 Good afternoon, everyone. Last week, most school districts voted on their budgets for the upcoming school year on town meeting day. And for this year, we're still looking at a roughly $90 million surplus in the education fund as we forecast in December. Property tax rates were set for this year using the best information available at the time, which included a grim projection about the economy due to the pandemic. Fortunately, that projection didn't come true. And the numbers show vermonas actually overpaid on their property taxes. So that means we have more money than needed to meet the budgets that were approved last year. I should note this is still in addition to the roughly $400 million schools have received in direct federal funding to use for things like air fills air filtration and many other needs. As for monitors are well aware, it costs a lot to live in our state, which is exacerbated. Other challenges we have like our demographics and property taxes are a big part of our affordability challenges. Typically, when you overpay for something, you get some of that money back. That's why I've asked the legislature to return about $45 million to taxpayers. To put this simply, if the legislature agrees with my plan, residential property taxpayers will get a check back for over $250 this summer, which could come in handy considering inflation these days. This rebate would be in addition to the $50 million tax relief package I proposed, which would provide ongoing relief to nearly 25% of Vermont taxpayers from seniors on social security to working low income families. Those with student loans, nurses and more. Now we know there's no single policy or one bit of taxpayer relief that will solve our affordability crisis, but it all adds up. So when Vermonters give the government more money than it needs, they should get money back. Next, the second half of the education funds surplus because of our workforce shortage, I'm proposing we dedicate that to support career and technical education. I think most would agree we need to do more to support CTE because they've been left behind for quite some time. As I discussed in my state of the state and budget address, it's important our kids know that choosing a career in the trades is lucrative and we need more of them to choose this path. It's no secret. We don't have enough workers, especially in the trades, which makes this a top priority. Secretary French will speak to the specifics of our proposal in a minute. But we have an opportunity to make historic investments in CTE for infrastructure, learning opportunities and workforce training. I'm hopeful we can come to agreement with legislators on this shared goal. Lastly, a year ago, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan. As we move into the second half of the legislative session, I want to remind lawmakers how important it is to get this right. We agreed last year to make transformative, tangible investments in areas like climate change, housing, water and sewer, infrastructure, broadband and more. We simply can't squander this once in a lifetime opportunity. So I again hope legislators remember the commitments that were made and use this funding strategically to deliver the best returns and make sure that all 14 counties benefit. With that, I'll turn it over to Secretary French. Thank you, Governor. Good afternoon. It is projected the Education Fund will have a large surplus this year. Governor's proposing to return half of that surplus to taxpayers in the form of property tax rebate. Governor's proposing the other half of the surplus be invested strategically to expand the capacity of our career and technical education centers to address what is probably our greatest challenge as a state, our workforce development. Our CTE centers play a critical role in our education system and in the economic development of our state. Using these one time surplus funds in a strategic way to expand the capacity of CTE centers can help us meet our current and future workforce needs. Simply put, investing in CTE is an investment in our future. There's a lot of interest in expanding CTE programming the legislature this year, and we look forward to working in partnership with legislative leaders to advance this common goal. To help support these deliberations and the collaboration with legislators, the governor has put forward recommended strategies in the form of three investment priorities to use these one time surplus funds. First priority would be to establish a $15 million fund to create a CTE construction and rehabilitation experiential learning program and revolving loan fund with the purpose of expanding the experiential and educational opportunities for Vermont CTE high school and adult students to work directly on construction projects, including residential housing projects. This program would improve property values around the state, while also teaching high school and adult students critical trade skills. This program would accomplish several goals, including create community partnerships with CTE centers, housing organizations, government entities in private businesses, beautify communities and rehabilitate underperforming housing and land assets and expand housing access to Vermonters and communities throughout the state. The second priority would be to establish a $28 million competitive grant fund program for CTE facility and infrastructure upgrades directly tied to high need workforce areas. Funds from this grant program could be used for the expansion of CTE classrooms, applied learning spaces or purchasing new equipment to expand program access for additional students. Centers would work with their local advisory boards to identify the high need workforce areas in their regions to guide these investments. The third priority would be to use $5 million of the Ed Fund surplus in two areas to support the development of just in time rapid deployment training opportunities. And second to support the development of innovative workforce training programs. $4 million into $5 million would be directed towards the just in time training programs to assist CTE students, secondary and adult in mastering the skills for Vermont's high need jobs in the trades and in health care. Examples could include summer training programs, an extended year of high school as a pre-apprenticeship apprenticeship experience and training boot camps or other intensive training programs. The remaining $1 million would be available to support innovative ideas and CTE centers to support workforce development needs where there might be a critical need for training at the regional or state level and where additional funding may be needed to support these types of innovative programs. Together, these three priority proposals represent about $48 million in investment in CTE programs and workforce development. Vermont's workforce needs are perhaps our most critical challenge right now. And these strategic investments in CTE can act as a catalyst to support the expansion of the workforce now and