All right, good afternoon, everyone. It is Tuesday, February 23rd. This is a joint committee meeting of Senate finance and Senate education. We are looking and considering today the waiting study, also known as S13. Senator Cummings and I have spoken to the pro tem and what Senator Bowne has asked us to do is since there's jurisdiction on this for both committees to have a conversation, hear a walkthrough, hear from some key witnesses, and then for each committee to have a conversation and get a sense of what it really thinks at what it wants to do as well as what it can do between now and crossover. So with that, Senator Cummings, is there anything else that you'd like to add or is there anything that I'm missing? No, I think we're all on the same page on that one. Okay, great. So with that, Senator Campion. Yes, please. May I ask a big picture question? The waiting study, is it slated to be adopted if we don't act or do we have to adopt it? Can you just give us the big frame? Like, how is it going to be? I'm going to ask you to hold your questions because we are all in the same spot. We're all learning about it together, ensemble, if you will. So, but it would be something I can tell you that we would have to adopt. Things don't just go into statute unless we take action. So with that, I am going to turn it over unless somebody wants to correct me, one of my senior colleagues. I think it would probably be best. Jim, are you planning to take us through this? I was not, this says, witness. So I thought I wasn't where I was going to walk through. I'm just wondering if it makes sense for you to give us a high overview of things, although you're not on the schedule, so that we all can be on the same page. Sure. So I'm wondering which bill you're looking at. Are you looking at a specific bill? We're looking specifically at S13, the weighting study. S13, okay. I'm not prepared, I'm happy to go through it. Jim, can you pull that one out for me, please? It'll take me a minute, I have to pull it up. Okay. I think, Jim, if you don't mind, I mean, I know you brought our committee through at once, even if it's a high level overview, I think it would be helpful for all of us. And then we could jump right into our witnesses. Sure, of course, yep, I would do. Yeah, I appreciate it, and I apologize for not giving you the heads up on that. No problem. I can let folks know that S13 is basically the bill that we passed at a committee last year after looking at the weighting study. Yeah, I guess I think what happened, and correct me if I'm wrong, Senator Persley, you guys passed it out. Senator Ruth thought it ended up in Senate Finance, and then we went on recess because of COVID. I'm not sure if it ended up in Finance or not. It seems like it could belong there. Okay. Given the last five minutes, how do you spell weighting? Jim, are you ready to roll? I am, yes, I'm ready to roll. Right. I will say my daughter is about to leave for England the next 10 minutes. I have to say goodbye to her at some point. Oh, Jim, of course. Let me just go through where I can, okay? So let's see, this is... Jim, Jim, Jim, give us literally the two-minute overview and then we'll go right to Secretary French. Okay, okay. So this is proposing to implement the development plan to implement the changes. So this is very much like we did last year in Senate Education. You have some findings which I won't go through. We're going through, they talk about 173 and what the report's about. And then the heart of this is section two. So by December 15th of this year, the agency will work with the support of education and various stakeholders, the B's, to develop a plan for the implementation of the report's recommended weight-weighting changes. It's specifically referring to table E1 of the report's executive summary, which has a certain set of weights. So I don't have that information right now to show you which ones they are, but it's very specific as to which ones this plan would be targeting. And then what the plan would do is create a timeline for phasing in a design that is sensitive to the effects on property taxes, consideration of the formalized interaction with various other provisions of law, including the excess payment threshold and responsible grants, et cetera. And then, let's see. Okay, and then the shape board, which is what it did during Act 46. The shape board would again go around the state either virtually or in person and educate the public about what these changes mean and take their input and would communicate to the agency to help inform the plan. And then that plan would be delivered to you by December of this year. And then lastly, just to kind of note that there's more work to be done. So this is kind of, language is not necessarily a guess, but just saying that to move forward on this, you have to have implementation next year, obviously with a vote on both House of Senate and by the government. And that's it, it takes effect on passage. Jim, thanks a million. And please give your daughter our best. Okay. Secretary French. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Let me go ahead and jump in. Yeah. If you would be so kind as to just fill in any holes, anything that you think we should know both committees as we move forward with this or not move forward, also be important to hear whether or not the agency and the administration have a position as to whether or not we should move forward and some of the sort of compelling reasons to move in one direction or another. Okay. Good afternoon for the record and Dan French, Secretary of Education. Thank you for inviting me to testify in the waiting study. I thought I do have some written testimony I'm gonna put on the screen in a minute, but just by way of sort of table setting, I think it's important to sort of acknowledge where the waiting study comes from, from a intellectual process. It really comes from special ed reform and particularly Act 173. So if you're familiar with Act 173 and that special ed policy, which is a multi-year policy, the essential aspect of that from a financial perspective is shifting our current reimbursement model for special education expenses to a block grant. And by definition, that means a finite pot of money being allocated to school districts for special education costs. So the question emerged in order to make that transition should there be some acknowledgement that some districts have more special needs students and others or students with disabilities more than others? So should there be some sort of weight, if you will, introduced into that new special ed block grant? And that's sort of the genesis of the waiting study from my perspective to answer that question. Frozen for me. It comes to the conclusion or the surfaces, the idea that should we do something with weights in the new special ed block grant under 173 or, and or, but or should we do something under the general education spending, weighting, you know? And that's sort of an important policy decision. I think that the general assembly ultimately has the answer, but that's sort of the context for the weighting study. And I will also say as way of introduction, and these are just sort of my editorial comments having worked with the author authors at some length because the agency was essentially the contract holder on the study, that the weighting study does not provide specific policy recommendations on what to do with its results. So that's really the business of the general assembly. And that's to answer your question, Sarah, about what are we doing, you know, you're really trying to assess what the import of the weighting study is and then what to do next. The weighting study does include some modeling to illustrate the impact of its findings and also actually include some tools if policymakers were inclined to, I don't say play with those indicators just to understand how they interrelate with each other. But those should not be construed as a plan for implementation. You know, those are essentially just models. So, you know, that from my perspective, that is the work before the general assembly is to understand the import of the weighting study and then decide on how to implement it or not. And since you've prompted essentially why I'm here is to say, well, what does the administration think of the weighting study? I'm gonna, now I'll transition to sort of my written testimony. I'm gonna try to put it on the screen here. I think she gave me permission. Yep, she did. If you can see that, can you see that okay? Yeah, it's not up yet. Okay, things are a little locked up on my end. I think I'm gonna, still not there? Not yet. Okay, it's sort of locked up on my end, but I'll try to talk through it. And I'll