08-05-2025
Efforts to make Manchester schools a city department get new life
An effort to ask Manchester voters if they support making the school district a department of the city — a topic debated on and off for decades — has new life.
Mayor Jay Ruais broke a 7-7 tie Tuesday night when he voted to send a request — to look at either making the Manchester School District a city department or granting the mayor the power to set the district's budget — to the aldermanic Committee on Administration/Information Systems later this month, ahead of possible placement on the November election ballot.
Voting in favor were aldermen Chris Morgan, Ross Terrio, Ed Sapienza, Norm Vincent, Kelly Thomas, Joe Kelly Levasseur and Crissy Kantor.
Ruais said he recently spoke with the City Clerk's Office and several department heads on how such a change would impact them.
'The easiest thing to do would be, on the budget side, to give the mayor — whomever that is — budget authority,' Ruais said. 'Merging the entirety of the school district and the city beyond just the budget would require potentially 14 changes to the charter."
He suggested that the administration committee come up with a recommendation about the best direction to pursue.
For the matter to appear on a municipal ballot this November, aldermen will need to take a final vote by June 3.
'This would be a pretty significant lift, and I just think if we're going to do this, we should do it thoughtfully and substantively and go through the committee process,' Ruais said.
Similar efforts have fallen short over the past 20 years.
In April 2017, Levasseur proposed putting a question on the ballot that, if passed, would have put aldermen in charge of school finances.
That motion initially passed, but a few weeks later aldermen voted to reconsider, ultimately rejecting Levasseur's original motion.
Levasseur said the school district would have better supervision and oversight as a city department.
More than 20 years ago, the school district filed a petition to determine whether it was a city department. According to Judge Joseph Nadeau's ruling, the 'school district functions as a substantially independent governmental entity' and was not a city department and not under the control of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.
In 2001, voters passed by 4,000 votes a city charter amendment changing the school district to a city department. That amendment was later struck down by the courts, which ruled that it violated state law.
The Legislature changed the law in 2003, but attempts to hold another charter vote have foundered — as in 2011, when aldermen voted against scheduling a required public hearing that would put the issue back before voters.
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