About SDGANH
Elected school district officials now have a resource devoted entirely to educating and empowering them to assert their lawful authority and be responsive to their electorate.
The School District Governance Association of New Hampshire (SDGA NH) has been created to establish a forum for past and present school district elected officials and others with elected fiduciary responsibility over a school district budget.
The aim is four-fold:
- to educate elected school district officials as to their proper role and responsibilities
- to promulgate best practices in good governance and prudent budgeting
- to formulate model school district policies so elected officials will have an independent, alternative resource
- to propose and monitor legislation that enhances local control in education and openness in administration
School Administrative Units were designed to be subject to the will of elected school district officials but too many have developed overweening power over the governance and finances of school districts. Policies and practices tend to consolidate power in the SAU office instead of empowering elected representatives of the people to direct the administration.
The long-term goal of SDGA is to restore local elected control in school districts, and push for some legislative changes to increase transparency and accountability for the ultimate benefit of our children’s education.
Membership is open to all who share our mission. The core of our membership consists of past or present elected officials with fiduciary responsibility over a school district’s budget.
Monthly meetings of the Board of Directors are open to all members.
BOARD
Officers
President
Eric Pauer, MS
Eric Pauer represented Brookline on the Hollis Brookline Cooperative School Board from 2014 to 2017, including as secretary from 2015 to 2016. This two-town cooperative school district includes the middle school and high school (grades 7-12). Eric helped set policies and goals, evaluate the new superintendent (who started during Eric’s term), and improved educational programs while running the school district in a cost effective manner for taxpayers. With a $22M budget, he worked to help keep spending increases at 1.5% per year. His wife Diane served as chair on the Hollis Brookline Cooperative Budget Committee.
Eric served the town of Brookline as the chair of its Public Works Study committee, to make the transition from Road Agent to Public Works Director in 2017. He also led the Brookline BudCom Study Committee (2020-2021) as chair to investigate adopting an official Budget Committee for Brookline. As a fiscal conservative, Eric spearheaded the successful citizen efforts to adopt official balloting system (SB2) for the Brookline School District (2016), to adopt a tax cap for the Brookline School District (2018), and to require tax impacts to be listed in future Brookline School District warrants (2021).
Eric has worked as an engineer, engineering manager, and systems architect for a number of different companies for over 34 years in defense and medical electronics. He also served part-time for 30 years in the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve as a Civil Engineer, State Director of Logistics/Engineering, and Senior Emergency Manager, retiring as a Colonel in 2018. He has two adult children with his wife Diane, and Diane is currently a second term NH State Representative for Brookline/Mason/Greenville (Hillsborough District 36). Eric currently serves on the Brookline Planning Board.
Vice-President, Past President, Founding Member
Donna Green, MA
Donna Green represented Sandown on the Timberlane Regional School Board from 2014 to 2018. She was recognized with a Nackey Loeb First Amendment Award for her 2016 NH Supreme Court victory, Green v. SAU55, that established the right of all people in New Hampshire to receive public information in electronic form if it so exists. The New England First Amendment Coalition also honored her with an Antonia Orfield Citizenship award in 2017 in recognition of the importance of that case.
Before retiring, Mrs. Green was a writer specializing in Canadian business and personal finance. Her blog on Timberlane school issues won a New Hampshire Press Association award in 2014, the same year she was honored as Sandown Citizen of the Year. She served on Sandown’s planning board for four years, as an alternate on the Sandown ZBA for three years, and two years on Timberlane’s budget committee before her school board service. She was a member of the NH Legislature’s Commission to Study Issues Relating to Pre-existing Districts Withdrawing from a Cooperative School District. She is waiting impatiently for grandchildren.
Secretary, Past President, Founding Member
Jody Underwood, Ph.D.
Jody served on the Croydon School Board (2010-2023) in various roles including Chair (2012-2016) Secretary (2011-12, 2016-17), and Vice Chair (2017-19), and is also School Choice Liaison. She shepherded a bill that clarifies the law to allow private schools to be included in town tuitioning agreements. She completed the withdrawal from an AREA agreement and put into place tuition agreements with the schools to whom Croydon tuitions their students after they leave the K-4 Croydon Village School. Dr. Underwood also oversaw the separation of Croydon from SAU43 (with Newport) and started their own, very small, SAU99.
Jody is also an Education Fellow at Granite Institute (http://graniteinstitute.org), where she has written research papers about how New Hampshire uses tax dollars for private schools and on how town tuitioning works in New Hampshire and New England. She has delivered presentations about town tuitioning and school choice around the state.
Professionally, Dr. Underwood has conducted research and development around the use of technology for learning and assessment in the classroom since 1988. She received her B.S. in computer science from Hofstra University, her M.S. in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence from Rutgers University, and her Ph.D. in Education from The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
She and her husband moved to New Hampshire in 2007, where they live on a large off-the-grid property with their two dogs.
Treasurer
Bill Smith
Bill Smith is a retired software test engineer with an M.S. in Industrial Administration. He has served on the Atkinson town Budget Committee for many years. He is motivated to serve as a good American citizen to enable the best possible, quality education for people of all ages, especially children.
BOARD
Board Members At Large
Glenn Cordelli
Glenn Cordelli has represented the town of Tuftonboro in Carroll County in the New Hampshire House of Representatives since 2012. He is currently vice-Chair of the Education Committee.
Glenn has been House representative to the N.H. Home Education Advisory Council and New Hampshire State Advisory Committee on the Education of Children/Students with Disabilities.
He previously was one of the tri-chairs of the House Republican Alliance (HRA).
Glenn served multiple terms on his local board of education and finance committee in Connecticut before moving to NH.
Glenn lives in Tuftonboro with his wife, Christine, they have 3 grown children.
Aubrey Freedman
Aubrey Freedman moved to Bridgewater, New Hampshire from San Francisco in 2018 after retiring as an accountant after more than 40 years. He obtained his real estate license in 2019 and currently works with the Independence Realty Group @ Coldwell Banker.
He ran for the Newfound Area School District School Board (SAU4) in 2022 on a platform of fiscal responsibility and accountability to the taxpayers. He attends almost every school board meeting religiously.
Aubrey has one son and two granddaughters back in Northern California.
John Sellers
John Sellers is a NH State Representative for the town of Grafton, and serves on the House Transportation Committee.
He served several terms on the Bristol town budget committee and currently on the Newfound Area School District budget committee. In 2022 he was part of a taxation formula study to investigate a more equalized tax rate for our seven-town school district (currently each town has a different tax rate).
John grew up in Weymouth, MA with mom, dad and five siblings, went into the USAF after high school. He has lived in NH since 2008, living in Milton, Whitefield and settled in Bristol. He served six years in the USAF, was a small business owner for many years, more than 20 years as a Senior Business Analyst working at SAS Institute and retired in 2021.