30 Vital Vermont Public Education Thought Leaders

Introduction

Vermont public schools are at an inflection point. Enrolment has fallen by roughly 20 percent over the past two decades, per-pupil costs have risen to among the highest in the United States, and a majority of students in the 2024-25 school year were not yet meeting grade-level academic standards, according to the Vermont State Report Card released in February 2026. The state that once ranked among the top performers nationally in science and mathematics is now reckoning, honestly and sometimes painfully, with a system that costs a great deal and is under increasing strain. At the same time, Vermont is home to some of the most original, committed, and courageous education voices in the country. These are people who are not just describing the problem but building something better, fighting for something worth protecting, or demanding the kind of reform that serves students rather than administrators.

This list gathers thirty of those voices. They include the state's Secretary of Education, the chairs of both legislative education committees, the executive directors of Vermont's principal and superintendent associations, university researchers whose scholarship on rural schooling is cited nationally, classroom teachers who have been honoured as state and national exemplars, early childhood advocates who helped pass landmark legislation, and rural school champions who are insisting that small community schools are not an inefficiency to be eliminated but a resource to be supported. These are not distant commentators writing about Vermont from afar. Every person on this list is working, researching, teaching, or advocating inside the Vermont public education system right now.

Vermont's education crisis is also, looked at differently, a Vermont education opportunity. Act 73 of 2025, the most sweeping education reform legislation the state has passed in a generation, has restructured how the state funds and governs public schools. It has also ignited the most substantive public debate about education in Vermont's recent history. The people on this list are central to that debate, and the ideas they are championing will shape what Vermont public schools look like for the next generation of students.

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant and keynote speaker who works with school leadership teams around the world to translate the ideas these thinkers champion into practical Monday morning decisions. To discuss how Jonno might support your school or leadership team, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Vermont Public Education Matters

Vermont is the most rural state in the United States by population density. Nearly two-thirds of its residents live in rural areas, and the state averages just 68 people per square mile. Those numbers are not just demographic curiosities. They shape everything about how Vermont educates its children, from the extraordinary number of school districts (119 as of 2025, now under active restructuring) to the unusual tuition-choice tradition that has sent students in roughly 90 Vermont communities to approved independent schools at public expense for generations. Vermont is a testing ground for some of the most pressing questions in American public education: What do we owe rural communities when their schools become financially unsustainable? How do we fund education equitably when property values and tax capacity vary enormously across a small state? What is the relationship between a community school and the community it serves, and what is lost when that school closes?

The answers Vermont finds to these questions will matter well beyond its borders. Vermont is already being watched closely by education researchers, state policymakers, and rural school advocates across the country as it implements Act 73. According to data from the Vermont Agency of Education, the state's education spending increased by 42 percent between 2014 and 2025 even as student population fell, pushing per-pupil costs to the second highest in the country. The leaders on this list are the people navigating that reality, in legislative chambers, in superintendents' offices, in research labs, and in classrooms. Following their thinking is one of the most direct ways to understand what public education's future might look like in rural America.

If you lead a school, a district, or a leadership team and want support translating these ideas into practice, email jonno@consultclarity.org. Jonno White works with school leadership teams around the world and regularly travels to work in person with teams across the United States. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

How This List Was Compiled

This list draws on public records, legislative testimony, academic publications, media coverage, and professional profiles across Vermont's education system. The selection prioritised geographic diversity across Vermont's regions, disciplinary diversity across classroom teaching, research, policy, advocacy, and leadership, and a genuine contribution to shaping the current direction of Vermont public education. The list deliberately includes voices across the full spectrum of the current reform debate: those driving consolidation and those arguing for the value of small community schools; those working from within state government and those challenging it from outside; those focusing on early childhood and those focused on the secondary and CTE pipeline. No single perspective dominates. Vermont's public education debate is genuinely contested and this list reflects that.

Category 1: State Leadership and Policy

These are the people who hold formal authority over Vermont's public education system at the state level, either through executive appointment, legislative role, or institutional governance. Their decisions set the frame within which every other person on this list works.

1. Zoie Saunders

Few education leaders in Vermont's recent history have entered the role with as much outside attention as Zoie Saunders, who was appointed Vermont Secretary of Education by Governor Phil Scott in March 2024 and confirmed permanently in November of that year. Educated at Harvard as an undergraduate and Vanderbilt's Peabody College for her Master of Education, Saunders brought experience from Broward County Public Schools, one of the six largest school districts in the United States, and from five years as the City of Fort Lauderdale's first chief education officer. She had worked on school improvement across Florida's public charter school network, and her arrival in Vermont coincided with a moment when the state was ready to move from describing its education crisis to legislating a response.

Her most significant specific contribution to the Vermont public education conversation is her framing of the education challenge as inseparable from three dimensions simultaneously: funding, governance, and quality. In a December 2025 interview with VTDigger, Saunders articulated this explicitly, saying the work of Act 73 is distinctively different from prior reform efforts because it keeps all three dimensions together rather than treating them in isolation. That triangulated framing has shaped how every subsequent legislative debate has been structured. Vermont Agency of Education, Montpelier, Vermont.

