Campaign for Vermont, a non-partisan citizen driven advocacy organization, has requested that Vermont State Auditor Doug Hoffer review the accuracy of “equalized pupil” and “education spending” calculations used by the Agency of Education and local school districts. These two highly obscure terms are defined in Vermont’s statutes and play a central role in setting local education property taxes, reallocating students from among school districts, and penalizing school districts with seemingly high spending levels per pupil. No other state utilizes these terms when managing their education funding system.
For fiscal 2014, the application of the legal requirements associated with “education spending” and “equalized pupils” resulted in the following:
· The reallocation of 2,912 students among Vermont’s school districts with Burlington, Mt. Anthony Union High School, Brattleboro Union High School, and Rutland City’s student count increasing by 178, 137, 126, and 112 respectively while Williston, South Burlington, Shelburne, Essex Town and Duxbury-Waterbury student counts decreasing by 97, 73, 66, 52, and 49 respectively, for example. These counts effect local education tax rates. The higher the “equalized student” counts, the lower the local tax rate and vice versa.
· Statewide, only 78 percent of total school budgets are classified under the law as “education spending”. Yet, from district to district the proportions of such classifications vary widely, from as low as the 50 percent range to as high as the 90 percent range. The lower a district’s “education spending” ratio the lower the local education tax rate and vice versa.
· The utilization of these two statutory terms are key to the allocation among school districts of over $190 million in property taxes
In response to a Public Records Request by Campaign for Vermont to the Agency of Education, it was learned that the calculation of “equalized pupils” involves confidential “free and reduced lunch” information from the Agency of Education (AOE) and that there is no systematic audit of “education spending” information submitted to the AOE by school superintendents.
RELATED: Campaign for Vermont releases public education spending and outcomes report
Here are quotes from the AOE’s response to the Campaign for Vermont.
“The equalized pupil count is weighted for students residing in families receiving nutrition benefits. The Agency of Education receives these counts from the Agency of Human Services. AHS does not send AOE identifying information as part of this function. Federal standards limit the sharing of such identifying information. See, e.g. 7 CFR §272.1”
Further, AOE states:
“With regard to information on students who reside “within a family receiving nutrition benefits,” the Agency relies upon confidential information received directly from the Agency of Human Services. AOE does not receive identifying information within this data, but nonetheless cannot share this data because of the ways in which small community, school, and grade sizes within Vermont can allow identifying inferences that would run contrary to AOE’s duties to protect student records under FERPA, 1 V.S.A. § 317(c)(11), and, in this case, potentially, the federal School Lunch program (see, e.g. 42 U.S.C. § 1758(b)(6)).”
“As with the data for families receiving nutrition benefits, the state-placed student data can also allow identification as the data are received by district and by grade. Again, that would run counter to AOE’s duties to protect student records under both FERPA and 1 V.S.A. § 317(c)(11).”
With regard to oversight of district “education spending”, as defined in statute, the AOE response was:
“the Superintendent of each school district must submit a signed form attesting to the accuracy of the information”. Further, “Any independent reviews would be carried out by or for the State Auditor of Accounts, who would be the custodian of any resulting records.”
Given the above, Campaign for Vermont believes it vital that the Auditor of Accounts immediately review the accuracy of the application of these two terms to Vermont’s education funding system before voters go to the polls on town meeting day.
Source: Campaign for Vermont. 10.29.2014. Full report available at http://www.campaignforvermont.org/research.