Sponsor says amendment would shift private pre-K funding to DCF to ease property-tax burden

Representative Rebecca Holcomb told the Vermont House Education Committee on May 1 that an amendment to H.248 would move tuition payments for pre-kindergarten provided by private child-care providers out of school district education budgets and into the Department for Children and Families (DCF) budget.

“This amendment simply makes DCF pay for childcare in those private providers,” Rep. Rebecca Holcomb said, explaining that the change is intended to reduce pressure on education property-tax rates and to simplify administration for parents and small providers.

Holcomb said the change would not alter in-school pre-K programs offered directly by districts: “If the pre-k program happens at school … it comes out of the [education] budget. If it’s a private provider, it comes out of the DCF budget,” she said. She also emphasized the amendment does not change program standards or the existing prequalification process.

The sponsor presented several factual figures to justify the amendment, citing data she attributed to the state education agency and other sources: about $14,300,000 that school districts currently pay in tuition vouchers for private pre-K providers, and roughly $15,000,000 in surplus generated by the Act 76 childcare payroll tax this year. Holcomb said redirecting that private-provider tuition to DCF would be roughly comparable in scale and could translate to about “a cent on the average tax rate.”

Holcomb described additional operational aims contained in the amendment: asking DCF to study whether a single, unified application could replace the current two-step process in which parents apply separately to school districts and to DCF for childcare subsidies. “If it’s all coming out of DCF, they only have to do one unified application,” she said, noting that small providers sometimes must interact with many districts and that streamlining could reduce duplicative paperwork.

She acknowledged the amendment is focused on funding rather than program design: “I’m deliberately not changing anything about the program,” Holcomb said. She told the committee the amendment preserves existing parental choice and the ability of parents to combine multiple subsidies where applicable.

Holcomb also noted the bill did not pass before crossover and will return to the Senate; she said a Joint Fiscal Office (JFO) study requested earlier will examine unintended consequences and fiscal impacts. During the hearing committee staff reminded members that the earlier vote had asked JFO to study the issue.

Members asked practical questions about mixed settings where private providers share school facilities. Holcomb said such arrangements already exist and would continue to be evaluated under the same standards; only the funding source would differ for the private-provider portion.

Holcomb framed the amendment as a narrowly targeted change intended to ease property-tax pressure while leaving programmatic decisions with districts and the committees that oversee program rules. She urged colleagues to consider the amendment as a tool to start addressing property-tax increases and to allow small or rural districts more flexibility to operate and scale pre-K offerings.

No final committee vote on the amendment was recorded in this hearing; the sponsor and staff referenced the pending JFO study and the bill’s status as having missed crossover for the current session.