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Close * Donate Search for: Search * Jobs * Legislative Guide * Government & Politics * Economy * Environment * Education * Health * Public Safety * Newsletters * Podcasts * Jobs board * Latest Stories * Opinion * Obituaries Search * Donate * Buy merch! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Share a tip * About us * Contact * Advertise -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FOLLOW ALONG * Facebook * Instagram * YouTube * X * LinkedIn -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MEMBER-SUPPORTED JOURNALISM. INFORMING AND ENGAGING VERMONT. 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Skip to content VTDigger News in pursuit of truth * Donate Open Search Search for: Search Menu Donate Menu * Jobs * Legislative Guide * Government & Politics * Economy * Environment * Education * Health * Public Safety Posted inGovernment & Politics HOW A SMALL POT OF AFTER-SCHOOL FUNDING BALLOONED INTO A PITCHED POLICY BATTLE The Agency of Education says it needs a technical change to state law in order to allow $3.5 million in grants to flow directly to public, nonprofit and private after-school program providers. Some lawmakers see the request as more than just technical. by Ethan Weinstein February 8, 2024, 6:22 pmFebruary 8, 2024, 7:04 pm SHARE THIS: * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) * Heather Bouchey, interim secretary of education, speaks about statewide flooding during a press conference in Berlin on Dec. 19. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger A debate that simmered in legislative committees for weeks boiled over on the Vermont Senate floor Thursday during that chamber’s vote on an amendment to the budget adjustment bill. “I cannot support a continued degradation of public education,” Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, told her colleagues. “We have been cutting schools out. Public education is the foundation of our democracy.” How did the annual budget adjustment vote lead to talk of the dismantling of public education? The source of the debate was a pot of money from cannabis sales taxes meant to fund after-school and summer learning programs. Sign up for Final Reading, our inside line to what's happening at the Statehouse. Delivered to your inbox Tuesday through Friday during the Vermont legislative session. Email Δ At issue was whether that money should go directly to public schools — as current law requires — or whether private and nonprofit programs should also be able to directly receive the funding, which, some senators argued, was lawmakers’ intention all along. In order for all programs to have equal access to the grant applications, the Legislature needed to move the program out of the education fund and into a special fund, hence the proposal of an amendment to the budget adjustment bill. Were the amendment to fail, “I believe our children would be the ones who are victimized by it,” said Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who presented the amendment as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Special funds, she suggested, are not so special. “We have 300 of ‘em,” she said. “They’re not unique.” Following two hours of at times testy debate, the Senate passed the amendment creating a special fund in an 18-10 vote. The change, though, plus other items in the budget adjustment bill related to emergency housing assistance and flood recovery funding for municipalities, will be hashed out in a conference committee with members of the House, which previously rejected the same idea. A TECHNICAL CHANGE OR A POLICY DECISION? Since the start of the session in January, tensions have grown over whether $3.5 million in new after-school and summer learning grant funds should flow through public schools, or whether private and nonprofit organizations should receive the money directly. The relatively small sum is currently frozen inside the state’s multi-billion dollar education fund. The official position of Vermont Agency of Education leadership is that the money — newly available through cannabis taxes — cannot be distributed at all unless it’s moved from the education fund to a separate special fund as part of the annual Budget Adjustment Act. Yet disagreement over whether that move is necessary has surfaced within the agency itself. And lawmakers have debated amongst themselves in committee whether to assent to the agency’s request or instead ensure that those taxpayer dollars flow first to public school districts, which can then sub-contract for private and non-profit programming. The fixation with the “very small” pot of money drew the attention of Rep. Erin Brady, D-Williston, vice chair of the House Committee on Education. “I’m really kind of stunned sitting here today that there’s so much interest from the administration,” she said in testimony on Wednesday. “There’s been more members of the administration in this room in the last three hours than there have been in the last three years.” On its surface, the issue appears bureaucratic. By the letter of the law, the cannabis tax dollars for the program were allocated to the statewide education fund to “be used to support a mixed delivery system for afterschool and summer programming. Eligible recipients can be public, private, or nonprofit organizations,” with emphasis placed on expanding access in underserved communities. The administration’s position is that those two directives are incompatible. Vermont law requires all education fund dollars go directly to public schools, unless special allowances are made. If the money were moved into a special fund that restriction would go away. Heather Bouchey, interim secretary of education, has said that the state cannot even start the grant program until the money is moved to a special fund. But her subordinate, Jess DeCarolis, director of student pathways at the agency, who oversees after-school and summer learning programs for the state, has suggested to lawmakers that the state could begin the grant program by distributing the money to public schools that partner with private and nonprofit providers — a system that already exists. Separately, some lawmakers believe that the special fund change has much broader implications for maintaining protections against discrimination, and feeds into an ongoing debate around the use of public education dollars by private institutions. If money flows through public school districts, laws governing all public schools follow the money. Specifically, the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Vermont’s public accommodations laws, which prevent discrimination based on attributes like race, gender, sexual orientation and ability, would apply. Those laws have recently undergone increased scrutiny as private religious schools seek to sidestep them in their applications for state approval. Lawmakers opposed to the creation