The comprehensive study of Vermont’s school funding system released last month should be welcome news to Vermonters, who have invested significant effort over the past fifteen years to reform the system. The study’s conclusion: “the current funding system meets the goals established by the Court and Acts 60 and 68 – to provide equal access to all towns for raising revenues for PreK-12 education.”

This means that all Vermont children, regardless of their family’s or their town’s wealth, have the same access to resources for their education. And the report makes clear that school districts around the state have used this opportunity to improve education for their children: district-to-district variation in student achievement has been reduced, Vermont’s student test scores are among the highest in the country, and we graduate more of our students than nearly every other state.

Overall, the report by California-based Lawrence O. Picus and Associates is very good—the best effort by an outside consultant to assess Vermont’s school funding system that we’ve seen. The problem with out-of-state consultants generally is that they often fail to understand the culture and therefore the intentions of the people of the state they’re working in. The Picus team made a real effort to listen to Vermonters and understand Vermont, and their report is better for that effort.  We do take issue with some of their analysis, however.

• Spending: The Picus report points out that Vermont had the second highest growth in per-pupil spending in New England over the last decade — New Hampshire had the highest. What the report doesn’t mention is that the Supreme Court in each of Vermont and New Hampshire found each state’s school funding system to be unconstitutional in 1997. And both states have taken steps over the past decade to reduce town-to-town spending disparities by making more resources available for the education of children in poorer districts. This improvement in equity has likely increased per-pupil spending in both states as school districts that previously did not have sufficient resources now spend more.

• Equity: The report points out that Vermont has achieved equity that most other states have not, but it doesn’t take the next step of analyzing what it would cost other states to match the equity of Vermont’s system. When the report notes that Vermont’s average per-pupil cost is higher than in most other states, it does not account for lower average spending in other states due in part to inequities: low-spending, poor districts pulling down the state spending averages.

• Cost drivers: According to the Picus report: “The historical decline in Vermont enrollments have driven up the cost of education.” (p. xiii)  This is simply nonsense and misleads readers. As we’ve discussed in other posts, reducing the number of students in a school does not increase the cost of operating the school or make education less affordable; in fact overall school costs have come down in recent years. The report means to talk about spending per pupil, but is sloppy about this important distinction throughout the report. That’s not to say we should ignore per-pupil spending. It’s an indicator we should track, and we should be analyzing why some districts consistently spend more or less than the per-pupil average. But an increase in per-pupil spending, by itself, is not evidence that we’re spending more money overall.

• Economics: Our biggest concern with the report is in Section 5: Economic Analysis. The Picus analysts clearly have a bias for town property tax-based funding systems because that is what most of the other states have, and they acknowledge the bias in the report. Consequently, they make the discussion about Vermont’s income sensitivity and about pricing signals to voters more complex than it needs to be.

In essence, towns don’t pay taxes, people do. Act 68 is designed to send pricing signals to individual taxpayer/voters. And the pricing signals are the same for voters in every town. Higher school district spending per pupil results in higher taxes for resident taxpayers. This point is not made in this section of the report. In fact, this section confuses readers with an extensive discussion about pricing signals to towns rather than individuals.

One closing thought:

There is a lot of concern about the declining enrollment in Vermont schools and about how that is increasing the per-pupil cost of education. As noted earlier, increasing per-pupil costs from declining enrollment is not making the system less affordable. In fact, the system may be more affordable as overall system costs decline as they have for the past two years.

But decreasing enrollment does create an opportunity. So far, we’ve opted to respond to the drop in students by trying to reduce costs: shrinking the system to match the lower enrollment. Another possibility is to expand enrollment to fit the system.

Think of it this way: we have excess capacity in an education system that is among the best in the country. Maybe there are children that would want to come here to attend our schools. Many people who establish businesses here do so because they had a childhood relationship with the state. Maybe Vermont could cultivate future entrepreneurs for Vermont by opening up our schools to out-of-state, or even out-of-the-country, children who want one of the best educations available in the U.S.

So it’s odd that Campaign for Vermont Prosperity, a new organization seeking to promote public policy debate, has been running radio ads citing Vermont’s 2008 spending— $56 for every $1000 of personal income—as if it were news.¹

Although Campaign for Vermont Prosperity doesn’t say so explicitly, it seems we’re supposed to infer from the ads that Vermont’s relatively high ranking is a bad thing. The ads criticize Governor Shumlin and the Legislature for “refus[ing] to reform our statewide education funding system,” but don’t say how. It’s not clear whether Campaign for Vermont Prosperity believes we should be striving for higher test scores, even if it costs more, or that lower spending should be our goal, even if it means our kids have to settle for less of an education, closer to the U.S. average.

