First look at Harwood’s FY28 budget tees up unprecedented choices

September 30, 2026 | By Lisa Scagliotti

In the first full preview of the budget needed to run schools for the 2027-28 school year, Harwood School Board members have gotten the bad news – and more bad news. 

Harwood Finance Director Lisa Estler’s sweeping 50-slide presentation to the school board last week uses preliminary cost estimates in its forecast that will come into clearer focus as January nears. 

Nonetheless, the options appear to be setting up an unprecedented choice between asking voters to agree to pay a potentially hefty penalty to the state, or asking them to support trimming the equivalent of several dozen full-time staff in one year. 

Starting with the current $51.9 million budget that voters approved in March to run schools this year, Estler calculated a projected budget for next year considered “level-service.” That means keeping the same staffing and programs that exist today. 

Calculating the increased costs of current services, that scenario shows the bottom line would grow by 6.4% to $55.2 million.

The catch: The 2026-27 budget came in $241 below the state’s per-pupil spending threshold. But legislation passed earlier this year has lowered the spending threshold, so the projected level-service budget for 2027-28 goes over by $1,071. 

As a result, aiming to run the Harwood Unified Union School District next year as it is running this year would cost the district a penalty of over $2.7 million. 

Superintendent Mike Leichliter joined Estler in presenting the information. He pointed to one slide showing a school being squeezed by a vice. 

He said the illustration is apropos, and he also took issue with the state’s spending cap being called an “excess spending threshold” in common parlance. 

“To me that's a pejorative term,” he said, explaining that the figure is an average. “You’re going to have numbers above and below,” he said. 

Harwood historically has built its budgets to fall just below the state average per-pupil spending, he pointed out. Exacerbating the pressure, Leichliter noted, is that enrollment continues to decline, pushing the per-pupil cost calculation upward. 

“All the calculations that Lisa showed you … are further to our detriment,” he said. 

The district will share its student count for this year in October. Estler said it will likely be down by about 30 from last October’s tally of 1,591.

Assessing options 

In all, Estler presented five variations of preliminary budgets. 

A $53.3 million version, for example, relies on an increase of just 2.7% in line with inflation. It also surpasses the spending threshold by $172 per pupil, resulting in a $445,000 penalty. 

One option for coming in under the new threshold holds spending at the exact level as the current school year’s budget, $51,884,847. 

The good news: Capping FY28 spending at the FY27 level puts per-pupil spending $230 under the state threshold. The bad news: Rising costs of contracted salaries, employee health insurance, special education, and transportation will require cutting at least $3.3 million to stay under the cap. Estler said that equates to losing the equivalent of at least 30 full-time employees. She pointed out that over the past three years, the district has trimmed the equivalent of 53 full-time staff.

“That bottom line of reducing $3.3 million with our current structure – that's impossible. I don't know how we would get there,” Leichliter said. 

Budget season begins 

Meeting twice monthly, the school board has until late January to assemble the budget that it will put to voters on Town Meeting Day in March. Leichliter said the board’s first task is to choose a path. 

“The board is going to have to strategize to say, number one: what's the appetite of our community for exceeding that spending threshold? To what amount? What would you like to see?” he said.

Administrators emphasized that this exercise is likely to play out again next year for the 2028-29 school year because Act 170 calls for the excess spending threshold to be lowered for two consecutive years. By 2030, a new education funding formula is to be implemented, not using this calculation.

The first run-through yielded no decisions from the school board. They asked administrators for more data on costs associated with big changes to consider, such as transportation, extracurricular activities, and field trips to find ways to cut $3.3 million from a status quo budget. They asked about savings from combining all seventh- and eighth-graders at Harwood. 

And although the board in September agreed to explore the concept of combining the four valley elementary schools, that move has not been envisioned to occur as soon as next fall. The board has yet to hire an architect to evaluate the feasibility of the Cabot Creamery office building in Waitsfield as a possible site for a future combined elementary school. 

Short of that, some members pointed to a slide listing operational costs by school, showing several schools’ operating costs between $2 million and $3 million. “We are not fans of closing buildings,” the superintendent said, adding, however, that there would be efficiencies in combining classes from small elementary schools. Another modeling request to the administration was to consider the cost/benefit of potentially closing two elementary schools next year — Fayston and Waitsfield — and combining students into the Warren and Moretown schools.

All of these suggestions are ways to gather specific cost information to potentially find combinations of options that could result in the savings needed to reach whatever budget bottom-line goal the board agrees on.

Drafting the FY28 budget has a late-January target to be ready for voters in March. Meanwhile, all Vermont school districts are beginning discussions to explore consolidating into fewer, larger school districts, as outlined in Act 170 this year. 

Harwood’s request to join the Champlain Valley and Mount Mansfield Union districts in Chittenden County for those conversations was approved. They are to explore merger scenarios, although mergers are not mandated. Any recommendations for structural changes are expected to be hammered out to put to voters in March 2028.  

Board Chair Ashley Woods commented that the new, lower spending thresholds are putting pressure on that process. “So now we're going to get squeezed,” she said. “Squeezed to meet [the] demand, which is to merge, to shrink, to close. That's what this is. This is deliberate.” 

Woods said the board could try a suggestion from Waitsfield member J.B. Weir to begin future board meetings with budget discussions to make it more convenient for the public to attend or follow online. The board’s Outreach Committee encourages people to send board members emails with suggestions and questions. They also created an online form to collect and share questions and answers publicly. Find that online at tinyurl.com/Harwoodbudgetquestions.