Vermont’s House of Representatives education committee has approved H. 833. This bill will drastically change how our public schools are governed. Local school boards will be eliminated and replaced with regional APPOINTED boards. This massive restructuring is being done in to improve “outcomes” for students and create greater efficiency in reporting to the state and federal government.” The online newspaper, Vermont Digger, says, “Lawmakers make no promises about cost savings. Rep. Johannah Donovan, D-Burlington, chair of House education committee, supports the new governance system and she says it could lead to better cost effectiveness over time.” “I think it’s accountability for taxpayers; I think it’s more accountability for students, and so I think we’ll see where we’ll go with it,” Donovan said. No cost savings for taxpayers? But accountability for the taxpayers and for the students? Really? Sounds like political doubletalk to me. So why the need to restructure our governance system at all? Control and power. This legislation constitutes a tyrannical power grab by the ruling elite in Montpelier. It is yet another ferocious attack on local self governance that Vermonters used to cherish so deeply. It is a swift and decisive act that creates taxation without representation. Our town and union schools were built with the hard earned tax dollars of citizens. These schools continue to operate on these tax dollars. Locally elected school boards provide for responsive and immediate accountability for how our children are educated and how these tax dollars are spent. These boards allow for the maximum amount of ownership of schools by taxpayers. This legislation eliminates representation and further reduces financial accountability. Even Carol Brigham, of the famed Brigham decision and subsequent Act 60, is quoted quite recently in the Rutland Herald, saying “Bottom line, this bill is a fast track to silencing local voices and closing small schools.” The 1997 Brigham Decision and ACT 60 stripped local control of education finance from the towns and consolidated control over our educational tax dollars into the hands of state government. This was done in the name of making education financing “fair” for all Vermont’s school children. The amount of money now being spent on education in Vermont is around 1.6 billion dollars. This equates to a lot of power. Money is power and power corrupts. History is abundant with examples of what happens when the people blindly hand authority of their money to big government. More often than not big government ends up dictating to the people what kind of choices they can have. The end result is no choice, no freedom and no liberty. Since the passage of Act 60 our elected state representatives and state senators have been steadily eroding the authority of local boards with poor results. The results are expensive state and federal mandates, stagnant student test scores and skyrocketing property taxes, all of which the boards have little control over. Please call your local state representatives and state senators and tell them to oppose H. 833. Remember, there is an election in November. Your vote can make real difference.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 23:44:14 +0000
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