Ed finance panel delays internal deadline for cost-containment suggestions Kornheiser calls commission timeline 'impossible'

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Anyone who watched the Sept. 30 meeting of the Education Finance subcommittee of Vermont’s Commission on the Future of Public Education might well have expected that this Monday’s session would see members hammering out a list of short-term cost containment ideas to present to the full commission as expected next week. But that was not to be.

The subcommittee has the two tasks. It’s supposed to study the system that finances education in Vermont and make recommendations for changes to improve it. That work is due late next year. But first, the panel is supposed to identify short-term cost containment measures to recommend to the legislature for its consideration in the session that begins in January 2025.

But local school budgeting begins in October and several commission members have stressed the importance of giving the schools a heads-up on what is being considered as that work starts. To that end, the full commission had the expectation that the finance subcommittee have a draft of those short-term measures to look at when it meets on Oct. 21.

Instead, the subcommittee – chaired by Rep. Emilie Kornheiser – worked through a long agenda of presentations that included a number of ideas that would not deliver cost savings for years, if ever.

Before going into those, there was a slide presentation on the history of education finance reform from Abby Shepard of the state Tax Department and Emily Simmons, general counsel for the Vermont Agency of Education.

The subcommittee then heard from administrators of the state’s benefits programs on the difficulties of controlling costs and from the co-chairs of the Commission on Public School Employee Health Benefits, who said they are looking at cost-control measures, but have agreed to keep the system as is while that work goes on.

Nicole Mace, who represents the Vermont School Boards Association, concluded that the savings on health-care insurance in the short term would be “zero.”

The subcommittee also looked at special education as a cost driver that is complex and doesn’t lend itself to short-term savings. It also looked at the idea of a board of cooperative educational services that could allow districts and supervisory unions to save money by sharing resources. But because a BOCES organization would take funding to set up and  time to show savings, it would not be a short-term solution for cutting costs.

“I’m going to publicly reprimand the timeline we were given and say that was an impossible timeline,” said Kornheiser, who told the panel she would attend the Oct. 21 meeting of the full commission and report on the results of the group’s brainstorming as well as the information gathered so far. “We’re meeting every two weeks, we’re committed to it,” said Kornheiser saying the process will take time.

Mace said, “The interest was in getting information out to the field … budgets are being built right now.” Mace said she wanted to avoid having people show up in January with “an idea that impacts a budget that’s already baked, and the cycle of nonsense continues.”

The four hour meeting could have gone on for another hour or more, but a data review by the AOE was not ready due to a lack of time and resources, according to Interim Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders.  She said the agency is bringing in New Solutions K12, a Massachusetts education consultancy to help with education finance policy and added analysis. It was noted that analysis of spending is difficult across many districts and supervisory unions and with several changes the way accounting is done in the those settings.

Under the heading of “Policy Tools/Cost Drivers,” a presentation by members of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ staff on the concept of community schools did not happen because they were unavailable. Instead, AOE Program Manager Johannes Haensch was given 10 minutes to make a normally longer presentation on pilot community schools funded by Act 67. According to the AOE website, a community school is “a set of partnerships between the school and other community resources.” It integrates the focus on academics, health and social services, youth and community development. Like many of the other ideas presented, implementing the program will take time and money but not deliver short-term savings.

Mace cautioned against “mission creep,” which is a gradual expansion of a project or mission beyond its original scope.

A presentation on school construction was dropped for lack of time.

No members of the public spoke during the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting but a written comment was included in the meeting package.