Will state mandate school consolidation?

School funding critics gain some traction

By Jesse Roman

Published:

Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:10 PM EDT

There’s growing consensus in the Legislature, on both sides of the aisle, that school reforms need to happen sooner rather than later.

Even the rhetoric is the same: Consolidating small school districts would save money, improve educational opportunities, and result in a fairer tax code.

But reform may not occur this year.

“I think that there is a desire to move the issue forward and a recognition that we do need to change the way things are done; the rub is how do we do that,” House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, said Tuesday in an interview.

Legislative leaders set last Friday, March 12, as the deadline for advancing bills out of committee to give the House and Senate time to consider and pass bills. Those bills that didn’t make it out of committee likely won’t make it to the floor this session.

The leading education reform bill was conspicuously absent at the end of the day Friday, largely because disagreements lingered within the mostly Democratic committee. Smith granted an extension and the bill was finally reported out of committee Tuesday night by a unanimous vote.

The bill, largely the creation of Rep. Peter Peltz, D-Woodbury, stops short of requiring school districts to consolidate, but does require that supervisory unions at least discuss it. Budget and tax incentives are offered to districts that decide to merge.

If the House passes the bill, it goes to the Senate. It’s unclear what a final bill might look like, since there are major rifts between chambers about whether the state should require school districts to consolidate, or leave it for the districts to decide.

All three education proposals unveiled in recent weeks feature school district consolidation in some form.

Unlike Peltz’s plan, the other two— from Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, and Sen. Robert Hartwell, D-Bennington — mandate consolidation from 260 school districts to only 15 or 16.

“As the process unfolds, we’ll work to find the proper balance of incentives and, where appropriate, make sure people are considering the consolidation issue,” Smith said Tuesday.

The argument on whether to require districts to consolidate doesn’t seem to break down by party lines; rather, there appears to be a rift between House and Senate.

The Peltz plan leaves consolidation up to local districts; Hartwell’s Senate bill, which didn’t make it out of committee, would require consolidation — an approach favored by several influential senators, including Sen. Susan Bartlett, D-Lamoille.

Scheuermann said Senate Democrats have been much more responsive than House members to ideas in her education bill, including abolishing the statewide property tax and having the new, big regional districts handle school funding.

“I’ve been beating this drum a lot and I’ve been making a lot of inroads lately in the Senate,” Scheuermann said in an interview.

Bartlett says she is open to the idea of switching from a statewide school property tax to a small, regional-based system — but doesn’t see it happening this year.

“It is way too late in the year to get into changing the funding system. That is a big conversation,” she said. “But we can give it legs so people start thinking about it and talking about so perhaps we can roll it out next year.”

Scheuermann’s plan never had much of a chance in the House, where the Education Committee, chaired by Rep. Johannah Donovan, D-Burlington, abandoned it early on in favor of Peltz’s incentive-based plan.

That’s largely because the committee thought a top-down mandate just wouldn’t work, Peltz said Tuesday in an interview.

“The cruel irony and contradiction here is people blame the statewide property tax for various problems, but they think the best way to answer that is by further state imposition,” Peltz said. “Over the years, we’ve had 20 attempts at school consolidation, but because we went with a top-down mandate with little concern with the quality of schools or direct local oversight, they have failed.”

In her column in this week’s Stowe Reporter, Scheuermann makes the exact same but opposite Act 60 argument for why opponents shouldn’t have issue the state mandates in her bill.

“The irony in this argument is that many of those who oppose my plan on this ground also supported, and continue to support, a statewide property tax,” she says. “If that is not a state mandate, I’m not sure what is.

Peltz, a member of the House Education Committee, said the committee has heard testimony from superintendents, school board officials, principals and teachers, and they have largely been receptive to his ideas.

“They’ve said, ‘We’re willing to do this if the decisions are made locally,’” Peltz said. “They know efficiencies can be gained.”

Speaker Smith agrees with the House Education Committee’s direction, and believes incentives can achieve the desired effect, so the state doesn’t have to be too heavy-handed.

“I think the conditions on the ground are such that supervisory unions … might make those decisions on their own,” Smith said. “I don’t think (consolidation) is something we can mandate from Montpelier, especially if it’s not clear it would be saving money.”

Scheuermann isn’t convinced about that, and neither is Bartlett.

“Do we let people volunteer, or do we have Montpelier say, ‘Here’s the path: In X number of years we’ll have 14 districts,’” Bartlett said at a legislative breakfast in Stowe last week. In her view, the latter is preferable to telling school officials, “Here’s a lofty goal, now get here somehow.”

“The path to getting to larger districts needs to be paved by finding all the best practices in administration and requiring all districts to implement these practices over a two-year time period,” Bartlett said in a recent statement to the Stowe Reporter.

