 after this about proficiency based standards and ratings. Absolutely. If there's any other opinions you'd like, just ask me. I think we'll move to here. I've yet to run out of opinion yet, so I'll understand. Do you have testimony that was looking at it? Yeah. I think Colin's emailing that persistent opening statement, really, because I thought that I'd be mostly questioned and answered. So good afternoon. I'm Don Tenney, 31-year veteran teacher of English from South Hero and current president of Vermont NEA. Last June, I completed my 16th year of teaching at BFA St. Albin's. So in addition to teaching and working at various levels within the NEA, I also served on the Vermont pass force for teacher and leader effectiveness, which is the group which wrote the guidelines for teacher and leader evaluation, and also served on the Vermont standards board for professional educators for four years, and served as chair for two years until I left that position to take this position last July. So I appreciate being invited to speak to you today about proficiency based graduation requirements and to offer the perspective of a practitioner who has lived through the implementation of this new approach to learning, instruction, curriculum design, and assessment. I have a few reflections to offer about the experience of a classroom teacher, but would like to allot most of my time to answer any questions you might have. To start, I would like to recall that the genesis of this new approach came from the pre-K16 Council a few years ago. It was not generated by classroom teachers, nor was it based on student performance data from the field. It was based on theory and theoretical research from a variety of sources. Actually one of my former superintendents, Robert Rosane, was one of the people involved with the Council at the time and one of the proponents of a proficiency based system. While it is beyond the scope of my testimony today to review the entire history of this system to figure out how we got to where we are today, I think we should refer to the Vermont State Board of Education Rule 2120.8 local graduation requirements. You can see that there's a very basic requirement. The graduation credits quote must specify the proficiencies demonstrated in order to attain a credit and shall not be based on time spent in learning. I am personally unclear about how we went from that simple rule to making the wholesale changes we have made in some of our schools, including entirely new grading policies and systems. Our members are experiencing a very broad spectrum of new programs and policies with a new proficiency based system. Now it's a cliche to say that the devil is in the details, so I'll say that the snafus are in the implementation. Anyone would be hard pressed to find any two school districts that have implemented this new approach in the same way. The anecdotal evidence we have gathered reflects the variety of approaches each school district has taken. As I've been asked about our members' experiences with PVGRs in the last couple of weeks, I realized that we do not have adequate data or evidence to reach a conclusion about the effectiveness of this new approach. At our next board of directors meeting this coming Saturday, I will be asking the board to authorize some type of survey of our more than 30,000 members to ascertain where they stand on this issue and dive more deeply into their experiences. If you have specific questions that you would like to answer, I'm more than happy to include those on the survey and report back to you at a later date. I would rather not reach any general conclusions without gathering more evidence from our members. One area of serious concern that I have heard from members is the change in the grading system and the subsequent confusion. For example, in my school district, the curriculum coordinator announced that the state of Vermont had mandated that we change our grading system from the traditional ABCD system to a four point proficiency system. I do not know the sorts of his confusion, but neither the AOE nor the State Board of Education ever issued this mandate. Somewhere along the way, however, many districts followed the same pattern to begin changing the grading system, the report cards and the transcripts. This has been a great source of confusion and consternation on the part of our members. One of my colleagues, a math teacher, has calculated that she spends four times as much time calculating her grades than she did in previous years. This also creates an awkward situation for teachers who are teaching dual enrollment classes since they have to follow the requirements of the community college of Vermont, which are not consistent with the high school requirements for grading. I also wonder how much money school districts have spent on software systems that have been designed to manage the new grading practices. This might be an area that your committee would like to investigate further because thousands upon thousands of dollars being spent on software that is not being spent on books, materials, and services for students. Maybe school districts should be required to report the per pupil cost for these new software programs. I believe we have work to do in assessing this new approach. How will we know that the PBJER approach is effective in improving student learning? How will we know that this proficiency-based approach is effective in dealing with the issues of equity? Will this lead to our students being more successful in college and in the workplace? I have yet to see any statewide or district-wide assessment plan of this nature. In closing, I want to express my concern about the very high stakes decisions that will be made next year regarding whether or not students will graduate from high school. How will we know that every school has policies and programs in place that will allow these decisions to be made with fidelity? If there is doubt about the efficacy of this new approach, I ask that you consider extending the deadline to the class of 2022 or to consider other options. Thanks, and thank you, and I'll be happy to entertain any questions. Last question from Representative Matisse. Just a quick refresher. Do I recall correctly that it was the State Board of Education by rule that adopted this timeline? Is that correct? Yes. As far as I know, it was not legislative. It was part of the State Board of Education. What was in the deadline? So the deadline, the similar question I had, so the deadline was the State Board of Education, but there is legislation that mandated the change in general that would not be the deadline. Correct. That you'd have to re- That's another flexible pathway. Flexible pathway. So what was the... I'm a new member. I'm hearing skepticism maybe on your part of what kind of data was really behind that move is what you're saying today consistent with testimony that this committee might have heard from the NEA or other individual teachers during the development of flexible pathways. I'm just kind of wondering, is this... Not aware of how much testimony was taken from classroom teachers during that time period as it was being developed. There was not much teacher involvement at all when we created, when the PVG Air System was created. Long-send time as flexible pathways. But that's one of the issues, by the way, is that there's been so much focus on the rating problems that PLPs, right, which are at the root of flexible pathways have taken very much a backseat because everybody's trying to figure out how to come up with grades and transcripts. So there's two different things happening, right? And PVGRs have taken really all the energy and time. And so are your comments more directed towards the PVGRs and the PLP? Yeah, I've been at questions are being asked of me around PVGRs and I think that's what started this discussion as well was around the PVGRs as opposed to the PLP of flexible pathways. Because you can certainly have flexible pathways without changing the whole grading system and saying that you're quote unquote proficiency based. We've been, as a teacher of English, I've been teaching writing as a proficiency based program for years, right? We take the process approach there are multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate they are proficient at writing. If we go back to the portfolio system that some of us remember and the writing portfolio was a proficiency based system and a very good one because what it did was that it influenced the behavior of the teacher. And so the teacher actually assigned more writing because those folders, those portfolios had to be built. So it was a very effective proficiency based system even though it wasn't called that. Just a quick follow up. We had testimony, please anyone on the committee correct me if I'm wrong here but I believe we had testimony from the Head of the Principal's Association last week kind of expressing that moving to personalize learning evaluations did not necessitate moving away from a traditional GPA, right? So how does that square with what you're saying or does it not square with what you're saying? Because I would think we're retaining the ability to have a more traditional grading structure, a four point grade structure essentially. How is that different from the PBGR? And I may just be right here. Well, there doesn't have to be that distinction, right? I mean, you can build the proficiencies into the curriculum and maintain the traditional grading system. So a student can still get an 87 or a 94 or a 62 and just barely pass. So one does not dictate the other necessarily and that's to be honest, I was not in the room wherever this room was when that decision was made that all of a sudden it had to change this entire grading system. And just a bit of a caveat. When we're talking about fours now, four, three, two, one, it's not the equivalent of what we know from college at getting a 4.0 because a 4.0 is an A, right? The 4.0 that we