 I'm gonna hit, let's hit it and I will officially start. Great, sounds great. Well, hello everyone and welcome to a conversation on education funding policy here in the state of Vermont. My name is state representative Emma Mulvaney-Stanik and I am a Burlington state rep who represents a portion of the Old North End and the New North End. I'm joined here tonight with several other co-hosts who are both state legislators and advocacy organizations interested in this issue. And I'll be queuing up kind of the purpose of this meeting and then letting our co-hosts introduce themselves briefly. We're really excited folks are here tonight. We're recording on CCTV, which you really appreciate so this information can get out further and wider as this impacts the whole state of Vermont. So very briefly, besides streaming and recording, I wanna invite participants to leave their cameras on if they wish, otherwise you can turn them on when you speak later on in the discussion. We really wanna make sure this space is a space that's a one for dialogue and not debate and certainly one that's also safe. So the facilitator in me is going to share three really basic group rules. I'm gonna ask everyone to abide by as we engage tonight. And those three simple ones are to think first on who speaks first. This is one where I like to offer folks to think about that we live in a culture where some people in our community have been marginalized and devalued because of their identity. Whenever it is possible, please check in with yourself first and see it, let the response first to a question or a prompt B from a person most impacted by oppression and bias in our culture. This includes youth, indigenous people, people of color, LGBTQ plus folks, women and gender non-conforming people. The second rule I ask folks to think about is that we are living in a Zoom life here. So here's a little technical stuff. Please use your raise hand function if you'd like to speak, especially when you get into the dialogue function and stay on mute so we can minimize distractions in the background noise. I mean, I think everyone's pretty much memorizes at this point in 2021, but just a quick reminder. And if the space becomes unsafe for any reason, if we have folks in here who are intending to disrupt, then we will remove those people from the room. But if the space is unsafe for you, I encourage you to turn your camera off, mute it. And we will the facilitators of the space make the room safe again and then let folks know with a broadcast message that you can come back in. Finally, the third one is please expect differences. This is a policy debate. There are strong opinions sometimes on issues. And I ask people to listen to understand not to debate or outmaneuver someone's comment that they share. We are hoping to educate people to learn and to understand the nuance of this issue tonight. Sound good? I get to be a little dictator here and say, those are the rules, so thanks for playing. Okay, great. So briefly, tonight's event. So Ed's funding in Vermont, education funding, we have one most equitable systems in the country and we have one of the more complicated ones. So tonight's mission, Liz Curry, who is a wonderful constituent of mine here in Chittenden 6-2 and I began discussing, wouldn't it be great if we could try to help folks grapple with this issue and understand it a little bit more deeply? So our first goal tonight is to deepen your understanding of the education funding system. Our second one is to specifically focus on the emerging policy conversation around this with changes to the formulas that inform the Ed funding system. This includes concepts you might have heard, like the per pupil weights, a cataclysm aid and the UVM study. These are just a few things floating out there that we'll talk about tonight. And also the task force that's been working this fall on this issue. The third and final piece is we wanna make sure there's time for discussion and questions and insights from folks convened tonight, not only legislators, but all of you as remanters and how we go forward with this policy discussion because legislators do better policy decision-making when we hear from folks. So that is our purpose. Thanks for coming along. And now I'm gonna pass the mic just to introduce have each of our co-host tonight introduce themselves. So we have a few state reps on tonight and also rights and democracy and we'll introduce a couple more guests in just a minute. So I'm gonna pass the mic to Tanya. Tanya, do you wanna come off and mute and introduce yourself? Absolutely, thank you so much. I am representative Tanya Bihovsky. I am also a representative in Chittenden County. I am in Chittenden 8-2. Nope, I'm in 8-1. And that is Essex town primarily with little bits of rural Essex and little bits of the village of Essex Junction. And I'm really excited to be here to have this conversation as a social worker who actually works in schools and really sees the impact of the inequitable, the inequitability in our funding streams firsthand. Thanks, Tanya. Taylor. Hi, everyone. I'm representative Taylor Small from the great city of Wenuski, Chittenden 6-7 because I still do have the River Silver of Burlington. And also excited to be engaged in this conversation this evening understanding the way that our pupil weights directly impact Wenuski school districts and school districts that have English language learners predominantly. So looking forward to hearing what everyone on the panel is going to bring forward. Thanks for hosting this, Emma. Yeah, thanks, Taylor. And representative Brian Cina will be here in just a couple more minutes. Has a work obligation and will be here soon. That's our other official legislator co-host. And then Dan, do you want to speak just briefly of rights and democracy and who that organization is? Yeah, thanks, Emma. Dan Fingus, rights and democracy. Vermont, organizing director, rights and democracy. A six-year-old member-based organization that works on social justice, climate justice, and participation justice. And we're really excited to make sure that community members and parents voices are included in these very complicated conversations but very important conversations. And I appreciate being able to go with this. Thanks, Dan. And we will hear very shortly from Stephanie Yu who is from Public Assets Institute. So her introduction is going to be in just a minute as well as Liz Curry, not only one of my favorite constituents but actually also former school commissioner from here in Burlington in just a minute. So before that, just so I can officially pass the mic, I'm gonna provide a little bit of an oversight on Act 59 just for a few minutes to help folks understand at home who haven't been in the legislature what that enabling legislation was around this task force, enabling this task force to be in formation and then a little bit of how those all come together. So this bill was a bill we passed in the 2021 session. It's purpose and you can find this on their website which I'll put into the chat in a few minutes. The purpose of this from the enabling legislation is to help the state legislature for the task force to form an action plan and propose legislation for the legislature to ensure that all public school students have equitable access to educational opportunities in the state of Vermont. And they are charged with making a set of recommendations on how any proposed legislation or this action plan by December 15th of this year. So right before the legislature reconvenes in January. They were also directed to use elements of the UVM per pupil waiting factor study which was something that in 2019, the legislature funded and enabled to dive deeper into how we fund education today. I'll say a little bit more about the UVM study in just a minute. The task force has eight members on it. There are four senators and four state representatives and the committee membership is based on committee assignments standing committee assignment from finance and tax committees and education committees on the house and Senate side. Sometimes I've been asked who made that decision that appointment was made by the speaker of the house and on the Senate side, the Senate committee on committees. That's how those folks were selected. Side note, since I am in Burlington and most folks who are co-hosting are from Burlington or sorry from Chittenden County there are no Chittenden County members on this statewide task force. And I just make that point as a representative from this County who we have a handful of districts who really have a very diverse needs compared to others in the state not to say we all have different needs but it was interesting choice just in terms of committee composition and perspective. So the legislature, as I mentioned before in 2019 forms or enabled a study to be drafted, created sorry missing the verb there but a study to be, well, I'll just skip over that create they enabled and funded a study for the legislature to better understand the current funding formulas that are used to weight economic disadvantage students, English