The Vermont House of Representatives narrowly rejected a plan on Wednesday to give a one-year extension to all school districts facing forced mergers under Act 46.
But House lawmakers, who voted 69-74 against a blanket delay, will take up another proposal Thursday giving certain districts extra time.
Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, who sponsored the legislation asking for a simple one-year delay, said that while she would have preferred another outcome, she was glad at least the partial delay proposal looks likely to pass.
“It was close. It was very close. We were almost there. But we’re going to have something that we can use as a vehicle to continue to pursue this,” she said.
A tripartisan coalition of lawmakers — hailing mostly from communities facing forced mergers — have been asking their colleagues to postpone the July 1 deadline in the law by one year. They argue the extra time will give the courts enough time to weigh in on the merits of three lawsuits filed against the state challenging the mergers, but also allow districts that weren’t expecting to be consolidated enough time to do so thoughtfully.
After weeks of testimony, the House Education committee declined to endorse Scheuermann’s proposal. But they put forward their own, which would give certain districts a one-year extension and require others to abide by the original deadline.
The committee’s version of the bill would split districts in to roughly two camps: those where merger proposals were put before voters at some point, and those where no proposals were ever crafted at all. Operating under the assumption that districts in which officials never put together merger plans had little foundation upon which to consolidate, the committee’s proposal grants the extra year.
Among the districts that will get the extension are Elmore-Morristown and Stowe, where local officials felt blind-sighted by the State Board of Education’s decision to consolidate the districts despite the Secretary of Education’s recommendation not to.
Barre City and Barre Town, on the other hand, where local officials have put merger vote after merger vote before the electorate, would still be required to come together by July 1. Barre superintendent John Pandolfo told legislators in the House Education committee he and his boards badly wanted to move on from the turmoil of Act 46, and that allowing for a delay would paralyze momentum forward.
“The school merger process and discussion and landscape out there … is complex, and needs a complex solution,” said Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, who sponsored the committee amendment.
Lawmakers debated Scheuermann’s proposal for nearly three hours before voting it down. Many said that, while they supported consolidation, the law didn’t allow much of a runway for districts to prepare for mergers once ordered to by the state.
Rep. Chip Conquest, D-Wells River, argued that the timelines outlined in Act 46 simply didn’t give local districts enough time to do difficult work in the end-stage of the law.
“I think we got a lot of things right in Act 46. I think we ought to, as a legislative body, admit that we got that part of it wrong,” he said.
But still others, like Rep. Johannah Donovan, D-Burlington, pointed to major reform efforts underway in Vermont’s schools in such arenas as special education and pre-kindergarten. These are heavy lifts, she argued, and will require local officials to have the bandwidth to implement them.
“This is the business of the future,” she said. “And Act 46 must be completed so that we can move on.”
The House will reconvene at 1 p .m. on Thursday. If the committee’s proposal gets a majority vote, it will next head to the Senate.