‘Super Tuesday’ for budget revotes looms this week
By Guy Page
The 2024 Property Tax Revolt continues, with two more budgets going down to defeat last week.
As reported in VDC, 30 school districts rejected budgets March 5. Since then, five of six revotes (known to VDC) failed.
Add two more to the No list. Voters in the Essex Junction-Westford school district and the Rivendell Interstate School District (Orford NH, and the Orange County towns of Vershire, West Fairlee, and Fairlee, Saturday morning) both rejected their 2024 school budgets last week.
It was the first 2024-25 school budget vote for both districts. In the aftermath, as elsewhere, their school boards must prepare tighter budgets in the face of voter unrest, if not outright rebellion, against the proposed 20% statewide property tax increase.
Both votes were resounding Nos.
Saturday night, RISD voters in Orford, NH and the Orange County towns of Vershire, Fairlee and West Fairlee voted 240 no, 143 yes on the proposed school budget.
In the Essex-Westford vote Tuesday April 9, the vote was 2,353 (yes) – 3,340 (no). A ‘yes’ in Essex/Westford would have increased spending by 7.7% and property taxes by about 23%.
School board chair Bob Carpenter said April 10, “as an elected board, we respect the will of our community in choosing not to uphold the initial EWSD budget brought forth. Now, our board is focused on bringing a revised budget forward over the next few weeks.” Voters did approve the tech center budget.
More school budget votes are scheduled for this week.
Hartford (White River Junction) will vote tomorrow, April 15, for the first time. The budget would increase taxes by an estimated 18.5%.
“If this budget does not pass, we will try to produce a budget that will pass. We will need to keep putting out budgets until we pass one, or we run out of time before the new fiscal year, which begins July 1,” a Hartford board statement said.
Schools may borrow up to 87% of the current budget necessary to operate schools. Taxpayers would be on the hook for all interest we incurred on the funds borrowed.
April 16 will be a Super Tuesday of sorts for budget revotes.
Milton, Champlain Valley Union SD, and Springfield, Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School, and Northfield schools, and the Elmore-Morristown school district will have their revote on April 16.
Georgia, South Burlington, St. Johnsbury, the Slate Valley Unified School District, and the Kingdom East School District all have voted no a second time to reduced school budgets. Alburgh is the only school district (known to VDC) to approve a revoted school budget. VDC readers, including school officials, are invited to report their school budget vote news to news@vermontdailychronicle.com.
Meanwhile, legislators are developing a bill that would fund a ‘foundation’ level for schools statewide with taxes other than the homestead property tax, leave it as a local option to fund education above and beyond the ‘foundation’ level.
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Categories: Education
Just say NO!
It’s about time ! The tax man cometh. Slam the door on him !
I hope they get a clear message from the people we don’t want our children failing because new curricular is taking president over the basics!! This gender transitioning/ affirming must go. God made male and female perfectly!! Mental health issues are rising ! Kids are angry and unhappy! They don’t have the skills or full brain development yet to decide what’s truth and what’s been given as a lie!! Get the blasted pronoun garbage out of our schools! This is the weakening of America!!
Congratulations Essex! Scream no from the rooftops.
Please publish what the interest rate tax payers are on the hook for on the 87% rule.
I think whatever the districts can get from a borrower….I don’t know if there’s a preferential rate
If a local school district votes down the budget for the third time, state law provides that the budget will automatically be reset at 10% below last year‘s budget. Then the school board and the state will have to figure out how to adjust spending accordingly.
Blue Mountain Union is voting today, April 15, also. This is their first vote.
thank you! please let us know how it went, news@vermontdailychronicle.com
The Champlain Valley CSD vote is tomorrow (Tue 4/16) Our household will be voting NO – even with reductions in the budget, it’s still padded with excess. It’s been long overdue to reign in these Progressive spendthrifts (who spend using other people’s money)
Keep in mind that school boards can deficit spend at their discretion, even when their budgets fail. They’re simply required to report the deficit at the end of the year and taxpayers are still on the hook.
On the other hand, if an electorate can garner enough votes to reject a budget, they ought to be able to elect board members who will do what they must to reduce the budget in the first place.
