Okay, great. Thank you. So this is Senate Education Committee on Tuesday, June 23rd. I'm Debbie Ingram. I'm the vice chair of the committee. Our chair, Senator Bruce is in another meeting. But he will he will join us. He asked me to go ahead and get started though so we could start on time. So today we're hearing testimony about COVID-19 testing funds for independent colleges and I will let Senator Hardy just kind of give us a little background since this pertains to something that she brought up in committee last week. Great. Well, thank you, Senator Ingram. Well, thank you all for coming to testify and I look forward to hearing in getting introduced and hearing from you. I'm Senator Hardy from the Addison district and I brought up this issue because I was serving on what we called our transitions work group, which was a work group of Senators looking at issues surrounding transitioning back to a new normal or whatever people are calling it these days. And I was taking the lead on education issues and so I spoke with both Ted Brady and Rich Snyder who are sort of leading some of the efforts at the state level about reopening institutions of higher education and they both mentioned testing and resources for testing as an issue that the state doesn't have the capacity to test all of the incoming students. So we have as a legislature provided, you know, funding for the state colleges and UVM. And a lot of that will or some of that is to be for their response to COVID, but we have not provided funding to independent colleges. And I also personally I live in Middlebury and represent Middlebury College. And it's a concern for the residents of Middlebury that will have hundreds of students coming back from around the world and around the country and the country and may not have the capacity to test them all. So from the public health perspective, it's really important to my constituents and I'm sure to constituents people around the state who live in towns and cities that host your institution so that was sort of my angle. So I've been advocating for funding for testing and some PPE associated PPE so that you all will be able to test students as they return to your campuses. So that's the background. Thank you. Thank you already. Okay, so I think we'll just I'll just go down the list that I have here so that would mean starting with Susan Stitely from a bit. Welcome Susan. Thank you thank and thank you for having us today. I'm just going to be introduced everyone right now and I'll be on I want you to hear from the president's first and then I can answer questions at the end. We have Tom McHenry, who is the President and Dean of Vermont Law School who's the AFIC chair. Matthew President Matthew Durr from Sterling College, which is our smallest institution. The interim president of Champlain College and Mark and Arumov, the new president from Norwich University. I just want to mention one thing, you know, we talked about testing and PPE, but I didn't think about the the apps that the colleges are trying to get which are turning up so that students can have self testing or be tested every day for symptoms. And that is turning out to be a big expense and actually President Arumov from Norwich will talk to that at the, when it says turn. So I will turn it over to Tom McHenry to get started. Tom, you're muted. Yeah, you're still muted. Alt A to unmute your microphone. Let me try that. Alt A. There we go. I think my, our host unmuted us. So, Senator Ingram, Senator Hardy, members of the committee. Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with us on this important subject. We, I'm the President and Dean of Vermont Law School, as you know, an independent law school located in South Royalton, Vermont. We have approximately 550 full time residential students and interestingly, most of our students do want to come back to the campus in the fall, even if a number of our classes will still be offered virtually and about 130 online students, a group that is growing. And we are a Senator Hardy actually made my case for me because she pointed out, we have the same set of interests, perhaps even more compelling in the small town of South Royalton, not as many people as Middlebury, but our, we have no dormitories at Vermont Law School. One of the few times we've actually been happy not to have dormitories was during the COVID outbreak. All of our students live in apartments in and among our residents and they live as far away as, you know, Bethel White Rebel Junction, Heartland, you know, in the surrounding areas of Windsor and Orange County and we even have a few students who commute from places like Barry and Waterbury, Motelier and Burlington as well as from towns in New Hampshire. So, you know, the health of our students is of course paramount to us, as well as our staff and faculty. But so is the health of our community and of course this is Vermont we have a lot of older people in our community. Students from our law school come from all 50 states. I think a year ago we had students from 41 of the 50 states and 11 of the 25 countries where our alumni currently work. So it's a very mixed group. We expect, of course, many of our international students will have to participate virtually in the fall. As I'm sure you know, and Senator Hardy knows because she's looked hard at this question. The problem we face is that we're going to have to do some form of testing and testing at the moment is quite expensive and time consuming and we need to line it up ahead of time. My understanding and I have this from Senator Leahy staff and Senator and Congressman Welch's staff is that the federal money that was made available to the state was made available for the purpose of allowing testing and that that was not in any way limited to public universities and state colleges. So it seems to me only fair that we would be receiving support to do that testing. I'm happy to go into any of the specifics of, you know, the challenges of bringing people back on campus. You know, during a relative, you know, relatively the same amount of time, getting them properly tested and then the issues that arise. If we have a COVID outbreak, which we certainly hope we won't and how to do the testing separately. But my guess is that, you know, you read the newspaper like I do and you're well familiar with those issues. So maybe better if I stop there, you see if you have any questions for me and then we'll go on to the other members of speakers and I apologize. I won't stay on for the whole committee meeting because we are right in the midst of our annual faculty reviews and some of these faculty reviews have actually been scheduled with our faculty members. A month ahead of time and it'd be terribly upset if I if I wasn't on the call with them. So let me see if people have any questions for me and I'm not sure how the format of how you want to do it but I'd be happy to try to respond to any questions. Thank you. It's probably Dr. McGinry I would imagine. I do actually wonder have you been doing testing prior to this. Has that been going on. We have not we closed our campus on the 16th of March, by the way, I'm not actually a doctor unless you call a Juris doctor a doctor degree. With the legal community, the legal community did so they could get a higher GS rating years ago but just Tom is fine. So when we close our campus down we are we remain shut down. I got my own nasal and blood test and talk my way into it at the urgent care in West lab. Just so I could make sure that I was clean but we've we've not done any at this point but we are looking at various providers of the testing and you can be assured if we receive the funding that we are going to be very careful about spending that money wisely. We'd be starting to spend it like Susan can respond to this too but probably we're talking about mid August would be the beginning of that date. Okay, August. Other questions from that committee. Okay, well, great. I'll thank you I'll stay on as long as I can and thank you so much for your time. Thank you for coming. So, Susan I get is Matthew der next. Well, I want to echo the appreciation to just have have your time. And I don't ordinarily sit around my own home and a jacket and tie. But I'm a member of a commissioner of the New England Association of higher colleges and higher education and you know this is a conversation that that folks in your role across New England are having. It's one of the common themes that I'm hearing and that we certainly feel right now at Sterling is the need and desire to partner with state government to preserve public health. We're concerned about our campuses we're concerned about our students for employees. But I think every one of the private colleges in Vermont also cares deeply about the community in which they're embedded. And I think what we talk about when we talk about the colleges are our commitment to studying a sense of place and that place matters to us. The town of Craftsbury Orleans County is our living laboratory. And it's our campus if you drive through Craftsbury Common. There's one Vermont Historical Association sign that says Sterling College on it, you cannot tell our white clabbered houses that are academic buildings from our neighbors white clabbered homes. And so we are a part of this community and I think, again, my colleagues at the other colleges would say similar things about their own campuses. But to think about that that partnership I think is is important and in ordinary times before all of this happened. You know, our role in the state is to prepare people to understand the working landscape of Vermont so our mission is ecological thinking and action. Our graduates are working across agriculture and outdoor education and fields that are really critical to the economy of Vermont and the only way we can provide that education is to bring them to Vermont and so about a third, a