 Switching gears back to H171, we are focused this afternoon, I think on some level on that part of the bill that relates to scholarships and training and education. And so we have Sonia Raymond and Johnny Flood, who are going to talk to us. And I want to ask both of you, should we stop and do you want us to stop you in the middle while you are speaking, or would you like us, would you for us to wait till after both of you speak or if you'd like after Sonia you speak and then Johnny you speak. What's your preference? Usually after I speak and after he speaks, I mean after each speaks if you have questions to ask of that person that makes sense I think that works for you Johnny. It helps us to know whether we can interrupt you or whether we should hold our questions because usually oftentimes if we hold our questions they get answered. Okay, thank you. Thank you again Sonia for coming this afternoon. You're very welcome. I'll be speaking first. And committee if you're following it, it's section 9 and 10 of the bill, sorry. That's okay. Thank you for inviting me to testify this afternoon, my name is Sonia Raymond, I'm the Executive Director for the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children. So quality early childhood education has always been essential to our economy, but in these very stressful times that we've all been facing, access to early childhood education has actually become imperative, providing the stability for families that they serve, ensuring healthy growth and development of our children. And when the pandemic hit, many people began to work from home as you know, but there was a portion of our population, our essential workers for whom that wasn't possible. And it was the early childhood education programs that stepped up and reopened their businesses to serve these families. And it was all of you in the Vermont legislature that actually led the nation in supporting these programs until the state reopened, as no other state did. It has never been more clear that an investment in early education is not just the key to Vermont's economic health, but provides the very foundation for young children to develop into well-rounded happy productive members of our society. Even before the pandemic, the very existence of early education was in jeopardy and that hasn't changed. Families cannot afford early education with some paying as much as 30% of their household income, even with state assistance. And early educators can't make a living with a medium average wage at $13.72 per hour, often without access to health insurance. Program capacities continue to decrease and challenges with hiring and retaining early educators have reached a crisis point. Without specific and targeted investments being fully realized, we will continue this decline. The quality of early and early education program begins and ends with qualified early education program staff and leadership, unless we assure that there are affordable entry points into the profession and resources for those currently in the workforce and proper compensation for the important work early educators do. We will not stop the exodus of early educators out of the field and we will never attract new early educators to the field. Addressing affordability for families must be a top priority as well. We cannot hope to have a strong economy if families cannot go to work, yet this is a reality that our state is facing. Most families now face a difficult choice. Do I want to support my family when the majority of my paycheck is paying for early education or will I stay home and begin accessing other social supports for my family? H171 calls for several key actions and investments that are the first steps necessary to addressing affordability and accessibility to quality early education for working families. Changes to our child care financial assistance program over time that move us from reimbursements to programs being based in the market rate to the true cost of care to a structure where families pay no more than 10% of their household income is imperative. These changes when fully implemented will mean that the 70% of working families will be able that are accessing early care and education will be able to afford the desperately needed services and programs. And it will also allow programs to compensate early educators with wages that are commensurate with peers in other fields. This is addressing quality is really a three-prong approach to providing the supports and resources to build a pipeline into early education and to retaining those currently in the workforce. All three prongs are crucial to building the much needed capacity in early education programs. The first that you see in H171 is the funding for scholarships for the current workforce to create a true pathway for those who have little to no education all the way through those who are working to attain their teacher license. While we have scholarships that support early educators in attaining their apprenticeship certificate associate's degree and teacher licensure endorsement, we need additional funding to sustain the current 95 recipients. And additionally, we're missing the crucial step of having a scholarship that supports those that need to move from an associate's to a bachelor's. There are currently 40 early educators on our wait list for this scholarship. We are seeking funding to support 25 BA scholarships this year and the governor's budget allocates 150 for this purpose, but we need an additional 300 to support our current 95 and additional 25 BA. Creating a loan repayment is the second prong for those newer early educators working in private community programs with a degree. This is an important vehicle to retaining those quality early educators. It is this population that cannot afford their basic living expenses, car, rent, food and their monthly student loan and unfortunately are often choosing to leave the programs that they work in to find a position that pays them a livable wage. The loan repayment program outlined in H171 would allow these early educators to remain in community based programs. So the third is the scholarship funds that will be available for our higher education institutions to assist students who wish to attain early education