Most adroitly, Gov. Jim Douglas turned the screws on Vermont’s school boards—and on the voters who accept or reject school budgets—the other day.

“I think Vermonters have to ask themselves if it’s fair to have eight percent reductions in some critical state services when the caseload is increasing, while at the same time we’re going to have a 4.6 percent increase on average in local school spending at a time when we’re going to have 1,400 fewer kids to educate next year,” Douglas said. “We need to have an honest discussion about our priorities.”

An honest discussion he will lead? Perish the thought. “I don’t want to be that direct,” he said.

Or responsible, as it is sometimes known. But responsible and adroit are often not the same thing.

A really responsible governor who wanted his state’s schools to spend less would say something like, “and here’s what I propose to cut,” or perhaps “here is the process I am putting in place to decide what to cut,” or at least, “here is the commission I’m going to appoint to advise us on what to cut.”

But a politician who acts responsibly risks…well, being held responsible. Any specific plan to cut school spending would be opposed by one faction or another: Teachers, administrators, school board members, parents, ideologues of the left or right. Or maybe all of the above.

Governors don’t like to get those folks mad at them. Far better to say, “the schools ought to spend less,” and leave it to others to figure out how.

From a politicians’ perspective, this has two advantages: (1) If anything is done, the politician is less likely to get blamed than whoever actually came up with the unpopular (to some factions) specific proposal; (2) If nothing is done, the politician can claim he or she tried to get something done, but was thwarted by “special interests.”

But Douglas should not be condemned. First of all, most ofthe other 49 governors would do the same. Besides, Douglas is taking the lead in proposing those other budget cuts he talked about. On Monday, the governor and key legislators announced agreement on almost $20 million in cuts in mental health services, environmental programs, and college scholarships, not to mention shutting down rest areas on the Interstate highways. All of that will be unpopular.

But not comparable to the political peril of messing with the public schools. And anyway, the Democrats who dominate the legislature share whatever blame the Republican governor gets for these cuts in the state budget. They cover each other’s backside.

Or course, the other reason Douglas should not be condemned is that he might be right, On the face of it, he has a strong case. Thanks to the recession, the state has to cut programs that help an increasing number of low-income people while the schools teach fewer children every year. Why should the public schools keep spending more to teach fewer while other government agencies have to spend less to serve more?

John Nelson of the State School Boards Association says the comparison is invalid.

“It doesn’t quite work that way.” Nelson said. “You can lose ten or 11 kids, maybe spread out over five grades. Does that mean you’re going to be able to cut a teacher?”

Besides, Nelson said, schools and school financing run under “an entirely different process” than the ones that prevail in state government.

“By that I mean that the process of developing and approving school budgets happens locally on the part of people who are going to pay the bill.”

Well, yes and no. In many ways local control of public schools has been attenuated. State (and, increasingly, federal) requirements help determine what is taught, and effectively, if not officially, how it is taught. Teacher salaries are negotiated with a union organized on a statewide level.

Furthermore, the statewide property tax and its income sensitivity provision, which holds down most people’s property tax, mean that local taxpayers may not save all that much from a cut in the local school budget.

“Our tax burden is more driven by the statewide tax rate, so only a small portion is based on our local spending,” said Tax Commissioner Tom Pelham. “There’s no incentive to control cost.”

Nelson, not surprisingly, does not agree.

“I can’t see any evidence that people vote yes (on the school budget) even though they think it’s too much money because , ‘I have incomesensitivity so what do I care?’ I never heard anybody say that , or heard that board members argue that to their voters.”

Who’s right? Who knows? It’s all conjecture, and will remain so unless some economics graduate student tries to collect and analyze real data.

What is not conjecture is that most Vermonters think their schools are worth it. Last year only 12 of the 263 school districts voted down their budgets at town meeting, according to figures provided by Darren Allen of the teachers union. Sometimes voters forced school boards to cut programs. Sometimes they forced them to put back programs the board had proposed cutting.

It isn’t that Vermont schools aren’t expensive. By any objective standard, they are. Thanks simply to the lay of the land, they will probably continue to be expensive if they are going to continue to be good, which, by those same objective standards (test scores, for what they are worth, which is something) they also are.

That doesn’t mean there is no way to save money on the schools. But as John Nelson said, “ it’s not as though people aren’t looking for it.” Even a re-elected and politically adroit Jim Douglas could have trouble convincing Vermonters to slash their school budgets. Perhaps that explains why he doesn’t want to be “that direct.”—Jon Margolis

Tags: Jim Douglas, John Nelson, Schools, Taxes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 8:24 am and is filed under Politics & Elections, Schools, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.