This commentary is by Lauren Morando Rhim of Norwich. She is a public school parent, former school board member and an advocate for students with disabilities.
I have closely followed the discussion on transforming Vermont’s education system and wholeheartedly agree that change is necessary. I loved growing up here, and I hope it will be viable for my children and grandchildren to call Vermont home. But, for the state to remain attractive for generations to come, we must figure out how to improve the quality and affordability of our public schools.
To continue to operate an expensive system that does not generate the outcomes our students deserve is a lose-lose scenario, and nowhere is this more apparent than for our students with disabilities.
Luckily, the legislature and the Agency of Education already have a tool to leverage to improve outcomes and reduce costs — Boards of Cooperative Education Services, or BOCES.
Rather than merging schools, districts, or supervisory unions, we should invest our energies in creating BOCES to centralize specialized resources and expertise and realize economies of scale for educating students with disabilities regionally. It is an approach leveraged by dozens of other states, and we can implement it in a way that can work for our unique context while also learning from the experiences of states like Massachusetts and New York.
Multiple factors drive education costs, but some of these, such as our wonderful small towns and schools, make Vermont special. However, as a school board member, I witnessed the inefficiencies of small schools and boards navigating the complexities of special education, especially for our students who require significant support. And, across the state, the percentage of students qualifying for services is increasing rapidly, exceeding national averages.
For instance, we identified more students as eligible for special education services relative to national averages before the pandemic (17.9% compared to 14.4%), and the trajectory has continued post-pandemic, climbing to nearly one in five students. Today, Vermont ranks seventh in the nation in terms of the highest proportion of students with disabilities. Not counting local dollars, we spent $437.5 million on special education in fiscal year 2023.
If these services and expenditures led to strong outcomes, I would be first in line to vociferously defend Vermont as an exemplar, but unfortunately, this is not the case. While researchers estimate that the vast majority of students with disabilities (~85%) can achieve grade-level standards when provided appropriate supports, we generally see a 30-40% point average gap between our students with and without disabilities.
We are in the bottom third of all states for grade four reading and math on this subgroup’s most recent National Assessment of Education Progress. Given what I have always perceived to be a deep commitment to education by Vermonters, these outcomes are incredibly disheartening, especially given the quality and experience of our teachers and low student-teacher ratios.
Even more concerning, far too many of our students with disabilities are being referred to private placements in which they have little opportunity to access the general education curriculum, interact with peers without disabilities, and for which there are few quality controls.
Last year, nearly 5% (792 of 16,152) of Vermont’s students with disabilities qualified for extraordinary cost reimbursement. A disproportionate number of them are educated in independent or therapeutic settings. Recent scandals at the LiHigh School in Poultney and the I.N.S.P.I.R.E. school for Autistism located in Brattleboro, which revealed egregious academic and fiscal control failures, demonstrate that, as currently structured, the state is ill-equipped to monitor these programs effectively.
Luckily, there is a better model, and I was encouraged when the legislature passed a bill during the last legislative session supporting the creation of BOCES. Decades ago, the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act anticipated that it would be hard for small, largely rural districts to effectively educate students with disabilities, especially those who would require more intensive supports.
The IDEA encourages states to create regional intermediaries to, among other functions, centralize aspects of special education to ensure small districts can access highly specialized support that a small number of students require while introducing efficiencies across regions.
BOCES can take on different characteristics depending on the needs of the member districts but examples of the types of functions they can coordinate include professional development, applying for federal and state grants, addressing special education teacher and related services personnel shortages, providing or ensuring access to high-quality regional therapeutic settings and procuring and providing training related to assistive technology.
They could also provide critical guidance to parents navigating tuitioning options, a challenging proposition for many parents of students with disabilities. As the U.S. Department of Education shifts more responsibilities to states, it will become increasingly crucial for the AOE and districts to intentionally build and sustain their technical capacity to deliver on the requirements of federal statutes such as the IDEA.
I hope the Legislature and the AOE lean into the tools at their disposal to address some of Vermont’s most pressing problems rather than creating a whole new set that will inevitably arise in an ill-informed and rushed effort at wholesale consolidation and mergers.
