Residents of the Washington Central Unified Union School District have voted in favor of a new procedure that would allow the entire district to decide on the fate of individual school closures rather than leaving it up to individual towns.
The vote amended the district’s articles of agreement to allow the district to close a school after a majority vote in favor by both the school board and residents of the district. According to the district homepage, 1,711 residents voted to approve the measure, while 1,365 voted against it.
The vote comes only six months after Worcester and Calais voted to keep their schools open despite concerns from district officials about declining enrollment. In May, however, the district announced a plan to bus fifth and sixth graders from Middlesex to Worcester, while routing pre-K through second grade students in the other direction.
Washington Central’s vote offers one example of how a unified district can overcome town-level opposition to closing schools. It remains to be seen whether other districts in the state follow suit as declining enrollment and statewide education reforms intensify pressure to consolidate.
Diane Nichols-Fleming, chair of the Washington Central school board, said there were no plans to implement a new procedure “right away.”
“There’s so much on our plate right now that has to do with the start of school, the transitions and the reality of our budget season,” she said.
Nichols-Fleming herself started at her position in March, and said she has tried to remain “neutral” on the subject. The district is also currently without a superintendent.
Yet she admitted that the last budget process was “challenging,” and the idea to close Calais Elementary School and Doty Memorial School came out of a desire to avoid the per-pupil spending threshold set by the state. Average enrollment in the district has declined 14% over the past decade, according to Seven Days.
“We’ve said for years how we’re an aging state, and how our population is dwindling,” she said. “We in Washington Central are suddenly feeling it. It’s like all of a sudden Covid and those ripples (from it) suddenly really hit you in the face.”
Each of the schools had fewer than 100 students in the past school year, VTDigger reported in February. District officials previously have cited academic and extracurricular opportunities as a bonus to merging. But parents who opposed the closure said they preferred the small-school feel.
Reflecting on what she’d tell other communities facing their own consolidation conversations in the wake of statewide education reform, Nichols-Fleming said that there needs to be communication in a way that establishes trust.
“Both sides care deeply for their children and care deeply for the education, and the beliefs and the philosophy and the research that they each bring to it are valid — they’re just different,” she said. “And so that’s when you get into those discussions around small versus large and economics versus the abilities.”
This latest decision was “just a start,” she said.
“The work is now really with all of us in our communities moving forward and just finding that common ground,” she said.
