Leaders of the Mountain Views Supervisory Union (MVSU) are initiating a statewide campaign calling for a special session of the Vermont State Legislature this fall to pass emergency legislation decoupling capital construction debt from the per-pupil spending formula used by the state to fund education in public schools.
At its regular monthly meeting on Monday evening, the MVSU School Board approved a letter that will be sent imminently to legislative leaders, including Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore Philip Baruth, Speaker of the House Jill Krowinski, and members of the Windsor County Senate and House delegations, urging prompt lawmaker action to avert a looming school funding crisis. MVSU superintendent Sherry Sousa and school board chair Keri Bristow plan to share the letter with their counterparts statewide to encourage a coordinated legislative outreach effort among school supervisory unions and districts statewide.
“Without immediate action by the legislature, the current school funding system requires any district that must borrow to repair, renovate, or rebuild facilities have its construction debt counted in its ‘education spending’ allotment,” the letter drafted by the MVSU administrative and board leadership states. “As you know, this artificially inflates the district’s per-pupil spending, which in turn places schools at risk of hitting the excess spending threshold,” the letter continues. “If that threshold is crossed, taxpayers are penalized — paying two dollars for every dollar over the limit. Needless to say, this discourages critical capital investment and forces districts with aging, unsafe buildings into an impossible position: either neglect facilities further or burden taxpayers with punitive double taxation.”
The letter goes on to call renewed attention to the fact that the state of Vermont has not funded a school capital construction program since abandoning such an effort 18 years ago in 2007. “Since [that time], districts have been left without state partnership in addressing aging infrastructure,” the MVSU leaders state in the missive to legislators. “The consequences are now acute: some schools are on the brink of closure, and others may soon be forced to move students into temporary trailers on athletic fields if one more system fails,” the letter adds. “Fortunately, Act 73 (the landmark education transformation act passed in June by Vermont lawmakers) and the new State Aid for School Construction are set to reverse course, but this change cannot happen without decoupling capital construction debt from the per-pupil spending formula,” the adherents for that funding path argue.
In conclusion, the letter-to-Vermont-lawmakers campaign, which kicks off this week under the auspices of the MVSU, calls for definitive and imminent action on the part of legislators.
“We urge you to convene a special session this fall to pass emergency legislation that decouples capital construction debt from the per-pupil spending calculation; protects taxpayers from punitive double taxation that discourages critical investment; and acknowledges that school construction needs are a statewide responsibility, and not a burden that can be left to local districts alone,” the letter to lawmakers concludes.
For more on this, please see our September 11 edition of the Vermont Standard.
