Vermont

Inside Vermont’s Radical Approach to Helping the Formerly Incarcerated Succeed

Published

2 years ago

May 28, 2024

Inside Vermont’s Radical Approach to Helping the Formerly Incarcerated Succeed

It’s a slate-gray October day in Vermont, and Leon—middle-aged, balding, in work boots and a plaid shirt—sits inside a local community justice center, a low white-clapboard building in the back of a storefront. Five other people encircle a round table with him. A bouquet of pink carnations blooms in the center.

Leon has been out of prison for going on three years. But he’s struggling, battling depression as winter closes in. Close family members died while he was locked up. His children don’t speak to him.

“That’s the real price of what I did, not what some guard says or what my parole officer thinks or the time they can give me in jail,” he tells the group.

Leon is surrounded by town volunteers who’ve committed to supporting and keeping an eye on him in his first years out. Called a Circle of Support and Accountability, or CoSA, it’s an approach to keeping those who’ve committed sexual crimes from reoffending that Vermont has built into its reentry system. (At the request of the Vermont Department of Corrections, The Appeal is not using anyone’s real name nor the name of the town in question to protect his identity and that of his victim.)

Leon keeps venting. When he was in prison, he didn’t fight back if he got punched; he was focused on staying out of trouble and getting out of prison. He says that if he goes behind bars again, he’ll fight back.

Barbara stiffens at his tone. She’s the center’s reentry coordinator and is moderating this meeting. “Do you think there’s a risk that you’re going to go back to jail right now?” she asks.

“Always a risk,” Leon replied. “Always.”

“What are the things that have helped lessen that risk?” she asks.

“Daily choices and not ever forgetting,” he says. “Seeing people who are still making really horrible, detrimental choices.”

Leah, a volunteer, says she understands how disappointing it must be to lose the connection with his kids and grandkids, which he’s talked about in past meetings. “How do you keep that disappointment from consuming you?” she asks. “What are you filling your time with?”

Leon starts to tell her about all the stuff he’s bought to fill his time—guitars, snowboards, watches, and more. Talking about new toys is a diversion tactic the group recognizes from past meetings, one he uses to avoid answering tough questions.

“We’re not doing show and tell today,” Barbara interrupts. The group laughs, and Leon starts over. He listens to music, tries to be still and quiet his mind, and focuses on managing his depression, he says.

“You know, anytime you want to ask your team to get together, as long as it’s not just to shoot the shit, they’re here for you,” Barbara says.

“And you’re still welcome to text me anytime,” adds Tina, another volunteer.

“This process really does help,” Leon says at the end of the meeting. “You can only fake it so long, and when you’re faking it, these people are going to know.”

Leon has had no reoffenses or parole violations since he left prison in late 2020, according to state records.

“Not even close,” he adds.

Vermont’s CoSAs are made up of volunteers who meet regularly with those coming out of prison after sentences for serious crimes, meeting typically once a week for a year, though at least half the groups extend beyond a year. They offer encouragement, advice, and watchful eyes, helping the person at the center, or “core member”, with goals they’ve set for moving back into the community offense-free.

Every quarter, an “outer circle”—including their probation officer, substance abuse provider, family members, and friends—gets together to share their perspectives with the impacted person.

The circles model started in Canada in 1994. But in the U.S., only Vermont and Minnesota have built CoSAs into state reentry policies.

The results have been remarkable. Studies show that nationally, the vast majority of those with a past sexual crime don’t reoffend in the first place. But several studies have found that those who go through the circles model have lower rates of any type of reoffense than those who don’t. A 2018 study of Minnesota’s program showed it yielded a benefit of about $41,000 per participant in state costs avoided–in particular cutting the expenses of reimprisoning someone and the costs borne by new victims.

In 2016, University of Vermont sociologist Kathryn Fox reported to the state legislature on a study she and two colleagues did of the state’s CoSA program. Researchers compared 139 people with convictions of any type who went through a circle and 139 who didn’t. Circle participants were half as likely to be reconvicted of some kind of felony within three to four years after release: 18 percent versus 35 percent. (Robin Wilson, a psychologist and collaborator on the study, told The Appeal that the sexual reoffense rates in both groups were so low that the researchers would have needed an even longer follow-up period to get meaningful results.)