talk about now in proficiencies, levels of proficiencies is around exceeding proficiency. So a three means the student is proficient. If you translate that to traditional system that could be anywhere probably 75 to 87 or 88 somewhere in there. So it's not quite the same as just thinking transferring it to what we know as a 4.0 system. I don't know if that makes sense, but. So we're all still just recalculating anyway back to a system that we were familiar with and we were students. Right, and I think it's no one really demonstrates that why that system is bad. The bad part of that system, which we actually started dealing with at our school was when you use a hundred point scale and a student doesn't turn in the work and I give them, okay, you didn't do this, you're getting a zero, right? And then even if he gets a hundred, the next assignment, now his average is 50 so he still is failing. So I think what we realized that we talked about the power of zero, that's easily evaded because he's simply if you don't turn your failure rate as a 50, right? And then your average will be 75 in that case. One of the problems is today and as I heard from a number of educators, there's no immediate consequence for students who don't do the work now and they're leaving it for the end of the term. They're not keeping up. We were told, you know, well, the pop quiz in an English class is no longer acceptable because that's somehow grading compliance, et cetera. That counts as a transferable skill. And so what happens is students feel that they have all these multiple chances to prove they're proficient and as a result, they don't keep up with the regular work. So you're suggesting a one-year delay. What would happen? I would actually suggest that a two-year delay. I'm so used to one-year delay. I get one delay in a year for quite some time. So you're suggesting a two-year delay. What would happen in that two years? I would envision rethinking some of the processes and there may very well be plenty of schools that are ready to go now that they feel that their system has been in place a while. I think some schools were already proficiency based and systems were working much better than others. I think the two-year delay is for those who haven't quite got there. And I think that that what should happen is really studying is this, does this grade, right? Or does this assessment really demonstrate what it is that we want to demonstrate? And that's, I don't know that everyone has that answer right now. And the other piece is, do we know what's going to happen in January when that high school senior has not met the levels of proficiency, right? What's gonna happen in June, right? And are they then retained for another year? Is there summer work? How does that happen? Those things are just being put in place since in many schools now because it's been, you know, I think 2020 seemed a long ways away when it was first introduced. And so I think we're catching up. But it would take, right. But those students weren't even in high school, right? So it took high school folks a while. So and again, I'm speaking from my personal experience and a few folks that I know and I really think this, the questions that I've received from the press recently and coming here today realize we really need to know more about what's happening because, you know, one of the things that I learned when I was on the task force for an evaluation, we always talked about, well, and I'm sure you've heard this plenty, you know, Vermont is committed to local control, right? And we then, you know, push for a statewide system. And as we know that that has its pluses and minuses, so. And there's, so because of the inconsistency because there's no template that districts have done as they've seen fit, not necessarily bad, but we just don't, it's harder to get a handle on what the experience is across the state. When we say it's all over the map, it is all over the map. Representative Jane Matisse? In terms of taking the concept of a survey to your board, would you prefer that we wait to see the findings of that survey and if so, about how long would it take for you to get a full data set? I don't know the answer to that, how long it would take. We're getting much better at surveys because of the technology that we have and we have, of course, access to so many educators. I would prefer that if there are questions that you folks know that you have now that you really wanna know, for instance, did you feel there was adequate professional development offered in your school district as you were preparing for this, which probably will be a question we ask anyways, but if that's the kind of question, let me know and we will put that on the survey and then get back and I would think turnaround would probably be a month or two given, as you're probably well aware, we have been serving a fair bit around our healthcare issues and we've gotten terrific response to that. I don't know how if it would be as quick and as complete as that one was, but we're pretty good. Given that we are a citizen legislature coming from all different backgrounds, I'm just wondering if there would be a possibility of having maybe a group helping to advise on what those questions would be. Well, like I say, we're, I'm committed to having a survey done for our own use and so my offer was that if you want us to include questions, we can. I don't want, I mean, I think that would be a little more efficient rather than the legislature now requests a survey or a study committee. I think we can do a quick question. Thank you, that's a good class for that, I'm ready. Representative, yeah, I know the students in the school I was working with really did not like proficiency-based ways of measuring. They just felt like it was good practice. You know, to, I mean, the people were saying, well, if a kid gets a C and they don't know what the C is for, that's just not good teaching practice. You know, good teaching practices, you've had four conversations with that student when you're giving them a C and very clear rubrics or very clear directions on what they need to do. And I remember reading research that said that the more words there are in an evaluation for a student to use, the let, it's not as easy as getting a grade because the grade is so concrete but it's not just the grade. So again, the teaching practice is having a lot of talking and time with the student to explain where they are, what they need to do, what they need to work on. And so I know they were very concerned about, and this was a long, this was, you know, probably seven years ago. Yeah, because it's so subjective. Right, and you're absolutely right. I think whatever the grading system is to be fair to the student, the student needs to understand what that grade is based on. And if they don't, then you've got to wonder what the point is. I remember Sue Bigham, who was a wonderful reading specialist and worked in the AOE for years, is just a very brilliant woman. And I remember a conference where she said the only rubric a student will understand is a rubric the student helped create. So one of the things that I always did in writing and public speaking classes was to work with the students and write the rubric. So they internalized what the standard was and they knew how to get the A, B, or C. And so when they did get that C, they could go either back to the rubric where they had internalized, this is what it means. And also the parents have an understanding of the ABC that they don't quite know what not meeting proficiency necessarily means. I also thought sitting in on meetings with teachers when we had the portfolio, the writing portfolio, especially looking at student work, the conversations that were so powerful when one teacher gave a B and one teacher gave a B minus and having the conversations, well, how did you get a B minus? By looking at the same writing, someone might give it a B, a B minus, a B plus. And those conversations I thought were so helpful for teachers. You're absolutely right. And what speaks to another issue and that is around calibration. And as we've moved to the proficiency-based system, it's reliant upon rubrics and understanding what the standards are. One of the pieces that's missing right now is do we have our teachers calibrated so that the score in my classroom is going to be similar to the score in the classroom next door? And without that calibration, no matter what the grading system is, it's not fair to students because I can just go down the hall with another teacher and get a different grade. Calibration takes time and there's all the professional development involved in that and we tend to not add that in. One of the things that I have heard, again, anecdotally, is that that's a piece that's missing and that maybe to answer your question in those two years that could be a more robust effort in calibration. Yeah, I'd like to think if there was a two-year delay that there was some active work going on related to moving forward. Well, there hasn't been an absence of active work in as we've put the system in place. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention, you know, I've worked with colleagues who have literally been in tears as they've tried to make this system work and doing the right thing for their students because there's so much at stake for them and the lack of understanding, and particularly for ninth graders and who have gone home and because they're getting one or two because they haven't met the level of proficiency, they think they're failing the class, right? And it's a real brutal way to begin one's high school career thinking that you're failing the class because you're failing to meet a level of proficiency with a traditional system that are other grades to put in there to assure the student, no, you're not done. Here's some work that you need to do. So there are a lot of flaws in the system that will eventually, I'm sure, be worked out and have been worked out in other schools. I mean, where are any places where it's being successfully implemented? I think there's such a wide range. I don't want to speak about any other school, although I'm because of friends and folks in our office and Williston has done a good, Williston has started years ago with a standards-based system and I think they have done some good work and yet there are issues around different school. I don't even know if the whole district would say that. I know there's some folks who have done a lot of good work at Mount Abraham and they came and spoke with us, but again, they'll always, I remember one in service we have folks from Mount Abraham and they've done all this great work. We asked a few questions and it was like, well, we haven't quite figured that out yet, right? So there are certain pieces that are, we definitely are designing the plan as we're flying. Do you see consequences to a negative consequences to a two-year delay? Personally, I don't, there may be the, oh my God, we've done all this work and now we could have had an extra year or two years. I think it would be the only one. I don't know what the negative would be. There's a little bit of precedent in the sense that the state of Maine has just decided to make it optional as opposed to a delay. They said, well, we'll just make it optional, which as I said, there are plenty of options of dealing with this. That was their choice and again, there were a lot of issues that my counterpart remained unnoticed in terms of lack of professional learning opportunities and again, inconsistency, not clarity around what the standards are. And I'm not sure if there was a more of a state top-down implementation. Maybe the AOE is Dr. folks' name, I'm not sure, but so there's just such a range that it's hard to say. And again, I would say that the delay says if you're ready, if everyone is confident, doesn't mean that they have to change. We're not asking, I'm not asking for the change at all, although there are a tailored delay that you know. Oh, please. Sorry. Too soon. What I also just want to do is maybe see if there's some offline folks that want to speak with you to develop this shot, but then because we do have other testimony here and they're waiting. So what was it about? Just real quickly, like one question I would have is, do you have evidence-based like data to show that this advances student learning? You know, and not anecdotal or you know, just something very, very scientific evidence that shows because again, as an educator, one of the things that concerns me about education is that we don't look at output. You know, we look at input, we're gonna do this, this, this. And you know, we really need to do with, like you said, for the money and time that people are putting into it, you know, we want it to work. Absolutely. Yeah, we can certainly ask if there is that, if they have that in place at their schools. Thank you. I might see if we can get a little subgroup to take a look at this. Thank you very much. Okay, I think you all know where to find these questions. Thank you. Brad James, nice to see you. Hi there. Do you, no, yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's a good problem. Do you want this one up behind you or do you want the other one? No, the number one. Any else? Nope, that will affect the other ones if they work like that. You're right. Thank you. I'll leave this until I'm done with you. I can't. Brad James, he's of education, I would just like to start off by saying I love parking in Montpelier. Yes, I love parking in Montpelier. I look forward to it every time I come in here. Yeah, I'm free to talk. I lucked out this time. But when I was here at nine o'clock, thinking I was meeting with you guys at nine o'clock, I had a great parking place. Now I mixed you guys up with Ways and Means on Thursday, and I think that's actually 9.30. I'll check. So, it's good afternoon, get up. So, we're here to give that equalized people update, I believe. When I was here last time, several weeks ago, I was talking about what was going on in terms of the ADM counts that are coming in to us and what's going on. Life has gotten much better. My stress level has gone down. Everybody else's stress level has gone down. We're not done yet, we're very close. And I'll explain it. The numbers behind me are basically where we are right now. I'm showing you the FY18 column here. Just look at the first one. First FY18 average data membership ADM, because that's where we're collecting and using the data right now. Last year it was 87,000, just that was about 87,400. And at this point, we're about at just over 86,000. That's a lower number than I projected. This one, I was expecting it to be closer to, if I recall, 86,000, 86,000, something like that. How close is that to accuracy? I think it's actually pretty accurate at this point. I'll come back. Probably going to take 100, is my guess. Maybe a few more, probably not a lot. I don't think. It seems low to me. But the reason it seems low to me, I'm going to do a quick diagram here, is because ADM has been doing this the last several years. That's probably an eight or nine, 10 year trend, something like that. And then, with the passage of the VAC-166 pre-K, the universal pre-K, it did this, OK? And now it's doing this. And so it's a little bit difficult to project what's going to happen. I spent quite a while. So that happened a bunch of three and four year olds. It did. And then we hadn't had any three and four year olds. We would have had a fairly good curve going down this way. It was working nicely, and it was easy to project on. But that blip there, that two year blip, before it really started going down again, makes it difficult. So I worked my way around and tried to figure it out. And I think I overestimated high, which I don't prefer to do. I prefer to be low, because it's better to be low on your estimate that I'm high. Then we can talk about all that. Margaret talked about that. We told you how the ADM fund works a little bit, in terms of equalized pupils. So anyway, we're down about at the moment, 1,200. When I had told business managers to talk to all their people, I told you it's IT people who are submitting the data to us. Not the normal business manager, not the school registrar. It was IT people who don't really know the data. And they were having issues getting into our system. They would drop leading zeros, who uses those. But we do, apparently, or the provider does, whoever it is. So anyway, we're down. But when I told the business managers that I wanted all the data in as best they could as of 4 o'clock yesterday, our data team then got me the data. I went home and played with it. And everything looked hunky dory until I got to pre-kindergarten, at which point, this was our 11th run, at which point pre-kindergarten was down roughly 900 from our 10th run. And I figured that's something on our side. So our data team are looking at that right now. They're going through it, figuring out what went wrong. Because something went wrong. Because pre-k had been going up. So what I did to get this number was I ignored what was in our system for this 11th run. And I used what I expect to be a more correct run, or number, from version 10. So it's kind of a composite. So these numbers aren't final. But I think they're at the point where we're getting pretty close. So what's going to happen is once we get this issue resolved, one other district has some tuition students are doing with, I will then go in and I will freeze the equalization ratio, which we can talk about shortly. We'll just accept it for what it is at the moment. I'm going to freeze the equalization ratio. And that way, if somebody doesn't have any changes, their numbers won't change. But we still have some cleaning to do in the background. So some people who are claiming a student, two districts are claiming a student, only one can have them. So things like that need to be resolved. So numbers will fluctuate a little bit. So we're not quite done, but it's very close. And I'm much happier that I was blessed that I was here. So when you put this all together, and you calculate equalized pupils, what I'm coming up with, I called Day of the Wrong in French. I'm telling the wrong number because I couldn't remember. When I calculate this year, it's a two-year average. It's 87,800. That compares to about 88,300 last year, for a difference of 502 or down, which is normal. We go down. This is using the whole harmless calculation. And again, we can come back to all these things shortly. Can we remind the committee how the whole harmless works for the average school? Sure. Just very, very briefly, what the law says is that when I calculate equalized pupils, you can't drop more than 3 and 1 half percent of what your real calculation was the prior year. So if the prior year I calculated 100, and this year I calculated you at 90, you can't drop more than 3 and 1 half percent from 100. So you would have a count of 96 and 1 half. And that difference of 96 and 1 half to 90, that's 6 and 1 half, those are the phantom pupils. I think I'm probably not the only one very distracted by the phantom pupil. It's great stuff. So let me just finish here, and then we'll talk about some more. But then the actual calculation without whole harmless. So before I do a whole harmless calculation, the actual calculation is 88,200 last year. This year it's 87,100. So it's lower than I expected it to be, because I think this number is, I think I overestimated this number, I think we're finding out. So that's a drop of about 1,000, which is really not out of place. That's kind of been the norm, but it was starting to slow off. It looks like it might have picked up a bit of bad numbers in the ballpark. The difference between the whole harmless count and the actual count are the phantom pupils, the ones who don't really exist. And this year, based on the numbers that I'm looking at right now, we have 691. The last