By Angelo Lynn
Editor’s note: Angelo Lynn is the owner and publisher of the Addison Independent, a sister paper of the Mountain Times.
With 2024-25 education property tax rate hikes well into double digits last year, it’s little doubt school boards will be primed for holding costs to a minimum for their upcoming budgets. Already local boards are trying to find ways to keep their budget to the single digits, without knowing yet what the state will negotiate for teacher contracts and health care, which make up over 80% of district costs.
Holding budgets that tight will likely require significant cuts in staffing and programs. Increases in health care, for instance, are pegged at 11.9%; contract salary increases are projected to be around 6% for some local districts plus a 5% bump in base pay for teachers; and the Addison Central district expects a $650,000 increase in special education costs.
We don’t envy the job school board members face. They’ll have to make decisions many of their friends and neighbors will oppose, and some will despise. For everyone involved inside the system — staff, teachers, students, parents and the community at-large — cutting school budgets is always a lose-lose proposition. That’s because we want our students to have the best education possible. The counterweight is its cost and the impact on taxpayers.
To that end, bringing the public into the conversation well before those cuts are made is the best tonic. Providing thoughtful, well-reasoned responses for the board’s proposed cuts — that look at both the short-term and long-term — will be essential.
Let’s also recognize there are minor cuts to programming (eliminating an elective class, for example), and major cuts, like school or grade consolidation.
Of the latter, specific studies demonstrating the proposed savings via a detailed spread sheet should be provided, as well as the probable costs in closing any school — not just in dollars and cents, but in costs to that community and the overall cost/benefit to the district. To that end, crafting these concerns into a grand plan — much like towns create 5-to-10 year master plans — would help residents understand the underlying issues facing our schools and how to reach solutions.
Part of that planning would be to factor in housing projections. Now that the state has finally recognized the creation of affordable housing as its top-priority — and Rutland City has a goal of bringing on 1,000 units in the next five years while Killington has a workforce housing development planned that could bring in 300 plus to town — school districts should plan for that eventual reality.
Those area school districts must answer the question: When 300-1,000 housing units come online, how many new students will that bring to the district; and if 25-50 more come online each year (as some have suggested are needed to meet demand) where will they attend classes? Before we close district elementary schools we should consider how soon it could be before the district is faced with building new or expanded facilities to make room for more students? (I know that sounds like a fairy tale, but if the housing is there, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest people will come.)
At the very least, school districts would be unwise to prematurely shutter classrooms right at the time the state and local towns finally understand that creating more affordable housing is the linchpin to addressing many of the state’s underlying ills.
We’re not suggesting no consolidations be considered, just that they’re done with eyes wide open on the short-term benefits versus long-range consequences and that the communities impacted have ample time to respond and prepare.
Educational outcomes of the students should remain central to the reasoning to consolidate. Parental involvement and sense of community is known to be a signature benefit of smaller elementary schools, so sacrificing that, if need be, has to be offset by a greater societal gain.
Granted, that’s all balanced by the necessity of lowering the high cost in Vermont. But cutting education costs within our schools should not be the sole focus. Health care costs play an outsized role in school budgets. Simultaneously, the state has an ambitious road map to overhaul the state’s unreasonably high health care costs, which in part, depends on building more housing for health care workers.
We are, in short, juggling many hefty balls in the air.
The caution is not to over-react.
In sizing up the national election on down to local elections, many observers have noted we’re all still reeling from the aftermath of the pandemic — which was a massive disruption still rippling through the world, the nation and our local schools. As we seek solutions, we should operate with the faith that more housing will be built, that health care costs will come down, that education costs will again reach a more even keel and the one thing we should avoid, as philosopher Francis Bacon famously said, is making the remedy worse than the disease.