On the other, other hand, while lowering budgets sends a financial message, enacting a curricula that improves academic performance, increases parental rights, and stops political and social indoctrination, can only be achieved in an educational free market. That’s the message I hope the electorate is sending and their school boards are hearing.
Wow ! How many times have I said
“if I only had three hands” ! 🙂
Jay- Rivendell voted No Saturday. I am forwarding your above message around the community. Thank you.
Here’s the issue that’s making renters cry bc they like to call themselves taxpayers, too.
Well, then don’t cry and instead be proud to pay $2000 or more for rent. I say, come up with another cool flag, too, and celebrate your high rents in a renters day parade! You’ve earned it!
What is that Vermont’s representatives do best, that would be raise more ” TAXES ” and you let it happen, as you vote these ” inept ” clowns in year after year and you expect them to act in your interest…………..fools in charge, so just pay your taxes !!!
You’ll only win when they are voted out……………………….
So 30 school districts out of how many? And only 7 are revoting again? I contend it’s not bad enough yet or every single budget would have failed every time. It’s starting to get late folks better wake up soon…….
I’d be interested to see the school rankings in the state with their associated expenditure per pupil. Vermonters are not getting what they pay for and in small town areas, the school is the biggest employer so these budgets pass. It’s the largest reason I left Vermont. $25K per pupil expenditure where I lived, 4:1 student to staff ratio, 50% of the kids on IEPs … and third worst school rating in the state.
Amy et al: While individual school cost per student rankings are important to consider (especially for those specific district voters), start with the ‘big picture’.
The Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) put forth its 2024 report in February.
https://ljfo.vermont.gov/assets/Uploads/98c8d09089/edu-budget-book-agency-of-education-FY2024.pdf
There are two important data points to consider.
First, the AOE Executive Summary indicates that: “The Agency provides critical leadership, support, and oversight to a $2.56 billion education system with an operating budget of just over $51 million and 161 positions (in FY23).”
Again, that’s a “… a $2.56 billion education system…”. The same amount is repeated on page 19. And, clearly, that money is not allocated only to Vermont public schools. $51 million, for example, pays for the AOE’s operating budget. But the point is that the total of recommended 2024 Appropriations is $2,557,721,117.
The second set of data points of interest are the reported publicly funded student enrollments of 84,463. That equals $30,282 per student. And that’s the most generous assessment one can make. Students in approved Independent Schools and Out-of-State Schools typically cost less than $19,000 per student. And Pre-K and Early Essential Education programs, also included in the total population, typically cost less than $5000 per student.
So, when you estimate the cost per student only for those Kindergarten through 12th grade kids (72,727 of them), the cost to taxpayers is approximately $38,000 per student.
But you will never see all of these costs in your district’s budget. And, typically, the enrollments in your individual districts are the newly revised (and extremely complex and convoluted) ‘equalized enrollment’ numbers that can arbitrarily double the actual number of students in your local school annual report and cut the cost per student you are being asked to approve almost in half of what it actually is.
Does your hair hurt yet? It ought to.
Now consider the return on this massive investment, that fewer than half of Vermont’s graduating public-school students meet minimum grade level standards in reading, writing, math, or science. Or that parental rights are essentially non-existent. Or that the control of the indoctrinating curricula in these schools that threatens our traditional family structure is virtually unassailable, that the suicide rate for 18- to 24-year-olds doubled in 2023, and that drug overdoses are epidemic.
It’s not just the cost per student that’s outrageous. It’s virtually everything about Vermont’s public education monopoly that should be called into question.
Oh, come on people. Unthinking Vermonters have been asking for this situation for decades. Begging to be fleeced even more with every election by increasing the number of zany leftists in the Legislature. To all of a sudden become aware they’re being screwed by the Legislature and the NEA (but I repeat myself) is a testament to their inattention and ignorance.
Re: “To all of a sudden become aware they’re being screwed…”.
Not like you, though. Right. You’re not inattentive or ignorant. No one can fool you. You’ve seen this coming for decades – the misery and suffering – just watching the sham play out day in, day out, and remaining silent all the while…. until just now, of course.
Oh, come on….. indeed.