Armando Vilaseca, commissioner of the Department of Education, doesn’t have all that much control over education spending – or savings, for that matter.
The best he could do last fall, in light of the recession and the continued pressure on property taxpayers, was to send a letter to local school boards, asking them to do their level best to cut spending. And, they did.
In fact, school boards cut $22 million in spending — $2 million more than what is required for the fiscal year 2011 goal for the education component of the Challenges for Change, also known as Act 68, the government restructuring law.
The question all along in meetings between Vilaseca and a team of education professionals who addressed the education Challenges was, could they count that $22 million toward the specific goals set in the law for administrative costs and special education?
On Tuesday, Vilaseca recommended just that. He told the Legislature that it ought to apply the reductions boards made in overall school spending to the Challenges targets for general education administration and special education savings, tagged at $13.3 million and $7 million, respectively.
Vilaseca’s suggestion appeared to run counter to the administration’s wishes. In a discussion at one of the Education Challenges Design Team meetings, Neale Lunderville, Secretary of the Administration, indicated it would be preferable to make additional reductions based on the original targets for administrative costs and special education, in order to further lower the statewide property tax rate.
Under the Challenges, the Douglas administration and the Legislature are looking for 5 percent reductions in both those areas for fiscal year 2011; and 15 percent in school administration and 7.5 percent in special education for fiscal year 2012.
Schools will be required to register $50.5 million in total savings in those two categories, which would be softened by about $10 million in reinvestments in technology upgrades (for example, electronic student records and unified systems for accounting and personnel) in fiscal year 2012.
The annual cost of administrative services for 280 school districts is approximately $266.7 million; special education runs about $140 million a year.
Over the last 10 years, while Vermont has led the nation in education results for its students, it has also seen a decline in enrollments.
The student population for grades K-12 has dropped to 92,000; in the late 1990s, there were well over 100,000 children in Vermont’s schools. Over the last decade, the number of educational workers has increased, according to the Department of Education, and costs have continued to rise, pushing property taxes up statewide.
Vilaseca’s recommendations include the following:
1. Mandatory consolidation of districts.
He said the state could save $15 million to $20 million through the consolidation of 280 separate school districts. Supervisory unions – conglomerations of smaller school districts – would become supervisory districts in which school board members would represent each town within a geographic area. In Vilaseca’s plan, there would 46 supervisory districts in Vermont based on the existing boundary lines between 60 supervisory unions. Small unions with 400 to 500 students would become merged with larger districts to achieve the lower total number. The average student population of each district would be 1,800.
“We’re not talking about schools with 2,000 to 3,000 students or districts with 10,000 students,” Vilaseca said.
The new, larger districts would, in his view, help reduce inefficiencies and duplication of services and create more flexibility for staffing and the creation of magnet schools.
Under the proposal, Vilaseca would be solely responsible for drawing the boundary lines.
2. Raising the student-to-staff ratio.
Staff includes everyone who works in a school building — teachers, principals, janitorial workers, librarians, athletic directors, and so on. Vermont’s current ratio of 4.55 students to 1 school worker is the lowest in the country. Vilaseca proposed creating a mandatory threshold of 4.75 in fiscal year 2011 and 4.95 in fiscal year 2012. At these staffing levels, Vermont’s schools would continue to rank at the top nationally, Vilaseca said.
“The only way to meet the amounts set in this bill is by reducing staff,” Vilaseca said.
3. Forming a commission to review the viability of small schools with fewer than 75 students.
Vermont has 307 schools: Fifty schools in the state have fewer than 50 students; 43 have fewer than 100 students.
Vilaseca said combining schools will increase opportunities for students, while finding efficiencies for operations.
If schools are merged, they will still be “way smaller than the national average,” Vilaseca said.
4. Sweeping changes in funding and service delivery for special education.
The commissioner expects to meet the special education Challenge by distributing funds through block grants; requiring more rigorous review of Individual Education Plans, mandated under federal law; and behavioral intervention training for all educational staff.
