Teachers defend small Vt. schools

Springfield's Alison Sylvester was one of several teachers who offered their thoughts to the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday on proposals to overhaul the governance structures of the state’s nearly 300 school districts to create fewer, larger districts.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20150226/NEWS03/702269881

Published February 26, 2015 in the Rutland Herald Teachers defend small Vt. schools By Josh O’Gorman VERMONT PRESS BUREAU MONTPELIER — Teachers are urging lawmakers to carefully consider any legislation that could result in the closure of small schools. Teachers offered their thoughts to the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday on proposals to overhaul the governance structures of the state’s nearly 300 school districts to create fewer, larger districts. The proposals aim to save money and ensure equity of educational opportunities from one school to the next. While proponents of the legislation say such a move would improve the financial viability of small schools, others see it as the first step toward closing small schools around the state. The committee took testimony from Carl Johnson, a science teacher at Gilman Middle School in Lunenburg, which has approximately 40 students in grades five through eight. Johnson argued that small classes allow him more opportunity to engage his students than he would have in a larger classroom. “On paper, Gilman might look like one of the schools that is not providing the best opportunities for students,” said Johnson, who noted the school does not offer a foreign language and, under the proposed school budget, will not have a school counselor next year. “But that’s not what a school is about. A school is about the teachers and it’s about the students,” Johnson continued. “The close proximity that we have with students really prepares them for success as they head off to high school.” Dottye Ricks teaches business at the Concord School, a K-12 school in Concord, and is also a member of the Barre Supervisory Union Board. Ricks discussed the effects of school consolidation efforts that began 30 years ago in her native Louisiana. “You drive back after 30 years down Highway 71 and those small towns are now ghost towns,” Ricks said. “When you take children out of communities, when you take families out of the communities, you take away the community.” Ricks said some students in the Barre Supervisory Union are unable to learn in a traditional classroom setting and end up in smaller classrooms, and argued those students could be best served in small schools. “It doesn’t make sense to close our small schools, send them (students) to a larger school and then funnel them into a small program,” Ricks said. “Can’t we figure out how the big schools can support the small schools?” Donald Tinney, an English teacher at Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans and current candidate for director of the National Education Association, argued that the current metric of using per-pupil spending as a measure of efficiency leads the public to look at students as “tax burdens.” Tinney said evaluating spending in terms of per-pupil spending would be akin to measuring the efficiency of the Agency of Transportation by how many vehicles travel a stretch of highway. “That wouldn’t be fair to VTrans, and it’s not fair to our students,” Tinney said. Alison Sylvester, vice president of the Vermont-NEA and a fifth-grade teacher in Springfield, noted how financial constraints are affecting one of the largest school districts in the state, which is shedding teachers, paraeducators, mental health clinicians and foreign language courses. Sylvester argued that program cuts are happening not only at small schools. “When we talk about cutting programs, we’re not just talking about small schools,” Sylvester said. “We’re talking about all schools.”