Voters in the nine towns that make up the Contoocook Valley School District on Tuesday defeated a plan that would allow the school board to close up to four elementary schools in Bennington, Dublin, Francestown and Temple to address declining student enrollment.
The proposal to consolidate schools was rejected by 2,572 (55%) of those voting compared to 2,145 (45%) who supported it, school board member Alan Edelkind of Dublin said Wednesday. It needed a two-thirds majority vote to pass.
“Keeping the schools in the towns is a very emotional issue,” Edelkind said. “People don’t want change so they, regardless of what you’re telling them is needed to be done, voted to do that. And we, as a school board need to accept it.”
The ConVal school district has seen steadily declining student enrollment with more than half of the district’s 1,540 elementary school seats now empty, according to October student enrollment figures and a hired consultant’s report.
The district comprises Antrim, Bennington, Dublin, Francestown, Greenfield, Hancock, Peterborough, Sharon and Temple. Its 1967 Articles of Agreement requires elementary schools exist in eight of its nine towns. Sharon sends its elementary students to Peterborough.
The warrant article sought to amend the district’s founding agreement to give the school board the authority to close up to four of the elementary schools in Bennington (68 students enrolled), Dublin (61 students enrolled), Francestown (45 students enrolled) and Temple (33 students enrolled). Elementary schools in Antrim, Greenfield, Hancock and Peterborough could not be closed.
“The facts are these schools are no longer called small schools. They are called microschools,” Edelkind said.
Edelkind, who chairs the school board’s strategic organization committee, said the committee will discuss the vote with the full board at its March 19 meeting and will recommend it no longer pursue consolidation.
“I think we need to drop it. It’s going to be a huge, huge effort (to continue to analyze it) and we just spent a whole year of the school board’s time doing this,” he said. “We have a lot of other issues on our plate.”
Voting tended to range by community with “small towns who are basically the ones under consideration for consolidation saying no and the big towns who are saying yes,” Edelkind said. In Temple, for example, the K-4 school enrolls about 33 students and “over 90 percent of the people in that town voted to keep the school,” he said. But Peterborough residents voted 1,048 to 349 to pass the article. And Greenfield voters supported the warrant article 224 to 99.
Feelings ran strong Tuesday outside polling places in Bennington and Francestown — two communities under consideration for school closure.
“I want my school to stay open,” Theresa Kimball of Bennington said outside the polls Tuesday. “I’m raising my grandchildren. I have two more to go through Pierce School (Bennington’s elementary school),” added Kimball, who said she has lived in town nearly 20 years.
“I’m against closing the schools. It’s important for communities to have their own small school,” Francestown resident Dan Fotter said before casting his vote outside Town Hall. While he said his children are older and no longer attend school, a local school remains important to him with regard to maintaining property values.
But Jon Bicknell of Francestown said he voted in support of the warrant to close schools. He said the school district overbuilt elementary schools and now is faced with the high cost of maintaining them as enrollments drop.
“They can put a lot of kids in a single building where the cost of heating and maintenance and everything else (would be lower),” the Francestown native said. “They’ve got an identical school in Greenfield, Bennington and Francestown. All the kids of those three towns can fit into one school.”
Meanwhile, Francestown residents will vote at Town Meeting on Saturday, March 16 on whether they want to explore leaving the ConVal school district. Dublin voters have a similar article on its Town Meeting warrant, which also will be held Saturday, March 16, Edelkind said.
The ConVal school board spent more than a year studying how to address declining enrollment and consolidation. The process included hiring independent consultant Prismatic Services Inc., of North Carolina, which spent six months evaluating ConVal’s situation. Prismatic estimated the ConVal school district could save $2.4 million to $4 million a year by consolidating elementary education at four schools.
Voting results by town TOWN YES NO Antrim 212 219 Bennington 73 341 Dublin 100 439 Francestown 74 491 Greenfield 224 99 Hancock 298 221 Peterborough 1,048 349 Sharon 72 32 Temple 41 381 TOTAL 2,145 2,572 Source: ConVal School Board member Alan Edelkind {related_content_uuid}826898f6-d6b9-4e5d-860f-a453856a003b{/related_content_uuid}