into the future. Lastly, I thought I'd provide a quick update on changes in our COVID recommendations for schools. Those new recommendations go live on March 14th as we announced last week, and are part of a broader strategy to have schools operate under the same health recommendations as the rest of Vermont. Dr. Levine will provide an update on these recommendations in his comments in a moment. This week is a week of transition for many districts as they plan to implement the new state recommendations. Several districts have announced that they are going to move to mass optional earlier than March 14. So we've been engaging a lot with districts as they're trying to make that transition. We are hoping the shift in mitigation recommendations will free up capacity in schools to focus on critical education recovery work, which includes utilizing the federal relief dollars that we have at the state level to help them with their local needs. This recovery planning has kicked into high gear at the state level, and I will have updates on this work soon. I expect our focus will be in two areas in particular this spring. One addressing the academic and learning needs of students and two supporting the social and emotional needs of students and staff. That concludes my update. I'll now turn it over to Dr. Levine. Thank you. I'd like to start out by thanking our state epidemiologist Dr. Patsy Kelso for speaking to you last at last week's press conference in my absence. She's obviously one of the many, many people in the health department who have stepped up to shoulder a great deal of work to help us navigate the pandemic. And I owe her that of gratitude. As we've noted for many weeks now, the COVID-19 situation continues to improve both nationally and in Vermont, particularly when it comes to the important measures regarding severe illness and disease. The CDC has reinforced the need to use metrics that focus on severe disease as we plan for the future. And Vermont as a state is seeing very low hospitalizations and impacts on the health care system related to COVID illness. We're well protected against severe disease through vaccination, have more immunity in our population from infection, have ready access to testing and treatment options are available for those at higher risk. With lower risk of severe illness and the tools available to protect Vermonters, we are preparing to update our public health guidance. It will reflect these new realities and help us live safely with fewer COVID-19 disruptions in our lives so we can focus on recovering from the setbacks caused by the pandemic. As we've already previewed, starting Monday, March 14th, the decision to wear a mask will be up to each person based on their own circumstances, personal risk assessment and health needs. This will mean something different for everyone. You may feel ready to take off your mask indoors or you may decide to keep wearing it due to your age or a health condition or to protect someone at risk for more severe illness or maybe you're just more comfortable keeping it on during this transition time. I want everyone to know that's totally okay. It's okay to be cautious and make these decisions at your own pace and I ask everyone to be supportive of these personal choices and not judge anyone who chooses to keep a mask on. Remember it's still a good idea to keep a mask with you as some places you may choose to go may still encourage or require them. I urge you not to throw these masks away and while you're at it, hang on to your home test kits as well. As much as we've learned about this virus, we also know it has the ability to quickly change and we must remain prepared to meet those changes if we need to. Now also on March 14th, we will simplify our isolation and quarantine guidance. If you test positive, you will need to stay home and isolate for five days. If you are a close contact and not up to date on your vaccines, you do not need to quarantine but you should get tested. Testing is still recommended if you have symptoms or an exposure to COVID-19. We'll continue to urge room honors to stay up to date on their vaccines and boosters to be as protected as possible. The science is clear on this and I urge you to follow it. We'll also continue to conduct surveillance for disease trends, monitor outbreaks in vulnerable populations, and be on the watch for new variants. I again ask for monitors to make sure you know if you are at higher risk for COVID-19. Not only will it inform whether you take extra precautions, it's also critical to accessing treatment quickly through your health care provider if you do test positive. The list of health conditions that could put you at higher risk continues to be updated so consult the CDC list or talk to your health care provider if you have questions. It's the same conditions that may have put you at the front of the vaccine line that will apply and more have been added to the list over time. You can learn more by visiting the treatment page of our COVID-19 portion of the webpage at the health department. I'll finish with a few quick words about the White House's test to treat initiative announced last week. Test to treat is just what it sounds like. People will be able to get tested and if they are positive and treatments are appropriate for them they would receive a prescription from a health care provider that can be filled in one location. These one-stop locations would include pharmacy-based clinics and federally qualified community health care centers. It's a very interesting model of care however we are not yet aware of any pharmacies in Vermont that are eligible and the federal administration has not yet let any of Vermont's community health centers know that they are part of this program at this time. There is a possibility this could happen for at least one in the near future if the site so desires. Meanwhile as the initiative develops and we will keep you informed the majority of Vermonters will still be able to both test and receive prescriptions for treatment at their primary care practices or other health care settings. That's all I have for today. Thank you Dr. Levine. We'll now open it up to questions. I want to invest all of that 90 million into schools and kids instead of giving some back. Well I do think that the taxpayers deserve a return. They overpaid and I just think it's just the right thing to do. Some might argue you should give all of it back to taxpayers but I thought that there was something that we could agree to in the middle. Returning half of it to taxpayers as well as making the investments in workforce that we know we need. CTE centers have been pushed aside and neglected I believe for decades and and they're not treated the same as the rest of the education community I don't believe or haven't been. So I think we need to change that. Put some put our money where our mouths are and and try and invest in an area that will give us a great return. This week of course is crossover for policy next week for money bills. What would you