JFO: House-passed H.454 would raise statewide education funding about 2% but shift dollars across districts

On April 17, 2025, Julie Victor of the Joint Fiscal Office told the Senate Education Committee that the House-passed H.454 foundation formula — including the Education Opportunity Payment (EOP), a sparsity grant and a small-school grant — would increase the aggregate statewide funding set against FY25 education spending by about 2 percent, but would redistribute funding unevenly across districts and regional configurations.

Victor, presenting a slide deck the office posted to the committee page, said the JFO used FY25 data as the baseline: statewide “education spending” for comparison (defined as a district’s total budget minus offsetting revenues) was roughly $1,900,000,000 and Vermont’s long-term average daily membership (LT ADM) was about 83,400. She said the house version sets a base per-weighted-pupil amount of $15,033 and applies additive pupil weights to produce each district’s EOP.

The analysis covered multiple district boundary scenarios. Using the current-law set of roughly 119 operating school districts, JFO estimated 68 districts would see an increase in funding under H.454 while 53 would see a decrease. Aggregating districts into the Vermont School Boards Association (VSBA) 11 regions or into alternative consolidation proposals produced different distributions, though JFO reported the…