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By Guy Page
Governor Phil Scott weighed in Wednesday on recent local decisions to keep small schools open, suggesting that while voters want lower taxes, the “emotion” of losing a local institution is currently winning out over the “math” of declining enrollment.
Reflecting at his Wednesday press conference on recent votes in towns like Calais and Worcester, where voters this week decided by about 2-1 to keep the small local schools open, Scott noted that the results were “not surprising,” despite the “unfortunate” reality of the schools’ situations. He specifically pointed to Calais, which is not anticipating having a kindergarten class next year due to low enrollment, calling it “indicative of the future” for many small Vermont towns.
In response to voter concern about rising property taxes, the Legislature is currently developing a plan to restructure school governance into a small number of large school districts, in an effort to reduce administrative and possibly classroom costs. Closing small local schools are a likely outcome of such a restructuring.
The Governor argued that if these school closure decisions were “working through math,” the choices would be far less difficult to make. However, he acknowledged the deep personal ties residents have to their local buildings. “Nobody wants to close down their own school,” Scott said, noting that many voters likely attended those same schools themselves and view the institutions as vital to their “way of life.”
According to Scott, this creates a fundamental conflict in the public’s appetite for reform. While Vermonters vocalize a desire to see property tax rates go down and the system become more efficient, they remain resistant to the closures necessary to achieve those goals. He suggested that if voters were asked directly if they wanted to pay “30, 40, 50% more in their property taxes” to keep the schools open, the outcome of the votes might be different.
The Governor highlighted a stark demographic shift to illustrate the necessity of consolidation, citing U32 as an example. While the school has a graduating senior class of 134 this year, the incoming kindergarten class for that district is only 80 students. “That somewhat tells you the whole story,” Scott remarked, emphasizing that the state will continue to see this decline.
Despite the pushback in Calais and Worcester, Scott does not view these votes as a “referendum” on Act 73, the state’s voluntary merger law. Instead, he sees them as a localized effort to protect specific communities, often at the expense of others. He noted that residents in one town might prefer to see a neighboring school close—such as Worcester or Roxbury—if it meant their own school could remain open and perhaps regain its kindergarten.
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Categories: Education
What the Governor is trying to subtly say is that most decisions made in majority-liberal jurisdictions like pretty much every town in Vermont these days are based on emotion, ignoring fiscal realities.
Our Governor, so-called leader of the Vermont Republicans, is dragging down the state by failing to consider school choice, perhaps because the Education Industrial Complex puts pressure on him to maintain the status quo: expensive schools with horrible academic outcomes that are ruining the future of our youth and our society. If small communities are forced to close their schools, young families are not going to move here. The rhetoric that student population is going to continue to decline is self-fulfilling. The “either we passively force schools to close to save money or you can expect your taxes to go up 40-60%” sounds more like manipulative arm-twisting than liberty, and is no different than the rhetoric around Act 46, “we’re not going to force you to close your schools.” If you return control to the local level, reduce state administrative burdens on schools, citizens will decide locally what they want to spend. First, the Brigham decision needs to be reconsidered. Education should be based upon a course of study per Thomas Jefferson’s original intent: reading, writing, math, science, history, maybe two languages, instead of “equal opportunity.” Under Bringham’s “equal opportunity” decision, school districts will constantly have to keep pace with one another in their course offerings. Pay for a baseline education, and that’s it. Students are not victims if they don’t have access to twelve different foreign language classes. I’m sure we can find creative solutions for advanced placement students who need calculus and physics.
Guy,
I believe the vote was in Worcester not Roxbury. You might want to check this.
The real savings of over 300 million dollars, identified by Campaign for Vermont Prosperity is not by consolidating schools but by drastically reducing the number of our expensive 52 Supervisory Unions to around 15 administrative units aligned with our Career and Technical Centers who would over see the sharing of services.
At the same time we can focus administrative time on children and schools by having teacher and staff contracts negotiated on the state level as they are for state employees. Also by adopting many policies on a statewide basis.
Local schools are vital to rural community health and attracting young parents to stay or move to these communities. They do not want their children, nor does it make any sense to have them on buses for hours. Local school districts could be maintained and focused as well on the education of the children in their communities not on meeting all the current bureaucratic gobbledygook that currently takes up so much of their time.
Consolidate supervisory unions – Keep rural schools and local school boards
So was your statement about Minneapolis Phil…..
I am glad that Worcester Doty School was voted to stay open. My niece goes there and I think that it is not one bit fair to close the only school that she has ever been to and loves. It is a close community school where everybody knows everybody. That is what is nice about it.
I hate to mention this but studies show that there is more violence in large schools than in small schools, so, Phil, be careful what you wish for, it may come back to bite you.