Healing, the past, and budget planning

As we come out of the successful amendment of our Washington Central Unified Union School District Articles of Agreement, I hope WCUUSD residents are asking what's next.

I heard residents, "Disapprove" voters in particular, talk about the need for healing and how much division a valid petition had caused in the district. You can see this dialogue during the recording of the WCUUSD special informational meeting of August 10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYpCR4tlJZI

What I do not hear these same "Disapprove" voters talk about is today's district children. Linda Gray, addressing the School Board with a public comment (at 32:30 in the recording): "This will be your legacy. They will be talking about this for fifty years. I know you've heard me say this but I'd like you to think about that. Because we're still talking about Act 46. We're still talking about how Montpelier pulled out of U32 and that was fifty years ago..." It's true, Montpelier did pull out in June of 1969 (fifty-seven years ago) - and in July of 1969 voted to rejoin. Our five union-district (now WCUUSD) towns rejected their appeal to rejoin! Imagine how different things would be had cooler heads prevailed and we had a district unified in geography, not just governance...

What possible bearing could a decision from 'fifty years ago' have on what we should do for our children's education today? Fifty-seven years ago we landed men on the moon for the first time. Fifty years ago the Concorde — notable mostly for being financially unsustainable — made its first commercial flight. Like the Concorde, U-32's origins belong to the past. We need to focus on today and tomorrow for our children. Obsessing about a past that cannot be changed is no way to move forward. We ought to take stock of where we are now, discuss the facts of our situation, arrive at a shared understanding and then make a decision about how to move forward through a democratic process.

It is time for our district's full focus to be on our kids, the education they are receiving, and what we can do to improve it.

If our district offers the best public education our student body and funding allows, that will be the best thing our district can do to encourage families to move to our towns. During the community conversations surrounding this amendment to the Articles of Agreement, I also often heard "Disapprove" voters talk about the need to market our towns better or build more housing. I agree these are conversations individual towns should have. But our school district is not any of our towns, the WCUUSD school board does not supervise town matters and it does not have control over town zoning or funding. In short, these conversations are a distraction from our district's need to focus on our children and the education we provide them.

Let's agree to bring town matters to each town's selectboard, and school district matters to the school board. We need to start focusing our district resources to provide the best we can for our children, within the constraints of those resources.

We should call for provisional WCUUSD budget planning and the School Board to begin scheduling discussions now. It is unfortunate the district has been unable to retain a Superintendent past 2 years (outgoing Superintendent Dellinger-Pate lasted the longest, at 25 months). This is another challenge we ought to look at fixing, but we ought not to let it cause us to be underprepared and underinformed for next year's budget.

The point of planning isn't to plan once and be done; it is to prepare and familiarize ourselves with facts, estimates and numbers so that when decisions must be made and budgets must be voted on, voters have as much context as possible on which to make an informed decision. Divisiveness grows where multiple parties do not have shared facts and cannot understand other sides' viewpoints.

The School Board has an obligation to begin planning and sharing the options it thinks most viable ahead of final funding numbers from the state. The Board should share those plans and the rationales for them with the public, and involve the public in discussions around those plans. This is our best bet for moving together as a unified district into the future, doing the best we can with the past we have.