Marc Schauber is executive director of the Coalition for Vermont Student Equity (CVTSE).
WEST DOVER-Act 127, the 2022 law that corrected 25 years of injustice in our education funding system, is a good law. It allows all children in Vermont to receive an excellent education regardless of their background or ZIP code, all while supporting local control and decision-making. The bill that led to Act 127, S.287, passed committee reviews and then passed both the House and Senate with unanimous voice votes, and the governor signed it. Hundreds of Vermont school officials, teachers, school board members, members of education associations and citizens spoke in favor of the legislation. It was among the most important tripartisan pieces of legislation to be passed in years.
Sadly, with immense and complex economic upward pressures on fiscal year (FY) 2025 school budgets, many are mistakenly and unfairly blaming the equitable funding law for the sharp rise in property tax rates. There are many economic and political pressures on FY 2025 school budgets that seem to be creating a perfect economic storm. Act 127 is not one of those pressures.
I was surprised to receive an email recently from the Task Force on the Implementation of the Pupil Weighting Factors Report announcing a delay in releasing their proposal and data to back it up. This came as a surprise because, for the better part of two years, it was...
Education finance in Vermont is an often-hard-to-understand-and-quite-complex system. Act 59 of 2021 created the “Task Force on the Implementation of the Pupil Weighting Factors Report” and a group of eight Vermont legislators who will spend time this summer determining, as the name implies, the best path forward to implementing...