Headmaster’s Message on Senate Bill 91
Currently, the Senate Education Committee is hearing testimony on bill S.91, a bill that would
place extra requirements on independent schools, making them more like public schools. This
bill, if passed, would have devastating effects on independent schools statewide, especially on the
smaller schools here in the Northeast Kingdom. I am opposed to the bill as written as it does not
seem to recognize the role independent schools play in their communities and in Vermont
education. I offer you some of my reflections on this issue, most of which will be included in my
testimony before the Education Committee.
Since its founding in 1842, St. Johnsbury Academy has provided an excellent education to the
families of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and for over 150 years of that history, it has also
provided a boarding school education for young people from around the region and the world. In
the 1860’s, St. Johnsbury opened a public high school and asked SJA to run it. After six years,
the town closed the school, acknowledging that it couldn't possibly compete with the quality of
SJA. Through my nearly 30 years in St. Johnsbury, the Academy has kept this reputation for
excellence and has had a wide-ranging, global impact as a leading educational institution, a fact
borne out by its recent selection by the Korean government to help establish an international
boarding school on Jeju Island.
The Academy presently serves 260 boarding students from 30 countries and 660 day students
from over 50 towns in New Hampshire and Vermont. These numbers have remained relatively
steady over the past decade, and our enrollment has not significantly declined as families continue
to move into choice towns and our boarding program continues to gain an internationally stellar
reputation. We also offer Special Education Services, some at no cost, to hundreds of our
students, over 40 of which function at or below the sixth-grade level. We are approved for all
categories of special education and provide free professional tutoring for all students throughout
the school day and until 6 p.m. We serve as the regional Career and Technical Education Center
along with Lyndon Institute and run a robust Continuing Education and Workforce Development
Program. Therefore, my first point is this—St. Johnsbury Academy serves a more diverse student
population than any school in the state.
My second point has to do with our service to the community. We open our facilities to numerous
community programs and organizations. We serve as the hub for First Night St. Johnsbury, and
we have taken over management of the town’s Recreation Department at virtually no cost to the
town. Our students provide thousands of hours of community service, and our faculty and staff
hold leadership positions in several community organizations. In fact, one of our social studies
teachers has spent his sabbatical serving as the President of the local Chamber of Commerce, one
of our Alumni and Development staff is currently serving as selectman in St. Johnsbury, and until
his retirement, Howard Crawford served in the Vermont House of Representatives.
According to economist, Art Woolf, we are responsible for 1 out of every 20 dollars earned in the
town ($11.2 million), and we generate more than $12 million in export revenue. Using a
conservative multiplier, we are responsible for 418 jobs and an additional $4.9 million dollars in
Caledonia County. We have helped lead efforts to bring biomass to the town of St. Johnsbury,
strengthen the anti-drug efforts in town, and promote the burgeoning arts community in the area.
We use local vendors as much as we can, and we support local elementary schools through shared
professional development, free classes, afterschool activities, and multi-cultural events. We have
recently been named a finalist for a $250,000 grant that will help fund a summer program serving
100 eighth-grade graduates, especially aimed at those from disadvantaged households, raising
their skills, aspirations, and workplace readiness despite where they choose to go to school.
The bottom line is this: ever since its founding and true to its mission St. Johnsbury Academy is a
key community partner and leading institution; however, it could not do any of this without the
flexibility, innovation, and resources generated by its identity as an independent school. We have
compromised on some points—our Special Education teachers are licensed, and we administer
the NECAP—in exchange for our ability to remain independent in the rest of our operations and
governance. The current bill asks us to compromise our independence on even more points such
as universal teacher licensure and our admissions policies. We find these intrusions to be
unacceptable.
The teacher and administrator licensing provision is the most onerous and unacceptable for St.
Johnsbury Academy. I do not have a license, yet I have been teaching for 30 years, was named the
AP Teacher of the Year for all of New England, have been recognized as a leading educational
consultant in English and Vertical Teams, and have helped students achieve some of the highest
AP scores in the state (if not the country) over the past 25 years. I would like to see the evidence
that shows I would have been a better teacher or a better administrator if I had a license.
Likewise, I pride myself in the ability to hire outstanding teachers based not on their license but
on their educational credentials, and I have seen considerable success in classrooms taught by
bright, enthusiastic, well-prepared, and hardworking young people who did not get a license and
instead were experts in their field. SJA has never required licenses, and I challenge any one to
show how the school has suffered or how students have been poorly served as a result. I have
studied teacher professional development for decades and have come to believe what the research
now shows: the best teacher development programs are school-based and teacher-driven. They
involve portfolios, multi-year plans, reflection of student results and personal growth, and
teacher-driven professional development for all areas—not just the classroom. I have been
instrumental in developing the NEASC Teacher Certification Program, which the Commission
now offers to its member schools as a way to ensure teacher quality and growth. I offer that
program as a better vehicle for ensuring teacher quality and growth that is not only more friendly
to SJA and all independent schools, but more effective than counting Continuing Education Units.
In closing, I want to emphasize what I stated at the outset. St. Johnsbury Academy has a 170 year
history of being a leading institution in its region and in Vermont education. This bill would ignore
that in an attempt to “level the playing field.” Kurt Vonnegut satirized such a view in his story
“Harrison Bergeron.” In that story, in an effort to make sure no one had an unfair advantage over
another, the Handicapper General made those who were faster wear weights, those who were more
graceful wear one shoe higher than the other, and those who were smarter wear headphones that
randomly interrupted their thoughts with noisy blasts. Rather than handicap the independent school
community in an effort to level the playing field, perhaps the Committee could look at ways to free
the public schools from the burdens that keep them from being equal competitors.
I believe that the Academy could not have been as effective as an educational leader and would not
have been able to be as generous to our community if this bill had been in place. That will certainly
be the case if this bill is allowed to pass. My hope is that the Committee will come to understand the
great service St. Johnsbury Academy provides for its communities and the educational community of
Vermont as a whole and, as a result, revise or defeat this bill so that it will not cause a series of
devastating consequences that will greatly diminish education in Vermont.