To the Editor:
Today’s Progressivism is eerily similar to Nazism. Here is an excerpt from Murr, Charles Theodore, The Godmother: Madre Pascalina, A Feminine Tour de Force (p. 38):
“It was 1938. The Nazis had just announced that ‘all denominational schools’ — and by ‘denomination’ they really meant Catholic schools — would henceforth cease to exist. The buildings and properties now belonged to ‘the German people’ and would be converted into ‘community schools,’ owned and operated by the State, to insure that proper national socialist educational standards and values were taught.
That Sunday, when Munster’s Bishop, Clemens August Graf von Galen ascended the great pulpit in St. Paulus-Dom, he looked out on a standing-room-only congregation and was quick to notice some very hard faces belonging to members of the SS. He knew they were there because already, too loudly and too clearly, he had opposed Nazi positions on euthanasia, concentration camps, Jewish racial inferiority and the purity-of-German-blood theory. Von Galen dedicated his Sunday sermon to the God-given right of parents to educate their children. Parents — not the State, nor any totalitarian government — had that right. Even Catholic schools exist merely to help mothers and fathers with what is their parental, natural right and obligation to educate their own children, rather than to take it away. One thing was for certain, and the Bishop of Munster thunderously proclaimed it: the Nazi State had no right, whatsoever, to expropriate the God-given rights of mothers and fathers to educate their own children.”
-Molly and Rick, Essex Jct.
To the Editor:
Our Reps continue to try to put a positive spin on the school funding mess and divert blame to the executive branch. Spending originates in the legislature, not with the Governor.
H850 will not fix the problem, only delay the inevitable by allowing school districts to ignore town meeting day votes on the school budget or remove the budget from the ballot altogether. Most town ballots have already been printed. Do we vote on school budgets on town meeting day or not? Will it count or not? Nobody knows at this point but we may have to have another vote later. H850 proposes a half million dollars to help cover the expense of voting twice. That’s right, half a million more when we are already spending too much! Representative Holcombe stated, “, the legislature put together a bill that removes the caps and replaces them with a tax discount– basically a reduction in rate based on how much tax capacity a district lost under Act 127.” So, this does nothing to solve the problem, just reshuffle deck chairs. Even Rep Holcombe admits, “. This doesn’t actually reduce spending directly. It just shifts who and how much districts pay.” And, “it does not provide mechanisms for true cost containment nor a funding formula change that ensures we are not in the same situation next year.”
H850 is an attempt to undo the harm Act 127 created. Act 127 did a couple of things. It told school districts, regardless of what you spend, tax rates will not go up more than 5%. Who would have thought that was a green light for school districts to spend? Additionally, a provision I personally find appalling, is the idea not all students are equal.” Pupil weighting” in the funding formula essentially says some students are worth more money than others. On its face I have a problem treating students unequally in the name of equal spending. We have used pupil weighting for a number of years now but Act 127 took it to new heights. A recent Valley News article about the Woodstock school district is a good example. Although there are about 700 students in the Woodstock middle and high school, current pupil weighting treated the school as if there were 925. The article went on to say under Act 127 there are now 1525 “equalized students” The article also confirmed its “the system of “pupil weighting” that determines how much money a district receives from the state.” It is clear to me, and should be to everyone else, Act 127 had nothing to do with equality and everything to do with money. It provided a legal method to funnel money where the legislature wanted to send our tax dollars.
Rep Holcombe stated “at the very least we owe our communities:”
- a commitment to pay down some of the increase this year, to buy a little time for real solutions.”
They are considering taxing candy, clothes, and cloud software purchases to” pay down” the increases.
- “a commitment to end the cost shift to the Education Fund of social service and mental health costs.”
It was the legislature that intentionally added $29 million to ed fund expenses last year by insisting on free school meals regardless of income.
- “a commitment to develop a new formula that puts some rules on how this shared resource is used.”
If we counted heads instead of equalized pupils, the legislature couldn’t manipulate money flows at all to their preferred school systems.
- “a study of the impact of mandatory “mixed delivery,“ including out of state prep schools and schools that are not open enrollment or which do not comply with anti-discrimination laws, as well as non-K12 uses of the education fund:”
There are a number of schools, like Thetford Academy and The Sharon Academy that are essentially private but are also the designated public school. The legislature is desperately trying to find a way to remove public funding from schools that don’t march in lock step with the left’s political ideology. If they succeed, schools like The Sharon Academy and several others that are resisting being told how to run their school, may cease to exist. I don’t see that this is in the best interest of students.
- “a reasonable and coherent school infrastructure plan.”
This is at least a nod to the realization that over the next 2 decades, at least $6 billion, yes that’s a “B”, in needed repairs to existing schools will be needed. Hang on to your hats, the school funding issue is just getting started.
