 Welcome everybody. Good to see everyone again in minutes of the previous meeting. I think you got them by email and then Mike just handed out her copies. So there's been a chance to... I had one change so... Yeah, okay. Of course, I wasn't at the last meeting, so... Yeah, okay. Good to see that often. Alright, so... Yeah. Goodbye. Bye. Have a nice day. So I move that we accept a minutes of... As amended? Okay, great. Thank you. Any further discussion? Mike, did you get that amendment? Oh, I'm sorry, Katie's the one doing this. Sorry. Great. So, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All right, we've approved the minutes. I know. Hi, Kara. Hi. Hi. This is Debbie Ingram. So we're happy to have you join us by Zoom. And we're ready for you to start with your presentation. Okay, great. I did this yesterday, so I'm going to try to again share my screen so you can see my slide. Yeah, we have a hard copy of them too. Great. Thanks so much for having me. It's really great to be able to talk with all of you and hear about the work you're doing. So, I'll start with introducing myself, which might be helpful. My name is Kara. I am a Vice President of Family Economics at First Focus, which is a bipartisan kids advocacy organization. In DC, we mostly work on federal policy, but do a little bit of upstate and local. And we kind of work on a range of issues affecting children and families. Everything from health care to nutrition assistance to children in the budget and more. So I handle our child poverty portfolio as well as housing homelessness and have been working for the past few years around this National Academy of Sciences study that I'm going to kind of detail further. So great to be with you and encourage a lot of questions at the end as well. So I think all of this data is probably not new to anyone that I would just kind of start out, especially because the new national census data came out. I know some of the state data is coming out this morning in like a half an hour. But, you know, this past year, we saw a little bit of a slight decrease in child poverty rates. So about a million kids were lifted out of poverty last year, which of course is encouraging. But we know our child poverty rate is still high. It's still 16.2%. So about 12 million children nationwide. We know that there's still great disparity. So children of color still continue to experience poverty three times the rate that of white children. And we also know that children just disproportionately continue to experience poverty. Right? They have higher rates of poverty than any age group in our nation. We calculate they are 54% more likely to have a poverty than adults at a higher rate. And also, you know, when we compare ourselves to our other peer nations, our rate is so much higher than many countries that we compare ourselves to. So we know that this has made a problem, although we are happy that we saw kind of a slight decrease in this past year. And, you know, as well as the kind of official poverty rate, the numbers in this game every year, right? Well, for, you know, a little more recently, the Census also reports out a supplemental poverty measure, right? Which kind of, you know, seems a little more realistic because it takes into account a lot of different things, including, you know, the effective benefit programs for children, children in the larger public. But, you know, the numbers show that for children, these programs are particularly effective. And so you can kind of see here, right, the chart of the programs and how many children they listed out of poverty in 2018. So you can see that tax credits that they are earning from tax credit and tax tax credit listed the most, right? That's kind of a big resistance. So probably not as surprised as not as well as having a big increase in property. So we like to do both those numbers, right, to show that, you know, when we take these programs into account, that the, you know, the child's poverty rate does drop a little bit and it drops more than it does for other populations. Because again, these programs are particularly effective. So we always say we want to build on, right, worth working and do more so we can list the other 69 children that are celebrating poverty. So first focus is 2015. Had worked with members of Congress to get as studies in Massachusetts fund it to be federal for free. And so we went to a few members who said, you know, we know there's a lot of great research out there on child poverty, but it's often comes as a bias, right? It comes from a think tank that seems to either be left or right leaning or from a university that seems to be left or right leaning. And so we really want something from a little more of like a non-partisan entity that, you know, we know folks from both sides of the aisle will respect making it to the attention and kind of really be a good tool to rally some good political will, right, and momentum our activity in child poverty. We know we've seen other studies from the National Academy of Sciences that would not only look at the problem, you know, kind of look at the effect of poverty of children, the cost of society, but also what we could do about it. And that last part we really pushed for, because we knew any kind of recommendations are modeling for managed. Again, we have a lot of credibility, and we don't want to just pose a problem, right, but also talk about what we could do about it. So we convinced them, and I got funding for the study, and so it's been a long process. It takes several years. It's a pretty big 600-page study. But last February, it was released, and we were really pleased with the findings. They kind of had some big overarching takeaways that we think are really helpful. And I think it's a great opportunity to talk about what we could do about it. We also have some big overarching takeaways that we think are really helpful for our work movements as well as, you know, modeling