Nearly all jobs nowdays require at least minimal computer skills, a focus of workforce development initiatives in the state.

Vermont’s biggest workforce challenge at the moment isn’t the unemployment rate. The state Department of Labor announced last Tuesday that unemployment dropped another 0.2 percent last month, down to 5.1 percent, the lowest rate in more than three years.

Regional Department of Labor Manager Larry Sudlow, who runs the Rutland and Bennington offices, calls that very close to technical “full employment.” National and international economic stumbling blocks may yet get in the way, and more than 15 percent of the state’s workforce is discouraged and underemployed, but by most measures the state appears to be recovering.

The significant challenge for businesses is finding enough qualified people and helping them to develop necessary new skills. Many Vermont workers meanwhile struggle to keep a job or prepare for something better.

And for those who are under- or unemployed, adds Bill Morison, a former New Hampshire businessman who coordinates workforce development initiatives for the Community College of Vermont, the problem can be anything from learning how to succeed in an interview, developing more confidence, dealing with stress, or obtaining a credential that will provide an edge.

Of the top 10 fastest-growing jobs in Vermont, seven require a two-year college degree or more for entry, according to a 2010 state report. Two more call for specific post-high school training.

In response, the Labor Department and CCV have been building and refining a collaborative approach to workforce education and development in recent years, highlighted by an employee credentialing program that leads to a National Career Readiness Certificate. Free 10-week courses leading to certification run at various regional locations. At least 600 people have completed the program, which meshes academic and professional skills.

Bennington County is emerging as a potential model. A joint CCV/DOL office covering the region coordinates apprenticeships and career readiness, while the Southwest Vermont Career Development Center forges partnerships with business. About 100 people turned out last week for a local jobs forum, organized by the Greater Bennington Industrial Corp. and led by the two organizations. The topic was training and new jobs making ultra-light carbon fiber parts for cars, airplanes and hospitals at area composite plants.

Plasan North America, which produces military armor, has a non-military sister company that is hiring. Three Bennington-based companies,including Plason, have developed a training program with CCV and the Labor Department tailored to the skills needed in their industry.

A Career Readiness Certificate doesn’t guarantee a job, notes BCIC director Peter Odierna. But people who do obtain them “will beat the front of the line.”

Enhancing skills, increasing productivity

In 2007, Vermont officials noticed troubling workforce skills gaps in areas like teamwork and computer skills. Vermont Technical College teacher Allan Rodgers, a former CEO, conducted a series of industry forums that year to find a “different way of doing business,” Morison recalls.

Two things Rodgers found were “a general lack of career readiness” and the need for new training to prepare supervisors. Among the under-employed, Morison adds, “Professional skills were lacking.”

Last March, CCV formally partnered with Vermont Technical College to launch Vermont Corporate College, which offers customized courses “for people struggling with the next step.” Morison coordinates the project as part of his CCV portfolio. The services include needs assessment, training design and execution, and customized degree programs.

In September, CCV received a $2.5 million job-training grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to better match its offerings with what employers consider the most-needed skills. A new academic program offers a fast-track associate degree for adults enrolled in courses that provide training in high-demand, high-growth career fields.

Nationally, the Labor Department’s Workforce Innovation Fund is putting $98 million into employment and training that enhances workforce investment, with a special focus on “vulnerable populations.” With investment money moving globally, developed nations and states should have a better chance of attracting capital investment if more of their workers have up-to-date skills. Academic research says that past workforce education initiatives enhanced individual competence and productivity, and also improved the bottom line.

Gov. Peter Shumlin’s proposed 2013 budget includes $4.8 million for a Next Generation education and training initiative, based on recommendations of the state’s Workforce Development Council, also a collaboration between CCV and the Labor Department.

In 2010 the council assessed underlying state trends and concluded, among other things, that Vermont’s workforce is expected to begin shrinking this year and will continue to decline over the next decade.

Considerably higher skills will be required to win and keep a good job, the report concluded, but employers claim sufficiently skilled Vermont workers can be hard to find. Good jobs that were once available to those with limited education now normally require strong skills in reading, communication, math and the use of computers.

Almost all jobs in health care, graphics and banking require specialized information technology and software skills, the council learned. It noted that employers tend to invest in those who already have some skills. Half of college graduates receive on-the-job training, it added, but fewer than 20 percent of school dropouts.

The council also found that more than 1,000 Vermont students leave high school each year. Those lacking a high school diploma earn 65 percent of the U.S. average wage; those with a bachelor degree (or other relevant credential) earn 131 percent.

“To address these challenges,” the report said, “we will focus on education and training strategies to increase worker productivity, provide the training necessary to help underemployed Vermonters move up into better jobs, and meet the needs of employers for skilled workers.”

As Patricia Moulton Powden, deputy secretary of Commerce and Community Development, recently explained on Vermont Public Radio, “We are hearing about challenges of finding certain skills, even entry-level folks. Are they properly equipped in today’s technology? Have they got the right reading and writing and computer literacy skills and ability to work in teams and be analytical thinkers?”

GMCR shows the way to readiness

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters “propelled us into the business side,” Morison says. Beginning with its Waterbury headquarters, the company wanted to assess the skills of current employees, help them chart careers, and define the essential skills needed at its manufacturing sites.

“Only a few years ago, you could be hired without computer skills and survive in the mostly manual environment,” explains Prudence Sullivan, GMCR’s director of Continuous Learning & Organizational Effectiveness.

“Today, that’s not feasible. Even if employees simply want to take a day off, they must enter it on a computer,” she says. “Employee self-evaluations at performance appraisal time are also done by computer.”

Working with CCV, GMCR established a non-site certification program with six modules. A professional profiler worked with employees on WorkKeys testing, an assessment method that defines tasks and skills involved in various jobs.

Sample of the ACT National Career Readiness Certificate. Image courtesy of ACT.

Eight job profiles were developed, and everyone who finished the course also earned a National Career Readiness Certificate. GMCR saw benefits in standardized measurement of skills. The company has since implemented the program at all U.S. plants.

“To be successful we need businesses pulling employees in, saying they would like people to have a National Career Readiness Certificate,” Morison argues. Since 2006, the national certificate has become an industry-recognized, portable credential that tells employers the worker or job candidate has the essential skills needed for success.

More than a million certificates have been issued, and about 40 states have state or regional certificate programs. Certificates verify both cognitive skills and various work-related behaviors, known as soft skills. The cognitive skills include problem solving, critical thinking, proficiency with graphics, reading specialized texts, using information to solve problems, and mathematical reasoning and calculation.

People can earn a national certificate by taking WorkKeys tests on applied mathematics, locating information, and reading. Platinum, gold, silver and bronze levels are awarded, based on the test scores. People at the bronze level qualify for about 35 of the profiled jobs. Silver indicates appropriate skills for about 65 percent, and gold means one is ready for 90 percent of the jobs.

Collaboration and service

In announcing Vermont’s certificate program, CCV described it as a way to “improve your work skills, enhance your ability to get a job, and raise your confidence in meeting your career goals.”

The state’s “spin off was to include soft skills,” Morison says.

Another approach is “job profiling.” The objective here “is to observe jobs and help businesses to determine the skills levels needed to perform them successfully,” he explains.

CCV already works with a variety of industry partners to design and implement programs, and wants to add more. In addition to GMCR and the composite companies in Bennington, the list to date includes Cabot Cheese, Vermont Country Store, Burlington International Airport, the Visiting Nurse Association, and several hospitals and health centers.

In some “small-scale situations,” consortiums are sometimes created to design the courses. In Newport, Morison adds, a biotech company is planning to fill 250 jobs and wants to certify people.

CCV also has a Supervisory Success Program to prepare future and new supervisors, including workshops for managers and frontline employees on leadership, customer service, communication and hospitality. A separate Homeland Security Certificate Program has courses on transportation, border security and intelligence analysis.

For individual workers, Morison suggests, “The payoff is how to get and keep a job. For employers it’s finding people they can hire.”

