Is Vermont’s declining student enrollment driving up costs?

No.   Declining enrollment doesn’t drive up costs. It’s true that Vermont’s student enrollment has been declining at a rate of about 1 percent per year.  But, school costs have also been declining for the past two years.

If you listen to some who are weighing in on Vermont’s school spending lately, you’d think that a lower student count is causing increased spending.  In fact, VTDigger fell prey to this fallacy in a headline today about the newly released study of Vermont’s public education system.

Here’s the problem.  Some people are focused on spending per pupil when they talk about school costs.  As the number of students in school goes down, the spending per pupil goes up.  But increased spending per pupil doesn’t mean higher school costs.

Consider this:

If a couple with two children earns $50,000 a year and spends $12,000 for housing (mortgage, insurance, and taxes) you could say that the family is spending $3,000 per person for housing.

When the two children leave home to make lives for themselves, if the couple still makes $50,000 and their housing costs have stayed the same, their per-person cost will have doubled—now $6,000 per person—even though they’re not spending a dime more on housing.   The new situation with fewer people in the household is just as affordable after the children left as it was before. The couple may consider moving to a smaller house to save money.  But wanting to save money is not the same as having unaffordable cost increases.

The fuss about Vermont’s increased spending per pupil is confusing Vermonters into thinking that our public education system is unaffordable.  In fact, it’s as affordable now as it has been for the past two decades.

Let’s hope our policy makers don’t make the mistake of rushing to cut costs even when they aren’t rising, and leaving our children to face the consequences.