Tabitha Nedeau couldn’t be there in person to tell the Concord Board of Education how much Second Start Alternative High School had meant to her. Not because she didn’t care, but because she was somewhere she once thought she’d never be: college.
In a letter, Nedeau explained how she’d struggled at Concord High School. Her personal life weighed on her mental health, and her absences ticked up. She finished her freshman year with just a few passing grades. She was told she wouldn’t graduate on time.
“Hearing that made me feel completely given up on by staff, causing me to eventually give up on myself,” Nedeau wrote.
Second Start turned everything around, she said, not just because of its more individualized structure but because of its culture. She graduated on time last spring, and is pursuing a degree in education, hoping to one day become a teacher like her grandmother.
“For the first time in years, I felt like I was surrounded by people who saw my potential instead of my problems,” Nedeau said. “Second start didn’t just change the direction of my education, it changed the direction of my life.”
Nedeau said courses at Second Start got her to the finish line. Credit: CATHERINE McLAUGHLIN / Monitor 
Tabitha Nedeau receiving her diploma at the 2025 CHS graduation. Credit: CATHERINE McLAUGHLIN / Monitor 
Tabitha Nedeau with her grandmother, Jerilynn, and her father, John, after the 2025 CHS graduation ceremony. Credit: Catherine McLaughlin / Monitor staff 
As Tabitha crossed the stage, her family pressed up against the fenceline and erupted in cheers. Credit: Catherine McLaughlin / Monitor staff
Nedeau was among several students, alumni, parents and staff connected to the alternative high school program who asked the school board on Monday night to restore funding for Concord students to attend at the same level they do now.
They weren’t alone in their pleas for relief from budget cuts.
The school board is weighing an array of reductions to close a $17 million deficit. Its plan so far includes cuts to spending on technology and furniture and classroom tools, pauses on raises for central office administrators, shrinking the number of students attending Second Start and eliminating 37 staff positions, roughly two-thirds of whom are “certified teachers.”
Among those testifying to the board were teachers and counselors worried about how sharing assistant principals between elementary schools could deteriorate the special education system at the primary level. Also testifying were students and teachers who feared a loss of arts programming with fewer staff.
Concord is not in a strong position to be adding things back into its school budget. The $124 million proposed spending plan adds less than $30,000 in total expenses from the current year. The deficit comes from a drop in revenue, which means cuts or increases in taxes, or both, to make up the difference. At its current level, the budget would carry a 12% increase to the local school tax rate – more than double the board’s goal of 5%.
“No matter how we look at it, there’s no way to avoid reductions in staff in order to come in at a budget that would not be an astronomical raise to the tax rate,” Superintendent Tim Herbert said.
The staff and equipment cuts would extend to every district school and mean relocating the central office. Even with them, as a property revaluation wraps up, increases in taxes this year will compound for those with the least means, as manufactured and starter homes and multifamily units are expected to see spikes in property value.
“These are really hard subjects,” said Pam Walsh, president of the school board, at the hearing’s outset. “We’re talking about people’s jobs. We’re talking about the education of our children, and we’re also talking about the ability of people to continue to afford to live in this community.”
There will be a second budget hearing on Wednesday evening, and the board has given itself another week after that to agree on a budget for 2027.
Assistant principals
At the primary level, assistant principals perform a key coordinating role for special education, helping bring together families, teachers, counselors and specialists, sometimes in moments of student crisis.
Broken Ground teachers and special education professionals told the board that sharing those positions between buildings would compromise the efficacy at a time when special education needs have never been higher.
Their expertise, presence and relationships, said Broken Ground teacher Lauren Matava, “can help prevent situations from reaching a crisis point, reduce the need for emergency responses and ensure that students receive the appropriate care and interventions.”
“When these positions remain unfilled,” she continued, “case managers carry heavier workloads. Teachers spend more time navigating systems instead of teaching and, most importantly, students may not receive timely support.”
The board has proposed reducing the number of elementary assistant principals from five to three. On a balance sheet, together they represent well over $200,000 in expenses, or roughly half a percentage of tax rate adjustment.
Second Start
When it comes to Second Start, the district is planning to send fewer of its students in the coming years and, instead, expand its adult diploma program. The goal of that expansion would be to provide more individualized and intense support for some students in-house. They would attend classes in a renovated wing of the high school’s third floor. Those with more acute special educational needs would still access programs at Second Start and beyond.
But students and alumni, like Nedeau, say that simply being on the high school campus would be a non-starter for them. Or, after already falling through the cracks at the high school, they don’t trust that a program under that same umbrella would catch them the way Second Start did.
“My daughter, I know, that if she goes back to Concord High School, she will not go,” said Jennifer Harris. “She will skip. She won’t go to school.”
District leaders have praised the new in-house program’s potential to encircle a range of students who need more support, not just the ones attending Second Start. They hope it would reduce the number of kids choosing home-school and online options. They’ve also said those already attending the alternative high school would continue to do so uninterrupted, though administrators at Second Start dispute whether there’s enough funding in the budget for that.
Second start will not close with fewer Concord students in attendance – a fear of some testifying – but it would be less available to them.
Redirecting students from Second Start to the new CHS program would provide a net savings of about $500,000 next year.
Art courses
Teachers and students from the middle and high school cautioned the board against nixing arts courses and instructors.
“The arts are not an extra. They’re not a luxury. They are part of what makes school meaningful, humane and engaging for so many children,” said Somayeh Kashi, an art teacher at Rundlett Middle School. “When the arts are among those cuts, we send a painful message that creativity, expression, and joy are expendable. They are not.”
Broadly, the high school would see the greatest teaching reduction for next year at about 11 positions.
At the elementary level, classroom teachers can be slowly reduced and rearranged in tandem with student populations to manage class sizes. At the secondary level, things aren’t so flexible. A course is either offered or it isn’t. The threshold for offering a course is generally around 15 students, Herbert said after the meeting.
The district hasn’t confirmed exactly which positions or programs would be affected by many of the staff cuts, but Herbert noted that, as in any year, the number of electives offered by the district depends on more than funding. The district factors in how many students sign up and the experience and certifications of staff to teach certain courses. A class like computer science, even with strong student interest, might not run without someone available to lead it and visa versa.
Projections for high school courses for next year show how many students requested each course and how many sections of each class will be offered – though it doesn’t differentiate how staff changes would factor in. Of the courses that won’t field sections next year, many but not all of them are in the arts.
High School enrollment is expected to fall to its lowest ever level next year, Herbert said. That will affect the high school’s ability to offer certain courses across subject ranges, particularly more specialized ones.
More advanced studio art and acting courses wouldn’t run, per the projections, but neither would AP Calculus BC, French 5, business law or AP European history.
Audience members and the board also revived a longstanding refrain to lobby state lawmakers to increase New Hampshire’s contributions to local school districts.
Concord is anticipating just under $3 million less in overall state education funding next year, one piece driving the need for cuts. Other factors include ever-climbing health insurance, utility and special education costs as well as the beginning of debt payments on a new middle school.
Concord’s all Democratic state representatives and senator already support more state education funding, but their party hasn’t held a dominant legislative position in years.
“Unfortunately, we only have one revenue source that we can control,” Walsh said, “and it’s property taxes.”
