More thoughts on the cost of losing Calais Elementary – and why we need to fight for it at the School Board Meeting on Wednesday

December 10th School Board meeting at U-32 at 6:15. 

Come in person. Join on Zoom.

Come in blue and red for Calais and Doty. 

I really appreciate nearly all the commentary I’ve seen on the School Board ramming through school closures (or involuntary student relocations)  despite clear community opposition. 

I’m writing to respond to the comments posted over the weekend from one of our elected School Board Representatives. 

1. Claiming that the school closure plan is a “good faith effort” 

A good faith effort would have looked like exploring all the other options community members suggested looking at last year, rather than having the committee twiddle its thumbs, spending multiple meetings talking about the definition of “configuration” and then putting forth the exact same proposal the community voiced strong opposition to last year at many public meetings, at listening sessions, and in digital public forums like FPF. 

A good faith effort would have looked like doing the due diligence requested – conducting or commissioning the studies constituents asked for to fully understand the educational, economic, health, environmental, and taxation impacts of shuttering schools. 

A good faith effort would have looked like abandoning Orwellian Doublespeak when it is called out. We are NOT talking about “configuration” we are talking about closing schools. 

A good faith effort would have looked like publishing each and every comment and question received by the board in writing, and publishing and updating a responsiveness summary, instead of changing district policy to no longer publish comments received absent an explicit request from the commenter. 

A good faith effort would have looked like presenting this plan to voters in the summer, as was the case in 2024, not in October, which gives the appearance of intentionally shortening the opportunity for public involvement. 

A good faith effort would have looked like a multi-year approach to study, recommend, iterate, and plan in response to the questions raised last year. 

A good faith effort would have looked like surveying the community in an unbiased way that did not ask us to help the board make its case for closure. 

What the school board is doing contains no markers of a “good faith effort.” 

2. Impending budget cuts

At the Calais Elementary School listening session, we were told that the configuration committee did not select this closure plan because it would save money, but for “programming” reasons. Yet the Board members and the Administration officials present seemed unprepared to be responsive when asked how it would improve programming.

Despite asking about it last year and this year, I have seen no evidence-based research that supports (1) the board’s apparent preference for single-grade classrooms (rather than multi-grade classrooms and teacher looping), (2) that a larger school will result in improved academic and functional skills outcomes for students, or (3) that students will have access to any additional services or supports. 

We all know the drivers of the budget: staffing levels (because of the cost of health care). But aren’t staffing levels more disproportionate to student population at U-32 than than at the elementary schools? 

There is plenty of reason to conclude that closures will increase costs. Indeed the Superintendent seems ready to budget for consultants for the “transition” to force us through “goodbye celebrations.”

We also know that the Board has backdoor plan to leave Calais open for pre-K. This means that the district won’t even shed the modest costs of operating the school building. 

Frequently, we’ve been told our school is too small for a full time nurse. If the 500:1 ratio is accurate, closing Calais and Doty still won’t put 500 students in any elementary school building). How have we not looked at other ways to make full-time nursing presence a possible? Could some of this be arranged by telemedicine? Or could the district contract with a local health care provider to co-locate a primary care office in an underutilized space, in exchange for making nursing available during school hours? Wouldn’t that be the essence of the community schools model? Haven’t other communities who have been pilot “community schools” done just that with medical or dental practices? 

How can the Board expect the community to support any budget that involves functionally closing a school, against the will of the voters, because it may be technically legal?

You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand the difference between what is legal and what is ethically right. 

3. Act 73

Act 73 does NOT require or encourage closure of small rural elementary schools. It supports finding efficiencies at the middle and high school levels. Those efficiencies make sense to me. By high school, young people are developmentally more prepared to find their place in a larger student cohort. Reasonably, student to teacher ratios can be greater because students are more self-sufficient. Those efficiencies would take pressure off the budget to support the elementary schools. 

4. Twinfield as an example

Marshfield and Plainfield made the choice together – voluntarily – to come together to build Twinfield, just as our towns (that once made up WCSU) did with U-32. That is not what is happening here. That is why it is so disingenuous to call this plan the opening of a “multi-town” school. I have heard very little engagement from East Montpelier. What I have heard is a misconception that moving Calais kids to “their” school will lower their taxes – it won’t.

