Twice a day, Susanne Smith-Meyer walks her dog past the sugar maple tree that her now 35-year-old son planted at the Eastman School decades ago.
She has watched the tree grow taller over the years and change colors with the seasons. She’s watched the school itself change forms, too, from its closure during elementary school consolidation to the years when it sat empty, attracting a camp of unhoused people.
For the last several years, the building has been home to a Boys and Girls Club pre-school.
If the Concord School District does eventually sell Eastman – as the district will seek voter permission this fall to do – Smith-Meyer hopes that those negotiating the sale will be picky. She hopes they’ll consider protecting the building from demolition and preserving the character of the neighborhood surrounding it.
She especially hopes they’ll try to keep that sugar maple.
“I would have to tie myself to that tree before anyone took it down,” she said.
The Concord Board of Education voted Monday to introduce a ballot question seeking permission from city voters to sell the Eastman School. While the Boys and Girls Club has an active monthly lease, it doesn’t cover the roughly $50,000 the district pays to maintain the building each year. Selling the building, which is assessed at $2.6 million, would bring a jolt of cash to the district that could help pay for a new middle school.
The board also agreed to assemble a public committee to oversee what might happen to the school, or who might want to buy it, allowing neighbors like Smith-Meyer to get a say.
The debate over Eastman’s fate has triggered a new rule in the district for the first time.
A charter amendment approved last year states that “no…property owned by the Concord School District shall be sold, gifted, or exchanged by the District without an affirmative simple majority vote of Concord School District voters voting on the question.”
There’s some disagreement about what the rule’s language means. The board and its lawyer read it as requiring them to get public permission to put the property on the market. Those who wrote the amendment read it as requiring the board to let voters weigh in on a buyer and sale once they’re lined up.
Charlie Russell, a lawyer involved with the Concord Concerned Citizens group that authored the amendment last year, said the rule originated out of some residents’ distrust of the school board’s decision-making ability.
He maintains that the intention of the charter amendment was to give residents a direct and final say over school locations and school buildings, but that is not explicitly required in the rule’s language.
“That in theory sounds pretty feel-good, but in the way the world works, I don’t see it being a productive way for us to actively sell a property,” Board member Sarah Robinson said. “The language is vague enough that there are two separate interpretations of what this charter amendment means. Our legal counsel has interpreted it in this way.”
Robinson said that interpretation would be untenable: Developers interested in the building might have to wait several months for an election, and in the end, voters could still shoot down their proposals. Accommodating that risk would likely bring down the sale price and potentially put the Boys and Girls Club preschool in limbo.
The board voted unanimously, with Jim Richards absent, to place a question on the ballot that asks voters for permission to put the school and its 4.6 acres on the market, and to pursue a sale that the board deems best for the district.
Smith-Meyer sees the Boys and Girls Club as among the best possible new chapters for the school.
The organization is interested in buying Eastman, Executive Director Chris Emond said outside the meeting, but having just completed a major project with the new Penacook Community Center, pulling together the money to buy Eastman would be a tall order.
In the meantime, Emond said, his organization is keeping an eye on the conversation. The pre-school can handle up to 60 kids, although staffing limitations sometimes keep capacity down.
“I’m here just to get an understanding of what’s going on,” he said.
Last week, when the school board first discussed selling the building, Board President Pamela Walsh said the topic’s abrupt addition to the meeting agenda came down to the board’s belief that think there was any time remaining to get the sale question on November ballots.
After checking again with its attorney and with the city clerk, the Board learned that there was still time and scheduled Monday’s meeting, according to district public information officer Terry Wolf.
The reversal left some, including members of the Concerned Citizens group, feeling as though they’d been caught in a bait-and-switch.
The urgency there, Walsh said, stemmed from the district’s financial woes, not a larger conspiracy. The sooner the Board can sell the building – with voters’ permission – the sooner the district can get that money.
“There is no secret buyer, there’s no secret plan,” Walsh said. “It’s an expensive, falling apart building that we don’t think taxpayers, I don’t think taxpayers… should be maintaining any longer.”