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By Guy Page
The School District Redistricting Task Force took a long look at Act 73, the law passed this year to reduce school spending and improve student outcomes, and recommended on November 10 for the creation of new supervisory format – shared services – unforeseen by Act 73 and targeting small, rural schools for voluntary, incentivized mergers. This newly envisioned school reform rollout would take 10 years.
Neither the lengthy time frame nor the details were what either most legislators or Gov. Phil Scott had in mind when they passed the law this spring.
To paraphrase three high-profile reactions to the recommendations:
Reaction #1: No, stay the course on Act 73 as written! The lead proponent of this option is Gov. Phil Scott, who said at a press conference the task force “didn’t fulfill their obligation….They didn’t redraw the lines, and they were supposed to put forward three maps for consideration, and they failed,” Scott said. No one ever said it would be easy – now do the hard work, Scott said. “It would appear that those who didn’t fulfill their obligation are OK with the ever-increasing property taxes, cost of education, and they don’t want to see change, or at least not immediately.”
Reaction #2: The real message of this report is that Act 73 just doesn’t work. It’s a bad idea. Drive a stake through its heart and start again. So urges former Ethan Allen Institute President and Behind The Lines columnist Rob Roper, speaking mostly but not only to Republicans in the Legislature.
“Act 73 was a political time bomb, maybe more like a depth charge, destined to explode at the pressure point when a majority of voters actually started paying attention and figured out what was in it. Why Republicans who won a historic victory in 2024 largely by promising to do something about affordability crushing property taxes would sign on to a law that does nothing to reduce property taxes for years, if ever, was – and still is – baffling to me. But they did!,” Roper writes in his latest column, available on Substack and today on VDC.
But – task force to the rescue!
“But, HALLELUIAH!! for the incompetent, scofflaws beholden to special interests in the Redistricting Task Force!,” Roper writes. “By refusing to put forward a map – effectively killing Act 73 before the legislature has to take it up – in a scene from Hollywood snatching hope from the jaws of hopelessness, in the nick of time they have snipped the map-wires and diffused the bomb.”
Reaction #3: We agree with the task force: large-scale school redistricting is unworkable and financially misguided. Shared services are a better option.
In a joint position paper, North Country, Essex-North, and Orleans Central supervisory unions argue that the state’s proposed restructuring would disrupt local schools without delivering meaningful tax savings, the Caledonian-Record reports today. Instead, they urge the state to adopt a shared-services model similar to one proposed by the redistricting task force. The unions warn that “Act 73 in its current form will create an unreasonable level of disruption… while distracting school-communities from the important work of improving learning outcomes for our students.”
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Categories: Education, News Analysis
Last week I commented on the Education Reform Committee’s report that:
Re: “Per AOE data, there is no observable cost advantage associated with private schools in VT. Per AOE data, on average statewide in FY24, tuition districts paid more per student tuitioned to a private school ($20,432) than to a public school ($18,476).”
Again … False! Across the board – an absolutely false statement.
___________
Here’s the actual data from my school district.
In my Westminster School district, we have 165 K-8 students and a $5,308,124 annual school budget. Quick math: that’s $32,170 per student.
Of those 165 K-8 students, 39 are in our 7th & 8th grade school choice tuitioning program. The budgeted tuition is $1,044,000 for all 39 students. Quick math: That’s $26,769 per tuitioned 7th & 8th grade student.
Of those 39 7th & 8th grade students, 8 of them attend independent schools, receiving $20,910 per student. Quick math: That’s a total annual tuition cost to the school district of $161,520 for our independent school students.
That leaves an $882,480 tuition cost for the remaining 31 students choosing public schools. Quick math: The public-school tuition is $28,467 per student…. again, compared to $20,910 per student costs for chosen independent schools. Quick math: 7th & 8th grade Independent school tuition costs are 36% less than the 7th & 8th grade public school tuition costs.
But the comparison shouldn’t stop there.
When we deduct the total 7th & 8th grade tuition expense ($1,044,000) from our total K-8 district budget ($5,308,124), we’re left with total K-6th grade costs of $4,264,124 – for 126 K-6th grade students. Quick math: Our K-6 public school per student costs are $33,842 per student.
Compare the K-6 grade $33,842 per student cost with the $20,910 7th & 8th grade per student cost of independent school tuition.
Now compare these numbers to the Education Reform Committee’s projections once again… “on average statewide in FY24, tuition districts paid more per student tuitioned to a private school ($20,432) than to a public school ($18,476).”
This is blatantly fraudulent reporting by the AOE Reform Committee.
Prediction: Any response from the AOE, if they dare respond, will begin with the remark… ‘That’s not how we calculate the cost per student’.
Well, no s— Sherlock. How the AOE calculates anything is a mystery.. even to the members of the AOE Reform Committee.
H. Jay Eshelmann: I like your math…great job!
Pretty good math! But, you have proven why America lags behind much of the world in Math by showing how wrong our elected officials are. In the words of George W. Bush, the AOE is using “fuzzy math.”
No worries, the school districts have bonded and yoked taxpayers to fraudulent, hyper-inflated property values to ensure hog troughs remain funded with increased property taxes to infinity and beyond. No matter how they paper over the collusion, corruption and outright fraud, it’s all coming apart in the global markets – all due to hyper-inflated valuations and circular lending. How much State or Teacher pension money is tied up in the sub-prime private lending scams? Credit swaps, credit defaults, debt bundling, redemption requests increasing, reserves vaporizing, investments claimed with no receipts to show? Liquidity crisis? What liquidity crisis?
There is no business like show business and there is no honor among thieves.
I agree with reaction #2 because Act 73 is a big pile of #2. I am beyond disappointed that we paid elected officials to solve the education funding problem along with failed academic outcomes and have nothing to show for it. The best government can do is remove themselves from the oversight of education.