Woodstock Union Middle School and High School, January 15, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger This story by Alex Hanson was first published in Valley News on March 4, 2026. WOODSTOCK — Area voters this week narrowly approved a long-debated replacement for its aging schools. There’s more work left to do. Voters in the Mountain Views School District on Tuesday approved a $112 million bond issue for a new middle and high school. Ballots cast in the district’s seven towns favored the bond, 1,648 to 1,047. With 61.1% voting in favor, that put the project just over the 60% supermajority needed to approve it. “I’m absolutely thrilled,” Keri Bristow, chairwoman of the Mountain Views School Board, said in a phone interview Wednesday morning.  The successful bond vote followed a rejection at the polls in 2024, by a vote of 1,910 to 1,570. The smaller turnout for Tuesday’s vote was a surprise, Bristow said. School officials held dozens of public meetings since last fall and felt they had gotten the word out about the project. Snow on Tuesday afternoon might have kept some voters away, she said. The school construction project still has two hurdles to clear. District officials must raise at least 25% of the cost through federal, state and private funds. Also, the project will be put on hold if the state Legislature doesn’t exempt construction costs from the excess spending calculation in the state’s school funding formula. State school building aid is expected to cover at least 20% of the cost, and the district has already received pledges of $4.25 million from private donors, including a $1.5 million challenge grant that the district has a year to match. District officials plan to lobby legislators for passage of the exemption for construction costs. Under a measure the state Legislature adopted in 2024, bond repayment would be included in a district’s annual per pupil spending. If annual spending is more than 118% of the state average, every dollar spent above that level is taxed as two dollars. “I think what we’ll have to do is mobilize ourselves,” to get the law changed, Bristow said.  State Rep. Charlie Kimbell, D-Woodstock, has sponsored a bill, and other districts across the state also approved construction projects, Bristow said. For many voters, the decision to support the bond this time was straightforward. The school, which serves around 415 of the district’s 1,000 students, was built in 1958 and has reached the end of its useful life.  Voters who had seen the deterioration for themselves said that the time to replace it is now. “I strongly support building a new school for the kids,” Susan Burgess, of South Pomfret, said outside the polls. “It’s time. We can’t repair the old one.” Burgess volunteers as a costumer for the school’s theater program.  “I see firsthand just how dangerous it is,” she said. “This is what towns do. They come together as a community to build their future.” Ralph Lancaster, who lives in Woodstock, voted for the measure. “I did vote for it, because I can’t vote against schools,” Lancaster said.  His wife, Fran, voted the same way.  “That school served our children,” she said. “We’ve taken the tour” of the nearly 70-year-old building. “It was terrible.” “Taxes are always a concern,” Ralph Lancaster said, “but there’s some things that have to get done.” Two other couples who voted together Tuesday afternoon in Woodstock, Dan and Rhonda Bruce and Richard and Lyn Kolb, said much the same thing. “It would cost at least $20 million more to renovate the old school and then you still have an old school,” Dan Bruce said. “I don’t know a better answer,” said Woodstock resident Dail Frates, a 1976 graduate of Woodstock High. “Our taxes are unbelievably high,” but the district needs a new school. Another WUHS graduate from the same era took a dimmer view of the project. The primary concerns among voters who opposed the plan were its cost and size. The school is designed for 600 students, and could be expanded to 750 to 1,000, if needed, either because of population growth or the state’s proposed redistricting. “I don’t think they need to go that extreme,” Kathy Churchill, class of 1974, said. She lives in the Woodstock house she grew up in, which is next to the mobile home park her parents developed. Why didn’t the school district budget to maintain the school, she said. “My property taxes doubled in the last three years,” Churchill said. She had retired from a career in property maintenance and cleaning, but took a job at Woodstock Village Market to make ends meet. She fears being pushed out of her home. Prior to the vote, school officials declined to calculate the tax impact of bond repayment, on the grounds that too much about Vermont’s education system is in flux.  Even so, the price tag seemed too much for many residents. “Absolutely f—— not!” said a man who spoke as he walked briskly from the Bridgewater Town Clerk’s Office back to his plow truck. “We spend enough money in this f—— town. I don’t need to spend any more, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.” Another Bridgewater resident, Anna Spaulding, had a more measured response.  “I said ‘no’, because it has already become unaffordable to live here,” she said.  Spaulding has five kids in the school system, but despite that investment, the project is “still just completely unaffordable.” “I feel like they’re asking for an ungodly amount for a school that’s just not needed,” Spaulding said. Enrollment is “heading in the wrong direction.” “I just don’t feel that the size of that is right for the future,” Barnard resident Martha Leonard said in explaining her “no” vote. “There’s no way we’re going to have 1,000 students, not the way things are going.” More importantly, with the higher taxes, “who can afford to live here?” said Leonard, who worked for 30 years in the school district’s office, when it was known as Windsor Central Supervisory Union. “And if they can, are they going to send their children to public school?” As if to answer Leonard’s question, Ryan Heney, a primary care doctor who moved to Barnard from Rhode Island three years ago emerged from Town Hall having voted yes. He went to public school in Essex, Vt., and wants his kids to have a strong public education. Four of them are at Barnard Academy, the town’s elementary school, and one is in preschool in Randolph. “I think the kids in our community deserve it,” Heney said. Renata Welker, a Barnard resident who voted in favor, said she did so despite some reservations. “I don’t make a lot of money,” Welker said. She works as a teacher at the Upper Valley Waldorf School, but has children in the public system. “It wasn’t an easy vote.” In the end, she voted for it because “we need something to serve the students in this area.”In the end, she voted for it because “we need something to serve the students in this area.” Read the story on VTDigger here: After bond approval, Woodstock school project faces next tests. ...read more read less