Last August, secretary of commerce and community development Lawrence Miller responded to a criticism by Vermont Republican Party that Gov. Peter Shumlin was not focusing on job creation by pointing to the Governor’s Career Readiness Certificate program. It show that administration was setting “a high standard for interagency collaboration and customer service,” he said.

Going forward, more employers are expected to seek out and reward those workers with the education, technical skills and creative flexibility needed by business and other enterprises to compete and adapt. Whether they seek a certificate or not, one thing is clear: People who can rapidly adapt and handle the learning curve of their jobs are apt to have a competitive advantage for long-term success.

VTDigger

View of a school bus through a rainy window.

Editor’s note: A version of this story by Katie Jickling first appeared in The Herald of Randolph on Jan. 12.

State ­­Rep. Sarah Buxton, D-Tunbridge, is submitting a bill today that will likely stir controversy among education policymakers. Her proposal would allocate more public money for independent schools and require that those private schools offer special education programs.

As the state representative for both a school-choice town (Tunbridge) and a town with a designated public high school (Royalton), Buxton treads a fine line between two differing ideas about government intervention and equality in public education.

The issue of how to incorporate school choice and independent schools in the state’s public school system has been an ongoing issue as legislators have sought to reform the state’s education system through district consolidation and other efforts. School choice proponents have often clashed with public school advocates over equity and funding.

Buxton’s proposal would require compromise from those on both sides of the issue. Her legislation would require independent schools like Sharon Academy to become certified in special education programs. It would also allow private schools to set higher tuition rates, closer to the state average, that would be met by sending towns. The proposed bill also contains basic requirements for schools receiving public money, such as complying with all state and federal assessment requirements for public schools.

“I’m not trying to make approved independent schools function like public high schools,” she said. “I acknowledge that more flexibility has helped them to have a different type of educational opportunity. Whether or not they can provide special education to everyone, I believe Sharon Academy provides an excellent education. Their standard is one I think that the public schools would like to adopt if they didn’t have those kinds of restrictions.”

The compromise approach gives her optimism about the bill’s passage.

Rep. Sarah Buxton

“I think it will pass,” she said. “If I can show that the two parties that have the most interest in this bill, approved independent schools and public schools, can both come to the table and say ‘we can live with this,’ then the bill can move out of the committee.”

Last year bills on regulations for independent schools that receive public money were introduced in both the House and the Senate, by Rep. Anne Mook, D-Bennington, on the House side, and in the Senate by Sens. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, Harold Giard, D-Addison, and Mark McDonald, D-Orange.

Both bills envisioned a stringent reform for policies regarding “choice” students, requiring all independent schools — whether focused on ski or hockey, special education or general education — to meet the standards of public schools in order to receive public funds.

The justification for the legislation, McDonald argued, was equity. “Private schools would not be able to cherry-pick students and still take public money,” he said.

Under the current system, state tuition money for students of “choice” towns – towns where there is no designated public school — travels with the student to the school of their choice. Tunbridge, Strafford and Sharon are among 91 such towns in Vermont where students have school choice. As an independent school drawing from these towns, The Sharon Academy has surfaced as a source of contention in the debate.

Although some choice towns limit education options to a few surrounding schools, many others allow students to use public funds to attend any school in Vermont or beyond, provided that they find their own transportation. Private schools — or more specifically, approved independent schools — can also accept these students, though at times, as in the case of Sharon Academy, admission policies apply.

Neither bill last session gained traction. Vermont Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca maintained that last year’s suggested measures were too strict to be effective. The proposition, he reasoned, was “too comprehensive in its expectations that all schools be held to the same standards, especially for smaller schools that have a focused and specific mission.” As a result, his department opposed the policy.

At the end of the last legislative session, S.044 in the Senate had been tabled, and H.170 remained in the House Education Committee. Neither bill, agreed both legislators and officials, is likely to be taken up again this session.

A level playing field?

Meanwhile, deep-seated and divergent opinions from the area’s educators, citizens and school administrators smolder as they weigh potential effects of the proposed changes.

Tom “Geo” Honigford is perhaps the area’s fiercest advocates for “a more level playing field” among public and independent schools. Honigford, a farmer in South Royalton, taught at Sharon Academy for several years and now serves on the Royalton School Board.

Current education law, Honigford argues, unfairly privileges school-choice students and creates inequities in how it treats mandated offerings for public and private schools.

Independent schools, he said, don’t play by the same legal rules. They don’t have to take all comers — students go through an admissions process. Teachers at private schools don’t have to be licensed. Compliance with special education and the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act is optional. Free and reduced lunch programs are not required.

Whitcomb High School, Bethel

These differences have always existed between public and private education. The inequality issue kicks in, Honigford said, when independent schools exercise these privileges while accepting public money.

He has described this policy, especially the application process, as “educational apartheid.”

That’s “kind of a strong word,” he admitted, “but ‘apartheid’ means separatism.”

“Randolph, Bethel, Rochester, Chelsea are all comprehensive schools, and are teaching to the ones that are going to college and the ones that are not going to college,” he continued. “Probably some of their students will drop out of school and they’re teaching them, too.”

Honigford said he sees the value in a Sharon Academy education. “It’s not about the quality of the education,” he said. “It’s about who gets that education.”

Drawing from his work in politics and as a former Randolph middle school teacher, Sen. Mark McDonald of Williamstown was one of three senators to champion Honigford’s ideas when he co-sponsored a bill in the Senate last year.

During his career as a teacher, McDonald said, “I worked hard to make sure that every child felt entitled to go to school, even those from diverse backgrounds, and learn from each other.”

McDonald added that removing students from that environment negatively affects the whole system. “Kids make classes work by participation as part of a team. It makes the public school a less useful place.”

At the academy

In his office at Sharon Academy, Michael Livingston pulled up a chair alongside Amber Wylie, associate director of communications and admissions, and Jen Hayslett, the senior director for development and communications.

Livingston is in his seventh year as head of school, after serving six years as humanities teacher and assistant head. Previously, he served in various administrative capacities in public schools including Royalton, Norwich Elementary and Hartford.

To dispel lingering allegations of elitism, Sharon Academy administration underscored their educational philosophy as unique and challenging, but not exclusive.

The Sharon Academy, Livingston explained, was started 16 years ago with 12 students with “the impetus to create a safe, welcoming environment,” while “not isolating students with different learning styles of disabilities or interests.”

Sharon Academy also prides itself on its egalitarian approach, doing without such stratifying components as National Honor Society, advanced placement or honors classes. The high school now has 131 students, with an additional 40 middle school students housed in the Old Schoolhouse in Sharon. Some 80 percent of its students hail from “choice towns,” and so attend with public funding.

The academy uses a different methodology that isn’t always comparable to public schools, Livingston said.

“In terms of formal state regulations, we don’t provide special ed,” Livingston said, adding that the academy has its own system in place for students with disabilities or who need academic support.

Allowing that they don’t accept 100 percent of applicants, most often due to space, Hayslett asserted, “It’s not about being elitist. It’s about giving kids opportunity.”

“We get to know students well and build that trust and respect,” Livingston added, “to build life-long learners.”

And, contrary to the perception that Sharon Academy has abundant resources, the school was forced to cut its lacrosse program this year, instituting co-ed club ultimate Frisbee instead.

“Even Hartford with a huge facility can’t accept every single student,” Livingston continued. “The question is, where are we getting into massive duplication of services? We can’t be all things to all kids.”

Mill Moore, executive director of the Vermont Independent Schools Association, concurred. “Independent schools do things that the public system doesn’t want to or are unable to do,” he said. “There’s no point in being independent if you can’t be different.”

“The rules we’re playing by are the rules that are laid out,” Livingston concluded. “We’re not manipulating the rule. It’s public money for public school kids.”

Pupil shortage puts schools in competition

Parties on all sides of the school choice debate say the issue is exacerbated by low student enrollments statewide.

