Harwood school board regroups to rework FY25 budget
March 13, 2024 | By Lisa Loomis | The Valley ReporterFaced with a resounding rejection of the proposed 2024-25 school budget at the ballot box last week, the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board met late last week ahead of schedule to reorganize and begin discussing next steps to bring a new budget to voters later this spring.
Numbering just 12 members with two Waterbury vacancies, the HUUSD School Board meets by Zoom on March 8 to reorganize and begin looking at revising the budget proposal that voters rejected on Town Meeting Day. Five of the attendees are district administration staff. Screenshot
The first order of business was to choose new board leaders as the former chair and vice chair, Kristen Rodgers and Kelley Hackett, both stepped down when their terms ended on Town Meeting Day. The board unanimously elected Warren member Ashley Woods as chair and Cindy Senning of Duxbury as vice chair. It also welcomed newly elected Moretown member Steve Rosenberg to his first meeting. Rosenberg succeeds Rodgers.
The board meets tonight at 6 p.m. in the Harwood library and online via Zoom and YouTube. It will dig into the process of reducing the $50.8 million budget that failed 2,640 to 1,439 last week. Harwood is one of 30 school districts across Vermont where budgets failed to win voter approval last week. When the board met on Friday, it picked April 10 as a target to have a new draft budget completed, aiming for a revote 30 or so days afterward.
As Friday’s budget discussion began, Superintendent Mike Leichliter laid out the first two questions for the board to answer: “At the end of this conversation tonight we need answers to two questions: When does the board want to have its second vote? And what additional information do you want us to bring for the next meeting?” he said.
To start the conversation, school district Finance Director Lisa Estler presented slides reviewing details of the failed budget and then showing various lower alternative spending levels and their resulting tax hikes.
The $50.8 million budget that was defeated reflected an 11.94% increase in spending and a tax rate of $1.58 (after a state discount of 9 cents under the new state education funding formula). That’s up 9.9% over the current equalized tax rate of $1.44. Those figures are the rates before the Common Level of Appraisal is factored in to adjust for real estate assessments not keeping pace with market values.
That original budget would have resulted in tax increases of 22% to 31.7% with Duxbury seeing the lowest and Warren the highest increases due to each town’s real estate values. Those figures were calculated using a yield (funds from the state) of $9,775 per equalized pupil. An earlier yield of $9,171 for that same $50.8 million budget projected tax increases of 30-40% across the district.
In her presentation, Estler demonstrated the impact of several levels of cuts ranging from $1 million up to $4.5 million:
Cutting $1 million would mean tax increases of 19% to 28.4%.
Cutting $1.5 million would mean tax increases of 17.4% to 26.7%.
Cutting $2.7 million would mean 13.9% to 23% increases.
Cutting $3.6 million would carry increases of 11.1% to 19.9%.
Cutting $4.5 million would result in tax increases of 8.6% to 17.2%.
Put another way, those scenarios gradually cut annual spending increases from a high of 9.74% (to support a budget of $49.8 million) to a low of 2.03% (for a budget of $46.3 million). By comparison, the $50.8 million budget that voters rejected last week represented a 11.94% increase over the 2024 school budget.
Estler told the board that there is now talk at the state level of the legislature increasing the yield to $10,000, but that will not be set until later this spring. The higher the yield, the lower the tax rate, she pointed out. Because the yield reflects education spending across the state, and because 30 budgets failed last week and 10 have yet to go before voters, projected reductions in spending could increase the yield, she explained.
Estler went through the same scenarios, using a projected yield of $10,000 per student, and tax increases dropped to as low as 8.4% to 17% with the $3.6 million spending cut for a budget just under $47.2 million.
During the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, the board discussed various approaches to cutting the budget, whether a specific bottom-line number should be used as a goal, or whether targeting a specific level of staff and/or programming cuts made more sense.
