Let's begin, and we are back on S40, and Riva is here to talk to us about our child care centers and this bill not related to child care centers. Riva, good morning, I'm Riva Murphy, Deputy Commissioner for Child Development at the Department for Children and Families. Thanks for inviting me to testify in Senate Bill 40 related to testing and mediation of lead in the drinking water of schools and child care programs. We agree that the investigation that the ingestion of lead has a negative impact on the healthy development of children. Younger children with a small body mass and in a critical and rapidly evolving developmental phase are particularly vulnerable to these negative impacts. CDD staff however are not experts in the science of food safety and we look to our colleagues at Department of Health for guidance on what is reasonably safe for children and how we ensure that what children eat and drink in child care and early learning programs is safe for their developing bodies and brains. For that reason, CDD has long required testing for lead in drinking water of regulated child care programs. Crystal Michaud, CDD Director of Licensing and I can answer any technical questions you may have about the current regulations, enforcement and mediation. We also have copies of the regulations and guidance bookmarked to current regulations so if you wanted to read the full regulations you can go to that website and you'll see when I get to the bottom. I actually put in the information from our guidance manuals because I was a little more clear and succinct. Our current regulations were developed in collaboration with VDH and the Agency of Natural Resources in 2014 and 15 accessing information and standards that were available at that time. The action level currently established for child care and early learning programs is 15 parts per billion consistent with the U.S. EPA's lead and copper rule. Lead negatively impacts the development of young children. So logically the less lead the children ingest the better. If this level isn't safe we're happy to change it. According to February 2019 data from Department of Health related to family child care homes if the action level of five parts per billion becomes a new standard less than 2.8 percent up which is 14 of the 486 family child care homes would not be in compliance with this standard and would need to remediate in some way. VDH the health staff estimates that it would be a few hundred dollars to purchase a treatment system with annual operating cost between 20 and 150 dollars. You'll see the data further down. That said the current child care relations only test the first draw and the bill is written. The new testing would be the first draw and flush sample which better represents the pipes in the home and is therefore more protective of safety. All 486 homes would have to test again to collect and submit the flush sample. Sorry. Which when we put in the new regs we did pay for all the water testing in family child care homes. They had not been tested prior to the new regulations in 2016. So we did with the help of Department of Health we paid for all the original water testing samples and we are talking about doing that again but we just have to get it all done. Currently when any unsafe levels of toxin are directed in drinking water in child care and early learning programs we require the programs to use bottled water which conform to the standard of five parts per billion. Therefore we would support the five parts per billion because that could continue to be our remediation strategy that would allow them to stay open and still have sufficient water to feed the children and prepare food. So the protocols for testing for environmental toxins in schools and child care and early learning programs have been very different. That is one of the reasons we believe that all early childhood programs be held to the higher standards in child care regulations. That said child safety is always our greatest concern. We are more than willing to adapt our standards and protocols to whatever new standards are passed in the law. It may take some additional resources to support child care and early learning programs through the change for the testing and also potentially for any remediation we would find. But we will continue to work with our colleagues at Health and ANR to establish safe standards and protocols and continue to protect children. And then what you can see towards the bottom of this is these were the results from the 486 home-based providers. David has just checked and we can try to get results for the centers as well. And what our rules do say is that any faucet where children would be drinking or where food would be prepared has to be tested. That is not every faucet in the facility because we have another rule that says where children wash their hands after going to the bathroom can't be used for drinking or for food. But we can check those two just to be perfectly safe. We just have it in the past because we have a regulation that says they're not allowed to be used for that. You said that the current requirements in standards in testing is any faucet for drinking or food prep, those are the ones that are tested and all of those that are food prepped or drinking are tested. Those are the ones. So if they use two, family child care homes sometimes that's only the kitchen because the bathroom sink is used for toilet. In centers you generally will find at least one faucet in every classroom preferably that can be allowed for drinking water. So all of those would have been tested if they're used for drinking water. But if you were to go into a program that had four little bathrooms, four little sinks in the bathroom because their bathroom sinks we would not have tested them because another regulation prohibits children from drinking out of those same places. So the test that you've done, is it all first draw? I mean what are the differences? We do first draw on less, more than 15 is detected and then we have to do a second draw and then we make decisions on remediation. So is first draw supposed to be sitting overnight or a certain amount of time or is it just sort of when you get to it? It's been sitting in the building overnight or at least six hours without being used. That's the first draw. So it's first draw but it's not the 250 milliliters I guess. Hang on, I'm looking at the guidance here. Let's see what it says. It's a different system but it does give an indication of lead in the water. But you can see right here, this is from our guidance manual. So we publish guidance manuals that help providers understand fully the rules. So this sort of walks through the details of the first draw sample but of course there's also they get a testing kit and they follow the directions of the testing kit and they send it. Questions? And then we do this, anybody? So you can see here where it says they have to send a flush sample if their first draw exceeds the .15. And then at Linesons Renewal we take a look again because every three years. If they've ever had a high reading, we do that at the annual certifications as well. And we can sort of ramp up any of that monitoring piece without any significant change in regulation. We can just change our protocols. So is it approximately a third each year? Is that about how it works out, a third each year? Well there are annual certifications. So though we have now moved to a three year license, every year there are certain things they can send in. And we can right now only if your water sample has failed but you have to redo it every year. So we recheck it if you had one higher than the 15 parts per billion. We can change that and say it's required every year for everyone no matter what. And then we can make it part of the annual certifications. So we do check certain things every year.  You have 486 home providers right now and how many centers do you have? We have about 950 or so, almost a thousand centers. Do you want to keep going? Well that centers, no that and the rest of this is just information for you to see what is in current rule. One of the questions that I am considering given that all of this costs money. Is there a way, would you recommend recommendations on the fact that all these child care facilities are tested every three year? And we do have information about those who have had a test that was over five. Do you see a way that we could perhaps do a rolling retest on the new standards? These are different standards I know. We talked a little bit when the law first came out and we were discussing it. We talked a little bit about trying to do it as part of annual certification. So everybody's on sort of a schedule based on whenever they were initially licensed, where we do annual certain information that we need every year. We talked about doing it on that which would get us through it in approximately 12 months but sort of not all at once we sort of run through the process. That would, I mean if we go to their license renewals for some people that just got renewed that's three years, that feels like a long time. So if we try to do it as part of the annual certification and we started whenever the law is passed that would get us through it. Not quite by next January, but it would get us through it in 12 months from the time it has. Just to clarify you're saying annual certification is only if you have had a failed test? Well in the past we've done that only if you've had elevated. But we could send out a memo saying everybody at annual certification is going to have to do this. So our next steps depending on what you pass will be to send out notifications to providers about what we need them to do. Either immediately everyone's going to have to do this and we have to get it done. It will sort of chase everybody down till it's done. Or this is going to be required at your annual certification and tell them where to find that date and the system so they know. And some might do it sooner, some might wait and we'd be poking them in annual certification to make sure it was done. But it would be a little, I mean for us it would be a little bit more in our regular workflow instead of like all at once. We could do it either way. If so, Riva, if my concern is VPS 15 parts per billion, you support five at three, what happens to the 486 home care center? Are we going to be closing some of these people down perhaps? No, I don't see us closing anyone down. They would have to do immediate remediation. If we found, if you moved to three, we just wouldn't have, they wouldn't, I don't know what we'd have to talk to David about what to do about the water. Like right now, the remediation is you have to use only bottled water until you finish remediating. And we've had folks do that, not so much for lead but for other toxins. We've had people have to use only bottled water until everything gets completely cleared. Which is, we discussed this five parts per billion. Right, which is the five parts per billion. So at three parts, you wouldn't be able to use bottled water. That was a bit, that's a bit of a worry for me. What do we do? I'm only talking about the home care simply because it becomes unaffordable for them to do these remediations. I probably have to tell them they can't operate till the remediation is done. That creates a big problem. Huge problem. That was a concern of ours at three. With the questions, now we have more. That's okay. The estimates to get a new water treatment system in, just go back to your testimonies. I didn't know if some of that data was below. One of the links was broken and I just wanted to. Oh sorry. No, no, no, it's fine. I just wanted to make sure I was seeing that data if you had some. Because you were, I'm sorry, I have a little trouble finding it now. But, oh yeah, it's a $20 to $150 with annual, let's see, the treatment system. So that was to operate the treatment system. And so we say a few hundred dollars to purchase the treatment system. What are we talking about? I would really have to call somebody in from health because we got the information from them. So we got this, when we talked to health about, but again, this is my understanding. And I am going to look to David and I'll phone in a friend if I, in some cases, a faucet needs to be replaced. So that wouldn't be buying a whole new treatment system. That would be getting the faucet replaced and we would certainly be supporting providers with the resources to get that done as it needs to get done. A greater concern is if there's larger remediation that get done, if the water can't be corrected, they would need a treatment system to make sure that it was being treated all the time, it was safe. So that was sort of a worst case scenario, that there wasn't an option for remediation outside of the treatment system that had an annual operating cost. And I will say, it's sort of a little ray of sunshine in child care. There's number one, centers have been tested for the whole 10 years I've been here. That was not new in the new regulations, though they were tested