Superintendent's Corner
Superintendent Community Report
January 2025
Dear Windham Northeast Supervisory Union Community Members,
I want to share our progress and improvements from this year with you.
Our school district has one main goal: "Creating an Inclusive Community through Personalized Student Engagement." This means we want every student to learn and grow in ways that work best for them. All our teachers and staff are dedicated to helping each student reach their full potential. I can state confidently that we are seeing improvements in our students at the individual and cohort levels; which we attribute to our implementation of a new Reading and Mathematics curriculum in grades K-8. Additionally, our faculty is focused on understanding and using student data to adjust and drive instruction to meet the needs of all students. However, we are not done yet.
I understand that our community members worry about taxes. Last year, when many school budgets across Vermont failed to pass, you still supported our students' education. This year, as we planned our budget for 2025, we tried to balance what our students need with what taxpayers can afford. We face some big challenges:
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We will get $280,000 less from the state for Special Education next year. Over two years, that's a $500,000 cut, even though we have seen an increase in students’ needs.
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Our health insurance costs went up by 11.9% this year, after already going up by 16.4% last year.
We received some good news about our ESSER grants (Emergency Relief funds for schools). These grants were extended through June 2025, which lets us finish important building projects and teacher training we already started.
Our school district received over $20 million in ESSER grants. We used more than half of this money to improve our school buildings. Here's what we did:
At Bellows Falls Union High School:
- Installed a new heating and cooling system ($5,000,000)
- Built a new Science Wing ($2,000,000)
- Improved the kitchen
- Bought auditorium seats to replace ones damaged in the February 2024 flood and other furniture for students
At other schools:
- Put new roofs on Westminster Center School, Studio Y, Bellows Falls Middle School, and Central Elementary
- Made school entrances safer at Westminster Center and Saxtons River Elementary
- Improved the playground at Grafton Elementary
- Upgraded security systems at all schools
- Improved kitchens at Bellows Falls Middle School and Central Elementary
Our school boards continue to invest in our buildings. Westminster Center School started a solar energy project that will save money on electricity bills. They also fixed drainage problems in the parking lot and plan to upgrade their bathrooms and temperature control systems.
Bellows Falls Union High School will complete a new roof by the summer of 2025. They'll also completely replace the driveway and parking lot for the first time in 50 years. The school is still working on its PCB problem, but early cleanup efforts are working well. We turned off over 100 air filters because the air quality improved. So far, the state has paid for all this work, but we don't know about future funding yet.
The Supervisory Union is responsible for Administrative Oversight, Financial Services, Special Education, Transportation, Food Nutrition, Technology, Curriculum and Instruction, and our Early Education Program.
To learn more about how these changes might affect your property taxes, please look at the tax projection and school budget pages in this Town Report. I'm happy to answer any questions you have.
Thank you for supporting our schools.
Andrew Haas
Superintendent of Schools
