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By Michael Bielawski
The governor’s office has put forth a comprehensive education overhaul plan that would uproot both the economics and governance of public schools in the Green Mountian State. Some top voices in education police have already submitted mixed reviews.
The plan itself is full of critique of the status quo. The 17-page document called Governor Scott’s Education Transformation Proposal states “For a system that relies so heavily on local control for cost containment, its success depends on local decision makers understanding how their decisions will impact their taxes – a task that is, at best, extremely complicated, and, at worst, impossible in the current system.”
The document does not list a specific author but generally presents itself as the Scott Administration’s highly anticipated proposal in response to public outcry over rising costs and dropping performance.
It opens with a reminder that over the past year, Vermonters initially voted down roughly a third of school budgets. The governor’s office says that poor communities suffered for it.
“While budget failures occurred in all areas of the state, districts in economically disadvantaged communities felt the impact most keenly with reductions made to staffing in educational programs that serve the highest needs students,” it states.
Some of the key components of this plan include a block grant funding formula meant to put budgeting before spending, a massive consolidation of school districts from 109 to just five districts, and potentially minimum/maximum student classroom sizes. It would also do away with the state’s 52 supervisory unions.
The document says Vermonters are most concerned with affordability, poor academic performance, and unequal access to opportunities.
“Today, students in different districts receive different funding, even though they have the same needs; in our current funding construct, this is an allowable and expected outcome of local decision-making,” the policy states. “However, we know this funding approach can limit student opportunities, particularly in school districts with less income and property wealth.”
Another section suggests that communities are not properly utilizing the current funding system. In particular, communities with the most needs are choosing not to spend.
“The choice to spend or not spend equitable amounts of education funding per student across the state rests with individual districts, following voter approval,” it states. “Spending patterns demonstrate that many districts do not utilize the tax equalization mechanisms to increase spending, even in the districts with the most demonstrated student need.”
More on the funding formula is that it focuses on an “evidence-based per-student amount”. Students would get different “weights” assigned to account for special needs.
Early mixed reviews
One of the state’s leading education policy analysts, Rob Roper, has already weighed in on the plan. The review is mixed. The new block grant funding proposal receives praise, but on the five-district statewide proposal, Roper is less enthusiastic due to the reduction in local control.
“Governor Scott’s plan for education reform does some things right, and others unnecessarily very wrong,” he wrote.
“What’s right? The move to a foundation-based funding formula and the primary focus on cost savings being the elimination of supervisory union level of bureaucracy. In no way shape or form do we need 52 supervisory unions governing 109 school districts servicing just 80,000 kids. Kudos on that.”
He continued with his concerns about the five districts.
“The plan to eliminate all the supervisory unions and consolidate the 109 school districts into five, and scrapping all the local school boards is… I struggle for the right word and not finding it will go with ‘what and why the [heck]!’ accompanied by the pulling out of clumps of precious hair,” he wrote.
Roper notes that Vermonters “prize their local control,” which means the five district proposal might be too much consolidation of governance. The full commentary by Roper can be read here.
The Vermont NEA has also already responded to the governor’s proposal. They wrote on X, “No matter what the governor calls it, creating a statewide voucher scheme is bad for public schools and the 90 percent of kids who rely on them.”
Although it doesn’t single out the governor’s proposals by name, a look at the Vermont NEA’s “Protect Public Schools” page reveals rhetoric that seems to express irritation with those seeking to overhaul the status quo.
They wrote, “Public education is a cornerstone of our democracy. Unfortunately, some politicians seek to dramatically slash funding that helps reduce class sizes, feed hungry students, provide special education services, and lower the cost of college and vocational schools.”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chrronicle
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Categories: Education, State Government
Vermont declaration of rights. No right no tax. You have a conflict between property rights being taxed for public education. Where in the Vermont constitution does it allow taxing land or your home for education????
Mr. Day: You are correct in this regard – property taxes are tantamount to the unconstitutional seizure of our private property. On the other hand, both our State and Federal Constitutions allow for the raising of taxes. But property tax should be a no-no. At this juncture, however, I suggest attacking one windmill at a time.
If the Vermont NEA is against these proposals then the Governor must be on to something, Wake up people, they’ll keep picking your pockets until there empty !!
Inflated school funding, and education levels below standards……Yeah
What the NEA is against is a ‘statewide voucher system’. Unfortunately, from what I’ve read of the Governor’s proposal, his ‘voucher system’ comes with the over-regulation of existing independent schools, forcing them to be just like the public school monopoly. Sure, parents have a choice. As long as it’s the Governor’s choice.
