[M]embers of the House Education Committee heard a real-life example of a school district’s battle with declining enrollment last week.
The chairman of a soon-to-be-dissolved elementary school board, Andrew Pond, walked the committee through the process communities in the Bolton region have undergone — working to bring together five elementary school districts into a single pre-K-12 district.
Those five towns’ prior independent districts will be served pre-K through 12, while the town of Huntington, which did not choose to join the new school district, will be part of the district only for grades 5-12 and retain its independent elementary school district.
Pond — who is the vice chairman of the new Mount Mansfield Modified Union School District, as well — said the new district is in its infancy and there remain many important discussions, possible transitions and future decisions.
The new school district’s board was officially sworn in Dec. 18 by Agency of Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe.
“I can provide school board perspective for issues surrounding consolidation,” said Pond, who sat in on several days of testimony delivered by witnesses to the House Education Committee last week.
Pond painted a picture of a community that once had to build a school, then add onto it, to meet growing numbers of pupils, but which, in recent years, has seen that trend reverse to the point there are not enough kids.
It’s a story being played out in many corners of the state, where small schools are becoming tiny schools, student to staff and teacher ratios have dropped to the lowest in the nation, and there is a call from taxpayers to respond to the declining enrollments accompanied by ever increasing education tax rates.
“The original Smilie School was built in 1960 when the highway came through, it was a two-room school,” said Pond of the Ellen Pinneo Smilie Memorial School in Bolton.
By the 1990s, the school was deemed overcapacity, and students from West Bolton were tuitioned to Jericho Elementary.
In 1999, an addition was constructed at Smilie “to reunite a divided community,” Pond said.
The school continued to gain enrollment for a time, then that changed.
Pond brought members of the House Education Committee up to 2011, when Chittenden East considered a Regional Education District or RED, and voted on that, with four districts favoring joining, and two voting against the move.
The push for an RED in the region, Pond said, was due to the boards beginning to see inequities that affected some of the elementary schools.
“There was a real concern that they might not be coming with the same preparation to the middle school,” Pond said.
Finding agreement across that many layers of governance made it difficult, Pond said, “to get agreements to make things happen … it was sort of an unwieldy process.”
In Bolton, a feasibility study was embarked upon in 2012.
Each year at town meeting “Somebody would ask, ‘How small is too small?’” Pond said.
It’s the statewide theme being heard from small towns to the Statehouse now, and what the governor touched last week during his budget address: there are too many too small schools in Vermont.
By 2013, Pond said Smilie School was graduating fourth-grade classes of nine pupils.
“We could tuition our students to one of the other districts, or move with one of the other districts in Chittenden East. We were in a position where we felt like we couldn’t do anything,” he said
Also in 2013, Pond said, he “had the pleasure of explaining to taxpayers (at town meeting) that we were going to reduce our budget, but taxes were going up 10 percent.”
Voters approved that budget but a revote was called and the budget failed the second time around.
That led to the need for more budget cuts and the situation finally hit home.
A janitor was cut, and hours were taken out of art, music and Spanish, Pond said. “We were desperate to find anything we could cut; it was a difficult time.”
That led to the modified union vote last year.
When the vote took place in November, Pond said voters in the Huntington Elementary School District “strongly opposed the merger, 2 to 1. I think it’s really going to be interesting to see how the Huntington Elementary District feels down the road,” he said.
For now, no schools are closing, but the fact the elementary schools have joined with the middle and high schools under the new MMMUSD, means efficiencies, such as food service and maintenance costs, can be realized immediately
“We felt that the merger was going to give us meaningful local control,” Pond said.
“We found that as we were going through this process, our definition of ‘we’ was changing. When I used to say ‘we,’ I meant Bolton elementary, and now when I say ‘we,’ I’m thinking of all the students in Chittenden East, and it really makes a school board feel responsible for everybody,” he said.
Pond cautioned lawmakers about transportation and how important he believes it is that young students not end up spending too long on school buses.
Pond also put on the table his belief that lunch should be included for all students as part of the educational program, to not have the distinction obvious for students who receive assistance, saying as students get older, that is an issue.
Rep. David Sharpe, D-Bristol, chairman of the House Education Committee, asked, “Are you implying free lunch for everybody?”
“Yes,” responded Pond, acknowledging, “It’s certainly a cost shift.”
Pond als said the district strategy is beneficial when a school needs something like a new roof and another project in that town, a road issue, or renovations to a firehouse, for example, won’t necessarily have to be put off.
Rep. Ann Manwaring, D-Wilmington, asked Pond if any of the five elementary schools in the now merged district are “likely to be in that category of too small? What does that look like?”
“Three of the five are predicted to have under 100 students by next year,” Pond said.
Rep. Bernie Juskiewicz, R-Cambridge, vice chairman of the House Education Committee, asked Pond if the state’s incentives, including $150,000 in planning grant funds, was helpful.
“It certainly was helpful,” Pond said. “From the school board’s perspective, that wasn’t the reason for it. It does, I think, help us to send the message to individuals in our town that this is something that the state feels is worthwhile.”
