A bit of history (credit to Linda Gray for putting this together)
Calais once supported about 14 one to two-room schoolhouses, each with its own school meeting! Ledgers for these meetings are kept in the Calais Historical Society archives.
Building a single elementary school was a big step for Calais. Calais voters may remember how generous the town has always been to the Calais Elementary School. We have often voted for school budget increases, even when our property taxes felt too high.
In the early 1990s Calais voters approved a bond to expand the school. We had been using temporary classrooms (trailers) where there is now an outside basketball court for two classrooms. (Rachel’s commentary: I was in Ms. Moulton’s class in the trailer that year!). Calais voters paid off that bond.
We also were able to create a rainy day fund for the school, in case it ever needed major repairs. That fund was about $70,000.
When our elementary school boards were merged into WCUUSD (Washington Central Unified Union School District), the new district absorbed that $70,000 fund, without promises to use it for Calais.
Calais lost the use of that fund.
When the merger happened, East Montpelier Elementary School and Rumney both had outstanding bonds they had not fully paid off. We, as Calais taxpayers, along with taxpayers from the other four towns, paid off those bonds.
So the consolidation we have already done with the four other towns in our district has cost Calais taxpayers more, not less. The town lost the use of a small cushion fund. That fund might seem small by today’s multi-million dollar school budget. But the sense of having savings taken away from the taxpayers remains.
Post-Covid effect
The children now in Calais Elementary and Doty, and the other elementary schools as well, had some of their elementary education at home for parts of two school years, during COVID. These students are just now beginning to be socialized back into school settings and school behavior. Their parents also went through a lot, working remotely, helping kids learn at home, and isolating from other children and families. To ask these students and their parents to make two other big changes in the next two years (move to a new school, then go to 6th grade at U-32) seems particularly unwise.