 This is Senate Finance and this is February 10th and we are going to walk through a draft that for a committee bill for anything we choose to do with the weighting study. And Senator Hardy, do you want to give us just a brief walk through of, I know this was your, you've been handling the drafting of this so just tell us what's happening and we'll go through it. OK, well Jim has been handling the actual drafting, but I've been working closely with him and the bill that we'll walk through it is long. It's a complicated bill and it includes the goals of the whole thing, the whole change to our school finance formula and system. It includes provisions to change the weights. So in the bill, the assumption is that we would go with the weights for the four categories of the poverty, students living in poverty, students who are in small schools of two kinds, students who are in population density, rural areas and grade level weights. It does not have anything at this point about ELL that we're still waiting from Senate for Senate from Senate education, but it has the weights for the other four categories. We could certainly change to the cost equity formula, but that's what is in there now. It also includes some transition provisions that I mentioned yesterday about rolling in the changes in weights by averaging the equalized pupils. It includes an audit and an evaluation, which is based on the proposal that Senator Brock made to the task force and it's fleshed out a little bit more. And it includes the creation of an Education Fund Advisory Committee, which was recommended by the Tax Commission and also the Pupil weighting task force and has some provisions related to that. And it also provides additional staff to the Agency of Education. So the one thing it does do in ELL is to staff for ELL support and then to staff for education quality standards and to for finance. So those are the main provisions and Jim will go through all the details. But a lot of this is based on the recommendations of the pupil weighting task force. So that's sort of what I had Jim draft as a starting point. Right. So this is the initial draft from base just about entirely on the weighting on the study recommendations. And Jim will walk us through it and then it will be our turn. So, Jim, why don't you start and welcome to Senate Finance? And Jim and I started down in Ed together and did a steep learning curve. For me, for sure. Oh, for me, too. So thank you for coming. So do you prefer to have the document on screen or or not? Yeah, it's probably easiest to do it that way. OK, so faith, I'm not sure if I have that capacity. Let's see. I do. Great. And it's right here. OK, so for the record, Jim Dan, we're at the console. We are walking through this initial draft of a committee bill. And I won't go through the statement of purpose. I think Senator Hart already did an excellent job. Bring out the main points to their four points brought here. Just high level around the changes to weight around creation. This new advisory committee the new positions that AOE and the requirement to have an audit were formed this morning, both in that, but those are some of the main parts. So coming down to the findings and goals, I won't go through these in detail. I'll just summarize what's in the subsection. So we start with Brigham and the right to equal substantial equality and educational opportunity. Then we go into kind of a Vermont perspective on trying to achieve that. And then we talk about learning differences in students coming from different backgrounds and and therefore in the different levels of support. And then D goes into talking more at one seventy three and the weighting study that UBM and workers did. And then he goes into that report that they delivered and its findings. F goes into after the last session, which created the task force that met over the summer and their recommendations. And that's it. So those are the findings and a high level. The goals here, there are five goals and these goals are the same goals that would be tested against during the audit. So I'm going to read through these things that are important. So it says by enacting this legislation, like the GA tends to fulfill Vermont's constitutional mandate to ensure that all students receive substantial equality of educational opportunity throughout the state. The legislation is designed to one, increase educational equity by ensuring that the financial resources available to local school districts, educating students, living in poverty, students with English language learning needs, students in small rural communities, students in sparsely populated school districts and students in middle and high schools are sufficient to meet the cost of educating these students. Two, improve educational outcomes for these students by ensuring that financial resources tied to the cost of educating the students are available to local school districts. Three, improve transparency in the distribution of financial resources to school districts by simplifying the school funding formula and tying educational expenditures to student needs for enhanced educational and financial accountability by ensuring that equitable resources are budgeted and expended for the education of students in these circumstances or categories in that regular evaluation mechanism mechanisms, I'm sorry, are utilized to assess educational equity outcomes. And lastly, improve oversight of Vermont's K through 12 public education funding system by creating the new advisory body. So those are the five goals. Then we go into the determination of weighted membership kind of the heart and soul of this bill. It begins with a very technical change to the definition of long term membership. I'll come back to that definition. But this is just merely clarifying that it's an average of two years involvement, basically, and it's the current school year and the previous school year. So just clarifying which two years are used for that purpose. And then we have six and four. There's a couple of things. So this changes the way in which people from economically deprived backgrounds are identified. So now it means that people from an economically deprived background means that people who is eligible for free or reduced price lunch under the National School Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act. That also takes out in the past, English language learners were counted in poverty for purposes of the poverty waiting. And this changes that to take that out. So ELL would be dealt with on its