I will agree with Rep Holcombe when she says, “please support and work with your school board members to help support our children and communities.” It won’t benefit anyone to fight amongst ourselves when the root of the problem can mostly be remedied in the voting booth.
-Bill Huff, Thetford
What is an Idiolect?
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… I was a sophomore in college studying linguistics and learned the word, “idiolect”. It was a banner day for me because that word and its implications have echoed down the years and affected everything about how I relate with people: how I think about them, how I listen to them and how I speak to them.
So what does it mean, “idiolect”? It is the language spoken by one person. According to Wikipedia: “Idiolect is an individual’s unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among a group of people. The term is etymologically related to the Greek prefix idio- (meaning “own, personal, private, peculiar, separate, distinct”) and -lect, abstracted from dialect and ultimately from Ancient Greek, lego, ‘I speak’.”
Think about this, let it sink in: we each speak our own, unique language. Every single one of us has our own understanding of the meanings of words, and puts them together in our own special way. It doesn’t matter if you have a twin, if you have both always lived together and been educated exactly the same for years and years. You each will still speak a unique language, a different language. Therefore, it always takes some goodwill and work to understand what anyone means by what they say, no matter how well, or how little, you know them. Assuming that you know what they are saying because you both are speaking English is a big mistake, a stumbling block to genuine understanding.
This word has implications, at least it did for me when I thought about it. If everyone speaks their own language, then encountering anyone, everyone, is like going to a foreign country. It doesn’t matter if it is your twin or your coworker or a random person at the supermarket or someone on the news: each of them is a foreign country and they are speaking a foreign language even if you are both speaking English. You are a foreign country to them, too. How do we treat the people we encounter when we are visiting a foreign country and they don’t speak our language? Do we do our best to learn a little of their language, or a lot? Are we extra careful in our choice of words to help them understand us? Do we pay close attention to the words they are saying, to make sure we understand what they mean, even asking for clarification? Maybe we’ll laugh when we can’t figure out what the other person is trying to communicate, we’ll be curious and patient as we figure it out together. But sometimes people visit a foreign country and are frustrated that it is different from home, and instead of observing and appreciating the local language and customs, they speak more and more loudly in their own language and get upset when the other person still doesn’t understand. The latter approach is all too common lately.
We are living through interesting times. Communication is the key to navigating them together. Each of us has something which only we can offer the world. That personal gift and its worldview are reflected in the unique language every one of us speaks. Be curious, be patient and pay close attention when you are listening to someone because they speak a language which has grown out of their life and is therefore inherently different from yours, as yours is different from theirs. Different is good.
-Karen Bufka, St. Johnsbury
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Opinion
more debt/// more bonding/// higher property taxes/// you will own nothing and you will be happy///
H.405
Subject: Education; school choice; elementary education; secondary education:
“Statement of purpose of bill as introduced: This bill proposes to allow all Vermont students to attend the school of the student’s choice, paid for by a School Choice Grant issued by the Agency of Education. The School Choice Grant would be paid from the Education Fund payment otherwise due to the student’s school district of residence. This bill also proposes to require the Joint Fiscal Office to issue a report with recommendations for the integration of the school choice program into Vermont’s current education funding structure.”
H.405 relies on the following existing statutory language in Title 16.
“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.”
H.405 is the fix to our education governance and performance malaise. However, I can’t say how many more times I have to cite these statutory examples before VDC readers, and the public at large, begins to figure it out. You all seem, to me at least, to be your own worst enemies – as, I suspect, will be proven yet again by the across-the-board absence of question and debate on the matter.
At this point, what do you have to lose? ….other than your children, of course?
public or private schools all paid for by property owning tax payers/// you are a tenet in your own house, which you do not own any more/////
The option then is, of course, to stop publicly subsidizing education altogether… a prospect with which I do not disagree. The question is, how do you get there from here?
For one thing, under “Vermont’s current education funding structure”, the tuition payment is approximately 40% less than the cost per student created by Act 127 and its permutations. Do you have a problem, first of all, with having your property taxes potentially cut by 40% over the long term? … as opposed to the projected 20% increase this year alone?
Disgusting comparison! I’m guessing the author is not Jewish.
The real issue here is simply that religious schools do not treat all students equally. On second thought, it’s that they don’t admit the students that they don’t want to treat equally. Religious schools equal religious rules. I’m fine with that, but not with my tax dollars.
Re: “The real issue here is simply that religious schools do not treat all students equally.”
Clearly, the public-school monopoly doesn’t treat all students equally either. Act 127, the recent cause of this latest brouhaha, is the epitome of Mr. Costello’s complaint, in that it assigns unequal ‘weight’ to almost all students – under the false premise that doing so somehow makes them equal.
Re: “I’m fine with that, but not with my tax dollars.”
“Requests for tuition payments for resident students to approved independent religious schools or religious independent schools that meet education quality standards must be treated the same as requests for tuition payments to secular approved independent schools or secular independent schools that meet educational quality standards,” according to the Vermont Agency of Education.
