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By Michael Bielawski
House lawmakers heard on Wednesday from the two sponsors of a bill that would create 25 school districts in Vermont, contrasting with the governor’s five-district proposal. Part of this plan would target 18 students per classroom and it would set standards for a school’s student total population.
H. 122 seeks to “require the State to provide educational opportunities through the merger of the school districts in existence on July 1, 2025, into not more than 25 newly formed unified union school districts.”
Both plans break from the current 52-supervisory union model that may have contributed to rising education costs and/or dropping test scores. The bill’s sponsors are Rep. Matthew Birong, D-Vergennes, and Rep. Edye Graning, D-Jericho. Birong suggested that this is about adjusting to changing trends.
“Now, obviously, times have changed,” he said. “Workloads are different.”
Graning noted starting from scratch is preferable to fixing what’s in place. She said, “If we were designing an education system from scratch, it would be so much easier than taking the system that we have now and trying to retrofit what we have now into something that will work for this.”
She said that existing superintendents will be a good source of guidance on how to proceed.
“They do think about how to do education the best in Vermont and where the deficits are and where the strengths are and how to pull from both. And the superintendents have figured out how to take the system that we have today and squeeze every last drop out of it for the benefit of their district,” she said.
School/class sizes dictated?
Legislative Council Beth St. James suggested that there will be targeted school and class sizes.
James said, “Elementary schools operated by a school district have to have a minimum average daily membership of four hundred and fifty students and an average class size of eighteen students. And high schools would have to have an average daily membership of six hundred students and an average class size of twenty-five students.”
There can be exceptions to these numbers when concerning for example students who fall into special education categories that require more attention and resources.
25 districts or “it could be less”
James also spoke about the logistics of switching over to a 25-district model. She reminded the committee the number is a cap, there can be fewer than 25 districts..
“So the policy here is in order to provide substantially equal educational opportunities and an efficient, sustainable, and stable education system that enables students to achieve or exceed the state’s education quality standards, while also maximizing operational efficiencies the state shall provide for the education of students across not more than twenty-five separate school districts. So it could be less,” she said.
A commission
The bill would require a special commission to review the district proposal that would initially come from the Secretary of Education’s office.
James states, “This commission [is to] review and analyze the Secretary of Education’s proposal and issue an order merging and realigning districts as necessary. The commission would be composed of five retired superintendents, one member appointed by the governor, two members appointed by the speaker, and two members appointed by the Senate Committee on Committees.”
Five-year implementation
The timeline for how these districts would come to be approved was discussed. James said, “Newly formed school districts would have a requirement for them to obtain an affirmative vote of all necessary districts not later than July 2029 in order for them to be operational on or before July 2030.”
Contact legislators
See all bills assigned to this committee here. Constituents may contact committee members (click link on name for bio, party affiliation, etc.) with comments, questions and information at the following email addresses:
House Education
Peter Conlon, Cornwall, Chair, pconlon@leg.state.vt.us
Chris Taylor, Madison, Vice Chair, cataylor@leg.state.vt.us
Erin Brady, Chittenden District 2, Ranking Member, ebrady@leg.state.vt.us
Jana Brown, Richmond, Clerk, jbrown@leg.state.vt.us
Joshua Dobrovich, Orange-3, jdobrovich@leg.state.vt.us
Leanne Harple, Orleans 4, lharple@leg.state.vt.us
Robert Hunter, Bennington-4, rhunter@leg.state.vt.us
Emily Long, Windham-5, elong@leg.state.vt.us
Kate McCann, Washington-4, kmccann@leg.state.vt.us
Beth Quimby, Caledonia-3, bquimby@leg.state.vt.us
Casey Toof, St. Albans City, ctoof@leg.state.vt.us
Senate Education
Seth Bongartz, Manchester, Chair, sbongartz@leg.state.vt.us
David Weeks, Proctor, Vice Chair, dweeks@leg.state.vt.us
Kesha Ram Hinsdale, Montpelier, kraminsdale@leg.state.vt.us
Nader Hashim, Windham, nhashim@leg.state.vt.us
Terry Williams, Rutland, Clerk, tkwilliams@leg.state.vt.us
Steven Heffernan, Addison, sheffernan@leg.state.vt.us
All committee transcripts are available at www.goldendomevt.com. Committee meeting video available at the committee’s YouTube channel. The committee meets in the morning in Room 8.
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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Categories: Education, Legislation, Local government, State Government
Those aren’t desk chairs in the photo… they’re ‘deck’ chairs… on the Titanic.
Emily Long, Burlington, elong@leg.state.vt.us
should say;
Emily Long, Windham-5, elong@leg.state.vt.us
Fixed
Why 25 instead of the 5 recommended by the Gov??? If we’re gonna do this, lets not be back here in 7 years with the same issue. Its gonna have some hurt either way, so lets GO. And 5 years? Thats siimply too long We cannot sustain the schools as it is.
Oh and how about you let PARENTS choose how to educate their children, home school, private school, religious schools, The parents/guardians should receive the $$ not being used to educate that child, to fund the selected education.
“existing superintendents will be a good source of guidance”. Typical government, some of the people who are part of the problem are going to formulate the solution. Are they going to draw straws to see who gets the boot? And five years is way too long. This should happen by this summer. School choice! Let the parents decide where and how to educate their children.
Eighteen students in a class is great, but don’t leave out curriculum. Teaching eighteen students Marxist garbage instead of reading, writing and arithmetic is a worthless endeavor.
And there lies the problem, we’re creating organizers instead of citizens, useful idiots instead of critical thinkers.
Buying more wood and saving money for next years property tax increase. These cave monkeys are going to keep blowing smoke up your????? as long as you keep paying them.
Why do we need supervisory school districts? Why is there an unelected layer of bureaucractic BS inserted into our school system? How many bureaucrats does it take to run a school? Apparently hundreds. What are elected school boards for now? Why not let the county run their own schools based on their county population and infrastructure? There was a time a county had a seat of local governence and control of local matters. The State took over and they are the overlords, rule makers, and money changers – the county means nothing other than a boundary line, a court house, and a sheriff transporting prisoners. The State has too much power and too much control over education, which is why our students are the ultimate losers all the way around and our pockets being emptied by the State. All for mismanagment and theft of our labor and our money.
This bill is missing a critical factor to reduce costs: Staff: student ratio (currently 1:4!) is likely more important than 18 students per class in reducing costs. The system is currently top heavy. Salaries and benefits in non-classroom employees is a problem.
The legislature needs to set goals to reduce adminstrative staff and over time and the state needs to reduce mandates for data collection and other administrative, non-classroom activity in the school setting. Buying cheaper toilet paper and other supplies in a larger organization is not going to cut it.