Winchester selectman resigns

WINCHESTER — The town's five-member board of selectmen is now down to four.
Kenneth S. Gardner resigned from the board June 11, two days before he sold his house on Adams Court.

Gardner, who was elected to the board in 2009, was in his second, three-year term. That term was set to expire in March 2015.

While Gardner will remain in the area, he plans to spend the winters in Florida, town officials and residents said.

Town Administrator Shelly Walker said Thursday selectmen are looking for residents interested in filling Gardner's seat until town elections in  March 2015. The board plans to address the matter after the July 4 holiday, she said.

Walker said anyone interested in serving on the board of selectmen can fill out a volunteer interest form either at town hall or from the town's website at www.winchester-nh.gov/pages/winchesternh_clerk/index.

Development site put up for sale

By Meghan Foley Sentinel Staff

WINCHESTER — There’s a new twist in the controversial plan for a combined convenience store, gas station and Dunkin’ Donuts here, and it’s not another lawsuit.
The property on which the store is supposed to be built, 4 Warwick Road, is for sale as legal wrangling over the proposed project continues.

The property, which is at the corner of Routes 10 and 78, is being offered for $595,000, according to a listing on the ReMax Town and Country website.

A message left Monday afternoon for Teofilo Salema, manager of S.S. Baker’s Realty Co. of Keene, asking why the property was for sale, wasn’t returned. S.S Baker’s owns the property and is proposing the project. It also owns other Dunkin’ Donuts stores in the area.

The roughly 1.19-acre property is valued at $64,700, according to town assessing records.

Meanwhile, one of the two court cases involving the project has been resolved, while the other has been appealed to the N.H. Supreme Court in Concord.

The first lawsuit was brought by S.S. Baker’s against the town after the Winchester Planning Board denied the proposal for the convenience store, gas station and Dunkin’ Donuts in July 2012.

The case was heard in Cheshire County Superior Court in Keene, and in April 2013, Judge John C. Kissinger Jr. upheld the board’s decision. Kissinger said in his ruling the board was justified in denying the application based on traffic safety concerns, and determining that the project would overwhelm the site. He also said that the board acted within the law in denying the project because it didn’t adhere to certain design standards.

S.S Baker’s then appealed Kissinger’s ruling to the state Supreme Court in May 2013. The court accepted the case in June of that year, and in March, it affirmed Kissinger’s decision.

Around the same time S.S. Baker’s appealed the case to the Supreme Court, it filed a second site plan application for the project with the Winchester Planning Board.

The second plan, while similar to the first one, had some differences. First, the proposed 3,500-square-foot building was going to be 4 feet shorter than first suggested. In addition, vehicles wouldn’t be allowed to make left turns from the store’s parking lot onto Main Street (Route 10), and up to 11 cars could fit in the drive-through lane for Dunkin’ Donuts. The drive-through lane in the first plan had space for only 10 vehicles.

The planning board approved the second plan in July 2013.

A month later, the Winchester Zoning Board of Adjustment decided not to grant a request from Stanley S. Plifka Jr., owner of Kulick’s Inc., to rehear, reconsider and reverse the planning board’s approval of the project.

Plifka, who operates Kulick’s Market at 30 Warwick Road, opposes the project.

Plifka said Monday he isn’t against Dunkin’ Donuts, but doesn’t think the proposed project is good for the property.

“It’s a very dangerous intersection for the building they’re trying to put up,” he said.

Plifka then appealed the planning board and zoning board decisions to Cheshire County Superior Court, and in February, Judge Kissinger upheld the boards’ decisions once again. He then denied a motion filed by Kulick’s Inc. to reconsider his ruling in March.

On April 30, the N.H. Supreme Court accepted Kulick’s Inc.’s appeal of Kissinger’s ruling. That case remains pending.

Meghan Foley can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1436, or mfoley@keenesentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter @MFoleyKS.

Unanswered questions about Winchester students at Keene High

Sentinel Editorial
Sometimes what’s ideal isn’t what’s feasible. And sometimes, what seems to make sense somehow just doesn’t work.
A decade after Winchester started sending its high school students to Keene, there is still a palpable tension over the arrangement.

The latest issue has been one of information: Winchester school officials say they’ve repeatedly asked for data on how their teens are doing at Keene High School, but that information hasn’t materialized.

