House Education Committee previews statewide school-mapping tool for district planning

House Education Committee members on Feb. 28 reviewed an interactive statewide mapping tool created from datasets maintained by the Vermont Center for Geographic Information and assembled with public-data support from the Agency of Digital Services and Agency of Education.

The map lets users toggle layers showing school locations (public and independent), school district and supervisory union lines, CTE regions, regional planning commissions, population, enrollment by year, facility condition index (FCI) ranges, and PCB testing results. Annie, a presenter from the Agency of Digital Services, described the product as “a visualization tool, not a report” and emphasized that some data — especially independent-school enrollment and certain PCB/FCI fields — need refinement before being used for final policy decisions.

Committee members said the tool could inform line-drawing and budget modeling. Annie demonstrated filters that show schools by grade span (elementary, secondary, K–12), enrollment bands (for example, fewer than 100 students), and FCI buckets (0–5%, 5–10%, 10–30%, and 30%+). She noted the enrollment numbers visible in some layers come from the AOE enrollment dashboard and that the most recent enrollment year present in the demonstration was 2022, with some FY23 and FY25 figures available in district-level displays that were sent to the Joint Fiscal Office for ways-and-means modeling.

Presenters and members repeatedly cautioned about data accuracy. Annie said the Vermont Independent Schools Association had informed staff that some independent-school records were inconsistent and that PCB entries were drawn from Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) publications and might appear without full context on the map. Committee members pointed to an example where a PCB figure appeared unusually high for a single site (a value discussed in the meeting as “about 1,200”), and staff agreed the reading could reflect a localized sample (for example, a storage area) and should not be interpreted without consulting the DEC source context.

Members requested additional functionality and clarifications: a 9–12 (high-school) enrollment filter by grade band, an explicit capacity metric (staff said square footage exists in the facilities assessment but is not a precise measure of capacity), a “reset” option to clear filters, and the ability to import proposed district definitions (for example, a senator’s proposed map) by town spreadsheet and visualize them on short notice. Annie said town-level student counts (not exact addresses) and grand-list values are expected to be added and that the Center for Geographic Information can program proposed district maps if the committee supplies a town-to-proposed-district spreadsheet.

Staff also noted missing or out-of-date entries: Burlington High School and Winooski High School lacked FCI and PCB test fields in the display because of recent construction or because the school was not in service when the facilities assessment was taken. Annie and committee members agreed the map is a working product to be refined during town meeting week and afterward, and they asked that the AOE staff and facilities manager clarify FCI category definitions to display the meaning of the 0–5%, 5–10%, 10–30% and 30%+ buckets.

The session closed with committee members agreeing the map would be useful for early-stage visualization for line-drawing and budget conversations, while reiterating that users must treat it as an evolving visualization rather than a final data source.