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By Michael Bielawski
The Vermont Education Secretary Zoie Saunders spoke to the Senate Education Committee this week about how their work is going on education reform, including concerns about discrepancy in teacher salaries and her response to critiques of the Administration’s five district proposal.
“We saw there was really great discrepancy in terms of teacher pay. Another emphasis of our work is thinking about how we can promote teacher pay equity,” Saunders said.
Saunders said the administration is looking into class size minimums. She suggested if teachers are to be expected to take on larger class sizes, so they should make sure they are compensated accordingly.
“We do have one of the highest one of the lowest teacher to student ratios,” she said. “We also have a number of teachers on provisional licenses. We have a lot of turnover. So part of the strategy is also, you know, I think a teacher may be willing to save on a few more students if they’re also able to be compensated at a higher level.”
She emphasized that Vermont’s education challenges including rising costs and dropping performance are not for a lack of effort by teachers.
“We have really dedicated educators who are working hard and are doing amazing things for our students,” she said. “When we are talking about the challenges, we are talking about the systemic and structural challenges.”
A multi-year ramp
Saunders acknowledged that it’s going to take time in order to get the transformation going. This includes consolidation of governance structures including a reduction of school districts from 115 to 5 regions and a block-grant funding formula per student.
“This is a multiyear approach, and recognizing that it takes time to make this type of change, but there is a sense of urgency and being able to start that work,” Saunders said. “…We’ve built in those adjustments assuming that it’s two years before we would transition to a new governance model and funding formula and that when we do in that fiscal year twenty eight we’re assuming that we’re having the same number of schools and that there’s additional cost in maintaining those schools in the first year.”
Regarding a timeline, she said one big target would be to have a school board vote in November 2026, which would allow for school boards to elect superintendents which would be “giving that ramp to move into the new regions.”
She said for this legislative session, a foundation funding formula and governance structure should really get done this year. The governor also would like to see things get done.
“I also want to be upfront with legislators, I will not support adjourning this session without a bill to transition to a new funding system, establish a new governance structure that unlocks transformation, and includes a specific implementation timeline” he recently wrote.
Five districts
The proposal to have only five school districts for the whole state has proven controversial for critics of the Administration’s proposals. Saunders said more than five could be OK but only if all the impacts on cost and education quality are considered.
“We can have more than five districts but we need to make sure that we are really clear around what we’re trying to accomplish and any different configuration will have impacts on costs and it will have an impact on the operational considerations that are important for us to take into account,” she said.
She suggested that by consolidating districts to five would eliminate administrative overhead, enable teachers to be paid more, and make for redundancy in services so that when there’s turnover at a critical position nothing gets disrupted.
“In that modeling you will see there’s potential for pay raises from $5,000 up to $20,000 for teachers across the state,” she said.
She also noted that the current ratio of districts to students is off-base with the national average.
“I think we have one school board for seventy five students, which is quite an anomaly when you think about school board government structures in other parts of the country,” she wrote. “I think it makes it challenging to think about the broader needs of the region of students. It makes it challenging to, you know, manage some of the declining development challenges that we’re facing in a way that is strategic and maximizing resources.”
Contact your 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, Burlington, 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
Perhaps getting rid of the ” teachers union ” and coming up with a ” students union ” would go a long way towards improving the standards. The present full throated attack on religious schools by the teachers union is evidence of their disdain for students and their alignment with the Democrats.
Hmmm. Interesting analogy.
Student’s Union = School Choice.
Told you so……they are going to fleece you worse than every single previous plan combined, mark my words.
Pay raises for everybody!!!!lol
Appears the Administration and Legislature are laser focused on re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Has there been one proposal to decouple education costs from property taxes? If there was, it remains tacked to a wall and won’t go anywhere. You know why? Collusion, coercion, and conspiracies to commit fraud.
There is a lawsuit currently in the State of Texas, and similar documentation sent to the White House, regarding school funding, real estate valuation, municipal/county appraisals, and property taxes. There is an allegation that school districts are, by and large, nearly insolvent. The colluders decided to artificially inflate property values (incentivizing the government employed/compensated appraisers,) realtors complied as it increased their profiteering, and municipalities/towns/county obliged because it increased revenues to fund the hemorrhaging school districts, and more revenue for their operating coffers. The bankers clean up well lending over actual real value at higher rates of interest. Consumers lose all around due to large debt and large tax bills.