own, not through adding that into the poverty weight. Then six or five is a piece of section law and it's related to the previous session around how you determine whether students are from economically deprived backgrounds. And this says it's the intention of the joint assembly that this determination be changed from what you just changed it to, which is free or reduced price school meals to a measurement determined by the joint assembly, but not lower than one hundred and eighty five percent of the twenty twenty one federal poverty level with that collected from a universal income declaration form. And this goes on to explain that that form is used by various states and some school districts in Vermont to collect household size and income information and that it reduces stigma and is a more accurate collection of information and requires the agency to convene the working group to develop a new form with input from school staff and hunger and nutrition experts. And that would have to be in place for the twenty three twenty four school year. OK, now we get into the very long and complex section on how weighted membership is determined. So before we go through this section, I just want to spend a minute if I could framing the process, because I knew you've heard this Brad James and others, but it's complicated. So this basically works as a recipe, a very complex recipe and it's very step based as we go through it. But let me just say at the beginning, just to outline the process it starts with with current enrollment. So every year, enrollment is measured in schools at the beginning of the year. It's called average daily membership and it's a measure of enrollment. And so what happens then is that you average that average daily membership for enrollment over two years. And we just saw that definition earlier. So we now have something called long term membership. So lots of membership is simply two years worth of involvement averaged. OK, that lots of membership that that figure is then weighted. So now we're adding weights to that figure. And there are a number of steps to do that. And then then the equal equalization ratio is applied, which is very confusing, but I'll explain. And then you come out to your equalized pupils, which is the driver, of course, for your tax rates. So just very broadly, let's by way of example, let's assume a school district has long term membership of 900 students. That's the average for two years of enrollment. They do their weights and when they're all done, their weights, they have then weighted long term membership of a thousand. So they gained 100 students through the weights. Then after that, the equalization ratio is applied. And what that ratio is, it's a statewide enrollment. So let's say we have seventy eight thousand students statewide. Then then you divide that figure by the statewide weighted involvement. So you combine all the weights across all districts. So let's say there's seven thousand students, but the weighted statewide is a five thousand seven eight thousand divided by a five thousand. And you come to point nine two. So what happens with the equalization ratio is the school district, in my example, had nine hundred students, about thousand weighted students. The thousand weighted students would be multiplied by point nine two. And therefore the school district would have nine hundred and twenty equalized pupils. And it's the equalization ratio that that causes the system to you can only gain weights by other districts losing weights. It's a zero sum game. And that's the effect of that equalization ratio. So I know that's confusing, but I just want to give a high level of how the process works. And then we'll go through in detail. So the first part of the process is the determination of average daily membership, average daily membership and subgroup this. So this says that before the first day of December during each school year, the secretary shall determine the average daily membership as defined of each school district for the current school year. So that's the current involvement figure, basically, so far. The determination so for this separately, because these categories will be weighted, so they have to be identified first, list separately, resident pupils in Pre-K, resident pupils in K through grade five, resident pupils in grade six through grade eight and resident pupils in grades nine through 12. And then on or before the first day of December during each school year, the secretary shall identify resident pupils from economic lead deprived backgrounds as defined with the definition earlier in each school district for the current school year. And then before that day again, secretary shall list all school districts that have a population density measured by the number of persons per square mile inside within the geographic boundaries of the district as of July one of that year, equaling fewer than 36 persons per square mile or there are 64 persons per square mile or 55 to 100 persons per square mile. Population density dash will be based on the most recent U.S. census data as provides with the agency education by the Promont Center for Geographic Information. And then again, by that same date, the first day of December, secretary shall list all school districts that have one or more schools that have an average two year enrollment of fewer than 100 enrolled pupils or 100 to 250 enrolled pupils. And then there's a certain way that enrollment is counted in terms of the small schools. And it's it's here. It's very technical. It means the average enrollment of the two most recent recently completed school years and means the number of people who are enrolled in a school operated by the district on October 1st and people should be counted as one, whether the people is enrolled as a full-time or part-time student. That's very confusing. But that is how the it works now for small school grants. So it's carried over from that. And it's how Brad James computes this. So that's why this is here. OK, so the groundwork again. So so far, we've identified average any membership and we sort it into all these categories that we're going to need to wait. And now the second step of the process is the determination of long term membership. And again, that is just a two year average of average daily membership. So the Secretary shall determine on term membership. For each school district, for each people group described above. So people groups again are the ones we talked about in terms of like pre-K and etc., all those different groups. The