Merger vote passes in Rupert, Pawlet

Andrew McKeever

GNAT-TV News Project

PAWLET — A vote to authorize a merger of the Pawlet and Rupert School Districts, along with UD #47, a union district which operates the K-6 Mettawee School, passed during voting on Tuesday, Nov. 21.

The vote to create the new Mettawee School District was close in both towns, and the success of the vote depended on it passing in both communities. The margin was 259-201 in Pawlet, and 150-142 in Rupert.

The vote brought to a closure, at least for now, a long running debate which had divided sentiment within the two towns  since an initial attempt made over a year ago to create an Act 46 merger with the adjoining town of Wells foundered over school choice issues.

“I’m pleased that the Pawlet/Rupert merger passed,” said Bennington Rutland Supervisory Union Superintendent Jacquelyn Wilson.  “It is has been a difficult process and it is time for the communities to move forward together. Given that the Mettawee School District will go live on July 1, 2018 we have a lot of work ahead of us.”

The merger will enable Pawlet and Rupert to link up with the already formed Taconic and Green Regional District as a “side-by-side” district. The Taconic and Green Districts include a total of nine towns: Danby, Dorset, Landgrove, Londonderry, Manchester, Mt. Tabor, Peru, Sunderland, and Weston.  Effective July 1, 2018, this unified school district will operate five schools: Currier Memorial School (K-6), Flood Brook School (K-8), Manchester Elementary-Middle School (PK-8), Sunderland Elementary School (K-6), and The Dorset School (K-8).

Having approved their Act 46 merger before Nov. 30 also allows the new Mettawee district to become eligible for the tax incentives that accompany such mergers, which start with an 8 cent property tax benefit. That figure is reduced to zero over a four-year period.

The main issue over which residents of the two towns divided was over whether to continue with a long time policy of designating nearby schools in Salem and Granville, N.Y. for the district’s 7-12 graders. The tuition costs at the Salem and Granville schools were substantially less than what were and remain the going rates at nearby Vermont schools, which conferred a tax benefit to local residents. But over time, more and more area students have been attending Vermont middle and secondary schools, and the numbers now are nearly equal. An initial merger plan adopted by the seven-member merger study committee in September opted to keep the policy of designation in place, but this was shot down the State Board of Education and the Education Agency, on the grounds that it failed to allow for sufficient equity, or equal educational access for the all the 7-12 graders. Parents wishing to send their children to other schools in Poultney, or Dorset or Manchester, had to pay an out-of-pocket surcharge of several thousand dollars to cover the full tuition costs that parents sending their children to Salem or Granville didn’t. This in effect denied parents equal educational access, the state board held, and this sent the merger study committee back to the drawing board. They reicrafted the proposal to jettison designation and this proposal won approval from the state education board last month.

Under a new school choice model that will come into effect when the new district officially starts work in July 1, 2018, parents will now get an amount equal to the statewide union district tuition average to apply to their children’s education costs.

John Malcolm, a former state representative and member of the merger study committee, said he was disappointed by the outcome of the vote on Tuesday.

The state board of education overlooked the issues of accountability and transparency when it focused so much on the equity issue, he said. Independent schools where more district students may now wind up attending don’t have the same level of public oversight and scrutiny that public schools do, he added.

“I think it’s an acceleration of the suburbanization of the area,” he said.

Others who supported the merger and ending designation expressed a sense of relief that the long debate over the terms of forming the district – a dialogue that began last February and featured several well-attended public forums and information meetings since then – had reached an endpoint.

“I feel a sense of cautious optimism,” said Eve Schaub, of Pawlet, who has published a series of blog posts about the discussion. “”I feel a general sense that people would like to put this behind  and move forward.”

The new school district will be governed by a six-member board of directors. Four of them — Scott McChesney, Julie Mach, Diane Mach and Susan Ceglowski are from Pawlet. The other two members — Michael Krauss and Jane Laurie — are from Rupert.