By Curt Peterson
On Monday, Nov. 7 the Windsor Central Supervisory Union board unanimously approved tuition rates for the 2023-2024 school year.
Middle/high school tuition will be $19,649, and elementary school tuition will be $17,000 per student.
Tuition is the amount the district considers the cost of educating one of its students for the year, and is calculated using the appropriate budget, the estimated number of students to be enrolled, and by applying an index factor tied to economic conditions.
The state agency of education will bill the participating district towns through the state education tax as applied to each town’s Grand List. The funds are collected in the Vermont education fund and redistributed such that every Vermont student has an equal opportunity for the best education, per the state constitution.
Before the Covid pandemic, districts that budgeted for more tuition than the state approved were subject to an overspending penalty, required to return $2 to the state fund for every $1 in the approved per-student tuition rate. WCSU’s goal had been to avoid the overspending penalty when creating its budget.
Finance committee chair Ben Ford said because of Covid the state suspended the penalty for five years and it won’t affect the 2023-2024 school year.
