MVSD Will Appeal to Vermont Agency of Education for Final Approval of Construction Plans and Emergency Funds Release

Appeal planned as sewer replacement begins in failing high-school building to keep cafeteria services, lavatories open for students this September

WOODSTOCK, VT -- July 7, 2026 -- Mountain Views Supervisory District (MVSD) Chair Keri Bristow will urgently request an in-person meeting with Vermont Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders and Deputy Secretary of Education and Agency of Education (AOE) Chief Operating Officer Jill Briggs Campbell in Montpelier, MVSD announced today. The district will request the meeting as soon as possible to gain a final AOE go-ahead and emergency funding for the otherwise preapproved construction of a new Woodstock Union High School and Middle School (WUHSMS) building.

The WUHSMS construction plan earned previous preapproval from the AOE in February 2024. Because architectural plans for the footprint of the new building have not been changed since then, the preapproval remains valid and in effect.

Since the June passage of education-reform Act 170, however, rules required for the timing and prioritization of Vermont’s school construction grants -- now guaranteed under the law -- remain in limbo. Both the Vermont State Senate and House failed to clearly define those rules. Instead, they departed Montpelier at the end of June by passing a new law that simply delegates (as did Act 73) the question of how and when school-construction funding should be appropriated to an overworked, understaffed Vermont AOE.

Specifically, both Act 170 and the earlier Act 73 direct Secretary Saunders and the AOE to hire a new team of experts who, once seated, will be tasked with writing the new rules required for the future appropriation of construction funds to needy school districts -- a process that lawmakers say could take three years. More alarming, language in Act 170 states that any district compelled to begin construction without a final approval from the AOE stands to be penalized by forfeiting its eligibility for any state grant funding at all.

“Here’s the problem: because of this legislative conundrum, the progress our communities have made to secure their district’s future and rebuild WUHSMS over the course of ten long years could be totally derailed – all because the Vermont legislature and a sitting Governor have failed to budget construction aid through a direct appropriation to the most needy district in the State: our own MVSD,” said Bristow.

“We have told the Secretary and Deputy Secretary that we will comply with any of the rules that are rewritten, just as we have already complied with those that were revised in 2024,” she said. “We simply need to know that if we begin construction, we will still be eligible for the promised construction funding when it does become available. Our goal is -- as it always has been -- to partner with the AOE in this effort.”

Acts 73 and 170 stipulate that MVSU is promised state funding that will cover at least 30-percent of the cost of debt incurred by MVSD for the $112 million bond resoundingly approved last March by 61 percent of district voters. Additional funding from the state is also possible in the future. The State of Vermont stopped providing school-building construction support between 2007 and 2022, which in large part accounts for the poor condition of public-school buildings in districts throughout the state.

The 70-year-old WUHSMS building is now considered the worst case of school-building deterioration in Vermont. It therefore requires immediate and urgent state aid, which many State legislators have acknowledged. Bristow noted that emergency funding has relatively recently been granted to other school districts struggling with failing infrastructures. She cited the rescue by the State of Vermont of the Burlington High School rebuild project in November 2022, after voters approved a bond for $165 million.

She continued that the legislature’s failure to make the fiscal appropriations commitments that would fund the district’s shovel-ready construction project in 2027 should not be allowed to stand as a delay that further endangers the health and safety of MVSD’s students and teachers. Moreover, MVSD holds as unconscionable that the inaction in Montpelier could soon threaten to reverse and invalidate the very will of the voting taxpayers, who resoundingly passed their March school rebuild bond, by simply allowing time and inflation to raise the cost of the rebuild beyond the $112 million provided by the bond. She noted that these are the same voters who will be electing and/or reelecting legislators and a Governor beginning in August’s primary elections and later in November’s general elections. Governor Phil Scott has said he’ll seek a sixth term.

The costly band aid of sewer replacement with no guarantees

Meanwhile, Joe Rigoli, MVSD Facilities Director, reported today that replacement of a section of WUHSMS’ sewer system is underway as of last week*. The replacement was also approved by district voters last March as one of two separate bonds totaling $500,000, each needed to keep the ailing WUHSMS building open and functioning.

After extensive inspections, Rigoli said that the seven-decades-old cast-iron sewer pipes beneath the food- preparation areas of the cafeteria, the lavatories serving the cafeteria, and the hallways from the lavatories to the staff parking lot cannot be repaired. The repair team used ground-penetrating radar to identify sewer pipes from others and cameras to confirm what Rigoli defines as a “complete, catastrophic failure” of the sewer pipes.

“For all the money we’ve asked taxpayers to approve, these expensive repairs are a drop in the bucket: they cover a very small section of the total sewer system that extends throughout the entire structure -- all so we can keep the cafeteria open and operating,” said Rigoli. “What keeps me up at night is that we could experience similar system failures anywhere else in the building at any moment. The system could easily break down, even five feet from where we’re working now, and there goes another quarter-million-dollar expense that the taxpayers of this district will be forced to approve. Bottom line: we’re being held back from rebuilding our school because the legislature can’t figure out how to appropriate the funds we’ve qualified for and been promised.”

He added that the replacement of a failed boiler also began this month. The cost of the two new propane boilers required stands at $300,000, also part of the system replacement approved by voters in their March bond votes.

END

About Mountain Views Supervisory Union (MVSU): Located in Central Vermont’s Green Mountains, Mountain Views Supervisory Union serves students from Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Pittsfield, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading, Woodstock, and other neighboring school-choice communities. For more information, please visit the MVSU Website.

Contact:
Gina McAllister
MVSU Communications Committee Chair
gina.mcallister@mtnviews.org
Mobile: (802) 738-6414
Office: ((802) 952-1048

* Photos of sewer system replacement provided separately.