To the Fayston community:
As your elected Fayston School Board with responsibility to serve the interests of our students and our taxpayers, we felt it important to address the whirlwind of activity and confusion that Act 46 has created. This is undoubtedly the most impactful education legislation since Act 60 and we feel it is important that we all be informed and engaged in the work at hand to ensure our interests are best served.
Some clarifying details about what Act 46 is and is not might be helpful.
• Act 46 mandates school board consolidation, not the consolidation of schools, by July 1, 2019.
• Act 46 establishes that come July 1, 2019, the state will consolidate any unconsolidated districts according to Agency of Education (AOE) and State Board of Education (SBE) designs without further public input.
• Act 46 establishes significant tax incentives for consolidating and they decline over time (the deadline for the best deal is July 1, 2016), rewarding districts that consolidate quickly and shifting costs to those who don’t.
• Act 46 establishes very significant constraints on budget increases and double counts any spending above predefined increases set for each district irrespective of the cause.
• Act 46 phases out the Small Schools Grants, which Fayston Elementary School receives, unless governance is consolidated as prescribed.
We feel the wisest course of action is to collaborate with our peers across our supervisory union, as we are doing via the Washington West Supervisory Union (WWSU) executive committee and Act 46 Study Committee, to define a consolidation plan of our own making that our electorate can vote on prior to July 1, 2016. The committees meet jointly in the Harwood library the second and fourth Wednesday of each month at 5:30 p.m. Their work is public and all are welcome. Meeting notes are available at www.wwsu.org and sessions are videotaped and posted by MRVTV at www.mrvtv.com.
We feel that to delay or ignore this work would be imprudent. We believe that the financial implications of Act 46 effectively undermine our ability to sustain the quality of education we currently offer without a significant increase in costs to our taxpayers. In truth, that is by design and a fact we can ill-afford to ignore.
One impact of Act 46, should we maintain the status quo, will be an increase in our relative share of statewide education taxes for operating Fayston Elementary School. Of greater concern will be its impact on Harwood and the impact Harwood expenditures will have on our tax rates. For Harwood, the 2016-2017 allowable per equalized pupil education spending increase is a mere 0.98 percent before expenditures are double-counted in the computation of tax rates. Against the backdrop of contracting enrollment and deteriorating building and grounds, increasing costs of insurance, transportation and labor, it is certain that should we not leverage the incentives for consolidation, the financial burdens our communities will face for statewide education funding will increase notably, while our own local offerings will face further erosion.
As noted, many questions must yet be worked through before a proposal can be developed for Fayston and our neighboring towns to vote on. To encourage participation, we can highlight a couple of the key areas that the Act 46 Study Committee must consider:
1) School Innovation: With the creation of a single budget and tax rate across a consolidated district, we have the potential to introduce school choice, school specialization, increased flexibility for families and flexible combinations of cohort groups. A framework can be developed that leverages the advantages of consolidated governance and better serves student interests, drawing more families to our schools.
2) Representation: On a consolidated Supervisory District Board each town will have less representation and the majority of board members will be residents of other towns, putting school investments in the hands of those less familiar with each town’s school. The Act 46 Study Committee will weigh, for example, establishment of advisory councils for each town to broaden effective representation of local interests to the Supervisory District Board and increase accountability.
In summary, while nobody appreciates being held hostage financially, governance consolidation is mandated by current law and there is reason to believe that governance consolidation could provide us some upsides concerning flexibility, enhanced collaboration and the interests of our students. We welcome community input and ask that it continue and grow so that our work can be as constructive and enlightened as possible.
FES School Board meetings are at 6:30 p.m. on the third Tuesday of every month and the first item on our agenda is always community input.
