Where the HUUSD budget grew.

The whole budget and the student count

What is and is not public. HUUSD's annual reports print no table of the budget by function or line. The function-level record is the audited financial statements, whose Schedule B lists about forty functions with the original budget, the final budget and what was spent. Five audits are public: FY2018, FY2019, FY2022, FY2023 and FY2024. The FY2020 and FY2021 audits are linked from the district's site but the files require sign-in, so those two years have no public actual by function. The page therefore compares FY2019 with FY2024, the latest audit posted. Budgets by object run to the FY2027 proposal, but for FY2025 onward they exist only on image slides, which were read by OCR and accepted only where the cells reconcile arithmetically and foot to the printed total.

Between FY2019 and FY2024, HUUSD general-fund spending (the audit's total of departmental operations) rose 24.7%, from $36.0M to $44.9M. The original budget rose 22.2% over the same years, from $37.2M to $45.4M; the budget has since gone to $47.9M for FY2025 (the revised figure that passed after the first proposal of $50.84M was defeated in March 2024), $49.2M for FY2026 and $51.9M proposed for FY2027, approved March 3, 2026. Over the FY2019–FY2024 window the state's fall count of students in the seven schools fell 5.0%, from 1,888 to 1,794. Spending per student, the total divided by that count, rose 31.2%, from $19,068 to $25,016.

Consumer prices rose 22.2% over the same five fiscal years (the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U, FY2019 average to FY2024 average; June 2019 to June 2024, 22.7%). Spending, at 24.7%, rose more than the 22.2% rise in consumer prices; spending per student, at 31.2%, rose more than the 22.2% rise in consumer prices. On the budget side, salaries rose 28.3% between the FY2022 budget and the FY2027 proposal and benefits 41.0%; everything else rose 29.3%.

The enrollment series runs longer than the budget window. Since FY2005 the seven schools' fall count is down 12.6%, from 2,012 to 1,758; Harwood Union Middle/High alone is down 34.4%, from 838 to 550.

The state's measure. The Agency of Education sets the homestead tax rate on education spending per weighted pupil: the adopted budget less offsetting revenues, divided by the state's weighted pupil count. For FY2026 that figure is $15,486 per long-term weighted ADM (2,659.72 weighted pupils; rank 23 of 128 districts). The pupil measure changed in FY2025 under Act 127, so the chart below draws the years before and after apart. The FY2027 figure as printed on the district's own AOE form is $16,229 (proposed).

Change by function

The audit groups the general fund into five sections, each with a printed subtotal: instructional program (classroom instruction, special education, co-curricular), instructional support (guidance, nursing, psychological and therapy services, library and technology), administration and other support (board, central office, operations and maintenance, transportation), long-term debt and transfers to other funds. Those sections are the functions here; the audit rows inside each are one level down. Every figure is district-wide; the audit prints no per-school split.

Ranked by percent change between the FY2019 and FY2024 actuals, the increases were instructional support (+41.9%, +$2.36M); administration and other support (+32.0%, +$2.64M); transfers to other funds (+23.6%, +$0.19M); instructional program (+18.2%, +$3.77M). Spending rose 24.7% over the same window and consumer prices 22.2%, so a section above those lines grew faster than the budget as a whole and faster than prices. One section was lower in FY2024 than in FY2019: long-term debt (−11.3%, −$0.08M). The toggle on the chart switches to the original budgets for the same two years.

The same functions, per student

Dividing each section by the year's student count puts the spending change and the enrollment change on one line. Per student, every section that grew in dollars shows a larger percent increase than in dollars, because the FY2024 count is lower. Long-term debt is lower per student.

Per student, the largest percent increases were instructional support (+49.3%, $2,986 → $4,459); administration and other support (+38.9%, $4,359 → $6,057); transfers to other funds (+30.1%, $420 → $546). Every section is in the table under the chart.

These figures say what was spent and how many students there were. They do not say why a section grew. Was it a contract, a state requirement, a building, a program moved from another fund, or a cost that does not move with the student count? The audit rows below are where that question starts.

The biggest changes in dollars, one level down

Ranked by the size of the dollar change, up or down, the three sections that moved most between the FY2019 and FY2024 actuals were instructional program (+$3.77M, +18.2%); administration and other support (+$2.64M, +32.0%); instructional support (+$2.36M, +41.9%). Each is shown the same way the sections were shown above. First, change by audit row, in percent and in dollars side by side; then the same rows per enrolled student; then the full table of printed rows with the original budget beside the actual. Rows the audit stopped printing by FY2024 (central office special education, health education, hUB, short-term debt interest, technology education, vocational education, yATST) and rows new since FY2019 (building improvements, central office other services, human resources, school Board Treasurer, technology) are listed without a change figure.

