Opinion

Long arm of the blog

A recent report from Amy Nixon described endless requirements imposed by the state on the school boards of Danville, Peacham, Walden and Barnet; the Caledonia Cooperative School District and the Caledonia Central Supervisory Union. The root of their struggle is Vermont education law, enforced by the blob (Agency of Education).

The school boards of the affected towns and the CCSU want to find a solution that allows parents to send their children to their favorite school. One or another law won’t let them choose.

The receiving school can reportedly agree to waive any tuition payment by those kids’ town of residence, but if they do, they have to also waive tuition for every kid, from anywhere in the state. No school board can accept that policy.

School boards are also leery of accepting a tuition-waived student who subsequently becomes eligible for expensive special-education costs.

We have little doubt that left to their own devices, the school boards and their supervisory union could work out a satisfactory arrangement. But they aren’t left to their own devices.

They have to toe the line with the blob lawyers, interpreting the state statutes. The obvious short-run answer is to loosen up the statutes to allow local districts to make their own agreements, including tuition contributions by the sending districts.

In the long run, a far better solution would be for the State to give every child a tuition scholarship, and let their parents decide which school best meets their child’s needs. Then school districts — and independent schools — would prosper by competing to meet their customers’ needs, instead of continuing as a monopoly struggling to get their budgets approved by taxpayers every year.

That solution would favor all students, all parents, and the staff and teachers of market-responsive schools. Unfortunately, poor government-monopoly schools and the VT-NEA teachers’ union will always combine to stifle any consideration of that useful plan.

This editorial first appeared in the Caledonian Record on Dec. 12.

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