Category: Uncategorized

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.

April 11, 2025

Cheryl Charles 

RSCA Steering Committee Chair

802-376-8093 cherylcharles01@gmail.com

The Rural School Community Alliance appreciates the effort lawmakers have made in recent weeks to respond to the many concerns raised by Vermonters about proposed changes to our public education system. Unfortunately, despite some improvements, H. 454 falls short of addressing the most critical issues facing our rural communities, and it remains deeply concerning in its implications for educational equity, local democracy and the well-being of our children.

H. 454 proposes a dramatic shift away from Vermont’s functioning system of local democratic engagement in school governance. It moves toward centralizing decision-making into fewer school boards with reduced local representation, which would separate communities from decisions that directly impact their children and their schools. 

Many school districts in Vermont currently have merger agreements that give towns a say in decisions about school closures. These provisions are essential. When a school faces closure, it is the local community—families, students, and taxpayers—who are most affected. They deserve a voice to ensure that children’s needs are considered, including reasonable bus rides for young learners, thoughtful planning for the reuse of school buildings, and manageable financial impacts for the town. H454 eliminates closure articles of agreement in the formation of the new larger districts. and does not establish a clear process for school closures, creating uncertainty for rural communities. 

The combination of larger districts, less representation, goals for minimum class and district size without the protection of a vote of the town impacted, will drive rural school closures statewide.

 H454 does not acknowledge the well-documented negative impacts of school closures on children. National research consistently shows that closing community schools’ harms students: disrupts social connections, increases mental health challenges, lowers academic performance in the short term, and reduces family and community engagement.

Similarly, the bill ignores the consequences for rural communities in Vermont, a state that is predominantly rural. School closures lead to population decline, reduced property values, loss of social capital, and difficulties attracting and retaining families. These are not abstract concerns—they are lived realities in towns where schools have already closed.

Vermonters asked for tax relief—not the dismantling of a public education system that generations have worked to build, centered around strong, local community schools. We believe there is a path forward to address education funding in Vermont, and we urge lawmakers to focus on funding reform. Governance reform must be thoughtful, inclusive, and grounded in a commitment to educational equity and community voice. Our children and communities deserve nothing less.