A rush job, pure and simple

The Winchester Historic District Commission seems poised to allow the demolition of yet another historic building within the town’s main historic district. It’s a lovely Greek Revival home, clearly about 200 years old, located on a slight rise behind Mr. Mike's gas station in the town center.
It seems to me that the process the board is using to make this decision is abbreviated and inadequate. I plan to attend the Commission’s next meeting Monday, June 13, at 7 p.m. at the Town Hall in order to understand better what’s going on and to urge that they undertake a thorough process. I hope that many others will attend as well.
To responsibly decide whether or not to demolish a historic building, common sense dictates that you would gather various kinds of information and weigh them all thoughtfully to analyze the pros and cons of preservation versus destruction. The first kind of information that springs to mind, since we’re talking about a historic district commission making a decision about a historic district, would be, duh, historical. That is, solid information researched and written up by a professional historian pertaining to (1) the building’s own historical significance, (2) the building’s significance in relation to the other structures around it.
Our commission had indeed identified such a professional, ready and willing to do the job, and the developer proposing to demolish the house was ready and willing to pay for that research. Unfortunately, at its last meeting, a special meeting off the regular schedule, the Commission decided to cancel that professional historical survey.
I’m going to the meeting Monday because I believe that for the Commission and for everyone else in town, it will not be humanly possible to form a responsible opinion about the proposed demolition as long as we lack reliable and thorough information about the historical significance of the building. It’s common sense. You can not ethically destroy something without having first made a good-faith effort to understand its value.
Sincerely,
Paul DobbsAshuelot

Winchester School Board Votes to Explore Options

A tenuous union? Winchester votes to explore options in sending students to Keene High

  By Meghan Foley Sentinel Staff

WINCHESTER — The vote has been made, and with it, the future of how and where the town’s high school students will be educated is on the line.
Four Winchester School Board members present at a meeting last week voted unanimously to notify the Keene Board of Education that unless it agrees to modify the exclusivity provisions of the two districts’ high school tuition contract by June 29, the Winchester board will tell Keene it’s terminating the agreement, effective June 30, 2019.
Winchester school board officials want the exclusivity clause removed from the contract, and replaced with a percentage of how many Winchester students would need to attend Keene High School, according to the June 2 motion. The percentage would be negotiated with Keene, and allow for some Winchester students to attend high school elsewhere.
Board member Trevor S. Croteau was absent from the meeting, which came a week after the school board held a forum for parents, students and residents to provide input on Winchester’s options for its high school students. Leading up to the forum, Keene High School representatives gave a presentation to community members about the school’s programs. Officials from Pioneer Valley Regional School in Northfield, Mass. were also available to answer questions about that district’s offerings.
Winchester has been sending its high school students to school in Keene since 2003, following a town-wide vote to close the community’s Thayer High School. The school closed at the end of the school year in 2005.
The contract with Keene is good for 20 years, but includes a clause allowing Keene or Winchester to terminate the agreement at any time by giving written notice. The notice must specify the last school year for which the contract would be in effect, which has to be at least three full school years following the year the notice is given.
Residents and Winchester school officials have questioned in recent years if sending the town’s high school students to Keene is the best option.
Their concerns have included the rising cost of tuition, frustration with what they say is a lack of information about how Winchester students are doing as a group at Keene High School and students losing their sense of community because they’re leaving a small school to attend a larger one about 30 minutes away.
In 2012, the majority of voters participating in the annual Winchester School District meeting approved an advisory-only petition warrant article to study withdrawing students from Keene High School, and either sending them to a reopened Thayer High School, or a high school elsewhere.
Last year, voters at the school district’s annual meeting approved a warrant article, 374-269, stating it was not in the town’s best interest to tuition its high school students to Keene.
Rick Horton, chairman of the Winchester School Board, said Wednesday that board members understand the weight of their recent decision on the contract. It was difficult, but they feel pretty confident this will be for the better by reshaping the education of local children in the future in a positive way, he said.
While the majority of parents, community members and current and former students attending the recent forum spoke in favor of continuing to send Winchester students to Keene High School, some said they would have liked to have had another choice.
“We can’t try and push everybody into the same box. We can’t continue to say you have to conform to this box when there are options to learn differently,” Horton said. “We have kids who do very well at Keene, and love the school and support it. But what if we had Pioneer, and the kids who didn’t do well at Keene had the option of going there? Then we’d have more kids succeeding.”
Pioneer Valley covers the Massachusetts towns of Bernardston, Leyden, Northfield and Warwick, and became an option for Winchester following a visit to the school and tour of the building by local school officials.
Keene High School covers grades 9 through 12, and takes in students from the city and Winchester, as well as Chesterfield, Harrisville, Marlborough, Marlow, Nelson, Stoddard, Sullivan, Surry and Westmoreland.
Edward R. Murdough, chairman of the Keene Board of Education, said this morning that 48 percent of the students at the high school are from outside of Keene.
The Keene Board of Education has yet to receive any official communication from the Winchester School District about renegotiating the exclusivity clause in the contract, but members have heard about the vote.
“I’m hesitant to comment on it because we don’t have anything in hand,” Murdough said. “However, when we receive something, we’ll review it and respond with what the majority of the board wants at the time.”
The Keene Board of Education have previously taken the position that it doesn’t want to change the exclusivity clause.
Board members are concerned about what it would mean for the other nine towns who send their students to Keene if they renegotiate Winchester’s contract, Murdough said.
“We try very, very hard to treat all of them the same,” he said.
In addition, having the towns send their high school students only to Keene helps the school district plan for the future, he said. If the number of students coming from Winchester is in flux from year to year, it makes planning difficult for Keene, he said.
Kevin Bazan, vice chairman of the Winchester School Board, said in an email the vote last week was made with “considerable thought and research.”
During his two years on the board, he has known many students who have excelled at Keene High School, he said, but some have not.
The message he has heard from the community is that Winchester high school students deserve a choice, he said.
“The exclusivity part of our current twenty-year contract with Keene is a barrier that keeps this from happening. A lot has changed in education since this contract was created back in 2004. It is my wish that the High School Contract with Keene be negotiated as soon as possible,” Bazan wrote.
Board members Steven Thompson and Lindseigh Picard agreed.
“I think what I find most interesting about this discussion is how it happens at a time when school choice has become a topic to follow in (New Hampshire),” Picard said in an email. “We are not the first district to question if we can be doing more to meet the needs of all of our students.”

