The idea of the school rework / simplification is great. The implementation is really poor. The changes have actually reduced player choice and actively discourages association with one of the schools because there's an optimal solution: it's the generalist.
Each of the five paths look superficially equal, but in practice they aren't at all. The spells item list used to be very versatile (maybe too much), but now the reduction down to handful of non-heightened scrolls means that several casters have dead levels or won't have much use at all. The scrolls and swords school are dominated by talismans with incredibly marginal utility. Even worse, to use most of them in the Blades school, you need to be an expert in Acrobatics at the level 3 tier and an expert in Athletics in the level 5-6 tier. If you aren't doing both of those skills, you're kind of hosed.
Of course, everyone can pick a heal potion, right? That's the problem: if your school list is so narrow that is has no good choices, you'll always be picking heal potions. But if you're picking heal potions all the time, why wouldn't you be a generalist who can often get more or better potions? The Generalist list also has consumables which are just more useful in 90% of scenarios (water breathing, antiplague, antitoxin, etc). Generalist also cherry picks lores from the other schools and has some very strong feat choices (looking at you battle medicine).
I'd actually prefer if we did away of the school specific consumables altogether. What's the actual objective for the lists anyway? Why can't I pick from any school? I can't imagine that the Spells school would deny a low level magic scroll to a Blades student. You can also do away with the heal option for everyone that way. This frees up players to pick the school that matters the most to them for the identity of their character and not which one will add the most mechanical benefit in every scenario they play.
Note: These problems existed with the old lists, but the existence of the "catch-all" category made all of the lists at least have a handful of reasonable options. It's reducing them down that creates the illusion of more choices (more schools), but actually results in less.
