 We're going to hear today from some of the school superintendents. We are still on whether we should be looking at equity payments. This committee is not dealing with ELL. English language learners grant versus weight is being dealt with in the education committee. We will have the bill and they will bring a recommendation to us. Then we will deal with what I gather has become a very contentious issue. We are looking at the other weights. We are still trying to understand how weights interact. I've seen a few surprises, schools that thought they were going to, especially the poverty weight is the big one, thought they were going to see a big increase and doesn't look like they are. We're trying to get a handle around what's happening. We also know that schools have been under extreme stress and dealing with issues you never thought you'd be dealing with, and want to be sensitive to that. Not throw you a curve that you have to respond to. The next topic we're going to go to that is in our jurisdiction is a phase in for winners and losers. That's a long tradition in the Ed Fund. We're presently cushioning any major changes you're seeing in your grand list. I believe we do those over three years. It's from proposed, we might do a transition over five, but transition monies will impact the Ed Fund. It's probably a good year to do that, but just looking at four thoughts and Jeff, I have you first. I'll make just a few introductory comments and then we'll move. There you are. Okay. For the record, I'm Jeffrey Francis. I'm the Executive Director of the Vermont Superintendents Association. We have with us today an array of superintendents representing various districts in the state and who will experience a change in the education funding system differently. Some will see increased tax capacity, others will see what's perceived to be decreased tax capacity. I was asked to get a perspective from an array and that's what I've sought to do. We're happy to be here with you. Chair Cummings, you somewhat stole my thunder a bit. In the years that I've been working for the Superintendents Association, which dates back to the late 1990s, I've not seen a more pressure-filled time. In a way, it's miraculous that we have these superintendents with us today. While the association has really sought to make sure everybody was well-equipped in terms of information, we've got people at different places with regard to how they're thinking about the public policy change. Same thing can be said for me. While school districts have been contending with all forms of pressure as a result of COVID and its implications, I've found the velocity at the front end of this second half of the biennium nearly as complicated as I've seen before. In part because of big policy issues that are under consideration, including this one, but also because of the challenge of working in a remote setting. It's just relate to the issues and to the people who are working on the issues differently. That's a contextual statement as well. I want to commend the work of the task force, which I think has done a great job in laying out the considerations that need to be made. I want to commend the folks that are commenting on this issue. I think it's a pretty complicated issue. I want to today do justice to the current perspective of the superintendent's association with regard to our thinking, which is relatively simple thinking. Then have you hear from the superintendents with regard to what their experiences are on the ground? Let me just talk about a conversation that I had this morning with VSA's 10 member board of trustees, some of whom are with us today, where we talked about testimony this afternoon and sought to put together into a cogent explanation where our association is right now. I would add that despite the fact that I talk about these main points from the association, it may be that specific superintendents are not in agreement with the main points because of what they're seeing in their own districts and how their own districts are responding. I just have a few short points. Peter Burroughs, who is the superintendent for Addison Central and our president, will follow me with any additive comments that he wants to make, and then we'll get right into having you hear from folks who are contending with everything that I said they're contending with, and also thinking about this transition in our education funding system. The first thing that I wanted to say is that our current thinking is that adjusting the weights are a better mechanism for moving forward than the cost equity formula. We're generally in agreement with the school board's association because we think that with all the pressure on the system and the need to achieve greater equity sooner, a transition to utilization of revised weights is a more suitable way to do that. We think that the school districts will understand the transition better, they'll respond to the change better, and we think we can get down to business as it were faster if we utilize a reliance on the weights as opposed to move to the cost equity system. That's the first point that I wanted to convey to the committee. We also think, and Chair Cummings, you also referenced this in your opening remarks. We think that the work on the transition plan that will affect all districts, but in particular districts that will gain and lose tax capacity is incredibly important. You know from your own analysis that there are some big shifts in certain districts in the state, in terms of gaining tax capacity or losing tax capacity. That's the nature of this change. We think that a transition is necessary and we think that the presuming that we want to move to a more equitable system sooner rather than later, even with a phased-in approach, that the discussion about what the transition mechanism should be and what the costs are associated with that really needs to happen as soon as possible. You had mentioned and I know that the ELL discussion is in the Senate Education Committee and I'm respectful of that. I know that they're going to deliver to you a recommendation with regard to English language learners. But in our conversation this morning with the VSA trustees, we did touch on that and I'd like to touch upon it now as well. Our general thinking at this stage is that ELL should be handled through the waiting system with a caveat. That caveat would be if the hybrid concept that's been discussed is going to better be able to contend with districts that have fewer numbers of ELL students as opposed to greater numbers. We think that that analysis should take place and that that's something that everybody should be open to. We also could not avoid taking note of the contentious nature of the discussion as you characterize that I think, with regard to how to deal with the ELL. Our general point there, which I've conveyed to the Senate Education Committee and would be willing to discuss with your committee in more detail when and if you get to that point, is that our association has got a heavy emphasis on equity and the state education funding system has a heavy emphasis on equity and it seems, I want to emphasize the word seems, that the analysis that's been conducted by the experts that were engaged by the General Assembly to look at our current waiting system indicates that particularly with respect to ELL, there's a fairly major adjustment that needs to be made. So I'm not qualified to challenge the analysis. I understand and respect that the General Assembly may have a different way that they want to contend with it. But on its face, it seems that the experts have determined that we need to make a more sizable investment than we have in English language learners and that determination ought to be adhered to. I will add parenthetically that we understand that there's a concern that dollars really with regard to any of the weight adjustments might not be appropriately invested. And having observed the education funding system for the years that I have, I respect that and I know that some of the variability and spending in Vermont can be attributable to different patterns and different communities of voter interest, perceptions of capacity, and so on and so forth. That's what we're trying to get at with an adjustment to the education funding system. I think that in order to get the assurance of proper investment that the agency of education needs more capacity than it currently has. I do not think that currently there's enough programmatic support with respect to our key areas of investment. I don't think that there's enough monitoring in terms of how dollars