Making schools equal

...Under Act 60, individual towns may vote to increase their taxes to enhance the quality of local schools beyond the state's bare-bones funding...

...Towns with the lowest property value-per-child, on the other hand, will get a return of $4.50 or $6.00 for every extra dollar they remit...

...Given Brigham, Act 60, and the subsequent fallout, Vermont serves today as a virtual lab school where the nation can observe just how hard a job it will be to achieve equal educational opportunity...

...Trust funds for affordable housing have now been established in thirty-three states...

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...ERS would repeal portions of Act 60 and retain others...

...Besides Florida, other states with substantial funds include Washington ($50 million annually), New Jersey ($16 million), Ohio ($16 million), Illinois ($13 million), Vermont ($10.8 million), and Tennessee ($10 million...

...States utilize a variety of revenue sources for their trust funds, but many depend on some form of real estate transfer fees...

...By relying on the sale of tax-free bonds, these corporations have been successful in making home ownership a reality for millions of Americans of very modest means, without the use of tax dollars...

...They are designed to supplement other funding sources for a variety of low-income housing needs...

...The court concluded that the funding system had "fallen short of providing every school-age child in Vermont with an equal educational opportunity...

...Among epithets directed at Act 60, one often hears "Socialist...

...Yet comparable school opportunity, regardless of wealth, is a matter of fundamental fairness...

...Half a step beyond, I am tempted by their love to try again...

...Out in front: Vermont Coalition of Municipalities with a roster of fifty-two officials, a quarter of them from towns that will benefit from but are philosophically opposed to Act 60...

...Other states, including New Hampshire, Maine, Colorado, and Arkansas are at different stages on the road to eliminating the classic relationship of property taxes to schools...

...Money isn't everything, but a strong correlation does exist between school spending and student achievement...

...Susanne Washburn, a former Time magazine reporter, lives in Dorset, Vermont...

...Its goal is to maintain the town's higher-priced school without raising taxes...

...212-535-4052 Emaih para@cybernex.net www: http://www2.cybernex.net/-para/public/ Still other groups are determined to circumvent Act 60...

...The challenge of building affordable homes in the United States will not be met by war-on-poverty-type federal programs...

...Commonweal | | August 14, 1998...

...They notice me--and part...

...From the capital to the town offices, the schools and the taxpayers all across the state, Vermont is seized with Act 60 uncertainty...

...To facilitate the adjustment, those residents have recently received a transitional "prebate," a one-time check from the state to help pay next year's higher taxes...

...Jim Wayne, state representative for the 35th District in Kentucky, was the 1996 recipient of the Mae Street Kidd Outstanding Service Award from the Kentucky Housing Corporation...

...Employing signs, flyers, and internet sites, Act 60 opponents are scaling the barricades...

...At $120 million per year since 1992--earned from a documentary stamp tax--the trust fund has built or rehabilitated tens of thousands of units...

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...Vermonters with household income under $75,000 a year and a homestead with no more than two acres of land, will not pay more than 2 percent of their income toward the basic state school tax...

...In the state's pristine Northeast Kingdom the town of Victory provides a salient example...

...Susanne Washburn MAKING SCHOOLS EQUAL Vermont shows it ain't easy he right of every American child to a public school education is nearly as sacrosanct as the Constitution itself...

...Despite Act 60's income-sensitivity provision, all lowerincome owners of more than two acres of land will slip Commonweal | 0 August 14, 1998 through the cracks...

...In the past, it not only subsidized the construction of such housing, but also augmented the incomes of the poor to meet their housing needs...

...Historically, however, states seldom budgeted tax dollars for those who could not afford the purchase of a home, the people at the very bottom of the housing ladder...

...As the groundswell of opposition indicates and even its proponents admit, whatever its merits Act 60 was far from perfect...

...Still, the federal government has a proper role in assuring adequate and available housing nationally...

...Yet while the funds have been successful, they still lack adequate commitment from local decision-makers...

...The Section 8 program was damaged politically over the years by some landlords who were not held accountable for the maintenance or supervision of their units...

