RIPTON – It's a sunny afternoon late in the school year, and all of the town's energy surrounds Ripton Elementary School, the center of a minor traffic jam.

Motorists pause as a couple dozen elementary school students ride their bikes in laps in front of the school, an annual school library fundraiser in this town of 600 people that sits above Middlebury on Bread Loaf Mountain.

For each lap, a volunteer punches a hole in a library card that hangs from the child's bike.

"A lot of people, when they think of Vermont, they think of this," said Laurie Cox, 69, who sent two children to this school years ago and currently serves as chairwoman of the town Selectboard.

More: How do towns rally after school closures? Here's what the Free Press is doing to find out

Watching from the roadside, Cox worries the tradition may not last. The local school district has seven elementary schools, one for each town. Ripton, which serves 53 students, is the smallest.

Like the state as a whole, the Addison Central School District has been losing students. District schools saw their student population shrink 8 percent in the last decade, and officials say the numbers are unsustainable, particularly now that some buildings need major repairs.

District leaders are starting to talk about closing and consolidating schools.

"We just feel vulnerable because we’re the smallest," Cox says.

In Vermont and across the nation, rural communities are wrestling with the future of their small schools amid declining enrollment. In each town, residents worry not just about the quality of their children's education, but about losing their identity as a community.

Over the next several months, the Burlington Free Press will examine how rural communities beyond Vermont are navigating an age of shrinking schools. With funding from the Solutions Journalism Network in New York City, the Free Press will visit small towns across the country in search of thoughtful strategies.

School enrollment has dropped more in Vermont than any other state

Vermont's school population has been falling for about two decades. Between 2010 and 2015, according to the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education, the state's school enrollment dropped by 9 percent, more than any other state. School districts, as a group, have been unable to shrink their budgets to scale.

Enrollment dropping: No matter how you count it, fewer students in Vermont schools

One strategy for staying afloat has been to combine school districts to reduce administrative costs and more efficiently share resources. Two years ago, as part of the statewide Act 46 school district consolidation effort, Ripton and its neighbors agreed to merge. A unified school board now makes decisions for the children of all seven towns.

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When state legislators enacted Act 46, they argued that it would help small schools to survive, because they could draw on the resources and cost efficiencies of a larger district. No longer would the tax rate fluctuate wildly when a family moved in or out of town.

"I suppose we can afford to keep small schools in every town if we go back to one-room schoolhouses and having one teacher for seven grades, but I don’t think anyone wants to go back to those days," said Peter Conlon, chairman of the ACSD School Board.

One of the Addison Central School District's first steps as a unified district was to discuss moving 6th grade into Middlebury Union Middle School. That has evolved into the creation of a district-wide facilities plan.

We need your support Journalism at its core is made up of people who are passionate and dedicated to bringing you stories that go beyond the daily headlines. The Free Press is reporting from several small communities around the country that have lost their schools or are fighting to keep them open in search of lessons for Vermont communities facing similar challenges. Sign up today to keep up with this series and get unlimited access to more subscriber-only content.

Deeming the current configuration "unsustainable," the Addison Central School Board is considering four scenarios. All of them envision closing at least one elementary school.

The most dramatic proposal would consolidate all elementary students into a single school, likely in Middlebury, which a school board presentation described as offering "high equity" for students who would travel from the surrounding towns.

Tom McElhaney, a Ripton resident, questions the board's view of equity.

"It's not equitable when you’re going to have to put some of these tiny little kids on the bus for an extra hour," McElhaney said, predicting that students in a merged school would get less sleep and would have less opportunity for after-school activities.

Giles Hoyler was on the former Ripton School Board at the time of the Act 46 vote, and he encouraged his neighbors to support the merger. The school board promised creative solutions to the enrollment challenges.

"I was told many times that this is not about closing schools," he said. "This just doesn't seem creative at all."

How Ripton Elementary ties the community together

Traffic stops to make way for Ripton Elementary School student bikers at the Bike for Books on Friday, June 7. SADIE HOUSBERG/FREE PRESS

In recent years Ripton has not seen dramatic declines in enrollment, nor is the building in need of expensive repairs. However, the school struggles with staffing challenges due to its size, said Tracey Harrington, the principal.

Ripton shares a nurse with three other schools in the district. The counselor serves two other buildings. Nearly every staff position at the school — including the principal's job — is part-time. This can make it hard to maintain highly-qualified staff, Harrington said. She worries about having to cut services if enrollment numbers drop further.

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"We have a lot of itinerant specialists who we're paying to spend most of their time driving," Conlon, the School Board chairman, said.

A vocal group of Ripton parents, meanwhile, are fighting to maintain their children's small-school experience, which has attracted several young families to the town. They are suggesting strategies that could keep the school full, such as district-wide school choice or assigning some kids from neighboring East Middlebury to Ripton.

