State Rep. Dan McGuire testified Monday that a meeting with Epsom School District administrators was the genesis for a bill that would eliminate multiple subjects from a list of requirements for public schools.

Those administrators – Epsom Central School principal Patrick Connors and superintendent Jack Finley – said that McGuire misconstrued that conversation and they in fact oppose the bill, HB 283.

“The intent of the meeting with Rep. McGuire was to advocate for additional state funding, not to maintain the minimal funding and diminish the quality of education in NH,” Finley wrote in an email. Finley added that he was planning to testify during the bill hearing to clarify what was said during that meeting, but he had not done so as of the Monitor’s press time.

The bill McGuire brought would eliminate civics, arts, music, engineering, finance literacy, computer science, and other subjects from the list of topics public schools are required by law to teach.

Opponents of the bill questioned whether it was an effort to reduce funding for public education. McGuire testified that his “motives are pure” and that his goal was to free up time for struggling students to devote to core subjects.

He said the bill was a response to complaints about “mandates” brought by Connors and Finley.

McGuire said the administrators told him: “Every time you add to this list [of required subjects], it causes us to get a specialist, right? We don’t have somebody who can teach engineering. We need a specialist. We don’t have somebody who teaches foreign languages necessarily. We need a specialist.”

“And so that was the genesis. The genesis of it was my meeting with the superintendent and the school principal,” McGuire said.

Connors said in a brief phone interview that McGuire, an Epsom resident, invited him, Finley, and one other person to his home “to talk about mandates” last August.

The conversation focused on the minimum standards for public school approval, which were updated last year by the State Board of Education, Connors said. They did not talk about the list of required subjects set by state law.

Connors said he asked McGuire during that meeting to support more state adequacy aid so that those positions could be funded with high enough salaries to attract qualified candidates.

The words McGuire attributed to him were “not the words that I used,” he said.

McGuire did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his recounting of that meeting. His comments came at the beginning of a multi-hour hearing on the bill.

Over the first 90 minutes, not a single person spoke in support of the proposed legislation. Online, nearly 30,000 people had registered opposition to the bill, while 68 had expressed support for it.

Critics said they believed removing requirements for certain subjects would have the effect of eliminating them from certain schools entirely, particularly schools that are underfunded.

“I’ve had I don’t know how many ‘naughty boys’ tell me after they graduated from high school: ‘Your open studios were the reason I stayed in Concord High School, because I didn’t go into the smoking area, I didn’t go down to the cafeteria, I went to the art studio. And I knew I would be accepted there,’” said Phoebe Ann Neiswenter, the longtime art coordinator for the Concord School District.

Some people who testified ascribed a more hidden motive to McGuire’s pursuit of eliminating required subjects, one that would be in direct contradiction to the plea Connors and Finley said they made – to increase the amount the state funds an “adequate” education.

“The word ‘adequate’ explains why HB 283 is before you,” Jim Moyer, also of Epsom, said. “The court rulings oblige the state to pay for an adequate education. Thus, from a narrow view, any withering of the scope of adequate education may save some money.”

 

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.