Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
to build a new multiphased approach to school improvement to be
put to the voters over the next several years.
The first phase of the school
“A better answer to
American individualism
than what the communitarians
were saying about
returning to common beliefs
and values, it seemed
to me, was to ground our
community-building and
political practice on both
the norms of public virtue
and the practices of dialogue
and deliberation.
This, I believed was more
appropriate to a modern,
pluralistic society.”
(“The Work of ‘Public-
Making’: An interview
with Douglas Challenger,”
HEX, 2004.)
board’s plan for facilities improvement
was proposed in 2005 and
was successful at the polls. Phase
two, which included a $9.45 million
bond for substantial renovations
to the existing high school and
middle school campus, also passed
by a narrow margin in March 2006.
It’s clear that over the past few
years the Jaffrey-Rindge Cooperative
School District has experienced
the reversal of a long trend of deepening
community conflict and
continual electoral defeats for increased
local funding for schools.
What’s more, is that even though
the victories for school facilities
improvements have been by narrow
electoral margins, they have
occurred without the same kind
of divisiveness that was evidenced
in the earlier years when citizens
formed themselves into camps and
traded insults in the local newspaper
and at public meetings, and the resulting gridlock obstructed
any major change from occurring.
Superintendent O’Neill said of the March 2006 election result,
“It’s nothing but good news.” A selectman and member of the
school board’s facilities and planning committee said, “The logjam
of our school facilities has been broken: we can now move on and
fix our schools. Everyone came together and we found a compromise
both communities could support.” Privately, he told Drouin
that this recent electoral success for the school board had its roots
194