It has been an honor to serve the people of the city of Nashua over the past four years as your representative on the Nashua BOE. My term ends in 2021, and I have seen our public schools go through some tough times, and COVID has had a role to play in upsetting the status quo. We owe our teachers and staff in Nashua a huge debt of gratitude as they made the best of this situation. Teachers continued to teach, and students continued to learn through the Covid crisis under very difficult circumstances.

The pandemic is not over, but it is not really central to today’s problems. We have been back to in-person teaching to face new challenges, as discipline has broken down, with kids fighting, and our teachers terribly disrespected and caught in the middle, trying to maintain order. This is happening across the country, our teachers are stressed, over-worked, and disrespected at every turn.

This disrespect is not ingrained in our children. It is learned. It comes from parents yelling and acting out at BOE meetings, making unrealistic demands on our schools, and disrespecting our teachers by accusing them of indoctrinating our children. This is an affront to the professionalism of our public school teachers and our children are taking this all in.

Our public schools in New Hampshire are not failing our children, we in New Hampshire are failing our public schools, which in turn results in the abandonment of our children. Our teachers are seeing more and more students who are not getting their needs met in the home.

Public schools provide equal opportunity for all, and no one does this better, yet we see an effort to dismantle public education in New Hampshire. This is happening not because our public schools are failing but instead because our public school teachers are successful year in and year out in delivering equal opportunity in education to all students.

Gov. Sununu and the legislative leadership have a narrow constituency, they do not make laws and policies for all, but instead, they work for a narrow few. The current NH state education laws are designed as an avenue for white flight and undermine the basic tenet of Brown v. Board of Education. The school voucher law in New Hampshire is an elitist racist law, it encourages segregation based on skin color as well as income. This push to dismantle public schools is not coming from traditional Republicans or Democrats, it is coming from the so-called “libertarians” or free state “liberty” legislators in our legislative body. Libertarianism is a toxic poison on the body politic of New Hampshire. Private companies are coming into NH looking to make big profits off of education and the taxpayer, but they fail in delivering equal opportunity and will cost families even more in the long run.

Now Sununu, pandering to this so called “liberty caucus”, is criminalizing teaching with the horrendous “divisive concepts” law. It is a law that is supposed to solve a problem that does not exist, which according to proponents is discrimination against white people. This charade was instituted to intimidate public school teachers by threatening their livelihood. It is an affront to the hard work of New Hampshire’s professional educators. Those in Concord responsible for this travesty should be ashamed of themselves.

There is a saying, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” I would hate to see us 10 years from now losing our public schools and wishing we had them back. We have to be vigilant now and protect our community’s most important asset, equal opportunity in education for all through the tradition of our neighborhood public schools. If you really want positive change for our schools, if you want your Nashua residential property to maintain its value, if you have pride in your community and care about our children, then stop these snake oil politicians in Concord from dismantling our public schools and let us all, taxpayers, parents, and students alike, renew our support and respect for the hard work and dedication of our public school teachers.