 Good morning. This is June 23rd. This is the Education Committee in the Vermont House of Representatives. And we are looking at a few things today. The first thing is we, we have members of the agency of education here to talk with us. A little bit about S back scores and how we're doing in that area. I know the committee has questions. I know we all do. So I'm very much appreciate having both Wendy. Geller and Patrick Halliday here to talk with us. So I'd like to turn the floor over to you at this point. Who's going to start Patrick or Wendy. Patrick. I'll go ahead and just say, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to, to, to come in today. My name for the record Patrick Halliday. I'm the director of the education quality division at the agency of education. And in the past, I've also overseen the internally, some of the, the, the work around the development of the snapshot, although I kind of stepped away from that as others, other work has come in. But just happy to do our best to answer questions today. We don't have a presentation to give, but we're happy to do our best to answer questions as the, the committee may see, and I'll turn over to Wendy to, to add anything to that. Hi, good morning. Thank you for having me. My name is Wendy Geller. I'm the division director for the data management and analysis division at the agency of education. Among the crews that are in my division include the assessment team and the assessment data team. So you're interested in the smarter rounds, the assessment outcomes is essentially overseen all the work is presented and managed through my folks. So like Patrick said, we saw that you had sent a few questions across yesterday afternoon. So we figured you were looking for a conversation today. So we thought it would be good for us not to kind of talk at you. We thought it would be good if we came to talk with you. So. That was Siri talking to me. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Super. So. Are there, are there kind of general framing questions that you'd like to start with? I think there are. And I think I'm going to ask Serita. Why don't you, would you like to open this since many of these questions started with you. And mute unmute. Can you unmute. There we go. I just wanted. Hi, Wendy. And Patrick. Can you hear me now? Yes, ma'am. Can you hear me? Yes. I just wanted to give you a little bit of. Background kind of a context in terms of what the questions are being asked. And so previously, you know, the education committee was looking at a bill for literacy. And we were concerned about the literacy scores. I don't know if it was the aspect, I think it was the aspects that we were looking at in literacy. So we had a bill. We were hopefully going to get some funding to say. Our coaching for schools that had. Were below proficient in literacy. Then we also got the waiting study. We had a bill where we were going to look at a task force to look at the waiting bill and come out with recommendations about that. But again, I think it was a little bit of a question. I think that was a little bit of a question. And so I think that the committee. Was an issue that it looked like that was impacting. ELL students, disenfranchised students. Or, you know, minority students. So that, that was another piece. And then. You know, we didn't, we only have to the 2019 scores. We won't. See the. I'm sorry. We won't see the next set of scores until 2000 fall of 2021. And the scores, even for 2019, I don't know about others, but they're very, they're concerning to me. In terms of the fact that I think. Not only are they not really increasing as, you know, rapidly in terms of acquisition or proficiencies and acquisition. They're not acquiring the competencies. As I'd like, but. Especially with the students. Kind of, I think. They kind of group them together. I'm not sure if it's disenfranchised students, but the minority students, the, you know, students in poverty, the ELL students are really. Not. Again, not acquiring the competencies they need at their grade level. And so. And then there's COVID. And so, you know, there's a lot of things that can happen. You know, when you're out of school for six months, you know, basically, you know, if you take when they left in March and then add in the summer. You know, there was a New York Times article about the regression. That children will go through. So. That that kind of frames my concern. And I'm just wondering what the plan is. You know, to, I don't know, assess students and then, you know, what they are planning to do. You know, you know, I was asked about a couple of other plans to address. You know, where their gaps in their, skills and learning. And what that plan it. And what that plan is and how we, as a committee can stay informed about that. So that's a lot. Yeah, sorry. A chance to respond to at least grab some of the, the thoughts in there. Thank you, Serita. I'm done. that concerns are something we all share. So I appreciate you defining those for us. So Patrick, is it you, is it better to answer? I don't know, Wendy, do you want to go first or? Yeah, sure thing. So I think I'll just start with, thank you for those great questions. Those are certainly top of mind for us and for my crew at the moment. And also I just wanted to say that we share those values and we share those concerns. So thank you for those. So while we were certainly delayed in the release of the 2019 scores due to the overall delay and the statewide data collection that enables our reporting of those scores at the statewide level, we just want to make sure everybody knows that at the local level, locals have had access to those outcomes for quite some time. So I just want to make sure, I realized that sometimes the business processes around how we move data from one place to another place who has access to what can be a little bit opaque sometimes. And I just want to make sure everybody does know that at that local level that they have had access to their outcomes for quite some time. So the educators, the leadership teams at the local level, parents, students have all had access to that for quite some time. It's really just the statewide public reporting of those data that was so delayed due to the delays in the vertical reporting processes because some of our districts struggled so hard last year. We did need to wait for Burlington to be successful and they're in there. It's called DC04. It's the year end official data collection upon which the snapshot, most of those metrics hinge. So they were successful in December, but that did set our timeframe back about five months, which was unfortunate, but and we're working very hard with our district partners to improve and support them