little more than a third of our students are Vermonters. The majority of the remaining students are from across New England and a few from across the nation and they've chosen this college because they want to be in Vermont and our hope is that they will want to stay in Vermont. And so be able to do that we've we've developed elaborate plans to have them here on our campus to have them in pods of about 12 students that are socially isolated from each other. We are two blocks from Craftsbury Academy if you if you think of a Vermont block it's a pretty short distance. And so we're taking our village into consideration in the way that we're actually designing the social experience of our students and Susan mentioned at the beginning that Sterling is the smallest college in Vermont. Our enrollment is intentionally limited to 125 students. We have 55 employees, you can do that ratio we're investing a lot in philanthropy to be able to create this this program, and we want to make sure that we continue to have balanced budgets and we want to make sure that the college is here for the long run. So as we look at this partnership, hopefully with the state and this funding through the cares act, we're looking at $160 a test 175 people. That's about a half. Well, it's a good chunk of the number of our positions every year to be able to do a round of testing. And so we've been grateful for the guidance and the advice the state has provided this point. We're going to continue to work closely with you and we hope that as as Tom has shared that that funding will flow to these independent colleges so that we can do the right thing by our communities and afford to be the kinds of colleges that that do good work for the common good for for the state. I'm happy to take questions. I have quite literally snuck out of a commission meeting to be here with you so I'll answer whatever questions you have and then I'll just change the configuration of faces that I'm staring at to another group in about 10 seconds. But I can stay for many questions as you have and appreciate them. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And President Der. I, I've heard great things about sterling college also serve on the ag committee so your, you come up several times in there or your college does so I'd love to visit at some point but I'm really curious I'm interested in the pods design that you came up with and wonder if your students live in dorms or do they live out in the community like they do at the Vermont law school. Yeah. So, our scale allows us to do things that I think would be a challenging at some of the other colleges but what we essentially have done is to reorganize our residence halls. So 90% of our students live on campus. The students who are on campus will be eating together and you may know we're also a federal work college so all of our students who live on campus also do work on the farm and do labor around the college. If they do that that labor, they will do it in the same pod with which they're living pod membership and studying. And we are assigning vans and we're doing all of the work that we can to increase resources to be able to keep those pods segregated. Period of the semester has been broken into two five week blocks. So students will switch pods between from one to the next after after that five week period. We'll do testing in between and as Susan mentioned will be do routine health checks and wellness checks for for students, even in those those pods so we have more experience perhaps in this because we have run field programs for a very long period of time and so we're basically adapting our field approach to our campus. Wow that's really interesting and Tom how many students are at VLS I can't remember. Oh, you're muted. You're muted Tom. Yeah, so we have about 550 residential students we have a normal students and then we've about 120 130 online students we also have a number of students who come from other schools during the summer. This summer we're entirely virtual so it's not applicable. Who would come for a two or three week course or sometimes even a weekend course like my forest law and policy course so that's the the mixture and I say about 75% of them live within a mile or two of campus in downtown south Royalton Royalton more generally and then maybe the other 25% spread around the surrounding areas. Thanks. Thank you. Any other questions. Well, thank you. Yes, we appreciate hearing from you. Thank you so much. I appreciate being able to have the opportunity to talk with you. So I guess looks like Lori Quinn from Champlain College, my neck of the woods is up next. Good afternoon, Senator Ingram, and good afternoon senators. Special note of thanks to Senator Hardy for your leadership on this issue. It's really important to all of us as as college leaders to make sure that we're leveling with you about the extent of concern what's waking us up at night and frankly the concern for our communities as our students begin to return to our campuses whatever however we're situated around the state is certainly one of those topics. That is foremost in mind as we think about the implications of our responsibility to our communities. And we certainly see the potential for some funding to help with testing as part of our obligation to those communities and as many of you know here in Burlington Champlain is really nestled right in the community. We are in the Hill neighborhood. We are not even particularly distinct from UVM in the way that our buildings are laid out. And so, like our much bigger friend up the hill. We are, we are really interspersed in this community. I walk my dog and am out on the sidewalks with my family. I'm seeing Champlain students right next to members of this community, folks of all ages who I think right now are quite concerned about what the the two Burlington based colleges are doing to protect their health and when I think about the extraordinary work that my team is engaged in now at the college really working night and day to think of every detail that will keep our community our students our faculty and our staff safe. And when I think about the very real financial hit that our institution is taking the fact that Champlain after a living memory of no budget deficits will now have a budget deficit and a significant one that our board and our leadership is committed to managing down. I really want to emphasize to you the urgency of our request to you today. And I want you to know that the hard work that we've done at Champlain over more than a decade now to have really strong relationships with our community citizens. I have worried that that may be put at risk by the potential perception that we're not doing everything we can to keep that community and Vermont's hard one progress safe. We are deeply committed, as my colleagues have said deeply committed to using this funding wisely and well and promptly, because our, our time is ticking in terms of the ability to have all of the level of preparation in place that we believe to be necessary to save our public health and make sure that those those trusting relationships that we at Champlain have built with our community in our neighbors are not compromised at this incredibly critical time when we need to be in deep partnership with our community, not at odds because of perceptions that we haven't done our utmost to make sure that student testing is front and center to make sure that all of our physical distancing plans are known to our community so we want to do a good job sharing that information with folks so that they continue to have confidence in Champlain, and would really appreciate your, your support in in that important work. Happy to hear any questions you have. We've gone to remote learning. Is that right and when do you anticipate having students actually come back on campus. Yeah, our semester. Our spring semester went remote on March 11. And fortunately for us at that time we were on spring break. So the decision was to extend the spring break and then we informed our students that we wanted to pivot to remote instruction to complete the semester. And our academic calendar resumes again at the end of August so we will begin a phased move in in keeping with the state guidance that we've received from Dr ravine. And being able to test as as Tom said, being able to test during that critical window. And to do that without without further tunneling into that deficit budget will will make a profound difference, I think, to our community. Many. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Dr Quinn, I assume you're a doctor. Call me Lori answer to most things. Thank you Lori.  