Editor’s note: This article is by Matt Hongoltz-Hetling of the Valley News, in which it was first published Nov. 8, 2015.
[W]HITE RIVER JUNCTION — With Vermont’s new education reform law potentially threatening $1.3 million in revenue loss from tuition students at Hartford High School, one School Board member has proposed creating a much larger school district, spanning as much as 30 miles along the Vermont side of the Connecticut River.
The law, known as Act 46, aims to steer districts into groupings of at least 900 students, and school boards throughout the region have held anxious discussions with neighboring districts about the possible need to merge.
But rather than thinking about the law’s minimum requirements, Hartford School Board member Peter Merrill is talking about Upper Valley educators achieving the maximum advantages. He has proposed forming a blockbuster of a district that would stretch for as far as a student on a bus could reasonably travel — all the way from Windsor to Thetford.
“All of the school districts around us are looking at consolidation in one way or another,” Merrill said last week. “Some are looking at, how do we do the minimum and meet the requirements, because we like what we’re doing and want to continue. Some are thinking we need to be a bit more aggressive, and I think we’re out on the outermost limb of being most aggressive.”
Act 46 is the Vermont Legislature’s answer to the state’s shrinking student population, which has fallen from a high of about 105,000 in the mid-1990s to fewer than 90,000 today, a trend that has driven per-pupil costs up dramatically.
The law gives incentives to districts in which voters pass state-approved consolidation plans by July 2016; other districts have until 2019 to come up with approved mergers, or risk being merged under a plan imposed by the state.
In the Upper Valley, Merrill said, a unified district would be cost-effective enough to give schools the breathing room they need to improve the quality of education for area students.
In Merrill’s vision, the unified district would save money by reducing administrative staff, leveraging massive buying power in contracts for everything from bus services to paper, and the ability to close out-of-date school buildings that are groaning beneath the weight of expensive maintenance costs.
At the same time, he said, the educational offerings could be broadened by offering specialized classes, such as German, that are not now supported by small pockets of demand in any individual school district.
“How do you provide the most resources to the children at the best cost?” asked Merrill, a lawyer. “Thinking bigger is sometimes better. Not always, but sometimes.”
Merrill said the “Upper Valley School District” also could convert some of its existing high schools — Windsor High School, for example — into special magnet schools that could specialize in, for instance, the arts, thereby giving students a range of choices within the district.
Merrill pitched the idea to a community forum in Hartford, and again to the Hartford School Board, in late October.
At this early stage, he said, Hartford is still trying to figure out how to approach other districts in the region to pitch the plan. Right now, not even the Hartford School Board has endorsed the concept, and at least one member — Paul Keane — is skeptical.
“If you want to turn Vermont into Connecticut or New York, you give up local control,” Keane told Merrill during the Oct. 28 meeting, according to a CATV video of the event. “And that is the end result of this technique.”
Merrill acknowledged that the plan may be a tough sell for other districts, many of which already are engaging in discussions of a very different tenor. Sharon, Strafford, Thetford and Norwich have been talking about the merits of various merger scenarios, while the schools in the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union — Hartland, Weathersfield, West Windsor and Windsor — have been talking for several months about forming a single district.
“I am proposing a big picture, sweeping idea,” Merrill said. “Whether that will catch on or not is going to be an interesting question.”
Right now, he said, Hartford is putting out feelers to see “who would like to talk to us.”
Merrill said the issue is of grave importance for Hartford, even though its student count of about 1,600 is well above the minimum threshold established in Act 46.
“Though technically we don’t have a dog in this fight, most definitely, we have a dog in this fight,” he said during the meeting.
Merrill is worried about a “nightmare scenario” that could unfold, as districts surrounding Hartford choose their merger partners.
According to a hotly contested interpretation of Act 46 by the State Board of Education, merged districts must either offer school choice to all of their students, or none of their students.
That means that some school districts that now offer high school choice, such as Hartland, might be compelled to give up that choice in order to merge with a district that does not offer choice, such as Windsor.
Merrill is worried about a scenario in which the districts that now send tuition students to Hartford — which include Hartland, Strafford and Weathersfield, as well as some from the New Hampshire town of Cornish — give up their school choice option.
That would reroute those students in a way that could carry a nasty financial bite for Hartford.
Hartford High School had 84 tuition students last year, which brought a total of about $1.3 million to the district.
The loss of those students would create a budget gap for Hartford, which had a $36.1 million budget this year, and would also send the per-student cost of the remaining students through the roof, which would risk bringing down additional financial penalties or strictures from the state.
Hartford High is not the only school that stands to lose if school choice in the Upper Valley were diminished.
At The Sharon Academy, an independent school where 85 percent of the student body consists of tuition students from sending towns, including Hartland, Head of School Michael Livingston said he, too, is watching the discussion.
“I’m keeping my ear pretty close to the ground in all this,” he said Thursday.
He hadn’t heard about Merrill’s presentation, but said he is interested in making sure that The Sharon Academy can fit into whatever plans area towns come up with.
“We’re not drawing back from this conversation. We’re trying to figure out, what are our entry points?” Livingston said. “If he gained traction with that, I would be very interested in sitting down and talking about how we can fit into that.”
While he said he would need to see more details to really assess Merrill’s idea, Livingston said he rejects the notion that expanded educational offerings can come only with consolidation.
“I would disagree that you need to have a huge or a large institution in order to be able to do that,” he said. “I would argue that we’re a case in point.”
One of the Upper Valley’s biggest sources of tuition students is Hartland, which spent about $2.5 million on its 161 high school students, with almost all of that money going to Upper Valley high schools. It’s expensive, but maintaining choice is important in Hartland, said Hartland School Board Chairwoman Bettina Read.
“We can make the decision, for every student, what’s best for them — a big school, a small school, a school that’s strong in the arts,” Read said.
Read said she had heard about Merrill’s plan, which would be dramatically different than anything currently on Hartland’s table, and said it would be a tough sell.
“Of course, if they want to talk to us we’ll listen, but I just don’t think we want to jump into anything right away,” she said.
Right now, Hartland’s families make diverse choices about where to send their students — Hartford High is hosting 33 Hartland students this year, more than any other school, but Hartland students also choose Windsor, which got 28 students; Hanover and The Sharon Academy, which got 21 students each; Woodstock, which got 20; and Thetford, which got 14, with smaller numbers choosing Hartford’s technical school, home schooling, or Lebanon.
Read said Hartland is committed to working with the other districts in the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union to try to capitalize on existing relationships.
“We’ve done a lot of work together like coming up with a unified curriculum. Our transportation is now a unified contract. All of our special education has been centralized. To destroy all that and fracture what we’ve worked for would be a shame,” she said. “It could also be a large expense.”
Read said Hartland is hoping the state will come around to the idea that the district could merge with the other schools in the supervisory union, including no-choice Windsor, without having a uniform choice option. The issue is sure to be contested in the 2016 Vermont state elections, which critics hope could lead to a different interpretation of the law, or a legislative amendment.
The Hartford School Board will use a state study grant to explore this, and other, concepts.
Ultimately, Merrill said, the goal isn’t to subvert another community’s self-interest.
“I am not without self-interest myself,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out something that will benefit my town. The question is, are we able to sit down together and get something that benefits all of us?”
