OUR SCHOOL BOARD IS DRUNK WITH MONEY / RESULTS ARE SOBERING!

Epping Taxpayers were asked this year...to pay towards $22,972,989.00 for another year of a deficient education for our students. That’s right, almost $23 million dollars to educate a total school population of 891 students, the current school year enrollment as reported by the School District.

The School Board is asked for you to approve an “Operational” budget of $22,596,832 plus another $376,157 to pay for the 1st year of a 2-year $753,631 Teachers’ contract. That's approximately $25,783 per student, per year. At that rate of per student spending, the Epping School System should be able to brag about the abundant number of students scoring in the upper percentile for educational knowledge and achievement. Sadly, that is not the case at all. As reported by Public School Review, for going on 12 years now, Epping students’ overall test scores show an across the board, precipitous 30% decline in Math, Reading & Language Arts. The awful truth is this: the Epping School System ranks in the bottom 50% of all other New Hampshire schools.

This Being The Case, Why Is It So?

It is due to the majority of Epping School Board members, led by Chairperson Heather Clark, being led around by the direction of the School Administration and the Teacher’s Union rather than reaching out to other sources for guidance in how to improve. For the most part, we have outstanding classroom educators who aren’t permitted to focus on helping students build off of a solid foundation. There are far too many “social” programs being forced upon today’s teachers where the basic needs of students in learning “how” to think are subordinated to being taught “what” to think. Consequently, the Epping student body, overall, continues to underperform year after year. They are failed by a School Board that only knows how, unashamedly so, to year after year agree to larger and larger Administration crafted budgets.

Epping students will continue to be short-changed with a sub-par education; and, Epping taxpayers will continue to be bled dry to pay for it.

What’s the fix?

The fix is for the taxpayers to right the boat; to close the funding spigot until the value they are paying for becomes self-evident through educational test scores. In so doing, Epping taxpayers will exercise much needed oversight in provisioning an outstanding educational experience for Epping students. It is up to the voters to hold the School Board accountable for how taxpayer money is being spent. Taxpayers can do this best by choosing well at the Annual Town Meeting election. It is important that taxpayers not take this responsibility lightly.

The school system is in dire need of academically knowledgeable and curriculum crafting capable people to fill School Board seats. The time is long overdue for electing candidates to office who know what they are elected to do and how to do it. That is, School Board members who will take charge of directing the Superintendent and Administrative staff, rather than the other way around as it is now and has been for decades.

$25,000+ per Student Cost with No Appreciable Results

Epping taxpayers must stop throwing millions and millions of good money after bad only to end up with poor results. Epping is in need a of a School Board focused on academics (e.g., reading, writing and math), not on extracurricular activities. We need a Board dedicated to choosing a solid curriculum that will allow our students to excel academically while maximizing every dollar we taxpayers provide for running a top notch school system.

VOTERS: Take charge. Wake up! Reject the decades long cycle of under-performing School Boards who march to the beat of the Superintendent and Administrative Staff.