 Meeting between the finance committee and the education committee of the Senate and today I thought we'd get an update from Mark Peralta about the state of the Ed fund. Paying attention to any of the news. It's definitely feeling better than it did when we went home in June as our most of the revenues but we're not out of the woods yet so Mark why don't you bring it up and tell us what we're looking at. Okay so I'm Mark Peralta from the Joint Fiscal Office. Since it's been a while since most of you have had a walkthrough through the education fund artwork I thought I would just start off by very very briefly just recapping where it's been since the legislature recess back earlier this year. For those of you who follow the education fund and those of you who probably don't know that normally education tax rates are set so that the education fund is in balance and we have a full stabilization reserve. This year post pandemic because we had a dramatic decline in the non property tax revenues that went to the education fund that would have resulted in education property tax rates that the legislature just seemed to be unacceptable. So what was decided back in Act 122 when you were last in session was to set the education tax rates based on four things. The first was voter approved spending for FY 21 which had been conducted during town and the second was voter approved spending. So prior to our understanding of what was going to be happening with the pandemic the January revenue forecast which again did not reflect any of the revenue downgrades that we saw subsequently. A projected surplus in the education fund at that time which was about $13 million and significantly a full stabilization reserve. That went up from FY 20 to FY 21 only a little over three cents and education property taxes grew but only about $60 million compared to where they would have been. The downside of all that is what that meant is we weren't fully covering education spending in FY 21 based on the estimates and there was a significant deficit that was going to be carried from both FY 20 and FY 21. At one time that deficit had been as large as $150 or $160 million. That was based largely on the early revenue forecast that we had that were based on really sketchy epidemiological studies and a lot of conservatism on part of the estimators. Chair mentioned that that deficit has now dropped dramatically. I can use the education fund to show you how that's happened but the bottom line is that that deficit that was initially anticipated to be as high as $150 million is now $66.4 million with some caveats which I'll go over in a second. How we got to the $66.4 million. Faith can you page down to the bottom of the outlook. I think I'll just hit the bottom the bottom highlights of this. So FY 22 which you can't see the header but the middle column is FY 20. At one time we were even anticipating a shortfall in FY 20 because of the downgrade in the non-property tax revenues to the education fund which are primarily sales tax. However after the FY 20 close out and the more recent revenue forecast we had we actually closed FY 20 in pretty good shape. You can see on line 27 we have a 4.5% reserve. The statutory target is 5% so for FY 20 we're only about $2.5 million short having a full reserve so rolling into FY 21 we're not in that bad of shape. However as I mentioned the tax rates were set in FY 21 at a level that did not fully balance the fund and you can see that over on line 30 you can see the $66.4 million shortfall. There's a few things to keep in mind with that number. Let me back up a second and just tell you the other changes that came in. The changes that the most recent changes that happened in here and the reason that this has dropped significantly very recently is that the last revenue forecast indicated that non-property tax revenues coming into the fund were up by $11.8 million. On top of that we have been carrying a zero in line 22 which is prior year reversions and finance and management has indicated that they expect to be able to revert $14 million to the education fund in FY 21 those are from prior year appropriations. Those two significant impacts more than $25 million brought that projected deficit in FY 21 down to that $66.4 million. It's important to note that that deficit assumes that we have a full stabilization reserve so if you look online 27 again you can see that for FY 21 we have a 5% reserve of $38.2 million. That money we normally don't try to use that money but it is available and we had at one point well we did actually in FY 20 you can see we used that $2.5 million so that money is potentially available. You're not able to close that $66 million gap in FY 21. The other really big caveat is that this does not include yet in FY 21 any of the pandemic related federal aid that we are expecting to get or we have got. So back when you were in session in the Q1 budget you appropriated $50 million of our the state's C-R-F allocation for K-12 education. That included money for $12 million for summer meals, $6.5 million for indoor air quality, a million and a half for independent schools and another million dollars for accounting and technical assistance. That left $29 million for the local education agencies, our school districts to use to offset either new costs that they were facing that had not previously been budgeted or budgeted costs that were eligible for using C-R-F money. And that $29 million I know the agency is here today and I can talk some more about it but that money is available to school districts. It's possible that some of it may be available to reduce the deficit. It's also likely the significant amount of it is for new costs that weren't previously budgeted. But in addition to that this $50 million which includes this $29 million going to school districts. The legislature indicated at the time when you were here last that you wanted to reserve $100 million of our remaining C-R-F allocation to provide additional assistance to school districts thinking that when you came back in August we'd have a better idea of how much money districts actually needed. The guidance that AOE has sent out to school districts indicated that that was the case and I think that most school districts are under the impression that any C-R-F eligible expenditures that they have in FY20 and in the first half of FY21 would be eligible for reimbursement. It's likely that those reimbursements are going to exceed the $29 million which only amounts to between $500,000 and $500,000 and $600,000 per SU. So it's not a kind of money when you spread it out over the whole system. However, in the restated budget that the governor just released last week, they have recommended appropriating all of the state's remaining C-R-F allocation for purposes other than K through 12 education. Most of it about $133 million is going to ACCD and out to support businesses. So to the extent that money is not available to reimburse schools for some of their C-R-F eligible costs and they've gone ahead and sped that money, you could actually see a deficit showing up in school budgets. So the legislature has to weigh in on that. The C-R-F allocations have to be appropriated. So that's going to be something that you're going to be looking at. The other big piece of money that's missing from here is about $28 million that came through ESR money. I understand that Brad's going to address that, so I won't spend a lot of time on it. Other than to point out that how that money goes out may still be pretty uncertain. There was a court case last week in Washington state that issued a preliminary injunction against the USDA rules that had been issued several months ago as to how districts can allocate that money. So I won't get into a lot more detail on that other than just to say that I think it's uncertain at this point. And I think, unless you have any questions, I think that's it. I mean, the good news is that the deficit is significantly smaller than we anticipated initially. We do have some federal money available to have to help ship away at that. And that's about all I can tell you at this point. Okay. Committee, any questions? And I, there we go. You're all back up. Questions for Brad at this time. Senator Baruth. Senator Pierce. Thank you, Madam chair. Mark, I'm just wondering. Is there any downside other than not having a stabilization fund. If we were to use that 38 million or whatever it was. That was the deficit and we actually zeroed out the, the reserve there. Are there any downsides as there might be with, you know, elsewhere in the budget, if we didn't have stabilization reserves for credit rating or other. I'm not sure about the issue about credit rating and that kind of thing. I'm assuming it's better to have money in there than not. But one practical consequences that when the tax rates are set in that reserve would have to be fully restored. So at 38 million, eight million pennies, probably four or five cents on the tax rate that would be added to that recommended tax rate. But other than that, I don't think that there was any huge downsides to using some of that money. To offset. Thank you. I assume we could change the law to say we didn't have to reflect it. We didn't have to. We didn't have to. We didn't have to. We didn't have to reflect it. Or reflect all of it. Well, I mean, that, that's what that's, that's in fact what happened this year. I mean, you dipped a little bit into it. In order to, um, down, you know, balance things out in FY 20, but only through the tune of two and a half million dollars. If you were to use the entire amount, I'm not sure how that would be perceived. Okay. And people who own this money. I know we have drawn down some of it in the past. I think I have a similar question. Um, the federal money that you said is already gone to schools. Um, yeah, it hasn't got the schools yet. It's going to the agency of education. Okay. Um, but, but schools are spending in anticipation of that. And then, then, then we also, uh, Well, is the money that's gone to the agency is that. I've forgotten the, the term. There's two tranches of federal money, right? There's what we sent from CARES money to deal with HVAC and stuff like that. And then there was direct money. Um, right? So there, there, there are two accounts. One is the CRF fund, the corona virus relief fund. And out of that fund, you appropriated $50 million. We came through 12, but $29 million of that is going directly to school districts. There was also some $12 million for some of the meals. The other pot of money is the S or money, which is actually a lot more flexible. And there's $28 million there. And neither of those pots of money are reflected in the FY 21 outlook. I just showed you. Okay. So that helped me free my question. So is that. Is it essentially. Is that 28 million. Something we could effectively back out of this spreadsheet. Or is that got conditions? I mean, I don't know. Do they also have to prove that it's sort of COVID. Related expenditures. Do you see my question? Yeah, they do. They do have to meet all the requirements of the, either the CRF or the SR. Federal guidelines for spending that money, whether or not we can recapture any of it and use it to chip away at this deficit depends on whether the money was previously budgeted by the school district or not. If it's new costs that haven't been reflected in the spending, then it doesn't do anything to reduce the deficit. But it does assist school districts and going forward and trying to reopen that kind of thing. But anything that isn't funded. Any expense that is a COVID expense that isn't covered with COVID funds. Is. Barring intervention going to fall to the tax rate. Yes. Okay. So, and didn't we put Senator Perch look is here. I've heard it was his idea. 50 million in for efficiency Vermont to help schools with. Air quality. Six and a half million dollars of the 50 million dollars that you appropriated for K through 12. Okay. Earmarked for efficiency Vermont and injury equality. My understanding is that that money was slow getting out. So I don't know how far along districts. Authorize last week. Yes. The efficiency Vermont is going to come back and report to you on, on September 15th. As to how they're doing, but given that's only, you know, I'm not sure how far along they'll be. That's unfortunate because I was listening to the. Person from the Harvard school of public health. And I was listening to that. I was listening to that. I was listening to that. Who's been writing all the COVID. You know, return criteria. And he said wearing masks and. Air circulation were the two key ones. For schools. So given. Some of our antiquated air circulation systems. That's going to be unfortunate. That that money didn't get out there earlier. So I'm going to go back to that. Any other questions for Mark. Senator Ballin. Actually, it's a question for Andy. So I'll, I'll wait. I had one more issue. I forgot to mention it's a small point. The administration's restated budget also proposes to. Put the community high school in Vermont. Back into the education fund where it was back and 18. It's gone back and forth a couple of times, but the government is not sure that's going to go back to the government. So they're not going to sit in the education fund and FY 20 by 3.3 million dollars. So we've got a 69.7 million dollars. Not sure whether that has legs or not, but that's part of the administration's proposal. We started with a deficit of a hundred and 71 million. And we're down to. 60 something. Um, Decimal dust. So just, it has been kicked in and out. in and out. And there's deficits in both the Ed fund and the general fund. So, okay, I'm going to move on to Secretary French. And I think what we were looking for is an update funding expenses. Is the 100 million that we set aside to cover school opening expenses? There is it going somewhere else? Just what is happening? Anything you could throw in on broadband and daycare would also help. I spent this morning on daycare. Good morning or good afternoon. Sorry, I'm just choking down my lunch really quick. That's okay. Mine will be here soon. Yeah, just the press conference went a little longer. It's good to see you all. Yeah, I wish I had more answers than questions, but let me give you a recap and I invite my staff. We have Bill Bates, our CFO, and I think Brad James, our finance managers, perhaps the one as well. I think in terms of, you know, Senator Pearson's question and just to clarify, there's, you know, I would agree there's two basic plots of federal money at play. The CRF, which the legislature appropriated the $50 million and then the ESSER funds. One distinction I would draw, as I understand it, is the CRF is a reimbursement process. So districts have to expend those funds, then seek reimbursement. So a couple of times in the last few minutes, people have been referring to money going directly to the districts. It's more of a reimbursement. On the ESSER, on the other hand, is a direct allocation of school districts. So they do have to write up a grant strategy proposal, so to speak, and get it approved by the agency. But that's basically a direct allocation to them. In the CRF funding, you know, in our proposal with a legislature that was worked out to approximately $50 million back when we made that proposal, it was based on a national model that was put out by essentially the national organization of the superintendent's association and their counterparts in the school business officials. About $490 ahead that worked out close to our $50 million number. So back at the time when we were proposing this, albeit no one had experience in what the true reopening costs would be, you know, we thought the legislature appropriated sufficient funding for reopening costs. Unfortunately, it's taken, I don't know the answer, I guess, the question is that is that sufficient for reopening? I will say it's taken us longer than we had hoped to get that money out the door. In terms of the CRF application, once again, that's a reimbursement process of districts just had availability that as of late Friday evening. So they're in the process of now drawing down or submitting reimbursement requests for those funds. Included in the 50s, I think, as Mark mentioned, the $6.5 million for HVAC, I would say that's clearly insufficient to address the broader HVAC conditions in schools, but I'm not quite sure that was the intended purpose per se. I think this was designed to sort of a placeholder to get some of the work going. But I was talking, for example, with the school district of Wyndham Central Supervisory, which operates Leo and Gray and New Brook Superintendent yesterday was saying they have HVAC situation there that goes back many, many years at deferred maintenance on the part of the school boards and so forth. So it's not something they would have been able to address this summer, it's just something they want to start the planning process in. And that deficiency of having adequate HVAC has resulted in them opening school in a totally remote disposition. So districts have some flexibility in how they're navigating some of these issues. I will say in the one area we do have direct numbers to report on is the food service reimbursement. I think you there was an allocation in the $50 million of $12.5 million. I think as of last week, we once again, this is a reimbursement process. We received about $2.2 million worth of reimbursement requests on that. So to give you some sense of how that's going out, I think districts, if they had been able to go back a little farther and seek reimbursements in those probably that number would have been larger than we anticipated. And they're certainly going to be ongoing costs in the food service operations. But a lot of the mechanics around the CRF in terms of requesting reimbursement, districts also know those funds essentially are not available after December. So there's that sort of compressed time frame also for them to consider. The ESSER funds, on the other hand, that application has been live since July. But as Mark alluded to, there's been sort of a national debate around this thing called equitable share provisions, which basically the US Department of Education introduced a new methodology by which districts are required to determine how much of that money they should share with their independent schools in their region. And as Mark mentioned, there was an injunction issued, I believe, late in the week last week out on the West Coast. As of yesterday, we're kind of convinced that has broad national applicability, but we haven't finished our legal analysis on that. So anyway, the ESSER application has been live for a while, but it also has been caught up in sort of this political ambiguity. I would say the other piece of the political ambiguity for school districts is that we've had this sort of open and transparent conversation about a clawback approach. So I've heard from many business managers would say like, you know, we've had access to this application, but we're concerned that if we spend it, we'll also ultimately have it taken away from us in the shorting of the ed fund payment. So I would just throw that in the container of the political ambiguity that's influenced district behaviors. My impression right now is that districts have adequate liquidity to reopen school. And that's really, when I say liquidity, I mean cash flow only had one district this summer run into that issue. And that was really a function of them in unable to secure short-term loan as a result of not having an approved district budget. They've subsequently attained us an approved budget. So I think they're okay at the moment. But I think cash flow wise, people are doing fine. The question of what costs are ultimately getting reversed, I think is still uncertain. And I think, you know, for the moment our focus is so much on just the reopening of schools don't want to lose the side of what will no doubt be longer financial effects of the emergency that districts will have, which will no doubt necessitate further federal support. But I think, you know, just to summarize, we did have some conversation with joint fiscal earlier in August. And I think from our perspective, just from a technical perspective, we're fairly convinced that neither the CRF or ESSER funds could be used to address the deficit in the ed fund. We haven't found an easy way to do that yet. I think, you know, our strategy going forward, we're certainly very pleased and optimistic that we've been able to reduce the deficit since the earlier the gloomier projections that occurred back in the spring. Our approach right now and immediate near term is to certainly work with our congressional delegation to get more flexibility and more funding, but also to work with districts very closely in the coming weeks as they start preparing their budgets for next year. We think, you know, sort of taking a really intensive approach in terms of sharing information and the tax implications of their decisions will be really helpful as we try to try to close the gap, if you will, and we'll stop this. Why don't we stop there and invite Bill or Brad to add on. I don't know if Brad's still available or not, I don't see this as a space. Questions. More questions. I was going to, there isn't a question, Senator Hardy has a question. She was muted. There you go. Thank you, Senator Cummings. Secretary French, I'm just curious, when we allocated this $50 million, which is now the 29 of the 50 million that was supposed to be for reimbursements for school district, my understanding with some of that was supposed to be for reimbursement of FY20 costs. So the things that they spent in the spring so that they could close out their FY20 budgets, hopefully with surplus in some cases and carry forward that surplus into FY21. But because AOE hasn't gotten the funding out to school districts, many of them are in the process or have already closed their FY20 books. So that isn't going to be possible or will be much more difficult. So I know that everything had to be rushed this summer. I'm just curious why you haven't gotten the funding out yet to school districts. Yeah, I think, you know, certainly it's taken us longer than we had hoped. But if I remember correctly, you know, when the legislature finalized this approach, I think it had a retroactive date by which we were supposed to produce guidance. I want to say June 26th. So the following week it came out or passed and then you had already put a retroactive, I don't know how we were supposed to comply with a retroactive date in that regard in terms of producing guidance. But I know internally it's been more complex than we thought even by make the observation like on the ESSER rollout at the federal level, it takes, it tipped the federal government about four weeks on accelerated basis to produce the guidance and so forth to turn on ESSER. It's more or less what we've been working with CRF. Though I would argue it's more complex because this was a cross state government and we've had to work closely with the financial management team to make sure that our application conforms, you know, tightly to what the required uses are. I think we were about a week behind where we thought we would be and then as we were trying to put together a response for the childcare needs in particular, we wanted to go back, we went back and took another week to make sure that childcare costs, particularly childcare costs for teachers would be an eligible CRF reimbursement. So we took another week to make sure that that was included. But it's been a challenging process to put together while we're putting everything else together. So it's just, I hope people didn't have the impression that this would be turned on immediately. So it took us some time to do. And in the process, the governor has not recommended using any of the $100 million that we, the legislature, quote unquote, fenced off for higher, or for K-12. And I'm curious as to why that is and what role you played in that because clearly there are gonna be more than $29 million of costs for schools to reopen. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, once again, the national model was somewhere, when we applied that to our initial proposal was around $42 million. And that would include, we're parsing the $50 million into $29 million versus the $50 million pot. But based on the national model, the total pot, including things like HVAC foods, everything's in that sort of national model. So we thought our initial proposal, $50 million would be sufficient. And haven't seen anything else that would prove otherwise but albeit I would say our approach is on reopening costs, not the larger impact of the emergency. But the issue I was gonna mention, the $100 million was sort of took me by surprise and Jeff Francis sent a letter. I think he sent it out broadly to members of the legislature as well. And I heard it a little bit, I think in Senator Pearsons or one of the other senators remarks that, you know, the legislative general assembly had promised $100 million. That never came from our proposal. I mean, we had focused on, and I had the slide deck that says, you know, somewhere around the $50 million. So I'm not sure about the $100 million proposal or promise if you will. We certainly, in our guidance, I think as mentioned, are committed to ensuring that districts have what they need to pay for their reopening costs and the cost of the emergency. But I saw Jeff's letter and I observed as much with the superintendents, I saw a sort of a mix of those two issues. The $100 million wasn't anything we necessarily pledged to, but we're certainly keenly focused on ensuring districts have what they need to reopen. I think the reopening costs, you know, I think because the CRF funds are reimbursement costs, it isn't so much putting cash on the door, it's waiting for those requests to come in. It's yet to be determined whether that will be totally adequate. But I think, you know, we're still following the national model, what's put to that $50 million. And I think the legislature was generous in that regard. And I would also say we also know they have ESSER funds available as well, which have been available since July. But if we don't have money set aside, if the costs run over, we don't have any way to pay for them. Yeah, I mean, to your point, Madam Chair, anything