It was just over a year ago, at Keene area School District’s annual board retreat, and Deputy Superintendent Reuben Duncan was expecting the usual conversations about curriculum and finances. The teachers, he says, had something else in mind. In five or ten years, Duncan says, elementary school students were coming in without the skills they used to have. “They were coming in without vocabulary, without being able to interact appropriately with other kids, with hygiene issues, not being able to use the bathroom,” he recalls. “And then, there’s the aggressive behaviors.” Duncan isn’t a psychologist, or an economist, but he says, what’s changed is no mystery. “I see a lot of families working multiple jobs, working longer hours.” At a time of stagnant wages, in a region where almost half of students are on free or reduced school lunch, Duncan says he knows financial stress affects children. Often, he says, “they are not getting the stimulation that children need from their parents or