 So Becky Wasserman, Legislative Counsel, this draft 1.3 of H209 is the amendment that your committee had put together that has a needs assessment survey as well as looking for a funding source, I guess, for funding school construction projects. House institutions had put together a proposal. I can't speak to whether it's finalized in their mind. I don't know if you want to. Yeah, do you want me to just describe it? Or I don't know if you want to see the language. OK, maybe I can find it on there. I guess it was yesterday, H209 one. And we do understand that this is not something the committee has voted on. This is just where they are at this point in time. Is this the 8 o'clock 2 PM? This is from, it's not an amendment because they don't have jurisdiction in the bill. So it just was drafted as a proposal for 209. So in their proposal, section one is first looking at the Vermont Construction Planning Guide, which was the last one was published in 2008 when it was the Department of Education. And that set forth the process for the school construction program really, like how schools would apply for a grant. And it also had the capital outlay formula in there for how the costs were, how to figure out eligible costs, square footage, and those sort of things that went into the award that a school would receive. So section one of their proposal is asking the Secretary of Education to consult with the executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association and the chair of the State Board of Education and the Commissioner of Buildings and General Services to update that Construction Planning Guide by January 15 of next year. And the guide shall reflect modern educational requirements and opportunities. Any questions on that? Then section two is looking to have a school facilities conditions analysis. So this, again, would be done by the Secretary of Education but in coordination with BGS. And I think the idea out of there was that BGS does facilities conditions analysis for state buildings. And so they would be able to provide some guidance on how to do that for schools statewide. So you mentioned you weren't very much interested in being involved at all. They picked up some stain with those questions. And I think there were folks from BGS there who offered to. But he seemed positive. He seemed positive. He was seemed positive though. So they would be looking to develop a plan for a school facilities condition analysis to inform AOE of the statewide school facilities needs and costs. And this analysis would look at a review of both school facilities conditions and space needs. And this subsection B is a little different from the amendment that the last draft of the amendment in here where it has the Secretary of Education contracting with an independent third party to conduct the analysis, rather than having it internal to AOE. And then there's still the amount of $1.5 million appropriated for the analysis, although I hear there's been some discussion of general funds versus another source of funds for that. So we'll address that one now. And then section three is sort of similar to what was in this committee's amendment with respect to trying to figure out how to fund projects. So this has the Treasurer and the Executive Director of the Bond Bank by December 15, 2023. And I should mention that the conditions analysis, the idea was to have that completed by June of 2023. So after that's done, the Treasurer and the Bond Bank would, by six months later, submit a report to the House Corrections and Institutions and Education Committees and the Senate Education and Institutions Committees in analysis of the challenges and opportunities to the state, if any, of funding school construction projects, and then recommendations for a funding source for school construction projects that are linked to the inventory needs and conditions of all Vermont schools. And the Treasurer was there. The Treasurer was not there yesterday. I do think there had been some discussions with her about the language. And it's still looking at bonding, whereas I think we were trying to think of other opportunities, other funding options. So the language isn't specific to bonding. I guess recommendations for a funding source could be pretty broad. Do you want to go back up to the facilities analysis? I just wanted to make sure. So first we develop a plan for conducting the conditions analysis. And then you contract with the third party to conduct the actual analysis. OK, so we have the info by 2023. So one thing the committee did talk about yesterday was that I think this language needed to be clarified that the analysis would be done by 2023. OK. So that's what I was confused about. I think when we actually do the analysis. Right. So the plan is really, I think, developing an RFP to be able to go out to do the analysis with the goal of having that completed by 2023. OK. And on the next page, and then that's my only question, the only thing I'm missing here, maybe this is just beyond the scope of what the, because I know that Treasurer and we heard testimony and we didn't seem super excited about leading this project. One of the things though that I don't see here is I do see that recommendations for a funding source could include many things beyond bonding. So that's good. I had been kind of interested in how other states are finding funding school construction projects. We had that in our draft. Would that be just sort of built into this section? It's not necessarily built in. I think if you wanted to look at that, the language would need to include that. Because the work group had started to do some of that work and I thought it was so interesting. Colorado uses cannabis and Massachusetts uses the sales tax. Right. Yeah, so I just, I'm sorry to see that go. Maybe that doesn't have to go. We have the bill. We have, we own this bill right now. So we haven't started our markup on that. We did ask them to, in our discussion with the chair, is to start looking at really what we would include in the survey and to use some of their expertise for that. But we do need to follow up with our sections of the bill. And that would of course be one that we have some interest in. We also have some