by Michael Stack
With a record number of 2025 School budgets being voted down by Vermont taxpayers, 30% and counting, one would have to say our funding process and the Legislature responsible for managing it are receiving a failing grade.
The message from voters across the state is you need to take a systematic look at this mess and the resulting inequity and figure out how to hit the reset button. If you have to stop every other social experiment that you are working on (Renewable energy, Anti-trapping, Unrealized capital gains harvesting) do it and do it before the next election. It is clear the super majority has overplayed its hand and taxpayers have had enough. Back to our unassuming protagonist Carl Houghton (Pensioner and longtime resident of Essex junction) who spoke up at the Essex-Westford February school board meeting “You can’t reach your hand deeper into an empty pocket and expect to find something that isn’t there”. Stack: H.850 passes – Vermont Daily Chronicle
Just The Facts:
Our centralized education funding system by law must meet the needs of all Vermont Students equitably. The education funding system, its complexity and obvious biases to the larger population-based schools in and around Chittenden County is nothing more than a modern-day version of Medieval Feudalism. Today’s political class has inserted themselves as Monarchs and Clergy distributing favors in trade for loyalty and votes.
Let’s drill into the numbers and importantly the behaviors we are witnessing in this year’s budgeting process. Analyzing the top 10% of school budgets, (ranked by year over year projected dollar increases) we see them coming in at a cumulative $102m increase (see table at bottom). That represented 42% of the total state projected increase of $243m for next year. Let me say that again slowly “the top 10% of our state’s schools were looking to spend 42%” of the total state education fund increase. That spending/cost is shared across the state and explains why, with an inflation-based budget increase of up 3.5%, our town (Rockingham) is still looking at a low double digit increase in the education portion of our property tax. A critic will say “well yeah, but these are the big schools and they account for some 30% of the students so the 40% plus is justified.”
Well, let’s take a deeper look. Burlington is #1, coming in at up roughly $15m (again see table below). Utilizing student count numbers published before the state’s new “Special Headcount Sauce” was applied (lifting Burlington’s student population by over 70%), we saw them projecting a budget up 19.6% yr/yr, roughly $27k per student. That is a rate some 17% above the estimated $23k state average. Peeling back the equity onion a bit we know by their own admission that Burlington’s budget includes $9.5m in debt service payments for their new high school. Their budget passed with over a 70% yes rate. Does this indicate that Burlington is just one super supportive community when it comes to student’s education or maybe they just know a good deal when they see one?
Another in the winner’s circle, Winooski, projected a budget up $8.4M, up 40% yr/yr. This represents a $37k per student run rate (159% of the state average) based upon the long-term average daily membership (not weighted). Their voters also snapped up an outsized budget increase with a 70% yes vote. While not spelled out in their budget announcement, no doubt there was significant new high school debt amortization buried in their $29m total projected budget.
More from the winner’s circle, Mountain View, previously known as Windsor Central. Their original projected +40% yr/yr budget, with per student cost running at $32k or 139% of the state average, passed with a robust 68% yes vote. Full disclosure, Mountain View lowered their original projected budget and passed a whittled down $25m version up only 20% yr/yr. Like many districts across the state, when they were informed that they were not going to get the promised Act 127, 5% tax cap, it suddenly became clear they were going to be spending their own money. Subsequently they and others are finding ways to scale it back.
Our BFUHS $7.9m came in at up 3.5% yr/yr and passed with per student spending in line with the state average. Obviously, we are a fraction of the size of many of the larger schools like Burlington, however there was no padding our budget no “Beggar thy neighbor” behavior. Unfortunately, our students are not learning in a modern 21st century facility. When it rains our staff runs around our 52-year-old school with buckets to collect water from the leaks. When distracted by emergency facility management responsibilities, our staff’s academic responsibilities take a backseat, and our students’ education suffers.
So, yes, I am asking, where is the equity?
I am sure other small districts can share similar war stories. Are the students in the largest districts, “more equal” than others? Obviously, the answer to that rhetorical question is no, but who is going to do something about it? In the meantime, our taxpayers and taxpayers in multiple smaller districts are picking up the tab for new multimillion dollar high-schools serving the students of Chittenden County.
Act 60’s ideal was to eliminate the disadvantage of students in small (smaller meaning smaller grand list, less wealthy towns). Unfortunately Act 60 never anticipated the evolution of extreme and varied “voting wealth” which is geographically concentrated in certain pockets in the state. Obviously a very different form of wealth, power and trade that has evolved beyond our simplistic historic Grand list, based measure.
In the end significant disparities, and inequity have crept back into our education funding system. This year’s budget process has been and continues to be dysfunctional however I am encouraged the public has figured it out. They say the first step in correcting a problem is acknowledgement. I think at this point the public gets it. Now the challenge will be explaining to the legislature, we are looking for a well thought out systematic solution, no more short term politically expedient patches. Stay tuned.
