Governor Scott’s plan for education reform does some things right, and others unnecessarily very wrong. What’s right? The move to a foundation-based funding formula and the primary focus on cost savings being the elimination of supervisory union level of bureaucracy. In no way shape or form do we need 52 supervisory unions governing 109 school districts servicing just 80,000 kids. Kudos on that. However….
The plan to eliminate all the supervisory unions and consolidate the 109 school districts into five, and scrapping all the local school boards is… I struggle for the right word and not finding it will go with “what and why the [heck]!” accompanied by the pulling out of clumps of precious hair.
Vermonters prize local control – even if it’s just the illusion of local control – when it comes to our schools. But the only way to break the money hemorrhaging gordian knot that is Act 60 Plus and simultaneously comply with the Brigham decision is to wrest away local control of budget and spending decisions to a large extent. That may be a bitter pill for some to swallow, but necessary. Recognizing that, wiping out locally elected school boards – the people voters likely know personally and see as their primary points of contact and levers of local control over their schools – is, I’m sorry, too much to ask. An exceptionally large suppository to accompany that exceptionally bitter pill. Only in this case, it’s totally unnecessary!
Scott’s plan replaces local school boards with “advisory committees” for each school. So, question. Why do this and not just leave the local school boards in place to fill that role? Maybe even expand the number of locally elected school boards if you want one for each school or schools making up grades k-12 in a community. Make this a desirable political trade: less local control over how much a school can spend so that we can keep costs and thus taxes down in exchange for more local control over how the money is spent in your local school. I bet if you did this the school boards as well as parents and local voters would be on your side instead of making dolls of you to burn in effigy as they are currently doing.
As for supervisory and school district consolidation, here’s my humble suggestion: ONE supervisory union for the entire state and keep (at least) the 109 school districts and their boards in place, maybe with some tweaking. Otherwise you’re just alienating huge constituencies in every town and the whole plan becomes a non-starter.
And this gets to school choice in Vermont, or “tuitioning” as it is called. When public education was becoming a thing a century and a half ago, our ancestors here in Vermont – unhindered by the political influence of educrat special interests – made a very common-sense decision. If a rural community was too small to support a public school and so didn’t (a “non-operating district”), the parents could simply take the money for what a local public school would cost and use it to “tuition” their kid(s) to whatever the most convenient school they chose, public or independent. This system still thrives today for some ninety non-operating towns and has given rise to some of our most celebrated and successful schools such as St. Johnsbury Academy, Burr & Burton, The Long Trail School, Sharon Academy to name but a few.
However, under Scott’s plan of five mega school districts, every district would operate public schools and so tuitioning would be abolished. Every kid in Vermont would be assigned to a public school. For example, all the kids currently attending St. Johnsbury Academy would be assigned to, say, Danville or Cabot High School. Some of those kids might be able to return to St. J as part of a “school choice” lottery system, but no guarantees.
With Scott’s school choice lottery system (Side note, access to a lottery is not school choice. Nice try.), only some independent schools will be allowed to participate and only for the 9-12 grade levels. So, independent middle and elementary schools such as Thaddeus Stephens, Riverside School, Mountain School at Winhall and the Village School of North Bennington will be wiped off the map. Sharon Academy’s, Long Trail’s, Compass’ middle school programs will be obliterated. In addition, the plan dictates many small rural public schools will be forcibly shuttered. This policy, in a word, sucks.
Not only is it damaging some of the best educational opportunities we offer in our state, but these schools also tend to operate at less cost on average than their government-run counterparts. As such, the policy undermines both the goals of cost control and better educational opportunities and outcomes. Moreover, politically you are guaranteed to lose the support of most everyone – and I suspect a lot of their Representatives and Senators – who lives in over thirty percent of the towns in our state. More pulling out of precious hair. It’s an unforced political loser.
So, here again is my humble suggestion for not fixing what isn’t broken and fixing what is. Leave Vermont’s school district map and tuitioning system in place. When school boards (that have not been foolishly eliminated) across the state get their foundation formula grants – and these calculated to lower costs and save taxpayers money — they can determine locally whether to remain an operating district and maintain their local public school with the funds available, close their local public school and designate one or more schools to act as their public school, or become a tuitioning town that allows parents to choose the best option for their children.
This is a much fairer, more organic, and, most importantly, locally controlled means to right-size the number of schools, ensure kids have access to the best options available for their particular needs, and lower education taxes all while maintaining and even enhancing local control over education.
I suspect the teachers’ union and the other government school special interests may not like this idea very much. Here’s what I have to say to the folks whose greed and incompetence have exploded the cost of our public education system to the point where taxes are driving families out of their homes while producing increasingly worse outcomes for our kids across pretty much every metric, academic and social: (I asked Grok to suggest a polite way to express this sentiment, and…) “please take a whimsical wander elsewhere.” Nobody should care what you think at this point. You’re the problem.
