Board votes to retain structure
Toolbox
By PATRICK McARDLE STAFF WRITER - Published: November 11, 2009
BENNINGTON – The Mount Anthony Union School Board voted to maintain and defend its current structure despite a letter from Vermont Commissioner of Education Armando Vilaseca that recommended the board submit a new structure to voters in time for Town Meeting Day.
The School Board voted 9-2 on Monday to support a motion by member Amelia Silver directing its attorney, Steven Stitzel, to draft a letter defending the board's current composition as meeting all of the requirements of the equal protection clauses in the U.S. and Vermont constitutions and stating that the board members believe they're in full compliance with the law.
The School Board has four members from Bennington, two each from North Bennington, Pownal and Shaftsbury and one from Woodford. All five municipalities send students to the district's middle and high schools, which are located in Bennington.
Since summer, a subcommittee of the Bennington School Board has met to discuss "taking over" the Mount Anthony Union district to become a K-12 school district. There has been criticism stemming from those meetings that the Mount Anthony Union School Board is not properly apportioned because almost 70 percent of the students come from Bennington.
Mount Anthony Union School Board Chairwoman Sean-Marie Oller wrote to Vilaseca in August asking for clarification from the state in its position toward the composition of her school board.
In a response dated Oct. 23, Vilaseca said the board "appears to fail to comport with constitutional equal protection principles, also known in this context as the 'one person, one vote' rule."
On Monday, however, Stitzel presented information to the Mount Anthony Union School Board that he said left the board in a "very defensible position."
Stitzel said the Mount Anthony Union district, which formed in 1962, was created through a vote saying each member would have two representatives. At the time, Bennington was divided into two school districts. After those districts merged, the town was left with four representatives on the Mount Anthony Union board.
Pownal and Woodford joined later in 1962, but Woodford, the smallest town involved, entered with the understanding that it would have one representative.
The composition of Mount Anthony Union's board was challenged in a case decided in U.S. District Court in 1975. At the end of that case, the court asked the school district to submit a new plan for its composition. That plan, which calls for the same number of representatives from the various towns but allows for "at-large" voting, was approved by the court.
Stitzel said no court cases have overturned the 1975 decision.
Because the representatives are from particular towns, but elected by all the voters throughout the school district, voters all through the Mount Anthony Union district have "equal strength," Stitzel said.
Stitzel quoted a Supreme Court decision from a 1967 case, which was cited in the 1975 Mount Anthony Union decision, that said a school board member "must be vigilant to serve the interests of all the people" in the district because his or her "tenure depends upon the (districtwide) electorate."
Several members of the Mount Anthony Union School Board said they believed members already acted in the best interests of students without regard to the town he or she represents.
While Stitzel said the courts had occasionally stepped in to look at apportionment issues, they were generally in cases where the representation on a board seemed to have been designed to exclude minority voters. He didn't believe there was evidence the Mount Anthony Union School Board members had consistently voted in reaction to the wishes of the representatives from Bennington or that the actions of the board had been particularly harmful to Bennington.
The representation on the School Board could be changed by a districtwide vote or through a court decision, Stitzel said.
Vermont Department of Education spokeswoman Jill Remick said on Tuesday that Vilaseca had declined to comment because he had not received a written notification from the Mount Anthony Union School Board on their actions at Monday's meeting yet.
patrick.mcardle@rutlandherald.com
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