[G]ov. Phil Scott’s proposal to automatically cover college tuition for members of the Vermont National Guard, which had been stripped from an education bill approved by the Senate Tuesday, lives on in the House-passed budget bill.
The bill passed by the Senate Senate contains a number of education-related provisions that will fix issues that have been snagging the roll-out of the universal pre-kindergarten law, preventing an interstate school district with Massachusetts and making students vulnerable to college closings.
Absent from the list of changes was the Guard tuition plan, which failed to make it past the final cut because the Education Committee couldn’t agree on how to pay for it without raising taxes.  However, a bill (H.72) incorporating that provision is included in the Appropriations bill passed by the House.
Guard officials have said the plan, similar to those in other New England states, would help in recruiting young members who might otherwise look to other nearby states.
In defending the Senate’s action, Sen. Philip Baruth, D/P-Chittenden and chairperson of the Education Committee, said: “We don’t have a couple million for a new program because the governor wants to cut K-12.”
Baruth said, “We intended to pay for it with a limitation on student tuition portability within Vermont or contiguous states that would have created $5 million that wasn’t leaving the state.”
Of the students who receive tuition assistance from the Vermont Student Assistance Corp., about 30 percent take that money to a college out of state — amounting to about $5 million spent on “student portability.”
Baruth’s panel looked at requiring those grants to be spent in-state only, or within 25 miles of the border. VSAC lobbied strongly against the approach and eventually won over enough of the committee, but that meant killing the National Guard program, he said.
“The long and short of it is after their advance campaign, I had three senators in favor of the approach and three against. My informal rule is if something can’t get four votes it doesn’t move out of committee, so we stripped those two sections,” Baruth said.
Baruth said the pre-K piece was the most significant part of the catch-all education bill, titled S.257.
“The most important thing is the revamping of pre-K which basically removes the dual oversight that is tangled, and separates it out,” he said, explaining that the Agency of Education will run public programs while the Agency of Human Services runs private programs.
Under Act 166, the universal pre-K law, both agencies are responsible for making sure 3- and 4-year-old children get a voucher for 10 hours of early education delivered by a qualified teacher 35 weeks a year. The joint administration has caused a series of hurdles for school districts, superintendents and private providers.
On top of clearly delineating between public and private oversight, the new law will change the way funding is administered. All funding with go through the education agency, with private schools billing the agency directly and public school system adding pre-K students to their rolls, which will also lower tax rates.
“That eliminates the need for everybody to bill through their home district, so it simplifies and makes one uniform billing process. I think that is to the good and the money saved can strengthen the program,” Baruth said.
The bill also opens the way for students in parochial schools and homeschoolers to receive state stipends for college courses; creates safeguards for sudden college closings; gives the green light to an interstate school district with Massachusetts; and prevents towns from paying tuition for students going to school in other countries. Limited tuitioning for schools in nearby states and Quebec is still allowed as long as those places reciprocate by sending students to Vermont schools.
Coming in the wake of the closing of Burlington College, the bill lays out specific steps a college must take if they find themselves in financial trouble. It gives authority to the State Board of Education to make sure failing institutions continue to take care of student records or face a lawsuit in Superior Court.
There is also a line in the bill expressing the Legislature’s support for an interstate school district to be created between Stamford, Vermont, and Clarksburg, Massachusetts.
The legislation is now being taken up in the House Education Committee, whose members are considering adding ethnic studies requirements and support for health care changes at University of Vermont.
Clarification: An earlier version of this story did not include information that the National Guard tuition plan had been incorporated into the appropriations bill passed by the House.Â