Proposed $99 million bond for construction of new WUHS/MS fails 1,910-1,570
By Tom Ayres, Senior Staff Writer
Following weeks of controversy that roiled the seven towns in the Mountain Views Supervisory Union (MVSU) school district, voters on Tuesday rejected a proposed $99 million school bond to fund the construction of a new Woodstock Union High School and Middle School (WUHS/MS).
The combined tally in the vote across the towns of Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading, and Woodstock was 1,910 votes opposed to the bond issue versus 1,570 in favor. The results were not released by the MVSU administration until mid-morning on Wednesday because, by state statute, all ballots in school bond votes need to be comingled and counted by representatives of the Boards of Civil Authority in the seven-town school district. As a result, bond vote tallies from the individual towns in the MVSU are unavailable.
The results of the bond vote were a stark departure from the tally for another fiscal issue on the Australian ballots in the seven communities on Town Meeting Day: the school district’s 2024-25 fiscal year budget, which passed resoundingly, 2,115 to 1,300, with 62% of the voters in favor of the budget and only 38% opposed. By contrast, the proposed school bond was rejected by a 55% to 45% margin.
On Tuesday, March 5, nearly 3,500 residents of the Mountain Views Supervisory Union cast their ballots for Article 7, which asked voters to approve funding a new $99 million Woodstock Union High School/Middle School. The measure failed. Above, Stephanie Ambrose of Woodstock casts her vote. Rick Russell Photo
In a group interview via Zoom before the bond vote tally was officially posted, MVSU School Board Vice Chair Ben Ford, who is also the board’s clerk and the chair of its Finance and New School Build committees, weighed in on the results of the bond vote. MVSU Superintendent Sherry Sousa, School Board Chair Keri Bristow of Woodstock, Dr. Claire Debritko, a Woodstock pediatrician who was a prominent and vocal advocate for the bond’s passage, and Ford reacted with chagrin to the vote result that denied the school district permission to seek $99 million in a long-term bond to fund construction of the new WUHS/MS and the subsequent demolition of the 55-to-65-year-old current high school and middle school. The new school had been slated to open in September of 2026.
Given the bond issue rejection, MVSU administrators and the School Board are precluded, at least for now, from negotiating a long-term bond issuance with a preferred interest rate in the bond market. It remains to be seen when MVSU officials will take another crack at seeking voter approval for building a new WUHS/MS and demolishing the old school.
“We haven’t gotten the results we sought,” Bristow lamented. “We will have to do a quick turnaround and figure out what we can do to cause our communities to get behind us in passing this bond vote.” Asked if a modification of the school building proposal or the bond request total was a possibility, Ford was direct.
“I’ll answer that one,” Ford said. “’l will tell you what won’t be modified is the building. What might be modified is the amount of private philanthropy that gets donated, because the failed bond vote will give us a very strong message to take to our private donors and say, ‘Yes, you’ve given us a little bit of money. We need you to pony up more.’ And the same message would go to the state, by saying, ‘Yes, you’ve been working very hard with your task force on school construction aid, but we’re still the only state in the New England region that doesn’t have an active program, and we need you to accelerate it.’”
Picking up on Ford’s remarks, Sousa laid much of the blame for the bond’s defeat on state officials and lawmakers, contending that voters’ rejection of the $99 million bond was as much an expression of dissatisfaction with state education funding priorities as anything else. “We’ve gotten a negative vote that to me is more of a statement about the state of education funding in Vermont. It really is,” Sousa offered. “I think the governor’s office, legislature, and other superintendents are looking to us as a district that really did everything right,” the MVSU superintendent continued. “It took eight years, we gathered opinions from all levels of experts, we had long conversations at the board level, and we spent a great deal of time bringing the message to our communities. By not passing this bond, it’s really a moratorium on how education is funded by our state, more to me than a reflection of our towns and their commitment to the education of our children.”
Sousa specifically faulted state officials and lawmakers for the extended delay in coming up with a new funding strategy for school construction aid to local communities and urged swifter action when a new, statewide task force on the issue is put into place this legislative session. It is hoped that the new group will make recommendations regarding renewed state school construction aid in a report at the outset of the 2025 legislative session next January. “It’s too little too late for the students of our town,” Sousa said. “We have waited a number of years for them to take action and it’s only when schools are in a desperate situation that we’re seeing the kind of response that should have happened years ago.”
