The little town of Benson, Vermont, set a national record by voting down its proposed school budget 12 times. This paper reviews the facts leading up to the situation, providing the Benson residents' point of view, which was that they did not regard the system as their own and they felt that taxpayers' money was being wasted by the system. (SM)

This paper presents a case study of a rural community exhibiting a dramatic turnaround in community support for a new school bond issue. Demographic change was partly responsible for the change in community attitudes, with two waves of immigration altering the long-term conservative orientation of this community. After a series of failed…