How do towns rally after school closures? Here's what the Free Press is doing to find out Show Close and skip Many small rural towns in Vermont face the very real possibility of losing their schools, an institution that often serves as an important social and civic hub for the community. What, then, can communities do to keep residents engaged in the affairs of their towns should the local school close? With funding from the Solutions Journalism Network, the Free Press is taking to the road, in Vermont and across the country, to explore how others are working to keep their sense of community after their losing their schools. Solutions journalism goes beyond reporting on problems and seeks possible paths forward to encourage people to engage and work toward finding a fix. From the Solutions Journalism Network mission statement: Solutions journalism heightens accountability by reporting on where and how people are doing better against a problem — removing excuses and setting a bar for what citizens should expect from institutions or governments. Free Press hits the road in search of solutions This summer, reporter April McCullum is traveling to several communities around the country, small towns that have lost their schools or are fighting to keep them open in search of lessons for Vermont communities facing similar challenges. McCullum's stops include: Piseco, N.Y, an Adirondack community in Hamilton County that still has a school superintendent years after the local elementary school closed. Wolford, North Dakota, a hamlet of less than 40 people in farming country that hoped distance learning was the way forward. Hanston, Kansas, a town where the population has dropped nearly 40 percent since 1990 that turned its school building into a business incubator. Also, reporter Sadie Housberg will travel around Vermont to report on what the issues facing schools look like on the ground. How school closings affect rural towns The local school is where residents come together as they drop off and pick up their kids each day. School plays, concerts, fundraisers and sporting events hold their time-honored places on the town's social calendar. As Emily Hoyler, who has three children at the Ripton Elementary School, told the Free Press, "This is the town green." When the local school closes, a small town often loses an important part of what holds a community together, a key civic focal point that can be difficult to replace. Without the school, there is one less gathering place for the community in a place that may have little more than the volunteer fire department and town hall at its center. Join us in a search for solutions We hope the stories we bring you will spark thoughtful discussions about how small towns can build and maintain civic engagement even if they lose their local schools. The goal is to go beyond describing the problem and present possibilities. We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and in the comment section of the stories. The future of rural schools is a closed, public Facebook group. That means anyone can see what's posted to the group, but you must be a member to comment. To join, we ask you to agree to rules intended to keep the discussions civil and fruitful. We look forward to hearing from you. Aki Soga is insights and engagement editor for the Burlington Free Press. Email him at asoga@freepressmedia.com, or chat with him on Twitter: @asoga Hide

► Towns rallying after school closures: Here's what the Free Press is doing to find out

"I can’t see other families like mine coming to some place like Ripton if there isn’t a school in the community," said Jaime Cammack, who has two children at the elementary school.

Samantha Isenberger, the mother of two Ripton Elementary School students, moved to Ripton from Middlebury based in part on the school.

"If parents have to drive half hour to a school, it’s much harder for parents to be involved," said Isenberger, 41.

Harrington, a 15-year resident of Ripton and the principal of the elementary school where her two children have attended, sympathizes with the community's love for its school. But she believes another configuration could help kids.

Emily Hoyler, a parent of three Ripton Elementary students There's no main street to walk down. There's no place to grab a creemee. There's no park to go play. Quote icon

"I'm not opposed to the idea of looking for other alternatives," Harrington said.

Then there is the broader issue of community connectedness. The school hosts community events, draws volunteers and allows parents to meet each other in the parking lot.

"There's no main street to walk down. There's no place to grab a creemee. There's no park to go play," said Emily Hoyler, 43, a parent of three Ripton Elementary School students. "This is the town green."

Conlon, the School Board chairman, said the town of Hancock, which closed its school about a decade ago, maintains its bonds by holding summer concerts and community meals.

He said it may be time to redefine community.

"Many folks are still defining community by town border lines that were set in the 1700s," Conlon said. "Community can mean much more than that. But ultimately we are looking at the main purpose of a school, which is to provide the best education for children and being financially responsible to all of our taxpayers."

The Addison Central School Board expects to plot a path forward by September, laying out a new stage of detailed cost and savings projections and possibly architectural designs for a new school.

How the child population in Vermont towns has changed over the years

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the following towns lost the greatest number of children, based on a comparison of their under-18 population in 2013-2017 and 2008-2012:

Bennington (785 fewer children, or 23%).

Rutland City (395 fewer children, or 12%).

Milton (385 fewer children, or 14%).

Pittsford (301 fewer children, or 45%).

Randolph (281 fewer children, or 26%).

Lyndon (267 fewer children, or 20%).

The following towns saw the greatest numerical gains in their child population, based on a comparison of their under-18 population in 2013-2017 and 2008-2012:

Hinesburg (302 more children, or 33%).

Royalton (223 more children, or 58%).

Arlington (220 more children, or 71%) .

Barre City (175 more children, or 10%) .

Dorset (165 more children, or 47%).

Hyde Park (152 more children, or 26%) .

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Free Press Staff Writer Sadie Housberg and Clark Merrefield of Journalist's Resource contributed reporting.

Contact April McCullum at 802-660-1863 or amccullum@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @April_McCullum.