READSBORO, Vt. — Twins Tito and Samantha Pereira would have been the only kindergartners at Readsboro Central School this year.

So after prekindergarten year at the school, their parents pulled them out and home-schooled them. At age 6, they are reading at a first-grade level but they don't have other children to play with.

“Because of our location, we didn’t have a choice,” said their mother, Amber Bouman. “It was Readsboro. That was it.”

Now the educational landscape has changed.

In March, local voters decided to close Readsboro Central School by July 1.

Five schools, including three in Massachusetts — Clarksburg, Rowe and Abbott Memorial in Florida — are vying for Readsboro students.

Two Vermont schools, Stamford Elementary and Twin Valley Elementary in Wilmington, are also looking to pick up students from Readsboro. This week, four of the schools held open houses.

On Thursday Abbott Memorial School Principal Griffin Labbance stepped onto the front porch to greet the Pereira family. The kids shook hands with him and introduced themselves.

Gabriel Abbott Memorial School first grade teacher Lori Spencer speaks to prospective students Samantha and Tito Pereira both 6 years old, during an open house.

The family spent a long time in the first-grade classroom. The twins tried out blocks, told the teacher about their favorite books and used magic markers on a table that doubles as a whiteboard.

With 78 students ranging from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade at Abbott Memorial and two combined-grade classrooms, Labbance hopes he has enough students in the fall to justify a single classroom for each grade.

Students from Readsboro, as well as school choice students from Massachusetts, might help him get there.

Gabriel Abbott Memorial School principal Griffin Labbance speaks to parents Miguel Pereira and Amber Bouman about the elementary school during an open house.

John Franzoni, superintendent of North Berkshire Supervisory Union, oversees all three of the Massachusetts schools interested in recruiting Readsboro students.

“I’ve been involved with conversations with their board for the last couple weeks, because their families obviously need to have a place to go,” he said. “That would increase our revenue coming into the school that we could use to offset the budget.”

Franzoni hopes to finish that agreement by May 1.

Motivating some of the families in Readsboro to look to elementary schools in Franklin and Berkshire counties might be longstanding tuition arrangements with McCann Technical School and Drury High School, both in North Adams, where many Readsboro students attend middle or high school.

Franzoni said Clarksburg may be the most popular of the three because of its reputation.

Tara Barnes, assistant superintendent of student services, attended the open house Tuesday at Clarksburg Elementary School. She said seven or eight families from Readsboro came.

“I did get a sense that there were some that were definitely interested,” she said. “There were a few families that were going to follow up with the principal to do some during-school tours, where they bring their child to see during the school day.”

She also heard families discussing transportation.

While the town of Readsboro will be responsible for tuition, parents would be responsible for transportation if they decide to attend Massachusetts schools. Labbance said there might be a way for a bus to pick up Vermont students from a central location.

Bill Bazyk is superintendent of the Windham Southwest Supervisory Union, which covers rural school districts from Bennington to Brattleboro, including Readsboro and Stamford.

“I don't think our students are going to drive by the Stamford School, which is highly, highly academically achieving, to go to Massachusetts schools that are taking them — as I'm reading in the paper — because they're going through economic woes,” he said.

Bazyk was referring to a sustainability study. Based on declining enrollment and increasing education costs, school districts in northern Berkshire County are poised to hire a consultant to explore regionalization and shared services.

Acknowledging the flow of students from Readsboro to high schools in North Adams, Bazyk said, “That’s a longstanding tradition. This is not.”

Bazyk expects Clarksburg tuition to come in at about $15,000 for Vermonters.

That's three times the amount school districts receive for school choice students.

“It’s extremely profitable for Massachusetts schools to accept Vermont students, having much higher tuition than they would from a Massachusetts student,” Bazyk said.

In fact, Clarksburg doesn’t accept school choice students — and since adopting that stance has seen increased enrollment. It has 210 students in pre-kindergarten through grade 8.

There had been prior referendums on whether to close the school, one as recently as 2023. They failed. But with enrollment of just 37 students and mounting costs to clean up asbestos and lead pipes, along with rising costs for health insurance and special education, residents of Readsboro in March voted 222-36 to close the school. The town has 750 residents.

Robyn Oyer is principal of Readsboro Central School. She is hoping to end the year strong.

The estimated budget to keep the school open was more than $2.2 million, according to The Bennington Banner. To close the school and pay tuition to educate all students will cost $1.9 million.

Readsboro residents hope that closing now and running what’s called a non-operating school district will preserve families' options for education, though there are no guarantees.

Adding pressure to make this decision is Vermont Act 73 of 2025, which provides a framework to drive down education costs across the state through school closures and consolidations of both broad supervisory unions and the smaller districts within them. It will also centralize the way Vermont calculates education costs. The backdrop included both flagging student achievement and spiraling costs for education.

Vermont now has 52 supervisory unions and the goal is to reduce that number to 22, said Sen. Seth Bongartz, D-Manchester, who chairs the Senate’s Education Committee.

On Thursday, along similar lines, the Vermont House voted to set up cooperative educational service areas, to achieve economies of scale. That legislation will now have to go to the Senate.

Readsboro Elementary School is closing. Built in 1962, the building will be used as a community center.

Readsboro isn’t the only Vermont town to decide to shutter its school this year. Schools in Marlborough, Sunderland, Danby, Jamaica and Ripton are also closing.

“It’s obviously retching for the community to be in this position,” Bongartz said. “There's no way around it, but if you're keeping the interests of kids front and center, sometimes it's the right thing to do.”

Robyn Oyer is principal of Readsboro Elementary School.

“I think it’s overwhelming for families to now all of a sudden have all of these choices that they didn’t think they had before,” Oyer said. “This is a small school but it has been an amazing school, one that I am very proud to have led for the last five years, and I really just hope that all of my students and families land themselves someplace that they are happy and successful.”

Readsboro School Committee Chair Cynthia Florence said she wasn’t surprised by the vote but she, too, is concerned about next steps for families.

“I have a hard time thinking about it, because my heart breaks every day,” she said. “I hope that they can find a school that feels like Readsboro.”