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By Guy Page
On Hot Off The Press Wednesday, November 26, we took up a story that goes right to the heart of Vermont’s education system and the property-tax crisis hitting homeowners and renters alike. We had some expert direction and information from Ben Kinsley of the Campaign for Vermont.
Act 73 requires Vermont’s School District Redistricting Task Force to produce proposed maps of new, large “super-school districts”. But, after months of work, the Task Force voted on November 10 not to produce those maps. The seven-member majority at that meeting said forcing massive mergers simply didn’t solve the problem.
Instead, the majority proposed something different: a regional, shared-service model called the Cooperative Education Service Area, or CESA. It’s a structure that supposedly allows districts to share things like special education, transportation, staffing, purchasing, and technology.
One thing became clear during the discussion: the big cost drivers in education—health care, special education, transportation, aging buildings—don’t get cheaper when you create bigger districts.
In other words, the task force said consolidation doesn’t fix the big problem—that our schools cost too much, especially for the poor educational outcomes they deliver.
That brought us to our guest: Ben Kinsley, Campaign for Vermont executive director. His organization reached the same conclusion. Creating super-districts doesn’t touch the spending pressures that are sending property taxes through the roof. Both the Task Force and the Campaign for Vermont said the answer may lie in regional collaboration, voluntary mergers, and shared services—not in creating a handful of giant bureaucracies.
So we asked Ben—and our listeners:
If consolidation doesn’t save money, what will? How do we get out from under the crushing tax burden of the rising costs of health care, special education, transportation, aging buildings?
Ben’s conclusion, based on his review of the experiences of school districts nationwide: sharing administrative costs in the new CESAs would save $300 million.
The tougher nut to crack, he said, is how to cut the in-school staff to student ratio, already the lowest in the nation. He agreed with many other State House observers (myself included) that the current Legislature lacks the will to reduce school spending through staff reductions. And since salaries and benefits, including fast-rising health care, are among the main drivers of Vermont’s school spending, it’s the stomping elephant in the room that they’re just pretending to ignore.
We also reviewed who sits on the Task Force, appointed under Act 73:
- Senator Scott Beck – GOP senate caucus leader. He is affiliated with St. Johnsbury Academy, a private, tuition-receiving school and supporter of the model discarded on November 10.
- Senator Martine Gulick, Chittenden County Democrat, retired high school teacher.
- Senator Wendy Harrison, Windham County Democrat.
- Dr. Jennifer Botzojorns, retired superintendent of the Kingdom East School District.
- Dr. Jay Badams, former superintendent of SAU 70.
- Kim Gleason, former school board member, Representative (REP.)
- Reps. Edye Graning (D-Jericho), Rebecca Holcombe (D), and Beth Quimby (R-Concord).
- Chris Locarno, retired director of finance and facilities for the Central Vermont Supervisory Union.
- David Wolk, former Rutland superintendent, Vermont Commissioner of Education and state senator.
Click to hear the latest episodes:
Hot Off The Press – November 26th, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 25th, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 24th, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 21st, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 20th, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 19th, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 18th, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 17th, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 14th, 2025
Hot Off The Press – November 13th, 2025
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Categories: Hot Off The Press Podcasts
It’s not easy, but it is simple. Cut staff, cut wages, cut benefits by 30% across the board.
Cut the coasters and low producers first.
Vermont schools have the highest paid employees with the lowest outcomes, if you can’t see the problem stating you directly in the face, you are part of the problem.
Time to get your big boy pants on and do what needs to be done, enough is enough.
Headline fixed:
Hot Off The Press podcasts: Wednesday, the plan to reduce school spending plans
Get rid of the NEA ! Why are teachers the only “state” employees allowed to have an outside union ?
Because taking over education is the most important and significant thing a country can do to take over another by subversion. It’s the secret sauce for a colour revolution.
