Editor’s note: This commentary is by Robert Morgan, of Peacham, who is a former president of the Board of Trustees of Thaddeus Stevens School, a private K-8 school in Lyndon Center.
[T]his commentary is meant to provoke candid discussion about both the public behavior and what appears to be the private agenda of the State Board of Education in an attempt to hold it accountable for its actions in the future. In my opinion, representative members of the board exhibited, at the very least, disingenuous behavior at a public forum in St. Johnsbury on Dec. 6. It may prove, through their future actions, to have been deceitful. Or not.
I believe that those of us debating the rule changes for independent schools proposed by the board are currently acting out a version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The educational community — left/right, public/independent — is caught up in a sartorial disagreement over the cut of the emperor’s wardrobe. No one seems capable of seeing and addressing what I believe is the very real and distressing reality: bureaucratic management of the failing public school system, professional educators who represent goals of the NEA that support the welfare of teachers over that of our student population, wish independent schools gone. I recognize that this is an inflammatory statement. It supports a point of view that almost never surfaces in a measured and civil debate of educational issues. It is not politic.
I challenge the Board of Education to prove my opinions scurrilous.
The banner issues revolving around independent school rules — those of access, public funding and special education support — can all be resolved if careful thought and compromise are brought to a mediation table. But the Board of Education must first change its intent from that of crippling independent schools to that of serving the greatest number of students at the highest level of success, a goal worthy of their public responsibility.
But the Board of Education must first change its intent from that of crippling independent schools to that of serving the greatest number of students at the highest level of success, a goal worthy of their public responsibility.
“If one of the Board’s several talking points is true, that independent schools are successful because they are not bound by the same regulations as the public schools — and if the success of all students is the ultimate goal of our society — then wouldn’t logic dictate that we remove onerous restrictions from the public schools in an attempt to help them thrive?”
Similarly, can the board continue in good faith to purport that the elimination of independent schools would lead to the improvement of education in the public sector? Where is the common sense in the argument that we should further hobble the independent system, thereby lowering the quality of education in general to a mediocre common quotient?
If my contention is false — that a covert agenda of the State Board of Education is to wield enough control over the existing independent schools to weaken their ability to survive and to attract higher enrollments and/or to discourage the creation of new independent schools — then now is the moment for the State Board of Education to prove it so by demonstrating fair governance to all. I would be most pleased to be proven wrong in my beliefs, happy to eat crow.
