News Analysis: Transforming Vermont’s education system, again As House bill 955 enters the final stretch, here's what's coming at us

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

As this article is being written, H. 955 is still just a bill. Before it can begin “transforming Vermont’s education system,” it must be checked and double checked for typos and other errors before being sent on to Gov. Phil Scott.

His staff will also give it a once-over before Scott is expected to sign it. Then it will become an act, just like Act 46 or Act 73 or Act 173, all of which were also designed to address problems with Vermont’s education system while reducing costs. And yet, that system is apparently still in need of more transformation.

There’s a lot packed into the bill including:

• The creation of seven regional Cooperative Education Service Areas (add CESA to your list of education acronyms) to help provide services like purchasing and special education more cost effectively. Locally, Two Rivers Supervisory Union will be a member of the Vermont Learning Collaborative – the first CESA in Vermont – along with seven other supervisory unions.
• A requirement that school districts in those seven areas participate “in good faith” in committees to study the advisability of merging  into unified union school districts with student populations of at least 2,000.
• A moratorium on withdrawal from a union school district through 2035. Separating from the Green Mountain District has been a hot topic in Cavendish but that appears to be foiled by the bill.
• Establishing regional assessment districts to reappraise properties every six years and move assessment appeals from local entities like a Board of Civil Authority to the regional district. While this was not in the original bill, it makes up about one-quarter of the bill that passed the Vermont House and Senate. The districts will be laid out by the Tax Department and submitted to the Legislature in December 2029 and the districts are set to be established in 2031.
• Revive the State Aid for School Construction Program, which is intended to help with school construction projects that align with the push toward mergers. The bill creates a $900,000 fund for FY 2027 to give out master planning grants for education facilities as part of the merger committee process. While it appears to be an incentive to merge, there are enough qualifiers to give subsequent Legislative sessions wiggle room and give districts pause regarding the state’s follow through in coming up with funding. After all, Act 73 gave the AOE the task of implementing the program in 2025 but then the legislature suspended the program.

Have we been here before?

Starting in the fall of 2015, The Telegraph wrote more than 40 stories on the machinations around school consolidation through Act 46. That legislation was intended to find efficiencies and cost savings while increasing educational opportunities by creating larger districts that could achieve economies of scale.

And while that legislation did reduce the number of school districts, it did not reduce costs or greatly increase the number of academic offerings to students. In a January 2020 op-ed piece, David Sharpe, who was House Education Committee chair when Act 46 passed, went as far as asking if we were “hoodwinked” into allowing a “power grab” by school administrators.

A repeated complaint about the Act 46 process was that there were no fiscal analyses of the options considered to see if they would produce savings that could add opportunities for students. These might include more Advanced Placement courses, more vocational options and world languages starting in elementary grades.

That criticism may have been heard because the text of the bill includes a requirement for: “analysis of how the final recommendation will enable the merger committee member school districts to, under the foundation formula, maximize operational efficiencies, promote transparency and accountability, and encourage and support local decisions and actions that provide equal opportunities for an excellent education, all at a cost that parents, voters, and taxpayers value”

Merger groupings ‘guidance’ from the Legislature

While it’s up to the facilitators working in each of the seven CESAs to round up the school districts and sit them down to talk about merging, the Legislature put its thumb on the scale by saying that the facilitators “shall use” its grouping of districts in forming merger committees. There are 18 groups in the state. In our area those groupings look like this:

Group Three: Mettawee School District, Stratton School District, Taconic and Green Regional School District, Wells Spring Unified Union School District and Winhall School District.

Group Six: Athens Grafton School District, Bellows Falls Union High School District, Marlboro School District, River Valleys Unified School District, Rockingham School District, West River Modified Union Education District, Westminster School District, and Windham School District.

Group Seven: Green Mountain Unified School District, Ludlow-Mount Holly Unified Union School District, and Springfield School District.

Group Eight: Hartford School District, Hartland School District, Mount Ascutney School District, Mountain Views School District, Pittsfield School District, and Weathersfield School District.

It will be interesting to see how these work out and whether there’s much flexibility in the assignments since some – especially Group Six – span large geographic areas and break up supervisory unions. And the timetable to pull these merger proposals together allows just over a year before they must submit a final report to the AOE and State Board of Education.

While some of the assigned groups may not work out, individual districts can initiate mergers with other contiguous districts for approval by the Legislature. There are also allowances for schools that are small or sparse “by necessity.” Small is defined as fewer than 12 students per class while sparse has to do with areas that have very low population density. “By necessity” means that going to another school would involve long travel times, that closer schools don’t have the capacity to take additional students or that closing the school would be an undue financial hardship for taxpayers in that district.

Timing and Deadlines

Transition to CESAs

Within 30 days of passage, supervisory union boards in each region have to appoint someone to serve on the board of that region’s CESA. Within 45 days each CESA board must schedule its first meeting

Merger Committees

By Sept. 1, 2026: The Vermont Learning Collaborative will hire or contract with seven facilitators (one for each region) who will organize merger committees.

By Sept 15, 2026: Each school district board must appoint a member to serve on the committee to which that district will be assigned.

By Oct. 15, 2026: The facilitator for each region will assign districts to merger committees with certain criteria, including a student population of at least 2,000, and each committee shall have its first meeting.

By Sept. 1, 2027: Each merger committee must send its final report and, if applicable, proposed articles of agreement for merger.

By Dec. 15, 2027: The State Board of Education will issue its findings on proposed mergers.

On March 7, 2028: Voters in each school district that is part of a proposed merger will vote whether to form the new unified union district.

The Telegraph will be following the process in our area and welcomes your questions, thoughts, letters and comments.