By Alex Malm
The Londonderry School Board held its annual reorganization meeting on March 15.
During the meeting the Board re-elected Amy Finamore as the Chair. She previously served as interim Chair last year.
Sara Loughlin who served as the interim Vice Chair of the Board was also unanimously picked to serve as the Vice Chair this year.
Finamore said that people have had a difficult past couple of years and this year she wants to bring positivity.
“I think all of us really want to have a very positive year, a lot of healing, a lot of restoration and just a lot of really positive momentum over the next year,” said Finamore. “That really starts with me. I promise that I will do the absolute best job that I can to be your chair for the Board members and our principals for our students and for the community.”
Finamore said she also wants to receive constructive feedback from all stakeholders.
“I always want to be open and receptive to feedback,” saying that she encouraged people to reach out to her publicly or privately if there is something that they think she can do better.
Finamore also said she wanted the rules for public comment to be a little more flexible this year.
She said that she wants to keep the general parameters in place of three minutes per person and 30 minutes for the aggregate “But just have a little bit of flexibility,” when it comes to the time limits per person.
The rest of the Board agreed.
Also during the meeting Londonderry Superintendent Scott Laliberte explained that at the reorganizational meetings the District Administration gives the School Board a proposed calendar for Board meetings for the first four months. He said that it is usually based on the previous year’s schedule and is a way to get the discussion started about what dates may not work.
He said that the rest of the dates would be decided once the budget schedules are determined.
“There are already some complications as far as scheduling goes,” said Laliberte.
He explained that one of the meetings was supposed to occur on March 29 but an event is already scheduled in the cafeteria. He said that they would also need to eventually determine what to do for the June 7 meeting which is the same night as the Senior Supper.
“We don’t want to displace our seniors,” said Laliberte.
He explained that they could have the meetings at Town Hall on those dates however he isn’t sure they would be able to live stream it through YouTube like they normally do.
One of the options that was brought up was to meet on April 5. The concern however is that they would then be meeting only a week later on April 12, and it may be a lot condensed in two weeks.
Another proposal was to just meet on April 12 but Laliberte said that may make for a very long meeting.