BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont Governor Phil Scott’s plan to overhaul the state’s education system continues to face pushback from teachers and school officials.
The administration’s 16-page proposal released three weeks ago calls for eliminating supervisory unions and establishing five regional school districts. It also would designate an unlimited number of “school choice” schools.
The current school choice policy allows students who don’t have a school in their town to have their tax dollars follow them to another school within a list of criteria.
“That has worked fairly well, it’s been a good balance over time, but if that shifts dramatically, it could really erode the public schools in our state,” said Lamoille South Supervisory Union Superintendent Ryan Heraty.
The governor’s proposal would allow every Vermont student to make the choice of where they want to go to school through a lottery system, saying the choice would support an ecosystem built on strong public schools. But Heraty says in other school choice states, families typically move their kids to other better-performing schools, leaving the other public schools with needs in the dust.
“What that does is it takes the resources away from some of the neediest districts and so the students that are remaining are the students that are the most vulnerable with less resources,” he said.
Vermont Senate President Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden County said in a statement that he would not be pursuing broad-based changes to the current system. “Insisting on recasting choice in Vermont has the potential to sink education transformation efforts. Allowing that to happen would be an unforced error and would set our reform efforts back substantially,” he said.
The Vermont School Board Association has also expressed concerns on the proposal saying it is “a playbook to expanding school vouchers and defunding our public schools.”
But some families we spoke to are interested in the idea. A mom from Fairfax who asked that we not use her name, says she homeschools her child and that school choice would allow them to go to the tech school they want. “I’m all about choices, right. We have a choice to homeschool. But we have a choice to public school, but we don’t have a choice where we go,” she said.
The governor has insisted the plan is not a voucher system and is designed to support strong schools, students, and more vibrant communities.
In a statement from the governor’s office, a spokesperson says the education transformation plan lays the groundwork for Vermont to have the best public education system in the nation.
In a statement, they say, “Defenders of the current system – which has declining test scores, massive annual property tax increases and pays teachers unequally – have misleadingly referred to this proposal as a “voucher system.” They are wrong.”
The statement continues on to say that the plan “eliminates the flow of public dollars to private schools outside of the state and country. The plan also assumes the General Assembly will maintain the current moratorium on new independent schools and proposes more accountability standards for independent and public schools.”
Discussions over the proposal are still in the early stages and any final decision is expected to take several years.
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