BRADFORD, Vt. — Voters in the Oxbow Unified Union School District towns of Bradford and Newbury will go to the polls on Nov. 24 to consider a new budget proposal and an amendment to the district’s articles of agreement.
Then, on Dec. 29, Newbury residents will go to the polls to weigh in on a request by a group of town residents to withdraw Newbury Elementary School from the district.
These two proposals encapsulate some of the tensions in the district that have made it hard to get a budget approved, leaving Oxbow as the last school district in the state that hasn’t approved spending for the current school year.
“I’m hopeful that people have gotten to the point where they’ve heard us and realize that we really do have to have a budget,” Danielle Corti, chairwoman of the Oxbow district’s board, said in an interview. The district’s schools would face steep cuts, and the district could operate only by borrowing money, which would incur interest costs. “It is really at this point critical,” Corti said.
The budget up for a vote on Nov. 24 calls for spending of just under $16.8 million. That’s nearly $600,000 less than the original proposal from March, and about $500,000 higher than the 2019-20 spending plan. Voters rejected the budget on June 30, then defeated a reduced budget on Sept. 1.
If approved, residential property tax rates are projected to be nearly $1.65 per $100 of property value in Bradford and nearly $1.59 in Newbury.
That represents an increase of about 4.6% in Bradford and about 2% in Newbury.
Most residents pay their education taxes on their primary residences as a share of income, typically between 2.5 and 3%, based on a district’s spending.
“They’re much more reasonable percentage points than how we started,” Corti said.
Much of the additional savings is attributable to the USDA’s decision to fund free meals for students for the rest of the school year.
The Oxbow board had included a universal meals proposal in its budget, but the federal funding not only makes that line item unnecessary, it also provides more money than the district needs for its meals program, so the excess will reduce a deficit in the food service program from last year, Corti said.
Also on the Nov. 24 ballot is a measure that would define more clearly what steps the district would have to take to close one of its schools.
Formed through a forced merger under Act 46, Vermont’s 2015 school consolidation law, the Oxbow district oversees Bradford Elementary School, Newbury Elementary School, Oxbow High School and River Bend Career and Technical Center.
Residents were concerned that the district could close one of the elementary schools or reorganize grades among the schools without a public process. The proposal on the ballot says that “No school building conveyed to the OUUSD shall be closed prior to the academic year 2024-2025.”
More importantly, it makes clear that the district could close a school only after a thorough study of the impact of the closing on a variety of measures — including student experience, travel time and cost — and after holding at least three public forums in the affected communities.
Even then a closing would require a two-thirds vote of the School Board, followed by a special district meeting vote of 60% or more in favor and a subsequent vote of 60% or more in the town in which the school to be closed is located.
A public information hearing about this article is slated for 7 p.m. on Nov. 18, via Zoom.
Corti said she’s concerned that this article might cause confusion among voters and urged them to reach out to board members.
The Dec. 29 vote adds another wrinkle for Newbury voters to consider.
Former Newbury School Board member Marvin Harrison, who helped spur the petition drive to withdraw Newbury Elementary from the Oxbow district, said the group he’s involved with thinks the current district results in insufficient oversight of the schools.
“We really feel like the importance of having separate boards for the separate schools gives a lot more oversight and community connection to the school,” Harrison said in a phone interview.
At first, the Oxbow board had just four members, and it has since been expanded to six. Previously, the Newbury and Bradford elementary schools each had their own boards and Oxbow High School had a board comprising members from Bradford and Newbury. That meant there were 12-14 community members overseeing the schools, he said.
Also, the three separate districts gave Bradford and Newbury residents nine members of the Orange East Supervisory Union Board, where the Oxbow district now has just three.
The supervisory union moved into new offices this year, after many years in cramped quarters, and the added cost didn’t sit well with many people in Newbury and Bradford, Harrison said.
A larger board for the Oxbow district wouldn’t have the same effect as having three separate boards, as the schools once did, Harrison said.
“I think a board of 12 people is pretty cumbersome,” he said.
For comparison, the Dresden School Board has 12 members and the Windsor Central Unified district has 18.
At public meetings before the merger, Newbury residents were strongly opposed to it, Harrison said.
“We have no doubt that the town’s going to support this measure,” he said.
Time is of the essence, he said, as the state Legislature could adopt more stringent requirements for leaving a district now that the towns of Readsboro and Halifax voted to end their union.
If Newbury votes to leave the district, then Bradford would have to hold a similar vote, and the two towns would have to decide how to reconstitute a union high school district, since the current Oxbow district is preK-12.
Corti, who served on the Newbury School Board for nine years before the Oxbow district was formed, said she was initially not in favor of a merger, but having served on the Oxbow board for two years, she sees the benefits of it.
The merger gave Newbury equal representation with Bradford on the board, and the article on the Nov. 24 ballot will make it very clear just how difficult it would be for the district to close Newbury Elementary.
“I think we’ve kind of addressed the biggest issues,” she said.
The larger district is more efficient, and better able to ensure equal access to programs for all students, she said.
Looking at the school district as a single system also offers benefits in monitoring students all the way through graduation.
While taxes have increased for Newbury under the new district, it’s unclear whether residents would have fared better without the merger. No one has asked the supervisory union for such an analysis, said Emilie Knisley, superintendent at Orange East.
It’s likely that “if the merger had not happened, taxes would have gone up more,” Knisley said.
Regardless of the Dec. 29 vote, Harrison said the current district needs an affirmative vote on the current year’s spending.
“I hope that on Nov. 24 they have a budget,” he said.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanso@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
