Substantive progress on education reform continues to elude Vermont lawmakers even as the cost of inaction comes into clearer focus.
House Speaker Jill Krowinski recently asked the Legislature’s fiscal analysts to forecast growth in property taxes over the next three years under the current system.
The analysis relies on “significant assumptions” and “unforecastable variables.” But the Democratic House leader said it charts the spending trajectory that Vermont’s sweeping new education reform law, called Act 73, is designed to bend.
Vermonters could see property tax obligations rise by more than $600 million over the next three years, according to the analysis. Lawmakers would have to come up with $480 million in other revenue in order to keep annual property tax growth to 5%.
Krowinski hopes those numbers will breathe life into the foundering negotiations in Montpelier.
“It is an enormous policy lift, but I am seeing members showing up who are trying to find solutions,” she said.
Act 73 launched a multiyear plan to consolidate Vermont’s 119 school districts into larger governance hubs and ultimately shift control over school spending from local boards to the state. But its critical first phase — mandatory school district mergers — has ignited fierce opposition in communities across Vermont and also within the Legislature that approved the law last year.
Cornwall Rep. Peter Conlon, the Democratic chair of the House Education Committee, unveiled a proposed map last month that would result in about 25 districts, most with between 2,000 and 3,000 students.
The plan has met with skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Conlon’s own committee, many of whom fear that larger districts would erode local autonomy.
“We’ve got to figure out a path forward. Unfortunately the challenge is getting enough votes for any path that we take.”Cornwall Rep. Peter Conlon
Many lawmakers also say they’re dubious that larger districts will deliver the savings that Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have promised.
“It appears that I can’t stand up in front of my communities that I represent and tell them that the work we’re doing is going to improve education opportunities and outcomes … and even bend the cost curve,” said Newfane Rep. Emily Long, a Democrat.
The Vermont Senate, meanwhile, has begun to pursue an alternative reform path that would postpone forced mergers for at least two years. Bennington County Sen. Seth Bongartz, the Democratic chair of the Senate Education Committee, said “reams of testimony” from education officials have convinced him that lawmakers should give districts the opportunity to merge voluntarily.
“We’re really trying to listen to the needs of rural Vermont, and the notion of losing contact with their district is something that really scares people a lot,” Bongartz said. “I think what we’ve heard a lot of is, ‘Let it happen organically.’”
That organic approach, however, is unlikely to win buy-in from the governor, who’s said he’ll hold the state budget hostage if lawmakers don’t deliver a reform package that meets his standards. Scott’s director of policy, Jason Maulucci, said the proposed new school funding system in Act 73 — it’s called a foundation formula — relies on economies of scale that can only be achieved through mandatory mergers.
“There’s nothing that stops districts from voluntarily trying to merge right now, and that’s very rare. They largely haven’t,” Maulucci said.
Even if lawmakers coalesce around a new district map, they’ll still have to address perhaps the most divisive aspect of education reform — the future of school choice. Conlon’s proposal effectively eliminates school choice in the approximately 90 communities that currently have it. Bongartz, whose plan preserves choice entirely, said that proposal is a nonstarter.
The chairs of both education committees will spend the Legislature’s weeklong town meeting break preparing revised plans for their respective committees to consider next week.
With the halfway point of the legislative session nearing, Maulucci said time is now of the essence.
“I think the pressure will pick up coming back from town meeting break, and the rubber will have to start hitting the road,” he said.
In order for those wheels to gain any traction, according to Conlon, individual lawmakers will have to make choices that will be exceedingly unpopular back home.
“Everybody sort of has a block that they can’t get over,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out a path forward. Unfortunately the challenge is getting enough votes for any path that we take.”
