Tag Archives: act 46

Merger Proposal Reconfigured

06 Friday Oct 2017

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When last I posted about the ongoing school merger debate, it was nearly a year ago, but of course the debate, and the merger process, has continued.

To sum up: Last November in a non-binding referendum, both Pawlet and Rupert voted in favor of keeping designated schools in New York for grades 7-12. As a result, Wells, the third town of the proposed merger whose representatives favored school choice, went elsewhere to find merger buddies. Pawlet and Rupert then formed a new merger committee, and two weeks ago some members of that new committee made a merger proposal to the Vermont Board of Education, (you can watch the video below)

, our proposal comes up at 4:09) The state turned this proposal down, largely on the basis that they found the new proposal did not provide “equity,” a founding principle of Act 46, which essentially means that all children are to be given reasonable access to equivalent school programs.

Which brings us to last night’s meeting. It was standing room only in the Mettawee Community School library as the merger committee met and exchanged views on what had happened at the state and debated how to move forward. So what happened?

Here is the upshot: the committee voted four to three in favor of resubmitting the merger proposal with changes that remove designation from the plan.

In the absence of designated schools, the new merger of Pawlet and Rupert that is being proposed would by default entail school choice, with every student able to use up to the Vermont union state average annual tuition (currently $15,480).

A new merged school board could attempt to return to designation at some later date, but any attempt to designate the Granville and Salem schools in New York would be contingent on two things: an approval from town voters, and the state of Vermont changing the existing law.

If you’ve got all that then here’s what happens next: (Note- Update!! Some dates changed from the original posting )

October 18th- members of the merger committee will present this new plan to the Vermont Board of Education

November 14th- tentative date, public forum/informational meeting, time & location TBA. Also an informational mailing is planned.

November 21st- if the state approves the new merger proposal, this is the tentative date for Pawlet and Rupert residents to vote on the proposed merger.

That’s really what you need to know. A video of the merger meeting was made last night, so if someone sends me the link I will post it here.

A few snapshots from the evening:

“The democratic process was completely perverted… I’m coming out of this quite sad.”

—John Malcolm, committee member, (Referring to the state rejection of the previous plan)

 

“I just want folks to understand that if we don’t have a successful merger, we all lose.”

—Scott McChesney, committee member, (Pointing out that, if either town were to vote the new proposed merger down, both towns would lose associated tax incentives, and could end up designated to a Vermont school such as Poultney, not have the ability to attend Granville or Salem, and still have to pay the Vermont state average.)

 

“I support getting the merger done. If there’s still interest in designation, the new board could do it… (but) you’d have to deal with 827 (the existing law) too.”

—Jackie Wilson, BRSU Superintendant

 

“I don’t think the voters support it… (but) I’m for democracy. People are free to lobby… they have a right to do it.”

—Bill Meyer, committee member

 

“I would vote for a merger, and let the townspeople decide… talking about democracy, then we’re being democratic.”

—Gene Ceglowski, committee member

 

“We just have to move forward… our charge is to make sure people understand the options.”

—Diane Mach, committee member

 

“(Under the new merger proposal) we can have Granville and Salem and all these schools.” 

—Michael Krauss, resident

 

“(This merger) could be possibly the only way you get to choose Granville.”

—Heather Lund, resident

 

“I feel strongly that we need to tone down the rhetoric… This town is going to remain divided if people don’t begin to talk civilly to each other.”

Arlene Bentley, resident

 

“It is not political, it is constitutional… Everyone in the state gets the state average tuition except our two towns.”

—Jim Cole, resident

 

“I think perhaps the hostility would come down if we had more facts.”

—Christina Cosgrove, resident

 

“It would be so helpful to know the net tax impact (of the proposed merger).”

—David Nichols, resident

 

“It’s got to be put out to the public as simple as possible.”

—Regina Mason, resident. (on the confusing nature of past informational materials)

The Most Important Thing

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in local event, Pawlet Happenings

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On Tuesday, Pawlet and Rupert both voted to maintain designation to New York State high schools, and to reject school choice.

screen-shot-2016-11-11-at-10-37-33-amThis is going to sound weird, but as disappointed as I am about the results of the vote, I’m really proud of Pawlet and Rupert. Both town clerks reported an unheard of turnout for our two small towns.

