To explore ideas for a better approach to reorganizing, improving, and funding Vermont schools, today marks the launch of a new website where Vermonters may learn, suggest, and discuss ways to make our schools better, less costly, and more connected with their communities.
Toward a Vermont Design for Education
- Our School Web
- Vermont’s Wealth Tax: A Brief History
- WOOFs
- District size and school spending
- School-lunch Pizza
Comments
2 responses to “Toward a Vermont Design for Education”
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This is a refreshing approach. I noticed some errors on the maps and tables. 1) Twinfield Union School (based in Marshfield and serving the towns of Marshfield and Plainfield) is a PK-12 school, not a high school alone. If PK-12 is missing as an option in your database (which I suspect as it’s a common misrepresentation) please add it. Danville, Cabot and a handful of other schools remain in this category. 2) Twinfield families generally are more connected to Barre-Montpelier than to Danville but were forced into the CCSU under Act 46, as none of the Central Vt SD’s (U-32, Montpelier, Barre) would have us.There are good relations between Twinfield communities and Cabot & Danville (the Marshfield end of our district is closer to Cabot than Plainfield), and our schools share baseball teams and AP classes via remote enrollment. But, the section of Route 2 that runs between Marshfield and Danville is notoriously horrific in winter conditions, some of the worst winter driving I encounter anywhere. Believe me, we do not want to send school buses on that road on a daily basis. 3) There are some towns/schools missing on your list of school districts. The CCSU towns are among the missing.
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Betsy, thank you for your thoughtful and informative comment. I have heard from several other K-12 schools, and I think I’m going to add a new category to the interactive map so that such schools show up in a different color. And I’m still working on the table of districts, and I can assure you that the CCSU towns are now on the list, and will go up onto the website as soon as I get to it. As you point out, it’s very important that whatever is done to re-organize our schools be based on the actual flows of communication and sending and receiving patterns among the various towns. The realities of geography and community should trump the arbitrary town lines drawn in 1749.
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