Concord School District Hosts New Middle School Siting Public Hearing Wednesday

CONCORD, NH — The SAU 8 Concord School District Board of Education is holding a hearing on Wednesday on where to site a new middle school for the district, which carries a potential final cost of around a quarter of a billion dollars.

Most of the current Rundlett Middle School, previously a junior high school, is around 65 years old. About a third of the building is 33 years old. For years, even before the massive $90.8 million elementary school consolidation process, there were complaints about the school. Most of them were cosmetic — wear and tear, concerns about “ideal” class sizes and configurations, and lack of repairs because a new school was expected to be built at some point. Other issues, like HVAC and the lack of an elevator, were relevant even if past generations of Concord students never had central air in the building for the last two weeks of the school year.

The meeting, which has been moved from the district’s central office to the high school, is expected to be well attended. Many parents and activists in the community who have concerns about traffic and infrastructure, as well as student walkers and bikers who live on the west side of the city, will be there raising their concerns.

But, ideally, the city needs to rethink schooling and buildings altogether.

Shockingly, or maybe not so, in 2023 Concord, few are raising the issue of whether a new middle school is needed now.

Few have raised the issue of cost — $176 million with $72 million expected in state aid and more than $70 million in interest payments based on a 4 percent rate or a final cost of nearly $242 million across 30 years (three years ago, it was half that cost).

There has been a lack of meaningful discussion about whether the community can afford a new school at a time when property taxpayers are paying the highest home assessments in history and the highest local school tax rate in 23 years. This, after the city received higher adequacy aid and nearly $6 million more in state aid — money that was supposed to be returned to taxpayers as “bipartisan property tax relief” in the state’s two-year budget.

Many of the same activists who are organizing against building the middle school on the east side are also working to stop an updated $11 million Beaver Meadow Golf Course clubhouse project but have been silent about the astronomical cost of the new middle school.

No one also acknowledges that property taxpayers were promised there would be no new middle school project until the elementary school consolidation project note was paid off which does not occur until 2041.

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No one is speaking about proposed repairs of the building which are less than $10 million and could tide the community over until the elementary school bond was closer to being completed.

No one is looking at enrollments that have been dropping for years even as the city has grown — SAU 8 is now the fifth largest school district in the state when it used to be third.

No one is also speaking about the fact that in the northern part of the city, a second school district, SAU 46, the Merrimack Valley School District, has both a high school and middle school on a 56-acre parcel that is underutilized, which could easily take on more students from both the east and west side of the city if the districts were merged, limiting the need a new massive, expensive middle school.

Meeting Info

The SAU 8 Board of Education will hold a special board meeting at the Christa McAuliffe Auditorium at Concord High School at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 6, to discuss and vote on where a new middle school should be built.

Merging School Districts

The most complicated question that no one has addressed is why Concord and Penacook have separate school districts in an age of declining enrollments and skyrocketing education costs.

It makes no sense when eyeing data.

Between the 2011 and 2021, according to the U.S. Census, the city of Concord grew by 8 percent, adding about 3,300 people (40,687 to 43,976). At the same time, enrollments in the Concord School District declined by 625 students, or nearly 14 percent. Enrollments in Penacook declined by nearly 10 percent (109 students).

So, despite a significant increase in the city’s population, enrollments dropped. A lot.

New Hampshire saw similar enrollment decreases — about 11 percent, or 21,000 students, even though the state’s population grew. The brutal truth is that the new people moving here are not having children.

A new Census is seven years away, and we do not know what that data will tell officials. The city could be building another new school that is obsolete the day it opens just like the new elementary schools were a decade ago.

At the same time, costs at the state and local level have increased substantially. State spending on schools increased by more than 31 percent or $850 million during the same period. In Concord, per pupil costs rose from $12,774.90 to $19,773.90, while MV increased from $11,697.11 to $18,168.55. All while student outcomes have dropped. In both districts, per pupil costs increased higher than the state average. Concord now has a per pupil cost $440 higher than the state’s average, while MV is $1,200 less.

If Concord had a similar per-pupil cost as MV, property tax rates would have decreased instead of increased to their highest level in a generation.

When looking at the current configuration, it is easy to see how many problems could be solved by merging the two districts.

MV encompasses four town elementary schools (one in Boscawen, Loudon, Salisbury, and Webster), a village elementary school (Penacook), and regional middle and high schools. The middle and high school buildings are situated together on a 56-acre parcel. When comparing square footage space to students with Concord, there appears to be capacity to shift more Concord students into MV middle and high schools even without removing any of the smaller communities.

Boscawen, Loudon, Salisbury, and Webster could request to be moved into other districts, assisting those school districts that might need more aid and have capacity.

As an example, Webster could move its 160 middle and high school students into Hopkinton, while Loudon could have its 450 middle and high school students shifted to Pittsfield — a tiny standalone district that cannot afford to be a standalone district. Pittsfield only has 250 middle and high school students and 556 students overall. The district is always highlighted by income tax advocates even though the solution is not more taxes but a right-sized school district.

The same could be said for Franklin, another small standalone district with three schools and about 1,000 students. Could Salisbury transfer its 110 middle and high school students to Franklin, a shorter bus ride than Penacook? Boscawen, next to Franklin, could also consider the same move or stay in SAU 46. That town has less than 300 middle and high school students.

These shifts would assist two small districts that complain about their financial problems without harming students or taxpayers.

This also does not even address the costs to Concord and Penacook taxpayers who are paying higher administrative and other costs with two districts instead of one large district — two superintendents instead of one; multiple assistant superintendents; dual HR, business, and other departments, too. The overlap of expenses and salaries is immeasurable at this point.

These questions must be considered and studied before Concord spends a quarter of a billion dollars on a new middle school that appears is not needed.