2. Rebecca Holcombe

Before she was a state legislator representing Norwich, Strafford, Thetford, and Sharon in the Vermont House, Rebecca Holcombe was Vermont's Secretary of Education, serving from 2014 to 2018 under both Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin and Republican Governor Phil Scott. She is a rare figure in Vermont public life: someone who has both led the Agency of Education from the inside and now scrutinises it from the legislature. Her academic credentials include a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University, a Master of Business Administration from Simmons University, and a Doctorate in Education Policy and Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She also co-founded the Greenway Institute, a National Science Foundation-funded initiative to bring students from underrepresented backgrounds into sustainable engineering.

Holcombe's most significant scholarly and practical contribution to Vermont education is her work implementing Act 46, the 2015 school consolidation law that unified 157 school districts into 39 under her leadership as secretary. That work remains directly relevant to the current Act 73 debate, and Holcombe has been one of the most precise public voices on the funding formula's structural problems. Her published analysis arguing that Vermont's education fund has been burdened with non-school costs that make the system artificially expensive provides some of the sharpest technical thinking available to a general reader on why the cost crisis is not simply about inefficiency. Vermont House of Representatives, Windsor-Orange 2 District.

3. Peter Conlon

As chair of the Vermont House Education Committee, Peter Conlon of Cornwall has been the single most consequential legislative architect of Act 73 and the 2026 effort to turn that law's framework into concrete school district maps. His role requires him to hold together a committee that spans deep ideological disagreement about school choice, local control, and the pace of change. In a March 2026 interview, Conlon described the challenge plainly, acknowledging that every lawmaker has a constraint they cannot get past, and that the work ahead requires finding a path that generates enough votes despite those blocks.

His specific contribution to the policy debate is a concrete school district consolidation proposal that would merge Vermont's 119 districts into 27 units, most with between 2,000 and 3,000 students. That is a more moderate consolidation than Act 73 originally envisioned, but Conlon argues it hits the sweet spot between operational efficiency and community voice. The proposal has anchored the most substantive phase of the legislative debate and will likely influence Vermont's school district map for decades. Vermont House of Representatives, Addison-4 District.

4. Seth Bongartz

Seth Bongartz of Bennington was installed as chair of the Senate Education Committee in January 2025, a highly unusual appointment for a freshman senator, and he has since emerged as one of the most important moderating voices in the education reform debate. Where the House's approach to consolidation has emphasised economies of scale, Bongartz has consistently returned to the voices of rural communities who fear losing contact with their local schools and their long-standing tuition-choice traditions. In March 2026, he argued that extensive community testimony had convinced him that voluntary mergers, not mandatory consolidation, were the right path forward.

His specific contribution is keeping the Senate's reform proposal grounded in what he calls Vermont's democratic tradition of local education governance, including his defence of the tuition-choice system that allows students in approximately 90 Vermont communities to attend approved independent schools at public expense. That defence is contested, but Bongartz has forced the legislature to slow down and engage with it seriously rather than bypassing it in the rush toward consolidation. Vermont Senate, Bennington District.

5. Martine Larocque Gulick

Senator Martine Larocque Gulick of Chittenden Central is a former public school teacher and school librarian who serves simultaneously on the Burlington School Board and in the Vermont Senate. That combination of classroom experience, board service, and legislative work gives her a rare vantage point on Vermont public education that is both practitioner-grounded and policy-shaping. She was co-chair of the School District Redistricting Task Force formed under Act 73, and her public statements on that body's work have consistently emphasised equity for students across Vermont's diverse communities.

Her specific contribution is providing a public school voice within a Senate Education Committee debate that has at times been pulled toward the interests of Vermont's approved independent schools. On the Senate floor vote on Act 73 in 2025, Gulick made a public statement of discomfort with the bill's final form even as she voted for it, acknowledging the compromises Vermont's education reform has required and signalling her ongoing commitment to keeping equity for public school students at the centre of the reform process. Vermont Senate, Chittenden Central District.

6. Jill Krowinski

As Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, Jill Krowinski of Burlington has been the primary legislative champion of Act 73 and the consolidation effort it authorises. She has consistently reaffirmed the House's commitment to moving forward even as resistance from rural communities and disagreements with the Senate have slowed implementation. In a July 2025 statement announcing the members of the School District Redistricting Task Force, Krowinski framed the reform as being fundamentally about equity, describing it as an important step in building a public education system that is more equitable, more sustainable and more responsive to the needs of students and communities.

Her most direct contribution to the Vermont education conversation is her insistence, against significant political pressure, that the consolidation mandate is necessary for the foundation formula to deliver its promised savings and equalisations. Without Krowinski's willingness to hold the reform together when it faced internal Democratic opposition, Act 73 would likely not have passed in its current form. Vermont House of Representatives, Burlington.

Category 2: The Voice of Vermont Educators

These are the association leaders and union leaders who represent the people working inside Vermont's public schools every day. Their influence on the policy debate is direct, sustained, and grounded in the experience of tens of thousands of educators across the state.

7. Chelsea Myers

Chelsea Myers is the Executive Director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, a role that places her at the centre of every major policy discussion about Vermont's school leadership. She holds a graduate degree from Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, and her regular media commentary reflects an approach to the role that is both substantively engaged with policy and genuinely communicative with a wider public. She has been a consistent and clear public voice during the Act 73 debate, pushing back when she believes the data is being misread and advocating for solutions that serve students rather than political timelines.

