Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

The New England Center
for Civic Life—A Decade
of Making a Difference
Douglas F. Challenger
Breaking the Logjam between the Public and the Public Schools
The headline in our local newspaper the Monadnock Ledger read:
“J-R: Yes to bond.” “J-R” stands for the names of the two neighboring
towns (Jaffrey and Rindge) to Franklin Pierce University where
I teach and have helped foster public deliberation on and off campus
for the better part of the last 10 years. The headline was for an
article reporting the results of the recent March 2006 elections during
which the two towns, partners in a cooperative regional school
district, passed the first major bond in many years for the purpose
of school renovations. The school superintendent, James O’Neill,
said, “We’ve made a tremendous move forward.”
The back-story to this headline is interesting because it illustrates
the idea and approach to democratic social change that the
New England Center for Civic Life (NECCL) at Franklin Pierce
University has been teaching and practicing since its inception in
1998. For many years, the local school district has felt a need to
improve the Jaffrey-Rindge Middle School and Conant High School
housed on the same small campus in the heart of the village of
Jaffrey. Many proposals have been put forward in the last decade,
but the idea school officials and many citizens championed was to
build a new high school on land purchased by the school district in
1989, located on a stretch of rural road between the two towns.
Various versions of this plan were put before the local voters
only to be rejected year in and year out from 1999 to 2004. During
this time, citizens in both towns grew more and more divided each
year the warrant articles were rejected at the polls. Three years ago
in 2004, the election was particularly divisive as advocates for and
against the new high school organized and aggressively worked
to promote their positions. During the year leading up to the election,
advocates formed into activist organizations, each mounting
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