to the old standard and only did a flush sample if they were higher than 15 parts per billion. But they have been tested for a long time. The building stock is generally newer than you would find in schools. And there's always the option, it's not a great option, but we do if folks have a water system that fails, we actually have worked on relocation before, right? So we have some experience with making decisions about relocating a center with problematic toxins in the environment to a new location that is safer and better for kids without interruption of operation. We've done, that's pretty extreme, but we've done that. So we're hoping that no one needs extreme measures. We're really ready to work with them. Our goal would not be to close anyone, but in a family child, if there was, if we couldn't remediate with bottled water in the interim, we would have to have interruptions of service while remediation was managed, which we do as quickly as possible. At least there's a waiver in the bill that's in there for problem water. Thank you, yes. Representative Conrad. Excuse me. You said that if it is above 15 parts, then there is a flush sample? If somebody exceeds the 15 parts per billion in the first sample, then we do a flush sample to test where the problem is and to decide how to, where the best remediations are. And they, once that happens, they can't use those, they can't use those, that water until, you know, that's when they go to bottled water until we figure out what the problem is and remediate. So that's the current process. So from what I have gathered so far, centers and anything that's licensed is, does have water testing happening. You have an action level of 15. If there's more than 15, then you do a flush sample. You do have data on what the actual scores were, not just past, no past. And I believe we can get this on centers as well. You can get that as well. You can support five parts per billion as a test. And there's a possibility that we might be able to work out something that's maybe not testing all at once, but testing doing a rolling cycle. As part of an annual certification. As part of an annual certification. Yeah. We do have a process of annual certifications. We could fold it into that process. An annual certification is only if you've failed in the past. In the past it has been, but we could build a sort of more rigorous process into annual certifications, now going forward. Who's been paying for the tests? For centers, they've always paid for their own, because it was always part of a regulation. We didn't provide the kits to the centers for family child care homes, which were, this was a new regulation in 2016. And we worked really closely with the private appell to ensure that we paid for all of their first tests. And they're just coming up to the second testing cycles. They're just anybody who's, and then new folks who weren't registered or licensed prior to 2016 have been paying it as part of their sort of startup costs for their business. I will say Let's Go Kids has a program where they're helping with startup, so that may have been covered for them by someone else besides us. But I think the kid's only about $20 or so. It's not a $250 test. It's fairly reasonable. So most people, if they're starting it up, they know they have to do it. They'll do it. Okay, so between you and I, we'll get information back to us on child care. Yeah, we'll work on that on the centers. And what we can see is we did, went to five. It is likely that we'd pick up 14 out of 14 and 86. And what I will tell you is a certain proportion of those center-based programs are actually in schools. So it actually will be kind of a relief if they're all held to the same standard. Because now it's been sort of tricky for the preschool students that are held to our standard have been an anomaly in their buildings. But so we'll have to look specifically at those and make sure we're coordinating the overall school systems about not making them do stuff more than one time. Right, yeah, we'll figure that out. We've been down that road before. Yeah, we'll figure that out. Yeah, we'll figure that out. I'll take your prints. Riva, how many total are there again in the state? We have over, we have about 1,200, a little bit north of 1,200 now that we are starting to rebuild. So that could have changed since the last time I dated. But I can get you that. I can send you that this afternoon. Do you have any idea what percentage is newer housing stock? I don't, offhand. But just in general, they tend to be in newer buildings.  But most of the buildings that center-based programs are in, unless they're housed in schools, tend to be in slightly newer stock. And out of every 10, how many do you suppose are rented or leased? Well, that's a great question. I don't even want to estimate because I'm not, I think a lot of them probably are, rented or leased, as versus owned. But I'm not sure if we have that data, but I'll check. I'm not sure if we ask that question. That's another layer of competition. Yes, because there'd be a landlord involved. Though I will tell you, in general, whenever we encounter we test for a lot of toxins. And generally, landlords are, if they're renting to a child care program, they're generally very cooperative with us, we rarely have problems with that. If we were to look at other health-related issues in our child care centers. So one is lead. What else would you be concerned about? Well, I mean, we test for carbon monoxide and I would have to, I'd actually like to go, I don't want to start crystal with me. I'd like to go get crystal, but we feel we're testing for most of them. You might have called a couple years back. They found some brown sites that were related to dry cleaning sites. And so we worked really closely with Health. We did a full analysis of where any of those coincided with child care programs. We retested all of those child care programs to make sure that none of those toxins were coming into the programs. And we worked pretty closely in partnership with Health on anything that's coming up or that we hear of that might potentially be a danger to children. I don't know that right now there's anything, because our regulations are fairly new. We actually went to Health, we went to ANR, we talked with them at the time that we were doing the changes, asking for everything we needed to test for at that time. And we updated all our regulations around there. And I will say, ANR is a good partner in that one of the things we say to people who are interested in opening places is, deal with your water system first. Because the water system is often what holds people up at the end. Because they haven't gone through the process to make sure that it's safe. People assume that, say, this used to be a restaurant. So I'm sure it's safe for children. But the requirements around a restaurant where people come episodically to the requirements around a place where very young children and staff come every day are quite different. So people get tripped up by that. And ANR, we just always say, go to them first on your sites. And make sure you're on a safe water system. Make sure it can carry what you're estimating as your population here. And we partnered very closely with them on this. Because the water system is quite critical, making sure that that's safe. We want kids to drink lots of water every day. And we want that not to be poisoning them in any way. Given that 90% of lead poisoning comes from, other than water, comes from soil, comes from paint. Do you do anything that given how much children stand in dirt? Oh, yeah, we have an entire testing process around all of those things. So they have, I don't know if they're called EMP practices anymore. Every provider, so I can actually send you the regulations around that. There's a bunch of regulations specifically around lead in the environment. So, and there's stuff our staff looks for. And then remediation that has to be done if we see anything like chipping paint or if there's anything detected in the soil. We do a lot of that testing already. That's just helpful. Yeah, I'll send you that. Yeah, other questions? Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Just a note quickly to let's grow kids. If you have anything you can send us on any help that you provide. You can provide to senders for remediation toxins. We'll just get that from the student's point of view. Okay, Nicole Mays. How would this isn't paper copies? Does anybody want paper copies? Do we have a little card? I sent it to you. Shayna, that's not under today's date. Nicole's? Yeah. Didn't you read it? I didn't want it. Would you like me to wait? That would be a paper card. Sorry? Yeah, paper. Okay, you can read it along. I want eye contact. Yeah. So good morning. My name is Nicole Mays. I'm the executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association. I really appreciate the opportunity to testify on S40. And I want to start by saying, of course, this is an important issue. And schools should be testing to make sure that their children are drinking in their schools to save food right. So we support the intent of the legislation to ensure that children have access to safe drinking water in schools, providing safe and healthy learning environments for all Vermont public school students is an important equity conversation and has an appropriate focus for policy makers and school leaders. As you all know, because you've talked about this, this session, there's been no state support for improving school facilities for more than a decade. There I am. This year, we have seen increasing emphasis on hardening school facilities to make sure they are physically secure and on implementing state initiatives to ensure environmental safety. This new interest comes on the heels of several years of policy interventions and sharp rhetoric from Montpelier regarding high property tax rates and lowering the cost of k-12 education. Despite the fact that the state has expressed no support for updating school facilities in over a decade for deliberate support, we now see a sense of urgency to test every school outlet in the state of Vermont and establish the lowest lead action level in the nation. This new sense of urgency has already raised alarm bells among parents and community members by suggesting that Vermont schools are somehow less safe for children than their own homes or other community facilities. The results of the pilot report are useful and important and should provide us with insights into how to design a program that could work in schools. But to me, they do not raise this issue to the level of a crisis that needs to be addressed in the next six months. S40 further fuels parental concerns, and we have had schools contacted by parents because of the media around this issue. So the bill requires schools to send letters home to families indicating that lead testing is occurring. And depending on the action level and results, stating that the water at school is not safe. This is despite the fact that there is no guarantee that the lead levels in the child's municipal water supply are any lower than what is found in her school, not to mention her own home. These letters are also required to describe how the school district will respond to actionable lead levels prior to the district, even knowing which outlets may have elevated levels and what measures will be required to remediate the situation. That's in the language of the bill. As has been discussed in this room, S40 establishes the lowest action level for lead in the nation, even lower than the lead level, allowed for bottled water. This place of schools and child care providers in a very difficult position. It's not clear why Vermont schools and child centers would be held to this standard other than, as we've heard, there's no safe level of lead. We understand that. It's also important to understand what can be achieved, particularly in a short time frame and within limited resources. Other states have required lead testing of drinking water in schools that are active for action levels closer to the EPA standard. Even less clear, and this is really, I think the most important part from our perspective, is why an expectation is being created that this ambitious program will be fully implemented with actionable levels identified and treated across the state in a single school year. You've taken a lot of testimony this session so far about other state programs that have not been implemented very well because they have not been given adequate time or support. I participated in a two-hour phone call with school facilities managers on Monday. You heard from some of them yesterday. That conversation made clear to me it prompted my request to testify that the cost estimates of S40 are too low and the impact on local budgets is unknown. We know that the lower the action level, the higher the remediation costs and that remediation may be as straightforward as is indicated in this report from the Department of Health. It may be straightforward in terms