ANGELO LYNN

With 2024-25 education property tax rate hikes well into double digits last year, it’s little doubt school boards will be primed for holding costs to a minimum for their upcoming budgets. Already the ACSD board asked the school district’s staff to keep its budget to 2% or under, compared to a 6.5% budget increase last year.

Holding budgets that tight will likely mean significant cuts in staffing and programs when fixed costs like labor and health care see huge jumps. Increases in health care, for instance, are pegged at 11.9%; contract salary increases are 6% for ACSD staff and a 5% bump in base pay for teachers; and the district expects a $650,000 increase in special education costs.

We don’t envy the job school board members face. They’ll have to make decisions many of their friends and neighbors will oppose, and some will despise. For everyone involved inside the system — staff, teachers, students, parents and the community at-large — cutting school budgets is always a lose-lose proposition. That’s because we want our students to have the best education possible. The counterweight is its cost and the impact on taxpayers.

To that end, bringing the public into the conversation well before those cuts are made is the best tonic. Providing thoughtful, well-reasoned responses for the board’s proposed cuts — that look at both the short-term and long-term — will be essential.

Let’s also recognize there are minor cuts to programming (eliminating an elective class, for example), and major cuts, like school or grade consolidation.

Of the latter, specific studies demonstrating the proposed savings via a detailed spread sheet should be provided, as well as the probable costs in closing any school — not just in dollars and cents, but in costs to that community and the overall cost/benefit to the district. To that end, crafting these concerns into a grand plan — much like towns create 5-to-10 year master plans — would help residents understand the underlying issues facing our schools and how to reach solutions.

Part of that planning would be to factor in housing projections. We’ve long held that people would eagerly move to the greater-Middlebury area, and throughout the county, if there were adequate housing. Now that the state has finally recognized the creation of affordable housing as its top-priority, school districts should plan for that reality. Already in Middlebury, 200-plus housing units are in the making at Summit Properties, and studies have shown Middlebury would still be 100 housing units short to meet current demand with more needed each year.

The ACSD must answer the question: When 200-300 housing units come online, how many new students will that bring to the district; and if 25-50 more come online each year (as some have suggested are needed to meet demand) where will they attend classes? And if one or more district elementary schools are closed, how soon would it be before the district is faced with building new or expanded facilities to make room for more students? (I know that sounds like a fairy tale, but if the housing is there, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest people will come.)

At the very least, school districts would be unwise to prematurely shutter classrooms right at the time the state and local towns finally understand that creating more affordable housing is the linchpin to addressing many of the state’s underlying ills.

We’re not suggesting no consolidations be considered, just that they’re done with eyes wide open on the short-term benefits versus long-range consequences and that the communities impacted have ample time to respond and prepare. Preferably, any consolidations would be done with that community’s support and not forced upon them as happened with Ripton Elementary School.

Districts should also pro-actively consider district-wide school choice, as the Otter Valley/Rutland Northeast schools do, allowing students in elementary schools to attend either a smaller or larger school to fit theirs and the district’s needs.

And if educational outcomes of the student remain part of the reasoning to consolidate, districts should base those outcomes on something more than reading and math proficiency scores from a standardized test. Parental involvement and sense of community is known to be a signature benefit of smaller elementary schools, so sacrificing that, if need be, has to be offset by a greater societal gain.

Granted, that’s all balanced by the necessity of lowering the high cost of education in Vermont. But nor should cutting education costs within our schools be the sole focus. Health care costs play an outsized role in school budgets. Simultaneously, the state has an ambitious road map to overhaul the state’s unreasonably high health care costs, which in part, depends on building more housing for health care workers.

We are, in short, juggling many hefty balls in the air.

The caution is not to over-react.

In sizing up the national election on down to local elections, many observers have noted we’re all still reeling from the aftermath of the pandemic — which was a massive disruption still rippling through the world, the nation and our local schools. As we seek solutions, we should operate with the faith that more housing will be built, that health care costs will come down, that education costs will again reach a more even keel and the one thing we should avoid, as philosopher Francis Bacon famously said, is making the remedy worse than the disease.

Angelo Lynn