 Welcome everybody let's let's get started so just as a scheduling thing I was going to lay off on Debbie she was going to lay off on me now we've decided that neither of us will lay off on Cory so tomorrow we'll be done at 3 and we'll reschedule testimony from Jim on those two bills from later on. But I did want to let you know that after we hear from John Carroll about state board of education I will be putting on the table the first draft of the bill to create a task force for universal access to after school which was in the governor's state of state and I've given a copy of that language to the administration to take a look at. I don't think their hair lit on fire because I didn't hear back immediately. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it's a good thing. No that when your hair is on fire is that mean like your state? That's the worst. That means your bald. Well you can just be really excited. No it doesn't mean your bald. Your hair is on fire. You will be bald if you are lazy. So we'll take that bill through a few iterations but again the intention is to move it relatively quickly and hopefully with the ascent of the administration on the language. Wait quickly do you mean like in five years? Yeah well that's where I'm thinking as the sooner we can get the task force up and running the quicker we can expect for product from them. So can I just interject that there was a task force in 2015 that has done most of this portfolio? Yeah. So I'm really having second thoughts about this approach. I think we really need to hear from the people who are running the after school programs now and actually we had some testimony in this committee. I think when you put me in charge I've asked them to come so you haven't heard. You haven't heard their testimony. Well I haven't heard from Paulie Borhouse at other points so I know there's data out there. Yeah so I'm just expressing my skepticism of this as a good way to, I think first we're reinventing the wheel and we don't want to. There are a lot of and long standing after school programs. And we did give them a little bit of money in last year additional money and so they have expanded to a few more places but I think mostly just what they need is a fun thing to be honest but anyway. And I think it's a fair comment. I think the governor's timeline is far too long. Personally I don't say anything wrong with starting with a task force that is tasked at this one and you see the language you'll see. It's tasked for creating the program not discussing the need for after school. So creating the program and the language. So again if we move a task force get it together by March 1st let's say if that could be done then theoretically you would have legislative language suggested and ready to go by the start of next session. That would be a best case scenario. As you said the other way to do it would be we take those studies that have been out there and we write language this year. I think there's an advantage to be had in working with the administration rather than trying to force their hand. But we will have that discussion but I had agreed to draft a task force and we can maybe soup it up to your more to your liking. But we can certainly have the discussion about whether we go that route or not. Like an election. Yes. Okay John would you join us. John Carroll chair of state board. Had had you in the room before but you haven't been giving us your introduction to the to the concept of organizing the state board and I will credit you with saying that this push came from you. A push you brought to your own board and got them behind. So again in terms of trying to do things in the most efficient way possible. I think it's great to have the board in charge of its own restructuring. There's been a movement over the years to get rid of the state board and that's not something I've ever gone along with. But I think everybody agrees including you that it's time to rethink the mission and I think you've done a good job of starting that conversation. So please. So for the record I'm John Carroll chair of the state board. Thank you for having me. I guess I should say at the beginning that I've been visiting with some other legislators over the last several months and I feel like I'm in this position of I will be remembered as the chair who helped to reinvent the board or the chair who was present at its death. I frankly feel that future of the state board is very much in question at risk and for I think very good reasons. When I first joined the board which is about two and a half years ago I was frankly appalled at the extent to which the board had pushed its way into creating new law through rulemaking. But at your meeting on Friday the chair noted the language that says shall establish policy. And I tracked that down over the weekend where did that language come from because that's been the hook on which members of the legislative board have kind of gotten out over their skis I think was your term. And that language was inserted in 2012 when act 98 was passed and it's law that disconnected the agency and the board and said that created the agency said the secretary shall report to the governor said that changed the board's membership a little bit and said the board should have its own staff and so on. Somebody slipped in I think at the last moment this language that says and shall establish policy. And I know who it was. I think we both do. But you know that's sort of such an ambiguous term. I mean it means one thing to you sir and it's nothing different to you senator and I think it has been the cover under which the board has actually intruded upon legislative prerogative. It shouldn't come as any surprise to you that I'm a big fan of legislative prerogative. I served here for six years and so it gets into your DNA. This is our work not yours and that that. So when I joined the board I was astonished with this and worked to encourage the General Assembly to intervene in the rulemaking process that was going on in different schools and your chairman did so very effectively. Ever since then I've been concerned about what is this board up to. The other thing that I've noticed we've all been on lots of boards. All of you are committees and boards and there are highly functional committees and boards and they are quite dysfunctional ones. We've been on both. One of the very delicate things about boards school boards for example is their relationship with the superintendent. And very often the superintendent is the locus of knowledge and knowledge is power. And even though in school district boards the superintendent reports ostensibly to the board and the board hires and fires ostensibly. The truth is that superintendents have an enormous amount of influence because the boards are late people. They can't know as much as the superintendents and so they are at this inherent disadvantage. That is perhaps one of the reasons why the secretary and the agency were separated from the board. But a lot of people on the board never got that memo. That they no longer directly secretary of the agency and the president secretary has been diplomatic but forceful that folks you don't tell me what to do. And yet and that was all created by Act 98 and I don't have any interest in re-litigating that. That's subtle law but there are remnants from those times that have never been cleaned up. Remnants in statute and frankly remnants in the minds of members of the board. And so part of what I'm proposing to you is that we clean up that stuff for a very clear line of demarcation of the difference from the authorities between the two. The board and the secretary. The place I guess to start is the documentation is the annual report of the board which I know you all have received. I don't know if you have a chance to look at it. It's in your folders. It's in three parts. The first part is what do we do. And I know Senator Persley-Key were sort of asking so what is it these people are doing. And I'd say that there are three things you could categorize what we do. One is we do the legislature's bidding. In the last couple of years you all have assigned us certain duties to carry forward or oversee the implementation of things that are important to you. Act 173 is the current thing that we're working on. In its wisdom the General Assembly dictated that the rules for Act 173 to implement 173 shall be adopted by the board. Not adopted by anybody else. We don't have the capacity to write rules but the agency certainly does. The legislature also created a separate entity called the Census-based Funding Advisory Group which is a collection of stakeholders. And they provide a lot of input and guidance. So there's been this natural tension between the stakeholders and the agency. It was ever thus I think. And we've been put in the position of kind of arbitrating that. Mainly because we've said look if you guys don't sort this