By Paul Bean

A draft released by the Vermont School Redistricting Task Force November 10 recommends a 10-year plan that creates a new layer of educational bureaucracy called Cooperative Education Service Areas and proposes incentivizing voluntary school mergers, and the development of regional comprehensive high schools.

The task force was created by Act 73 of the 2025 Legislature to envision redistricting to reduce costs and improve educational outcomes. 

Enrollment in Vermont public schools has plummeted by hundreds of students annually, leaving behind under-filled classrooms, aging buildings with excess capacity.

According to data within the draft, high schools now operate at 65-91% of their capacity from two decades ago, while the state spends about $2,000 more per student on support services than neighboring states like New Hampshire or Massachusetts. 

One of the broader concerns outlined in the document was the prospect of school choice expansions through vouchers or unchecked tuition payments to private institutions. The document says that in some communities, private school choice threatens public education, creating “public school deserts” in the very places that need it most. The draft says that low-income families, English learners, and students with disabilities, who make up a disproportionate share of public school rosters, stand to lose the most.

“In rural areas, if we don’t think about how we fund schools, as opposed to how we fund students, we will create public school deserts,” says the draft on page 11. “In some regions, a small handful of students with the personal capital to leave, or who choose online college instead of high school, is enough to collapse local opportunity for the students who remain behind and don’t have the resources to access other opportunities. An alternative approach is to leverage regional cooperative services areas (CESAs) and more strategic use of subsidies.”

“We face hard choices,” the document continues. “Some people in Vermont are going hungry and going without health care. Others are taking vouchers away from the academies and public schools to fund taxpayer funded ski schools that require parents to ‘top off’ the tuition…”

The plan attempts to overcome the challenges created by past reforms like Act 46, which mandated large scale mergers with mixed results, high transition costs, and little proof of long-term savings. The draft also outlines the creation of Cooperative Education Service Areas (CESAs) as a new hub for shared communities. 

The draft envisions five regional CESAs, aligned with current proposed supervisory union boundaries, where all districts become mandatory members. This would be governed by representative boards with weighted voting and annual reporting to the Agency of Education (AOE), these areas would fund themselves through service fees and would ideally offer a variety of shared expertise. For example, multidisciplinary special education teams, professional development in evidence-based literacy, IT procurement, and even regional hubs for career and technical education (CTE) pathways.

The plan seeks to incentivize voluntary mergers targeting the smallest schools and the development of regional comprehensive high schools to consolidate resources. 

Vermont’s 200+ school districts, many tiny and scattered across vast rural lands, are currently strained on all fronts including special education evaluations, bulk purchasing, limited educational offerings, and social support systems. 

For example, the goal of CESAs would be that a rural elementary school student with emotional disturbances and previously facing a two-hour bus ride to a distant specialist would now – because of the CESAs – have access to better, closer resources. 

The draft also provides local prototypes for mergers, and describes how these mergers will depend on the demographics and make up of the current school district. 

One example shows the merging of Windham, West River, Twin Valley, Readsboro, Stamford, and Halifax. Such a merger would “require participation in a regional shared services entity that provides access on site at Twin Valley and Leland and Gray to 1-2 hands-on career pathways (e.g. health careers, construction), not to supplant the regional CTEs but to ensure foundational career exposure and more opportunity in these isolated regions. This same collaboration could support expansion of CTE opportunities in Arlington as well, to address the CTE gap in that region.”

The draft explains that not every district needs a full overhaul, but focuses on Vermont’s 73 smallest districts, those under 500 average daily members, with over 60% relying on tuition payments. 

These districts are often rural and tuition-dependent. These districts bear the brunt of fixed expenses like transportation and staffing. For example, Lincoln residents pay $220,000 in annual for just 12 students, inflating costs from $11,228 to $13,391 per pupil.

The task force’s solution is strategic, voluntary mergers, driven by local prototypes rather than top-down mandates. Focus on administrative consolidation in HR, finance, governance, while keeping beloved local schools intact, guided by geography (no K-8 commutes over 40 minutes, high school trips under 60-65).

It should be noted that this is a developing story and that this document is a draft and not a final form of policy changes. These are proposed ideas and potential solutions.