And how many students are there at Champlain I can't remember. We are just right around 2000 students in residence on the hill and fortunately for us are fully online population of right around 2500 does not have access to campus it's a it's a play asynchronous model. So for the 2000 or so who are based in res halls, a small number are based in the community directly but of course our res halls and the, the housing in the community are virtually indistinguishable like, like some folks have referred to in the smaller communities. And so what we are looking at is a change to our academic calendar, which would send students home at the Thanksgiving break. So we will not have our normal two days of fall holiday in order to keep students, you know confined to the campus. And also reduce our likelihood of a convergence of the flu season worse timing with coronavirus concerns. So we have made that decision that the final three weeks of our semester in the fall will be remote. And the phase move in that you asked about is looking like we're still working on the on the most detailed aspects of it. And effectively, it's making sure that we can implement physical distancing and face coverings and all of the other appropriate precautions in what is normally a very crowded process of movement. And so that that has required us to get much more creative about the way that that scheduled. We expect to begin with students who are coming from the counties that are green on that all indispensable map. And so we have a lot of work from there. And we are, we are studying now how will testing fit in to that protocol, right. And so this conversation is, is, is particularly timely today. And I would just ask the committee to do to do what you can to to help us in accessing these funds, it would make a huge difference to our to our confidence in our planning. Thank you. Thank you. And I see Senator breeze has joined us so I will turn it over to him we have one more witness to hear from center. I will turn it back over to Debbie in just a second and let her finish the, the movement of the witnesses I just want to apologize. I didn't have the call I had to be on, but I did want to say that the intention of today and Debbie may have already said this is to create a record and to document the need for these funds. The hope is that the committee can generate a letter out of this where we summarize the testimony and send that to the chair of appropriations, health and welfare, probably economic development, and also to the joint fiscal committee and just make sure that all the bases are covered and that if we're not in session, the joint fiscal committee will, in a sense, have our testimony in front of them. So, again, sorry for showing up late but Senator Ingram why don't you just continue. Okay, thank you. So, unless there are any other questions of Lori. We'll move on to Mark in a room from Norwich University. Right, sir. Yes, good afternoon. I'm assuming you can hear me all right. Yes. All right. Yes, I'm a doctor, but I'm a colonel and I'm apparently my two star general in the front militia but I will just go by Mark and everyone's welcome to refer to me that way please. So, I'm representing Norwich University I've been in the seat for a hot four weeks now, which is a this is interesting time to arrive and take over the seat obviously I'm actually driving right now we pulled over for a moment, the director of development and I were underway to visit some trustees we were summoned for for something. So we're sitting in the car but we should maintain the signal if I drop I'll call you right back thanks for letting me back in. I'm committed like everyone else is fully to opening and operating safely as an in resident experience here, nor field. You know I came out from my campus visits back in back in what have been for January was the last time I was here and I saw this thriving little downtown of course now it's boarded up and shutting the town really support really relies upon the presence of Norwich and a thriving Norwich to survive and it's. It's been a sad time to arrive but we're fully committed to supporting a local community and that way in a very safe way as well. Of course the vast majority of our employees they live in a local area they want to be safe they want to be good neighbors as as we want to ensure a neighborly existence for ourselves. You know as a university we specialize in experiential education and if you keep up with the literature it's that's the best way to reach this current generation of college age learning learners and obviously that relies heavily on in person instruction especially with the model we have as a senior military college for core structure that we are a national school we rely heavily on international partnerships so not being able to test efficiently due to physical constraints would definitely be a great partnership with other with other governments and that international community that we think is a very additive population to bring into Vermont as a state. Now we did develop a plan very deliberately with Paulette Thabo, who is our director of nursing who also has a degree in law, in addition to a PhD and nurse practitioner, which is a remarkable degree set and also Dr. It's a very significant system we're going to have for testing. But we do need the funding help, obviously, you know we're looking at doing a single test for everyone on campus faculty and staff or already a half million dollar range, which is going to really hammer a budget pretty badly and if we want to do monthly we're almost a $2 million. So how to do this testing and a fiscally responsible way is obviously something that were that's on the forefront of our mind. I want to pay the question that's coming. We are looking at a phased return, very well developed as it may stagger schedule every few days from August 11 through August 30. And we're defining exactly who's coming back student leaders first and athletes that upper class students, then our freshmen then civilian and first year students, etc. We're building out the plan and publishing it to our students about exactly who will arrive when to avoid having a concentration on campus and also convincing parents that one family member per student is desirable to reduce any kind of concentration of human contact. So, that's what I wanted to share initially I look forward to meeting all of you personally I'm sorry this is our first introduction but I look forward to get to know each of you. And with that I'll take questions. Thank you. Thank you. Colonel was it. It's a multiple title mark is fine sir I don't know. Okay. Well, respect to you but I'll go with Mark. So, I'm wondering about the phased return I think that that makes sense. Am I correct that it involves a certain amount of quarantine for each phase. The first students who come come in are in effect quarantining before the next wave comes in. Yes, it's a very good observation so the purpose is to bring them in, give the test and their test results should be available before the next round comes in, so that we can know how to house them more responsibly. So, it won't necessarily be quarantine it'll be it'll be more aggressively distance and as more come in we can put folks together or keep them apart based upon testing sequencing and results as they arrive. We actually purchased a home right across the street from my house that presidents quarters I should say, and that'll be where we've we've already designated that for positive tests for a for quarantine. If the medical professionals advise that they should stay until the virus from this course and whatever situation they have. But yes to your point directly, by phasing arrival, we can keep them sequestered until results come back. And it's interesting I my son is a cadet at the Air Force Academy in Colorado that's exactly what they did and it's working to very good effect by staggering arrival there one to a room until they can put them back when test results come. And that makes, again, good sense. I am a little. The numbers that you talk about in terms of your costs. When I think about the overall estimate that Susan Stitely gave us is is 4 million still the, and again apologies for missing the first half an hour, but is 4 million still the sense of what the independent colleges made out of the COVID funds. And maybe it's a question as much for Susan. I think that would be I was going to ask Susan myself. Yes. You know, it's only an estimate. And I had forgotten and I'd like Mark to talk a little bit about this about the apps and he's looking at one that would daily check temperatures. That is an additional cost of those are turning out to be very expensive whether it's a self administered app that a student would have on their phone. But the one estimate we got would be $6,000 per year per student. Mark is looking at a different kind of temperature check so if anything, I would think that 4 million is probably underestimated. You know, it should, I would ask that it be for any COVID related expense that relates to health and safety of the students, the campus community and the towns in which they're located, because I think there's other things that we could use that will really protect the towns and the campus community like these apps and the temperature checks. Mark, you want to talk a little bit about the company that you've had a discussion with and the cost and what it does. Yes, absolutely. So to the numbers, you know, we're going to have higher costs but I think I can speak for most of us that anything to offset the cost will be most welcome. And I think Susan's exactly right that the cost is much higher than we're anticipating but even a proportion that will be an offset will be tremendously helpful to our operating budgets, obviously. And to Susan's comment directly, you know, there are temperature check stations and actually Vermont Security, which is right there in Montpellier is actually advertising these two. They're actually called temperature monitoring systems and the way they seem to work is they're stationed, they take a heat signature video of people walking past and when there's an individual spike based on what temperature it's recording. We can ask that person to step over and maybe do it on site temperature check or check for other symptoms. So it's a way to passively check large gathering areas. We feel that's probably more responsible than expecting these young men and women to self report or self test. We'd hope they would do that responsibly but we're not sure but this is more robust but as Susan said it's quite expensive. The smallest system is in a $6,000 range and the larger that can monitor larger crowds is in a $25,000 range. And I'll tell you that in the media and people looking at these things critically they're not really sure about the efficacy. So they may work wonderfully as designed or they may not work as great as they're advertising so it's being worked out some of the manufacturers were challenged but it looks like there are local vendors in Vermont that could potentially do a demonstration and we would ask for that but that will be a significant financial outlay. In addition to the PPE that we're going to give everyone masks we're going to make sure hand sanitizers around. We're going to, you know, obviously do the testing that will be required except by the state but that'll be a significant significantly higher cost. Yeah, I can see that there would be a whole associated umbrella of costs. I think in my discussion so far with Senate leadership and appropriations, the argument that's most effective concerns the wave of out of state students who are coming back. So I had been thinking of it as the initial testing and quarantine at each place when that's complete. Then from those discussions it seems like people seem to feel more of the expense might fall on the institution, but for for bringing in and making sure that we're testing initially. So the the four million is probably more accurate for that. But not necessarily for taking the students through the whole year. So, Debbie, I think Ruth had her hand up. I'll send a punch like first and then get there. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for all the presidents. I think that's the one title they all have in common. So I'll use that one. We're trained so hard not to use first names. It's pretty difficult. My communications with the former president of Norwich University. Come to the understanding that none of the private schools, colleges and universities in the state have have made use of the other coven funds, like that have been available to businesses I was just kind of on the assumption that even though there are large businesses for the most part that they were finding ways of making use of those other funds. And I think that's what's that's basically my question and I'll have a follow up of the presidents that are still with us. Have your institutions been able to use any of the other programs to support the deficits that you're facing. Yes, sir. This is Mark and a rumo the new guy at Norwich and of course rich being active is wonderful for all of us he's a he knows what he's talking about obviously. So we did our CFO research the potential for recovery funds tied to business operations. And each effort we we laid out was met with a we don't meet a different criteria is we're either too big or too small or we're not aligned correctly. We did run that the ground and our CFO who I do trust and she also has a legal background. She was kind of, she was told that we don't meet criteria, but, but we appreciate that as we did pursue pursue that pretty aggressively even when rich was here. And the others. Yeah, in the interest of time, Mark said it well I'll just say ditto for Champlain. Yeah. Okay. And maybe the other two presidents have gone on to their other tasks. Yeah, unfortunately the other two presidents had to leave. Yeah, I think that you know, this is a higher education and although we consider that a business to those grants don't provide funding for the type of testing that we're looking at through this funding the coven, you know, the cares act and the money that was specifically designated for these types of expenses. And also just want to remember, point out also that. So we have the initial testing in the fall the students go home and Thanksgiving break they come back in January they're going to all need to be retested again. So that's another reason why this money probably wouldn't cover all that testing. And, you know, again, it's probably good to test more than just once to make sure that nobody's infected and that, you know, it doesn't seep out to the community. And you're testing staff and if you have athletes in sports they're going to be going out and maybe having contact with others. So yeah, I encourage a back to look at that $4 million number more closely and make sure that we're we're fully supporting the testing and the PPE that's required. And at least for me, it helps to know that there wasn't any other funding that these institutions received I think as they all said they're so important to our communities. And I'd like to see to make sure that we can at least support them 100% in this cost, because it's so obviously connected to the to the coven in the cares funding goals that if there's a way to if the need is greater $4 million that we meet that mean. Thank you. So, I think so I was next and then Senator brief. Yeah, thank you, Senator Ingram. When I reached out to Susan to get an estimate. We, she and I talked about the cost of the initial testing for each student to come back. As Senator Baruth mentioned, plus the associated sort of initial PPE costs of bringing students back. And that's what the estimate which I'm looking at now is is 4.43 million. If you test the 23,000 or so students who are in the independent colleges, plus 750 as an estimated PPE cost. And then our committee discussion. Last time we sort of rounded it down to 4 million. Just to get us sort of number we thought that the Appropriations Committee might go with. So that's how we arrived at the 4 million I would think that their testing costs is direct costs throughout the semester would be higher and their PPE costs would be higher but this was an attempt to try to support that initial return of students and also just to note Susan in terms of the CRF money that has to be expended in full by December 30 and actually we moved that to December 20. So that we have 10 days to wrap up things and move that money into the unemployment insurance trust. So we wouldn't be able to use this money to fund testing in the next semester unfortunately there may be additional congressional funds in the fall that would potentially address that depending on what happens but this would just be for the first semester because of the limits on the funds. It's unfortunate but so I guess I would love to be able to cover more costs but this was an at least an attempt to try to provide some support for the independent colleges and some equity and how we're looking at higher education across the states. Yes, thank you. So, as somebody who teaches college classes. It's never made that much sense to me that we go home for Thanksgiving and come back essentially for a week and a half or two weeks. Now with COVID it makes zero sense. And in fact, UVM has canceled the post Thanksgiving piece in person so everything that happens after Thanksgiving when they go home is remote. So they take their finals online, etc. So UVM will not have that second wave coming back from all over the country. I would, you know, I know we're getting late in the planning phase but it seems to make very little sense to me for any of these institutions that we're talking about to put themselves in a position where they need to do essentially an initial screening again when the students might only be here for two weeks or something like that. So I would, I would push strongly to, you know, put that on a remote footing post Thanksgiving. I don't know, especially with the testimony that a half a million dollars might be necessary to do a last round of testing. And we agree with you. None of us is, none of us is is returning after the Thanksgiving break so you're spot on. That's where we were. Okay, I thought I understood the discussion of testing to say that somebody said that they would need to be tested again when they came back after Thanksgiving. I was referring to it when they came back in January, but the money doesn't cover that anyway. Just, just to clarify, two institutions, one being sterling a small amount of students will stay. They will not leave Vermont at Thanksgiving break and then they will come back to campus to do some special outdoor program. And Bennington is also probably going to keep a small amount of students on campus. After, especially they're international students who won't be flying home. Okay, that's, that's reassuring. Yeah, definitely. So, if, does anybody else have questions, Senator person. I don't have, I don't have questions for the for the witnesses. Yeah. So, okay, to me the discussion. I just had one other question. I mean, this may be for Susan, I'm not sure I'm a lot of colleges are starting to come out with their, their plans in and yesterday, Middlebury College did. A lot of people are disappointed that it doesn't include any plan for de densifying the campus and sort of changing the schedule so that there's maybe three semesters or three trimesters and they bring back two thirds of the students at the time at a time. A lot of colleges, a lot of independent colleges around the country are doing this Bowdoin introduced plans to do that Oberlin Grinnell. So there are a lot of institutions that have done this and I'm wondering if any of the Vermont institutions are doing this. I mean, including UVM that's relevant for even a larger institution to try to have fewer students on campus and in the dorms. And if that's been considered, because I think there are many people in Middlebury who are hoping that that would be the case for the Middlebury plan. To my understanding, I didn't haven't read through all of Middlebury's guidelines is that they are going to at least stagger the return. And so that their students all won't be coming back on the same day but I think, you know, all the students do want to come back. But they are looking at ways of de densifying the dorms and seeing if they can have one student. So looking at those we are still waiting for guidance from the state. So we have submitted some recommendations and we haven't gotten guidance yet from the state as to what they would like us to do so that will also be key. And that's been part of the discussions as how to keep social distancing, not only just in classrooms and the dining halls but in the residence halls as well. And Laurie, I don't know if you want to talk about perhaps what you're doing thinking about the Champlain where none of the everybody who including Middlebury