Our schools, in six minutes (today's testimony)
2024-04-04
Dear friend,
Good afternoon!
Vermont's education funding system is a weird combination:
Local school districts and local voters pass their own budgets, and those determine local tax rates.
But, local property taxes flow into a statewide Education Fund, which is also supplemented by other revenues, and is doled out to districts using legislative formulae and policy updates, including much-ballyhooed Act 60, Act 68, and Act 127.
Because of Vermont's much-loved "local control," your local school board (Halifax and Twin Valley) are where a lot of key decisions are made. As a legislator, I vote on statewide education policy and tax rates that affect all districts.
Where local control and the Legislature meet is via an education funding system as difficult to follow as a bowl of spaghetti, and I'm not going to try to explain it here. (If you want to learn more -- Rep. Curt Taylor of Colchester does a good job of it on his website: Public Education Funding in Vermont. I also wrote earlier in the session about why the cost of education is going up.)
With a third of Vermont school budgets voted down this March, and some of them now voted down multiple times, voters across Vermont are expressing alarm about tax hikes around 20% in some districts. There's a narrative out there that those voters are "sending Montpelier a message."
Ask a classroom teacher (like Elaine Collins) at one of the schools with a failed budget vote how it feels to go to work the next morning. They're the ones receiving the brunt of this "message."
But here in Montpelier -- we are hearing from Vermonters about education, and we are talking about it a lot.
I'm writing to you after a 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. joint hearing this morning with the House Education committee and the House Ways and Means committees.
Joint hearing with House Education and House Ways and Means committees today
I was invited, along with other legislators who don't sit on those committees and don't talk education policy on a daily basis, to sit with them and offer testimony about our districts. The request was to bring concrete ideas about what the Legislature could do.
Here's what I reported from a Windham-6 perspective:
And here's the full text...
***
Good morning. My name is Tristan Roberts, and I represent Halifax, Whitingham, and Wilmington.
Our local schools are the topic that my constituents most often want to talk about, and I often tell them, talk to the school board.
I’m grateful to be talking about education at a state level and I want to voice some of the realities from my district.
Plenty of my constituents wouldn’t mind seeing our high school close. They have quality concerns. They feel it’s shrinking anyway – there used to be two rival baseball teams. Now they’re consolidated and can’t field one. Which in turn leads to more attrition as the kid for whom playing sports was a motivation to come to school peels off.
Many of my constituents would disagree, but you could make a rational argument that this district with the size of its facilities and its student population should focus on having a great middle school, even merging that with another town, then giving them a choice for high school.
If we closed our high school, some of these kids would be an hour away from Brattleboro Union High School, and that includes going over Route 9 and Hogback in the winter – it can be a hard commute. And while some kids love BUHS, for some it’s not always a fit.
For kids in Halifax who have a choice for high school, a lot are happy going to Franklin Tech over in Massachusetts, Northfield Mount Hermon, the Academy at Charlemont, all over in Massachusetts, as well as Grace Christian School in Bennington.
Could closing the high school or looking at merging local middle schools reduce costs and help us focus on meeting kids early and getting them where they need to be? Maybe. Speaking from my Windham-6, I would invite the state to look at consolidation.
I’d be in favor of a “Blue Ribbon panel,” like the federal Commission on Base Realignment and Closures that was chartered in 1988. It could make these hard, strategic choices at the State level, and then, I would urge us to reinvest in local culture.
When Wilmington consolidated with Whitingham, they built the high school in Whitingham. The old high school in downtown Wilmington was left empty. Today, the Old School Community Center is now becoming a great resource for two ends of the population scale. It’s a magnet for seniors with pickleball, and a magnet for families with daycare, now expanded thanks to Act 76.
Taxpayers sometimes scratch their heads. The school district walked away from that building because of maintenance costs but then the town picked it up and inch by inch is working to keep up with deferred maintenance. We should be careful about pushing costs into other ledgers.
We should really look at the lack of public participation in school budgets. Maybe a statewide school district would help—if that’s where we can gather the expertise and public input required by school budgeting.
A lot of my constituents are aging out of their homes. They know that sooner or later they can’t age in place, but they would love to age in the same town they’ve lived for their lives. Could we convert the high school to housing, pickleball, and a business incubator in the shop space? There’s a bond on it. This is the kind of thing the state could uniquely look at and help finance.
In terms of paying for it all, let’s have the State look at economic development at the town level. To say, maybe this town’s demographics are no longer a fit for having this high school, but they need senior housing and childcare, and there’s a local machine shop that’s been looking for space and would love to take over the shop building and employ local high school graduates.
As we look at the State on a systems level, let’s look at the dead ends in our systems and forge new connections. On school construction, I’d like to talk more another time about the potential use of standardized, modular but human classroom designs that can be built in Vermont prefab manufacturing facilities, and the potential to control costs, speed up permitting, and create entry-level jobs.
But as I wrap up, I want to come back to quality. Because again, in the eyes of some constituents, there’s not a loyalty to the public school system, either with sending kids there or keeping tax dollars there. I think we’d be talking less about cost if people were really happy with quality.
This also hurts us because we can’t protect kids from discrimination. I’ve spoken with constituents for whom they don’t mind the money going to schools that discriminate, if that’s a collateral cost of a free-choice system. Isn’t that our accepted State policy, if we don’t respond to Carson v. Makin?
That’s unfortunate, to say the least. It reflects that we’re in danger of giving up on our Constitution and on our values. And I also want to be clear, myself and many of my constituents support investing in our public schools. Can we do that, and talk about choice where it makes sense?
I encourage us all to think big about how we can meet kids where they’re at and stick with them. In House Corrections & Institutions, I see a lot of people who didn’t finish a high school education and are more likely to be illiterate and not prepared for the job market in any way.
You asked for concrete suggestions. In summary, I want to highlight the following points:
Support for consolidation via a State Blue Ribbon panel.
Couple that with economic development looking at town assets and population.
Keep our focus on quality education. On that point, I’m excited about the Legislature’s work on BOCES. I benefited from our county-wide BOCES as a public school student in New York State. BOCES gave kids access to specialized teachers and programs, including vocational and gifted and talented programs, that a single rural school would otherwise lack access to.
To quote educational philosopher John Dewey, who was born in Burlington and who spent one year teaching in Charlotte, “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”
John Dewey historical marker in Burlington, Vermont
I'd love your feedback. The invitation to testify came up very last-minute, and I spent last night and this morning jotting down some thoughts.
How did I do describing our schools in Windham-6? What do you think of my suggestions? I'm sure there are some different perspectives out there and I'd love to hear them!
Thank you.
warm regards,
Rep. Tristan Roberts
Vermont House of Representatives
P.S. Want more on education? It's always helpful to get a refresh of the Vermont Constitution, Chapter II, Section 68:
§ 68. [Laws to encourage virtue and prevent vice; schools; religious activities]
Laws for the encouragement of virtue and prevention of vice and immorality ought to be constantly kept in force, and duly executed; and a competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town unless the general assembly permits other provisions for the convenient instruction of youth. All religious societies, or bodies of people that may be united or incorporated for the advancement of religion and learning, or for other pious and charitable purposes, shall be encouraged and protected in the enjoyment of the privileges, immunities, and estates, which they in justice ought to enjoy, under such regulations as the general assembly of this state shall direct.
And here's the link again to the testimony today.