by John McClaughry Finally alarmed by voter resentment at high school property taxes, the Vermont Legislature is hot on the trail of some kind of “solution.” It’s not likely to be productive unless legislators crawl out of the box that confines their thinking. One obvious (non) ”solution” is to ship more money from the General Fund to the Education Fund. The GF already sends $300 million a year to the EF. Increasing that transfer would reduce the homestead school property tax. Great!
But not so fast. The General Fund is $100 million in deficit, largely because of Medicaid expansions. This “solution” can’t happen.
Another obvious (non) “solution”: Raise new taxes for education. Governor Shumlin’s proposed new payroll tax will if enacted go toward financing government health care, not education. An increased income tax? Sales tax? The VPIRG carbon tax? The sugary beverage tax? Not a prayer.
A more likely “solution” is “enforced frugality.” The state Agency of Education would command the school districts to increase pupil/staff ratios, shut down small schools, cap salaries, and implement whatever other cost-cutting steps Montpelier might mandate. This could bend education spending downward, but only by creating “One Big School System.” Vermonters will not like this.
Then there’s the “governance reform” solution. This requires consolidation of school districts into Regional Education Districts, similar to multi-town waste management districts. The REDs would then have to do the dirty work of enforcing frugality to the State’s satisfaction. This model may achieve some cost savings, but they are likely to be eaten up by adding deputy and assistant superintendents and incurring higher transportation costs. Even the backers of “governance reform” are very careful about claiming any significant spending savings.
All of these solutions and non-solutions are founded on the idea of maintaining our very costly near-monopoly public school system, in which school districts send their budgets to the Education Fund for payment. Is there an alternative?
The problems with our traditional form of public education have been getting more obvious over the past half century – let’s say from 1971, when the Vermont Education Association converted itself from a professional association of educators into the Vermont-NEA labor union.
Now many Vermont parents have become disenchanted with having the government assign their children to the centrally-controlled, union-dominated state-financed educational system. They view it as having an intellectually fatuous and/or morally deficient culture and curriculum. They see public schools as all too often catering more to the desires of those employed in the system, instead of the consumers.
Understandably, the parents want to send their children to their choice of public or independent schools whose culture, values and curricula are more responsive to the parents' aspirations for their children.
Vermont pioneered parental choice as far back as 1869 by allowing towns without their own high schools to tuition students to public and independent schools chosen by parents. Now in the 21st century the time seems to be ripe for expanding that choice program to more towns, more schools, more children and more diverse opportunities. Choice makes the consumer king, not the provider, and the competition will invigorate, not destroy, public schools.
But will giving all parents choice for their kids drive down K-12 spending? Quite possibly, yes. With empowered choice, many parents – probably thousands of them - will opt for independent schools and programs that cost much less than the public schools. This will clearly reduce education costs while increasing parental satisfaction.
How to do that without giving independent schools an incentive to increase their tuitions to claim the voucher payments is an important issue. Another is preserving opportunities and parental choices for special education students, for which Florida’s MacKay scholarships have been a highly successful model. Yet another is relaxing state mandates to encourage public schools to compete effectively for tuition dollars.
Representatives Vickie Strong (R-Albany) and Mike Hebert (R-Vernon) are about to introduce a bill to expand parental choice in a way designed to hold down education costs and thus school property taxes, better serve the needs of students, and put parents in the driver’s seat.
Their bill will attract lots of attention – especially from the Vermont-NEA and other invested “stakeholders” of the state’s Education Establishment. They view competition for student vouchers as a threat to their security and tranquility.
Now is the time for parents and taxpayers to have their say. They are the true “stakeholders.”
John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute (www.ethanallen.org).