The author is a Rockingham resident.
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Categories: Commentary
The Brigham Decision, Feb. 5 1997 set this bedlam in motion. I suggest that 26 years later, the decision itself be reviewed again:
PER CURIAM. In this appeal, we decide that the current system for
funding public education in Vermont, with its substantial dependence on
local property taxes and resultant wide disparities in revenues available
to local school districts, deprives children of an equal educational
opportunity in violation of the Vermont Constitution. In reaching this
conclusion, we acknowledge the conscientious and ongoing efforts of the
Legislature to achieve equity in educational financing and intend no
intrusion upon its prerogatives to define a system consistent with
constitutional requirements. In this context, the Court’s duty today is
solely to define the impact of the State Constitution on educational
funding, not to fashion and impose a solution. The remedy at this juncture
properly lies with the Legislature.
This is not full circle, it is numerous 360º turns by the legislature- still without the direction the VSC required in 1997.
What Mr. Stack curiously doesn’t mention is the 5 to 1 student staff ratio at his BFUHS high school – not counting WNESU supervisory union staff or the vast payroll of the Vermont Agency of Education. He doesn’t mention that the BFUHS school building, designed for at least 700-800 students, has only 334 students in it. And he doesn’t mention that half of the BFUHS 9th graders were recently found to be reading at a 1st grade level. The only equality (or equity) in this educational morass is in its lowest common denominator at the highest cost it can extract from taxpayers.
Re: “Now the challenge will be explaining to the legislature, we are looking for a well thought out systematic solution, no more short term politically expedient patches. Stay tuned.”
Stay tuned? Why bother. No one in the public education system, including Mr. Stack, has any idea what they’re doing or what they are looking for. In January, Mr. Stack claimed that he was ‘not lured by the promise of “Free Money”. And yet, here he is, complaining that his school isn’t getting its fair share. All he can say is that ‘the system is broken’. Well, duh.
There is a fix. But no one wants to hear it, let alone do it.
Well said, their response? Send more money, we know what we’re doing.
This whole thing was a scam and a lie from the beginning, they wanted all control and all control of our tax money.
It was NEVER about our children’s education.
they have to do a constitutional amendment before they have any power to do any thing/// no right/// no tax///
Let’s see what are we getting for the money being spent, test scores in the tank, teacher’s salaries bloated along with their ” golden ” Health & retirement account
more money for what, ineptness………. sounds like a Government job, more for less.
It is a govt job. Govt school , govt employees
It would be beneficial for Mr. Stack to add to the table the projected change in property tax to each of those school districts.
Grifters have to grift while the printing machine is running full tilt. Not only under the guise of “education.”
Watch out as they bury this nonsense into other laws to keep the laundry services going 24/7: The “environmental justice” grift for $600,000 – “In addition, Act 154 (S.148) established an environmental justice (EJ) policy for the State of Vermont which creates significant, new EJ-related responsibilities for the Agency. The policy provides a framework for ensuring fairness in operations of government to better serve Vermonters. The resources appropriated to support this work in the SFY23 budget included $500,000 of one-time money to support development of the EJ mapping tool and community engagement efforts. An additional $250,000 was appropriated to ANR to fund three positions to assist in the implementation; unfortunately, this was also appropriated as one-time money and, regardless, is insufficient to fully fund three positions. The Governor’s SFY24 Recommend includes sufficient one-time funding to support the three positions in the Civil Rights and Environmental Justice unit in SFY24, but it is imperative that the Legislature identify permanent funding for these staff given the on-going nature of the work. In total, the Agency has estimated an annual base appropriation of $600,000 will be needed to implement the scope of work required by Act 154”
Want to lower the property taxes and income taxes? Eliminate all and every DEI grift buried in legislation and into our bureaucracy – it is illegitimate, legalized, weaponzied thievery.
The comment above is right on…it all began with Brigham. We all pay taxes for each other’s schools. H 127 accentuated this to the extreme. Trying to create a “fair” and “equitable” system, our “we know better than you” legislators and education policy wonks in Montpelier have created a “system” of ginormous winners and losers. We – THEY – did this to ourselves, and it didn’t have to go this way. So, enjoy those new schools and flush budgets, Burlington and Winooski! While out here in the hinterlands we substantially help you pay for it, while muddling through another year with our outworn facilities and severely strained operating budgets. Welcome to social justice and “equitable” Vermont everyone. Are we having fun yet??????
you are all funding a socialist education system and you do not want to admit it/// this system was set up by the same one world crowd/// rockefeller/// rothschild/// the federal reserve bankers/// international monetary fund/// trilateral commission/// club of rome/// committee of 300/// counsel on foreign affairs/// skull and bones//// and quite a few more///