While the ratio of Vermont’s education spending to personal income has remained pretty constant for the last two decades, so has Vermont’s spending relative to the other states. In the 1990s, according to the Census data, Vermont usually ranked 3^rd or 4^th in education spending per $1000 of personal income. (It was 5^th in 1996, just before passage of Act 60.) Since 2000—again according to the Census—it has ranked 2^nd behind Alaska every year.

The recent evaluation of the state’s education funding system said Vermont has one of the most equitable funding systems in the country, thanks to Act 60 and Act 68. If other states were as equitable—that is, if there was less disparity in educational opportunity between their rich and poor communities—it is likely they would move ahead of Vermont in the spending-per-$1000-of-income ranking.

If Campaign for Vermont Prosperity wants to promote more public debate, its radio ads should be careful to accurately characterize the information it presents. The recent ads claim that Vermonters spend more of their income on education than residents of any other state. What the data show is the ratio of education spending to personal income. That doesn’t mean all of the money spent on education comes from Vermonters’ personal income. We know, for example, about 40 percent of the money in the Education Fund comes from corporations and from second homeowners who are not Vermont residents.

And perhaps Campaign for Vermont Prosperity could be clearer about defining the problem it sees and then suggest some solutions. If it really thinks we should back away from our commitment to education, Campaign for Vermont Prosperity should explain why educating our kids is no longer so important or why Vermonters have had their priorities wrong for the past 20 years.

1. The ads cite a recent report on Vermont’s education funding system that ranked Vermont number 1 in education spending per $1000 of personal income in 2008. That study used information from the National Education Association. However, the U.S. Census, which calculated Vermont’s education spending at $57 per $1000 of personal income for 2008, ranked Vermont number 2, behind Alaska.

While he doesn’t frame it that way, Margolis points out that Gov. Peter Shumlin, in a speech at the University of Vermont last week, urged the school to focus on preparing students for business, without mention of the arts, culture, or philosophy. The governor didn’t use the word “citizen” once in his speech about the “better results” the state should expect from its university.

The governor’s remarks reflect a perspective that runs deep these days among members of both major parties—in the Vermont State House, in this administration, and in the last administration.  It’s a money-first, people-second view that underlies policies that affect Vermonters’ lives every day.  As we pointed out in a report last year and in an op-ed last month, the state budget process now focuses on doing what we can for Vermonters with available revenues, instead of starting with a vision of the kind of state Vermonters want and need and adopting fiscal policies to achieve that vision.

Tax policy has become a mindless mantra of “no new taxes” even in the face of greater human need, the greatest income disparity in 80 years, and a declining middle class in Vermont. Economic development has come to mean more business tax breaks rather than public investment in a society that produces widely shared prosperity. Now the governor wants to bring this thinking to education.

The irony is that Governor Shumlin’s liberal arts education did not have the narrow focus he is encouraging Vermont’s university to adopt. Buxton, where the governor spent his high school years, educates each of its charges “to live a fully conscious, responsible life” — not exactly job training.  And his alma mater, Wesleyan University, boasts “[f]reedom, rigor, intellectual experimentation and the desire to make a positive difference in the world” as the Wesleyan Experience.

These institutions are focused on developing human beings to be productive members of society.  While that might involve a life in business, it might also be in the arts or public service or politics, but always as a critical thinking, participating citizen.

Occupy Wall Street has rightly demonstrated to the world how the current focus on money is leaving people behind.  The balance between money and people is tilted toward money in Vermont as well.  And while philosophers still argue about it, we can be confident that the purpose of life involves a lot more than cash.

This is some of the information that we uncovered last year and published in “Vermont Education Spending: The Facts” in October 2010. More people read this report than any we’ve written. So we decided to update it this month with the new data that has become available in the past year. While the new data don’t change the conclusions, the updated version of this popular two-page report is still a quick, illuminating read.

Download a PDF of this Issue Brief.

Education spending is not out of control.
Education spending as a percentage of the Vermont economy (gross state product) has remained remarkably steady since the early 1990s. Contrast that with health care, which has been growing much faster than the underlying economy. Should the education line trend down because Vermont’s enrollment is declining about 1 percent a year? Perhaps. But remember: Education spending includes those rapidly rising health care costs. Regardless of the number of pupils, the cost of Vermont’s public education is neither “skyrocketing” nor “out of control.”

