Full Name: Ian Freeman
Age: 31
Family: Large
Education: AA in Radio/TV Broadcasting
Occupation: Radio Personality, “Free Talk Live”
Local group memberships and positions held: Cheshire TV board, 2006-2011
Experience with public education issues: Went to government school. Knowledgeable about monopolies and unintended consequences of force, when applied to education.
Questions:
1. Why are you running for the Keene Board of Education?
I am running for the board to give voters and parents a principled voice in favor of educational freedom. Our young people deserve better than government monopoly education.
2. What are the two biggest issues facing Keene schools and what should the board do about them?
The biggest issue is that people are forced, at the threat of the taking of a family’s home, to pay for a government school system with which they may not agree.
The next biggest issue is the monopoly system in which people are pitted against one another in an endless struggle over the educational curriculum, among other things, including minutia like whether or not an electronic sign should be in front of the middle school.
3. Are there any areas where you think the district is overspending, or is not spending enough for education?
Overspending is part and parcel of being a government-run, monopolistic system. Despite the best intentions of the school board and district staff, costs continue to rise. Compare this to market-based industries, like the computer business. There, costs continue to drop, year after year. Not surprisingly, as that market is open to competition. No one is forced to by a Macintosh, Android, Windows, or Linux – they get to choose. (Or choose to go without a computer.) Not so with the government schools. Everyone is forced to pay, and so therefore since the school district knows they are guaranteed the funds, they have nothing to stop them from overspending besides their good intentions. Intentions are very different from incentives. Government incentives are backwards from the market. In the market, some of the incentives to keep costs down is the fact that there is or can be competition in the market and that customers can choose to take their business to a competitor or even start their own competing operation.
4. How can board members balance the educational needs of the district with the need to keep taxes down? (please be specific)
The only thing the board can do to satisfy the educational needs of the young people of Keene is to get out of the way, turn the operation and ownership of the schools over to the school staff, and allow them to run their schools as independent, non-government entities that are subject to competition in the market and can no longer depend on coerced, tax funding.
5. Do you support changing grade configurations at the elementary schools? Why or why not? Do you agree that Jonathan Daniels School should close?
I support all the schools being freed from being under the control of the state and local governments, which would allow them to set their own grade configurations and other policies based on what they and their customers want. The Jonathan Daniels School, like all government schools, should be given to the current staff and allow them to decide how to run it. Each staff member should be given an equal share.
6. The need for having two superintendents – one for Keene and the other for towns in NH School Administrator Unit 29 – is being studied as both officials approach retirement. Do you think Keene should continue to have its own superintendent?
The SAU should be abolished, as once the operation and ownership of each school is turned over to the school’s staff, the top-level government bureaucracy will no longer be needed, as each school will be a separate, independent, market entity.
