Last week the Vermont Legislature passed another education reform bill. This one calls for – guess what—study committees! Yes, more study committees will be created in the new cooperative education service areas (CESAs) which are part of H.955 which the House passed on April 17.
When school districts in Vermont voluntarily join others in the seven regional CESAs there will be study committees to figure out what should be regionalized and how cost savings might be realized. It’s a great idea and it also pushes off any real meaningful reform in how we fund education until 2030.
That is four education/property tax bills from now, for those who are counting.
To be fair to the legislators, they concurred with Governor Scott’s handpicked study committee from last year who opted not to move forward with the part of Act 73 that called for mandatory consolidation of the state’s 119 school districts into five large districts. That select committee couldn’t get any traction on forcing districts to merge without community involvement and couldn’t identify any real savings.
Let’s take a look at that – any real savings. The bill that the House passed last Friday alludes to and aspires to and could potentially lead to savings, but opponents point out that there’s no real or concrete savings identified.
It’s like beating a dead horse to reiterate how stupid and convoluted our education funding system is. Gallons of ink have been sacrificed to expressing that here in this space over the years. And yet, here we are again, looking at using this funding formula that is so bad, we can’t even bear to talk about it or utter its name, kind of like Voldemort (he who shall not be named) the villain of the Harry Potter books.
We’ve got another four years (at least) of paying for education via a system that does not work. When the Legislature takes this up again in 2030, the system surely won’t be fixed for that tax year or the following.
Our educators and students and schools boards did not cause this, so please don’t direct any (righteous) ire at them. This failure is a state-wide problem with local impacts.
