Career center budget comfortably approved in 18-town vote

March 9, 2024 | By David Delcore | Times Argus staff writer

BARRE — The Central Vermont Career Center School District got the collective nod it needed from voters in 18 towns — most of them members of other districts where school budgets didn’t fare as well this week.

All but two of those budgets failed before the first of the 14,115 career center ballots cast on Tuesday were fed into tabulators on the third floor of Alumni Hall in Barre Thursday morning. The counting resumed on Friday and concluded after the last of the commingled ballots — those cast by Cabot voters — had been processed and the tabulators spit out the favorable results.

The career center district’s second-ever budget was approved, 8,754 to 4,933, in an election cycle when its $4.6 million bottom line wasn’t as tempting a target as the much larger budgets proposed by its six sending districts.

Budgets in four of those multi-town districts — Barre, Montpelier Roxbury, Washington Central and Harwood — were rejected. A fifth — Twinfield — passed by just three votes. The school budget passed by a wider margin in Cabot, by far the smallest of the career center’s sending districts.

That fact wasn’t lost on CVCC Superintendent Jody Emerson.

“With (budgets for) all of our biggest sending schools going down and Twinfield’s being so tight I felt like we might get caught up in that,” she said, noting her concerns the career center’s budget could be collateral damage in a year when voters were clearly concerned about school spending were tempered by a couple of factors.

“Our budget is much smaller and folks support CTE (Career Technical Education), so I was hopeful,” she said.

Emerson said the positive vote was a relief and won’t disrupt the fledgling district’s momentum as it explores alternate locations for a stand-alone center with an eye toward proposing a bond vote that would finance that ambitious project a year from November.

The center has been in a wing of Barre-based Spaulding High School since it opened under a different name. Until the new autonomous district that was approved by voters in its 18-town service area two years ago, oversight of the center fell to the board — now the Barre Unified School Board — responsible for Spaulding High School.

Now, its own district, with its own board, the career center’s budget reflected a spending increase of roughly 12%. However, there was no accompanying tax increase because the local cost of running the center is reflected in a tuition line items in budgets for its sending districts.

Though four of those budgets failed — some for the first time in recent memory — cutting tuition for the career center isn’t an option for the Barre, Montpelier Roxbury, Washington Central and Harwood boards as they regroup and prepare for a revote.

The career center budget passed by more than 3,800 votes, but it wasn’t completely immune from the sticker shock that led to failed budgets in its four largest sending districts. Nearly 6,000 more voters participated in this year’s career center election — a new record, and the result wasn’t as lopsided as last year when a $4.1 million spending proposal passed, 6,535-1,806.

Emerson said the higher turnout was good news for the district and the fact that the budget passed by more than 900 fewer votes than it did a year ago wasn’t surprising given the fate that befell other school spending proposals.

“We’re grateful that it passed,” she said of the budget. “That’s the important thing.”

This story was originally published by the Times Argus on March 8.