St. Johnsbury School Board on Act 76's Proposed Changes

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Created on Wednesday, 18 March 2026 04:45

Written by Asher Ballantine

St. Johnsbury — St. Johnsbury school board members share mixed feelings about Act 73’s new redistricting structure and how it’ll affect them. On Monday, there was a school board meeting held at St. Johnsbury, where during a legislative discussion, Act 73 was brought up.

There are two current proposals for Act 73, and both have different structures for school governance. Vermont State Senator Scott Beck was at the meeting and helped give the board clarifying information regarding the two proposals.

The House proposal would see St. Johnsbury merge with Kingdom East, creating a larger school union for the local region. While the Senate proposal would see St. Johnsbury enter a larger Caledonia region supervisory union.

There were a lot of differing and cautionary opinions shared at the meeting amongst the board members.

“My perspective is that the SU (Supervisory Union) is overly complex but the larger SD (school district) is also not the same. So I think it’s important that everybody understands all of that,” said Colleen Morris, the Chair of the school board.

Other members focused on the balance of power between local and regional oversight.

“I think I really like the SU (Supervisory Union) model because it allows for someone without local control at the local board, and then that board can dictate to this new board and then it allows us to kind of represent our own local interests. And it doesn’t necessarily take this away,” said school board member Joseph Achilles, referencing the school board itself.

Scott Beck informed the board that they have until the end of the week to provide clarity to the state which direction they’d prefer to go. Chair of the board, Colleen Morris, said that she would reach out to Kingdom East to get their opinions and get a shared perspective on what both schools want.