CoSA is a radical departure from prevailing laws—public sex-offense registries and related regimes—that force registrants into isolation, unemployment, and homelessness and make them and their families targets of harassment and violence. For her 2023 book From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts, Not Fear, St. Francis College sociology and criminal justice professor Emily Horowitz interviewed dozens of people on registries. They reported being harassed by neighbors, having trouble finding housing and work, being shunned by family, friends, and their communities, and worse.

In South Florida, hundreds of registrants live on the streets because of rules that forbid them from living anywhere near parks, schools, daycares, and more, putting vast swaths of housing off limits. Researchers have repeatedly found these rules do nothing to prevent sexual crimes.

And 25 years of research show that sex offense registries don’t prevent repeat sexual offenses. A 2021 meta-analysis of 18 studies concluded those policies “demonstrate no effect on recidivism.”

Vermont, like other states, is required under federal law to operate a public sex offense registry. But its rules are decidedly less draconian than elsewhere. Unlike in many states, registrants aren’t forced to tell new neighbors about their registry status when they move. And there are no state-level bans on where registrants can live, unlike in the many jurisdictions where such laws force registrants into homelessness.

Vermont CoSA’s advocates are mystified as to why other states ignore its results. In conversations with The Appeal, experts and proponents said interstate community activists may need to launch their own circles to show state leaders what’s possible.

Fox, the sociologist, said some research on those who succeed after prison shows that people stop committing crimes because someone believes in them—a probation officer, a pastor, a CoSA member—and gives them the chance to create an alternative narrative: that they’re a good person who had some twists and turns along the way.

To that end, circles let core members support others in the group.

“Sometimes the core member comes in and says, ‘I came in here wanting to talk about myself today, but I can see that Tina needs CoSA today, so we’re going to focus on that,’” Barbara said.

By contrast, probation and parole tend to take a ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’ approach so they’re “not really the best mechanism for support because they generally are just measuring compliance, sadly,” Fox said.

The biggest challenge for core members might be the state registry. Having their photos and details listed publicly makes getting jobs and housing tough. Plus, the public list makes them targets for harassment and violence. Registrants have to pay $20 to $50 each week to attend mandatory sexual offending treatment groups. If they can’t get a job, they can’t pay. And if they can’t pay, they get sent back to prison.

Circles are also only part of Vermont’s alternative approach to crime.

A shift happened in the early nineties when imprisonment rates were climbing even as crime rates held steady, Derek Miodownik, DOC’s community and restorative justice executive, told The Appeal. The public was telling state leaders it was unhappy with the state spending ever more money on prisons.

After hiring a market research firm to listen to residents, the department funded community restorative justice centers. In addition to CoSAs, those centers house a system of “reparative probation,” which complements traditional probation but functions differently. For nonviolent, minor crimes, the person who offended meets with a volunteer board and negotiates an accord in which they agree to tasks—like a letter of apology to the victim, restitution, and community service—designed to help them see the effects of what they did and repair the harm to the victim.

A study by researchers from three universities concluded that, compared with standard probation, those who went through reparative probation were significantly less likely to commit a new offense of any type.
State legislators wrote restorative justice into state law in 1999, and today the Department of Corrections is administratively located within the state’s Agency of Human Services.

In CoSA parlance, Leon is his group’s “core member.” Most volunteers in his circle have experience inside the justice system: There’s Tina, a court stenographer; Samantha, who worked with adults with disabilities, including inside jails; Kyle, retired from the state’s Department of Corrections; and Leah, a business manager at a nearby university.

Their reasons for getting involved are moral and practical. “I feel like we need more people who are kind and inclusive and want to help everyone have a place in our community,” Leah said. Samantha has a son who was in prison for years. She saw how isolated he was after getting out. Tina said the lesson she took from 40 years working in courts is that a “punitive-based system doesn’t work.” And Kyle saw the need for the program when he worked in corrections: “A lot of guys get out with nothing, and we’re here to fill the gap.”

Circles are akin to a combination of Alcoholics Anonymous and small support groups. Meetings open with an icebreaker that a member brings, like “What was your favorite childhood candy?”

