A counterproposal for 2025 education reform focused on the learnings from Act 46 and recognizing Vermonter’s preference towards local control of schools.

Executive Summary

It is now quite clear to most close observers that Vermont’s education system is unsustainable. School spending has increased 42% since 2014 while our student population has shrunk. This has pushed the state to the second highest cost per student in the country. At the same time student performance has declined.

Governor Scott and Secretary Saunders have proposed a bold plan to change the trajectory of our education system and re-imagine what education in Vermont will look like in the years to come. We appreciate the audacity of the plan they put forward. There are some things that make a lot of sense like the new foundation formula and the increased focus on oversight and accountability. There are also things that miss the mark, like unwieldly regional school districts.

After more than a decade working on education reform in Vermont, we know what is likely to work and what is not. We pointed out many of the pitfalls of Act 46 before the bill even passed the legislature. The current plan repeats some of these mistakes.

Our largest concern with the five-district model is that it eviscerates local control. Vermont’s schools are more than just buildings where we educate students, they serve as de-facto community centers. This is not unique to Vermont, I just read a report last week from MassInc talking about the importance of school-centered neighborhood vitality. If we move the responsibility for a school many miles away, we risk losing the connection to their community.

The tragedy is that we don’t have to. School districts, at their core, really only require a volunteer school board to operate. There are no meaningful cost savings to be had there. The major opportunity is our 52 supervisory unions. Currently they are the impediment to larger economies of scale as most of our overhead has already been moved up to that level. We get into details with our proposal below, but consolidating these structures makes much more sense than taking away local school boards and severing the connection between schools and their communities.

I hope to work with legislators and the administration to Vermont-size our education delivery system and to re-align our current incentive structure to achieve better outcomes for students, more engagement from communities, and stable and predictable costs for taxpayers.

On behalf of Vermonters,