After finding no evidence that creating new, larger school districts would save money or improve education, Vermont’s Redistricting Task Force at a final meeting on Thursday gave its approval to a report recommending a more incremental approach to reform.
The document, which will undergo small revisions before it is delivered to the legislature on December 1, puts forth three recommendations. First, it calls for the creation of five regional partnerships known as Cooperative Education Service Agencies that would enable school districts and supervisory unions to share services such as special education and transportation as a way to save money and improve quality.
Also called Boards of Cooperative Educational Services, or BOCES, the model has already been rolled out successfully on a small scale in Southeastern Vermont. Eight school districts and supervisory unions there have pooled money and resources to provide professional development to teachers and administrators, saving districts an average of 66 percent on those costs. The collaboration has also enabled them to hire for hard-to-fill special education roles and create a regional program for elementary school students with social-emotional challenges. The task force has suggested that the creation of cooperative education service agencies could yield more immediate cost savings compared to more complicated school-district mergers.
The task force’s plan does call for voluntary mergers of school districts and supervisory unions as a way to improve education quality and cost. Rather than slicing up the state into new districts using “arbitrary size targets,” though, the task force envisions a more data- and community-driven merger process.
Finally, the group suggests a long-term goal of regional high schools that would offer all students in Vermont advanced coursework, world languages, technical education, mental health services and extracurricular activities. That reality is likely many years away since it would require major renovations to existing buildings or the construction of new ones. Without state funding for school construction, which has been on pause since 2007, it would be a hard goal to realize.
The task force’s report notes that the education system’s biggest cost drivers — health care, special education and facilities among them — would not be addressed by creating bigger school districts. The 11-person group, comprised of six legislators and five non-legislators with public-school experience, also heard from more than 5,000 community members through public hearings, written comments and surveys. Their input predominately indicated skepticism about large-scale redistricting.
Vermonters “expressed strong concerns about student wellbeing, loss of local control, transportation burdens, rural equity, and a process perceived as rushed or unclear,” the report’s executive summary states.
Last week, Gov. Phil Scott said publicly that he believed the task force had “failed” at its mission because it did not draw new school district lines, as called for in Act 73. But in its report, the task force refuted the governor’s assertion, writing that it instead advanced the goals of the law “in a way that is realistic, evidence-based and responsive to the voices of Vermont communities.” It also noted that it completed its work in the face of multiple challenges, including a “compressed four-month timeline” and inaccurate and delayed data from the Agency of Education.
At its final meeting, task force members reflected on their process, which included eight daylong meetings and four public hearings across the state.
“This task force has been an example of how we need to work together,” said Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (D-Norwich), who served as Vermont’s education secretary from 2014 to 2018. “We need to take our time. We need to do our due diligence. We need to check our assumptions. And we need to find ways to work together from all different corners of the state and all different parties.”
Jay Badams, former superintendent of SAU 70, an interstate school district comprised of Norwich in Vermont and Hanover in New Hampshire, said he’d learned a lot from fellow task force members and the Vermonters he met in different regions of the state.
“This is not just a spreadsheet exercise,” Badams said. “I appreciate that we’re submitting a recommendation to the legislature that points out, ‘Take a deep breath. This is way more complex than we thought, and we need to be really careful with what we do to this system.’”
