 Good morning. This is Friday, August 28th, 2020. This is a joint meeting of the Vermont House of Representatives Education Committee and Ways and Means Committee. And today, we're taking a look at the increase in applications for homeschooling with a focus today on how that affects enrollment and funding. As of August 1st, the agency reported 1,634 applications for homeschooling. And last year at this time, it was 932. We hope to get an update from the agency next week on those numbers, as well as to have a better understanding of current oversight of the agency on homeschooling. So to start, we'll hear from the Joint Fiscal Office regarding financial implications for school districts, followed by testimony from the Superintendent and School Boards Association. So with that, I would like to turn this to Mark Perot, the Joint Fiscal Office, or Chloe. Good morning, everybody. I thought before jumping into the homeschooling issue specifically, I'd talk a little bit generally about what the implications are for making adjustments to ADM are in addition to the homeschooling proposal. The agency also has a couple proposals about either providing a whole harmless or some other way to make adjustments to ADM next year. So in some of the discussion I've heard over the last week or so, I think some people are under the impression that making adjustments to the pupil count has directs resources to students as if we were under a foundation formula. Under our system, money doesn't follow kids. So the number of students that you have in your system doesn't determine how much money you receive from the Education Fund. You receive exactly what you spend. What changing the pupil count does is it changes your homestead property tax rate, because the way we determine that rate is your education spending per pupil. So if a district that's losing kids is able to have a higher number of pupils than they were under current law, that means that their per pupil spending would drop a little bit and consequently their homestead property tax rate would also drop. So from a district's perspective, the initial impact is they would have a slightly lower homestead tax rate, which they would like. The issue that then comes up is that whether when we apply those reduced tax rates to the grand list, we raise less money on the homestead property tax. And because we have to raise the same amount of money, regardless of how we've counted pupils, Chloe, when she does her rejections of the yield for the year, would have to slightly lower the yield so that overall property tax rates would come up slightly. So this is a complicated explanation because it's the way our system works, but the net result is that when you change ADM count, you haven't changed statewide the amount of money that we're going to raise on the homestead property tax. And we haven't changed the amount of money that's going to go out to districts statewide. What you've done is you've adjusted the homestead tax rate between communities. And because it's a zero sum exercise, districts that benefit from any change in ADM are going to see a slightly lower rate, but districts that aren't benefiting from that reduction are going to see a slightly higher rate. So you're basically reallocating the education tax burden. So that said, on the home school issue, with the numbers that Representative... Mark, may I interrupt or just ask a question? The... what you're describing doesn't affect 21 tax rates, though. I'm sorry. Yeah, I should have let off with that. We're talking about that next year. Yes. We're talking about, you know, when we go through the exercise in December of projecting education tax rates for next year, this is where this would come into play, and in tax rates in FY22. So it doesn't affect the taxes that anybody's paying now. It's going to affect the taxes they pay next year. Yes. If we made a change. So with all that said, in terms of the magnitude of a change like this, I don't think it would be huge. Based on the numbers that Representative Webb just went through, we're talking about another 700 kids, which is less than 1% are equalized pupil total. So, you know, the fiscal implications across the state, I don't think would be very significant. It may be significant if the number of homes... the new homeschoolers are clustered very tightly in a particular area of the state or in a particular district. But otherwise, it's a really relatively small number of kids. And the other thing that I think needs to be pointed out is when we're measuring... when we're determining equalized pupils, you start out with a two-year average for ADM. So the impact of ADM in any one year, it's felt over a couple of years, but fully. But in FY 22, you'd only be receiving the impact that it would only be half what you might expect of the 700 kids initially. So I think it would be a relatively small impact. So I wanted to make it clear just so everybody sort of understands what you're doing when you change ADM. That said, I don't think this particular change on homeschoolers would have a big, big impact on rejiggering how we've done the burden overall. But and I have reached out to Ted Fisher, and again, I was told as the chair was that they would have a much better idea of what the final number is by the first week of September. The numbers that we were looking at so far were done, I think, based on the July 15th initial application timeline. We are going to be hearing from them next week to clarify that. So if I understand what you're saying and help me with this because this is education funding is not a simple topic in the state of Vermont. So if I have a large number of homeschoolers, it will affect it. And I'm looking at what it's going to cost me to run the school, and all of a sudden I have a decreased number, that's going to raise my per pupil spending. It's going to affect my district, but it's going to have an effect on the whole broad education fund, but not with, you know, whatever it is, number of students, 700 students is probably not going to make a gigantic difference. Is that correct? I don't think so, only because 700 new kids is, you know, significantly less than, I mean, 1% would be 170, 870 kids. So it's a relatively small number statewide. I mean, that number, that number may be higher now. I'm not sure how much, but even if it even if it's double that, it's still not a huge number compared to our overall enrollment. And, you know, one thing I didn't mention, I think part of the impetus behind the desire to not continue to count home school is to pull out for one year is that it's possible that parents will pull their teachers, their kids out short term. And so they won't be available for the count, but they may be back in school in October or November and the school will be then required to provide services to them. So. And the count is specifically in October. It's a four week period in October. Is that right? Or a two week period in October? I'm probably not the best person to ask that. I think it's, I think it is done in October. Yes. Which is going to be a probably a rather volatile month anyway in terms of what parents are choosing. Yeah, although I think, I mean, the remote or in school option, I don't think affects this. It's just if you're withdrawing your kid. To home school. That would be an issue. Okay. Questions for Mark? Representative Coopley, Larry, you're muted. What happens in, let's say in January, these children go back to school because home schooling has been probably somewhat difficult for some parents. Is that change? Yeah, no. I mean, if they're not counted in the October Calvin, they wouldn't be counted for the year. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Other questions for Mark? Okay. I'd like them to turn to, is it Sue Szylowski and Chelsea Myers? We're going to speak to us. It's actually Jeff Francis and Sue Szylowski. You're back. I am happily back. I think that Chelsea had another assignment this morning. She might be watching, but she's not on the call. Okay. Is my audio working okay today? Yes, it's good. Okay. So I'll endeavor to be brief, but I want to start with two comments. The first is I had occasion to watch the Ways and Means Committee this morning. I was away for three and a half days, so I was on a way for a long period of time, but I did have a chance to reflect. And I was appreciative this morning of the discourse in the Ways and Means Committee, and I was reminded of how much I appreciate the service of all legislators, but also the thoughtfulness that I've had occasion to observe both the Ways and Means Committee and the House Education Committee. And I, despite the fact that we're in a very challenging time, I actually found the approach that was taken in the Ways and Means Committee as somewhat settling. So I really sincerely appreciate the way you approach this, and that goes to both committees. So thank you very much. In terms of this issue specifically, I'll start by saying in my more than 20 years of observation in the education policy arena, you know, I'm reminded every day as you are that these are just extraordinary times for the state, not just in education, but period. And I've advocated from the outset of working together, and that's what the Superintendent's Association and I endeavor to do. I think you've seen that from Chelsea, who's working with me now, and I'm constantly touching base with our members who have never experienced anything like this either. So we are all in it together, and that's the spirit in which I offered this testimony this morning. This issue of stabilizing the ADM for a one-year period to contend with the lack of predictability and enrollment is really an effort in my mind to bring as much normalcy to the process of providing education this year as possible. And in early conversations that I've had with some of you, the question was why do it at all and why do it now? Well, the reason to do it in this session, short session, if you do, is because as Mark Peralta pointed out, the count of students to calculate the ADM takes place in a window 11 days after the first day of school through the 30th day. So you refer to it as an October count that's accurate. That number is utilized to calculate equalized pupils, which are announced by the agency and referred to in the December 1st letter. And it's the denominator equalized pupils is the denominator that's applied in the calculation or education spending per pupil for FY22, as Chair Ansel pointed out, and that's how tax rates are calculated. We're at a point right now where I think school officials honestly do not know what that enrollment is going to look like during the census period. We do know that homeschooling applications are way up, but some superintendents are alluding to the fact that kids may not come because their families have made other choices. So even though the number may be a minimal number, as Mark Peralta indicated, I think it would be helpful if school districts knew that the predictability around minimal change in their equalized pupil due to and factors that are outside their control would be both settling and stabilizing in terms of the budget making process for FY22, which we know is going to be excruciatingly difficult, despite all the efforts that you're making to make sure that schools have enough resources. We have not, at least I have not worked with Secretary French on this, but he apparently has come to the same conclusion because in his presentation he recommended it as a policy change that the General Assembly could do on a one-year basis. I fully understand Mark's point about it being a zero sum game. I did a survey a couple weeks ago because I was hearing from the field about concerns over a loss of enrollment and thus ADM, and I had 48 out of 55 superintendents respond. 