Save the date: May 30 is Harwood’s third budget vote
May 14, 2024 | By Lisa ScagliottiUpdate: This post was updated with information on ballots available for early voting as well as a mention of next steps should the latest budget proposal not win voter approval on May 30 and to add the district’s chart showing property tax impacts of the latest budget proposal.
The Harwood Unified Union School Board has chosen a new, lower 2024-25 budget proposal under $48 million that relies on staff layoffs and cutting elementary foreign language instruction, and it has set May 30 for the next special election.
Meeting for the first time since the April 30 defeat of the second budget proposal, the board on May 8 unanimously approved a third budget of $47,892,873 for voters to consider. That’s $2.95 million less than the original budget that failed on Town Meeting Day in March and $945,000 lower than the second version that lost at the polls by 166 votes the previous week.
The latest version is now 5.4% higher than the 2023-24 budget of $44.5 million, down from the nearly 12% increase that the first budget reflected; the revised budget voted on last week relied on a 7.6% increase. (see chart below)
Budget history since the Harwood district unified. Scroll over to see budget values. Source: HUUSD data. Graphic by Julia Bailey-Wells
This latest version also keeps the school district tax rate essentially level with what was needed for the current school year’s budget: $1.435 vs. the current $1.44. This is a measure that’s part of the overall education funding calculation.
But that’s where the similarity ends.
School Board Chair Ashley Woods of Warren summed up the grim reality: “It is incredibly hard to swallow that this is not a level-service budget – this is below that. We’re going to cut teachers. We’re going to cut interventionists,” she said. “But the fact remains that our taxes are going to go up.”
In a year of extraordinary pressures on the education funding matrix, reining in education spending to just $2.6 million more for 2025 over 2024 will mean cutting some 27 school district jobs, eliminating programs such as elementary school foreign language instruction, and cutting back on regular building maintenance and staff training.
Factors driving up costs include a 16% increase in health benefits for employees and a loss of state funding due to changes in the state education funding formula this year. “Our student population is flat but we have lost funding for approximately 100 students in this new formula,” Superintendent Mike Leichliter noted at last week’s school board budget presentation.
The latest budget proposal now calls for 11 additional job cuts on top of the 16.5 already factored into the first two budgets that voters rejected. Those cuts will mean layoffs which Leichliter said he very much wanted to avoid.
In education for 33 years as a teacher, principal, and 15 of those years as a superintendent, Leichliter said he’s never had to lay off staff. “I was very proud of that,” he told the board. “This is a route we did not want to come down to this year. We wanted to do this slowly over time …but it’s something we feel we need to do at this point in time in order to achieve a lower budget.”
This is Leichliter’s second year as a superintendent in Vermont going through the budget process. The irony of the timing of the layoff announcement was not lost on him either. “The teachers in our district are some of the finest people I’ve worked with,” he said. “It’s challenging entering teacher appreciation week knowing we have a very difficult budget.”
Property tax impacts of the latest school budget proposal on the May 30 ballot. The far right column notes increases for every $100,000 of assessed property values per town. Source: HUUSD budget presentation, May 8. Click to enlarge.
As Woods noted, people still will see increases in their property tax bills despite the additional spending cuts. However, the new estimated tax increases are half to two-thirds what was expected from the first budget presented on Town Meeting Day.
District Finance Director Lisa Estler shared details of the newly revised budget in a presentation to the school board last Wednesday. Property tax increases now range from a low of 10.5% for Duxbury to 19.3% for Warren; Waterbury would see a 14% increase. That compares with increases of 22-32% to support the first budget and 13-21% for the second budget.
Translated to dollars for every $100,000 of assessed property values, the new figures come to increases of $199 for Duxbury, $267 for Waterbury, and $378 in Warren. (Example: A property valued at $300,000 in each of those communities would see a tax increase of $597 in Duxbury, $801 in Waterbury, and $1,134 in Warren.)
Estler cautioned that those figures are based on calculations that were not final until a key piece of the formula provided by the state is settled. Gov. Phil Scott still needs to weigh in to either sign or veto lawmakers’ education funding proposal. An expected veto would mean reworking the state funding piece for consideration in a special legislative session in June.
The HUUSD School Board meets May 8 to review the latest FY25 school budget proposal. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Public asks for details, restraint
About two dozen district teachers and staff members attended last Wednesday’s school board meeting. Several spoke during the public comment period urging the board to consider the impacts of the budget cuts they were considering.
