Compliance with a new directive in Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s budget address last month would have meant cutting 20 professional positions next year from the Springfield School District.
www.eagletimes.com
2017-02-08 / Front Page
Superintendents: Governor’s proposed ‘level-funded’ school budget not for FY2018
By TORY JONES
toryb@eagletimes.com
Springfield School Superintendent Zach McLaughlin, left, talks with school board members about Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s proposed changes to future education funding. — TORY JONES
Springfield School Superintendent Zach McLaughlin, left, talks with school board members about Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s proposed changes to future education funding. — TORY JONES
SPRINGFIELD — Compliance with a new directive in Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s budget address last month would have meant cutting 20 professional positions next year from the Springfield School District. However, the governor’s call for level-funded school budgets appears to be a guideline for the Fiscal Year 2019 budget, and not meant to take place immediately, all according to Springfield School Superintendent Zach McLaughlin.
When the time comes to look at the governor’s proposals for FY2019, “we have to be clear about what we value,” McLaughlin said on Monday, Feb. 6 at a regular school board meeting.
School boards in Springfield and Rockingham sounded off on Monday about the governor's call for significant changes to Vermont school budgets, which the governor talked about on Tuesday, Jan. 24 in his first budget address.
In Springfield, McLaughlin said that, following discussions with state legislators in Montpelier, it is his understanding that the governor does not intend to ask school districts to make this change for the upcoming budget, but that districts will need to start thinking about these changes for FY2019.
The governor’s address was not really about what will happen this year, but was more about “planting a flag,” McLaughlin said on Monday.
His concern at this point is that it may be a confusing message to the voting public, especially just before budget voting season, and because FY2019 is under discussion when FY2018 has not yet been voted on.
McLaughlin said voters may be worried about approving the proposed budget for the coming year, which the school district has been working on. The existing proposed budget set for vote in March, people would be getting a tax cut this year, he said.
If the Springfield School District had answered the governor’s call this time around, it would have meant 20 professional positions “walking out the door to meet that mandate” for 2018, he said.
McLaughlin also said that he has heard from state legislators that they have a real interest in having more ongoing dialogue with the school district.
It may be difficult for school administrators to anticipate the governor’s exact course until he has had a chance to clarify his plans, McLaughlin said.
Scott presented what he describes as a “balanced budget without increasing taxes or fees or cutting programs for Vermonters in need.”
The proposed budget makes “strategic investments in education” to help the state move toward an early care-through-college education system and attract working families to Vermont, the governor said.
He also proposed to keep school budgets at fiscal year 2017 levels, “level-funding” the state’s base appropriations at the FY2017 post-rescission level, which he said would eliminate the need for higher taxes or fees, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
His budget proposal recommends policy changes in the education fund, and moving the state’s contribution for higher education, teachers’ normal retirement liability, and retired teachers’ health care to the education fund.
That would effectively take funding from the K-12 fund at the state and federal level, and move it to other areas of the budget, such as for teacher retirement and Pre-K, McLaughlin said. If that is what the governor plans to do, discussion will be around Title funds, which are closely tied to census data, and similar funding for special education, McLaughlin said.
The Springfield School District loses an average of 1 percent of the student population per year, on par with the state average trend, McLaughlin said. He also mentioned that the school district has been working hard at reducing spending.
If those things come to fruition, “as a group, we are probably going to be in a changing policy environment,” McLaughlin said.
Springfield School Board member Mike Griffin said that while he is glad the governor’s requirements are not going into play immediately, he also thinks it is important that the school board uses the next 12-36 months to “think about what is best for our district.”
Griffin also said the board will eventually need to think about how to “restructure things” to cut expenses without cutting student sports, art, or music programs.
In Rockingham, the school board also briefly discussed potential local impact from the governor’s budget address on Monday, Feb. 6 at a regular meeting.
“None of the school board chairs have any interest in reopening their budget discussions” for the upcoming year, Windham Northeast Superintendent Chris Kibbe said on Tuesday, Feb. 7.
Kibbe said the general consensus at Monday night’s Rockingham School Board meeting was that the proposed changes are intended for the next budget cycle, FY2019, not for this coming year.
“I think the legislature has already given the governor his answer on that one,” Kibbe said.
He also mentioned that part of the governor’s proposal, addressing insurance, would have to go through a negotiations process.
A special Westminster School District board meeting scheduled for Tuesday night was also set to include discussion of the budget proposal, but that meeting was rescheduled to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 13 due to inclement weather.
The Vermont House and Senate Committees on Appropriations are seeking public input on the FY 2018 Governor’s Proposed State Budget. A community-based public hearing is scheduled from 6 to 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13 at Windham Antique Center, 5 The Square in Bellows Falls, one of six hearing locations in the state.
might not be a bad thing to cut some help,central office could lose some,they got pretty big over the years,take a walk thru some of the schools,you'll see some classes with 3-5 kids sitting in it,the worst part would be is the support staff will be the ones to go,happens every time
ReplyDeleteThe classes with 3-5 kids are the classes with the luckiest students! The key to effective teaching is the relationship between teacher and student. As soon as you have 15 students in a classroom, quality starts going downhill.
ReplyDeleteBut since one of our prime cultural beliefs is, "If he's rich, he must be smart," we've never really valued education very much.
It's been my experience that many of those who don't care about education are the students! The idea of education as a right has given students AND parents the belief that NO effort on their part is required. Learning is the responsibility of the student; you can't just pour an education into their heads! The motivation to learn must come from parents, you can't just dump them at school and expect little Einstiens! The average class size when I went to school was 20-30 students. I attended college courses with class sizes in the hundreds! Yet, both I and my classmates managed to learn! Why? BECAUSE WE STUDIED! You can't learn by playing video games, watching TV, or Tweeting! Class sizes of 3 to 5 is a waste of time and money! If you don't feel like learning, just memorize this phrase, "Do you want fries with that?"
Delete6:27, When I was 11, a TV in the home was a rare thing indeed. When you were 11, there was hardly a newborn in the nation who wasn't being brought home to a TV already there. Today, more than half the kids in America are in households where TV, the Internet, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, etc., are normal, kids whose parents think so too. These parents for the most part don't have a clue about how the post-literate aspects of these media create illiteracy.
ReplyDeleteThese kids and their parents are not the kids and parents of your generation-- or mine. Teachers for the most part know this and do what they can to keep education at a humanly interactive level. It's a lot more work when a teacher is facing 20-30 kids who expect a cut to a different visual every 5-7 seconds.
It's even harder when a teacher is dealing with 140-150 kids on a fifty-minute once-a-day basis in high school. It's impossible when an adjunct professor has a classroom of 300.
To simply say it's the fault of students and parents is to resign ourselves and our children to peasanthood. We need to make the changes that are known to produce better results. We deserve to make it possible for all teachers to bring out in every student, as Larry Carbonetti said, "things they didn't know they had."
Who said 150 kids per class? 20 is probably enough. Sure, there was a TV in my house when I was a kid, (black and white, so I'm older than you think) but I was only allowed to watch it one hour per day. TV rots your brain, mom said, and she was right! I was taught to read by the age of 5, so I read a lot of books (you know, the square paper things.) I don't know what to do about bad parenting; there's far too much of it. But paying teachers 30-40k per year to be pseudo parents is not the solution. One solution is jobs that pay enough so that one parent can stay home and actually raise their kids. Another would be to stop promoting computers and technology as the solution to our problems; they are tools, and nothing more. I'll paraphrase mom, here; THE INTERNET ROTS YOUR BRAIN!
DeleteGood points, 9:11, but times now aren't the way they were even as recently as when you were growing up: Flat wages for the 80% since 1970 means both parents HAVE to work. Parents born with a TV in their house don't believe TV rots the brain (it does, but they think that's normal); good teachers are not pseudo parents (never have been); and because most of society thinks social media is great, they don't think about its deleterious effects on one's adaptation to reading.
ReplyDeleteThe "150 students" refers to a high school teacher having as many as 150 students rotate through her/his classroom in the course of a day. Hard to create or sustain a teaching relationship with contact only 3 times a week for 40 minutes...
It turns out that there's hardly anybody-- teacher, administrator, school board member or candidate, who at this time is thinking of improving the substance of Springfield schools. Maybe we've been driven so deeply into the survival level at this point we don't dare dream...
Well, at least we agree on one thing; our culture is becoming ever-increasingly intellectually bankrupt! I was fortunate to have grown up during the Great Society years, when intellect and education were valued, and not condemned as "elitist" as they are now. I believe it was Jaime Escalante who said "students will rise to the level of expectation." We need to raise our standards; our future depends on it.
Delete...the problem articulated here, level funding will equal loss of 20 positions, indicates that year over year costs are rising at a level equal to the cost of 20 staff positions...the 800 pound gorilla in the room is that it is the rising cost of staff benefits that is creating this problem. The article barely mentions benefits and draws no correlation to the effect that benefits are having on school budgets all over the country. Union contracts protect longevity, so any positions eliminated are newer employees, regardless of employee value. It is not uncommon for school district budgets to represent up to 70% of a municipality's total tax revenue, with no slowdown in the escalation of benefit costs. Look at the benefit package of your local school district employees and compare them to those of the typical private sector worker. Until this unsustainable formula is addressed, the quality of education delivered by public schools will continue to decline.
ReplyDeleteYeah, EVERYBODY should get screwed, just like in the private sector. Who do these people think they are, educated professionals? They should be on food stamps, like every other minimum wage, private sector worker!
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