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==Background==
"As of July 1, the new Lamoille South school board will oversee schools in Stowe, Morristown and Elmore, the result of a state-ordered merger of the school districts... The board is working on a property transfer — passing along Stowe School District buildings — the elementary and middle/high school — to the new Lamoille South district, with the understanding that if it decides to close any schools in Stowe, the buildings must be offered to the town of Stowe for the price of $1." -- By Caleigh Cross | Stowe Reporter Jun 6, 2019 https://www.vtcng.com/stowe_reporter/news/local_news/school-s-out-forever-for-the-stowe-school-board/article_6b5f28f0-8867-11e9-aeb8-737ddffd3112.html
"We, the undersigned, members of the communities of Elmore, Morristown, and Stowe, Vermont, are very proud of our high-quality public school systems. We request that the State Board of Education reverse its provisional decision to reject the Vermont Secretary of Education’s recommendation that our Act 46 Alternative Governance Structure Application (AGS, for short) be approved. Forcing this merger..." -- https://www.change.org/p/vermont-state-board-of-education-stop-the-forced-merger-of-the-elmore-morristown-and-stowe-vermont-school-districts
"The Lamoille South Unified Union School District: Lamoille South Unified Union (LSUU) is where the students of Elmore, Morristown and Stowe construct, express and act." Retrieved Apr 2nd 2021 -- https://lsuu.org/
A wealth of files are available from Google Drive in the archive:
*https://lsuu.org/board/#minutes-agendas-etc
*https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FZhM4HjRbQD6tIM-nvAx5BTlzIbKsMWE
Act 46:
*ACT046 Act Summary.pdf
*https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2016/H.361
*https://education.vermont.gov/vermont-schools/school-governance/act-46-state-board-final-plan
*https://www.vpr.org/term/act-46#stream/0: Friday's report is just the latest development in this school district consolidation process, which kicked off when then-Gov. Peter Shumlin signed Act 46 in June 2015.
All the links to the State Legislature go to a dead page: https://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Documents/2016/Docs/ACTS/ACT046/ACT046%20As%20Enacted.pdf
Analysis on Act 46:
*Vermont Supreme Court upholds Act 46 mandated district mergers By Lola Duffort Jul 10 2020: https://vtdigger.org/2020/07/10/vermont-supreme-court-upholds-act-46-mandated-district-mergers/
"The controversial law was implemented over multiple years, and eventually cut the number of school boards in Vermont by over 150. It used tax breaks to encourage voluntary mergers between school districts, and, in its final phase, tasked the State Board of Education with deciding how to reorganize those that had rejected merging."
Donna Russo-Savage on Section 4: edu-sbe-memo-overview-operation-tuition.pdf
Can a multi-town school district require that students from one member town
attend a district-operated school, but offer tuition vouchers to students in the
same grade who live in a different member town? (“Different Opportunities
Based on Residence”)
Issue #2: Different Opportunities Based on Residence
• Current statutes do not authorize Different Opportunities Based on Residence
• The Vermont Supreme Court would likely find that providing Different
Opportunities Based on Residence violates the Common Benefits Clause of
the Vermont Constitution as interpreted by the Brigham Court and later cases
• Act 46 does not authorize Different Opportunities Based on Residence
Previous analysis by Donna Russo-Savage: edu-sbe-memo-different-treatment-common-benefits-analysis.pdf
"A school district, no matter how many districts have merged to form it, is a single
municipality, with one governing body, one budget, one group of voters, and one
homestead tax rate. As a practical matter, it would be difficult for a district to provide
different educational opportunities to district students in the same grade based upon
their town of residence. More significantly, a school district would likely violate the
Common Benefits Clause of the Vermont Constitution if it provided specific educational
opportunities to one group of resident students and denied them to another group of
resident students in the same grade based solely upon where they live."
==Pulling Census Data==
