Glenn wrote:
“Perhaps someone could start a new thread to talk about school issues? While they all end up boiling down a town tax bill, they’re not really in the same category as town and selectboard issues. BUHS, the Brattleboro school district, and the municipality are all a little different”
Good idea, and wish granted. Carry on…
Some links
Here is the BUHS 2015 annual report summary as a pdf.
Here is the full BUHS 2015 annual report.
Brattleboro Tax Implications
Well, this made me laugh out loud – be careful what you wish for. Unfortunately I didn’t start a story because I really don’t have much insight into the school budgets themselves or any issues there, other than a general feeling that a) they don’t get much public attention (for or against) given how much they cost (and I’m not faulting the school boards – maybe it’s just that everyone’s happy with the schools), and b) it just doesn’t seem like there’s any correlation between local budgets voters pass and local property taxes (which is, I believe, a state issue). So I’ll just offer this food for thought…
Calculating the expected tax impact from the BUHS budget on someone who owns a $200,000 house in Brattleboro:
While I like running down numbers and CLEARLY have way too much time on my hands this evening, working through all this just seems very complicated… and while I’m sure there are good reasons for it, a $165K drop in the budget leading to a $39 increase in the actual taxes someone has to pay is probably pretty frustrating for the school board (not to mention the taxpayers).
Also for what it’s worth, two data points from across the state; the Department of Taxes provides a breakdown of all the town tax rates, and these are the averages by town (not by number of residents or total grand list or anything, so Burlington carries the same weight as small towns):
…please note that I’m not saying we should strive for those numbers, I was just personally surprised to find that apparently in most Vermont towns the education tax rate is almost three times the municipal rate.
[Please don’t turn this into a municipal tax discussion – I won’t ask to start yet another thread (!) but I’ve dug through Brattleboro’s municipal taxes before and in general the reason they’re the seventh highest in the state (not THE highest!) is because we have everything when it comes to services – police, fire, library, parks, trash pickup… – where many other towns do without some or all of those.]
School Tax Rate
Here is a good link that explains the basics of the School funding formula
http://vttransparency.org/index.cfm?section=all&pg=Education_Finance
It us actually not uncommon to spending in a district to go down but the taxes rise because the school taxes are based on a formula that is based on the Base tax rate set by the legislature ( it went up .02 this year), the number of “equalized” pupils in the school and the equalized grand list devised by the state dept of taxes. The local boards can cut or change spending but it is hard for them to control the base rate or the property valuation formula. you add on the Income- sensitivity tax exemption and you get a very complex system that is difficult for everyone.
Your figures look low even
Your figures look low even though you’re only calculating BUHS. What do you calculate overall school taxes paid for a $200,000 home? And yes, the school taxes are a much higher percentage of the tax bill than most people realize, as you said about 70% of the tax bill. In fact I heard a former selectboard member asked if they knew what the percentage was some years ago and they had no idea it was that high either. The state figures aside our town spends one of the highest amounts per child in school in the country. This can all be verified by figures released annually by the Federal Government, easily obtained through a search. I’ve looked through them before, it’s a PDF file.
Vermont stands yearly somewhere in the top three nationally on amount spent per child with test scores sitting in the median mark and overall test scores for those from less advantaged homes (using free school lunch as the criteria) being even lower. This is pretty much average standing using test scores as the criteria. And I believe I saw figures awhile ago that show that this is true of BUHS also. In other words we get average results yet even spend in the three to five (it varies year to year) nationally per student. And for all that money spent we are not see any advantages for our less advantaged kids. Our class sizes are significantly smaller and I would assume that our expenditures on enrichment classes is probably higher than average. None of that is a bad thing but I find it strange that our huge expenditures per student aren’t showing up in some measurable way. It doesn’t seem to be.
