 This is January 14th, 2021, and we are continuing our discussion to get an update from the field on how we are doing in our schools, our students, our families, our communities, our faculty and staff, and right now we're going to be getting a perspective from the school boards and I am very pleased to have, we have four school board chairs here, our members, and we also have Sue Siglowski, who is the Executive Director of the Vermont School Board Association. So, Sue, if you could introduce this to us, we'd be most appreciative. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I will be brief because I'd like to have as much time as possible for you to hear from the four school board chairs. So I will just give a short overview of the role of school boards to let new committee members know about the role of school boards. Their job really is to provide high level student-focused oversight and assure the delivery of an effective education program in their communities at a reasonable cost for taxpayers in accordance with state and federal law, and they have six areas of responsibility at the local level. The first is to engage the community to establish a vision for the school district. The second is adopt policies. The third is to hire a superintendent and establish clear expectations. The fourth is develop a budget and provide financial oversight. The fifth is monitoring progress towards the vision, and the sixth is operating in an ethical and effective manner. To serve on a school board is to uphold the great American tradition of a free public education for all. This tradition forms the foundation of our democracy, a well-informed citizenry. Simply put, education is crucial and central to the future of our state, and school boards play an important role in Vermont's education system. I would like to thank the four school board chairs who are taking time out of their busy schedules today to speak with the committee, and all of Vermont's school board members for their dedication to Vermont students during this extended challenge of the pandemic. And with that, I will conclude. Thank you. Thank you. And I also appreciate you giving us an overview of the role of school boards. There are so many different folks involved in structuring education. We appreciate having our new committee members understand your role. So we will hear now from Allison Knott, chair of the Board of Commissioners for the Rutland Public Schools. Thank you and welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your service, and thank you for providing us with this opportunity to give you our perspective. So I am currently the chair of the Rutland City Public School District, and our district went fully remote in March of 2020. And in the fall of 2020, we reopened with 100% in-person for five days a week for grades K through nine, and our model is 50% hybrid, alternating days in-person and remotely for grades 10 through 12. And also, there's remote options for all grade levels that parents were able to select to meet their needs. While we were able to roll out remote learning very quickly and very quickly deployed technology, obviously additional costs were incurred. We anticipate needing to replace technology faster than our current schedule due to faster depreciation now that we have deployed technology into the homes and hands of students. Increasing our technology resources has afforded us the opportunity to explore more flexible student learning, and we plan to leverage that in the future as well. Our district has been committed to in-person learning. We've had a few disruptions on occasion and have had to return to remote learning due to positive cases, contact tracing, post-holiday travel concerns, and most recently transportation staffing capacity caused a disruption this week. Our administration and staff have worked tirelessly to provide education, technology, food, medical resources, contact tracing, and stability to our school community. Our students, staff, families, and communities are obviously under increased strain due to the impact of COVID-19. COVID-19 has presented new challenges and compounded previous existing inequities. Rutland City has a high level of poverty, and that was already a great challenge. As many of you know, with poverty comes trauma and an increased need for student supports to enable them to be able and ready to participate in learning. We have alternate programs and supports to help these students thrive, but these, of course, come at a cost. The results of the UVM study of pupil weights in Vermont education funding speaks to many of the challenges districts like ours with high poverty rates face. The study also demonstrates the strain on financial resources when compared to our current weight funding mechanism. While students are often resilient, we know that some students have not fared well academically. The schools are currently addressing losses from last year, and we expect this to continue through at least next school year. We hope that we will be able to access federal, elementary, and secondary school emergency relief funding in order to provide further interventions and support of these students. We also have no idea how this will socially impact students for years to come. Many recent graduates in current seniors paths have changed or paused due to the pandemic. Our families are feeling overall economic strain. Many working parents are also challenged with balancing the duties of their employment with childcare and education through the waves of the pandemic. Childcare being tied to education is a statewide challenge. Our model, we use universal pre-K partners and many of them have struggled to reopen after initially closing in March. Staff and faculty safety, PPE and protocols to limit COVID transmission created hurdles that were hard for our community partners to overcome. Our teachers have felt the strain of