Then there’s a check-in. This often starts with the core member: What’s happened in the last week? What’s been tough? What’s going well? The group may discuss pressing tasks, like a core member’s progress on getting a driver’s license. At the end, they offer closing words for one another. Barbara doesn’t always facilitate, the volunteers or the core member might take a turn.

Sometimes they chuck it all and do something fun, like play a game, have a cookout, or go to an art gallery.

This day’s meeting was a bit different than a standard circle. After Leon left prison, his CoSA group met with him weekly for a few months. But in late 2018, he slipped up, violating his halfway-house rules and landing back in prison for an additional two years. When he was released, the circle took up where they left off, meeting once a week until May 2022. Leon can still ask the group to get together when he needs support, which is why the group convenes today.

Barbara, the coordinator, asks the group to think about Leon’s first circle, which ran for only a few months. How was that experience?

The group agreed Leon was overwhelmed on the outside after four years locked up, but he didn’t want to admit it.

“I don’t want to say [I was] delusional, but I still had such a jail mentality,” Leon said to the group.

In prison, people got jealous if someone had a nice watch. So once he was out, he started buying stuff to fill up his life. Buying expensive things made him feel fine. But he wasn’t.

“I didn’t commit crimes, but I didn’t feel like I was doing that great,” he said.

“You were really like, I’ve got this, and it’s great, and it’s perfect, and you just were drinking from the firehose,” Tina said.

Samantha then chimed in.

“You would get really defensive whenever we asked a question, and that would kind of shut things down,” she said.

Barbara then offered her own expertise.

“For me, there were red flags,” she said. “When that happens and it’s going on for too long, I feel like some bad thing is going to happen.”

Before Leon left prison for a second time, he said he wanted to start meeting with the CoSA group again on release. Barbara wanted to make sure he was serious. So she met with him several times on the inside. She had him write three drafts of a “success plan” in which he mapped out how he’d stay on track. By the third one, she thought he was starting to look inward and ask hard questions.

Re-starting was complicated by the pandemic. The group met on Zoom the first few times, with Leon sometimes disengaged and staring at the ceiling. But of all its programs, the Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC) wanted to keep CoSA face-to-face. Barbara said the DOC quickly built a yurt outside the center for them to meet in.

The volunteers were skeptical when they started the second time.

“We’re dropping the shit, and we’re all going to be here,” Tina remembered telling Leon on a Zoom call. “Cards on the table. I’ll put mine, you put yours, and we’re not going to do show and tell this time around.”

Still, Leon struggled in early meetings. He showed up to one high, and the group confronted him. He admitted he’d been smoking weed, a turning point because he wouldn’t have owned up to it during the first circle, Barbara said. At one of the next meetings, he told the group, “Okay, I’m ready to go. Give me the hard stuff. Let’s ask the hard questions.”

They did. Leon had been convicted of pressuring two people, including an underage teenager, into having sex. In the first round of CoSA meetings, Leon was laying blame elsewhere, complaining about the DOC, the judge, and the prosecutor. When he was locked up, other prisoners—and even guards—had praised his abuse.

The volunteers hammered away at that distortion, asking him to consider the terrible impact of the abuse on both relatives and the pressure he’d put on the woman to participate. One day Leon got it and a light bulb went off.

“I never thought about it that way,” he told the group.
Meanwhile, Barbara helped Leon get an apartment and a construction job—no easy prospect for someone on the sex offense registry. Volunteers serve as ambassadors for core members and help spread the word about what they need. Now, Leon said he is “so happy to pay my rent every month. I loved getting my first electric bill.”

What might make other states pay attention?

The circles model has two goals for core members: no secrets and no more victims.

“If that doesn’t appeal to everybody, I don’t know what does,” Barbara said.

And there’s the money: It costs between $60,000 and $80,000 a year to keep someone locked up in Vermont, she says. Circles lower reoffending, so they cut prison costs, and thus cut taxes.

To spread beyond Vermont and Minnesota, the idea might need to start with grassroots activists. Wilson, the psychologist, helped launch the first CoSA in 1994 in Canada, completed the first research on the model, and co-published a “how-to” guide in August 2022 for communities interested in starting a circles program. He believes a CoSA effort should be community-driven and managed, even if it draws state and federal dollars.

That’s what happened in Fresno, California, and Lowell, Massachusetts.

