The State Board of Education is finishing up its work on the Act 46 statewide plan, and at a meeting in North Clarendon on Monday, the board debated some of the most complicated merger proposals.The board looked at school districts throughout the state that didn’t fit neatly into merger plans with nearby districts.
In some cases, the board went along with the secretary of education's recommendations to either merge, or not merge — and at other times the board split with the agency's proposed statewide plan.
State Board of Education member John Carroll said districts that are reluctantly merging will need extra support once all of this work is done.
“Some of these districts are going to need some help in order to succeed at accomplishing the mergers that they’re being ordered to implement by the first of July,” Carroll said. “I’m not proposing that we make our votes conditional, but I am advocating that we think about communicating separately to the General Assembly that our actions may create burdens on the communities that need to be addressed.”
The board also considered easing up on some of the deadlines imposed by Act 46, especially for these districts that face extra hurdles.
But State Board of Education member Stacy Weinberger said the Act 46 debate has been going on for a long time. And even though these final decisions are hard, she said it was important to keep it moving forward.
“I think it’s dangerous for us to signal moving the timeline as ... set out in law,” Weinberger said. “The Legislature had a calendar. They had Nov. 30th as a date. They had July 1 as a date, and I would be concerned about signaling that we would be moving around dates when communities are trying to figure out what’s expected and what to do next.”
The State Board of Education members worked their way through most of the proposed statewide plan, and the decisions they made Monday were provisional. They have two more meetings scheduled before the Nov. 30 deadline.
What merger decisions did the State Board of Education make at Monday's meeting?
The secretary of education had made some recommendations for forcing mergers on some districts that have similarly operating districts nearby, and the board supported some of those proposals. The following districts will be forced to merge following the State Board of Education’s provisional votes Monday:
- Enosburg and Richford will merge into a single pre-K-12 district
- Montgomery will merge with the Franklin Northeast pre-K-8 Unified Union School District
- Sheldon will merge with the Franklin Northeast pre-K-8 Unified Union School District.
But in some instances the board rejected a merger proposal even though the secretary recommended one in the state plan. The following districts can remain independent:
- Cabot
- Danville
In some instances, the secretary recommended that districts not merge, but the State Board of Education rejected some of those recommendations and instead voted to merge the following districts:
- The Elmore - Morristown Union District will merge with Stowe district
- Westminster, Athens and Grafton will merge — but Rockingham can remain independent because it has a different operating structure.
- Lakeview, Greensboro pre-K, Hardwick, Stannard’s elementary district and Woodbury
In the statewide plan, the education secretary did recommend that some districts remain independent and the State Board of Education agreed with some of those proposals. The following schools districts will not be forced to merge:
- Craftsbury
- Fairfax, Fletcher and Georgia (even though all are in Franklin West Supervisory Union)
- Hartland and Weathersfield
- Stamford
- Waits River
The Regional Educational Television Network contributed to this report.
