A legislative task force appears likely to recommend revamping Vermont’s school funding formula, potentially breaking with recommendations issued in a landmark study two years ago.
That study, a 150-page report on the state’s school funding formula, recommended upgrading Vermont’s “pupil weights,” which are essentially mathematical tools intended to direct funds to schools that need them more.
But now, a task force of lawmakers is considering a wider overhaul of the state’s school funding formula.
“We’re sort of broadening the question,” said Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, co-chair of the task force.
In Vermont’s Byzantine funding system, school budgets are approved by local voters but are funded through the state’s education fund, which is made up mostly of property tax revenue.
Local tax rates are then calculated based not on the school budgets’ size but on how much is being spent per student. In that formula, some pupils — rural students, students living in poverty and English language learners — are assigned “weights,” a recognition that those students’ education costs the state more money.
That means rural and low-income districts, or districts with many students learning English, calculate spending “per equalized pupil” — as if they had more students than they actually do. A more heavily weighted district has a higher tax capacity, which allows it to spend more money without raising local taxes.
But in 2019, a University of Vermont study found that the standard weights used in calculating tax rates greatly underestimated how many resources weighted students need. The study recommended lawmakers implement new weights that could expand the tax capacity of districts with many students who are in poverty or learning English. Earlier this year, the Legislature set up a task force to examine how best to do that.
Now, roughly a month away from their deadline, lawmakers on the task force appear to be forging their own path.
Lawmakers said the UVM study was narrowly focused on the pupil weights and did not take into account other ways of getting money to schools.
The UVM study “didn’t say anything about, is there a better way to do this?” Hardy said. “Is there a better way to get resources to school districts than doing it through weighting our tax equalization formula? It didn’t ask that question.”
Instead, task force members are considering a series of proposals that could partially — or completely — dispose of the weight system in its current form.
In October, the task force proposed overhauling the state’s system for funding English learners. Instead of assigning English language learners a weight in the formula, the state would simply pay each district a certain amount of money based on how many of its students are learning English. Districts would be required to spend that money on programs and support for English language learners.
Lawmakers are also considering tweaking the equalized pupil formula itself by changing how school districts measure poverty and how different weights interact with each other.
The most transformative proposal under consideration is a “cost equity formula,” which could eliminate the state’s equalized pupil system entirely.
Under that formula, districts would be allocated a certain amount of cash from the state’s education fund, depending on how many of its students live in poverty and whether the district is rural.
“This is the number of kids living in poverty in your district, this is how much out of the ed fund you automatically get,” said he task force co-chair, Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro.
Unlike the English language learners’ grants, districts could spend that money however they wanted.
Although that system would be a dramatic overhaul of the school funding formula, Kornheiser said the ultimate effect on districts’ budgets would not differ significantly from the current equalized pupil model. But it would be less opaque, she said.
“It does make it a lot simpler,” she said. “Voters can understand better what they’re voting for.”
The task force has not yet made any formal recommendations, and it’s possible lawmakers could recommend a mix of several different proposals. Kornheiser and Hardy warned the models under consideration are still in the early stages.
Those recommendations, when they do arrive, will be nonbinding. It will be up to the Legislature to decide what to do with them.
But some school officials fear that the task force proposals, when they are released, will fail to correct longstanding inequities in the state’s school funding.
The Coalition for Vermont Student Equity, a group of school officials from around the state, has called on the task force to stick to the recommendations of the UVM study. Members of the coalition worry an overhaul of the state’s school funding system could water down the gains achieved by changing the weights.
“They’re trying to reinvent the wheel,” Marc Schauber, a River Valleys school board member and the executive director of the coalition, said of the task force. “At least, the spokes of the wheel.”
The Vermont School Boards Association has also endorsed that position, saying in a resolution that the organization “fully supports the findings as presented in the Pupil Weighting Factors Report.”
“And furthermore, the Vermont School Boards Association requests the Vermont Legislature to thoughtfully and expeditiously establish an implementation plan for the report’s recommendations,” the resolution read.
The task force is set to release its final recommendations by Dec. 15.
