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by Ben Kinsley
Governor Scott says the Act 73 School Redistricting Task Force “failed” because it refused to deliver a mandatory consolidation map that would force Vermont into a handful of mega-districts. Respectfully, I disagree with this assessment.
To assess if the task force failed its mission, we should agree on what that mission was. Was it to reduce the number of school boards? Create more opportunities for students? Or, generate cost savings? Those are three distinct goals. While some may argue that the former was the letter of the law (Act 73 in this case) most will agree that the latter two were the intent of the law. By those measures, the Task Force succeeded in its mission.
After hearing from more than 5,000 Vermonters who overwhelmingly said, “keep our local schools and local boards,” the Task Force chose to protect the community connections that make Vermont schools more than just buildings. Just as importantly, they recognized that the research shows no cost savings from consolidation and instead put forward a plan that actually achieves those goals.
That is not failure. That is leadership.
We at Campaign for Vermont have been making this exact case for over a decade. In 2014 we showed that larger school districts did not produce better outcomes or lower costs. In 2024 we updated the data and found the same thing — plus clear evidence that Supervisory Union size and staffing ratios matter far more than district size.
In March 2025 we released A Pathway to Viable Education Transformation, explicitly recommending replacing our 52 Supervisory Unions with roughly 15 regional Education Service Agencies (ESAs) aligned with Vermont’s Career and Technical centers. This approach would leave local school boards, and their community connections, intact.
The Task Force’s proposal, Cooperative Education Service Areas, looks remarkably like the model we laid out eight months ago. Other states (like New York’s BOCES or Pennsylvania’s Intermediate Units) have proven this shared-services approach delivers real savings in administration, special education, transportation, procurement, and professional development without destroying community identity. Our own analysis showed plausible annual savings in the hundreds of millions by moving to 15 ESAs.
The Governor’s frustration is understandable; there is no doubt that property taxes are crushing Vermonters. Education spending has increased a staggering 47% since 2019. But forcing the entire state into a few giant districts is not the answer. Act 46 already proved that forced mergers produce lawsuits, resentment, and little to no savings. Schools are the beating hearts of our rural towns. Rip that out and the research says you don’t get efficiency; you get resentment.
The Task Force heard that loud and clear. Instead of drawing arbitrary lines on a map, they proposed a framework that encourages districts to share the expensive stuff (administration, special ed, transportation, IT, purchasing, HR) while keeping school leadership close to home. They just handed the legislature a workable path forward: regional cooperative service areas, preserved local boards, voluntary but incentivized mergers where communities want them.
That is not failure. That is the first mature and well-researched education savings proposal Montpelier has seen in decades.
Lawmakers should take the Task Force’s recommendations, flesh them out with the cost-saving details we and others have already modeled, and pass them in 2026. Do that, and we can finally bend the cost curve without breaking the connections between our schools and our communities.
Ben Kinsley has over a decade of public policy experience in Vermont. Working for non-profit organizations, he has shaped public policy in areas such as education, elections, and ethics. He currently serves as the Interim Executive Director for Campaign for Vermont, a non-partisan advocacy group seeking to grow the state’s middle class.
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Categories: Commentary, Education
Consolidation will save money, a lot. And keeping leadership, “close to home” is an absolute joke. School district that perform well are run like businesses with actual expectations and directives for student outcomes. Here in VT they’ve become echo- chambers of self-promotion and celebration. Districts think a “sense of belonging” is more important than learning. Three “FREE” meals a day, schedules to accommodate late sleepers, co teachers, EL, SPED and giant supervisory employee budgets are ridiculously expensive with very little ROI. A recent story about Burlington School suspension gap is a perfect example. The DEI head and his minions (millions in salaries and benefits) claiming to have defeated racism, “see! no more school suspensions disparity”. Ask the teachers there, behaviors are worse, attendance in the toilet all because they simply won’t suspend students of color regardless of the infraction. Lib taxpayers think it’s wonderful but it’s one small look at public school fraud. The list is endless……
“ After hearing from more than 5,000 Vermonters who overwhelmingly said, “keep our local schools and local boards,”
Vermonters who voted for Governor Scott and school consolidation:266,439
Vermonters who voted for the democrat who supports the status quo: 79,217
Nice try Mr Kinsley. The task force failed miserably.
