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Health & Fitness

Why We Voted to Close Nathan Hale

The Manchester Board of Education unanimously voted to suspend the use of Nathan Hale for the 2012-2013 school year Wednesday night.

Last night, the Manchester Board of Education voted unanimously to . It was one of the toughest votes that I've made as an elected official, but it would have been negligent for me not to vote in the way I did. 

This has been a highly emotional issue locally for years.  It's been closed to only be reopened to then appearing again on budget agendas.

The first time I spoke publicly at a town meeting was at a joint hearing that was hosted on St. Patrick's Day of 2009; I spoke against closing Nathan Hale.  I'm sure you may wonder how I am on record speaking against closing the school to now being one of the nine votes that voted to take it offline in less than three years?  I've struggled with the same question myself.  While the end result is the same, the reasoning behind it is entirely different. 

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In 2009, the prospect of Nathan Hale being shuttered was looked at for budgetary reasons, which I was totally against.  Today, while there are budgetary implications, this decision was about the decaying facility that our students ha e to learn in.

Based on a  that the Board of Education received at the beginning of January, the school building was in need of serious repairs that could no longer be epoxyed or painted over. Even if the barest of minimum repairs are made, the school still needs to be offline for a period of 6-8 months. The students aren't failing, it is the school building itself that is failing them. Those minimal repairs, in my opinion, will not do our students justice. 

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Nathan Hale has lived well beyond her life expectancy. She's heated by a boiler that is 91. The low-pressure steam pipes are paper thin. On especially cold nights, I jump slightly when the phone rings wondering if it's news on the other end that Nathan Hale's heating system has failed and that we need to uproot our students to other schools. 

It's kind of like having a grandparent or parent on death's doorstep and just waiting for the call that they're gone. There is no denying the inevitable--they're going to go, it's just a question of when. The facilities manager said without a doubt that Nathan Hale's heating system would not make it through another winter. We've gambled on the students of Nathan Hale long enough, but we cannot do it any longer.

Some members said that the vote tonight was a sad one for them - to some extent I agree - but what would have been much sadder to me is ignoring the information that we have in front of us and negligently sending students to Nathan Hale for another year. Don't get me wrong: students are safe, but being safe is a whole lot different than being in a building that is most educationally sound and ready for 21st century learners.

Now is not a time to point fingers or hem and haw about reports that were done 20 years ago. Here we are in the present with issues that need to be addressed. I am not willing to be part a school board that is blamed for not coming up with a plan to meet the educational needs of our students. I am encouraged that the joint committee that the Board of Directors and Board of Education will be voting on in the coming weeks will look at the needs of our school district as a whole in terms of facilities, demographics, enrollment and educational needs and come up with a plan that will best suit our student population.

I believe we are committed to doing what is best for our students. We cannot be hasty in making decisions of this magnitude, which is why there is now an opportunity to fully explore the options for Nathan Hale and the rest of the district. We need long term investments into our schools and need to invest more in preventative maintenance. Additionally this evening, the Board adopted a 2.26 percent budget increase from last year's that includes an additional $200K for capital investments, so we can begin the process of getting ahead of some of the smaller, critical items that are facing our district.

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