This commentary is by Jim Lengel of Duxbury. He is a former deputy commissioner of education for Vermont, and has worked with governments and schools throughout the world to improve teaching and learning.
Now that Gov. Phil Scott’s education plan has stalled in the Legislature, it is time to begin the hard work of designing a system that works better for students, costs less and shares the burden of support fairly across Vermont taxpayers.
Vermonters are ready to do this work. Folks from all walks of life are suggesting positive alternatives to what the governor had proposed. The news media are full of opinions on how best to approach a redesign of our system.
Any new design must preserve what’s best about Vermont’s schools, save money and revise the tax system so that all Vermonters contribute a fair share. And the plan should be built around the folks for whom our schools are most important: our students.
Some students live in cities, some in villages, others in rural isolation. For all of them, school is the place to learn your lessons, meet your friends, compete in sports, sing in a choir, paint a picture and prepare to be a good citizen. Any new design should first and foremost provide this full experience to all of our students.
Designers should start by looking at education through a student’s eyes, from when they gingerly enter preschool until they proudly stand in the graduation line. Schools should be organized and governed to support students as they follow their educational path through an elementary school, a middle school and a high school.
Their paths, plotted on a map of Vermont, show a collection of school webs — clusters of sending and receiving schools, based not on town or county lines but on Vermont’s natural community patterns. Perhaps these webs should form the basis of our new design.
Our task is to figure out how to preserve what’s best about our schools without unfairly taxing Vermonters. The property tax that currently funds our schools falls unfairly on the backs of wage-earning Vermont families, while at the same time exempting billions of dollars worth of property from contributing to the support of public education. A broad-based and more equitable property tax needs to be part of any new education plan.
I am confident that Vermonters can design a system that works better for students, costs less and shares the burden of support fairly across Vermont taxpayers. To learn about and influence this new Vermont design for education, connect to VermontDesign.org.
