Tim Maciel is a director on the Windham Southeast School District board and a member of the Rural School and Community Alliance. He emphasizes that "the opinions made here are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of the [WSESD] board."
BRATTLEBORO-The narrative that began with Gov. Phil Scott's education transformation bill, H.454, continues to echo across Vermont, from legislative halls to local school board meetings: Our education system - with its high per-pupil spending and low student-to-staff ratios - is unsustainable and in urgent need of dramatic restructuring.
I reject that narrative.
As a director on the Windham Southeast School District board and a member of the Rural School and Community Alliance (RSCA), I offer a different perspective - one grounded in equity, community voice, and whole-child education.
Yes, Vermont ranks near the top nationally in per-pupil spending. But this is not a symptom of inefficiency. It reflects our rural geography, aging infrastructure, and our commitment to personalized learning.
This point has been raised repeatedly-in legislative testimony, public forums, and op-eds - by superintendents, teachers, parents, and education advocates. (See, for example, David F. Kelly's May 30th piece in VTDigger.) In fact, education spending as a percentage of total state spending has stayed the same for two decades.
Yet these facts continue to fall on deaf ears in Montpelier.
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We are a rural state. Many of our schools are small because they must be. Consolidation would mean unacceptably long commutes for students, loss of community identity, weakened ties between families and schools, and it would discourage young families from moving into a district.
The fixed costs of education - heating, transportation, staffing - do not scale down when districts merge. This isn't a matter of opinion. Research shows that school consolidation rarely delivers promised savings and often harms students and communities. (See Howley, Johnson, and Petrie's "Consolidation of Schools and Districts: What the Research Says," National Education Policy Center, 2011, and other research reports on the RSCA website, vtruralschools.org.)
Critics also point to Vermont's slipping test scores. But standardized test results don't tell the full story of educational success - especially in communities like ours, where we prioritize curiosity, civic engagement, emotional well-being, and environmental stewardship alongside academic achievement in basic skills.
We know that test scores correlate more with out-of-school factors - poverty, housing instability, trauma - than with teacher quality or school size.
Even if we wanted to improve test scores alone, would any teacher argue that the way to do it is by increasing class sizes, reducing mental health staff, or putting kids on buses for an extra hour each day?
It just does not make good sense.
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We've seen what works. Just this year, Putney Central School and Guilford Elementary School - along with The Compass School in Westminster - were three of only 15 schools nationally recognized for exemplary "whole child" education. They were praised for fostering school-wide climates of nurturance, community involvement, and integrated social-emotional learning. Would this be possible in a 400-student mega-school with fewer adults per child?
Yes, Vermont has the lowest student-to-staff ratio in the country. That's not a flaw - it's a quality of our educational system. It allows our schools to nurture individual learners, build strong relationships, and intervene early when students need support.
While Brattleboro Union High School's graduation rates have lagged slightly behind the state average (a challenge our district is actively addressing), Vermont as a whole continues to boast one of the highest graduation rates in the nation.
More tellingly, Vermont students are far more likely than their peers nationally to complete college within four years - a clear sign that our graduates are well prepared for life after high school.
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If we're serious about solutions, let's stop repeating false claims of consolidation. Instead, let's invest in ideas that reflect Vermont's values and realities. We could:
• Update the funding formula to account for real cost drivers like rising health insurance premiums.
• Support the development of regional Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) to share specialized services like transportation and special education.
• Expand our commitment to community schools - schools that also serve as hubs for health care, social services, and family support.
Change is needed - but it must be smart, equitable, and rooted in the strengths of our communities, not a misguided obsession with economies of scale.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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