Lawmakers say they want to get back in the business of school construction aid. But how they’ll pay for it, how generously they’ll subsidize it, and what kinds of conditions they’ll attach to it remain very much in the air.
A report delivered to lawmakers this week by a task force created to study the matter suggests one strategy that is sure to prompt debate in Montpelier — an approach that would see construction aid used, at least in some circumstances, as an incentive to consolidate schools.
“The cost to replace all 384 school buildings is simply beyond our state's resources,” Jill Briggs Campbell, the director of operations for the Agency of Education, told lawmakers in the House’s education and tax-writing committees Thursday. “We're never going to be able to replace in-kind.”
School districts have been on their own to pass and finance construction bonds since 2007, when Vermont suspended its state school construction aid program. But in recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that the state’s aging campuses require major investments — soon.
The problem is national: one widely-cited 2021 report estimates that the country under-invests in public school facilities to the tune of $85 billion a year. And while school officials have been clamoring for a federal fix for years, there is little momentum in Congress on the subject.
The estimated price tag in Vermont alone is staggering.
The state will need to spend at least $6.4 billion over the next 21 years to replace existing systems, according to facilities assessments that districts submitted to the state. And while some repairs can wait, others require immediate attention. Districts reported $229 million in health and safety issues that should be remedied now, and another $340 million in short-term fixes that they predict will require action within a year or two.
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State officials, meanwhile, have emphasized that they believe these figures to be an underestimate. And they’ve stressed that the longer Vermont punts on construction needs, the more expensive the problem will become.
“Deferred maintenance becomes construction, right?” Briggs Campbell told lawmakers. “And we are well down that path. And so the future is now. The longer we wait to support our school facilities, the further down the path you get, the bigger the dollars become.”
The task force was also asked to weigh in on whether Vermont should lower the threshold at which schools must take action to remediate for the presence of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls.
Burlington High School was forced to close in 2020 after elevated levels of the industrial chemicals were detected on campus. And the following year, lawmakers passed a mandate that the state test all schools for PCBs.
The testing program has proved to be an expensive can of worms. School after school is detecting high levels of the carcinogens, and remediation costs are mounting. The Vermont House passed a bill last year that would have paused the PCB testing program entirely, but the Vermont Senate refused to advance the measure. Gov. Phil Scott’s administration has since said that while they don’t support halting the program, they’d like to slow down the pace of testing.
The task force ultimately decided it didn’t have the requisite expertise to say whether Vermont should adjust its action levels for PCBs. But they did argue that Vermont should take a more comprehensive approach to environmental contaminants and hazards in schools.
The Legislature is not expected to restart a school construction aid program this legislative session. Indeed, the task force’s headline recommendation may be that lawmakers create yet another working group, which would be tasked with fleshing out a more detailed plan — due next January.
Williston Democrat Rep. Erin Brady, the vice chair of the House Education Committee, said at the conclusion of Thursday’s hearing that if lawmakers can’t act right away, they need to nevertheless send a strong message.
“We need to signal to the field as clearly as we can see where this is going and what those priorities might be,” she said. “Because we're also living in this world of school budget, sort of implosion, and … the deferred maintenance is just like reaching a fever pitch here.”
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