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By Guy Page
The Legislature’s education financing bill would cost property tax payers too much money and would take too long to implement, Gov. Phil Scott said in a Wednesday, May 27 letter.
Last Friday the Senate passed an education reform bill, H.454, which basically agrees with the House version Gov. Phil Scott opposes. Scott and Republicans in both chambers had hoped the full Senate would adopt the amendments recommended by the Senate Education Committee – including $1800 less spending per student.
It was not to be. The Senate Democratic caucus opposed the Senate Ed bill 12-5. Rather than let a minority of Democrats and every Republican pass the Senate Education bill, Senate leaders scrapped it and successfully pushed a more House-friendly version.
Last year, a Scott veto would have been quickly overridden. It’s different this year. In an act of property tax revolt, voters in November elected enough like-minded legislators to uphold his veto.
Lawmakers wondered how Scott would respond to Friday’s vote. They found out May 27 in a letter sent to the Senate-House conference committee, which has been working out their own relatively minor House-Senate differences over H.454.
Jason Maulucci, the governor’s legislative liaison, gave a quick overview of the letter Thursday morning to the conference committee. He basically echoed the contents of the letter, which appear below.
Level spending for education
“I will not support a bill that spends more than we are today in FY25 dollars,” Scott said in his May 27 letter.
While state property tax payers value quality education, “Vermonters have also been clear: our state is simply not affordable, and property taxes are a key contributor to our affordability crisis,” Scott said.
Implementation sooner rather than later:
“I cannot accept an implementation timeline of FY30. I have proposed FY28. [The Legislature and Gov. Scott recently adopted the FY 26 school spending plan.] We’ve seen too many important reforms rolled back before implementation over the years, and I fear that could happen here.”
School district composition:
The governor is willing to wait until January for the Legislature to enact new school district sizes and boundaries.
“I have been clear that I would have preferred the Legislature approving new districts this
session. However, I’m willing to support the summer district task force structure, provided it sets us up to quickly approve the new lines when lawmakers return to Montpelier in January. I would support an up-or-down January vote on a consensus map produced by the Task Force,” Scott said.
The conference committee listened to Maulucci, asked a couple of questions about special education funding, and adjourned for the morning. They’ll be back, and time will tell whether the conference committee adopts any or all of Scott’s recommendations.
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Categories: State House Spotlight
No matter what these wrong minded supper spenders propose, my money is betting that it will be to expensive ! They just don’t get it ! Make them understand at the polls. That is the only thing that they understand ! Veto Phil ! veto !
Oops ! Super, supper, Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, NO it’s Supperman !
VERMONT is #50 out of all 50 state as the HIGHEST Property TAX burden! We are Last Place Prize loser.
Rich state Poor state .com 2025 stats – Hello…. Hello …. Legislature?
As a retired 40 year classroom teacher, I will state – when we moved to Vermont 25 years ago, I was startled by how small the classroom sizes were and how many paraprofessionals were on hand to tend to what was referred to in the teachers’ lounge as 3-for kids. Kids who frequently disrupted and ought to count as 3 students on the roles. In Vermont these students are whisked away by paraprofessionals for a walk to cool down, or one on one tutorials, and other means to restore order. And it does. It made Vermont’s classrooms by far the friendliest atmospheres to teach in compared to 3 other states and one international setting I’ve worked in. However, it also makes it costly without really do that much to improve academic performance scores.
Both small classroom sizes and the number of paraprofessionals go a long way along with more administrative overhead than other settings I’ve worked in to make per pupil education more expensive in Vermont.
I survived and prospered in a sixth grade classroom with 36 students – 24 boys and 12 girls. We had a classroom zoo with guinea pigs, chickens, mice… we also had long winter recesses with soccer games most days. Now that was an exceptionally rare teacher, and I don’t think I’d recommend it for most, but good things can happen in larger classrooms.
Peer reviewed studies on ‘Self-Determination’ indicate that children (and their parents) who have no choice but to be assigned to a specific public school (one-size-fits-all) curriculum have a greater propensity to act out in the classroom.
In today’s political climate (left vs. right), bullying (i.e., gaslighting) becomes more prevalent. And while learning to cope with bullying (a skill that all kids learn in school and in their neighborhoods), the special attention provided to kids who act out encourages the behavior and diminishes the coping skills we all develop, preparing us to live and work with people of differing perspectives in adult life.
As a former school board director, I could see that so-called ‘behavioral disabilities’ became the single leading classification in most school’s special education programs. However, when given a choice of schools to attend, students and parents felt more ‘invested’ in their outcomes and showed an improved propensity to not only cope with adversity, but to learn from it.
I suspect that much of the behavior we see in various political protesting today is the result of what are now a couple of generations of behavioral coddling in the classroom. Hhilltop, I also suspect that your experience in classes with 30 or more kids included, shall we say, less tolerance for what is, otherwise, simply petulant behavior.
Please review and comment.
lol, Jay you hit the nail on the head we are raising protesters and unruly people at best, sadly we are also increasing the likes of fools, aka narcissists, and the path people, people on the sociopath/psychopath spectrum. All of which stems from people thinking they are the center of the universe and no recognition of perhaps being at fault for anything.
Being humble was definitely thrown out with the baby’s bath water.
Their time will come , just ask, Nebuchadnezzar, how does that grass taste? Pride, arrogance are taking our leaders over the cliff. Popcorn will be available for all the people enjoy while they watch this very slow moving train wreck, which with the massive momentum will be epic!
Taxed Enough Already. Is it time to bring back the TEA Party?
Notice they were and ARE trying to please the house, where clearly some of the 10 oligarchs of Vermont are calling all the shots.
Notice who they are NOT trying to please, taxpayers, aka citizens , aka their real boss in a democratically elected republic.
They are doing this because their masters are the United Nations, agenda 2030 and they are told what to do by other people.
They are openly stating they are more concerned about other elected officials than what the Vermont citizens have been asking for. It would be one thing if we had been stingy, but it’s been the exact opposite. We have been overly generous.
We have clearly been subverted, they could care less and are open about saying it.
It’s time for change, this just isn’t working.
Republicans, have you learned Democrats don’t want to work with you?