Her specific contribution is her February 2026 public response to the Vermont State Report Card, in which she acknowledged that the results demand attention and continued action while simultaneously insisting that no single snapshot can fully capture the breadth of student learning, and that data should serve as a tool for understanding and improvement rather than political ammunition. That combination of institutional accountability and genuine substantive engagement is precisely what leadership associations are supposed to model, and Myers has provided it consistently throughout the reform debate. Vermont Superintendents Association, Montpelier.

8. Amy Minor

Amy Minor is the Superintendent of the Colchester School District and has served as President of the Vermont Superintendents Association since 2023, a term that has spanned the most consequential education reform period in the state's recent history. As VSA President, she has been one of the most active voices representing superintendents before the House and Senate Education committees, providing practical perspective on how the proposals being debated in Montpelier would actually function in the school districts her members run. Her testimony has been a consistent reminder to legislators that the people who will be responsible for implementing reform are watching the legislative process closely.

Minor's most direct specific contribution is the VSA's 2025 Legislative Platform, which she helped shape and present to the legislature, including detailed positions on class size minimums, PreK funding formulas, facility modernisation, and the governance relationship between the State Board of Education and the Secretary. That platform has provided a practical framework against which the legislature's actual proposals have been measured, and its specificity reflects the quality of thinking Minor has brought to the VSA's advocacy work. Vermont Superintendents Association / Colchester School District.

9. Jay Nichols

Jay Nichols is the Executive Director of the Vermont Principals' Association and one of the most frequently cited advocates for school building leaders in Vermont's public education debate. The VPA represents principals across Vermont's 295 schools and is a consistent presence before the legislature on questions of school governance, school safety, student wellbeing, and teacher pipeline. Before his eight years in this current role, Nichols served as a principal and superintendent for over 20 years. He has also served in a broader capacity as a former chair of the Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont.

His specific contribution is sustained testimony and advocacy on behalf of Vermont's school building leaders, who are often left out of education reform conversations that focus on district-level governance or state policy. In written testimony to the House Ways and Means and House Education committees in February 2025, Nichols provided a detailed technical framework for thinking about how a foundation formula would actually play out at the school district level, arguing for holding higher-spending districts harmless where their costs reflect appropriate scale and employee compensation rather than inefficiency. Vermont Principals' Association, Montpelier.

10. Don Tinney

Don Tinney is a long-time English teacher at BFA St. Albans and the President of Vermont-NEA, the state affiliate of the National Education Association representing approximately 13,000 Vermont educators. His decision to remain a classroom teacher while serving as union president is itself a statement: Tinney brings direct first-hand experience of what Vermont's education reforms mean at the chalk-face, not just in the halls of the State House. He has been one of the most consistent and forceful critics of Governor Scott's education agenda, arguing publicly that Vermont's declining outcomes cannot be attributed to local governance structures but reflect a decade of underinvestment in educators and a failure to address the underlying demographic issues facing Vermont's communities.

Tinney's specific contribution is a February 2026 public statement titled 'Educators Want Outcomes, Not Platitudes,' which articulated a clear counter-narrative to the official reform story: that student outcomes cannot be meaningfully improved by governance restructuring alone, and that the educators doing the daily work of teaching Vermont's children deserve support rather than blame. His sustained public voice, including regular op-eds and press statements throughout 2025 and 2026, has ensured that the perspectives of Vermont's classroom teachers remain visible in a debate that often focuses on administrators and legislators. Vermont-NEA, Montpelier / BFA St. Albans.

11. Jeff Fannon

Jeff Fannon is the Executive Director of Vermont-NEA, the organisational counterpart to Don Tinney's elected union presidency. While Tinney provides the public voice and political leadership of Vermont's largest union, Fannon manages its operations and institutional relationships. He has been a consistent presence in legislative hearings on education reform, representing the interests of Vermont's 13,000 educators before both the House and Senate education committees. His steady institutional leadership of Vermont-NEA through one of the most contentious education reform periods in recent memory has helped the union maintain its credibility as a serious policy voice even as the political stakes have escalated.

Fannon's most notable specific contribution is the Vermont-NEA's 2025 Legislative Agenda, which he presented before the Senate Education Committee and which outlined a comprehensive position on education funding reform, including a proposal to replace the residential homestead property tax with an income-based system that would make Vermont's education finance structure more genuinely progressive. Vermont-NEA, Montpelier.

12. Sue Ceglowski

Sue Ceglowski is the Executive Director of the Vermont School Boards Association and one of the most experienced institutional voices in the Vermont education debate. The VSBA represents the elected school board members who govern Vermont's school districts, a constituency that has been both challenged and supported by Act 73's proposed changes to district governance structures. Ceglowski has been a regular presence in legislative testimony and has consistently advocated for a process of reform that respects the democratic role of locally elected school boards rather than concentrating authority in the Secretary of Education or in larger, more distant governance structures.

Her specific contribution is a December 2025 open letter co-signed with Burlington School District Superintendent Tom Flanagan, titled 'Vermont Doesn't Need a State Takeover of Education,' which articulated the case that Vermont's public schools are under strain rather than broken, and that the path forward requires equity, evidenced savings, and community engagement rather than top-down restructuring. That statement provided the clearest single articulation of the pro-public-school, pro-community-governance position in the 2025 reform debate. Vermont School Boards Association, Montpelier.

Category 3: University and Research Voices

Vermont's universities, and UVM in particular, have produced scholarship directly relevant to the current education debate. These researchers bring methodological rigour and longitudinal perspective to questions that the policy debate often addresses with urgency and limited evidence.