like to see get across the halfway point and also budget adjustment. I know you would have some concerns of some of those pots of money where those are being spent so where what's the latest? Yeah I still have concerns with the budget adjustment act but not enough to prevent it from going through. My biggest concern obviously is the where they're spending where the getting the money for budget adjustment we went in using a lot of the surplus money that we had from this current fiscal year that is going to be substantial. They're using a lot of the ARPA funding that I believe we should use for strategic transformative investments. Now that could all sugar off in the bigger bill that's coming out at the end of the session so we'll have to wait and see. The other provision that I have a problem with I mean there's many but the million and a half dollars they're using of ARPA funds to design their new cafeteria in the statehouse. I think that that's something that's not on the priority list from my perspective and that's going to lead that million and a half dollars just to design a new cafeteria is going to lead to about 25 or 30 million dollars of ARPA money or some money spent on something that I think could be utilized in other areas. Do you mean the proposal to potentially build another floor on top of the cafeteria that redesigned? Well they're actually building a cafeteria right I mean the floor they're talking about using the existing eating area for more committee rooms I believe so they're actually building a new cafeteria. Dr if I could the the test kits we were just talking about most of those test kits now I believe have a used by date of June or July I believe and I'm just wondering can they still be effective after after those born-on dates? I'm not sure it's as straightforward as you're presenting it in terms of when you're looking at hundreds of thousands of test kits which ones are of test kits that came out I know when I picked up mine they were they were good till June the ones that just came out and were delivered this past week from the federal government were right around July 2022 of this year yes so I was just curious yeah I do know there was talk at the level of the FDA about if those expiration dates actually could be extended because of the fact that nothing is going wrong within those kits that would prevent them from being accurate later on I don't have an update on that unfortunately I do know that the federal government has just given Americans another opportunity to get several more test kits for their family so I would hope that if those are coming in April that they don't expire two months later clearly at a time when the pandemic will have really receded and we want to save them for a future time if we need them. Is there a way to find out one way or the other that those will be that will be able to extend past the yeah I would have thought we would have heard from the FDA but now but let me have our office look into that. Governor also just wondering with the legislature proposing a bill to really treat legislators and people in government different from the general public as far as stalking and a few other harassment issues if is that a good idea or should we be just strengthening the law all together? Well I'm not you know I think any issues surrounding stalking of any sort should be is reprehensible and I think that we should do all we can to prevent that from happening if we're talking about and I haven't looked at the specifics of this one but before talking about treating legislators or those who are holding office in a higher to a higher standard or or treating them better that that doesn't wouldn't work for me either I think that everyone should be treated the same. Backlash on that that's why. Yeah I haven't I haven't read the language yet to be honest though. You're hoping comments you've alluded to inflation and the higher cost of gas but right now certainly lots of people are paying at the pump and in some states there's been a kind of evolving discussion of potentially temporarily rolling back the gas tax or lifting it temporarily I don't know if the commissioner Volio is on the line or if you want to comment I mean is that something that you look into? You know we need to do all we can as a country we're not just facing this as a state we need some revenue to match the federal funds so that we can build the projects and keep the infrastructure and improve the infrastructure in our state and that would only give us temporary relief we're not talking about a lot of money when you when you combine I think it's about 28 cents or something like that per gallon that's not going to I mean we've seen the price of fuel go up dramatically fire exceeding the 28 cents so I don't think in the long term that's going to help I think that I'm sure on the on the national level they're looking to do whatever they can to increase production to take at least temporarily to try and take some of the impact away from everyday taxpayers but this is again difficult we saw the before the Putin war on Ukraine began I think that we were already seeing the prices of fuel increasing due to inflation supply chain issues and so forth since then it's increased dramatically and may increase more but it's the price we may have to pay for freedom and for democracy and to do all we can to condemn the actions taken by Russia and Putin in particular governor the president today did cut us off from Russian oil that's good move by the way I think everybody kind of agrees with that but what he didn't do was increase production on on the US side he said he would negotiate with our other suppliers the Middle East Europe and such but he did not say anything about you know opening the spigot here as far again this is a little bit out of my area of expertise but but I think we should do everything we can independently to take care of the US and if we can increase production and more currently I believe at one point recently we're the highest producer of fuel and so we if we can do that to get us through this hump we should but on this at the same time I think this really does emphasize our need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels I think that the electrification of vehicles is the future and we should accelerate that just as quick as we possibly can so that we can be truly energy independent so we don't have to rely on the rushes of the world of the Middle East or any other country for that matter we should we should be able to stand on our own two feet and and so maybe there would be a reduction in conflicts as a result I think this war this war this on on Ukraine I think some of it is about dominance world dominance dominance of the fuel industry natural gas and gas as well petroleum gas so I I think again we can do two things at once we should increase from my humble in my humble opinion increased production here in the US if we can to get us through this period of time but also double down on on trying to invest in the technology to to reduce