South Royalton
Royalton’s 460-203 “no” vote on April 11 prevented the formation of the White River Unified School District with Rochester and Bethel and also thwarted plans for Chelsea and Tunbridge to merge their school districts into a proposed pre-K through 8 First Branch Unified School District.
Following the Royalton vote, the town’s consolidation supporters successfully petitioned for a revote, scheduled for June 13, which seemed to breathe new life into the prospect of the three-district merger.
However, a group of residents in Tunbridge this week petitioned for a revote on their merger proposal, which would have Tunbridge and Chelsea share middle-school grades while offering school choice for high school.
The original proposal passed in Tunbridge last month on a vote of 151-109 vote, while Chelsea residents also voted to support it, 173-78.
Tunbridge resident Anissa Morrison said some residents supporting the petition are concerned that townspeople would be losing some control over the future of the Tunbridge Central School in a merger. She said via email that the purpose of the petition was twofold.
“The goals of reconsideration are to have the chance for more details about what ‘one middle school program’ would look like and what may be lost if Tunbridge Central School houses just grades K-5,” she said. “A criticism heard from community members when the plan was first presented on January 30th involved the lack of details, and (whether) the combined middle school program have to be housed in one building. The proposed savings (of) $250,000 offered by the merger would be lost if a joint middle school program was not operated.”
Tunbridge Town Clerk Betsy Sponable on Thursday said the petition, submitted on Tuesday, was signed by 72 legal voters, well above the 50-voter threshold required to trigger a revote. The matter will now go to the School Board, but no date has been set.
Meanwhile, consolidation opponents in Rochester, where the April measure passed, 213-178, also have petitioned for a revote of their own, meaning that all three communities would have to approve the consolidation plan before it could take effect.
Rochester Town Clerk Joanne McDonnell said about 95 registered voters signed the petition, more than the 45 needed to trigger a revote. The Rochester Selectboard is meeting on Friday to schedule a revote; because the Rochester revote will need a 30-day public warning period, the earliest it could be scheduled is June 12, one day before the Royalton revote.
Jessica Arsenault, who represented Rochester on the three-district consolidation study committee that crafted the original merger plan, said that, as of right now, she favors a different plan in which Rochester and Bethel merge on their own, without Royalton. School district officials are presenting that alternative plan to the State Board of Education for approval on Tuesday, and hope to bring it to voters in both communities in August or September.
Arsenault said she only reluctantly embraced the original plan, under which students in sixth through eighth grades from all three towns would attend a middle school in Bethel, while high schoolers would come to Royalton, and Rochester would operate an experiential learning center.
Now, Royalton’s rejection has her worried about merging with that town because, she said, some of the plan components that Royalton voters objected to — paying for the experiential learning center, and extra bus routes between the two towns — were the same components that make it acceptable to her and other Rochester voters.
Arsenault, a 1996 Rochester graduate with young children, worries that merging into a single school district could subordinate Rochester to a merged school board that could, over time, scale back on those features.
“We can see what South Royalton wants and it’s not what we want,” she said. “To start a relationship on this kind of note, what is the future going to be like?”
Lisa Floyd, who represents Bethel as chairwoman of the study committee, said she now feels “really conflicted” about whether she favors the original merger plan, or the alternative plan that excludes Royalton.
The original plan, which passed on an overwhelming 320-67 vote in April, had more programming opportunities for the students, she said, but busing problems were problematic. But she said the alternative plan, which would unite the two towns under a school board with three representatives from each community, offers less to students and is less sustainable, but eliminates the transportation problems.
“Both of the plans have advantages, and both of them have challenges,” she said.
In an effort to court continued interest from Rochester and Bethel, consolidation supporters in Royalton have taken symbolic steps to demonstrate their commitment to the original plan, which they hope will gain the favor of Royalton voters on June 13.
During a May 5 meeting, the Royalton School Board asked the five Royalton representatives on the three-town study committee to resign in favor of new members, according to Geo Honigford, who sits on both the study committee and the Royalton School Board.
He said the call for resignations did not involve a formal vote, but a “nodding of heads” from the School Board, and that four of the five study committee members agreed to resign.
The study committee members were the focus of much of the ire of consolidation supporters, because three members — Christine Hudson, Jennifer Stratton and Bridget Barry — voted in favor of the plan in late January, but spoke against it a few days before the April vote. Honigford is the only study committee member who has consistently supported the original consolidation plan, while Tim Murphy is the only member who has consistently spoken against it.
Honigford said the call for resignations is meant to demonstrate to Rochester and Bethel that Royalton’s education officials want to make the partnership work.
Honigford said that four of the five committee members, including himself, agreed to resign.
Murphy said that the School Board did not ask him to resign, but asked him whether he intended to resign.
He said he intended to stay on the committee, in part because he has gained expertise in the nuances of the proposals that he says will be valuable to the committee, should it need to craft a new plan for Royalton.
“The School Board, other than Geo, didn’t question it,” Murphy said.
On Tuesday, the Royalton School Board passed a resolution that rejected the idea that the South Royalton School could continue on in its current configuration.
“The Royalton School Board recognizes that due to the loss of students, the South Royalton School has serious fiscal and academic issues that need to be addressed,” it reads. Another section says that “we will need to merge with another school(s) to increase our student population and provide the opportunities that our students deserve.”
Arsenault said that the measures from Royalton do matter to her, and she is open to switching her allegiance back to the original plan.
“If they can pull it together and they can get this to pass ,and they can prove to us that they are dedicated to the original plan we voted yes on, you may get people coming out and saying yes again,” she said.
Another complicating development has happened at the state level, where lawmakers have extended the deadline for school districts to meet the goals of Act 46, the 2015 education reform law that has driven school districts across the state to consolidate. Under the original law, districts had until July to gain voter approval for merger plans, but last week, the Legislature approved H. 513, which extends that deadline to Nov. 30. Districts that fail to meet the deadline will lose financial merger incentives offered by the state, and also run the risk of being forced into a configuration by the State Board of Education.
Arsenault said she didn’t support the deadline change, because it will leave school districts that take advantage of it with less time to implement their new structures. Under the law, the new districts must be up and running by August 2018, a particularly tight timeline if Rochester’s new structure includes the new experiential learning structure.
“That leaves us very little time to build a brand new school program that needs to open up by mid-August,” she said.
Murphy said the extension will give Royalton a chance to explore other partnerships, including with school districts in Tunbridge and Sharon. Because those districts have different governing structures than Royalton, merging with them would not be legal under Act 46, but Murphy said he expects that the districts could convince the state to make an exception for a merger plan that successfully achieved the goals of Act 46.
“I’m not at all afraid of the future. I’m not afraid of the challenge,” Murphy said. “I think that the entire state is paying attention and this one-size-fits-all (model) is not going to work.”
Other towns in the White River Valley Supervisory Union have approved plans that will not take effect if the original consolidation plan is not approved in Royalton and reaffirmed in Rochester and Tunbridge, because unanimous approval was needed to trigger their adoption.
A reaffirmed no vote in Royalton would invalidate the Chelsea and Tunbridge vote, as well as a Granville and Hancock vote to form the non-operating Granville-Hancock Unified School District.
White River Valley Supervisory Union towns Sharon, Strafford and Stockbridge are seeking state approval for alternative structures that would meet the education and efficiency standards set out in Act 46.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.