School leaders call for reform
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By Jesse Roman
Teachers, parents, school board members and top school officials delivered a unified message Tuesday night to the Vermont Senate Education Committee:Vermont needs education reform.
What reform should look like is still open for debate, but most, if not all, of the people who spoke at a public hearing in South Burlington said consolidating school governments would benefit students and taxpayers.
Vermont has more than 260 school districts, each with its own school board, and 63 supervisory unions that provide top-level administrative services to those districts. One proposal in the Legislature would reduce the number of supervisory unions to 15 or 16.
“Sometimes in discussion on this we fail to recognize the seriousness and fall into quaintness and cuteness; this is not about the past, this is not about what used to happen, this is serious business,” said Jim Fitzpatrick, superintendent of the Essex Town School District and a former Stowe school employee. “This is one of the few times I’ve seen the Legislature in Vermont have a real opportunity to change the way we provide education in this state and I’d hate to see you guys miss this. … The system we have is inefficient.”
With consolidation, “we will either save money, get more for the money we already spend, or perhaps both,” he said.
Inefficiency was the word repeated time and again by school administrators, who told the Senate committee they spend more time dealing with school board members and selling budgets than actually running the schools.
Voters in the Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union, home to Richford and Enosburg High Schools, would probably reject consolidation, said Jay Nichols, the superintendent.
“They are willing to talk about merging to a unified district, but in the end they are not willing to give up local control,” Nichols told the committee. “But the administration and staff believe going to a unified district would be better for the kids and better financially. …
“One set of policies, hiring practices, transportation, economies of scale, sharing professionals — that all makes sense.”
Nichols said he spends a lot of time just negotiating teachers’ contracts, which are different for every school in the district.
“We do everything five times: five budgets, five policy manuals, five board meetings. There’s an awful lot of redundancy,” said David Bickford, superintendent of the Orange-Windsor Supervisory Union. “You need to provide the opportunity for your education administrators to spend more time on education issues, and less time serving governmental bodies.”
While almost everyone said the current school structure needs fixing, there is hardly consensus on how to proceed. Many favored letting school districts decide for themselves whether to consolidate, then, if they don’t take the bait, requiring them to merge.
“After applying the carrot, there has to be a stick,” said Richard Bland, who won election to the Stowe School Board this month.
Bland, like others who spoke, is open to a short window for allowing school districts to consolidate voluntarily, but wants the state to step in if progress is slow, because the state’s budget problems require it, he said.
Not everyone was as hawkish.
“Begin with freedom to consolidate, move to incentives to consolidate, but if we go to a system where we’re told to consolidate, I would be very careful,” said Richard Cassidy, chairman of the South Burlington School Board. “What if two districts have very different pay scales? You need to ask how that would be resolved, and my guess is it won’t be to move toward the less generous compensation.”
Whatever comes out of the Legislature, cost cuts should not damage educational quality, Cassidy said — a sentiment echoed by many.
“If we don’t do a good job on education, people will not want to come here to open their business; people will not want to stay here and will not want to move here,” Cassidy said. “Be careful of the quick fix.”
Not enough money
For the first time in years, there is broad consensus among Republicans and Democrats about a need to shake up Vermont’s education system.
“The problem is there isn’t enough money to pay the bill, and that’s a big problem,” said committee Chairman Bobby Starr, D-Essex-Orleans. “Our children are doing well, test scores are good, but there’s not enough money to pay the bill. We’re trying to find a way to provide good, quality education and save some money.”
On Tuesday, state Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca outlined a plan to consolidate Vermont’s 281 school districts into 50 or fewer, and save $15 million to $17 million in fiscal year 2012. The plan would give him broad authority to consolidate districts as he sees fit, and reduce student-staff ratios.
The measure would increase student-staff ratios from 4.55 to 1 to 4.95 to 1 for fiscal 2012, eliminating more than 1,200 jobs and saving about $46 million, he said.
House members have been unwilling to embrace that type of top-down approach to consolidation and seem to prefer an incentive-based plan.
Earlier this month, the House Education Committee endorsed the only education reform bill now before the Legislature.
The bill — often referred to as the Peltz bill for Rep. Peter Peltz, D-Woodbury, who wrote much of it — does not require that school districts consolidate, but does require supervisory unions to 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.
Two other plans have been proposed, but likely won’t be considered this year — from Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, and Sen. Robert Hartwell, D-Bennington; each would require consolidation from 260 school districts to only 15 or 16.
Unlike the Peltz bill, Scheuermann’s bill also does away with the statewide property tax that now funds education. Instead, the individual, much larger school districts would set their own property tax rates.
That funding change is crucial in any reform, says Bland, of the Stowe School Board.
“In the gold town of Stowe … we have suffered through maintenance budgets over the last decade. Now we are seeing our programs cut wholesale,” Bland told the committee. “We are seeing one of the best school systems in the state of Vermont being dismantled in front of our eyes.”
In the Peltz bill, “there is no recommendation about funding at all, or for ameliorating the situation we face,” Bland said.
The best hopes for school-finance reform seem to reside in the Senate, which Scheuermann says has been more receptive to her ideas.
However, Senate leaders, including Susan Bartlett, D-Lamoille, although open to the idea, say it’s likely too late in the year to consider dramatic funding changes.
http://www.stowetoday.com/articles/2010/04/01/stowe_reporter/news/local_news/doc4bb48bbbe0786008853624.txt
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