80% of them indicated that this issue of potential loss of ADM based on unpredictability and who was going to be in school for the census period was cited by 80%. So 25 out of 48 superintendents expressed, they said they were very concerned about it. 14 out of the 48 said that they were concerned about it, and I gave them an opportunity to offer comments and the comments went directly to their knowledge of folks who had indicated that they would be homeschooling their students, but also other mobility that might take place as a result of COVID-19. So I will confess that I have not taken the analysis of all the implications all the way out, and I will also indicate that I don't have the best possible information yet because I don't think that the best possible information is going to come frankly until the census period that starts 11 days after the start of school, but based on my thought process, my conversations with people and what I know of the issue, I think it would be both useful policy and a good gesture on the part of the General Assembly if they did create ADM stability through legislative action for the budget process, which will affect FY22. So those are an overview of my comments. I'd be happy to answer questions to the extent I can, but that's my thinking and my testimony at this point this morning. How do homeschoolers interface with the schools at this point? We do participate in sports, some will take a class. Yeah, so Sue may have, I didn't check the statute on that. I know that Chair Webb, you had asked me about that and I started to look into it and got distracted. There are provisions for homeschoolers to petition the school for some participation in the school district and I think, but I could be wrong, somebody needs to check because I've just forgotten, I used to know that there may be some credit associated with that, but there's no obligation for school districts, excuse me, for homeschoolers to interact with the school system other than the school system needs to know that the resident pupils are in a homeschool situation. So I can't speak for Sue. She may know the answer to that off the top of her head. I would have to look into it or you could have somebody from Legislative Council look into it. So do you want to respond to that? And then Larry, I see you've got a question. Good morning. So Jeff is right that homeschoolers do participate in some aspects of school. Sometimes it's sports or a class and I, while you're talking, I can look up a little bit more information about that if that would be helpful. Remember something to do with they have to be at least three-fifths homeschooled? I'm not sure what that was in relation to that. It'd be great if we could find that out or Jim. So other questions? Larry Coopley. Yes, special education for homeschoolers. I think are they subjected to IEPs? Can they participate? They give up their free and appropriate public education. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. So no, there's no obligation. May I ask a question? Yes. This is for Jeff. Since this does not affect tax rates in school 22 and we, we're still, you know, what's going to happen in schools is still evolving. I don't think any of us really know what's going to, what's going to unwind here, which is part of, part of the problem. But I guess I made to understand why it makes sense to act now rather than waiting until January when we've got more information. Yeah. So I think that's a great question. And if you consider, and so I'm going to speculate that the volatility in terms of equalized pupil and tax rate calculations is going to be more dramatic in some of the more rural areas of Vermont that have lesser populations, but may have an inclination toward homeschool because of a lesser full complement of services than you might get in a larger population area. And that, you know, I'm deducing that it's a, but if, if, if people accept that as a well reasoned explanation, I would then sort of translate you to December 15th when you're a school district and you're have a budget that you've been working on that is going to provide what you consider to be a appropriate and useful education for the kids in your district. And you see a precipitous decline in your equalized pupil count because let's say 20% of the kids in a district with 150 kids were now homeschooling. So all of a sudden the landscape for your budget development process has changed because you're going to see a measurable effect, an increase as it were in the increase in the cost per pupil. So now you're dealing with a whole set of factors in terms of less equalized pupils simply through the mathematical computation of much higher cost per pupil and a tax rate that now gives you a lot of pause with regard to whether or not you're going to get approval by the voters or not. And these are circumstances that were not within your control. And I think that you would argue or it could be argued that they're not even sort of a natural occurrence. It's an occurrence of a trend toward homeschooling, which is responsive to the COVID-19 era. Your question about why not wait is really it's a it's a the answer to that is the timing of it, right? So the legislature, a new legislature is going to reconvene in January. The budgets need to be wrapped up and warned by the end of January. So the ability for the General Assembly to make a correction if it needed to or wanted to, that would in fact have an influence on the budget making process, the window had already closed. So it's a and I apologize. It's a long winded way of saying two things. One, you want to guard against dramatic effect if equalized pupils fall precipitously because of homeschooling, particularly in the more rural districts with lesser population. That's the first point. And the second point was if the General Assembly was inclined to do something about it because they saw it happening, the timing doesn't line up because budgets are completed and warned and by the end of January and the General Assembly is just getting started at that point. If I could just jump in and I know there's other hands, but I think I appreciate your comments. But I think what I'm trying to separate in my mind is the question about how you budget, which is how much money do you need to educate the kids that you've got to educate and how do you set the tax rate. And I feel like the comments you're making are mixing those together and that if I were, I guess the message I want to see whether it makes sense is that the budget needs to be set based on the needs of the school district. And I understand that it should be as low as possible in order to be able to educate the kids that need to be educated. So anyway, that's just a comment that you don't need to respond. No, if I can respond, I'd like to because I think it's a very, very good comment. And it's a comment that I have no, I don't take issue with it whatsoever. My thought, though, is that the volatility, I mean, we don't know if kids, if children, if families are making homeschool choices for their children. And as several of you have indicated, you know, that they could come back at some point in the year, the budget making process for FY 22 is presumably going to reflect the number of kids you're educating. And I think that, you know, just like we don't know what exactly the numbers are going to look like in the current school year, we're also not sure what the numbers are going to look like in the next school year. So there's a lot of variables that we don't have control over or knowledge of at this point. And that's why I think if the ADM protection as it were is judged by the General Assembly to not have a material effect on the yield, I think that there's a reason to do it to bring that stability in. Because, and it's my opinion, by doing it, you actually are creating a lot of stability and you're accounting for variables that could have a more destabilizing effect if that ADM is protection is not in place. And I don't think that's not perfect thinking on my part, but it's the best I have right at the moment. I think you remind us that today we're just talking about one lever that could be pulled, which is ADM, but there are obviously a bunch of other levels of levers that could be pulled as well. But I want to just, I see that Jim Demere, our ledge council wanted to say something, and then we'll do Emily, Peter and George. Just briefly on the reason to do it now, just mentioning that the equalized people calculation is done by mid-December. So if you want to give direction for that calculation, you have to do it now. Otherwise, we'll be doing it after the fact, which is possible, but I'd point that out. Emily Coronizer. Thanks, Jeff. I know we're talking about sort of a drop in enrollment due to homeschooling. Do you have a sense of what the scale is as compared to a rise in enrollment due to second homes becoming primary homes or folks sort of COVID refugees, however you want to describe it? I imagine that it's happening differently in different communities. Yeah, and the answer to that question is no, and I wish I did because it's all part of the picture. But what I will say is that the concerns about ADM loss were responded to in the manner that I indicated, 80% were either concerned or very concerned. And remember, I mean, they're responding in a period of unprecedented instability. And the information that I have on the increase, which is likely got the same sources that you do, largely comes from media accounts from districts in the southern tier of Vermont, like the Wyndham Central area, where people are reporting increase spikes. So, but I don't have any, I can't reconcile those numbers and don't have any more information than what I've read. So from, I just want to clarify, so the homeschooling information you're getting is from superintendents, but you're not, I'm not hearing media accounts. Personally, I'm actually hearing about increases from superintendents, but I'm in the southern tier of the state. Yeah, I mean, I've talked about it from Billy Anton, and there was a Vermont Digger article about it. But you haven't heard about it from other superintendents. Yeah, I've not. And the homeschool information, which Kate, I think Chair Webb indicated early, came from the AOE as of July 15th, where homeschool applications were up from 932 households, I think, to 1634. And they're expecting to do an update to that number next week. Yes. And that's a good point, Jeff, because I can't tell if it's applications from families or applications for individual students. I don't know that yet. Kate, it looks like you're frozen. So I'll go ahead and get Peter. Sorry. Thank you. Peter. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Thank you. Let me just suggest a position which recognizes the need to impose some order, but also not to shield what may turn out to be a more permanent change. And that is simply introduced some dampening language, such that the ADM shall not be permitted to be used for calculations in excess of 3% to 5% changes up or down. I say that because it also helps the point that Chairman, Chairwoman Ansel made about the superintendents he's trying to budget, and they'll be budgeting before, in fact, a lot of the dust settles. So it allows them some flexibility, but it also limits the volatility. Thanks, George. Yeah, I want to go back to, you know, we set the tax rates way before we had all the information this year, and the reason I supported doing that was because we wanted to give as much certainty, remove as much uncertainty as we were capable of removing from the boards and the business managers and the superintendents. And I look at this very much the same way. You know, 16 years of building budget in a 2000 kid's school district, it is how much you're going to spend and what's the effect on the tax rate is are not independent in the building process. There is always an eye on what this is going to mean, because when you get your budget voted down, that is a really difficult situation. So that's why I think it's important to do this now, to give them as to reduce the uncertainty that we can by letting them know they're not going to have this giant change in ADM after they've started the process, because the process starts in September, really, and, you know, it goes through to after the first of the year when they have to make the budgets finalized. So I think it is important to do it now, to give them as much certainty as we are able to give them. I think Mark is next. I just wanted to point out on the stability argument, under current law, ADM is already a two-year average. So to the extent that there's an impact in the 2021 school year, it's going to be cut in half because you're going to be taking last year, you know, last year's ADM, this year's ADM and averaging them to come up with a number. It basically smooths it anyway. I'm sorry? It smooths it anyway. Yeah, there's already a dampening factor built in, so you don't get wild strength. Yeah. In my back, can you hear me? Yeah. I can hear you. I did my best while you were traveling. Yeah, thank you. I was looking for even in Shelburne, we have trouble with internet now and then. We have three possible suggestions on how we would address this issue in terms of ADM, and I'd like to turn over to Jim Dammeray to look at those three issues. Okay. So there's a piece of paper, Sorcha, that I sent you, I believe, which has the three options on it. Can you put that up? Hi, Jim. Phil is on now and I think I'm looking for it now. Oh my God. It's posted in our Friday testimony under Jim Dammeay. Right. It's a different version, but there's the same things, either it's fine. Sorry, just a second. So is this what you sent out, Kate? I have something. I sent out sort of the different pieces, and I think that Jim might have put them all together. Is that correct, Jim? I put this three options on a piece of paper. Yeah. You have to break them out, so that's what I did. Okay, good. And you sent it to Phil? Phil, I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm going to have to open it from the email. So just a second. It is on your website for the Education Committee. Is it at the actual document because, okay, it's called Options for Adjusting ADM to Address Increased in Homeschooling. Right. I just looked at that and it appeared to be something different. I might have mislabeled it, but I found it again. There is this, whoops. That's not what I want. Is it? Is it? Yeah. That's fine. Phil, thank you. Yeah. Okay. So very short. The recommendation from AOE is the first one, which is to require the secretary to determine ADM for each school district account, no lesser than the districts in 1920 ADM. The second is to limit the decline, for example, to a 3.5% amount year-over-year, and especially before during this being that maybe it could be a decline or an increase, but some form of whole columnists. And the third is to, for 2021, count students enrolled for the 1920, so for the 2021 school year, count student enrolled for the 1920 school year who are in home study programs. So basically, what you're doing there is you're looking and seeing if they were enrolled last year, but they're not enrolled this year because they're homeschooled, you add those back in. That's the third option. So there's three options. And one thing Mark mentioned is money does not follow the students. So one thing to think about in these three options is not just the impact of operating districts, but the tuition districts as well, and how that will work, and also under public high school choice. So a couple of variations here, maybe a thing through that maybe Mark or Jeff will help with, but I think we got through operating districts, tuition districts, and public school choice as well. Okay, so we have three options. One is not less than or equal to last year. The other is the whole harmless added 2.5 decline. And the third is to count students who were enrolled last year, who are homeschooling this year to count them in your ADM. Scott back. Thank you, Kate. I really like option three. I think the first two, I think they induce other instabilities into the Ed fund and to some degree sound like Phantom students part two. I think the last option is it's going to be the easiest and it's going to protect the districts from the homeschoolers not be counted, and it'll also protect them from a bigger jump in the future because they were held harmless on just a quantitative basis in FY 22. Jeff Francis or Sue, you had provided the whole harmless I believe option, wondering your response to these three options. You know, I represented back, I think makes some good points and I can speak only for myself here. I haven't conferred with anybody, but it strikes me that any of the three options would be useful and from a policy perspective, the one that has the least amount of and I use the term because I can't think of other downside or as most appropriate term what it is we're trying to accomplish. So I do see the merits in number three. I also think I know that you need to move on this fairly quickly, but it would be good to be able to frame this in the new data that's supposed to come from the AOE. So I don't object to any of them. I think that any would be fine and I do see that right now, at least preliminarily, I see the merits of the third one. Sue Siglowski. Yes, I would agree with what Jeff just said, but also just wanted to clarify on the third one because it sounded like Jim was saying that he was changing one of the years in there in the second. Yeah, so the reference to 2019-21, that should be 2019-2020. So you're looking back at 19-20 school year and what with them and if the child is not enrolled in this school year because they're being homeschooled, you'll be added back in to the count. Okay, thank you, Jim. Hi, there are questions. We will hear from the agency next week. I will talk with Representative Ansel if you would like to be a part of that conversation going forward or if we end up just YouTubing or sending a member in. Yeah, I have a question, actually. I heard maybe for J.F.O., which is, I'm the third option if that's where you're going, how does it work for tuition districts? Because if you're tuition district, you're obviously paying tuition to the operating district. The operating district's enrolling that student, that student isn't in the operating district's ADM count because it's only resident students. So I'm wondering just, I haven't got that three yet, but I'm hoping J.F.O. can help think through implications if going that direction for tuition districts and for the high school choice. So, Mark, and then I see Scott back again. Yeah, that's a good question, Jim. The way that would work in a district that tuitions is the schools that are educating the student, they receive the monies, the money follows the student in other words. And so if the student, let's say you have a kid that's being tuition to a school, and that student decides, it was part of their ADM count last year, if that student decides that this year, you know what, I'm going to do, I'm going to homeschool, I'm not going to go take my tuition to that public or independent school, then the public or independent school doesn't receive that money. However, that money would reside with the district. Right. What does that do for ADM count? I guess nothing for the average school. It wouldn't do anything for ADM count. The ADM count would, if we were looking at option three, if that student was counted as an ADM in the previous year, then they would still be counted for the district. For the same district, yeah. Right, yeah. So basically what happens there is that the receiving school, that public or independent school that was supposed to educate that child, they just, they would not receive the tuition money. Right, but in terms of ADM, I'm trying to focus on ADM here, that child's enrolled in the operating school, they're receiving school. There's really no difference. That's students, whether they're being tuitioned out, or whether they are attending a school that an operating school in the district, they count, their ADM count is, they count in the same way. Right, yeah, I get that, yeah. Mark or Chloe, do you have a comment? I don't, maybe Chloe does. I think she's on. I don't, can I jump in just for a second? I don't want to sound like a broken record, but there's a fourth option, which is to wait till January when we have better information. There's also just the consideration that we know that school districts are looking for some kind of a signal. And the question going forward is, is this conversation enough of a signal to say that we're going to be looking at it again? Yeah, we understand. We need, we may need to make a change, but we need better information, I guess, is the way I would, I would communicate my feelings about it. We may need to look at the way when we start counting. We may, they're just a multitude of different ways that we could be looking at this, and we'll have three, three months of actual school by then. There's so much uncertainty and so much variability, and I suspect that there are issues that we haven't thought about. Just listening to the conversation about the three options that Jim presented, you know, there are just multitudes of issues that we haven't really, I think got our arms around yet. My preference at this point would be to wait, but I understand the need for a signal. So I realize this is probably going to continue to be a subject of conversation. I think that's helpful. I think it's good that it is. And school will be in session while we're still in session. So that may help us see at least what the first week or two of school will be. So we'll still have time if we find that we need to act. So anything, any other questions? A comment is one thing would be really nice to know, you know, to whether do we need to do something in the short session or is if there was some indication from AOE whether clustering is really a problem. If it's not, if these kids are completely spread out evenly throughout the state, then, you know, this is a conversation that probably ends. So we kind of need to know that. Which leads me to my question also to the Superintendent's and School Board Association is, are the schools aware of the number of students within their district that are on homeschool applications? I don't know. That would be important to know. I know when we asked, we asked the AOE if they could tell us where these students were, they said that that would, that would be, that would be a complex calculation at a time that didn't have the personnel to do it. But it is a question going forward if we are to see if this is as big a problem as we think it is. Yeah. I mean, again, you know, I can't speak for the AOE, but if there's 1700 applications, they're all tied to a residence. They're all tied to a district. Right. Strikes me that, you know, it's an important consideration that somebody ought to be able to find the time to do to answer the question. That's a very good question. Yeah. Scott Beck. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't have a question. Oh, sorry. I didn't lower my hand. Okay. So I guess we will be hearing from the agency next week. I am going to ask them if they can give us a better indication about whether there are clusters or whether it's, we don't need to know where at this, but we just need to know if is there anything else that that folks would like me to make sure that we get from the agency? I guess if we're asking about clusters, it would matter if they're in small districts or large districts, right? Yes. I don't mean to assign work outside of state government, but I suspect a survey by the superintendents association would probably get that get those numbers pretty quick. Yeah. My response to that is we always try to help. I like it when things are official. They're not official from us. They would be from the AOE, but I, you know, what I'll do is watch the AOE's testimony next week and if there's something we can do to help get you the information that you need, we will most certainly do that. I would agree. Official numbers are better, but they may be a lot longer away. Well, there are 1600 applications. I'm assuming that they've got an address or at least a town on those. Emily Kornheiser, do you have- Yeah, I mean, if we're asking about homeschooling, I wonder if we could also ask about new enrollments. And I also agree that things might take longer from the AOE than we need to make a decision that seems to be a theme of today. And I hear you, Jeff, that you appreciate, you know, I appreciate the idea of appreciating official numbers, but we're, we need to make decisions and we need information to make decisions. So maybe if we had information from a few different sources, we could triangulate that information and come to an answer there. I don't know. Jeff, do you- I'm sorry, I interrupted you and you broke up a little bit there. Could you say that again? No, I just said, I understood Emily's point. I mean, for my vantage point as the Executive Director of the Superintendent's Association, I often am concerned when we're making what is construed to be a redundant request or are asking for follow-up information when the logic model would have one say, we've already submitted that information. Why doesn't another entity or agency provide it? So I mean, these folks are like I opened with our, you know, they basically are working longer hours on harder projects than they've ever done. But I will stress that our job at the Association has been and will continue to be can contribute to thoughtful analysis and the best decisions and I'm not gonna turn down an opportunity to do that. So my preference would be let's see what the AOE comes up with next week and if we need to help or take responsibility for some information, I'm not gonna, I will give you my commitment right now that we'll do that. We'll invite you in, Jeff, when we have the AOE as well. Okay, anything else? Thank you very much. This is a challenging conversation and a challenging time and we have three months until we get back in in January to address some of the issues we aren't able to address now. So with that, I think we will switch our topic to one related to the governor's budget and a couple of the grant issues that were slated for reduction. So to say goodbye. Yes, and if you want to stay, you're welcome to stay but I think that the ADM issue is over next. Thank you. Thank you very much for running us, don't you? Thank you very much for being there. Okay, so we're a little bit early which is okay. If we have a few minutes to spare, can we just, you probably have gone over this already but what our days will be for committee next week and sort of ongoing? Yes, I do have that and there's a little graph, and oh here I can. Next week we are on Tuesday, we have floor 10 and committee from one to three on Tuesday. On Wednesday we have committee from 1030 to 1230 and floor from two to four. On Thursday it's just floor from two to four and Friday we're 1030 to 1230 committee and floor from two to four. Madam Chair, I think they have moved us on Wednesday, September 2nd. Okay. We are 1230 to two just before floor. Okay, thank you. Sorry, could you say that one more time? Wednesday 1230 to two is committee time. Not 1030 to two. Oh gosh I'm looking at the wrong, I'm looking at the wrong way. I'm sorry. That's correct. Everything else, yes. Tuesday is one to four. Wednesday is, you said 1230 to two and Friday is 1030 to 1230 for committee time. Thank you. So next Wednesday not 1030 to 1230 but 1230 to two? Yes. And we're anticipating getting the agency of education in at that time. I'm hoping that on Tuesday that we'll be ready to respond to the pre-K-12 budget request. I'm glad to see we have chip conquest in the room as well. And anything else before we switch? Okay. The second part of our meeting has to do with the governor's recommended budget for 2021. And we're looking at three of the three areas of the governor's budget which raised some concern. One was the state board of education allocation. We will hear from them next week. And we also heard concerns about the cut in funding for outright Vermont. There is a cut as well to the governor's institute. There was a third one that disappeared that had to do with early reading that it's not attached to policy that I'm going to recommend that we just say goodbye to that even though it's disturbing. And we had lots of uses for that. So with that, I would like to invite Dana Kaplan. Just as a reminder, chip conquest, I believe the governor's recommend was to go back to the 2019, FY19 or was it FY19? 20,000 allocation. Whereas I think it was FY20 was 60,000. And FY19 was 20,000 when they actually had federal funds. Does that sound accurate? In the ballpark, but I would be best probably for Dana Kaplan to let you know the specific details. But it is, but you're right that there's a significant cut from last year's 60,000 dollar. Okay. Dana Kaplan. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're here. You're the impact. You hear me okay? Yes. Okay. So I am here and I am joined also by Mara Iverson, who is our director of education. Mara is waving to everybody. Thank you for taking this time. I shared some remarks yesterday in the public testimony period of the budget and I had two minutes. So I'm going to try and speak a lot slower now. And I do have more than two minutes of information to share with you all. I appreciate your listening and engaging on what is really, really important to the organization. So I'm going to just read these remarks and we'll certainly be available for whatever questions you all have afterwards. We do speak to the history of the partnership and the ways that the funding has been pivotal to the organization in prior years. So for the record, my name is Dana Kaplan. I use he and him pronouns, and I'm the executive director of outright Vermont. We are here today with a clear ask. Please recommend full restoration of the $60,000 legislative appropriation to outright Vermont so that LGBTQ youth have a chance to live. Make no mistake about it. The stakes are that high. Over the past many years, we've worked incredibly hard to move from scrappy to mighty, knowing the stakes were too high to be anything but resourced and available through tireless advocacy efforts at the state house by building relationships with individuals, corporations, and private philanthropic foundations. We've made sure that our financial footing is strong so that we can be well positioned to meet the needs of Vermont communities. I assure you, we could have five people doing the work that Mara does, and there would still be an unmet need. And Mara doesn't mess around people. Our overall education budget for our FY20 calendar year is $163,469. That is direct costs that allow us not just to execute our trainings, but to be ready and available to provide resources for educators year round. We know firsthand the desperation that teachers and administrators feel when they don't have the knowledge or skills to support their students. Just this morning, Mara was on a call from some educators and can share that anecdote with you. We hear time and again how relieved and successful they are when they get these answers and reassurance. Study after study has shown that the best way a government can spend money is on education. It has the highest rate of return in the long run. The $60,000 appropriation covers most of what it costs to have one educator on our team, and one person providing these services amounts to hundreds of resourced adults, schools, and youth. And I will share some of those numbers with you in a second. Conversely, we have seen just how much it costs a district when they fail to meet the needs of their students. Just last year, Burlington District was sued by the Department of Justice for failing to provide affirming treatment of trans students. Do you know what they are mandated to do now? District-wide training. The $60,000 is an investment in all of our futures so we can keep the worst from happening. And that was pre-COVID. At a time when the pandemic reveals the depths of our reliance on schools and educators to do so much more than teach, and though our schools are burdened by the extra costs of operating safely in a COVID world, we just cannot afford to take a short-sighted approach. We must continue to invest in teacher training, in school supports, and programs that set us all up for brighter days ahead. I promise you, outright is a pivotal part of that constellation. Educators and administrators are navigating enough as it is, trying to get up to speed on how to teach in this new world. We are here and at the ready to provide useful suggestions, coping strategies, and curriculum ideas as needed. Think one-stop shopping for all things supporting LGBTQ youth. A $40,000 cut to that budget, money that we were told as of July we could count on, would be detrimental to our services. It's a reduction of nearly 25%. Without this money, we lose our stability and as the only entity in this state providing specific training, consultation, resource development, and support programs for LGBTQ youth educators and administrators, we must remain steady and available to the people we serve. Now for our data people in the room, here is a quick snapshot of that reach. In 2019, our work spanned all 14 counties in Vermont, 104 towns, and that's what we know of, it's likely higher as schools like U32 serve multiple towns. We supported 83 gender and sexuality alliances in schools. These are pivotal peer social and support spaces in schools for youth. We trained 1,341 youth, 2,674 adults, and provided a total of 111 trainings and workshops, or 250 hours in actual training and workshop delivery time. Mind you, that does not include prep time, time scheduling, the follow-up phone calls that come, so that number is quite low. In terms of the annual statewide events that we held, we worked with 130 youth and 30 educators in our GSA conference that we do each year, 106 youth and 26 adults at our leadership day at the State House, where we saw many of you, and 134 youth and 30 adults at our end of year summit. In each of these instances, we are providing youth and adults the opportunity to see bright futures that are possible, in other words, a critical and hopeful counter narrative to what they typically see and feel. Now, you all have been critical to championing these efforts, taking testimony from educators and administrators, youth and parents, listening to your constituents, and increasing your understanding of the harsh realities that LGBTQ youth face in Vermont. Let me turn for a moment to provide a very quick refresh of how we got to this point in terms of the appropriation. In 2019, we came before you to share the very real need for schools across Vermont to better their support for LGBTQ youth. You acted with care and dedication, recommending a $60,000 appropriation to the AOE base as a pass-through grant to outright Vermont, expressly for the purpose of funding our work to create safer schools. That the AOE would attempt to cut this relatively small for them amount of funding that directly supports the sustainability of these efforts through funding salary of the director of education is beyond disheartening, and it's honestly scary. I know you have seen the YRBS data that we sent earlier this week. Those numbers are real youth. Those are lived experiences of kids in our schools who are suffering, isolated in their remote towns, and living with rejecting family members, being bullied in their classes, and left out in their curriculum. In fact, they are ultimately navigating poor health outcomes across every single risk category that we know of, all based on having to navigate a world, and in our case, a state that is still largely unaccepting, oftentimes violent, and hateful towards them, and yes, that is at school as well as at home. I want to speak now just to a few points that I heard from the Secretary of Education over this past week. One, the $60,000 is not an anomaly. To paint it as such is downright inaccurate. You can see a slice of the picture when you look at the PDF of the AOE payments, and specifically I would like to draw your attention to the agreement amount column, which shows a steady increase in funds from $18,000 to just under $40,000, and that $23,000 that you see