MONTPELIER — The Vermont Senate has given preliminary approval to a bill that would give nearly all school districts facing forced mergers under Act 46 the option to delay consolidation for a year.
The bill is the upper chamber’s take on House-passed legislation that would give about half of all school districts a one-year extension. But while the House version picked which districts should get leniency, the Senate’s bill asks any districts who want the extra time to create unified school boards.
“The question isn’t really who gets the delay, it’s how they get the delay,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden, said on the floor.
The House’s version divides districts into roughly two camps: those where merger proposals were put before voters at some point, and those where no proposals were ever crafted. Operating under the assumption that districts in which local officials never created merger plans had little foundation upon which to consolidate, the House’s proposal in those instances grants the extra year.
Baruth said the logic behind the House’s plan was “unacceptable” to his committee, because it basically rewarded the least cooperative districts. His proposal — which the Senate green-lit, 26-3, on Tuesday — would instead ask school districts to form merged school boards. Those merged boards would be empowered to delay implementing consolidation for a year.
That means that while a merged board would be seated, component districts and their boards could remain in place, with separate budgets, until July 1, 2020.
The Senate’s version leaves four districts as is: Huntington, Cambridge, Windham and Barnard.
Those districts are the lone holdouts within supervisory unions that have already otherwise unified and satisfied the law. It’s up to the unified districts to hold a vote before July 1 to decide whether to absorb their neighbors. If they don’t, those four districts will get to stay independent.
Baruth’s proposal is strongly opposed by the Vermont Agency of Education and the Vermont School Boards Association, which say there should be no delay at all. But even many local officials asking for delays oppose the idea, preferring a clean extension with no strings attached.
Baruth acknowledged as much, calling his committee’s plan the “perfect, sweet-spot compromise, in that it is annoying to both sides.”
At least one group, however, likes the bill: officials with the Stowe and Elmore-Morristown school districts. The two districts, which are under order from the State Board of Education to merge, have challenged that decision in court. Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, introduced HB 39, which asked for the delay in the first place.
But while Stowe and Elmore-Morristown have resisted merging, they’ve taken a noticeably different tack than the majority of school districts fighting consolidation. Stowe and Elmore-Morristown sued separately from the 33 school boards jointly challenging mergers in court. They also have worked to create a merged board — as well as independent boards and independent budgets — in case the court case doesn’t go their way.
But many districts have thus far resisted seating merged school boards. And the Education Agency is worried school officials could run out of time to get budgets approved before the end of the fiscal year. They even warned districts in a memo that they were willing to “take every action legally available to bring (districts) into compliance.”
Baruth said on the floor that Stowe and Elmore-Morristown had followed a “model” process, and that the intent of his committee’s proposal was “to get everybody to the same place that they will be very soon.”
Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Washington, said her county had one of the most complicated and divided landscapes under the merger law. But she complimented the committee for striking a balance.
“That will not assuage my daughter who’s on the Swanton school board, who’s furious at me for throwing it back in their lap and making them make a painful decision. But I think it’s probably the best we can do,” she said.
The House will now have to decide whether to concur with the Senate or bring the legislation to a conference committee, where representatives from both chambers will attempt to craft a compromise bill.