out we will. We'll get our own attorneys and we'll write the darn law rules. Pardon me. You got me right. I've been around on the board too long. And frankly the three groups have played their own roles very effectively. And so the agency has really sunk its teeth into the revision of the rules. The interest groups have done a good job of commenting and critiquing. And we've encouraged them to sort out their differences and they mostly have. So I think that's something that has worked pretty well. Now depending on where you live in the state you might say it worked pretty well to have the state board involved in the state plan. I can't comment much about that. Well I can comment but I won't because the matter is in the courts. In fact tomorrow is the Supreme Court hearing on the matter. The Act 46 final plan. Yeah yeah the final state plan. Right that wasn't clear thank you. But that's a place where for whatever reason the General Assembly asked the state board to kind of take the law and translate it into what does this mean on the ground. And that was supposedly the state plan. And then also very recently small schools grant. That's always been a very sub parochial and controversial topic. I think it matters especially to House members. And the General Assembly asked the state board to be the ones who figured out the algorithm for allocating monies. We did that. We did it as effectively as you all might have. We annoyed some people. We pleased some monies. And just to interject a bit. And you asked the legislature to review your work because the board wasn't necessarily happy with what they did. We tried something quite new which was to say let us advocate resources where people are doing good work. Well define me good work. That's real hard to ascertain and that's part of the question. We also wanted to look at equity and we wanted to look at efficiency and we tried to reward those schools that seem to be doing. We rated them on those criteria. That's very hard work to get that right. So that was where we made a pass at it but we don't think it's definitive. So that's one big piece of what we do. It could stop the moment you stop assigning things to the board. The second piece of what we do is rulemaking. And I think of rulemaking as essentially looking at what the law tells us the General Assembly wants and translating that into language that can be set up to guide the guardrails or the provisions that agencies and school districts and other schools fall. It's sort of like machine language. It's an intermediate language that is more actionable than statute and is perhaps more precise. Sometimes the language of statute is very, very broad and general and so that creates a whole lot of original rulemaking. We kind of have to be careful to interpret carefully, read between the lines what's going on here. Other times independent schools is a good example. Statute is very clear about what the General Assembly wants in evaluating independent schools financial capacity. The language is quite extensive given the scope of the universe. So in writing those rules, basically you just need to cut the basement statute. In any case, all rulemaking authority with regard to education has for 100 years resided with the State Board. But in 2012 the universe changed. The world went upside down. For 100 years the State Board had been the board of directors of the Department of Education. The CEO of the Department of Education answered to the board. I fired, you do what we say. It was a very powerful entity. In fact, you spoke on Friday about this business of establishing policy. It was, they saw themselves and maybe in fact many people did see themselves as almost like a fourth state of government. Independent of the General Assembly. Well, those days are history as well as they have to be. And that's what 2012 did, what Act 98 and 2012 did. But we haven't fully understood the meaning of all of that. And then the third thing that the board does is, and it doesn't take a lot of our time, is various appeals. So if there's an appeal of an administrative decision like great setting for an independent school or an appeal of a licensed revocation. We have one of those on Friday. It comes to us. It's sort of like a planning board or somebody else that might appeal the rulings of an administrative. Interlarded with all of that, those three big tasks of which the middle one is the rulemaking and probably done. It's the most important because it sets the overall framework for how the legislature's statutory intent gets deployed out into the world. It's also, I think really, I mean you know this better than anybody. The way education works in Vermont is so different than the way social services work or the transportation department. I mean it's this very, very complex state, regional, local, classroom base. I mean it's these levels of influence and shaping what happens. And I mean there are eight to nine thousand people involved in the delivery of education every day in Vermont. And there's 168 people in the agency of education. It's a very highly decentralized, very complex implementation. So rules are probably pretty important because people need to know the rules of engagement. But in addition to all of this, what astonished me was that the board micromanages the agency. Sometimes by virtue of statutory requirements, other times just by I think very bad habit. And so the agency spends a huge amount of time explaining itself to us. And if I were the secretary, I mean I totally empathize with his view which is please go get out of my shorts. I mean and so by the way I think it's fair to say that he's generally supportive of the direction we're seeking to go. I don't believe he's had an opportunity to study the proposed draft in front of you. And I wouldn't presume to speak for him. But reading body language and a few things that we've said with one another, my sense is that yeah, it would be a good thing if you guys spent a lot less time looking over my shoulder and second guessing what I'm doing. I'll give you an illustration of something where we do that. And it is required by President Statue which is corrected in this. I just have to say parenthetically you were very kind to allow me to work with Jim Demeray. And he was terrific to work with and he was very helpful. And we went through probably six or seven iterations. And so he's tried to capture in here sort of all the vestigial stuff that's left over from an earlier time. So an example is the statute for many, many years has said that the state board shall approve independent schools. Independent schools come up for renewal of their approval every three to five years. Somebody has to look at it and say well by the meeting the standards and the standards are pretty elaborate in the statute. And typically the agency's done that. I mean it's a matter of having educators and other people go visit the school and assess and so forth. But under the statute it's the board that makes the approval. Now that made sense at one time when the board had authority over the department. So if an approval was brought and you looked at it and said that's pretty half-baked. Did you really look at that and you could say go back and do it again? We can't do that. No should we. I mean again I'm not saying we should have those authorities. But we ought to get out of the business of approving stuff that frankly we bring no value to the conversation and no authority. There's a whole lot of that kind of stuff and there's a culture of frankly micromanaging the agency that's inherited. One of my very first bosses a hundred years ago said over the coffee cooler the routine drives out the non-routine. And by that he means that we all get involved in washing the dishes and ironing the shirts and all that stuff and you got to do it. But frankly we don't pay attention to our advanced directives our wills and our financial planning. We don't see the big picture of planning ahead. And if you allow yourself to get caught up in that routine which the board does. Guess what you're not seeing far out of the horizon. And frankly except for the two committees here probably nobody is although I should give the secretary credit. He has offered a blueprint when he first joined quite controversial elements of it that are very controversial. But nonetheless at least it was visionary put something out there. The board needs to be in that role not in this kind of micromanaging role. So part of this is to is to take away nuisance some responsibilities that the board has no value to free up time to be looking at current issues on its own. I'll give you an illustration on its own the board doesn't really set the agenda. The agenda is sort of kind of inherited every month from the agency. This is just like school boards. I mean it's your superintendent who determines the agenda that you're going to spend your time on. And keep in mind the educators have the great advantage of deeper knowledge. As lay people we are at that disadvantage. That's one of the reasons why we're advocating for complete separation of the two entities. The proposed statute in front of you does not provide funding or address the question of staff at all. We advocate that it should but I have an understanding that at this point let's get the vision straightened out. And then later on perhaps in subsequent years we can talk a little bit about the sources. Yes. So I'm curious if you're the vision making body but you have no power to then carry that vision out. Who's vision? What if we disagree with your vision? What if the agency of education disagrees with your vision? What if the governor disagrees with your vision? What's the point of having a vision if you don't have the ability to carry it out? If we all see ourselves as also potentially having a vision on those other actors. Right, exactly. So what's... I guess I would say that it's not in anybody's orbit to see and respond to the long-term big picture. Where is education going to be in 20 years? I mean I understand what you do and I admire what you do but I reckon you probably don't get much time to think about understanding what that might be like. The secretary because of his own personal very deep knowledge of education was able to offer a blueprint which is some ideas about where we might go in the next 10 or 15 years. It seems to us that having a citizen, a lay citizen board, I want to continue with your question but I just want to observe. This is not a board of a bunch of stakeholders. There's nobody representing the teachers, there's no representing the business community. We're just 10 ordinary citizens. Each with some interest in education. Hopefully the law requires that we be from all around the state but we're not supposed to be agenda-driven or advocates. So the premise of what we're saying is that it would be a service to the state if there were a group that was independent, nonpartisan. By the way our terms are six years which has it seems like a long time but it has the benefit of transcending gubernatorial changes. Almost at any time the board consists of appointees of the last governor and the president governor and they very often are not of the same political persuasion. That's the way we go. We're operating on the premise that there's virtue and value in having a group in the state that's unencumbered by how you do things but that can look at the long term picture. What do we do with that? We would under this proposal have no power to implement and nor do I think we should. And how do you share it just in these annual reports? No, I think we share it by preparing our findings and bringing them to you. Your meeting on proficiency-based learning is a kind of test run precisely. If I can speak about that very briefly. So we've got this sort of airy-fairy vision, right? And you've right to challenge it. How's that really going to work? There's two kinds of things that we can be useful on. We could bring you information on current issues, current questions, challenges, complaints. And we can bring you stuff that you never thought to ask about, i.e. where we'll be in 20 years. I wanted us to just do a test run of what would it be like if we took a current issue and found out about it. So I asked your chairman and the chairman on the House side, is there an issue you would value having some information about? And they both, independent, I don't think you consulted with each other, came right back and said, proficiency-based learning. We're getting a lot of stuff about that. And grading and notation. Yeah, and all that, the whole thing. So we decided we would convene a one-day hearing. And we chose Rutland because it's pretty easy to get to, although it's not perfect. And we will be hearing from 22 witnesses and the public. We will prepare a report on what we hear. We will not caution my people. Do not bring in your own opinions. I don't care about your opinions. Our job is to report faithfully to this committee and to the House committee what we hear. What is told to us by the witnesses. You'll have to judge for yourself as to whether they're representative of the universe. And whether they're reliable or incredible. But it's our job simply to be, I would say, honest brokers of information. But that's different than a vision. It is. I see this as two different kinds of things. There's sort of the immediate problems or questions that you folks are grappling with. And then there's the stuff that you're probably not grappling with is, how do we get to the year 2040? How do we grapple with the trajectory of spending per student? How long can that keep going on? Those are questions that we have to, somebody has to address a long term. And I think it's fair to say, John mentioned 2012 and the legislation that produced, you know, the move from a department to an agency and a commissioner to a secretary. And then that was a political compromise where the board and the agency redivvied their responsibilities and powers in ways that were agreeable to a scant majority of this committee. I was actually on the losing side of that. But it did have to do with creating a sort of hybrid idea of what the board was. This draft still forwards a hybrid vision. It's just, it makes more sense, but it's still, you know, willy-nilly, it's still a hybrid. So it still has rulemaking authority. It still has the ability to carry out immediate tasks for us, things like the rulemaking we gave in 173. That's all of great value. But then I think what John is foregrounding is, although not viewing itself as the primary maker of educational policy the way in 2012, the drafters of that legislation were viewing the board. So admitting that the legislature and the agency are the ones that are doing educational policy, John is still retaining the idea that there's value. And I think you compared it to a think tank at one point, a sort of higher order think tank that's engaged in looking at these issues with the idea of presenting them to lawmakers. You know, run this through your policy machine. That doesn't mean we're not pursuing our own vision. The agency's not pursuing their own vision, but you've got this body that is allowing itself to look out both far and near and coming up with another set of policy ideas for us to think about. But I mean, it's a fair question. Is there duplication? I think there is some. Just the way there's duplication in rulemaking authority. For me, the question is, are there values for us as a legislature and are there values for education writ large in Vermont? I saw myself with Act 36 that it was a great value to the legislature to have a body that could do on the ground like work for us. So the meetings that were conducted around the state by the state board, that was a great value to us. And with Act 173, we did a very complicated bill, but that wasn't anything like the rulemaking. And the rulemaking is going to take strict attention almost to the point of crowing out everything else. So if this committee were trying to keep an eye on that, it would be really difficult given, you know, how little time we have. So hybrid with the contradictions that Ruth was pointing out, less contradiction than currently exists. I think that's the direction we're moving in, but this doesn't envision a conflict free or a duplication for the environment. Right. I mean, I see that it is moving further in that direction. You know, I only was an observer of the 2012, from the local level, the 2012 changes. And there certainly are embedded conflicts in the current law as it stands. And I appreciate that you're trying to clean up those conflicts. I'm trying to figure out what exactly you'll be doing as a board if that is a value to the state. If it remains as value to the state. And if what we lose by making a change, like is there something that we have right now that's working well that we would lose by making these changes? And I don't know the answer to that. Those are the questions I would have is would we continue to have value and would we lose something that we currently have that does have value? My first thought is I can't think of one, but it would be really worth asking the secretary the same question. Since I'm not proposing that we eliminate our role as a court of second resort or hearings, I'm not proposing that we not create policy, draft policy, frame policy. We're keeping those functions. I think what we're talking about is sort of getting out of the shorts of the agency and opening up our agenda so that we can be more proactive about current pressing issues like PPL or longer term vision things. You're actually right though. Is there a crying need for this? I would say there's not a crying need for it. That's what I think makes my case difficult because I doubt that when you say I see no benefit in having an entity that is free to pursue these