Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jay Eshelman, of Westminster, who is a business owner and a former Work Force Investment Board and River Valley Technical Center board member.
[A]s a business owner and former school board member, I can report that most school district board members I know are typically not qualified to exercise the systemic financial management tasks required by their station.
Specifically, school budgets are presented to boards and voters in a typical business financial statement format, as with any income statement, and the ratio analysis required to determine whether or not a specific line item provides a reasonable return on the investment is rarely, if ever, accomplished. After all, a typical school budget is in constant flux until the monies are actually spent, as represented by hundreds of individual line items and millions of dollars in spending.
A budget is, after all, just that … a budget. It’s an estimate — and it’s typically compared to the previous year’s budget/estimate. But unbeknownst to most voters, once a budget is passed at the annual school meeting, a school board may allocate its funds in any way it sees fit, despite the detailed presentation approved by the voters. And not only can a school board deficit spend without prior approval by taxpayers, boards can spend excess unanticipated revenues without prior voter approval.
And please, don’t say to yourself that schools aren’t businesses and students aren’t widgets.
Schools are businesses, their current mismanagement is bankrupting us, and if we started paying attention to student quality control the way businesses assess “widget” quality control, our students, their parents and the community at large would be better off.
School board financial management has been distorted by administrative and other special interests. One need only review the many recent VTDigger discussions on small schools and the Vermont Agency of Education’s attack on school choice tuitioning. The Vermont AOE, supervisory union administrators and other education special interests consistently misrepresent the cost and effectiveness associated with tuitioning.
Here’s the deal. Real local control is best assigned to individual parents and their children in a school choice tuitioning environment as they choose the institution, public or independent, that best meets the needs of each student. My assessment, in this regard, is consistently supported by my anecdotal experience in Westminster as well as independent studies on tuitioning in Maine and Vermont.
Consider that when we purchase a car, we don’t care whether or not the auto dealer has a specific relationship with the car manufacturer, or what the details of that relationship are; or whether or not the manufacturer has a specific arrangement with its labor force, or its material suppliers, or its subcontractors. When we purchase a car, we care, first and foremost, that the car provides the level of transportation we require, as represented by the dealer, and that reliable service is included, all for a cost that’s reasonable for our specific budget.
Education should be handled the same way as buying a car. Let professional educators present the educational services they choose to provide to the marketplace.
Education should be handled the same way as buying a car. Let professional educators present the educational services they choose to provide to the marketplace (i.e., to parents, their children and the community at large). The River Valley Technical Center in Springfield, for example, is just such a public institution, as is the independent Compass School in Westminster. Both schools’ educational services are established and chosen by the specific parents and their children in our community. In fact, some of the services these two schools provide are a collaboration between schools. That’s the beauty of the tuitioning system, one of the ways curricula are cost effectively expanded.
If the state should do anything, it can certify the standing of a given education provider (citing test scores and financial viability, perhaps) and provide a forum for redress of grievance — should any negligence or breach of contract occur by either party, the educator or the parent/student consumer.
But that’s it. Let each educational institution provide the services its management team (the school’s board and the principal) and its employees (teachers, para-educators, nurses, librarians, IT technicians, bus drivers and so forth) choose to provide — and let the education consumers (parents and their children) determine each school’s level of success by their choices.
What’s the best way to begin implementing this kind of education structure?
Statutorily, the provisions are already in place. Tuitioning!
Elected school district boards (as opposed to individual school management teams) should simply ensure that education providers, public or independent, are legitimate institutions, that parents and their children have equal access to them, and, lastly, determine whether or not the state’s stated average allowable tuition be maintained or increased at additional expense to local taxpayers.
Then let the chips fall where they may. Public or independent, let parents and their children choose.
Under tuitioning, the Brigham v. Vermont Act 60 and Act 68 requirements are met, curricula are expanded while costs typically decrease, all with typically high parental and student satisfaction.
If we want real local control, expand tuitioning provisions throughout Vermont.
