It was like, super obvious on Thursday that even senators who voted in favor of that bill were kinda iffy about the policy choices it had. The Senate Finance Committee gave a 5-2 vote to push H.454, a big education reform bill that’s been the star of this year’s legislative session. The bill wants to totally change Vermont’s education governance and finance systems over the next few years by making bigger school districts and setting up a new “foundation formula” that hands control of money to the state instead of taxpayers.
So, the bill started in the House, but the Senate Education and Finance committees spent the last month or so making a bunch of changes to it. They did stuff like switching up how new school districts would be drawn, lowering the base amount each student would get, and speeding up the timeline for this foundation formula thing. But even though getting a major bill out of a key committee is usually cause for a party, senators weren’t feeling all that jazzed about it this time.
Sen. Randy Brock (R-Franklin) was like, “Everyone involved in this bill, no matter which side they’re on, is walking away at least a little bummed out.” He said the bill was too complicated and didn’t have enough specifics in some parts. Brock wasn’t too sure about the funding numbers either. But he still voted for it because at least it gets things moving. Plus, he figured there’d be chances to change it up since a bunch of the stuff in the bill won’t kick in for years. “Doing nothing is even worse, I guess,” Brock said.
Sen. Ann Cummings (D-Washington), the finance committee chair, felt the same way. After voting yes, she said she felt pretty awful about it. Since the start of the session, lawmakers have been gabbing about how to fix Vermont’s education system to save taxpayers some cash, boost quality, and make things more efficient. But for the first six weeks, they let Gov. Phil Scott’s crew take the lead on the issue.
In January, Education Secretary Zoie Saunders tossed out a plan to shake up Vermont’s 119 school districts into just five regional ones. The state would also use a foundation formula and drop $13,200 per student as the base amount, with more cash going to students who cost more to educate. But then lawmakers were like, “Whoa, five districts is a bit much,” and decided on bigger districts instead. They still kept the foundation formula idea, though.
The House voted on H.454 last month. Their version wanted to form a committee to figure out new school district boundaries by next session, with five education peeps and four legislators on the team. The House bill also set minimum class sizes and planned to start this foundation formula thing with $15,033 per student in 2029.
The Senate version, on the flip side, wanted a redistricting committee made of only legislators to suggest at least one plan to the legislature. The panel also needed to come up with an “alternative process” to push schools towards bigger, more stable models of education if the legislature couldn’t agree on new boundaries by January 2026. The Senate ditched the class-size rules and dropped the base funding amount to $14,870 per student. They also wanted the foundation formula to start in 2027, two years earlier than the House wanted.
Before the vote, Sen. Ruth Hardy (D-Addison) bashed the bill. She said the House passed something that, while not perfect, had a lot of thought and research put into it. But then the Senate had to go and mess it up. “This bill is gonna wreck our education system,” Hardy said. “It’ll cause chaos and won’t give us the changes we need or the property tax relief Vermonters want.” Sen. Martine Gulick (D-Chittenden-Central) also voted no, calling the bill a mess that left her feeling down.
The bill’s up for a chat in the Senate Appropriations committee next before the full Senate gets a say. If the Senate gives it the thumbs up, a conference committee with three House members and three senators will try to agree on a final version.
