Elizabeth on Education

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
— Nelson Mandela

Anyone who knows me, knows that I will fight hard for Vermont’s small schools, the lifeblood of our communities— but education includes a full age spectrum, and Vermont’s colleges receive among the lowest amount of state support in the country.

Let’s stop trying to bolster bigger schools by starving smaller ones.

That system might work for business acquisitions, but it doesn’t work for education. I will push to require full economic and educational impact studies prior to closure of schools of any size. Let’s make sure education is treated like the unique system that it is, and not like a business.

Reform and Update the Education Funding Formula.

The 1997 Brigham decision brought about one of the most equitable K-12 financing systems in the country, but one that requires some fancy footwork in data collection and tax calculation. Now that we have lived with Act 60/68 and have seen its downsides, let’s commit to the recommendations put forth by UVM’s analysis of the 2019 study regarding equity in Act 60/68’s use of pupil cost weighting factors (“equalized pupil”), and examine whether it, and the education funding formula, can be updated. Doing so could alleviate much of the cost and pressure to the current education system, and could help to shore it up.

Support Education During Recovery

The pandemic has caused strife with nearly every student in the state, country, world. We consider the economic impact of the pandemic, and how the education fund, and education itself, are going to be supported and not weakened. We should be wracking our brains to figure out how to make students whole again — including finding a way to make therapy services accessible — not how to make deep cuts that will cause permanent damage to the system that supports students and their families. I also understand the conundrum of not being able to afford to bill our tapped-out taxpayers for much more— but I believe there is a way that could be worked out to lessen the impact on both.

Vermont’s state college system has seen declining enrollment even before the pandemic thrust them further into financial troubles. Let’s use this time of transition to leverage our state colleges to re-tool and retrain our workforce.