 Welcome. Today we're talking about the genesis of U32, Union High School District number 32, a rural supervisory union district that was formed in the 60s with the school opening in the fall of 1971. I'm Betty Keller. I went to U32 starting as an eighth grader when it opened and I now live in St. John'sbury and I have with me here today a guest, Alice Blatchley, the mother of one of my friends, two of my friends at U32 and she served on the school board. So she has the perspective of a community member, a taxpayer, a voter, a mother, and a school board member. And so we're going to have a conversation today about how did we come up with this idea of starting up such a progressive school in the middle of central Vermont in the 60s in a rural area. Thank you so much for being with us today, Alice. I'm delighted. It's great to see you again. It's been a number of years since I've seen you. And so could you talk a little bit just to get us started talking about central Vermont in the 60s, a lot of farmers, some people worked in Montpelier for the government, people worked in school systems, hospitals, whatever. What kind of culture was there and how did we end up with a school like this? Well, it's an awfully good question. And I remember asking the same thing and my friends do. This is amazing. I mean, this school, it just seemed to just come out of nowhere because certainly, well, Vermont had originally the one-room schools, which were marvelous. I've heard about them and I do think that they provided a really fine education. The teachers had to be very creative. They had to be very resourceful. The children learned from each other. The younger ones would listen in. There were no walls at all and the grades weren't separated. So if that was just in hearing, I've known people who went through that system and I've been impressed. Even when I first came, I remember how impressed I was, how well-spoken and how well they listened and thinking for themselves. These are people who thought for themselves. And I just thought that in some ways, those one-room schools embodied some of the principles of progressive education. They had to use whatever resources they had at hand if they didn't have, it was very little money. So sometimes take a serious robot catalog and use that as a kind of for scrapbooks or to make almost mosaics of things. I mean, just, you know. Then they graduated from that, of course, to the graded system and elementary schools in each town and so on. And of course, at that time, most towns didn't have high school, many of the smaller towns. So they would tuition their students. But the students had a choice of any school, any high school, like you could go in our area in Montpelier High School, you could go to Spalding and Barrie, or you could even go, some people went to St. John'sburg Academy, you could go there. Oh, really? I hadn't heard that one mentioned. I've heard Hardwick mentioned, and Northfield High School. I'm not sure just when that started, but yes, you could go to St. John'sburg. And, you know, so there was a lot of choice there. But I think it was the reasons for consolidating probably were largely economic. I mean, that was the way that kind of the school, the Department of Education went around discussing this among the voters and pointed out that by consolidating, you know, it would be more economic, ordering supplies and doing all that kind of thing. And that also, there were new, well, you know, there was new ideas in the air throughout the country, new, there was progressive ideas, the more wealthier districts in the country had more progressive, that idea was taking hold. And I think Vermont was a little slower to learn that. Right. So maybe a little background for our viewers is that when we're talking about the towns, we're talking about East Montpelier, Middlesex, Worcester, Berlin, and Callis. And so Montpelier is smack in the middle of that, then East Montpelier and Callis, Berlin, Middlesex, and Worcester. So they were all surrounding Montpelier. So a good number of people did choose to send their children to Montpelier, mostly for transportation. There was no busing. So parents had to figure out how do I get my high school kids to school. When they got to be juniors or seniors, they might be able to drive or they might have a friend who could drive them. We had to afford an extra car if that were the case. But so a lot of choosing the school wasn't based on the educational philosophy or what was the best match for my kid's learning style. It was more about how can I get my kid to school. And so people in Berlin might go to Northfield, for instance, people in East Montpelier or Callis might go over to, it may have been Plainfield High School before Twinfield was started. That's true. Quite a few went to Hardfield. And then, and the Hardwick is north of there, so there was a school up there that people went to St. John'sbury Academy. That would be a hike. And I don't know how many of those kids ended up living in dormitories. Yes, I don't know. But basically the towns would pay the tuition to whichever school the family chose. And then the student would go there with the parents' responsibility to get them there. Well, some students actually boarded. I mean, in the old days, that's what they did. There were two women from Callis who they were the only ones in there. They were from the Adamant region. The only ones who wanted to go to high school, so they went on and they boarded with a family, each of them. And it had jobs to do. They had to wash dishes or maybe look after the kids. Boarded where? To Montpelier High School. And they would come back and visit their families over the weekend, the farm families. And believe it or not, these women walked 12 miles, no matter what the weather. On Monday morning to get there? Absolutely. I've talked to them. Yes, I said, you really did? Even when it was late at night or 50 below zero or something, she said, oh yeah, we were used to it. I couldn't get over that. These were trust people in those days. Right. This is before we had school busing. My husband, I remember, used to get picked up by the mail carrier to be taken to the Mabel Corner School. And then, I forget what was worked out for when he went to Woodbury, before he went to Berlin. But during high school, his father drove him there