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