Local school districts weigh budgets with staffing needs | Local News

FRANKLIN COUNTY — This budget season, Vermont schools are looking into cost-saving measures, whether that be in extra-curricular activities, transportation options or in staffing. 

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When budgets across Vermont fail to be approved, school administrators have to reach deep into their pockets to find every penny, potentially cutting positions that had been budgeted to be hired. 

As of the writing of this article, there are 781 open positions in Vermont public schools, according to SchoolSpring, an educator hiring website. There are only 288 public schools in Vermont. 

All this while Vermont faces a teacher shortage, with 10% fewer educators in the state than it had before the pandemic, according to the U.S. Department of Education. This is partly due to concerns about salary and the increased expectations placed upon educators since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Taken more regionally, 54% of schools in the Northeast reported feeling understaffed in October, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Vermont’s schools are looking to hire a range of positions, from cafeteria cooks and custodial staff to principals and superintendents. Not all the positions are new needs, with some schools still looking for jobs posted in 2023. 

After budgets across the state failed to gain voter approval in 2024 and were eventually whittled down, positions were cut, merged or pushed out. 

Georgia Elementary and Middle School, for example, had to cut three paraprofessional positions, including the library assistant and two classroom paraeducators as well as a custodian. 

“These budget cuts are ones that start to impact students,” John Tague, superintendent of the Franklin West Supervisory Union told the Messenger in March of last year.

Other times for the budget to pass, schools will decide to stop looking to fill a vacant position, saving them money while adding pressures to staff already in place.

Affects from budget negotiations 

The schools in the FWSU district, Tague said, started the 2024-25 school year with all their professional staff positions filled, although some support teams could use extra hands, like paraprofessionals, custodial and cafeteria staff.

After some of the schools budgets failed in March, he said the boards were struggling to find places to cut in their streamlined system.

“When we were in the second and third budget cycle, we looked at positions that we weren’t able to fill, so custodian positions, maybe some para positions, before we got to a place where we would have to make the difficult decisions of positions that directly impacted teaching and learning,” Tague said. 

So far in this year’s budget conversation, the boards have not officially requested any reductions in staff. 

Those cuts to positions previously, however, can directly impact the school environment. 

“In the case of our custodial positions that we ended up cutting from a couple of budgets last year, it makes it very tight,” Tague said. “If there’s somebody who is out either short-term or long-term, it makes it very difficult.”

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Tague said everyone who works in the school is important. From the bus driver who greets students in the morning to the custodian cleaning the floors and maintaining the grounds, each staff member provides a positive impression and impact on the kids. 

Any one of those adults, he added, can be someone a student trusts or relies on within the building. 

But because of tight constraints on voters’ wallets, administrations and school boards are ultimately forced to take a hard look at their budgets. 

“It’s that balance, really between what you know we want and need and trying to make sure that we focus on the important aspects of students,” Tague said. “Some places we try to do more with less.” 

In the Maple Run Unified School District, which covers St. Albans Town and City as well as Fairfield, Superintendent Bill Kimball said in terms of staffing, they’re making do. 

By making do with what they have, Kimball said current staff is put under more pressure and that stress causes problems in other parts of the system.

When making any decisions regarding staffing levels, the leadership team at Maple Run — made up of the board of directors, principals and central office directors (of special education, pre-k, student support and curriculum) — looks at current needs. 

That’s not just in academics, Kimball said, but also in social emotional learning and mental health. For budgets, it means the board will look at creating efficiencies in the school whether by increasing class sizes or finding a different way to provide services. 

“That’s what we have to look at in doing this, when we look at cuts, and we try to say, what is the least harmful ultimately, to the students,” he said. 

Empathy also has to be shown to staff, Kimball said, as cuts to colleagues can be harmful to the working environment and stress levels. 

“The second worst part of my job is when I have to tell an adult we don’t have a job for you anymore,” he said. “We want people to be able to do their job well, and when we put more workload on an employee, it makes it harder for them to do their job well.” 

