by Rep. Scott Beck (R-St. Johnsbury)
The annual discussion over Vermont’s Education Fund and wringing of hands over education property tax rates is an unprecedented mess this year, and that’s being kind. The Dec. 1 Tax Letter projects that unless school districts back down from increasing their education spending by $207M (around $60M is normal) the average property tax bill will go up by 18.5%. Voters will make the final determination of how much school districts spend, they always do.
Here is a laundry list of why such a large increase this year – Universal School Meals added $28M, healthcare premiums went up by 16%, very high staffing ratios, inflation on everything else, student weighting changes, failure to fully implement special education reform from 2018, increase in pension costs of $10M, collective bargaining agreements, the retention of school positions being funded by one-time Covid dollars, high capital construction costs, a cap on district rates that has encouraged spending, and consumption tax growth has returned to 2%.
And then there is the confusion of the Common Level of Appraisal. Half of the districts benefit from CLA, and half don’t. I’ve never spoken to anyone that knows which bucket they are in or why, or how it impacts their tax rate.
Recent public comments indicate that the Legislature will address property tax rates. It is important to understand that the Legislature has only four blunt tools at its disposal.
- In the middle of school budgeting the rules could be changed.
- A reserve fund could be tapped to provide one-time relief.
- Spending could be cut from a non-education program and diverted to the Education Fund.
- Non-property taxes could be increased to reduce property taxes.
These are extraordinarily unpopular and dramatic ideas to consider. Of course, so is an 18.5% increase in property tax rates.
Some of what is occurring is not particular to the Education Fund, but much of it is. These changes would finally fix Act 60/68 and cause the Fund to perform as it was supposed to, and in a way that Vermonters could understand while strengthening local control and accountability.
- More closely connect a district’s tax rate to its spending as proposed by the House in 2018
- Normal pension costs should be paid by employers, not as a line-item in the Education Fund, also proposed by the House in 2018.
- Eliminate CLA and instead move to the Massachusetts schedule of determining property value.
- Reform the property tax bill to a property tax payment with an income-based credit received at tax filing. This is how every New England state administers an income-based property tax credit. An estimated income-based credit could be applied for in advance.
- Modify or eliminate the Act 127 rate cap in FY26.
- Eliminate the excess spending threshold and penalty.
This year’s mess is unprecedented, but Vermont would be foolish if it did not acknowledge that much of our problem is systemic. The Legislature should act decisively and provide Vermonters with an education funding system that is understandable, more closely connects a district’s spending decision with its tax rate without the use of penalties, and divorces the local tax rate from unpredictable local property valuations changes.
Rep. Scott Beck (R) from St. Johnsbury is on the House Ways & Means Committee.
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Rep. Beck, thank you.
Common sense is an uncommon virtue in Montpelier. What do we expect as taxpayers from our educational systems? Clearly the educational product that Vermonters are overpaying for (well prepared literate citizens able to contribute to society as adults) delivered. Use any metric. Basic literacy, the ability to hold a job, critical thinking, understanding our history and government, and dare I say it, citizenship. Most Vermont schools fail to deliver 60th percentile results. Except perhaps in individual “feelings” or other squishy terms. The Vermont taxpayer is being scammed. Rather than wringing hands about illusory systemic racism, we need to dismantle the systemic bureaucracy that celebrates mediocrity and requires more of our shrinking income every year.
Reinforcing failure. A proud Montpelier tradition. Maybe this year more $ will make a difference….
Combined with municipal budget increases, (in my town it’s a projected 11%) an 18% education tax would destroy the financial viability of many individual taxpayers. Will the state have to borrow to finance this? We know the governor can’t print money. And then there’s the elephant in the room bearing down on us, the unaffordable heat act.
