The Senate came close to putting a one-year moratorium on allowing public schools to turn private Thursday, but the move failed by two votes, and the legislation reverted to a study.
Two small schools districts have stoked concern in the Statehouse. More than a decade ago, the town of Winhall closed its public school and reopened it as a private one, and North Bennington recently voted to follow suit.
Sen. Don Collins, D-Franklin, who proposed the moratorium Thursday in an amendment on the floor, said he was troubled by testimony from the Winhall headmaster, who indicated that he was sharing information with other schools.
“He’s been to nine towns to explain how you can do this, and that really concerns me,” Collins said.
Collins isn’t the only lawmaker anxious to slow down the process before other school districts opt out of the public school system, and there have been several attempts this legislative session to prohibit the practice of closing a public school and reopening it in the same building as a private school serving the same student body.
Some lawmakers are inclined to act more boldly, putting a strict ban on the process, while others say that would fly in the face of local control. That disagreement thrust H.521, an education housekeeping bill — designated as the vehicle for this concern — into a cycle of repetitive revisions.
The House Education Committee originally included a ban on the practice, but then changed it to a moratorium, and by the time the legislation left the House, it was only a study.
The Senate Education Committee reinstated the ban, but the Appropriations Committee removed it, and the Education Committee acquiesced in the hopes of securing their support on another controversial provision in H. 521 that would have given child-care workers the right to unionize. (That provision failed on the Senate floor Thursday when it was voted “not germane” to the underlying bill.)
Sen. Richard McCormack, D-Windsor, who chairs the Education Committee and engineered the child-care provision, described the agreement: “This is a collaborative body and you’re looking for common ground and the Appropriations Committee intimated that they were prepared to support the larger bill even with the union language in it, but that had to come out. This is simply a matter of negotiating.”
But Collins, who sits on the Education Committee, made another bid to bring the moratorium back in play when H.521 was up for a vote on the floor Thursday.
“If you’re going to use public money, then I think you need to follow the public rules and that’s not happening,” Collins said. He added, “I don’t think the people in Bennington clearly understand what they bought, and Winhall thought they did and then they had a $500,000 deficit.”
Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison, also made the case that school districts may not understand the consequences of the decision before they take it. Addison, Ayer said, was on the verge of selling the public school building for a dollar to a nonprofit academy that would replace it, without realizing the transition could cost them money in the future.
“Our town came fairly close to making the decision on incomplete information,” Ayer said.
Sen. Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden, also member of the Education Committee, said he was worried students with special education needs would fall though the cracks if public schools turn private. “What’s disturbing to me about this possibility is that based on testimony we had, there are discreet circumstances under which a school might reduce its responsibility to provide special education.”
Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, said that as a resident of North Bennington, he voted against the decision to turn private. But he insisted the state would be infringing on local control if it forbids the move.
“What are we afraid of?” Sears asked.
At least two senators who supported the one-year moratorium were out of the room at the time of the vote Thursday. Collins’ amendment failed, 12-14.
