House lawmakers are pushing ahead with a controversial plan to consolidate school districts and impose spending limits on public schools. But Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe says they need to be careful they don’t do more harm than good.
House leaders have taken some intense heat from teachers and school boards over the last couple weeks for a plan to impose spending caps on school budgets. The initial House proposal would have limited annual spending increases to no more than 2 percent per pupil.
That would have proven a particularly harsh cap on districts with declining enrollments. And the latest version of the plan creates a different kind of cap for schools contending with a drop in student numbers.
The new plan caps spending increases to 1.5 percent, but would allow districts to base that cap on total education spending, or per-pupil spending, whichever is more generous.
“We’re still working to see if we can put something together,” says House Speaker Shap Smith. “And I’m committed to doing that, if it works.”
But while Smith remains bullish on education reform – and the property tax relief he says it would bring about – Education Secretary Holcombe is telling lawmakers to think long and hard before they act.
"If we aren't careful and if you don't get it right, there's a potential to do a tremendous amount of damage, and I need to put that on the table." - Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe
“If we aren’t careful and if you don’t get it right, there’s a potential to do a tremendous amount of damage,” Holcombe says. “And I need to put that on the table.”
Holcombe delivered those cautionary words to the House Committee on Education Friday morning, where lawmakers are fine-tuning their spending-cap plan. The House education bill would also mandate the consolidation of school districts into education systems of at least 1,100 students.
Holcombe says it’s great lawmakers are taking such a hard look at the issue. But she says legislative overreach could thwart meaningful reforms already underway in the education system.
“We also are very concerned about the capacity of our system to implement change right now,” she says.
Gov. Peter Shumlin has dispatched Holcombe to districts across the state, where she’s briefing board members and school administrators with demographic trends that in many cases threaten the continued existence of schools.
Shumlin has argued that this hands-on approach with districts will prompt the behavioral changes needed for property tax relief, but do so in ways that fit the unique needs of Vermont’s nearly 300 districts.
“There’s really not a one size fits all, and it’s really hard to come down with one solution from a statewide level,” says Jill Remick, director of legislative affairs for the Agency of Education. “It’s much better to do whatever we can to inform those local conversations and have them make those decisions.”
"We would argue that there are fundamental changes that need to happen and simply dictating that districts need to spend less won't actually solve the problem." - Jill Remick, director of legislative affairs for the Agency of Education
Remick says the agency isn’t convinced that the spending cap is the best mechanism for education reform.
“We would argue that there are fundamental changes that need to happen and simply dictating that districts need to spend less won’t actually solve the problem,” Remick says.
Remick says legislation passed in recent years that provides a variety of financial inducements for directs to merge is beginning to yield fruit.
“It’s moving at a glacial pace, and that’s why it’s frustrating for some folks. But it’s moving in the right direction. In the last several months, we’ve had a lot of really successful mergers that are happening voluntarily,” Remick says.
Speaker Smith says the electorate has demanded property tax relief now, and that the spending cap is among the very few ways to deliver it anytime soon. The original version of the cap, had it been in place this year, would have disallowed more than $30 million in education spending.
The spending cap has some influential supporters. The 12-person board of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns voted unanimously earlier this week to endorse the House bill. Steve Jeffrey, executive director of the VLCT, says school budgets now account for more than three-quarters of all property taxes collected at the local level. He says the consolidation mandate and spending cap contained in the legislation look to be the only possible mechanisms under consideration this year that might curb growth in property tax rates.
“I think it just came time for the board to realize that we need to do something, and (the House bill) is the vehicle that’s there,” Jeffrey says.
But data provided by the Agency of Education Friday shows the cap would have forced additional spending reductions at more than 100 school districts. And Remick says those cuts aren’t without consequence.
“Looking at it from here in Montpelier, we’re talking about this big picture and about property tax rates. When you’re at a school district operating and you have to decide whether to lay off your third grade teacher or close your French program or stop offering transportation, those have really significant impacts on the kids right away,” Remick says.
"We would say that it would be better to not do something than to do the wrong something." - Jill Remick, director of legislative affairs for the Agency of Education
Remick says legislation this year might be useful in the reform process, but not vital to it. “We would say that it would be better to not do something than to do the wrong something,” Remick says.
Even if the House does proceed with the cap, it looks to have far less support in the Senate, where lawmakers are working on their own reform bill.
