HINESBURG, Vt. (WCAX) – Students in Vermont’s largest school district are urging the community to say yes on Tuesday at the ballot box. Eight school districts, including the Champlain Valley Union District, will try once again to pass spending plans, as Vermont lawmakers search for larger solutions to fund education.
Students in the Champlain Valley Union School District want to send a message to voters and to state lawmakers. More than 800 students walked out of class on a soggy Monday, urging the community to approve the district’s second school spending plan.
The budget in front of voters on Tuesday is about $100 million, about $5 million less than the budget on Town Meeting Day. It also cuts about 40 positions.
“It’s really difficult to make those decisions,” said Meghan Metzler, the chair of the Champlain Valley Union School Board.
Cuts to human resources, finance, custodial and IT positions, along with teachers, academic and mental health support staff. Many of the jobs were funded by what was intended to be one-time COVID cash which has long since dried up.
Meanwhile, no cuts were made to school administrators or their staff.
Students tell us they are worried about what layoffs mean for extracurriculars, sports and even academics.
“I, personally, want to be a good engineer so having a good math teacher that I like and enjoy and I can stay motivated to learn math is helpful for the career that I want to go into,” said Felix Nestor, a 10th grader.
The new spending plan would increase property taxes by about 14% across the district that serves Charlotte, Hinesburg, Shelburne, St. George and Williston.
Spending is up across the board for a variety of reasons at CVU, education equity reforms are putting a strain on the budget, too.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers are puzzling over what they can do to keep schools funded and mitigate the harm to taxpayers.
“Need something that raises all ships and that really works for all districts, including CVSD,” Metzler said.
The tax hikes have many taxpayers gravely concerned. Students at the rally say they understand double-digit tax hikes hurt, but they also say the cuts to staff would hurt them.
“My mom is a teacher at this school and I know that even if this budget doesn’t impact her, the next one will. I want to do what I can to protect my mom and all the people that we love in this school,” said Nikhil Blasius, the student body co-president.
The push for the school budget comes as dozens of school budgets failed and continue to fail across the state, including the Rivendell Interstate School District over the weekend.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers in Montpelier are still searching for ways to blunt the impact on property taxpayers this year before the end of the legislative session in about a month.
VT. LAWMAKERS WANT TO VOTE ON YIELD BILL SOON
Friday, the Scott administration pitched a plan to essentially buy more time for the Legislature to dig deeper into education reform.
The proposal got a somewhat chilly reception in the Ways and Means Committee.
It would borrow money from cash reserves and set it up as loans to districts, and then districts could have some of those payments erased if they showed academic merit.
In the meantime, the hope was that legislators would work on widespread education funding reform.
But Vt. State Treasurer Mike Pieciak says pushing back the payments would be risky to Vermont’s credit rating. He compared it to the Burlington Telecom debacle over a decade ago when the Queen City found itself millions of dollars in the hole, dropping the city’s bond status to nearly “junk bond” status.
“Sound fiscal management, prudent investing, prudent budgeting, working together to solve challenging issues quickly– those are things that the ratings agencies think of highly when it comes to Vermont and fundamentally they were worried that this kind of proposal may question that long-held belief,” said Pieciak, D-Vt. Treasurer.
Lawmakers are also discussing how to make this education fund sustainable. That would include funding a commission to study the size and footprint of the fund and issue a recommendation in 18 months.
They also continued discussions around buying down the tax increase this year, including a 1.5% tax on short-term rentals and a tax on business software.
But time is ticking as state lawmakers say they want to vote out the yield bill Tuesday morning.