degree and are attending minimally part time. This option makes it affordable for students at our state colleges and universities to obtain early childhood or early childhood special ed degrees to build that pipeline of our future early educators. For in a crucial moment in time, we know that early education is essential to our economy and the health, the growth and development of our young children. We have seen the fragility of this industry, especially over the last year. If we do not address affordability, accessibility and the quality we will and target and make intentional investments in the early education system now, we will lose this industry as we've watched happen in many other states. That would truly be a cost that we can't afford. Are there any questions? Sonia, thank you. You have really sort of set the stage very thoughtfully. A question that I have given your history in this. Is there any data that you are collecting as it relates to how many of your of the graduates or how many of the recipients of scholarships actually go into early care and education? And how long do they and how long do they stay? So, yes, we do have data. So at first, it's important to understand that the current scholarships that we have available in this state right now are targeted specifically to the current workforce, meaning those that are working minimally 30 hours a week in an early childhood program. We don't have long repayment and we don't have scholarships for colleges to give to students that come in, say out of high school or off of another career path and into early education. Those don't exist. So the data we have is specifically for the scholarships that we give out for those in the incumbent workforce. And part of that scholarship program actually is a commitment to remaining minimally in the program they are working in for an additional year after their scholarship completes. Not only do we keep, you know, do folks hold to that commitment, but we then keep data. And I haven't looked at it this year, meaning since fall because we just entered into a new semester. But as of the last semester ending in the data, we have 82 percent of our previous scholars that have remained in the field since this program began in 2015. Thank you. That's that's good information. Any committee, do you have any other questions? OK. Johnny. Hi, everybody. Thank you for inviting me here today. So my name is Johnny Flood. I wear a lot of different hats in this field. So I just want to introduce myself a little bit and tell you what hats I'll be wearing today as I speak to you. So I am an educator. I've worked with middle. I've been a middle school teacher, high school teacher. I've worked with incarcerated youths. I was a classroom preschool teacher for years. I currently work at Vermont Humanities as their literacy programs manager so that part of my responsibilities are overseeing our professional development opportunities for early educators. And I'm also on the board of directors at a local child care center. But today I'm really speaking as an educator and as a member of the Early Childhood Educators Coalition, which is a worker led statewide advocacy group that formed out of the frustration around the reopening plan of last spring. And I think I'd actually like to start there. On May 22 of last year, Ted Brady, our deputy secretary of commerce and community development, he told the Senate Health and Wellness Committee that child care was one of the biggest obstacles reopening the economy on par only with the lack of available testing and PPE. He told the committee that employers were telling him that child care was in fact the single biggest obstacle to getting employees back to work. So for me, another way to say this is that child care providers are one of our most essential professions. They're vital to the proper functioning of Vermont's economy. And yet these essential indispensable workers who we have all leaned on not just since June of last year, but for years and years before that, their wages and working conditions do not nearly reflect the magnitude and the value of their role. Sonya mentioned this, but according to the Building Bright Futures Early Childhood Systems needs assessment, the median wage for a preschool teacher in the state is 1457 an hour. And for other child care workers, it's only 1271. We can compare that to the kindergarten teachers who we send our four and five year olds to at the end of every summer who make thirty one sixty nine an hour, a wage that does in fact reflect their skills and the value of their role in our communities. And while we still ask to raise all minimum wages to at least fifteen dollars an hour, it's important to know in Vermont that according to a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, our state's housing wage, the hourly wage our neighbors must earn to afford a two bedroom home at Fair Market Rent is twenty two seventy eight an hour. And in Burlington, it's almost thirty an hour. So the majority of early educators are really condemned living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to afford housing, food and health care. And I think it's also worth mentioning that this is a field primarily staffed by women whose skills, dedication and labor go largely unnoticed and underappreciated. They are in subpar wages and they're largely subsidizing child care costs themselves. This is true of home providers in our coalition who will go without paying themselves for a week or two when they know some of their families are unable to come up with the cost of tuition. And this is true on the other side of mothers who have had to pull themselves out of the workforce to watch their children. In my preschool classroom pre pandemic, I had eighteen three to five year olds in my care every day, which meant constant care, attention, clarity, precision, planning and a lot of reaction. Eighteen kiddos is a lot of noses to be wiped, wet pants to be changed. And more often than you'd expect things like fights to stop and crying children to comfort. And that's all without mentioning the activities to set up, curricula to design and direct classroom instruction to put into practice. In the meantime, in my classroom, I had to meet the Act one sixty