Last year, the legislature created the Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont and gave it an ambitious task: to develop a more sustainable, affordable and equitable vision for public education. But five months in, and as the legislature prepares to convene this week, commission members are wrestling with how its work fits into larger policy conversations around education funding. The topic is expected to be hotly debated during the upcoming session. At a meeting on Monday, commission chair Meagan Roy signaled that lawmakers may change or refine the charge of the 13-member group. "We shouldn't be working at cross-purposes" with the legislature, Roy said. "We were convened to serve a purpose. We need to make sure that that is still the [work] the legislature needs us to do." [content-1] Last month, the commission issued a preliminary report to the legislature that outlined, in broad strokes, several policy considerations for reforming the education system — including revising the education funding formula, pooling resources so that students have more equitable learning opportunities and better aligning staffing to enrollment. (Vermont has the most teachers and staff per 100 students in the country, according to the Vermont Agency of Education.) The report also linked to a menu of options for policy change that require further study. But the report stopped short of giving policy recommendations, noting that there is “no silver bullet solution” to solving the state’s education funding problems. More time and data analysis are necessary to come up with more concrete fixes, it said. The commission is slated to meet for 10 more months and issue another report in October with final recommendations. But one committee member on Monday questioned whether that timeline was realistic, given that the full commission meets just once a month. Oliver Olsen, who represents the Vermont Independent Schools Association on the commission, said members may need to "radically reshape" how they operate to meet the deadline. "There needs to be more division of responsibility and probably some more committee time to really dive into these things," said Olsen, a former lawmaker and State Board of Education chair. [content-2] Commission member John Castle, who is executive director of the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative, stressed the importance of the group remaining independent and "not an extension of the administration." Castle expressed reservations about the meeting's agenda, which included a lengthy presentation from APA Consulting, a firm hired by the…