[A] handful of supervisory unions want to be the first to change their governance structures in order to reap tax benefits.
Under Act 46, the state is offering tax breaks to towns that agree to merge town school boards into larger supervisory districts by July 1, 2016.
About five supervisory unions have contacted the Vermont Agency of Education to see if they could be the first ones to change their school governance structure, officials say. The Vermont Board of Education held its a meeting on Friday to facilitate implementation of the law.
David Baker, superintendent of the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union in the White River Junction area, says he runs a school system with four towns, four schools, five school boards, and roughly 1,500 kids.
Baker says the current system isn’t efficient. Eliminating the five school boards and replacing them with one new supervisory district board would help the four schools share management talent and improve the school system’s buying power for purchases from large companies.
“That unified board structure would allow us to bring (different educational) proposals to one place, deal with the finances in one place, and then make sure for equity purposes all kids get the treatment,” he said. “So if you decide jazz band is important, everybody gets jazz band.”
The Vermont Agency of Education has given superintendents like Baker a handful of guidelines to help school systems decide how they can merge into one district, with one school board, and at least 900 students. Act 46 gives the small school systems three main options — accelerated mergers, conventional mergers and alternative mergers.
Under the agency’s accelerated merger program, local communities that vote by July 1, 2016, to merge town districts and implement the mergers by 2017, will enjoy five years of education property tax breaks.
The Agency of Education is using tax breaks to encourage accelerated mergers in part because officials want to learn about the efficacy of the new merged governance systems before the state takes the merger program statewide.
Rep. David Sharpe, D-Bristol, the chair of the House Education Committee, is the architect of Act 46. Sharpe described the law as a system of “carrots and sticks” that encourages some school systems to reduce overhead immediately, and others to take their time and learn from the school systems that move ahead with governance mergers.
Communities that don’t participate in the accelerated merger system, but instead go the “conventional” route, need to approve a merger plan by 2017. Property owners in this scenario would get tax breaks for four years — as long as the state approves the proposed merger, and the new governance model is in place by 2019.
The tax breaks for accelerated mergers kick in at 10 cents, then are reduced annually by 2 cents, down to 8 cents, 6 cents, 4 cents, and 2 cents per dollar of residential property value. Tax breaks for “conventional” merger districts start at 8 cents, reduce by 2 cents each year, and end after the fourth year.
Rebecca Holcombe, secretary of the Agency of Education, says the tax breaks are designed to cover the cost of the transition.
“If you’re going to do this right, you might incur some costs in transition,” Holcombe said. “In the long run, you’re going to be able to bring those down. People won’t make changes if it’s only for a tax break because they know the tax breaks will end and you’ll be stuck with the system.”
Act 46 gives supervisory unions a third option — an alternative merger — that school systems can propose by late 2017.
Holcombe is required to propose a school structure plan in 2018. The Vermont State Board of Education has the authority to force school systems to merge school governance structures if some school systems refuse to accept the tax breaks.
“I think we have a real challenge that we can’t get away from,” Holcombe said. “We have a very expensive system to operate, but a lot of that cost is not actually directly targeted at the relationship between kids and teachers.”
Vermont has 24,000 fewer students than 20 years ago and the same system of school boards and supervisory unions. Holcombe compared the situation to a retired couple debating whether to live in a big house after their kids have grown up and moved out.
“When the kids are all gone, do you really need the house anymore?” she asked. “We’ve got 24,000 kids who aren’t here right now, do we still need the big house, the complexity?”
Holcombe pointed to the Bennington Rutland Supervisory Union, where member districts of the school system have been holding meetings to understand Act 46.
That supervisory union has 12 boards, including one in the 250-person town of Mount Tabor, where there are no schools. That district, which has 14 students, has the same legal responsibilities as Burlington’s public school district, she said.
Baker, from Windsor Southeast, said communities need to trust each other as they move forward with school governance mergers and watch their local school boards dissolve.
“All of this local control and efficiency and equity is based on trust,” he said.
