Vermont Education Law Act 73: What Residents Need to Know | NEK News, Local Headlines, Vermont Updates

The confusion was evident: What does Act 73 actually require? When does it take effect? What will it mean for property taxes and local schools?

Those questions aren’t unique to Danville. Across the Northeast Kingdom, small communities are trying to understand a law that could fundamentally reshape Vermont’s education system. Much about Act 73 remains unclear, and the uncertainty is forcing difficult decisions in towns that can’t afford to wait for answers.

Here’s what Act 73 does, what it might do, and what Northeast Kingdom residents need to know as the December vote approaches.

On July 1, Gov. Phil Scott signed Act 73, which aims to transform Vermont’s education system through three main mechanisms.

New school districts. The law created an 11-member task force charged with redrawing Vermont’s 119 school districts into larger regional districts. These new districts must have, “to the extent practical,” between 4,000 and 8,000 students—a massive consolidation in a state where many serve just a few hundred kids.

The task force must submit up to three different maps to the legislature by Dec. 1. If lawmakers approve one during the 2026 session, the new districts would go into operation July 1, 2028, replacing current local school boards with regional boards serving the larger districts.

Minimum class sizes. Schools must maintain minimum average class sizes starting with the 2026-27 school year: 10 students in first grade, 12 students in grades two through five, 15 students in grades six through eight, and 18 students in grades nine through 12.

Schools that fall short for three consecutive years face consequences ranging from technical assistance to state takeover to forced closure or consolidation. Schools can request waivers if they’re deemed “geographically isolated,” but the State Board of Education hasn’t yet defined what qualifies.

State-controlled funding. Act 73 creates a new funding formula that would take effect in fiscal year 2029—but only if the legislature approves new district boundaries. Instead of local voters deciding most education spending, this foundation formula would shift control to Montpelier. The state would determine base per-pupil funding, and districts could raise no more than 10 percent above that allocation with voter approval initially, phasing down to five percent over time.

The law also restricts which schools can participate in town tuitioning programs, limits public money going to private schools, and establishes working groups to handle voting wards, construction debt and other technical questions.

Here’s where things get murky. Supporters of Act 73, including House Speaker Jill Krowinski, argue it will “stabilize and lower property taxes” and “bend the cost curve.” Krowinski said when the House passed the bill that the current system is “unacceptable for our kids, teachers, and communities.”

“I know change is hard, but we must lead and create stability in our public education system,” Krowinski said. “This bill stabilizes and lowers property taxes, bends the cost curve, and creates safe, consistent, quality education for all Vermont kids for a generation.”

But the mechanics of how that would work remain unclear, particularly for rural districts. The foundation formula hasn’t been fully detailed. Nobody knows exactly how much the state would allocate per student or how that compares to what districts currently spend.

At Tuesday’s Danville meeting, former Caledonia Central Superintendent Mark Tucker highlighted one significant problem: Act 73 proposes allocating just over $15,000 per student, while tuition at area independent schools runs around $25,000. For districts that close their high schools and tuition students elsewhere, that gap could mean higher costs, not lower.

“Deciding in December 2025 to close the high school in 2026, without first knowing how we are going to fund our students’ education, is a risky move,” Tucker said. “This is just one of many uncertainties facing every community in the State of Vermont as we wait for the Legislature to finish its Act 73 work.”

The financial impact also depends heavily on which redistricting map the legislature chooses—if it chooses one at all. Different configurations would create different tax bases, different administrative structures and different cost allocations.

Campaign for Vermont, an advocacy group that tracks education policy, says the new system would shift Vermont “from a system where roughly 90 percent of spending decisions are made locally to one where 90 percent of spending is determined by the legislature,” according to the group’s analysis of the legislation.

It remains an open question whether that centralization saves taxpayers money or simply moves decisions farther from local control.

Act 73’s vision of larger, consolidated districts collides with Northeast Kingdom geography. Small schools serve scattered populations across rural terrain. Many towns operate under choice systems, sending students to a mix of public and independent schools. Winter roads and long distances define what’s actually practical.

