Conserved
Ticky tacky
City, land trust saves 100 acres of Wheeler Park
Fundraiser brings out community, ugly sweaters
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South Burlington’s Community Newspaper Since 1977
the DECEMBER 12, 2024
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VOLUME 48, NO. 50
Legislators talk education finance LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
PHOTO BY ISORA LITHGOW
Artist Sarah Jayne Kennelly, curator of the South Burlington Public Art Gallery, leads a printmaking activity.
New South Burlington city curator ‘exhibits’ belief in art, community MADELEINE LEVESQUE COMMUNITY NEWS SERVICE
Sarah Jayne Kennelly of Burlington dreamed of being a scientist as a young girl, fascinated by the examination of life and the desire to explore. Now an adult, she keeps that desire alive in a different kind of lab — the photo lab.
Kennelly draws on the same curiosity of her youth as a local artist specializing in photography, darkroom photographic processes and printmaking. “I love the experimental nature of alternative photo processes. There’s a lot of control you can have over certain processes, and there’s a lot of experimentation in it,” she said.
Now, she brings that spirit of exploration and experimentation to the city of South Burlington. Kennelly was appointed curator by the South Burlington Public Art Committee in the spring. She creates showcases in the city’s Public Art Gallery, placing the See CITY CURATOR on page 12
What should be done about Vermont’s education funding system? It seems the question looms in everyone’s mind — taxpayers and legislators alike — after a year that saw a third of Vermont’s school budgets fail and as another budget season begins. The issue helped overturn the Democratic supermajority in the Statehouse this November, with many Republicans centering their campaigns on affordability and education reform in a year that saw an average 14 percent education property tax increase statewide. While South Burlington’s Democratic House representatives all ran unopposed this year, they have all argued that affordability will be top issue as they prepare to head back to Montpelier in early January. But on a particularly snowy and blustery Monday night this week, the five House representatives got an early start on that conversation with constituents. More than a dozen residents filed into the library’s community room — and on Zoom — to discuss ideas, solutions and questions about Vermont’s complex education funding system. To understand some of those solutions, it’s important, at least
for legislators, to look back on how Vermont’s education finance system got to where it is. Most notable is Act 60, passed in 1997, the monumental law that separated a school district’s tax rate from the property wealth in every town. That law followed the Vermont Supreme Court’s Brigham decision, which found Vermont’s education funding system to be unconstitutional. Prior to 1997, towns with more property wealth had well-funded schools with lower tax rates and property-poor towns had to tax themselves at high rates to afford adequate schools, Act 60 proponents said. With Act 60, Vermont set up a system to finance education that lets school districts approve spending plans and collect local school taxes, which are then sent to the Montpelier for redistribution to towns to equalize spending. This year, Vermont will spend roughly $2.3 billion on education, legislators said Monday night. “It was an effort to preserve local control while the funding system went to the state level,” Brian Minier, Chittenden-11, and member of the House Committee on Education, said of Act 60. “We Vermonters always pride our local See LEGISLATORS on page 13
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