of policy options of programs. And I think, you know, I know Michelle has these materials. I'm happy to send them again after. Considering I haven't studied 600 pages long, first focus put together several materials to kind of make the study a little more digestible. So we have kind of a big top takeaways summary as well as a deeper dive to provide some context to the findings and talks about how it minds us with current policy proposals that we see in Congress or places that we think we need proposals that aren't any already. So kind of looking at the overarching kind of top takeaways from the study, you know, the first big thing said is that child poverty is solvable, right? Like, we can do something about it because it models policy, you know, and programs that if we implement them could cut our rate in half in 10 years. And we know that's the first critical step to being able to then end child poverty. And so that alone is really helpful, right? Because we often hear about child poverty as being this attractable problem really complex. So the fact that they said we could really make some big headway within 10 years was really helpful. It also says that, you know, other countries have made progress, and in fact, which I'll get into in a little bit, you know, we've made more progress in the past than have solved. So it shows its detail kind of what the United Kingdom has done, what Canada is doing, a little bit on what Ireland is doing. It doesn't include a New Zealand that has been doing some good work. So we know other places have done it for, you know, art as a process of making some better strides than we are and as well as we've made more progress in the past, so we should follow that lead. And we had asked them to do that. We wanted them to look at what other countries have done as well because we thought it would be helpful to kind of bring some transformable things for us. It also says that, you know, income poverty itself is what causes poor outcomes in kids, right? So it's not other things that are correlated with poverty, but poverty itself, right? So not having enough resources in a household to see what causes those negative outcomes and therefore increasing those resources, right, can then lead to those outcomes, which is really helpful as well. I was getting to that a little bit more. That money matters to reducing child poverty. When it talks about what other countries have done, it talks about the big, much bigger investments than we have. They have more revenue and they've used that revenue to combat child poverty and it has worked. And we know we don't spend nearly enough on our children. First focus issued a children's budget book every year that kind of looks at federal funding on children. The share of spending on children continues to decline. So this past year, it is at an all-time low, about 7% of the share of federal funding on children. The children make up about 23% of our population. So we know those numbers don't match up. The study also says that it makes more economic sense to reduce child poverty, which is also a really helpful top takeaway because we know that's what we continually hear, right, is that we can't do some of these investments because we don't have the money. But it finds that it actually saves us money to reduce child poverty. So again, I think this is something a lot of us know, but to have them say it right is helpful. So it finds that child poverty costs our country about $1 trillion a year due to lost earnings and healthcare costs increased homelessness, child maltreatment. But yet, the program options model, you know, if you put together the ones that will cut our rate half in 10 years, it would cost about a 10 for that. So it costs about $100 billion a year to cut our child poverty rate in half within a decade, compared to the one showing that you're not going to cost it. The other takeaway is that it says that work requirements are some kind of policies with work mandated, you know, that mandate work and that kind of don't work for reducing child poverty. It says that, you know, and I'm quoting, evidence with insufficient to identify mandatory work policies that would reliably reduce child poverty. And it appears that work requirements are at least as likely to increase as to decrease child poverty. So it confirms that work requirements like SNAP and Medicaid are actually harmful for child poverty rather than helpful in helping parents be able to secure employment that could reach economic security. And I'll, you know, and you know, I don't know how familiar everyone is with the NAS, but so what they do for these, this is a consensus study affair, and so what they do is they put together a set of votes. They form a committee, kind of a temporary committee for each study. And that committee is made up of a group of folks that is from all different viewpoints, so they're very careful to kind of have a balanced approach. So they have folks from conservative state tanks as well as left-leaning. They also, you know, they have people from different universities, a lot of economists, people who have been in this field a long time. But again, you know, they really do try to take a balanced approach of viewpoints that folks that have to come to consensus, right? So knowing that the group of folks that came up with these, you know, came up with these findings is again, really helpful and provides some credibility. So yeah, this is just, I thought, a helpful chart to, you know, show that we have made progress in the past. And you can see, you know, those periods of our time when we did have really steep decline, partially due to right good economic times, but also due to investments like the urgent tax credit, the child tax credit, SNAP and Medicaid. But as you can see, that progress just flowed. Again, we say, especially in the past decade, it's really because of the lack of investment in children. We haven't had any kind of new programs