House lawmakers gave final approval Friday to legislation that puts Democrats on a collision course with Republican Gov. Phil Scott over the most controversial aspect of education reform — forced school district mergers.
Scott and Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate were in lockstep on mandatory consolidation heading into the 2026 legislative session. House Speaker Jill Krowinski says it’s since become clear that while voters are desperate for property tax relief, they’re not willing to sacrifice control of their local schools to get it.
“Vermonters like our approach and want to be involved in this process in their communities,” Krowinski said this week.
“I don’t think anybody wants change."Gov. Phil Scott
The standoff over the future of education comes less than a year after Republicans and Democrats united behind a multiyear plan to consolidate Vermont’s 119 school districts, and shift control over school spending from local boards to the state.
The bill approved by the House Friday, which didn’t get a single "yes" vote from Republicans, instead relies on voluntary mergers to streamline governance of public schools.
The legislation still sets Vermont on a path to a “foundation formula,” wherein the Legislature would establish a per-pupil spending amount and send each district a corresponding payment based on its student enrollment.
Cornwall Rep. Peter Conlon, the Democratic chair of the House Education Committee, said the House plan places new checks on education spending but “in a way that respects local voice.”
“I think that we have to be responsive not just to sort of the fiscal needs of the state, but to where Vermonters think we should be and how we should get there,” he said.
The House bill requires districts to engage in merger studies and provides staffing and technical resources to explore their options. It also creates seven new “cooperative educational service areas” that will, Democrats say, allow schools to share services across district lines.
“Mental health and special education costs are going to be a completely different landscape with the CESAs,” said Brattleboro Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, the Democratic chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means. “Doing that cooperatively at a much larger scale is going to make opportunities for kids to get much better services, but also … in a much more affordable way.”
A report from the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office found that potential cost savings related to CESAs are “unclear.”
Scott and many Republicans say elected officials can’t responsibly transition to a foundation formula until districts achieve the scale needed to operate under the new financial constraints.
On the House floor Thursday, Berkshire Rep. Lisa Hango told fellow lawmakers that forced mergers are the only way to guarantee that scale happens.
The House plan, the Republican said, forces small districts with limited resources “to resolve complex structural issues ... and may potentially leave smaller, rural communities stranded.”
New polling that the Vermont-NEA shared with Vermont Public suggests that both lawmakers and the governor are at odds with voters on the issue of education reform. The survey of 400 registered voters, commissioned by the state teachers’ union, found that 67% of Vermonters “strongly oppose” or “somewhat oppose” giving control of school district budgets to Montpelier. Less than a third — 28% — said they “somewhat” or “strongly” support the plan.
The proposal is unpopular among Democrats, Republicans, independents, and both rural and urban voters. Scott this week acknowledged the political headwinds.
“I don’t think anybody wants change in this respect,” he said.
However, he said the results of the 2024 election, when Democrats lost a historic number of seats in the Legislature following a steep increase in property tax bills, proves that voters “want relief.”
“And I don’t know how else to give it to them, other than to create a system that’s much more efficient,” Scott said.
Scott has a plan to force Democrats to capitulate on forced mergers — he says he won’t allow the state budget to go into law until lawmakers send him a mandatory consolidation bill. The education bill still has to make its way through the Senate, but lawmakers in that chamber also favor voluntary mergers.
In the meantime, according to the Vermont-NEA’s poll, Scott and lawmakers are rapidly losing faith among voters on the issue of education. The percentage of registered voters who say they have a “great deal of trust” or “some trust” in the governor on education issues has dipped 14 percentage points over the past year. The Legislature has seen its trust levels on education fall 8 points over the same time period.
