Guided by the work of our ACSD Strategic Plan and our transition to becoming an International Baccalaureate World District, the Facilities Master Plan will ensure that investments in our buildings support student learning objectives. The ACSD Board has recognized the enrollment challenges facing the District, and wants to be deliberate in the investigation and planning work to identify the best long-term solutions for our students, our schools, and our community.

The Facilities Master Plan will be used as a guide to the ACSD Board to address our facility and educational goals, setting timelines for decisions on issues like bonding for building improvements, investigating changes in school borders, improving the efficiency of our buildings and deciding on a choice policy.

The Board is investigating school closure for a number of reasons. Our continued declining enrollment operating under-enrolled schools presents a number of challenges, both educationally and financially. Educationally, it is difficult to offer the breadth of quality programming and services for a small number of students. Using itinerant educators for such classes as physical education and music, as well as for nursing, special education and behavior intervention poses challenges. It is also harder to attract quality applicants for itinerant positions.

Low enrolled schools also have trouble maintaining an optimum age-grade size cohort group, requiring schools to move to more combined classrooms with a much broader range of ages and development levels.

Looking more broadly, as our enrollment continues to drop, our per pupil costs will continue to rise, and those costs drive tax rates up. Our district is close to the maximum spending threshold, beyond which we will face significant tax penalties. In order to stay within those spending boundaries, we continually face the dilemma of cutting educational services to keep our tax rates below the maximum threshold. Part of the challenge is driven by operating so many buildings, each of which has to be adequately staffed to provide a quality education - these are unavoidable fixed costs.

Yes. Since the passage of Act 46, which mandated school governance unification, many new unified boards have continued to see declines in enrollment. They have also discovered that rural school boards often traded building maintenance for keeping programs in place and tax rates stable while enrollment declined, leading to an enormous amount of building needs across the state. Nearby, the Brandon-area schools have consolidated K-6 education in three towns to two schools, and the Vergennes-area school board has proposed closing two of its three elementary schools. The Harwood district is also immersed in a long-term facilities plan based on contracting, not expanding, and Mt. Abe is beginning a facilities planning process with their community. These are just a few examples.

The ACSD Board aspires to provide our students learning environments that are diverse, have optimum classroom sizes that allow for single-grade groupings, that provide students the resources they need to succeed, that are inviting and healthy learning spaces, and have a broad selection of opportunities during the school day and after.

There are many costs that are fixed and increasing, including contracted salary increases for employees, employee health insurance, utility costs on all buildings and transportation (up 40 percent), as well as keeping up with building maintenance. Our per-pupil spending has also been increasing, in part, due to continued declining enrollment. The school district has offset some of these increases by adjusting staffing levels based on declining enrollment, which has resulted in more combined classrooms and fewer paraprofessionals. ACSD, like other districts in Vermont, is facing a spending threshold that is growing at a rate that is slower than the rate of increase for our operational expenses and increases.

It has, however, other costs continue to rise. In many areas unification has allowed the district to be more flexible in staffing all of our schools in a systematic way rather than each school staffing itself independently, leading to savings. There have also been savings in the back-office functions such as audits and other financial requirements. However, these savings have not been able to keep up with increases in employment contracts, health insurance, transportation, and, declining enrollment, which is used to calculate per pupil spending.

The ACSD Board will provide frequent updates on its work through district newsletters and on the acsdvt.org web site, including updating our FAQs. Also, look for updates in the Addison Independent newspaper, both in news articles and material provided by the District.

Statewide, many local school boards deferred major building work in order to keep programs funded and property tax rates in check. This probably coincides with the state Agency of Education ending its aid program that often provided 30 percent funding for major building projects. It ended about 20 years ago.

When the seven towns of the ACSD voted overwhelmingly for unification in 2016, governance of the schools shifted from the local school boards to the new ACSD Unified Board. In 2016, voters approved a charter creating the new district and the structure of the ACSD Unified Board.

The facilities master plan represents a look at our school district as a single system as a way to address the challenges of declining enrollment, increased per pupil costs and building needs, and to maximize our limited resources to provide students with optimal learning environments. Under the former system of individual school districts, eight school boards would be working in isolation, trying to deal with these challenges on their own.

The Board will use the information gathered throughout the facilities master plan process, including public input, to weigh these decisions. This information will include a range of factors, such as enrollment, transportation, parent travel patterns, building condition, and much more. Should the Board move to close a school, the ACSD charter requires that 10 of 13 board members vote in favor, and that at least one board meeting occur in that community before the vote.

Yes. Building needs in the district include Middlebury Union High School, the middle school and all operating elementary schools. These needs surpass our ability to fund such efforts through current financial resources.

Regardless of how the district moves forward with its configuration, a bond will be needed to address deferred maintenance and more significant building needs in the district. Our work today ensures any bond referendum reflects a funding strategy that supports our educational mission and is financially sustainable.

While current projections locally and statewide do not predict a significant increase in our school-age population, this will be one issue the ACSD Board looks at when the building study is complete.

As ACSU became ACSD, all professional development funds were pooled into one fund. This fund was not increased, but rather the focus of those funds was redirected to International Baccalaureate training and fees. For a complete breakdown, please see our ACSD Budget Book here.

Our enrollment continues to drop and our per pupil spending continues to rise. We are at risk of needing to cut more educational services each year in order to present a fiscally responsible budget. Balancing the needs of our students (fulfilling our vision and mission) with our fiscal duty to all the citizens of the district is what drives the current work of the Board to look at the future of our facilities.

The ACSD Board defines equity with the following statement: ACSD will ensure the allocation of resources as necessary to establish a foundation of instructional experiences and learning opportunities so all students can become principled, knowledgeable, and caring citizens.

The Board is committed to providing students with all available resources to support their growth and success.

The numbers presented at the community forums were based on an analysis by a firm called School Dude a couple years ago, which really surveyed each building and its infrastructure and assigned each a value as well as an estimate to bring those up to date. That report was then reviewed by a firm last year to bring the numbers more up to date.

Significantly more investigation will need to be done in order to have numbers the Board would use to develop a bond, and significantly more conversation will have to happen regarding the priorities for the bond. Many of the above questions the Board also has, so therefore much more work will need to be done to get a handle on building needs and opportunities to create 21st century places of learning.

Transportation will have to be considered very carefully as part of any plan for those and other reasons. As the Board gets more clarity following its capacity study, transportation will be a key factor in examining possible options.

Tuition income is treated as revenue to the district. It is set at a level to offset the expense of educating the students. Tuition students are not counted in our calculation of equalized pupils (a weighted student number), although the revenue offsets expenses.

According to the District's Articles of Agreement, once a school building is no longer used for educational purposes, it is offered back to the town at no cost. Its future use is up to the town.

Pre-K certainly deserves a broader look. It has, of course, challenges, including the cost of providing the programs on a large scale. Beyond that, there are also questions of whether public Pre-K programs hurt the ability of our private childcare centers to remain economically viable. Often these centers rely on a mix of ages to meet their bottom line needs, but they also provide the services that meet parent needs such as full-day, year-round care, and locations that better accommodate parents.

Population and enrollment trends have been studied in depth at the state level. Locally, much of that information is carried forward, such as local birthrates and in-migration, as well as keeping a census of pre-school-age children (and infants and toddlers as best as possible).

The timeline for the Facilities Master Plan has been extended to incorporate a study of elementary school configuration and consolidation. It is currently slated to be completed by February, 2020, at which time the Board will create recommendations and action steps by adopting the Plan.