in the morning and went to work. And then he went and hung out at Kellogg Hubbard Library after school until his father could pick him up and take him back. I was speaking with Houghton Cate's son, Richard Cate. And he said that from his perspective, it was his life to just accept that he couldn't be on any teams, beyond any theater programs or anything. That's right. No extracurricular. Because he couldn't get home afterwards. You know, he had to go with one time, he could catch a ride. And if he didn't get that ride, that was it. And so even if, for students from the area, from those small towns, even if they did have a reliable transportation, the coaches and advisors of these groups kind of took it for granted that they couldn't count on them. So these kids would pass it over for parts. And I think that was a very strong reason for wanting to consolidate and have those towns too. It wasn't really fair. Right. So one thing is they could participate more in those extracurricular activities. The other thing is that the townspeople could vote to fund the busing because you weren't voting on Montpelier's budget, and you weren't getting input with your own school board member to make a decision to add busing to the Montpelier budget. So that was never really a choice. So now they would have control over being able to have a voice on how their kids could get there. Busing, of course, being a huge problem. Yes. And then you're talking about after school and again after activities. So that's an expense. Right. So to get back, I just wanted to kind of give that background to get back to more about the beginnings of the school. Where did these ideas come from? Well, I don't really know because I wasn't on the original school board. I joined it in was 72, 73. Somewhere right in there. Yeah. But I just know, well, I know what Rosendo Cueto, otherwise known as Rosie, would tell me about this. Of course, the board had to hire a principal. They chose this man, Bill Grady, from New Jersey, who happened to be a very dynamic guy and very much devoted to the principles of progressive education. And so he had all these great ideas that were being done in the New Jersey schools. And so I guess the board, just like what they heard, and they had other choices, but they did decide to go with what he suggested. And so that had a lot to do with it. But I give the board a lot of credit for being very open-minded. They did not want to just do things the same old way. We wanted something. It must be. I mean, I wasn't there then, but it was a fresh start. And we want to have these children to have all the advantages that they can have, you know, the best kind of education so that we'll prepare them the best for the world they're going to be working in and going to be actually, you know, being running, I mean, in a way. And so he worked with them. And one of the things they did, the school was the plans for the architectural plans are already drawn up, but he wanted them to look at a few schools that he hadn't, so that they knew they had options for what kind of school would be. And one of the schools they went to was a school in Maine. And Rosie said, we looked, we saw these children. They were some fluidity moving back and forth between classes. And it was very open. And the atmosphere in the school was altogether different from anything. They weren't sitting in chairs all looking at the student. It was not authoritarian. They run. They weren't just, you know, taking dictation or always saying back what the teacher had said, anything like that. Each child was very busy at something purposeful that they had planned, helped to plan themselves. And they were able, though, to learn a lot just from interacting more with the others and seeing what other people were doing. And they all said, that's what we want. Every single member of the school board said, he said, we want that kind of a school. Now, that was pretty darn good. That's pretty interesting. So let's talk a little bit about that school board. So this had to be a few years before the physical building was built and the staff were hired to go in. Now, I'm not sure exactly when they would have hired Grady. Sounds like they were hiring him for at least some consulting, even though the school wasn't built and he wasn't working as a principal. He could have been a consultant. Yeah, and I don't know. I don't know any of him. He's the only one. But before the building had the finishing touches on it, certainly he was consulted. Well, yes, and he did make some changes to the, and they they endorsed that. Go ahead and make whatever changes to the physical layout to, I don't know whether it was his idea or the school boards, but probably, I don't know, but he wanted the library to be at the center. Library shouldn't be off somewhere. That should be the the the nerve center almost of the school. And I totally felt as a student that that was the heart of the school. Yeah, and he wanted it to be very open. People could pass through. You didn't have to be in a place where you had to be so quiet. I mean, not that anybody was loud, but I mean, you were there to study, you were there to learn, but you could and actually it had a nice rug and students are actually allowed to sit on the rug and study. That was, of course, a bone of contention among those people who were very upset with the school because it was so non-traditional. It was a shock. I mean, they were willing to think of some changes, but not anything to sit on the, to sit. I mean, seem disrespectful to the teachers and so on. So each town had one, two or three members on the school board that they voted in. So of these five towns, they each chose people who participated on the school board and those people who went to Maine all appreciated and were enthusiastic about this new model of learning. Yeah. So just to talk a little bit about those towns. So East Montpelier and Callis were actually close to Plainfield, which is where Goddard College is. That's right. And so there would be, there would be faculty who were living in some of those towns, for instance, as well as the, you know, the farmers and everybody else who's there. So can you talk a little bit about some of these other school influences, the new school you had mentioned to me earlier? Just talk a little bit about some of those, maybe? Yeah. All