This is not a criticism of teaching staff, it’s a much more difficult job than most realize. However something seems a bit off considering how expensive our schools are. And I am only addressing Brattleboro schools so many of the likely reasons for other Vermont schools including the argument about the expense of smaller rural schools aren’t really applicable. I find it extremely problematic that voters aren’t really attending or paying much attention to the school budget. It appears that the school board pretty much has a free hand in setting their expenditures without much input at all. Personally I think having a show of hands vote instead of a paper ballot is one problem. Our tax rates are, in my opinion, unsustainable. I think that it’s imperative that more citizen focus and input on the school budgets might be in order considering that the town taxes are only about 30% of our entire property tax bill, the rest being school taxes. And it appears to me that the schools have been able in large part to set their budgets almost at will as there has historically been little attention from taxpayers who have been more focused on town expenses. It’s not a matter of not supporting kids or schools, it’s a matter of making sure that the school budget is effective, prudent and lean.
Also might I add that I find the percentage of residents who get income sensitivity exemptions is proof alone that something is way out of whack with the taxes in town. To have such a large percentage needing relief from the state on taxes indicates to me that the taxes are not in line with what income levels are overall. That figure should be much much lower, taxes and town and school expenditures should reflect what taxpayers can afford to pay and the percentage of people getting adjustments indicates to me that this is not happening here. We spend a lot more than we can afford, taxpayers have to file for exemptions and adjustments because they can’t afford the taxes and then the additional cost gets passed along to a smaller percentage of residents. This town (schools included) seems to be living way beyond it’s means.
FY15 Brattleboro Education Taxes
For the current (FY15) year, this is how Brattleboro taxes would break down for the (resident) owner of a $200,000 house (references are the town Treasurer page and the Department of Taxes info sheet):
This does NOT take into account the income sensitivity part of the education taxes – that depends entirely on the homeowner’s income and I don’t know how anyone would show that, other than to say that the majority of people would see at least slightly lower education taxes than this (but the numbers above are the baseline).
There’s nothing we can do about statewide education funding with local votes. My two cents, though (actually this year the state is setting it at $1.00, hahaha… hmmph), would be that having a statewide local property tax has just made things WAAAYY too complicated. While I definitely think statewide funding has a role, I think that it should be much easier for voters to be able to trace the dots: lower the local school budget and local property taxes go down, raise the local school budget and local property taxes go up.
"I think that it should be much easier for voters"
Agreed that it should be much easier. And that decreases in budget should equal decreases in tax.
We complain that people don’t go to the BUHS meeting, but if they do, and vote down the budget, and the budget gets cut, and it gets re-presented… taxes still could go up!?! That would make it seem like taking time to attend and participate in a meeting is fruitless.
I’m surprised school board members put up with this. They dedicate time and energy to working out what they think is a responsible budget at a price they think people can afford, and then the price gets changed on them by higher ups.
It seems like the problem isn’t that local taxpayers don’t have a say in the budget, it’s that the entire district doesn’t really determine the end amount. That might lead some to find the entire process or system quite futile.
Is this the way we’d do it if we created a new school system from scratch?
Hang onto your wallets!
Is your 2016 CLA figure an estimate using last year’s figure? It is more likely than not that Brattleboro’s CLA figure is lower this year than last year. Southern Vermont real estate sales have picked up slightly. That would raise the amount of the total tax in your figure.
It’s unclear from the information in the BUHS report whether the listed tax rates already have the CLA figured in , or not. Probably not, since the CLA isn’t listed anywhere. It is customary to provide CLA-adjusted tax rates, but maybe BUHS’s budget are completed before the figures are available.
So Brattleboro is looking at, what, an increase of 8 cents (was it?) on the municipal budget that has had ~500k cut from the solid waste line, and at least 2 cents from the BUHS budget, probably more when adjusted for the 2016 CLA. What will the tax increase be for the town school district budget?
CLA and Brattleboro Town Schools
I used the FY15 CLA (Common Level of Appraisal) figure for the FY16 estimate above; while the BUHS budget has presumably hard figures, there are other variables (like the state school property tax rate) that aren’t set until May. I don’t know if there’s a current CLA available, but as Maus pointed out if the CLA goes down, the final property tax goes up. Again, that’s out of local hands.