of a special fund have argued that if state grants go directly to private organizations, the state could not ensure that those groups would be required to follow anti-discrimination laws. Bouchey, for her part, indicated that the agency feared legal trouble if it didn’t create a special fund, and deemed the creation of such a fund to be a mere technical change in line with legislative intent. “We are concerned that there could potentially be a real risk of having a lawsuit from a nonprofit or private that could reasonably argue that they were excluded from an application that was meant for them to be applicants to,” she said. ‘AS MUCH FLEXIBILITY AS POSSIBLE’ OR ‘ESTABLISHED HISTORY’ In response to emailed questions from Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, D-Norwich — who previously led the Agency of Education — DeCarolis said that she and her colleagues developed an initial grant application last year and presented it to an after-school advisory committee. “Our work was put on hold as cabinet/executive level conversations took place that I was not involved in to determine how they would like to proceed,” DeCarolis told Holcombe in the email. “I was directed to launch an application designed for public and private applicants before the end of the calendar year but would not be able to award applications until the (budget adjustment act) was passed,” she continued. Disagreement between Bouchey and DeCarolis bubbled up earlier this week as the two testified in the Senate Education Committee. Bouchey, the interim secretary, told lawmakers that the state wanted to ensure “as much flexibility as possible” for the expanded support for after-school programing, which required providing money directly to the broadest spectrum of providers. Putting public schools in charge of grants for non-school entities also makes them responsible for their use and puts them at “significant risk,” Bouchey said, if the money were to be mismanaged by a private or nonprofit after-school provider. DeCarolis disagreed, highlighting the 600 such collaborations that have already occurred using different sources of funds. “This is not a risk right now,” she said, pointing to existing memorandums of understanding and other forms of agreements that already partner schools with non-school providers. “We have very established protocols.” And as Bouchey told lawmakers that in rural areas like the Northeast Kingdom, schools couldn’t take on after-school programming, leaving non-school entities as the only option, DeCarolis spoke up suggesting the opposite. “What we find is in the geographically sparse areas, the school is the only game in town,” she said, and a school “offers the sort of infrastructure to support after-school programming and unique individual partners.” While the Senate Education Committee did not hear from the after-school providers themselves, the House education and human services committees did take testimony from staff at schools — including those in the Northeast Kingdom — and nonprofit organizations later in the week. Perhaps unsurprisingly, public schools and nonprofit providers largely fell on either side of the issue, with school leaders advocating for the grants to flow through public schools, and the other providers asking to access the grants directly through a special fund. “Enabling more diversion of education fund money to private and non-school organizations adds to the draining effect on the already stretched education fund,” said Jason Di Giulio, principal of Hazen Union School in Hardwick. In a rural area like Hardwick, Di Giulio said, the school often serves as “the last resort for vulnerable students and community members.” As a public school, Hazen can’t turn students away based on their needs or means. Mark Tucker, superintendent of Caledonia Central Supervisory Union, said his schools’ after-school program is the only option in its rural region. “We have an established history,” he said, speaking against moving the grant money into a special fund, which he called an “assault on public dollars.” The nonprofit after-school providers who testified asserted that they had more flexibility than public schools and, thus, could serve students’ differing needs. The most marginalized students are “the least likely to show up” to public after-school programs, Deb Witkus, a leader of the Bellows Falls youth services program Friends for Change, told lawmakers. Her program can support students who might be suspended from school, or who don’t feel comfortable in a school setting, pointing to data that reflects the diverse students her program serves. “We know we are reaching in real representative ways, the kids — the most marginalized kids — for which this funding was intended,” Witkus said. The leader of North Country Supervisory Union’s after-school program, Beth Chambers, offered a slightly different angle. While she expressed some concerns about the idea of a special fund, she ultimately supported the move if it allowed nonprofits to expand access to after-school programming. One caveat, she said, was that legislative language should require providers to put “safety, equity and access” at the forefront of their work. The agency’s top legal official has also offered some nuance. In an email to Holcombe, the Norwich representative, Emily Simmons, general counsel for the Agency of Education, said that grant recipients will need to follow Vermont’s Public Accommodations Act to the extent that the recipients can also exercise their “constitutional rights.” In the Senate’s amendment, which created the special fund, appropriations committee members took a ‘belt-and-suspenders’ approach to the discrimination question, writing in a provision that specified grant recipients, whether or not they were a place of public accommodation, needed to follow Vermont’s public accommodations laws. That still wasn’t enough to convince Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, who suggested to her colleagues that, in the current legal landscape, private entities have the option to ignore the state’s anti-discrimination laws. “We are not as protected as we think we are,” she said. RELATED -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Free VT newsletter Request a correction Submit a tip -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tagged: Agency of Education, Alison Clarkson, Beth Chambers, Budget Adjustment Act, Caledonia Central Supervisory Union, erin brady, House Committee on Education, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Jane Kitchel, Jess DeCarolis, legislature 2024, Rebecca Holcombe, Ruth Hardy, Senate Appropriations Committee, Senate Education Committee, Vermont legislature ETHAN WEINSTEIN VTDigger's southern Vermont, education and corrections reporter. More by Ethan Weinstein MEMBER-SUPPORTED JOURNALISM. INFORMING AND ENGAGING VERMONT. 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