Fresno’s CoSA program was launched in 2007 by a nonprofit with a grant from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Now run by another nonprofit, the Community Justice Center, it’s served dozens of people re-entering after prison.

Program director Jaime Leyva says since he took the job in 2022, 34 people have participated in a circle. None have reoffended, he says. Sean, a former Fresno CoSA core member, said each of the four volunteers on his CoSA team would call him on different days to check in. “They basically become your circle of real-life friends,” he says. “I went from hanging out with no one to hanging out with healthy individuals. I never thought that would be possible,” he says.

The Massachusetts CoSA project, started in 2014 by the nonprofit THRIVE Communities, has worked with at least 150 people returning to communities from prison. Last year it won a $300,000 grant from a local foundation that it will use to launch 100 additional circles, according to a local report. An award-winning 2023 documentary featuring interviews with several of its graduates now holds screenings around the country.

For her part, Barbara thinks people can start circles on their own as long as they can recruit volunteers and find space to meet.

“I mean, AA works, right?” she said. “Everybody could use a CoSA. I could use one myself.” She added later: “It’s a brilliantly simple process.”

It’s a compelling idea: individuals anywhere might seed an alternative to the existing brutal, expensive, ineffective system of banishment and public humiliation for those coming back to society after a sexual offense. Barbara said the CoSA volunteers at her center are ambassadors for restorative justice and have changed how their community thinks.

For Leon, the circle has become more than just a way to stay out of jail—it’s a permanent support network. If he were slipping, he’d call Barbara.

“I know they’re here,” he said of his circle. “You don’t feel so disconnected from the community. You become a part of the community by interacting with these people.”

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Vermont

Nine Vermont dams were removed in 2025. There are many more to go. – VTDigger

Published

12 hours ago

December 21, 2025

Press Room

Nine Vermont dams were removed in 2025. There are many more to go. – VTDigger

The landscape before and soon after the removal of Newport’s Sleeper Pond Dam in Oct. 2025. Photo courtesy of the Missisquoi River Basin Association

There are at least 140 dams in the Winooski River watershed, according to Michele Braun, executive director of the Friends of the Winooski River. Three of those dams help with flood control. Fifteen provide hydropower. A “handful” contribute to local recreation.

But the rest? They “aren’t doing anything but causing trouble,” Braun said.

“The great majority of those dams serve no purpose and are a public safety hazard, as well as bad for the river health and fish,” she said.

Braun helped lead an effort to remove two dams in Barre City and Barre Town this year, part of a decades-long effort to get rid of derelict or harmful dams along Vermont’s waterways. According to the Vermont Natural Resources Council, local and regional organizations removed nine dams this year, the most in a single year, reconnecting 125 miles of river.

More than 80 dams have been removed since the 1980s, some of which were more than a century old, said Karina Dailey, science and restoration director for the council, who also chairs the Vermont Dam Task Force.

There are plenty more to go. Vermont’s dam safety program and local watershed partners have identified 47 dams that would be good candidates for removal, along with 27 active projects at different stages of preparation for removal and 12 projects that have stalled, according to a task force report.

Dam removals have gained urgency in recent years as Vermont communities have been battered by repeat floods. An increasing body of research shows that some dams can worsen flooding. Five dams failed during flooding in 2023, sustaining heavy damage, according to state investigators.

Removing dams can also benefit the local ecosystem, improve water quality and improve recreational opportunities for swimmers and boaters, according to the task force’s website.

But dam removals can be a long and arduous process. The first challenge, Dailey said, is getting the dam owners on board. Many of the dams pegged for potential removal are privately owned, and the landowners have no obligation to participate in the process.

Braun said that one of the dams her organization removed this year was owned by Trow and Holden Co. Initially, the owners expressed an emotional attachment to the dam, which was built in the 1800s and powered a factory that manufactured tools for the granite industry. Braun won them over by showing how getting rid of the dam would lower the flood elevation behind their building and make the river more predictable in the future.

Dailey said the “silver lining” of the 2023 flood is that landowners are now “connecting the dots between the flood hazard in their yard of owning this dam, and not wanting to be liable for impacting downstream infrastructure or communities.”

She gave the example of a dam failure in Williamstown that caused “quite a lot of damage.”

