Merger study committee meets tonight

The 18-member committee studying the proposed school governance merger (in compliance with state Act 46) between the Otter Valley and Barstow districts will meet tonight, Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 6 o'clock in the Otter Valley Union High School library. Public comment is welcome.

A public forum on Act 46 is scheduled for tomorrow, Nov. 4, at 6 p.m. at Cafe Provence in Brandon. A Nov. 7 public forum on the act is scheduled for Goshen Town Hall at 7 p.m. (potluck dinner at 5:30).

Plan for school governance consolidation

The Joint Sudbury/Whiting School Board held a community forum Oct. 21, 2015, at the Sudbury Meeting House to discuss the planned "side-by-side" operation of the Otter Valley and Barstow school districts within a single supervisory union.

Under the plan, the Pre K to Grade 12 Otter Valley Unified District (including the six towns of Brandon, Pittsford, Goshen, Leicester, Sudbury and Whiting) and the Pre K to Grade 8 Barstow District (Mendon and Chittenden-Barstow) would share centralized services, a single education budget and a single overseeing board.

A study committee of eighteen people, formed in June, is working on the specifics of the side-by-side model. It meets the first and third Tuesdays of each month through December at Otter Valley Union High School in Brandon. The committee is due to report its recommendations in December. Articles prepared by the study committee would be presented to member towns for vote on Town Meeting Day in March.

The merger is planned in order to meet goals set in Act 46 (see below), which provides tax incentives for standardizing and combining smaller school districts. According to planners, the Otter Valley region would experience a 5 percent or $.08 decrease in the homestead tax rate as a result of the planned merger. (Reduction of $80 on every $100,000 of homestead value.) The tax benefit would decrease $.02 each year through the first four years of the merger.

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Act 46

The state government noted a number of problems contributing to escalating school tax burdens:

• The grade K through 12 student population in Vermont has decreased by about 24 percent (from 103,000 to 78,300) from 1997 to 2015, and the number of school-employed personnel has not decreased in the same proportion.
• Most of state schools have lower student populations than the optimum level, as established by national educational literature. A significant number of schools have very low student populations. (Sixty-four of 300 public schools have total enrollments of 100 or less students. Sixteen of those have enrollments of 50 or less.)
• Vermont's numerous school districts include only four with enrollment over the 2,000 students deemed optimal in national educational literature.
• Vermont has thirteen different styles of school district governance structures, preventing them from achieving economies of scale and limiting their sharing of resources with other districts.
• A 1999 law designed to protect small school districts from abrupt changes in school enrollment resulted in artifically low tax rates in those communities.

While seeking to retain the state's small community schools, the legislature sought to resolve some of the problems by encouraging the combination of school districts and the establishment of standard governance structures. Deadlines for tax incentive eligibility were put in place.