in their processes on the ground so they can be successful with those state level submissions. So just to kind of give you that little bit of context about why the timeline, so in knowing that timeline, and we did not have the summative testing, which normally happens in the spring, we certainly did not have the summative testing this year, essentially like most all other states all across the nation and the territories. So we're all gonna be wrestling with that coming into the new year. Some of the thinking that we've been doing and the collaboration with our vendors and our various different members of the leadership team like Patrick Patrick is a peer leader here at AOE. We've been thinking about what would be supportive to the field. And while we haven't been able to share this yet because we have been having to engage in making sure that we're crossing our eyes and dotting our T's with the procurement pieces because these are contracts that we have with the assessment vendors and then with, I'm sure you're familiar with Metametrics but that big push on the literacy effort from last spring. Oh gosh, last spring. Geez, it was only a couple of weeks ago. Doesn't it just feel like time is so strange right now? Oh my gosh, sorry about that. So in any event, this is, and again, this is kind of the first time that we're sharing some of this thinking out. We are going to be starting the conversation with the superintendents and the folks on the ground in the field soon, but we were trying to look at what tools already exist in the toolbox and are readily deployable and have a low barrier of entry or a low burden to learn on the field. And essentially, we actually have a pretty good toolbox when it comes to the assessment suite. In particular, we can provide the interim comprehensive assessments. Those are actually open at the moment they've been open all spring and we've worked very hard both with the Smart Balance Consortium and with our vendor, they were formerly AR but now their name is Cambium. We've been working very hard with our vendor to make sure that there are supports for remote deployment and remote use of that. I don't want to call it sweet but that functionality as part of the assessment program. And so we, like other states, we're actually very actively engaging other states at the moment with trying to think through how are you adjusting? What are the supports that you're putting in place? How are you responding to this right now? And it seems a very logical and robust course of action that we lean on the tools that exist because these should be familiar to folks on the ground and they're designed to function within the existing system. And so what I mean by that is we have one portal for our English language arts and our math deployment. So the interim comprehensive assessments and I'm just gonna speak about that one right now because your questions were around literacy. So essentially the interim comprehensive assessments function in the same portal as the summit of assessments. So there isn't like a whole new platform that educators would have to learn in order to grab them and use them. They're an existing tool that are designed to support teachers by helping them check where students are in their learning and determine where they need additional instruction or if they need to move forward into maybe some more challenging work. And it really supports educators and reflecting on the results of those interim assessments to help them learn about what's working and not working. So it seems a very apt and available tool that shouldn't be a high burden to learn how to use immediately. It also is supported by a new teacher support platform called Tools for Teachers which just launched in the last month which is designed to help support tailored content for where students are at. And so I'm not sure how familiar folks are with all this. I don't wanna go too far down the rabbit hole specifically about what the interim assessments are because the second step to all of this is that in working with the Lex Island Quantile Vendor Metametric, we were exploring adding the Lex Island Quantile scores to the interim comprehensive assessment scores. So initially, these are going to be added to the summative results but we're expanding that scope to add them to the interims so that they would then have access to all the content and the supports that are provided through those. I believe they're called hubs, is the right naming convention. So as I said, we're still working to the paperwork processes I spent most of yesterday afternoon on that. And we're going to be engaging our field partners to help them know what kind of immediate, immediately accessible tools are available to them so that they know what they've got to work with as they look ahead toward reopening in the fall. I should probably pause for a second because I was talking for a long time. I also just realized I don't have my participant lists up to see if they're in question. So I'll do that now. But I think it might help us to understand a little bit. There are a lot of different types of assessment. SBAC is a summative. We also have formative. We have diagnostic and a whole bunch of other forms of assessment. So I think a little bit better understanding of what we're assessing and how it relates to what we're teaching is important. I do appreciate the work being done on Lexile Quartile. I think that'll be a much easier way for us to look and compare across the state how we're doing. But I think if you could help us a little bit on understanding, we have scores that are down. How do we relate those lower scores to where we are now? And what is the value of the SBAC in terms of what we're teaching? Are SBACs measuring what we're teaching at this point? Are they measuring what is called as a value? Go ahead, Patrick. So the SBAC is, I mean, the SBAC are aligned with Common Core State Standards. So in that way, they are one measure of what we're doing. As you mentioned, Representative Web Chair, whether that this is, it's a summative assessment. A summative assessment certainly has value and it's an important part of any assessment system. But I think that if we think a little bit more broadly, I mean, really what the work of the agency for the last several month or two has been after we kind of got the continuity of learning plans going to get through the end of the 1920 school years, trying to figure out how we're going to open for the 20 school year. And a ton of work has been put into that. And we don't know what we're going to find because we don't have any way to, we're not going to be able to do a summative assessment of all of the students coming back into the classroom in, let's hope, September. But