Editor’s note: This commentary is by Lisa Manning Floyd, who is director of Project Based Learning at Randolph Union High School and chair of the White River Unified District board of directors.
Last Friday, I was surprised to read the announcement that Chancellor Jeb Spaulding was recommending the closure of the Vermont Technical College in Randolph Center and both Northern Vermont University campuses. As a pragmatist, I have known for some time that adjustments needed to be made in order for our state college system to survive. There are fewer and fewer young people in Vermont and the crisis that prompted Act 46 school mergers is also real for our college system.
However, the proposal shared last week was deeply concerning. The idea of living in a Vermont where all of our state colleges, with the exception of Community College of Vermont, are clustered along our western border and in Chittenden County makes college seem even more inaccessible to young people who struggle to believe that college is an achievable goal for them. Simply looking at the funding side of the equation will not get us where we need to be. It will not provide an equitable and sustainable solution. It will not turn the tide of youth flight from Vermont, and it will not ensure that the demographics that struggle most and experience the most fragile relationships with education have equal access to higher learning.
For the past several years, Central Vermont high schools have sent seniors who need to access early college to the Vermont Academy of Science and Technology at VTC. Some of these students are passionate about tech fields, others realize that completing their last year of high school and first year of college simultaneously will decrease the financial burden college places on their families. By moving all of VTC’s operations to Williston, this program becomes inaccessible to students in our area, and instead shifts more of our state’s limited resources to Chittenden County, draining jobs, a sense of community, and opportunity from the heart of our state. If VTC is going to be centralized, I propose leaving the Randolph Center campus (the original campus) as the sole remaining location, thereby preserving the school’s heritage as well as accessibility for rural students.
As an educator and leader on my local school board I have watched as a turf war ensued over students; this battle fueled by the need for tuition dollars led schools to compete for students. High schools and colleges create challenging, relevant programming for kids to win over students and families from one another. This is ironic, because Vermont is a small state and the task of educating them is a common task. Although local boards have some control, funding all flows from the state, and Vermont is small enough that we know that the investments we make will benefit us all. The CNA, plumber, firefighter, and teacher whose education we work to make real and useful will benefit us long term if our state is one where they can live and eventually raise families. By shifting resources to Williston and shuttering NVU Johnson and Lyndon, options in New Hampshire and Massachusetts suddenly take on greater appeal for students who geographically are distant from Chittenden County or who do not want to access their education in that corner of the state.
The decisions being made will have a significant economic impact on communities already facing economic challenges — people who live in Randolph, Lyndon, Johnson and neighboring towns, who work for the VSC system, buy their groceries and pay their taxes in Vermont. Dedicated, well-educated professors who currently live in our communities will get jobs in other states and leave Vermont, with them, they will take their children, their tax revenue and their intellectual strengths that enrich our communities. Also, weighing heavily on my mind are the environmental services and food service employees who keep our colleges clean and fed, and who will likely struggle more than professors to find work in our towns and cities.
The decisions of the board of trustees, should they vote for Chancellor Spaulding’s proposal, have serious implications for the countless students who were already experiencing tremendous anxiety about their futures as they have just wrapped up their first month of remote learning as college students, or are completing their senior years of high school while at the same time looking forward to attending college in a place that they now have learned may no longer exist by the time they are ready to attend. All of this was done without input from the communities in which these colleges exist and students, parents and taxpayers which they serve. The lack of transparency and timing of this message are incredibly and needlessly cruel.
Our state colleges are owned by all of us. They are funded for the people of the state by the people of the state. Where have the voices of stakeholders been captured in this process? Where are the reports on economic impact to the communities of Lyndonville, Johnson, Randolph? Where are the plans for what will happen to these vacant buildings? We know that there are painful decisions to be made, and as a state we have accepted hard decisions together as neighbors, families, and friends, in the past, but it is unfair to expect us to accept this kind of drastic measure without the opportunity to be well informed and involved.
