Fix overtaxation of small-town schools

Over the years, I’ve seen our school boards work hard to do the very best they could with inequitable access to resources. Different communities have different needs and we can’t spend the same amount per pupil everywhere and expect the same outcomes.

Clearly legislators understood this when they created Act 60 and built weights into the student funding formula. Now we learn that those weights have, according to the report, “weak ties, if any, with evidence describing differences in the costs for educating students.” 

Our schools are faced with the increased costs associated with serving high-poverty, rural communities. That means increased social emotional, mental health and academic support needs — all a part of larger systemic inequities in our society.

Tending to these basic needs has stretched budgets to an extreme and left little room for caring for our buildings or providing programming. Staff across the region deal every day with septic problems, failing boilers and old roofs. Children are turned away from pre-K programs because of a lack of space. Students don’t have access to as many language courses, advanced placement or foreign travel opportunities as some larger districts.

As parents, we are tired of seeing vital school programs cut, enrollments decline and property taxes go up. I want my children, and all Vermont children, to have an equal opportunity to thrive. 

These are the longstanding problems that the state Supreme Court called out in 1997 and that Act 60 was meant to address. But it did not. This report makes clear that what we actually achieved was more uniformity in taxation for education. But we have not come close to giving districts the resources necessary to create equal educational opportunities. 

My children and my neighbors’ children deserve to go to a school with a functioning boiler, where they get to eat lunch in a cafeteria instead of at their desk, and where the roof doesn’t leak. They deserve art classes, STEM programs and foreign travel. They deserve the resources they need to be successful.

For too long, our most vulnerable students have been shortchanged. We can’t keep failing our kids. I urge the Legislature to take action this session to address these wrongs.

Katherine Sims

Craftsbury

Editor’s note: Katherine Sims is a candidate for an open House seat representing an Orleans-Caledonia district that includes Albany, Barton, Glover, Greensboro, Sheffield and Wheelock.