 our formal agenda is just to discuss what our formal agenda should be going forward. So for anybody joining us, this is Senate Education. It's Tuesday, the 25th of August, remote hearing still during the pandemic. We're back now until we pass a budget, which Tim said this morning, the drop dead date was the 25th of September, but he left open the possibility that it might be actually shorter than that. So I'm personally thinking that we probably do go right up against the 25th, so call it a five week session. So, well, I would say that recent history bears it out. Or is that a realist? Yeah, although if they do get the budget done, I could also see nobody wants to prolong the session any more than it has to, so maybe we'd get a few days earlier than that. But just to say what I just said in a few more words and with some reasons attached. So I wanted to wait and hold off on planning an agenda for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm not sure if you guys got the memo from the pro tem about listing the bills that he and the speaker had agreed on working on. Now, I think that must have just gone to chairs. I think so too. Just to strip it for our purposes down to education, they agreed on one bill that would not definitely, but they think should go through. And that is S226, which is statewide healthcare bargaining changes. That's not even in the house education. That's in their economic development, military general affairs committee with Tom Stevens. So that's the only bill that made the list. In other words, everything else that we've sent them, they don't plan to act on and everything else we've sent them will die for that reason at the end of the session. So that doesn't make me happy, honestly. I feel like we worked very hard on a number of bills before the pandemic, getting them out before crossover. But then after the pandemic, we continued with a normal pace to get them two or three other bills. The agreement between the state board and secretary French will go by the wayside because they don't wanna pursue that bill. Then the only other thing I'll say is that at the bottom of this memo, there was a group of things that were labeled undecided. And it wasn't immediately clear what that meant, but I took it to mean that it would be things that we could decide not to work on if we didn't want to. So there was nothing of ours on the undecided list. There were two things that the house has been looking for. One is their school construction evaluation bill, which we had done some testimony on. So that's in the undecided category and it has in parentheses, a little note that says possibly in the budget. So I think what House Ed's thinking is, is that they might try to secure the appropriation for that, which you remember was a pretty hefty price tag. Jim, do you happen to remember what the cost was on that? Isn't one and a half million? Yeah, so I was in that box, it was Becky's bill. Okay, I think Debbie's around right. It was one point something. So my memory is that we liked that bill, but we sort of didn't like the timeline on it and we also didn't like the fact that not any of it went to districts. It was all money for consultants. But with that said, I would sort of tentatively propose that if the house wants to go forward with that, we indicate a willingness to work on it. It's a little tough, we just got out of the finance meeting, there's gonna be a significant deficit in the Ed fund. It's a little hard maybe to make the argument that we need to spend 1.5 million doing an evaluation when we already know that there are massive construction needs, but I'm willing to have the discussion if nobody's adamantly opposed. And I should put in one more caveat. Given the one way pipeline that has established itself, in other words, we've been sending things to the house, nothing that we've sent to the house has come back to us. So I think it's not a good lookout for us to initiate legislation and pass it again to the house. So what I'm trying to indicate to Representative Webb is that we'd prefer it if they send us legislation and I gave her my word that we would act immediately on whatever they do. That's not a promise to say that we would pass it, but we would take it up immediately because when we send them something, it's been months or weeks at least before they even take it up and then they haven't moved on anything. So I'm envisioning that the couple of pieces of legislation that may pass this abbreviated session that those would start in the house so that we can be sure that they're willing and able to act on them. Senator Parr. So, I mean, I'm probably gonna sound obnoxious here, but they've been meeting throughout the summer. What do they do over there? Like what's Kate Webb doing? I take the fifth. I have zero understanding of what they do. I will just say that in general, the house has a different attitude that I've never understood. I don't know if you guys have ever gone to the wall, you know, the virtual wall of the house and looked at what bills they get in. They get in like 50, 60 bills from the house a year and they never act on any of them. Like none of them, zero. I don't know how house members put up with that. Well, it depends on the committee chair. I think Sharp and Kate have run that way in education, in economic development, my first term, the chair, actually both terms in the house, the