of replacing fixtures or as complicated as replacing water pipes throughout the building. We do not know. S40 makes no clear commitment from the state with respect to reimbursement for remediation expenses. It merely states that a district will quote the eligible for assistance from the state for the cost of remediation that has been implemented or scheduled as a result of sampling conducted in the calendar year proceeding January 1, 2020. So if you want to be eligible for some assistance, you have to have conducted the sampling prior to this coming January. That is not a commitment to support school districts. That's not a sufficient commitment. And it's not that the fiscal note attached to the bill we believe underestimates the total cost. So while the goal I believe is 50%, we're not clear that the amount that's been allocated or appropriated is sufficient to even cover 50%. We do know that districts have not budgeted for the local costs of lead testing or remediation in their FY20 budgets. You heard that from school facilities managers yesterday. And it is not as simple as the state covering for the cost of the lab tests. There are time and personnel involved, potentially training involved, potentially the need to seek outside assistance for someone to do the testing itself, not to mention the remediation that will be required. And obviously if a school identifies outlets that have lead levels that are above the action level, wherever that's said, it is incumbent on that school to take steps to remediate. That's not something they can say, we didn't budget for that this year. We'll need to wait until next year. So again, what level of expectation are we creating in our communities about the capacity of school districts to respond when they receive test results? The Senate and the administration are hoping to begin the program during this current school year. I think that there's a fair amount of pressure to pass this bill quickly so that that testing can begin. We also know there are no local funds budgeted for testing in FY19 either. So we potentially have two consecutive school years where there are unanticipated costs. And I'll say, speaking of costs, I just want to alert you to some of the education funding dynamics that you may not be as tuned into as the Ways and Means Committee is testified there. Yesterday they've approved a yield bill that keeps property tax rates level despite the fact that education spending increased by 4% this year. It uses $24 million of one-time money in order to do that. It's the third consecutive year in a row that upwards of $20 million has been used to lower property tax rates artificially. Off-setting revenues this year, the one reason education spending went up 4% is because districts had left access to fewer offsetting revenues through reserves or grants or federal funds. So increases in spending were actually only 3% but because they had access to fewer offsetting funds and spending increased by 4%. If districts are required to deficit spend in order to respond to this lead testing program within the next six months, then that creates an even bigger hole for FY21. People just need to be aware of that. And potentially question why we're continuing to use substantial amounts of one-time money to buy down property taxes when we've also identified the need for environment to address and mitigate environmental hazards in schools. Perhaps that's a better use of one-time funds. I'm sorry, did you say that they actually have passed? I yield? Yes. Unanimously. I did raise these concerns in the committee yesterday. Not to mention, I also raised healthcare bargaining. It's happening. That is an equally ambitious task. We're seeking to align the healthcare benefits of licensed employees and non-licensed employees. The price tag of that package is yet to be negotiated but that's another unknown potential liability on the very near horizon. So the VSBA strongly believes the state of Vermont should fully fund the cost of the mandatory lead testing program and ensure that there are adequate numbers of state employees on the ground, plumbers or otherwise, prepared to implement the program, particularly if we're going to break new ground by establishing the lowest action level for lead in the nation for our schools and childcare facilities. So S40 as passed the Senate appears to be unimplementable and underfunded. For those reasons, we do not support it. Do you have a response to if we move the level to five? That's for building the same level as water. It has bottomed water. Again, I think that certainly makes more sense. And we don't know the extent to which that will, with the cost of remediating to that action level are. We've got a pilot with a small sample size of districts. Very, it's not clear to me how many were at five based on the, it's a one between one and 15. So many, there weren't many. You know, again, it's important to do the work. I'm not sure why it's being framed as a crisis because it drops us of the time we need to put together a program that will work. To sort of approach it in a slower, more methodical data driven way, there's some thought of, let's just get the testing done, see where we're at and come up with a remediation plan at that point. Seems to me that still brings up issues of a perceived crisis or heightened parental concern. Even though that process might sound more logical, I think you still have that issue to overcome, thoughts? Agreed, and I think there's another approach that could be to, based on the results of the pilot, identify the most at risk facilities, whether it be the age of the facility. I don't know exactly what the criteria are, but to triage and target and phase it in over. I think the original proposal from the administration was a three-year rollout of the program. While I understand that doesn't satisfy some interests, that seems far more feasible to me, and does not put schools in a position of needing to respond to a crisis in a time frame that really is, I don't know how to do that. Would you agree though that just doing the testing and assuming that information would be public, which it certainly should be, that you could be creating, you can say, well with a three-year rollout of remediation, but there's gonna be demand for immediate action. No, I don't think you can separate the testing from the remediation. I think it's a three-year rollout of targeting the schools that satisfy some criteria to be most at risk, test, remediate, have another cohort, test, remediate, have another cohort, test, remediate. What's unacceptable is that there's been no interest or focus on school facilities for 12 years, and now all of a sudden we need to fix this problem and we need to do it in six months, and school officials are gonna be left whole in the bag with their communities and with their budgets, their parents. So you're addressing just schools. Correct, those are my members. We're leaving out a whole different contention of other testing here, which is approximately 1,400 centers and homes. Children, is there any concern from the public regarding that? I believe there are two positions in this bill to support a program that is as far reaching a program as I've seen with this short timeframe. And I believe that the administration has downplayed the operational and fiscal impacts of this scope of this program within S40 and the timeline established in S40. The agency of education just on that topic has said this could work better depending on whatever the rollout happens to be, but their feeling was, at least at the time that they testified, we need a full-time person in our department to help the rollout of just the lead program because they're best equipped to sort of coordinate schools and coordinate what needs to be done to address this. Well, we've seen how interagency responsibility and dual responsibility has worked on other programs and the answer is not very well. So I think it's important that there is a lead equally important is that a program is designed with school officials at the table, including some of the facilities directors you heard from yesterday. So it moves from theoretically this could work to practically how will it work. Tell me a little bit about how you would set action levels in a rollout, if you were to roll it out. So year one, we just test. We have it at a 15 is what you're saying, correct? Year one, we just test. We've already got an action level at 15. Do that gather the data and how would you report? Well, I mean, so I'm not an expert on action levels other than I know the lower the action level, the higher the costs are going to be and the more outlets we're going to be talking about. And I do think it's probably a good idea to keep the level consistent throughout the course of the program so you're not sending miss messages to communities like last year. It was safe because it didn't cross the EPA threshold. Now we're determining it's not safe because we've set this new action level. I think it needs to be clear to everyone why the action level is being established where it's at and what steps are going to be taken to make sure we can support schools in getting there. Also being clear that this is an ambitious level. It's lower than what's required of municipal systems. It's lower than what's required in most other states that require testing in schools so that we're not creating this false narrative out there that Vermont schools are not safe spaces for children. Uniquely unsafe. I'm trying to get some of the practicality of this. So we test and then do we direct the Department of Health to set the action level moving forward? I don't know that that's a useful step. I think to me the better step is to identify the action level and prioritize facilities that need to be tested short term, mid term, year one, year two, year three. Hold everybody into the same standard. I don't think I'm not seeing it as a phased approach where you do one round of testing just to see where we're at because the representative Conlon's point, I think once you've done the test you need to move into remediation really quickly. So you'll see then perhaps setting a different timeline for remediation based on how high your level was? No, I would see the remediation needs to, you need to decide on the action level which in my view should not be lower than five because I don't know how you implement or enforce that. You would support a level of five. I would support a program that has funding, timing and at a level that's commensurate with the decision that's made around an action level. I guess I'm just a little confused because first of all, I feel like the committee is grappling with this. I know, and I appreciate it. We haven't really, every day we come out like with more questions and we really, I think I'm trying to seek understanding and make a reasonable cost effective safe decision. But that's why I kept asking the Department of Health for an action level because I feel like this is a health issue. And you came back with five, right? So I feel like they're the experts and why would we not go with five if that's the recommendation from the health experts because this is a health issue. If that's fine, if that's the approach that gets taken, my concern is, and how are we funding this program? And how are we rolling it out in a way? I mean, you were all embroiled in Act 46 conversations just a month ago. Are we gonna expect districts that are contending with forming a new system? And how much are we going to ask these folks to respond to within the next six months? What are the trade-offs? And is it the possibility that the program will fail because the timelines are too ambitious and the level of support from the state is inadequate? Do you give the recommendation on the timeline? I, my recommendation is that you take a face-to-approach and you have a certain number of districts moving year one, two, three. And that we refrain from public discussion around this that creates a greater sense of urgency than perhaps is warranted. How do I do that? Nicole, do you think we should test child care centers as well? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm sorry for the sort of... Hey. ...approach, but it's... We understand. It's difficult to feel like a program of this nature is being put together without due regard to the concerns that are being expressed by school officials. Thank you. We are definitely trying to figure out... I understand. I appreciate it. Much appreciated. Thank you. Okay. Now, Ted, I'll have you take a brief break. Okay. Come back and discuss. I'm an agency of education. Just really quickly to preface my testimony, we tried when preparing this to as much as possible due to the notes, the bullet points on the board about cost timeline and so on. But I think I just want to recognize, sort of by the way of preface, that there are some significant policy decisions that you have to make before you vote on this that influence all of those things. So before I read by some of those, I just think you've taken significant expert testimony on the benefits and drawbacks of various aspects of this bill, including action level costs of just real complexity. And so based on your decisions, those will influence things like what the best and most workable timeline is, what the cost is, and these are tough decisions. That's why you folks can pay the big bucks, you know. Sorry. But you know, so a lot of that is gonna be dependent on some of the decisions that you make. And so we just want to offer, the agency does not have technical expertise in a lot of these areas. So we really just want to offer some thoughts on the logistical complexity and financial stuff. And I have my colleagues from DEC and VDH who I will wave to if I get into 2D waters. So I just want to also note up front and we'll go into my written testimony that our understanding of the scope of this problem is to a certain extent incomplete. I don't fully know, I mean, you were hearing some testimony from the facilities managers yesterday about what some of the costs might be or the complexity, but it's gonna vary depending on the individual school district. And that's something that we're just going to have to, that's gonna just be part of this program. So we're pleased to offer additional testimony and the agency supports all initiatives to improve student health and learning. And it's important, however, that we craft good public policy that balances state resource with good public health outcomes. And to that end, we're offering the following suggestions. As I mentioned a moment ago, in terms of fiscal implications, S40 has significant fiscal implications for both the state and for school districts. And the decisions, such as the action level, the scope of the extent and scope of testing, the timeline, the decision on whether or not to include childcare facilities in this, these will all have fiscal impacts, both on the state and on local entities. And then just to mention about the state versus impacts to local entities, it's important to keep in mind that all Vermonters will pay for the costs of testing and remediation, at least in the case of public schools, because what we don't fund directly up front in terms of paying for testing or remediation costs sharing, is gonna come back to us in the future years through the school budgets. And I just wanna appreciate and echo what Nicole May has mentioned earlier about the risks of deficit, spending by schools in an environment where education spending is increasing. So there are multiple policy decisions here that could have fiscal impacts. The action level is mentioned. If the general assembly chooses a lower action level, it's likely that remediation costs will be higher. You've taken expert testimony on the action level and the complexities of remediation, and you should weigh the increased costs against the possibility of an improved public health outcome. And just to mention testing protocols, the general assembly should consider setting a testing protocol that's as clear, simple to comply with as possible in order, again, with reference to what you heard from yesterday, to build facilities managers to make sure that this is something that is achievable and clear and easy to understand. And also in with regard to the timeline, make sure as best as you can to set forth a feasible timeline that will be financially and logistically workable for districts and for the state. And then finally, you should, one other thing to consider that was mentioned a bit yesterday is to the extent remediation, there could be a flexibility in remediation. Some of the facilities managers mentioned, you know, instead of taking it tactfully offline, they work well to, they work to allow that to be used for handling or make sure that if it's not specific or it's posted for non-drinking, not as drinkable water or other measures of that nature. What I should say is that the agency of education doesn't really have expertise on that. So our recommendation to you would be figure out what you want to do and then let the experts at VEH and DEC, particularly at VEH, do the rulemaking to a safeguard to make sure that the appropriate public health safeguards are there. And so that just gets me to the logistical complexity aspect of this. There's a lot, a lot in this bill and given the implications, I mentioned in written testimony implications for student health and safety, but I also think based on what Nicole mentioned to you, there's also an implication for just making sure the public has a clear understanding of what's being done. It's important to make sure that we get this right in the first try. And so I think you should look in, right in crafting your legislation, you should look to making sure that your policy directives are clear and based on the judgments about what you think the best process is going forward and then allow, empower the executive branch to do some of the detailed work for the rulemaking because they have, the VEH has the technical expertise to run this program as I think they able to demonstrate it yesterday afternoon. We've been doing a lot of work already on this to get spun up and up to speed. So give them the guidelines and let them go at it. And I think that will also empower local providers to as much as possible work efficiently. I'll just say on behalf of my agency, we're gonna do as much as we physically can to make sure that we assist both our state partners and our folks in the field in getting this done and making sure it's as clear and easy to work with. So I just wanted to mention, as I mentioned at the top, there's some ambiguity here about exactly what the scope of the problem is and I think that complicates the debate to a little bit. We have a good understanding of the public health imperatives, but we have less understanding about the fiscal impact of it. So I just urge you to keep that in mind. My assumption is just from being in the room and listening is that there's going to be unintended or unknown fiscal and logistical complexities here that we haven't been able to fully estimate. I will leave it there and answer any questions that I can. Do you see the role of the agency of education in this? You might have said it, I'm just not sure. So as currently written, we're sort of in a consulting role with VDH specifically in terms of working with school districts. We talk a lot almost on a daily basis to school districts. So to the extent that we hear things that can be used to help inform the process, we'll be providing that. We are already working, I should mention VDH is already working, but we are already working with them on things like communications and coordinating with them. We'll be coordinating with them in the health operations center. And but the other impact, and that's why we've focused on the fiscal and logistical complexities that we do the work on the school finance side. And that will be something that you can appropriate what you feel is right for this year, but the balance will be paid through school budgets out of the iPhone. Do you see a need for staff in the agency of education? So it's currently drafted the bill and sort of based, it's hard to tell exactly what folks are gonna do, but I'll chime in as I listen to the discussion. But it's currently drafted, the bill will not require additional AOE positions or resources. Previously, there had been conversation and speculation about how this project might be related to school facilities or construction work and the scope might expand a little bit as part of that conversation. And that led us to make previous testimony in the interest of bringing to your attention that AOE has no capacity or resources, or excuse me, not resources, no capacity or expertise in the area of school facilities and construction currently. So if you make changes to the legislation that gives us a more active role or if you expand the scope to more facilities review or if you take more of a school construction legislation next year, that will be something that we'll come back to talk to you about. Question. Why don't we take a brief break and come back and start a conversation about the different buckets that we need to be addressing. As we move forward, discussion. We're going to be looking at, I'm hoping that we have our two, yes. So we've got our three departments in here, our three, the agency of education, Department of Health and Department of Environmental Conservation in the room, which we really appreciate you being here. So we've heard a lot. We've talked about breaking it down to the different categories of decision-making that we need to do. One has to do with cost, another has to do with who we're testing, another has to do with our timeline, another has to do with the action level that we're going to set, and then remediation priority. I think the first thing that I would like to talk about are people okay with talking action level first? Does that feel like it's the one where we're the closest? Right. Okay. So if we scroll through the bill, and the definitions. First page. This sets the action level at three parts. We've heard 15, five, three, and one. Let me just put it bluntly. Who would go with five? Who wants a different level? Okay. What would you like? What is your, what were you thinking? I think we should, I don't probably go, I don't really know. I'm not focused on the action level. I just think I don't have a strong feeling about it. I would be fine with starting with 15, honestly. Given where we are right now, and I am uncomfortable with duplicating the regulatory environment for our schools to comply with, and for municipal water supplies. I have a problem with, if we did five, I would like us to do it by pointing at the federal FDA requirement for bottled water, which is five. I would like us to point to another regulation rather than create one out of whole cloth. I don't think it's appropriate at this point, many, many more. There has been some discussion about referring to it as the bottled water, as opposed to calling it a number. Yeah. And that's something that's already regulated by the FDA. And I just think we should look to existing regulatory frameworks rather than creating a new one. Okay. Is everything okay? Well, I think I've made clear that I wish that we were going for one. But since the interested parties have really pushed into that. I mean, five, CLF is okay with five, but not such. I've been bearing in mind, bearing in mind that once you start the remediation, we've seen that the remediation goes well below five. So we have agreement at this point on five, but actually referring to it as pointing to the FDA regulation on identifying that without your suggestion. Yeah, I'd just say one more thing. I think we can get to zero or one. Yeah. I don't think setting an action level of one will get us there any faster than sticking with the FEPA. If I did think that, I would support it. But I have not heard anything to really make me believe that's the case, given how long we're gonna take. There's nothing precluding us from doing a year of testing and then setting an action level next year. That won't, I don't believe, set us backwards on the path to getting to zero or as close to zero as we possibly can and get into a lot of schools. Five, pointing it to the federal level. You okay? I was gonna say five, pointing it to the Department of Health and Vermont Department of Health. They don't have that. They don't have that. They can't point to anything that says that's our standard. They're saying they're approving this standard for us right now, but it's not in writing it anywhere. There is a standard in writing with the FDA in terms of bottled water. But I'll just say that we can point to it. But I'll point it to you. Do you have a standard that we can point to? So we're going to have the Department of Health advisory on one part of the story. That's your advisory, right. But you have accepted that an action level of five at this point. It is likely one of the ways that we are able to get to the lowest possible level. Okay, this doesn't have any findings in it. We could do some findings. So thank you for being here. We're just starting to look at some of the buckets of questions that we have answered at the moment. We're looking at five parts per billion, but instead of calling it that pointing to the FDA bottled water regulation, Michael. Okay, you want to incorporate that rule or just incorporate the standard? The standard, I think. What we're trying to do is not, what Representative Elder was saying, he liked the idea of pointing it to a regulation that's already in statute somewhere. Okay, can I sit down? Please do. Please do. So have you looked at that rule? I have not. I bet you have. I'm all stacked with you first. Yeah. So it is pretty specific to bottled water. We need action level concept is the same regardless if you cross reference the FDA or not. So it applies to the manufacturer processing or packaging of the primary container units of the same size. There's a lot of detail about how you do sampling. So I mean, if you're just going