Newbury sticks with Oxbow district
Modified: 12/30/2020 9:17:35 PM
NEWBURY, Vt. Voters have rejected a proposal to leave the Oxbow Unified Union School District and return Newbury Elementary School to a standalone school district.
In Australian and mail-in balloting on Tuesday, Newbury residents voted 169-140 to defeat the proposal.
Newbury had tried in 2018 to avoid joining the Oxbow district, which pairs the town with Bradford, Vt., and oversees an elementary school in each town as well as Oxbow High School and River Bend Career and Technical Center. The State Board of Education required the involuntary merger that created the district under Act 46, Vermont’s 2015 school consolidation law.
Newbury, Tunbridge among Vermont towns considering leaving school districts
Students at the Ripton Elementary School head to the bus at the end of the day on Tuesday, December 1, 2020. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Modified: 12/28/2020 8:45:38 PM
MONTPELIER At least five towns across Vermont will vote in the coming weeks on whether to secede from their unified school districts, a first wave of district breakups that could herald more.
For David Major, the former Westminster School Board chairman who helped organize a petition for his town to vote Jan. 5 on secession, it is fundamentally a question of local control. Westminster has already collaborated with its neighboring towns on such services as food service and special education, Major said, and has seen no added benefit to being forced to combine school boards with Athens and Grafton under Act 46.