year we had 111, okay. That, something doesn't start with me, but it might be right, I don't know. It just, it seems odd to me, because this number is more reminiscent of what we had four or five years ago. And the phantom count didn't profit me a little bit. But I'm not sure what's going on out there. Generally speaking, this point I know, right now I don't know. But I'm starting to feel more comfortable with the numbers that you're seeing behind me if they're not finalized. But you know, business members are perusing it right now, I'm sure, because I said something about last night. Representative Melcher. So the whole decline, including phantom students, seems to be in the ballpark of one a quarter to one and a half percent. So if whole harmless only kicks in for districts that have over three and a half percent and the average is significantly lower than that, that would suggest that there are some districts that are losing a large percentage. Is that right? It could be to be districts losing a large percentage or it could just be a small percentage across the board is what it could be. And while I don't sit down and really look at what the percentage changes each year, the actual change from one year to the next is when they can't, I have the data. Some, I think it's starting to slow off. Well, I was expecting it to slow off or to slow down the actual drop off. This to me is suggesting otherwise, but again, it may be because I estimated incorrectly, which in turn is gonna drive all the stuff down below it. Again, we haven't talked about equalized people's account yet, but it's a two year average. But if I was high back when I was doing this back for December one letter, if I was high then the equalized people account I used for the December one letter was high. And that's not where we want to be. It's actually better to be the other way where I was low and it came at higher. It's like the odd verse of that is spending. You want me to come in to make my estimates to be high as opposed to low so that when the yield is set it's gonna lower tax rates later on than what people initially think. And I'm not sure that's what's happening this year. I just wanted to make sure I understand what we're looking at. Sorry to drop it back to a very basic level. This is not basic. So it feels basic. So to me, so the actual number of pupils is what I think it is. That's the actual number of pupils. Phantom pupils are the difference basically the gap. Once you say that, hey schools, we're not gonna let you drop more than 3.5%. So they're fake. They're what goes into that calculation. And the whole harmless, the purpose of that is so that smaller schools, particularly if you lose 10 kids or something, you don't see a huge decline in funding. Yeah, no, no. Okay, there's something to stop right there. I'm missing something about. Well, that's what you just said. They get less funding because of that is a common misperception. We don't fund based on kids. Regardless of how you count it. We fund based on what school districts say they're going to spend. So when people are town meetings, they vote on a budget. You have certain revenues that you know are coming in, you subtract those out, and you have what's called education spending. That's what we own school districts. So kids haven't even come into the equation at that point. They have when they're building their budgets, but not in terms of state funding. So this doesn't have to do with state funding. What this is leading to is equalized pupil number right here. What this is leading to is this is leading to how we calculate tax rates to raise the money for the education fund. And again, that's a longer conversation. Well, we've had that. Yeah, I know. Conversation. And I will tell you, it's a conversation you probably can have five or six times before it starts making sense, regardless of how, who says it. Okay. Yeah, really, remember, this is complex. It's gone through a change last year. And so there really aren't stupid questions here. You're probably asking a question for everybody. Representative Jim Batista. Can you remind the committee, ADM is a rolling average? No. Well, yes, no, no, sort of, yes. How many years? That's a good question. Average daily membership, ADM, is, comes from a 20 day census period each fall. It's from the 11th day of school through the 30th day of school that you're 20 days. And what the school districts are doing is they're counting every student they publicly fund. If a student is there for the full 20 days and publicly funded, they're one ADM. If they're there for 15 of the days, they're 0.75 ADM. Okay, so it just works. So the 10 days, you're half an ADM. That's how it works. So it's just 20 day FTE. If you move the day after the 30th day, doesn't matter, your ADM count doesn't change, okay? It's just that type of thing. It's hoping not to be countered during flu season. Yes, exactly. But actually, they don't need to be in school. They just have to be enrolled. So they could all be out sick. That's all fine. But they have to be enrolled in schools, what they have to be. You're going to equalize pupils. Right, yeah. Okay, which is what ADM goes into actual, then we do the whole parms and put them backwards intentionally. So when we're now talking about equalized pupils, and we can run through equalized pupils, I don't think you have time to do that today, but I will happily come back and run you through equalized pupils and watch your eyes spin. That's great. So that's fun. But equalized pupils is a two-year average of average daily membership. So for what I'm doing equalized pupils right now for fiscal year 20 next year, I'm using this year's ADM and last year's ADM. I take that average, then I add state play students to it from the prior year. And so I now have my long-term average. I then apply weights for various categories. Such as? Such as secondary, which is an additional 13%. Poverty, which is a calculation. It's 25% based on a ratio of your poverty count versus your count of kids. And then... ELL? ELL, that's the last chapter. ELL is another 20%. And then pre-k is deflated because they don't cost as much. The other three categories are presumed to cost more. So you get more weight because it's more expensive to have those kids. Pre-k is presumed to cost less. So it's deflated by a 0.46 factor. Did you do special ed? No, special ed is not a factor there because special ed's fun differently. It's part of education spending. So it's not, but your special ed students are in your equalized pupil number, aren't they? Yes, they are. They're just weighted at one. They're just... They're whatever they happen to be, but not an IEP does not affect it relative to what you're... Because there's additional money coming in from another funding source in other students' source funding formula, the special ed formula that's bringing that pain. Just curious, since we've been on this downward trajectory of equalized pupils as well as ADM for a while, I'm just... It seems that as our, and in our district, our superintendent has optimistically thought that maybe we're approaching a floor with student population. Which district? Yeah, right. So let's just assume that's not true. As it's going down, as I understand it, the students that are weighted a little bit more, at least in one category, the secondary category, those class sizes are slightly bigger than the class sizes that are typically coming in. Not always, none of your whole population is going down. So I'm just, is the ratio between ADM and equalized pupil changing in a predictable way as that pattern plays out? In other words, you can have the same ADM across the school district, but your equalized pupil number is actually getting tighter as the population leaves the school at the high end. I'm just thinking, I'm just wondering if you're seeing trends in those kind of two lines. It's a good question. I haven't looked at it that way. If I find time, I can and will, because it's interesting. You're expected, though, right? I kind of do, because there was a bolt that was going through the school system several years ago, and it's kind of worked its way out at this point, where exactly you're seeing what you're seeing, the egg going down the snake, and suddenly most of it's gone at this point in most districts. I just kind of took a quick look statewide, and it looks like the elementary grades up through, maybe, if I remember correctly, maybe through fifth grade, fourth grade, are higher in aggregate than the fifth, sixth, and seventh grade, then it takes them back up for eighth, ninth, and tenths, and maybe eleventh and drops for twelfth. I think eleventh starts to drop too a little bit. I'm going off the top of my head, I don't really know for sure. But it's a funny thing. When you look at it over time, it's, you know, you could kind of see that bolt going through. It wasn't giant by any means, but it's bolts. But in general, the population's been not everywhere, but in general, the overall state population's going down. It's interesting, I wonder how birth rates in the recession interact. Yeah, we're actually, that was, when it really hit Vermont, it was 2009 and 10, I think, when we really hit Vermont, we started seeing it here. So it was a couple years after this, the rest of the country. So say 10, 11, you know, we'd be seeing those kids either coming or not coming in. So 10 years ago, it's fifth grade now. Yeah, yeah. Robinson, do you have a question? Just one other question on waiting while we're talking about that. So if we look at changing the weights in the future, how difficult would that make your calculation of ADM projections? Because you described we had a trend, we added pre-K, the trend changed, and now it's coming back. Wouldn't changes to weights in the future add a level of uncertainty to your projections? No, and the reason because is there's no weighting involved with ADM, okay? I see, yeah. The weights are applied to ADM. Yes, the weights