at the end was based on an additional three-month agreement to do work creating a curriculum guide for the state around inclusive sexual health education. After that, we then got the $60,000 appropriation. This growth is the AOE being responsive to the needs of their students specifically based on feedback and advocacy from educators across the state who are desperate for more in-depth trainings, resource and curriculum development, and consultation so they can boost their capacity to support struggling kids. What I want to say is that I stepped into the helm as our ED in 2017, but prior to that, I was our director of education. So while Secretary French acknowledges not being around then, I was, and I was working very closely with both the AOE and our districts across Vermont to see that arc of growth and need. The rationale to cut this money is essentially to spread the pain around. If we apply an equitable lens to how we look at budget changes, that makes no sense. LGBT youth cannot tolerate any more pain. It is a death sentence. We do not want any part of it. What kind of a message does it send to queer and trans youth who are already struggling in schools? In Vermont, we lead. And in the past, we have done so with the Agency of Education by our side, trailblazing with authoring of the best practices guide for supporting transgender students in schools, including gender identity in our anti-discrimination laws. Other states look to us, but right now with this proposed cut, I am not seeing the Vermont that we need. In closing, let me say this. Calling out this money from the base is dangerous and it puts youth at further risk of failing at the hands of our education system. What's at the heart of protective factors is supportive people, adults and peers, not having to bear the burden of being the one in your class to educate others about how to use your correct name and pronouns. It's about getting to be an active participant in school, in sports, in clubs, in classes. It is about belonging and belonging is suicide prevention with no backup or alternative plan for the life-saving services that this money funds. It means the cut isn't just a cut to outright. It's a cut to LGBTQ support work in schools, period. We cannot afford that. If there is any silver lining to this wretched pandemic, it is that more of us see how our fates are intertwined. I thank you all for your consideration of restoring these funds so we can all get back to the necessary work that's ahead of us. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dana. I am wondering, is your full budget and the revenue that you have to run your organization, where do your other funds come from? Yeah. Our full budget for FY20, and we're on the calendar year, is $700,948 to be exact. And that money comes from a combination of about 28% of contributions, private contributions. 25% of that is foundation grants. 19% of that is state money. And another just shy of 20% of that is coming from annual fundraising events that we are trying to figure out how to do virtually. We get 5% of, and this is projected, of course, 5% of money from running our week-long summer camp, which this year we said to everybody that attended was free, so we did not see any of that revenue. And we do get 4%, projected 4% of revenue from fee-for-service for healthcare providers, for youth-facing professionals, and sometimes from some schools who are able to pay for additional professional development. So a little bit of fee-for-service money. That's the constellation of what we do. And I think it's important to say that especially as an LGBTQ youth organization, so much of what we are up against is having to prove our validity, and having to prove the importance of our resources, that we know what we're up to, right? Because that's how homophobia and transphobia works, works, this idea that we are somehow less than. And so we want to make sure that folks are seeing, you know what? The Agency of Education is partnering with you. You are valid and well-resourced and knowledgeable. There is an incredibly important piece to that, where we can then turn to donors and say, the Agency of Education is backing us up with $60,000. We want you to be in it with us too. And that's really, really important for an organization like ours. So in terms of professional development, so at this point you're providing that primarily at no cost to the districts? It depends on the district. We have a sliding scale fee that we use for workshops. We don't deny anybody for lack of ability to pay. And we have a suggested amount that folks are able to give us. What we have seen over time is given our capitalist society, money is value. And when school districts pay or any individual pays for any sort of professional development, which they do, there's a different level of buy-in and accountability that happens. Thank you. I didn't see the order of who had their hands raised first. So I'll start with Representative Austin, then Elder, then James. Representative Austin. Hey, Dana. Thank you for coming to speak to us today. I guess I am a data kind of person. And I'm wondering about the Q population. Like I'm assuming there are students in school that are not identified. You don't have those numbers because they're questioning or they don't aren't even aware. And that through your services, they become more aware and kind of hopefully feel more accepted in terms of identifying publicly. Do you have any data about those students that might be in schools but have not identified yet? Mara, do you want to share anything about that? What I usually talk about, by the way, my name for the record is Mara. I was the Director of Education at Outright Vermont, and she, her pronouns. I usually use the YRBS data because there is a questioning gender and a questioning sexuality option. And so some of the youth who are questioning do identify themselves there. At that point, we're talking at about roughly 10% of the youth that take the survey are identifying as LGBTQ in some way. My guess is that we could probably add about another 2% on that for the kids that at some point during their high school career will recognize. And then it's obviously hard to tell kind of beyond that. Thank you. I think another number that we can share is essentially 14,700 LGBTQ youth in our state. And that's using an estimate of 87,000 students, which does include all grades and multiplying that by 14%. So yeah, we're talking about a lot of students. And anecdotally, I was just going to look for a quote. We've been hearing from a lot of our community members, and I assume that you all have too, about this funding proposal cut. And just this morning, I heard from a parent who was talking about, my kid, when they came out at the age of 12, was so shut down and shy and struggling just to be in the world and having gone through connection to being in a GSA, having come to some of your other work, which is doing social and support programming, they found themselves and they found their peers. And now we've got a confident 14-year-old who's out there and able to tend to the rest of their parts of their lives, because we're not just talking about this one piece of who you are, right? Those are stories that we hear from folks all of the time. It is hard to underscore the importance of what happens when you cannot be yourself. And the burden of that on a kid going through the world on a daily basis, it really is hard to quantify. But so many times we hear from folks on the other side of that journey, I didn't realize what I was missing out on. I didn't realize the things that I could be involved in and tend to until I had met some peers, until you shared with me the language to describe what I'm feeling and what I'm going through. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you for that question. Representative Elder. Thank you. And thank you, Dana, for joining us today. I express support for the program and for the full funding of the day, so I won't reiterate that only to say that I truly hope this committee sends a letter to appropriations with support in the strongest possible terms for fully funding the $60,000. I just want to say for anyone who might want to refresher on some of the work that's done, if you look at Valentine's Day 2019 on our committee page, members of the public can find it as well, you will find testimony. And I'd like to just read a little bit from some from Mike McGrace. I may be saying his name wrong, he's the principal or was last year. I'm a peeler and had also been in Unisburg. I quote from his paper, outright Vermont is not only the resource for gender sexuality in Vermont, they also do a fantastic job in their work. Skipping ahead, they bring professionalism, expertise and kindness to the work they do around the state. They navigate the challenging waters of providing ad hoc counseling, instruction and normative fragility at any given time in their work. And they close the thing, I cannot imagine a Vermont learning environment without the contributions of outright Vermont. And now speaking for myself, I can't imagine it either. And I was deeply disappointed in the AOE and the administration with both in one moment cutting this funding by two thirds and still trying to say they support the work. Those are mutually exclusive statements. So I'll close with that. Thank you, Caleb. Kathleen James. Yeah, thanks. And thanks to you both for being here. I had two things I was hoping you could speak to just briefly. One is I spent a lot of my career raising money for nonprofits. And I think the assumption in a nonprofit whenever there's a budget cut or a funding cut is, well, they can just go out and raise the money. So why don't you just go talk to your donors? So I wondered if you could speak a little bit to the challenges that you think you might face with that and to the effort that I know that you guys already put into raising money through grants and from private donors just to put that question to rest. Because my first thought is that's not as easy as it sounds. And I assume you guys already put quite a bit of time into that. I know I've worked at nonprofits where I spent half or all of my time raising the money we need to do the work that we do. So I thought that you might address that a little bit. And then two, I wanted to hear a little bit more or maybe just to get on the record because I think people aren't aware of the very nuts and bolts work you do in providing resources and training to educators. I know that you do enormous work directly with youth. I'm not sure people are as aware of the services you provide to educators to districts and to teachers. Thanks. Laura, I'm pointing at you if you want to just start. Oh, I was going to say I'm above you in your screen so that was not helpful to me, I apologize. With respect to the question of work with educators, my position actually does the bulk of its work with adults. So the programming position, the advocacy work, the youth organizing work are all youth facing and I do some youth facing workshops, but grossly more adults than youth. And the point of that is that it's part of our prong that is directed at transforming the communities that LGBT youth find themselves in. And so most of the training that I do is just some basic super ground level. This is what gender is, this is what sexual orientation is. Here are some of the talent terminology piece. When a kid says pronouns, what do they mean by that? Just because a lot of people have no other exposure, it's not in a lot of the pre-teacher training, although I do sometimes get invited to St. Mike's to talk to their pre-service teachers. And it's not necessarily emphasized in the continuing education requirements. So it really comes down to individual teachers or individual staff who are interested studying on their own or an administration that values the work and the information and chooses to engage with us. And there are additional levels of work to do. A lot of it beyond that 101 level is individual consultation. Today I actually had a phone call