Voters overwhelmingly approved school budgets on Town Meeting Day.
Only three out of 95 budgets failed, according data compiled by the Vermont Superintendents Association. Voters have yet to weigh in on another 20 budgets, 11 of which have been postponed because of uncertainty surrounding Act 46 mergers.
Overall, the state’s share of education spending is up nearly 4 percent, according to the Vermont Agency of Education. The Joint Fiscal Office has projected that the average education tax bill will rise 2.4 percent next year.
Last year school boards kept growth at 1.5 percent. One big cost driver is health care: Rates for the most popular insurance plan used by school district employeesare set to go up 11.8 percent.
Nicole Mace, the executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association, said school spending is up about 3 percent on average, according to preliminary data from the Agency of Education. But school spending the state is on the hook for, which drives the statewide tax rate for education – is up 4 percent. That’s in part because schools appeared to have fewer offsetting revenues, which can be anything from a surplus to federal grants.
“For whatever reason, districts had access to less offsetting revenues this year,” she said.
She speculated it could be because districts dipped into reserves in prior years to put downward pressure on taxes, and so had less of a cushion this budget cycle. But after a series of lean years, Mace said districts also likely finally decided to spend on things they’d put off.
“I think people have been making up for previous years,” she said.
Tax rates won’t be set for next year until lawmakers set what’s referred to as the “yield,” a key figure used for calculating local tax rates. That work will start now in the House Ways and Means committee.