At a meeting earlier this month in Winchester, parents and board members alike said they feel their kids are looked down upon in Keene. This despite Keene High Principal Lynda Wagner’s proclamation that “You’re part of us.”

That message was certainly better received than when a previous Keene official said five years ago that Winchester students were dragging down the high school’s test scores.

Wagner was in Winchester to present a report that theoretically would satisfy the town’s demand for information. What she provided was, she said, the same information the district gives each Unit 29 town on the students it tuitions into Keene.

It wasn’t enough. For each number, the Winchester board had questions. And some of the data — such as that Winchester’s students have a grade-point average of 2.49 compared to Keene High’s overall 2.92 — begged for context that simply wasn’t to be had at that meeting.

Now, Winchester School Board members want more: They want to know how their kids feel about being at Keene High School.

That — and conversely, how Keene students and staff feel about the Winchester students being there — is the million-dollar question. More likely, a multimillion-dollar question.

The question revolves around whether Keene High is a good fit for the Winchester students, and if not, what the town can do about it.

Winchester is 10 years into a 20-year deal to send its students to Keene. Officials say they’re not looking to get out, but they have also formed a withdrawal committee to study that very possibility.

The issue is, then, what? Conversations with Hinsdale about sending Winchester’s students to Hinsdale High School were friendly, but Hinsdale says it can’t take that many more students.

The current arrangement came about because Winchester’s Thayer High School building had become so run down it no longer was accredited. The school is still used for some middle school and other programs, but would require an expensive overhaul to become fit to be a high school again.

Keene officials say they’re committed to all the high school’s students, including Winchester’s. But after a decade of uneasiness, some may conclude Keene simply isn’t a good fit for Winchester’s students. That’s what the town’s school board wants to determine.

At the time, Keene was the best option for Winchester’s teenagers, and whether a perfect fit or not, it still may be.

Winchester pays Keene about $13,000 per student, more for special education students. With about 200 students tuitioning in, that’s a minimum of $2.6 million the town is paying out to educate its teenagers in Keene.

For that amount, Winchester is certainly due whatever information it reasonably wants. It’s looking out for its kids. It’s plausible some of the answers Winchester officials hope to get simply can’t be gleaned from available data. But to the extent it can, the Keene district should make every effort to accommodate the request.

Looking for straight answers, by Brian Moser

On June 5, I had the chance to sit in on a meeting between School Administrative Unit 29 officials and the Winchester School Board.
Winchester has been asking for both timely and in-depth reports on our students for several years with no results, and promises were again made to bring them this time. It was no surprise that the SAU officials didn’t bring that information to this meeting either. No wonder Winchester is looking for other options for our students.

This is not about Winchester. This is about everyone who has students attending Keene High.

When Winchester asks about more information, they are told no other districts ask for it, so why should Winchester want more? Maybe Winchester is looking more closely at what its students are receiving at taxpayer expense.

We’ll move on. I was told that data is provided by Keene High guidance department that if a student at Keene High School applies to five colleges and gets accepted to all five, the guidance department counts that as five students are going to college. You might ask why. The only answer I see is that it makes Keene look like it has success rates better than they are (Book cooking 1).

Also, if a 12th-grader does not graduate, and does not come back to school, the guidance department doesn’t count that as a dropout. Why? It makes Keene look better than it is (Book cooking 2).

These two practices inflate the numbers of college-bound students and deflate the number of dropouts.

I hope someone else will see this and start asking questions.

Next up can anyone at SAU 29 explain conflict of interest?

Can anyone in the legal world explain conflict of interest?

This is about students! Why isn’t SAU 29 forthcoming with true and honest statistics involving very expensive “educations?”

Let me know what you think.

