Governor Scott opened his fifth gubernatorial term stating from one side of his mouth, “Let’s put our communities (a direct reference to rural towns) above all else and reset the playing field so it’s fair and benefits all of Vermont.” Shortly after his inaugural address, he unveiled his “Education Transformation Plan” from the other side of his mouth. Scott stated that voters had given him “a mandate” to do so. Scott’s transformational silver bullet to solve all of Vermont’s educational property tax woes is school district and school consolidation — the kind that would make Act 46 look like a fart in hurricane-force winds.

The Democratic (the party that championed Act 46 consolidation) leadership in both chambers of the legislature gave the plan a green light for debate and revision. The Scott Plan, renamed in February as H.454, An Act Relating to Transforming Vermont’s Education Governance, Quality, and Finance Systems, presently has three versions (the original Scott Plan, a House version, and a Senate version), all engaged in a tug of war — with Scott bullying the legislature to put a bill on his desk before adjournment. The House and Senate are currently negotiating in a conference committee to see if they can reconcile their differences. And as the six-member committee debates, Scott has already stated that he will veto any version of a bill that doesn’t look like, sound like, or behave like his plan (behavior I think I have recently seen role modeled in Washington).

With this brief historical overview in mind, I want to cut to the chase about what H.454 — Vermont’s “The One, Big, Beautiful ‘Educational Transformational’ Bill” (my name) — will do.

It will be the end of local control, plain and simple, in a top-down generational power grab. See examples below:

Gone are the days of voting on your school budget and educational property tax rate. The amount of money that a school district will receive will be determined by the state and so will your tax rate.

The state will draw the boundaries and articles of association for forcibly consolidated Walmart-sized districts. There will not be the chance for citizens to craft thoughtful and geographically relevant articles of association, followed by a vote of the historical districts being merged together.

The Walmart-sized districts will include many more towns and far fewer seats at the school board table. Thus, many communities will not have their own locally elected representative on the merged district board — and thus, no accountable representation.

Gone is any hope that a town will have a voice and vote in the closure of their school. The state is going to take care of that through setting minimum class and school enrollment sizes to forcibly close “small” schools (just to be clear, this is true for schools of all grade levels).

Please do not take my sarcasm as hyperbole. All of this has happened, is happening, and will happen if any current (as of 6/10/25) variation of H.454 becomes law.

I think that we can all agree that Vermonters need and want tax relief and tax fairness (the current and proposed new tax system is regressive, with the poorest Vermonters paying a larger share of their income than the wealthiest), and that was the mandate that we tasked the Governor and Legislature to provide. However, I have yet to meet a Vermonter who asked to be completely disenfranchised and stripped of Vermont’s cultural practice of local control in matters of public education. For if H.454 becomes law, there is no “public” — it will just be a tax bill from the state, leaving Vermont’s rural communities covered in school bus dust.

To Governor Scott and all Legislators, please stop playing politics with our children’s future and our democratic rights. As a school board volunteer, a rural Vermonter and most importantly a father of two young children, I am still trying to understand how your plan will “reset the playing field so it’s fair and benefits all of Vermont.” The way I see it, my community and my children will no longer have a spot on the H.454 “playing field.”

Rob Backlund

Lincoln