for the investment in children in a while. And again, our federal spending right continues, our share of funding on children's and crime. And so we can see the results of that. Obviously, the recession didn't help, but we also know that child poverty is nationally, you know, remaining fairly last. As a result of, you know, some of the investments we made through ARRA and other things that were passed up during the recession towards mom. So those are some of the kind of the top two ways. But, you know, so they actually began to manage these challenges and policies and the effect of these policies would have for different populations of children. So they found that not one single policy of program change could cut our rate of half and 10 years. And I'll mention here, so we had asked for actually that mandate to be able to find, you know, some model options that could cut our rate of half and 10 years. And we picked half and 10 years, right? And I know you guys are familiar. Based on your work and your history, because we've seen that in other places and felt like that 10 years kind of gives a sense of urgency. But, you know, we always hear different views on whether 10 years is too soon or too long. But, so yeah, those are their mandates to do. And then they lay out these, so they found that not one single policy of program change could cut our rate of half and 10 years. But instead, there are packages of policies of program changes that have done together could have this changed. And I'll just say that, you know, they measured progress based on what we call an adjusted supplemental poverty measure. So, you know, they found that there's a lot of under-reporting incentives which comes from measuring poverty, right? If you look at administrative records, a lot of people might not report that they're on SNAP or other things, you know, because they might not realize or they don't want to reveal that. And so they kind of adjusted a supplemental saying that actually the program's having bigger effects because of under-reporting than we realize. And so, so they're basing it on to SPM that's a little bit lower than what the census reports every year, and that's what they kind of measure progress based on that. So they wanted to be as realistic and honest as possible and show the true effects of these programs. So they modeled more different policy packages and two of them had an effect of kind of child poverty in half over the next decade. And the policy packages that had that effect included the Submit to the Earned Income tax credit, the Child and Dependency Care tax credit. It included an establishment of a child, an annual child allowance. It increased the number of housing vouchers that would be available. It increased the minimum wage. Some other things are not allowed, but it modeled a child support guarantee of about a hundred for $150 a month for families who have a child support order. It expanded benefits for immigrants, right, to improve access to benefits for immigrants. And so, you know, we have analysis that kind of shows, right, all the different packages and the effect they would have, but the two that have that effect included all the things I just mentioned. And they found that an annual $3,000 child allowance per child and also distributed monthly, right, because we have families who had expenses monthly and not just annually, that would have a big impact. And in fact, we've cut our deep child poverty rate in half a decade. And so we thought that was really notable. You know, again, almost every country we compare those two have some credit child benefits, right, so that the child was born a family automatically gets a payment for months to help with expenses. Sometimes that amount is bigger, right, when the child is younger and our expenses are higher. And so, you know, the fact that we don't have anything like that, you know, we have a child tax credit which is really important, but it doesn't reach the families at the bottom because you have just some earnings to be able to get anything and to be able to get the full amount of your job more earnings, right. So, so this would just be a new different way to model it, right, to cap it for people, you know, with certain income, save it out, or tax it at a certain income. But, you know, but looking at a, so they did, you know, they did save it out at certain points, but looking at a $3,000, you know, a year child allowance, we almost cut child poverty in half. And we know that cutting deep child poverty happens really critical because a lot of those families, you know, parents might not be able to work due to disability or substance abuse or other barriers. And so, the fact that that child in those households would be able to get a floor of resources no matter kind of what's going on while we kind of help those parents is really critical. And right now, you know, those children are the ones that might not be able to get much assistance because for many of our, you know, many of our program we have some earnings to be able to, to be able to access those programs. So, you know, we're missing a lot of kids at the very bottom of our program. Let's see what else we're going to highlight. So, yeah, here's a helpful chart to kind of show the, the effect of, I know those numbers kind of on the right-hand side are not that helpful, but at least you can just see visually, right, the different policies that they modeled. And so they modeled not just the ones I mentioned, they modeled as a side, they modeled as child care subsidies as the effects that those would have on reducing our child poverty rate. And as you can see, the child allowance, so, and they modeled kind of different amounts for each one. That's the child allowance, one child allowance too. So usually the first one is a little bit of a lesser amount. So the child allowance was $2,000 a year, child allowance is $3,000. And again, that would be a fully refundable amount