‘Rebuilding my life, starting now’: How open enrollment gave one Pittsfield student a fresh start

Rilee Paquette stepped out onto the front porch of her home atop a sprawling hill in Pittsfield, pencil and loose-leaf paper in hand.

Being outside helps the 14-year-old think, and she had something important to do.

After months of research, Rilee planned to ask her parents to let her switch schools – from a small, private Catholic school, like the ones her family had gone to for years, to a larger, public school. On that porch, she wrote a three-page letter to them explaining her reasons: She wanted a bigger community, one with more opportunities and experiences at her fingertips. Mainly, though, after a tough year socially, she wanted a fresh start.

“It was easier starting anew than it was to go to my last school when people already knew me,” Rilee said, sitting on the couch in her living room with her mom and sister, Christmas music playing in the background. “I’m rebuilding my life, starting now.”

If she were to attend public school based on her geography, she would have gone to Pittsfield Middle High School just three miles down the road. But Rilee had a different idea.

She wanted a fresh start at Prospect Mountain High School: the only non-charter public school in New Hampshire that educates students from outside its immediate district of Alton and Barnstead. Residents there voted years ago to create an open enrollment program, enabled by state law, that allowed the school to accept students from outside the district.

The Paquettes are one of the first families in the state to choose that option. When Prospect Mountain opened its doors to out-of-town students three years ago, it kicked into gear a relatively dormant law, raising questions about who controls where children go to school and how school districts share the cost of education. Some lawmakers are seeking to make the option available across New Hampshire, while local schools are considering their next steps.

None of that was on the Paquettes’ radar.

Rilee just knew she wanted to leave her old school – there was nothing wrong with it, her mom said, but it wasn’t the right fit for her. She didn’t feel accepted socially there, Rilee wrote in the letter to her parents. After constantly being known through her siblings, she wanted a place where she could spread her wings and chart her own path.

“I wanna make my tracks, my own mistakes,” she wrote. Then, with a wavy underline for emphasis: “I wanna leave a mark on the world my way and on my own.”

Taking the leap

Rilee found Prospect Mountain’s open enrollment program through her own research, though she was already familiar with the school, having done dance recitals there for years.

The application was a hefty one, complete with an essay. Once accepted, she became one of just 31 students in New Hampshire who currently participate in the open enrollment program. That number has grown threefold, said Superintendent Tim Broadrick, since he opened the program to about 10 students in the 2022-23 school year in an attempt to head off declining enrollment from the district’s own towns.

Several Prospect Mountain students live in Pittsfield. Others come from Chichester, Epsom, Farmington, Franklin, Gilmanton, Laconia, Milton, New Durham, Rochester and Wolfeboro, which are all relatively close.

Asking to go to public school, Rilee knew she had a tall task ahead of her. The Paquette kids had always gone to small Catholic schools, most recently one with under 100 students. It felt safe, she said, enclosed from the world, but she wanted to get out of that bubble and start expanding her horizons before college.

She pledged to keep her grades up and join extracurricular activities. She also promised her parents that public school wouldn’t change her Catholic values or who she is – “I will stay your happy, smiley Rilee,” she wrote.

Rilee’s mom, Megan Paquette, has already seen a difference in her daughter. Not only did Rilee bring home the best report card she could recall, but after she struggled socially in her eighth-grade year, Paquette said, Rilee’s now back to her old “goofy goober” self – just more mature and stronger for it.

Initially, sending her daughter out of the Catholic school sphere felt scary.

“You send them off to school six hours a day,” Paquette said. “She’s in an environment she’s never been in, this huge ocean compared to what she had been going to – less than 100 kids, now she’s in over 400 kids.”

After Rilee presented her parents with the letter, Paquette said they took the entire summer to pray on it and mull it over. In the end, they decided to let Rilee take the leap.

“It just was a really thought-out, very mature letter and really advocating for herself,” Paquette said. “As parents, you know, we teach them to do this, and so if we didn’t give her this opportunity, then what is it all for?”

‘A new experience’

Despite pushing for it, Rilee’s months of hopeful preparation didn’t calm her nerves once Day One rolled around.

“When I was going in, I wanted to turn back and run back to Mom, but I reminded myself that I signed up for this,” Rilee said. “You always have to get through your first day or your first week and then just take it step by step, because it was a new experience.”

An hour into her first day, Rilee made her first friend. At the end of the day, the weight lifted from Paquette’s shoulders when she went to pick Rilee up and found her daughter running toward her with a wide smile.

Rilee is taking half a dozen classes in her first semester of high school, including biology, French, algebra, citizenship, and two electives that are required for graduation: physical education and business and basics. Come the new year, she’s excited to experiment with classes on woodworking and food and nutrition. She’s also joined the drama club, and she went to the homecoming dance.

Some aspects of the Paquettes’ daily lives have changed with Rilee’s relocation – her younger sister, Reagan, also switched schools to make for an easier commute. With Rilee now going to school in Alton, Paquette couldn’t drive her there and bring Reagan to Manchester before heading to work in the Concord area.

When asked if it felt weird being at separate schools after going together their entire lives, the girls exchanged a glance. Reagan said “yeah,” while Rilee shrugged.

Their mom laughed, adding that it’s made their family time more interesting.

“Now, when we have dinner, we can discuss everybody’s day,” Paquette said. “She doesn’t know what she did. She doesn’t know what she did.”

That may be short-lived. Reagan likes attending classes at Pittsfield Middle High School, but said she’s already interested in applying to Prospect Mountain next year to be with Rilee and after hearing about her experience.

A ‘very positive’ thing

As more prospective students from Pittsfield seek to attend school elsewhere, the school district – and others across the state – is regrouping following a Supreme Court decision that will force the school districts where students live to pay 80% of their per-pupil cost of education to the district they’ve chosen to attend.

That has financial implications for Pittsfield’s already stretched-thin budget, as the district explores its next steps. Officials may have to consider closing the high school, according to a legal brief filed by the district’s lawyer earlier this fall. To gain control over how many students are allowed to leave to attend other districts, residents would need vote to opt into the open enrollment program at town meeting. The move would give school officials the power to cap the number of those allowed to leave.

State lawmakers, however, are exploring making the program universally available, where students could enroll at any public school in the state. The proposal has been championed by school choice advocates, who say it can encourage schools to improve their performance by competing for students. Opponents argue it’ll intensify inequalities in education, causing lower-performing districts to lose students who they still have to pay for. The legislation ran into roadblocks this year, with some legislators wanting more time to figure out how costs would be shared among school districts.

Paquette said she hasn’t gotten swept up in the political winds but thinks school choice is a “very positive” thing. 

As a parent, she initially had a vision in her mind of her “three little ducklings” all graduating from Catholic school. But she quickly realized that just because something works for one of her children doesn’t mean it’ll work for the others.

So far, she has no regrets.

“I think people are generally comfortable to go to school in their town,” Paquette said. “But someone like Rilee, you know, it just has been so incredibly wonderful so far that we could just gloat about this decision … all day long, because this was a really good choice, and it was a good match.”

Rilee’s also glad she took the leap.

“It’s the best thing, probably, in my life that I’ve done,” she said, “that I’ve decided on.”

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