What's up everyone it's your girl Kenty here from Layton Sports Cards and I'm ripping 2022 tops tier one Bundesliga soccer hobby 12 box full case break number five random teams again here's a look at the random results you can always find these at LaytonSportsCards.com underneath the results tab and the links also in chat for you here we go let's see we get out of here on random hit style baseball five to go in that one we've got tier one baseball up next and then that breaks after that up first 21 to 25 patch julien green from geyer fruth gruther fruth purple 16 of 50 a mill fourth for for libsick get some regular slips from you yes and out of 25 24 25 a umvapa for stugart katomba umvupa german names are definitely harder than champions league ones that's for sure we've got patch 230 127 sebastian anderson for colo 64 of 100 florian grilich for hafenheim nice one there hafenheim and goalkeeper here of geowitz 101 out of 106 for osberg geowitz calling him right now on his day off he's got to come in in the two right first patch we've got 42 out of 127 another umvupa for stugart kind of extra patch in here 34 of 127 a hergada for goose uh goose or fruit 11 out of 100 giddy and jung for goose or fruth and we've got purple 750 auto for libra kuzan a zidane sturt dimer we're looking to fill diamond icons baseball it is a one box break random hit style so you will not go hitless you are guaranteed one hit from that box big hit potential out of those as well rookie david realm for hafenheim patch 24 of 127 85 out of 100 libra kuzan an admin to soba auto top soba and 10 of 10 we've got maximum light uh light it light itch for bochum 10 of 10 on the red very nice beautiful looking card there who's got him bochum a lad a there you go a lad very nice red to 10 we always do dean always you get your uh cases in yet from he said he bought a couple of jersey cases off ebay those jerseys since we're out a uh jung out of 127 for friber 104 of 127 we got another red auto here nine of 10 edward loin for bochum another uh red autumn the red auto there for bochum very nice you did nice did you open them yet oh haven't gotten the ebay cases oh haven't gotten the ebay case gotcha uh 82 of 106 auto a moog galley for lifezig just say first without the first without the yes so first what do we have here we've got a gnaw for frankfort two of five on the letter patch frankfort is rob oh there you go rob back to back cases we had the one of one puma patch in the last one and now a letter nice nice letter patch there on the authentic memorabilia no auto 41 of 50 a um two start for berlin nice and rick yotto eight of 75 paul jacquel for union berlin just say first without the first okay good to know so it's good good good for it sub joshua hey joshua a uh nilson uh patch here for armenia it is 67 of 127 for berlin 92 of 127 ecklin camp ecklin camp we've got purple 31 of 50 of nehouse for um borussia man see i'm so happy through the case in it i was waiting for it uh eight of 25 auto aurel mangala for stewart mangala i'm starting to become a left uh left side trash can now are you i am i don't know what happened just one day i started like doing it that way and it just came so much more natural so we'll see one of 25 on the dual patch dominant core for mains it's two color two color patch 16 out of 100 auto andre sylva for leipzig what'd you get joshua leipzig and nice robert lindowski for buyer munich that is 22 of 25 big hit there that is sean am there you go lindowski oh my god this guy is just the biggest knotting him forest man in the world i guess we will mag this one for you congrats buyer munich this forest guy this forest guy there you go sean in chat too congrats on that one of the bigger autos you can hit out of this product congrats buddy for sure he's on the last break as well very nice we've got 113 to 127 max a million uh eggrstein for friber two color patch correct re kc uh barcott on the patch for frankfurt two color there got wrecked irl rookie autos 17 of 50 florian crew uh kruger for armenia rookie auto there 56 out of 100 auto a marcus thuram for borussia mond um it does look like the sticker is damaged on this card as you can clearly see right there we will send a box here with you uh silvio h who's that uh man yeah borussia mond again uh just looks like the sticker is is damaged there yeah like it looks like a bubble in the sticker honestly when they put it on the card so we will send a box and wrappers with you if you'd like to get that taken care of anytime i hear lightning while i'm at work it's just all right here we go patch here uh 96 of 127 of camada for frankfurt camada rookie autos 66 of 75 anton stach for mains and goalkeeper auto here mark fleckin for friber 59 of 106 106 shawn's now apparently a big man chester city fan and he's been letting florist hear about it shawn's been watching watching he said he's been watching soccer for a week and that's his team he's been talking smack the floor he's got patch 31 of 127 of tapsoba for libra kusan don't ask me because i don't watch any soccer so i don't have this club whatsoever uh 48 out of 50 chris richards for hoffenheim chris richards and a mathias guinter for marisha glomond that is 68 out of 100 fair enough i guess all right last box here and then we'll do a recap again up next we've got tier one baseball full case and then a one box random hit style of diamond icon still some spots left in that let's get that filled up patch of pridal 70 of 127 armenia rookie autos 6 of 25 of lupichitch for cologne thanks for the follow all right miss the name on that one and last one rookie auto for fryberg 103 of 106 philip leinhardt rookie auto out of 106 all right quick recap here our relics first pridal for armenia tapsoba libra kusan calmata frankfurt barcock frankfurt a ecstine fryberg core for mains eklene camp um hertha berlin nilson for armenia jong for fryberg david rom rookie hoffenheim a hergada uh gariforth a envupa stugarts anderson for cologne julian green for um geutherford and then we had the beautiful name patch two of five for frankfurt and scarp noff two of five and then our autos rookie auto for fryberg leinhardt a lupichitch for cologne kinter borosha mons chris richards hoffenheim mark fleckin for fryberg anton stach mains a marcus thurman borosha mons florian kruger armenia again this one had the little damage on the sticker we're going to send a box with that one um andre silver for leipzig mangala stugarts a florian uh nehouse for borosha mons rookie auto of jackel berlin uh twosart berlin uh mukili leipzig to ten on the low end for bochum a light stitch for bochum to ten nice back-to-back red autos there uh tapsoba leverkusen sturdimer leverkusen a jong for gariforth a geckowitz osberg auto uh grillitch hoffenheim a envupa stugart auto and a mill for spurt for leipzig and then we had another big robert uh lumandowski for bier munich 22 of 25 big hit there all righty that will do it for soccer for today everyone thanks again for the fill and we'll get these cards right out to you


Hope you had a good lunch and you have a good conference so far. Today I'm going to talk about abstract syntax tree. So to start off, I'll introduce a little bit about myself. Right now I worked for LinkedIn Learning. Just in case you don't know, LinkedIn Learning is a platform where we offer video courses in fields such as technology, creative, and business taught by industry experts. It started as linda.com and then later it was acquired by LinkedIn. At LinkedIn Learning, I get my first exposure in Ember. Before Ember, I was working at this startup called Spoke, where Spoke was trying to help employee to work more efficiently by using machine learning to manage internal requests. There I was working full stack. I used tools such as Node.js and Angular. So to start off, I want to share two problems that I encountered this past year that really leads me very interested in this topic. So one of the problems I encountered this past year was a problem to book edits syntax on a scale. For example, I was trying to wrap around all of our requests wrapped around in this global error handler. Two, when I first started working on this project, my first thought is I'll just do it manually. But then when I started looking at it, there were thousands or maybe like hundreds of requests across our code base. It's going to be a lot of code that I need to like edit. And it's going to take days and it's tedious. So I thought about a second solution, which is to use regex. And I tried it and I wrote the most complicated regex in my life. And it solved about half the problem. For other half, regex can just simply cannot do it. And regex especially can't handle the situation where the lines, the kind of a request call that outlasted a couple of lines. Regex does really well when single line, but when it's like a couple of lines, it doesn't do as efficient of job. So that's when I started looking into code mod and it made my life so much better. And I was able to transform a lot of the code in our code base using code mod in just a couple of days of work. So that's the first problem that I encountered. The second problem I encountered started from observations. I realized we have a lot of code conventions in our team. And you would see that code reviewers or one review code, we're always trying to enforce those conventions. Sometimes I feel bad of pointing them out. And as people who submit code, I also feel bad of making those mistakes. But sometimes they're just hard to catch, especially when I'm trying in a rush, it's hard. So I was wondering if there is a way to automate this process. And that's why I looked into creating a custom linking rule. And then it also made my, I think my team's life so much better where we can identify problems before it's been pointing out to other people and shorten our kind of problem solving cycle. It was great. So from these two problems and those two tools I used, I realized both of them somehow have this very similar underlying way to solve a problem. That is involved code manipulation and transformation. And that's what I wanna talk to you about today, is to how to do it, how to just use that tool and make your life easier as a developer. So to start with talking about kind of that underlying concept behind them, I'm going to start with a simple analogy. If you're ever trying to learn different language, you would always start with probably one or two things. First thing you'll learn about vocabulary. Second thing you will learn about grammar. You will learn things like, Apple is a noun. I is a subject. You have a sentence, you need a subject, verb and noun.  Understanding grammar behind a language enable people to communicate more efficiently and enable people to understand each other better. And how does this relate to our daily life as a developer? Similar to speaking a language, writing code is very similar where if you understand, if we can understand how the code are working behind the scene and be really familiar with the grammar behind it, we are able to do so much more things with the code that we write every day and thus become a very efficient developer. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. To help you understand better of the underlying syntax and the underlying structure behind the code that you write every day. So to start off, I'll go a little bit more in-depth about the tool, the product utility tools that we might encounter in Amber and from there, I'll point out to you this underlying concept abstract syntax tree behind them. And then I'll talk about how you can apply abstract syntax tree and use it in your future work. So to start off, I'll go a little bit more in-depth into some of the tools that I may have mentioned before. The first is Linter. What Linter does is it catches error and point out errors as you're developing. It can often seen as a code editor plugin or like as a pre-commit hook. I'll start with an example of disallowing unreachable code as part of the Yes, Linter rule. So for this rule, if you have a line that's written after the return statement, like assigning a value, the code editor will barf at you for making this mistake. This seems like a simple like problem to solve, like you just check what comes after return and that's it. But it's actually a lot more complex because if both the same line, return value equals to two, how would the Linter determine that it's after return but not before return? How is that position determined and how does Linter know the particular syntax like the context around that particular line? That's some questions that will be answered later. But for the next thing, I'm going to look at another tool. Code mod that I mentioned a little bit before and I wanted to go a little bit more in-depth into it. So code mod enable us to bulk edit syntax within your code base. A lot of us may have went through the transition of upgrading Ember 3.4 and trying to get to the Ember Octane. To do that, you need to convert a lot of the curly braces syntax in your template into angle brackets and that's what code mod can do. It automatically not only convert the curly brackets into angle brackets and it adds add symbols in front of the arguments and it skips attributes such as class. Code mod here is really impressive because it not only edit things in bulk and it's able to distinguish some of like a very similar syntax. For example, in the original code, the curly braces version in 3.4, you would have syntax such as curly braces country.name and code mod is able to distinguish this curly braces with the curly braces that's wrapped around super dash select curly braces and they decided to convert the curly braces right next to super dash select but then skip the curly braces around country.name. That's a hard problem to solve. In order to solve it, code mod also needs to learn to know the context surrounding those two lines and similar to linter, those are very similar problems that it needs to solve and I'm going to talk in a little bit later of how this problem is solved. For the next thing, I'm going to talk about the third tool, transpiler. The reason why I want to look at it is even though this tool, you may not be actively using it but it's probably somewhere in your dependency. You probably have this as a package in your project. What transpiler do is for, let's say for example, what it does is it convert ES6 code into a backward compatible version that can run any browser such as Chrome or IE. It saves us developers so much more time from writing code that's particular towards your browser. So I want to look at a specific example that Babel does. In this particular example, Babel is kind of converting the fat arrow syntax into a regular function syntax. And in fact, not only from the fat arrow to kind of backward compatible version, transpiler are also able to do the other way around. It can convert older version of syntax to the new version of syntax. This is definitely sure a very beneficial tool to be included in our repository. But similar to code mod and linter, transpiler also needs to solve a lot of problems in order to get to where it is. One important problem is also very similar is how does it know where is the ending of a syntax that is trying to convert? How does it know that when it's converting a fat arrow to a regular function that N plus one at the end of N plus one, that's where it's supposed to wrap around the function around instead of this whole entire item. All right, so I've been throwing a lot of questions at you and maybe you've been curious, what's the answer Sophia? All of those problems have, all of those tools have very similar problems to solve, which is to identify a context surrounding a particular line of syntax. How does it do it? The answer is abstract syntax tree. Abstract syntax tree is basically a tree structure that highlights most important syntax of a language. To understand abstract syntax tree well, we had to start with the most basic concept of tree and then see how the concepts evolve from a tree to abstract syntax tree. So what is a tree data structure?  If you are not familiar with this concept, I linked an article at the bottom of the slide and feel free to check it out after the presentation. So basically tree is very useful in computer science and it's always adapt to, it's widely used and it's made adapt to very different forms for particular problems we're trying to solve. So for example, we have heap trees. We use heap trees to store memories. In order to solve the problem of encoding decoding, people come up with binary trees because that's the kind of data structure that solves that problem particularly well. What if we want to solve the problem of representing a language? That's what it comes parse tree. So you can think of parse tree as basically making a grammatical structure of a sentence onto a tree. For example, when we have formula three times four plus two, if we map it onto a tree, it would look something like this. So it's a literal translation of this grammatical structure. You can see in this tree, there's a lot of math terminologies about what each part of this line does. For the example purposes, I'm not going to go in deep of what each this math expression means. But here I do want to point out the specific term here looks really scary, but it will change depending on the context. If it's a natural language, say, I ate an apple, then the different note here will probably be replaced by none or verb and then say if it's a handlebar template, each of the node will be replaced by things like mustache statement and different kind of statement or hash values. So basically the different kind of a node is determined by the grammatical structure of the language. So when we look at the parse tree, it actually looks kind of complicated and it's not as efficient as it can be. If when you're looking at this tree, there are a lot of nodes on the tree that actually contains repetitive information. For example, if we look at three, there are three parents here and as a tree is not as efficient as it can be. And that leads us to abstract syntax tree. Abstract syntax tree basically have the best part of parse tree, which is the kind of the structure, or medical structure for a syntax, but it highlights the most important information. For example, it does so by kind of condense the chain nodes together and then it take away extraneous information in this case, brackets. And then that's where we get to this new tree, which is the abstract syntax tree. The way I think about it is the abstract syntax tree is the tree I would think about, that would be how I actually think about in my head. And then I would think about the tree on the left as a way to kind of reproduce the original format of this tree. As you can see, if I combine the information from the middle tree here with the tree on the left, I can get to the original expression of three times four plus two. So as you can see that this tree hierarchy really provide a clear way, like a very hierarchical way to get the surrounding syntax. Because if I look at four here, I can clearly see that the plus here is taking precedent over the expression four plus two. And then the multiplication is taking a precedent over the plus. So it's kind of at a higher level. So kind of abstract syntax tree, this is how if we have a code that people are able to know the context around it is by this kind of hierarchical structure that provides a lot more information about the context. So yeah, we just talked about the concept of syntax tree. And then how it provides this context through this hierarchical structure. How does it relate to the code that we write every day? This is what I'm going to talk about next is a step to step from the code that we write every day to abstract syntax tree and translate it back to the code. So typically to go through this step, there are three steps. These three steps are pretty common for tools such as compiler, translator, oh, not translator interpreter. So the first stage of the code manipulation is this parsing process, which I'm going to get into it soon. So you can think of a parsing as a process converting a sentence to abstract syntax tree. In order to make this happen, we first need to know what are the lines we're reading. So for example, to convert from the three times four plus plus two, you have to finish reading it as a machine. So that's the scanning step. After you finish reading it, you have to find a way to break this statement down into a certain way. So that's what the tokenization does. Tokenization basically break down this particular expression into smaller chunks such as three, four and two. And this whole process of scanning and tokenization are called lexical analysis. So let's look at a real world code example. Let's say I have this block of code. After I scan it, this is the kind of token I would get. It's like div, class, ember, com, h1, title, and next line. So this is some of the example tokens that I would get from this block of code. After I get this block of code, the next thing to build up the tree structure is we want to put them together into a tree. And then this process is called syntactic analysis. So in order to help this process of building a tree, we use a tool called AST explorer, or I use this tool pretty often during my development. This is a really simple tool, actually. It's a website developed by Felix Klim and I have linked the link to this tool and his name at the bottom of the slide. So to use this tool, you just simply go to this website. The interface will look something like this. At the top left corner, you would have the code that you want to transform. And at the top right, it will output you this abstract syntax tree with the token that's already parsed. So here I want to use a glimmer parser to do the job of actually building the abstract syntax tree. This will be the output of this abstract syntax tree. As you can see, each one is this element node. And within this element node, there is mustache statement that is this dot title block. And then it has the value, aka original this dot title. So this will be the actual abstract syntax tree coming kind of the output of the parser. So the parsing steps are really done by existing packages. If you were to write a compiler or like a new tool, you usually don't need to kind of write your own parser. Usually there's already parser coming from each language. For example, for JavaScript, there are already parsers exist like Babylon. And for handlebars, there are parsers such as glimmer parser. There's also parsers such as handlebar parser. And all the different parsers works a little bit different. And therefore the parsing results is also a little bit different. The second stage of the code manipulation is the transformation step. If you ever want to write your own kind of code mod, or if you ever want to write your own linter, this will be the bulk of the work since the parsing step is already done for you. What the transformation step does is help you actually manipulating the code. For example, looking at this particular block, say I want to add a helper function called beautify to this in front of this.title. This is the kind of code I would write to actually transform it. As you can see, the kind of to the transformation usually have this visitor pattern for this particular code block. If you're not familiar with the visitor hook pattern, I've linked the link at the bottom of this slide if you want to look more into it. So basically within each hook, I write an expression that matches the kind of statement I want to modify in. In this particular case, the kind of code block I want to modify is this.title. It's with mustache statement. So that's the reason why I have this modification inside the mustache statement method. And here I'm just time checking if it's a path expression, then I would add beautify in front of the value. Just FYI, this code may not actually work, but this is an example of the kind of manipulation I would actually do to manipulate the code at a scale. An interesting thing about this is if I were to write a linking, link to rule, I would do exactly the same thing, but except instead of actually manipulating a value, which is what code mod does for linking, I would do type checking. For example, if I want to create a link to rule that's trying to check, it's each mustache statement, aka those values that's kind of wrapped around a bracket if they have this. I would do it here and check node.path.original have contains this value. So the last step of the code manipulation process is code generation. Not all the tools that we created or you're going to create need this step. This step is helpful for tools such as compiler, transpiler, code mod, but maybe not as much for linking. But what this code generation step does is it reprints the trees that we have just manipulated in the case of the beautified example, because in the last example, what we did is we changed the value within a particular statement. And what the code generation does is it detect the change and then it reprint out the things that we have changed. And then this would be the ideal output from the code snippet before. So just now I went over a concept such as abstract syntax tree, what it is. And the process of how it's applied in a lot of different tools. I hope you have a base understanding of these concepts and the tools around it. There are a lot more cool applications can be developed using abstract syntax tree that hasn't been developed yet. And I hope with more understanding of these concepts, you are able to empower to develop your own tools. And I'm really looking forward to see what you can do with this information. At the end, this is a list of resources that I found being useful for me when putting together this presentation. And lastly, I really wanna thank my team for their feedback and support and for the conference organizer for really sticking through everything and make this happen. Great job. This is my contact information just in case you can still contact me. Thank you everyone. Hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.


