An updated report prepared for the Mountain Views School District (MVSD) shows that rebuilding Woodstock Union High School and Middle School (WUHS/MS) as proposed will be more than $20 million less expensive for local taxpayers than a comprehensive renovation of the existing facility.
The cost analysis, prepared by Burlington-based PC Construction, assumes that state construction aid and pledged private donations will help reduce the cost of an all-new WUHS/MS to taxpayers. The updated analysis presented to the MVSD Rebuild Working Group last week builds on a post-bond-vote study that the PC firm prepared for the school district after a $99 million school building bond was defeated by voters in the seven-town school district at Town Meeting in March of 2024. The MVSD School Board is now asking voters to okay a proposed bond of $111.9 million for the construction of a new WUHS/MS. School district officials have said that although the cost of the newly proposed bond has spiked $13 million over the price tag on the 2024 bond due to inflation and federal tariffs on imported materials, taxpayers will bear only $84 million of the new bond over the next 30 years — $15 million less than they would have spent if the earlier bond had been okayed.
In the runup to the 2026 bond vote at town meetings in Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading, and Woodstock on March 3, school district officials acknowledged in a statement accompanying the release of the PC Construction cost analysis that “many community members understandably want to repair the building they know.” The updated analysis released last weekend was intended to examine the costs and long-term impacts of the rebuild as opposed to renovation of WUHS/MS. “This analysis confirms that rebuilding is the more affordable path due to the strong financial safeguards built into Article 4 (on MVSD’s Town Meeting warning],” Seth Webb, an MVSD board member from Woodstock and chair of the Rebuild Working Group, averred as the new cost comparison report was made public.
For more on this, please see our Feb. 19 edition of the Vermont Standard.
