Action Alert!

Last week the House punted on education reform when they passed H.454, which delays making any structural changes to Vermont's education system until 2029. Even worse, it puts the same folks who designed and run today's failed system in charge of building the new one. You can find our full analysis of the bill here.

The House passed their landmark-ish education reform bill yesterday. It's a mixed bag of results that punts on governance reform while making significant strides on education finance.

The Legislature's grand education transformation initiative offers a mixed bag of results but does manage to move forward historic changes to the way we raise funds to pay for schools that should introduce better transparency and accountability for taxpayers while also putting downward pressure on spending. Unfortunately the combined effect of governance and finance changes that create a very top-down educational model. 

Action Alert!

A bill that would allow legislators to exempt themselves from ethics oversight is up for a key vote on Tuesday in the Senate Government Operations Committee!

This week the Judicial branch jumped on the H.1 bandwagon, saying that if the Legislature is going to exempt anyone from ethics oversight, it should be them!

The reforms brought forward by H.474 relate to revising the candidate nomination process for major parties and making changes to campaign finance rules.

Good Morning House Ways & Means Committee,

Thank you for your work on the new foundation formula, this will be an important step forward for education policy in Vermont by reducing the complexity of the current system and providing transparency and predictability to voters about how the school budgets they vote on will impact their tax bills.

Senate Appropriations Committee, I fully appreciate that you are in the midst of crafting a state budget that meets the needs of Vermonters in an uncertain environment. That is no easy task and I thank you for stepping up to it.

Dear Senate Education Committee,

Thank you for expressing a commitment to solving the issues with our career and technical education (CTE) system that have persisted for decades. We believe that this system will be critical to the success of our workforce in the 21^st century.