Last week, 14 GOP lawmakers wrote to the Secretary of Education and the Chair of the State Board of Education asking them to rescind their September 15 decision to only consider mergers between like districts in the first phase of the implementation of the new education law.
The letter comes on the heels of statements made by Lt. Gov. Phil Scott and the House Minority Leader Don Turner calling for lawmakers to address merger options for choice districts when the Legislature reconvenes in January.
The new education law encourages school districts to merge together and offers tax incentives at various stages during the consolidation process. Every group that wishes to merge must submit a proposal to the State Board of Education for approval and then it can be put to the voters to ultimately decide whether they want to move ahead or scrap the plan.
In September, the SBE told districts that want to merge during the first phase of the law that they would only consider mergers among like districts. So, choice districts that merge with other choice districts or school districts that operate a school at each grade level could merge with other districts that do the same. The SBE made this determination after reviewing Act 46 within the context of Title 16 VSA 822.
It is not likely that the SBE will change course because as they see it they merely clarified the statutory requirements that exist and which Act 46 did not change.
There are other merger options available to both choice school districts and those that operate schools in future phases of the implementation of Act 46.
Education professionals working in the trenches with school boards to consolidate the state’s unwieldy governance structure support the SBE’s reading of the law.
To try to both operate a school and offer tuition in the same school district and same grades will add cost – communities will no longer have control over their dollars or their future, according to Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association.
“If we ever got to a state where we are both operating and tuitioning in a single district then things will get a lot worse not better,” Francis told the SBE at their October meeting.
Francis said that combining the two systems would be like spending $300 a week on groceries and then eating out at restaurants for five nights of the week.
This was one of the reasons that Concord High School recently voted to close, according to former Superintendent Brian Rayburn. The reason the school was initially able to operate while the community paid tuition for some students was because they had surplus funds from previous years to draw upon. “When that dried up the true cost of operating a school and tuitioning was seen,” Rayburn said. He added that another contributing factor to Concord closing was the high cost of tuition at the independent school. It was “typically $2000 more” than other area public high schools.
“My advice … don’t do it,” said Rayburn. “You still have to pay the cost of operating your local high school and everything that goes along with that in addition to the tuition you will have to pay. It will only increase taxes and overall costs,” added Rayburn who is now a superintendent in Lima, Montana.
