Unevenly applied, competency-based learning has achieved mixed results in New Hampshire

Signs made by students line the hallways of Pittsfield elementary. GEOFF FORESTER—Monitor staf

Dek: While some districts have embraced the new approach, others have lagged behind.

By Kelly Burch

Granite State News Collaborative

New Hampshire is nearing the end of a more than three-year effort to revamp the state’s core educational standards. When approved early next year, these new rules will steer the course of public education for at least the next decade. In this continuing series of stories, the Granite State New Collaborative will explore what those changes are, how they came about and what they mean for the future of public education in the Granite State.

In the Epping school district, students learn with other children who are at the same learning level as them, even if those students are in another grade. A kindergartner who is an avid reader might go to a second-grade classroom for reading instruction for example. 

“Our vision is to give each child what they need when they need it,” said Superintendent William Furbush. "If we insist on giving every child the same thing at the same place, we’re missing the boat, and putting a lot of energy into a broken system.”

Epping has been a leader in competency-based education (CBE), an educational philosophy that emphasizes real-world application of skills and students learning at their own pace. The district has even garnered national press attention for the changes it has implemented, and yet Furbush says there’s still miles to go before the district has a truly competency-based approach. 

“I don’t know if anyone is really doing it,” Furbush said. “We made strides and continue to make strides, but we’re still a long way from what the vision of CBE would look like if CBE were really in place.”

The situation in Epping underscores the state of competency-based education in New Hampshire. The Department of Education (DOE) has embraced the approach since 2004 and over the past two decades has implemented multiple changes to the minimum standards for public school approval, also known as ED306 or the 306s, in order to require a more competency-based approach from districts. 

Yet educators say those changes haven’t been backed with funding, widespread policy adaptations needed to support the shift or consistent resources to support CBE. That has led to the approach being unevenly applied throughout the state, educators say, creating misunderstandings and misconceptions about what CBE even is. Now, with an even more significant shift toward CBE proposed in the most recent revision of the 306s, educators are concerned that the existing inequities and misunderstandings could be exacerbated. 

“What we’ve heard is pretty strong support for competency-based learning… folks believe in the concept,” said Fred Bramante, president of the National Center for Competency-Based Learning, which received a $50,000 contract with the DOE in 2020 to facilitate the current revision of the 306s, a process that could wrap up by the end of October. “What we’ve also gotten is the sense that the DOE has not done a good job in the past 20 years of getting us to where we need to be.”

CBE varies between districts, and has since it was first implemented

Carla Evans has three children in the Oyster River Cooperative School District. As her sons have moved through school she’s noticed inconsistencies in how their work is graded and reported to parents. At the middle school, her son was graded based on competencies. Now that he’s in high school, he’s receiving traditional letter grades. 

Evans, who is a senior associate at the Center for Assessment, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit that contracted with the DOE to create assessments that are compatible with CBE, said the variations even within her district are emblematic of what’s happened in the state since the DOE started pushing CBE in 2004. 

From the start, CBE has been deployed differently in school districts around the state. The department “left it flexible how districts and schools implemented and interpreted the law,” Evans said. “How [districts and schools] changed teaching and learning varies considerably.” 

Paul K. Leather, who was deputy commissioner at the DOE from 2009-2017, helped bring the concept to New Hampshire originally, beginning in the late 1990s through a U.S. Department of Education grant meant to help advance student learning outside the classroom. 

At the time, “we had a fairly good set of resources to support districts,” Leather said. Those grant-funded resources were distributed to about 20 SAUs, a small portion of the districts in the state (today, NH has roughly 140 SAUs, including charter schools).

Leather said the work he was doing caught the attention of Bramante, who was then the chairman of the New Hampshire State Board of Education, a position he held from 2003-2005. 

Bramante “thought [CBE] was the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Leather said. “He wanted to see this put into place for all students and all schools doing it.” 

Leather said he was “a little leery of that, because it’s a bit of a shift from traditional education. To require people to do it might not be the best way to start it.” Yet, “Fred [Bramante] was pretty adamant. He felt it was time for a big change in education.”

Discussion of competencies was first integrated into the 306 rules in 2004, mostly for high school students. In 2014, the rules expanded the focus on CBE, bringing the approach to elementary and middle schools. At that point, there were clear differences in how districts were approaching the change, Leather said. 

“It was all well and good when a district dived into it quickly and understood how important it was. They started changing from kindergarten up,” he said. “But when a high school came to it late—when they weren’t excited about it, but were doing it because of the rules change [to the 306s]—they would…have trouble.” For example, students who hadn’t been evaluated based on competencies before might have difficulties adjusting to the new assessment systems, he said. 

Nearly twenty years after competency-based education was first introduced in the state, New Hampshire’s structure of locally funded education makes it difficult to have equitable progress toward the approach, said Karin Hess, an educational consultant and president of Vermont-based Educational Research in Action, LLC. 

“There are schools that really have moved along,” she said. “But it’s live free or die. They don’t have to do it.” 

The effort to adopt CBE is often led by a “strong administrator” who is “willing to stay the course,” she said. Yet now, a “critical mass” of districts within the state are pursuing CBE—a mass that could be accelerated if the proposed changes to the 306s are adopted and implemented as soon as next year. 

• What is competency-based education?

  Competency-based education (CBE) is an approach to learning that emphasizes the real-world application and transfer of skills, said Karin Hess, president of the Vermont-based Educational Research in Action, and a national consultant on CBE. Under the model, students only advance when they’ve shown mastery of a concept. This is at odds with a traditional teaching model, where students pass or fail a section of instruction, and move on to new topics in either case.

  In talking with professionals about competency-based education (CBE), there’s a common example that comes up. Consider you’re in flight school. You pass the majority of your classes—mechanics, reading instruments, holding altitude, and takeoff. There’s just one class you have trouble with: landing the airplane.

  Under the traditional pass/fail approach to education, you’d pass the course, because you passed the majority of classwork, but you certainly aren’t qualified to fly an airplane.

  CBE aims to address that by ensuring that students do not advance until they have mastered essential concepts that they need to successfully apply their learning in the real world.

A need for more public understanding of the approach

The traditional approach to education–with lectures, letter grades, and a fixed pace of learning that the whole class follows–is familiar to most American adults because they went through it themselves.

“The age-graded model is in our DNA: it’s how we organize students, certifications and parent expectations,” Furbush said. 

CBE takes a novel approach to learning, focusing on competencies, rather than grades. Students advance when they show they can apply their learning in real-world settings, rather than on a test. Students learn at their own pace—which is why in Epping a kindergartener and a second grader might be in the same reading lesson together, an approach known as flexible grouping.

There’s a challenge in helping parents and even teachers understand CBE, a system they did not experience first-hand, said Val Zanchuk, a member of the 13-person task force drafting the current revisions to the 306s. 

“It’s been difficult to get past the public’s perception of public education,” Zanchuk said at a Concord listening session. “[The traditional age-grade model] is what people have gone through, it’s what they’ve experienced.”

With CBE, “there’s a lack of trust in the community members because they don’t understand it,” Furbush said. For example, when Epping changed from the traditional A-F grading system, replacing it with competency-based parameters like “proficient” or “mastered,” the process went poorly, Furbush said, and undermined parents’ willingness to be open-minded to the new approach. In hindsight, he said, the grading system “shouldn’t have been tackled until all the other pieces [like teaching to students of similar abilities, regardless of grade] were in place.”

“Now, the impression of the community is CBE is bad,” Furbush said. “That’s a hole that we have to dig out of."

When parents aren’t entirely sure what to expect with CBE, it can cause two issues, said Stephanie Malia Krauss, an Illinois-based educational consultant who has worked on CBE efforts nationally. First, the approach can become a sort of scapegoat for parental dissatisfaction or frustrations with the educational system. Furbush said this happened in Epping when parents were concerned that nontraditional grades at the high school level were keeping their students from being accepted to selective colleges—a concern that has disappeared after several students were accepted to elite universities, he said. 