Brookside Primary School staffer KC Shogrin spoke in support of keeping teachers in “specials” areas such as physical education, art, languages and music who “are doing magical things for our students.” Some students may struggle in their main classes, she said, “but put them in music, art, French and they light up and it’s beautiful.”
Longtime Harwood educator Jacki McCarty said a freshman student asked about starting a GoFundMe campaign to pay for classes and programs they want to keep in the school budget such as languages and STEM subjects. She asked that district leaders spare program cuts as much as possible. “These kids are the stewards of our future,” she said. “Let’s show them that they matter to all of us.”
Harwood teacher, Waterbury resident and parent of two elementary schoolers, Jessica Deane spoke up for interventionists and said she disagrees with a public perception that school spending is excessive.
“I’m puzzled by this narrative of frivolous spending in schools. When I walk into our school every day, I don’t see frivolous maintenance spending. I see a school that’s falling down around us,” she said. “I see everybody working their hardest to meet the needs of all the students.”
Also during public comment, Duxbury resident David Specht asked the board to make a detailed version of the proposed school budget available to the public. He requested a breakdown showing line items for spending in order to be able to offer suggestions. “I suggest you post it on your website so everybody could see exactly where the money will be spent,” he said.
Estler addressed the request in her remarks later saying that the district’s computer software made it difficult to provide that level of detail now but an upgrade expected later this year might allow for that in the future.
New cuts will mean layoffs
The board discussion began with Estler and Leichliter reviewing the slides and walking through the list of proposed spending cuts. The latest version contains reductions to staffing and operations in addition to those included in the failed April 30 budget. The earlier budget proposals relied on retirements, resignations and transfers to eliminate positions. The slide presentation recaps the 16.5 full-time-equivalent positions cut through attrition. The newly revised version trims an additional 11 positions for an added savings of $945,466.
The latest round of budget cuts to bring the 20224-25 proposal under $48 million. Screenshot from the HUUSD budget presentation May 8.
Those cuts will affect programs, Leichliter said, and require layoffs. “We don’t have programs that are fluff. We do have programs that are not required by state statute,” he pointed out.
The largest single cut is $357,000 from ending the elementary World Language program which will mean laying off four full-time teachers. District schools have had some elementary foreign language instruction for about 20 years. It became universal when the district unified in 2017. “Unfortunately, that is one of our recommendations [for cuts] and that will have to involve layoffs,” Leichliter said.
Another four interventionist positions – specialists who work individually with students on subjects such as reading and math – will be eliminated as well, trimming $284,000. In those instances, Leichliter noted, there are other positions available to reassign those staff members.
All but three of the newly proposed cuts are to union positions. “There is an administrator position that we are looking at that will involve a layoff,” Leichliter said. He did not specify the role and said in an email on Friday that information would be shared after the individual was notified.
Another non-union position that has been vacant this year – a coordinator who worked on accommodations for students with disabilities – will be eliminated with those responsibilities covered by other positions. Finally, one district-wide position from the central office staff will be cut through a layoff, Leichliter said.
School administrators informed leaders of the teacher and staff unions of the staff reductions as they prepared their latest budget draft. Harwood social studies teacher and co-president of the Harwood Union Education Association Matt Henchen shared a statement from the union advocating support for the budget but disagreement with some of the staffing cuts:
“The Harwood Union Education Association strongly encourages community members to vote YES on the upcoming school budget vote although we are concerned with some of the specifics of how that budget will be achieved. We disagree with the decision to eliminate Elementary World Language K-6, which takes rich programming away from all our students and results in the layoff of four hardworking teachers in our district. We are also concerned about the continued elimination of interventionist positions, which will disproportionately impact our struggling learners.”
Henchen said the association would like to play a role in helping find ways to bring down district expenses going forward. “We are more than willing to work with the school board and local community to strategically identify ways of reducing our per-pupil costs in a way that does not negatively impact the programs and services that our students deserve," he said.
In a related matter, the current three-year labor contract covering the district’s teachers ends on June 30. Negotiators for both the union and school board have been in talks for several months regarding the next contract. Estler said the budget proposal on the May 30 ballot contains funds to cover estimated wage increases for teachers.
‘Feeling a gut punch’
Board member Life LeGeros of Duxbury was one of the first to comment on the new proposal, acknowledging that district leaders aim to do “the best for the most students” but saying the loss of interventionists is most troubling. As an educator and a parent, LeGeros said, he knows that a student struggling “can throw an entire academic career off base” in just one year. “Those interventionists do critical work every single day,” he said. “It’s just really devastating. This is going to have big impacts on equity. I’m feeling a gut punch at the moment.”
