Chas Street has announced his intention not to run again for the Selectboard.  He served on the Fall Mountain Regional School Board for a term and is finishing his term on the Selectboard.  With a house in Florida and a vacation spot on Lake Spofford, one can hardly blame him.  We all owe him a big thank you for the service he has provided our community.

While I am not looking or thanks as much as for good candidates, I want to also announce that I am not running for another term as your school board representative.  I have been on the School Board for the past six years and have enjoyed it very much but I’m not getting any younger. 

The people on the Board are a great group to work with and we have accomplished a lot these past few years.  The roof at the high school was fixed.  Pre-Kindergarten programs for four-year-olds are in all three attendance areas.  Every high school student has a notebook computer to enhance the high school programs.  We have a teacher contract that attracts the best and the brightest new teachers to our district and rewards those who continue their learning with advanced degrees.  The contract also recognizes and rewards teachers who receive National Teacher Certification (an arduous process that recognizes those who go well above and beyond the expectations).  School budgets hold the line on spending – although the decreases in state aid do cause taxes to go up.

We have two schools (Alstead Primary and Charlestown Primary) in the District that received Circle of Excellence Awards from the Commissioner of Education. Our School Board was recognized as School Board of the Year two years ago.  This year, the school district has a Middle School Principal of the Year for the State of New Hampshire (Paula Southard-Stevens) on our staff as well as two Teachers, Tammy Vittum and Lisa Mulhearn, who successfully completed the work to become National Teacher Certified.  If you don’t know these people I would also like to point out that Paula and Tammy both live here in Walpole and Lisa teachers math at Walpole Elementary School.

We have much more to be proud of but we need school board members to work with these good people to keep our school district moving forward.  I hope you will give serious consideration to filing for either Selectboard or School Board.  The work doesn’t get done without people who step up.  Filing opens January 21^st and closes on the 30^th.

If I can answer questions, please don’t hesitate to call.  I am also confident that Chas would be more than happy to answer questions as well.  We don’t want to leave it until the last minute and have a write-in candidate. – Lil