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Campaign for Vermont proposes 15 ESAs built around CTEs, projects roughly $300M in annual savings
Summary
Campaign for Vermont urged the Senate Education Committee to replace 52 supervisory unions with 15 education service agencies (ESAs) aligned to career‑tech regions, arguing ESAs could centralize business and special‑education services and yield roughly $291M–$350M in annual savings (model dependent). The group emphasized pairing governance change with a foundation funding formula and warned of salary "level up" risks from district mergers.
Ben Kinsley, executive director of Campaign for Vermont, told the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 6 that his group's updated 2024 analysis found "no statistically significant relationship between size of the school district and cost per student" at the district level but a stronger relationship at the supervisory‑union (SU) level. Using Agency of Education (AOE) FY23 data, Kinsley said the team’s regression work attributes about 16% of spending variation to SU size versus roughly 4% at the district level.
Kinsley recommended replacing the state's 52 supervisory unions with 15 ESAs roughly mapped to existing career and technical education (CTE) center regions. He said ESAs could consolidate administrative and financial services—payroll, benefits administration, special‑education coordination and contracted services—while preserving local district boards for school‑level decisions. "We actually, worked on a…
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