simultaneously teaching students in person and students remote. There have been challenges around learning new techniques and platforms. Our nurses have added many tasks to their daily duties. Our administrative team has overcome one challenge after another. Our bus drivers have taken on new roles delivering meals, equipment, and screening children. Our custodians have brought on new products, adjusted techniques, and procedures to reduce potential for transmission. Our support staff has been flexible to bridge and accommodate needs. There is no doubt that COVID-19 has stressed school resources. As a school board, our biggest challenge is going to be getting our FY-22 school budget passed on town meeting day. Our district's homestead property tax rate could be driven significantly higher for the coming year due to the change in common level of appraisal. We are currently looking at a 4% increase from CLA and another 4 cents from the property tax yield. These state metrics alone would increase our property tax rate by 8 cents, representing over a 5% increase. Asking taxpayers to pay such a large increase over one year, especially when many are facing economic hardship, is certainly challenging. We have incorporated staff reductions in our FY-22 budget. Despite this reduction in force, our budget line for employment costs is staying close to the same due to the increased health care costs. Our per pupil spending is below the state average. We believe we have made responsible cuts to our budget, and if not passed on town meeting day, deeper cuts would have lasting effects on our quality and continuity of our programs. Changes in tax metrics and implementation of recommended changes to the state budget would be a way to address poverty with significantly benefit Rutland City public schools where our K-8 low income percentage is close to 100%. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think I'm going to just have us go right down and then if there are questions for the group, we'll open up to committee members. So thank you. John Stroop from Addison Northwest. Hello. Thank you for having us. I'm glad to be here. I am the current chair of the Addison Northwest school district. And I have some remarks and I'll be glad to send them to you after if that would be helpful. So I'll just go. The condition of education in Addison Northwest school district is fragile. Our people are resilient, but we're tired and we're stressed, and we need your support financially and in planning how to manage the future, both the immediate aftermath of this COVID pandemic and the ongoing concern of declining student enrollment. If I've learned one thing during this last year, it's that a functioning economy is dependent upon offering in-school education for students. Funding education by supporting our teachers and staff is vital to our entire economic system in the present and in the future. In short, education is essential if we want our people to be able to work. To that end, I ask you to do whatever you can to prioritize vaccinations to our teachers and staff so that the essential work of schools can proceed in as safe a fashion as possible. We need our people in schools and we need them to be safe. In the ANWSD, we have a strong set of administrators who have worked hard for the best interests of our students. Our teachers and staff have adjusted so many times, they've lost count, and they persisted to deliver education to our students over the last year as we've all struggled with the consequences of COVID. Our families struggle to support the education of their children. It's fair to say that every parent or guardian is a teacher, but they are not all professional educators, and that's what we've asked many of them to become. The inequalities that existed prior to the pandemic have only been exacerbated. Please consider how to redouble your support for working families and the children who must now learn by themselves, as well as families who live at or near poverty levels, struggling to maintain their connections to learning. I think this requires an investment not just in our schools, but in childcare and early education, and as also in the afterschool. Some concrete ways that you might do that. Please focus on expanding access to broadband networks and support resources for technology in schools. Rural school districts like ours really need the support, and we also need to help our families who struggle to afford the kind of broadband capacity that's going to be required for remote learning. It's unlikely we'll ever move away from one-to-one computer needs, and we need resources to support the diffusion of technology and support to maintain their increased use as technology faces greater wear and tear. Simply put, too many of the families in my district live without good enough internet access, and they need it now. A second concrete way to support families, please advocate for and support universal free meals for all children. And please, this cannot be an unfunded mandate to the districts themselves. One of the greatest success stories of 2020 was the pivot made by school districts to ensure that every family and every child was fed. With increased economic hardship, we know that even more of our families are going to face food shortages. The CARES Money Act will not last forever, so please consider plans now to how to support free universal meals for all students. And if you're looking for more heroes and heroines to celebrate, please keep in mind those people who in a total time of fear made lunches, they packed them and they delivered them to every child who needed it. And we know that this is an important challenge for all of our families, and we know that we are above and beyond to ensure that all of our children were fed. Our board faces significant challenges in our attempt to maintain quality educational programs and opportunities. Some of our