I love chocolate, do you love it? If love is victory, I'm sure I can share it with you. Just make a more vibrant place. Because that will make a bouquet of chocolate will be yours. Just make our love alive by sharing something special. And if there are sneakers, the nature of the piece of chocolate that you need is to melt the energy inside. And if it motivates me to be successful humans, we should never give up.   Sometimes I feel terrible. I'm frustrated about what have I done. You owe when I face a problem. Will you sit with me when I feel terrible? My beloved psyche. Enjoy when I'm in love with you for who I am. For my precious you. You. And you for being mine. Feeding our eyes but only for being with each other. And together as I have a family, like Charlie, Jeremy, chocolate, chocolate almost like therapy. Journey and appointment. Sometimes not as sweet as we expected. But have the same feelings. Chocolate will be yours.


Hold on. I'm back. Okay. I am not promoting any products here. Just going to talk about some things I have here. So I would say a year and a half, two years ago, I bought some Google Cardboard here and I actually bought the actual Google Cardboard, you know, that you can make your own. There's other brands out there. But I said, you know, it's not expensive. Get the real thing. It's real. It works very well for what it is. Just open it up, unfold it, and then you put your camera in here, Velcro it down, and you've got, you know, 3D or virtual environment that everything's 3D only if it's filming 3D. And it works really cool. And one of the benefits of this over a lot of the other ones. So some of the older Google Cardboard, I guess, have a little magnet in them or something for allowing it to descend, sense when you click that to change things. But not all phones support that. And a lot of the Cardboards don't have that. One of the nice things about this Cardboard is there is a button here. And it's actually pretty cool. All it is, is a little tab with a little, you know, some sort of fabric on there that I guess the screen is going to text. So when I press that, it clicks the screen, which is cool. So you can write software for this, and you don't have to worry about near field communication. You just set up your programs for touch screen stuff, which so you know, there is Google Cardboard software, which I have played around with. I try to keep my desktop computer very the only really proprietary software I have on my desktop computer is basically some drivers, I think just for my video card. And the only other proprietary software I'm still using Chrome rather than Chromium or Firefox at the time, just because there are times when I kind of have to backwards engineer some flash on a website and need flash results. I'm gonna have flash results. Might as well have it through Chrome, which is updated regularly and well supported. On my phone, though, it's a little more, a little more, you know, I don't see more difficult. I could easily go fully free and open source. But there's just a few programs. Basically, the only proprietary software I have on my phone is the Google software that it came with that I didn't disable or remove. Not that that makes it good.  I don't think they're going to trust me. You can consider their software, the proprietary stuff, obviously is malicious software in some ways when it comes to proprietary and watching you and stuff like that. I don't think they're going to destroy my device or anything like that. That makes it any better. It does in some ways. Anyway, what I'm getting at is I do use some proprietary software. I would say I probably have 20 things, 20 apps installed on my phone, and half of them are Google apps. Two of them, I really, really would find it hard to live without. And the others, then there's one or two that I don't necessarily need by have on there anyway. I'm making excuses now. Basically, for me, Google Hangouts, I have not found any, and I'm getting off subjects. I wanted to talk about these, but Google Hangouts is a program to me, and I've mentioned this before, that there's nothing else like it. It's not the Creates program. The program actually runs like crap, but I do use Google Fi as my cell phone provider, which I absolutely love and is saving me Buku dollars. And I'm not promoting them with anyone's interested. I do have codes that can save you 20 bucks and get me 20 bucks as well. I just, before I was with T-Mobile for years, well, they use T-Mobile and Sprint Tower, so I'm going to get just as good if not bear service, and also automatically flip over to Wi-Fi if it's available and stronger than cell phone signals, which is awesome, especially when you're out in the middle of nowhere, but you have some Wi-Fi, you can still make calls. But anyway, going back to Google Hangouts, and again, I'm getting off subject of what I want to talk about here, but hey, this is a whole day of me talking, so I can talk about whatever. So I have not found a program that allows me to send and receive texts from my phone, tablet, and computer that doesn't cost me any money, and that's important because I am cheap. And that's kind of why I have not found, I looked into, I can't remember what it's called, but it's the chat program that Edward Snowden suggests. It's totally encrypted and open source. I don't remember what license it's under, but it's at least open source. And I tried it for a little bit. And the problem with it is it, like a lot of programs, you can chat with other people using that program. If it's on your phone, let me just stress, there we go. If it's on your phone, you can text other people, but the texts don't come and go to your computer or tablet, well, yeah, tablet seamlessly. The only thing that goes to all your devices is chatting, which means those other people have to use it. I really like texting, you know, this is actually getting into another conversation with something that Google is working on with their chat thing, which I find very interesting. Let's get back to the 3D stuff. So going back, I don't use Google Cardboard on my phone. I had installed for a bit. It was pretty neat. It let you do a panorama with your camera that would be 3D and it recorded audio too, which is pretty cool. Other than that, I like making sphere photos. I've done them a lot with my phone using, you know, the Google photo app, which is a proprietary software that used, that would do sphere photos. Actually, I just recently switched. I'm recording this with my last phone, my, what is it, the LG Nexus 5X. I just a week ago got this Moto 4X, which is a great story. And the software that came with it, because it's got dual cameras, so it can do some cool things. But the software that doesn't do sphere photos, I'm like, ah, you know, I don't want to install two different phone apps, whatever, but I am actually getting a Samsung camera that someone's going told me they would give me for doing sphere photos. I just like making sphere photos. They're fun. And if you use Google photos, again, another proprietary software on your phone, they've recently added the feature that allows you to use devices like this. They've always had sphere feature where you can go around with your phone or drag with your phone and look at sphere stuff. But now there's a button for goggles and you can put your phone right in here and look at all the way around. It's not 3D, but it's a full sphere that you can look around, which is great. So if you have Google photos on your phone, awesome. But again, proprietary software, but it's very easy to write software. And I actually have some up on GitHub or my pay spin that I've written and examples on my website for 3D environments that actually took example code from somebody else and completely stripped out all the non-necessary stuff. But using 3JS that will, I can put it in my phone in here and go like this and look around 3D environment. I've done sphere photos like that. I haven't done sphere photos that work with the goggles yet. But it's pretty cool. It's pretty simple. So it's nice to be able to have that option of freeing open source software that I can look around. Well, it's using 3JS, which is open source, but not under the GPL. I think it's an MIT license. Anyway, so it's nice having the Google Cardboard and I think it's like 15 bucks. Well, a couple of months ago I was walking through Walmart and they had these and again, I'm not promoting anything and you can find different brands of these different places. These 3D or these virtual reality headsets for your smartphone and they were only $5. And I got two one for me and one for my friend for his birthday, which is back in January at the same time as mine. But he actually, he's been busy. We haven't gotten together. And it's cool because it's got the head straps so I can put this on like this. And it has adjusters here that adjust so that you can adjust the width and the focus of the lenses so you can move these all around like this. So you focus in and it actually, the Google Cardboard seems to work very well at least with my Nexus phone. Pop it in there and it works. Although my old Motorola phone, it didn't, didn't like it line up. So it might work better for this. It's nice. It's cushioned. It straps to your head. You can adjust these individually for the eyes so you get it how you like. It doesn't have a lot of these cheaper headsets don't have anything to click the screen, which would be awesome. It wasn't hard. They did it with cardboard. Why can't you incorporate it into this? I would have paid $6, an extra dollar if you just added a button. Still, it's pretty cool. It's padded.  My daughter loves just looking at our vacation photos. She insists on walking around even though the sphere photo is just stationary looking around, but she insists on looking through the house like she's going to go anywhere.  I mean it's cheap and it's fun.  I'm not looking for virtual reality for games at this point. Although, you know, it would be cool. The Google Cardboard application when you install it has a lot of cool examples of 3D environments that you can move around and tours of different places around the world. So my point is these are great for $5. Again, not necessarily a brand. You go to big lots or Walmart. You can find them for $5. Google Cardboards a little bit more. Actually, it's really nice having this button. So if you can, I recommend this even though you would think this would be as good as this. They both have their benefits, but the button to be able to click through stuff if your application has that sort of thing. I mean, if you're just looking at if I want to look at a picture in 3D with this, I could or not 3D, but in a sphere photo, I can do this. But then if I want to change the photo, I either I need to take a phone out, change photo, put it back in, or maybe set up some sort of wireless remote control, which would be a cool project. Anyway, in another video, hopefully in the future, I will look go over software, different software options for virtual reality headsets like this, you know, writing your own software, and options are out there for some very easy to use like Google Photos. So yeah, I just want to talk about these for a little bit. So let's see, I'm going to move.


In this video we'll look at notifications. If you've recently started using Wikipedia you may not know there are notifications, so let's take a look at this feature. First, make sure you're logged in. At the top right hand corner of Wikipedia you should see your username. If you aren't logged in, you'll see a link to login or create an account. Next to your username are four icons. The first icon is a bell, clicking on the bell shows you alerts. This is to let you know someone has left a message on your talk page or perhaps they tagged you in a comment. Your alerts icon might have a series of numbers which tell you how many alerts you have. To clear these one by one, click the blue circle on the alert like this, or just click mark all as red at the top. Next, there's a square icon for notices. These are separate messages, like if someone has thanked you for an edit you made on a Wikipedia article or a draft article you were working on has been reviewed. You can clear these in the same way as the alerts. Clicking all notifications takes you to a page with all the alerts and notices together. If you'd rather not get so many notifications, you can click the preferences button and then select or unselect the type of notifications you want or don't want. Clicking the information icon next to each one gives you an explanation of what they are for and then click save.


I wanted to get some more real-world experience outside of the classroom, so the data mine corporate partners program was just a perfect fit for me. My team specifically focused on NLP, which is natural language processing. What it is is helping the computer or machine understand and comprehend human language and human text. Cummins and Purdue are developing brand new technology within Cummins together. Their student base is very responsive. They listen, adapt to any feedback that they're receiving. I think it's a great opportunity working with a company like Cummins that really has reaches across the globe. It really gets experienced. I mean I see data from all over and it's interesting because you don't get to see that a lot in college. It's all stuff that professors typed up, but that's what you'd be working with in the real world. You'd be working with stuff coming from all over. One of the things that I think is special about the Purdue students is they're very inquisitive. They want to know everything around the work that we're doing. They want to know where the data comes from. They're very thoughtful and thorough and they also have great leadership, which I think really helps kind of pull everything together as well.


The research and knowledge that's generated within the University addresses real critical important issues for the nation and also for global problems that we have. The outcomes that we're trying to commercialise really start to address those problems in ways that make really tangible benefits come about. We know that only a third of Australians with a mental illness receive professional help. We really have to do something about that. MUGIM was the first evidence-based online program to provide self-help for depression. E-Couch came along later. It provides self-help for depression and for anxiety disorders. MUGIM and E-Couch can be used from anywhere at any time. They're accessible 24 hours a day. They're non-stigmatising. You can access them anonymously and you can access them at no cost. The micro-concentrator system that we are developing in conjunction with partners is designed to supply both electricity from silicon solar cells, heat and also the solar cooling. In this way we could hope to produce a complete energy solution and thereby ameliorate the amount of greenhouse gases from the buildings and cities. Well it's really a very unique discovery that the group at John Curtin has made in terms of understanding how the cells that make insulin die during diabetes. If we can find drugs that really address the mechanism that's been discovered and that are safe and that we can develop from a manufacturing point of view, we really do hope that they could have a huge difference and these would really be a first-in-class type therapeutic. The focus on diabetes is very important because diabetes is actually becoming almost an epidemic worldwide and so new therapies that actually modulate disease progression are incredibly important.


Good morning. This is the Senate Health and Welfare Committee and it is April 8th. This morning we're taking some continuing testimony on the child care bill as H171 and we're going to hear from some folks who have important information to share with us on 171 and their own organizations and the workspaces that they represent. Good morning. Sarah, did you want to kick this off? I'm open to that, how you would like to organize this a little bit. Sure. Thanks, I'm happy to say just a couple of comments just following up on last week's conversation. But I want to make sure most of the time is dedicated to the great witnesses who you have lined up this morning. So I just want to start by thanking the committee again for your thoughtful conversations about this. I've been really appreciating both the conversation last week and as we've been listening in on YouTube to some of your discussions as well. The overall picture just before we sort of dive back into the details today. Families are struggling and you'll hear more about that from the programs who are supporting some of the families who are struggling the most in our state. The pandemic, as we know, has highlighted some of the deep inequities that already existed across the board and childcare is no exception. Early childhood educators have been on the front lines all along during this pandemic and need fair compensation for that. Still H171 makes changes now for families who are in the childcare financial assistance program. It expands it a little bit. It strengthens the pipeline of new early childhood educators and I'm sure you'll hear this morning about what a challenge staffing is in many programs. It's important wheels in motion with two studies. So the systems analysis and the financing study to really part our course for the state and give the legislature some concrete solutions and options to work within the coming years. So ultimately this bill is about families and the economy and our workforce, but mostly it's about children and our youngest children and our state's commitment to them. And so I'm really glad that you're hearing this morning from Head Start programs and from the Otterfeek Children's Center. These are exemplary programs. They're very high quality. Head Start nationally and in Vermont really sets the standard for what high quality care can look like with highly paid or well compensated and well supported employees, high quality spaces. And even in spite of all of that those programs are still struggling because of the lack of state investment in a more holistic way. So and that's even with the significant federal pandemic supports and state supports that you all have helped to mobilize over the course of the past year. So I'm really glad that you're going to be hearing from these folks this morning. I just want to leave you with in the in the house. The committee talks a lot about how Vermonters and especially Vermont youngest children really need bold solutions right now and I know that this committee likes to think boldly about big solutions for Vermont's children. And so we're just encouraging you to be bold as you think about this bill and the work to be done in the coming years. So I want to turn it over to the folks who are really living and breathing this on the ground every day. Thank you very much Sarah and one never knows what what happens with boldness but we do our best. You do. So, let's let's move right to Sue mentor and Sue I understand that Christie Swenson is also here with you. So we'll do we and I think we have something in our documents from you so we'll, we'll pick that up and thank you for being here. We'll listen to your testimony. Thank you so much for allowing us to join you in this important conversation for the record I am Sue mentor and I'm the executive director of capstone community action. We are one of five community action agencies in the state of Vermont serving. We capstone serve Washington LaMoyle and Orange counties. And with me today is Christie Swenson the director of our head start program. I'm going to just start explaining a little bit about what community action is all about, and then more about head start specifically capstone head start program. And we want to just say we are in strong support of h171 as really frontline childcare workers for the most at risk families. We want you to reconsider a decision the house made to put into study a need that we have that the childcare assistance family assistance program financial assistance program the CC FAP be based on enrollment rather than attendance. That has now been put into a study that recommendation that was part of the original bill, and we're going to talk about the impact that the state's decision has had on our incredible programs but first, just to let you know. And I'm starting of course with the pictures of our beautiful children. Capstone community action was established in 1965 out of the war on poverty, and that is our mission to help lift people out of poverty and we have an array of programs to do that. We begin really in, we see it as a two prong strategy, we meet people in crisis, and we help them out of crisis and into financial and economic security. This pandemic, obviously, has really put on steroids our programs focused on meeting people in crisis. And by that I mean food security. Crisis fuel and heating for families, and probably most significantly at least in our case housing, we have been involved in multiple ways with housing our homeless families. But we also do an array of other programs we create warmer and healthier and cost effective and efficient homes through the weatherization assistance program that you are also very involved in in your work in the legislature. We support financial empowerment helping people really become independent, starting a business the micro business development program that you, the Senate and the legislature has supported through this pandemic. We do vital volunteer income tax preparation. We do workforce development, an array of programs. But really what I consider our flagship program is the program dedicated to breaking the generational cycle of poverty. Which is absolutely essential through early education and development programs, as you see in our headstart program headstart is a federally subsidized program. It doesn't cover all of the costs the feds we rely on the state we raise philanthropic money to make a very holistic program and I want you to understand it's not just childcare that this program. And it isn't for anyone it is specifically and primarily devoted to at risk families, which means families that are homeless and by the way, 30% of the children we serve in our capstone service area are homeless 30%. We serve generally in normal times, 375 families throughout our service area so we're not one small childcare center. We actually have an array of programs. Christy if you can go to the next slide. It helps you see more carefully by mandate 10% of our families have our children's with disabilities, but we also have children in foster care, we have children whose parents are suffering or challenged by substance misuse, or substance use disorder. We have the children of parents who are incarcerated. And we have families at the federal poverty level which you know means very low income. But we aren't just bringing them to a childcare center we actually have an array of programs. We have home visitors, those are families that have each week of visitor a trained home visitor coming for an hour and a half to the family. We are working partnership with public pre case as well as with private providers. The programs that are most affected by the policy we're talking about the CC FAP are our center based programs so in capstone service area, we have a program in LaMoyle County, as well