On March 23, 2004, Bristol residents convened their annual town meeting at the Bristol Consolidated School. It was one of the better-attended town meetings in recent history.
At the time, the hot issues included a citizen’s petition to restrict consideration of future school budget articles to a secret ballot vote, which was rejected, and the $3.7 million school budget, pared down that year in anticipation of looming capital improvement expenses in the years ahead.
In an unusual twist, led by a future school board member, then private citizen, Julie Crider, residents overruled the school board and voted to restore $39,374 to the budget for instructional costs. The vote saved a teacher’s job.
As presented, the budget entailed cutting a teaching position. In the middle of that school year, a third grade teacher left and another teacher had been hired to fill the unexpected vacancy.
During the debate, Crider, a BCS parent, argued that not only did the students need all of the teachers then employed; the school board shouldn’t have hired someone mid-year to begin with, if they were just going to eliminate a position in the next budget anyway.
In his third year at the helm of what was then School Administrative Union 74, Supt. Bob Bouchard stood up and argued for the budget as proposed. In fact, he told the voters that night, based solely on the numbers, in his initial budget he had recommended cutting two teaching positions.
If he could have seen the future, he might not have recommended filling a position for the short term, Bouchard said, but he couldn’t and he did, and in any event, the budget process worked the way it was supposed to.
“I am very sorry I contributed to that, however I am very much a believer in the process we went through and the integrity of that process,” Bouchard said that night. “As much as I would like to see that teacher added back into the budget, I must remain in support of the budget we adopted.”
It was a decisive moment in Bouchard’s local tenure.
In front of a crowd of taxpayers, facing an unknown outcome, Bouchard could have taken the easy way out, which would have been – say nothing and silently endorse the voter’s largesse.
He could have deferred responsibility to the school board. He could have pandered; playing up his efforts to keep the tax burden down, or, wanting the money, papering over the relative drop in the bucket that is $39,000 compared to $3.7 million.
He could have done a lot of things but what he did was stand up and take responsibility for his work.
For Bristol parents, that was the moment that publicly established the person responsible for educating their children as a man of character.
In the days since, Bouchard has never lacked credibility.
It was a moment worthy of the Superintendent of the Year.
