Tammy Kolbe, School Funding Researcher, Takes Over as State Board of Education Chair
Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Vermont State Board of Education has a new chair at a moment when the board is being asked to make some of the most consequential decisions in years about how the state’s schools are organized and what students must do to graduate.
Board members voted unanimously on Oct. 21 to elect Tammy Kolbe as chair, VTDigger reported. Kolbe will serve the remainder of former chair Jennifer Samuelson’s term, which runs through the end of February. Samuelson resigned from the board last month. Cynthia Stuart was chosen as vice chair.
Who Tammy Kolbe is
Kolbe is a familiar name to anyone who has followed Vermont’s long-running debate over education funding. A former professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Vermont, she now works as a researcher advising federal and state governments on education policy and finance.
Her most visible work in Montpelier came through the state’s pupil weighting study. The Legislature commissioned the study in Act 173 of 2018 to examine how Vermont’s school funding formula accounts for the different costs of educating students, including students from low-income families, English learners and students in small, rural schools. Kolbe led the research team that delivered the study in 2019, and its findings that the old weights did not reflect actual costs became the starting point for years of legislative work on the funding formula.
She has continued to brief lawmakers since then. Kolbe presented to the Senate Finance Committee in January 2022 as lawmakers worked through the recommendations of the Task Force on the Implementation of the Pupil Weighting Factors Report, and in April 2025 she provided an updated memo on weighting to the House Ways and Means Committee.
Speaking after the vote, Kolbe told VTDigger that being chosen was “really an honor.” She also described how much of her professional life revolves around the issues in front of the board: “Pretty much all I do is think about education policy and finance,” she said.
A heavy agenda before January
The timing matters. Under Act 170, part of the Legislature’s broader push to reshape the state’s education system, the board must set a framework for evaluating proposed school district mergers. It is also responsible for establishing statewide graduation requirements. Both are due by January, according to VTDigger.
Those tasks put the board at the center of decisions that will be felt in nearly every community. The merger framework will help determine how districts are judged as they consider consolidating, a sensitive subject in towns where the local school is a civic anchor. Statewide graduation requirements would set a common floor for what a Vermont diploma represents, in a system that has historically left much of that to local boards.
How the board works
The State Board of Education has 10 members, eight of whom are appointed by the governor. The board sets education policy and rules, while the Agency of Education, led by the secretary of education, carries out day-to-day administration. The board’s chair runs its meetings and plays a significant role in setting agendas and representing the board before lawmakers.
Because Kolbe is filling out the remainder of Samuelson’s term, the board will choose a chair again after February. By then, the merger framework and graduation requirements are expected to be in the hands of the Legislature, which returns to Montpelier in January.
What to watch
The board’s meetings are open to the public, with agendas and materials posted on the Agency of Education website, and public comment is taken at regular meetings. Vermonters interested in how district mergers will be evaluated, or what new graduation standards could mean for their high school, will have several chances to weigh in over the next three months.
For a board that will be asked to translate complicated legislation into rules that affect every school district, choosing a chair whose career has been built on the details of school finance is a notable signal. The work ahead will test whether that expertise can help produce frameworks that hold up in communities across the state.