to reference the action level, I think you could do that. But I think the rest of it is very, it's very specific to bottled water. It has E. coli testing requirements. It's arsenic testing requirements. It's really not a one to one at all. Okay. Whatever the language is that gets us to five in a way that just makes sense. Okay. Can we leave that to Michael Green? And just to confirm, you're talking about the definition of action level currently, it says means in the Senate pass bill, three parts per billion of lead. So are you envisioning just a reference there where it would say five parts per billion with some cross reference to this standard? Could you do that within a definition? Well, it depends on if you want the standard to potentially the action level to change depending on what the action level is in the federal rule. Okay. If you do, then it would be, I would say the action level or they don't, I don't know if they use action level here, but the level, the acceptable level for lead underneath this rule as amended from time to time. And that as amended from time to time brings in future changes. I'm gonna suggest we just leave it at five. People comfortable with leaving it, just leaving it, just finding it as five in the bill. Yes. Okay, okay, that is a straw vote to do. Yes. Okay. Okay, can I just ask one question? Yes. Is that a flush level or a non flush level? I think it's not an indication that it's gonna get really complicated if we start breaking that down. Is that other people's sense? There was a conversation at one point about leaving the first straw level higher than the flush level. And it's my memory that we've gotten some testimony that said that would work really well. And we've had others that it might complicate the picture. So, at the moment it's for everything. If we need to change that, if you would like to change that, let's get back to that. And that can be a discussion that you can have outside of the room with the folks, okay? So you guys would be prepared to talk with Sarita about that. The next area we've talked about, and if we're looking at definition to define some of those, the who's testing, we had looked at it differently. We'd looked at childcare centers, and we'd looked at schools, and we'd looked at elementary schools versus high schools, and we've kind of gotten the sense that the department wants to go into that area and hit that area, so starting to divide up schools sounded like it did not sound like a good idea. So in terms of who, we have the childcare centers, childcare facilities, and our schools. Right, so in the Senate, they didn't want to use the term school, they wanted to bring it up beyond the discrete elementary school or high school, and to a higher level, the government structure for whatever school, school districts, super districts, etc. Right, so they included independent schools. Yeah. Yeah. And they were referring to buildings, right? Right, is there any building that there were children? Right. Where was that? I remember looking at that this morning. The definition of building? No, it's the definition of building, is that what it is? It's J1. Oh, okay. Just to clarify, that doesn't mean homes. Not my home. Later in the draft, it says, under control by the school district there are a lot of super disease. Okay. Are we good? Yeah. Does that include, in my district, we have like that, it's called the project store, it's alternative school, or it's... I'm sorry. It's like an alternative school, or it's two more, plus council, it's four, six, two. It's probably an independent school. Yeah. But they take a lot of tax dollars. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, A, right, because it's one of the approved schools for your school funding formula. So, yeah, it would be an independent school, it would be likely, I would say it's like that, I don't know if it's been likely to fall under the independent school. So, if it's part of the school, if it's an outbuilding part of the school, where the rec facilities are, that could be included? Right, and it's, again, it's your testing outlet, and the outlet is the drinking water fixture, so it has to be for drinking water, where there's currently, or potentially, use for consumption or cooking purpose. Where is that? That is in the definition of outlet on feed, too. It is kind of feed. So, that outbuilding, if it's only the garden hose for the baseball field, then that's not used for... And the mop sink, the custodian's closet. The mop sink in the janitorial closet is not... I mean, having been a janitor, I don't want to do that. I'm worried, like, in our sports facility, we have all the children, you know, you go into the locker room, there's six in the beds, six in the women's, then there's probably like 10 locker rooms in there. So, that's a lot, I don't know if I would consider those all drinking fountains, since they're right across from where the toilets are. They're like in the same room. Is it just a sink, or is it a...? Just a sink. And the water fountains are on the outside of the lobby. So, it would be a lot of testing on those fixtures. I don't think anybody would use that. I would hope for people who are drinking water and water. I mean, it's kind of not even totally just about drinking long, and how I was noticing about funny, but I was noticing in some data from Oregon that some of the worst sinks were the eye-washing stations where they had readings of 1,000 PBB and high copper levels. So, you're not going to drink that, but it's not a great situation, right, you know? So, I think it's hard because it's all water in the school, and it's all ultimately, in a lot of cases, being driven by infrastructure containing lead. So, it's sort of like, shouldn't we be getting it all on? And they can take that on a service? Yeah, which is an example of something you don't drink from, that's still probably a good idea, and that's all. I can't imagine trying to drink out of an eye-washing station. No, but you don't want to catch that. Well, I think you have. No, we're okay with who we're testing at this point, to answer that question. So, still school districts, supervisory unions, independent schools, and childcare providers? Right. Well, great, everybody agreed on that? Um, scope of the testing and timeline. We've heard that, we've heard that the current timeline is going to be insufficient. I think we've heard, in terms of testing, I think we've heard 12.20 for all. I look to the Department of Health. I'm sorry. So, end of December is when you thought that you could December 31, 2020. December 2020 would be the timing. We've had some. And that's for your initial standpoint? I also just want to note that the Department of Health and the Department of Environmental Conservation are putting together some things that we could draft related to rule, so that we can move ourselves out of rulemaking, make sure that's directed. And I think that they're communicating with you about that, that language related to language for rulemaking. I don't think they've communicated that language to me yet. Right. But that is coming. Move yourself out of rulemaking? Sorry, I did not phrase that well. So that we're not trying to put things that are better in rule and dispatch. I'm just going to keep her discussion on this issue. Yeah, I do want to just say one thing that we've heard. Well, OK, we have timeline in terms of testing, and then we have timeline in terms of remediation. You want to talk about timeline in terms of testing and remediation? Well, I think my concern is more scope of testing than it is timeline of testing. I continue to be concerned about testing everyone, having this information, but really not being able to do remediation at all quickly, just to the boots on the ground and other factors. And again, creating a public concern that I feel might be a little overblown. So the way it's written in the bill now, even if we were to extend it to 18 months over rather than six months, it still is testing everybody. It's still creating a database, which in theory sounds really good. But in practice, I think it's going to create a somewhat strong urgency to remediate that either may not be necessary or frankly will be impossible to meet the urgency of remediation. That's my concern. The first step in remediation, if you have an outlet that exceeds is you prevent student staffs, et cetera, from accessing it for purposes of obtaining drinking water or cooking water for consumption.  And there's no timeline for that subsequent remediation of that fixture. So you could just take it out of service. So if you're a small school and you've got lots of them and you've got one kitchen sink that you need to fill the pot out of, then you're going to need to have alternative sources of water. And I think that part of my concern is that we've said that remediation is you can't use that anymore, even though a simple remediation would be a 30-second flush, especially in a water supply that's controlled by adults who should be able to do that. We haven't allowed for education and simple remediation, such as flushing. That's where I think the Department of Health and the agency come in and are rulemaking, whether or not that. Because they do have that authority right now in the rulemaking to determine what is the appropriate remediation. So they have requirements for guidance for taking samples. And then they have requirements for implementation of the lead mitigation plan or necessary response. I think in rulemaking, they potentially could say that if you have a exceedance in this level and if you do a flush draw for a certain amount of time, then you can use that. I think that's a possibility that's available in rulemaking. Excuse me, is there available in rulemaking now, or? It's there now. I mean, if they wanted to say that that's an acceptable form of remediation, I think they have that authority. Yeah, just to riff on that, I was really struck by Mr. Kenny's submitted testimony about the flushing protocols. And I just wanted to underscore that we're also concerned about creating a panic and schools feeling like they can't remediate and there's nothing they can do. That it seems to me that a very important first step now with available funding would be to roll out a really extensive education and awareness program around things that districts couldn't should be doing for free, or maybe not for free, because I understand that I understood that the flushing protocol was a little complex, but that you can institute a flushing protocol. You can stop cooking with hot water. You can disconnect taps that were installed before, blah, blah. So it just seems to me that the logical first step to just kind of give everybody something they can do immediately should revolve around some of these low-cost or no-cost alternatives that really are effective, right? Which can be addressed through roommate, through you can establish remediation guidelines. Yes. Which would get to this concern that we're discussing. Sure, I'd like a little more assurance. So I'd like to hear from the Department of Health if they consider those to be suitable. Short-term remediation efforts. I don't know if we now, if we get some time for them, but rather take advantage of having a glitch council in the chair right now. But in the meantime, we just want to make sure that the Department of Health is prepared to create remediation plans. Remediation guidelines. Excuse me. Guidelines. I don't know when we clear that we. Right. Guidelines. The record I've given when we just called the project to make sure it fell. We don't want to be, and we can talk about this about providing the chair in moments from now. We don't want to be in the business of looking at individual remediation plan and individual process. That will be potentially enough thousands that will provide guidance and, et cetera, to follow that guidance. Or I should say, one of the guidance, it's viral. Do we have any assurance that people will follow these guidelines? Well, if not, they're in violation of the rule, which is, you know, that's the same thing as breaking the law. So you didn't follow these guidelines. There could be consequence, because you're violating the rules. Averable things happen. We could have led jail, too. Represent a comment. If led jail, let penalties. Let penalties. If not, you're going to jail. You just increase the penalty. If anything, because the bars increase the exposure. Represent a comment. Well, so I guess my concern is whether the Department of Health agrees that guidelines that say flushing is sufficient in certain cases, if you agree with it, that is acceptable or not. So you're asking me point, is flushing sufficient? I'm asking you if it is a likely possibility that guidelines that say flushing is sufficient is a strong likelihood. I'm not in position to say that it's a strong likelihood as a permanent remediation measure mostly, because things like. I didn't use the word permanent, just to be. So as a temporary measure, as you're putting the current remediation plans, certainly