Vermont’s education funding system is overdue for an overhaul

By Karen Horn

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Karen Horn of Moretown, where she serves on the planning commission. She retired as director of advocacy for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns in 2023.

As for so many others, our property taxes went up by 26% this year, an appalling and unsustainable amount. Of our total tax bill, 79% is education property tax. The new rate will be the base for education property tax bills going forward unless the next Legislature takes a drastically different path toward both constraining pre-K-12 education costs and paying for them.

On June 17, the Legislature overrode Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of what is now Act 183, the property tax yield bill. This action followed the initial defeat of nearly one-third of school district budgets this spring. In the district in which I live, voters passed the Harwood Union Unified School District budget on the third vote. Nothing like that has ever happened before and it happened despite general support for our schools and students.

The Legislature has collectively been wringing its hands over the broken and complex Vermont education funding system for more than a decade. They took no action this year to make structural changes to the education funding system that would relieve the burden on those who pay education property taxes. Reports and commissions are not actions. There have been plenty of those.

Depending upon what you count, the Legislature has required at least 15 studies of education funding, going back all the way to 2006. That includes the most comprehensive study of Vermont’s tax system by the Tax Structure Commission, which issued its final report and recommendations in 2021, and the Joint Fiscal Office 2023 Report on Vermont’s Education Financing, which contains a seven-page section on cost containment options.

Additionally, every session, the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees receive frequent reports on the “education funding outlook,” which projects average homestead and non-homestead tax rates based upon school budget votes, other education fund revenue sources, tax yields per weighted pupil and projected “long term weighted average daily membership” or the number of pupils the education fund will be paying for — which is not the number of actual students in the school system.

This year, in Act 183, the Legislature created a new “Commission on the Future of Education” and a “steering group” to provide leadership to the commission. The commission’s report and recommendations are not due until Dec. 1, 2025. Thus, it is unlikely significant changes, which Vermont property taxpayers need badly, will be made in the 2025 legislative session. The bill also created a 10-year Education Fund Advisory Committee, initially recommended by the Tax Structure Commission, to monitor our education funding system, conduct analyses and recommend updates.

What will the people you are voting for this election season do to make Vermont a place in which Vermonters can continue to pay reasonable taxes and call home? I urge you to ask that question of every candidate you meet and to require an unambiguous answer from them.