 Welcome everybody. I'm Phil Baruth, Chair of Senate Education. I'll take a few minutes while we wait for the list you signed up on to come back to us to have my committee introduce themselves. Hi, I'm Senator Ruth Hardy from absent county. Senator Jim McLeod from Berlin County. Debbie Ingram from Chittenden County. Corey Barrett from Franklin County and Albert. Andrew Pertzick from Washington County. And we're all here obviously to take testimony on people waiting in Vermont and potential changes to the waiting formula produced by this study, which is amazingly comprehensive, put out by Professor Colby and her team at UVM. So thank you to them. I know Professor Colby is in the room somewhere. Professor Colby? There she is. Unusual for the author of the academic study. So the way we'll work tonight is we do want to hear from everybody. Sometimes these are divided up into people speaking for against a certain issue. I don't like that approach myself. I think it emphasizes division. So we'll just have you come up in the order that you signed up. You'll have two minutes. My friend Jim will give you warning at a minute and a half and then the gong at two minutes. I think with the number of people we have, everybody should get to speak, including those who may not have signed up, but realize halfway through, they would like to say something. So with that said, Daniel McCartland. My thanks to the members of the Senate Ed Committee for hearing this today. I appreciate that. I'm not going to express the grievances that everybody else here will be presenting. We'll stand on the gong. I'm here to advocate for some median tax relief for the school districts which are born in disproportionate tax burden over the past decades. I present as written testimony a petition that was drawn up by an individual tax payer in Marlborough and signed by hundreds of residents. It's clear to the point that I ask that you read it in honor to help submit it for testimony. I also want to relate the story that illustrates the situation my school finds itself in. My grandfather's fifth and sixth grade classroom has a bucket on the floor. It's been there all winter catching the leaks when it rains or snows. A simple symbol of the impossibility of operating and maintaining a small rural school when students are under grade. So I conclude with a poem, a poem that's acceptable to you, and it's called Weighted Pupils. I am weighted a portion of a pupil. I am weighted about a point eight. I don't know what part of me is missing or how they came up with that weight. There's a bucket to catch drips in my classroom, sits in the middle of the floor. It fills about 10 gallons a day, seems to be leaking a bit more. We each take bets on the timing. It becomes a math problem each day. But the cold and the mold are getting older and there's rot in the ceiling now, they say. We try to be a philosophical. We don't really mind much the fuss. But if we were 100% pupils, it would not be happening to us. Thank you. Doug was core. Oh, I suppose I should say everybody on the panel has been told not to shake hands in terms of public safety. So I just commend that to you as advice. I know you're many of you are here from districts to the extent that you can avoid that kind of contact. We've been doing this a lot around the building. Thank you very much for hearing testimony. I'm from the Marlboro School District. I'm chair of the school board. The release of the equalized people we need to study in December of 2019 is finally answered an agony question of the Marlboro School Board has asked itself for quite some time. Why can we not adequately fund our school? Each year the Marlboro School has been forced to kick the camp further down the road on various capital improvements for a bid farewell to student program opportunities. I'm not here to complain to the legislature that my taxes are too high. I'm here to demand equity and accountability. The Marlboro School Board, its community and the 76 other districts impacted by this oversight and waiting insist upon immediate implementation of this waiting system recommended by the study. We're not a group of towns looking for a hand up. We're neighbors in southern northern Vermont who have seen increases and penalties only to find out that for years we have been provided the opportunities that so many other districts have. It is an outrage and if I want a legislative committee such as yours overseeing the change, I would not be questioning momentum, but rather apologizing to us and stating it will be fixed. I assure you that the Marlboro School is not the only school to come before you with a roof that has been patched too many times, or has been forced to turn away pre-k students due to lack of space, or called a Spanish classroom in an equipment closet. Harperingly this year we had to consider cutting all special programs from art, Spanish music, all of them due to an excess spend that has been based on an inequitable system. This is not simply a tough year, it is the culmination of years of compound over-taxation and inactive waiting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Peter Barris. Did I pronounce that right? Barris. Thank you. Peter Barris, Whitingham, recording secretary at WCSU School bus driver Marlboro Elementary School from 2012 to 2019. I'm a voter first-time testifier. Commons published my full text last week, so this will be shorter. Thank you for this profound opportunity. I know why you keep showing up in this building, see possibility in public service. You want nothing more than to make a difference. Since well before Act 46, I've taken the minutes for the boards of many schools. We lend a grade in Townsend and New Fane Jamaica, Warthboro, Brookland, over in Marlboro, and since consolidation to combine with them Central Supervisor Union school districts and their full board at the public meetings. When I first hit the wheel of a school bus, the scheme had been going on for more than 12 years. Though I could not know the structural causes, I didn't see the rise of pervasive sleep deprivation, malnutrition, lowliness, and humiliation as the true face of childhood poverty. Since the study was made public, parents vet openly at recent school board meetings, children of the motion as awful realization began to take hold. Years of struggle and worry, and all unnecessary, and the next town had no such problems. And what are the lessons learned? I mean by the children, the privilege and power of the right and the privilege and the powerful, and poverty just rewarded the poor, and double-take the hindrows. Armed with this hard-willed knowledge, they will decide how to vote. The helpful encouragement of lots and hackers and patrol farms, foreign and