And because of the vast network established, suddenly all across Vermont there are Ukraine flags out stripping American flags, to which nobody was informed, Ukraine being one of the most corrupt countries on planet earth, along with having no idea where or that Ukraine existed prior to VPR and the government school programs.
“The tougher nut to crack, he said, is how to cut the in-school staff to student ratio, already the lowest in the nation. He agreed with many other State House observers (myself included) that the current Legislature lacks the will to reduce school spending through staff reductions. And since salaries and benefits, including fast-rising health care, are among the main drivers of Vermont’s school spending, it’s the stomping elephant in the room that they’re just pretending to ignore. ”
Let’s be 100% clear: The #1 cost driver of school spending IS Vermont’s LOWEST in the nation pupil to school district employee ratio and pupil to teacher ratio. Period. End of story.
People make the argument Vermont is rural so we need the very low ratio.
2- part answer:
#1: I live in well-to-do SB. It ain’t rural (nor is Charlotte, Shelburne, Stowe, etc). Pupil to employee ratio in SB is ~5:1, ~50% Lowe than the national average of 7.45:1.
#2: The statewide pupil to employee ratio is 4.4:1. In spite of that ~70% differential, Vermont student performance on in-state and national standardized exams has not shown improvement over a decade of spending when student numbers were declining and employee numbers were increasing!!!!!
When the rural explanation fails, the “defenders” blame poor performance on cell phones and social media…even though students in other states perform well on standardized exams…and those students also use cell phones and social media.
Healthcare is expensive, yes, but the #1 reason for that is the statewide healthcare policy for school district employees is egregiously gracious resulting in it being MONSTROUSLY expensive….and the massive cost is due primarily to the terms of the policy.
When the statewide contract ends in December of2027 the Legislature must assume responsibility for writing a new contract, as opposed to turning the decision over to one person, which is what the Legislature did for the current contract.
If the Democrat-controlled Legislature cannot draft a policy that shows respect for what most private citizens who pay for school district healthcare policies have, then a statewide campaign will need to be mounted to return to Republicans the Legislative majority.
Full disclosure: I am an independent. Both Republicans and Democrats at local and national levels have adopted policies that are not only not “equitable”, not “merit-based”, but have also created monstrous levels of aggregate federal debt.
I trust neither party so all-too-often my vote is based upon the least worst alternative. A sad state of affairs indeed.
So first off, government is involved, so no it will not decrease costs. You can’t expect the entity that caused the problem fix the problem! They have no incentive to fix it! Second just about every one on that task force is a democrat.
Wake up, Vermont…we are among the culprits. A lot starts with the wasteful expenditures and curricula of our so called ‘education’ system.
A society can only stay stable when it upholds order, accountability, and a shared understanding of right and wrong. But critics argue that the modern liberal model is pushing us in the opposite direction—and the results are impossible to ignore.
Bail reforms that release offenders back onto the streets, prosecutors who treat criminals like victims, and years of soft-on-crime policies have created an atmosphere where lawlessness feels almost protected. At the same time, the border has been left porous for years, with waves of unvetted immigration overwhelming systems and communities. Add to that a sustained political and cultural campaign that treats law enforcement as the enemy, and it’s no wonder morale has cratered while crime surges.
Education? An entire younger generation being taught to sympathize with criminals, distrust authority, and view consequences as cruelty. Schools barely teach ethics, responsibility, or discipline anymore. Instead of building strong citizens, we’re raising people who believe rules are optional and accountability is oppressive.
Put all of this together and you don’t get a compassionate society—you get a fragile, unstable one. A society where chaos grows faster than order, and where leaders seem more interested in ideological experiments than in keeping the country safe.
When a culture stops defending what’s right, it starts protecting what’s dangerous. That’s the real cost of the “liberal society” critics warn about.
You want solutions? Get back to basics!!
https://www.theblaze.com/news/mississippi-miracle-catapults-4th-grade-reading-scores-from-bottom-into-top-10-by-getting-back-to-phonics