Led by Jim O’Connell who also leads Hillside Parent Teacher Organization and

LinkTaxpayers for Quality Education (TQE) is a group of Bedford, NH taxpayers committed to ensuring educational quality, fiscal responsibility and public accountability.

TQE believes that education is absolutely vital to career success, to stable family life, to profitable and competitive business, and to a thriving democracy.

A strong public school system is also without question, one of the most important factors in ensuring that our properties maintain their value and that our town is attractive to businesses.

We are a non-profit, non-partisan, pro-education organization!

We are concerned citizens committed to supporting quality programs that help ALL children achieve academic success.

LinkFriends of Oyster River Education (FORE) coalesced over concerns that events occurring in the ORCSD were happening that were not in the best interests of our district and ultimately the education of our community’s children. We were upset when a highly regarded HS Principal resigned, followed by the subsequent rejection of the Superintendent’s nominee to fill this position by the School Board. This nominee had been brought forward by a widely representative search committee after much due diligence. These events were followed by several decisions made by the ORCSD School Board that lacked the input of the public and that were made out of the public eye. These actions included the buying out of the final year of the contract of the superintendent, attempts by the School Board to make arbitrary cuts in the budget, and the eventual finding by two different judges in two separate cases that the School Board had violated RTK law.

FORE worked to point out to the community the destructive actions being taken by the Board. The community ultimately restored the needed funding to the budget as well as defeat two incumbents in the March 2012 election. It appears that a majority of the newly comprised School Board is more aligned with the sentiment in the district.

Our group is a diverse one and includes community members (both with and without children still in the schools), educators and former educators as well as former School Board members. We all care about the quality of education and appreciate how crucial public education is to our/all societies.

We as a group, have also been very concerned and discouraged by what has been transpiring at the State level and hope that this tide can be stemmed and reversed.