challenges are exacerbated by COVID, but most precede them. Our enrollment has declined significantly over the past decade. We know it will level off in the coming years, and the requirements of the education quality standards. The things we'll likely have to cut are some of the parts of school that make it great. Think about this. We may only be able to offer one language to high school students. We may face the unenviable choice to cut band or chorus or other athletic programs. Act 77 requires us to provide flexible pathways for all of our students and we're working hard to do so, but these unsustainable rising costs put those pathways on the brink of poverty. That's where we are, down to the bare bones and struggling to keep what we have. Our teachers work hard to offer great education, but the curriculum and the offerings are austere. We are a district that is lower middle class. We have a substantial number of students eligible for free and reduced lunch. We are also small and shrinking, staying within the budget parameters that the state sets while also maintaining those programs is becoming more and more important. The process of declining enrollment will become overwhelming with the changes to Act 173. The waiting study which are likely to impact our revenues during FY23 and beyond, please hear me. The waiting study in its current form will diminish our revenues deeply. So as to likely make high school education in the county, the state wants, but if that's the case, then please think carefully about what high school education will look like in Addison County, especially in its northern half. There are numbers of factors beyond our control, and the most important of those are healthcare costs. These comprise an increasing and increasingly unstable part of our budget. They drive up our overall cost by about two to 3% per year. That means that we will be able to move across the board cut to education services. That means fewer field trips, fewer supplies, fewer programs dedicated to addressing our most pressing issues like racism and prejudice in school. Please take up and consider Act 63 as one step in the direction of helping districts deal with the cost of healthcare. So in addition, while I believe that while districts should not be forced to go through another round of mergers, they should not be forced to go through another round of mergers. So that's one of the things that I would like to share to our community or board members. Merging with other districts may be an avenue. It may be an avenue to secure educational programs for kids and for districts, for districts like ours who might consider, so might consider it. How will you support them? And what are the pathways for doing so? With all the funding pressures and rising costs, I would like to thank you for taking the time to learn about the state of education in the Addison Northwest School District. What we have learned during this pandemic is just how resilient and excellent our teachers, staff, and administration are in adjusting and delivering remote and in-person learning to our students. They have risen to this extraordinary challenge. And while it continues to take a toll on everyone involved, it is a testament to what we have accomplished in adverse conditions. But the pandemic has also laid bare the daily inequalities that many of our students face. And this is an area that needs to be further identified so we can create viable pathways and solutions for those students. So in conclusion, please prioritize vaccinations for educators, work on equitable broadband coverage statewide, look into funding universal free school meals and carefully consider the impacts of both the weighting study and increasing costs of health care. Thank you. Just to clarify, when you said Act 63, I think you were talking H63. No, thank you, I was. Related to health care. Thank you. Argony. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate your testimony. Next, we're going to hear from Danielle Corti, school board chair for Oxpo. Congratulations, Oxpo. You just passed your budget. The last in the, the last in the state. Oh, there is no words to put to the relief and weight of this district. Having been left, left, lifted last night. Yeah. There was definitely and by a wide margin, which was fabulous. So yes. So I am Danielle Corti. I am the board chair for Oxpo unified union school district. We are comprised of two elementary schools, a high school and a career and tech center, which is River Bend career and tech center. Just to give you sort of a lay of the land real quickly, we have the two elementary schools are going to school. Every day they go a shortened day on Wednesday. So the staff can have increased cleaning time. Our high school at the present time is going. The middle school and high school. So seventh through. 10th are going two days a week. And then the older kids in. The senior high school. And then the older kids in the seniors, juniors and seniors are also going two days a week. And it's a hybrid model. So two days a week. One of the cohorts are there in two days a week. The other cohorts are there. So not all students are in the buildings at the same time. There has been different models used throughout, which has been obviously a chore for our communities to handle with the schedule changes. So that's sort of what we are programming looks like. So I'm just going to read my statement. I will provide it to you guys once I'm done. So I'm going to speak to the questions that you asked and how it applies to our students or families, our faculty and communities. So first, I want to say that the access to food from the federal program has been a huge positive in our area. Our staff at Bradford elementary with the support of all the schools was able to roll out meals for students in our district almost immediately. This was a great opportunity to provide some equity to all of our