The Woodstock Union High School and Middle School building is in bad shape. Its HVAC, electrical and sewage systems — products of the mid-1960s — are now well past their useful life, according to school officials.
Sherry Sousa, superintendent of the Mountain Views Supervisory Union that operates the school, said the district “can’t guarantee, based on where our systems are now, that our sewage system is going to work.”
For those familiar with Vermont’s public education system, this sort of story is hardly new. Districts throughout the state routinely deal with general disrepair and disruption caused by aging school buildings.
Over the years, education officials have pleaded with the state to restart a long-dormant state aid fund for school construction, which previously supported up to 30% of construction costs. But Act 73, the new education reform bill Gov. Phil Scott signed into law last month, is creating optimism among education officials that state aid could begin again.
Mountain Views Supervisory Union officials are banking on that. Last week, members of the school board and central administration announced they would press ahead with a new working committee to oversee plans for a new high school and middle school building under the terms of Act 73.
“We’ve decided that we can’t wait. We have to move forward. We need a new school,” Keri Bristow, the Mountain Views Supervisory Union’s board chair, said in an interview. “We have to do something before we have a catastrophic failure.”
‘Cart before the horse’
Vermont’s new education law seeks to address the state’s “languishing” school infrastructure through implementation of a new state aid for school construction fund. Act 73 provides preliminary rules around what schools could be eligible for state aid, and which projects should be prioritized.
The newly created State Aid for School Construction Advisory Board, set to first meet on or before Sept. 1, according to state Board of Education Chair Jennifer Samuelson, will work with the Agency of Education to further develop and finalize those parameters before the School Construction Aid Special Fund is officially created July 1 next year.
The advisory board is one of the first facets of the new law to get off the ground. The School Redistricting Task Force has already started work to consolidate Vermont’s 118 school districts, contained within 51 supervisory districts or supervisory unions, into anywhere from 10 to 25 future districts. The school construction advisory board will work concurrently with that task force.
David Epstein with the Burlington architecture firm TruexCullins has worked with a number of Vermont’s school districts’ on facilities needs. He called the new framework in Act 73 a “positive sign.”
But he and others have cautioned that while the law sets up a framework for a revived school construction fund, the law does not directly address where funding will come from.
“Until a funding source is identified and the scale of that funding source is understood, it’s hard for me to be too optimistic,” Epstein said.
In a press conference Thursday, Scott said school construction is “going to be very important” once new school district maps are drawn and plans for consolidation are considered by the Legislature.
“That’s an appropriate time to talk about school construction,” he said. “We should be prepared for that, I realize that, but I think we’d be putting the cart before the horse in terms of school construction.”
To bond or not to bond
Vermont’s schools are the second oldest in the country and have continued to depreciate since state lawmakers paused construction aid nearly 20 years ago.
The Agency of Education has previously estimated schools will need upward of $6 billion in infrastructure investment over the next two decades.
“The level of investment has not been keeping up with the needs, and so there’s a tremendous amount of need,” Epstein said.
The disrepair in school facilities has forced districts to try and finance fixes through voter-approved bonds. Last year, the Colchester School District put forward a $115 million bond to modernize its aging schools — which, similar to the Woodstock High School, were built in the mid-20th century.
Colchester residents narrowly approved the bond proposal in November, but other districts that have floated bonds have not had such luck.
In March 2024, residents of the Mountain Views Supervisory Union’s seven member towns voted down a $99 million bond measure — throwing in flux plans to replace the Woodstock High School building.
And in 2021, voters in the member towns of the Harwood Unified Union School District sunk a $59.5 million construction bond. Without voter approval, the district is now stuck using general fund dollars to complete patch work repairs.
“We’re spending a lot of money on capital needs for things that really require wholesale renovation, new construction,” said Michael Leichliter, Harwood supervisory union’s superintendent.
Leichliter said the Harwood school district hired TruexCullins to conduct a review of its buildings, which he said should be completed by the end of August.
The Orleans Central Supervisory Union also hired TruexCullins to conduct a facilities assessment of school buildings. Dan Roock, the chair of the facilities committee there, said the district has $108 million in deferred maintenance across its eight school buildings.
Officials there are hoping to begin a community outreach campaign to gauge willingness for any new renovation projects.
Uncertainty over taxpayers’ appetite for million-dollar bond investments has created a tricky calculation for districts that fear catastrophic failure in their school buildings.
The more they wait, the more expensive repairs will cost, Roock said.
“We know we’ve got to do something,” he said. “We know it’s going to cost a lot of money — even if it’s no new construction, just fixing what we have.”
‘We’ve been patient’
For districts with construction plans in the works, like Orleans Central Supervisory Union, the decision whether to proceed with bond votes has been further complicated by the redistricting process underway.
“Some districts are waiting to see what the new districts are like,” Epstein said. “Some districts want to move forward with projects while they still can, while they still have control of their destiny, so to speak.”
Uncertainty around whether state lawmakers will even fund the new state aid construction fund only complicates that decision.
Sen. Seth Bongartz, D-Bennington, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said there is “a general recognition that we have to figure out a way to help with school construction funding.”
“But there’s also a recognition that, right now with what’s happening nationally, we’re in uncharted waters, and we’re really going to have to see where we are come January and see what kinds of immediate crises we may be facing, or not,” he said.
In the Mountain Views Supervisory Union, officials say they can’t afford to wait any longer.
“I think we’ve been patient, and the board has been really responsible,” Sousa said. “Now, we really have to fill in the gray spaces of Act 73. We want to work with the Agency of Education to fill in that gray space and acknowledge, how does this school district move forward?”
Ethan Weinstein contributed reporting.
