EDUCATION

Dover teachers speak out

Brian Early
bearly@seacoastonline.com
Dover teachers assemble in front of City Hall Wednesday night, asking for more funding from the City Council to be allocated for education. [John Huff/Fosters.com]

DOVER — Close to 100 of the city’s public school teachers and their supporters stood in front of City Hall Wednesday night wearing red and calling attention to what they say is a lack of funding for public education in Dover.

Teachers then filed into Council Chambers for a City Council meeting, many of them addressing the City Council and calling for more education funding during the meeting’s citizens forum as they have in previous council meetings.

The gathering in front of City Hall and the attendance at the City Council meeting capped another “Day of Action” by members of the Dover Teachers’ Union, which held a similar event March 15. Each Day of Action included the teachers working strictly to their contract hours and entering and leaving the school together at their respective schools as a show of unity.

The teacher demonstrations come as the union is amid contract negotiations with the School Board. Josh Droesch, who is part of the DTU negotiation team and a Dover Middle School eighth-grade math teacher, said the contract talks are moving in a positive direction. A meeting is scheduled Friday, Droesch said, and he is hopeful the sides will reach a resolution.

“The School Board is handicapped by what their current budget is," he said. "They can’t really do much more financially for the teachers until the City Council invests more in education. They would like to pay the teachers at a rate comparable to the other area schools. But they have to be able to get a budget passed by City Council.”

The School Board in February approved a $63.9 million budget, which is estimated to be $1.9 million over the city’s tax cap. Approximately $800,000 of the tax cap overage is attributed to the first year of the debt service for the $6.7 million bond to pay for the Garrison Elementary School renovation that is nearing completion.

During the council meeting, 22 people addressed the council, including teachers, students, parents and community members. They touched on similar themes as previous meetings: Dover’s public school per-pupil spending, class sizes, the percentage of city budget spent on education and teacher pay. Many of the speakers urged the councilors to make Dover “average” based on the per-student spending.

According to the New Hampshire Department of Education, Dover's per-student spending across the city's schools was $12,234 per student in the 2017-18 school year. That a little more than $3,500 below the state per-pupil average of $15,865. Dover Middle School’s per-pupil spending was $10,615, the lowest per-pupil spending of any school in the state, according to the DOE.

DTU President Lisa Dillingham previously told Foster’s the average class size for the middle school is 25.1 students, well above the state average of 16.2.

Debra Hackett, who has worked for the district for more than 30 years, highlighted Dover's teacher turnover, which she attributed to lower pay than nearby school districts. Over the past three years, there has been a turnover of one-third of the staff, she said.

Ward 5 City Councilor Dennis Shanahan attended the DTU rally in front of City Hall before the council meeting. “I’ve gotten an overwhelming number of emails that support the school budget and highlight the fact that it’s probably still inadequate,” he said. “I believe the biggest part is the state is not adequately funding education.”

Shanahan said he’s also heard from many taxpayers who are concerned about their taxes going up. “I don’t want to pit the people living on fixed incomes against the kids. We’ve got to make both sides work as best we can,” he said.