Two Upper Valley educators with experience in reorganizing school districts are members of the task force charged with drawing a new school district map for Vermont.

State Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, a Norwich Democrat, served as Vermont education secretary from 2014 to 2018, when the state was implementing Act 46, a law that encouraged school consolidation. Prior to that, she was a driving force behind the establishment of the Rivendell Interstate School District, which brought together the towns of Orford, Fairlee, West Fairlee and Vershire into the nation’s first K-12 interstate district.

And Jay Badams, who is retiring after eight years as superintendent of SAU 70, which oversees schools in Hanover and Norwich, was part of an effort to reorganize the Erie, Pennsylvania school district. He lives in Strafford.

Both were named to the 11-member committee by Speaker of the House Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington. Badams and Holcombe have been staunch advocates of keeping public money in public schools, and have expressed some skepticism about Act 73, the new state law set in motion by Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, that gave rise to the school redistricting task force. Holcombe voted against the bill, then known as H. 454, last month.

“The hard and the beautiful thing about democracy is that you don’t always get what you want,” Holcombe said in a phone interview. “To choose not to be part of that continuing conversation just wouldn’t be right,” she added.

The new law followed a sizable property tax increase last year, which led to an initial proposal from Scott to carve the state into five school districts and to replace Vermont’s long-standing school funding system with a foundation formula. The aim, Scott said, was to create a system with lower costs and higher quality. The House bill recast that plan into one that would redraw the map into districts of between 4,000 and 8,000 students. Act 73 also has ended the practice of sending tuition money to out-of-state private schools and limited which Vermont private schools can receive public funds. If it proceeds as written, the law would not be fully enacted until 2034. The redistricting task force is the next major step.

There was a period of time when House members could express interest in being on the task force, Holcombe said. “They spoke to each one of us,” she said. “It’s just a routine application process.”

Badams has been active in testifying on education issues in Montpelier. He had expressed interest in participating, and Krowinski’s office reached out to him, he said.

When he became superintendent in Erie, the city of around 100,000 in far western Pennsylvania had around 13,000 students attending 23 schools, including four high schools. The school district faced an imminent financial crisis, and Badams had to cut $26 million from a $180 million budget, which entailed cutting 300 positions.

The district brought in a consultant and started by mapping where every student lived and went to school.

“There was a line drawn from every kid to the school they attended,” Badams said, adding that “a very similar process could be used” in Vermont. Mapping technology has greatly improved, he said.

In the end, Erie needed only two high schools, Badams said. (A proposal to reduce Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts to 100, first brought up by then-Gov. Ed Rendell in 2009, is still being batted around.)

The plan in Erie took about two and a half years to develop, Badams said. The Vermont task force is working under a much tighter timeline. The committee is due to hold eight meetings (two of them public listening sessions) starting Aug. 1. The law requires it to deliver three possible school district maps by Dec. 1.

Holcombe’s experience with school consolidation was under Act 46, but the new law is quite different, with the state taking on greater authority.

“I think one of the first things we’ll probably have to talk through is what are we hoping to achieve with this process,” she said.

Holcombe’s four-town House district illustrates the challenges of drawing a new map. Norwich has an elementary district, overseen by its own school board, and is part of Dresden, the interstate secondary school district with Hanover. Thetford has a public elementary school and designates Thetford Academy, a private secondary school for grades seven to 12 that functions as a public school. Strafford has the preK-8 Newton School, which is public, and pays tuition for high school, which used to allow students to take state money to any school they wanted, public or private, in-state or out. And Sharon has a preK-6 public elementary school and choice for secondary school. The Sharon Academy, a private school founded in the 1990s, gets most of its funding from public tuition.

The four towns also are part of three different supervisory unions: Orange East for Thetford, SAU 70 for Norwich, and the White River Valley SU for Sharon and Strafford.

While the district lines aren’t meant to address other issues in the law, school choice will be inescapable, Holcombe said.

“There’s no merger in our area without doing away with choice, or expanding choice,” she said. And it isn’t just this area, she added, but many parts of the state have different governing structures.

How the law will deal with the two interstate school districts is another question entirely, Badams and Holcombe said. Dresden, which operates Richmond Middle School and Hanover High School, was created under federal law in 1963. Federal jurisdiction makes the district both an outlier and a kind of safe harbor.

“It appears that in every iteration of this plan so far that the interstate (districts) have been carved out,” because of federal legislation, Badams said. Dresden retained legal counsel to monitor Act 73 as it was moving through the Vermont Legislature, he added.

Hartford Superintendent Caty Sutton said she was encouraged by the inclusion of Badams and Holcombe on the task force, but the heavy weight of unknowns in the law. How will new school district lines affect transportation costs and will there be school building aid? (There is none in the law now, Holcombe said.) How will existing teacher contracts be reconciled, and how will the public interact with their school officials in the new larger districts?

“The overall composition of the task force is critically important in determining an evidence-based approach to how many districts we have in the state, where they begin and end, and what governance will look like,” Sutton said, “so I remain hopeful that this committee will engage in a balanced, research-based approach to the work.”

The redistricting task force is ultimately making big decisions that could reshape a central aspect of the state. Holcombe said she thinks the task force possesses a strong mix of people with backgrounds in education, and of people who voted both for and against the reform bill.

While both Badams and Holcombe said they were approaching the task with optimism and open minds and are eager to see the hard data, Holcombe expressed a note of caution. The uncertainty of this process has the potential to cause real harm to schools and communities that are already under stress.

“How do you have it reflect how people live, and how people want to live?” Holcombe said.

Communication and transparency will be essential, Badams said. The information, about where students live and where they go to school, will be crucial, he added.

“I’m looking forward to working with the committee and hoping we come up with a solution that makes sense,” he said.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.