To honor our 25th anniversary, I’ll be sharing a series of reflections on our journey and accomplishments over the years. Stay tuned as I share stories, insights, and memories from the past 25 years.
– Dennis Kane, Executive Director
Chapter 2: Setting the Table
Act 230 and Beyond
The seeds that produced the VT-HEC were sown in the 1990s. That decade was a particularly eventful time for education in Vermont. It was the time of major changes in general education funding with the passage of Act 60 and established curriculum standards and required local plans for school improvement. In special education there was a near constant focus on special education counts, costs and staff shortages. Most of those issues had been addressed in 1990 with the passage of Act 230. That law revised the special education funding formula and established the goal of strengthening school districts’ general education capacity by developing a comprehensive system of educational and support services known as the Education Support System (ESS) which was to include an Education Support Team (EST).
Controlling special education counts and costs, refining funding strategies, and dealing with staff shortages turned out to be persistent challenges for many states. Vermont’s Act 230 gained significant national attention for its focus on building capacity of general education through development of the ESS and EST. It marked the start down a path Vermont is still on today with the MTSS.
I want to mention here Marc Hull who was a prime mover behind the concepts of Act 230 and later served as Commissioner of the Department of Education (DOE). I recall Marc and I sitting in his office across from the statehouse, discussing how to roll out this new system and what would be needed to implement these goals. Marc was an inspiration to me and to most everyone he came in contact with. He was instrumental in efforts to make VT schools more inclusive and successful for all students. There were few people in education in Vermont that were more trusted, effective, and admired than Marc.
Although Act 230 had some initial positive impacts, it was just a beginning. Funding complications, competing initiatives, rapidly growing staff shortages, and continued increases in special education costs persisted through the decade. In 1998 the legislature leaned into cost containment for special education by establishing a Blue-Ribbon Commission on Special Education to study special education growth, costs, and funding as well as the Special Education Fiscal Review Panel to go into schools to research the causes of cost increases and the impact of ESS/EST on costs and providing support to students.
I want to highlight here the work of Susan Hasazi and the team from UVM who did the actual Fiscal Review Panel’s research in 60 schools over a five year period. With Katie Furney (Shepard), Dan Kucij, Michael Giangreco and others who served on the Panel, Susan gathered and analyzed data, acquired grant money and produced reports for the school districts that helped focus their work on strengthening their ESS and provided data to evaluate and refine state policy. Susan with various other UVM teams had a hand in researching, evaluating and refining many of the state’s initiatives over three decades including Act 230, Act 117 and the VT-HEC secondary program (TASS) in addition to the work Susan did at UVM as noted researcher, successful grant writer, dedicated professor, etc.
Findings and Recommendations
In addition to the above groups, the DOE had already had a Task Force on Personnel Development in 1995-96 involving staff from all the colleges with special education preparation programs and representatives from schools working on how to address staff shortages in a rural state. The point being that many smart and dedicated people were grappling with these issues working through a variety of committees and boards. By the end of 1999, findings from many of these efforts had been published and many were notable for being consistent.
Addressing the costs of special education would require:
- Continued strengthening of general education capacity (ESS, EST) to better meet the needs of all students.
- A review of cost shifting from Human Services and General Fund to Education Fund.
- Improving the consistency and efficiency of the delivery of special education.
- Ensuring the availability of early identification and intervention services, especially in literacy.
- Building the capacity of the DOE to provide:
- technical and legal assistance,
- information on best practices on instruction and interventions,
- data on outcomes and expenditures to assist schools in planning and evaluation.
- Improving the recruitment, preparation, training, and retention of classroom teachers, special educators, related service providers, administrators, etc.
Act 117 is Passed
In the spring of 2000, the legislature passed Act 117. The Act made the largest investment and laid out the most comprehensive set of strategies addressing the issues of special education cost containment and strengthening general education capacity the legislature had yet passed. It outlined a wide variety of specific actions to be completed by the DOE, school districts and higher education. The Act:
- boosted DOE staffing to implement the Act’s provisions,
- required a variety of special studies and annual reporting by school districts and the DOE,
- required the refinement of special education rules, especially on eligibility,
- increased state monitoring of school districts to ensure the special education rules were being implemented consistently.
Act 117 outlined specific work to be completed by the DOE, requiring the Commissioner to increase the capacity of general education to meet the needs of more students outside special education. To meet these requirements, the DOE would need to ensure sufficient staffing by forming partnerships with higher education institutions, school districts, and others that would work together to:
- provide increased and improved training opportunities for general education teachers, administrators, and paraeducators on techniques for meeting the instructional needs of all students;
- improve the preparation of all teachers to be effective in an inclusive classroom;
- increase the availability of qualified staff in critical need areas, including special education teachers, speech pathologists, related services providers, and administrators by improving their recruitment, training, and retention.
The list of requirements went on to cover a variety of areas, but it doubled down on the goals of Act 230 emphasizing both staffing and training needs. With Act 117 providing motivation, direction, and resources and the various reports providing an outline of the needs and strategies to address them, the table was set for the formation of what soon became the Vermont Higher Education Collaborative.
Are You Curious? A Key to Stronger Schools
VT-HEC: 25 Years in Review
VT-HEC Gets a Fresh Look
AI in Education: Empowering Teachers
New Workshop Series with Elijah Hawkes: The Power of Dialogue
