(This article first appeared in the November 3, 2016 issue of the Addison Independent)
Residents in Starksboro, Lincoln, New Haven, Monkton, and
Bristol will be voting Nov. 8 on whether to consolidate school governance under
Act 46. It’s a polarizing issue, at a time when we’ve seen enough polarization
at the national level to last a lifetime. As coauthors, we come together from
the left and right to urge you to vote no. We think these communities can do
better, by stepping back to look at the big picture.
For a lesson in big-picture thinking, let’s take a quick
visit to the environmental movement. In 1962, scientist Rachel Carson published
Silent Spring, a groundbreaking
exposé of the over-use of chemical pesticides. One of the first books to call
Americans’ attention to environmental issues, Silent Spring revealed the link between pesticides and cancer.
Of course, pesticides like DDT were applied with good
intentions—for instance, to kill mosquitoes that could carry disease. But Carson
showed the grave links between pesticides, health problems, and significant
bird die-offs, hence Silent Spring’s
poignant title: A spring when no birds would sing.
The most important revelation of Silent Spring is that you can never do just one thing. In an
interconnected system, all actions must be considered with humility, and within
the context of the whole. Tinkering can have devastating unintended
consequences.
In 2015, the Vermont legislature passed Act 46, an education
law inspired by concerns about rising property taxes, declining enrollments,
and a growing achievement gap among students. But with its incentives to erase
town lines for school purposes, abolish local school boards, and effectively
eliminate Town Meeting Day deliberation on school issues, Act 46 pushes for a massive
overhaul not simply of education, but of what it means to live in a Vermont
community.
Key points that have been missed in the consolidation
discussion include the following:
1) Size matters. Current
district lines follow town lines, but erasing these and replacing them with
regional districts means a dramatic increase in the size of the governed body.
What we know from town meeting research is, the larger the town, the lower the per
capita participation. Citizens understand that in a small body, their
participation counts for much more than in a large one, and they feel more
civic responsibility to support the common good.
2) Power matters.
The current proposal dramatically reduces the number of elected representatives
per citizen. This means reduced ability to know, understand, and communicate
with decision makers.
3) Structure matters. It
is well known that single-issue interest groups tend to dominate attendance at
single-issue public meetings. But education needs the voice and wisdom of the
full community. The structure must be designed to invite them in, not turn them
away.
4) Community matters.
Vermont is the second most rural state in the U.S. And researchers consistently
rank Vermont among the highest in “social capital”—the trust, neighborliness, and
volunteerism that make our society, economy and democracy function. Social
capital is not some magical ingredient in Vermont’s water; it is built by
having one neighborly conversation, one thoughtful compromise, one difficult
meeting at a time. Consolidation flies in the face of civic research showing
that America’s social capital wastelands are suburbs, where too often there is
not a strong community center, and governance happens at the regional level.
Like any natural system,
this one works as a loop—education supports community, community supports
education. Vermont’s schools may be the single most powerful setting to inspire
citizen engagement. Schools are where we spend the majority of our locally
collected tax dollars. And here, we entrust what is most precious to us—our
children—to a larger system.
In turn, decades of research show that schools function best
when the community is involved. The future of public education depends on
communities full of people who are willing to pay for good education—with their
time, their wisdom, and their dollars—even though their immediate interests are
not at stake. For this, we need robust democratic engagement.
Let’s be clear: Rachel Carson was not pro-malaria, and
consolidation opponents are not in favor of bad schools. Carson advocated for
biological pest control—a sustainable middle ground. Likewise, we can find a
middle ground in school governance reform.
In Act 46, legislators included alternatives to wholesale
consolidation. Vermonters should hold them to their offer. After sending back a
“no” vote, communities can collaborate to create a new proposal, for instance
one that retains elected local boards with key local powers (such as developing
budgets and hiring the principal), while also creating a combined board for
issues better decided together. This can be a Jeffersonian moment to create
something that’s truly better, not to meet a one-size-fits-all mandate.
What makes no sense is the wholesale eradication of effective,
responsive local school boards and the erasure of the sense of place that makes
our communities function. Vermonters’ experience with self-governance lifts our
politics dramatically above the national. What sets us apart is our human-scale
structure, and the intermingled voices of local wisdom.
What kind of world do we want our children to graduate into?
And what kind of communities create that world? What will be the impact of a
silent spring, with no voices heard on Town Meeting Day? These questions, too,
are our responsibility.
Frank
Bryan Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of
Vermont and a Starksboro resident. Susan Clark is the co-author of "All
Those In Favor" (with Frank Bryan) and "Slow Democracy" (with
Woden Teachout).