Missing the mark on education reform

If and when the governor and Legislature agree on something they call “transformational educational reform,” it’s unlikely to be what most people expected or wanted. Vermonters won’t see the property tax relief they were hoping for because changes to the funding system will be a few years off. Instead, the first signs of reform will be reorganization of their school districts, which they didn’t ask for. On top of that, democratic decision-making on school budgets will be a thing of the past.

People may be wondering whatever happened to the Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont, the body created after local voters saw a big jump in school budgets and school taxes last summer. The commission was given 18 months to study Vermont’s education system and get public input on how to improve education for their kids and make it more “efficient and sustainable.”

After the 2024 elections, however, the commission was pushed aside before it could finish its work or hear from Vermonters. Eleven months before their time was up, Gov. Phil Scott presented his own education reform plan, which took advantage of voters’ frustration to push for his priorities of the past decade: school funding cuts, widespread, top-down consolidation, and the sidelining of local voters in decision-making. Scott also threw in an expansion of vouchers—public money for private schools—and the elimination of income sensitivity by leaning into property taxes.

Despite their early criticism of the governor’s proposal to consolidate Vermont’s 119 school districts into five mega-districts, the Legislature appears ready to give the governor most of what he asked for—especially control of education funding. They are supporting a foundation funding system, which would have the Agency of Education and the Legislature—not local voters—determine how much districts should spend on each student. They want more school consolidation, though not as much as the governor. And like him, they want to return to school taxes for resident homeowners based on the value of their property rather than household income, which is the better measure of ability to pay. In essence, policymakers seem set on protecting the highest-income taxpayers from paying the same share of their income in school taxes as everyone else.

Because the commission was disempowered, the current reform plans were cobbled together without analyses of the failures of recent attempts to reduce spending and improve student outcomes. We’re still waiting for an Agency of Education report on what was accomplished by Act 46, the last major consolidation effort, which many believe saved no money. Nevertheless, Montpelier is counting on large districts and school closures to shrink the cost of education, even while the cost of health insurance balloons and kids’ mental health needs grow. The current version of the bill would create a task force to design large consolidated school districts by the end of 2025.

Switching to a foundation funding system will take a few years, but we’re already getting a glimpse of future education spending battles. We’re told that the foundation amount provided to all students will be “evidence-based,” the result of careful analyses to determine the cost of an adequate education for all kids. We know the governor will have one number and the Legislature will have another. Both sides say they want to spend less on education going forward. But neither is revealing what their number provides for students or how they’ll rein in costs that are out of schools’ control.

So once foundation is in place, local voters will be left on the sidelines while policymakers negotiate over how much to allocate for education.

Outside of the Statehouse, there has been an outcry against the current education reform efforts—from teachers, parents, kids, administrators, and community members. Inside the building, there is plenty of doubt from lawmakers who admit that they’re uncomfortable with the process. Two weeks ago, senators acknowledged that they had a half-baked bill based on incomplete or unreal data from the administration that pushed a lot of important decisions down the road. Even the chair of the Senate Finance Committee said she had never felt so bad about voting for a bill.

Education reform may still end in a standoff this year. While legislative leadership and the governor agree on a lot of the big changes, many members are appropriately raising the concerns they’re hearing from Vermonters.

So lawmakers should not feel pressure to pass a bill many don’t like. If they do, Vermonters are going to wonder why they’re getting what they didn’t ask for—reorganized school districts and less say in their schools—and not getting what they want and deserve: fairer school taxes, a plan to address the real cost drivers in school budgets, and a clear commitment to delivering the resources all Vermont kids need to succeed.