One-year contracts won’t help Vermont’s schools

Dear Editor,

This time of year, I trade in the cup of coffee for a mug of warm apple cider. The leaves are starting to turn, mornings are colder, and schools are settling into familiar late September rhythms.

It is a beautiful time to be a school leader in Vermont. It is also a strange one.

Vermont is embarking on the widest transformation of its education system in decades. And now we face a new wrinkle: School boards have been instructed by the Agency of Education to hire superintendents on one-year contracts instead of standard multiyear contracts.

So here’s the question. Can Vermont redesign its schools while keeping the people who have to lead the redesign? Because, c’mon, somebody has to do the actual work.

It seems like school leaders are doing it all: explaining a merger to a skeptical community, defending a budget — more than once, sometimes — reassuring a teacher and answering a parent’s 11 p.m. email. And then arriving before sunup the next morning to do it all again.

If Vermont wants school leaders to guide this transformation, it needs to think carefully about what keeps experienced people in the room. It shouldn’t be a surprise that we all do our best work when there is stability. And forcing school boards to issue one-year contracts won’t promote continuity or stability.

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So here’s the challenge for state policymakers. If you want experienced leaders to carry Vermont through this transformation, start treating leadership stability as part of the transformation itself. Give superintendents enough time to finish the job.

Don’t just redesign the system. Give school boards the go-ahead to invest in the people who will have to make it work.

Steven Berbeco

Winooski, Vt.

Read the story on VTDigger here: One-year contracts won’t help Vermont’s schools.