ACTION ALERT!
Email Task Force Members
We are at another extremely critical moment in this process. The Task Force meets December 1st for their second to last meeting to go over their recommendations. We need to finish this next couple of weeks with strength and volume. We must make it a pain for them to do what they are doing. They need to be flooded with emails.
Instructions: Please send an email to the Task Force and Leadership ASAP. You can CC all these emails. The email provided below is a sample only. Please put this in your own words. And forward this alert to your networks.
Thank you for all you do!
Maggie
jkrowinski@leg.state.vt.us
bbalint@leg.state.vt.us
rbrock@leg.state.vt.us
chooker@leg.state.vt.us
sbeck@leg.state.vt.us
kjames@leg.state.vt.us
rhardy@leg.state.vt.us
aperchlik@leg.state.vt.us
ekornheiser@leg.state.vt.us
PConlon@leg.state.vt.us
Chairs Hardy and Kornheiser and Members of the Task Force on the Implementation of the Pupil Weighting Factors Report,
Thank you for your time this summer and fall working on the issue of inequitable school funding.
We are now at the end of the line, and it’s clear you have chosen to go completely off track. You’ve given districts no time to understand the proposal that you decided to go with seemingly overnight. Those of us watching these meetings regularly are left wondering when these deciding conversations actually took place. Because it doesn’t seem like they have taken place at the meetings we have watched. One meeting not so long ago you seemed inclined to use model four from Tammy Kolbe’s memo. And then suddenly, inexplicably and without any compelling explanation, you tossed those weights out in favor of an approach that no one understands.
Close to 100% of the comments from the public asked for the recommended weights from the 2019 report to be implemented. They took time away from their work and lives to explain to you what the issues are with treating poverty, rurality, small schools and ELL with categorical aid. You heard this from superintendents, school board members, teachers, cultural liaisons, business managers and so many other experts who work on the front lines of some of the most impoverished, struggling districts. You would be shocked if you saw the conditions of some of our schools. Yet it was as if those hearings never happened. You took the testimony and then did exactly the opposite of what the majority of districts are asking for. You continue to push for categorical aid to fund New American English language learners, separating those students. You have created a funding mechanism for the remaining categories of learners that is murky at best. Because the cost equity proposal fundamentally replaces our current funding system, we don’t know how the entire calculation would work or what math you’ve used to get there. We have no idea what the impacts will be on individual school districts and the entire state.
I am asking you to get back on track. We continue to ask you to do the right thing and create a plan to implement the report’s recommendations. Should you continue to favor your model of weights over the recommendations of the report authors, we want to see how your policy assumptions have changed the outcomes from the original recommendations. That means providing updated, unaltered simulation of B.1.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
ACTION ALERT!
Email Task Force Members
We are at another extremely critical moment in this process. The Task Force meets December 1st for their second to last meeting to go over their recommendations. We need to finish this next couple of weeks with strength and volume. We must make it a pain for them to do what they are doing. They need to be flooded with emails.
Instructions: Please send an email to the Task Force and Leadership ASAP. You can CC all these emails. The email provided below is a sample only. Please put this in your own words. And forward this alert to your networks.
Thank you for all you do!
Maggie
jkrowinski@leg.state.vt.us
bbalint@leg.state.vt.us
rbrock@leg.state.vt.us
chooker@leg.state.vt.us
sbeck@leg.state.vt.us
kjames@leg.state.vt.us
rhardy@leg.state.vt.us
aperchlik@leg.state.vt.us
ekornheiser@leg.state.vt.us
PConlon@leg.state.vt.us
Chairs Hardy and Kornheiser and Members of the Task Force on the Implementation of the Pupil Weighting Factors Report,
Thank you for your time this summer and fall working on the issue of inequitable school funding.
We are now at the end of the line, and it’s clear you have chosen to go completely off track. You’ve given districts no time to understand the proposal that you decided to go with seemingly overnight. Those of us watching these meetings regularly are left wondering when these deciding conversations actually took place. Because it doesn’t seem like they have taken place at the meetings we have watched. One meeting not so long ago you seemed inclined to use model four from Tammy Kolbe’s memo. And then suddenly, inexplicably and without any compelling explanation, you tossed those weights out in favor of an approach that no one understands.
Close to 100% of the comments from the public asked for the recommended weights from the 2019 report to be implemented. They took time away from their work and lives to explain to you what the issues are with treating poverty, rurality, small schools and ELL with categorical aid. You heard this from superintendents, school board members, teachers, cultural liaisons, business managers and so many other experts who work on the front lines of some of the most impoverished, struggling districts. You would be shocked if you saw the conditions of some of our schools. Yet it was as if those hearings never happened. You took the testimony and then did exactly the opposite of what the majority of districts are asking for. You continue to push for categorical aid to fund New American English language learners, separating those students. You have created a funding mechanism for the remaining categories of learners that is murky at best. Because the cost equity proposal fundamentally replaces our current funding system, we don’t know how the entire calculation would work or what math you’ve used to get there. We have no idea what the impacts will be on individual school districts and the entire state.
I am asking you to get back on track. We continue to ask you to do the right thing and create a plan to implement the report’s recommendations. Should you continue to favor your model of weights over the recommendations of the report authors, we want to see how your policy assumptions have changed the outcomes from the original recommendations. That means providing updated, unaltered simulation of B.1.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,