by Anne Galloway vtdigger.org Thirty-four municipalities out of 246 towns rejected school budgets on Town Meeting Day, according to the Vermont School Boards Association. Two hundred nine passed budgets, 12 have not reported results and 19 towns will hold budget votes in the next several weeks.
Typically, about a dozen or so school budgets go down each year. The last time so many budgets were defeated in Vermont was in 2003, just before the Vermont Legislature passed Act 68, a funding reform law that eliminated the spending pool from so-called “gold towns,” the state’s wealthiest communities.
Governor Shumlin issued this statement regarding the school budgets: “As we saw in communities throughout Vermont on Town Meeting Day, local control over school budgets is alive and well. Vermonters are clearly frustrated by high spending, high property taxes, and the complexity of the statewide education funding system. In a number of communities, voters scrutinized their budgets and per pupil school spending, and asked school boards to go back and make adjustments. Vermonters know that their property taxes are too high and expect action to reflect that concern, locally and at the state level. We are all in this together, and in Montpelier we will redouble efforts to improve the system to get better outcomes for our kids at a lower cost.”
Stephen Dale, executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association, said half of the defeats this year were the result of increases in taxes not related to significant increases in education expenditures. In those school districts, spending was held to between 2 percent and 4 percent. Meanwhile, taxes are slated to go up by double digits in many cases. The tax increases are related to erosion of the Education Fund by legislative decisions, shifts in property values and other factors.
Taxpayers, Dale said, are trying to send a message to Montpelier about the statewide property tax formula.
“They’re saying to the state, we don’t like what’s happening with property taxes, and we want you to do something about it,” he said.
The other half of the budgets were rejected because of apprehension over 6 percent to 30 percent increases in school spending, Dale said. In those towns, voters were expressing dissatisfaction with local decisions about spending, he said.
Dale said education is a joint responsibility between the state and local boards. The state is responsible for setting the tax rate and distributing reimbursements for students statewide; local boards must ensure students get a good education for a reasonable cost to taxpayers.
“In this instance, what you’re seeing is that dichotomy,” Dale said.
School budgets that were defeated include: Ferrisburgh, Vergennes, Barre City Elementary, Currier Memorial Elementary in Bennington, Blue Mountain, Miller’s Run, Westford, Underhill Town and Underhill ID, Mt. Mansfield Union High School, Colchester, Fairfield, Burlington, Mississquoi Union High School, Fairfax, Georgia, Alburgh, Grand Isle, Elmore, Milton, Montpelier, Holland, Hardwick, Stannard, Rutland City, Brandon, Middletown Springs, Poultney, St. Johnsbury, Bennington Elementary, Plymouth Elementary, Leland and Gray High School, Vernon and Reading.
Vermont is the only state in the nation that has a statewide property tax system for funding local K-12 public schools. The system was put in place with the passage of Act 60 in 1996 after the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in the Brigham decision that the state’s education system did not provide students equal access from town to town for an adequate education. Poor towns were not able to raise enough money to support schools sufficiently, while wealthier towns could generate larger tax revenues because of higher property values.