Today, voters in the Northeast Kingdom town of Danville took to the polls in a non-binding referendum on whether they should close grades 9-12 of the Danville School and tuition their high-school aged students to nearby high schools. The results are in, and the vote failed resoundingly.
In the special meeting, 480 residents voted against closing the school and 75 voted in favor, according to the Danville-based North Star Monthly. The vote is a rebuke to Danville’s State Senator, Minority Leader Scott Beck (R-St. Johnsbury), who was a staunch proponent of the measure.
Brother Beck urged Danville and nearby Cabot to close their high school grades at the end of this year and begin tuitioning them to nearby schools on the grounds that the legislature’s implementation of Act 73 (last session’s marquee ed reform bill) might deny them that opportunity in the future.
Last year, about 1500 people voted in Danville, so turnout of over 500 for an in-person special election on a cold Saturday in December is very impressive. You don’t have to be a political Nostradamus to look at that and the lopsided margin and see that people are fired up.
This result confirms something that I’ve suspected but hadn’t had data to support until now. Vermonters (especially in places like Danville, which swung hard towards Republicans at the state level last year) are crying out for property tax relief. However, they don’t want that to come at the expense of their community schools.
I’ll be the first to admit that this is a political quagmire. Our elected officials are currently in the unenviable position of having large factions of the state hating both the status quo and every proposed solution. Consolidations may be necessary to improve administrative efficiency and to standardize the quality of education that young Vermonters are receiving, but it’s easy for me to say that from my perch in South Burlington, where our smallest school (my alma mater, Chamberlin Elementary) has about as many students as Danville’s entire K-12 enrollment.
The governor and legislative leadership on both sides of the aisle seem determined to forge ahead with Act 73 in January, so I hope that they are prepared for a confrontation with the communities that would be most impacted by school consolidation. If the governor, Brothers Beck and Baruth, Speaker Krowinski, and Minority Leader McCoy want to keep Vermont on this path, they’re going to have go to places like Danville, and Cabot, and the Islands, and make the case that consolidations are going to be worth it for their kids, their communities, and their wallets in the long run.
They’ve certainly got their work cut out for them. This early report from Danville makes it clear: Vermonters aren’t buying what they’re selling. Strap in, everyone, the new legislative session will be a slog.
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