Let’s go back in time, way back to 1990s when a court case was working its way to the Vermont Supreme Court. That court case challenged the state’s existing formula for providing aid to education. Called the Foundation Plan, the state provided money to school districts that had lower Grand Lists and hence less ability to raise funds for education through property taxes.
That case, Brigham vs Vermont, made its way to the Supreme Court which ruled in 1997 that “the current system for funding public education in Vermont, with its substantial dependence on local property taxes and resultant wide disparities in revenues available to local school districts, deprives children of an equal educational opportunity.”
That decision led to Act 60/68 and multiple subsequent pieces of legislation, most recently Act 127 and H.850. The state threw out the Foundation Formula and established a state-wide property tax to be distributed to all towns in an effort to create the “substantially equal educational opportunity” that the Brigham decision called for.
Almost three decades later, we know how that worked out. At least a third of Vermont’s school budgets were voted down this month and there’s no clear indication that they will be affirmed on second (and third) attempts.
Finally, maybe, hopefully, it seems that the Legislature is taking seriously the issue of coming up with a new formula to fund education. Ironically, one of the formulas under consideration is a foundation formula -- just like we used to have.
Those who were around during the run up to that Supreme Court case and before, will recall that the Legislature never fully funded its obligations to schools under the Foundation Plan. Never.
The Foundation Plan established a basic amount of funding per student, above what a town could raise -- but never provided that full amount. No wonder it failed and led to a system that is arguably much worse and damn near impossible to explain. Try explaining the significance of the ‘yield’ -- go ahead, we’ll wait.
If we’re going back to a foundation plan -- and that could be a good thing -- let’s make sure we do it right this time.
