Editor’s note: This commentary is by Margaret MacLean, who is an educator with 40 years’ experience and a Peacham resident. A former Vermont Principal of the Year, MacLean’s term on the Vermont State Board of Education ended in March 2015.
[L]ast year the Legislature grappled with the issue of declining student enrollment and the resulting impact on education costs. They pondered how to respond to this problem in a way that would curb cost and at the same time enhance equity of opportunity for all Vermont students. The result is the new education law Act 46.
Since the law’s passage Vermonters have begun to understand the ramifications of the law and its impact locally. In doing so they have talked to legislators and it has been acknowledged from the governor on down that the law needs to be “tweaked” this session.
Act 46 would organize Vermont’s school system around units of at least 900 students with one school board and superintendent. If we were starting from scratch it might make sense, but in fact, Act 46 is a neat and tidy solution that is not in tune with Vermont values of equity and fairness and denies the reality of our culture, geography and history.
It is only when you look beyond the surface of Act 46 that you begin to understand. It was never talked about openly during the last legislative session, but it was decided that the solution to the problem of declining enrollment and escalating cost was to be laid at the door of our smallest, most rural communities.
Never mind that our smaller community schools are not the biggest drivers of increasing education costs and that many cost below the state average. Never mind that many of our smaller community schools are among our most flexible and innovative. Never mind that many can point to strong academic results for students and never mind that these small schools have higher proportions of children living in poverty than the state average (74 percent of schools receiving small schools grants have higher than average student poverty rates).
The fiscal pressures of Act 46 are heaped on the smaller most rural places (variable cap, loss of hold harmless funds, loss of small school grants and increased taxes to pay for consolidation in places where it might make sense, by communities where it does not make sense) and the mechanism of Act 46 will result in the closure over time of numerous community schools.
Although it is unspoken, the closure of schools is where the cost savings, if there is to be any cost savings, will come from. Clearly it won’t come from enlarging a paid bureaucracy, particularly bureaucracy with less citizen involvement and oversight, due to the dissolution of local school boards and the end of town meetings, as we know them.
The problem of declining enrollment is a Vermont problem, not a small-school problem, and the solution needs to be a Vermont solution. It is not acceptable to Vermonters that our poorest most rural children should bear the brunt, while larger places get a pass just because they happen to be large, not because they are beacons of cost effectiveness or opportunity.
Ironically if we had a mechanism to pinpoint beacons of opportunity and cost effectiveness, we would likely be pointing to many small schools. For instance, Montgomery Elementary which spends $11,993 per equalized pupil (below average spending) to operate a K-8 school of 138 students and most notably has managed to level the playing field, demonstrating equity in academic outcomes between students from poverty and those who are not through grade 8.
Given the problem of declining enrollment and escalating costs the solution should build on Vermont’s strengths. The way to a more equitable education is not a highway that is inaccessible to those who live on rural dirt roads.
The way to a more equitable education is not a highway that is inaccessible to those who live on rural dirt roads.
We all need to adapt and change in response to this problem, and pull together to find the solution. In doing so we need to build on community strengths. We need to think local not “big,” and recognize that children, particularly our smallest children, are best served in a local community school where they and their families are well known, not a large school an hour away on a winding dirt road.
Hollowing out our rural communities and littering them with empty school buildings, supplanting a system from 1960s Massachusetts to Vermont is not the answer. Rather we should look to Scandinavia for ideas, to countries that have chosen to decentralize to create a networked, flexible, responsive system, fit for the education of children in the 21st century.
As just one example, Denmark has looked holistically at what tasks made sense at a state, municipal and school level. Ultimately Denmark chose to move to the school-level local governing boards. Such an exercise might make sense for Vermont.
The fact that it is not easy, neat and tidy should not daunt us. A Vermont solution will afford a poor child living in the Northeast Kingdom just as much a right to an excellent local community school as a poor child from Burlington. This is a win-win solution because local schools are not only good for children, they are good for communities. And if Vermont is to prosper it will need vibrant rural communities.
Now that legislators have had time to think, listen and talk in their communities, they are beginning to understand the ramifications of Act 46. As the new session looms they are realizing that in “tweaking” Act 46 they are going to need to adjust the law so it will work for everyone, rather than become a potholed road to nowhere. In this task they should draw on their best resource, Vermonters, school board members, parents, teachers and principals.
Beyond the obvious need to eliminate the variable spending cap, additional possibilities include:
• Increasing the weighting in the funding formula for students from poverty.
• Completing education quality reviews, pinpointing at the school level those beacons of cost effectiveness and opportunity prior to mergers and before forced mergers. This is data schools and communities need now to make wise decisions.
• Removing the hammer included in the law, which says that an appointed board, the State Board of Education, will force merger of districts, ousting elected local school board members in the process. This should be replaced with a negotiated process between the state and local communities subject to the final approval of local voters.
Vermont’s children, regardless of where they live, deserve an equitable solution to this problem. We hope that on this second pass legislators will leave with a workable solution, one that keeps in mind those children from poverty who happen to live on our most rural dirt roads.
