Two education bills that were floundering on Monday met different fates Tuesday in the final hours of the legislative session.
H.538, which seeks to rein in school spending, was ushered through the final legislative stages at the behest of Democratic leadership. H.270, a bill to expand access to pre-kindergarten education, will languish until the Legislature reconvenes next year.
H.538 was stripped at the last minute of many of its more controversial components in order to secure enough support to swiftly pass in both chambers.
The key provision left standing lowers the threshold of excess spending from 125 percent to 121 percent by Fiscal Year 2017. School districts are penalized if their per-pupil spending exceeds the state average by the designated percentage. H.538 also calls for a study on the renters rebate contribution to the education tax, and it asks for data on student-to-staff ratios. The only other provision that was preserved from the House version changes the way school districts can bill sending schools for tuition.
Senate President Pro-Tem John Campbell, D-Windsor, said he prioritized H.538 because property tax payers “need relief.”
“It’s clear that the property taxes are looking to face an increase of at least a nickel starting next year and I believe taxpayers can’t afford that. It was essential for us to act this year in order to affect next year’s [school] budgets,” he said.
On Tuesday evening, Campbell orchestrated a series of ad hoc meetings held in the Senate cloakroom and behind closed doors in committee rooms to get H.538 shipshape. Sen. Kevin Mullin, R-Rutland, added a provision that would require neighboring supervisory unions to discuss merging with one another, but it was removed soon after due to objections from the Vermont School Boards Association and the Vermont Superintendents Association.
The Senate passed the bill 29-0 without debate. Less than an hour later, the House accepted the watered-down version of the legislation, also without debate. In both cases, it was the last piece of legislation, excluding the Big Bill, to squeak by this session.
H.270 received no such push. The bill requires school districts to pay for at least 10 hours per week of pre-K education for 35 weeks a year.
It landed in the Appropriations Committee Friday, when a critical mass of committee members was caught up in the final throes of budget negotiations. In the pecking order of legislation, pre-K ranks below the budget, and the bill was put on hold.
“I know people were anxious to have it come out, but it’s matter of timing. We did not have the time to do the due diligence that an appropriations committee needs to do,” Kitchel said. “It’s a significant amount of money in this fiscal environment.”
Supporters of the bill say the cost is actually quite low. The Joint Fiscal Office estimates that H.270 would increase spending from the Education Fund by between $1 million and $1.5 million in FY 2016.
Campbell said the pre-K bill fell victim to unfortunate timing. Any bill that increases education spending requires additional due diligence, he explained, and the timing this session didn’t allow it.
“We know the cost of education right now is extremely high and we know the burden on the taxpayers is one that’s getting harder and harder to bear and so I believe any new costs we have, even one as good as the pre-K issue, we have to look at it in a very thoughtful manner,” Campbell said.
H.270’s problems date farther back than Friday. Introduced in February, the bill was held up in the House by concerns about its price tag and concerns over the degree to which it expands school choice.
Parents are currently limited to the pre-K program in their district of residence. H.270 would give them the option of enrolling their child in a private or public program in a different district, but school districts can choose to limit choice within certain predefined geographic boundaries.
The House didn’t pass H.270 until May 1, leaving the three committees of jurisdiction in the Senate just two weeks to review it. Kitchel says she can’t predict what her committee will do with it in January.
“I don’t know what the vote will be here,” she said. “I can’t say.”
The 2014 budget does include $100,000 to cover startup costs for pre-K programs in districts that don’t have them. Shumlin pitched this investment during his budget address at the session’s start, saying “it is well past time, to move aggressively on early childhood education — words are nice — action is better, let’s take it, together.”
Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents’ Association, is a proponent of the bill. Francis said that he wished H.270 had gone through, but he didn’t fault the Senate for not acting on it sooner.
“I think it is an extremely complicated bill that got to Appropriations too late,” he said.
