Last year, when members of the Community School District’s (CSD) Trustees learned the costs for necessary repairs and upgrades to their schools, they decided we needed a plan to move forward. The high school is over 60 years old, and the elementary school is well over 40 years old. Both have served the community well, but nobody could have envisioned the dramatic changes that have taken place in public education since their construction. Technology advances, school safety, and demographic shifts are just some of the changes forcing us to examine how we can safely and effectively continue to offer top-notch educational opportunities.

This school year, the trustees included in their budget a line item to engage a firm to develop a “Master Plan” for how to move forward. A small committee made up of school administrators, trustees, school board members, and local citizens, interviewed four firms who responded to an invitation to complete the study. The committee unanimously selected the team of professionals from New Hampshire- based Lavalee and Brensinger Architects. The firm has a strong background working with communities building state of the art schools as well as helping taxpayers understand the options available to extend the service life of existing schools and bring them up to the requisite standards for a 21st-century education facility.

Over the next several months, we will embark upon an exciting journey, with input from a variety of stakeholders, to ascertain what they want moving forward to educate our community’s students. We will have at least three days of listening forums to solicit ideas. Everyone is encouraged to attend and offer ideas and suggestions on how we should proceed. In the meantime, we will engage the services of a community planner to look at the number of students we can expect to attend our schools in the coming years.

It is critically important that we get the most useful and informative plan possible. Simultaneously, we are working on a future-oriented “Vision” for our students and schools to prepare for a future not yet envisioned. When all this hard work is complete, we should have the foundation for moving our schools forward and a mandate from the community that says, “This is what we want in our community, and we are behind you 100%. Make it happen!”