Barring intervention by the courts, the Huntington school district will cease to exist come July 1.
Voters across the five towns gathered at Mount Mansfield Union High School on Thursday night for their fifth merger vote in a decade. The vote was overwhelmingly pro-unification: 450 voted yes to consolidate; 191 voted no.
Huntington has represented one of the most divisively contested mergers in the state. Its four partner towns in the Chittenden East Supervisory Union – Bolton, Jericho, Richmond, and Underhill – all merged voluntarily into the Mount Mansfield Modified Unified Union School District, even before Act 46, the state’s school district consolidation law, was passed. The benefits of that merger were widely touted by unification advocates, and when then-Gov. Peter Shumlin signed Act 46, he did so at a public ceremony at Smilie Elementary in Bolton.
But Huntington has repeatedly rejected merger, voting a total of four times against consolidating with its neighbors. And when the State Board of Education issued its final order under Act 46, telling MMMU to hold another merger vote, Huntington filed suit, against both MMMU and the state of Vermont. (The state board’s plan merged 45 districts into 11 new union school districts. But in four instances – including Huntington’s – it asked existing union districts to hold votes on incorporating an independent elementary district.)
That lawsuit was put on hold, but then re-initiated when the MMMU school board decided to warn a merger vote.
No ruling has yet to be issued in that lawsuit, and a hearing is scheduled for June 10. But the judge overseeing the case, Robert Mello, has issued three rulings in similar legal challenges to forced mergers – all in the state’s favor. The Huntington school board hasn’t yet decided if it will appeal to the state Supreme Court if Mello ultimately rules against them.
If the vote stands, the Chittenden East Supervisory Union, which served as the umbrella district for Huntington and MMMU, will cease to exist as well. For merger proponents, this was a key goal.
Huntington’s autonomy means more than an extra school board, MMMU officials argue: it means keeping a supervisory union structure, developing multiple budgets, and an estimated $100,000 in unnecessary administrative costs.
“If we vote yes tonight, we will condense our three boards into one, our nine budgets to one, and further enable our educators to focus on students and less on administration,” MMMU board chair Andrew Pond told assembled voters in his opening remarks.
For many in Huntington, the merger is viewed an undemocratic imposition, given the number of times it had voted to remain autonomous. And anti-consolidation advocates were doubly upset with the MMMU board’s decision to hold a floor vote instead of an all-day Australian ballot. With some 12,000 registered voters, Huntington argued in court filings a floor vote could create myriad logistic issues and keep people from accessing the polls.
But that didn’t turn out to be the case: half an hour after the meeting had begun, there were still empty spots in the Mount Mansfield parking lot.
Calling the matter “a moral issue, an American issue,” Tara Fowler, the Huntington school board vice chair, slammed the vote Thursday as illegitimate.
“Everyone who believes in democracy and the Constitution should not be supporting an election that intimidates voters, disenfranchises our electoral process, and pursues an aggressive campaign of voter suppression,” she said.
Some, like Ian Wyatt, a Huntington resident and parent, also argued that independence had allowed the school to innovate.
“We launched one of the first foreign language programs, which has now been adopted across the district. We launched an outdoor education program,” he said.
But opposition to the merger in Huntington was by no means unanimous. Several residents – many of whom work at Brewster-Pierce, the town’s pre-K-4 elementary, came to the podium on Thursday night to urge their fellow voters to vote yes.
Heather Fergerson, a nurse at Brewster-Pierce and Huntington resident, said she had initially voted against merging but since changed her mind. She was grateful for the collaboration from her fellow nurses in the CESU’s schools, she said, and felt like Huntington should be fully integrated with its neighbors.
“It didn’t feel right that we were kind of wanting to be independent however sort of sucking off the district,” she said. “And I feel like it’s time for us to be part of that district.”
