Legislation backed by Senator Dan Innis to close public schools is already causing chaos at a local school district in Senate District 7. New Hampshire’s House Bill 1374, which Dan Innis supported and shepherded through the Committee of Conference, strips local communities of the ability to decide their own school’s fate on their own terms, replacing a single-town decision with a district-wide vote that can be triggered by a petition with just 20 signatures.
HB 1374 was originally written as legislation addressing how schools voluntarily withdraw from a district. Later, Senate Bill 588, legislation authored by Innis, was merged into HB 1374, adding the process that allows a small petition to force a district-wide closure vote, with the school required to close “no later than one day prior to the start of the following school year.”
The Kearsarge Regional School District, which serves seven towns including Innis’s own hometown of Bradford, where he moved in 2021 from the Seacoast, is already grappling with the consequences. HB 1374 is already putting two schools, the Simonds Elementary School in Warner and Sutton Central Elementary School, at major risk of closure.
At a Sept. 23 community meeting in Newbury, the district’s interim superintendent, Michael Bessette, warned that the law’s poor drafting creates a chaotic and uncertain situation that could seriously impact school operations.
“The problem … is that the language in that particular law is so poorly written,” Bessette said, warning that “there is no restriction on that to force petitions repeatedly.” He emphasized that groups “can force the same vote to occur multiple times over the course of a year,” leaving the district with “no recourse other than to file suit,” all while administrators and volunteers are repeatedly “brought to bear on that question, which has likely already been answered.”
“Local schools are the heart of our communities and Dan Innis’s legislation is paving the way for districts to force the closure of elementary schools despite local opposition,” said Jason Mutschler, a parent from Warner who attended the meeting. “Towns should decide the future of their communities. Dan Innis is focused on the Republican agenda of dismantling public education at the expense of parents, students, and the towns he’s supposed to represent. Instead of funneling hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into a private school voucher scheme, Dan Innis should invest in our public schools and stop downshifting costs to local communities.”
At a moment when Kearsarge families and school officials need stability to plan for their children’s education, Dan Innis’s legislation delivers the opposite: a rushed, poorly written process that could force a small New Hampshire school district into chaos, one special meeting, and one 20-signature petition, at a time.
Garrett Ferguson is the comminications director for the New Hampshire Senate Democratic Caucus.