Op-ed: The operating system behind Vermont’s educational decline

By Kendra Rickerby

Six months ago, the Vermont Agency of Education released guidance encouraging schools to use artificial intelligence to improve teaching and learning while preserving the human relationships that define education.

Last week, in a WCAX article on July 16, it was announced that the U.S. Department of Education has identified Vermont as “needing improvement” in supporting students with disabilities. This article also noted that “the last time Vermont met the federal requirements was 2018.”

At a glance, these two developments may appear unrelated; together they raise an important question: are we investing enough attention in improving how education is governed? 2018 also marked the first wave of forced school mergers under Act 46, with some communities having to permanently close their public schools two years later during Covid’s extended school shutdown in 2020.

Vermont has spent nearly a decade reorganizing school governance through successive legislative initiatives, beginning with Act 46 (2015) and continuing through Act 73 (2025). Each promised structural improvement and cost efficiencies. During this same decade, the state’s special education performance deteriorated, educational spending continued to increase, and policymakers returned once again to debates over district organization rather than the effectiveness of governance itself.

To date, public discussion has focused almost entirely on AI in classrooms. Far less attention has been paid to AI’s potential to transform educational governance. AI deserves to be considered not only as classroom technology, but also as a governance technology. Governance is more than legislation or school board meetings. It is the system through which information is gathered, priorities are established, decisions are made, and institutions are held accountable. Viewed through this lens, AI is not simply another educational technology. It is an opportunity to modernize the operating system of educational governance.

Vermont has failed to meet federal special education requirements since 2018 while the number of students attending Vermont schools dwindles and the cost of operating our schools remains unsustainable. Those realities warrant more than another conversation about compliance. They warrant a thorough examination of whether Vermont’s educational governance model is equipped to meet today’s challenges.

The legislature spent much of the 2026 legislative session debating mandatory versus voluntary consolidation without reaching a resolution before adjournment, leaving school administrators and volunteer school board members to plan for another year without clear direction. Vermont has spent years talking about reforming schools when it is governance itself that must evolve.

Now that the U.S. Department of Education has told Vermont that it “needs intervention” in special education, it is time to examine underlying causes through a broader governance lens. A decade ago, Act 46 promised that consolidating school districts would improve efficiency and reduce costs. The fact is these goals have not yet been achieved. Educational spending continues to increase while the cost of living grows further out of step with Vermont’s economic opportunities. Rather than expecting schools alone to improve outcomes, we need to ask and answer whether Vermont’s governance model is helping or hindering their ability to do so.

Vermont’s educators and school-based leaders have demonstrated extraordinary resilience through consolidation, pandemic disruption, declining enrollment, fiscal pressures, and excessive waves of top-down reform. Before instructional strategies can be expected to solve yet another problem created elsewhere in the system, perhaps it is time for governance to become the object of improvement.

If Vermont wants to reverse its current trajectory, the first step is not another round of school improvement. It is modernizing the operating system behind educational governance and school accountability.

Artificial intelligence has received considerable attention as a classroom technology. Its even greater potential may lie in helping school boards, policymakers, and educational leaders synthesize complex information, evaluate alternatives, and make more transparent decisions. Strengthening governance in this way would not only improve Vermont’s ability to meet its federal obligations but also increase public confidence that educational policy is being guided by evidence, transparency, and thoughtful human judgment.

Kendra Rickerby, Ph.D., a resident of Proctorsville, is an independent education consultant whose work focuses on educational leadership, governance, and the strategic application of artificial intelligence across education and the public sector. She earned a doctorate in Educational Leadership from Lesley University and a Certificate in Education Finance from Georgetown University’s Economics Lab. She has been head of school at both the Expeditionary School at Black River in Ludlow  and the Compass School in Bellows Falls.