Peacham residents have voted unanimously to purchase their elementary school building from the district for a token $1, a move designed to ensure the building remains a community asset even if the school itself closes due to future consolidation.
Around 40 voters at town meeting approved the article authorizing the select board to buy the pre-K-6 school, which serves roughly 60 students. The building will be leased back to the school district, which remains responsible for operating costs. The structure is in good shape, with recent upgrades to ventilation, heating and windows.
School board chair Andra Hibbert said the idea surfaced about a year ago when state-mandated district mergers seemed imminent. “It just felt like the only move we could make to sort of future-proof the school as a community asset,” she said. “We all want the school to stay open. We all love our school.”
The transfer reflects growing unease among small rural towns as the Legislature advances education reform. A bill passed Friday encourages voluntary consolidation into districts of at least 2,000 students and penalizes districts whose spending exceeds annual thresholds. Peacham previously shifted $10,000 for its after-school program to the town budget to avoid those penalties.
Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, who chairs the House Education Committee, said he could recall only one other case where a district did not own its building. He pointed to Roxbury, where the shuttered village school was sold to the town for $1 last November, as required by the merger agreement with Montpelier.
Morgan Gold, a local farmer with a popular YouTube channel, posted a 12-minute video supporting the purchase. “We would not have so many young families moving to town if we didn’t have an elementary school,” he said. “That elementary school is the lifeblood of our town.”
Peacham School is one of seven in the Caledonia Central Supervisory Union, which enrolls 1,461 students total. Hibbert said the town worried that a future merged district might repurpose or sell the building. By owning it outright, the community retains the only structure suitable for an emergency shelter, adjacent to the town soccer field and pump track.
NEK will be checking with other small CCSU towns to see if they are considering similar preemptive transfers.
Originally reported by VTDigger.
Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0). Photo is illustrative and not from the scene.
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