Thinking Again about ‘Think Twice’
By Sandy Vondrasek

Every mid-winter for the past five years, school boards from the Orange Southwest Supervisory Union (Randolph, Braintree, and Brookfield) have invited their two representatives and one senator to a meeting to discuss education issues.

This year, concern about a recently-passed education law is so high that five supervisory unions, representing 19 towns, have banded together to host a joint, January 17 meeting with all their legislators.

The Green Mountain Forest Collaborative, as the coalition of five supervisory unions calls itself, is also inviting other notables to the session, including Gov. Jim Douglas, Senate President Peter Shumlin, House Speaker Gaye Symington, and the chairs of the senate and house education committees.

The public is invited too, according to Laura Soares of Randolph, one of the organizers of the event, which will be Thursday, Jan. 17, 6-8 p.m., at the Randolph Union High School auditorium.

Soares, a member of the Randolph School Board and chair of the OSSU board, co-chairs the Green Mountain Forest Collaborative with Doug Shiok, superintendent of the Orange North SU (Orange, Washington, and Williamstown).

The other SUs in the collaborative are: Washington South SU (Northfield and Roxbury); Windsor-Northwest (Bethel, Stockbridge, Pittsfield, Rochester, Hancock, and Granville); and Orange Windsor SU (Chelsea, Royalton, Sharon, Strafford, and Tunbridge).

School boards and administrators are primarily concerned about the "two-vote" provision of Act 82, Soares said. Act 82, passed in the last hours of the 2007 session, will require districts with budgets that exceed a defined "inflation rate" AND with per-pupil costs over the state average to divide their proposed budgets into two sections. Voters must vote twice, once for the "allowed" portion of the budget and again for the "excess."

The vote-twice provision was developed as an alternative to the budget cap sought by Gov. Douglas.

Since the measure was an 11^th-hour creation, legislators may not have a clear idea on how the law might affect schools in their district, Soares said. Members of the collaborative stand ready to help them understand, she said.

Representatives from each school in the collaborative will present information at the January 17 meeting on how Act 82 might affect that school.

For example, Randolph’s school budget would not trigger the two-vote mandate for two years, but likely would the following year, Soares said.

Soares said Randolph school officials have worked over the past five years to keep per-pupil costs down, and budget increases low. A number of teacher and other staff positions have been cut as enrollments dropped. However, if student numbers continue to decline, and fixed costs, such as fuel and health insurance rise, the district’s per-pupil costs will inevitably rise.

Having a portion of the budget termed "excess" seems likely to lessen its chances of being approved by voters, the administrators fear. So members of the five-SU collaborative plan also to explain to the politicians what would be cut from their school programs to keep budgets at the "allowed" level. Soares said other technical problems in the law will be discussed.

Randolph-area representatives Patsy French and Jim Hutchinson, and Orange County Sen. Mark MacDonald voted against Act 82. Soares said local school officials are "definitely requesting a change" in the law, and Rep. French is already preparing a bill.

Other Issues

Area board members and administrators plan to raise other issues January 17, including the potential loss of special education funding under Act 82, the loss of school construction funding under the moratorium, and "the rigid restriction of the state-wide school calendar bill."

The five supervisory unions in the Green Mountain Collaborative comprise nearly 5000 students, seven high schools, 11 middle schools, 18 elementary schools, the Randolph Technical Career Center, and the RAVEN and VIP Collaboratives.