BRIDGEWATER — As Greg Jenne asked voters to close his elementary school and bus the students to a building nine miles away, he blamed the town’s difficult situation on statewide education policies.
Jenne, the outgoing chair of the Bridgewater Village School Board, was asking residents to vote to consolidate their 35-student K-6 school into the nearby Pomfret School building in the same supervisory union.
“This has been an emotional decision for me,” Jenne said. “I went to this school. Seth Shaw (another board member) went to this school. I remember when my dad owned the garage across the street and I could walk over.”
The measure was the latest solution to a drop in enrollment and increase in costs at the Woodstock-based Windsor Central Supervisory Union, following the Elementary School Consolidation Study announced in 2013.
Bridgewater passed the consolidation plan, 111-11, by paper ballot Tuesday, and Pomfret passed it, 84-2. The chairs of each school district will meet Wednesday night to sign a formal contract, according to Alice Worth, superintendent of WCSU.
As part of the agreement, the Pomfret School’s name will dissolve, and the two communities will have a “name the school” competition to come up with one that incorporates Bridgewater.
The joint district will have a six-member board, amalgamated from each town’s three current school board members, and the town of Bridgewater will maintain its 100-year-old facility through 2016 in case voters want to change their mind.
The merger will lower per-pupil spending by about 30 percent, to $10,744 for both towns. Without the merger, Jenne said per pupil spending would have been $15,309 for Bridgewater and $15,840 for Pomfret. (Their budgets for the 2016 fiscal year are $653,701 and $862,647, respectively.)
Worth called the merger “the best thing for both communities,” because it maintains each town’s local control over board decisions while empowering them to better serve their students.
“The control that the board had over the budget left [board members] with no other option than to cut the things that matter the most to kids,” Worth said. “The joint district is a great opportunity to maintain a voice and control and connection with your kids.”
The combined enrollment will be around 90 students, Worth said, giving the new school district about the same population as Killington Elementary School. The joint district is advertising for a full-time principal, who will replace the two part-time principals, Worth said.
Before the merger, Pomfret had already combined its 63 students in up to three grades per classroom, according to its website; Bridgewater has multi-grade classrooms at every level except kindergarten.
The school has suffered declining enrollment for at least a decade. Bridgewater Village School Principal Tedd Brown remembers having 42 students when he started a few years ago; the Agency of Education reports the school as having 78 students in 2004.
With enrollment plummeting, Bridgewater’s annual budget still rose at least as fast as inflation — reaching nearly $1 million in 2013 — according to town reports. In 2005, the budget was about $830,000; in 1997 it was around $600,000; and in 1993, the school budget was under $400,000.
Jody Pindt, who voted for the merger, said students are better off transitioning to Woodstock Union High School if they are socialized at the combined school with more kids.
Bruce Martin, who also voted yes, said it was about the money.
“It’s unfortunate to close schools, small schools, but because of the financial side of this issue, you have to,” Martin said.
Sheryl Phelps, who attended the Bridgewater Village School in the 1950s, said she was one of the 11 people who voted against the merger.
“The school is the hub of the community, and when your school dies, your community dies,” Phelps said.
“The State of Vermont has put so many mandates on schools and the taxpayers that they’re not calling young families, and the young people who grew up here are leaving,” Phelps said. “If the state would smarten up, they’d attract young families. You can back off on the taxes. You can back off on the mandates.”
Phelps said, “Sixty percent of the property back in the ’90s was nonresidents. How could we be a Gold Town?”
Jenne, the school board chair, told the more than 100 people at the floor meeting that he sat on a merger study in 2005, and this year’s decision was difficult.
“The state is to blame in my opinion,” Jenne said. “They’re not encouraging business growth.”
