On Thursday, March 7th, members of the Oyster River Cooperative School District (ORCSD) community gathered in the high school auditorium for a School Board Candidate Forum hosted by the ORHS Student Senate.
Five of the six school board candidates on the ballot for the upcoming election on March 12th were in attendance, including three from Durham (Stephanie Pitts, Kelly Ickes, and John Colwell) and two from Lee (Brian Cisneros and Renee Bennett). During the forum, candidates answered a handful of questions written by the ORHS Student Senators before taking questions from the audience. Each of the candidates would bring different perspectives to the school board with specific ideas of things to work on.
Since leaving the military, Stephanie Pitts has spent the last five years living in Durham with her three children, including a rising freshman and two others in the school district. Pitts is a Certified Safety Professional by trade. One of Pitts’ main ideas for her role on the school board would be to continue to support LGBTQ+ students in all buildings within the district as well as learning more about the ORCSD community.
Kelly Ickes moved to Oyster River for the school district and has been here for roughly seven years. Ickes has a third grader at Moharimet Elementary School and a freshman at ORHS. Ickes also has a background in education and wants to largely focus on continuing to create opportunities for students within the district as well as supporting their mental health.
John Colwell, who has a daughter in second grade at Moharimet, moved to the district in 2020 with his wife and two daughters because of the school’s reputation and outdoor opportunities. Colwell works as a chemical engineer for a battery startup and looks to take the leadership skills he has learned from that role into the school board. Colwell’s main ideas for his role on the school board are largely to continue learning about the inner workings of the district as well as improve the connection between Oyster River and UNH.
Brian Cisneros has spent over 20 years as a member of the Oyster River community and is the only candidate up for reelection. His daughter is a recent ORHS alum, and his son is a freshman. Cisneros is the Business Administrator for the Contoocook Valley (ConVal) School District. Cisneros looks to continue his work on the finance committee and supporting the mental health of both students and faculty with another term on the ORCSD school board.
Renee Bennett is a mom of six with two children who have already graduated from ORHS, three elementary schoolers, and a toddler. Bennett works as an Assistant Superintendent and Director of Student Services for SAU 16 which includes Exeter, among other towns. She is looking to use her role on the ORCSD school board to create more opportunities to support both student and faculty mental health as well as conversations around diversity in various forms.
The ORCSD School Board is responsible for creating policies, organizing the budget, and keeping the district running efficiently and with the best interest of its students as top priority. If you’re curious to learn more about the candidates, and their views on different issues facing the Oyster River community, you can find a recording of the forum on YouTube on the ORCSDVideo channel.
Voting for School Board members, and other important local issues, will take place on Tuesday, March 12th. Durham residents can vote between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. at Oyster River High School; Lee residents can vote between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. at the Lee Public Safety Complex; and Madbury residents can vote between the hours of 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. at the Madbury Town Hall.
-Delaney Nadeau
Image courtesy of @orhs_noe on Instagram
Mouth of the River 
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