So how do education advocates grade Vilaseca’s proposal?
They give him an A for recognizing school boards’ contributions to the statewide school budget reduction effort.
Jeffrey Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, Rep. Joey Donovan, chair of the House Education Committee, and John Nelson, executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association, applauded the commissioner for acknowledging the spending reductions made by local boards.
“He asked schools to be conservative in the budgeting process and they did that, and they deserve credit for that,” Francis said.
All three also lauded the education commissioner’s thoughtful approach to addressing the small school conundrum. Vilaseca, they said, recognizes that closing schools is not only politically difficult, but also impractical, in some instances, for geographic reasons.
Nelson is perturbed that administration officials don’t recognize in their purported focus on two main educational outcomes – an increase in high school graduation and post-secondary aspiration rates — that Vermont is ranked consistently high nationally in both areas. The state has had the best graduation rate in the country for two years running, he said, and Vermont schools consistently score at the top on math and reading tests.
Nelson also points out that school boards have been conscientious about keeping their budgets in check. This year school expenditures statewide were flat.
The premise behind the Challenges, Nelson said, is flawed: There is no evidence that larger districts produce better results. “It’s the local connection communities have with schools and local accountability that makes a difference in Vermont,” Nelson said.
From a practical standpoint, he said, it’s not possible for school districts to turn around the restructuring changes quickly enough to realize $40 million in net savings by fiscal year 2012.
Francis and Joel Cook, of the Vermont-NEA, gave Vilaseca an F for not only mandating school district mergers, but also taking the task of redrawing districts on himself.
“This would confer more power on one person than we’ve ever seen,” Cook said. “Even if everyone votes to pass something like that, it would be truly unprecedented. Communities would rise up and say no.”
Francis said the governance proposal is a “stretch.” “It doesn’t address the technical details of a merger – voluntary or not,” he said. “The presumptive savings are not proven, and he would be usurping local authority.”
House Education chair Donovan put it even more bluntly. She said the committee created three categories for the Challenges recommendations from the commissioner: “Deader than a doornail; almost dead and still breathing.” The mandatory consolidation proposal, in which Vilaseca’s red pen would be poised over a map of the state, falls into the first category, as far as Donovan is concerned.
Still, she said she applauds his interest in student outcomes for all Vermont children, and she said district consolidation is a concept Vermont communities are going to have to get used to. The bill her committee passed a few weeks ago, H.782, would give towns incentives to voluntarily merge districts and schools.
“My desire is to be able to have local districts in charge of that,” Donovan said. “They did such a fabulous job on budgets in March. Next year we have to keep those budgets flat again AND find $20 million in savings. I have every confidence they will rise to the occasion.”
Rather than the state imposing a staff-to-student ratio in such a short time frame, Donovan said school boards should be looking at staff attrition through retirements for further reductions next year.
At the local level, Francis said, Vilaseca’s recommendations will come across as draconian. Without the kind of help school boards provided this year, he said he doesn’t know how the commissioner can meet the financial targets.
“The thing that hasn’t been addressed is, can Armando enlist the support of local school officials?” Francis asked.
As Cook put it: “It’s politically feasible to acknowledge the work of boards. It’s not feasible to impose change from Montpelier.”
This is particularly true with special education, Cook said. The state is obliged, under federal law, to provide a free and appropriate education for children with learning, mental health and physical disabilities. The commissioner’s proposal, he predicted, will likely bring up legal issues. Though the total enrollment of general education students has declined, the number of children who need special education services has increased, Nelson said, partly because of a significant rise in the number of children with autism in Vermont.
The Legislature has a very short time frame in which to respond to Vilaseca’s Challenges proposal: The House Education Committee must give its recommendations to the House Appropriations Committee by Wednesday, and the second Challenges bill, which will include statutory changes, is scheduled to come to the floor of the House on April 12, Donovan said.
