Proposed school district size baffles local education officials statewide

Winooski student Lucille works on a leaf that will become part of a larger mural. Photo by Catherine Morrissey of Community News Service.

By Noah Diedrich
Community News Service
The Chester Telegraph was not involved in the reporting or editing of this story.

In the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, the Lamoille South Supervisory Union has faced an equally novel problem: helping kids readjust to school.

“There was a distinct minority of students who had some very, very marked needs,” said Dave Bickford, school board chair for the Elmore-Morristown district, one of two that make up the supervisory union. “Social-emotional needs that transcended the special education designation.”

It’s taken a few years to diagnose and remedy the problem, and only in the past year have officials in Lamoille South seen noticeable improvements — progress Bickford attributes to the close working relationship between the supervisory union’s central office and school administrations.

It’s that type of collaboration Bickford fears will be lost under Gov. Phil Scott’s Education Transformation Proposal, which, among other things, seeks to eliminate supervisory unions as a concept and consolidate the state’s 119 school districts into just five. Education officials across the state are uncertain of what they see as a plan that sidesteps solutions to affordability and school governance.

Amanda Wheeler, the governor’s press secretary, did not respond to several attempts this week to seek comment by phone and email.

The proposal comes at a period in Vermont politics when education funding dominates the conversation. Due to a multitude of factors like the growing needs of students following the pandemic and dwindling federal funds, property taxes have soared in recent years.

As safeguards to ensure a degree of local input, Scott is calling for the creation of local school advisory councils, which his proposal states will “promote high levels of community engagement.”

“Having fewer school districts that oversee more students improves efficiency, promotes resource sharing, and supports equitable decision-making for students from many communities,” the proposal says.

But Bickford said he sees the proposal as being more about the economy than good outcomes for students.

“I can’t imagine how his plan really benefits kids,” Bickford said. “In addition to the academics, their needs are social and emotional and structural, and I don’t see the plan, as he has sort of outlined it, being able to supply that kind of support.”

Bickford, who has 30 years of experience as a teacher, principal and school board chair, doesn’t see close cooperation between administrations and schools being able to exist within the new proposal.

“I worked in a school district in New Jersey where we had, Lord, maybe 20 schools,” he said. “The bigger you get, the more bureaucratic the organization becomes in order to manage and address needs, and the less personalized attention is given down to the level of the classroom.”

Bickford’s own supervisory union, Lamoille South, would become part of a district that stretches over 60 miles top to bottom.

Lisa Rudd, superintendent of Grand Isle Supervisory Union, said the widely held notion among her colleagues is that the current iteration of the governor’s plan — the one with just five districts — is something of a bargaining tactic.

“I think the general sort of feeling about this document is that it was shock value to propose something a bit more moderate,” she said.

Rudd said her apprehension with the proposal does not mean that she opposes the effort to rejig the current system. In fact, she said her colleagues hold a general sense that something needs to change.

Take her own situation. Grand Isle has three different school districts within one supervisory union. That means Rudd has to work with four separate boards — a task she said is like running four businesses.

“We really should be one school district, and I think there’s community (members) that feel that way too,” Rudd said. “So I don’t think change is the issue here.”

For Rudd and other district officials across the state, the connection between district consolidation and affordability for Vermonters is not readily apparent.

“I think it’s misleading (to suggest that) the saving of money is somehow going to miraculously improve student outcomes,” Rudd said. “Putting it in the context of what’s happening nationally, it’s pretty disturbing.”

A September 2024 report prepared for the Legislative Joint Fiscal Office suggested that Vermont could save $400 million by completely revamping its education system. But Bickford said he does not yet understand how the plan aims to make education funding more affordable.

“I just don’t see how aggregating people is going to provide that kind of savings,” he said. “We’re still going to have to have principals. We’re going to have to have coordinators of programs, because they don’t just happen. They don’t fall full grown from the head of Zeus.”

Keri Bristow, chair of the Mountain Views School District board of directors, agreed that what’s missing from the proposal is how exactly it aims to save money.

“Just removing superintendents in every school district — you’re still going to have assistant superintendents to do the paperwork that’s required by the state to oversee the staff, make sure things are running the way they should and all of those things that they have to do now,” she said.

Bill Yates, board chair of Windham Southeast Supervisory Union, said that while he thinks the current supervisory union system is flawed — the supervisory unions are too small for full efficiency — Scott’s proposal puts forth a district configuration that is much too broad.

“That geographic area is just way too large for any sort of reasonable governance,” Yates said. “It’s just not feasible to have 15 districts within an SU. It can’t work that way to supervise all the things that a supervisory union is legally required to do these days.”

One of those responsibilities is special education, Yates said. Under Scott’s proposal, a single special education director would be responsible for each supervisory union, which would cover large swaths of geographic area and many school districts.

Yates sees an obvious solution to the supervisory union problem: school construction.

“I think Gov. Scott, in this proposal, put the cart before the horse,” Yates said. “To have consolidation, you have to have construction.”

Within Windham County, Yates said there are multiple supervisory unions, districts and schools he thinks are close enough to provide a more efficient method of education.

And building regional high schools could improve educational opportunities and avoid transportation discrepancies between students, he said.

With the proposal as it stands, Yates said if smaller schools close, it could mean students have to spend more time going to and from school every day.

“Some of these elementary kids already have an hour, and so if you start closing schools, you’re going to have these young kids on a bus for two or three hours just to get to school,” he said.

All in all, Yates said he supports the idea of making the education system more efficient and economical — just not by the current approach.

“It’s such an unfunctional proposal, but I think reworking the SU structure right now is probably a good idea,” he said. “I think there’s something to be had with that, but there has to be some sort of dialogue and investigation study before it’s done.”

Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship.