Two Gifts-The Story of a Small Town Fighting Back and An Ode to Joy

1. Croydon

Have I told you the story of Croydon, NH? It’s an example of how people, working together, can make a difference at the local level.

Public support and public engagement for education can be successful on a small scale, as proven in little Croydon, New Hampshire, where Libertarians associated with New Hampshire’s Free State experiment tried to eviscerate the school district’s budget. Commitment to public education rallied the town.

Particularly now, people need a cause around which to rally. Croydon is an example of how, after being thrown a curveball, things should work.

Croydon has less than eight hundred residents and is in Sullivan County, one of New Hampshire’s poorest counties. Croydon is one of the communities targeted by the libertarian Free State experiment that seeks to have twenty thousand libertarians move to New Hampshire and take over government.

Free Staters run for local boards and for state rep—and don’t always disclose their extreme libertarian bent or affiliation with the experiment. Sometimes they run as Republicans and sometimes as Democrats. There’s a bit of a parlor game in parts of New Hampshire focused on outing Free Staters.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s book, A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears), provides a very readable description of a predecessor experiment called the “Free Town Movement” that failed. It was focused on Grafton, New Hampshire, population 1385.

Croydon engages in New Hampshire’s two centuries plus experiment in direct democracy. While voters elect school board members to execute policy and run things on a day-to-day basis, they also debate and directly vote on the school district’s budget at a district meeting. This exercise in democracy generally works well. Think flannel shirts, coffee and cider donuts with children scampering about the meeting place, often a school gym. Usually there is debate about hiring a new teacher, buying new materials, or something similar. The problem is that sometimes devious sorts can hijack a meeting.

Jody and Ian Underwood are two of the Free Staters who moved to Croydon, in 2007. Both are highly educated. Jody became the chair of the school board. Ian became a member of the board of selectmen. They were, as a result, influential in the management of the town and of the tiny school district that educates Croydon’s less than eighty children.

Croydon doesn’t have a school beyond one k-4 elementary school. After elementary school, Croydon children may attend middle school and high school in the neighboring Newport School District or the nearby Sunapee School District. Croydon pays the necessary tuition.

The 2022 school district meeting, with just one substantive vote to adopt or reject the well-vetted school budget for the next year, was to be a “sleeper,” except to Ian Underwood.

Underwood considered the school budget to be more of a “ransom demand” than a proposed plan to meet the town’s education needs. The Underwoods don’t believe in government, so monies collected in taxes are not freely given, and ways to starve government of resources are always of interest.

After the budget passed, Ian moved to reconsider the budget vote and to cut the school budget from $1.7 million to $800,000. He thought the children in town could be quasi-home schooled in Prenda pods. Prenda is a tiny company pushing an untested innovation called “microschools” run by “guides” who aren’t certified teachers. As Prenda touts on its website, you can be a guide if you’re a parent, church leader, soccer coach, or businessperson. Teacher training and experience are absolutely unnecessary.

Ian Underwood figured the town could form a handful of Prenda pods and cut the per-pupil spending down to $10,000 per child, less than half the state average. Of course, he hadn’t worked out how to split up the children into pods or where those pods would meet or who the eight guides would be. He also hadn’t bothered to ask the parents of the eighty children what they thought. He just made the motion and the thirty-four voters still in attendance slashed the school budget. With the new school year beginning in less than four months, everything would change for Croydon children because Ian Underwood resents government.

Jody Underwood knew of her husband’s plan but did not inform the people of the school district, who had elected her to watch out for their children’s education.

Under New Hampshire law, reconsideration of Croydon’s vote required a petition of half the registered voters in the district. The effort to organize the re-vote was undertaken almost immediately. The effort was a strong example of grassroots organizing and democracy in action.

The lead organizer was a resident who taught in another district, Amanda Leslie. Angi Beaulieu, a former school board member, and Hope Damon, a dietitian, were also among the organizers who formed We Stand by Croydon Students to support the re-vote. John Tobin provided free legal advice. You can see him smile whenever he talks about consulting on the effort.

The effort to obtain signatures for a re-vote was like a school bake sale on steroids and a new meeting was called.

Three hundred and seventy-nine people showed up for the re-vote, establishing a quorum. All but two voted to reinstate the budget as it was recommended by the school board, before Ian Underwood’s slash-and-burn amendment.

The fallout from the Underwoods’ maneuver was that Hope Damon, one of the Stand by Croydon Students organizers, was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives in the next state election. She sits on the House Education Committee where she can work to protect school funding. Ian Underwood resigned as a selectman. Jody Underwood was defeated in the next school district election by Angi Beaulieu, another organizer.

I should mention that Jody and Ian Underwood are also big fans of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut. Both fawned over Edelblut at his 2017 confirmation hearing. Neither disclosed their association with the Free State experiment.

In these difficult times, local action may be the best way to fend off the most draconian federal laws and, if NH organizes to take back the statehouse, efforts there will also help.

2. Joy

Even a small pebble, well-planned, can cause a huge wave of joy. Enjoy!

Happy holidays.

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