Act 60 (Vermont law)
Act 60, known as "The Equal Educational Opportunity Act", was a Vermont law enacted in June 1997 by the Vermont legislature intended to achieve a fair balance of educational spending across school districts, independent of the degree of prosperity within each district. The law was in response to a Vermont Supreme Court decision in the Brigham vs. State of Vermont case, wherein the court ruled that Vermont’s then existing educational funding system was unconstitutional, because it allowed students in towns with higher total property values to receive a higher level of education funding per pupil than students in towns with lower property values. Act 60 was followed by Acts 68 and 130, which addressed some imbalances caused by Act 60. State-wide education funding In most local jurisdictions outside of Vermont, public school funding is determined within a school district by the following steps: 1. The school expenditure budget is set and non-tax income from grants and other sources is identified. 2. The difference between expected expenditures and non-tax income determines the amount to be raised by taxes. 3. Where taxes are raised by property tax, property values across a jurisdiction are assessed and each qualified property contributes to the total