Much like a lot of the education news coming out of the Granite State recently, the developments in Claremont schools’ budget crisis and the mass termination of new hires leave N.H. students as the ultimate losers.
On what was supposed to be the second day of new teacher orientation for Claremont schools, the district’s 19 new hires were alerted that they no longer had a job at the district, according to reporting from the Valley News.
The terminations happened as a result of a financial crisis that the Claremont school district has found itself in after years of mismanagement and poor fiscal controls, according to the Valley News’ reporting.
Because the school board chose not to ratify the contracts of the 19 new hires, the district will save $1.8 million in expenses.
As the Valley News article states, it became apparent in the spring that the district was in deep financial trouble, so why were these 19 hires strung along through the process up until nearly the first day of school before being told they were terminated?
It’s nothing short of a tragedy that the district’s board has now uprooted the careers of 19 people who were all under the impression that they were set to begin a new job at the district.
While budgetary struggles have become quite common in New Hampshire due to a lack of state support, it seems the Claremont school district is in a uniquely poor position because of previous poor financial decision-making, and I am glad that a new business administrator has been appointed in the interim to try to navigate this crisis.
However, these terminations will result in larger class sizes and less one-on-one instruction for students, and as the Valley News notes, the district’s schools may be in danger of shutting down entirely if they are not able to meet their current payroll obligations into the year.
I understand that the school board’s decision not to ratify the contracts was likely motivated in the interest of self-preservation for the embattled district, but that just leaves me wondering why the state has not stepped up to alleviate this crisis.
Nearly every time the United States has found itself in economic turmoil, the first folks to be bailed out are large corporations. Our representatives find no issue with injecting billions of dollars of stimulus into these companies’ cash flow in the name of “rescuing the economy,” but now that a local school district finds itself in financial distress, the state is nowhere to be found.
Once again, our government would rather bail out Wall Street than Main Street.
Now, some people may say that the district doesn’t deserve the state’s help because of previous poor financial management, but when students’ education is on the line, I find no cost too large in the interest of preserving our public schools.
Have we forgotten how the government bailed out banks during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, even though it was the banks and their management who were at fault for giving out high-risk, subprime mortgages to people they knew wouldn’t be able to foot the bill?
These banks were deemed “too big to fail” by the government’s standards, meaning they play such an integral role in our economy that we couldn’t let them fail, even when they play by their own rules and lose at their own game time and time again.
But why aren’t our local public schools too big to fail? Claremont has a population of over 13,000 people, and its school district failing would be devastating to both the children the district serves and the city’s economy.
I suppose the answer to this question is that our state legislators are too busy finding ways to funnel even more public money into private schools to notice when public schools desperately need support to be rescued from a financial crisis.
They should all be ashamed of themselves.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
