Petitions seeking to break up unified school districts have produced mixed results at the ballot box.
Five towns have held special elections in recent weeks on whether to secede from their school districts. Three — Tunbridge, Newbury and Weybridge — decided to stay put. The other two, Ripton and Westminster, voted by wide margins to withdraw from their respective districts.
The result was expected in Westminster, where local school officials have adamantly opposed consolidation. On Jan. 5, townspeople voted 200 to 58 in favor of independence.
The results will now trigger a vote in Athens and Grafton, which, along with Westminster, form the Windham Northeast Union Elementary School District.
“The town had previously voted not to merge, then it was forcibly merged with two other towns that had voted not to merge. And so it’s no surprise it still doesn’t want to merge,” said David Major, a former Westminster school board chair and an organizer of the ballot initiative.
In September, a split between two southern Vermont districts demonstrated that a little-known law could give communities a path to independence, if they could persuade all towns within a merged district to vote to approve secession.
The State Board of Education, worried that this could undo the work of Act 46, has suggested to the Legislature that they revisit the matter.
“Two small towns which had formed a joint school district three years ago under the incentives of Act 46, came to the State Board in 2020 for permission to dissolve their joint district. Under provisions of statute that pre-date Act 46, the Board was obliged to approve the dissolution. Yet this dis-aggregation of school governance appears to be inconsistent with the Legislature’s purposes in Act 46,” State Board members wrote in their annual report to lawmakers.
It’s unknown what appetite lawmakers will have, in the midst of the pandemic, to return to deeply bitter debates around consolidation. But Rep. Kate Webb, D-Shelburne, the House Education Committee chair, said it is precisely the crisis — and the strain and chaos it has imposed on schools — that could spur legislators to act on the matter.
“There’s definitely conversation about it,” Webb said, though no legislative proposals have been floated yet. There is talk of a one-year moratorium on secession from merged school districts, she said. Lawmakers may also consider a requirement that a district seeking a divorce to demonstrate it can meet the goals of Act 46 on its own.
“What we will do, whether we do something or not, I don’t know,” she said.
In Tunbridge, the proposal to break up the two-town First Branch Unified School District failed by just nine votes – 135 voted to leave, 144 to stay. Kathy Galluzzo, the school board chair, said the newly minted union district had a rocky start, including failed budgets and a proposal to close the Tunbridge Central School outright.
The petition to secede, she said, ironically landed at the same time as a merger committee finally put forward a more palatable path forward for the two communities — one in which Tunbridge would educate students in grades K to 4, and Chelsea would serve students in grades 5 to 8.
“I think timing was everything in this situation,” she said.
In Ripton, where a well-organized campaign has been underway for months, the vote Tuesday in favor of secession was resounding: 163 voters cast ballots to secede; 107 chose to stay.
The effort to withdraw from the merged district is part of an attempt to save the town’s school. The Addison Central School District, to which Ripton belongs, is considering closing several elementary schools to cut costs in the face of declining enrollment.
“It’s actually about 100 more people than normally vote in recent years on town meeting,” said Ripton selectboard chair Laurie Cox. “You’d have to say it was a good turnout.”
The nearby Weybridge elementary school, which is also facing closure, will stay in the merged district. Residents there voted 190-109 to remain in Addison Central School District, according to unofficial results reported by the superintendent’s office Tuesday night.
The remaining towns in Addison Central — Shoreham, Cornwall, Middlebury, Bridport, Salisbury and Weybridge — will now each vote on whether to allow Ripton to stand on its own.
It’s likely that geography played a role in the split vote in Addison Central, said Margaret MacLean, a former State Board of Education member who has been a leading organizer of anti-merger campaigns. The Weybridge elementary school is less than 4 miles from downtown Middlebury, where children from the school would likely be educated in the event of a closure. Ripton is more remote.
Other towns, including the Windham Southeast School District, will take up similar votes in the coming months. How many, and whether they can convince their neighbors to let them go, are all open questions. But MacLean expects to see petitions pop up as districts debate how and whether to close schools.
“You’re going to see people use this route to kind of assert their position. Because that’s the only thing open to them,” she said.