things. I would also say that I see enormous benefit in getting the, let me back up, boards in general, whether they be school boards or corporate boards, often have a kind of unhealthy, unhealthy co-dependency relationship between the CEO and the board itself. As I spoke about earlier, you know, there's power imbalance, there's a knowledge imbalance. And yet the boards are the ones who are stensibly in charge, but in truth, it's sort of like, it's the power of the first draft. Who writes the first draft gets to control the discussion. And the boards don't write the first draft. It always comes from the superintendent. We need to get out of that because in truth, a lot of times the boards have been either unwitting or willing collaborators to implement changes that were driven by civil servants, not by the legislature. And the best example of that in recent parlance is proficiency-based learning. That was in no way with PBL contemplated by statute. People for years have imagined that Act 77 created proficiency-based learning. It did not. The word is not. The phrase is not mentioned. You might say it created an environment, individualized learning and so forth. But PBL was a whole cloth creation of the State Board out over its skis again. And in that case, the board, I've talked to one board member who was on that board. And he basically says, well, we didn't really know what we were doing. But there were ardent advocates in the agency itself, civil servants. You know, talented people and have a lot of good ideas. But that's a classic case of the CEO driving the ship. And the board either willingly or unwittingly going along with that. So that's why I think it's really imperative to kind of get divorced. Get out from underneath the excessive influence of the agency, which ought to have lots of power. But it doesn't accomplish very much to have the board being its co-collaborators. There is this, quite literally, a co-dependency that is, like most co-dependencies, not very healthy. Do you have an idea what adequate staff would be, like numbers? First of all, I'm prepared to go naked, because that's probably what it's going to be like. I wish I could find a less offensive term, because that's a very pretty picture. I'm prepared to be without staff. Well, we have staff, and it's available to us, and I don't want to leave an impression. And they're very responsive. They're very kind. They're very good. They're mostly very capable. And they carry your operating expenses. Yeah, we have about $85,000 line item in their budget, which pays for our travel reimbursement and so on. And I estimate that they provide the equivalent of two to three full-time equivalents, roughly. But that's a horseback, I guess. You can ask Dan what he thinks. I did run that number by him. So, probably at least two staff. Probably it would be a half-time person to do logistics and administration, organizing meetings, organizing hearings. There's a lot of work for that, as Jeannie could tell you. A full-time policy director who helps us with that. I see this group working very much like your own, let's say, councilors. To sort of understand how this works, imagine if your staff, and Jeannie and Jim, reported to Jason Gibbs. You can see that would not work very well. Me and Jason might be a nice guy, might be very cooperative, might be sympathetic about that. But if you start wanting to know about things that he doesn't want to know about, you ain't going to find out about it. So, we have no ability to skeptically or critically examine the agency. And I do believe that somebody should have that ability. And we don't. And we don't, in part, because we simply don't have independent staff who can inquire of what's happening. And we're just, you know, ordinary citizens who are paid, well, $50 a day. So, but if you are, if this proposal were to go through, I'm hearing a bit of a contradiction, or maybe I just don't understand it. Right now, you, the secretary feels like you're too much in his business and too embedded in what's going on. But yet, you want the ability to be able to critique the secretary from the outside. So, do you understand that kind of contradiction there? I do. I think that it would be useful if the board could inquire of the agency while you're doing it the way about something. I'll give you a simple description. We, as I mentioned earlier by law, we approve the independent school renewals. All the staff work is done by the agency. Very often the staff work that comes back to us is very weak. In the old days, you could have said, this is weak, go back and do it better. You can't do that. There seems to us to be a systematic weakness in the agency about how effectively it's overseeing independent schools. A topic, sort of a current topic that the board might take up is, is the state doing a good enough job with oversight and approval of independent school? The state. Because as you know, there are two mechanisms. You can either get it through NASC or something like that, or the agency can go in and approve you. We see a huge difference in the quality of oversight that comes from a NASC visit, where, you know, six educators go for four days at the school and have all kinds of complex conversations that strengthens the school. There's a lot of mutual learning that goes, and, and then such, and people have to come into conformance with NASC. What the agency does is it sends two people, none of whom know a whole lot about running schools for a day at most, or they send a consultant who spends a day at most. The quality of the agency's oversight is inferior to that of NASC. We have to ask, are we satisfied with that? And that would be the kind of thing in which we'd need to be able to ask the agency. We won't understand how you do this. We want you to document to us how you do this process and what sort of tell do you bring to this process. That's the kind of question we feel we, it would be useful to ask. And you can't do that now? We can ask, but we can, we have no way to verify the information we're getting. Frankly, under the President's Secretary, we very rarely see any other agency person presenting to us except as a attorney. So if we're getting a presentation about an independent school, the people who did the visit and the analysis are not available to us. But would they be available to you under this new scenario? I mean, you could ask, but they could just tell you to go fly. I think that would depend upon what the legislation said. Because I've been thinking about this lately, and I sort of hate to go back to Jim about it, but I won't. But we probably should have had some language in here that at least stipulates that there ought to be cooperation with an inquiry. But I mean, I understand where Dan's coming from. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't want people messing around and asking me questions. Well, it's got my work to do. You know, we have an oversight function with AOE and the administration. So to the extent that the legislature agrees that the state board is helping us in that oversight function, then I don't think there is contradiction. But on page three of this draft, it makes clear that the rulemaking authority is to be pursuant to the purpose of carrying out and with the limitations of legislative intent. And I think that's a great addition to this draft. I have this argument many times with previous chairs of the state board who are arguing in effect that the state board was independent, operating independently from the legislature. So I appreciate that. To go to the question of staff and resources, what was a tough lift even to add positions at AOE? I think that there are a couple of things working against, and I've been candidly drawn about this, working against adding any staffing to the state board. The first is that the legislature and the administration both worry that independent staff operated by the state board might ultimately be termed in their direction to litigate with the legislature or with the administration. So there's that. But the second thing is that this draft, in a sense, skinnies down the board's duties and responsibilities pretty significantly, which is an odd time to add staff to say we're lessening our duties by 40 percent. Right. Now we need staff where we've gone by without them before. So I think what makes sense, and this is my opinion, I'm not speaking for the committee because we'll straw vote and pursue the direction we want to go. But if we imagine pursuing the reorganization that we're talking about, I think that speaks to, we've had bills every year to get rid of the state board. Jeanette White's Sunset Committee recommended or nearly recommended getting rid of the state board. I think ultimately they suggested a reorganization. So there's real sentiment out there, ambient sentiment that the board needs to be reworked, which is why I think John was smart to go down the road