Your zoning lot size is a feature, not a bug. Unfortunately, it limits your tax base and with you guys being a spendy District, that translates to a high property tax. It gets you nice surroundings, but it's expensive.

Souhegan has been around a lot longer than Hollis Brookline HS and BHS. I want to say HBHS was built in the mid 1990s and BHS was opened in 2006.

I'm in Bedford, so I can't really talk about HB.

What I can say is that when BHS was being developed after the vote to build it passed in 2004, the Amherst HS model was considered and widely and rapidly rejected.We settled on the Bow model thanks to the first principal, George Edwards. IB focus for those driven students. A responsible education for all the other students.

Bedford's zoning is more accepting of commercial expansion and, along with financially aggressive school boards gets that competitive education at a state wide quite low tax rate.

Bedford's tax base is pretty close to Merrimack, but they score (HS wise) at the top of the bottom half, and they spend $5M more than Bedford to do it with 500 fewer students. Their cost per student is similar to Amherst.

The difference is the quality of the School Boards. Until places like Amherst and Merrimack get some aggressive management chops, they'll continue to just muddle along.

Another reality is that the academic performance of students can be predicted by the economic success of the parents. Seeing that Bedford and Hollis jockey for the highest income position in the state, their academic expectations and success give them a leg up...