School board chairs urge preservation of local control as Senate Education panel reviews redistricting map

School board officials from several Vermont regions told the Senate Education Committee that redrawing legislative districts and reshaping school governance should not come at the expense of local control, school choice and critical career-technical partnerships.

Jason Miller, board chair of the Caledonia Cooperative School District, testified that his community needs more detail before choosing between a supervisory-union model and a consolidated school district. "In contrast, the supervisory union would preserve enhanced local control across all participating communities," Miller said, and asked the committee to confirm whether the foundation formula would be applied equally under either governance model.

Ronick Darnell Martin, school board chair for the Saguay Valley School District in Franklin County, urged the committee to leave his district as a stand-alone unit. He said the district is "fiscally already quite responsible as a district" and noted that, "despite a low spending district, our student outcomes are both the best within county, consistently outperforming higher spending, neighbors." Darnell warned that placing the district in a proposed supervisory unit could sever its relationship with the Northwest Career Tech Center, a program that many of his students rely on.

Perry Bristow, board chair for the Mountain View Supervisory District, told senators the district has navigated consolidation under Act 46 and is trying to build on voluntary regional partnerships. He said the district is exploring collaborations with neighboring systems and recommended using regional education cooperatives (BOCES/CESAs) to share high-cost services while preserving local schools. "We have been in contact with neighboring towns who are interested in joining our district, yet they have no immediate mechanism to move into a different district," Bristow said, urging a transitional approach that facilitates voluntary shifts.

Officials also pressed lawmakers on school construction financing. Seth, chair of Mountain View’s rebuild committee, told the committee voters in seven towns approved an approximately $112,000,000 bond to rebuild the middle and high school and that the district has already raised about $5,000,000 locally. He asked lawmakers to remove a capital-debt penalty added in 2024 and to keep the state’s school-construction commitment from Act 73. "We need to raise the rest of that money," Seth said, arguing that the penalty on locally issued capital debt makes it harder for communities to invest in safe, energy-efficient facilities.

Committee members asked clarifying questions about high-school choice, transportation, teacher-pay shares and why some local budgets had failed. In several exchanges senators expressed sympathy for proposals to exempt certain capital spending from the excess-spending threshold and noted ongoing work on health-care costs that contribute significantly to school budgets.

The testimony underscores several recurring requests from school leaders: explicit guidance on how the foundation formula will be applied under new governance structures, protections for existing career-technical partnerships, transitional rules that enable voluntary district realignment, and statutory or budget fixes to ease penalties and pay for school construction.

The committee concluded the day having heard these concerns and said it will consider them as it moves forward with map decisions and related policy proposals.