School officials: Job cuts key to containing Harwood’s FY26 budget
December 16, 2024 | By Lisa Scagliotti The Harwood Unified Union School District aims to present a budget to voters on Town Meeting Day with an increase lower than the rate of inflation, but reining in costs likely will mean cutting 15-20 full-time jobs.
That was the message delivered at the first of several public sessions to discuss public school funding for next year held at Crossett Brook Middle School last week. About two dozen community members attended in person to ask questions and hear district officials explain the many factors they must navigate to build a budget that will win voter approval and adequately run schools for the 2025-26 school year.
Some key details:
The Harwood Unified Union School District School Board has directed the administration to present a budget starting on July 1 that increases spending by no more than 2.75% over the current school year’s budget.
If the district made no changes to staffing or programming from this year, the new budget would increase by 7.3% or about $3.5 million, according to Director of Finance and Operations Lisa Estler. On a third vote last May, Harwood district voters approved a school budget of $47,892,873 for the current school year, a 5.4% increase over 2023-24.
Given that staffing accounts for more than 70% of the district’s spending, 15-20 full-time equivalent positions would need to be trimmed to present an FY26 budget with less than a 3% increase, officials said.
Superintendent Mike Leichliter was joined by Estler, school board Chair Ashley Woods of Warren, and five other board members: Ben Clark and Steve Rosenberg from Moretown, Waterbury’s Corey Hackett and Dan Roscioli, and Bobbi Rood from Waitsfield.
The Crossett Brook session had a workshop-like format and was the first of what school board members say will be several such gatherings before the budget is finalized in January for the March vote. It began with attendees being asked to share their questions about school funding in general and the 2025-26 budget in particular. Attendees included some parents of current students, parents of recent graduates, and others who no longer or never have had students in Harwood schools.
Inquiries ran the gamut:
How are students counted? Estler explained that for funding purposes, enrollment is based on a two-year average now weighted to reflect actual costs of educating various categories of students.
How does the Harwood district spending compare to the state per pupil average? Superintendent Leichliter answered that it is below, but close to the limit without going over and triggering a penalty. The current threshold is $15,926 per pupil; Harwood’s spending in the draft budget is $15,554.
How do early college programs for high school students affect enrollment and funding the district receives? “It does count against us,” Leichliter said, but he noted that the state deducts funding from a maximum of five early college students regardless of how many students take advantage of the state-funded program.
Does the school district have any control over health benefits for teachers and staff? Vermont manages health care for educators at the state level, Leichliter said. That issue is among topics being reviewed by a state commission on the future of Vermont public education where Leichliter is a member representing superintendents. Other areas the commission is discussing to find across-the-board savings include meal programs and the free-college program, he said.
Can bus routes be cut to save money? Leichliter noted that many buses are not full and some routes have been cut this year. The district has put the bus contract for next year out to bid. In fact, bids were due to be opened on Friday.
Could the district move its administrative offices out of leased space? The district’s lease for office space in Waitsfield runs out at the end of the 2025-26 school year, Leichliter said, and it hopes to move central office staff to space the district owns.
Are higher taxes leading to better test scores? Leichliter said new state tests make comparisons difficult, but he pointed to the latest school rankings by U.S. News and World Report which show three of the top Vermont elementary schools are in the Harwood district: Waitsfield Elementary at number 3, Warren Elementary at number 9, and Moretown Elementary at number 10. Fayston Elementary ranked 23rd and Brookside Primary was 65th. Crossett Brook ranked 16th for middle schools and Harwood was 30th. Harwood Union High School ranked 12th on the list of best high schools, according to the report. “We are performing well,” Leichliter said.
Are district officials concerned about changes at the federal level and whether a new administration might cut federal education funding. Leichliter said yes while Eslter pointed out that federal dollars make up less than 2% of Harwood’s revenue.
Consolidation/reconfiguration in the spotlight
The answer to one question steered the discussion to the overall structure of the district and future costs well beyond the 2025-26 budget. Attendees at one table asked what happened to interest from several years ago in closing Fayston Elementary School and consolidating its enrollment among other schools. Leichliter said Fayston’s enrollment has grown recently, so a consolidation discussion does not presume that Fayston would close.
Consolidation is now the focus of a new study that the school board has commissioned and a new committee that the board has created.
“We are looking at consolidation – period,” said board Chair Ashley Woods. But we can’t do it without the feasibility study.”
At its Nov. 6 meeting, the board unanimously approved spending $48,500 to have the Burlington architectural firm TruexCullins begin a master plan for the district’s facilities for the next 30 years. The firm presented a four-phase proposal and the work commissioned so far covers the first two phases.
The architects will look at the needs of each school, what their strengths are, etc., Woods said, with the direction to report back to the school board in January. “The plan is to have a plan next year and the year after,” she said.
TruexCullins has been working with the school district since 2015 on building-related planning although no significant building projects have been undertaken during the decade. Just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus was on merging the middle schools and expanding Crossett Brook Middle School along with significant renovations to Harwood Union High School. Voters overwhelmingly rejected a $59.5 million bond proposal for that project in November 2021.
Last fall, TruexCullins architects laid out a proposal for more than $90 million of possible renovations and repairs to Harwood Union Middle/High School. That effort involving a series of meetings to gather community input was put on hold in the spring after voters rejected the 2024-25 school budget in March and tax increases just to fund school operations were in the double digits.
