By Corey McDonald/VTDigger
Two members of the Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont, including the commission’s chair, announced last week they would be resigning, saying they no longer believed their efforts would make any impact.
Meagan Roy, the chair of the commission, and Nicole Mace, the former representative of the Vermont School Boards Association, both announced they would be leaving the commission in June 19 emails to fellow commissioners viewed by VTDigger.
Both members said the commission’s refined role, as laid out in the landmark education reform bill approved by the Legislature last week, H.454, does not give the commission the power to inform or influence the state’s efforts to reform public education policy.
“Even with the revised charge of the Commission, I cannot in good faith dedicate my professional time and energy to a body that I can’t be certain will be legitimately part of the work moving forward,” Roy wrote.
Likewise, Mace, who serves as the vice chair of the Winooski School District Board of Trustees, wrote in her email that the commission was “never fully embraced” by policymakers since its creation during the 2024 legislative session.
“I supported the basic framework for education reform that was built in the House-passed version of H.454,” she wrote. “But what has transpired since then has revealed this process of reform will go down the same path as many failed reform efforts of the past — carve-outs for powerful interests, last-minute deals based on political expediency and not what what’s best for the system, and a disregard for the educators who show up every day and do extraordinary work on behalf of the children of our state.”
Mace added that she “cannot continue to participate in a process that sacrifices equity and accountability in favor of power, privilege, and political games.”
Roy said in a phone interview that independent schools were the only group lawmakers prioritized and protected when they crafted the bill.
“What we’ve witnessed is a process that’s become very political and driven in that way, not driven by good education policy,” she said.
The resignations come as Gov. Phil Scott waits for legislative lawyers to finalize the language in the education reform bill, which he is expected to sign. The bill calls for a radical transformation of Vermont’s public education system over several years by consolidating the state’s 119 school districts and creating a new education funding formula.
The Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont was first created as part of 2024’s Act 183, the law that set the double-digit average property tax increases needed that year to keep pace with ballooning public education costs.
The law established the 13-member body, composed of lawmakers and education officials, and tasked it with studying Vermont’s public education system and making recommendations to reduce costs while ensuring equal educational opportunities for all students. The commission must create a final report due this past December.
But the commission, Roy wrote in her resignation letter, was “undercut” in January when Scott released his own sweeping proposal calling for the consolidation of Vermont’s 119 school districts down to as few as five regional administrative districts.
From then on, the commission lacked buy-in from all sides of the political spectrum, and members were uncertain of the point of the commission, according to commission members.
In H.454, lawmakers gave the commission room to “work closely” with the state’s School District Redistricting Task Force, which is expected to begin meeting in August to craft new school district configurations, according to the bill.
The task force is expected to utilize the commission’s public engagement efforts “to maximize public input regarding the development of the proposed new school district boundaries,” the bill states.
The bill also tasked the commission with making recommendations to the Legislature about what roles and powers should remain at the local school district level versus what should move to the state level. The commission, the bill reads, should also recommend “a process for a community served by a school to have a voice in decisions regarding school closures and recommendations for what that process should entail.”
In an interview, Roy said these remain critical questions to answer, but “we don’t have evidence to suggest that the General Assembly actually wants our opinion.”
`It was not immediately clear who would replace Roy and Mace, or serve as the chair. Their positions on the commission are listed as vacant on an agenda for a future meeting.
Roy in her resignation letter said she will be “focusing my professional energies on supporting school districts and school leaders as they navigate the uncertainty to come.”
