A Slow Start for the Commission on the Future of Education

The Commission on the Future of Public Education has recently begun its legislatively man­dated 18-month lifespan. The commission was established by  Act 183[1] of 2024 in response to wide­spread negative public reaction to the 13.9 percent statewide property tax increase needed to support FY25 public education spending.

The thirteen-member Commission has met once and its seven-member Steering Committee has met twice. The next full Commission meeting will be held August 26.[2] All work to date has been organizational and procedural. No substantive discussions or decisions have occurred.

The Commission is tasked with making recommendations, at a minimum, including:

  1. governance, resources, and administration;
  2. the physical size and footprint of the education system;
  3. the role of public schools; and
  4. the education finance system.

A report of the Commission’s preliminary findings and recommendations is due on or before December 15, 2024. A report with the Commission’s final findings and recommend­ations is due on or before December 1, 2025, and proposed legislation to advance any rec­ommend­a­tions for the education funding system is due on or before December 15, 2025.

Eight commission members are representatives of education advocacy groups, three are members of the executive branch and two are legislators. The Commission and the steering committee are chaired by Meagan Roy, a former superintendent and the former chair of the Census-based Funding Advisory Group.

Commission and steering committee meetings are streamed live on the web and are recorded for later viewing, enabling interested outsiders to follow the commission’s work. Interest in the commission’s work is high. The commission’s July 15 meeting was attended by 61 interested individuals—a remarkable number—in addition to Commission members and Agency of Education support staff.

The Commission’s tasks are daunting. In effect, the Legislature has asked the Commission to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the structure and functions of the public education organ­ization in Vermont and to recommend improvements, particularly for the education finance system.

Naming a study group is a typical legislative response to a looming complex public policy problem. Vermont’s part-time legislators have no staff and no resources to address issues such as education finance, making calling on panels of experts an easy and sometimes effective solution.

Some observers have questioned whether the Commission is capable of accomplishing the goals set for it. Because Commission is dominated by self-interested advocacy groups it may never be able to reach consensus on far-reaching reforms. Most Commission members have full-time jobs, leaving little time to conduct deep investigations. And, some critics wonder if any institu­tion as complex as Vermont public education is capable of self-reform.

The Legislature took a different approach the last time education finance was seen as a major political problem, appropriating $250,000 to hire an outside edu­cation consult­ing firm to conduct a thorough review of the administrative structure and cost centers in public edu­cation. The result was the “Picus Report,” a 291-page in-depth analysis published in 2016 which contained several recommendations.[3]

The current commission’s charge includes an option to hire a consultant, though not at the cost or scope of the consultants who produced the Picus Report.

The Picus Report estimated “an adequate fund­ing level” for Vermont public education would be approx­imately ten percent less than what was spent in FY2015. The principal recom­mend­a­­tions included:

  • increasing Vermont’s lowest-in-the-nation student:teacher ratio,
  • reducing Vermont’s abnormally high proportion of students identified as needing special education,
  • increasing resources for English language learners,
  • increasing centralization of supervisory unions while decreasing the number of administrators,
  • eliminating use of instructional aides at all education levels.

These recommendations are largely unaccomplished, with one significant exception. In Act 173 of 2018[4] the legislature man­dated far-reaching changes to special education funding and service delivery procedures, one of which aimed to diminish Vermont’s heavy reliance on instructional aides. Whether the funding changes will reduce Vermont’s abnormally high proportion of stu­dents identified as having special needs is unclear. Act 173 implemen­tation is several years behind schedule due first to the covid pandemic and later by slow follow-through from the Agency of Education.

 

[1] https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2024/Docs/BILLS/H-0887/H-0887%20As%20Passed%20by%20Both%20House%20and%20Senate%20Unofficial.pdf

[2] https://education.vermont.gov/calendar/commission-fopevt-05-26-24

[3] https://ljfo.vermont.gov/assets/docs/education/adequacy/17e5b10a4a/VT-EB-Analysis-20.1.pdf

[4]https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2018/Docs/ACTS/ACT173/ACT173%20As%20Enacted.pdf

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