DUMMERSTON — Wow! So many news articles recently, all slanted by administration and top state officials. There are a lot of other views to this school merging issue, but unfortunately citizens do not have the same clout.
There are so many issues with these articles that I can't begin to address them all, so I will try to address some important ones.
1. Stephan Morse is the cheerleader for merger and, as chair of the education board, is deaf to other views. His comments that merger is a huge success are way overstated.
Yes, many districts have merged. Most have been talking for many years and now have taken advantage of promised state money (our tax money). Most of these districts are in larger areas where it is no big deal to merge.
Many more districts have voted “no,” disbanded their study committees, or not even formed a study committee. These districts are in areas where merging generally doesn't make educational or economic sense to their residents.
Additionally, those that have merged are not seeing the savings promised. They don't tell you that.
2. There is no exit strategy if we merge. Once in, it is next to impossible to leave. The process is onerous, as we have seen in the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union.
It remains to be seen if other towns will vote to let Vernon leave to preserve that town's school choice. It also remains to be seen what financial effect Vernon's leaving will have on the rest of us.
We should look to Maine, where voters enacted school consolidation legislation in 2007. Many towns there are now in the process of trying to unmerge. One of the big problems in Maine is that towns no longer own their schools. The schools were turned over to the larger district - the same as ours will be if we merge.
3. We are told that merging will “simplify governance.” Yes, we will have one school board of nine members, heavily weighted to the interests of Brattleboro. These nine members will supposedly be operating eight or nine schools that now take almost 30 school board members to run.
These nine members will only be yes people to a larger administration. If the state really wanted to simplify governance, Act 46 would have called for combining Superintendents. That is where the big money is, not local school boards.
Actually, that was the original plan, but the superintendents' lobby is very strong, and the legislature chose merging districts instead.
4. We are being promised things that we either already have or could easily have now if we as a group work together. We do not need to merge. For example, schools have been sharing teachers for years. We share common curriculum already.
5. I find it disheartening that one of these articles only quotes one Dummerston resident at the meeting where 40 residents attended and more than half of them had comments and concerns. On top of it, I do not believe that the reporter was even in attendance.
6. Two really big issues in the proposed articles of agreement are board makeup and closing of schools or relocating grades to operate. The board makeup is heavily weighted to Brattleboro as the town with the most students in the district.
Two proposals deal with board makeup. One is proportional where Brattleboro would get six members and the small towns one each. With this model, each town would vote for its own board members.
The other model is the hybrid model. Brattleboro would get three members with smaller towns getting one each. Three more at-large members could conceivably be from any town but would likely be from Brattleboro, which has the majority of voters.
All nine board members would be voted on by everyone, and the votes would be commingled and then counted. Towns would not know how their town voted and once again Brattleboro would control who got elected.
As to closing of schools, the articles say that the super board could close a school. Towns would not have a vote. Schools would not be closed for five years, but we would not have any say after that five-year period. This is a huge concern. As the articles stand now, a town would also not have any control over which grades would be operated in their school.
The super board could decide that Brattleboro Middle School is losing too many students so it would require, over wishes of local voters, Putney and Dummerston to send their seventh and eighth graders to Brattleboro Area Middle School.
I would strongly encourage everyone to watch the study committee videos on BCTV and get educated as to all of the ramifications of these school merger plans. There can be other options, and a group of area citizens is working on them. Many other areas in the state are doing the same.
If enough of us come up with a plan that works better for us than this heavy-handed, top-down plan by the Legislature and unelected state board officials, I firmly believe we can still retain control over our local good schools.