CBE can also be used to cover inadequate education practices by teachers or even districts, Krauss said. 

“Someone can say they’re doing CBE, and they would be radically different from someone else who says they’re doing CBE,” she said. "When it’s attempted by someone who doesn’t have the skills and supports to do it well, or the infrastructure to do it well, it could make things worse.” 

For parents to take an active role in their children’s education, they need to understand this new approach to learning—something that schools, districts and even the state could help with, Krauss said. 

“Even after a decade there’s still confusion and lack of clarity on what CBE is and what good CBE looks like at every age and stage of a K-12 experience,” she said. “What should you be able to expect as a parent and how do you know when it’s not going well?”

Growing pains, but a determination to move ahead

Overall, the educators interviewed for this story agree that the transition to CBE is a positive one. 

“I don’t know of an educator who would say [CBE is] a bad idea,” Furbush said. 

While New Hampshire was alone in implementing the approach back in 2014, according to Hess as of 2023 every state has legislation supporting CBE. 

“The worst thing New Hampshire could do would be to walk away from something that every other state and school would like to be walking towards,” said Krauss. 

However, to ultimately succeed in the state-wide transition to CBE, districts and educators say they’ll need resources and funding to implement the changes that will be required if the proposed changes to the 306s are adopted.

“One of the things I think is needed is money, resources and guidance at state level for schools that simply don’t have the capacity to go at this alone,” said Brian Stack, a member of the committee drafting the 306 revision and former principal of Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston.

Rose Colby, a former teacher and principal in Goffstown who was the DOE’s competency-based specialist from 2007-2014, said that establishing a CBE approach in a district can take up to 15 years, even when it’s well supported. 

“It’s like turning around the Titanic in the middle of the night,” she said. 

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org. 

If you like what you read here, help us keep it going. Now through 12/31, GSNC is trying to raise $13,000 for local reporting. If we do, we unlock an additional $13,000 in national matching funds. We could use your help. Can we count on you?

Main Story: New education standards continue a decades-long push toward competency-based education in the Granite State.

At a community session in Hinsdale, Fred Bramante, former chair of the N.H. State Board of Education, elicits questions and feedback about a redevelopment of rules for public education in New Hampshire.

Jamie Browder / The Keene Sentinel

By Kelly Burch

Granite State News Collaborative

New Hampshire is nearing the end of a more than three-year effort to revamp the state’s core educational standards. When approved early next year, these new rules will steer the course of public education for at least the next decade. In this continuing series of stories, the Granite State New Collaborative will explore what those changes are, how they came about and what they mean for the future of public education in the Granite State.

Over decades as a teacher, administrator and educational consultant, Rose Colby has seen first-hand the difference between traditional teaching and competency-based education, an approach that encourages students to apply their learning to real-world situations. 

For example, rather than passing a test after learning about solar energy, students following a competency-based model might be asked to build their own solar-powered cooker, she said. 

“That’s a much deeper assessment of a student,” said Colby, who was a teacher and administrator in Goffstown and worked as the Competency Education Consultant for the N.H. Department of Education from 2007-2014, but is no longer associated with the department. 

Although competency-based education (CBE) may be a new term to many Granite Staters, there has been a slow transition to this model in the state since 2004. But that pace is likely to increase as the Department of Education is preparing a broad set of administrative rule reforms aimed at pushing more schools to adopt CBE standards. These "Minimum Standards for Public Schools Approval," better known as the 306s, are undergoing their 10-year update and are expected to be finalized by early next year.

The 306s are part of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules established in 1983 by the state legislature to provide legislative oversight in the area of administrative rulemaking by the agencies of the executive branch.

These rules define the minimum standards for public school approval. The document is how the state defines its education system, according to Fred Bramante, president of the National Center for Competency-Based Learning, a non-profit that has been contracted by the state Department of Education to update the rules. 

School approval is a mandatory process required by state law (RSA 21-N:9). All children residing in the State of New Hampshire between the ages of 6 and 18 are required to attend an approved public school, approved private school, or an approved home school program.

“The nuts and bolts of public education are defined in this document,” Bramante said. “It’s a big deal.”

Many educators, including Colby, say that CBE is a good thing. Yet they worry that the proposed changes to the 306 rules could dilute the rigor of education, put unfunded and unsupported burdens on teachers and school districts, and even be used as a backdoor approach to defund public schools, all without educator input. 

“When you look at the substance of the proposed overhaul, it’s problematic,” said Nicole Heimarck, executive director of Reaching Higher New Hampshire, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on providing public policy resources around K-12 education in the state. “With this proposal, the department is moving away from evidence-based practices… and really weakening the standards for public school approval.”

The changes—which could be adopted as soon as next year—“will have a consequential impact on how New Hampshire does schooling tomorrow and well into the future,” Heimarck said.

A revision with limited public oversight

In the past, these every decade updates have been drafted internally by the department. Yet for this update, the DOE, led by Commissioner Frank Edelblut, signed a $50,000 contract to “facilitate a revision” of the 306s with the Durham-based National Center for Competency-Based Learning (NCCBL). 

That organization was founded by Bramante, a two-time former Republican candidate for governor who has been involved with educational policy-making in New Hampshire for more than 30 years, most visibly as the Chairman of the New Hampshire State Board of Education from 2003-2005. 

Bramante, who is the only person the NCCBL compensated in 2022 according to the nonprofit's tax filings, appointed a 13-member task force, composed of school administrators, educational consultants, state Board of Education policymakers and members of the state’s business community, which has long promoted CBE an opportunity to foster graduates better prepared to enter the workforce. The task force does not include any current teachers. 

Including Bramante, five members sit on the NCCBL’s Board of Directors.

The task force began working on the revisions in January 2021, but many educators and educational advocates in the state did not know the work had started until the task force sent out a letter in June of 2022, inviting stakeholder leaders to share their input. In 2023 the task force held more than a dozen listening sessions around the state. 

None of that public input was required, Bramante said and because the revisions are currently happening as part of a state contract, the 306 task force meets outside the public purview.

The task force doesn’t publish its meeting schedule or its agenda, he said.

“It’s a private process,” task force member Val Zanchuk said at a Sept. 12 listening session held at Concord High School. 

The DOE and the state Board of Education then have the last call on what new educational standards will be submitted to the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules for final approval, Bramante said. 

The task force aims to submit its final reform recommendations to the Department of Education by October. That will kickstart a 180-day period of feedback, including at least one public hearing–the only point during the process where the department is legally obligated to bring the revision to the public, Bramante said. 

[opportunity to link/plug third story, which highlights this mistrust more in depth]

The content of the 306s

Like many government documents, the 306s can be arduous to digest.

“It’s very difficult to follow, which makes it difficult for people to respond to,” said Sarah Robinson, a Concord School Board member and education justice campaign director at Granite State Progress, a progressive advocacy organization.

The DOE has published a side-by-side document outlining the proposed changes. At the September Concord High School listening session, Bramante outlined what he and his committee deemed “noteworthy elements” of the proposed changes. 

Most notably, requirements that students be present in a classroom for a specific amount of time are removed. High school credits are redefined as a set of related competencies, rather than time in a certain class. To advance in school, students need to show they can apply a concept. Grade levels are replaced by learning levels, with students only advancing when they’ve shown they can meet the required competencies. 

That means students learn with other children at their same competency level regardless of class distinction. A third-grader with advanced math skills could be assigned to a fifth-grade math class, for example. 

“We don’t care where or how you get [learning] done,” Bramante said of high school students. 

There’s also a strengthening of support for extended learning opportunities (ELOs), or learning that happens outside the classroom via internships, mentorships and other experiences. Although ELOs are part of the existing 306 rules, schools often put limitations on them, Bramante said. The proposed changes would stop high schools from restricting ELOs, such as limiting the number of credits that can earned outside the classroom and allowing more ELO opportunities for middle school students, according to Bramante. 

• What are the 306 administrative rules?

