By Polly Mikula
On Monday, Dec. 2, the Mountain Views Supervisory Union met to discuss a proposed $2.5 million budget cut.
“These cuts were necessary to stay under the penalty threshold,” Superintendent Sherry Sousa explained. “The proposed cuts are across all schools and the central office,” she said.
The proposed budget is just below the threshold that would cause taxpayers to pay $2 for every $1 raised over the mandated limit.
“The good news is that tax rates are projected to go down in nearly every town in the district,” said Ben Ford, board vice-chair and chair of the finance committee.
The district serves students from Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Pittsfield, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading and Woodstock operating five pre-K through 6th grade schools and one middle/high school.
But Ford cautioned that the numbers were preliminary and to “take it all with a grain of salt,” noting that the much-anticipated “December 1 letter,” which is the first public-facing estimate of expected education property taxes for the fiscal year starting July 2025, just came out a few hours before the meeting. “I did my best to incorporate the new estimates into these figures, but it’s important to remember that these are always just estimates,” he said.
This year’s projections give Mountain View SU a long term weighted average daily membership (TWADM) of 1,485 students compared to last year’s 1,520 (despite the fact that the district only lost four actual students, Ford noted). The TWADM is the weighted pupil count that takes into account how expensive certain students are to educate.
The current estimate for property yield is also down from $9,893 to $8,553 per TWADM. And health insurance is up 11.9%, or about $300,000 for MVSU.
Also new this year is a statewide adjustment to the CLA (see page 2).
Calculations
MVSU’s per pupil spending is projected to be $16,055 — calculated by dividing the district’s education spending (the proposed budget of $23,838,871) by its TWADM (1,485).
That per pupil spending ($16,055) is then divded by the adjusted property yield (currently $8,553) to get the district’s equalized tax rate of $1.8771 (top row of the FY26 chart above).
That equalized tax rate ($1.8771) is then dived by each town’s Common Level of Appraisal (CLA) divided by the statewide adjustment of 72% (second row of the FY26 chart above) to give each town its tax rate (third row of the FY26 chart above).
So despite the equalized tax rate being 20 cents higher than last year, when the new yield and statewide adjustment to the CLA are factored in, six of the seven district towns will see a decrease in homestead property tax rates.
“Our district was required to make significant budget cuts from FY25 due to the reintroduction of the excess spend threshold,” explained Ford. “As a result, we should see lower tax impacts than the statewide average [5.9% per the Dec. 1 letter].”
Proposed cuts
The district was able to trim the $2.5 million needed to stay under the spending threshold by restructuring its debt, saving $1.1 million.
The remaining $1.4 million of proposed cuts are spread between the five elementary schools ($730,764), the middle/high school ($332,990) and the central office ($311,944).
The majority of Monday night’s meeting was dedicated to hearing passionate pleas from members of the MVSU district to not cut the Unified Arts programs/positions across the district to help achieve the necessary budget savings.
The district board voted in favor of a motion to find out how much keeping the current art programs would cost and would consider alternative savings before voting whether to approve the proposed budget cuts at its next meeting, Dec. 16.
The top chart shows the current year FY25 tax rates by district town; the chart below the projected rate calculations for the coming budget year FY26 with comparisons to the prior year.
