Calais, Vt., and Worcester, Vt., residents on Tuesday voted against shuttering two community elementary schools in the Washington Central Unified Union School District.
In Worcester, 212 residents voted against shuttering the Doty Memorial School, while 114 approved of plans to close. In neighboring Calais, 398 residents voted against closing the Calais Elementary School, with 249 in favor.
Tuesday’s results marked a rejection of plans to consolidate five schools into three by merging operations at the district’s three pre-K-6 and K-6 schools in Berlin, Vt., East Montpelier, Vt., and Middlesex, Vt.
Washington Central has seen a 14% decline in students over the last decade, a trend officials expect to continue in the coming years. Each of the two schools educates fewer than 100 students, and one school’s kindergarten class had only seven students.
While Act 73, Vermont’s latest education reform law, has not mandated school closures, fears abound that broader district consolidation efforts will inevitably result in small, rural schools closing their doors.
District officials pitched consolidation as a way to expand academic and extracurricular opportunities for the student body. But parents and residents in informational meetings questioned what effect the plan would have on the two small towns.
Andrea Tucker and Anthony Houser, Calais residents with two kids in the town’s elementary school, were among those who voted against closure.
The couple moved to Vermont from Texas specifically for “the small state feel, the small school down the street feel,” Houser said. Closing schools, he said, would be a “momentum killer” for other families with school-age children hoping to move to the small town.
Tucker said she hopes “our state representatives are paying attention to what rural Vermonters are communicating with these recent elections.”
“Our small schools are an asset to invest in and leverage in response to a declining population,” she said.
Flor Diaz Smith, the Washington Central Unified Union School District’s board chair, said in an interview Wednesday that officials “might not have achieved what we hoped for,” but said she was nonetheless “really proud of all the work” that went into it.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, you know, it was tough. It was tough to hear the results yesterday,” she said. “But this was not about winning, this is about a shared future for our kids.”
Tuesday’s special election was closely watched by lawmakers and public education officials. Some argued it served as a temperature check on the ongoing education reform being discussed in the Vermont Statehouse.
Washington Central’s plans mirrored those broader efforts being vetted in the Statehouse. But those plans have stirred anxiety in the state’s more rural communities, where residents argue that shuttering rural schools will further exacerbate demographic decline.
Gov. Phil Scott during his weekly news conference Wednesday said the results out of Calais and Worcester were “somewhat unfortunate” but “not surprising in some respects.”
He noted the low number of kindergarten students at both schools, something he said was “indicative of the future” of the state’s public education system. With consolidated school districts, those decisions would be “much less difficult.”
“Nobody wants to close down their own school,” he said. “Everyone wants to save money. Everyone thinks that we need to consolidate schools. We need to close schools. But they don’t want to close their own, and I think that’s going to be the case throughout the state.”
Student population decline will continue, he said, “so we have to deal with it in some way, and I believe Act 73 has a way to deal with it.”
Lawmakers on Friday reviewed the first concrete proposal put forward this legislative session to consolidate the state’s 119 school districts. State officials meanwhile are working on guidelines to distinguish between schools considered small or spare by necessity, and schools that are small by choice.
Washington Central’s superintendent, Steven Dellinger-Pate, in an interview said the results showed how “intimately tied” small schools are to their local communities.
“A small town and a small school are — they’re very special to each other,” he said. “And so when we start talking about declining enrollments or changing demographics, or creating more robust school environments, I think our definitions can certainly differ at times.”
While disappointed in the results, Diaz Smith said they “showcase how difficult it is to make these decisions at the local level, and at the same time how important that local voice is.”
Now, with Town Meeting Day just weeks away, Dellinger-Pate said the district’s total budget amount remains the same at about $43 million. But officials will have to tinker their expenditures to spread resources across the five schools.
Plans to have full-time nurses and librarians at schools will have to be cut, and current employees will have to split time among the five schools, Dellinger-Pate said.
The district will also have to merge grades at certain schools, and will look for savings in food service and transportation programs, he said.
“We now have to be resourceful and resilient,” Diaz Smith said. “We have a fixed amount of money. It’s the same budget that we’re going to have to spread a little thinner.”
This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.