Major line-item contributors, in dollars

Across every section, the audit rows with the largest dollar change, up or down. The five largest were regular education in instructional program (+$2.37M, +31.4%); special education in instructional program (+$1.58M, +32.6%); operations and maintenance in administration and other support (+$1.09M, +36.8%); psychological services in instructional support (+$0.71M, +52.8%); and guidance in instructional support (+$0.46M, +62.0%). The fifteen on the chart, decreases netted against increases, sum to 92% of the net change in the total, the FY2024 total less the FY2019 total (+$8.88M).

The biggest changes in percent, one level down

Ranked by the size of the percent change, up or down, the three sections that moved most between the same two actuals were instructional support (+41.9%, +$2.36M); administration and other support (+32.0%, +$2.64M); transfers to other funds (+23.6%, +$0.19M). Administration and other support and Instructional support are in both groups; their rows are shown once, under the dollar group above. The other one get the same three views.

Major line-item contributors, in percent

Across every section, the audit rows with the largest percent change, up or down, among rows of at least $50,000 in FY2024 actual. The floor keeps off the chart rows that are small in both years, where a change of a few thousand dollars is a large percent. The five largest were eLL in instructional program (+229.1%, +$0.06M); school Board in administration and other support (+134.3%, +$0.15M); next step in instructional program (+118.7%, +$0.21M); health education in instructional program (+108.2%, +$0.12M); and occupational therapy in instructional support (+102.6%, +$0.09M).

The budget by object: salaries, benefits and everything else

The audits give functions, not objects. The board's budget packets and budget slides give the budget by object: salaries, benefits, purchased services, supplies, equipment, debt service and transfers. Two windows are shown. Salaries, benefits and everything else run from the FY2022 adopted budget, the first print that separates salaries from benefits, to the FY2027 proposal; the detailed objects run from the FY2021 adopted budget to the FY2026 proposal, the last slide that prints them. Benefits do not follow pay: healthcare costs especially are uncoupled from pay in Vermont, so the two are shown apart.

Sources, method and caveats

Every number on this page comes from a table printed in one of the documents linked below, all from the district's budget page, its previous years' budgets and annual reports page and its audited financial statements page, or from the Vermont Agency of Education's enrollment collection. The tables were extracted from the PDFs and checked by footing and by the audits' own arithmetic (variance = budget less actual on every row). The cross-year series built from them, with each figure's document and page, are the CSV downloads at the top of the page.

• FY2018 HUUSD Audited Financial Statement, 153 pages.
• FY2019 HUUSD Audited Financial Statement, 140 pages.
• FY2022 HUUSD Audited Financial Statement, 131 pages.
• FY2023 HUUSD Audited Financial Statement, 133 pages.
• FY2024 HUUSD Audited Financial Statement, 132 pages.
• 2017-02-10 HUUSD FY2018 Budget and Annual Report, 38 pages.
• 2018-02-09 HUUSD FY2019 Budget and Annual Report, 76 pages.
• 2019-02-12 HUUSD FY2020 Budget and Annual Report, 60 pages.
• 2020-02-12 HUUSD FY2021 Budget and Annual Report, 64 pages.
• 2022-02-11 HUUSD FY2023 Budget and Annual Report, 54 pages.
• 2023-02-17 HUUSD FY2024 Budget and Annual Report, 54 pages.
• 2024-02-16 HUUSD FY2025 Budget and Annual Report, 51 pages.
• 2025-02-13 HUUSD FY2026 Budget and Annual Report, 23 pages.
• 2026-02-13 HUUSD FY2027 Budget and Annual Report, 24 pages.
• 2021-01-13 FY22 Expenditure Budget #3 (board packet), 19 pages.
• 2022-01-26 FY2023 Expenditure Budget #4 (board packet), 10 pages.
• 2024-02-14 FY2025 Budget Presentation (image slides), 46 pages.
• 2024-05-20 FY2025 Revised Budget Proposal Informational Meeting (image slides), 23 pages.
• January 22, 2025 FY2026 budget presentation (Google Slides exported to PDF; image slides), 23 pages.
• January 21, 2026 FY2027 budget presentation (Google Slides exported to PDF; image slides), 30 pages.

