Dear House Commerce Committee,

Thank you for taking on Career and Technical Education (CTE) reform this year. This is such an important topic for the future of our state and our workforce. Campaign for Vermont has long supported efforts to put these resources front and center in our education system.

To this end, I wanted to make sure you were aware of the recent policy proposal we released which suggested consolidating Vermont’s 52 Supervisory Unions (SUs) around our 17 CTE Centers. Not only does this better leverage to efficiency of scale that SUs could offer, but it creates a strong tie to the trades and to post-secondary education. Further, and more relevant for you, it solves the funding challenges that CTE has faced by rolling those costs into the SU budget.

A Pathway to Viable Education Reform

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

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Act 46 missed the mark because it focused on school districts. We can gain efficiencies of scale through Supervisory Union (SU) consolidation that were never realized by merging districts. SUs could be a useful tool for gaining efficiencies of scale as many services have already been pushed up to this administrative level. However, in the current system there are roughly 2 districts for every SU - they are not being leveraged property for their potential to achieve scale.

Sincerely,

Ben Kinsley Executive Director Campaign for Vermont