our emissions as well as to become more energy independent with the electrification of vehicles would you care to comment on Florida discouraging healthy children from getting vaccinated and Governor DeSantis chiding students for wearing masks in school if I could paraphrase the governor's response last week about a Texas policy Vermont is not Florida our perspective continues to be and this joins the perspective of the pediatric community at large that vaccination is the most effective way to prevent serious illness and worse outcomes this is an essence of why we call many viral illnesses vaccine preventable diseases the word is preventable and it's in healthy people that you want to prevent these things so what the Texas governor sorry the Florida governor and surgeon general of that state basically announced was that healthy people specifically children don't need to get vaccinated I was also troubled by the the governor's commentary discouraging students from wearing a mask because students who are so chosen to wear a mask wanted to be able to do so now Vermont guidance is shifting to people determining their own risk and taking into account their own personal circumstances and those of their loved ones around them and the people around them so berating kids who are trying to make the choice that is either best for them or for those around them is not a very sound public health policy and probably not a good parenting policy either hi everybody as always thanks for being so accessible this is for both the governor and dr Levine it seems that this week sometime is the two versa the original state of emergency that came with covid and i know that covid was looming for a while before that actually came into place but i'm wondering two years later would you ever imagined that you as Vermonters and you as public officials would have had to have gone through what you have gone through and what lessons do you think that you have learned here both as or as human beings and public leaders well first of all i think if you look back two years to march 13th when we i signed the order stating an emergency declaration here in vermont i never expected that it would last two years not that the state of emergency is lasted but i didn't think the pandemic was going to last two years but at the on the other hand i don't know if any of us knew what to expect and i think the lessons learned from my perspective is that understanding we don't have all the answers individually that we continue to have to learn from others we were able to watch other states they were some of them were experiencing the pandemic before we were so we were able to avoid some of their mistakes we also started these these press briefings when we've had you know over the last two years i would imagine well over 100 150 maybe maybe more i don't know but we leveled with vermonters and we tried to tell them what was going on we were truthful with them and giving the good news and the bad but we also as a team we worked together to listen to the science watch the data and make decisions on what we thought was best collectively for vermonters and that wasn't always popular not everyone agreed but but again we tried to be forthright transparent and explain that to vermonters so i think if if there's a lesson to be learned from my perspective is just give as much information as you can but but do what you think is right not what is politically right not what is what people are asking for all the time but but do what's right based on the information you're receiving and and rely on the health experts to give you that information that's levine yeah this is a amazing time that it's two years later although as you point out it's actually way more than two years for all the preparatory work and anticipation i think certainly one thing we learn as a human race i think should be humility and what i learned in a scientific way and in a medical and public health way is humility because this is again something no one had encountered in a century a pandemic of this proportion and a virus that had never really been around to infect human beings before and we still don't even know exactly how it got to human beings though the theories are getting further honed so i think relying on science relying on data would have been something that i would have thought was a natural thing for most people to embrace but as we've seen we live in very polarized and divisive times as well so one of my lessons learned is the power of powerful leaders and others uh in providing misinformation making it all the more important for political and public health figures in this state to be as true to the science as possible true to the data as possible and as uh hopefully full of integrity and transparency as possible one of the basic tenets of public health in situations like this is frequent and obviously accurate communication and as the governor said not only telling people what they want to hear but sometimes telling them what they don't want to hear but that they have to hear and i think that's an important lesson that we all need to take into consideration as well the reality is this is a cause of stress across the world and certainly in our country and we need to understand that and continue to be understanding of what that stress has done to people at the very basics it's gotten people into arguments and uh polarities about mass or good mass or terrible vaccines don't work vaccines are lifesaving um and we need to sort of navigate those waters uh and try to be understanding of people who aren't on the same side of the fence as us we also need to be incredibly thankful that we live in a state where the majority of people have been aligned with us completely all along the way which has been really a wonderful wonderful aspect of this but when i refer to the stress it's also what we've been referring to in the numerous press conferences of late which is we are taking the focus off of this virus that is receding for hopefully a longer than a moment into the background and now dealing with all of the impacts that it's had on our population you've heard about some of the education impacts many many times also impacts on our overall health on our overall health habits and lifestyle habits on numerous numerous aspects of our existence so i think we need to be very humble and realize that we have a ways to go to now engage in what we call recovery and revitalization and get ourselves pointed in the right direction and hopefully with some unity and getting there without a virus sort of lingering in our minds all the time impacting every move we make and every action we take so that's not probably doing justice totally to your question but that's about it for now okay thank you very much and the value reporter yes hi thank you uh i have a question for secretary friend um so at this stage in the pandemic you know we've been talking about the social and emotional health with vermont students how or what exactly are some specific uh measures that you're yeah