Debates about education won’t be contained to school budget votes this Town Meeting Day.
Voters in towns across Vermont are also weighing other questions about the future of their schools.
Three school districts will be voting on March 3 on whether to close their schools.
The towns of Marlboro and Readsboro are both asking voters if they want to close their schools at the end of this school year.
Both schools are small, with about 50 students in Marlboro’s pre-K-8 school.
Readsboro this year has 37 kids enrolled in the pre-K-6 school.
“We’re just trying to be realistic. If we had more students here in town, keeping the school open would be great."Cindy Florence, Readsboro School Board chair
Both schools are also facing steep drops in the number of projected students over the next few years, and both schools have aging buildings that need expensive upgrades.
“We’re just trying to be realistic,” said Readsboro School Board chair Cindy Florence. “If we had more students here in town, keeping the school open would be great. The school is too small, and it’s really hard to have healthy peer interaction.”
Further north in the state, voters in the Addison Central School District will officially decide if the Ripton Elementary School should be closed for good.
More: Ripton Elementary will close its doors this fall, as district mulls future of tiny school
Students from Ripton this school year attended the Salisbury Community School, but the seven-town district must vote to make the closure permanent.
Ripton voters also have a second question about their school: The town is asking for $70,000 to maintain the building if the district votes to close the school.
Similar votes are taking place in four other towns that are trying to figure out what to do with their closed school buildings.
Windham, which closed its school in March 2024, is voting on whether to put $15,000 into a maintenance fund for the shuttered building.
And in Roxbury, which closed its school two years ago, the select board is asking voters for authority to lease out the building.
Peacham is still determined to keep its elementary school open. But voters will weigh in on selling the school building to the town in case it’s closed in the future.
Hartland wants voters to approve $50,000 from its capital reserve fund to “properly demolish” the North Hartland School building, which has been closed for years.
And the town of Starksboro has an advisory vote to begin looking into withdrawing from the Mount Abraham Unified School District, to prevent the district from closing the Robinson Elementary School in Starksboro.
The school was cited as a possible candidate for closure in a study the district did.
Starksboro resident and former school board member Nancy Cornell said a lot of people in Starksboro don’t like that idea.
“The new rules they have created around withdrawal are much more complex,” Cornell said. “And because of that, and in light of the current situation it seemed important to us to at least start to educate ourselves about the process in case we do need to head down that road.”
If the town votes to move ahead, Cornell said a committee will put together a plan with the steps it would take to withdraw from the district, setting up a possible future vote.
More: Act 73 is already changing Vermont's education system
And while there will be a lot of focus on shutting down schools on Town Meeting Day, at least one district will vote on investing in its future.
The Mountain Views School District, which includes the towns of Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading and Woodstock, will vote on a $111 million bond for a new high school and middle school in Woodstock.
These same towns rejected a similar plan last year, but this time the school board is asking for the money only if it receives state aid and other grants to offset the total cost.