“The landowner had to do an emergency breach to stabilize the project because we couldn’t remove it fast enough to get all the funding and the permits,” she said. The task force is hoping to get the dam removed sometime next summer.

Dam removals tend to be more complex than other infrastructure projects, requiring specialized construction companies and a variety of permits, Braun said. The state also sets a hard stop: All river projects have to be finished by October.

Although removal projects can benefit the local flora and fauna, they can also cause short-term upheaval to animal habitats and vegetation. Lindsey Wight, executive director of the Missisquoi River Basin Association, said that the crew removing the Sleeper Pond Dam in Newport had to carefully relocate snapping turtles.

“We got to dive into the muck and get a couple of turtles and bring them up Mud Creek a little bit farther to just sort of keep them out of the way,” she said.

Greg Russ, restoration director of the White River Partnership, said the organization had to plan their use of heavy equipment around the local bat roosting season when they removed the Farnham Bros. dam in Tunbridge. The crew also had an archeologist on site throughout the project documenting any details uncovered about the roughly 100-year-old dam for future researchers.

Dailey said she was glad to see so many projects move forward this year despite the chaotic situation at the federal level. The federal government froze funding specifically for dam removal that had already been committed in February, and for a while the task force thought those projects might not happen at all.

Although the funding has since been restored, lining up grants and loans for new projects is an ongoing challenge, Dailey said. At the Army Corps of Engineers, one of the most important Vermont staffers took a federal buyout and hasn’t been replaced, she said. Cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency have left it short-staffed, slowing down approval for a dam removal in Northfield.

“The money supposedly is still there and hasn’t gone away, and the project will still move forward,” Dailey said. “But there’s just not enough staff to review it to keep it moving along.”

She said she expects the Trump administration’s actions will affect funding for years down the line, impacting the possibility of future projects.

In the meantime, the waterways that had dams removed this year will slowly change as they adapt to the new shape of the landscape.

“Really the first five years is where the river is sort of just creating its natural channel, and it meanders a lot,” Dailey said.

“You watch a rain event, and the river just starts moving and meandering more and more,” she said. “And that’s really exciting, because that’s what rivers do, how rivers function.”

Braun noted one immediate benefit of the Trow & Holden dam removal. At the kickoff meeting for the removal, her team spotted a dozen trout swimming right up behind the dam.

“We were all so excited to see them, because soon they would be able to be connected to the rest of the river system,” she said.

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Vermont

Vermont congressional delegation nominates 23 students for military academies

Published

24 hours ago

December 21, 2025

Press Room

Vermont congressional delegation nominates 23 students for military academies

MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont’s congressional delegation nominated 23 students for military academy appointments Saturday, with the applicants speaking to lawmakers about their goals to serve the country.

Senators Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders, along with Representative Becca Balint, met with the nominees at the Statehouse to discuss their motivations for military service.

“You’ve made a decision that life is better when you’re helping others,” Welch said.

Balint told the students that regardless of whether they are accepted, being nominated is significant.

“Whatever happens whether you’re accepted or not being here, today is a really big deal,” Balint said.

Many nominees said they want to be part of something bigger than themselves and protect the ideals the country was built on, according to reporter observations from inside the event.

“That was a very interesting message that came from the young people,” Sanders said.

Welch said the students were motivated by teamwork, service and giving back.

One nominee said the reason that motivated them to serve is wanting to be a doctor.

Francis Robinson, a Merchant Marine applicant, said he wants to be the captain of a ship one day.

“All the books I’ve read since I was a kid have all been sea stories and I just want to be a part of that,” Robinson said.

Grady Gallagher, an Air Force applicant, said he wants to protect the people he loves and replicate the feeling of camaraderie he felt through football.

“I just want to be exceptional,” Gallagher said.

Many families attended the ceremony to support the nominees. Jamie and Sarah Gallagher, Grady’s parents, said they felt proud hearing their son’s answers.

“Seeing that he’s ready to take on the world and really be a leader of this next generation is really awesome,” Jamie Gallagher said.

Beck Welch, an Air Force applicant, called it a special moment.

“This is a very special moment for me and all of us and I think we’ve all worked very hard to be here,” Welch said.

Robinson said the experience was unique and one he will remember forever.

Sanders wished the nominees the best of luck and said Vermont has a long history of dedicated military service.

