Former state lawmaker: Act 73 turns its back on Vermonters

March 16, 2026  |  By John S. Freidin

These are not usual times for schools or students. Or for adults. Everyone is on edge. We’re beset by AI, social media, technology, and world crises. Our children suffer from school closures during COVID. Fifty percent of Vermont households live under financial stress. Few of us expect to be better off than our parents. The anxiousness of adults infects and distracts young people, and they carry those feelings to school, where they disrupt classrooms.  

Act 73 turns its back on all of this!

Instead, it wants to: 

• Consolidate school districts from 119 to as few as 5.

• Abolish local school boards and local voting on school budgets.

• Make the governor and legislature determine what schools can spend.

• Abolish income sensitivity (school taxes based on ability to pay), and instead base school taxes on the value of your home.  

• Merge and close schools.

• Outlaw classes that have too few pupils.

And the purpose of this agenda is to cut costs, which neither the governor nor the Legislature has estimated, and which was unsuccessfully tried by Act 46 in 2015, Act 173 of 2018, and Act 127 of 2022. Not an encouraging track record.  

The risks for public schools, communities, and taxpayers are too high, because we would have: 

• Bigger schools and busing young children farther from home.

• New spending necessitated by refitting schools to accommodate more pupils.

• State reallocation of each school district’s existing debt.

• Higher school taxes for low- and middle-income homeowners.

• Districts forced to cut spending without input from voters.

• All cuts to spending forced to come from educational services, because healthcare insurance, special education, and mental health costs (which schools cannot control) would continue to consume 33% of school budgets. 

• State control rather than local control.

• A brand-new funding system, even more complex than the one we have now.

Better ways forward

ONE  

This year, confront the budgetary crisis facing lower- and middle-income Vermonters by directing tax relief to them, not all property owners. 

TWO

(a) Have all residents pay their school taxes, based on their ability to pay.  This would reduce school taxes for most residents and be simpler, easier to understand, and fairer than the current system or Act 73. 

(b) Fund healthcare insurance, mental health services, and special education outside school budgets. 

(c) Make no other changes until these have been in place long enough to be accurately assessed.

THREE

Study the Report of the Act 73 Redistricting Task Force. Its suggestions are less destabilizing and extreme than those in Act 73. The report challenges claims that larger schools are more efficient and produce better outcomes than smaller ones. It opposes forced consolidation but recommends voluntary consolidation for some districts. It advocates collaboration among districts to save money and favors increasing community engagement, because it is critical to making change work. 

John S. Freidin lives in Middlebury. He has served on the Beeman Elementary School Board in New Haven, been director of the Teacher Education Program at Middlebury College, and founded and run a successful business, Vermont Bicycle Touring. As a Vermont state representative from 1991 to 1998, he played a major role in the development and enactment of the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1997.