Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jill Stahl Tyler, who is a member of the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union Act 46 Study Committee. It was first published in the Brattleboro Reformer on June 11.
[I]t is good that we all care about our schools and our kids. It is even better when we, the voters controlling the funding for the education of our towns’ students, are well informed. As a member of the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union Act 46 Study Committee (a role I never imagined could be so filled with controversy or take up so much mental energy), I wish to answer some of the false statements made by Judy Normandeau in her “The Unintended Consequences of Act 46.”
Normandeau began her comments with a statement that she has repeated many times at study committee meetings: ”Since the beginning, the WSESU study committee and administration have been on a one-way track to merge all five towns in an ‘accelerated merger’ … other options were given lip service and quickly dismissed.”
If we had all been convinced that the accelerated merger was the only option, we all would have made it to many more family suppers since November. We started with this option — because it had the fastest deadline (a vote by June 30). None of us felt comfortable in not studying the other options, and so we first made up a subcommittee to review the other options. David Schoales (Brattleboro), Beth Bristol (Guilford) and I worked through the options in January, coming up with a large chart that is shared on the website under “Act 46 options.” A second subgroup of Amy Wall (Dummerston), Kristina Naylor (Dummerston) and Alice Laughlin (Putney) looked at this further.
Far from being dismissed, if you review BCTV’s recording, you’ll find specific discussions of the other options during our meetings on Jan. 7, 13 and 27 (most extensive walk through the charts). Feb. 11 continued the discussion, and nearly the entire meeting of Feb. 24 was spent on the second subgroups’ look into other merger options.
Further, ANY merger also required all of the self-study that has been done, and we continue to do. Do we have inequities — in the results we are obtaining, in the programs offered, in the specialists students can access, in the amount of assistance and enrichment offered? The unfortunate answer is yes: we are not equitable. Not all of our kids have the same needed inputs, due to the constraints of a smaller schools’ budgets not spreading as far.
There are so many issues surrounding any school decisions, and we all care passionately about them.
Ms. Normandeau points out that, under a merger, “students and teachers can be moved from town to town.” Actually, many of us on the study committee think that’s a positive. Right now, we know that there are kids who start the year in, say, Brattleboro, but then, because of perhaps a family situation, end up living in Vernon with a different parent. Then, a few months later, they might move again, back to Brattleboro. Under our current system, the child must move and start over each time. In a merged system, the student could stay on with the same teacher and classmates, with much less disruption.
Also, right now, we have a third-grade classroom of only 12 kids in Guilford — while Vernon has 27. Between the two schools, there are three teachers. But under a merged system, we could adjust the children and the staffing, and only have two classes and still have fewer than 20 kids in a classroom.
When she notes that, under a merger, “towns will no longer own their own school buildings,” I am perplexed. Right now, the town’s taxpayers own the buildings. Under a merger, all the towns’ taxpayers would own all of the school buildings in all of the towns. This means that any needed maintenance for any one building is no longer borne by just one town’s taxpayers — but would be split over all the taxpayers. And if the building was no longer used as a school? The articles of agreement provide that the town would be able to “purchase” the building back at $1. The town would not “lose” this community center.
Brattleboro’s Act 46 Study Committee members have tried to be very sensitive to the concerns of the smaller towns’ voice being overruled by the larger population of Brattleboro, which Ms. Normandeau mentions. However, she is wrong when she says that “… each small town will only have one vote … the larger towns will rule … the small towns literally have no say or choice as to what happens to their school.” Instead of putting together a board that is represented solely on population, the study committee opted for a board whereby all the communities would vote on all the board members. Board representation would be one from each of the smaller towns, and only two from Brattleboro. Three more would be elected as at-large, and could come from any community. That means Brattleboro is only guaranteed 22 percent of the board representation — while Brattleboro’s student population in 2015 represented 55 percent of the elementary population and 68 percent of the high school population. If Brattleboro has all three at-large, making its total board representation at five of nine (55 percent), the representation still does not actually match the student population.
I agree completely with Ms. Normandeau’s statement that “The WSESU Study Committee did not meet the deadline for the accelerated merger.” It was not for lack of trying; ask any of us how many family meals, sports events and other gatherings we have missed while trying to do our due diligence, looking at the options offered from the Legislature. In the end, we declined to put it to a study committee vote, because we were uncertain of Vernon’s position.
What Ms. Normandeau asks for — “slow down” — is already happening. After it was clear that we would not look at accelerated merger for our supervisory union, at our last meeting, on May 26, we looked at the deadlines that would be necessary for the other options. It’s because of that, we did, indeed, look at a merger that Ms. Normandeau is correct in noting would be “basically identical to the accelerated merger, and headed to a vote in November.” But it was not the only option we discussed, either. Just as we have been doing all along, we continue to keep many options open. We have been looking at the things we want to change in our inequities, how they might be changed, and what implications there are.
There are so many issues surrounding any school decisions, and we all care passionately about them. I think it is part of what makes us a good place to raise kids, really: Who wants to live where people don’t care about schools and communities?
For me personally, I’m trying remember who’s at the core of all these discussions: our children. For every point we discuss, I am asking myself, “How does this affect the kids?” I think it keeps us all focused while we work through the questions.
