MVMS teachers, staff deserve to be heard

For over two years now, repeated attempts by concerned Mountain View Middle School teachers, staff members, and even parents, have fallen on deaf ears at the school board.

At the last school board meeting on Feb.7, public comment on the issue was shut down.  Formal complaints that have been filed repeatedly over the last year or two have resulted in no changes whatsoever.

These teachers and staff members deserve - and have a right - to be heard.  Teachers, especially, have enough on their plates handling the huge responsibility of educating our children, and doing so at pay rates that are nowhere near the top of the scale in New Hampshire.

The school board's inaction is a stark contrast to the way the Board of Selectmen seems to handle things when citizens or town personnel come to them with concerns. 

Take the selectmen's meeting of August 9 of last year.  Dan Devriendt, a local businessman, spoke briefly during public comment, expressing his concerns over the problems his business was experiencing due to construction of the Wallace Road roundabout.  

So what did selectmen do?  They asked Mr. Devriendt to remain, put aside their sizeable agenda, and worked for nearly half an hour until a solution was found.  It was truly a pleasure to watch, and as my wife said afterwards, the kind of effort the selectmen put forth to help a local resident that evening is just one of the many reasons she enjoys living in Goffstown (see Selectmen went above and beyond).

I'd suggest every member of the school board go to PEG-On-Demand and watch the selectmen's meeting of August 9, 2010.  If nothing else, they might learn a few lessons from what selectmen did that night, not the least of which is allowing a citizen (let alone their own teachers and staff) to actually be heard, and to have their concerns taken seriously and promptly addressed.

Guy Caron can be reached via e-mail at: GuyC@GoffstownResidentsAssociation.com

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