TTO

By:  Robert Letovsky        

      Chairperson        

     Chittenden East Supervisory Union Executive Committee

This past December 2009, the Chittenden East Supervisory Union (CESU) Executive Committee decided to begin a comprehensive study of its current governance structure.  The Executive Committee’s ultimate aim is to have a ballot question at Town Meeting Day 2011 addressing the idea of a single school board for all of CESU.  However, to get to that point, CESU’s boards have to follow a fairly complex series of legally mandated steps.   

Currently CESU is comprised of seven member school districts, six representing the K-4 school districts (i.e. Bolton, Huntington, Jericho, Richmond, Underhill and Underhill Incorporated District) and one representing the schools covering grades 5-12 (BRMS, CHMS and Mount Mansfield Union High school). As well, the overall governing body is CESU Executive Committee, comprised of one representative of each of the K-4 school districts and two representatives of the MMU district.  

The most important of these legally mandated steps is the formation of an exploratory committee composed of board members and the public.  This exploratory committee will discuss the range of issues which creating a single board to govern all K-12 education in our member districts raises, and produce a report which must then be approved by the State Board of Education and ultimately, the voters of each community involved.  

Even before the exploratory committee begins its work, Vermont law requires that it be allocated a budget to fund its work. At its December, 2009 meeting the Executive Committee voted to create a $15,000 budget, funded by each CESU member district based on its Equalized Pupil count. (Chittenden East is in the process of applying for a $20,000 grant from the State of Vermont to fund the costs associated with the consolidation study).  During the months of January and February of this year, all CESU boards approved their respective shares of this budget.   

To give the Committee some baseline information on what is involved in creating a single school board for all of CESU, the Executive Committee also voted to allocate $5,000 of this budget to commission a preliminary study by the Vermont School Boards Association.  The first draft of this “Phase I” study was completed and submitted to all CESU boards in early March 2010.  During the months of March and April, the CESU member boards reviewed the document and submitted suggested revisions to the VSBA. The final report was delivered to all CESU boards in early May 2010(community members can read the full report at http://www.cesu.k12.vt.us/ ).   Finally, during May and June, all CESU boards reviewed the final Phase I report.  Each CESU board approved its content, and voted to move forward to the next phase of the process, which involves actual formation of the exploratory committee.  

                                         What is the end goal?

The ultimate aim of this initiative is to ask CESU voters if they wish to replace the present CESU Supervisory Union, comprised of seven member school districts plus the CESU Executive Committee, with a single K-12 Unified Union School District.  Under this new structure, a single K-12 school board would replace the present eight CESU school boards. This unified board would consist of representatives from each of the districts currently forming CESU.  

                                                  Why now?  

It’s important to note that this is not the first time CESU’s boards have looked into ways to improve governance processes and structures within the Supervisory Union.  Since CESU was established in 1966, there have been several committees to study the pros and cons of moving away from the present model of seven boards over the five towns which comprise the Supervisory Union.  The most recent of these was in 2008, when the boards of the Jericho, Underhill and Underhill I.D. school districts hired the VSBA to study the formation of a possible “tri-school” board for the three northernmost CESU elementary boards.  Prior to that, a committee made up of representatives from all CESU boards conducted a comprehensive study of CESU governance in the early 1990’s, while another CESU committee briefly studied the governance issue in the 1980’s.  

This most recent effort resulted from the coming together of a variety of forces and influences.  On the one hand, Vermont public schools face a challenging demographic environment, with total enrollment statewide already down considerably since the 1990’s, and further declines anticipated over the next five-ten years.  In fact, according to the Vermont Department of Education, the current public school population is anticipated to continue to decline to about 75,000 by 2014, with a slight increase in school population beginning around 2020.  That said, according to Vermont DoE data, this increase will not bring statewide enrollments anywhere near where they were in the 1990’s. This enrollment decline has hit small schools particularly hard, with corresponding impacts on per student expenditure levels. 

At the same time, there has been a significant move from the State government to encourage consolidation among Vermont’s 240+ school boards.  The Legislature voted this year to offer property tax relief to taxpayers in towns that approve consolidation initiatives.  Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Education has been very vocal about the need for school board consolidation, and has strongly suggested that the day may not be far off when some boards are mandated to adopt consolidated formats.  

                What could a Unified Union School District mean for CESU students, families and taxpayers?  

As noted, the exploratory committee will be looking at the full range of potential impacts of consolidation.  The initial Phase I report from the VSBA outlined a number of educational and financial advantages of a new governance model for CESU.  Allowing all available resources in a unified union school district to be allocated by a single board allows for greater flexibility in responding to fluctuations in demand in each of the member schools.  Under the present arrangement, for example, we have seen instances where one board has had to reduce its staff in response to declining enrollment while another CESU-member board was conducting a hiring search in response to rising enrollment, sometimes at the same grade level!  A single PreK-12 board could use that flexibility to introduce several measures that could strengthen overall educational program while preserving the future of smaller buildings. As well, Act 153, the statute recently passed by the Vermont Legislature to encourage school district consolidation, prohibits the closing of any school in consolidated union receiving state incentives for a period of 4 years, unless approved by the residents of that school’s pre-consolidation district.  

Beyond the flexibility in allocating resources, a Unified Union School District does offer potential economies, for example in terms of fewer audited financial statements (current state law requires separate audited annual statements for each of the seven CESU boards) and  in terms of central office support services.  

Finally, as already noted, the Legislature has approved a sizeable incentive package for towns that approve consolidation programs.  According to the Vermont Legislature’s Act 153, these include property tax reductions of 8/6/4/2 cents per hundred dollars for the first four years after an approved consolidation, respectively  

                                                   What’s Next?

 The Exploratory Committee will begin its meetings this summer (a complete schedule of the meetings will be posted on the CESU website).  The committee aims to have a report completed by early fall. This report will be available on the CESU website as well as on member district websites. This will be followed by a series of public forums at which interested community members will have a chance to offer comments and suggestions.  The report will then be submitted to the State Board of Education by November, 2010.  If the report is approved, a ballot question for Town Meeting Day 2011 will be warned some time in January, 2011.  This is an extremely tight timeline and the boards could end up presenting the ballot question in March 2012.  However, there is broad consensus across all of the CESU boards that we should try to present this question to CESU taxpayers and voters as soon as possible.