Deering

As the Hillsboro-Deering school board began looking over the budget proposed by the administration for the coming year, two philosophies about how to go about trimming and adjusting it emerged. One is to come up with a figure to cut from the budget and allow the administration to decide where cuts should be made to accommodate it. The other is for board members to decide where individual cuts should be made.

With board members Pam Butler and Richard Pelletier in favor of giving the administration a number to cut, and Paul Plater and John Segedy in favor of deciding where individual cuts should be made, the board is evenly split on the issue.

The newly appointed Deering representative, Tim Grass, will be getting his first chance to voice his opinion at the Jan. 5 meeting, when he will be sworn in. Meanwhile, he has been given the proposed budget to look over by that date.

Currently, the budget is set at about $200,000 more than the default budget. The default budget uses the numbers from the current year’s budget, plus any contractual obligations, to set a number for the default if the proposed budget is defeated in the March vote.

Charlie Byron of Hillsborough, whose love of flying was known to many, died at 79 on Nov. 3 at his home on Contention Pond. The Sunday before last, his wife Janet and about 150 of their friends, all either pilots or relatives of pilots, gathered at the Hawthorne-Feather Airport in Deering to share their memories of him.Charlie Byron (courtesy photo)

Several flew in from other airports, but it was a windy day, preventing some from arriving by plane. Friend, David Feather, pointed out that Charlie would have goaded them for avoiding flying in the strong winds, as he always did.

“I’ve flown with him when I had to lean into the wind after I got out of the airplane,” said Feather. “He had a real disdain for people who would let the wind keep them on the ground. It was like a joke. He was good-humored about it.”

Charlie was also known to tell his passengers not to worry if the door wasn’t latched while they were flying, “The wind will keep it closed.”

Hillsboro-Deering High School student Tucker Cutter single-handedly raised over $1,700 to provide the school district with two portable defibrillators. He presented the check to the district at the school board meeting on Monday.School board chairman Paul Plater accepts a check from Tucker Cutter for defibrillators. (Michael Pon photo)

The defibrillators cost between $750 and $800.

Although the district has a defibrillator in each of its three schools, Cutter feels accessibility to them is an issue.

“There were other defibrillators, but we didn’t have ones to carry around on the sports fields, and if someone’s heart stopped we wouldn’t have time to get them,” Cutter said. “So I wanted to get ones that could be transported with us and have in case of an emergency on the sports fields.”

Coincidentally, High School Nurse Candice Garvin was writing a grant for one defibrillator and funding for training. Garvin and Cutter agree that all the defibrillators should be the same exact type, so all those trained to use them will have the same sort of training.

Although only she was the only Deering resident present at Monday’s Hillsboro-Deering school board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Barbara Baker was adamantly in favor of the board appointing a member to fill the seat left by Kathy Pepper. A Meet the Candidates Hour will be held from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 15. Letters of interest may be submitted until 5 p.m. Dec. 12.
The seat left by Pepper may only be filled by a Deering resident. Since her resignation was announced on Nov. 17, to be effective Nov. 28, board members have been weighing whether appointing someone to fill the vacancy would be appropriate or not, considering how little time any new member would have to get up to speed on the budget.
Also, with elections around the corner in March, some board members felt the seat would be filled soon enough by means of an election.
Board member John Segedy was charged with asking for advice from the New Hampshire School Boards Association.

The Hillsboro-Deering, Windsor and Washington SAU board proposed a 0.8 percent increase for the 2009-2010 school year on Wednesday. The proposed budget of $943,519 would be defrayed by $40,000 from the unreserved fund balance. The board has yet to finalize the numbers in meetings to come.
Board member Rich Pelletier moved that the budget be proposed at the $943,519 number. Board member Sue Hoffstetter seconded the motion. It was approved by a weighted vote of 4 to 3, with Pam Butler, Paul Plater, John Segedy and chairman John Corrigan dissenting.
There is currently $115,000 left in the unreserved fund balance. With $40,000 allocated to the budget, that leaves $75,000 in unreserved fund, the sum that business administrator Lisa Braiterman explained is approximately what the SAU needs on a monthly basis. The unreserved funds are typically used for cash flow coverage during any given month.

