Vote to close school a first

CONCORD – The New Hampshire Board of Education voted Thursday to shut down a small town’s only school because of fire code violations, marking the first time the board has ordered a school closed.

In voting 5-0 to shutter Unity Elementary School, the board rejected pleas from legislators to give the western New Hampshire town more time to correct the violations. Board members expressed dismay that voters have twice defeated bond issues to build a new school, and made it clear that another grant of conditional approval to remain open was not an option.

“The community has not listened,” board Chairman John Lyons Jr. said. “My concern is that if we grant conditional compliance, it will just be another boy crying wolf.”

Board member Tom Raffio said the historic vote “sends a much stronger message to the community.”

Although it officially closed the 120-student school Thursday, the board planned to review its decision at its Aug. 11 meeting. Town officials scrambled to schedule a school board meeting Tuesday and prepare a court petition for an emergency town meeting to appropriate construction and other contingency funds.

“It’s not about them not caring about their children,” School Superintendent Jacqueline Guillette said. “It’s about economics and what they can afford.”

During the board meeting, Unity School Board President Shawn Randall said 20 percent of the town’s 744 households have tax liens on them for nonpayment. Claremont Reps. John Cloutier and Joe Osgood urged the board to give the town more time. Osgood asked for a Jan. 1 deadline for the school to correct the violations.

“The town of Unity is one of the most economically challenged in our state,” Cloutier said. “If you shut down the school, it will be unprecedented.”

After the decision, Guillette said she likely would ask the state education commissioner for permission to delay the start of school, eliminate a midyear vacation week and extend school several weeks into the summer to allow time to complete the construction necessary to remedy the fire code violations.

“We are going to do everything we can to move everything as quickly as we can,” Guillette said. “So much of it is out of our hands. How long will it take the superior court to hold a hearing?”

If the school remains closed, tuition and transportation costs to send the students to Claremont will run about $1.3 million. That includes the cost of paying teachers and staff who are under contract.

The state Fire Marshal’s office had insisted that seven violations must be corrected by Aug. 1 for the school to open Aug. 30. Some of those would require knocking down walls and creating new exits at the 55-year-old school. Unity school officials said the cost to correct the problems would be $143,000.

The net cost of building a new school would be about $3.2 million, after emergency state aid that would offset 45 percent of the $5.9 million needed.

The fire code violations include “dead end” corridors with no exits, a lack of fire-resistant partitions and classrooms that do not have two exits. The fire marshal’s office also wants the school to upgrade its fire detection panel to include heat and smoke detectors in the attic and strobe lights and horns in areas that don’t already have them.

To fix one dead-end corridor, Principal Chip Baldwin said, the school would stop using a storage area at the end of the corridor, remove its door and punch out the wall to create an exit.

Hot lunches would be discontinued because the fire marshal’s office has banned use of the school’s small kitchen unless a costly ventilation and fire suppression system is installed, Baldwin said. The kitchen might just become the new storage area, he said.

Town leaders had considered leasing the old Kearsage Regional Middle School building in New London, but took that option off the table Wednesday after learning New London could not do the work necessary to render that defunct school safe by Aug. 30.