A southwestern Vermont school district has voted to close two small elementary schools, after more than a year of debate.
The Taconic and Green Regional School District voted 11-2 to close Currier Memorial School in Danby and Sunderland Elementary School in Sunderland during a school board meeting Tuesday night.
The board needed at least 10 votes, or 75% of its members, in favor of the closures, as agreed to in the district’s Act 46 merger.
Both schools will close on June 30.
“None of us are doing this with a light heart,” school board Chair Melanie Virgilio said after the vote. “This is hard. I don’t know how best to appropriately apologize, or say that we’re excited. There’s just a lot of emotions around this, and I think the 'yeas' represent those of us on the board who think this will really be providing the best next steps for our kids and our communities.”
The vote on Tuesday followed a long process of community meetings and studies.
Last week residents in the three towns that send children to the schools rejected the plan, in a non-binding vote that was held in Sunderland, Danby and Mt. Tabor.
At a meeting in Sunderland last year, the Bennington Banner reported that parents were concerned with longer drive times, especially for younger students, as well as the loss of community in the small town.
There are approximately 100 students at both Currier Memorial and Sunderland Elementary, and those students are expected to go to The Dorset School in September.
The vote in the Taconic and Green district, which is a part of the larger Bennington-Rutland Supervisory Union, was held as the state moves ahead with an education overhaul under the Act 73 legislation passed last year.
Both Sunderland and Currier Memorial have student counts that fall below the thresholds laid out in Act 73, and supporters of the closures said it made sense to close the schools before the state forced them to close them anyway.
Both buildings are also in need of maintenance, and the board said students would benefit from moving to the larger school in Dorset.
Closing the schools would save about $1 million each annually, according to information on the school district website.
The Taconic and Green board said they needed to make a decision so that they could prepare a budget for next year, which the towns will vote on during Town Meeting in March.
Putting off a decision, they said, would only make it harder for children, families and staff at the schools in the district to prepare for next year.
The Bennington-Rutland Supervisory Union is also in the process of planning a bond vote on a new regional middle school, with a vote possibly happening as early as next year.
