CVSD proposes less than 1-percent budget increase

If you’ve been living under a rock while wearing noise-cancelling headphones, you might not know that school budgets have been a turbulent subject for over a year, and not just in Charlotte, but all over Vermont.

Champlain Valley School District board members and administrators have been holding many meetings around the district to explain how they arrived at the proposed budget voters are being asked to approve.

Although the in-person Australian ballot voting is Tuesday, March 4, early voting is happening now. Ballots are available at the Charlotte Town Hall.

Among the other district public meetings, Meghan Metzler, chair of the school board and a Charlotte resident, appeared at the selectboard meeting on Jan. 27 and at the Charlotte Senior Center on Friday, Feb. 7. She was joined at this budget discussion by Tim O’Leary, Charlotte Central School principal.

The Champlain Valley School District was one of a third of school districts in the state whose initially proposed budget was defeated last year. It was the first time voters had defeated a CVSD budget since the district was created by school consolidation.

In the first vote last year, almost 60 percent of district voters voted against that budget. After around $5 million was trimmed, almost 60 percent voted on the second reduced budget of almost $101,801,185 million in expenses.

This year the school board is proposing a budget with $102,724,062 in expenses. The almost $1 million increase for fiscal year 2026 over the previous budget is a less than 0.9 percent increase.

The district is touting the proposed budget in flyers promoting it as “a responsible budget in challenging times.”

“I have gotten more positive feedback on this budget than last year’s budget,” Metzler said at the senior center discussion. “One thing I’ve learned as a school board member is that no one will ever be happy. A lot of life is that way, but I think that, overall, this budget is the right balance between being responsible and trying to address the factors from last year.”

Metzler said the only silver lining she sees in the proposed budget is that taxes are expected to go down if the state’s forecasted numbers in its annual “December 1 letter” hold true. In Charlotte, that would mean a 2-percent decrease in school property taxes, or a reduction of $30 per $100,000 of home value.

She said that if the district kept a level number of services for the next year, it would require an extra $5.2 million, or a probable increase in school property taxes of around $10 million.

“We knew that was a nonstarter for our community,” Metzler said.

The board asked the administration what a budget of $103 million would look like, and it came back with a budget of $102.7 million. Reaching that proposed amount of spending will require reductions in staff, she said.

“Eighty-five percent of a budget in a school is people. So, there’s no way to get there and keep your building running, oil in the tank, keep heat on in the building, without reducing people,” Metzler said.

The proposed budget will take a reduction of school district personnel of 38.8 FTEs. FTE stands for full-time equivalent and is used to compare the work force by using a factor that combines part-time and full-time employees.

To reduce school personnel by 38.8 FTEs, the district plans to cut three administrators, which is 9 percent of the administrators currently employed by the district. The proposed cuts will eliminate 8 percent of district teachers and 2 percent of support staff.

Metzler said the board had heard a lot of feedback last year because there were no administrators cut, so this year’s proposed budget includes cuts there.

A question was raised from someone who had heard that there was a house director being cut from the current four at Champlain Valley Union High.

This cut looks likely, but it may be that CVU retains four houses and figures out a way to have three house directors covering four houses. The high school is divided into “houses,” a system used so teachers and administrators build relationships with students and their families. Students remain in the same house throughout high school.

O’Leary said that at Charlotte Central School they expect to be down one teacher in kindergarten-fourth grade, one teacher in fifth-eighth grade, one music teacher and at least half of an administrator.

Usually, at Charlotte Central School grades are divided in half into two classes. This has meant that classes have ranged from 18-23 students.

The third grade is large, and this year is divided into three classes. A change that would come under this proposed budget is that, when this year’s third graders enter fourth grade next year, they will be in two classes which will have about 24 students in each, O’Leary said.

“From a nationwide advantage, that is super reasonable,” he said. “From what has historically happened at Charlotte Central School, maybe that’s bigger than expected.”

O’Leary said that it is important for teachers to be involved in a “collaborative brainstorming process” about the reorganization for all kinds of reasons: “One, I think it gets us all ready for change. Two, everyone has good ideas.”

But all their planning is contingent on the budget being approved, he said.

Although enrollment is fluctuating at Charlotte Central School, O’Leary said, the plan now is for every grade in the kindergarten-fourth grades to have two teachers.

Metzler said some of the fluctuation challenge at the school is because the school’s largest class, the eighth grade, is graduating, and it appears the entering kindergarten class will be smaller.

Although there are decreased opportunities in the proposed budget, Metzler said she believes the proposed budget still provides opportunities for all students and meets their needs and addresses contentious factors from last year’s first proposed budget.

O’Leary said, under their tentative plans for the proposed budget, students will still get music, art and the same academics. The impact is more of a stretching. For example, in next year’s fourth grade, class sizes may be closer to 24 students when they have been closer to 20 students.

“I think that one of the primary things that will happen district wide is that class sizes across all of our schools will increase,” Metzler said. “They will still be within educational quality standards.”

The Charlotte Central School educators “are just rock-star teachers, every single one of them, and it breaks my heart that one of those people might have to leave,” Demaris Herlihy said. “One of them is the reason why one of my sons is enjoying school.”

“The cost of living is always going to go up, and if we always try to maintain a flat or nearly flat budget, it’s going to continually to erode the services we can provide,” said JD Herlihy.