CANAAN, Vt. (AP) - Schools in northeastern Vermont and northern New Hampshire are finalizing plans to create what organizers hope will become the third interstate school district between in the two states.
A committee of educators from Canaan, Vermont, and Colebrook, New Hampshire, has been working for two years on the plan that would help the communities deal with dwindling student-age populations and a lack of resources by creating a single district.
Organizers hope to submit their plans to both states for approval. If state education officials approve, voters in the two communities could decide the issue later this year.
There is even a proposed name: The Northern Borders Interstate School District.
Vermont Public Radio reports that Canaan, located where Vermont and New Hampshire meet Quebec, Canada, has 164 students in kindergarten through high school. The number is down 41% in the past 15 years.
Across the Connecticut River in New Hampshire, there are just over 400 students in the district based in Colebrook. Enrollment there has also been on the decline.
“They refer to us as ‘geographically isolated,’” said Karen Conroy, the superintendent of Vermont’s Essex North Supervisory Union. But, “if you look at our geographic area, we have - within 20 miles of each other - three high schools, four elementary schools, two supervisory unions, two central offices.”
Colebrook School Board Chair Brain LaPerle is part of the group trying to merge the districts in the two states.
“The ultimate goal,” LaPerle said, is “to get the students together into a single high school with a (Career Technical Education) center connected to it. That’s going to just provide more opportunities than we have now, mainly by pooling resources.”
For two years, the Connecticut River Collaborative Planning Committee has been planning the merger. The other two, the Rivendell Interstate School District and the Dresden School District, are both located near Hanover, New Hampshire, and Norwich, Vermont.
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