This week Governor Scott gave his budget address for FY2026 and we learned more details about his plan to overall Vermont's education system.

This week we received the broad strokes of Governor Scott's plan to transform Vermont's education system. It is undoubtedly the boldest policy proposal he has ever put forward; doing away with local control and 52 supervisory unions and consolidating our 119 school districts down to 5.

After much teasing, Governor Scott's team introduced a comprehensive education reform that is undoubtedly the boldest policy proposal he has put forward during his career in public service. It would make dramatic changes to the way that Vermont's education system looks and functions.

Vermont taxpayers hard hit by the recent property tax increases and in the line of fire for another increase this year may be alarmed to know Don Tinney, the President of the state teachers’ union, recently said “We’re not spending too much money on education. We’re having a difficult time funding it.”

We are of to the races! The first week of the legislative session was as active as you would expect as a flood of new legislators sought to get up to speed on big issues like education spending, health care costs, and carbon-pricing.

Good evening, I wanted to be sure that the Commission took the recent Education Outcomes & Spending report from Campaign for Vermont into consideration. As well as the original report from 2014 that Tom Pelham and I co-authored.

The Commission on the Future of Public Education has recently begun its legislatively man­dated 18-month lifespan. The commission was established by  Act 183[1] of 2024 in response to wide­spread negative public reaction to the 13.9 percent statewide property tax increase needed to support FY25 public education spending.

Chairman Conlon introduced the concept before the House Education Committee on Tuesday, which was “to put the right people in a room together to talk about the vision for education… the problems that exist and how to address them… local control versus state control… all of the big topics we have heard and heard,” he stated.

The House Education Committee hosted school officials on Thursday to hear their feedback from budget votes last week. The House Ways & Means Committee listened in for added context in their own discussions.

In February 1997, Vermont’s Supreme Court found “the current system for funding public education in Vermont, with its substantial dependence on local property taxes and resultant wide disparities in revenues available to local school districts” is in violation of the Vermont Constitution. In response, in June 1997, the Vermont Legislature and Governor enacted the Equal Educational Opportunity Act—Act 60— a Vermont law intended to achieve a fair balance of educational spending across school districts independent of the degree of prosperity within each district. Act 60 was followed by Acts 68 and 130, which addressed some imbalances caused by Act 60.  Acts 68 and 130, established a system to pool the state's educational budgetary requirements from across jurisdictions and pay for them, in part, with pooled statewide property taxes.