ACT 46 Alternative Governance Sub-committee Meeting Tuesday, August 9, 2016, 6:00 pm Room 131 @ U-32
I saw this meeting to be confusing, unhelpful, and frustrating to the Alternative Governance Sub-committee in that it did not appear to answer any of their questions. But listen to it yourself and draw your own conclusions. Below is a typescript of the beginning of the meeting.
The audio of this meeting is at http://calaisnotes.wordpress.com/ ORCA videotaped this meeting at http://www.orcamedia.net/ ; search – Washington Central, choose: the Aug 9, 2016 meeting.
Around the table counter clockwise: Rebecca Heintz (Chair of this sub-committee, Worchester, non-voting member of the ACT 46 Study Committee), Chris McVeigh (Worcester, ACT 46 Alternative Governance Sub-committee & ACT 46 Study Committee), Matthew DeGroot (Worcester School Board & ACT 46 Study Committee) Carl Parton (Berlin School Board, ACT 46 Alternative Governance Sub-committee & ACT 46 Study Committee), Flor Diaz-Smith (East Montpelier School Board & ACT 46 Study Committee), Adrienne Magida (Middlesex, U-32 School Board & ACT 46 Study Committee), Steve Looke (East Montpelier School Board & ACT 46 Study Committee), Bill Kimball (WCSU Superintendent), Donna Russo-Savage (VT Agency of Education, VT Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe), Nichole Mace (Executive Director of VT School Boards Association).
Absent: Scott Thompson (Calais, U-32 School Board, ACT 46 Alternative Governance Sub-committee & ACT 46 Study Committee)
Audience: Peter Harvey (Calais), Dot Naylor (Calais), Rick Kehne (Calais), Paul Cate (East Montpelier), Joshua Warman (ACT 46 Implementation Committee), Scott Bassage (Calais).
6:00 Chair Rebecca Heintz called the meeting to order. After introductions around the whole room, Bill introduced Donna Russo-Savage (VT Agency of Education), Nichole Mace (Executive Director of VT School Boards Association) as “invited to come and have a conversation around the guidelines of Alternative Structures.”
6:09 Rebecca explained the purpose of the meeting: “A small group of us [the ACT 46 Study Committee] has formed a sub-committee to look at what we might be able to propose as an alternative model, in part, I would say primarily for me at least and I think for the other Alternative Sub-committee members is having some budget authority in our own towns, but it’s a much broader conversation than that. We have actually met quite a bit; and one of the obstacles we keep coming up against is that people say they just aren’t going to let you do it, no matter what you propose, it’s not going to be allowed. So, I was excited to see the guidance, and I do think that it’s obvious that it’s a very high bar; and so I think the hopes of this meeting would be to figure out some more information about if we are going to meet this bar. I’d also like to know whether or not we are just not eligible because we have heard, that’s been communicated to us; that the WCSD is just not eligible. So if that’s true, I’d be curious to understand that position and the reasoning behind it. So we could start there. That would be a great place to start.
6:10 Donna Russo-Savage began by telling the meeting - “from 1999 through 2015 I was the “non-patrician legal counsel at the Legislature,” and for the last 9 of those years she was the Education Attorney. So that means that any of the 180 legislators or any committee who wanted to have a bill or an amendment having anything to do with education came to me. So that meant that I would be writing something on one side of an issue and I would turn right around and write something on the other side of the issue or something that was going to try to destroy that. That was what my job was. It was to provide the services to everybody equally regardless of what my opinion was because they weren’t even supposed to know what my opinion was… I started with the Education Committee in 2007… I eventually wrote the bill that became ACT 153, which created the Red Incentive Program, the Regional District Incentive Program; that was in 2010. And I also wrote ACT 156, which are all the variations to the regs, and that was in 2012. That’s a side by side, and the MUSD [Modified Unified School Districts] that you have probably heard of… And then in 2015 wrote ACT 46. So from a very non-patrician perspective I’m very familiar with the conversations that happened at the Legislature and what went into the Legislation. Any of you who have spent any time at the legislature know that an idea comes out and its fairly stream lined; then people keep adding things and so what you end up with something that is a lot lumpier than you would like it to be. And I know that ACT 46 is confusing; and it’s largely because of that. But it really was intended to be a seamless process of Phase One, which were the accelerated mergers created in ACT 46. Phase Two, which were the Reds and the red incentives Phase Three, what we are calling Conventional Mergers, which also created ACT 46, and having that be a chance the district would talk to each other and figure out what was best for their area…In Oct [2015] I moved over to the Department of Education and my job there is to be the point person for Governor’s issues which primarily means the implementation of ACT 46 and the ACTS that it incorporated. I see my role and the Secretary sees my role as nearly identical to what it was at the agency. I am not here to tell anybody if they should do anything, or that one thing from you is better than another. I’m really here to say – this is what the law says now. It may not be what you like. You may want to go to the legislature and get the new person who is doing education legislation to write something or do something different. But I’m really here to answer questions and say this is what it does. And this is the way it’s being interpreted by the State Board [of Education]…”
7:40 The meeting adjourned when Bill reminded Donna Russo-Savage and Nichole Mace that they had to leave.
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