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By Guy Page
Danville residents turned out in huge numbers Saturday, December 7 and decisively defeated a petition that sought to close the high school in the small Caledonia County town.
The final vote was 75-480 against the petition, thereby opting to keep Danville High School open, the North Star Monthly reported this weekend.
Coverage is also available at WCAX and the Caledonian-Record.
The vote was held amid statewide discussion of closing or merging small schools via Act 73, passed by the Legislature this year to reduce school spending and improve student outcomes. Critics of Act 73 say it could lead to unwelcome, involuntary mergers of small rural schools. The School Redistricting Task Force last month recommended ”strategic,” voluntary-only school district mergers.
According to the report in the monthly community newspaper, more than 580 voters cast ballots during the special town meeting held in the school gymnasium, a turnout that filled the space with close to 1,000 people. Longtime Moderator Toby Balivet remarked that he had never seen so many people packed into the gym.
Danville High School currently enrolls 66 local students and 15 tuition students from other communities. If Danville High School was closed, it is likely that many local students would be tuitioned to neighboring high schools including Twinfield (located in Planfield), St. Johnsbury Academy, Lyndon Institute, and Hazen Union in Hardwick, and others.
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Categories: Education
Re: “If Danville High School was closed, it is likely that many local students would be tuitioned to neighboring high schools including Twinfield (located in Plainfield), St. Johnsbury Academy, Lyndon Institute, and Hazen Union in Hardwick, and others.”
Guy, I don’t know where or how you arrived at the above assessment. But it ignores one of the glaring differences between what the Danville voters were told and what the closing of their high school would actually allow.
For example, if the Danville High School closed, it could be re-opened under independent and truly local control as an independent school. Consider the North Bennington, VT school conversion.
“When North Bennington residents voted to shutter their public school, it wasn’t because of rising teacher pay or declining test scores. Far from it: They were worried the state would close or consolidate the small, kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school in their town of 1,500. So, they preempted fate and made it private. The school district now pays tuition for North Bennington children to attend the new Village School.” – Seven Days January 8, 2013
That was more than ten years ago.
Is the new Village School of North Bennington really a ‘new’ school? No, not really. It’s in the same facility, with roughly the same staff and same programs. But as an independent school, the Village School is free of the Agency of Education whims and mandates that adversely affected it as a public school.
Importantly, the North Bennington Village School operates successfully on the Vermont Average Annual Tuition that is, typically, significantly less than the cost of operating a public school.
Is it surprising that Danville voters voted as they did, given the fallacious information recently presented by the AOE’s Education Reform Committee? No. Vermont’s public education establishment is blatantly falsifying and misrepresenting the facts of these matters.
The Danville voters should ‘reconsider’ their options. They can have their cake and eat it too.
Re: “Danville votes by 6-1 margin to keep small, local high school open”
The irony of the Danville vote is that, in their attempt to save the school, they’ve made it even more susceptible to AOE mergers and school consolidations that will likely close the school.
Petition to Reconsider!
If you plan to keep a school open that is this small then you should be paying for it from your town budget. You should not be getting federal funding and you should not be getting excessive state school tax. School this small are a waste of money. it should not be the burden of the taxpayers to pay this. The school should be consolidated to another bigger school
Kenneth, what happened to local ‘Democracy’ and per pupil compensation is per pupil regardless of size of student population
The reality is that when your local public school is closed your property taxes will go up regardless.
Keeping a small school open by privatizing it can not only save a community center, it can cost taxpayers 36% less than maintaining that same small school in a public configuration.
Bigger schools with so-called ‘economy of scale’ are a remedy only for the current public school one-size-fits-all structure, …that has been obsolete for decades.
The gorilla in the room: It doesn’t take a rocket scientists to predict the outcome of this continued centralized education governance. Higher costs and property taxes. Continued dysfunctional student outcomes.
Remember, doing the same thing over and again, and expecting a different outcome, is the definition of Vermont’s failed education system (i.e., insanity).