are applied to ADM to get to the equalize number. It would change my projections not because when I do this, I'm projecting both, trying to get them to converge as I'm doing the other work that I'm throwing numbers in, trying to get both sides to come in so I get what I'm hoping is right. Apparently it may not be this year. But so it's not gonna affect that. In terms of the equalized pupils projecting that, it would. However, it's kind of a zero-sum game. As you, if you change weighting factors, you increase secondary to 25%, or you increase poverty to 30%, you increase ELL to 25%. What that means is those districts that have higher proportions of them have a higher pupil count, and means those districts that don't have a higher pupil count, the sum total is pretty much the same. Before whole harmless, that's where people are changing. But that boy washed itself out after a year because of the change in the formula. So in order to model it, it's very easy because the way the spreadsheet's set up, I wanna change that number, and just type in a new number and it goes right through the whole thing. So that part's easy. But we can predict what's going to happen in this little, you know, the future as well as the parts. So is there a place where you just wanna freeze it? Yes, yes. When we get our problem solved, I guess it's probably the best way to put it, when we get our problem solved with a pre-K, I will run it through, and I will take the data, and I will tell people I'm freezing it, this is it, and I'm not freezing the data per se, but I'm freezing the equalization ratio. And the equalization ratio, since we talked a little bit about what's happened to the equalized pupil calculation, the equalization ratio is used to take that, that really, that big number when you added the weights to the two-year average, you now have too many kids in there to bring the whole number back down to what it should be to the state. That's called the equalization ratio. It's about 94.8% right now, and then 4.7% or something like that. I will freeze that, and then once that's frozen, anybody who doesn't have a change because of cleaning in the background, or, oops, I forgot to count those 15 kids who are tuitioning out here, which happens, okay. Those who aren't having any issues like that will not have their number changed, it's done. The people who have minor changes will, that ratio will not change. They'll be able to figure out what it's going to be, but we're not gonna keep making changes that much longer. I just, at this point, I would say probably within two weeks we'll be completely done, I think a perfect closer to a week. But the woman who's doing the check for what went wrong in the system is working on it now. She's out in the field doing stuff tomorrow, so it'll be Thursday before we can really connect again to see what happened. And so I think, I really think we'll probably finalize things the next week because it's really my anticipation. So just going forward, the Ways and Means Committee will be using the data that you have. They will be setting the yield sometime in third week of March or second week in March. We will pass that, then go to the Senate. Budgets will come in. They will have more accurate information, closer information, and then they'll come back and they will set the yield and then we'll agree on that. So all in all, this has just been challenging for the school districts who are trying to calculate. It has been, and it's hard for them because they're talking to their voters shortly, in town meeting, and they don't have finalization on a lot of these things. So it is a difficult process for them, and I understand that. So that's why we're trying to get things done as soon as possible, but by the same token, we want to be as accurate as possible, too. We will certainly have an after-action discussion once this is all over and figure out what's fixed, what went wrong here, with people in the field too, not just internally, but with people in the field too, to see what's going on, make sure that these problems are resolved so we don't come anywhere near to this point next year. And this is separate from the SLDS, right? No, this is actually coming in through the SLDS. Yes, this is coming in through the SLDS. The SLDS system itself is working internally. It's people who don't know the data trying to get it to bring it in so that it gets pulled into the SLDS correctly where the problem is. And even my guess is, even if you had people who knew the data, they would have troubles trying to get things to move in. I think a lot of it's what normally happens in the first year of a new process. Things just do not work smoothly. This is just, they're bumping easy, even in the right words for this one. This is the Himalayas, but that's not good. Basically, three that you're waiting for. No, pretty much everybody is now in, all the districts are in. When I last, I did a run on the seventh, that was run 10, so whatever the seventh was last week. I noticed that St. John's very, their public student census was a big, big count, had dropped out. And it's because the person had gone and changed something and when they put it back in, there was some leading zero that was gone. And so nobody recognized until I looked at them and said, oops, something's not right here. Then there were a couple other districts that they knew their kindergarteners weren't in, they knew their pre-K weren't in. Those are all in now, okay. The problem was somewhere on our end this time with the pre-K account and so that will be resolved. And at that point, I didn't see any of the big changes really outside of that, except the ones that expected that we're gonna come up. But there were no big fluctuations like I've been seeing in the past with districts now. So everybody's in, everybody is there and we're now doing the finalization. Kind of, that's kind of where it stands. Any other questions? So sometimes you wanna go over equalized pupils when you have a little time and you're awake and you wanna be mystified, I will happily come back. I almost did a little bit of that with us, fortunately. So we have been primed. Okay, that works out for me. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Thank you, for the record. For the record, my name is, representative Barbara Rachelson. I represent part of the program, Tim. And I introduced each 185. It's nice to be in the new expanded education committee room. When I served on the Ed committee, it was the tourist class, so this is lovely. I hope you all appreciate the spaciousness of this room. So I was approached by Gene Robles, who's a graduate student at UVM and here today to say a few words to you also. Gene approached me to introduce a bill much like the one that California passed. So in 2013, California became the first state in the nation to ensure rights to transgender students. So Gene helped work on the draft based on both the California law as well as model law and a document that the agency of education has produced called best practices for transgender students. So H185, a bill to provide student rights to transgender and gender non-conforming students would provide students with access to gender segregated school programs, activities and facilities that are consistent with the individual's gender identity, regardless of their assigned sex at birth. And it would be, in this draft, it would be used for any student enrolled in a Vermont public or independent school, and it would allow them to participate in gender segregated school programs and activities such as athletic teams and competitions, facilities, also it would allow students to list on their record their gender identity as opposed to their gender at birth. And it would encourage teachers and other staff to address students by name and pronoun corresponding to their gender identity and also not disclose that information except for as required by law. And last, it would allow schools, it would have schools encourage and allow teachers, staff and other students to identify their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression on any forms used to collect that demographic data as appropriate. So today, Jean is here with us as is Kate German from UVM. And they'd love to say a few words about the importance of this bill and how it can make a real difference for so many students in our state. So what? Right. Pull up a chair and go back. So we have, so this is Jean? Jean, yeah. So for the record, can you give us your name? Yeah, so my name is Jean Robles. Nice to have a script, so I don't miss anything. It's fine. It's my first time here. So, hi everybody, my name is Jean Robles. I use the pronouns and I identify as gender, queer and trans, masculine. I'm a grad student at UVM and the higher education student affairs program here. And so last year, the Trump administration released a memo which would define gender as a biological and mutable condition determined by genitalia at birth. And this definition would erase trans individuals. So if the federal government defines gender in this way, trans people will be unable to go to the federal government for civil rights protections. Trans people will be unable to change federal documents to align with their gender identity. And trans people's citizenship will be fragmented because our rights will maybe recognize at the state or institution level, but not at the federal level. So, trans rights are human rights and as a state that has led in queer and trans rights, we should act. The state of Vermont at UVM currently protects trans students from discrimination based on gender identity and expression, but trans students continue to face obstacles because of their identity. And the 2017 Vermont Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed that queer and trans students were two times more likely than straight cisgender students to experience bullying in the past month. Four times more likely than straight cisgender students to hurt