 Hi, I'm Tiffany Pash. I'm reporter with Vermont Digger. I cover education, and we're here today with members of the Act 46 Study Committee from Roxbury and Mount Peelier. On June 20th, voters in their community will vote on whether to merge their school districts. There's a 17-mile distance between both town centers. Roxbury is rural and has about 86 students. Mount Peelier is more of a large city-like school district serving 992 equalized pupils in pre-K through grade 12. Roxbury's school is pre-K through 6th, and then they tuition their high school students to other schools, mainly U32. If the merger passes, Roxbury will operate grades pre-K to 4, keeping their youngest children local, and send grades 5 to 12 students to Mount Peelier. There would be a 9-member school board with 16 votes. 7 members would be from Mount Peelier with 2 votes each, and 2 members from Roxbury with 1 vote each. If voters approve the merger, the school district would begin operating in July 2018. If you could each state your name and your affiliation. I'm John Guifre. I'm the Roxbury School Board Chair, as well as the Chair of the Committee. I'm Jim Murphy. I'm on the Mount Peelier School Board, and I was also on the Act 46 Study Committee. And I'm Tina Muncie. I'm on the Mount Peelier School Board, and I was also on the Study Committee. Okay, I'm going to ask you all a series of questions. We'd like each of you to take a moment to consider the question and answer it. The first one is, how did your study group arrive at this particular proposal? What type of data did you consider? What type of issues came up? Well, I can start and then you guys can fill in. Well, we began the process at the end of last year. We've had, I believe at this point, 14 publicly warned meetings with public comment session at all of them. Back in the middle of March, when we mostly had the plan together, we held public information and feedback meetings in each community so that we could gather feedback from the constituents to see if there was anything that was glaring missing or needed to be changed. And at that point, we continued to move forward, finished off the report, and sent it to the Agency of Education for their approval or comment. And during that process, we went back and forth several times with our both administrations of both districts and supervisory unions, and maybe you might want to pick up on where I'm leaving off there as to what information we gathered. Yeah, I think we looked pretty comprehensively at a lot of information, particularly as a Montpelier member. I wanted to know what would be the cost to Montpelier, would there be cost savings, what if there were hidden costs, etc. So we asked the administrators of both school districts to build in what we thought were numbers that accounted for all the costs that could be expected, plus what if we need to increase staffing in Roxbury, kind of the maximum type of transportation that would be needed to make sure that the Roxbury kids were able to participate in Montpelier schools. What would it cost to feed kids in both districts, etc. And got numbers that we felt were very comprehensive and also very cautious in terms of making sure that we weren't overlooking costs or coming up with numbers that perhaps were more optimistic than they should be or missed hidden costs, etc. And came up with numbers that we thought justified the merger and created savings for both districts. And then just kind of a quick bit of history as to how the merger came about. Roxbury approached us and John might want to speak to this either now or later. Roxbury was in a situation where they really needed to merge, they needed to find a partner. Under Act 46, their current system was unsustainable. Montpelier was an attractive district for them. And so we sat down, Montpelier was very interested in hearing how the merger might impact Montpelier and might provide benefits for Montpelier. So we sat down and again looked at a comprehensive suite of information in terms of getting to this. And what are some of those benefits? I think the primary benefits for Montpelier are that we add 86 students and the more students we add. Right now Montpelier is one of two districts in the state that is actually gaining students. And that's been good and it's been good for our budgets because prior to that there was a period where we were experiencing the same walls as the rest of the state was. And it created some really tough budget decisions that we felt was creating educational issues for our kids. With kind of the last couple of years of increased enrollment, we've seen the benefits of that. But we all know where the state trends are and why I think Montpelier probably will enjoy a while more of increased enrollment. I think because it's an attractive community that is investing in education and people with kids are attracted to it as a result. I just think given the overall trends of where the state's going, having those additional kids and having that long term stability which will allow us to provide robust budgets without huge tax burdens is an enormous benefit that the citizens of Montpelier really can't overlook and I think justifies the merger in and of itself. I also think Roxbury is a great community. I think it will add some diversity as you mentioned. It's a more rural community. I think it will add some socioeconomic mix. I'm not quite sure I'd characterize Montpelier as a large city. But it is certainly, I think, by Vermont standards, a more urban community. And I think kids from both systems will benefit. And I think that families and parents will benefit too from having the diversity and having the mix. I think those are the two major benefits. There is also, as a number show, a small tax benefit for the Montpelier residents. There's a substantial one for Roxbury. But there is a small savings and a tax savings is a tax savings. Especially when it gives you, I think, a longer term ability to continue to provide the type of