CALAIS – Following the February 10 vote in which Calais and Worcester voters overwhelmingly voted not to close their schools, rejecting school board recommendations to consolidate five schools into three, Calais residents have learned Pre-K students from Calais will need to enroll elsewhere, a fact confirmed by School Board Chair Flor Diaz Smith who said, “Pre-K students will be at East Montpelier. . . The program at Calais needs to go back to Rumney Elementary.”
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East Montpelier already has a full day Pre-K program and it will be a morning and afternoon program with before and after care. The same as in Berlin Elementary School. The two programs will stay in place and Calais Pre-K teacher and program had come temporary to Calais from Rumney and now is moving back to serve both Doty and Rumney.
A community member contacted Superintendent Steven Dellinger-Pate who gave a detailed explanation of the work of a Pre-K and Extended Day Programming Task Force formed at the beginning of this school year “to ensure our offerings align with the WCUUSD Strategic Plan Goals.”
“The group was intentionally composed of diverse stakeholders that included two school administrators, an early childhood education expert (Rebecca Webb), two Pre-K teachers, a parent representative, a special education representative and a school board member,” said Dellinger-Pate.
Communication about the process began with formal recommendations to the board in October 2025, said Dellinger-Pate. “During the budget process, it was determined that the initial recommendation was not financially sustainable. As a result, the program was scaled back to the current half-day, full-week model at 12.5 hours per week.”
Then, “On November 11, we provided information to the board that our current planning involved consolidations of the Calais and East Montpelier Elementary School (EMES) Pre-K and the Doty and Rumney Pre-K to ensure full-time staffing,” he said. “The plans remained subject to final enrollment numbers and district configuration.”
ellinger-Pate said prior to February 2, a message was posted on the district website and families were notified. That information read:: “Washington Central Unified Union School District (WCUUSD) will offer half-day (morning or afternoon), full-week (Monday-Friday) programming for Pre-Kindergarten students. The school-based programs will provide 12.5 hours of preschool services per week, exceeding the state mandate, with extended care options available for a fee through Community Connections. The current plan for PreK sites is a morning or afternoon program at Rumney, a morning and afternoon session at Berlin, and a morning and afternoon session at either EMES or Calais; all contingent on enrollment and our elementary school configuration. PreK enrollment begins on February 2 and our configuration vote is on February 10, so we will make final decisions on program locations no earlier than these dates and most likely not until mid to late March.”
“That message was revised this week [the week of February 16] to denote the sessions will be at Rumney, Berlin and EMES,” he said.
Diaz Smith added, “East Montpelier already has a full day Pre-K program and it will be a morning and afternoon program with before and after care. The same as in Berlin Elementary School. The two programs will stay in place and Calais Pre-K teacher and program had come temporarily to Calais from Rumney and now is moving back to serve both Doty and Rumney.”.
In response to questions about a statement in the district’s annual report, in which Diaz Smith wrote about moving to a three-school mode, she responded, “The statements in the annual report about moving to a three–elementary school model came after a lot of work to communicate what the board, the configuration committee, and the administration felt was best for our students.
“Looking back, I’m guessing the sentence you’re referring to would have been clearer if it said something like: We believe reconfiguring from five elementary schools to three multi-town schools will help us better align our resources…
“That wording aside, we respect the outcome of the vote and remain committed to providing the kind of education we believe, and that our school families tell us. all students deserve: reasonable class sizes, dependable transportation, access to counseling, nursing, and other support services, equitable access to programs, strong and collaborative teaching teams and meaningful opportunities to learn and grow.”
“After the vote, I shared that we respect and understand the will of the voters in Worcester and Calais, and that we’ll keep moving forward, as we always have, with their students’ best interests at heart.”
She added: “I am going to change that one sentence on the online version of the report for clarity. We can’t re-issue the printed one.”
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
