Voluntary path with State backup

by Sam Douglass

Information for In Committee news reports are sourced from GoldenDomeVt.com and the General Assembly website.

Vermont’s education system is facing yet another large-scale proposal for reform. 

In the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday, Committee Chair Senator Seth Bongartz (D-Bennington) introduced a new plan to revise Vermont’s education system. The main goal of the system, said Bongartz, is to increase governance efficiency and enable a higher quality educational delivery, in a way that moderates the growth rate of state spending on education. 

From conversations with stakeholders across the state, his plan balances the desire for local control with the need to right-size Vermont’s education system and increase system wide efficiencies—from reforming governance to offering a higher quality education. The plan calls for voluntary consolidation and mergers at a pace that local communities can tolerate but includes guardrails for state intervention if progress towards efficiencies aren’t enacted over the three year timeline. 

The governance structure that Bongartz proposed calls for at least a 50% reduction in governance across school districts, supervisory unions, and supervisory districts. In total, it mandates a maximum of 12 supervisory districts statewide and a maximum of 56 school districts to be achieved via consolidation to reach the proposal’s “three-year horizon”. 

Bongartz believes that a softer approach is necessary to maximize buy-in and retain autonomy of local communities. “Providing an opportunity for local communities to make their own merger decisions through a voluntary process will help drive an outcome that maximizes buy [sic] and will result in a map that is most reflective of local and regional considerations. A hard target with a firm deadline and potential risk of involuntary merger will ensure that these conversations happen and will encourage voluntary consolidation”, said Bongartz in his proposal to the committee. He also clarifies that districts which consolidate voluntarily will not be subject to further consolidation by the Agency of Education, unless merger targets are unable to be reached solely through voluntary means. 

Senator Bongartz’s plan faced initial pushback from members of the committee over the structure of district mergers but the majority of the committee appeared willing to continue the conversation. 

As a whole, the public and the legislature appear to be in agreement that reform must occur. For many years, Vermont’s education system has faced strict calls for reform over multiple endemic issues. High cost and underperforming student outcomes has been the rallying cry of reform efforts in 2025 with the passage of Act 73, as Vermont consistently ranks nationally near the top

in terms of per pupil spending for public education and below average in test scores. Critics also allege that its governance structure is complex and misaligned with declining enrollment rates. 

A report published by the Agency of Education on Thursday reflects this bleak reality for our students. In the majority of cases across Grades 3 through 9 from 2022-2025, fewer than 60% of public school students showed proficiency in English and fewer than 50% of students showed proficiency in mathematics across the same grades and time period. The report also indicates that the lower grades in both English and mathematics are faring the worst, with Grade 3 students from 2022-2025 showing less than 50% proficiency in English, and Grades 3-5 showing less than 40% proficiency in mathematics during the same period. 

Despite this, the Agency of Education is optimistic about the direction that mathematics scores are trending. “This pattern suggests that, although overall proficiency rates remain well below performance expectations, students are demonstrating increased average growth, an essential condition for closing achievement gaps and moving toward long term proficiency goals”, stated the report. 

As a whole, from 2024-2025, 51% of Vermont schools received a rating of “Not Meeting” state standards for education quality and progress toward Vermont’s long-term education goals, based on their average performances in English and mathematics. 

The proposal presented in the Senate Education committee comes at a time when its counterpart, the House Committee on Education, is facing challenges itself over how best to structure governance and draw its own maps. The current proposal in the house, presented by House Education Chair Representative Peter Conlon (D-Addison 2) has faced both praise and criticism from advocates and members of the committee.