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By Guy Page
News reported this week by three factsy, independent Vermont news outlets paint a bleak picture about fixing Vermont’s school funding problem anytime soon.
Everyone knows about the property tax disaster of 2024. But what about next year? On December 1, Gov. Phil Scott will release his annual school funding outlook letter. Last year he predicted a 20% or more statewide tax increase. The Legislature dropped that tax to “only” just under 14% by ‘back-filling’ the other six percent with two newly-created taxes.
At his press conference this week, Scott wouldn’t say whether next year’s school funding will reach double digits. We’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile we can read three news stories that say in a nutshell two facts:
- The Legislature’s Future of Public Education Commission won’t meet its December 15 deadline to deliver a path forward to the sunlit uplands of affordable public education. That trek is even more complex and daunting than they thought it would be.
- Ditto for local school district consolidation. Undoable? No. But a long, steep, winding road.
- Thanks to the Legislature suspending school construction capital funding in 2007, Vermont’s public schools are in severe disrepair. The upgrade/replacement bill is an eye-popping $6 billion.
For whatever reason, the hyper-local, online Chester Telegraph has become the go-to source for up-to-date information on the progress (if you can call it that) of the Future of Public Education Commission set up by the Legislature this year in the wake of dozens of sticker-shocked towns and cities rejecting school budgets at Town Meeting.
Shawn Cunningham’s Nov. 20 story, “Update on the Future: No silver bullets to cutting costs,” reveals an earnest group of citizens who have discovered the roots of the school over-spending tree stump go very deep indeed, branch off in many directions. A blast of legislative Round-Up won’t get the job done. We’re talking backhoe, maybe dynamite.
The merger ‘solution’ tougher than it looks
Kudos to reporter Phil Dodd for his matter-of-fact reporting (“Talks on Merging MRPS and Washington Central School Districts Could Begin Later This School Year”) in the Nov. 22 Montpelier Bridge about two school districts considering a merger. It’s all there: the financial advantages vs. the local love of the small schools, flood risks, resolving the varying property tax rates and school spending priorities, the huge, multi-year lift facing volunteer school school boards.
Finally, VDC’s own Michael Bielawski in today’s edition (“Legislature suspended school construction fund in 2007. Now the $6 billion bill’s come due”) describes the dismay of yet another study commission facing another Sisyphusian project: how to upgrade Vermont’s many structurally failed and failing school buildings.
The next Legislature has chosen its leaders in the Senate. Burlington’s Phil Baruth is back as Pro Tem. Chittenden County’s Kesha Ram Hinsdale replaces Allison Clarkson of Windsor County as majority leader, but the eastern Vermont county won a consolation prize with Becca White as assistant majority leader AKA ‘whip.’
Over in the House, Rep. Laura Sibilia, the Dover independent, wants to take the Speaker’s job from Jill Krowinski of Burlington. No-one who knows is saying how the resurgent 57-ish GOP Republican caucus will vote.
These leaders – all with track records of kowtowing to the Public School Education Establishment AKA the Blob – will wrathful voters, again, at Town Meeting in March unless they extract the stump. Get ‘er done, Montpelier.
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Categories: News Analysis
Here’s a one question “pop assessment” (see answer below):
Of the following, which have proven to be sensible, solid and successful / effective public education reforms in the State of Vermont over the past twenty+ years? ?
a) Act 60 – achieving funding and taxpayer equity.
b) School Improvement and policies and programs – dramatic and widespread improvements in learning.
c) Special education system and funding reforms (ongoing for twenty plus years) – bringing about much more effective learning at a lower cost.
4) Act 46 and district mergers – providing huge economies of scale, better use of resources and delivering a quality education at a “cost Vermonters will support”.
5) Overall more focus and concerted work promoting diversity, equity and inclusion intended to bring about deep and sustainable positive changes in learning for all.
6) None of the above.
Answer: 6
Bonus question:
Which of the above public education reforms – championed by public education leaders and legislators – have greatly solidified the entrenchment of the Vermont education establishment, while providing scant if any real improvement in student learning,- at a cost that taxpayers can afford and will support?
Answer: Above 1 – 5.
Here’s a one question “pop assessment” (see answer below):
Of the following, which have proven to be sensible, solid and successful / effective public education reforms in the State of Vermont over the past twenty+ years? ?
a) Act 60 – achieving funding and taxpayer equity.
b) School Improvement and policies and programs – dramatic and widespread improvements in learning.
c) Special education system and funding reforms (ongoing for twenty plus years) – bringing about much more effective learning at a lower cost.
