By Tess Hunter, Managing Editor
In addition to its town articles, Hartland residents will be asked to vote by Australian ballot on five articles and two board seats for the Hartland School District (HSD) on Tuesday, March 5. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. downstairs at Damon Hall.
Voters will have to weigh in on three important issues — a school budget that has increased by 15.51%, a $75,000 allocation for a new playground, and the election of two board seats, one of which remains vacant.
Hartland School Board chair Nicole Buck spoke to the Standard about the recent furor that has emerged online following the announcement of the school budget, which comes amidst a soaring tax rate for Hartlanders. The homestead education tax rate in Hartland will rise 23.95% this year — from $1.8202 per $100 in assessed value, to $2.2509. “The tax increase in Hartland is projected to be 42 cents [per $100 of assessed value]. Seven cents of that is related to the school budget,” Buck told the Standard. “Thirty-five cents is related to the CLA (Common Level of Appraisal).”
According to the website of the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office, the CLA is an assessment of local property values. The website states: “Each town determines assessed values and sets the timing of reappraisals. It is not practical or possible for towns to reappraise each year, therefore there is a divergence between the assessed value and the fair market value. The fair market value is an estimate of the potential sale price of the property on the current real estate market. The CLA adjusts the locally assessed property values to the estimated fair market value. The CLA ensures that each town is treated equally and uniformly — regardless of when they last appraised. The CLA is unique in each town and is calculated annually by the Department of Taxes.”
But some Hartland residents are concerned that the CLA is not fair, equal or uniform. Buck says the HSD was prepared for a property tax increase when formulating the budget, but not to this extent. “We knew the CLA was going to be bad. We did not know it was gonna be this bad. I’ll be honest, it feels broken,” said Buck. “Hartland’s property values have skyrocketed. I mean, we were only appraised in 2019, so less than five years. Our CLA has plummeted, which means that our property values have skyrocketed. And that’s great, except that right now, as of last year, 67% of Hartlanders were deemed to have not been able to afford their tax bill. So 67% of Hartlanders got a Homestead adjustment. Now we’re going to increase property taxes by 22%? You’re not actually going to get any additional money out of Hartland, because that number of Homestead adjustments is just going to go up. And then we’re going to have maybe only 20% of Hartlanders paying their full tax share. It just feels really broken.”
Article 5 asks the voters to approve the school district budget expenditure of $11,541,199 compared to $9,991,128 last year. Buck says the school budget increases are due to three main factors — inflation, deteriorating facilities, and the end of COVID relief funds, which previously funded three faculty positions.
Of the three faculty positions now in question, Buck says two were classroom teachers who were added during COVID to help reduce class sizes. Buck added, “It’s important to note that we actually decreased a teacher last year, knowing that this was coming. So it makes our year-to-year increase look worse because last year, we removed that position. We’re really only adding one teacher if you look back over two years. So we tried to be responsible and plan ahead.” Buck explained why she believes it’s necessary to keep that extra teacher, saying, “Without that teacher, we would have to have a combined grade classroom. And that is difficult. It’s not a good situation. And so with that teacher, we don’t have to do that.”
The other position being added to the budget is an instructional coaching position, whose role is to teach teachers how to implement certain curriculums. “We’re the only school in the supervisory union that does not have an instructional coach,” said Buck. “And we’re implementing two brand new curriculums this year and it’s really impacting our teachers.” Buck explained that the position was previously Title I funded, a state resource that provides financial assistance to schools in need. “We’re losing Title I funding because of the Universal Meals law. Our student population hasn’t changed, but because of the way that they’re accounting for free and reduced lunch now, we are losing title money which had been allocated to cover that position. So it’s the loss of two sets of federal funds that are causing us to hire these positions locally.”
The other big expenditure is Article 4, which asks voters to approve a withdrawal of $75,000 from the Capital Reserve Fund to go toward the replacement of the Hartland Elementary School playground. “The total cost of the playground is $270,000. Okay, we pulled some out into the capital reserve account hoping that we could fund that with grants and not have it in our main budget. But if we can’t fund it with grants, then we can pull from the capital reserve,” Buck explained. “We’re at a point right now where kids can’t access portions of the playground, they’ve been roped off. Because it’s over 25 years old and failing. And it can’t be fixed. Because it’s so old, it can’t actually be fixed anymore… If we have to rip it down, then [students will] just have grass and no play structure outside.” Buck continued, “And our other goal was to make it a community place. The school is our community. It’s kind of a hope of ‘build it and they will come.’ Our hope is that parents might choose to have a picnic behind the school so that their kids can play.”
Though not factored into this year’s budget, according to Buck, the playground is only the tip of the iceberg. “We have a building committee study going on right now. We need to make changes to the building. [Hartland Elementary School] hasn’t seen any changes in like, 40 years.We’re not going to do a whole new building like Woodstock, but we do need to make some changes that are going to cost money. I don’t know how the state’s going to deal with that, because nobody has done anything to their schools in years.”
Buck also acknowledged the role of inflation and soaring health care costs on the budget. “We’re in the middle of a contract that we agreed for wages and the health care is killing us. And I mean, programmatically, the one thing that we’re doing is that we’re increasing three teachers — but we’re really only increasing to two teaching positions from two years ago — and the playground. Those are the programmatic changes, everything else is just cost.”
Buck noted that decreasing the school budget would have little effect on the taxpayer. “If the school wanted to bring the budget down, or the tax rate down from 42 cents to 41 cents… So if we wanted to remove one penny, we would have to remove $800,000 from the budget, which is multiple teaching positions, right? That’s the playground, plus more teachers than we’ve increased.”
She continued, “I think people need to understand that 35 cents of the tax increase — that’s like 20% of the tax increase — is not related to the school budget. And that the vast majority of Hartlanders, two-thirds of Hartlanders will not pay their full tax bill. Which means that they’re not going to have to pay for that CLA increase. It’s just so broken. That’s all I can say. It just feels so broken. We’re voting on a budget based on a CLA that says that we have these incredibly expensive properties that nobody can afford to live in.”
Buck is running for one of two open school board seats. She says she is interested in the three-year term because “I hope to achieve continuity. We have one board position open. And I am nearing the end of my board tenure. But I think it’s important to have continuity.” The other position, a two-year term, is vacant on the ballot, but Buck hopes to conduct a write-in campaign if an interested candidate comes forward before March 5.