On June 11th Kingdom East School District (KESD) voters will head to the polls for a third time to vote on the KESD FY27 budget. During the budget process, we cut $3.4 million and eliminated 27 staff positions, reflecting our understanding of the deep financial strain our communities feel. Our school board collected data from voters, listened, reflected, and made hard decisions to balance the needs of our students, families and staff with all of our taxpayers to deliver a disciplined, level-services budget that also includes $850,000 in tax stabilization funds to reduce taxes.

Crucially, this budget preserves vital community pillars: the KESD Summer Program and the Kingdom East Afterschool Program (KEAP), which families rely upon and which contribute to both the academic and social/emotional/behavioral growth of our students. Our Summer Program serves 450-500 Kindergarten-8th grade students for five weeks, Monday through Friday, from 8:30-3:00 with meals. 87% of our students who attend are maintaining or growing their reading skills over the summer. Our K-8 students who attend the KESD Summer Program outperformed students who did not attend by 11% in Reading in our Fall assessments. These two programs together cost taxpayers $900,000, or 1.7% of the overall budget, and provide great academic results. Not providing these programs would effectively be a tax on working parents, and a great loss to our children.

The primary driver of our fiscal anxiety is not local excess, but a broken Vermont educational funding system. Only $23 million of our proposed $53 million dollar budget is raised locally since all property taxes are collected at the state level and redistributed to school districts. KESD receives about $2 for every $1 dollar we send to Montpelier.

Remarkably, this third budget revision decreases the KESD estimated homestead tax rate by (-2.08%), easing town impacts. Specifically, Lyndon and Sheffield residents should see a decrease, particularly Lyndon who recently completed a reappraisal. Lunenburg, Sutton and Wheelock should see less than $3 per month increases, and Burke and Newark are seeing increases primarily due to their Common Level of Appraisals (CLAs) which are out of KESD’s control.

Our students today face unprecedented challenges shaped by a perfect storm of COVID disruptions, addictive technology and social media, changing family structures, and continued inflation. Their needs are fundamentally different from a decade ago. Investing in our schools yields clear returns. Our data shows a stabilization of student behavior and, most importantly, that more students are reading at grade level or above (from 23% to 44%) and more are doing math at grade level or above (from 12% to 36%). While we want all students to be on grade level or above, we are still in a recovery mode from COVID, and this positive trajectory in outcomes is a credit to our strategy and the tireless work of our teachers. Stable school funding keeps us on the path toward improved student behavior, high teacher and support staff retention which prevents costly turnover, and academic growth in reading and math for our students.

Voting “Yes” sends a powerful message to Montpelier that local property taxpayers cannot bear the brunt of required state legislation and unfunded mandates alone. The state’s Education Fund increasingly absorbs human service costs, turning our schools into the last existing social safety net for Vermont's youth. Voting “No” lets the legislature off the hook for continuing to avoid repairing a broken system.

If our school budget fails for a third time, KESD will borrow up to 87% of last year’s budget as a stop-gap measure to fund the start of the FY27 budget. The interest charges alone are estimated at $200,000.

With turnout at just 10-11% in the first two votes, our democracy demands higher participation. Going back to how things were is impossible, and failing to pass this budget won't make student needs disappear; it will only compromise labor stability, slow academic recovery and cut deeper into the overall needs of our students. As the old adage goes, “we can pay now, or pay much more later”. Please vote on June 11th.

Thanks, Sean McMannon-KESD Superintendent