domestic. Everyone knew the disparities. That's what convinced us to endure Act 46. Wouldn't say nobody believed they would do that. To find a way to bring equity to the system. Otherwise, they might never have thought of it. Thank you. Nate Stolloff. Thank you. I'm a resident of Bloomington, and I have students in two jobs. A few of us came up from Southern Vermont today, which you might know is a far piece of the road. It's still a little over two hours, so we came because this testimony needed to be delivered in person. This issue is so critical, and it's so critical in my community to be heard on this matter. The current funding structure is hurting our schools, it's hurting our students, and it's hurting the foward of our communities. So in Bloomington, our residents pay the highest education tax rate in the state. You can sort that spreadsheet for yourself. But despite our high property values, which are driven by wealthy second-hand owners, much of our resident student population is living in poverty. In our elementary school, 62% of our students receive free and reduced lunch. Meanwhile, our school is struggling to cut budgets and stay below the excess spending threshold all the time. I mean, we've got buckets in our gym too, we stopped our town meeting listening to the driven. The result is that our students are struggling. Our elementary school ranks 111th out of 142 schools in Vermont. Clearly, our students are not getting the education that my community is paying for. That's not all. If you know anything about Bloomington, you'll recognize that it was a town that was devastated by a tropical storm. Despite multiple recommendations, eight and a half years later, we still have police and fire services located in the flood zone. I know that sounds crazy, but why? Our community cannot afford to add to our tax rate for a volunteer fund critical emergency services. So our community loses it again. 30 seconds. This situation has eroded our trust in government and its badly-dented civic engagement in our town. Public meetings people are mad and we feel helpless. I know it's going to take our community a long time to fix what 20 years of inequity have brought in our school, but we are begging you to start that process now. Swift action on the findings on this report can begin to chart a more reasonable and just path forward for our entire state, including Bloomington. Thank you. Al Claussen. My name is Al Claussen, I'm the Vice-Chair for the West River Education District in Wyndham County. I am the proud father of four boys who have and continue to go through our educational system, including one who has studied computer science at the University of Vermont. My wife Tana Claussen is a physical education teacher and varsity softball coach and has been at Leland and Gray Union High School in Townsend for the last 30 years. Why am I giving you this lengthy bio? I want you to understand that my family is fully invested in the educational decision making of this government on a personal and professional level. To gain a better perspective on where we are right now, let's look at some of the tragic events that have happened over the last 20 years, 9-11, the longest war in the history of the United States, the Great Recession, Hurricane Irene. On top of these macro events, we also have the current local crises, double-digit increases in health care costs annually, higher needs and costs in special education and mental health services, the opioid epidemic straining our social services to the brink of it. An aging population with a fixed income and a declining student population. These compound crises serve as a backdrop for the school boards and administrators who, to the best of their abilities, craft budgets in the face of the erosion of our socio-economic infrastructure. And despite our best efforts at West River with a 2.8% increase in the school budget this year, we have exceeded the spending threshold, sending hard-earned dollars back into the system to be distributed at the discretion of the state government. In the midst of our Board's budget deliberations in early June 2020, we learned of the findings and recommendations of the study of people's weights and Vermont's education funding formula. One word, hope. Hope that our state government will implement the findings of the study and restore equity for our students and incorporate new cost factors and weights. The time to do the right thing is now. The people of the West River Education District are suffering with a high task burden. Schools have outlasted their expected lifetimes and have many number of repairs, yet we continue to kick the can down the road. We need this legislation. This is an opportunity to hit the reset button. Now this cannot stop the implementation of the weighting study recommendations. Issues are much deeper. Try to explain to your taxpayers how a 3% increase in the school budget translates to a 15% increase in the tax rate. The funding formula is broken. The findings of the weighting study need to be the catalyst for educational funding reform. We need to be able to provide this generation of students with the resources, tools, and environment that helps them thrive while balancing the needs of our stress tax base in the West River Valley. Our people work hard and expect a greater return on investment from the state of Vermont and they want it now, not phased in. The state of Vermont has been 20 years of easing out of rural areas. We'll have to. Thank you. My name is Marat. It's a little unclear. It's Emma. Good morning. Good afternoon. I'm Emma Morath from the town of Windham. I'm from the town of Waterloo. Windham is a community of 27 square miles with less than 450 residents. That amounts to about 13 people per square mile. We are one of 53 towns having fewer than 500 residents. These small communities represent 9% of the Vermont's population. Many residents saw the tax doubled and many homeowners were unable to pay their taxes on time, ending up under delinquent tax rolls and into their town's economic difficulty. The new weighting would correct us by providing weights for sparsely populated areas and small schools. We would ask that committee move forward thoughtfully but quickly on this matter. Thank you. Kathy Scott. My name is Kathy Scott. I'm from the town of Windham. I'm the school treasurer and the town treasurer. I love the school. I love the nurturing environment. Small, wonderful. Both the current weighting system, weighting formula has underestimated the cost of educating more accomplished families as well as small and rural schools for 20 years. Windham students have had less access for education equity opportunity than students from larger, less rural school districts. Windham