with an educator on what do we do about this kid who picked a name that we think is weird and everybody's going to react to it strangely. What do we do about the fact that we have to teach puberty ed in like two days instead of six weeks? And how do we make that puberty education inclusive? And by the way, we needed you to do a training within the next five days and you made that happen great. What are we covering on Tuesday? Like I got that email two days ago and I found a way to fit them in for Tuesday so that they're ready to roll when the kids get there. And so that's, it's really all kinds of levels. Some of it's super foundational basic information that some people don't have access to and some of it is much more intricate around particular students or particular situations or curricula. Thanks, Mara. Yeah, I think that when folks, I think that you're right Representative James in terms of thinking about our work, a lot of times people hear about individual, supporting individual kiddos. And when we talk about our work, we talk about our work with youth directly. We talk about our work supporting families. And then we also look at the larger community. And so we're doing a lot of work around transforming schools, communities and systems. And that is doing things like policy development, looking at schools, handbooks and seeing where they can tweak their handbook, where they can tweak their language. So they're not saying boys on this side, girls on this side, you know, they don't have the answers to those things. But we do. Part of it is also when we think about a state like Vermont, there's really different needs in different districts, right? We know that what's important and going on for youth in Burlington is really different than what's going on for youth in Canaan or Rutland. And so so much of what Mara is doing is individually tailored to meet the needs of those school districts where they're at. You know, we don't. The this morning, for example, that phone call was with Franklin. So that phone call literally one of the requests on the call was by the way, we're Franklin County. So can we get this in a Franklin County kind of lens, which basically just means there are some people who are all there are some people who are all on board and wicked educated in Franklin. And there are some people who legitimately think terrifying awful things about LGBT people. And that's a completely different set of reactions. The school has to be prepared for there. Then say maybe Burlington High School has to be prepared for. So yeah, that is that's a huge part of what I do is translating what's possible into what makes the most sense for a community that a school is serving. Yeah, you know, I think we provided this in previous testimony, but some of the most important work that we've been doing with the Agency of Education has been around creating guidance. So that best practices for supporting transgender youth in schools really looks at policy level guidance for how do we navigate, you know, multiple school records? What does that look like? What do we do about a kid who wants to play sports? You know, there's these questions that come up again and again, we are sort of the anchoring place for folks to get that information. I will leave that there. And I hope that that helps in terms of some of the work that we are doing specifically around resourcing up school systems so that the system itself can better respond to the needs of all of their students. In terms of philanthropy and raising money elsewhere, what I can share with you is that right now, having looked at some numbers last night, we are looking at needing to read close to $120,000 to finish out our fiscal year in the black. Again, historically, we have worked hard to create a diverse source of funding streams in order to make that happen so that we're not heavily relying on one place given things happen. Here we are. We are anticipating between a 30 and 50% drop in our end of year revenue given the hardship that is being faced by people across the world right now given COVID. And so I think that, you know, there's something else to be said about. It's just not a good look. You can only be in crisis and need to turn to your community so many times to say, help us fill this gap, help us fill this gap. As I said in the beginning, it's our responsibility. And as an LGBTQ organization, again, I think the level of scrutiny is that much higher for us to be steady, to be here, because people don't expect that from an LGBTQ organization. And so we've worked really hard over the years to build relationships with foundations that are saying, we're investing in you for multiple years. We've gotten a couple of multi year grants. And we've also grown tremendously. So in 2013, we had one director of education. Now we have added a position that was a part time position that we were able to build funding on to create a second full time position for a youth organizer to really work with the youth while Mara is focusing attention on the adults and the administrators. And I'm going to have to pull this together fairly soon. So I just I have a question for you. I think you just noticed that you're seeing a 30% drop in your revenue. And we also know that revenue is a scarce thing for the state of Vermont as well as it is as it is for a lot of businesses that are closing and struggling. So the fact that the agency is looking for where can I find cuts. This one, I will agree seems pretty severe. At the same time, I'm wondering, are you seeing since much of the work will end up being remote this year, do you see the ability to cut some of your expenses to meet some of those challenges? I mean, we are we are doing whatever we can to be resourceful and mindful of how we are spending our money 100%. You know, we usually do a week long summer camp in Starksboro and you know, we pay upwards of $20,000 for some of the costs associated with being in that location. Because we went remote to do our summer camp, we aren't paying, you know, $7,000 for that rental space. So there are absolutely places we're adjusting. But you know, as an organization that is working to resource people around a specific identity, so much of the power of what we do are the people that work for the organization, right? When you're talking about making connections, you're talking about having people that can show up whether virtually or not to be able to do that resource exchange. And we can't we can't cut our staff or we don't have any of this service delivery. So there are absolutely places where we are looking at saving some money, but it is certainly nothing to the extent of having secure funding in the means of, you know, $60,000. And again, we have been in conversations with them. The first time I heard about this cut was through their testimony to I believe it was actually you all. So it's concerning that, you know, it's different than somebody saying, I'm looking at what's coming down the line, and we're going to need to look to readjust. We haven't had any sort of ability to do that. And again, I think it's just really important to bring us back to, I hate that we even have to be having this conversation, honestly, the amount of time that we have invested even just in this past week of connecting with folks to say, don't worry, we're going to do what we can. I mean, we don't need to be adding further uncertainty to this vulnerable population. And I just, yeah, I mean, in another world, I would be sitting here and advocating for us to have, you know, a $300,000 appropriation. We're talking about a small amount of money, but it is so, so critical. And I assure you, we do a really good job of stretching that money way beyond the dollar amounts that we're talking about. Well, I thank you. I think the committee here is your voice loud and clear. I think we'll be taking a look at this. This is one of the things on our list of question marks brought to us by the agency. And the committee will look at this. I appreciate that. One last thing that I want to just say that I don't think I've shared is that when we originally talked, again, it's very clear that this was an appropriation made to the base from legislators, right? And so much so that the secretary himself, when we originally talked about the transfer of funds, said, we don't have anything to do with that money. That was an appropriation to you and come to find out, actually, it does need to pass through us. So again, maybe neither here or there, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not really fair. It doesn't feel to me like it's even within their jurisdiction, necessarily, to say, we're going to cut this. They were the conduit. This was a decision made by the people. Well, this is the governor's recommendation. And then we will get back to appropriations as to whether we support this appropriation or not. And Chip Conquest, you're looking to us for a statement about support for the governor's recommend or full funding or partial funding. What is exactly that you would like from our committee? So both for this issue about the proposed reduction of the outright grant and for any of the other budgetary related issues we want from your committee in this case, a memo just basically indicating what your priorities are. So, given that we're in a very difficult budget year and that there won't be enough money for everything that we all would like to do, what does your committee feel strongly most strongly about? So if providing the full $60,000 for outright Vermont is high on your committee's list priorities, then that should be indicated in the memo. The same is true for any of the other things you're going to be discussing later and any other budget related items. Given that we are to get this back to you next week on Tuesday or Wednesday, we are not doing a full testimony of every aspect of the budget. We basically are just looking at the moment at those grants. We've heard from the agency about the agency's budget and the proposals there and for where they're making reductions in their budget. Unless you have a strong position about any of those, I know you've heard from them. You don't need to include that, but really we're looking to the committees to give us guidance about what things that have been proposed in this restatement budget you don't agree with essentially. If they're in there and you don't talk about them, we're going to assume that you agree with them. That has risen to the level of putting it in the memo. Okay, thank you. Larry Coopley, and then we're actually going to switch because we have the governor's institute here as well. I want to make sure that we hear from them and we've only got about 20 more minutes. Yes, thank you, Kate. Chip, I'm wondering is agency human services have any funds available to help in this matter or does it really come down to the agency of education and therefore going back to property taxpayers which not property tax is general fund. Is there any other source of revenue that can be used to fund? So, I mean, given that this is general fund, wherever it comes from, whoever's budget it comes out of, it comes from the general fund. You have the full billion dollar plus budget and you will move money around, which we don't have to actually spend time looking at those budgets. That's what the agents, that's what the appropriations will do. We just need to say this is a priority. Yeah, but, you know, but I mean, all in every agency, every department, there are demands on the money just as there are through the agency of education. And, you know, and all of those agencies and departments have made, put their proposals forth about how they're going to deal with what across the board has basically been a 3% cut in all of state government. So, I don't think there's an opportunity to look to a different part of government to fund this, at least not this year. I mean, we can think about that going forward about whether the agency of ed is the proper place or, but given that this is a grant that's been through the agency of education, I think