Upholding our Values and One Another During a Challenging Budgeting Year

September 28, 2026

Dear HSD Teaching and Learning Colleagues,

I am so sorry to write to you today to relay information that will be a challenge for us all as we grapple with challenges that were placed upon us by outside and external factors and led by those who are not familiar with our communities nor our work to support our students and families.

As I have shared with you previously, toward the end of the last legislative session we became increasingly concerned about the proposals and actions that the state legislature, the AOE, and the Governor were taking in relation to the way in which public education is funded in the state of Vermont, and how these then proposals were compelling larger, consolidated districts while fiscally starving our local districts.

Act 169, signed by the Governor in June, made a significant change to Vermont’s excess spending penalty. This mechanism imposes a substantial tax penalty on school district spending above a threshold tied to statewide average per-pupil spending in FY2025, adjusted for inflation. For the FY2028 budget cycle now underway, Act 169 lowered that threshold from 118% to 115.5% of the excess spending base. The threshold will continue to decline over the next several years, reaching 112.5% by FY2032. This means our school district will begin the budgeting process this year needing to make very significant cuts or risk steep tax penalties.

On top of this reduction, we are again faced with ongoing astronomical increases to health insurance costs, and I am sure I do not need to relay to you the obvious impacts of the ongoing increases to inflation, which our local budget also must absorb. Add to this our PCB testing, abatement, and remediation, and the transition to a new Medicaid funding mechanism that will also lead to less funding for these services, and we have now arrived at a considerable challenge this year.

At our special school board meeting this Wednesday evening, September 30, we have been charged with presenting the school board with some different options to consider in approaching a deficit of this magnitude. The presentation will include some dramatic ways for the board to consider in approaching this reduction to our budget, including reconfiguring our facilities and potentially closing some buildings in an attempt to overcome this budget shortfall and achieve some sustainability, knowing that these reductions will need to continue until we arrive at what the legislature has referred to as a “bridge to the foundational formula,” or 112.5%, as an excess spending threshold by 2032. What this means is that this year is not the only year we will be facing reductions, so whatever the board selects will need to consider the long-term impacts of the decisions that were made by the legislature with the passage of Act 170.

No decisions have been made or will be made at this meeting, but the board will be considering what is presented and may direct the administration to go into further depth in exploring some of the models presented. Needless to say, your input will also be critically important, and we commit to continuing to share with you every bit of information that is shared with the board so that you remain informed and able to provide input along the way.

What we want you to know, most of all and most importantly, is that we are well aware that when we are talking about “reduction” and “reconfiguration,” we are talking about human beings. We are talking about careers and livelihoods and essential and critical programs that serve our most vulnerable students. We are talking about what our students deserve throughout their tenure in the district, and what our staff deserves while they create the thoughtful teaching and learning environments and experiences that make us a unique and special place to learn, to teach, to work, to live, to enjoy, to care for.

It feels impossibly hard to navigate through such a challenging time that will involve such intense conversations about our special district community without feeling like our value, our worth, is being exponentially diminished by technical discussions about reduction.

We will continue to be honest, transparent, and real with you, and truly and sincerely believe that in solidarity and support of one another and our students, we can and will weather this together and arrive on the other side with our values intact.

In Solidarity,

Caty