[N]early a year after facing criticism for a late start in Vermont’s annual school funding debate, Gov. Phil Scott is looking to get his oar in the water earlier this year.
In a letter to Vermont’s education leadership, the governor made a pre-emptive strike this week, identifying his thinking on school spending now, during the school budgeting season, instead of during his State of the State speech as he did last winter. That timing caused consternation among many local school officials, who were nearly done crafting their own budgets for the coming year.
Scott also said he wants to hold an “education summit” in December to promote his ideas for school funding and changes to Vermont’s education system.
The five-page letter was dated Tuesday and was described a day later at the November meeting of the State Board of Education by Scott’s chief of staff, Jason Gibbs. It touts the state’s balanced budget for fiscal year 2018 that didn’t raise taxes or fees for the “first time in memory.”
The letter talks up education spending that didn’t grow faster than the state’s economy or wages, but that’s because lawmakers used nearly $50 million in one-time money to push the problems ahead a year. As a result, taxpayers may be looking at a tax rate hike of 8 cents or more to pay for a hole in the education fund of $47 million to $80 million.
Scott wanted to make his perspective public now,“so folks at the local school board level can be aware of it during the budgeting process,” Gibbs said.
Nicole Mace, head of the Vermont School Boards Association, welcomed the letter and December summit, both changes from last year. The association has been holding regional meetings to figure out how best to deal with the shortfall in the education fund.
“I strongly encouraged policymakers to work with school boards in a proactive, collaborative and constructive manner to address the $47 million deficit and its effects on the FY 2019 budget process,” Mace said.
In his letter, Scott asks school districts to keep spending per pupil growing at the same rate as wages and the economy. Over the last six years, the state’s economy and wages grew on average 2.5 percent.
The administration said that although Vermont has been losing students for 20 years, per-pupil education costs have grown faster than health care costs during the past decade. From 2006 to 2015, health care costs grew 4.7 percent a year, but during that same time the average per-pupil cost in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade grew about 5.2 percent, according to the administration’s calculations.
When schools lose students, per-pupil spending goes up and taxes go up.
“The root of the problem is an education infrastructure built and staffed to educate well over 120,000 students, despite having only 80,000 today,” according to Scott’s letter. “Every dollar we spend on underutilized space, or on staff-to-student ratios that are unacceptably low, is a dollar that’s not being spent on a child.”
There need to be boundaries set around per-pupil spending statewide, according to Scott. He said he doesn’t want any cuts to programming; instead he wants to increase academic opportunities. Scott suggested schools cut staff, consolidate grades and possibly close.
“If your student count is declining, districts should do everything possible — including consolidation of grades and schools, or other innovations — to lower per pupil expenditures,” the governor’s letter said.
The education summit is meant to help local school districts by bringing together members of his administration, legislators and others to develop tools and supports to get this work done.
Mace said school board members have been trying to identify ways to contain costs for several years. “We welcome a conversation at an education summit with all education stakeholders — independent schools, higher education, early childhood, and the teachers’ association — to determine what additional opportunities exist to address our challenges while maintaining strong and vibrant schools,” she said.
The administration is doing this because officials think education could be a way to draw working-age people with families to the state and make it more affordable, Gibbs said.
He told the State Board of Education that excellence in education could attract working families with children to Vermont from neighboring states and Canada.
Vermont will be affordable only when the percentage of household income spent on taxes is less than annual raises, Gibbs said. “If government is taking a greater share of your wallet than your wages are growing, government is pushing you down the economic ladder and not helping you up the economic ladder,” said Gibbs.
As a rural state with an aging population Vermont has to find a way to appeal to young working families, he said. “If we want to stand out from the herd, we have to go big,” said Gibbs.
The plan is to sell Vermont as the best place to educate children. Scott envisions expanding education to include support for early child care and learning on one end and job training or college on the other, to turn Vermont into an education destination for families.
The idea is to reach out to people in New York, Boston, Montreal, Toronto and “microtarget young people at the exact point in their lives when they are making decisions about where they want to be adults,” according to Gibbs.
Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, agreed that education is essential to growing the state’s economy and said the Act 46 school consolidation law will help. “The challenges and opportunities cited by Gov. Scott are well-known to local school officials, who are working to respond to them,” he said, adding that Act 46 is focused on reorganizing schools to offer a better education at a price taxpayers can afford.
The state is one year out from an unfortunate ratio where there is one worker for every retired person, and that isn’t good since the worker is the only one paying taxes, according to Gibbs. “It is a fundamental challenge, but we think with the right strategy, the right focus we can get a big chunk of people here who are in the workforce,” he said.