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Though his reappointment of Rebecca Holcombe, of Norwich, as the state’s secretary of education earlier this year seemed like a continuation of the status quo, these recent appointments of Republicans who are not educators may begin to shift the way the board approaches policies such as those related to independent schools and school funding.
One of Scott’s picks is John Carroll, a Norwich resident, former Republican state senator and majority leader. Carroll, who said he initially ran for state Senate in 1988 because he knew he couldn’t get elected to the House from the primarily Democratic town of Norwich, is accustomed to being in the company of people with different ideas of what government’s role ought to be.
In an interview last week in his study at the home he built off Campbell Flat Road, Carroll lamented the shift in child-rearing responsibilities in recent decades from the traditional role of the family to the public sphere. It’s a shift that has wide-ranging policy implications, he said, including “Where do the responsibilities of families leave off and the responsibilities of publicly-funded education come in?”
State educators and taxpayers have taken on too much of this burden in recent years, he said.
Carroll said he does not favor the sentiment that “it takes a village to raise a child,” which was popularlized at least in part through Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book It Takes a Village.
“Of course the traditionalist response would be: ‘No. It takes a family to raise a child. And the village should step in when the family can’t do what it needs to do.’ And that’s more of a formulation that makes sense to me,” said Carroll, who has three daughters and nine grandchildren.
It’s this and other high-level policy questions that Carroll, whose acquaintance with the new governor goes back decades, said he hopes to address through his new position.
Carroll said Scott was a supporter of his during Carroll’s 1994 congressional race against Bernie Sanders, after which Carroll retired from politics. In turn, Carroll said he supported Scott in his race for governor.
With Scott’s election last fall, Carroll said Vermonters made a “very significant statement” that they wanted a leader who would work to contain the cost of living in Vermont. The state’s cost of living is high, Carroll contended, because of the low availability of good-paying jobs, limited housing and high cost of government.
Scott now has “considerable political capital” to advance his cost-containment agenda, Carroll said.
Despite their agreement on the need to reduce expenses, Carroll, who is retired and in his mid-70s, said he is not operating under any kind of directive from the governor’s office. Instead, he said he believes Scott chose him for the Board of Education because he will “tend to move the ball in the general direction they’d like to see it” go.
In a March 20 release announcing his appointment of Carroll and John O’Keefe, of Manchester Center, Vt., Scott said that he chose them for their “demonstrated commitment to public service and impressive policy knowledge.”
O’Keefe is Manchester’s town manager. He previously worked in Massachusetts’ state government, including as legislative director for then-Gov. Mitt Romney.
“They both deeply value the importance of education and a strong, effective education system, which is critical as we look to build a cradle-to-career continuum of learning that benefits students, attracts working families to Vermont and strengthens our workforce,” Scott said in the release.
Carroll and O’Keefe replaced outgoing board Chairman Stephan Morse, a former Republican speaker of the Vermont House from Newfane, Vt., and Sean-Marie Oller, a social worker for the Vermont Department of Children and Families from Bennington, Vt., whose terms expired in February. Board terms are six years in length. The board comprises 11 members, including two students, one of whom can vote, and the secretary of education.
In Carroll and O’Keefe’s first board meeting on March 21, they demonstrated their status as outsiders by opposing the re-election of William Mathis, a former school superintendent from Brandon, Vt., as the board’s vice chairman because of his role in proposing Rules Series 2200, a controversial set of requirements that would apply to independent schools that receive public money.
The rules, which the board will not act on until May, would require private schools that receive public money to provide special education services in all categories, as public schools do.
The rules have been opposed by independent schools, including The Sharon Academy.
According to draft minutes of the March meeting posted on the agency’s website, Carroll “expressed concern for both the clumsy process of Rules Series 2200 and for the candidate in nomination (Mathis) because of his very significant involvement in the leadership of Rules Series 2200.”
Mathis, who is managing director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, has published articles and papers that are critical of voucher programs.
Carroll said he voted against Mathis’ nomination “with a heavy heart, based on process and perception and asked the Board to consider if there were other members who might serve the Board better in this role.”
The Board elected Mathis to the vice chairmanship by a vote of 5 to 2, with Carroll and O’Keefe acting as the sole dissenters. Board members Bonnie Johnson-Aten, of Montpelier, and Rainbow Chen, a student from Winooski, were absent from the meeting, according to the minutes. The new chairwoman is Krista Huling, a social studies teacher from Jeffersonville, Vt.
In the interview last week, Carroll said it was “very difficult” to come into his first meeting and speak out against Mathis, but he felt it was important to do so.
Carroll is a graduate of what is now The Governor’s Academy — formerly Governor Dummer Academy — a private high school in Newbury, Mass. that offered free tuition to boys like Carroll who did well on a qualifying exam, and Harvard University, where he was recruited to play lacrosse.
Carroll’s father, who was born in 1896, was wounded in France in World War I and was in his mid-40s when Carroll was born in 1943. Carroll’s mother was a teacher.
His father came from a dysfunctional Irish family and though they “lived close to the bottom,” his father “bootstrapped far beyond his alcoholic father,” Carroll said. Though Carroll’s father didn’t finish high school, his children all went to college. Carroll’s brother went to Princeton and his sister to Boston University.
“I’ve always known that it was the parents’ job to launch their children into a better world than they themselves inherited,” Carroll said.
In turn, Carroll’s three daughters also attended “excellent schools” and one earned a doctorate.
“I’ve always worshipped Ph.D.s,” he said. “Education just is a big deal to us. Perhaps I place more value on it than it deserves, but it means a lot to me.”
Carroll sat on the Norwich and Dresden school boards in the 1980s before serving in the state Senate. In terms of offering educational opportunities to students, Carroll said “All diversity is good.”
At this point, Carroll said he is unsure of the board’s overall goals for the independent school rules. It appears as though the rules are aimed at improving equity and access for all students, he said.
But, he said: “Is it also the goal to preserve our system of diversity in how we educate children in Vermont? Or, is it an unspoken goal to dismantle it?”
Independent schools that accept public money have a responsibility to act in the public interest, Carroll said. But, he said, that shouldn’t mean that independent schools come to mirror public schools. In Carroll’s view, the board must determine: “What is the public interest, precisely?”
Since that first meeting, Carroll said Mathis has reached out to him to arrange a meeting to discuss the board’s work. Carroll said he had replied positively to Mathis’ suggestion and said, “We probably won’t agree on much.”
Carroll said Mathis replied, “You might be surprised.”
At this stage, because he is still learning about the state board’s role, Carroll is uncertain how he might use his new post to advance policies he supports.
Though the Legislature makes laws and sets the state budget, Carroll hopes he will at least be able to start conversations about the cost of education. Though Act 46, a school consolidation law the Legislature passed in 2015, is intended to cut costs by finding economies of scale, Carroll expressed skepticism that it would save money.
The major cost drivers are salaries and benefits, costs which he said the state lacks a strategy to cut.
“I’ve been at some organizations that have had to downsize,” he said. “Shrinking is hard … But it’s not our money. I believe that’s our job: To do the hard work.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get to engage on this, at least in the setting of the state Board of Education. I just don’t know. But I certainly would love to somehow help move that ball down the field.”
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
Correction
Former Vermont State Board of Education Chairman Stephan Morse previously served as speaker of the Vermont House. An earlier version of this story incorrectly described his legislative background.
