On March 4, Addison Central School District voters will have the opportunity to vote on the ACSD FY26 spending plan. With the educational changes being discussed in Montpelier, I believe it is especially important to exercise your right to vote to show your support of public education.

To further your understanding of the Board-approved FY26 budget, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight several key aspects of the proposed spending plan.

• The FY26 spending plan was developed to protect and preserve the trust of our voters, advance the work of the Board’s Strategic Plan, and honor the values that have led to widespread and historic support of public education within our ACSD community.
• At the forefront, the plan was developed with financial transparency and equity-based budgeting principles.
• The plan includes a strong focus on academic achievement in mathematics and literacy, a deepened commitment to equity, and prioritizes student experience and success based on student proficiency data.
• The plan invests in a high quality licensed educator workforce.
• The plan reduces the district’s per pupil education spending by over 6%. It is worth noting that a status quo budget based on FY25 would have increased our total education spending by over 6%, due primarily to increases in healthcare benefits and wages. To provide much needed relief to our taxpayers, the board directed the superintendent to cap these increases to 2%.
• The district employed a “zero basis” budgeting approach to ensure our spending is strategically tied to our goals. This process achieved spending reductions, some of which the district is proposing to reinvest into staffing and programming tailored to achieve our 5-year strategic plan improvement targets.
• The plan increases rural elementary school classroom sizes to comply with the district’s class size policy.
• Just over a million dollars of this budget is devoted to assisting students to make accelerated progress in mathematics and literacy in grades K-8. The ACSD Board’s strategic plan calls for at least 80% of ACSD students to meet grade-level expectations in mathematics and literacy by 2029.
• In response to the strategic plan targets of increasing 4-year graduation rates to at least 90% by 2029, the plan also includes additional funding for our high school’s Flexible Pathways initiative to provide students greater access to dual enrollment and early college opportunities, and new avenues for blended/virtual learning and work-based learning placements.
• The spending plan also dedicates resources to eliminate bias-based harm and strengthen informed and safe school community cultures for all students and staff.

Further information on the FY26 spending plan can be found at our ACSD website under the ACSD FY26 Budget Development tab (www.acsdvt.org/district-link/fy26budget). You are also encouraged to attend our Annual Meeting and Public Information Hearing, which will be held at the Middlebury Union High School on Feb. 25 at 7 p.m.

Barbara Wilson

Shoreham

Editor’s note, the writer is chair of the ACSD board but is writing here as a knowledgeable citizen, not on behalf of the board.