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

Barbershop under new management

Don's barbershop on Main Street, a fixture in Winchester for many years, is now under new management and will now be known as Cuts On Main. Sarah Lounder has become the new owner and will provide the same services and more for everyone that have been offered in the past. Don will still be coming in some mornings to help out and chat with the many friends he has made over the years. We hope you all give Sarah a warm welcome and visit the barbershop for all of your grooming needs. The tradition continues.

Joining Sarah and Don is Lea Blake, who has worked in Keene for years. Cuts On Main is open 8-5 Tuesday and Wednesday. 8-7 Thursday and Friday. 8-2 on Saturday and closed Sunday and Monday.

Winchester's Farmer's Market .. Saturdays

Don't forget and please visit the new Winchester Farmer's Market on Main St. downtown
Open at 10:am - 2:pm starting Saturday June 6th

visit us on facebook ... https://www.facebook.com/WinchesterFarmersMarketonMain/

Winchester parents, students weigh in on high school options

By Meghan Foley Sentinel Staff
 

WINCHESTER — Choice: This is what many residents attending a forum Wednesday night said they like about having the town’s teenagers attend Keene High School, even as Winchester contemplates sending its students somewhere else.
Students at Keene High have hundreds of classes to choose from, they can take different tracks depending on what they want to do after high school, there are ample extracurricular activities to get involved in, and the Cheshire Career Center provides students with the opportunity to learn a trade, they said.
Choice is also what they suggested students have for high schools, as the five-member Winchester School Board mulls whether to sever ties with Keene and send students in grades 9 through 12 to Pioneer Valley Regional High School in Northfield, Mass.
“I hear a lot of people taking about options and choice,” parent Sarah M. Lounder said. “Anyone who knows kids, or works with kids, knows you just can’t cookie-cut kids, it just doesn’t work one way or another. I think we need to have choices.”
The Winchester School Board held Wednesday’s public forum to gather comments and questions from the community about the topic of high school options.
Superintendent James M. Lewis said school officials didn’t plan to answer questions that night, but would provide responses later by email and on the school district’s Facebook page.
The forum followed presentations given by officials at the Keene and Pioneer Valley schools.
Pioneer Valley covers the Massachusetts towns of Bernardston, Leyden, Northfield and Warwick, and became an option for Winchester following a visit to the school and tour of the building by local school officials.
Keene, which covers grades 9 through 12, takes in students from the city and Winchester, as well as Chesterfield, Harrisville, Marlborough, Marlow, Nelson, Stoddard, Sullivan, Surry and Westmoreland.
Winchester has been sending its high school students to Keene High School since 2003 after town voters approved a warrant article to do so and close the community’s Thayer High School. The school closed at the end of the school year in 2005.
However, the transition to Keene High has been bumpy, leading residents and town school officials to question in recent years if it’s the best option for Winchester students.
Their concerns have included the rising cost of tuition, frustration with what they say is a lack of information about how Winchester students are doing as a group at the high school, and students losing their sense of community because they’re leaving a small school to attend a larger one about 30 minutes away.
Approximately 165 Winchester students attend Keene High, representing 12.1 percent of the school’s enrollment. The cost to Winchester of sending a regular education student to Keene is $13,270, while it’s $29,282 per special education student.
Winchester’s tuition contract with Keene is good for 20 years, starting in 2003, and is automatically renewed every four years.
The document includes a clause that either Keene or Winchester may terminate the agreement at any time by giving written notice. The notice must specify the last school year for which the contract would be in effect, which has to be at least three full school years following the year the notice is given.
Parent Bridget E. Pearce said her three children have had bad experiences at Keene High School, and her two oldest weren’t prepared, upon graduation, to enter the real world. She said she views Pioneer Valley as a better option for her youngest child and other children who aren’t succeeding at Keene.
But Conor T. Hill, a Winchester resident and Keene High freshman, says he loves the school.
Children need to experience going from a small school to a larger school to prepare them for the world outside the classroom, which is a big place, he said.
“I love Keene High. I have gained another family on top of the family I gained from my first day of preschool to my last day of 8th grade here in Winchester,” Conor said. “I wouldn’t trade my experience in a small-town school for anything, but to move a family that has grown so close to a place where there are other families, is something our kids need to experience.”
Resident Kevan D. Whippie encouraged the school board to make its decision based on education, not money.
“This is an educational decision,” he said. “The town has a long history of making bad ones, and this is a good chance to start making good ones.”
Both Selectmen Chairwoman Roberta A. Fraser and former Winchester school board member Colleen Duquette said the question of whether to switch high schools or send students to multiple high schools should be decided by the town’s voters.

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

Board of Selectmen Meeting Minutes 5-11-16

 


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