also try to cancel it. Is it something Secretary of Friends you've already submitted that would be on our website? Yeah, I did this morning. I just, I'm wondering if I might, I might have to come back out of the call because my desktop is locked up, but I'll try to walk through it a little bit. I mean, you'd love to go back out. I mean, this meeting's going so well as it is since I've been here. I mean, feel free to, since this is probably my last day as chair, I'm willing to try other things if you'd like. Well, I appreciate that. I'm just wondering what's kind of, oh, there we go. Maybe something's happening on my end. Maybe not. Just if you could be patient one second, I'll be, maybe I'll have a resolution here of this. That's, that's exciting. Hey, my desktop's free again. That's good. I think I'll stop. I won't share. I'll just have a conversation. That's okay. Sure, absolutely. The, just a moment. I have my desktop. There we go. So my written testimony is really focused a little bit on, you know, what is our position on the, on the waiting study, but also specifically to respond to the two bills that I'm aware of that are in play. One of them, as you mentioned, Senate Bill 13 and the others, H54. But to start off, firstly, yeah, we think the waiting study is very important. It's essentially, in terms of our commitment to equity as a state, you know, one of its conclusions, firstly, is that the weights that we currently have, and just sort of put this in context again, we have this concept of equalized pupils, which is not an uncommon context or concept around the country. Different types of students cost more to educate. And so we, we do some waiting behind that. So we count up another kids, then we give them a weight based, you know, for example, students in poverty get more weight, students who are English language want to get more weight. The waiting study firstly analyzed our existing weights and basically discovered that there was no, no real mathematical basis for how the weights were established. We, the General Assembly, perhaps under the pressure of Act 60 or in that context, the Brigham decision created them, but there's, they couldn't find any, the researchers couldn't find any real empirical methodology behind the weights. So, you know, that's an important acknowledgement, but secondly, they went on to derive some new weights based on empirical analysis. And my screen is now showing a document on the screen, is that true? Or maybe Jean, there it is. Great. So I think, you know, when we consider that, that the essential, one of the essential purposes of Act 60 was really to equalize funding effort in the form of tax effort, meaning if a district in this community want to spend X dollars per student in another community that had a higher degree of property wealth want to spend the same amount, their tax rates would be the same. You know, essential element of achieving that is the pupil weights. And basically the study is concluding they're not working as designed. So that's a significant finding. And then the study goes on to present some alternatives to address these issues.  We think the weighting study is a critical piece of research. It's an important study and should be given your immediate attention. I think, you know, the point, particularly reacting to House Bill 54, which contemplates a sort of a phased in approach, which I think is no doubt going to be part of the solution. But I would just make the observation that the analysis and the thoughtfulness that went into the weighting study, an equal amount of thoughtfulness and analysis should go into the implementation. So, to a certain extent, I appreciate House Bill 54 as being a conversation starter in that regard, but I think it's gonna need some more work. And particularly Senate Bill 13 then goes on to say, yeah, we should create an implementation plan, but the agency should do it. And my response is the agency can't do it. Firstly, we don't have the capacity or we don't have the expertise, both to a certain extent, particularly with COVID right now. But I think certainly, you know, continuing on with the efforts that General Assembly made in commissioning this report, the General Assembly should commission or establish a implementation committee or entity to do that work. I've testified on this topic a couple times this session and last year we started with the rollout of the weighting study. It's technical, it's involved, there's a lot to it, a lot of it is political. It's really, from my perspective, proving to be inadequate to approach this very complex topic sort of on one off testimonies, even I appreciate two committees coming together today to hear me on this, but it is gonna take some thoughtful implementation with some legislators, no doubt, that obtain greater fluency on this than their peers. So it's gonna take some work. And I think it's worthy of that work. I just throw in a couple of points from my perspective and those are essentially, I'll wrap up my testimony, we're just sort of highlighting those. You know, just to reiterate this idea that what's being proposed in the weighting study in terms of weights are a coherent and complete model. So initially I saw folks interested in maybe taking some of the weights or tinkering with some of the others and I don't use tinkering in a disparaging way, but it's important to acknowledge that the model was empirically derived. It is sound from a mathematical perspective. So just be very careful about doing that. And I think as a state, especially with our commitment to equity, that whatever we do in this area should be grounded in some defensible or defendable mathematical rationale. I would say that, you know, the issue, this kind of gets to number three on my list about, as I mentioned previously, I think you have a policy decision about, should there be weights incorporated in the special ed block grant and or in the general funding formula. My after, after listening to that conversation, in particular, we have an advisory group that the legislature formed as a result of 173 that has a lot of expertise from the special ed director community and so forth. My conclusion on that is that we should not endeavor to include an additional weight in the block grant, but we should ensure that the weights in the general education funding formula, and particularly the poverty weight is established in accordance with the model because I think that to a certain extent will address the issues. But I think the other concern, particularly from some of the qualitative data from the study is that we just don't know yet how the block grant will affect how it will be implemented and how it will affect decision-making on the part of districts relative to how they staff and pay for special education. So at this point, I think the approach should be first to establish weights in the general education funding formula in accordance to the weighting study and then to monitor the implementation of Act 173, the block grant to see if still issues emerge. That kind of approach makes a lot of sense to me. I think, you know, with number four on my list, that this is another theme that emerges often in testimony is that giving districts more equalized pupils or, you know, there's going to be essentially winners and losers in terms of how that gets reshuffled in accordance with the weighting study, that does not equate to more money necessarily. It basically gives districts more equalized pupils which creates the incentive perhaps or at least the capacity to spend more with not seeing taxes go up in the same proportion, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee that districts will make those investments. So I made the observation early on last year in the Ways and House Ways and Means Committee about part of the solution there needs to be a review of the regulatory construct of the agency and the state board and how we monitor education quality as a state. We've made a transition over the years away from what we call school quality standards to education quality standards. And the education quality centers are focused more on outputs, which I think is a very really good innovation to a certain extent, but in that process of moving away from what were school quality standards and essentially a regulation focused on inputs to exclusively more or less focusing on outputs, we've lost that sort of regulatory oversight that's so common in other states around the basic inputs that need to be in place. And what I mean by that is that the agency of education has a responsibility to ensure that there is baseline quality of our public schools. And by focusing on output, we've shifted some of our role away from that scrutiny. And I