The Issue is Education
For the 18 years that I have been in the legislature, I have been dealing with the subject of education. Before I was a Senator, I worked in education in both the private and public sector. I have a Masters in Educational Administration and have worked as a coordinator of special education services. One of the reasons that I decided to run for the Vermont Legislature was that I am totally committed to public education. I believe that it is the public school system that has made America a great country. Making sure that all students have access to high quality education is the key to the future. Well-educated citizens know how to think, they know their history, and they understand their social background, they think about their future and how to build a good future for themselves and their families. Well-educated citizens have the knowledge and confidence to invent new products, start new businesses, be great employees and to be active participants in their communities, be it as a basketball coach, a volunteer firefighter, a selectboard member or a member of a local theater group.
When I ran for the legislature in 1992, there were stunning disparities in Lamoille County between our schools. There was constant complaining that we just didn't fund the formula properly. That's the truth, it was not funded properly; there was no incentive to fund it properly. If you were a community with property wealth, why should you support general fund dollars going to some other community for education when that meant your community would have access to fewer general fund dollars for other projects? Without a formula that put all communities in the same boat that had the same impact on all communities when money was added, or subtracted you wouldn't have a formula that was "funded" properly.
Along came a major court case and the Vermont Supreme Court found that according to the Vermont Constitution, the state has to supply education and that it was not constitutional for a child's access to education to depend on the wealth (or non-wealth) of the town in which they lived. Enter Act 60.
Many folks think that Act 60 came out of nowhere and happened very fast. That's not the truth. There had been ongoing work on the issue of funding education for years. Many elected officials wanted to have a formula that was based on an individual's ability to pay, others wanted more broad based taxes, some thought charter schools would fix it all. The multiple pieces of Act 60 were all there and just waiting to be assembled. The court decision opened the door for a new formula and Act 60 arrived. Love it or hate it, Act 60 did succeed in putting all communities in the same boat.
A History Lesson on Act 60 and Act 68
Act 60 was a combination of terribly convoluted "paying on your income", a statewide property tax and general fund dollars. Just like all previous education formulas in Vermont and like all formulas I have seen from other states, it's complex. By the time all the special interests and special concerns are taken care of, nothing is simple anymore. Act 60 also created the hated sharing pool, or as it became know the "shark pool" and the Common Level of Appraisal (CLA).
The sharing pool was the method by which a school that was spending over the statewide average had to pay in more to the education fund. It was a significant penalty and deterrent to increasing your spending over the state average. It worked and it was hated.
The Common Level of Appraisal is the formula by which houses of equal value, pay the same property tax if their schools are spending the same amount of money. It serves to keep all communities and their property appraisals up to date. If a town simply stopped updating their appraisals, the total value of the property in their community would stop growing and they would pay less into the education fund with the statewide property tax. That wouldn't be fair to all the other towns. If there is one part of Act 60 and now Act 68 that disengages school spending from your taxes, I think it is the common level of appraisal.
I believe that this year, just like last year, we will see many schools keep their budgets level or at only a 1% or 2% increase. A school board can level spend and due in part to the Common Level of Appraisal see a 15% increase in their tax rate.
Next came Act 68, brought to you by Governor Douglas and the republican house. There was so much anger at the shark pool and a statewide property tax that the republicans took their swing at the ball. The sharing pool was gone, but the CLA remained. With Act 68 there is a small penalty if you are a really high spending school. What happens now is that schools pass their budgets, the bill is sent to the state and the money is sent back. There are little or no spending controls on public education in this formula. There was a great deal of talk and study of a gross receipts tax, but that never really got any traction. It is interesting to note that most states that had a gross receipts tax have since repealed them.
That brings us to today. In Vermont we are among the highest per pupil spending in the country at $14,000 per student. We have one of the lowest student/teacher ratios in the country at 11to 1. Yes our students perform well on standardized tests. However, when you look at the average Vermont student and you look at the rest of America, I don't think it is fair to compare Vermont to New York or Illinois where there are major urban areas with hundreds or thousands of children living in poverty that we really can't understand. Yes we have poor families and students who come to school hungry. But are we really like those large urban areas? When you compare Vermont students to suburban students, we come out about the same. I believe that for the amount of money we spend on education, we are not getting the results that we should.
Where Do We Go From Here?
We have a lot of really great schools and great teachers and great students. It's easy to forget all of that when we get into the frustration of talking about paying for education. Both Act 60 and Act 68 have two parts; quality and finance. I want to talk about both of those parts and how I would improve them as your governor.
We are all concerned about the quality of education and here in Vermont we have some excellent things in place to support and measure quality. The Vermont Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities works well. We comply with No Child Left Behind with all of the testing, but we have attempted to minimize the amount of testing we do. If we look at our tests scores, we see that there is wide fluctuation around the state and we need to address that issue.
Vermont has been a leader in special education and mainstreaming all of our special students. There have been and will continue to be many benefits from this policy, not only for the special needs students, but for all students and teachers. We have all come to understand much better the needs of special folks and to learn that they aren't really much different than all of us.
Now I will speak the unspeakable, I do not believe that all special needs students belong in the regular classroom all of the time. We are asking our teachers and students to deal with distractions that are not constructive to anyone in the room. We have developed a system of aids that have increased the number of folks in our schools, but have not necessarily improved the educational opportunities for students. Certainly there are students who benefit from a one to one aid and can work in the regular classroom to their benefit and not to the disruption of the class.
