Make no mistake. Vermonters are a savvy, intelligent, and articulate bunch, work boots notwithstanding. This was evident at the public forum on Act 46 held last week by the legislature’s school choice caucus. Parents of school age kids and other engaged Vermonters articulated excellent reasons for opposing Act 46 mergers.
Some parents fear giving up school choice means sending their kids to schools found to be “in need of improvement” by the Agency of Education (AOE) due to poor student academic performance. Other parents don’t want to send their kids to schools with “tough” environments or schools where children with special needs (this includes gifted kids as well as kids with disabilities) are not understood and accommodated. Then there are Vermonters who just plain like what they have because they have devoted years of time and attention to creating a great school system. Their choice would be to maintain the status quo but they can’t meet the minimum number of students per district set by Act 46.
Further, there was also testimony about the loss of political control that comes with a centralized school district governance board with proportional representation. Residents of small towns will always be the voting underdogs. The prospect of a centralized board vote in favor of closing a small school in a small town where the school is the “ heart of the community” is a legitimate fear. Taking on the debt obligations, collective bargaining agreements and construction costs of other districts in addition to increased (the word used was “bloated”) costs at the administrative level raised another legitimate fear - property tax increases. One recurring comment was that the Act 46 process was “divisive”.
This testimony mirrors the sentiments of residents of Maine. Unfortunately, our legislature hasn’t learned from the lessons there. Maine enacted a mandatory reorganization statute in 2007. Like Act 46, the Maine law was intended to improve educational opportunities for students and reduce costs while improving efficiency. Like Act 46, Maine required districts to share educational costs, assets and debt. Like Act 46, Maine’s statute came with penalties, incentives and a tight time frame. Like Act 46, Maine’s statute had requirements for a minimum number of students per district. The end result is that there have been referendums and bills to repeal the Maine statute ever since. A number of districts (with large student populations) were able to vote down mergers. A few districts even defied the law altogether.
School District Reorganization in Maine
By 2014, a follow-up study in Maine indicated many towns wanted out of mergers and some (about 15 %) had initiated the complicated political process of disentangling themselves. This analysis, five years after the law took effect, “found that combined districts did achieve modest administrative savings but that the average district did not reduce overall spending or pass savings along to taxpayers.” One former Mayor of Saco, Maine (its seventh largest city) referred to the reorganization law as a total failure that “divided communities up and down the state and saved minimal money.”
Tax relief scarce in school consolidations
Despite Maine’s failed experiment next door, and the efforts of Vermont’s school choice caucus, the house and senate education committees are not interested in putting the brakes on a mandated consolidation process that is growing increasingly unpopular and impractical. This can now be fairly characterized as indifference by both house and senate leadership given how often concerns about loss of school choice have been raised.
School Choice Proponents Want Tweak to Act 46
The State Board of Education’s unexpected (any many would argue legally unsupported) decision to disallow districts to operate schools and provide school choice for the same grades threw a monkey wrench into some consolidation plans that were a logical extension of good community relationships and geographic proximity. It certainly contributed to the distrust surfacing about the supposedly impartial study group process that precedes mergers.
As discussed by savvy Vermonters at the forum here are a few questionable tactics to watch out for:
- Residents of choice towns are sometimes told that they will not really have to give up high school choice if they merge with districts that operate high schools. This is misinformation. High school choice is a lottery, not a right. It can be limited by a governance board in terms of the number of eligible students and receiving public high schools can set “capacity quotas.” High school choice is also limited to public schools. There is no independent high school lottery.
- Residents of towns with small schools are told that they can protect these by way of merger articles of agreement. Articles of agreement between merging districts are not however an ironclad protection against closing a small school. Although you can build some safeguards to prevent closing small schools into voter approved articles of agreement these articles are not cast in stone. They can be changed later by a majority vote of a governance board that has proportional representation (that is small towns have fewer votes) unless the articles specifically require an electoral vote on changing a particular provision. Blind faith in the study group is a bad idea. Pay close attention to those articles of agreement.
Finally keep in mind that unsuccessful mergers are like bad marriages; once you are in it’s very difficult to get out. Tax incentives on the other hand are a short-lived honeymoon. It is important to realize that even if the electorate in your town thinks the merger is not working you can’t get out of it unless the other school districts vote to let you out.
Best,
Barbara Crippen
Policy Coordinator
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