third step is to determine weighted long term memberships. Now we're applying the weights to a long term membership. So we're applying weights to the two year average enrollment. The Secretary shall determine the weighted long term membership for each school district and there are a number of steps here. So first, the Secretary shall first apply grade level weights. These people include in large membership shall count as one multiplied by the following amount. So this will be a little confusing because we have a negative. But so the way this is going to work in the end is we're going to accumulate all these weights and then add the cumulative weights to the count of one. OK. So it's a cumulative process and you're adding weights to a count of one. So it'll be one plus something except that we have a native weight, which is a native weight of 0.54 because the weight for pre-K student is 0.46. And this methodology, you have to subtract this to get to that 0.46. So that's a little confusing, but that's how that works. And then grades six to eight, much more straightforward. You have a weight of 0.36. So, for example, if you're a student in grade six from this, you have a weight so far of 1.36. And then grades nine to twelve, you have a weight of 0.39. Then so that applies to grade level weights. Now we're going to move to weights for the economically deprived background. Students, so these people include in long term membership to receive an additional weight of 1.03. So if you're from economically deprived background, you're getting an additional weight of 1.03 in addition to your count of one. And then third, so that applied the weight for people to be in low population, desi school districts. So these people include in lots of membership residing in a low population desi school districts to receive an additional weight of 0.15 with a number of persons per square mile in the school district. It's 35 or fewer and 0.12 with a number of persons per square mile in the school district is 36 or more but fewer than 56 or or 0.07 where the number of persons per square mile in the school district is 56 or more but fewer than 101. And then lastly, the secretary will apply weight for people who attend a small school. That is conditional though. So if a number of persons per square mile in the school district is 55 or fewer and the school district has a small school, they'll get this weight, but you have to meet both conditions. You have to be especially populated school districts as well. And that weight is if there are a few of the hundred pupils then the school district receives an additional weighting amount of 0.21 for each people included in the small schools average to your enrollment or if it's a hundred or more but fewer than 251 pupils, then it's a way of 0.07 of the school of the students enrolled in the small school. And then five says school districts where the launcher membership so equal launcher membership plus the accumulation of the weights assigned by the secretary under the sub-session. So this is five is where we're saying a lot of stuff accumulates. So you have a count of one because you've got launcher membership will be your count of one for each student and then you accumulate all those weights and you have one minus weight for the pre-K. Everything else is a positive weight. And then we go to no change here. There's a whole harmless provision. So we did take out some language here. But again, it's just taking out the old weighting methodology. For F is hold harmless. This is where you have a 3.5 percent. Hold harmless. You have the client of students year over year. You'll be protected to your tax tax rate won't go up too much. That stays. But you'll see there on that this is in this transitional provision. This is suspended for five years during this transition. And then. And then lastly, H the secretary then determines equalized pupils. And again, that she does that or the secretary does that is to take that wasted launcher membership of the school district and multiply by the equalization ratio that I described. And that will get you to equalize pupils. So that is that is that section, which is very complicated. Let me pause there. Maybe by Michael, you're not muted. Shall I continue or I just wanted to give it to me a chance to raise questions or no. Yeah. OK, so I'll continue. So six days is is a amendment to what we just went through, which is and that's because this amendment takes effect in the future. So you'll see there on that as a transitional mechanism for for five years, equalized pupils is averaged in the first couple of years is averaged over a five year period. And then it reduces to averaging over a two year period. So the transitional period has an average to smooth out the rolling in of these new weights. But once that process is over, I believe it's in twenty twenty eight. This says that the going forward, the equalized people count will be the average of the current year in the last two years. So it'll be a three year average. So going forward today, equalized people count was a one year figure and going forward after this transition, it will be a three year average rather than one year figure. And that's what this this does. And then there is this section six B called perspective and conditional repeals, which is session law, which reads if on before July one, twenty twenty seven, the zero assembly has not revised the weighing factors to reflect changes in cost factors from which the weights are derived after receiving a recommendation of the new advisory committee to do so. Then the weighting section we went through is repealed and in that section six A, which again is a memetally section is repealed. So this is kind of kind of a measure to encourage the general assembly to take action in the future, either by adjusting the weights or or not, but if they're not going to do that, they have to repeal this provision right here six B so that that the weighting section won't be repealed. So it's a for some action in the future. Is this similar to if we do not set a yield used to be a tax rate, it reverted to the original tax rate and whatever the corresponding yield was of a dollar ten? Well, I'm not sure because I'm not that close to the yield. But what this is similar to in my mind is the Education Fund statute, which says that there's permitted uses for the education fund. But the very last provision says if the fund is used for other purposes, the whole education tax system basically is right. So so this is more similar in that in terms of