Career center passes its first budget test
March 13, 2023 | By Lisa ScagliottiVoters across the region last week gave a strong vote of approval to the budget for the Central Vermont Career Center, according to election results released on Monday.
The $4.1 million budget passed by a vote of 6,535 to 1,806 on Town Meeting Day, superintendent Jody Emerson said in an announcement following the multi-day vote count that began Thursday and ended Monday.
Votes came from the 18 communities that comprise the six school districts that send most of the just over 200 students to the vocational and technical education center located in Barre at Spaulding High School.
Harwood Unified Union is one of those districts along with Montpelier-Roxbury, Barre Unified Union, Twinfield Union, Washington Central Unified Union and Cabot.
The district combined the ballots to count them. Individual towns did not report how many ballots they contributed to the count. Three tabulator machines were used to count the ballots. They came from Barre City, Barre Town and Montpelier.
Barre Town Clerk Tina Lunt is also the clerk for the Central Vermont Career Center School District and she certified the election results. A total of 8,978 ballots were cast, according to the official tally. Emerson said that there were 5,070 ballots in the tabulator machines which means 56% of the ballots were cast in Barre and Montpelier.
A key element of the newly approved budget is that it contained an increase for the 2023-24 school year that will enable the school to offer full-day rather than half-day programming.
Each of the school districts that send students to the center had its contribution to the career center annual budget included in its own budget as tuition for students attending the center. This school year, for example, Harwood has 28 students enrolled at the center. Tuition for the 2023-24 school year is listed at $18,748 per student in the career center district’s annual report.
The career center just last year formed an independent school district with voter approval on Town Meeting Day 2022. It previously functioned as part of the Barre School District.
The career center district is governed by a 10-member board with each of the six school districts appointing a member from their school boards and an additional member from each of the four largest contributing districts elected at large.
On the ballot last week were two of the new board members who were elected without any opposition: Lyman Castle won the at-large seat in the Montpelier-Roxbury district with 7,111 votes and 153 write-ins for other candidates; Terri Steele won the Washington Central at-large seat with 6,900 votes to 151 others written in.
Both the Central Vermont Career Center School Board and the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board meet next week for their organizational meetings following Town Meeting Day. They will select officers. The Harwood board will appoint one of its members to serve on the career center board for the coming year. Harwood board member Jonathan Young of Warren served in that role for the past year.