committees I was on, we allowed every member of their five minute spiel. And then what we try to do is group, okay, these six deal with this topic. So like, let's deal with that. We deal with topics and pull the bills, but yeah, they haven't. I mean, Kate, I mean, I'll say it, but I think it's just been an app done and some of the stuff and being able to move anything. Well, I don't want to characterize personalities or lay a blame or anything because we just don't have time. So the only reason I say it is my tendency is usually to say these three, four things need to get done. Let's put them out, get them over to the house. But again, the very established pattern is that then they will just die. So school construction evaluation, I think they're serious about moving on. The other thing is districts without budgets. I've asked Brad James to update us on where things stand with districts. You remember we had a disagreement with the house. They wanted an inflated budget. We were willing to do level funded budgets and change the default language in the statute to match that. So the only reason I bring that up is that it was on the undecided list. My tendency and feel free to chime in if your attitude has changed personally, my tendency would be to stay with where our committee was, which is to say if the house was interested in changing the default statute to default from the previous year's budget, 100%, we would be interested in doing that, but we would not be interested in any inflated budgets for districts without budgets at this point. Because the- Are there still districts without budgets? I think there are a couple, but I lost track about a month ago. So I know South Burlington passed there's finally third try with a 1.6, I think, inflation over the previous year. So basically everybody's faced a very fiscally challenging electorate. People are not willing to green light increase unless there's a demonstrated austerity move on the part of the budget or on the part of the board. So like I say, it took three tries in South Burlington where people wanted to be sure that it was as lean as it could possibly be. So I think that being the case, our position is borne out to the extent that voters are not interested in an automatic, they were talking about an automatic 4% inflation back two or three months ago. Senator Hardy. Yeah, I guess I would like just to before I form an opinion whether new or old that we get testimony on where things are at. The two school districts in my Senate district that hadn't had their budgets passed actually have now passed budgets. So they passed on primary election day. So I think there were a slew of budget, school budgets that were up that day. So I guess I'd like to see what the current state of affairs is and see if that changes our position or not before I make up my mind. Sure. Yeah, and as I say, I've sent a request out to Brad and he'll probably send me a long email which I'll forward to everybody. And if we have additional questions, we can ask him. As I say, those two things are buried down at the end of this memo from Tim. It's very clear that he and the speaker didn't think these were high priorities and nothing else of ours made the list. These were both things that the house was more interested in. So then the other piece to lay out what I've got in front of me, Secretary French sent me a little memo with four potential tweaks. Jeannie, did you get that up on the website yet? Is it up on Thursdays? It is on Thursdays. Okay, if everybody can just take a minute and bring up. No, you can't get it until Thursday. I'd have to change the date. Oh, okay. Well, then I'll just summarize and we'll, Secretary French is gonna be with us Thursday and he's gonna present these ideas. One is to change ADM calculation in light of the pandemic. Everybody agrees that's necessary. The last I spoke with Representative Webb about it, she was of the opinion that that should wait until January. I don't see why we would wait until January because it's a simple fix and it's a demonstrable problem. So I know that Representative Webb and Secretary French are interested in changing the 175 days of the school calendar to 170. And I'm a little bit at a loss what the other ones were. There were a couple of other little pieces, more like things we'd have in a technical corrections bill. And Ruth, I remember back, a while back, you suggested a change in transportation, calculation also to preserve the rolling average from incorporating corrupted pandemic numbers. So I'm thinking this might be a place to stick that into because I don't think transportation ever did anything with that. Andy, did they know? Okay, so I'm thinking of that as, oh, I'm sorry, Jim, go ahead. I was just saying have in front of me if you want me to summarize for you. Oh, yeah, please. So first is to reduce the number of student days as you mentioned from 175 to 170 for the school year. And also to increase the teacher and service days, I think from five to 10. Second is to adjust ADM as you mentioned to make it not less than last year's count. Third is to enact a waiver of the online teaching endorsement. And lastly is to require the use of Australian ballot for school district meetings. Right, that was the other one. And so Secretary of French will explain these and give his pitch for each. And we can get some of the pros and cons. I've