[V]ermont’s school district consolidation law, Act 46, may have been the state’s most controversial school reform in decades.
But an internal government document suggests the state’s top education official believes it hasn’t gone nearly far enough.
In a draft policy memo dated Jan. 1, administration officials, led by Education Secretary Dan French, outline a radical idea for Vermont’s schools. In it, they suggest consolidating all school districts into one, abolishing the State Board of Education, and establishing four regional administrative entities, each with its own school board and superintendent, to oversee schools in the area.
Under this system, according to the document, titled “Designing our Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Vermont’s Education System,” students would have universal public and private school choice. Budgets would be developed by regional superintendents and submitted to the secretary of education, who would create an overall education budget. That budget would then go before the General Assembly, which would have the final say over how much money schools receive. Regional school boards, with the approval of the secretary, would decide whether to close schools.
According to the memo, an “education policy design team” was formed in fall 2018 to design a “policy blueprint” for reform efforts. Its members included the secretaries of Commerce and Community Development, Digital Services, Education and Human Services, the commissioner of Labor, and staff from the governor’s office.
For context, the document repeats oft-repeated concerns – in particular, by Gov. Phil Scott – about Vermont’s schools. It cites statistics about steadily declining enrollments, rising costs, and the state’s extremely low staff-to-student ratio.
“Vermont’s education delivery will need to adapt to the current demographic context to be successful,” the document states. “We will need to redesign an education delivery system not just make incremental adjustments.”
The document was not publicly available and was leaked to VTDigger. Officials with the governor’s office and the agency acknowledged the document existed and that such conversations had occurred, but hastened to add that there were no plans yet to propose such a reform.
Rebecca Kelley, the governor’s spokesperson, said the document was not a “policy paper” but instead a “conversation fielder.”
On VPR’s Vermont Edition Friday, the governor said he’d asked French to “be creative, to be bold” in bringing new ideas to the table.
“I don’t think we’re ready for anything like that at this point,” Scott said of the single-district idea. But he said he gave the secretary “great credit for at least bringing this up and talking about it. Because the way we’re doing it right now doesn’t work.”
And Ted Fisher, an agency spokesperson, said the document – and a follow-up expected out Friday – should not be considered “policy proposals” but “collaborative efforts to imagine a new system focused on quality and equity.”
“The secretary is leading a visioning process to reimagine the future structure of our education system,” Fisher said. “This is a strategic exercise internal to the Agency of Education designed to surface opportunities to create a more coherent and integrated approach to delivering education and related human services.”
Fisher added that a second version of the document would be ready on Friday with “significant updates, more developed policy proposals and additional materials,” and he offered to share that document publicly then.
State Board of Education Chair Krista Huling said she hadn’t seen the document and didn’t feel comfortable commenting until she had read it. Bill Mathis, the board’s vice chair, said he also hadn’t seen it and that it was “disconcerting” that discussion on the subject had gone as far as it had without wider input and a more public process.
“This comes as a surprise and government should not have surprises,” he said.
The document itself appears to explain why so few people were involved in its development, by way of a discussion on the difference between a “representative” and “design” strategy. A representative strategy, it states, “is often used when a solution to a problem already exists, and when affirmation of stakeholder values or current practices supersedes the need for change.”
A design strategy, meanwhile, “is more useful when there is a need to create a new policy solution.” In that case, “a small design team is assembled with the goal of rapidly creating a viable design prototype.”
Legislative leaders said they had gotten wind, secondhand, of discussions of a statewide school district, but then been reassured by French that conversations were entirely theoretical and would not be brought forward during the legislative session.
Rep. Kate Webb, D-Shelburne, the new chair of the House Education committee, said French had characterized the conversations as “futuristic thinking.”
“It wasn’t anything that he was interested in pursuing at this point,” she said.
Webb said she had heard a white paper existed on the subject but that she hadn’t seen it or had access to it.
“The secretary is really thinking about a future of education. I guess it would be my hope that it would be a very distant future,” she added.
Sen. Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden, the chair of the Senate Education committee, also said he had been assured that a statewide school district was, at this point, simply a “thought experiment.”
“He’s new. He’s trying his best to think things through from the beginning, as opposed to coming in and just patching up the tires. So I give him credit for that,” he said.
Read the draft document below:
AoE single school district policy paper (Text)
And the updated, 32-page draft memo released by the Agency on Friday: