By JEFF EPSTEIN
[email protected]
WEST WINDSOR, Vt. — With one month to go before the state board of education is scheduled to finalize district and supervisory union alterations under Act 46, several local school communities are alarmed at current or future state proposals to change their governance.
Westminster has been targeted for a merger with other districts, and at least one person there is raising funds to possibly fight the state legally. Meanwhile, the combined Windsor and West Windsor school districts met here Thursday and unanimously approved a resolution to plead with the State Board of Education to not make any changes to the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union.
The resolution was passed because of fears that the state board would consider changing the WSESU to add or subtract member districts when it meets Nov. 14. The alarm was prompted by some language that the state board used about the geographic area, said board chair Elizabeth Burrows.
The planned merger of Windsor and West Windsor was considered by the state board at its Oct. 18 meeting, and the board took no action against the merger. (At Thursday’s meeting, the two boards also unanimously decided to name the merged district “Mount Ascutney School District.”). However, WSESU also includes Hartland and Weathersfield. Although it was decided in the plan that these were to remain single districts within their supervisory union, Burrows found something else in the state’s draft final plan released in June.
In an email to a list of school district personnel yesterday, Burrows wrote:
“Page 161 of this document tentatively puts forth the rationale for not merging Hartland and Weathersfield, under Section 9 of Act 46. Later, however, a footnote appeared to touch on a plan to break apart our supervisory union, sending our newly merged district (Windsor/West Windsor), with Weathersfield, down to Springfield, and Hartland up to Hartford.”
In the email Burrows also quoted from page 188 of the state plan:
“Creating one SU with the Hartford and Hartland Districts as members and another SU with the Springfield, Windsor/West Windsor, and Weathersfield Districts as members.”
“They are going to seriously consider realigning supervisory district lines,” WSESU Superintendent David Baker told the meeting by speakerphone. He said he plans to distribute this resolution to the chairs of the other member school districts on Friday. Those districts are scheduled to meet Monday at the same place, a regular practice known as a “carousel” meeting. Before or after the individual district meetings, the entire supervisory union will meet, and may take its own action on the resolution.
A woman in the audience at Thursday’s meeting asked what the resolution would do. Burrows answered that the resolution was intended as a statement that, “We do not want to be broken up as a supervisory union.”
“They have 15 schools left to announce,” said Burrows. “It would be foolish not to act.”
The plan, assuming the resolution is adopted Monday by WSESU and its other member districts, is to immediately launch a massive letter-writing campaign to the state board of education, for fear such action must occur prior to the critical Nov. 14 meeting.
In Westminster, meanwhile, the school district there is facing a forced merger with Athens and Grafton under the most recent decision by the state board.
A fundraising page at the site GoFundMe was established more than two weeks ago under the name The Alliance of School Board Members, apparently created by David Clark of Westminster. The site’s text includes a statement that the campaign is “to help Vermont school district maintain their independence despite the threat of involuntary merger” and claims to have raised $5,660 from 30 people in 16 days, as of Thursday.
The site text also states that “twenty districts have voted to take legal action should they be forced into mergers that are not a match for them.”
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