The prospect of yet another double-digit hike in property tax bills didn’t stop most Vermont voters from approving their local school budget proposals Tuesday.
According to results compiled by the Vermont School Boards Association, 82% of the 112 votes held on or before Town Meeting Day succeeded. The 19 rejections are slightly higher than historic norms but far from the one-third of budgets that went down in 2024.
“Town Meeting Day is one of the clearest ways that Vermonters show what they value,” said Sue Ceglowski, executive director of the School Boards Association. “And that even in these times when there are economic pressures, communities are continuing to show their commitment to supporting our public schools in Vermont.”
Proposed budgets were up by an average of 4.2% statewide, significantly less than the nearly 6% administration officials had projected in December. That increase, however, is projected to translate into a 10% increase, on average, in property tax bills.
"The equity gap is just getting wider and wider between the haves and the have nots."Superintendent Brooke Olsen-Farrell, Slate Valley Unified School District
Most school budget rejections were in “highly conservative, lower-income areas of the state,” according to Slate Valley Unified School District Superintendent Brooke Olsen-Farrell, who suffered her sixth budget defeat in nine years.
“It’s a cultural thing in our district, unfortunately,” she said Wednesday.
The decades-long trend of low-spending districts meeting with resistance from frugal local electorates has led to deep inequities in Vermont’s public education system. Per-pupil spending is projected to range next year from a low of $10,846 to a high of $19,089.
Slate Valley’s proposed spending increase of 2.8% required the elimination of 13 full-time positions, according to Olsen-Farrell, who said the district has cut nearly 50 positions over the last three years. Slate Valley, which covers several Rutland County towns and Orwell in Addison County, spends a little more than $11,000 per pupil.
“I’m very, very concerned with the districts whose budgets don’t pass,” she said. “The equity gap is just getting wider and wider between the haves and the have nots.”
Amy Rex is the superintendent at Milton Town School District, where voters rejected a proposed budget increase of less than 3% per pupil. That spending increase would have led to a 9.8% jump in homestead property tax rates, due largely to a drop in the town’s common level of appraisal.
“It’s the tax increase,” Rex said. “That’s all they look at.”
Rex said she’s eliminated nearly 90 positions in the district over the last four years. The latest spending plan cuts nine positions and a bus route. Crafting a budget that leads to no increase in property taxes would require more than $2 million in cuts.
“We wouldn’t have enough teachers to run classrooms,” Rex said. “We’re always thinking about, How do we redesign? How do we become more efficient? But that’s becoming harder to do.”
This year’s school budget votes come as state lawmakers pursue the most significant education reform initiative in 40 years. Proponents say Act 73 — which would force districts to consolidate into much larger governance units and hand control over school spending to the state — will save money and make spending across districts more equitable.
"The fact that the same communities often struggle to pass budgets year after year points to deeper structural challenges in the system."Chelsea Myers, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association
Education officials, however, are skeptical. Chelsea Myers, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, characterized Act 73 as a “sledgehammer.”
“The fact that the same communities often struggle to pass budgets year after year points to deeper structural challenges in the system,” she said Wednesday. “If Vermont is going to move forward with education reform, these results suggest we might need a more precise tool.”
Lawmakers are pursuing other cost-containment measures in the meantime. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote out a bill after the Legislature’s town meeting break that would lower the excess spending threshold — a mechanism designed to curb budget increases in high-spending districts.
Myers said she prefers that proposal to an earlier plan, which would have imposed a hard spending cap on all districts. She said Vermont’s statewide education funding system functions such that low-spending districts suffer the tax consequences of higher spending in other communities.
“The decision of one community affects the decisions of others, and sometimes that is lost in the conversation,” Myers said.
Rex said the legislative and executive branches are the only entities with the sweeping authority needed to fix the state’s “crazy system.”
But she added, “There’s been a lot of talk and I don’t really see any movement.”
Republican Gov. Phil Scott is also pushing to use $115 million in one-time money to buy down property tax rates next year — his proposal would cut next year’s 10% average increase by more than half.
Democratic lawmakers, however, have expressed reluctance. One-time buydowns merely defer the tax impacts of increases in education spending. (Much of next year’s projected tax hike, for example, is the result of a buydown last year.)
“My whole philosophy on the buydown thing is it’s been irresponsible from the start … because we leave a cliff every year, and some year we’re not going to be able to take care of that,” said Middlebury Rep. Robin Scheu, the Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
If lawmakers do allocate money for that purpose in this year’s budget, Scheu suggested they’d likely spread it out over several years, to avoid sharp fluctuations in the future.
