JFO briefing shows wide property-wealth differences across governor’s five proposed school districts

Julia Richter of the Joint Fiscal Office told the Senate education committee that Vermont’s 100% equalized grand list for fiscal year 2025 is about $122.4 billion and that the value is distributed unevenly across the five regional districts proposed in Governor Phil Scott’s education transformation plan.

Richter, the JFO presenter, said the Champlain Valley region holds the largest share of the state’s grand list (39%) while the Northeast Region holds the smallest share (9%). Using Fiscal Year 2025 long-term average daily membership (LTADM) as the pupil count, the Champlain Valley also represents roughly 41% of statewide LTADM and the Northeast about 12%.

The difference in property wealth per pupil across the proposed districts is sizable, Richter said. Depending on whether analysts calculate total, homestead, or non-homestead grand list per pupil, the ratio between the lowest and highest districts ranges from about 1.6 to 2.5. “Numbers say what the numbers say,” she said, emphasizing that JFO’s presentation is nonpartisan and informational.

Why it matters: under Vermont’s current statewide education property tax system, district-level property wealth does not determine a district’s tax rate because revenue is raised into a statewide education fund and local tax rates adjust to local spending choices. Richter and committee members repeatedly noted that the distribution of grand list value would matter only if a new revenue-raising design allowed districts to raise money on their own grand lists or otherwise tied local tax burdens to district property wealth.

Committee members pressed on scenarios and next steps. Several senators asked for the spreadsheets and underlying tables Richter had posted as PDFs; Richter agreed to provide the Excel versions with county, current-law district, and LTADM columns. Senators also asked JFO to run alternative aggregations if the committee wants analyses by county or by hypothetical district sizes (for example, districts designed to have 4,000–8,000 pupils) rather than the administration’s five-region map.

Richter reiterated modeling caveats: the analysis used preliminary FY25 equalized grand list values (defined as 100% fair-market value), focused only on the five proposed consolidated districts, and did not apply pupil weights or model future valuation or enrollment changes. She also said JFO had received preliminary materials from the Agency of Education and the Department of Taxes and was still working to reconcile and model some of the administration’s figures.

Committee discussion touched on trade-offs the members expect to face if the Legislature changes how school revenue is raised: equity in student resource allocation, potential tax impacts for local taxpayers, governance and local control if districts are consolidated, and the logistics of any transition. Several members said consolidation could achieve economies of scale but warned that larger districts would be a dramatic governance change and could require transition funding and additional design work on how decisions and funds flow.

No formal action was taken during the briefing. Committee members requested additional JFO outputs — including county-level breakdowns and editable spreadsheets — to support further analysis and possible statutory drafting on consolidation and revenue design.

The briefing closed with committee leaders emphasizing that the administration’s proposal is a starting point for legislative work: the Legislature can accept, modify or reject elements of the plan as lawmakers consider both how dollars are distributed (foundation formula) and how they would be raised (statewide fund versus district-level grand lists).