Consolidation Push Roils Vermont Landscape

Education Week: Consolidating rural school districts with sparse enrollment is a complicated—and contentious—process that can unfold over several years.

Case in point: Vermont, where the issue has been roiling the local and legislative landscape for a year now.

Amid rising education costs for a rapidly dwindling student population, that state's legislature last year passed a law aiming to reward residents of districts willing to consolidate with a series of tax breaks—and to significantly increase the local homestead-tax rate on those districts that stay independent and spend beyond a series of caps set by the state.

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