Board member Mike Bishop of Fayston asked whether any additional administrative cuts could be substituted for those positions working directly with students. Leichliter said there are no plans for additional administrative staffing changes for next year, citing multiple legal requirements. “While there is some community thought that we are administration-top-heavy, the data does not back that up,” he said.
He pointed to principals as an example – one area that’s been mentioned at board discussions for possible reductions. District legal counsel has cautioned that Harwood schools are of a size that cannot share a principal, the superintendent said. And state statute regarding contracts for principals states that principals with contracts ending this year – if they have been in their job for at least two years – must have been notified of a change to their contract by Feb. 1, he shared.
In a follow-up message to local reporters on Friday, Leichliter said staffing organization is something he hopes the school board’s newly formed Finance Committee will look at when it looks at long-term changes to bring down operating costs. “Just because we are not looking to reduce principals for FY25 does not mean it is not a consideration for the future,” he said.
Waterbury board member Dan Roscioli asked Estler and Leichliter how to convey the reasons for the lingering significant tax increases despite the level of cuts. In addition to reiterating the impact of the state funding formula revision, Leichliter reminded the group that local taxes fund more than local schools. “The property taxes collected in our six towns go into the collective education fund at the state level,” he said. “One hundred percent of that money does not come back to our school district. It’s dispersed across the state.”
As he suggested before the second revised budget was decided, LeGeros floated the idea to administrators and board members of reconsidering transferring a surplus of $535,000 from the 2022-23 budget into the district’s Maintenance Reserve Fund in order to reduce the number of personnel cuts in the new proposed budget. Voters on Town Meeting Day approved the transfer in what is a customary use of year-end surplus funds for facility projects.
None of the other board members supported the idea and both Estler and Leichliter advised to keep the transfer for building projects given the long list of repairs and updates that are needed.
Waitsfield member Bobbi Rood stressed that the Finance Committee will be looking across the budget to find savings. “Some of these are not quick fixes and cannot be done this year – We’re going to look at it all, but we just can’t do it for this coming year,” she said.
Large-scale change is “not something we can rush,” Woods said. She promised that the committee’s work ahead will dig into layers of the budget to cover “things the community wants to know.” For example, she said, “How do we cut administration? Do we close schools? There’s all the things we don’t want to talk about. I want to assure the public that this Finance Committee is going to talk about all of those things. That is the job they’re signing up for. It is going to happen but not in terms of this budget.”
Messaging to the public
In a discussion of wording to put on a postcard mailing to voters before the May 30 vote, Waterbury board member Elizabeth Brown cautioned against the district emphasizing the school district’s equalized tax rate which is essentially flat, because tax bills ultimately will be higher. “This to me is falling on dead ears,” she said, noting that people she’s heard from say they voted against the previous budgets “because none of this makes sense.”
Leichliter agreed. “When people say they don’t understand it, yes, it’s incredibly complex and it’s not something that we would create.”
In an effort to offer more details to the public before the next vote, the board and administrators said they would work on a list of frequently asked questions that would be posted soon on the school district’s website. There also will be an informational meeting on May 20 for members of the public to ask questions.
Warren member Jonathan Young said he hopes voters don’t continue to consider a “no” vote a way to “send a message to the state” about frustration over education funding.
Rood shared another worry: “I am concerned a little bit about parents who are thinking we are making too many cuts and they’re going to vote ‘no’ because they don’t think their child’s going to get a quality education.”
Woods replied, “I would hope those people were smarter than that and they know that voting ‘no’ means they’re going to get more cuts.”
After more than an hour of discussion, the board made no changes to the administration’s recommended third budget and unanimously approved putting the $47.9 million spending plan on the ballot for May 30. Voting will be held from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 30, in each of the Harwood district communities. As of Thursday, May 16, ballots are available for early and absentee voting from each of the six town clerks in the school district.
Note: School officials have explained that should the district not have a voter-approved budget by June 30 when the current fiscal year ends, the district may borrow up to 87% of the 2023-24 budget of $45.4 million. That would come to $39.5 million. The district would then continue to seek voter approval on a revised budget.
Conflict addressed: ‘We have it in hand’
At the outset of the budget discussion, Woods addressed a concern raised by a community member and former board member regarding the potential for a conflict of interest involving a current board member.
Brian Dalla Mura of Duxbury, who served on the school board for several months in 2021, emailed the board asking it address whether the budget discussions covering staffing cuts including administrators could pose a conflict for Moretown member Ben Clark. Jennifer Durren, co-principal at Crossett Brook Middle School, is Clark’s spouse.