students. Poverty and lack of access creates a significant obstacles for many of our families in the district. And this has been a wonderful way for our community to sort of level that playing field. It has also been clear how valuable this program is and can be and our push would be to figure out a way to continue this, either maintain the program or figure out a way for universal meals to continue. So regarding equity of education for our students and families due to the pandemic, disparities between students and families and poverty and those not have widened. If a family has an ability to have a parent at home or to provide guidance and oversight, the system is working to keep kids learning. If there is no support at home, the ability to learn drastically suffers. Older students are finding themselves working to assist in supporting the family and themselves, which creates the staggered ability to do their schoolwork. So there's that disparity. And yet for some families, things haven't changed much financially. So there's just a wide gap. Younger students on our districts, because they are going every day, that's been a positive impact. And the differences have been somewhat minimal. The differences in scheduling from building to building and grade to grade is a constant. Stress for families and students. The ability to reach students that need both educational support and social emotional support has been extremely difficult. And at times impossible. We've had families sort of fall off the radar and have to work really hard to regain contact. The community, much like the national landscape has groups that feel like school should be open and there's nothing to worry about. And others that feel like the risk is too great in school shouldn't be open at all. This is a constant struggle to balance these perspectives. And our students and families are constantly stressed by that. We feel, I feel that our students and families are going to need extra support and services over the next few years. This is not going to be a quick fix. As far as faculty and staff, they are surviving. They are doing an incredible job in a horrible situation. Much like our families, they are dealing with constant changes while at the same time worrying about their health and safety. In the OUUSD, for us, they've also been working under the stress of not having a budget. So constraints for spending, buying supplies. All of that has been an addition to us. We've been working on a lot of things. We've been working on a lot of things. We've been working on a lot of supplies. All of that has been an additional wait for our specific district. In order to transition to remote, investments had to be made in technology both for infrastructure. Internet service act. In our area. There are many community members who don't have reliable internet and have had to be given hot spots if they have access to Wi-Fi coverage. This is definitely an issue. And obviously there is an equity problem there. The teachers and staff are not only teaching. In my opinion, they're also triaging students as they come through the doors in the morning and on Zoom classes, they're trying to get a sense of how they're doing. This is something that they are not necessarily trained to do, but are doing nonetheless. The elementary school teachers have worked together to create a group of teachers that are in charge of the remote group of students. And another group of teachers that are in charge of working to support the in-person learner. So there's creative things happening on the ground, which is amazing. This creativity has helped. But in order to move forward, we really need to have as many students back in the building as possible. And for me, that means I think that there needs to be some extra funding and support for teachers and education. And also it's imperative to try and get teachers vaccinated. It seems to me that it would be the best thing for kids to be in school. And the best way to make that happen is to make it as safe of an environment as possible. Our community in general. So speaking of the community is overwhelmed. We are struggling under the weight of COVID. Constant schedule changes. Eight months of an unpassed budget. The residual effects of act 46. And the ballooning costs of health insurance and the decreasing enrollment. The ability for us to move forward is going to require extreme amounts of support and creative thinking. As a community, we cannot continue to support the increasing costs with fewer students. Having just survived a long budget process, it's clear to me that change is needed and something must be done. So as far as challenges that I see, the challenges are, how do we bring students back and help them recover, learn and grow? How do we give teachers the tools and resources to do their job? How do we pay for the services, supplies and programs that are needed? How do we build our new district after act 46? How do we communicate effectively through a pandemic? And how do we keep parents involved and engaged when they can't come to the buildings? In my opinion, we need to throw out the old map and realize that a new way must be found. As a mom, when my kids were little and taught, and we were running late, I would scoop them up and force them out the door and we would get there on time. We would be a train wreck for sure, but we would get there on time. And as I look at this situation, I think that there would be a mistake made if we rush to try and fix or get to a finish line. I think that it's very important for us to take time and look at the system. And figure out what is essential. What is really needed by the students, by the teachers, by the administrators and our communities. Trying to force us all to achieve a normal seems like forcing that toddler out the door only to arrive as a train wreck. We've seen the power of universal meals. Our community has had