MONTPELIER — In his annual address to Vermont legislators Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Phil Scott urged members of the House and Senate to move forward with the next stages of the sweeping education reform project they started last year, at his administration’s urging.

But as the 2026 legislative session got underway this week, it has seemed far from certain that the process of creating new school districts and developing a new funding model — with the goals of improving educational quality and making the system less expensive overall — will advance at the pace the governor wants.

Speaking to a joint assembly of legislators for his State of the State address in the House chamber, Scott called education reform “our most critical challenge.”

“This session, we have the opportunity — and the obligation — to continue this transformation in order to build the best public education system in the nation, at a cost taxpayers can afford,” he said.

The half-hour speech was notable in that it focused almost entirely on that one topic, including details as specific as the names of teachers around the state, whom the governor said he was pitching his plan to, directly. Many of the governor’s education proposals were included in the 2025 law known as Act 73.

Scott framed the need to evolve the state’s education system as important for preserving the public’s trust in state government — at a time, he noted, when that trust is low.

“We don’t need to be asked to do the right thing,” he said. “We just need to do it.”

Scott also used his speech to preview, albeit briefly, that there would be “hard choices” to make when building the state’s budget for the 2027 fiscal year, which starts in July 2026 and runs through June 2027. House and Senate leaders have already said they expect that some existing programs will need to be cut as support from the federal government, especially for key human services programs, wavers.

“This year’s spending package has required difficult decisions,” Scott said of his administration’s budget proposal, which he will present in another address later this month.