are invested. I'm not a proponent of usurping local control, but with the amount of money that's invested in the state and the dramatic adjustments that you're going to make in favor of better equity. I think that accountability with regard to investment that incorporates the school quality standards, et cetera, is something that we should be putting more time and money into. As a parenthetical statement, I would just add if I would not have the energy to follow Brad James around, who's trying to do too much as a singular person with regard to this and other policy arenas, and I would say that that illustration is reflective of what the AOE is challenged by currently, but would be more challenged by if when this change is made, we want to get more emphasis on the quality of our investment and the results they're from. The last point that I'll make before I yield to Superintendent Burroughs is that the recommendation from the weighting task force that goes to a mechanism legislatively derived that would provide for a consistent evaluation of the education funding system is something that I think is particularly useful and well-placed. Right now, we're dealing with a very, very difficult navigation from what was and is to what will be, and the swings that districts are going to see as a result of changes in their relative taxing capacity. I think moving forward in the future should be protected against by periodic and frequent evaluation of the functionality of the education funding including and especially whether we can continue to operate with what we hope is the most equitable funding system in the country by making sure that we have the necessary recalibration of the system in particular weights if that's the way you go, but also other aspects. There's a lot to our investment in public education and I would say that the legislature needs more mechanisms for oversight with regard to annual and progression of that system and also that the agency needs to do more in terms of programmatic support and evaluation of the quality of our investments and the yield therefrom. So with that, I would like to turn to Peter Burroughs to see if he has anything to add and then individual superintendents will get into their perspective on all of this and we as a group are available to respond to questions. Okay. Thank you. I was going to say, you don't get off that easy. I'm going to ask the committee if they have any questions. Not trying to get off easy. Thank you. You've been here before. Okay. Senator Bray. Thank you, Mr. Francis. Good to see you again. You were so diplomatic that I wasn't quite sure you were saying on ELL. So could you translate that into, you know, a preferred path based on what your group is recommending? Right. So I testified in the Senate Education Committee last week and I'll restate today. Because of where we want to be, where we are today, the need for equity, the I think expert counsel that you've received from Professor Colby and her allies, my belief, and I think it's shared by the at least the trustees of the Superintendent's Association, is that we ought to be moving forward with a waiting system that relies on the weights that were recommended in the report. And we understand that that alters the playing field as it were even more so than if the weights came in in a different form. But and, you know, I would stand corrected on this if the information that had come from Professor Colby is challengeable, but our belief is if you've got empirically derived calculations of what the cost implications are, that irrespective of weights or cost equity, we ought to be putting more investment into English language learners than we currently are. So I hope that's clear, but that's our current stance. That was very helpful. Thank you. Jeff, you had put a little caveat at the end of that. When you first presented, it was provided. We should go to weights provided that we can find a way to deal with those schools. Um. That have a small, small by comparison, since this is all done in percentages of English language learners compared to this. To the this, I believe there's seven, but there's a whole bunch that have a few and any thoughts on what that might look like, because I know at least one school I've looked at loses 92 students until there's an ELL grant and just about breaks, even if it's an ELL weight. And it's one of those schools that is poor. Yeah. So we're we're deep into territory that we weren't going to talk about today. OK, no, we won't. But I but I but I will talk about it. So we looked at the so Brad's graph that he presented earlier this week that shows what happens to equalized pupils if the weights for ELL are considered along the lines of Professor Colby's recommendations. And one, I want to say that I'm glad that we're not that these discussions aren't completed, right? So I know that Chair Cummings, your intent is to get a bill out by crossover. It's a it's a it's a thorny issue, right? So but where we found ourselves in our conversation this morning is that if the state values equity, if the findings of Professor Colby are accurate and we do need to invest more into English language learner systems than we have historically, then it's important to recognize that and make the requisite change. I think it's, you know, maybe there's another way that we haven't thought of or that you are going to better find a better approach to inducing the equity into or introducing the equity into the system that the modifications of the weights were intended to do. But I really think that the emphasis needs to be on transition. That's why my second point was get to transition as soon as you can after you make the policy decision about what method you're going to use or, you know, find a different body of research that says that the kick the determinations that were made by Professor Colby and her colleagues aren't accurate unless I'm missing some point, huge point. And I could be, you know, given the pressure that we're all under, but I don't think I am. No, I don't think we're going to start over with new researchers, not at this point. And we will start talking about transition next week. First, we're going to decide not for ELL, but for everybody else, if we're going to weights or it's been suggested, some things might be better with just a grant, but my intention is to take that, do that first and then we start transition. And that's all in the early part of next week. So our work is done when the recommendation comes over from the education committee. Hopefully we can just plug it in, but that may not be the case, but that would be my intention. That's the section they're doing and we'll move on. So other questions. All right, I am not seeing any. So I'm going to move on. Peter Burroughs from Addison Central is here, welcome. And the floor is yours. We just need you to introduce yourself for the record. All right, I will. Thank you. Peter Burroughs, I'm superintendent of Addison Central School District and I'm president of VSA. It is great to be here and talk with all of you senators about this topic. So as Jeff mentioned, we spent a significant time this morning and have been talking about this issue for a long time. I was recalling the first time I heard about this when Professor Colby came to Lake Maury and did a presentation. I think this was pre-COVID. So it's something that superintendents have been talking about, have been preparing for. And I think it's been, I think for some it's been a strident call to make change right away. I think for others it's been challenging and Jeff mentioned this in terms of the varied impact that this is going to have on the state. I think you mentioned winners and losers and I think certainly as a whole superintendents have had a couple of years to think about what does this mean for our district? What is it going to mean in terms of taxing capacity? What does it mean in terms of programs that we either have and won't be able to sustain or programs that we really need to address the significant equity gaps that all of us are facing in our schools. So I think it really says a lot about the superintendent's association support for this that even though the impact is varied across our state, I personally haven't talked to a superintendent who's not behind the change in weights who wants to see this move forward. I think the challenge for us as we move into the term transition and this moving forward is thinking about the impact on all the different districts and the support that I think is gonna be really critical that the legislature gives to the agency to support districts and