Roxbury Village School building in Roxbury. Photo credit The Bridge This story by Tracy Brannstrom was first published in The Bridge on Sept. 22, 2026. ROXBURY — When the Roxbury Village School closed two years ago, the building didn’t become obsolete. In fact, it remains the town’s lar gest public gathering space, housing Town Meeting Day, elections, an afterschool program, community meals and other events. But it comes with a cost.  The town took ownership of the building earlier this year and has given itself three to five years to make it financially self-sufficient. A seven-member committee appointed in May has been tackling everything from the building’s heating and energy costs to rekeying its doors, fire-code requirements and how to structure rental agreements. Kristen Getler, chair of the Roxbury Village School Committee, said she is mindful of the town’s tight financial reality. Roxbury has many miles of gravel roads to maintain, she said, and officials are discussing the possibility of a new town garage. “There is a concern about continuing to carry a building on the town’s operating budget when everybody is feeling pretty stressed with taxes right now, and any added expense has a tax implication,” Getler said. “That’s really real for folks.”  Roxbury Village School closed in fall 2024 as part of the Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools (MRPS) district effort to cut costs, saving the district $1.5 million, according to Superintendent Libby Bonesteel at the time. Under the merger agreement, the town could buy the building back for $1 if the district could not identify a financially feasible educational use for the roughly 10,000-square-foot space on 2.5 acres. The town of Roxbury has since spent about $71,000 on operating the building, according to town clerk Tammy Legacy. Legal work related to the property transfer, property insurance, technology upgrades, maintenance and testing for PCBs and other contamination have been among the largest expenses. Fuel is expected to be a major cost this winter, and the town is also considering replacing the building’s fuel tank, Legacy said.  The town will budget somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 for the building in the coming year, said Roxbury selectboard chair Jeremy Reed, who also said the building committee is putting together financial projections to put before voters on Town Meeting Day in March. The hope for those involved in redeveloping the building is to maximize rental revenue in the coming years. The committee identified 4,673 square feet of potentially rentable space that could generate roughly $68,000 to $115,000 a year, depending on rates.  Though a former owner of the building, MRPS is now the town’s first major tenant. In early September, the building committee finalized a lease for the district to host its afterschool program, expected to bring in about $15,000 through next June, although that revenue is not guaranteed beyond the current agreement.  Reed said the Vermont Farm and Forest School, an independent K–5 private school and outdoor education program in Roxbury, is another possible tenant that’s conducting its own feasibility study to run an early-childhood program in the building. In fact, a number of childcare facilities and a private school showed interest in renting space, but Roxbury’s rural location is challenging, Reed added.  The town also hopes to secure grants to help offset the building’s costs in the coming years.  Asked if the building might pay for itself, Reed said, “I think there’s a hope that can be the outcome, but it does sound like there’s been a bit of a realization that (it) will be harder than we thought.” But before the town can lease more space, it has to clear out the building. The attic is packed with items the school district left behind, including boxes of unopened, unused curricula, while the library is overflowing with books the town library has no room to house, said building committee secretary Heidi Albright.  “We’re trying to figure out how to afford fuel and replace an oil tank, and we have this mundane project of dealing with all these castoffs that the district didn’t want to deal with,” Albright said.  “There is a little bit of a sense that we got the fuzzy end of the lolly pop.” Albright said she remains optimistic about what the former school building could become, but getting there has required a lot of work behind the scenes. Juggling the building committee with her Third Branch Flower farm, family life and other obligations is difficult, she said. “In a small town, you basically have a small group of people who do so much, because they care so much, then they really burn out.” Albright would like to see the town hire someone to assist with coordinating the work around repurposing the building, although that may not be financially feasible. Alyssa Johnson, a program manager at the Vermont Council on Rural Development, an organization supporting Roxbury’s redevelopment efforts since spring 2025, agreed that much of the work of repurposing schools and other community buildings in Vermont falls on the backs of under-resourced volunteers. “There just isn’t a coordinated wraparound system of support in the state for this,” Johnson said. “It tends to be a very patchwork approach, often involving communities that are the smallest and have the fewest paid staff to help support the work.”  Support from the council and Preservation Trust Vermont, which often work together, has been critical, several residents serving on the building committee said.  Last fall, both organizations took a taskforce of Roxbury residents around the state to see properties undergoing repurposing, including a former Bridgewater elementary school that closed in 2015 that was converted into a community and childcare center in 2021.  Prior to the bus tour, in 2025, the Council on Rural Development facilitated three public forums in Roxbury for residents to discuss what they wanted for the town’s future, with repurposing the elementary school identified as a priority. Preservation Trust president Ben Doyle, who is also a Montpelier city councilor, said more than two dozen communities in Vermont are grappling with how to use shuttered schools. The buildings range from large high schools to one-room schoolhouses, and from century-old structures to those built in the 1950s and ’60s. Their condition, size and layout can shape what comes next, from housing to community centers. Doyle said Vermont’s push under Act 73 toward newer and fewer schools raises the question of what happens to all the shuttered schools left behind. “What are we going to do with these community assets that are kind of like, left there? They don’t just go away, right?” He said these buildings offer towns and residents an opportunity to think about how to play a role in local economic development. In Roxbury — population 678, according to the 2020 census — the former elementary school has already emerged as a potential asset for development. The question is how to make it work. For now, the building hosts free community events from two nonprofits that formed in the aftermath of the school’s closure. Roxbury Roots currently hosts a grant-funded series of Sunday workshops on local food production, and Roxbury Rising will hold its second annual silent disco in November. Under the merger agreement between the town and MRPS, the building must be used for community purposes for at least five years after the town takes ownership. Getler, who runs Moonlight Mountain Farm in Roxbury, got involved with community uses of the building almost immediately after the school’s closure. She was serving on the MRPS board when it made the decision, and voted against it, a contentious process she said left residents without a say. With the building’s future still largely uncertain, she still sees a way for the old school to remain part of the community. “I see that kids have a thread keeping them tied to Roxbury,” she said, referring to how the town’s elementary students now attend school at Union Elementary School in Montpelier. “And overall, people are accessing the building in ways they never have before.” Read the story on VTDigger here: Roxbury looks to give its former school a new life. ...read more read less