themselves in attempt suicide. And these data matched trans at a national level. So this bill would show the state's support towards trans students being able to fully exist as themselves at school through the acknowledgement of their identities, access to facilities, and also assessment by collecting the demographic data. And for me personally, I came here from Iowa, I'm just a grad student here, but I was able to transition emotionally and physically as a gender queer and trans masculine person because of the support systems here and there's a lot more trans people identifying more openly in the state of Vermont. I also was able to transition because of the structured student health insurance here. I'm in campus resources, so Vermont is a good place. And this bill would just tell students that we care about them as a state, especially in our political national climate. And just wanted to thank Wendy and Kate for supporting me through these two years that I've been here in Vermont. So you have experienced support at UVM? Yes, for sure. Good to hear. It is Mother Morissette's serving news, so it's nice to hear that you've had that experience. Yes. Questions, Representative Austin. So hi. I just have a couple of questions. One is, and I don't know how to say this, but I feel like with the sports teams, that it's not just gender, but it's also muscle. Do you know what I mean? And how does that, in terms of, that's why we have men's sports and women's sports. Women don't compete against men because just men are built physically differently. So how would that be equal for students? Do you know what I mean? That if there was a trans that went, if there was, let's say, a woman or a man that meant to be a woman and then competed on women's teams, would that be equitable in terms of the strength of that person, in terms of their capacity as a man? Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. So there's been this talk for a while and actually there's some schools that have supported trans individuals, especially in Harvard, if you've heard of, there's a swimmer who's transgendered who was female, signed up for it, but the school let them compete. And is it okay if I ask the other constituent to, to help me answer this question? For here? Yeah. What we can do is maybe just ask your question again or we can get you all, once we've heard from everybody individually. You understand what I'm asking? Yeah. Okay. So what we'll do is just get everybody through and I think that's what we'll do and then we'll just get questions to everybody at the same time. Okay. Then we'll put it in one person. You know, I'm not sure. Yeah. That's everybody in the room. Okay. If they're like researchers, if they're in politics or whatever. You know. So we'll get to that in a second. Okay. Okay. So the next one is Kate. Hi everyone. Hi Kate. I'm Kate German. I'm the director of the Prism Center at UBM. We serve queer and trans students on campus and focus on making campus a more equitable place for lesbian, gay, for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. I came today in support of Gene and also because I think this bill is really important. I've been watching what's been going on around the country in terms of support for trans students and what California did was really groundbreaking at the time. I think this bill for Vermont makes a lot of sense because in a way it enshrines what the practice is most commonly here but also takes a middle ground compared to what California did and encourages or suggests some things start happening at the school level but doesn't require it. California went straight ahead and required things and so there have been some massive infrastructure changes there. This bill doesn't go as far so I think it's easier for schools and it just makes sense for us here. I think one of the things that we see on campus is a lot of goodwill and intention to support students but when it comes down to it, people have questions about structure like what can we do and what can't we do when a student's gender identity or their expression how they're showing up day to day is different than what's on their legal records and as we approach each of those hurdles we've figured out where the lines are and I think the bill does a good job of making it really clear to folks in schools at all levels that really as a daily practice it is appropriate to call someone by the name that they're requesting to be called. It is appropriate to use the pronouns that they ask to be referred to by in which usually match their gender presentation and it is appropriate to let people have access to the facilities that match their gender identity and expression and I can speak a little bit to the sports teams question but first I wanna say most commonly this stuff comes up around facilities and so it's more about facilities and access like if a student is presenting as a boy and a boy in kind of every aspect of their life except for their legal sex on their records of course it is safer for them and for everyone else for them to be using the boys restroom to be competing on boys teams that really is dangerous for that student to be forced to compete on female teams or to be a part of programs for women when they're clearly not presenting as a young woman. So to the question about sports teams we've seen this addressed at a lot of different levels that I'm actually not a sports fan so I can't say where UBM's teams fall in all of the competitions and things that I know at the NCAA level. There are best practices and rules now about allowing trans students to compete and at most levels now we're seeing the Sports Association saying it's appropriate to affirm the gender that that person is presenting as. A lot of what we have been told or think we know about biology and the way that hormones affect how people compete doesn't turn out to be true at that level. I think the Olympics might be the one exception but when you're competing at the college level it's appropriate for people to be on the gender specific team that they're presenting as. But really younger than that we're not talking to a lot of people who are taking a lot of medical steps towards transition so it's much less of an issue. It's really about their safety and comfort and affirmation from their peer group that they belong on that team. There's really not much of an imbalance for younger students or people that be competing like that, if that makes sense. Questions? Everything okay. I just had a couple of questions. So you had mentioned that this bill is perhaps doesn't go as far as the legislation in California. Is that in the use of the word shall be? So in other words, it's encouraged. Is the, I'm looking at the bill. Is it the shall that? I was referring to the date of the demographics, I think. Yeah, thanks, June. Part C. This wasn't encouraged. Yeah. That's like, yeah. Oh, I'm up, I'm sorry. I'm up online on the first page, line 19. I'm just wondering how much leeway you've left for schools that might try to not comply. You have a question? I know the guy. I don't know if that would happen, but I'm just wondering. You know what channel it is? Yeah. If it was maybe permitted when they leave it up in school. I guess that's what I'm asking. So I think it should happen. Yeah. Okay. Can you feel the language is strong enough? I mean, I deferred a lot. Jean did a lot of research on it and both in talking to Kate and at looking at lots of different documents including the AOE document. I mean, I think I would feel great if the committee took it up and made a determination, is it strong enough? Because we wouldn't want to have everybody opt out of like, oh, that's nice, but we're not going to do that here. We're too small or... I guess that was my question. I don't see that this bill speaks, and that's okay, I'm just saying. So it speaks to the being able to use facilities consistent with the individual's gender identity irrespective of the gender listed on the student's records. Just thinking that with the secondary age of the student population, we may have, and anywhere in society, maybe especially in that age, we might have students who are non-binary, students who are questioning, and I don't see that this bill kind of speaks to the availability of non-gender specific facilities, but I'm just kind of curious if that's something you've thought about. It's, I think you're raising a great point. I think, yeah, again, it would be great to have the committee look at that. I know that we always like to do things incrementally here, so this seems important, but I think that could also help a lot of students feel legitimized and this too, and I do, as a social worker, I am worried about, as a society, how we can normalize things for kids together, trying to figure it out and not feel like they have to keep it as a secret. Well, I would just follow up by just saying that it occurs to me that, in a time, really, I support this initiative, and I'm glad to have the bill in front of us. It is also a really challenging time with many facilities budgets generally in Vermont schools, and I was just thinking that the re-identification of a, say, a facility, whether it's a bathroom or another facility, into a gender-neutral facility, may be more, something that can be expedited more quickly without necessarily requiring new construction, and it just might be, so just something to consider that as we move forward on this, that it's kind of the nature of one of things. And really, the other, allowing facilities to be consistent with the individual's gender identity, that shouldn't require any construction either, right? It's just that, I think, having an additional piece in there may be helpful. As schools are looking at using money for safety, I mean, kids are gonna be safer if they are able to sort of be in the right spot. I'm thinking about what happens, you know, some of the incidents that have happened around the country. For younger students, often what we