as in Morrisville and also in Barry. We serve in two ways one is called the head start which is three to five year olds, and then the early head start so these are two come programs but the early head start looks at pregnant mothers, all the way to age three. And in our Barry childcare center, we actually have a program for pregnant and parenting teens, where our young pregnant moms who have dropped out of high school are enabled to get their diploma, while pregnant and as their child, their parents are born right there in our childcare center. But what that program and it really points out is the importance of the variety of programming are young moms are not just getting their high school diploma, they're learning how to be moms they access to an array of programs that all of our families do health care, oral health care, mental health care, case, wrap around case management. So our families are, you know, have a variety of needs based on trauma throughout their lives, and we are there to support them. And I think let's move I think so here are in this you'll see the different providing programs and the different who is eligible for head start now I want to look at what has happened during the pandemic. Obviously, the pandemic has just been an extraordinary time and I am so in awe of our head start programs and staff who, you know, even we at capstone really foresaw and prepared. Even before the governor took action to close our schools we made a decision and it was a difficult one to begin to anticipate this, and actually we closed down ours. Our care provided at our center. What we did was we thought creatively about how to keep our programs going. So each week, we delivered to every one of our families packet materials activities and food. I fail to mention that food and nutrition is essential to our head start programs we provide nutritious meals, a breakfast, a lunch and a snack and for many perhaps most of these children, it is the only healthy meals they are able to get. So we made sure that we ensured that they continue to get them through deliveries of meals of activity packs, and continuing to communicate with every family over the phone we made sure they had hotspots made sure they had phones, and we stayed in touch with them through this very stressful time. We never wavered on that. And we do really appreciate that the state did decide to reimburse us during the shutdown for all students enrolled in our program. But then in September when we opened up our classrooms, we made very cautious and thoughtful decisions about and strategize and work so hard about how do we open up safely. We did a rigorous following of the CDC guidelines in terms of the amount of students that could be in each space. And obviously made the decision that we didn't open up fully because we wanted to make sure our families and our teachers were as safe as possible. We made separate entrances. Our classrooms never connected our teachers never connected and still to this day, retain very safe environments for our families. And now what that required was that we did what you would call in the schools a hybrid, we had two days with 50% of the classroom, one day of cleaning and letting the air, and then the next two days Thursday Friday the other 50% of the classroom. So essentially, the number of students we were able to enroll reduce significantly, or the number of families that were coming, we enrolled them, but they weren't there four days a week they were there two days a week. So, what did that mean, the childcare financial assistance program is based on attendance, rather than enrollment. So, for us if you can point out here, look at the federal money that comes to just in capstone for our head start our early head start program we have six 4.6 million dollars. And then for our partnership programs, an additional $671,000 federal dollars. Normally, and how we budget every year is depending on that childcare financial assistance to the tune of 847,000, as well as Act 166. So, in normal times we are seeing that if you think about this, every dollar state dollar you are putting in investing in this program for the most at risk families is actually leveraging $5 five to one ratio of federal to state dollars for the incredible program that you are getting here. Now, unfortunately, because of this decision to only reimburse us based on attendance. We have lost in capstone between June of 2020 and December, $200,000 deficit, moving forward into the year that we are now in, we are looking at an additional $237,000 deficit. The capstone is looking at a $437,000 deficit right now that I am trying to figure out how to manage that Christie is trying to figure out how to manage because of this decision which by the way, the national head start program is not reducing our and their investment at us at this most critical time for our families and our communities. They are being very flexible. They are supporting us. In fact, the accolades on our head start was mentioned in a national head start publication because of the work we did during the pandemic. Other states are also paying CCF AP based on enrollment. That's what we believe Vermont should do. What are the impacts we've had to leave positions unfilled.  So we've had a series of those we can't read, we gave away all of these important materials for our families to keep their children active through the pandemic through the shutdown. Restock. We are very much hampered and the stress on our teachers and obviously they do their best not to make that trickle down to the families but I just want to conclude, and you can close the presentation Christie by saying, I really am amazed by our head start program of the results. You will see incredible results in some of the materials I also presented from you from our head start over program. What the state is getting with the federal investment in this program and the relatively minimal investment that they need to make we really implore you to help us through these times to consider the enrollment based. Any business cannot all of a sudden not receive. When I was a had my children in childcare, you can be sure I had to play pay my provider whether my kids were there or not. Why would we ask something different for the lowest income students, what private business is going to ever be able to bring low income students into their program into their childcare, if they can't be paid if the student isn't there. So, I would just ask your consideration to, to actually help us through this pandemic, and really to consider reimbursement based on enrollment, rather than attendance. I know there are others to testify I hope I didn't go on too long. I thank you for your time and I'm here throughout this, along with Christie to answer questions either now or at the end. One question, actually to I think, and then we'll, then we'll go ahead, unless there are questions of understanding. So the amount of the dollar request that you were asking for is, is that the 237,000 that we see on on the. It's actually 437,000 because we're already 200 in our last fiscal year and now we are anticipating in this fiscal year that. Okay, so for that's just for capstone, but that's right that's not for the all the head start programs in Vermont. Okay, we'll get there thank you. So this is just for zoom enter at this time. So the other, the other question is, are you asking for this only as during the coven time and recovery, or is this an ongoing request for enrollment reimbursement by enrollment. Yes, this is an ongoing request for reimbursement by enrollment as other states do. And I guess it's really also helping to fill our deficit. During this critical time when we haven't been able to receive the reimbursement that we think is necessary and obviously that is hampering us struggling forward and you know, yeah, I, that's it thanks. And with then, and then finally, during the pandemic, when you were receiving CRF funding, a supplemental funding, you were being paid by enrollment, and that stopped. Christie can you verify exactly how that happened. Yeah, June 1, it switched back to attendance. So you were paid from March to June. Yeah, yeah, from it was mid March I want to say around the 15th through the last day of May we were paid based on enrollment and then June 1 switch to attendance. Okay, and then did you get notice of that. Notified boy it wasn't much notification I don't know Deb if you remember it feels like it was two weeks maybe. Madam chair. Yeah, go ahead Senator hard. I just want to clarify this because it sounds like we're discussing something was specific to capstone and it's not. The state program well let me let me explain so that people out in the state program last year during the first two and a half months of the pandemic I believe it was from like mid March through June 1 paid based on enrollment for students in or for children in all of the programs that received CC FAP payments my and then it went back to attendance base for everyone so it wasn't specific to the programs that are here today it was a statewide thing. And my understanding of what suit mentor and others and Sarah started are asking for is not a change just for their programs it's a change in the way the state does it more broadly, and to continue what was done in the first two and a half months of the pandemic, and everyone's nodding their head so I think that's I just wanted to make sure that was clear because that line of question made it sound like it was just suit mentor asking for it for her program, but it's a much broader ask than that. So what we're trying to do now thank you Senator that's very good clarification but what we're trying to do now is to understand the extent to which enrollment based reimbursement is critical for a variety of organizations across the state. And we do understand that what happened last year, because we asked to have it happen, but it was a may so the when you asked the administration, you indicate to the administration that they may reimburse by enrollment then it becomes a may and not a shell. So that's where we are with this one Senator Cummings. And you're muted Senator. This has been an issue since day one, one of my first jobs was with head start. And that the pay on enrollment children get sick. All the time, but you still have to pay the teacher. And if you don't get paid when the child isn't there. You don't have the money to pay the teacher. So this has been. I think I first ran into it in the 70s, it's been an issue forever. I agree. I ran into it in the 70s too. All right, Senator Hooker. Thank you. Senator Lyons. Maybe you could clarify for me what happens with the federal money when we're doing enrollment versus attendance. So the federal money is continues. The issue is the, you know, our financial, our business relies on federal money, it relies on state money, it relies on independent philanthropic money. And what happened is if you take portion of the state money away, we are in this deficit. So the federal money federal the head start program remain very flexible and very supportive of us throughout this time. That answer your question. The deficit is the state money, the federal money isn't being affected. Not only more, if we do, if we do enrollment versus attendance, there's no more federal drawdown than there is. I want to make sure to, there isn't, I said it's like a match, but it isn't really a drawdown. I'm just saying that we are leveraging great federal resources with a relative five to one ratio of state to federal, but it isn't a program that relies upon that state dollar to bring the federal dollar. So the federal's will come will stay. Okay, thank you. All right, so I know we're, thank you. No, Mr. Geller, we're going to continue on with testimony and when we get to you, you'll be able to share with us your thoughts and perhaps answer some of these questions in your testimony to thank you. So we'll move on to Deb gas, who is the executive director of early Ed services in Brattleboro. Good morning everyone and thank you Sue for giving a perfect groundwork for things I don't have to say now because early education services is located