In the 1960s and 1970s Marshfield and Plainfield decided – together – where to locate that school, and that they *wanted* to unite on a social and economic level. And the development of Twinfield was planned over multiple years. This allowed time to plan for the repurposing of former school buildings. School House Common in Marshfield has remained a community hub because the approach was thoughtful – not rushed, and not forced.  

By contrast, here we were compelled to merge into a unified district, and now, we are being compelled – not choosing – to see our school shut down on a ridiculous timeline. We are not creating a new shared space. Slapping a new name on the front the building does not change the the social and community dynamics for the kids, or the rest of us.

We don’t know, we can’t know, what would have happened to the populations and economies of Marsfhield and Plainfield if they’d made a different decision. We don’t know, and can’t know, what would have happened to the five towns in this district if we’d never decided to come together to build U-32. 

But we do know that choice matters. 

5. Death Spiral

At the December 3rd meeting I used the words “death spiral” – when I described what this decision could do to our towns. I had only ninety seconds to comment – not a reasonable amount of time in my view – let me expand. 

When the things that bring people to a community go away, towns can die.The Vermont towns or villages of Tyson Furnace (former village near Echo Lake, Windsor County), Glastenbury (unincorporated in 1937, Bennington County), Lewiston (formerly a village in Norwich), Somerset (disincorporated in 1937, Windham County) and Ricker Basin (now part of Little River State Park) no longer exist.

** By the way credit to Mrs. R for giving me the opportunity in 5th grade during a Vermont history unit to explore some of this history on my own. **

The pressures on rural communities are different today than they were in the 1960s when Marshfield and Plainfield chose to come together to build Twinfield, when we chose to come together to build U-32, or even when we chose to bond to do the renovations my classmates and I suffered through in the early 2000s to make the building what it is today.

In the days when Twinfield and U-32 were conceptualized, we had growing towns, and didn’t have to think about how we would attract people to our communities. 

We know that we need statewide solutions to address some of the main drivers of population stagnation/shrinkage: we need lower health care costs which drive up the labor costs not just of schools but all government and private entities. And, we need more affordable housing. 

Because we can’t easily solve those problems at the town level, the question becomes, what  CAN we do to attract younger people to our town, to keep it a viable community? 

Many of our newest community members have spoken up about the influence our small school played in their decision to relocate here. Yes, our small school is an attractor to help us combat our aging population. 

Don’t get me wrong, I know it is necessary – but not sufficient. 

We also need to address the cost of health care, and the cost of housing. We need to rebuild the trades workforce. We need better options for commuters. 

As Paul Bruhn, who many of us knew from his extraordinary leadership at Preservation Trust of Vermont, articulated so well, some resources are core to a community – stores, post offices, and schools. This is why community members went to such great efforts to prevent the loss of the Maple Corner store and the East Calais Store in just the last decade.

This is why we are going to great efforts to try to convince our school board not to take away a core resource. As others have asked, without a school, how do we entice people to move here? To invest in housing and community here? 

Affordable housing developers look for communities with infrastructure and community resources. If the school board takes away our school, we have one less community resource to offer, one less way to attract the kind of housing development we want and need. 

 If we can’t attract housing investment, we can’t combat our aging population. The people who are here will age, we’ll lose our friends and neighbors, and we will have that much less to offer to bring new people to our town. 

That is what I mean, when I say the school board seems ready, willing, and able, to put Calais and Worcester into death spirals. 

6. Finally, a Brief Comment in Defense of “Tone”

It is not the job of elected leaders to police the tone of their constituents when we are exercising our First Amendment right to petition our government. It is appropriate for people who believe elected school board members are not listening, are rushing a decision, are acting on a rapid schedule to write, and speak, with urgency. It is appropriate when a decision is being made that impacts us financially, educationally, socially, and, yes, emotionally, to have a tone that is emotional, that is upset, that is even, at times, angry. 

In my view, my tone – and the tone of others – has been reasonable given the circumstances the board has forced upon us.