For Scheuermann, mandated consolidation is important, but perhaps more important is fixing the property tax system. She says she’s made “inroads” in the Senate on the issue, but, when asked, said it’s far from clear that initiative will pass: “In politics, a month and a half is a very long time, so I can’t answer that,” she said. “I just hope we don’t do something for that sake of doing something.

“My brother always told me, ‘Never mistake activity for achievement.’ I think that applies exceptionally well in this case.”


Read story at: http://www.stowetoday.com/articles/2010/03/23/stowe_reporter/news/local_news/doc4ba20f86ce5e6758425124.txt

What Leahy says on health bill

Comment of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) On The Signing Of "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" The White House Tuesday, March 23, 2010 After a long night of worry and ruin for uncounted millions of American families who have fallen through the cracks of a broken health insurance system, this is the dawn of an historic new day of hope in a country that has always risen to meet its challenges and to renew its promises. America has some of the best health care in the world, if you can afford it. Millions of families in Vermont and across the nation worry that they are just one paycheck away from medical and financial disaster. This is a new dawn for them. Wherever I travel in Vermont I am often stopped in the grocery store, at church, on the street or at the gas station to listen to personal, wrenching stories, like the woman from Winhall who needs to spend $500 a month on prescriptions but who would be uninsured if not for her husband's job. She is working two jobs just to make ends meet and to afford their health care costs. Or the small business owner who works six and seven days a week but still can't afford the blood tests her doctor recommended. If she becomes sick she will lose her business and her home. This is a new dawn for them. I grew up in my family's small business in Montpelier. I know that business owners want to attract and keep good workers and many want to be able to offer health insurance options. Spiraling insurance costs are rapidly taking that option away. Some of the most immediate and far-reaching reforms in this new law are the tax credits that will help small businesses continue to offer insurance to their employees. This is a new dawn for small business owners and for those who are self-employed. Until now, the rules have been stacked in favor of insurance companies. Now the rules will protect America's families. Like many sweeping reforms of our history, this legislation will likely be improved in the coming years as these reforms are implemented. For example, I will continue to push for a public option and for repeal of the health insurance industry's anti-trust exemption to promote competition, choice and lower prices. This week, the Senate is already working on improvements to this legislation. These include closing the Medicare 'donut hole' in the next several years, making coverage more affordable, and creating a more equitable distribution of Medicaid reimbursements to states like Vermont that have acted early on reform. Health insurance reform has prevailed through the grueling gauntlet of obstructionism erected by defenders of the status quo. One remaining gauntlet remains in the Senate, where many are trying to derail these further improvements to this law - improvements that many of these opponents say they support. I am proud of our president and our country for proving that change is possible when a pressing national interest is at stake. Sincerely, PATRICK LEAHY United States Senator

Keene coaches White to gold

Keene has the golden touch

U.S. snowboard coach Bud Keene of Stowe pumps up gold medalist Shaun White before White’s impressive final run at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Photo by Neil Korn

By Jesse Roman

Published:

Thursday, March 4, 2010 12:08 PM EST

Stowe resident Bud Keene is on the phone a lot these days.

Just last week, he spent two hours chatting with a writer from Rolling Stone magazine. This week, he’s talking to Time magazine.

It’s gotten to the point where he’s turning down tiny publications such as the Denver Post (circulation 255,000) because there’s just not enough time.

It’s the residual effect of another gold medal, of being the most decorated snowboarding coach in history, and especially of being Shaun White’s coach.

White — snowboarding’s Michael Jordan, Tony Hawk, and Muhammad Ali all rolled into one — transcends his sport. It’s now unclear which is more famous: White, or the sport he champions.

Two weeks ago in Vancouver, the 23-year-old from Carlsbad, Calif., with the flowing red hair dropped the two most technically difficult halfpipe runs in history to win his second-straight Olympic gold medal. Before Vancouver, White was already an icon; after Vancouver, where he landed his latest biggest trick yet — his new Double McTwist 1260 — he’s even further off the charts. Keene, as his coach, has also been lifted to celebrity status of sorts. And now, the phone won’t stop ringing.

“It’s cool. My stock definitely goes up working with Shaun,” Keene said last week in an interview in Stowe. “The best halfpipe rider on the planet has chosen me, which is great.”

Coaching gold

When White asked Keene to be his coach in the summer of 2005, neither was exactly an unknown. White was already winning X-Games, was one of the best riders and skateboarders in the world, and was the favorite for halfpipe gold at the upcoming Olympics in Torino.

Keene was the head U.S. halfpipe coach, and it seemed inevitable that they would work together.

