 It is still Tuesday, March 29th sometime in the afternoon and we are going to run through the basics of people waiting and how it works with Brad James in preparation for a run through of S 287 on Thursday. And so, yes sort of ask, you know, this is well tread ground but as Janet said maybe if we hear it 40 times on the 41st time it will click for each of us. So, thank you Brad for doing this with us really appreciate it. And I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay, so there we go. So I just try to turn pages. So Brad James agency of education and good afternoon. So, we're going to as as represent coroner said we're going to cover some ground that we've already covered but that's not a bad thing necessarily. And please feel free to interrupt anytime you want to and ask questions I don't mind and it's better to ask the questions as they come to your mind so. So, essentially what I have is is really one hand out at the moment it's going to kind of run through what student weights are for which you pretty much seen before. How the student weights, how it actually operates on a very simple example, which you again you've seen before, and then how we have the two or more weights can interact we're going to you just use to for simplicity sake. So I just very quickly talk about what's happening in terms of tax rates and such with with how that works out. And again as I said the answer any questions along the way that you may have. So, I get I guess we'll start there I, there's only the one handout I don't know what it's called because I was not organized as usual to get to see what sort of call it but if you all have it. It's a model, strangely enough, that's what you need to do. Oh, you have it. It's right in front of you. Everybody has it. Yes. Okay, it's it's again it starts out with kind of just an overview of what the weights do and without going over well trod ground I have six things list they're kind of in order what they're doing. And I think the key point is that that weights are used to reduce the cost of certain categories of students because certain categories of students represent the cost more. And so what the idea behind x 60 as an x 68 and all the subsequent additions to it afterwards was to equalize the cost of the student and we do that by we do that by equalizing students means we wait the students first for various cost factors. And under current law, we are waiting, we are deflated actually for pre K and triple E kids. We are inflating for secondary we increase for kids in poverty counts and we increase for you, and that's it. Okay, that that that's what we do. So that's what we're just going to talk about here in general for the for the moment. So those are the weights we've been using pretty much since I've been here the numbers have changed slightly for secondary but the other ones have stayed constant. And that was part of the impetus for the study that put on by UVM group. But the, I think, I think the one I want to draw, I want to draw your tend to do is number three word says that if a district has a high percentage of any category kids is presumed to have more cost. And I think that they're probably budgeting to that they're they're increasing their spending because they have higher cost kids, and therefore their cost per pupil is high as we all know your tax rate your homestead tax rate is directly proportional to your pupil. So there's this really cool thing built into YouTube where if you're a person watching a lot of committee hearings you can speed things up to double time in order to move through the testimony faster but you have spent yourself up to double times. I do have a tendency to start going faster and faster when I taught I used to tell my students just tell me to slow down and you guys do the same thing. So as a question before you call yourself back in. Also, if you could keep all your words as loud as every other word. So I would say slower, and I'll try to do the louder over here but I can't slow you down. Okay. I get it. We'll see how I do. So it's great for words, right. So, so what what I was what I was blasting right through was was if a if a school district has a high percentage of one of the categories of students that cost more money. We would assume that they are increasing their budget to account for the cost of those students. And that's kind of a logical assumption. So what we do to offset that increased expenditure of theirs before it goes their tax rate is we we we wait the pupils, because remember the tax rates themselves are dependent the homestead tax rates are dependent on spending per pupil. Since we're trying to equalize things and make make it everything fair. If you have a higher percentage of expensive students, then we're trying to increase your student count to bring that cost per pupil down and to keep the tax right roughly in the same area where one would expect it to be. So that's that's kind of the whole idea behind waiting of the pupils. Yeah, I don't need to say anything else about that. I don't think so. So that's that's going to quick overview. So the second page is again called student weights is how are equalized pupils calculated. And what I'm about to say, not only holds for current law but it also holds for s 287 with the specifics will change but the general idea is the same. It's, it's, you know, the way the weights are weights. They're different weighting factors are different weights themselves, but the concept itself doesn't change. So what we start out with when we're doing the weights is what's called the long term ADM. And you heard this term before from me, and you heard it the other day from Julia Richter when you when you're talking about the not cost equity but cost factor adjustment model. The long term ADM is the, is the denominator in the cost fact adjustment model, but it's the base of what's starting out with the weight. Yeah, I didn't totally get so the long term ADM is the numerator and the denominator is it's the long term ADM in the cost factor adjustment model that Julia Richter was talking about is the denominator. And you're spending your education spending by the long term ADM long term average daily membership. Thank you. Is there, what is the distinction between long ADM and ADM. The long term ADM is a one year count of students basically and by count. It's a little more detailed that of course it's it's based on the student census period it's a 20 day student census period, and basically one ADM is is a full time that a school district pays for during that 20 day period. So if you have one student in there for that full 20 days they are one ADM. If you have a student who is there for 15 of those days and moves and is not there for the last five days, then that student will count as 0.75 ADM. You know 15 divided by 20. So that's, that's what an ADM is it's a single year. And it's based on where the students live, and who's paying for them which is the resident school district. The long term ADM is a two year average. So if I was doing equalize people for this coming school year, I would be using the ADM count from this year, and last year because those are the two that we have. And I would just average those by grade. And then on top of that also added in is the state place student count from the prior year. So from last school year. So, go ahead. So when I'm reading here has long term ADM is the two year ADM average. I understand that. And then these says the long term ADM is the count the state has in a given year. So, so, so that's that's the number that we're starting out with we're doing to equalize people calculation. Okay, so so what if you were to say, in terms of for equalize people to where are we starting, then for the state it's starting at the long term ADM so that's that is your average eight plus the state play students that's that's just the base where the state starts, and that's what the weights are applied to. That's what I mean by that by one be there. Okay. My question is, I need help understand something. I