The towns of Calais and Worcester both voted by large margins Tuesday to keep their small elementary schools open.
Calais voted 398-249 to continue sending students to the Calais Elementary School, while Worcester voted 212-114 in favor of keeping the Doty Memorial School open.
The Washington Central Unified Union School District board voted 8-5 in December to close both schools, but doing so requires approval from town voters.
“Both of our towns have decided that closure is not their preferred choice,” said Washington Central Unified Union School District Superintendent Steven Dellinger-Pate. “So we’re going to move forward with our current configuration of five elementary schools, and we’re going to continue to work on creating a high quality educational experience for all of our kids.”
Like a lot of districts in Vermont, Washington Central has been contending with a sharp drop in students, along with rising taxes and an ever-increasing list of facility upgrades needed to keep its aging school buildings open.
The board held a series of meetings to discuss closing the two schools, and moving students to district schools in East Montpelier and Middlesex.
By closing the schools, board members argued that the district could better distribute resources among the three remaining buildings. It would also have been able to provide a full-time librarian and school nurse, as well as new programs, such as band and chorus, which would have been too expensive to fund with the five-school model.
"There is a firmly held belief in the local school."Steven Dellinger-Pate, superintendent, Washington Central Unified Union School District
That did not prove enough to tempt residents in Worcester and Calais, who will continue sending students to their own elementary schools.
“There is a firmly held belief in the local school,” Dellinger-Pate said. “People are very interested in making sure they maintain it and programming might not be the No. 1 driver for people’s decisions. If we can offer basic programming, what people think is necessary for our kids, it is more important to those towns that there is a school located within that town.”
Voters in the five towns of Berlin, Calais, East Montpelier, Middlesex and Worcester will vote on the district’s $43.2 million budget on Town Meeting Day.
The budget was put together with the assumption that only three elementary schools would be open next year, Dellinger-Pate said, and the same budget will now have to fund the five elementary schools, along with the district’s middle and high school.