asked principals and superintendents for Thursday to comment on those. We'll take some testimony on them. Again, I'm hopeful that the house will send us the vehicle bill first, but we can take some testimony and begin to form an opinion on those things. At least three of the five seem like kind of no-brainer ideas. Australian ballot, I'd actually like to talk with Jeanette about that. She's great on questions of voting and all the unintended consequences that might occur. But can I just ask, is that what the fourth one? I've missed what Jim said, is that requiring an Australian ballot for a school district budget. Is that the fourth one? They're five, Rome. Oh, they're five. They're five. What was the fourth one, Jim? Major of the online teaching endorsement. Oh, yeah. Oh, they're two calendar. They're two, there's the teacher in service. Okay, I just counted them differently, but that's the Australian ballot requirement is one of them. Okay, thanks. And Jim, just looking ahead, could you take a look at that transportation calculation and what might be necessary to make sure that that's not adversely affected by radically different numbers in the pandemic? Oops, you're muted, Jim. Can you just please explain that what that is again? I'm not sure what that is. Ruth, do you wanna summarize for Jim what your issue was there? Yeah, and this was something that actually representative Conlin in the house flagged for me. And it's that our transportation aid, which is the aid that school districts get for their busing program is based on the number of students transported and since in the spring of 2020, buses were still running, but they weren't transporting kids. They were transporting food. It's question of whether or not that would count and there were still expenses, obviously those buses were still had drivers and gas and contracts and all that, but they didn't have kids in them. So I don't know, I talked to Secretary French, he had an idea of just adding more money or something like that, but it also could be a language change that would be temporary. And I think it's, there's a two year lag on transportation aid. So I guess just looking at the language and seeing what you think, I just don't want school districts in two years to get shorted on their transportation aid because of spring of 2020, not having kids and buses. You know, it's a good reminder. So kids are going back to school, but it's very possible that all districts, some districts, a few districts wind up having to shut down and go virtual again. If that's the case, we should make sure that because we're gonna be gone. So we should make sure that the changes in statute are framed the way our other ones have been so that during the emergency, nobody's disadvantaged by these calculations. So, and maybe it involves trying to think of what might be necessary if everybody has to go remote again that we're not thinking of because we're out of that, theoretically, we're out of that mode now. But if anybody in their thinking over the next couple of weeks comes up with something that might be a problem if we're gone and everybody goes virtual again, like take nutrition, that's obviously gonna have to ramp back up in the way that it did before. So we might have to think about those startup costs, which we did once that we might incur again. So anyways, that's the brief skeleton of the bill that the secretary suggested. A number of those pieces I know Kate is interested in, the remaining ones seem relatively narrow gauge, things that we could maybe spend a week working on. None of it seems all that difficult. So that's what I've got on my plate. Anything that you guys feel we need to be working on with the caveat that as Tim said, the emphasis is not really gonna be on writing legislation probably, it's more oversight and cares funding or federal funding directing that and oversight of things that we've already done. But that doesn't mean we couldn't write legislation if there was a clear demonstrable need for it. Any thoughts about anything yet to be mentioned? Ruth? Thanks. Well, I just wanted to put in a plug for the ADM count and making sure that we fight that battle if we need to with the house. After you left the finance meeting just now, I actually brought it up there and sort of made the pitch that we make sure we do that now, not later. The school districts need that information to develop their budgets in January is just too late for that. And you also mentioned school meals. This came up in the ag committee this morning too. There was allegedly some report that was sent while we were gone and I didn't receive it. Did you get it? I did, that's up for Thursday as well. Oh, the school, okay. So Secretary French is gonna speak to that. So Jeannie? Yes. So does that mean at midnight on Thursday morning people can see that? Yes, I can change the date or I can email it to the committee members. If you could change the date, that's probably the easiest. If you could change the, would that change the date of the meeting? No. Okay. Well, then if you could make it immediately available, that would be great. Okay. And yeah, it's basically blah, blah, blah. We have a lot of money left over. We have a lot of money left unspent. And I'm a little leery because if you remember in the finance meeting, there was a very similar frame like, well, we were late getting this money out and