If a forum at Hartford High School clarified anything about Vermont’s ongoing education reform debate it’s that agreement about what reform should consist of remains far off.
Monday evening’s event, moderated and organized by state Sen. Joe Major, D-Hartford, brought together state lawmakers, school superintendents and Vermont Education Secretary Zoie Saunders, who participated via Zoom from a conference in Washington, D.C.
While Saunders told the 75 or so attendees about a statewide consensus that the education system needs sweeping change, such consensus was not in evidence.
“I don’t think the transformation is going to do what people think it’s going to do,” Christine Bourne, superintendent of Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union, said.
For the past two years, Vermont lawmakers have been debating ways to restructure the state’s system of public education, under pressure from Republican Gov. Phil Scott, who initially proposed doing away with Vermont’s 119 school districts and 52 supervisory unions and supervisory districts and replacing them with five much larger districts that would have the power to close schools.
Last year, lawmakers passed Act 73, which charged a task force with drawing three possible new maps to present to the Legislature for consideration this term. The task force instead recommended that school districts share services across district lines as a way to improve outcomes and save money and urged the state to encourage voluntary mergers that would create larger high schools.
Scott and legislative leaders vowed to press on with a sweeping consolidation plan paired with a foundation formula that would replace the current funding scheme, which produces equal funding effort across districts, but not equal funding outcomes and is widely considered too complicated.
There are two competing reform proposals in the Statehouse, one from the House Education Committee and one from the Senate Education Committee that seem unlikely to be reconciled.
In the meantime, a funding bill, S. 220, is intended to curb spending by lowering the excess spending threshold from its current 118% of state average per pupil spending to 112%. Every dollar above that level of spending would result in an additional dollar of tax penalty.
The bill also would exclude bond repayment from the per pupil spending calculation, which would enable the Woodstock-based Mountain Views School District to build a new middle and high school approved by voters earlier this month. District officials made the project contingent upon passage of the exclusion.
The spending limits in the bill would serve as “a bridge to get to a foundation formula,” Saunders said.
“I just really disagree,” state Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, D-Norwich, said. The state has been putting its schools “through the wringer,” and S. 220 would heavily penalize districts with high populations of students in poverty.
For example, the Bradford-based Oxbow Unified district, where 60% of students live in poverty, would face an excess spending penalty of nearly $550,000, according to an analysis from Holcombe, a former Vermont education secretary. In Hartland, that figure would be $1.5 million, and in Hartford, $1.3 million.
Small, wealthy districts such as Stratton and Winhall, in southern Vermont, would see no penalty. Neither would Norwich, which is exempted from the excess spending limit because it’s part of an interstate district with Hanover.
The state is creating constant policy and funding uncertainty, Holcombe said.
It also hasn’t implemented Act 173, a 2018 law intended to transform the delivery of special education, in the hope of making it both more effective and less costly. Dan French, who served as education secretary after Holcombe, fired the deputy secretary who was supposed to lead implementation of the law, Holcombe said. French stepped down in April 2023.
“We have an implementation problem in this state,” she said. “I think we need to be focused on sensible policies.”
Other attendees said Vermont has taken its eye off the ball and forgotten to focus on classroom teaching.
“I feel like we’ve lost our way instead of focusing on where the magic happens,” in the relationship between teacher and student, Tim Fariel, a former Hartford School Board member, told the assembled officials. The state is spending too much for insufficient outcomes.
“In my humble opinion, Act 60 has failed,” Fariel added.
Act 60 is the 1997 law that equalized property taxes across the state.
“We thought we would take Stowe and Windsor and give kids equal opportunities,” he said. “It’s a myth.”
Vermont’s state education agency used to offer school districts sophisticated and timely technical assistance and professional development, making the state a leader in teaching and learning.
“I remember as a classroom teacher being able to call the agency and speak to a specialist in my area of education and receive guidance in how to be a better teacher,” state Rep. Kevin Christie, D-Hartford, said.
That’s no longer the case, both Holcombe and Sherry Sousa, superintendent of Mountain Views Supervisory Union, said. School officials in southeastern Vermont have created a board of cooperative education services, or BOCES, as a way to obtain some of the services the state used to provide at a lower cost than a single district can get on its own, Sousa said.
And Holcombe noted that the state cut back its education staffing in the Great Recession of 2008.
“Teaching doesn’t get better if you don’t focus on improving teaching and learning,” Holcombe said. “We were nationally known for our professional development.”
Creating larger districts will make it easier to provide more effective and less restrictive special education programs and better professional development at a lower cost, Saunders said.
The list of concerns about education is long, and attendees of the forum brought up the state’s testing of schools for PCBs, which doesn’t include any funding for remediation and the effect of the high cost of health care on school spending.
The shifting of mental health costs from the state and local agencies onto school districts, along with the explosion in the need for mental health services has driven huge cost increases, Sousa said.
“Those designated agencies have had significant cuts,” said Sousa, who started as a special education teacher in Vermont in 1994. “The need doesn’t go away.”
“Vermont schools spend about $2,000 per child more” than other states to cover mental health costs, Holcombe said. “Schools are the safety net of last resort.”