by Steven Berbeco In June here in Vermont, the noise settles as teachers count field trips instead of fire drills and seniors drift through hallways like ghosts already halfway gone.
Meantime in Montpelier, lawmakers are still arguing about how to rebuild the entire education system.
Everyone agrees the bridge is cracking, but nobody agrees whether to reinforce it, replace it, or paint it green and form a study committee.
That disconnect sits at the center of the state’s education reform debate. While legislators battle over district consolidation, governance structures, and funding formulas, educators are stacking chairs for the summer without knowing whether their school will be closed in two years as collateral damage.
It’s clear that lawmakers are divided over Act 73 and the future of school consolidation. Some argue Vermont needs larger districts and mandatory mergers to control costs and create equity. Others warn that forced consolidation would erase local voice and hollow out rural communities.
Both sides are right about at least one thing. Vermont’s education system is financially strained. The reality of declining enrollment and climbing property taxes can’t simply be wished away with another committee report and a Statehouse ice cream social.
The people resisting rapid consolidation are not defending inefficiency for old times sake. They are defending the small-scale civic glue that keeps rural life functioning. A school in Vermont is rarely just a school. It is the gym where the town gathers after floods, the place where people vote, the winter concert, the basketball banners, the social heartbeat. That is why this debate feels less like accounting and more like identity.
And yet the clock keeps ticking toward summer. This time of the year in education is both a finish line and a starting gun. Schools move forward whether we are ready or not. New budgets arrive, new staffing shortages emerge, new challenges walk through the doors in August.
The children keep moving. Government should, too.
Steven Berbeco is editor of the 802 Ed, a biweekly newsletter about education policy and practice in Vermont. He lives in Winooski with his children.
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