Manchester Essex School Committee Unanimously Approves 12 School Choice Seats for Fall

ESSEX — May 20, 2025 — Manchester Essex Regional School Committee approves 12 school choice placements for fall 2025. The committee voted unanimously Tuesday to accept the 12 seats — all siblings of current district students, distributed across kindergarten through eighth grade — after a debate over whether the roughly $60,000 in projected revenue justified the long-term enrollment commitment heading into what Superintendent Pam Beaudoin called a potentially more difficult fiscal year 2027 budget cycle. The district had increased its reserve draw from $500,000 to $600,000 to close the fiscal year 2026 budget, and Beaudoin framed the school choice revenue as a partial offset to that gap rather than a fund for any specific position. Social studies teacher Jennifer Show, appearing before the board for the third time this year, presented data showing 303 students requested social studies electives for next year but only 200 seats are available, and asked the committee to earmark school choice funds to restore a social studies position cut in the approved budget — a request the committee did not act on. Beaudoin also announced a one-year pilot aligning the middle school and high school onto a shared seven-day rotating schedule, reinstating grade 6 world language instruction by enabling a teacher to be shared across both buildings.