  The Ed 306 Minimum Standards For Public School Approval are part of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules established in 1983 by the state legislature to provide legislative oversight in the area of administrative rulemaking by the agencies of the executive branch.

  The 306s, as they are commonly referred, define the minimum standards for public school approval. The document is how the state defines its education system, according to Fred Bramante, president of the National Center for Competency-Based Learning, a non-profit that has been contracted by the state Department of Education to update the rules. The rules, Bramante said, have the force of law (as long as they’re not superseded by another law).

  “The nuts and bolts of public education are defined in this document,” Bramante said. “It’s a big deal.”

Concerns about the 306 draft changes

Educators around the state have voiced concern not only about what’s been added to the 306 rules, but about what has been taken out. 

“There is vague language in some spots, and then very specific language that’s not in the definition section,” said Christine Downing, director of curriculum and instruction in SAUs 32 (Plainfield), 75 (Grantham), and 100 (Cornish).

For example, the proposed changes replace “grade level” with “learning level,” and “instruction” with “learning” or “opportunity.” The word “local” has been stricken in all references to “local school board(s)”. In the section on ELOs, the word “certified” was removed from reference to “certified educator,” prompting concerns about who would be qualified to approve learning that happens outside the classroom. References to equitable discipline were removed. 

“The lack of equity in this draft was noticed by everybody,” Zanchuk said. 

The changes to the language were significant enough that eleven state organizations, including the state’s largest teacher’s union, published an open letter last December voicing their concerns and asking for the revision process to be halted until more community input could be collected.

At the Concord listening session, Bramante said that many of the language changes were made by the DOE as the document went back and forth between Bramante’s committee and the department. 

“Ultimately, [Commissioner Edelblut] has more say than we do,” Bramante said. The recommendations of the task force are not legally binding and do not need to be adopted by the DOE. 

Task force member and former principal of Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston Brian Stack said he was concerned “that there were a lot of changes being made at the department level. I’m not sure I always had the background of why."

He was told that words were removed by the DOE to simplify the document, he said, but he worries the DOE went too far. 

“If it’s oversimplification, now you’ve created something that’s so gray you can interpret it lots of different ways,” he said. 

The 306s help define what is an “adequate education”—a standard that the state must fund according to law. Whether the state is meeting that obligation is the subject of a lawsuit brought by the ConVal school district in 2019. The trial in the lawsuit concluded in May, but the judge’s ruling has not been released. However, some community members are concerned the current revision of the 306s could lead to loopholes that allow the state to remove funding for items that are not outlined in the 306s.  

"Whatever is not in this document, I am very concerned about it not being seen as fundable,” one public commentator at the Concord listening session said. 

There’s also concern that changes could open the door to for-profit entities getting state funding in order to provide an “adequate education,” Heimarck said. 

Challenges in implementing the proposed changes

Stack said the 306 committee’s primary directive “... was to look for opportunities to refine and deepen the role that CBE plays in the 306s.” 

However, educators are concerned the push to expand CBE requirements will be difficult for districts to implement because teachers will need additional training and school schedules will need to be adapted. For example, in Epping, which follows CBE, all elementary students must take reading class at the same time, so that children can be matched with the other learners who are closest to their level, even if those students are in a different grade.

Speaking during the public comment section at the Concord listening session Tina Philibotte, the chief equity officer in Manchester School District, compared the changes to “unfunded mandates.”

“Competency-based education, when done really well and well funded, I’m here for it,” she said. But without money and resources, “you’re going to get a really watered down, poorly funded version.”

Philibotte pointed out that the Parker-Varney School in Manchester is “no longer using that (CBE), because they cannot fund it.” 

William Furbush, superintendent of Epping School District – an early adopter of CBE – worries that the committee and ultimately DOE are making changes to the minimum standards with “no idea” about the day-to-day operation of schools and districts. 

“The implementation piece is completely missing,” he said. 

Bramante has pointed out that funding is not part of the scope of the revision process for the 306s. Yet educators say there must be an awareness of the money and resources that districts will need to put the required changes into place. 

“It was a big dodge on Fred [Bramante]’s part to say it’s not a conversation about funding,” said Robinson, the Concord School Board member. “You can’t unlink it to funding in the state.”

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org. 

If you like what you read here, help us keep it going. Now through 12/31, GSNC is trying to raise $13,000 for local reporting. If we do, we unlock an additional $13,000 in national matching funds. We could use your help. Can we count on you?

Click here to watch a conversation with Granite State News Collaborative Reporter Kelly Burch, former state Board of Education member Fred Bramante, who is leading the task force reviewing these standards and serves as president of the nonprofit National Center for Competency-Based Learning in Durham; educator Brian Stack, who is also part of the task force; and Nicole Heimarck, executive director of Reaching Higher New Hampshire, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on providing public policy resources around K-12 education in the state.

UNH speaker series digs deeply into “difficult” topics

By Melissa Russell, Granite State News Collaborative

University of New Hampshire education graduate students, Shantel Palacio and Nathan Harris expected their fellow students would be eager to discuss societal issues impacting education, even those that are controversial or sensitive. 

But that’s not what they encountered in one of their graduate classes. Blame it on the fiery political and social climate of the times, but Palacio and Harris said classmates were uncomfortable digging into hot-button topics, particularly around race, often bringing classroom conversations to a halt. 

“We were excited to discuss policy, but we could not get to it because there was this fear and anxiety around mentioning something like race,” said Palacio, currently working on her dissertation in the UNH Leadership and Policy Studies track. “Not only were we deprived of sharing our perspectives, but we were deprived of our classmates’ perspectives.”

“We saw this as an opportunity to engage, to have a dialogue and it didn’t happen,” said Harris, also in the Leadership and Policy Studies program. “We were both disappointed. It was a blown opportunity.”

Their disappointment led to concern and conversations: If this self-stifling was happening at a university where students should be able to share perspectives and debate issues, what was happening in the world outside, where people do not have safe spaces dedicated to respectful conversations, questions and debate?

It became clear that students, faculty, staff and those outside the school community needed a place to respectfully explore so-called difficult topics of contemporary society and to listen to each other with reassurance that they could have conversations without fear of making mistakes or saying something awkward. 

Thus, in 2020, Palacio and Harris, with support from Dovev Levine, assistant dean for graduate student affairs and assistant vice provost for outreach and engagement, created Beyond the Border: A Critical Dialogue Series. The programs bring New Hampshire-based professionals together with their counterparts outside the state to discuss such potentially contentious issues as diversity, policing, pathways to success, meritocracy, disability and inclusivity. 

In order to encourage audience engagement and robust participation, Palacio and Harris start with titles designed to acknowledge the complications inherent in the discussion, such as “Diversity is a Dirty Word,” “Meritocracy is a Dirty Word,” and “Disability: Inclusivity and Reality.”

The titles, according to Harris, put audience discomfort right up front. “We know the word diversity was a trigger for some people, that it had different narratives around it, that it was complicated,” he said in an interview on  New Hampshire PBS’s program “The State We’re In,” 

By diffusing that discomfort, and giving participants permission to hold opinions opposing the guest speaker, Palacio and Harris set a tone encouraging respectful and productive conversation, according to Levine.

There have been five sessions so far, all conducted virtually, with the first live program to debut later this month.

Participation has been robust, with 50 to 200 participants, including students, on each call, from the university and beyond, Palacio and Harris said.

“At one point we thought we broke Zoom because there were so many people who wanted to have the conversation,” Palacio said.

Levine credited Palacio and Harris for fostering a climate designed to encourage participation. “I knew it was going well when people stayed on after the Zoom – we had to create what we called the afterparty – people hung on way past the hour was done because they wanted to keep talking,” he said.

Levine said rather than feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the subject matter, people were “enlivened.”

“It lifted them as opposed to leaving them with heavy hearts – that was just an impressive feat,” he said. “They discussed really tough stuff with a sense of hope, community and optimism – that’s what struck me most.”