Moretown board member Ben Clark asked Estler at what point her budget-cutting would require staff reductions. “Our community is deeply concerned about tax rates that reflect their own values, but also peoples’ livelihoods and making sure that we’re honoring the fact that we’re talking about peoples’ jobs. Can you tell me with which scenario we’re making cuts to live human beings in our district?” he asked.
Clark’s spouse, Jennifer Durren, works as a co-principal at Crossett Brook Middle School.
Estler replied that the scenarios calling for cuts of $2.7 to$4.5 million would require staffing cuts.
She reminded the board that the proposed $50.8 million budget that was on the ballot included $1 million for the district’s maintenance reserve fund. It also relied on transferring the 2023 budget surplus of $535,000 to the maintenance fund. Voters approved the surplus transfer on the ballot last Tuesday.
Estler said she was hopeful that foregoing the $1 million for maintenance and cutting $535,000 from the budget would help avoid cutting staff positions. The surplus would still be put into maintenance as planned and approved by voters.
Board member Mike Bishop of Fayston said he might frame things differently than Clark and asked, “Where are there enrichment classes, per se, that might affect the student experience from kindergarten to high school? Where in this budget can we ask a question like that? Where can we find programs that are not required to be taught?”
Warren board member Jonathan Young noted that all board members are going to have something they want to protect from budget cuts and said he didn’t want spending cuts to be made without full board consideration.
“This is not going to be a simple matter. It’s not going to be fun and it’s not going to be easy. We need to get a sense of what is important to this board to protect and what does the board think can be on the table. If we’re making cuts, what are we cutting? It can’t just be Lisa [Estler] giving us numbers. This has to be a lot of line items and going over lists,” he said.
No votes were taken, but the board members expressed support for their starting goal to be cutting 5% from the budget that voters rejected on March 5. That would be approximately $2.5 million.
The board also considered how to engage the public between now and adopting a revised budget on April 10. One idea was to hold town-by-town budget hearings to review tax implications specific to each community. Board member Danielle Dukette of Fayston suggested holding one budget meeting at Harwood instead, which Woods favored.
At Young’s suggestion, the board agreed to hold at least one extra meeting as Estler continues to work on budget scenarios and as public feedback is provided.
In giving Estler some direction, Woods said, “I don’t think people want to know pre-CLA tax implications, but they do want to know post-CLA tax implications and the impact on each town and the tax impact based on the value of your home.”
She also asked Estler to provide suggestions for cuts short of cutting teachers and to also show the impact of cutting 10 teachers.
As the meeting concluded, Leichliter said a measured approach is best and he cautioned that deep program cuts would make it harder to hire staff.
“We’re going to end up starting the school year with more vacancies than we have now. From what we’re being told, we have four more years of challenges. If we cut too much too soon, we won’t be able to meet our legal obligations to students. This board doesn’t set tax rates or CLA. All we can control is the increase to our budget. It’s important that we don’t pass a budget that our community can’t absorb and afford but also important to propose a budget that can adequately fund our classrooms and our needs,” he said.
Other reorganization action
In addition to choosing its new leaders for the next year, the board’s reorganization involved: naming Bobbi Rood, Waitsfield, as finance officer and Dukette as assistant finance officer; Clark as recording secretary, and Bishop as Harwood’s representative to the Central Vermont Career Center School Board. School administrators were approved to serve as truant officers.
The board also designated The Valley Reporter and the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus as newspapers of record. The board said it would consider a request to add the Waterbury Roundabout online newspaper to that list at an upcoming meeting.
Newspaper community survey
In an effort to gather public opinion following last week’s school budget defeat, Waterbury Roundabout and The Valley Reporter have created an online survey. Community members are asked to comment on their vote and offer feedback on what they could support as the school board prepares for a revote to have a budget to run the district’s schools for the 2024-25 school year.
The survey so far has had more than 270 responses. It will remain open through Sunday, March 17. Find and fill it out online here.
Waterbury Roundabout reporter Lisa Scagliotti contributed to this report.