This story by Corey McDonald was published by the Shelburne News on Sept. 7.
The future of more than 15 positions in the Champlain Valley School District may be at risk as federal Covid-19 relief funds run out.
About $1.5 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding is set to expire in September 2024, presenting a challenge as the district begins work on its fiscal year 2025 budget in coming weeks.
The funds have supported approximately 17 additional school counselors, social workers and interventionists throughout the district’s five schools, and have funded new assessment systems and other education software and expanded summer programs. How and if the district can absorb those positions into its general operating budget for the 2024-25 school year is still unclear.
“We know that’s going to be a driver of difficult decisions, tough discussions, and it’s going to leave a mark,” said Gary Marckres, the district’s chief operations officer.
The Champlain Valley School District faces a daunting task in the next five years thanks mainly to the effects of Act 127 — but further exacerbated by the end of the emergency relief funds, as well as the increasingly immediate need to rehabilitate its aging buildings.
Act 127, Vermont’s new education formula signed into law last year, corrects what researchers at The University of Vermont and Rutgers University showed was an insufficient pupil weighting system for low-income students or non-English speaking students. The new formula tries to correct that, but because of the shift, several districts that have historically benefited from the weighting — Champlain Valley, South Burlington, Essex and Mount Mansfield Unified Union among them — are now facing dwindling student counts, meaning those districts will eventually have to start raising taxes or cutting spending to fill in the gap.
Because of this, the Champlain Valley School District, which includes Hinesburg, Charlotte, Shelburne, Williston and St. George, is facing a budget hole that will either need to be raised through a 16% homestead tax rate increase or by dramatically cutting spending.
Coupled with the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding, the district expects to face tough choices over whether to cut programs or institute a hefty tax increase for residents of the five Chittenden County towns.
The new education formula provides for a cap of 5% per year through fiscal year 2029 to ensure tax increases are not overly onerous, giving the district some time to prepare.
School administration officials hope to use the next five years, while the cap is still in place, to identify resources “that don’t align with our goals in the strategic plan or have become inefficient of obsolete,” Marckres said.
Administration officials have said they will begin requiring offsetting reductions for any new expenses.
Meanwhile, the district is beginning work on addressing its facilities and soon plans to create a larger facility study committee — including board members, faculty and staff and other stakeholders from the broader community — as a starting point for a capital plan.
“Those three things are really going to be the main drivers of the fiscal year 2025 budget and the next five years and even beyond that,” Marckres said.
Bonnie Birdsall, the director of communications for the district, said administration officials, including Marckres and superintendent Rene Sanchez, will be working with school leaders and teachers to explain the implications of the loss of the federal relief funds and plan on visiting each school this month to share a presentation and engage faculty in conversations on the implications of the loss of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding.
Officials at a recent school board meeting said they will be reviewing and prioritizing those positions against the existing general fund spending.
“With our budget process starting within the month, this is among our top priorities now that school has begun,” Sanchez said.