hi ben i think i heard your question around social emotional well-being and schools and what specific measures we're taking yeah so i think it's useful to think about this in two levels one is what we're going to do at the state level and what locals can do is that's essentially how the dollars are deployed so we have state-level resources that can be deployed to address the issues of education and recovery of which social emotional well-being is a priority but there's also local funds as well and kind of our challenge and this has been how we've had to navigate all of our response and education as a result of the federal funding is we have to do our best to coordinate both the state uh investments and the local investments to have the biggest impact so and you know we've been delayed in doing that to a certain extent because we've had to navigate various the variants of the virus so to speak and there's limited capacity uh for us to really have a focused approach on both recovery and doing the daily hard work of ensuring our schools are safe from COVID-19 that being said i think first thing is to acknowledge that one of the most important things we've done already this year is that we maintain our schools open through perhaps some of the most challenging moments in the pandemic in spite of the two-year cycle you heard about a few minutes ago starting this fall our high schools have largely been operating continuously which was not the case last year most of our school programming went forward and that's a tremendous achievement considering the context that we're in both with Delta and Omicron but now as Dr. Levine mentioned as we see the the variants sort of fading we have our work cut out for us and we need to renew our interest in making the focused effort on addressing the impact of the pandemic so at the state level right now with our state funds we're talking in partnership with our department of mental health um about focus strategy relative to well-being in schools and I think that's going to play out around two things one is to actually deploy more clinical resources to schools but the other would be a focused strategy on staff well-being because we need our staff teachers um fully able to do the work that they're so great at doing on a daily basis and that they've been adversely impacted by the pandemic the state of least so that's that's kind of the in a nutshell where we are at the state level um I think at the local level what we're anticipating doing is really putting some emphasis on something we call education support teams which have been a long-standing education policy in the state going back some odd 20 years uh we want each school each school district to have an educational support team uh focused and beginning to say take referrals or to do the assessment around what student needs are and also serve as a interface between local resources and state resources so as we bring state agencies to bear to help out school districts and so forth they can have one point of interface at the district level as opposed to one of each school level so this is kind of where we're at at the moment we'll have more explanation of this as we're going forward but the good news is we're starting to you know get out from underneath the sort of the public health aspects that have dominated a lot of our work in schools and we are unable to sort of now really put some focus effort on the education recovery work thank you Erin B.T. Digger um I believe that I I think this question um will probably be for Dr. Levine I was wondering for the mask um new mask guidance that you guys are putting out does it apply to concrete facilities like long-term care healthcare setting you know incarcerated and individual places like that yeah that's a great question so um the guidance that we're putting out is really under the rubric of general population guidance both the healthcare sector and the long-term care sector have guidance coming from CDC and from CMS and they need to be attentive to that as they always are having said that even the guidance coming from there is really focused on recovery if you will and on maintaining good visitation patterns maintaining um you know good infection control practices of course but not being so overly restrictive that we adversely impact the mental health of people working in such facilities so um they will go under their guidance though and with regard to corrections our corrections department has been formulating more renewed plans for again returning to time when visitation policies and restrictiveness can be revisited as appropriate to the circumstances on the ground at those settings so their guidance does not come under the general population guidance either okay um I also have a question about the schools maybe Secretary French would know better than you but you know we'll see what is the status of testing in schools at this point is it still regularly happening and is it going to be continued through a certain time period or are there plans to wind it down at all yes we both know the answer to that but I'll give Secretary French his opportunity thank you Dr. Levine you're talking about COVID testing in schools yeah yeah I mean I don't know if that is simply anything testing or if you guys still are performing any level of PCR testing but I was thinking of kind of both initiatives yeah I just want to make sure you weren't talking about SBAC academic testing in terms of COVID testing in schools we're maintaining our current programs which are two-fold we call test at home you know in both I should say both programs rely on antigen testing a rapid test so tested home is still being maintained for the time being as is what we call staff assurance testing which is you know basically to provide staff ready access to antigen tests so they can maintain an awareness of their own status relative to the virus so what we announced last week is that those programs will be fading out over time I think we'll start to see that happen around April 1st sometime in that time frame but it's not certain at this point and very similar pattern to our mitigation recommendations in that we're going to be moving the testing towards a statewide approach as opposed to a specific strategy for schools so in the background there'll be increased supply of antigen tests coming into the state from the federal supply and we'll be seeking to phase out the specific school program in favor of a larger testing initiative available to all Vermonters okay just by the way did you ever get that list of highly vaccinated schools throughout the state? yeah it's something we're working on thank you for asking you know we had the week of vacation so we weren't able to make much progress on that because our intention was to send the information to local school districts first so that's what we did on Wednesday of last week so we're in the process of just pulling that together so we'll have some reporting on it soon okay thank you Tim McQuiston Vermont Business Magazine Hi Governor I have