The budget for Woodstock Elementary School will be presented to voters on the floor during the March 4 Town Meeting, starting at 10 a.m. at Woodstock Town Hall. That meeting will also include a presentation on the proposed school merger. Voting for the Woodstock Union High School budget and the proposed Windsor Central Supervisory Union merger will take place by ballot in each member town on Tuesday, March 7. In Woodstock, voting will take place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Town Hall.
Woodstock
If voters in Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Pomfret, Reading and Woodstock approve of the proposal, the Windsor Central Unified Union School District will be formed under an 18-member school board made up of representatives from all of those towns, plus Plymouth.
If voters in at least four of the six towns approve of the proposal, those towns will form an alternative structure, the Windsor Central Modified Unified Union School District, which would come into existence in July 2018.
The seventh town, Plymouth, is not currently a part of the high school district, but would be included as a founding member of the newly formed district.
The State Board of Education signed off on the proposal on Tuesday, according to Windsor Central Superintendent Alice Worth.
Under the plan, Reading Elementary School and Barnard Academy, which currently serve pre-K through grade 6 students, would instead serve grades pre-K through 4. Students in grades 5 and 6 would go to Woodstock Elementary or Prosper Valley in Pomfret.
The budgets of all of the schools would be merged, and the new School Board would have two representatives each from six towns, plus six Woodstock representatives.
If voters approve the plan, the district will receive tax incentives under Act 46, the education reform law that seeks to address dwindling statewide student populations by shepherding school districts into larger, more cost-effective administrative structures.
School districts that do not merge into larger blocs this year will be subject to a review by the State Board of Education, which could devise and impose its own merger plan, a carrot-and-stick dynamic that has led to at least 10 proposed mergers coming before Town Meeting voters across the state this year.
After roughly two years of debate and planning, many area education officials have thrown their support behind the plan, and administrators — including Worth — have urged passage of the merger, which they say will ease costs and broaden opportunities for students in the district.
The outcome is anything but certain, Worth said.
“We’ve got to get four districts to vote for the modified unified union,” Worth said. “We won’t know until the vote, but through the public forums and the discourse, we see strength in at least three of the communities — Bridgewater, Pomfret and Woodstock.”
Worth said that the other three communities — Barnard, Killington and Reading — are “kind of hard to predict.”
“Other folks are not clear on what advantages will be there for them, and they’re having some challenges with letting go of what they are used to, and what they know,” she said.
School Board members from Reading Elementary School have voiced opposition to the merger in the past, based on concerns about the loss of local control, and the possible closing of Reading Elementary.
Rules governing the new unified school district prevent it from closing any schools for the first four years of its existence.
During Town Meeting, voters also will be asked to approve school district budgets, which have been overshadowed by the merger talks this year. Because the new district would not be formed until summer of 2018, the proposed budgets are based on the current structures.
Under the budget approved by the School Board, the Windsor Central Supervisory Union budget, which includes nearly all of the special education costs for its constituent districts, would increase by 2.6 percent, or about $85,000, from $3.2 million to $3.3 million.
Nearly all of the increase is attributable to special education expenses, according to Richard Seaman, financial director for the supervisory union.
The budget for Woodstock Union High School and Middle School would increase by about $70,000, or 0.6 percent, from $11.6 million to $11.7 million.
“I think it’s a real focus from the board to establish stability there,” said Seaman.
The education portion of the tax rate in the various towns will fluctuate more dramatically, because their share of the budget is based in part on their share of the high school’s equalized pupil count.
In addition, the tax rate in each town is adjusted by the common level of appraisal, a statewide formula designed to adjust local tax rates to ensure equality in property valuations across the state.
In Barnard, the proposed high school budget would result in an education tax rate of 72 cents per $100 of assessed property value, while the elementary school rate would be 76 cents, for a total of $1.48 per $100 of assessed property value. That’s a 15 cent decrease from the current year’s total education tax rate of $1.63. That means that a property owner whose home is valued at $250,000 would see a $375 decrease in his or her education tax bill.
In Bridgewater, the high school budget would result in a rate of $1.14 per $100 of value, and the elementary school budget would result in a rate of 63 cents, for a total of $1.77. That’s an 8 cent increase over the current rate of $1.69, which means a $250,000 home would see a $200 education tax bill increase.
In Pomfret, the tax rate based on the high school budget would be 93 cents per $100, and the rate based on the elementary school would be 62 cents, for a total of $1.56. That’s an 11 cent increase over the current $1.44 rate, which means a $250,000 home would see a $274 tax bill increase.
In Reading, the tax rate based on the high school budget would be 71 cents per $100, and the rate based on the elementary school would be 93 cents, for a total of $1.64. That’s a bit more than an 11 cent decrease from the current $1.76 rate, which means a $250,000 home would see a $283 tax bill decrease.
In Killington, the tax rate based on the high school budget would be 82 cents per $100, and the rate based on the elementary school would be 88 cents, for a total of just over $1.69. That’s a 7 cent increase over the current $1.62 rate, which means a $250,000 home would see a $172 tax bill increase.
In Woodstock, the tax rate based on the high school budget would be 97 cents per $100, and the rate based on the elementary school would be 71 cents, for a total of $1.68. That’s a penny increase over the current $1.67 rate, which means a $250,000 home would see a $24 tax bill increase.
The Woodstock Elementary School budget proposal is up from $3.2 million to $3.5 million, but its impact on the tax rate has actually lessened, by about three-quarters of a cent. Most of the increased spending will go to para-educators for special needs students, said Paige Hiller, chairwoman of the Woodstock Elementary School Board.
“I think that the district has become a leader in special education,” Hiller said. “We’ve seen an influx of people coming into our area with our needs. We’re really proud that we’ve become a destination for families that seek out support for their children.”
She said the increase puts a small added cost on the district, but that the large majority of those costs are offset by compensating revenues from the state, and their towns of origin.
The district also saw an unusually large enrollment of 30 students in its pre-K program in the current year, which has bumped enrollment figures for the upcoming budget.
Hiller said the district had only expected about 10 students to enroll in the program, but that the bumper crop of children was a welcome bucking of a decades-long statewide trend of decline.
“We’re excited to see those numbers growing and not getting smaller,” she said. “Maybe its not a blip. Maybe we’re going to see a couple good years here. It’s fabulous.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.