When Act 60 was being debated I pointed out that disconnecting school budgets from “local” tax rates would make Act 60 “the perfect property tax eating machine”. My analysis showed that every time the property tax (either the old one, collected locally, or both new taxes, determined by the state) neared paying for 70% of total education costs the demand for reform of the system became a crisis. Vermont continues to rely more heavily on the property tax for education than nearly every other state. The solutions are 1) reconnect local budgets with local tax burdens, 2) reduce spending by eliminating many state mandates for non-core function services, and 3) increase broad-based state tax support for education services. The Vermont Constitution lists education and public safety as required government functions. That implies that the Legislature should fund these functions FIRST, and then apply the available resources to those things the state would like to do. And when they run out of money, stop.
Re: “The Vermont Constitution lists education and public safety as required government functions.”
Clearly, then, the State is breaching its contract – not only is it charging an arm and a leg, it isn’t educating our children, and our environment, in school and out, is becoming untenably dangerous.
I am forever impressed by the continuing dissertations on our educational demise. We get it.
In fact, from a technical perspective, the dysfunction of Vermont’s public education system is more pervasive now and ever more complicated (by design) than I suspect most VDC readers can possibly fathom. The system is tantamount to the proverbial Tar Baby in the Uncle Remus Tales of the South story book. The more one tries to converse with it, the more embroiled one becomes in the sticky goo.
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid
That property taxes are going up is one way to look at it. But looking at the cost per student is the best way to compare apples to apples. Take your total school budget – the bottom line that you’re being asked to approve – and divide it by the actual number of students in your school. Use the *actual* student enrollment. Not the Equalized Enrollment the State uses to allocate funding. How many kids with a beating heart are actually in the school?
With the recent enactment of Act 127, the State’s enrollment calculation metric is more difficult to understand than quantum mechanics – by design. What you are going to find is that the tuition grants available to you, sufficient for you to choose and pay for most any alternate school, are approximately 30% less per student than the costs you’re approving in your districts annual budget to attend your public school as a default. And that’s before any threatened property tax increases.
Yes, you’re going to hear all sorts of convoluted arguments obfuscating this comparison. Again, just wait until you see the Equalized Student Enrollment numbers that are about to be passed around. Surely, if this is too complicated for your school administrators to explain to you, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Or perhaps they do understand, and they are simply hiding reality from you because it suits their purpose – not yours.
They will bring the school tax rate down to perhaps 15% and we will all sigh a
moment of relief. It’s a shell game and we the taxpayers are the losers.
Ditch the statewide control of our schools, return the power to the local government
and let each town determine its investment in their school system. Everyone knew this outrageous spending would occur, and we did not to stop it. November is
another opportunity to make changes. We need a balance in the political parties in Montpelier. We are getting what many voted for. The VEA owns most of the people in Montpelier who are supporting the short and long range goals of VEA.
Get out and vote to make a difference. Even if it’s not your party it is your wallet and state when your voting. It takes most of us to make a difference.
Beck is one of 24 VT State Transrepublican Representatives that voted for H 89, the law that gives the ” State ” the ability to take children from their parents to sexually, chemically, physically and psychologically destroy them.
So while he is willing to fight for Tax dollars he is complicit in the mutilation of children.
Anyone that supports Beck, any of the other 23 or Phil Scott because they are
” fiscally responsible ” which they aren’t, is also supporting the destruction of innocent Vermont children.
The VTGOP supports them and they support abortion thru the 2nd Trimester.
That is why their candidate of choice was Christian Nolan, who supports abortion thru the 2nd trimester, over 99% of all abortions. Nolan also vowed to fight to codify Roe V Wade if she had been elected.
The Republican Pro Life candidate for Congress received no monetary support from the VTGOP, either during the Primary or the General election. After Ms. Nolan was defeated, VTGOP Chair Dame issued a plea for donations to support Gerald Malloy. Mr. Malloy never received any financial support from the VTGOP.
Conservative Vermonters have almost no voice in Montpelier.
Beck is a fraud, selling out children.
Has he explained why on earth he voted for H.89? If not, I would encourage him to do so here. His excuse had better be good. That vote is absolutely unconscionable.