use you talk about number three. And so, I think what I heard was the reason for the weights is because if you have a school district has a higher percentage of a certain kind of child. And the spending per pupil would be higher. And because homestead test rates are dependent on spending for people. We have the weights to help. But the word that I'm hearing is spending. And it's really is. How would you express that same thing if you're saying needs because there could be still lots of needs that aren't being met because the spending is still not high enough. Because, for example, the weights haven't been high enough for the kids and that school district over time. So isn't about needs not spending. It's about me about spending, and then you pop into this new cost factor and you're dividing the long term idiom into spending, because in not into needs. You're just the premise for the whole thing is spending. What if the premise for the whole thing were needs, what if the numerator were needs. I think I think that's a that's a that's a great question. I what I was simply doing was was talking about current law but you're right I mean the spending does not necessarily address the needs of the students. And part of that is because we leave spending decisions up to individual school districts, the state does not tell them what they need to spend that is not how that is not how our, our education finance system is set up. So, so in that sense, what we what what what we're looking at is what districts choose to spend. You could have two districts side by side with identical student populations and one may spend more than the other because that's what the voters have chosen to do in the school board. That's just it's just it's just where we are I agree with you it does not necessarily address the needs question. So my follow up to that is thinking very very big picture. I think it might not be big enough but if you wanted the spending to be equated with the need. You mandated that the spending be according to the need those with the weight is the is the need is an expression of need. What if there were a mandate to use that extra tax capacity to do the spending on those particular students so you would Well, high school students, you know we do need to spend more on the high school students they have extra curriculars and they have football team that the things elementary school kids don't have her, for example. So, so when I say that, then I wonder, and this I've wondered for a long time for 20 something years. Would there be a way, mathematically to track so that you could say well, this is the is the help we're getting from the state essentially. And now, how do we show that we really are allocating that school board, we're really allocating that to the students who are weighted. So that we then can only present a budget can say, this is allocations for the weights. This is the required special ed spending. So that's what we need to increase the budget in order to first do those basically mandates, and then, and then, you know, what do we need to come up with for that, plus for any other programs that we want to do that year for, you know, seven contracts, whatever. So, do you have an idea. I mean, Brad if we mandated how people spend their money according to me wouldn't that be a categorical aid program. And what I was going to say was this kind of leaning towards the, I still want to say cost equity so cost factor adjustment model that we were talking about because what that is doing is that is saying that that based on the calculations that this is this is what you need for poverty student to bring that student from from the standard student up to where they're supposed to be on the tests because they're using they're using testing scores as their as their measure. That's, that's, that's what the cost equity against apartment cost factor adjustment model is essentially doing. It's not saying, and as far as I know anyway, it's not saying that you spend the money on this fat on this perverse though, which is a different thing entirely, nor does the current s 287 do that what what you're suggesting representability is fine, but it would be a market change I think and how we do things with the state saying you need to spend $10,000 on a suit for poverty. I don't have a problem with that, but it's just it's just not how we're doing it currently. Yeah, I get that we're not, but I just asked big picture. I mean, not just probably but high school, everything. Yeah, I mean, it can be done, it can be done because we could track we could ask we could ask the business managers and do it. I don't think we'd want to real time but we already basically do it to a large degree. At the end of the school year we will be collecting annual statistic reports. Those are commonly known as the stat book, what those are our actual expenditures and actual revenues over the course of the year for the school districts. So you can you can break that out it follows the chart of accounts and you can break that out and see stuff I'm not. That's not my world particularly I'm not, I know it's there I know it vaguely of it, but I could not give you details on what it's doing and how it's working but but the data are there. We're jumping way ahead. That's trying to explain. This is just counting the equalized people. Talking about spending. So, so it would be really nice. Go through and tell us the whole part of how I see equalized people. Thank you for. But I think that was your cue. Okay. So, so then. So, so here, so here we are now we have the long term ADM. Okay, again, to your average of ADM plus state place. And that's what the weights are applied to. I'm without going through each and every one of them that's just that's just what happens that that's the base. And so what we're doing is we're increasing that count over time each time you put on a new weight and multiply by that weighting factor, you're increasing the count of students in the state that's what's happening. And again, as I said, this is exactly what would happen under the under 287 s 287 versus current law and they're just more factors and different factors and different weights in S 287 than in current law. When, when all is said and done when all the weights are applied, and you add up all those weights with the long term ADM, you have what's, again, current law statute what's called the long term weighted ADM so it's basically it's the weighted count of students is what is really what it boils down to. And that number is higher than than what the state started out with remember the state started out with long term ADM we now have added weights to it. So the number is higher. So what the law says to do is to bring the count in the state back down to where quote unquote where it should be to the long term ADM. And that's done by taking what's called the equalization ratio. And it's, I say simply, it's just the long term ADM divided by the weighted long term ADM so you start out with, you know, roughly 85,000 kids. And then you're dividing by maybe I'm making up a number here maybe 94,000 weighted kids this point some something like that, maybe it's probably not quite that high. But that's, but when you do that division you come out with currently a number somewhere on the order of 93 94% I don't remember exactly what it is this year, but you come out with that equalization ratio and that ratio I'm just going to call it 93%. The ratio of 93% is then multiplied by every school districts weighted count. So we're reducing them all by the same proportion. That's what's happening. When you add it up, you then have the right number of students in the state, the equalized pupil count because that's what you have when you take the equalization ratio times the long term ADM gives you equalized pupils. When you do that for all the districts and add up the equalized pupils, it's just about equal to the long term ADM. What's happened though within is that, as given school districts count of equalized pupils is going to probably differ from its long term ADM because it doesn't have the exact same ratios of secondary students as the state as a whole or of poverty. That's what's happening. That's why that's why the long term ADM, the equalized pupils aren't exactly the same. We all good. Okay. So if we go to slide three and again you pretty much see this when I did add one line down at the bottom and yellow. This is basically how the way to work and I'm doing a very simple example. We're talking about three school districts in a very small state, even smaller than Vermont. We're talking about three school districts and we're talking about just one waiting factor. We're talking about secondary waiting factor. So my three districts are districts one, two and three. They each have a total of 20 ADM. Their breakout is different between K6 and 712. Again, I've simplified this. So district one has five elementary kids K6 and 15, 712 secondary students. District two has 10 of each and district three is the opposite of one. They have 15 elementary and five secondary students, but they all have 20 kids is really what it boils down to. The line that I added down at the bottom is the yellow and it says state average. And the average for the K6 when you take those three districts is 10. The average for the secondary is also 10 and the average for the state as a whole is 20 per on the average. Okay, so that's that's where we're starting from. So the long term ADM in this case, again very simplified is 20 for each of them. But their kids are in different places in terms of the weights. So the second column says K6 there's no weight because that's kind of the base. But for grades 712 secondary there's a weight of 0.2 that's not the real weight. It's not the real way currently it's not the real weight in the in the proposal from S287. It's just very simple math. So when you multiply that 0.2 weight times secondary count in district one you get an additional three because 0.2 times 15 is three. In district two you get an additional two students or weights whatever you want to run. And in district three you get an additional one because 0.2 times five is one. Okay. Again, if you look at the state the average is two. And I'm talking about the average because that's because I mentioned that before. That's where the equalized people by the equalized people counts change from the long term ADM. When you add the weights to the weighted to the ADM you end up in that column that, believe it or not that's that says weighted ADM, I just lost the vowels. In district one has 23 students weighted students district two has 22 and district one has 21 again the average for the state is 22. The equalization ratio, which we talked about because now now we have more students in the state we started out with six I should have said that we did. We started out with 60 in the state we now have 66 because of the weight so they're too many students. In the equalization ratio you take in this case the the long term ADM is 60 divide by the weighted ADM which is 66, and you get an equalization ratio of 0.909. I apologize for this question I'm going to ask it anyway. How many people in the state understand this. No, I don't know. I don't understand. I, I, I'd say, I'd say, maybe two handfuls really understand it. Yeah. In terms of people who are doing state but the school budgets and so on. And the reason I ask it is that I understand that our finance system reasonably well, but it wasn't until last year that I knew that once you want to create it all those things with the weights then you shrug them back down. I didn't, I didn't know that. I know it now. I don't think I could explain to somebody how, or I think I understand a little bit of why but I'm not like I explain it. And I'm just, it's really, I think it's a serious question because it, it helps us decide sort of what path we want to take here but I, this must just seem like an incredible black box to people who are trying to figure out how it works. I would agree with you it is because it's as I was talking to somebody else earlier today, I used to go out to town meetings and school board meetings such and people would ask me questions and I'd answer the questions. Somebody would invariably ask how are equalized people's calculated. I would shrug, sigh, breathe out and say, sit down. Hold on, because, because it does get confusing. You can, but, but representative Beck asked this question I think last time, maybe last, one of the last two times I was in, I think, about why do we use the equalization ratios. And that's the exact same question you just asked. And we don't need to is the answer. It's, it's just, it's in statute I don't know why it was put there, initially when x 60 was written but it was, but it was in there. And, and we've followed ever since but you could, you don't need to do that step you could actually stop at that step that says wait at 8am and use those counts because fortunately they're the same. It would be different. I mean, what the result be different it would seem that it would but it would in that your spending per pupil would decrease but it would decrease if assuming education spending was the same for everybody didn't change. It would decrease proportionally for everybody the exact same amount. And so that what that would do is you're spending per pupil decrease but that means your tax rate decrease of the yield would have to change to bring in enough money. So you could you could easily do that you could easily get rid of the equalization ratio without any problem. And just just just adjust the yield by a little bit, you know whichever way it needs to go in order to bring in the right amount of money because that's what you do with the yield anyway. So just use it a different pupil count instead of what we have now but again proportion they're all the same. My district business manager, and please forgive me if he's watching. Did his graduate dissertation on this on people weights, and I have heard him say, and I've, he's been in the field for a very long time but I heard him say more than once at town meeting, it's too complicated to explain. Which the sort of, you know the disconnect between knowing like understanding this really that well and you know, being able to explain it to other people is also sort of interesting for that question. Scott had a. Yeah I just using the existing with Brad's going to it's really worth pointing out that probably about half the districts in the end receive two or weighted pupils and they actually have atm. Yeah, once you've shrunken back down. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. That's all. That's all I can understand is that you expand them and then you shrink them and it does seem to me that there's an impact you're trying to there isn't any impact at the end if we didn't shrink up. It is counterintuitive to most people including you. It really is because he said we're expanding them we're shrinking. We don't need to do that. We could we could cut that step out and it would just change the you is really what would happen. You go down to generate those dogs, Carol and George. So we stick with the current funding formula. We could just take this out. Yes, and then people would be clear. Well, you know, I don't, I have knocked on doors before and trying to pass tax increases, and even when people are getting money, and they're not actually paying property taxes are paying based on their income. So there could still be their impression that they're concerned about property taxes but they're, they don't, they may not understand that they are paying based on their income not on their property. So, you know, there's a lot in the formula that's that's complicated. But as far as I understand it, to make it more fair. It can look more complicated to get to the fairness for people. You know, Brad, you kind of really just said, you know, you apply the weights to the long term ADM, but there's complications in that piece of it too. I think that some of our weights are multiplicative and some are additive in the current system. I know that we need to necessarily get into that but it's not right now as simple as you apply the weights. No, that's that's that's correct. The, and as to 87 does address that and makes it all additive. What the part that is multiplicative is when you are taking the poverty count, the poverty ratio I should say, which again, we're jumping into my weeds now you take the poverty ratio, and you're multiplying it by the long term grade weighted So what you've done before you add the poverty weight, you're calc in the poverty weight, not on the long term ADM but on the grade weighted ADM so you've already increased the count of secondary students. So a student whose poverty and secondary is quote unquote, more valuable in terms of waiting into equalized pupils. Hopefully those look at whatever we do this right that that that's multiplicative part and the Senate bill does address. The Senate bill does address that takes that out they remove that, and they make it just straight weight so so great weight is great weight poverty is poverty sparsity is sparsing there there's no inner interconnection other than that, in terms of multiplying on top of another one. But that's a good point. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so, so we now have the equalization ratio that's that's 0.909 number. It's applied by the weighted ADMs. You can skip that column of district ratio I should have taken that out and didn't. And when you do the multiplication, the equalized pupil count for district one is 20.9. So, they're up a little bit. The equalized pupil count for district two is 20. They're right where they started, and the count for district three is 19.1 they're down. Why did why did to why did district one go up and district three go down because of where their kids are located in terms in in contrast to the state average. So if you jump back and look, you see the district one has 15 secondary students, whereas the state has 10. So, so district one has more secondary students that therefore they get a bump in their way it goes up. Okay, and that's that's why they get an increase because they're because we're presuming that they're spending more for those those those additional kids that the other districts don't have by the same token or opposite to the same token look at it. District three has fewer secondary students in the state does it has five versus the state average of 10, and their equalized people count has gone down because they're because they don't have the weights there and therefore because their cost shouldn't be as high. They, they everything should work out roughly the same. So theoretically, if everybody was spending on a per pupil basis, the same throughout the disk throughout these three districts, you come up with the same spending for people at the end, when you do these weights. We know that theoretically, they're not spending the same per grade per per secondary or any of the other weights but if they were this is what would happen. What happens when we add another way. That's the exciting part. We're going back to slide four. And I'm not sure I had inadvertently made a mistake. Well, I always make mistakes. And the first one that I sent to source, I did not show what the second, what the sparsity weight was and that's our second weight here. So if in that second column where it says sparsity weight it says, it says 0.0, it should say 0.1 I'm not sure what is source ahead time to correct that or not. It always has time to correct everything. Okay, thank you for our show. So, so now now as representative cornheiser has now we're now we're going on to a second way. Okay, and what I want you to see here is how the weights interact with each other. Because right now in current law we're really talking about just a few weights in the new S287 we're talking about a multitude of weights, and they tend to interact with each other. And so they, so if one goes up and one goes down you can actually kind of cancel things out a little bit. And that's what I'm going to show you here. So here we've got the same initial information that we started out with same three districts same population same same grade ranges. And then I threw in sparsity as as the as a second weight, and that's that second column. And I said that district one does not meet whatever whatever the who cares what it is but whatever the sparsity criteria is district one does not meet it so that's what the no means. So district two and three do meet the sparsity criteria. And in this case, my sparsity weight is 0.1. It gets multiplied by the total long term ADM count of the school district. So district one gets nothing. District two get and three they both have 20 so they each get multiplied point one they each get an additional two secondary is the same as what you saw before nothing's changed there. So now when you go to the weighted ADM, the weighted ADM for district one is still 23. It doesn't change because they got nothing for sparsity. However, District two has has increased. For some reason though it didn't I didn't write that in I apologize. So one district two should say 24, it says 22, because I didn't change that. And District three should say 23 instead of 21 I apologize. I did something wrong. I got part of it right on that one where I sent a distortion. So my apologies for that. Yes, the weighted ADM column should be the sum of the ADM total plus the grade total plus the sparsity weight total. That's correct. District three should be 20 plus one plus two for 23. Correct. Okay, just district two should be 20 plus two plus two for 24. And District one is the same at 20 plus three plus zero at 23. Again, the rest of the numbers are okay I just forgot to update those two very clever. Okay, so once once again what we've seen is you know we now have more students than we thought back to the equalization ratio because that's what current law says. In the case the equalization ratio is different because we now have not only secondary weight, we also have a sparsity weight. So we now have a higher count of weight in people so the denominator has changed the numerator is the same but the denominator has changed. So the ratio the equalization ratio drops and it drops to 0.857. And that's 60 divided by 70. So when you do the multiplication of the weighted ADMs. You can get 19.7 for District one so they've actually dropped remember they were at 20.9, I think, in front of me. Yeah, they were they were 20.9 they've now decreased, even though they have more secondary kids than than the state as a whole or on average. So District two has gone up from 20 to 20.6 and that's because of the sparsity weight. And District three has gone up from 19.1 to 19.7 so it's coming back up. It's still not it's still not quite at the long term ADM, but it's coming up. So the important thing to see is really what happened to District one, they did not get that weight because they're not a sparse district, and therefore the weight shift between the districts so the equalize so the equalize pupils get shifted towards where those weights are. So what we're seeing here is we're seeing that the weights do interact with each other. When you come down to the end result. Is that is that kind of making sense to folks. This totally blows my mind. And even though you sound like I've seen it a bunch of times for you Brad so thanks for doing it again. The idea that we've sort of said that it costs more to educate secondary students for District one and District one says yes it costs more to educate all these secondary students we have, but then in the end they wind up with less equalize pupils than pupils, or then ADM. And so wind up with sort of less resources than state average and that's just like, that just continues to blow my mind. I just think it's an amazing piece of the interactive stuff. It's not that they're ending up with less resources because they're still spending the same amount we're presuming that their tax rate is going up. Yes, because their count has gone