13. Daniella Hall Sutherland

Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Vermont, Daniella Hall Sutherland is the leading academic voice on rural school governance and community-controlled education in Vermont. Her research examines the intersection of educational leadership and policy in rural communities, with a specific focus on Vermont school boards, superintendents, and principals. Her work has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and has appeared in leading journals including the Peabody Journal of Education, Educational Policy, and Education Policy Analysis Archives. She received two awards from the National Rural Education Association and founded the Vermont Rural Education Association as a state hub for collaboration and advocacy focused on rural education.

Sutherland's specific scholarly contribution most directly relevant to the current debate is her award-winning research on rural school governance and local control, recognised by the National Rural Education Association with its Howard A. Dawson Best Research Study Award in 2019. Her work provides the most rigorous academic treatment available of the very questions Vermont is wrestling with politically in 2025 and 2026: what local control of education means in practice, what it costs, and what is genuinely lost when it is replaced with regional governance structures. University of Vermont College of Education and Social Services.

14. Matthew McCluskey

Dr. Matthew McCluskey is an Assistant Professor in UVM's Educational Leadership and Policy Studies doctoral programme, where his research focuses on teacher turnover, charter schools, and the contagion effects that educator departures have on school culture and student outcomes. His 2025 article in Research Outreach on teacher retention offered concrete recommendations for improving educator retention that are directly relevant to Vermont's current challenge of sustaining a high-quality educator workforce in small, rural districts where replacement hiring is significantly harder than in urban markets. He joined UVM as part of a deliberate programme expansion designed to bring research capacity into Vermont's most pressing education policy questions.

McCluskey's specific contribution is empirical research that bridges the gap between the policy language of education reform and the lived reality of what school staff experience when their organisations are restructured. His work on the contagion effect of teacher turnover, the finding that educator departures tend to accelerate further departures in the same school or district, provides an important evidence base for evaluating the human capital risks of the rapid consolidation approaches being debated in Vermont's legislature. University of Vermont College of Education and Social Services.

15. Bernice Garnett

Dr. Bernice Garnett holds the Adam and Abigail Burack Family Green and Gold Associate Professorship at UVM and is the research lead for the Catamount Community Schools Collaborative, a research-practice-partnership between UVM, the Vermont Agency of Education, and five school districts that received pilot grants under Act 67, Vermont's Community Schools Act of 2021. Her work focuses on how community schools, which integrate student supports, expanded learning time, family engagement, and collaborative leadership into a whole-school model, can serve as sustainable anchors for Vermont's most rural and underserved communities.

Garnett's specific contribution is her leadership of a three-year research-practice-partnership spanning Vergennes Elementary, The Cabot School, North Country Supervisory Union, Hazen Union High School, and White River Valley, collectively supporting over 3,560 students. Her partnership with the Vermont Agency of Education on this work is one of the most concrete examples in Vermont of university research being deployed to improve actual school outcomes rather than simply describe them from a distance. University of Vermont College of Education and Social Services.

16. Rebecca Callahan

Dr. Rebecca Callahan is the Program Coordinator for UVM's master's and doctoral programmes in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, which she oversaw through a significant 2024 transformation designed to make them more accessible to Vermont's working educators and school leaders. The doctoral programme shifted to a hybrid model and the master's programme moved fully online, directly addressing the geographic barriers that have historically made graduate education inaccessible to educators in Vermont's most rural communities. Her work in curriculum coordination and programme design is shaping the next generation of Vermont education leaders who will implement whatever reforms the legislature produces.

Callahan's specific contribution is the pedagogical redesign of UVM's flagship leadership preparation programmes during 2023-2024. In a state where distance from Burlington is a genuine barrier to professional development for rural educators, making high-quality doctoral and master's-level leadership training available online is not a minor administrative adjustment. It is a structural equity intervention that directly expands who can access the credentials Vermont's education system needs. University of Vermont College of Education and Social Services.

Category 4: Rural Schools and Community Advocates

Vermont's rural schools debate is not just a policy debate. It is a debate about community identity, democratic governance, and what happens to small towns when their schools close. These voices represent the communities most directly affected by Act 73.

17. Cheryl Charles

Cheryl Charles is a leader of the Vermont Rural School Community Alliance (RSCA), the coalition of educators, parents, school board members, and community members that formed in early 2025 in direct response to the Governor's education transformation proposal. The RSCA, which within weeks of its formation had membership from more than 60 Vermont towns, brought together Vermonters from across the state who agreed that any reform that did not account for Vermont's rural character and the role of community schools as community hubs was a reform that would harm the people it was meant to help. The RSCA has completed a statewide rural needs assessment across all 14 Vermont counties to inform both policy discussions and grassroots advocacy efforts.

Charles's specific contribution is the March 2025 written testimony to the House Education Committee, submitted on behalf of the RSCA, which provided one of the clearest public articulations of the alliance's position: supporting community-driven reform that preserves local democratic governance, and advocating against centralised restructuring that would close elementary schools and transfer control away from local communities. That testimony helped shape how the Commission and then the legislature framed the community consultation components of Act 73. Vermont Rural School Community Alliance.

