Gov. Scott to education leaders: We must finish the job

August 28, 2026

Editor’s Note: Ahead of the start of the 2026-27 school year, Gov. Phil Scott on Aug. 19 sent the letter below to school board members and school district superintendents around the state, addressing the ongoing efforts to transform the public education system in Vermont.

Dear education leader:

For the past few years, we’ve had a lot of conversations about education — property taxes, funding formulas, district boundaries, and governance. Those things matter. But they aren’t what this conversation is really about.
At its core, education transformation is about our kids and the future of our communities. It’s about making sure every student, regardless of where they live, has access to an excellent education. It’s also about making sure taxpayers can afford to support that system for generations to come. 
Right now, we are not meeting either goal.

Structural problems require structural solutions

Vermont’s student population has been declining for decades, but the system itself has not changed accordingly and is designed for a much larger population. At the same time, property taxes and other revenue sources have risen dramatically, and will continue to rise dramatically, if nothing changes. All this is happening while educational opportunities vary widely and often depend on where a child happens to live. This is unfair and unsustainable.
If we want young Vermonters to stay and new families to build their futures here, we need world-class educational opportunities at a cost that Vermonters can afford. We should never ask families to choose between quality and affordability. We must deliver both.
That’s why, over the past two years, my Administration worked with a bipartisan coalition of Vermonters to pursue structural reform. The goal has been straightforward: Use the billions of dollars Vermont already devotes every year to education much more effectively to improve opportunities and outcomes for students while reducing the property tax burden. 
Education transformation was never going to be the easiest path. But it was, and remains, the necessary one.

What we will achieve

The bipartisan commitment to education transformation is rooted in a shared belief: Every student should have access to great teachers, challenging coursework, career and technical education, arts and music, extracurricular activities, modern facilities and the supports they need to succeed. Whether a child grows up in Burlington, Bennington, Newport, or Norton shouldn’t determine the opportunities available to them. 
That is a promise that only education transformation can deliver. 
This has never been about creating bigger districts for the sake of size or simply drawing new lines on a map. It’s about creating the scale necessary to expand opportunity, share resources, attract and retain quality educators (and pay them more fairly, and invest more of every education dollar in students.

ACT 170

Earlier this year, the Legislature adopted an approach to continuing Vermont’s education transformation that reflects compromise, as major reforms often do. Act 170 places significant responsibility on local communities to shape the next phase of transformation. I supported a different approach, but this is now Vermont’s path, and I want it to succeed. All of us have a responsibility to follow through with the provisions of this law.
Under my Administration, the Agency of Education will continue to lead on supporting educational quality, including creating tools for districts to understand the implications of proposed mergers and working with the State Board of Education to implement statewide graduation requirements. However, under the community-driven merger process in Act 170, it will be up to Merger Committees, school boards, and community members across the state to lead on creating the school districts of the future. Every one of you has a role.

Merger committees

To those serving on Merger Committees that will soon begin meeting, my message is simple: Don’t ask how to recreate the system we have today. Build a better one. Don’t begin with what each community might lose. Begin with what every student could gain. This is an opportunity to rethink how we organize schools, share services, support educators, and expand opportunities that many communities simply can’t provide on their own.
Remember that every decision you make affects not just the children in your town, but children across Vermont. The conversations won’t always be easy. They will require trust, and they will require a willingness to let go of ideas that may have made sense decades ago but no longer work as well today. We can honor our history without allowing nostalgia to determine our children’s future.

School boards

To our school boards: I know another difficult budget season lies ahead. Under our outdated system, you will be expected, yet again, to withstand declining enrollment, manage rising fixed costs, maintain a top-heavy administrative structure, and more. Preliminary projections indicate education property taxes could rise another 10% this year without action, and there will be difficult conversations in every community.
Families are already struggling with the rising costs of housing, healthcare, childcare, groceries, fuel, electricity and more.
We all know Vermonters cannot continue absorbing property tax increases of this magnitude. As you build your budgets, I encourage you to look more aggressively for opportunities to improve your classroom sizes, reduce redundancy and duplication regionally, share services, and use resources differently. 
Until we achieve structural reform, this is the reality. In the meantime, we’re counting on you to keep kids and quality at the center of every decision you make, and to be
transparent with your communities about the choices you face, the tradeoffs involved, and why you are making them.

We must finish the job

To every community across Vermont, don’t lose sight of where we’re headed or what is possible. 
Education transformation isn’t about surviving one more budget cycle. It’s about building a stronger system that gives every child more opportunities, while restoring confidence that Vermont can provide an excellent public education, at a cost taxpayers can afford.
If we simply preserve today’s structures, we’ll preserve today’s problems: rising costs,
higher property taxes, uneven opportunities, and increasingly painful decisions every year.  

The current system is not sustainable. The status quo is not stability.   

There will always be pressure to take the easier path of slowing down, delaying difficult decisions, or waiting for someone else to act. I understand the instinct. Change is hard, especially because schools have always been — and will always remain — central to our communities.
But we know from experience that delay has big costs — to kids, to taxpayers, and to the same schools we might think we’re protecting by avoiding change. Every year of delay means another year of unequal opportunities for students, another tax increase that families can’t afford, and another round of haphazard cuts to staff and programming.
For nearly a decade, I’ve been calling for the structural changes necessary to improve quality and affordability. We have already waited too long.

This is about much more than schools

Every young family deciding whether to build a life in Vermont is looking for good schools, strong communities, a great job, and a cost of living they can afford. Employers need a skilled workforce. Seniors need confidence they can remain in their homes. Communities need enough fiscal capacity to invest in roads, public safety, and other priorities. 
Getting education transformation right strengthens all of Vermont and is the single best economic development tool we have available to us.

We can do this, together

Vermont has never been afraid of hard work. And we’ve always been at our best when we focus on what we can accomplish together. 
We have a real opportunity to build the best education system in America — one that expands opportunities, strengthens communities, and respects taxpayers who make it all possible. 
But that will require us to follow through, without delay. Thank you for your service and everything you’re going to and have been doing on behalf of students and communities.

Sincerely,

Philip B. Scott

Governor