forcing and not with staying clause in that case, in this case, it will force some action to be taken, either by changing the weights or repealing the section six B. If we don't update the rates, then it reverts, all of this goes away and it reverts to the original weights. No, the weights go away entirely. So you have to do there's no weighting. OK, so you have to change basically this take out six B. So you can just repeal this this this section six B and you'll be back to where you were. So it's either do the weights or repeal or repeal this basically. So and I assume we put we would have to act if we wanted to continue the rates as as they are. This will because this will. Yeah, you'd have to act because otherwise if you didn't it would go away. OK, we'd have to reauthorize. All right. And Madam Chair, if I may, one of the reasons this is in here is because the the original weighting factors report by Professor Colby and her team recommended that the weights be updated every five years. At least every five years. And so this would be if we enact this in twenty twenty two. Twenty twenty seven would be five years. And so it sort of forces a recalculation of the weights and could recalculate them to be the same thing or something different. So this is that's why this is in here. OK, any other questions? I can't see anybody. So you have to holler. All right. OK, all right. So now we're going to section seven, so now we're talking about merger support or what used to be called small school support. So what this does now that now that there is this small school weight, this repeals essentially the small school support statute. Except that it turns into a merger support statute because we do have merger support for those districts that that voluntarily or involuntarily merged. So it takes up the current language, but put to put to language, which I come to. When we tell you so now it says that school districts that was voluntarily formed under four six, et cetera, and receives a merger support grant shall continue to receive that merger support grant subject to provisions of subsection C. And with that, we'll say is that if you get a weight, a small school weight, you don't get the merger support grant too. And then same thing here and B, if you're involuntarily involuntarily merged, reformed by the state board, again, you you get the same same deal basically. So you get the merger support grant. So it's the same. Basically, you got to take your small school grant you had in fiscal 2020, and that would become a merger support grant going forward the same amount, but you don't get that again if you get a small school weight, which is right here and C. And then, of course, the the merger support grants go away go away if the small school is closed. If the reason for getting that grant change changes because the small school closes, then, you know, I could get the grant. And then there's just some technical changes here. So we have section eight around that's missions and corrections. And this is just taking out the reference to small school support since that's gone. And again, another conforming change here. Talking about small school weight adjustment rather than the small school grant. So these are merely conforming. Now we go into the transitional section, section 10. And so what this says is that for fiscal years, 24, 25, 26, the first three years, I believe the number of equalized pupils in a school district should be determined by averaging the equalized people count for the year of calculation with equalized people counts for the preceding four fiscal year. So for these three years, you're taking a five year average of your equalized people counts. And then for the next year, you're taking four year average and then for the next year, 28, you're taking a three year average. And then after that, we went over earlier that you're amending the base statute to have a three year average going forward after fiscal year 28. Then section 11 suspends the excess spending penalty for that same five year period, the transitional period and it also suspends that holds harmless provision that 3.5 percent hold harmless we talked about is also suspended during that five year transition period. Section 12 is a piece of session law, which just says that the Vermont Center for Geographic Information will work with the agency to help them determine number of persons per square mile. And then we go into evaluation and reports. So I'm going to read through this section. We're not the goals again, which are repeated here. But it says, on before December 15, 2029, the state auditor shall submit to the House, the Senate, committees on education, ways and means, finance, agency of education and the new Education Tax Advisory Committee a performance audit connected under a gap. Oh, government except the generally the gap that's government. So that identifies the successes and failures of the implementation of this act, including, including whether and to what extent each of the acts five goals have been met, which are two and this just repeat pieces five goals that we went through at the beginning. But this is the testing which we tested against and this is a goal has not been met. The reasons why and recommendations to achieve that goal and the physical impact of the act, including the cost of implementation. This is the arch we carry out by the state auditor or a contractor doesn't need other state auditor who in order to maintain independent, independence has not consulted on or constructed to provide services in relation to the people waiting fastest report or the report prepared under act 59. And the actual cover the period beginning July 1, 2024 and ending on June 30, 2029. And then the actual take into account such metrics as the auditor determines appropriate which shall include EQS, so how the school is doing that EQS and looking at various metrics for that. Student performance, progress and proficiency based learning assessments and graduation requirements, student performance on standardized tests, the Vermont youth behavior risk surveys results, graduation of post-secondary education enrollment rates, education spending homes and tax rates, educator compensation levels and full licensure stats and academic extracurricular and student support resources across school districts. Then we have the creation of this Education Fund Advisory Committee and the purpose is to monitor Vermont's education financing system, conduct analysis, recalculate and recalculate the people's weights and categorical