of moving with that wave rather than getting hit by it. So assuming that we do this, something like it, then I think a subsequent session might be the time to think about now that we see what the new duties are like, now that AOE has picked up their new responsibilities, where does staffing need to go? Should we add an AOE? Should we add to the board? I think that can be a question for another year. Yeah, I'm certainly not proposing that AOE staff that have been available to the board should be taken away with the board. I mean, in fairness to Dan, I just don't think, I don't think that's a very fair way to treat somebody who's been supporting you for all these years. He ought to get to keep that staff and use it for his purposes because Lord knows he's got a lot of stuff that needs to do and he's understood. So I guess I'm saying we should, we completely support this. Some people on my board are very cranky about, you mean there's nothing in there about staff and I'm just saying, look, this is the art of the possible, not the perfect. Not the perfect. My hope, and I'm just unfounded at the moment, it's a hope as opposed to a conviction, is that we'll be able to recruit some funds from some independent sources and maybe even some staff from independent sources that opened up a conversation with the Tarrant Institute, for example. And I'm willing to go back for some resources and for some talent to be available to get us through say two years. And if we've kind of proved our worth in two years, then we would have a case for the state support. If we've failed at that, then I think let's just move on with life. We definitely have to have a, if in fact the state board is going to go looking for funding, I think that potentially represents another area of friction with the legislature. Well, I mean let's take the Tarrant Institute, I don't think everybody in the building would be necessarily behind funding. I mean look at what happened in the aftermath of Act 60 and Act 68. You had some private organizations that wanted to provide monies that were perceived as having an ideology strained to them. I see. I certainly am concerned. So, all the way of saying that I think the broader question of resources we should probably push down the road. But I would just flag that before the state board begins accepting donations from them. Well, that's a good heads up. And maybe there needs to be some statutory guidance about that or they don't know. Yeah. I guess I'd prefer to avoid the whole question. Yes. I think it's enough for people to think about, because you know how it is, the minute money gets involved, that's the discussion, not the policy. Well, as you can imagine, I'm not very interested in having anybody tell me what we ought to be working on. I'm interested in what the board says, but I don't want an agenda coming from a source of revenues. It's just off the limit. Except for if we give you tasks, because that's part of... Oh, for sure. I'm saying money people. Hey, if you give me some money, I'll do whatever you say. Yeah, I'm careful about that. There are people who do. Well, in effect, we are giving money because the operating expenses coming out of A&E are coming. Those would come over better than that. Yeah. Has the board voted on this proposal? And they're unanimous and they'll support it? But unanimous might be a strong word. Hey, it's a bunch of independent people. They can live with it? Yeah, basically the board endorsed the annual report. And the annual report sets forth the elements on the third page. It sets forth the essential elements of the proposal in front of you with the exception of E, appropriate necessary resources. They support that too. And I'm just telling them, well, that's just not in the cards. To clarify, have they seen this actual language? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. That language I'm sending out today. Okay. Because this, this is what's here. Act necessarily. We don't need a unanimous sign off by the board. I just think it would be a good, you know, good neighborly move. Yeah. Yeah, really. Yeah. You know, what's on page three of our, of our press, of our annual report really does speak to the essential elements including B, which is affirmed that the board is empowered to advance settlement, advance any policy, but only within the explicit scope and content of legislation adopted by the General Assembly. Yeah. Frankly, if you do nothing else with this, just please pass that piece. Oh, I'm going back to, it's a shorthand for me when I say the 2200 rule series. What I mean is, if we go back four years ago, the board put out these rules that in the initial iteration would have mapped public school rules on to approved independent schools. And it would have, it was a universal changes that had happened in the absence of any legislative directive. And it really was a, the negative characterization would be that it was a rogue act. The ultimate positive characterization would be that it was a visionary act that everyone else was, was too afraid. They were the only ones who had that vision. But I had discussions with co-chairs of the board then in economic development and literally had a conversation where one of them said to me, the state board is independent of the legislature and independent of the governor. And I said, are you saying it's an independent branch of government that is not included in the oversight scheme laid out otherwise? And that person said, yes. We exist. I mean, it was like Dick Cheney's vision of the vice president's office when he said it wasn't legislative or executive. It was its own branch of government. And so I pointed out that the legislature had created the board and that if we passed the law, getting rid of the board, it would go away and asked if that wasn't the case and was told, yes, but until you do that, we operate utterly free of any oversight. So all the way of saying, I'm very glad to see here, you know, just a plain statement of the fact, which is that the board has always been there to operate at the behest of the legislature and also of the executive branch, but, you know, as a helpful instrument, not as a antagonistic. Right. Thank you. If I may, I'd like to pass out, Mr. Chairman, just something about the board's work on Act 173, the implementation of the rules. Because we've been sort of, there's 10 copies there. I think I signed the report last month. You're saying that it will be done, 18 months sequence to draft and formally adopt the rules. You'll be completed in 2012. Oh, absolutely. We're just being the tough cops about following these rules, this sequence. It's really, understandably, it's such a complicated undertaking. It's understandable that it's very hard to keep people on schedule. But if we get behind schedule, some just really ugly things happen. I mean, for example, if they're not careful, the public comment period drifts into the summer vacation. Well, that just is not the time of year to be getting educators and even parents in to talk to us about their concerns. So you've got to keep that in the school year. If you don't manage the schedule, that's what happens. So our role is kind of traffic cops on this thing to keep it moving. Frankly, we don't add a lot of knowledge. We count on the stakeholders to do that and the agency. Just kind of a traffic cop. Well, again, it's much appreciated. I mentioned the final map on Act 46, which was controversial but was also going to have to be done by somebody. Act 173 is more nuts and bolts even than that and it will have a greater impact ultimately. So I'm glad that you've stepped in. I know there was an impasse between the advisory group and AOE and neither side likely to give in. And I think it was the board's mediation that helped work through that. So I think the state board has been very much value-added with controversy here or there. But I'm committed myself to seeing it restructured rather than eliminated. And again, I'm very glad to have your help. Can I ask one more? So if you maintain your rulemaking authority and you don't have staff and you're not sort of entangled with the agency, how do you see that ability playing out? Like how do you actually do it? I think that's a great question. And I don't have a highly evolved answer. My expectation and in that connection, maybe I could, if I may, I'll hand out another thing that is about rulemaking. Because right now there are about 35 sets of rules that span the entire universe of education. And under the present law, I'm accustomed for the last 100 years, all those rules are written by the board. Or I should say, they're all adopted by the board. We have authority over those rules. Some of the rules are about how long school buses can idle. Well, frankly, I don't think we bring a lot of expertise to a question like that. And if anybody does in this field, it would be the agency, not us. And so what we're proposing is