Please see the following note from Nicole Twohig

Hello Neighbors,

I wanted to let you know that there is a special board meeting this Wednesday, December 20th at 6 PM at Hunt Middle School. The main purpose of this special meeting is the FY19 budget.

As many of you may know, the entire state faces a massive shortfall to the education fund and Governor Scott has called for local districts to level their school budgets. Unlike the rest of the state, Burlington is not seeing reduced enrollment but rather level or increased numbers of students enter our schools. We have yet to learn what a level budget would mean in terms of the millions of dollars we would be forced to cut from our schools and how that would translate to reduced direct services for our children.

Burlington, and Vermont in general, is facing the same demographic pressures that the rest of the country is today - a large baby boomer generation that has not been matched in size by younger generations. This contributes to an imbalance and currently forces those 55 and older to shoulder a larger portion of public education funding. What we all must realize is that public education funding is a benefit to everyone because schools are the heartbeat of our communities. If our schools decline, our communities decline. Businesses leave, property values drop, people do not move to these areas, and populations decrease - a problem Vermont is already facing. Without an increase in business and population, the tax burden to fund our schools becomes even larger.

There are many challenges ahead that we need to examine, including how to re-coup some of Burlington's taxpayer dollars back to Burlington schools due to an apparent flawed system from Act 60/68 and Act 46. In the meantime, how to encourage transparency throughout our budgeting process, and how to ensure we are doing the best we can with the money we have.

I encourage you to attend Wednesday’s meeting. If you are unable, or have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to email me directly at this email or NCTward5@gmail.com.

Best,
Nicole Twohig

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