(This story by Chris Mays was first published in the Brattleboro Reformer on May 26, 2017.)
[W]ILMINGTON — Act 46 shouldn’t send shock waves to the two school districts that make up Twin Valley.
“It’s our opinion that they are encouraging other towns to do what Wilmington and Whitingham have already done,” Twin Valley School Board Chairman Seth Boyd said Tuesday at an informational meeting for the vote that will formally merge the districts under the direction of the law that seeks to address student inequities and find efficiencies to the benefit of taxpayers. “This isn’t a huge, substantive change for Twin Valley. It could be for schools closing or joining together in Vermont, but this isn’t a big change for us.”
Votes on two different school-district mergers will be held in member districts of the Windham Southwest Supervisory Union on Wednesday. Residents of Whitingham and Wilmington, which form the Twin Valley School District, are considering the creation of a “unified union” district while residents in Halifax, Readsboro and Stamford are looking at doing the same.
Boyd said the Twin Valley board supports the proposal because of the incentives offered through the state and if the districts don’t merge, the state officials will come up with their own plan.
Twin Valley School Board Vice Chairwoman Kathy Larsen said school consolidation has helped the two districts. Efforts over the last decade have seen schools in the two towns come together, closing down the old high school in Wilmington.
An Act 46 committee was made up of the same people who are on the Twin Valley board and the state had provided funding for a consultant to assist with getting a plan approved by the Vermont Board of Education. At one point, progress stalled as the Vermont Agency of Education did not support a draft of the proposal. Now, it’s good with both groups.
A seven-member board for Twin Valley will also be elected at the same time as the vote, as long as the merger is approved. Whitingham and Wilmington will both need affirmative votes to move forward, and at least two of the other Windham Southwest towns will need to approve for Twin Valley to receive benefits offered under the law. The arrangement is considered a “side-by-side structure” under Act 46.
Tax incentives include 8 cents off the education tax rate in the first year of consolidation with 6 cents off the second year, 4 cents off the the third year and 2 cents the fourth year.
“That doesn’t guarantee your education tax rate will go down if we have other variables like we did this year,” Boyd warned, recalling large increases for taxpayers in Twin Valley districts which were blamed on a “excessive spending” penalty related to the way students are weighted and counted in an “equalized pupil” formula. Another factor for the increases involved the common level of appraisal, which seeks to adjust tax rates based on property assessments and recent property sales in the area.
With a merger, tax rates are expected to stabilize in the two Twin Valley towns, Boyd said.
One of the other incentives for merging is a 3.5 percent “hold harmless provision.” That will allow schools to hold on to a certain number of “phantom students” to help ensure tax rates don’t sky rocket with a sudden shift in population. Also on the table is a $150,000 transition grant, which will mostly cover legal fees as the new district is created and new policies are put in place.
Halifax School Board Chairman Homer “Chum” Sumner, who was not at the meeting but spoke with the Reformer later, said the biggest reason for merging “is because that’s what Act 46 says.”
“This is the first act that the state has put into place that actually has teeth as far as taking away grants and whatever, so schools have to do something,” he said. “If schools merge on one side and Twin Valley merges on the other side, hopefully there will be savings with sharing of staff and buying materials in a larger quantity. And hopefully there will be sharing some administrative people. And hopefully there will be some savings.”
Sumner anticipates voter approval in his town.
“The rest of the towns, it’s up to them,” he said. “If you do nothing, you’re going to get penalized so I think all the towns really have to vote this thing in. Whether that’s going to be the first step or final step of what the state’s going to make you do, that remains to be seen. It’s kind of like you have no choice.”
Searsburg, a district in the supervisory union that does not operate a school, is also part of the merger plans for now.
Searsburg School Board members spoke with half a dozen similar districts, according to WSWSU Superintendent Chris Pratt.
“It says in the report they’d like to stay the same if possible,” he said.
Noting Twin Valley’s struggles with budgeting due to declining enrollment, Wilmington resident Diane Chapman asked whether the other Windham Southwest districts will still have school choice. The answer was yes.
“We joined as a union because we’re k-12,” Larsen said, and the members of the other proposed district have k-8 with school choice.
Boyd called the drop in students a statewide issue. He said, “It’s not people leaving to go to other places.”
“Some people do choose us,” Larsen added. “We’re at a good location.”
Twin Valley has about 37 students paying for tuition, Boyd estimated. The board is currently talking with legislators about getting a small schools grant back for Whitingham that was no longer offered once the schools consolidated.
Board make-up will be a big change if the merger is approved. Currently, Whitingham and Wilmington have two separate school boards. Representatives from the board are on the Twin Valley board.
“Essentially, when we meet we have three boards going at once,” Boyd said. “Seven members will make up the new board and it’s one board instead of the three that we have.”
Also set to change is how budgets are voted on. Affirmative votes in both Twin Valley towns are needed now in order for a budget to pass. But in a merged district, the votes will be commingled. That means the total number of collective votes will dictate whether the budget gets approved.
All buildings will be owned under the same union unifi ed district. Improvements are expected to come to accounting.
“We’ll have one audit instead of three,” Twin Valley board member John Doty said. “Right now, each one costs $8,000 to $10,000. We have to run three sets of books.”
Pratt called the “side-byside” structure “the least disruptive” path forward.
“Other ways are destructive to the kids and the SU,” he said.
Chapman, who was one of four attendees at the first of two informational meetings on the Twin Valley merger, said she was all for the merger.
“I just hope other towns are, too,” she said.
The new districts would not be operational until July 1, 2018. But work would start happening this fall, with members of the new boards meeting to put the districts together.
Boyd and Larsen could not think of a downside to the merger.
“We’ve done all the work already,” Boyd said. “We’ll gain some efficiencies out of it, logistically and through business [practices].”
Larsen said principals in the Twin Valley schools found that consolidation had been successful and the students don’t see themselves as Whitingham or Wilmington kids anymore but Twin Valley kids.
“I feel like Whitingham and Wilmington have been in a relationship for 10 years,” Pratt said. “Now they’re getting married.”
Twin Valley board member Therese Lounsbury said she thought it would be nice to work with the smaller schools in the supervisory union. Some discussions on programming have already happened.
“It’s going to be kind of fun to sit together and share those sorts of things as a bigger community,” said Lounsbury.
