[B]righton was once a booming railway crossroads midway between Portland, Maine, and Montreal. Now it is just another Northeast Kingdom village without a grocery store. But what the townspeople in Brighton do have is a K-8 school, and it seems they aim to keep it.
Like many Vermont schools, Brighton Elementary is suffering from attrition. The school has 10 seventh-graders and nine eighth-graders, but upcoming classes have as few as four and five students. This trend drove the town to hold a community meeting last fall to consider tuitioning their seventh- and eighth-grade students to North Country Union Junior High School, which is nearly 50 minutes away. Not only is that time spent on the bus, but it increases the school’s transportation costs.
The North Country Supervisory Union performed a cost analysis for the meeting that showed it would take a couple of years to realize any savings from closing the Brighton school, but keeping the students put would raise taxes for local residents. In a unanimous decision that has been described as “powerful in its solidarity” the town opposed sending its middle school students to another community.
“The school means as much to the community as it does to the teachers – people are invested here – and in the absence of a grocery store or even a hospital we have become everything and we have become so willingly.”
“We had an enormous turnout and not one hand was raised against keeping the kids here,” Brighton Principal Denise Russell said. “The school means as much to the community as it does to the teachers – people are invested here – and in the absence of a grocery store or even a hospital we have become everything and we have become so willingly.”
North Country Superintendent John Castle was also at the meeting and said that “the community was adamant. I wish there was a local (state) representative there. I wish that the secretary of education might have been there. It was so compelling. The people didn’t want their children leaving the community.”
Poverty and isolation
Brighton Elementary has a number of special needs students and enough poverty to require 70 percent of its student body to be on the Free Lunch Program. Russell said that there isn’t a major industry in town and the children come from working poor backgrounds. Many families in the community don’t even have cars, she said.
“We are talking about generational poverty in some cases,” Russell said. “We have many dedicated working families. How is a single mom, working two jobs, going to participate in her child’s education when they are going to school 50 minutes away? Families need to participate, especially when dealing with high-needs kids.”
The community trusts the school, something that has been hard-won, Russell said. When a student is hungry, they are fed, when they have a psychological problem, they are helped, if they need to go over math facts one more time, someone does it with them.
“That intimacy is really necessary when dealing with high-needs kids and they are just as deserving of an excellent education. There is a collective responsibility to educate the whole child,” she said.
Propping up small schools
Towns like Brighton that have been holding onto their schools despite declining enrollment have been enabled by two provisions in Act 60/68 – the Small Schools Grant and a hold-harmless provision that mitigates student declines by pretending the school has more students than it does (a phenomenon known as phantom students).
Brighton Elementary receives a substantial small schools grant of $115,677 annually and is allotted 20.21 phantom students for which it receives per pupil funding. This year, Brighton is spending $15,760.28 per student, all according to the Agency of Education, or AOE.
“It doesn’t cost the same amount of money to educate every child or run every school – it just doesn’t — and the expectation is inaccurate and inappropriate to even ask,” Russell said “We are not fiscally irresponsible up here. It costs a lot to run a small school. It is very hard for this town to maintain this, but the alternative is sending our children so far away and creating a giant disconnect.”
Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe agrees that it’s expensive and often unsustainable to keep small schools going.
“When you are talking about 15 kids in a school and you are trying to operate and do everything a big system is meant to do, you will spend a lot of money,” she said. ”There is a price to pay for small, and it is something you may have to bear locally.”
Because Act 60 changed school spending from a local responsibility to that of the state it means that each town’s decisions affect the entire population.
“The state is all of us. The Education Fund and the tax rates are set by what folks vote on locally,” Holcombe said.
The growth of small
In 1999, the first year that the small schools grant was implemented, $921,000 was allocated to 46 districts. The following year, a second support grant calculation expanded the program to 87 districts at a cost of $4.1 million. By 2011, 104 districts garnered $7.1 million and for 2016 the cost rises to $7.6 million, according to a 2011 study and Agency of Education (AOE) budget projections.
Last session, lawmakers debated a bill that would have phased out the small schools grants and hold-harmless program but the bill did not make it into law. Since then, Vermont voters registered their frustration with the recent property tax hikes, nearly ousting a sitting governor. In response, Gov. Peter Shumlin and Speaker of the House Shap Smith have made education spending a priority.
Proposals to end these grants have returned to the forefront, the governor outlining them in his recommendations during his budget address and an Education Finance Task Force proposing the phasing out of the programs in its report to the speaker. If lawmakers choose to transition out of one or both of these funds, rural towns such as Brighton could be severely impacted. They could be forced to sharply increase local taxes or close.
“We have depended upon the small schools grants and phantom student counts and it will be a loss to us, especially over the next five years,” said Russell. She added that demands are increasing upon schools – such as the requirement to have a pre-K program — without adequate increases in support from the state.
“Look at the homeowners who showed up at this community meeting. You have an 80-year-old woman living in the same house for three generations and I’m going to raise her tax bill – that is a huge responsibility,” Russell said. “I’m just trying to run the school and do right by these folks.”
‘Equity of opportunity’
But Holcombe points out that building relationships with nearby schools could benefit everyone.
“What we are arguing is that there are opportunities through partnerships to free up resources from administrative overhead that could also be put into program quality and development,” she said. “Look at what some communities are doing. If other districts are moving toward a more sustainable system, does it make sense to reward a system that is not trying to do that?” she asks.