in Wyndham County we are a designated Vermont parent child center, as well as a head start early head start program. And we serve all of Wyndham County, we are a full day full year operating program. Many of the things that Sue mentioned are also services that are provided by ES. We finance our full day model by blending head start early head start and child development division funds to make that full day head start has never given us funding for full day operations but they encourage us to collaborate with our partners with our state partners to make that happen. And, and we have been doing that for many years we serve 184 families in our head start and early head start program and then probably another hundred through our parent child center designation. The points that I want to sort of endorse that Sue mentioned our first that head start is our funding is based on enrollment versus attendance. And so we are able to have continuity of services, because we can rely on that funding model, much like businesses do. And we have, we have limped along through the pandemic with with being able to continue to provide those full day services we we never, we never skipped a beat when when the state moved into lack lockdown or quarantine mode. EES quickly stepped up to the plate and open essential childcare for many of our families. And we did that for about a month we did have a COVID case we had to close for a few weeks and then we, we booted right back up in June and opened 13 of our 15 classrooms for our families. And we were able to use the, the, the relief funds that came through the state to address the gaps, the finance, the financial gaps that we were experiencing because we as for all the reasons that Sue mentioned, there were days when we couldn't fully serve our families. And one of the, one of the key struggles that we still are faced with is is the daily health screens that we must conduct in response to the protocol set by the Department of Health around COVID. Often some of our teachers don't pass that health screen, or our subs and so we have to close a classroom for the day or we have to reduce the enrollment for the day and really try to focus just on the families who really have no other option. We operate with a limited staffing pattern, but those are days that we cannot bill the child development division because we are not serving particular children on that day. Our average net loss at this point is $7,000 a month. Right now we are dealing with an accumulative impact of about $35,000 in deficit that we're, we're not sure how we can address. We have access to funds that were, that were given to us by the state, but they have, you know, that's water under the bridge at this point. And in moving ahead when we move when we rise out of this pandemic, we are going to be left with the impact of the pandemic that I think still has will have a significant trick trickle down effect, and we need to be able to stay in business to help support our families there. You know, as Sue mentioned, we are seeing exaggerated needs at this point, and it will be a long recovery, I imagine. And when we don't, when we're not stable in our ability to rely on consistent funding, we can't keep our doors open, we can't keep staff, we can't pay staff. And, and you know that leads into a little bit of a path that I wanted to talk about and that is the lack of early education and childcare staff that we are all struggling with that has become exacerbated by the pandemic, because we are, we are having, care in very risky situations, or at least that's a perception. And so we're, we're having a hard time keeping our staff. EES has 15 classrooms, we have not been able to open two of our classrooms, because we just can't find the staff. And the other piece of that is that the salaries and wages for early child care early child hood and early child hood educational professionals is significantly lower than what colleagues and in public schools are making and, and that's general knowledge and that is really steering a lot of young folks away from the field. And so, again, the pandemic is only exacerbating that, and we need to be able to, to have solid program we need to be able to rely on solid funding. I have worked in other states, Massachusetts, one that that bases their state funding on enrollment versus, I'm sorry attendance versus enrollment model, and New Hampshire is also in the same boat. And, and I think that we, we need the ask is that, you know, this is not just a snapshot situation, but a model that we are pleading with you to consider as we move forward. I think, I think that the rest of what I wanted to say really was covered in Sue's presentation. Thank you. Thank you. And let me just say how helpful it is that that you are not, we're not redundant. It's, I think the points have been made very well, and we appreciate your endorsing some of the comments that Sue Mitter made as well. Well, thank you for that. Questions of clarification committee. Okay. Senator Hardy. Thank you madam chair and thank you, Deborah and Sue, I had a question, Sarah in her opening comments, made a comment about Head Start programs being able to pay their staff more. But you just made a comment about the low pay of your staff so I'm just wondering if you, is it true that Head Start pay providers are able to pay their staff more. And if so, how much more and how is that because of the federal month. I would say that that is the general perception. But it is not always true, because Head Start does not, you know, tell every, every program. Here's what we want you to pay your staff and here's the money to do that. There's a lump sum to each of the agencies and they say, do what you can with this tell us how you plan to do this and you know Head Start is a locally designed model. So the amount of funds we have available to contribute towards salaries are based on our budget and what we can leverage in our community as in kind donations. I would say that in my own region, my salary scale is comparable to that of our partners, our private partners. In our case, because we are also part of the Wyndham Southeast School District, we are able to tap into their benefit package, we have to pay for it, but it's more affordable because we're part of that bigger entity. By and large, I would agree with Sarah's comment that Head Start probably has more funds to contribute toward their salaries. Nonetheless, the salaries are not commensurate with what we're asking our professionals to do and what our teachers to have in their toolbox. So the field is still in desperate need of more funding and financing to pay salaries commensurate with the work. I would just add that for Capstone, because our Head Start is part of our community action agency, we are committed to having a full benefit package so we have health care we have 401k we, and that I think is not necessarily something that other health agencies are able to provide but it is absolutely what the bill is aspiring to. And we also, I think because of the support of Head Start, support our teachers certification, we pay for their education certification through Head Start funding so those are two aspects that are I think worth mentioning relative to some of and we, and we are a five star high quality childcare. I would say like Deb, what we see is we're slightly able to pay a little bit more than other providers but not as much generally as the child as the school system. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Yeah, that was good. That's good clarification. Thank you. Can you pay regardless of whether or not there are kids in the classroom. So, okay. So we'll move on to Steve. Geller, who is here from the southeastern Vermont Community Action. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much, Senator and thank you all for your time and your consideration of this important issue. I'm not going to be on the, all right, as the volume good. I'm experiencing a little bit of instability I cut out and got thrown off and came back at one point so I apologize if that happens again. As Senator Lyons mentioned, we serve southeastern Vermont, Wyndham and Windsor counties. Our Head Start childcare and universal pre K program is restricted to just Windsor County because Deb and her program are serving Wyndham County and we're doing that before we took on Head Start, you know, many years ago. So just a quick background from mine. I am the president of our state association Vermont Community Action Partnership. I'm on the board representing New England of the National Community Action Partnership, and I've been in the Community Action Network in four different organizations and three states for 39 years. And those of which were in organizations that had Head Start and childcare programs. So I come to this discussion to this, you know, issue with a lot of experience and those of you who mentioned this being an issue in the 70s I can. I wasn't in the system at that point but as far back as I was in Community Action, starting in the early 80s. This has been a concern. I think childcare in general has been looked on as an orphan child in many ways. Mr. Geller you are frozen. You're frozen. All right. This is one of the beauties of having zoom. I, and we've all experienced it. Why don't we ask Elizabeth Brown to go ahead. I understand that you're under some time constraints. So you're welcome. So please unmute yourself and provide your testimony that be very helpful. Thank you so much Senator. Good morning. I am Elizabeth Brown I am the current Head Start director for Rutland County Head Start. I am new to my experience at Head Start but absolutely love Head Start and will do anything I can to advocate for the needs of the children and families we serve. I want to share our experience and challenges with the current model of reimbursement that is based on attendance versus enrollment and to express my support for the passing of the childcare bill h171 with the added piece of shifting in reimbursement to enrollment versus attendance. In order to really understand and gain insight into the importance of enrollment versus attendance. It'll be important to go back to 2010. In 2010 the state ended contracted slots. These contracted slots meant predictable income and in turn a clear way to intentionally plan for the fiscal year ahead. The contracted slots ended and we moved to an attendance based model Rutland County Head Start had to terminate five full time employees due to the significant loss of revenue and the unpredictable income we received. The shift in the current model makes stabilizing our budget and even staffing very difficult. As you all have noted the overhead costs of staffing facilities program supplies and administrative costs do not shift or change based on a child attendance. The costs are consistent. While much of our funding comes from the federal government we do rely on CC FAP to round out our budget and to support our ability to provide our children with full time early care and education programming that many of our full time working families need desperately. Without a consistent income organizations like Head Start will feel at the mercy of the attendance records of our children. Rutland County Head Start like many of the programs you've heard from serve the most vulnerable children in our community. We serve 117 children and families with multiple risk factors that make them some of the most vulnerable individuals we serve. In some cases we are a family's last resort for care because of the high quality staff we hire the comprehensive services we provide and the mental health services that we have integrated into our program. Like our children, like our like the children and families we walk alongside, we too need stability and consistency to ensure our programming can continue and can maintain the highest quality of care and education that we are passionate about delivering. This last fiscal year like many of the other programs, Rutland County Head Start suffered a loss of over $200,000. We anticipate that loss to be even greater as we look towards our current fiscal year. This loss has created a significant reduction in any emergency reserves we may have and will be felt for many years to come. It is hard for me to understand why when a child is out due to a multiple told of reasons that are beyond our control, we as an organization must struggle to front the bill. This is my hope that the committee will demonstrate its dedication and investment into the lives of our youngest and most vulnerable residents by passing the child care bill h171, and by allowing us to not only survive, but to thrive regardless of the adversities we may face as we work hard to provide the highest level of care and education to the children and families in Vermont. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. Thank you for the time you were with us. That was very clear. Questions of clarification. All right. I think that we're really getting beginning to get a picture. And we appreciate the clarity that you bring to the to the issue. Steve Geller, are you there? I'm not sure where I was. I'm sorry. You won't freeze. Thank you, Elizabeth. Take care. Yes, I thought that was a good idea. I'll try that. Just I think begin where you were. I'm not sure where I was. I'm sorry. I'm just stating the, the problem that's facing you is probably a good place to start. Okay, sure. I think I was starting to say that childcare has for many, many years as people have pointed out, been looked on as sort of an orphan child in, you know, in term in professional terms, like babysitters instead of the child development program that had started really upset game to a tremendous degree because of the standards that we have to follow when we provide any kind of care or development developmental support within head start. And I'm not going to repeat what what folks have already said very articulately I'll just try to, you know, add to complement what they said by providing a perspective that might be helpful for you to think about. Childcare is often dealt with and I think the question of this attendance versus enrollment reimbursement issue is an example of that is that it's almost like it's perceived as an impulse by like like when you want to go to a movies at night and you call the babysitter and say you available.  That's not the way childcare typically works in the real world and especially not on a long term basis. It's not if you think about what impulse buys are that that are additional income for for businesses that they don't depend on for their survival for their livelihood, like chewing gum and five hour energy drinks beef jerky or fidget spinners. That's not what childcare is we all agree that it's a vital service that people have to plan for scheme cajole and sometimes bribe their way for years to obtain the best option for their kids. And it's critical in so many ways to help families build better futures for their children and enables healthy child development and prepares kids for transition to succeed in school and in later life. And it's an invaluable support for workforce development that allows motivated workers to enter and stay in the workforce and for employees to obtain qualified work the qualified workforce they need. It's a mission driven enterprise that depends on reliably consistent compensation for sustainability. It can survive on walk in impulse buying attendance based payment only when kids show up empty slots must be committed to and paid for to support qualified workers the facilities they work in the equipment they need and the materials license requirements and everything else that comes with a professional quality childcare business and operation. And if we're serious about enabling equitable access to opportunity and healthy child development and to eliminate the chronic intergenerational poverty that we see all over our state. Then the state must commit to be the reliably consistent payer for those services, since their cost is beyond the reach of the families that we no need this service with low and often even moderate incomes. And without them they're stuck on the treadmill that goes nowhere. Quality affordable childcare is inherently beneficial, as many have pointed out, but head starts value added benefits add even more to it. Such as full featured proven child development outcomes overcoming the disadvantages of poverty comprehensive family support services full day wrap around care and flexibility to support working parents, progressive career path and dependable jobs with livable wages and excellent benefits. And I want to also just clarify something that that submitter had said about the leveraging of the federal dollars. While there's no, you know, strict one to one match that says if you for every dollar you don't bring in, you're not going to be able to get your federal funding. There is, however, a requirement that at least 25% of the total funding for our programs for which we get head start grants be funded by other than the federal grant that we get. And the quarter of the funding is really is a required a mandated match that we have to come up with either through through a combination of cash from other sources that are not federal and and or in kind contributions and the truth is that for the most time we need that additional doll those additional dollars in in cash because the federal grant is only really giving us 75% of what we need to operate a full featured quality comprehensive program as we do. So, think of it this way that there's a three to one return on investment, at a minimum, and as soup pointed out for a program it's more. It is for mine as well but it has to be at least a three, three to one ROI on every state dollar provided for sustainable care due to the head start grant requirement and and that leverage funding is something that benefits all the children in the program in the state because of the, you know, the way that operates and enables us in most cases to leverage even more than that minimum. So, there's been a there's been a misconception that that has occurred in the debate about whether head start program should be eligible for Act 166 funding for participation in the universal pre K program in Vermont. This is a settled a settled precedent that is some people said that, well, we already run these programs so you're double dipping, but it was based on a misdisposed conception that we didn't have to get additional funding to operate the programs the fact is that we do. And that money that comes in that the federal dollars require our leveraging helps to keep those federal dollars in the state. So, all for all those reasons it's critical that there be this reliable and consistent method the enrollment based method that not the attendance only when you're in the seats method to to fund the program so that the low income people, low income families that need this program need the childcare, most desperately are able to get it in order for them to work in order for them to get trained for all the things that are necessary and our benefits from them having the childcare they need for their children. Steve that was that was very, very helpful and we don't have your testimony on our webpage but if you can get us something and writing, we would appreciate that. Sure. Perfect questions of clarification. All right, we're good. I've we're we're beginning to get the full picture. So this is extremely helpful. And we will turn to Linda January from Otter Creek Child Care Center. Where is she. There you are. I think you just, you kept moving around on my screen. Welcome. The joys of zoom. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me for the record. My name is Linda January. I'm the executive director of Otter Creek Child Center in Middlebury Vermont. And I run a very different program from Head Start, although we are an early Head Start partner with Champlain Valley Head Start. Our day to day operations look a little bit different. I sat down to write this and had a little bit of a deja vu moment. It was almost two years ago to the date that I testified in the house on a very similar bill that H 171 is still issues that it's still pushing forward. And I hope to just give you a little bit of a highlight into the impacts it will have on programs as well as families. Otter Creek is a nonprofit organization. We were founded in 1984 as an infant and toddler center and we now serve up to preschoolers. We currently have 45 children. We have 13 full time teachers, three part time teachers, two full time administrators, a part time administrative assistant, a part time bookkeeper, and a handful of regular substitute teachers who are in and out of the building. We have an average cost per child for this current school year of just over $14,000. Oh, sorry, just over $21,000. The average amount of tuition dollars coming in per child is only $14,000. So there's a funding gap of just over $7,000 per child when it comes to tuition funding and tuition funding comes from CFAP dollars from co pays family co pays. We do have a lot of families who are 100 or who pay 100% out of pocket you and act $166. But because of this funding gap, we 28% of our budget comes from other revenue sources outside of tuition and of that 28% over 71,000 of it is grant funds. We budget about 11,000 for fundraising. And that's on a good year. Last year and this year we're not good fundraising years. If we were to lose our biggest grant of $40,000, we would have to reduce three of our teachers from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week, which would impact our programming. We currently fund around $14,000 and scholarships to families. So that that's funds that we raise through grants through town support, and that we bring back into our budget as scholarships support for families and most of those families are receiving a CFAP dollars. Some are receiving 100%. And because of where our rate that and where subsidy rates currently are, there's a gap. And so we fill that gap with scholarship dollars and families who fall below 100%. We automatically give them a scholarship, and they pay. So if a family comes in at 25%, their co pay is up to 80% of the subsidy rate and then we cover the remaining of the tuition dollars. So if the changes in each 171 come to full for tuition and my board makes a decision to go full throttle and just buy the this this way with the state, then it could increase our it could ink. We would see an increase of $97,000 to our budget through tuition payments. We become less reliant on grant funds to balance the budget. Instead grants would be able to enhance the program instead of balancing the budget. 