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.