Comparing School Sizes

• Concord High School: 290,000 square feet of space (includes regional technical center). Number of students: 1,310
• Rundlett Middle School: 147,000 square feet. Number of students: 818
• Merrimack Valley High School: 107,000 square feet of space. Number of students: 723
• Merrimack Valley Middle School: 83,000 square feet of space. Number of students: 473
• MVHS and MVMS are on a 56-acre parcel.
• CHS is on a 7-acre parcel, while RMS is on a 21-acre parcel.

The merger idea is not a new one. But it was recently raised by Penacook educator Carisa Corrow of Education for Good in late 2021 in a column she wrote. Corrow focused on the MV tax rates, which went down this year, while Concord’s went up. But she raised other important points and, frankly, her motivation does not matter. When eyeing the data, it is a no-brainer for everyone to sit down over a series of meetings and figure out how this can be done.

According to school officials, neither school district has even tried to communicate about merging districts to find savings for taxpayers.

There are complicated issues with this proposal. There are separate bargaining units and contracts for teachers, nurses, and custodians. There is also the issue of SAU 8 being an autonomous district with taxing authority and SAU 46 having a town meeting form of government. But all of those things could be worked out. The New Hampshire Department of Education, Concord city councilors, and a new mayor could also assist in working to merge the districts.

Middle School Project Website: Plans, schematics, and studies for a proposed new middle school in Concord can be found here.

Why The East Side?

There are several reasons why building on the east side is the best option if it must be done now.

The most recent documents, building on the Broken Ground site costs a little less. But building on the east side also derives more potential revenue by selling the RMS parcel to a housing developer.

On Nov. 27, the district’s architect provided a side-by-side site comparison between the two sites. Building anew on the current site costs about $5.5 million more. Most of those costs are $4.5 million in demolition costs.

Unless there is a plan to sell the site to a developer who wants the current building, demolition costs would be handed off to them.

Analyzing the current RMS site, which is zoned RS-residential, along with the current single-family home market, it is clear any developer worth their salt would give the district millions to develop the site for housing with limitless options.

While there are some wetland set-asides, when compared to neighboring homes, built on postage stamp lots, as many as 60 single-family homes could probably be built on the parcel. Current homes on the market are more than $400,000 — even small homes in the South End. Would a developer give the district millions even if they have to spend $4 million to demolish the school to build $24 million worth of homes? Of course they would. The valuation of all these homes would bring at least $650,000 annually to the tax rolls for many decades.

This is only a single-family housing option. It does not include duplexes, triplexes, or apartment buildings.

Consider Oak Bridge Condominiums on Fisherville Road, 180 units on seven acres. Units are selling for $200,000 to $250,000 — about double the price from a few years ago. Two or three like-sized complexes could be built at RMS, leading to $50 million to $75 million in valuation or $1.3 million to $2 million annually in new tax revenue.

Some people have mentioned the increase in housing in the city. This is a relevant point. About 3,000 units are scheduled to be built in the next three to seven years. There are potentially more. According to documents by the city, around 2,700 of those new units are on the east side of the river, with about two-thirds built within a few of miles of Broken Ground. If all these new housing units fill up with kids, they will be closer to a new middle school on the east side than they would at Rundlett. Who decides whether those children are stuck on buses longer because a few dozen kids currently bike to Rundlett when the weather is nice?

But this lends credence to waiting longer to see what demographic changes shift people around the city, whether the two districts are merged or not.

Again, looking at the 2020 Census: Most of the new growth was on the east side of the city, Penacook, and the two wards to the north, partially due to the construction of the women’s prison.

Wards 1, 2, and 3 saw a population growth between 15 and 19 percent. Ward 8 saw 248 residents added, about 6 percent, while Wards 9, and 10, the largest ward in the city, grew by 9 percent.

Two wards, Ward 4 and Ward 5, on the west side of the city, lost population. Wards 6 and 7 had 5 percent growth, about 425 new residents combined.

What will these numbers look like when the 2030 Census data is released and nearly two-thirds of the new housing units are built on the east side, miles from Broken Ground?

Why The Rush To Vote Now?

There is no rush.

Voting on the siting now is based on the district’s architect and their timeline.

“If all goes well, construction could begin in December 2025 with completion in June 2028 with its opening for the school year beginning August 2028,” the school district’s website stated.

This means there are two full years before construction is even supposed to begin.

There is plenty of time to analyze alternatives and have some common sense. The beleaguered taxpayers of Concord deserve better — they deserve questions answered, merged districts in the city to reduce costs and utilize two high schools and two middle schools that already exist, and then, after the 2030 Census, to see if the city truly needs a new or updated middle schools closer to when the elementary school consolidation bond is paid off.

So, What To Do Now?

The solutions are not easy, but they are easy to understand.

First, fix what is there now: Repair Rundlett, about $6 million, to get it through for another 10 years. Replace the ceiling tiles, fix the door jams, and all the other things left unrepaired because everyone wants a new school.

Second, begin open and transparent public discussions with the Merrimack Valley School District and the other communities as well as surrounding districts on how all involved can rethink schooling and districts. Contact the NH DOE and ask for assistance organizing districts into the process.

While working together to merge the districts, watch for demographic changes in the city to see where the greatest need is for a new middle school (if there is a need for one).

This would take the city into the early 2030s, less than a decade before the elementary school consolidation note expires in 2041, freeing up $3 million annually. If, at that time, the merged district sees enrollment rise, officials can reanalyze everything again. The city might need a third middle school; it might not. The students might be reconfigured, especially with two high schools, with the last grade of middle school in high school instead.

But if enrollments decline, as they always have for decades, delaying this process and doing what was best for the community will have paid off for Concord and New Hampshire — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

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