The Educational Freedom District

Vermonters have many innovative ideas for reforming and improving education. Unfortunately the legislature and state Board of Education seem unwilling to free the people of local communities from the state laws, rules, and regulations which restrict their options and keep overall control of education in the hands of the Board , the Department and the organized educational interest groups..

The purpose of the "educational freedom district is to create a process whereby local citizens may choose to opt their district out of the state-controlled public education system in favor of a new system characterized by competition, parental choice, opportunity, and diversity of educational experience.

In brief, the "Educational Freedom District" proposal would allow petitions signed by 10% of the voters of each town in a supervisory union district to put the proposal to create such a district on the town meeting or the general election ballots of the towns in the supervisory union district. Voting would be by Australian ballot.

If a majority of the voters in each of the towns voted to create the district, a planning commission would be created, composed of persons from the various towns involved named in the petition plus a specified number of additional members to be chosen by the persons named in the petition. Since voter approval of the commission's educational freedom district proposal will be necessary, there will be a strong incentive for the organizers to appoint commission members who can be effective in presenting the proposals to the voters.

Over the following year the planning commission would design a proposal for the district by choosing from a menu of opportunities contained in the authorizing statute. That proposal would then be presented to voters of the participating towns for approval. The proposal could be one integrated proposal, or a core proposal with several additional options voted upon separately.

Among the opportunities available for inclusion in the proposal would be:

• a unified district school board and elected superintendent
• creation of charter schools
• full parental choice, with educational funding paid out to parents for use in public, charter, alternative, parochial, work-study or other educational programs.
• voter approval of two district school budgets, one presented by the district school board covering non-instructional costs, and the other presented by the teachers union covering costs relating to the union contract.
• leasing of public school buildings to charter or independent schools
• educational materials assistance for home schoolers
• allowing home schoolers to take part in selected classes, make use of library resources, and take part in extracurricular activities at other schools.
• accelerated school completion for gifted students
• dual high school and college credit for advanced placement courses
• apprenticeship and work-study alternatives to classroom instruction
• exemption of teachers from state certification requirements
• exchange programs for study abroad
• periodic subject matter examinations for teachers
• merit pay for teachers
• participation in nationally recognized subject matter tests for students, including graduation examinations
• opt-out from the state Board's "portfolio assessment" program and Goals 2000
• termination of the check-off of teachers union dues
• recertification of union representation
• exemption from state mandates and required supervisory overhead (except for civil rights and financial accountability)
• public school contracting for instruction, maintenance, and management
• exclusion from state special education requirements with respect to mainstreaming and classroom disruption

It is unlikely, of course, that any planning commission would offer a proposal including all of these options. Its job is to offer the voters a proposal which is likely to be approved, and many of these items would be intensely controversial. Ultimately the voters will have to decide whether the proposal will be implemented.

If the proposal is approved by the voters, the new plan would take effect at the beginning of the ensuing school year. The district would sunset in four years but could be renewed by the voters or revoked at any general election after the district had been in existence for one school year. State aid would be distributed to the district as a unit with a unified tax base, counting all school age children in the district.

Most Vermont towns probably would not take action to effect an educational freedom district, but a few would. The people of those towns would then have the opportunity to design their own innovative educational program. In due course other towns would make similar choices and learn by the experience of the pioneers. The proposal does not require radical wall-to-wall educational changes across the whole state, but allows a broad range of changes to be made through local initiative with democratic approval.