BRATTLEBORO-As the provisos of this year's education reform law set in, the Windham Southeast School District (WSESD) and Windham Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) have each sent resolutions to the Vermont School District Redistricting Task Force advocating for supervisory union (SU) consolidation.
"At the moment, we find ourselves in the interesting position of simultaneously moving forward as if things will stay the same and as if they are about to change," WSESU Chair Anne Beekman told The Commons. "The board will continue to work in the best interests of our students, schools, families, and communities."
The next step, she said, is "making contact and having some discussions with our neighboring SUs. We can continue to talk, but ultimately we will need to see what the Task Force comes up with before we can even hope to make any decisions."
"In addition to business as usual, boards are working to unravel Act 73 and how it affects students, their families, staff, and administrators in the near future and beyond," added Deborah Stanford, WSESD board chair. "The health of our communities and towns is dependent on the ongoing presence of local schools. The very essence of Vermont, as we know it, is at stake."
Passed in July of this year, Act 73 aims to reform Vermont's education system through redistricting, funding changes, and improved school infrastructure.
The act mandates redistricting of the state's public school system by July 2028, consolidating the current 118 school districts, which currently serve anywhere from roughly 180 to 4,100 students, with a mean of approximately 700 students.
The new larger districts are to serve 4,000 to 8,000 students.
SU consolidation would combine administrative services such as transportation, payroll, and food services across multiple districts.
In the case of the WSESD, SD consolidation would eliminate that school board and replace it with a new entity that would be responsible for more towns and schools.
The WSESD and WSESU resolutions say they both support remaining "within a supervisory union, within a larger governance region to the extent practical," under the terms of the new law.
The boards' resolutions go on to state the WSESD and WSESU will "reach out to contiguous school districts and supervisory unions to explore combining into a larger supervisory union, if possible."
"Our purpose is to optimize cost savings and efficiencies where possible while maintaining local democratic engagement, oversight, and accountability in order to achieve excellent educational outcomes for our communities' children and youth at a cost that Vermonters can afford," the letter notes.
The WSESD is composed of member towns Brattleboro, Putney, Dummerston, and Guilford. The WSESU is composed of member towns Brattleboro, Putney, Dummerston, Guilford, and Vernon.
School finance admins disagree
While the WSESD and WSESU boards of directors support SU consolidation, many school financial directors disagree.
WSESU Business Administrator Frank Rucker is one of 10 school finance directors who have urged the Redistricting Task Force to consider for school district (SD) consolidation rather than SU consolidation.
The signers' combined experience totals more than 170 years in 80 towns.
In their Aug. 26 letter to the task force, the group urges adoption of "a more effective governance model for Vermont's schools," and speaks against the SU consolidation model.
"Based on our experience, we believe a unified district structure will deliver greater efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and transparency, benefiting both students and taxpayers," the letter reads, noting some signers work in SUs now and others have in the past and now work in SDs.
"All of us have firsthand knowledge of the inefficiencies of the SU model. Our concerns are shared by colleagues who cannot speak publicly due to employment or board pressures," the letter says.
In the business managers' letter, signers say the SU structure "adds unnecessary layers of governance."
"Multiple boards and administrative teams slow decision-making, duplicate discussions, and create inconsistent policies," the letter says. "From a finance perspective, our staff must manage separate accounting systems, payrolls, and reports for each member district, compounding workload and fragmenting accountability."
"Budgets are approved by the SU board and appear only as a single line item in local budgets, obscuring true spending and limiting taxpayer oversight," they write. "We urge the Task Force to focus on district size (both student count and geography) in its redistricting plan, and to make clear that retaining the SU structure will prevent Act 73 from achieving its goals of saving money and expanding opportunity."
Finally, the financial heads say that if SUs remain, the state will "continue to suffer from multiple layers of governance, lack of taxpayer accountability, failure to realize economies of scale and inconsistent policies and opportunities."
"The only 'benefits' of SUs are the preservation of numerous small boards and continued public funding of private schools," they say. "If those are legislative priorities, they can be addressed separately - without burdening new, larger districts with an outdated governance structure. Act 73 represents a difficult transition, but also a chance to eliminate obsolete systems and modernize Vermont's schools."
Beekman and Stanford apparently have no issue with Rucker's point of view.
"I have no doubt that Dr. Rucker and our boards can continue to work effectively together," said Beekman. "He is very good at what he does."
RSCA: Large-scale district consolidations 'not sustainable'
As stated in a position statement from the Rural School Community Alliance (RSCA), "We know that the cost of public education in our state is unsustainable, largely driven by large yearly increases in costs such as health insurance.
"We continue to believe, based on Vermont-specific evidence, that further large-scale district consolidations are not the answer, in large part because there is substantial research showing the negative effects of mandated consolidation on all communities, particularly rural communities, including a lack of cost-savings."
The RSCA counts among its steering committee Cheryl Charles, chair of both the Westminster Town School District board and the Windham Northeast Supervisory Union board; David Schoales of Brattleboro, a former chair of the WSESD and, previously, a longtime member of the former Brattleboro Town School Board; and Dan MacArthur, longtime school board chair in Marlboro.
Opponents also argue that SD consolidation risks degrading educational quality, noting larger systems are likely slower to respond to student needs, more bureaucratic, and more likely to implement policies across the board that don't fit all.
A huge concern about consolidation to larger school districts is how the redistricting process will affect local voices and representation of rural communities in decision-making.
At its Aug. 26 meeting, the WSESD board voted to create its own redistricting task force to engage the community and develop action items. The issue of supporting supervisory union or supervisory district redistricting was on the agenda again for Tuesday, Sept. 9, after press time.
The state task force is to finalize recommendations for Senate and House committees in November.
By Dec. 1, the Redistricting Task Force - made up of six legislators and five experienced educators appointed by the state - must present the Legislature with at least three proposals.
At least one will involve merging supervisory unions and at least one other will involve merging school districts.
This News item by Virginia Ray was written for The Commons.