Voters reject school budget in Morristown and Elmore

Superintendent Ryan Heraty, in a letter Wednesday morning to Lamoille South Supervisory union faculty and staff, said the vote — one of several school budget defeats around the state — had him “extremely saddened by what has happened in our state.”

Heraty said the Elmore-Morristown School Board would likely meet this week to determine what happens next, and noted his office has already prepared some options to present to the board.

“All of these options will impact students, and doing this when we see our student needs higher than ever feels unjust,” Heraty wrote. “We will identify the areas that will impact teaching and learning the least and principals will be an important part of this process.”

The school board managed to cut the $120,000 from its first failed budget simply by opting to not replace an elementary school literacy coach who is retiring at the end of the school year. Even then, one school board member, Ann Dryden, was intent on keeping the original figure, hoping the original 22-vote margin was attributable to the angst felt all over the state at rising education costs and the rollout of a newly-implemented education law, Act 127, that aimed for great equity but instead was hastily amended in the Legislature in late February.

Thirty school districts that voted on Town Meeting Day shot down their budgets, with voters around the state voicing their discontent with Montpelier. Meanwhile, lawmakers and Gov. Phil Scott criticized local school boards for spending too much.

Since then, numerous school budgets have failed again on a second go-round. That includes budgets in Milton, Fairfax and the Lamoille North elementary schools, also shot down Tuesday. The South Burlington school budget was defeated last week for a second time.

Heraty said Wednesday that he and other Lamoille South school district officials “hear the community’s voice and concern and this will impact future decisions.”

However, Heraty has been one of the most vocal critics of the Legislature and Act 127 in recent months, and he places the blame squarely at lawmakers’ feet. He said the Elmore-Morristown school district was identified as a district that would benefit from Act 127 “and now we’re on track to be one of the 10 lowest spending districts in the state.”

In his letter Wednesday, Heraty said the law “completely disrupted the education funding system” by incentivizing school districts to spend more and creating a “huge gap” in funding that had to be made up with increased taxes all over the state. He said that led to pressure from Montpelier to have districts reduce their spending. He said Elmore-Morristown’s proposed spending was only up 6.8 percent, but the tax increases associated with that were double that or more in the two towns.

“The rhetoric around both of these steps created a great deal of mistrust and questioning across the state,” Heraty said.

He added that the school board has been supportive of the budgets and foresees tough decisions in the days ahead. If a school district does not have a budget in place by July 1, it reverts to current spending, and even then, not 100 percent.

“They are not eager to be in this position and I predict a fair amount of anger and frustration at these meetings,” he said.