Editor’s note: This commentary is by Margaret Maclean, of Peacham, who is an international education consultant, a Vermont principal of the year and a former member of the Vermont State Board of Education.
[F]or the second year in a row, Gov. Phil Scott has used his budget address to attack public education. Last year he proposed a package of budget transfers that amounted to a raid on the education fund to pay for general government obligations. This year the administration has laid out another set of proposals designed to limit the amount of money Montpelier spends to support Pre-K through 12 public education, but it’s not clear any of these ideas would lower property taxes. Again, it appears to be an attempt to divert property taxes to pay for other services.
While many of the details of the governor’s plan are troublesome, the proposal is a symptom of a bigger problem in Montpelier that reaches beyond the governor’s office. In the name of cost containment, the governor, legislative leaders, and many in the education establishment are trying to exert greater and greater control over the day-to-day operation of our public schools. It threatens the lifeblood of our communities, the creativity and ingenuity of many of our schools, and the quality education that our children deserve.
Vermont recently marked the 20th anniversary of the Brigham decision and the passage of Act 60. Act 60 was a grand bargain of sorts. It recognized that Vermont communities place great value on their local schools and created a system that allows local voters to make their own spending decisions. It also sought to correct the problem the Vermont Supreme Court found when it ruled, in Brigham, that the state’s funding system was unconstitutional because kids in rich towns and kids in poor towns did not have the same access to a good education. Act 60 was designed to strike a balance between Vermonters’ desire for local, democratic decision-making and our collective responsibility to educate all of the children in the state, not just those in our own school districts.
In recent years, Montpelier has been reneging on the bargain with local communities. It has adopted school consolidation rules that will force schools to close, even though many of them are serving the needs of their kids cost effectively. Additionally the governor wants to control hiring decisions by setting student-to-staff ratios. And the governor and many legislators seem to believe that local voters — the same people who put them in office — don’t have the good sense to stop throwing money away on education.
Vermont has good schools, schools that we all can and should be proud of. They also need to get better if we’re going to fulfill our commitment to making sure that all children can become successful citizens and feel at home in the larger world. Dictates from Montpelier aren’t going to make our schools better or more cost effective, they are to blunt an instrument, they are one size fits all solutions applied across the board to a situation where nuance is needed. Instead we should be working together, and that requires that Montpelier start treating local communities as equals who are up to the task.
Local communities are willing to partner with the state to find workable solutions. Local school boards and local community leaders represent a huge reservoir of talent, commitment, energy and knowledge that Montpelier is squandering by treating them dismissively or eliminating altogether.
In his budget address on Jan. 23 the governor spoke of wanting to “attract more families to all areas of Vermont” that won’t happen with education and tax policies that will close schools, hollow out our rural schools and their communities and put young children on long bus rides over the hills and far away. The one size fits all and bigger is better thinking of Montpelier is a disservice to all students, particularly our neediest kids — and to the people struggling to prepare them for healthy adult lives.
I urge the governor to get outside of Montpelier and go to places like Craftsbury Academy, Marlboro, Montgomery and Barnard to talk to school boards, teachers and students. He will find people and communities rich with imagination and ideas that are also grounded in reality. If we are serious about attracting more families to all areas of Vermont then our public policies must spring from a partnership between the state and local communities, one that recognizes that rural is an asset not a liability.