ultimately that we don't have federal dollars for is going to come out of education spending. So we have to be very careful. I mean, the federal, we need to get greater flexibility, certainly, I think, at federal dollars, but we're going to need additional federal dollars. I predict, I feel pretty good about reopening costs, even though, as I mentioned, some of the HVAC issues are longstanding ones in the state. I think where we're going to see a significant uptick in costs is in student support services, which also comes out of the Ed Fund. So we need to anticipate, and this is going to be the real challenging piece, I think, of district budgeting, because the first part of that process is going to start here in a couple of weeks where the special ed directors start preparing what they call service plans, which is a projection of what next year's special ed costs will be. I don't know how they're going to begin to do that. So I want to work very closely with them as they're preparing those budgets. Houses on fire. Yeah, that's Barry. I'm in my apartment in Barry. I'm sorry, it's a regular currency. It's a regular fire, yeah. But I think, you know, not to conflate the issues, when reopening costs are not the long-term financial costs of this emergency in education, those costs are going to be significant, for sure. Okay, and I think that's as we go forward, planning what we need to start figuring out. I spent this morning listening to plans for childcare, and I said then that my panic button was rising, that we've got two weeks left, and I don't know how any parent knows what's going to happen to their kids in two weeks. Yeah, in childcare, as I saw the article this morning too, it's also about staff availability. Yes, I asked that. Yeah, it's not like you can just appropriate the money, and suddenly we have a childcare workforce, or infrastructure. So some of these issues like HVAC childcare that we had issues with prior to the emergency are just being exacerbated as a result of it. So it's the very challenge, I mean, it's hence the nature of an emergency. But I think it's so much of what I've been, my personal mindset now as secretary is really focused on reopening schools. And I think last spring, when we were admiring the complexity of this financial, we all knew this was going to be a very challenging dynamic, but in some ways it gets very simplified in an emergency because you focus on putting the fire out first, or dealing with the most immediate thing in front of us, which is right now, reopening schools. And now we're shifting pretty quickly into this conversation that we knew was coming, was how to, well, how are we going to ultimately pay for it? And then going out a year further, which many are thinking will be even more challenging, but I think the immediate good news is that the deficit's much smaller than it was. We can manage this situation I think where the other one was. Small gifts that we have. Okay, any further questions? Senator Baruth. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I'm wondering, as I remember, there was a deadline in the legislation we passed somewhere in November, and it presented an opportunity if money that we had put toward a certain purpose, for instance, the HVAC, six and a half million dollars, if it wasn't expended by that point, it could be moved out of that purpose and repurposed. So one of the concerns I have is that we have four weeks now or five weeks, then we will adjourn, and it will basically be the administration and the Joint Fiscal Committee that are making those reallotment decisions. So I was not honestly, not encouraged to see that the governor's budget didn't allow any of that hundred million for K through 12. So it's my hope that AOE, the legislature, and the administration can get on one page about making sure that there's a commitment. You just stressed that the commitment on the hundred million didn't come from your agency, that is true, but I'm hoping that before we leave in September, we can all be on one page about making sure that there's money and that we're not gonna short K through 12, say in favor of $150 gift cards to go out to Vermonters for random purchases. Just a little comment. No, I think, you know, to my comment about the political ambiguity, you know, to our credit, we've been talking openly with the field about when I say the field, I mean, school districts about the potential for clawback because that was a very real strategy. And I think it's important that we communicate that very transparently to people. That's given them a sense of unsettleness, if you will. And I think the more we can get on the same page through September, the better position they'll be in. That's one less thing they don't need to worry about. But it is, it's also, I would say in fairness, it's the nature of, you know, the emergency. This is a complex issue and we're addressing issues as they emerge. And I think, fortunately, we've also been able to get out in front of that to a certain extent as a state because we've achieved a high degree of suppression, but the financial implications are, you know, gonna be with us for a while, but we certainly would welcome the opportunity to get on the same page. I think any talk of clawback has really been if money can be paid with CRF or ESSA or something else, if we don't find a way to fill that deficit and, you know, going forward, none of us know what it's gonna look like. We're gonna have long range costs. It's gonna hit the property tax. And I think we know this next year are not gonna be the time to hit people with a major property tax increase, even if it starts to get offset by rising values. But I think it's not gonna help schools either if they come out next year and are looking at a 25 cent tax increase. So we're trying to find that balance. And I would hope we could work in partnership. We all wanna make sure that we use as much federal money as we can and to keep as much cost off the backs of property tax payers at a time where they may be particularly vulnerable. So I think I hope we're all trying to go in the same direction. Other questions, I don't see any. So thank you. I'm sure this will just be the start of many discussions. I've got Bill Bates next. Bill, do you have anything to add to this? You muted. Sorry. There you go. So I echo what Secretary French has shared with the committee today. And then to the extent that we have specific questions on ESSER or CRF, we also have Brad here that can dive into the more granular detail. I wanted to just point out that with CRF that has a very short tail. So that's the money that is, we need to use it by December 30 of 2020 or we have to return it. The ESSER money has a longer tail. So there's more flexibility. And I know that in our guidance we're suggesting that the field prioritize the use of CRF and then use the ESSER money thereafter. Brad, anything else to add to that? Okay, well, if no one has any questions for Bill, I'm going to go on to Brad. Yeah, and I'm looking at my screen. Where's Brad? I'm back. There you are. Okay, you're there. I'm back. I'm back. Screens, you're there now and the next time I look you're up there and I can't find you. Well, I disappeared for a while because I lost the internet. Oh, well, that happens to the best of us. I asked Brad to come talk and I guess it must have been joint fiscal that you gave the presentation to on ESSER funds and they can be chosen in districts and there was some concern, maybe it was even money chairs if the Department of Education was giving guidance because one, there was a potential that some of that money could cover things. It could be clawed back and others it wasn't. And at least for those of us that weren't on the Education Committee this, I thought made it clear. So I thought as we went forward, it would be helpful for you to get the Finance Committee up to the president and what we're looking at. Sure. First of all, I just wanna say, I think claw back is an unfortunate term. It is. It has bad connotations and it takes people back to what was a claw back for healthcare. And this really is not a claw back. No. This is reduction in education. That's a good word for I try not to use that one. But yes, that's a great word for it. So again, I missed probably 10, 15 minutes of everything that was going on there. So I'm not sure what was said, what was not said. I came back in when Secretary French was talking about $100 million. And part of that confused probably out with the field is probably part of my fault because I have been talking to people saying that my understanding is there has been this money set aside and reserve. I, apparently it's not in terms of the governor's budget. So that's probably on me a little bit to the confusion in the field because I have been talking about the thing that I believe that money was there to backfill if they did not have enough and that $50 million that was allocated that we got of CRF funds plus the ESSER money. So anyway, what Secretary French and Bill both said was that we are trying to get folks to use the CRF money first if a cost can be covered by both ESSER funds and CRF funds we are trying to direct the school districts to use the CRF funds first for two reasons. One, the CRF money is more short-lived it ends as of December 30th. ESSER funds continue on from the year and then two thirds, I guess. And secondly, because the ESSER funds are more they have a wider use, the uses delineated by the federal folks are much broader than the CRF. So if one cost can be covered by CRF and ESSER we are trying to get them to use the CRF because that will allow the ESSER money to be used for other things because it has a wider series of uses. At this point, and again this is where I don't know what we said, at this point I did check with folks who are collecting the ESSER applications from school districts. We've only had two ESSER applications come in. I heard Secretary French saying this has been a slow process and we had hoped it truly is. We have now gotten two ESSER applications in for about $485,000 in total. I cannot tell at the moment how much of that money is replacing money that was budgeted which would help the ESSER funds versus unbudgeted. I know that's part of the thing that we need to tease out because I know that's one of your major concerns is helping the ESSER funds. Secondly, in terms of the CRF money that those applications just went out, I believe it was on a Friday. And so we'll be getting those applications back in about a week. I think we had a fast turnaround. I think we're asking to get the information back to us on September 2nd. So I would say probably within another week it's called September 10th, thereabouts we should probably have some idea of what the CRF money request is going to be what people are asking for, what's going to be happening. As of right now, I can't plan any parameters around those numbers. I have been talking to Business Manager at the annual meetings at various times that they're aware of what I'm telling you right now is the same thing that I say to them. So that's kind of how we're looking at things being paid for CRF if possible first, then fill in with ESSER. And then after September, or not September, pardon me, December 30th it'll be all ESSER money after that. So the idea is to make sure you have enough ESSER money to go. The Business Managers is a group understand that there's a hole in the education fund, it's getting better, but there's a hole in the education fund, it's a problem. If it's not addressed, it will roll over an FY22 and that will cause them problems also. They also understand that they have costs that are not in their budgets that need to be covered too. So it's a balancing act on both sides on your side, their side, and on our side. Trying to get folks to get to use these money as best they can. What would you like me to do in terms of discussing ESSER or CRF, Madam Chair? I'll happily go either way. I just wanted to kind of get that. There were two options within ESSER that schools could use and I thought that's what I got totally confused on. I thought you helped understand, me understand that. Okay. Language in the CARES Act that allowed the ESSER funds to be used says that that a portion of ESSER funds will be sent or will be used by the LEAs in our case, the Supervisor Unions will be used by the LEAs for equitable services for kids in independent schools. And what the language said was, it said a lot about the same way it's done basically for Title I, okay? And that's based on poverty counts. So the way equitable services are the way they calculate that proportionate share of money for equitable services is they look at the total number of kids who have with the poverty criteria in school, just in independent schools that want to be partake, plus the public schools and they calculate a percentage based on that. And that's how the money goes out. When US education came out with their guidance back in, I don't even remember what it was, when they came out with their guidance instead of basing the proportionate share on poverty counts, they said that they wanted to base it on enrollments instead. So if an independent school wanted to partake of equitable services, then it was based on enrollments as opposed to poverty counts. Generally speaking, if you use enrollments, that's a higher percentage of the total enrollments in an SU versus poverty from independent schools is the total of poverty in an SU. So what that effectively would do would be effectively would drive more money through the private schools for equitable services and less being available for the public schools. Having said that, one thing to make sure is the money itself does not go to the independent schools. It's the services that that money pays for and it goes to the independent schools. So the supervisor used control of the money the whole time. So that was the controversy between basing the equitable services on enrollment and between basing them on poverty counts with a language intimated. There were lawsuits put out and just recently there was an injunction in Washington State to preliminary injunction that stopped US Ed from making any LEA across the nation allocate their proportionals, their proportion share on enrollments. Right now they currently have to do it on poverty. There are other lawsuits that will probably could be where the judge will make a ruling too. It's anticipated it'll be the same thing. I don't know, it's up in the air. But that's what the controversy was. It was whether it's gonna, where this money is gonna go out for equitable services based on enrollment, which is the larger piece or whether it's gonna go up based on poverty, which is a smaller piece to the independent schools. That's what the controversy was. And it looks like the court, one court at this time has said, no, it's going to be based on poverty because that's what the CARES Act actually says. The other part of all that is regardless of what a, which of those two options of school district choose, it had nothing to do with how much money they got. Cause that was also a confusion that you folks had that was out there. That was based on different calculation. The second piece that I think you're asking about Madam Chair is, is if, I'm sorry. After the controversy before the preliminary injunction, I missed this piece, before the preliminary injunction came out, USN came back out with guidance and said, you may either do equitable services based on enrollment as they prefer or you may do it based on poverty. But if you do it based on poverty, then you have to use all of your ester funds at only your Title I schools. You can't use them at any of your other schools again, if you have schools that are Title I and not Title I. So they limited, and we're trying to get, they also said that if you choose to use it based on poverty, and not only does it have to be used only at Title I schools, but federal supplement versus the planting regulations apply. They do not apply if you use enrollment. So that was the converse, that's where people were coming in. So now with this preliminary injunction, that whole interpretation of the rule that USN came out with is now on standby. And they're back to the, based on poverty without supplementary regulations right now. If there are no supplementary regulations, then that ester money can be used for costs within school district budgets that are eligible costs. That then would reduce education fund payments to those school districts because they have the money from esters. So they'll be washed from school districts. Those monies would not become into the education fund and it would be offsetting, helping to offset the deficit out of them. And that was a lot of words and I apologize. So if there are questions, I'll happily go back over any other questions. For Brad. And I, okay, Senator Perch, like I believe your committee is getting set to leave. So I'll take your questions first. Okay. I think I saw Senator Hardy too. So go for it. Great. Thank you, Senator Cummings. Yeah, Brad, on the applications that you talked about that have come in, if it's a reimbursement, how are you, can you just talk a little bit how that's working? Are they estimating what they're gonna spend and then applying to just so that you can kind of reserve funds for the different schools? How's that working on? Okay, right now these are the ester ones. And so it's all, this is all money that they've either spent this year, like starting July one for fiscal year 21, or that they anticipate spending there. So a lot of this is in anticipation with what they're going to do. So at this point, I think a lot of school districts have a pretty good idea of what their costs are going to be that they need to have to reopen. So that's what they're putting into their applications. Brad, it's fair to say this is the ester application. These are necessarily reimbursement. This is, the CRF is more of the reimbursement, Brad. So you don't have applications for the CRF reimbursement. They have not come in yet, no. But will there be applications or will it just be, they just send in their reimbursement? No, it's basically, we have to run everything through a grant application. They will tell us what they think they're gonna need. We will make the grant application itself. And then when they send in their request for the money, they will have to give back a documentation that we can see this is what they spent the money on before we send the money out to them. Okay. Thanks. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. First, I think it's really important, Brad, that your explanation of the difference between the ester funds and the CRF funds and the two ways that the ester funds have been interpreted. One of my priorities, and then I've talked to you and others about is that we try our best to find is an equitable way to distribute funds to school districts. And the ester funds, if they are distributed based on poverty is a much more equitable way of distributing funds than merely reimbursement situation. So one thing I think I would like us all to keep in mind as we're trying to figure out this puzzle of how the ed fund and school costs and reopening is that if we use the ester funds as a way to sort of backfill or save the ed fund, then we're doing it less equitably because then we're not giving us funding to the schools that would qualify for the ester funds because, and those are the schools, that more students in poverty the schools have, the more ester funds they would potentially get. So I think it's just a consideration of equity or am I interpreting it incorrectly, Brad? Let me just jump in quickly. There's a set allocation amount for each school, each LEA, each SU based on the ester calculation. The ester calculation at the allocation itself was based on title one monies, how that was spread out between SUs last year, the year that just ended FY20. So everybody got that their percentage, if they got 3% of the title one monies, that's how much ester money they got. They got 3% of the ester money. It almost sounded a little bit like you were mixing that up with what I was talking about with providing money and services to the independent schools based on poverty versus based on enrollment. I just wanna be sure that everybody understands that the calculation is, as you said, for how much each SU received for ester money was based on the poverty counts, based on title one information. Right, okay, but still the title one or poverty counts is a more equitable way of distributing funds than merely a reimbursement situation. So it's just a consideration if how we use the ester funds has an equity component to it and making sure that we're not losing that equity component in terms of how schools or what money schools are getting. I guess I just wanna make that point. And then I do have a question since our committee is leaving to go to our, the Ed committee is leaving. I just wanted to make sure, I know a concern of school districts and I've talked to Secretary French already about this, but is the average daily membership counts for FY, for this current school year and how they may be affected by the number of families who are choosing to officially homeschool their children. And that would drop the ADM counts and could have a negative effect on school district budgets moving forward. So I know that this is on a lot of people's radar, but I just wanna advocate for making sure we take care of that during this session. So school districts have an accurate count of their ADM for putting together their FY 22 budgets. So potentially holding harmless their ADM counts or using the FY 19 or 20 counts instead of penalizing them for this particular situation where a lot of families may be choosing to homeschool temporarily. So I just wanted to say that before we had to leave, even though it hadn't come up yet. And thank you, Senator Cummings for having the Ed committee join. Thank you for joining us. Okay, I think most of the Ed committee is gone. Are there any other questions for Brad? Everybody understands Esser, right? Okay. Next slide, it's Nathan Lavery, it's been a while, Nathan. Hi, good afternoon. Yes, it has been a while, but I'm happy to be here. I think just in terms of content, if it please the chair, it may make more sense to let Sue Seglowski and Chelsea Meyers kind of pick it off if for us as a group. Okay, that's whatever works for you. So Sue, we'll go down to you. Where is Sue? I am right here. And Chelsie and I are doing a joint presentation. She's actually going to start off and then I will finish it. So if you don't mind, could we start with Chelsie? Welcome, Chelsie. I don't know if you've been to Senate Finance before. I haven't, thank you, Senator Cummings. I'll just quickly introduce myself. I'm Chelsie Meyers. I work with Jeff Francis at the Vermont Superintendent's Association. I'm the Associate Executive Director. And as Sue said, we're going to present some joint testimony and then I believe Jay and Nathan will speak more to their memberships and what they're hearing. So on behalf of the Vermont Superintendent's Association and the Vermont School Hordes Association, we would like to thank you for inviting us to speak to your committee on the current fiscal implications of reopening schools amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Before I like really dig in, I just wanted to make a comment on the ESSER equitable shares since it was just being talked about. We have heard from some districts that they will have, if the current ruling stands, they will have to allocate all of their ESSER money to independent schools based on the calculation. So that's something to consider moving forward. So school boards and administrators have been working tirelessly to responsibly navigate the safe reopening of schools on September 8th. As you all know, this includes contending with evolving health and safety guidance, competing concerns from families, staff and community members, operational and logistical challenges and the significant academic development and social needs of the students they serve. At this time, we have two key recommendations for your committee to consider to ensure school districts have the financial stability and support to safely reopen schools in September. And we will conclude with a few additional observations. So first, at the end of June, the General Assembly set aside 100 million of coronavirus relief funds to help K through 12 schools with the cost of reopening schools during the pandemic and to address a deficit in the education fund if possible. The governor's budget does not include money to help schools deal with reopening costs amid the COVID-19 crisis. If the federal coronavirus relief funds are not used to pay for these unbudgeted costs of reopening schools, districts will be operating in a deficit, which will need to be addressed in the following year's budget, leading to a spike in property taxes and potentially drastic cuts to spending at a time when students will need additional academic, social and emotional support. VSA has begun to collect information. I will say we started this collection before the CRF application went out on Friday. So some of the information might have been changed based on what school districts have learned since then. But the costs associated, we collected information on the costs associated with reopening schools. We have not heard from a significant portion of them yet, but it is becoming clear that the estimates will likely exceed the original allocation for reimbursement, though more information needs to be collected. Furthermore, many business managers and superintendents have reported uncertainty about what is considered an allowable cost. Given the go ahead this summer to do what it takes to safely reopen schools in the fall, districts have purchased protective equipment and cleaning supplies, increased their technological capabilities, hired additional staff such as custodian school nurses and the highly coveted right now substitute teachers and committed to providing childcare for their employees while their children are in remote learning. They have not yet been reimbursed for these expenses. Again, this was prior to Friday and have significant concerns about operating at a deficit leading up to an extraordinarily difficult budget season. Chelsea, were these, let me interrupt from it. Were these expenses they were hoping to have covered with the CRF funds or? So what we asked them to do is to report to us if they could, as you can imagine, people are quite busy right now, what they have spent and what they are anticipating spending. And as I said, we haven't really had a clear total collection of that information. So I don't feel comfortable sharing it at this time, but what we are finding from our preliminary investigations is that it will likely exceed the original reimbursement amount. Is that the estimate that Secretary French talked about based on national models of? No, so this is actually specifically asking the superintendents to report what they've spent and what they anticipate. Okay, all right. Yeah. So as a secondary factor, in many cases it is unclear to the field how to be proactive and supportive of the efforts to use federal funds to address the education funds shortfall. And from the conversations I've had with superintendents and business managers, this is while not the first priority as that's the safe reopening of schools that they are concerned moving forward with the education fund. We respectfully request that the General Assembly proceed with its original plan for the $100 million, which were set aside for K through 12 education. We understand that they may not have been the original plan from the administration's perspective. The agency of education in the administration have strongly encouraged school leaders to procure the equipment and hire the personnel needed to reopen safely with the understanding that coronavirus relief funds would be available to reimburse districts for the associated costs. A changing course requiring local taxpayers to pick up the cost could disrupt reopening plans already in place. In particular, more systems may determine that if they don't have the proper funds to move forward in the safest manner possible that they may move to remote learning, which would of course have additional implications for the reopening of Vermont's economy. With that, I'm going to pass it over to Susie Glowski who will finish us up the testimony. Okay, then we're going to Sue. Any questions at this point? Not seeing any questions. All right, so Sue will go to, up Senator Ballant has a question. Just Chelsea, you alluded to this quickly and I know this is finance and not general ed committee but have you been hearing from school boards that there is going to be a shortage of substitute teachers? Is this something that school boards are reporting to you? Yeah, I mean, we have heard that substitute teachers and to be honest, substitute teachers are always a hot commodity but even more so now when we have uncertainty about illness and leave. So a lot of, I shouldn't say a lot, I've heard from several superintendents that they are hiring permanent subs to make sure that they have someone available for that purpose. And do you know if any of those school districts are having to increase the pay to entice people to do the job? I don't have the answer to that. Thank you, watch. Any other questions? Okay, Sue, it is your floor. Thank you. There's one thing I can add to answer Senator Ballant's question about substitutes. There are some superintendents that are into requesting waivers from the agency of education in order to allow school board members to serve as substitutes in the districts where they serve as school board members. That's not allowed under the statute unless you get a waiver and so there are some places that are actually looking for those waivers. Moving back into our presentation, the second concern that we wanted to cover is something that was mentioned by Senator Hardy before she left. It has to do with a concern about reductions in equalized pupil counts for the fiscal year 2022 which are attributable to declines in enrollment in the current school year resulting from decisions by families either to homeschool or enroll students in private schools or other factors that will lead to decreased enrollment during this time period. The Vermont Superintendent's Association did a survey earlier this month that indicates with 46 superintendents responding 85% are either very concerned or concerned about declines in enrollment in the current year due to COVID-19 dynamics. This concern is shared by other local school officials. As you and other legislators are keenly aware, a decline in equalized pupils will translate to an increase in education spending per equalized pupil and increased tax rates at the very time when schools need to both invest in learning opportunities for students and when they are contending with the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis. The importance of the general assembly taking action on this issue in August stems from the fact that school districts will receive equalized pupil counts in December to inform FY 2022 budget deliberations and preparation. By December 15th, budget development work is nearing completion for school boards with budgets slated for finalization in January so that they can be warned and presented to voters in March. This year more than ever districts need a stable environment for their budget development process and a decrease in equalized pupils resulting from COVID-19 effects would be tremendously destabilizing. So our associations are recommending that 16 VSA section 4010 be amended to establish a one-year hold harmless protection against declines in equalized pupils in order to stabilize budget development for FY 2022. And we have four additional observations. The first one is that in an August 5th letter to the House and Senate Education Committees, the superintendents serving Vermont's three technical center school districts informed legislators that they had learned from the Vermont Agency of Education that under current law, their districts are not eligible for federal COVID-19 relief funds. It was later announced that the entirety of the governor's emergency education relief fund, the GEAR Fund, which is $4 million, would be directed to the career and technical education. Our associations believe strongly that technical center school districts should be granted sufficient funding for the reopening of schools through one of the available federal funding sources. Second, our associations have heard concerns from members that receive revenue through tuition dollars paid by so-called choice districts in Vermont. We have not yet surveyed receiving districts about this concern, but we are hearing from school officials about anticipated revenue shortfalls in districts accustomed to receiving tuition revenues where those revenues are expected to decrease due to COVID-19 related enrollment decisions. To the extent that anticipated revenues do decline, operating deficits will likely occur in those districts. It may not be necessary for the general assembly to consider this issue in the August session, but it is a situation that may require to be addressed in January. Third, in June, the legislature created a $6.5 million school indoor air quality grant program. That's the HVAC program that you've been talking about previously today. And this was to help schools repair and upgrade their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems to meet the COVID-19 specific guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It has been reported that approximately 300 schools are interested in applying for the grant and that project prices vary with many in the 40 to $60,000 per school range. At a $40,000 per project, 300 schools would need $12 million and at $60,000 per project, 300 schools would need $18 million. And we're bringing this to your attention because ventilation and air filtration are a major concern when considering whether or not to reopen a school for in-person instruction and current information indicates that more funds are going to be needed to allow schools to meet the CDC guidelines. If you'd like more information, we refer you to pages 24 and 25 of the Strong and Healthy Start Safety and Health Guidance for Reopening Schools, which was issued jointly by the Vermont Agency of Education and Department of Health. And we'll send you in some written testimony with a link to that. And finally, in February, there were two bills that were drafted that would have provided breakfast and lunch free of charge for all students. And as a result, back in the JFO provided the estimated cost of universal free breakfast and lunch based on the 2018, 2019 free and reduced lunch enrollment for 175 school days. And that information was $40,656,000 with current participation in free and reduced price lunch program and roughly $50,820,000 with potential loss of federal aid. And we just point out these estimates because they provide essential information that will be needed if it's the intention of the General Assembly and the Governor to continue to provide universal free breakfast and lunch to all students during the COVID-19 crisis. And that concludes our presentation. Thank you. I think I froze. I think, sorry, it's time to camp in, yeah. Thanks. So I'm just wondering about the free lunches. So that right now it goes into when the end of August? The summer meals. Yes. Allocation, is that what you're referring to? 12 million, I believe so, yes. Nathan will be speaking next. Nathan Lavery, the business manager, he may have some more information about. It is kind of challenging to see how we're gonna do free breakfast and lunch for all the schools where the kids are only in school two days, which means if we're gonna do it, we'll have to deliver it, right? We've been doing that this summer, at least to some extent, but that's not up a dirt road in a blizzard in January. So, okay. All right, issues, okay. Sue, have you finished? We kind of cut you off there. Yes, I'm finished, thank you. Okay, any other questions? Yeah. Senator Pearson. Madam Chair, I don't know if this is a fair question for Sue or the secretary or whomever, but as I listen and we've been thinking about the intense cost and need for to get reopened and to deal with all sorts of things like the substitutes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We have anything, and I know, I can appreciate that we've been very guarded around talking about the idea of schools not being open or having another stay-at-home order. But it strikes me that we will likely get very ready and figure out how to come up with budgets and invest significant resources to make this succeed. And then there is some chance, we have to acknowledge at least some chance that by October, November, we are in fact retreating and working entirely remotely. And I'm wondering if there's at least some planning somewhere that would allow the state to kind of not necessarily have to spend all the money or recoup some of the money if we're not gonna be in-person. Just some of that thinking. I wouldn't want anyone watching to get the idea that any of us think it's important that we're remote, you know, I think the hybrid is what it is and likely reasonable. But I just wonder if there is some contingency there that might actually help us save some resources. Is that one? You can answer, is there any planning or just what happens if we do get shut down again? Do we need to go to all remote? Are we ready to do that? Do we have a contingency plan or are we just so focused on getting open in two weeks that everyone wants to answer this question? So I saw you unmuted, so it's you. Okay, well I can start and just let you know that there are a few districts that are actually starting in remote, so that they are doing remote education right from the beginning. And I believe that districts that are going with the hybrid method are, they have planning in place in case they need to move to remote. I don't know how closely they are, how much they're thinking about how that affects the cost, I think that they're trying to do what is best for their community and their students. But there may be others on the line that have more information about the remote. Chelsea, I see you're unmuted, do you have anything to add? Just to add to this, we collected fairly detailed information from all of the superintendents about two weeks ago that information shows up in BT Digger in a recent article. But a lot of the schools have also planned, if they're doing hybrid learning have planned and are offering a fully remote academy, a lot of them are calling it. So in terms of being ready from an academic and support level, they are mostly all ready for that. Any other questions at this point? If not, I'm gonna go to Nathan. Great, well thanks again, it's nice to be here and I appreciate the opportunity to share some of the perspective of the Vermont Association of School Business Officials, which are your business managers, your financial people in school districts across the state. For those who don't know me, I'm also the business manager in the Burlington School District. So I can speak to a degree about kind of anecdotally about what we are doing in Burlington if it becomes relevant. I think the main point that I want to reiterate today is that schools have been told in various ways, virtually since school closed this past spring, that federal funds would be available and are intended to make schools whole for the cost of reopening safely. And no alternative guidance has been communicated that would give us any reason to believe that we should be doing anything other than ensuring that we have the tools and the systems in place to open safely for our students and our staff. And it certainly has not been suggested that we need to sacrifice that due to a lack of available funding. And that message has been clear from various channels, but including from the Agency of Education. So we're glad that they share that. I think Dan reiterated that during his testimony this afternoon and what has seems like it is changing in terms of the messages, whether or not the costs will be completely reimbursed as we were led to believe. And I think that is really the key here. I don't think there's anyone who doubts the fact that it's going to be a challenging budget development year this fall. And I think that it would be extremely complicating to really the next few years to put school districts in a position where they don't get fully reimbursed for their costs and are instead asking their local taxpayers to foot the bill when there's actually federal money that is available and that the legislature intended to go to cover the cost for school. So I think that couldn't be clear to business managers across the state that that's the expectation and we've been operating under that guidance for months at this point. The other issues that were brought up with respect to ADM and the independent text centers getting funding, I'm glad to hear particularly on that front that there's an opportunity there to use the Governor Emergency Relief Fund. Those are also things that business managers believe do need attention and so we're glad to hear those as well. But again, I feel like I'm here primarily today to talk about the importance of ensuring that there's adequate reimbursement available for schools. One of the encouraging things, although it's a lot of work for schools is that the deadline for our application for CRF funds, while it doesn't guarantee the exact amount, we are being asked to estimate our need for those funds through the end of December. So at that point, and that's due September 2nd, at that point, the agency should have the information that needs to be able to say with a reasonable degree of confidence what schools actually think that they will spend through the end of December. We all know that there's a lot of uncertainty in this process. The health situation could change, the guidance could change, the science could change. There's a lot of uncertainty, but that's gonna be probably the best and most comprehensive data that we have in terms of trying to figure out is 50 million enough, is 100 million enough? We should at least have some sense. Probably, I would think an order of magnitude at that time. We may not know exactly, and I would certainly advise that whatever number is indicated that we leave ourselves a margin for error there to reflect the uncertainty. But it certainly seems at that point, we would be in a position to potentially back away from the full commitment. But at this point, I don't believe we're in that position. And I think that that would be very concerning to school business officials and potentially taxpayers across the state if it turns out that they're being asked to put the bill for expenses that we believe the federal government intended to have covered for us. So I think that's where I see an opportunity and a benefit to the data that is gonna be collected over the next couple of weeks. And I would hope that in the meantime, we don't make any decisions that put us in a position of potentially jeopardizing full reimbursements to schools because the reality is I don't think there's any more compelling case to be made for supporting school spending that the health and safety of the children in our state. Good afternoon. For the record, I'm Jay Nichols, Executive Director of the Vermont Principles Association. And I wanna close our testimony by saying that the testimony that Sue and Chelsea shared with you is collectively supported by the Vermont School Boards Association, the Vermont Superintendents Association, the Vermont Principles Association, the Vermont School Business Managers Association, as well as the Vermont Council of Special Educators. So that's joint. We all support those same major goals that Sue and Chelsea articulated. I thought my testimony related to education finances would be most illustrative if I shared some of the things that schools have had expenses for as a direct result of COVID-19 and working to ensure a safe reopening of school. Our schools are expecting to have sufficient funds for the 100 million we were told in June we would have. We've been telling school leaders to spend what they need to spend to make sure they can reopen schools safely. And we've been asked by the governor and the AOE to do that. If this costs less than $100 million, we hope the remainder can be used to close the gap in the Ed Fund. We do realize this will be up to the US Congress in some respects. So here are just some of the things that principals have shared in the last week of what they're spending money on. Schools have purchased tents. Many have constructed outdoor classroom solutions or expanding existing outdoor infrastructure such as adding picnic tables, carports and other areas to make outdoor classrooms. Schools have hired additional staff to work as screeners both on buses and at school. Additional custodial staff to help with buildings being cleaned and disinfecting. Various decision points around meals for places that won't be able to use their cafeteria and working with bus companies to deliver meals to families in remote settings. Buying masks, sanitizer, extra cleaning and disinfectant products. Hiring of permanent subs to staff the building. One district told me today they've hired nine permanent subs in their district because they know that they will need them between their six schools. Increasing of nursing time. Many schools do not have a nurse and schools are looking at finding ways to make sure they have more nursing time in place. Taking on additional mental health support contracts to better support our neediest students. And I'm afraid this one's gonna be a tremendous cost overall and it won't be a quick financial fix. This is gonna be something we're gonna be struggling with for the next few years, I'm sure. Buying plexiglass dividers, repurposing rooms to create social distancing. Computers for kids, prepaid internet cards, remote hotspots for families to improve connectivity for students that don't have it. You've heard about HVAC upgrades. And as was mentioned earlier, one school system is even pushing back their in-person learning. They were gonna start on September 8th with some degree of in-person learning. They're now looking at closer to Thanksgiving before having the kids back. There's districts that are buying Zoom cameras and microphones to the classroom so that people remote can hear in the classroom and vice versa. Portable air humidifiers for classrooms is a real big expense that a lot of schools are buying into. CO2 monitors. Some schools are actually taking rooms and creating isolation rooms. So if they have kids that come down with exposure, they don't have to isolate them. They don't have a place to do that right now. They're building rooms to do that within other rooms or other spaces in their buildings. This is causing costs for plumbing, purifiers, and in some cases, paraeducator support to help cover this extra nurse's office for lack of a better word. They're also creating standalone self-contained sinks in some of these creation rooms because we need running water and stuff in those situations. Buying extra sessions of the Vermont virtual learning consortium so that they can provide more access to students that are learning in a remote environment and extra summer hours. And those are just a few things that money's being spent on. In addition, just a couple of extra thoughts. Schools are completely rethinking their master schedules. Student and staff migration during the school day as well as planning for the ability to move between in-person and remote options as conditions dictate, as was asked in a question earlier. Schools are planning for, if we're coming back remote, how soon can we get the in-person instruction and what will that look like? If we're coming back to in-person instruction, what will we do if the conditions require us to go into a hybrid or fully remote and being prepared for that as much as they can? There are major concerns, as committee members have mentioned, about staffing at our schools. Will he actually be able to keep the school running if a couple of staff members get sick or if staff can't go to work because they have to take care of their own children? Lots of concern about finding substitutes. What to do about music classes is a big issue that we've talked about a lot in the last couple of weeks, especially when it becomes too hard to go outside because of the weather. We know that singing is one of the biggest transmitters of this disease, and so if we have kids singing and they need to be outside six feet apart, maybe still would mask on singing on the same direction. That's hard to do in January and Vermont. We're worried about delivery of special education services. Those were incredibly difficult in the spring and I don't think we were all that successful. And I don't think it's gonna be a lot better if we're in a remote environment this fall. And lots of worry about different districts doing different things and a problem that causes for staff who have children of their own in different school and for parents that are able to go to work full-time in some systems but forced to perhaps stay home in others because one system decides to go full on-person learning while the system next door might decide to go fully remote. I also want to mention that we, the BPA, with support from philanthropic groups and with selected support from VSA members that Chelsea actually served on our committee, we've given out almost $200,000 to support schools with urgent needs and we could have easily given out 100 times that. And I'm not exaggerating. We've got hundreds of requests for things, everything from extra money for picnic tables to social emotional supports, outdoor learning environments. I could show you the list. It's amazing the applications that we've received and we've given out our money in three to $5,000 grants and we could give out a lot more. And lastly, although there are significant costs of reopening, the hope is to be in a position where students can get back to in-person learning as soon as possible. There are costs associated with this that are not associated with remote learning but we know and the evidence clearly demonstrates that remote learning pales in comparison to in-person instruction. This is especially true for our most vulnerable students. They need to be in school, in-person, receiving that instruction. I also want to mention and anything touched on this that I'm very worried about future financial aspects of this pandemic and the FY22 budget is of extreme concern as well for our public education system and our economy overall. So it's my hope that we can close the education gap if possible without using education fund reserves as it is very likely we might need those next year. So I'm hoping that we'll be really careful about putting things onto the education fund such as the community prison education system and asking schools to pay for other things that really should not be asked of schools during this time. And subject to questions, that's all I have. Thank you. The message I'm getting is, don't spend that $100 million on something else until we're absolutely certain we don't need it. We have an issue with enrollment and what happens if parents who are concerned decide to go home school and then a vaccine pops up in the second half of the year, those kids are back in school with no funding behind them. We have an issue with the tech centers which that's one I hadn't heard about. And I'll let the Ed department, the Ed committee worry about tuition students. But has anyone heard, there's been all kinds of rumors about people who moved here who were enrolling there. They came to stay for the pandemic in their second homes. They are supposedly enrolling their kids in mass numbers. Are we seeing schools that are seeing significant upticks in enrollments this year? Do we know that yet? We have some, or Brad can probably give you numbers. We have some- Brad has numbers. Yeah, numbers Brad. We have some towns that have indicated to us through their principle that they have increased enrollment. A lot of these are, I don't want to use the word ski towns but some of our towns that tend to attract tourists- But second homes are more abundant. Thank you. That was much, much more politically correct Senator Cummings, I appreciate that. So we have seen some of that, but we've also seen places that are worried about having less students as