Hillsboro-Deering budget cuts make state Teacher of the Year consider sending her child elsewhere for school

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Noah Welch is 3 years old, and a good part of his world revolves around the Hillsboro-Deering School District.

His dad, Randy Welch, used to be a school board member and a school psychologist at Hillsboro-Deering High School, where Noah’s two sisters attend. And his mom, Heidi Welch, is the school music teacher, New Hampshire’s Teacher of the Year and now one of four contestants for National Teacher of the Year.

Until last Tuesday, Noah’s parents assumed he would attend the local school district, too. Now, the idea that he might not is on the table, though it’s an idea that causes Heidi Welch to cringe.

After hearing that night that district voters approved a budget $1 million less than administrators requested, Randy posted on Facebook that the question of where to raise Noah is now open. Heidi, one of Hillsboro-Deering’s loudest, most indefatigable cheerleaders, still has hope.

“I firmly believe that if you are a teacher in a district, you should believe in the district enough to bring your kids here,” Welch said Thursday at her home. “I believe in Hillsboro-Deering. I believe in it with a million-dollar cut, I believe in what the teachers can do for our kids. But with a million-dollar cut, if we start losing some of the best teachers, some of these teachers who make the district what it is, than that belief starts to go. They’ve got three years, before we say, ‘hmm, where do we really want him to go to school?’ ”

It would take a pink slip or a severe budget cut to the music department for Heidi to leave her post, she said, but Randy Welch has set a much lower bar for what would motivate him to look for other educational opportunities for Noah.

“We’re always the first to defend the school district,” Randy said. “We love the school district and we’ve never even really seriously considered leaving the town. But cuts are one thing. Default budgets are one thing, but when you cut $1 million out of a $20 million school budget – if this is what our town is going to do, I don’t know that I have the same faith in the town that I did when we were raising our first two kids.”

(Sarah Palermo can be reached at 369-3322 or
spalermo@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @SPalermoNews.)