This commentary is by Chuck Lacy of Jericho, a member of the Mount Mansfield Union School Board.
The ancient Burlington Technical Center building will soon be demolished due to PCB contamination. This unfortunate event gives Burlington first dibs on designing the future of technical education in Vermont.
Instead, the Burlington School Board is making a $30 million to $50 million bet that things will stay the same and that students will continue commuting up to 50 miles a day for 132 minutes of daily instruction.
The proposed new building will be Chittenden County’s biggest investment in technical education for maybe forever. I wish they would think more about it.
By law, the Burlington School District serves the technical education needs for nine high schools (alongside the Essex Westford School District). But the system runs on tuition. This year, two-thirds of the Burlington Technical Center students come from outside Burlington.
The tuition following these students covers two-thirds of the cost of running the Burlington Technical Center (with some multiyear averaging to smooth things out).
The high cost of the planned Burlington Technical Center building will push tuition beyond viability. To maintain enrollment, the Burlington School Board plans to subsidize per-student tuition paid by Mount Mansfield Union and Champlain Valley Union and the other high schools (as made clear at the April 27 Burlington School Board meeting).
This is not a debate for and against technical education or whether Burlington Technical Center is a good school. I’m here to say the technical center is a great school. The faculty is excellent. They can be rightly proud. The evidence is in positive evaluations from students, parents and employers. The successful emergency relocation of the tech programs out of the old building demonstrated extraordinary resilience and commitment.
But running a great school is not the same as meeting the needs of a region. Greatness recognizes the need for change.
Students in Chittenden County are 60% less likely to take technical education than students in the rest of Vermont. Chittenden County students going to tech are richer than the students who don’t.
The current technical education model of high tuition, low participation, and low accessibility is not good enough. Mount Mansfield high school students starting at Burlington Technical Center miss 75% of their high school classes to get 132 minutes of daily technical instruction.
Most Burlington tech programs overlap with the programs at Essex tech (some programs are stronger at Burlington and others are stronger at Essex). The Burlington and Essex school boards are not addressing the current unnecessary program duplication while Burlington (on its own) is considering even more program duplication.
The Burlington School Board promises to work toward an actual regional plan (as required by law) but it is designing the new Burlington Technical Center building first. Burlington recently completed a “comprehensive local needs assessment” for the region without talking to superintendents, principals, guidance counselors, or asking students in sending high schools about their technical education interests. The plan shows little evidence of meaningful conversations with employers. (Completing the plan involved 259 pages of instructions from the Vermont Agency of Education where three people will read submissions for compliance.)
We will always have some centralized tech programs. But most Burlington Technical Center programs and many areas of job growth don’t involve heavy equipment.
Tuition-paying high schools have a choice. They can bus students long distances or they can use their tuition money to hire their own technical education faculty.
The tuition-paying schools in Chittenden County are already developing technical education approaches that work better for them. Examples abound. High schools in the lead already send proportionally fewer students to the tech centers. It is a shame the high schools are working on their own with so much faculty expertise residing at the tech centers.
The Burlington plan to subsidize tech education for wealthier sending school districts signals a plan that needs more work. While Burlington hopes the project will be rescued with grant money, outside money does not address the core issue. Grant money for the replacement Burlington Technical Center building as currently conceived does not increase the number of students receiving technical education. It does not address lack of access. It rewards duplication. Funders should support a future facing plan that addresses these issues.
I am an advocate for technical education. I want more students to experience the joy of learning through inquiry and the confidence that comes with skill development. I want more tech faculty in all nine high schools. We don’t bus kids across the county to take chemistry, English or physical education. We don’t need to do it for engineering or digital media, either.
We need to anticipate the 21st century before committing to a 50-year building investment. Tech centers should have centralized programs when necessary and decentralized programs when possible. We need more tech faculty serving students where they are — in their own high schools.
Faculty expertise in the tech centers should be front and center to the effort. With lower enrollment, many of our high schools have space available.
Burlington is proceeding alone on a risky and expensive long-term bet. This could end badly.
