Show me the numbers.

Lately I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about various ideas in the governor’s office and state house regarding stealing the final vestiges of educational local control and accountability.

Hell, apparently there was a hearing in the state house yesterday allegedly giving Vermonters a chance to testify on this very subject … actually designed to tell a select committee why they should go ahead and take accountability for our kids education away from the local communities. Yeah … great place for that hearing … well away from the folks who stand to lose the most … the kids and their parents and the concerned community members too busy to pander to your schedules and locations.

The songs are all the same: if only the STATE could run our schools, if only we had fewer school boards providing oversight and policy guidance, if only there were fewer school districts, if only those nasty dirty locals didn’t get in the way … if only … THEN everything would get inexpensive and the heavens will open up and school building choice (not educational choice mind you) and better course offerings will ensue.

Show me the numbers.

Show me how substituting a super-superintendent and 3 sub-superintendents is going to save money over having 3 superintendents. Because that is what is going to happen when you consolidate supervisory districts. Oh, you may not call all of them superintendents, but that’s what they’ll be in form and function and you’ll have to pay the commensurate salaries.

Show me how much better things will get for grade school kids when they have to spend hours each school day in a school bus getting to and from their now non-local primary school buildings. Or, if you acknowledge they shouldn’t be doing this, tell me why the individual town’s aren’t better suited to watching over their youngsters as opposed to the STATE? Hasn’t Burlington already shown folks a path forward? Do you really have to steal that idea as your own?

Tell me about these savings that will be guzzled up by the gasoline and diesel fuel required to send the k-12 generations all over the map because, once centralization and school closings begin, that is exactly what will happen.

Tell me about the savings in salaries you’re expecting? Are you going to shift gears and give yourselves wider latitude in who can be hired as a teacher to save a few bucks … the same latitude you refuse the local school boards? Or maybe you’re going to make use of shared resources and modern communications technology … you know … what the local schools are already doing?

Tell me why the most heavily centralized school districts in the country, mostly the urban ones, are the exact same school districts that required a federal law (no child left untested) to correct?

SHOW ME THE NUMBERS!

PS. I do understand you can’t really show me the numbers. I’ve read enough to thoroughly understand the numbers contradict this drive for centralized command and control over our kids education.

PPS. Odum, if you don’t think moves like this are designed to kill off public education: just think about loss of control and accountability with a parallel increase in mandated cost. People will be dying for a voucher to a religious school that discriminates in who it accepts and saves them a boatload of cash. These assholes know what they’re doing.