In Southeast Vermont, a group of school districts are already out of the gate putting into practice a key feature of the redistricting task force’s proposal — forming regional cooperatives to share services.
For several years, the Mountain Views Supervisory Union — which serves students in the towns of Woodstock, Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret and Reading — has been partnering with seven nearby districts in Windham, Windsor and Rutland counties to pool their resources under the Vermont Learning Collaborative.
Officials there say the initiative shows clear cost benefits and improvements to educational programs, two central goals of Act 73, the state’s sweeping education reform law.
The districts’ collaborative — a precursor to the type of regional entity now being proposed by the task force — facilitates the sharing of services in special education, professional development, human resources and more.
A state law passed in 2024 enables districts in Vermont to form a Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or BOCES. The Mountain Views Supervisory Union’s collaborative will soon be officially recognized by the state’s Agency of Education as the first in the state.
The five regional partnerships envisioned in the task force’s proposal, called Cooperative Service Areas, would similarly allow districts to collaborate and save money by sharing services at scale.
The educational structure is commonplace in much of the United States. Forty-three states, including smaller, rural states like West Virginia, Maine, Mississippi and Montana, utilize a form of regional cooperative service agencies.
The collaborative has generated cost savings for participating districts, officials with the Mountain Views Supervisory Union said. Districts that would otherwise be siloed and forced to pay for duplicative services have been able to access professional development services at a larger scale thanks to their collaborative, saving individual districts an average of 66% on those costs, according to Jill Graham, the collaborative’s executive director.
The task force’s proposal has generated interest throughout the state. Other districts have approached the Agency of Education about adopting a similar structure, according to previous reporting. Campaign Vermont, an advocacy group, said in a release that the state could save $334 million annually if districts share services.
The Mountain Views districts’ special education services have also seen improvement. Their collaboration has led to a reduction in the number of students who are placed outside of member districts, school officials said.
“We are seeing the impact of this resource,” said Sherry Sousa, the superintendent of the Mountain Views Supervisory Union. “And we’re getting the payback.”
Sousa says the Agency of Education is reviewing the articles of agreement between the partnering supervisory districts and will soon approve its formation. The approval comes with a $10,000 grant from the state.
‘Legacy inefficiencies’
The task force’s proposal was finalized in a draft report that will be sent to the legislature by December 1. But it has faced heavy criticism from Gov. Phill Scott’s administration.
Scott has made direct consolidation of the state’s 52 supervisory unions and supervisory districts and 119 school districts a key priority of the broader reform envisioned in Act 73.
The change would wrest control of local spending away from school districts, but much of the law’s changes to education finance may not happen without agreement on a new map of districts.
Regional cooperatives are one facet of the task force’s proposal for the public education reform envisioned by Act 73. The group is recommending voluntary mergers of the state’s school districts.
Those mergers could be incentivized by using state construction aid to facilities creating regional high schools, a more long-term proposal in their recommendation.
Gov. Phil Scott and his education secretary, Zoie Saunders have panned the proposal, and said the task force ignored their mandate to consolidate the state’s existing districts and draw new maps of those possible boundaries.
Saunders, in a letter to the task force, said their plan “inverts the Governor’s original plan” by maintaining the state’s 52 supervisory unions and districts and 119 school districts, “while adding” five regional entities on top.
Each regional cooperative, she wrote, would “have its own governing board, executive director, and staff—expanding, not reducing, administrative footprint,” she wrote.
“The result is more governance, more overhead, and the preservation of legacy inefficiencies,” she wrote.
Scott was more forceful in his criticism, telling reporters this month that the task force “failed” in their task.
“They didn’t redraw the lines, and they were supposed to put forward three maps for consideration, and they failed,” Scott said.
Task force members have pushed back on this. In a draft of their final report, task force members wrote that they could not find evidence that direct consolidation of school districts would help alleviate primary cost drivers like health insurance, special education, facilities and transportation.
“Regional coordination, shared staffing, and well-planned high school collaborations address these drivers more effectively than mandated structural change,” the task force wrote.
The disagreements between task force members and officials in Scott’s administration foreshadow a difficult legislative session to come. Lawmakers will have to agree on a new map of school districts for much of Act 73 to see the light of day.
The debate has generated a vast amount of uncertainty in the state’s public education landscape. Keri Bristow, the board chair of the Mountain Views Supervisory Union, said the task force’s proposal preserves a local democratic process.
“You can make any map you want, but if the people don’t have any affinity with the other groups they’re pushed with, there’s just going to be a lot of problems trying to meld those people, those groups, into an Uber School District,” Bristow said. “We would prefer to choose our partners.”
