MARLBORO-At a special meeting held on Nov. 20, the Marlboro School Board told gathered public that in the coming months, it will hold an Australian ballot vote in which the district’s voters will be asked to determine the future of its school.
The move comes as the board acknowledges that, facing declining enrollment, the town cannot continue to operate its school as it stands currently.
The options currently being considered by the board are a full closure, which would give the town’s school-aged residents school choice, or “pared-down” operations, which would limit the school’s enrollment to those in second through eighth grades. Pre-K, kindergarten, and first grade students would have school choice.
Under that scenario, programming, such as the school’s band, would also be cut.
The board was careful to say that nothing is set in stone. “The purpose of this meeting tonight is to explore the options and to inform ourselves of what the effects of them would be on our taxes,” said board Chair Dan MacArthur.
Demographic charts shared by Windham Central Supervisory Union Superintendent Bob Thibault and Director of Finance Heidi Russ showed that if nothing were to change, the district anticipates 47 students would be enrolled next year in Marlboro, which currently serves students in pre-K through grade 8.
Among those 47, projected numbers for the youngest grades are particularly low, with two 3-year-olds, two 4-year-olds, and three kindergarteners aging into their respective classes.
The school, said MacArthur, can’t afford to hire staff to support classrooms that small, nor would classes that small necessarily be what’s best for students. Some families, said principal Dana Gordon-Macey, chose different options this year because the kindergarten class was already so small.
“The big issue is the birth rate,” said Gordon-Macey. “It’s just not sustainable classroom sizes, and when we talk about wanting to do what’s best for our kids, they need to have a cohort, and those much younger kids don’t have any sort of a cohort, which is very challenging.”
Russ said that if the school were to close and tuition out its students, taxes would be anticipated to rise by about $1 per $100,000 of home value next year.
But if the school were to continue operating for grades two through eight, the supervisory union would anticipate a tax hike of about $439 per $100,000 of home value. That number was translated within the meeting to roughly $1,200 on a $300,000 home, with attendees saying the number was more relatable to the average homeowner.
Closure of the school would mean its projected 47 students would need to pick a different regional school to attend next year. Thibault said that of the nearby schools he contacted, most said they had the ability to absorb Marlboro’s students.
“Because there are declining enrollments everywhere, it’s not just a Marlboro problem; not surprisingly, everybody around us said, ‘Yeah, we have room,’” said Thibault. “In fact, most of the schools said they could completely accept the entirety of Marlboro School and just keep rolling.”
Parents’ and residents’ responses at the meeting were mixed when remarking about what might be the best-case scenario in a situation none seemed glad to find themselves in.
Some parents said they would be willing to pay extra taxes, despite the significant burden it would bring them, if it meant allowing some of the school’s students an extra year in their school while the board and town figure out what’s best to do next.
Others said doing so would be prolonging the inevitable and would cause an undue burden on staff and students.
‘This is not an Act 73 knee-jerk reaction’
MacArthur has cumulatively served on the Marlboro School Board for about 35 years, with a bulk of that time when his own children were in the school. After a break, he returned about 10 years ago.
In a recent interview, MacArthur said that the current conversations around closing the school are not strictly related to Act 73, this year’s landmark education bill. But the 2025 law does throw some complications into the future in Marlboro.
For example, the law dictates that multigrade classrooms can comprise only two grades at a time, meaning that even if it thought it was what was best, the school could not combine its low-student-count pre-K, kindergarten, and first-grade classrooms into one.
Still, MacArthur said, the difficult conversations in Marlboro are not tied to Act 73, but rather are about the town’s dwindling demographics.
“This is something we recognize within our community, and that’s why we’re trying to engage the community and make the decision as an independent school district,” said MacArthur. “This is not an Act 73 knee-jerk reaction. This is something that the community recognizes needs to happen.”
MacArthur, who attended the school himself and whose children and grandchildren attended it as well, said the school has always been one of progressive thinking and, owing to its small size, has long had an intimacy to it. It’s clear in talking to him that the conversations he’s engaged in now are not without grief or sadness.
He lauded members of the public for the way they engaged during Thursday night’s meeting, the tone of which was cordial and practical, if not reflective of a certain type of grief. MacArthur relayed one comment from the meeting that particularly moved him.
“A person stood up and said basically, with all that’s happening in the world, we’ve got to keep our act together here,” said MacArthur. “Because where else is there sanity in the world, other than this group of people in this room trying to deal with what we’ve got going on? I really appreciated her.”
At the public meeting, Gordon-Macey said that despite the difficult conversations swirling around it, the school remains dedicated to its students and to upholding the spirit of the school.
“It is as magical a place here at Marlboro as it always has been,” said Gordon-Macey. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I do want folks to know that this is a place to celebrate today as much as it was to celebrate 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
“Our kids are really lucky to be here,” she said.
A version of this story appeared in The Deerfield Valley News, The Commons’ sister newspaper.
This News item by Lauren Harkawik originally appeared in The Deerfield Valley News and was republished in The Commons with permission.