There is a tension between those who see the grants as disincentives for school districts to come together and build partnerships, says Stephen Dale, executive director of the State School Board Association, and for those who see the grants “as a lifeline to making sure students in very rural schools are able to get a decent, quality education despite the financial pressures they are under.”
Castle said that the Legislature would probably continue the small schools grant to Brighton because in the past the AOE has deemed the area geographically isolated. But such a clause would have to be written into the legislation and Brighton would still lose the hold harmless money which would be significant for them.
“They don’t have the population that has the ability to rally and say, we’ll spend more per pupil,” he said.
Holcombe said she gets it. She says that in places like Brighton “people are pretty far out there and putting a bunch of elementary kids on the bus is a big commitment. I really understand that pressure. These small schools are important in these communities where the school is the only institution left in town.”
But she adds there are places where school buses pass small schools that are nearer to their community to get to a larger school further away. Why would they do that? Because they perceive that the more distant school is offering something more than those they are passing along the road. Officials say such choices show there is a lack of “equity of opportunity” in the nearby schools.
This is the argument being employed to urge small schools and districts to merge. Meaning that students at small schools are not being exposed to the rich curriculum and extracurricular choices that they would be at a larger school. While that argument makes some sense at the high school level it begins to fall apart for the K-8 grade span.
Hugs and high fives
Take Coventry Village School, for example. It is also a small NEK school with about 100 students K-8. CVS receives a small schools grant similar to Brighton’s, $110,265, however, it isn’t likely to be deemed geographically isolated and could, therefore, lose the funding.
Coventry manages to offer an array of courses including foreign language, arts and technology. The computer to student ratio is 1:1. Sixty percent of the students take part in the Free Lunch Program, yet more than 80 percent of the students read at or above proficiency on the state test.
Last year, CVS had the highest reading and math scores among special education students in the district. Principal Matthew Baughman says that is because the school is small and nimble and has a staff that really pitches in to make sure those kids receive a quality education.
Like Brighton, Coventry also struggles with poverty, single-parent homes and students showing up without having their most basic needs met.
“The kinds of relationships the children of Vermont need, particularly in today’s world of growing inequality, just do not happen as regularly or as easily in larger schools.”
“What makes us (CVS) different than say, a school of 1,000, is that we are better able to provide a sense of belonging and connectedness in our small environment, than a larger school. At the end of every day, I stand at the door and give 103 high fives, while Mrs. Tapin, our kindergarten teacher, gives almost as many hugs. The kinds of relationships the children of Vermont need, particularly in today’s world of growing inequality, just do not happen as regularly or as easily in larger schools,” Baughman said.
Research supports Baughman’s argument and shows that often small K-8 schools are able to overcome the achievement gaps induced by poverty. And rural school advocates say there are added benefits to keeping small schools – they become a hub in the absence of other institutions and businesses and ultimately can become an asset to draw residents and industry to an area.
Superintendent Castle said that in his district small schools grants make up between 8 percent and 10 percent of the budgets.
“Hold-harmless and the small schools grants are resources helping these schools provide what is needed,” Castle said. Taking away these funds, he argues, will adversely impact the local tax rate and result in inequality and a real lack of opportunity – both things that lawmakers are trying to fix.
If the small schools grants were eliminated, Baughman says he would be forced to reduce staff and increase the student-to-teacher ratio, which “could result in lower student achievement.”
In 2011, AOE looked into how much savings would come from phasing out the small schools grant and associated funding and learned it would reduce costs to the Education Fund by $5.3 million – at the time the state was spending $7.1 million. In FY16, Vermont is projected to spend $7.6 million on those programs.
Bill Talbott, chief financial officer for the AOE, said Vermont taxpayers wouldn’t feel much relief from the phasing out of the program, which represents about three-quarters of one tax penny on the statewide tax rate. Instead, he suggested that it’s about the message the government is sending. “I think you’d call that pressure,” he said.
Castle agrees that this isn’t as much about saving taxpayer dollars as it is about “starving the schools to the point where they will be pushed to close and consolidate. What I have a hard time with is that they [the governor and Legislature] aren’t being honest about that … don’t say we can’t afford this subsidy or pose this as an equity of opportunity issue and that somehow we are providing an inadequate education for our children.”
Holcombe disagrees with the notion that the state is anti-small school.
“It is too simplistic to say this is about closing small schools,” she said. “We are asking local boards to really ask themselves, given the prospects for the future, what is the best way forward.”
The entire state is shedding students and demographics suggest that the NEK will continue to experience enrollment declines. Holcombe said.
“They need to be planning not for who is in the building today, but for the students who are going to be there in 10 years.”
Schools and school districts are talking and considering creative ways to partner, according to Dale. He warns the Legislature to think comprehensively. By taking away the grants when consolidation is on the table could end negotiations because now one of the parties will become much more expensive.
“Removing important resources that that region has had available for some time will make a complex process more challenging,” Dale said, equating it to the Jenga game. “Make sure you aren’t pulling out one of the bottom sticks, but instead creating an overall framework for what you want to do,” he advised.
Castle agrees and says he fears that the Legislature doesn’t understand the impact of phasing out the grants.
“It will be with a blunt instrument,” he said. “Do away with the small schools grant – boom! Do away with hold-harmless – boom! It will impact each community very, very differently. We need to work collaboratively with the state to be more cost effective, but I want to ensure it is truly an honest conversation.”
