Two Vermont communities are considering the creation of consolidated school districts that cross state lines.
In the upper reaches of the Northeast Kingdom, Canaan school officials are in talks with their neighbors across the Connecticut River in the New Hampshire towns of Colebrook and Pittsburg. And in the southern part of the state, Stamford’s voters earlier this summer voted to explore a merger with Clarksburg, Massachusetts.
“We could offer more if we pooled our resources together,” said Essex North Supervisory Union superintendent Karen Conroy.
Vermont already has two interstate districts — both are in the Upper Valley and shared with New Hampshire. The Rivendell Interstate School District, serves the Vermont towns of Fairlee, West Fairlee, Vershire and the New Hampshire town of Orford. The Dresden Interstate School District, which serves Norwich in Vermont and Hanover in New Hampshire, was the first school district to cross state lines in the country.
Because the Twin States already share two school districts, an interstate compact for Vermont and New Hampshire has already received Congressional approval, according to Vermont Agency of Education officials. Since no such agreement is in place between Vermont and Massachusetts yet, a similar compact would need to be approved by Congress in order for a Stamford-Clarksburg merger to take place.
Even with an existing compact in place, a new Vermont-New Hampshire district would need to jump through several hoops. First, Vermont’s secretary of education and New Hampshire’s commissioner of education need to authorize a planning committee to explore the idea. If that committee recommends a merger, proposed articles of agreement governing the district would go to the state boards of education in both states. If the Vermont and New Hampshire boards approve the plan, voters in the consolidating districts would need to greenlight the merger at the ballot box.
In a statement, Vermont Education Secretary Dan French said he’s supportive of interstate mergers, but he said they can be complicated.
“These mergers tend to be more complex than normal mergers, however, since they require a consideration of many issues relative to complying with laws of both states,” he said.
Conroy said school officials believe a merger could involve creating a regional high school in Canaan to serve all three towns, and a regional middle school in Colebrook. Currently, all three towns — Canaan, Colebrook, and Pittsburg — operate separate high schools.
Several nearby non-operating school districts — where all students receive a voucher to attend schools elsewhere — have been asked to take part in the conversations. But Conroy said she did not expect them to become formal members of a unified district. If the schools formed a unified district, families would lose the opportunity for school choice.
French, alongside his New Hampshire counterpart, Frank Edelblut, attended a meeting in Canaan last week to discuss the possibility of a merger with local officials, according to the Caledonian Record. The two must now authorize a planning committee in order for the process to go forward.
The three towns already share many resources. Buses travel between the three high schools to allow students to take courses their schools don’t offer, according to Conroy. And the technical center in Canaan already serves students from across the border.
But the arrangement still means the separate schools and districts compete in unproductive ways — especially over staff. Smaller, rural schools often struggle with labor shortages, and Conroy says the schools sometimes poach from one another to fill vacancies.
“We take from each other often,” she said. “Whereas if we had one high school, we wouldn’t be competing for high quality staff.”
Between Colebrook, Pittsburg, and Canaan, the three high schools collectively serve about 200 students.
“It’s crazy,” said Canaan School Board Chair Dan Wade.
It’s not the first time Canaan and its neighbors across the river have discussed consolidation. But lengthy discussions back in 2012 stalled out. Wade thinks it could be different this time around, in no small part because enrollment has only continued to decline.
“The robust school population is gone and it’s still dwindling,” Wade said.
Wade also speculated earlier talks didn’t pan out because the process was led by an outside consultant, who couldn’t get buy-in from locals. This time, he said, people from the three towns will be in charge.
“We put a committee together, from the community, who are driving the narrative on this,” he said.
Both Stamford and Clarksburg have taken votes this summer affirming their interest in studying a merger, according to media reports, but discussions are exploratory. Micah Hayre, the principal at the pre-K-8 Stamford School, said the model under consideration in the two communities would see Stamford become a pre-K-2 school for both towns. Clarksburg would serve students in grades 3-8. A single school board would oversee both schools.
Merger talks have been spurred by Act 46, Vermont’s school district consolidation law, Hayre said. Because it was in conversation with its Massachusetts neighbor, Stamford was allowed to remain as-is by the Vermont State Board of Education when the body reorganized districts under the law. Now that the merger deadline under the law has passed, the board can no longer force a merger, but it could reorganize Stamford into another supervisory union.
Hayre said the two schools don’t currently have many formal links, but its students often participate in the same extracurriculars, especially sports teams. Because the districts offer school choice for the upper grades, many of its students ultimately go to the same high school or technical center in North Adams, Massachusetts.
“We’re a whole state away, but we’re 4 miles apart,” he said.
