The Vermont House Education Committee unanimously passed the so-called “Peltz” bill Tuesday night after several hours of negotiations over school choice language. The bill, which creates incentives for school districts to merge, passed out of committee on an 11-0 vote last night.
Chair of the House Education Committee, Rep. Joey Donovan, D-Burlington, said “I’m thrilled we got an 11-0 vote. I think this is an opportunity to have a wider discussion.” Donovan said the bill has “meaning for everybody,” for small and large school districts alike.
Rep. Peter Peltz, D-Woodbury, said the unanimous vote puts the bill on a “solid trajectory” for possible passage in the House.
The Peltz bill provides financial incentives for school districts to merge voluntarily. The state currently has 280 individual districts based on municipal boundaries, nearly all of which have their own school boards. The bill states that a unified union school district, in which board members represent individual towns, must include two or more contiguous school districts (not necessarily from the same supervisory union), must result in the merger of at least five districts and must have at least 1,250 students.
The bill does not mandate district consolidation – it leaves the merger process up to local communities. School boards would be required to decide whether they will consider merger options by Nov. 1, 2010; on Dec. 1 they must vote on the matter. The state Board of Education would not be permitted to change locally determined school district boundary lines.
“This responds to the ability of local communities to make decisions,” said Rep. Linda Waite-Simpson, D-Essex Junction. “To put a cookie cutter district plan on this incredibly complex system is a recipe for disaster.”
Under the legislation, a unified district is not allowed to close schools within the first four years of the merger; only local voters in a given town can take that action.
The bill gives newly formed unified union school districts homestead property tax breaks if a district keeps its spending below 2 percent. The financial incentives would be graduated: The more a district saves on local spending, the more it could reduce its statewide assessment.
Unified school districts would be required to produce multi-year budgets. The state Department of Education would provide schools with technical assistance, data and merger templates.
Choice options for private independent schools would be determined by the unified districts; the bill stipulates that all students should have substantially equal access to educational programs. Public school choice within larger student cachement areas would be available to all students.
House members debated private school choice language for several hours before they passed the bill out of committee. In the end, Rep. Duncan Kilmartin, R-Newport, relented on his provision for expansion of statewide school choice to all private and public schools in Vermont.
Kilmartin argued the additional language would ensure that residents of towns without a high school can continue to “tuition out” or send their children to independent schools at taxpayers’ expense outside a unified district. Under his proposal, parents would have had the authority to designate which schools children would attend.
Rep. Gary Gilbert, D-Fairfax, argued that the original bill already gives towns the option to provide school choice, and he called Kilmartin’s proposal a “deal breaker.”
“I don’t see (the Peltz proposal) as a choice bill,” Geier said. “I see this bill as an opportunity for school districts to provide education as a function of the state, and communities should be empowered to bring school choice to the electorate. If the electorate chooses to provide school choice it should not be at the discretion of the parents.”
Rep. Anne Mouk, D-Bennington, said the provision was too “proscriptive.”
“I’m fine with school choice,” Donovan said. “I’m trying to avoid politicizing this bill and by adding parents in there, it does exactly that.”
Under language proposed by Rep. John Zenie, D-Colchester, unified districts will be required “to provide voters opportunities to make local decisions regarding school choice.”
