ORFORD — Voters will be asked later this month to approve a pared-down budget for the Rivendell Interstate School District after an earlier proposal was defeated at the polls.

The School Board voted last week to approve an $11.87 million budget for the coming school year. That amounts to a $585,642, or roughly 5%, increase over the district’s current spending plan.

The budget proposal is about $500,000 less than plans defeated, 484-349, during Australian ballot voting late last month, and calls for cuts in staff, services and supplies.

“I think this is as close to bare bones as we’re going to get it,” Superintendent Barrett Williams said during Friday’s School Board meeting, which was held over teleconferencing software.

Voters in Rivendell’s four towns — Orford, Fairlee, West Fairlee and Vershire — will receive absentee ballots in the mail next week, Williams said Monday.

The new budget also will be open to limited in-person voting June 30 at Rivendell Academy for those who cannot or don’t want to vote by mail, he added in an email.

Rivendell’s re-vote comes nearly three months after officials decided to postpone the district’s annual floor meeting due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Because of safety concerns and restrictions on large gatherings, the traditional meeting was replaced by a combination of absentee and in-person Australian ballot voting that saw the May 26 rejection of the district’s $12.38 million budget proposal.

Officials responded to the defeat last week by offering a series of cuts to placate voters.

Those reductions include $100,000 for four support staffers — two at Rivendell Academy and two at the district’s two elementary schools.

Williams said the elementary school staffers were behavior coaches while one employee at the high school worked with its academic mentoring program. The other high school staffer assisted a special education student, he said.

Officials also cut $37,000 originally budgeted for a new part-time maintenance worker, $40,000 for a high school behavior coach and $40,000 for new books and supplies.

Other reductions were made easier by the coronavirus pandemic, such as elimination of the district’s summer program for $39,000 in savings and cancellation of the after school program for $54,000.

While School Board members largely agreed on many of the cuts, a proposal to adopt multi-age learning at Westshire and Samuel Morey elementary schools became contentious.

The plan, which would see some age groups paired together in larger classrooms, would have saved an additional $160,000, according to Williams. The idea was defeated in a 5-4 vote.

Board member Vanessa DeSimone, who represents Orford, acknowledged the savings but said the change could hurt students possibly returning to school after a difficult year.

“Whether they’re the younger kids or the older, kids in those classrooms will suffer,” she said during a School Board meeting on Wednesday.

DeSimone, who attended elementary school in Orford, went on to recount how she was placed in a multi-age classroom in the second grade.

“It was not successful for me or my classmates in the second grade,” she said. “I’m a product of it. It put me behind for the better part of my elementary school years.”

But board member Jason Knowles, of Fairlee, said multi-age classrooms served him well while growing up in the United Kingdom, saying the teaching model “worked excellently.”

“I’m absolutely open to hearing other alternatives but what we’ve been told is that the budget that we’ve proposed is nowhere near where folks feel comfortable with,” he said. “Unfortunately, that means us having to change how we operate.”

If approved, the new budget would result in an 11.7% increase in Fairlee’s property tax rate, while West Fairlee’s rax rate would grow by 2.2%, and Vershire would see its taxes go up 5.1%. Officials say many many residents are eligible for Vermont’s income sensitivity program, which would soften the blow by capping property taxes by income. The common level of appraisal, a method of ensuring that each town in Vermont is paying its fair share to the state’s Education Fund, is also a major factor in the tax rate increase in Fairlee, they argue.

In Orford, where property taxes are the largest contributor to school funding, the tax rate is set to decrease by nearly 1%.

The school district plans to hold a public information session on the spending plan on June 16. More information will be available on Rivendell’s website, rivendellschool.org.

Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.