Fewer students results in fewer state dollars for schools, and as enrollment drops, the base costs for small schools can’t be reduced, spreading resources thinner and thinner.

“This issue didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago,” Livingston said. “There were enough students to go around.”

An empty classroom. Vermont's student population has declined by about 20 percent.

Geo Honigford agreed, noting that now, “SoRo is competing with Sharon for students.”

Specifically, Honigford estimated that “If TSA was not there at all, we would probably have 16 more students, at a tuition of $14,500 per year that means $232,000.”

Most schools in the area suffer from declined enrollment, he continued. “There are kids every year that leave Randolph and move to a choice town to send their kids to Sharon Academy. For each kid that moves, that’s money being lost for the Randolph school system.”

“I can’t stress enough,” Honigford repeated, “that I think private schools have a right to exist, so I am not calling for them to not be able to accept public money. They just need to accept it on the same terms that public schools do.”

The Sharon Academy has been working to accommodate those needs. Although there is no legislation requiring them to do so, the school is currently in the process of becoming certified in two of the 14 national special education categories. Though the academy is not certified in any of the federal special education programs, through referrals and their own observation, the school develops personal Education Support Plans, its equivalent of the Individual Education Plan, a special education program used in public schools.

About 11 percent of the students at Sharon Academy have “academic diagnoses,” while 35 percent are involved with some type of academic interventions, ranging from brief to long term, according to data from the school.

Although the special education certification would placate critics, it would also increase the school’s dependency on tax dollars when it starts to receive federal funding. The administration also predicts more applications with the increase in programs, which would mean turning away more students.

To address special education, the most contentious aspect of the dispute, Buxton’s bill requires that independent schools accepting public money become certified in four federal categories, two by July 1, 2013, and two more by July 1, 2015.

This stipulation, Buxton said, would meet the standards “related to more basic disabilities, and that appeal to the broadest number of students in the state of Vermont.”

“It would not make that a completely equal playing field for both types of schools,” she acknowledged. “But I feel that by pushing this bill forward outlining 6-8 categories, both the needs (of the independent and the public schools) can be met.”

Under the current system, the public school is also responsible for tuitioning out any student they cannot serve, often at high cost, an issue highlighted by Honigford. That same burden would not be placed on independent schools in Buxton’s existing proposal.

Out of the 14 total categories, Buxton estimated that most public schools are certified in about 10.

Funding increase

Buxton’s legislation would also increase the funding that independent schools like Sharon Academy can receive from sending schools, putting the figure more on par with the state average. Currently, the academy has limited its tuition to the 2011-12 state rate, “so every student in choice towns can come here,” Jen Hayslett said.

The current tuition rate at The Sharon Academy is $12,035, compared with an average cost per student between $15,000 and $16,000 in most public schools.

The bill will also allow the application process to remain unchanged, a point that may generate controversy.

“I’m not sure that I really support eliminating the application process,” Buxton explained. “And I think that the public school could adopt a permutation of that policy. When you’re affirmatively choosing to attend that school, you take a more active role in your education than if you are just enrolled.”

Buxton recognized that “Some people could look at this and say this is a political nightmare.” But that just made her more determined to push ahead.

“I really value education, and I said, if they’re disagreeing about this, I want to be part of this conversation; people care deeply about the kids they’re serving. I think it’s important that we value that.”

Katie Jickling, from Brookfield, is a freshman at Hamilton College.

Correction: This story originally and incorrectly stated that Thetford was among the towns that sent students to Sharon Academy.

VTDigger

Declining enrollments have driven up the per pupil costs for education in Vermont. National school finance expert Lawrence Picus issued a draft report about Vermont's education finance system on Wednesday. Photo by Terry McCombs.

The verdict is in for Acts 60 and 68, Vermont’s statewide education finance system. Lawrence Picus, a nationally respected consultant, told lawmakers on Wednesday that the state’s school funding mechanism is doing what it was designed to do – it is ensuring that school districts are equitably financed.

Widening disparities in funding for schools based on the relative property wealth of individual communities have largely disappeared, Picus told legislators via web cam at a joint meeting of the House Education and Ways and Means Committees.

No other state in the country has a more equitable system of education financing, Picus said. There is a correlation, he said, between equalized funding and the decline in variation in student achievement in reading and math, based on the relative poverty or wealth of a given school district. School spending is neutral, according to Picus. Wealthy towns aren’t spending more per pupil than poor towns. “In Vermont, there is very little relationship between those two factors,” Picus told lawmakers.

“The system is doing what it was intended to do,” Picus said. “If the purpose was to provide adequate funding for schools, it’s doing that.”

Download the Picus And Associates Vermont Finance Study, executive summary

Download the Picus And Associates Vermont Finance Study, with case studies

Picus was charged with evaluating the equity of the financing system, costs and student performance. He also examined statistics from Vermont against other states in New England and around the country. The 281-page draft report includes statistics, graphs and case studies of five schools in Vermont that have significantly improved student scores on the New England Common Assessment Program tests. The schools are Brewster Pierce in Huntington, Colchester High School, Montgomery Elementary School, Whitcomb Junior/Senior High School in Bethel, and the White River School.

Vermont’s complex hybrid of local and state school spending formulas is the only system of its type in the United States, according to Picus. Acts 60 and 68 created a statewide property tax to finance schools. Local school districts vote for budgets and municipalities collect a portion of the taxes for the state. The state, meanwhile, manages an “income-sensitivity” program for the majority of Vermont households that qualify for a cap on property tax payments based on income. The Legislature sets a statewide rate and local voters decide how much they’ll spend on education. Last year, the property tax generated about $900 million in revenues for education, or about two-thirds of the total $1.353 billion spent on Vermont schools.

Vermont’s public school system is exceptional in other ways, too, that are driving up the overall cost of education for elementary, middle school and high school students, according to a draft report from Picus and Associates, which is based in Los Angeles.

Vermont is near the top of the national charts on a number of measures. The state has the third highest per pupil spending ratio in the nation ($17,447 a student, while the national average is $10,826). We have the smallest school districts – with 299 students on average — in the country (the national average is 3,213). Student enrollments have declined by 18.1 percent over the last decade, faster than any other state except North Dakota. In 1999, Vermont had 104,559 students; we now have 85,635.

Meanwhile, teacher and administrative hiring has continued to increase. (Wages for teachers, by the way, are below average.) Our student to teacher ratio, 9.8 to 1 is the lowest nationally (we vie with Wyoming on that score), and the student to administrator ratio is the third lowest, 184.1 to 1.

Overall expenditures for primary and secondary public education have increased by 83.7 percent between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2011. The Picus report pins the blame on declining enrollments and reduced student to teacher and staff ratios.

Though the state is ranked high nationally on standardized tests, the Picus report shows that scores for Vermont students aren’t as high compared with their New England counterparts. Some schools though have figured out how to improve student testing with existing resources. The report suggests that school districts already have the financial and human resources in place to dramatically improve student performance, and Picus points out five examples of schools that have found ways to create a collaborative approach to teaching and have responded quickly to student academic needs as they arise.

Rep. Oliver Olsen, R-Jamaica, asked how Vermont’s system compares with that of New Hampshire, which spends less on education and has higher test scores. He asked if increased funding was the primary lever for boosting student performance. Picus replied, “Not at the level you spend.”

School consolidation, Picus said, is not a “silver bullet for savings.” The local connection to schools is deeply rooted in the culture of Vermont, he said, and bigger districts can create more distance between a community and its school. He recommended looking at supervisory union savings through shared contracts for transportation, curriculum development and other services school districts can share.

The response to the report was mixed.

Rep. Peter Peltz, D-Woodbury, a member of House Education, said the study puts the focus where it should be – on student performance, rather than the financing system. “This was by no means an aspersion of what we’re offering, but a suggestion of what we can do better,” Peltz said.

Rep. Adam Greshin, I-Warren, was less enthusiastic. “I think it’s clearly a half-hearted presentation on Vermont’s education finance system,” Greshin said. “The focus was on equity, not adequacy, and we need to focus on both. I want more focus on student outcomes. That’s the value proposition for education. We need to focus on the value. That’s what we’re looking for, period.”

