By Heidi Spear
Our community has legitimate questions about why anyone would oppose the superintendent’s proposed teacher cuts at Fayston and Warren. I can’t speak for the HUUSD Board or the Fayston School Board, but I can share my own perspective as someone who has worked for eight years on education governance and property tax reform.
I can sense the confusion and even some outrage in our community and given the limited information provided on this matter, I understand both. If you look at education investments solely through the lens of class size, you get the false impression that anytime there are variances in class sizes across schools or within schools they are inequitable or even wasteful. Using this lens alone you don’t see other disparities in resourcing or other considerations vital to meeting the needs of students, maintaining healthy learning communities, optimizing outcomes at a reasonable price or effectively containing property taxes.
If we broaden our lens to review two Agency of Education (AOE) longitudinal data sets that tie directly to total spending and tax rates we see that class size doesn’t tell the whole story. Net Expenditures/Average Daily Membership (ADM) is the measure that was used to evaluate inequity in the Vermont Supreme Court’s Brigham decision and Education Spending/Equalized Pupil is the measure created by our Legislature to set Act 60/68 property tax rates. In reviewing that data we see that the two schools in our new unified district with the two lowest expenditures according to both measures are Warren School (No. 1) and Fayston School (No. 2).
I don’t believe either measure provides a comprehensive evaluation of equity or efficiency; they are directly relevant and provide insight into relative resourcing and impacts on taxpayers. With Fayston and Warren consuming fewer dollars per student on the basis of total expenditures and by the Act 60/68 equalized measure, one simply can’t argue that they are undermining the broader promise of efficiencies and savings for taxpayers. Not only did the Act 46 votes of these communities make us all eligible for an extra 2 cents off our taxes, but these schools’ budgets have the net effect of reducing the new blended education spending per equalized pupil figure that establishes our unified tax rate.
The expenditure data reveals that other disparities in resources must exist across our schools that are not captured in the class size metric. And they do. Thatcher Brook has larger class sizes but also has a host of other staff that aren’t available or affordable in smaller scale schools. To operate as cost effectively as it does, Fayston has used time studies to guide elimination and reductions of interventionists, paraeducation and special education resources, shifting Tier 2 supports to classroom teachers, ensuring teacher consistency through fluctuating enrollment. Fayston also manages the approximately 20 percent of costs that are not captured in personnel with tremendous frugality.
As noted in the Picus Report on adequacy of Vermont’s education funding, Vermont’s expenditures on administrative overhead and staffing outside of classroom teachers are significant contributors to our exceptionally high spending levels and statewide special education expenditures far outstrip adequacy models. These expenditures have consistently grown in Vermont while regular education teacher counts remain flat in the context of declining enrollment. Any guess what metric will completely overlook expenditures in overhead, support staff and special education? You guessed it – class size.
For us to effectively oversee our expenditures, properly evaluate equity, realize efficiencies and optimize education quality, we need to take a deeper look at how we invest our money and what we achieve through those investments. If we limit our view to class size, we limit our capacity to reduce costs to where dollars actually have their greatest impact on learning. We also overlook other disparities in resourcing and major cost drivers.
There surely will be opportunities to increase efficiencies. Two efficiencies frequently discussed in advance of consolidation were merging our two middle schools and centralized purchasing. The HUUSD Board has not yet considered either.
As we budget locally, we can’t afford to ignore two primary drivers of our rising property tax burden: 1) declining enrollment and 2) our statewide education funding system. As our superintendent noted in the Act 46 forum in October 2015, over a recent seven-year period, enrollment did decline in many of our schools, but Warren’s actually rose by 22 students and Fayston’s fluctuated considerably but was down only one student. In that same forum, she said, regarding enrollment, “It’s going to keep going down.” In my view, there is one way to be absolutely sure of continuous decline – plan for it.
While we can’t ignore economic forces, not all Vermont districts are declining and some public and private schools are growing in Vermont. Growth is not only a possibility, it must be a central goal and our investments should be targeted to optimize our prospects. Surely, we won’t achieve this by pretending that all schools can and should operate on the Thatcher Brook model. In my view, establishing school choice and allowing our schools to differentiate and specialize is our best chance to cost-effectively expand opportunity and boost enrollment by enabling us to appeal to and effectively serve a diversity of student and family interests. The HUUSD Board is scheduled to discuss goals and strategy this spring.
With regard to actually containing our tax rates beyond our current Act 46 discounts, we can ill afford to ignore that our statewide education funding system is still based upon Act 60/68. In this context, even when we level fund or reduce our expenditures locally, as statewide spending climbs, so do our taxes. We have experienced this dynamic firsthand. Until we are no longer called upon to finance exceedingly high and unlimited spending levels across the state – spending levels that outstrip our own by $10,000-plus for each student in districts large and small – this system will sap our communities’ resources and our schools’ ability to compete. If we ignore this fact, we ignore our basic governance responsibilities.
Those advocating for deeper considerations of equity, outcomes and efficiency are not heedless of taxpayers’ financial burdens. It is just that to ensure local investments and cuts actually serve the interests of students and taxpayers we must consider more information, cultivate deeper understanding and develop a strategic plan. We just consolidated governance of seven schools. I am grateful that the HUUSD Board recognized that it must study, strategize and then act, not the reverse.
Spear lives in Fayston and serves on the Harwood Unified Union School District Board as well as the Fayston Elementary School Board.
