South Burlington School District proposes $71.5 million FY26 budget, cites special education and health-care cost drivers

South Burlington School District Superintendent Violet Nichols on Monday presented a $71.5 million proposed fiscal year 2026 budget that the district says preserves core programming while responding to a drop in state education funding and rising fixed costs.

Nichols said the budget keeps structured literacy, visual and performing arts, nursing and co-curricular activities while proposing staff reductions driven in part by the end of pandemic-era federal funding and by changes to the state education funding formula. "If students cannot get to school, they cannot learn," Nichols said when explaining the district's plan to add two bus drivers to improve access.

The budget, Nichols told the steering committee and public hearing, responds to multiple cost pressures: a nearly 12 percent statewide increase in health-care costs that districts must pay through statewide bargaining; a shift in the education funding formula’s weighting that, the district said, reduced its Long Term Weighted Average Daily Membership by about 61.3 pupils; and steep increases in special-education costs. "This year 25 percent of our budget for fiscal year '26 is looking at special education costs," Nichols said, adding the district is increasing special-education staffing and rolling some previously grant-funded multilingual supports into the local budget as competitive grant funding declines.

Nichols said the proposed budget meets Vermont education-quality standards and related requirements such as Act 173 and the literacy law she cited as "Act 139," and that the district is continuing a structured literacy program after a pilot year. She said the district has prioritized affordability while noting constraints outside local control: "This budget...was developed to adhere to regulatory and legislative requirements and meets education quality standards," Nichols said.

On taxes, Nichols said the district estimates a 7.93 percent increase in the homestead education tax rate tied to the FY26 proposal and a projected tax rate of 1.57. She said the budget equates to an average per-pupil spending figure of $14,464 and that the proposed tax impact translates to roughly $509 a year for the average homeowner (assessed at about $439,000) and about $344 for the average condo owner (assessed at about $297,000). Nichols also noted that about 53 percent of South Burlington households qualify for state income-based property tax adjustments; the district said the average credit this year is about $2,000.

Members of the public questioned test scores, FTE counts and income thresholds for state property tax credits. Resident Kathleen Easton urged attention to student outcomes and cited state and local proficiency figures. Online commenter Jerry Silverstein corrected a detail Nichols gave about the upper income limit for property tax credits: "The upper limit for income eligibility is a hundred and 15,000," Silverstein said, adding he believed slides showing multi-year FTE reductions reflected selection bias. Nichols and later commenters, including state Representative Bridget Burkhart, urged readers to consider broader state-level factors such as special-education mandates, health-care negotiations and recent changes to how pupil weighting and the common level of appraisal (CLA) affect revenue.

The steering committee meeting included public commenters who urged continued investment in childcare and preschool programming and called for attention to affordability. Volunteer Jennifer Carpenter, with the advocacy group Let's Grow Kids, said continued state action is needed to expand and make child care affordable: "We owe it to Vermonters to get this right," she said.

Nichols closed by encouraging residents to review the budget materials and the state's tax-calculator tool for exact impacts, and by thanking the district team and community for input on the budget.

Votes at a glance during the meeting included approval of minutes from the Jan. 22, 2025 steering committee meeting (voice vote, outcome: approved; counts not specified) and a motion to adjourn (voice vote, outcome: approved; counts not specified).