until the students are back in the classrooms, we're not going to really be able to have any way of trying to figure out exactly what the needs are. Our thought is, we may be wrong in this, is that the primary need or the most pressing need come September are going to be socio-emotional needs of the students who are there. There has been, this has been an alienated experience for a lot of students, a stressful experience for a lot of students and families. And our assumption that we're working on is the first thing that we need to do is make sure that kids feel safe and they've got food in their stomach because they're not, NES backscore is going to, that is going to be completely meaningless or until we really get a handle on that. And then if I can make a little bit of a jump to Act 173, I think that some of the guiding principles of 173 provide a little bit of a roadmap for us to think about the way that we need to go. One is that every school has to have a local comprehensive assessment plan. So what Wendy was talking about was really kind of the state provided resources which are really important and they really serve the school as well. Lexionale quantiles is another resource that will be coming online. That is an optional one for schools to do. They don't have to participate in that. So when we can't say to two different districts to kind of look at it, we can't assume that a school is necessarily gonna opt into that. But what a school does have to have is a local comprehensive assessment plan. And through that plan is something that the schools, once they kind of take the pulse of what their students are how they're doing with their social emotional needs is really looking at where those gaps are. Again, we can come forward with assumptions as to what those gaps are, but it could be literacy that has really dropped off since the middle of March. It could be math, it could be, we don't know exactly where those needs are and we don't know kind of the gravity of what those gaps are going to be. So that local assessment plan is going to be important. Coupled with the social emotional learning are the educational support teams that are also outlined in 173. So that when we realize we have kids who are really in crisis here, what are we going to do to support those kids so that they can even get in the classroom and participate. I think another important part of Act 173 are the needs-based professional development so that when after we've done those first two parts of local comprehensive assessment plan and EST that that really should be driving with the professional development investments of an individual district is going to be, SUSD are going to be based on what the needs of their students are and, you know, districts, two districts across the state could see radically different needs based on how badly the, for instance, the quarantine, the shutdown has hit different districts and individual communities. We might posit that in Winooski, it's going to be particularly, you know, stressful after the bump that we've seen in the coronavirus cases, S6 Norse may not be dealing with that same level of anxiety that's there. And so the professional development needs that the teachers are going to be different. And if I could just point to one other thing and you are right that there has been, you know, a little bit of a decrease in test scores on SBAC, I'm, which is always concerning, even though that's just kind of a one point in time measure. What's to me more concerning is that we have done very little as a state, we've been very ineffective at driving, at decreasing the gaps that are existing in performance. So our historically marginalized students are consistently and almost without exception across all of the different metrics, not just the SBAC, but if you look at the snapshot with a couple of outliers, something like participation in flexible pathways is one of the outliers. The PE assessment, which is new is also one of those outliers. But really if you're from a, if you're an English learner, free and reduced lunch, IEP, a racial ethnic minority, it's pretty common that your performance across the board is going to be, is going to be lesser than your historically privileged peers. And I think that that's more than personally, more than the relatively small dips in overall performance. It's those, those persistent gaps that to me are concerning and really need to be not just at the state level, but at each local level need to be an area where schools are setting continuous improvement goals to address those equity needs that are there. And then looking at their assessment, looking at their needs-based professional development, developing a coordinated curriculum to address those needs. I think you're muted, Chair Webb. How long have we been doing this? Really, I think, I'm curious, how are we doing in terms of schools developing their local comprehensive assessment plans? Particularly in relation to professional development and excuse me, the needs-based assessment. I'm curious about where we are in terms of identifying where professional development is actually needed in which areas and do we have a good sense of that? I don't work directly with 173. So this would be a better question for Secretary of Friends when he comes on Thursday. I don't have update other than to say to have a local assessment plan is not a new requirement. This is something that's been around for a long time, that there's been some need. How schools have reacted to this under 173, I wouldn't know maybe Wendy, you have a better. I am struggling with my mute button. No, I'm with Patrick, that is not my wheelhouse and I would defer to Secretary of Friends on that one for this piece. We really are, our scope is the statewide standardized assessment batteries. So I think Secretary of Friends will probably be able to speak to that on Thursday. So is the biggest concern that you identified as a bigger concern is saying that we have been ineffective in addressing the gaps between our more economically advantage students and our marginalized students. And we certainly know that the closing of schools, if there's any way to exacerbate that, it's close public schools. So in terms of the other scores, are you seeing that you see this as okay other than for the marginalized groups or? So the point that I was trying to make, and I'm sorry if I was unclear with it, I think you're exactly right, that this is certainly a fear of across the agency. It's also a fear, I would imagine in every school district and probably in most homes in the state that we're going to see those gaps become exacerbated. My 14 year old daughter was not the most successful distance learning child that you've come