Alburgh’s school board is taking steps to distance itself from the Grand Isle Supervisory Union after members previously voted no confidence in the supervisory union’s superintendent, furthering tensions between the two bodies as the new school year gets underway.
Meanwhile, Superintendent Michael Clark said last week that he plans to resign at the end of the 2023-24 school year, chalking up his decision — at least in part — to a simmering dispute with the Alburgh board over special education services.
Alburgh School Board members have said that, during the previous school year, about a dozen Alburgh students were not receiving special education services and had not even been assigned to special educators. Board members have said they fear the lack of services has prevented the school from meeting special education regulations.
But Clark has disputed parts of that account, saying the issue came down to a special educator taking a leave of absence partway through the year, and a widespread staffing shortage that has made it extremely difficult to hire special educators.
He and several supervisory union board members have also said that Alburgh’s board has made an insufficient effort to address the special education shortages.
The Grand Isle Supervisory Union oversees the Alburgh school district and provides key services, including data and financial management, school meals and special education. Along with the Alburgh district, the supervisory union includes the South Hero School District and the Champlain Islands Unified Union School District.
The Alburgh board oversees the Alburgh Community Education Center, a roughly 200-student pre-K-8 school.
At a special meeting Monday night, Alburgh board members voted to adopt a policy that all communications sent to Alburgh students, staff and parents “be printed or electronically sent on our school district letterhead” and “not contain any mention” of the supervisory union.
Michael Savage, the Alburgh School Board chair, acknowledged in an interview on Wednesday that the move “may seem trivial” but said the board thinks it’s important to highlight the local district’s own identity as it’s considering leaving the supervisory union entirely.
The board also voted to apply more scrutiny to contracts for Alburgh school employees, which Savage said would help ensure the district was hiring the most qualified staff.
“We answer to the taxpayers of Alburgh — and, you know, our concern and our job is to take care of the staff and students of Alburgh,” Savage said in an interview.
Alburgh board members also pointed to letters the board received from three Alburgh Community Education Center teachers, who wrote that they did not think students requiring special education services were fully supported by the supervisory union last school year.
“While some of our frustrations stemmed from a staffing shortage, many of our issues were a result of a lack of communication, clarity and follow up,” wrote Meghan Mello, a math teacher, in a letter dated Aug. 4.
Monday’s meeting was at times contentious, as Sylvia Jensen, a Grand Isle Supervisory Union board member from Isle La Motte, said during public comment that Alburgh board members had failed to communicate their school’s needs to the supervisory union and questioned their decision to vote no-confidence in Clark and another top official.
Clark submitted his resignation letter to the supervisory union’s board ahead of its Aug. 22 meeting. The letter did not mention the disagreement with the Alburgh board, but in comments to board members, he said that after Alburgh’s no-confidence vote he did not feel comfortable leading the entire supervisory union community. He said he wanted to give the board significant advance notice so that it had time to find his replacement.
“It’s been a challenging summer,” Clark said at last week’s meeting, speaking about the vote. “If we continue on the path that we’re on, it’s not good for our students, it’s not good for our faculty, it’s not good for our staff and it’s not good for our communities.”
The board unanimously approved Clark’s resignation on Aug. 22, with at least one member saying he was doing so reluctantly.
At that meeting, Clark and supervisory union board members also expressed concerns that the Alburgh board had, over two meetings this summer, delayed paying its local share of the supervisory union’s budget for the second half of 2023.
Worried that nonpayment could endanger services rendered to other schools in the county, the supervisory union board approved a motion stating that, if Alburgh’s board did not pay its roughly $582,000 assessment for supervisory union services by the end of August, the supervisory union would begin prioritizing “services to those districts that paid for those services, even where it may leave member districts without services.”
The Alburgh board voted Monday night to pay the assessment, and members disputed the characterization that they were not planning to do so. Savage said the board was instead waiting to act until it received more information from the supervisory union about how its local payments were being used at the countywide level.
Clark said on Aug. 22 that he provided Stacey Gould, the Alburgh board’s vice chair, with a full accounting of the supervisory union’s finances. In a message to Gould dated Aug. 14, Clark wrote that “the idea that somehow there are students in Alburgh who have not received services is inaccurate.”
“Students have received the services identified in their (individualized education programs),” Clark wrote. “In the case of the services that were to be delivered to students by a special educator who left their position at the end of April, all families have been offered compensatory services.”
Savage said on Wednesday — which was the first day of school — that the Alburgh Community Education Center now has a replacement special educator on hand, and there should not be any immediate gaps in special education services.
But he said the Alburgh board members believe they would have access to more special education resources for students if they were part of a different — and perhaps larger — supervisory union, so members are forming a committee to study what it would take to leave the Grand Isle County district.
He said the board has not engaged with any other supervisory unions yet but did not see a path forward under the current structure.
“Right now, I think you’ve got a better chance of finding a unicorn than improving this relationship,” Savage said.
