GLOVER – Thank you to those of you who attended the September Legislative Coffee Hour at the Highland Center for the Arts today, and a big thank you to HCA for that delicious apple tart. For those of you who could not make it, I shared this update about the work of the redistricting task force, the group that is currently working on new school district maps to present to the Vermont Legislature in December.
The task force decided upon a template to use to test whether the maps will work for Vermont. It was tested on a random map of a single statewide school district. More maps will be run through this template at the next meeting on Monday, Sept. 29, including a map based on counties and another based on tech centers.
Jay Badams and Sen. Harrison did some work around county-level districts. Dr. Badams and Sen. Harrison will continue to develop the county model, including by addressing the following questions:
In what ways does a county district model make progress toward our goals?
In what ways does a county model make our situation worse?
Could county districts function as supervisory unions (SUs)?
What geographic limitations are there to a county model?
How would we deal with the very small or very large outlier counties?
Is there any county-wide governance support available, any other potential partner agencies that are organized on a county basis?
The task force had hoped to have these maps for a thorough discussion at this meeting, but the lack of data from the Agency of Education caused this to be delayed until the next meeting. The task force still doesn’t have quality data from the AOE. This is a tremendous burden to the task force because they can’t create reliable maps without it, and it is also raising concerns about whether the AOE can truly support our schools as they go through the many changes required in redistricting.
The task force is working on where, when and how often to have public engagement and have decided to do this in addition to the 8 funded meetings. There will likely be three or four public engagement meetings across Vermont to ensure that they hear from as many Vermonters as possible, though it is not yet known how the public engagement and map creation timing will align. This is a concern as well. Kim Gleason and Sen. Wendy Harrison are working organizing these public engagement sessions. The task force proposes to hold meetings in Rutland and Bradford, and is looking for a third site in Windham County and possibly a fourth in Chittenden County
Finally, there have been many issues with the livestream. The Agency of Administration is working hard to ensure that the meetings are available for the public to attend, but has not been completely successful yet. Transparency of a process this important is crucial and we are hopeful that this will be fixed soon.
At the next meeting on September 29, the task force will review the revised problem statement and goals, discuss proposed modifications of the template and rubric for map proposals, and discuss what CTE regions would look like (Sen. Beck and David Wolk), discuss county level proposals (Badams and Harrisson), and discuss whether a map of regional shared services could be a tool for addressing cost, quality and fairness in service delivery in a more feasible way.
I will continue to provide updates on the task force following these monthly meetings. The next coffee hour will take place on Saturday, Oct. 25, and I would love to see you there.
Leanne Harple is the state representative for Orleans-4 House District that includes the towns of Greensboro, Craftsbury, Glover and Albany
Rep. Leanne Harple
Leanne Harple represents Orleans-4, the towns of Albany, Craftsbury, Glover and Greensboro.
