Vermont’s Commissioner of Education, Armando Vilaseca, is determined to take your kids school days away from you. His latest gig in central Vermont is encouraging Montpelier city’s high school and U-32 to pursue something neither district is actually pursuing: a merger.

(While Vilaseca pushes for a political win in the guise of a merged supervisory district, the two boards are actually talking about sharing resources – not legal oversight.)

Local control is the best known phrase that gets in the way of Vilaseca’s dream of lordship over our public school system, but a lesser known phrase is also at play.

Local accountability would disappear along with the last remnants of local control. Under Vilaseca’s dream, parents would lose the easy accessibility of a school board made up of neighbors, and this is important.

As a local school board member I am available. People know who I am, and they know how to reach me. Folks know I am approachable and I will listen regardless our personal feelings towards each other. If I am not reflecting local community values I can be persuaded to change or acquiesce.

All of this is important because I help make decisions that directly affect the day to day treatment of their kids. Our school board sets the school’s policy and direction on where resources should be directed, whether to hire an extra teacher on short notice, was that incident involving bullying something that should result in expulsion or merely a talking to, where will the school buses stop and more.

The same expectations of communications and responsibility back to the community member are lost with physical distance and lack of personal acquaintance.

There are a lot of practical problems with Vilaseca’s desire to force centralized command and control on our local school systems (well beyond today’s already often burdensome set of demands). How many hours per day on a school bus are too many? Why wouldn’t we be able to save more by making liberal use of modern day communications for the likes of distance learning? If we need to be reducing school staff to more closly align with fewer students (something that is not true across the board by the way), why does the state keep sending us new programs and policies to implement?

And my biggest question: where in Vermont has school district consolidation resulted in a less expensive system?

“Parents who live in Middlesex drive through Montpelier to get to their high school,” [Vilaseca] said. “Whether that’s right or wrong, is there a better way?” (Education chief says merger talks should continue, Times Argus, 10/19/09)

Yes, there is a better way Mr. Vilaseca. That better way would be for those Middlesex parents who would prefer their kids attend the Montpelier school be given that right. Better yet … a high school local to the Middlesex community that uses any number of concepts enabled by today’s ability to easily make use of audio/video and other types of electronic sharing. Consolidation is not a part of it at all.

And Vilaseca’s club? He has the authority to redraw supervisory district lines … well not exactly. According to Title 16, Chapter 3, Section 165 of Vermont’s statutes that privilege rests with the State Board of Education.

We have enough issues with maintaining cohesive communities. We don’t need to add centralized command and control Soviet style governance over our for now local school systems.