DANVILLE-The Vermont State Board of Education came out with their final report regarding the statewide Act 46 initiative at the beginning of December.
On that final report was the proposed unification between the Cabot school district, the Twinfield Union school district, and the Danville school district. Which over many proposals the districts hadn't found a solution, after multiple proposals got voted down time and time again.
David Schilling Principal of the Danville School says, "There were a few different proposals on the table. The original proposal was to combine Danville, Cabot and Twinfield, and to maybe have a project based learning academy at Cabot."
Ultimately the 7 of 6 committee came up with a new proposal which the end result of the plan would've been the closing of the Cabot School. "That proposal was not very well like between Danville or Cabot and led to that merger being put down pretty strongly between both towns" says Schilling.
Schilling adds there were too many differences at the beginning that prevented the merge from working in the first place." I think the key issue in those two merging is just different budgets.Cabot has decided to go with a project based learning approach to high school. It's a great program it's also a pretty small program, so I think between the two towns there's just a lot to figure out about the strength of both schools, budget challenges of both schools. And it seemed to be too much to bring both together right now."
The Secretary of the Board of Education's proposal for the schools is all become part of the Caledonia Central Supervisory Union and work towards a unified school district in the years to come.
Shilling says,"Now that we'll be in the same supervisory union, I think there's a lot of potential for it to work. I think that once, with separate boards and separate budgets I think that over time I think we'll start to realize how both programs could be complimentary, and could be assets to each other."
Twinfield and Cabot will join the Caledonia Supervisory Union on July 1st, 2019.
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