18. Karen Conroy

Karen Conroy is the Superintendent of the St. Johnsbury School District and a board member of the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative, whose mission is to advocate, innovate, and partner on behalf of Vermont's rural schools and communities. Her district sits in the Northeast Kingdom, the most rural part of Vermont and the region facing the steepest demographic and financial challenges. Conroy has been one of the more active district voices in arguing that rural schools are not simply a governance problem to be solved by consolidation, but a genuine community asset whose loss would be irreversible.

Conroy's specific contribution to the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative's advocacy is her consistent voice for Northeast Kingdom schools within a state debate that tends to centre on the larger districts closer to Burlington. The VREC's statewide rural needs assessment, completed across all 14 Vermont counties and providing evidence for both policy discussions and grassroots advocacy, was the kind of resource that Conroy and her colleagues helped create from the practice side of the rural education equation. Vermont Rural Education Collaborative / St. Johnsbury School District.

19. Ken Cadow

Ken Cadow is the co-principal of Oxbow Union High School in Bradford and a VREC board member. He is also one of the most recognised literary voices to emerge from Vermont's education community in recent years. His novel Gather, published in 2023, became a National Book Award finalist, won the Kirkus Prize, received an American Library Association Printz Honor, and was selected as the Vermont Reads book for the 2024-2025 season. Gather is set in rural Vermont and tells a story deeply shaped by Cadow's two decades of experience as an educator in a small, rural high school, making it one of the most authentic literary engagements with the experience of rural Vermont young people that the state has produced.

Cadow's contribution to Vermont public education discourse is his demonstration that rural school leadership and creative scholarship are not mutually exclusive. His prominence as both a school leader and an award-winning novelist gives him a platform to speak about rural Vermont education that reaches audiences well beyond those who follow legislative hearings or read policy journals. Oxbow Union High School / Vermont Rural Education Collaborative.

Category 5: Classroom Voices

Vermont's teachers are the people whose work ultimately determines whether the policy debates in Montpelier translate into genuine improvement for students. These are individuals who have been recognised as exemplars of what Vermont classroom teaching can look like.

20. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver

Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver is Vermont's 2025 Teacher of the Year and a history and English teacher at Winooski High School who also serves as an adjunct lecturer at UVM. Her teaching practice is rooted in culturally responsive pedagogy: she created courses titled Global Explorations and Challenging Systems of Oppression that directly engage her students, many of whom are recent immigrants or children of refugees, with the histories of their families' countries and with structural questions about race and justice. In a 2025 profile in Seven Days, MacLeod-Bluver described Vermont as a model for what true inclusive, culturally responsive teaching looks like.

Her specific contribution is demonstrating, in a state that is demographically quite homogeneous at the aggregate level, that Vermont's diverse communities need and deserve teachers whose practice explicitly centres students' full identities. Winooski, with its remarkably diverse student body relative to Vermont's broader demographics, has become in part because of teachers like MacLeod-Bluver a proof of concept for what inclusive, rigorous, culturally responsive public school education looks like in practice. Winooski High School / University of Vermont.

21. Linda Alvarez

Linda Alvarez is Vermont's 2026 Teacher of the Year and the first career and technical education educator to receive that recognition in the state's history. A Business and Entrepreneurship teacher at the Windham Regional Career Center in Brattleboro, Alvarez brings a distinctive combination of lived entrepreneurial experience and pedagogical creativity. Her signature programme, the year-long Food Truck Business Plan, takes students through the complete arc of entrepreneurship from concept through to presentation to community leaders and local bankers. First-generation college students, multilingual learners, and neurodiverse students are central to her classroom design.

Her specific contribution to Vermont public education is making the case, through practice rather than argument, that career and technical education is not a consolation track for students who struggle academically but a rigorous, real-world learning environment that equips students with skills, confidence, and purpose. In a Vermont where workforce development and economic vitality are increasingly connected to the education system's ability to prepare young people for meaningful careers, Alvarez's recognition as Teacher of the Year sends a clear signal about what kinds of teaching Vermont values. Windham Regional Career Center, Brattleboro.

Category 6: Early Childhood and Child Wellbeing

Vermont has been a national leader in early childhood education investment, particularly since the passage of Act 76 in 2023. These voices represent the early childhood ecosystem that is shaping the earliest years of Vermont students' educational journeys.

22. Sharron Harrington

Sharron Harrington is the Executive Director of the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children (VTAEYC), one of the partner organisations now leading Vermont's child care advocacy following the wind-down of Let's Grow Kids in 2025. The ECE Profession Bill, which VTAEYC has championed, passed the Vermont Senate in 2025 and would create professional licensure for early childhood educators working in non-public child care programmes. If enacted, Vermont could become the first state to adopt the national guidance contained in the Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Profession, which would establish three professional designations based on education and experience.

Harrington's specific contribution is her sustained public articulation of why professional licensure for early childhood educators is a quality and equity intervention, not just a credentialing exercise. In a September 2025 statement, she made the case directly: early childhood education is teaching during the fastest period of brain development, and Vermont must invest in preparing, compensating, and recognising early childhood educators because a stable, qualified workforce is the key to access and quality for every child. Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children.