budgets that will really get good educational results. Okay. And I am going to come back to you, Tina, with that question. But I wanted to ask you why not Northfield? That's a very good question. And one we've been asked quite a lot. As Jim alluded to, our fate was sealed as soon as the act was passed two years ago, back in May of 2015. So we knew that we could not stay in the same situation that we were in. Our supervisory union, which was Northfield and Roxbury, I think, is one of or the smallest supervisory union in the state. And we were too small to stay that way. So both communities needed to do something that launched us on a two-year journey through Act 46. Where it culminated, to make a long story short, it culminated with two options for us, which were to be a full member of a 706 study with Montpelier. Or to be an advisable member of the Northfield-Williams Town merger study, which was going on at that point. That all came to being in the late summer of last year, early fall. We had had some preliminary discussions with Montpelier school board members last summer as we sort of figured things out a little bit and tested the waters. And it culminated in a five and a half hour school board meeting in Roxbury where we needed as many people from our community to come in and give us the feedback on the two paths that were available to us, which were the only two paths available to us. And we needed some feedback loop from the community as to which one they wanted. Certainly that's not the only thing that we considered. There were probably a couple dozen factors swirling around which decision might be better for our community in the long run. But I will say that our community with a fairly significant majority spoke strongly to wanting to be with Montpelier as opposed to Northfield-Williams Town in that merger. The reasons why, we never did a survey, we never polled everyone in the town. But from that feedback it was pretty resounding that the community wanted us to go with Montpelier. And being a full partner in the merger study was also I think a big consideration. We had a full seat at the table, a full vote in the table, and had we been with the Northfield-Williams Town merger one of the concerns at that point in the fall was we might become collateral damage in that merger if either Northfield or Williamstown voted no and we were tacked on, we had no self-determination in that. That merger would have fallen apart and we would have been out in the cold so we decided we wanted to take our fate in our own hands. In retrospect that merger passed resoundingly so perhaps our fears weren't well founded but at the time we really didn't have that information and there was some uncertainty about it. Okay, and Tina do you have any different take or anything you want to add to what you looked at and considered during your work on the study committee? As far as what we looked at and considered no I think we had a lot of discussions about equity and it's a small place Roxbury and how would their students equitably be able to access the things in Montpelier. And I think the committee did a good job in looking at various data pertaining to that. So they might not be able to take part in some extra curricular activities and such because of being so far away is that what you mean by equity or? That's one thing so for example we put in the plan a late bus so that you could stay here and be part of the activities and yet get back home. So it wouldn't be just up to your family to make sure that you could be here. Okay, great. Next question is the big one really. Voters go to the polls next week. Why should they vote yes or no based on your own personal perspective? I mean to start with that or are you? We don't have to go in order. I think for some of the reasons I articulated earlier I really see for Montpelier residents there's the benefit of increased enrollment and increased stabilization. I just feel that from a budget perspective and a long term perspective saying no to 86 more students especially when we saw the difficulties we had a few years ago. I think there's a mistake to do that. I think Roxbury will be a good partner. I think that adding Roxbury to our school will enrich our school district and there's a small tax savings. And I guess the kind of fourth piece is, well I'll add a fourth and a fifth. The fourth is that Montpelier will continue to be in control of the district as you said at the introduction. We'll have seven members of the board, 14 of 16 votes. I think Roxbury will definitely have a voice and they're going to have two members and their concerns will be listened to. But as a Montpelier resident you're going to know that Montpelier is still going to make most of the major decisions and be in a position to ensure that decisions are made in a way that continues to help all students and help Montpelier and Montpelier's interest. And the fourth is there's really no downside. And that's kind of been one of the things I've been hearing from people. What are the costs? What are the cons? And as someone who came into this kind of skeptical, kind of wondering why Roxbury? Why does this make sense? I'm open to hearing but I certainly didn't come in with a bent towards needing to do this. And hearing the pros and cons over several months and several meetings and several hours, there are clear upsides and there really isn't a downside. There's not a hidden cost or unintended consequence and I think we look pretty thoroughly at that. So you've got identifiable upsides and no real identifiable downsides so I think it's a pretty clear choice. Tina, do you feel the same way? Not quite. I have said from the beginning that I see no significant upside for Montpelier. And on the other hand I quickly follow that by saying I have no data to prove a significant downside for Montpelier. Here are my concerns and I'd say that both financially and educationally. So because of the small number of students in Roxbury, maybe an average