South Royalton
“When you’re already talking about the state coming in and taking control, and now we’re talking about our budget being voted on by three towns, it already feels like we’ve lost control,” said Jeff Barcelow, one of about 35 area residents who came to a community meeting hosted by members of a study committee that helped to draft the plan as a means to comply with Act 46, Vermont’s education reform law.
Supporters of the plan, like Laurie Smith, who worked on a committee to build a blueprint reimagining the middle school, said the new plan is needed to meet Act 46’s standards of providing an education that is equitable, efficient and of a high quality.
“Right now, in South Royalton, we are not meeting those goals,” she said. “At the end of the day, the question we’re voting on is, do we want to improve our schools? It’s fantastic that we have school pride, but we also need to look at our limitations and the way that we’re not serving the kids.”
Under the proposed plan, the school districts in Bethel, Rochester and Royalton would merge to form the Pre-K through 12 White River Unified School District, which would operate under a single budget and a single school board with elected members from each of the three towns. Each of the three towns will continue to operate Pre-K through 5 elementary schools, grades 6-8 would attend a middle school in Bethel, and high school students would go to Royalton. Rochester’s high school would be repurposed as an experiential learning program, providing hands-on teaching experiences to students throughout the district.
An information packet distributed at the meeting showed that combining the curricula of the schools would allow for a much more diverse slate of classes — Rochester students would be able to take AP chemistry and French, Royalton kids could take Biomedical Innovation in Medical Interventions or Introduction to Art History, and Bethel students could take AP Art History, or an Introduction to Engineering Design class, among many other expanded opportunities for each student.
Geo Honigford, a member of the South Royalton School Board, said he would support the merger plan, even if the districts weren’t feeling pressure from the state to merge, or risk being placed into mandated mergers, with fewer financial incentives, in 2018.
“This is my 12th year on the board,” Honigford said. “Over 12 years, we have steadily eroded the programs at the high school. … The only chance I see of us increasing our programming here in Royalton is doing this. … If we stay as we are, we won’t increase programming. We’re going to probably keep eroding them.”
Honigford said that, if Royalton’s school district is forced to tighten its belt any further, the next likely savings would be from trimming AP classes.
“If we have a budget cut, that’s where we’re going,” he said.
Of those who voiced concerns about the plan, the loss of local control cited by Barcelow was one common theme. Others, like Bethel resident Andrea Taylor, expressed concerns about the fiscal impact of the merger plan, and about whether enough details had been gathered in time for April 11, when three mergers affecting seven districts will go before voters throughout the White River Valley Supervisory Union.
“This all seems rushed,” Taylor said at one point in the meeting.
After the meeting, Taylor said she appreciated the work of the study committee, but she still didn’t know which way she would vote.
“I worry because there’s a lot of unanswered questions,” she said.
And Dorothy Rikert, of Royalton, sounded similar themes.
“I’m really concerned about voting for this and giving up something that we have. It may not be perfect. There may be serious flaws in it,” Rikert said. “But it is something that has been working. … I also don’t want to throw away something prematurely to glom onto something that I don’t think we have all the answers to yet.”
Under the plan, the unified district as a whole would save money, but applying state education funding formulas would result in a tax rate increase in Royalton over the next several years, even as Bethel and Rochester would see their rate go down, according to the information packet. However, the most costly alternative for Rochester and Royalton would be allowing the state to impose a plan on the school districts, because districts that don’t come up with proactive merger plans lost certain state incentives.
An estimated six full-time positions would be cut under the plan.
Under the other plans coming to vote on April 11, Chelsea would merge with Tunbridge to form the First Branch Unified School District, educating students from Pre-K through 8. Instead of attending high school in Chelsea, as they currently do, students in grades 9-12 would get school choice.
Honigford said that, though the current budget projections for the White River Unified School District don’t include revenues from tuition students, he expected that the Royalton High School would get the “lion’s share” of those 40 students.
The third merger would see Granville and Hancock form the Pre- K through 12 non-operating Granville-Hancock Unified School District.
Meanwhile, Sharon, Strafford and Stockbridge would seek state approval to fit into the White River Valley Supervisory Union as part of a yet-to-be-defined alternative structure.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.