Vermont Gov. Phil Scott is proposing to use a nearly $100 million surplus in the state’s education fund for tax rebates and to improve career education across Vermont.
On Town Meeting Day last week, voters weighed in on school budgets across the state. With those results tallied up, it’s become clear that the nearly $2 billion education fund, the pot of money that pays for Vermont’s local school budgets, is expected to enjoy a roughly $96 million surplus.
That $96 million is a windfall for the state, caused by an unexpected jump in revenue from a number of different tax sources, and comes despite increases in school spending across Vermont.
At the governor’s weekly press conference Tuesday, state officials released a proposal to return half that money to taxpayers through tax rebates.
“The proposal is to do a flat amount, which would be somewhere between $250 and $275 per homestead parcel in the state,” said Craig Bolio, the state Department of Taxes commissioner.
The rest of the money would go toward career and technical education. Under the governor’s proposal, $28 million of that money would fund a grant program focused on “CTE facility and infrastructure upgrades.”
Another $15 million would create a loan fund tailored toward career and technical education students working on construction and building rehabilitation projects.
State officials billed the plan as a way to help solve Vermont’s workforce shortage, and to improve and expand the state’s housing.
“Simply put, investing in CTE is an investment in our future,” Dan French, the Vermont secretary of education, said at the press conference.
Career and technical education is a longtime priority of the governor, former owner of a construction company.
“Some of the most successful people I know came from the trades, and I think that it’s a lucrative career,” Scott said Tuesday.
Details of the plan came just a week after Town Meeting Day, when residents in most Vermont towns voted on school budgets, bringing next school year’s education spending into focus.
Of the 102 school district budgets on Town Meeting Day ballots across the state, voters approved 96 and rejected six, according to Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association.
Twenty districts have yet to vote, with most scheduled to do so later this spring.
So far, those budgets show a roughly 5.36% spending hike compared to the current school year, according to documents provided to the House Ways and Means Committee by Brad James, the Agency of Education’s education finance manager.
Much of that extra spending is driven by students’ increased needs during the pandemic.
Districts’ business managers are expecting to spend more money to hire more staff and improve support for students, many of whom have fallen behind or struggled since March 2020, when the first Covid cases surfaced in Vermont, James told the committee Tuesday.
“Delays are apparent in the skill level (of) a lot of the kids, especially in the early grades,” James said.