right. So I think it was a rather remarkable board. I, as I say, I wasn't on the original board. I came on just a year or two after it started. Right. When Rosie, it was a remarkable group of people. We had Houghton Cate from East Callis, a very fine man. I mean, everybody said Houghton Cate is just one of the finest people I've ever met. And Rosendo Cueto, who was, and he told me that he originally, I'm not sure how he got on, but he was interested in civic affairs, always very involved. And he just, I say remarkable, I think, because they were open-minded enough to, I mean, they had very set ideas, but they were willing to listen and to be, have their minds changed. I mean, and so. So there was a Mr. Magnet, Charlie, what's it called? Magnet. Okay. These are hardworking people who believed that you should take part in community affairs, that you had a responsibility, civic responsibility, took very seriously. All. Yeah. So, but in any case, they represented, the districts they represented were quite different. Berlin, the, we, there was a member there, was it one or two? Let's see, Ruth Town was from East Montpelier, I guess. She was later though. She wasn't on the original board. Oh, she was, came on. So, at the first, the board, they liked Mr. Grady's ideas and so on everything, but it, at some point, and this was the point at which I got on the board, I was asked to run by some people who were really concerned that the school's philosophy was in danger, in danger of losing it, because I think partly because of the, the, maybe there were cost overruns, people were concerned, particularly in Berlin for some reason, maybe because there were more persons who were concerned about property taxes rising, there was a large people who, well, there was trailer parks and so on. I don't know if that had something to do with it. I mean, people who really could not afford much. Yeah. So, I had a hypothesis on that too. I think that Berlin may have been earlier than some of the other schools on having a regular graded system with a lot more structure. They were, yeah. And like, like Callas, in any case, still had the one room schoolhouse. I just was told that, so the, it began to, this groundswell of opposition began to get very serious and unfortunately the anger and the stuff all fell on to Bill Grady. He was the magnet for it. He took a great deal of, I mean, it was very difficult. People were very, very upset and what they, they centered on some of the things they really objected to with the fact that the children were allowed to call the teachers by their first names. Yeah. That just seemed wrong. I think they were concerned about the emphasis on the arts, music and arts and so on as not being a good preparation for life, for having job. They were very concerned about being able to get a job. From what they'd heard about progressive education, well, don't just do whatever they've a mind. I've heard people say something like that. But I mean, actually, if you think about it, the point of progressive education is to prepare the kids, really prepare them for life. They learn to think for themselves. That's what you're going to have to do. And the whole, as a matter of fact, now as we see a whole economic thing has changed so that you don't have a job for life. It's all of that. So you really need to be able to think on your feet and to be able to integrate ideas and be, well, let's say, think for yourself. That was really important. Right. I think, yeah, a lot of concern was the lack of structure so that students... They were worried. Yes. Students were able to choose their classes or they could choose to have more free time as long as they got enough credits in. And actually, there was some cause for concern because the, this was an ideal school for some kids. Some kids were well prepared for it. My son, Tom, he had gone to a very progressive elementary school. It was one that was open, formed by some parents who wanted something different for their kids. And it was a while, public school kids could go there. We had very few people who wanted to do that. We did have one student, I remember. But he learned there, I mean, just to figure out for himself what he wanted to do. And so one of the teachers said to me, your son is the son... I mean, this school was made for something like that. He knew what he wanted to do. There was free time. He usually would use it playing chess. And the teachers there... I mean, chess is really very good for your mind. Developing strategy. Yeah. And so on. Or you could watch a film, apparently. You didn't have traditional study halls with somebody over there making sure that the students had to learn to discipline themselves and take responsibility for themselves. The idea being, they're going to have to learn that. You've got to learn to take responsibility. Why not start learning it in school? Why wait? What are you preparing them for, if it's just road learning? But then there were some students, and students, of course, tend to group together like people, like themselves. So there were some people and students, I don't know how many, but they would tend to isolate themselves from the others. They didn't understand what to do. They weren't prepared for that much freedom. And so on. So I'm not the best one to say what happened there, because I think it was a problem for some time. And the teachers had to figure out how... They worked about it. They were concerned about it. The whole school was concerned. And so because that's exactly what you didn't want. You didn't want people going off into their separate... You wanted all the students from all different backgrounds and everything to mingle together and for the program to be good for everybody. So in any case, but I think the central thing about that school, the thing that ultimately sold it to the parents and to the kids themselves, was the teacher-advisor system. This was an innovation on Bill Brady's part. I don't think any of the school had it. When the student enters, they get a teacher-advisor who will sort of see them, talk with them, and help them sort of make the best use of the school for their... Figure out all kinds of things. At that time in your life, adolescents, they're full of all kinds of... But they're not quite sure how to negotiate things, how to manage. And so they