click to enlarge - Daria Bishop
- Fourth graders learning in an overcrowded classroom at Rick Marcotte Central School
During a tour of Rick Marcotte Central School earlier this month, interim principal Lissa McDonald gestured to a jumble of backpacks, winter boots and water bottles lining the hallway.
"This is the stuff that should be in the classroom," she explained.
But this year, overcrowding at the school has meant that one class of fourth graders is crammed into a small room that doesn't have enough space to accommodate a coat closet and storage cubbies.
That's not the only sign of growing enrollment at the South Burlington elementary school. Lunch period spans nearly three hours to allow all the students to cycle through the overwhelmed cafeteria. Kindergarten teachers use a small classroom for storage. Four shabby rented trailers outside the building serve as office and meeting space.
Orchard School — another of the three elementary schools in the district — is also overcrowded.
Demographic consultants forecast that enrollment at all five of the district's schools will continue climbing over the next decade as a result of new construction, generational turnover in housing, and an influx of young families drawn to suburban amenities that include roomy properties, chain-store shopping and easy highway access.
In school districts around Vermont, the K-12 student population has dropped steadily in recent years. But South Burlington is on the upswing. State officials say it may be the only district where surging enrollment is beginning to overtax the capacity of its buildings.
In the short term, district leaders hope to stanch the overflow by spending $6 million to install eight 900-square-foot energy-efficient units called zero energy modulars — four each at Marcotte and Orchard — as part of a proposed $14.5 million bond that South Burlington voters will consider on Town Meeting Day.
To recoup the cost of the modular units, known as ZEMs, the district wants to charge residential developers an "education impact fee" to offset the cost of educating students whose families are moving to the booming burb. A public hearing on the proposed ordinance is scheduled for January 23, and the city council will vote on it soon after.
"We want to continue to develop our vibrant community, and it's people that make it vibrant," superintendent Violet Nichols said in an interview. But "students' ability to learn is absolutely impacted by our space limitations."
Impact fees are one tool Vermont municipalities can use to compel developers to contribute to the costs of public infrastructure needed as a result of new construction. South Burlington already uses such fees, which must be tied to a specific project, to pay for road improvement, recreation fields, water lines and fire trucks.
Only municipalities with growing student enrollments can use education impact fees, meaning they are rarely used in Vermont. Low-income housing is exempt. Developers of qualifying projects in South Burlington would have to fork over anywhere from $2,748 for each one-bedroom unit to $12,535 for a four-bedroom unit. The proposed fee would be phased in, with developers paying 50 percent for projects approved after July 1 and the full amount after January 1, 2024.
Since 1980, the city has added an average of 140 to 150 new single-family homes and apartments per year. That number could tick up in the coming years, in part because of the ongoing downtown development on and around Market Street, said the city's director of planning and zoning, Paul Conner. At that pace, it's estimated that the city could recoup about 90 percent of the $6 million price tag for the ZEMs within six years.
The school district first approached the city council about the education impact fees last spring, before it had settled on ZEMs as the preferred solution for overcrowding, according to Councilor Helen Riehle. At first, she said, there was some concern that large impact fees could make new housing in the city unaffordable, since developers are likely to pass on the extra cost to renters and buyers. In its current form, though, Riehle said the proposed fees seem reasonable.
click to enlarge - Daria Bishop
- The trailers outside Rick Marcotte Central School
Developer Joe Larkin, president of Larkin Realty, agreed. His company plans to build several hundred residential units in South Burlington in the next five to 10 years, and he said the education impact fees wouldn't deter him. He said it makes sense to ask developers to contribute to infrastructure that is related to population growth for which they're responsible.
"It's already a challenging environment to build," Larkin said, noting that rising construction costs and interest rates are bigger concerns right now.
Even if the impact fee ordinance won council approval — which appears likely — the city would have to find a way to devise a more permanent solution for its burgeoning student population. In the next 10 years, the district is expected to grow from its current level of about 2,500 students to 2,900, according to a recent study conducted by McKibben Demographic Research.
Last school year, an enrollment committee made up of school staff, parents and community members met over the course of six months to look at a range of options for alleviating elementary school overcrowding. Possible solutions included redistricting to balance enrollment among the three schools, moving fifth graders to the city's Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School, building additions to the overcrowded elementary schools or constructing a fourth. That committee ultimately recommended installing ZEMs as an interim fix.
Now, superintendent Nichols is working with the school board to look more closely at longer-term options and to collect additional input from the schools and wider community.
There are other issues on the horizon. The city's middle and high schools also need substantial work. That includes both deferred maintenance and renovations needed to support the swell of new students that will eventually flow from the elementary schools.
Another education impact fee on developers might partially fund longer-term improvements to accommodate increased enrollment. But given their expected costs, such improvements would also likely require the passage of a sizable school bond.
Whether South Burlington residents have the appetite for a large-scale capital project is an open question. In March 2020, voters there resoundingly rejected a $209 million bond that would have substantially raised taxes to renovate the middle and high schools.
But Nichols, who became superintendent this school year, said she believes that there's wider community recognition of the need for new school facilities. She said the state could help by lifting its moratorium on school construction aid, which was put in place in 2007 due to a backlog of projects. Today, Vermont is the only state in New England that has no designated funds going directly to school facilities.
Conner, the city's planning director, touted the benefits of the "compact development" taking place in South Burlington in recent years — including resource conservation, proximity to employers and services, and greater pedestrian accessibility.
From his office on Market Street, just a stone's throw from Marcotte Central School, Conner has witnessed the "growing parade, day by day and year by year, of kids and their parents ... walking to school," he said.
But he acknowledged that without robust state funding for infrastructure such as schools, the cost of that growth often falls on the communities.
"Whether it's the existing residents or it's the new residents via an impact fee," Conner said, "the burden of all of this is largely being carried at the local level."