Tuitioning program likely to be scapegoated by government school special interests

This article was originally published on Rob Roper’s Substack page Behind the Lines and republished here with permission

By Rob Roper

Before we get into the meat of today’s topic, here’s a quick review of how property tax reform has gone down in Vermont since Act 60 became law in 1997:

Property taxes go through the roof…. A critical mass of voters howl…. The Democrat controlled legislature promises in public they’ll do something about it, but in private their puppet master at the VTNEA, Superintendents Association, and Principals’ Association tell them you better keep the money flowing into our coffers or else…. Some non-reform reform law passes that doesn’t fix the problem, mostly makes it worse, but buys a few years of “Hey, let’s give it time to work” headlines while the special interests continue to syphon away our cash at unprecedented rates…. In that time, those taxpayers who truly can’t afford it move out and are replaced by wealthier people from New York, New Jersey, etc. who can pay the higher taxes – at least initially – until they can’t…. Then repeat.  

Think, for example, Act 46, the school district consolidation law passed in 2015 that was supposed to lower school costs and increase opportunities for our students. Yeah, “no” and “no” on that, but it did keep the money flowing to the special interests until Covid came along and they were able to exploit another crisis to suck the taxpayer dry while making excuses for their failure to deliver results in the classroom.

All this is by the way of saying, here we go again!

The so-called Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont has been meeting since mid-July. This collection of public education special interests is the proverbial can the legislature kicked down the road with the ostensible mission of “solving” our school funding crisis. In three months, it has accomplished precisely nothing. Maybe that’s too harsh. They did manage in this time to “define the problem” they are trying to solve thus: “…how does Vermont provide the quality education that our children deserve that is affordable.” Brilliant. It took a quarter of a year to come up with that.

This of course begs the question, what has our education policy objective been up until now? Is this an admission that at present the goal of public education in Vermont is to NOT provide quality education that is affordable? It would certainly seem so. But let’s not dwell on past failures; let’s look to the future. How will this collection of top minds go about finding the path to that elusive goal?

According to the minutes of the September 30 meeting of the Finance subcommittee, “The group brainstormed for 10 minutes on Policy Ideas to Control Cost Drivers, Policy Ideas to Reduce Property Tax Rates, Policy Ideas to Reduce District Spending, Data Desires and Ideas to Increase Equity. The subcommittee produced a Jamboard of their brainstorm.”

Ten minutes. Since mid-July, they have spent ten… whole… freakin’… minutes brainstorming ideas to fix a problem that is literally causing Vermonters to lose their homes to catastrophic property tax increases. That’s what caring looks like?

And what did this ten-minute exercise in mental masturbation produce? Here are some of the digital-post-it-notes that stand out.

“Agree on what is off the table.” So, first things first, the idea that everything is on the table in order to solve the crisis is apparently off the table. How’s that for commitment to the mission!

“Add more revenue,” along with “Expand the Sales Tax to Services,” and “Tax Millionaires.” Umm, Vermont already spends more per student than any other state bar one or maybe two at an average of roughly $25,000 per kid. We have a $2.5 billion education budget and rising paying for under 80,000 students and falling. We just added another two revenue streams to the Ed Fund – an internet-based services tax and a surcharge on short term rentals. Your solution to the high tax/high cost crisis is “give us more money to spend via more/higher taxes?” (Insert string of graphically suggestive profanity here.)

And this one really gets the old jaw to drop: “Bake sales.” Yeah, sure! At an average cost of $2 each, we would only have to sell around 100 million chocolate chip cookies to cover the current over-spending gap – assuming parents foot the cost of ingredients. Sound thinking here from the brains of those charged with preparing our young people for future of success.

If you’re starting to get the impression that this coven of special interests isn’t serious about reigning in education costs or materially reforming a broken system that is failing to teach our children basic skills, you just might be onto something!

But they are serious about one thing: going after Vermont’s highly successful independent schools and the tuitioning system that sustains them. The very first post-it note says, “Require school districts to designate up to three public schools if they close a school to limit expansion of tuition vouchers.” Right below that is, “Limit tuition payments to average announced tuition.”

So here is my prediction for where this is going as we head into the 2025 legislative session: The “reform” recommendation is going to scapegoat Vermont’s independent schools and tuitioning system, even though by and large this system provides higher quality education at more affordable prices – a perfect model for the very mission these dopes took three months to come up with!

If they were serious about investigating ways to lower costs and improve quality, they would be studying now how St. Johnsbury Academy, Burr & Burton, Sharon Academy, The Longtrail School, Rice, etc. are able to deliver the highest quality education in our state at fraction of the cost our public schools expend for poorer results. And what they find should form the basis restructuring our education system for the future. 

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.