You could say, “But they were coming to vote for president anyway!” and that’s true. But Election Day wasn’t the only time people have showed up on this issue. Since way back in July, when I started covering the (now-dissolved) Pawlet/Rupert/Wells Merger Committee and pimg_4643osting blogs about their progress I’ve watched the Act 46-related public meetings grow from audiences of one or two people, to well over a hundred. And these were not just ordinary meetings; these were long, three-plus-hour meetings, standing-room-only meetings, emotional and rancorous at times. Not just adults, but kids showed up and bravely made public statements on both sides of the issue. Heckimg_4642, kids from other towns were showing up, just to hear our version of the debate, to see what our town was going to do.

I think we’ve all come to know way, way more about educational law in Vermont than any one of us probably thought we would ever need to know.

So now, at long last, we have actual numbers as to the will of the townspeople. Although it wasn’t a landslide, it wasn’t exactly razor-close either: in Pawlet 413 voted for designation, 306 voted against. In Rupert, it was a similar margin: 235 in favor, 145 against.

img_4641 Clearly, the majority of people in our towns feel that school choice is a luxury we simply can’t afford. They believe it despite all the arguments that have been made to the contrary: even if designation means exploiting a loophole of New York State law, even if it means we have no say in how the educational system is run, and even if that means our Vermont kids can’t freely go to a Vermont school… public or private.

For a long time I thought that opponents of school choice in our area just must not have all the information. And so I made it my business to help get more information out there. And guess what? I was wrong. We still disagree.

So that, as they say, is that.

img_4681Who knows what will happen next? Nobody. Maybe another merger committee will be attempted, but I doubt it, since we’re surrounded on all sides by communities who have opted for school choice. Maybe we’ll just keep going along with things as they are, unchanged, until the day that someone comes along and tells us we can’t anymore. If that ever happens.

But my biggest hope now is for our community to heal. The school issue has been so divisive along so many lines, that at times it has felt like Act 46 was tearing our town limb from limb… pitting young versus old, “born-here”s versus newbies, those who are struggling to make ends meet versus those who are not. I think the key to moving forward is rooted in being proud of the fact that we all participated, and not just a little, but a lot.

I mean, did you see all those signs out there on Election Day? If you were in our area you could hardly have missed them. Printed ones, hand-lettered ones, sheets, banners… they were everywhere.

“Yes”!

“No”!

“YES“!!!

“NO“!!!

Outsiders driving through must’ve thought the entire town was having a schizophrenic seizure or something. I kind of loved it. It was evidence of a thriving democracy, in which each person really does feel like their opinion matters. And in our town, it really does.

img_4644No matter what, you can’t say we suffer from apathy around here. I’m glad that we are a community who doesn’t leave our important decisions- no matter how painful they may be to make- up to someone else. We can all be proud that on last Tuesday we did the most important thing of all: we showed up.

What You’ll See Tomorrow

07 Monday Nov 2016

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screen-shot-2016-11-07-at-10-06-55-am

Tomorrow’s Ballot for Article 3

Just so there’s no mystery: here’s the ballot Pawlet voters will see tomorrow for Article 3. The Rupert ballot will be identical, except of course it will say “Rupert.”

Although the article’s language is easily confusing, the upshot is this:

  • If you want things to stay pretty much as they are- sending children to New York for public high school- vote YES.
  • If you want children to have greater access to more choices of school, including Vermont public schools, at the tuition of the Vermont State Average- vote NO.

I could repeat the arguments here in favor of voting “NO,” since that’s what I intend to do, but I won’t. What with all the many-hour public forums,  pro and con flyers flying about, and lawn signs popping up everywhere, you probably know all the arguments backwards and forwards at this point. I figure any local resident who hasn’t fully made up their mind one way or the other by now is either dead or… no they’re probably dead.

Don’t Sacrifice Education

04 Friday Nov 2016

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People are often surprised to hear that in Pawlet and Rupert we don’t send our kids to high school in Vermont. It’s been a quietly contentious issue for decades, but the merger requirements of Act 46 have now brought the issue to a head. Next Tuesday residents will vote to find out once and for all: should our towns maintain high school designation in New York State?

Rumors abound, as do speculations and fears. No matter what we decide, there are no guarantees. No matter what we decide, taxes will go up. We just don’t know what the numbers will be.

