Sharon
Head of School Michael Livingston said the move is meant to remove a barrier from prospective students who were deterred by the prospect of filling out a lengthy application — which included academic documentation, a photograph of the student and a personal essay — without a guarantee of admission.
“We think families and children have less bandwidth these days,” Livingston said. “They’re pretty overwhelmed. … We’re trying to make ourselves more accessible and more transparent in everything we do, because that’s what is needed.”
Livingston said the change, which was unanimously approved on Saturday by the school’s board of directors, grew out of weekly discussions by the academy’s enrollment committee. The application process was just a formality, Livingston said, and never resulted in a student being rejected on the basis of the quality of an application or academic credentials.
“This just takes practice and makes it policy,” Livingston said.
The academy draws its students from about 20 towns in the region, according to Livingston. About 85 percent of those students come from sending towns (towns that do not operate their own high school); these students carry more than $14,000 each in tuition dollars with them. The remaining students, who come from towns that are not sending towns, pay their tuition out of pocket.
Livingston said students who enroll at Sharon Academy still will be asked to provide all of the information that the application asks for, because the information helps the faculty to devise individual education plans for those students.
Livingston said the school’s total capacity of 160 students will remain unchanged, and there are no plans to expand beyond that limitation.
The move comes as Vermont’s independent schools seek to make themselves more attractive to prospective students in an increasingly competitive educational marketplace, said Mill Moore, executive director of the Vermont Independent Schools Association.
“Now that there’s enrollment declining statewide, people are looking for the money,” Moore said. Schools like Sharon Academy, he said, are “keenly aware of that. They are working really hard to remain attractive.”
State Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Bethel, said he would reserve final judgment on Sharon Academy’s new open enrollment policy until he had seen the details, but his initial reaction was positive.
“It strikes me as a democratic, very fair, enlightened approach, and I applaud it,” McCormack said.
With competition increasing, state education officials — including McCormack — have suggested that in order to qualify for public tuition dollars, independent schools should be required to provide educational opportunities for all students, including those with disabilities.
“High schools are subject to rules and demands on them that independent schools are not,” McCormack said. “The various burdens that public schools face are either just or they’re not. If they’re not just, then we ought to relieve the public schools of them. If they are just, we shouldn’t be giving an exemption to other schools.”
But becoming certified to meet the needs of 14 different categories of students with disabilities can be costly and narrow the range of options that a teacher can offer in the classroom, part of the reason that independent schools have resisted such a mandate.
Moore said that, while independent schools do have fewer regulatory burdens, they have other challenges that public schools lack. The Sharon Academy fundraises about $250,000 a year to bridge the gap between the tuition dollars it receives and the amount it spends to educate its students.
“The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” he said.
Ethan Allen Institute President Rob Roper said he supported Sharon Academy’s move to open enrollment, but he worried the school might have been reacting to pressure from state officials.
“I hope that they didn’t feel intimidated by the state Board of Education,” he said.
Roper accused the state of trying to drive independent schools out of business through a dual strategy of increasing mandates and making it more difficult for sending towns to maintain school choice.
“At the end of the day, that’s what’s going on,” Roper said.
While more independent schools are expressing interest in adding special education coverage to their programs, Moore said, they aren’t acting in response to pressure from the state.
“There’s conversation about people with disabilities generally in education circles, and I think it’s just generally raising awareness,” he said.
Livingston said the school, which was founded in 1996, doesn’t reject students based on the quality of their applications, but that sometimes, students with disabilities apply and ultimately decide to go elsewhere when they learn the school can’t support their needs.
Three years ago, Sharon Academy began offering special education support to two categories of students with disabilities, and that while he has an interest in eventually expanding those offerings, Livingston said, there are no active plans to do so.
The two categories the academy supports include about 46 percent of the total number of Vermont students with disabilities, Livingston said.
Livingston said the move to open enrollment is not directly connected to the expansion of support for disability students, but that both grew out of a philosophy of constantly monitoring how to best maximize enrollment.
The state Agency of Education does not track the enrollment policies of Vermont schools, and could not say whether more schools are adopting open enrollment, according to Haley Dover, a spokeswoman for the agency.
In another effort to stay competitive, Sharon Academy is continuing a 20-year, $5 million fundraising campaign to improve the school’s infrastructure and educational offerings. With $800,000 collected, the campaign is on track to meet the Phase One goal of $1.5 million by December of this year, Livingston said.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com.