Finance committee reviews how governor’s foundation formula would shift school funding

A Vermont legislative finance committee on March 27 reviewed a Joint Fiscal Office analysis comparing school districts’ fiscal year 2025 education spending with foundation amounts in the administration’s proposed foundation formula, and discussed how proposed supervisory-district maps would change those results.

Julie Richter, an analyst with the Joint Fiscal Office, told the committee the office compared FY25 education spending with the administration’s publicly shared foundation amounts using the Agency of Education’s streamlined model. “We’re nonpartisan, unbiased fiscal analysis, not in policy recommendations,” Richter said, adding she was presenting numbers the Agency of Education had already calculated for the administration’s proposal.

The nut graf: the analysis shows most current-law districts would receive less under the administration’s foundation amounts than they spent in FY25, but the arithmetic changes once districts are reconfigured. How many districts or students win or lose depends heavily on which map of supervisory unions and supervisory districts is used alongside the new foundation math.

Key findings and context

Richter summarized several headline figures the committee discussed. Vermont’s FY25 statewide education spending (school budgets less offsetting revenues) is roughly between $1.8 billion and $1.9 billion, and the state’s long-term average daily membership (ADM) used for…