4) Act 46 and district mergers – providing huge economies of scale, better use of resources and delivering a quality education at a “cost Vermonters will support”.
5) Overall more focus and concerted work promoting diversity, equity and inclusion intended to bring about deep and sustainable positive changes in learning for all.
6) None of the above.
Answer: 6
Bonus question:
Which of the above public education reforms – championed by public education leaders and legislators – have greatly solidified the entrenchment of the Vermont education establishment, while providing scant if any real improvement in student learning,- at a cost that taxpayers CAN’T afford and WON’T support?
Answer: Above 1 – 5.
The problem is the more qualified, competent and sane a candidate for Legislature is, the less likely braindead Vermont voters are to elect said candidate. Take ol’ Phil Baruth, for example. A life spent in academia, literally a fiction writer, without so much as a toehold in reality. Prince Philip, uniquely unqualified for any position above hall monitor is in so far over his head he can’t tell day from night. Just another sneering leftwing elitist who, irony of all ironies, thinks he knows everything when he knows nearly nothing. At least about the operation of a state. The Vermont braindead voting majority is getting exactly what it deserves, an unaffordable state run by bunglers and fools. Unfortunately, the voting minority gets to suffer from their folly as well.
We are watching a business struggle in a cloud of overwhelming evidence that it is failing; Its infrastructure is overblown, inadequate to the demands, it’s not viably fiscally and it’s customer/constituent base is seething with dissatisfaction. Other businesses typically consider fundamental restructuring to regain an efficient delivery of their services/products. As a government program the public-schooling business is not likely to have the self scrutiny necessary to do this restructuring transformation. And so, in effect, we find ourself trapped with a wounded animal that’s going to continue hurting us and it’s not going to be saved. Is it time to consider giving the schooling business back to its principle stakeholders, teacher&families? Get the commonweal out of this business…Privatize it?
Like citizens need more reasons to leave Vermont. I own property in Vermont (and visit and spend $$) but these property/school taxes are just not sustainable. I think I may have reached the point to finally get out. I keep rooting for Vermont to fix this but end up disappointed every year. There seems to be no adults in Montpelier to reconcile this massive problem. Year after year it’s “kick the can down the road” hoping the problem will just go away. It won’t. Real reform will not come until the citizens of Vermont stand up to these career bureaucrats.
Another factor in escalating school costs is pupil weighting, updated in a bill a couple years ago that increased the pupil weighting formula. In my opinion this is a significant driver of the exploding costs of education.
‘Per pupil weighting’ is an indirect driver of exploding education costs, not a direct driver. Every business, from healthcare to construction to transportation to energy production, considers the cost of servicing each of its customers. We all know that no two children are precisely alike. One size doesn’t fit all… right. But the unintended consequence is that ‘per pupil weighting’, on the macro level, obscures the cost of doing business. In fact, it arbitrarily lowers relative per student costs by arbitrarily (and inaccurately) increasing actual student enrollments.
Of course, this deceptive aspect of public-school budget scrutiny doesn’t escape our less than honest legislators and school administrators. Consider, again, my point below. There are approximately 80,000 ‘actual’ students in Vermont’s public school system. But if one adds up the number of students using the so-called ‘equalized student enrollments’, they would find that the cost per student is based on an artificially high enrollment of more than 100,000 students (coincidentally the high point of actual Vermont student enrollments more than 40 years ago).
Keep in mind too, that while the AOE says it has 80,000 or so students, there are only 72,000 K thru 12th grade students being served. Vermont recently added Pre K (kids aged 3, 4, and 5 years old) further increasing the current 80,000 student count recognized by the AOE.
Call it what you will. It’s a shell game in a room filled with smoke and mirrors accounting. And never mind that for this exorbitant taxpayer cost only half of Vermont’s high school graduates meet grade level standards.
Listen up everyone. The Agency of Education stated in its 2024 budget analysis that it manages a $2.7 Billion education system serving approximately 80,000 Pk thru 12th grade students. Do the math. That’s more than $33,000 per student.
Now consider that Vermont’s existing (and very popular) School Choice ‘tuitioning’ programs provide approximately $19,000 (the average announced annual tuition) for a student to choose an independent school. That’s just a little more than half (57% in fact) of what the AOE is spending per student for its entire ‘education system’ today.
Hello! This isn’t rocket science. How many times must this circumstance be published before voters realize how their legislators are ripping them off?
Does anyone have any questions?
Will stay in Vermont and watch the coming meltdown and the results of this clown show.
Put me in charge of the Educational “DOGE” and these problems will be solved lickety split! It’s not about funding, it’s a gross overspending.