[V]oters in the two Barres will head to the polls on Nov. 6 to cast their ballots, once again, on the question of merging the school districts of the town and city.
A similar proposal to consolidate under Act 46 was voted down in 2016, when Barre City resoundingly said yes to a merger but Barre Town said no. But school officials in both communities, which already jointly operate Spaulding High School, have decided to ask voters to weigh in one last time, before the State Board of Education has the final word on school districts that haven’t voluntarily merged under the law.
The school board struck a new merger study committee in 2017, which crafted the proposal now before voters. It would consolidate the two municipalities’ four school boards into one, governing Spaulding, the Central Vermont Career Center, and two elementaries.
The debate in town over merging has been deeply divisive, and whichever way the vote goes, Superintendent John Pandolfo said he’ll just be glad to see the process come to a close.
“I think there’s going to be some need for some healing,” Pandolfo said.
Merger study committee chair and Barre Town resident Gina Akley says she hopes the vote passes, arguing that a consolidated entity would be more nimble and better able to stretch resources.
“It can expand our offerings and help the schools help more children,” she said.
But Rebecca Kerin-Hutchins, another merger study committee member from Barre Town, remains opposed to a merger, arguing it will erode local control.
“We’ll end up with a school board that’s not as in tune with their school or school system,” she said.
It’s unknown what the State Board will do if Barre Town and Barre City decline to merge by choice again. The board is tasked with deciding what to do with those districts that haven’t merged yet by Nov. 30. They’ve left a decision on Barre and the Orleans Central Supervisory Union, where a vote is also being held on Nov. 6, until the end in order to not interfere with the local process.
But the State Board has issued provisional decisions on all other districts that haven’t merged yet, and proponents of a yes vote next Tuesday note that in all other cases where towns all send to the same union high school, the board has opted for a consolidation.
At least one member of the committee, Paul Cook, of Barre City, called the vote a “waste of time and money.” Cook said he believes the outcome is a foregone conclusion – the town will vote no, and then the State Board will merge the districts anyway.
“To have another defeat will only further embitter the people of Barre Town,” he said.
Jeff Blow, a Barre Town committee member, says he’s “still opposed to the dictatorship coming out of Montpelier,” and anti-merger. But he said he’ll vote yes on Tuesday because he believes, based on the State Board’s decisions so far, that the body will ultimately merge the districts anyway.
Voting to merge voluntarily will allow the city and the town to access four years of tax breaks under the law. But more importantly for Blow, it would allow the new unified district to use locally written articles of agreement to govern the new district. Although they can later be amended, districts created through forced mergers take on the articles written by the state.
Articles of agreement dictate things like board representation and how district assets and debt are handled in a consolidated entity. Most notably, especially for merger skeptics, articles determine how difficult it would be for a new district to close or reconfigure schools.
“It’s incumbent on us to write our own destiny,” Blow said.
