Act 46: Vermont Pushes Local School Boards To Consolidate – Two Opposing Opinions

We present to you two thoughtful and considered diverging opinions on the Act 46 school board consolidation vote.

ACT 46: Voting IN FAVOR – Eve Frankel; Chair of the Waitsfield School Board

On Tuesday, June 7^th a vote will be taking place at Waitsfield Elementary School to determine whether or not our Washington West Supervisory Union boards (Waterbury/Duxbury, Waitsfield, Moretown, Fayston, Warren, and Harwood Union High School) should participate in an accelerated merger. I am using the term accelerated merger, because we will be forced to merge within 5 years’ time if we don’t voluntarily vote in favor of this accelerated merger. An accelerated merge would allow us to have input into the process, keep our small school grants, avoid certain fiscal penalties AND pick up tax incentives every year for the next five years.

 Now there are a lot of nuances to this narrative that would make this email perilously long and in the end, I do want you to read it. Therefore, since I assume that most of you voted for me to be your Waitsfield School board representative I want to assure you of the serious and deliberative approach I have brought to this role. For almost a year, II have studied the ins and outs of Act 46 and the accelerated merger process. I appreciate the trust you have given me and I as a busy parent who works full time, understand the limited bandwidth we all have to fully comprehend the implications of such a change and the potential consequences if we don’t move forward with this merger. I have been discussing this topic in great detail at long and involved board meetings, with teachers and neighbors, with the general public and at several public informational sessions that I am sure many of you have been too busy to attend. Therefore, I felt compelled to communicate with you directly about why I and the rest of your Waitsfield school board, and all the other boards in the Washington West Supervisory Union, with the exception of Warren, are in unanimous support of this accelerated merger.

 Here is an overview of just a small sample of the reasons we are advocating for this position:

·         Act 46 is the law. We will be forced to merge in 5 years without any of the tax incentive benefits and face various penalties one of which is losing our small school grants

·         Unfortunately, our student population in the Mad River Valley is precipitously falling which is raising our per pupil costs to new heights. We will probably lose another 10 students at Waitsfield Elementary next year and this is wreaking havoc on our school budgets. Most schools in our union are feeling the same pain. We cut our school budget by 7% this year and our taxes went up 5%. We believe the pain point is going to become much worse and we have cut everything we can cut without reducing programming but sadly that harsh reality is facing us now. This accelerated merger will buffer us from some of the most painful financial decisions.

·         Our local school boards just focus on the immediate needs of our community schools. We need refocused attention on the quality of education from a PreK-12^th grade continuum. We are working in silos and it is impacting the type of innovative decisions we could be making to invest more deeply in our middle and high schools

·         I as your Waitsfield School Board member have had to also serve on the Washington West Supervisory Union board which in effect is what this proposed new governance structure would look like. I cannot express enough the burden it is for your school board members to attend these additional meetings or how difficult it is to even get 5 community members interested in the 5 board seats. We beg people to join; no one runs opposed and no one attends these public meetings. If we had a combined board with 2 representatives from each Valley town discussing important policies relevant to students in PreK-12, I have to believe we would increase participation, transparency, and engagement.

·         We worry about the idea of local control but I must ask us to rethink how we define local. Is Fayston or Moretown not local? With students diminishing and our community facing new challenges like fielding sports teams, finding PTA members, or even being able to establish academic peer groups within classrooms, we must embrace our neighbors and bring our concerns, good intentions and focus under one governance structure. I am all for local but not “hyper” local and I know that the school board members I have had the pleasure to work with from Waterbury to Warren all have the same goals in mind: how do we offer the best quality educational experience in the face of this changing landscape.

 These are only a few of the many discussion points that we have labored over the past 9 months as we have worked late into many evenings drafting our articles of agreement which can be found on the wwsu.org website.

 ACT 46: Voting IN OPPOSITION – Rick Gordon; member of the Westminster School Board

Somehow lost in the discussion of Act 46, the school consolidation law, is the question of what are the real benefits of district mergers and what are the costs.

The main arguments for merging are the short-term incentives given by the state, as expressed by the superintendent of Washington West Supervisory Union: “Even though many may have concerns about consolidation, the tax incentives offered appear to be too great to ignore.”

Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe has stated these incentives are merely offsets to cover the cost of merging. And who will pay for all these “offsets?” With no funding mechanism in Act 46, the cost of merging and all its “incentives” will fall on all of us taxpayers.

The problem Act 46 was intended to address was decreasing student numbers in Vermont and the related high per-pupil cost of education. It is unclear how merging districts would address decreasing enrollment, unless by closing schools, which, we have been assured, is not the intent of merging. So what long-term savings does consolidation offer? Certainly, with fewer districts, superintendents will have fewer board meetings, and we will save some of the tiny stipends board members receive. And having only one audit for a merged district may be less costly than audits for several smaller districts. Merging may simplify some tasks for central administration, but the real savings from merging are likely to be a rounding error compared to overall school budgets. Even the best-case scenario celebrated by state officials about the first merger in Essex-Westford touted a $200,000 annual savings on a budget of over $54 million — barely one-third of 1 percent.

The other benefits promoted by merger proponents are greater equity and expanded educational opportunities. It is hard to see how expanded opportunities could possibly cost less than more narrow offerings. And equity, which is being defined as offering similar programs in different schools within a district, would entail either: A) adding programs that other schools have (and increasing costs), or B) cutting programs a school has that offer some “advantage” other schools don’t have (thereby narrowing opportunities). In the Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, for example, will Westminster have to get rid of its highly praised garden program? Or will all the other schools in the district have to plow up a garden to be “equitable?”

But there are tremendous costs in centralizing even more power in the superintendent’s office and reducing the power of parents, teachers and principals to determine what is best for the children in your community school. Sharing a Spanish teacher with a neighboring school seems nice enough, but what happens when a superintendent of the merged districts decides the best reading teacher from one school is needed to shore up the reading program at another district school? How does a principal develop a high-functioning team when individual teachers can be assigned by the central office? What happens to collegial relations and connections with students and families?

What other decisions will be made by the central office that may simplify management for administrators but lower quality for students? For example, will schools such as Putney or Westminster, which have developed superb farm-to-table food programs, have to become part of the new districtwide, corporate food service? Will Jamaica be able to develop as much enthusiasm for the state spelling bee as Newfane has had for years? Will programs with the same title in each school be of the same quality?

The list of concerns with merging goes on: With merged districts, our local towns lose ownership of school property; participation at town meetings will drop as the school budget is voted on by Australian ballot; budget oversight will drop with a merged budget too complex and far removed for local citizens.

The quality of student learning has much more to do with the quality of educators than the name of programs in a school. One school can put on great plays because there is a theater-oriented teacher with vision and passion. Another school will be more committed to community service, or nature-based learning, or global connections. There have been few mandates from state or federal authorities that have thrilled local school officials. I don’t think having more mandates from a central office in a merged district is likely to be any more welcome in individual schools. Top-down edicts have rarely benefitted students or teachers. Removing authority from principals, teachers and parents will not improve educational quality, nor is it likely to lower educational costs.

The biggest concern is that Act 46 is a one-size-fits-all approach with little existing evidence of positive results. The state is putting all its eggs in this one basket that has costs we can identify and the inevitable unintended consequences that are harder to foresee. Let’s hope our political leaders can step back from this ill-advised gamble and let our local communities determine how best to provide quality education for our children in the most cost-effective manner.

Rick Gordon is a member of the Westminster School Board.