Editor’s note: This op-ed is by George C. Cross of Winooski.
When asked why he robbed banks, the notorious Willie Sutton supposedly responded, “That’s where the money is.” Unfortunately, the architects of the education section of Challenges for Change failed to heed Sutton’s good advice. Instead of carefully analyzing the above average spenders (where the money is) to find savings, the architects simply applied the same ruler to all communities. The architects simply took the easy way out. To understand what might have been a better plan, let us look at two small cohorts of communities.
Across the state, the average equalized per pupil “education spending” is $12,203. A group of less affluent communities including Bennington, Barre City, Barre Town, Burlington, Newport City, St Albans City, St. Albans Town and Winooski, has an education spending average of $10,734. A group of more affluent places including Charlotte, Dorset, Essex Junction, Essex Town, Londonderry, Manchester, Middlebury ID, South Burlington, Williston and Vernon, average $13,146. Looking inside these numbers, Londonderry spends $14,595, while Bennington spends $9,495. That is a difference of over $5,000! Essex Junction spends $13,333 while Burlington averages $11,173, 16% less.
If the 10 affluent communities above simply reduce their spending to the state average the Education Fund would save $7.1M, about one-third of the wished-for $23M. If these same ten communities lowered their spending to the average of the less-affluent communities listed above, the Ed Fund would save $18.3M, closing in on all of the “desired” reduction. If all communities in the state were in-line with the less-affluent ones listed above, the Education Fund would be reduced by over $136M. Like Sutton, Challenges for Change should look at “where the money is.” By-the-way school size has little to do with it according to the data. Communities with fewer than 100 equalized pupils average $12,174 and those with over 1000 equalized pupils average $12,176.
It is time for the legislature and the Department of Education to stop taking the easy way out. It is time to conduct a detailed study of school expenditures community-by-community to determine why we still have these great differences in costs and determine the best places to enact reductions, if such makes educational sense. Determining the most cost efficient and educationally effective public school system for Vermont is hard work. This cannot be accomplished by taking the easy way out!
(All data for the above computations is on the Department of Education website.)
