Legends and Fantasies
Public
education is under attack from several quarters these days, and much of the
negative information is based on long-held and often trumpeted beliefs that are
the equivalent of urban legends. The problem
is that believing these legends leads to decisions that are bad for our state,
bad for our communities, and bad for our
children. Here are a few of the most
pernicious ones.
Legend
One:
The most prominent legend, and perhaps the most destructive one as well,
is that our dramatically increasing property taxes are due to growing school
costs, and that we can reverse the trend by cutting school costs – the more
cutting, the better. Fact: school
budgets have grown by an average of 5.2% in the last three years, while
education property taxes have risen 7.6% per year. How can that be if the primary use for
property taxes is to fund our schools? The truth is that while all education
property taxes go into the state Education Fund, they are not sufficient to pay
for our schools. By law, the state is
obligated to contribute additional resources from the general fund and other
specific sources like the lottery. In
fiscal year 2000, the State’s general fund financed 31% of our education
costs. Since then, the contribution has
increased at a rate slower than inflation, putting a greater burden on the
property tax. If the general fund was
still supporting 31% of our revenue costs, the education property tax could have
been reduced by about $70 million last year.
So the solution to our “property tax problem” lies directly with the
Governor and the Legislature who have decided to increase property taxes while
at the same time complaining about the burden they place on Vermonters and
blaming our schools.
One
indicator of the impact of lower school budgets is the much-touted target 3.5%
average increase in school budgets. If school costs had increased an average of
3.5% statewide in 2008, the net cost reduction would have been $6.1 million. Although not insubstantial, it is a tiny
fraction of the total cost of public education and less than the “vote down the
budgets” crowd would have us believe. In
fact, if schools had spent $6.1 million less in 2008, the tax rate would have
been reduced by only a fraction of one cent. As it turns out, Vermont school districts are
proposing budgets with increases averaging only 4.1% anyway, but having a
statewide mandate on this ignores the differences in needs among our individual
towns and will be far less effective and more dangerous than letting towns make
their own decisions on what they need and what they can afford.
Legend
Two: Vermonters are crying out for
lower school budgets. Fact: By the end of Town Meeting 2007, only 17
towns rejected their school budget while 233 districts passed theirs (93%
approval). And all this despite the war cries from Montpelier that school costs
are out of control and can only be made reasonable if the state increases the
level of pain associated with school spending and tilts the playing field
dramatically in favor of the budget cutters by devices like the two-vote
provision of Act 82. What Vermonters do
seems to want is lower property taxes if possible,
without doing great violence to their schools.
To a large extent income sensitivity and current use taxation have done
this, but in any event Legend One above makes it clear that cutting education
is not the answer.
Legend
Three: Small schools with their
inevitably higher per pupil costs are driving statewide school spending through
the roof. Fact: There are
some towns where declining school age populations are making schools less
efficient than they could be. And many
of these towns are addressing their problems by looking at consolidation or
other ways to improve educational offerings and spread the cost. Once again however there is a drumbeat to
lay the blame for school costs on Vermont’s geography, with the solution to
consolidate small town schools or to penalize them dramatically for the crime
of believing in small towns. The fact is
that is if the 50 smallest school districts all spent at the state average cost
per pupil this year, costs would actually rise slightly! This is
compelling evidence that our smallest school districts are not models of
inefficiency as some would have us believe.
Legend Four. Dramatic increases in property taxes are forcing
Vermonters to sell their homes. There is absolutely no evidence that this is
true. Fact: At last count about
75% of Vermonters were covered by the income sensitivity provisions of Acts 60
and 68, meaning that their property taxes were capped as a relatively modest
percentage of their incomes. Lower
income Vermonters with larger land holdings are definitely affected by property
tax increases, but the Current Use program affords them significantly lower
assessments on open land.
So
I urge school board members and Vermonters in general to question these overly
simplistic arguments and ask for the facts. To paraphrase,
“The problem ain’t what people don’t know, but what
they know that ain’t so.”
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