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Last week, administrators in the Mount Abraham Unified School District invited Bristol parent Shawna Gabbeitt to their central office to look over financial documents. Gabbeitt, a bookkeeper, had filed an extensive request for public records about school spending after voters rejected the district's budget on Town Meeting Day.
She had become more concerned about the district's financial practices after receiving dozens of documents, Gabbeitt said, and later shared her misgivings on social media and at school board meetings. Her efforts, she believes, were a factor in the failure at the polls of Mt. Abe's second budget proposal, on April 16.
Administrators wanted to give her more context about spending decisions and allay some of her concerns, superintendent Patrick Reen said. Gabbeitt remained unswayed, though. She said she still thinks the district didn't follow proper protocols for spending money.
In years past, most Vermont districts passed school budgets easily. But with property taxes anticipated to rise sharply, 30 school districts failed to do so on Town Meeting Day. Now, as some districts prepare for a third or fourth vote on their spending plan, residents such as Gabbeitt are asking more questions — and pledging to continue voting no if they don't like the answers. The growing discontent is fueling an erosion of trust in Vermont's education system. School administrators and board members, meanwhile, are trying to figure out how to convince voters that their money is well spent.
Mt. Abe, which serves 1,300 students in Bristol, New Haven and Monkton, is one of about 20 school districts that still does not have an approved budget. If voters don't sign off before July 1, the start of the next fiscal year, those districts would need to borrow money, with interest, to continue operations — a nightmare scenario for school boards.
"Everyone wants to avoid that cliff," Mt. Abe school board chair Erin Jipner said.
Slate Valley Unified School District, which serves Fair Haven, Orwell, Castleton and Benson, must now draft its fourth budget after three failures at the polls. Its most recent proposal, which voters rejected last Thursday, would have increased property taxes by less than 7 percent. Slate Valley is already among the lowest in the state in per-pupil spending.
Superintendent Brooke Olsen-Farrell said budget failures aren't uncommon in her mostly conservative, rural district. But this year, the vitriol has been more intense than ever.
A school board member has been encouraging community members to reject the budget until the district gets rid of its proficiency-based grading system, which is used throughout the state, Olsen-Farrell said. That same board member has called for Olsen-Farrell to resign and has said he'd tell people to vote yes on the budget if she did.
Olsen-Farrell said she's unsure about how to effectively communicate with "no" voters, since they don't typically attend informational meetings about the budget. Staff morale is low, with some educators questioning whether they want to return next school year amid the hostility, Olsen-Farrell said.
"The rhetoric is far worse than I've ever seen," Olsen-Farrell said. "It's downright nasty."
In the Twinfield Union School district, superintendent Mark Tucker is in an unusual position. Voters from Marshfield and Plainfield, who send students to one pre-K-12 school, approved the budget on Town Meeting Day by a three-vote margin. Two residents successfully petitioned for a revote, as allowed for under state statute. The same budget failed by 17 votes last week, despite a relatively small projected property tax increase — 2.6 percent in Plainfield and 8.3 percent in Marshfield.
Marshfield resident Dave Bingham, who organized the petition, said he was spurred to do so after budget increases that he considered too steep both this year and last. Data he found on the Vermont Agency of Education's website show that many Twinfield students are performing below proficiency in math, Bingham said, which added to his feeling that out-of-control school spending is not yielding good results.
Bingham, who raised three kids in Marshfield, said living in Vermont is becoming increasingly unaffordable. He believes voting no on the Twinfield budget is a way to rein in what he calls an "overbloated" education system.
"I've noticed the governor isn't too happy [either]," Bingham said, referring to Gov. Phil Scott's remarks about school spending this spring.
Some believe the breakdown of trust can be traced to dwindling opportunities to engage in civil debate. Plainfield resident Sarah Galbraith, whose daughter attends Twinfield, said she would like community members to discuss and vote on budgets in person, as in past years, rather than with the paper ballots they cast these days.
"So that we could all be part of the same conversation, we're all getting the same accurate information [and we're] making decisions based on that," Galbraith explained.
