To the editor: School officials fail to see central importance of Flood Brook School to community

Editor’s Note: The following is an open letter to the Taconic & Green School Board and the Bennington-Rutland Supervisory Union.

I’m writing as a parent of two students at Flood Brook School, a community member and a third-generation graduate of Flood Brook to express my sincere and urgent concern about the proposed reconfiguration of our district schools.

While I appreciate the board’s efforts to address enrollment and budget challenges, the current plan, which involves centralizing elementary education at Manchester Elementary Middle School and shifting middle school students districtwide, feels deeply out of step with the lived realities of families in our rural mountain towns.

Flood Brook isn’t just a building: It’s a cornerstone of this community.

My mother, myself and now my children have all walked its halls. It has always served as a K–8 school, and this model has supported generations of learners with continuity, familiarity and a sense of belonging that goes far beyond academics. This proposal doesn’t just change logistics; it unravels the very fabric of a tight-knit rural community where families move because of the school’s quality and structure.

The assumption that busing is a minor inconvenience is dangerously disconnected from local realities. We live in Vermont. Winters are long, roads are often icy, and many of us live over mountains, far from main routes. As it is, we already have what feels like an excessive amount of snow days at Flood Brook. To compound that with a commute over the mountain twice a day seems borderline negligent. During the May 6 meeting, board members acknowledged that some students could face bus rides exceeding 1 hour and 10 minutes, and that’s before the additional time it takes for parents to reach far-flung bus stops or schools. For a working parent with a sick kindergartner, that’s a 30 to 60 minute round trip on a snow-covered road. These are not hypotheticals; they are weekly realities for us.

The transportation update presented at that meeting confirmed what we already know on the ground: routes are already at or over capacity. Buses carry up to 70 students, and solutions like “hub routes” might reduce ride times at the cost of burdening families even further.

You’ve cited equity and efficiency as primary drivers of this plan. But what could be less equitable than forcing our youngest, most vulnerable students to endure the longest and most dangerous commutes? What could be more inequitable than stripping communities like Londonderry and Weston of their local school identity, while consolidating resources in already-full facilities? How is it equitable to force parents, who need every hour of work they can get to support their families, to now be required to find a way to pick up a child 30+ minutes away on a moment’s notice in the middle of a work day?

Your own data show that the community overwhelmingly does not support centralized elementary education. The May 6 board minutes reflect strong public concern, and even a unanimous vote to pause consideration of plans that include closing Flood Brook . But even “pausing” still leaves our school in limbo, undermining morale, enrollment and planning. People cannot put down roots, or stay, when their community school’s future is uncertain. Many people in our community have already expressed the fact that having Flood Brook in the area is precisely why they chose to move to or stay in this area.

We’re not just asking you to preserve a building. We’re asking you to preserve a community, to safeguard our children’s well-being, and to recognize that true educational excellence cannot be achieved through consolidation alone. If anything, it dilutes the learning experience and facilities and teachers become overwhelmed, being pushed beyond reasonable capacity. Smaller schools like Flood Brook are not liabilities, they are assets. They offer connection, trust, and stability that no architectural redesign can replicate.

Please listen to the voices of the families you serve. Reconsider this path before irreversible harm is done to the schools, towns and children who depend on you.

Respectfully,
Natalie Boston
Anthony Boston
Londonderry