“A house divided against itself can not stand.” –Abraham Lincoln, 1851.
Once again, Sullivan’s good name was in the Keene Sentinel with regard to the lawsuit against the Monadnock Regional School District (see School issues causing divide). That’s unfortunate because the people of Sullivan put their faith and trust in their elected officials, and in this case I believe that those officials succumbed to a contagion of misplaced anger and some pretty irrational arguments.
That anger was whipped up by a small group that included folks from the Monadnock Taxpayer’s Association, whose members apparently met with town officials. Now a group of residents has come forward to challenge the town in a lawsuit to stop the action against the district. Sullivan taxpayers will have their chance to weigh in on this sorry mess in their upcoming town meeting and when the do they should give the town’s lawsuit against the district the boot. Here’s why.
It makes no sense
I was at a public hearing on the school budget last year when Dick Bauries, of the Monadnock Taxpayers Association and then a member of the Budget Committee, demanded that the school district immediately discontinue its early retirement program, which had been approved by voters and had been in effect since 2000. The superintendent explained to Mr. Bauries - and not for the first time - that the district’s legal counsel had recommended against doing so.
There are several good reasons why this was a bad idea. The key to the argument in the suit is that voters weren’t given the “true costs” of the early retirement program before they voted on it. I suppose that means voters couldn’t be trusted to do the math themselves: They needed an in-depth report that gave all of the “what if” scenarios, including what would happen if every teacher decided to retire.
As with most of these silly little wars that keep the school board divided and distracted, there’s kernel of truth here. This backward-looking argument turns on a technicality: Whether what was posted more than seven years ago about the original warrant article was sufficient. But does this matter, really, at this point - seven years after the fact? Are we going to go back and force early retirees to return the money, put them all back in their old jobs and say, “Sorry, we changed our minds?” Of course not. And the costs of the program, despite dire predictions, have not broken the district. Nor will it in the future, for reasons that I’ll make clear shortly.
The whole idea of trying to retroactively wiggle out of a contract approved more than seven years ago seems pretty ridiculous. If you went to lease a car, signed the papers, and then several years later went back to the dealer and told him that you wanted your money back because you didn’t fully grasp the financial implications of the contract, what do you think they would say?
It will cost taxpayers a lot of money for nothing
The amount of money that would have been saved by reneging on the early retirement program in the coming year was very small relative to the overall budget. The teacher’s union would be forced to take legal action, the district’s counsel advised that we would in all likelihood lose the case, and the legal bills to defend against that case would probably use up most - perhaps all - of any savings that might accrue in the coming year.
Furthermore, the early retirement program was tied to a teacher’s contract that had expired a year earlier. The continuation of the early retirement benefit, which allows no more than five teachers per year to participate, was a key point of contract negotiations going forward. The program was likely to be either eliminated entirely, substantially changed, or phased out completely in any new contract. (In fact the agreement recently reached with the teachers, if approved in March, will phase out the program).
Despite this, Mr. Baurie’s public response was “Let them sue!” And sue they would have. First the teacher’s union would have challenged the action. Then, if they didn’t prevail, every early retiree would surely have engaged the district. Taxpayers would have paid the legal expenses every step of the way. (That was in January. Two months later, in the March elections, Mr. Bauries was defeated in his bid to be reelected to the Budget Committee).
Everyone’s a loser - especially your kids
When things didn’t go Mr. Bauries’ way, I half expected a lawsuit. But I didn’t expect it to come from the town of Sullivan. This was the Monadnock Taxpayers Association’s battle, one of a string of ongoing legal maneuvers and petitions the group has arranged over the years that in my view have caused much stress for the administration, disrupted meetings, and have successfully diverted time and energy away from the school board’s core duties: Things like helping to provide an excellent education for students in safe, well maintained buildings that meet minimum requirements for accreditation. Keeping focused can be hard to do that when you have a small cadre of angry middle aged men getting on their soapboxes, giving lectures on their latest cause du jour and making angry outbursts at board meetings. (Try going to some school board meetings. It will make you sick.)
It’s not Sullivan’s fight
In launching the lawsuit against the district, I believe that Sullivan taxpayers became a proxy, funding a battle for someone else’s war. If Sullivan’s task is to investigate whether or not to leave the district, it makes no sense to spend Sullivan citizens’ tax dollars fighting this battle, rather than forming a withdrawl study committee, as directed by voters. Even if it prevailed, would this in some way affect the decision as to whether or not to withdraw? Is this what such a decision is predicated upon?
Sullivan’s voting citizens could be excused for feeling outraged at how this has played out. They’re paying through their taxes to prosecute and defend this case. Win or lose they’re chewing off their own foot.
The lawsuit seems to be searching for issues
The Sullivan lawsuit against the district, as cited in the Sentinel story, throws in other, unrelated accusations for good measure. These appear to track closely with the Monadnock Taxpayers Association’s agenda. I won’t bore you with them all, but one is that the district is charging less than the full cost for out of district students who attend the Monadnock Community Connections School (MC2). This innovative program, one of a few bright spots in the NEASC’s evaluation of the Middle/High School (now on probation and one step away from losing its accreditation), has long been the target of the Monadnock Taxpayers Association, whose members would like nothing more than to see it shut down and the money for its operation returned to the taxpayers.
The last straw
Now a group of fed up Sullivan taxpayers, lead by resident John Hoffman, is suing the town to stop the lawsuit against its own schools. Was some of the $25,000 allocated to investigating withdrawing from the district used instead to fight this battle, as it appears from comments atribuged to Sullivan Selecman Hotchkiss in this week’s Sentinel story? Is this what Sullivan voters wanted?
Fortunately, this probably won’t play out in court. Thanks to a petition article against the lawsuit, also submitted by Hoffman, the issue will be decided by Sullivan’s voters at their town meeting, as it should be.
Hopefully, the residents of Sullivan will put aside the lawsuit, get involved, and work to make the schools a better place for all of our kids.