The default answer, Olsen said, is “we’ll just spend more money and the more money we spend the better the outcomes will be.” In this report, Olsen didn’t see that correlation. “We could be doing a better job of educating Vermont children with even less money by focusing on some more fundamental reforms within schools,” Olsen said.

Picus, the director of the Center for Research in Education Finance at the University of Southern California, will visit the House Education and Ways and Means Committees next week.

VTDigger

Fayneese Miller, chair of the State Board of Education. VTD/Josh Larkin

RANDOLPH – The Vermont Board of Education Tuesday gave the green light to a draft proposal that seeks a waiver from the controversial No Child Left Behind Act.

The unanimous vote was wrapped around a lot of discussion about forging a “Vermont way” in the 21st century to assess student progress and measure teacher effectiveness, using innovation, technology and the advantages that go with being a small state with a close-knit education community.

The board’s vote at Randolph Union High School came after a wide range of members in the education community mostly lent their backing to the waiver from the controversial and oft-disparaged NLCB law.

The waiver plan was spelled out in a 26-page document drafted by a design team panel represented by Deputy Education Commissioner Rae Ann Knopf.

“We support the waiver request unanimously,” said Dan French, president of the Vermont Superintendents Association. He said among 50 superintendents, the consensus was that NLCB was “harmful to education.” In his view, the state needs another way of assessing students’ progress in order to inspire “the next generation of leaders” in the education field.

Martha Allen, president of the Vermont NEA, which represents teachers, lent her support as well. Allen said teachers are “incredibly burdened” by social pressures on students and federal mandates. She welcomed the waiver because she said the structure of NLCB doesn’t encourage creativity or account for different teaching styles that keep students engaged.

Brent Kay, superintendent of the Orange Southwest Supervisory Union, said he did have concerns about how many details remain to be spelled out.

“I have a huge reservation about the waiver itself,” he said. “I think we don’t have much of a choice. It’s a sad situation.”

Steven Gross, a Middlebury professor with long involvement in Vermont education, told the board that he felt the waiver proposal was “too generic,” too “top-down” and too disconnected from the real causes of poor learning, which he said are tied to kids coming from disadvantaged families that struggle with inadequate housing, lack of food and employment, and poor health care.

NLCB, now almost a decade old, was never rewritten by Congress as planned four years ago. The Obama administration last September outlined how states can get relief from NLCB if they come up with an alternative plan acceptable to the U.S. Department of Education, and the Shumlin administration quickly moved to take advantage.

The proposal before the board was developed in the past two months with the help of five focus groups and includes measures for college and career readiness, redesigned accountability systems with multiple measures, a focus on underserved students, closing the achievement gap, and evaluating teacher effectiveness, according to the education department. Knopf said the proposal would be spelled out with more details by Jan. 17, for a possible final vote of approval by the board and then a public comment period.

Fayneese Miller said Vermont has seen widespread participation and a ‘broad buy in’ of the entire education community in developing the waiver request.”

Jeanne Collins, superintendent of the Burlington School System, worked on the draft and said there were many reasons Vermont needs its own system of measuring student progress. In her district where there are a lot of students with immigrant backgrounds, she said it makes no sense under NLCB to “have an arbitrary finish line in a race where they’re starting a mile behind.”

“I feel this is the right thing to do,” she said.

Some of the nitty-gritty details that remain to be worked out and which were discussed Tuesday include what grades will face testing and by what methods teachers will be evaluated. Under NLCB, schools had to make annual progress in a broad range of student categories or face public sanctions and even removal of the principal at the school.

“We like the fact there’s not testing at every grade level,” said Ken Page, executive director of the Vermont Principals’ Association, who said he also likes a greater emphasis on student creativity. He said the testing requirements of NLCB and prepping for tests have meant lost learning time and when schools fail to meet annual progress standards, it resulted in “the blame and shame we’ve had the last few years.”

He noted 72 percent of his colleagues “are now on the bad principal list,” which he himself belongs to.

But he also wondered what is going to happen when federal officials get Vermont’s proposal and if they will start tweaking it and imposing their views, leading to Vermont’s greater arts and creative endeavors emphasis being tossed.

Janet Steward, chairwoman of the Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators, stressed that the proposal was not about loosening accountability under NLCB, but making sure it’s in the right places.

Education Board member William Mathis, a former superintendent, raised a concern that the proposal leaves gaps of several years when students would not be tested and could fall behind, which could lead to federal denial of the waiver. But Knopf explained that states were asked to be “innovative and creative” in assessing student progress a variety of different ways, and not all by tests.

She said plans were for students to be assessed “on a continuum” in a smarter and more balanced way that is not grade based. The state currently uses the New England Common Assessment Program tests at various times in grades 3-11 in reading, writing, math and science achievement.

Knopf also said the proposal envisions far more extensive use of technology throughout the school systems as Vermont modernizes and upgrades its broadband capabilities with a big chunk of federal dollars.

Collins, the Burlington school superintendent, said her district is using an iPad application that allows the principal to go into a class and provide immediate feedback for a teacher. She said new technology will allow Vermont to move to an “entirely different level” in how it measures classroom progress.

Board member Brian Vachon wondered what Vermont’s chances of getting the waiver were. Knopf said she thought they were “high” based on her discussions with U.S. Education Department chief Arne Duncan, who has told them he favors a flexible approach.

“I’m taking him at his word,” she said.

Education Board Chairwoman Fayneese Miller said Vermont has seen widespread participation and a “broad buy in” of the entire education community in developing the waiver request.

“I think that’s one thing in our favor,” she added.

In other business:

• The board backed a proposal to study a possible consolidation of the Essex-Caledonia school district, which only has 520 students in eight towns. Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca said  it was an ideal time for consolidation since that district and the adjacent one in St. Johnsbury both are facing loss of their superintendents. The Essex-Caledonia district was given permission by Vilaseca to hire a superintendent for one to two years while options are considered, he said.
• Vilaseca said the education department is looking at its options to reunite its 200-member workforce, which is currently housed in two places in Berlin and in the DMV building in Montpelier.  The review comes as the state reorganizes departments and agencies after the flooding closed most of the Waterbury state office complex after Tropical Storm Irene.
• Officials said the education department, which has lost some 24 percent of its employees in cutbacks the past few years, is having trouble filling vacancies because of the low salaries for the positions being sought.

VTDigger

Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca. VTD/Josh Larkin

RANDOLPH – Vermont’s hopes to cash in on some $500 million in federal monies for early education were dashed Friday when the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services rejected the state’s application.

Education Commission Armando Vilaseca announced that the state had not been chosen at Tuesday’s Vermont Education Board meeting at Randolph Union High School.

Vermont was one of 35 states that applied for the funding under the Race to the Top-Early Education Challenge and was ranked one of the nine top contenders by Early Ed Watch, a national blog.

Vilaseca said he has not had time to review why Vermont’s application was rejected but the state will look at feedback and see if there a chance to reapply for further funding. He said there might be a second round and officials will review what the criteria were that Vermont fell short on.

The White House announced that nine states—California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington—will receive the grants. According to a press release, The Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge will support the work of the nine state grantees to develop new approaches to raising the bar across early learning centers and to close the school readiness gap. Awards will invest in grantees’ work to build statewide systems of high-quality early learning and development programs, as well as innovating with new reforms, the release said.

Grant awards will range from $50-100 million, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

To learn more about the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, visit http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-earlylearningchallenge.

VTDigger

The Vermont Labor Relations Board, from left, Gary Karnedy, Chairman Richard Park and James Kiehle. VTD/Josh Larkin

MONTPELIER — Burlington attorney Richard Cassidy has been before the Vermont Labor Relations Board many times, but never in the witness seat.

But that was where he found himself Monday morning in a hearing on a complex unfair labor practice charge brought by the South Burlington School Board against the local teachers union and the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association.