a couple construction questions for you we're just about to enter the season and this is sort of the near wheelhouse there's a lot of money available of course for construction and the industry has actually been doing about as well as any industry through the pandemic there's a lot of money but not a lot of workers what are your expectations as we ramp up the new construction season? my expectations are we're going to have more projects than we have entities to construct them we're you know having this unprecedented amount of federal dollars coming into the state for a lot of infrastructure and we have our traditional funding as well so this is going to put a lot of stress on us as and those in the industry as well we also at the same time are experiencing a lot of supply chain issues so I think we're going to have to have some tolerance in terms of how long some of these projects are going to take we may have to ask the federal government to extend the time period because I don't believe we're alone in this as I keep talking about and I've talked about over the last six years we have a workforce challenge on our hands the demographics are proving themselves out we are heading in that direction before the pandemic and the pandemic has exacerbated the issue so we we don't have enough people in the trades as I said in my opening remarks so this is all leading to we're going it's going to take some time to to put all this into place but but that's a good problem to have as opposed to not having enough money to do the projects in the first place so again this is going to be challenging but we'll work our way through it as far as the DTE funding is concerned there's I've sent three kids to the high school and you've experienced with this as well of course and there's there's three things three issues one is is convincing the kids convincing the parent which of course is vital and then there's always been a transportation issues since there's you know for most of the students they'd have to travel to the the tech centers having to address those issues and where do you see the the money that you want to spend on it going to yeah again I think that sums up what some of the challenges have been and that I think CTE has been viewed as an afterthought by some but I hope it's on the the forefront I hope that we can reduce and eliminate the stigma attached to CTE schools and those who enroll because I said in some of my remarks some of the most successful people I know came from the traits and and I think that it's a it's a lucrative career and I think we need to at least engage more kids so they understand the opportunities that are out there and the success they can have in doing so maybe Secretary French can go through what we actually want to use the CTE money for but but I will say the sooner that we can de-stigmatize this and and put this into you know a more a congregate setting from my standpoint the better off will be so they aren't separate units that they're all interrelated in some capacity yeah thank you governor yeah I'd make a few comments and specifically on the proposal of Ed fund the governor's remarked that you know CTE centers have been left behind to a certain extent I think that's definitely been true pertaining to COVID relief you know most of the COVID relief dollars that have come in to all states come to school districts and that isn't necessarily a good alignment with the funding for CTE center so we've had to work and the governor's had as a priority we had another very small relatively speaking pot of funds called the governor's emergency education relief funds and those have been largely dedicated to CTE centers but there is a significant need not only to address the COVID related costs for them but also again to to make a strategic investment in the future and I think CTE from an educational perspective and a workforce perspective should be leveraged to the maximum extent possible and to your point Tim I think about this idea of eliminating barriers as a useful one we have several other policy proposals in play with the legislature we should be looking at structural barriers that prohibit or prevent or make it difficult for kids to attend CTE programs one for example that we're working on with the legislature gets at the structural issues of how CTE is funded there are some essentially financial disincentives for schools to support students attending the centers and we want to work to eliminate that and essentially fund CTE right off the top of the ed fund so we had a study that was done a year ago on that and we have an interest in taking that forward and actually trying to operationalize that in the coming year I think another issue to your point about students you know the logistics involved of attending the different CTE centers I was down at the staffer tech center in Rutland earlier this year and I was a superintendent that area but I wasn't surprised to find that they're basically trying to manage the academic programs from 12 different sending high schools and each of those high schools has different curriculum different standards different proficiencies if you will and that's really challenging and it's a it's a fundamental structural issue we would like to see hoping to pilot the use of remote learning technologies for the academic portion for CTE centers so the students could spend more time in the centers and less time on school buses driving back and forth between their sending high schools so anyway those are a few ideas but I think you're on track that we need to look more aggressively I think at eliminating some of the structural barriers that make it more difficult for students to access these programs all right great thank you Chris Roy Newport Daily Express Chris Roy moved to Pete Hirschfeld VPR Pete VPR right we'll try Lisa Loomis the value reporter good afternoon this question is for Governor Scott and it comes from a reader who is insured by UnitedHealthcare which is ending its current partnership with UVM Health Network at the end of the month they would like to know if you or you and your administration are able to do anything to help resolve the differences between the two organizations and short of a resolution is it any way you can bring to bear some sort of postponement so that it does not happen till the end of the year when people can openly and can open enrollment is available I might ask if Secretary Samuelson is on the line and might be able to answer that better than me yeah thank you for the opportunity to answer that question so we are currently evaluating the situation that is occurring between the UVM Health Network and UnitedHealthcare and what options we have we are going we are strongly encouraging UVM and UnitedHealth to work through their challenges and differences we recognize that both of the these providers provide a significant footprint in Vermont in terms of our actual next steps that we're going to take related to this but to get back to you in the in the future but again really working to to watch