communities because this is not just something that's gonna fall to a business office in a district but it's gonna be a real community wide change for everybody in both directions. And I know one of the things that has been raised throughout this process is even if a district has the taxing capacity, will they use it? So I think there's a lot of community-based work that we need to do. And so the communication side of this and the specifics around implementation are gonna be really critical. As Jeff said, I think staying with the weighting makes a lot of sense. It's both what we know, we've got extensive research on it that's had a couple of different iterations. I think it's time and we fully support it. Okay, thank you. Any questions? Not seeing any. So I'm gonna move on to Libby Bone Steel. Welcome. Hi, Senator Cummings. Thanks for having me. I just wanna do a quick check because I thought I saw an email where Dave Young needed to go before me. Ah. I just wanna make- Okay, I- Okay, I see Jeff shaking his head. No, Dave Young is okay. Lynn Kota would like to go last. So I should have mentioned that. Okay. All right, then I'm good to go. I just wanna make sure- All right, I'll move Lynn down. All right. All right, so hi everyone. My name is Libby Bone Steel and I serve as the superintendent for Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools. Just for a little background, MRPS currently has about 1300 students and 5% of our student population receive English language services. Since December holidays, we've welcomed 12 new students who are coming to us from Afghanistan and expect more Afghani families to be settled in the Montpelier town limits very soon. As a result of these new families, we've recently increased our FTE for EL teachers from 2.4 to 3.0 and we'll be asking our community to permanently increase our ELL teacher FTE to 3.0 in the upcoming budget vote. This may not be enough to service our new families who have come in and need significant support. In other words, our context regarding English language learners is currently very dynamic because of the refugee resettlement efforts. In addition to our English, our learners of English that's interested for this particular question regarding weights, Montpelier Roxbury serves Roxbury Village School that currently has an enrollment of 40 students. It's an extremely small school that's struggling to appropriately staff to meet the needs of students because of its distance to Montpelier, which is about 30 minutes away. Sharing staff between buildings is not always possible. To put this into a budgetary context, it costs approximately $10,000 more to educate a student who attends Roxbury Village School than it does to educate a child who attends any of our Montpelier schools. Approximately 23% of our MRPS students qualify for free and reduced lunch. Based on the modeling of either weights or cost equity grants, MRPS would have a considerable tax burden increase for our citizens. So some ideas for the committee to consider when making your decisions with the context of MRPS. The Ed Fund formula is already complex. That very few people completely understand. However, it's something that is a known entity for our budget creation process. MRPS supports sticking with changing the weights over creating a new grant system. We worry about any type of categorical grant that potentially increases reporting requirements or adds time consuming processes to our staff in order to get the money. Because our tax burden is significantly increasing as a result of this work, taxpayers may not be so keen to add additional administrative staff to oversee cumbersome grants. Categorical grants may also silo students and our district's ability to meet their needs should the grant come with stringent regulations for how the funds can be used. It may actually undermine our inclusive education efforts. We have a couple of questions. One being that would adding additional weights for very small schools like Roxbury incentivize the status quo for small schools. The extremely small multi-age class sizes with a wide range of learning needs may not be sustainable from a staffing perspective or in thinking about what's best for learners. Incentivizing this through weights may work against the goals of Act 46. Based on significant, the significant increased tax burden to MRPS, we would advocate for a five year transition period for any change works. We are concerned that the excess spending threshold has always seemed overly punitive and it would be appropriate to consider the change in weighting with the elimination of the excess spending threshold. The spending floor needs more definition than our understanding. A district could, for instance, have a prior year surplus or other increase in non-tax revenues which could drastically reduce ed spending per pupil. And in this scenario, forcing a district to arbitrarily increase their spending when it necessarily be appropriate. The committee should take into consideration the significant sway that students can have when moving into a district after the October one count, much like our refugee families from Afghanistan. Transitory families may, in fact, be more of a factor for more districts considering the current influence of the pandemic and what's happening in the world around us. Our district is in full support of making sure the students of our state who need the support get it by changing the weights. MRPS is interested in seeing a longer term model of the effects of these changes. We are concerned that the long-term impact may be that a community, such as ours, that could support a significantly higher budget, partly due to the increased tax burden this change creates, may further segregate our communities because of high property taxes and a high statewide education fund need. I'm happy to answer any questions based on that testimony. I'm also happy to share that written testimony with you. Thank you. Senator Hardy has a question. Thank you, and thanks, Libby. It's good to see you. I don't know if it was your internet or my internet, so some of your stuff was a little groggy for me. But I appreciated your comments about the couple, well, all of your comments. But one thing, do you know if your small school gets the small school weight? Because not all small schools do. It's dependent on population density. I'm not positive on that. Actually, we get the small schools grant right now. Yeah, it's not exactly one-to-one. I was going to try to look it up, but I can't because of my internet thing. I couldn't look it up. But you might not get the small school weight. The weight is dependent on being in a population density area of 55 people or fewer per square mile. If you spend a Roxbury, that may actually be the case. But I know ACSD is none of the small schools would get the weight in ACSD because of population density. So that's just one point I wanted to make. And I can look it up for you after we're done here and email you. But I'm curious about the tension between the overburden of reporting, which I totally hear you about, and some of the things that Jeff was saying about accountability. And so how do you balance those two? Because we all want to make sure that whatever we implement actually does lead to equity. But we're not going to know if it does unless we put some strings and some reporting back to us. So how do we find that balance? I think when I'm talking about the burden that a grant would give us, that's where the burden was coming in when I was discussing that the actual grant is more on administration of a grant system. The agency often puts a lot of administrative hurdles in the grant process that make it very cumbersome to ask for the money. And actually Title III, which is the grant for English language learners in a district such as mine, would qualify for approximately $8,000 for Title III. And we say, no, we're not going to ask for that money because it's too much effort. We've spent $8,000 and per diem just asking for the money. So that's where the burden for me, I think there should be a lot of accountability in regards. I'm not sure what that would look like based on what the agency currently has for their capacity for how we support our learners. But we do have ed quality standards, and it should probably be based within there. But I hear you, I would agree with what Jeff said, and I believe Peter said as well, around increasing the capacity for the agency to provide high quality accountability and support to districts. So that the funds are spent appropriately. Okay, well, if you can, I mean, ask superintendents, think