Sophie Lampard Dennis has lived in Marlboro for 38 years. She is an educator who recently retired after 20 years as an associate professor at Landmark College in Putney. Her three children all attended Marlboro Elementary School.
MARLBORO-Imagine, if you will, a town with no children. What does it look like? How does it feel? How does it sound? Would you want to live there?
Here in Marlboro, we the voters are being asked to seriously consider closing our local elementary school in favor of sending — busing — our children elsewhere for their education.
On a practical level there are legitimate forces at play causing us to consider this, and there are certainly important issues to be discussed and logistical and budgetary questions to be raised and pondered.
Indeed, there are informational meetings scheduled by our school board for this very purpose, the first of three having taken place on Nov. 20 and the next scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 13.
While I am, of course, interested in how my property taxes may be affected by this change, my thoughts nonetheless go first not to the details but to a larger question which often preoccupies me: What is community? And, in this case, how does our local elementary school fit into the broad concept of community?
I do wonder: If we decide to cede the responsibility of educating our own children within Marlboro — their home — to another school in another town, what might the consequences be for our town, its children, and any sense of community now and in the future?
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I don’t know the answers to the questions swirling around in my head, but I do know that it is a momentous decision because I suspect that if we choose to close our local school, we will likely never have one here again. This makes the decision facing Marlboro voters momentous and multi-generation-affecting into the future.
I do wonder: If our kids leave Marlboro every day for school, will their allegiance become bound to another place? Their social, athletic and after-school lives will be elsewhere. Their friends will be elsewhere. Birthday parties will be elsewhere. Marlboro will become their bedroom community with a commute every morning to another town, another community.
Does this matter?
I don’t know, but I think about it. I worry that these youngsters will not grow up with the kind of sense of place that comes from being in school in your place.
And I wonder if lacking this connection to their town, to their community, may make it easier to leave when the time comes rather than choose to stay — or return — and raise their own family here.
I wonder if, without a school in town, will families choose not to move to Marlboro? And, conversely, if we close the school, will some families who have been living here choose to move away, perhaps closer to the new school?
I wonder if children spend their days elsewhere, will they still come to our local library to check out books?
I wonder if our only playground — the one at the school — is closed, will our community ever experience the sights and sounds of kids sliding and swinging joyfully in Marlboro again?
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I think about the positive impact on our schoolchildren over the years of the long tradition of community members volunteering at the school. I wonder about the implications of what its loss might mean for how our youngsters form of their idea of community.
Parents and family members, as well as many others with a simple passion for sharing their gifts and time with our children, have consistently taken the opportunity to engage within our classrooms while supporting the teachers and curriculum.
Countless generations of Marlboro kids have benefited as Marlboro residents have shared their love of books, art, architecture, history, and nature — among other passions — and I wonder whether and how we could continue this tradition at another school, in another town.
I wonder what education even is. Does it begin and end with a teacher in a classroom? (If so, then presumably any classroom anywhere will do.) Or could it be the case that the education of children is situated within an environment, a milieu, a sense of shared lived experiences in a place — in a town, in Vermont, within America? In a community, their community, in which they are surrounded by and engaged with many others calling that place home, too?
There is a case to be made that including our town’s children in a larger learning environment may provide increased opportunities. As an educator, I don’t discount this argument, and the School Board is providing important data on costs and benefits of staying or going.
But I believe that we must engage our heart as well as our head to think about the existential questions related to place as we also mull over the practical details.
Marlboro residents have a rare opportunity with this vote to think about what kind of town we wish to live in — and to leave for future generations. Power increases when we engage together in community and is dispersed when people are dispersed.
So, I ponder: What is a town without a school? What makes a town a town?
Is it just a bunch of houses, or is it something more?
And, if we do close our school, will we become a town with no children?
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