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School boards have curbed spending growth.
The growth in education spending has been declining since 2005. Fiscal 2009 saw a bump following passage of legislation that required voters in school districts with high spending growth to vote twice on the school budget. Districts may have anticipated being subject to the two-vote requirement in fiscal 2010 and shifted certain purchases to fiscal 2009 to keep their 2010 growth below the threshold. In fiscal 2011 and 2012, education spending was lower than the previous year.

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Property taxes now pay a bigger share of costs.
The Legislature reduced the General Fund transfer to the Education Fund in fiscal 2010, 2011, and 2012. Other dedicated revenue sources of the Education Fund, such as proceeds from the Vermont Lottery and a portion of the sales tax, have grown slowly or not at all since the recession of 2007. Even with modest education spending growth, property taxes have had to cover the shortfalls in the General Fund transfer and dedicated taxes. In 2005, property taxes paid 61 percent of education costs; in 2012, 67 percent. If the General Fund and dedicated revenues provided the same level of support as in 2005, property taxes would be $77 million less in fiscal 2012.

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Even with Act 68, school taxes are regressive.
Act 68 went far in reducing the burden of the property tax, which used to fall disproportionately on middle-income residents. More than six in 10 Vermont households now pay school taxes based on ability—on income rather than assessed property value. Even with this change, however, upper-income households pay a much smaller portion of their incomes to support schools than their less-wealthy neighbors. The chart is based on a 2010 Vermont Tax Department analysis of homestead taxes as a percentage of personal income across all tax brackets.

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 Investing in education strengthens the economy.
A 2010 study by economist Jeffrey Thompson at the Political Economy Research Institute documents the benefits to states and regions of investment in education, including pre-K and higher education. The benefits include higher personal income, employment, and tax collections and reduced crime and welfare dependence. Because education is labor intensive, such spending creates more jobs per dollar than many other sectors. Those jobs are direct (teachers and school staff), indirect (electricians who wire the school), and induced (workers at the market where school staff buy groceries).

* The original report was published October, 2010.

© 2011 by Public Assets Institute
This research was funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. We thank it for its support but acknowledge that the findings presented in this report are those of the Public Assets Institute and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the foundation.

We’re in a similar boat here. We used funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to avoid making harmful cuts during the recession. If we don’t develop a strategy to replace the federal money, we won’t have really avoided the harm—just postponed it. Local voters once again will face a choice between raising property taxes or undermining their kids’ education.

Much of the ARRA money was designated for specific purposes. However, there was also a pot of so-called “fiscal stabilization” funding that was given to the states with few strings attached. Tax revenues had taken a nosedive. All of the states were facing big budget deficits. These funds were meant to help fill the gaps.

Vermont used the bulk of its fiscal stabilization money for education—specifically, to make up for cuts in General Fund spending. Every year, money is appropriated from Vermont’s General Fund to the Education Fund. For the last two years, the administration and the Legislature reduced the transfer by about $60 million, but backfilled only about two-thirds of the cut with ARRA money. That left Vermonters paying higher property taxes.

The cuts were supposed to be temporary—and full funding of the transfer restored in fiscal 2012. But in the budget he presented in January, the governor put back only part of the money and proposed a permanent reduction to the transfer of $23 million—nearly 8 percent.

That cut won’t be felt quite as much in the coming year because there is some additional federal money—about $19 million—that is going directly to school districts. But in 2013, if the Legislature goes along with this permanent education cut, local districts will be left holding the bag again as they were early in the recession. Neither the administration nor the Legislature is willing to raise taxes directly for education, but they don’t seem to mind shifting costs onto school districts, which forces local education officials to cut programs or once again ask for higher property taxes.

Download a PDF of the report or read the text below:

Vermont has long supported preschool. For 40 years, the federally funded Head Start program has served disadvantaged children whose families meet income-eligibility requirements. Since 1991, Vermont has required local school districts to offer Essential Early Education (EEE) services to young children with disabilities whose families seek assistance. And since the passage of Act 60 in 1997, local districts have had the option to provide pre-kindergarten (pre-K) education and include three- and four-year-olds as part of the student population eligible for state funding.

