Royalton
“I didn’t vote in April,” said Rett Carpenter, 29, who said he and his wife were thinking about future schooling for their unborn child when they decided to vote this time around. “I wasn’t too aware then, and I just assumed it would pass. When it didn’t, I was shocked.”
Carpenter spoke after exiting the polls on Tuesday evening, where a handful of consolidation supporters were gathered to lobby voters and hear the unofficial vote tallies as they were announced by Royalton Town Clerk Karmen Bascom.
The 377-248 outcome gives a major boost to those who favor a plan to meet new state education requirements by merging with school districts in Bethel and Rochester.
The merger proposal now will move on to Rochester, where voters initially approved the measure, 213-178, on April 11, but now are scheduled for their own revote on Tuesday.
If the plan is approved there, the three towns will form the pre-K through 12th grade White River Unified School District in which students in sixth through eighth grades from Rochester, Bethel and Royalton would attend a middle school in Bethel, while high schoolers would come to Royalton, and Rochester would operate an experiential learning center.
The new district would be governed by a single school board with representatives from all three towns, and would operate under a single budget.
William Wuttke, 19, was one of many conflicted voters who came to the polls on Tuesday.
“I tentatively voted yes,” he said. “I’ve heard the argument both ways. My heart wants us to be our own school. But I want it to be sustainable for the long term.”
The merger was proposed after the passage of Act 46, a 2015 education law that requires schools to meet strict standards of accountability, affordability and equitable opportunities for students. Schools that don’t gain voter approval for consolidated districts by Nov. 30 will have to prove that they meet the standards, or be subject to a consolidation plan crafted by the State Board of Education.
The issue became a political hot potato for Royalton School Board members, who found themselves caught between pro-consolidation and anti-consolidation camps in advance of a 460-203 rejection of the proposal on April 11.
The acidic debate included personal attacks spread on social media, neighbors with dueling lawn signs, accusations of the deliberate spreading of misinformation, and, in one case, the mass purchasing of newspapers in an apparent attempt to prevent people from reading a letter to the editor written by an opponent of the merger.
The tension left some voters, like Don Carbino and Rebecca Barcelow, leery of publicly sharing their opinion.
“I don’t want to make anyone angry,” Carbino said.
“The three-month period between votes, that’s been hard on people,” Barcelow said.
Election officials said that Tuesday’s outcome is definitive, and cannot be challenged by another revote. Carbino said that he felt that whichever way the vote went, a definitive answer would allow the town to move forward.
“I think it’s going to be water under the bridge,” he said.
Many voters, including Ian MacKenzie, said that they felt conflicted after hearing arguments from both sides.
A civil engineer who just bought a house in Royalton and has a 9-year-old child in the school district, MacKenzie said his own position has shifted back and forth as he’s heard more information from the two camps. He cast the last ballot of the evening.
“It’s been a crazy weekend,” he said. “This weekend, I was a ‘no.’ The no side, they have good points.”
MacKenzie said one of his main problems with the proposal was the loss of local control, which has been a common theme among merger opponents.
But MacKenzie ultimately voted in favor of the consolidation. He said it came down to having faith that the people who worked to craft the plan had come up with the best possible alternative.
“They’re working toward something that’s going to be better for all the kids,” he said.
One of the plan’s main selling points was the idea that a larger student body would allow for expanded course offerings for students from all three communities.
Rep. David Ainsworth, R-Royalton, who responded to calls for help from consolidation opponents by pushing to extend the Act 46 deadline to November from July, said that now he thinks those opponents can still benefit by staying engaged in the process.
Though the merger proposal lays out the broad strokes of what a consolidated district would look like, there are many details yet to be determined, which he said leaves lots of wiggle room for objections — such as concerns about lengthy busing times — to be addressed.
“Some of those ideas can be worked into this,” Ainsworth said.
Laurie Smith, a consolidation supporter and former member of the Royalton School Board who petitioned for the revote to take place, said that this time around, the pro camp was more organized and made a more active push to reach out to voters.
“There’s been a huge effort put into educating people,” she said. “There have been lots of one-on-one conversations.”
The Bethel-Rochester-Royalton merger is one of three plans being considered by voters in seven towns in the White River Valley Supervisory Union.
During the April 11 vote, Chelsea and Tunbridge initially approved merging into the pre-K through eighth grade First Branch Unified School District, but Tunbridge has scheduled a revote for Thursday, June 29.
Meanwhile, Granville and Hancock have voted to merge into the non-operating Granville-Hancock Unified School District.
But because the governance structures within the supervisory union have to meet certain requirements under Act 46, a no vote in Rochester next week could prevent all three mergers from taking effect.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.