October 15, 2025 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Our guests today were Matt DuBois and Janet Eccleston from Plymouth Regional High School and Paul from the UK (near Oxford) who is a regular visitor to the Mountain Faire Inn..
The 50/50 was won by Walter.
Walter was also lucky enough to earn the chance to draw for the ace spades, but selected the 7 of hearts. The game continues.
Jake Tuck has resigned from the club due to the pressures of work and family life.
Hometown Holiday Celebration plans are progressing.
Penny Sale Grand Prize ticket sales: We raised $510 this weekend and we are looking forward to next weekend.
Tomorrow is Steve’s birthday! We all sang a rousing version of Happy Birthday.
Plans for the Penny Sale are progressing well. Thanks to Randy Cleary, Jay Fogarty, Nina Sargent, Matt DuBois and Janet Eccleston at the high school for their help. Tom Granese of Granese Construction has donated $500.
Denise asked us to look at the link to the signup sheet for street sales. If you don’t have it, she will send it to you again. We still have lots of slots.
This Saturday there is a half day training session at the Gibson Center in North Conway for our Rotary district. You can car pool with Denise; just let her know if you would like to go.
Plymouth Regional High School principal Janet Eccleston takes questions from the club.
Jenny Bentwood introduced our speaker, Janet Eccleston. She is the new principal at Plymouth Regional High School and previously served as vice principal. She grew up in NY, went to William Smith college, and did graduate work at Binghamton and Plymouth State, mainly in special education. She is a mother of 3. Her husband is from Holderness so they are locals.
Janet thanked us for having her here today. She feels like this is where she should be! She previously worked in the elementary schools and enjoys seeing the kids grow up. She feels that Mr Parsons left the building in great shape and the rigor of the courses is outstanding
Ben noted that a lot of schools have budget shortfalls. He asked what systemic problems are brewing that we should be trying to prepare for as a community. Janet doesn’t worry about major budget shortages, but she worries about the unanticipated things, like a lack of grant funding that they normally rely on. She also worries about unfunded mandates. For example, there are new minimum graduation standards that will impact next year’s graduating class, but there is no money to provide for, say, an additional teacher if she needs that to make that goal. Steve noted that our state constitution requires no unfunded mandates, so people need to stand up and point out when these mandates are passed. Educational equity is a problem here and it will persist until and unless enough people complain.
The state of NH has a new bell-to-bell cell phone ban. This is a relief for the administrators, as the teachers no longer have to be the bad guys. She brought in a few seniors class leaders to the office in August and talked to them about the pros and cons of cell phone use, the addictive behavior that phones trigger, and how to get the message out. They did a Tik Tok video, walking through the halls and talking to their peers, and it was very helpful. Then they held an all-school assembly, asking the students to start practicing putting the cell phone away, and giving them a couple of weeks to get used to it. It is going well; there are violations but all in all it is going great. The lunchroom is now much louder as students interact with each other and not their phones! One student has even thanked her for making this change.
Phil asked if there is any difference between students from the local elementary schools in terms of academic preparation. She said that they have worked hard on reducing differences between the feeder schools, working on “vertical alignment” at 6th grade. They use their curriculum committee meetings to see how each cohort is doing in each class. The more rural towns don’t get as much co-curricular activity in middle school, and that can be a barrier for those kids.
Student leadership is elected by the classes. The officers run the class activities, with the consent of the administration. There is also a student senate.
Student population has hovered around 650, so the high school has maintained D2 status for a number of years. They work with each student to assure that the students have a post-graduation plan; 40% go to 4 year college, while the remaining students split between 2 year programs and going to work. They are offering students ways to get experience that helps earn college/vocational credit, such as internship. The health sciences have a program in which they can get an LPN upon graduation. The vocational program is phenomenal.
Ben asked what the students are worrying about, vs what kids worried about years ago. The number one influencer, for good and bad, is social media. The way that kids want and receive information has changed radically. Students prefer not to have to listen to someone lecture; they live in a world in which information is short and fast and lectures are just too boring. Tik tok, Snapchat and Instagram are the top platforms.
Sharon reminded us that the Penny Sale setup is tomorrow night at 5 pm at the High School.
Happy dollars were shared by Denise, Mike, and Tony.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary