Dear Editor,
I write as a father of a child in a rural Vermont school, a taxpayer, a community member, and someone who hopes one day—after enough years of showing up and contributing—to earn the honor of being considered a Vermonter. I am responding to Chaunce Benedict’s recent opinion claiming that the Vermont School Redistricting Task Force “failed” because it did not impose forced statewide school district mergers, and further asserting that consolidation is necessary, financially prudent, and reflective of the will of Vermonters.
With respect, the evidence does not support that conclusion, nor does the characterization of the thousands of Vermonters who participated in the process as merely “organized activism.” That phrase is a dysphemism—substituting a negative label for something legitimate in order to undermine it. What Mr. Benedict calls activism is, in truth, the people: parents, teachers, children, taxpayers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, neighbors, and the surrogate older family members who raise and support Vermont’s children. These are not operatives; they are the citizens who hold the community together.
Act 73 directed the Task Force to study options for governance and cost efficiency, including—but not limited to—consolidation. They fulfilled that mandate by recommending voluntary mergers and regional shared-service partnerships that are already producing measurable cost savings in parts of Vermont. They did so without dismantling small rural schools or stripping towns of democratic agency. Calling that result “failure” misrepresents both the law and the work. What the Task Force delivered is analogous to a merger-of-equals strategy in finance—collaborative integration designed to produce real efficiencies in the areas that actually drive cost: special education, transportation, central administration, facilities, etc. In corporate finance,
it is well-known that hostile takeovers destroy value far more often than they create it. Reckless restructuring may produce dramatic headlines and short-term excitement, but rarely results in stability or financial strength. The same is true in car racing, where the surest path to disaster is a late-brake dive into a crowded corner, and in seamanship, where no competent captain orders flank speed into heavy seas just because a chart suggests a straight line. Disciplined pacing and coordinated decision-making win races and protect ships. That is what the Task Force did: they chose prudence over spectacle.
The belief that forced consolidation reliably reduces costs or improves academic performance is contradicted by research and practice. A national review in 2021 found no conclusive evidence of academic improvement from district mergers. A major Arkansas study documented null or marginal gains. A Danish national study found a 5.9% decline in student performance in the years immediately following reorganization. Meanwhile, mid-sized and large consolidated systems frequently produce larger bureaucracies and higher central administrative costs, offsetting or eliminating anticipated savings. The real-world outcomes show that communities that lose schools see property values fall, families leave, volunteerism collapse, small businesses close, and tax bases shrink—leading not to lower taxes, but higher ones. This is why states including Maine, New York, and Illinois reversed their consolidation initiatives after the promised savings failed to materialize and the harm to local communities proved severe. If we are serious about fiscal responsibility, then real data—not theoretical spreadsheets—must guide us. Economies of scale should never be applied to children.
The current distraction is the deeply flawed foundational formula being advanced, which would centralize control and erode community representation. Governance is not a red herring; it is the core issue. Ronald Reagan once warned that the most dangerous words in the English language are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” And the late David Dellinger reminded us that democracy is built from the ground up, not imposed from the top down. Protecting local control while pursuing efficiency is not obstruction—it is responsible stewardship. The trade-offs are significant, and the foundation formula shifts power away from local voters and toward distant state decision-makers.
A system built on a state-set base per pupil amount, a statewide property tax, and strict caps on supplemental local spending effectively strips towns of their ability to decide what their children need. It replaces community judgment with bureaucratic uniformity and punishes independent thinking. In its design and intent, it resembles the very groupthink and top-down command culture Americans have always rejected. Centralized control imposed from above is not democracy — it is the opposite of what this country stands for. Act 73, as currently advanced, feels less like collaborative reform and more like DFA — Death From Above — a policy airstrike dropped from 10,000 feet with no regard for the people, towns, and children living on the ground beneath it.
If Governor Scott and supporters of forced consolidation remain convinced that the surest way to save money is to slam the throttle and hope the hull holds, then perhaps the most worthwhile next step is to revisit basic accounting and Economics 101. They might discover that reckless acceleration and centralized control are rarely winning strategies—in racing, in seamanship, in finance, or in the stewardship of a public education system that depends on trust, stability, and community partnership. When leadership becomes about speed or spectacle, it ceases to be leadership.
Governor Scott and proponents of Act 73 should step back from the late-brake dive-bomb approach and return to disciplined racecraft, rather than gambling the entire field on a risky maneuver destined to produce smoke and flames on the front page and put every car into the wall. Governor Scott, pump the brakes. This is not Thunder Road. These are our children. It is my son in our public school. And as a fiscal conservative, I understand full well the tax bill that will arrive if we learn too late that what looked efficient in theory was catastrophic in practice. You gave the Task Force its mandate. They delivered. Let them do their jobs. Micromanagement will wreck the race. Let the driver drive.
-Eric C. Pomeroy, Peacham