The Act 127 & 173 Follies
by Mike Stack
As the Vermont School 2025 Budget season grinds forward the depth of the dysfunction and the unintended consequences from recently passed Act 127 and implementation of Act 173 continue to snowball. As a follow up to my December 29th 2023 comments Michael Stack: The broken Vermont education system | Opinion | reformer.com, even I an admitted skeptic of centralized processes have been surprised by the lack of awareness and insight involved on the part of the representatives that brought this monster to life.
If it sounds like I am repeating myself, “A for headlines, and an F for implementation” I am. Honestly at this point it feels like the legislature is just making this stuff up as they go along. Obviously not the behavior that would build the confidence of taxpayers across the state who are ponying up close to $2B to cover education spending.
So, what do we know?
Education spending as predicted by the state’s December tax commissioner letter projected education spending up 12% (4 times the current rate of inflation) and Property taxes across the state to be up possibly 18%.
The basis for the 12% increase. First, moving the ESSER sugar high spending into local budgets, undoing multiple years of Infrastructure neglect, and a 16% yr/yr health insurance increase. Unfortunately, this double-digit projection is coming on the tail of a decade of state spending at a rate roughly 1.5 times inflation as student count and academic results decline. The natural question, “where did all that money go”? As a taxpayer I am all the more infuriated as we have dealt with PCBs and roofing failures at BFUHS and realize that the state basically hasn’t invested anything in our school buildings over the past 15 years.
So where are we now?
In Rockingham our coming August 24 -July 25 education-based property taxes are likely to be up mid teens. That is a crushing number for taxpayers who have seen their disposable income vaporized due to out-of-control government spending and the inflation that subsequently rained down upon us.
Variables that drive our tax rate including Student count, Student yield and CLA (Common Level of Appraisal) continue to be rejiggered in the political backside covering taking place in Montpelier, so unfortunately none one really knows. The uncertainty that was injected into the budgeting process by these acts resulted in many districts padding their numbers. As I have outlined before that fatal “beggar thy neighbor” flaw that is inherent in the centralized funding system was only exacerbated by the uncertainty injected by the legislature and the false promise of capping the homestead tax rate at 5% annually and smoothing the outsized spending over multiple years.
A recent Kornheiser and Cummings Chairs of Ways and Means and Finance letter stated “The education fund is a promise among neighbors that we will take care of each other’s needs and costs. If districts act solely in their own rational self-interest, those costs will be picked up by property taxes in neighboring
towns.” Unfortunately, these words come very late and after the fact. It is going to be very hard to put the budget genie back in the bottle with so many budgets near completion and headed for town vote.
Now comes the AOE Agency of Education centralized “review committees” across the state to evaluate if local budgets were developed in good faith. My interpretation, more cost, more bureaucracy, more distracted resources, and yes more cost for the taxpayer to carry.
For Rockingham voters I can assure you your boards at the BFUHS and in the Rockingham school system held the line and developed a reasonable “middle of the road” low to mid-single digit increase in our budgets. We worked closely with our Administration to minimize the impact on staff and our student’s education. We also avoided calls to take advantage of the Act127 5% cap loop hole created by Montpelier. We knew those costs would have to be covered by other more regressive forms of taxation (Sales, Meals and Rooms, etc.) the multiple pockets concept, in which all of the pockets turn out to be yours. We were not lured by the promise of “Free Money”.
Rockingham has been hurt and will continue to be hurt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by the implementation of Act 173. Our Finance manager has referred to that as the State “Defunding special Ed” a Federally mandated program. The Act 127 headline was “directing money toward students that need it”. I didn’t see the headline for implementation of Act 173, however if I was to write it, I think “WNESU Students Last” might be a catchy one. Where was our representation when that sausage was being made?
Michael Stack is a member of the Bellows Falls Union High School Board.
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Categories: Commentary, Education
i will just use two more society security checks to pay my eight property tax bills/// the increase in our health care insurance was double the increase in our society security cola/// stock piling next years fire wood now/// this will be an interesting year////
correction///social security
“5) delivered at a cost that parents, citizens and taxpayers value.” – from the Goals of Vermont Act 46
Didn’t happen, folks. We were sold a bill of goods. You know it, I know it and the Act 46 snake oil salesmen know it.
127 is an equity bill. Schools are weighed based on factors like population density and % students that don’t speak english at home. This bill is a perfect example of virtue signaling legislation passed by bureaucratic, partisan legislators basically trying to offset the guilt that they have been taught comes with a lighter skin color. Hey Montpelier, do us all a favor and throw away anything that involves “equity”, “anti-racism” or “DEI”. It always fails. This state and this whole country are such a mess and in most situations we could be so much better off if we just did things the way we used to, from public education, to the economy to social norms. We have the blueprint. Use it. It was not perfect but it was much, much better.
Re: “This state and this whole country are such a mess and in most situations we could be so much better off if we just did things the way we used to, from public education, to the economy to social norms.”
Carl: My wife and I served on our local school boards here in Vermont 25-30 years ago. This ‘mess’, as you characterize it, has been long in the making. To “just did things the way we used to’ is the problem. We need a radical change. See my comment below to Mr. Stack.
Jay i said thing weren’t perfect then but they’re worse now. I currently serve on my local school board. It’s a mess and the bureaucracy is disgusting.
It’s a classic governmental employment racket. The public school system is, by far, my county’s largest employer and voting bloc. In my local district, the student staff ratio is less than 3 to 1. And that doesn’t count maintenance workers, bus drivers, or the myriad NGOs and 501(3)s providing affiliated social services. Four out of five members on our current school board are retired teachers or teachers working in neighboring districts. So, there’s nothing the rest of can do to stop the dysfunction… at least until it goes bankrupt… a time I suspect that’s in the not-so-distant future. I just hope our children survive, and I can outlast the economic dystopia.
Mr. Stack, the BFUHS Titanic is sinking. As are all of Vermont’s public-school monopoly programs. Have you considered manning the lifeboats, before the legislature destroys them.
16 V.S.A. § 822 School district to maintain public high schools or pay tuition
In Westminster we have a real-time comparison between traditional public-school funding and the cost of ‘tuitioning’ afforded by 16 V.S.A. § 822. The difference in cost between our ‘Tuitioned’ programs and our traditional public-school governance is obvious.
PK costs $2,330 per student. (Tuitioned School Choice)
K-6 costs $31,645 per student. (Traditional Public School)
7th & 8th costs $15,818 per student. (Tuitioned School Choice)
Have you considered this option?
It’s clear, yet again, that neither BFUHS board members, nor BFUHS and WNESU administrators, have any answers. And, apparently, they aren’t inclined to consider and discuss recommendations from others.
The ‘single digit’ budget increase isn’t the result of anyone’s hard work. It’s just another way these folks are using Act 127 to game the system.
“If a district’s spending per student increases by 10% or more from the previous year, it will trigger a review by the Secretary of Education, per the law.” — VT Digger
So – it’s a 9% increase in spending. And we’re being told inflation is going down.
Hello! Enjoy the sausage, taxpayers. Or let them eat cake.
It’s all crap, they continue to demand more and more money and in return they show no results. Look at the public school test scores lowest in 50 years.
Not to mention a quadrupuling of drug overdoses over the last ten years and a doubling of 15-24-year-old suicide rates last year.
It seems to me that special education was already covered, so this bill is making the rest of the state pay for choices only a few towns or cities made, such as “welcoming” refugees who need help with English and perhaps American culture. It’s notable that Kornheiser is from Brattleboro.