Agenda Summary February 22, 2021 Agenda Item No. 3-B-4 School Withdrawal Discussion Summary: Enclosed is an email from Richard Bland, stating in part, “Please consider this email a specific (and timely) request that the Agenda for the February 22nd meeting of the Selectboard include the following item: Establish a process for the Town of Stowe to vote on whether to withdraw from the LSUU at a special meeting.” In terms of process, I have asked the Town Attorney to outline the process if any under current statute for the Town of Stowe voters to withdraw from Lamoille South Unified Union School District. He should have his opinion ready for your 3/8/21 meeting and can be available if you desire. Based upon the information provided at the 3/8/2021 meeting and legal counsel’s opinion, if there is a role for the selectboard in the withdrawal process, you may want to have a joint meeting with the LSSU School Board or representative(s) thereof to hear their perspective. Also, if there is a legal process to withdraw from the existing school district it may require a vote by the other member municipalities to ratify it, so you may want to meet with Elmore and Morristown’s legislative bodies as well. You may want to address how the board can disseminate factual information and answer any questions the voters may have (e.g. issues with governance structure, the impact on property taxes, etc.). For your informational purposes, enclosed are two historical documents that Erica Loomis asked me to pass along. The first is “the section 9 alternative structure proposal drafted by the Stowe and EMMU school boards.” The second document is “from the, then, secretary of education suggesting reasons why our districts should not be merged.” Town Plan Impact: N/A Fiscal Impact: The cost of legal counsel. Also, any potential tax impacts. Recommendation: Discuss and advise on what if any process you would like to pursue going forward to determine if and when to warn a vote to withdraw from the Lamoille South Unified Union School District if permitted under statute. LAMOILLE SOUTH SUPERVISORY UNION PROPOSAL FOR AN ALTERNATIVE GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE Submitted by Elmore-Morristown Unified Union School District and Stowe School District November 30, 2017 1 Table of Contents Executive Summary .................................................................................................................. 3 Fast Facts ................................................................................................................................ 11 Background and Context........................................................................................................ 12 Committee Membership ......................................................................................................... 18 Self-Evaluation ........................................................................................................................ 19 Baseline/Demographics ......................................................................................................... 20 Program Review .................................................................................................................... 30 Student Performance ............................................................................................................. 38 Operational Efficiency ............................................................................................................ 49 Transparency, Accountability, Community Engagement ........................................................ 67 Appendices ............................................................................................................................. 70 Phase 1 Intro and Executive Summary .................................................................................. 71 Excerpts from LSSU Optional Educational Structures Report ................................................ 82 Regional Education Committee Recommendation ................................................................. 86 Excerpts from EMUU Final Report and Articles of Agreement ............................................... 87 LSSU Act 46 Tax Projections................................................................................................. 89 SSD & EMUU Program Review ............................................................................................. 94 Student Assessment Data ..................................................................................................... 97 LSSU Comprehensive Plan for Continuous Improvement .................................................... 109 LSSU Mission ...................................................................................................................... 121 VSAC Post-Secondary Survey Results ................................................................................ 122 VT High School Post-Secondary Study ............................................................................... 130 Wolcott Unification Financial Data ....................................................................................... 134 Wolcott School Board Meeting Minutes ............................................................................... 135 LSSU Geography……………………………………………………………………………………136 LSSU Act 46 Meeting Dates ................................................................................................ 138 2 LAMOILLE SOUTH SUPERVISORY UNION PROPOSAL FOR AN ALTERNATIVE GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Introduction: Nine years of strategic reflection concerning the operations and direction of the Lamoille South Supervisory Union and its member communities – Elmore, Morristown, and Stowe – has resulted in unprecedented levels of transparency, accountability, and community engagement. We are not the same Supervisory Union we once were. Working together, both districts individually and jointly are meeting and exceeding the goals of Act 46: equity and opportunity, quality, efficiency, transparency and accountability, and value. Our LSSU Action Plan commits our boards and administration – regardless of future turnover – to continued cooperation in service of these goals. Proposed Alternative Structure: The Elmore-Morristown Unified Union (EMUU) and Stowe School Districts (SSD) propose to continue as side-by-side PreK-12 operating districts assigned to the Lamoille South Supervisory Union (LSSU). Operating PreK-Grade 12 Operating PreK-Grade 12 3 schools 4 schools 815 students 912 students 3 A Brief Illustration: In the fall of 2016, Elmore and Morristown began their first year as a unified union. At the same time, the board of the new district began meeting regularly with their neighbors – the Stowe School Board – to discuss forming an Alternative Governance Structure. Those conversations were bolstered by a robust review of programming and data across the supervisory union, and both boards saw some glaring inequities. While there had long been a need for a foreign language teacher at the elementary and middle levels in Elmore and Morristown, it wasn’t until EMUU began more significant and open communications with its partner in Lamoille South that the EMUU board really began to consider how to close the gap between the robust foreign language exposure that Stowe students were getting and EMUU students’ exposure. EMUU’s board worked to find a way to extend its foreign language program throughout all schools. Meanwhile, next door, Stowe’s school board was concerned about the significant achievement gap between students who received Free and Reduced Lunch and students who did not. The achievement gap is, of course, a state and national issue. However, Stowe’s gap was more significant than EMUU’s, a fact which became apparent as the two boards looked at the data for the entire supervisory union. Because Stowe’s Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL) program is small – approximately 13% of Stowe’s students – the board knew it had an opportunity to tackle the achievement gap in their town, while districts with a larger FRL program might not be able to. The board asked the administrators what they needed to help all students reach benchmarks and then found a way to provide a literacy interventionist in the elementary school and a literacy coach on the secondary level. These two instances – EMUU’s foreign language program and Stowe’s literacy gap – are just two examples of how fruitful our conversations around Act 46 have been. Act 46 has brought us together and made us a tighter team working together for all our students. As a result of that collaboration, we are able to focus on the distinctive needs of our individual districts, targeting our resources towards providing an equitable and quality education in both towns. Summary Argument #1: Alternative Structure as “Best Means” Introduction: Governance Alternatives in LSSU: Through nine years and six phases of thoughtful self-evaluation, LSSU has evaluated three separate governance structures in order to assess the best means for achieving the educational, fiscal, and operational goals of Act 46: 1. Maintaining the SU’s original operating structure of three autonomous school boards. 2. Merging all three districts into one unified union operating district with a single board. 3. Merging Elmore and Morristown into a single unified union district with a single board, within the context of a new Supervisory Union Structure representing the EMUU and Stowe school districts. 4 Through these evaluations, we found