After a night of closed-door dealmaking and a day of public debate, the House passed its education reform bill Friday.
The vote came after weeks of Republican opposition to the legislation, criticized by GOP representatives and Gov. Phil Scott for an implementation timeline two years slower than what the governor’s administration proposed. Ultimately, most Republicans, as well as some rural Democrats, opposed the legislation — which passed 87-55.
“I come from a rural community that will lose vital, small, wanted, local schools, both public and independent, if this bill moves forward in its current form,” Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun, D-Westminster, said on the House floor. “I voted ‘no’ to preserve small local schools.”
The bill, H.454, proposes massive changes to Vermont’s school governance and finance systems that would phase in over multiple years, including school district consolidation, class-size minimums and the creation of a new education funding formula. The legislation has drawn support from the organizations representing Vermont’s superintendents, principals and school board members.
Both chambers of the Legislature and Scott have made education reform the year’s key issue in response to last year’s double-digit average property tax increases, and all three have drafted competing versions of wide-ranging reforms.
The vote Friday came after a compromise between House Republicans and Democrats. Some of the GOP proved willing to back the bill despite it outsourcing the creation of new, consolidated school districts to a summer committee. Friday’s bipartisan amendment created a second outsourced task force that will work with the other summer committee to create voting wards for the new districts, potentially speeding up the district consolidation process by a year.
The amendment also added legislators to the body tasked with creating new districts, though lawmakers would be nonvoting members.
Rep. Casey Toof, R-St. Albans Town, the House assistant minority leader and one of the amendment’s sponsors, said in testimony in the House’s tax writing committee Friday morning that he’d advocated for adding elected members to the district creation committee because “they can be held accountable.”
To build support across the aisle, Democrats added language to the bill that studies taxing different types of properties at different rates. The idea of new property tax classifications drew sharp criticism from Scott’s administration and the business lobby.
The last-minute amendment, approved on the floor Friday, was sponsored by Toof, a member of the House Education Committee, and Rep. Lori Houghton, D-Essex Junction, the House majority leader.
But a majority of Republicans still voted “no.” And even among those who voted “yes,” many said they only wanted to advance the legislation to the Senate in hopes of a better, more bipartisan outcome.
“It is with great reticence that I’m voting ‘yes’ on this version of the bill,” Rep. Gina Galfetti, R-Barre Town, said on the floor. “If we do not pass this bill out of the House, the opportunity to reform education funding and stabilize property taxes will be lost.”
House Speaker Rep. Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, explaining her support for the legislation, called the education status quo “unacceptable.” “This is our moment, let’s show every kid in our state that no matter where they live, they will have the best education at a price we can afford,” she said.
Opposition to H.454 has percolated throughout its development. On Thursday, when the bill hit the House floor, Democratic leadership scrambled to build support. In a surprising move, the House advanced the bill Thursday by voice vote, concealing what level of support the legislation actually had at that point.
From the beginning, Republicans voiced frustration with Democrats’ decision to largely reject the Scott administration’s specific proposals.
At the same time, grassroots consortia of education leaders, school board members and families in rural Vermont have organized against the legislation, which they say will close small schools without community input. And lawmakers from corners of Vermont that rely on school choice have condemned the bill’s restrictions on sending students to private schools using public money. Both reasons led some Democrats to vote “no” Friday.
H.454 will arrive in the Senate next week, where it is expected to undergo substantial revisions.
In a statement following the vote, Gov. Scott called the bill “nowhere near perfect” and indicated he would not sign it in its current state. But he said that moving the legislation to the Senate was an “important procedural step” toward “education transformation.”
Correction: A previous version of this story mischaracterized an amendment to H.454.
