Contact: david.clark@wnesu.com
Letter: VSBA says no to accountability
Brattleboro Reformer | October 24, 2017
I made the scene at the Vermont School Board's Association's sparsely attended annual meeting at the Lake Morey Resort a week or so ago, where 31 voting members, out of however many hundreds of Vermont School Directors who haven't yet been completely disenfranchised by the VSBA thru their support of the school merger cyclone, made a series of policy decisions about what's good for Vermont education.
The VSBA's Resolution's committee, because with only one exception, no resolutions were forthcoming from school boards, presented a series of "Cost Containment" proposals which seek to put as much State Bureaucracy as possible between School Boards and their schools. This was presented as "being proactive" before the Legislature, but I would submit that it was really more of an exercise in "Please hand me that gun so I can shoot myself before you do it." Cost containment sounds great until you stop and consider that in addition to simply teaching school, the schools are now the social services safety net for most of the population under the age of 18 and in many cases, up to the age of 21.
A better approach to being proactive around cost containment might just be to ask why the velocity of spending increases in recent years on the part of the Legislature has been so much steeper than the schools?
I mentioned those school board initiated resolutions a little while ago because I made them on behalf of the local boards in Windham Northeast, and they're kind of interesting. The first one was that, "In as much as the VSBA is a School Board's Association, that it include school boards as voting members." Last year the VSBA changed its bylaws to completely disenfranchise every local school board in the state in favor of supervisory unions and the new super districts. But that comes with unintended consequences.
Under the VSBA Bylaws, "Any Supervisory Union, Supervisory District or Private School may become a member by notifying the executive director of its intentions and paying the annual dues" thus becoming a regular member. Furthermore, "Each regular member in good standing shall be entitled to one vote at the annual or special association meetings." What it means is that upon application to the director and payment of dues, Bump-Stock Academy, enrollment 12, now possesses equal voting weight with South Burlington School District. Pretty nifty. The membership voted not to consider the question.
The second Resolution that I introduced should have been a no-brainer, "That the Agency of Education report to the Legislature on an annual basis the financial impacts and savings, if any by merged school districts as a result of Act 46." Well, the 31 members present didn't want to consider this one, either. So we are left with a situation in which the loudest backer of these mega-mergers, the Vermont School Boards Association, issued a very loud no to public accountability.
David M. Clark,
Westminster, Oct. 20
Gutting local control
Rutland Herald | October 19, 2017
Most of the time I simply ignore the Vermont School Boards Association, whose staunch support of Act 46, the school consolidation law, has placed them in the unusual position of actively advocating for the elimination of school boards and thus local control, perhaps the bedrock of Vermont democracy. However, their more recent shenanigans in cozying up to Phil Scott in his attempt to muscle those same school boards aside in teacher contract negotiations is likely to result in an 8 cent increase in the statewide property tax next year after his disingenuous 2 cent property tax rollback earlier this year.
Well done on the part of the VSBA — because for reasons I’m about to explain, I now consider it dangerous.
This one-time service organization, which has morphed into an advocacy group, is about to employ a Trojan horse maneuver to further marginalize those same school boards it is supposed to represent through the adoption of a series of resolutions that it is asking its vastly diminished membership to endorse at its annual meeting on Oct. 19, which I will be attending.
Let’s take a peek at a couple:
“Authorize the creation of school innovation zones to exempt supervisory unions and/or districts from specific regulation and policy in order to create world-class education systems that can be scaled across the state.” While this might sound like the shining castle on the hill, the language is straight out of the Koch brothers-supported Innovative Schools Network playbook, and it would relieve those “systems” of such burdensome obligations as voter oversight of their spending and even requirements such as providing special education, which is a significant cost driver in our public schools.
Here’s another:
“ The VSBA will work with the Agency of Education, the Vermont Superintendents’ Association and Vermont. Association of Business Officials to establish guidelines for the appropriate amounts and uses of reserve funds and the treatment of budget surplus amounts.” You already know what those reserve funds and budget surpluses do: They replace the roof on your school and in many districts smooth out the worst of the bumps in the local education tax rate, making the reward for traditional Vermont frugality simply more onerous state mandates.
There are six of these resolutions, all written by the Vermont School Boards Association’s resolutions committee, and all of which are designed to delegitimize, defund and discredit local school boards and are really nothing more than a subterfuge for the real agenda of the Koch brothers’ American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its spinoffs.
It is my intention to offer a resolution of my own from the floor next Thursday, and it’s a simple one: “That the Agency of Education annually report out to the Legislature the savings realized by the merged districts as a result of merger.” I think this needs no explanation.
You will find a much fuller discussion of these VSBA-sponsored resolutions, their origins and their implications on the website of the Alliance of Vermont School Board Members (AVSBM.org). Please take a few more minutes and have a look.
DAVID M. CLARK
Westminster