Ludt says she won’t run again

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Amherst resident Jeanne Ludt is leaving the Souhegan Cooperative School Board after 12 years. "I found it hard to get my arms around Souhegan. But Souhegan got its arms around me," Ludt said. Photo by Hattie Bernstein

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"I'm still very optimistic about Souhegan and what we can do there," says Jeanne Ludt, a School Board member for 12 years. Ludt is stepping down from the Souhegan Cooperative School Board next month. Photo by Hattie Bernstein

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Amherst resident Jeanne Ludt is leaving the Souhegan Cooperative School Board after 12 years. "I found it hard to get my arms around Souhegan. But Souhegan got its arms around me," Ludt said. Photo by Hattie Bernstein

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Amherst Town Meeting 2012
Annual meeting season 2012 is coming up for most area communities. Be sure to check The Telegraph’s Town Meeting page for ongoing coverage of local town meeting issues and events. For dates, times and locations of annual meeting events and continuing coverage of Amherst town meeting issues, check the Amherst Town Meeting page.

AMHERST – In 2000, after she was elected to her first term on the Souhegan Cooperative School Board, Jeanne Ludt said she realized she had a lot to learn.

“I found it hard to get my arms around Souhegan,” said Ludt, who recently announced that she would not be running for a fifth term.

Souhegan is a non-traditional high school based on a philosophy that emphasizes partnerships between students and teachers, critical thinking, and problem solving. It is part of the Coalition of Essential Schools, and 20 years after its founding, it is still not widely accepted in the community, particularly by residents who don’t have children in the school.

When she ran for the board, Ludt’s oldest child was a sophomore at Souhegan. Her other connection to the local schools was her work in the late ‘90s to bring public kindergarten to the town. She had also served on a space needs committee created by the Amherst School Board.

“I’d dipped my toe in,” Ludt said, describing how she decided to challenge Souhegan incumbent, the late Lee Slocum.

Ludt’s testing of the waters began with a series of letters to the editor, in which she pointed out the merits of the high school and sparred with Slocum who responded to each of her letters with his own.

“People would be waiting for the next issue of The Cabinet.” Ludt said, adding that Slocum’s questions pushed her to think more deeply about her positions.

“He made us really think about this great venture, this new concept, to understand it so that we could defend it,” she said.

Ludt launched her first campaign with help from friends and neighbors.

“I ran a huge campaign because I wasn’t a household name, and I was challenging an incumbent,” she said. “I had a campaign committee, signs, brochures. It was big, and I had a lot of help.”

For the next three terms, with one exception, she ran unopposed, remaining on the board for almost four more years after her youngest child’s graduation in 2008.

“I stayed on because there were some things I wanted to see happen. I had a bucket list,” Ludt said.

Ludt said she was working on improving communication between the principal and the community, and she was also seeking ways for the high school to find space for a fitness room.

“I got a little bit impatient because things didn’t happen as fast as I’d like them to happen,” she said. “We identified a need for improvement, a space for wellness classes, in 2006 or 2007, but we failed to get voters’ support and didn’t get the space until 2012. They just re-purposed an art room into a wellness space” because enrollments had declined.

During her 12 years on the School Board, Ludt said, she and her colleagues hired four principals, including an interim one.

They were fiscally conservative, she said, typically increasing the annual budget by no more than 2 or 3 percent, and this year, with the pressure mounting to keep expenses flat, the board passed a budget that went up by .07 percent, the smallest increase in a dozen years.

“I stayed on because I felt there were some things I wanted to see happen,” Ludt said.

School Board colleague Fran Harrow, who served with Ludt for six years, described Ludt’s contributions as many, and deep.

“She has been extremely active in multiple layers of the school – community council, every building committee, wellness,” Harrow said. “She really looks at the budget in depth, and from the start of her 12 years on the board, she went over the manifest every two weeks, every check written, a huge amount of detail.”

It won’t be easy to fill Ludt’s shoes, Harrow said, given the amount of time and effort, and energy, she put into the job.

“She has a tremendous amount of dedication,” Harrow said, adding that working with Ludt has been a pleasure.

Ludt isn’t likely to break her ties with the Souhegan, or the School Board, however.

While she looks forward to channelling her energies into other volunteer activities, she said, she can’t turn her back on an institution that for a dozen years was “a central part” of her life.

“Souhegan has its arms around me,” she said.

Hattie Bernstein can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 302 or hbernstein@cabinet.com.