The Harwood Unified Union School District is considering a plan to close four elementary schools and a middle school, creating a school district that reflects current and predicted future enrollment as well as impending state dictates on school district size and configuration.
It’s painful to contemplate closing the schools that are so central to our communities, AND it’s better to control our own destiny and future before it’s imposed on us by Montpelier.
Since Act 46, which merged the school boards of our six local school districts (Warren, Waitsfield, Fayston, Moretown, Waterbury/Duxbury and Harwood Union Middle and High School), colleagues, co-workers and I have spent hours discussing how we might reconfigure our schools without gutting them. It’s not easy. We’ve asked ourselves, where would you build schools if you had none? Where would it make sense to group elementary school students, middle and high school students?
In The Valley, we came up with a north/south elementary school concept. We kept a high school near Harwood Union, kept Crossett Brook and kept Brookside. We never drilled down into where Valley schools might be. If you were going for north and south, Waitsfield and Moretown might work. Or Warren and Moretown.
Merging under Act 46 was a decade ago. The education funding landscape has changed dramatically since then. The state (et al) failed to act on the cost of health care. Everyone has failed on ed funding. Enrollments continue dropping, while the state, via Gov. Scott and the legislature, insists closing schools will save money -without concrete evidence.
The preliminary work that the school board has done is a good starting point. We disagree with the suggestion that Waitsfield Elementary School cannot be repurposed as a Valley elementary school. It makes more sense to re-use this than start afresh by buying land. The property may technically be in a flood overlay district, but it does not flood. It can be reconstructed for flood resilience and to support a second floor. It has access to municipal water and wastewater. It’s central to a large percentage of local students. The school district already owns it. Waitsfields’ Local Emergency Management Plan designates the school as the town’s emergency shelter and it’s been outfitted with a generator and other infrastructure to support that. As we contemplate closing schools, let’s not throw this particular baby out with the bathwater.
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