Two school districts in the White River Valley are bringing slimmed down versions of school construction plans defeated by voters last year back to the ballot box at Town Meeting.

The Sharon School District will ask voters to approve a $7.1 million bond issue for a renovation and expansion of the town’s elementary school. And the White River Unified District, comprising Bethel and Royalton, is asking voters to pass a $3.8 million bond issue to finance high school and middle school improvements.

But a third, far larger project, the construction of a new middle and high school in Woodstock, remains on the drawing board amid uncertainty about how the state funds education. Voters in the seven-town Mountain Views School District rejected a $99 million bond issue last March. No new vote is planned.

“We’re in wait-and-see mode,” Ben Ford, vice chair of the Mountain Views School Board and chairman of the building working group, said in a phone interview.

Leaders of the two White River Valley boards said their boards didn’t want to wait for the state to sort out school funding or the governor’s proposal to consolidate school districts, preferring instead to fortify their schools while they still have local control and district voters can decide what happens with their schools.

“We need to have good buildings in order to have viable schools,” Andrew Jones, chairman of the White River Unified District board, said in a phone interview.

“We know that we need to do this work,” Will Davis, chairman of the Sharon School Board, said in an interview. “The conversation around education funding and reform in Montpelier could take years. In the meantime, our students are being educated in closets and entryways.”

Both the Sharon and White River Valley proposals are intended to address critical needs for more space and safer entrances.

At Sharon Elementary School, the pre-kindergarten program has made do in temporary classrooms next to the school building, which was erected in 1989. Designed to accommodate 100 students, it now houses 165.

The proposed expansion would bring the pre-K pupils into the building, enlarge the library and provide dedicated space for counseling and one-on-one instruction. Also included are sprinklers, dehumidification and a more secure entrance.

After voters rejected a $9.5 million bond issue last May, school officials pared the project down to $7.1 million.

The initial 8,220-square-foot addition has been cut to 6,770 square feet, and other aspects of the initial plan, such as a new gym floor and ventilation, and a flexible classroom space have been cut.

The new plan also saves $500,000 by using modular construction.

“I think we’ve done a good job of cutting a lot out,” Davis said. The leaner plan “meets the bare necessities” and responds to concerns residents expressed about the cost of the initial proposal.

“There were certainly some people (who are) very supportive of the school, but who felt like it was just too much money,” he said.

It didn’t help that a panic over school spending gripped Vermont last year. The budget Sharon officials are proposing for next year will result in a slight decrease to the homestead property tax rate. If approved, the bond issue would add $310 to the tax bill on a $200,000 home in the first year, a figure that would decline over the 20-year repayment period. Most Vermont households pay education taxes on their homes based on their income, not on property tax rates and assessments.

In the White River Unified District, voters also expressed concern about the cost of the proposed renovation and expansion, which was defeated by a vote of 253-243 last November.

School officials explored ways to shrink the project, both in square footage and in height, but found that the loss in the building’s usefulness wasn’t worth the small return in savings, Jones, the board chairman, said.

But the board did cut back some of the proposed improvements, including upgrades to the smaller of the Royalton campus’ two gyms, which serves as a performance space for music and drama. Reducing the scope of the project means the district has all the non-bond funding in hand in the form of private donations and building reserve funds.

“Our thought was that we build the basic structure and anything additional will need to be through private funds,” Jones said.

The $6.17 million project still includes new secure entrances at the middle school in Bethel and at the high school in South Royalton; a 3,000-square-foot addition to accommodate music rehearsal and classroom space; a 1,000-square-foot expansion of the school’s shop space; and improved heating, ventilation and stormwater abatement.

The high school portion of the project is needed because of continued enrollment growth, both in the music and shop programs and overall. The current enrollment of 231 is 10% higher than the last high-water mark, in 1998. (Royalton and Bethel merged their schools to create the pre-K to 12 White River Unified District in 2017.)

“Even before we had these extra kids, the music spaces weren’t ideal,” Jones said. The band program, among the largest in the state and a point of community pride, crams into a tiny rehearsal room four times a week. A new space for the high school band would free up the current band room for use by the attached elementary school.

While the project is intended for students from Bethel and Royalton, it also could bring in students from surrounding towns, some of whom bring state tuition money with them. Any added revenue would be “a win-win,” Jones said.

The district’s budget has been stable, with modest declines or increases in the two towns over the past few years, Jones noted, and the spending proposed for next year is in the same mold. Royalton residents will see a slight decrease while Bethel residents see a slight increase. Annual repayment for the bond would average $47 a year on a home assessed at $200,000. As in Sharon, most households pay education taxes on their homes based on income, not property value.

“I hope people look at our budget ... and see that this is something we can afford and will benefit our students,” he said.

Both of the White River Valley districts find themselves in a more favorable funding situation than the Woodstock-centered Mountain Views district, which faced excess spending penalties reinstated last year by state lawmakers.

“We’re not up against the excess spending threshold,” Jamie Kinnarney, superintendent of the 10-town White River Valley Supervisory Union, said in an interview.

The funding formula and the absence of state construction aid, which Vermont lawmakers phased out in 2007, make a $99 million building plan a big pill to swallow, Ford, the Mountain Views board member, said.

A new middle and high school would accommodate 600 students, but could stretch to 700, Ford said. Whether such a school fits in Montpelier’s plans is unclear, he said.

“If that’s a ‘no,’ then we’re back to the drawing board,” he said.

Kinnarney and other officials in the White River Valley are more confident that their schools will remain fixtures in their communities.

“It’s my expectation that these will be public school destinations, even if the governor’s plan comes to fruition,” Kinnarney said.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.