sends approximately 61% of its education taxes to the state and keeps 30, a little less than 39% to fund its elementary and secondary education expenses. With passage of 661, which we testified in this morning, how 661, and with your swift action on this weighting study, we could see a reduction in our tax rate for the upcoming $2.98 from the 284 we are staring down at the moment. We ask you please act on this as quickly as possible. The rural people in the standard month really need this help. Thank you. What's coming? Mr. and Windham, I'm also on the school board. And what we're finding is that the equalized pupil count in our town is relatively low, and by adopting the equalization study, the equalized pupil count will go up significantly. As a result, right now without the equalization study, our $535,000 budget is $6,998 over the excess spending amount, which means that that's $12,200 added to the excess spending amount. So our tax rate based upon $30,956 gives $2.83 homes that tax rate. That's driving people and fixed incomes to put their homes up for sale. It can't be continued at that level. The solution is the higher weighting study that's in your program. If we were able to get that, we would be able to reduce our tax rate significantly. Part of the problem is also with the early childhood special education costs that when they exceed a certain level, they get added into our education cost. We have no control over that, none whatsoever. And if you were to consider removing some of that excess special education cost out of the excess formula, it would also allow us to have a much lower tax rate. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Bill Duncan. Good afternoon. Thank you for letting me testify. I'm from Wyndham also. You're getting a full Wyndham treatment here. So last week at town meeting, the voters at Wyndham did something very unusual. They turned down a school budget. That never happened to them because people are committed to providing a quality education for their students. But as you heard, had we passed that budget, the anticipated school district homes that tax rate would have been $2.84. I don't know if that would have been the highest in Vermont but it would have been awfully close. Between 2019 and 2020, the homestead tax rate went up 32%. If this budget had been passed at town meeting, it would have had a 63% increase from 2019 to 2021. As you can imagine, homestead rate increases like that are placing an enormous burden on our taxpayers. As Russ said, some people are saying they may have to move out of town to Vermont. Some people have told us that their taxes have doubled in the last five years. Like a lot of towns in Vermont, we're an aging town. We're trying to attract young families. We've got some affordable. But when people find out that's the tax rate they're going to pay, it's pretty tough to get young people to move into town. If you've ever been to Wyndham, you know that we are not a rich town. If you drive around Wyndham, you're not going to see big mansions and big designs. Thank you. You're going to see very modest dwellings. 62% of the residents in the town are retired. We're living on fixed incomes. 80% of the residents qualify for income sensitivity when they pay their income taxes. This is not a rich gold town. Like a lot of little towns in Vermont, we've cut our education budget to the bone. We've stretched our taxpayers to the limit and we really need your help. Please pass. Thank you. We need to learn as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you. Court Scott. I'll be quick. My name's Court Scott. I'm a slight aluminum and I'm the bus driver. As you can see, my teammates have played out a lot of facts for you. So like I said, I'll be quick. I see this as being videotaped so I have to shout out to one of our residents. We're going to be talking about this before we go on the phone. They heard it freely. We've been coming to town meeting ever since this basically Act 60 was implemented telling us that there was something wrong with this money formula and that we should do something about it. Now I can say that I'm going to be up here trying to do something about it. You guys are too. The one takeaway, like I said, my teammates have played out lots of information for me. for the one takeaway I'd like to remind you about are point names. When we were talking about how much the percentage of money that we send out on education tax, I just wanted to give you some dollars. If that budget had passed, we'd have been sending $877,877,000 in the education fund on top of the $608,000 that it would cost us to educate our kids both. That's for a town of 400 plus residents. I mean, if you think about that, it defies common sense. Out of the fact that 400 people possibly send that much money out of town and still be able to keep their heads full order. I would ask this way, is that we would help us and we would help that situation. So I would ask that you implement it as soon as possible. Thanks. Thank you. Catherine Sims. Good afternoon. I'm Catherine Sims from Grassbury. And as a parent, I am shocked and saddened that our communities have been overtaxed and underfunded for so long. Over the years, I've seen our school boards work hard through the very best they could with inequitable access to resources. We all know that different schools and different communities have different needs. We can spend the same amount of people everywhere and expect the same outcomes. In the Northeast Kingdom, schools are faced with the increased costs associated with serving high poverty rural communities. That means increased social, emotional, mental health, behavioral and academic supports, all a part of larger systemic inequities in our society. Tending to these basic needs has stretched budgets to an extreme and left little for caring for our buildings or providing programming. Staff across the region deal every day with septic problems, failing boilers and old roofs. Children are turned away from pre-k programs because of a lack of space. Students don't have access to the language courses, the advanced placement or travel opportunities available in other districts. As parents, we are tired of seeing vital school programs cut, enrollments decline, and property taxes go up. I want my children and all Vermont children to have an equal opportunity to thrive, no matter where they live. These are the long-standing problems that the bringing decision called out and Act 60 was meant to address, but it did not, not by a long shot. My children and my neighbor's children deserve to go to school with a functioning boiler where they eat lunch in the cafeteria instead of their desk, where music doesn't happen in a closet and the roof doesn't leak. They deserve our classes and STEM programs and foreign travel. They deserve the resources they need to be successful today. We can't keep failing our kids. To overcome decades of inequity in school resources impacting the most vulnerable children, I urge the general assembly to take action this session to implement the weighting recommendations contained in the people-mating factors report. Thank you. Leigh Ann Desjardins. My name is Leigh Ann Desjardins. I'm the director of special education for the North Country Supervisor Union. I've been the director for 26 years. I'm also a Newport Center resident, which is one of the top 12 towns that North Country Supervisor Union serves. I wanted to paint a little picture for you of the Northeast corner of Vermont where NCSU is located. 