WOODSTOCK — The Mountain Views Supervisory Union is rejecting advice from Vermont’s education secretary to only hire a one-year interim superintendent amid school redistricting talks. The district, which serves Woodstock and seven nearby towns, is instead offering a two-year contract.
Education Secretary Zoie Saunders has given the same advice to other districts hiring superintendents this year, as Vermont studies school mergers. Mountain Views leaders say a one-year hire would hurt the district and its students, and that state law gives Saunders an advisory role, not the final say.
The Agency of Education says it has no record of a school board going against the secretary’s advice on a superintendent hire.
District leaders say the advice is part of a broader pattern of the state Agency of Education asking districts to do more than the law requires, including more frequent reading tests for young students, at a time when the state is also asking districts to cut costs.
The superintendent search
Superintendent Sherry Sousa plans to retire June 30, 2027, after seven years leading the district, which serves Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Pittsfield, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading and Woodstock.
When the board told the state it planned to hire, Saunders replied in an Aug. 10 letter that she would approve a one-year interim superintendent “during this period of education transformation,” and asked the board to weigh “planning for potential mergers.”
The board chose a two-year contract instead, board chair Keri Bristow said. The job starts July 1, 2027, and pays $150,000 to $170,000, according to the district’s job posting. Applications are due Oct. 12.
Bristow said the board left the word “interim” out of the posting on purpose because strong candidates with secure jobs are unlikely to apply for a one-year post. “They would have to be quite a risk taker to go for a one-year interim,” she said.
An interim leader would also likely be “very cautious,” she said, in a district she called “very forward-moving.”
“We want that person that can come in and take the reins and continue to push the education forward,” Bristow said.
Sousa said Mountain Views appoints interim administrators only “when we feel like we can’t have a fully vetted process.” She said she told the board a year ago that she would retire so the district would have time for “a thorough, thoughtful process.”
Washington Central Unified Union School District got similar advice and first posted its opening as a one-year job, Bristow said. “They only got two candidates, and they think it was because they had put it in as a one-year position,” she said.
The Agency of Education said its advice is meant to help districts recruit “candidates who are prepared to lead during a time of broader transformation.”
Bristow said the board does not expect legal action over its decision. She said the agency’s legal counsel wrote in a letter to Addison Northwest School District, which got the same advice, that districts that don’t follow it won’t be sued. “If you do go forward and you don’t follow the advice, there will be no litigation,” Bristow said, describing the letter Addison Northwest shared with her.
State law says a supervisory union board may hire a superintendent “with the advice of the Secretary,” according to 16 V.S.A. § 241. “It doesn’t say consent in the statute. It says advice,” Bristow said.
Agency of Education spokesperson Lindsey Hedges said the agency has given the same guidance to every school board seeking to fill a superintendent vacancy since Act 170 passed, including Washington Central and Addison Northwest.
A board that disregards the secretary’s advice “will have to assume the risk and justify that decision to local voters,” she wrote. She pointed to precedent: after Act 46, the 2015 law that pushed districts to merge, then-Secretary Rebecca Holcombe recommended: “limited, time-bound contracts that can be extended one year at a time.”
Why the state wants short contracts
Vermont’s education overhaul followed an average 14% jump in property taxes in 2024, driven by education spending, the Valley News reported in January. Act 73, passed in 2025, set a path toward larger school districts, a statewide funding formula and a single statewide education tax rate, with the goal of “boosting educational outcomes while bending the cost curve,” according to the Agency of Education.
This year’s follow-up law, Act 170, dropped plans for the state to draw new district maps. Instead, every district must join a regional merger study committee, though voters have the final say. Committees report by Sept. 1, 2027; voters decide March 7, 2028; and any new districts would take effect July 1, 2029, according to the agency.
Districts are also under pressure to cut costs. Under Act 169, the per-pupil spending level at which a district’s tax rate climbs faster drops from 118% of the state average to 115.5% next fiscal year and keeps falling through 2032.
“At a time when Vermont is contemplating larger, more inclusive districts, hiring superintendents on multi-year contracts is simply not a practical decision — for local communities or for the state,” Saunders said in an emailed statement. “If a school board chooses not to follow my recommendation, I encourage them to be transparent with their community about the financial risk.”
The agency said a newly formed district takes on the contracts of the districts that form it, and “should not be put into the position of being obligated to pay out one or more years of superintendent salary upon separation.” Mountain View’s two-year contract would end June 30, 2029, the day before any new district would take effect.
Mountain Views is in a merger study group with the Hartford School District, the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union and Pittsfield, Bristow said. The group holds its first meeting next week. Saunders said an interim appointment would let those districts explore “how an interim superintendent might support multiple districts.”
Bristow said combining services does not have to mean closing schools. “I believe that change will happen, but it’s going to take a while, and I don’t see it being done in two years,” she said.
Reading screening
The state has tied falling test scores to its push to reshape schools. In February, the agency’s annual report card found most Vermont students below grade level, with fewer than half of third graders proficient in English language arts.
Vermont also fell below the national average in reading for the first time on a 2024 national test, according to a May agency news release that listed stronger reading screening as a next step.
Gov. Phil Scott said in a statement that the report “illustrates why education transformation is not optional, it’s essential.” Don Tinney, president of the Vermont-National Education Association, the statewide teachers union, said in a news release that Scott and Saunders were using the report card’s results “to pit schools and communities against one another.”
Act 139, the state’s 2024 early literacy law, requires schools to screen students in kindergarten through third grade “at least annually” and report results once a year, according to 16 V.S.A. § 2907. The agency is now encouraging districts to screen and report three times a year, at the beginning, middle and end.
Hedges said most screening tools are built to be given at those three points, and that Act 139 requires screeners to be given “in accordance with best practices.” Districts that screen once a year are not out of compliance, “since three rounds are not required,” she wrote. The agency aims to make three screenings “a full Agency expectation by the 2027–2028 school year.”
“Literacy is a statewide priority, and improving literacy outcomes requires us to be clear about what we know works and to support schools in putting that evidence into practice,” Saunders said.
Sousa said Mountain Views has the staff to handle the extra work, but “there are districts who are not staffed accordingly.”
Five statewide education groups, including the associations representing superintendents, school boards, principals and teachers, have asked the agency in a memo to name its legal authority for several of the new literacy reporting requests.
Capacity concerns
The agency has raised its own resource concerns. In a March budget memo, it told lawmakers Act 139 “did not include any additional funding resources” but placed “a significant demand on the Agency and districts.”
Lawmakers initially left out its request to keep $700,000 for literacy work, then added the money in the final budget passed in May. In January, it told the House Education Committee it was still filling several leadership roles and five new positions tied to education reform, according to its testimony.
Bristow said the agency is “woefully understaffed.” She said Saunders “has good intentions, but I’m not always sure that there’s been enough looking forward to say what’s the unintended consequences.”
Sousa said the state’s goals pull in two directions. “You want to merge districts. You want to reduce central office. You want to reduce overhead,” she said. “Meanwhile, expectations from the agency of education continue to increase the expectations of central office.”
That uncertainty reaches students, Sousa said. At the district’s Oct. 5 board meeting, its two student members, both seniors, said they were anxious. “They worry about their high school. They worry about where their friends are going to go to school next year,” Sousa said. “They worry about the mergers.”