I trust women and doctors far more than the government.
So Scott, you trust women and doctors more than you trust your own decisions? After all, you ARE the government.
Bill, it’s not a trick statement. I think women and doctors will make better decisions than government whether I’m a part of government, or not. You don’t have to agree with me, but 75% of Vermonters and a majority in every Vermont town do.
Let the record show that Rep. Beck was unable to justify his vote for H.89 and in the process has demonstrated that he is both pro abortion and pro child sexual abuse.
Mr. Beck: I’ve read most of H.89 and cannot find a legal definition describing the difference between gender-affirming healthcare and child abuse as defined by the Department for Children and Families (DCF).
For example, according to the definitions in DCF Family Policy 50:
Abused or Neglected Child: A child whose physical health, psychological growth and development or welfare is harmed or is at substantial risk of harm by the acts or omissions of his or her parent or other person responsible for the child’s welfare. Also, a child who is sexually abused or at substantial risk of sexual abuse by any person and a child who has died as a result of abuse or neglect (33 VSA § 4912(1)).
Will you be kind enough to cite for us where the distinction is between ‘protected healthcare’ and ‘child abuse’ in the H.89 statute?
What a mess indeed. The Brigham decision was borne out of nothing but ugly envy. Congratulations Vermont — all your kids are now equally ignorant and miserable.
Beck’s response to my comment…… ” I trust women and doctors more than the government. ”
His own words prove him wrong.
Because he voted to take children away from their Mothers, ( Women ) Fathers and Doctors who would fight to protect the children.
You can’t defend the indefensible. You sold them out by giving the government the legal authority to take the children away from their Parents. You also betrayed every Conservative Vermonter.
I didn’t reply to your comment.
we opposed act 60/// major taking rights/// pay your taxes or loose your house/// you could have your property paid off and still loose it /// notice /// the little town of searsburg vermont has 50.000 owed in back taxes//no tax sale yet
h.j.e…. during the act 60 battle they tried to do a constitutional amendment to make health and education a right///never came out of committee///declaration of rights in the vermont constitution/////no health care or education/// they knew it and jammed act 60 to cover this up/// this was a criminal act///
Sounds like the proverbial brick wall is now hit quite squarely and firmly. Now what? How about more currency printing and flip-flopping interest rate increase, decrease or hold? What to do about the over $20 Trillion in unmet federal obligations which would include education spending would it not? How about more deficit spending (currently $34 Trillion in the hole) on an insolvent, flat-broke busted corporation who can’t find buyers for their treasury bonds? It is so bad, the Fed is taking the treasury bonds through the back door (literally and figuratively I hear.) Can’t depend on the people to pony-up the cash – it’s the same worthless currency the regime is inflating into worthlessness. Get the picture yet?
Correction – my bad, US unfunded liabilities currently stands at $211 Trillion or $630,141 per citizen. As a citizen, I’ll have to owe the corporation past my death by 100 or so years.
End the Current Use program. Problem solved.
While the bulk of our property taxes do go toward schools in vermont, those funds do not account for the majority of the budget at the schools. Most of it is federally money, either directly from the Department of Education or second hand through our state government’s Agency of Education. Here in lies the problem. The schools rely mainly on those funds and are in turn forced to follow the bureaucratic and politicized red tape that comes with the dough. They’ve got us by the balls. Im all for disconnecting from the government in our education systems and returning to a more grassroots school program where opinions of local residents, parents of school children and their teachers are unfettered. My question is how can schools be truly locally funded without the tit of the government and would our state or federal government even allow that? Would they cost more or less? One thing is for sure, the education industrial complex is real and while schools get more and more expensive, the students enrolled and the tax payers get less and less for their buck. If the schools were excelling in producing extremely independent, self sufficient, well educated young adults ready for positive societal contributions, spending a little more, while extremely tough given current economic conditions, would be more palatable. Yet this is far, far from the current situation. However, i bet if you ask any administrator or employee of the DOE, AOE, VPA, VSBA, NSBA, etc, they would tell you the schools are very successful despite declining academic proficiency rates. Afterall, if everyone is below par, it’s “equitable”, and in their stated goals “equity” is the priority. We need a solution.