At the heart of the complaint and reams of subsequent paper is just one line in a long email message about the testy labor dispute last winter at the South Burlington School, and the impact — and interpretation and ramifications — of that message on Cassidy, who was chairman of the school board during tough contract negotiations last winter.

The line in the email, authored by Vermont NEA Executive Director Joel Cook on Feb. 25, 2011, suggested that Cassidy’s law firm could face picketing by teachers if a strike occurred, “and frankly I don’t want that to happen,” Cook said, noting Cassidy’s Burlington legal firm, Hoff Curtis, has a long reputation on the other side representing labor unions.

The question is: Was the prospect of his business being picketed a subtle threat to force Cassidy, seen by teachers as the major “impediment” to a contract settlement, off the negotiating team?

Or was that mention by Cook just stating the obvious ramifications of a strike, a throwaway line in a long email that otherwise discussed points of law and was an effort “part personal and part professional” in Cook’s words, by two lawyers to try and defuse the situation?

“I hope you appreciate the spirit in which I write,” Cook ended his emailed letter, saying he was open for further discussion.

Discussion is indeed what he got, though perhaps not in the way he intended, and the “spirit” of the email was at the sometimes convoluted heart of the hearing.

Cassidy testified Monday that he “was shocked” at the email and at receiving a direct communication from Cook instead of to the board counsel. He said he took the picketing reference as indeed a “threat” and a warning “that if you don’t knuckle under to what I want, I’ll hurt you.”

As he explained to the VLRB, led through questions by Attorney Jeffrey Nolan of the Burlington firm Dinse Knapp McAndrew, the prospect of picketing at his place of business struck him as “intimidation” and made him decide, after discussion with school board’s counsel, that he had a personal conflict of interest as a result and that his role in negotiations would be tainted if he stayed on.

“That was a reasonable way to read the email: Do what I want, or there will be consequences,” testified Cassidy, a big, rotund man with close cropped gray hair and a calm demeanor. He said if he agreed to any concessions, considering the picketing threat, his impartiality could be challenged and his position would be “untenable.”

As a result, Cassidy recused himself from the negotiations several days after the email. A revamped board elected after March town meeting eventually settled for a three-year contract, though Cassidy wrote letters and commentaries urging a no vote.

But Vermont-NEA attorney Alan Biederman tried to show Cassidy basically overreacted to the email and that Cook’s comment about picketing had no ulterior motive. The morning was filled with lawyerly verbal jousting, pinning down and backtracking as Cassidy and Biederman, both experienced attorneys, went back and forth parsing the intent of Cook’s meaning about picketing, Biederman trying to show there was more than one way to interpret the email and shade individual sentences.

Biederman got Cassidy to concede that picketing is the common result of a strike and there’s nothing illegal about it.

“I wouldn’t disagree with those propositions,” said Cassidy.

Biederman also went through the letter paragraph by paragraph, pointing out it was all about trying to get a contract agreement and that that was the “spirit” talked about in the email. He pointed out Cassidy and Cook had a “collegial relationship.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Cassidy agreed. But Cassidy still said he characterized the intent as “hostile.”

Biederman also pinned Cassidy down on the fact that Cook in the email pointed out some labor law on so-called automatic step pay increases — a key stumbling block in the contract dispute — that he felt Cassidy was not aware off.

“Could you take this that he was explaining that you didn’t know the law” and that Cook wanted to talk with him about it, he asked.

Biederman also reminded Cassidy that when he ran for the school board he said publicly four times that he might lose “union clients” and therefore the idea of picketing as part of labor strife could hardly be a shock. Mr. Cook, he said, “told you something you already knew.”

And Biederman got Cassidy to agree, Cook’s email nowhere suggested it be kept private as part of some “shady option.”

He also went over testimony to point out that Cassidy was wrong to assume that Cook’s letter directly to him was “out of bounds,” pointing out instances where such contacts to other people were made by Cassidy.

South Burlington High School.

Cook, in testimony in a previous session before the quasi-judicial VLRB, called the reaction to the email “so blasted out of proportion” he admitted he now wished he hadn’t sent it.

Documents in the voluminous file also indicate some teachers were opposed to picketing Cassidy because, in the words of one, “we look like a bunch of thugs, and he looks like a victim.”

The board also heard testimony from two other board members on their view of Cassidy’s decision to step aside on the conflict of interest issue, and with questioning by Nolan, touched on whether they felt they had been misled on coordination between Cook and the South Burlington Education Association.

Board Member Julie Beatty, who was elected last March, testified that she agreed with Cassidy that Cook’s email raised a threat.

“The whole email offends me, frankly,” she said, and she said picketing at someone’s home to her crossed a line.

“My feeling is it shouldn’t be allowed,” she said.

Board member Martin LaLond testified he felt “it was the right call” for Cassidy to step aside but noted it was unfortunate to lose “his leadership.”

He also said board members had been misled by the local teachers’ union about coordination with the Vermont-NEA on the sending of Cook’s email. If they had known “union leadership had lied to us,” perhaps the board would have filed the unfair labor charge earlier and not settled.

LaLond testified he was the sole opposing vote in the 4-1 vote to impose a contract on the teachers, which led to Cook’s eventual email.

Monday’s hearing, which last just over three hours, might seem arcane to laymen but that is not the view of another heavyweight in the schools realm, the Vermont School Board Association, which decided not to stay on the sidelines and intervened on behalf of the South Burlington School Board.

Speaking after the hearing, VSBA Executive Director Steve Dale said the picketing threat and subsequent decision by Cassidy to recuse himself “strikes at the heart of the integrity of the collective bargaining process.”

He said in his view, it would be “incredibly disruptive” if volunteer school board members could be forced from negotiations and it was a “significant concern” if there was a threat of so-called “secondary picketing” that occurs not at schools but at volunteer board members homes or workplaces.

Dale said he was not aware of any such cases in the roughly two dozen strikes that had occurred around the state in the last 40 years.

All parties agreed to provide a filing with arguments for conclusions and findings of law by Dec. 5. The board usually then takes 30-60 days to render a decision.

VTDigger

The Dudley H. Davis Center at the University of Vermont. VTD/Josh Larkin

Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is a columnist for VTDigger.org.

Vermonters owe Gov. Peter Shumlin gratitude and respect for his candor, if not necessarily for the breadth of his spirit.

In a brief, forthright speech at the University of Vermont last week, Shumlin openly spoke a truth that Vermont politicians usually finesse, if they do not simply ignore it: UVM is, first and foremost, a taxpayer-financed subsidy for the state’s business community.

The university, the governor said, should concentrate on “preparing students for the jobs of the future…connecting the power of the research university…to support and expand partnerships in the state’s business sector and economy…preparing our students not only to get good jobs…but also…to go out and create those good jobs as burgeoning entrepreneurs.”

Culture? The arts? Philosophy? Literature? The old educational ideal of the well-rounded man or woman trained not simply to earn a good living but to live an interesting life?

Not a word about any of it.

Nor about purely theoretical science, which rarely does much to “support and expand” a state’s business sector. There is no record of a shrewd entrepreneur in 1905 glomming onto this new idea of Special Relativity and turning it into a profit-making company. If the next generation’s Einstein lives in Vermont, he or she will probably have to go to college out of state.

But not, probably, to any other state university. What Shumlin said about UVM is true –- or at least is fast becoming true –- at all other public universities and colleges in the country. Officials at several of them may claim otherwise. A few of those claims –- in Berkeley, Calif.; Madison, Wisc.; Ann Arbor, Mich. -– may even have some merit.

But perhaps not for long, as tight budgets merge with an increasing push to make sure that, in Shumlin’s words, any state’s appropriation to its university is spent “in strategically focused ways that have the maximum return on investment.”

“Return on investment” is not a phrase often heard in classes about the Thirty Years War, Plato, or John Keats, perhaps because while there may be a very rich return on the time and effort invested in those classes, it is rarely measured in dollars if it can be quantified at all.

