Words you will hear

Merger discussions come with their own vocabulary, and a lot of it sounds more settled than it is. Here is what the terms actually mean.

ADM, average daily membership

The plain head count of students in a district, averaged across the year. This is the number the 750 student line in Act 170 uses.

LTWADM, long term weighted average daily membership

A different count, used to set school tax rates. It weights students according to what they cost to educate, so a district’s LTWADM is usually higher than its ADM. The 750 line does not use this number. The two are easy to mix up, and mixing them up makes a district look bigger than the act considers it.

Articles of agreement

The written terms of a merger. How many board seats each town gets, how the board is elected, what happens to each school building, how existing debt is handled, what the new district is called. A merger committee drafts these, and they are what voters actually approve or reject.

Merger committee

The group that studies a merger and writes the proposal. Under Act 170 these are convened by a regional facilitator, include members named by the participating districts, and are expected to work in public.

CESA, cooperative educational service area

A regional body created by Act 170 for shared services such as transportation and business functions. A CESA is not a school district and does not run schools. Joining one is a separate question from merging.

Foundation formula

The new statewide school funding formula in Act 170, set to begin July 1, 2029 if the conditions in the act are met. It replaces the current system of district by district tax rates with a per student amount adjusted by student need. Much of the detail is still to be written by the Legislature.

Excess spending threshold

A penalty in current Vermont law: spending per pupil above a set level is counted twice for tax purposes. The estimator models this, because it is one of the places where district size changes the arithmetic.

Isolated district

The term Act 170 uses for a district under 750 students left without a merger partner. The act directs facilitators to try to prevent this, and directs the State Board of Education to report on districts that end up in that position.

School choice

The arrangement under which a town pays tuition for its students to attend a school it does not operate. Several towns in the Windsor Southeast have tuitioning arrangements at the high school level. How choice is handled in a merger is a term of the articles of agreement, not something Act 170 settles.