this program and it's been a huge positive. We've seen how it works. I think trying to come up with a way of a modified hybrid system, whether it's partially state funded, partially locally funded. It cannot be a unfunded mandate, but I do think there is huge value in that. The power of collaboration. Our district has really started to learn to get there. And I think that there's a lot of, there's a lot of work to be done. And I think that there's a lot of collaboration. Our district has really started to learn together. And I think trying to figure out ways to break down those walls. And, you know, I mean, sort of like John said, figuring out how to merge, but in our case, it can't be called a merge. People would definitely go away from that, but figuring out how we can work together and cooperate and coordinate across the state needs to happen in order for us to survive. And so we've been working on this for the last 10 months, figuring out how to financially support a system. We cannot have another 13% increase in our healthcare insurance and not cut programs for staff at a local level. There's just no way that that's going to be supported in our community. restrain those costs. And I think for us a local opportunity is we are a new district, we are just starting, we have the opportunity to figure out what we look like, how we develop, and that's definitely an opportunity for us and we would need support and finances to sort of build that new infrastructure. In closing I just want to say thank you very much for your time. Please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions and thank you for all of your work and commitment. I know this is not an easy time to be doing any of these jobs so thank you very much. Thank you. Bridget Burkhart from South Burlington School District, welcome. Thank you. Thank you Chairperson Webb. Thank you to the other representatives on the committee for giving us this time to give you a little insight into what's happening in each of our districts. South Burlington is experiencing many of the same issues that the other districts who spoke before us are experiencing. Some of them are slightly different. South Burlington is in a slightly different position for example with regard to enrollment, but I won't repeat a lot of the very good things that the other speakers have brought with regard to the pandemic. I'm going to focus today on one of the things that a couple of others have picked up on which is the impact of the rising cost of healthcare on what we're able to provide students in our district. Healthcare costs have been rising in our district as for other districts over the past several years. Monthly premiums have been going up by double digits or close to double digits for each of the past four years. So 10% in FY 19, 11.8, 12.9, and then if this year's rates are approved 9.6% in FY 22, annual premiums did go down in FY 18 and FY 19 with introduction of new high deductible plans. However, the state clawed back hundreds of thousands of dollars meaning that local taxpayers really didn't see a whole lot of benefit from shifting to those new plans. Our school budgets didn't really reap the benefit of that. As of FY 22, if the announced rates are approved, premiums will be higher than they were under the old plans that have very low or no deductible and the district will also be on the hook for 84% of out-of-pocket expenses on a first dollar basis. And those out-of-pocket expenses range from $2,500 to $5,000 depending on what plan level an employee is on. The arbitrator's award, that was the outcome of the negotiations at the state level with regard to health care, is particularly problematic. Teachers and staff in our district were paying first dollar out-of-pocket and the award changed that to last dollar. The most exposure any employee will have to out-of-pocket expenses will be $800 no matter how many family members are included on their plan and for folks on a single plan that's no more than $400 per year. The change to first dollar out-of-pocket and higher premium rates meant that as the district prepared its budget for this school year, FY 21, it expected health care costs to go up by just over a million dollars or 17.7% versus FY 20. That's about 2% of the FY 20 overall budget. So in other words, before we could even talk about increases in salaries for our employees or additions to programming or supports for our students or maintenance of our aging buildings, we were starting with an increase of 2% in our expense budget. For context, our expense budget had gone up an average of about 3% over the previous eight years. So that 2% is a really significant number. Given increasing enrollment, which is one, as I mentioned, something slightly different than some other districts, we are needing to add staff, particularly at the elementary level, to make sure that our class sizes are not getting out beyond the bounds of what's reasonable. It's particularly important going into next year, as we're not sure what social distancing will have to look like and how many classrooms we'll need to accommodate the number of students who are coming into our system. We're also seeing an increase in the needs for a range of services amongst our students, ranging from special education services, a greater percentage of students needing free or reduced lunch, a greater number of families and students needing services of like a cultural liaison and translators, because they may not be able to understand all the information that the district shares with them. We have a lot of new Americans coming into South Burlington. And then there are a range of other pressures on the budget. So our initial budget for FY21 included a 7.96% increase in expenses. Unfortunately, for the children of South Burlington, taxpayers soundly rejected that budget, in part because it was going up so high and would have translated into an estimated 