If we vote “No” on article 3, we make sure that kids don’t have to get stuck in a school that’s not working for them. Contrary to some rumors, voting “no” to designation doesn’t mean our kids can’t still go to high school in New York- they can. Nor does it mean that our town’s property taxes will have to accommodate any school a kid wants to go to. It only means that child will receive the Vermont state average tuition.

In fact, it all comes down to this question: are Pawlet and Rupert willing to pay the average tuition to send their kids to school? Not pie-in-the-sky tuition. Not boarding school in Europe prices. Not the highest tuition in our state… but also not the lowest.

Which is what we have right now: the lowest tuition in the entire state of Vermont.

Right now, because we send kids to New York (where tuition is heavily subsidized by New York State) we have the lowest high school tuitions in the state of Vermont, ($8,755 and $7,739) which, on the face of it sounds like a good thing, right? Unless you are a kid who would do better elsewhere. Because then, that’s the same amount you get towards tuition at a different school. Vermont state average tuition ($14,297) is well above these numbers, which means: forget about private school, you can’t even go to a public school in Vermont.

Let me say that again: our tuition rate is not high enough to send a Vermont kid to a Vermont public high school.

Once upon a time, around the turn of the last century, the town of Pawlet actually did have its own high school. It was a two-year program with a 70% graduation rate, which for that time was actually pretty good (well above the national average). Nevertheless, around 1939, the town made a bold decision: they would pay more money in order to send the kids across the border to Granville High School instead.

Just like today, the residents of our town were faced with a difficult choice: should we stay with what we already have, which is pretty good, and spend somewhat less on education? Or do we go with something new, and more costly, in hopes of an even better outcome for our children?

As we now know, they made the choice to spend more. Mind you, this was no flush period of economic prosperity either; the late 1930s were the tail end of the Great Depression. And yet still, they decided to spend more money on education.

The Superintendent at the time said this: “It is more sensible to sacrifice money to save children, than to sacrifice children to save money.”

Pawlet and Rupert residents, I urge you: let all our children have access to the Vermont state average tuition. Vote “No” on Article 3.

 

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Merger…

07 Friday Oct 2016

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So…. funny story. After spending all summer going to terribly exciting meetings where about one-tenth of a decision got made, the Act 46 Merger Committee finally made a big decision. Really big. And then- like that!- they voted to dissolve.

Wait, what?

sept-29-mtg

Sept. 29 Meeting Pawlet & Rupert School Boards

To recap, here is a quick summary of what happened over the course of the last month:

  • Sept. 1st, The Merger Committee holds a long, well-attended public forum at the Mettawee Community School on the question of Choice versus Designation. Lots of public comment, including from kids, much of it very emotional and intense. The committee was planning to vote this night on Choice vs. Designation, but, truthfully, they all look a little bit freaked out. They put it off to the following week.
  • Sept. 7th, The Merger Committee holds another long, well-attended meeting, this time at the Wells Village School, which, kind of by accident, turns into another extended session of public comment. When at last the committee votes, they fail to pass a measure endorsing choice. The committee talks some. Then, the committee fails to pass a measure endorsing designation. More talking. Finally a third vote is taken and by the slimmest of possible margins, choice passes. At last! A decision has been made!
  • Sept. 19th, The Merger Committee implodes. I wasn’t in attendance for this meeting, but apparently the representatives who had voted against choice felt that this was not a measure, which would ever, in a million, billion years, be passed by the voters. Consequently, they take a vote not to recommend the merger of Wells, Pawlet and Rupert, and then formally vote to dissolve the committee.

Well! If that wasn’t an excellent way to spend a summer— not to mention up to $20,000 of tax payer grant money—I don’t know what is.

But enough about the past. What happens now? On Sept 29th, the Pawlet and Rupert School Boards held a special meeting, and here is the decision they made: once and for all they are going to find out what the voters think on the issue of Choice versus Designation. Clearly, there has not been enough comment to date. Forget the agonizingly emotional public forum of Sept 1st. Forget the four-hour Bataan Death March of a meeting on Sept 7th. Forget all those dozens of emails and scores of letters and hours-upon-hours of public comment. Forget the fact that Merger committee chair Sue Ceglowski stated at the Sept 7th meeting that the committee had definitively heard many more comments supporting choice.

No- now the school boards would really like to know what the community thinks. Like, for real. Therefore, there will be a special ballot vote on Election Day (November 8th) to determine the will of the voters on this issue. Although the vote is “non-binding,” the boards voted to recommend that any outcome be followed by any future merger committee.