Commenting on “The State We’re In,” Palacio said the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a loss of community and connection, while the nation’s racial reckoning in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd created a climate where people want to connect, but are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Social media, Harris added, has added to the situation where people can “just send barbs out, and not communicate.”

“You watch teenagers or adults have a whole conversation just using their phones and never engaging, that’s not what we used to do,” he said. “So now, when you throw a difficult topic matter into the mix, it makes it even harder.”

While it may be harder to have civil and productive conversations about “tough stuff” without devolving into a yelling match or silence, Levine said the model developed by Palacio and Harris clearly works.

“We think there is scaling up we can do to turn out more people, to have the same conversations, which people clearly want to have,” he said.

The key to hosting a successful conversation, Palacio and Harris agree, is setting the tone at the outset and giving participants permission to “be raggedy and make mistakes,” Palacio said.

“We need to have spaces, to be able to engage and ask questions and even make mistakes. The university setting is a perfect space to be able to ask questions. I think folks need the space to explore conversations they’ve never had before,” she said.

“We let folks know they don’t have to agree with what’s being said, but to take time and engage in active listening and get a different perspective, or to hear the same perspective in a different way,” she said. 

To date, speakers have included law professor Rachel Godsil, co-founder of the Perception Institute and Dr. Dottie Morris, the chief officer of diversity and multiculturalism at Keene State College, who discussed racial and social justice; Dr. Mauriciere de Govia, a leadership strategist and executive superintendent for New York City’s Department of Education and Dr. Jahmal Mosley, superintendent of the Nashua Public Schools discussing equality of educational opportunity; Robert Quinn, New Hampshire commissioner of public safety and Benjamin B. Tucker, first deputy commissioner of the New York Police Department discussing building safe communities with Jerika L. Richardson, senior vice president for equitable justice and strategic initiatives a the National Urban League; Grammy-award winning producer John Forte and Eric Logan, of Industrial Manufacturing Strategy on access and pathways to success; and Emmy-nominated director Dan Habib discussing diversity, equity, disability and inclusion with Danielle N. Williams, founder and CEO of S.T.I.G.M.A. consulting group.

The next conversations will be bolder and more ambitious, Harris said, moving from virtual to live events. 

“There are a whole lot of extra risks when you do something in person, versus something on Zoom,” he said. 

On Sept. 28, the first in-person session will address challenges faced by researchers, exploring whether the right questions are being asked about housing, education, policy, economics and other topics. Dr. Andre M. Perry, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and author of “Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities” is the guest speaker. Perry is a nationally known commentator on race, structural inequality, education and economic inclusion. 

“If we can create even more of a community of people where we can have a cohesive and sustained conversation about difficult and challenging things, we think that would be really healthy for our area, for ourselves, for faculty and staff – to continue to learn together and talk in ways we think are relevant, helpful and gets us to a better place,” Levine said.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org. 

If you like what you read here, help us keep it going. Now through 12/31, GSNC is trying to raise $13,000 for local reporting. If we do, we unlock an additional $13,000 in national matching funds. We could use your help. Can we count on you?

Different visions for Nashua emerge among city’s three mayoral candidates: First competitive race in eight years pits incumbent Donchess against a county commissioner and a master electrician

By DAVE SOLOMON, Granite State News Collaborative

It might sound like the start of a joke, but a lawyer, an electrician and a retired police officer walked into the race to be the next mayor of Nashua, and they are creating the city’s first interesting mayoral contenst since 2015.

At the time, attorney Jim Donchess, a Democrat, soundly defeated Republican Chris Williams, who had served eight years as president of the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce. Donchess had already served two terms as Nashua’s 51st mayor from 1984 to 1992 and was sworn in as the city’s 56th mayor in  2016 and ran unopposed in 2019 for another four-year term.

As that term expires, Donchess finds himself facing a challenge from one candidate with an impressive resume of government service, and another who prides himself on the fact that he has none. The top two vote-getters in the Sept. 12 nonpartisan primary will appear on the ballot for the general election on Nov. 7.

Republican Hillsborough County Commissioner Mike Soucy could hardly be called an outsider. Before being elected to the three-person commission in 2022, he served as a Nashua police officer, firefighter, and alderman. Mark Gallant, a master electrician and local radio talk show host, stresses the fact that he has no government experience and has made that the cornerstone of his campaign.

“If a person decides they want to make a career out of government, they can no longer run government because their main interest becomes growing government, not serving citizens,” says Gallant. “Anyone being promoted by the Democrats is a government official. Anyone being promoted by Republicans is a government official.”

Gallant does not stake out many specific positions on the issues, arguing instead for a return to the original model of “citizen legislator,” which he says would solve most of our problems.

“The system has been designed in a way to make you think you only have two legitimate choices, the government party of Democrats or the government party of Republicans,” said Gallant. “The only time they were forced, they did it kicking and screaming. They were forced to take a private citizen and promote him, and that was with the recent election of Donald Trump.”

People should have a job and a life outside of government, run for office to serve one or two terms, and then return to private life. That’s the essence of the Gallant platform, and the only way, he says, to address burdensome taxation, homelessness, addiction and other problems facing the community.

“To me, the right answer is to debate everything out in public and give the public more input than the government,” he said. “If I get elected, I’m serving one and done. I just want to do my civic duty.”

Not exactly nonpartisan

Although the Nashua mayoral race is technically nonpartisan, neither Soucy nor Donchess makes any bones about their affiliation, although both fall to the moderate end of the spectrum in their respective parties. 

“I’m a Republican, but a lot of my Republican friends call me a RINO (Republican in Name Only),” says Soucy, who sees modern U.S. politics as a football field in which most voters are gathered around the 50-yard line, while politicians have moved toward opposite goalposts.

“I have some on the far left over here, and friends on the right over there, who want nothing to do with the common good. Americans live between the 40s, a little left of center or a little right of center. If you are pragmatic and willing to enter into conversations with honorable intentions, we can work something out.”

While Donchess and Soucy both see themselves as playing the middle of the field, they have decidedly different visions of what Nashua should look like in the years ahead, particularly as regards the downtown.

Soucy has accused Donchess of pushing for a European-style downtown in Nashua, with narrower streets, slower-moving traffic and an emphasis on pedestrian access. While Donchess has promoted the Nashua Center for the Performing Arts from its inception, Soucy believes the project was ill-conceived and sold to voters by sleight-of-hand.

Donchess backed the bonding for the new arts center on Main Street and a new junior high to replace the aging Elm Street school, while Soucy believes a steady decline in school-age population made such new construction unnecessary. He cites studies that suggest the Elm Street Junior High could have been kept in operation a few years longer while the city closed as many as three elementary schools and remodeled one to create a new junior high.

Donchess says he is working to hold tax increases to 2 percent while Soucy says the city is already spending enough. “I’m going to try for a level-funded budget in my first year, and if we can reduce it, even better,” he said.

Gallant finds the debates over things like the arts center, new junior high school, and municipal budget as distractions from the key issue: lack of genuine citizen representation. “Almost everything people are arguing about, every issue, comes down to money. Never elect a government official to run government,” he said.

Nashua Performing Arts Center

When the $15.5 million bond issue to finance a new arts center went up for a vote in November 2017, it passed by 150 votes out of the more than 10,000 cast – an indication of the intense division on the issue. 

“It’s so politicized at this point, you have a lot of people -- I don’t care what shows are going to go in there -- they are just not going to go,” says Soucy.

If elected, Soucy would order a top-to-bottom investigation into the finances and operating structure of the arts center, which he says has cost the Nashua taxpayers more than was initially promised and has not operated with the necessary level of transparency.

“It’s so convoluted, so complicated, the only thing I can promise the voters at this point is we are going to look at this,” he said. “I don’t know if it means bringing an attorney into it or real estate expert, but we have to let the taxpayers know what happened, with a summary that your average high school kid could read and understand.”

