Editor’s note: This commentary is by Stephen Dale, the executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association.
On Jan. 6, Tom Pelham of the Campaign for Vermont wrote an op-ed piece entitled “Wolves at School Board Doors.” The article was a good description of our current financing system and the range of uses and abuses of the Education Fund. It was full of much-deserved praise for Vermont’s school board members who work hard for their schools and our future. His article referred to Statehouse leaders as “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
In proposing a solution to our education finance system challenges, Mr. Pelham referred to a plan devised by the Campaign for Vermont where “Regional administrative entities, controlled by local school boards, can coordinate setting district education budgets and raise property taxes that stay with local school districts. …”
This all sounds good, except for the fact that this description is grossly misleading. It is critical that all Vermonters understand the details of what is being proposed by Campaign for Vermont. Their proposal would render powerless the school board as an institution. One has to ask, “Who are the wolves in sheep’s clothing?”
We need an honest conversation about our challenges, and about options. School boards and communities will need to be open to change.
The CFV solution is to create a new super-structure of 17 regions (which they call READs), defined by current tech center regions. The power for setting budgets would be moved to those 17 regions. According to the CFV plan, each town would have one representative who could vote proportionally on major decisions, such as the budget proposal. Imagine Calais, a school district that is now part of the Barre Tech Center region. Under the CFV plan, Calais would have one representative out of 21 on the READ board – and their proportional voting power would likely be less than 2 percent of the total votes. The most important decisions regarding school budgets, programs and buildings would be moved far, far away from that community to a brand new level of bureaucracy that has little accountability for the quality of the product, but total control of the budget. In many ways, this is the worst of all worlds — separating accountability for outcomes from control of resources.
Rather than just calling it what it is — consolidation of power on a county-wide level, the op-ed and the CFV policy paper wrap it in sheep’s clothing with subtitles such as: “READs Help Retain and Strengthen Local Control” and “READs Help Foster Bottom up Education Policies.”
There are many locations in Vermont where our small districts need to come together with neighbors to create economies of scale and to be able to provide a broad range of education programs. We do need to be willing to look at our definition of “local” in order to ensure we are best preparing our children to thrive in the diverse global world that awaits them. But moving to 17 large, powerful regions is anything but “local” and anything but “bottom up.”
The education debate in the 2015 legislative session will be critical for Vermont. We need an honest conversation about our challenges, and about options. School boards and communities will need to be open to change. To their credit, Campaign for Vermont has put forth a concrete proposal for consideration. However, decision-makers must beware of plans that claim to be one thing, yet are the opposite. As we engage in this dynamic discussion we must watch out for the real “wolves” – those who praise our school boards, but would render them powerless.
