Consultants outline foundation funding model; say funding must link to governance and accountability

A consulting team briefed the Senate Finance Committee on Jan. 23 on a proposed foundation, student‑centered school funding model that begins with a base funding amount per student and layers weighted adjustments for student need and district or school characteristics.

The presenter described the "base" as the funding floor that should provide every student with core educational opportunities. "When we say the base, it's really the floor of funding that you want to make sure every student has," the presenter said. From that floor, consultants proposed targeted adjustments for economically disadvantaged students, English learners, career and technical education participants and special‑education needs, along with adjustments for school size and community cost drivers.

Consultants said they used an evidence‑based approach as a starting point — referencing a September 2024 report by Pike and colleagues — and that they adjusted that national model to Vermont's smaller average school sizes and stated priorities such as career and technical education. The evidence‑based model identifies prototypical school staffing and non‑personnel resources (class sizes, interventionists, counselors, librarians, and school‑level administrative staff) and then applies salary and price assumptions to produce a per‑student base.

The presenters recommended three sets of policy steps be paired with any formula change: governance scale changes to realize economies of scale where possible; transparent rules or guardrails to ensure weighted funding is used for the students it generates; and a clear accountability framework that defines the minimum educational opportunities each school must provide and a menu of options if small schools cannot deliver them.

Jill Briggs Campbell, interim deputy secretary for the Agency of Education, told the committee that funding alone will not achieve the intended outcomes. "This funding formula is predicated on other changes in terms of governance and scale, but also in terms of accountability," she said. "You really need to pull all three levers at once in order to achieve cost savings at high quality that treats every student fairly." She added that officials will need to be explicit about what a necessarily small school is and how quality will be measured.

Committee members raised cost questions and said they will ask fiscal staff to model the proposal's numbers. One senator noted that many of the consultants' proposed adjustments would add new dollars compared with some earlier studies; consultants replied that some variations reflect differences between the Pike evidence‑based prototype and Vermont's context and that net fiscal outcomes depend on governance choices and consolidation options.

Next steps: consultants and legislative fiscal staff plan a deeper, numeric review in the coming week to identify baseline costs, the data the committee needs, and which choices drive the largest budget impacts. The committee asked consultants to provide detailed base and weight figures so Joint Fiscal Office and the Department of Taxes can produce cost models.