The Vermont Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved an education-reform bill that calls for voluntary school district mergers — leaving the House to weigh in on the compromise legislation that could potentially resolve the biggest issue of the session.

The 27-2 vote in favor of the plan — which lawmakers fine-tuned last week in close consultation with the administration of Gov. Phil Scott — signaled that the legislature and the governor have settled many of their differences about the future of education in Vermont.

The House voted late Tuesday afternoon to form a conference committee to try to quickly work through differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill, including class-size minimums and school-construction aid. If the negotiations go smoothly, the stage could be set for adjournment of the legislature this week.

Tuesday’s development signals that a long-predicted standoff between the governor and the legislature appeared to have been averted.

The governor had advocated for months for mandatory school district mergers, even threatening to keep the legislature in session until it complied with his demand. Lawmakers objected to forced mergers, and instead insisted on local decision-making around consolidation.

Scott ultimately backed down on his ultimatum.

“The governor made a major concession in the context of good-faith negotiations,” Sen. Seth Bongartz (D-Bennington) said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “That showed a willingness to listen and to work with the legislature to achieve something positive for Vermont taxpayers and for Vermont’s children.”

The version of H.955 passed by the Senate Tuesday has the same framework as the bill passed by the House in April, with some notable changes.

It creates seven cooperative education service agencies, or CESAs, regional entities that allow districts to share resources. Within those CESAs, committees would be formed to consider voluntary school district mergers. The bill also calls for a new education funding formula that allots the average student the same base dollar amount rather than leaving spending decisions to local voters.

After the Senate Education and Finance committees failed to produce a bill that leaders deemed suitable, a small group of senators moved into closed-door meetings with several House members and representatives from Gov. Phil Scott’s administration to hammer out a “consensus amendment” that was brought to the floor on Tuesday.

Sen. Ruth Hardy (D-Addison), Senate minority leader Scott Beck (R-Caledonia), Education chair Sen. Seth Bongartz (D-Bennington) and Finance chair Sen. Ann Cummings (D-Washington) worked on the amendment with House committee chairs Rep. Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall), Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (D-Brattleboro), Rep. Pattie McCoy (R-Rutland).

Hardy said in an interview on Monday that legislators told the administration last week that there was no legislative support — in either the Democratic or Republican caucuses — for mandatory school district mergers. Ultimately, Hardy said, Scott’s team accepted the idea of voluntary mergers and the legislators conceded to a shorter timeline for voluntary town votes on school district mergers and the implementation of the new funding formula.

The Senate amendment largely preserves the process laid out in the House bill by which school districts would consider voluntary mergers. Study committees made up of school board members from different districts would be required to take part in facilitated meetings to contemplate mergers into districts of at least 2,000 students. Because merging will not be mandatory, some of those committees might decide to merge while others may not. Some of Vermont’s larger districts may not even have to contemplate merging because they’re already big enough.

Under the Senate’s amendment, merger committees are required to meet by October and finalize their recommendations by September 1, 2027. Voters would then weigh in on mergers on Town Meeting Day 2028, eight months earlier than the November 2028 vote called for in the House bill.

The amendment also puts a nine-year moratorium on towns petitioning to withdraw from school districts, which might happen if residents fear their school would be closed in a bigger district.

“It was mostly just to keep the process from getting too chaotic,” Hardy said.

The amendment also includes language to prevent small districts from being left out of the merger process. Agency of Education officials said last week that could create isolated or “orphan” districts that would be too small to operate efficiently under the new funding formula. Hardy likened such districts to ones that “nobody picked … for the kickball team.”

By November 2029, the State Board of Education must submit a report to the legislature naming school districts with fewer than 750 students that have not successfully merged. Another process laid out in the amendment allows isolated districts to appeal to the legislature in order to merge with a neighboring district.

The amendment also bumps up by one year the date by which the new funding formula would be implemented, to July 1, 2029 — the same date that new school districts and new property tax classifications would formally go into effect. Some smaller districts would likely merge because they wouldn’t be financially viable under the foundation formula unless they achieve greater scale, Hardy said. School districts that merge, or already have 2,000 students, would also be prioritized for school construction aid.

A number of things would have to happen before the new funding formula goes into effect. Those include decisions related to funding for career and technical education, special education, sparse schools, high schools, geographic cost differences, prekindergarten and transportation. A report commissioned by the legislature that will shed more light on those issues is due at the end of this year. The governor wanted to remove those contingencies, Hardy said on the Senate floor on Tuesday, but legislators advocated to keep them.

Not everyone thought that was a good idea.

Sen. Russ Ingalls (R-Essex), one of two Republican senators who voted against the bill, noted that the funding formula was years away from being put into place, and he expressed doubt it would ever come to fruition.

Sen. Russ Ingalls (R-Essex) Credit: Kevin McCallum

“We keep talking about a foundation formula,” Ingalls said. “I’m pretty sure we’re gonna see Bigfoot before we see one of those.”

The bill is silent on the role of tuitioning students to independent schools.

“Because the whole private-school thing kind of took over last year’s conversation, I think people this year tried to not make it about private schools,” Hardy said. School choice will be something that has to be addressed at the local level during merger-committee discussions.

Hardy pointed out that the final version of the bill reflects the recommendations of the
redistricting task force that met over the summer and fall to consider drawing a map with consolidated school districts, only to end up rejecting the proposition in favor of a more measured, democratic approach. Gov. Scott previously said that the task force failed to do its job.

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