More than thirty years ago John Sheehan asked his wife-to-be, Elizabeth Early, what she wanted for a wedding present.
"I told her I'd give her anything that I could," he said.
Early asked him to quit smoking, and after just one trip to a hypnotist John was through with cigarettes.
Flash forward to 1999: the couple is reading the paper and they breeze over an advertisement for a hypnotherapy class coming up. A pair of life-long learners, Elizabeth says the class fascinated both of them, but she took the class solo as her husband had traveling conflicts.
"It was really exciting to learn something new that I could use to help people," Elizabeth noted.
In 2003/04, working as a Consulting Ethicist, John found himself sitting at a US Airways Club in New York. He realized he didn't want to spend his time staring at the walls of clubs anymore, when he had so much to go home to.

According to numbers reported at Monday’s Hillsboro-Deering school board meeting, the success rate at the high school has spiked upward since last year.

High School Principal Christian Elkington proudly sat by as Student Representative Curtis Hines reported that course failures during the first quarter of the school year are sharply down compared to last year’s first quarter. Although the statistic Hines gave do not include how many students are failing courses, they did give a count of how many course have been failed.

In the Senior class, 8 courses were failed as compared to 17 last year. In the Junior class 17 courses were failed this year compared to 30 last year. In the Sophomore class, 38 courses were failed as compared to 67 last year. And in the Freshman Academy, 33 courses were failed as compared to 105 last year.

Later in the evening, Elkington also gave board members a chart listing how many students are in each class at this time, asking permission for courses with less than twelve students to be kept active. The board unanimously elected to do so.

During her monthly financial report at the Hillsboro-Deering school board meeting, business administrator Lisa Braiterman reported that she took the opportunity to opt out of paying high prices for heating oil the district locked into when the prices were running high. Provided that oil does not spike upward again, this move could save the district quite a bit of the cost of oil for the year.

Braiterman said she had originally locked into a price of 3.99 a gallon, but that the supplier had offered to let the district out of the lock-in. The supplier will now allow the district to buy at the gallon price on any day of delivery, plus 50 cents a gallon. With prices floating down around two dollars and change now, that could save the district a dollar a gallon in oil for deliveries for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends on the last day of June.

The Deering tax rate has gone up from $19.11 in 2007 to $21.20 for 2008, an increase of $2.09. But the tax rate in 2006 was $19.53, decreasing 42 cents that year. The total increase from 2006 to 2008 is $1.67, reflecting decreases in all portions of the tax rate in 2007.

The County portion of the tax rate went up 6 cents from 95 cents in 2007 to $1.01 in 2008.

The School portion went up $1.87 from $10.38 in 2007 to $12.25 in 2008.

The Town portion went up 16 cents from $5.64 in 2007 to $5.80 in 2008.

The State Education portion remained the same at $2.14 with no increase or decrease between 2007 and 2008.

In the interest of high spirited theater, Mary Rose Carter of Hillsboro-Deering High School may have put her mother’s wellbeing, along with her dogs’, at risk of being eaten alive by a carnivorous plant.Troy Ellis, Rchel Carter and a crowd of other Hillboro-Deering High School Theater enthusiasts had some touchy moments taming the plant, but they finally wrestled it into the building on Monday. (Michael Pon photo)

Carter enlisted her mother, Clara Rogers, to pick up the plant, a prop to be used in the high school production of Little Shop of Horrors, from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. It was the cheapest rental she could find for the plant at $950, but it was also convenient, because Rogers was overdue for a trip east to see her family.

Rogers left Dayton for New Hampshire on Sunday with the plant on what she thought would be an uneventful journey. But which ended up in car problems. Her transmission died on Interstate 84 in Fishkill, New York, just east of the Connecticut border.