Dr. Debritko, a former member of the Windsor Central Supervisory Union (WVSU) School Board, the predecessor to the MVSU body, also addressed the state’s responsibility for reinstituting construction aid from the state level in times ahead — an effort that could have a significant, beneficial impact on the homestead tax burden of the school bond for property owners in the regional school district in future years.
“It is inexcusable for the state to not be stepping in when we have schools that are crumbling around students and no longer meeting any of today’s standards for education, health, ADA accessibility, and safety,” Debritko noted. “I think this vote really gives another message to legislators that our seven communities want them to step up in the way that they as individual community members have always stepped up to support education and a quality learning environment.”
Adding to the pediatrician’s remarks, Ford said, “There’s this whole notion of where the money is going to come from. If our legislature is going to greenlight things like cannabis and gaming in our state, knowing the social ills that come along with that, then those resources need to be plowed into the greatest social benefit that we can make, which is public education.”
Bristow, the current MVSU School Board Chair, was reelected in an uncontested Woodstock race Tuesday for another term on the school district’s governing body. “My next three years will be spent trying to get this building approved and built and doing the best we can through education,” Bristow offered near the end of the group interview.
Reached briefly just after 10 a.m. Wednesday, Ford added to his comments from the earlier group interview, speculating about what the school district’s next steps will be.
“When you consider how close this was, we made an incredibly strong showing,” Ford concluded. “You’re talking about 340 votes — that’s 170 people we need to convince out of 3,500, right? That’s likely two or three public presentations in terms of the attendance that we’ve gotten at recent presentations. We’ve done dozens of them. So looks like we just need to keep at it. What I’ll push for is to get another bond vote scheduled. And that conversation will be about when — and the steps that we need to take around getting the word out in advance so that we pass this the next time.”
Efforts to get comments from leading critics and opponents of the school bond proposal were unsuccessful as the Standard went to press on Wednesday.
The 2024-25 School Budget
Voters in the MVSU school district overwhelmingly okayed a school budget of $29,756,674 for the 2024-25 fiscal year. While tallies varied widely across the seven towns in the district, the overall vote was definitive: 2,115 yes to 1,300 no, a margin of 62% to 38%.
Woodstock and Pomfret voters delivered the greatest margin of victory for the proposed school budget, okaying its passage by 950-380 in Woodstock and 328-88 in Pomfret. The budget was also okayed by wide margins in Barnard and Reading, while Plymouth voters narrowly passed the FY25 funding, 101-98. The outliers were Bridgewater and Killington. Bridgewater voters rejected the budget by 20 votes, 176-156, while Killington residents voted decisively against the proposed budget, casting 315 no votes to only 186 in favor.
The newly adopted budget for the coming school year will result in education spending of $16,552 per “Long Term Weighted (LTW) equalized pupil,” according to the State of Vermont’s complex educational funding formula.
School Board Races
There were six uncontested races for 3-year slots on the MVSU School Board on Tuesday. Four incumbents from Bridgewater, Killington, Pomfret, and Woodstock were reelected, while two newcomers — one each from Barnard and Woodstock — also joined the school district governing body. All were elected with minimal or no write-in opposition.
In Bridgewater, incumbent Ryan Townsend was elected to another term, as were his fellow incumbents Katie Reed in Killington, Robert Crean in Pomfret, and Keri Bristow in Woodstock. Bristow is the current chair of the MVSU School Board.
The newcomers to the MVSU Board are Heather Lawler in Barnard and Ernie Fernandez in Woodstock.
In an email statement Wednesday morning, Lawler said “I wish to thank the community of Barnard for electing me to serve. I bring more than 20 years of experience in public education and I look forward to serving the community as a school board member… My goal is to continue the good work the MVSU/MVSD board has been doing; to continue to be fiscally responsible and also continue to move our schools forward to be among the very best in the state. I look forward to representing the needs of our students and community members in this role.” Lawler is currently the assistant superintendent of the Orange Southwest Supervisory Union, based in Randolph. She formerly served as the principal of elementary schools in Braintree and Randolph, and from 2017-2020 was the associate principal at WUHS/MS.
Queried late Tuesday evening about her reelection, incumbent School Board Chair Keri Bristow of Woodstock said she will devote the next three years to helping bring a newly built Woodstock Union High School and Middle School on line, despite Tuesday’s rejection of a $99 million school construction bond issue. “Our strategic plan is going to be published very soon and our portrait of a graduate, which includes many important aspects of education, including global citizenship, will also be one of my focuses.” Bristow is a retired foreign language instructor in both the Woodstock and Hartland school systems.