[T]he new education law, Act 46, was ushered into existence to find a better way to deliver public education while maximizing educational opportunities and equity for students. It also is meant to stymie rapidly rising school property taxes at a time when Vermont’s student numbers have taken a double decade plunge.
Now, the law that’s been on the books only a few months is being challenged by Campaign for Vermont. The advocacy organization is calling for a repeal.
The Legislature moved too hastily and got it wrong, according to Tom Pelham, co-founder of Campaign for Vermont. Pelham says Act 46 unfairly caps spending and will end up increasing property taxes for some school districts.
In an interview, Pelham said Campaign for Vermont wants its members to “resist this law.”
“We will help raise money and help organize,” Pelham wrote. “We will help school districts that feel burdened by this law.”
But the message Campaign for Vermont is telegraphing to members doesn’t sit well with supporters of Act 46.
In a recent, heated email exchange with the Vermont Business Roundtable, which has been supportive of the education reform law, Cyrus Patten, executive director of Campaign for Vermont, said the law is “destructive” and argued that consolidation will induce additional spending, increase property taxes and undermine community involvement in schools while fiscally punishing well-managed small and medium-size school districts that choose not to merge.
The president of the roundtable, Lisa Ventriss, disagrees.
“We cannot continue doing what we have been doing with a student population that has declined 20 percent and a teacher and staffing level that is flat and an increasing burden on property taxes,” Ventriss wrote. “Act 46 is a very responsible response to these challenges.”
Vermont’s public schools have shed more than 24,000 students since 1997 while maintaining staff and teacher ratios.
When school boards meet this fall and move through the budgeting process, Pelham says, they will be “stunned” to be on the “receiving end of Act 46.” Those districts that “don’t need to consolidate are going to find themselves paying higher and higher taxes” because of the tax incentives being provided to districts that choose to merge, Pelham argued.
Act 46 gives the state’s 277 school districts until 2018 to merge into systems of at least 900 students. Communities that dive into an accelerated merger will get a 10 cent tax break per $100 of residential property value that then decreases by 2 cents annually over five years. Those who take longer to merge see smaller tax breaks for fewer years.
“That doesn’t come from God, it comes from the districts that decide not to merge,” Pelham said of the tax relief.
Jeff Francis of the Vermont Superintendents Association says a repeal is ill-advised and says the General Assembly acted responsibly. “If the state policy is to provide better educational opportunity and over time a better cost structure, and they want to put money up front in transitional tax incentives there is nothing unique, uncommon or wrong about that. To take that singular argument and say that Act 46 is not worthy really ignores how public policy is made.”
Campaign for Vermont agrees that things had to change and some consolidation is worth considering. Using U-32 and Montpelier High School as an example, Pelham said a merger of the two high schools which are within three miles of one another makes sense.
The campaign, however, opposes top down, forced consolidation. After 2018 the State Board of Education will be given authority to compel the merger of any remaining small districts that have not moved toward consolidation.
“It is putting immense pressure on school districts to consolidate and using huge tax rate incentives at the expense of school districts that don’t consolidate. These are temporary tax incentives that may not be in the districts’ or the students’ long-term interest,” Pelham added.
For example, Pelham says, Montgomery School District is spending less than neighboring schools yet getting great outcomes. Under Act 46, because it can’t meet the size requirement, it is required to merge.
“There is something valuable and precious about local control where parents can get involved in their local school district and play an important role,” Pelham said. “This bill takes away something that Vermonters have held dear, going back to the Constitution and that is that education as much as possible should be conducted as close to the people as possible.”
But Peter Peltz, a retired lawmaker who spent years toiling on the House Education Committee, disagrees.
“The state is being blamed for what we are doing at the same time that we are being blamed for trying to do something about it,” Peltz said.
Peltz thinks that Act 46 gives school boards an opportunity to work together to figure out the best way to deliver an affordable, rich education to the children of Vermont. “We are not ramming any particular model or method – we are saying to the boards ‘Figure it out and we will help you do it.’”
The Campaign for Vermont also argues that bigger districts often aren’t better. Patten points to Burlington which spends $20,124 per student and has operational deficits. Vermont is administratively top heavy and hyperlocal all at once. The governance is more jumbled than structured with 277 school districts, 282 school boards, 1,442 school board members, 18,000 employees serving 80,000 students at 300 public schools.
The Business Roundtable’s Ventriss describes the current system as “heavily burdened from an administrative perspective.” But she says, Act 46 creates a pathway for significant structural improvements that should enhance quality and be more cost effective.
Francis says a third of Vermont school districts have fewer than 100 K-12 students. Small schools cost more to run and that is driving up costs, he says. Vermont spends more on education than most of the states and yet, “every year school boards are making decisions not about what to add to children’s education but what to take away,” he said.
Act 46 is a “mechanism,” to help schools work together and save money, according to Francis, who added, “If through the process of unifying school districts we get – and we will get – better scale we are going to provide both more opportunity for children and better utilization of tax dollars.”
Even after the mergers, Francis says Vermont will still have the smallest school systems in the nation.
Peltz agrees with Francis, saying that when considering costs the delivery system has to be examined and addressed, but that the state is leaving it up to localities to determine the best way to do it in their community. He recommends that everyone just “tone down the rhetoric. The boards realize they have to do something different. By working comprehensively, collaboratively with open minds and not getting amped up about what they are reading in the press” they will get there.
