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By Guy Page
The Education Finance subcommittee of Vermont’s Commission on the Future of Public Education met Monday, October 1 to review where school revenue comes from and brainstorm on how to cut spending.
Editor Shawn Cunningham of The Chester Telegraph – one of Vermont’s strong online community newspapers – has been regularly reporting on the work of the commission, which was created in the final days of the 2024 legislature to find a path out of Vermont’s school spending morass.
In today’s post, Cunningham shares a State of Vermont pie chart of the FY2024 $2.1 billion school revenue sources:
- Non-homestead property tax $792 million
- Sales & use tax $595 million
- Homestead property tax $508 million
- Miscellaneous others
As noted in the October 2 VDC, both enrollment and test scores are down this year compared to last year. Vermont has the highest staff-to-student ratio (4.4: 1) in the country. Gov. Phil Scott has said property owners will likely be looking at another double-digit property tax increase next year, over and above this year’s average 14% homestead property tax hike.
The Telegraph story listed the ‘brainstorming’ ideas for controlling school spending solicited by the chair from (anonymous) commission members, published below verbatim:
- Control employee health-care costs, including returning bargaining to local districts
- Look at ways to control tuition costs – especially out-of-state tuition
- Find optimal sizes of schools and classes and close small schools
- Make adjustments at AOE to cut administrative costs at the district level
- Base education financing on the income tax and tax high earners more
- Find ways to reduce special education costs including more support for younger students to avoid the need later
- Look at the needs for construction and upkeep of facilities
- Make the education fund for education only by moving services schools are obliged to provide to other agencies.
None of these recommendations specifically raise the lowest-in-the-nation staff/student radio, although ‘find optimal sizes of school and classes’ at least suggests the possibility of larger class sizes.
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Categories: Education
As someone who has taught in 3 states public schools and one other, though it was heaven to have so many other adults on hand to work with more challenging student behaviors, I’ve always been amazed at Vermont’s willingness to fund such small class sizes. My own elementary experience had 36 sixth graders with one teacher – an amazing feat that I wouldn’t recommend for other teachers to endure. Most capped classroom size to 28, though parents don’t train children to be as compliant to seatwork tasks – so 22-24 is likely a better class size limit for Vermont in today’s world.
Control employee health-care costs, including returning bargaining to local districts –
This didn’t work to constrain cost growth for at least twenty years; what is the reason to think it will work now?
Look at ways to control tuition costs – especially out-of-state tuition. – Same old song.
Find optimal sizes of schools and classes and close small schools. – Same old song.
Make adjustments at AOE to cut administrative costs at the district level. – What does this mean?
Base education financing on the income tax and tax high earners more. – Same old song.
Find ways to reduce special education costs including more support for younger students to avoid the need later. – HUGE same old song. Been trying this for thirty years. Not effective in improving learning, and certainly not in controlling cost growth.
Look at the needs for construction and upkeep of facilities. – What does this mean?
Make the education fund for education only by moving services schools are obliged to provide to other agencies. – Rearranging the deck chairs will not result in providing a more sustainable fiscal system.
CONCLUSION: This laundry list is disgraceful. The ideas listed are like a left over green bean casserole from Thanksgiving that has been sitting in the back of the fridge for several days. Long past edible. Time to throw out. If these ideas are the best the Commission has to offer, the results of this work will be USELESS in helping to improve learning or create a more realistic and sustainable fiscal and school resources system.
Do we need two Co-Principals and two assistant Principals? Do we need five Guidance Counselors? All this for a school with six hundred students? Could there be shared Superintendents? I mean three schools in the district with one 125k or higher salaried superintendent with 50k in benefits? Then we get to class sizes at ten students or below. There must be a better cost efficient way to teach our children.
They will probably organize another sub-committee!! What are the 176 employees in the Ed. Dept. doing? The $$ waste in our State government is atrocious and unacceptable. Feel free to prove me wrong.
Which part of the education fund covers the homestead credit? The maximum is $8,000 for ’24-’25, and there’s all kinds of information about qualifying for the credit, but nothing about how it’s paid. All that money doesn’t just descend from a cloud.
The more the education system attempts to cope, the worse the result.