26% of the students enrolled in NCSU are identified as eligible for special education services. Within the last five years, we've seen and observed an increase in eligibility and specific disability categories. Our eligibility category of autism has increased by 10%, intellectual disabilities by 33%, and emotional disturbance by 48%. In rural communities like ours, we struggle to meet the intensity of social, emotional, and mental health needs. These students require a continuum of extraordinary and costly supports. Currently, our local mental health agency has no counselors on staff to serve our students and families. This lack of access to quality mental health services places a significant burden on the school system to meet this need. Each school individually contracts with licensed counselors, and we have developed resources at the SU level to support students facing social, emotional challenges. 30 seconds. 20 years ago, the NCSU hired one behavior specialist. We are now hiring 14 behavior specialists for the upcoming school year. The flexibility of services at 173 provides is critical to student success. However, we will not be able to meet the, we will not be able to meet the growing needs of students without a funding system that provides for students with intensive needs, students who are economically disadvantaged, and at risk. Thank you. Thank you very much. Samantha Stevens. Hello, I'm Samantha Stevens. I am the Equity and Community Outreach Coordinator for North Virginia Supervisor Union. I'm also the Board Chair for Voice of Staff for our moms children. Our schools are fighting rural poverty every day on our own and we need help. It takes much more to teach our students to have barriers to basic needs because students who are cold, hungry, tired, and worried have a harder time accessing learning. These disruptions don't just affect those individuals, they affect entire classrooms. And so we've had to become experts in many fields. We help families apply for economic benefits. We negotiate with utilities and landlords to help keep them housed. We provide meals at school and we send food home. We coordinate and transport families to essential medical appointments and the list goes on. We have grown our capacity to make these needs and we have built up social and behavioral supports that help teachers teach and students learn. The people waiting study gave me hope that the monitors and particularly you all might now have the information needed to make a fairer system for all. I'm here to ask you to act on these recommendations and make systemic change to face an unfair system. Thank you. Thank you. Kristie Ellis. Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity. I am the outgoing principal of a small rural school in the J. Vermont. We were probably the last joint contract in the state of Vermont. It's the J. V. Hospital Joy Elementary School. And I am here with my colleagues from North of the country and we ended a wonderful job of describing some of the challenges that we are facing. And that is what I hope to do is explain why this waiting study is so important. I think my job is analogous to trying to fit a twin size sheet on a king size bed. Anybody who has ever done that understands their frustration. You have two corners on and you can put that there in an all public park. It's how it feels right now. This growing need, the students are coming with emotional, social, cognitive and linguistic. It has become very intense. The proposed changes that are driven by Act 173 have just the potential to have such a negative impact on our resources. And I worry that with that negative impact, we will be forced to meet even tougher decisions that we've already made. We've already made a lot of tough decisions in our law school programming. But we do our best to maintain that quality. If we cannot continue to find the programs and the story becomes that it's because of our students with disabilities or because of our students who experience poverty and trauma, then we blame them. And that's very scary. 30 seconds. So I worry that we'll never move more of the valuable system. If we have a system that does blame the most fragile numbers of our communities. Thank you for your time. And if you ever have any other questions, please reach out. We're there and you'll be happy to share our stories. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you. Karen Chittambar, glad to know. Chittambar, very close. So I'm Karen Chittambar. And first, thank you for your service to our state. I'm an auto motor technology teacher at the North Country Career Center. I am a foster parent, farmer, a veteran, a select person, a union representative. And as you might guess, I don't do very many things well. But my superintendent did ask me to be here today. And I'm here to talk to you about some of the kids who are challenging our system because they're my kids. So first, yes, our special education qualification rate is 26%. And yes, we are seeing an increase in disruptive learning. And we know that trauma is a factor. But let me tell you what that looks like. That looks like a two-year-old being dropped off at midnight at our home with the flu. That looks like DCF calling us on a regular basis to take in more kids, even though we're already, there's no more with the end. Let's just go that way. And so what does that look like 100% or more increase in the number of kids coming into care in our community? And as you might guess, those children oftentimes have higher needs. So the two-year-old that I spoke of was not able to articulate mom or dad or the people that she knew she was wanting to have sooth her and couldn't say things like ow or no. And what does that look like? We know that years down the road when she goes to school, she's going to need some additional services to get her through and to make her the best possible Susan that we can have in our community. 