aid amounts as necessary and make animal recommendations reporting it, animal recommendations and report its findings to the general assembly. Membership should be seven members, commissioner of taxes, secretary of education or dozen needs, two members of the public with expertise in education financing appointed by the speaker, two members of the public with expertise in education financing appointed by the committee and committees and one member of the public with expertise in education financing appointed by the governor. Powers and duties are annually on before our January 15th of each year, commissioner recommendations to you regarding the recalculation and recalibration of people's weights and categorical aid as necessary, the property dollar equivalent yield, the income dollar equivalent yield, the non-state property tax rate and the amount of the stabilization reserve. Assistance is from various people or departments of taxes, AOE, GFO, less council and office of less operations and the standard language around meetings, compensation, the standard of compensation as well. And then it requires the first report of this committee by January 15th of next year. And yeah, so that's basically it there. And then section 16 is a change to the tax title, section top 32 and this changes existing law. And so now it will be annually and not later than December one, the education fund advisory committee rather the commissioner of taxes after a consultation with the GFO shall calculate and recommend the property dollar equivalent yield, income dollar equivalent yield, not homestead tax rate. And then it also says that Emily, before December one, the committee with the assistance of GFO shall prepare and publish the education fund outlook. And those are the only changes to that section of tax law. Then we have the section that requires a collaboration by the agency in GFO. So it says that they will, before August one this year enter into a memorandum of understanding to share data, models and other information that's needed to update the weighing factors, host the statistical model used to provide modeling and keep, maintain that on both systems in parallel and then recommend based on their consensus view recover weights to the education fund advisory committee. Then we come to staffing at the AOE. So this creates six positions, you know, two positions to provide support for English language learners, two for education quality standards to support that and two to support the new committee. The appropriation of 600,000 I put in as a guesstimate, 100,000 per, I'm sure the agency would have used on that figure and then we come to technical and conforming changes and the task force realized over the summer that the excess spending provision has some provisions that aren't used, so they're being taken out. So when you're determining excess spending, you exclude various categories and so these are categories of exclusions that aren't being used. So remember, the first thing is spending, it should go through the cost of playing the merger of a small school, which has great size of 20 or fewer students, but there are schools in the state like that anymore or I think the agency doesn't believe that so that's where that's been taken out. And then school district costs associated with dual enrollment early cause, those aren't paid by the school district, those are paid by the state, so that shouldn't be here. Then we're, so in 20, we're amending equalized pupils. This is just simply a technical change because you have to calculate equalized pupils in a given year, but then we're gonna be using a three-year average of that going forward. So I'm just clarifying that this definition is one that is used when you're calculating for a given year, so that's the change there. And then this provision section 21 is the power of school boards and so has this change here. It's basically cross-referencing the, sorry, the weights again, so the new weighting language we've got. And then we have effective dates and these basically, the core of this bill takes effect, if you will, I'm gonna slip down to B, I'm July one, I'm next year, that's all the weighting changes that we're talking about and that's what we're talking about. That's all the weighting changes we're talking about. So the ones coming to effect on passage or on passage are the findings, the goals, the requirements to develop universal income declaration form, the requirement to the new education advisory committee, et cetera. So you have a bunch of things that can affect on passage, things taking effect a year out and then finally that provision 6A taking effect in 2028 and that's the one that changes the definition to use the three-year average as opposed to one-year. So that is the end of your walkthrough. Okay. Let me take this down so you can- Yeah, committee. Let me- Okay. The one change I noticed that we hadn't talked about was having this committee do the, what's now called the November 1st letter with the recommended yields. I wanna send that, we'll send the whole bill out, I think to the education department and to the tax department and joint fiscal for comment or feedback because that is a change. And that committee is set up to recommend weights every year. Director. Every five years. Sorry, Chair, Chair, I'm looking for that provision. I wanna make sure I get it right for you. In fact, it was right at the end. It talked about, are they assessing weights every year? The, yeah, there's a report. Yeah, let me, yeah, let me check. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. And this calculates everything is a weight, is that correct? Correct. And we're leaving, but the ELL weight is, we're still waiting, right? There's a big red square that we will plug Ed into. But we have not talked about one of the original thoughts was that we could do some as weights and some as grants outside of ELL. And what's concerning me and I've gotta do more research is that I have an inner city that is losing that is one of my lowest spending, poorest districts. And one of my larger, not definitely wealthier than the inner city school is gaining. And a lot of it and the difference is the sparsity weights. And I'm wondering how many other inner cities because they are dense are actually losing. These are the places that thought they were going to win. And I wanna check on that, but I'm wondering if we went to, because we are ready for rural schools. They get a transportation grant. Now we're waiting them for poverty. There's also a small school grant