The Deeper Dig is a weekly podcast from the VTDigger newsroom. Listen below, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Holland, Vermont, a tiny Northeast Kingdom town on the Canadian border, is anchored by its elementary school. It’s the closest thing the town has to a community center. But this week, residents voted decisively to close the building and send its kids to nearby Derby.
“What do we got? Farms, and cows. And the church. The school, and the church. We don’t have a post-office. We don’t have a dance hall. We don’t have anything. This is what we have,” said Lincoln Petell, the school board’s chair.
The vote is the latest development in the saga of Act 46, the controversial school district consolidation law passed in 2015. In order to avoid forced, state-imposed mergers, communities are considering unexpected strategies for staying autonomous.
Towns like Holland – who believe a consolidated, regional school board would shutter their small schools anyway – think closing now will allow them to sidestep the law, and at least keep the building control under local control.
The strategy has befuddled many state officials, who say closing a school is a strange price to pay for a school district’s autonomy. And it’s unclear if the strategy will work, at least according to the Agency of Education, who now says a vote to close doesn’t preclude a merger.
On this week’s podcast, Holland school officials talk about why the community voted to close a school so central to its identity. Plus, VTDigger’s education reporter, Lola Duffort, discusses the many levers Act 46 skeptics are pulling to try and block mergers.