Tucker, who is retiring this year, is hoping disgruntled residents will weigh in on what they'd like to see cut from the budget before the next vote. He has pleaded with community members to share their thoughts at this week's board meeting.
The superintendent thinks some of the heated rhetoric is trickling down from Montpelier. Gov. Scott, who stated publicly that he voted against the first school budget proposal in his hometown of Berlin, has said it's "unacceptable" that some people might be hit with double-digit property tax increases due to school spending.
"At the end of the day," Tucker said "the ultimate victims of this political wrangling are children who rely on public schools for their education."
Reen, the Mt. Abe superintendent, said he believes frustration about property taxes — which were initially expected to increase between 13 and 16 percent — is just one of the factors that contributed to the two budget defeats in his district.
Students in several district elementary schools have exhibited challenging behaviors in recent years, leading to contentious public discussions on social media. Some community members have concluded the district isn't doing enough to address the issue. Those discussions often "only include a part of the story," Reen said, but it's difficult for the district to share additional information publicly because of student privacy concerns.
"We're left in this kind of defenseless position," he said.
After Mt. Abe's initial $37 million budget proposal failed in March, the district shaved off $1.3 million and tapped into its education reserve fund, removed $250,000 from its construction budget and left vacant positions unfilled. Because the district was obligated to give teachers their contracts by April 1, Reen also issued 17 reduction-in-force, or RIF, notices to teachers to lay the groundwork for cutting positions if subsequent budgets failed.
The RIFs upset some residents who believed teachers were actually being laid off, Reen said. Others felt like the district was threatening the community with cuts if they didn't agree to the second budget, which voters ultimately rejected on April 16.
Gabbeitt, the Bristol resident, said she didn't feel the initial budget effectively addressed the problems the district is facing. A $2 million construction line item in the revised budget seemed excessive, she said, especially in light of what she believes are dire special-education and behavioral issues. Her concerns spurred her to file the public records request; she raised $1,000 through GoFundMe to pay the school district for the labor required to produce an extensive trove of documents.
Those documents show that the district budgeted $1.7 million for a recent lobby renovation project at Mount Abraham Union High School that ended up costing almost $3 million. She also viewed invoices that outline spending she considers extravagant on items such as furniture and a television. Further evidence suggested that the school district did not properly follow the bidding process when issuing contracts to businesses, she said.
Gabbeitt said she'll continue to vote no on school budgets until the district does a better job of publicly sharing and explaining financial documents and grant information. She also believes the school board needs to demonstrate a willingness to hold superintendent Reen accountable.
"I want to see transparency, because it's what we deserve to have," Gabbeitt said.
Reen said he understands that voters would put past budget decisions under the microscope as districts face financial pressures, but it's not necessarily productive. He said the lobby project went over budget because of supply chain issues and higher-than-expected construction costs and asserted he's done nothing "illegal or immoral or unethical."
"Any decision that I have to make is driven by what I believe is best for our students, first, and at a cost our taxpayers can afford," Reen said. "Any thought or accusation or belief that there's some ulterior motive ... is just false."
Jipner, the school board chair, said she hasn't seen any evidence that the school district did anything improper, but the board and district staff are working to make financial information more accessible. Jipner also believes the 13-member board needs to take a different approach before a new budget is drafted and scheduled for a third vote.
To that end, the board scheduled multiple community forums this week that will be organized around two questions: "What do you want the board to know right now?" and "What would it take to make you feel positive about the budget?" The board also asked Reen to put together a presentation that addresses some of the questions members have heard from the community about topics including the number of administrators at each school, the salaries of central office and middle-management positions, and where money comes from to support capital improvements and construction.
If residents feel the board is listening to them, Jipner believes the contentiousness and anger will begin to dissipate.
The community "can't sit in a stagnant place of just being angry," she said. "We need to get to the place of marching in the same direction."
The original print version of this article was headlined "Schools of Fraught | As budget season drags on, residents put education spending under the microscope"
Tags: Education, education funding, school budgets
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