As the national debate about charter schools rages, a variant of that discussion has unfolded in the Vermont Legislature. The movement underfoot — set in motion by Senate Bill 91— would attach more strings to the public funding paid to the independent schools.
Proponents say the bill is about leveling the playing field for public schools and is not intended as an anti-independent school piece of legislation. But opponents say it fundamentally misunderstands how independent schools operate, and it shackles them with mandates that could spell their doom.
School choice policy in Vermont allows public funding to follow some students — many of whom hail from towns without a public school option — from the sending town to the receiving school. Under this setup, independent schools often receive, to varying degrees, public dollars for a portion of their student body.
S.91 was introduced by three members of the Senate Education Committee — Sens. Richard McCormack, Don Collins and David Zuckerman — and Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington. It lays out five major mandates for independent schools:
• Adhere to a “blind admissions” policy. This means all publicly funded students would be accepted on a space-available basis.
• Provide free and reduced lunch to students who qualify under USDA guidelines.
• Subject students to the same testing regimen that public students take part in.
• Require teachers to be licensed by the state.
• Obtain certification in four different categories of special education. There a slightly over a dozen special education categories designated by the Agency of Education.
Of the 125 independent schools across the state, the bill would impact about 15, since it applies only to schools where at least a third of the student body consists of publicly funded students. Some of these schools already comply with some of S.91’s requirements.
Declining enrollment — a statewide trend — has led to situations where school districts, seeking to boost enrollment, are competing for tuition dollars with nearby independent schools.
“If this were 30 years ago and schools were bursting at the seams from too many kids, it would be great if a couple of kids went off to independent schools,” said McCormack, who chairs the Senate Education Committee.
The scramble for students has led to calls for stricter state regulation of independent schools.
Proponents of the bill — the Vermont National Education Association (NEA) and the Vermont School Board Association number among them — say independent schools have an unfair advantage when vying for students since they aren’t saddled with the same requirements — like providing the entire array of special education services — as public schools.
Tom Honigford, who serves on the South Royalton School Board, said independent schools “don’t play by the same set of rules. They can pick and choose which students they want and which services they want to offer. They aren’t encumbered by the same rules we are.”
Honigford is a former teacher at The Sharon Academy, an independent school in Sharon, which borders South Royalton.
The bill is lurching through the legislative process. Senators on the Education Committee say they’ve received a deluge of mail from people who object to it, and the committee has heard testimony from two headmasters and several parents from schools that stand to be affected.
“The opponents have done a masterful job of marshaling their forces,” McCormack observed.
McCormack, who is a sponsor of the bill, acknowledged that it’s riddled with “poison pills” — certain provisions that spur a toxic backlash — which, he added, the committee plans to address.
But the opponents who gave testimony took issue with the very underpinnings of the bill — objecting both to the intent of the bill, which they say would squash innovation at their independent schools, and the fact that the dictates come unaccompanied by any offer of state funding.
The executive director of the Vermont Independent Schools Association, Mill Moore, said, “There are philosophical objection here as far as state intrusion into places that it has never gone before and there are practical issues such as if you’re going to impose requirements on school meals and teacher licensure, these are all unfunded mandates. Some of these small schools are really operating very close to the edge financially and if you put a major financial burden on them, they just couldn’t possibly comply. That would mean they would have to give up taking publically tuitioned students and in some cases that’s virtually their entire enrollment, so that would simply put them out of business.”
Jennifer Sterling, a parent at Riverside School in Lyndonville — one of the schools slated to see changes under S.91 — told the Senate Education Committee that she moved to Vermont from Florida so that her children could attend Riverside.
“We realized that we were never going to have enough money to live in an area where we could send our kids to public school that would meet our needs, and we were never going to have enough money to pay for private school for two children,” she said.
Sterling said she was drawn to Riverside because it offers an education tailored to the needs of her children at an affordable price. Asking independent schools to adhere to a “blind admissions” policy would do away with that specificity, Sterling said.
If the bill is an “effort to make all schools accommodate all children, then you’re making everything bland. You’re getting rid of all of the seasoning and flavor,” she said, adding that the bill could lead to prohibitive tuition costs for her and her husband. “If it came down to price … then as a teacher and a nurse, we are out-priced.”
Debate, which has taken place throughout the week, has become inverted at times, with headmasters calling on legislators to lessen the regulation for public schools rather than intensifying it for independent schools.
“Why not release the public teachers from some of the things that prohibit them from doing what we do?” asked Julie Hansen, head of school at the Thaddeus Stevens School in Lyndon.
Independent school headmasters took pains to combat the perception that they “cherry-pick” the most promising kids from surrounding districts.
Joel Cook, executive director of the Vermont NEA, said independent schools’ admissions policies allow for de facto discrimination, which creates a liability issue for the state when public dollars are at play. “I’m not sure what the argument is for an independent school to discriminate against citizens … [The bill] simply says, like any other institution that receives public funds, we don’t sanction discrimination.”
Opponents also told lawmakers S.91 would stifle the socioeconomic diversity they currently enjoy at their schools by forcing them to increase tuition.
Michael Livingston, head of school at The Sharon Academy, told the committee, “It is going to very adversely impact our ability to run our school. We would have to charge additional to our families and frankly we’d drive away the low-income families who create socioeconomic diversity.”
The Sharon Academy — with 85 percent of its student body publically funded — has been at the fore of the debate.
Zuckerman explained that the bill seeks to appease taxpayers who want to “make sure their dollars are spent as effectively and transparently as possible.” But, he added, “sometimes what that leads to, for publicly elected officials, is reacting to those pressures with more and more rules about how that money is spent, which then leads to some of these shackles and requirement for testing, etc., etc.”
Disclaimer: VTDigger reporter Alicia Freese graduated from The Sharon Academy in 2006, where Michael Livingston currently serves as head of school and Tom Honigford formerly taught. Freese’s partner, Charles Enscoe, works for the Vermont School Board Association, Vermont Superintendents Association and the Vermont Principals’ Association.