There’s no mystery, according to Donchess, who says the voters were told the building would cost $20 million, with $15.5 million from a municipal bond and $4.5 million from other sources, and that’s what happened. Allegations of subsequent payments by the city for rent, cost overruns and additional loans that have been kept secret “have no basis in fact,” says Donchess, who also notes that predictions of low ticket sales due to competing venues in all directions failed to materialize.

“It’s been tremendously successful in attracting visitors and investment,” says Donchess. The city’s goal was to attract 70,000 visitors a year downtown, with ticket sales in the first two months (middle of May to middle of June) averaging about 10,000 a month.”

“There have been a lot of sold-out shows; and the restaurants are doing very well on nights of performances, so it has been an incredible boost to the downtown economy,” he said.

The alternative, according to Donchess, would have been to allow the vacant Alec’s Shoes store to occupy the heart of downtown indefinitely.

“Imagine what we would have there without the Nashua Center for the Arts,” he said, Since the pandemic, he said, “no one is leasing space that big. So, on the most significant corner in the downtown, we would have a vacant, dark, white elephant making downtown look like a dead zone, and instead of that we have an incredibly alive, active, successful performing arts center.”

Gallant described the arts center project as “taking on big debt on a gamble, in the hope that it’s going to work. Once someone has already stuck you with something you have no choice but to figure out how to make it work. I would promote the hell out of it.”

Controlling taxes

As the value of commercial real estate in Nashua and elsewhere has fallen precipitously amid high vacancy rates, the value of single-family homes has skyrocketed amid some of the lowest vacancy rates on record. The result is that single-family homeowners (and, by extension, renters) are bearing a greater portion of the tax burden as properties are revalued.

Add to that the bond payments for the arts center and new junior high, along with general inflation, and there can be sticker shock when tax bills are received.

Soucy says Donchess has grown government with unnecessary projects like the arts center and junior high school. Gallant agrees with that, and claims that Soucy would be a big spender also, kowtowing to the demands of the unions he grew up with as a first responder.

If Nashua is not competitive in its pay and benefits to first responders, they will find better jobs elsewhere, counters Soucy. “I’m promoting balance between the taxpayers and union workers,” he said. “Whatever the market dictates, we are going to have to go there. We won’t be above the market, but we have to match what the other communities have.”

The city has had year-ending budget surpluses over the past three fiscal years — of $8 million, $9 million and, this year, $11 million — which Soucy sees as a sign of over-taxation. 

Donchess points to the surpluses as a sign of good management, contributing to the city’s rare triple-A bond rating and its ranking as third-best-run city out of 188 in WalletHub.com’s 2023 rankings.

The last city budget was passed unanimously by a Board of Aldermen representing a wide range of ideologies. Donchess is recommending that $8 million of the surplus from the year ending June 30 go toward  mitigating tax rate, “which means in the fall of 2023 we will see an increase of 2 percent, less than half the rate of inflation,” said the mayor.

Donchess also points to the city’s initiative to advance collective power purchasing with the advent of Nashua Community Power in May, with savings averaging around $25 a month per resident on electric bills.

Sidewalk dining vs. downtown traffic

If one issue more than any other illustrates the different visions for Nashua, it is perhaps the question of what Main Street should look like. Should it remain a wide thoroughfare with four lanes of traffic or become a more pedestrian-friendly destination with wider sidewalks and “traffic-calming” infrastructure?

COVID-19 brought the issue to the forefront with the advent of concrete barriers to enable sidewalk dining. While Soucy said he supported the COVID initiative as a way to help save restaurants financially, he now sees the idea getting out of hand.

He points to the city’s master plan, supported by Donchess, which calls for the possible extension of sidewalks into existing parking or traffic lanes, with two lanes of traffic, one going each way, on Main Street. 

Soucy says he “knocked on every door” in the downtown area and asked every property owner who is not a restaurant owner what they thought of the current barriers, let alone the master plan.

“Eighteen businesses told me it was killing them. Three or four said they could end up closing. Three said they liked them, and one couldn’t care either way. Yet Mayor Donchess and his Imagine Nashua plan says they are getting good reviews from shop owners and citizens with reference to downtown barriers. He can’t see, hear or feel what his constituents want. It’s 85 percent or higher of people who do not want them.”

Donchess said the Master Plan is “guided by the citizens of Nashua,” and not by the mayor.

“It remains to be seen what’s going to happen,” he said. “The master plan, guided by the citizens of Nashua, recommended that some changes be made in that direction, but before taking a step like that we would have to take a lot more public input and decide what the community feels is best.”

According to Donchess, “There’s no question that outdoor dining has boosted the downtown economy. Post-COVID and even before, we don’t have the daytime office workers that we used to; no downtown does, so in order to maintain and build a stronger downtown economy you are really relying on restaurants.”

He points to surveys that suggest 80 percent of visitors to downtown Nashua came downtown for the restaurants or bars, “and those surveys were before the arts center opened.”

“Now that the (arts center) is there, if you combine that with restaurants, it’s way more than 90 percent of people who come downtown are doing restaurants, bars and the theater. If you want a downtown that’s alive; if you want to have young people live in your community, you’ve got to have an alive downtown.”

Affordable housing

After taxes, the lack of affordable housing ranks high on the list of local concerns. “If you really analyze this truly, the problem is government,” says Gallant. “It benefits them so much to have unaffordable housing. This is a cash cow for the government. They couldn’t ask for anything better. Until you get government controlled by the citizens and shrink it, everything is going to continue to rise by design.”

Soucy would like to see the city add at least 2,000 new apartment units in the years ahead. “We have to build,” he said, “and given the lack of land we have to build these three- or four-story complexes all over the place. This is the new Nashua. We are going to build apartments up, because when you have a limited amount of land, where else do you go.”

Toward that end, Donchess points to the “inclusionary” zoning ordinance Nashua passed, which requires affordable units and encourages multifamily housing that other communities discourage through “exclusionary” zoning.

The result is a building boom in the city with more than 1,000 units of new housing permitted in the past two years, with about a quarter designated as affordable (rent equals 30% of median income for Nashua).

Commuter rail

Donchess is a big supporter of extending commuter rail connections from Nashua to Lowell, Mass., and a hookup to the MBTA transportation system. The project has been a political football for 20 years, with no significant advance except that a feasibility study was almost complete, until the Executive Council recently shut off funding.

To Soucy and Gallant, such a project would just be another government boondoggle, with high costs and low ridership, subsidized by taxpayers.

“We are not urban enough to do that,” says Soucy, citing low potential ridership in studies and costs for constructing railway stations and upgrading hundreds of miles of track.

Donchess says he will continue to advocate for the project, which he sees as “a huge opportunity for the city.”

“It would add jobs, strengthen the economy, develop a lot of the tax base,” he said. “It would be a huge boost for Nashua. Right now, there is an unprecedented amount of money available for these rail projects, and without completion of the planning stage we are not eligible to get all that federal money. The Executive Council just turned their backs on a major opportunity for federal money that could greatly benefit the state and the city.”

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org. 

Got Seaweed?: Could kelp help New England's Declining Seafood Industry, Climate Change

By Amanda Pirani, for Granite State News Collaborative

RYE –Along the shores at Odiorne State Park, sparkling tide pools and gray boulders provide the perfect environment for Gabby Bradt, a marine biologist and fisheries specialist at the New Hampshire Sea Grant, to forage for  yellow-green tendrils of Rockweed, a seaweed also known as Bladderwrack.

Since 2015 Bradt has led New Hampshire Sea Grant’s “Seaweed Mania” Spring workshops, teaching individuals how to harvest and prepare seaweed in her quest to open people’s minds to the plant’s potential.

Bradt is a key player in efforts by the New Hampshire Sea Grant to expand the public’s understanding of the roles seaweed can play in our lives, as seafood production declines due to climate change.

“Part of what I have been doing is trying to teach people that seafood and seaweed, it's not scary,” Bradt said. “The other aspect of it is going out in the field and learning to identify the, you know, 10, edible seaweeds that you can find on the coast of New England or New Hampshire, and sort of teaching them how to forage sustainably and all the rules and regulations that go with it.”  