up to schools having 250 students, which is not too small in Vermont. So we've got three. And I've asked Professor Colby to come in and talk to us why we also need a rurality, sparsity, lack of density grant. If we are covering for the cost of transportation and poverty and ELL and other things, but it seems to be the density, that's the weight that's working against the inner cities. And I just haven't had time to sit down and go through all of Brad's printouts from yesterday. But I asked about my two schools and it was the density weight that threw them. Senator Brock. I would just amplify what you said in the discussion with Professor Colby coming up as to whether the density rate is a measure in itself or whether the way it appears in the ultimate statistics that she came up with in effect a measure of other factors of which density just happens to be commonality. For example, in rural districts, our rural districts are poorer, our rural districts have other factors that may have influenced this particular weight or the application of this weight. And as rurality, it equally valid measure of something that is meaningful, whereas poverty is much more clear cut. And I think it's worth exploring more in our questioning of Professor Colby because it's something frankly that's concerned me as a member of the task force. So that's just one that I've picked up on and I wanna have a little more discussion. And I finally figured out, I haven't heard much from my districts but I have two superintendents that were appointed in the last two weeks. One is recently as last night. And I'm not sure, I know there's been some churning in the superintendency. There's been in terms and I'm not sure where they are but I don't think that if they have a full-time superintendent now, it's not a very long-term one. So I'm, but I know that these are schools that thought they are so poor and they weren't when the weights got put in originally that they were going to see something of a windfall and they are actually going to lose depending on where we, and lose 92 students which is not a small amount. So that's just one of the things I wanna look at but we haven't, we've looked at weights, we've decided we were leaning towards weights rather than the equity payments but we haven't really looked at the interaction and if we might either not do something or do something as a grant which would take it out of that whole waiting profile. So just a thought there but you might wanna look at some if you've got any inner city. I know I've looked at, we looked at Bennington. I think I've looked, I wanted to look at St. Johnsbury. St. Albans I think is probably transferred enough to it might still be impacted but some of those smaller denser communities and then some of them have private academies that act as public schools. So that gets even more complicated. Okay, questions at this point. I'm starting to think there's a conspiracy to get a long break. Senator Bray. So I don't remember the sequence in terms of the factors used in the waiting study group. I mean, did Professor Colby's report get drafted prior to your ever convening and then you're reviewing that and so this whole reality measure had already been introduced into the mix or was it something that evolved out of your committee conversations? Okay, that's a question for Senator Hardy I assume. Yeah, so is that, do you want me to answer that Senator? Okay, so the original pupil waiting factors report that was produced by Professor Colby and her team came out in December of 2019 and it included a set of weights for the five categories under current discussion. So students living in poverty, students in different grade levels, middle school and high school, students in small schools and ELL students and then students who lived in low population density areas. And the population density has three different levels of population density and the small schools has two different levels of small schools. And those were all in Professor Colby's team's original report and she and her team did a lot of statistical analysis based on 10 years. I think it was 2010 to 2019 cost data for school districts and schools and regions, the region, looking at that cost data and doing a statistical analysis determine how much more educating a student in those various circumstances cost to the same standard and that standard was test scores. So quick answer to your question is yes, those were the original categories that Professor Colby's team proposed. We did not change those categories at all. We had a lot of discussions about them as I've talked to Senator Cummings about and Senator Brock can confirm or deny I suppose this but we had a lot of conversations about whether or not we thought that all three of those rural categories were necessary and did transportation offset it and Professor Colby can talk to that issue. She talked to us about it. We had conversations about the different grade levels. We had conversations about the different school sizes and as Senator Cummings said, a lot of us were skeptical that a 250 person school was small in the context of Vermont but Professor Colby's data showed that there were differences in costs for these categories and I would assume that she would say that the other things were held constant. So poverty was held constant when looking at rurality, et cetera but I can't speak for her. I'd rather have her explain it but they are the same categories that were in the original report. And if I may just to follow up. So costs, I mean, if the idea is to measure costs then you would also wanna know that you're getting the same outcomes for that cost. You know, like the educational quality or whatever product is the same in each place so that the costs are also comparable. And so you're saying she normalized the test scores that was the proxy for an equally valuable education. Her outcome, the outcome they used was math and English language, English test score reading, math and reading test scores. So they looked at the standardized tests for students in each district and said, if this student got a, I'm gonna make up levels but a hundred and they are this kind of student how much more would it cost to educate this student to get up to the hundred? So that sort of differential was what was used to determine the weights. And this is a very oversimplification of it but that's how it is done sort of in the background. And so behind each weight is a cost factor and those cost factors are actually what is the cost equity payments are those cost