qualified what they released because we are still waiting for the state guidance. So it may change. Yes, and just to speak briefly to our our efforts at Champlain, we are, we are more aggressively de densifying in terms of classrooms and residence halls. Our academic plan is based around a flex hybrid course model which you may have read something about if you've been paying any attention to higher ed press. There are a number of institutions that in addition to changing the calendar and staggering the return or only returning some of their students. A number of institutions are like Champlain, designing from the get go to allow for remote access to a virtual college experience and so for us what that means is investments in higher quality cameras for example, to make sure that students who either can't or do want to return to the in classroom experience can still have the full Champlain experience in real time. So different than an online program like we do it with our other adult learners. So the way that Champlain is approached is really through that course design to make sure that we achieve the same kinds of goals. We are being, as I said, quite aggressive about the de densifying of res halls. And just to give you a sense of how that plays out. What that means for us at Champlain, we have over many years come to a really proud point of housing most of our students on campus through the cooperation with our neighborhoods to make sure that we were being being good community members and taking responsibility for housing more of our students. So, while we've made wonderful progress there. We are, as you know if you've driven through our neighborhood recently, we are pretty dense in in in this neighborhood and so being able to de densify both our own res halls which are normally full to capacity, and move out a little bit into community facilities where we can house more students in a spread out format. Frankly only increases the urgency for us of the testing protocols at the beginning of the semester, because students will be even more mixed with our community than they are under normal circumstances. In fact, based on what we're seeing so far we expect somewhere between 20 and 30% of our students to come up with some modified option and not to return to campus in the full schedule that we would normally see. So we do expect fewer overall, but of course part of what part of what we also are reckoning with is how many folks and you all are seeing this in other places, how many folks want to come to Vermont because of how well we've done. So, threading that needle of being welcoming but also insisting on the public health is very much part of what we've been navigating. Okay, so I think that might be all the questions we have for our witnesses. And I want to thank you all for taking time out of your schedules, and especially Susan Stitely for putting Senator Hardy on to this so that she could put the rest of us on to it. We will have a little committee discussion now you're free to stay if you like but most people usually drop off because it's not scintillating. So, in any event, nice to see you all and thanks again. Thanks. I really want to thank the committee for considering this and taking the time is very appreciative that you're thinking of the private colleges. And we really are helpful grateful for your efforts. So thank you. Absolutely. You're here. Thank you, Susan. Thank you. Thank you, committee. We are, I believe this is our last meeting pre break. And part of the reason I say that is, I don't know if you have noticed, but I have noticed, we've got nothing from the house. They have not generated other than the date change on Act 173. They have not generated anything from them. So even though I had to have discussions with Kate Webb about our priority bills as recently as some weeks ago, they, I guess they've been just focused on COVID and other things. Be that as it may, we're not in the normal phase of the end of a session which is, we would be dealing exclusively with house bills. And we've moved all of our stuff over to them. We've done the work on the Q one budget. The last piece really was this. That is the money for testing for independent colleges. And just to finish that, I'm wondering, since I came in half an hour into the testimony. Is there somebody who would volunteer to write a letter on behalf of the committee to the joint fiscal. In other words, doesn't have to be long. It could be a one page letter, just outlining what we heard in the testimony. So I'm going to ask in terms of the amount. And then it would come from all of the committee members who have agreed to sign on to it. It is the, okay. You saved Corey. If you want me to send it to everybody first before, or would it come from you Phil, should I, how, how do you have the. If you, if you draft it and send it to the committee, we can send you back a quick email comment. And then you can just list our names in the order they appear on the, on the website. Okay, great. Yeah. You know, so, so the emphasis would be on, again, the fact that these out of state students will come in a wave and that is a potential public health threat to the rest of the state unless we are wise about how we use the COVID money. So I think it should be a high priority. And the idea would be that the committee agrees with that. And then if you, you know, break out who we heard from on it, and maybe just a highlight from each of their testimony that would probably be enough, you know, maybe four or five paragraphs. And Phil, did you know that I, I think you were copied on most of the exchange this morning with Senator Kitchell. I did see it. And, and her thought was that the joint fiscal committee would deal with this, even in our absence and not to include it in one of the bills right now. Yeah, because a final decision about whether or not colleges are going to open is actually hasn't been made by the governor yet. Was that your understanding of it was. And that's the thinking behind them having a letter sitting on, on their desks when they meet. Because we won't be around and it might be that Senator Kitchell would remember what we're talking about, but she's got a lot going on. So I want to make sure that there's a formal request to the two JFC. Okay, great. Thanks. And Senator Purchart. And in that letter, can I advocate that it be the higher number, the $5 million number or do we feel like there's a danger if we say $5 million we get zero, not sort of a. I would be for five, five million, they they'll do what they'll do. But I think it's better to be a little more realistic. In fact, in the letter, Ruth could cite some of the figures and say they turned out to be slightly higher than our original discussions indicated. So, I can put a table in it. Out yourself out. Different colors to. The other thing is, Tim sent out a spreadsheet this morning in the chairs meeting, he, I'm not sure if maybe it just went to the chairs at this point. Yeah, because I haven't seen it. Okay, it's the house has been working on putting out some more covert money before we leave. And, and so it's, it's mostly around economic development, ag. Not non education stuff. So I went through the list there was nothing that fell into our purview. That's what I think some other committees are going to be doing over the end of the week is looking over those request numbers and giving recommendations to appropriations. But our chunk of the money went out in the q1 budget has a has a fence around it. And it'll be the remainder of it will be divvied up in August. So we don't have that work to do. So, you know, other than me working through Tim to work through Mitzi to get the House committee to work on some of our bills. Is there any anything else that I'm forgetting that anybody is wanting us to do before the break that couldn't be done in August. I just have a question about. I was looking through. I don't remember. I think it's eight, eight 966. I don't remember all the numbers but that their big package that has about housing broadband economic development stuff. There is $12 million in there for summer meals for kids. And based on what the testimony we got from this, the Secretary of Education, my impression was part of that 50 million that we put in the first quarter budget was supposed to go for that purpose. I think he said 10 million and I think I supported you his testimony that he gave in the house. I don't know if that's something we want to just get confirmed or not, but that seems to be a double, not that I don't think that we should give more money to meals. It's been something I've advocated for a lot, but it seems like it's double counted in the math and maybe Jane has already figured that out. I don't know, but that was one red flag I saw. Okay, and I'll make a note to talk with because it's not really clear. No, I was just going to say, we just approved health and welfare on a letter to approach that includes $12 million, especially assigned to AOE for summer lunches. So there are food programs. Okay, so then, I mean it. All right, I will double check and just make sure everybody's aware that Dan French did indicate very specifically. I 10 million was what I remember him saying. Yeah, that's what I remember to and I think I sent an email to Bobby and Ginny and I think I copied you to fill just saying hey we got testimony that the Secretary said 10 of that 50 million was going to summer lunches. I think I did that right after his testimony because I thought that would save us some money, but apparently it didn't. The understanding is they need more, they need more. That was, that was what the impression that I got that they told us in health and welfare, which is why we put it in our budget. $22 million is a lot. That would be a lot. I don't know. Yeah, I guess it needs to be sorted through that. I will talk with those three people. The other