This commentary is by Dave Larsen, who taught at Wilmington Middle/High School for 33 years and is a former state legislator, former chair of State Board of Education, and former Vermont interim edcation commissioner.
The issue of weighting factors as part of Vermont’s state aid to education formula is front and center these days, and appropriately so. The Vermont Legislature’s Weighting Factors Task Force is hard at work taking testimony and trying to define and incorporate into that formula the concepts of equity and fairness.
However, the efforts of the task force and the proposals it produces may be doomed.
First, some history. In 1987, in search of equity, then-Gov. Madeleine Kunin and legislative leaders strongly advocated for an end to the Morse-Giuliani formula for state aid to education. In 1988, after two years of testimony, study and debate, the Legislature approved a new formula: Gov. Kunin’s Foundation Formula.
However, only the distribution component of the formula was voted into law. The other component of her proposal, a revenue or taxation plan called “recapture,” was rejected. This was a statewide equalized property tax that, at least in the minds of some, resulted in “winners” and “losers.”
The so-called losers would be those taxpayers in districts (school and/or legislative) that were designated as property-wealthy, as determined by their respective grand lists and numbers of students. Their property taxes would increase, and the new revenue that resulted would be distributed to the districts that were deemed to be property poor, aka the winners.
Opponents of this plan often referred to it as a Robin Hood scheme. And, while not exactly a zero sum game, it was viewed by many as exactly that.
In 1987, prior to the governor’s state aid proposal passing into law, there were at least a half-dozen different state aid taxing and distribution bills introduced by various lawmakers. What resulted in the Statehouse was what some referred to as the “printout wars.” Without question, what motivated lawmakers more than anything was how their districts fared. If a printout associated with a particular proposal showed their districts gaining in state aid, they would support that proposal. If not, they’d oppose it.
In 1988, when the Legislature passed a new distribution formula complete with millions of dollars of new money distributed among all districts, they did it without recapture, the taxation component of the governor’s proposal. How was this possible? That year, the state was flush with surplus revenues, and much of it was appropriated to state aid to education. With that new source of revenue (the surplus), there were no losers. Every district was a winner, at least for a while, and the bill passed.
In 1988, the Legislature incorporated a few weighting factors into the formula. Each student receiving free and reduced lunch, as well as each high school student, was counted as 1.25 students. Whether these weighting factors were ever subjected to rigorous, quantifiable, data-based analysis is debatable.
Fast-forward nine years to 1997 and the Vermont Supreme Court’s Brigham decision. This decision resulted in legislation (Act 60) that created a statewide property tax that, like recapture, increased the property taxes in property-wealthy districts. In the name of substantial equity, that revenue was distributed among property poor districts. The winners-and-losers dichotomy was once again front and center in the state aid debate.
In the September/October 1999 issue of Mother Jones (“America’s Newest Class War” ), David Goodman wrote, “By 2001, when Act 60 is completely phased in, an estimated 89 percent of Vermont school districts will see their property taxes drop. Of Vermont’s 252 towns, 198 are ‘receiving towns.’” There was no surplus in 1997. However, as Goodman points out, the newly instituted statewide property tax, and the new pot of state aid money it created, resulted in more winners than losers, and Act 60 became law.
And now, fast-forward to 2021. Reworking the weighting factors will likely make it difficult for lawmakers and their constituents to ignore the resulting financial and tax ramifications affecting their districts.
With no new source of revenue — like the significant surplus in 1988 or the new statewide property tax in 1997, both of which mitigated a shift in tax burdens — the creation of new winners and losers may be inevitable. If history is any indication, any bill that redefines weighting factors and consequently creates more losers than winners will be in serious jeopardy.
Once the task force produces its report, a corresponding bill is introduced and vetted, and it’s finally time to vote, will history repeat itself? Will the work of the task force and any related legislation it produces, regardless of its merits, be distilled to a simple matter of winners and losers? And, once again, will winners and losers be the criterion upon which Vermont’s lawmakers base their votes?
Or, will Vermont’s lawmakers honor their oath of office to be “true and faithful to the state of Vermont”? And more to the point, will they take a principled stand and support what will likely be an equitable, data-based, rational and politically reasonable solution to the current inequities in how Vermonters financially support their public schools and ultimately their students?
The choice is clear.
