Voters in Brookline, Jamaica, Newfane, Townshend, and Windham will still get to decide whether to establish a single, unified school district for all their students, but state officials sent the committee developing the proposal back to the drawing board on an article informing how the district is established.
A special vote in those towns on a “Windham Central Education District” has been warned for an Australian ballot Tuesday, Oct. 8.
If approved as written, the district would replace seven school boards with one newly minted 11-member board charged with the educational welfare of all pre-K through 12th-grade students in all five towns.
However, on Sept. 12 in Jamaica, the Voluntary Regional Education District Study Committee, which has been developing the proposal, needed to contend with the state secretary of education's recommendation to rethink the measure's one-vote/one-town provision.
At that meeting, members agreed to review the recommendation and to produce wording in a new draft that the State Board of Education would approve.
The committee also agreed to continue with the first of three public information meetings on the proposed WCED, held Sept. 17 in Windham.
“Further plans would be discussed later pending SBE rulings,” read draft minutes of the committee's Sept. 12 meeting.
There are seven conditions and agreements listed, covering grades; composition of the new school district; the new board's voting method; assumption of debt and ownership of property; the requirement for unanimity among towns in creating the unified district; and a direction that the provisions of the final report of the RED Study Committee, as approved by the State Board of Education on Aug. 20, be made to govern the new district.
A second article calls for the election of one school director for a three-year term, one school director for a two-year term, and two school directors, each with a one-year term, to serve on the proposed Unified Union School Board of Directors.
Attached articles of agreement discuss responsibility for transportation, union contracts, curriculum alignment, transfer of resources to the WCED, transfer of real property, composition of the school board, board member terms, budget development, school choice and assignments, and local participation in policy and budget development.
RED Study Committee members are Emily Long, Newfane, chairperson; Bruce Parliman, Jamaica; April Chase, Townshend; Heather Hallenbeck, Jamaica; Joe Winrich, Townshend; Cory Stark, Newfane; Antje Ruppert, Windham; Neil Pelsue, Newfane; LeeAnne Parker, Brookline; and Ken McFadden, Newfane.
Under the measure, the school districts of Brookline, Jamaica, Newfane, and Townshend are necessary to the establishment of the WCED.
“Without all four towns joining the WCED, no Unified Union School District will be formed and the current governance structures will remain in place,” the report reads.
The Windham School District is an “advisable” district.
Back to the drawing board
The state education board had approved the committee's initial recommendations, which it had released in a warning to voters, but the attorney general's office bounced back Article 12, which deals with voting methods.
The article read, “Any member of the WCED Board may call for a decision to be determined by a two-vote method. One vote will be the usual decision making method with each board member having a single vote. In the second method there will be one vote for each town. The Board will develop procedures for determining town votes when there is more than one representative from a town, the result of a tie vote, and any other procedure needed to implement the two-vote method. Unless both votes are affirmative, the motion fails.”
The AG's office recommends instead a single, super-majority vote.
Voter turnout sought
At a recent meeting of the Newfane Selectboard, board member Gloria Cristelli urged all voters take the time to read and understand the proposal.
“Last year, when we did just the Leland & Gray budget, out of the Town of Newfane we had just 64 voters out of 1,200 and some-odd. And that was for a $6 million budget, of which we were 21 percent or something like that,” she told the board.
“Almost 80 percent or so of our tax dollars goes to schools. People need to turn out for this,” she said.