WHITINGHAM- School board members presented the first of two informational meetings regarding a petitioned referendum that would end the Twin Valley joint school district.

School board chair Seth Boyd told voters the forum was a chance for them to speak up. “We want to make sure everyone is able put their two cents in,” he said. But before the floor was turned over to the public, board members offered their opinions on the question of withdrawing from Twin Valley for the first time since they received the petition more than 50 days ago.

Reading from a prepared statement, Cheree Dix said she felt like she was the voice for the petitioners, and that she understood their concerns about proposals to combine Whitingham and Wilmington’s elementary schools. One of the concerns, she said, was that because of Wilmington’s larger number of students, Wilmington could have more control over the education system and Whitingham’s building.

Under the current contract terms, however, Whitingham’s facility is under the sole supervision of the Whitingham School Board.

Dix also touched on a concern of many proponents of the split, that Whitingham would have to pay for improvements at Twin Valley High School, which is located in Wilmington. One Whitingham resident also rose to address the concern over Whitingham’s cost for a high school facility. “The high school building needs serious work, and it’s going to cost serious money,” he said. “And 39% (Whitingham’s share of Twin Valley expenses) of serious money is serious money.”

Under the Twin Valley contract, no extraordinary capital expenditure can be undertaken without the approval of Whitingham voters. If a large capital expenditure at the Twin Valley High School facility were to be approved, Whitingham has a $2 million credit under the contract. Under a Whitingham school choice scenario, however, Whitingham taxpayers could end up paying for a portion of the cost of capital improvements at a reconstituted Wilmington High School through an increased tuition charge for their students who choose to attend the school.

“The petition was circulated for several reasons,” said board member Ed Metcalfe, “and several of them have turned out to be misrepresentations of fact.”

Metcalfe said that the suggestion that voters should vote to eliminate Twin Valley was “like saying you should divorce your spouse so you won’t have any more kids. The elementary proposal is just that, a proposal. It would have to have Whitingham voter approval to bring about any change.”

Boyd said losing the middle school and high school, their sports teams, and other activities would be a great loss to the community. “The recent (Junior) Iron Chef competition, things that make a community proud, they would go away,” he said. “What would the Memorial Day parade be without the middle school band and chorus?”

Whitingham Selectboard member Greg Brown said he was one of the people who Dix represented – one of the people who signed the petition. But he said he signed the petition under the assumption that “there were a host of schools willing to take our students and there would be great cost savings,” he said. “But none of that has turned out be true.”

Brown said it was time to “get over” any differences between Whitingham and Wilmington, noting that the joint board hadn’t had a decision that split along town lines in the nearly five years since the district was created. “And any expenditures we have are split 61/39, with Wilmington paying 61%. I think I’d be more upset if I lived in Wilmington. What we’re doing is affecting Wilmington, too, and they’re our neighbors, not our enemies.”

Referring to a proposal for the town to provide transportation to Mohawk High School, Brown said, “I hope enough people in this room have driven over that road through Heath. It’s a challenge in the summer, let alone the winter.”

But a number of petitioners have questioned the quality of education at Twin Valley schools, offering school choice as an opportunity for parents to choose schools that better suit their children. John Lyddy said he was concerned about Twin Valley’s New England Common Assessment Program test scores, suggesting that Twin Valley was “fourth from the bottom” of all schools in Vermont. “How is it that Twin Valley continues to improve, yet we have scores like that?” he asked.

But Metcalfe said that, while several schools around the region were under some form of corrective action for not maintaining adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind law. “We set goals and achieved them,” he said. “Others did not. Mount Anthony did not. Brattleboro is in corrective action for their scores. And I don’t know that we’re fourth from the bottom.”

“We’re second from the bottom in science,” Lyddy said.

“You’ve come to a lot of meetings with facts that have turned out not to be true,” said Metcalfe.

But Lyddy said that if the quality of education at Twin Valley High School was better, “there would be no traction for this petition. The quality of education leads me to believe (improvement) is not going to happen, and school choice is our only option.”

But Wayne Corse made the case that NECAP scores weren’t the mark of success that counts. “I care more about graduation rates,” he said, pointing to a packet of information on several schools in the area. “Twin Valley is ahead of everyone else except McCann Tech. As a father of a high school senior, I think the collaboration has been a great success.”

Craig Aekus said that, from his experience with his kids and their friends, Twin Valley has been successful. “If you’re saying they’re not getting a quality education at Twin Valley, you’re dead wrong,” he said. “A lot of kids that have gone to this school have moved on to success in college. If you want to break this up, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.”

Former school board member Linda Corse, who was on the board during the formation of Twin Valley, said she had once been a skeptic, but has been sold on the education that her kids have received at the school. She said Twin Valley offers parents and students more choices than most high schools through its Virtual High School Internet-based courses, opportunities to attend college courses for college credit during students’ senior year, as well as a regional cooperative school choice, the Windham Regional Career Center in Brattleboro, and other programs. She said the opportunities at Twin Valley may have saved the academic career of one of her children. “I don’t know if he would have made it through high school if it had still been just Whitingham,” she said. “We’re small, and our kids need a bigger world than we can give in Whitingham.”

But another former board member, Johanna Boliver, said the issue was one of choice. “I don’t think this is so much a Wilmington versus Whitingham issue,” she said. “Americans like choices. Other schools in the area are successful with school choice. Why don’t we take the opportunity to see what other schools offer?”

Molly Corse, a Whitingham resident and a senior at Twin Valley High School, said the academic program and other activities at the school were “awesome,” and that students benefited from attending school with their friends, but in a bigger school than either town could provide on their own. “There’s so much more in the valley outside of this town that students can have if we’re all in this together,” she said. “All of my classmates are planning to go to college or some kind of further education. As a student, I think the current situation is one of the best of any the options under consideration here tonight.”

Whitingham voters will vote on the issue by Australian ballot at the municipal center in Jacksonville on Wednesday, May 27, from 10 am to 7 pm. A “yes” vote would end the Twin Valley joint contract school, and a “no” vote would preserve the current Twin Valley middle and high school configuration