MANCHESTER — Wait and see.
That seems to be the primary sentiment among local educational leaders when it comes to Act 73, the education overhaul statute signed into law by Gov. Phil Scott on July 1. The legislation is a transformative pivot intended to bring efficiencies to the operations of the state’s schools and improve educational outcomes.
But at this point, it’s hard to know what the impact of Act 73 is going to be with so many unknowns, said Dr. Randi Lowe, the school superintendent of the Bennington Rutland Supervisory Union (BRSU). The BRSU oversees three local school districts across 12 communities and operates six elementary and middle schools.
“I’m behind the premise of the reform,” she said. “Whether this bill realizes and addresses all these things, I’m not sure.”
If it unfolds as planned, the legislation will drastically reshape how the state’s pre-K through 12th grade schools are governed and financed. The stage will be set for a sweeping overhaul that will play out more visibly over the next 3-4 years.
Different parts of the overhaul will be phased-in over several years. The first up will be class size minimums, which are scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2026. As enacted, the minimums would be 10 students for first grade,12 students per grade between second and fifth grade, 15 students per grade between grades six-eight and 18 students per grade from ninth through 12. Multi-age classrooms for kindergarten through eight grade could only have two grades per classroom.
Statewide, voters sent a message during the elections of 2024 that a painful uptick in property tax rates to fund education was unsustainable. Beginning with a controversial proposal from the governor that drastic change was needed, legislators, after much wrangling and debate, settled on a bill which became Act 73, one destined, in all likelihood, to be grouped in with previous education legislation such as Act 60 (1997), Act 68 (2003), and Act 46 (2015), as landmark statutes which herald in a new era.
Start with the money, or how it will be raised. Currently, voters in local school districts approve a proposed school budget, usually on the first try but not always. In 2024, nearly one-third of all school budgets were initially rejected and had to be re-voted. These budgets then go to the state, which then must distribute the funds to pay for them. Simply because a school district opts for frugality doesn’t necessarily mean a low tax rate will follow. A complex funding formula intended to produce a level playing field makes for a broad range of tax rates.
Under Act 73, the state will control most school spending, through a system known as the Foundation Formula, which will allocate a set amount of money per pupil for each district, with accommodations, or “weights,” added in to help finance students with special needs. That base amount right now is set at $15,033, but could well be revised as further information becomes available. There will be one statewide tax rate, across three categories – homestead, non-homestead, and a new one, non-homestead residential, intended to capture revenue from short-term rental housing and second homes. Communities could also opt to add in more spending, but that would be capped at 5 percent.
But the Foundation Formula won’t be coming into effect until July 1, 2028, and will be contingent, as is everything else, on the successful completion and adoption of the new statewide school district map. That will be the job of a new 11 member task force, consisting of six legislators and five non-legislative members. The task force is slated to dissolve by June 30, 2026.
They are charged with creating three options and those are due by December 1, 2025. Instead of 52 supervisory unions managing 119 school districts, there will be drastically fewer – perhaps a dozen or so.
Settling on one of the three possible maps could potentially be a drawn out process. Lawmakers will weigh in on them when the next legislative session begins next January. The new districts must have at least 4,000 students each but not more than 8,000. Developing the new district maps to maintain historical and geographical relationships while meeting student count minimums and maximums is likely to prove challenging and politically fraught, and in an election year, no less.
And if an overall statewide map isn’t adopted, the Foundation Formula goes on hold.
Locally, for example, the Bennington Rutland Supervisory Union (BRSU) is the second largest Vermont supervisory union with a total area of approximately 460 square miles, according to its website. The total combined enrollment of all students in the BRSU districts is approximately 2,200 students — 1,100 students in BRSU operating schools and 1,100 school choice students. That’s a little more than half of the minimum number of students one of the new school districts will need to have.
Bennington County State Senator Seth Bongartz, who chaired the Senate Education Committee, played a central role in the development of the legislation that became Act 73.
Shrinking the number of supervisory unions and school districts will be good if it leads to efficiencies and cost savings, but that process will need to happen in a way that doesn’t result in a “one size fits all” outcome. The needs of rural communities and schools in particular will need to be attended to, he said.
“I think the potential is there for this to be good for Vermont, but we have to make sure,” he said. “The way these maps get put together is going to be the ball game.”
This coming year will be critical, he added.
“My fear is the way we put the bill together in my committee it would have let that process unfold organically at the supervisory union and district level,” he said. “The way the bill ended up, it was a little too top-heavy,” referring to aspects like the minimum class sizes.
And then there is the independent school factor, a major element in the educational landscape in Bennington County. The BRSU does not operate its own public high school, and the majority of its students attend independent schools such as Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester and Long Trail School in Dorset for grades 9-12. Several other independent schools, such as Maple Street School in Manchester, Long Trail School in Dorset and the Village School in North Bennington educate significant numbers of students at the elementary and middle school levels. Should public dollars continue to follow students to independent schools? The issue had not been a hot button one in Vermont in recent years, at least not before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 in the Carson v. Makin case, which held that a law in Maine was unconstitutional because it violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by excluding religious private schools from public funding while allowing funds to go to non-religious private schools.
This question of whether public tax dollars should continue to be paid to independent schools as vouchers resurfaced in the discussions over Act 73. Statewide, about 9,680 students attended K-12 independent schools in Vermont during the 2022-23 school year, according to the Vermont Agency of Education, less than 11 percent of the entire school population.
Act 73 establishes new criteria for independent schools receiving public funds. Now, the school must be located in Vermont, must be located in a supervisory district that does not operate a public school for some grades, at least 25 percent of the school’s enrollment must have been publicly funded students during the 2023-24 school year, the school must be in compliance with the class size minimums established under the Act 73 statute, and the school must have been previously approved to receive publicly funded tuition. These criteria went into effect on July 1, 2025, but they will not impact students already receiving publicly funded tuition, according to the Agency of Education.