well. So we don't really know how this is gonna sugar out. And typically when there's influx of students, they tend to be in communities that are in better shape financially than our most vulnerable and challenged towns. We've also heard a superintendent that reported that more state place students are being placed in those districts that are opening more in-person than remote. So those that are fully in-person or four days in-person. So that might be something to flag as well. Might be where some of the migration is coming from. Okay. All right. Any other questions? If not, we've got Jeff Fanon and then we'll go on to who gets to come to these meetings. Okay, Jeff, the floor is yours. Yeah, good afternoon Senator Fanon, Jeff Fanon from Vermont NEA for the record. And I guess I stand between you and a break. So I'll try to- Oh, there's no break coming. Okay, okay. So the six or seven manager groups came together and laid out a pretty good list. And my written testimony, which I think you now have maybe in front of you echoes much of it, but we didn't rehearse this together at all. But it's largely the three issues that I think in some sense of the word that they talked about or at least we want to talk about and prefaced with the fact that schools are working as never before and have since the closure in March to address every kid's need and they are becoming painfully aware. We're well aware now that schools are the hub of most of their communities. They're serving kids lunch, breakfast and whether they were in remote in the fall or they're gonna return to school in the spring or coming back in the fall here. So some are doing a hybrid plan and they're trying to figure out how to feed kids on days they're not in school. So they're trying to do, so the added expense of just feeding kids alone is not insignificant, right? You've got a cohort of kids coming in in a hybrid model, for example, A through M or whatever that school's doing, you're feeding those kids in school and then the rest of the kids you're feeding outside of school. So you're running two tracks, two trains at the same time and the costs are significantly more just to feed kids. I think the 12.5 million for summer food money and only 2.2, I think it was being request had to do with the delay. And I think if delay in getting that information out there and either more of that information is gonna come back or a lot of people just didn't provide summer lunches this summer, which is unfortunate. So we are moving very quickly, all by way of saying we are moving very quickly, schools are doing a magnificent job and some are doing certainly significantly better than others and it varies, but they're all trying their best and there's a lot of challenges with in-person return in the fall, remote entirely in the fall, which now I think three or four districts are up to are doing all remote or hybrid, which a lot are doing. So everything presents a little bit differently and schools are challenged with everyone in different and unique ways. So Chelsea, Nathan and Jay all mentioned the $100 million, what I call the fenced off money. I think somebody referred to it as well in that regard. The budget, the first quarter budget that you passed in June and the governor signed into law, certainly if not explicitly did incorporate that type of thinking into the budget. And I think it's important that we hold true to that. And so while the governor's proposed budget does not include that yet, I'm hopeful that we can all figure out a way to make sure that schools do receive the money they've been told they would receive since March. As Nathan pointed out, they've planned accordingly and counted on that and in reliance on that money. And as kids are just about to return in many cases, the schools need to be, that deal if you will needs to be held true. And Sue mentioned the ADM issue. Again, I mentioned that here in my memo. The ADM is the fluctuations in enrollment. You're right, some schools have seen an uptick, but mostly schools are seeing a downward decline in enrollment. Home school applications were up 75% last I knew from the AOE. So a lot of parents are holding their kids back, educating them at home as best they can. And schools should not be harmed by that change because it's a temporary blip, I think. I think we'll all agree it's because of the pandemic that they're suffering these while, a while, but the fluctuations has never before. So they ought to be held harmless for those fluctuations at least this year, certainly. And while not a finance issue per se, the number of school days you may see coming across your transom at some point down the road. Right now the current losses that kids have to be in school at least 175 days. And we think that needs to be relaxed a bit this year because of all the fluctuations that we're gonna see. We think that there, I think somebody was talking about contingency plans about remote education. Certainly we think as the cold and flu season starts in earnest in November, where we may see blooms in the virus itself and schools will need to shut down. And so the 175-day requirement may be, I think schools will need some flexibility and some relaxation of that rule. So you'll see that probably come across your desks as well. So those are the three things that we have to say. Schools are doing great work, trying to reopen in whatever form they've thought to do so. And I think the 100 million is a huge issue currently in going forward. The ADM is something as well, currently in going forward as the average, as the enrollment counts are coming in and certainly the 175-day calendar issue. So those are my issues. People are nervous and anxious about returning. There's a lot of anxiety out in the field. We're hearing a lot of it, but I think a lot of people, some people are ready and really wanna get back into school in whatever form their district is doing it, remotely or hybrid or in-person entirely. So I think people are excited about the fall and kids need to get their education back on track. It's not gonna look like it normally would be. Even if they're in school, I hesitate to say this, but it's true. Even if schools are all in-person, it's not going to look like it did a year ago. Schools are gonna look very different this year. They're gonna act very differently in how they deliver education because the spacing requirements, the mask requirements, it's gonna be a far different education experience, but it will be hopefully up to standards to educate our kids. They deserve it and we count on it. So I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, any questions for Jeff? To see that everybody seems to be going in the same direction and delivering basically the same message when it's encouraging. We did not re-hear it, I promise you. Labor management did, management may have, but labor did not. I think it, no, it says we are all doing our best to make sure that the students and the staff are able to go back to school with as much safety as it is possible to give them. And we know that at least the next three to six months are highly fluid and perhaps volatile and we're prepared to make the change. And I think we did it. We did it without any prep last March and did an excellent job. So hopefully we will keep doing that. And I'm open to any other questions or comments. If not committee, I can give you a five minute break, but our next presenters are here and it's really just a committee discussion on how do we deal with people who wanna be on the Zoom meeting but are not witnesses. There's, I've all got a copy of letters signed by a lot of groups saying that they would like more access. Leadership said, well, it's up to you guys, you know, each committee. So I thought we would have a discussion in the committee about how we wanted to deal with this. So I think we're finished with Ed. Thank you all. Thank you all. And I'm glad that Senator Pearson is with us since he's probably our most tech savvy person, but I'd asked to have Kevin Moore kind of be with us to tell us what our options are. And I see that Mike Farron and Peggy of all, Delaney have shown up, but this is really, my one request, I mean, I will, anyone that wants to testify, I will let testify. You know, and if they drop me an email or if they drop Faith an email, we can do it. The one thing I would find difficult is if I suddenly got 57 chat messages and I'm trying to monitor a witness, the committee who wants to talk and read messages, I mean, one I can handle, but if there were a whole lot it would be challenging, but it can be done. So, okay, I've got Senator Pearson and Senator Brock, that's the order I saw the hands. And I'm chair, I wonder if we should just, the time where it could help us is when we have questions that we're not getting an answer to and people watching potentially have the answer. And I wonder if Faith is always with us and I wonder if we couldn't ask people, if they need, they have something to add to email Faith, Faith jumps in and says, do you guys want to hear from so and so? And you or the committee makes a decision that I don't see another really workable answer. But anyway, just off the top of my head. I don't either. And I think, Faith, you're getting, you can join this meeting since your name is being used. As long, I think as long as you're only monitoring us that might work, if you're, I know on occasion you've been doing at least two committees at once. It might get a little challenging, but if we can keep it to when you're just doing one committee, can that work for you? Okay. It would be fine. Okay. So we could just tell anyone that feels they have something to add to email Faith. Then I assume we could let them into the meeting or just, or you could chat the comment up to us. We could probably let them into the meeting unless we were booked through till five o'clock at night at which point I'd put them on the next day anyway. So Senator Brock, did you have? I did. I just had really a couple of issues and questions. When we hold a normal in-person meeting, everybody who's sitting in the audience is not at the table, nor can they speak or ask questions as just as a normal course of business. It's no different than being on YouTube. On the other hand, if a person wants to testify, the invitation such as the one that you gave Madam Chair applies to in-person meetings just as it does to online meetings. So there is an opportunity to testify. I'm concerned a little bit from a technological standpoint and perhaps the IT folks can guide us here, but if we allow people in and we're using a recurring meeting number and presumably a recurring password, does that expose the future to those same people constantly being on? Now I realize that we let people in or out of meeting, but I'm just a little bit concerned about how we do this technically to provide at least a degree of security for access to the meetings. By access, I mean the ability to participate and play porn and do other kinds of things on our meeting site as opposed to the ability that we give people with YouTube, for example, to see everything that's going on. And so that's a technical question that I have concerning it. Okay, and I think that's my train of thought. The one difference I can see is that if there's an interest group sitting in the room and they stick their hand up and I can recognize them and we add them as a witness on the agenda. If we've got time, if we don't, we put them on before the next day. We can still do the next day. The immediate input is not there. On the other hand, it's much easier for people to watch us just the general public if they are so bored. They don't have to come down to Montpelier. They can just click on YouTube and watch us do whatever we're doing. So for some people, this is easier access if you have broadband, another subject due to our hearts. But, so Kevin, you're here. What can we do? What are our options? I think if you recognize me, Madam Chair, I did see Senator Balanced hand up first. I don't cut her off if she had a thought. Oh, Kevin, you go ahead. I'll save it for the end. All right, for the record, my name's Kevin More. I'm the director of IT for the General Assembly. I appreciate the invitation today to discuss this a little bit. I would state just at Face Valley at the start of it, our recommendations don't change at this point on how to host these meetings. We certainly understand that the virtual world does not live up to the physical world that we were used to in March. There are some things that are lacking. If there is something pressing enough that you would want to have the general public attend to these virtual meetings, we would be required to change this platform a little bit, which would require a heavy staff presence from the committee assistance and operations unit. I don't want to speak in detail on that particular part. I'll leave that for Peggy Delaney or Mike Ferrant, as they're the ones who actually have done that work. Again, our recommendations aren't changing at this point. We do understand that there is some deficiencies, if you will, in the virtual platform in comparison to the physical world, and we're happy to try to match technology to