Phil Dodd
In the last issue of The Bridge, we examined the financial trends and impact of Act 170 on the Montpelier Roxbury (MRPS) and Washington Central school districts. In this article, we’ll examine two other school districts in local merger Group 20 — the Barre and Paine Mountain districts — in light of the state’s education reform push.
Harwood Union, which was originally assigned to Group 20, asked to leave for another group, and Twinfield asked to join Group 20. The changes have been given preliminary approval, and the Central Vermont Career Center has also been added to Group 20 (see sidebar at end of story for details). The Bridge will look at these other Group 20 districts in a future issue.
Act 170 was designed to reduce education costs and improve educational opportunities in a state with sharply declining student numbers, falling test scores, and fast-rising property taxes. Unless the Legislature changes direction, the state will adopt a new school financing scheme known as the foundation formula in July 2029, replacing the current complicated system.
Barre and Paine Mountain (which covers Northfield and Williamstown) both currently spend less than Vermont’s average per pupil, so under the new foundation formula — which will send the same amount to every district, adjusted for demographic characteristics — both districts will likely receive more money than they get now.
That contrasts with Washington Central, a bigger spender, and MRPS, which is more of an average spender. Washington Central is already expecting to consider budget cuts next year to comply with the tightening of the state’s excess spending formula and will face pressures for additional cuts when the foundation formula kicks in later.
Barre and Paine Mountain could eventually see higher school property taxes, however. Under Act 170, nearly all districts will pay the same tax rate, which could mean increases for those two districts (and possibly a decrease in Washington Central).
Act 170 calls for tax increases to phase in over a few years, and legislators expect a tax on second homes starting in 2029 will bring more revenue to the state and thus offset everyone’s homestead taxes to a certain extent.
Promoting school district mergers — seen as a possible way to reduce school costs — is another major feature of the new law. The state’s merger committees, which start meeting in October and will issue a report next summer, could conclude that all the districts in a group should merge, or that only some of them should, or that none of them should merge. Any merger proposal will need approval by district voters.
The facilitator for Group 20 will be Brad Morgan, a veteran Massachusetts educator and superintendent of the North Middlesex Regional School District in that state. Earlier in his career he helped lead the merger of three Massachusetts high schools into one regional vocational district.
Barre Unified Union School District
The Barre school district, the largest in Group 20, covering both Barre City and Barre Town, is a low-spending district on a per-pupil basis, so it will not be affected by the tightening excess-spending penalty.
In fact, Barre could eventually end up with a larger school budget, since it will get more state funding when the foundation formula takes effect in 2029–2030. One legislative estimate from 18 months ago, based on an earlier foundation proposal, showed Barre could see a 25.7% increase in funding from the state.
Voters in Barre are reluctant to spend, one reason education property taxes are now low there. For the past few years, Barre has had a hard time passing budgets, and this year has been no exception. On Sept. 15, district voters rejected the school budget for the third time this year.
Brand new Barre Superintendent Emilie Knisley (who started July 1) said affordability concerns have made it hard to get budgets passed.
“We’re all seeing gas prices rise, oil prices rise, all of that, and we don’t feel like we have any control over it, but people do feel like they can have some say when they’re marking that ballot,” she said.
“There’s still angst regarding the merger between Barre City and Barre Town schools that took place a couple years ago,” Knisley said. “I think that that has carried over and there is some frustration about having everything merged together from a financial perspective.”
Barre’s budget woes may be seen as a deterrent to merging by other local districts, as voiced by Harwood School Board member Pam Eaton of Waterbury at the recent board meeting, where Harwood voted to leave Group 20, according to a Sept. 11 article in the Waterbury Roundabout.
“It concerns me when I’m reading in VTDigger that Barre still doesn’t have a school budget for this year,” Wood said. “So regardless of whether they’re like us or not like us, I want to be grouped with people who can pass a budget.”
Another concern for other Group 20 districts could be the sharply declining test scores in Barre. District-by-district school test results in 40 states compiled by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University show Barre reading and math test scores falling significantly in the past ten years to well below the state average, which also declined. Test scores for MRPS and Washington Central were above the state average. Paine Mountain statistics were not shown in the report.
Knisley said she was optimistic Barre’s test scores will improve.
“I’ve only been here for two months, but I’ve been super impressed with the commitment to trying to really improve instruction and outcomes for students, and we are starting to see some of that data trend upwards rather than downwards,” she said.