Most of the money funding Vermont K-12 public-schools is not, typically, federal money.
I say ‘typically’ because over the last couple of years, yes, a lot of federal money came through the pipeline because of the Covid fiasco. But that money has pretty much dried up. And because the public-school monopoly became addicted to the extra cash, like any junkie, when the supply dried up, it started looking for replacement sources – your property taxes for the most part. But the income and sales tax stipends are increasing too, along with other fees on a whole slew of services we take for granted.
According to the 2023 Report on Vermont’s Education Financing on Non-Property Tax Sources: “There are multiple non-property tax sources that contribute to the EF. These include all revenues from the Sales and Use Tax, one-third of Purchase and Use Tax revenues, one-quarter of Meals and Rooms Tax revenues, all revenues from the State lotteries, Medicaid reimbursement funds, and other miscellaneous revenue sources. Together, these non-property tax revenue sources generally account for approximately 35% of EF revenue.”
https://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Legislative-Reports/GENERAL-366459-v2-2023_Report_on_Education_Financing.pdf
As de Tocqueville is sometimes credited for saying – “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
Neil Young offered a fitting lyric too – ‘A Junkie is like the setting sun. Oh, oh, the damage done.’ Of course, we could ‘just say no’, if we had the stones to say it.
In excess of 95% of the revenue used to support Vermont schools comes directly from Vermonters.
https://ljfo.vermont.gov/assets/Subjects/Education-Fund-Outlooks-for-2024-Session/d84e5822f5/Dec1EFOutlook_113023.pdf
What’s specifically interesting in this report is that the 2025 forecast of total education spending is $2.347 Billion for about 83,433 students. That’s more than $28 Thousand per student – 2nd highest cost in the U.S. after NY. Of course, what else should we expect from an organization (the AOE) with almost as many employees as it has students.
And for that, half of Vermont’s students can’t meet minimum standards in reading, writing, math, or science. And still, more than 80% of those students graduate anyway. Talk about bait and switch.
Interesting notation: In those districts that provide School Choice Tuition, the State pays $18,300 per student for grades 7 through 12, and $16,700 per student for grades K through 6. That’s a savings of about $10,000 per student choosing to attend an independent school. Go figure.
Caution: When voters are asked to approve their local school budgets, they should keep in mind that the actual school enrollments are arbitrarily increased, almost doubled in fact, by the so-called Long Term Weighted Average Daily Membership (LTWADM) equalized student metric. That means the cost per student in the annual school budget presentation is about half the actual cost per student.
Prediction: as Vermont’s enrollments continue to decline, look for an increase in English Language Learners (ELL). And ELL students have the highest equalized student weighting, overstating their actual enrollment more than any other school cohort.
I’ll leave it to your imagination to consider where those kids will come from.
Another note on the enrollment game. I just got my hands on the Agency of Education’s latest enrollment data as conditioned by Act 127.
If my school district is any indication, 15% of the Average Daily membership (actual student head count) consist of three grades of Pre-K students ages 3, 4 and 5 years old. These kids are typically in school for only 10 hours a week, 35 weeks a year. And still they’re counted as fulltime students.
I do have the data for all of Vermont’s schools and will calculate the total PK enrollment asap.
In the meantime, consider that if the ADM enrollments list in the report referenced by Mr. Beck include the same percentage of Pre-K students, that means instead of there being 83,433 students in Vermont’s public schools, there are only about 72,000 K-12 students.
That means Vermont’s cost per student for K-12 students is over $31,000 per student for the FY 2025 school year.
If your head hurts… tell me about it. Keeping up with these moving goal posts is frustrating, to be sure.
There are 75,282 Kindergarten through 12th grade students in Vermont’s public school program, including students tutitioned by the State to independent schools.