Winnisquam board under fire for turning down sale of closed school

TILTON — Members of the Winnisquam Regional School Board acknowledged by the end of its Sept. 19 meeting that it could have done a better job of handling questions about its decision to turn down the sale of the closed Union-Sanborn Elementary School.

More than a dozen residents of the school district, along with some state representatives, attended Monday’s meeting to complain that the school board was acting contrary to the law when it took no action on an offer by the Compass Classical Charter School for the purchase of Union-Sanborn.

Voters had authorized the sale of the school, which closed in 2020, at the March 2022 School District Meeting. The district put the sale in the hands of Dow Realty, which listed the building for “slightly above $4.2 million,” according to school board minutes.

Only one bid came in, and after a non-public session to discuss the offer at its June meeting, Marcy Kelley moved and Dave Honeman seconded a successful motion to take no action on the bid, “on advice of real estate agents.”

The decision prompted a citizens’ petition that garnered 372 signatures, asking the board to reconsider.

“The current law in place gives charter schools the first right to refusal when a school is being sold, and the school board is ignoring the law by not negotiating and ignoring them,” the online petition states. “This is due to certain board members [sic] personal bias.

“The Charter school will offer a much needed option for the education and well being of our children. The board sees this as competition instead of the reality, which is that not all kids learn the same, so there needs to be easily accessible options.”

The person who initiated the petition, Amy Robillard, was among those speaking at Monday’s meeting.

Board Chair Sean Goodwin issued the statement, “Union-Sanborn School remains on the market, and there is no further information to report at this time” — a sentence he repeated several times during the evening, saying, “That is where we are.”

“Well,” Robillard asked, “how about which properties did you use to run comps on the school?”

“I can further say that this isn’t a question-and-answer session,” Goodwin said. “This is a public comment. I mainly provided that answer to be clear to everybody where we are in that process.”

Rep. Greg Hill, R-Northfield, quoted a portion of the law giving charter schools the first right of refusal on an unoccupied school building.

“Section D ... says, ‘If the offering school district has not received an offer to purchase or lease an unused facility from a party other than an approved charter public school operating in this state, a charter public school may initiate and the school board of the offering school district shall engage in good-faith negotiations for the purchase or lease of the unused facility.’ The law does not say, ‘After the school board waits for other offers to show up;’ it does not say, ‘Whenever the school board chooses to act, or when you get around to it.’”

Goodwin said people with questions could submit them to the board and “we’ll work on the answers at the next meeting.” The next meeting is Monday, Oct. 17.

Jason Gerhard, a candidate who just received the Republican nomination for state representative, spoke, saying he is “new to all this.”

“I just don’t really understand what’s going on,” he said. “I saw a petition on Facebook — 300-something signatures, who knows? Maybe they’re all illegal aliens that signed it — but the point is, people do want an answer to this, and I don’t understand the need to keep this secret. ... So if you address the issue of some bid that did or didn’t occur, it’s gonna deter other people from putting bids on it? I mean, you have a building full of bat poo. ... If you can use something the town is paying for, does that make any sense?

“I’m just getting this blank stare,” Gerhard continued. “Everybody’s here for answers. ... It’s public comment, but no reaction. We’re just going to do this whole miming thing? ... Can anyone else talk, or is this kind of like your kneecaps get broken or something?”

Sen. Bob Giuda, gesturing to the residents attending the meeting, chastised the board, saying, “You people have forgotten that you are the servant and you work for these people, as I as a senator work for 54,000 people, and I’m accountable to them. This is not your school; this is their school. You are charged to be the responsible stewards of it, and by violating the state law — of which myself, Sen. [Harold] French, and Rep. Hill were involved in shaping and crafting — you are in violation of state law and your stonewalling now puts you in violation of [RSA] 91-A, as stated in the law. So if you want to play confrontation and legalese, we can do that. We’ll put a 91-A request and get the information. It’s very clear in the law.”

Giuda told them they have an obligation to explain why they tabled the sale offer and why they are not negotiating with the charter school in good faith.

“Tabling that proposal is not negotiating in good faith and you’re facing legal consequences for that,” he concluded.

Some answers forthcoming

Later in the meeting, there was some further explanation of the Union-Sanborn situation.

Rob Berry, the district’s director of facilities, addressed reports of vandalism at the facility, saying that, while windows had been broken, “Nothing has happened at Union-Sanborn that we have not experienced over the years. It happened outside of school hours, whether that building was occupied or not.”

He noted that security cameras at the school remain operational and the police have obtained video files of the individuals responsible for the damage.

Later, while responding to questions the Northfield Selectboard had posed a month earlier, further information about Union-Sanborn was revealed. Some board members had met with the selectboard, but Goodwin said, “We were not able to answer [their questions] as we were not the whole board.”

Winnisquam’s policy is an extreme version of what many governmental boards have adopted to make sure that board decisions are not misrepresented by individual members. Most allow members to answer questions as long as they do not speak of matters that have not yet come before their board.

Monday’s meeting revealed that the answers being provided to the Northfield selectboard did not come from the school board, but from staff members. Some board members were not even aware of the questions until they received their board packets on Sunday — an oversight for which Goodwin apologized.

Responding to a question about how the school district came up a price for the Union-Sanborn School, Goodwin said, “The property was evaluated in price by the real estate agency using a formula which will not be discussed as it is proprietary.”

Goodwin said there is no timeline for responding to the purchase offer, and that the district hired Dow Realty to advise them through the real estate transaction. However, board minutes from March state, “Once we have a legitimate offer on the table, we notify the [Department of Education] who will notify charter schools in the state and they have a 60-day clock to meet or exceed the offer and have the right of first refusal. If two or more charter schools get in a bidding war the board will decide who they want to sell it to.”

Responding to a question of whether the board is aware of other interested parties, Goodwin said, “We are aware of other interested parties and relying on our real estate agency to receive these offers.”

Katherine Dawson raised the issue of not being informed of the Northfield board’s questions ahead of time, and other members agreed that they had not been able to participate in the answers; nevertheless, they voted to submit those responses to Northfield.

Mary Steady took up the issue again later, saying, “It feels like there’s a little bit of a transparency issue.”

Speaking of the public comment period, Steady said, “I tried to sit and reflect tonight on how things went and I don’t think it went as smoothly as any of us intended it to go, and I don’t think it started off on the right foot. And I totally hear people’s frustration that you come to a board meeting, you have questions you want answered, but as a board member I also appreciate the side that you don’t always get that straightforward answer, and there’s more to it.”

She suggested that the board make time at future meetings to respond to the public. “I think somebody used the word ‘stonewall’ and I felt like that’s not actually the position I’m in right now. I’m trying to listen and take that information and give the best possible feedback ... but I don’t think it came across that way. I felt for the public that came here, and then we gave a standard answer which is what we probably legally are able to provide at this time, but it didn’t come across that we were listening.”

Jon Cilley, one of the board members who met with the Northfield selectboard, agreed.

“I think transparency is a big issue,” he said. “I am not a quiet person easily. I do respond by emotion and I would have put answers out a lot faster, but I can’t represent the whole board any faster. ... I would love to have come up with a lot more answers than what you may have seen, but we’re obligated to wait for the legalese and other processes, and things like that.”

Goodwin said they would make modifications in the procedures for their next meeting to address the concerns.