I believe we have failed to give our classroom teachers the professional development they need to deal with the many diverse learning styles that are in every classroom. There are two ideas that as governor I would urge that every one of our teachers receive professional development in; differentiated instruction and workstations in the classroom. Differentiated instruction is learning the different ways individuals learn. Some students learn by seeing things, some by hearing, some by repetition and some by a combination. Differentiated instruction teaches the teacher to instruct students in all these different ways.
Workstations are exactly what they sound like, taking a topic, for an example math and having different workstations around the room where individual students can work at their own level, in their own way. These workstations also incorporate differentiated instruction. Milton implemented this idea when they found their math scores were below the statewide levels and in 2 years showed significant increase in all students' math scores.
As governor I would propose that half of the professional development money in the teacher's master agreement be used to train all teachers in these two teaching methods. I would also use matching education dollars to make sure that all teachers received this training in a 2-year period. We have many great teachers, we need to enhance their job skills the same way we enhance the skills of the rest of our workforce. I think it is also important to work with our colleges to make sure that their teacher education programs include these programs for all students who want to become teachers. The world of education continues to evolve and we have a responsibility to our workforce to make sure they always have the up-to-date skills they need to help all students reach their full potential.
How Do We Reduce Our Spending?
Here is the core of the frustration and confusion over school spending. When we all go to town meeting and vote on our school budgets, we are only voting on a little piece of the total. Our school taxes are determined not only by what we spend, but what is spent as a whole in education.
A school and their board can do all the right things in terms of containing costs and unless all schools do the same thing, we are still left with high spending and we all subsidize all of that spending. We will not see a significant reduction is school taxes until spending as a whole is reduced. Here are ways that I believe will lead to lower spending and thus lower property taxes.
I believe that the ultimate goal should be much larger districts. I support the idea of 16 districts, each centered around their local technical center. I believe that these larger districts will ultimately lead to wiser spending of dollars by allowing the superintendent to distribute resources in a more cost effective manner.
Here's an example, if we take all the schools that are in a county and they currently have 17 art teachers, it could well be that the same amount of class time could be covered by 15 teachers and a more coordinated schedule. Fuel could be purchased for all the schools from one supplier, leading to a better price because it's a bigger contract. There are all sorts of things that could be done more efficiently with a larger district.
The path to getting to larger districts needs to be paved by finding all the best practices in administration and requiring all districts to implement these practices over a 2 year time period. Business managers need to meet minimum requirements that would be established by the education financial staff in the department of education and the Vermont Society of CPA's. These changes should be required and paid for by the education fund. A failure to meet these requirements would lead to a reduction in funding from the state.
All districts would have to adopt a minimum-maximum policy for all of their classes. The districts in Vermont that have these policies have found them of great value as they plan for the future and how many teachers they need at each grade level. This would also allow districts to move towards an overall goal of increasing our student/teacher ratio of 11to 1 to 14to 1. In the larger school districts that I support, it would be greater job security for teachers because they could be moved around the district as the needs change.
When there are a number of teachers retiring, a larger district can take advantage of retirement opening and move staff to being to reduce the number of teachers by taking advantage of retirements. A minimum-maximum policy allows districts to truly plan their future.
Teacher contracts should be negotiated on a district wide basis and the state should supply negotiation assistance to schools for these contracts.
Special education services that are on a contract basis, should be negotiated on a statewide basis. There are wide differences between districts and what they pay for services. There can be a range of prices, but the prices need to be brought under control.
A major area of rapidly increased spending is special education. Our schools and our property taxes have become the deep pockets of special education/social services. We need to have our department of education define what truly belongs as an educational cost and what is a "social cost". I believe it is correct to have educational taxes pay for educational costs, but not the social costs.
When a child comes to school and is not at all ready to learn because of problems in the home, is that an educational cost or a social cost? Obviously it is the job of the school to teach a student to read and write and do math. But if the student isn't learning because of emotional issues/behavioral issues is it the school's responsibility to deal with the emotional issues? The school can't do its job if the child isn't ready to learn. Obviously we need to deal with the emotional issues the child has, but the real question is who should pay the bill.
We have a high drop out rate and that does lead to real social costs. We know that a very high percentage of folks in corrections dropped out of high school. But many of these students are dropping out because of family problems. One way or the other, we tax payers will pay the bill.
The question is which pocket should the payment come from. And what is the most cost effective way to increase high school graduation and help our students and families deal with their problems. I believe that services should be provided at the school and that schools should make the connection for social services to the family. But the money needs to come from the general fund. I do not think that social services should be written into the IEP's (individual education programs).
This will not be an easy conversation, but I believe it is a conversation we must have as a state if we are to reduce not only school spending, but to get better results for all of our students.
Saving Money to Improve Education
"Our test scores are not good enough." In this video Susan discusses re-evaluating mainstreaming and the number of school districts while advocating for work stations and "Differentiated Instruction."
"K-12 education is the biggest business in each community and each district should have a professional business manager to handle school accounts."
My campaign is about policy, community, and vision. I will focus on restoring Vermont for all Vermonters, a Vermont that reflects the values of hard work, caring for our families, neighbors, and communities.
For the past 7 years Vermont has bounced from slogan to slogan, ribbon cutting to ribbon cutting, without a vision or a plan. This cannot continue.
Over the next few years it will be important to help business create jobs in Vermont. We need to lower the cost of health care and insurance, improve education and support social services while exercising fiscal restraint. It is a tough job. I am running for Governor because my experience, relationships and deep understanding of the problems we face in Vermont are what we need to face the challenges ahead. If you do your part to help me win the coming elections, I'll do my part to lead Vermont to a bright future based on the values we share.
New Leadership: Working Together for a Better Future. Susan Bartlett for Governor
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