across, but she has two older siblings who are in college who serve as a model for her. She has a mother who's a literacy researcher at the University of Vermont and a father who works for the agency of education. She's going to probably turn out just fine, but for those students who don't have those sorts of access, don't have a parent who understands, you know, as a new American and doesn't understand the system, doesn't maybe even speak the language or at least read the language. That I mean, it would certainly seem that those are going to be the places where those needs are going to be exacerbated. And then, you know, we ultimately, the annual snapshot is should have about 20 different indicators on it. I think we have 15 that we now have data for based on the release that came out last week. And, you know, we see almost across, certainly 10 to 12 of those historically marginalized status is doesn't necessarily have to be a determinant, but it's certainly a pretty big indicator of a gap in performance. And the couple that I've noticed, which are positive graduation rates are not, you don't see as big a gaps in graduation rates based on historically marginalized status. Sometimes you see a gap between four and six year graduation rates, but ultimate graduation rates, we see students doing relatively well regardless of their background. The PE indicator is one that I mentioned that we see a fewer gaps. And then the other one, and this is, I think, encouraging, it'll take a while for, I think, this to work through the system to show up in other places. But participation in flexible pathways is another one that schools have certainly changed the way they're delivering their model to get more students, you know, to be kind of an anywhere, anytime delivery of education. But outside of those three, to lesser degrees, and it depends a little bit on the historically marginalized group that we're talking about for individual indicators, those gaps are persistent and really, to me personally, I'm not speaking necessarily for the AOE here, although I think that's probably consistent with the AOE values by the places that jump out to me as concerns. Serena, I'm gonna get to you. I wanna get to Representative Elder and then you'll be up next. Okay, thank you. Representative Elder. Yes, thank you very much. And this is, I guess, a question for Patrick. First to comment, though, just to, I agree that that information about flexible pathways is important. I'm glad you hit upon it. And just knowing that PLPs and moving in a more personalized direction is part of the trajectory for a lot of our schools. It's good to know that what I'm hearing is that some of those disparities, socioeconomic disparities are not as apparent for students who are pursuing that, who are pursuing flexible pathways. Is that, do I have that right? You know, that's, I haven't dug deeply into it. I haven't looked to it by school, by school or district by district, but the overall trend seems to be reflective of that. Yes. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. The thing that I'm also hearing there is that it seems like with the metrics of free and reduced lunch students qualifying for that and also English language learners, that seems to match up pretty well with our equalized pupil study. And it does make me think that with the delay of Act 173, I personally have always thought that those two elements would be important to go together in sort of reshaping our education finance system. I'm not looking for an in-depth answer on this, but I just kind of, what I'm hearing from you, aligns to me with what was at least found in that study, which is that those categories of students, ELL, and free and reduced lunch qualification are just grossly underweighted in our current system. I mean, is that kind of borne out by this data? So I am not a finance person. This would be a much better question for Secretary of Friends. It's not something that I would know. Wendy, you may have some thoughts and be able to dig in that better than I have. I really, this is not an area that I deal with with any seriousness. Totally appreciate that. Yeah, anyway, it popped out to me that that was this pervasive known problem that lies before us. And anyway, just interesting to hear that. It's a very good question. And it's one I'd be interested in, but this is, I mean, I would think, Wendy, please correct me. I would think someone like Brad James or our Secretary of French would be much more eloquent in answering that question than I could be. I can't speak for Wendy. I appreciate that, but thanks for, you've been very eloquent in your presentation as far as I appreciate it. Yeah, just to close that out, you're absolutely right, Patrick. That's a finance or a Secretary of French wheelhouse. Sarita, Austin. Yeah. So I know it's very, just being a former educator and working a lot with evaluations and developing plans. I know how complex it is to measure learning and how many factors impact those scores. I'm looking at COVID and I'm looking at money, and I just feel like there's money available. I'm assuming this is in my kind of my world. There's money available to do assessment of children, maybe our most at risk children. I don't know if we could start doing assessment now almost like a kindergarten screening, but getting our most disadvantaged students, so just looking at their scores and having them come into school, maybe using COVID money to hire and train assessors, so that when they get to school in September, we have a pretty good idea of what they need in terms of interventions to hit the ground running because if they're already struggling and then they have COVID on top of that, I just think it's gonna be so difficult for them to get the kind of intervention that they're going to need to catch up even in six months to a year in math and in literacy. And I guess I'm just wondering, I don't understand the kind of roles, but the AOE, like do you review the plans like individual district plans? And a lot of what we're talking about is input. We're not talking about data, the outcome. Do you just kind of keep looking at the data and look at are those sounds real on paper and even they're working the children? But are we measuring, are they working? Are the children, oh, so are the children learning? You know, who kind of oversees that the children are developing competencies and skills with the plans that the districts are using? How is that measured? And if they're not, what happens? Do you want to start with that and I can follow up? Yep. So what I hear you asking is, and you tell me if I'm not hearing you correctly, what I hear you asking is a couple of things. The first thing is who evaluates the local