Rochester’s
School Costs

I have been a critic of the excessive spending of the Rochester school officials. There is plenty to be critical about.

The latest is the "discovering" of a $200,000 deficit in the supervisory union. Of course it’s someone else’s fault. Rochester’s portion will be about $50,000. Not to worry. We can borrow that as we did last year when the superintendent’s office overspent their budget by $356,146 (Rochester’s share, $94,000), and the school board over spent $96,000, making a total of $190,000 that Rochester was responsible for.

A suggestion that Bethel and Rochester might share certain resources like teachers to reduce costs has ballooned into a feasibility study of out-sourcing our high school students to Bethel with Bethel sending middle schoolers to Rochester.

It makes me very uneasy to think of the officials (from Rochester) that have made Rochester the most expensive school in the state, being involved in this study.

Consider the following:

For the past two fiscal years, Rochester has been the most expensive public school in the entire state of Vermont (see the Vermont Department of Education’s web site that summarizes costs of all public schools).

There are fine very small schools in Vermont besides Rochester that have K-12 enrollment that have an average 200 students.

In fiscal year 2006 the overall cost/pupil was $14,428 for these five schools. Rochester’s was $16,565. The five schools cost/pupil was $10,063. Rochester’s was $12,639.

The results for FY 2005 were similar but not quite so drastic.

The five schools I have referred to have an average enrollment similar to Rochester, operate under Act 68, and must follow federal and state mandates.

So why the excessive Rochester spending?

It has to do with management. Poor judgment, bad decisions and an apparent lack of a workable and practical knowledge of budgeting for small schools seems to be the case.

During FY 2006, Rochester had the second highest tax rate of any school. We were beaten out by Dummerston.

Mickey Lary

Rochester

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