Thoughtful lawmaking should take time — and it is
Well, this is taking longer than expected.
I’m used to adjourning to great fanfare — midnight speeches from the governor, celebratory whiskey in a plastic cup, hugs and smiles, etc. This year, however, two weeks past our initial expected adjournment date, after days and hours of waiting around the State House playing Uno and waiting for an education bill to surface, we just kind of wandered out of the building and went to bed.
Months of delay by the governor kicked things off early in the session, then the House voted out a bill that was slightly destroyed by the Senate, and then there was a week of committee of conference meetings that yielded nothing. Now we’re hanging out again, although this time at home, waiting and hoping that something will work out before next week.
Here’s a quick summary of how the process works: A bill, in this case H.454, comes out of a chamber. The H indicates that it came out of the House of Representatives. When we vote it out of our chamber, it goes to the Senate, they tinker with it how they will, and then it comes back to the House and if we like it, we approve it with their amendments, and if we don’t, then we ask for it to go to a committee of conference.
The committee is made up of three members from each chamber of mixed party affiliation. Those six people sit in a room together (you can watch it on YouTube, if you want) and try to figure out compromises and to come up with a bill that both chambers and all parties will support. The bill that comes out of the conference committee can be debated, but it can’t be changed or amended, which is why they really need to work it out carefully before it goes back to both chambers for a final vote.
As I’ve mentioned in this column, I hated the version of the education bill that came out of the Senate, so I was relieved that the committee was working from the House version of the bill as a starting point. It seems like there will be a mixture of legislators, community members and experts from the education field on the district-drawing committee, which is great. It also seems like the folks who enjoy public money supporting private schools are digging in a little hard, which isn’t that great.
Other issues that affect our school district, or potential future district, less are things like school closures. There are some communities with really tiny schools, and the thought of closing those is horrible for them, but unfortunately, it’s probably necessary given the high cost of maintaining facilities, some of them aging and in desperate need of upkeep, and the significant expenses related to administrative staffing and expenses. We’re lucky we won’t go through that — although I can see a day within the next decade that we end up merging into a central middle school in our region that then feeds into our high school — but we will face some hardships in the next five years or so as far as major budget cuts.
Champlain Valley School District is large, and wealthy compared to many others across the state. We have wonderful schools and dedicated, hard-working educators, staff and administration that are meeting increasingly unmanageable circumstances, and who just navigated a crushing pandemic and the academic, social and emotional aftermath that our kids suffered and are still suffering.
We pay a lot for this. Everyone’s property taxes went up, we voted down our school budget last year, we cut a lot of money and positions from our schools over the last two years, and we’ll probably have to do it again and maybe even again after that. For us, the consequence of equitable education for all Vermont kids at a lower cost is probably going to be losing stuff for our students. And our taxes won’t be going down right away; they might even go up a little. I’m really sorry about that.
I know people think we’re just throwing cash at everything and anything, and that our kids are learning basket weaving and six dialects of Chinese, but the reality is that healthcare costs are a major unpredictable driver of rising budgets, and there’s no chance that the federal government is going to do anything about that over the next few years. We’re also losing federal funding for all kinds of programs at a moment’s notice, which means we have no way of knowing what’s to come in three months, let alone two years.
So, there’s the doom and gloom. I wish there were something prettier to report, but there isn’t. If you’re looking for a silver lining, though, it’s that this is taking longer than expected. It seems like maybe that would be a negative, but I think it’s really good. We’re not pushing through something just so we can say we did it, and we’re not compromising just to be able to point a finger at someone else later and be like, Oh, hey, look how that guy messed up! Thoughtful lawmaking should take time, especially when it comes to Vermont kids. I honestly hope that they take as much time as they need. I’ll happily go back to Montpelier over and over again if that means this is getting done right.
Please let me know if you have thoughts or feelings or ideas about the situation with Vermont education. We’re back in Montpelier on June 16 and 17 to try again; the committee of conference is meeting for the rest of this week. I can be reached by email or 917-887-8231.
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