A lot has happened recently in the legislature and the governor’s office that affects the school budget, your property taxes for the next fiscal year, and the push for school district consolidation. As we wind down the school year, here is our quick take on these complex issues.
To set the stage, school budgets across the state are under pressure from rising healthcare costs (up 35% in three years), special education, mental health costs, and transportation/utility costs. If we simply added these increased costs to our school budgets, you would have seen your property taxes go up much more than they already have. In fact, we’ve cut the school budget by 15% over the past three years. There’s no sugarcoating the fact that these cuts hurt our kids’ education, although we’ve tried to make cuts that do the least damage. The Harwood Unified Union School District board continually balances the difficult task of trying to balance the educational needs against homeowners’ ability to pay for them.
With these pressures in mind, we are distinctly unhappy with this year’s yield bill (H.949), which lowers the amount we can increase our budget before facing a steep penalty. We had already foreseen the need for more budget cuts this year to avoid the penalty, but this new cap will force us to cut an additional $625,000. So, as we enter the fourth year of cuts, we are now facing a very scary year where there is nothing left to cut.
BUDGET CRISIS
At the same time, the legislature recognized that just cutting school budgets wouldn’t solve our budget crisis in the long run. Legislators passed S.190, which would have capped medical expenses charged to school districts and small employer health care plans. This would have been a strong step towards curbing our health care costs, and we’re extremely disappointed that Governor Scott has vetoed this bill. The governor said that S.190 was unfair because it would “[direct] savings to some payers while excluding others. ”To us, that’s like saying the fire department shouldn’t put out house fires, because it’s unfair to people whose houses are not on fire.
On the controversial topic of school district consolidation, the legislature took some cautious steps. First, they grouped school districts into CESAs (Cooperative Educational Service Areas) with the idea that districts in a group will look for ways to share costs in areas like special ed, business services, IT, transportation, etc. Those are all our big cost drivers. Our board elected superintendent Dr. Mike to be our district’s representative on the Winooski Valley CESA, based on his years of experience with a similar structure when he was a superintendent in Pennsylvania. Our CESA will begin meeting this summer. In our view, time will tell if CESAs lead to substantial savings, but they are definitely worth trying.
MANDATED STUDY
The legislature also created a second, different grouping of school districts, and we are mandated to study merging with other districts in our “Merger Group.”It’s important to state that nothing is written in stone – we’re not forced to merge, and we can (if we wish) merge with a district outside our group. The school board will elect a representative to send to this merger study group, and we’ll take it from there. We’re very mindful that the legislative Commission on the Future of Public Education in Vermont’s final report in 2025 found no solid evidence that district consolidation would save money, so we’re withholding judgment on this process for now. Our potential merger includes HUUSD, Barre, Montpelier-Roxbury, Paine Mountain and Washington Central. And please keep in mind that this study of merging districts is independent of the difficult question of consolidating schools within the HUUSD.
A good summary of CESA and the Merger Groups is at https://tinyurl.com/v64s8eyy.As always, we welcome your input on all these issues. These are tough, tough issues, and we listen to what our community has to say.
Ashley Woods, Warren, HUUSD chair, Cindy Senning, Duxbury, HUUSD vice chair
