Vt. school spending down from last year
Toolbox
BY Cristina Kumka Staff Writer - Published: March 11, 2010
In Rutland, the school district will ask for tens of thousands less from the state's Education Fund for K-12 public schooling, because more revenue, in the form of a $1 million surplus, will be added back into its spending plan.
The million-dollar revenue stream will reduce the district's tap on the ed. fund by $65,000, said Peter Amons, the Rutland district's chief financial officer.
In many other school districts across the state, the same has happened — schools have asked for less than what state education finance officials expected them to by cutting their budgets and reducing expenses.
The result is a zero percent increase in education spending statewide, Mark Perrault, a fiscal officer in Montpelier's Joint Legislative Fiscal Office, said Tuesday.
The fiscal office and the Vermont Department of Education projected education spending — spending and offsetting local, state and federal revenues — to increase by an average 2 percent, meaning $22.6 million more in property taxes would be needed to support all public schools through 2011.
Instead, because school budgets statewide increased an average of less than 1 percent, education spending didn't increase at all, Perrault said.
Out of 280 school districts across the state, an analysis of 266 school budgets adopted on Town Meeting Day show that the figures equate to an overall increase of .5 percent, said Brad James, education finance manager with the state Education Department.
School boards keeping their budgets low this year caused a drop in education spending – the money paid out by the Education Fund to school districts to cover their expenses — of just over one-tenth of 1 percent, James said.
"The Education Fund requires less money than what was projected last November," James said Tuesday. For taxpayers, that means $11 million in property taxes won't be needed and won't be collected.
The other $11 million will go to cover other state expenses and into a reserve fund to cover education spending in the future — about $7 million will be transferred into the state's ailing General Fund and $4 million will go into the Education Fund to boost its reserve, Perrault said.
The $7 million will likely not be returned to the Education Fund as in years past, Perrault said.
But, Perrault said, "Unfortunately, most taxpayers won't see much of a difference," because the $11 million spread across the state isn't enough for tax rates to go down.
According to a handout Perrault provided the Legislature this week, "in spite of flat spending overall, homestead education tax rates will increase in many towns."
"Even though spending is down, the economy is in really bad shape," Perrault said Tuesday.
"Non-property-tax revenues coming into the fund are flat, the General Fund can't continue to support schools as much, growth in the property tax base has slowed and tax rates have to make up for it."
The state's student population since 1997 has been declining at a rate of about 1.5 percent per year and there are nearly 90 school districts statewide that serve fewer than 100 students, according to Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca.
Perrault said, "the only way that property taxes are going to come down, schools are going to have to reduce their personnel costs."
Amons, who told the city's school board about the favorable revenue amount Tuesday, said, "You have to cut people for taxes to go down."
cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com
16