we wouldn't have a discussion. The issue with flushing is that the protocols are sometimes, because people are fallible and plans can be insufficient, flushing that would actually be sufficiently protected, would have to happen, in some cases, several times throughout the course of the day. So it's not something a matter of turning the taps on for six minutes at 7 AM, but in fact, several times. So flushing is probably never going to lead to higher instances of exposure, therefore. I would say the Department of Health would be skeptical of that as a method, but we would certainly assess it. Brian Redmond from the Department of Environmental Conservation. I would agree with everything that David just said. Flushing is a very effective measure during the pilot phase. We looked at it more as a mitigation versus a remediation. Right. So it's just to get you through to the point where you can perhaps budget for improved. And that would be a nice reference to where, for instance, I want to remind the committee that the 27 taps that were trying to be above 15 parts per billion, 17 of them were certainly just immediately taken out of service. You had a situation in which you couldn't take a tap out of service for whatever reason, because it was the way to get to fill with the cost of it. Then perhaps flushing would be an interim method. Right. Representative James? And that was all I intended, just a way of getting something out there now that folks can do so that it doesn't feel panic with no action. Your department will be working on that. Representative Belder? So if I'm going to understand, if we had the five PVV rate, the high end that we've had for an estimate for JFO in terms of what could eclipse that level would be 25% of all fixtures, that's kind of what we're running with in these numbers. If you just removed all of those from service, under S40 as it currently stands, have you fulfilled your obligation as a school? If you just remove all of them and say, we're not going to remediate any of them, we're removing those 25% of our taps, does S40 allow you to be done there if you don't intend to remediate them? Well, I think you need to interpret S40 with the requirements for providing drinking water in a public building, and there are requirements of certain distance. So you would have to look at whether or not you could take all of them out and still comply with the requirements for providing drinking water in a public building. And if you could, I think that that is an acceptable remediation. Can I ask a question? So not sure of health or in our addresses to either of you, if a school were to do that, would that be an acceptable endpoint? Brian Redman from the Department of Environmental Conservation. Just exactly what Michael just said there are, the calming code is going to dictate in terms of what is acceptable for the availability of water in the facility. But if they could keep the availability of drinking water in line with the calming code, it would be a potential option for remediation as we saw in the pilot. We saw a lot of seldom used fixtures being removed from service as a remediation strategy. I'm just going to say my problem with that is that seldom used correlates to high readings. Period. So we're just going to go and remove all our fixtures that are seldom used. And who knows if we're going to get a statewide round at testing funding again. And so then we will have removed just the fixtures that are used that much. And the fixtures that have identical lead contents are all just sitting there. I just, in some ways, I like that answer because I was like, well, at least it's achievable. On the other hand, I'm not showing you $1.3 million of testing to get us there, which I know is what I've been saying from the beginning. I just kind of feel like if there's that kind of out within this, it just feels like this bill both has mandates in it, which have followed, I think, in good faith lead to a very expensive solution that we haven't funded. And it also has holes in it that if you want to, you can just slip the whole problem through. And I just don't think this bill's ready. So I'm not going to make you hear a lot more of my take on this, but I'm not feeling like we're at a point of closure where this makes any more sense than down day one. Following up on Cale's concern, it brings me back to the definition of outlet. And it says, outlet means a drinking water fixture currently or potentially used for consumption or cooking purposes, including drinking fountain ice machine for a faucet. I'm having trouble knowing if that's a broad definition or not a broad definition is a lab sink where you can fit a water bottle under the faucet in a science lab. Is that a drinking water fixture currently or potentially used for consumption or cooking purposes? This kind of goes to Cale's concern in a way, because if you can narrow the definition of what we're talking about, it sort of gives a little more guidance as to maybe you can just remediate without testing. Partly that's within your control of defining what the universe is going to be for testing, either under the mandated entities doing testing or what they will test from. So if you want to say that it's not going to be a certain type of faucet or a certain type of sink, you have the ability to define that. Desiccated. Thank you for one time. You could do that? Or just one of those details that's better left and we'll make it. That's the thing, so that's the question. Beth, this is going to explode if I don't wrap up. No, I'm not going to explode. I will tell you that we started a conversation with the Conservation Law Foundation late yesterday afternoon. I sent out emails to Brian and David, and I'm just going to suggest that I think we're at a place where we may make some progress in being to deliver a consensus or close to consensus-based draft. So we will hopefully deliver something to you that will bring agreement to as many of the points we can with areas of disagreement being fairly limited. That's the goal. I can't say that we will get there, but I can say that we've started the conversation, and I thought the intent was to meet after the testimony to work on that to see what we can agree to. What you want to do that information, that's your choice. But I can tell you that we've begun a discussion, and I'm hoping we can get to a place of agreement where there's disagreement that'll narrow your world at least somewhat. OK, but I know that I think the conversation was David, and I do know that that work is going on. Representative Cooper? Beth, how many hours and minutes close are you to that consensus? Hours and minutes? I think we're going to know in probably the first hour of discussion how close we are and whether we can get there or whether everybody can move in a direction. There are going to be some areas I think maybe where we can't, but at least then we can come here to say this is what we do agree with, and this is what you're going to have to resolve these points of disagreement. I want to keep us back and focused on speaking with our Ledge Council on how to move this forward. I'm going to just mention one thing. One of the things that has come up in terms of our child care facilities is that they're already tested at licensure, which is every three years. There also are some that are yearly annual testing if they exceeded, I guess, the 15. And of course, they're not using the same level. But there's some question that's come forward in terms of rolling them into this program as opposed to starting all over with all of them at the same time, but rolling it in to addressing those ones that we already know were over. Actually, they even know which ones are over five at this point. But rolling in the testing to align with their licensure as opposed to trying them into this so quickly. You can do that. You know, the initial sampling is by a certain date. You're now talking about 18 months. So you could say they're the first renewal or their first application or first renewal. They shall test according to the requirements of this. But no later then. And you could probably put that out for a year, so that. You hit everybody? You hit everyone? Does that make sense? What does that include? That was a suggestion that we would include in this bill that the entire program you pay for by the state and as the state agency to come up with a plan by two o'clock this afternoon, how it's going to work. Can I just keep it just hold that one? In terms of the child care facilities, are we OK with changing the language to put it at the point of licensure in the way that you just discussed it? Can we add that? Sure. I have some color. Is there licensure or certification? Is like an annual certification? That's if you had a problem. You had an annual certification. So to be at annual certification, it's required. So it's not here, but we can connect you with Riva. So with that kind of construct, you might want to move the child care facilities out to a separate section. And street schools is one section, and child care facilities is separate. And you would also probably want to direct AHS to amend their rules to be consistent with the statute and the testing requirements. You might also want them to test the continued sampling to just be on the three-year period or annual period if there's an exceedance. So you're really not changing much for them. It's just you let them hit the five under their traditional license cycle. You tell the department to revise their rule to be consistent with the five. I think you probably hit everything for the child care facilities. Unless you want to specify that they have a mitigation plan that is consistent with the mitigation plan for a school. Yeah, they do have a mitigation plan, I believe. And there's, this would be important too. So the department's going to come up with rules about what the guidance is for a mitigation plan. Do you want that child care facility to comply with that? I would assume yes. It gets a little tricky because pre-K is under child care, it's also under education. Okay, well, it sounds like you're probably going to be doing markup from something you haven't seen. And we know that there's more coming in from there. I guess, were you going to say something? No, okay. I assume our time with you is limited. Yeah, one minute. Okay, so there's some notification provisions in this bill. Do you know, and I'm sorry I didn't ask the expert before, do child care centers have to follow what's already in this bill in terms of notifying all staff, parents, or guardians of students directly in writing more electronic means of the scheduled sampling, the requirements for testing, why testing's being done, and how they're going to respond? Do you know if that currently exists for child care centers? I may have a quick answer. I think we already have the answer, which is no. I don't see it. There aren't that many references to the testing for thank you, Wada, for that and the rules, and I don't see it in the three major references. Do we have the information included in the application to the agency, not into the parents or guardians or staff? Okay, so that's it for you. This is the now. Are we comfortable with much counsel is looking to draft? I'm not comfortable with the time I'm on here. I don't know that we're quite done with the time I'm on. You mean in terms of the 18 months of testing? Are we doing 18 months? At the moment, we're looking at testing is done by, well, it's 12, 20, as opposed to, oh, 12, 20. 12, 20, December 2020. Okay, I thought it was sooner. Yeah, well, it is sooner, according to this, but we've given another year. Should I begin drafting, considering that you're going to be working off of that? I know that you are working on some draft, some changes, correct? I'd say hold the thoughts. I don't think you have to, you know, we don't have to do 18 versions of this. That'd be profitable. Yes, well, I would like very much to take that into account. So these are the things that we can eventually be throwing into a draft that will be more inclusive than just little niggly things here and there. Try to figure out how we are going to not have a panicked population. That is a very good discussion. I think we can let Council go. Well, you have some great ideas. You know, what I was thinking was, to have the schools, the childcare centers, they should have to adapt to all of the rest of the restrictions to me. And somehow we have to get some information out there to let the parents know what the heck we're doing and why we're doing it before they all of a sudden have hard to catch over this, right? Me to account, yeah. Madam Chair, so the record, this is David Amander. So the Department of Health does public communications on these issues and issues, in fact, significantly more dire, I mean, where there is acute and death coming in the near term. So the Department of Health has developed communications for parents and schools to avoid panic. So that kind of information can be sent to schools, via schools, but using materials developed by the Department of Health. I just take a moment. So my intention, I'm going to be clear and consistent, make sure I'm consistent with the interests of the committee and the chair, is that we are going to sit, the stakeholders will sit down following the end of the committee discussion, and we're going to try and come up with a draft that is, consensus as much as large as we can, come to good does about as many points as we can, and then, because my intention to be fair is to say, here's something that Beth wants. Here's the CLEF wants, here's the ANR wants, but there isn't consent. So here's where there's consensus in view. Is that a fair university? That would be very helpful. You listed a few members there, I assume, the public schools will also be represented. Anybody who wants to be the table can be the table. You could hand up over here on the left. I'll represent where the children are standing.  