“I know they’re going to continue that tradition,” Sanders said.

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Vermont

‘On the cusp of something very special.’ In Q&A, Vermont’s education secretary ponders the challenges and opportunities of ed reform. – VTDigger

Published

2 days ago

December 20, 2025

Press Room

‘On the cusp of something very special.’ In Q&A, Vermont’s education secretary ponders the challenges and opportunities of ed reform. – VTDigger

Zoie Saunders, interim secretary of education, speaks during Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly press conference held at the Central Vermont Technical Center in Barre on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Vermont’s Education Secretary Zoie Saunders says the state is “really on the cusp of something very special,” as lawmakers gear up for what will be a critical legislative session in determining the future of public education reform.

In an interview with VTDigger, Saunders acknowledged the difficulties ahead. Act 73, a law passed this year, sets in motion generational change to how local education is governed and funded in Vermont.

A key part of that reform, however, depends on lawmakers agreeing on a plan to consolidate the state’s 119 school districts when the session begins in January. Without an agreed upon plan, the reform envisioned in Act 73 is uncertain.

Saunders urged lawmakers and residents of the state to “stay the course.”

“There’s no doubt that our lack of scale and our challenges with funding are creating obstacles for us to deliver on our statutory responsibility to our students of providing them a world class education,” she said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VTDigger: I’d like to start by just asking where we go from here. You and the governor both criticized the task force for failing to come up with a map that adheres to Act 73. Now we’re in this period of uncertainty without an agreed upon map. Is your office working on a map to put forward?

Zoie Saunders: I think the characterization of being critical of the task force is really misapplied. The feedback was that the task force did not deliver on the charge, which was to put forward district maps. So, that does create additional work for the Legislature this session.

Act 73 always required the General Assembly to select the maps. The redistricting task force was created to provide an opportunity for the separate body to review and put forward recommendations, but that vote was always going to be the responsibility of the General Assembly. So, we’re moving into the legislative session without the Redistricting Task Force putting forward maps. That means the General Assembly will need to spend the time putting forward a map that they can vote on to move forward Act 73.

My role as the secretary of education is to provide input and subject matter expertise on the policy considerations. And ultimately, my role is implementing law established by the General Assembly. So, we have provided input all along the way, and really that input has built upon the educational priorities expressed by the General Assembly in law and has built upon the studies that the General Assembly has done.

VTD: How do you plan on being on the front foot come Jan. 6 when the legislative session starts? What role does the Agency of Education have in moving this forward?

ZS: I think it’s important to provide context to understand how Act 73 came into being, and the level of bipartisanship and data-driven decision making that has been part of this process all along the way.

So, if we recall, the General Assembly actually first commissioned a study to evaluate the need to move towards a more efficient system that would produce greater quality, and that was through the Picus and Odden study, using an evidence-based model. The leadership of the General Assembly asked the governor to bring forward a plan to help address the systemic issues in our education system and ensure that we could also bend the cost curve as we are delivering higher quality.

(The study) also evaluated the express priorities that have been codified into law over the last 15 years, but we have struggled to implement (them) well because of issues with scale and resourcing. Those included expanding access to pre-kindergarten, expanding access to career and technical education, providing wraparound support for students, ensuring that we could increase teacher pay, particularly in our rural and high-needs communities, where teachers are paid considerably less than their counterparts in more affluent parts of the state.

That resulted in Act 73, and the role that we played as an agency is the role that we continue to play. We are the subject matter experts in education matters statewide.

We consistently said throughout the process, you have to focus on funding, governance and quality together. That’s really what makes Act 73 different from any prior education reform efforts.

The singular focus on redistricting really belies the complexity and the intent of this law, which is saying we need to keep all those pieces together.

VTD: If lawmakers were to move forward with the task force’s proposal, does that present problems in implementing Act 73, given its emphasis on voluntary mergers?

ZS: The plan put forward by the task force does not represent anything new. Districts have always had the ability to voluntarily merge. Districts have always had the ability to share services.

In fact, the model that continues to be referenced for (Boards of Cooperative Educational Services) began prior to the BOCES law being established, because school boards within their current purview are able to establish shared resources and to enter into contracts collaboratively to deliver on the needs of their students.

