Rep. Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall), who has served in the Vermont legislature for a decade and helmed the House Education Committee for the last four years, will not seek reelection this November.
In an interview on Monday, Conlon, 62, discussed what went into his decision to end a 10-year run in Montpelier and reflected on the future of education reform, which has sucked up most of the oxygen at the Statehouse in recent years.
Conlon, who also served on the Addison Central School Board for 17 years, said that the work has taken a toll: wrestling with how to address declining enrollment, find cost savings and maintain high-quality education for students at both the local and state level. The intensity and scrutiny has ramped up, he said, after the Scott administration unveiled a proposal for state-mandated school-district consolidation last year.
“It has been very … challenging, and therefore pretty exhausting,” Conlon said. “I was feeling ready for a break.”
But the rising cost of Conlon’s own health-insurance coverage was the “nail in the coffin” in deciding to leave the legislature, he said. Since 2015, Conlon, a former news editor for the Addison Independent, has run his own business helping older people move, downsize and manage their estates. He and his wife, Mary, have purchased their health insurance on the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. This year, the couple were among the millions who lost federal subsidies that enabled them to pay a lower monthly rate. That means they’ll spend $20,000 more on premiums this year.
“We just simply can’t afford to absorb that kind of hit without dipping into the savings that we have put aside for retirement,” Conlon said.
Now Conlon is on the hunt for a full-time job with health benefits — doing what, he doesn’t know yet. After Conlon left the Addison Independent, he worked for a decade as a dairy labor specialist helping farms hire and train their workforce, which he described as a “niche” job.
“I don’t have an advanced degree and I am a mile-wide and an inch-deep,” said Conlon, a graduate of Montpelier High School and Dartmouth College. “So I’m not really sure what I’m qualified for.”
He’s undoubtedly gained some policy chops in his 10 years in the Statehouse. In the early days, Conlon said, he “followed the age-old advice of being quiet, watching and listening.” He said he learned the most during hourslong Thursday night dinners with a large group of legislators who sat on different committees and would discuss what they were working on at length.
“It was, first of all, great fun, but also really helpful,” Conlon said.
The thing he’ll miss most about serving in the Statehouse, Conlon said, is the daily interactions with his colleagues, who he describes as “this group of Vermonters who are there to — even if we disagree — really do what we think is best for the state.”
What Conlon won’t miss as much is the daunting nature of education-reform work: making big decisions when the right path forward is unclear on a topic for which everyone has different, and strong, opinions.
Conlon said he’s particularly proud of helping to pass legislation intended to support more learners in the general-education classroom and to fund rural community schools, which offer an array of health and social services for students and families. But he acknowledged there are still many unanswered questions and decisions when it comes to the future of education in Vermont.
Early in the session, Conlon floated to his committee a map of new school districts. But he quickly realized it didn’t have the buy-in needed to advance. The bill eventually passed by the House, H.955, instead calls for voluntary district mergers; the plan is currently being considered in the Senate.
“I’m very torn over whether the state should mandate newer, larger districts and thereby relieve local school boards of having to make hard choices,” Conlon said, or listen to those who think “the only way it should be done is with local voice being respected and getting buy-in from the community.” He believes the perennial issue of how to address school choice in certain parts of the state is going to impede reform efforts “until we figure out how to not make it a major roadblock.”
Conlon is unequivocal, though, that if Gov. Phil Scott believes in mandatory school-district consolidation, then he needs to use his political capital to make a case for it.
“As I’ve said from day one to the administration … we won’t get Vermonters behind [widespread education reform] unless [the governor] is out there really selling it to Vermonters, which I don’t think he’s done,” Conlon said.
Conlon is also concerned that the frayed relationship between the Agency of Education and educators in the field could impede reform efforts.
‘The work of education transformation is going to be a multiyear process,” Conlon said, “and as legislators turn over or as things change on the ground, I really hope — but also worry about — that process continuing in a thoughtful way that doesn’t leave kids and communities behind.”
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