Senate Education Committee urged to sustain Vermont community schools after federal grants

Jessica Carrolls, division director of student pathways at the Agency of Education, and Bernice Gurnett, faculty in the College of Education and Social Services at the University of Vermont, told the Senate Education Committee on April 15 that Vermont's community schools program has shown local results but needs predictable state support to remain viable.

Carrolls said the state has "invested $1,000,000 of state education costs" this year to extend and develop community schools and to support coordinators who link schools with community services. She and Gurnett described Act 67 (the Community Schools Act, passed February 2021), the initial ARPA/ESSER grant awards and a pilot cohort of community schools that together have formed a community of practice across the state.

The witnesses told senators the program began with a three-year ARPA/ESSER grant and six applications in 2021, with five awards made that year. Carrolls said the Agency of Education later added a $1 million annual state appropriation to continue grants and new development. That funding, she said, covers a range of supports, with personnel costs for community school coordinators representing the largest recurring expense.

Gurnett said three of the five original awardees were able to incorporate a community school coordinator into their local education budgets after three years. "Three of the five awardees were able to build it into their local education budget after 3 years," she said, noting that coordinator positions are central to sustaining connections among schools, families and community partners.

Committee members questioned sustainability and scale. Senators asked whether the program has been operating on roughly $1 million a year and whether that amount is sufficient to support the model statewide. Carrolls replied that annual state funding supplemented the ARPA/ESSER grants and that typical local awards ranged from about $200,000 to $225,000 a year per SU awardee. She said the agency's tally showed 11 supervisory unions (SUs) participating in the program, representing 74 schools and an explicitly counted community-school student population of 7,743 out of 287 schools statewide.

Witnesses also addressed evidence and return on investment. Carrolls and Gurnett cited national ROI estimates for community-school investments (for example, $7.11 returned per $1 spent in one outside analysis) and described work with Apex Consulting to apply a ROI tool in Vermont. Gurnett said the University of Vermont secured roughly $2,200,000 in additional federal grants through a research-practice partnership to support implementation and data collection on the ground.

Senators raised questions about measurement and comparability across diverse districts. Carrolls acknowledged that statewide data systems do not currently track the program's student-level outcomes across all sites and said the next phase requires data-sharing agreements protected under FERPA, MOUs and research protocols to enable cohort-level analysis.

A community school coordinator who spoke during the meeting described being hired locally and coordinating across schools in a district. She summarized the coordinator role as liaising with partners, expanding learning opportunities and connecting students to health and social services.

Carrolls and Gurnett framed community schools as an integration of existing initiatives rather than a replacement: the model seeks to braid federal, state, local and philanthropic resources and align with existing education rules, multi-tiered systems of support, flexible pathways and other state priorities. They urged lawmakers to consider stable, predictable appropriations or multi-year grants rather than one-time funding to avoid program interruption and initiative fatigue on the ground.

Committee members did not take a formal vote on funding during the session. Carrolls offered to provide additional materials and data to the committee and said the Agency and UVM would continue the research-practice partnership to refine Vermont-specific metrics.

Carrolls concluded by asking the committee to consider the program's evidence of effects on absenteeism, disciplinary referrals and targeted supports for historically marginalized students, and urged that a modest, predictable investment could preserve the gains made during the grant period.