of one student per classroom will gain in Montpelier on any given year. And my other concern is that I was principal of a small school. Now my small school was easily three times as big if not bigger than Roxbury. But small schools are expensive to run. And I'm feeling like after three years or four years this new board will be in a position of considering whether to close the Roxbury school. Now maybe Roxbury will gain a lot of students during the next few years. But Ks through four there will be 25 students in that building once the merger begins. And most schools across the state who have had 30 students or less have closed because of the financial burden. So it's something we can't quite figure it's too far in the future to figure but I guess I'd say I have concerns. You have concerns that that board, the unified board would have to close Roxbury school. Do you think Roxbury school might have to close if you don't merge? John. That's a good question. The future of our district in its current format is not sustainable. So I can say that. Prior to Act 46 being passed several years ago our board was about to try to find a new solution for how things were being run there. We clearly had identified some problems. Had identified that we were on an unsustainable path. And as soon as Act 46 was passed however we really had to focus our energies on that and that's taken up the last two years on the school board there. So it's, I don't know the answer to that. I think that when anyone is looking at educating young children up through grades 2, 3, 4, certainly travel logistics and the best place to educate those children is something that any district is going to look at. I would disagree with Tina on several things. She's conflating small schools closing in a different environment as opposed to being part of a larger district or potentially being part of a supervisory union which we currently are. As one district it's simply a building within the district and how that building is used, how it is staffed. That is a district decision just like figuring out which teachers are going to go to union elementary or do we need someone over in the middle school. I don't know exactly if that's how staffing decisions are made in Montpelier but in other districts figuring out who's where is a district decision. So certainly there is the risk of that however I think as Jim pointed out we built into the model, a staffing model that makes that school function indefinitely into the future certainly with the number of students that are there and could absorb significant increases without any more staffing there. The question has been raised. Increases in students. Correct. So it would be unlikely that it would cost any more to run that staffing in that building and particularly even if 10, 15, even 20 new students moved into the town. On the flip side of that we certainly as a committee talked about and raised the question and we've heard it from committee members about what happens if it becomes unsustainable, what happens if the population drops. We pulled in the last 20 years of data for the Roxbury Village School and while it hasn't been exactly flat I think within a fairly small deviation it's been more or less stable for the last 20 years and there's no data to support or to say that we would drop to a point where there's 10 kids in that building and I've made the point in several forums that at that point and my kids go there. So I have a vested interest of what my children's education would be. I have no doubt that a future school board will make the right choice based on educational principles and standards as opposed to well there's four or less kids in that building right now. Maybe we ought to close it down because we could save $100,000. That's generally not what school boards do. So am I concerned about the future of our school? Sure and that's one of the reasons why we chose Montpelier because in our conversations we felt that they were a great educational partner and people that valued education in a similar way that we did in Roxbury. Yeah, can I just add a couple things to that? Sure. I mean kind of what John said. I think we did use numbers because we have those concerns. What does it take to run this school? We looked at increased staffing. We did look at the kind of enrollment numbers which have been stable. Certainly my desire is to have a structure that keeps that school open for the pre-K through 4. Hopefully forever because I think that's the best educational solution for those kids. And I think those expenses were built in and again those expenses still resulted in a major savings for Roxbury, a modest savings for Montpelier. Yeah, if everybody decides to vacate Roxbury in the next several years, I think that's a decision that the future school board will have to visit. I think the chances of that happening are pretty low both because there's no signs that people are vacating Roxbury. And I actually think there's a chance just given the fact that I think Montpelier is an attractive school district which we're seeing from the fact that this adds a more affordable rural option for people who want to be part of that district to move into. So I think there's a chance that if anything, Roxbury could bring more students to the district and more students to that school. Probably not a ton, but perhaps a few more families. And I actually know some families in their early 30s that are kind of watching this merger and seeing where they want to move based on it and Roxbury could become an option. Those anecdotal stories have filtered in to some members of Montpelier, certainly some members in Roxbury. That's why I mentioned that the school could handle even more students with the current staffing level that's budgeted in there. Alright, so it might become a real estate boon for Roxbury. It might be over exaggerating it a little bit, but it certainly I think will help. Okay, if your communities vote no, what will the impact be on your