By Polly Mikula
The agenda was jam-packed at the final Mountain Views Supervisory Union (MVSU) board meeting of the school year, Monday, June 2. The nearly 3-hour meeting covered a spectrum of issues, but two will have far-reaching implications for the district’s future: namely, the impact of education funding reform on the district’s budget and the possible outcomes of PCB testing.
Rep. Charlie Kimbell attended the meeting and gave a brief update to the board about the education finance reform bill (H.454) that’s currently stalled in the Legislature.
“The House is not adjourned and the Senate is not adjourned,” explained Kimbell. “They are in recess and coming back on June 16 and 17 for an already scheduled veto session. Maybe the conference committee can come back together and form some kind of compromise then,” he said. “If they can agree, they’d bring [their report] back to the House and the Senate and it’s an up or down vote. It can be debated, but it can’t be amended,” he explained.
If the House and the Senate can’t agree, they could adjourn and take it up next session, he said. While “that would be unfortunate, because we’ve spent five or six months really working hard to try to come up with a new vision, it also may be in some ways the least harmful, and we’re trying to make sure that we don’t do any harm and actually make progress going forward,” Kimbell said.
Another factor weighing on the House and Senate as they negotiate H.454, is the governor. “If it’s not something that he likes then he’ll veto it,” Kimbell explained to the board. “So his administration is constantly consulted by both the House and the Senate. And the conferees actually met with him on Thursday night to say, how are we doing? And he said, things look good … So that’s that’s where we are.”
Bringing back school construction aid is also currently in H.454, albeit without a funding source, Kimbell noted.
Since Woodstock High School had been preliminarily approved by the state for construction of a new school, Kimbell explained that he tried to see if there was any prioritization that MVSU could benefit from. “I tried to figure out if there was a way legislatively to say schools, school construction projects that had already received approval couldn’t jump to the front of the line. But what I found in speaking with the Agency of Education is that even a school project that was approved wasn’t approved for green light to get state aid for education, it was mostly about ‘Yes, these are reasonable numbers,’ and so the debt service would not count towards the excess spending threshold. However, when the Legislature took away that exemption from the excess spending threshold, that approval really kind of went away,” he explained.
“So we’re dealing with this very malleable area … we’re now talking about school consolidation and what schools can accommodate other schools, is it existing facilities or a new facility?… the state aid for school construction language is trying to help address that,” he clarified.
None of it was good news for MVSU and board members reacted accordingly pairing the cuts resulting foundation formula with the lack of school construction aid prioritization.
“If the Colby model is adopted, I think it’s like $7 million that comes out of our budget. And it seems like, even if you closed the smaller schools… I don’t even think we could operate the high school, middle school, elementary schools [Killington and Woodstock elementary] for that amount of money,” said John Williams, vice chair of the MVSU board. “It almost implies that the high school is no longer. The parents who called me… they see it as existential, like we’re not going to be Woodstock anymore.”
“Oh, yeah, and I’m hearing that from a lot of community members, too,” Kimbell responded. “So the spreadsheet that got published [by the state’s joint fiscal office showing district budget and tax rate implications of the foundation formula] often is an unfortunate exercise in some ways, because it doesn’t take into account what a new district may look like and the resources that would be available to that district and how that would work.”
But because the Legislature is attempting to pass H.454 which puts funding mechanisms in place before school district reconfiguration is mapped out, the actual affect on budgets or taxes cannot be known.
Then there is the issue of PCBs in the building.
Woodstock Middle School, High School and Elementary had been slated to be tested this summer with Killington and Reading elementary schools to follow in future years, but state has run out of money — even for testing. So it is no longer requiring schools that have not yet tested to do so.
“As many of you know, there’s been some changing information about PCB testing,” MVSU Superintendent Sherry Sousa told the board, Monday.