Danville School serves about 80 high school students—66 from Danville, 15 from surrounding choice towns. The school runs pre-K through grade 12 on one campus. Whether individual class sizes meet Act 73’s student minimum for high school courses remains an open question, but the small enrollment puts the school at risk under the new standards.

The law includes a provision allowing “small by necessity” designations, but the state hasn’t defined what that means. On Tuesday night, the Danville School Board drafted a letter to the redistricting task force, pleading for clarity.

“The crux of this issue is that the idea of districting Danville with the closest high-school-operating districts to meet the class size restrictions set forth by Act 73 is completely untenable to our voters and unfair to our children,” the letter states. It asks the task force to declare Danville small by necessity and preserve local control.

Similar concerns exist across the region. Cabot is surveying residents about its small high school. In a recent opinion piece in the Valley News, the White River Valley Supervisory Union board argued that Act 73 does not save money, eliminates local voice and control by abolishing local school boards, contributes to population decline in small towns, and forces the closure of small rural schools, putting young children on buses for long periods of time.

The redistricting task force must consider geographic barriers, drive times, population distribution, district sizes and access to career and technical education when drawing maps—but is not permitted to factor in financial considerations. But what looks workable on paper in Montpelier may not reflect reality in the Northeast Kingdom.

Much of the urgency around Act 73 stems from uncertainty about school choice. Currently, when a district doesn’t operate certain grades, it must pay to “tuition” children to any state-approved public or private school. That system gives parents broad choice.

Act 73 restricts which schools can receive public tuition dollars, but it doesn’t eliminate choice entirely. However, in August, state Sen. Scott Beck warned Danville and Cabot school board leaders that future legislation might limit choice further—potentially requiring districts that close schools to designate just three public schools to receive students. That would eliminate independent schools like St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndon Institute from the approved list.

Beck, who teaches at St. Johnsbury Academy, told school boards he believed such legislation could pass in 2026. His warning pushed some communities to consider closing schools sooner rather than risk losing choice options later.

But Rep. Peter Conlon, chair of the House Education Committee, told Seven Days that trying to predict Act 73’s future is “a fool’s errand.” Once new districts form, current school board decisions could be rendered moot anyway. “Closing now and going to (school) choice could be something that’s quite temporary,” Conlon said.

It’s clear that this version of Act 73 doesn’t eliminate school choice. It’s unclear whether future legislation will.

Beck’s warnings created urgency in Danville and other small communities, though not everyone agrees the pressure is warranted.

Beck attended a Danville School Board meeting on Sept. 2, where, according to meeting minutes, he made “clarifying points on Act 73’s foundation formula.”  Soon after that meeting, the petition for the December vote on school choice emerged.

“Only two people have promoted the idea that if we don’t close this school, our kids will not be afforded choice in the future,” said Eric Hutchins. “Act 73 has been passed, and the idea that if we don’t instantly close our school, that in some future consolidation our kids won’t have access to independent schools is a falsehood.”

Beck attended Tuesday’s meeting but didn’t speak during public comment. He later defended his actions and said he contacted Cargill because he’d picked up that Danville and Cabot were having conversations about changing what grades they operate.

Beck pointed to Section 8 of a prior version of Act 73 legislation, which he said “basically takes away a town’s local control over school choice.” That provision was removed at Beck’s urging just before Gov. Scott signed the final bill.

Beck told Cargill that people in the state are trying to close off local control over school choice. He said they weren’t successful this time, but they may come back next year to try again. He believes the window for communities to preserve choice through voluntary closure may close soon, creating what he sees as urgency for towns to act before the legislature reconvenes.

Beck acknowledged the passionate response to his warnings. “It’s a very passionate subject, so I get it,” he said. He added that his role is to represent the whole community, where there’s a variety of opinions about what should be done with grades 9-12 education, and that ultimately the community needs to have its say.

Cargill said the board’s consensus is to wait for clarity before making school closure decisions. “Why would we do this to ourselves when we don’t know what’s going to happen to us,” he said. However, the petition forced the issue onto a faster timeline.

One reason emotions ran high Tuesday night is that nobody can say with certainty what closing the high school would actually cost taxpayers.