16% of our revenue would come from other revenue sources and this is all these are already revenue sources that are built into our budget. The need for in-house scholarship would lessen reducing our expenses and my position, I would be able to shift my time from fiscal oversight to program support. These are all huge things. Time is is so precious and my time in classrooms supporting teachers. I think that for me would be more than anything would benefit our program more than anything. And then the changes for families. So we currently have a family. It's a two parent home, both family, both parents are working full time. They have a toddler and an infant that are enrolled full time, five days a week. They make approximately $68,772 a year. This brings them in to receive subsidy at 25% of the full time rate. So on the chart, their co-pay their monthly co-pay for two children under the age of two is over $2,400 a month. They bring in the subsidy pays about $606 a month of that tuition, and we provide a scholarship of $609. So their monthly co-pay is $1,260 a month. That's 22% of their income. With the changes that are proposed in H171, that family would come in at 275% of the federal poverty level, making their maximum co-pay for the month around $541.25. That's 9% of their income. So it reduces their co-pay by 43%. We no longer would need scholarship funds, and we would receive the full tuition. Full tuition would be collected. This is huge for families. I could probably give you 10 other examples. We have families who are receiving subsidy now who will move up and will receive more support. And then we have this group of families that we're cradling with our in-house scholarship funds that right now aren't eligible for CFAP dollars, but they will become eligible. And it will just, it will be a game changer for them. The other pieces around H171 that are huge for Otter Creek are the scholarship and loan repayments. So we currently have three teachers who are receiving teach scholarships through the Vermont Association of Education for Young Children. And one of those teachers are currently, she's graduating this May, which is super exciting. She's been attending CCV part-time, working full-time for the past four years. And we are all so excited that she has made this achievement. And along the way, she has moved up the career ladder. She has gotten bonuses. She has gotten raises. And yet it's not enough. She will be graduating and without being able to continue on with a B and a bachelor's because there is no scholarship support or significant scholarship support for her to do so. And even though she will be getting a raise, it's not enough to continue to support higher education as she's struggling to pay rent and healthcare. We don't offer healthcare. So she goes through the exchange and it's not really affordable. And it sometimes doesn't feel like real insurance. So, you know, we have a goal that if a teacher comes to us who just graduated and has a teaching license and early childhood education that we're able to pay them $40,000 a year. Currently, if that person came to us, it would take them 13 years of working with us before they reached $40,000 on our current salary scale. So we do have a goal to pay entry level teachers $15 an hour and we're currently at 1350 an hour. We also want to be able to offer a comprehensive benefit package and we can't do that. We do have some, you know, the benefits we do have their good benefits. We do have wonderful paid time off, paid holidays, short term and long term disability, but it's nowhere near enough to make this field sustainable for teachers. When I talked to Kelsey about her future and it's heartbreaking to me to hear this young teacher who is graduating with her associates degree feel really defeated about this field and thinking that long term, this isn't going to be an option. And these bridge supports would really help teachers as the state administration continue to build out on what's outlined in H171, you know, to get us to a place where we're able to offer a comparable wage to public schools with an affordable benefit package. And then just the last piece is the studies that are in H171. I strongly recommend them and feel that they're really necessary to see this full vision out. The analysis study, you know, before any big changes happen to our system, it's really important to know what's working, what's not working. You know, what is the field thinking about it? How does the field perceive this system that we live and breathe every day? And the financial study, you know, the field is excited. We are so excited. We feel like for the first time, like, it's going to happen. Like, we've been working so hard to feel like we've been heard to feel like we're going to be at a place where we can pay our teachers and afford to keep our teachers and to make it affordable for families. And yet with that excitement comes some skeptic, right? How? How is this going to happen? And the financial study will really answer those questions of how will it be sustainable? The field needs to know that this is really, that this investment in this plan is not just a short term, that this is the long haul. And this financial study will answer those questions and show the field that the state and the administrative administration is serious about supporting early childhood education at a level that it should be. Thank you very much. You have each and you, Linda, including you in this, you've provided a really nice set of information that it's going to help us as we go through H171. It's not that we are unaware of the issues, but it is just critically important that we understand what's happening on the ground. You have provided that for us. We're acutely aware of the high rate of turnover and the inability of folks to continue where they love to work the most with kids. And so we're very appreciative of the time that you've taken to bring us your testimony. Committee, any final questions of clarification? Okay. Thank you all. And we'll give you a minute to, to scoot off because we're moving on to the next topic of the day, but this topic is really important to us. And by the way, we are returning to H171 next week, so we'll spend, I forget which day it is, it's Wednesday or Thursday, we'll spend a significant amount of time talking about the bill and we'll keep all of your testimony in mind as we go forward. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Senators. We appreciate it. Take care. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Take care.  Everyone go. Cheryl went for some reason. Maybe she'll be back. Oh, I don't know where she went. Oh, well. Okay. We have, that was terrific, I think. And we'll have to spend some time understanding the, I don't know whether. Here she comes back in. I don't know whether Nolan did a. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just wrote on the cost, the total cost for enrollment based. Reimbursement. For this, I do know that there's some, there's CC FAP increase in the bill. And we also know that there's a cap on family expenditures of 10% of one salary. And I think we just got a picture of how much it is when it's not 10%. So, I don't know if anyone has three or four kids in childcare. That's a, that might end up being a bit costly. So, so keep, keep your thoughts about that. And we'll, we'll have to have a broad discussion about that next week when we come back to the bill. So I think what we should do now. I do have a couple of comments that we'll say for the end of the, I think we'll have to have a broad discussion about that next week. I think we'll have to have a broad discussion about that next week. Our continuing interest in looking at. The. All payer model and the healthcare implementation plan that we have in front of us. And I've invited. In a back as director of healthcare reform from the agency of human services. To give us some information. You know, you are here. Thank you for being back. Appreciate it greatly. Thank you. So I'm going to have a, I'm going to have a, a two minute stretch. All right. So, and we're going to, we'll stretch that out. Take three minutes.


What's up internet? Reviewing today another card from Asurix, yung RX 560XT. But you can be forgiven wondering anong card na ito? Kasi to be honest, kailangan rin namin i-research. Hindi ganoon kasi cut yung 560XT. It was released in 2019, originally China exclusive ito. Pero since kinukuhan naman yung China yung mga lupa at mga pulo at mga isda natin, kunin natin yung mga GPU nila. So now it's available in the Philippines thanks to Asurix. But do you really want a 4GB, 4-year old card in your system? Let's find out. So as the name implies, yung 560XT na sagit na siya nung 550, siya nung 570. It's basically a paired down 570. Roughly yung performance niya dapat around the same level as an Intel A380 or an NVIDIA 1650. Unlike some of the other entry level cards that we've reviewed, it does need a 6-pin power connector in addition to installing it in the motherboard. So hindi sapat na isalpak lang sa mubo. It does need additional power. The price of this card is very good. Actually, kahit gusto mo bilin yung card na ito, it's currently sold out sa Asurix, but it was selling at $3,500. And for the performance, that price was really good. So our test bench was an Intel i3-1200, not the greatest system, but probably something thereabouts that you would bear with this card. All of the games we tested were at 1080p. Shadow of the Tomb Raider had an average FPS of a very decent 56 FPS with an average temp of 63 degrees. Final Fantasy XIV 1080p maximum preset had average FPS of 62 with an average temp of 63 degrees. Forza Horizon 1080p ultra preset had average FPS of again very decent 66.4 with an average temperature of less than 60 degrees, 58.8. Superposition 1080p high average FPS of 32.1 with an average temperature of 61.5 degrees. And finally, with 3D Mark Time Spy, average FPS was 17.5 with an average temp of 62 degrees. Now we ran the NVIDIA 1650 with the same system and got very similar results. Kung baga sa ibang games masubilis ng konte yung 560 XT sa ibang games masubilis ng konte yung 1650. So just to give it a rundown, same games with the 1650. We have Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p high. Average FPS was 55.4, again very very close to the 560 XT although hotter at 64 degrees average temperature. Final Fantasy 14 1080p maximum preset 63 FPS average with an average temp of 69 degrees. Forza Horizon 4 1080p ultra preset Average FPS was a very good 71, beating out the 560 XT but also at a hotter average temperature of 71 degrees. Superposition 1080p high average FPS of 35 with an average temperature of around 66. And 3D Mark Time Spy for the 1650 was an average FPS of around 21 with an average temperature of 57. So if you do a blow-by-blow, there are some games where the 560 XT is slightly ahead and some games where the 1650 is slightly ahead. Overall, not bad for a relatively unknown card that was released just in China. But the one thing that the 560 XT, the Isurix one, has going for it is sobrang muran niya. Yung na, 3.5 lang siya usually if they're stock. It'll be very difficult to find a new 1650 at that price. Baka makahanap ka second hand although Isurix claims that all of their cards are brand new. And with that, we come to the part of the review na palagi may disclaimer tunggul sa Isurix kasi andami nang sasabi online na bulok yan, sobrang mura, second hand. Again, we're just going on what we know on the data that we've gathered, on our actual experience. What we know for sure is that A, Isurix claims that their cards are brand new. B, their cards are super cheap. Sobrang hirap to find this kind of performance at that kind of price. And even interestingly, even the more expensive Isurix cards, like the RX 580, which is around 4,300, so it's around 20% more, they do give slightly better performance. If you go back to our previous RX 580 video, although you can't really compare it, kasi iba na yung test bench namin from that video, compared to this video. But a very rough comparison. Paminsan mas mabilis pang ngayong RX 560XT and for only 3,500. Yung nga, value for money, it's really hard to beat. Isurix and this card in particular. But yung nga, as we always say, there are a lot of detractors online and nasasayo na yun. If you want to risk buying something super cheap na parang good value for money naman siya, pero di mo alam kung kilan masisira. At least based on our experience, so far, the Isurix card seem to be holding up. But we have had comments online saying na yung iba na bumilin sa kanila, mabilis masira. But even then, may nasisira naman talaga, regardless of brand, yung masmahalaga, mabilis ba yung RMA nila? And that's something that we're still waiting for feedback from our viewers who have actually bought an Isurix card and needed it replaced. But bottom line, the RX 560XT from Isurix is out of stock and very good value for money. To be honest, I was really surprised by the performance of this relatively unknown card. Kung gusto mo naisugal, because the performance is really good for the price that you're getting, that's really up to you. But at least you know the ballpark of the performance that you can expect from this card. Thanks for watching. Nagbabenta rin kami ng fully assembled rigs. We clean computers, kasama na rin yung excellent cable management namin and CPU cooler repasting sa cleaning. We also clean and repaste GPUs. Nasamakati yung physical store namin and you can also buy from our site www.hwsugar.ph na 100% palaging up to date yung inventory dun. Kung instock yung item sa amin, available yung sa site. We also ship nationwide. Thanks for watching and maybe one of these days maghita tayo sa shop.