Vermont asked every school district to look at merging. These four towns decide by March 2028.

In late May 2026 the Legislature passed the next stage of Vermont’s education overhaul, and the Governor signed it as Act 170 (H.955). Lawmakers had the option of drawing a statewide map of new districts and assigning towns to it. They chose not to. The act instead sets up a local process: merger committees convened by regional facilitators, a year of public engagement, and town votes targeted for March 2028.

Alongside the merger work, the act creates regional service areas, called CESAs, for shared functions such as transportation and business services. It also sets a new statewide funding formula to begin in July 2029 if the conditions in the act are met. Several pieces, including much of the formula detail, are left for lawmakers to finish in the 2027 and 2028 sessions.

What the act does not do is order any district to merge. No district is assigned to another. A merger happens only if a committee proposes one and the voters of each town approve it.

Act 170 singles out districts below a certain size. By November 1, 2029, the State Board of Education must give the Legislature the name of every school district whose average daily membership is under 750 students and that has not merged with a neighbor by July 1, 2028, along with recommendations on whether and how to merge it into a larger district.

The 750 is average daily membership, the plain head count, not the weighted count used in the school tax formula. And the report is a set of recommendations to the Legislature, not an automatic merger. Acting on any of it would take a future act.

Separately, the law asks the regional facilitators who convene merger committees to aim for committees covering roughly 2,000 students where practical, and to try to keep districts under 750 from ending up isolated. That is the provision most likely to bring the Windsor Southeast into conversation with larger neighbors, whatever these towns eventually decide.

All of our three districts in Windsor Southeast SU are under 750 on their own. Merged together into one District, the ADM count would come to roughly 1,400, which would be almost double the 750 requirement.

Four broad options are available. They are not equally likely, and none of them is settled. Working through them in public, and putting one in front of the voters, is what a merger committee is for.

The estimator covers the combinations inside the supervisory union in detail, because those are the ones with budget numbers and tax implications behind them. A merger with a district outside our supervisory union would have its own numbers, and those do not exist yet.

These dates come from the act itself and from the Agency of Education’s implementation schedule. Dates after the 2028 vote depend on decisions lawmakers have not made yet.

Every merger committee meeting is a public meeting. Agendas go up at least 48 hours ahead, minutes within five days of approval, and the documents the committee works from are posted here as they are produced.

Everything on this page comes from the act itself and from the Agency of Education’s published implementation material. The primary documents are linked below so that anyone can check any of it directly.