The State Board of Education is urging lawmakers to avoid “regressive tax reform” when they consider ways to change the way education is funded in Vermont.
By a unanimous vote Tuesday, the board approved a legislative agenda that calls for “limiting new educational legislative action, so that our scarce resources can be focused on fully and properly implementing recently passed laws.”
“I think the role of this committee this year will be much more active and much more involved than it’s been in years past,” said board Chairman Stephan Morse. “I think there will be a lot of activity on these various issues in the Legislature that we’re going to want to stay involved with.”
Education — especially as it relates to rising costs and the way those costs are covered — is a topic that is expected to be near the top of the agenda when the Legislature convenes in January. Discontent with a funding formula that leans heavily on property taxes was a common complaint among voters during last month’s elections.
Lawmakers have already generated a number of proposals, as outlined in a report last week from the Education Finance Working Group that recommends shifting the funding burden from property taxes to income taxes.
“What I’m finding is, every day there is a new proposal in the Legislature and the session hasn’t even started yet,” said Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe.
The legislative agenda adopted by the board warns that proposals that shift the tax burden from one pocket to another could negatively impact poor and working-class Vermonters.
“Unfortunately, many of these notions have regressive effects and would shift tax burdens to middle income and poor Vermonters,” the document stated.
Instead, the agenda calls on lawmakers to focus on ways to promote fiscal efficiency, including looking at the cost of health insurance, which composes approximately 10 percent of education costs.
“It’s too early to be definitive about how teacher health insurance costs should be factored into the state health system,” the document states. “The board asks the legislature to actively pursue and resolve this important area.”
And while 10 percent of education costs consist of health insurance, overall, 80 percent of education costs come down to personnel, and the board is calling on the Legislature to fund a study looking at the many factors — geographic, temporal, special education and local population variability — that affect staffing decisions and has caused the state to have the lowest student-to-teacher ratio in the country.
The board is also calling on lawmakers to fully staff the Agency of Education so it can support previous mandates imposed by the Legislature, including dual enrollment, universal pre-K education and individual learning plans.
This story was originally published in the Barre Montpelier Times-Argus and was reposted through an agreement with the Vermont Press Bureau.