The Brattleboro School District board has as website (http://www.brattleborotownschoolboard.org/) and their budget goes to Brattleboro’s Representative Town Meeting. I don’t know what that looks like, but I suspect it’s similar since at the time of this writing the first line in their Community Conversations box about their informational meeting is “Why will school taxes be down in Brattleboro but up on your tax bill?”
school daze
Just a quick word on the state-promulgated notion that small schools drive up state-wide costs. Our local board has kept spending level or a bit reduced over several years, but, as Brattleboreans have found, lower budgets do not seem to lead to lower school taxes. Inquiring minds want to know … WHY??? Someone is spending more; who? And why are the rest of us paying for it?
Small schools
Most small schools have had minimal budget increases over the last 10 years, while larger schools have increased by leaps and bounds. Particularly certain schools in Chittenden County. Is there any wonder why Montpelier wants to focus on the phony “per-pupil” measure of school spending?
And if anyone wants an explanation of why per-pupil cost is a phony measure of school spending, I’d be happy to rant.
Rant away
Rant away
The per-pupil scam
I’m not feeling all that ranty today, but it’s basically this: Schools just don’t spend money on a per pupil basis.
Let’s say you have a classroom that has 20 students in it. You heat the room, you pay for the electricity, you pay the teacher a salary and benefits. Let’s say it all comes to $100,000, a nice round number. Your per-pupil cost is $5,000.
Now let’s say five kids move away – a quarter of the students – leaving you with 15 in the classroom. Do you make the teacher’s position a .75 FTE position because he or she is teaching a quarter fewer kids? No. Do you cut the teacher’s health care insurance by a quarter? No. Do you turn off 25% of the lights in the classroom? No. Do you turn down the heat? No.
All of the costs remain the same, but the “per-pupil” figure shoots up by $1,666. If, instead of five kids leaving, 15 left, maybe the remaining five could squeeze into the classroom next door and you could actually cut costs AND per pupil spending. Maybe not.
So “per-pupil” spending is okay as a very general thumbnail sketch of overall spending on a statewide or even countywide level. It’s not an equitable way to distribute funds – since a fixed per-pupil amount will go farther in one district than it does in another (which I think is against Brigham). It’s a terrible measure of spending to use as part of an already overly complicated formula of taxation. And it’s also a terrible measure of efficiency, effectiveness or thrift.
Vermont currently uses a three year rolling average to figure the number of “equalized pupils” so that schools aren’t hit with sudden, large losses of per-pupil-based state funding. But guess what? The Shumlin administration wants to end that practice. So under their plan, the classroom above would not only have a higher per-pupil cost to raise your local tax rate, it would lose 25% of its state funding at the same time, shifting even more of the burden to the local tax rate.
Chestnuts
Tinker with the numbers, tweak the variables…
When and where do we talk about the system itself?
Chuang Tzu:
A keeper of monkeys said that each monkey was to have three chestnuts in the morning and four at night. But the monkeys were very angry at this; so the keeper said they might have four in the morning and three at night, with which arrangement they were all well pleased.
Back in the day...
I’ve been looking at the history of our schools system pre-1900. No real clues there. Everything worked pretty well. There were schoolhouses in neighborhoods around town. Qualified, interested persons seem to be able to start a school without much trouble. Teachers were given exams each year. Parents paid for books. Schools had local competitions with one another. School board discussions were often on which books were best, or the school facilities. There was a connection to regional and state education, but there state wasn’t the boss of everyone. Imposing a national curriculum would likely have led to another civil war. : )
No paras. No bloated administrative offices. No expensive sports programs. No national testing. No computers. No phones in each student’s hand. Kids walked to school, so no busses or transport costs. Extracurricular activities were in the community, in clubs, in town hall events, in debates, and at home.
Teacher, desk, paper, pen, books and roof above was all that we required.
It was one of the most prosperous times in Brattleboro history, too.