Sudbury opts out of school merger plan
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By Cristina Kumka Herald Staff - Published: January 13, 2009
For the second time in two months, Sudbury voters opted out of a plan Saturday to join Leicester and Whiting in fronting the cost of building a new $5 million to $7 million school for 120 of their children in pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade.
Although the measure — to enter into a joint contract and allocate $7,000 toward the further study of the school — failed by a slim margin of 66 to 60, Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union Superintendent William Mathis said the proposal is hardly dead — the two other towns in favor of the school will move forward now that "Sudbury has voted itself off the island."
"It already has," Mathis said Monday.
"It's possible and somewhat likely that Leicester will choose to go forward and talk with Whiting and others to see what their options are."
Those others could possibly include Brandon and Salisbury, Mathis said.
Sudbury residents who attended the afternoon vote at Town Hall in opposition of the plan said they didn't trust an 11-member school planning committee of school officials from all three towns that had one idea in mind — to build a new school.
"It was setting that train rolling and you can't make it stop," said resident Colleen Wright. "The way we understood it is that if we gave them that $7,000, we're not gonna stop until this school is built."
Wright said she wasn't opposed to merging students, she was opposed to building a new place for them.
"Everyone wants their name on a plaque outside of their school, but the reality is people just don't have the money to commit to this," she said. "In the long term, I don't see a school of 120 surviving; they'll be going to Neshobe School in five years."
The idea to vote on the proposal the second time around came from resident Jay Merluzzi, who circulated a petition late last year for a re-vote after the proposal was shot down by a vote of 54 to 44 in November.
Merluzzi said he didn't get the feeling that the committee had an agenda.
"I would have hoped we would get the information and make a yes or no vote from there," Merluzzi said Saturday. "The public would have had to authorize a bond for that school."
Voters in the three towns would have been faced with two more votes before the school materialized — one to form a joint school district and one to take out a bond to pay for the structure, according to Mathis.
A push to consolidate schools or school districts is a fairly common occurrence at the local level but there's no way to tell what state legislators will do in the future now, Mathis said.
"If you look at the existing law, there's a financial incentive for districts to consolidate," he said. "But with finances and the economy, it's too early to tell whether there will be a big push at the state level."
Resident David Crane, the father of a Sudbury School student, said although he voted against the school plan, he didn't feel good about it.
The proposal just came at the wrong time, he said. "They (school officials) need to look at more than one option," he said. "And in the economic times we're having right now, building a new school isn't the way to go."
Contact Cristina Kumka at cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com.
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