New Hampshire law allows an individual to harvest up to three bushels of seaweed for personal use every day, according to New Hampshire Sea Grant. However, Bradt’s classes emphasize sustainability. Individuals are not recommended to harvest a whole three bushels (almost 28 gallons) unnecessarily, nor should they harvest from one site, which could disturb the environment.

Although the commercial seafood industry is a small portion of New Hampshire’s economy, it still brings in an estimated $700 million in yearly revenue which supports about 5,000 full and part-time jobs, according to 2020 data from the Department of Commerce.

For neighbors like Massachusetts and Maine, commercial fishing holds even greater importance. The industry supports almost 37,000 jobs in Maine, and over 127,000 jobs in Massachusetts.

However,  the robust seafood industry's future is threatened by rising sea temperatures as some species migrate north in search of cooler, less acidic waters.

A 2023 report from the National Marine Fisheries Service indicates that 2022 was the warmest year on record for the North Atlantic. As water temperatures increase, oceans store more carbon dioxide which in turn increases their acidity. This process can spell disaster for sea life, causing a number of harmful health defects to shellfish and fin-fish. 

In 2019 the U.S. Department of Commerce reported noticeable declines in New England seafood harvest. Commercial fishermen harvested over 516.7 million pounds of fish in 2019, a 15% decrease from 2010 and a 13% decrease from 2018.

Recently, the industry has seen the largest decreases in catches of Atlantic herring, Atlantic Mackerel and the American Lobster. Northern shrimp populations have plummeted so sharply that fishing them has been prohibited since 2014.

In the face of this threat, the scientific and marine community is looking to seaweed as a partial solution for the future because of its sustainability and unique role in ocean ecosystems.  

“One of the great things about growing kelp, unlike almost every other crop that we have, is that they don't require any (additional) water,” said Thew Suskiewicz seaweed supply and innovation manager at Atlantic Seafarms, Maine’s largest seaweed company.

“They don't require added nutrients or fertilizers and we don't use pesticides on them. So, from an input standpoint, and from an energy standpoint, they're about as efficient as you can get.”  

He also explained that seaweed farms can reduce the impacts of ocean acidification by creating a “zone” of low acidity in the places where the seaweed is growing. Through the process of photosynthesis, seaweed takes up carbon, lowering the acidity of the surrounding water. The macroalgae also take up nitrogen and phosphorus, which can contribute to excessive algae blooms and ocean acidification. 

These properties of seaweed make their surrounding environment more hospitable for shellfish such as mussels, oysters, crabs and lobster.  

Seaweed is easily mistaken for a plant, but it is actually a type of microalgae — a type of living organism that is classified separately from plants because of its lack of leaves, roots or stem.  Kelp, often used interchangeably with seaweed, is the subspecies of seaweed most popularly grown in the Northeast. 

“Kelp encompasses a bunch of different types of brown macroalgae, so the most common that's being grown right now is sugar kelp,” Bradt said.

For New England fishermen slowly watching their annual catch decline due to the impacts of climate change, seaweed is a promising venture. Many of the farmers with Atlantic Sea farms grow seaweed to supplement their income from lobstering or fishing. 

“They're seeing this as something that they can do when they're not lobstering in the offseason, that will continue to earn them money, continue to keep their crew…employed,” said Suskiewicz. “And allow them to use all of the skills and equipment they already have.”

No easy task 

However, harvesting seaweed is a challenging enterprise, as Kittery-based kelp farmers Inga Potter and Krista Rosen can attest.

One sunny Friday morning in May, Potter and Rosen, owners of Cold Current Kelp, traveled to Pepperrell Cove for their second kelp harvest of the spring season. In a few weeks, they need their lines to be completely removed to make room for summer activities on the water. Geared up in rubber gloves and bright orange fishing overalls, the two remove kelp off the lines by hand, hauling rope up from the water and carefully using a machete to slice it off. Then, they pack it piece-by-piece in storage containers. Working against the wind and the beating sun, the process can take hours. 

“[Harvesting] it’s very labor intensive if you're doing it piece by piece. There really doesn't exist yet in Maine a really fast and efficient way of drying kelp,” Rosen said.  

Potter and Rosen manage all of their processing alone. They put out the seed line in the fall, which grows throughout the winter. Then the kelp is harvested in the Spring and brought to a rented greenhouse for drying, which takes a few days. 

Rosen described the process as highly weather dependent, as the greenhouse must be dry or the kelp will absorb any moisture in the air.  

Potter and Rosen will offer the harvest to Maine customers primarily for use in beauty and skincare. They cited seaweed’s sustainability and its potential for local impact as their main motivations for founding Cold Current Kelp. 

“It feels good to be growing something that can impact the marine environment and potentially have effects on a global scale,”  Rosen said.

Obstacles to growth  

Commercial development of seaweed aquaculture in New England only began around 2010, and the industry is fairly young compared to the Asian market. As a result, regulatory infrastructure and processing facilities are not yet available in the capacity farmers need. 

In Maine, a surge in aquaculture interest during the past decade quickly outpaced the state’s capacity to lease permits. It is now estimated there are more than 140 farms in the state. The rapid evolution of the industry also means regulations can quickly become out of date.  

“The experimental and the standard leases, I think, typically take two or three years,” said Rosen. “And so that is an issue you hear in the aquaculture community, quite frequently, that the process could be a little faster.” 

Another obstacle for potential growers is the up-front costs of seaweed farming, which can be steep for those without fishing or lobstering gear. Currently, Potter and Rosen borrow a boat to plant and harvest, as owning one would be too expensive.  

Nonprofits expanding climate-friendly fishing practices, such as Greenwave, hold one piece of the puzzle. Their Kelp Climate Fund provides subsidies to ocean farmers committed to engaging in seaweed aquaculture, facilitating the transition process.  

New Hampshire’s Role  

Against a backdrop of an expanding seaweed industry along New England’s coast, Bradt expects that New Hampshire’s main contributions will continue to be through research and consumer demand. 

“I don't think in New Hampshire, there is really any real potential…maybe very small scale,” she said. “But not a lot that would bring in a lot of jobs or anything like that.”

Key challenges include limited coastline and the lack of infrastructure. Lobstering and fishing leave less room for aquaculture on New Hampshire’s shorter coastline. 

“We have such a short coastline,” said Bradt. “It's pretty rocky access to where you would want to go… you wouldn't be able to grow enough to meet any sort of demand.”

She suggested multi-trophic aquaculture (a farming system in which multiple organisms are grown together) might hold greater potential as a role for seaweed in New Hampshire. Oyster aquaculture has rapidly expanded in Great and Little Bay, and research is revealing the benefits of growing seaweed in combination with shellfish. 

Suskiewicz said that at Atlantic Sea Farms, farmers are already doing this. 

“Over the last couple of years, [shellfish growers have] actually come to us and said, ‘hey, when we put kelp lines around our mussel wraps, when we put kelp lines around our oyster cages, our oysters and mussels do better,’” said Suskiewicz. 

No ‘magic bullet’ 

In terms of climate change solutions, Bradt cautioned that seaweed should not be lauded as a “magic bullet” just yet. While seaweed has positive impacts locally, just how beneficial it would be on a larger scale is unknown. 

“It is really exciting… but we haven't tested it enough. We haven't scaled it up enough to be able to do that,” she said. 

She also noted that once growers try to expand past the local level, sustainability starts to become complicated. For example, seaweed products from the coast become less sustainable once they’re shipped to the middle of the country. 

“I think that's where things start to sort of fall apart, is trying to grow, and of course, everybody wants to grow,” Bradt said. 

Scientists hope that seaweed can help with the process of carbon sequestration, a method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by capturing and containing it, either through living organisms or land formations. A common example of this effort is the planting of more trees to ‘save the planet’. 

However, seaweed is only storing carbon through photosynthesis as long as it remains unharvested or alive. 