since it's beginning, trying to make any a change to that right now doesn't, I don't think it's possible. Thank you. I'd like to switch the conversation. I'm sorry, I should have, I saw Jeff Francis is still in the room. I should have asked him about his experience with working with outright. If you have like one minute, Jeff Francis, in terms of the value of outright for school districts. Yeah, I thought that Danny Kaplan's testimony was some of the best testimony I've heard quite frankly. She in a extraordinarily short period of time laid out what I know about outright and the values that they have to, to the, to the, to the young people of Vermont that they serve in school districts that they support and working with those kids. Jeff, you are, you're sounding a little bit like you're We had a conversation this morning with Jeff, we're having very, very difficult time understanding Okay, Jeff, I'm silent. Jeff, I'm sorry. You sounded a little bit like Hal in 2001 of Space Odyssey, but I think what we got was that you support, you support the work of, of outright and they have value for the schools and I'm going to have to move on because I've got to get the governor's institute. I thank you so much for your testimony. We appreciate the work that you do and we'll have a committee chat. So I believe Kaomi is here, correct, from Governor's Institute? Yes, I am. Yep. So Karen, which do you go by? You know, I'm in the process of switching to Kaomi, but you guys have Karen on your schedule is what I heard. So I thought I'd put that in the window. Okay, thank you. So yes, Governor's Institute, there's I think a $5,000 cut to you and speak to us about what that means to you. Let me, if a $5,000 cut is what is on the table, then I'm going to break from what I'm supposed to say and I'm going to say go ahead. We'll make it, we'll be fine with a $5,000 cut. I'd like to take the time that you've allotted to us to tell you what we've been doing because of course our tradition is convening people in person and we haven't been able to do that. So in February we held two in-person immersions. They had 130 plus students at them. They were very successful. We had 10 week to two week long in-person institutes scheduled for the summer and in April we realized that we would not have the resources to keep those students safe if they came. So we launched eight online immersions. I am delighted to tell you that they all went really, really well from engineering to astronomy to arts to health and medicine. They were super well received. Much more than I had expected. I have to tell you we had 280 students participating. There was very low, you know, kind of interest during March and April when people were just getting their feet under them and then it sort of momentum grew through May and June. So we've had remarkable results. The survey has come back from parents and students and 100% of the parents said that they felt that their students had learned something. A remarkable number of them also felt that their students had gotten social connections and new friendships. 26% had new friendships. 41% said social opportunities. These are students that, as we know, are otherwise in isolation at their homes over the summer. This past summer 77% said that their students got personal development and I'd like to read to you a quote from one student or one parent actually that made me cry. It said, I thought my daughter was happy and doing well enough this spring and summer. Even though the two places she was working have closed, she missed out on planning prom, couldn't play tennis, etc., etc., like every other high schooler. But then I saw her during the 10 days of GIV and she was herself again. She was engaged and creative and happy. She carved out her messy, as usual, workspace and for a brief time she was thriving again. And that's what GIV has been able to deliver to students during this summer on the fly because of the support that the legislature gives and work to make it as accessible as possible with asynchronous learning to the degree that we could. We mailed out hundreds of care packages to students before their immersion started and they contained things like the ingredients you would need to build your own working solar power generator for the engineering students. So that's what the engineering students did. They also contained some more ingredients so that the students could have some more together online. And in the Health and Medicine Institute we actually got students, we made sure that they all knew what they were getting into. They used live, not live, but real autopsy footage to look at diagnoses and anatomy. So it's really been an extraordinary learning curve, one that has definitely paid off for the students of Vermont to the extent that we're launching a fall to spring program for the first time online because we realize that the vulnerable students who are high potential learners in this state who need that intensity of education are not guaranteed the consistency and the depth that they need during the next school year and it's unlikely that many of them will find it otherwise. So that's where we're headed with things. I know you guys have tough choices in front of you. I've tried to be very transparent with you and come to you and say, you know, GIV has been getting the same amount or actually less than we did when we started 16 years ago getting funding from the legislature. And that's remain consistent. And so I really appreciated in February when you sent a letter to appropriations saying, please increase their appropriation to $275,000. And indeed, if we knew we were going to have in-person programs next year, we would need at least that to even maintain the size that we were at or we would be facing significant cuts. But where we are right now and with the pieces of funding that we can pull together, I'm going to say to you, the state needs it and $5,000 is not huge and we'll find a way. Okay. Thank you. And I believe we may have some of your students coming in in the future because you're working on a masks project. Is that correct? You know, what we've done is partner with the masks folks to say if any alumni are interested, get them involved with that. So there's going to be a mask promotion day that is not a GIA. Our partnership was just to get the students to the mask day to let them opt into it if they wanted to. Okay. So I hear that we may have some students coming to talk to us about that. Okay. Any questions from folks? I know we've always loved having your students come in. Missed that this year. Can I just ask Kail me to remind me since I don't have it right in front of me, what the state, the funding level from the state is. So it's $5,780 down from the January proposal is what's in the restatement budget. Okay. The amount that we've received since 2009 is $192,654. And I would like to share that that is an amount that was cut from a higher amount previously when we went through the last budget constriction in the state. And so you know, I'm coming to you being being very open about the fact that we can weather this year, but we need to go up in the future to continue providing services on the scale that you expect of us. You have access to other funds as well. You have private, as outright did, you have access to private donations and foundations, correct? Where does the rest of your funding Yes. Traditionally, the state appropriation has been about 18% of our budget that we've matched with tuition dollars, comprising about 28% of the match and donations and business contributions comprising the rest. The government, the legislative appropriation is likely to be a larger proportion of the budget this year, because although we're seeing our foundation funding hold mainly steady this year, we're seeing a significant drop in individual and corporate donations. And we removed tuition for the for all of the eight institutes and for the fall to spring tuition, we just made it pay what you can. So we brought in about a fifth the revenue that we usually do through tuition. Thank you. Any other questions then for the governor's institute? Okay, so we have about 10 more minutes to talk. I'm looking at the governor's budget and the grants, which were actually the only thing I think we had we had really talked about having an interest in. I know that there are concerns about dual enrollment, but that will be what it will be. We're looking at the teacher of the year, which was 2,500, which I haven't followed up on that we just let that one go. We've got the 5,780 5,780 to governor's institute, 40,000 for outright Vermont. Then there was the early reading that I haven't done anything with because there's no policy that's attached to it. So I'm just looking for feedback on what people would like me to say to appropriations about these these issues. And we will hear from the school boards, the State Board of Education, because there are some real concerns about the cut that was made there. So I'm opening to conversation. Kathleen? Well, just a just a question on the early reading. I believe Mr. Bates said that was unspent. Those were unspent funds or unused funds. I wasn't sure I had understood that. Has anybody had a chance to explore that? Just took him at his word. Do you know what program that is? My understanding is it was tied to a program that no longer exists. Is that what your understanding was, Larry? That's the way it sounded to me as well. Yeah. It's just money that's been sitting there. So it was unfortunate given the amount that we wanted for Act 173 support. It was disturbing to hear that that money was there, which we certainly could have used for our bill, but at any rate. Okay. So it's a it's a defunct program. Yeah, it's not got you not attached to anything. Okay, thanks. Just I think given now it's got to go. I agree with me folks on that. We'll let that one go. So in terms of outright. Can I just ask about that again, the reading early reading, what happens to that money now? It just doesn't get appropriated to it. It doesn't get counted in anybody's budget. It just disappears. It's just it's a line item. It's a line item. Does it go back into the general fund? Yeah. So it falls to the bottom line. And then and then the budgets are built off of the available revenue. But so when they're when the agency is going through their budget making process, they take out all those things that they're reducing and say here's here's where we are. Does this have we met the 3% reduction? I mean, this is part of the way they're getting to their their 3% reduction. And that trickles down to the general fund, meaning we don't need that money in the we don't have to find that money in the general fund to go to the agency of it. Thank you. There was another question. I thought I think that was it. Correct. Our committee, you okay with me supporting the budget for outright? I'm okay. I don't mind supporting them somewhat. But all of it I have a problem with. In light of, I mean, everyone's I think we all know and it was just said, I mean, it's, you know, businesses are struggling. And, you know, the general fund granted revenues come from taxpayers revenues come from all over the place. But I can't support the whole amount of money that they're asking for. I think and we also have to recognize that you know, perhaps it's even difficult for them to go out and and raise money and light of business people and other entities not having funds available to to participate in these programs any longer. But you know, I can't support the whole amount of money. That's that's my that's my feeling others. I also agree with coup. This is Lynn. Some, yes, they need help. But not the whole not the whole amount others to the say some money but not necessarily the whole thing. Yep. Okay. Well, I'm very much in support of it. I believe outright literally saves lives. But I'm sensitive to the fact that everybody's got to take a little a little pain what we're going through. You know, we can take that we can take the three percent off that the governor said he wants taken off