READSBORO — In five weeks, town residents will vote on whether to keep Readsboro Central School open or to begin sending their pre-K to 6th-grade students elsewhere.
The Readsboro school board scheduled a special election May 17 after receiving a petition last week to close the town’s lone school by June 30. The school currently educates 39 students spread across eight grade levels.
The petition was signed by 39 of the roughly 600 voters of the southwestern Vermont town — including parents who question the quality of the primary education and services the school is providing. The town sits on the Massachusetts border, just west of Whitingham.
Some petitioners emphasize the fact that two teachers are currently handling three grade levels in one classroom, up from the norm of two grades per room at Readsboro Central. Others cite multiple staff positions that have not been filled, such as librarian and guidance counselor.
“These are all issues a functioning school shouldn’t be dealing with,” said signatory Christie Kaiser, whose son is in first grade in Readsboro. “I have two more kids that have to go through this school system.”
Kaitlynn Boyd’s son attended fifth grade at Readsboro Central until she decided to start homeschooling him last month, believing the school wasn’t preparing him well for middle school. Boyd, who submitted the petition at a school board meeting April 4, said she’d raised her concerns with the school board and school administrators, but didn’t see any improvements.
“Things weren’t changing,” according to Boyd, who said she did some substitute teaching at the school last year. “I want the kids to be learning stuff to move on to bigger grades.”
The school board and the school administrators want to keep Readsboro Central open, and say it’s a safe, stable educational institution.
“Our students are happy, learning, and thriving here,” Principal Robyn Oyer said in an email. “Stability is exactly what students need.”
The three members of the Readsboro school board — Helyn Strom-Henriksen, Cindy Florence and James Irace — didn’t respond to interview requests. Oyer said the board “asked me to respond, and they agree with the responses.”
During a school board meeting Tuesday that focused on the petition, Oyer announced that Readsboro Central had just hired a new classroom teacher for the next school year, allowing the school to revert to two grades per classroom.
As for how the school’s graduates are faring, Oyer told VTDigger that many of them are on the honor rolls of their current schools.
“The feedback we have received from the schools points to the fact that we are properly preparing students socially, emotionally and academically to move forward and do well in other area schools,” she said in the email.
The principal acknowledged that, since 2019, the school’s math and early literacy programs have been part of an improvement plan overseen by the Vermont Agency of Education, which runs through this school year. Oyer said it’s not known whether the improvement plan will be lifted, since the state agency has not released recent test scores.
Tim and Annelise Stys, owners of the Readsboro General Store, oppose calls to close the school. The couple and four others who work at the store have children of varying ages who attend Readsboro Central, and Tim Stys said the students are all “doing well.”
Losing Readsboro Central School would put the town on a downward trajectory, he said, since the school could attract young families to move to town. His own family relocated to Readsboro from the New York City suburbs at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tim Stys said a school closure would also have a detrimental effect on local businesses and lead to population loss.
“If you look across the country, in a rural community, if you shut down a school, the trends tend to be that there’s a population exodus,” he said. “Also, trends tend to be that businesses close.”
In a letter to the editor sent to a local weekly newspaper, the Styses and 17 other signatories said that sending local children to other school districts, if Readsboro Central closed, would also remove some stability and community support from their young lives.
The way to resolve any issues with the school is for stakeholders to have a conversation, Stys said, rather than the “nuclear option” of shutting down the school.
Some people who signed the petition admitted they don’t expect it to succeed in closing the school, but said the effort has shined a light on problems in the school district, including a need for greater transparency from officials.
That opinion is even shared by the person who wrote the petition.
“In my personal opinion, it’s got no chance in hell of flying,” Larry Hopkins, a former Readsboro school board member, said of the document he drafted and signed. “But it’s going to make people aware of what’s going on over there and maybe make somebody a little self-conscious that people are watching us here and we’ve got to start improving.”
Hopkins declined to say who came to him with the idea for the petition. He said he hopes the discussions about whether to close Readsboro Central at the end of this school year would make residents take a hard look at what’s in the best interest of their children’s education, as Hopkins wrote in a letter to the editor distributed to a couple of news outlets.
Hopkins described Readsboro as politically dormant but, because of the petition, the town now has more community activity than it’s had in 20 years. He said Readsboro school district budget meetings usually get only a handful of participants; the school board meeting on Tuesday brought dozens to the nighttime meeting.
Meanwhile, Boyd has removed herself from social media, citing the “backlash” she and her family have experienced since she submitted the petition.
“I get people are upset, but there’s no reason to call people names in a public setting. No reason to scream at somebody or swear,” she said. “The community should be able to discuss this issue in a calm, rational manner.”
When asked, Boyd said she doesn’t regret the steps she took out of a desire to improve local education. “Somebody had to make a change. Somebody had to stand up,” she said, adding the petition wasn’t her idea.
Agency of Education spokesperson Ted Fisher said the decision on closing the school is up to local voters and declined further comment on the petition.
The special election will be held by Australian ballot on May 17, with voting at the Readsboro school auditorium from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
A petition can get on the ballot if it meets certain requirements and is signed by at least 5% of town voters, of which there were 617 in Readsboro as of April 5, said Town Clerk Amber Holland. The 39 signatures on the school-closing petition exceeds the 5% minimum of 30.85 voters.
The vote will be preceded by a public meeting at the school auditorium at 6 p.m. on May 16, where school district leaders plan to answer questions raised by the petition and provide information about Vermont’s school-choice system for towns that don’t have their own schools.