language learners, secondary level students which are high school students for the purpose of calculating the equalized per pupil figure. And whether or not Vermont really needed new or other factors to better inform that calculation. So that was the charge of this UVM per pupil weighted study. It was a peer reviewed study done by more than just UVM professors and academics. So they released the study in late 2019 and then a little thing called COVID hits. So the legislature actually wasn't able to do much with this study in the 2020 session. The major findings in the study was that the current per pupil weights are not based in strong evidence of the needs of the current needs, the modern day needs of what it takes to educate students with these identities. So as I mentioned before, English language learners economically disadvantaged students and some other categories that they noted in the study. They said updates were needed and one in particular was adding a rule weighted factor for students who are in very rural districts in the state. A couple more things I just wanna say on this before I pass it over to Liz and Steph is the current task force that's been meeting is charged with looking at the weighted calculations, looking at excess spending thresholds. These are some terms that probably Steph will mention again. So it's not just the per pupil weights that they're looking at, I want folks to know that. So they're also looking at excess spending thresholds, yield calculations and how categorical aid is used to help address differences across districts because states still have local, I'm sorry, districts still have local decision-making powers on how they move money. And they also are looking at how to better define these categories when calculating equalized per pupil spending so that there's a better basis for saying why is the weighted formula such for the folks who are economically disadvantaged, the kids from experiencing poverty or English language learners that there's an actual rhyme to a reason on those calculations. Their last piece they're incorporating in 2018 was an act called Act 173 which made changes to the special education funding and so they're incorporating that into their work as well. So going forward, these are some of the policy considerations and challenges that will start to seed our conversation tonight. So we have districts in the state with very diverse needs like Burlington and Winooski who have a lower tax capacity than they need to fund what actually is needed for these students to be successful. So this might be a term folks have heard called underweighting. So basically there's an increased need, they need more services, more ability to raise money to order to really meet the needs of their student populations. Other districts and other parts of the state have a lower tax space and a lower tax capacity to fund their schools. And that's either because they have higher poverty rates, a lower grand list values, et cetera that go into what they are able to work with. And a change in the formula if we were to make policy changes could increase their tax capacity and they could choose to lower their taxes for example for folks who are having trouble paying their tax bills or spend more on their local students. And then we have a third kind of general area where districts are more homogenous with their student populations and may have adequate tax capacity. It's a fund what their student needs most at this point. And so they may choose to do more or less but there's really very, this is where all the differences really start to emerge around different needs within different school districts in Vermont. So the questions to throw out tonight really to start grappling with is how do we create equitable outcomes statewide with these differences knowing we have such diverse needs across districts? And that truly, I hope everyone on the call tonight we really are here for the equitable education and successful outcomes for all students no matter where they're going to school in Vermont. And how do we address the wide range of spending per, sorry, how do we address the wide range of spending per pupil across districts because the student population is very so much. And then finally, because the whole system of education is a complex one how do we find short-term solutions and opportunities while also looking at larger policy questions here about really looking at a more equitable way to raise money for education this data from up. The task force meets again for the public hearing on October 29th. And so if any of this is stuff that you want to follow more deeply again, I'll put the task force committee website into the chat and you can participate in the next public hearing if you so choose. So thanks for coming to my TED talk that I hope I didn't get graded on that because that is a first term legislators attempt to try to talk about education, funding and moving parts. And I'm sure staff or Liz or other folks tonight will correct anything I didn't get 100% correct there. But that was my attempt to get you up to speed on where act 59 is at as quitting the task force. And so I'm going to pass it over to Liz Curry local neighbor who will take us into the next part of our information sharing. Hey everyone, thanks a lot for being here. And I really want to appreciate my representative Emma and the other representatives all the legislators that are on this call because I spent seven years on the Burlington school board and what became increasingly clear to me is that school boards hands are really tied by legislative action. There have been an incredible number of changes to education, funding over the past eight years with a lot of different access and acts that ACT, not AFC but we did have to act as a result of Act 46. So anyway, the legislative role is so huge more than most other issues the legislative role in school funding is huge. That being said, there's this dynamic of maintaining local control. So that creates a lot of the tension and having legislators like Emma who are paying attention means that I think we get ultimately we'll get better outcomes from conversations like this. There are very few people who can articulate the ed funding system in Vermont even if you could understand it intuitively there are very few people and staff who is one of those she's the deputy director of public assets Institute which has focused actually the director was part of the architect of the original Act 60 or N68. So they are deeply steeped in education, funding for Vermont and staff's background is in fiscal analysis for the public sector, financial analysis for the private sector. She's been in the executive branch of the department of treasury in another state. So she just brings a incredible amount of not only analytical knowledge but ability to really break it down for us. So thank you staff for being here tonight to do this and we're really looking forward to understanding more. Thanks Liz and thanks for that introduction. I always appreciate conversations with you and other school board members for that perspective because I think it's easy to get sort of stuck at the state policy level and kind of forget what it looks like for the people actually implementing some of this stuff. I'm also a parent in the Burlington school district I have a kid at IAA and a kid at Hunt. So I'm also looking at it from that perspective. I'll try to make this not too Burlington centric although I do have a little bit of information that's related to Burlington. But this is sort of the quick version there's a lot of details as both Emma and Liz said this is a complicated system and there's a lot of detail but I'll try to sort of hit the highlights and I think what we'll do is if you have questions put them in the chat and we'll try to get to them and if not we can kind of cover them in the discussion part of this. So I think I have the ability to share my screen. Let's see. I just have a few slides. I think that hopefully are helpful. So let's see if that we can bring those up. All right. So a little bit about public assets briefly which is we're a nonprofit nonpartisan fiscal policy think tank in Montpelier. As Liz said, we do a lot of work on education funding partly because it's really important but also because it's sort of the biggest thing that the state does, right? In terms of dollars dedicated. So there's three things that I really want to try to do tonight. Here are the goals. First provide this quick overview of the funding system and talk about sort of the basic level of statewide equity that we achieved with that 1668 and that will include a little bit of a detour about the Burlington reassessment because I think that sort of illustrates how people interact with the system and also sort of how any town when they reassess what sort of the impacts are on folks. And then the second thing is to really talk about how these cost adjustment tools work. The categorical aid piece and the people waiting piece and then and third just briefly kind of touch on I think Emma did a good job summing it up but sort of what the waiting study was charged with doing. So when we talk about the school funding system there's really, there's four main things that I want you to take away from this. The first thing, and for those of you who are familiar with Brigham we always sort of put up a couple of Brigham quotes because I think they really kind of tell you what we're trying to accomplish with the system. But the first thing to know is that Vermont is one of only two states that has a statewide school tax system. And I don't think this really gets talked about enough because all resources are pooled into one big pot which is the education fund. So there's three major revenue sources for the education fund, residential school taxes, non-residential taxes and then consumption taxes mostly the all the sales tax, a chunk of the meals and rooms tax and then a few other odds and ends including, excuse me, including lottery, all the lottery proceeds. So I think whether or not it's a statewide system might not seem that important but especially to the taxpayer who doesn't necessarily care where the bill is coming from or who's billing them. But it's important for two reasons. The first thing is that all school districts are drawing on the state's non-residential property tax all the state's non-residential property tax which wasn't true before 1997. So it used to be that if you had commercial property or second homes in your town you kept that revenue local which was a big part of why there was so much disparity between wealthy towns and less wealthy towns. And the second thing I think to think about is that the second reason why the statewide funding system is important is because we're all collectively raising all the money for all of the kids. So school tax rates are set based on the total amount we need statewide and then they're calibrated and this is where I think a lot of this discussion is focused they're calibrated so that each town's tax effort corresponds to its per-people spending. So what that means is in Vermont the student funding is less dependent on the wealth of the community. So no town is funding its own schools through homestead taxes. We're all getting a mix of all these revenues from the education funds which has allowed us to achieve this sort of as Emma was saying sort of a much more equitable funding system than most states have, right? It's better than what we had 25 years ago and other states are sort of still in the phase of being sued by districts or being sued by students because their funding system seems unfair and isn't working for them. So that's sort of the basic level of statewide equity that we talk about. All students are sharing all the resources and all resident taxpayers have to make the same effort have the same tax rate to get the same per-people spending. So we're taking this sort of statewide view in the interest of equity recognizing that when we do leave things 100% local that is the town to town disparities do tend to get pretty big. So that's the first thing we have statewide tax system. The second thing is that we have local control and this is where I think Liz mentioned sort of this balancing act that we're trying to achieve. We're leaving the decisions about how much to spend and what to spend it on in the hands of communities. So we still have variations among districts while we're all paying for all the kids we trust each community to know best what it needs for its kids. So Vermont's funding system unlike a lot of other states supports whatever level of funding that voters choose. A lot of other states have a foundation formula which is essentially trying to get to a floor of spending. So the locals raise some money then the state adds whatever aid it needs to aid to get you to sort of this floor of spending. It's a fixed amount. Vermont system supports whatever level of funding the voters choose where residents of that districts are paying higher taxes for higher per people spending. So second thing, that's local control. The third thing is that again those rates for the residential slice of the pot are determined each year. They change each year based on your per people spending that you decide on your budget on how many. So towns with more per people spending towns with higher per people spending have higher tax rates those with lower per people spending have lower rates and those with the same have the same rates. It sounds simple, but it wasn't true before 1997, right? So before Act 60, you could have these high tax rates and not a lot of money to spend per pupil or you could have a low tax rate and a lot of money to spend per pupil and it just depended on the property wealth in your town. So it was sort of all over the place. But since Act 60 we've had this coherent relationship between per people spending and property taxes, right? So any town that's spending $15,000 for pupils is gonna have the same tax rate and it moves together higher your spending, higher your tax rate. So you're getting the same payment from the ed fund for the same tax rate regardless of how much you are as a town are contributing to the ed fund. For example, Burlington, 4,000 plus students Roxbury, 88 students both have the same tax rate. Clearly the amounts that we're contributing to the ed fund are different but we're still getting the same amount in education payments in per people spending. So this is really a big step forward for students and taxpayers. The fourth thing is that resident taxpayers can pay their school taxes in one of two ways either based on their property value or based on their income. And for most Vermonters paying based on income is a better deal. But for those at the higher end of the income scale paying based on property value is the cheaper option. But regardless of how you pay your taxes are moving up and down with your per people spending, your tax rates. So we're really trying to strike this balance between state and local control. We have a statewide pot, it's state taxes but then there's this local control where local voters get to decide and the towns still get to decide what to spend it on and then residents have this choice between paying based on their home value or their income. So we do have to kind of dig into a little bit more the details to sort of go over the Burlington reassessment piece. I don't wanna spend too much time on this but I do just because this is what happens when any town reassesses but I think Burlington felt particularly dramatic because there's a lot of people because it had been 15 years. So I just sort of wanna go through a little bit of what's happening there. So as I said, I live in Burlington and I experienced the reappraisal too. We've established that most residents are paying their school taxes based on income but some are also paying based on property value and there's some who kind of have a slice of each. So when the property value changes their school tax bill will change. But I just wanna be clear that from the state's perspective it's not 15 years from a school tax perspective, right? It's not 15 years of changes in one go. Each year the state is recalculating that fair market value of the total property in all of Vermont towns. So what you're paying in school taxes is more or less keeping up with market changes, right? So it's not on the school tax piece of it. So the state is applying the school tax rate to what the state sees as the total fair market value in the town, whether Burlington or anywhere else. And that determines how much the town has to pay into the Ed Fund. So the state's been updating Burlington's aggregate property value all along even though the actual assessed values of the properties are not changing so the on paper value is not changing. So then there's this technical fix that the town has to do. And again, this is true of all towns. The technical fix is that because the town is sending your bill based on your assessed value and not a fair market value amount, they're adjusting the tax rate to get the same amount of money that they would get if they were basing it on the fair market value rate. So this is sort of a shorthand example. So if the state is saying that all of Burlington property is worth $100 million and the tax rate is $1.50, then they're saying Burlington has to contribute $1.5 million to the Ed Fund. Obviously these numbers are not the right numbers but you get the idea. So, but if the local assessed value is a total of 95 million we still have to contribute 1.5 million. So we have to set a tax rate that gets us 1.5 million. So that ratio, the ratio of the assessed value to the fair market value is what we call the common level of appraisal or the CLA. And it varies from town to town depending on when they lasted and appraisal and how much property values have changed. And because Burlington had gone a pretty long time, 15 years, that CLA had dropped to below 80%. So you see, so that's a big jump I think in the difference between the assessed value and the fair market value. But again, our school tax bills have mostly been keeping up with it except that the state is not changing the value of each individual property. It's just sort of estimating the overall change in the town. So when a town does a reappraisal it's a truing up of the state and sort of reestablishing the base value of each property. And what can happen and what did happen in Burlington is that not all properties increased in value by the same amount. So I'll give seven days credit for this great map I think and interactive maps. So you can go sort of look at all the neighborhoods and sort of street by street and it shows the difference in growth in the different neighborhoods. So you can see how much it varied from area to area. So again, while that total amount that Burlington owed in school taxes to the Ed fund might not have changed a lot what individuals are paying what changed a lot. So again, the way the system works is that you pay based on whichever is better for you your income or your property. But there's also a few additional quirks in the system that are likely to increase the number of residents who have jumps in taxes. And I think this is a particular problem in Burlington but also in some other towns in the state. So I hope that this table helps explain what these other quirks are. So what you're looking at is household income and house side value and then what that means. So both of these pieces sort of come into play your household income and your house side value. So for those with incomes under 90,000 and house values under 400,000 and those with incomes between 90,000 and about 137,000 and house values up to 225 they're only paying an income-based tax. That won't change. So a property reappraisal is not gonna change their taxes. For household incomes under 90,000 but house values over 400,000 and those incomes between 90,000 and 137 and a house value over 225 they're paying the income portion and a slight property portion based on the amount of the value over that threshold. So whatever is over 400,000 you're paying a property tax piece. Then for household incomes over and this is Burlington specific numbers because the kind of tipping point varies based on the town because the tax rates vary town to town. So but it's roughly around that 136, 137,000. So over 136,000 give or take no matter what your house side value is you're paying all property based on your house side value. So you can see how these thresholds kind of create some additional groups that were particularly affected in Burlington. So Burlington's median household income is around 51,000 although that includes renters so homeowners probably skew higher than that. But and the median house price and these aren't final numbers because the appeal process is still happening. The median home price jumped from 237,000 to about 380,000. So you can see that it's likely that there's a group under 90,000 who may have crossed that 400,000 threshold or people with incomes between 90,000 and 137,000 who crossed that 225 threshold. And what that means is both those groups are picking up a property tax portion of a bill that they've never had before that they didn't have to pay previously. So we couldn't get numbers because the public Burlington data had some problems. So we can't get numbers on how many households are in those groups but I think it's likely that there are households in those groups. And it might not be a huge difference, right? If your value is 401,000 you're only paying it on that 1,000. But if your house value jumped from 380 to 500 it's a pretty big jump. And I'm not even gonna touch the municipal side of that because that's a whole other story. And I do recognize that as a taxpayer in Burlington that what you see on the bill reflects both of those pieces so it can be hard to kind of keep those pieces separated. But that's how the school piece of it works. And as an aside, all of this sort of complicated explanation of how the CLA works and how the property value piece works would be unnecessary if we got rid of the two parallel systems and just had an entirely income-based system but that's a different conversation. So that's sort of the detour into the Burlington and really any town's reassessment of what happens. So I wanna come back to the two cost adjustment tools which I know is a lot of what people are interested in tonight. So we really think of this as the second level of equity. So on top of this sort of statewide level playing field which is, we all share the resources we have this one big pod. We have these two cost adjustment tools, categorical aid and pupil weights. And the purpose of those is to recognize these costs that differ from district to district that are out of district control. And so to sort of smooth that cost so that all districts have the resources they need for their kids, whatever those needs might be. And these tools really aren't meant to be static. They're meant to be responsive to changing needs and to be recalibrated as needed. So some quick definitions. Categorical aid is money for districts either for categories of specific costs or for categories of need where weighting is used to adjust each district's pupil count which impacts your per pupil spending and therefore your residential tax rates. So currently we use, I think somebody mentioned this we use categorical aid for three things special education, transportation and small schools. And I'm gonna sort of set aside a lot of the policy debate and complications around special ed funding and sort of talk about how it's mostly operated over the years. Similar to small school, the small schools grant which also has been kind of in a couple of years of upheaval over the last couple of years. So, but the idea is that transportation and special ed are reimbursement for specific costs where small schools are sort of a category of need. So if your school qualifies, you get the money you can do what you want with the money. And then the way that weighting works is that it's applied to these students and these facing these different categories. As Emma said, English language learners, economic disadvantage and then the grade levels. There's also pre-K are also weighted slightly less than one, so that's another piece too. But this is an, I hope this equation is something that we look at. I think that sort of just helps people understand where the two different tools come into the process. So I'll walk you through this. And so we all vote on our school budgets on town meeting day. We approve a total budget, but that's not, the total budget is not what's setting our town's tax rates. We take, first we take these costs off the top which include categorical aid and some other adjustments, federal aid and a few other things. And so that leaves us with this sort of bottom part of the pie, which is the district's education spending. And this is where people, which is typically around 85% of the budget, although again, that varies from district to district because of how dependent they are on categorical aid or other things. But so this is where people waiting comes in. So we divide the education spending by the number of equalized pupils, which is the number of pupils after waiting adjustments are made and then equalized across the state. So that gives us each district's per pupil spending, which then gives us the residential tax rates, both the income and the property rates. So per pupil spending is really a way of comparing apples to apples across districts. So how does the district spending compare after you set aside the size of the district and the differences in need across the districts? So again, I think it's helpful to really think of these as two tools that we can use to make tweaks to the statewide level where we can sort of take this statewide look and try to smooth differences across districts while still leaving most of the decision about how much has been and what to spend it on at the local level. So I think Emma gave a pretty good overview of what the waiting study called for. I will just add, and again, this is sort of you don't have to read all the language, but I think the point is that the waiting study has been a lot of the focus, but there were a couple other questions that were also raised in Act 173 as Emma noted, the special ed census grants. And then there's sort of this broad number two, which is methods other than per people waiting that could have an effect on quality and equity of educational outcomes. So that's really sort of the quick version of that. And I think part of the reason that Act 173 was sort of putting these things together is because there is a lot of interaction between among these things. And so I really felt wanted to look at the whole picture of special ed, kids facing poverty, English language learners sort of put it all together and see what that added up to. So again, I think Vermont has this very solid education funding system with sort of this baseline level of equity for students and taxpayers balanced with this local control has these two tools to make these tweaks as needed. And it is a complicated system. And I think for my perspective, the critical finding of the waiting study is I think something that