“If you think about it, all right, fine, you have all these seaweed farms. And yes, they are sequestering carbon and so on and so forth,” she said. “But they're not going to live forever.” 

Once seaweed decomposes or is consumed by another organism, the carbon it was storing will find its way back into the environment. The lifespan of seaweeds varies, with some growing annually and others having lifespans as long as ten years. 

Suskiewicz agreed that Kelp alone cannot “cure” our coastal environments of acidification but added that seaweed is still a preferable food source because of its minimal impact on the environment.  

“For every calorie or pound of food that someone's consuming kelp, it's much less input than it is for almost anything else,” he said. 

Is the Northeast “sold” on seaweed? 

Whether it’s a kelp beer in Portsmouth or a seaweed salad while fine dining, many local businesses have embraced the macroalgae as they look toward a more sustainable future.

Evan Henessy, a Dover chef who runs fine dining restaurant Stages at One Washington,  prides himself on using local and sustainably sourced seafood. He describes seaweed as a highly versatile source for a savory “umami” flavor, which can be used to create anything from dashi, a Japanese soup broth, to a paste for salad dressing.  

“That's only a few possibilities in the culinary world,” he added. “But these are a lot of systems, a lot of work and a lot of people that need to be involved in creating this change.” 

Market Outlets for Seaweed

Currently, seaweed has several market applications.

Raw seaweed can be dried or frozen and served as a meal ingredient. It can also be added to commercial food products such as vegetarian burgers, condiments, and seasonings. On its own, it can be fermented or pickled for sale.

Seaweed is also used in many personal care products including face creams, face oils, face masks, shampoos, conditioners, soaps, and lotions.

In addition, seaweed can be found in health supplements and even fertilizer.

Henessy and Bradt emphasized marketing issues for a lack of significant demand in seaweed products. They also noted the lack of value-added products on the market. 

While research has shown uses for seaweed in everything from animal feed and  biomass fuels to compostable plastic, many of these products have yet to reach the commercial stage. A lack of variety in commercial seaweeds also limits potential consumer interest. If a consumer has a variety of options, they are more likely to find a seaweed product or food they enjoy. 

“I think that does limit people's interest in it,” Bradt said. “That's one area of research that people are trying to grow… what else can we grow at a commercial scale or more easily?” 

At the University of New Hampshire, Professor Chris Neefus has been researching the optimal methods for commercial Nori production, the seaweed mainly used for sushi. 

To grow new varieties of seaweed, researchers must determine the most conducive environment for growth, or how to replicate their natural environment. Different varieties of seaweed also have different life cycles, and may grow differently. While kelp can be grown off of seeded rope lines, other seaweeds might fare better in a lab tank. 

“So it's not as straightforward as being like I'm just gonna plant carrots and peas and you know, radishes all on different rows on the same plot of land,” Bradt said. “It's a lot more complicated.”

As a specialist in commercial fisheries, Bradt spends a lot of time thinking about how to sell sustainable products like seaweed. 

“I do really want to figure out how to hit that right messaging for marketing seaweed,” she said. “Other industries have had, you know, the success of kale, ‘got milk’… what about that resonated so much that demand and market share increased?”

Bradt’s hope is that over time the relationship between growers and markets will balance. 

“One of the things I'm working on with the Sea Grant seaweed hub is exactly trying to figure that out,” she said. “How do we expand those markets?”

She points to her daughter’s experiences with seaweed for a sense of what the future could be.   

“She never knew that it was gross and slimy,” said Bradt. “I always taught her ‘look, Rockweed, over here, pop this bubble, and now you have smooth skin.’ But at the same time, ‘clip the top over here, and it tastes like nuts. If you're hungry, there's a snack.’ She's been doing that her entire life.”   

Bradt sees educational efforts, like her work at the NH Sea Grant, as key to mobilizing the younger generation of entrepreneurs and consumers to utilize seaweed to its full potential.  

“Seaweed really, absolutely, has the potential to save the world,” Bradt said. “If we do it right.” 

Amanda Pirani is a New Hampshire native and previously studied at the University of New Hampshire, where she reported on seaweed for an advanced reporting course on Climate Change. She plans to continue her degree in political science as a rising junior at the University of Michigan.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org. 

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New Hampshire Food Bank Fights New Obstacles to Food Security: Rising food prices, climate change, creates challenges for organization

Rising food prices, climate change, creates challenges for organization

By Chloe Gross, for Granite State News Collaborative

MANCHESTER — On a Friday morning in late March, the New Hampshire Food Bank’s industrial kitchen was alive with the whirring of mixers, volunteers chopping vegetables, and staff stopping by to chat and tell Chef Paul Morrison that yesterday’s green goddess dressing was “so fresh” and how delicious his pot du creme tasted.

“It’s lots of work but worth it,” Morrison said.

And for food insecure state residents, the New Hampshire Food Bank is more than “worth it” — it is a lifeline. The organization, a program of Catholic Charities New Hampshire and Feeding America — the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization — provides supplementary food assistance to residents around the state, delivering more than 13 million meals in 2022. 

The Food Bank also promotes food system resilience by partnering with local farmers.

But lately, food has not been flowing so freely for this nonprofit organization. A perfect storm of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine have fueled food price hikes that have impacted the organization. But a still larger threat looms on the horizon for those laboring to bring nutrition to the food insecure: climate change.

According to the 2021 New Hampshire Climate Assessment, the state will experience more frequent short-term droughts similar to the summer of 2022’s dry spell that sent 90% of Hillsborough County into a severe drought. Global temperatures will continue to rise, but New Hampshire will not see an increase in total precipitation to balance the increased amount of moisture lost to evaporation.

Cameron Wake, a climate expert at the University of New Hampshire and an author of the climate assessment report, noted that while warmer temperatures could extend New Hampshire’s growing season, associated droughts are quickly shriveling the state’s orchards, drying irrigation pumps and cracking parched soil. Floods, he noted, will become more common because drought-ridden soils aren’t able to absorb torrential rains delivered by frequent, stronger storms.

Speaking to the Valley News, Rebecca Nelson, owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, said that unpredictable weather due to climate change is making it difficult to grow crops. 

“The extremes are disconcerting, with swings from drought to overly wet the last couple of years, and raising crops has become risky and hard to plan,” she said.

Other local farmers discussed how temperature extremes have delayed planting and stressed crops while extreme precipitation events flood their fields after lengthy dry spells.

As crops wither, farmers in the state and across the country search for solutions such as novel drought-resistant varieties. But Eileen Groll Liponis, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank — ever aware of the systems that support the food bank’s mission — fears that the new strains “won’t be developed fast enough.”

The food bank purchases inventory from over 200 local farms through the NH Feeding NH program, developed by the food bank in partnership with the NH Food Alliance, NH Farm Bureau and Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire.

The 2022 USDA State Agriculture Overview recorded 4,100 individually operating commercial farms in NH, though most are small farms that don’t make more than $10,000 per year. 

The USDA awarded the food bank $900,000 in 2022 to use over two years for purchasing local produce and proteins, with further funding pending. In 2021 the food bank and its partner agencies purchased over 200,000 pounds of local food, helping keep local farmers afloat and food-insecure neighbors supplied with healthy food. With funds from this grant, the food bank is expanding the NH Feeding NH program and anticipates reaching more than 129,000 people this year. Furthermore, this program funneled about $264,000 back into New Hampshire's economy.

Increased demand, less food

While worries about future food supplies affect the food bank’s long-term planning, day-to-day operations continue. Over 16 million pounds of food flow from the food bank and into hungry hands and mouths every year. At least 7% of New Hampshire residents do not know where their next meal will come from, up from 5.7% reported by the USDA in 2021. And the food bank is feeling this demand. 

The Mobile Food Pantry program began with six trips to different parts of the state in response to the pandemic. Now the program sends out trucks once a week to deliver families two boxes of food: one full of protein and one with produce. Through this program alone, the food bank distributed over two million meals to almost 125,000 New Hampshire residents in 2021, up 55% compared to pre-pandemic figures. 