assessment, the local assessment program, which is part of one of those pillars that Patrick was talking about a little bit earlier. So that first piece, the second piece that I hear you asking is that are there plans for a statewide battery or statewide screening process on reopening? And then what I hear you asking is, what are the plans around or are there COVID dollars that would support additional staff or, you know, contracts or what have you? So I would have to leave that first question to another. I'm not sure if that's you, Patrick, or if that's a pathways question, but I can try to take a swing at the other two. So the second question that I heard being about whether or not we were going to have like a mandatory screening process. It was just an idea. We have two months. I mean, we have June, you know, we have July and August where kids, yeah, yeah, I really hear you. And I need students could bring them in for an assessment using COVID dollars. So for the dollar question, it's my understanding that the CRF funds are geared toward reopening the schools. So they're not well suited to this challenge. I believe that there are funds at the local level that are geared toward addressing the needs of students, which are a part of the existing title grant funds because this is understood as local work here in Vermont. So we're not really the folks who are the best fiscal folks to speak to those pieces. It's my understanding that we will be gearing our ESSA funds, the AOE level ESSA funds for the reopening effort at this time, but I know that Secretary French would be able to speak further to that. I mean, I think I could speak to the, do you remember when we talked earlier this spring about how I approach resources, not just on from a fiscal standpoint, but from a human resources and a time standpoint and my crew, you raised a really good question about, okay, you raised a really good question about being able to deploy some kind of a screening effort. I am currently without an assessment director at the moment that position is held in the hiring freeze. So for me, when I think about how do we use the tools that we know are in our toolbox, like what we were talking about earlier with regard to like accessible, low burden, low barrier of entry, existing platform, readily deployable. I'm thinking very hard about what can we do with the resources that we have immediately out of the gate. So from that standpoint, that's why we were looking at the interim comprehensive assessments as a possible screening tool given that, I mean, they're aligned to the summits, they're designed for this kind of work, they integrate well, they're designed to integrate well with all the teaching supports and the teaching suite for the educators. So while we don't know the dollars end of things, from what I can say from AOE's standpoint around the assessment program is that we're looking very hard and we're gonna be starting those conversations now that we've kind of got past the initial stage of what can we do, what do we have to hand? We're gonna be starting those conversations with districts to see, look, we can do this, we are going to do this, here's how you can use it, here are some professional development opportunities to support you, but ultimately to get what I think I heard as your third question around who's really paying attention to the learning acquisition on the ground, that is a local, that is a local purview. It's not really our role at the state to be that far down into the local work in that sense. So to kind of zoom back out to that first question to return to who takes a look at those plans or the district's progress towards meeting very different plans, I think what I heard was a question about how we engage in the continuous improvement plan evaluation process, and I think, Patrick, your position to talk about that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, I agree with what Wendy was saying before I jump in to talk briefly about the continuous improvement plan or the CIP, I think you bring up a really good question. I know that I haven't been as intimately involved in the reopening discussions as some others have. I don't know all of the things that necessarily need to be considered before someone can, before school could open for some sort of assessment. I don't know from terms of health and safety and cleaning and all of those things, what need to be done. I think it's a really good thing to pursue. I also know that a lot of local districts have left a lot of money on the table over the course of the last several years of title funds. And so before dipping into additional funds that are available potentially around COVID, making sure that those schools really work with our consolidated federal programs team to use up the funds that they already have. Every year we return lots of money to the US Department of Education because local schools are not using the money that they have and we don't control that money, local schools have to control that money. And so that might be a really good leverage point for those local schools to say we wanna invest in that. Returning quickly to the continuous improvement plan, I think that this is absolutely, I mean we talked about 173 before, effectively the continuous improvement plan, the folks on our team who work on this would be rolling over right now if they heard me simplify it to this extent. But effectively we have data sources, we have lots of different data sources. The ones that we talk about at the state level and the ones that we control are the things largely that go into the snapshot that we've talked about. And then the integrated field reviews, which are more qualitative take place every three years. So those are two kind of collections of data that the schools get. But then also as we've discussed today, there's lots and lots of local data that schools are collecting. And it's the responsibility then for schools under the, we are absolutely happy to work with individual schools. Some schools we've done more with at their, because they've been asking some schools we've done more with because they are eligible for comprehensive support. So we've pushed in a little bit further, but to help them dig through that data and really figure out what their needs are going to be. And the better the data, the better you're going to be able to do to identify those needs. And this is, I think what you're referring to Representative Austin is really getting as good of data and it's gonna be local most likely as opposed to part of these state provided. Data as we can to really understand what those needs are. And then what happens is, based on those needs, schools go through a process to identify those schools and how they're