For more than a century, one Loudon neighborhood has been looped into the Concord School District, and its residents have paid Concord School taxes. That could soon change.
Beth and Paul Morrissette, along with their neighbors, have long chafed at their inclusion in the city, rather than their own town. They set in motion a plan to move their road back into Loudon’s school district.
Concord, which plans to hold a hearing on the idea in November, will have to sign off on the change.
Some Loudon residents on Oak Hill Road would largely prefer that their children attend Loudon and Merrimack Valley Schools. Others, as Paul Morrissette once put it, would rather their tax dollars go to their “own damn town.”
Beyond that, the Concord taxes are higher. Residents paid 15% more in school taxes in 2025 than they would have as Loudon school taxpayers, a Concord Monitor analysis found. That comes out to an average of $942 per property on the street.
Moreover, the Loudon residents don’t get to vote in elections for Concord’s school board. Some cast it as a straightforward case of taxation without representation.
Oak Hill Road, once a stretch of farmland, became part of the Concord School District under an 1859 law. It allowed the farmers living there to send their children to a Concord schoolhouse that was far closer to their land than Loudon schools were at the time.
That practice was fairly common for the era, but in every other case where it occurred, it was eventually repealed, according to Monitor inquiries. The survival of the arrangement in Loudon has puzzled state educational history experts.
A century-and-a-half later, kids in that area are still going to Concord Schools, even as Loudon Elementary and Merrimack Valley are now closer options. About a dozen properties are affected, only a few of which currently have school-aged kids.
State law includes a provision where areas annexed into another town’s school district can ask to be restored to their original district. It requires a vote of the select board of their own town and the receiving town. Oak Hill Road residents initiated that process with a petition this spring, and Loudon’s board signed off in June.
The Concord City Council will hold a public hearing on the question at its November meeting.
If the restoration moves forward, it would go into effect on July 1, 2027. Students affected by the change would get to choose which district they attend through the summer of 2030.