and monitor the situation on the ground and encourage the providers to really get to consensus so that we can continue to provide adequate treatment in Vermont so I'm not sure if Mike Pichek Commissioner Pichek if you have something to add to that yeah thank you Secretary Samuelson I just want to you know echo Lisa's point it's certainly a concerning situation so obviously having an impact on Vermonters now even though the contract doesn't end to the end of the month there's great deal of anxiety about what this means for them but we do want to reiterate that the negotiations are ongoing that the parties are speaking to each other as Secretary Samuelson said we're coordinating internally among the state we are hoping and urging the parties to come either to a long-term agreement and if they can't do that to reach a short-term agreement that will allow these individuals that are impacted to find alternative health insurance so we will continue to monitor closely we're meeting with the parties we're trying to do all we can to get to a favorable resolution thank you both for that is does the state have any regulatory authority to pause and ensure to stay in the state through until open enrollment so because of the type of insurance that's offered here the state unfortunately has very limited authority very limited regulatory authority these are regulated plans at the federal level but that doesn't mean that we can't still play a role in trying to get to a resolution so that is the role that we're playing also want to mention any consumers that are concerned about the impact they are we encourage them to reach out to our department to have conversations about alternatives to have conversations about the the actual impact and to get information about what their options are but again hopeful that a resolution will be reached great thank you very much hi thanks governor I was curious if you could give us an update I know it's only been a few days but last week you had said you had asked the state treasurer to review in liquid any investments from on has in Russia and you also asked your administration secretary to haul any purchases of Russian goods in terminate contracts with Russian entities have you been briefed on any movement on that of any has anything happened on that so far are you still in the exploring space yeah it's still a work in progress I don't know if secretary clauser has anything to add to that at this point in time I have not heard back from the treasurer but I know she and her team have been working on this as well thanks governor I don't have much to add we are looking into all of our contracts the office of purchasing is looking into their contracts and reaching out to contractors to determine whether or not we have Russian Russian stores goods as part of any of those contracts but I don't have any definitive numbers to provide yet some of the challenges Colin is that you have to do some research in terms of which products actually have Russian I guess roots some of them we may not even consider like I think it's Nikki and Haka Belitas I believe are manufactured in Russia as well as in maybe Finland but but I don't know where the entity is owned so that's a pretty big item coming into the state but also do we purchase any of those for our fleet vehicles for instance so it's a it's a bit of a a pain taking process to go through that you know every commodity would have to be research so it's going to take a bit but but if we encounter any we'll certainly have to research that and then we'll be able to tell you of what we come up with great okay thank you and then just one quick question about the your proposal to return the 45 million dollars in property taxes I think you have said along the lines of 250 dollars would that be like 250 dollars per taxpayer or is that an average in other words would it be prorated based on when you paid or is this just a blanket 250 dollar ish check to every every residential taxpayer yeah commissure Bolio are you on the line I'm here governor I'm happy to take that one so the governor's proposal would be a flat amount to each homestead filer so that's based on property and it's usually by household it might be you know a single person it might be a married couple it might be a family but the proposal was to do a flat amount which would be somewhere between 250 and 275 dollars per homestead parcel in the state and the reason for that Colin is just simplicity it would be too difficult to go through every every tax paid so to speak and then take a percentage and so forth so we just thought it'd be much easier if we just had a one one check written to everyone great thank you Chris Mays Bennington Banner to Greg Lamarow County Courier good afternoon governor I know you touched on this a few minutes ago but I want to go back to it for a minute in Washington there's been talked about a federal tax holiday to alleviate some of the effects of what Americans are seeing from the war in Ukraine federal tax rate for a gallon of gasoline is 18.4 cents Vermont collects another 30 cents I suspect that every day Vermonters would see the combined 50 cents as a big difference especially for those who are struggling to make ends meet especially for those in rural Vermont who have to travel for work a lot you began today by saying that you know affordability is is a big issue for you would would you support a gas tax pay us in the state of Vermont especially considering that you know we're going to be seeing a large windfall of federal funds coming for infrastructure yeah I as you probably know and have researched I have a lot of proposals to reduce the cost of living on everyday Vermonters I'd like to see the legislature take those up because that would be very very helpful I believe and and help the most vulnerable I would entertain anything in this regard but but again I just have to caution we still need to match federal funds unless the federal government is this was to say you don't need a match in order to move forward with any of these transportation projects because if we don't have the money to leverage we don't get the money to do the project and and that may not and they may not be advantageous for us either so again it depends on the details but but certainly entertain anything to try and alleviate some of the pressure but I think we just have to be very open and honest about this this war this war this invasion on a peaceful nation by Putin in Russia is going to have a devastating effect and an increase costs not only to to Ukraine which is horrific but the cost of living is going to increase here the cost of fuel is going to increase and we have to bear that cost we we it's just no getting around that and and so we'll we'll entertain anything we'll see what the federal government does but but again I I think they might be able to take some measures as well to to try and increase some production for the short term to alleviate some of the pressure thanks the other thing I have for you today is as you know this is Sunshine Week a week that highlights transparency and all levels of government your administration over the years has done a number of things to to reduce transparency including blocking BACs or blood alcohol contents and in DUI arrests from from BSP troopers publishing that and press releases and and even even though that is public rate record later on so governor I'm wondering what you would or your administration is actively doing to improve government transparency we're having press conferences every single week and standing up here for sometimes two to three hours answering your questions I think that's being pretty transparent I I think that we've tried to do everything we can I think there is some privacy concerns in a lot of cases so that may be some of the rub with the with the media and with you in particular Greg but but we we do feel that private citizens are entitled to some privacy so there's a there's a you know fine line there and we try and do the best we can and we try and articulate why we take some of the the stances that we do okay yep totally understand that answer just you know like in the case of the DUI arrests that was a that was something that was switched from the previous administration so just one of those changes that your administration has reduced transparency on just for the record okay that that's it for me thank you Greg all right we move to Guy Page for my daily chronicle hello governor in senate judiciary this morning senator benning voted no on the s-30 compromise bill approved by your legal counsel he expressed his concern for a provision that allowing courts to remove guns from a household without the due process of being able to make a case before a judge and he said I'm going to quote it's a precedent setting that I fear for the future will be a stepping stone for other cases now I'm just I'm wondering why didn't this concern about due process not keep you from saying no to that part of the compromise bill well first of all I didn't this wasn't my bill to begin with as you know I vetoed the bill I don't know if senator benning brought this up during the first bill I don't know if this was is this something that was added to the bill this new proposed bill yes I I believe it was yeah okay so if it's something that's added to this this bill I'm I haven't I just don't know that much about it and we'll see I was pretty clear in in the veto letter what I expected to change if they were I presented a path forward and if they don't adhere to what path that is what I had laid out then I would probably be opposed but but again if this was part of the original bill then I would expect that senator benning had brought that to light earlier I just hadn't heard about it okay thank you um another question of Commissioner Levine was talking about pharmacies doctor's prescriptions treatment for for COVID-19 and I I may have missed it but I wondered if was was he talking about that it's now okay to get treatments such as iromectin and hydroxychloroquine have have these standards been relaxed on that or is that still a verboten as far as the federal government the pharmacies and the and the state's concern absolutely yeah the test-to-treat program from the federal government does not include the drugs that you mentioned that includes the newer antiviral drugs paxlovid malnupiravir and any other new pills that come out and are shown in an evidence-based fashion to be effective at treating COVID and preventing serious illness okay thank you very much Commissioner Greger Caldoney record yes thank you good afternoon a question for secretary French interested in the pivot to academic recovery I'm wondering if AOE yet has enough data to be able to describe the scope and impact of lost education from the pandemic I mean are you able to either qualify or quantify a fifth grader today is you know a year behind or a year and a half behind that kind of assessment yeah thanks for the question we don't at the state level have that kind of data the only statewide academic assessment that we have is the SBAC Smarter Balanced Assessment which is given once a year in grades three through eight largely in math and reading the year before the assessment was canceled last year was implemented with some waivers and particularly a waiver on participation rate so we don't have good data at the state level necessarily we are going to be working directly with school districts to to have them leverage their local data most of our school districts do have some form of benchmark assessments that they use particularly at the elementary level and that's an area where we'll have to focus a bit to ensure students are on track with their their sort of foundational skill development at the older grades you know high schools will have some information I think around course taking patterns and have some idea of students progress towards meeting graduation requirements I think the the challenge academically is going to be probably for the middle students who were transitioning so from the elementary sort of benchmarking approach to the high school course taking and these are going to be areas where we're going to be operating where we don't necessarily have good information at the state level and we'll have to decide to what extent we try to implement some new data metric or to what extent we just focus on providing those supports directly to schools so they can intervene is it your expectation then a greater grasp of these impacts on a more granular basis is available at the schools I mean are you hearing anecdotally that superintendents and principals are pretty dialed in on on this or you know is are we still in the shadow of the variant surges then that shift in thinking hasn't yet happened yeah I think I think the shift has started at the beginning of the school year but certainly people's energies appropriately were directed at managing the public health concerns but again I think it's a tremendous accomplishment and credit to our staff and the schools that we've maintained as much stability as we did this year in terms of keeping schools open but we do need to put new emphasis on addressing the impact to the pandemic and you know I am optimistic that we'll be able to do that you know it's a question of how how best to manage again the sort of balance between providing those direct supports versus measuring what the need is and we have to do a bit of both and you know we expect for example from a strategy perspective to make greater investments in after school programming and summer school programming as we did last year those programs largely had a engagement or social focus I think going forward we'll put renewed emphasis on those systems for academic purposes so the basic strategies we can put in place I think are knowable but it's a question of how we measure the impact which is still an open question but I think schools are very much involved in those conversations right now okay thank you very much okay that's it thank you all for tuning in and we'll see you again next Tuesday