Because of a relatively robust economy, a sudden windfall from online sales taxes, and growth in grand list values, Vermont will have a little extra cash on hand when lawmakers come back in January.

Officials across the state’s education world — from child care advocates to state college administrators — have plenty of ideas about what to do with that money. VtDigger talked with key interest groups to see what they’ll be asking from the Legislature this round.

Primary and Secondary Education Funding

Lawmakers are expected to pick up a perennial debate again this year: How — and how much — should we fund Vermont’s preK-12 public schools?

The Vermont-NEA will push to eliminate the residential property tax that pays for pre-K-12 schools by expanding the income tax. Currently, that levy contributes more than $400 million to the state’s education fund (the union would keep in place the property tax on second homes and businesses, which contributes more than $600 million to the fund).

It’s unclear whether lawmakers have an appetite for the wholesale elimination of the residential property tax. But certain liberal lawmakers have long sought to move to a more income-based system.

Gov. Phil Scott, meanwhile, is expected to once again pursue cost-containment strategies, although his administration has thus far remained mum on the details of any forthcoming proposals.

The governor set up a task force last year to study student-to-staff ratios, which are comparatively low in Vermont, especially in small, rural schools. The task force is expected to report back this month with recommendations to the Legislature.

Pension Debt

Vermont’s state employee and teacher pensions were underfunded for years in the ’90s and early 2000s, and the state has been trying to catch up on its ballooning liabilities in the retirement funds ever since. Pension watchers long had predicted the situation could lead the state’s credit rating to fall, and in October it did, as Moody’s Investor Service downgraded the state’s long-standing Triple-A rating.

A debate over what to do with the pension is coming. Darren Allen, spokesperson for the NEA, said he stands behind Vermont Treasurer Beth Pearce’s “approach to ensuring the promises made to teachers are kept.”

Pearce said she wants a “risk assessment” to see where the pension stands. And in the meantime, she said, Vermont needs to stick to the repayment plan it already has laid out — and make extra payments wherever it can.

“The bottom line is there are no quick fixes,” she said.

The Scott administration has thus far stayed mum on its own plans for the pension. But a switch to defined contribution plans — which Scott has advocated for in the past — appears to be off the table for now.

Higher Education

The state’s higher education community in Vermont has long bemoaned Vermont’s perennial bottom-of-the-barrel ranking in state funding for public colleges. The Vermont State Colleges System, which includes Castleton University, Northern Vermont University, Vermont Technical College and the Community College of Vermont, is asking the Legislature this session to increase its annual appropriation by $25 million over a five-year period.

The system currently gets only about 17 percent of its budget from the state. Raising its state appropriations by $25 million would increase state funding to 30 percent, which the VSC says is in line with other New England states.

In exchange, they’re promising to freeze tuition for Vermonters for at least two years. And college officials have suggested one place to go to fund their initiative — the new revenues expected from online sales taxes, which are expected to bring in $7 million in fiscal year 2020.

But the VSC system isn’t the only one eyeing that pot of money. Scott, for his part, has said he wants online sales tax money to go toward child care subsidies for low-income families. That’s at the same time as many leaders in the public K-12 system, meanwhile, argue that the money already is spoken for — 100 percent of sales and use tax revenues were promised to public schools, they note, when lawmakers last tweaked the education fund.

Child Care and Early Education

Janet McLaughlin, executive director of Let’s Grow Kids, a nonprofit that advocates for child care providers and access to early education, says the group has three priorities in the upcoming session: more subsidies for child care, support for the early-education workforce and incentives for employers who want to help with child care.

“Our goal is to have the state Legislature and the state administration have the budget reflect our state’s core commitment to meeting our families’ child care needs,” McLaughlin said.

She said the nonprofit wants to see expanded eligibility for child care subsidies for low-income families, and the subsidies themselves increased. Let’s Grow Kids also wants to address the workforce squeeze at child care centers, which increasingly have a tough time recruiting because of the sector’s low wages. That could take the form of scholarships for people going into the field, loan repayment programs, or tax credits, McLaughlin said.

And finally, Let’s Grow Kids will push for tax credits for businesses that offer child care benefits.

Act 166 of 2014, which implemented 10 hours of publicly funded universal pre-K, also likely will be revisited by legislators. The program, which is overseen jointly by two state agencies, has been an administrative boondoggle for both providers and state regulators, and a recently released state report found a steep decline in home-based providers since 2015. Secretary of Education Dan French has said finding a fix for the program is a major priority.