So what’s put forward does not represent anything new, other than it provides some additional requirements to add another layer of complexity on top of the existing status quo. And what I mean by that is it’s adding another layer that they’re calling a cooperative education services area that would need to have additional staffing and another board, which creates an additional governance complexity, which is what we’re actually trying to avoid.

When we were contemplating the original proposal, we identified that larger districts are able to ensure that the dollars go further for students, that they can help to provide the specialized resources that are needed, and to realign funding in a way that is going to be in the best interest of student learning.

If you ask any superintendent or principal or educator in our state, they will share the challenges of providing educational quality because we don’t have scale. When we talk about moving towards statewide graduation requirements, which is part of Act 73, we are moving in that direction because we know that there is such great variability when it relates to educational rigor across our state. And that’s not to say we don’t have bright spots — there are great districts and schools and students that are achieving academically.

But what we’re talking about with Act 73 is that there is such tremendous variability and inconsistency, and because of that, we are not giving every student a fair shot to achieve academically and to pursue their passions and be ready for success after high school graduation.

So it’s really important that we think about scale in relation to delivering quality, to ensure that students gain access to those important inputs. I’m talking about access to academic courses, access to enrichment opportunities, access to after school clubs and sporting opportunities. It also means that they have access to a high quality teacher, and we know a part of that is dependent on teachers getting compensated at appropriate levels and getting the support that they need.

Scale is really critical when we talk about the ability to actually deliver on education quality objectives that are set forward within Act 73, and we’ve had a number of focus groups with students — what we hear students asking for is meaningful opportunities to deepen their learning.

It’s really profound that we’re hearing that pretty consistently from students across the state.

VTD: Why does the foundation funding formula hinge on consolidation. Why can’t we apply that formula onto existing governance structures?

ZS: Our existing governance structures have great variability when we describe the number of students served, so that can be either from as small as 100 students to as large as 2,000 students. Each of those districts is required to deliver on some pretty onerous compliance requirements to operate a district and operate a school, and many of the expenses need to go to overseeing that.

And so when you think about the need for that level of administrative compliance, there’s great duplication across systems, and it also limits our smaller districts and having the resources to bring on content experts and reading coaches and curriculum experts who can really support with the design delivery and continuous improvement of teaching and learning.

There are opportunity costs that come with keeping our current system, and that results in short changing our smaller districts by not enabling them to take advantage of additional resources.

VTD: When you unveiled your first proposal last January, your estimate was that the state would save around $180 million annually. Is that still the current estimate, or are there updated estimates on the expected cost savings?

ZS: Ultimately, the final cost of the foundation formula will depend on decisions that the General Assembly makes.

Act 73 calls for a larger study to finalize the base and the weight amount included in (the foundation formula), so some of those decisions continue to be outstanding. But what is really clear, and what we see consistently in other states that implement a foundation formula, is it creates a way for us to be really transparent around how we fund education.

It is predictable year over year, and it comes with policy choices. There is cost modeling based on the funding put forward in Act 73 that shows considerable savings year over year compared to our existing trajectory.

So, yes, there has been cost modeling at every iteration of the foundation formula that’s been contemplated that proves a cost savings for taxpayers. As the formula is finalized in the Legislature, there will be more details around how that translates into budgeting. We have already, as an agency, built sample budgets to show how those dollars can be applied and represent a very generous amount when compared to other states.

VTD: I’ve heard a lot of fears that consolidation could be really disruptive to educators’ lives. Is there a potential for consolidation to result in job losses at school districts? What sort of impact could we see?

ZS: I think the fears that you’re describing are fears that community members have now within our current system. Despite the increase in cost and the increase to property taxes, districts across Vermont are having to cut staff. They’re having to cut programs, and that’s being done in a haphazardness way, and is not resulting in ensuring more equitable opportunities for students.

As we talk about the next phase of planning — you mentioned disruption — there’s a tremendous amount of disruption currently in our system because of the fact that it’s quite unpredictable, and there are system challenges that our superintendents and our school boards cannot overcome because of the way that we’re organized and structured.

Moving into larger districts, moving towards a foundation formula, is important to ensuring that we can actually deliver on those education quality objectives. There does need to be a process in place to ensure that that transition does not result in the disruption that you’re describing.

VTD: Vermont consistently ranks as one of the highest spending states on public education. Why?