six requirements of documentation and assessment, which meant recording at least three pieces of evidence for seventy three different benchmarks for all twenty five of my kiddos. That's that's almost fifty five hundred pieces of evidence to record, write up and grade for each grading period. I had no time to meet with my co teacher for planning. I had very little time to meet with parents. And after working eight thirty to five thirty with that kind of energy output and focus getting home, the thought of attending night classes just to eventually reach what's considered a livable or fair housing wage, frankly, was demoralizing, is depressing and it was devaluing. And honestly, it still feels easier for me to come tell all of you that the people doing this work just need more money. And all that was before the pandemic. Once the pandemic hit, this essential, vital, dedicated, stretched thin workforce was asked to return to in person instruction without hazard pay or state provided PPE in order to save and prop up Vermont's economy for all of us. I should note here that our organization, the EC EC, partnered with Sonya and last summer and they see or the Vermont Association for the Education to Young Children last summer, we partnered to run a health care survey of child child care providers in Vermont. And unfortunately, the results matched what we had known and said to each other for a long time. Results from this survey showed that over eleven percent of child care workers in Vermont are uninsured completely and over 50 percent are underinsured. And for those who do have some type of insurance, the majority were insured through a spouse or a family member, which is never a sustainable or adequate solution. We know people can feel trapped in a job by the health care it provides, but people can also feel trapped in households or relationships for the same reason. And when our coalition asked Dr. Levine if he would advise someone to our job without health insurance, he immediately said no. But again, compared to statewide and national statistics, child care workers in Vermont are both uninsured and underinsured at a much higher rate than the general population. Only three percent of Vermonters as a whole are uninsured compared to 11 percent of child care workers and 36 percent under the age of 65 in Vermont are underinsured compared to over 50. I personally used to take extra unpaid time off from my classroom teaching in order to keep my income under the threshold to qualify for Medicaid because I did not have the extra income to pay for my own insurance. And I had to be very careful about what that looked like. And it should be noted that with all this going on, many child care workers are working side gigs for money, you know, under the table in order to supplement their insufficient income and they aren't reporting it for the same reasons. So I was paying 50 percent of my income on housing in what could generously be described as an efficient one bedroom apartment, and that's not counting utilities, car payments, grocery, student loads and any unexpected expenses. I would also take freelance transcription jobs at night to supplement my income. And with my education and experience in the field, I was actually making more money than many of my colleagues. So so when we were forced back to work without adequate protections, I knew I had to have a conversation with my family. Because of the conditions I was going to be working in. And many of you here actually know my family, my father, Patrick Flood. He's going to be 70 this year. He's pretty solidly in the at risk category. And just incidentally, in his retirement, he and my mother have actually been providing child care for my niece so that my sister doesn't have to quit her job to raise her daughter. And knowing that in my work as a preschool teacher, I was going to be in very close contact with those small children and their noses and wet pants and tears and all the secretions that come with that trade. My family told me they would not be comfortable seeing me in person for the duration of the pandemic. So like Sonia said, I left the profession and I now work for Vermont Humanities. And it's a good job with a wonderful organization that does a lot of good in our state. It is not, however, essential to Vermont's economy. I don't think anyone at the agency of commerce and community development would force my current colleagues and I back to in person working conditions to preserve the stability of our economy. And yet now as a non essential worker, I now make nearly twice as much money as I did as a preschool teacher. I have very good health insurance and I can work from the safety of my own home. I can see my parents, my siblings, my niece. While my former colleagues in child care, however, are still working under the same looming viral threat, the same uninsured numbers and the same wages as before. And should be said, like our colleagues in elementary and secondary ed, they're not in line to be vaccinated as a group. And, you know, do these people not deserve a living wage, deserve access to adequate housing, health care? Should our essential and dedicated and skilled professionals in this field be tasked with propping up our state's economy for all of us with, you know, essentially nothing more than a well intention to thank you. So today I'm here to ask the committee, I'm here to ask all of you to look directly at the issue actually before on page eight of this bill, where it stated that early childhood educator compensation will be commensurate with peers in other fields. And I would say their peers are educators. Their peers are the kindergarten teachers who make 31 an hour. Childcare providers are vitally important educators who provide stimulating and nurturing environments for their students at perhaps their most critical developmental stage and they deserve to be compensated for their valuable labor and skills. So we, the Early Childhood Educators Coalition, we really encourage the committee to be specific in your calls for adequate compensation and that entry level wage for child care providers be raised to 25 an hour and that all child care providers receive comprehensive health care. Student loan repayment and scholarship