Who is making these allegations? Real estate developers. They are building, can’t secure buyers, so they have to take losses to fill empty brand new houses. They did their research, they have their ducks in a row, and they have the charts, graphs, and receipts to show how the scam is playing out on property owning taxpayers. The lawsuit is worth the read and I’m watching it move through – even though the courts are managing to defer and deter with all it’s mighty lawfare warfare might.
It is not out of the realms of reason such a scam is going on only in Texas. It is going on all across the country. In Vermont, considering how property valuation in this State is an absolute joke. A home with considerable deferred maintainance or less land than a postage stamp, is being sold for hundreds of thousands?
No honor among thieves and reprobates.
Disdain is a two-way street. Clearly, Zoie Saunders left Florida, one of the bastions of free enterprise and free markets, and came to Vermont, of all places, for a reason. That Ms. Saunders sees a “discrepancy in terms of teacher pay…. how we can promote teacher pay equity”, demonstrates the government’s disdain for the free-market principles that make the U.S. one of the most desirable places on the planet to live.
Of course there are discrepancies in pay. But that doesn’t mean something nefarious is a foot. Instead, it’s indicative of a ‘dynamic economy’ in which rates of output and equilibrium are constantly changing.
If anything, teachers in public schools are grossly overpaid. Their productivity has been declining for decades, while their relative wages and benefits continue to increase. Why is this?
Because there is no merit based ‘self-determination’ allowed in our Marxist public education monopoly. Not only are parents and children not allowed to choose the path that best meets their needs, teachers are equally afflicted.
Like students, the more teachers are externally regulated the less they show interest, value, and effort toward achievement, and the more they tend to disown responsibility for negative outcomes, always blaming others.
I have disdain for our education monopoly, at least as much as it has for me. But in a dynamic economy, in a free market, freedom and economic efficiency go hand in hand. Again, I rely on the wisdom of economics Nobel laureate, Milton Friedman, to explain.
“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace.”
“By relying primarily on voluntary co-operation and private enterprise, in both economic and other activities, we can ensure that the private sector is a check on the powers of the governmental sector and an effective protection of freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought.”
“Exchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist. Monopoly implies the absence of alternatives and thereby inhibits effective freedom of exchange.”
“The key insight of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”
Apparently, Zoie Saunders, and the teachers in Vermont’s public-school monopoly, never learned these economic principles. Which explains why they are incapable of teaching them to our children while they ‘gradually, then suddenly’ bankrupt all of us.
In the final analysis, to be fair, we voters are to blame for electing those who impose their opinions on us. I can only hope we learn our own lessons for a change, instead of blaming others. Let us choose our own paths in life – and accept responsibility for those choices.
What a wonderful comment.
In the process of subverting a country, which is taking over from within, the highest art form of war, one of the main objectives is to “educate” an entire generation, in this case of Marxism, without ever saying what you are educating them about. In the case of Vermont, we have two or three generations educated in what they believe to be truth, but in fact are lies, and because we are not educated in how to discern truth and love, vs pride and lust we are in the mental, financial, spiritual, loveless void we now experience.
Jesus came to heal, to save, to forgive, to keep us out of the ditch and avoid becoming a hot mess.
We have all that we need, but without love we are doomed for hell on earth. TGBTG
I am all for equity.— of opportunity. As with any profession, not all teachers come into the classroom prepared to provide their students an education which would enable them to compete in a world economy much less a Vermont economy.
Raising all boats under the guise of equity of pay does nothing to enhance Vermont student learning experiences and outcomes. Raising pay via demonstrated performance( granted a neat trick given Vermont politics and the NEA) provides the foundation for the educational community to raise both the student performance with enhanced standards and recognize those educators who are able to reach their students.
If it is not obvious, it should be evident throwing money at Vermont’s educational system does not yield demonstrable results. Learn from Vermont having one of the highest per student spend rates in the nation. Reinforce the positive with directed compensation. Cut loose the elements which do not or cannot meet enhanced performance. One of the tougher lessons in life is where you put your scarce resources. Sometimes tough love is not tough love. It is smart love.
They are clearly working on a totalitarian government school, of, for and by the union. Every step over the past 40 years has brought us closer.
There biggest fear is freedom, freedom to think, freedom to choose, freedom of control, freedom of the truth.
Don’t be fooled, don’t be fooled again, and yet again!!!!