thing is this will all go through the normal process so we will all have it on our radar screen and make sure we get the right answers before we before we vote so in other words when we talk about it in caucus. I just want to say if it's found money I want part of it for the arts. I think the arts is in the spreadsheet that I saw this morning. Yeah, they get 5 million. I was advocating for 10 for the arts. Yeah, so. Yeah, headline will be, Hardy takes money from school kids to give to the arts. True, I don't want that headline, especially after all the advocacy I've done for school lunches, but it's the same. Okay. I'm going to have the backs of. So, not, not hearing any, anything else that we would have to do my assumption is then that we will not meet Thursday. And that this will be our last meeting pre break. That would only change if something comes from the house either money wise or policy wise or a bill that we have to deal with before, before we break. Otherwise, we'll, you know, turn to our other committees and we'll follow the, this particular thing we just mentioned through the regular process. I wanted to make sure I say to thank you. First is to Jeannie. Jeannie, can you show yourself. Hi. And the second also showed himself, which is Jim Demeray. I really, really want to thank the two of you for jumping to the virtual format. Jeannie, I know you were, you were at the beginning you were scrambling and you picked it up in record time. Jim, thank you also for keeping us even keeled in terms of ledge counsel through all of this. Jim and I developed a text a secret testing system for the floor so that I could appear more authoritative than I actually was. So thank you both very much. And I also want to thank the committee. I've been on the education committee for 10 years. Nothing remotely like this. You know, we've just never had this kind of disjointed crash of the whole system. And this committee, like every other continued, got our work done. As I said, everything that we did this year made it over to the house. Whether they act on any of it, we don't have a lot of say in, but we got all of our priority bills over there, including things that were not such big priorities, as well as did the budget work and other other things. Thank you so much. And I will see you in zoom calls between now and Friday or whenever we break but but this will be it for Ed for a little while. Can I can I say something, Senator. Please. So, um, as usual, it's really, it's really been, you all have treated me so well and it's been such a pleasure to work for you and with you. And Senator Baruth, you really make my job doable. I really appreciate that. Jim's been tremendous help for me, and I want to wish the best to Senators Ingram and McNeil because I guess this is so long. Yep. Both the best. I have to say, like when I first heard that they have made the voluntary decision to leave or to pursue other things. I was like, I'm not at that place, but I kind of am now, like, you know, after this last couple of months, I, you know, I can see why so many people are retiring. Like, it really took a lot out of everybody. But Senator McNeil, we will have his brother running soon. So we'll, we'll have an identical twin. My wife wants to do it right in for me for independent. She said, she's got to get me out of the house for years. Now I have to know, is, do you really have a twin or is this some mythical joke that? No, no, it's for real. The joke was a triplet. Jim, John and Joe, but it really is Jim and John. Well, Joe will never see them together. Our imaginary triplet. All right. Or guardian angel. All right, everybody. Thanks again. See you all soon. Thank you. Bye everyone. Thank you.


The next step we want to consider in our statistics and data science and the choices that we have to make has to do with measures of fit or the correspondence between the data that you have and the model that you create. Now it turns out there's a lot of different ways to measure this and one big question is how close is close enough or how can you see the difference between the model and reality? Well, there's a few really common approaches to this. There's one of us called R-squared. It's got a longer name that's the coefficient of determination. There's a variation adjusted R-squared which takes into consideration the number of variables. Then there's minus 2LL which is based on the likelihood ratio and a couple of variations, the Ikeke information criterion or AIC and the Bayesian information criterion or BIC. And then there's also chi-squared. Now that's actually a Greek C there. It looks like an X but it's a C. And that's chi-squared. And so let's talk about each of these in turn. First off is R-squared. This is the squared multiple correlation or the coefficient of determination. And what it does is it compares the variance of Y. So if you have an outcome variable it looks at the total variance of that. It compares it to the residuals on Y after you've made your prediction. The scores on R-squared range from 0 to 1 and higher is better. The next is minus 2 log likelihood. That's the likelihood ratio or as I just said at the minus 2 log likelihood. And what this does is it compares the fit of nested models. We have a subset and a larger set than the larger set overall. This approach is used a lot in logistic regression when you have a binary outcome and in general smaller values are considered better fit. Now as I mentioned there's some variations of this. I like to think of variations of chocolate. The minus 2 log likelihood. There's the Akeiki information criterion, the AIC and the Bayesian information criterion BIC. And what both of these do is they adjust for the number of predictors. Because obviously if you have a huge number of predictors you're going to get a really good fit. But you're probably going to have what's called overfitting. Where your model is tailored too specifically to the data you currently have and doesn't generalize well. These both attempt to reduce the effect of overfitting. And then there's chi-squared again. It's actually a lower case Greek C. Looks like an X. And chi-square is used for examining the deviations between two data sets. Specifically between the observed data set and the expected values or model you create. We expect this many frequencies in each category. Now I'll just mention like going to the store there's a lot of other choices. But these are some of the most common standards particularly with the R-squared. And I just want to say in some there are many different ways to assess the fit. The correspondence between a model and your data. And the choices affect the model. You know especially are you going to penalize for throwing in too many variables relative to your number of cases? Are you dealing with a quantitative or a binary outcome? Those things all matter. And so the most important thing as always my standing advice is keep your goals in mind and choose a method that seems to fit best with your analytical strategy and the insight you're trying to get from your data.


Good morning. Welcome to CMC markets on Friday the 2nd of February and this quick look at the week ahead beginning the 5th of February with me, Michael Houston. It's been pretty choppy last few days. Obviously, the main focus of market attention has been on central banks and essentially whether or not we get an early rate cut from those very same central banks. And ultimately what we've had this week is a slight reset of expectations around that. Having had a high degree of confidence the rate cuts were coming before the end of Q1 in the first few weeks of this year. We've seen a bit of a reset in that. Obviously, we had the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. We had the Bank of England on Thursday. And while we have seen a resetting of the guidance when it comes to further rate hikes. What we haven't seen is a cast iron commitment to signal for an early rate cut. And it's not really hard or that hard in my opinion to see why. But what effect has had it as it had on equity markets? Well, if you look at the FTSE 100, not been great. Had a pretty poor January. Slipped back towards the lows of the last couple of months around about 7400 since then. We've seen a bit of a rebound since mid January. We're consolidating a little bit of that rebound, which is a little bit of a worry. But ultimately I think what we're seeing at the moment is a continued range trading of the kinds that we've pretty much seen over the course of the past few weeks. So really no change there. Not an awful lot to get inspired by on the part of the FTSE 100. The DAX is still finding it tricky to get through 17,000. Yeah, we did see a record high back in January, a very marginal one. And we're pretty much trading very close to that as I speak to you now. So again, the rebound that we've seen over the course of the past day or so pretty much keeps further gains in sight. I think it was very interesting to see the fact that we managed to rebound off the 50 day moving average. And we're now retesting the peaks of earlier this month. I think the key question now as we look to gain further momentum is whether or not we can consolidate the gains that we've seen over the course of the past couple of days and continue to move higher. S&P 500. Well, we had five of the magnificent seven reports this week. Bit of a mixed bag, fold told. More a case of the magnificent two now really strong numbers from Facebook and Meta platforms last night. Amazon also fairly decent numbers. I think it was rather instructive that of all of the magnificent seven, Amazon is probably the only one that hasn't made new record highs since its previous high set back in November 2021. So it'll be very interesting to see whether or not Amazon continues to play catch up on the rest of the market. Apple disappointed on the face of it. The numbers fairly