Education Cost Containment: Round II 
By Curtis G. Hier

As a nation, we are spending way too much money on non-classroom personnel.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released numbers that show that the U.S. spends 25.7 percent of available funds on non-teaching staff – compared to 15.5 percent among other members of OECD. Vermont is no exception.

It’s important for voters to have a benchmark to see how their districts are spending their money and measure it against comparable districts. Vermont schools all operate under the same state and federal mandates, but some schools are much more efficient in their spending than others.

First Class Education for Vermont (www.fcevt.com) is proposing two measures to inform and empower local voters. Our newly updated website provides details about getting involved.

The first measure we’re advocating is S.175, a bill to require that supervisory union budgets be voted on by the residents of the supervisory union. Currently over $120 million of such education spending is not voted on. Currently superintendents are given virtually blank checks for spending. While they report to supervisory union boards, nobody usually knows when these boards meet or even who is on them. We encourage citizens to visit our website to download a copy of a paper petition that we can present when the Legislature reconvenes.

The second measure is to require that school boards report percentages of current expenditures going to direct instruction versus other categories in annual budget reports. In school districts across Vermont, spending on administrative overhead and "student support services" is crowding out spending that could get a better return in terms of education quality, and it’s precluding cost containment.

The way it is now, Vermonters can visit the Department of Education webpage and see what percentage their district devoted to direct instruction – three years ago. Why can’t we see more up-to-date numbers? If it makes sense for districts to report the data, after the fact, so the Department can eventually put it up on their website, why wouldn’t it make sense for districts to report the data for proposed budgets before the citizens vote on it?

Vermont statutes currently authorize the Commissioner of Education to prescribe the categories to be included in the required annual budget reports. But the Commissioner feels that there is too much going on with Act 82 and the required cost containment measures passed last year to add one more requirement. However, such a requirement would only take district business managers five minutes to comply. It is unfortunate that the Commissioner apparently feels that the Legislature did enough to bring about cost containment last year. It’s unlikely that most Vermonters feel that way.

The other option in adopting this second measure would be for the Legislature to adopt it. Senator Mullin (R-Rutland) offered the legislation as an amendment to the cost containment bill, but he withdrew it after the leadership promised consideration of the legislation in committee this next year. It remains to be seen whether that promise will be kept.

These measures, if adopted, can only enhance our democratic rights and will likely help bring education costs under control.
 

Curtis G. Hier is a high school teacher and is chairman of First Class Education for Vermont.