that would be given would actually be administered to the Social Security Administration. You know, in our analysis we provided some more context of some of these because we know some of them could be looked like they don't have as much of an impact as we think they would have. So for example, the minimum wage, they actually only modeled as a 10-25 an hour because that was the latest data they had from the congressional budget office. But we know that, you know, the house passed a $50 minimum wage. We know that we're out of proposals. We know some states already have a higher minimum wage than 10-25. And they did, right, that they're modeling with a little old that they felt like based on national data that's what they could do at the time. Also, looking at expanding access to benefits for immigrants, they, you know, they did not model expanding access to tax credits, which you know that the biggest impact for immigrants because they look at other meat-sested programs such as SNAP and Medicaid. And That had a more limited effect, because a lot of kids for adults, a lot of people get SNAPs within a five year window, if they're a legal permanent resident, they're undocumented, it would have a bigger impact. But the take-up rate might be lower, SNAP is still kind of small amounts per month, but it would be significant. You know, some things you know, so you don't feel like medicated here, right? Supplemental poverty measures do not include Medicaid. We know they have a basic discretion around Medicaid and how important it is for kids, and that we know it increases family resources, right, and it's money that families have to put towards health care, as well as the first and first child health, right, which would get out of poverty in the long term. But, you know, since it's not modeled for actually, like, how much they could save a family per month, if that could differ so much, they don't model it here, but they mention how important it is. And so, after Medicaid, for example, for immigrant families, you can't learn to give the effectiveness numbers, but we know what happened at best. So, the bottom- Sorry, can I interrupt you a second? We had a question about reading this chart. Thank you. Thank you. It may be just morning, but I'm not getting fully understanding the graph at the bottom, the zero through 14, is that a percent? What, help me to understand that better. I get the stop. Yeah, I just... Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's, so the 14 is about, so 14 is the percent of, is the poverty rate using the invested SDM that they found. Okay. So, we found that 14 percent of kids, and to make it even more confusing, right, so I just, so the supplemental poverty rate for 2018 from the Census Bureau was actually 14 percent for kids, but they are using old numbers, right, so they were doing this in 2015, so it was a little higher. But using their adjusted supplemental poverty measure, they found about 14 percent of kids living in poverty, so they cut that in half, right, so that goal, that why you see... The goal is a seven. They're cutting up. Exactly. I guess. I see, okay. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I have another question about the child allowance. So, I mean, I think playing devil's advocate, you could look at this as kind of an incentive for people to have more children if they're going to get more money, and some people, cynical people might say that, if we're paying people to have children, that they would have more children, and that would actually have an adverse effect on the poverty rate. Has there been discussion about that, or how you would mitigate against that? Yeah, I know there's studies that kind of show that that effect is pretty small. It's also only about $250 a month, right? So, you know, I don't even think that is true. I'm not really getting encouraged people to say that. That's what I get. Right. One thing that I think is really important that they stress, which I think is really helpful, is that, you know, if a child allowance or other kind of income transfers, you know, do have long-term effects, right? So, what we'll do here is that, you know, you give the concerns that you give those families, right, you know, $200 a month, whatever, for a period of time, and then you take that away in a vacuum poverty, right? Well, you know, for children, that's not the case, because, you know, when children's friends are developing, if they're getting those extra resources, right, they're gonna do better. And so, they're gonna have better health outcomes, they're gonna have better education outcomes, they're gonna hire a group of adults and studies show that, and so that they will be able to break the cycle, right, of having these, by getting these extra resources early on. And so, it does have a long-term effect. It's not, you know, the temporary kind of standing. And, you know, this study doesn't model some things that I know people would have liked to see when it's two generation approaches, right, things that would help parents that just support the higher education, job training. They have that work advance program, which they model, pretty small, but I think that's kind of, people see it as long term, right, which gives you, you know, to help reach families with economic mobility. And, you know, we always say we need both. You know, we know that some of those, you know, ways to help, you know, families kind of reach economic mobility. You know, families take a lot of barriers, and we know that might be, you know, that might take a little while. And again, that might be some parents who are never gonna be able to work to do disability mental health, but have you. And so, we wanna make sure that we have a floor of resources, right, while they're breaking the developing, and so we tend break the cycle that way. But we know we need to be doing both. And because the study has this 10-year window, they can't look at things that