The Commission on the Future of Public Education has recently begun its legislatively man­dated 18-month lifespan. The commission was established by  Act 183[1] of 2024 in response to wide­spread negative public reaction to the 13.9 percent statewide property tax increase needed to support FY25 public education spending.

Chairman Conlon introduced the concept before the House Education Committee on Tuesday, which was “to put the right people in a room together to talk about the vision for education… the problems that exist and how to address them… local control versus state control… all of the big topics we have heard and heard,” he stated.

The House Education Committee hosted school officials on Thursday to hear their feedback from budget votes last week. The House Ways & Means Committee listened in for added context in their own discussions.

In February 1997, Vermont’s Supreme Court found “the current system for funding public education in Vermont, with its substantial dependence on local property taxes and resultant wide disparities in revenues available to local school districts” is in violation of the Vermont Constitution. In response, in June 1997, the Vermont Legislature and Governor enacted the Equal Educational Opportunity Act—Act 60— a Vermont law intended to achieve a fair balance of educational spending across school districts independent of the degree of prosperity within each district. Act 60 was followed by Acts 68 and 130, which addressed some imbalances caused by Act 60.  Acts 68 and 130, established a system to pool the state's educational budgetary requirements from across jurisdictions and pay for them, in part, with pooled statewide property taxes.

On Wednesday morning, the Senate Education Committee reviewed their 2023 bills with Legislative Counsel. Bills that were passed but not signed into law were looked at as possible priorities. These included S.133 (miscellaneous) and S.134 (school construction).

On Friday afternoon, Representative Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee) provided the Senate Education Committee with an overview of their committee bill, H.461.

Brad James (Finance Manager, Agency of Education) joined the Committee on Tuesday. He informed them that all but three districts have reported their budgets so far and the remaining ones were very small. He noted that if they assumed the remaining districts came in at the statewide average, the overall average spending increase would come out just under 8%.

The Senate Education Committee invited two Assistant Directors from Career and Technical Education (CTE) Centers to join them on Friday. The issues they spoke to the Committee about were on a list presented by Jodie Emerson earlier in the week.

Tuesday

Chairman Conlon shared with the House Education Committee on Tuesday that over the weekend some technical changes relating to H.483 came to light.

The Senate Education Committee heard from Senator Hardy on Wednesday about S.66. She described the bill as being about the changing education landscape in light of recent US Supreme Court rulings (Carson v. Makin, etc.). She stated that the bill prioritizes the designation of public schools only for public tuitioning of students (regardless of whether one is within a practical distance).