The Scott Administration made big news last week when they warned of an unprecedented impending property tax increase for next year of 18.5 percent. Driven by a 12 percent year-over-year increase in public school spending, they anticipate this will add another $650 to the bill of a $250,000 home.
FYI, the median price of a home in Vermont in 2022 was $310,000.
Vermont already spends more per pupil than almost every other state in the Union at the official count of $22,953, but the NEA pegged the number at $25,053 in 2022-23, which is the number you get when you simply divide the education budget by the number of students. And what are we getting for all this increased spending year after year? An unmitigated disaster of falling student outcomes, rising classroom violence, and a shockingly arrogant lack of accountability or common sense by public school officials.
Here’s a rundown of some recent stories.
I have written previously about Curt Hier’s ongoing battles with the Slate Valley School Board in which Hier, a school board member himself, is trying to discover the extent of abuse in his district, particularly against students with disabilities, regarding the use of “seclusion and restraint” – euphemisms for locking kids in closets or pinning them to the ground. Rather than joining Hier’s attempts to get to the bottom of this, his fellow school board members joined with school officials to attack Heir, attempted to remove him from the board and block the information he seeks from becoming public.
Good news on this front: Judge Mary Miles Teachout sided with Hier’s public records request, stating, “The transparency policy of the (Public Records) Act would be served by making such records available as long as individual privacy of students is protected. Without access to the only government records documenting compliance with its detailed policy on the use of restraint and seclusion in schools, the public has no access to information collected by the government on whether Rule 4500 policy is actually being responsibly implemented (Rutland Herald).” Umm… yeah!
The school pledged to appeal the ruling to keep their compliance (or lack thereof) with the law secret. We hear so often in the debate over school choice in Vermont that public schools are transparent and accountable, whereas independent schools are not. This episode should put the lie to that claim. Public schools are neither transparent nor accountable to the public, and don’t think they should be.
Note: “Seclusion and restraint” abuses are not isolated to Fair Haven. There is currently a bill in the legislature, H.409, to address this statewide problem.
In Morrisville’s Peoples Academy, there was recently an incident in which a student was stabbed through the hand by another student who brought a six-inch serrated knife to school. While the details of what actually happened between the two students are disputed, the key beef school officials have is with the parent of the student who was injured for reporting the incident to the police.
According to the News & Citizen, Mindy Marshall, the boy’s mother, “… alleged that Peoples principal Phil Grant told her to keep the incident under wraps as he didn’t want the media reporting on the incident…. Marshall also said that she and other parents found it upsetting that there was no public communication between the school and parents that a stabbing occurred at the school.”
Again, so much for transparency and accountability regarding student safety.
In Hinesburg, a police chase ended on the grounds of the Community School where kindergarteners were outside playing. School officials refused to let the police search the area because they worried the sight of law enforcement officers would scare the children. Later, a loaded gun and a bag of what is suspected to be cocaine were found – by students. Likely but unconfirmed, they were second graders (WCAX). This is how public school officials interpret “safety first” for our kids.
Similarly, the principal of Burlington High School was compelled to resign after she resorted to pulling a fire alarm in order to break up a fight. Much was made about her judgment in pulling the alarm, but the question remains: what was happening that was so bad that she felt her best option was to resort to such a drastic action? And where were the school security officers? Oh yeah, they were let go because seeing them caused trauma or some such logic.
But despite all this, the kids are learning, right? Wrong.
As has been reported, Vermont test scores are dropping significantly and have been for over a decade. A recent deep dive revealed that our public schools have been teaching kids to read the wrong way for over a generation. Along that line comes a story from the Brattleboro Reformer, Low Reading Scores Alarm BFUHS Board, in which the Bellows Falls Union High School principal revealed that half of the freshman class “were reading at a first-grade or elementary school level.”
And for these kinds of results – culturally and academically — the people running our public schools want us to pay 18.5 percent more on top of our already exorbitant property tax bills? $25,000 per year per kid isn’t enough?
Clearly, money isn’t the problem. It is the way the system is structured and being operated that is the problem.
Did you know that Vermont public schools don’t have to go through any accreditation process to show that they are performing to standards? Our independent schools do. Every five years. And it is an arduous process involving in-depth auditing and outside review.
According to the Associated Independent Schools of New England, “The goals of an accreditation through AISNE are quality assurance and continued school improvement. AISNE accreditation is a system of accountability that requires self-reflection, analysis, and planning for the future. Comprehensive in scope, it is based on a set of standards that define the characteristics of independent schools. AISNE accreditation attests to substantial compliance with established qualitative standards, integrity in statements to the public describing the school’s program, school commitment to improvement, and sufficiency of institutional resources.”
In Vermont, if an independent school cannot successfully pass through the accreditation process – again, every five years – it is not allowed to receive public money through the tuitioning system. This is a big reason why you don’t hear stories about kids attending Vermont independent schools not being able to read or being locked in “blue rooms” because discipline in the classroom is gone.
Public school advocates big lie in trying to shut out and shut down independent schools is that they don’t have to do all the things public schools have to do. Fairness! Okay. How about the 2024 legislature passes a law that mandates every Vermont public school must follow the same rigorous review and accreditation process that independent schools have to pass? That would not only be fair, it would also be of tremendous benefit to our students, families, and taxpayers.
But until our public school system demonstrates it is capable of reform, willing to be transparent, can reasonably guarantee the safety of our students, and, you know, is competent to teach them to do things like math and to read, Vermonters should send a loud and clear message: not another dime!