interest in the money. Yeah. On page two, lines two through five, the Secretary of Education and concentration, shall develop a school catholic. So within that wording, does that mean that the Secretary of Education can look also like at kind of prioritize schools with the highest needs in terms of safety, addressing safety, or kind of have some kind of waiting system at the end of what schools? Are you on that? I'm so sorry, but I just realized that we have a time limit for the Secretary here, who has to be somewhere 11.30. I'm sorry. So if we can do that. I'm just wondering if you have a quick answer. Or if that's in rule. I just didn't know which section you're talking about. OK. Section one or section two? Let me just say, through you getting ahead of it, this is only to do the assessment. This is not about a warning. Or making a deciding. Being priority at. Yeah. Being priority at. There's nothing in here about it. I'm not scheduled to testify. I'm not scheduled to testify. I'm not scheduled to testify. Oh, you're not. I'm just interested. OK. So let's get you. Because are you going next door as well? I'm available to you as you wish. OK. Great. What did we put? OK. So we're done. You're done. Thank you. Oh, I think what Sarita was pointing out, which is also, as you say, it's our bill. We need to add to it. Because there's no what's next. We haven't marked. We haven't marked. We haven't marked. We haven't marked. We haven't marked. We haven't even. All we have is the first draft. They've been working on the survey. And now we need to take up the other stuff. Great. So I guess I would add to that that this is contemplating that the treasurer would come back with a funding source by the end of 2023. So then in the legislative session in 2024, I guess that's when the legislature could decide to, you know, figure out what the program will look like based on what the funding is and what the needs are in the schools. OK. If he knows, maybe that federal funding will come through. Speaking of itself. Yes. Absolutely. So we should get you back to start working in our section of the bill. We know, for example, that it needs to, it was, I think the number was changed to 1.3 million. And it needs to come from the general fund. Maybe from the Ed Fund. OK. It was in part five. It was recommended it could be 1.3. After Jan looked at that. And who do you think that we need to give some? Maybe the treasurer and the bonding. Yeah. If they're being tasked with looking at funding. We did have the Mon Bank talk to us about the current state. But we haven't had the treasurer back. I'm sure that she has. I guess the interest would be other models besides using the treasurer, another person that we can task for that. When we did water quality. That was the treasurer's office. That was the treasurer's office. And as she said, she wasn't in the room. I was in the room when we selected her. And here I am again. I don't know if there's another. If there's someone else looking at what other states are doing. That can inform the conversation too. And BGS would also be helpful to hear from in terms of. I mean, if you call it a needs assessment or facilities condition analysis, I think they could give some background on what that process looks like. They spoke in house institutions about how they had just done an RFP for the state buildings. So they do have a lot of the information like sort of recently done that they could help provide for schools. Okay. Avery, let's see if we can get BGS and the treasurer into talk with the city. Okay. Thank you. Did you get a sense from over there, I mean, the level to which what is being asked of the state treasurer with water quality with like your task with turning over every rock in mind every corner for money, whereas I'm not sure that this is necessarily saying the same thing. This is more. So I'm hesitant to I guess characterize it, but I guess I sort of heard through the grapevine that the treasurer's office was the one that said they were comfortable with what is there, but I think that you should definitely hear from her to convert that. We did hear from her earlier. Thank you. Which will help me organize a question to the chair of the state board. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. There's the committee. Pleasure to see you. My name is John Carroll, the record chair of the state board of education. I guess a couple I did sit in on the discussion yesterday and institutions and the discussion of their draft as well as yours. I guess my perspective would be to say that you're trying to get your arms around two things. I think one is what might be involved for costs given the status of our schools today, what might be involved for costs, big number to bring them up to standard or expectations. And then the other piece of it is where would the money come from? Two totally separate questions, equally important. And the answers to those questions ought to come on stream about the same time. And that's what I think it's the institution's proposal brings the answer to the first question. What might it all cost on stream around mid-year 2023 and then the proposal about and how would you go pay for it would come on stream at the end of 2023, six months later. And that's understandable because you need to sort of dimension how big is this problem in order to make some recommendations about how you go about paying for it. So all of that seems to make some harmonious sense. I just would observe that in your current draft, so let me, I want to just talk about how big is the problem. So you answer that by doing a systematic assessment or evaluation of existing facilities and their adequacy to meet their current purposes or projected purposes. That's what your assessment proposes to do. The difference between your proposal and the institutions is that institutions proposes that that be conducted by an independent expert, presumably an architectural engineering firm that's been retained for that purpose. Whereas your proposal looks like it's a self-reporting survey, the language in your draft says something about a plan for distributing and maximizing response rates to the survey. My personal counsel on this would be, and I think the State