that a lot of rules move to the agency. And some, that is, the kind of broader implementation of statute rules, interpretation of statute into policy would stay with the board. I'm sure if Dan were here, he might take issue with some of these allocations, which is fair. I think that's all for discussion. But this gives you, and what you can see from this is that about 15 to 20, maybe 22 of the rules that are presently under the board's authority would move to become under the agency's authority. And as you scan them, you'll see two kind of clusters. One is about the agency stuff is about the administrative particulars of how you roll out and implement legislative policy. The former group is about what's the shape of education in Vermont, whether it's post-secondary education, pre-K, education quality standards, what happens in our schools. This would leave those kind of things with the board. But to go back now to your question, writing the rules is the heavy lifting. Adopting is the easy part. My expectation would be that the agency would do most of the heavy lifting at both ends of this. They would certainly write all their own rules, the whole bottom half. But my expectation is that the agency brings in an enormous amount of expertise to any of us. And so either they would write them or they would be crucial in the development of them. They might serve only as critics, but if they can't or won't do the hard work of writing them, and it is a lot of work, then the board would have to find its own resources to do that. When, for example, I threatened to the agency that if the agency didn't get moving on the rules, we would write them. That meant that we would hire a law firm to do it for us, not you. But that's what we would do. We don't have the expertise to write these rules, especially because they have to be in compliance with federal law. Where would that money come from? Well, we happened to have it left over in our budget. The reason we have it left over in our budget is we had about $20,000 for membership in a national association. Which was kind of nice and all that, but it wasn't worth $20,000. So the board decided to drop that membership. We saved ourselves $20,000 and set that aside so that if we needed legal help, we'd have some money to pay for it. Now, is that, I think you and I talked about this before. The agency has a line item that carries your operating. That's correct. Is this $20,000? So does the secretary, and I wish for this, but if the secretary thought that you were going to hire a lawyer to litigate those rules, could he stop you from doing that? It's a good question. You called it your budget, but it's really his budget. That's correct. It is. I don't know the answer to that. I've only thought to myself, would he? And my clear answer on that is this secretary wouldn't dream of attempting to control us. I can't imagine that he would, as you can ask him. But could he? I don't know. I'm thinking, again, back to the 2200 series, Governor Shumlin stopped the resources flowing to the board. As a, I wouldn't say a protest, an attempt to stop people. To control what's happening. It's possible. Another reason for the board to become financially independent. I forget. Thank you, sir. Well, thank you, John. I appreciate you coming in. I appreciate you all the time you're giving this and everything else. And just to let you know, what we will do is probably next week, maybe we'll take another look through the longer bill with Jim Demeray. And the committee will have a chance to have a general discussion about this approach. And then if the votes are there to go forward with it, then we'll be calling in stakeholders to talk about it. The next step will be the straw vote on the committee. The direction of it and the general look of the legislation. Good. Thank you so much. Thank you. So committee, let's take a look at the, it's in the next folder down. The task force language that I mentioned at the beginning of the way. So it should be paper clipped to the front of your. So just to flesh out where this came from, the administration, the governor asked to meet with Kate Web and I and our vice chairs, Debbie and Representative Cobley, in his office the day before the status date. And he laid out a very general idea with a very general and to my mind, extensive timeline. And in that conversation, we talked very basically about he wanted in general to avoid a mandatory program for after school. He wanted it to be voluntary for the student, the parent and the district. So that people are forced to take the program. And then he wanted it also not to rest on property tax and drive up people's property tax bills. So the education fund not be taxed. So at that meeting, I, as you might well expect, mentioned tax and regulate and the possibility that I had been talking with people about having about a third of that revenue stream, that projected revenue stream, a crew to education. In this case to after school because there are demonstrated research effects with preventing underage substances. So this draft reflects that general conversation and some back and forth I had with Jim Demeray about how to put it together. So Jim isn't here with us, so I will do my best to walk us through it. So page one, section one is findings. The first two came from material that the governor's people put together. They had a very limited white paper that was, you know, general in quality, but I wanted to incorporate some of their language. So those first two findings come from them. The third I added to add in the substance abuse piece and that references a 2018 report that was done for the Alaska after school network that specifically looked at the prevention of uptake of cannabis use and people who had a high quality after school program. There's the hook. That's one of the hooks. So then section two, it's called the Task Force for Universal after school access to consider and make recommendations on the framework for the costs of and related long term funding sources for access to universal after school. Membership is 10 members. I could easily see this blowing up to 20, which I would like to prevent. So I stopped at 10. House member, Senate member, governor or designee, superintendent school boards, special education administrators. We did have email contact from special education administrators wanting to make sure that this draft referenced specifically children with disabilities and special needs. Principles. Executive director of Vermont after school or designee. Director of the all for one program is people with Vermont or designee, director of the after school program in Franklin or designee. The thinking there was, first of all, Vermont after school has been I think the primary mover, but then to try to get some geographic distribution and three members representing the after school community. Powers and duties. Task Force shall consider and make recommendations on the framework for costs of and related long term funding sources. Task Force shall map existing after school programs and highlight gaps in access and equity, including equity for homeowners with disabilities. Obviously, their first move should be to pick up the studies that Debbie and Ruth referenced earlier work that's already on the table data that's already on the table. In exploring funding sources, Task Force shall prefer solutions that do not draw upon the state's education fund. That's specifically not forbidding the consideration of the education fund, but putting it in the legislation that solutions that don't draw on that fund are to be preferred, including equity for whoops, and shall explore the possibility of using potential revenue from the taxation and regulation of cannabis. Task Force may recommend legislative language to enact its recommendations. Whoever is on there from the Senate, I would hope would push for the creation of actual language as a way of moving this along more quickly. They shall have administrative technical and legal assistance from Ledge Council. Governor calls the first meeting, you know, often it's the administrative person, the secretary of the related agency that calls the first meeting. Then they elect a chair from the members, so it remains agnostic on who is going to chair this, whether it's legislative, layperson, or administrative member. Majority constitutes a quorum, ceases to exist, December 16th of this year. Report to relevant committees of the governor, there's reimbursement, and a price tag of $87,000, which is kind of the standard. What's up? You said $1,000. Oh, sorry, $8,700. And that's it. Take effect on passage. Again, I think it's possible that we could move something quickly. The House could go along relatively quickly, and this Task Force could be up and running well before we've gone over the hump toward the end of the session. So thoughts on that, and I'll let me just table what you guys brought up earlier. So