Woods said the board has asked its lawyer, Pietro Lynn, about the circumstance multiple times in the past year. She read from a state statute that bars school district employees from serving on their district’s school board – noting however that a spouse of a district employee is eligible to hold a school board seat.
“‘However, it would likely be a conflict of interest to be involved in any manner that goes to the compensation or job security of the spouse’ – that's a quote from Pietro,” Woods read from her notes.
She continued that board members who have relatives employed by the district understand their role and the circumstances of when it is appropriate for them to recuse themselves from a discussion or vote. “So our view is that you're innocent until you do something wrong. They haven't done anything wrong. So they are going to serve their role on the board,” she said. “So just addressing that because it has come up and we have run it through legal. We have talked about it. We have it in hand.”
Following the meeting, Dalla Mura said he was disappointed in the response. “I’d say voting on a budget that includes personnel cuts definitely fits within the scope of ‘job security,’” he said.
Clark responded to an inquiry from the Waterbury Roundabout and Valley Reporter about the matter acknowledging his unique position of having a spouse in an administration role.
“Rest assured in this settled legal and ethical matter, my commitment to Moretown's welfare is unwavering. I took an oath,” Clark wrote in an email to the newspapers. “In consultation with Board leadership, I actively participate in general budget discussions and voting, stepping back only when necessary.”
Clark said he consults with board leaders about any potential conflicts, “no matter which former Board member under the previous administration raises them.” He dismissed Dalla Mura’s concern saying the budget should be the focus of attention. “Let’s keep our eyes on the broader picture—the health of our district during these challenging budget times. Make no mistake, I want to be re-elected, but I also want to sleep at night. I couldn't do either if I thought what I was doing had an element of a conflict of interest to it.”
Other business
The School Board also addressed multiple non-budget items on its agenda on Wednesday.
Pride flag: The board approved a request from the Harwood High School Gender and Sexuality Alliance club to fly the LGBTQIA+ community pride flag starting May 17 through the end of June. The flag has been flown in June for the past two years in observance of National Pride Month. In the request, faculty advisor Kendra Christiana explained that the group would like to fly the flag earlier this year because the club is hosting the Outright Vermont Queer & Allied Youth Summit at Harwood on Saturday, May 18, with students from around the state attending for activities, workshops and a prom. “Flying the flag for this event is one more way to make everyone from around Vermont feel they belong here at Harwood,” Christiana wrote.
The district flag policy asks applicants to conduct a school survey regarding a request. This year’s survey had 250 responses with 62% in favor and 38% opposed to flying the pride flag. In 2023, the survey garnered 297 responses with 78% in favor and 22% opposed. LeGeros, who is on the board’s Equity Committee, called the change “a very troubling trend” that others agreed was concerning and supported efforts for more education around the subject.
Committee assignments: The board appointed Roscioli to the newly formed Finance Committee. Other members in that group are Bishop, Rood, Young and Steve Rosenberg of Moretown. The committee will meet for the first time on May 15 at 4 p.m. at Harwood Union High School and via Zoom to organize and begin its work to look for long-term financial savings for the district.
Brown also was appointed to a new Equity Committee. She joins LeGeros and Victoria Taravella from Waterbury. That committee met for the first time on May 9.
Student trips: The board approved requests for several student trips – Harwood music and theater programs traveling to New York City May 26-27, and student trips to Spain and France over April break in 2025. The trips are paid for through fundraising and family contributions, Estler noted.
New policies: In an ongoing effort to update school district policies on a range of topics, the board approved revised versions of 10 policies. Topics include hiring procedures, public complaints, naming facilities, student privacy, student freedom of speech in school media, and selection of library materials. The full list of new policies with links to them is on the May 8 meeting agenda
Change in ESSER fund use: Director of Curriculum and Technology Shannon Lessley explained a request to reallocate some remaining federal COVID-19 relief ESSER funds to help pay for summer school programs in the district because the proposed fiscal 2025 budget does not have funding for the summer programs that will cost just over $300,000. The board approved the request.
Links for more information:
May 30 election warning and sample ballot with details on the May 20 public informational meeting about the next budget, taking place in person and via zoom at 6 p.m.
Publicity Committee of the School Board to discuss informing voters about the May 30 budget vote. Taking place Wednesday, May 15, at 6 p.m. via Zoom only. Agenda is here.
Finance Committee of the School Board’s first meeting, taking place Wednesday, May 15, at 4 p.m. in the Harwood Union High School conference room and via Zoom. Agenda is here.
More information on the HUUSD.org website’s budget vote page here.