[F]acing a significant loss of students and a huge budget cut, Waterville reversed last spring’s Act 46 vote and decided to join a school district merger after all.
Residents in April had rejected plans to become part of the Lamoille North Modified Unified Union School District by a vote of 63 to 28. But when it became clear the town would lose 34 students who tuition into the K-through-six elementary school — forcing a 30 percent cut in the school budget — community members asked for a revote in February.
On Tuesday, with assurances that Belvidere students will continue to attend the Waterville school for at least three years, residents agreed to join Belvidere, Eden, Johnson and Hyde Park in a new single district. The vote was 126 to 58.
Belvidere and Waterville are towns of about 350 and 650 residents, respectively, with an intertwined history. In 2004, Belvidere couldn’t afford to keep its elementary school and began sending its students to Waterville. The towns shared the former Belvidere school as a preschool.
“A beautiful thing happened — it knitted our two towns together,” said Chrissy Wade, a Waterville resident.
When Waterville decided against merging last spring, its voters didn’t realize the new unified school board could decide to send Belvidere’s students to another school.
“We were all in shock when we realized there would be big consequences for towns voting separately,” Wade told lawmakers on the Senate Education Committee. In January, Wade and several other Waterville residents took their concerns to the Statehouse.
On Jan. 10, the new unified union school board voted to send Belvidere’s 34 students to Johnson Elementary for a fraction of what it would have cost: $26,000 instead of paying $402,000 to Waterville.
Wade Chivington, of Waterville, who was a nonvoting member of the new unified school board, said he asked the board to consider keeping Belvidere’s students at Waterville as a sign of trust before the February vote.
“The overall district budget is approaching $40 million. The $402,000 they would spend to tuition Belvidere students to us was a tiny percentage of the overall budget. I asked them to continue to do that for at least one more year, and they didn’t. They just decided to tear our community apart,” he said.
Chivington choked back emotion as he told lawmakers that his child’s best friend will go to a different school next year. “They decided to split our community to save less than 1 percent,” he said, predicting that the mistrust would hurt the merger’s chances when the town revoted.
Waterville resident James Osborn said he was planning to vote against the merger because a vote for it meant giving up Waterville’s culture of education.
“Our town prides itself on making the right decisions in educating our children that are not based on cost, but what is the right thing to do,” he said. “The new (unified) board has shown that they are penny wise and pound foolish. I do not want them in charge of my 4- and 5-year-olds.”
