The candidate chosen for Concord School Board’s at-large position in November will be changing up the status quo, taking over a seat that has been held by former board president Jennifer Patterson since 2008.
The winning candidate will pick up where Patterson left off when she resigned unexpectedly Aug. 20. The term ends in December 2021.
At-large board members are elected to represent the whole city rather than a specific district, so residents in all wards will vote on these candidates.
Two candidates have signed up to run for the position: Jane Presby, a former teacher who owns Dimond Hill Farm, and Pamela Walsh, a parent and former chief of staff for Gov. Maggie Hassan.
Teaching has always been a part of Jane Presby’s lifestyle, whether she was instructing in the Concord School District or educating the community about food at Dimond Hill Farm.
Presby grew up in Concord on the farm that she now runs, and worked for 34 years in the Concord School District, coaching sports and teaching PE and health and sexuality classes. In the 1970s after Title IX was passed, she became heavily involved in women’s inclusion in sports, working to create more girls teams at the high school level. More recently, she served for nine years on the county committee for the USDA’s Farm Service Agency.
She is now looking to the school board as the next way to get involved in the community.
“I bring a lot of different perspectives because I’ve done so many things,” Presby said. “I know what it’s like to sit in a classroom every day. I know what it’s like to do preparation for classes. I feel connected to the population and the students.”
Presby says one of the most important issues facing the district now is finding a way to educate students while keeping them safe. She said it’s been interesting to see the way education has shifted under COVID-19, and that the challenges include balancing the needs of the students who are excelling and the ones who are struggling during remote learning.
“I think it was extremely overwhelming and challenging to put together the program they have going now,” Presby said. “I think they’re doing a good job, but there are so many situations they deal with at the moment. There are so many critical pieces for kids to succeed and it’s not always ‘home is best.’ My bottom line is, are we listening to the experts, or is it a political thing because of the pressure of the parents?”
Presby wants the board to be a place of open discussion, where board members can provide as many details to families as possible about the issues that impact them.
“I think we are in a time where people have a right to know the cause and effect of decisions of the school board to their children attending schools,” Presby said. “The more information you give people the more support you have – that’s my belief.”
Presby believes education on topics like sexual harassment and racial discrimination should start early on in schools, to help prevent those problems later in life.
“I really believe that those are learned behaviors and they’re brought forward to children. Education is key to making those kinds of changes,” Presby said. “We’re all people – let’s learn from each other.”
One thing the school board will be doing within the next year is selecting a permanent superintendent for the district. Presby said she would look for a candidate who has a clear vision for the future and for the bigger picture of how COVID-19 will impact all students going forward.
That vision for the future is one Presby says she tries to maintain in her own life.
“There are new ideas that are emerging and people are thinking about a different vision for tomorrow. I find that really exciting,” Presby said. “Today is over. I don’t want to stay stuck on today.”
Pamela Walsh is no stranger to policy and administrative work, and her goal is to re-examine the school board’s decision-making processes.
Walsh started her career in Concord in 1996 as a reporter at the Concord Monitor, and then became press secretary for former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, communications director, policy director and deputy chief of staff for former Gov. John Lynch and chief of staff for former Gov. Maggie Hassan. Her career has been a blend of management, administration, policy planning and communications. She has a son in second grade at Christa McAuliffe School.
“I am running … because they need voices on the school board that can talk about how the decisions they are making are impacting the community and families moving forward,” said Walsh. “I also think we need people who can help define processes and decision-making processes better so the community understands how the school board is arriving where it arrives at.”
One of her biggest critiques of the board’s methods is that the process for deciding on a school reopening plan didn’t begin with adequately defining the guidelines for when to operate remotely vs. in person or in a hybrid model. She also thinks the Perkins Report, which outlined the district’s response to sexual assault allegations against a former teacher, should have been designed differently from the beginning, knowing the public would want to access that information.
Walsh’s role as a parent informs some of her thoughts on remote learning. She recommends making lunch and recess times the same across grades to streamline schedules for families with multiple children, and consider a later start time in the mornings. She would like to see students back in school soon for a hybrid learning model and eventually fully in-person.
To improve the board’s transparency and communication with the public, Walsh said she would post meeting summaries on social media and also create more forums for parent questions.
“The school board is really good about having public comment periods,” Walsh said. “But if you listen to some of them, there are some legitimate questions parents are struggling to find the answers to, and they are told, ‘well this isn’t the forum to ask questions.’ Well, I think we need to create forums to ask questions of the board and the administration.”
On the topic of the district’s Title IX work, Walsh emphasized the importance of training, and making sure all staff members understand their role as mandated reporters.
“The training has to be more than ‘this is your obligation under Title IX, this is your obligation under the state’s reporting statue,’ ” Walsh said. “It has to be about how to listen, how not to go to gendered stereotypes, how to stop signs of grooming. Those are big first steps.”
Walsh said she sees “a lot of value” in recent anti-racism efforts within the school district, started by students, alumni and a community task force. Walsh said she feels she has a personal stake in the topic because her son, who is adopted, is of Mexican descent.
“(The district) has to be integrating curriculum that is representative of the entire American experience and not just pieces of it,” Walsh said. “We need to think creatively about how to create a diverse faculty and promote a diverse faculty and staff. I think that just leads to greater exposure and greater knowledge.”
When it comes to choosing a permanent superintendent for the district, Walsh said she would look for someone who would be able to take the reins on three of the district’s most prominent issues – Title IX issues, racial justice and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“One of the things I think this pandemic gives us an opportunity to do is think about what we want school to be like when we go back to normal,” Walsh said. “Certainly I’d want a superintendent who wants to engage the community in those discussions and think creatively about how we’d best move forward.”