Brian Moser

168 Clark Road

Winchester

Winchester board seeks more information about its students at Keene High

 By KAITLIN MULHERE Sentinel Staff

WINCHESTER — A school board committee wants to know how Winchester’s teens feel about life at Keene High School as part of a study on whether the school is the right fit for the small town.
The decision to conduct a student survey was made at a Winchester School Board meeting Thursday. It followed a nearly three-hour discussion with Keene High School Principal Lynda C. Wagner, in which board members and residents told her repeatedly that they weren’t satisfied with the data and information the high school provides about the town’s students.
Wagner was presenting an annual report on Winchester students’ academics, involvement and behavior at Keene High during the 2012-13 school year. The school delivers the same report to each of the nine towns that pay tuition to send students to Keene.
In March 2012, Winchester voters approved a petition warrant article to study withdrawing their students from Keene High and either reopening Thayer High School, which closed in 2005, or sending the students elsewhere. Supporters said that with the price of tuition to attend Keene rising each year, Winchester should explore other options.
The withdrawal committee didn’t form until last year, though, and it only recently began meeting regularly. Committee members said in October the district wasn’t looking to breach its 20-year contract with Keene, but just wanted to research whether they were getting the best value for their money.
Winchester will pay $13,081 for each regular-education student next year and $29,000 for each special-education student.
School board Chairman Richard Horton told Wagner that Thursday’s presentation wasn’t about tuition prices or budgets. It was about how Winchester students are faring at Keene High.
And it was clear Winchester board members aren’t entirely pleased with their relationship with Keene.
They asked for more information on almost every category in the report. In several cases, Wagner said she’d have to report back to them since she didn’t compile the data.
Specifically, Winchester board members asked to see the graduation rates for Winchester students from the 2012-13 school year, the percentage of Winchester students in lower-level classes and the number of Winchester students participating in athletics, and to clarify several categories where the numbers didn’t add up or make sense.
In addition to Winchester, students from Chesterfield, Harrisville, Marlborough, Marlow, Nelson, Surry, Sullivan and Westmoreland pay tuition to attend Keene.
Wagner said she would do her best to get the information the Winchester board requested, but that this was the same format and report that every town with students at Keene High receives.
“We’re not every town,” Horton said. “We want more information. We continue to ask and we’re not getting it.”
Those at the meeting, both board and audience members, said they’re not confident in much of the report because of the questions and mistakes they found.
Still, Horton wanted to know how Wagner planned to use the data she presented. If, as the report shows, Winchester students’ grade-point average (GPA) is lower than the rest of the student body and their number of discipline infractions is higher, he asked, what is the high school going to do to remedy those situations? In 2012-13, Winchester students’ average GPA was 2.49. The school-wide average was 2.92.
Wagner said more than once that she doesn’t single out groups of students from specific towns. She looks at students on an individual basis. After a decade of Winchester students attending Keene High, there’s no distinction among students, she said.
“We’re Keene High School,” she said. “You’re a part of us.”
Horton disagreed.
“I hear what you’re saying, but I think there are still labels,” he said. “When you say you’re from Winchester, it’s a different look you get.”
Parents of Winchester students who were sitting in the audience echoed many of the board’s concerns. Their students face a stigma at Keene High simply for being from Winchester, and it comes from teachers just as much as from students, they said.
Wagner was not happy to hear those reports, calling that attitude unacceptable. She said she’d work with her administrative team about ways to improve.
She also said she thought additional late buses would help Winchester students participate in more after-school activities, which build relationships with classmates and motivate students to do better academically.
Other improvements Wagner and the board discussed included better communication between Winchester School and Keene High in terms of planning curriculum and preparing Winchester students academically for Keene High, and more regular visits between administrators from the two schools.
“I’m offering you an open door to work with me,” Wagner said.
Board members were happy to hear that.
This is Wagner’s second year as Keene High principal, and she said she can’t explain or change anything that’s happened in the past decade.
This isn’t the first time the Winchester-Keene relationship has been less than smooth. In 2009, Winchester students were singled out by some Keene officials as a cause of the school’s low test scores. Since the tuition agreement began, many in Winchester have had concerns about the pre-dawn drives to Keene putting students at a disadvantage academically, and about how students fit into a 1,500-student school after growing up in a small community. About 380 students attend Winchester’s kindergarten through 8th-grade school.
One of the biggest advantages mentioned by supporters of sending Winchester students to Keene High is all the opportunities students have there that a smaller school couldn’t provide. But, Horton asked, if they find Winchester students aren’t participating in those sports and clubs, then how is that benefiting them?
That’s where the Winchester Withdrawal Study Committee comes in. The committee has toured Keene High, looked at other high schools and examined what would be required academically to reopen a high school in Winchester. Now the committee needs to hear what Winchester students think, board member Elisha Jackson said.
Questions on the survey will ask things such as how students perform academically, what extracurricular activities they’re involved in and whether they feel accepted and happy at Keene High.
The committee is aiming to complete the survey before school ends in a couple weeks.