[T]he top education stories in 2016 find their roots in decisions made in 2015 by the Legislature and the State Board of Education.
At the end of the 2015 session, lawmakers enacted sweeping changes to education with Act 46 — a school district consolidation law that included spending caps.
The law requires communities to combine into larger school districts to address an unprecedented decline in student enrollments.
While the rollout of the consolidation effort has been rocky, school boards found the spending cap provision of Act 46 completely untenable. The caps, known as the allowable growth percentage, made it difficult for boards to build budgets without triggering tax penalties.
Gov. Peter Shumlin asked lawmakers to address the cap problem in time for school boards to finish budgets for Town Meeting.
Initially, lawmakers hoped to fix the problem by accommodating an unforeseen rise in the cost of teacher health care. But within the first week of the session they found out it wouldn’t be enough to help districts that were also struggling with declining enrollment and higher special education costs.
Then the Agency of Education told lawmakers that they had miscalculated AGP and school districts were working with incorrect numbers.
Speaker Shap Smith D-Morrisville set up a joint committee of Republicans and Democrats from Education and Ways and Means who met in secret to craft a solution. They bumped up the allowable growth rate by 0.9 percent. School districts that spend less than $14,095 per pupil – the state average – would be exempt from spending thresholds and tax penalties. They also repealed the caps for the next fiscal year – 2018.
In the end, school districts built budgets that did not increase statewide education spending as much as they had in the past because they tapped rainy day funds.
When lawmakers set the school tax rate – now called a yield – they used $18.8 million in surplus money to lower taxes. and kept spending thresholds at 121 percent anchored to average per pupil spending in 2015. Any school district that spends above that threshold in fiscal year 2018 will be penalized with a double tax on each additional dollar.
Act 46 mergers
The State Board of Education is tasked with carrying out Act 46 mergers by approving unification proposals, suggesting guidance and rules, and eventually redrawing the school district map in 2019.
In September 2015, the SBE announced that they could not allow mergers between communities that have different ways of delivering education to their students. There are just over 90 towns in Vermont that offer tuition to students for all or some grades to attend public or private schools of their choice. Some of these towns are in parts of the state that operate schools that teach students in every grade. A law that predates Act 46 doesn’t allow districts that offer tuition to students to choose a school to merge with districts that operate schools.
This issue continues to surface and the GOP caucus and Governor Elect Phil Scott have indicated they would like to see Act 46 tweaked to address it, although they haven’t said specifically how they want to change it. Ultimately, voters in the towns decide whether they want to continue to offer school choice or give it up.
Since towns began voting on Act 46 mergers four school districts have decided to give up choice – Tinmouth, Fairfield, Westford and St. George. Several choice towns have used side-by-side mergers to preserve school choice, such as Chittenden and Mendon.
Since voting began on unification proposals 64 towns have voted to merge; 17 towns have rejected mergers.
Fight over private school rules
The State Board of Education has been criticized by some lawmakers for draft rules that address alternative governance structures. An alternative structure, according to the law, is supposed to be an “exception” meant for school districts that have unique circumstances and can’t fit into the other structures already approved by the board.
The State Board of Education has taken heat over proposed changes for private schools that accept students from public school districts in a practice called tuitioning out. The Agency of Education wrote draft rules and introduced them to the SBE at their annual retreat in July. The SBE approved them and sent them to the Interagency Committee on the Administration of Rules.
In August, board chair Stephan Morse pulled the rules at the request of the Shumlin administration. The rules were back on the agenda after the November election, and in an unprecedented move, the Interagency Committee on Administrative Rules sent the rules back to the board to gather more stakeholder feedback and fiscal impact data.
Since then, two public meetings and two private meetings have been held with stakeholders, first in St. Johnsbury and then in Manchester, cities where two of the four town academies are located.
Private school advocates argue that the proposed rules would make it harder for smaller private schools to accept tuition students and that would, by default, limit school choices.
Working groups were set up to look into the best way forward on the most disagreeable sections of the proposal.
School testing
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium – SBAC- test was given for the second time to students in grades 3-8 and 11.
The highest performing schools on the 2016 SBACs include: Underhill Central School, Marion Cross School in Norwich, Mount Mansfield High School in Jericho, Barstow Memorial School in Chittenden, Dummerston schools, White River School in Hartford, Montgomery Central School, Newton School in Stratford and South Burlington High School.
But when VTDigger used a proficiency lens to look at the test results, it became apparent that many high schoolers were not prepared for college level math. In fact, only seven schools scored proficient on the 11th grade math test. Two were private schools and the other five were public.
This fall Vermont rolled out its universal pre-K program. Vermont has had to rely on a hybrid system of private and public institutions to provide early education. Regulations are needed to ensure quality but too many regulations might drive some of the needed providers out of business. VTDigger looked at the state’s capacity to deliver preK and the systems meant to make sure children get what they need out of the programs.
