Update on the Future: No silver bullets to cutting costs

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC

As school districts are working on their 2025-26 budgets, the deadline for the preliminary report from the state Commission on the Future of Public Education’s — including short term cost containment strategies —  is fast approaching.

The message from recent subcommittee meetings is that it’s complicated and there are no silver bullets and few near-term solutions.

Created by the legislature, the commission is supposed to look at the education system and make recommendations to the legislature regarding:

1. governance, resources, and administration;
2. the physical size and footprint of the education system;
3. the role of public schools; and
4. the education finance system.

In addition to that work, which is not due until December 2025, the commission has the task of recommending ways to cut costs to keep tax increases in check next year. And that report is due Dec. 15 — just 25 days away.

At the Nov. 14 Steering Group meeting, commission chair Meagan Roy presented a draft of the preliminary report and asked for comments. State Board of Education chair Jennifer Deck Samuelson, who also serves on the commission, noted that while getting data to help inform recommendations has been difficult, the Agency of Education has taken large steps to bring forward data that has “not been available for years.” But using it is another story.

“We may not get on top of (the data) by Dec. 15,” said Deck Samuelson. “But we can begin to have substantive conversations around it.”

Members agreed that one key to their work gaining and retaining credibility lays in the validity of the data sets used to come up with recommendations.

Another aspect, according to Roy, is to be clear about the complexity of the system, adding that there are no simple fixes for problems.

“Tell the legislature that there are no silver bullets,” said Commission member Sen. Ann Cummings, adding that some legislators would still offer such silver bullets.

Roy said she would incorporate the comments of Steering Group members along with the work of the Finance Subcommittee in identifying ways to contain costs and present the draft to the full commission at its Monday, Dec. 2 meeting. She also suggested that the group meet again before the legislature’s deadline. The members agreed to an 8:30 a.m. meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 11.

Finance Subcommittee struggles to find near-term solutions

On Nov. 18, the Finance Subcommittee met to discuss the ideas it brainstormed on Sept. 30 which had been put into a somewhat cumbersome spreadsheet and called the Policy Matrix.  The document organized the ideas brought up a month and a half earlier into broad topics for cost containment including:

• Tuition
• School size
• Health-care costs
• Special education
• State support
• Facilities (including school construction)
• Added revenue

Also included in the spreadsheet is a column estimating how soon such reductions could be realized. This is important to legislators for finding savings that can soften next year’s tax increases from the education fund. Members of the subcommittee concluded – in most cases –  that finding cost saving measures would not be a quick enough process to ease next year’s education tax hikes.

Two examples include changes to special education and to the health-care coverage for school employees. The latter involves employee contracts and statewide bargaining for those benefits. The former would require renegotiating Individualized Education Programs that provide specialized instruction and supports with parents or guardians, which could be time-consuming and result in legal action that would be an added expense.

“So reducing costs (to special education) has a long arc because … renegotiated plans and lowering costs in this area has significant implications  … because we have a federal obligation,” said Finance Subcommittee chair Rep. Emilie Kornheiser. The federal government funds much of what is spent on special education. The subcommittee also noted that the education fund is paying for student mental health services rather than the state departments that have such services as their mandate.

Jill Briggs Campbell, interim deputy secretary of the Agency of Education, noted that a new report on the education funding system points out Vermont’s above-average use of paraprofessionals in providing one-on-one services. She said it is an unusually high number and needs to be part of the conversation. A recently passed law encourages more intensive work with very young children to help avoid the need for an IEP but that will take time to show results.

School mergers, closings: Who decides?

Kornheiser said school superintendents and school board chairs have told her that a local decision on school mergers and closings “is too much (for them) to navigate” and that a state mandate would depersonalize it.

Sen. Cummings agreed, saying, “You can’t ask school boards to close schools. We’re going to have to do this. It gets personal.” At the same time, Cummings said that just closing a school doesn’t save money. “You have to send (students) somewhere,” she added.

Briggs Campbell also said that changes to statutes could give the AOE the ability to apply  standardization, oversight and accountability statewide. That would involve schools and the AOE agreeing on the key priorities to focus on.  Included in that would be a statewide coordinated curriculum and proficiency-based learning.

“If we have standardization, we could measure. We can’t measure (now),” said Briggs Campbell who noted that under state law the agency doesn’t have the authority to do a number of things, including mandating minimum class sizes.

Subcommittee members were impressed with the new AOE report on education funding. 

The Finance Subcommittee is scheduled to meet again from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Monday Nov. 25.