A school in Newfane is fighting to keep its yurts, which the local Act 250 commission wants removed. Now a legal battle is brewing between Vermont’s landmark land use law and the ability of a small independent school to survive.
“Those two yurts that we’re talking about represent 12 to 14 kids and two full classrooms. And so as we see it now, on that campus, removing those yurts would be pretty devastating,” said Drew Gradinger, director of Kindle Farm School. “It would remove half of our high school and 25 percent of our total census from both campuses. So that’s something we’re quite concerned about.”
Kindle Farm School has been around since 1994. Along with academics, the school focuses on the emotional and social needs of its students, as well as farming, logging and other vocational programs.
A yurt is a traditional Mongolian, semi-permanent, tent-like structure. It's round, made of canvas, and it can be an inexpensive way of creating a warm indoor space. Gradinger says the yurts provide a peaceful space for the students to learn in.
While there have been a few changes in management through the years, a former director did receive an Act 250 permit in 2006 for one of the school's yurts.
But that permit was only supposed to last three years. And without knowing that they needed another Act 250 permit, the school also put up a second yurt.
Gradinger says he knows the school messed up, and he understands that the yurts need to have an Act 250 permit — but having to remove them before there’s any plan on where the school’s students would end up doesn’t make sense to Gradinger.
“When this ruling came down it was pretty shocking,” Gradinger said. “Act 250’s trying to preserve our agricultural landscape, our forested landscape — and here we are, the Kindle Farm School, who is doing just that. So to get a ruling from Act 250 that would really chop us at the ankles of being able to provide those services for these students, really seemed antithetical to the mission of Act 250 itself.”
The local environmental commission ruled in November that the original permit only allowed the yurts to stand for three years and that they have to come down.
The National Resources Board oversees Vermont's Act 250 process, and chairwoman Diane Snelling said she couldn’t comment on a pending case.
"To get a ruling from Act 250 that would really chop us at the ankles of being able to provide those services for these students, really seemed antithetical to the mission of Act 250 itself." — Drew Gradinger, Kindle Farm School director
Joslyn Wilschek is an environmental attorney who’s representing the school in its appeal of the Act 250 ruling. And Wilschek argues that there’s a provision in Act 250 that allows organizations like Kindle Farm to re-apply for an Act 250 permit, when situations have changed since the original permit was issued.
“Courts have said Act 250 permits are written on paper, not stone,” Wilschek said. “And you need to take into account policy considerations. And the policy considerations here is these yurts have basically no land use impacts. They comply with all Act 250 criteria. And requiring them to be removed will remove 12 students from this program. And Act 250 was not designed to be regulating yurts.”
The local Act 250 commission found out about the yurts after a separate environmental dispute with a neighbor flared up.
Wilschek says the yurts have no environmental impact and no one has complained about them.
The school’s finance officer, in his argument to the Act 250 Commission, said removing the yurts would “threaten the school’s overall economic viability and harm the families that rely on the school’s specialized and affordable programming.”
