Which school districts are delaying a budget vote due to last-minute legislation?

School budgets are being dropped from some Town Meeting Day ballots, days before the election.

In response to a complicated and contentious tax season that has led to an unprecedented property tax rate increase − 20% for some communities − the Legislature adjusted the education formula that calculates a town's education property tax rate. House Bill 850 sailed through the Legislature and was signed by Governor Phil Scott on Feb. 22, just 12 days before Town Meeting Day on March 5 − when most communities vote whether to approve school budgets for the following school year.

The last-minute legislation eliminates a 5% cap on tax rate increases and instead creates a tax discount for communities facing extreme increases due to changes to the pupil weight system, which is being implemented this year. The Legislature appropriated $500,000 to meet the expenses for towns changing the vote date and ballots.

If delayed, districts have until April 15 to hold their vote.

Will school districts opt to take the delay and modify their budgets? Here's what Chittenden County school districts have decided.

School districts going ahead with Town Meeting Day vote on budget

School districts have been carefully developing their budgets for months − in some cases, the past six months. Some school districts in Chittenden County say they do not wish to quickly throw something new together and feel the budgets they are presenting are bare bones and cost-conscious. Many said spending was kept to a minimum knowing the impact upon taxpayers this year. For these reasons, these school districts are planning to go ahead with voting for the school budget on Town Meeting Day, as was previously warned to their communities.

• Burlington School District

• Champlain Valley School District (serving Charlotte, Hinesburg, Shelburne, St. George and Williston).

• Milton Town School District

• South Burlington School District

• Winooski School District

Burlington School District said they worked hard to keep expenses for services at the same level. The areas that saw increase were employee wages and benefits, operating costs, and payment toward the bond for constructing the new high school and technical center. The recent formula change created a slight increase to the tax rate, moving from 13.97% to 15.6%. "As a result, we are working to communicate to the community that this late change in law will have a small increase in the tax impact, and we are hopeful that Burlingtonians will see that we worked hard to keep our spending decisions at a minimum," said Russ Elek, communications director.

The Champlain Valley School District said the proposed budget maintained commitments to academic growth and belonging, support and development for faculty and staff, and social-emotional and mental health supports for students.

"We and other districts have known that the implementation of Act 127 was something we needed to prepare for because it would cause a loss of tax capacity for our community, meaning that we would need to increase tax rates to raise the same amount of funding," said Superintendent Rene Sanchez in a letter to families. "Unfortunately, due to statewide inflationary, health care, facilities, and revenue pressures, the original tax rate protection written into Act 127 did not work." Sanchez said the new law provides a 17-cent reduction to the tax rate, before property value is weighed in. "CVSD does not control statewide tax policy or local property values, but we do control the development of a fiscally responsible budget that continues to provide the level of quality education our community expects," he said.

In Milton, the district felt the budget it had worked on was fiscally responsible.

"Our original budget was a level service budget - no additions from the previous year. We all felt strongly that maintaining level services was critical to our trajectory in addressing the needs of students," said Superintendent Amy Rex via email. Increases were imposed for employee salaries, transportation, cost of services and to make up for a significant loss in revenue. As a result, Milton Town School District is proposing a 7% increase in education spending. Milton anticipated a favorable to level Common Level of Appraisal (CLA) rate this year owing to a recent town reappraisal, however, their CLA dropped and added 5 cents to the tax rate for that factor alone.

Rex said it's been a difficult tax season: "this has been a very intense roller coaster ride for districts. Given all the changes and some just weeks before the vote has utterly confused and/or frustrated our communities."

South Burlington decided to go ahead with the vote as planned after the Legislature removed the 5% cap imposed by Act 127. "This budget contains what our schools need to thrive in the coming school year as it prioritizes student facing positions, supports social emotional learning needs of students, includes multilingual supports and bolsters academic rigor," said Julia Maguire, communications coordinator for the district.

Winooski School District said it encouraged legislators to intervene swiftly when mechanisms to reign in dramatic increases to property taxes weren't working as well as planned. The district said the new changes make equitable funding a closer reality for the state. In addition, the changes help prevent a potential fiscal cliff in the future, similar to what is happening now with the abrupt ending of federal funds for pandemic recovery.

"With the extreme increases in costs for schools, who are tasked by the state with providing much more than they have been historically designed to, communities often have no option but to use what is available to them in the moment, even with the threat of a future cliff," said Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria.

Districts delaying school budget vote

Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District − which serves Bolton, Huntington, Jericho, Richmond and Underhill − will delay their vote until April 2.

This decision was reached because the passage of H.850 − which alters the education funding system − came very late in the 2024-25 budget development process, said Superintendent John Alberghini.

"This year's budget development process has been extremely confusing and unclear for school districts and community members," he said via email. "Changing how public schools are funded and property taxes are determined after budgets have been planned, developed and warned has created a great deal of uncertainty, concern and disruption."

No change − Essex Westford maintains later vote as usual

Essex Westford School District has the distinction in the county of voting for their school budget after Town Meeting Day. The consolidated district serves Essex, Essex Junction and Westford.

Given all the changes, the district will maintain their April 9 vote as planned. "We are especially grateful for the April vote due to the challenging year," Superintendent Beth Cobb said in an email to the Free Press.

The Free Press did not hear back from the Colchester School District before publication, however, the week before Town Meeting Day is historically a school break for most districts in the area, including Colchester schools.

Contact reporter April Barton at abarton@freepressmedia.com or 802-660-1854. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter @aprildbarton.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Which Chittenden Co. school districts will delay budget vote to April