Vermont has some big problems that desperately need fixing! Many of them are connected, in a variety of ways to a symptom rarely discussed. The population of Vermont is falling while the population of the United States is growing. Vermont has been losing people for the last few years. The reasons include deaths in Vermont outpace births; between 2023 and 2024 there were 1,700 more deaths than births. More people left the state than moved into Vermont. In another worrying sign the birthrate in the United States is down 25 percent since 2007 when the decline began. Another symptom may be that weekly take home pay in Vermont is about $400.00 less than the national average. Taken together these problems should set off alarms about our future.
S, it should not be a surprise that our schools throughout the state have a diminishing number of students while simultaneously school budgets are skyrocketing upward. Yes, it is costing us more to educate fewer students, and Vermonters are rarely wealthy. Maintaining quality schools is expensive. The average pay for public school teachers in the United States is $72,030. The average pay for a public-school teacher in Vermont is only $52,559. A nearly $20,000 gap is hardly an incentive to attract the best of the best. Good teachers are a precious commodity.
Gov. Phil Scott has demanded the Legislature do something about education costs in the Green Mountain State. Legislators have been spending much more time on this problem than any other facing the state. There have been various proposals, one of the latest is from Sen. Seth Bongartz of Manchester that would create a two year “ramp period” for school districts to merge voluntarily. Two years is a long time to wait when the problem is financially urgent. School mergers are inevitable in many areas which will mean the eventual closing of several small elementary schools. The closing in many cases means long bus rides for little kids.
One idea that has not been discussed is increasing, substantially, Vermont’s population over the next decade or so. We don’t have enough students to make financial sense for our small rural schools. We need more property-owning people whose taxes will help balance our cash-strapped education budgets. Why doesn’t the Legislature think about a campaign to entice people to move to the Green Mountain state?
In the 1960s Vermont’s economic development officials, under new Gov. Phil Hoff, launched a marketing campaign that was known as “Vermont the Beckoning Country.” The campaign was remarkably successful, bringing thousands of people to a place that at that time had largely skipped the Industrial Revolution. Vermont’s ski industry began growing by leaps and bounds then, bringing in large numbers of people new to the state. Entrepreneurs, many of them World War II veterans, began developing ski resorts in the Green Mountains. They attracted thousands of visitors and some of those visitors fell in love with Vermont. They stayed. These Flatlanders changed the state, making it more liberal, and more environmentally conscious. Gov. Hoff, the first Democrat elected governor since 1853, was followed by a wave of successful liberal politicians who turned Vermont from red to blue. People can differ about the whether the political transformation improved the state or destroyed it, but the state undoubtedly grew more prosperous.
Vermont has plenty of land that can be used to build new housing. New people can bring fresh ideas and the capital needed to create new businesses with good jobs. More families living in more houses means more property taxes going to schools. It should also lighten the load for the current financially stressed Vermonters.
A well-financed advertising campaign to entice new people to make Vermont their home will make us more prosperous. More taxpayers can be one of the many solutions needed to save our struggling education system.
Clear the cobwebs off the old slogan and invite a whole new crop of young, energetic families to Vermont the Beckoning Country!
