The board heard representatives of the study committees working on mergers involving the Bennington-Rutland, Windham Northeast, Windham Central, and Caledonia North and Essex-Caledonia supervisory unions.
The Bennington-Rutland Supervisory Union has 11 school districts in 12 towns. A study committee formed by seven of the districts from nine towns proposed coming together to form a new unified district.
Danby, Dorset, Manchester, Mount Tabor, the Mountain Towns Regional Education District (consisting of Londonderry, Landgrove, Peru and Weston) and Sunderland want to unite and call themselves the Taconic and Green Regional School District.
One board and one budget would operate five schools: Currier Memorial School (kindergarten through sixth grade), Flood Brook School (K through eight), Manchester Elementary Middle School (K through eight), Sunderland Elementary School (K through six) and the Dorset School (K through eight). Students at the two K-through-six schools would have to choose a district school to attend for grades seven and eight, but current tuition students would be grandfathered. All students have school choice for grades nine through 12.
The merger would mean continuing to receive $160,000 in small-schools grant money for Currier and Sunderland and keep tax rates from a significant rise in Danby, Mount Tabor and Sunderland. Also, the towns would be able to keep the 3.5 percent “hold harmless” money that helped keep taxes down in some communities where student enrollments are shrinking.
Having one board handling personnel rather than seven would allow more flexibility in adjusting staffing patterns, according to the proposal. The school boards also have had a hard time filling vacancies, and 95 percent of candidates run unopposed, according to administrators.
Jon Wilson, a member of the study committee, presented the plan to the state board and said committee most enjoyed thinking about potential educational opportunities for students through this change. “We talked a lot about how increasing scale could really stabilize programming,” he said. “We also talked about a future board providing interdistrict choice and creating specialized schools. … We had exciting conversations about that.”
Windham Northeast proposed bringing together Athens, Grafton, Rockingham and Westminster into a seamless K-through-12 education system. The four towns plan to merge five school districts operating a total of seven schools into one with a 10-member board.
Through their study they identified inequalities in the elementary schools.The kindergarten-through-six school districts do not have comparable opportunities in art, music, foreign language and health on their own, according to the committee. Changing to one school district with one board, the study found, can bring consistency, allow sharing of resources and staff, and make sure students are ready to enter Bellows Falls Middle and High School.
The schools will also be able to keep their small-schools grants, the “hold harmless” monies and other incentives. They also anticipate the possibility of saving money by reducing the number of central staff, office space needs and audits.
The Kingdom East Governance Study Committee put forth a plan to unite up to seven school districts that are members of the Caledonia North and Essex-Caledonia supervisory unions. All seven districts were listed as advisable, and voters in at least four of them would have to say yes if the new union is to be formed.
Concord, Lunenburg, Burke, Lyndon, Newark, Sutton, Sheffield and Wheelock would come together to operate K-through-eight schools and pay tuition for high school students. Depending on what towns agree to the union, there could be a school board of up to 15 members made up from each town.
Through unification they would be able to “operate in the best interests of all students instead of seven separate school district boards and potentially two supervisory union boards,” according to the plan. They are also interested in offering public school choice among the elementary schools and sharing specialists, coaches and professional development opportunities.
Jamaica, Townshend and Windham have schools offering pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. Brookline and Newfane have a joint contract school that teaches kindergarten through sixth grade. These elementary schools feed into Leland & Gray Middle and High School.
Marlboro has a school with pre-kindergarten through eight and pays tuition for students to go to high school. Dover and Wardsboro have pre-K-through-six schools and tuition students in grades seven through 12.
One study committee offered a plan to create a pre-K-through-12 district for the towns that feed into Leland & Gray. This would be a modified unified union school district and would get some incentives from the state. If voters go for it, this union would be called the West River Education District.
The other group — Wardsboro, Marlboro and Dover — proposed operating schools for grades pre-K through six and then tuitioning students in the upper grades. It would become the River Valley Unified Union School District. The plan unifies up to three existing school districts and would replace the current governing bodies with one school board of nine or six members depending on which districts approve the merger.
Jamaica residents had considered leaving the Leland & Gray Union School District and switching to operating pre-K through sixth grade with choice for grades seven through 12. Ultimately, voters decided to stick with Leland & Gray.
The ninth town, Stratton, is not part of either proposal. It does not operate a school and has choice for kindergarten through 12th grade.
State board member Sean-Marie Oller asked how these proposals are different from the current setup. “It seems like you put this together to save the small-schools grant and not necessarily to be part of a bigger scheme,” Oller said.
One of the chairs, Joe Winrich, of Townshend, said they were looking to keep the individual character of their town schools.
Rich Werner, the other person making the proposal, told the state board that the River Valley district would have one school board instead of five, one budget, one audit. “We took advantage of everything we could in our study,” Werner said. “We are looking at a lot less students in Vermont. This isn’t just for this year or next, this is for 10 or 15 years out. This protects us and allows the central office people to work out better outcomes.”
All the plans that were approved Tuesday will be put to local voters March 7.
