School officials, board members dislike Douglas education proposal
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Gov. James Douglas delivers his inaugural address on Thursday at the Statehouse in Montpelier. His proposal to curb education costs and jettison the state's education funding law got low grades with many local school officials. |
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By Sarah Hinckley Times Argus Staff and Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau - Published: January 10, 2009
MONTPELIER School officials statewide had plenty to say about Gov. James Douglas' proposal to revamp and curb education spending, announced during his inaugural speech on Thursday.
The governor is proposing to do away with the state's education funding law, Act 68, and he wants to cap local spending by requiring school districts to flat fund their per-pupil spending for the fiscal year 2010 budget.
If local school boards want to spend more per pupil than they are doing in the current year, any additional funds would have to be paid for entirely by local residential property taxpayers. Income sensitivity provisions under which homeowners pay school taxes based on income, not property values would not apply.
Rutland Northeast Superintendent William Mathis, a respected longtime observer of education issues, didn't mince words Friday, calling Douglas' education proposals in his inaugural address "inappropriate and insulting."
"It's really saying that the local electorate who vote on the budgets each year and the local school boards are not doing their jobs and he can do it better for them," he said. "It's nothing but a power play to manipulate government."
Mathis said that 93 percent of school budgets pass in a typical year, showing that local populations generally approve of what their school boards are doing.
The governor's proposal also is drawing fire because it asks school boards to go back to the drawing board and make cuts as the deadline looms to ready 2010 budgets for voters at March Town Meeting. The final draft of those budgets is less than a month away.
"I think the governor is a little out of touch with what goes on in schools," said Owen Bradley, who has been the principal at Twinfield, a preschool through 12th grade school for the towns of Plainfield and Marshfield, for 10 years. "We have been doing more with less every year.
The impression he gives is that schools don't cut."
Bradley says his school has made cuts in the last few years in English, math, science, home economics and music. Keeping per-pupil spending low at the school is not the issue.
"Twinfield has one of the lowest per-pupil spending in the state," said Bradley. "We've been cutting Twinfield positions for five-plus years.
I didn't get into education to be in the budget trimming business."
The governor's proposal seems to point at schools to come up with answers, said Bradley. "School leaders need to stand up and say we're not going to take the blame," he said. "The state leader should not be blaming anybody. He should be encouraging communication.
The answer, I think, is a studied look at funding education."
Douglas defended his proposal at a press conference Friday, arguing there needs to be a solution to rising school spending that leaves some money for social services and other needs.
"These are very unusual times," said Douglas. "I think in this environment level funding is a pretty good deal."
The governor acknowledged that the timing of the proposal school budgets are largely written and will be voted on in a few weeks could pose problems for boards.
However, they could postpone those votes or return to reconsider their budgets later, he said.
Douglas also rebuffed arguments that rising fuel costs, or locked-in multi-year contracts with teachers, are an obstacle to having per-pupil spending frozen.
"We have the same pressures in state government, yet we are spending less," Douglas said. "They have to recognize reality."
The governor argues that voters, even when they may not be happy with their property taxes, do not turn down school budgets.
"We all want the best for our kids," he said. "There is a disconnect between the vote cast at Town Meeting and the bill that comes for your property taxes."
Jeffrey Francis, executive director of the Vermont School Board Association, on Friday admitted Douglas has been consistent in his view that education costs "are too high," but said the governor's idea is misguided.
"The governor got a lot more elaborate in his proposals.
He is calling for a disinvestment," he said.
Douglas' proposal has also gotten some heat since it seeks to dismantle the current school funding system which has a long legislative history of being very difficult to craft without proposing what he thinks should take its place.
Rutland's Mathis said there were contradictions in the governor's speech, such as talk of how property taxes are too high coupled with a proposal to effectively raise them on many people by changing income sensitivity provision in education funding.
Also, moving teacher retirement funding from the general fund to the education fund does not mesh with the goal of lowering property taxes either, Mathis said.
And freezing state education fund appropriations, he said, would be a disaster.
"Teacher contracts are already there," he said. "Budgets are already there.
That means an immediate and massive shift onto the local property tax, which would be a horrendous burden.
The sum total would be a financial crisis in every town in the state."
A key concern for Ginny Burley, chairwoman of the U-32 High School Board in East Montpelier, is that the governor's proposal backs away from a commitment to provide equal access to education in the state, a principle that emerged from the Vermont Supreme Court's landmark Brigham decision.
"If you take away any piece of that, you are back to inequity again," said Burley who has been on the school board for more than a decade.
Burley understands the need to look at areas for savings in education, such as a statewide teacher contract and retirement packages and school mergers.
"Consolidation gets batted around a lot but there's not been any real work done to see what kind of money can be saved that needs to be done," said Burley. "Voters know the implication on their property taxes. We provide the tax rate.
I hear all over the state that there have been real efforts made to cut costs."
But Burley is adamant that the state should not jettison a funding formula that equalizes education costs for rich and poor districts.
"Equity is the primary purpose of the current school funding and if we're not doing that then we're going to be in trouble."
Although the governor's proposal would reduce the Montpelier Public School District's budget by $700,000, school board chairman John Hollar said he understands Douglas's intention.
"I'm very sympathetic to the governor's view that our education finance system has become too complex," said Hollar. "In my view there needs to be a direct link between local taxpayers' spending and the taxes they pay."
Many school districts tend to focus on the bottom line when crafting budgets. Hollar said the Montpelier district shifted its focus to per-pupil spending at least five years ago. The main reason for that was a steady decline in enrollment at the three schools within the district.
"The fact is, there's only so much you can do with fixed costs," said Hollar. "There's just fixed costs that we can't eliminate with 10 fewer students.
We'd have to look where the money is which is instruction which would mean cutting positions and programs."
A $700,000 cut would be the equivalent of a 10 percent cut in staffing among the three schools, according to Hollar.
"I'd certainly be concerned about the governor's proposal on our budget," he said. "Our board has been pretty consistent to not want to exceed 6 percent spending."
According to the governor, too many times in the past his suggestions for changing school funding have hit dead ends in the Legislature, or lawmakers have suggested that he needed to use a more comprehensive process to draft his proposals.
"That is what I am doing this time," he said.
The idea might not be getting much support in the Legislature, but he said he expects it will in the state at large, Douglas said.
"I believe Vermonters are going to greet it warmly," he said.
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