I was recently elected to the Harwood Unified Union School District board, and at our most recent meeting, the question of advocacy came up: what role should a school board play when Montpelier gets it wrong? For me, the answer is simple: we have to stand up for Vermont’s future, especially when it feels like our state leaders are quietly giving up on it.
While my primary focus is on the students and teachers in HUUSD, I want to put the current education funding crisis into its larger context. The governor has decided to use school districts as a punching bag while he protects his own political future. By injecting $118 million this year, the current "leadership" dropped a projected 5.9% hike to just 1.1%.
This follows last year’s trend, where an 18.5% projected increase was masked and lowered to 13.8%. But these buy-downs ignore the systemic issues driving costs upward – problems no single district can solve on its own.
Let me be clear: some consolidation and restructuring of Vermont's school system is necessary. With more than 50 schools serving fewer than 100 students each, Vermont has real structural inefficiencies that deserve serious attention. But the Governor’s proposed fix – collapsing 119 school districts into five – may make a good soundbite, but it won't deliver results. The School District Redistricting Task Force – appointed under Act 73, his signature legislation – spent four months reviewing the evidence and concluded it “did not find evidence that mergers of the scale contemplated in Act 73 would reliably lower costs, improve educational outcomes, or expand equity.”
The Governor commissioned a study and then trashed it minutes after it was released. Even though his own study said the plan won’t work, Gov Scott (and quite a few legislators!) have decided to ignore that, dig in and hold the budget hostage until he gets his way:
Governor Scott isn't simply ignoring the experts, he's undermining critical trust through the system. The Vermont Principals' Association has said publicly that it has "no confidence" in the Agency of Education's ability to support schools. The Vermont Superintendents Association called the administration's approach "disorganized and politicized." These aren't partisan critics. These are the people who run Vermont's schools.
At that February 18 meeting, I asked Senator Cummings (chair of the Senate Finance committee) whether she’d seen hard numbers behind the administration’s claims of $400 million in savings. Her answer: “I’ve asked for hard numbers and I haven’t gotten them yet.” She won't get them; the task force’s report is explicit: Vermont’s largest cost drivers – health care, special education, facilities, transportation – “are not solved by district size.”
On health care alone, Vermont’s education system spent $267 million in FY2023. This year’s budget: $381 million. A 43% increase in three years. The task force was direct: “Benefit structures are set through statewide bargaining, meaning district consolidation does not produce savings in this category.”
Closing schools doesn’t touch that curve. And that statewide bargaining system? It was Scott’s signature achievement. In 2018 he championed Act 11, which stripped health benefits bargaining from local control and centralized it at the state level, promising up to $75 million a year in savings. Instead, costs have increased over 120% since the law took effect — and he’s now using the crisis he created to justify dismantling the local governance he already gutted.
Here is the reality that should give any long-standing legislator or executive a healthy dose of humility: Montpelier’s current plan isn't leadership; it's managed decline. In the past two decades, Vermont's population grew by more than 20,000 people – and we lost more than 20,000 K-12 students. That's a generation of state leaders pulling up the ladder, trading young families for retirees, seasonal residents, and short-term rental investors.
As the denominator of kids shrinks, the per-pupil price tag reflects it. Vermont spends somewhere around $27,000 to $30,000 per student – among the highest in the country. Not because Vermont schools are lavishly funded, but because fixed costs don’t shrink as fast as enrollment does. When you lose 25,000 kids but still need teachers, buildings, and buses, the cost per remaining student goes up. That’s math, not mismanagement.
We need to stop calling the consolidation of empty classrooms a 'transformation.' It is a white flag. It is the state giving up on Vermont's future because they don't want to do the hard work of fixing what's actually broken.
We can't tax our way out of a demographic crisis, and we can't consolidate our way out of it either. The real work is making Vermont a place where young families can afford to stay – and where new ones want to come.
That means housing people can actually live in, not just rent for a weekend. It means a tax system that asks more of those who treat Vermont as an investment or a vacation and less of those who treat it as home. And it means a state government willing to tackle the actual cost driver instead of pretending that redrawing lines on a map will make them disappear.
I ran for the school board because I am not giving up on Vermont. I believe we can build something better.
But none of it gets fixed by a governor and a legislature who would rather consolidate the damage than reverse it. We need to be honest about what's broken and who is responsible for fixing it. For now, I'll be focused on what I can do: fighting for our students, our teachers, and our community right here in Harwood.
Phillips lives in Warren.
