Tisbury voters have spoken, and the proposal to replace the old and outdated Tisbury School with a modern, even progressive facility, is effectively dead. Following the failed vote last week at the annual town election, it’s all but certain that the town will withdraw from the $46 million plan and in the process give up some $14 million in state reimbursement money.

What is most troubling about the vote is not the legitimate differences of opinion about how tax money should be spent, but the way the school issue has torn apart a community that sorely needs to be working together on constructive solutions to a range of problems, the inadequacy of the elementary school being just one.

Those who are celebrating their success in rejecting a plan that was two years in the making might instead be asking what they can do to help forge a more satisfactory plan, because the Tisbury School is not going to magically repair itself.

At a meeting of the building committee Monday night, critics of the school plan seemed more interested in attacking the motives of the committee than considering what the possible next steps might be. Their mean-spirited tone with a group of citizens who took on a thankless job only serves to disrupt and distract from the important job of finding a way forward.

Sadly, the town selectmen showed no leadership on the school issue, never even voting to take a formal position. Two of the three selectmen stated their individual positions — Tristan Israel was against the new school while Larry Gomez supported it. (Mr. Gomez left office last week and the newly-elected selectman James Rogers is against the school plan.)

The third selectman, Melinda Loberg, has shied from taking a public position despite the fact that she sits on the school building committee as the selectmen’s appointed member. Mrs. Loberg abstained from voting on the town meeting floor, speaking later in vague terms about the need for the school superintendent’s office to begin to explore a regional middle school.

As an elected town leader and member of the school building committee, Mrs. Loberg could have influenced the recommendation that went to voters.

Instead she ducked, depriving voters of an important guidepost going into the town meeting and election.

It’s time for the Tisbury selectmen to pull their act together. With new decisions about the school to be made and a new town hall project on the horizon, the town clearly needs to address priorities for future capital spending.

And leadership is badly needed to wrestle competing interests into policy decisions that can guide the Island’s major port through the stormy decades to come.

As the school building committee, under pressure and under fire from some quarters, attempted to bring some closure Monday to two years of work developing the plan for a new school, the fault lines of the vote were in high relief.

Limited by its geography, Tisbury has the highest property taxes of any Island town, though it still remains low compared to other Massachusetts towns. Many taxpayers, some of them living on fixed incomes, are understandably concerned about the hit to their tax bill from a $32 million school bond that would have taken 20 years to repay.

On the other side, parents and others are equally concerned about the now urgent need to significantly upgrade or replace the 1929 school that has seen too many years of deferred maintenance. They envision a school that will continue to enable excellence in education and serve the town well into the next half century.

The building committee plans to ask its grant partner for a few months to decide whether to seek a revote on the failed school proposal, but without the support of the selectmen the effort seems doomed. Let’s hear now what town leaders could support. No is not a solution.