ZS: I think our lack of scale does contribute to the cost. We also have a very unique funding formula, and that results in tremendous variability in per pupil spending across our state. That gap in per pupil spending is as wide as being as low as $9,000 per student to as high as $18,000 per student, so there’s tremendous variability.

The way that our funding system is structured, it is designed to promote taxpayer equity. However, in practice, what we’re seeing is that our highest need communities and lower income communities tend to spend less per pupil than our more affluent communities.

So, even communities that are making budgeting decisions to cut their budgets or hold their budgets steady, those community members could still see an increase in their property taxes because of decisions that are made in other communities across the state of Vermont. So it creates a lot of instability.

When you think about specific cost and how lack of scale contributes to cost, that comes in the form of challenges with recruiting teachers and sometimes having to contract for services that might cost three times the amount that it would (cost) to actually hire a qualified educator to deliver special education services, for example.

We talk to a lot of districts that are larger and are able to better create a continuum of support for their students, because they can pool their resources in ways to be more targeted with how they help to deliver special education services, for example. So our lack of scale contributes to higher cost, but that doesn’t translate necessarily into higher quality opportunities.

VTD: You’ve taken on a difficult task in going against this idea of local control. Vermont has a very unique culture in that regard. Has that been difficult to navigate for you? Has that made for tough conversations?

ZS: We must acknowledge that we are contemplating a large-scale change in Vermont, and any time a state is endeavoring to do this level of transformation, there should be tough conversations. We should be engaged in debate. We should be in dialogue. Vermonters do have many questions. Educators have questions, and it’s important that we’re noting those questions, that we’re responding to them and continuing to have that dialogue.

I understood that I would need to facilitate many challenging conversations, and when you enter difficult conversations, it’s important to always assume positive intent, to also focus on the facts and to identify and name where there’s agreement, and sometimes name where there’s disagreement, so that gives us a path forward to continue the conversation and move in a way that will be productive for the state.

While there’s been a lot of hard conversations, what I have found in my engagement in Vermont is that there is a shared sense of responsibility and a shared focus on doing whatever is right for kids and for our students.

VTD: What is your inspiration here? What or who do you look toward? Is there a model of public education or a model of public education reform that you look to? Or is there a leader or expert in education you’ve taken your cues from?

ZS: It’s an interesting question. Everybody who goes through their education training learns about John Dewey. He’s really the grandfather of public education and is from Vermont. I always think about education being a debt due to future generations, and that’s part of the service of being an educator, and certainly being in this role as a secretary of education is really ensuring that we’re making the right decisions to support and prepare the next generation.

I think when states often face a financial crisis, or they face, you know, a challenge with their education and performance, they pretty consistently diverted dollars away from public education, and we’re taking the opposite approach in Vermont. We are doubling down on public education as the great equalizer.

VTD: There are a lot of feelings right now in public education, from general uncertainty, to fear, to a sense of optimism. How are you feeling about the future of this effort to reform public education? And what would your message be to those in public education who are feeling that uncertainty or fear?

ZS: My role as secretary of education is to ensure that every child has access to a substantially equal education. And leading the Agency of Education, I am committed to that mission every single day, which is why you see that we have made some really meaningful changes in how we are prioritizing our work at the agency and how we are organizing our teams.

We know that some of the barriers to our success are some of the systemic challenges that we face, including lack of scale, variability of funding, the inability of certain districts to offer the array of programming that we expect in our education quality standards. So, while it’s challenging to move forward with Act 73, because it represents a significant amount of change, and change can be hard, it is really of paramount importance that we stay the course. That’s going to help us ensure that we can meet our statutory obligation to all students.

I would encourage Vermonters to stay engaged, to stay engaged in the dialogue, to stay focused on the opportunities ahead of what we can do for our students, because I think we’re really on the cusp of something very special in the state of Vermont.

I think we’re in a unique position because of our size, because of the community connections. We can be more agile than other states, we can be more responsive to the needs of our students and the needs of our community, and we’ve outlined a plan forward to achieve that.

And while change is hard, there’s also a lot in this work that’s very inspiring and motivating, because it’s going to set us up to ensure that every single student in our state can take advantage of an excellent education that prepares them to be successful after high school. And that’s where we’re headed.

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