WILMINGTON-Vermont must reduce its education costs or face further increases in property tax rates, but residents will defend their local schools against the threat of closure, and Twin Valley School District is no exception, according to superintendent Bill Bazyk.
In an interview just ahead of the first meetings of districts to study possible mergers, Bazyk said Vermont has wrestled with the question of how to control public education costs through three recent laws. The latest one, Act 170 of 2026, establishes a district-driven process requiring them to convene merger study groups to explore the viability of possible mergers that would create larger districts with an average daily membership of at least 2,000 students.
Bazyk argued that Vermont as a whole has failed to act on the glaring problems of soaring education costs, falling enrollment, and declining test scores. He said the state should have listened to Gov. Phil Scott in 2024, when he proposed reducing the number of school districts to only five, a number that Bazyk said was close to what is needed.
“I’m coming to the end of my career so I can speak a little more freely,” said Bazyk, 55. “I think we’re going to have to do some large regionalization that’s going to be very unpopular – more than just merging with other districts in Group 5 – the study group that Twin Valley is in. “We have to start looking at this honestly. Somebody has to lose because there is just no other way to lower costs.”
For the Windham Southwest Supervisory Union, which Bazyk manages, it may become part of a larger unit as a result of consolidation. If so, that would coincide with his planned retirement after 32 years in public education.
“I will retire if and when WSWSU dissolves,” he said. “However, I believe we are in a position to add districts to our [supervisory union] to reduce costs, and I would be happy to train a new superintendent to continue this work.”
But, despite the increases in education costs and a sharp drop in the number of students enrolled in Vermont schools in the last 20 years or so, Bazyk predicted the talks will fail because mergers are just voluntary, and because the Legislature will fail to pass a “punitive” per-student funding formula that would incentivize school districts to merge with others.
Like residents who defend their local schools and cherish local control, lawmakers will shy away from setting a formula that would drive consolidation of districts and lead to some school closures, he said. Under Act 170, lawmakers were required to set a formula by July 1, 2026 but missed that deadline. Now they have until July 1, 2027, but Bazyk predicted it still won’t happen because legislators won’t have the political courage to make what would be a deeply unpopular policy change.
The Scott administration wants to create school districts that have at least 2,000 students, and are part of big regional districts that would sharply reduce administration costs. Although Scott has now backed away from his first plan to reduce the number of districts to just five from the current 119, that number could be 20, according to a guideline in Act 170.
“I don’t have confidence at all in our state Legislature to pass a funding formula that’s going to match the 2,000 minimum because that would take away local control and force school closings for small rural districts, and that’s where the votes come from,” Bazyk said.
The proposed consolidation will be led by districts in merger committees; the final number of those panels won’t be known until the October 15 deadline for their formation. The districts are currently overseen by 52 supervisory unions or supervisory districts.
Last week, Twin Valley School Board members voted to stay in Group 5, which also includes Halifax, Vernon, Windham Southeast Supervisory Union, and West River Educton District, which serves students in Townshend, Jamaica, Brookline and Newfane. Some other towns have left the group to join another group, and any group may yet change, Bazyk said.
For Twin Valley School District, the main priority in the upcoming talks will be preventing the closure of one or both of its schools, Bazyk said.
Apart from their first meeting, the merger committees are not required to meet again but must produce a recommendation by September 1, 2027. That decision would be approved or denied by voters at Town Meeting in March 2028.
Although surging property taxes may be controlled by the sharp consolidation of Vermont’s public education system, districts like Twin Valley will fight tooth and nail to prevent closure of their schools, Bazyk said. District representatives at the upcoming talks are likely to fight for their own interests rather than voluntarily agree to merge with others, he said. “There’s nothing to incentivize people from not going into it with their own personal interests. I don’t see anybody being collaborative right now.”
Even bigger nearby schools like Brattleboro High School and Leland & Gray Union High School will resist closure even though their costs are rising and their enrollment is falling, Bazyk said. “At Twin Valley, we would love to welcome students from seven or eight towns around us; we have space at the high school,” he said. Nobody wants to close their high school and everyone wants more students.”
He predicted that taxpayers won’t support a school closure if that would produce a modest cut in local taxes. “If you say, ‘We’re going to close Twin Valley High School, put the children on a bus for an hour, and you get a menial tax cut,’ it’s just not going to work,” he said. “As Vermonters, we love to not have the hard conversations, we love to incentivize and hope people do the right thing.”
If the merger talks fail, they may be followed by conversations by neighboring units that recognize they could save money by consolidating. One local example could be that Windham Southwest could become part of Windham Central or vice versa, he said.
Despite his concerns about public education in the Vermont system as a whole, Bazyk said the grouping of school districts he now heads is well positioned for the future because it has replaced all its principals in the last two years, while building a capable administrative staff.
“The future is bright,” he said.
A version of this story appeared in The Deerfield Valley News, The Commons’ sister newspaper.
This News item by Jon Hurdle originally appeared in The Deerfield Valley News and was republished in The Commons with permission.