need someone, an older person who will be their friend, really be their friend, and almost like their advocate, help them to make the best possible use of the school, and get to know their parents. That was the thing. There was a teacher, Gene Overgrozicki. He was terrific. And he would go and pretty much invite himself to have dinner with the family. And he did... I remember there was a schoolboy member, Bob, I can't remember his last name. He said his son used to hate school. It was such a chore trying to get him to go to school. But Gene, he had Gene for a teacher-advisor. And Gene would go home and sit with them, and have dinner and stuff. And he noticed, he, Bob, noticed that he really liked going to school. And he was doing so much better. He was learning math, which had always been something he couldn't seem to get. Because here was somebody who was interested in him and caring about him and what he thought and just helping him do. He said it made all the difference. And he said, that's what sold me on the school. He said I was deltful. I was skeptical. But after when I saw what it did for my son, he said, you know, that's absolutely... So Gene was going... He said at first, well, I was a little deltful because Gene had a macrame belt. Something about a macrame belt, that signified, you know, it's kind of 60's-ish, you know, kind of whatever. But he said, well, I figured out the belt wasn't very important. He was great. Always people. Now, even now, there was one who it was kind of a... It became very polarized when I got on. And I was told that. And I said, look, we're worried because the parents who are used to more progressive school, who would come from somewhere else, many of them, some of them, you know, a teacher said, Goddard, which has a very progressive philosophy coming from Dewey, John Dewey's philosophy, you know, learning by doing and so on. And they said there was... The opposition was very strong. And we were really afraid that somehow or other there would be a vote to turn the school's philosophy back to eliminate all of the good features. And we were worried for our children and just thought it would be a shame. So I got on because I was very progressive. And I did have to... I went around and talked to people. And I went on with the express purpose of really trying to fight for what the school was doing and to try to help people see how positive it was. So when you say to fight for what the school was and to maintain that philosophy, does that mean that you were going out and talking to more parents who you knew were opposed to it to try to help? No, no, it was just... We had to... At school board meetings, you know, we had to decide on kind of all these issues. And so I just wanted to represent the point of view that felt the school was really something worth saving that was really good for the school and that the answer, the objections, but talk about the real issues. There was a tendency for people to kind of attack this budget. That would be one way to get it. And I mean, some of the opposition was kind of hard to really argue about it. But you could state your point of view and and don't back down, but listen to the others. And we had to all learn to do that, which we actually did, which was surprising. Because I remember there was one member, Ruth Town, and I was kind of warned. I said, you will find it very difficult to deal with. And she was indeed, because she was very so sure that she was right about this and that and the other, that children are not going to learn anything. And this is terrible. I think she took her own son out of the school because she was afraid it was just going to... It was a terrible kind of education. I'm not quite sure how, but I know that we ended up good friends. I came to realize that some of us, though, I agreed with her. And there was one thing that we had in common. We both cared passionately about education, about our children. She cared passionately about education. And so did I, from different points of view. And that was really good. And I said that to her. And I said, well, you know, when I could agree, I did. And that was a revelation to me that you could, and I think to her, too, you could disagree very much, but you could still respect each other. I love that. I want to end on that note. That is so wonderful that you can disagree, but find your common ground that you both have this passion that you care about, and you're going to work together, even though you disagree. Wonderful. I wish we could all do that today. So thank you so much for joining me today, Alice. And thank you for listening. And we'll be having more conversations on this and carrying on with Alice, the conversation, but also with others. Thank you so much for joining us. Initially, in 1967, Union 32 included Montpelier, East Montpelier, Calis, Middlesex, and Worcester. In 1968, Montpelier withdrew, and Berlin moved from Union 31 to Union 32. The trip to Maine in February of 1968 was to look at how a district with similar demographics worked, with a central larger town surrounded by rural towns, while Montpelier was still in the union. The field trip to see a progressive school in action was to New Hampshire. The composition of the board at the time of these field trips was nine members from Montpelier, two from East Montpelier, and one each from Calis, Middlesex, and Worcester. 12 of the 14 members visited the progressive school in New Hampshire and were favorably impressed. The other two, Bill Doyle of Montpelier and Bill Sargent of Worcester, who traveled later and spoke directly with teachers, were not happy with what they found. See Bill Sargent speak about it on the Genesis of U-32, the rural context. After Montpelier withdrew and Berlin joined, East Montpelier and Berlin each had two board members, and Calis, Middlesex, and Worcester each had one board member. No towns had three members. Ruth Town represented Berlin, her oldest son, Owen Town, attended Montpelier High School for grades 9 to 11, and then attended U-32, where he was in the first graduating class in 1972. He shares his perspective in, from Berlin's Berry Road Schoolhouse to Zoo 32. He also contributes to the Genesis of U-32, the rural context. His younger brother Brad attended Montpelier for a year, then U-32, and then transferred back to Montpelier High School.