Royalton
Royalton voters, who rejected a school district merger with Bethel and Rochester on April 11, will take a second vote on June 13 on whether they should merge with the other two towns to form the pre-K-through-12 White River Unified School District.
Under the plan, students in sixth through eighth grades from Rochester, Bethel and Royalton would attend a middle school in Bethel, while high schoolers would come to Royalton, and Rochester would operate an experiential learning center.
During a meeting of an Act 46 Study Committee on Thursday, Royalton resident Shannon Morrill-Cornelius announced that she had purchased more than 100 copies of the weekly paper that day.
“The one thing I did today is I went to South Royalton and I got every copy of the Herald that I could find, 120 copies. They’re in my car,” she said, according to an audio file of the meeting.
Her announcement was met with applause and laughter from those in attendance.
The paper, which was published that day, lists a newstand price of “One Dollar (And Worth Every Penny)” and also is distributed to subscribers in the White River Valley.
Messages left for Morrill-Cornelius on Monday were not returned. She made the statement amid a discussion in which study committee members expressed consternation about a letter to the editor from consolidation opponent Tim Murphy, a former chairman of the Royalton School Board.
Murhpy’s letter, titled “New Approach Needed on Schools,” listed several reasons that the community should pursue options other than the merger, but Morrill-Cornelius and others took particular issue with a paragraph in which Murphy wrote that “Model 1 includes building a brand-new school campus. At current square foot construction costs, this exceeds $30 million dollars.”
In fact, Model 1, the school merger plan that is under consideration, does not include plans to build a new school, though it does provide for the exploration of the idea at a later date, school officials said.
The articles of agreement for the plan, which were the apparent basis of Murphy’s statement, reads that “No new facilities will be required to create and operate the Unified District. However, the Unified District is committed to addressing issues of more equal geographic access for students … (W)hen the State resumes school construction aid, the Unified District will fully explore the possibility of constructing a new high school in a more central location.”
In an interview Monday, Christine Hudson, chairwoman of the Roylaton School Board, said Murphy’s assertion that a new campus would be required was inaccurate.
“There’s no plans to build a new school,” she said.
Should the district ever get to the point of recommending the construction of a new school, she said, it would require a series of public meetings, and a district-wide vote.
The Royalton revote has the potential to affect the mergers of several other towns in the White River Valley Supervisory Union. Under a broader consolidation plan, Chelsea and Tunbridge would merge into the pre-K through 8 First Branch Unified School District; and Granville and Hancock would merge into the non-operating Granville-Hancock Unified School District.
The Tunbridge and Chelsea merger, if voters approve, would likely see a shared middle school in the two towns, and school choice for high school.
Royalton is not the only town that’s scheduled a revote — in Rochester, the School Board has set a date of Tuesday, June 20, for a revote in that town, while in Tunbridge, the School Board set a date of Thursday, June 29.
While a no vote in either Rochester or Royalton would defeat the entire consolidation plan, a no vote in Tunbridge would only affect the Tunbridge-Chelsea merger.
The school consolidation plans were crafted as a way for districts to comply with Act 46, an education reform law that set new standards of quality, efficiency and equitability for districts across the state.
Districts that don’t present voter-approved merger plans to the state by November will miss out on state financial incentives, and will also subject themselves to a review by the State Board of Education, which could impose a merger from above.
Hudson said she was trying to stay positive, and that issues like the mass newspaper purchase, and the statement about the new school, served as dangerous distractions from the real issues.
Hudson said she supports the merger plan as the best option for the Royalton community.
“I look at our green and our co-op and the deli, and I look at our town and I think to myself, we have a great community,” she said. “Think of the community without a high school. And then think of our community with a high school that’s so great we’re getting students from Bethel and Rochester and other sending towns.”
On the mass newspaper purchase, Hudson said she was personally affected when she went to a local retailer to buy a copy only to learn it had been sold out. She stopped short of condemning the act.
“I don’t have any opinion on it,” she said. “I try not to judge people on either side.”
Others attacked the mass purchase as an attack on free speech that damaged the many people in the community who rely on the weekly paper as a means of communication.
Kathi Terami said that on Saturday, she was working the counter at her husband’s business, the Tunbridge General Store on Route 110, when customers began to tell her they had come in to get the Herald, which had sold out at locations in Royalton, including RB’s Deli, Welch’s True Value Hardware and the South Royalton Market.
“I heard customer after customer say all the newspapers in town were gone,” she said. “We were hearing a lot of comments about why they needed the paper and what they missed. It was all day, hearing this.”
Terami posted a scathing message on Facebook condemning the act.
“I just felt like it was hampering free speech,” she said. “She was trying to prevent someone from reading someone’s letter to the editor, which didn’t feel right. I felt like any week, this would be bad, but this was graduation week, and there were Memorial Day events. I saw schools with car wash fundraisers advertised, that this was the main way for the community to learn about the fundraiser.”
Terami said she is against the school consolidation merger for Chelsea and Tunbridge.
“I felt like it was too rushed and they needed to look at more options,” she said. She said she felt the study committee hadn’t done a good job of soliciting public input, or of adapting the merger plan to reflect the public input they did receive.
Tim Calabro, publisher of the Herald, said that when the newspaper received a call from RB’s Deli about the instant sellout, it was able to replenish the newspapers later that day. Other stores in Royalton did not request additional copies, he said, and so he was unsure of the full extent of the mass purchase.
“It’s a new one on me,” Calabro said. “It’s nice to sell papers, obviously. But you kind of wish that they go in front of readers instead of going into the trash bin. That’s why we do this, to spread the news.”
Calabro said the Herald, like most newspapers, generally considers the letters to the editor section as a forum for unrestricted community engagement.
“It’s the people’s space in the paper,” he said. “It’s there for them to air their opinions about important issues. We do as little as possible to censor those opinions.”
Calabro said that he will likely touch upon the topic in a forthcoming Herald editorial.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.