see now is that, you know, a young person might be assigned, for example, might be assigned male at birth, realizes that that's not true for them, and that their gender is female and is raised by their family as female, but maybe at that point it doesn't have their records changed, so they enter school as female, and need to be, it would be safer for them to be recognized as female and to be treated as such, but if an employee in that school has access to a record saying that that's not that child's sex at birth and outs that student, that that's where the safety issue comes in, it's actually, or tries to prevent that student from participating fully in school life, the way that the student is trying to be recognized, so, yeah, when you think about safety issues, it's much more of that outing or trying to stop people from participating in the, you know, fully in the activities of the campus or the school that is more worrying than kind of the reverse. Do we have any data on schools that are doing well with this already, or not well with this already? Do we have any data on that regard? It's hardening to me that there are no, we haven't had any lawsuits in Vermont from people trying to be kept out of their school activities, and so in some ways it's kind of the absence of really, of glaring problems, it's really common, but you know, it happens, I mean that's how we know in other states there are a lot of issues and it often happens district by district, and so, yeah, it can be much harder. And there was a program on Vermont edition, gosh, I don't know, it must have been, I feel like it was, it's before we and I had the conversation about this, so I think it was in the fall or the summer, and people were calling in, a lot of parents were calling in from all over the state and talking about sort of the lack of resources in parts of Vermont and just how isolated their children were, and so again, school could be one of the places where there could be support and validation of that could truly make a difference. I mean, that's not to say that Chittenden County or Rutland are doing great because they're bigger areas is obviously we still have our challenges, but it's tough to be a kid period right now, let alone add in something that is still not widely understood by others, so. Yeah, and we wanted to add that last point on point C about the data, just because we want schools to collect this demographic information so that they could do some analysis based on queer and trans student identities, and then how the students are doing grade-wise, how the students are doing behavioral-wise, just like they do with other demographic information that they already collect like grades or disability, because that's what California also started to do with their schools. They just started collecting the data this past fall so that they could look at retention rates and look at how students are actually doing, because without data we can't really save much because we're not counting the students as part of our population. What's your answer to that? My question did relate to that passage you were just discussing. I didn't fully understand, I didn't take the intent of that passage or what challenge or problem that was addressing. Could you just elaborate on that just a little bit more? I like why we would like to collect the data. Well, I understand why you would like to collect the data. Is it not currently collected or are people discouraged from it? Almost sounded like there was a problem you were specifically trying to address it. I don't think I know the problem. At the higher education level, I would say the problem is, so we don't collect the data currently. I know that's true for UBM and in conversations I've had with some folks at state colleges, I believe that's true as well. A lot of the data collection at that level is driven by what has to be reported federally and right now, depending on the agency, it's either not being asked or you couldn't report it if you wanted to. So it encourages schools at this level to collect that information and do something with that information climate-wise. At UBM, that's been really important because we happen to be doing a climate survey that launched actually last week, but the last one we did was in 2011. So until now we haven't had any climate information daily, any data to back it up, I would say, about how well marginalized folks who help marginalized sexual and gender identities are doing on campus. And this bill is intended to cover post-secondary as well as what grade levels are you guys aiming at here? I think it was K through, that's a very, very tough. I didn't see that, I might have missed it. I think it was K through, what? Is it K through 16? Like, all the way through? I think it almost says K through 12, but maybe that needs to be done. You're saying you're on public learning to be school, right? I didn't know that by definition, excluded post-secondary? Right, so that is going to be a date. So this would not be post-secondary? Well, I don't know. Like, this, right, yeah. Well, we can ask you to check with Jim, but you're thinking of this as PK-12, correct? Are we hoping that we'll also do high-end college, too? Yeah, yeah. So you're a team, I need to add that. PK-16, or, yes, I get it. But now, it's pretty much PK-12. PK-12 is easier than PK-16. So if that were a huge barrier, I guess. Or higher ed, it's easier to separate than what I would say. Pretty sure. I don't know. Anything else? Is that one of the questions? Yeah, but it might, you may not tie into the book, but as a former EMT, one of the concerns I have is that I come upon an accident and as a trans person, biologically, they're different, and sometimes you're making really kind of split-second decisions. And I was wondering if there was ever a concern about having to identify in an emergency, because just physically, there's a difference internally. They may, in terms of the kind of care that they provide you, if they would provide the wrong care. Does that make sense? That the intervention would be not correct, and it could be unsafe. I mean, because they're thinking in one gender, biologically, you're another. Another bill for, right? I know, I just wonder if that's an issue, or there are, I mean, it's probably one, it's a very small percentage, but it was a concern along with the EMT. And I think it's a really thoughtful question, and I think it wouldn't be, yeah, I don't think it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't bother them. Yeah, it's not in the bill, but it is something just to think about. It's a dilemma. I mean, I can't, and again, it, you know, that certainly seems like a bill that could percolate. I know that there was a bill last year about removing gender off of driver's licenses, right? So, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, when I think about the health and wellness of this student population, I think the problem is in kind of, is in emergency situations like that, it's that when the EMT show up, they refuse care when they discover they're working with a trans person. Yeah, not that, that's not right. Right, like that kind of level of discrimination, or being told, you can't play, or, you know, you can't use the bathroom in school, good luck to you, right? So, it's those things that we're trying to protect against. You know, safety or medical decisions and very sure and a lot of time, and maybe making a lot of assumptions. But the daily challenges in terms of students' mental health, oh right, which seems like we know that, you know, this being at risk suicide data is pretty clear, so. Right, the good would outweigh the bad, you know, even if you can't send me. You guys can have that conversation outside too. Does UVM have a policy? Specific to access to facilities? We have, so gender identity and expression are included in our non-discrimination policy. Athletics has policies by division, but promotes, you can play. And we don't have, for example, we don't have a policy about bathroom access, although we're working on an affirmative statement of folks being able to use the bathroom that feels appropriate and safe and comfortable to them. But I think we have more actions in place like we're already working on multi-user gender inclusive restrooms and all the single user, well, before it became the law, the single user bathrooms got transitioned, things like that. Other things like housing are case by case basis. So you're in process, working on it? Probably because you're there. Always trying to improve. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. For the record, Katie McLean, Office of Legislative Council, and I'm not often in this meeting, so hello to folks that haven't met before. We're looking today at a bill on rate on testing in school but I thought I'd give you a little history lesson before we jump in and look at the language. So this is a concept that's been floating around the building for several biennium. Last year, there was a version of this that was taken up in Senate education and they took a lot of testimony, they did a lot of rewriting, and what is actually introduced in front of you today is the version that the Senate Education Committee had worked on, so they never voted it out of committee, but this never made it by my time, it never made it to the floor, but this is... Well, actually it ended up in the miscellaneous... And it was, was it vetoed? Is that what happened? It died in committee, it died in committee of conference. It was an S-2 something. So it was... S-2-57. S-2-57. Okay, thank you. So it ended up in the meeting bill. Okay. Okay, well there we go. So anyway, this represents the work of the Senate Education Committee last year. So first we have in section one, a definition section. We're creating a whole new chapter around radon testing in schools, and this is in Title 18, the health chapter. And we're defining facility to mean all or any part of a building in a school's campus that's deemed by the commissioner of health or his or her designee to be at high risk for elevated concentrations of radon. And then school means a public school or an independent school. The next section has to do with mandatory radon testing in schools. So this first paragraph of section A directs the health department to perform radon tests on facilities of at least 40 schools annually. And until each school has been tested. And then those schools that request a test can be among the first to receive a test from the health department. And the school should be tested at least once every 15 years. The next section, subsection B, says that the health department is to provide the principal or the head of the school with all of the following information. First, the results of the school's radon tests. Second, information on the level at which the EPA recommends taking action to reduce radon concentrations at school facilities. And third, information about the health effects of elevated radon concentrations on children and adults. So that information all goes to the head of the school. And then in subdivision B2, the principal or the head of the school is to share the test results and all of the information that's been provided by the Department of Health with parents, guardians, students, school employees, school volunteers, the school board and any community representatives regularly present at the school. The top of page three, there's language that any new school construction or expansion of an existing school is to attempt to use radon resistant new construction. The language in that section is interesting. If you look online through it says shell endeavor. So we have the shell, which is the strong, you must do it, but shell endeavor, that softens it a little bit. Section two is the creation of a school radon mitigation study committee. And this committee is really focused once the testing has been done and we know that a school potentially has radon, how do we pay to mitigate the radon? So we're creating this committee to explore funding opportunities for the mitigation of elevated radon concentrations in schools and contingency plans for the loss of related federal funding. And next in subsection B, we have membership of the committee, the state treasurer, secretary of education, commissioner of health, member appointed by the state school boards association, a member appointed by the Vermont superintendents association, a member appointed by the Vermont independent schools association, and a radon mitigation professionals certified for testing and mitigation by national, the national radon proficiency program was appointed by the director of the department of labor's workers compensation and safety division. At the top of page four says that the committee is to have the assistance of the agency of education to do this work. And there is to be a report on or before December 15th of this year. And the committee is to submit the report to this committee and to the senate committee containing viable options for funding the mitigation of elevated radon concentrations in schools. In terms of meetings, the state treasurer or his or her designee is to call the first meeting by September 1st of this year. The committee is to select a chair from among its members at the first meeting and the committee shall cease to exist on December 31st, 2019 of this year. Paragraph F has to do with compensation reimbursement. This is the standard language we use at the end of enacting legislation for committees. So this gives individuals who are not employees of the state and not otherwise compensated for their attendance at the meetings per DM compensation and reimbursement of expenses for up to four meetings. And this money for these payments would come from the appropriation to the agency of education. This is really about two things that are not mitigating. Were you on that committee of conference? Yes. So does this sound like it was what? It was very similar language in some of it. Now, my question is, we had a school this summer that was tested but found to be, I'm not sure where the school was. The cost was, I don't have to find out where it was. I think it might have been someone who wrote in county. One of those marble schools. Was it on granite? Was it right on granite? I don't know. I'm sorry. Unfortunately, not totally. No idea, Kate. I don't know. Which school it was? Yeah, no. This starts with the testing of 40 schools, which is what they do already, is that correct? I don't believe in any test, but 40 a year. I think the number that the health department is testing is much smaller than that. Okay, so we just need to hear from the health department. Okay. Yeah, so they were looking to increase the number of schools as I remember. This increases it, and it also has that time line of 15 years, each 15 years, a school is being tested. Did they go to school? Question, we're becoming a builder. There's not a findings section in this bill that you think there would have been last year. I'm just thinking we have the lead abatement bill now and also had some tests recently for PFOAs. This seems like an absolutely good thing to test for. I know there's a certain amount of rayon testing that sounds like it already happens. I guess I'm just looking for what's the upshot of this in terms of appropriation of any or additional capacity needs for the agency and could we expect to see that supported by some more findings? I guess I'm just not in a position to have a sense of, not trying to minimize it, it's just there's not information showing how compelling or urgent this issue is to kind of add to the list of initiatives and boards. So is that information available? That's something that we could probably use data from the health department. No, we can't talk about that. I know, the version introduced last by IEM did have findings. It did, okay, so I could refer to that. And that originated in the Senate? I believe so. At 257? 257 is where it ended up. It ended up, it started as a stand-alone bill. Yeah, it was started as a stand-alone bill. Because it was in the house. Did you have? It was made up, it was in the house. Well, it could be that there were companion bills, that's often the case, and you have matching bills, and then one moves and one body. Yeah, it might have been a special session. It looks like it was S279. 279, and 257 is where it ended up in the Committee of Conference. I just pulled that up. To the findings, okay, there we go. It's 257. Where did you find those, Caleb? I got that in the 2017-2018 session under S279. 279. So we obviously have some work to do. Some background work. Is there anything else we need from Ledge Council? Just, is there anything about new construction? Because isn't there like a way to mitigate a rate on if it is found eventually? I mean, you can put a pipe in, it's much cheaper than having to, like, with new construction. Well, our real estate agent here can tell you, because you had to deal with rate on mitigation. It's like 1500 bucks to put a rate on mitigation system in, but when we build our new construction houses, we already retrofit it with rate on pipe to be there. Right, so I was wondering if a new construction of schools, if that should just be a standard thing. That would certainly help, so. Do you think so? Do you think that's a new construction of schools, that they just put that pipe in just in case? It's a lot more than just putting a pipe in, so. Yeah, and it's also different. It goes underneath the whole floor. With a big school, it's gonna be in some rooms and not in other rooms. Ledge and Magings. Yeah, just a lot cheaper to do it. I'm just wondering about the makeup of the committee and who does what. The study committee, the agency of education is providing staff support, but the treasurer is chairing it. It just seems like an odd arrangement of leader and staff support because there's seven rooms. A quick correction. So if you look at, let's see, subsection E, the treasurer is calling the first meeting, but then in subdivision two, the committee is selecting a chair, so it's not necessarily the treasurer. Okay. Does it say anything about how? Sorry. Does it say anything about testing itself, like the longer-term ones, like nine-month testing instead of like a 48-hour test like we do in real estate? Well, I'm not gonna find names, not that. Okay. This is on June 23rd. And then just the other question I have. So the Department of Health was the primary witness that we heard from in the previous biennium. They had a program manager, I think, and then a policy person. I'm also just wondering, I mean, did the person who had this draft, did look at whether the health department was more appropriate than the agency of education or otherwise in terms of providing staff support? Did that come up? There would probably be a great question for your witnesses. I don't remember it coming up last year. There's something to look at. I've been looking at their testimony from last year, which is very good. In retrospect, I think it might have been helpful to have gotten her in first. But anything else in terms of just the legal drafting? We're gonna be changing it, I'm sure. And just can you remind me, in terms of the way we draft, which are the things up here? Because we also have a lead bill coming over from the Senate. And I wasn't sure if these might be able to be put together in some way. Is it the statement of purpose that can't be changed? Or is it the subject? We generally don't change either. We generally say that those are... Oh, if the act was, okay, an act. Is that the part that we don't change? You definitely can't change. An act relating to rate on testing in schools, that we can change to reflect if the bill changes. I mean, we wouldn't change it for partisan reason, but we would change it to reflect the accuracy of what's in the bill. Yeah, okay. Thank you. We really have some work to do. Nice to see you. Nice to see you as well.