23. Aly Richards

From 2015 to 2025, Aly Richards served as the CEO of Let's Grow Kids, the statewide advocacy organisation whose ten-year campaign to secure affordable access to high-quality child care for Vermont's families was one of the most successful long-term policy campaigns in Vermont history. The campaign's impact report, released at the close of Let's Grow Kids' operations at the end of 2025, documented more than 100 new child care programmes opened, over 1,700 new spaces for children, 400 new early childhood educator jobs, and enrolment in tuition assistance growing by more than 63 percent. Richards' decision to build Let's Grow Kids as a time-limited, ten-year campaign is itself a model of disciplined advocacy: having a clear goal and a deadline created accountability and focus.

Her specific contribution is the passage and initial implementation of Act 76, Vermont's landmark child care law, under which families earning up to 575 percent of the federal poverty level are now eligible for tuition assistance. In a 2025 reflection with New America, Richards described the discipline of the time-limited model as central to the campaign's success, and announced plans for a case study and toolkit designed to help other states follow Vermont's lead. Vermont Let's Grow Kids (former CEO).

Category 7: Policy Analysis and Commentary

Vermont's education debate is shaped not only by those working inside institutions but by the analysts, commentators, and advocates who push the conversation from the outside.

24. John Walters

John Walters is the founder and principal writer of The Vermont Political Observer, one of the most widely read independent political commentary outlets in the state, and has been one of the most consistent and substantive critics of Vermont's education reform process. A former Vermont Deputy Commissioner of Education, he brings institutional memory and policy literacy to his commentary that most journalists cannot match. His analysis of Act 73's legislative process, including sharp observations about the structural dynamics of the Senate's Education Committee and the interests of Vermont's independent school sector, has provided a counterweight to official narratives throughout 2025 and 2026.

Walters' specific contribution is his sustained, granular analysis of the Vermont education policy process at a level of detail that goes beyond what mainstream news coverage provides. In a small state where institutional relationships are close and accountability journalism is scarce, independent analytical voices like Walters serve a genuinely important function: they name structural dynamics that official narratives often obscure, and they provide readers with the context needed to evaluate the claims being made in the legislature and in press releases. The Vermont Political Observer, Vermont.

25. Anne Watson

Senator Anne Watson of Washington District is a former public school educator who has become one of the legislature's strongest advocates for keeping the Vermont public school educator perspective central to the reform debate. Vermont-NEA has highlighted Watson as one of four educator-lawmakers who bring a special knowledge to the current debate that comes directly from years of classroom experience. Watson has been active in both the Natural Resources and Energy Committee and in education reform debates, demonstrating the kind of cross-portfolio engagement that effective legislators need when education is intertwined with community viability, workforce development, and rural economic policy.

Watson's specific contribution is co-leadership of a Vermont-NEA initiative to bring more educator voices into the Vermont legislature, arguing publicly that the state's students need lawmakers who have actually been in the classroom. Her advocacy for the Vermont-NEA Educator Candidate School, which trains union educators to run for office, is a structural investment in the next generation of Vermont education voices at the Statehouse. Vermont Senate, Washington District.

26. Corey McDonald

As VTDigger's lead education reporter, Corey McDonald has done more to inform the Vermont public's understanding of Act 73 and its implications than almost any other single journalist in the state. His 2025 education coverage, described by VTDigger's own year-in-review as capturing a year marked by both uncertainty and optimism as communities weighed the promise of Act 73 against fears about the future of local schools, has been the primary public record of legislative debates, community responses, redistricting task force meetings, and Agency of Education communications throughout the most consequential education policy period in Vermont's recent history.

McDonald's specific contribution is his sustained, longitudinal coverage of the Act 73 story from its origins in the Governor's January 2025 proposal through the redistricting task force's December 2025 failure to deliver a map and into the 2026 legislative session's renewed attempts at reform. That kind of sustained beat reporting, staying with a complex policy story through its full arc, is increasingly rare in American local journalism and unusually valuable for a state undergoing the kind of transformation Vermont's education system is experiencing. VTDigger, Montpelier.

27. Brooke Olsen-Farrell

Brooke Olsen-Farrell is the Superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified School District and one of the more visible district-level voices in Vermont's current education reform debate. She has testified before both the House and Senate Education committees during the Act 73 legislative process, providing a practitioner's perspective on what the proposed governance changes would mean for a district that has already undergone significant consolidation. Her testimony has been notable for its willingness to engage with both the genuine challenges of the current system and the practical risks of the proposed changes.

Olsen-Farrell's specific contribution is her testimony on instructional scale, presented to the House Education Committee in early 2025, which directly engaged with the question of how large a district needs to be to offer students the full range of curriculum, services, and learning opportunities they deserve, without losing the community connection that makes small Vermont schools worth fighting for. That testimony represented one of the clearer practitioner frameworks available to legislators for thinking through the consolidation trade-offs. Slate Valley Unified School District.

28. Lynn Cota

Lynn Cota is the Superintendent of the Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union and has served as Treasurer of the Vermont Superintendents Association, a role that placed her at the centre of Vermont's education finance reform debate. The Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union covers a rural corner of Vermont near the Canadian border, and Cota's experience leading schools in that context gives her testimony particular weight when the legislature is debating how consolidation and funding reform will play out in Vermont's most remote communities. Her contributions to the VSA's 2025 legislative platform reflect a long-term engagement with the structural questions Vermont education faces.

Cota's specific contribution is her role as VSA Treasurer during the period when Vermont's education finance transformation was being negotiated, a role that required communicating the operational and financial implications of the proposed foundation formula to VSA colleagues, legislators, and Agency staff. The details of how a foundation formula interacts with small district cost structures may not generate public excitement, but it is precisely the kind of technical leadership that determines whether education reform actually works in practice. Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union.