In 2007, the Legislature passed Act 62, which strengthened some of the requirements for school districts operating pre-kindergarten programs. However, the new law also set limits intended to slow the growth of pre-K enrollment.

Investment in pre-kindergarten is good for the economy in both the short and long term. Expanding early education creates jobs right away, and investment in education can increase a region’s income and employment over time. Research shows, for example, that money invested in pre-kindergarten education produces many more jobs than spending the same amount on business tax incentives.¹

Questions about whether and how to expand voluntary access of pre-kindergarten to more Vermont children revolve, at least in part, around the cost and tax implications of doing so. This report offers a preliminary estimate of the cost of increased pre-K education enrollment in Vermont.

Enrollment
In fiscal 2010, almost 4,900 children—about 37 percent of the state’s three- and four-year-old population—were enrolled in publicly funded pre-K education.² Because Vermont’s policy is to continue to offer voluntary pre-kindergarten, there will always be some families who choose not to participate.

It is beyond the scope of this report to try to estimate the level of enrollment Vermont might ultimately achieve or to suggest how quickly it should strive to increase enrollment. However, in order to project the cost of expanding access to pre-K services, it was necessary to make some assumptions.

Looking to a state with long experience in publicly funded pre-K education can help to inform the development of this estimate for Vermont. Oklahoma—which has been providing state funding since 1998—achieved 71 percent enrollment of four-year-olds by 2009.³ Oklahoma does not have a program yet for three-year-olds, and nationally the three-year-old enrollment rate is considerably lower than the rate for four-year-olds.

If Vermont increased its pre-K enrollment at 15 percent a year, approximately 65 percent of the state’s three- and four-year-olds could be receiving pre-K education by 2015. Fifteen percent a year would be a faster growth rate than Vermont has seen over the last few years, but enrollments did increase at that rate earlier this decade. At that rate, Vermont would have an additional 3,400 pre-K students by 2015. A 15 percent annual growth rate is a reasonable assumption, if somewhat ambitious. Using that assumption, we looked at the increased cost for a five-year period.

Cost
Accurate figures on the cost of Vermont’s existing pre-K programs are difficult to find. In the past, school districts did not separate expenditures for EEE programs from other pre-kindergarten expenditures. Because districts are required to provide EEE, these children will continue to be served regardless of the extent of other pre-kindergarten programs. The Department of Education has begun to collect segregated data from the school districts in their annual expenditure reports, but the reports are not yet consistent, and the department acknowledges more work is needed to produce more accurate cost estimates.⁴

School districts are using three basic models for providing pre-K education: school-based programs, partnerships with Head Start, and partnerships with local, qualified child care providers that receive tuition payments or some other form of compensation from the district or supervisory union.

In fiscal 2010, 4,878 children were enrolled in pre-K and receiving EEE services. About 22 percent of them received services through private child-care providers, and the rest were in school-based programs or in Head Start partnerships. Of this total enrollment, 1,089 children were receiving EEE services.

Based on figures currently available from the Vermont Department of Education and the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), Vermont spent about $4,000 per student for pre-K education in fiscal 2009. That figure was supposed to exclude EEE expenditures. But it appears that not all school districts segregated costs the same way.

Vermont’s per-pupil cost is about average for the 38 states that now provide publicly funded pre-kindergarten programs.⁵ However, Vermont’s programs are typically open 10 hours a week, fewer than in many other states. NIEER estimates the per-pupil cost of half-time pre-K programs (15 hours per week during the school year) to be about $4,400 a year. That would suggest that Vermont’s average cost is somewhat high, but the Institute also has found that per-pupil costs decline as enrollment increases and efficiency improves. Based on available information, $4,000 per pupil is a reasonable assumption for projecting the future cost of expanding Vermont’s pre-kindergarten programs.⁶

Cost Analysis
As noted above, at 15 percent annual growth, pre-K enrollment would increase by about 3,400. Assuming Essential Early Education continues at its current rate of about 4 percent per year, total pre-K enrollment, including children receiving EEE services, would reach about 8,400 by 2015, or about 65 percent of the projected population of three- and four-year-olds. At $4,000 per student, projected education spending for the additional 3,400 pre-K student would increase by about $13.6 million (Figure 1) over five years, or about 1 percent of Vermont’s total K-12 education expense.