everybody agrees on, which is that we know there are kids that are not getting the resources that they need. And so that's something we need to fix. So I'm happy to listen and participate as needed or take questions and listen to the rest of the discussion. But I'd also just point you, we do have a number of sort of kind of one pagers or graphics or different things about the education funding system on our website. And we also are working on this Vermont Education Equity project with voices for Vermont's children. So there's a website there as well that has resources if people are interested. And I haven't looked at the chat, so I'm happy to have questions came up or anything else. And Steph, no questions came up, at least for now. So I think we can pass it over to Liz. Thank you so much. I always really appreciate how graphic your presentations are to help explain all the moving parts. And I appreciated that last one in particular around the moving pie. I don't know, you probably have a cooler name for that graphic. So Liz, I'm gonna pass it over to you. Great, thanks. And I just wanted to throw this up on the screen so people could actually see in Burlington, the calculation that Steph was referring to when looking at the fiscal year 2020 budget or 21, I'm not sure, sorry. But essentially, for Burlington, we had the education spending, which is, as Steph said, less than our budget because we start with the total cost of delivering education and we deduct special ed grants, federal grants, EL federal grants and other things that I am not remembering. And so this is our education spending, which is what we get from the state ed fund. Our equalized per people count has been around 4,000, give or take, less than 100 students for a long time, for like four or five years. Equalized people count, meaning that's not how many students are in the district. That's the number of students that fall into these buckets that get weighted. And so you end up with a higher count than actual bodies because some students have higher needs than others. And then you get the homestead dollar yield, which is a calculation that basically says, this is what we need. I'm not even gonna, it's like that's one of those things I can't accurately define, but that's what we'll get from the state. And determine our tax rate. This is the common level of appraisal that Steph was talking about. All communities are assumed to be at 100% of appraised value based on the state tax assessment. They say to each other, all the property in the state and said it's all should be at 100% of market value or appraised value. So states fall below, municipalities fall below that when they don't reassess. And so the state formula makes up for that gap. And that's how you arrive at a tax rate that compensates for that. So that's kind of what it looks like in Burlington recently. So the only other things that I was gonna kind of just bring up are just those policy questions around what we're talking about in terms of people waiting versus categorical grants. And from my perspective, I plugged into this issue in 2018 when the original Act 173 was written that then directed the legislature to study the waiting formula. The waiting formula has been embedded in the education funding system since Act 60 and 68. And so that is something we've grappled with for a long time and as well as categorical grants. So the policy question I have is which approach is in keeping with the intent of equity? And why does the answer change depending on whether you're in an urban or rural district? So I think that just gives you an idea of like in terms of framing, many districts across the state have a different student body. And so equity looks differently when you are looking at a statewide picture. In Burlington, it's our commissioner's job to represent our needs. So that is the local control piece. Each school board has to represent its district needs. And there's an element of parochialism in that. And then there's statewide actors who will look out at the state and look at equity differently. And that might be organizations like Rights and Democracy or PAI that might say, we are concerned about equity for everyone and approaching it in a different way. So that's kind of where some of the tension comes into this conversation. So those are of us that locally really wanna advocate for what's gonna work for our kids. And statewide you're gonna have districts that don't have our experience or our challenges and they may have other experiences and challenges they have to solve. But the question is, which approach is in keeping with the intent of equity in the original funding system? Thanks Liz, we have one question in the chat. And I also, before we move into the dialogue, I wanna also just invite, I see one Burlington current school commissioner on. So in just a moment, I'm gonna see if there's anything they would like to add locally. But Steph, I wonder if I can give this question to you. Ruth asks, I'm curious about the non-residential tax rate, current use and other similar exemptions. Not sure if those are the right terms and around education tax reform. And so Ruth, I don't know if you wanna come off mute and ask more specifically about that or if you're just wondering what those are and how those are up in play. Yeah, just wondering briefly about those things. Thanks. I think those are really good questions. How do we decide what the tax base is and who pays what? So I think, so there's a couple of additional provisions in the education funding system that I think are relevant. So first, let me start with just the reason that only the residential tax rates move with this per people spending is because those are the people voting on the budget. There might be somebody who owns non-residential property in Burlington who's also a resident in Burlington, but they're voting because they're a resident in Burlington and that's why it affects them. So the way the non-residential piece works is that it's one flat statewide rate, right? So all non-residential property is subject to the same statewide and that doesn't vary because they're not voting on the school budgets. They don't get to decide. Those property owners don't get to decide if they wanna spend more or less on school. So we just set a fixed rate. But the other piece of the funding system that affects this is that all of those pieces have to move proportionally together. So the income tax rate for residents, the property tax rate for residents and the non-residential property tax rates has to move together because the idea is that we can't just say, well, we wanna spend some more money and we're gonna put it all on the non-residential tax rate. The idea is that those pieces are sort of moving in conjunction. So if overall spending goes up, both those pieces have to go up proportionally. So I think, so there is this sort of tie-in on the non-residential piece. The current use piece and, I think it's sort of the bigger question of sort of how do we value property? Who do we include in the tax base? And there has been some debate over, so when we say non-residential, the definition of the residential property, and I threw around this term house site and I probably should have defined it because your house site is your house in contiguous two acres. So if you have land beyond those contiguous two acres, you're paying a property tax based on that land. Now, with your house site, 90% of your value is in that house in two acres piece. So if you have additional land beyond that, you're paying something else. Again, I don't wanna get too deep into the details, but I think these are good questions. And I think the task force is, as Emma said initially, doing a good job thinking through, not just sort of how you change the weights or if you change the weights, but also what are the definitions and the terms that we're throwing around here? And to Liz's point, I would even go back further. These weights were in place before Act 60 and nobody quite knows where they came from. And I will say, one of the things that's interesting about sort of, and please cut me off if I'm talking too much on that, but one of the things that's unique about Vermont system is because there's variable spending across districts, the weights apply to different numbers unlike in a foundation formula system, which is what we have in a lot of states. The weight is being applied to a fixed amount. So if you have a 0.25 weight for poverty, which many other states do a similar range, it's being applied to a fixed amount as opposed to in Vermont where it's being applied to a variable amount. So there's a lot of questions in there, but I hope that's helpful. Thanks, Steph. And I just wanna say that as a new legislator, I've probably been through four to five different education funding sessions and I'm still picking up pieces as I hear them. So I think one of the most important things as we grapple on a statewide level about what changes do we do is to really make sure that Vermonters have all the information they need to follow along and really feel informed about