Here is how they worded the article to be voted upon, which is not leading, really, very much at all:

“Shall the voters of (Pawlet/ Rupert) advise the (Pawlet/ Rupert) School Board to continue the designation of New York public high schools as the District’s public high school, and limit the amount of tuition monies paid to non-designated schools to the amount paid to the NY designated schools, as part of any school district merger under Act 46?”

Translation: If you would like things to remain exactly as they are- which under the new law they cannot– then vote Yes! Then the state can tell us who to merge with! (Oo- maybe they’ll pick Manchester and Dorset. Then we can have their property tax rate- hooray!!)

On the other hand, if you want area children to have access to New York high schools Salem and Granville as well as other area schools, for no more than the cost of the Vermont state average- then vote No!

So you see, it’s all perfectly clear. But just in case it’s not, there will be two informational meetings about this special ballot item: one at the Rupert firehouse on Nov. 1 at 7PM, and one in Pawlet, at the Mettawee Community School on Nov. 3 at 7:30.

About time too. I haven’t been to a good four-hour meeting in days.

“A Sweet Deal” vs “The Right Thing to Do”

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

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A lot of things happened at the Pawlet-Rupert-Wells merger public forum last Thursday night, but one thing I especially noticed was the way that certain phrases got picked up and reused by commenters on both sides of the school choice versus designation debate.

Three different commenters called the existing system— which designation would seek to replicate under the new Act 46 merger scenario— “a sweet deal.” This gave me pause. What’s so sweet about it? you might ask.

In a nutshell: when we send our kids to middle and high school in Granville and Salem, New York, we are getting a bargain price. Everyone agrees on this. We can educate our kids for roughly $8,000 per student tuition, even though in Vermont the state average clocks in at well above that amount: over $14,000.

So great!- right? But wait… why is New York State’s high school tuition so much lower than Vermont’s? Have they figured out something we don’t know? When I looked it up, I found something fascinating: New York State doesn’t spend less on education. In fact, contrary to what was said at the public forum, Vermont does not spend more on per student education than any other state in the nation. New York does.

I found a Washington Post article which lists the top five highest education spenders per student… Vermont isn’t one of them. But New York is. In fact, as of 2015, New York is the top spender of all.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/ 

I found lots of information online, varying by year, but all of it pointed to the same thing: New York pays more than any other state:

screen-shot-2016-09-06-at-10-07-40-am

(Graphic source:http://www.governing.com/topics/education/gov-education-funding-states.html#data )

What gives? How can Granville and Salem secondary tuition be so low, when the state average for New York is so high? According to the most recent information I could find, actual Granville tuition per student is: $24,241. Salem is: $23,237.

links- http://www.syracuse.com/schools/index.ssf/2015/05/spending_per_student_nys_school_districts_2015_lookup_compare_any_district_rank.html

http://b5.caspio.com/dp.asp?AppKey=3908300013b754e71e5842a2a35e

Not $8,000.

So when we send our children to New York high schools, who is making up that $15,000 or $16,000 difference? New York State taxpayers, that’s who. As committee advisor Dan French explained to the merger committee at a recent meeting, New York provides “greater support” for education from a state level.

Is it ethical, I wonder, to combat rising education costs by sending our kids to a state that seems to have a worse problem with escalating tuition than we do? And asking them to pay for it?

Even if you the kind of person to say “ethics-schmethics,” consider this: there’s another, more practical concern here, which is the possibility that New York State residents will awake from their slumber to realize that we’ve been riding on the back of their education system courtesy a big fat loophole. And they could raise tuition. We have no guarantee that they won’t. Here’s a thought: what if they charged us what it really costs? By comparison with $23,000- $24,000 tuition, School Choice per pupil tuition waver of $14,000 starts looking downright frugal.

Which brings me to the other phrase I heard more than once from commenters at the meeting. In the absence of having our own secondary school, they said, School Choice is simply “the right thing to do.” As in, “Yes, rising taxes are hard, but we’re a community. We should all pull together and give our children choice in education because it’s the right thing to do.”

So ask yourself: down the line, what would you want to be in a position to tell our community’s children? That we based their education on “a sweet deal” with no long-term guarantees… or on “the right thing to do”?

No matter which side of the debate you find yourself on, I highly encourage you to show up tomorrow night for the merger committee’s vote, Wed. Sept 7th, 7PM at the Wells School.