about that question a little bit more because I think this is a tension that we're always trying to figure out that balance between state and local control, the balance between too much paperwork and not enough accountability. And if we're gonna shift around, and I so appreciate that you're all using the term tax capacity, that makes me so happy, thank you. But if we're gonna shift around tax capacity and potentially put a lot more resources into the system for some school districts, how do we balance that? And if you all have direct recommendations for that, I think we all would appreciate that. It's a struggle to find. And especially coming from this group that would have to actually like literally do the work, what would you recommend would be helpful to know? And one of the issues we face is we can put money in the budget for personnel to do this. For personnel to do this. What we have a hard time doing is forcing the administration to spend that money. It isn't the first time that the legislature has said, we want you to hire people and administration has said, no, it's separation of powers. We can tell them they have to do this. And we can tell them what we want them to do, but there's limits to our ability too, much as we hate to admit that. Any other questions? Okay, thank you. And I'm gonna move on to Jennifer and I am not even going to try and do your last name because I've only hit names once this week without massacring them. So you just tell us how to present your name for the record. I'll be in good shape. Thank you, Senator Cummings. If you remember Bill Batso, he's my cousin. So Batso, Jorns, you just add the Jorns to the end. So. Oh, I didn't know Senator Batso. Okay, Batso. You are representative from Poundall. So thank you for inviting us to testify. You know, as a superintendent's group, we truly appreciate it. I'm in my 36th year of education. I work in the Kingdom East School District serving as the superintendent. And we have seven pre-K through eight schools. We do high school choice for high school. We have about 1,800 students. We have about 330 square miles and the size of our schools range from 55 to just under 500. So, you know, equity is a significant public policy issue and there's heavy political pressures and it weighs often, as you know, the disadvantaged against all others. And I see the disadvantaged in my district every day and I see the impacts of it. And each day we're working to shift that. And it's no question that we are one of the winning districts when you look at the equity and the waiting formula. And I just wanna give you one example. We have currently 44 teachers with provisional licenses. What that means is that they don't have the correct licensure and they have to take extra courses at the same time that they're teaching. And if you think about going into an emergency room and the doctor has a provisional license and the nurse and how that impacts the quality of what we're able to provide, it's just one example why the waiting formula is so important. And I think everyone agrees with this, but I just need to give you that example. And I have hundreds more, but you know, the waiting, when you look at the question of waiting versus cost equity or grants, you know, I support the waiting approach rather than the cost equity approach. And because the research, the empirical research has shown that this is what works. And you know, I have this analogy that I brought with me and I feel like the cost equity is a little bit like icing on a cake. Right, so you're adding the grant and you could have a little bit of icing or a lot of icing depending on what the political mood is in a year or two, whereas the waiting is baked in. You know, if you have chocolate and you cut the cake, it's still there, right? You still have your chocolate. And to me, that's the difference of the two is that, you know, the icing can be thick or large depending on whatever the political pressures are. If you bake it into the formula, it's there and it's always there and you're always gonna be serving the high need areas along with everyone else. So that's one, you know, and one of the things I do wanna say and I wanna just mirror what Libby said is when I looked over the materials, one of the pros and cons, one of the cons was that the equalized pupil calculations are confusing to voters and the legislators. And I guess I don't think that's a good reason to not use it. And if you actually look at the funding formula, it's arithmetic, you add up numbers, you subtract, you do some division, you multiply by a fraction, you do some more division, you know, so it's multiple steps, but it's not, it's a system that we have that we use and our whole funding system is based on it. So if you take that piece out using the cost equity, then it has other unintended consequences. So I believe we should stay with that. You also asked about transition mechanisms and a timeline and I agree with Libby and other folks about the timeline. And one of the things that I see with Act 173 is that a decision was made and it just kept getting kicked down the road. And if you make a decision and say, okay, year one this, year two, year three this, it really is clear and people can plan and the unanticipated challenges don't happen as quickly and as dramatically. And we, our district was an early adopter, an early adopter, a voluntary merger and we got the incentives and the eight, six, four, tax incentives were a transition and it was a very reasonable way to adjust. The one other piece that I wanna address is this concept of the districts that are receiving and the use of increased resources. And you know, some have argued if regions are provided for that the resources would be used solely to decrease tax rates rather than serve students. And I just, I feel very, it's unfortunate that people make judgments about the commitment of the local folk to education. And I personally think it's unfair because we're a high poverty region and our taxes haven't been high. And when we merged and we received the incentives, we spent it on, we got an athletic director. We know every middle school child can run cross country if they want. We have advanced French kids can get French in high school, you know, we had a facilities manager. These are things that we've added which has added to the quality of education. So I have many examples of how the local district who has these incentives uses it to really improve the quality of education. So in summary, you know, just the 44 provisional license is just one example. You know, when I worked in Chittenden County in a district, I was a leader there for I think 11 years. And I think I saw five people with provisional licenses over that time. You know, so 45 and 44 in one year is a lot. And that's just one example. So, you know, I believe in the waiting formula as opposed to the cost to equity, I think it should be transitioned in. And you also asked one other question about ESSER funds. And my belief about ESSER funds is they should be used for one time, not repeating purposes so that they don't need to be backfilled. And I see that as things like helping figure out the teacher retirement, funding something such as this facilities, which you know, many of our union schools were built in the 60s and 70s and we've got a facilities crisis. Those are things that are real and hard and will be fixed. And when the ESSER money goes, you don't have positions that need to be filled. So that's the sort of the completion of my thoughts. And I did submit written testimony, which has a few more details, but I'm happy to answer any questions. And thank you for your time. Thank you. That's very helpful. And for all of you, once we finish this, we'll probably be inviting you back. We've got the transition to work through, but we also have an evaluation process. It has, I guess the recommendation is some kind of a standardized test. But I think some of us who have worked with ESSER who have worked with children realize that some of these kids need a lot of help in getting ready to take standardized tests. And we're not quite sure, we're coming out of a COVID, where kids have had very erratic schools. And we're not sure how to fairly do that. And maybe we should kick it a couple of years down the road, but I think something may be a little more complex than a standardized test might be in the works, but something to think about. Okay, I have Zach McLaughlin is next. Madam Chair, I'm sorry, you've got a question. Yes, I'm sorry. Thanks, and it's maybe a question for you, Madam Chair, or back to Jeff, but I'm curious, there's a very consistent message from our group of superintendents here. And I suppose my question is, did we invite superintendents that wanted to come testify in favor of the weights or does this really represent where superintendents are coming from having looked at it a lot and obviously knowing it intimately, I'd be curious if somebody could comment on that. Okay, what I asked for, and I trust Jeff delivered, was superintendents that represented schools that would fare differently. I asked for a cross-section. So I'm assuming we've got some folks that we already know that the kingdom is gonna make out better than they have. I am not seeing anyone from Chittenden, but I have a feeling we will have them in. Mr. Young is? Mr. Young. He counts. Okay, yes he is, I'm sorry. Too much speed, skim reading. All right. Okay, other questions? Senator Hardy. Just to answer Senator Pearson's question, yes, this is a pretty good cross-section of the superintendents and the impact on various school districts based on my looking at these spreadsheets. And so I think Jeff did a really great job of getting us a diversity of perspectives or at least a diversity of impact. So I would congratulate him for that and thanks everyone for coming. Thank you. Okay, so we're gonna move on to Zach McLaughlin from Springfield. Okay. Thank you Chair Cummings. I'll keep my stuff pretty brief because I appreciate Senator Pearson that it's feeling repetitive. And I think that I- Don't hear me saying that. I mean, and I don't mean that in a like you guys are droning on way. I mean, I think your observation which is it sounds like the core message is the same is accurate because it is. And I think that that is representative of the vast majority of membership, especially on the narrow question he asked us to talk to you today which is cost equity versus the weights. I don't think you're gonna find within our membership much of a lobby around moving to cost equity. And I think as Jeff pointed out, pointing to some of the reasons, some of the reasons why, I think the kind of the thought process is that 60 and 68 have been battle tested and there's been years of work connected with that approach. And I gave public testimony at one point around this to the task force where it was, this was like the shining moment for me, for you guys because I've dealt with a bunch of situations when I say you guys, the legislature with where well-meaning, well-intentioned policy didn't have the type of research behind it that this situation does because you don't have full staffs. And so there's been some well-intended things both on that, whether it's on the financial side or it's programatically where I'm trying to then deal with something that looked good on the surface but then it has a whole bunch of ripple effects in my organization that are difficult to deal with. And so when the legislature had the wisdom to say we're gonna actually do an empirical we're gonna have people do the thing that we would love to do all the time and then come back to us with how the existing system would best serve the interests of what we're saying we're trying to do which is to make sure all these different types of disenfranchised kids get what they need. It was like, I was cheering like, this is great. This is the moment. And then to have Professor Colby and our team do the work and then come back and say, look, here's using empirical evidence. This is how this should work. So for me, and then I think, and I apologize I'm the superintendent in Springfield but I'm also the trustee of the southeastern part of the state. And I know what I'm saying it represents what the folks in the Southeast believe keeping the same system with those adjustments based on the work done by Professor Colby and our team feels like the right way to go because again, battle tested system research is done around that area. And so if we were gonna move to something new I think people would wanna see that we have the same depth of analysis that both Professor Colby's group has given us and even though their scope was narrow and the analysis that collectively we have with the understanding we collectively have through experience of this long period of time that we've been utilizing this particular system. So, and I think what's up to this point those two things, the depth of the work both through experience and through Professor Colby's team people are not confident not because the task force is more hard it did, but that those two that the timeframe that was available to those folks doesn't equal out the years of experience connected with the existing system and the other work and if we're not sure, you know if we can't reasonably extrapolate that a major shift in terms of the structure of the system is definitely gonna lead to significantly better outcomes in terms of what we're looking at then most of our membership is why would we make that move? So, and that better to make the adjustments to the weights and then we'll see and there are gonna be differing fallouts around the system and it's not as easy as and I appreciate this it's not as easy as going to the appendix in the report and saying, well, this is I'm a winner I get this or I'm a loser or, you know and it's slightly in Springfield it's slightly different based on the two models but Springfield would be a winner but it also is, you know once I think the real game is around this ELL conversation and because it is such a significant impact to the Ed Fund as a whole it's hard to separate out that piece that you guys have separated out and to have this dialogue without knowing that that's a looming in the background someplace and you really can't separate it out and I know the fear and I've talked to some people some of my own delegation the fear is that if you go fully with the weighting for those kids it's gonna suck the impact that some people think are coming for their students in poverty is gonna get washed away by what's gonna happen in terms of those kids who need additional services because they're second language learners and I think at its core I mean our membership I think understands and supports the idea of empirical resources led to this basically an understanding that we need to make a huge commitment to those students and regardless of the impact on people's individual systems educational leaders across the state are looking at this and saying this is a moral issue and yes it will have different impacts on a variety of different places I'll pay in the town in which I live and my taxes will go up but this is necessary if we really believe what we claim we believe is a state that would be necessary to have this occurred so I think what you're hearing the repetitiveness is that it is pretty much the consensus of superintendents across the state but this is the approach on the narrow question you're asking us cost equity or weights I think it's generally the consensus of the group that weights is where we should be. Okay, any other questions? Okay, thank you and this is one of the days I'm glad we are doing Zoom because I'm not worried about all of you having to drive it's still snowing in Montpelier Senator Hardy. Yeah, that's why we got so many superintendents because they're all these they all have to drive. Sorry, my internet is funky so Zach, thank you for your testimony you did mention and maybe Jen also did this sort of outcomes question and as you guys know, the study was based on like a very, very narrow outcome of just standardized test scores. So Senator Brock and I in particular who's kind of been in and out as well are very interested in an evaluation mechanism that looks at a broader set of tools than just those narrow test scores. So I'm wondering if you all in addition to this the sort of accountability could give us some ideas about what we should add to that list of evaluation mechanism markers. There are some graduation rates has been suggested the student flanking on the survey of student. Oh, yeah. You all know what I'm talking about. It's a cultural it's a cultural survey but it's so social emotion some of this stuff. Yeah, yeah, I'm blanking on the name of it but that survey sort of course, you know, grades, etc. But you know, something that we could use as an evaluation tool that's broader than simply test scores but is still measurable and something that you already all do some somehow. So I guess that's homework I would give you. I think I've indicated we will have them back to do that. We didn't give them a warning for today. So I'm gonna try and keep today on today's topic and then we will have everybody back or everybody who wants to come