By Jim Sabataso
RUTLAND HERALD
MONTPELIER, Vt. — The Senate Finance committee advanced a bill the week of March 7 that aims to address inequities in education funding for Vermont’s K-12 schools.
Last Wednesday, committee members unanimously approved the yet-to-be-named bill, which would update the per-pupil weights in the formula the state uses to calculate how much money is allocated to individual school districts.
Currently in Vermont, school budgets are developed at the local level by school boards and approved by voters. Funding, however, comes from the state education fund, which is funded in part by property taxes.
Those local tax rates are determined by spending per equalized pupil. A higher equalized per-pupil count means lower tax rates for a district.
To calculate per-pupil spending, the state applies a weighted formula that reflects the resources a district needs to educate students based on certain characteristics, including students living in rural areas, students from low-income backgrounds, students with different learning needs and students for whom English is not their primary language.
Yet a 2019 report commissioned by the Legislature found the existing formula to be “outdated,” with weights having “weak ties, if any, with evidence describing differences in the costs for educating students with disparate needs or operating schools in different contexts.”
Last summer, a joint legislative task force used that study’s findings to help it develop a plan for updating the state’s funding formula. The new bill is a reflection of the task force’s work, which revises those outdated weights and proposes a roadmap to implementation.
Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, a co-chair of the task force and member of the Finance Committee, has shepherded the bill through the committee this session.
Hardy called the bill a “strong start,” which she said reflected many of the task force’s recommendations, including the new per-pupil weights that were presented to the task force last fall.
The revised weights are based on a new metric for measuring students living in poverty, which uses enrollment in the free and reduced lunch (FRL) program rather than eligibility for the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP). The poverty metric will ultimately transition to a universal income declaration form.
The bill also reflects a compromise in how funding for English language learning students is allocated. Initially, the task force proposed removing ELL students from the funding formula entirely in place of providing categorical aid grants directly to schools. That proposal, however, drew criticism from student equity advocates. In response, the bill applies the ELL weight for all districts with ELL students and provides additional categorical aid for districts with small ELL populations.
“The reason being for that is that the weight alone would not provide those districts with sufficient resources,” she said. “Weighting only a few students doesn’t give you enough money to buy a teacher.”
If the bill passes, Hardy said it would be rolled out over five years starting in fiscal year 2024 in order to give districts time to adjust to the new weights.
The bill also creates an “Education Fund Advisory Committee” to oversee updates to the system and “recalculate and recalibrate the pupil weights and categorical aid amounts as necessary.” Hardy said the body would include representatives from the tax department and Agency of Education, as well as “citizen experts in education funding.”
It also adds six positions to the AOE directly related to the implementation of the new funding system.
Hardy said she anticipates the bill, which is now in the Senate Appropriations Committee, will make it to the Senate floor sometime this week or next before heading to the House of Representatives.
Ted Plemenos, director of finance at Rutland City Public Schools, said the proposed bill is “moving in the right direction financially.”
RCPS is a member of the Coalition for Vermont Student Equity, a group of nearly 30 school districts that has advocated for an update to the funding formula.
But while Plemenos was encouraged, he said the bill still needs work.
In particular, he was critical of changes in how poverty is measured.
“Poverty is a difficult thing to measure but it’s very important that it be measured correctly,” he said.
He agreed the current metric has issues but argued that using FRL eligibility would still undercount the number of students living in poverty.
“For Rutland City Public Schools, that’s a huge issue considering that so many of our families are considered to be of lower income,” he said. “It’s still a step in the right direction and it’s a workable proposal if there are additional and complementary steps taken to ensure comprehensive reporting.”
Hardy acknowledged that criticism but argued that even if the FRL metric is an undercount, it’s still more accurate than SNAP.
She also noted that FRL data wouldn’t begin to be collected until next school year, eliminating any data skewed over the last two years due to universal school meals being provided to all students by the federal government during the pandemic.
Hardy added that the universal income form would be the ultimate metric for determining poverty.
“That would be a form that all of us fill out, all parents, regardless of whether they’re eligible for free and reduced lunch,” she said.
Alison Notte, a Rutland City School Commissioner and coalition member, said she is pleased with the progress made updating pupil weights over the past year, stating it “could greatly benefit our schools and our students.”
However, like Plemenos, she has concerns about the poverty metric.
She argued that districts like Rutland, which have offered free meals to all students for several years predating the pandemic, will face a challenge of getting families to file paperwork again.
“So that will certainly be a struggle that can negatively impact our district, as well as other large districts with historically high poverty levels that have been doing universal meals,” she said.
She does, however, favor the idea of eventually transitioning to universal income declaration form.
Notte was also concerned that the five-year rollout was too long for districts that have already been underfunded for more than two decades. She suggested shortening the timeline or doing something to bolster underweighted districts in the meantime.
“I certainly think that would be an opportunity for some good conversation,” she said.
Another aspect of the bill, which Notte questioned is a provision that states the weights must be updated by 2027 or the new system would be scrapped.
She said the provision could be viewed as a backdoor approach to getting rid of the weights by purposefully not updating them and replacing them with another method down the road.
Plemenos agreed, calling the provision “perplexing.”
“Why put a provision in that says the weightings will be blown up in 2027 if they’re not re-estimated and simply say, by statute, in 2026 the government will commission another study?”
Nonetheless, both Notte and Plemenos said they are encouraged by what they’ve seen so far.
“I am hoping that it will stay on the tracks and move forward,” said Notte.
jim.sabataso @rutlandherald.com
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