The town of Halifax has voted 48 to 0 to break up its unified school district with the nearby town of Readsboro, according to results reported by the town clerk’s office.
The unanimous vote to dissolve the Southern Valley Unified Union School District, which was held Monday night, represents the first attempt by a consolidated district created under Act 46 to dissolve a merger. Another vote has been scheduled for Jan. 20 in Readsboro.
Homer Sumner, school board chairman of SVUUSD, said that while the question came before voters via a citizen petition, he supports the district dissolving.
“There really is no advantage to being merged,” he said in an interview before the vote.
The two tiny southern Vermont towns, which each operated a K-8 school with well under 100 students, came together in 2017 to meet the demands of Act 46. But Sumner said they were never that enthusiastic about consolidation in the first place.
The merger has not exactly brought the two communities closer together. Halifax voters resent that their taxes went up after consolidation. And when Readsboro, which currently has about 40 students – about half as many as Halifax – started sending its 7th and 8th graders to Halifax, transportation was “a nightmare,” Sumner said, despite the two schools being about 12 miles apart.
“There’s no such thing as a straight road in southern Vermont,” he said.
The district first tried to hire a bus contractor, but that was deemed cost prohibitive. Then it tried taxis for a while, but that was also too much. Now, the district is just giving parents money directly instead of providing transport.
He added that a merger might have been more beneficial if Stamford, which also borders Readsboro, had come into the unified district. But that town is currently exploring a merger across the border with the school district in Clarksburg, Massachusetts.
Once both towns hold their votes, the matter will go to the State Board of Education, according to state officials. The State Board erred on the side of consolidation when it made its final call on re-organizing districts under the controversial law. But the board’s composition has significantly changed in the interim. John Carroll, the current chairman, said it is anybody’s guess how its members will react to requests from unified districts to dissolve.
“Speaking only for myself, I think it’s better that towns and communities have the opportunity to sort these things out without incentives and without the heavy hand of the state,” he said.
If the two towns part ways, there would be tax consequences. Ted Fisher, a spokesperson for the Agency of Education, said Halifax and Readsboro will lose out on whatever tax breaks the unified district was set to continue receiving for merging under Act 46. Sumner said the two towns only had one year of tax incentives left anyway – for a two-cent reduction.
Both schools also receive small schools grants, which were guaranteed in perpetuity to districts who merged under the consolidation law. If Halifax and Readsboro split, their individual districts will need to apply for those grants on an annual basis and meet the state’s criteria for academic performance and cost-efficiency.
But for Sumner, at least, that’s not a concern.
“I’m not worried about Halifax’s education not being up to par,” he said.