factors. So if you remember the chart that I gave all of you that had, these are the weights. These are the cost factors. Literally that, the weight is that's the cost that's associated with that weight to educate the same student up to an equitable standard. And I guess you could say the sort of like average student is a student in elementary school that's doesn't, doesn't, is not impoverished, does not go to a small school, does not live in a sparsely populated area, does not have English language learner needs. So that the one is the elementary school student in those circumstances. And so how much does it take to educate everyone else up to that same standard and knowing that educating middle schoolers and high schoolers is more expensive, namely because of the wider variety of classes and services that are necessary. But this is all based on the assumption that if I spent two point whatever, you know, if you've got the one and you weight is 1.24 that if I spent two, twice as much, two and a half, two and a quarter times as much, I could educate that poor student to the wealthy student's level based. Essentially, I mean, and I really, you know, Professor Cole, it's her research, so I don't want to. So I think, yeah, we talked about that. But we did have these conversations and, you know, there were skepticism expressed and concerns and questions, you know, about some of the weights and ultimately the task force kept the same categories that she had in her team had in their original report, mainly because we didn't have any sort of counter factual data to say that's not right. And theirs was an empirical study that came up with these, a different empirical study would certainly come up with different results. That's how it works, but. Okay. Did I see somebody before Senator Brock, Senator Pearson, did you have your hand up? I was just gonna comment that, you know, the details of language seem a little in the future to me that, so that's why I wasn't engaging in questions. Okay. Senator Brock. There's just a comment on where there may be some skepticism. When Professor Colby first came before the task force, I noticed that she emphasized that her work was based upon what the legislature asked her to do. And in a subsequent meeting, I went back to her and said, what I heard was that you did what we told you to do, but the question is, did you do what should have been done? And I didn't really come away and Senator Hardy may have a different opinion. I didn't really come away having come back to that question two or three times during the weeks we did this. I didn't come back with a real clear answer on that. And so that has always been kind of in the back of my mind is did we do everything that should have been done and did we use everything that perhaps we should have looked at or were we narrowly focused on these particular areas of inquiry? I think that what was done, I think was done well. I think it was done thoroughly. I think I'm comfortable with the kind of methodology that Professor Colby used. I also of course, obviously look at the end result we have what a 66 page bill. And I guess the only thing that we should have added is a coefficient of complexity to make it a little bit more difficult to understand. But aside from that, I think we did what we could with what we had. And I think that given what we asked the task force to do, they did way more than we asked them to do. But our primary goal was equity. And we knew the old weights weren't equitable. We knew that towns had changed and people had migrated and towns that once were fairly middle class, the jobs have gone away and they aren't that middle class anymore. But now we're doing the runs. And when you look at the impact and something seems counterintuitive, I think it's, I just feel the need to understand why because I'm gonna get asked why. And if Washington County may be different in that we do have a couple of small cities, but I wanna make sure that we aren't disadvantaging another group of kids in trying to advantage kids in more rural communities. Because there are some very wealthy rural communities. And I think we just need to take a look and make sure that what we've done fits, when we look at the reality of how it plays out, just see if that fits with how we thought it was gonna come out with the reality on the ground. And if it doesn't ask why, at least so we understand that. Sandy Hardy. Yeah, a couple of things. The rural cost difference that Professor Colby pointed to and she'll have more details on this is that the cost of labor and the cost of supplies are higher in rural areas in some cases and our rural school districts don't have sufficient funds to pay that same cost. And I think you heard that from Superintendent Batza Jorn talking about how she has a whole bunch of teachers who aren't fully licensed because she doesn't have enough resources to pay for the licensed teachers. So that's one thing about the rural things. And then there are districts that sort of get caught in the middle that are neither wealthy nor really poor. And that's certainly true for Addison County. We get caught in the middle. And I think it's somewhat true for Washington County just sort of looking through that run that Brad did. And one thing about Barrie, and this is true for Addison County District, did Barrie merge center? Yes. So the districts that merged. It was a forced merger. Right, so because they're larger, the sort of poverty and maybe inner city Barrie gets, you know, overall is lower and then also their density is lower. So districts like that, that's true for a couple of my districts as well. And that's one of the main reasons why we kept the merger support grants. For those districts, they would continue to get the merger support grants. And that is not in the printout that Brad did. So we could ask him to add those in so you can sort of see the extra that they would continue to get for merger support grants. So that was definitely a factor because they wouldn't get the weight. They did what they asked. Yeah, they are getting the merger. To make it more complicated locally, Barrie town just did a reappraisal and one tax bill I'm very acquainted with went up 40%. And it's took them, it usually takes at least two, it took three votes. To pass a budget and if they're wealthier areas, taxes went up anywhere near that. It's gonna be a very interesting town meeting in Barrie or the Merge School District. And it's just, it's the perfect storm at this point. So I just wanna make sure we've dotted our eyes