11.2% tax increase. It was also voted down alongside a very unpopular bond that we put forward to rebuild our middle and high school campus. However, the challenges that once that budget was voted down the pandemic hit before we could get another budget together to take to the community. So anxiety about the overall budget was even higher than it had been in March. So it took us two votes, two more votes I should say. So finally on the third vote, we did pass a budget, but we had to come in at an increase of 1.52% in our expense line in order to get that budget to pass. After staffing cuts, that final revised budget included an increase in health care costs of 842,000 versus that 1 million I mentioned earlier. And so that was an increase of 14.4% in our health care costs. And it represented about 1.63% of the FY20 budget. So how could we pay this 1.63% increase in health care expenses, but only have the budget increased by 1.52%? It was an extremely long and painful process. So we asked administrators to create a list of potential cuts and prioritize them according to those that least impacted student experience directly, and then moving on to more and more direct cuts to student programs and supports. That second budget vote, we tried really hard to make it mostly administrative and operations costs that we were cutting. By that third budget vote, we were cutting very deeply into programming. So in the end, we lost about $830,000 in programming and services that we had offered in FY20. That included things like athletics and student activities. Not all of them went away, but a long list at both the middle and high school went away for the year, or teams were cut back significantly in the numbers of students who could participate. Math and literacy coaching, particularly, unfortunately, at the elementary level was cut back significantly. We still have a math and literacy coach in each of our elementary schools, but we had cut back the number of staff. So we've had emails from the existing math and literacy coaches saying to us, we're not reaching the students that we need to reach, particularly in this pandemic year when students are seeing big gaps in what they're getting in terms of in classroom time. We had to reduce social-emotional supports. There was a very innovative program start at the middle school the previous year to help kids with self-regulation and sort of building resilience. And we had to cut staffing and remove that program for the year. Driver's education had to offer fewer sections, which means that kids had to wait longer to get into Driver's Ed. This is particularly an equity issue because families that cannot afford to pay for kids to go and get Driver's Ed somewhere else might also be the families who have students who need to work and need to get to work, and they are delayed in being able to get their driver's licenses because of that cut. Family and consumer sciences at the middle school as a program had to be cut, which was unfortunate in and of itself, but that also put pressure on the other optional programs that students have to choose from in terms of they have to have their day filled up. And so those other teachers had to take on more students because there was one less class for those students to take. Arts education was cut back, business and health education at the high school. We have a school within a school program called the Big Picture Program, which is a very flexible pathways alternative program for students. And we had to significantly cut the number of students who could be supported in that program because we had to cut staffing in that program. And we lost AP classes, not all of them, but we lost some pretty important ones like AP European history, AP chemistry, we thought we were going to lose AP calculus, BC, we ended up being able to offer it in remote only fashion for this year. But those are some very significant things that we had been offering students that were now that are now gone. In addition, I won't go through all of them, but there were $1.1 million in operations cuts. And that increases the risk that the district is taking. It increases staff burnout, for example. So one example, and I won't go through all them as I said, but one example is we had two transportation directors because with five schools and serving not only South Burlington, but Georgia and the islands with a lot of tuition students, transportation was a very or is a very significant part of what we do in our districts to make sure that everyone can get to school in an equitable way. One of our most senior transportation director retired, and we chose not to replace her for one year. And our director of finance and operations had to sort of help step into that role and pick up the slack for only having one person who was the more junior of those two people on board. And that led to some real challenges within finance and operations. All of this kind of trickles down when you sort of stress one part of the system, if you're too leanly staffed, it stresses the rest of the system. And so we lost our business manager, who it wasn't entirely due to the stress of this, but it was in part due to the stress of the sort of various things that have happened in South Burlington, and the pandemic kind of being the final straw, we lost our very long time, decades long business manager to another job outside of education, unfortunately. And then we also had to cut back $1.3 million dollars in previously proposed new expenses for FY 21. And that was particularly challenging. For example, we have fewer teachers to address enrollment. And so some of our class sizes are creeping up. And that's particularly challenging at the elementary school level. Taxpayers just cannot continue to support education budgets that are growing significantly faster than their own incomes, which is what we hear from taxpayers when we go out with our budget