think it's precisely that, I'll say healthy pressure from the state to bring schools up to a basic benchmark, if you will in terms of quality, it's what's necessary, particularly in these districts where there's a hundred degrees of poverty. This is what's necessary to compel them to make the investments that the waiting study would give them the capacity to make. Lastly, I would- Secretary, may I just interrupt there for one moment? Yep. I think it's very compelled. I just want to make sure that we're all following this accurately. Would districts actually be compelled to then make the necessary financial decisions to support what we're talking about? Or are we just sort of creating a system where people can make decisions as to whether or not they want to make that investment or perhaps not? Yeah, I think, I can answer that. I'm giving you two examples. One would be the question of school facilities and school construction, which has emerged as an issue. Often when we hear the stories of some of the condition of our facilities, what I think is missing from that is there was a time and through what was called the public school approval process where the state through the agency would go out and tell the school district, these conditions are unacceptable. You must fix them in order to continue to operate as a public school. Since the agency is not doing that function anymore, we've experienced a lot of deferred maintenance, our buildings as there's a lot of pressure on school budgets and salaries are 80% of our costs in school districts, unfortunately, are then up in the difficult position of having to cut things they can cut. And unfortunately, in my experience, that often results in maintenance issues being cut. The second example I'd mentioned, we already kind of do that to a certain extent. The federal law, Every Student Succeed Act, requires the agency to identify schools and districts in need of more support based on student outcomes. And that leads us to the ability to compel or to direct them to spend their federal monies to address the needs of those students that aren't doing as well. So that's, once again, it's sort of part and parcel typically of what any state agency does in education across the country. I'm not saying we've lost that altogether, but certainly we've definitely shifted our focus over the years and more or less in my experience, correlates directly with the admin and no child left behind act, where we more or less got brought along that process of accountability, which just recently ended in 2014. And prior to that time, prior to 2000, we were doing these sort of basic quality assurance functions at the state level. And it made a real difference, not only in the quality of the facilities, but also in assisting school districts, I'm saying assisting providing the necessary pressure for those districts that aren't necessarily going to have broad public support for updating classrooms, building 21st century learning environments, making investments for the future and so forth. So the state has a significant role in that from my perspective. Lastly, I would just encourage you, particularly since there's a significant interest in the waiting study about doing something now. And I appreciate that. I think it is a compelling study and that is essentially part of the question before you. But I can't help but also observe that there needs to be some appreciation of the context that we're in right now. And implementing the waiting study, it's gonna be a complex implementation task. And we have to be very careful, particularly right now in COVID about destabilizing the education funding system. That we were able to partner with the General Assembly in August to freeze the average daily membership. You might remember that whole approach was around this issue of bringing stability to the funding system in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic. And so we still have those many of those forces of instability in front of us, including certainly COVID and we're not sure yet what that work in front of us will look like as we're talking about COVID recovery, basically how students were impacted by the emergency. And we know that'll be a multi-year effort. So we have instability in costs. We have instability, not necessarily in a bad way, but we have new federal revenues being coming down all the time. We're not sure yet how that'll affect things. There are also a number of, and I only put a few, but there are a number of new initiatives being contemplated by the General Assembly. In spite of its interest in focusing almost exclusively on COVID, there's still a number of major policy issues being contemplated by the General Assembly that will have a direct effect not only on the Education Fund, but also on education spending. And I listed some of them there. So that is the context in which we're operating right now to rapidly introduce a recalibration of the waiting system simultaneously in the middle of a pandemic with all these other variables of cost and revenue being up for redefinition and very dynamically so, I think would be irresponsible. So unfortunately, as much as I share the urgency on this topic, I think it deserves some analysis in terms from an implementation perspective. And that would also give us a little breathing room to get through the rest of, hopefully the rest of this emergency. So I'll conclude my comments there and I'll be happy to answer questions. That's very helpful, particularly your last comments in regard to what the agency is dealing with and timing. Questions or comments? Senator Chinden. Well, thank you, Senator. Senator, thank you, Secretary French. I really appreciate your written testimony. And item number four is where I wanted to expand upon because I think it's one of my biggest things that I'm most concerned with. And I would just want to ask if you would agree with the following interpretation that it's not only just a risk that the money won't be spent to address the needs. It could just lower tax rates. But on the other side of this, I'm concerned that with the winners and losers, the losing districts, this is gonna push their tax rates up to the point where they won't pass their tax bills or their school budgets. I live in South Burlington. Over the last three years, we have had five or six failed school budgets. And so if we do that, my understanding of this waiting study, it's not drawing in more revenue. If anything, it will lower the tax, could lower the tax rates for the winning communities. And then the losing communities might just not approve their school budgets, which effectively would reduce the overall pie of dollars to then be spent on education. Is that an incorrect interpretation from this waiting study? Or is that a fair assessment? No, I think that's very fair. And I think it speaks to the political complexity of implementation. It's the political complexity is much greater than just winners and losers. It's really understanding the dynamics and also then matching that with what our policy objectives will be. And I would argue those policy objectives now are really being formed by a post-COVID environment. Also by the demographic challenges that existed prior to the COVID environment. But that is the context that will require, I think, some real focus on the part of policymakers to create a thoughtful implementation plan. Definitely need to do an implementation plan. Don't get me wrong, but it's gonna require a little bit more than just phasing it in and saying you're done with it. Senator Hardy. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Secretary French. It's great to hear the consistency in your testimony on this topic. Basically what you said today was what you said to us last year with the addition of the COVID implications, obviously. This bill, when it was in Senate education last year, I did not vote for it actually. I voted against it in large part because of what I heard from the secretary then and what I'm hearing from him now is that there needs to be a broader implementation committee than just leaving it up to the agency of education. They don't have the capacity to do this work and especially now during COVID. I actually had been working on my own bill related to this and had a broader implementation committee in mind. I didn't introduce it when I wasn't reassigned to the education committee. But I think that if we are gonna move forward with S13, it's a good place to start. But I do think broadening it out and also including legislators in that implementation committee because we need to build legislative capacity in our own bodies to be able to handle a major shift in our education finance system like this. I do think it's urgent that we move forward. There are districts that don't have the capacity to raise sufficient funds to meet the education standards and provide an equitable education for students. And I think we'll probably hear some testimony and the education committee maybe already has. We heard a lot of it last year. But I also think there's a good chance that we could do it wrong if we don't take the time to consider all of the factors such as the one Senator Chittenden just mentioned but there are many, many others. And so I just hope that we broaden out this implementation committee if we move it forward. And I had a question and now I can't remember what it was. Oh yes, so Secretary French, one thing I'd heard in testimony and another committee is that there's a possibility with all the additional federal funding that we're receiving right now to address some of these inequities through a sort of modified distribution using some of the elements of the waiting study for distributing that federal funding. Is that true? Did I misinterpret that? Or can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, I can. I'll just, you know, feedback on your comments. I think, you know, the issue of agency capacity on this, you know, our function is largely a technical one. And certainly we have limited technical capacity relative to our responsibilities under COVID but we stand ready to provide technical support for these deliberations. But I see the implementation largely being a political activity and that's not something the administration and particularly in agencies well-equipped to do thoughtfully. So we really need to have that. And I think to your point about building broader capacity inside the General Assembly to engage in this topic is gonna be necessary. I think, you know, the issue of federal dollars is in looking at sort of at a sort of a general level, I think also to me gives me a sense that this is the time to do the implementation. It perhaps will provide a little bit of cushion to navigate some of this because, you know, if you remember what the condition of the Education Fund was in April when we were admiring, I think at 1.168 million dollar deficit and as federal dollars kicked in, we were able to basically get rid of that whole situation. The federal dollars could function provide some cushion here to find a path forward to address the issues that Senator Chittenden sort of highlighted. But I think it will be a challenging conversation, don't get me wrong, but I've had a number of conversations, as I mentioned, there's a lot of interest in the General Assembly in establishing a COVID relief platform or program. And part of that conversation, particularly I've had some conversations with JFO around, you know, what are some of the federal sources that are going targeted directly to school districts, mainly what we call the ESSER Fund, the Elementary, Secondary Education Relief. And that appears to be a consistent vehicle for the delivery of federal dollars that we saw ESSER was kind of a small program last spring, it was $30 million in compared to the larger pot of money in the CRF, which was 1.2 billion. But then we recently saw ESSER II being 127 million for Vermont. So basically four times as much. And what's being contemplated for ESSER III in this new package coming out of Congress is probably gonna be double that. And the ESSER funds come with some pretty strong restrictions that were put in place back in April when no one knew what was in front of us in terms of COVID response. And those restrictions basically are, I'll say restrictions from a state perspective, there's a lot of flexibility at the local level, but 90% of those funds must be delivered directly to school districts. So there's a conversation emerging nationally and certainly in Vermont about, can we make sure those funds are directed more strategically? Is this an opportunity for us to address some things? And when I did have a meeting with JFO, I think they had mentioned this issue of addressing some of the themes of the waiting study, particularly on poverty. And they were basically just, I think, trying to get oriented to what ESSER program looked like. Similarly, we've been contemplating those sort of strategic use of the funds are sort of more focused areas on deferred maintenance, some of the issues that I mentioned previously on the regulation side. At any rate, I think it's not clear how we're gonna proceed in that regard, but I think it is fair to say that we could contemplate the use of federal dollars here in a way that would help the smooth transition of the waiting study. And that's a useful lens to apply in this situation. Great, thank you. That's very helpful. That's what I was hoping you would say. If you don't waste an emergency, we can use that to help with our longer-term goals. Other questions for Secretary French? Senator Persley. Thank you, Chair. Secretary French, have you guys thought at all about categorical grants? Because one of the things that I heard recently about the waiting centers, it still doesn't get to kind of what the cost is of educating these children appropriately. It does do the waiting better, but it doesn't get to the costs. And given some of these complexes we've talked about, some people have suggested that 173 method of providing categorical grants and say, okay, this is how much it's gonna cost. So here's the money for that specific issue. Let's say like learning English as a second language. Has that entered your discussions at all in the agency or is it all bit about the waiting? Well, I think it's firstly, I'd observe that the folks behind the waiting study, notably Dr. Colby, who I think you're all familiar with and Dr. Baker, I mean, the research behind the waiting study is situated pretty subtly in the national body of research. And they're the experts, I would encourage you to bring them in to talk about this kind of, the function of a categorical aid approach, but I believe they do surface in the waiting study, just the sort of raising the flag that perhaps the state should look at the issue of a categorical grant, particularly as it comes down to mental health and some of the social service delivery. There was a question raised in the last several legislative sessions about to what extent our schools, financing social services through the Education Fund. And I think the waiting study mentions it, it doesn't, for my end sort of provoke a specific solution, but it does raise that for a point of conversation. I've recently brought that issue up relative to school construction aid. So just the recap, I mean, most states, I would say all states except for Vermont, basically have a foundation aid formula for education as the name implies, the state gives a base amount of funding. And then on top of that are layered a series of categorical grants that are designed and focused. I mean, the whole purpose I think of a categorical grant is the general assembly gives direction for money to be spent in a specific way, but it's on top of that foundation. It's important to acknowledge that, things like construction aid, although they function like categorical grants in any situation, but Vermont doesn't have foundation aid anymore. It's essentially the big transition we made with Act 60. We have this big pot of money called the education fund, which by design is supposed to incorporate all education spending. So even when we look at things like a block grant and special education, the origin of those funds are the education fund. It's not like, you know, we're putting extra dollars on the table necessarily. So I think it is important to look at the issue of categorical aid relative to the general funding formula. The weighting study is a great starting point. I think that would be, again, an important consideration for an implementation committee would be to evaluate the use of categorical grants. It might be too much to take on in that initial implementation conversation, but I think it would be useful conversation for a follow-up. So back to the idea of school construction aid, that was a categorical grant, again, provided on top of foundation aid. The foundation aid formula went away, more or less simultaneously, if you will, at the same time we did a moratorium on the categorical grant in 2007. At a few years earlier, we made the transition to Act 68. So, you know, to what extent would the state provide a categorical grant on top of this very unique funding system to focus on the issue of school construction? I think those are really great conversations. So we have some other work to do relative to the very unique nature of our funding system. Great, Senator Chinden. So to follow up on that, my understanding, limited as it is and how schools are funded in this state, I would interpret categorical aid to have the same effect on the property tax rates. What I understand is when that categorical aid is accounted by the school, it's the difference, the remaining amount that affects their property tax rate. So it has the same effect that the waiting study would in lowering tax rates when we give categorical aid. Is that a true statement? Almost, it depends on how you look at it at the local level versus the state level. So yes, at the state level, it all is going to contribute to the aggregate education spending. But the difference under our funding formula is that each district has a different categorical. I'll use transportation reimbursement as a really good example, I think. All the other sources of revenue that a school district has in Vermont are called local revenues, even if they originate from things like transportation aid. So if you look at a school district budget, you have the expenditure budget, and then you have a revenue section. All aspects of that revenue section, except what comes from the Ed fund are called local revenues. Even if they come from federal sources like meals, student meal reimbursement, transportation reimbursement, special ed reimbursement, they're all aggregated together to call local revenues. What's left over, which arguably is the biggest pot of money in the revenue section is what comes from the Ed fund, which is called education spending.  So use transportation as a really kind of unique example, even though, again, it all comes out of the back end and that's what factors into your thinking around yield values, because you got to pay the bill at the end of the day, but how it plays out locally can vary significantly. And transportation is a great example of that because under Vermont law, school districts are not required to provide transportation. They may choose to do so if they want to, but they don't have to. And we provide some reimbursement for them when they do. So not all districts have transportation reimbursement revenue in their budgets and some have a lot more than others. But it's just an example again of how I think we need to understand the difference between the Vermont funding system, fundamentally being different than pretty much any other state that has a sort of tradition of a foundation formula and layers of categorical grants. We throw it all into one pot, but how it sort of manifests itself at a local level in terms of categorical grants can vary significantly depending on the program. Any other questions for Secretary French before we hear from other witnesses? Senator McDonald. So are we gonna, we basically have a choice of taking some time to figure this out or taking too much time and having the courts tell us to get off our backsides and do something? Is that where we're at now? Is that directed to Secretary French? Yes. Yeah, I was hoping that was a rhetorical question. I think it is, it's a fair point. I think the waiting study, you know, I was working with the contractors all along and I can't help but admire it. I think it's anchored and situated in the national body of research, as I mentioned, that's very compelling. So I, you know, I can't help but conclude that you're going to have to take action on this one way or the other. Secondly, I would say you should endeavor to take action on it because we have a commitment to equity in the state that is also, I wouldn't say unique, but it's very emphatic and Act 60, you know, sort of underscores that. So I think we are compelled to action and I would say yes, if the General Assembly can't find a path forward to do that, that one should anticipate, you know, the courts at some point doing that. And, you know, just sort of my layman's perspective on it, when the courts get involved, I think Secretary or Senator Hardy mentioned, you know, doing a good thoughtful response on this, the courts come up probably with the least thoughtful response. So I think there's an opportunity for you to focus on implementation. Perhaps the COVID revenues coming of the state provide also some additional energy behind that. I would hate to see us have to engage in a less than thoughtful approach to implementation because the courts ordered you under a fixed timeline to do it. I don't know. Senator McDonnell, do you have a follow up? Oh, the traditional log jam here is that the towns that have the resources in the current system, which measures property tax resources pretty well and has brought a high degree of equity and spending from top to bottom, but the individual wealth isn't taken into account. The income wealth of towns, they're not gonna wanna give up the funds that they have to spend on their school districts, which are desirable that people wanna go to and get high test scores to send money to the districts that are heavily weighted. I mean, if they come in and pony up and say, yeah, we have to do this and you can solve it in no time, but I imagine they'll be kicking and screaming to do that. So it's the agency of education volunteering to come up with a thoughtful plan and then ask the legislature to oppose it. No, as I said, we'd be perfectly equipped to provide some technical back end for that work, but the questions you just raised are largely political questions. I would say the General Assembly commissioned this report. It's your report. You've created the questions the researchers were to answer. They've answered the questions very thoroughly. And I would just say, all of us have a responsibility then to act upon those findings. And we certainly would partner in doing that. But I think the, I would say the shortcoming of S13, there's no partnership in S13. It's exclusively given to the agency to do. Our capability is really technical. Certainly we can help with the modeling as we did with the weighting study. We provided some of that data and so forth, but it's gonna require policymakers to take a more direct role to the perspective of you all or to the greatest extent possible. There needs to be greater fluency and fluency in the General Assembly on these issues because there are gonna be related policy questions that come up even after implementation such as issues of transportation or construction aid and so forth. And right now we've lost some of that connection to the Act 60, Act 68 fluency that was in the General Assembly previously. The history of changing formulas for aid to education and one of the precepts is nothing changes if the losers aren't held harmless and that takes money. Yeah, I would just say it might not be as dramatic as you point to, our system has been fairly stable. I would agree with you that one of the characterizations of foundation aid formulas is that the legislatures in those states often every other couple of years they tinker with them and they never seem to put enough money into the foundational piece. But I think it's, I don't necessarily agree that the weights are gonna end up with money moving one way or the other. I think it does get back to the core aspect of Act 60, however, and this is where some of the urgency for folks that are advocating for a more immediate implementation emerges, is it fair, you know, is what was inherently part of Act 60 to address the issues of equal effort? Basically the weighting studies concluding the weights are not functioning as intended in that regard. And there are communities all around the state that would desire to and need to spend more of their students relative to who those students are and acknowledgement that those students cost more to educate than others. And so we, you know, if we are gonna be sincere to our commitment to equity, we have a fundamental condition of equity is to ensure the funding equity. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. We're going to move on since we, I know your chair wants, has witnesses at three as do we. So if we may, Ms. Capitani. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And please, if you're interested, please stick around. Thanks for being with us. Welcome to Senate Ed and Senate Finance. It's good to see you, Vicky. Thank you, nice to see you. And so you've followed this discussion and I believe you've followed it now for a while. So we would appreciate your thoughts, your perspective. You're the chair of the Dover Select Board. And I know you've also been involved with education policy for a long time. So if you wouldn't mind starting just by introducing yourself, tell us a little bit why it's important for you to be here and any thoughts you have as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to testify. I actually have a prepared statement, which I submitted. So I'd like to read that. Please. I don't do that that often. And I'm here on behalf of equitable education advocates and the chair of the Dover Select Board. And I'm here to urge you to take immediate action to fix the broken education finance system because it is unfair to rural and economically disadvantaged students. First, I'll give you a little background about me. I'm a native Ramonner and I was educated in our local school system. I am the co-owner of the Deerfield Valley News with my husband, Randy. I served on the school board for nine years and I'm currently in my 10th year on the Dover Select Board. I've been involved in education governance for decades at both the state and local level. This is my third time testifying in front of the state house and I'm a passionate advocate for equitable quality education for our children. The statewide education reforms over the past 20 plus years significantly impacted our region. We have been very engaged in order to offer the best education possible to our local kids. Our students are left withering on the vine. The promise of Brigham has not happened. In fact, as the legislature's waiting study conducted by UVM has shown, the inequities have just been shifted. Rural and poor students have suffered. For us, this is not about the pain of an increased tax bill. We are not here to seek reduced taxes. We are here to advocate for quality education for our students. Our region has done everything you've asked of us. We started at 46 mergers before the mandate and followed through. We joined the statewide insurance program. We constantly seek out special grants and our focus has always been on quality. The results have not been what we'd hoped for in fact, we are going backwards now. The way the funding has been allocated has just has not been equitable. Penalties punish our communities for trying to provide for our students only compounding the problem. Programs are cut, maintenance is deferred and our children suffer. Here are some examples of negative impacts. Almost no AP classes for our high school students. Inadequate student transportation services, unequal access to language classes, deferred maintenance and inferior school facilities and test scores are falling behind. What is causing this? Looking at the numbers revealed in the legislature's waiting study, we see and these numbers come directly from the waiting study simulator posted on the AOE website. The legislature has failed to recognize the difference in costs per pupil for educating students in poverty, in geographically necessary rural and small schools and for English language learners for more than two decades. I'm going to give you some examples. Please keep in mind that you are listening to these examples that an underweighted district has a higher per pupil spending calculation than they should and an overweighted district has a lower per pupil spending calculation than they should. When you look at the data, the 2018 data provided as part of the study, we see that almost all rural isolated mountain school districts surrounding the town of Dover are being underweighted, meaning these districts have either one and not had access to equitable resources to educate their children. Two, their taxpayers have been paying more to provide equitable resources in violation of Brigham or three, likely a little of both. Using the corrected weights, the equalized pupil count in 2018 would be, for example, in Wardsboro, a district we merged with in 2019 was underweighted by 10% of their equalized students, meaning instead of 116 students, Wardsboro should have been calculated at 129 students. The difference is 13 students. Wardsboro was underweighted by 28%. They were counted at having 75 students, 30 less than they would underproperly weight as weighted, which would have been 105. Jamaica was underweighted by 22%. 59 students instead of 75, 16 students too low. These are some of the neighboring elementary schools. When the students from these students go to high school, you can see the problem is then being compounded, for instance, in Brattleboro. The equalized pupil counts are underweighted by 15%. 1,101 students instead of 1,298, a difference of 197 students. In Bennington at Mount Anthony, we can see the equalized student counts are underweighted by 14%. In Chittenden County, we can see from the analysis that the districts like Essex and Mount Mansfield are 20 and 25% overweighted for their equalized pupil counts. In Burlington and Winooski, are 15 and almost 40% underweighted. By failing to correct this 20 year old educational injustice, we're incentivizing more spending on students who cause less to educate the overweighted districts. At the same time, underweighted districts are incentivized to spend less on students who cause more to educate. Our students are not only the heart of our communities, our schools, I'm sorry, are not only part of the heart of our communities, but they're also the catalyst for our local economy because they bring young people and life to our region. We are asking for you to act now to correct these long-standing inequities. Our schools and communities do not have time to spare. We are on the brink of collapse and we are looking for you to turn the ship around and stop this financial race to the bottom. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very helpful. Senator Pearson. Thank you. I don't know if this is a fair question to ask you, but I'm gonna try because you've, sounds like I've been thinking about this for a long time and I'm struck that the region you live in would have a real mix of communities in terms of this question. And, you know, there's no community really that's saying maybe our kids are getting too good at deal. You know, we're doing, we're over-resourced in our high school and you mentioned several communities right here in my district in Chittenden County and it's real pluses and minuses. So what, somebody asked this before, but again, maybe this is not a fair question, but what would you suggest we do to the towns that are over-counted right now and if we put in a more fair formula would stand to lose ground. That is going to cause a lot of upheaval just as the injustice is causing upheaval. Any suggestions for us because as legislators, that is gonna be the sticking point I suspect. Well, thank you for asking that question. And I understand where you're coming from. When X-60 came in, it cost a lot of towns a lot of money and there was a major shift. It was a gigantic shift. I think we all hope that it would be an answer and it really hasn't been an answer for particularly the poor and rural schools that are small around here, but are very geographically isolated. And they're just literally hanging on by the skin of their teeth. It's very difficult.  And that is just not equitable. That's not your fault. That's not your community's fault. It's not the teacher's fault.  And so I think that this hurts. Yes, you can put it in in phases, but yeah, it's hurting us now. Okay, thanks. Other questions. I appreciate the very local and the experienced testimony. Please keep in touch. I know you will as we make our way through this. I think you heard during the introductory comments that both committees are going to have committee conversations, committee discussions around this, talk to the pro tem to see what the path forward is. So thank you, Vicky. And it's great to see you. Thank you for letting me speak. Committee. Mr. Yin, good afternoon. I see you have joined us. That's good afternoon, Chair Campion and Chair. Thanks for being with us. As I understand it, you are a school board member in the Winooski district. Is that accurate? Yes, that is. And so I think you came in a little bit after we had some preliminary and even some in depth conversations, but I think you understand the bill that we're contemplating and generally the idea that we're contemplating. And we've heard a little bit about your school district. I know we have in Senate Ed and you came up again today in Senate Finance. So thank you for being here and thank you for taking some time to give us your thoughts on this. So with that, the floor is yours. Well, thank you so much, Chair Campion and Chair Cummings. And really I wanna thank the members of the Senate Education and the Senate Finance Committee for really giving me this opportunity to offer this testimony on behalf of the Student Waiting Coalition which consists of school districts and supervisory units from all over the state. It's a coalition that unites both urban and rural areas together on an issue that I think we believe ensures a healthy and viable future for Vermont. And I'm here speaking to you about the implementation of the recommendations made in the Pupil Waiting Factors Report. This, you know, made in this report for this legislative session. And I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna get today I'm gonna give you examples of my personal experience serving on the Winooski School Board. And I'm here, but I'm also wanting you to know that I'm speaking here to you as a fellow Vermonter. I'm pleading with you as our state legislators to come together and support the implementation of the Pupil Waiting Factors Report. Because as a Vermonter, I know that we are defined by our passion for equity and a strong democracy. A democracy that we know can only be nourished and strengthened by an educated populace. Now this democracy that we cherish is really threatened by the inequalities of our current education funding formulae. No doubt, I think we all had an inkling that there are cracks to what we hope to achieve and be because of this. It was only a few years ago that legislators commissioned a study that was completed by esteemed University of Vermont professor Tammy Colby and her research team used data. I'm gonna say use data to highlight what many already suspected. And this I think is true and everybody understands this. It costs more to educate certain types of students. Now in my day job, I'm a big numbers person, but I also understand that it's sometimes hard to grasp onto the numbers and what it means by the weights. And so let's talk about real-life examples that bring these numbers to life. I'm gonna say when I joined the board in 2017, I could quickly see that we had a vibrant school district in Manuski. A district where administrators, teachers, and staff embrace an education that would prepare our students for the knowledge economy of today and tomorrow. Generational poverty though exists in our city and creates barriers that prevents our students from reaching their full potential. So what does this mean? Generational poverty means that our school district not only needs to consider how to educate our students, but also how to feed them and how to provide them with healthcare. Because we believe that all of our students deserve to lead a healthy, productive, and successful lives and that this will help them to better engage with their local and global community. Because many of our family circumstances, they cannot afford the luxury of taking time off from work to go to the doctors. And that's why we put the healthcare part in our schools. And truthfully, they don't even have time to drop off their children at school, which seems trivial until you realize that our school district cannot afford year-round busing. And this was a choice we made as a school board because we thought it was a better investment to renovate and expand our school building. A building that was built to house only 600 students when we had 800. We were using closets to hold special education sessions. A building that with every passing year, we hoped our 1955 boiler would last another season because replacing it would be cost prohibitive as repairs meant e-banging parts with hopes that other schools had decommissioned their old boiler. So you may ask, why not add everything that we needed into our budget? And the answer is really simple. Our taxes would skyrocket and our school budget would not have a chance of passing a city vote. I also, when I joined the, when I made a promise when I joined the school board that I would not design a school budget that would lead to gentrification. I wanted to make sure that the school we were building in the district we were becoming would continue to be the home for the current residents. Little did I know that the tough choices that we were making as a board were directly caused by these inequities in a school funding form that was created in the 1990s. And I promise you, as you all know, the world has changed a lot since then. I mean, my smartphone right now is much more powerful than any computer I had in college. And I highlight this notion of change because Vermont is also changing. We are in our district enriched by the new Americans who have settled into our state and I am fortunate enough to live in that city that is home to many of them. And I think if we are to truly integrate and benefit from the diversity that these families bring, then as a school district, we need to invest extra resources into our educational system. This allows us to build a stronger community. The obvious investment is in our English as a second language program. Some see this as a burden, but I see this as an investment. Why? Because once they learn, our students learn to communicate in our common language of English, we see the brilliance of our new American students who oftentimes know more than one language and have many new ideas to share with our students. And more importantly, they share with us their perseverance and grit. I've been fortunate enough in my time in the school district to mentor at least two new Americans and I already can see the investment paying off. One of them even has dreams of becoming the governor of Vermont. Think about that. As a student that we invested wants to stay in here to be a leader in our state. And today I'm gonna, I'm gonna proud to say and tell you that like he actually did his college interview with Yale today in my home. And yes, why in my home? Because he was worried about the internet connection. These are the inequities that we sometimes face in the lack of resources that we have. The other investment, if you see in our, in our district is in our cultural layer zones. These layer zones help us build a community where all of our family can support and take part in their children's education. A fact that is often taken for granted by many of us. Our culture relations do more than translate and ensure constant communication between parents and our schools. They also help build trust between the new American population in the government. We have to remember here. Many of them were exiled from their countries because they were vocal about their government. Regardless of us actually welcoming them to our country it doesn't take a leap of faith as to understand why they don't trust government, right? And this was made more evident to me when two of our students made this wonderful music video almost a year ago that's called Let's Go to School in Swahkely, their native language. Their songs about how Vermont gave them an opportunity for a better life. But when represented Welch wanted to meet these students which for many of us see as a honor it took our cultural liaisons several hours to convince their parents to let them meet him. They feared that having a governmental official know them would mean future trouble. I actually do not blame them for feeling this way because of their past experiences with government. I am fortunate enough that their trust in our school and allows us to slowly build stronger bonds, slowly stronger bonds are formed between them and the community at large. This is not meant to be a complaint but an illustration of reality. I cannot emphasize enough we want these families here because they enrich our community. Thus our cultural liaisons who have teaching degrees from their home countries are worthwhile investments for our schools and city. And truthfully I hope there are ways for us to increase their salaries because they are woefully underpaid. Having a formula that is inequitable means we depend on people's generosity and kindness and hope it's enough to cover what should be provided by our state. And I'm gonna say that a funding formula that is inequitable causes school districts to be reactive to problems instead of being proactive and strategic. I am proud of our school district and what we have done with the constraints of the funding formula has provided us. Think about this. The current weight says that we have about a thousand equalized pupils but with the new weights, we're gonna have 1600 equalized pupils. Imagine what we could do if we did not have such limitations. I talked about that student that's going interview with Yale and wanting to be governor. That I often joke about like he's gonna make be a Disney movie a start of a Disney movie. But when you think about Disney movies we think that we are highlighting the exceptional and not the norm. And that's what the funding formula is preventing us sometimes from doing is being the norm and having hope in all of our children. And when you think about it there's a reason why 62% of our students qualified for free or reduced lunch in our district. Their families cannot afford to live anywhere else. Yet instead of shutting them our school district embraces the challenges. Please allow the districts that are willing to accept these challenge be given a fair chance to educate their students. I know this is gonna be hard work to implement especially if we continue to deal with the pandemic and its fallout. But the pandemic was the ultimate stress tests of our system and it highlighted even more of the inequities of our educational system. But I also know as Vermonters we never run away from things that seem difficult. Instead we steer into and roll up our sleeves and fix what needs to be fixed. This is your chance to fix inequities that have been made worse by the pandemic. And I want to write at this moment really say thank you to the students in Winooski who are teaching school board members like me and how to create an anti-racist school district. And one of the many lessons that they've taught us is that it's imperative for us as adults that we stand up when we see inequities. Especially inequities that affect them. As you see today, the examples today I provided hope gives a little bit more face to the numbers that you hear about in the waiting study. Because these are, I'm advocating for the people who are often voiceless and cannot be here to advocate for themselves. And I really hope I did them right by being their advocate. Many of our students start their morning pledging their allegiance to the United States. A nation they believe to be indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Let's work together and make this a reality for all of our children. Let's stand up and fight for equity and quality by passing legislation this session to implement this new empirically derived weight. Do this now because building an equitable education system allows us to continue having a government that is of the people, by the people, for the people. Doing this now means that we truly care for those who do not have a voice. And I'm gonna say it's rare when there is a legislation that can unite so many of us. But this is a legislation and this needs to, but this legislation and this act unites the Northeast Kingdom with Bennington, with Burlington and Winooski, with Rutland, with Mount Peeler and with the Wyndham County. To not take up this bill will be a moral failure on us all. It will signal to our children that we do not care. And if that's the case, then the values that I thought embody what it means to be a Vermonter were false. So let's be leaders and make a better and more equitable Vermont, where our children's futures is not dictated by where they live. Let's do this now. Thank you for giving this moment to speak and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Hinn. There's powerful testimony. You represent and are involved with an incredibly dynamic, important district. So thank you for your work. I should also mention that Senate education is looking at a multicultural liaison bill that Senator Rom put in that hopefully will kind of continue the good work that you have all done throughout the state. So again, thank you for everything that you're doing. Committees, questions for Mr. Hinn. Senator Pearson, it's your district. Any questions, comments, anything? Well, thank you, Commissioner. And I haven't heard people disagree with you. I think how and on what kind of timeline are big questions that go far beyond just my choice and Senator Chittenden's choice. But you're compelling testimony and thank you. Senator Shinden. So thank you for that testimony, Alex. It's good to see you. I will say, I completely agree that we need to look at the waiting. I would just echo an earlier comment from Senator Pearson, which is how do you do this in a thoughtful and in phased manner? Because I heard you say in your testimony that if you were to put into your school budget everything that your school needs, there's no way your school budget would pass. I see that same problem if we do this haphazardly where if it skyrockets the tax bills too quickly of our communities that might be able to afford or based on the new calculations be responsible for contributing it, those bills will fail or those school budgets will fail. So the conversation I wanna have at some point but I don't think now is the time is how do we actually increase the amount of money available to our schools? And that's where I would assume that's through increasing the tax rate or the tax base. And that's where I wanna understand more by exploring conversations not in this public forum. How do we generate more revenues for our schools so that we're not just shifting these things ultimately shrinking the pie if we don't do it thoughtfully but I don't know what else to add. Thank you for your testimony, Alex. Thank you. Am I allowed to quickly? Absolutely. If you wanna say something, please. Yeah, no, and I agree. It's a difficult, difficult problem to deal with but I also know that like the current waiting system has been around for 20 years and it's disadvantaged certain communities, right? And I understand and one of the things that I always tell my school board in the constituency is that please have faith in the school board members to make intelligent decisions to think strategically. It is not necessarily that we're gonna go spend every dollar that we can, but because let's be true. The other thing about being a true remonder that we're financially responsible, okay? And we make strategic decisions. And I think that is one of the things that Winooski has done is that we had the long-term planning and we're thinking how to spend strategically because we have a superintendent administration to do that with. And I hope that this true of all school leadership because in the long run, I'm the one that stands in front of the school board that has to listen to the parents yelling at me as to why we don't have a school bus and they have to watch their kid six years old walking on the sidewalks in the cold. And sometimes they come to school with cold feet, which means we have to then think of ways to get warm socks so that they can learn better. Tell me how that is fair for my students. Other questions, comments for Mr. Yen. Senator Hardy, please. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Yen, thank you so much for your testimony. I just wanted to thank you. We visited your school last year, right before the pandemic. And just talking to you was really inspiring and hearing about the situation in Winooski and all the efforts you were making there. And so it's good to see you again. And I live in a district that would not necessarily benefit from implementing the waiting study. And I have a lot of school districts that are concerned about how or if we're gonna do it. And I still think it's the right thing to do because I believe so firmly in educational equity and opportunity for all kids. And if anybody goes and visits the Winooski school or some of these other schools in other areas of the state and sees the differences between their schools and your schools, it's stark. And so I just appreciate that you're highlighting it and continuing to be persistent. And I think we need to do this well and smart and not rush into something that's not a good plan. But I also think we have to have something on the table that starts to move the ball forward so that you know that there's some hope for your district and for the kids that you're serving. So thank you. And thank you. And I know that my students would appreciate that their impact on us is working. And that's what it truly means to be a community, right? And a democracy. And that's what's beautiful. That's what's happening in our school district. So thank you. Absolutely. Senator Lyons. Thank you, Chair Campion. And thank you, Mr. Yen, for being here. I wanna echo the comments that Senator Hardy has made about Winooski. It's an outstanding community. And you've worked very hard to build that school community relationship. We greatly appreciate that. I do wanna apologize to the committee for not being able to be here for most of the testimony, but I will read it all and I may even spend some time looking at the YouTube so I can fully appreciate where we are with the conversation. So thank you. Thank you, Senator Lyons. Any other questions or comments? I know Senate Finance has a witness at three. Mr. Yen, thank you very much for joining us. Please stay in touch. And if you would be so kind as to send us, if you have it, to the video of going to school in Swahili, it would be great for us all to see. You could send it to one of us and we'll share it or to one of our committee assistants. Thank you very much. Thank you. Take care. Senate Finance, it was great being with you. I think it's for you all to depart and for us to stay. And it might be that we reconnect on this topic, but until then, thank you for being with us.


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