Raphael Adamek, MVSU director of technology and innovation, began the presentation to the board by explaining the basics of the chemical compound. “PCBs are a class of compounds that are really widely used in construction materials from 1950 to 1979. The list of things that they were used in is exhaustive: paints, varnishes, lacquers, plastic and rubber around electrical cables, insulation materials, adhesives, tape, caulk, ceiling tiles, all sorts of different things and sprays. Some of these materials have more PCBs than others. The EPA is aware of caulk that is made up of 50% of PCBs, so caulk around windows and caulk that was used in buildings between 1950-1979 are a huge target. This wide variety of sources can make it incredibly difficult to track down and to remediate… off-gassing of those materials into the air, is the primary route of exposure, and the EPA has determined that PCBs are probably carcinogens, and the WHO has said they are definitely carcinogens, and high levels of exposure can cause all sorts of non carcinogenic effects as well. So they’re a serious threat,” Adamek concluded.
In 2021 the Vermont Legislature required that by 2024, the indoor air quality of all schools built or renovated prior to 1980 be tested for PCBs, Sousa noted.
The Vermont Dept. of Health set different acceptable levels for different age groups — levels that were much lower than the EPA guidance from 2017.
“The effect of this is that if we test our buildings, and we see any of these levels, there are correlating actions… occupancy plans that go into place. These can vary from limiting a room to a certain number of hours per day, to closing a room, to closing a wing, to closing an entire building until the levels come down,” Sousa explained.
“So while we were slated to test this summer at our middle school and high school, and at Woodstock Elementary, we received the following information on May 16 from the secretary of education that for schools scheduled for PCB testing after June 2024 that have not yet tested, future testing will occur in scheduled order as funding becomes available for initial indoor air quality testing… So it’s not a pause, it’s saying we’ll get to you when we have the money. So it really puts us in a challenging position,” Sousa continued.
“So MVSU has two options. Option 1: the board chooses to wait to test the middle school, high school and WES until state funding is available to cover the cost for testing, or Option 2: the board authorizes PCB testing the middle school, high school and WES with cost to be covered through the local budget,” Sousa explained.
The cost of testing, may be up to $500,000 based on conversations with Hartford School District and the recent facilities testing they did, Sousa said. While the initial testing is around $30,000, if elevated levels are found, extensive material testing is required to determine where it’s present and craft a remediation plan. All testing costs and remediation would be included in the districts per pupil spend, pushing the district further over the spending threshold, Sousa noted.
For Hartford, the testing started last September and they’re just now getting the latest data. As the result of testing, last month the Hartland School District announced that 60% of their high school would need to be closed in order to deal with the contaminants.
Not testing is also an option; it would save the school money and the potential of closure but would leave the community in the dark about the extent of PCB exposure.
“From the standpoint of looking at this, from a cost perspective, wouldn’t we be doing an injustice to our students, not by doing Option 2 and not doing Option 1. I mean, we’re going to increase our cost per pupil and our taxpayer impact significantly by approving this,” said Josh Linton, a board member from Plymouth.
“I’ve been following the issue for some time, and I’ve noticed that the Vermont standards are like 80% lower than the EPA standards,” said Matt Stout, a board member from Woodstock. “But then when I read some of the results from neighboring schools like Hartford, they certainly had classrooms that tested above the national standard. Some were extraordinarily higher, like 1,600 nanograms per meter cubed. And so whether we do the testing or not… what I think we really want to know is where are the worst areas in the school and is it possible to do some sample testing that’s not $500,000?”
Sousa reiterated that the initial testing was about $30,000 but that if elevated levels were found the school would then be obligated to do much more extensive testing. Additionally, the school could have to seek alternative locations for students (possibly trailers on the football field) and pursue costly remediation efforts, or rebuild part of the school in order to reoccupy it — all depending on the height of the levels found and the materials infected that were discovered after testing.
Some board members expressed the imperative of prioritizing health over costs, strongly advocating to proceed with testing. Others expressed concerns about the implications of PCB levels forcing schools to close just as consolidation talks ramp up statewide, thereby potentially forfeiting any chance for Woodstock to be a hub for the region.
In the end, with so much on the line, the board decided to move the issue of PCB testing to committee and host public forums for the community to weigh in on the matter. Those meeting dates have yet to be announced. They will be posted on the district site: mtnviews.org.
