The future of Vermont Education as it relates to the GMUSD/TRSU

 Restructuring” schools has been a hot button topic for the Green Mountain Unified School District (GMUSD) board for some time. While Chester Andover Elementary is filled to capacity and beyond, Cavendish Town Elementary School (CTES) currently has a student population of 62 in a building designed for 140. Given the issues such as aging infrastructure, PCBs, and low enrollment, some community members are calling for the closure of Green Mountain Union High School (GMUHS) and replacing it with school choice, which is available to those in the other Twin Rivers Supervisory Union (TRSU) district, Ludlow/Mt Holly.

 On Tuesday, Nov. 12, the TRSU superintendent, Layne Millington, held a Forum at CTES to discuss the future of the schools. His take home message was that the schools are old and have major issues, including prohibitively high levels of toxic PCBs (note that CTES does not have PCBs and is the only school in the district that has up to date fire codes). Therefore. the best option maybe to replace them with a type of “super school” centrally located. Further, doing so would encourage families to move to the area.  

While parents were concerned about children being bussed long distances, it’s questionable at best that a new school would draw families to the area.

According to the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission’s (MARC) Regional Plan-MARC covers all of the GMUSD towns- the region’s population is declining. The proportion of school age children (ages 18 and under) continues to decline in the same way it has since 1970, declining from 19.3% to 17.2% of the Region from 2010 to 2020. Factors contributing to decreased population in the Region include the loss of major employers, (especially those in the machine tool industry), reductions in the average household size, the relatively high cost of living, difficulty to recruit new employees, and a lack of housing options. …The recent increase of short-term rentals has also led to a decline of available long-term rentals.

A similar message-build it and they will come- was given to the Cavendish community twenty years ago to encourage voting for a new school addition. The addition was made, but the families didn’t come.  

Note that Millington stated that the CTES enrollment was around 79. He adds the preschool students at Stepping Stones into his number, which does not reflect the students attending CTES. 

As far as paying for the "super school," Millington indicated that two thirds of the cost would be picked up by the current tax structure for education in VT.  It’s true that lowering your school budget doesn’t necessarily result in reduced taxes. VT is only one of two states in the country where the supervisory union (SU) comes up with a budget and the state raises the taxes to meet it.

However, the construction of a new building would require a bond vote by the towns in the SU. In 2022, when the GMUSD wanted to pass a $20 million bond for major renovations on the schools, particularly GMUHS, it was defeated. 

Millington has also suggested that the schools could be sold to help pay for the new building. Again, this requires a town vote. The way Act 46 was structured, if a school is to be closed, the town would need to vote on whether they want to keep the building or let the SU have it. We saw an example of this when Black River High School was closed. Ludlow voted to keep the building and it’s now the home of the Expeditionary School.  

What would such a construction project possibly cost? Our closest example may be Woodstock, which has been trying to replace their 7-12 grade building. The projected cost is now up to $99 million. 

On Friday, Nov 15, VT’s Agency of Education (AOE) issued a report, Vermont’s Education System: Explained and Compared to Other States. The AOE Interim Secretary, Zoie Saunders states that the intent of the report is “to set the stage for discussions around system improvements that will support educational quality, equity, and sustainability.” The tax payers as well as the VT legislature are demanding an over haul of how education is funded and this report is laying the foundation for change. 

Saunders has stated that she wants to make the AOE driven by data, which this report does as it compares what is happening in VT to not only what is being done and achieved in the other 49 states but research driven “best practices.” It should be noted that the report is easy to read and does a good job of explaining VT’s complex education funding and taxes.

Highlights of the study include the following:

• As indicated above, 48 of the states tell the district what their budgets will be. If a district wishes to add to these funds, they can but their community will be responsible for the additional tax burden. A state typically sets a floor, not a ceiling, on school spending. 

• VT has more school boards and membership than many other places across the country. Many states have school districts with just five or seven members. The TRSU deals with three boards with 11 members alone on the GMUSD board.

• Many states do not have SUs. VT has 52. In some states a typical sized district has 3,000-5,000 students and a large district has 25,000 or more students…Some of the highest achieving school systems in the country have 10,000 students or even 50,000 students, a single school board, reasonable spending and very high achievement. The authors of this report, New Solutions K12, notes that they have seen firsthand that nearly all school systems with 3,000 to 5,000 students do not consider themselves too large to handle, but just the opposite. The TRSU does not have 1,000 students between all the towns. 

• Best practice research has shown a variety of ways to increase achievement while being cost effective in small and rural districts. These practices include shared and part time staff, staff wearing multiple harts, teachers taking on leadership roles for extra compensation while remaining a teacher, principals of small schools having other responsibilities, regionalized services, and shared specialists. Though these strategies exist in Vermont, there is great variability in implementation. 

• VT tends to have the smallest class sizes in the country. Very high level of student success are achieved with average class sizes of 24 at the elementary level and 28 at the secondary level. In Vermont smaller-than-typical class size is the  outcome of many deliberate decisions, not just the result of small school size. 

• VT has one of the highest-in-the-nation per pupil spending with a higher than average number of classroom teachers. 

• VT school districts typically employ more paraprofessionals per student than schools across the nation.

 The report gives some ideas where cost savings can be achieved, including changing the budgeting process to be more in line with the rest of the country, as well as by reducing the high numbers of SUs.

In addition to the activities of the past week, the result of the November elections need to be considered moving forward.

How much funding will VT receive from the federal government as this administration has promised to cut costs? If Project 2025 is any indication, there could be a complete overhaul of the federal Department of Education, including the dismantling of programs the state relies on.  

Secondly, there have been significant changes in the VT legislature, with Democrats losing key seats and the numbers to override the Governor’s vetoes. Since education accounts for close to 70% of property taxes, the legislature will hit the ground running in January to begin making changes. 'A de facto emergency': Senate Democrats pledge new focus on property tax relief

At the upcoming GMUSD board meeting on Nov. 21 [6-8 pm at GMUHS Library], Millington plans to hand out his proposal for restructuring schools. The board will only have had 12 hours to look at his proposal before the meeting. Even though this is a public document, Millington is choosing not to release it to the public until the meeting.

It would appear that Millington could be putting forth a proposal of a potentially $100 million solution that is not in accordance with the recently released AOE report, let alone one that these towns couldn’t even begin to fund.

It is unlikely that one of the options in the restructuring proposal will be dissolving the TRSU, yet it may be one that offers the most benefit and should be given serious consideration by the board. In fact, it’s likely that new legislation will be passed in the upcoming session that makes the process of merging SUs in 2025 considerably easier than it is today.  

However, and whenever the GMUSD board votes on the restructuring issue, they need to consider the AOE report in their decision making, along with recognizing that significant changes are in the offing on both the state and federal level.