of his various administrative departments. Somehow they got it somehow they got a 66% not a 3% like other things. Yeah. So in other words, you would you would consider take 3% off 60,000 as opposed to I realize it's a it's a token gesture but I think it's in line with the philosophy of the cuts being taken across the government. I think in our original letter from from Dana Kaplan, they anticipated the 8% reduction that was anticipated across the board. And I think it's acceptable to settle for that amount. I think that the additional 56 or 58% that came off needs to be needs to be found. So maybe it's not 60,000. I think it did sound like that 8% was anticipated and is a far way off from where we are now. So it wasn't going to come all up to 60. If it could be more in line with that, that would be I think a lot better. Chris Meadows. Yeah. Is there anywhere else in AOE's budget that they can find? Technically the number we're looking for is 40, right? Go from 60 back to the 20. So we're looking for 40. Was that a deep deep dive into their budget? Like a final that's the best we can do in cutting our budget down for AOE overall? Or is there other areas that can be trimmed to meet the need of the 40,000 or 40,000 less 8% or 60,000 less 8% whatever you want to do there? I'm sure that there are ways that they can they could adjust somewhere in here 40,000. It's kind of chump too. Or be less than that. It'd be like, what 33,5 maybe something like that that they'd have to find? Is that minus 8? I think 35,2 is what was 35,2 is the difference between the 20 and the 55,2 that they had anticipated based on previous guidance earlier in the pandemic. Kathleen James. Yes, I've been muted. Yeah, I just want to chime in here that the way the committee's heading I think is a good one. I agree everybody needs to take a little hit. And what felt so unfair to me, and this is what I was questioning Secretary French about, was that outright was told at the beginning of the summer to expect an 8% budget cut and to get ready for 55,2. And I think that they were preparing for that. And then they found out in testimony last week that instead it was a much, much larger cut. And so if we rally the committee behind the 8% budget cut that they were anticipating and were told to expect for, I think that is fair. I think that they'll take a hit that is across the board and that everybody else was, to me, that's fair. And it's what they were preparing to do and everybody takes the same pain. And I would love it if we could compromise with that. I was impressed by Dana's comment about the cost of a lawsuit on a district. It's wise money and foolish money. Larry Coopley. Yeah, you know, the program is really wonderful. It's worthwhile. But I think we need to be looking, I think we need to be looking forward somewhat in as much as kids may or may not be going back to school in some respects. And, you know, if there in fact is a second wave here, we need to, we need to be really cognizant of the finances coming into the coffers in our state. You know, I don't want to overstate what's going on, but you know, we have, I think all of us understand we have difficulties with our budgets, with our state budgets, and it affects everyone. It's all of our agencies. It's really difficult to say no to people. But, you know, there's a point in time when you have to accept, you have to accept the reality that there isn't that money available. And we do have, there is budget adjustment and a lot of things are handled in budget adjustment going forward. That's correct. We, there's a real question mark over Congress at the moment in terms of what they're going to do. So, yes, and that is part of the purpose of budget adjustment. When do we get another, at the next budget, you know, from the budget estimates from CAVAT and the. You mean the next revenue forecast? Excuse me, revenue forecast. So I, the obvious answer is that I don't know right off the top of my head. We will certainly have one previous to the January to, you know, the legislature starting up in January, or actually I think there is one in early January, but whether there's one over the summer in between that or in this case the fall, I don't know. And budget adjustment happens in January, correct? Yeah, yeah, it's the first thing we do when we get back. So there's, remember this is the, we're talking about the year that is finished June 30th, 2021, and we're going to be looking at building the next budget when we get back. And they'll be looking at, we should have a lot more information going forward as to where we stand with this pandemic and what it means. We'll have an election, lots of things that will happen that will be different when we get back in January. Dylan, were you raising your hand? Well, we're not making a final decision today. Is that right? No, I'm taking a temperature. Yeah, I mean, I just, I would love to take the weekend to think about it as a committee. And the reason why is that we know these services are needed. We've heard it from the superintendents and educators. We know they are valuable. We know that we are facing some economic uncertainty, but certainly this is an area where I think the needs for these services will not go away, particularly if kids are at home or are not in a school setting. And when we think about the implications on the emotional welfare of our learners to be at home, I would view this as a very modest investment. And in fact, I'm very comfortable having a full 60,000 for this, recognizing that the pressures that will form upon our learners, if they face more social isolation, could be very detrimental to their health and their learning. So as far as I'm concerned, a program like this geared towards supporting those kids, many of whom are vulnerable, many of whom may have a risk for suicide or self-harm is a very good investment. And I would be inclined to support it at the full 60,000 amount. And bearing in mind, this will be a recommendation from our committee as to the value and why we would make this a priority, and then appropriations will do with it, what they will. Correct, Chip? As soon as we say this, there's not a guarantee that anything happens, correct? There are no guarantees. Yeah. Yeah, I would be inclined as well to go with the full 60, but certainly willing to have that conversation. Kathleen James. Well, you can easily convince me. The services are vital. Question. In our memo, Chip, I think you already addressed this. Will our memo only be about the grants or, Chip, I think you said you do not need in our memo any thoughts on bridge funding for the state colleges? That's different. Yeah. That's different. I've already sent that to, I already sent that we supported bridge funding. I sent that memo already based on our conversation. So yeah, right now we're just in the pre-K-12 world. Sweet Austin, and we're going to close pretty soon because I realized we just went over. Sweet Austin, you have something? Yeah, just Kate, do you have the current enrollment of K-12 students, give or take, you know, the home schoolers? Do you have, is it like 70,000 in terms of the K-12 enrollment? Depends on how we're counting. It depends on whether we're counting equalized pupils or whatever. I think it's 87,000 might be equalized pupils, but I'm not sure what that is in actual terms of seats. Yeah, I just want to say one thing. I think that I'm very supportive, you know, of the 55,000. But I also think this for all students in schools, it's not just for LGBTQ students. I think, you know, we are so not diverse in Vermont. I think it's a very, you know, it's very beneficial for all students to become more aware of differences and hear differences. So when I look at this funding, I definitely think it's directed to LGBTQ, but I think the education and awareness that all students get is really important for our kids. Thank you. So just have a think about it over the weekend. I want to just check in with Phil to see what we have so far for this coming week. We've been madly trying to get things scheduled, given that we have to basically solve the budget by Wednesday. So and then we'll have the CRF. So where are we? Yeah, sorry, Chip. I have to go because I have to get on the other device for the public hearing. Yeah. But I just wanted to say any as soon as you come to some committee decisions about any of these things, particularly, so well, I'm saying this because I hear that you're going to hear from the Board of Ed next week, which is a big, important issue that we'll want feedback on. But if you come to decisions, committee decisions about some of these other things before that, as soon as you have that decision, please send it along. You know, it just needs to be an email is fine. Don't wait till they're all done and send them all in. Right. So as we get pieces, we'll send you pieces rather than a fully designed edited and proofread. That would be. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much. Phil, what do we have so far for next week? Well, I'm still working on it, but on Tuesday, Secretary French can only come in at 2 p.m. And I'm anticipating, although I haven't heard from him yet, that John Carroll will come in. But I wouldn't imagine that would take a full hour from one to two. No. No. All of the Vs that you requested for Tuesday have not responded, except for Sue Seglowski, who said that she couldn't attend and thought I was going to run into trouble with other people. She anticipated I was going to be inviting. Yeah. So I can't remember. Let's see. I haven't heard from the VSA for Tuesday. And this was related to the CRF. Is that what this is? I've forgotten what the topic is. It's related to the CRF funds, 3K through 12, including the independent technical funds. For Wednesday, I have a confirmation from Representative Welch that he can speak to the committee at 12.30, our regularly scheduled time. And I wouldn't anticipate that that would probably go longer than a half an hour. I have not invited Secretary French for questions pertaining to the standards board. That's okay. And for Friday, that was the time that you wanted me to bring in the homeschool people. And I haven't gotten a confirmation yet on them. Okay. So our goals for next week are basically to respond to appropriations with their budgets. I've responded with higher ed. We'll respond. I'm hoping we can do this on Tuesday. And then also we need to respond related to CRF. And we've asked folks to, you know, I'm supposed to be looking at the magnitude of need and have reached out to JFO and AOE and the V's to help us determine, you know, where are we with that? There's the question of the 100,000 that we had understood had been set aside. We did find a statement from the chair of senate appropriations about that money being set aside. And the governor has appropriated it in different ways. So my job is really to just kind of sense where are we with the magnitude of need on CRF funds. And I'm hoping to get that done next week. In addition, we have a number of items on our list. We're going to be working on a committee bill related to some of these items related to the number of school days. I think there's one, the tech center question, the independent tech centers. There's a question about there's a few questions. I can't remember what they are at the moment. I don't have in front of me. I can't remember what it is. There's a, I think there's a school board school superintendent school school board and elections that we'll probably throw in there as well. There's a question about Australian ballots, which I've sent over to government operations to see if they can find a spot for that. But we should have Jim in to present on that on Tuesday or Wednesday, I would think. But the CRF is important. And I will go see if I can put a fire under under those folks to get to me. I do know that JFO is on them as well. Anything else? Thank you, committee. I think we're good. We'll see you at two o'clock. See you at two. That was none. All right, thanks. Thanks, Kate. Thank you. Thanks, Kate. Bye-bye. Thanks, Kate.