Two Rochester School Board members resign amid ethics complaint and police presence at meetings

Karen Stokes and Finza Cormier resigned from the Rochester School Board during its July 10 meeting, and the board unanimously voted to accept both resignations and forward the vacancies to the city council for replacement.

Stokes, a sitting board member, read a prepared statement to the board saying she had filed a formal ethics complaint and would send it to the U.S. Department of Justice and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office. In her remarks she said the board had become “power hungry” and that the district had spent more than half a million dollars of taxpayer money related to personnel departures; she concluded, “I hereby resign from the Rochester School Board effective immediately.”

The departure matters because it reduces the board’s membership and came amid a contentious period of public criticism, social-media accusations and at…