At the Sept. 2 meeting, board member Eric Hewitt presented a cost analysis suggesting closing the high school and offering school choice would be more cost-effective. The analysis faced immediate scrutiny when community members pointed out it hadn’t accounted for roughly 18 to 20 Danville students whose families currently pay privately to send them elsewhere. Once that additional tuition expense was factored in, the Sept. 2 minutes noted “any initial change to the HS structure would still be more expensive (including that additional $450K) than keeping the HS open fiscal year.”

By the October meeting, many speakers challenged Hewitt’s analysis. Cargill later came to Hewitt’s defense, explaining families who pay privately don’t appear in official enrollment records once they decide to tuition their students elsewhere. He said Hewitt used available enrollment data, while critics used informal means for counting the existing tuitioning families.

At Tuesday’s meeting, critics argued that once those additional tuition costs are factored in, keeping the high school open would be more economical than closing it.

Cargill said the board may consider hiring an independent consultant or commissioning a financial study to model the costs more thoroughly “but not in the timeframe put on us by this petition.”

Former Caledonia Central Superintendent Mark Tucker warned the community not to make assumptions about cost. Tucker said, “I have seen this movie before.” When pro-school choice parents say it has to be cheaper to tuition out, he said, it’s because they don’t understand school finance.

Tucker highlighted a significant mismatch in the numbers. Act 73’s foundation formula proposes allocating just over $15,000 per student, while tuition at area independent schools is around $25,000. How that gap would be resolved remains unclear.

Five Ways Act 73 Could Affect Your Family

Act 73’s impacts could reach beyond school board meetings into daily life across the Northeast Kingdom—but how and when remains unclear. The law creates potential changes on multiple fronts, though much depends on decisions that haven’t been made yet.

School stability: Small schools that can’t meet class size minimums face pressure to consolidate, close or seek waivers. Whether your child’s school remains open may depend on definitions and decisions that haven’t been made yet.

Local control: If regional districts form as planned, your town will lose its school board. Decisions about curriculum, budgets and operations would shift to a regional board serving thousands of students across multiple towns.

School choice: If you live in a school choice town, your options may change depending on future legislation and how the new regional districts handle choice. The current system remains in place for now, but its future is uncertain.

Tax impact: Whether Act 73 raises or lowers your property taxes depends on variables that won’t be known until the redistricting maps are finalized and the funding formula is detailed.

Transportation: Larger consolidated districts could mean longer bus rides for some students, particularly in rural areas. How regional districts handle transportation logistics remains to be seen.

The redistricting task force meets twice monthly through November at the Waterbury State Office Complex, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The task force is also holding regional public hearings, including one Friday, Oct. 10, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Oxbow High School in Bradford. The meetings are open to the public, and residents can submit comments via email to ADM.Redistricting@vermont.gov. Meeting schedules, agendas and recordings are available through the Agency of Administration website.

The community will have more opportunities to voice opinions in the weeks ahead. The school board announced it will hold three informational meetings leading up to the vote on Oct. 22, Nov. 4 and Dec. 3. Cargill said the meetings will focus on the closure question itself, not Act 73. “We’ll concentrate on just the question about closing the school,” he said, though disentangling the two issues may prove difficult given how intertwined they’ve become in community discussions.

The Dec. 1 report will be the first clear picture of what consolidation could actually look like. Until then, much of the debate around Act 73 is based on speculation.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Kay Freedy, a member of the Danville School Board, worried the community was being pushed to make consequential decisions “without real information.”

“All of the information right now is no one knows what will actually happen,” she said. “They don’t have answers yet.”

That uncertainty extends across the Northeast Kingdom. Small communities are trying to plan for a future that hasn’t been defined. They are weighing local control against state mandates, balancing school quality against property taxes, and making decisions based on incomplete information.

For now, the clearest advice for Northeast Kingdom residents is this: Pay attention to the redistricting task force process. Attend public hearings or watch recordings. Watch for the Dec. 1 report. Ask questions about how proposed maps would affect your community. And understand that the final shape of Vermont’s education system remains very much in flux.

The maps may answer some questions. But plenty of others—about funding, choice, local control and what makes a school viable—will likely be debated well beyond December.