One of the best known lines from Shakespeare's Macbeth is this line delivered by the hero himself: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
And listening to the hoopla and "sound and fury" surrounding last week's vote of the Vermont House to do away with the state education grants for small schools, one can't help but wonder whether it signifies nothing.
This is not to suggest that our legislators are idiots telling tales, but the endless banality and sheer ineffectuality of the group in achieving real education funding reform is noteworthy.
As one of our state representatives, Adam Greshin, noted in his column this week, how quickly memories of Town Meeting fade. The House last week rejected an amendment to a property tax bill to repeal Act 68.
House members then held a vigorous debate over whether to phase out small school grants. As Greshin explained, with more clarity than the subject deserves, small school grants were originally supposed to be a short-term solution when Act 60 was adopted, to help small schools adapt to the new financing model.
Naturally, rather than sunsetting, the grants for small schools were continued, and continue until this day. And the definition of a small school has changed so that rather than meaning a school with fewer than 100 students, it now means a school with class sizes of 20 or fewer students. That change doubled the number of schools that qualified for the grants.
All the hoopla, the sound and fury over really, truly, honestly sunsetting the small school grants (over six years) at the State House last week is the tail wagging the dog. The dog, in this case, is a failed education funding system that is built on the premise of ever rising property values.
How much more interesting and productive might the legislative debate have been if the discussion had focused on what might happen if the old Foundation Formula of education funding were revisited and fully funded?
The Foundation Formula looked at the total of each town's grand list and awarded state aid to education generously to property-poor towns while awarding it sparingly – if at all – to property-wealthy towns. It failed not because it was a bad idea but because the Legislature never fully funded it, never, not once since its inception.
All this sound and fury over a six-year sunset of small schools grants is just a distraction.
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