Residents in Barre on Tuesday rejected a school budget proposal for the third time this year, with 53 percent of voters against the spending plan and 47 in favor.
The outcome means that the Barre Unified Union School District will have to continue borrowing money — and paying interest on those funds — in order to operate. And it leaves the school board with the difficult task of figuring out what else it can cut to create a fourth version of the budget that voters will approve.
The results were different in Barre City, which makes up the downtown urban core of the district, and Barre Town, a more suburban and rural area. City residents approved the budget, 628-526, while those in the town voted against, 993-737.
School board chair Garrett Grant was “heartbroken” by the results, he said on Wednesday. Barre is among the lowest-spending school districts in the state, and around half of its students live at or below the poverty line.
The board is hoping to meet next week to discuss next steps. Because teacher and staff contracts and health insurance are locked in at this point, additional cuts will likely impact student services such as sports and extracurricular activities, he said.
Grant, a librarian at Barre’s Aldrich Public Library, said he believes “AI propaganda” that circulated on Facebook about the budget helped contribute to its defeat.
“We’re not operating with the same set of facts in our community,” Grant said.
Several posts reviewed by Seven Days came from a Facebook account called MAGA Vermont. One blamed the “Montpelier Democrat majority” for taking “all the education budget to pay down people’s property bills to cover up the overspending in Montpelier.”
“And now they need you to pay back their ‘ROB PAUL TO PAY PETER SHENANIGANS,” the post reads.
“The responsible thing to do for our city and kids is Vote No on the Barre City School Budget,” another post read. “Voting no is a step in the right direction.”
To try to combat the messages, Grant shared a lengthy “mythbusting” post on Front Porch Forum the day before the vote that addressed some of the inaccurate information people were sharing online.
“The proposed budget is a 2.1% increase, lower than the rate of inflation, and one of the lowest school budget increases in years,” Grant wrote in the message — which included nine “myths” about topics including administrative costs, per-pupil spending and the budget development process, followed by facts that refuted them.
Grant said he further worries about how Barre’s budget woes will impact the district when it comes to discussing mergers with others as part of the state’s education transformation.
Just last week, the Harwood Unified Union school board voted unanimously to request a move from a merger committee that included Barre and Montpelier to one made up of Champlain Valley and Mount Mansfield Unified Union. Before the vote, one Harwood board member explained why she was in favor of the move.
“It concerns me when I’m reading in the VTDigger that Barre still doesn’t have a school budget for this year,” Pamela Eaton said. “I want to be grouped with people who can pass a budget.”
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