As this legislative session winds down, I look at the week ahead and see many consequential bills still in play and much work to be done in the remaining days.
Today we voted on H.955, the education bill. As someone who voted “no” on Act 73 last year, it took time to get to a “yes” vote this year, but I was happy to see much of the work I’ve engaged in the last three and half years included in the bill. Having served on two State Aid for School Construction working groups, it is great to see school construction play a prominent role in the bill. Healthy, safe learning environments should be a number one priority.
The work of the School District Redistricting Task Force also takes shape in this bill. I spent much of last summer co-chairing this group, and now, the legislature and the Governor have come to the same conclusion as the task force; that Vermonters don’t have an appetite for forcing mergers but do acknowledge the need for reform. They recognize the need to close some schools, to merge some districts and to cut costs, and they are aware of the inequities that exist across the state. The task force concluded that we must move toward regionalization to save money. CESAs or cooperative education service agencies that will require the sharing of services across districts and will build economies of scale are a prominent part of the bill.
I still have deep reservations about what we are doing. A foundation formula, the new funding system in H.955, is by its very nature a “money follows student” funding system. That system in some states has become a voucher system, pure and simple, and often leads to tax-payer subsidies for wealthy families that raise costs for everybody. Vermont can’t afford this.
Attempting a fix to the system, when the undergirding is still shaky, and the very structure is riddled with inequality will be a challenge. We have a bifurcated system where not everyone is playing by the same rules, and it is inevitable that some will be favored over others. Still, this bill represents a step toward regionalization, to getting to scale and to building a more predictable, affordable system for Vermonters.