[T]he State Board of Education has cleared the way for local votes on more district merger proposals in areas trying to beat a summer deadline when tax incentives were slated to disappear. Lawmakers recently passed a bill to extend those deadlines to November.
The board gave its approval to three proposals at its May meeting last week.
Each month the unification plans meant to satisfy Act 46 continue to get narrower and more unusual.
Montpelier, a mega school district by Vermont standards with more than 1,000 students, has proposed merging with tiny Roxbury — which has 86 students and is more than 15 miles away. The two seemingly polar opposites were brought together by taxes.
The tax rate in Roxbury has been growing steadily in recent years and is on a trajectory that isn’t sustainable, according to Jon Guiffre, chair of the Roxbury School Board.
“Our budget went up $100,000 and raised our tax rate by 23 cents” in one year when six children moved in needing tuition for high school, he said. “We have to pay their tuition, and that has an impact in a small town on our tax rate.”
The Cabot, Danville and Twinfield districts got SBE approval for a merger that would complement an April plan put forward by Barnet, Walden and Waterford. Each of those proposals is designed to go with the other and is contingent on receiving tax breaks. Together they would constitute the two halves of a side-by-side merger.
Voters in Barnet, Walden and Waterford did their part Tuesday, approving the proposal before them.
The final plan the board approved last week was really an amendment that Bethel and Rochester need in order to move forward after a negative vote in Royalton in April dashed their merger plans.
Opposites Attract
The Montpelier and Roxbury team acknowledged its proposal seems a bit odd at first glance since they are an unlikely match. The capital city’s district operates schools from pre-kindergarten through graduation; rural Roxbury operates only an elementary school, paying tuition for students to go to nearby middle and high schools.
When asked about the distance between the schools, Guiffre said it isn’t a problem. “We drive anyway. When you move to Roxbury you know you are driving 25 miles to get anywhere,” he said.
Roxbury members of the study panel said they can’t control how many students will need to have tuition paid for in any given year, and as a result the elementary school budget is often cannibalized. Steve Dale, the group’s facilitator, said this merger would help Roxbury keep its small school going.
“This is a freestanding school budget being eaten by a tuition budget. If we value young children being educated in their own communities, this pre-K-four is sustainable” in this context, Dale said.
It is Roxbury that makes out the most from this union, with better tax rates and more stability for its elementary school. But the state education fund would also get a boost; by fiscal year 2023 the fund will be saving $550,000 from this merger. It’s a bonus for everyone in the state, according to Guiffre.
Any Roxbury students in grades seven through 10 as of May 1 this year would be grandfathered in and will continue to get tuition to attend other schools. Current sixth-graders would be on notice that they might start out at a different high school but would be there for only one year if the merger goes through.
Most Roxbury high school students have traditionally chosen to go to U-32 high school in East Montpelier. U-32 wasn’t interested in merging with Roxbury.
This deal is pitched as a win for Montpelier too, because of an influx of new students to fill excess capacity, stabilizing per-pupil costs over time. No more staffing or construction would be needed to absorb the Roxbury students. The study group hopes to be able to create some farm programs in Roxbury for Montpelier students.
In addition, the merger would give both towns the ability to engage in future unification discussions on their own terms, rather than having to react to the statewide plan the state board will impose in the near future, according to the study report.
About $75,000 in cost reductions are expected from a unification.
Krista Huling, chair of the state board, said she found the partnership surprising. “I think it is amazing,” she said. “You are looking out for each other and coming together as communities and you are one. I can’t wait to see what comes out of this.”
By each other’s side
Cabot, Twinfield and Danville — as half of a future side-by-side merger — were cleared last week to take their unification to voters June 20. Each school operates all grades, and they will call themselves the CDT Unified Union School District if voters like the idea. The districts put the same conditions on their merger as the would-be other half: They will not merge without the other side and tax benefits.
Voters in Barnet, Walden and Waterford this week overwhelmingly approved the plan to unify their districts. In Barnet, Tuesday’s vote was 129-25; Walden’s was 124-39; and Waterford’s result was 93-7.
Getting voter buy-in may be tricky in Cabot, where the high school would be closed as part of the merger. High school students in the three towns would choose to attend either Danville or Twinfield, which is in Marshfield but also serves Plainfield, and that isn’t sitting well with some Cabot residents.
Closing the high school was the “downside of the proposal for a lot of folks in Cabot,” according to Chris Tormey, a Cabot resident who is chair of the study committee.
Only two of the 11 members on the study panel that made the decision were from Cabot. Some residents think it is an unfair advantage and fear that their elementary school could have the same fate in four years when it isn’t protected any longer by the articles of agreement between the towns.
Loss of control is an issue in Danville as well, according to Bruce Melendy, who represented his town to the state board. Even though they would have three members on the unified school board, residents are worried. “It is not just a Cabot concern, it is a concern in Danville as well,” Melendy said.
“People aren’t familiar with the benefits that will come from this,” he said, adding that it might be five years from now when people realize it. Trust comes with time, but right now each town has a separate identity and they are sort of discrete, he said.
The report indicates savings of around $415,000 annually from closing the high school, but there will be increased transportation and other costs, bringing the net yearly savings down to $175,000. Tormey called that “limited.”
But the study group also argues that bringing together students from the four towns will increase graduating class sizes and allow for more variety in class options.
Each town will maintain its pre-K-through-eight school, and there is discussion of allowing intradistrict choice someday.
If the side-by-side forms it will bring together two supervisory unions, streamlining operations and reducing administration. Central office savings would be around $633,000 annually. There are also more long-term savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Royalton redo
When Royalton voters said no to a merger with Bethel and Rochester in April, they also tanked mergers for four other towns. A revote in Royalton has been scheduled for June 13.
Rochester will have a revote June 20 because some community members aren’t sure they had enough information at the time voters endorsed the plan earlier.
In the meantime, Bethel and Rochester have asked the state board to approve a way forward for them in case Royalton votes no again and Rochester wants to stick with the merger plan.
“We felt like we have an obligation to our region and other communities to come up with a proposal that maintains the integrity of their yes vote and meets the needs of our community and our students,” Lisa Floyd, of Bethel, told state board members last week.
The Bethel and Rochester subcommittee of the original Act 46 study group is proposing creating a unified district between those two communities. Each town would continue to operate grades pre-K through six but then would bring the students together for middle and high school at Bethel.
They would keep the outdoor experiential learning center in Rochester for high schoolers and a drama program from the former merger plan.
“Rochester has a forest deeded to the students in the community. They have a theater, Bethel doesn’t, and that is good for drama, art, music,” Floyd said. Rochester also has a shop used for science, technology, engineering and math programs, Floyd said.
She acknowledged the two school districts still don’t meet the student counts Act 46 is looking for, but said that by combining they can improve the quality of education and save around $180,000 while stabilizing tax rates and letting the towns maintain small-school grants.
In the first year of operation, the plan predicts that the owner of a $200,000 home in Bethel would save at least $280 on property taxes, while in Rochester savings increase to $814.
The school board would have three members from each town but voted on by everyone.
“We think this plan is workable for us,” Floyd said, adding that it would set them up with some flexibility needed to make more decisions in the near future.
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