U-32 Closed Door Decisions & Wider State Education Failures

U-32 splitting grades 1-4 and 5-6 across different towns

I wanted to highlight a news article that quotes a few Middlesex residents on the U-32 decision to split elementary & middle school grades between different town locations.

A symptom of wider problems

I also wanted to make the public comment that the local and state discussions about cost cutting amount to "shuffling deck chairs on the titanic". Over the past 10 years Central Vermont learning outcomes appear to have fallen off a cliff in reading and fallen behind in math:

NYTimes Link

Where is the money going?

How many people have heard a legislator, local or state school representative talk about the system's failure to steward Vermont's education system to be successful, let alone cost effective? Why are we paying school administrators 3-4 times what classroom teachers are paid when the administrators are failing to even track and ensure their systems are successfully teaching kids? https://www.wcuusd.org/ad-min/human-resources/wcuusd-faculty-and-staff-salaries

How bad is it?

Meanwhile the state knows ~25% of students are "chronically absent" -- so we're all failing to make sure every child in the state has the daily opportunity to benefit from our nation-leading per person education spending.

The Vermont legislature can't even get kids to schools

We should expect more from one another better care for the state's children, and we should hold legislators accountable for their failures in governance -- rather than fixing basic issues like educating America's next generation, too often they spend time and and our tax dollars in their salaries on things they know won't work and aren't sustainable .

Did you know how bad things were?

I think that we as a community have a few things to fix, and I hope more people will get involved -- I think many of these issues aren't difficult -- but the state and current legislators have become far too complacent, partly because we as responsible citizens and voters haven't been doing enough.