Updated 2:31
Ethics complaints filed with the Vermont Senate against Sens. Seth Bongartz, D-Bennington, and Scott Beck, R-Caledonia, allege they used their positions on a critical committee negotiating the final form of a wide-ranging education bill to advance provisions that benefited the private schools they are associated with.
Beck, the Senate minority leader, is employed as a teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy. Bongartz, the chair of the Senate Education Committee, served almost two decades on the board of Burr and Burton Academy.
The complaints, filed with the Senate’s Ethics Committee by Friends of Vermont Public Education board member Geo Honigford, allege that both senators violated ethical standards set forth in state law by negotiating this session’s major education reform bill in a committee of conference — which was charged with reconciling differences in the House and Senate versions — despite their associations with private schools, called independent schools in state law.
The Legislature passed the bill June 16, and Gov. Phil Scott is expected to sign it into law Tuesday.
Honigford, in an email to Senate Ethics Committee members, wrote that the two senators “used their positions to advance provisions that directly benefited the schools they are associated with.”
“I believe this crossed a line,” Honigford wrote. “Vermonters should be able to trust that lawmakers are working in the public interest, not using their influence to benefit their employers or clients.”
Beck, in a phone interview, brushed aside the alleged conflict, saying that “every senator has a connection to their school districts, to their schools.”
“They’re going to advocate for their schools. I would expect nothing less,” Beck said. “That’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to represent and advocate for our area. I’m no different than that.”
“I do happen to work at a school, but there are other people in the Legislature that work in schools, and we defend our schools and we defend our districts and our towns that make up those districts,” Beck added.
Bongartz, meanwhile, in a phone interview, called the complaint filed against him “complete garbage” and an “amateurish attempt at intimidation.”
“I just think that bringing this level of attempted intimidation to Vermont politics is something I thought I’d never see in this state,” he said. “This is just beyond the pale and completely baseless.”
He added that the “problem is that I understand independent schools, I understand the critical role they play in the areas they serve, and they don’t like that.”
“They don’t like the fact that I’m an articulate voice for something that they don’t like,” he said.
Earlier this month, Bongartz, Beck, Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Washington, and three House members served on the Committee of Conference that shaped the final contours of H.454, the landmark education reform bill set to transform the state’s public education system.
Among its many components, the bill set new limits on which independent schools would remain eligible to receive public funding in the future and how much they would be able to charge.
The final version of the bill requires that a task force set to craft new school district boundaries include at least one option that maintains the current supervisory union and supervisory district administrative structure, which would support the continuation of historic tuitioning arrangements with independent schools.
In a press release announcing the ethics complaints, the Friends of Vermont Public Education alleged that both senators either fought against, or advocated for, changes that would benefit the independent schools they work for.
Bongartz, for instance, fought to set the threshold for public tuition eligibility for independent schools at 25%, “a number many observers couldn’t explain,” the release said.
The organization noted that Bongartz, through his company, Gubb and Bongartz Nonprofit Consulting, worked on behalf of the Maple Street School in Manchester in 2021. This school, “one of his clients, has 33% of its students publicly funded,” the release reads.
“A higher threshold, like the 51% number proposed by the House, would have cut off their public dollars,” the group alleged in their press release. “The lower threshold preserved them.”
Bongartz in an interview said he has not had any professional contact with the school since his work was concluded in 2021.
Beck, meanwhile, pushed for increased funding for independent career and technical education centers and high schools, including a provision allowing independent schools like St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndonville Institute — which operate such centers — to set their own tuition rates for public school districts who send students there, according to their release.
Current law, unchanged by this bill, allows public high schools with career and technical centers also to set tuition rates for districts that send students there. Whether and how this may change under the new funding system is a question legislators plan to take on during the 2026 session.
“St. Johnsbury Academy stands to lose significant taxpayer support under the bill’s new funding formula,” the release reads. “Beck’s efforts helped insert carve-outs and funding increases that will cushion that impact and protect the school’s revenue.”
Beck downplayed that allegation, saying that he was simply “advocating for the status quo.”
Public and independent career and technical education programs in Vermont are allowed to set their own tuition rates, he said.
“If I had gone in and tried to get something new, like some special good deal for St. Johnsbury Academy, maybe that would be a different story,” he said. “But, effectively, all I was advocating for is the status quo, which is that they get to be able to set their tuition as a CTE center, just like a public school CTE does.”
This story was updated with more details related to the history of Sen. Bongartz’s relationship with Maple Street School in Manchester.
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify the way that current law governs how tuition rates to attend public schools with career and technical districts are set for students from other school districts.
