Burying a Good Idea

Over 1000 Vermonters sign a petition to pass a law allowing citizens to vote on supervisory union budgets.  Once explained to them, people support the idea enthusiastically.  Except, of course, some school bureaucrats who don’t like being held accountable.

So how does a no-brainer idea like that get killed without the guy killing it looking like a jerk?  Well, here’s what Senate Education Committee Chair Don Collins is doing to the bill:

He drags his feet, knowing the bill has a few problems.  He stutters and stalls.  Fiddles and diddles.  Takes up snowboarding as the state sport and other such matters.  Then at the last minute, he says there’s not enough time to work out the details on the bill.  So he offers a strike-all amendment creating a summer study group. 

And just who comprises the summer study group?  The executive directors of the Vermont Superintendents Association, Vermont School Boards Association, Vermont-NEA, and Vermont Principals Association.  Think the idea has a chance?  Senator Collins assures me, however, that I will have a chance to be heard by the study committee.  But that’s if it gets by the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has to sign off on the money going to pay this group.   

Comments

[Karen Kerin]

Don Collins has been a foot dragger for anything the NEA has not put forward. Has anyone looked to see what the NEA has donated to his campaigns for office?