A provision of the school district merger bill that seeks to lower education spending could end up having the opposite effect.Among the many parts of the merger bill — incentive grants to merge, cost containment and a call to develop criteria to determine if a district is making efficient use of money while providing a good education — is an allocation of $300,000 to perform an “adequacy study” to determine how much money should be spent per pupil.
The inclusion of the study was part of a compromise between members of the Senate — who did not want to fund the study — and House lawmakers who supported the study in response to suggestions from the public when, in January, House Speaker Shap Smith called for ideas on how to address education during the now-completed legislative session.
While many suggestions called for larger school districts, others suggested the state determine the correct per-pupil figure to pay for the education of the state’s students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, said Rep. David Sharpe, D-Bristol, chairman of the House Education Committee.
“Many [members of the public] suggested that there is this magic number, this adequacy number, that is the right number to spend per student,” Sharpe said. “We did not pursue that, partly because we didn’t know what that number should be, so that’s why we’re commissioning this study, to find out what number is right for Vermont.”
The issue of the study arose Tuesday morning during the monthly State Board of Education meeting at Twinfield Union School, with Chairman Stephan Morse saying, “My understanding is, this bought a few more votes on the House floor.”
“This was the part that really alarmed me,” said board member Stacy Weinberger of Burlington. “It really jumped out at me as something that is substantially different from what we’ve been doing.”
In some ways, the idea of an adequacy study runs contrary to the Vermont Constitution and the court decision that led to Act 60, which revamped the education funding system. While some state constitutions call for students to receive an “adequate” education, Vermont’s Constitution calls for equity, not adequacy.
Those members of the public who called for an adequacy study as a means to lower the state’s per-pupil cost might find the eventual study will call for higher spending, said board member William Mathis, a former school superintendent who has written an adequacy study and described himself as someone who enjoys “studying adequacy studies.”
Mathis noted that, around the country, adequacy studies are used by advocates to call for more education spending, not less.
Since 2008, when adjusting for inflation, the education spending in most states is less than it was before the recession. Advocates in a host of states, including New York and Connecticut, have filed lawsuits arguing the states are not spending enough on education.
“In Vermont, people who want to control spending, they’re saying that by looking at just what’s adequate, maybe $12,000 will do the job rather than $15,000,” Mathis said. “So, they would use an adequacy study to ratchet [spending] down, but what’s happened in the courts is that people use adequacy studies to argue for higher levels of spending.”
He predicted the study will show the state is not spending enough to educate children living in poverty or who are learning English.
“As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for,” Mathis said. “For people who are looking at an adequacy study as a way to control spending, that’s likely to backfire.”
Josh O'Gorman is a reporter for the Vermont Press Bureau.
