[B]RATTLEBORO — Residents in five Windham County towns won’t be voting on formation of a consolidated school district next month.
Officials cited unanswered legal questions Tuesday as a key reason they are stopping work on an Act 46 “accelerated” merger of all school districts in Windham Southeast Supervisory Union. Such a merger would have required a vote in each town by June 30.
Merger talks will continue in some form in Windham Southeast, given Act 46’s push for larger school districts throughout the state. But Tuesday’s news means there is no longer a pressure for a quick vote on what had become a controversial consolidation plan.
“We need more clarification from (the state) and time with our legal counsel on timing and options,” said Ron Stahley, Windham Southeast superintendent.
The decision is welcome news for the Vernon School Board, which recently had pulled out of merger talks. “We think it’s good that the process is going to slow down,” said Mike Hebert, the Vernon board’s chairman. “We’re happy to hear that.”
Act 46, approved by the Legislature in 2015, aims to cut school costs and equalize student opportunity via formation of larger school districts by 2019. The state has offered tax breaks to merging districts, and the biggest incentives are associated with the accelerated merger option.
Windham Southeast’s Act 46 study committee has been meeting since last fall to plan for such a merger. The idea was to consolidate all school districts in Brattleboro, Dummerston, Guilford, Putney and Vernon into one new district governed by a single board.
But there are time constraints associated with an accelerated merger, since voters in every affected town must approve it before the next fiscal year begins July 1. And Windham Southeast officials now acknowledge they’ve run out of time to make it happen.
“Ron Stahley and I discussed the matter with legal counsel and determined it did not make practical sense to further attempt moving forward via the accelerated path,” said Alice Laughlin, a Putney resident who chairs the union’s Act 46 study committee.
One major hangup was Vernon’s exit from the study committee. Vernon officials last month said they could no longer participate in merger talks, in part due to concerns about losing the town’s unique school choice setup for students beginning in seventh grade.
One big question for the remaining study committee members was whether there still could be an accelerated merger vote in Vernon given that the town’s representatives no longer were participating in the planning. The committee asked the state Agency of Education for a legal opinion regarding Vernon’s withdrawal but has not yet received that advice.
Laughlin said other issues also remain, including state questions about various aspects of the committee’s proposed merger articles.
The state Board of Education must approve a merger plan before any vote can happen. On Tuesday, Laughlin confirmed that “we are not presenting our report to the (board) on May 17,” as had been planned.
The Act 46 study committee also has canceled its meeting planned for Wednesday and isn’t scheduled to meet again until May 26. By that time, committee members expect to have more answers from the state.
“We’ve asked legal counsel to research several additional issues for the committee as well, and he will be at our next meeting to discuss these and address all active committee concerns so that we can move forward,” Laughlin said.
But all of that will happen too late to get a merger vote done by the end of June. Hebert said he believes the delay will turn out to be in everybody’s best interest because area districts need time to pursue alternate school merger structures.
Hebert expects to ask Windham Southeast’s towns to consider voting Vernon out of the Brattleboro Union High School district. He believes such a legal maneuver would allow Vernon to preserve its school choice arrangement, though he acknowledges that “it is an extraordinarily complex issue” that requires further research.
“What we have to find out is the financial impact to all of our (school) partners and also the financial impact to Vernon,” Hebert said.
No matter what happens next, Hebert said, “our whole goal here is to do no harm to Vernon and its students.”
It is unclear what shape merger talks may take in Windham Southeast in the coming months. “We certainly considered taking the slower path — the conventional merger approach — and we will discuss this path and perhaps others at the next meeting,” Laughlin said Tuesday.
But she added that “it is unfortunate that the voters were not given the opportunity to consider the (accelerated) merger at the end of June.”
She still believes the unionwide merger offers many educational benefits. The study committee saw “value in creating a governance and organizational structure that provides long-term stability to keep property (taxes) reasonable and small schools open and thriving,” Laughlin said.
Though there has been debate about the financial benefits of accelerated mergers, Laughlin believes they would have been significant in Windham Southeast. And she argues that it would have been “irresponsible” not to try to put such a merger to a vote.
“Proceeding via the accelerated path was appealing, as we estimated around $1 million in tax relief and transitional funds with this approach,” Laughlin said.