down. However, even if we if we if we track back the conversation a little bit to ignoring the equalization ratio. Okay, so we're backing up that stuff and get rid of the equalization ratio just now talking to the long term weighted ADM. There's their their their weight has not their weight their weighted ADM has not increased. So, there's their spending per pupil then is not going to change again, we're conceptually out here a few steps now. But when the yield goes down, because as representative Beck said it would go down if we got rid of the equalization ratio and all it's being equal, then as the yield goes down their tax rate would go up. So the same the same effect happens that's that's what I just wanted you guys to see is the same effect has happened where they use the equalization ratio or not, you end up at the same place it's it's it's going to just because the rate is still going to go up. They're going to cost factor adjustments. I only caught part of that. It's good argument for going to cost factor adjustments, which is, they both have their pros and cons. I guess. So you are going to take us through weights and waiting factors. Any other questions about the interactive effects. But I sort of the other thing that blows my mind about this is I could for the two we can sort of see it and get our heads around it when you add in five different factors, you can't predict how they'll interact with each other inside your own brain only the internet like only a spreadsheet is capable of doing that. That's true and that that was part of the discussions I recall represent cornhuisers and back in the task force is that the results were not what people were expecting necessarily. And that had to do with the interactions of the weights, you know where where some people will go up in one area but down in another area, or stay flat and so they're, it just changes at the end. Sorry. Before you go until the weight weighting factors is 287 the bill coming over from the setup. Does does that include the equalization ratio that they still keep that in. Yes, that that that is still in the data. They did not take that out. And we're going to have a pretty comprehensive walk through. So just very quickly continuing the neck the next slide is to show you what the weights are that are recommended in 287 that are using in the modeling that you'll be hearing about. And then the last cut the last couple slides are just a quick walkthrough of going from a school budget to with offsetting revenues to education spending because that's the number we care about when we're talking about tax rates is education spending. And for the education front to a large degree. And then what happens is you change as you change the equalization not the equalization apartment, the equalized people count if it goes if the equalized people count goes down then your tax rate goes up if you're spending if you're spending stays education spending stays the same. Can you take us through that. Sure. I don't know if you want to. Yes. Okay, so we're going we're on slide six. We're not going to talk about the waiting factors. We can go back slide five that is perfectly fine. Well, I'm, it's okay. I still have trouble visualizing the, I know about grade range and I know about I know about poverty. I can understand small schools it's the sparsity population density ones that I really struggle with and the question I keep trying to ask, but I don't know who to ask is what tell me a district that has under 36 population per square mile just because I want to visualize it. I want to know where it is. I will I will open that file because I off the top man I can't remember who it is. I don't know if it's of them or is there just one or I. And can I ask another question. Are we wed to those three break what those three brackets is there a sort of database reason why we're using those three without why we're using three and why we're using those three. The answer the answer is yes. Again I did not do the model and quarter pressure, Professor Colby, and, and, you know, Bruce Baker and the other folks. When they were looking at sparsity and cost what what they found where their inflection points where the where the slope changed dramatically you in this case probably go down. They were changing but but they what they saw was somewhere around the 36 people per square mile is is where they saw the cost changing. You know, again, I'm not I didn't see with the model itself I'm not 100% sure what they were looking at but that's what they saw. And then they saw another inflection point when it went to population became around 55. That's why those two points were picked they were the inflection points where the where the slope of the line changed noticeably statistically significantly, I guess the right way to put it. I assume that that analysis controls for all these other factors and I don't know how exactly you would do that but if it's a low population district also has many poverty students. How do you control for that and try outcomes and those inflection points. I will tell you flat out my statistics were too long ago to to remember how they did it. I mean if I sat down with the model and talk to them I might remember. But they they're there they're methods for controlling where you do. You can do you can run multivariate regression analysis where it's it's controlling for different things I don't remember how to control because again it's too long ago. But that's what they, that's what they did. If you would like a, not too technical explanation you would probably ask Professor Colbert and I'm sure she could give it to you. I don't think I'm qualified to do that. I also have not seen their model as to what they were actually looking at specifically. And so these numbers are here because these are the numbers in the study we are of course not tied to anything in the world because we're the ones who need to put out the bill in the end. And is there a spreadsheet or a map or something that would show us which districts are in these categories. Yes, I actually pulled that up right before we started this, this part of the conversation let me go back to it. There are districts that have school districts that have as far as the of 36 or less, there are 42 of them. Let's see what's, I mean, if I'm going, I'm going from the top, we can start out I'm just going to read the first five or 10 or something I want to really be 10 bar first five. There's a wind hall but they don't operate a school. There, there's Meadoway, which is, Meadoway is that I want to say Rupert and thank you Rupert and Paula. There's I can't read my own graph, let me spread that out a little bit here. There's Caledonia cooperative, which is, which is, which is Barnett. Waterford. Thank you. I actually know these believe it or not. There's Canaan, there's Northeast Kingdom choice, Northern Mountain Valley. There's Fletcher, there's Champlain Islands, Blue Mountain, which is, which is Rygate, Wells River, and Groton. There's Waits River Valley, Topson, and I used to tease there, I should know, Topson. It's okay. You can put them on the spot. There's Stratford, Granville Hancock, so they're actually quite a few. And then if, if we look at those who are, let me get rid of that filter, those who are between 55 and 55 and 36, there are another 32 districts. And then there are 16 that are below 100 and the rest are four. Yeah, Brad. Okay, tell me, tell me on your list there. Well, first of all, could you send that list to Sorcia? Sure. And could you tell me how many of those most sparse districts, how many don't operate a school? And what would be the reason it would cost more if you're not operating the school? It doesn't. What I was just giving you was a list, I wasn't giving you a list of who gets the sparsity. Wait, I representative Ansel's question was more, I heard was more who is sparse. Let me, let me jump back and I can tell you very quickly. So let me just walk it up this way. Brad can send Julia a spreadsheet that's messy and then Julia can