Consumer prices: Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U, all items, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted, as published by the St. Louis Fed (FRED series CPIAUCNS), fetched October 8, 2026. Fiscal-year averages of the twelve monthly values July to June: FY2019 253.27, FY2024 309.57 (+22.2%); June 2019 256.14 to June 2024 314.18 (+22.7%). The page uses the fiscal-year averages.

Rules

• The state's per-pupil figure is shown as printed. Education spending per weighted pupil is the Agency of Education's own figure from its yearly “School District Spending Per Pupil” workbook, with the latest year from the district's own AOE form. Equalized pupils (through FY2024) and long-term weighted ADM (from FY2025) are two measures; they are never joined or compared across that line.
• Scores are for the same fiscal year as the spending figures. The state assessment tile is the share of students proficient or above on the VTCAP for FY2024 (school year 2023-24), the last year of the “spent” window, all tested grades, student-weighted, from the Agency of Education's dashboard files. The panel under the tiles sets the headline numbers beside the peer districts, with the Stanford Education Data Archive's comparison against what communities like this one typically score (latest published year, labeled). No composite rating is made, and the comparison is shown beside the actual results, never in place of them.
• Two windows, never mixed. “Spent” compares the FY2019 and FY2024 actuals in the audited Schedule B, the earliest year with a comparable later year and the latest audit posted. “Budgeted” compares the original budgets for the same two years from the same schedules. The objects section has its own windows, stated in each chart.
• Ranked both ways. Every change chart shows the same rows twice, ranked by percent change and by dollar change, in both directions. Shares are shares of the net change in the total, the FY2024 total less the FY2019 total.
• Two groupings one level down. The three sections with the largest dollar change and the three with the largest percent change each get the same three views for their audit rows. The dollar contributors chart takes the fifteen rows with the largest dollar change across every section; the percent contributors chart takes the fifteen with the largest percent change among rows of at least $50,000 in FY2024 actual.
• Functions are the audit's own. A function is a section the audit subtotals in Schedule B; the page uses the printed subtotal, never a recomputed sum. Rows are compared where the same row is printed in both years: “Regular education and prior year adjustments” (FY2022 onward) is the earlier “Regular education”, and “Foreign language” became “World language”. Rows printed in one year only are listed with no change figure.
• Per student uses fall enrollment, not the weighted pupil count. The Agency of Education's October head count of students by grade (its “Fall ADM” collection, grades PK–12) for the seven schools, same fiscal year, using the file's own total row for each school. Harwood Union Middle and Harwood Union High are two schools in the state file through FY2019 and one from FY2020; Thatcher Brook Primary became Brookside Primary under the same school id. The district's own per-pupil figures are the state's weighted pupil counts (equalized pupils through FY2024, long-term weighted average daily membership from FY2025 under Act 127), a funding measure that runs far above any head count: 2,647.61 for FY2025 against 1,758 students enrolled.
• Image slides are read by OCR and accepted only on arithmetic. The FY2025, FY2026 and FY2027 budget slides are images. Each table was read in eight renderings; a row is kept only when its cells agree (new less old equals the printed change) and the printed total then fixes any single row the OCR could not read. The raw OCR text and the manifest of checks are kept with the extracted tables.

Caveats

• The FY2020 and FY2021 audited statements are linked from huusd.org but the Google Drive files require sign-in. No other public document prints those years by function; the FY2023 budget packet's PowerSchool report gives the FY2021 and FY2022 adopted budgets by function code, which are in the functions CSV.
• The FY2022 annual report and the January 25, 2023 budget presentation have downloads disabled on Drive and are not used; the FY2018, FY2020, FY2021 and FY2023–FY2025 annual reports contain no table of the budget by function or object.
• The FY2025 budget first proposed in February 2024 ($50,844,703) was defeated in March 2024; the revised budget ($47,892,873) passed and is the FY2025 figure used here. The January 21, 2026 slide's expense table totals $52,921,172 while the budget warned and approved for FY2027 is $51,884,847; the page uses the warned figure for the total and labels the slide's table as the slide's.
• In the FY2018 audit the printed variance on the administration subtotal and on the total is $32,205 off final budget less actual, although every row's own variance is right; the page keeps the printed figures.
• The state's FY2018 enrollment file lists every school at roughly double its count in the adjacent years and is left out of the enrollment line.
• Rows the audit stopped printing by FY2024: central office special education, health education, hUB, short-term debt interest, technology education, vocational education, yATST. Rows new since FY2019: building improvements, central office other services, human resources, school Board Treasurer, technology. Their dollars are in the sections' subtotals in the year they were printed.