lo and behold, there's a bunch of it that didn't get spent. And we were late getting this money out and lo and behold, there's a much left. And then the governor is proposing that we hoover up all the money remaining and give it out in the form of gift cards and business grants. And I think, all things being equal, I'd be for that, but all things aren't equal in my opinion. I really think getting kids back to school is number one at this point, especially in this committee. So I wanna make sure that the secretary is serious about using the nutrition money for nutrition. As I say, let's say a month from now, everybody goes virtual again. If he's got 10 million left unspent, that money should plug immediately into getting everybody meals every day just like we did before. So other, anything? Oh, it's essentially my universal school meals balance. Yeah. I like that idea. So I wanted to ask a favor of Senator Hardy and Senator Perchlich. So I'm wondering if as we go forward in the next couple of weeks, if Ruth, you could just personally look into the nutrition side of it a little more than the rest of the committee, make sure that everything's going smoothly, just be giving us updates on that. And then, Andy, I'm wondering if on the HVAC, which now looks absolutely prescient, I have to say, if you could be updating us on that. And one question I have is, all the reporting that's been done on it, Vermont Digger did a decent story on it, but they didn't, they made it seem as though we had underestimated the amount of need. And we didn't, we were being careful in terms of what could get done by December 31st and the number of contractors available, et cetera. So if your sense is that any of that has changed, in other words, we know the need is greater. If it looks as though they might be able to spend more and get more work done than we thought, I would sort of doubt it, but if it looks that way, it would be helpful to know sooner rather than later so that we could go back to appropriations and see about upping the 6.5 million. Because I think there's general agreement now that that's a top three item in terms of best bang for the buck in terms of public safety. So if the two of you wouldn't mind just being a little more on top of that, and then I'll try to remember at each meeting if there's anything you have to update us on. Yeah, Andy. You want an update on Thursday? I can give you a tiny update right now. Yeah, yeah, let's hear it. Yeah, the contractors have been working with the schools. They've gotten a lot of interest when the reports came out and everybody wanted to get started right away, but unfortunately they couldn't get started because they needed the contract. And of course everybody was pointing fingers at everybody else, but I think EPT just got the contract signed so they could guarantee the contractors that they get paid if they started the work. So a lot of contractors were calling me and saying, I want to do work, but you know, EPT won't sign the contract. And I called the EPT and they said, well, the agency administration hasn't given it to us. So they may say it was just a problem with the feds. So unfortunately they're just getting started now even though we worked hard to get the money approved by July 1st at the end of August and this getting started, unfortunately. So I think it'll be harder to spend the money with the losing a month there, but I'll check in with them and see how things are going now that the contracts have started to flow. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's the story across the board. What I heard in finance and that I've heard from leadership is that everything's been taking much, much longer. I mean, look at the emergency, the money for frontline workers that we okayed in the Senate. That was supposed to be an emergency measure that would get cash in their hands. And it's just like run this long meandering course, which is too bad. Other things that anybody has on their plate, it's not that we can't, you know, a week down the road or two weeks down the road get to work on something new. I just wanted to figure out how to apportion our time for the first couple of weeks. So on Thursday, Secretary French will be here he'll talk about that little grab bag of policy changes. He'll talk about the report on summer meals. And oh, I know, Alison Clarkson wrote me one of her constituents had highlighted a problem in pre-K and that was all around the need for a certified teacher and the inability to get a certified teacher during the pandemic. I mean, it's a problem normally, but then this person went on to suggest a couple of policy changes around private providers and how they might interact with the state and public providers during the pandemic. So I've told her we would schedule that witness and talk about, you know, one of the suggestions would be to waive the need for a certified teacher for so many hours, 10 hours a week during the pandemic. And so we can take testimony and figure out what we think, but that's on my list as well. Anything else? Yeah, Debbie and then Ruth. Yeah, I just wanted to say that just so that we feel like we've accomplished something. One of our bills, what about feminine hygiene products being put in schools is moving forward and help them welfare bill. And that's one of our priorities is with the contraception, handing out contraception to