...A wide variety of thoughtfully selected titles, including: FREE AND FAITHFUL: MY LIFE - Hiiring ALL SAINTS - EIIsberg GOSPEL LIGHT - Shea FRIENDS OF GOD AND PROPHETS - Johnson Prompt, careful Hours: attention to your Tuesday - Friday 10-6, phone and gift orders...

...New to the scene is the Dorset Educational Foundation (DEF...

...Those methods proved inadequate and sometimes socially disastrous...

...But to really meet the housing needs of the poor Kentuckians, the state ought to have been providing $20 million a year, which in turn could have leveraged another $100 million...

...For example, during the last six years, my own state of Kentucky allocated $1.6 million for its fund, which in turn leveraged an additional $32 million and helped to provide 819 safe, affordable units in 52 of Kentucky's 120 counties...

...If the foundation is successful in raising private contributions outside the tax system, the state would get nothing from Dorset as its contribution to Act 60's equalized-yield mechanism...

...In fact, an income tax element was part of the original bill the Vermont House passed, before a conference committee changed it...

...The East Havana Community Development Corporation, which built and manages the Towers, has developed a foster-grandparent program that links children in day care with Tower residents...

...State trust funds provide one useful model that needs to be enhanced and supported...

...In recent years, the Clinton administration has cut back on construction allocations and has had a policy of near zero-growth in Section 8 subsidies (although it is seeking authorization of an additional 100,000 subsidized units next year...

...Since Act 60 became law, those towns have feared everything from 50 percent cuts in teaching staffs to pay-to-play high school sports...

...Diane Beaty ing across school district lines places poor children at a disadvantage and is an unconstitutional denial of equal opportunity...

...Taxpayer revolts of several kinds are also taking shape...

...The largest such fund is Florida's...

...Owners of second homes, a significant economic resource in Vermont, will also be hard hit...

...Nonprofit housing coalitions have been able to persuade realtors and homebuilder associations, powerful brokers in any state capitol, to agree to these fees, since they benefit from the trust funds' infusion of capital into their industries...

...To educate its six students, Victory pays tuition to schools in other towns...

...representative, is the lone self-described Socialist in Congress...

...am already that which they abhor--my unintentioned place in their sun, intrusive...

...Most state criteria for grants have been left broad intentionally to encourage local planning, design, and administration...

...If wealthier towns---called "gold" towns--want to spend extra money on their schools (say another $2,000 per pupil) they must also raise extra money for poorer towns...

...Under Act 60, two-thirds of the money for education in Vermont will come from the state's biggest income producers, tourism and recreation, with the prospect that jobs will be lost...

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...In districts where need exists ERS would enhance school funds...

...An underlying assumption of Act 60 was that wealthier towns would continue to fund education at previous levels...

...To achieve equity, the General Assembly passed Act 60, which replaces the local school tax traditionally paid to the town with a state education tax...

...What Vermonters really wanted was not for some schools to be brought down, but for all schools to be lifted up...

...Many people, as well as the activist American Civil Liberties Union, argue that the failure to equalize spendCommonweal 9 August 14, 1998 Meeting On the bridge, he sips her breath, seals her back, is of her shape what she is not...

...Building housing for America's poor requires that government, on all levels, join with nonprofits and the private sector...

...Because the public school system in the United States is for the most part funded by local property taxes, the discrepancy in the quality of education from town to town can be dramatic...

...Wealthier municipalities will usually spend more on their schools than do poorer towns...

...We do not think that Act 60 was intended for communities like us, land rich, relatively low-income, with no schools in operation," the town's Select Board wrote in its unanswered request...

...East Dorset resident Mary Barrosse, mother of three young children and a doctor's wife, who chairs Vermont Parents for Quality Education (VPQE) says, "The legislature got it all wrong...

...and the Stowe Act 60 Action committee, a leading advocate statewide...

...The district's ability to pay would be calculated for all--whether individuals, businesses, or second-home owners--from the residents' state income tax figures...

...There are other complications...

...Due for a doubling of the tax rate under Act 60, the town asked the state to allow it to continue under the old system...

...The foundation will raise money privately to bridge the gap between Dorset's actual school budget and the state's basic block-grant payment...