It has been reported that because of the rises in salaries and benefits in response to inflation; health insurance cost increases exceeding inflation; the expanding need for expensive mental health services for students; the loss of federal funds the schools received as part of the pandemic-related American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), and the demand for mental health staff (a 456% increase in positions over 3 years), taxpayers can see spikes in their bills even when spending doesn’t jump. Spending cuts won’t address either of these challenges— disparate costs from district to district or the inequities low- and moderate-income taxpayers face.
Yes, education costs are exceedingly high and rising. But even worse are the results. More than half of Vermont’s students graduate without being able to read, write, or do arithmetic to grade level. Drug overdose deaths have quadrupled over ten years, and the suicide rate for 18 to 24 year-old Vermonters doubled last year over the previous three year averages.
As a former school board director and Workforce Investment Board member, I assumed that the complexity of the public education system was surely by design… to confuse and coerce taxpayers, parents and students. But the current level of chaos we see in the education system is now well beyond the capability of any intentional malfeasance. We have a run-away train on our hands that is now out of control to an extent never seen in the private sector – because free market checks and balances stop this kind of chaos long before it reaches this level of bedlam.
How the dysfunction is resolved now is anyone’s guess. But one thing is certain, this social chaos and anarchy will present an infinitely and increasingly painful set of circumstances expanding our continued misfortune before anyone in charge, or the voters, figures out what to do.
In other words, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Much worse.
In our school district, administrative costs continue to increase while instruction expenses rise at about the rate of 3%. Administrative expenses are now 20% of the budget which is far too high. That is where the costs are which are the result of mandates from the Vermont Board of Education in Montpelier. Our local Board admits that a consequence of the Vermont State boards directives, they incur administrative expenses for reporting and staffing. Unless this stops, we will continue to see 10% increases in school budgets.
To repeat myself yet again:
When I served on a local school board, the common refrain was to always blame the State mandates and the AOE. The superintendents and principals always insisted that eighty percent of the budget was beyond the board’s control.
In a word…. it’s ‘hogwash’. It was hogwash then. It’s hogwash today.
School boards have several options, most of which they deny exist or they are too lazy to consider. Here are two options available right now.
16 V.S.A. § 821 School district to maintain public elementary schools or pay tuition
16 V.S.A. § 822 School district to maintain public high schools or pay tuition
The operative words are “…or pay tuition.” That’s ‘or’, … not ‘shall’, … not ‘shall not’. It’s up to the school board and the district voters.
For example:
16 V.S.A. § 822 (c)(1) A school district may both maintain a high school and furnish high school education by paying tuition. The operative words here are “…both maintain a high school and furnish high school education by paying tuition.”
“(A) to a public school as in the judgment of the school board may best serve the interests of the students; or
(B) to an approved independent school or an independent school meeting education quality standards if the school board judges that a student has unique educational needs that cannot be served within the district or at a nearby public school.
(2) The judgment of the board shall be final in regard to the institution the students may attend at public cost.”
In fact, several thousand Vermont public school students already exercise this right (responsibility). And then there is the H.405 School Choice bill stashed neatly away in the House Education Committee shelves proposing to give all Vermont students these options. We own it folks. Either we take the bull by the horns and do what must be done or quit making excuses and pay the piper.
But understand this: The current level of chaos we see in the education system is now well beyond the intentional malfeasance of special interest groups. And we all know who they are. We have a run-away train on our hands that is out of control to an extent never seen in the private sector – because free market checks and balances stop this kind of chaos long before it reaches this level of bedlam.
More than half of Vermont’s students graduate without being able to read, write, or do arithmetic to grade level. The demand for mental health staff has increased 456% over the last 3 years. Drug overdose deaths have quadrupled over ten years, and the suicide rate for 18- to 24-year-old Vermonters doubled last year over the previous three-year averages.
How the dysfunction is resolved now is anyone’s guess. But one thing is certain, this social chaos and anarchy will present an infinite and increasingly painful set of circumstances expanding our continued misfortune before anyone in charge, or the voters, figures out what to do.
In other words, unless we voters accept our responsibilities, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Much worse.
Postscript:
The Agency of Education claims its public education system is a $2.7 Billion enterprise for FY 2025, serving 72,093 K-12 students. That’s a lot of money to pay for the privilege of shooting yourself and your children in the foot.