decent. Certainly revenues came in much better than expected. But sales in China saw a big drop off when it came to revenue growth. So again here, big question is, can we continue to kick on? Certainly there's no reason to suppose that we can't. Again, here, we're getting higher highs and higher lows. And we're looking for a very positive US open later today ahead of today's non-farm payrolls report. So earnings from the magnificent seven have by and large and been fairly decent, albeit it was a very, very high bar. Alphabet was disappointing or the market thought it was disappointing. I actually thought they were quite good. Certainly they beat expectations, but the market reaction was a little bit underwhelming. But again, it's all about expectations. And I think when you set the bar so very, very high, as has been the case with the gains that we've seen so far this month, then it's going to be very tricky to actually not only clear those expectations, but also deliver guidance that's strong enough to carry the momentum forward. So now maybe we get a little bit of consolidation over the course of the next few days. But certainly if we look at the NASDAQ, again here, seen a nice little test of this trend line from the lows back in October. So again, very much in the uptrend that we've been in for quite some time. So certainly I can't see any evidence that we're going to see a slowdown in the up performance that we've seen from US markets. One fly in the ointment, however, could be that the volatility that we're seeing in the US regional banking sector in a replication essentially of what we saw in March last year. The real estate concerns New York Community Bank earlier this week, seeing some really big declines. Regional banks are starting to come under pressure. Does that translate into further weakness across the rest of the sectors within the US economy? So I think there is that there are starting to we are starting to see rumblings about concern about the US real estate sector. Okay, so let's go back to what we saw from J. Powell earlier this week. So as far as the statement was concerned, reference to possible additional rate hikes was removed. Again, the Bank of England was pretty much moving out the prospect of further rate hikes. And so is the ECB. So basically central banks are pretty much singing from the same hymn sheet. Fed statement accompanying statement maintain job gains have remained strong, despite having slowed and inflation remains elevated. So I think the reference to inflation remain elevated is a warning that the Fed is concerned about second round effects maybe because of disruption in the Red Sea. Obviously the GDP numbers in Q1 were very, very strong, much stronger than expected. And we are starting to see evidence of a pickup in inflationary pressures in manufacturing from the manufacturing ISM earlier this week prices paid went back about 52.5. So I think there is this expectation that the declines or the slowdown inflation is not linear and won't be. I mean, I think that's a big question. And I think if we are looking for evidence of a pickup inflation this week or this coming weeks China CPI China PPI numbers due out on the 8th of February for January will be I think a key I think there'll be a key benchmark in terms of whether or not China is about to come out of deflation China very much in deflation. Headline CPI in December was minus 0.3 that improved from minus 0.5. Chinese central bank is relaxing reserve requirement ratio starting from Monday the 5th of February. However, it's likely it will probably need to do more in the coming weeks probably after Chinese New Year, which starts on the 10th of February. So not expecting any significant pickup from Chinese inflation. And certainly I think if you look at PPI PPI has been very firmly stuck in negative territory since October 2022. So there's there's that cumulative goods inflation lag that is likely to take quite some time to pick up. But obviously shipping rates have shifted quite markedly higher in the past three or four weeks. And at some point that will start to filter down into the headline numbers for companies for goods inflation over the course of the next few months. And one of the things that Powell did do on Wednesday was pretty much rule out the prospect of a March rate cut, which disappointed markets to a certain extent, but ultimately hasn't really had that much of an effect on the two year yield. So no rate cut in March. We'll have to wait and see. Very much data dependent, seen a little bit of a rebound in two year yields, but not that you notice. So expectations have now shifted out to May. And really this is I think what key takeaway for this week has been. It's really about not about when rates are going to be cut. It's more about the timing. As I pretty much said last week, I always thought March was a bit of a tall order. Powell has pretty much confirmed that, that there are concerns about sticky inflation. And that was no better born out by this week's Bank of England rate meeting where we saw a divergence of opinions.  I actually welcome that. It's nice to see a divergence of opinions. It's nice not to see root think. I can see both sides of the equation. I can see why Swatidingra has asked for a rate cut and is pushing for a rate cut. But I can also understand why Jonathan Haskell and Katherine Mann have argued for a 25 basis point rate hike. Doesn't mean I believe them, but at least they're having the discussion and they're looking at a broad range of views. And ultimately, given the fact that the UK is a price taker when it comes to inflation, I think the more they can do to underpin the value of the pound is very much a good thing. Because ultimately, if you look at the headline rate for CPI, it's a 4%, but good inflation, while very, very weak, services to inflation is at 6.4%, wages is around about 6.9%. And food inflation for December was 8% and did come down to around about 6.97%. It's still very, very high. So it's that sticky nature of inflation on the services side that's giving them cause. And I think they're right to do so. I still think we will see rate cuts this year. The market is pricing rate cuts this year. And that is certainly manifesting itself in the guilt market. And certainly if we look at the way UK Guilts have traded over the course of the past few months, you can see that born out in this UK guilt yield chart here. We are starting to wedge higher. We're off the lows around about 4.3%, around about 4%. So essentially what's happened is that 25 basis points of loosening has been taken out of the pricing since the end of last year. And essentially all that means is that the first rate cut instead of coming in the first quarter is likely to come at the end of Q2. Certainly I think we can probably see three rate cuts this year, the markets pricing four, first of which could well come in June. And certainly I think that's always been my base case when it comes to the Bank of England. We'll probably see a rate cut in June. We'll probably see a rate cut from the ECB in April. Might even see one in March and we'll probably see one from the Fed in May. So that's been pretty much my base case. The ECB will move first, closely followed by the Federal Reserve and Bank of England. So that sort of brings us forward to what's coming up in the next few days. As I said, we've had a choppy week. Certainly as far as currencies are concerned. We've it's pretty much been much of a much as if we look at cable, fairly decent support around about 12590. That 50 day moving average is sort of confusing things a little bit. But ultimately, I think as long as we hold above the 200 day moving average for cable, we should start to push through 128 and head towards 130. I've still been minded to think that there's potentially more upside in cable than there is downside. And certainly, I think as long as the pound can remain resilient, that will act as a drag in helping call inflation lower. Euro dollar slightly more complicated. Certainly looking at the price action here, there is slightly less momentum when it comes to further Euro dollar gains, fairly decent support in and around 10780 108. We could see that here and here and here. But ultimately, fairly decent resistance around about 10920 10930. So again, it's very much a bit of a range trade when it comes to Euro dollar. What does that mean for Euro sterling? Again, pretty much the same. But with a slight downward bias. But again, if we look at the candles here in the wick, we can see that there's fairly decent support anywhere between 8510 and 8520. 