By Russ Choma
Correspondent

Karen Pratt stands out among the three candidates recently elected to terms on the Goffstown School Board.

First, she is the newcomer. None of the candidates running was opposed in their bids for a seat, but Pratt is the only firsttime candidate, the other two – Philip Pancoast and Sara Ann Sarette – were incumbents.

The second distinguishing characteristic of Pratt is her affiliation with the Free State Project, a libertarian-minded movement that hopes to move 20,000 “liberty-loving people” to New Hampshire.

The fact that Pratt is a newcomer to town – she moved to Goffstown with her husband Calvin just over a year ago – does not faze her, and she said she’s eager to bring fresh ideas to the board. Nor is the fact that she has no children of her own in the public school system.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” she said. “I sort of bring a fresh outlook to it. I have no special interest in any one school or special program. I can kind of represent the community as a whole.”

That’s not to say Pratt has plans to do things in a dramatically different way.

Part of the reason she and her husband moved to Goffstown, Pratt said, was because they liked not only the community and the people, but also the way things are done in town politics.

“I’m very impressed by what I see here on the school board,” she said. “In a lot of ways, they’ve had to deal with a lot, but I like the way they work with the charter school, the way they work with homeschoolers. I just feel like they have a really good idea.

“And Goffstown as a whole seems to be fiscally conservative,” she said. “Fiscally, they try to get the most for the taxpayers’ money.”

Specifically, Pratt said she likes what the district is doing with the possibility of a charter school. The school, which is still in early exploratory stages and has not received final approval, has been planned as a high school that would have more “real world” options, and give students opportunities to work with more specific, hightech learning tools.

“I think one of the things that interests me a lot is what we do in the upper education,” she said, mentioning a recent statement by Bill Gates which suggested America needs to rethink the way high schools are run, in an effort to keep them from being “obsolete.”

“Are we doing the right thing to get kids competitive?” Pratt asked.

She believes getting students more prepared for life after school and ready to enter the workforce should be a priority.

“I think it’s really important that we send kids out of high school with a really good base. I’ve faced people (in the professional world) who came out, not just from high school but college, and weren’t able to fill out the application,” she said.

Pratt’s interest in both the educational process and the real world payoffs may reflect her own personal background – a degree in developmental psychology, and a professional career in financial services. But this foray into elected office isn’t just her first in Goffstown – it’s her first ever.

Pratt has previously been involved with the Free State Project and currently serves as the treasurer for the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, a nonpartisan group devoted to similar “pro-liberty” ideals.

Both Pratt and her husband have been featured prominently on the New England televison news magazine “Chronicle,” and a Washington Times article as Free Staters, but Pratt described her husband, Calvin (who lost a bid for library trustee this year) as the more politically active.

The Free State Project is nonpartisan, like the Goffstown School Board, and does not directly endorse candidates.

However, because of checkered media coverage which may have harmed the group’s reputation, Pratt said some people may hold certain misconceptions about the group and what her affiliation may say about her plan for her term on the school board.

“There’s probably two misconceptions,” she said. “First, that it’s a strictly Libertarian movement – which it’s not. The second is that it’s somehow here to take over or destroy the government – and nothing could be further from the truth.

“There’s no one agenda,” Pratt continued. “The only two principles are that they believe in smaller government and they believe in personal freedoms. With that you can work with all kinds of groups (from both the right and left side of the political spectrum.)”

If anything, Pratt said she credits the Free State Project for getting her more interested and excited about local politics.

And after 23 years of marriage, during which time they moved eight times, Pratt said she and her husband were ready to settle in Goffstown – and the political system that exists in New Hampshire and in Goffstown is something she’s grown to really appreciate.

It not only fits with her more “pro-liberty” politics, she said, so there’s no desire to take over the system – only a desire to become part of it.

“It’s just so accessible – I think people who live here all the time don’t appreciate how open and accessible (government in New Hampshire) is,” she said. “ I’ve fallen in love with the whole process. How can you come here and not participate?”