[M]ANCHESTER — The first-ever election ballot for the proposed Taconic and Green Regional School District Board will list 13 candidates for the 13 available seats.
Formation of the merged district is also up for approval by voters during the March 7 annual town elections.
“We have someone running for every seat but no more than that,” said Jacquelyne Wilson, superintendent of the Bennington-Rutland Supervisory Union. Write-in candidates are possible.
A 17-member study committee developed the proposal to merge the districts under Act 46, which encourages consolidation among Vermont school districts and offers a tax incentive.
The proposed Taconic and Green district would merge all districts and kindergarten through eighth grade education involving nine towns. That encompasses six current districts, including the Mountain Towns Regional Education District and the Union School District 23, as well as Northshire town districts.
Students in grades nine through 12 would receive tuition support to attend a secondary school of their family’s choice, such as Burr and Burton Academy or Long Trail School.
The first ballot for the Taconic and Green district asks voters to approve a regional district, for which there are different merger options depending on which towns vote in favor. Manchester and Dorset and the Mountain Towns RED (Landgrove, Londonderry, Peru and Weston) are all considered necessary for the merger to be completed.
The towns of Danby, Sunderland and Mount Tabor and Union District 23 (Danby and Mount Tabor) are considered “advisable” for the formation of the new district, but a no vote in one or more would not prevent the merger from taking place.
If not all the towns approve the new district, the makeup of the new regional board will be altered, with fewer members depending on which towns are involved. The smallest possible Taconic and Green board would have nine members.
In the voting, there are nine town representative seats, for which the candidate must be a resident, as well as four at-large seats, candidates for which can reside in any of the four largest towns: Manchester, Dorset, Londonderry or Danby.
Even if the merger is approved, the current school boards in the area would continue through July 1, 2018, when the new regional board would assume management of schools and the education programs.
If the district is approved, the year leading up to the official handover of the school operations will be a busy one for the new board, Wilson said. The state education secretary would officially activate the board over the summer, she said, and the members would begin planning the fiscal 2019 budget, developing policies for the merged district and otherwise preparing for the official transfer in 2018.
Meeting for about a year, the merger study committee developed a detailed plan for the district, which was provisionally approved by the State Board of Education in December, allowing the voting to be scheduled for the March 7 town meetings.
The full plan can be viewed here.
The study committee also has scheduled several informational sessions around the area leading up to the town meeting. Those include Feb. 28 at 6:30 p.m. at Sunderland Elementary, for Sunderland residents, and March 2 at 6:30 p.m. at Manchester Community Library, intended for all districts.