When asking about food insecurity in New Hampshire, go up north, Liponis said, “you get real honest answers.” 

For example, at a Coos County drop-off location, Liponis met five different women who said they gave up protein in their diets because it was too expensive. Mobile food pantries helped fill that need by supplying perishable items - such as milk- that historically have been difficult for conventional food pantries to distribute.

Demand for food has increased. But so has the cost of food, which has slowed the flow of donations into the food bank. Grocery stores and personal budgets both feel the squeeze: since the same amount of money purchases less food, there is little left over to donate. Most of the food bank’s inventory used to be supplied by donations from community food drives and fundraisers. But now, more food must be purchased to keep up with demand. 

Liponis, who oversees the purchasing of mass amounts of food, said that many shipments from Feeding America’s bulk-purchasing program now line the shelves of New Hampshire’s only food bank. And the $250,000 that used to cover a year’s worth of expenditure now barely stretches through one month, she added.

Sourcing protein is especially difficult, partially due to long-term droughts in the western U.S. and supply chain issues. Liponis explained that larger storm events, caused by atmospheric instability due to climate change, destroy feed crops and wash out infrastructure, both of which drive up meat prices.

Systemic droughts forced many farmers to abandon their annual crops last summer, including tomatoes, potatoes and carrots, to save their long-term investment in orchard crops. Last summer’s estimated tomato price increases have come to fruition: the projected 1 million ton drop in production created a price jump from last year’s $105 per ton to $138 per ton, according to the agriculture information magazine “The Grower.” Basics such as pasta sauce and ketchup have consequently seen recent price increases, not making it any easier for low-income residents to make ends meet.

In the winter, for the food insecure, “it’s heat or eat,” noted Liponis. 

But summertime does not bring reprieve from the choice between eating and paying bills: according to the recent New Hampshire climate assessment, the average number of days above 65 degrees Fahrenheit has increased by 74% since 1971 and this warming trend is not projected to slow anytime soon. Increasing temperatures will increase energy costs as air conditioning becomes more necessary in the summer, even in northern parts of the state. 

And as for putting food on the table any time of the year? Liponis said, “It’s not gonna get any easier.”

In light of continuing big-ag issues and heightened need for food assistance, the food bank has turned to New Hampshire’s local agricultural system. 

Liponis said that supporting the local food system is a key component of sustainability and climate resilience. Food Solutions New England, a program of the University of New Hampshire’s Sustainability Institute and parent organization of the NH Food Alliance, seeks to strengthen New England’s local food system. The program’s current vision is “50 by 60” — that is, New England aims to produce 50% of its food supply by 2060 to combat food insecurity, economic and environmental food scarcity projections and climate change.

Liponis said that transitioning to sustainable agriculture is pivotal to fighting climate change. And using more local foods may be one key: local foods don’t emit emissions from international travel, small farming businesses support regional economies, and regenerative farming practices can heal worn-out soils and lock away carbon. 

While fighting climate change wasn’t the New Hampshire Food Bank’s original goal, it turns out that what is good for feeding people is good for creating climate resilience, too. And in the meantime, Liponis and the Food Bank will keep fighting food insecurity, one obstacle at a time.

Chloe Gross is a rising senior at the University of New Hampshire where she studies Environmental Conservation and Sustainability with a minor in Forestry and a concentration in science writing. This piece was written for the ENGL 721: Advanced Reporting course on climate change.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org. 

ACLU calls Nashua’s prohibition on obscene speech “unconstitutional”

By Melissa Russell, Granite State News Collaborative

A Nashua ordinance prohibiting “crude, vulgar, profane and/or obscene remarks” represents an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and should be repealed, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire.

The ACLU sent a warning letter to the Nashua Board of Aldermen in early May regarding the ordinance, passed in September 2022, stating it was a violation of New Hampshire residents’ right to peaceably assemble to petition their elected representatives. 

A motion to amend the ordinance by deleting the prohibition of certain comments was on the agenda for the May 23 meeting, but it was not brought up. Mayor James Donchess stated that evening he would be meeting with the ACLU to discuss the ordinance. When reached for additional comment Donchess declined and referred questions to Corporation Counsel Steven Bolton.

According to resident Gary Braun, the Administration and Personnel Committee has tabled the question until August.

In the letter, ACLU staff attorney Henry Klementowicz stated while the city can limit time for public comment, can set rules preventing speakers from disrupting others and can require speech to be “orderly and peaceable,” it cannot constitutionally prohibit speech that is crude, vulgar, uncivil or profane.

A similarly worded ordinance was considered in 2020 but was not enacted at that time. The Board of Assessors has a similar prohibition in its bylaws.

Gregory Sullivan, president of the New England First Amendment Coalition, called the aldermen’s policy “bogus,” and said, “offensive speech is protected speech.”

“They (the aldermen) can do reasonable things. Time, place and manner restrictions are allowed so long as they are reasonable. They can restrict speakers to three minutes, but they can’t restrict speech they find offensive,” he said.

Bolton, in comments to the Granite State News Collaborative, said he strongly disagreed with the ACLU, adding, “If someone wants to express their opinion, they can do so utilizing the other millions of words in our language.”

Nashua resident Laurie Ortolano believes it is her long-standing beef with the city assessor and lawsuits citing other officials that led to the passage of the ordinance. In January 2021, Ortolano was arrested for trespassing at City Hall, following an episode in which she refused to leave the building, protesting a lack of responsiveness from Jesse Neumann, the city’s Right-to-Know attorney, according to The Nashua Telegraph. That paper reported Ortolano had a Right-to-Know lawsuit pending, accusing the city of withholding emails and other documents that she claimed to be public. Although Ortolano claimed her sit-in was “peaceful,” and that she “never raised her voice,” or “did anything to make anyone feel threatened,” city councilor Celia Leonard said her alleged refusal to leave the building despite multiple requests “created a hostile and threatening” situation. Leonard did not respond to a request for comment.

In a recent interview, Ortolano said she was the “first person arrested in City Hall for trespassing.”

A few months after the arrest, Ortolano attended a Board of Assessors meeting regarding abatements. She said her frustration over her own assessment led her to use objectionable language.

“I said I’m disgusted with what happened to me and I said it was the cu****est behavior I had ever seen. On July 22, at a finance meeting, the mayor cut me off and said ‘we will not tolerate criticism of employees; this has to stop, we’ve got to write a new public input policy to shut this down.’ I get three stinking minutes to talk and he interrupts me. I said, ‘shut your piehole, Mr. Mayor.’ I said it three times. The alderman next to me almost choked.”

Alderman John Sullivan was the sole vote against the ordinance and supports its repeal. He said his primary concern was “suppression creep,” and felt the city was trending against openness, transparency and free speech by discontinuing the use of Zoom for public meetings, which had been introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as not including letters from constituents in the public packet of information.

“I drew a line. People use bad language, but it is protected under the First Amendment. We live in a free society. It isn’t nice that people feel the need, but they are allowed to do it,” he said. 

Alderman Alex R. Comeau supported the ordinance “reluctantly,” he said, because he felt it was appropriate to limit certain speech during hours when children might be watching the meetings broadcast on local cable stations. 

“I don’t believe that prohibiting profanity is the same thing as viewpoint discrimination or prohibiting speech, because one of my constituents can still come to a meeting and tell me I’m stupid. We just can’t have them tell me I’m [expletive] stupid if we’re on TV,” he said.

He stated he supported repealing the language prohibition, in part because he feels it is his responsibility as an alderman to “keep the city out of court, especially given the city’s abysmal recent track record of court losses.”

If a constituent is upset and angry, Comeau said the board should consider the reasons for the anger and try to make improvements to the way the city operates, especially with respect to information and transparency.

“If someone comes to a meeting and chooses to use profanity, the chair of the meeting has the authority to cut off any speaker, so it seems we don’t need a codified ordinance to ask people not to curse,” he said.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.