BRADFORD, Vt. — Voters in the Oxbow Unified Union School District have again rejected a proposed budget, putting the district’s schools in straits few other districts have found themselves in: halfway through the school year without a plan for how to fund routine operations.
In Tuesday’s vote, which saw higher turnout than the two previous defeats, residents of Bradford and Newbury, the district’s two towns, rejected the nearly $16.8 million plan by a count of 593-578. The district oversees Bradford Elementary School, Newbury Elementary School, Oxbow High School and River Bend Career and Technical Center.
The third defeat means Oxbow remains the lone school district in Vermont without a budget for the current year. School officials are struggling to understand both why the budget went down and what the next steps are.
“It’s mind-bogglingly disheartening and discouraging,” Danielle Corti, chairwoman of the Oxbow district’s board, said Wednesday. While the 15-vote margin of defeat suggests that the board is making progress in reaching out to voters, she felt that it was clear that the budget had to pass this time around.
The defeated budget was $600,000 lower than the first budget presented to voters in the spring, but it’s still almost $500,000 higher than last year’s spending.
The district sent ballots to every voter, and the absentee voting might have made it easier for people who don’t usually turn out for the district’s meeting to register their disapproval, Corti said. Attendance at two online informational sessions was sparse, she added, and only a few people turned up to some outdoor, in-person events the board held.
“I don’t know how to reach those people,” Corti said of residents who might be reflexively voting against any spending increase.
While the district will eventually hold a fourth vote, in the meantime officials must address whether they can continue to keep the schools open.
Vermont law allows schools to spend up to 87% of the previous year’s budget, and districts have authority to borrow that much. At the same time, the state will provide 25% of what the Education Fund would have provided to the district, and beyond that funding, districts can borrow up to the 87% allowed by the state. This has forced Oxbow to borrow to keep its doors open, said Emilie Knisley, superintendent of Orange East Supervisory Union, which includes the Oxbow district.
The district secured a line of credit that will fund it through January, Knisley said Wednesday. Beyond that, “there’s nothing that guarantees that we’ll be able to borrow,” she said.
In the middle of next week, district officials will sit down and assess the district’s cash flow. If the district can’t get a budget approved and has to make cuts to meet the 87% spending threshold, then it might not be able to staff schools sufficiently to keep them open, given the staffing needed to maintain coronavirus health protocols, Knisley said.
In October, the district had to close Oxbow High School for a week after a staff member tested positive for COVID-19.
“We needed to go remote because we couldn’t staff the building” in a way that provided for student safety, Corti said.
“I will personally not support additional cuts,” Corti said of the proposed budget.
While marginal amounts could be removed from the spending plan, further substantive cuts would affect staffing and programs that would diminish both the quality of education and the safety of the schools.
A second article on the warning won approval on Tuesday, a measure that spells out the process by which the district could close one of its schools.
And on Dec. 29, Newbury voters will go to the polls to decide whether to withdraw Newbury Elementary School from the district, a process separate from what voters approved Tuesday.
Many other Vermont districts struggled to approve budgets this year. First Branch Unified District, which comprises Chelsea and Tunbridge, took three tries, and South Burlington School District also went to a third vote.
But neither of those districts had to face entering a new calendar year without a budget.
Many districts are in the process of assembling budgets for next year, work that will begin in Oxbow in January.
In Vermont districts, “we are all going to be facing a pretty tough budget cycle,” Corti said.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