In the 2001 Zelman v Simmons-Harris, Cleveland School Choice case, the SCOTUS opinion articulates the point as well as any. That in an educational ‘free market’, the benefit of a publicly funded voucher used in a parent’s voluntary exchange for educational goods and services – whatever it is:
“… is reasonably attributable to the individual recipient, not to the government, whose role ends with the disbursement of benefits.”
Mr. Costello, apparently, thinks the entire $2.4 Billion Vermont education budget is his money? Thus, as ‘disgusting’ as this article’s characterization may seem – when the totalitarian shoe fits him, he should wear it.
Sorry, I guess my point was too subtle for you. I was referring to Christian schools that hold the position that they shouldn’t be forced to admit gay and students, or any students with gay parents; bakers don’t have to bake cakes for them, schools don’t have to let them in. “It’s against our religion”, they say. Talk about a slippery slope! Next they’ll be requiring baptism, (it’s a requirement to get into heaven, you know).
No, Mr. Costello, you won’t find your strawman under that rock either. Subtle as it may seem to you, under your logic, not only can ‘the state’ force a Catholic school to accept a gay child, ‘the state’ can force a gay child to attend a Catholic school.
Your logic exemplifies the typical paradox created under a misguided and over-simplified secular, Marxist, form of governance. It’s a perfect example of why the public-school monopoly is failing. It’s why Marxism fails – always. It is the mistaken perception that ‘equal access’ and ‘equity’ are one in the same.
An educational ‘free market’ (i.e., School Choice) accommodates everyone by ensuring that all children have ‘equal access’ to what is defined under the law as a ‘free and appropriate education’ (FAPE), because no two children are equal, and never will be. One size doesn’t fit all. Never has. Never will.
“The great virtue of a free-market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. 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.” ― Milton Friedman
I agree- in a roundabout sort of way. Uncle A was a great patriot of Germany and did nothing wrong. It’s so stupid how the myths (Soviet propaganda )of WW2 define and underline every aspect of US political discussion. Just stop with the “everything I don’t like is Hitler” already ffs and let’s talk about reality.
Re: Today’s Progressivism is eerily similar to Nazism.
No, it is not. similar to Naziism. It is Naziism using a different name. And when people catch on, they will change the name again.
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution to establish a dictatorship”. – George Orwell
Historically, parochial schools have actually saved tax money.
You can’t spell progreSSive without SS.
or Progre$$ive results in regre$$ive. Hence, go woke, go broke.
I read with bated breath Karen’s op ed comments. And she nailed where we are today with our unique expressions of languish. Where we diverge in our thinking is her pathway of linguistic personal meaning, she believes, leads us to better empathetic, caring society. I would argue that this practice of everyone being “allowed” to define what a word or expression means keeps society paralyzed and retards the building blocks of society. I’m surprised she elicited Wikipedia to get her point across which is antithetical to her argument. This augmented reality is where future technology is forcing us to go. Artificial intelligence models are being developed that will adapt to our every whim and will become our bubble of our reality. If we embrace this model our lives will be entrapped by this dystopia. We will no longer want to or be capable of communicating usefully with the outside “real” world. These tailor-made AI agents (robots) will become our co-workers, our companions, and yes even our lovers. The meaning of the word humanity will not only change, but it will also cease to exist.
H. Jay, Last time I checked religious schools were still refusing to agree to the terms set by the state that require them to allow equal access gay students and students of gay parents.
My comments have absolutely nothing to do with Marxism. I am just expressing my opposition to the concept and practice of discrimination of students based upon their sexual orientation, especially if they are taking taxpayer money. If religious schools decided to not admit Atheists or Hindus, would that be okay?
WWJD?
No, Mr. Costello. The strawman you seek isn’t an Atheist, or a Hindu either. And I’m the last person who would presume to know what Jesus would do. That level of hubris is above my pay grade.
What I can say is that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”. What is it about the second clause of that statement, ‘the free exercise thereof’, that you don’t understand?
Again, your point is a classic false dichotomy. The State isn’t constitutionally authorized to force any student to attend any school where they aren’t welcome. And, conversely, not only is the State not authorized to force a school to accept any given student, contrary to the oft misinformed claim, so-called specific public schools already don’t accept all students.
You, apparently, are still confusing the responsibility of a given school (public or independent, secular or religious) with the responsibility of a ‘school district’ and its obligation to provide a FAPE (free and appropriate education) to everyone, if it decides to provide a FAPE to anyone.
And, most importantly, the fact that the State provides the benefit of funding for an individual’s education, according to the SCOTUS at least, doesn’t give the State the authority to direct how that funding is allocated. That responsibility is specifically reserved to the individual receiving the benefit.
No matter how many times you re-state your false premise, its logic remains incorrect.