Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe has received her marching orders for the 2015 legislative session. In a letter dated Aug. 19, Gov. Peter Shumlin lays out his priorities for the state’s public education system and requests specific initiatives from the Agency of Education.
Among the directives: promote the benefits of “right-sizing” especially small districts, enforce a moratorium on any legislation that requires additional spending by local school districts and find new ways to develop better outcomes for students in school and after graduation.
The letter reflects a series of conversations between Shumlin and Holcombe about how to manage Vermont’s public education system, Holcombe said.
First and foremost, the letter reads, the agency needs to solve the state’s education funding paradox: “(W)e have a statewide education tax to create equity, but decisions about what to spend are made locally. That means each local decision has statewide impact.”
This creates a host of problems, particularly in light of public schools’ declining enrollment, Shumlin said in the letter. Student populations have declined on average 20 percent since 1997, but the count of teachers and paraprofessionals has climbed along with the proportion of students needing special education. These ratios drive school spending increases, which in turn leave many local property taxpayers feeling they cannot afford the rising costs.
And despite the money going into the system, educational outcomes don’t appear to be improving, the letter notes in a bullet-list titled “The facts matter.”
Five years of high-stakes testing has not shown meaningful improvement, despite high scores by affluent kids offsetting low scores, thereby keeping Vermont ranked high among national comparisons. Achievement gaps persist for students in poverty, particularly boys, and too few high school graduates pursue post-secondary education, Shumlin said.
He directed Holcombe to immediately commence work with the Vermont School Boards Association and local school districts to promote district partnerships or consolidations as a correction for unsustainable cost equations.
“In all cases, please ensure that conversations are focused on the reality of our need to right-size our systems to reflect our substantially smaller student population, and what will happen to tax rates if we stick with the status quo,” the letter said.
Holcombe said the outcomes likely will vary from district to district. Some may choose to merge governance structures, she said, while others would consider consolidating schools.
‘Informed conversations’
Steve Dale, executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association, said decisions about how to respond to long-term enrollment trends and funding needs will be highly localized. He said Holcombe’s presentations at regional school board meetings have already begun. Two more meetings will be held in October in Brandon and Lyndonville, he said.
Dale said there are three stated purposes behind the presentations: to help school board members understand the trends affecting school budgets and property tax rates; to inspire them to “dig more deeply” into the factors contributing to their unique situations; and to share potentially statewide policy changes with state officials.
Holcombe said too many people don’t understand the way Vermont’s per-pupil based formula works. If school budgets stay level but enrollment declines, she said, taxpayers have to make up the difference because the state’s Education Fund provides less money for fewer students.
Her outreach this fall and winter will focus on data specific to the schools and districts she’s working with at the time.
“I find that when people begin to look at the numbers, it does shift the conversation,” Holcombe said. “My hope is we’re going to have more informed conversations moving forward.”
Dale said the VSBA is most focused on the cost per student, which he said clearly has the attention of policymakers, legislators, the governor’s office and the business community. Equal quality of education and opportunities for children in poor and rural communities also needs to be addressed, he said.
“We don’t believe for a minute (education) ought to be homogenized,” Dale said. “But we do believe in personalization of education, and we believe there is disparity in range of opportunities available across the state.”
Steve Jeffrey, executive director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, said the letter contains some priorities his organization applauds. Primary on his list is a proposed moratorium on new legislation that would cost school districts extra money.
Shumlin asked Holcombe to work with supervisory unions and local districts to figure out how the state’s newly revised Education Quality Standards can be implemented without adding to school costs.
“I recognize that local districts have questioned whether the cost of these and other initiatives can be absorbed successfully, despite their promise of significant improvement in student achievement,” the letter states. “That is why it is critical that we support implementation of these new goals on the ground, while at the same time refraining from adding new initiatives that increase budgetary pressures.”
Jeffrey said he has trouble reconciling this sentiment with Shumlin’s support of two school cost drivers: universal pre-kindergarten and dual enrollment for high school students taking college courses.
One of Shumlin’s suggestions for Holcombe is to come up with a new cost-sharing scheme for the dual enrollment program, which many local districts say saddles them with undue costs.
“The time to mitigate that (cost) would have been before the horse was out of the barn,” Jeffrey said. “Now we’ve got this cost on locals, and at same time he is calling for 5 percent budget cuts.”
In addition to promoting local solutions to the cost equation, Holcombe is asked to extend her outreach to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, the Department of Labor and the business community to develop programs that align better with “priority economic growth sectors.”
She said these include the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The agency’s and school’s job won’t be so much to train students for specific jobs, she said, but to better align public education with programs at career and technology centers. The goal will be more students pursuing post-secondary education and higher-achieving careers out of school.
The agency also will be expected to fund grants for technical training and “innovation” in teaching to help improve performance outcomes, as well.
Balancing all this with existing pressures on the budget likely will require elimination of some programs, Holcombe said.
“So we are looking hard at whether there are certain things we can give up, so we can focus our resources on (other) things to leverage.”