...Not surprisingly, opposition to Act 60 soon became a firestorm, with opponents designing numerous creative end runs around the new law...

...Besides Barrosse's VPQE, other groups are rallying opponents...

...It creates a new formula for distribution of state aid, the key to which is not the property wealth of the school district, but the income of residents...

...To match their before-Act 60 spending, gold towns face doubling and tripling tax bills...

...According to one estimate, for every additional dollar wealthy Stratton (a ski resort) sends to the state, it will get back four cents...

...That is changing...

...Perhaps the most far-reaching "equalization" court ruling is now being fitfully implemented in Vermont...

...The trust funds have also proven successful in large part because local leaders have designed the programs to meet their communities' needs...

...Successfully suing in state courts, equal-spending advocates have forced states from California to New Jersey to reconfigure school funding...

...Yet were he governor, Sanders has said, he would have tied school spending more to a progressive income tax rather than to property taxes...

...The Archdiocese of Miami leases space for a children's day-care center in the Towers, and this has created twenty new jobs...

...While income tax went out, a degree of "income sensitivity" was incorporated into Act 60...

...However, the law further requires that a portion of all monies raised above the basic tax rate go to the state for redistribution...

...It is home to sixty voters, largely retirees who own former farms of typically 100 acres...

...In March 1998, the legislature passed Act 71, a "technical corrections" bill that attempted to iron out the multiple wrinkles in the law...

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...But as other legislative snafus from Washington on down have demonstrated, such assumptions are by no means a certainty...

...In California, for example, voters have notoriously refused to increase taxes, not without effect on a once exemplary public school system...

...As it happens, Bernie Sanders, Vermont's sole U.S...

...However much justice requires comparable school spending, any scheme that deprives successful schools of previous funding would seem destined to face widespread resistance from parents...

...If those waters could keep their gaze, I'd slip into shadow, retrace my own false steps, turn up elsewhere--though when I first began, this path was mine...

...As a state legislator, however, I believe the strongest government response to the poor's housing needs should rest with the states...

...Still, nothing seems straightforward when fine-tuning the tax system, and applying for the prebate turned into a timeconsuming headache for accountants and an even bigger chore for the lay tax preparer...

...According to the Vermont Supreme Court's Brigham decision in early 1997, some school districts routinely spent twice as much per student as other districts...

...212-535-4050 Visa & Master Card Fax: accepted...

...Certainly laudable in the abstract, equalizing school spending is much trickier in the details, especially when it deprives voters of their traditional control over local taxes and school budgets...

...We believe that education is the best opportunity for middle- and lower-class kids...

...Their school taxes will double or triple, and in some cases rise by a factor of six, when Act 60 is fully implemented in July 2000...

...One example is the Rio Towers, a combined rehabilitation and new construction site in the Little Havana district of Miami...

...They are outraged at the prospect of good schools dismantled and the loss of revered local control...

...It consists of efficiencies and onebedroom apartments for the elderly poor...

...He is also a licensed clinical social worker...

...Thanks to Act 71, layoffs and cutbacks were reduced temporarily, although they were not eliminated...

...Privatizing public schools is one startling solution afoot in two towns...

...Another well-off village, Dorset, is due for fifty cents per extra dollar...

...They will also contribute proportionately to additional town education taxes...

...In short, taxes for school spending, once jealously controlled at the local level, will soon be collected on a statewide basis and redistributed according to an esoteric formula that determines "need...

...The antis are uniting around an alternative-funding proposal called Education Revenue Sharing (ERS), crafted to meet Brigham's demands, and now a bill in the legislature...

...In the last thirty years, however, state housing corporations have been formed to provide below-market financing for many low-income homebuyers...

...Says Geoff Chapman, president of DEF, "We don't disbelieve in what is behind Act 60 itself, but we certainly disagree with the method chosen to fund it...

...Some public schools, of course, are better than others...

...This tax, currently gauged at $1.10 per hundred dollars of assessed property value, is meant to cover only a bare-bones education (roughly $5,000 per pupil...

...Tagged the "soft landing," it provided assorted adjustments designed to ease the transition for hardhit gold towns...

...Historically, the states assumed too little responsibility for housing their citizens...