there is the objection that we don't need another Task Force because we have had in the past Task Forces. This one, and I specifically asked the governor about this at the meeting, it's possible to write this sort of bill in a speculative fashion. Should we have an after school program, it's up to this Task Force to come up with an answer. This presumes that we're going to have one and asks them to find means of implementation up to and including legislative language that could be picked up in January. So I don't know if Debbie, you or Ruth want to talk more about the concern of having a Task Force. That was the governor's specific ask, and I think my way of thinking about it is I don't believe we as a committee have the bandwidth to start now and by the end of the session have legislative language. So if I imagine this Task Force producing legislative language in parallel while we're doing our work during the session, it seems like a good use of everybody's time. So I guess I'm just curious. So there are a bunch of after school programs that already exist. There are, and I'm sure all of our districts, there are schools or communities that have some kind of after school. Some of them are attached to the school and run by the school. Some of them are run in the school by another organization. Some of them are run outside the school. And are they universal now? Are they all of equal quality? No, that's clear. But they do exist. And so I'm curious what the point of this is beyond the, oh let's identify a funding source. Well, so exactly what you said. So for instance Burlington has a very robust program, means tested. So if you're from a family of no means in Burlington, you can get full time after school. But there are many, many, many communities, the majority of communities where you can. So one of the things that this group is tasked with is mapping out on the powers and duties. The Task Force shall map existing after school programs and highlight gaps in access and equity. So it would identify places that might need after school programs. And then, or identify like best practices maybe, identify. So there would be a lot of ways to think about it. So one, you know, if you think about universal pre-care. So the negative knock on it is that we've got dual oversight. It's clunky. People only have 10 hours a week. People have complaints that are valid. The positive way to look at it is Act 166, it used to be before Act 166, let's take Rutland. Rutland was very, you know, they were very resistant to pre-care. They didn't want to provide it. And so if you were a parent in Rutland, you would kind of shed out a lot for pre-care. Because your district didn't want to do it. After 166, you could go to a private provider because it wasn't reliant on your district. So it may be that this Task Force thinks about and creates a mixed delivery system on purpose that just closes in gaps and doesn't necessarily try to create uniform structures. Or it may be that after discussions this group feels there should be a certain amount of uniformity but with a little bit of deviation. I think the governor's red line is he doesn't want mandatory programs that a district must adopt or a parent must send their kid to the program. So those are decisions left to this Task Force. And for instance, let's say we were going to start today writing the legislation. We'd have to decide all of those things. We'd have to, if not produce the data from scratch, we'd have to gather it from everywhere it exists. So there's a lot of work to be done aligning the data, mapping what's out there and then figuring out how you fill those gaps and accents. And is this K-12? So it would be both elementary and high school programming. Could we get a copy of the report that Debbie, I actually haven't looked at it. I don't remember it. But you referenced just to see what they recommended. Yeah, Debbie if you can point Jeannie to that. Jeannie, Debbie's going to give you reference to a report and then if you could give us all a copy of it in this folder. So let's... So I did have another comment too. I think in our conversations with the governor there was also the desire to emphasize substance misuse prevention. And so I'd like to see this model of a task force. I'd like to see more in the powers and duties of coordinating with... Because there was an advisory council on substance misuse prevention that met this past summer. And I'd like to see that, you know, there's some coordination with what they recommended. We could put in also somebody on the task force. So that's a possibility. Or an organization that I'm trying to think of who the premier organization would be who might cover this interface between... Well, I mean really it's the Department of Health. It's... And the governor has a desigee. Well, sure. So, okay, so Debbie if you would just make a note on your copy of that. Jim's going to come in later in the week and move through this bill again. So let's all have suggestions. If we are going with this, what are suggestions you have to add or subtract? And then we'll give those to Jim and produce a 2.0. Andy? Well, I wondered about the definition of after school. Part of it was a K through 12. And is that just pretty established? I mean it's... I have my own idea but maybe there's already a pretty established definition. I mean, like as a sports program, does that count? Well, we had an email or I had an email from a guy who was specifically arguing that he calls it youth sport, but sports generally should be considered after school. And I think he had left down the road already to funding and didn't want sports programs to be left out. My way of thinking is that, and I don't know if this was your experience, when I was on a school board, it was never a problem to get money to sports teams. It was a problem to get money to, you know, strings and art. I remember there was a huge fight to get rid of Chinese at Burlington High School. It offended people and people talked about saving the $50,000 that we could save. They wanted that gone like that. And then the next year, they wanted to fast-track a new field that was going to cost $3.2 million. And they didn't even want it to move through the committee process. They wanted us just to approve it in one meeting. So the difference between, you know, money for sports. And when you have a budget go down, the typical tactic is to highlight that sports are going to be cut. And then you pass your budget the second time around. I just wondered about a definition in here. I think it can't hurt to put K through 12 in. And is that it? Well, if you think about pre-K, I don't think anybody generally thinks of pre-K. Well, no, but is it anything, is it just like a, is it really just about the time on the clock if it's after school, everything counts? Well, let's, we can either write that in or we can leave it to this task force. I think, I never think about college students being part of after school and I never think of pre-K. So that doesn't mean we can't say it. But I think everybody's basic assumption is that we're dealing K through 12. When you're talking about elementary school, you're generally not talking about people with a lot of team sports activities, some, but not like in high school. I just wondered if there was some kind of pedagogical definition. But just as if they're under control during that time period, it counts. Right, I mean, I do think it would be valuable for us to sketch out some kind of definition in here because otherwise I do think we run the risk of having sports, some clubs, especially when you get into high school. There are tons of things that high schoolers can do after school and really what I would assume the goal of this is to fill the gap for students who don't have those things after school that may not be part of team sports or the debate club or whatever and need something to do. The question would be, and maybe this would be fine, but it does, it will involve us in the question of access to sports teams which are kind of their own decisions about which sports teams people want to provide. So what if a school doesn't provide football, but they provide soccer and parents begin saying there is no football team, so this initiative should provide us with football. Right, so I just think our definition should just exclude sports. I mean like team, competitive sports teams, they can have recreational. Anyway, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole and so if we don't have a definition then the committee is going to go down that rabbit hole. Okay, and let's do that. We'll ask Jim, we're going to have to give him some direction on so maybe everybody can look for definitions after school. And I'm sure Holland and Morehouse will have. And these three organizations that you put on here, that Vermont After School, I know we heard from them last year, but all for one and leaps. I mean I don't know