what, again, how do we fund today's modern needs for students based on who's in the schools today and what the needs are today based on what we know. Mike, I wasn't able to chat you because you're calling in on a film. Mike Fisher is one of the current school board members here in Burlington and I just wanted to briefly just acknowledge you, Mike, and I do wanna move us into a dialogue with folks on the phone because, sorry, in the meeting shortly because they've been so patient and I wanna make sure we hear from folks. But Mike, is there anything pressing from the Burlington side of things you just wanna throw out there that Liz or others haven't mentioned yet? I just wanna thank you and the other representatives for bringing this together. As anybody who's just diving into this can hear, it is, education funding is extremely complex and I appreciate what Liz says about we're all bringing our own perspectives to this and I think me personally, the complexity is part of the problem and I appreciate the task force trying to look at this holistically but every time we look at an aspect or someone looks at an aspect, it just adds more complexity to the conversation and so that's part of the challenge is to make sense and look at it holistically as a whole as to, I think we agree, everyone who's been looking at it this is that something needs to be fixed. There is a fault in the system that the system is inequitable and so looking at how to solve it in a way that makes sense for the entire state, I think is what we're all trying to do. Thanks Mike and thanks for being here. Really appreciate everyone's attendance. So we're gonna pass it on the facilitation mic over to Brian Chiena, representative Brian Chiena who represents another part of the old North end who agreed to facilitate the dialogue portion of this. So Brian, I'm gonna pass it over to you if you're ready and Brian's just gonna help just remind us that we want to have this be a dialogue now debate and really just on earth people's thoughts on this. So Brian, I'm gonna pass it over to you just to help us guide us through our last bit of time together. Thank you. So I wanted to quickly look at the, just review the ground rules again. Emma, did you text them to me or email them to me? Email, but I can read, yep, okay. I can read them over if that's all. I do, I got you, don't worry. All right, you read them then I'll put two questions out there for people to consider and then I'll explain how I'm gonna kind of manage the order, so go ahead. Excellent, great. And reminder, folks can come off camera if they like when they speak or for the whole discussion it'd be great to see people's faces but it is challenged by choice. So the three very brief reminders about the group rules would consider who speaks first. So this is just a reminder of folks who have marginalized identities. It's great to make space for their participation first. Zoom life here, so raise your hand if you'd like to jump in and stay muted otherwise. You can also use the chat and then finally, please expect differences in the policy debates and try to listen to understand versus debate the issue. Right, thank you. So if you would like to say something you can raise your hand. You could raise your Zoom hand, you could raise your living flesh and blood hand. If you have a foam hand from an athletic game you could wave it, you could wave a flag. You could write in the chat that you wanna speak if we don't see you and if worse comes to worse and you're being totally ignored, you could say, I'm trying to raise my hand and no one's acknowledging me. So we'll do our best to keep track of that. The best thing might be Zoom hands. And did I see a hand? No, all right. So there's two questions that I was asked to pose. You don't have to answer these. It's just sort of to sort of stimulate the discussion. So the first one is that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman nor an empire discuss. No, I'm kidding. That's an old Saturday Night Live joke. What are ways to advance policy that do not divide Vermont communities for those underweighted and those overweighted? What are ways to speak to the value of advancing policy that benefits equitable education outcomes for all students knowing that that doesn't always mean the same dollar amount for each kid? So would anyone like to start? Is that Barb Wilson? I see, yes. Okay, Barb Wilson, please go right ahead. Hi there. Thank you so much for putting this on. And Stephanie, your presentation was awesome. I'm learning more and more about the whole educational funding. One of the concerns that I have as I followed the waiting study is that I think it could have, if implemented based on the report and the study, and I know the task force is looking at this and I have provided them comments as well, it could have unintended consequences because it does so much at the district level. So I happen to be part of a town, Shoreham, Vermont, who's part of Addison Central where you have a more affluent town, Middlebury. And we yet have towns such as Shoreham who basically have high poverty rates and also have, actually, we've grown. We've worked hard at getting people to come to our town. So we've actually grown 40% over the next several years, but we would actually lose a lot if the waiting study was implemented as I understand it. And we would actually lose our small school grant because we're in a more wealthy district. And I really get that we need to be more equitable how we spend the money. But I also think we also have to look at the social economic impacts of what might happen to some of our small schools. And I think it'll be a driver to close those schools because they're gonna have less money available and our middle school kids are on the bus an hour and a half already. And I can't imagine having our elementary kids having that same situation. And so that's just a real concern I have. I would much rather see a more income tax-based kind of tax as well. So anyway, just my two cents here. Thank you, Barb. Thank you. So I see that representative, Tanya Vihovsky's hand is raised if you'd like to go next. Thank you, Representative China. One of the things that the question raises for me and Barb actually your comment raises as well is the importance of talking about these things together. You know, how we fund the system and how we spend the money as one issue. I am in Essex, which is what would be labeled an over-weighted district. Although we also the Essex Westford School District also has the Westford Elementary and middle school, which is a K-8 school, it's one school, which is not as economically affluent as a lot of Essex is. So it's a similar struggle. And I remember talking to our school board chair who was feeling really stressed out about this and this waiting study and what was it gonna take away from our Essex students? And I think when we are able to talk about raising money in a more equitable way, we're able to talk about actually lifting everyone up. And we're able to talk about how do we give every Vermont student the access to the things that the students in Essex have. And so I think we have to really have this conversation as a holistic thing. And we do, Stephanie pointed to that as well, we do have bills in conversation around, you know, how do we move to a more equitable funding source? The reality is that our education system has been sort of systematically defunded and hasn't gotten adequate funding as a whole. And so we really need to talk about how we raise more to put more into the whole system as well. So I appreciate that what you brought up, Barb, with some of our small schools and the way districts have been pulled together in a way that may include more wealthy towns and less wealthy towns and more rural towns and really just thinking carefully about this. Yes, thank you. So next we have Allison Knot followed by Mark, is it Shauber? Okay, go ahead Allison. Sure, thanks for hosting. So yeah, I am Allison Knot. I'm a Rutland City resident, a member of our Rutland City School Board and also a member of the Vermont Coalition for Student Equity. We've been working hard, I think we probably came together almost over a year ago now in examining the results of the waiting study and the impacts it has. And one of the things that has amazed me is that this can benefit, we're not just talking about urban schools, we're not just talking about rural schools, poverty, the English language learners, schools from all around the state of Vermont can benefit from this. And I think where it's getting muddled up a bit is we're not discussing where the money is coming from, it's the waiting, what it does, it's how we divide the pie. If there's extra money they can get thrown at education, great. But we need to make sure that that money is going to meet the student's needs. And if you look at the waiting study and many other literature across the education field, there are students with much more significant needs and costs to educate. And those need to be addressed no matter where the money is coming from. And it's simply the weights provide an