The chair of the Danville School Board filed a complaint on Wednesday with the Senate Ethics Committee against state Sen. Scott Beck (R-Caledonia), alleging that Beck pressured the Danville and Cabot school boards to call votes on closing their small high schools in an effort to benefit St. Johnsbury Academy, where Beck has taught for 27 years.
Beck “leveraged his official position as a high ranking state senator together with his inside knowledge of the legislative issues likely to come before the General Assembly to coerce two school districts to consider preemptively closing their schools in order to maintain the option to tuition students to St. Johnsbury Academy,” the complaint from Danville school board chair Clayton Cargill states.
The closure of those two high schools, Danville and Cabot, “would help ensure financial stability for [Beck’s] employer and are an abuse of Senator Beck’s official elected position for both personal and, potentially, financial gain,” Cargill wrote.
The complaint stems from phone conversations Beck had with Cargill and Cabot School Board chair Chris Tormey in late August, as Seven Days reported earlier this month. During the calls, Beck said he believed that when the legislature reconvenes, it will likely amend the education reform law so that any district that voted to close a school would have to designate three public schools to receive its students. If the school districts wanted to retain the option of letting families choose a public or private school of their choice — including nearby St. Johnsbury Academy or Lyndon Institute — they should consider calling a vote on a possible closure before year’s end, Beck told them.
Subsequently, Beck texted Cargill saying that he thought the board “should let the voters have their say” about a school closure, the complaint says. A week later, Beck texted again asking “How’s that 3rd and 4th vote coming along?” Cargill said the question was a reference to two Danville school board members who were undecided on whether to call a town vote about a school closure.
The Cabot School Board has decided to put off its conversation about a closure until after a redistricting task force, of which Beck is a member, completes its work and more is known about statewide education reform. But earlier this month, the Danville School Board received a formal petition, initiated by a parent who also teaches at St. Johnsbury Academy, calling for the town to hold a vote on closing their high school. The board last week warned the vote for December 6.
If the closure were approved, the town would pay for students to go to another public or approved independent school of their choice.
In his complaint, Cargill noted “the pattern of Senator Beck’s outreach” as a cause for concern. Though there are three small high schools in the Caledonia Supervisory Union, Beck only reached out to the two — Cabot and Danville — that are geographically closest to St. Johnsbury Academy, the complaint stated. Beck did not contact the third high school, Twinfield, which “would more likely send students to U-32 or Montpelier High School if it closed,” the complaint continued.
In an interview on Wednesday, Beck defended his decision to initiate the conversations in question, saying that he was “trying to be straightforward and honest” with board members and believes it’s his job as a senator to let the communities he represents know what he thinks will happen in the legislature. Beck said that during the summer, he had conversations with Danville constituents who wanted to start a petition to close the high school. But he advised them to see whether the school board would take any action before they moved forward.
“I thought it would be a better, less divisive, process if the board led the conversation,” Beck said. He characterized the texts he sent to Cargill as an attempt to assess the board’s thinking on the issue.
Beck also faced another challenge on Wednesday from the Friends of Vermont Public Education, a group formed last year to advocate for the state’s public schools. The group’s board sent a letter to Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth (D-Chittenden-Central), Sen. Ginny Lyons (D-Chittenden-Southeast) and Lt. Gov. John Rodgers — members of the Senate’s influential Committee on Committees — requesting that Beck be publicly censured and removed from the School District Redistricting Task Force. The group said Beck’s interactions with the Cabot and Danville school boards “have caused real disruption in communities that were not actively pursuing school closure prior to Senator Beck’s intervention.”
Beck’s conduct, the letter said, is “incompatible with service on a task force charged with reshaping Vermont’s public school governance structure.”
But Beck, in an interview, downplayed the role of the task force, describing its role as simply “drawing maps and lines” rather than making bigger decisions about educational issues such as whether districts should operate public schools or move to school choice.
The two complaints are not the first time this year that Beck’s actions have come under scrutiny.
In June, Friends of Vermont Public Education filed an ethics complaint against Beck and Sen. Seth Bongartz (D-Bennington), alleging that the senators used their positions on the conference committee negotiating the final details of the education reform bill to advance the interests of both Burr and Burton in Manchester, where Bongartz was a longtime chair of the board, and St. Johnsbury Academy.
Beck at the time called the allegations baseless.
Read the full complaint below: