 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Senate Education on Tuesday, March 26th. Today, we are doing a couple of different things. We are still spending a lot of time, a lot of afternoons and mornings on the Senate floor, moving bills. But we missed the app 77th presentation. Our House counterparts invited us to participate in one a while back. We couldn't do it, so we have some students with us today, and we're looking forward to all of you. Then Austin Davis, the director of government affairs, Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce has a little bit of facts and education issues, and we have an amendment for 220 Senator Renner, and we'll have a little conversation about CTEs, and we'll wrap it up after that. So, Ms. Holland, would you, who is first? I'm going to be first. Sure. And what about our slides? Are they, they're not like slides that we can project? Are they in your packet? They have it in our packet. Okay. You guys, I think, because everyone prepared to kind of, yes, exactly. So, which group? 10 years for that 77th? You just need to let me know when you want to. Yeah, I'll just let you know. We can go to about 205. 205, okay. Great. So, where's yours? Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Lindsay Holman, my pronouns are she, her, I'm the executive director of the learning or nonprofit based here in Vermont. And we are here to share with you about an event that happened on December 7th here with the reason why we had the event, which was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of 707. So I want to just kind of frame it and then I'll share the goals and then a lot. Most of us can be turned over tonight. My colleagues over here. And, and we also have a video we want to share with you from the event. So, as you know, Vermont, bless you, has been a national national leader in education. I want to just highlight a few of the key moves that Vermont made that led to 77 flexible pathways in 2013. While talking before this, but one little place I'm going to start is in 2007 with the publication of the future of education in Vermont. I want to articulate the vision of the state board of education and the then commissioner of education and identify five components of a desired state to be addressed. Student center of learning leadership flexible learning environments, engage community partners and indicators of success. In 2009, the Vermont legislator developed and passed what became at 44. This contained the first use of the phrase flexible calculate the graduation and established the goal of a 100% graduation rate by 2020. At 44 with the basis for the statutory language that would become at 77 2013 at 77 2013 was passed in July 2013 to ensure that all Vermont students have access to high quality educational experiences that will prepare them for life after graduation. And at 77 is grounded in what we now know about learning and the brain. We'll also seek to make school relevant to our changing world and ensure equitable opportunities for all of Vermont's youth. So, what a teaching and learning booklet in Vermont system systems that embrace student center practices may possible through at 77 and expanded upon through other landmark legislation in Vermont. Our goal today is to share that and we want to share the impact that 77 has had on the educational landscape of Vermont over the past decade to support deeper learning for our students in school communities. And want to urge you to recommit to the spirit and intent of this legislation as you think about current and future legislative priorities for Vermont to use. So, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you, Olivia. We're going to need you for a little activity. And please know if these aren't things bothering you at all, we'll just close in. Right. Please. I want to pull up an extra chair. Yeah. Also, Hi. I'm Olivia Siri. I use she her pronouns. So, maybe it's just like asking us to think of like a specific meaningful or engaging learning opportunity that you've had in your life. And like when you are maybe post engaged. And just really like bring it to life in your mind. What did it look like and how did it make you feel so over the new sector for that. So now we can just do like a quick couple minutes circle share around. Like, you can describe what like moment you thought of how it made you feel. Yeah. I'm happy to break the ice. I just thought back to sixth grade and we had a terrific sixth grade teacher, great teacher all the way through. But this particular teacher did a big end of the year play with all the students and it was just great in terms of building student confidence. Did you do all sorts of things out of our comfort zone is very encouraging and warm about it. I just remember it quite well. I can go. That's because I could tell the senator machine is still thinking. I've got my. Sure. Yeah. So. A meaningful experience. So, yeah, college. I took a class. It was a night class about war of the rings, and it was it was a English lit class, really just for a few extra credits, and took the class for granted and I assumed everything was going to go totally fine and so I didn't put as much effort into it. Compared to all my other classes, I ended up getting a C in the class because the professor took it very, very seriously and basically just learned to, you know, don't take any subject matter for granted. We passed the literacy bill today up in the Senate and it's been making me think about how I learned to read and I, I couldn't help but go back to my first grade class at Central school in South Wellington. Witness Coughlin, who would I just remember her kind of being next to me and like helping me sound out my words. And that's how I learned to read. Fifth or sixth grade history teacher, really motivated, totally into the topic, totally into the kids, all the kids, all of us, getting something out of person basis. I could see right then that teaching was a profession, and not all teachers are creating equal, but this guy was something really special. Thank you for sharing. Is there a Senator that's on? Yeah, I'm not sure if Senator Williams, are you there? Let me accept the way. Okay, thank you. I mean, inclusive. And maybe just think of like one word that, like, you know, some of these experiences like having common. Yeah, I personally noticed like around education, which is very important. I was just saying growth, like I feel like growth, learning how to read or realizing that can't take classes for granted. I just think that word came up. A word that comes up for me is respect. I, some of my most important teachers at the time I didn't necessarily like them very much because they thought it was something hard, but I respected them and I think that's kind of what stuck with me for time. Growth. I agree with you. That sounds like a good word. I like growth through satisfaction. You repeat the question. Yeah, just think of like maybe one word that you noticed these experiences like how it cost. First word was respect. So I respect people who are highly motivated and subject matter. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to transfer the video and then we'll do that. Yeah, so thank you both. So, on December 7th, you all received an invitation. I know not everyone was available to attend. And we were here at the state house, youth and adults from across the state in the variety of roles to celebrate the 10th anniversary of 77 flexible pathways. There's a planning team that planned that event on December 7 that consisted of the agency of education at the Simmons this year as a representative of that team. Carol and we're from McClure Foundation, the Vermont principal association. Ashley's Newton is on zoom from Vermont. Virtual learning cooperative. And, and up for learning. My organization as well. So there was a group of us that came together to realize this is the 10th year. And we want to make sure that we lift up the spirit and intent of this really important legislation. And have a day where we can all gather together to learn from the past 10 years and then think ahead to what the next 10 years might bring. So if it's okay for me to share my screen. I'm going to share a video that highlights that day. And there's even more about the upgrade. And I'm going to unmute or will the sound come through? I'll try and play. I'll try and mute it. We'll let Morgan unmute it. Do you have your sound on? Maybe you should. Let me turn you turn yours off. Yeah. There we go. 10 years ago the flexible pathways legislation was passed right here. With the intent to create and students roles as active learners. This shift required different practices such as personalized learning plans and flexible pathways to graduation. A lot of the things and a lot of my strengths. I realized through my research program. I had such a great experience. I had a great experience. I had a great experience. When I went into a personalized learning program. I had such a great experience. I get students to have success at school. What is making sure that flexible pathways and these other programs aren't just available to some schools or some kids. That access for all types of ways to engage everyone. We have our youth in the dark into their education. That's what we do. And let's talk about that serving. What is that service for you? All stuck in the operating habits and mindsets that have gone back for many years. Connecting students to real work force pathways. Getting to like see them connect to the location. Something like that. It acts that way. That is an outstanding success. I'd like to thank you all. Thank you very much. We wanted to give you a feel for the day. Thank you for letting us use your place of work. Thank you so much for that great celebration and sharing opportunity. So now we're going to hear from this whole group here about what it looks like for them. We have folks here from various stages in their educational journey. I just want to start. I think we can go in order. I can read Macy's when we get there. We have one of our youth that cannot be here because she's actually at UVM in her class right now. I have something to read from her. We can advance probably a couple now. And we'll go to Olivia. So yeah, I read myself earlier, but I will again. So my name is Olivia Siri. I usually hear pronouns. I'm a freshman at CBU high school. I personally have benefited a lot from 77 and feel like I've been able to extend my learning on a lot of topics in a lot of different ways. You see my slide. There's UC Scout on there, which is like an online program through the University of California. I have given some program on there because he came to my school and gave a little presentation and I was able to miss class to go to that. And there's other opportunities like that at CBU. There's the cover slide to my PLP. And so I'm kind of going to go into detail on a couple of things that I've been able to experience. Last year I had the opportunity to take an accelerated math class through UC Scout. And it's allowed me to skip into a higher level class at CBU. And then recently I enrolled myself in another extra math course through UC Scout and I will finish that in August and I will sophomore. I'll be going if everything goes right. I'll be going to AP calculus next year. I've also been able to work with up for learning. And sometimes I have to step out of class to attend meetings. My teachers have been like spectacular at working with my schedule and they've just like supported me the whole way through. They've offered like a bunch of alternatives so I can say up to part classroom while also getting to experience opportunities like this. Inside of the school act 77 has made it so that we have access to a PLP, which is a personalized learning portfolio and CBU also offers a class called next seminar, which is a flexible learning environment course. In the future I am looking forward to taking that class where hopefully I can do an independent study of my choice, which will be most likely focused around youth leadership and voice. Act 77 is really important to me because it's allowed me as well as many other people to go through personalized courses with support from the school. And it's made me feel a lot more seen like in the classroom by my educators and has definitely helped me to become really excited about my learning. I've enjoyed learning from a young age, but once I started taking the advantages of the resources that we have in Vermont with act 77, my level of engagement has definitely increased. And yeah, overall without act 77, I don't think I'd be able to access programs that I really enjoyed tonight. So thank you. Next slide. Okay. Hi, my name is Ethan Sanmore. I use he and pronouns and I'm also a freshman at CBU. Act 77 opened up so many more opportunities for me as a student that I probably couldn't get elsewhere. CBU's rise program reflective interest based student experiences gives students the opportunity to explore interest within and outside of the school community. I'll be helping teach younger kids how track meets work what goes into them and then putting on a track meet for them. And I'll also be exploring small businesses in the Chittin County area. Some other rise sessions include hiking, photography, Dungeons and Dragons, lifeguard and CPR certification. And it really ranges to all kinds of student interests to make sure every student in the CBU building can spend the last two weeks of the school year doing something that they're interested and passionate about. Another thing from Act 77, POPs or personalized learning portfolios are a way for students to share their accomplishments and goals with teachers, parents, advisors. And students can also share other important parts of their lives like sports, family, friends, hobbies, anything that they really want to share on their portfolios they can share. And I know for many students, me included, sometimes have a difficult time focusing in a classroom setting and building connections with their teachers. And with Act 77, it gives students the opportunity to create connections with teachers or adults in the building and exploring interest that they couldn't explore cooped up in a classroom learning the typical school stuff. Personally, myself, I want to be a future business owner and my rise session gives me that opportunity to learn what goes into making that hope of my reality. And for many other students, rise gives them that same opportunity. And I believe that's what's so important about flexible pathways and Act 77 is with opportunities created from Act 77 students can really show their creativity and express themselves in a way that they probably couldn't anywhere else. That's awesome. Great. Olivia next slide. Hi, so I am Olivia Schroenberg I use she her pronouns and I'm a sophomore at my player high school down the road. Yeah, so my journey with flexible pathways really started in like middle school, which is kind of different than other peoples like in seventh grade was when I was really first exposed to like all of the available like learning opportunities and I recognized that other kids used to not have these when they were like a few years ago before accident was passed. Like one of these was involving like CPS the organization which is like cultivating pathway sustainability, which is connected with after learning. And it helped me make sustainability class that is now taught at the middle school for all different for fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. And I like the opportunities that I had like creating the curriculum and like going out in public and learning about how sustainability is like in like how that is implemented into schools and should be implemented more often. And it's it was really interesting just to learn about the impacts that schools have on the environment, and I learned a lot of relating to science. And yeah so that was something a three was when I was part of that. And it also encouraged me to take like facilitation rules from seventh grade and beyond. Like I became more of an extroverted person I feel like because I was so used to presenting due to like me having to present at these meetings related to the class that I was on board with making at middle school. And like my teachers were very supportive like excusing me from school like giving me opportunities to like of leadership and facilitation roles more often throughout my school day. And then now at high school at MHS. Yes, so these are the different opportunities that are at high school on this list I took this from the website. I have not done like most of these because I'm only a sophomore most of these are available to juniors and seniors. But one of the things that my school does that I think is really like amazing is the PLS which is a personal learning study. And it's kind of similar to the rise thing that you guys do it see you and it's basically like a self paced course of your own choosing for any kind of credit that you want. And one of my friends gardener on the side right there it's a little bit of a silly picture, but he did a PLS for his cost country season this fall. And it's like, for if you can do it for once for one semester or for both semesters at the school year, and he got a P credit by running and keeping track and making his own like some of this like tests for something that he was personally interested in. And he got credit for so didn't have to take the school job classes because he doesn't tend to do well in larger environments like that. And it was really cool like seeing how some of my other friends have done these to like using their interests to really give them off like using that to their advantage in class if they do not work well and personal like in class settings. And I really think that act 77 is so important it's allowed me like I said earlier to become a more extroverted person, more confident and like give me more opportunities to do things like this. And like another thing that is up on there is CBLs, like which are community based learning. And that's something that you can do. But again during the year so I have signed up to do one for next year, my junior year, where you can like shadow the kind of job that you would like to pursue in the future as possibility to kind of see if you would be interested in that field actually like seeing action. So what I'm going to do next year is shadow social worker. And I've because I've kind of been inspired by like the practices and the like sustainability work that I worked on middle school really carried me along and helped me realize that I feel a connection with working with people. So I think it's really cool that I can utilize that and have it be a part of my schoolwork where I can like really explore see if it's something that I really want to pursue. And I think it's very important for I kind of looked out with my brain and how it works in a school setting so I, I can usually adapt to many different teachers learning or teaching styles. But, like, so many of these things that are available at my school are really good opportunities, like for alternative teaching methods and learning methods for not additional hours, which I think is very important in schools. And yeah, it's pretty much. Thank you. Wow, you're good. Next up is Mary slide. Oh, good. Hi guys, I'm Mary and I'm a junior at Newsy High School and Center for Technology ethics. I thought the CT was for that. And this is my journey of at 77. So the new ski has this class called I lap where you can do anything you want and like your program. You can take whatever class like do whatever you want and you can get credit for it. So for a freshman year, I did that class, because I want to have more professional care. And I took for the first semester I did Japanese. Because mostly doesn't have a Japanese class so I want, I really want to take Japanese that you're on the line. And they paid the class for me that was like $200. And I thought that was really nice. And then the next semester I want to learn about forensic science. I need a bunch of books and I choose myself for me to do that. And then I did a bunch of peace studies and throughout the process the teachers really supported me in my brain. And during all that I realized I also want to do something in the healthcare setting. And the problem was that music doesn't have in classes like cater to that. And so my sophomore year, I did pre tech three at CTE. And that class prepares you it's like it's the human services so prepares you to a bunch of gene services like cooking, child education, and the healthcare setting. And during all that, it was very hands on and I got to learn a lot of stuff and a lot of careers that I can possibly have in the future. And then now in my junior year, I did the health professions program at CTE. And these those classes have helped me prepare for my future goal as a healthcare worker. And I really like how friends on health professions been so far. Like, recently we just did football to me so I did a bunch of like blood drops. You guys, like, if you need any testing, I got you. And then we also work on mannequins as patients as you can see in that picture. But in that one we went to the Vermont Technical College. And we did a bunch of hair on mannequins that mannequin was pregnant and we're giving delivery. I mean, how are we going to get delivery. And, and up and on top of that, I'm also taking a CC fee class at. I'm also able to take CC fee classes as a high school or those are college classes. And the college class I'm taking right now is the statistics. And in my senior year I plan on doing early college. So that gives me one year of college. And I, all of these opportunities have challenged my learning and helped me take classes that I otherwise wouldn't have able to at regular school. And, and otherwise my classes will also just spend the regular slideshows were she and listen to the teacher, but not everyone was like that. I know I don't. But I've been into all this, all things to actually set it. Great. Thank you. How are we doing with time and witnesses. Okay, we've got Ivy and Don event and amazing really quick. So maybe like how much time do you and we wanted to give you some time for questions. Right, right, right. Yeah. We can we we push over to 15. Great. Okay, great. We can do it. We can do it all. All right. Next. The next slide. Hi. Hello, my name's Ivy Manchester. I'm a student at Otter Valley Union High School. And I'm a part of the moosa Maloo program. Moosa Maloo is a three year program. So there's lower moosa Maloo, which is for ninth graders. And it's kind of like an introduction to like what we do in upper moosa. This is my final year. So I have been able to learn all kinds of things like rock climbing, winter camping. Things go well next week. I will be your first aid certified. I would not have been able to be a part of this program without back 77. And it's changed my life to be honest, like become a lot more confident and willing to take risks. And just being here, I would never be able to do without like confidence this program has given me and. So moosa Maloo gives students an opportunity to like learning a less traditional way. So like, we're still learning all our subjects, like social studies and science, but it's just mixed in with everything else. I learned about moosa Maloo when I was in third grade, because we have elementary our reaches where we reach out to local elementary schools. We bring them here to Otter Valley for a day and we teach them about what we've been learning. So I was able to do that when I was in third grade. And ever since then, I wanted to be a part of this program. Even though like, I was in third grade, I didn't pick up a lot during that. I was excited to be outside. And moosa Maloo is so much more than just going outside and like fooling around and whatever. Like, I've learned life skills that many of my peers would never know. You're doing well. I want to get out there on the canoe with you. Yeah, that was my overnight, the first overnight this year. And then we spent the night out on the Connecticut River, which was amazing. And then I had a rock climbing trip, which is what second picture is about. And I went back last summer and climbed that cliff with my uncle. I want to know what it existed without moosa Maloo. And then the picture of me is on Mount Washington, which was the day after my 16th birthday. And we went up and spent the night and we almost got to the top, but it was too foggy. And I would have never been able to do that without at 77 and moosa Maloo. So, thank you. Okay, next up is Donovan who's on zoom. And it'd be the next slide. We just need to unmute Donovan. Can you hear me? Hello guys, my name is Donovan. I use he him pronouns. I'm currently a senior at richford junior senior high school, but I'm also a freshman at CCV. Before the early college program diamond. On top of doing early college, I'm also a part of the free degree program, which basically means that if I say at CCV for two years, I can basically get a free associates degree. I kind of just jumped right into that already so. So the way how I've been able to get into these programs is, you know, through act 77, letting me be able to take a step further into my education and rather than spending my time at, you know, doing my traditional senior year at high school. I can really expand what I'm wanting to learn right now. And just pursue what I really want to do. That's why I couldn't come in today because I'm currently 1 of my classes is for me to do an internship. And that's where I currently am at the moment at my internship location. On top of being able to further pursue higher education my senior year. I've been able to still partake in like school activities. The bottom 2 pictures on my slide are from my final dance season this year ended last month. Those are me and my team shortly before we want to go perform our palm routine. And then my instruments, those are what I play in the school band that they still let me. Partake in and finally, something else that being able to go do early colleges is. During like my free time, I'm still able to work and like earn money so that when I transfer out of CV and go to pursue further call or further education for like my bachelors. I can save up that money and I currently work. Sorry at 1 of my so sorry, I'm all over the place. My internship is a part of notch, which has a whole bunch of different buildings and facilities. And 1 of their places is main street market, which is right below me actually. And that's where I work during the day outside of my school hours. So, yeah, that's basically a lot that has helped for me and be able to achieve outside of. Normally, just sitting in a classroom all day learning in the traditional high school. Very cool. Thank you. And finally, the next slide is maybe who was hoping to be here on zoom, but she got and had class that she had to attend. And so what you've heard so far is the journey from basically from freshman year in middle school, talking about middle school. To now lazy, who is post high school and is in her first year at the end and what she said, she said, I wanted to share a bit about my journey through high school and college. I feel so incredibly lucky to have been able to learn under at 77 in high school and opportunities like dual enrollment and flexible pathways. I entered college with skills, knowledge and experience and college credits that I would never have been able to attain solely through high school. I was able to become a strong leader and public speaker. I was prepared for networking and creating meaningful connections. And I had a chance to explore my interests. In high school, I co taught and plan courses, which eventually led to a finished curriculum being implemented throughout the state. I was at my own little editorial, maybe graduate from Harvard. I graduated last year. Feeling ready to take on jobs, classes and realize situations. This learning was a progression throughout high school and is what makes me so grateful to have grown up in Vermont. It inspires me to push for education standards like ours all around the country. Thank you. That's amazing Frankie was currently in her class at UVM. And I just want to, we have it before we turn it over to questions. I want to turn it over to Ashley who's on zoom and then Natalie. And we can see what time we have Carolyn and to hear a little bit of the perspective from you heard from us to hear the adult perspective as well. So actually over to you. And there's no slide for this one. So you can just, just Ashley. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to share my experience. As noted earlier, I am the co director of the virtual learning cooperative and going to chime in on the act 77 and the impact of flexible pathways for virtual and online learning. So act 77 is important to continue to champion because it promotes equitable access to education by providing students with a diverse learning opportunities, one of which includes online and virtual at. It's really important for students who may not thrive in a traditional classroom settings or who acquire flexibility due to personal circumstances. We heard that from many of you who shared your educational experience. What were those moments when you got to interact in a play when someone sat down next to you to teach you how to read. These are the exciting parts. We also have online supports personalized learning, allowing students to learn at their own pace and in ways that suit their individual learning styles online and virtual learning platforms can offer tailored experiences catering to each student's needs and interests. We are as excited when students come to us and say I have a passion to learn about this. Let's create an independent project, or we don't offer AP physics or we don't have this class, but this is an area that I want to look at can you offer this class, and we do. Addition, which we've seen today from the fine young students who have presented act 77 is essential for developing executive functioning skills, such as digital literacy communication collaboration and critical thinking. Act 77 support for these modes of learning ensures that students are prepared for the demands of the modern workforce. In addition to this, in our increasing digital world proficiency and online and virtual environments is essential act 77's emphasis on these modes of learning help prepare students for higher ed and future careers. We're online tools and technologies are in use. In conclusion from my experience here at my virtual learning cooperative. Act 77 has promoted access to an equity personalized learning and the development of these executive functioning skills. It fosters innovation, adaptability, resilience and continuity and education. I look forward to seeing with the next 10 years of act 77 will provide to the state and to the students that we serve. Thank you. Emily. Hi, I'm not really so I'm the director of secondary education initiatives at the community college in Vermont. And you've probably, you've heard a number of students talking about CCB already today and we're so happy for the role we can provide and supporting students through their journey that CCB we're offering 150 classes in high schools and technical education. So I think it's just this semester so it's done wonders in terms of providing access for students. There's sort of three areas where I think act 77 has had benefits across the state students programs and partnerships. So for students, since 2013, more students have access to opportunities that allow them to connect their educational journey to their personal goals. And empower students to find their purpose and connect with mentors, community members, teachers, employers and others to help them envision and create lives for themselves in the future in Vermont. As far as programs are concerned at CCB, we see students from middle school access days, right through dual enrollment, fast forward, which is our partnership with technical centers, and then early college and then the free degree promise. These programs allow students to start as early as sixth grade and access free opportunities right through an associate degree program. So we're so happy to be able to allow students access to post secondary education. And then in terms of partnerships, flexible pathways really open the doors for different constituents to start working together. CCB works in partnership now with almost every high school and technical center in the state. But we also see parents connecting with school counselors, community leaders, providing opportunities to schools, and then more integration between the colleges across the state in terms of supporting students. Act 77, for example, says that if students earn dual enrollment credit at one college in Vermont, all the other colleges that participate in the program have to accept that credit. So it's created some wonderful partnerships across the state. And I think continuing to promote Act 77 for the next 10 years will provide just an amazing opportunity for students, schools and the communities in Vermont. Thank you. And I might have exceeded my one minute. Does the committee have any questions? Right. We're getting close to, I want to give people a breather for our next witness. Nothing right now. Okay. Anything else? Yes. Okay. Would you like to go? And then we'll just talk about our last slide, which is recommendation from the board and then we'll open it for questions if there are any. Yep. Great. Hi, everyone, Karen, we're executive director of the more foundation, we're an affiliate of the Vermont community foundation that works to close opportunity gas here in Vermont by making post secondary education the easy choice. And it has been a no brainer for us to support the equitable and meaningful implementation of this legislation for the past 10 years. And that's been the bulk of our work as a grant maker here in Vermont. We've learned a lot through supporting the implementation of this bill in the past 10 years. Our grant making is focused both on supporting the capacity of CCB to deliver some of these programs alongside the full continuum of youth and secondary education programs as Vermont's access institution. But it also looks like dozens and dozens of easy access and many grants to schools all across the state. Many grants that are in alignment with the occupational projections data coming out of the administration that are not perfect of labor. This bill informs really almost everything that we do and 10 years in the biggest learning that we have. Number one, there are huge strides being made right now in equitable access of any of these flexible pathways. And for us as a foundation that means we're excited to recommit at this anniversary as well and the same way we hope legislators do too. So if I may just ask on that theme. So if we brought some of the poorest high schools, would we have the same quality in terms of presentations and access do you think. Even what your sort of your sort of your vantage point and the way that the foundations and best. So flexible pathways means a lot of different things to different people right for some people it's a mindset and a cultural approach to learning for others it's a set of state administered and funded programs. For others it's a school based program and for some folks in the public school system with the part of their job title right and flexible pathways is showing up in all schools and when we assessed some of the access data that is available statewide for some state administered programs we've been really excited to see things like a 70% increase in early college enrollment at CCB over the past 18 months and double the number of number of first generation college students and digging into okay where are there still gaps for station among young men. And some caps regionally at the rest of the state. And where there are gaps where are those young people doing. We were just invited to a national to participate in a foundation supported national movement to equity scale accelerated pathways to free associate degrees and they're helping us get closer to approximate voice and understand what that work. Thank you. So if we could go back to the slide for a moment and then we'll be back it up. So we're going back to the slides I just want to share in my previous role as I was a educator you haven't heard the educator voice really. So I was a 15 year middle level educator before I joined up for learning. So I just want to share really quickly that I was grateful to be part of the public education system here in Vermont both pre and post act 77. I'm backed up by all that strong vision and policy that I shared earlier. I was basically gifted the opportunity to co found the Academy which was a school within a school of Essex Middle School. This was transformation of education and these practices were celebrated and really encouraged. And that means that it wasn't I think you know we often think of high school journey. So all seven through 12th graders will have personalized learning plan that allows them to explore flexible pathways. And it should go beyond it should go before seventh grade to so these practices are best practices. So I just wanted to share that piece and one quick story before we get to our recommendations and then we'll definitely be wrapped up. So even before 2009 before at 77 from 2013, the young people that I worked with in fifth through eighth grade have personalized learning plans proficiency based assessment and were provided opportunities to explore different pathways. These are fifth through eighth graders. This is before 77. So these are practices that we know are really important for all young people and their equitable practices. And the other day I ran into father of a student that I had a decade almost decade ago as a middle school learner Kayla. She was very passionate about drawing and writing and I ran in and social justice and during her student led personalized learning plan conferences. That happened throughout the year and I was her advisor her and her family and I would sit and talk about how she can enhance her skills and really pursue her passions and work on the issues that were challenges. Well, now for past four or nine years later, I ran into her father to now a junior at Savannah College of Art and Design pursuing writing and drawing. And I think that that just shows as you heard from all these stories here that when given the opportunity to explore these passions and not saying stop writing on the desk or but you know writing and doodling or whatever it is that when people have the opportunity to explore passions. They actually follow those pathways and here she is in her final year at STAD. So recommendations came out of this the day the celebration. You can see them all here. You can see kind of who was here by the numbers and the data that came out of the day along with the commitments that we hope to see ripple out. But really what it means is continuing to explore support and strengthen connections between schools and community partners. We need to continue to develop and share and create resources for act 77 related concepts that came out loud and clear throughout the day. And we want to ensure there's increased access to flexible pathways, particularly for those that are in smaller programs at schools or for supporting innovative individuals or schools that don't have as many or as you said are resources other schools so to increase access to 15 questions is great. We have other witnesses coming in so during the break if people have questions they can mix and mingle with the students and we'll come back welcome back everyone to send an education. So we understand that you are Mr Davis making around talking to people a little bit about for my property tax system with recommendations thoughts. I just wanted to attend a little bit yesterday evening afternoon and he put some ideas so it's, we know that there's this this general conversation that's going to is happening is going to happen, a bunch of bills coming out of the house. So we appreciate you coming in, sharing your thoughts with us. And so we'll give you the floor for about 2030 minutes and then we'll jump in for questions. Great committee wants to throw with you. Sometimes just through the questions out. Yeah, I'd love to keep it a conversation. Beautiful. Beautiful. Can't wait. So for the record, Austin Davis director of government affairs, fully championed chamber. And I want to start this. I'll try to be, I have a new fatality set that I spent an hour and a half with this house education committee last week. We don't have that much time, but I do want to just super rethink knowledge and solicitation as we start out here and then we do a lot of tax and economic development and workforce policy or certain of our members ability to pay as well as their employees ability to pay. And for taxpayers in the day. We're, you know, all by the top of the picture. So obviously it's a nitty gritty book. We can get into some of the nitty gritty there because so many folks I've never actually testified for this committee before. I just kind of get a quick intro to the lifetime playing chamber or regional chamber of commerce, serving the Northwestern portion of the state seeking to create an economic opportunity for all. So we're going to start with ownership, promoting the robust diversity visor economy, cultivating community leadership, and you're sharing already talent through the programs you can see out here. So it's like our regional marketing organization that is converting over leads for roommates and conferences in our hotel spaces that helps fill shoulder seasons and keep our robust rooms and meals tax and revenue coming in. So again, professionals work and some of our other talent development programs ranging from internships to many other things, leadership development for aspiring CC staff as well as CC staff and our business accelerator. Business is great with the land actually want to end on because that's actually a 40 that's a that covers every county and it's a matter of how. Despite the fact that we are a regional chamber of commerce we have statewide programming we try to include every county in of our overall 1100 members or so. We have owners in every single county of the state, because of the services we operate through hello bro and to the now defunct from our convention bureau and many other services like that so there are a lot of different doors that folks enter the chamber through. And you might have done that so yourself not realize if you're entering bulletin champagne chamber leave a big breach. What I always wanted to know this but what when you say regional is it is it mainly. Our counting up in. Yeah, so we just read the north western first like modern state. A lot of Franklin County to ask how may be a little more numbers. What I actually split this describes our coverage is the greater Farlington metro area, which would. Overlapped perfectly actually it's this early 30 but the bureau later statistics for all of them that South Farlington metro area is exactly almost when you do a heat map for my first load with the cover. I was like the champagne islands as well. Yes, yes, so when I was a large part of our membership, we actually operate a lot of the welcome centers around the state, including the ones in the islands. So he had another thing we do. But yeah, we cover all that really anything within a 40 and it drives the road. I'll just say knowledge I don't want to go into some of the best use of my time, the levers in Vermont's education fund, which was provided to you by the joint pistol office as required under statute. And it's suggesting the staff or issues mandating mergers and solving these very services. All of these levers that you can pull to address this current funding crisis. You know we encourage you to follow those diligently. We can recap those or keep running those. What we are here to do is talk about our perspective on, you know, just the economy at large, and our ties that patient funding more acutely and housing growth and brand list, because we're really talking about the sustainability and stability of our tax base. We really need to remove perverse incentives for individuals communities and that also happened economy wide scale. We need to visit current policy that is working against itself, and we did incentivize current growth, as well as the items in the slide before, which are about right sizing of cuts. Our decisions, you know, as I said, on each other, growth and education spending is sustainable in these feet, more transparent, less better linked to local decisions and better links to the economy. Growth and tax reach has not should not be mistaken as growth and tax base. I'd say that most of our tax base growth we've talked about in this building over the last decade has really been about reach. Sorry, can you just clarify for me what tax reach means? Yeah, so I think a great example of, you know, here, for example, forms that were brought in our tax base by bringing in cloud based computers, you know, and letting the sales tax on that. That's not true base growth necessarily that might be adding another thing and reaching to another thing spring in, but we'd rather see as a chamber of commerce is more individuals paying the tax by virtue of growing our economy, growing our population growing our economy and stuff, and then them all actually putting more in taxes by virtue of improved economic conditions. So, the final thing I'll leave on this side is whether we like it or not education funding decisions are housing policy decisions because we are primarily funding our education fund, or a large part, but not entirely but we're in a large part of by using our property tax. So, the outcomes of some of the things we've done with property tax has stagnated our housing market and therefore added problem I'll get that a little bit, but this didn't happen overnight. Well they've been multiple times to try to have costs for revenue and other things. You know, we're, we caught it on a roadway train and these are perhaps actually provided to you by your own fiscal office and that levers report as well. And, you know, we go primary primary response has been adding sales tax and rooms and mail stacks, directing those entirely ending the general fund transfer. We got saved to a large extent by South Dakota versus Wayfair, which brought in online sales. Frankly, we would have had a reckoning but for the pandemic and all the federal justice came through we would have had another reckoning following that disappearing, but for the fact that that largesse and frontal stimulus had made its way through the economy and was showing up in our trust taxes in a robust way. But now the chickens really come home to rest and we're in a difficult place where we need to stop the roadway train. This is kind of getting a little bit and I'll skip over this just to the sake of time getting a little bit more reasonable. We talked about with tax based tax rich, but we don't have sustainable groundless growth in the state. I think there's a large part of what I want to talk to you about today. If there's anything you can walk out of this with is I want to just drive home for you folks that partner education funding problem is our housing problem. I'm sure that in this committee, you hear from the experts in education about their constituency struggles with housing too. I know I was talking to NDA just the other day about how their teachers are having trouble finding housing. How students are under house and that's or or not house and that's having a pass on the schools. Housing is the lowest common denominator in the state all problems frankly the back to housing. Even when I try to talk to my developers about what they need to build more housing they tell me they need housing for their staff and say you're the housing people. Why do you need housing and that's just indicative of where we are today. And I think actually our education funding system and our property tech system in some way has led to that. Here is a sharp graph of useful grand list growth rates between 2011 and 2021, excluding the support, appreciation and utilities. And that should be an answer not a horror, but that's important because we're not looking at the inflation and we're not looking at, you know, expenditures by utilities which can distort that. What you can see here is the majority of our municipalities are under two or 3% in grand list growth. And that's, you know, the average of one, one and a quarter. What you can see here from the top 20 grand list growers which I think it's going to be interesting when we look at the context of town meeting day conversation next, but also look at this in the context of housing you can see housing growth as, you know, dropped over, you know, the last 40 years, and we're not growing at a fast enough rate for just replacement of housing stock that is continually depreciating in the second most housing stock in the country and that actually gets to this graph here on the right. If I could, going back to the previous slide, are you in any position to offer a reasoning of why you think this housing stock has dropped, such as you put out here? There's a number of stuff working towards it. So I love that you're having me. There's a number of reasons. Is it deeper in second way? Yeah, I think part of it is, and I can start here, is, you know, I think we had issues around, you know, regulation. I think we've all had conversations in this building about active 50 around, you know, some of our exclusionary zoning in the state. I also think that in a post-Verugum world, development looks different. And that's where I kind of set the education funding to. And I'll get to that in a second. I want to just touch on, I said, you know, replacing destroyed homes, you can see here, 2,500 homes, or almost 2,600 homes go off of mine in a given year. Or I think you should understand normal, of course, of a decade because of how old our housing stock is. My point here to some extent is, if we had, you know, just 11,000 homes that our housing needs assessment has set the acutely, and they went for the median price statewide of $400,000 with an anticipated tax bill of at least, you know, $52,000, $5,300 per year, we'd be looking up $58 million that we could have right now in education, but that would help you close some of that gap. Not to mention the economic multiplier fact that would have of stably housed people who can participate in our economy, both as employees, but also as consumers who go out and buy things that contribute to sales abuse, meals, their personal income comes in, and our businesses could have a, you know, a more robust workforce and grow and we can see that corporate income tax, all things that fund what your priorities are. And so, you know, I think our members are, you know, willing to pay for the price of education. They understand the importance of education. They can see that, you know, an individual they might be investing in today at the start of their educational journey is the employee and, you know, 10, 15 years. You know, but they also, they can't just be the full source of it and you got to let them lose and let them do the things that they're best at, so they contribute. So, this kind of bouncing all over a little bit here trying to speed up, but going back to that grand list growth conversation, you can see here, you know, some of those towns have great grand list growth are also in some of the places we have very large schools. And out of our town meeting day, we saw that our large schools, 52% of them were rejecting budgets, our next year of large, 38% were rejecting their budgets. Our medium and small schools were less likely to. And the graph to the right of that shows how education spending per bus vehicles fairly is below the state average and mean. They've ranked, you know, in some of our cheaper schools, yet they were voting down their budgets and these folks are these districts in our, you know, our analysis are are the ones who are actually producing random growth that's being sent into the state coffers to then get redistributed back out. They're also lower in cost and they've done everything that's been asked of them over the last few decades as far as merging finding efficiencies. And those are primarily the folks that I represent. So what I think is helpful is to kind of walk through a little bit just understanding how I help them understand education property tax and show how it's hard to explain to them to voters, how this works and also talk about some of our changes we have some perspective on. So understanding property tax is nearly impossible. And I think it's easy, an easy way to do this. Sorry. I want to thank just to hear you have say, but do you do your members have a sense when I look back on the slide of through people spending. You guys ever have the conversation of like, what should the per people spending be like what do you have a number in line that would be you feel or your membership feels would be adequate to educate your kid in Vermont. Well, I'd say that I definitely hear from my membership who can do, you know, who can research on their own that they're seeing that we have the second highest per people spending in the country and this will this year will probably put us into the highest per person spending. They also can do a quick Google search and see that our educational outcomes are middle of the pack and dropping. So I think for them, you know, it's, it's about they're willing to pay, but they're going to pay the highest country they want the highest outcomes of the country. And I think that's a frustration now. I always find the number of these numbers interesting is about 10 years ago and I looked at a 13th year for my daughter dearfield Academy was $54,000 with up and I was with a scholarship. That was 10 years ago. Granted that include room and board, but I just want to be interesting to tease out a number that people think would be adequate to educate kids. I just I'm always like in my mind thinking what would that look like. We know high school kids are more expensive to educate than elementary school kids but when you think about, you know, sports and music, the drama like everything they get in an education. If you are up with the number, I think it's a great idea. I mean, even if this at some point the legislature could get in our minds like okay it's going to cost about this or about that. Everything that we want students to be able to take advantage of. But our members are more interested in the strength that how can we find efficiencies in the spending we already have. And I think that goes to the conversations that are having being had around the building around newer and fewer and around shared resources. We had three pieces of a incredibly large piece of legislation around merging over the last decade. So I'm going to break down the district homes and property tax formula into its constituencies to talk through a little bit better. So one education spending to equalize people's property. So education spending. You know, this is just our obviously our issues around deciding the local level with expectation of a statewide property tax kind of distorting those choices. And this gets to our growth conversation around free break up because if you were trying to talk about your local spending, what were you doing, you were likely it was likely sparring some effort to grow the grant list to fund that spending. That would mean bringing in a new large employer who would be tax based or expanding housing stock or revitalizing your community or some combination of those things. But the intent, the understanding would be with a local school district free freedom that you were on the hook for whatever you're wanting to do whatever your local education priority was. We're not saying go back to, you know, pre 97 world or three 2003 world and, and, you know, recreate an equity of that we understand that sometimes we're gold town sometimes we're having a hard time educating the populace but there needs to be a closer to decisions of voters and their, you know, the spending and there also needs to be a better understanding for voters municipalities school districts everyone involved of what actually is funding this this money just doesn't magically appear. It's created through economic development and housing development and other activities such as that. You know, right now, ironically, a lot of groundless growth is not rewarded in our current system. And so you look back at, you know, some of the folks who are on the top 20 grant list growth. They're seeing that growth gets sent to my pillar and then they're having to make hard austerity choices in their district level, you know, but for Brigham. They would have to make these hard choices they can have the district that they want and they can do all the things that they wanted so I think that's, and that manifests itself into some of our are frankly excluding Arizona zoning if you're already have high propensity to say no to things in your backyard which less basic monitors do have that. What incentives are there now and say yes when you know that you don't want to see that, and the grant list group from that isn't going to go to your community it's going to get sent to my pillar and then go to someone else's community. So when grant list growth is everyone's job it kind of ends up being no one's job. And it's kind of akin to if you ever take a CPR class they tell you when you start doing CPR, look at a person point them and say you call 911, because if you say someone call 911, then everyone seems someone's calling 911, no one takes a person as their job. And that's kind of what we're in a position of a grant list growth. So, second constituency of that equation is equalized peoples, and that is the point I was trying to make earlier about how Act 117 is kind of at odds with what we did in, you know, Act 153, Act 156, and Act 46, which is trying to push rural and small schools to merge. When we added a sparsity and a small school weight, and you let folks buy down property tax rates with that you're working against every piece of legislation, you know marquee piece of legislation you've done in the last decade, and beyond, you know, from our perspective it might be more appropriate to push that into the categorical aid category, or for those weights or do something of that nature, not just let those buy down. Now, I know that the idea then what we had this to be around and economically defined background weights, I'd say that those are still appropriate to not be pushing the category of late, because I think ELL is a much larger conversation about how to support and stand up students who are new Americans. And that does take, you know, the ability to be much more, much more dexterity, and then I think economically defined backgrounds is a greater indication of how that community's ability to pay. Frankly, if we could burn down the system today and redo it, and we were going to have the weights, I'd say like maybe economically defined background might be a better way to get at some of our statewide equity, then actually like a purely statewide or another day type of that. And then, you know, this all fits together in the last part of the equation, the denominator, and that's the yield. And I think that we had a really, because we had a lot of time in house education made a really robust conversation around is statewide property yield something that districts use to make their education spending decisions, or is the yield actually something that's comes after and I would say, you know, it's a chicken and egg house, I would say that statewide property yield is frankly it's a legislative conversation that's done in reaction to what districts say we're and I think just time on loan supports my argument because you don't set the we're not going to set the yield this year until probably at least April 16, because the last votes are going to So, and we already voted on our budgets, we've already voted on our budgets the yield set far after budgets get voted on so, you know, one thing that could be a discussion to try to keep the statewide system, while also making voters feel the impact of their decisions a little bit more acutely is discussing playing with that yield number, and making it a smaller number, which effectively makes dollars more expensive for humanities, you shrink the denominator equation, while keeping the numerator the same or in this case growing the numerator, you make the overall outcome more expensive and really and so a simple deal is the cost of buying statewide dollar for humanity. You could also bring back excessive spending adjustments that was suspended through 2029. That was something JFO suggested to you folks. That's another way to go about it. There's a fourth item here that I don't want to talk a little bit about that also further starts our property tax system. And that's the whole set of that correlation and the property tax. Because the income sunset property taxes, you know, if one of your constituents a lot of members can manage to get through that very complicated educations, spending formula, they still wouldn't need to understand the difference between property tax yield and income tax you know the delta of which turns out to be a property tax credit. And this distorts the what happens even further because a voter might know, oh, my property tax goes up but they might be income sensitized so they might feel like they're protected or they might learn they're not protected after voting. And that's two thirds of our monitors pay based on their income already. And I also think it's not truly reflective of one's ability to pay. And so to get it and I've got this little example here. So this is actually a three bedroom pole that I pulled on the Zillow. And there's three individuals in this scenario, all three are working at working age, and they're having the same median salary and that's solid actually the South Carolina high school teacher. However, there's, you know, this first thing so in the one household via two teachers they're both being 65,000 for a confined household income 130,000. They actually have two dependents. And the other one we have one teacher making the same exact salary but they're living all by themselves in the same and that three bedroom home. The couple with the dependence is exceeding the property tax credit and cut tax, which is now 128,000. It's worth noting that that's been marched down over the last decade to make this program actually work and not be too big of a revenue expenditure. So it was probably like a part of the top of the head is 150,000 per household, just six years ago and since it's been brought down. But they're past this cap. Well, this individual is getting a property tax credit of, you know, 3,675 dollars. So I would encourage you to, you can actually go to the wrong part of Vermont Department of Taxes website and download their property tax credit same box and play with this on her own. It's fascinating when you start to get into it and we have some economic model we've done with that on the back, which is what can play around the folks sometimes they have more time to do, but you know, we have this ethos of one's ability to pay. And we have it's kind of based on marginal utility, but I asked, you know, who gets more marginal utility and three bedrooms, a similar visual or a family of four. You know, I think that that's an interesting kind of deck out here. Why are we such that someone is over housed. It goes actually another way. When we start looking at this, if I may think if some people were house, they might be room. They might be getting some income. I think that's really well to my point still, because I know that you know, but if if you were to say we got were over housing said I want to bring a roommate into the situation. Your roommates income counts towards your property tax benefits is all of the income domicile in the house, regardless of relationships. About two years ago, change this to exclude qualified refugees, because qualified refugees are coming and people were being kind enough to bring them into their homes. But then they were getting her because those refugees were able to work and how much their brains pushing them out of property tax credit. So, you know, we've already kind of acknowledged the ludicrous nature of this to some extent in our tax code, but we need to go a little bit step further. It also, you know, it's more interesting when you look at it in terms of someone who was possibly retired, and you look at the net assets so same example but let's say this person strong 65 K from investments, not from a job and they're sitting up for a million assets with no mortgage, you know, all this couple that we talked about in the first example as 50 K and student deaths, and only three years in a mortgage then started paying off principal they're only in the interest zone. You know, because they used a three and a half percent BHFA loan, let's say, which thank you all for doing the support in that. But, you know, in this situation, we're kind of subsidizing someone from being overhoused and it's not indicative their ability to pay it's indicative of what they set their income at when they retire their retirement professional, they have the ability to pay. And that also drives housing decisions, because, you know, what, what in this example, what incentive is there for this person I'll say that they're, they're down to paying for me about $1,200 a year to live in that home, they're going to stay in that home longer, they're actually kind of trapped with tax to this because they don't have that economic nudge. So they're going to live in this home, they're likely going to defer maintenance, which means that when that house goes back on the housing market, it's not going to just be a, you know, $400,000 house before the $1,000 house about $100,000 of deferred maintenance attached to it, which is why we have to be a program again thank you for your support of that. But, you know, we're distorting the housing market with this to a large extent is my point. You know, whether you like it or not, our education property tax conversations are housing conversations because we've stagnated in the housing market and it only is going to get worse. As our demographics age, and you can see by this in the right hand corner, this is from our housing needs assessment for already very overhoused population. So if you want some more tax revenue, you got to get this housing market churning, and that means maybe some changes to the property tax revenue. No, it's okay. Thanks Austin. I just wanted to highlight or underscore this scenario that you have here, the one person in the home with, I know so many couples in that exact situation who want to pay, like they want to pay more and they are embarrassed about their tax credit, like they don't want it. Well, they don't want to deny it's a problem. That is an option. Okay. All right. That's good to know. Wait, repeat that option. You can always not fall actually. So we're not just a lot of times don't file that for almost a declaration because it is so unique to say he's a lot of tax offer. They frankly get it wrong. I've even experienced that myself. So most of the regulations very difficult. So some people cannot actually worry this year that that revenue expenditure that like two thirds or monitors might grow. Because I think you're going to induce some demand when people see these high property tax bills, people who might have skipped the homestead declaration step or like the property tax credit step, or, or just, you know, missed it entirely. They're going to be searching for that property tax card. So that could even throw this year and anything you need to shrink it. That's, so that's good to know. I do think there are folks who understand the scenario and understand the inequity in it. Over and over and over again. And like I said, I think it's only going to get worse as our demographics shift older. And so, you know, I don't, I'm not saying we should be cruel and try to like push property taxes up and push older remonters out of homes. I think there's some ways we could do this. I think we've actually, by being kind, but a little cruel, we've trapped some remonters by like subsizing their property tax rates, which would otherwise and any other situation any other state then an economic nudge to right size their house and stuff. I know a lot of folks will say to me well, you know, Austin did a lot of folks would want to leave their housing stock, but there's nothing for them to go to. It's a bit of a check in the next situation, you know, if we aren't incentivizing that then the markets not seeing the demand for that, and if the markets not seeing the demand for that is not creating that and it's a feedback loop so we need to break that cycle. So one thing we're interested in pursuing and it's too late in section like this but as a seller spread it, much like the by administration proposed in the state of the Union last month that would actually provide an ability for an individual to realize some of their other PTC in their next domicile. And they could, you know, sell, and maybe they moved something, they take that activity from what they sold and moves, maybe not as efficient public planning solution but they can see that PTC stepped out of a five year basis on the taxes of their new domicile which would hopefully be smaller so. Yeah, so suggestions and we kind of got into this, considered home said decorations and rent or eBay, you know, should they include attestations of household and well. You know, I think you frankly do that this year as a box on home said declaration, not this year for the coming fiscal year, and it could frankly be a two plus tiger this year. But most people with high net wealth are getting their taxes done by professionals as professionals will check that box, you know, saying, Okay, we do have that wealth about this so we're not going to. We're not going to use this or will not follow the PTC process. You know, I think later on down the road you can figure out how to enforce it better but for now could obviously just start that way, because of the professionals to do that. I think it also, you know, we have statuses like dependence and verify jointly our tax book for a reason. I think that the PTC should, you know, continue to exist and it can continue to exist should reflect the makeup of the household and a person that and not penalize people who are living more densely we're putting a bunch of earners under one roof. Right now, I've talked to folks who have told me about how they had a child come back to live with them, you know, who's in their 20s is trying to get a full back in Vermont. And that child's income is pushed them out of property in a tax credit range, because the child's making enough money that it's in its household income it's not individual for household it's household. You know, we think we need to get our housing market churning a little bit more and bring down this overhouse status that we have world most overhouse states in the country. Ironically, you know, one thing to not do is one thing to do is project and increase the property transfer tax that if you're trying to get people to exit housing do not put a tax on exiting housing. You know, that is, even if it one might say, oh, that's that's paid by the buyer, not the seller like people all sat down, most of us have probably sat down and negotiated a, you know, closing up a home at one point like it all in some big one chunk of money and it affects itself. And then I think it's also worth talking about how we might need a CLA equivalent for homestead taxes. So there's a series of growth with higher property that is hit caps more easily than others. This is a conversation that's kind of tearing apart those upstairs right now, because they just increased profit transfer tax and each 829. And he wanted to start the high special at 600,000. And a lot of letters that are from Schiffman County said, well, wait a minute, that's a lot of homes in Schiffman County. Those aren't extravagant homes. This is you live in Main Street, Burlington. That's what it costs, you know. So, you know, the statewide caps on both the home site value and the cap on that income. Those are disproportionately affecting, you know, different parts of the state takes $128,000 in Schiffman County looks a lot different than $128,000 in other parts of the state, because of the high cost of living that it requires to live in Schiffman County. And we reflect that to get back to my point earlier about the Bureau of Labor Statistics, my area, there are discrepancies and wages in those places, but there's also discrepancies, the cost of housing, the cost of the central goods. That's why our base in each budget state has an urban and rural component to it. And that's that's a long stand. So, I want to actually kind of doubt is, I'm going to go to the quick overview. So, the things to really take away from this conversation that I had, and sorry, rush this as much as possible, some of it might have been lost, but you're not going to talk with anyone. But Vermont education, Vermont's education system is growing on sustainably. It's been mitigating by adding new revenue streams, and a few miracle that's right. Local decisions funded through statewide mechanisms, great disconnects between choices and tax rates, resembling the traffic, the common scenario, the complexity of Vermont's education funding system, vendors, public understanding and engagement. Whether we like it or not, education property tax policy is housing policy, education property policies, significantly towards the housing and development market have stalled the housing stock growth and discouraged tax based improvements. But tax equity or mitigating the expense of property taxes have diluted our community's community decision making and contributing to stagnant grant list growth property tax credit system, impacting two thirds of our monitors for those sorts of new decisions. These efforts have also created perverse incentives and that fairly should divert in the same amount of larger households, including those with multiple earners. Real grant list growth remains minimal, especially municipalities focused on, well, actually this should be backwards, but you know those folks who actually are finding the efficiencies or making union school districts who are building grant lists, they're the ones voting down their budgets and they're kind of being asked to bring more to the statewide system and they've really got all they can. We need to have collaboration across housing and economic development sectors to support our education system financially. And then I think you should also explore the fiscal numbers that were all onto you by JFO and moving forward. Thank you so much, Austin. This is great. And I appreciate the bullet points and the real clear breakdown. I just, I like to focus when I can anyway on data and facts rather than anecdotes and hyperbole, you know, all those good things. So, for example, like just the first bullet. And by the way, I totally agree with you about efficiencies and right sizing and it's completely in agreement with you. But I do start a little bit, you know, Vermont's education system is growing unsustainably, which has been mitigated by the addition of new revenue streams and a few miracles. I just sort of playing devil's advocate here, but what does unsustainably mean? Is it unsustainable by virtue of the fact that people are voting down school budgets? I mean, is that what makes it unsustainable? Because I do look at some of the communities around where I live that voted down their school budgets and I'm thinking the majority of people in that, I mean, the average income in that town is like the highest in the state or second highest. So, I just, I just question. Well, I think that anyone can figure it's unsustainable whether they think it's unsustainable to keep having these school budgets get voted down or you think that we can't handle, but you know, 20% chop the property taxes this year. I think one great example, though, like, you know, I think kind of what you're talking about bringing to the lines is, is CVU. And that's a pretty, there's some pretty wealthy towns there. Granted, like, a lot of those towns that feed CVU are, those are where grandness growth has happened. So incomes are higher, sure, but they're pulling their weight and then some in the statewide system. I like to think about also when you see so like I live in when you see, and I think it's really ironic when you look at when you see it's downtown improvement district was grown from being worth 24 million to 104 million over the last two decades. And it's one of, when you see as a whole is one of the only growing municipalities in the state, despite the fact that it's, it's got a geographical borders that are the highway river. And it really can't grow much but it's been welcoming to American populations. It's been welcoming to businesses. It's developed housing, you know, bar and above its its weight class and it's punching well on its weight class. And you know, there's a lot of folks saying, Oh, like, all this money's getting sent to a new ski through 127, it's waiting, they're making out like, and if we were to undo this, like, really just layered on a thing of our education funding system, it's like an old farmhouse that we've all probably done renovations on one of those at some point, for all the monitors, like, it's not intentional. You know, you find like layers of shift lap and then drywall and you know all these things. It's just, it's been kind of long together as we go and sustain root Goldberg machine. And if you were to not have that you were just to have when you see budget alongside when you see for analyst growth when he's covering what it doesn't need all this regular role of my pillar to potentially to get at the funding that it wants it's growing. And so I think that's just, it's a really long way of saying like I think at the end of the day, the folks like you're going to see CB you've seen CB you go down the budget. You know, you also call Chester from the north, you go down their budget. These are places that are actually doing their part and trying to like for the being welcoming to other populations to development to new employers to to actually develop. So I think that's a, that's where it comes down to is, you know, if you want a 40 person headcount with 13 staff, you know, find an employer to fund that like build some more housing around it so that you also can bring in more Right. So I just want so I know this is a policy decision and I'm going to have that bumper sticker made for this committee. But my colleague, Senator weeks is often asking what's the strategy what's the plan so I know you can't dictate policy to us but what we have a pretty rural state so you're right we do have like a small school and rural areas. Two of us sat in the school construction task force so we were grappling with these issues, but what is the answer. We like build a regional school do you more fussing or like you have any thoughts, you know, I think that the outcome of that committee your interviewer is important. I think we need to start making that county level. I love that's 159 that Senator Hardy path like push through around, and I wish it's been done two years ago because I think it'd be brilliant. Oh, this is a municipal study. It was a regional and county governance. And I think that that could be a great. If we had outcome of that study can be something that could serve as a, you know, a north star for the new or fewer conversation, because I think that the future of the state needs to be more regionally or countywide infrastructure for schools, you know, every school needs the new athletic facility, maybe we can sexually locate some, you know, I think we need to pull smaller schools into bigger schools. If, you know, if the worry is transportation, let's mitigate those worries but let's not let them get in the way I personally grew up in what would be considered a union school of 18 towns and my biggest pet peeve of it was that I didn't have a big enough school, even after all that, like I would love to go to the big school. So I think we need to do that. I think we need to look at a county wide level, or regional as it makes sense to find the shared infrastructure. Two questions. This is this will be it. Did you follow the bocees bill? What's your opinion on that? And did you live in the bocees world? Because you grew up in New York and I know New York has bocees. So can you speak to anyone? You may not have followed it. I followed the bocees to some extent. I grew up in I'm staying in New York where there was bocees. I don't think I can talk eloquently enough on it. I think it's getting at what I'm saying of shared responsibility, shared resources, shared outcomes and shared funding. And the crux of it is a lot of our issues in Vermont are, you know, unforced errors that are on the basis of like trying to think too tribally between all of our small municipalities. We need to start thinking more regionally about everything. When I was in the house education committee, we talked a little bit about just picking on KC2's district. They built a pool shared between multiple communities. And it was like groundbreaking to hear people talk about it. Like, oh, yeah, no, there's a swimming pool? Yeah, hard act. But they built a swimming pool there. And, you know, it responded between multiple communities and they have this like hole. Like, this shouldn't be groundbreaking. Anywhere else in the world, you know, six towns sharing a pool is very normal. But like in Vermont, that took like a whiz kid, a city manager, and a lot of work to pull off. And, you know, that should be how it is. And I think we need to get to that to make our education system right sized. I'm not saying necessarily, like, less lower the peer people spending, but let's spend it more efficiently. Municipalities and school districts can also partner with each other. There are a lot of places in the country where there's a pool in high school that serves the retired community as well as the students. Yeah, I mean, that's a fast thing. Yeah, exactly. But I think we can all agree, we try to do something between these thousands. And I sit on the board of Greenmont Transit, my volunteer role, and that is, that just is exemplary. How difficult it is to get, you know, more than 10 municipalities to rely on anything and find something and try to understand that they're, you know, they need to come together for the collective good. And if you try to increase that, after you've been able to do that, you're kind of found it. So, you know, we need more of a county or regional level, you know, leadership. I think that there are some things, like I said, that can be done immediately around property tax credits, make that a little bit more equitable and reflective of, you know, the fact that that revenue expenditure will grow as our Asian population grows. And they start to be uptixed incomes, which aren't always just fixed incomes, they're just what is coming out as a trickle from all our high level assets. So, I think that's conversation. We need more housing. And right now, you know, your colleagues in semi natural are discussing housing bill. You know, if we had, I've been working on some iteration of this activity modernization conversation for six years now. You know, some of the work that is tier one a and tier one B that is in that is frankly, then exactly what we've been asking for, it's like shampoo and chamber for six years. We haven't had anyone tell us that they don't believe it's right. What we've had is this wait for a grand bargain situation so that we can have, you know, treat that for rule for fragmentation. And, you know, nobody is sad on the way like, Oh, no, we should actually like, we shouldn't remove downtown Burlington for active 50 jurisdiction. If we had done it six years ago, maybe we'll be closer to that target of 11,000 housing units. And maybe we could have some of that $58 million I've discussed, you know, maybe we wouldn't have such a big deficit. So, you know, housing is education financing to, and it also means that when you go to your part of our agreements, the teachers, they're not worried so much about their housing costs and they can actually live closer to school if they work down on this other thing. You know, it's, it's a very hairy way that's like what did problem we have here. We didn't get into it overnight. We're not going to get out overnight but we can start understanding that our star nation and grand list and housing has lent itself to this problem and that could be a large part of getting out. Thank you, Austin. Thank you for coming in. Let's take five minutes. Welcome back everyone to Senate Education Tuesday, March 26, 321. We have an amendment being proposed by Senator Renner to S-220. Senator Renner, floor is yours, please. Thank you Senator Campion. I'm going to wear my lesson really quickly about this, but I did propose it. I have a floor to change a word in the library bill S-220. And you have it before you. It's in section 622, the essay section 143, which is the trustee section. It would say, if corrected, the word chalk consists of not fewer than five members. So we're changing one word less if fewer. With your blessing. Thank you. Thanks. It's like we'll need saps to get us walking. So we can't do it. This is super controversial. I'm sorry. I enjoyed the attention to grammar. Yes. I'd like to hear from the bees. So we have draft 1.1 of amendment to S-220 before us. Committee, do I have a motion? I'll make a motion to an S-220 with Senator Renner's amendment. Seconded. Committee, any discussion? My only question, you're an English teacher, right? No. When does use become the rule? You don't have to answer it. I'm just throwing it out there to the universe. As it relates to grammar and language. But it's, that's just a hypothetical. I'm in favor of this amendment. Thank you. Do you want to call me as the busier? Assets of. Senator flames. Great. So we've got that and we have date and. Let's see. Let's start with. Senator Weeks. Oh, yes. Senator machine. I think Senator Williams, did he vote before he left? No. Senator Gullick is in yes and share champions. Yes. So we'll vote out for zero one. What's the, you represent Milton, right? I do. You call the papers. That's the Milton newspaper up there. No, I'd like to report the event. I believe Senator Renner will get up on the floor. And I believe Senator, you need to bring a copy to the. Secretary and their way they know that it's coming. So they will are either waiting for you or maybe waiting for. Sure. But if you don't mind bringing it up now and let them know that the vote is or zero one and you have a clean copy. I don't think we give them that. I don't think we don't send up this, right? We just send up the. So all you need to do is go up and say four zero one. And there they are looking for you. Yes. Oh my goodness. You're saying a trip. Can you tell me when do I stand up or do I not stand up? We can go up as much as.