Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerUpdated at 5:04 p.m.A new report issued Tuesday by third-party consultants says that as of last year, Vermont was spending $400 million to $460 million more on its schools than what it calls “adequate expenditure.”But the report, written by Picus Odden & Associates and commissioned by the Vermont Legislature, is based not on the educational landscape the state already has, but one that “differs substantially” from the current reality. The findings rely on research into the staffing and resources needed to produce “high-performance schools.” Factoring in Vermont’s labor costs and statewide student body, the researchers determine their model’s “estimated adequate costs.”“Addressing the cost of education is not going to come easily or quickly,” Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro, who chairs the Vermont House’s tax-writing Ways and Means committee, said in a Tuesday interview. But the report illustrates one way “Vermont could transform our system so it works for all.”The report uses financials from last year, when education spending totaled more than $1.7 billion, meaning it does not factor in the additional $180 million in costs added in the current school year. Among all states, Vermont is one of the top spenders, spending the fifth most per student on education in fiscal year 2022, according to national data. The ballooning cost of education — and with it, rising property taxes, the source of a large portion of the funding  — defined this year’s legislative session. Republican lawmakers and Gov. Phil Scott pushed for measures to immediately reduce both education spending and tax hikes, while Democrats favored a longer-term approach, fearing short-term relief could cause fiscal consequences down the road. The Democrats won out, though they did include some short-term tax relief, and lawmakers ultimately created a Commision on the Future of Public Education in Vermont that is tasked with charting a more financially sustainable future for the state’s schools. This latest report, however, was commissioned separately as an update to a report issued in January 2016. If the report’s model, grounded in academic literature on education best practices, is followed, its authors said “student achievement in Vermont would substantially improve and the cost of education could be reduced.” The researchers define adequacy as providing “a level of resources (with appropriate adjustments for size and geographic cost differences) that would enable schools to provide every student with an equal opportunity to learn to high performance standards.”The report’s per pupil adequate spending, between $12,300 and $12,900 per pupil (compared to the roughly $16,900 per student the state spent last year), could form a baseline in a redesigned education finance formula. This year, lawmakers briefly considered a funding formula that would have used a baseline or “foundation” amount, much like the model. The model factors in five major elements: staffing of “core programs,” cost of per-student resources, central office costs, resources for struggling students, and Vermont-specific factors. Yet the Vermont-specific factors are far from comprehensive. Rather, the idiosyncrasies of the state’s education system — namely small schools — would likely prevent Vermont from quickly implementing the report’s model. Don Tinney, president of the teachers union Vermont-NEA, pushed back against the report’s relevancy due in part to its lack of Vermont specifics, calling it a “distraction” from the changes lawmakers should implement.“Picus’s model does not fit the landscape of Vermont,” he said, “I’m not sure how he can reach conclusions about Vermont’s systems when he knows the model he’s using doesn’t fit.”The real change Vermont needs to make is moving from funding schools with property taxes to adopting an income-based system, according to Tinney.  “You’d have the wealthiest Vermonters paying their fair share,” he said. “We’re very frugal in Vermont regarding all of our public dollars. There is no budget anywhere that comes under more scrutiny than a local school budget.”A spokesperson for Gov. Phil Scott declined to comment, saying the administration had not yet had time to review and analyze the 133-page report.  In addition to school size differences, the report also uses different student weights than those adopted this year, and does not factor in costs related to transportation, food service, debt service, capital construction and some special education expenditures.  According to the report, “Vermont’s current policy decisions to maintain smaller school and districts likely result in higher costs that are not fully addressed in this analysis.”Still, the differences between the “Picus model” and Vermont’s current landscape are staggering.The report recommends 15 students per class in elementary schools, and 25 students per class in older grades. Vermont currently has 11.2 students per teacher, according to state Agency of Education data, resulting in far smaller class sizes. Research cited in the report indicates the ideal school size — in terms of economic efficiency and student performance — is 400 to 500 students in an elementary school and 500 to 1,000 in a secondary school, though the report did utilize smaller “prototype schools” to more closely reflect Vermont’s reality. The state, though, has more than 50 schools with fewer than 100 students, according to state enrollment data from 2023, and the smallest “prototype school” the model used was 119 students, according to the report. District sizes too differed. The report relied on a prototypical district size of 3,900 students — far larger than the average Vermont district. Those discrepancies make the report’s model essentially impossible to immediately implement, according to Kornheiser, and a lack of comparable data from the Agency of Education also makes it difficult to know how current districts shape up compared to the report’s model.“(I’m) hoping to receive the kind of comprehensive data that we need from the Agency of Education in order to understand where we are in relationship to this,” she said. “I would like to be able to dive deeper into how our schools are organized. How many classes do we have per school, how many kids are in those classrooms?” Kornheiser, who is chair of the new public education commission’s education finance subcommittee, also said that the Picus model’s recommendations for teacher professional development differ substantially from Vermont’s, an aspect she hopes will receive legislative attention. “I’ve heard from districts around the state that a lot of them feel like they’re going at it alone,” she said. “They want more support from the Agency of Education to be able to improve and shift practices within those schools.”The education finance committee, tasked with developing short-term cost containment ideas for Vermont’s education system, is expected to discuss the report at an upcoming meeting. Read the story on VTDigger here: Report says Vermont is spending at least $400M more than needed on education, but it’s not that simple.