For more than 20 years, Vermont's smaller towns have been overtaxed and their schools underfunded, according to the Pupil Weighting Factors Report, a $300,000 study of current school funding legislation recently issued by the Secretary of Education. Hurry, and you may be able to save your school.
The state has been raising enough tax dollars - it simply has not been distributing those dollars fairly. The current law, a math mystery called Act 60, was passed in 1997, when the state Supreme Court ruled that Vermont's education-funding system was “constitutionally deficient” - denying students in poorer towns equal access to educational opportunities to be had in wealthier towns.
Unfortunately, according to researchers from the University of Vermont, Rutgers University, and the American Institutes for Research, Act 60 was built on the previous funding plan - which was unsupported by anything measurable.
The resulting statewide property tax funding formula has not only failed to fix the problems. Like a cancer undiagnosed for years, it has also feasted on the meager resources of many small towns.
When it comes to protecting our democracy, what could be more important than educated citizen voters? Can our country's way of life survive without an informed and engaged electorate? To this end, we created public schools. Sadly, our nonpartisan neglect of public education has produced many voters who think...