School budget Yes outweigh No by almost 3-1 in VDC tally, thus far

By Guy Page

Two small towns in southern Vermont have voted to close their elementary schools, citing declining enrollment and rising costs.

At Town Meeting, Marlboro residents voted 311 to 65 to close the town’s elementary school. Marlboro has educated local children since 1827, but it is among a small number of Vermont towns with fewer than 100 students enrolled, according to the Brattleboro Reformer.

Voters in Readsboro also approved closing their school, authorizing the school board to shut it down effective July 1. The measure passed 222 to 36, the Bennington Banner reported. Residents narrowly approved a $1,931,739 school district budget — by a vote of 122 to 121 — that will convert the district into a non-operating system that tuitions students to other schools.

If voters had opted to keep the school open, the projected budget would have been $2,253,956 and required a second vote. The school currently enrolls 37 students.

Meanwhile, voters in the Mountain Views School District approved a major school construction project. Ballots cast across the district’s seven towns supported a $112 million bond for a new middle and high school by a vote of 1,648 to 1,047, according to the Valley News. The 61.1% approval exceeded the 60% supermajority required for bond authorization.

In Burlington, poll workers kept watch for federal immigration agents during Town Meeting Day voting. The Burlington Free Press reported that election officials in Burlington, Winooski, and Montpelier — the only Vermont cities that allow legal non-citizens to vote in local elections — were alert to the possibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence.

Although Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said there were “no plans” to deploy ICE officers at polling sites, Burlington Ward 7 clerk Wendy Coe said some eligible non-citizen voters chose to mail in ballots rather than vote in person.

“Many of them don’t leave their houses,” Coe told the newspaper.

Coe said no federal agents were seen at the Integrated Arts Academy polling location in Ward 7, and she had not received reports from other polling places.

Volunteers with the League of Women Voters of Vermont were stationed outside polling sites in the three cities and planned to film any ICE officers who appeared, Coe said.

Elsewhere, a proposal to allow teenagers and non-citizens to vote in municipal elections failed at Bennington’s Town Meeting, according to local reports.

In Underhill, however, voters approved a referendum urging the town to declare itself an “apartheid-free community.” The advisory measure passed 390 to 228 and asks the selectboard to adopt a resolution expressing support for the Palestinian people and opposing what the measure describes as racism, bigotry and oppression, while calling for an end to support for Israel over conditions in Palestine.

VDC school budget tally as of March 5: 36 yes, 13 no – thanks to all who reported in results