The Valley’s state representatives split their votes on H.454 and the district’s senate delegation voted two to one against the bill in voting on June 16 in the evening of the first day of an extended legislative session.
Local education leaders were disappointed in the votes and the result, which is the bill being sent to Governor Phil Scott for his signature. At issue, at least in part, was the way the bill was passed. The Senate voted to send the bill to the governor by a roll call vote which saw Washington District Senators Andrew Perchlik and Anne Watkins voting no, and Ann Cummings voting yes.
The House voted by a voice vote to send the bill to the governor, but later conducted a roll call vote in which Dara Torre, Moretown, voted no and Candice White, Waitsfield, voted yes, Waterbury representatives Theresa Wood, and Tom Stevens voted no.
‘DEEPLY FLAWED START’
Harwood Unified Union School District superintendent Dr. Mike Leichliter, who was engaged in this legislation from the start, said that Monday’s vote was a “deeply flawed start to a challenging bill.”
Leichliter was disturbed by the tenor of the negotiation that tilt in favor of independent/private schools getting more access to public funding as well as the ability to increase their tuition and fees by up to 5%.
“The transformation ahead will be long and challenging. And if recent days are any indication, it will be public schools that are asked to do the hard work, while those with more political and positional influence are shielded from it,” he wrote.
His focus now will be to work on three areas: the roles and responsibilities of school district boards and voters, community choice in decision making on school closures as well as that process and a process for monitoring how the bill is implemented so that it is transparent.
“I'm debating whether they are a good use of my experience, time, and passions.
This is not a plea for inaction – it is a plea to get it right, for all of Vermont’s public school students. Based on how I saw Act 127 and the past week play out, my confidence is not high at the moment,” he added.
HUUSD school board chair Ashley Woods was not a fan of the Legislature’s approach to getting the bill passed at the 11th hour.
‘DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED’
“I’m deeply disappointed in our state leadership. The “vote yes now and fix it later” approach is irresponsible and undermines the integrity of the legislative process. What we needed was bold leadership not a retreat in the face of the Scott administration’s brutally shortsighted plan. A plan that puts our public schools in peril,” she said.
State representatives for the HUUSD voted three to one against the bill. Torre her no vote was a result of constituent concerns, including educators and Leichliter “who has been immersed in this work”
“I voted for the House version of the bill back in May, but it changed in some troubling ways in the committee of conference last week, including allowing the district design process to become politicized. I'm supportive of the more predictable and stable funding mechanism and the goal of building scale to expand opportunities and equity that are envisioned in the bill,” Torre said.
White said that she voted to support the bill after careful review, acknowledging that received a lot of constituent feedback on it. Her support for the bill, she wrote, hinged on its limiting public money for private institutions, establishing class sizes and a school construction fund as well as a committee to look at student weighting and special ed costs and a plan for public participation in the public school system.
‘UNACCEPTABLE’
Tom Stevens said he’d been a supporter of the bill until the conference committee announced its agreement on Friday. During those negotiations, he said, “the two Senate conferees with deep ties to our private/public schools, and the governor, held out for the changes that were, to me, after many years of trying to make those schools accountable for fairness and equity in the way they accept students, and how they teach them, completely unacceptable.”
“I have served in the Legislature long enough to have voted on Act 127, and Act 46 – the two most recent attempts to provide an educational system that works for those who fund it and those who receive the benefits of a topnotch education. This tension is real, and while many of us put the students first, we must consider the expense of educating a diminishing number of students in buildings that are aging and in communities that are shrinking. H.454, in my opinion, acknowledged and respected those differences, up until the forced inclusion of continued benefits for the private publics and the loss of the protection of the use of public dollars for strictly private schools. The inclusion of this language and the weakening of a long-needed accountability for these schools led me to my “no” vote,” he added.
Washington District Senator Anne Watson said her no vote was due in part to a desire to see an income-based approach to education funding that was supplemented by taxing second homes.
“I also had issues with parts of the bill, including that private schools can charge up to 5% more than public schools. That feels unnecessary and somewhat ridiculous. I also think this will cause significant upheaval to our school districts, and as a teacher, this does not feel like the right time for there to be more chaos in public education,” Watson wrote.
Local state representatives will discuss the education bill and other major bills from this session on Tuesday, June 24, at the Big Picture Theatre, from 6 to 8 p.m.
