By Michael Bielawski

The new highly anticipated education reform bill H. 955 is now at the governor’s desk to be signed or vetoed. On Friday the bill passed out of the House chamber via a 125-10 affirmative vote.

Highlights include a foundation funding formula that targets reducing the cost per student by about half the current price. One thing this bill does not do is force the consolidation of school districts. If the bill becomes law, it would take two years to begin implementation.

Read the 149-page text as passed out of the House chamber. The formal sponsor is listed as the House Committee on Education.

One lawmaker from the Senate Education Committee is skeptical that this bill sufficiently addresses Vermont’s needs.

“We keep kicking the can down the road,” said Sen. Terry Williams, R-Rutland, who has spent the past two years on the Senate Education Committee. He met with VDC on Wednesday for an interview at the Statehouse.

No to forcing mergers

Efforts to reform education policy began last year with Act 73.

“The real issue with Act 73 was the loss of local control,” Williams said. “Vermonters like local control, they are paying for the education. The other issue was the ability to tuition students to other schools. I favored that as well as not mandating mergers.”

The lack of forced consolidation had been a sticking point for the governor to pass the bill. More recently he’s relented that standard in exchange for accelerated timelines for voluntary mergers and the new funding formula.

There are currently 52 supervisory unions and 119 districts, while the state is expected to lose yet another 1,000 students this year. That would bring the state’s student count to around 82,000. Williams said this all makes Vermont’s education system “administration-heavy”.

The initial plan from Act 73 was to create five statewide districts. However, the notion of forced consolidation was a tough sell for lawmakers.

“You get to the point of diminishing returns, you have to cut someplace,” Williams said. “There are some high schools that are graduating 19 or 20 students. And the issue was nobody in this committee that I know of had a flavor for forcing another merger like [2015’s] Act 46.”

The bill does require the formation of study committees to look at potential consolidation of governance and services. Whether schools will choose to consolidate remains to be seen. Williams said that last year there was a law passed to encourage the merging of services such as special education and bussing, but only one school supervisory union in Windham County chose to do so.

Foundation funding

One big change the bill will implement is the transition to foundation funding. This means the state chooses the amount to be paid per student and thus allocates education funds to each school based on that number. This contrasts with the current system, which is the schools create their budget locally and then asks the state for the money.

Each student is expected to get about $13,000 in state funds for their public education, the number will vary depending on special needs or situations for each student. 

When asked how education spending kept rising despite losing students, Williams said the state got too comfortable with federal aid.

“Well COVID, we got an infusion of federal funding into the education system,” he said. “We got used to the spending and having that money even though we really didn’t have a plan on how to deal with it. And now we have to curb our appetite for the spending.”

Williams would have liked to see more focus on technical fields such as training to be electricians and plumbers.

“The five districts that were the original plan, my understanding when the bill first came out was that it was going to be grounded in CTE (Career and Technical Education) which my understanding is the governor supports and so do I,” he said. “…We need more technically proficient people to go into the workforce from Vermont.”

Pre-K funding, school construction funding, and more

The 149-page bill includes several other initiatives, including how to fund Vermont’s aging school infrastructure and how to fund an overall expansion including pre-kindergarten classes.

On pre-kindergarten education, the bill states, “It is the intent of the General Assembly to, in the 2027 legislative session, establish a funding structure for prekindergarten Education.”

On the status of Vermont’s education infrastructure, the bill states, “Much of Vermont’s school facilities portfolio is at or near the end of its useful life and will require substantial investment to address deferred maintenance and other necessary updates.”

On whether the bill potentially gets vetoed by the governor, Williams said, “It’s possible, yes.”

Michael Bielawski is a freelance writer who has covered Vermont politics for about 12 years