format it into something readable for us. That was not a dig on you, Brad. I was just trying to save you some time. It's okay. It's all right. You can go on with which one. Okay, but I can easily get that information out. That's not a problem. It's sitting in the background of the model. Thank you. Any other thoughts on the weight page? Yes. Yeah, I'm just curious now that George asked that question about not operating districts with sparse populations. Brad, so the weight is not applied. Thank you representative. I just realized I misspoke. I was thinking about the small schools one, the weight, the weight for sparsity is applied, even if they don't have a school because it's a, it's a, it's a sparse school district. So it is applied. I misspoke a minute or two ago. But, but if they don't have, if they don't have a school, then they don't have a small school. So they wouldn't get that way. That's right. Okay. So what's the logic behind applying it if they don't have a school. I'm not 100% sure I can answer that fully. I think Scott has a perspective on it. The kids still has to be educated. They still have all the underlying factors and some, some, well over half of them are going up in a public school anyhow. That school is going to have to, you know, have the money to deal with that kids needs. But I don't understand if your, if your school is not. I don't understand how the sparsity of the district that is sending you to school effects. It's going to cost us to educate. The same. So let's say, for example, let's say I have a district with 100, an operating district with 100 kids. Okay, they're operating a school for those 100 kids with a certain sparsity. Okay, if that, if that school, it's going to cost the school so much money to educate those 100 kids. Okay. Let's say you have another school school district that has 50 kids that live in that district. And say, you know, then you have, then you have these adjacent districts that are sending kids, you know, they're tuition kid to the district. 50 kids. So you got 100 kids 100 kids. These 100 kids that are a combination of operating and tuition. If they have the same needs as the school district that has 100 kids, then their operating costs are going to be the same. They're not going to be tuitioning the kids. It's not costing the school district more because there's parts to send to tuition a kid to another school. I'm saying they have the same sparsity. You know, if you have a district with a certain amount of sparsity, and the kids are all from that one district they go to that one school. There's no difference between that and a school with the same number of kids going to one school. It costs the same amount of money to educate me the way. Yeah, well that's true, but that assumes the same sparsity between the sending areas. Yeah, the district where the school is which is probably not the case in most instances is probably the school is in a more less sparse district. And they're getting, you know, having a tuition bill to the sending school, the sending district. I agree. But you're, but you're talking about the nuance between, you know, combined districts that doesn't necessarily make some difference whether that district is tuition again, or that district is is joined it's still the same. It's the same, it's going to cost the same amount of money to educate kids. I think the question that I'm struggling with I just don't understand it yet is that by using the sparsity weight to follow the logic of what we're doing with weights for creating tax capacity. And what, what do we want that district to do with that capacity what what is it that they're not doing currently that we want them to do with that additional capacity and I don't understand it with sparsity I do with somebody I don't want to cut off that conversation, but I think it to me anyway it's helpful to think that there are non operating districts that have like wind hall, a school that was operating and it just, you know, at one point became. an independent school so it's the dealing with the same population students in the same building. Just a different, different arrangement, and then you've got districts like districts that have an approved independent school, sort of similar situation there perhaps and then others where they're just you know they're sending into town where there's a, there's going to be more population to start with. And we're thinking about it I think there's maybe three different scenarios or at least two different scenarios that are in the background. I couldn't. Representative or Madam chair let me see if I can rephrase your question the way I think I'm hearing it I'm not sure I'm hearing it this way but I think I am. I think what you're asking is, is there a difference. In what kids need who come from a sparse district who do not hyper school they're they're tuition versus what those kids need who are in a school does that where the costs are because of what's happening within the school itself. That was a question that was one step back. I'm ignoring the tuition question and I'm saying in a sparse district, and I get some additional weight as a result of that sparsity calculation. And the whole thinking behind this is that we're creating text capacity because we want the district to do something. And that's not the way that otherwise if this isn't worth doing. So what is it that we want that district in that sparse district and nor ignore the tuition question. What is it we want the district in that sparse district to do differently. Well I think. You know Jim go ahead. Well we had this question a year ago with regards to English language learners. But I think I'm coming around, you know, the question was, if we change the category clay, is there any assurance that as opposed to just putting it in waste that actually gets spent on that. I'm going to assume that we can assure that it's going to be standard and I want to know what it is we want them to do with that money. Good education. Chris. I was going to say the only thing that I can logically think of is transportation. Right, but that would be the only difference. Scott and they can. So, I think at least twice. I've been in the room with Professor Colby when the question has been asked. Their analysis indicated that in areas of the state that were sparse. They did not have the same employment options for both for subcontractor and for direct employees that were more populated areas the state had, and they were, because they couldn't find them or they couldn't, they, because they couldn't find somebody there they were put into very expensive options, or they were having trouble just holding on to their faculty that are going to districts that are able to pay more. Because they have density. And so these numbers were so that these districts could compete with the larger districts for employees. And so to clarify, sort of, Professor Colby is very careful as was Bruce when he came in that their analysis around the weights does not point to any particular patterns and spending or point to what the money should be spent on. And it's just sort of the difference between these factors and costs but the qualitative analysis that also happened pointed to what Scott was saying and then also sort of in the subcontractor like an example for me is that in my school district which is not sparse. There's a lot of support from designated agencies in the schools that's available, whereas in the more rural districts even in my county. They have, they can't access designated agencies as easily and so they have full time staff to provide those same services, which winds up being just a few kids for just a few kids and that's just sort of one example homeless lay is on and like getting, you know, is sort of another one of those. Well, you had a thing or not at all. George. Look at that if you're tuitioning kids to another district, you don't have any of those expenses. So why in the world are you getting a sparsity. It's just low in your taxes spending anything more on the