By Jay Eshelman
H.634, allowing only public schools as alternatives if a local school closes, is an educational end run being perpetrated by the Usual Suspects.
By usual suspects, I do not mean Rep. Laura Sibilia. Sibilia is but the ‘front man’ for this crime against humanity. The real culprit is our old friend, and vaguely referenced co-sponsor of H.634, Rebecca Holcomb, former Vermont Secretary of Education. Holcomb has been a shill for public education special interest groups for years. She is almost single handedly responsible for the current mess in Vermont’s public schools. Holcomb resigned her post in 2018.
Now she’s baaack.
This is what I said with regard to Rob Roper’s recent VDC and Substack article – Constituents Want School Choice.
“And there is another tack that can be taken, although I hesitate to mention it specifically here for fear that Sibilia and the other legislative tyrants will seek to eliminate it too. Suffice it to say, your local school boards still have significant authority in this regard. And it’s easier to elect a sympathetic slate of school board members than it is to dislodge our legislative parasites.”
I should have known. H.634 is the point of the tyrannical spear aimed to eliminate the statutory language that has empowered Vermont’s School Choice programs for decades. Its target:
16 V.S.A. § 822 School district to maintain public high schools or pay tuition
(c)(1) A school district may both maintain a high school and furnish high school education by paying tuition:
(A) to a public school as in the judgment of the school board may best serve the interests of the students; or
(B) to an approved independent school or an independent school meeting education quality standards if the school board judges that a student has unique educational needs that cannot be served within the district or at a nearby public school.
(2) The judgment of the board shall be final in regard to the institution the students may attend at public cost.
Read the above statutory text, folks. 16 V.S.A. § 822 is the basis for the H.405 School Choice legislation collecting dust in the Education Committee that no one will discuss. 16 V.S.A. § 822 is what Holcomb and Sibilia are really after. If you let them get away with this… well, your children will get what they get – whether you like it or not.