students? And it'll be different answers I know. So the first thing to think about is there's a 30 day waiting period after the vote. So typically if it's a resounding yes or no, that just kind of sort of passes. But if it's a close vote it's an opportunity for people to assemble a petition for a re-vote at that point. So immediately that would be the first thing to consider once the vote happens. You guys will have to speak to Montpelier in terms of the impact on the students, but Montpelier is not required to do anything based on the current situation under Act 46 and the recent exemption that was placed into the Ed Bill at the end of the session this year. Roxbury is not. The exemption being that if you have 900 students you do not have to merge. Correct. So Roxbury will be faced with a difficult situation for sure. We have several choices or options in terms of action or non-action. One of them would be to wait and be placed by the state in the state plan that will begin to be formed this fall and delivered next June I believe. In which case the state would decide to place us with someone as a district within a supervisor union. One of the unique situations that's going on right now is within Act 46 if you've merged as a district you can't be forced to merge within another district if you're within there and everyone around us has merged. So technically if I have my facts correct the state can't force us to merge or force a district to absorb us as a district. But they could place us within a supervisory union and the two closest ones would be the Northfield Williamstown slash Orange Washington supervisory union or down towards Randolph. Those would be the two directions my guess is they would look and those would be the two directions that we will probably have to reach out to if the vote is a no vote. And so the impact on the kids next year regardless of what the vote is both districts function as is for next year and again as you mentioned it would be 2018 the fall of 2018 would be the first school year. We would so we would probably have assuming the state made good on some of the guidelines in Act 46 we would begin to lose some of the things that keep our tax rate from skyrocketing it already is going that way. So I would assume that we'd have a very difficult subsequent financial budget year which there is nothing to cut in Roxbury we did that five years ago and I'm not sure what we would do there could be some negative impacts I don't think the school would or the board would look at closing the school to tuition them because then we'd just be disrupting families even more but it might lend itself to a very unpleasant tax year until we were able to at least begin the process of merging in there. And the children's education would probably be bare minimum as far as the programming? There's nothing to cut so we'd be in a very tight spot and we were going to be in that regardless of who we chose to work with but there's really we have two teachers teaching grades I mean sorry three teachers teaching grades K through six in our school so you can't cut a teacher out of that mix. Okay. And there's not a whole lot of other places to cut so. Okay and in Montpelier would students be impacted in any way? Well as you pointed out the revision to the law says that we're exempt from having to merge with anybody. Right. And I think student wise what's interesting in Montpelier as Jim mentioned we're already growing so kindergarten first second grade we're growing our population and that population is coming into the middle and the high schools so sort of on our own we're growing student wise. So I'm not sure of any great unlike Roxbury I certainly understand the situation that Roxbury's in but I'm not sure it will have a significant effect on Montpelier. Yeah I'm certainly not going to say that if Montpelier votes is down it's going to be catastrophic for the students or for the town. I think the biggest loss is it's a lost opportunity to shore up those numbers longer term. I think Tina's right I think over the next few years you know we do have good numbers and those numbers appear to be pretty solid in the next few years. You know five six years down the road if those numbers drop again are we going to regret not having those 80 students from Roxbury my guess is yes because I'm not sure where else we're going to find them. I think that's the biggest downside. I think the other downside is this is really I think just a chance for I know one of the things I hear is the school board members Montpelier really values diversity really wants our kids exposed to kids with different experiences growing up. I think this is a chance to do that to bring some kids into the school system that have different experiences growing up that live on places where they sugar and have cows and etc. I mean not that kids in Montpelier are too far from that but there's not a lot of people actually in Montpelier who grow up in those type of circumstances. Those are kind of the two biggest downsides. Okay and we're almost out of time but I want to quickly ask about how it will impact if voters say no how it will impact the taxpayer in each of your communities. Certainly in Roxbury it's unknown but we know that the tax projections are on an upward trend so I can fairly confidently say that the taxes for a Roxbury resident will go up at least in the short term until we sort out our new partner in some capacity. Okay. Any Montpelier? There will be a small loss of an opportunity to reduce taxes some. I think the bigger impact again might be five, six years down the road if our enrollment numbers start to drop again then we might find ourselves back where we were three or four years ago trying to get the budgets we want without big taxes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all for coming and speaking to this issue. Thank you very much. Thank you for watching. I'm with The Digger. Thank you to my guests and please go out and vote on June 20th.