kids because that's being taken care of over the school in a different district. I think you're assuming that wherever that kids being tuition to has a dense population. It may not. I mean, if it doesn't, it's in the tuition cost that they're charging the expense. But if that if that school, there's a worker independent is in a sparse area of the state. It's going to cost them more to provide the services which means that's going to show up in the tuition costs. That's right. So, so why then should you additionally, when you're getting that tuition skin in the tuition cost, why should you. Why should you get a reduction. Well, I guess the weight is available in order to cover the higher tuition costs that district. Operating school in that case would only get the sparsity. They would only get their own density for the school the kids that they're educating that are from their district. The weights don't fall the students. Is that true. Language learner. Yeah, with some fall students. In current law either. Right, Brad. Right. The way the way sir at the district level. So it's on your example, sir, let's say you have a district that they're operating at school. They've got their own kids. They would receive weights to help with educating those kids. But the help for the kids that are, you know, tuition and is there. They're capturing that additional money that's needed through the tuition payment. How that district is affording that tuition is they get to keep. They keep their weights. And to sort of add another. Thank you. I think the hypothetical imagination part of this whole thing is that I can think of it. So even if a kid in a super rural district like somewhere in the kingdom was tuition to more urban district. That kid in their home and in their sort of home lands home geography might not have the same sort of cultural resources. I don't think it's going to be as easy fingertips as a kid in a more urban district. I don't know if it's necessarily to like given all the amazing cultural stuff that happens like, you know, right. Deep in they'd like deep in the kingdom. And that's that's true say in Vermont but it's generally how the differences between rural urban education. I think Jim said. Can I see that note. I mean that conundrum is true and you have in lots of areas. I know right now that if you look at that list of districts that rattles going to send on. You will see districts that have an anchor school or a high school. And there is density right there in that town. But then when you look at the whole district and all those small towns outside of it. It trips one of these. One of these levels. For example, you know, in St. John's very we don't trip any of these levels. Okay, living bill, which is about, you know, about the same population, they're joined with a bunch of really small rural districts. So they basically are playing in the same labor market at St. John's very, but they trip this population density thing. It's not going to do with whether they're independent or operating or whatever it's just that's just the way you're going to see those conundrums all over the state. Yeah, yeah. Logical sense to you. That's one would trip it. Well, it doesn't because the same J Lyndon labor market is one. And I'm not sure that it's still makes sense to me at those break levels that we're talking about. Appreciate the discussion. But how much time do you have with us today, because we didn't stop time on your. No, I didn't, I didn't have anything scheduled for the rest of the day I had to work to do, but I was not scheduled so I got the afternoon. Okay, so let's do one more question and then maybe finish up your slides to that. Well, some comments as a conversation goes around, I agree with Scott you started back a while ago. Saying that one of the reasons to write extra resources for small schools but simple English density is the factor that I, from my experience talking with other people in small towns. They have the difficulty of having resources to hire qualified, the more qualified staff, particularly if they're trying to achieve that diverse curriculum or at least some more cost course offerings they don't have people to do that. So this makes sense. I think to me I think some of our examples what are this what are that I think we're assuming the math is correct on what you've prepared. And what you've prepared for us, Brad. I think we're making the examples more complicated than they need to be. I mean what we should do is follow through the math. And in parentheses on slide page four. Brad, you said that Georgia had corrected for this varsity weights, but the, the math addition under underneath in those columns, you pointed out it's not correct. In the way to the column that's correct. Way that I forgot to update that. And it would be nice to have that correct that I were having this abortion in this. This portion to try to explain us using some of these slides to explain things to the constituents. And I'd like to be able to work from corrected math, incorrect math. So I'm just trying to find out tripping over myself. No, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll make the corrections and send them out to source and highlight that people like to highlight. But in terms of saying that some of our examples comparing one thing to another thing I think we're making it more complicated that it needs to be if we work from from corrected math, we should be able to explain things. And if we pair one hypothetical against another hypothetical that's where we get tripped up, I think. That makes sense to me. Anyway, my 10 cents for it. And thank you, Brett. Sure. My apologies. We do that all the time. I do want. So, Brett, do you want to take us through this tax rate calculation. Sure. So, so, so now we're on slide six. Thank you. So, okay. So I've also learned not to try to change things on the fly. She think I want to learn that years ago, but I didn't. So hypothetical example here and this is simply to show how change and equalize people's changes to actually that's what this is designed to do. So we start out with every dollar that school districts are going to spend so that's their budget plus any separately warned articles. So in this line the total expenditures are $19,250,000. The offsetting revenues of $5,210,000. The office of derivatives consists of federal money titles to see if that type thing. I would consist of special education a transportation a if they receive the small schools or merger support granted would show up there. If they were a town that received tuition students the tuition would be there if they had a surplus would be on that line. So also the line where the cost factor adjustments would appear they would they would appear as as an offsetting revenue. Okay, reduce reducing that's that overall expenditure number. So when you track those two numbers you get education spending. And that that's just over $14 million in this case and again as I said if you were adding the cost factor adjustments that 5.2 million number would go up to maybe six or $7.2 million and the education spending with decrease accordingly. In this in this fictitious example we have 780 equalize pupils if you take the education spending of just over 14 million divide by 780 equalize pupils you get spending per pupil. And that's 80 that's $18,000 in this case. And then fictitiously picked a property yield of $12,000. And when you divide the spending for people the education spending per equalize people technically by the property yield of 12,000 you get $1 50 and that's what the rate would be if that's what's called the equalize tax rate. And that's what the school district generates and then that gets sent out to the towns that are members of the school district town or towns plural. So at that point, then the town will apply its common level, praise in this case I chose 93% why I don't know but I always seem to choose that number, you divide the equalize rate by the by the CLA and you come up with an actual tax rate that is on the home