Before the liberal arts professors get themselves into a big tizzy (and getting themselves into a big tizzy is the default position for liberal arts professors), they might consider whether subsidizing business wasn’t just what Vermont’s own Justin Morrill had in mind when he created the state university back in the 1860s.

Then Congressman (later Senator) Morrill was the chief sponsor of the Land Grant College Act, signed into law by President Lincoln in 1862. Introducing the bill, Morrill said that the institutions he envisioned were to be “accessible to all, but especially to the sons of toil, where all of needful science for the practical avocations of life shall be taught.”

No Philistine. Morrill added that “neither the higher graces of classical studies nor that military drill our country now so greatly appreciates will be entirely ignored.”

Calling for something to be “not entirely ignored” is not exactly a proclamation of its importance. To Morrill, classical studies were to take a back seat to “agriculture, the foundation of all present and future prosperity.”

Not as it turned out. But agriculture was central to the economy in the 19th century, and Morrill clearly saw that the state university’s chief task should be to train young men (and maybe a few women) to be better farmers so they could earn more money. The university was to be a taxpayer-financed subsidy to the individual farmer, not to a company. But in those days, most people didn’t work for companies. Now they do.

To be sure, today’s individuals who become more highly skilled employees –- at the expense of the taxpayer, not the employer -– will also benefit from what they learn at employer-oriented UVM.

Gov. Peter Shumlin. VTD/Josh Larkin

As many Vermonters know, their direct tax support of the university is limited, roughly 14 percent of UVM’s $600 million general budget. But most of that other 86 percent is directly or indirectly tax-supported also. UVM gets money from foundations (which are tax shelters), from tax-deductible individual donations, and from research grants from for-profit companies (mostly tax deductible).

Even tuition is government-subsidized through guaranteed student loans, Pell Grants, work-study jobs and several other federal and state programs designed to help students afford a college education.

From his own perspective, Shumlin might have erred by ignoring the arts. They are an economic engine. Plays, concerts, museum exhibits, and even poetry readings (Poet Laureate Phil Levine filled a good-sized auditorium in Burlington two months ago) draw sizable –- and largely affluent –- crowds, many of whom eat out, sleep over and go shopping while they’re in town. Return on investment in the Burlington arts scene – on and off the UVM campus –- could be impressive.

Shumlin did not suggest that UVM become an indiscriminate, open-ended subsidy to business. He wants the University to focus on specific areas which are likely to grow in coming years and which fit Vermont’s resources and interests –- health care; environment, especially the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change; and the “agriculture that supports our economy and way of life, and fosters Vermont’s bright future as a quality food producer.”

All this makes sense, but also raises complications. For instance, the subject of Vermont’s promising localvore, “farm to plate” agricultural sector –- clearly one of the endeavors Shumlin wants UVM to support –- brings up questions that transcend agriculture and the business thereof. In fact, the very suggestion that the university support this agricultural sector is political, bringing into the mix at least one of the social sciences.

But it really brings in more than that. It raises the question of what kind of society Vermont wants to become, which in turn raises the question of what is personally worthwhile, of what constitutes not just the good society but the good life.

Just the question Socrates asked.

So students had best study Plato after all. Otherwise, they (and we) get less return on investment.

Perhaps not quite the way he intended, Peter Shumlin might have helped UVM become a great university.

VTDigger

Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca. VTD/Josh Larkin

A new statewide survey released Wednesday finds Vermont teens have modestly decreased their use of alcohol, are smoking less, and fewer are abusing prescription drugs.

The Vermont Youth Risk Behavior survey, based on a random sample of 8,654 students grades 9-12, also found no substantial change in the number of high school teens who reported having sex, driving while drinking or taking drugs, and experiencing incidences of bullying and physical abuse.

The student survey has been conducted every two years around the state since 1993. It creates a snapshot of teens’ risky behaviors and helps state and school officials develop strategies for altering patterns of substance abuse.

Health Commissioner Harry Chen said the 2011 results encouraging because they show a “significant shift” in young people’s views about avoiding risky behavior.

“They are making the right choices,” he said, and that is encouraging for the teens and for the future of Vermont, he added.

Comparing results with 2009, the survey indicates there is a downtick in substance use for high schoolers:

• 60 percent of students reported they have ever tried alcohol, a decline from 66 percent;
• 13 percent of students smoked in the past 30 days, a decline from 18 percent;
• 14 percent of students had tried prescription drugs without a prescription, down from 17 percent;
• 15 percent of students reported drinking before age 13, down from 18 percent

While officials said the trend lines were encouraging, statistics for other risky behaviors remained stubbornly high:

• 35 percent of students reported drinking alcohol and 21 percent reported binge drinking in the last 30 days (five or more drinks in a few hours)
• 41 percent of students reported having had sex, and 45 percent oral sex, and only 63 percent of sexually active students reported using a condom during their most recent experience
• 24 percent reported using marijuana in the past 30 days, the same as in 2009.

Some of the figures in the survey may surprise, such as 53 percent of students saying they rarely or never wore a helmet while riding a bike, a decline in safety from 64 percent in 2009.

Also, only 63 percent said they always wore a seat belt while in the car.

Fully 9 percent of 6-8 graders reported drinking before age 11, and 4 percent reported binge drinking.

Some 15 percent of high school students reported being bullied through use of electronic devices in the past 12 months, and 23 percent reported being in a fight. While the fighting figure is unchanged from 2009, the trend line has declined from nearly 50 percent in 1993.

In grades 6-8, 50 percent of students reported having been in a fight, and 48 percent reported being bullied.

The survey showed that teens are well aware of risks and parental disapproval if their behaviors are discovered. For example, fully 91 percent think their parents would disapprove of their smoking, and 74 percent cite their likely disapproval in the case of drinking alcohol.

Chen vouched for the survey’s accuracy, noting it was conducted anonymously and taken seriously by schools.

Students were also polled on diet and exercise. Twenty-three percent of students were overweight or obese, and, startlingly, that only 38 percent had physical education classes at least once a week.

As for sedentary pursuits such as watching TV and doing video games, more than a third — 36 percent — of students said they spend three or more hours per day participating in such activities.

Commissioner Vilaseca highlighted two subtle but important trends that he said were encouraging. One was that 55 percent of teens said they felt they mattered in their communities, up from 47 percent two years ago.

He said teens also are showing a growing penchant for volunteering in their communities, with 55 percent saying they spent an hour or more per week volunteering, up significantly from 43 percent in 2009.

The survey found general agreement that teachers care about their education and 52 percent of high school teens said they felt schools listen to their concerns.

Senior Connor Hunt, 17, and Jordan LaBonte, 16, a junior, offered some front-line perspective to the numbers behind the survey. The two students from Twin Valley High School in Wilmington, which only has around 150 students, told how five students started an underground campaign to counter the impression drinking is cool and everyone does it to have fun.

Hunt said the “Audacious” program began after a survey found students guessed that 72 percent of kids in their school drank, on average. A followup survey indicated that only 30 percent in actuality used alcohol.

“Our slogan is two out of three kids do not drink,” said Hunt.

The survey found 73 percent of teens said it was easy to get alcohol.

Chen noted that while there were declines in some of the risky behaviors, there is still plenty of work to be done when 60 percent of surveyed students report they have tried alcohol.

“Are we satisfied with that? Of course not,” he said, adding that there is “no magic answer” to bring the number to zero.

Vilaseca emphasized that adoption of risky behaviors by teens is a societal issue, not a school issue, and it will require a broad effort from parents, teachers, friends and relatives, the community and the media. He cited ads and TV shows that glorify sex and drinking behavior as a particular target of reform.

He also noted that many teens in high school are entering the workforce and coming into contact with adult behaviors that may influence them.

“This is not a school-alone issue,” he said. “This is a community issue,” he said.

To download the full survey results at www.healthvermont.gov.

VTDigger

Strikers along a roadway in south western Vermont. Photo courtesy of Vermont NEA.