Now the firm is being asked to do an updated review of all of the Harwood school buildings to determine their condition, building needs and associated costs, in order to make recommendations for how to potentially reconfigure the district with fewer school buildings and ultimately reduce building-related costs in the future.
At TruexCullins’ request, the school board last week approved forming a Building Use & Visioning Committee for this process. It has three board members so far – J.B. Weir of Waitsfield, Ben Clark of Moretown and Vice Chair Cindy Senning of Duxbury –and Woods said it wants to add a member of the public. The group meets for the first time this Thursday at 6 p.m. via Zoom only. It will discuss its role and timeline.
Leichliter explained that the process will not recommend facility changes for the 2025-26 school year. “It won’t happen for next year. It’s a process that will take time, but that is under way,” he told the gathering at Crossett Brook last week.
A detailed look is needed, he said, to determine which facilities are worth investing in and which may be too expensive to maintain long-term. For example, Leichliter noted that the district’s largest elementary school, Brookside Primary School in Waterbury, is also the oldest school building in the district and “the building with the most needs after Harwood,” he said.
Estler cautioned that consolidation may come with up-front costs. For example, Waitsfield Elementary School is at its capacity now and could not accommodate many more students should another valley school close. School officials also acknowledged that consolidating facilities could have down sides of losing community centers and longer travel for some students.
Attendee Matt Lillard asked about past studies that looked at building capacities and conditions – are school officials using any of the data the district already collected and paid for? Woods replied that the architects are “not starting from scratch.” In fact, she said, TruexCullins’ history with the district was a key reason to hire them for the latest study.
And given recent trends that saw education property taxes in the Harwood district increase by double digits this year, “More people want to consider consolidation now,” Woods said. “We’re going to turn those rocks over thoroughly.”
Budget slideshow crunches the numbers
Estler then shared her budget slide presentation which is posted on the district’s business office webpage under budget development.
The district will need to find cuts to afford cost increases that are growing faster than inflation, Estler said. To maintain the same level of education and staffing currently in place this year, the budget would cost $51.4 million which is $3.5 million higher than what voters approved on the third budget vote in May.
The draft budget has a bottom line of $49,209,927 for next school year, an increase of just 2.75% over this year’s $47,892,873, Estler showed. That compares to information shared by the state showing that school districts around Vermont have begun working on draft budgets with increases averaging 6.1%. The state tax commissioner already has projected that the average education property tax increase next year will be 5.9%.
To keep the Harwood district’s spending increase under 3%, Eslter said the district will need to trim the equivalent of 15-20 full-time positions. This year’s budget also relied on staffing cuts but retirements and resignations accounted for most of the 27.5 full-time equivalent positions cut. Only six layoffs were necessary for this year. Estler and Leichliter said they so far have received word few retirements coming at the end of this school year, so layoffs likely will play a larger role for 2025-26.
Leichliter also acknowledged that school officials are looking at increasing class sizes given the need to reduce staffing.
Looking at the past several years of budgets and inflation figures, Eslter shared a slide showing that Harwood’s budgets have generally mirrored inflationary increases but this year’s increase of under 3% will be less than inflation.
Estler pointed out that the draft budget also represents an increase of just 2% in educational funding that the district receives from tax dollars. The district has other revenue sources such as grants and federal funding for expenses such as special education. Estler projects that those sources will account for just over $8 million in FY26, up from $7.5 million this year.
Several slides and much of the discussion revolved around Vermont’s complex education funding formula and the recent calls to update it. Leichliter noted some ideas being discussed in the state commission he’s serving on such as creating a foundation formula as other states currently use. The formula sets limits on how much growth school budgets may have each year, he said. The state commission is expected to share its recommendations soon, ahead of the legislative session that convenes in January.
One slide used data from the 2022-23 school year to list the education tax revenue generated by each town in the Harwood district which totaled over $50.7 million. Harwood that year only needed $42.6 million to fund its budget. That meant that $8.1 million of local taxes – 16 cents of every dollar collected – was retained by the state to distribute to other school districts with lower taxing capacity.
School board members expressed their frustration at the task ahead. “What are we sacrificing in terms of quality?” said Waitsfield member Bobbi Rood. “Nobody wants to sacrifice quality. Nobody wants to fire teachers.”
Attendee Tamatha Hasse thanked the board members for their work in tackling the thorny issue. “You are volunteers,” she said.
While critical of the circumstances and the growing tax burden on the public, attendee Chris Viens also gave the elected officials credit. “I commend the school board for what they’ve done,” he said. “Let’s hope that the state legislature comes up with some ideas that are going to end this problem for a lot of the people that are suffering.”
Board member Ben Clark closed out the session saying he wants the community to know that the school board takes its charge very seriously. “We are really hard at work trying to think about how we can do the very best we can do with the very least amount of tax dollars we can get away with,” he said. “We’re balancing the tax bills with the care of the kids, and we’re trying figure out a way forward. But we’re trying to do all of that with this background noise of the state and their formulas and changing targets...We’re really hard at work behind the scenes trying to get business done for you.”
Mad River Valley Television recorded the informational meeting at Crossett Brook. See that recording online here.