It was a busy week keeping tabs on the pre-crossover sprint. Vermont's school performance took center stage in Senate Finance's joint hearing on the annual state report card (based on the ESSA accountability dashboard), where Education Secretary Zoie Saunders revealed the stark underperformance in Vermont's schools: no english grades surpassed 60% proficiency, math rarely topped 50%, science ranged in the low 40s, and over half of schools were "not meeting" expectations or declining. Equity gaps widened dramatically with designations nearly doubling for students with disabilities, low-income kids, and English learners. These results prompted the Agency of Education reorganization and initiatives like READ Vermont (Act 139 literacy), COUNT on Vermont (math), and Act 73 graduation standards aim to reverse trends.

As amended and passed by the legislature, Act 130 updates Vermont’s approach to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in schools by extending the statewide indoor air testing deadline, creating a dedicated School PCB Program Fund to support investigation and remediation, linking PCB evaluation to school construction planning, and requiring a statewide cost estimate and funding plan.

The legislative gears are grinding towards crossover, with committees balancing ambitious reforms against practical fiscal and rural realities. This week the House Education Committee grappled with how to move forward on education reform. The Committee appears deeply divided and was looking for solutions to break a stalemate. It was perfect timing for our testimony on Friday. Our research on the efficiencies of replacing supervisory unions with CTE-based Education Service Agencies, we believe, will help inform the Committee's deliberations, by leveraging regional models to capture administrative savings without top-down mandates or the need to buy out collective bargaining agreements.

I think we all are aware that they are several large funding gaps that need to be filled this year and a lot of issues that need to be addressed like a housing shortage, cost of living, health care, the economy, education crisis (on several levels), etc. We are faced with some touch decisions this year. There is perhaps another issue, a more fundamental one, that looms above them all...

It was another impactful week in the legislature. Lawmakers are still wrapping their arms around an absenteeism issue this week as some superintendents shared successes in cutting chronic absentee rates by engaging directly with students and families. This restorative approach contrasted with what was described as outdated 1960s truancy laws that alienate families, especially low-income ones.

It was a busy week here at Campaign for Vermont. We testified in two different legislative committees this week and interviewed on a popular NEK TV show. Our hard work is paying off, we are getting positive indicators from legislators on multiple fronts!

This week, Vermont's legislative focus was largely on housing, education, and health care. The Senate Economic Development Committee advanced a task force proposal to inventory business resources and tackle gaps in access to capital, evolving from last week's broader housing finance pilot programs toward a comprehensive and inclusive economic ecosystem. The task force would include stakeholders like the Vermont Futures Project, the Vermont Small Business Development Center, and Professionals of Color, signaling an emerging pattern of nonpartisan collaboration to address rural-urban economic divides.

This week in Montpelier, education governance reform took center stage, with Act 73 discussions evolving from high-level overviews last week to concrete proposals on district consolidation, shared services, and regional structures. This signals a shift toward mandatory regionalized service (or consolidation) to address equity and costs, though voluntary options and rural safeguards remain hotly debated. We weighed in early in the week with the letter to the House Education Committee, urging them to challenge assumptions similar to those that derailed Act 46 (the previous consolidation effort). We followed later in the week with testimony in the Senate Finance Committee about our report identifying $300 million in potential savings by consolidating Supervisory Unions (instead of districts) and taking advantage of shared services.

The legislative session is off to a fast-paced start. Maps seem to be a key theme: from the Governor's threat to veto the state budget unless legislators move forward with his mega-district school consolidation plan to the statewide zoning plan set to replace the Act 250 framework all come down to drawing lines on a map. We have been keeping up with all of it in our legislative updates. If you haven't subscribed already, you should!

Dear Members of the House Education Committee, 

I have watched your deliberations regarding Act 73 with interest over the first weeks of the legislative session. The conversations you are having today are startlingly similar to the Act 46 conversations from over a decade ago. Local control versus the need for scale and efficiency. Small schools versus equity and achievement. Etc. These conversations are framed as binary choices: one or the other, this or that. The problem is, the data do not support binary framing.