Ed Commission creates group to fix school financing Hears public criticism of members' 'hidden agenda'

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC

At the third meeting out of 30 budgeted by the Vermont legislature, about half of the members of the Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont assembled as the “steering group”  on Monday and got down to making some decisions on how their work will be done. The commission was created by Act 183 (the Yield bill), which was a response to the education finance problems created by earlier legislation.

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On the agenda was a discussion of the kinds of data the commission will need to study the education system and give the legislature recommendations for a “statewide vision” for the education system and reforms in the way Vermont pays for it. There were also action items to be tackled including developing a plan for the commission, which must be approved by Sept. 15, and populating a subcommittee that is supposed to look at changes to the education finance system that will result in “substantially equal access to a quality basic education for all…”

After the finance component, the questions around “governance, resources and administration” could be the thorniest. They include

• Do changes need to be made to the structure of the AOE, including whether it should be an agency or a downgraded to a department?
• D0 changes need to be made to the composition, role and function of the State Board of Education?
• What should controlled locally and what should be controlled by the state?
• What’s the most effective number/locations of school buildings, school districts and supervisory unions?
• How would those be implemented?

Jennifer Deck Samuelson, commission member and chair of the Vermont Board of Education, suggested that rather than a subcommittee, she and Interim Education Commissioner Zoe Saunders could work together on such issues. But Nicole Mace, representing the Vermont School Boards Association, pointed to people “in the field” who also have “useful information on the role of the agency and the state board.”

Mace noted that part of the charge of the commission is to decide “which decisions sits where,” referring to local vs. state control.

In the end, the idea of setting up two committees in the near term — one to look at education finance and another to handle communications and engagement — was a good direction since finance must recommend interim cost containment to the legislature by December of this year and the commission plan must include substantial outreach and public meetings in every county.

After those committees have been set up, the commission could move on to a governance, resources and administration subcommittee that doesn’t need to get going for a little bit while its charge gets firmed up. The “education delivery” subcommittee was envisioned as the same members as the steering group and running alongside the governance group.

There was a long discussion about keeping the number of members on the finance subcommittee to eight or under while having the skills that the tasks required including experience with school budgeting, the complexities of education finance, familiarity with other states’ finance systems and enough legislative influence to have its recommendations taken seriously.

Commission member Sen. Ann Cummings said that in all her 20+ years in the legislature, she has “never felt this crisis pressure to ‘fix it and fix it now’ ” like she does today.

From the start of the meeting, the steering group discussed whether they could discuss possible candidates for appointment to the finance subcommittee in executive session. While they were uncertain whether a subcommittee member could be classified as a public officer, they went ahead with the closed door session.

Coming out of the executive session, the steering group voted to tap the following as members of the education finance subcommittee:

• Zoie Saunders, interim Secretary, AOE or her designee
• Craig Bolio, commissioner, Department of Taxes or his designee
• Sen. Ann Cummings, chair, Senate Finance Committee
• Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, chair House Ways & Means Committee
• Rep. Peter Conlon, chair, House Education Committee
• Nicole Mace, Vermont School Boards Association
• Michael Leichliter, Vermont Superintendents Association
• Elizabeth Jennings, Vermont Association of School Business Officers

Steering group chair Meghan Roy said the next meeting of the full commission would be on Monday Aug. 26 from 9 a.m. to noon. There was no date announced for the finance subcommittee. For remote access to the meeting go to the commission’s page on the AOE website.

Commission criticised for members’ ‘hidden agenda’

In the first public comment portion of the meeting, Jay Denault of Franklin read from a document he said was sent to legislators and others from the associations of education professionals and school boards who have representatives sitting on the commission.

Referring to the document as a “hidden agenda” and a “reprehensible attack on the people of Vermont,” Denault said those organizations were advocating for the legislature to establish for school boards to directly petition the governor to amend their governance structure and close schools. “But vigorous local opposition to school board plans stymies progress” Denault read, pointing to a sentence that the final decision with such actions “would rest with the governor.”

Later during the meeting, commission member Rep. Peter Conlon, chair of the House education committee, said that he understood the perception that the presence of the education associations on the commission creates, adding, “I think that it’s important to call that out because … it’s been a criticism from the beginning that it’s the same people sitting around the same table talking about the same thing.’

But Conlon added, “We’re in a different point in time. I think that all of these associations have at least said publicly or said to me they’re ready to make hard decisions that may not necessarily be the same as they might have made five years ago.”