Public schools are the deliverers of compliancy to doctrine. They refuse the children their individual path, and announce them disordered for every reason under the sun that Big Pharma can busily fabricate. They have deliberately at some far off corporate level, likely to do with global enslavement, abandoned spelling, hand writing, risk taking, logic, and rhetoric, let alone delivering emotional abuse to those children who chose not to read see dick do dick at 6 and 7 and instead begin at an adult level a few years later at ages 9-12 after gathering the information to do so along the way. But by that time they are in the stupid class, ridiculed and sequestered from their confidence. No, take every ‘public’ school, remove every testing standard and allow the teachers to teach to their strengths, the children to find and explore their strengths and to most of all, be different, end up different, and make learning the basic tools, the multiplication tables, the periodic tables, the alphabet, the spelling, geometry, the memory skills, a fun element involving a great deal of music, dance, and art, and indeed, with these tools, see how to support each one in a unique journey. Not every Susie needs what Charlie can do, and vice versa, there will be enough experts in each field and each child, when LOVING learning shall indeed learn everything he/she needs. Indoctrination to compliance is suffocating the creativity of students, as the A students are the MOST compliant ones, and when done, they have very little access to original creative thinking. BUT they are good at following orders!!! To what? A failed dying regime that has endangered life on Earth itself. WOOOWOOOO
So, Emily, what do you propose we do about this catastrophe? How should we “remove every testing standard and allow the teachers to teach to their strengths, the children to find and explore their strengths and to most of all, be different, end up different, and make learning the basic tools, the multiplication tables, the periodic tables, the alphabet, the spelling, geometry, the memory skills, a fun element involving a great deal of music, dance, and art, and indeed, with these tools, see how to support each one in a unique journey”?
The key consideration in Governor Scott’s proposal is the term or prospect of so-called ‘local control’.
Make no mistake… ‘local control’ is a euphemism. It simply means a local board, elected by a mere majority of the electorate, tells the minority how much money to spend and how to spend it. In my district, the public school system is the district’s largest employer – by far. Public school affiliated voters control the annual town meeting and pass articles that benefit them personally, to the detriment of the minority. It is the classic case of two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. It is also the classic case of a ‘tragedy of the common’. Look it up.
Old fashion town meeting and so-called local control is the governance that created the educational dysfunction we’re experiencing today. And in reaction to its continuing failure, both in cost and performance, the State took control with its so-called Foundation Formula, the Act 60 Equal Educational Opportunity Act, and the ‘weighting’ of student enrollments based on arbitrary assumptions that certain student cohorts were more expensive to educate than others.
But one aspect of education governance has remained the same over the decades. And the Governor’s recent proposal does nothing to change it. If anything, it exacerbates the problems. Costs will not decrease. Student performance will continue to decline.
We’re spending more than $30,000 per student today. Student proficiencies in reading, writing, math and science continue to decline. Social norms are being obliterated. Drug overdoses and suicides in Vermont’s 18- to 24-year-old cohort have doubled in recent years. And nothing in the Governor’s proposal addresses these issues.
Make no mistake in this regard either. Our Vermont legislators are equally corrupt, preferring now, in the face of increased criticism, to do nothing. And the various critiques mentioned in this article (a classic false dichotomy in itself) conveniently ignore the one obvious solution that’s been discussed over and again on the VDC forum.
So… one more time. Isn’t it reasonable to follow the education governance that’s been under our collective noses for the last 100 years or so? Isn’t it reasonable to follow the education governance that is proven to lower costs and improve student outcomes? Isn’t it prudent for us to follow an education governance that is proven to be popular with students, parents, and local businesses – an education governance that is time-tested, already in place for the lucky families that happen to live in the right zip code?
Again, the H.89 School Choice bill, currently shelved in the House Education Committee for the last two years or more, solves all of these issues. It lets parents choose between public school governance and the various independent school alternatives available now to only the lucky few. H.89 requires no new and convoluted legislative adjustments. School Choice ‘tuitioning’ governance is already well established in Vermont. H.89 simply lets ALL of Vermont’s parents and their children choose the education programs they believe best meet the needs of their children.
Just sayin’.
H. Jay Eshelman One wind mill at a time??? The problem with that thinking, many birds still get destroyed in the process.
Well, Mr. Day, is a bird in the hand not worth two in the bush?