NASHUA, NH – The Board of Education during its May 13 meeting decided to schedule a special meeting to discuss whether to close Mount Pleasant Elementary School.
A date has not yet been scheduled for this meeting.
The decision was made after the board gave an update on the May 7 Ad Hoc Capital/Debt Committee meeting. At that meeting, Superintendent Dr. Mario Andrade and Plant Operations director Shawn Smith informed the committee of the school district’s budget projections through 2030.
Included in those projections was $25 million for renovations at Mount Pleasant. Alderwoman Patricial Klee had said she found this “somewhat insulting” after hearing that there was discussion around closing the school.
At the Board of Education meeting, president Jennifer Bishop said that the Ad Hoc Committee said the Board of Education needs to make a decision on what to do with Mount Pleasant. Bishop called this challenging, saying that the board was waiting to hear if the city was going to give them money for the renovations before they could decide what the plan for the school was going to be.
“We’re pretty much playing volleyball right now with who’s going to make this decision,” she said, adding that she would like to reestablish the building and construction committee to better understand what the buildings need.
It was also discussed whether to have assessments done on all the schools – as the city suggested – which would cost $350,000.
“I think the mayor’s office should be involved in this because Mayor Donchess ran wanting to keep all the schools open,” board member Rob Johnson said. “Now it’s being thrown at us saying ‘well I may have said I wanted to keep all the schools open, but here you go Board of Ed, you guys got it now.’”
Bishop agreed with this, saying this is the conversation the Board of Education wanted to have, and it’s been “a bunch of phone tag at this point.”
“If we’re talking about these big huge capital projects – especially if they’re things that were election-winning edicts – if they’re not going to be followed up on [and] they’re not going to be funding the millions of dollars that needs to [be had] to create equity for our excellent educational institutions, then I do find it a little bit unsettling that now it’s our decision if we’re keeping it open or not.”