By Fayston School Board
We are writing to advocate for budget decisions that honor commitments, serve the interests of students and taxpayers and do not make teacher cuts without thorough consideration of strategy, equity, staffing models and performance.
We view staffing reductions proposed by Superintendent Brigid Nease to be ineffectual in the face of proposed budget increases, contrary to the interests of students at Fayston School and in direct contradiction to the commitments made to voters by the Act 46 Committee and Nease during the marketing of accelerated consolidation.
In its first months of operation, the Harwood Unified Union School District (HUUSD) Board has been presented a level service budget and expenditure increases, many which do not directly support educating students and several teacher cuts. The board has discussed these changes without developing a common vision, strategy or plan, common operational knowledge of schools, consideration of revenues and under advisement that the central office is unprepared and cannot provide comparative analyses on resourcing or programming.
It is reasonable that we don’t have thorough analysis to inform shifting investments and reductions yet. The ramp of state tax breaks and the Act 46 Committee’s commitment to sustain the status quo in our first year of operation anticipated that. The Fayston School Board asks that in this context the HUUSD Board recognize how nascent their authority is, the limits of its knowledge and the importance of honoring all communities’ interests and goals during this substantial change.
Fayston School entered into our unified district as a high-performing and efficient small school and a very desirable asset, though you would not imagine so from the conversations at board meetings to date. Nease characterized our school as being excessively staffed, suggested repeatedly that our budget should offend board members from other communities and that teacher cuts should be made immediately.
This is despite the fact that Fayston School:
• in the current year has lower education spending per equalized pupil than all schools across our unified district but Warren School’s, while fulfilling common mandates and serving significantly smaller population than most.
•has come to the unified district with no debt, a $91,000 building maintenance reserve and no deferred maintenance.
•has come to the unified union with a grandfathered Vermont Small Schools Grant of $62,000 this year – and which will increase if populations decline further – to subsidize the continued operation of our small school within a larger unified district.
•has demonstrated its appeal beyond our town lines with the largest net inflow of students of all schools in our choice survey.
•has made deliberate decisions to reduce other expenditures and staff to sustain consistent, high-caliber teachers to meet the needs of routinely fluctuating populations.
A picture of running Fayston School has been painted that suggests there is an expedient way to make teacher cuts with no downsides to education quality or school health. This is patently false. Teachers that come and go are not good for students. Capping Fayston School capacity below what is desirable for cohorts or effective for multiyear classroom instruction is not good for students.
The Story Board that the Act 46 Committee used to sell accelerated consolidation to our community featured school choice prominently. As a mountain town with second-home owners and seasonal visitors and little affordable housing, we recognized that enabling students beyond our town lines to attend our school was vital to our sustainability and our growth. If the Act 46 Committee and all our boards had not approved the implementation of school choice, we would not be a part of this unified district. Now we are confronted by the potential that the HUUSD Board will cut our teachers and limit our capacity, undermining both school choice and our potential to sustain or grow our enrollment.
Fayston School came to this union understanding the challenges at other schools. We knew Moretown had exceptionally high education spending per pupil. We knew Warren had neglected its building and was going to take on a massive debt which would be socialized. We knew Waitsfield was starting to experience real estate constraints and sizable population swings. We came as team players to support the health of these schools. We did not expect that this budget season would start with Nease calling for two teachers to be cut at Fayston School, given her direct communications to our town when marketing accelerated consolidation.
The Fayston School is an asset. It is an asset that your board can undermine or can leverage for current families across our unified district and to attract new families. Rather than rushing to cap capacity below what is good for students, we would argue that in developing a HUUSD strategy you should actually consider expanding investment in Fayston School to attract new families.
At the HUUSD Board meetings nothing has been discussed of Fayston School beyond preliminary forecasts of classroom sizes for one year. Anyone empowered to make decisions that directly impact students and alter education delivery must take the time to understand the operational challenges and qualities of this school. The HUUSD Board is an entirely new venture, convened in September, shouldering a responsibility that had been the responsibility of each community’s elected leaders with much more knowledge of each community’s school.
We request that the HUUSD Board invest sufficient time to learn the operation and results of Fayston School and all schools before departing from level service budgets and cutting teachers. The HUUSD Board should honor the Act 46 Committee’s commitments not to rush and overturn the status quo without deeper evaluations of equity, efficiency and performance and development of an HUUSD vision, strategy and plan. Making immediate changes that ignore community challenges and priorities and reduce school investments without adequate information or deliberation will undermine the mission and credibility of the HUUSD Board.
(This piece is abridged and excerpted. Read full piece at www.faystonschool.org/school-board.)