Like other districts in Group 20, and the entire state for that matter, the Barre schools have seen a drop in student counts and may lose more. From the 2017-2018 school year to the 2025-2026 school year, the number of K-12 students in the district fell by 10.7%, according to the New England School Development Council. Barre is projected to lose another 14.4% of its students between last year and the 2035-2036 school year, slightly more than MRPS and a bit less than Washington Central.
Paine Mountain School District
Paine Mountain, like Barre, is a relatively low spender that will likely see more state funding and higher taxes under Act 170. The legislative estimate from 18 months ago showed state funding for the supervisory snion that Paine Mountain is part of rising by 19.3%.
The Paine Mountain District — the smallest in Group 20 — was formed in 2018 when the Northfield and Williamstown school districts combined. The Central Vermont Supervisory Union it belongs to also includes the Echo Valley School District, which covers the towns of Orange and Washington. Act 170 assigned Echo Valley to a different merger group than Paine Mountain.
The two middle/high schools in Paine Mountain also have declining enrollments, with about 250 students in each town’s grade 6-12 school. And, as in Barre, budgets have been hard to pass.
“This was the third year in Paine Mountain that our budget didn’t pass on a first vote,” said Superintendent Matthew Fedders.
In the face of these challenges, the district is considering a couple of options. One would be to close one of the middle/high schools, a move that surveys show has about 50% support in the community, although support drops sharply among those surveyed if it involves closing the school in their own town, Fedders said. A recent facility study found neither school could accommodate all 500 students without changes, which would require passing a bond.
Another option under consideration is to close both high schools, consolidating grades 6-8 in one of the existing schools, and tuitioning high school students to neighboring districts.
“The tuitioning model would be a lot easier and we would have a facility to put all of our middle schoolers in,” Fedders said.
Fedders has reached out to neighboring districts to see whether they have room for more students, but has not heard back from all of them. One scenario would have Northfield high school students attend Montpelier High School or U-32, and Williamstown students go to Spaulding in Barre.
Some Paine Mountain board and community members think the district should push to begin tuitioning by next year, but not everyone agrees, and getting state approval in time for receiving school districts to build budgets for next year based on more students may not be feasible, Fedders said.
Paine Mountain is considering these changes even as merger discussions are imminent. Fedders said the tuitioning option, if pursued, could take place before mergers happen. He also raised the possibility that a merger could divide the district, with Williamstown joining Barre and Northfield joining MRPS or U-32, but said he was not sure if Act 170 would allow that.
In the last ten years, the number of students in the Paine Mountain district has dropped by 8.5%, according to the New England School Development Council. By 2035-2036, the enrollment there is projected to drop by another 3%, significantly less than projected declines in the three other Group 20 districts.
Group 20 Changes: Harwood Leaving, Twinfield Joining
As the mid-October deadline for school merger committees to meet approaches, a dozen or so school boards have asked to switch merger committees, according to David Younce, lead facilitator of the merger committees created by Act 170, the new education reform law.
Harwo1od Union, originally assigned to Group 20 with Montpelier Roxbury (MRPS), Washington Central, Barre, and Paine Mountain, has asked to instead join Group 13 with Mount Mansfield Union School District and the Champlain Valley Union School District.
The Harwood school board voted unanimously to request the change at a Sept. 9 meeting.
“It just makes a little more sense for our geography. We touch with them. We’re similar-sized communities,” Harwood board Chair Ashley Wood of Warren said at the meeting, according to the Waterbury Roundabout.
“I am not an advocate for merging districts right now, but it would be more palatable for our district to consider that than to lump in with the Barre-Montpelier area,” Wood said.
Meanwhile, Twinfield — which operates a pre-K through grade 12 school for students in Marshfield and Plainfield — asked to move from Group 10 to Group 20. Twinfield is part of the Caledonia Central Supervisory Union along with several other schools in the Northeast Kingdom and Orange County.
Twinfield Board Chair Erin Barry said surveys have consistently shown the majority of residents in the district would prefer to align with a Group 20 district, such as Washington Central, if the district has to merge.
A preliminary change list released by Younce on Sept. 18 shows both Harwood and Twinfield being reassigned to the districts they requested. The list also shows the Central Vermont Career Center as part of Group 20. David Younce said he hoped to release a finalized list by Sept. 25 so the first merger committee meetings can be scheduled.