The Bennington board and union have been irreconcilable since June 30, when the Southwest Supervisory Union Board imposition went into effect. Officials from the union and board both expressed a desire to end the strike on Monday.

The Southwest Supervisory Union includes Mount Anthony Union High School, Southwest Regional Technical School District and the Woodford, Pownal and North Bennington elementary school districts. The union serves 3,114 students and employs 345 staff members.

Stephannie Peters, the head of the local union, says teachers went on strike to protest what the union sees as a draconian contract the board imposed last summer. At the end of June, the board cut the base salary for starting teachers by $2,000, required teachers to contribute 5 percent more toward health insurance premiums, and mandated that teachers work with students for an additional 30 minutes a day (for a total of five hours of direct interaction with students per diem).

Peters says these conditions have lowered teacher take-home pay.

“Imposition was quite disrespectful; it directly contradicts the idea behind actually negotiating,” Peters said. “We would not be striking today if they had not imposed.”

Tim Holbrook, unofficial spokesman for the board, said the imposition put the board in a better position to negotiate with the union.

“If you don’t have a contract, raises and things revert to the previous contract,” Holbrook said. “If that were true, we weren’t in a strong bargaining situation. They would automatically get a step increase, and there would be no incentive to negotiate. We wanted as much as possible to work with the teachers to resolve some of these issues.”

Bennington teachers enter the 9th day of a strike over compensation, work rules and contribution levels for health care premiums. Photo by Terry McCombs.

In the latest proposals from the board, Holbrook said, “nobody loses money,” even if teachers pay more for health insurance. The new contract, he said, would be retroactive over the course of the imposition and teachers would be made whole.

Both sides are anxious to get back to the negotiating table, and he said there is mutual agreement on 170 out of 199 areas of the 60-page contract. Holbrook and Peters both said they hoped the dispute would be resolved on Monday. The board planned to hold a series of meetings with the public to explain the results of the most recent talks with teachers.

State officials take sides

Whether the strike is settled right away or not, the nine-day strike has reverberated politically.

Pressure is beginning to mount from union and political leaders in Montpelier for the two sides to settle, and proxies who are taking up the charge have enjoined in a rhetorical battle over teachers’ rights.

The Vermont-NEA brought Joyce Powell, a member of the national organization who fought the “anti-union” Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, to Bennington to rally teachers before they presented a new proposal to the board Monday morning. Powell’s mission, according to a union media advisory? “To let the members of the Southwestern Vermont Education Association know that they are not alone.”

Meanwhile political pressure from several state leaders is also building.

On Friday, Pat MacDonald, chairwoman of the Vermont GOP, urged Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat endorsed by the Vermont NEA, to encourage teachers to settle.

McDonald pointed to recent “broadsides” from the governor’s office in response to a state workers’ grievance as evidence that Shumlin “isn’t afraid to confront organized labor when it suits his political interests.” She argues that he should “direct his ire” toward the Bennington teachers union.

“It is outrageous that this strike has gone on for so long, and it’s time for the governor to speak up and tell the striking teachers to get back to work,” McDonald said in a statement. “Parents need to get back to their jobs, and kids need to get back into the classroom. As Vermont’s commissioner of education put it earlier this week, it is time to stand up for the silent victims of strikes: students.”

Shumlin has not issued a statement about the strike.

Armando Vilaseca, commissioner of the Department of Education, disseminated an op-ed last week that outlined the impact of the strike on students who rely on free and reduced lunches as a main source of nutrition, and college-bound seniors who will fall behind on applications and AP studies. All students, he says, stand to suffer academically.

The commissioner advocates for new legislation that would put an end to teachers’ strikes – and a school board’s ability to impose salaries, benefits and working conditions. Vermont is one of 13 states that allow strikes; none of the other New England states permits the practice.

Since the beginning of the school year, Bennington teachers have been working under an “imposition” that requires them to take a roughly 2 percent pay cut, contribute 5 percent more toward health care premiums and spend more time in the classroom.

“This is not about taking sides,” Vilaseca said in an interview.

“I’m not saying the school board or association members are at fault. The ultimate real losers in this are our kids and our communities. It’s a gut-wrenching and difficult option for teachers to take. It is a really difficult situation for boards to be in as well. I understand both perspectives when I look at what is happening for kids. As commissioner for education, I have to be the one advocating for our kids. I want this to be a discussion point.”

The Vermont NEA said it is “disappointed” by Vilaseca’s remarks.

Darren Allen, communications director for the union, said “A time of crisis is not the time to have a public policy discussion.”
Vilaseca has floated the no-strike, no-imposition concept before. Legislation of the same sort, proposed by Rep. Kurt Wright, R-Burlington, was rejected by the House Education Committee a few years ago.

Rep. Johanna Donovan, D-Burlington, says the situation in Bennington is unfortunate, but said she is unlikely to endorse Vilaseca’s proposal.

Armando Vilaseca

“I think collective bargaining is a critical piece, and the right to strike is part of that,” Donovan said. “It’s not the first choice, but I support the right to strike.”

Donovan argued that strikes are very rare in Vermont.

How uncommon are they? There have been five strikes over the last 10 years. The most recent was in Richmond in 2006.

According to the Vermont NEA website, there have been 23 strikes since 1978. Over the course of the last 40 years, since unions began to form at schools around the state, about 5,000 contracts have been settled.

Though the number of strikes is fairly small, the Vermont School Boards Association past president Kalee Roberts is concerned about the length of the bargaining process. “Contract negotiations between school boards and school employees are too often protracted, sometimes taking more than a year to conclude.”

Roberts said Vilaseca’s proposal should be analyzed to determine whether an elimination of teacher strikes and board impositions would “lead to more efficient and timely resolution of collective bargaining processes.”

“This is a very difficult time,” Roberts said. “There is significant pressure on boards all around the state as they work to provide excellent educational opportunity at a time of diminishing resources. It is critical that teachers and boards understand the economic situation of this state and country and respond accordingly.”

The genesis of a strike

Bennington teachers have worked without a contract since June 30, 2010. Over the course of the last year and a half, teachers and the Southwest Supervisory Union Board went through the usual process. They negotiated and failed to come to terms.

Both sides lawyered up. A fact-finder was brought in to clarify the issues. Negotiations continued, and failed. The board imposed working conditions after school let out and teachers found out about it through a story in the local newspaper.

They took 30 years of mutually agreed upon language and disassembled it. The very nature of imposing something sends a clear message you do not want to respectfully negotiate.”
- Stephannie Peters

Teachers attended board meetings through the summer en masse, and Peters said they couldn’t get the board back to the bargaining table. After the strike ensued, negotiations took a sour turn when board members admitted they had been using an inaccurate salary schedule.

The three main issues the board and union have disagreed on are health insurance premiums, work rules and salaries.

The board asked teachers to pay 20 percent of the premium by the end of 2014 (the percentage would gradually increase); teachers wouldn’t budge from the 15 percent they were already contributing.

Holbrook said most Bennington residents pay a much higher percentage toward health care premiums. The teacher health care insurance plan is “very comprehensive,” he said. The total cost for a family plan is about $19,700, and the district picks up 85 percent of the cost.

The two sides also battled over time in the classroom. Teachers were required to spend 4.5 hours with students out of a 7.5-hour workday under the old contract. Board members wanted educators to work with students for 5 hours a day.

Salaries have been, perhaps, the biggest sticking point. Teachers are paid based on years of experience and level of education, and each district has a “grid” or spreadsheet that details all of the iterations of those two factors and applies a salary amount to each one. The grid is organized in steps. That is to say, inexperienced teachers are placed on the bottom step and teachers with masters degrees and 40 years of time in the system are at the top.

In negotiations, there are typically two salary adjustments school boards must consider. One is the “base salary” increase or the amount earned by teachers at the bottom of the grid. (This figure, a percentage of pay, is applied across the grid.) The other is the percentage “step” increase, an amount that is distributed across the grid, regardless of experience and education.

