A decade after Vermont put a moratorium on school building aid, districts are starting to reinvest significantly in buildings again. School construction bonds totaling just shy of $280 million will be on the ballot for Town Meeting Day.
But this week’s bond votes are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Another $280 million or so in school construction could come before local electorates between now and 2023, according to a survey conducted by the Vermont Superintendents Association. And school officials suspect that the capital investments needed in Vermont’s aging campuses are much higher.
The flurry of K-12 capital projects has prompted lawmakers to return to the subject of school infrastructure, although legislators are not expected to reinstate a building aid program this year. The only money in H.209, a bill just OK’d by the House Education committee, would set aside $1.5 million for an analysis of facilities needs and costs across Vermont.
“The first step is to get a baseline of the current condition of our schools,” said House Education chair Kate Webb, D-Shelburne.
When schools in Vermont bond to rebuild or renovate, their debt service is included in their budget – and therefore ultimately paid for by the state’s Education Fund. That means that while a school bond in a particular district is reflected most directly in that community’s education tax rate, bonding puts upward pressure on property taxes everywhere.
State Treasurer Beth Pearce warned lawmakers in February that the state’s capital bill – which subsidized school construction before the moratorium was put in place – was basically maxed-out. As for where else to look for funding, Pearce said she wasn’t quite sure where to suggest.
“The first step is to define the problem. And that’s as far as I’ve gotten,” she said.
And even if all of Vermont already technically helps pay for every project, not all communities are as likely to greenlight capital investments, or investments of nearly the same scale. The biggest bond on the ballot this week – a $209 million plan to rebuild a new a middle and high school complex for South Burlington – is also in one of the state’s wealthier communities. The smallest – for $1 million – is in Canaan.
Jen Botzojorns, the superintendent in the Kingdom East Unified School District, told lawmakers last month that voters had overwhelmingly rejected a $24 million bond last year and were unlikely to ever give the go-ahead, absent more direct help from the state.
And that’s despite sewage ejection pumps in classrooms in the Lunenburg School, a structurally unsound gym roof at the Concord School and standing water, mold, and lead in the basement at the Gilman School.
A former Chittenden county school administrator, Botzojorns said the state’s current model for funding such projects underlined deep inequities.
“I can guarantee you that in Underhill, Jericho, Huntington, Richmond, and Bolton, this would never happen. Because I live in an area that is poor, our children don’t get the same education,” she said.
H.209 would also ask the Agency of Education to make recommendations about fundings sources, if any, Vermont should consider for school construction. And it asks the state to provide an analysis of what other states have done to tackle this problem.
The bill next heads to the House Ways & Means committee.