29. Cris Mayo

Dr. Cris Mayo is a Professor of Education at UVM and coordinator of UVM's Interdisciplinary Studies in Education programme. Their scholarship focuses on LGBTQ education, ethics, and the role of complexity and ambiguity in educational practice. Mayo's work occupies a space in Vermont's education conversation that is sometimes underrepresented in the reform debate: the philosophical and ethical dimensions of what public education is for, who it is for, and how it should engage with questions of identity, justice, and community membership. In a period when federal pressure on diversity, equity and inclusion in schools is intensifying, Vermont's public schools have had to make consequential choices about their values.

Mayo's specific contribution is ongoing scholarship and teaching on LGBTQ inclusion in schools that has shaped UVM's preparation programmes for the next generation of Vermont educators. Their work, published across journals in education, queer theory, and ethics, provides a philosophical grounding for the kind of inclusive schooling practices that Vermont teachers are putting into practice in classrooms across the state. University of Vermont College of Education and Social Services.

30. Jonno White

The people on this list are Vermont public education's thinkers, researchers, advocates, and practitioners. Jonno White is the person you bring in when you are ready to act on what they say. A Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, with over 10,000 copies sold globally, Jonno works with school leadership teams around the world to translate complex ideas into practical decisions. Whether your school leadership team needs to navigate a difficult conversation, build a stronger culture, or work through the kind of structural change that Vermont's schools are managing right now, Jonno brings a workshop or facilitation experience that turns the ideas these thinkers champion into Monday morning action.

His book Step Up or Step Out is available on Amazon at amazon.com.au/Step-Up-Out-Difficult-Conflict/dp/B097X7B5LD. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect. To book Jonno for a keynote, facilitation session, or executive offsite for your school or district leadership team, email jonno@consultclarity.org. He works with schools across the United States and globally, and many organisations find that flying him in costs considerably less than engaging local providers. Clarity Group Global, Brisbane, Australia (working globally).

Notable Voices We Almost Included

The Vermont public education conversation is rich with voices beyond the thirty profiled here. Phil Scott, Vermont's Republican Governor, has been the single most powerful force shaping the 2025-2026 reform agenda, but his role as the political executive driving the process places him in a different category from the educators, researchers, advocates, and practitioners this list centres. Heather Bouchey served as interim Vermont Secretary of Education before Zoie Saunders arrived and provided important continuity leadership during a period of transition; her subsequent role as Deputy Secretary means she remains active in the system but in a supporting rather than leading-voice capacity. Jeremy DeMink of Edmunds Middle School and Sonya Shedd of Wolcott Elementary School were both Distinguished Finalists for the 2025 Vermont Teacher of the Year. Vermont Rural Education Collaborative board members Sean Davis and Jennifer Blay were seriously considered. On the research side, Dr. Brittany Williams of UVM, recognised in 2025 as a Pioneer for Change by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, and Dr. Maureen Neumann, a 2025 Fulbright Global Scholar Award recipient, both represent important UVM research voices that warrant attention. Alison Novak of Seven Days, a former elementary school teacher who now covers K-12 education, has also produced important journalism on the reform process.

The most prominent names in education thought leadership more broadly, including those who appear on every list like this one, were deliberately set aside to make room for the Vermont-specific voices doing the actual, daily, contested work of building and defending public education in the Green Mountain State.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Engaging with Vermont Education Thought Leadership

The most common mistake readers make when engaging with the Vermont education debate is treating it as a proxy for a national culture war argument. Vermont's education reform crisis is fundamentally about demographics and finance, not ideology. The state has the highest per-pupil spending in the country alongside declining enrolment, and those two facts in combination have produced a structural problem that cuts across party lines. The voices most worth following on Vermont education are not the ones who can most fluently translate local details into national narrative but the ones who stay with the specific, technical complexity of the Vermont situation.

A second mistake is assuming that reform and preservation are straightforwardly opposed. Most of the people on this list support some version of change to Vermont's school governance and finance structures. The genuine debate is about pace, scale, and which community values must be protected through any transition. Reading the reform conversation as a simple conflict between progress and resistance will cause you to miss what is actually interesting about it.

A third mistake is ignoring early childhood. The most transformative investment Vermont has made in public education in the past decade was not Act 73. It was Act 76, the 2023 child care and early childhood education law. The people on this list who are working in early childhood are building the foundation that every other education reform will either stand on or crumble without.

A fourth mistake is treating Vermont's outcomes data in isolation. Vermont's declining test scores and graduation rates are real and serious. They are also occurring against a backdrop of national trends, post-pandemic learning disruption, a mental health crisis in adolescent students that has been documented across every state, and Vermont-specific demographic pressures that no governance reform by itself can resolve. The voices on this list who engage with this context most carefully are the most useful guides to what is actually happening.

A fifth mistake is underestimating the importance of community voice. Vermont's tradition of local control of education is not just a legacy preference. It is a functioning democratic institution with deep roots in town meeting culture. The reform process that respects that tradition while addressing the genuine financial unsustainability of the current system is the one most likely to produce schools that Vermonters will actually support and sustain over the long term.

