GMUSD board mulls finances, new bond effort, restructuring

By Shawn Cunningham
©2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Late summer board meetings are often sparsely populated, with both members and the public on vacation,  and light on topics to tackle. But while the former was true of the Thursday, Aug. 15 Green Mountain Unified School District board meeting, the latter was not.

With just five members in the room,  two on Zoom and four absent, Vice Chair Lois Perlah was in charge of an agenda that included a discussion of reviving the efforts to pass a bond to fix a number of problems with school buildings, improvements in PCB levels at the high school and ongoing outreach to the public regarding the school budget and education funding.

As part of his report, Facilities Director Todd Parah told the board that a representative of Energy Management Consultants  had made a presentation to brand new Superintendent Layne Millington, TRSU Business Manager Cheryl Hammond and himself. The company does much the same work as Energy Efficient Investments (EEI), which assessed the problems with schools and put together the budget and presentation for the $20 million school renovation bond that failed by 47 out of nearly 1,700 votes in November 2022.

Many of EEI’s projects involved energy savings and replacement of infrastructure that was at its “end of life.” Those included boilers and replacement of unit heaters in each classroom with a heating and ventilation system using ducts in the high school. There was also replacement of lighting with LEDs, upgrades to fire alarms and more in the other schools. The publicity campaign – which EEI put together – was seen to have fallen short.

Parah said the Energy Management presentation was especially impressive with its representative anticipating a number of the questions that the board had asked of EEI, but which EEI did not have answers for on the spot. Parah called EMC “very open” compared to EEI, which he said was not as open.  Parah was also quite impressed with the software the company used that quickly calculated various options, then recalculated bond numbers depending on options chosen. Parah also thought EMC had a better understanding of how to communicate tax implications to voters than EEI did.

To get the ball rolling, Parah asked the board for a letter of intent to use EMC to work on a slate of projects to bond and for a 5 year plan he said the State of Vermont requires from schools. Then ECM President Tom Seekins would make the same presentation to the board. Perlah asked if the presentation should come before the letter of intent and Millington said he’d like to have the district’s lawyer look at the letter first anyway. Parah will check with Seekins to see if he could make a presentation at the next meeting.

Parah also told the board that they are continuing to use air filters to bring the PCB levels in the school down and are happy with the results.

Budgets, funding and the ‘Future of Education’

Millington told the board that he would be holding a public forum on Tuesday, Sept. 10 to talk about the school budget and the state’s education funding system. He said he would be explaining to the public “what levers we can pull” to accomplish what needs to be done in the district.

Millington said that by educating the public on the issues they can get the budget and a bond passed. He also said he is monitoring the work of the state’s Commission on the Future of Public Education and that he saw a few things that group seems to be concentrating on.

One is rightsizing, which Millington defined in brief as ratios of teachers to students, and whether that would be set in law. He also mentioned consolidation noting that the commission is looking at how many school buildings are needed to provide education in Vermont.

“That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen,” said Millington as he pointed out that the commission’s recommendations have to pass through the legislature. Another question that the commission is looking at is how much control local boards should have.

The forum will be held at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at the Green Mountain High School, 716 Route 103 south in Chester.

Restructuring Green Mountain schools turned over to administration

One of the most contentious subjects for the board over the past year has been around figuring out how to better use the district’s three school buildings.

With Chester-Andover Elementary reaching its student capacity while Cavendish Town Elementary’s population continues to decline, the possible solutions were seen by Cavendish residents as first steps toward that school being closed. Over the course of several meetings of the district board working as a “restructuring committee,” chair Adrienne Williams concluded that they were not able to come to an agreement. At the July 25 meeting, the committee voted to turn the task over to Millington and the administration of the schools.

At the time, Millington said that none of the solutions would make everyone happy and that the administration would do what it can to mitigate any problems with the changes it recommends recommend.  There were questions about how soon a recommendation could come, but if changes that will have an impact on the 2025-26 budget, the board will need to have the restructuring proposal by the time budgeting work begins in October. It will be up to the board to approve of any restructuring measures, so the outcome is not certain.