and crossed our T's. And know why whatever is happening is happening. So, okay, any other questions, comments? All right, we are ahead of schedule. We are not, our next witness is not scheduled until 315, right? Cause we thought this would go until three and it hasn't. Madam chair, can I just ask? I'm just wondering, given the silence, what other people, what other members of the committee might need to hear in order to go to the next step with this? I think we may need to start with see if we can get some breakouts on the Ed Fund impact of that rotating or averaging per pupil. I'm assuming you guys didn't do that. The average being the five year average, the transition. Yeah, I can talk to Brad about that. Well, we'll drop Brad a note and see if he can come in and help us see how that would work on the Ed Fund and get a sense of how that might work. The other thing we've done is say your tax rate, you know, to stabilize how much that can go up. But I think it, per pupil, which is what we're changing, we're gonna want to transition in. And we have got somebody from the pupil, waits from the director of the coalition of Vermont student for Vermont student equity is coming in and at 315. And after that, we are going back to S53. Bill Driscoll is here from AIV. We've asked for some testimony from what could be affected industries. Apparently there was a CPA that spoke for the chamber in the house, Megan Sullivan from the chamber. That CPA has moved on and she's trying to find somebody else to come in and talk to us from the chamber and see how that works on that one. And then we're gonna walk through S166, which is a new bill. So that's the rest of the afternoon. Are we still anticipating some guidance from Senate Ed at this point on pupil waiting? We are anticipating a proposal on the English language. Yes. And I know they're trying to get it out. We had a touch base this morning and I think if they're looking at trying to get it out early next week, I know they couldn't get it out tomorrow. But they're trying and as soon as we get that, we can plug that in. Then we can look at the, you know, then we know we're dealing with the runs with at least that we, you know, we can, I think eliminate one run and then one column in there and still work our way through, but we'll be able to see what the impact of that decision is. Madam Chair, you've repeatedly stated that we would just accept Senate Ed's recommendation as gospel. I want to just say I don't, I don't accept it as gospel. I will be very, very appreciative of their work and obviously consider it, but I'm not sure why we would just sort of hand over our power in this case. But obviously their input is not anything I would dismiss. No. I usually, when a bill comes to us, try and keep our focus on sections of the bill, which are within our jurisdiction. Jurisdiction has been given to the Ed committee to work this one through. I've been in this building long enough to know that there are no sacred cows and that we can cut up our lives and that we can cut up anything we feel like. And I also know that anything we do will be chopped and reassembled in the other body. This is sausage making at its finest. I think it's wishful thinking that you will just do that so we can get this bill out of here. But I've also know that you might not. So, but they are getting the first cut at it and they might do what you think is the right thing and life might be good or life might get a lot more interesting. So we will see. Senator Hardy, did you have something to say? I'm not on that, you've said it all. But I just wanted to make a request to Senator Brock because in the section on the audit, you'll see that I, as I said, put a lot more meat on the bones of that and just want you to make sure you, I know you do this anyway, but please look through it and maybe we should have the auditors and obviously AOE and people like that. I think I'm gonna ship this bill out to all the impacted state agencies and just ask them if they would like to comment because we've switched responsibility, we've added responsibility. Having been through this before, I think telling the administration, they will add six positions, probably won't get warmly received and it will send this bill to appropriations. But we also heard from representatives. We heard really clearly about how school districts need more support from AOE. And also to Senator Brock's point about the sort of narrowness of the study and that question that he asked, I think at least five times of Professor Colby about what would you do if you were going to redesign the whole thing. The audit is partly sort of trying to get at that question. So wanting to make sure the timing of it, I didn't, Jim and I went around and around on the timing of it. So that's another thing to make sure that we've got it at the right time. So it's important that we do this right because this is going to be a major change. There will be some major change in some of our districts which means we will feel major pain. Some of us are still healing from the merger debates. And so you don't, when you do something this major, you might, you can tweak it, but you don't want to be doing something major in the next year or two. So I think it behooves us to make sure we've got it right. Senator Brock. Well, I think we did what we could with what we had, but part of the underlying thought behind the questions that I kept repeatedly asking Professor Colby and others were if you were to design a really workable education funding system, would it look like this? Well, no. It wouldn't. It probably wouldn't, but we didn't get there. We didn't get there. Well, that is what we asked her to do or paid her. That's correct. We did not. And so we got what we asked for. Yeah. And now we've got to deal with it. So we are, yes, we are dealing with the base system we've got and we are changing one section of it, one section that never got looked at in, I think any of our time here in the building, maybe Senator McDonald was here in the other body when they looked at weights, but we've never looked at them in my time in the building. Okay. So you're getting a slightly longer than scheduled break. Thank you, Jim. That is, yeah, this one in the merger bill, you've done your share of heavy drafting. I think the worst for special education, that was tough. Okay. I missed that one. But if you'd like to take a shot at appraisal, how you appraise time shares, we'd love help. Okay. Okay. Committee, I'll see you be here a few minutes before quarter after three.