Press Releases
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: MARGARET MACLEAN margmaclean@netscape.net 802-274-3080
RSCA Statement on H.955 Transforming Vermont’s Education System
June 2, 2026. The Rural School Community Alliance (RSCA) commends the Vermont legislature’s bipartisan support for local democracy and voluntary school district mergers with its passage of H.955. The RSCA has advocated for this result for the past 18 months: no forced mergers, and let the people decide by a vote of the electorate whether or not to merge into larger school districts. H.955 is a dramatically different result than was initially proposed. The legislature, and the Governor, ultimately listened to the thousands of voices of rural Vermonters who provided Vermont-specific evidence that forced mergers would not save taxpayers’ money, would undermine the vitality of Vermont’s rural towns, and would do a disservice to Vermont’s school-aged children.
While the RSCA supports the intent of H.955, serious concerns remain. For example, the requirement for every school district in the state to participate in merger committees will be time-consuming. It is essential that skilled and neutral facilitators be hired to assist in the study process. Further, the merger committees are to be established concurrent with establishing cooperative educational service areas (CESAs) throughout the state. It is those CESAs that can immediately produce cost-savings, and yet there is significant risk that their effectiveness will be delayed while the study process takes place.
Despite strong evidence to the contrary, there is still an underlying assumption that larger school districts will bring both financial and educational benefits. There are checkpoints along the way in the implementation of the law whereby the legislature may make adjustments, particularly if the intended cost savings and improved opportunities for Vermont’s school children and youth are not achieved.
The RSCA will continue to stay actively engaged in the implementation of this law. RSCA’s focus will be on Vermont-specific evidence that these changes actually provide quality education for students and cost effectiveness for taxpayers while maintaining and enhancing the vitality of Vermont’s rural public schools and the communities that support them.
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About the Vermont Rural School Community Alliance
The Vermont Rural School Community Alliance is a coalition of educators, parents, and community members dedicated to advocating for equitable, high-quality public education in Vermont. School boards, select boards, and other groups in more than 100 Vermont towns and villages have joined the Alliance. The RSCA’s work is informed by direct experience in Vermont schools and leading research in rural education. www.vtruralschools.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: CHERYL CHARLES cherylcharles01@gmail.com 802 376 8093
RSCA Statement on H.454 (Act 73) Redistricting Task Force
July 10, 2025. The Rural School Community Alliance (RSCA) is cautiously hopeful with the news of appointments of members to the Redistricting Task Force established under H.454 (now designated Act 73). The Alliance has expressed concerns about the necessity of authentically representing the state’s rural communities throughout the process of the legislation’s development.
According to the RSCA Steering Committee, “Among the appointees to the new task force are experienced and highly-qualified educators as well as legislators with direct leadership experience serving Vermont’s rural communities. While not all appointees have these qualifications, we believe inclusion of these appointees indicates acknowledgement of the need to represent and serve all of Vermont’s children, communities, and taxpayers throughout the state.”
Some of the appointees have seen and understand the benefits of place-based, high-quality community schools that exist within the collaborative supervisory union governance model that works effectively in Vermont’s rural areas. Supervisory unions are an essential part of any redistricting model in order to maintain democratically-representative rural schools in Vermont. The alternative is merged school districts that dissolve local school boards, de- stabilize local economies by closing community-based schools, and require busing of students over long distances to schools in the new merged districts, sometimes for many hours a day. Such outcomes would be inequitable, unfair, and unlikely to produce either cost savings or improved education.
The Redistricting Task Force is scheduled to deliver a report to the Vermont legislature by no later than December 1, 2025. The RSCA will continue to advocate for Vermont-specific evidence as an essential requirement to inform, support and provide justification for Task Force recommendations. There must be Vermont-based and relevant data to demonstrate that cost savings will be achieved and educational quality will be improved in equitable and practical ways if their recommendations are to be implemented.
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About the Vermont Rural School Community Alliance
The Vermont Rural School Community Alliance is a coalition of educators, parents, and community members dedicated to advocating for equitable, high-quality public education in Vermont. School boards, select boards, parents and other groups in 100 Vermont towns have joined the Alliance. The RSCA’s work is informed by direct experience in Vermont schools and leading research in rural education.