Reps. Oliver Olsen, of Londonderry, Adam Greshin, of Warren, and Laura Sibilia, of Dover, signed a nine-page letter and issued a news release Monday calling for more transparency and accountability by the board. They expressed concern that board member William Mathis works for a national education organization based in Colorado that receives funding from teachers unions and that he has written policy papers raising civil rights questions about charter schools and voucher policies.
“Dr. Mathis has to be forthcoming with his associations outside of his work for the Vermont Board of Education,” Greshin said in an interview. “Many of the papers he has written strongly advocate for public schooling in a traditional model. He has been an outspoken critic of independent schools or vouchers as they are called, and he is not a fan of charter schools.”
“For me, transparency is paramount, paramount, paramount,” Sibilia said.
In a response, Mathis said he hasn’t ever hid anything about what he does and called the charges baseless. “My visibility and transparency is obvious. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been nine pages of fodder for a letter,” he said.
He is managing director of the National Education Policy Center.
“My salary is paid by the University of Colorado and is not funded with ‘soft’ money,” he said. “That is, no outside funding — neither from the funders mentioned in the letter nor from other outside funders — goes to my salary. Only some travel funds or stipends come from outside sources.”
In the letter, the lawmakers question whether Mathis was paid directly by teachers unions that have business before the state board and which historically don’t support charter schools and vouchers.
“My work is editorially independent of any funder,” Mathis said. “My skepticism regarding private school vouchers, and my expressed opinions about other educational policies, are grounded in research evidence. They are not for sale, nor will they be altered by attempts to intimidate me.”
Board Chairman Stephan Morse called the allegations serious and said he is consulting an attorney before responding.
The largest funder of the National Education Policy Center is the Ford Foundation. The group also receives funding from Atlantic Philanthropies, the National Public Education Support Fund, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, according to Mathis. “In each case, the funder has zero involvement in (the center’s) editorial process,” Mathis said.
Vice Chair Sean-Marie Oller said Mathis’ outside experience is a plus for the board. “Bill’s knowledge is an asset, just like (Bonnie Johnson-Aten’s) role as a principal and administrator and (Krista Huling’s) viewpoint as a teacher in Vermont is helpful,” Oller said. “(Board member) Mark Perrin has spent a dozen years on a tech center board. All of us bring our own personal work life and experience to the table.”
Oller said board members go through a vetting process that for her and Mathis included an interview with the governor before being appointed. Mathis’ resume shows that he began working for the University of Colorado in 2009 and was appointed to the state board in 2011.
Oller suggested Mathis is being singled out because of controversial draft rules the board approved that would change the requirements for private schools to receive public dollars for students who use town tuition to attend.
“It really feels like bullying to single one person out who has quite a wealth of knowledge,” she said. “The board voted unanimously to move these forward. This has not been one person’s charge.”
Olsen was not available for an interview.
The letter to Morse said Mathis had made “hostile comments” about independent schools and school choice.
“These statements, coupled with his work at NEPC and his actions as a member of the SBE, give rise to serious questions about the ability of Dr. Mathis to conduct himself in an impartial and independent manner when considering policy matters before the SBE — particularly those matters concerning school choice and publicly funded access to independent schools,” the letter says.
Sibilia, who represents towns that tuition students to public and private schools, said the timing of the private school rules drove her decision to sign the letter. But she said she was speaking for herself, as an independent.
Mathis disputed Sibilia’s assertion that the issue was his transparency. “The questions the representatives seek to hide is: Do all children have equal access to education and do we have public transparency on how independent schools account for public money?” he said.
While the private school rules are a concern, Greshin said, he called the timing more of a coincidence, saying the question they are raising is appropriate regardless of any proposed rule change. The lawmakers thought they should write the letter to see if their worries are merited, he said. “It may be that Stephan Morse knows this and is familiar with it and thinks this is a tempest in a teapot, but it isn’t clear that this is public information,” Greshin said.
Oller said she doesn’t think a review would uncover anything. “It is a tactic to disrupt the process of the rule change,” she said, adding that the state board is concerned with all the state’s children and the question of equity isn’t going to go away. “Regardless of how the politics are spun, we still face the questions of equality and fairness that Bill raises,” Oller said.