SHARON — The School Board has delayed a vote on a roughly $10 million proposed bond to renovate Sharon Elementary School until after March’s school meeting.

The School Board opted to delay because it has concerns about the effect Act 127 — a law enacted with a goal of decreasing statewide education spending — will have on the school portion of the property tax rate.

“We didn’t think it was fair to ask the town to make a really important decision about funding a potential building project when the tax impact may still be uncertain,” Sharon School Board Chairman Will Davis wrote in an email earlier this month.

The goal of Act 127, passed in 2022, was to redirect funding to school districts that spend more money on students who are in need, VTDigger has reported. Sharon, like other districts throughout the state, is still grappling with what the change means for them financially, including how much the new law will affect its school tax rates.

“The decision (to delay the bond vote) was based on the need to focus on educating our community about Act 127, impacts on the (fiscal year) ’25 budget process and to keep the two discussions separate from each other given how complicated education funding in the state has become,” Jamie Kinnarney, superintendent of the White River Valley Supervisory Union, wrote in an email this month.

Sharon Elementary School was built in 1989 and serves children in kindergarten through sixth grade. It also has a preschool program that has been housed in temporary classrooms since 2012.

The $9.8 million, 20-year bond proposal includes moving Sharon’s preschool into the school itself, dedicated space for one-on-one meetings with students and security upgrades, among other improvements. The school was built to educate 68 students and now has 161 students, according to a December building project presentation from the School Board.

Before they get to the bond, residents will address the proposed $6.7 million school budget during the annual school meeting, which is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. on March 4 at the elementary school. The budget calls for $13,513.93 of spending per equalized pupil, according to the school warning, which the School Board approved last Friday.

The proposed budget is roughly $1 million more than last year’s approved budget of $5.88 million. The majority of the increase is due to a 16.4% increase in health insurance, which is set by the state, and an increase in tuition, Kinnarney said in a phone interview. Sharon is a school-choice district, meaning that after sixth grade students have a choice of where to attend middle and high school and the district is responsible for paying their tuition.

If the budget is approved, the projected tax rate will rise 18 cents, or $180 per $100,000 of assessed property value.

Kinnarney has been hosting in-person and virtual public forums to discuss the impact of Act 127 on the district’s schools, which in the Upper Valley include First Branch School in Tunbridge, The Newton School in Strafford and the two campuses of the White River Valley School in Bethel and South Royalton.

There are discussions scheduled for 8 a.m. Friday, Feb. 16 and Friday, Feb. 24, at the supervisory union’s offices at 461 Waterman Road in South Royalton. The discussions can also be streamed via https://meet.google.com/tbz-bmgf-cui or by phone by dialing 770-904-9936‬ PIN: ‪629 570 405‬.

“I will be working closely with our boards over the coming weeks to provide multiple opportunities for our constituents to learn about Act 127 and how the drop in the Common Level of Appraisals (CLAs) have significantly impacted the budget process,” Kinnarney wrote in a January letter to the school community.

CLAs are part of a formula used to ensure that Vermont towns pay their fair share to the state education fund. But surging property values in recent years have meant that many towns’ CLAs have fallen below the actual market rate of properties on their grand lists.

“What it does is if the CLA drops … then that means taxes are going to go up by that much because it’s making sure a town can’t keep their assessed values arbitrarily low. It’s a mechanism to make sure everyone is paying equitability across the state,” Kinnarney said. Sharon’s CLA has dropped. That means that because houses in Sharon are selling for higher market values, residents will be getting a higher homestead tax bill.

After the annual school meeting, the Sharon School Board plans to hold more public information sessions about the bond and tentatively aims to schedule a town-wide vote in early May.

“That time frame would give folks more time to digest the potential tax impact and it will give us more time for outreach, while preserving the construction schedule with completion prior to the ’25/’26 school year starts,” Davis wrote.

Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.