back or you can just send in written testimony. Best thoughts as to how we evaluate the effectiveness of this program and perhaps how often we should do it. Okay, so I'm going to move on. This is where I have to start making changes. David Young. Yep. Thank you very much. Thanks for taking the time. Again, David Young from South Burlington spent about half of my time here in South Burlington and the other half has been in Franklin County. So I have a little bit of some contrast there. Again here, I've been here coming on my 33rd year. Gonna be fairly repetitive to my colleagues. I think we're all on the same page as far as we believe strongly in equity, equity dispersion through resources and systems that support them. I similarly support the weights over the cost equity model but I'll be a little bit more redundant here and some of those as a school district we would see a reduction. And again, we still support that where I begin to probably deviate and would ask for additional thoughtful clarity is around the transition plan that was also mentioned by my colleagues. Anytime you try to implement anything particularly in the education funding model many of you know we have adopted budgets and sent them to the printers and we're preparing for town meeting. Yet we have high level of volatility between yield and common level of appraisal equalized pupils are continuing to move around. And any of you who've been part of a multitude of businesses or in education know that it's very difficult to try to make changes. And certainly on top of that when you have the pandemic it adds a major, major layer of complexity to us. And so for me a big, big part of that and Jeff said it earlier on the velocity if I think he used of the economic current conditions that are upon us is probably at paramount than many of us have ever, ever seen. So to me I would highly, highly recommend a transition plan that allows for those that need the resources to make those adjustments to have them but not necessarily make the downward adjustments to those that would see an immediate decrease and phase it in over a four, five year period or what have you to allow that to occur. Again, I do want you to be really thoughtful around some of the things that are happening that I mentioned earlier, the yield dollar and the determination to hold back or to include. We're still not really sure. Our common level appraisal here in South Burlington were different than in other communities. We've had almost in a two year period a 31% variation. And those of you who know how the model works has a major, major impact on that tax calculation or I can translate that to the ability to pass your budget and or the ability to carry out the services needed for your students. I also want to just second in on the AOE resources. I think as Jen said, it is a fairly understandable education finance model although there are some intricacies for instance, in the equalized pupil calculation and God bless Brad James, but all of us have a hard time really doing any sort of affirmation of that work. It's a spreadsheet on top of a spreadsheet on top of a spreadsheet, difficult. And so when you talk or Jeff or others talked about monitoring, in order to monitor you need to be able to have access to not change but you need to have access to and the ability to understand it. And so my desire would absolutely echo getting AOE some additional support so that we then can determine equitable measures and be able to monitor the changes. I know there was a question I think Senator Hardy asked around evaluation and sure we always go to academic. I know that she didn't, she was asking about that. And you're right, academic is an import to our EL population. But one of the most important factors are participation. Our ability for our kids to develop dispositions to be lifelong learners or that personal development asset for those citizenry types of things inclusion and co-curricular activities or clubs and those types of things are critically, critically important in the success pathways that we know for our kids. So I certainly support the weights. Love to see a transition plan. Love to see something that doesn't come out that then puts significant pressure on any of us. Those that have to either come up with the resources to make it happen or those that have to reallocate resources. And if I do, often I'm gonna have to probably reduce resources, those same resources that add to participation and success outcomes for kids. So the transition plan is important to me and I'm certainly happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Okay, any questions? I am not seeing any. So I'm going to move on to Emily Nisley. Nice one. Did I massacre you? Only slightly, and I'm quite used to it. No worries at all. It's Emily and Isley. Nisley. Okay, long eye. All right. So the floor is yours. I'm Emily Nisley. I'm the superintendent for Orange East Supervisory Union. And for geography, I serve Fetford School District, Blue Mountain School District, Oxbow Unified School District and Waits River. And I'm going to cut short some of the pieces I was going to talk about here in favor, perhaps, of some others. But I certainly share the sentiment of my colleagues that I support the Waits. But what I thought might be useful for the committee is to talk a little bit about my SU because it's somewhat unique in that the impacts of the Waits would play out very differently in different districts across my SU. And just to reiterate what has already been said about transition planning, that's certainly something that I fully support, transition planning, ideally with some notice. And I bring up the point of notice because what I'd like to talk about is 173. And our transition right now that we're contending with on 173, going from a reimbursement model to a grant model. And for us, that's been challenging because we haven't had notice of that in a specific financial way. And so we're engaging in making those shifts now and it's playing out as a pretty significant loss in revenue to some of my local school districts. So FETFURD specifically is looking at a loss of about $200,000 in local revenue. Oxpo Unified, which is my larger one for Bradford in Newbury is looking at a loss of about 562. And we haven't been able to plan for that over a series of years, right? So we're having to absorb this right now. And that's FETFURD is in a good place to absorb that. Oxpo, not as much. So if you look at how the changes in the weights would impact those two districts, FETFURD would see about, and these are rough, but about a 20% loss in equalized pupils, roughly a 50 cent tax increase if it happened all at once. Newbury, on the other side, would see about a 20% increase in equalized pupils and about a 22 cent tax decrease. And there are, to be frank, major differences in the resources that are available in the FETFURD school system versus the resources that are available in the Newbury school system. The things that Newbury, or excuse me, the things that FETFURD would be looking at cutting if we were making, if we were having to adjust in FETFURD for the decrease in local revenue for the transition to 173, we would probably be looking at cutting enrichment, which, and to David's point are important, but we'd be looking at cutting things like enrichment or gardening support that we have that are wonderful things. To make those adjustments in Newbury, we would be looking at cutting reading teachers and math interventionists and kind of the very things that we really need right now in the pandemic. And so I really support creating a model in Vermont that's equitable, a school finance model that's equitable that makes up perhaps for some of the historical differences that we've been experiencing. But I would like to see a plan for how we're going to do that because as we all know, the sudden changes that create havoc in our local budgets and our local communities and quite frankly, cause frustration with the legislature, cause frustration with the state, anything that we can do to help remedy that I think would be very useful. And so, yeah, I think that's a little bit about what it looks like from my perspective. And I would certainly be happy to talk about that in any detail. I also would be very interested in talking about what perhaps the mechanisms could be that could be built in perhaps something around per pupil spending and there being kind of a minimum spending floor that could be worked in over the course of a couple of years, creating something akin to maintenance of effort in some of the school districts that may seem more money coming their way that we could in fact make sure that some of that is being invested in the things that those districts truly do need. But again, happy to answer questions and happy to talk about some of those things more specifically at a later date, if appropriate. Okay, definitely will Senator Hardy. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm sure you're going to ask me to put a pin in this one but since Ms. Kinn... Nicely, did I say that right? Nicely brought this up. So regarding the maintenance of effort and the spending floor, this is something that the task force struggled with and debated and that sort of is counter to what your colleague, Ms. Batzerjorn, was saying about sort of local decision-making about how to spend the money or at least it could be depending on how we might think about it. So I guess I would really love to hear another thing from your group is like where is your tolerance for that kind of maintenance of effort, spending, floor thing? And this is a question for you, Emily. So I'm asking because you just... And then Jen, if she wants to, but you're muted though. Yeah, so here's... Hi. Here's part of the intricacy of that for me. So right now, when I'm looking at Oxville Unified, which is looking at again, having this $560,000 loss of revenue. What we're looking at is, okay, part of the transition for 173 in our initial thinking included the weights. The transition to the grant funding, the block funding model, excuse me, in 173 from the reimbursement isn't being coupled in at the same time with the weights. So we're saying, okay, we know that we have this, what perhaps will be temporary shortfall of $562,000 to the local budget. We're looking at that and saying, okay, we have an obligation to students through IPs, through other things that we need to provide certain services. We're looking at how do we use ESSER funds to bridge that gap? But we know that we're only setting ourselves up for a problem down the road. So in my district in particular, I don't see there, I see any increase that we would gain from the weights helping to fill that type of hole and not necessarily being credited back as a 20 cent tax decrease. I do agree with Jen in many ways that our communities do want to invest in some of these things. But to be frank, what I also worry about is what the CLA looks like in that year and what the yield looks like in that year and what the possible ed finance storm is in that moment. And so that's why, if I knew my yield was good and I knew my CLA was good, I'd feel better about it, but is there something that we could do to ensure that those things are there? And I don't know if that's a two round about way answer, Senator Hardy. Okay, and Superintendent Batza-John, did you have a response to that? Sure, my comments mirror, Emily's, in that there are two parts to it. I mean, I did give examples of how communities can make local decisions, but I'm not opposed to a lower and upper thresholds guardrails as it were some sort of mechanism for that. I think that that's a fine idea. I just also believe that we do have to trust that local districts will make decisions. So I agree with Emily. Okay, but the upper lower thing you're okay with as long as we set it appropriately. Okay, thank you. But the thing we've learned is that this is not the only moving financial piece. We are seeing major shifts in many, not most grand lists, which is playing havoc with the CLA's, that there are towns having very different experiences in some superintendencies that, and we have also hit you with the new grant system for special ed, which is going to have different impacts on different schools. And I think we've recognized as a general principle that education in order to proceed smoothly needs a smooth funding system that's always been the argument for the property tax because it was less volatile, except this year than income. So we need to find a transition that will allow you, that will smooth the bumps and give you predictability so that when you go to your voters, you're not saying, oh, there's a, we've lost $50 million this year. And so your tax rates going up, who knows how many cents that we need to find a way to walk this through and be cognizant of other issues that are also impacting your local budgets and tax rates. I think that's the other message I'm hearing. Correct me if I'm wrong. Okay. Other questions? Emily, did we interrupt you before you finished? No, thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. Okay, then we are going to Lynn Koda for wrap up. All right. Hello there. Hello. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Lynn Koda. I'm the superintendent for the Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union. My supervisor union consists of two member districts and we serve around 1,900 students in nine schools. We have a career technical center in one virtual academy. Our towns are mostly rural. We support many of our schools have students and families that have high levels of poverty in them. Our free and reduced lunch eligibility rates or poverty rates range anywhere from 40 to 98% in our communities. So historically, our per pupil spending has been consistently well below the state and county average and near the very bottom of their per pupil spending comparison data for the state. I'm wondering if I could quickly just share a visual with the group? Would that be possible? Yes, that's fine. You cover Swanton? Just... Do not, no. Do not, that's West, okay. Yes. So I don't have a vested interest by grandsons live in Swanton. Okay, so we're gonna find the share button. There we go. Okay, can you see the visual? Yep. So as you can see... That's better, yeah. This represents the FY22 per pupil spending comparisons for towns across the state of Vermont. So you can see the systems that I serve are the Northern Mountain Valley Unified Union School District down here and the Enosburg-Ritzford Unified Union School District down here. So you can see as you compare the per pupil spending throughout the state of Vermont, we're significantly lower than the Vermont state average and we're even lower than the Franklin County average and we consistently, our spending comes in very near the bottom of per pupil spending across the state. So that hopefully just gives you a little bit of context about the system that I serve. So to Emily's point about the spending floor, I think that there is something to be said for that. I'm not sure if it's a spending floor and per pupil spending or if it's a spending floor in terms of the tax rate. So it's just something to consider. So as a result of our per pupil spending, we've had really limited capacity to add or build new programs and opportunities for our students to fund additional staff members for these programs and to provide our students with more equitable access to experiences that some of the other districts have been able to provide. Additionally, our spending constraints have made it really hard for our school boards to be able to compensate our staff in a way that is competitive with other systems across the state, which has made it really challenging for us to be able to make progress. And if any issue as we're, our pattern is that we're turning over about 20% of our professional staff each year. And as we're trying to fill those positions, it's most common to have between zero and three candidates for any one of those teaching positions. So to Jen's point about the number of teachers on provisional licenses, there's a report that comes out from the AOE every year and we are in the top three, two, three or four in the state in terms of the number of provisionally licensed teachers we have that has a pretty profound impact on our students. Fixing the equity issue as envisioned by the task force, either with the waiting or with the cost equity payments will benefit both of my districts and give us the opportunity to build a smaller and more equitable system for the benefit of our students. I think the task force has done a really good job of identifying the pros and the cons for the two systems. My colleagues and you and your colleagues may not agree on which factors are most important. One other factor that I wonder if it would be helpful to compare between the two models would be the factors that create greater stability around funding for our system. So is there one that could keep tax rates more constant from year to year? I understand the concerns of many legislators around these changes and providing communities with a temptation of using this transition to cut taxes rather than to increase opportunities. Over the