opportunities while a valuable part of a good compensation package, those alone are not nearly sufficient to meet the need. You know, child care is a collective good for state officials, for businesses, for employers, for parents, for grandparents, for teachers, for children, for all of us. We need a child care system that represents our values and we need creative, courageous leadership to get us there. And we can get there. The ECEC, we've been talking with similar coalitions around the country and Multnomah County in Oregon, which has a population of around 800,000. It's only a bit bigger than our state. They just successfully passed an ordinance that all four and five year olds in the county would receive full day, five days a week, child care using their existing mix of public, private and home based care. They did this while also dramatically raising wages for all child care providers to be equivalent to kindergarten teachers and all just by taxing the top 12 percent of earners in the county and no one below that threshold. So we can do this and we owe it to our essential workers now more than ever. Thank you. I think you're still muted. Thank you. You think after a year, I would learn how to do this. Representative Redmond. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just wondering if we can send the witness to Washington to advocate on a federal level, because you are amazingly you laid it out so beautifully. So thank you. I'd be happy to go, although I guess these days I wouldn't have to go to Washington. I just stay here, get a different zoom link. Johnny, so what let me if you were to how would you want? How would you suggest to us that we modify the bill? I think, as I said, being specific about what a commensurate compensation package means as it as it stands, it's carefully worded and I understand that, but I think looking carefully at what wages should be deserved to be for these folks need to be and also providing health care. So we're recommending 25 an hour. That's below the median wage for kindergarten teachers. And it is above fair market rent wages in our state. And that childcare workers have access to comprehensive health care. Thank you. That's helpful. We're getting to the point where we have to do word smithing and agreeing and that kind of thing. So that's helpful. Are there any additional questions? Representative Brumsted. Thank you. Thank you very much, Johnny. I am. Wow, that was amazing. And all that is going on in the system, we all sort of hear little pieces in our own communities, but to have it put all together in one presentation, really very moving. I'm curious, I mean, we want to do this. We we've all been working on this for a lot of years. And but one of the things that's a struggle and is hard is that part of the system is private and some of its public and it's all sort of if it was all public and everybody was a state employee, they would get the state employees benefits and that would be, you know, sure, it would cost more, but it would be succinct and a little bit easier to put your head, you know, sort of wrap your mind around it. I'm just curious, you've worked, it sounds like in private centers. And have you thought about that at all? I'm not really sure what my question is, but I wanted to just put out there so you understand sort of what we're struggling with a little bit here. Yeah, I'll say that as a coalition, we're talking about that, but we don't have any hard and fast agreements. But I will I'll say that, you know, there are a lot of home based providers who if we continue, continue, continue to professionalize and raise what it takes to be a childcare provider in the state educationally, those people are going to get locked out of the system and that's going to reduce access dramatically and immediately. And these folks are just as essential. Their labor has just as much dignity as folks with the bachelors or more. So, you know, I like that we were speaking with those organizers in Portland and in Oregon, who who who got that ballot measure passed because they have a similar mix, you know, they had they it's it's there's a lot of ways to provide childcare and they they they were able to incorporate all of those and still increase access, make it of maybe make it completely affordable for families and raise wages. So their system doesn't necessarily need to bring it all under the umbrella of the AOE, for example. Thank you. Thank you, Sonia. I just wanted to speak to your question, Representative Bromstead. So the concept of compensation and you know, paying a livable wage and having the benefits that are they are due. Really, what that entails having access to those benefits, specifically in compensation, mean that programs, including home-based programs, are able to actually charge the cost of care. Right now, as Johnny pointed out, it is on the backs of every one of the early educators in this industry. I mean, that's it. That's that's the simple plain truth of it. And, you know, parents cannot be paying any more than they're paying. They you're basically, as I pointed out, people are up against a wall. These families, they can't pay what what it costs. They continue to the cost continue to go up every year. And that's with us paying $13.72 on average per. So we need to figure out how we fund the cost and, you know, the Blue Ribbon Commission did their work. The think tank did their work. The figures are out there. We know what the cost is. This bill asks for us to really take a fresh look at that and decide how to move forward to create a fund to look at those private public philanthropic mixtures and figure it out. It's going to take a significant investment. There is no question. There's no getting around the millions of dollars this costs. I think the cost to not doing it is going to become far greater to this economy if we don't. If programs were able to charge what they needed to, they would be offering benefits. Look at the YMCA, for instance, right? Look at some of these larger programs or affiliations. They're offering them, right? Some private programs are offering them. That's because they're able to charge what is necessary to actually have a group plan. That would be one way you could assure it. You could start a state plan, which can be accessed, if you wish. By our early educators. That would be another way. But the bottom line is it's an investment in the cost. Just as it is with compensation. Thank you, Sonia. We have a question from Representative Whitman. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you so much, Sonia and Johnny, for your great testimony. I wanted to talk more about the cost of care and especially, like you mentioned, that we've found out ways to calculate that. I saw that a couple of days ago, we got the fair market survey released and it included a piece for the difference between what that market rate is and what that cost of care is. And we see that we're not keeping up. My question is adding the component of increasing wages, say to 25 an hour entry. Would that be is that included in some of the studies that you mentioned as well, Sonia, as far as not only what the difference in funding would be to start compensating providers at cost of care, but also that increased wage. And the reason that I ask that is because in the short term. From some of our questions, conversations with Commissioner Brown, there's thoughts of what belongs in the study component of this bill. And there's it kind of comes down to what do we address now and what do we address in January 2023? So I'm interested in kind of what we know right now as far as switching the cost of care. Yes, that was a consideration in these studies. I would say that as we're asking that, you know, what be looked at when you're doing this study is pay, as was pointed out, that's commensurate to others in a similar field or with similar credentials and similar work that they are doing when you take a look at that. You know, you're going to see the clear differences that exist. And I would also say that, you know, this state has undergone the exploration of becoming a profession, early education becoming a recognized profession. I guess it's the way to put it and in that, you know, we are there are several current studies going on. One, which CDD is currently doing on wage and fringe and benefits in the field in Vermont. And I would use that study that will be complete this spring. You know, and the work that's going on within the efforts around advancing as a profession really are taking a look at, you know, what are the skills and experience that folks hold and what is an appropriate compensation? In fact, the whole premise is do not require anything more without compensation, right? Like so we are where we are and you cannot require anything more without fair compensation because the reality is that doesn't exist. But we actually do have the resources we need to really dig into this and look and make some clear path forward. There are the studies that have been done and the current ones that are being done to reference. Madam Chair, you're muted. Thank you. And your hand is up. Do you have another question? No, thank you. Thank you all for the questions. Are there any last questions that folks have for Sonia or Johnny? Or Sonia or Johnny, do you have anything you want to leave us with? I would just say go bold. I know it's a tough time, but honestly, we won't make a dent. And I am just deathly afraid that we are headed down a path we can't come back from. I've watched it sliding over the last five to 10 years significantly. And it really concerns me, especially as the industry is such an important piece of our economy at this point. We just have to find a way and get creative and make incremental steps. I'll second that. Go bold. It's desperately needed. There's tremendous need on all sides of the issue. Representative Wood has a question and I'm going to have to change computers. I just got up. So I'll be back, but Representative Wood will take over. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sonia, you were just making me think when I don't know why it just popped into my head. Do you have any data with regard to the BIPOC population in terms of their access to your your tuition assistance and education programs? Yes, we actually I have to let you know that the most of the scholarships that we are giving out are through the teach program. And that program is very specifically targeted toward diversity and equity within the system. That is actually a requirement that we keep data on all of that. And it is a requirement that that be a focus and target for us within that program. Not, you know, not just for the BIPOC population, but to, you know, financial equity to other socioeconomic pieces, to regional, to programmatic and settings. So there are several equity lens which we look through and keep that on. Thank you. You may also have any final questions and Johnny, just thank you and my best to your dad. I worked with him. So that was the first question I had. I have to say that did pop into my head. When I when I saw your name on our agenda. So thank you both for being here. Any any final questions? OK, great. Thank you very much. And we are now going to. I think that what Madam Chair has asked us to do is to one, you will see that the final version of the budget memo has been populated and sent to you. And I think is up on our website. The other thing that we're going to do this afternoon is to sorry about that little bleep is to now start, I guess, some discussion really. We have more witnesses coming next week on this bill. And as we talked about previously, our goal is to have a bill out of our committee by the end of next week, a week from today. Seems rather daunting when we think about it right at this particular moment. But we haven't really had any discussion as a as a full committee about the various sort of about the overarching thing that then about each individual component and section within the bill. And is that what you were planning for now, Madam Chair? Well, now that I'm back on I was actually going to give people like a five minute stand up and turn around and look at their email where Katie has sent us. But another draft, which hopefully does that so that we can take a look at that and thumbs up with them, you know. Yes, I mentioned that. Yes. Oh, OK. It took me a long time to get on. All right, why don't we take a it's two o'clock by my clock? Seriously, can we just, you know, be back by.