gonna enact those goals. Our team is completely ready to work with all of the different schools and updating those continuous improvement plans. They are continuous. They are not written in stone. They're not intended to be written in stone. They're supposed to be reflecting the realities that surround right now. So we've reached out to schools to say, if you need some help in honing those, if you wanna update the goals and we really limit the goals, we say, don't come up with, please, don't give us more than three goals because as soon as you take on 14 things, all of them are done poorly. Whereas if you do three things and you can really hone in on those, you might be able to actually affect some change in those situations. So as we get new data, either around the social emotional needs or the academic, the direct academic performance of schools, what we expect to see are schools going through the process to better identify what those needs are to update those goals. And then annually, at least annually, they need to just kind of update those continuous improvement plans saying how they have been successful, where they haven't been successful in addressing the goals that they've identified. And we have a team of five people, each who kind of have a case load, if you will, of Supervisory Union, Supervisory Districts with whom they work. We have for our schools who are eligible for comprehensive supports, which are about 15 schools in the state. We have bi-weekly meetings set up with those schools to just say, like what are the specific needs at the school level? How is it going in implementing these things? What can we do to, what questions do you have? What can we do to help with those? And then we have some monthly or quarterly broader meetings that might include the superintendent or the curriculum director or special education director, depending on what those continuous improvement goals for an individual school are. For other schools though, if there's a school who is a Supervisory Union that doesn't have any schools that are eligible for comprehensive supports, we are completely happy to walk through this process with those schools, go out and provide some training on how to do this work better. We don't have the ability for the schools that are not eligible for comprehensive improvement to force ourselves in. We can make ourselves available, but we can't say you have to come listen to us because we don't control those purse strings. We are gonna need to bring this to a close. We have other things that we need to address that are coming up on the floor. We very much appreciate hearing from you. I feel some regret that we did not figure out a way to give you at least another staff person. This year, particularly probably being using some CRF funds to give you someone to help with this, but that didn't come forward as an idea and we didn't put it forward. So I have some regret that we're leaving you once again without positions being held vacant. We are going to wanna hear from the agency again. I think we all have a lot of questions about what's happening over the summer and fall and what it is that our committee can do to aid in this. Things that are needed that we could provide. I know that we're anxious to do that. I think with that, I will close out this section and we will move on to our next agenda item. And I thank you, Dr. Calladay and Wendy Calladay. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. Take care. Thank you. Okay, we are gonna move on to part two of our discussion today, which is related to age 961 and that is the first quarter budget. The bill has passed out of appropriations. On the notice calendar, I believe, or it will be taken up on the board tomorrow. There will be discussion today in caucus of the whole. There are a couple of items that are relevant to us. One is the use of CRF funds for pre-K through 12. And the other is what happened with the higher ed study. And I have Peter Fagan in the room, but I just wanna give you a little background. When we met with the chair of Senate education, we had a conversation. We were not able to get movement on a number of items, but he was willing to entertain the idea of putting University of Vermont, that was I think four. Was it four or E or some such thing? Four, yes, as a point. In addition, no, no, that other one's right. Except the geltz. Over that evening, I had a conversation with Nebby and they gave us the compromise language, which I presented to you on Friday. That language had been rejected and it was rejected by the senator because he said it was too late to go to appropriations and he felt that we had a deal and did not wanna go back to appropriations. I think, yeah, so I got the language on Wednesday, gave it to him Wednesday night. He felt that we had a deal and did not wanna go back to appropriations with that language. Over the weekend, there was some work done and the Senate Appropriations Committee will be presenting that language as an amendment, the compromise language as to the purpose and the objective of the, what's it called? State, what's our group called? Select committee. Can you just a quick clarification? You said Senate appropriations, I think you meant to say house appropriations. I did, excuse me, house appropriations and this has been, and the Senate, my understanding is Senate is prepared to support this language. We need to get this bill out. I had thought that maybe we'd have to wait until August to work on that language, but there were some efforts at the letter leadership level that were able to switch that back to the compromise language. There are some things that we did not address and I think at least being able to state what the creation of this group is, is really important that it's taking a broader view. There are a lot of places in this bill that has VSC where we had had higher education. I think we can still work with it. I'm really, really very thankful and Peter Fagan will be the lead sponsor on that language and Peter's in the room now. I'm just looking, so what we're gonna wanna do is then vote on that amendment. We'll take a straw poll because we don't have possession of that, but a straw poll on that. Other things that changed, they went from a 22 member to a 15 member. They removed the secretary of education, but gave him, gave them organizing work to do. They removed two community members, but they address it in another section and say that in the entire group, it has to be the people that are part of the select committee also have to represent different geographic areas. They took out two of the other higher ed or workforce development organizations, which is unfortunate, and they took out the two additional ones that the