When it comes to plans to ask voters in 18 area towns to approve a $149 million bond that would finance construction of a modern new home for the Central Vermont Career Center, what has been a summer of silence is coming to an end.
The CVCC School Board hasn’t met in more than a month – nearly two if one discounts a virtual-only meeting that lasted less than 20 minutes, and ended with its decision to pay Place Creative Company $48,850 to handle marketing and public relations associated with the November 4 bond vote.
The board held hold its annual retreat on August 11, when it will meet for the first time with representatives of the Burlington advertising agency that will have roughly two months to pitch the project before early voting is underway in a sprawling school district that includes all the towns from six other districts.
Those districts range in size from the Cabot School District, which serves roughly 170 pre-K-12 students, to the two-town Barre Unified Union School district, which has a total enrollment of just over 2,200.
Geographically, all the other districts – including Cabot’s – are larger than Barre’s, which covers 34.7 square miles, all but four of them in Barre Town. Cabot alone covers 38.4 square miles, and all the other districts are larger – some significantly.
Only four of the towns in the career center’s 18-town catchment area – one each of its four other sending districts — are geographically smaller than the entire Barre district, which is its current, and, the CVCC board hopes, future home.
Montpelier is 10.3 square miles, but its partner in the Montpelier Roxbury Public School District is 41.7 square miles. The district serves 1,178 pre-K-12 students.
East Montpelier covers 32 square miles. That’s smaller than the Barre district, and smaller than any of its partners in the five-town Washington Central Unified Union School District. Anchored by U-32 Middle and High School, that district covers 185.5 miles, and serves 1,357 students.
At 25.9 square miles, Waitsfield is the smallest of the six towns in the Harwood Unified Union School District, which is anchored by Harwood Union High School and collectively covers 235.4 square miles and serves 1,785 students.
Plainfield, which is paired with Marshfield in the Twinfield Union School District, is 21.1 square miles, but the district, which serves 323 students, is 64.8 square miles.
Add it all up, and the towns within the boundaries of the CVCC School District, cover 610.8 miles, and include schools that serve a little more than 7,000 students.
Give or take, the Barre-based career center, currently serves roughly 245 of them in space it has occupied since it opened in a wing of Spaulding High School in 1969.
The center’s name has changed a couple of times over the years and, while its programs have evolved, its location hasn’t changed.
That’s a problem for a center, which, due to space constraints and a spike in popularity of career technical education, routinely turns students away. Expect that fact to figure prominently in the campaign that hasn’t started, but will have to quickly given the tight timeframe.
While there has been some work behind the scenes, the project hasn’t advanced much since a series of poorly attended forums that started in late May and ended in early June.
Those who visit the district’s website (cvtcc.org) will be prompted to: “Check it out! We’re building a new CVCC!” However, the material that follows that link is dated including the answers to “frequently asked questions” about which more information is now available.
Earlier this week, the board’s facilities committee met for the first time since June 3, and members were told wetlands that were potentially problematic still are, though the design for the 167,000-square-foot facility proposed in Graniteville has been tweaked to minimize the impact on one Class 3 wetland. They were told there is the potential one of two proposed entrances to the new center may have to be scrapped. The problem isn’t viewed as insurmountable, and off-site mitigation could be an option. A preliminary traffic study has yielded generally favorable results, and while two intersections warrant further analysis, and may require paying impact fees, those issues will be sorted out if the bond passes.
Getting the bond passed during an off-cycle special election in an 18-town school district that didn’t exist four years ago is the next step.
The marketing campaign has been limited to a survey that, by design, wasn’t broadly circulated, but will help frame the messaging about a project that would expand the center’s capacity to 500 students, open the door to a full-day program for those it serves, and deliver “education that works” in space that was specifically designed for it.
The project has an estimated price – $149 million. However, projecting the tax implications of the bond’s approval is a mostly hypothetical exercise for a variety of reasons.
Unlike the six school districts it serves, the CVCC district doesn’t have taxing authority. Though its operating budget is now approved by the collective, commingled votes of residents in 18 towns, it is paid for by tuition charged to the sending districts based on a six-semester average.
Barring a change, tuition would be boosted to cover the debt service, assessed using the same formula, and show up as a line item in school district budgets from Barre’s to Cabot’s.
Those are the numbers being crunched, using a theoretical $300,000 house and homestead tax rates for each community. That exercise is nearing completion and rough numbers should soon be available, officials say.
