During the public input portion of the May 5 Hudson School Board meeting, Randy Brownrigg, a resident and member of the Hudson Budget Committee, questioned the school district and or School Board about whether or not they have thought about putting together a plan for Dr. H.O. Smith and Library Street Schools. He noted that the school buildings are in need of serious repairs, and said that they need to come up with a plan of what they will do with the students there in the future. “Let’s be honest, that has to be leveled to the ground,” Brownrigg said during public input.
Brownrigg explained that he thinks they need to have all the different stakeholders come together and be involved with the process, including teachers for example. “That needs to be started now,” Brownrigg said.
In response to the public input, Hudson School Board Chair Maureen Dionne explained that what Brownrigg was suggesting is exactly what they are looking at. “There is an ELC (Early Learning Center) committee that has been meeting throughout the year,” Dionne said. She explained that the public will be getting updates soon on the progress, and that the Committee will be formally presenting ideas sometime in June or July. “At that point, they will be discussing it in further detail about what might take place,” Dionne said.
“There is a committee because multiple people need to be involved,” Dionne said. She also noted that they would be having public input sessions about it in the future.
School Board member Ethan Beals said the first question he had about it was what the best model for education would be, saying the Dr. H.O. Smith and Library Street make up the ELC. “Before they used to have neighborhood schools,” he said. He explained that the first question they have to answer is whether or not they want to continue with an ELC model or go with something else. Beals also explained that right now, the only focus for the Committee is about education elements to it, but the next step would be a discussion about facilities and there could be potentially additional committees added to examine it.
Brownrigg also explained that he thinks the school district can use students more often from the CTE program to help with different things. “We have an excellent welding program, we have an excellent carpentry program at the school, we have students who just want to learn all the time,” he said. He explained that in looking at the budget “I still don’t understand why we have to spend all this type of money when we have all those availabilities to do a lot of these different things.”
For example Brownrigg said students could help with fixing things like broken chairs for example. “I really do think there is an opportunity to save money at the high school, the thing we’re going to be spending money on,” he said.