The Bennington teachers wanted a 1.8 percent annual step increase, as per usual during negotiations, in addition to base salary increases of 8 percent over a three-year period. (With the “steps,” the raise amounts to 13.4 percent at the end of three years.) The “step” alone would have amounted to a $1,455 average annual raise for teachers in the district, Holbrook said. The board offered no step increase and base salary increases of 3.25 percent over a three-year period.

Given the recession and the low average earning power of local residents, Holbrook said the salary offer was “quite reasonable.”

The Southwest Vermont Education Association balked at the work rules, the health care contribution and low percentage increase in base wages, but it was the elimination of “steps” that sent members over the edge.

“Step” increases are included in many teacher contracts in Vermont. Until the imposition, Bennington teachers received the 1.8 percent raise automatically – regardless of performance, experience or education level. The Bennington board eliminated the “step” increase in the imposition and proposed that the automatic increase be jettisoned in the negotiated contract. That same issue was the lightning rod that brought the South Burlington school system close to a strike last spring.

The final blow, and what led to the strike, according to Peters, was the board’s insistence that the new contract be based on the cuts in the more recent imposed conditions instead of the former, more generous contract, which expired on June 30, 2010.

Peters said the imposition “directly contradicts the nature of negotiations.”

“We have now been without a contract for over 500 days,” Peters said. “This was not a quick decision, not a quick action that we took without great consideration and without making serious attempts to take action — none of which were effective.”

“They took 30 years of mutually agreed upon language and disassembled it,” Peters said. “The very nature of imposing something sends a clear message you do not want to respectfully negotiate.”

Though a budget hasn’t been rejected by local voters in recent memory, Holbrook argues that the Bennington area is relatively poor, and local property taxpayers can’t afford to pay more for teachers’ salaries. The average wage in the county, he said, is about $35,000. Under the old contract, teachers earned starting salaries of about $34,500 and top out at about $63,600.

“How many people get a guaranteed step increase of 1.8 percent — no matter how the economy is faring, or how good a job you’re doing?” Holbrook said. “That’s a nice deal.”

Vermont-NEA Communications Director Allen says Bennington teachers are paid less than their compatriots in Albany and northern Massachusetts, and lowering salaries further still will make it more difficult for the Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union to attract new teachers.

VTDigger

South Burlington High School.

Labor board begins trial proceedings in the South Burlington School District case against the Vermont NEA

Though the South Burlington School District settled with the local teacher’s union last March, and the two parties managed to come to an agreement without a strike, the bitter strife over the collective bargaining negotiations has lingered on in hard feelings between the board and some members of the union.

Last winter, the South Burlington board imposed a one-year wage and benefit contract on teachers without “automatic” step increases, or incremental financial rewards for levels of education and years of experience that accumulate over time. For decades, step increases have kicked in automatically without board approval when contracts expire. The board’s attempt to suspend step increases was unsuccessful and it agreed to a three-year contract with the union that sets up a strict negotiating schedule.

All was not forgotten. The acrimony between the two parties continued, long after they settled, and the South Burlington School Board filed a formal complaint with the Vermont Labor Relations Board in May, and the quasi-judicial body listened to testimony in the case on Thursday.
At the center of the dispute is a time-honored tradition in the world of unionized labor – picketing. The problem revolves around how that tool was used in negotiations.

The focus of the rancor? A single email from the executive director of the Vermont NEA, Joel Cook.
Cook sent what he calls a “personal” note to Richard Cassidy, a labor lawyer and the former chair of the board of the South Burlington School District, suggesting that his law firm, Hoff and Curtis, could be picketed by the local teachers’ union and other labor organizations if Cassidy didn’t lift the imposition of wages and benefits the school board put in effect when negotiations stalled last winter.

“To me, sitting atop one of the other ‘law firms’ that represents labor unions, the immediate future appears to be one that includes labor unions picketing the offices of Phil Hoff and Dave Curtis, and frankly I don’t want that to happen,” Cook wrote in the email.

Cassidy and the school board say Cook’s “threat” of picketing Cassidy’s law firm created a conflict of interest – the email forced Cassidy to choose between his livelihood and his role as chief negotiator on the South Burlington School Board. Cassidy stepped down from the negotiations team shortly after he received Cook’s email and recused himself from decisions and discussions related to the collective bargaining process.

The South Burlington School District’s complaint alleges that by sending the email, Cook “interjected himself into negotiations” and attempted to “coerce” Cassidy by issuing “threats directed at him personally.”

Read Exhibits presented by the South Burlington School Board

The Vermont School Board Association filed a motion to intervene in the case, which was partially granted, in support of the South Burlington School District. The association argues that the Vermont’s NEA’s “threat” has broad implications and could undermine local school board negotiation teams and the integrity of the collective bargaining process.

“School board members must be allowed to serve without fear of retaliation,” the motion asserts.

In addition, the lawyer for the association, John Hollar, of Downs Rachlin Martin, writes that the board is concerned that the union justified this “threat” in a news release as a “legitimate bargaining tactic” in negotiations with other school boards. The press release from Vermont NEA stated: “It is not uncommon for board members’ businesses to be picketed during a strike” and Cook “merely pointed that out to Cassidy.”

Read the VSBA motion to intervene

In testimony before the Labor Board, Cook said he sent the email to help the South Burlington board avoid a strike.

Under examination by an attorney from Dinse Knapp McAndrew, representing the school district, Cook told the labor board that in retrospect, he wished he hadn’t written the email in the first place.

“I never would have wasted time way from my grandchild to write this on a Friday if I’d known the reaction was going to be so blasted out of proportion,” Cook said.

The attorney for the Vermont-NEA, Alan Biederman, told the Labor Board that he would show that there was no evidence of a threat in Cook’s email and Cassidy was not coerced into leaving the position of chair on the school board, but he “decided to conflict himself out” – even though there was “no conflict of interest that required Mr. Cassidy to recuse himself.” Though picketing is lawful and proper, it never occurred in South Burlington and the local union had no interest in pursuing such an action, Beiderman said. He concluded his opening remarks by declaring that the entire case, for the aforementioned reasons, was moot.

In an email to union colleagues last spring, Cook reiterated that point: “We disagree that the prospect of being picketed at one’s place of business constitutes a conflict of interest. If that were true, it would be far too easy to create a conflict of interest for every school board member.”

Witnesses for the union, including Richard Wise, the co-president of the South Burlington Education Association, described a very difficult negotiation. Wise said Cassidy was an “impediment” to a successful resolution of the collective bargaining process who went out of his way to be “condescending” and to “lecture” union members. Most worrying was his immovable stance on the step advancement. Cassidy refused to budge on the issue.

In email correspondence, members of the local union communicated with the Vermont NEA about “targeting” Cassidy. In one memo from October of 2010, Wise alluded to picketing Cassidy’s office.
Wise, who serves on the Vermont NEA board, then later approved the email written by Cook with the picketing reference.

Wise said South Burlington Education Association has the right to picket in front of businesses and homes.

Nolan, the attorney for the South Burlington School Board, pointed out that Kathy Buley, a union member, had refused to consider a picket before Cassidy’s business or home on two occasions – once in October, long before Cook sent his email to Cassidy, and once in March, after Cook’s email went public in press reports. Nolan argued that the union never intended to conduct such a picket, and therefore Cook knew it was an empty threat.

In testimony before the Labor Board, Richard Cassidy said he served on the school board even though he was aware that his volunteer work could have an impact on his labor practice, but he served anyway. Cassidy, who has represented unions, said he was aware of the possibility of a picket, but he felt it would be unlikely. He also said he recognized that his role on the board could “damage his relationships with clients.”

“I was naïve about it,” Cassidy said. “I thought unions would want someone who understood their issue.”

The Labor Board will take up the case again on Nov. 21.

Correction: We originally and incorrectly reported that Cassidy stepped down as chair. He remained chair but dropped out of the negotiations team and recused himself from the collective bargaining process. His term as chair ends on Town Meeting Day; Cassidy has not decided whether he will run again.

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