Area schools deemed eligible to receive public funding include Maple Street School, Stratton Mountain School, Southshire Community School, Burr & Burton Academy, Mountain School at Winhall, Long Trail School and the Village School of North Bennington. Eighteen independent schools all together have made the cut so far.
But there will be a difference, once the new districts are in place by the 2028-29 school year, assuming they are indeed in place. The tuition the schools receive will be the same as whatever the Foundation Formula turns out to be. That will be the equivalent of what public schools receive, a departure from independent schools setting their own tuition rates. At this point, in many cases, if the $15,033 per student amount, plus the weighted factors, remains in place, that will be less than what many of the independent schools charge for tuition. They will need to find more revenue from other sources if they plan to continue operating in the same way.
So while nothing changes immediately, and won’t until the new district lines are drawn up, local independent school heads of school are paying close attention.
The way the state governed and financed education broadly speaking required some kind of overhaul, they agreed.
“Anytime our local school budgets go up 4-5 percent and out local taxes go up 15 percent, you know something’s wrong, “ said Mark Tashjian, the headmaster of Burr & Burton Academy. “The economics aren’t working.”
But limiting their ability to charge an appropriate tuition rate is problematic, he added.
“Under the foundation formula, the danger is we don’t receive adequate funds in which case we have no recourse but to change what we’re doing. Our independent governance has been in no small part the reason why we’re able to fund all of our capital investments and improvements through private philanthropy,” he said.
Tashjian said he was hopeful that the relationships between public and independent schools could be preserved “where it is really working.” And it is working well here, he added.
Tim Newbold is the head of school at the Village School of North Bennington, an independent PreK- 6th grade school. He is also the president of the Vermont Independent School Association.
As it stands now, the provisions of the legislation won’t have a dramatic impact on the Village School this coming academic year, but “it depends on how they implement it and how it’s going to work out, but I’m looking on the horizon on how that’s going to be implemented,” he said.
The redistricting and mapping will be very significant in determining how the independent school model goes forward, he said.
“It changes the model — we come up with a tuition that we feel is reasonable and we work with the district, it’s voted on by our community and it’s been passing for years now,” he said. “But we’re not going to be able to do that under local control, it’s going to be this Foundation Formula.”
Newbold also noted the changing role of schools from what they used to be in the past.
“The other piece that is not always factored in here is how much more schools are being asked to do,” he said. “We are human service organizations, now just educational organizations now. We’re the bridge between a lot of families and social services and things like that and that takes time and effort and the kids starting school are coming in with more challenges, sometimes academically, sometimes behaviorally, and meeting those needs — I want to see how we can do all of those things better. I would love to look at this with optimism and whatever’s going to come out the other side is going to be better than what exists right now. If that’s the case I’ll be all for it but I’m not sure that’s going to be the case.”
The Long Trail School in Dorset is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. With one of its highest enrollment levels ever, Head of School Colin Igoe said that while the Foundation Formula may be a step in the right direction to resolve some of the state’s educational financing issues, there were concerns.
“What I worry about in the governance is that as a rural state it is important that all of Vermont is represented in the governance conversation, and we are a good example of that here in southwestern Vermont,” he said. “Our ecosystem of of public schools and independent schools really does produce some excellent educational outcomes, and we should be proud of that and as they tackle things statewide, the folks around the table dealing with governance and mapping really need to be sensitive to and appreciate the fact that our model is working well, even if it is different from other parts of the state and the reason it’s different is that we are a rural place where independent schools have stepped up to fill gaps that public schools didn’t fill because of our population.”
While Long Trail School meets the state’s criteria for public monies, others won’t, and that presents some “massive implications,” he said.
And it was a myth that independent schools are basically elitist institutions that were only for kids whose parents could afford to pay, he said.
“We are serving the public and serving it well,” he said.
Maple Street School’s Head of School Dan Skoglund agreed that educational reform, particularly around financing, needed to happen, but wasn’t sure the new statute brought the state towards that goal.
“From our standpoint, we want to have a seat at the table and absorb whatever changes that will be better for the state,” he said.
“One thing that would really help is providing more certainty for educators,” he said. “When you can provide a road map and say ‘this is where we are headed,’ people can react to that. It seems like every year, there’s a new policy machined there’s drastic reform we’re reacting to and as a head of school that’s a hard place to be.”
While there will be no immediate significant change to Maple Street School as result of this legislation, Skoglund said that he is keeping his eye on the class size minimums and the percentage of sending town students.
“If they keep it like that for the next 5-7 years, we can manage the school,” he said.
One thing seems clear at this point – area schools will have to figure out how to educate students with less money than at present, said Dr. Randi Lowe, the superintendent of the BRSU.
The combination of less state and local money with less federal dollars means “we will be feeling it for sure,” she said.
“It will require operational change from my perspective,” she said. “If we want to continue to provide the best education for our kids we’re going to have to be (statewide) more efficient,” she said. “Being more efficient means closing small schools and consolidating. Too few students means you don’t have full-time personnel there.”
The BRSU has been looking at this issue for some time and has proposals on the table that would close two of their schools, one in Danby and one in Sunderland. A school board meeting of the Taconic & Green Regional School District, one of the three that make up the BRSU, has been set for 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 2 at the Currier Memorial School in Danby, will explore that option further.
Maintaining high standards of education while cutting the costs — and not losing touch with Vermont’s tradition of local control – will be a tough nut to crack, State Senator Seth Bongartz said.
“I am concerned and paying close attention,” he said. “We need to have a system that in the end is better across the board, that improves opportunities for our kids going to public schools and fits the independent schools into the system.”