Implementation Guide: How to Engage with Vermont Public Education Thought Leadership

The best starting point for anyone wanting to follow Vermont public education thought leadership is VTDigger's education section, which provides the most comprehensive and sustained coverage of the policy debate. The Vermont Political Observer, John Walters' independent commentary site, offers a necessary critical counterpoint. The Vermont Agency of Education's press releases and reports are the primary source for official data, and the Agency's annual Vermont State Report Card is essential reading for anyone tracking outcomes over time.

For legislative developments, the Vermont Legislature's website publishes video recordings and transcripts of House and Senate Education Committee meetings, and many of the voices on this list testify regularly before those committees. Watching that testimony live or on video provides a quality of policy understanding that press coverage alone cannot match.

For research, UVM's College of Education and Social Services publishes regular updates on its research-practice-partnerships and faculty work, and the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative has produced advocacy documents and rural needs assessments that are essential reading for anyone interested in the rural schools dimension of the debate.

The Vermont Superintendents Association, the Vermont Principals' Association, the Vermont School Boards Association, and Vermont-NEA all publish legislative platforms, testimony, and commentary that are freely available on their websites. Following all four simultaneously gives you the full range of practitioner perspectives on any given reform proposal.

Engage with the people on this list directly where possible. Many of them post publicly on LinkedIn or contribute to media outlets and are genuinely responsive to thoughtful questions about their work. Vermont is a small state with a close-knit professional community, and the distance between a curious reader and a thoughtful conversation with one of these voices is shorter than it might appear.

To book Jonno White for a workshop or facilitation session that helps your school leadership team put these ideas into practice, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Act 73 and why does it matter for Vermont public education?

Act 73, passed by the Vermont Legislature in 2025, is a sweeping reform law that consolidates school districts, introduces a new education funding formula called a foundation formula, and restructures the governance of Vermont's public school system. It represents the most significant change to Vermont's education system in a generation, and its implementation is the central preoccupation of every major Vermont education voice in 2025 and 2026. The law's goal is to address Vermont's twin challenges of rising costs and declining student outcomes by creating larger, more efficient governance structures and a more equitable funding system.

Why is Vermont's education system so expensive?

Vermont's per-pupil education spending is among the highest in the United States, reaching the second-highest nationally by 2025. The primary driver is structural: Vermont has a very large number of small school districts, each with its own administrative overhead, and a student population that has declined by approximately 20 percent over the past two decades. Fixed costs stay roughly the same even as the number of students paying for them shrinks, which pushes per-pupil costs up. The foundation formula in Act 73 is designed to create savings by redistributing resources across larger, more efficient governance structures.

What is Vermont's tuition-choice tradition and why is it controversial?

In approximately 90 Vermont communities that do not have their own secondary schools, students receive public funds to attend approved independent schools of their choice. This tradition is beloved by many rural communities as a form of educational freedom. It is controversial because public funds flow to private institutions, some of which are religious, and because critics argue it undermines the public school system by diverting students and dollars. The Carson v. Makin Supreme Court decision in 2022 expanded the constitutional basis for this kind of arrangement, and it has become one of the most contested elements of Vermont's current reform debate.

How was this list compiled?

This list was built from public records, legislative testimony, academic publications, and media coverage across VTDigger, Seven Days, Vermont Public, and the Valley News. The selection prioritised geographic diversity across Vermont's regions, disciplinary diversity across classroom teaching, university research, policy advocacy, and institutional leadership, and genuine active contribution to Vermont public education in 2024-2026. The list deliberately represents the full range of perspectives in the current education reform debate rather than any single viewpoint.

Can I hire someone to support my school or district leadership team with workshops or facilitation?

Jonno White, who appears at position 30 on this list, is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who works with school leadership teams around the world. He delivers keynotes, workshops, and executive offsites that help school leaders navigate structural changes, difficult conversations, and cultural challenges. He is based in Brisbane, Australia and travels globally, and many organisations find that international travel is far more affordable than they expect. To discuss working with Jonno, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Final Thoughts

Vermont public education is in one of the most genuinely interesting periods of its history. A state that has long prided itself on its progressive education values and its strong community schools tradition is discovering that those values and that tradition are harder to sustain when the demographic and financial ground is shifting underneath them. The thirty voices on this list are navigating that tension with courage, expertise, and in most cases a genuine commitment to getting it right for Vermont's students rather than winning a political argument.

The debate about Act 73 will eventually be settled, one way or another, and the district maps will be drawn, and the foundation formula will either deliver the savings and equity improvements it promises or it will not. What will outlast any single piece of legislation is the quality of the thinking, the research, and the advocacy that goes into the decisions Vermont makes about its public schools. The people on this list are contributing to that quality, each in their own way, and following them will give any reader a genuinely richer understanding of what public education can and should look like in a small, rural, democratic state in the twenty-first century.

Jonno White works with school leadership teams around the world to translate ideas like the ones these thirty thinkers champion into practical action. His book Step Up or Step Out, available at amazon.com.au/Step-Up-Out-Difficult-Conflict/dp/B097X7B5LD, has helped over 10,000 leaders navigate difficult conversations and build stronger teams. To bring Jonno in to support your school or district leadership, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits across the UK, India, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, New Zealand, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Finland, Namibia, and more. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read

For more on how school leadership teams can build stronger cultures and navigate structural change, explore Jonno's posts on leadership and team development at consultclarity.org/news-updates.