BRADFORD, Vt. — The Oxbow Unified Union School District has approved a budget for next school year, this time on the first try.
It took four votes and a looming funding crisis to get a budget passed for the current year. But for the 2021-22 school year to come, voters approved a budget in Australian ballot voting Tuesday by a count of 243-166.
“I’m so relieved,” Danielle Corti, chair of the Oxbow district’s board, said Wednesday morning. “I’m happy that it passed.”
Turnout could have been better, though it was still higher than when the district held in-person annual meetings, Corti said.
Last year, voters in Bradford and Newbury rejected the proposed Oxbow budget three times. Higher expenses from the Orange East Supervisory Union, which made a long-anticipated move to new, but more costly offices last year, as well as ongoing uncertainty about the Oxbow district itself, which was forced together under Vermont’s Act 46 school consolidation law, contributed to voters’ dissatisfaction with the budget.
But district officials cut spending and put forward more detailed articles of agreement for the district. Additional federal revenue emerged and voters in Newbury, Vt., rejected a proposal to exit the district. Voters finally approved a $16.8 million budget in mid-January, when the district was on the brink of a financial crisis.
The $17.2 million budget approved Tuesday cuts spending in several areas but adds $827,000 in direct instruction, which includes higher health insurance and teacher pay, but also new teachers and equipment across the district, which comprises Bradford Elementary School, Newbury Elementary School, Oxbow High School and River Bend Career and Technical Center.
Also Tuesday, district voters reelected Newbury resident Carol Cottrell to the district’s six-member board, and elected Meagan Ballou, a write-in candidate, from Bradford to replace outgoing board member Melissa Gordon.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
