Last of its kind: Vermont town weighs future of one-room schoolhouse
Each morning before school starts and after recess, Diane Nicholls rings the bell atop the snug one-room schoolhouse where she teaches.
“I don’t feel like I’m living in the 19th-century, but it is charming,” says Ms. Nicholls, who educates a group of 18 students in the Elmore School, Vermont’s last operating one-room schoolhouse.
The Elmore School, a public school serving students in grades one through three, is a cherished tradition in the tiny town of Elmore, with a population of under 1,000. Generations of students have attended since the school opened in the 1850s. Now, townspeople are wrestling with how best to support it.
Residents will vote March 1 on whether the town should withdraw from a joint school district with two other nearby towns in order to strike released in November 2020 proposed five cost-saving recommendations, with four out of the five options suggesting closing the Elmore School.