It's one thing to be participating in these conversations and not bear full fiscal responsibility. It's another thing entirely to expect that the financial obligations for this program will fall to where I believe the right place is, and that's the state of Vermont. So it has a tendency to sharpen the lens and focus in which programs are designed. And I think even if you don't end up at that place, it's a fair place to start. I think in terms of our buckets that we're looking at, we're sort of doing well on the timeline for testing, we're good on the cost for testing, we're good on an action level. The next step is really talking about what happens in terms of remediation. Who's responsible, where's the unfunded mandate, and what is the timeline for remediation, given that we heard the other day that we have a limited number of farmers. Right, and if I may, Jeff Francis from the Supertent Association. S40 as a past the Senate contemplates rulemaking around future testing sequences. When you consider the million dollars plus that are involved in the first testing sequence, any interval at which you require subsequent testing sequences are also going to come with the same or greater cost. So it's a matter of not only the first one million dollars plus, it's a matter of every subsequent million dollars plus. Isn't that in rulemaking? That is in rulemaking, but what I'm saying is, even if you complete the package with the first round of testing and remediation, if the rules then determine that five years from now you'll test again, and I would say, and we are in communications with Conservation Law Foundation, their first proposal was that schools get tested every year. So for every subsequent round of testing, if it's going to be comprehensive, like the first round, there's going to be, based on the fiscal note, one million dollars plus per round of testing. Do you think you keep in mind the percentage of elder? I do think that's an important point, just as we think about equity, because having had a very narrow budget passage in our district, I'm just thinking that if certain schools had a larger obligation for remediation, we'd want them to undertake that, but that's dependent on voters authorizing that budget, right? And so I think looking at something that would come from the state, from a specific appropriation would be appropriate to make sure that this work happens equally across our state, and doesn't just leave it up ultimately to local voters to ensure that equity piece. There's conversation about where that money comes from. That money can come partially from the general fund. There's some conversation about taking it off the top of the fund. There's some conversation about working out something with the capital bill. All of those are under discussion as potential sources of support. In the moment, the current bill for the money that's in the Budget Adjustment Act that came back from the Senate currently has $860,000 available for half of the mitigation, the remediation plan. I think we're getting information that's probably an underestimate. Do we, that's the issue I have, we don't know what this is going to cost. But our next step may be to get an updated fiscal note. I don't think they understand the complexity of what we can be running into, in particular dealing with the home. I don't, she can't imagine they can come up with a number without doing, it's almost like you need a home inspector to go in and say, this is what you need to do in every one of these facilities. Mr. Senator? This is what I said yesterday, we're not going to know how much we need until we do the testing. We're putting the cart before the horse. So we need enough money to get started. Right. We need enough money for year one. Looking at that, $24 million in one time. Funds to buy down the tax rate. Yes. But it's for the children. I understand the funding piece. I agree with Jeff. And at least I think, as of last night, the conservation law foundation agrees this should be funded. That we need to make sure that it's funded. But, you know, if the obligation is in standard to fund it, how much you appropriate this year if it falls short of the mark. The obligation, by law, is still to the state. You would see a budget adjustment, you know, to correct for the underfunding if there is underfunding. And that would be the mechanics of making sure that you have money to pay for the legal obligation.  But that mechanically is how it works. How much you put to it this year, you know, you make your best guess. And then next year there's a budget adjustment. At the moment it just says 50%. 50% is left to the local district, which I'm sure my friend over here would refer to as an unfunded mandate. If your friend over here says, yeah, it is, but it's worse if you don't know how much what the total costs are going to be. So, Jeff Francis from the Superintendent's Association, I tried and was unsuccessful because we weren't afforded a lot of time in the Senate Education Committee to suggest that whatever liability the school districts will have be capped at the original estimate. So, if your estimate is at $1.5 million for remediation and you want schools to bear 50% of that, then, you know, if the result of the deliberations is that schools are going to be held accountable for 750,000, that would be, I think, a relatively reasonable outcome. But if the costs sort of $4 million, the school district's obligation shouldn't go to $2 million as a result of that. So, one of the things that is well established, in my view, from these conversations is that we're not really sure what we're going to get to. So, if it comes in less than that, everybody's happy. If it comes in exceeding the estimate, then somebody needs to be prepared to pay for it. And I, as Nicole Mace testified this morning, no money for remediation has been included in FY 2020 budgets, which cover the period July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020. So, even if a testing program induces school districts to respond immediately because they see places they want to, that they can remediate, that is going to be a currently off-budget expense. So, there's $24 million in what time funds in the tax bill? There is. In the yield bill? In the yield bill. Oh, and you have a radon, too, which you have that money. Which you know where that's going. They're buying down it. But that still doesn't address the real issue of no one knows how many millions of dollars this could eventually cost in where it was paying. You can't go... Doctor, moving forward, how do we handle it? We don't know what it's going to cost. Send it back. Senator, do you have an answer to that question? Can I ask a question? Yes. So, it's like looking at the pilot results. It looks like... Why don't I... Would you mind joining us at the AOE right there as well? Yes. Good morning. Good evening. Good morning. Brian, I think of you guys as a team. Oh. Yeah. Roland Martin. I was reading the results from the pilot. It certainly calmed me down immensely to read those results. Because it looks like, I don't know, eight-tenths of schools are below the action level we just came up with. Is that accurate to say? It's somewhat accurate to say. Anyway, is there any way that we can extrapolate from that pilot what the cost could worst-case scenario be? It's obviously... I don't know if that would be useful to say. It's only semi-useful, I can say. We've heard a lot of information about the cost. The simple matter is that within the pilot, only one school spent more than $500. Right. Which is not per-tap. Per-tap. That's different. When how many schools needed... It looks like very few schools needed remediation. Very few schools did. Right. And is there any way, again, to extrapolate that kind of analytically, that the chance is this is a good sample of Vermont schools, and it could be... And it's a very small number of schools that will need remediation or we can't do that from this pilot. I think that that's what the fiscal note did do, was use the pilot. Okay. So then I'm confused as to why we're concerned about... We're not sure that that's accurate. You say can you do it? I think the concern is that, no, actually you can't. You can't. All they looked at was the cost of a fixture. That what is a fixture cost. And they did that. They did not account for the labor. And they did not account for remediation beyond that. So that's why we are concerned about using that. I believe that was the Senate's goal, though, was to say that we will participate in helping to fund fixtures. And that was they kept it limited to that. And we're hearing from the superintendent's association that that sounds like an unfunded mandate. Well, I got you guys right there. I can't... I should look at the bill better. Can you just talk about ongoing testing and what you feel the protocol should be? The protocol is for testing. So the moment... The testing in schools is entirely voluntary. There are schools that have said and reached out to us and said we know this is coming, so we're just going to go ahead and do it.  If we're putting in a new law... If we're putting in a new law, what is the Department of Health or DEC's recommendation for ongoing testing, knowing that it costs over a million dollars? Yes. The rulemaking is what we recommend. The rulemaking language that's currently in the bill. So we would take the time to consult with the stakeholders and our partners to say what makes sense and then move it to the committee process. I can contribute a little more. And actually, your commissioner of health had presented this on the record previously that coming out of the pilot and some of the analysis we did in trying to sculpt a statewide approach, the initial recommendation for retesting was set at a five-year period. But I would agree with Mr. Angleter that we would need to go back and consult with the group of stakeholders and evaluate now that we're in a different place what the appropriate frequency is. So you were not getting ready to do every year is the way some people have been afraid. And again, it goes to rules and then it goes to L-Card and you've been taking public testimony and, yeah, the opportunities. Okay. Our money. What do we need? What do we need? Didn't you make a suggestion? Oh, yes. Let's go back to you. It should definitely not stay in the agency that we test. And again, my concern is what do we do, Senator? We do a private sector whose, you know, there's going to be a tango there. So. Tang has a trade for these people. Riva said that they have emergency money that they can make available if there's a situation such as there's a child care facility that could close because of something like that that they need to have prepared. She was going to look into that, get back to us on that. I don't know how much that emergency money is. Is it $500,000? A question. $2 million. Where's it coming from? So I'm having trouble seeing how this works without a state commitment to fully fund everything out of the general fund. Otherwise, we're going to get into, well, if we do this out of the Ed fund, what about independent schools and we can't fund independent schools out of the Ed fund. So if we're going to say this is a public health issue, we're going to twist ourselves around and around and around if we don't just say state funding it. 100%. I would agree that that would help. Really, really, it creates a great focus on what's the best program through rulemaking. The Senate, the Senate wanted the schools to pick it up. Well, you know, when the schools pick it up, you know where the bill goes to, right? Right, it goes to the Ed fund. I am certainly not in favor of that. I'm one of the least sympathetic people to public funding for independent schools. But if we're mandating that they test and they come back with a major issue, you could be putting a lot of those guys out of business. And if we're going to say that that's a place where kids are and they need to have lead-free drinking water, then the state's going to have to pay for it. So we need a fiscal note for the whole thing. If you can discover what the whole thing is going