desire, depending on what your committee is looking to do. So if there's gonna be a change, it would be best if any or all, that it was the same change with any committee. Now, if we're gonna do something, everybody should essentially do the same thing if it's gonna require you alter the platform. So consistency is certainly a benefit. We are a small organization in the grand scheme of things. We're a small IT staff. You have a small committee services team. You have a small operations team. It's incredibly challenging to get these meetings off the ground and make sure that it's coordinated effectively. So if there is consistency, we would greatly value that. We would greatly appreciate that. Understanding that Senator Ash has left it up to individual committees decisions at this point. We will certainly honor that as well. So if we did what we had discussed and just say anyone that had something to add or wanted to talk could email the committee staff. And if it was just a comment, she could chat us or just let us know that somebody wanted to talk tomorrow on that issue. That wouldn't require a change, would it? It wouldn't. That's something that you could work into your existing workflow as appropriate. Wouldn't have to change anything technically. And I again would defer the capacity question to a phase of the committee services group at that point. Chat is beyond my pay grade. So I'm not, I know at one point we got a message that anything we chatted between ourselves was going out over YouTube. So the comments on people's haircuts or backgrounds or whatever ceased. But if, is it possible to open chat or... So at the committee level, Madam Chair, you are able to use that chat function that is not broadcast out towards YouTube at the committee level. At your Senate chamber level, we use a different platform to stream. Okay, that it was the Senate chamber. Yes. Okay, no note passing. But we could, can outsiders chat without being in? So in the Zoom meeting, no. Could they use the existing chat features and comment features that are on the YouTube platform? Absolutely. The YouTube platform is about 15 to 25 seconds delayed depending on the day. However, you could monitor that if that was a choice of the committee. And again, within the capacity of the committee assistance you could monitor that chat. It's not regulated. It's not something we have real control over on that chat function other than turning it on or off as appropriate, as deemed appropriate by the committee. But that function does exist if somebody wanted to just jump on YouTube and chat if your committee was actively monitoring that chat function, you could use that. Alternative email would be a wonderful record as well. That might get a little, that has the potential for getting a little overwhelming in that, is there any limit to how many words you can put in a chat? I don't have that information in front of me at this point. It is unrestricted as far as access goes and it could allow either internet bots or internet trolls to comment. That does happen from time to time as it is. I wasn't thinking about bots or trolls. There are some unsavory folks out there who spend their time trying to interfere regardless of. I was just thinking of people who have very strong opinions that write us emails that might, you know, that you can then choose your time to answer them, might to send that comment to the committee staff which could get a little overwhelming. We need her to keep us in line. It certainly could. As a potential alternative, if you're looking for a place to funnel information aside from the committee assistant, we could create another email account for your committee or for a topic and funnel it appropriately. There are a couple of different ways we could approach that if that's a concern. I do think email is a better method than using the YouTube chat function. It allows you to really triage things rather than trying to keep up with what you've actually read or not read in that chat window. I'm just thinking about having to have a third or fourth screen. Yes. Well, I'm sitting on- I got my agenda, I got my documents and now I got to have my emails. I can certainly appreciate that. But I do want to leave some time for Peggy and Mike to weigh in on it from Rebecca as well. Okay, Peggy. Peggy Delaney. Oh, sorry. Peggy Delaney, committee services supervisor. Yeah, I think my concern, I think it sounds great, Senator Cummings to say on YouTube, meaning if anyone has a comment, email faith. But I think behind the scenes, I think sometimes people don't realize how challenging these Zoom meetings can be. In some ways they're easier, in some ways they're harder. And when you're on it, I mean, I know myself because I do Senate judiciary. And when you're on a committee meeting and you're trying to share screen and you're reading emails and you're reading chats and you're getting texts and you're trying to listen to the chair, it can be a lot. And there are times that you don't even get an opportunity to go to your email for a while. And I just, my fear is if it's one or two people, I've got emails from people that I know, John Campbell emails me. I'm listening Peggy, can I jump in? I know John Campbell, I know it's okay to let him in. No problem. But if you're in a situation where you throw a comment out like, if anybody has comments, email faith. Who knows how many people you're gonna get? Who knows if you're gonna know who those people are? I certainly wouldn't want to enter anybody into a Zoom meeting unless I knew who they were. If you don't know who they were, then she's gonna have to reach out to you or the interrupt the meeting or whatever. I just think it could be disruptive and it could take away from the focus on the committee meeting themselves. I think people do have the opportunity to email ahead of time. They know when these meetings are taking place. If it's an advocate of lobbyists, they can email faith or you ahead of time and say, I'd like to be at the meeting. Agendas are posted the weekend before. If they wanna testify, they can email and you can say yay or nay at that time. I just think, again, if it's a one or two person and you know them, that's easy. But if it becomes a lot more and we don't know who the people are and then we'd let some in, but then you don't see others, then we'll be accused of letting certain people in and not others. So I do have some real concerns about it, to be honest. Okay, John, I actually need the committee chair or the staff to be able to pay attention to what's going on because I've got three screens and sometimes I miss something like names. So it's very helpful when you do agenda planning to have a staff person that's actually got the freedom to listen to the testimony. And then you can work with that. Maybe the best thing would be to just announce that anyone that would like to testify should email me because normally faith doesn't just let people in without running it by me to just email me. And I let anyone in. It's never been an issue. Anyone that wants to testify can testify. It's just timing it. So I know Mike, do you have anything to add? I don't, I support Kevin and Peggy's statements. I think your idea of having people email faith if they want to be on the agenda is what we would do in real life. We've always, like Senator Brock said, tried to replicate real life with this virtual life. And we didn't just blow the walls out of every committee room to do this. There's still confinements of how many people you can have on a Zoom meeting, how many tiles you can have on the screen, how many people faith is keeping track of. And so I think what you've heard so far is completely accurate, is the best way forward and I fully support it. And I won't keep you from your break. We're finishing, we're early today. Okay, committee thoughts. Senator Ballant. Just for the folks who might be watching at home, my understanding is a lot of the outreach that was done on this topic was from advocates and lobbyists. Is that correct? And not from citizens who have wanted to testify and haven't been able to. Is that? I think, yeah. I think that the letters came from advocacy groups. Okay, and I had seen them. I just didn't know if there were, there had been another set of communicates from regular constituents. And so. Probably no more than we do. Exactly. I have not. Okay. I have not seen that. No, and I, again, anyone that wants to testify, we let testify. There may be a delay in, but there is in real life anyway. There isn't, you know. Well, and I think what Peggy says makes good sense. And to your point, Madam Chair, it's going to be important for faith to be able to concentrate on meeting the needs of the committee and the chair. But if we can make a commitment to people that they will get a chance to testify, it may not be at real time, but that we will fit them in. So they'll be heard at a later time or day. That seems fair. What happens? Yeah. That's what happens. We post faith. Do we send the agenda out or is it just posted? I have a small group of people. I send it to mainly ledge council and other folks just to be sure that they're aware they may be needed. And otherwise it's just posted. But as Peggy said, it's updated on a sort of day-by-day basis and it's posted on Friday for the next Tuesday. I think we used to send it out to a broader listserv. And maybe we, well, that could, we could try having it, tell people if they'd like to see the agenda. Can we put them on, just send out to more people? We can do that. It's also so easy to get to from the legislative website that it seems sort of, I mean, if you thought it was important, I'm happy to do it, but it seems very- If you're a lobbyist and getting paid to pay attention, then we probably shouldn't be doing your job for you. Okay. So committee, I'm seeing Senator Pearson smiling face, but not hearing from him. At this point, you can think it over, but I think what I'm hearing is we'll just announce that anyone that wants to testify is free to just drop an email to me. I'll give them my email. We will get them in the next time we take up that issue. It sounds like we are going, this week I'm gonna try and clear out a couple bills that I've been contacted about one is dental insurance. The other one, despite what it is, is the Act 250 bill. And that was an issue with title insurance people. So we'll take a look at those. And then I'd like any other bills that all, there's the dog. Is that the puppy? Yeah, sorry. No. I have the picture of Officer Ramsey. I would like to make the official mascot of the committee. His picture will lower your blood pressure in 30 seconds or less. But anyway, Officer Ramsey is a canine officer who saved a lady who was foraging for mushrooms. He's a classic yellow lab who will calm anything. So anyway, that was my plan. Take a look at the bill still in committee. If you need a copy, I'm sure Faith can get it to you. These are two that I've been contacted about. Oh, we're also getting vapes out. That was on the list. I don't know what's happening with Act 250 at this point, but I thought I'd look at the title insurance guys who are just asking, how are they supposed to know if a road is 1500 or 2000 feet long? And they have to certify that whoever gets title of this piece of land is in compliance with Act 250. So we'll look at that. I think that's about it for the rest of the session. I think we're gonna be looking probably a lot at broadband. We're gonna start with just an update of the grants that have gone out, the issues, Senator Kitchell I think sent us all a thing on what were the problems, whether glitches or things in the system we set up that slowed things down, issues, what can they get cable that have come up? And I was told that one company told the teacher who has to teach remotely that they weren't taking part in the line extension program. So they're not extending the line to her house unless she pays for all of it. And I gather that it is within their domain to do that. We can't make them. I did check that one with the commissioner, but I'd like to, any issues, any of you have heard? And I again wanna hear from the schools about we have asked them to identify clusters of students and what are they doing with those students that can't access the internet? I did find out this morning with these childcare hubs or pods, pods. I see this kind of spaceship-y thing, but that students that can't get broadband will be able to go there. But I'm assuming it will cost their parents the estimated $125 a week to go there unless they are below the 300% of poverty. But there's issues there with students in, what are we doing? And why aren't the schools paying for the pods or the, I don't know, a lot of it seems to be falling back on the shoulders of parents. So we can discuss that. Thoughts, go forth and contemplate. Take a look at those bills. If there's anything you know we need to get out or you would like to get out, I think we're looking at H bills right now unless it's been put on the list. So Senator Campion, you have, no, you were just turning your computer on or off. Okay. I just see, palm prints. All right. Okay, thank you. Ending live stream now. We are going off live.