RE: “They just handed the legislature a workable path forward: regional cooperative service areas, ****preserved local boards***, ***voluntary*** but incentivized mergers where communities want them.”
Hmmm: preserved local school boards?
In South Burlington (SB) the School Board (whose Chair has 2 children in the school system..and he is not the only member with children in the school system) just approved (and congratulated themselves) for signing on to a new contact with the teachers association (SBEA) that provides 4.25% salary increases for this year (FY26) and next year (FY27).
National inflation is currently running at 3%, senior citizens will get a cost-of-living increase in 2026 of…wait for it…2.8%. That follows a “massive” COLA this year of 2.5% (compared to last year).
The agreement with the SBEA followed a 3-year contract that provided additional salary dollars to teachers equal to 15.5% over 3 years.
The 4-year 19.75% increase for teachers in the SBSD is about 60% greater than both 4-year inflation and the 4-year social security increase.
What could go wrong with leaving decisions up to local school boards????
EVERYTHING!
There is only one entity in the state of Vermont legally responsible for the financing of public school eduction in Vermont (according to the Brigham decision)…and that is the state of Vermont….. NOT local communities.
Leaving decision making up to local school boards means never-ending economically destructive property taxes due to out-of-control school budgets.
Those budgets finance educational programs that generate learning proficiency outcomes that statewide are inferior to many other states that spend less pupil; often much much less.
So what could go wrong?
The bottom line,so to speak, should be what is best for our children, communities and taxpayers. The report by Campaign for Vermont correctly identifies the way towards savings is reducing the wasteful education beuracracy in having 52 Supervisory Unions, costing roughly 2 million dollars each to roughly 15 based around our regional career and technical centers. The savings for this would be well over 50 million dollars each year.
At the same time we need to recognize that in order to keep our rural communities attracting the young people and families, we need to have rural elementary schools connected with parents and their communities and that do not require busing our youngest for hours. Studies have shown that these are as economic as consolditated schools. Older students have the ability to travel more and also benefit more by having larger peer groups and consolidation of our high schools should be considered.
We also need to make sure that fewer Supervisory Unions do not simply add more Assistant Superintendents by focusing and streamlining functions. This includes adopting many policies statwide than spending administrative in each district adopting pretty much the same policies. It also mean moving towards a statewide teachers and staff contract similar to the statewide State employee contracts. An incredible amount of time, by adminstrators, teachers and staff is currently wasted that could be put into educating our children by negotiating individual contracts in our current structure. It also is a situation in which highly paid NEA negotiators are set up against volunteer school board members. It is a unequal situation that effectively plays one district against another.
Limiting Educational Property taxes to paying only for PreK-12 Education is also another way of addressing the affordability crisis we are now in.
Consolidation never equals savings. Any time you give monopoly power to the government or corporations the consumer will see an increase in cost and a decrease in quality of product. This is a a universal law as fixed as the law of gravity. More than a decade ago while I was serving on a local school board I attended a conference in South Burlington. The topic of the conference was balancing the cost of municipal services while paying for the high cost of public education. A superintendent, now long retired, commented to a small group of us that “Every supervisory union and the VT Agency of Education could float down the Connecticut River into the Atlantic Ocean and sink, the result would be massive cost savings and an increase in academic achievement. He was not wrong.
The best possible outcome for students and taxpayers in Vermont would be to abolish the state Agency of Education, the supervisory unions and replace them with full school choice. Don’t believe me? Even a short study of the history of ACT 60 and ACT 46 and the poor results should change your mind.
No wonder our kids are failing …. The solution to a 500 million plus admin system is to keep it …. Our educators choose to continue with the gaslighting as does the writer of this “opinion” ….. consolidation never equals savings ……??? Yeah let’s keep the 119 CEOs , 119 CFOs etc ect …. Vermont cuts its own throat again ….