to be, could we put the money for remediation that's in the Senate version of this bill kind of to the side pending our full test results? Because if we are going to do testing every five years, instead of every year, then the completion of the testing will be a more momentous point. And then we'll have, as Bachelors have been saying, we'll have a lot more information to properly estimate the scope and cost. Well, I'm not being able to do that. What do we do if in December someone finds out they have a high lead level? We can't say, well, we'll get back to you in a year after we figure out how much everything's going to cost. So we have a problem in that we need to be setting something aside now. And that will give us a picture of what it is going forward. Can we just shut the faucet? Well, they can do all of those things, but they're going to have, it won't cost anything, but I just can't see that they can wait a year to spend any money. So if their testing's done, maybe it's just you need to have your testing done prior to accessing them. I understand that the total amount accessible won't be there, but if we have some money accessible for remediation and your testing's complete, then I agree that shouldn't be a you shouldn't have to wait for every other school especially when talking about phased phased in testing procedure. I totally agree with that. It might run out of money after the first region of the state, but it might not. Well, we had talked about the concept of a priority of remediation as well. Prioritizing the ones that are farthest over first. Your point is very well taken, Madam Chair, and we just keep going around in circles because there's no easy answer to saying well, if we do all the testing and all the information is out there it's going to be very hard to say well, we can't do anything about it because there's no money available. And I don't have a solution to that except to say maybe never mind. I don't have a solution to that. I think we're getting closer. We do. Really? There's no more information we can possibly get. So we do all the testing. Do we set a priority about who gets the money first? Yes. Do we or does that happen in rulemaking? I'd love to put it in rulemaking. I don't know, I think we have to actually have to do that, don't we? We probably have to do that, don't we? Yeah, because that's actually the way. So we would have to set those prior sessions more. In terms of priorities, in terms of funding. Any recommendation? In terms of remediation for prioritization. Prioritizing for remediation? We could take a look and come back. Generally speaking, I think it would follow something in line that the professor from Middlebury presented. Highest levels and most actively used apps would take remediation. I like that language. It's contained in Dr. Costanza Robinson's testimony, but it's generally speaking. It would be the most often used fixtures and the highest levels would take most used fixtures over the action level would take remediation priority. We actually want to be able to get to everybody. In your opinion, is there enough money aside right now to do all the testing and place all the deposits based on what number? Based on whomever we have to do, all the schools, all the children's centers, etc. I mean, based on the fiscal level, I'm thinking that side. Well, we've done some. Right? So, simply have to replace deposits. I think that's what we're struggling with. We don't know the answer to that question. We have a fiscal note that extrapolates from the study, but we've been told that that's perhaps not as accurate as it could be. Okay. I think we do know that we've got you folks and some stakeholders ready to have a conversation. I'm thinking, I think we've gotten pretty far today. I want to see if we can work on something in terms of prioritizing limited dollars. We've heard an awful lot of discussion right now about the number of pressures on the general fund. There's like a hundred million dollars worth of requests. And we haven't even added anything for the general fund. So, I think we'll take a break here. Let you folks see how far you can get with your group. Bring it back to us. And I don't, I think today is going to be a long day on the floor. But I think we're making progress. We'll come back tomorrow that you want to see the presentation tomorrow. That would be really excellent if you could do that for tomorrow. And I'll get Michael O'Grady in here. And please share, you've got an open line to Michael O'Grady on this. I would like to get myself out of the bad conduit position. We've got the two people connected. Yes, yes. Oh, we've got an announcement. Oh, that's right. John and Cher, would you like the students to come in now? Oh, students, sure. Okay, we have a few students. We need them. They're carrying you left. Yes, they're carrying you around. Okay, thank you very much for your hard work. What do you do when you go to the time of sleep with them? Yes, of course. Do you have something to say to us? So would you come and join us for a witness chair? Yeah. It's not a court of law, though. Actually, it doesn't sound quite right. So, hi. So for the record, could you tell us your name and who you are with? My name is Chandra Perrow. I'm from the Compass School in Westminster, Vermont. I just read my essay out there that I submitted for the school choice contest. Mm-hmm. Yeah. In the past two years, school choice has become more important to value. Each year, I try to make a list of the things I'm grateful for.  This year, Compass School is at the top of my list. I lost myself in public school. I didn't see myself graduating. I could barely see making it past my sophomore year. But here I am in the second semester of my junior year thriving. Since attending Compass School, I can sincerely say that I've grown as a person and as a learner in more ways I've lasted one semester in my public high school. I remember walking down the halls and passing the posters telling me I mattered. But feet down, I think everyone who passed them knew we were just merely body to be accounted for on the attendance sheets. Just another person to be checked for a hall pass. Hundreds of people coexisting in the walls of that high school never had I felt more alone. Engulfed in my bleakness, I turned to the wrong crowd. The open arms I was searching for came to me. But instead of lifting me up, I found my motivation dwindling. I often skipped school and on the days I did attend, the teachers didn't know how to help me. I felt overwhelmed by the large class sizes and the clearly distant, overworked teachers. My grades went from honors quality to barely scraping by. No one seemed to care. After just a few months, the rate at which I was slipping reached a whole new level. Drug use became a part of my daily routine. I needed help, but I felt as though I had no one to turn to. I ended up having to leave school to go get help. I needed to come to terms with my issues and accept that I didn't have to struggle through all the hardships of life on my own. When I was discharged from rehab, I needed somewhere safe to go. I knew I couldn't go back to the same school. I needed a place that could meet both my emotional and academic needs. My parents heard about Compass School through a family friend whose daughter had attended there. I'll admit I was skeptical and scared, but at the same time, what I had desired most at the time was stability and an environment that I could count on. The immunity that Compass provided was just that. With great patience and undying support, they taught me confidence not only in my work, but also in myself and my abilities. Over the course of my first year at Compass, I was able to discover not only who I am as a learner, but who I wanted to be as a person. Without the option of school choice, I don't know where I'd be today. Thank you so much. Questions? Is Compass a residential or is it a day school? It's a day school. Of course they want to know where you went to school beforehand. I went to Brattleburg. Brattleburg? That's where I've been at. Where are you from? And through what form do you have school choice right now? Is it because your community is a choice community? Yeah, I think so. Okay. What grade are you in? My junior year. So are you writing a personal learning plan? Are you writing someone? I'm just curious. I know I have one, but I could read it when I first got there. Do you have a sense of where you might have after high school? Yeah, what your interests? I'm just in psychology. I want to be a social worker. I just want to help people. You're looking at colleges? Yeah, I've been looking at some. I've been having a hard time trying to figure out where I want to go with financial stuff and all that, but I think I might want to go to somewhere in Maine or something like that. What? Cassin. I will continue. Michael and Bryce. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? I'm Abigail Ham. I'm a senior at Linden Institute. High school is supposed to be the best four years of our lives or so they say. It's also among the most difficult. Before high school, I was home school and transitioning to high school was a really big deal to me. It was complicated because I needed to have a surgery in the first month of my freshman year. Fortunately, it was also made a little easier because of the school that I chose to attack. My time at L.I. has opened up a world of possibilities for both now and my future that I could not have foreseen. My decision to transition from homeschooling was based on a desire to study in areas my parents simply couldn't teach me like art, music, and Chinese. I'm in a unique position to access a variety of opportunities and pursue all of my passions instead of being forced to choose just one. This proved to be true on a grander scale than I could have imagined. Within two years, my paintings would be displayed in town, I would be performing with pit band and I would have the opportunity to travel abroad in China. The list of opportunities I've had at L.I. still blows my mind. I've studied four languages as well as taking classes in studio art, painting, I've also gotten to challenge myself with AP classes, earned college credit through Living State College or the Vermont University. I've run track, joined cheerleading, performing with and producing choreography for the theater company, writing for the school newspaper, and competing with the Kataman team at Harvard and Yale. Almost every industry in the world is rapidly globalizing and future employers of my graduating class will be looking for employees who approach real world problems in the future. In this arena, my classmates and I have an advantage. My sophomore year, I joined L.I.'s Kataman team and found myself studying Latin intensely after school almost every day, with two equally motivated and motivating companions, one from Vietnam and one from Germany. Forming close connections with peers like them not only exposed me to a broader understanding of world politics, religion and curiosity, it also formed friendships that will last beyond high school, make us a globally connected and conscious people even before we graduate. For me, these have been the highlights of experiencing a unique school environment. Studying in a place that offers every student access to preparation for their future, whatever future they choose to pursue. A preparation that transformed my academic prospects and gave me the confidence and well rounded skill set to apply to college. In the future as options like J-Term and other diverse opportunities continue to catch on and expand. I hope that high schoolers are encouraged to pursue their diverse interests in environments that can provide multiple opportunities to advance that learning in and out of the classroom. Thank you. Thank you. That was the first you know that. In some of your experiences you included things like welding, were you able to do all of that at L.I. or did you travel all of that at L.I.? Where will you go to college? I'm not 100% sure yet. I'm still waiting to hear back. Shameless advertising. Yeah? I don't know what to do. Any ideas for me? Let me know. Chinese. Why did you pick Chinese? Because I know it's really hard. I actually didn't find it as hard as you would think it is. Definitely writing was harder than speaking. But I don't know since I was little I think I read a book about China when I was like three or four. I just got really interested in it and I've just always found China a really fascinating place in culture. And this is for everybody, all the students. You know how much we love you. Even if you do go to college away from Vermont, we'd love you to come back to Vermont. We really, you know, we're all getting older. I mean, I'm not speaking for everybody here. But we can really love our kids to come back. So just keep that in mind. Thank you. It's very exciting. Yes. We have one more? Did you want to say anything? Were you going to say anything? Just go on. All right, folks, we take a break. I guess that's it. Thank you very much.