This commentary is by Cheryl Charles, Ph.D., chair of the Westminster School Board, initially elected in 2016 in the early days of implementation of Act 46. She has served continuously since then — first on Westminster’s board; then as vice chair of the forcibly merged Windham Northeast school board for the towns of Athens, Grafton and Westminster; and now on the reinstated Westminster town school board.
Please don’t make it harder than it already is. This is my plea to the Vermont Legislature about proposed changes in a Vermont law that currently provides a way by which townspeople can withdraw their town from a school district.
Westminster has succeeded. And yet it was in no way easy.
Westminster’s townspeople petitioned and voted to withdraw from the Windham Northeast Union Elementary School District in January 2021. The vote was subsequently ratified by the voters in Athens and Grafton on March 2. Representatives of the elementary district, the Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, and the town of Westminster presented written and oral testimony to the Vermont State Board of Education in support of Westminster’s request to withdraw.
On April 21, the board voted its conditional approval after discussion, additional questions, and emphasis on the criterion in the law “that the students in the withdrawing member will attend a school that is in compliance with the rules adopted by the Board pertaining to educational programs.”
We were asked to return before the State Board in September 2021 to demonstrate compliance with additional requirements. The State Board’s actions drew out the process even longer than necessary, so it will culminate on July 1, 2022, when locally elected townspeople will once again have responsibility and authority for the town school district.
We gathered the evidence to demonstrate that we could provide quality educational programming as required by law. It required rigor, research and dedicated effort. Many steps were taken and some thousands of dollars in legal fees were spent.
If the process is made more complicated, it will be even more difficult and costly, and not justifiably so. The current law works.
The proposed revisions to 16 V.S.A. § 724 require a new study committee. At face value, that would seem a good idea. Theoretically it would provide the opportunity for local citizens to investigate the pros and cons of such withdrawal in advance of taking the request for the consideration to the State Board of Education.
However, based on my direct experience with study committees and Act 46 since its implementation began in 2016, I can say clearly and emphatically that study committees are largely a time-consuming, distracting and often damaging waste of time.
I sincerely believe the legislators are well-intended as they consider proposed revisions in the law. However, the results — with a host of cascading unintended consequences — are worth considering carefully before this latest round of proposed impediments is put into law.
To illustrate, I was a member of the initial Act 46 consolidation study committee formed in the spring of 2016 in our supervisory union. The committee met over a six-month period. As part of the committee’s analysis, it found there would be no significant cost savings were the consolidation to occur, and no obvious additional efficiencies or equities.
On March 7, 2017, the vote to merge failed overwhelmingly in three of the four towns.
As a result, the next step was for another study committee to be formed. We were charged with developing what was called an Alternative Governance Proposal within the parameters of Act 46. Board members and townspeople took this process seriously, as we had with the initial Act 46 Consolidation study committee. The process was even more arduous than that of the initial study committee, and spanned nine months.
We submitted our proposal to the state Agency of Education by the December 2017 deadline. By 2018, we were involved in testimony before the State Board of Education on two occasions in support of our Alternative Governance proposal, and held a personal meeting with then-Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe in 2018.
Ultimately, the recommendation of the acting secretary of education who replaced Holcombe was ignored by the State Board of Education: Westminster, Athens and Grafton were forcibly merged into the newly created Windham Northeast Union Elementary School District in November 2018.
The merged board resulted in fewer board members from each town. Energy, expertise, volunteerism and a sense of community were dissipated as we worked conscientiously to serve the students in all three towns — a total of around 250 students, not the recommended number of 900 suggested in Act 46. We could have been focused on reinforcing the synergies and possibilities within the 1,100-student supervisory union.
What was the State Board thinking in forcing this merger? Nothing evident that would be consistent with the intent of the law, and nothing that resembled the recommendations of either of the study committees that led us to this point. The State Board’s decision seemed arbitrary at best, demonstrably insensitive to the will of the voters, and in willful disregard of the work of two consecutive study committees.
Good-willed, knowledgeable and dedicated citizens have spent years of our volunteer time to comply with the intent of Act 46. This is in addition to the multiple meetings, sometimes several each week, I and others participate in as part of our responsibilities as locally elected school board members.
Specific to Act 46, we have formed study committees, produced detailed reports and plans, held informational meetings with voters, and held elections. In turn, the State Board of Education has ignored the votes of the citizens, ignored the results of the study committees, and imposed significant barriers at every step.
This latest proposal to revise current law was initially poised to take even more authority away from local citizens while further empowering the State Board. That risk may be remedied by new language being considered that prevents the State Board from having veto power over townspeople’s votes to withdraw. If so, that is good.
Once again my plea: Please don’t make it harder than it already is.
