I read Epsom School Board Chairman Dave Cummings’s “My Turn” (Sunday Monitor Forum, April 10) and now I feel so much better.
Now I know this whole thing at Pembroke Academy is just being fueled by the Concord Monitor. “The Pembroke community would like some time to consider what just happened.”
Yes, it only just happened, merely six weeks ago. Give us some time here – maybe six more weeks – but who knows for sure?
The Monitor is just “chest-thumping about breaking the story.” Yeah, you don’t see NH1, WMUR, the Union Leader, Boston Globe or even the Montreal Gazette reporting about this stuff, do you?
Thank you for making a call to the superintendent and listening to her talk candidly to you about this matter. We have no idea what was said, and we don’t need to know. As long as the chairman is satisfied, who are we to question?
Yes, it was discussed at the SAU meeting. Well, after the meeting a bunch of us parents stayed around and talked for an hour. We talked about why it took six weeks to be divulged publicly, whether RSA 91-A, the right-to-know law, did indeed apply, how things could be better in the future and all kinds of unrelated SAU silly stuff. Thanks for leaving the lights on for us.
I understand that you and the superintendent are confident that “no one in the school community would be put at risk based on a lack of communication.” After all, telling a parent about heroin in a school could cause them stress, and we know stress is bad.
Boy, you couldn’t have been more right when you said, “Sherman was faced with a delicate balancing act.” I see what you mean – she said she was bound by state and federal law, but really she wasn’t bound at all. That is a delicate balancing act, for sure. Balancing this all could land someone on the wrong foot.
I am glad that you pointed out that this incident is more important than “calling a snow day.” Some of us concerned citizens might have missed that one. After all, there was only “sparse attendance at two public meetings on the subject.” I am sure you normally have more than 40 people at SAU meetings.
The meeting agendas did list “Citizen Comment.” Normal, informed people should know that the agenda item means the subject of the meeting was “the arrest of the dean of students for possession of heroin and steroids on school grounds.”
I am sorry; I didn’t note the “significant exception to board policy in favor of allowing a Hooksett resident to speak.” I didn’t know you had a policy that a Hooksett resident couldn’t speak. I thought citizen meant citizen.
And thanks for granting the exception in the “spirit of transparency.” Even with that, I had to argue with the board to speak publicly. I can’t imagine what it would be like if it wasn’t transparent.
You know all along that I thought these were “good, well-intentioned people” – not the down and dirty evil demons that Nick Reid portrayed them to be.
I have learned so much. When a dean of students is arrested at school with heroin and steroids, it is not an arrest but is prescribed bureaucratic jargon such as “change of employment status.”
I can’t believe I was so insensitive.
Well, I guess I don’t need to go to any more meetings or ask any more questions or read that Monitor rag.
You guys are taking care of everything just swell. Well, as far as we know.
(David Pearl lives in Hooksett.)