Assuming this growth were to occur evenly over the five years, to cover the additional spending Education Fund revenues would need to rise about 0.2 percent each year. For the average Vermont resident with a $200,000 home, homestead taxes would go up a little more than $5 each successive year for five years. By the fifth year, the additional tax would be $27 (Figure 2). For an average family paying income-based homestead taxes on an annual household income of $60,000, expanding pre-kindergarten education would mean an increase of just over $3 each successive year for five years.

Vermont businesses, which also have a stake in improving education in Vermont, would see their school taxes increase about $2.65 each year on every $100,000 of assessed property value. At the end of five years, business school taxes would be about $13 higher on each $100,000 of property value.

Conclusion
Many Vermont organizations and members of the business community recognize the long-term educational and social benefits of early education.⁷ The economic benefits also are well documented.⁸ In these difficult economic times, the good news is that expanding pre-K education in Vermont can be achieved for a relatively small investment.

© 2010 by Public Assets Institute

This research was funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Public Welfare Foundation with support from The Permanent Fund for the Well-Being of Children. We thank them for their support but acknowledge that the findings presented in this report are those of the Public Assets Institute and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the foundations.

1. Jeffrey Thompson, “Prioritizing Approaches to Economic Development in New England: Skills, Infrastructure and Tax Incentives,” August 2010.
2. Vermont Dept. of Education, “Report to the Legislature: Implementation of Prekindergarten Education in Accordance with Vermont’s Act 62,” January 2010, p. 10. (The enrollment figures include some, but not all, children receiving Head Start services.) According to latest U.S. Census estimates, Vermont’s three- and four-year-old population averaged 13,100 for the period 2005-09.
3. National Institute for Early Education Research, http://nieer.org/yearbook/pdf/yearbook_OK.pdf
4. Op. cit., Vermont Dept. of Education, p. 20.
5. Op cit, National Institute for Early Education Research.
6. This analysis does not adjust the per-pupil cost for inflation over the next five years. The National Institute for Early Education Research estimates that per-pupil cost will decline 10 percent to 30 percent if enrollments can be increased to 70 percent of the three- and four-year-old population. And the Institute’s data show that per-pupil costs have dropped 8 percent in the last five years. Finally, Vermont’s per-pupil expenditures include some fixed costs that schools would be paying if they had no pre-kindergarten programs. The $4,000 figure, therefore, is likely to be an overestimate.
7. http://www.prekvt.blogspot.com/
8. Op. cit., Thompson; Vermont Business Roundtable, http://vtroundtable.org/filemanager/download/8756/

Education spending is not out of control.

Education spending as a percentage of the Vermont economy (gross state product) has remained essentially flat since the early 1990s. Contrast that with health care, which has been growing much faster than the underlying economy. Should the education line trend down because Vermont’s enrollment is declining about 1 percent a year? Perhaps. But remember: Education spending includes those rapidly rising health care costs. Regardless of the number of pupils, the cost of Vermont’s public education is neither “skyrocketing” nor “out of control.”

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School boards have curbed spending growth.

The growth in education spending has been declining since 2005. There was an anomalous bump in fiscal 2009, following passage of legislation that required voters in school districts with high spending growth to vote twice on the school budget. Districts anticipating that they might be subject to the two-vote requirement in fiscal 2010 may have moved certain purchases to fiscal 2009 to keep their 2010 growth below the threshold. In fiscal 2011 spending was actually lower than the previous year.

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Property taxes now pay a bigger share of costs.

The Legislature reduced the General Fund transfer to the Education Fund in fiscal 2010 and 2011. Other dedicated revenue sources of the Education Fund, such as proceeds from the Vermont Lottery and a portion of the sales tax, also have not grown. Even with modest education spending growth, property taxes have had to cover their share, plus the growth that should have been covered by the General Fund transfer and dedicated taxes. In 2005, property taxes covered 61 percent of education costs; in 2011, 68 percent, even with the help of federal recovery funds (ARRA).

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Even with Act 68, school taxes are regressive.

Act 68 went far in reducing the burden of the property tax, which used to fall disproportionately on middle-income residents. More than six in 10 Vermont households now pay school taxes based on ability—that is, based on income rather than assessed property value. Even with this change, however, upper-income households pay a much smaller portion of their incomes to support schools than their middle- and lower-income neighbors. The chart is based on a new analysis by the Vermont Tax Department of homestead taxes as a percentage of personal income across all tax brackets.

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Investing in education strengthens the economy.

