Concord School Board’s president and longest serving member both seeking another term

Concord School Board President Pamela Walsh, left, and Barb Higgins, the most tenured member currently serving, are both seeking another term on the board.

Concord School Board President Pamela Walsh, left, and Barb Higgins, the most tenured member currently serving, are both seeking another term on the board.

By CATHERINE McLAUGHLIN

Monitor staff

Published: 09-20-2024 4:32 PM

As its president and its longest-serving member, respectively, Pamela Walsh and Barb Higgins are fixtures of the Concord School Board.

They’re both being challenged by four candidates who, in some way, are running because of how the board’s decision last December to move the middle school to East Concord has divided the community. Whether on that project or other works-in-progress in the district, though, the two incumbents say that they bring valuable experience to the table.

Higgins is seeking a fifth term on the board, which would bring her time in that seat to 15 years.

“What we have now is an incredibly new board… You don’t have to go grow up here to run for school board, but when you have almost half your board only having lived here under a decade, that takes away a lot of perspective,” she said. “I’ve been a student in the district. I worked for 20 years in the district. I’ve been on the school board. I’ve been a parent with kids in the district. So I bring a lot of knowledge.”

Walsh first assumed her seat through a special election in 2020, and is now running for her second full term. She was chosen by the board to be its president at the start of this year. In addition to being a district parent, she said she brings professional expertise to the board through her work in government. As former chief of staff to then-governor Maggie Hassan, Walsh wants to see through the district’s ongoing work to improve academic performance after the pandemic.

“I first ran for school board because of COVID, because I felt like kids needed to be back in school,” she said. “We’ve introduced a new reading curriculum to return to a solid foundation on phonics. We’ve introduced a new math program. This year, we’re expanding foreign language… but I think we still have a lot of work to do in that area.”

In the divisive vote last December to locate the new school in East Concord, Walsh and Higgins fell on opposite sides.

Walsh stands by her vote to move the school and the board’s decision to continue forward despite community pushback.

Article continues after...

Yesterday's Most Read Articles

“I, along with the other board members, we spent multiple years on this. I did my homework and at the end of the day looked at what I thought was best for students and what was best for taxpayers,” she said. She pointed to how a school at the Broken Ground location would be able to be completed sooner and it would allow students, many of whom were in formative years during the disruptions of the pandemic, to transition without a gap from one school to the next.

Higgins voted against changing the school’s location, but she felt the question should have been tabled until the new year when a newly elected board could decide. Now, she’s open to having that conversation again.

“Is it too late to start over? I think so. Is it too late to rescind a vote and relook at the vote? I do not think so,” Higgins said. Reevaluating the location, she said, would give the board a chance to rebuild community buy-in on the project. “We’ve had all these committees to plan the building and all of that, but enlisting the support of the community before we decided to put it at Broken Ground didn’t happen. And when the community did come and speak out, they were ignored.”

Despite divergent views on how the board has handled the project, both spoke critically of the proposed charter amendments, which would force the board going forward to pass any school location change or substantial land sale in a voter referendum.

Higgins is open to changes in the charter, and thinks it should be easier to amend, but said the two proposed “are not the right changes to make.”

“I don’t think they realize how much red tape we cut through having board autonomy compared to other districts who have to wait and wait and wait for very simple decisions to be made,” she said. “If these pass, some of the things they will prevent us from doing will not help the district and how we run the district.”

Walsh also described the amendments as a threat to the ability of the board to act quickly and flexibly, saying she’s worried the district would have to get voter approval to relocate students if, for example, one of the district schools were destroyed in a fire.

She also went further, saying that the delays to the project caused by the amendments would make the new school far more expensive.

“When we had public hearings on it, a lot of people said they wanted a say on the cost. Well, these amendments don’t give them a say on the cost,” she said. “And I think people should be aware that the end result of this is a higher cost project if they pass.”

Both also touched on education in New Hampshire finding itself in political cross-hairs.

For Walsh, the school board stands between local schools and legislation in the statehouse she described as “draconian.”

“Our students and teachers are getting used as a wedge,” she said. “There are great things happening in our schools... and it’s our job to defend the ability of our teachers to teach.”

Higgins said political rhetoric by parents, board members and other community members had “infiltrated everything” and gotten in the way of productive work.

“I think one of our biggest challenges as a board is to remain neutral,” she said. “Our goal isn’t to be a red school board or a blue school board. Our goal is to be a school board that supports and loves and educates all children.”

The two are facing off against four challengers, three current parents with middle-school related motivations to run and one former board president, Clint Cogswell. The top three vote-getters of the six will get spots on the board. With both big state and national elections on the ballot in November and ongoing debates over the charter amendments, the race is sure to draw high turnout.

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com