past three years as we've been preparing for this shift I've had a significant number of conversations and we've done a lot of work to prepare for this move within the districts in Franklin Northeast. I'm confident that our boards understand that this opportunity is one that is incredibly important for our students and that they will not be tempted to use this as a mechanism to drive tax rates down they're poised and ready to take this on in terms of really trying to leverage more opportunities and create greater equity for our students. But ultimately, as you all understand that is up to the voters under our current funding system. I believe that you all in your capacity as legislators do have mechanisms that could ensure that we don't lose this opportunity throughout the state. I do appreciate both the logistical and the political concerns around developing a phased in approach for districts that would see either an increased tax rate or a programmatic cut. I believe something has been lost in the discussion of winners and losers though. So when you think about the context of the students I serve some of them have spent their entire career in school systems under a flawed funding model. So a senior graduating this year has spent 15 years in a system. I'm sorry, less in place. A senior graduating is leaving a system that has been shorted many millions of dollars since they enrolled 13 years ago. And yet he's being labeled a winner and a student entering high school next year has spent nine years in an under resourced school. So in my districts, I don't think it's a stretch to put that dollar amount at 10 million or more. She however, still has another four years with us. So again, I understand the needs around the stable transition. I encourage you to find a way to create a transition plan for those with decreasing tax capacity without delaying for those who have gone without for much of their careers. Are there other ways to cushion for the lost tax capacity for those systems with higher spending through the use of categorical aid, pandemic relief money or using that excess money in the education fund? Again, my districts would do better under the cost equity model payments but I understand there are other systemic considerations that are more important as a state. And I think it's important that we take those into consideration and would therefore support the weighting model. I can support, I could logically support either model based on alone on its impact for FNE issue but I do believe that the weighting model is preferred. Whichever model you ultimately choose in whatever transition mechanism you do put into place I think the most important point here today is that you move quickly and you don't let the inequity of the current system linger any longer. It's long overdue. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today and I do welcome any questions. Okay, thank you. So your request is that we also consider when we're talking about transition that some of these schools have operated with less state support than they should have had for years and that we not deprive their ability to move forward. On the other hand, if we gave you all the money at once do you think you could hire the teachers? I think that we're gonna struggle with hiring right now. I just think that we need to be thoughtful about it. I don't think all of the money necessarily would go into hiring more teachers. I think one of our big priorities right now is stabilizing our workforce because everyone has teacher shortages around the state and the discrepancy between what we're able to compensate our teachers varies drastically. So I think one of the efforts that we would prioritize is to become more equitable in terms of our compensation with our educators. So I think hiring new teachers is one factor but it's not the only one. Okay, so you would like to also work on a more equitable wage or competitive wage? Mm-hmm. Yes. I didn't hear, I don't think it was in your district of a teacher who'd been there for 13 years. This was a couple of years ago but was making around $30,000 a year. I doubt that's competitive. So questions from Ms. Koda. Senator Brock, I see your hand and your picture. I don't see Senator Brock. So I don't know if I've missed that. I know he's had a couple of meetings, other meetings this afternoon. So Senator Pearson. Maybe more a comment than a question if you'll indulge me, Madam Chair. I was among a group of legislators that met with Ms. Koda and others before session from a handful of districts. And I sort of was tapping my screen if you like midway through, because I thought, wait, is this a call with the union? And it was a very forceful call because it was an alarm among school leaders of the intensity of the needs right now. And just personally, it was helpful. My wife is a high school teacher at CVU, not exactly a district that we worry about their resources, but you helped me explain some of the intensity that she's been describing in a very straightforward way. And so that was personally very helpful. And as I'm listening to this conversation, I've been trying to understand the dynamics at play for the last month. I really just wanna express my appreciation for the partners that we have here in the leadership of schools across the state. And really, first of all, I appreciate it because you're the only group testifying that hasn't made me more confused. You've been very clear where you're coming from. And that means a lot to me. And I guess I just, you know, there's just a number of factors at play. I'm quite convinced we will not get this perfect. But what I'm hearing is a crystal clear call to do something to make improvements and to keep focused on those student needs that too often when we're describing policies, we think of what they look like on paper and you've helped to make that clear. So I just wanna express my appreciation. And, you know, it's just been very helpful to me this whole afternoon. Thank you very much. Any other questions? Senator Hardy, I'm gonna see if anyone else has a question beforehand. Senator Brock, are you there? Okay, he's still got his hand up, but he's not there. So Senator Hardy. Well, I just sort of wanna echo what Senator Pearson said and thank you all for being here on a snow day to talk with us. And Jeff, I reread your testimony that you gave to the task force on our last meeting when we had you in to respond. And it sort of left us hanging, you know, and this was what I needed for closure on that testimony. And so I really appreciate that you got this group of people together from a diversity of districts to talk to us and, you know, agree with Senator Pearson that United Front is helpful in our efforts. So thank you. And I do hope to hear that more from you on the questions that I asked. Okay, and as we go forward, this may be the easiest decision we've got ahead of us. As we go forward, I'm sure we're gonna call on Jeff and he'll be calling on many of you as we work out the transition so that we get help to the schools that need it as quickly as possible. And at the same time, limit the blow. I think I've gotten the message that we need to look at a variety of issues as we go through that. The CLAs that are gonna be popping up all over, the special ed funding and take a look at the totality and see if we can come out first with the transition that works. We do have a surplus. I don't think we're gonna be able to give it all back because I think that may be what we need to use to step this in. And then we're gonna need to work with you on an evaluation tool. And how do we do that? And stepping, how we evaluate how well this is doing. And you help us, I think, understand the reality of the students you're dealing with. For some kids, it's a major achievement to be able to sit in a chair for 20 minutes. And for other kids, it's learning to read and for other kids, it's excelling. So finding a measure that doesn't just measure the top, but measures progress that you're able to help these students with to me would be very helpful. So something to think about. It's still snowing in Montpelier, so drive carefully. And thank you. Any thoughts, anything, email it to us. Email it to Faith. I know she's been in contact with Jeff and he can mail it to us. And things you think we should consider. This has been probably one of the most helpful groups that we've had to take testimony on, so are with or from. So thank you very much. And since it's a snow day, I think my grandchildren are downstairs and I haven't seen them in a long time. So I'm gonna go say hi. Ending live stream now. Thank you.