“It was inconceivable that he wasn’t going to be on the Olympic team” in Torino, Keene said. “We had already some degree of familiarity, but in the summer of 2005 we decided to formally hook up and start working together in anticipation of the Olympics. We both figured the greater familiarity we had, the better.”

From that point forward, Keene and White were together all the time. They spent months in New Zealand perfecting his tricks.

“We basically lived together on the road. We both had amps and electric guitars; we’d play and sing, find a drummer and jam,” Keene said. “We had some great times sitting around playing cards, riding dirt bikes in New Zealand, or playing cricket or whatever.”

Over time, their bond has grown bigger than coach and rider.

“Bud is great; he is the guy I can go to and talk about anything,” White said. “He is great to hang out with, ride with, and obviously is a pretty good coach. In the end, though, it’s cool to say that Bud is my friend and that I owe a lot to him.”

That connection, camaraderie and familiarity are crucial.

“He’s doing death-defying stuff out there,” Keene says.

All that work turned into a gold medal for White in Torino.

Terrifying

Four years later in Vancouver, not a whole lot had changed — at least on the surface. White was still the overwhelming favorite to win gold, Keene was still his coach, and both had worked to develop new tricks no one else had dreamed up, never mind executed.

But Vancouver was different.

Keene wasn’t the halfpipe head coach; he was there to help all the athletes, but he was mostly Shaun’s guy. And the expectations were stifling.

“This one for me was much more pressure-packed. Silver would be a defeat for Shaun,” Keene admitted. “We worked incredibly hard to get ready, and we were more than ready. He is by far the best in the world, but still, anything can happen on any day. It could have turned out that we didn’t win — it was terrifying.”

Shaun White was such an overwhelming favorite, had he not won the gold medal, it could have been the story of the 2010 Olympics. Nobody would remember the rider who unseated the Olympic champ; everyone would remember only that White had failed.

In the past several years, White, with Keene coaching, has set the bar. He invents tricks that blow the competition out of the water, and his rivals spend the next year learning them, just so they have a chance. By the time of the next big competition, White has a new arsenal, and the cycle starts over.

Keene and White worked together through most of 2008 and 2009, preparing for Vancouver. White spent hours falling on the hard, icy halfpipe in Park City, Utah, perfecting his new Double McTwist 1260.

“He took slam after slam,” Keene said. “There was no safety net. He broke seven boards. Shaun has heart; nobody can deny that.”

How do you coach and prepare an athlete who symbolizes his sport, who’s the undisputed best in the world, for a gold-medal repeat?

“I coach him exactly the same as I would coach anyone, a 10-year-old kid, a boy, a girl, anyone. The challenges are exactly the same; the goal-setting is the same,” Keene says. “He is a 23-year-old kid with the same fears and doubts as everyone else.”

The big difference, of course, is the freakish ability and the uncanny way White can rise to the moment.

“Whatever adjustment I suggest, Shaun can immediately transfer to the snow,” Keene says.

“The more I’ve worked with the elite-level (snowboarders), I’ve found they have a quality of coming through when the moment matters. When the spotlight is on him, the higher the stakes, the higher the pressure, the better Shaun reacts, and the better I react.”

Cultivating a talent as unique as White’s is less X’s and O’s and more about motivation. Keene jokes that he’s surprised he hasn’t been awarded an honorary psychology degree yet.

“You’ve got to be able to reach into their mind and flip a switch,” he says. “It’s one of the most nebulous things. I can’t tell you how to do it; I can’t tell you how I do it. You’ve got to get to know the person, see inside their head.”

Keene’s style was on full display just before White’s fabled second run in the Olympic finals. With the gold medal already wrapped up, and White about to make what was essentially a victory lap, Keene prepared his rider to unveil the much-anticipated Double McTwist 12. According to Keene, White has a history of not being able to pull off tricks unless the pressure is on — unless it really matters. Victory laps hadn’t been his best moments.

The motivation for White, who really has no peer to challenge him, is his dominance; he can’t slip, he can’t even appear vulnerable. The Double McTwist was his trump card. It turned out he didn’t even need it to win, but his level of dominance demands he do more than just win.

The final run was a legacy run, and White knew it — his coach, in so many words, made sure of it.

That concept “is so pervasive with him. He’s showered in it, and the last run at the Olympics was case in point. That was the run he was there to do,” Keene said. “He was there to show the world that run.”

“I look over and say to him, ‘Bud, what do you think? Should I do the Double McTwist?’” White recalled. “He looks back and me and says, ‘Don’t do it if you’re not going to land it!’ It was the perfect comment to get me motivated, and kind of pissed, and set (me) up to stick my run.”

With Keene’s final words “still ringing in his ear,” as White later said, the world’s best rider pulled off the world’s hardest trick, barely getting enough speed, air and rotation to land it cleanly.

