Act 73: Time to realize we’ve gone down the wrong path.
Now, let me ask you to think about a time when you’re hunting, mountain biking, driving, or on a hike and you’ve gotten turned around. You somehow got off the trail, took a wrong turn, it starts to get dark, and it hits you: I went the wrong way. When that happens to me, I stop, get my bearings and get back on course. But when it comes to politics, I know it can be hard to admit when you’ve gone down the wrong path and need to turn around.
–Governor Phil Scott Inaugural address January 2025
The Legislature willingly followed the Governor down a dubious path of H.454/Act 73 for fear of being branded with “not doing something” to address the concerns with property taxes. Following a large number of failed school budgets in the spring of 2024 and an election in November of 2024 that resulted in Republicans eliminating the Democratic super majority, Governor Scott had the upper hand. The Governor was able to stick to a simple message that Democrats were responsible for high property taxes and he was going to do something about it. Although the Democrats need to own their lack of attention to issues that matter to middle income and working class Vermonters, Vermont’s economic woes are more complicated and certainly not to blame solely on the public education system in Vermont that must also contend with inflation, upward pressure on wages and the highest health care costs in the country. Nonetheless, we headed down a path of redistricting to a promised destination of property tax relief.
Act 73 is one of several legislative attempts billed to save money and stabilize tax rates over the past ten years. Act 46 was the first shot at promising cost saving, equity and improved learning outcomes through consolidation of governance and closing small schools. With no comprehensive analysis of Act 46, there is no proof the law achieved its goals. At best the results are mixed. It is not likely that the administration, nor legislative leaders, want the answer as it does not advance their narrative. Just like the move to statewide bargaining for educator health care, and Act 173 was going to reduce special education costs with a move to a block grant, these decisions did not “bend the cost curve” as promised.
The call to respond to raising property tax rates has been loud and clear. Now with a projected 11.9% increase for FY27, there is a need for a more direct response to both education spending and tax policy to mitigate the impact on middle class and working Vermonters. Unfortunately, the response to impose substantially larger school districts is not what Vermonters asked for and is not the solution.
Whereas there are reasons and opportunities for some district mergers across Vermont, our school governance units are not outside of norms for other rural states: NH has 107 SAUs, Maine 118 Districts, Massachusetts over 300, Minnesota 331 and Wisconsin 421. Many rural states have small, rural districts with fewer than 2500 students.. Vermont has 52 Supervisory Districts or Supervisory Unions and is considered to have the most rural schools in the country.
The research on state imposed school district consolidation does not demonstrate positive results with regard to the cost savings or improved student outcome promised. In some cases, aggregation results in diseconomies of scale and centralized bureaucracies actually grow. Without evidence to support redistricting, it appears this endeavor is entirely based on wishful assumptions or political spin. Hard for Vermonter’s to accept, given the magnitude of change considered. We are better off devoting incentives and technical assistance to explore mergers on a case by case basis. Even the Joint Fiscal office initial analysis of Act 73 concludes 13 times in their July report, “because any fiscal impact would depend on future behavior and decisions, JFO cannot estimate the potential costs or savings…” There is no modeling that demonstrates substantial savings while we know there will be substantial transition costs.
Larger supervisory districts, with voting wards, are intended to hasten the closure of small schools. Legislative leaders keep saying “nothing in Act 73 is about closing small schools.” However, it creates the conditions to close more schools. In addition, much of Act 73 is to centralize authority into bigger administrative units and concentrate more authority at the state level with a foundation funding formula that decides what school districts receive for funding. Mega districts and a loss of voting on school budgets, will further disconnect the public, ultimately diminishing support for public schools. Move fast and break things might work in Silicon Valley, but it is not going to work with school governance in Vermont.
Thankfully, the Redisctricting Task Force established under Act 73 did their homework, listened to Vermonters and came to the conclusion that forced mergers in the scale suggested in Act 73 are not cost effective, not practical in our context and not the wish of Vermonters. They recognized the law was a political solution. The Task Force came to realize redistricting was not founded on research, comprehensive data or complete financial modeling.
The Redistricting Task Force had the sense to know we were headed down the wrong path and recommended a course correction with voluntary mergers and development of Cooperative Regional Education Services for supervisory unions and districts to achieve scale and cost savings without losing local governance. The pressure to demonstrate a political solution resulted in poorly crafted public policy with Act 73. We will create an unreasonable level of disruption in our attempts to implement a misconceived redistricting process that will detract central offices and schools from the important work of improving learning outcomes for our students.
It is time to abandon the flawed path of redistricting and focus on property tax relief. This comes with a stark reality that we will have downward pressure for cost containment through measures such as excess spending thresholds. While it is justified that we look at tightening our belts with declining enrollments, we must also consider tax policy that shifts more of a burden on second home owners and those who have benefited most under the Trump tax cuts. Closing small schools, diminished programs and services and reducing staff will unfortunately occur given our challenging context. However, we cannot rely on cutting our way out of this situation when there is still a need to make strategic investments in areas such as community schools, student mental health, teacher workforce development and facilities. It will be a rough road ahead.
