Bill aims to restrict tuition costs for public elementary schools

By Michael Bielawski

A bill proposes new restrictions on how much tuition can be charged by public elementary schools. It would “limit the tuition rate charged by a receiving public school to the average announced tuition of union elementary schools or union high schools, as applicable.”

H. 199’s primary sponsor is Rep. Elizabeth Burrows, D/P-West Windsor, and additional (and bipartisan) sponsors are Reps. John Bartholomew, D-Hartland, Voranus Coffin IV, R-Cavendish, Mari Cordes, D-Lincoln, and Jubilee McGill, D-Bridport.

It would also prohibit the receiving school from charging “additional fees for special education, availability reservation, or other fees that cannot be accounted for.”

And it, “proposes to eliminate tuition paid by a nonoperating school district from the district’s education spending for the purposes of calculating excess spending pursuant to 32 V.S.A. § 5401(12).”

Costly/underperforming

School tuition has been a hot-button issue for the Green Mountain State. The average public elementary school tuition in Vermont is $19,400 according to WorldPopulationReview.com.This is above the national average of $17,187, according to Public School Review.

Jill Briggs Campbell, interim deputy secretary of education, said on Friday of last week to the House Education Committee, “In education spending, we’ve seen significant growth, and we’ve also had sort of the technical term, the double whammy, the end of our pandemic era funding. So the five $500 plus million dollars of ESSER funds, GEER funds, child nutrition, and a whole host of other programs, largely came to an end on September 30, 2024. We are also in an inflationary context with increased costs, including health care.”

Political analyst Rob Roper wrote in January, “Since 2014, spending on our public school system has increased 42 percent, nearly $607 million dollars per year, to — inexplicitly — educate fewer and fewer students as our K-12 population declines. You know what else is dropping despite all this spending? Student outcomes. Vermont has fallen from a top performing school system to the middle of the pack, with this trend still pointing downward.”

Special education

It’s unclear how much revenue schools could lose for special education were this bill implemented. According to the Pew Research Center, the nation’s public K-12 school system educates “about 7.3 million students with disabilities – a number that has grown over the last few decades.”

The report indicates that “7.3 million disabled students in the U.S. made up 15% of national public school enrollment during the 2021-22 school year.”

The same report noted that finding special education teachers is a challenge. It states, “During the 2020-21 school year, 40% of public schools that had a special education teaching vacancy reported that they either found it very difficult to fill the position or were not able to do so.”

The report does not offer an analysis of the financial implications of special education.

From a school board chair

Burrows, the bill’s primary sponsor, also chairs the Mount Ascutney School District’s board. She’s been a vocal critic of the Agency of Education, telling Seven Days in 2023 that “Almost every department in the Agency of Education is falling short of what their charge is,” Burrows said. She met with Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders while she was still the interim secretary.

Big changes to education formula

The Agency of Education is proposing some big plans for Vermont’s education programs, including a block-grant funding model that gives schools a set amount of money to budget with, though individual communities can still vote for more spending.

Saunders recently wrote to Vermonters, “I do not expect the work ahead of me to be easy: nothing worth doing is. Like many other states, Vermont faces challenges – some of which were exacerbated by the pandemic and others that are compounded by national and regional economic challenges.”

---

Contact your legislators

See all bills assigned to this committee here. Constituents may contact committee members (click link on name for bio, party affiliation, etc.) with comments, questions and information at the following email addresses: 

House Education

All committee transcripts are available at SmartTranscripts of Meetings Under The Vermont Golden Dome. The Committee meeting video is available at the committee’s YouTube channel. The committee meets in the morning in Room 8.

The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle