 I'm going to call the meeting to order. This is Senate Finance January 13th. And I think we're still missing one committee member, but I'm going to start. The agenda today is to get an update from the Department of Education on the CRF money that they received. There were several bundles. What that status is, what they did with it. I believe there was 14 million returned, which I believe Joint Fiscal has not used. But I know I'm hearing positive things, which we'll know next week when we get the revenue update about the revenue status in the Ed Fund. But just kind of walking us through the whole November 1st letter that set people kind of into a tizzy, and then where we are now. But I think we'll start. And I know Secretary French needs to leave by 2. So we'll start with him. So Secretary, welcome. And the floor is yours. You have a lot of people with you. So I'll let you just kind of orchestrate. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. It's good to see you. It seems just like a couple of months ago we were meeting. So it's. Yes, it was. Nice to see you all again. Yeah, and thank you for the introduction. It's been a lot of hard work. It's also been a fairly dynamic situation. You alluded to the sort of the 15 million, 14 million right when we were in the process of doing that. The new package was announced, which included an extension of the CRF for a whole other year or so. But today, I do only have 30 minutes, but I'm happy to answer questions. But I do thought it was important to bring our team in that's been dealing very directly on these programs and all kinds of details of Bill Bates for CFO. Brad James, I think we've met Brad before. And Jill Briggs, who's been a wonderful addition to our team, has been really wonderful managing a lot of the detail in this. So it's been a very challenging piece of work. Every time these programs come out, we have to stand up new ways to allocate the funds and manage it and so forth. And I was pleasantly sort of surprised. I just assumed all states were moving forward so energetically. And I guess apparently they're not. Vermont has been very successful, I think, and part of it's our partnership with our legislators on being able to get these funds out the door rapidly as possible. So thank you for your support. With that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Bill Bates, who I think Bill's gonna share a screen perhaps and invite the others to take you through a presentation and answer your questions. Thanks, Dan. Let me see if I can share my screen here. I think Faith did. Let me know if you can see my screen. Yes, care summary. It is up. Excellent. Well, Madam Chair, thank you for having us. And if it would be all right, I'd like to just take a brief moment and introduce our newest team member. That is Jill Briggs Campbell. She came on to the scene about 10 months ago. And I think, Jill, it was your first week on the job that we said, surprise, surprise, surprise. We're gonna repurpose your position for a temporary basis to help out and agency COVID response. She, Jill, has been with the team for about 10 months. We hired her as a business project manager and as the results-based accountability lead. But like I said, COVID hit about 10 months ago just as she was coming on board. And she has done a remarkable job of helping us navigate the everything COVID. Jill, do you want to- I was told this morning that it is 10 months ago today that the legislature got sent home. So, I hope, Jill, you don't take that personally. If you got hired and we went home on the same. It was my first day, actually, it was the day that everybody went home. Oh, welcome to our strange new world. Yeah, thank you. So, I've been told I need to say Jill Briggs Campbell, agency of education when I sign on here. Yeah, as Bill said, it's been a wild ride. I've been on managing the federal emergency funds as well as working with Ted Fisher on the COVID-19 response team. So, that's included all of the school testing and all of those missions as well. So, needless to say, it's been a crash course. In particular with the federal emergency funds and this next bucket of funding, which I'm sure we'll touch on today. If you need details on the status of any particular fund at any time, please feel free to reach out to me. I'll probably have my fingers in all of those pots as well. So, I'm available for whatever information you need. And I'll hand it back to Bill with that, but thank you all for having me here today. All right, thank you, Jill. So, yes, Bill Bates for the record agency of education and what we would like to do is give you a high level overview of care summary, which would include Essar gear and we've got in here CRF summer food and child nutrition. We also have joining us today, Brad James. He's going to also provide a deeper dive into the CRF portion of it as far as CRF is concerned for LEA and independent schools. And so with that, we'll proceed to the next slide. So, as you're familiar, we have received $28 million as of March 27th and this is Essar money that we're talking about here as part of the CARES Act. And that grant goes from March 13th of 2020 all the way out to September 30th. And that if you jump down on as of January 12th of 21, we have 11 LEAs that have approved grant awards totaling $6.7 million dollars. And you might wonder, all right, well, we were awarded 28 million, we've only awarded $6.7 million dollars, why is that? You'll recall that with CRF, it had a very short window of use and originally it was going to expire on December 30th of 2020 and then we just got an extension for 12 months. But the LEAs, and I think rightfully so, have been focused most of their attention on utilizing the CRF funds initially. And now that we've done that, you're likely going to see a more rapid application process with the Essar funds for LEA. They have until March 20th of 2021 to submit their applications. And Jill, I think just earlier this morning, you had an LEA calling you and walking you through, asked you to walk them through the application process for Essar, is that right? Yes, that is correct. And we're definitely starting to see sort of all the team members are starting to get more inquiries about Essar. So they're turning their attention to it. What kind of things are the grants for? That's a great question. And thank you for the segue. Let's jump right over to the next slide. I think it'll highlight for everyone where we see the funds being used based on the approved applications that we've received to date. And you can see from this chart here that the bulk of the money is going to salary benefits for teachers on remote instruction. Then you've got a significant amount being applied to supplies and equipment, meeting healthcare guidelines, additional staffing, and then also the cost for school operations. And Jill, we aligned these to the US Ed object codes. Is that right? Yeah, it was a little bit tricky to put these in these kinds of buckets. Our schools track them by accounting object code. So I will say these are a little bit arbitrary in terms of how I broke them out, but these are sort of the major cost categories that we're seeing. And the additional staff is going to include, just to break that out a little bit more, because I think we'll see actually a lot of costs going into there. The hiring of full-time substitutes in case of losing staff because they had to quarantine or positive cases, whatever it may be. The hiring of additional COVID nurses or coordinators and the hiring of additional paraprofessionals. So that is one of the buckets of funding in addition to salaries and benefits for teachers for remote instruction. Those are kind of the major, if we added those two together, I would say, as Bill mentioned, that would be the bulk of spending. So going forward, I can carry these categories over. As I said, it's a little clunky, but we can work within those. You know, the next slide, sorry, go ahead. Madam Chair, do you want to wait for questions till the end? No, we can take questions. I just can't see you. Okay. So I'm going to need a yellow hand, I think, or just say, Madam Chair. Okay, Madam Chair. So I have a question on salaries benefits for teachers for remote instruction. I'm just not sure. Can you explain that one a little bit? Figuring these are teachers who are already have salaries benefits when they were in person. What's the, what's this addressing when they went remote? Jill, do you want to articulate the detail that make up the salary benefits for remote instruction? Yes. And as I said, this is not a perfect way to do this. I had to sort of do some coding to move those costs over. So what was included in here was the hiring of additional staff to teach remote. So it would not be, as you said, already budgeted instructors. It also included things like the professional development and planning time that went above and beyond budgeted expenses, you know, training for online teaching, that sort of thing. I included in that bucket of spending. And then the supplies and equipment to support continuity of learning or remote education includes things like laptops, supply delivery and those sorts of costs that are associated with that. I hope that helps to answer the question. Yes, thank you very much. Great. Senator DeBrock, you had a question. Thank you. I just have a question to make sure that I understood your last couple of slides related to some $28 million that were in March of 2020 made available to the state and that we expended a little over $6 million. And we didn't know that until December that that money would pass over into 2021. And so my question is, did I understand correctly that we would have left some $22 million on the table based on where we are at the early part of December? Senator DeBrock, that's a great question. Thank you for raising that. If we go back to the slide just before this, what Senator DeBrock is highlighting for us and his question is that we have $28 million as of March 27th. And then we are taking credit for having awarded $6.7 million as of January 12th, 2021. And so the Delta there is the $22 million. A key point to highlight is the second bullet point here, Senator DeBrock and team. It's the grants went from March 13th, 2020 to September 30th of 22. What we were rushing to get granted out and obligated and expended was the CRF funds. And so that's different and separate and apart from the SR funds. It was the CRF funds had a very short window of use. And that was up until December 30th of last year until the Congress and president passed the bill to extend their use from one more year. Does that help? Well, yes. How much fell into each bucket? How much fell into each bucket? You mentioned that the grant goes for that period of time. And here we're talking about the $28 million in total as part of the CARES Act. Was all of that $28 million, did it have to be applied before that December date or was only a portion of that subject to that stricture? And if only a portion of it was subject to that stricture, what was the amount of each portion? Yep, good question. So now this is separate and apart from CRF. So CRF is the funds that came through the US Treasury. And we have Brad James on the call today. Those, and he was leading that effort. Those funds were, you know... Can Bill, can I jump in for a minute? Yep, please. So Senator Brock, I think what you're asking, I think what you're doing is I think you are confusing the CRF money and the Esther money. They're both from the CARES Act. You're quite correct about that. They have different uses and they had different time periods. The Esther money that Jill and Bill have been talking about extended through September of 22. So that 28 million is good up through 22. I think what you're referencing and thinking about is the CRF money that Bill is alluding to. And that CRF money was a much larger piece of money. And it did expire up until the new legislation. It did expire on December, as of December 30th, 2020. But that's not the money that we're talking about right here in this slide. Okay, that's a different chunk of money. And that's the money that I'm gonna talk about briefly in a little while. That money has now been extended out for another year. So I think I want to say until December 30th, 2021, at this point. Okay, so that money you're gonna cover subsequently. It was a little unclear on which funds we were specifically talking about. No, I understand your question, Tyler. It's unclear when you're in the middle of it too. So this is the Esther money only. And it's been, we've been told since the beginning that we would do the CRF because of the timing first. And then we would get into the Esther. And it sounds like you are just now starting to take in applications for Esther funds. That is correct. The applications have been open, but we have been suggesting to business managers and the business managers themselves are pretty savvy about this. That it's best to use the CRF money first. So they didn't even, a lot of them didn't apply for the Esther money as they were using the CRF money. And so this is kind of, they are starting to pick this up now. And so as we see on the next slide of the 11 LEAs that have approved grants, this is the breakup of that money that Jill spoke about. The next slide is just a different view, a different slice of that. It's showing you the numerical values of each of those categories. And unless there's a question, I'll move on. The next section is gear, which is another source of funds. This is the governor's emergency recovery funding. And so again, similar to Esther gear, we had 4.3 million that we received on March 27th of 2020 as part of the CARES Act and those grants run from July 1st of 2020 through September 30th of 22. And as of January 12th of 21, we had 12 CTE, all 12, or all 17 CTE centers had approved grants. And they have until March 20th to submit amendments to the AOE. And on the next slide we have a graph that shows how those funds are breaking down, which is similar to what we had for seeing in Esther. You can see here that for gear funds, we had supplies and equipment, and then additional staff and then costs for school operations for in-person. And Jill, any commentary on the breakout of this and what makes up the individual bars? No, I kept to the same categories with the exception of obviously food service, not being one that applied here. So just as a point to reiterate here, for the gear funds, which have the same period of performance as the Esther funds going through September of 2022, these funds, all of the grants have been awarded at this point. And so all of the funds have been budgeted for the most part. So this is funding that the CTE centers were definitely eager to jump on and didn't have any of the kind of same obstacles in terms of CRF for the debate over equitable services, which also extended the Esther applications as we were waiting for the federal government and some challenges in the court. And so you can see that they've really spent quite or are looking to budget quite a lot on modernizing some of their systems so that they can provide hybrid and remote instruction for a lot of the things that would normally be hands-on. And then also the second big bucket over to the right is the costs for school operations in-person. They've had to make a lot of adjustments to the actual sort of physical plan and the way that classrooms are set up so that they're not sharing equipment and they can meet the safety and health guidelines. So that's why we're seeing the costs are looking a little bit different for gear than they are for Esther. It's funds under supplies and equipment. I heard from a couple of teachers who had kids who were doing school at home, a spouse that was working from home and a teacher that was needing to do remote from home and ended up in a parking lot trying to teach your students from her car. Did any of that money go to help with internet hookups, line extensions, anything like that? So in the review of, and are we asking about Esther or gear or both? Any of them. Any of them, yeah. So both the making wireless devices available or increasing access to internet are both allowable costs for Esther and gear. I did see, and this fell into that bucket of supplies and equipment. You're absolutely right. I did see that there was the provision of devices to increase Wi-Fi connectivity and other sorts of costs like that. I think that those stories, the sort of anecdotal stories about classes being taught in parking lots that was very much what we were seeing in the early days of school closure. I would definitely, haven't heard, and maybe the secretary can speak to this, but at this point I would be surprised to be hearing that, but that was definitely an allowable cost and we did see some of that in Esther. Yeah, I think that would be my recollection as well. I mean, it's anecdotal. Like we heard a lot more of that in the initial closure period after the reopening. There's been a lot less of that concern, not to say it's not out there, but I haven't heard as much about it from the superintendents or other stakeholders. Thanks for that, Janet. Go ahead, Bill. Well, Secretary, I'm sensitive to your time. You have a hard stop at two o'clock. Are there other comments that you would like to share before you have to break away? No, I think just to refresh everyone's memory, I think Senator Brock's questioning just points to, it's we've become fluent in these programs, but they are discreet, separate, and it's useful, I think, just to private everyone with the foundational information. What is Esther? What is gear? What is CRF? And now to be somewhat complicated by Esther too and gear too, so we're, it's a dynamic situation, but we sometimes take for granted that we have some fluency in this, but I think that you'll find it useful just to get a refresher on these. Definitely helpful. Sure. And we would be happy to do that, and we can work with Faith to get something set up, if that would be useful. And I can, I actually have a slide that breaks all of that out a little bit more discreetly that I can, I was trying to share it in the chat several times, but it was not working, but that's something that I can send over to the committee if that's helpful. If you email any of that background to Faith, she can make sure we get it. I think a basic definition, I know Esther and I know CRF, gear was new to me. Okay. So what does gear stand for? The Governor's Emergency Education Response Fund. Okay, I knew there was a governor's fund, I just hadn't tied the an acronym gear to it. All right. Was that at the discretion of the governor's office or what? Yes, I mean those funds, essentially CRF was the big bucket under cares, right? And then discreet funding through ESSER was targeted to LEAs, LEAs are school districts. So part of ESSER was to make sure that districts got money directly, but then they gave each governor a pot of money and it's gear is basically designed to be additional education support, but it gave governor some flexibility to look at areas that might not have been addressed through CRF or ESSER and Governor Scott focused in pretty quickly on CTE because CTE centers weren't really addressed either through ESSER or CRF and they were also particularly around reopening, had a lot of reopening costs and so forth. So we thought gear was the best use there. My question was, was that simply money given to the governor to use as the governor saw fit? More or less within parameters. Thank you. Yeah, the parameters are, I would say comparable. I think of CRF as being very restrictive, ESSER being less restrictive gear sort of in that same category, it just gave it to the governors to allocate, but they have to be used in accordance with COVID related education needs. There's a discrete list of available uses. Madam Chair. Yes, I think that's Senator Sorokin, you have a question. Yes, so there's a lot of reference being made to the CRF funds as being the big bucket. How much was allocated for education within the CRF funds and were they part of the 1.25 billion or are they a standalone? Brad, do you wanna answer that? So you got off mute. They were part of the CRF fund center, they are the CARES Act, so they're part of that 1.25 billion dollars we got. That was the money, the CRF funds were the money that you all directed towards the end of the session. You started out at the, I can't remember what that first budget number was, the one you did the short budget for FY21. You directed us to have X amount of dollars that went to various things. Then when you came back in the session in the fall, the rest, I believe the total amount was around $103 million, which was broken out. I might be off by that by a little bit, but that was broken out between efficiency from our child nutrition programs, summer's food and then money to the LEAs plus independent schools. So, but it all came out of the CARES Act as all part of that 1.25 billion dollars. It was a- Madam Chair, can I ask a good question? Go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, I think left center Sarat can finish. I'm sorry. I didn't realize he wasn't done. I'm sorry. Sorry about that. Maybe we could take the slides down if we're really into discussion and then we can see each other. Can we do that? There we are. Okay. So just as a follow up, is the 103 million was that discretionary with the legislature? Could we have put more money into education and less money into economic recovery, for instance? Madam Chair, I would almost defer that question to you as a member of the Joint Fiscal Committee, but I think that was more discretionary in terms of how much was coming to the- I think after we got through the emergency funding last year that the bulk of this went through the appropriations process. You remember this committee did all the work on broadband and recommended amount, I believe probably the education committee did work on education. I see Senator Hardy nodding and recommended it, but the big expenditures, the block grants, if you will, of CRF went through the appropriations process. Okay. Senator Hardy, can you add to that? Yeah, just for clarification, Brad, the first chunk of money was a $50 million appropriation that was given in our first round in June, and that was mostly focused on summer nutrition programs and a few other expenses for basically getting schools to September. And then in our second round, we added another 54 million, I believe the total was around 104 million, Brad, and we took a lot of testimony in the education committee to get to that number about what the estimates from local business managers were gonna be. We worked with Secretary French and this whole team you see here and came up with that number of $104 million. The house had put in I think 96 million and we in the Senate upped it to 104 million. And it was part, we could have given them more, but that was the number that was based on the testimony we got from school districts and the agency seemed to be the right number at the time. The one last question, Madam Chair, I don't know if it was Brad or the secretary, but someone said the CARES money was most restricted, the ESSER money was less so and the GEAR money was even less so. What restrictions are you talking about? Yeah, I was speaking to the federal requirements as to what are allowable expenditures. So I think, you know, that's, I think how I view them in particular the CRF, the legislature had to navigate some pretty tight restrictions in terms of how allocate those funds to ensure the costs were directly associated with COVID. ESSER, to a certain extent I view is less restrictive because it basically says we assume school districts are gonna have costs related to the recovery. We are gonna give this funding directly to school districts as long as they're using the funding in accordance with an established federal program and it can be justified as a COVID expense, they have some discretion in terms of how they use the funds. GEAR basically said to governors, and if there's anything that's not being addressed through ESSER in education, as long as it's within these general five parameters, feel free to decide how you wanna use the funding. So I think it's that in the timeline aspect, for me that makes a useful dichotomy because CRF had very more restrictions but also a shorter timeline. So everyone put their energy on that, particularly Senator Hardy said about reopening costs. ESSER is sort of the longer-term funds and we've certainly encouraged districts to sort of look at CRF first, now that we're anticipating moving into recovery, we know there's a whole bunch of work ahead of us in terms of the recovery phase of this emergency and it was just perfect to wait. What does recovery mean? Starting to go back to normal and particularly I think in education, I would define recovery as beginning to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on student learning and their development. When does, what's the, what do you predict is the milestone of the beginning of recovery? Well, the pandemic is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, I don't know if it's getting bigger and bigger. It's a recovery from. Yeah, I think it's certainly, it's a complex topic, but we see it as being the ability to get back to more in-person because the in-person is really the way we're going to address and not only the instructional needs of kids, but also the relationships and routines that have all been disrupted. So it's an intersection, sort of projection of conditions improving, not conditions getting worse or worse or if you will, but particularly with the advent of vaccine, warmer weather coming. Okay. The modeling we're. Madam chair, I get hung up on definitions, but all this money's been spent on recovery and recovery hasn't started yet. So how do we put that into context? Okay. I don't think the money's, it's been spent on coping is, and keeping the educational system functioning. The bulk of the money is here, I particularly it's about reopening school and being able to operate school in the conditions of pandemic. When I use the phrase recovery, it's like emergency recovery. It's like after the emergency's over, you know, how do we begin to address those needs of students and we're going to have learning loss and things like that. The emergency's not over and we've spent it all. So. Okay. Senator, I think there's more money coming. Oh, well, I just, so what do we call that? Recovery, recovery money or. Okay. Senator, I think you're getting argumentative. And I believe I had recognized, I think it was Senator Bray ahead of you. Maybe Senator- The understanding what we're talking about was both titles and vocabulary. Thank you. All right. I wanted to ask this question before we lost the secretary because it's kind of a 60,000 foot question. And that is we need to respond to the emergency we have. And so that's how we've been responding. No question about it. I'm just wondering to what degree we're investing in things that will in some way not serve us well or won't be that useful once we get back to, you know, real normal. I mean, you know, if you need a fire engine, an extra fire engine, you got to get one to put out the fire, but you might end up with an extra fire engine. Or as most of our investments repurposeable and you can see them transitioning into, you know, schools once we're back to normal. Yeah, I think it's a great question, particularly with Senator McDonald's line of questioning because so much of the initial investment was about buying the fire engines, you know, putting up buying mass PPE, you know, things that we're probably never going to use again, knock on wood. But as we start moving into recovery, I think very much so we have to be very strategic about having the system evolve in a way that can improve the system after the epidemic's over. In particular, I'm going to transition out of this meeting to go meet with my partners at Mental Health. So we're spending a lot of time partnering with them in anticipation of this recovery phase so that the relationships we build doing the recovery we at work will continue after the recovery period's over. So for example, in my experience as a school leader, I've worked in the Northeast Kingdom for 15 years, worked in Southwestern Vermont for nine years. I've noticed over the years there's a significant difference in terms of how mental health services are provisioned in each region of the state. So COVID certainly exposed those inequities of how service delivery is happening. One of the things we want to come out the other end of this as part of our response is a more integrated response to social service delivery with education. So I don't say full service school model, but also to ensure that all regions of the state are being served adequately. Great. Well, thank you. I think at some point we've gotten some distressing building condition report. I think shortly before we went home and I know we put money out for HVAC, but that's also essential, making sure that the air is clean. Yeah, and I think at some point in this discussion, like to get to those are ongoing investments. And we have a fairly aged school building population. So maybe talking about those kinds of investments. So. If I could real quick. Oh, yep. I think this is a great segue into Brad's update on CRF. So we can do a deeper dive into CRF. Then we can talk about the LEA portion of that. We can talk about efficiency from Montt and the $18 million that they've invested, as well as the other programs. So if that's acceptable to you. That sounds fine. Brad. All right. So the CRF money, which we've kind of been talking about in the background here and the foreground and all kinds of different places is as has been said, it was more restricted than its use. The federal folks when they wrote that language made it fairly tight that it could only use a certain things. And then as time progressed and US Treasury who was running the program started sending out guides that loosened up a little bit. So people use different pieces. The money is that you all appropriated for the CRF monies that you appropriated to be used. Initially gave six and a half million dollars to efficiency from Montt for HVAC systems. And they were able to come up with another $7 million, I believe it was, that they could use in the districts. And they've used most that were still in here where they are right now at this point. I don't think we've heard yet. But they basically spent 13 and a half million dollars on HVAC systems and upgrades, bringing the school buildings, I should say, up to the CDC and ASHRAE recommendations for what is needed for ventilation there. My understanding from talking to business managers, there's still a pretty good sized demand out there for more HVAC projects that bringing things up to code. Some of it could be done by doing simple equipment in terms of air purifiers, things like that was a lot of them done. Others are more involved and need more work in their actual HVAC system itself. So that's a good start. That's my concern when the $14 million was coming back and saying, does that mean every school's got adequate air? I don't think so. I don't think so, okay. And one of the things we've talked about with that $14 million, $15 million is coming back is seeing what exactly efficiency demands still can do and what that cost would be. Because I know they didn't do some things because of supply chain issues. The federal folks came out with information on how you could deal with supply chain issues. Basically, they said that if you ordered it and then it didn't come through no fall of your own, that was okay and you could spend for it. But if you knew it was gonna come beyond the December 30th cutoff date, then you could not order it. It was not an allowable expense. So that got in the way, not only with some of the HVAC stuff, but some of the other stuff with the school districts themselves. So one of our ideas is that with that $14, $15 million that is gonna come back is to take some of that and allow efficiency demand to finish up whatever projects it could that were due to supply chain disruptions, things like that. We still don't know what the size of that is. I don't believe they've gotten back to us in terms that they are supposed to any day now, but I don't think we've heard as of right now. But I agree with you. I think there is more out there. Having heard from the business managers, I would say there definitely is more demand out there for more HVAC system. The new ester money can be used for HVAC system, but we need to be careful with that because we and the agency don't have the expertise to monitor those projects and see how they're doing and sign off. That's not our area at all. That's why I first stepped in with the CRF money. So back to the CRF money. There was more money that was also given to child nutrition for equipment. They too had some issues. They weren't sure, I'm not quite sure what happened, but they had roughly $4 million for equipment, different refrigeration units, et cetera, things like that. And they had some issues where the supply chain issue rose its head too, but I'm not quite sure in what sense because I haven't talked to people about that, but the money's gonna go back to them so they're gonna be able to use their money for what we initially thought they would be doing. In terms of the school districts, as was mentioned earlier, it was all very fun, not funny. It was very awful timing in terms of when the CRF money was going to expire on December 30th, 2020. And then when the new bill was signed, I think it was on December 27th or 28th, I forgot in which, that allowed it to go for another year. In that period of time, because there was a cutoff date, we were working with the fifth floor finance and management and they had wanted to know how much money is not going to be spent so that they could take that money from education that was not being used and reallocated out to other areas of the state. And that's where that $15 million came from. We thought there was about $15 million that we weren't going to use. And so that was going to be allocated out. There was lots of discussion in the background which you're probably aware of. And since the language was signed, the bill was signed, that the money's gonna come back to us is how it appears. So in that case, because I'd had business managers say, once we gave that money up, and now it's gonna be extendable, it hasn't been extended yet, but we don't have the money, it's gone. But it's coming back, so we'll get it back out to them. The Joint Fiscal Committee declined to spend it. Yes, thank you. On behalf of the School of Districts, thank you. So that's kind of where that stands. That's what that $15 million is. There's probably a little bit more because it's looking like not all districts were able to spend all their CRF money before the grant expired on December 30th. The way we wrote the grants was the money expired on December 30th, boom, the grant died on December 30th. If you did not spend your money before December 30th, then that money will get swept back in. So that $50 million will probably go up by how much I don't know, but it will probably go back up some. What else along those lines? So I think just going back in general to the CRF money, again, as I said, it was fairly restricted and it's used initially when it came out. And you guys, as the legislature ran into this with the Education Fund, it said you cannot use that money to replace lost revenues. And so that was a hard thing. But then again, as time progressed, US Treasury came out with guidance that relaxed that a little bit. And they allowed for CRF money to be used for lack of a better term, repurposed money that was in your budget. That was used for a significantly different purpose. So one of the things they said that was significantly different and I think we talked about this last spring and fall was the amount of time that teachers were spending that staff, not just teachers, but staff were planning on doing remote learning, on getting ready for remote learning, not remote learning itself, but planning for remote learning. That was a reimbursable cost, even though those costs were in your budget because you're paying salaries, but they were being used for a significantly different purpose according to US Treasury. So some of that money is the money that is going to, that was sent out to the districts. If it was an FY20 or FY21, they now got that money replaced. They have money sitting there. And that's the money that we're talking about this in Act 154, whatever the first act was, which I still can't remember, where we're rolling that money forward so that we are spending less money out from the Education Fund this year in terms of education spending because they already have this federal money there on hand. And that is going to fall. But we'd hope you'd figure out how to do. Well, we're working on that. It's getting a little clearer. We don't have a good number. I'll give you the best number in just a second then Senator Hardy, I'll let you know. I'm gonna stop talking for a moment. The number that I just got from asking business managers right now, and this is not the final number, is nowhere near as robust as I had hoped it would be. It's about $8.7 million currently in the Ed Fund Outlook Statement. You're carrying a number of $10.9 million, so we're down. And that's just the way the business managers chose to use the money. And I'll answer the question when I'm done with Senator Hardy, go first. Oh, I'm sorry. Senator, come in, you should share your question. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair and Brad. Brad, you and I talked last spring a number of times, I would say. And one of my concerns then was that this 104 million plus other funds be distributed equitably to school districts. And with the reimbursement model, a lot of it is dependent on the school districts having a sophisticated enough business management office to come in and get the reimbursements. And I'm wondering on the ground, what you're seeing in terms of, are the school districts getting those reimbursements in a broadly equitable way? Or is it really concentrated on the school districts that have a more sophisticated operation? That, it's hard to say. And I know all the business managers, I know how they work. And what I've noticed in this is that a lot of them did not spend a lot of their monies in FY20 because of the school closure, basically the last third of the year, roughly. And so, a lot of them had that money and they used that money for different purposes. They probably could have had it reimbursed by Sierra, but they didn't claim it. I spent hours and hours and hours and hours talking to business managers, asking them, trying to get them to claim this money to help the Edvin. And they were trying, they were very nervous and very cautious about it because they weren't sure that the feds are gonna come in and say that it's not an allowable cost. And I guess, well, if they do, it's our problem, not your problem, because of how the lands or the states in the back, we'll get back somehow, but the states in the back, not the districts. But they were concerned that costs would be disallowed and so they didn't wanna put themselves in that position. So, some of what we're seeing that doesn't make it a period equitable is how they chose to do things on an individual basis. They're first and strongest inclination was to make sure that school of districts are whole and healthy. And then after that, they started thinking about other things. In terms of the ability, in terms of the savvy maybe, of business managers, who's going to account for it, it was all over the map. There were big districts that asked for a lot, there were big districts that didn't ask for a lot. There were districts that asked for very little. Why they did it the way they did, I don't know. Again, as I said, I spent lots of time talking with them in their monthly meetings and individually, trying to get them to do it. I think in terms of equity, if you looked at it on any way you wanna look at it, I do have one person out on a per pupil basis, on a district basis, on an SU basis. No, it's not equitable. But do they think it was equitable? Most of them do. I did have a couple of them say, well, what did everybody else put in? If my number is so low, how did they put everything else? And they just worked out more, is the large part. Do you have a spreadsheet of the reimbursements, the CRF money and how that was allocated to districts? What I have right now is I have their budgets from their grants. In order to get a grant, they had to send us a budget that showed us how they're gonna use the money. Now, they can switch around how they use the money within that budget as time progressed. But I do have that, and I just got an update on this morning, I do have a spreadsheet that has all the different costs in it. Are you willing to share that? Sure, absolutely. They'll love it. I would love to. You know how much they love spreadsheets. I know you like that. We will let you report to the committee on what you find in all those spreadsheets. I would love to, I love spreadsheets. And I just wanted to also ask Bill if he can share that, his presentation, because what is up on our website is actually a different slide deck. So I don't know if it got sent over or if it just hasn't been posted yet, but there's a different slide deck up on our website for today from AOE. Absolutely, I'll be sure to share. Thank you. Brad, we interrupted you. Not really. I mean, you know me, Senator Cummings, I just wing it anyway, usually. Now, I think I was just trying to think of what are the big things were out there. I mean, there are the uses that they made with the CRF money are similar to what they did. If I look at it by general area, roughly, I'd say roughly 30% went to direct instructions to in classroom type things. And roughly 20% of it went to the maintenance of the buildings and grounds and such because there was a lot of work done with that. That might cost them, that might be some of the rentals that people were doing and things like that. And then the next biggest pot of money was probably the instructional staff support service. And I'll send you all this information. I'm looking at a spreadsheet at the moment. And then if you look at it more by expenditure type, we have roughly almost 30% was in, well, if I take the salaries and benefits together, we have about 37, 38% was of all the money that the CRF money that was budgeted was in salaries and benefits. And then the next biggest chunk of money was about a large chunk of money, pardon me, was just over 39%. And that was for supplies. So that'd be PPE, supplies. And then equipment was a little bit more on that. So that would cover some of the laptops and the Chromebooks and such. And it would also cover some of the equipment that they were using for making hotspots and things like that, which goes back to your question center comments about getting people to be able to access the internet. So the money's kind of in pretty broad areas. And not the same areas that Jill was showing you, but they're similar to them. I just kind of took it straight out of their budgets as to what they're doing. And again, these numbers will change. I don't think they'll change significantly, but that's kind of how it's looking right now at the moment. A lot of it was personnel and a lot of it was supplies. That's one of the largest pieces of it. Jill, you had something to... Yeah, and I can just add a little bit of detail. I think Senator Hardy, you would want to know this about the child nutrition equipment grant. And so that went, quite a lot of it went to just the general supplies, but also large equipment like walk-in freezers and refrigerators, because schools are having to store quite a lot more meals than they usually would since they're not serving them day to day. And then we also had three possibly four. I need to double check my number. Districts that purchased vans so that they can deliver food for students that are learning remotely. So those are sort of some of the big cost categories for the child nutrition equipment. And they did, there was $4 million that was granted. And I think at last count, like over 380,000 of it was already in their budgets. And then we've given them the additional time to use anything that's leftover. So they did make good use of that. And they, as Brad said, they ran into the supply chain issues as well. Yeah, thank you so much for that, Jill. I had talked to the agency about that. And it sounds like you made a really good use of the equipment and supplies and child nutrition, which warms my heart. Thank you. Other questions here on where the money went, is there a list? I guess part of what Health and Welfare is talking about doing is having a emergency disaster plan. All the one we have right now is aimed towards a physical disaster. The tornado takes down the school, doesn't usually take down every school in the state, which the pandemic did. And just, are we following how many schools have adequate HVAC systems? How many don't? We had some discussion the other day about if we've got money to put in the systems, could this be used for radon mitigation that we haven't done the testing for? Lead turned out to be fairly inexpensive to fix, but radon could be fairly inexpensive to very expensive depending on the construction. And are we doing any thinking about, because we've got another part of money coming in, we know a lot of that's gonna have to go to probably remedial, just education, mental health. You know, I'm now a second grader and I haven't learned to walk in a straight line and be quiet in the hall. And I'm gonna need to learn that at some point, but Jill. So we did just really as Brad was speaking about efficiency, Vermont, get some information from them that just came in. So in terms of the additional HVAC need, I'm reading the email as we're looking at it here, they've identified that 40 to 50 schools in the state have no form of mechanical HVAC, which is the primary pathway for improving indoor air quality in schools. In addition, they, as Brad said, they do have projects that they had to limit the scope of due to the supply chain issues. So they have literally, you know, breaking news just provided us with sort of three sort of categories of need that still exist in the state. In terms of the physical plant, the one thing I would caution is that no matter what the pot of money is, there does need to be a justification that it's COVID related, right? So indoor air quality, very clear, you know, something like radon, I'm not sure that's something that we would need to go back to the feds and actually get confirmation is that an allowable cost. And so, and I'm wondering if it would be useful since we've sort of hinted at this new bucket of funding that's coming in and it speaks to one of Senator McDonald's concerns, if it would be helpful to discuss what's in the CRRSA bill or the Carissa bill, as we're calling it, because we've got to call it. Okay, the new bill. The new bill. And Senator Hardy, this is the slide deck that you were provided with that you were referencing. Ah, okay. Yeah, Phil, would you like me to take point on that or do you feel like jumping on that one? If you can share it, that would be great. Okay, I will, I don't know if I can share it because I'm not Senator Cummings, I have to be like a co-presenter, right? Have to be a co-host. Yeah. Because you want to take the first slide deck. So you are now co-host. Ah, you are now a co-host. So you can ask and you shall receive. So you can now share. Okay, let me see. Senator Brock, you have a question before we, no. Okay, your hand is up. Must be from previously. I haven't seen it before. If I get my cursor near anybody, I get a white hand, but this was the yellow hand. Can you all see my screen? Yes. Okay. All right. Let me see if I can do this as a slide show. Teams I've got down, Zoom is a new animal for me. So. All right. So, now we have Krissa. Yes, Krissa. So I think it would be helpful, again, to sort of talk about the different buckets. If something that's popped up that says, give subtitles a try, there it goes. Give subtitles a try. Okay. Not right now. So here's the overview of what exists in these programs and you'll notice some familiar faces here. So what we have here, this was in the bill that was passed on December 27th and was part of a larger sort of omnibus spending bill. We have the ESSER 2, GEAR 2, a new program within GEAR that's called the Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools. And I'll speak about that. The extension of the Coronavirus Relief Fund, which is CRF, and then some additional money for child nutrition programs, which I can also kind of outline in the broad strokes of that one. So for ESSER 2, this is really, it's going to be a new grant, but it's really an extension of what we saw in ESSER 1. It's the same allocation formula, but about four times as much money. So ESSER 1 was $28 million and our LEAs will receive $114 million. So a substantial increase at the same allocation. The SEA set aside, so what the agency is able to hold is $12.6 million. And I'll talk about some of the key details of this in just a moment. So substantially more money than ESSER 1. And so Senator McDowell, this gets a little bit to your concern that you expressed, which is we're not even through the pandemic and we've already spent all of this money. Here's the next big sort of tranche of money that's coming in. So the key points on this one is that while ESSER 1 goes through September of 2022, ESSER 2 goes an additional year. So September of 2023. And the other sort of the headliner on this is that there is no equitable services requirement. So ESSER 1 had a requirement that non-public schools had to be able to have some allocation of services and goods through the LEA. This does not have that requirement and I'll talk about where the support for non-public schools is going to come from in just a moment. There's also a note for this group, I would imagine, is that the maintenance of effort requirement has been changed, the language. And if we have questions about this, I'll let Brad speak to that because that is definitely in his wheelhouse. But the ESSER 1 had sort of a dollar to dollar that needed to be maintained. The language here is a proportional share of the state's support for elementary and secondary education relative to the state's overall spending must be maintained between 2017, 2018, 2019. So that is also a change that would be, I think important to note here. Same allowable costs for ESSER, which are actually quite broad. It's basically a list of about 12 categories and then anything that is an allowable use in any of our regular federal funding can be used for ESSER. So as the secretary was saying, the range of uses here is pretty large. And then there is a specific emphasis in the legislation on measuring and addressing learning loss and the state has a requirement to report within six months on how we are using these funds to measure and address learning loss. So there is that specific language in there. Any questions on ESSER before I move to the next bucket? And I can't see if anyone's raising their hands. Yeah, okay. I think I saw Senator Hardy's voice pop up. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Jill, could you just explain a little bit more about the proportional share? I'm reading it and I'm trying to round my head around a little bit more. Brad, maybe. Yeah, I mean, what it is, Senator Hardy is right now with the current ESSER for getting this piece. The current ESSER says that we have to maintain the same or a higher level of spending for education than the average of 17, 18, and 19. So for FY20 and FY21, they have to be higher than the averages. That's not a problem that we've got that. What this is now saying though, is that proportionally in terms of the state's budget, we can't drop below whatever that average was for 17, 18, and 19. I don't think we will, but I haven't looked at those numbers yet. But it's looking at percentages instead of the state as a whole as opposed to a dollar or fake year. Okay, okay, got it, all right, thank you. Any other questions on ESSER? Back, so I can see everybody. Okay. Okay, I'll go back to sharing. Nathan Lavery, I know you've joined us unless you have some real time constraint. I'll recognize you once we finish this presentation, if that works. Sure, that's fine, thank you. Okay. Nathan, you may enjoy the show as well. Thanks. Okay, so the next, and can everyone see my screen? Yes. Okay, great. So the next bucket of funds here is the gear fund, which again is the Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund. There are two different programs within this. So the first one, the total that the state of Vermont is receiving is just over $6 million. The first one is what's being called gear two. And it is basically the same program as the first gear in terms of what it can be used on, who the eligible entities are. We are in conversation with the Governor's Office right now to determine where these funds will be prioritized. So that has yet to be determined. The second is, and so that's about 1.9 million. The second funding stream here under gear is called the Emergency Assistance for Nonpublic Schools, the EANS. And this is where what would have been equitable shares in ESSER is now being designated into a separate grant. And usually the LEAs would be tasked with doing the equitable shares consultations with the nonpublic schools and then also administering the contracts and services that those schools receive because they're not allowed to receive the actual money. That is basically being put on to the SEA and onto the agency of education. So that's how that has moved. So for nonpublic schools, we have a total of 4.28 million, 200,000 of that can be retained by the SEA for administering the program. Both of these gear funds have that same period performance that goes September, all the way through September of 2023 and goes back to March 13th of 2020. So they do have the potential to receive reimbursements for costs incurred if needed. So that is the gear fund. And again, some of the highlights here I've already spoken about. The gear nonpublic, the EANS is an opt-in program, meaning that the state of Vermont has to decide to apply for it and then submit an application to the US Department of Education. So that is a decision point that we are awaiting from the governor's office right now. Any questions on gear? Anybody have any questions? I can't see you, so just speak up. I can either. Okay, I'm not hearing any. Okay, all right. We've already discussed this, that the Coronavirus Relief Fund is being extended through December of next year. And as Brad has already highlighted, all the details around that. And then the last thing is the Child Nutrition Emergency Funds. This is through USDA as part of the CARISA Act. I would direct folks if you need specific detail on this to Rosie Krueger, our state director of child nutrition because she'll be able to answer the details on this much better than I can. But essentially there's an opportunity if particularly LEAs, but all school food authorities and our child and adult care food programs, the CACFP, if those sponsors have lost revenue because they are not doing as many in-person meals, all the cart paid meals, they have the potential to be reimbursed for 55% of that revenue loss and they're measuring between two specific dates. So the impact could be variable here. We're seeing that the CACFPs perhaps will not have the same decrease in revenue. They don't provide meals in the same way, but that our school food authorities will likely benefit from this. We're awaiting USDA guidance and further information on this, which they're required to provide by the end of the month. So there's not a lot of detail on this at this point, but more is forthcoming on that. And so that's my high level overview of the next round of spending. So I can stop sharing at this point and if folks have a question, let me know. I will try to stop sharing at this point. It won't let me stop sharing at this point. There we go. Okay. Madam Chair. Senator McDonald. How did it come to pass that? I don't understand what the governor's office on such and such, how that fits in with the rest of the funding for education. Do we have a governor's office fund for broadband or a governor's office fund for highway improvements? Or, I mean, where did that come from? Brad, I think said has an answer. I said, Senator McDonald, it's in the federal legislation. They specified it, they said in the original gears they said they broke up the extra money and the gears money. And they said this piece is for the governor to use as he wants in terms of education. That's unique to the governor for that's for all. That's for everything. It was in the federal act, it was for all states. Okay, so. Probably it's very little to do with the money. Okay, okay. Mark, there you go. Well, you know, you make compromises at two in the morning. Things can get a little strange. You guys have all been there. So we're about to go there again and I'm grateful for this hearing to try and learn what not to do again. That's right. We're all getting older and it's harder to make decisions at two in the morning. All right. Committee, I've got too many screens. I've lost my agenda. There we go. Any questions? Because we are scheduled for a break. Actually, we're a few minutes early for a break. But I've got Nathan Lavery wanted to make a few comments that will get us up to the scheduled break, I think. And then I'm going to take, I'd say at this point, I'm going to give you a good half hour break so you can, as long as I think Chloe can come in at 3.30 and give everybody a chance to rest their eyeballs and stretch their backs and then we'll come back and give me feedback. This is one long break. I know Senator Bray was going to try smaller 10 minute breaks. I think we're all trying to figure out what coping mechanisms work. Senator McDonald, your head is now on that calf's body. When you move around, strange things happen. Now I have ears. Now you have ears. Okay, Senator Hardy, you had something before we... Yeah, I just wanted to mention to Brad and others from AOE. This is really helpful to get an update on this. And I'm wondering if in the future, maybe Chloe's going to touch on this a little bit, the interactions between this federal money and our state money and the school district budgets and how this is going to impact decisions we're going to have to make down the road about state funding for education, especially with that proportional requirement and whether, yeah, anyway, the sort of bigger picture interaction with state funds. We're going to have, I don't know how much detail Chloe's going into today. I think it's just our annual overview of the Ed fund as it sits. I know we're going to get some changes in the revenue forecast. So that, you know, we will have, we also have the report coming in from the tax department for changes in how we raise property tax. So we will be having lots of discussion, but I want to make sure we can't do the revenue until it's set next week. But once it's set, then, you know, the new revenue forecast, then we can start really working. Senator Bray, you're muted, Senator. Thank you. I just wanted to, well, one say thank you to AOE for walking us through a very organized presentation on a lot of moving parts with a lot of money in different buckets. So that's been really helpful. I'm just trying to make sure I have the big picture straight. Even though we're talking about, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, is it correct for me to think of it as not taking any pressure off our state education budget? Because these are really all oriented to paying for extraordinary expenses as opposed to displacing expenses we would have paid through ordinary means. Yeah, I thought I'd heard the secretary had a small tweak on that one. Yeah, I mean, part of the money is going to help the head fund. The vast majority of it will not be. It will be for new and unusual and budgeted expenditures, as you're mentioning. But part of it, again, the guidance that came out for the federal folks does allow for some of the money to be used for monies that were budgeted that were coming out that would have come out of the education at the canal state in the education fund. So that will help the bottom line. So that was about about 8.7 million dollars. I thought I heard about 8 million. Yeah, not as robust as I had hoped. That is kind of decimal dust when you get to the end. Right. And since I haven't had to keep track of this until coming back to this committee, where are we on total spend for education 1.7 billion? Is that about right these days? Yeah, it might be closer. Yeah, I think it might be closer to 1.8. We're not at 1.8 yet, but I think it's closer to 1.8 to 1.7. Okay, so as the chair says, decimal dust. So we're always grateful for money, but it's not a big dent in the 1.8 billion. That's right. But it all helps whatever that gap is down at the bottom. You know, it would have been a larger, but it doesn't appear to be. It wouldn't be decimal dust in my budget, but right. No, I know. No, I'd like just a part of that, a little dust of that little dust. Okay, Senator Sirotkin. Can any of the money be used for like capital expenditures as far as you can tell? I don't think so because the federal legislation was kind of, I guess guidance, not legislation was really saying, talking about what could be used to address the emergency itself immediately. I mean, if you talk HVAC as being part of capital, then yes, if you talk about building a new building, building a new wing on a building, renovating, that's much more up in the air. And it was a lot more questionable. Possible, though, maybe? I will say possible, but I think before we went anywhere with it, we being the agency went anywhere with it, we would certainly be checking in with people who have a higher opinion or higher on the decision level makers than we are. And we probably talking to federal people too. When you do things like HVAC and energy efficiency, can that subsume other construction as well as necessary, like a new classroom or something like that? I think it all depends on how, my guess is my strong feeling is where you're gonna, the federal folks are gonna come out and audit all these costs in the States. How closely they do it, I don't know, but I'm sure they're gonna come out and look. And I think we'd wanna air more on the cost aside, instead of them saying, you know, we're thinking, well, this might be okay, let's do it. And then saying, nope, that's not okay, send that money back. So it's a good question, Senator. I don't know the answer. The finance and management has taken on a group called Guide House as a consultant from where they get a little bit of an answer. Yeah, I thought you probably did. They always say no. Unless you don't ask me. Creative. Okay, any other questions for Bill and Brad and Jill? If not. Well, Jill has her hand up. Jill has her hand up, hi. Yeah, so just to add a little bit to what Brad said, the new SR2 does, in addition to some language around indoor air quality, has some language around the, like adjustments needed to like the physical plant of a classroom or school in order to meet health guidelines. So that's sort of the bottom line on, I think, your question and why Brad is leaning towards caution, which I think is correct, is that any of these costs have to have a clear, for CRF it was COVID necessary, like that was a very clear kind of line in the sand. So there's a little bit more wiggle room, but it is, we've seen schools do things like, they've added a vestibule to the front of the school so that they can do health screenings as students walk in or they've added outdoor classroom space so that they can continue to teach music class or whatever it may be. So if it was additional spaces needed in order to meet the six foot health guidelines, then that is a justifiable COVID necessary expense. If it's deferred maintenance, then we may be getting ourselves in a little bit more hot water there. So building a new wing on the school. Yeah, that would probably take a little bit. That pool we've always wanted. Yes, yeah. Yeah, okay. Any other questions for the Department of Ed team? Okay, I'm not seeing any. So Nathan, welcome. Why don't you tell us who you are, who you represent at this point? Sure, good afternoon everyone. My name is Nathan Lavery. I am the Director of Finance and Operations at the Burlington School District. And I'm currently the President of the Vermont Association of School Business Officials, which is the association for all your local business managers that where we get together on a monthly basis, we get to hear from the AOE team with guidance on what opportunities and obstacles there are to using federal funds. And we talk about all sorts of exciting stuff. But I can be pretty brief today. I was actually listening in on YouTube for the whole presentation. And I'd say it was very consistent with everything that we've been told and understand about all of the federal funding sources that are at disposal. One thing that came up at our last meeting, the Vasbo meeting, and when I believe Bill and Jill and Brad were all there, was kind of a question, a wondering, but we thought we should bring it back to you folks. And which is the fact that the legislation passed last year that was meant to help mitigate the impact on school tax rates. What it did was it held the ADM constant this year. And so as a result of that, the equalized pupil counts that we are receiving right now from the agency of education, reflect an ADM that is at least not lower than it was the prior year. One of the interesting things about that, of course, is ADM, while it's probably the most significant variable, it's really only one of the variables that goes into the calculation of equalized pupils. And so the question came up at our meeting of whether it was the intent of the legislature to hold equalized pupils constant, which would ensure that a decrease in equalized pupils that may have been attributable to any sort of coronavirus impact would not result in an increase in tax rates. So the short, the question is, is this a technical kind of situation where the technical correction could be considered if the intent was really to just hold districts harmless with respect to enrollment changes resulting from equalized, or whether, again, if it was fully the intent and this was discussed when the decision was made, then I think we just, and the conversation there and we wouldn't pursue it further. But that was the question. I think I've captured it correctly. I throw it back to Brad James if he wants to add, he discussed this with us as well. So Brad, did I overlook anything there? No, I think it's something nice and amazing. That was basically the conversation after I explained to you why business management and why numbers could change in terms of equalized pupils. I think I will defer to Senator Hardy since she was on education. My recollection, and it just kind of was one of those things that went through as we were cobbling together bills trying to protect schools last year was exactly that. At that point, we were hearing about families and they were going to go into homeschooling or some people were sending their kids to private school because the private schools were staying open and my daughter's on a school board has children with some asthma and was thinking about homeschooling them and till her superintendent pointed out that if five kids stayed home that they lost the cost of a teacher. So her kids are back in school. But I think it was a response to those concerns. I think as in all things we did last year as an emergency response, I at least I assume most of us are open to be corrected by reality. If that's not what happened, we kicked the $58 million can down the road too last year and we're gonna have to fix that. So we've got some fixing to do and look for input. Ruth, did Ed do more work on that? Yeah, we did. And I actually pulled up Act 137 to see if I could look at the specific language. Brad, do you have the specific language? Cause we took a, we worked on this. You're talking about the 8 a.m. issue, Ruth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, basically I'm gonna paraphrase. It says that your FY 21 at this current year 8 a.m. that goes to the FY 22 equalized pupils cannot be less than your FY 20 8 a.m. Which also goes into FY 22 equalized pupils this two year. I was not necessarily part of those conversations. So I don't know what the thinking was. I do know that people, excuse me, that people were concerned about a lot of kids not coming back to school this year. Homeschooling numbers did go up. They went up from about 2,000 roughly last year to about 5,000 this year, an increase of 3,000. So it's a significant count. So the numbers are down quite a bit. So essentially what was put in place was a hold harmless for 8 a.m., not necessarily equalized pupils because there are other factors in there. And just to, and this is, I don't wanna go into too much detail but just to let you know, the other factors are where the waiting factors hit, how many kids are in each group? Because that changes over time. The waiting factors also depend on your poverty counts, which have changed, and your state place student counts have changed and your ELL students which have changed, those counts have changed. All those factors plus the equalization ratio itself plus whether you hold harmless the prior year, they all factor into what Nathan was saying into your equalized pupils this year. We can talk about it. Now it's not fine, but we can debate. The 8 a.m. count is used as the basis for calculating equalized pupils, correct? Yes, so the intent was to hold schools harmless for actual pupils that may have been held home like Senator Covington mentioned, to hold them harmless for the students who were gonna not be in the classroom that wasn't intended for my recollection. And I certainly can't speak for the whole education committee, let alone the entire legislature. But my recollection from our conversations was just to get at that issue of if students were being kept home by parents because they were concerned about COVID or because they couldn't manage the hybrid schooling or because of a whole host of reasons why parents might be worried and keep their kids home or the logistics might be better to keep them home. We were trying to hold schools harmless for that. It wasn't, we didn't get into the details of which kids might be held kept home, which would be sort of more addressed with the equalized pupil thing. And it was the language that we adopted in the Senate, I believe came over from the house. I don't think we changed that language specific to the 8 a.m. And I believe the house language was what was specifically recommended by the secretary of education. So Secretary French is the one who, we literally took the language he recommended is my recollection of it. So it was intended to be actual pupils, not equalized pupils is my recollection. But I can certainly speak to my look through it more in detail and we can get back to this if you want. There's going to be an issue. We always are open to making corrections. If I may, I know we're short on time and I think that's really helpful context and that may be the end of the story. In fact, I think the question again that came up in the minds of business managers was the fact that holding ADM constant may make all the sense in the world for exactly the reasons that Senator Hardy just discussed. It just doesn't have I think the impact that some people speculated may have been the intent which was to hold equalized pupils constant. And obviously if you hold equalized pupils constant you effectively remove the possibility of a change in equalized pupils as being one of the things that causes a town's tax rate to increase, right? So it could still increase even with or decrease frankly go in either direction but equalized pupils could change and have an impact on a tax rate even with the holding constant ADM and that's fine. So I mean, I think what I'm taking from this conversation frankly is there was a specific intent to address the changes in ADM that could result from COVID not to say we want to hold equalized pupils constant. And to me, I think that's, I can explain that to my colleagues and that can be the end of it. I again, want to just reiterate that I don't speak for the whole legislature donate. And so this is just one Senator's recollection from last year and I'm happy to get the opinions of the former chair and my colleagues and others and to look at the materials more my notes and everything that I didn't expect this question. So I wasn't as prepared. So. And I think as, again, as the budgets get worked out if there is an issue, let us know our intent was to hold schools as harmless as possible from the effects of something they didn't control. So we will be working on school funding quite a bit as usual and we will go forward. Any other questions at this point, Senator McDonald. Madam chair, someone mentioned that last fall we cobbled things together. And I would say that the commissioner of education was an excellent cobbler and did well. And I think the reason we're having this discussion is because you often cobble things together when you have an emergency and then now you take a look at what you would do differently for moving forward and what you would alter now if you thought it was in need of being altered. I'm laying the grounds for broadband discussion but we're gonna run into several things were cobbled together and probably try and look at them each with the same intent. Don't always do things the most best way in an emergency, you have different priorities. I'm gonna ask, Chloe, are you available at 3.30? Yes, absolutely. Okay, I'm gonna give y'all a break until 3.30. Thank everybody, I think this was, now that we've come out, get a few steps back from the initial crisis and all the funds, this was very helpful to understand and to see where we came from and where we're going and we'll be in touch.