News Analysis—

Does Vt. Have

Too Many School Boards?

By Sandy Vondrasek Cooch

It’s laudable that Education Commissioner Richard Cate made a big effort this year to solicit Vermonters’ opinions on school governance structure before making any recommendations to the governor and legislature about changing the same.

However, the format used for gathering feedback from citizens in 30 meetings throughout the state this winter and spring was flawed.

The "conversation," as evidenced last Wednesday at Randolph Union High School, turned out to be a highly choreographed session, two-and-a-half hours long, that appeared designed to run participants through a shorter version of the same reasoning process the commissioner went through to reach his conclusions.

Maybe the current system ought to be changed, and maybe there are compelling reasons to adopt Cate’s model—but not much by way of compelling data or reasons were provided to participants last week.

Instead they were asked to brainstorm, in small groups, on two topics: The advantages and disadvantages of their current governance system and of the one proposed by Cate. Then each group shared a summary of its thoughts to the entire gathering of about 30 people.

Not surprisingly, most of the groups came up with pretty much the same thoughts. Everyone was looking at what they already knew, in the first question, and only conjectures about Cate’s briefly-described proposal, in the second. The evening had the frustrating feeling of little ground covered in a lot of time.

The opening minutes of the session did provide participants with some input, via a DVD of the commissioner. In his DVD, Cate gave a brief overview of the current governance system. Vermont has 280 school boards governing 311 public schools. Most of these 280 school boards are, in turn, members of one of the state’s 46 multi-district supervisory unions. Twelve of the 280 boards exist as single-board "supervisory districts," such as the one in Montpelier.

Cate suggested that turning multi-board SUs into single-board districts would make it easier to recruit administrators (fewer boards to report to) and to find school board members (fewer needed). His proposal, he said, would result in a more logical chain of command, better communications, and eliminate the problem of one superintendent working for different boards with different philosophies.

More details were available in the handouts given to participants as they walked in the door—but there was no time to read those prior to the "conversation."

When Central Vermonters at last Wednesday’s meeting had their chance to pro and con Cate’s idea, they didn’t dispute the rationales he noted in the DVD, and they even came up with some of their own advantages, as well as some disadvantages.

On the plus side, they said, a multi-town, single-board district might enjoy more "clout" in Montpelier, and the freedom to operate different kinds of elementary schools (choice!) within the district. On the other hand, a single board in a big district might have the power to shutter a tiny school in a member town.

But the most interesting comments and ideas came at the tail-end of the evening, when folks had a chance to broaden the conversation a little.

A few said that any governance change should spring from one overriding central goal: What system or systems would provide the best education for our kids.

Others questioned the need for a sweeping, top-down change.

Brookfield School Board member Bob Decker noted that some SUs are more effective than others. Perhaps, he said, governance should slowly evolve, using "lessons learned from successful supervisory unions."

"Less successful ones could be persuaded to change," he said, "rather than ordered by fiat."

A school board member from the Orange-Windsor Supervisory Union noted that his SU was composed of a diverse group of towns that didn’t necessarily share the same goals.

"We are learning to function better because we have to," he said. "We’ll figure it out. We’ll get it done. We don’t need a voice from above."

At the end of the session, Orange-Southwest Supervisory Union Supt. Brent Kay politely suggested that it would have been beneficial that night to hear from those who have actually worked in multi-school, single-board districts, such as those in Burlington and Montpelier.

It turns out that Kay, who comes from Canada, ran a similar system when he was superintendent of a huge district in Saskatchewan, roughly the size of Delaware. His 14-community district had two high schools and multiple elementary schools, with student populations that ranged from 25 to 1400 students.

Kay noted that, earlier in the session, one participant wondered whether a single board in a big district might move to shut down the tiny schools, over the protests of the local community.

That wasn’t his experience, Kay noted. Board members, he said, acted to protect the smaller schools, if for no other reason than they feared their school would be the next to be closed.

In fairness to Commissioner Cate, the paper handouts did provide his more detailed reasons for changing education governance in the state. And the first one he lists is "Quality of education."

"One reason I am proposing a change in governance is my concern that some of our small schools will not survive under our current system," he wrote.

It’s too bad the commissioner wasn’t on hand to make last week’s conversation a two-way one.

Curiously, in his DVD, Cate said the reason that he was not appearing in person at these meetings was that he found his presence distracted participants from focusing on the topics they were directed to consider.

The series of 30 meetings is over, but it’s not too late to let the commissioner know what you think. Emailed feedback will be accepted at governance@list.education.state.vt.us until the end of this month.