“It was by far one of the ugliest ones he ever did, but he made it happen,” Keene said, smiling.

•••

Shaun White’s view of his coach

The Stowe Reporter interviewed White on Wednesday about his coach, Bud Keene of Stowe.

Q: What’s Bud’s role in your life, career, in your snowboarding?

Bud is great; he is the guy I can go to and talk about anything. He is great to hang out with, ride with, and obviously is a pretty good coach. In the end, though, it’s cool to say that Bud is my friend and that I owe a lot to him.

Q: Why Bud? What makes him good at what he does?

He just calls it as he sees it. With what we do, there isn’t much debating or back-and-forth discussions about what to do. He is really sure of himself, which lets me know that he knows what he is talking about. It’s good to have people that you can trust and rely on when there is so much on the line.

Q: What’s Bud’s style of coaching?

It’s straight-up and direct. We will talk about runs and tricks, but when it’s time to get it done, he will let you know. I really like and respect that. In addition, he knows when to back off and give you space. Sometimes the best advice is nothing at all.

Q: What is one thing or a few things that Bud has done or said that made a difference?

During the 2006 Olympics, I fell on my first qualifying run. Bud pulled me aside and made me take some runs to relax, stay warm, and get my mind off things. It’s just the little things that help, and it’s nice to have someone around who can give you that advice.

Q: Can you share a Bud moment that will stay with you forever?

During my last run at the 2010 Olympics, right before I drop in, I look over and say to him, “Bud, what do you think? Should I do the Double McTwist?” He looks back and me and says, “Don’t do it if you’re not going to land it!” It was the perfect comment to get me motivated, kinda pissed, and set up to stick my run.

•••

White’s boards fitted in Stowe

Stowe’s connection to Shaun White’s gold medal in Vancouver doesn’t end with his coach.

Graham Lonetto, owner of Edgewise Elite Ski Services on South Main Street, prepped all of White’s boards for the Olympics.

“We take very good care of his stuff,” says Bud Keene, White’s coach, when asked why White is able to fly so much higher than the competition. “His boards were prepped by Graham Lonetto at Edgewise. We figured, why send it to someone else, when we have one of the best ski technicians in the world right here in town?”

Lonetto says Burton Snowboards — whose owner and founder Jake Burton Carpenter is also a Stowe resident — approached him early about working on White’s boards.

“I know they made Shaun’s boards right in Burlington and the guys at Burton were psyched to keep it in Vermont,” Lonetto said.

Lonetto prepped about nine boards for White in the months leading up to the Olympics, then three more right before the Games.

“Most of the boards come with a pretty generic prep, factory-tune,” Lonetto says. He puts them through a stone grinder, then does a ton of waxing work to “flatten them out and really dial them in.”

Different waxing patterns can be applied to the bottom of a board, depending on the conditions, which maximize its ability to glide over the snow.

White snapped a bunch of his custom boards while training, and had only a few left before Vancouver.

So, “two weeks before the Olympics, they brought in three more boards,” Lonetto said. “They knew it was going to be warm and they had a better sense of what the conditions would be like. I heard (White) was breaking boards, so I thought these three would be backups, or something.”

When the Burton people came to pick up the boards, they asked how they looked.

“I said they looked great, and they told me, ‘He’s going to use one of these three.’ I said, ‘Oh, OK.’”

A couple of weeks later, Lonetto saw his board on television as White rode to gold on Lonetto’s custom waxwork.

“It’s pretty cool. We don’t do a ton of work for snowboard athletes, but I obviously know who he is,” Lonetto said. “My mom and dad in Florida even know who he is.”

•••

Keene’s story

Bud Keene moved to Stowe from Virginia Beach in 1983, when snowboarding was still basically nonexistent.

He bought a ski pass, but used it only a couple of times before finding his true passion.

A couple of locals were basically strapping plywood to their feet and surfing down the mountain. As soon as he gave it a whirl, it was instant love. He’d hike up to the Chin four or five times a day just to ride down.

Snowboarders weren’t allowed on the lifts or even on the mountain in those days; the ski patrol routinely kicked Keene out of the resort.

Keene started at his coaching career at the Mt. Mansfield Ski and Snowboard Club in 1989. Four years before that, he had been competing as a snowboard racer. When he arrived at MMSC, the snowboarding program was a year old, and Keene coached racing.

He took a hiatus, but still coached at the club part-time. In 1996, he came back as head coach, to a changed sport.

By then, freestyle had become more popular, and Keene focused the program in that direction. In 2002, Keene left Stowe to coach the U.S. Snowboard Team.

Now, he is in charge of developing the country’s next big stars. He continues to work closely with Shaun White.