The comprehensive education reform bill that lawmakers passed last June promised a high-quality, equitable education system at a price Vermonters could afford. Act 73 prescribed larger school districts that could operate more flexibly and efficiently, funded by a “foundation formula” that allot s the average student the same base dollar amount rather than leaving spending decisions to local voters. In the weeks before the 2026 legislative session began, leaders of the House and Senate education committees — who hammered out the final details of Act 73 — said they were ready to jump into the work. But three months into the session, the House and Senate proposals circulating in the Statehouse share little common ground — and neither seems likely to appease Gov. Phil Scott, who has demanded that lawmakers make significant progress on ed reform before they adjourn for the year. Sticking points include mandated versus optional school district mergers; whether to form regional cooperatives that would allow districts to pool resources; how to manage school choice in areas that don’t have public schools; and the timeline for implementing these changes. With lawmakers entering the session’s final stretch, it remains an open question whether they can reach an agreement without a protracted standoff — or a gubernatorial veto. House Education chair Rep. Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall) said last week that he’d come to believe mandatory mergers, which the governor favors, were “politically unrealistic” and suggested that the administration might eventually acknowledge that as well. He said he hoped the two chambers could “come together, recognize our shared vision here and work out something in the end that will pass both bodies.” Conlon’s committee, at least, has advanced a version of its bill, H.955. But the measure has already gotten the thumbs-down from the governor, who said it “is not acceptable and would be vetoed in its current form,” according to a spokesperson. The House bill would divide the state into seven cooperative education service agencies, or CESAs. Used in 43 states, the regional entities allow districts to share resources in areas such as special education, administrative services, transportation and professional development, with the goal of increasing quality and saving money. Under the House bill, study committees in each of the seven CESAs would consider voluntary school district mergers. The bill provides suggested school district groupings but ultimately would leave the decision to local regions. Consolidation would be a multiyear process, with voters having a say in November 2028. A new funding formula, meanwhile, would go into effect on July 1, 2030. Days before the education committee voted out the bill, Education Secretary Zoie Saunders testified about her serious concerns with the proposal and reiterated the administration’s desire for mandatory mergers. Using a voluntary process for mergers would make creating larger school districts unlikely, she said, which would “make it hard to achieve quality goals and bend the cost curve.” Saunders also criticized the idea of forming CESAs before new districts, saying that would add “another layer of bureaucracy” and cost to an already complex system. She acknowledged the perceived roadblocks to forming larger districts, including the loss of local control, costs associated with “leveling up” teacher pay and school choice, in which districts pay tuition for students to attend an independent or public school. But she suggested ideas for addressing the hurdles, including creating school advisory councils made up of parents, students and community members, and “attendance zones” within districts to enable students who use public dollars to attend independent schools to continue to do so. “We’re coming here to be in partnership with you,” Saunders said. The committee’s chair, Rep. Conlon, had proposed mandatory mergers earlier in the session, an idea that failed to gain momentum among his peers, especially those in rural districts. “If only it were as simple as all this,” he told the secretary after her presentation. “I appreciate the continued communication. I hope you also appreciate that the world we are trying to maneuver … in is not just policy, it is also politics … It’s a difficult set of rapids to navigate.” The world we are trying to maneuver … in is not just policy, it is also politics.Rep. Peter Conlon Before the vote, Conlon said he believed the bill showed respect for “the different ways we deliver education in Vermont, local voice and an aversion to [state-mandated mergers].” The bill advanced by a 7-4 vote, with all Republicans opposing it. Afterward, the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Beth Quimby (R-Lyndon) wrote in an email that she liked many things about the bill, including the way it would delegate decision-making about consolidation to local communities. But she thought the timeline for mergers and a new funding formula was too long. The bill is now before the House Ways and Means Committee, where it will likely undergo further substantive changes. The Senate, meanwhile, is not as far along. Its proposal, put forward by Education Committee chair Sen. Seth Bongartz (D-Bennington), is more complicated. It would preserve the governance model of supervisory unions and envisions 58 school districts — far more than the governor has proposed. Bongartz’s plan calls for merging 32 existing supervisory unions — entities that provide administrative services such as business operations, grant management, technology and transportation for two or more school districts — into 12 supervisory unions. The 97 school districts within those supervisory unions would also be required to merge voluntarily to form approximately 48 school districts. Each district would still maintain its own school board, allowing it to make independent decisions about school operations, staffing and local budgeting. If districts were not able to come up with a merger proposal within two years, the state would force them to consolidate. The Senate bill, however, would prohibit the state from mandating mergers unless districts have the same operating structure. A district with only K-8 schools, for example, could not be forced to merge with a district that operates a high school. A different consolidation process is laid out for the 20 remaining school districts, primarily located in Chittenden, Addison, Franklin and Washington counties. The State Board of Education would be tasked with making recommendations to the legislature by the end of this year for merging those districts into approximately 10. Bongartz said the districts would be able to give input to the board during the process. Under the Senate proposal, the foundation formula would take effect on July 1, 2029. The bill has not yet made it out of the Senate Education Committee, where some members seemed skeptical about whether the proposal would actually lower education spending. “How can we model this to prove we’ve got some cost efficiencies percolating here? Or this is not worth our effort?” Sen. David Weeks (R-Rutland) asked during a committee meeting last week. “How do we even know we’re going down the right path?” “It would be nice for us to figure out what would the cost savings be, if anything,” Sen. Nader Hashim (D-Windham) added. Bongartz tried to reassure his colleagues by saying a foundation formula, in which each student receives a fixed amount, would inherently lead to cost savings. How do we even know we’re going down the right path?Sen. David Weeks But data modeling by the Agency of Education tells a different story. If Vermont were to consolidate into 58 school districts, as the Senate proposal envisions, the foundation formula’s base amount per student would have to be considerably higher than the approximately $15,000 laid out in Act 73. The governor’s administration has called for fewer districts with around 4,000 to 8,000 students each. That would allow the money to go further, Saunders contends, because there would be less administrative overhead and more latitude in allocating the funds — creating increased opportunities for students, more equitable teacher pay across the state, and new investment in prekindergarten and career and technical education. Critics, though, say the administration hasn’t shown convincing proof that consolidation would actually improve education quality and save money. If legislators are committed to replacing the state’s current education funding formula with a foundation formula, Saunders said in an interview last week, the most responsible way would be to make large-scale governance changes first. She worries the current proposals would implement a foundation formula before the consolidations are completed. That would likely underfund schools, she said, forcing them to make catastrophic budget cuts or consolidate haphazardly to stay afloat. “There are certain camps that have [said], ‘Let’s put forward a foundation formula, and, naturally, it’s going to create enough pain that districts will merge.’ And we don’t feel that that pain is a responsible way to do education transformation,” she said. Saunders also panned the Senate’s idea of preserving supervisory unions; she believes a system made up solely of school districts could better promote equity and be less administratively burdensome. Saunders was scheduled to testify last week before the Senate Education Committee, but Bongartz canceled the visit. He told Seven Days on Monday that he would only invite the agency back to his committee “if they’re offering anything new.” For now, it seems, any real negotiations will have to wait. The original print version of this article was headlined “Reform Schools? | The House, Senate and governor’s plans to overhaul Vermont’s system of education share little common ground” The post Education Reform Efforts Appear Stalled in the Statehouse appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less