them all specifically, but I'm wondering if that, if they are the appropriate ones. Well, so Vermont After School I think of as the premier actor in the space. But then the other two, like I said, Vermont After School is based in South Burlington and then we've got one from Franklin and one from Springfield. I'd never heard of a Vermont After School until they came in last year. So if they're premier, they're not premier around the state. One thing I'll do is send them to the, they're in the port too. Yeah, we had a testimony from them. Right, now is the first time I've done that. If there's another group that makes more sense. I'm not wind to those. I just thought there's a tapestry program after in Rollins City, Rollins Town. It's called tapestry? Tapestry. Okay. It's funded by the federal government most of them. Does anybody from AOE on here? Well, we've got governor or designee. So I think part of the thinking was it's not going to be the governor. So then who does he tap in his administration? He probably asks Dan French and then Dan French taps who he wants. How do you see independent schools? They're just not at all. You know, that's a big fight. And, you know, I think it makes it far more likely that we wind up squabbling amongst ourselves. But if they're included and their recipients of the public funding that goes along with it. But again, what does the word universal mean? If we have a mixed delivery system of education and it spans approved independence and public schools. So is that a suggestion that we add somebody from the independent schools to the town? Well, I was going to suggest that if they were going to be part of the universe, but if this is a universe that doesn't include certain planets. Yeah, we haven't decided. And this gets back to a really recurring policy question, which is, to what extent are you going to make advantages that come with the public school system, advantages that come with the public school system as reasons for people to go to a public school? So dual enrollment, that was the strongest argument against allowing independence into dual enrollment was that it became a significant advantage to send your kid to a public school. So I take no position on it except to say that it will make our task more fraught. Or their task. Well, both, right? Because we're going to have to enact whatever they come up with. So let's put that. So I've got the definition, the particular programs that have a great interest in the public school system. So I'm going to take the question of approved independence. Other thoughts on the draft? Debbie had, you wanted substance abuse bumped up. Yeah. In terms of. And you were going to get us the copy of it before. I'm sorry. I didn't mean like that. I'm sorry. I'll add it to my pile of reports to read. So maybe that's good. So is it first flush? Does it does it seem like if we examine those possibilities, we could go with a task force model as opposed to trying to write the legislation ourselves? Because doesn't make sense to continue working on this draft unless that's the direction we're going. I prejudice the issue, I guess, by saying I don't, I don't see how we add into our work at this point, the creation of the full model from where we are now to legislative language that we would pass to the house. So if we wrote the language, I think we would wind up introducing it again next year anyway. Or for the first time next year. All the way of saying, I don't say anything wrong with allowing this task force to take a stab at putting together the framework and the language. Because I think the timeline would be roughly the same. And we could work with their language next year if they come up with some or write our own. So is there anybody who's not down at this point with us passing a task force, an amended task force with the idea that we would try to get it to the house relatively quickly? I'm for it. I think it needs to be stronger than recommendations on the framework. If the goal is really to get it implemented, that seems like another similar on universal. So if they're just doing recommendations on the framework for the costs and long-term funding sources, that's not getting it implemented. We should call it the implementation. They're not going to implement. Yeah, maybe the different term. I'm for it if we strengthen that language a little bit about. And that's the powers and duties? Yeah, what are they doing? Okay, so well, it's repeated a couple of times. They're recommending the framework, the costs, and the funding sources, and then possibly legislative language. I don't want to insist that they produce legislative language because you've been on these things before. Sometimes that seems like it makes sense. And sometimes you're like, oh, we uncovered a huge unexplored area that's going to take more time. So. Yeah, I mean, maybe. But between now and when we talk to Jim, we'll go over and see if you want to tweak here or there. I guess I'm just still unclear as to what they, maybe similar to Andrew, what they are doing. I mean, if there are already existing programs, we want probably more existing programs. That's the question that they're answering. So they're answering where are the holes? And what's the framework to fill? And what's the framework to fill? And how will state-wide funding help fill those holes? The other thing is, you know, it's a little bit of a magic unicorn, this idea of the tax and regulate bill. But, you know, when Debbie and I talked with the government, with the governor about that, there was real interest from his people and the governor. So he reiterated his issues with roadside testing and public safety. And he said, if it comes into being, I got the feeling that he would really like this to be a recipient of some of that money. So when you think about the timeline for the tax and regulate bill, it's stuck over in the house. It may not move this session. It doesn't seem, you know, enamored of the idea of moving it. So it may be this year, it may be next year, it may be the year after. If that's the likeliest funding source, I don't think we should be too worried about revving the engine to get done in a year because it may turn out that by next year this time it looks good that it will be signed next year and then the following year would be when money would flow. So I think there's time. But I don't think it's a bad idea to get this group up and working as quickly as possible. Make sense? Sure. Okay. Y'all? I'm good. With amendations? Excuse me, yeah. Didn't mean to call on you. Now, yeah, yes, I mean, I can see the manager. Okay, so let's, I have those four areas noted. If between now and when Jim comes in, you know, you are talking with advocates and they have recommendations for this draft, by all means take note of them. If you want to draft out a sentence here or there, that's fine too. Once Jim comes in and we give them these suggestions and we come out with two point, actually four point one, then we'll put it up on the board. We'll have testimony on it and we'll hear from people. So I'm not, I'm not talking about Russian. We will take testimony. I just want to make sure everybody is okay with the basic approach. Okay. So the last thing on our schedule for today is Nevy has a reception that had four up in the Cedar Creek ring. So you're not required to be there, but you are invited guests and I think there will be some kind of food. So there's an incentive to go up. Nevy does good work and I wanted to support that. Place at Nevy at first. It sounds exactly right. He has a cold. I have an old juice. Okay. And then the other thing I want to say about tomorrow is we're going to have the secretary in and we're going to hear from him on the areas we outlined that we wanted to report. So staffing, I've asked them to bring an org chart and to be prepared to actually talk about since he took office, how many people have they hired? Where are they still understaffed? What are those ongoing pipelines look like for hire? Act 173, we wanted to know about professional development because we had, as you remember, we delayed Act 173 by a year because we had heard on the ground that there were problems. We also delayed the uniform chart of accounts. So I'd like an update on that. But it's your opportunity to talk about oversight. It's your opportunity to ask the secretary at the beginning of the session, what about these concerns we've had all along? Where's the agency on them, et cetera? We'll also have the new president of UVM then. And that should be interesting. And then we're not going to be having Jim. So we'll be done at three tomorrow. But the tradeoff is that Jim is going to talk to us about those bills between Thursday and Friday. Sorry? For Thursday. Yeah, for Thursday. So Thursday will go longer and tomorrow will go shorter. Anything else from anybody? OK. See you up at the reception at four if you're there. We'll be square.