empiric formula for dividing the money. If we have the same money that we have now, it's still earmarking more based on need versus just flat numbers of students in places that have larger taxing capacities getting the same amount of money as places with less taxing capacities and larger needs. And so I have great concerns with categorical aid. If we have all this money this year, great. Throw it out there, but it's not a sustainable issue and it is not something that is gonna change as populations change and shift. Certainly with the coalition, one of the amazing things that I've had is I've, obviously I've been on the Rutland City School Board for eight years and I've seen our population changes as the kids born into the opioid epidemic hit the schools and the challenges we have. But then being in the coalition, I was just amazed, I hear these other schools struggles and I'm like, geez, maybe we don't have it that bad or at least we're not dealing with this. And there's just a really broad spectrum that if there are weights for small schools and there are many small schools in the coalition that look to benefit from weighting implementation as well. So I think it's really, the idea is we want it to be equitable, but also sustainable and something that is going to change with time and not just at the whims of grants. So those are my thoughts. Thank you. Thank you, Allison. Next we have Mark Schauber. First of all, thank you for hosting and facilitating this really important conversation. My name is Mark Schauber. I'm the executive director for the Coalition for Vermont Student Equity. I'm also a school board member from Dover in the River Valley Unified School District. I just wanted to make two comments. One to kind of answer what Barb brought up in regards to the Small Schools Grant. The recommended weights that were published by UVM and Rutgers in the report don't actually address the need at the district level. They address it at the school level. The application is at the district level which is the way our funding system works these days but the need is addressed at the school level. So a school in a larger district that would lose its Small Schools Grant if the application was at the district level won't actually lose it because the district as a whole is gonna receive weights for that school. So I think the fear of the loss of the Small Schools Grant while it's out there and it's real, if the recommended weights aren't applied, if the recommendations are taken, then everybody's good to go. The other thing I wanted to address and Allison pretty much addressed this was that our coalition is made up of districts from the north to the south, from the east to the west, urban, rural. I think we are all in this to bring equity to every student and every taxpayer in the state. And I don't think that the divide between urban and rural is as great as it once was. So thank you. Thank you, Mark. I see Barb's hand is raised again. Barb, if you could just hold on a second and see if anyone who hasn't spoken yet would like to go. I said a second, I'll give him five. I don't know how to raise my hand on Zoom but I have a quick question. Thank you, Sinead. You did exactly what I said, which was feel free to yell out when there's a pause. And so that's why I did that. So thank you for modeling what I asked. So go ahead and then I see Sarah Woodard and then we'll come back to Barb if that's okay, Barb. Go ahead, Sinead. Yeah, I am Rev Mulvaney Sinex intern. I'm learning a lot about kind of the education funding in Vermont. I'm originally from New York, from Long Island and from where I grew up. We had a system where if you wanted your child to attend a different school district, you had to pay into that if you weren't in the tax zone. I'm wondering if anybody knows if Vermont has that and if they do, if a child from a different district can attend a different school, does that go into the per pupil waiting or is it because they're paying into it? It doesn't count because those kids aren't in that district. If that makes sense, if it doesn't, I'm happy to clarify on what I mean. I see Allison's hand raised as a school board member. Do you have an answer? Yeah, absolutely. So in Vermont, it is there's school choice. So if you can apply from your district to go to another district and there's limits set on the number of students that can leave a district to keep them whole. So there's not enough of fluctuation change, but money does not follow the students and nor does the pupil count. So you don't get any money for the student and you don't get the pupil count. Thank you. Shene, do you have any follow up to that or are you good? I think that is very interesting. I think it's great that kids don't have to pay to go to a different school district. However, I think it's interesting that that does not factor into their spending. Thanks for answering my question, Allison. I appreciate it. Sure thing. All right, thank you. So, Sarah Woodard. Hi, I'm sorry. I'm kind of sitting in the dark, I have a headache. And it's partly because of the school funding. No, I'm just kidding. I think my big question about this issue is that, you know, Burlington cut so drastically several years ago when we couldn't pass our local budget and then in the years following that. And it really hurt our kids. And so I'm like really relieved to see that the waiting study came out saying that it's inaccurate. But I think what I don't quite understand is why it's taking so long to implement it. I understand that COVID came up. But from my perspective, if it seems illegal because we're not actually, we don't have an equitable system if the weights are off. And so why, I guess why is this even something to be discussed and legislated? Like why isn't it just fixed? That's my question. Does anybody want to answer that question or was it more of a rhetorical question? Did you want any answers from people or was it more of a rhetorical question? No, I really do want an answer because I know like in past years the senators and representatives for Burlington have basically said this idea that the weights are inaccurate is dead in the water because we're a city and it doesn't apply to most of the state and we won't be able to win over our legislators. And so I'm, and now I think it has more legs because the waiting study found that the rural communities also are inaccurately weighted. But I guess, I guess I feel a little impatient and I'm wondering if we can't bring the other legislators along and get the weights adjusted, is that illegal? So is there any legislator who would like to speak to why they think, why, you know, to answer that question? No one's like jumping up. We'll try. Coming from a district that is over-weighted where the school board is really concerned about what their district would lose if we adjust these, I think that that can influence people, you know, representing those districts to stand, you know, there to support their constituents and their constituents are saying, this would hurt me. And so I think that that's part of the reason that there's been controversy around it. You know, I stand with you in that it is the right thing to do and we do have to ensure that all of our students get access to an equitable education. And there are so many pieces along the way here that make that not what's happening. And while we may be the most equitable, you know, that doesn't mean we are doing everything we need to be doing for our students. And that's why I think that, you know, having this conversation, I will say when I talked to, you know, my school board chair, who was hackle, you know, really worried about what the weighting study would mean for her district when we talked about, well, what if, you know, if we look at this as a bigger picture and we bring more money into that system, we can raise everyone up and implement the weights. I'm not suggesting we don't implement the weights. I just think there's a way of doing that, particularly if we change the larger funding model and bring more money into the system where nobody has to lose. I think too often we pick people against each other and that's why these things don't move. We say, well, if they get that, you're gonna lose and so fight against it. But there is a way in which we can actually bring everyone along. But I think it takes some outside the box thinking and really looking at things in a broader picture way because we can implement the weights and ensure that everyone gets lifted up and no one has to lose. But we have to think differently. So I think that that's why it gets really stuck too. And it looks like Liz has more of an answer as well. All right, so we'll have Liz Curry speak to this question. And then does Representative Mulvaney-Stanik wanna speak to this question? Only briefly because Sarah is one of my constituents. I feel like I gotta shine. That's fine, so let's do that. And then we'll see what Barb has to say at that point. And then we're gonna be near the end. So go ahead, Liz. Sure, so first I wanna say that the school board didn't actually cut years ago. We've lost