Editor’s note: This commentary is by David F. Kelley, an attorney and a co-founder of Project Harmony (now PH International) who is a member of the Hazen Union School Board.
[A]ct 46 made achieving its worthy goals seem simple. Essentially it said that if we did away with our local school boards, then quality, equity and efficiency would fall like manna from heaven. But from Nebraska to Maine the facts, and almost all of the reputable research (conservative, liberal or progressive), told a different story: “States should generally avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to maximizing district size.”
A globalizing economy, the digital revolution and the graying of Vermont have profound implications for our students and our schools. Change is not optional, it is imperative. There is almost universal agreement that we need more community engagement and more personalized, community-based learning. That requires schools and school boards that are more accessible to more stakeholders. Instead Act 46 and increased centralization does just the opposite by making schools and governance further removed from the communities they serve. Worse, centralization makes achieving savings through closing rural elementary schools increasingly tempting. Those “savings” come with a high price tag. Without their elementary schools there is less and less reason for young families to move to those towns, children are bused longer distances, property values go down and the social and civic heartbeat of some towns will flatline.
We should be embracing the pluralism and diversity of Vermont and appreciating why we live here: Rural is an asset not a liability.
By giving bigger towns the power to exploit their smaller neighbors, regardless of efficiency, quality or equity, Act 46 threatens to do harm to good schools and good communities around Vermont. In fact, it is ironic that towns wielding power in one region of Vermont might well be the towns that would be vulnerable in another region — because Act 46 as it is written is little more than a numbers game.
Instead of hollowing out our rural communities we should be talking about reinventing our schools and our communities with new technologies and innovation. To accomplish that requires the kind of cooperation that built our barns — not the kind consolidation that we expect from corporate acquisitions and mergers. We have a Vermont tradition of standing beside each other, not on top of each other. We have always been our neighbor’s keeper as well as our brother’s keeper.
Act 46 turns those values and traditions upside down. It is destructive public policy. Rural Vermont doesn’t need to be like the gold towns of Montana or the mill towns of Maine. But avoiding their fate depends on unleashing, not strait jacketing, our imaginations. Just as our students need flexible pathways to education, our school districts need flexible pathways to innovation and collaboration. Real progress toward the goals of Act 46 requires the collective wisdom and the unique and unrepeatable experience of each community in Vermont. We should be embracing the pluralism and diversity of Vermont and appreciating why we live here: Rural is an asset not a liability.
Before our General Assembly goes home they should amend Act 46 and put language in S.122 that embraces grassroots imagination, that allows the flexibility that innovation needs to thrive and that ensures our schools will be judged by honest, demonstrable outcomes, not structures.
Sources:
https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/SchoolDistrictSize.pdf
http://educationnorthwest.org/resource/what-does-research-say-about-school-district-consolidation
