Newfound School Board to consider censuring members over public records, meeting violations

BRISTOL — As the Newfound Area School Board struggles to comply with New Hampshire’s right-to-know and conflict-of-interest laws, Bristol’s representative, whose wife will become the new curriculum coordinator for the school district, has called for the board to censure members from Groton and New Hampton whose criticism of the hire last month had veered into territory normally reserved for nonpublic discussion.

Joe Maloney had not participated in the May 20 discussion because of his relationship with the nominee, but at the June 10 meeting, he asked that the comments by William Jolly and Francine Wendelboe be stricken from the minutes and the discussion be cut from the video of the meeting. When informed that changing the record would be improper, Maloney then asked about formally censuring the two.

Board Chair Melissa Suckling of Danbury said she would put the censure on the agenda for the next scheduled meeting on Monday, Aug. 12.

Both Jolly and Wendelboe had questioned Interim Superintendent Steven Nilhas’ nomination of Ariel Maloney — currently the chair of the English Department at Newfound Regional High School — because of alleged philosophical biases. During the May 20 meeting, Wendelboe said Ariel has a “woke” philosophy “that is contrary to probably most of the taxpayers and parents in this district.”

Jolly went further, saying Ariel’s resume showed she had been “freelancing” for other educational entities while at Newfound, writing about social-emotional learning competencies, learning for justice, social justice standards, and culturally responsive curriculum, including the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“The issue is this,” Jolly said: “Ariel has blurred the lines between her professional responsibility and role and her personal beliefs. And I have concerns that, if she takes this role, she’s going to have a hard time abandoning that pattern.”

The school board went on to confirm her to succeed the current curriculum coordinator, Jeannette Shedd, on July 1.

Residents attending the June 10 school board meeting took up the complaints, with Gary Phillips of Bristol urging the school board to be wary of “CRT educators [who are] gradually programming students to believe Thanksgiving is not even worthy of celebration.”

He continued, “It is vital to provide vigilant monitoring and oversight of the educational curriculum to assure that it is free of such destructive content to assure that we not rob our students of an objective understanding of our country's history. If we fail to do so, we will surely forfeit the most basic governmental protections that have preserved our personal freedoms and safe way of life, all of which greatly aided in the advancement of our prosperity and peaceful way of life.”

Marie Carson of Alexandria also expressed concerns about Ariel’s personal philosophy getting in the way of objective teaching. During a presentation Ariel had given in Boston in 2019, Carson said, “she said she tells her students that they have a choice, to take a blue pill or a red pill. The blue is current reality, the red is new reality. The red pill is better because it promotes social justice regarding racism, classism, sexism, and ableism.”

Carson also discussed an article Ariel had written about harmful Thanksgiving myths.

“In the article, she states how her stomach dropped the day her kindergartener told her that he had a good day at school and he had learned about the first Thanksgiving. Her reply to her son was, 'Well, that’s not exactly true. The Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts and liked the land. They liked it so much, they stole it from the people who were living there.' She goes on to explain this is why we need to do this work now when he’s young and his brain is still figuring out how to process the world,” Carson said.

During board comments at the end of the meeting, as they discussed procedural errors during the superintendent search that had violated RSA 91-A, Joe Maloney took the opportunity to bring up the comments about his wife.

“While we’re on the topic of RSA 91-A,” he said, “there’s also something I think that has happened on the school board that has also violated that law. And I think a couple of our board members overstepped in their comments in the May 20 meeting, and I do think that they discussed a public employee that, in both 91-A-3:2a and 91-A-3:2c, I think that as much as they’re championing this RSA, they may have inadvertently maybe, maybe not, went ahead and violated that RSA.”

Wendelboe did not attend the June meeting, but Jolly responded, “Everything that was garnered, that I presented, is from a 91-A released to me, and the email that your wife sends out is also public because she sent it to the entire board. So everything’s public.”

He went on to say, “We had a public meeting and, as Melissa will recall, that I asked in closed session if we should do this in public, and she never replied. She said we’ll decide that. And then we went into public, and so that was the only opportunity I had to speak.”

Suckling said, “And you just absolutely broke nonpublic rules by discussing what ... you are not to discuss anything that is discussed in nonpublic at public meetings, at all. And you just broke two golden rules on a school board, is not discuss anything in nonpublic in public, and you just did. That will be the one thing that will get you kicked off the school board, and you just did it.”

Jolly said, “If it’s a violation, I apologize.”

Linda Phillips of Bristol called out to Suckling from the audience, “You violated 15 [right-to-know provisions during the superintendent search]; he just finally did one. Are we to compare performance? You haven’t even apologized now.”

Suckling said she will research censure “and what we can do.”