David Clark has been serving off and on on local school boards - first on the Westminster School board and currently on the Bellows Falls Union High School board - since 1988, which informs his historical perspective. You can read more of his commentary about public education and his journey on the roller coaster of local school governance on his website, thisishowitreallyworks.com.
WESTMINSTER-I'm gonna come right out and say it: The two major stumbling blocks to improving public education in Vermont are the teachers' union, the Vermont NEA, and the Vermont School Boards Association (VSBA), along with their conjoined twin, the Vermont Superintendents Association (VSA).
This is because like all responsive unions - and it is Vermont's largest by far - job No. 1 for the VNEA is keeping as many teachers as possible in the clover, and job No. 2 is the kids.
For those of you in the Windham Northeast wondering how negotiations are going, I've got news for you: Thanks to Susan Smallheer's recent story in the Brattleboro Reformer ["Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, teachers' union, head to mediation," March 11] you already know as much as the school boards do,
Early in April, Attorney Pietro Lynn of the Burlington Law firm Lynn, Lynn, Blackman & Manitsky made an overture to superintendents of schools all across Vermont to join him an a suit against the chemical giant Monsanto over the widespread PCB contamination that is emerging as a significant health...
The fur is starting to fly as a consequence of Governor Phil Scott's willful misunderstanding of collective bargaining law as it applies to teacher health benefits and the continuing fallout from the pushback against the statewide school consolidations mandated under Vermont Act 46. But one positive result of all this really bad politics has been the creation of a new school board advocacy group, the Alliance of Vermont School Board Members. If you're wondering how we ever got into such...
As most people are well aware by now, the Legislature and Governor Phil Scott are at an impasse over the state budget, and the sticking point seems to be Scott's strong desire to utilize the putative potential savings that the new health insurance coverages might generate. More specifically, the governor has based his calculations on what would happen of teachers picked up 20 percent of their premium costs. Well, the dumb farmers and truck drivers down here in Windham Northeast...
The so-called “Brigham decision,” which was the opening salvo in the Legislature's attempt to create the equality of school funding mandated by the Vermont Supreme Court, was also the beginning of the end of local control over public schools. Act 46, with its disingenuous mandate to effect educational “equity, accountability, and transparency” in the form of super-sized school districts, is the death knell of local control. The fundamental flaw which has underpinned all of Vermont tax policy since the arrival...