A View from Here
By Keri Bristow, Chair, Mountain Views Supervisory Union for The Vermont Standard
This is a call to action! On July 1, 2025, Governor Phil Scott signed into law Act 73 (formerly H.454), Vermont's sweeping education-system reform plan. Act 73 establishes a Redistricting Task Force to deliver a report to the Vermont legislature by December 1, 2025. It is expected that the Task Force will reduce the current 119 Vermont school districts into a handful of regional "hub" school districts. Your Mountain Views Supervisory Union is determined to make our unified community a host to one of those regional hub districts!
The Mountain Views Supervisory Union Working Group for the construction of a new school reconvened recently with both board and community members along with our Superintendent, Sherry Sousa, and our legal counsel to discuss various options to launch this effort. We unanimously concurred that the time is now to work with our legislators and lobby for a new middle and high school. Our goal is to finance and build a new facility beginning as soon as next year.
Fortunately, we have a great case to make: first, we already perform as a regional hub within a 20- town community. Currently, seven member towns (Killington, Bridgewater, Plymouth, Woodstock, Barnard, Pomfret, and Reading) make up our supervisory union, with 13 other towns sending 100 students to our high school through tuition choice. Yet, with a 60+ year old middle and high school building, we know that at any moment, a catastrophic failure could occur, causing chaos and compromising our capacities to react.
Second, no middle and high school around us could absorb the number of students we already are educating.
Third, we are one of the highest performing high schools in our state, despite our failing building and its needs. Considering the programs we offer and the high scores that our students are achieving, one can only imagine how a new facility would benefit our students. Recently, our superintendent shared with the board that more than 50% of our students were enrolled in one or more AP classes, with 80% achieving a passing score of 3, 4, or 5.
Fourth, our current and planned curriculum is well aligned with Act 73’s goals. In coming years, we envision an expansion of our C.R.A.F.T. agriculture program, an improved NUVU (STEM education) program with state-of-the-art equipment, a properly sound-proofed music room for practice and lessons, art rooms, along with a well-ventilated facility area. We plan to provide classrooms that have space for both large and small group instruction as students work in teams to solve real-life problems in our core classes.
As we look ahead to the future, expanding our international student exchange program along with virtual exchanges will further enrich our student opportunities. Flexible Pathway opportunities for students at our middle and high school include student-designed internships, work-based learning, service learning, and independent studies.
Even more, the Center for Community Connections (C3) program will continue to provide pathways to explore the trades as careers, including a future tourism partnership and other expanding options for all students.
To ensure that we maximize our impact on the region and support Act 73”s goals, we will be reaching out to the towns around us to invite them to partner with us in our effort to build this new, larger regional facility. As the State seeks to set up larger districts by December 1, we will work with our legislators to remove one major barrier to building a new school: the financing of a bond. Currently, Act 73 has included any bonds and renovation costs as part of the per-pupil spend, which would put most schools into the penalty phase, preventing new builds and/or extensive renovations.
We will be lobbying the legislature to decouple building projects from the per-pupil spend – essential for us and any other district with comparable goals to proceed. In fact, we will seek to raise private funds to enlist lobbyists who can represent our efforts in Montpelier and help shape Act 73 going forward. With the State pushing for newer and fewer schools, at least at the highschool level, they must remove barriers to funding new school construction.
In February 2024, our plans to construct a new building were approved by the Agency of Education. We will ask the AOE to honor their approval and realistically expand its size to accommodate more students.
We have a lot to do, and we face challenges ahead. We invite anyone who is interested to join us in our upcoming Working Group, scheduled to meet on August 6 at 6:30pm. Meeting attendance can be in person at the Mountain Views Central Office on the Woodstock Union Middle and High School campus or via Zoom (a link is included on the meeting agenda posted on the Mountain Views Supervisory Union website at https://mtnviews.org/ under the School Board tab).
Our strategic plan, called Portrait of a Graduate, includes the educational principles we believe are necessary for all students to be successful. These include skillful communication abilities, critical problem-solving skills, self-direction, academic excellence, and stewardship. The time to act is now! Let us all take advantage of this moment to build a middle and high school that enhances and improves the ability to achieve these principles in new and innovative ways, as well as furthering the excellence in education that we have long been and are currently attaining.