30 seconds. What does this have to do with the waiting study? We need to ensure equity for our current and future students. There's a great deal that I cannot do, but one thing I can do is ask the faculty the impact that implementing Act 173 block grants without the waiting study would have on schools that are working diligently to prepare what our most or what our most vulnerable students need. They've got a tremendous amount of work, but I think we're really just bracing for impact right now. And as we look at how the block grants are implemented, we really have to consider the coming school. Thank you. Sean McMahon, thank you again for your hospitality yesterday. Thanks for coming to visit us. So I want to express enthusiastic support for the recommendations of the pupil waiting factors to report and urge immediate action from this committee and all other legislators. The study reports that under the current funding formula, quote, some communities may be either unable or unwilling to pay for the additional resources necessary to ensure an adequate education for its students. End quote. Indeed, low wealth communities like Winooski, which support a high percentage of students with complex needs have been losing in Vermont for decades. While we work hard to provide a more than adequate education that is fiscally responsible to our taxpayers, the current funding structure leads the Winooski School Board, administration, staff, and community in a position of frozen inequity and unable to meet the needs of our students, families, and staff. I support these recommendations in the report for a student I'll call Kay, whose family came halfway across the world having lived in a refugee camp so that he could get a high quality education and the opportunities that go with it. When he entered Winooski School District as a first year student in high school, he spoke no English. He credits the high quality educational support he received in our district and helping him to get a full scholarship to UVM, where he's now working toward a medical degree. Or another student, S, who grew up living in a basement because her family couldn't afford housing. Her mother's unable to work because the youngest of her eight children has autism and she's unable to afford full time care. S says being able to participate in fun and educational after school activities helps keep her away from a stressful situation at home and on the right path. 30 seconds. While these two students are overcoming tremendous challenges and improving their lives, we do not have the adequate resources to ensure this for all of our students. To fully support our students, all of our students, we need more linguistic, cultural liaisons, a fully staffed EOL department, more math and literacy coaches to adequately support all struggling students, and the time to allow our students who come from nontraditional educational backgrounds to catch up so they can graduate in college and career ready. All Vermonters deserve a system that fully accounts for the financial needs of educating our low wealth students and English language learners. These changes are necessary to create a truly equitable system. I fully recommend that you implement the recommendations of people with factors report in a quick and thoughtful manner. Thank you. Thank you. Dave Kelly. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. My name is David Kelly. I'm an attorney from Greensboro, Vermont. For the better part of 30 years, I've practiced law in the Northeast Kingdom. I've done vacancies, divorces, relief from abuse institutions, emergency guardianships, social security claims, disability claims, worker comp claims, and I think I've had an opportunity to come intimately familiar with poverty in the Northeast Kingdom. I have become convinced that the longest, most fruitless war in American history was not the war in Vietnam, the war in Iraq, but the so-called war on poverty. If you look at the Northeast Kingdom and you look at our schools, at Hayeson, 80% of the students are on free and reduced lunch. At Champlain Valley, only 10%. If you look at Champlain Valley or South Burlington, their teachers are being paid 25% more than the teachers at Hayeson. But a classroom with eight out of 10 students on free and reduced lunch is substantially more challenging than a classroom with only one student on free and reduced lunch. If we do not turn the tide of poverty around, the cost going forward for the next generation in terms of jail, session 8,000, behavioral supports, special education, only goes up. We have an opportunity to take a big step forward in areas like law, hardwood, glubber, and other small rural communities that I'm familiar with. We have an opportunity to begin to turn the tide, war on the poverty has been winning for the last 30 years. I urge you to accept the recommendations of this report. Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer Bonzo Jones, how about you? Perfect. Bonzo Jones? Bonzo Jones, yes. I'm Jennifer Bonzo Jones. I'm the superintendent of K-10 East School District in the Northeast Kingdom. I'm here today to share some data points. 31 teachers in our sparsely populated district have emergency or provisional licenses. That means our content areas are taught by people who are not yet fully qualified. 177 days of our elementary school students' year, they sit next to sewage ejection pumps because we have not yet been able to fix our HVAC system. 177 days, our middle school students do not have access to a baker's space or a STEM lab because the space is full of lead, mold, and brackish water. 20% on average of our teachers lead our high-partly schools each year. They exit the region because of low pay rates and the lack of available amenities in our rural areas. 37 days of teaching and learning were interrupted or completely halted due to unsafe buildings. School day closures due to air quality, septic, plays, sporting events, concerts, and talent shows canceled due to safety of our buildings, PE classes held in hallways. Can you imagine if your child's at school and 20% of its teachers are still in every year? So long, 37 days of learning interrupted. These stated points tell the tale of two Vermont's. The Vermont Constitution guarantees education for all children. 365 days a year, this is how many years, how many days we should be committed to equitable education from Burkhaven to Brownboro, from Cannon to Colchester. Please take action on the pupil weighting factors report of this legislative session. Thank you. Elaine Collins. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today about the weighting of the study. I am the principal of Newport City Elementary School. This is my fourth year there. It's in the North Country Supervisory Indian District and the weighting study work is very relevant for our work in Newport City. In our school of 370 students, pre-K to six, nearly 80% of them live in poverty and over 30% of them qualify for an IEP for 504. This is my 30th year coming back to school as an adult and the work has changed. Poverty, drug addiction, trauma are all creating pressures on our schools and making our work more complex. We have alarming number of students who are experiencing mental health crises, trauma, challenges with emotional regulation and behavioral challenges. If we don't meet their needs, nobody's able to learn. Nobody. Even the kids who are ready to learn aren't able to learn. Four years ago, I came to a school that was in crisis. We've racked a lot of social emotional supports around our students and our significant costs associated with this. Behavior specialists, behavior team assistants, intensive case managers, home to school coordinators, seven specialized teachers. The list goes on and on. Because of the lack of community resources, we have to do this as a school. It is our moral imperative to make these changes for our students because no one else is going to do it. 30 seconds. Last year are in the height of our work we had in one school year, 890 escorts, restraints and seclusions. So with that for a moment, 890 and 175 days. This year we are at 87. It's impactful and positive and important work, but we have to have money in order to do it. Please take action on the way instead as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you. John Kessel. Good afternoon. I greatly appreciate the Senate Education Committee taking testimony today. I currently serve as superintendent of schools with our country's supervisory union. I'm proud to serve our supervisory union where a board member summed it up in five words in reference to the increase in assessment for our supervisory union special services budget. They are all our children. It is my hope that your committee and our general assembly cares deeply about all our children across the state. We address the needs that they exist and aren't in one school differently than another as we address the needs of a classroom or a particular student differently. Likewise, our legislature must recognize the variation of the between districts and regions for that matter. We have disparity of opportunity given our economic circumstances and variation in need due to the same. A high percentage of students with needs, especially in small rural schools and our supervisory union requires substantial supports to meet those collective needs. Issues of equity, transcendent districts or supervisory unions and it must be addressed as a state. The needs being illustrated in testimony today are real. I believe this testimony in concert with the waiting study totally shines a light on the need for more resources to support students living in poverty. I recognize the call for more resources is counter to the narrative of declining enrollment, tying too many cars in the school parking lot and property taxes being too high. The reality is schools need more capacity, a robust social service organization to partner with and to shift the tide of families. We need those resources now, 30 seconds. We've lived complacently while the forces of poverty have adversely impacted far more people than our current public health crisis. Where is the sense of urgency and call for action that is justified to support the financial, social, emotional and mental health needs that for too long have disrupted, diminished and devastated the lives of our children. Justice too long delayed is justice denied. I truly hope that our legislature will be these. They are all our children. Thank you. Kathy Olwell. Thank you for taking my testimony. I am a retired social worker who spent the past 24 years working with Burlington's middle school population, running a youth center, after school program and Burlington and when you see combined middle school summer program. We know poverty creates high risk environment that increases probability of learning problems. That can lead to learning socio-emotional disabilities. Burlington has one of Vermont's highest concentrations of poverty with 49%, which leads the district to have 19% of its children on IEPs or 504 clients. Burlington is also home to one of this state's largest English learner populations at 16%. All of the above risk factors lead to higher costs to educate our students. As a member of the Burlington school's commission, it is larynally clear to me how the present formula works to the detriment of the students we serve in Burlington. The result of per pupil waiting study and the new waiting formulae proposes can only right the wrongs that have burdened Burlington's children for the past 20 years. I would ask this committee to please fully implement a new formula immediately and do not phase it in. The children who have lived with this underfunding need a swift remedy. Their education needs must be met now. Thank you. Claire Wohl. I stand here in unity with all our communities present sharing their testimony and those unable to attend but who will share their support for immediate action in email correspondence. When I hear the word work, I want to also include Burlington and Lemuski as we share concern for our most vulnerable learning population. Thank you for hearing our testimony today and I also want to thank the AOE for commissioning the study and UVM educated Tammy Colby for her work research and time spent this summer speaking with myself and our Burlington leadership team. Relative to most of our neighboring school districts in Chittenden County, Burlington serves a high percentage of students in poverty. As Kathy at all will share, 49%. Our student population is on the rise. Our two middle schools are at times over capacity. We are an anomaly in Burmont and also with more housing being built in Burlington. This site proves unequivocally students with the greatest needs require substantially greater educational resources and services. Our Burlington School Board and the City Council this month set the Burmont State Legislature joint resolutions recognizing and supporting this AOE study proposing action to change the Burmont State and fund waiting pupil formula. In the sanctuary city and school district, we are so proud to hear 45 native languages spoken throughout our school communities. Our current Burmont antiquated educational funding formula developed 20 years ago is essentially artifacts, said research team Colby who's present here today and could find no evidence that they were empirically derived. Thank you to all of you serving on the Education Committee and Senator Ruth. The citizens of Burlington that Burmont as you serve admired your recent public statement. The top priority this session would be to pass something out of this committee change to the waiting formula based on the report recommendations. I think it's extremely important thing and I was sent here to do extremely important things that make the system work in a better, fairer way. All of us present here today could be agreed with you more. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Keith Pillsbury, I'm sorry I didn't dress and it's put down because I've been on the school board in Burlington for 25 years and this is a story I have to talk to my constituents every year as we have to go through the tax increase about the equalized model and they always, they're very aware that some of our students are in poverty and some of our students in E.L. cost far more than the state is giving us and I think they have been very generous over the years. I went back and looked at it but then the report in 2011, we asked for a 10.4% tax increase. Our government was bad at us, the mayor didn't support us, the free press was just, whatever. Anyway, the citizens of Burlington understood that we had a population that needed to be served. They were generous and they've been generous for a long time but I think it's time now that the state step up and look at our needs as a city that's not as wealthy as everybody thinks. We have a high level of poverty, we have a high level of children who, English is a second line, English is a language they're learning because we have been generous and bringing them in to our community. Just some facts, we have the non-free reduced lunch students on the CPAC math test think 6% were proficient. I'm gonna say the free and reduced lunch people, students got a 20% of that. That's the kind of problem, that's kind of the challenge we have for our teachers in that district, making sure that all of our children become proficient. Thank you. Thank you. Joe, go ahead over here. I think we'll stand by, I think it's just a sign of a speaker. Oh, you'd prefer not to speak? No, no, basically I'm from a window barrier and the individuals that spoke earlier, they were pretty much this everything I would be saying, so thank you. Thank you. Deborah Green, Deborah Green. Questions? Oh, there you are. Sorry. My name is Debbie Green, I'm 54 years old. I work full time and own a home with my retired 80 year old mother in Wyndham, Vermont. We own an average size modular home on one acre of land. Our taxes have increased substantially each year. In 2019, our municipal tax was $1,595.07 and our education tax was $3,979.42 for a total of 5,574 dollars and 42 cents. I was just financially able to pay the balance off this past February. I'm told that window along with other small towns are penalized because the number of students that attend our schools is below state regulations or something to that effect. And that window will see another increase in 2020. I work and I claim Vermont and I'm pleading with the state for change or the better to take place so less populated towns with schools geographically necessary stop being tagged so unconstitutionally. The continued tax increases has placed me in a financial hardship. And I fear the time for me to sell my home and move out of Vermont is quickly approaching. Simply because I can't afford the taxes. Thank you for allowing me this time to speak. I appreciate it. Margaret Kier. I'm from Huntington, Vermont. Part of the wealthy Chittenden County, but I am in support of helping those communities who most need additional help. First of all, Education Committee. Vermont's economic health depends on intelligent, well-adjusted workforce with diverse skills. Tell your fellow senators and citizens we need well-educated, well-adjusted, well-skilled citizens to meet diverse requirements throughout the state's economy. We benefit most if we can find these workers within the state instead of importing them. I'm not gonna read you everything I've written, but basically we know that depressed economies unfortunately are still associated with poor education outcomes. I'd like to suggest there are at least two areas where we could dramatically improve the situation for those most at risk. The current waiting formula, which you are trying to improve, thank you, is based on research that indicates it costs more to educate high school students. Is this an assumption that is still valid in the 2020s? What considerations are not built into this assumption? The successful achievement of high school students depends, and high school graduates, depends not only what happens in high school, students arrive in high school with deficiencies in reading, math, science, social studies, as well as other problems. Those students will continue to struggle to overcome these deficiencies. Low achievers in middle school are very likely those who are left 30 seconds. Okay, so you need to look at the whole picture and the second area where you need to consider is the taboo subject of paying teachers across the state a fairly equitable wage. This is a taboo subject. Nobody wants to talk about having a state organized teacher wages. But I think that as long as teachers in wealthy districts get more, that is where they're gonna go. As long as the most experienced teachers get more in wages and salaries, that's where they're going to go. And those who are getting their training in their first few years, many of them will seek to go to wealthier districts, not all obviously. So I think you need to look at those two things and I would ask you to read the longer version of what I said. Thank you very much. Thank you. So that's the end of people who signed up to speak, but it often happens that people think of something midway through. Anybody who'd like to come up who wasn't on this. Please. Yes, please. And then we'll have the next. And if you could just, since I don't have your name, if you could just introduce it to the record in your town of residence. Okay. I'm Martha Haffner. I'm from Randolph. I am somebody with 40 plus years who experienced in the educational systems. I've worn just about every gap there is, preschool to college and everything in between. And my father was involved of 34 years in the school board. So there's a wide sort of educational experience that I've done. But I fully agree. There are a lot of students that we call them in the classroom as the three first where they should come as three students instead of one where their special needs are engaged and so on. But a piece that I would like to inject into this conversation that is perhaps viewed as a tangent, but really I feel very much relates. marijuana in Pueblo, Colorado is making it so