A recent study by economist Jeffrey Thompson at the Political Economy Research Institute documents the benefits to states and regions of investment in education, including pre-K and higher education. The benefits include higher personal income, employment, and tax collections and reduced crime and welfare dependence. Because education is labor intensive, such spending creates more jobs per dollar than many other sectors. The jobs resulting are direct (teachers and school staff) and also indirect (e.g., electricians who wire the school) and induced (workers at the market where school staff buy groceries).

Download a PDF of this issue brief.

“Scissors, Glue, Pencils? Check. Cleaning Spray?” describes how other states are responding to the wave of school funding cuts that have occurred during this recession. Having already shifted the cost of routine school supplies onto families with schoolchildren, administrators in some states are now asking those families to pack toilet paper, paper towels, and cleaning supplies in their kids’ backpacks as they ship them off to school.

This is the kind of false savings we’re likely to see in Vermont if we allow the commissioner of education to dictate school budget amounts for every district in the state. One way to meet artificial budget targets is to simply move items off budget. Instead of buying toilet paper or Windex with tax dollars, ask local residents to pay for them. The community doesn’t save any money. In fact, without the benefit of bulk purchasing, families are likely to spend more on the supplies than the school would. But the school budget will be smaller, and we can pretend we’re better off because taxes are a fraction lower.

The school board in Williamstown recently reduced bus service in response to pressure to cut its budget. Perhaps the parents who now will have to drive their kids to schools will use less fuel than the buses, but it seems unlikely. Like many of the state budget cuts in the last couple of years, the Williamstown action will reduce school spending by shifting costs, but without a net savings to the community. It’s true that only the parents of schoolchildren will have to bear the additional cost, but that hardly seems fair when everyone has an interest in making sure our kids are well educated.

We’re coming up on the 30^th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s declaration that government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. Three decades of anti-government, anti-tax rhetoric have created such a phobia about taxes that we’ve lost sight of our self-interest. We pool our money to buy and operate buses because it’s the most efficient way to get kids to school in a rural state like Vermont. We don’t (yet) ask kids to bring heating oil, chalk, fax paper, toilet bowl cleaner, or dry macaroni to school because it’s cheaper and more efficient to buy that stuff in bulk. But we’ve gotten so freaked out about taxes we’ll do almost anything to avoid them—even if ends up costing the community more than the taxes would.

First, the governor repeated his (erroneous) claim that education spending was out of control, and proposed a plan he said would reduce property taxes. What he didn’t mention was that for his plan to work local school districts would have to make dramatic cuts to their school budgets, and most of the savings would accrue to the state to help balance the General Fund budget.

Next came the Legislature and endless discussions about school consolidation and improved efficiency. Lawmakers were starting to hear from local school boards that taxes were going up despite their efforts to curb spending. Legislators wanted to appear to be doing something, even if they couldn’t quite articulate the problem they were trying to solve.

What the proposed fiscal 2011 budget will do—in contrast to what people have been saying—is raise property taxes. The state property tax rate may or may not go up for next year. The House version of the budget keeps the rate the same as this year; the Senate increases it a penny, to 87 cents per $100 of assessed value.

But the bigger problem is that both the House and Senate are underfunding the Education Fund again. Both are withholding almost $25 million that should have been transferred from the General Fund to the Education Fund. And the Senate is diverting almost $9 million more that should have gone into the Education Fund but now is going to be used to balance the General Fund.

Local school boards and local voters did their part this year. There will be essentially no growth next year in education spending, which is the important number because it determines the tax rate. Many districts actually reduced their education spending, but overall it’s up a small fraction of one percent.

That’s not easy. Even in this recession, schools are facing cost increases for health care, fuel, and salaries. Despite what the bean counters think, reducing staff to match declining enrollments is not a simple exercise. To even just level fund their budgets, school boards had to make cuts to programs, which diminishes the quality of education.

Local communities, therefore, will have to suffer the consequences of these cuts, but they are not being compensated with lower school taxes. Education spending will be flat next year, but residential and non-residential taxes are projected to increase almost $6 million in the House-passed budget or more than $22 million in the Senate version.

Property taxes should be going down, and they would be if the House and Senate weren’t short-changing the Education Fund. However, to meet their obligations to the Education Fund, the Legislature would have to raise some other broad-based taxes or make even more damaging cuts to the General Fund. It’s good they ruled out additional cuts. But once they acknowledged that they would need more revenue, there should have been an open debate about which taxes to raise.

They avoided such open debate because it’s an election year. But make no mistake, they decided to raise property taxes when they chose to short-change the Education Fund.