Vermont’s 11-member School Redistricting Task Force has bent to its monumental task, which is nothing less than to produce for the Legislature’s consideration up to three new maps that would consolidate the state’s current 118 school districts and 51 supervisory unions. The goal is to create 10 to 25 new districts of between 4,000 and 8,000 students each. All this is to be done by January. Given the time frame, maybe the panel should be named the Herculean-Task Force, or the Mission Impossible Commission.
Act 73, the state’s sweeping new education reform law that created the redistricting task force, gave birth concurrently to the State Aid for School Construction Advisory Board, which is charged with developing the outlines for a long overdue resumption of state school building aid after a lapse of nearly 20 years.
Apparently, these two efforts are intended to proceed on parallel tracks. But readers of a certain age may be reminded of the old Abbott and Costello comedy routine, “Who’s on First?”
That is, how can the redistricting task force intelligently draw new districts without knowing whether, when or how much school building aid will be available and what the revenue source will be? The Agency of Education estimates that Vermont schools, the second oldest in the country, will require a $6 billion infrastructure investment over the next two decades.
Not to worry, says Gov. Phil Scott. Or at least he’s not worried. He says school construction aid “is going to be very important” once the new districts are drawn, but focusing on it now would be “putting the cart before the horse.”
Which means, we guess, that the redistricting task force is not to take into consideration the conditions of school infrastructure around the state in drawing new lines. Certainly, it already has a steep hill to climb, cart or no cart, horse or no horse. At its recent organizational meeting, state Rep. Edye Graning, who was elected co-chair of the panel, noted that, “This is a two-year job being consolidated into four months. And so we will do the best we can with the time that we have.” State Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, D-Norwich, also a member of the task force, was similarly skeptical. “It’s pretty clear we are not capable of doing what we already have on our plate,” she said. Holcombe ought to know, having herself once been the state’s secretary of education.
And even if the task force produces viable maps, there’s no guarantee that the Legislature will adopt any of them, especially in an election year when legislators may rightly fear blowback from constituents incensed by projected closing of small schools in larger districts.
While these big questions play out on the statewide stage, other and quieter kinds of education reform are under way. Our colleague Alex Hanson reported recently on a collaborative effort among districts in the southeastern part of the state to share services and expertise that has resulted in both cost savings and improved services in special education and professional development.
This effort is being formalized into a Board of Cooperative Education Services, a structure newly enabled under Vermont law (although not part of Act 73). It covers districts and supervisory unions in Windsor County from Woodstock south, and all of Windham County and compasses about 8,000 students. It may be replicated elsewhere.
It’s certainly too early to write off Act 73 and its projected big new districts. Maybe Vermont’s education system will truly be transformed in the next few years. Whether it is or not, the resumption of state aid for school construction cannot come a moment too soon for districts facing massive construction projects, such as the Woodstock-based Mountain Views Supervisory Union. The cost to replace the aging and deteriorating Woodstock Union High School was estimated at $99 million in March 2024, when voters in the district’s seven towns declined to support a bond to raise that amount. And other districts, such as Hartford, face unknown costs to remediate toxic materials in buildings.
At the same time, the state should encourage reform such as Hanson reported on that arises organically at the local and regional level involving teachers and administrators who are on the front lines every day and who deeply understand the process and duty of educating youngsters. That shouldn’t get lost in the big picture of wholesale reorganization, and it might prove just as effective.