you. So at least we'll get one thing. Which is great, but I would rush to note a similarity. So S226, the healthcare bargaining, went to a committee other than House Ed and it is moving and the feminine hygiene product went to a committee other than House Ed and it is also moving. Everything we've sent to House Ed has died, so. Where bills go to die. Yeah, Ruth. Yeah, I just wanted to mention I emailed you about this and just as a heads up about some of the issues that some of us have been hearing about from teachers related to sick leave and remote being able to work remotely and childcare and potentially workers comp. And I believe that economic development is gonna be taking up some of those issues. And so to the extent that people are interested in those, I would just talk to that committee. I've been in back and talking with centers for rocking about it. So just to let you know that I think they're gonna at least take testimony. I don't know what they're gonna end up doing if anything but they're at least taking testimony. And Phil, do you know if joint fiscal committee approved the governor's childcare proposal yesterday for the school-age childcare? I don't think so. They did not. No, no, no, that was healthcare. We did that all morning long. There was a lot of questions about that. And fiscal didn't wanna do, didn't wanna kind of overstep. They approved something, just a tiny little portion of it that would be immediate but they don't wanna bypass the regular appropriations process. Okay. Ms. Tim and I had a meeting yesterday with the commissioner because I had some questions and concerns. So it's good to know that they sort of deferred it to your committee because it was a lot of money to approve without full. Yeah, we met. Senate Health and Welfare met and joined me with House Human Services this morning for what seemed like days but I guess it was only hours. Yes, and we still have more to talk about. Oh, excellent. Well, good to know that you're on it. Thanks, Demi. Yeah, I was glad to see that there was a $12 million proposal but yeah, definitely more work. Okay, so I will, I'll consider those the starting series of things that we'll be taking a look at. My thought is that we'd meet Tuesday, Thursday, 2.30 to four. I can't imagine that we'd need more than that for what we've laid out. Senator Kitchell will pretty soon start communicating with me about budget requests, CRF requests. I think the only thing we really have to do is figure out the $100 million. So not to minimize that task, but the $50 million is already out. The $100 million, I think part of the confusion, at least as I see it, is that that was always to include filling the hole in the Ed fund. I don't think anybody that I ever was in a meeting with thought that that $100 million would go to school districts as $100 million in spending. It was if we get complete flexibility, we would use this 100 million to defray the gap in the Ed fund. And then what was left over, we would spend for overages over the 50 million that we've already appropriated. So if we are in fact down to 66 point something million, and we were given magically flexibility, my thought would be that we would drop $65 million into the Ed fund. That would leave about 35 million. It sounds like the administration would then begin arm wrestling us for that 35 million. But it's clear, and I think Ruth pointed this out in the finance meeting, it's very clear that the 50 million is not gonna be enough. So of that 100 million, we have to make sure that if it's not gonna be used for the Ed fund, there is a big chunk that's still reserved for K through 12. And we'll, you know, worst case scenario, we would have to count on joint fiscal to divvy that out with us gone sometime in, you know, October, November. We could give each school district a gift card. 150 million. It has to be sent in their district. Exactly. Yeah, I don't know. There's something about the gift card. If they had called it something else, you know? Well, that's the end of this big problem. Cause like, you know, I live in Wilson and like, can I spend my $150 gift card at Best Buy? I mean, it's a local store for me, right? And if they don't have it in the store and I had to order it online, you know, wouldn't that be the same thing as spending it locally? Spoken like a true shitting in County person. Okay. Okay. Well, so that's all I've got for today. I've got enough to stay on the line and set up some agenda stuff with Jeannie. Just a heads up that as we go forward, if there is something that needs adding to our agenda, just drop me a line or at the end of our next meeting or whenever, bring it up. Otherwise we'll move on this stuff and I will try to mix in some oversight with working on these potential bills or pieces of language. So I intend to bring in superintendent's principles, the NEA, the administration, private providers, independent colleges, because I'd like to follow up on the testing side of what we did, the final piece of work we did. You know, reopening for higher ed, reopening for K through 12, we'll do a broad overview of oversight and these little legislative pieces and I think that'll be what we have time for. Okay, everybody, good to see all and I will see you Thursday on the floor, I think. Isn't that right? Good to know. Good to know. Wednesday, Wednesday at one. Yeah, it's Wednesday at one. See you then.