Superintendents and school board leaders representing 23 supervisory unions in Vermont flocked to Montpelier last week, seeking guidance on how to begin tackling Act 46 – the new education governance reform law which calls for larger school districts to be formed.
The new law, which can be seen here, pushes the state’s 277 school districts to partner with nearby districts in order to forge larger school systems of at least 900 pupils.
Another round of meetings will be held in the near future to help more school systems navigate the new law with guidance from the Agency of Education, the Vermont School Boards Association (VSBA), the Vermont Superintendents Association and the Vermont Principals’ Association, said Vaughn Altemus, education finance manager for the state’s Education department, on Wednesday.
There were not quorums of school boards, so the meetings were not public meetings, said Stephen Dale, executive director of the VSBA, and exactly which communities which came to Montpelier were not disclosed.
Representatives of supervisory unions came from all corners of the state, said Dale.
“What we found was that people were serious about what they can do to try to achieve the objectives,” of the initiative, he said.
School leaders across the state realize the new law aims to tackle some very real issues in Vermont – including having the lowest staff-to-student ratio in the country and one of the highest average per-pupil spending rates nationally, said Dale. In 2014, voters rejected the highest number of school budgets statewide in more than a decade, faced with rising property taxes.
Vermont faces a continuing decline of student population, down more than 24,000 since 1997. That trend is projected to continue through at least 2030.
“People are in a headset of ‘Let’s try to figure this out,’” Dale added.
“One thing we were struck with is that Vermont is a very diverse place…There are districts and supervisory unions that have a fairly clear task ahead of them without a lot of logistical complexity that can move forward fairly quickly,” he said. “There are other places where people are anxious to take action, but there are tremendous logistical challenges.”
The new law incentivizes the merger of much smaller districts into large ones by providing tax breaks and making grants available. The more generous bonuses are designed to go to those districts which move quickly, voting on new districts by mid-2016. The law also has built in mechanisms to pull away from subsidies previously given to small schools and schools that are losing enrollment, which were previously funded by the state.
Districts which do not voluntarily move into the called-for unified larger school systems can be restructured by the State Board of Education after 2018 if they do not meet state educational quality standards.
“There are immediate incentives and some of the buffers that people have had around small school protections will be going away, so the combination of the eventuality of a state plan, the reality of incentives and disincentives, if you will, obviously changes the intensity or the urgency of the conversation,” said Dale.
He said, “Whether people decide that it’s enough to act or not remains to be seen, but there’s a lot of interest on the part of school districts.”
Ken Page, executive director of the Vermont Principals Association, also took part in last week’s meetings, and said Wednesday, “Many teams said that they have come to the conclusion that they are uniquely poised to pursue the accelerated mergers, and if this is ultimately going to be the result, they thought it might be worth pursuing now.”
Fewer school boards and administrators are intended to save districts money, and the mergers will offer more flexibility to move staff and share resources, early adopters and advocates have said.
Goals of the law are to find cost savings through economies of scale and ways to offer more equity in schools through larger school systems with expanded learning opportunities.
The Agency of Education has launched tools on its website to help with the conversations beginning all over Vermont, and to help communities understand what the recently signed law means for their schools.
Merger study in Essex
The school districts of Essex Junction, Essex Town and Westford within the Chittenden Central Supervisory Union are “studying the possibility of a merger,” said Altemus, of the Agency of Education that would be called the Essex Westford Community School District.
A committee began meeting in March to consider forming a Regional Education District, or RED, and recently ruled in favor of pursuing a merger.
“I expect that they would be the first under Act 46,” said Altemus.
An early financial analysis showed that unifying districts could save the three communities $1.3 million in property taxes.
A meeting of the RED committee is set for Thursday, June 25th, in the Essex High School Library, from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
Brian O’Regan, the study committee’s facilitator, said on Wednesday, “We are still in process, so the report is not done, and will be finalized tentatively following the June 30 meeting.”
A public opinion survey on the RED for those communities can be seen here.
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