about 8% of our budget as a result of federal funds disappearing. The legislature passed Act 46, which prohibited communities from raising the taxes. And then there was a deficit. So it wasn't a cut, it was the money that was there. $7 million used to be there, wasn't there. Relation to the other question, I wanna just pose this to everyone because what's interesting about all of this legislation is that the legislature doesn't actually come and check whether you as a school district have spent your money based on these formulas. So in other words, all of this stuff says we're gonna send you this amount of money because you've told us you need it, but there's no one actually coming along and saying, did you spend $20,000 per EL kid and 15,000 per white middle class kid who doesn't have a disparity? So the accountability piece is interesting because it doesn't, sorry. Oh, someone was talking. So the accountability piece is at the local level. And these formulas try to equalize students across the state, they equalize them. The equity pieces is a little bit of a different conversation. So those are just some conceptually, it's very like, if you look at the testimony in the legislature right now, the Milton, I don't know if she's the superintendent or an EL teacher or head of EL, but if you look at the legislature and the task force website and look at the testimony, the Milton people are advocating for categorical grants because they've experienced an increase in EL students from like nine to, I don't know, they're projecting 30. And for whatever reason, categorical grants seem to make sense to them. And it's interesting to me when you look at the task force, what they're hearing, who they're hearing from. And then we ask why? And you would have to know a lot about their school district to know the way they take their total budget and allocate it. And the other thing you should know is that in Burlington, the school board has decided as it has in past years to allocate the budget based on an internal equity formula. So it's almost like you could take all this proposed waiting and any school board is welcome to allocate their money that way now. The legislation just requires that everybody use those formulas as a way to say, yes, we've equalized things across the state. All right, thanks Liz. So I see, we have representative Moveni-Stanek and then I see someone who hasn't spoken yet, Douglas Korb. So go ahead, Emma. Thanks very briefly, just to throw out a couple more concepts, because I think what this opportunity also presents us is to think more broadly about how we think about education in Vermont and an opportunity to think about systems and concepts that are no longer serving modern day Vermont. And I'm one, for example, when we talk about real equity around the concept of really thinking around local control and to Liz's point, how do we make sure that money is spent to really impact the kids that need all the services or the programming that really would lead to their success, be it in a tiny little school or be it a nine English learners in the Northeast Kingdom or 500 in Burlington. And so I think it's time to start having bigger policy conversations, not to say there isn't some short-term stuff we can be doing around an income-based system, but also this concept of local control so that at the end of the day, we're educating all kids and we see our job as the taxpayers of Vermont, as taxpayers in one big system and not these individual small communities. I know it's a big task, but I think we'll never have true equity if we have these individual decision-making points that create more and more differences. I want us to find like commonality, just some bigger policy thoughts. Thank you, Douglas Korb. Hi, thanks for hosting this tonight. This is really great. I love talking about education funding. I'm from Marlboro, we're a district that's really far south of all of you probably, but we are a small school's grant recipient and I felt like I just wanted to comment on that area. It seems like a lot of people had some questions, but I think it's overall relative to that discussion of categorical aid because we were heavily involved as a district in Act 46 and maintaining that local control representative, Mulvaney that you just spoke of, but small schools grants at that time, it was sort of dangled, a categorical aid piece was dangled sort of like a carrot in order for districts to merge and lose that local control and lose that governance that Vermonters I think holds so dear. So I just wanted to be cautious about categorical aid. And now we hear districts that are afraid of, quote, losing their small schools grant, even though if we were to implement the weights, that would not be true as they were directed through the report. But I also wanna point a finger to the ESSER funds that came through for COVID. And if you stick with me here, ESSER funds were basically a one shot influx of money to support schools through COVID. And in those funds, it was also to pay people to oversee the distribution of ESSER funds. So the same thing will probably happen through small schools or sorry, through a categorical aid to fix this problem is that you're going to be paying people to tick boxes which is exactly the opposite of what Act 173 was doing was to build a census block grant to have more easy distribution of the funds. So if you're gonna put categorical aid back into play, we're basically doing the opposite of 173 in my opinion. And I guess I'll just say that populations change, populations shift and numbers and censuses do the measuring there to adjust with those numbers. So Marlboro is not gonna be the same town it was 25 years from now, I think. And I'm sure Burlington won't be either. So in order to do the proper, I think adjustments, it should be an equation that does it for us and not I guess groups of legislators sort of, you know, issuing up definitions for us. But that's just my thoughts. Thank you, Douglas. So it's just about time to wrap things up. I would like to give Barb Wilson a chance. You've been very patient and let others who haven't spoke more than once that goes. So we'll let you have the last word and then I'm gonna hand it back to Representative Mulvaney Stanek. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate Mark and Allison and the comments you had on the small school grants but and Douglas as well. But I actually went through the math and created some spreadsheets. And when I went through it for our particular school in the small schools in our district, we would lose the small schools grant. Whereas if the Middlebury was a little smaller, we wouldn't lose it. So I must be missing something that I actually did all the math. You know, I kind of a spreadsheet kind of person and dove down into it. So, you know, I'll look at it again, but it was totally my understanding when I went through the steps that we would lose it. Thank you, Barb. So thanks everyone for joining us in the discussion and to wrap things up, we're gonna hear from Representative Emma Mulvaney Stanek. That implies that I have some great wise words of wisdom to still upon all of you to lead you into the evening. But really just gratitude for you all being here and for really being in a space around dialogue and trying to really unearth all the different moving parts in the discussion. Just a reminder, the task force has another public hearing on October 29th. It's something you can tune into thanks to the hybrid system in person if you're near Montpelier and wanna be there or via Zoom, they'll probably have a similar testimony system set up where there'll be information on that website I linked earlier. If you want to testify, you do have about two minutes. It is a very short amount of time but you can also submit written comment to that task force as well. And I will speak at least for the legislators on this call tonight. Please do reach out. If you would like to have further dialogue, do also reach out to your local reps if you haven't already, just to make sure we can make, we're hearing from Montpelier's from across the state and really appreciate everyone's different, you know, opinions and where they're coming from. Thanks so much to Steph, you for presenting all this great information on the education funding system from public assets and rights and democracy for being a co-conspirator, if you will, of getting the word out about this event and all of you for tuning in from around the state, really appreciate it. And I'll hang on for a minute as we wrap up and close out the room and close out the recording. But thanks so much. I guess, sorry, I wanted to mention that public assets has a webinar coming up about the topic. I'm sorry, Scott, I forgot to... That's actually news to me. So, I don't, I don't, we might, but not that I'm aware of, but I will definitely let people know. Oh, I thought I got an invitation. Nope, I don't know. Okay, maybe. Thank you. I'm going to bring some additional information in the chat. Thank you so much. Sign off, I'll keep the room open for a couple more minutes. Thank you, everyone.