Visit http://education.vermont.gov/data for a full list of reports.
So how did we do compared to the averages and other area schools? Let's look at two of the most asked about topics during budget time; staffing and taxes. (All data presented is pulled directly from the above website.)
The metric that has the largest potential impact to our budget is the student to teacher ratio. Right-sized staffing is critical to keeping the ratio both constant and appropriate. The average student to teacher ratio in Vermont is 9.9. The chart below shows Westford within the cohort of schools with greater than 200 students. Believe it or not, Westford is not considered a small school in Vermont!
Westford's student to teacher ratio is 11.88, which is the highest ratio for K-8 schools with 200 to 400 students. This is achieved with one classroom teacher per grade level. Note that all the schools with a higher ratio have at least two times the students we have, thus more flexibility in how to deploy teachers and classroom configurations. The FY'14 student to teacher ratio was calculated to be 12.1.
How this ultimately affects our town is through budgeting and the resulting tax rate. Below is a chart sorted by Actual Homestead Tax Rates for all the towns in our general area.
Westford's actual tax rate compares favorably to other towns in the area. These rates are adjusted by the Common Level of Appraisal, so they provide a fairly equalized look at how town to town property taxes stack up against each other.
Data for FY'14 and FY'15 has been compiled manually from the Department of Taxes, http://www.state.vt.us/tax/pvredtaxrates.shtml and is included below. Our continued loss of equalized pupils is evident as the spending per pupil number grows.
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