that there are 38% chronic absenteeism in their schools where they used to see one child in a classroom in the head start that had autism. Now after legalized and commercialized marijuana, they're seeing six to eight. If you want to diminish the number of students that are coming into our world with special needs, this is an area that you really should consider investigating. It's a lot worse than most people begin to realize. I've seen a student that was almost dead on the gym floor in Bethel because of the little dab that will do you. Our students need to be protected in this arena too. And that boat is coming up soon. Please, come on up. Yes. Good afternoon. You'll have to bear with my scratching voice and I'll be brief. First off is we were plaintiffs in the Brigham case. I've taught educational finance for 20 years. I'm the managing director of the National Educational Policy Center and I'm the state board of education. We should say that I'm not speaking for the state board. They're meeting next Wednesday, our chair is here. And we'll want to talk with you later after the board meets. First thing I say is I really would commend you for what you've done in terms of commissioning this study. It was very well-leaded and it really is going to have some hard decisions for you. Remember and not injured, you will, that this is for the common good. It is not an individual thing, it is for everybody. And that's what our constitution says and that's what we must hold on to. Something I've mentioned is the report deals a great deal with poverty. And that is correct, I don't think we can solve the education problem unless we solve the poverty problem. It's just that simple and I'd be glad to spend more time with you at a later time dealing with that. And I'm really pleased to see the emphasis that was given to that report. Also, morality, got a great deal of attention in the report. I'm very glad to see that because that is part and parcel of the problems that we face. And I just simply close these brief remarks by saying that this isn't something that's nice to do, it's our constitutional obligation to treat every child with poverty and with care and with love and affection. Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Steve Gross. I'm from Middlebury, Vermont. I'm a professor emeritus of educational leadership and policy studies at Temple University. And I served as chief of curriculum instruction to the state of Vermont many years ago. When I work with my students, when I talk to my neighbors, when people ask me what is it to root fundamentals of education? It is in our country, how do we raise up the next generation of Americans to take our very imperfect democracy and improve it? At least him. And when I think of the impediments that keep us from being able to do that properly or even reasonably attempt, poverty comes up as the number one issue. I think for a long time circles in education have gotten exactly backwards. And that has said that if only the schools did their jobs properly, we wouldn't have poverty. The fact is the research shows quite the opposite is the case that when we deal with poverty, all of a sudden magically things happen for our students and their achievement improves. I want to commend not only yourselves, but the researchers from the University of Vermont who have made an important contribution towards our recognition of what the facts are and being able to respond to them effectively. We often say the devil is in the details. I was told the devil lives in two places in the details, but also in our vehicle to conceptualize the problem. If we place the evolution of democracy and the betterment of democracy first and realize that it's poverty ourselves and it's itself that is at the heart of our issues, I think it will be a long way forward to being able to respond effectively. Thank you so much for this time. Absolutely. Thank you. Erica Montan, Executive Director at Campaign for Vermont. Just a few quick things. First, general statement in support of implementing these changes. A few things that I haven't heard addressed though is a lot of folks here have been talking about this as a tax relief measure. There's nothing in the bill to guarantee that the extra money into the community is going to be used that way. Communities could still choose to keep the tax rates and just take this money as additional money. So it should be addressed in that mechanism. There's also needs to be accountability measures to make sure that the additional money that's being given to these communities that need it is being used to support the students who need it the most. Just generally throwing money at a problem isn't always the best solution unless there's a specific plan to ensure that that money is really going to go to the people who need it most. And the last point is to the JFO prediction numbers. Through their study, they said that there might be upwards of $10 million in additional revenue generated by this proposal. I haven't heard anything as to where that money is going to go. Is that money going to be used to hold harmless some of these communities that can expect significant tax increases? Will it be further given to the schools in support of some of these infrastructure changes that need to be made? There needs to be a plan for this extra money so this doesn't get lost in this process. Thank you. Anyone else who hasn't had a chance to speak who would like to speak? All right, seeing none, as we say in the Senate, we will adjourn. I just, before we do that, I want to thank all of you for traveling to be here. It's important on something like this. We're talking about a system in which changes to one communities waiting affect other communities very directly, so it's good to get as much public input as we can. I know that all of you made the choice that we made after the thinking and thought process that we had, which was coronavirus, all of those concerns, should I go? Should we meet? And you came up with the solution that was important enough for you to be here. We appreciate that doubly in this day and age. So thank you. We will do our work as efficiently as we can. Friday is what we call crossover. It's the day by which any Senate committee has to have their work out to have the bill remain alive this session without all kinds of special operations being done by leadership. So Friday is the day we're shooting for. We will very much keep what you've said in mind if we have any further questions. There are some of you whose contact information we have. If you have further information to share with us, Jeannie Lowell, our administrative assistant, is happy to get anything to us that you sent. So thanks very much, and we'll adjourn with that.