[V]oters rejected 20 school budgets on Town Meeting Day, about half the number that went down a year ago.
All told, 37 school budgets were defeated in 2014. Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, said Wednesday that 226 budgets passed this week and another 20 will be voted on at later dates.
The following districts reported budget defeats: Bethel; Bristol; Charlotte; Concord; East Haven; Eden; Ferrisburgh; Grand Isle; Hartford; Isle La Motte; Millers Run Union District 37; Milton; Monkton; Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School District; North Hero; Sutton; Waterbury-Duxbury Union District 45; Westford; Vergennes Union High School; and Vernon.
A number of the larger cities and towns whose budgets were defeated last year, including Burlington, Montpelier, Colchester, Rutland City and Barre City, passed spending measures on the first try, Francis said.
Francis said school budgets presented to voters this year were responsive to taxpayer concerns raised last year, and reflected the focus in the Legislature this session on education funding and governance reform.
“Last year, there was clearly a lot of concern about both the property tax increases and where school spending was in the state overall,” he said.
Francis said voters might be encouraged by serious state discussions about controlling education costs and improving governance.
“We heard communities talk about sending a message and so on and so forth, and at this point last year there had been concern expressed by the administration and some in the General Assembly about the need to control property taxes and school costs,” Francis said. “But there really hadn’t been a public policy or a legislative response formulated yet.”
He said lawmakers listened to concerns heard on the campaign trail.
“We had the Speaker of the House go to work on that issue (school costs and property tax increases) before the Legislature even convened; we’ve got the House Ed Committee heavily engaged in H.361, (the big bill just out of the House Education Committee proposing larger regional school districts and spending caps); and we had school districts across the state which had either experienced or witnessed 37 school budget defeats, so there’s been a tremendous focus on property taxes and the costs of education,” Francis said.
Francis believes the result was more conservative school budget proposals across the state that came in at less than 3 percent increases, according to the Joint Fiscal Office. He also attributed the high number of budgets passed to a public perception that property tax relief may be coming.
While decisions on school budgets in every town are unique to that community, there are some patterns.
Francis said in the Champlain islands region, spikes in property taxes linked to decreasing enrollments and rising per-pupil costs led to budget defeats there, while two other communities in that region narrowly supported school budgets.
Some communities that historically approve their budgets, such as Waterbury, voted budgets down, observed Francis.
And in the town of Hartford, the school budget went down, but so did the municipal budget.
“It might be taxpayers signaling enough is enough,” he said.
Darren Allen, spokesman for the Vermont National Education Association, said in Montpelier the yes votes outnumbered the no votes 2-1, and the number of budgets turned down was about average for the past decade.
“Last year, the Montpelier leadership said there was a crisis in school budgets,” Allen said of the 37 budget defeats.
“Over 90 percent of school budgets passed last year, so by any measure, 90 percent is good. We’re seeing a year later, after a year of harmless rhetoric, that Vermonters are approving their school budgets and it shows that there is a huge disconnect between Montpelier and actual Vermonters in their hometowns when it comes to school budgets,” Allen said.
Yes and no
The $49.5 million Rutland City Public Schools budget passed with a 57 percent majority, results show. Last year, the budget failed there on the first vote, said Peter Amons, the chief financial officer for the school system.
All school budgets in the Addison Central Supervisory Union passed, including Middlebury Union High School, according to Superintendent Peter Rose.
Some of the smaller schools in Caledonia County, including the Sutton School and Millers Run Unified School District 37 serving the towns of Sheffield and Wheelock, saw budget defeats. Both of those schools belong to the Caledonia North Supervisory Union.
Sutton School, which just recently emerged from a controversy that led to the school board’s having to buy out the contract of its former principal, saw its budget go down by 10 votes, officials there said Wednesday.
At Millers Run, the budget went down 100-102, said Jill Faulkner, chair of the Millers Run School Board.
“Sheffield passed it by a lot, and Wheelock defeated it by more than Sheffield passed it,” Faulkner said. She said when she first was on the board, the budget went down by just two votes.
East Haven, also part of CNSU, which no longer operates its own school but tuitions its pupils since closing its tiny elementary school several years ago, also shot its budget down this year.
Faulkner said that in Sheffield the vote was 55-36 in favor and in Wheelock it was 66-45 against.
Millers Run last year took four votes to pass a budget, said Faulkner. The budget for the district was up about 4 percent this year, tied mainly to teacher health care increases and the increases in tuition at the secondary level, mainly attributed to the independent high school many students attend, Lyndon Institute.
At the recent informational meeting on the school budget, “no parents showed up, except one who is also a staff member,” and just 18 citizens turned out for the session, she said.
Caledonia North Supervisory Union falls beneath the threshold the House Education Committee’s bill requiring larger school systems be at least 1,100 pupils.
Faulkner said she asked people if they wanted to serve on a committee with her to start looking at options for collaborating regionally, saving money and improving offerings students.
“What if we had a middle school?” she asked, for example, where music and foreign language opportunities and more could be increased if districts worked together.
Rep. Emily Long, D-Newfane, a longtime school board member from Newfane, who also serves on the Vermont School Boards Association and is a freshman legislator on the House Education Committee, said the votes represent local voice.
“As they do every year, school boards, along with other school officials, put countless hours into developing budgets that meet the needs of students at a cost that voters can support,” said Long. “It is not an easy job given the demographics and climate we find ourselves in. It is true a message was sent last year, but even then that message was likely quite different depending on individual circumstances in each community. I suspect this year is no different.”
VTDigger reporter Erin Mansfield contributed to this report.