bill that you divide against people's property value of $1 61 3. So that's, that's very quickly how tax rates are calculated. So if we jump to the next slide slide seven. What I've done is I've shown you the exact same thing in that first column. No changes. I've highlighted the equalize pupils and the, and the equalize tax rate. In column two, I still haven't labeled long term medium because that's what I talked to you guys about before we're talking terms of cost equity and such, but this could be equalize people which I really meant to change it to, and didn't. So in this case, I forgetting that it says long term medium and I will, I will change this one to represent a mass and so that it's right. In this case, in this case when you apply the new waiting factors that the equalize people count increased. So one from the 780 to 794 were presuming spending hasn't changed. In this case, and the yield hasn't changed in reality probably both would but we're not worried about that. We still have that same education spending of $14 million just over. We divide by a higher number now 794 and so you get a smaller education spending per equalize pupil figure on line five. You're getting 17,683 now. You divide that by the yield same yield 12,000 you get an equalize rate of $1.47 for. So it's dropped two and a half to 2.6 cents. An example one, the sort of first set of math is current law and the second set of math is if you applied the new weights that are in. Yes, yeah. Okay, thank you. And then again I just divided by the CLA and you come up with a lower tape rate that would show up on a tax rate of $1.55. Then if we jump to seven is it's the opposite. It's rather dark blue and my print off here. And what I've now done is again new using the new weights and again still mislabeled improperly the second column. Page page page. Yes. Okay, that's right. So, so now what I've done is again, new, new, new weights. In this case, the, the equalize people count has decreased. So one from 700 you down to 770 same spending per pupil. So, or not same spending for people same education spending line five though is different number when you divide 14 million for 40,000 by a veg case spending by 770 pupils, you come up with education spending of 18,234 so same level of spending fewer with higher spending per pupil means a higher tax rate so you divide that by 12,000 you get $1.52 and divide that by the CLA you get $1.634 on the homestead tax rate that people actually see. So, all I want you to see here was keeping spending constant. If you change the equalize people count up or down it affects tax rate you guys all knew that but they're just a couple of examples, slightly of course, that I will fix. And just so you see it happens in front of you. We're talking about the equalization ratio before in the difference between current law and the new proposed weights into 87. What's different is the equalization ratio in these scenarios and how much further away is the equalize people numbers from the long term ADM numbers, the equalization ratio is going to change dramatically. That's the best word I can come up with for it. And that's because you can you can see that we have added not only more factors to the to what we have for current law and the proposal. The number increased significantly. Example, poverty is a way it has a current law weight of 0.25 under the proposals 1.03. So it's significantly higher so we've done is we've really increased the denominator of the equalization ratio. So it's going from somewhere around 93% to about 6263% in the modeling that I've done it's it's a significant difference. Again, everybody decreases by that same amount, because it's getting applied applied across everything. I off the top my head and I don't have a right in front of how many people are winning and losing versus their long term ADM but it. It's going to shift because because the we have we now have new weights and we have different weight factors. So it's good it's going to shift who's who's winning quote unquote winning who has more and who has less than what their long term ADM is. I can I can certainly generate something that shows you what's happening with the model that we're doing again reason FY 20 numbers but I can do that. Any other thoughts for anyone in the final five minutes here. Brad. If we go with the cost factor adjustments. I'm wondering whether those should actually follow a student, rather than, you know, the students tuition there goes to a system coming in is like a categorical age. So what are your thoughts on that. It picks up for the final five minutes. Think about it a little bit because maybe it makes more sense than just reducing the tax rate. I go with the kid. Yeah, it'd be it'd be a whole separate proposal I mean whole whole new proposal I have to think about a lot. Yeah. Well I was just going to say what why wouldn't we do it that way that just to pose a question differently. Why why would we not have the adjustment. One connection for lack of a better word is because we don't control it all for tuition. We're trying to control for all the little things within that that when those district bills bills separate. I have we have other than what we pay the bill. We don't have a high school we separate as no control over, or what the tuition is on the other end. And I think that throws the calculation, potentially off considerable. Who gets the money, and then who pays my pay over here, send it over there. So, the question on why the weights don't follow is a good question. But then we open another can of worms. I think you do and fundamentally I'm, I think what I'm stuck on though I was trying to figure out how would you do tax rate so somebody may have an answer that but off the top of my head I don't. Because we still have to raise the money which comes from tax rates. I think you could I mean, I'm sure you can but I mean what would happen is is that, you know, wherever the schools are that are taking these kids. It doesn't think it matters whether they're public or independent is that those kids are coming with dollars to assist whoever provided the education with their unique circumstances. And then all your tuition should reflect at that point it's just what a general education with, you know, would would require. I mean, the, the tuitioning, I mean it would it would work itself out. I mean, you would just see, you would probably see tuition rates come down to reflect that. Right. I would wonder how long that would take and what Brad said about how to calculate tax rates, the towns that are sending kids out, who wouldn't have a cost factor adjustment in there. As part of the funding available to them would wind up with tax rates to cover all of those down. If the tuition went down but how long would it like I guess I would wonder what the buffer would be between when the tuition goes down. That's based on the base cost for students. You know, not all those things that come in with time. Receiving schools are very, they're having conversations with school boards they know what they're going to afford. They have those conversations, all the, all the time. They know what the tax rates impact on the tax rates are the tuition, whatever tuition they decide they decide on. They know that that impacts the tax rate of the districts that are sending kids to know that. I don't think so. No, not not not that I can think about happy try to answer any questions you might have for me still, but I don't think every other thoughts. Use them up for the day. I'm sure had any today. I want to be sure to thank you for joining us on really really short notice. You're welcome. I, I mean, I, I shouldn't have tried to change things which is what I did. Thank you. You're welcome. I'll talk to you later. I think we can. Your hand was up first. Oh, Well, I'm just generally thinking about this. We allow local control. We allow. Just because we've been in this room for a really long time, and we're going to talk and I want to do maybe a 10 minute break first before we do that.