MONTPELIER — A deal between Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic leadership on the year’s massive education funding and governance reform bill took a big step forward Friday after a week of secret meetings.

Both Democratic and Republican legislative leaders described a compromise that arrived Friday night in the form of an amendment to the closely watched education bill, H.955.

“We have been working around the clock with the governor’s office to find a path forward to get him a bill that he will sign or let become law,” Ashley Moore, chief of staff to the Senate president pro tempore, said Friday morning. “And I feel optimistic about where we are now.”

Lawmakers and Scott have sparred all year about what should be included in the state’s effort to reimagine school district governance and funding. Whether to force school districts to merge became a key sticking point, with Scott saying he would veto a bill that didn’t include forced district consolidation.

As lawmakers, their staff and administration officials began to discuss the deal Friday, it became clear the compromise broadly would not include forced consolidation.

Most people with direct knowledge of the negotiations had declined to discuss details of the plan, which eventually took the form of a roughly 30-page amendment made public late Friday. That amendment was sponsored by three Senate Democrats and the chamber’s minority leader, Sen. Scott Beck, R-Caledonia.

The compromise amendment does not mandate mergers. Instead, it outlines multiple bureaucratic processes for districts to voluntarily merge. The first of those paths involves merger committees of neighboring districts, which would need to meet for the first time by Oct. 15. After those committees make recommendations and submit their ideas to state officials, district residents would vote on mergers in March 2028.

The amendment includes subsequent merger processes that could occur if certain districts don’t combine by spring 2028. The amendment indicates the State Board of Education will make recommendations for what should happen to school districts with fewer than 750 students that don’t voluntarily merge by July 2028. But the language doesn’t prescribe a total number of final districts.

Consolidated school districts would be eligible for preferential school construction aid. The new education funding formula, based on a school district’s student population, would take effect in the 2030 fiscal year.

Scott has repeatedly said this year that lawmakers need to pass an education bill mandating district consolidation. But behind closed doors this week, that stance appears to have softened.

Amanda Wheeler, a spokesperson for the governor, said Friday that the still-in-the-works compromise would facilitate mergers that are “voluntary but with some guardrails.”

What’s important to the governor, Wheeler said, is a more stable property tax trajectory.

“It’s about making sure that going forward, property taxes won’t be rising 40% in five years,” she said.

Asked why Republicans and Scott ultimately decided to back a plan without forced district mergers, Beck described the decision pragmatically.

“I think it’s the end of the biennium and everyone’s trying to find common ground,” he said.

Now, if a majority of lawmakers can get on board with the compromise, the year’s legislative session will come to a swift end, possibly as soon as Tuesday.

Closed-door legislative meetings are not unusual, especially at the end of the session, when dealmaking ramps up. But this year, with key issues such as property tax rates, transportation funding and the state budget linked to the fate of the education reform bill, so much relies on the work of so few power brokers.

Earlier this month, the Senate Finance Committee backed a version of H.955 that largely mirrored a version passed by the House in April. It prioritizes voluntary mergers of the state’s 119 school districts, bucking a key directive to force school district consolidation under last year’s reform package, Act 73. H.955 requires, though, that school districts participate in study groups to facilitate voluntary mergers.

Over the last year and a half, various proposals have emerged to try to merge districts, but time after time, those efforts have faltered.

Democratic lawmakers tasked with advancing such proposals have said it is politically infeasible.

Sen. Seth Bongartz, D-Bennington, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said in a hearing this month that he had “come to think that trying to force” mergers would not go well, and that “what we should try to do is pull people together and get them to think bigger.”

If lawmakers and the governor do strike a deal, the amendment will first publicly appear on the Senate’s calendar.

Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, said on the floor Friday morning that the Senate would take up the amendment Tuesday “if at all possible.”

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