Board would concur and I suspect the Secretary himself would concur that just asking the school districts to tell you what their needs are is not exactly a rigorous process. And so something like what the institutions folks have drafted by way of retaining outside experts to go in and evaluate these facilities is probably the way to go. Whether it costs 1.3 or 1.5, I used to be in the construction business but I can't possibly tell you what that means. Except I would say that if it's 1.5, that's about 50 to $100,000 per school, per facility to visit. So you can think about that a little bit and say, well, how many do we have to visit? Well, probably all of them. And watch it at costless to have some team of architects and engineers or other qualified professionals visit each building. Probably spend three or four days there, maybe longer, right up an analysis and report. You've got to do that 200 odd times to cover all the schools in the state. It may be more, I don't know, it may be understating the size of it. But in any case, it's a big project. It could be that in fact it might be wise to divvy that up among several contractors so that you're not dependent as was the State of Iowa on one contractor who just didn't have what it takes. I would say that in order to do this systematic engineering architectural assessment, you need a couple things before you start. And there's provision in here for making a plan for the RFP, as was just mentioned. To do an assessment, it's against you're comparing the existing school that you're visiting with a team of engineers and architects to what? So what is the what that you want them to be using as a frame of reference? And I would submit to you that there are maybe three things. One is simply modern building specifications. An example is that when many of these schools were built, they probably had insulation in their walls equivalent to an RF12. That was 30 years ago. Today, RF50 or 60 is probably a desirable standard. They might have had air changes in the stadium of three per hour. Today, you'd probably say for health reasons it ought to be six per hour. I'm not an expert on those things, but I know enough to know what I don't know. So you need to update your standards. The easy way to do that, of course, is just to ask BGS. What are the building standards the State is employing when it funds any new building for State purposes? Probably that ought to be the standard you would use. I'm not talking about how big is the room. I'm talking about how it is constructed. The second piece is how big is the room. And that is, BGS can't tell you that. But the existing documents you have, in particular, the capital outlay financing formula, stipulates that you have to have 30 square feet in the middle of the room for every child who will be in there. Whatever the numbers are. And for all the different activities in a school, there are standards for such facilities in terms of their size and capacity. So the first piece is a sort of specifications analysis. The building specifications. The second piece is the school or facility standards. The document called Capital Outlay Financing Formula basically says these are the standards that you have to meet in order to receive State money. The premise here is that there will be some State money involved. So those standards need to be updated. Maybe many of them are still perfectly appropriate. But I'll bet you there's no good standard in there for a computer last, for example. Because these things are what? 2006, the last time they were updated? 2008, I think. So who updates those standards? The work on that under rule the document called Capital Outlay Financing Formula is adopted by and updated by the State Board of Education. And the State Board has some experience. Four members of the State Board are former legislators like you might be someday. And there's a couple of decades of construction experience on the State Board as it happens. But obviously this would be a collaboration between the agency and the State Board to adopt updated facility standards if you will. How big do the rooms need to be in some? That's not rocket science, but it will take a little time and it needs to be done before you let a contract to an independent contractor, engineers and architects. Because they need to measure the music room and say well, how many kids do you have in here? 28? Well this isn't big enough. They need to use that standard. The third piece that probably would be very useful to have developed or updated if you will is the document called System for Rating Proposed School Construction Projects. Basically it asks is this facility adequate or is it ideal? Is it less than ideal? Is it marginal? Is it inadequate? And it would seem that while you're at it it would be very useful to have the architects engineers characterize the school facilities they're examining in those terms. And again that is a piece of the State Board rule that can be updated comparatively easily by the rule in consultation with the agency. And presumably in both sets of updates we would ask experts in the field there are federal standards about room sizes and stuff like that. We certainly need to be mindful of that. So there are a lot of sources to draw up on but the actual work of it falls to the State Board and to the State I think. That sounds like a bit of work and it would be good to get it done before you let a contract to an architectural engineering firm so they have that as a framework by which to evaluate all these schools. That sounds like a lot of work it probably is but it's not it's not as bad as it could be. It could be that you had to change the rules and rule changing is a laborious process dictated by 3VSA Chapter 25 the Administrative Procedures Act minimally takes 8 months typically takes 12 months. We've just been working on the Act 173 rules which you were all kind enough to say that the State Board should adopt and therefore we've been the ones who've been overseeing the process of drafting them and that's been about a 15 month process and just two weeks last week we got to the final draft and started the ICAR process so in 8 months it will be done. It will be a total of 15, 16, 17 months we don't have to do that here so far as I know until you come up with some significant changes in the way the Capitol paid school aid system works I don't foresee any needs to change the underlying rules, the so called Rule 6000. Finally, I guess I would comment that in the I think it's I'm a little, I'm losing track of which draft I'm talking about we've done nothing to our first draft. Yeah, okay I see your first draft and so I think it's in the institution's draft they say that the guidebook the Vermont School Construction Planning Guide should be updated immediately and I actually would submit to you that that is not a pressing concern because the guidebook itself although it has attached as appendices the capital outlay formula it's not actually part of the guidebook it's attached, it's relevant it's needed, but it's not actually part of the guidebook similarly the system for waiting proposed schools which I've discussed with you that too is attached as an appendix but it's not part of the guide the guide is not telling you how to build a school it's not telling you the specifications for the school it's not telling you how big the music group should be it's telling you none of those things it's telling you how to go about applying for state construction aid there's no doubt that this will need to be updated when you have created a state construction aid program whatever that might look like but Bill you have and they have doesn't create a state construction aid program at all it just starts delaying the data groundwork that might be involved our intention is to get the conversation started well you are and the first chapter is let's just understand how big the problem is and how we might conceivably go about paying for it this is a guidebook to a school board about the steps you need to go through in order to file all the applications and all of that stuff so I would suggest to you that the urgency of this urgency of getting started on this field evaluation I do want to be clear that your language suggests that it's a survey that you send out to the schools and those your neighbors are saying no no no we're not going to self report here we're going to send out experts and gather them and that might be worth 1.3 million to send out a survey and collect it I'll do it for a million if you like so you don't need to spend that so I hope that's that's helpful because we're looking at this as we're getting the conversation started and knowing that there's a possibility we can direct things to the board in this is very helpful if you have and we in terms of the fact that we're just getting this started we've got about a couple of days to work on this to bring it to the next stage so as a result we need to be pretty general and move some of the real work elsewhere right and I guess I would just say I think the House Committee on Institutions made some useful suggestions some of those in and I would just say I wouldn't worry so much about the urgency of getting this updated it's a process piece that really won't happen until you say ah we got a bundle of money, you want to apply and this tells you how to do that I want to say that Jim is going to come back to do pre-k at 10 of so just so that we all know that's when we're going to have the final draft and vote is there something in here that we can make sure we're also addressing 21st century education in that we're missing in what we're doing I mean we did mention that because we're talking about yeah we've got crumbling schools on one level but we also have the changing faith of education from a teacher directed to student driven which is changing yes and also from um from where geography matters to where geography does not matter and I think that's a piece that we all could do a bit of job at kind of thinking what that world could look like but as we know there are some online courses that students are taking which can be very powerful for bringing unusual or high level coursework to schools that couldn't possibly have a staff person to do that because of their size or what have you so I sort of it's a very blue sky thing that I don't feel qualified to offer proposals about but it would be an area that we ought to understand that is how do we create deep connectivity for every school and every child working with our college council on our draft because we actually have the bill at this point Peter so the 1.3 million really comes from you know an engineering architecture firm saying it's about eight cents per square foot to do this work and then a look at how many square feet we have in the state so it is based on a firm that has done this work previously and so I guess my question for you is you know if the RFP goes out to find you know experts in the field to carry out this assessment and they know modern school standards yes is there any need for involvement of rules on the state board in that process no rules it would be useful to to get coordinated between what their understanding of standards for how big the music room should be and our document so we just need to have consensus on that I agree with you a good architectural engineering firm will bring tons of technical knowledge about school construction standards and good ones will bring a lot of expertise about how big the music room should be and so I think that if for example we were updating the Capital Outlay financing formula the board and the agency together we ought to be sitting down and talking to Truex Collins and other expert folks with expertise in this area as well as looking at federal standards and that sort of thing so the school that you probably have carried out an assessment I think very similar to what's being envisioned was with Truex Collins and their engineering firm and it was very much along the lines of what you have, what it would take to bring it up to where it should be and then they can even take it a little further and say compare it against quote a model school and I do think BGS brings a lot of valuable information to the table not that they would do any of the work but we have a set of standards as to what are our values for state and allow acceptable standards for construction of state buildings today they're real different than they were 30 years ago and we surely want our schools to be meeting all of our state's expectations about school quality construction you're most welcome thank you for inviting me here thank you and I know that we have a bill that will likely be related to the changing nature of the role of the board if the lords are smiling upon us, yes and also I wanted to share with you that the board has state board has compiled a report of its inquiry into proficiency based learning and we'd be very happy to share with you what we learned and the many questions that come out of that so when I'll stand by and we'll wait for your call to come and share that when you get to PBL at the crossroads it's over there now and we'll be here in due course thank you so much thank you thank you how about proficiency based construction you're right you've got to change the yeah, yeah you can't wait to read the bill no problem so much one point there it is alright so we're here okay so we've got new language about yeah, no okay so we have new language about the responsibility or lack of responsibility of the school district for monitoring programs Rep LaLonde sat by and he actually he suggested a change to this language as well so this reflects both AOE's testimony and Rep LaLonde's recommendation, okay so this read through it says the school district pays tuition for pre-K education under the structure should be responsible for ensuring that the provider receiving the tuition payment is on the list, maintained by the agencies but shall have no responsibility to monitor the administration of pre-K educational services on the part of the provider receiving the tuition payment except for services which the district contracts with the provider in order to fulfill its obligations under IDEA then it says a school district paying tuition under this section should be immune from civil and criminal liability for acts or emissions of a public or private provider to which the district pays tuition under this section except for services which the district contracts with the provider in order to fulfill its obligations under IDEA and except to the extent that it has actual knowledge of a breeze by the provider of health and safety rules that apply to the providers pre-K education program so if I have a school employee and I visit the pre-K program and I see something that I would know would be some kind of a violation of health and safety violations child and parking lot but nine hours that's not an issue but if it's a health and safety issue and you have actual knowledge of it then you're not protected from being sued child and parking lot if you know and then we come into the mandated report of it so J. Nick was the wrong principle association so that happens and it gets reported like that I'm reading this from a skeptic's lens I would need to say that I find out there's a violation or not me but somebody by another violation makes the report and then maybe nothing occurs because that's been a concern in the past that school districts have asserted that occurs school district is still at potentially we knew about it we reported and nothing was done about it so we have no control over the provider and then the school district could be sued am I reading that wrong? well the facts should be determined by the court in that case it's the action that took reasonable under the circumstances so what we're looking at I think and they might say that reporting was sufficient they might not I can't predict that there's a currently no protection but there's an obligation to monitor so this is going the opposite direction and this shouldn't be a blanket and sometimes you do that because this point here once you open this up to some dollar standard they sort of argue about so there are different ways of doing it but this is the way he recommended individually it was on behalf of this committee at this stage isn't anybody mandated to report a health or safety issue to DCF as mandated? I'm not sure what DCF requirements are I mean they're mandated but they're requiring this bill to report to self-report they don't need any requirements to self-report to their agencies they're also I would think to DCF because that's their agency there's no question about reporting it's a question about I decided to report as a school employee that's all you have to do then be on DCF as Jim says it's probably for a court to decide it does open to Jay's point just open up school districts a challenge here otherwise it was a blanket so yeah it's always a bit in the other direction on the other hand if you have actual knowledge and you try to speak if you used or something over there you probably should do something about it so you know it's that balance but again compared to today this is more limiting yeah we're limiting that we don't even see it and there's nothing that says that you can't sue yeah you can you can still bring something regardless of whether you have these protections correct legally without these protections you need to bring sue with these protections you can sue because the guard you you knew right okay then we go to ALEE's language which is here so this is saying in proposing and adopting rules under Section E the agency State Board to ensure through rules that apply to public and private providers are aligned to the extent practicable after taking their account factors that are unique to public or private provider environment to justify applying different requirements that was ALEE's language lastly we took out Subsection 7 or Division 7 on your teacher study so you will see that so now 7 today was 8 before the 7's are taken out sorry and those are the only changes discussion I'll entertain the motion so I so move that we approve draft 12.1 as presented discussion discussion okay I forgot what to do this year nobody gave me any warning all of a sudden I'm I'm clerking you people okay alright it's cool sorry I had like three panics today on different things it's not work representative representative yes representative james yes representative hooper yes representative toof yes representative bachelor yes representative jambetista yes representative ostin yes representative meadows yes chairweb thank you very much