each year, particularly in a year like this, where we are probably going to have to ask them for a pretty significant increase. Given that we're limited in what we can ask in increases from the community, it becomes a matter of resource allocation. And if health care costs continue to grow faster than our overall budget grows, health care will take up a larger and larger percentage of our budget. In FY 19, health care was 10.7% of our total expense budget. By FY 20, that was 11.3. By FY 21, it was 12.8. And in FY 22, it's projected to be 13.2% of our overall expenses. But that's based on an overall expense budget that the board has told administration is not ready to take to the community because it's too high. So that 13% will likely be something north of there more like 14 or higher. As health care takes up a greater portion of our budget, it takes resources away from our core mission of providing programming and supports that students need to prepare them to be contributing members of society. Health care costs are a significant driver in rising education costs in Vermont, and we need to find a solution for the benefit of students, employees, and taxpayers. I don't have a complete solution, but some ideas might include handling health care at the state level entirely. It's not negotiated at the state level. Appropriating funds in the way that funds are appropriated for teachers retirement at the state level could be one way of doing that. We would urge you, as John mentioned earlier to consider age 63. It's not just a negotiations or labor issue that's being worked out in that bill. It really does speak to asking any future arbitrator to really look at cost as part of their decision. That was one of the struggles with the arbitrator's decision is that the arbitrator did not believe that cost was something that he was expected to incorporate in his decision. So he ended up choosing one versus the other with approximately, it's a very rough estimate, and it's hard to get an exact number, but the estimate is that that arbitrator's decision will cost districts $25 million across the state this year, as a result of choosing the union's proposal versus the employer commissioner's proposal. And I understand that income sensitivity with respect to premium share by employees is also being discussed as a potential law. I really believe it should be bargained by the commission that's set up to bargain these things rather than forced through as part of legislation without understanding the consequences of what that would mean for the education fund and for districts in general. I'll stop talking about healthcare for just a minute, but I do want to make two other small pleas. One is to really think through what we can do to help districts have a little bit more visibility on the state level factors that come down to us that really impact what the ending tax rate is and what the repercussions are of the decisions we make at the expense level. Those state level factors often come very late in our budgeting process. And so we get very comfortable with thinking we know what programming we need, what staff we need. And then we find out, for example, last night, literally was the night we were supposed to as a board approve our budget to put it on the ballots for town meeting day. We found out that even though our number of students is going up because they are more heavily weighted toward increases in elementary school students and some other factors are equalized pupil number, which just came from the states about 48 hours ago actually reduced our number of equalized pupils. So that drives up the tax rate, which means that then we are asked to go back and find other cuts to programming or other cuts to services to get us back within a range that taxpayers will accept. So the sooner districts can get those state level factors in the budgeting process and we've asked for years to see if there's any way to get longer term visibility on them. So we're not surprised every year and then having to shuffle programming to react to them. That would be extremely helpful. I would also remind you that there's a significant looming concern across the state with regard to school construction. In a year like this where budgets are going to be extremely tight, schools even more so than in a normal year and it's a very normal pressure, but this year it's going to be even higher. The pressure is going to be to delay maintenance on buildings. And I've testified before the committee before with regard to school construction funding that's going to really come to a head, I think in the state because there are a lot of buildings that are the same age, a lot of buildings that haven't been maintained in the way they should be. And without some state level funding, it makes it very hard to sort of choose between what we're offering our children in terms of programming and services and maintaining or even rebuilding in some cases buildings. And so I will leave it at that for today. And as my colleagues have have offered, I'm happy to take questions today, but also feel free to reach out by email or phone as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. So questions from the committee. I have one to to Bridget and that is in terms and to all of you in terms of health care negotiations. I think one of the thoughts when this was put forward is that and I was not a part of those discussions, I will say was that health care would be done at the state, but the local districts would have an opportunity to address some of those changes through salaries. That is still something that you have. If health care goes up, I'm sure that puts you into a very complicated concepts of negotiation, but you do still have the ability to address that perhaps not as quickly as the health care comes through. And that is a fair point that we can address salaries. The challenge is you're you're then