steering group would be able to appoint. That's what we live with, but we got the most important thing, I think. I think for the most part, yeah, we had had joint fiscal office offering assistance. They have the agency of education. In terms of the reports, we had recognized the need for near-term action. They had recognized the need for short-term solution. One of the things that's interesting to me, Peter Fagan is in the meetings section. We had had the secretary of education, shall call the first meeting, but they're no longer on it. So they had the secretary of commerce and community development, which should be fine. Someone has to call the first meeting. I agree. I think that's pretty. And I don't- And then from there, Kate, all they did was they really right-sized to the appropriation that was reduced from 40,000 to 20,000. For the committee, the legislative per diems would come out of the legislative summer study funds that we have set aside. So it should be fine if it isn't, we can always fix that. Avery, could you pull up the amendment that the Senate Appropriations Amendment on that? I think that I sent that to you. House appropriations. Yes, thank you. I'll look for it now. It's not the language that you sent me to post yesterday. Is it? That was yesterday. Jim Demerray sent it to me. Jim sent it, right? Jim, you have that language, correct? Did that go to Avery? I did not go to Avery. It went to- I'll try again. I think it's to you. Yeah. Okay. Could you send that to Avery? Yeah, I got it. Let me see if I got it here. Thank you. Give me one minute. The good news is that this will be able to get started. And that's what's important. Well, in August, we will hear a little bit more about the month forward activity. Dylan, do you have any comments or anything? Not at this time, just that our task force has started meeting in our world. And we had a board meeting last week. So we're very busy and there's lots of ongoing conversations. And this will be an important and included as something to be considered by the select committee. And then Peter, I don't know if we have chip in the room or not, but if you could just review the pre-K-12 spending would be great too. The differences. So Avery, I sent that to you. Have you received it? I'm just calling it up now. Great. Thank you, Avery. It's a busy weekend. Okay, great. So Kate, I'm not going to read this because obviously everyone can read it. Yeah. I really like this language because it speaks to the urgent needs of Vermont State College system. And then it speaks to the future of what public higher education ought to be plain and simple. Yeah. Our committee vote was 11-0-0. Can you scroll up a little bit, Avery? I just want to make sure, yeah. So there it is. That's all it is. Yep. Creation of a Select Committee on the future of public higher education in Vermont to assist the state of Vermont in addressing the urgent needs of the Vermont State Colleges and develop an integrated vision and plan for a high quality, affordable and workforce connected future of public higher education in the state. I was really pleased that, and again, deeply thankful to the newly board of higher education with help on this language, the language that came from the Senate actually had things like robust online capacities which needs to be a part but not a central focus in my humble opinion. So any questions on this at this point folks? So I want to take a straw poll here. Since we don't have a question we'll go through the usual way and I'll call a roll. On this. Shall the committee support the amendment? I will entertain a motion to approve the amendment by the House. I'm sorry. Do I need to keep a record of action on this? No. Okay, thanks. So Madam Chair, I move that we adopt this language. Okay. Second. And seconded by Representative James. No. Questions? I guess I'm confused about whether this is a vote or a straw poll. It's a straw poll. Why are we moving it and seconding it? I don't know. Because we're in a remote world and it's difficult to do it. So I was wondering. Why don't we just vote? Why don't we just call it a vote then? Call it a vote. It seems it's got all the makings of a vote. Okay. Then give me a sec because I need to, we're gonna vote, I need to. I mean, if it's easier, not to, it's fine. It just doesn't feel much like a straw poll when we're proposing it and seconding it and going around the room. Okay, we could. All right, let me get the record of action then on my hard drive and all that unless we're doing a straw poll. We're just doing a straw poll. Okay. Because we don't have possession. Therefore, we don't take a formal vote. Okay, I support it. I love the new language. Can we just raise our hands? You'll have to take the, you have to take the bill down because I can't see people. I see, so I see Lynn. Bachelor. Okay. I see Peter Conlon. Yeah, okay. We can just raise our virtual hands and support if that'd be easiest. That's fine. So if you, those who support the amendment. I see one, two, three, four, five. Oops, me. Okay. And those opposed, take your hands down. Those opposed to this amendment. Great. Sorry. And I'll leave out one. So am I just seeing Chris Matos as opposed to this amendment? Jay, I think I screwed up. I think I was trying to put my hand down. Okay. And I went up. Okay. I think I voted for it the first time. I'm just going to go back to the way I was going to do it. Sorry. Okay. Kathleen, will you just call the roll? Okay. I will call the roll. Okay. Representative Conlon. Yes. Representative James. Yes. Representative Hooper. I certify this is Jay Hooper and I vote yes. Representative Austin. Sorry, I'm going the wrong way around the table. He's my mind. I'm sorry. We've been out of the building too long. Representative Bachelor. Yes. Okay. Representative Toof. Yes. Representative Giambattista. Yes. Representative Elder. Yes. Representative Matos. Yes. Representative Coupoli. Yes. Representative Austin. Here for us and Serena. I thought I already voted, but yes. Thank you. Okay. Sorry for going around the table in the wrong way. That is 11 to zero. Thank you. Okay. I would be so happy when we're not meeting remotely, if that ever happens again. These things are so much easier just looking at everybody. Thank you very much. And thank you very much, Peter Fagan. And I so deeply appreciate the work of appropriations in getting this change. It's really critical. And I can't tell you, I've told you many times, this man and chair, but really you're all committee. Herculean work in a very short period of time. Thank you. So much. I'll see you on the floor. Committee of conference, but we didn't have that luxury at this point. Right. We need to get this budget. We need to move this