Once again, a group of Pittsfield residents wants voters to consider closing the town’s high school.
Signed by 32 residents, a petition warrant article to that affect will appear on the town’s March ballot. If passed, the article would authorize the school board to initiate the formal process of considering the school’s closure at the end of next school year.
The future of the school, which has one of the smallest enrollments in the state, has long been a subject of debate. As recently as 2021, the district engaged a firm to study the prospect of closing its high school. At the time, the study determined that sending students to other area schools would not save the town money.
Residents will get a chance to debate this latest proposal at the district’s deliberative session at 6 p.m. on Thursday.
Pittsfield’s schools face a host of challenges. The district has among the lowest property valuations per pupil, resulting in high property tax rates. Its students struggle on standardized tests, and its teachers have the second-lowest minimum starting salary in the state.
The prospect of universal open enrollment, which would allow students to enroll in any school in the state at their home district’s expense, would further threaten Pittsfield’s enrollment and finances. The policy could become law as soon as later this month.
Closing the high school has typically been framed as a way to save money while increasing students’ educational opportunities, but the move would prompt many thorny fiscal, logistical and cultural questions.
Chief among them would be what to do about the remaining middle and elementary school students. Currently, the middle and high school share a building. The 2021 study determined that space constraints would limit the district’s ability to consolidate the middle and elementary schools into existing buildings.
Devin Funk, who led the effort to gather signatures for the warrant article, was not available to comment on the rationale for the measure on Wednesday.
First-year Superintendent Sandie MacDonald said her administrative team will support district leaders in providing information on the benefits and drawbacks of closing the high school.
“There are benefits of big schools and there’s benefits of small schools, and it is up to the community to decide what they want for their community and their students, and it is up to us to take their wishes and provide a great opportunity for kids,” MacDonald said in an interview last December, prior to the warrant article being filed.
Both MacDonald and first-year Middle High School Principal Erik Anderson are veterans of small, rural districts. MacDonald was an eighth-grade teacher in Barnstead and Anderson was previously principal of White Mountains Regional High School.
At the time MacDonald taught, Barnstead didn’t have a high school and paid tuition to other districts to provide secondary education for their students. She said it was “very sad” to see students disperse from a small community to an array of high schools across the region. Barnstead has since joined forces with Alton to build a high school, Prospect Mountain, which has enrolled students from other districts, including Pittsfield, through open enrollment.
Anderson said there is great value in the environment of a small school. Halfway through his first year, he knows the names of all of 240 students in middle and high school.
“I don’t know all of their stories, but I know most of their stories,” he said. “And that’s real, and that’s genuine, and you can’t find that in a larger school.”
If Pittsfield decides to close its high school, it could pursue a tuition agreement with a single other school, as districts like Epsom, Chichester, Andover and Allenstown do, or give families options, like Deerfield does.
A single option would likely be cheaper, Deerfield has found.
Under a universal open enrollment law, though, tuition agreements with area districts might prove mostly irrelevant.
The main reason the 2021 study found the district would not save money by closing the high school was due to the additional expenses associated with transportation and special education. At the time, certain positions were shared between the middle-high school and elementary schools, limiting the cost savings from sending high school students to other districts.
Of course, the decision is not just financial. Though school leaders say Pittsfield provides its high schoolers a range of educational options, including through partnerships with NHTI, Southern New Hampshire University and the Concord Regional Technical Center, there are obvious limits to what a small school can offer. The 2021 report found that Pittsfield offers fewer academic and extracurricular activities than seven other area high schools in a comparison group.
Voters will also consider a more open-ended warrant article, which would establish a study committee to examine the long-term future of the school district. That measure is supported unanimously by the school board; the board has not weighed in on the measure to evaluate the closure of the high school.