Video of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s news conference April 14, 2015, provided by Vermont PBS.
A leading Senate Democrat sent a letter this week to the secretary of the Agency of Education expressing his concern that the administration was caving in on a major piece of a House-passed education governance reform bill because of backlash from school districts that are already ignoring other legislative mandates.
In response to the feedback from school districts, the administration recommended Friday that lawmakers make most of the bill’s language voluntary. Instead of imposing mandates, the agency proposed increasing incentives for a consolidation pilot program.
The House proposed eliminating the state’s 60 supervisory unions, some of which have as few as 500 students, and consolidating the state’s 277 school districts into larger integrated education systems with 1,100 students.
The letter from Sen. Philip Baruth, D-Chittenden, Senate majority leader and a member of the Senate Education Committee, was in response to testimony delivered by Deputy Secretary Bill Talbott on Friday. Talbott suggested increasing tax incentives for mergers, but backed off most of the mandates that set deadlines for the formation of larger school systems.
“Do you, as Secretary, ascribe to Mr. Talbott’s belief that we should limit our efforts to reform Vermont’s educational system based on producing minimal political resistance rather than optimal outcomes?” Baruth asked of Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe in his letter.
Baruth wrote that he was “honestly a little shocked, and more than a little dismayed, by Mr. Talbott’s rather casual assertion” that the Agency of Education “could not and would not enforce what few basic attempts at system reform the Legislature has enacted over the last several years.”
Holcombe is on vacation this week, but Alyson Richards, deputy chief of staff and director of intergovernmental affairs for the Shumlin administration, said the concerns Baruth outlined in his letter to the secretary were the subject of late day discussions Tuesday. She said the administration and leaders in the House and Senate are working together hoping to push out an education reform bill that is in the state’s best interest.
“As the Administration was moving fast on Friday to help continue in the Senate the momentum of education reform built by the House’s important work, there was an unfortunate miscommunication regarding the structure of suggestions the Administration provided,” Richards said in an email Tuesday.
Talbott told the committee Friday that feedback Holcombe and the agency were receiving indicated that many school districts do not want to merge into larger districts.
Talbott was blunt about the fact that some earlier state mandates around moving transportation contracts and administration and special education services to the supervisory union level have not seen full cooperation at the local level.
The part of Talbott’s testimony that concerned Baruth, he said, was Talbott’s reference “… that we should only pass a bill that we, the Legislature, ‘can stand behind.’”
“It became increasingly clear that by ‘stand behind,’ Mr. Talbott meant a bill we could enforce — and he went on to cite specifically the Legislature’s decision to move special education and transportation to the Supervisory Union level back in 2011 as a move we could not enforce, or ‘stand behind,’” Baruth wrote.
Baruth said the meetings late Tuesday with the administration about his concerns will lead to strong language in the bill on the Legislature’s expectations of the state’s 277 school districts.
“We had a good meeting yesterday afternoon about the issue covered in the letter, and how it relates to a broader bill around school district governance – the upshot is that the Agency and the Administration and our committee all realize that at some point the general welfare depends on insisting that individual local communities do their part,” Baruth said Wednesday.
Baruth said language in the bill would ensure compliance with Acts 153, 58, and 156, which require districts to manage transportation and special education spending at the supervisory union level.
“We’ll have similar language to make sure that the overall reforms we’re crafting won’t run afoul of the same problem,” Baruth said. The details will be out next week.
Shumlin said at a news conference Tuesday that the more carrot and less stick approach did not mean the administration was changing course.
“I don’t think we’re shifting position,” Shumlin said. “If you go back to my (budget) speech in January, I outline a plan to address the concerns Vermonters have where school spending is rising faster than can be sustained, where we’ve gone from 98,000 students to 78,000 and continue to drop, where we must have a process for a bill that helps communities develop a partnership with the state of Vermont to look at what will solve their challenges either administratively or in terms of the number of students to make sure we have a more rational school system going forward.
“I support the direction of the House moving to K-12 school districts. That makes good common sense. The question is how do we get there in a way that meets the needs of Vermont,” he said.
Administration proposal
Vermont has seen a loss of some 21,000 students since 1997, but education spending and property taxes have continued to rise.
The Legislature is working to find a solution to both fiscal concerns and the need to ensure equal educational opportunities for the state’s public school students in the face of economic and demographic challenges. Projections show continued declines in student numbers through at least 2030.
The pilot program under which districts would get a 10 cent tax decrease for five years includes deeper tax breaks than earlier incentives.
Those districts, in the Senate draft, would need to be between 900 and 1,100 students or have an as-yet-to-be-determined minimum number of students by the first year of operation.
The draft Senate version of the bill now states at its top that it is “encouraging governance change.”
Decreasing the rate of education spending is highlighted early in the draft bill. Reduced spending is expected “… to reflect declining student enrollment through a variety of approaches.”
The Senate Education Committee is considering intent language that would clarify the state would play no role in closing schools. Decisions about whether to close local schools would be made by communities.
“We don’t intend to say you will close … but the logical outcome, if we’re right, is that some of them will close,” said Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Washington, the committee chair.
The agency’s proposal supports legislative intent to remove most small schools grants, and to reduce the hold-harmless formula that has paid schools for more students than they have, cushioning the blow for schools rapidly losing students.
Under the Senate proposal, the grant and hold harmless assistance would be converted to merger support grant incentives.
More generally, lawmakers are concerned about the Agency of Education’s ability to oversee a major statewide push for integrated school systems.
The draft Senate bill calls for a grant-funded liaison position between the agency and local school districts. To roll out the agency’s education quality review teams, more staff will be needed, too.
Joel Cook, director of the Vermont-National Education Association, is skeptical about the agency’s ability to support local reforms.
“All the governance change in the world will not ‘ensure equal educational opportunities or compliance with state education quality standards,” Cooke said. “Those are the state’s roles. To fulfill them, the AOE mut have the real capacity to perform, and it doesn’t.”
Cummings said she hopes to have the Senate version of H.361 voted out of committee by Friday. A hearing will be scheduled to take public testimony on the education reform legislation.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 10:12 a.m. on April 16 with information about AOE capacity.
