DUMMERSTON — Discussions about Act 46 finally found their match at this year's town meetings.
After attending the one in my hometown of Dummerston, I watched both Putney's and Guilford's on BCTV and saw how the law has created some confusing exchanges over the responsibilities of the Act 46 Study Committee and those of the school boards.
While the conversations may still be lingering with some people, it might be helpful to try and shed some light on what I believe has led to the confusion.
In all three local Town Meetings, there was an article added to the respective warnings asking the school board in each town to achieve the stated goals of Act 46 by exploring the possibility of alternatives to merger: to create more educational opportunities for children and to lower costs for taxpayers.
In fact, the Legislature's larger goal is to reduce the number of school districts in the state.
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The confusion, I think, has resulted from townspeople trying to understand the charges of the two groups.
The study committee's responsibility, from the beginning, was to explore alternative types of mergers: the preferred model, the conventional mergers, the modified unified union districts (MUUDs), the regional education districts (REDs) - all different combinations of ways for districts to merge.
The charge in the article asking the School Board to explore alternatives to merging really was to focus on something called the alternative governance structure (AGS) - which, ironically, is our current form of governance but, in the law, has become the basic alternative to merging.
An AGS is defined as a supervisory union, with member districts containing at least 1,100 students, which is responsible for students in kindergarten through grade 12 and operates to maximize efficiencies. It would require modification in its functioning to meet goals, but it would also allow for the preservation of our local school character.
This option, by statute, falls under the purview of the School Board only, so it is not something that the study committee has the authority to investigate or consider.
At each meeting, I noticed that school board/study committee members from each town commented to voters that they had explored all options. They were talking about merger options - not options for alternatives to merger.
The latter could only come from the school boards working collaboratively in a bottom-up effort to show how the goals could be met without merging.
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From the beginning, many of us have wanted to have a conversation about alternatives.
The alternative governance structure, provided for in the law, has worked very well for our district for many years.
We have not been able to convince the Act 46 Study Committee to consider any such alternative, either through a sub-committee (as was done in some communities) or by inviting members of the public to come up with suggestions and provide an opportunity to have a wider conversation.