Well attended forum explores future of education in Vermont

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Monday night’s forum on statewide education reform, sponsored by the Chester Democratic Committee, attracted about 40 people of many political stripes. And it was remarkable for  the extent to which members of the invited panel — also of different political persuasions — agreed on the problems and the fact that the solutions will take time.

The forum’s panel, moderated by Chester Select Board member Arne Jonynas,  included Windsor County Sens. Allison Clarkson and Joe Major, Windham-Windsor District Rep. Tom Charlton, Layne Millington, superintendent of Two Rivers Supervisory Union, and Casey Leahy, board member on the Green Mountain Unified School District.

As he threw the first question to Sen. Clarkson, Jonynas said this was a chance to have conversations. He asked her simply to outline Gov. Phil Scott’s education proposal which would reduce the number of school districts from 119 to five with paid part-time school boards, centralize more governance under the Agency of Education, move to a “foundation funding formula” with some room for districts to add funding in addition to the state grant and consolidation of schools.  While noting that Gov. Scott or Education Secretary Zoie Saunders would be better suited to answering that question, she added that Vermonters want to see the education financing system fixed, but do not want a radical restructuring of the education system.

In addition to Scott’s proposal, a House bill – H454 – was discussed. It recently passed the House and will shortly be taken up by the Senate.

Millington commended Scott for getting the conversation going, but said his plan doesn’t address an expansion of busing that the plan will necessitate especially when it’s nearly impossible to find drivers and buses have been more difficult to purchase since Covid.

Major agreed, saying that the Scott plan doesn’t even mention the increased cost of expanded transportation, which, with fewer schools and more travel time, he called a “major factor.”

Major also pointed to Scott’s short timeline – approving his plan by the end of the session – and called it “crazy.” “To do a plan that will work needs more time,” said Major.  He also noted that the use of surpluses to supplement the education fund and “buy down” tax increases which Scott included in his plan was to give the process more time.

Charlton said that the state can’t buy down taxes every year to 2030 as was proposed in the recently passed House bill H454. Clarkson noted that back filling for federal cuts could drain the surplus that set to cushion education tax rates.

“The five district plan raised a lot of excitement,” said Charlton. “But five districts doesn’t mean five schools.”

Charlton noted that it’s likely to be more than five districts but the state needs to settle on “eight to 10” districts to find the administrative cost savings needed. He also said he is more concerned about school closings than the number of districts. Addressing the next question – on school choice – Charlton said he was concerned for the historically independent schools such at Burr & Burton in Manchester, St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndon Institute.

And this was where the party divide was most evident with Clarkson and Major expressing the legislature’s desire to protect public schools while Charlton looked to private schools as a part of the mix.

Major told the audience he was educated in Catholic schools in New York State, which his parents had to pay for. And he added, he believe that was the right approach. “Public money should go to public schools,” he said. Leahy echoed that sentiment saying that the state has a constitutional mandate to provide education and that taxpayer money should be used at public, not private schools.

And that’s about the time the tenor of the evening changed. Panelists agreed that public schools had to be better to attract students and  Millington pointed to large amounts of money that are “siphoned off from the education fund,” These included tuition being sent to to independent schools, teacher pensions which were moved to the education fund when the state had trouble keeping up with contributions and the free meals program.

Panelists agreed that rising costs of  health-care and teacher salaries as well as the cost of housing  are problem areas when the schools are trying to attract the best teachers. Panelists also discussed school system regionalization and consolidation with Millington saying that from a business point of view, the “leverage point” in making cuts is in the elementary schools.

Jonynas said the last question before opening the discussion to the floor was “How can we move ahead without answers to the unknown?”

“Incrementally,” says Charlton who looked at three to four years as a rollout for change and pointing to the House bill for it incremental approach.

Former  Windsor-2 Rep. John Arrison, a Democrat, asked the legislators to take their time with the education reform bill. “Rushing this bill,” said Arrison “you’ll end up with a bad outcome.”

Wendy McNaughton a teacher from Cavendish said that it’s difficult to see how the proposals will save money and that all she sees is increases.

Clarkson and Charlton agreed that goals for savings were not in the bills.

Clarkson said that McNaughton raised an interesting point, “I’m not sure we have a point at which we say ‘if this doesn’t save us ‘X’ amount (of money), we’re not going forward with it.” She added that the legislature also hasn’t defined the amount of savings in $2 billion education fund that would “make the pain (of a statewide restructuring) worth it.”

McNaughton had recently been recommended by the Cavendish Select Board to fill the GMUSD board seat vacated by Steve Perani. However she was passed over for the post at a special meeting on April 7, in which five GMUSD board members from Andover and Chester voted 5 to 4 for Donovan Nichols instead.

As the event was breaking up, The Telegraph asked Charlton how he could agree with so much of the direction of the House bill and still vote against it on Friday April 11.

“My no vote was to register my concern about not seeing the cost savings and the timeline,” said Charlton. “It’s not going to happen in four months, but five years (in House bill 454) is really costly. ”

Referring to the Republican delegation, Charlton said, “We knew exactly how many votes needed to be available to pass it to the Senate. We were not satisfied with this bill, but we wanted to be sure there were enough ‘yes’ votes on our side of the aisle to move it on to the Senate so it can continue. Otherwise it would have just died and nothing would have happened this year.”

“There’s a lot of substantive agreement on the principles,” said Charlton.