20 is a low there. And then we've got 13 here. We've got 16 here. You know, we've got 17 there. So there's really solid support anywhere between 8510 and 8520. But on the flip side, fairly decent resistance to 75, 8570 8580. So again, very much a range trade when it comes to an awful lot of these currency pairs. Dollar yen on the other hand could be interesting. At the moment, finding fairly decent support around cloud support. Around these sorts vary around these sorts of loads around about 146. We did see a little bit of a drift down to 14590. So 14580 14590, fairly decent support. While this level holds through here, then we could we'll see a revisit of 148. But again, I think much will depend on whether or not the federal is the data, the US data continues to support the idea that the Fed won't move in March. March isn't completely off the table. Certainly, I think if we look if we get any sort of weakness in the data, the markets will start to price that in. But I still think it's unlikely that the Fed will move in March, having seen how pretty much rule that prospect out on Wednesday. So an early rate cap from the Fed, the data doesn't support that idea. And ultimately, I think it's very unlikely unless we see a meltdown in the regional banking sector in the US or a significant deterioration in the economic numbers. Okay, so on the earnings front, we have got a whole variety. We're seeing a little bit of a slow down, I would say in terms of the number of companies that are reporting after the after the big, big announcements of this week. But one thing before we move off currencies that is noteworthy is we've got the RBA and the RBA. Again, I think it's highly unlikely that we'll see a move on rates from the RBA. One of the things that Governor Bullock has been keen to do, I think in recent decisions is that there are significant uncertainties around the outlook. They've given very little steer that a policy change in either direction is imminent. But I think it will be interesting to determine, given what we've seen from the ECB, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve, whether or not they'll rule out the likelihood of further rate hikes. I would argue that there's no downside to them in doing that. And a large part of the reason why the Australian dollar is as weak as it is at the moment, even though it's off the lows in October, is because of concerns about the economic outlook in China. But if we do get a pickup in economic activity, that should benefit the Australian dollar. Maybe, maybe, when it's, it's very big maybe. The fact that the US has deferred the prospect of a rate hike will delay any prospect of a rebound in the Aussie dollar. But again, here, if we look at where the lows are, we've got fairly decent support in and around 65, 20, and fairly decent resistance around about 66, 20. So you've got a bit of a hundred point range going on there as well. So currency, currency markets aren't providing a great deal of what I would call excitement. So on the earnings front, well, this week, we heard from Shell, and we saw some fairly decent numbers from the UK's biggest oil company, as well as another, another buyback, $50 billion buyback. And this week, we're going to hear from BP. And BP's share price has been a serial underperformer over the course of the past few weeks since those peaks back in October. And once again, it's on a downward path. Now, obviously, BP has challenges unique to itself. Obviously, it's still playing the legacy of Deepwater Horizon. Also, just, just seeing a new CEO confirmed earlier this month. Actually, no, it was last month, because we're in February now. But yeah, Murray, Murray, Auckland loss, I think that's how you pronounce it was confirmed as Looney's replacement early this year. But there appears to be growing disquiet at the current performing while transforming policy, which was part of the thrust of previous CEO Bernard Looney. So while Shell have abandoned the green all cost policy of the previous CEO, and that has started to reap dividends, we certainly saw it in the fourth quarter numbers that were published earlier this week. There is starting to be there is starting to appear growing disquiet from BP shareholders about the current policy. I think BP has been a lot slow in recognizing that while the current policy may tick a lot of ESG boxes, the policy itself isn't that practical, given that global demand for oil and gas remains strong. And it's a point that's been made by active investor Bluebell Capital, who called the current policy irrational. They aren't wrong. It is completely irrational. So last month, the shares hit the lowest levels since October. So it's very interesting to see that 2022, in fact, because it bit below the levels that we saw in in the middle of the summer, and Q3 profits were disappointing, they came in well below expectations of $4 billion, they fell to $3.3 billion, with the under performance coming from its low, low carbon and energy and gas division. So the big question I think is whether or not the CEO comes under further pressure from shareholders to start focusing more on what Sahwa and the CEO of Shell called policies, or not policies, but basically strategies that actually work. So it'll be interesting to see that BP is still the outlier when it comes to Shell, Exxon and Chevron, who haven't committed similar pledges. And let's just let's just outline what that pledge is. It's pledged to reduce oil and gas production versus 2019 levels by 25%. So when demand is growing, so Q4 expectations for this part of the business, the oil and gas business have been lowered due to the sliding gas prices, while the disruption in the Red Sea is expected to add to BP's costs after it suspended its transit through the sewer's canal in December last year. In its guidance, BP said, if I can get my words out, BP said it expects upstream production to be broadly flat compared to Q3, while also saying it expects to see lower volumes as well as pressure on refining margins. So it'll be interesting to see what the messaging is from BP if they once again deliver a disappointing Q4 update. So that's BP, fairly decent support in and around the lows that we saw earlier this month. Also, it's here from Vodafone. Vodafone, perennial disappointment on that particular share has does appear to have carved out a little bit of a base around about the December lows. And we've seen a modest rebound since those back in December after it's reported that the Iliad bid for its Italian business was back on the cards almost two years after Vodafone rejected a similar bid from the same company. At the time, two years ago, they argued that the bid was too low. The latest bid was for 10 and a half billion euros with an option that Vodafone would get 50% of the share capital in the new company, along with a six and a half billion euro cash payment. And yet again, Vodafone has once again decided to reject the software, making one wonder what their strategy actually is when it comes to this underperforming Italian business, because ultimately, its acting is a wider drag on this UK and German operations, which are seeing signs of an improvement. Now, Vodafone has already secured a deal to sell its Spanish business to Zagona for five billion euros and has announced a 10 year deal with Microsoft to integrate generative AI into its services to 300 million customers over the next 10 years. So, one, I want to know if I was a shareholder, what Vodafone intends to do with its Italian business, because at the moment, they say they are looking at other options without saying what those other options are. And the only company to actually put in a bid for the business has been Ali Iliad, and they've rejected that twice. So, you know, not to put too far in a point on it, they need to stop procrastinating about what to do with the Italian business, or do something about it to make it more profitable. One or the other, there is a rather crude metaphor that I could use with respect to about, you know, getting off the pot. But ultimately, they need to decide what to do with the business. Q3 total revenue is expected to come in around about 11.1 billion euros, which is 500 million euro decline from last year. And most of that weakness is coming from the Spanish and Italian businesses. UK and German businesses are expected to see a modest improvement from last year, 1.8 billion euros and 3.35 billion euros, respectively. So that's Vodafone. Interesting to see how those Q3 numbers pan out, and whether or not they expand on any plans for the Italian business. We've also got numbers from Disney, seeing a fairly decent rebound in the shares there over the course of the past few months. Given that Netflix saw some big jumps in subscriber numbers, we particularly interested to see what Disney has done to stop the hemorrhaging in that particular business. They did manage to stop the bleeding when it came to subscribers in Q4, adding 3.5 million, pushing the total back above 150 million, and revenues up to $5 billion. But that hasn't done anywhere near enough to offset the 15.7 million subscribers they lost in Q2 and Q3. So they have been some fairly notable additions to the catalogue. Q4 revenues came in at 21.24 billion, and profits came in at 82 cents a share. So for Q1, and this will be Disney's Q1, revenues are expected to come in at $23.8 billion, profits of a dollar a share, with net as for subscribers, forecasts to see only a very modest increase of $310,000. So there could be some disappointment around the Disney numbers, and seeing as we're approaching $100 a share, that could act as a bit of a natural barrier when it comes to when it comes to the current progress of the share price. Last but not least, arm holdings. Seeing a fairly decent rally off the IPO price, the shares closed at $63 on the first day of trading, slipping back below to $50 a share, and the lead up to the Q2 results back in November, made some fairly decent gains since then. Obviously, the development of AI chips is going to help arm holdings, given the fact that the likes of Alphabet and Nvidia are using ARM intellectual property to develop their AI chips. So a decent set of Q3 numbers for ARM, even though their guidance was disappointing, they've injected sales of between $720 million and $800 million, and earnings of between $21 and $28 a share. So since that guidance came out, the shares did drop sharply in the aftermath of that, but since they've made some fairly decent gains. So again, I would suggest that anything close to beating those expectations and some decent Q4 guidance should maintain the momentum for arm holdings shares. So that's pretty much it for this week, ladies and gentlemen. As I said, it's fairly low key week from a macro point of view. We do have services PMIs on the 5th of January on the Monday, RBA rate decision on the Tuesday, China PPI, CPI at the end of the week, and a whole host of earnings announcements. But for me, I think the main focus will be once again on the earnings and less about the macro. So that's it for this week. Thanks very much for listening. This is Michael Houston talking to you from CMC Markets. Thank you.