budget. Sorry. So Kate neighbor, just to clarify. So since we don't possess the bill, do I submit a record of action to the clerk? No, you don't. I'll just report it on the floor. Okay. We can just drop all 11 zero. Okay. Okay. It's just complex rules. Chris Meadows, your hand is up. Did you have a question or a comment or? Kate, I don't know why my hands fell up. I don't have a question. I'm just so happy that you're one of the youngest members of the committee and are having trouble with technology. I have no idea what I'm doing. So the next part, I don't think we've got Chip in the room. Do we? So the next part is the CRF budget. We worked on a variety of things, sent that language over. Nothing was ever presented in the house. Excuse me. We presented information to Senate appropriations. House appropriations. House appropriations. And then that stop, that was part of the CRF bills that were going forward. And that language was sent over to Senate appropriations. Just, I just said it too. They asked what we had been doing. I sent that information over. They worked with it and amended it. So there's no house position at this point on that. There's just what came over from the Senate. So as a result, because of that, I have given Peter Conlon the honor of presenting that on the floor. Yeah. So I'll just kind of talk about what I think are the differences. Yeah. It largely encompasses much of what we did if you recall from our discussion, they sort of slimmed down our language. So let's go from the base. We started with $50 million. 41 million of it sort of remains under the program we set up to essentially reimburse COVID-19 allowed expenses in FY20. And then the remainder of the money would carry over to FY21 to continue to cover COVID-19 qualified expenses, of course, also expended by December 30th. We had the money divided 25 million or 25 million, something like that, with the FY22 being more of a grant program. This is just a simpler version that says reimbursement for all expenses, starting off in 20 and then carrying over to 21 with the remaining money. Let's see here. Then, of course, there's the tortuous language over quote, available funds. And again, if you remember, sort of a goal here is to get as much school expense paid for through CRF funds that qualify in order to ease the pressure on the ed fund. And that's why on page 44, section little C, one B has this paragraph about quote, available funds. They're gonna look at what was expended, the area we will look at, what was expended that's currently covered by the regular funds anyway, and then adjust education payments accordingly. Continues to have the 1.5 million, it was up to 1.5 million from our number just to be a lot of cushion for the $422 per student, publicly funded students that approve independent schools can have access to should they choose. The Senate added or from the 50 million separated out a million for accounting assistance. This is really to help districts get their centralized accounting procedures set up for those who still need help doing it. COVID related in that accounting for all of the COVID related expenses is gonna be a very important part of making this all work and doing that through the AOE is gonna be equally important. So this will really help get school districts that get the whole chart of account system set. And of course that'll pay dividends going forward. And so then we have kind of the outlier that we don't know much about and that's the 6.5 million for the HVAC program. You guys all remember the presentation on it. The one sort of change that we were able to get in there was to require a report on September 15th as to how much money of the 6.5 million is actually going to be used in order to not let any of it go to waste. And so therefore if there's 3 million that can't be spent sweep that back into regular CRF money to help in other areas. And I think that about covers it. Did I ask the body support? How's that? This is flying out tomorrow. Any questions? There's so much in H961 with amendments and the pay act and all that. Who knows if anybody will even pay attention to it. We probably should have a straw poll on this. With our support. Yeah. It's not necessary. Yeah, Kathleen. Yep, and the money for higher ed went elsewhere. Yes. Okay, thanks. That's in a different part of the budget. It's in there somewhere. It's a lot of money. Or was it in the CRF? I've forgotten, but there's definitely money. That'll all be yielded to Peter Fagan. Yeah. So any questions? Okay, is everybody here? I think we've got everybody here. One, two, three, four. Yeah, we've got everybody here. Serena. Unmute. So I'm just wondering out loud here in terms of the CRF money used to open up schools. One, assessing students possibly Serena. Being, okay. That's all I want to know. Yeah. Thank you. We left it really. We looked at all of the districts as having their own needs that are not necessarily the same. Some were spending a lot of money on devices. Some were spending a lot of money on buses. Some of them were spending money differently. So our intention was to let them submit what was important to them and to qualify. Right. Yeah. I guess I would just want them to know if that is a possibility, that they know that's a possibility, that that money could be spent. If it is a possibility, they will know it. They will. Yes. And the Secretary's working on guidance now that should be out probably by the end of the week. It's my guess. Okay. What's eligible. And that's after going through, it has to be CRF, it has to be CARES Act related and it has to meet the requirements set by the Secretary. So we, it's not identical to what we did, but that's what's on the bus right now and it's leaving. So what's in the suitcase, what's in the suitcase? So is there anybody opposed to this? This is another straw poll. Is there anybody opposed to this? Either say something or raise your blue hand or wave. Okay. I'm seeing 11-0. I'm seeing an 11-0 straw poll that you are going to approve this language. Excellent. Thank you, everybody. So here we are at 941. This is the work of our committee for June. We hope to see it pass on the floor tomorrow and that the July one budget will be in place and we don't have to shut down government. Thank you, everybody. I think Avery, do we have the Secretary coming on Thursday, is that right? Do we have a Secretary coming one of those days? Yes, Thursday at 830. Thursday at 830. And then that should be it. I'm expecting that that will be it until August. And by then we'll have a little bit more clarity around funds and what's happening in Congress. So with that, I say we can adjourn until Thursday and I'll see you all on the floor in about 20 minutes. See you on the floor.