[T]he Vermont Agency of Education is urging school districts to begin merger work following a preliminary ruling last week in the multi-district lawsuit challenging Act 46.
State-imposed mergers are set to go into effect July 1, but many districts had held off on seating transitional boards to begin the work of unification in hopes that a judge would grant them an injunction postponing consolidations. Last Monday, Superior Court Judge Robert Mello said that injunction wouldn’t be forthcoming. And while his ruling wasn’t final, Mello’s 25-page order weighed in on the key debates at the heart of the case, and, on almost every argument, sided with the state.
Now, the agency is warning districts that they’ll soon run out of runway to elect members to a unified board and get a budget in front of voters before June 30. And they say, as the law stands now, that could mean districts won’t be able to operate at all.
“Barring a change in the law, which at this time is speculative, a district’s or group of districts’ failure to use the time remaining between now and June 30, 2019 will result in serious consequences to students and staff,” states a memo issued by the agency late on Friday.
Current law allows school districts to borrow the equivalent of up to 87 percent of last year’s budget in the event a budget is not approved by voters by June 30. But that wouldn’t apply to newly formed districts, the agency argues, which don’t technically have a prior year’s budget.
“If the transitional board or initial board of a newly unified school district is unable or unwilling to follow the law, the Agency will take every action legally available to bring the district into compliance,” state’s memo states.
The agency is working with lawmakers to change the law so that newly formed districts would have a default budget in the event a spending plan isn’t approved by voters on time. Such language has already passed the House, and is now under consideration in the Senate Education committee.
The bill, H.39, was introduced by Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, and was initially intended to delay mergers by a year. A substantially revised version, which granted a delay to about half of the districts facing a forced merger, passed the lower chamber in early February. That iteration of the legislation also included language creating a default budget for new, unified districts.
Meanwhile, Margaret MacLean, a leading member of Vermonters for Schools and Community, a group fighting the mergers, said school boards are now being advised by attorneys in the multi-district lawsuit to follow a “dual process” and begin planning for a merger and independence. The group is also expected to heavily lobby the Senate to offer districts a delay on mergers.
But some local officials may refuse to participate in merger activity at all.
David Major, the school board chair in Westminster, said an organizational meeting has been warned for April 10 to seat a transitional board. Major said he doubts anyone in the towns Westminster, Athens and Grafton, which have been ordered to merge together by the State Board of Education, will actually agree to serve on a unified body to begin the work of consolidation.
“That there’s enough support to make the proceedings go as the AOE envisions,” Major said. “No one locally understands the logic of merging the three towns.”
In a rebuke to the state, the towns have already warned, and received positive community votes on, independent school district budgets. He said it’s “highly questionable” the state will find anyone willing to build a consolidated budget according to the state’s timeline.
“I’m not optimistic about everything happening before July 1,” he said.
