Editor’s note: This commentary is by Rep. Jim Masland, of Thetford Center, a Democrat who represents the Windsor-Orange 2 district in the Vermont House of Representatives.
[T]he old adage “It takes a village to raise a child” is a recognition that well-rounded children are not raised in isolation. They develop and become part of a community when multiple adults care about them and participate in their upbringing. And so it is with small local schools that are important to Vermont towns.
Vermont’s smaller towns are losing population. Declining student enrollment is causing per pupil spending and school taxes to soar. Inefficiencies at such a small scale contribute to the downward spiral. But while small schools are struggling, they are no less important.
In 2016 Vermont passed Act 46, a law intended to address both the financial and education quality consequences of town to town demographics. The goals of the act are admirable: namely, to address spiraling costs and to provide equity in educational opportunities to all students whether they attend a large well-resourced school (with a large faculty, expansive curriculum, extra-curricular activities and a sizable peer group) or small schools without these assets. The current glaring disparity between well-resourced and under-resourced schools must be addressed. Act 46 proponents believe that by consolidating smaller school districts into larger ones streamlined governance, efficiencies of scale and an increased talent pool will overcome those disparities while also reducing costs.
But reducing spending should never override the humanistic side of education. Kids deserve to spend their early years in a caring community close to home. Why is that so important? Why does it seem to have been brushed aside?
The core issue that Act 46 overlooks is that communities form around raising children. And that happens in schools. As children get to know each other, more often than not from a very young age, their mothers get to know each other also. They are pursuing a common goal — raising their children. Sooner or later dads are drawn in and a genuine community forms around their efforts. The school is the locus where that happens. It’s easy to see then why support for local schools remains fierce, no matter how small the town. This manifestation of local community support is often confused with the more familiar idea of local control. We hear the term local control so often that the mix-up is understandable. Unfortunately, Act 46’s more ardent supporters refer to local control as stubbornness and resistance to change.
But Act 46 goes in the wrong direction. In requiring consolidation, it negates the role of local school boards, essentially deeming them to be irrelevant, and by extension dismisses community support for local schools as well.
During the year and a half since Act 46 became law there have been numerous successful mergers. But where towns are more geographically or topographically isolated, merger mania has been elusive at best. It’s entirely likely that if the law continues without modification, long after the last remaining schools are crammed into merged districts, deep resentment will remain. It may not be because decisions on school curriculum, teacher hiring and school budgets will be decided by a union board or that those decisions may be made several towns distant. It won’t be because local communities will have lost “local control.” It will be because Act 46 has deeply undermined the community support essential to education.
One of the principal motivations behind Act 46 was to drive down school budgets. The simplest way to do that is to consolidate local schools, shuttering small ones that have high per-pupil spending. Consolidating schools will reduce staff (the most expensive part of a school’s budget), produce efficiencies of scale and greatly streamline the work of superintendents. It will put increasing faith in professional managers, but there is no guarantee that consolidation will improve student learning, particularly for younger elementary students. Neither will it engender support of parents who have likely developed a deep affinity for their local community.
If driving down school taxes were the only guidepost, then fine, close small schools. If, on the other hand, we value the ability of a local community to participate in the development of their youth through being part of the local school, than Act 46 misses a golden opportunity to address costs and education opportunity disparities and strengthen community support for education. Maintaining a high level of community support will improve student learning. Unfortunately Act 46 aggregates all power with the consolidated districts and the State Board of Education.
Had House and Senate Education committees taken a more dynamic approach, they would have acknowledged the important role of community support and then parsed out which decisions should be made by the State Board of Education, which at the regional/supervisory level and which should be retained at the local level. Getting it right now will be a difficult but not an impossible task. It will require the Legislature to get out of the box within which they have framed the problem to be solved. Without identifiable decision-making responsibilities, local boards will become hollow shells and with them the communities in which they once thrived, for governments without power are necessarily ineffective.
Given that there is little likelihood Act 46 will be repealed, the best course of action is for dedicated townspeople — the hale and hardy — to rebuild the role of school boards within the confines of the law. That will have to come from strong local initiative, stamina and very hard work. Getting it right is not an impossible task. Hope will be built on strengthening and encouraging support for local participation and engagement, particularly when such participation has real impact. Unfortunately, the increasing centralization that Act 46 created leaves very little room to maneuver. In most cases, new centralized district boards will be able to overrule the wishes of their smaller members, regardless of promises to the contrary.
It may be several years before Vermonters realize that Act 46 hasn’t accomplished its stated goals, but instead has driven us further and from equitable educational opportunities and has instead unhinged local support and dynamic community participation in the future of our youth. Maybe by that time, Vermonters will realize that it takes a school to raise a village.