After a position has been cut, administrators typically won’t consider hiring back that role the next year, however, it depends on how strong of a need or calling from the public. 

Kimball, said in his close to 30 years in education, he’s almost never been in a position to do that. 

‘Pulling from the same pool’ 

When it comes to filling open positions, Tague said there’s been a shift. 

There’s a finite number of qualified candidates now and individual circumstances can decide whether someone takes up a job offer in Franklin or Chittenden County. 

“If we’re all looking for a math teacher, for instance, it may not be as large a candidate pool, and so it makes it difficult,” he said. “They may choose to work in Franklin West, or for some reason they might think it’s better to work at Missisquoi Valley or in the Chittenden County area.” 

To that extent, Tague said candidates — especially for more specialized positions like a speech language pathologist — have more opportunities to choose where they want to work. 

Because Fairfax and Georgia did not approve their budgets until late last spring, Tague said finding and hiring staff was more difficult as they got a later start than their competitors. 

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The hiring pool is similarly limited at Maple Run. Kimball said it is challenging to find candidates in special education, science, math, technology and in world languages. 

In years past, schools would get 50 to 60 applications for every job — “plenty of candidates,” Tague said. Now, FWSU and similar districts are looking at closer to 5 or 6 applicants, and those applicants are also applying to every other open position around. 

To stay competitive in hiring, schools have to find their flavor. It’s not just a wage and benefits battle anymore.

“I can’t compete with that [Chittenden County wages], but I can offer people opportunities to really have a direct impact on the teaching and learning and connection with kids and curriculum, because you’re maybe a department of four people instead of a department of 14 people,” Tague said. 

While FWSU offers smaller class sizes and professional teams, Kimball said Maple Run offers a strong community. When he talks to staff, they say a supportive and strong community has been their reason to stay. 

Budgeting the new year 

Staring down hard budgets again this year, school boards are looking for cost savings with job positions back under the microscope. 

For FWSU, BFA-Fairfax is under pressure to save as much money as possible while adding in a new athletic director position.

During their December meeting, the school board went into executive session to discuss personnel. No decision was made however. 

BFA-Fairfax struggled to pass its budget last year, so with four vacant positions on SchoolSpring, adding a new position may require hard decisions to be made. Meanwhile, some members of the public said the school needs to continue adding resources to be effective. 

“I understand the balance for responsible use of taxpayer funds, but I also want to make sure we are not having folks come to town without the resources they need here,” Fairfax resident Jolie Freschette said. “Removing the position of students as consumers of our tax money but instead a product of what we can put out in the town is another view point to take when considering this.”

Consider the high school soccer team, she said, which made their way to the state championship this year, and the benefits they would receive from an added athletic director position.

Supporting things like that, Freschette said, would be another asset to the town, beyond its location between Chittenden and Franklin counties. 

In Maple Run, the administration is looking to tighten its budget to keep in line with Gov. Phil Scott’s request to keep increases limited to 3% over prior year. 

Discussion during the December meeting led the leadership team to look at accomplishing that through possible staffing cuts and removing any unfulfilled positions — some of which have been vacant for two years. 

Maple Run currently has 23 open positions listed on SchoolSpring. Those 23 cost the district about $1.6 million when filled, the administration said. 

The board of directors asked about letting go all or some of these vacant positions to save money, which would take the district below the governor’s request. 

Administrators laid out scenarios for which staffing positions would be cut to decrease the budget by one, two, three and four percentage points. 

A 1% cut would remove six different positions they currently have and are hiring forincluding special educators, paraeducators, teachers, interventionist, technology staff and central office staff — the other proposed percentages include these positions and more to be removed.

“What you choose, we as administrators will have to discuss how it impacts schools and whether we have to do structural changes or if there’s less services or what that would be,” Kimball said at the meeting. 

Regardless of how school boards cut, teaching remains person-driven and person-reliant. 

“We’re a human endeavor, we need humans to do our work, that’s what our profession is,” Kimbell said in the December meeting.