asking us to essentially cut teacher salaries in order to make space for rising health care costs. And I can tell you we've had significant labor challenges in South Burlington since well before I was on the board, even in years where we were talking about an increase because the increase wasn't higher. The other thing that we hear from UNISER reps and from the Vermont NEA often is that they don't consider health care to be part of their compensation. We have tried very hard to sort of introduce this concept and bargaining of total compensation, including health care and salary. And in fact, we discuss it across the table when we're talking to our local union about what the total new money is not just on wages, but also with regard to changes in health care. And we are very careful to understand what their take home pay is. So we understand that health care costs are rising for them as well. But but that runs up against a brick wall. It really does in negotiations. And it's also very hard. For example, in this year, where health care costs are going up significantly, it would be extremely difficult to turn to teachers who, as many others have noted today, are bending over backwards and going 120 percent for our kids and for our community. It would be very hard to look at them and say, in this year, we expect you to take a salary decrease. That's that's very, very challenging. So I'll also just echo just having participated in negotiations over the last week that there's a disc there's a disconnect that cannot they can't be rectified. It's it's these are two these become have become two separate things. They the health care is is out of our hands, all of our hands. And it results in another place and to try to build a list of negotiable topics and and say, OK, well, here's something that we don't control. We don't really know what exactly what it's going to be. But here now, we're supposed to negotiate with it, but comes it just becomes really, really difficult in the in the act of a collective bargaining. So not just the the money that and the and the impact that would have on on our staff and our on our teachers, but it's just the difficulty of trying to incorporate something that doesn't that doesn't rest in in the room, even if it's in Zoom. Echo as well, what Bridget and John have said with in negotiations without having the health care piece in our hands in order to leverage salary around that. It's, you know, this this lofty out in the distance thing that is is no longer negotiable with us. So it is hard to leverage that expense against salaries and obviously, you know, difficult to propose salary freezes or or reductions in in the midst of a pandemic. So one of the the goals that was put forth in moving to a commission negotiating process was to save costs. Would you say that that has not come true? It it hasn't come true for for Rutland City. I think Bridget highlighted on on the money that did not come back when the when the cuts were made. Rutland City, we were already at an 80 20 model, so that didn't really give us any negotiation leverages and, you know, we didn't really see any money back from the state. OK, any other questions from anybody on the committee? Thank you so very much. We will be looking at there's a question from Serita. Oh, I'm so sorry. Please represent the Boston. I attended a presentation on affordable health care for all that involved the whole state. It wasn't just the schools by a Dr. Deb Richard. And I can send the link out, you know, of the PowerPoints. It was very informative. I mean, it was very data based in terms of what the problem is with nationally and our state, the delivery of health care and what her solutions are. And, you know, I just asked, like, what do you see five years from now, you know, in terms of the way health care costs are exploding? And she said it's just it's just going to be unsustainable. She said it's unsustainable now, you know, statewide and Natalie. But I'll just say, you know, when I asked what are her recommendations, she said that most of the money we spend are on a very, you know, a few amount of sick patients. You know, that's where a lot of our spending is. And she really is promoting primary care, universal primary care is one way to address the rising health care costs. But if anybody would like that link, I'd be glad to send it to you or even get in touch with her because, you know, she's in Vermont. She's a doctor in Vermont. And I it might be helpful for the Vermont School Board Association to have her come and present because it was very data driven and very helpful to get a sense of what the issues are and what the solutions might be. She was very involved in the universal health care before it collapsed in 2011. Okay, I think with that, there aren't any other questions. I'm not seeing any other questions. I want to thank you very much for this update. We will stay in touch with Sue. If you want to communicate with us, it's usually really easiest to communicate through her, though I'm more than willing to hear from you directly. But Sue has an ability to kind of organize some of those those thoughts for us. I appreciate your work. We are well aware, and we have been hearing and we will hear from the teachers soon about how things are going. And we appreciate those of you that are still sticking with it. Don't leave. Don't retire. Not yet. Thank you for being with us today. Thank you very much. So Serena, did you have one more question or want to say, Danielle, I didn't know that Oxbow had passed its budget, and that's really some of the best news I've heard in a while. So I just want to say congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. It has been a very much a learning process. So we're good. Texting with Representative Copland-Hanses last night on this very topic. So she's amazing. She's amazing. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.