By Nicole Mace
Editor’s note: Nicole Mace, of Winooski, is vice chair of the Commission on the Future of Public Education and vice chair of the Winooski School District board of trustees. She has previously served as the general counsel and executive director for the Vermont School Boards Association and the director of finance and operations at the Winooski School District. She currently serves as the dean of administration for the Community College of Vermont.
The past stalemate in Montpelier over the fate of H.454 belied the strong consensus on the need for Vermont’s public education system to evolve and the urgency with which we must approach that effort.
Vermont’s education fund is projected to allocate more than $2.3 billion this year to educate 80,000 students and fund a variety of legislative initiatives. Our outcomes are not equitable. Our school buildings are falling into disrepair. The status quo is not sustainable and the fate of our public education system hangs in the balance.
Despite near-universal agreement with the above problem statement, Vermonters are not on the same page about what to do about it. Some believe we need to add income tax revenue to the education fund to take the pressure off the property tax; others believe we should close small schools; some say we need to fix our health care system (or housing system, mental health system, etc); many think we need to control spending and cost centers at the state level; others believe we just need fewer superintendents and central offices.
Based on my years of service in public education at the state and local level, I think the answer is all of the above. Changing the funding system alone will not lower costs for Vermont taxpayers. Neither will closing schools or creating larger districts. But a coordinated and carefully paced plan to address funding, governance, and quality in concert could make a positive difference.
Changing public school governance and finance at the same time significantly increases the complexity of the task and the risk of doing damage to our public schools. H.454 lays out a path for the state to take careful steps in the evolution of our public education system.
The bill, developed in partnership with education leaders and subject matter experts, recognizes the need for cost drivers to be addressed and paces the implementation of funding changes to align with governance change, class size minimums, school building improvements, and multi-tiered systems of supports. The House’s proposed funding formula provides sufficient resources more equitably than our current system, grounded in research and the Vermont context.
Our public education system has been evolving over the past several decades to respond to the realities of our demographic decline. The legislature has attempted to address concerns over increasing costs and inequitable outcomes using a variety of different policy levers — Acts 60, 68, 153, 156, 46, 173 and 127. We have a lot of lessons to learn from the implementation of those policies.
One lesson is that Vermonters care deeply about their public schools. Students and families have strong connections to the community that is built around their school. If communities feel that decisions about funding, curriculum, and programs are being made without regard for their priorities, assets and needs, support for our public schools will erode. It is important that through the process of reform, communities feel they have a voice and a stake in a reimagined public education system.
Another lesson is that policy interventions that tackle one component of our system in isolation and without strong leadership and support from the Agency of Education will falter. Despite the policy goal in Act 46 of leveraging larger districts to achieve efficiencies and improve quality, there was inadequate technical assistance provided by the Agency to school districts post-merger on how to do so.
The same is true for Act 173. The special education funding model changed, but resources to change instructional practices have been insufficient; some of the rules promulgated by the State Board seem at odds with the act’s purpose. A lack of cohesion and support from the state means critical policy objectives are not achieved.
Vermont could not afford to have this legislative session end without clarity on how our public school funding, governance and quality assurance systems will evolve. But clarity should not come at the expense of thoughtful, research-based policy that gives elected officials and the educators of this state time to involve the public in the design of these changes, and the on-the-ground support required to get it right.
H.454 recognized the complexity of the task ahead and responsibly moves us toward a more equitable and sustainable public education system.