would have an impact a little bit further out. So, you notice there's no early childhood programs here on the side of child care, or any childhood substance abuse. There's no head start, there's no paid family leave. There's a bunch of things that people, including us, right, find really important, and we know have an effect. And they talked about a lot of those things. We could not model them because they're not within the 10-year window. But we know they're important. So we, you know, we have said we want to send some urgency to do some of this, but that, you know, our analysis and theirs talks about all these other things that we're doing at the same time. One of the biggest things to notice is not on here, which they do talk about, and I know given the work that happened in Vermont last year, is there's no TANF on here. They said that TANF was too hard to model given that they spent in so many different ways. It was too hard to model improvements to TANF, and the effects those would have on reducing child poverty. So, but they talk about it being important, and they talk about, you know, ways they could potentially improve it, but again, that is hard given the state that it is in. So we don't, you know, in our analysis, you know, we make sure to talk about that. We don't want this to be seen as improvements to TANF, right? Our youth list, that we should not be working to improve TANF at all. But we know that some serious reforms would be needed to, you know, ensure that families are able to get cash assistance. And so, yeah, so, you know, that is definitely something to note as well, but we know that it's still pretty important. We have one other question. Yeah, sure. Hi. Back a few slides ago, you talked about that nationally we spend 7% on children, even though we make up 23% of our population. And just, did that include education, or was that just this array of services and supports that you represent on these graphs? So no, that, so it's actually about 200 programs that are included in our children's budget book. And I'll make sure, Michelle, I think, you know, have access, but I could also make sure to send a link so everyone can see that. Yeah, so we look at about 200 programs in the federal budget that, where at least the share of those programs are going to kids. So it's a pretty broad array that includes federal education spending. So it doesn't include state education spending, right, doesn't include state child welfare spending. We know a lot of that, you know, but have it with the state level, but as far as federal, we look across the board. So we don't just look at anti-poverty programs that are listed here. We look at a whole bunch. We don't look at international, we just look at, again, federal, domestic, even though that might change soon. But, so yeah, we do look at education spending. We look at, you know, military spending on my daughter's kids, right, and military families. We look at a whole array. So, but only federal programs, not state, where the budget, all the education is state. Yeah, for sure. And so another resource that we just look at is the Urban Institute every year puts out a report they call Kids Share. And so we kind of work in tandem on those. And that actually just came out as well in September. And that does look at state spending as well. But those numbers aren't good either, unfortunately. Yeah. That's the question. We have another question. Hi. Yeah, no, great. Back under your findings, you said something to be effective. It's about the money, not about other factors related to poverty. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah, so I think, you know, first of all, they're looking right at a, if we're trying to measure progress, right, they're looking at a measure that looks at income and tracks income. And so I think they wanted to respond to the idea that just tracking income, you know, whether that's important or not, or whether that's not a whole story. And they argue that that is important. And that is the way to actually show progress. And that measure alone is indicative of how children are doing because studies have shown that it's actually really the lack of resources in a household that is what affects negative child outcomes. And so it's actually, it's the lack of money. And of course, you know, that families take a lot of barriers, right? But for example, you know, they talk about how when you look at child maltreatment, child maltreatment rates are higher for children living in families who are in poverty, but that is often linked to parental stress, right? And dynamics that would not be the case if that family was, was better off. You know, of course, we know we need a lot of different interventions, right? And I should say, interventions and services, right? Support for families, but we know that even with all those other barriers, kids have at least a floor of resources like nutrition, like, you know, stable shelter, a good education. And we know that that really, you know, that can, you know, that can provide the floor and get kids enough of a chance, right? And kind of put kids at equal footing. And so, you know, there's a lot of things that we need to address. I think that they felt that being able to measure based on income was pretty telling. And so they talk about a lot of other factors that are correlated with poverty, but that's the poverty itself, you know, that really is important to look at and increasing resources really can turn the tide. Yes, we have another question. So first of all, thank you so much for this information. It could not be more on point in terms of what we're trying to achieve here. But I just had a question about, you talked about the two packages that could reduce child poverty in half in a decade. And I don't know, is it one or the other? I mean, you talked about the annual $3,000 child allowance. So are you saying we could just do that and reduce child poverty in half in 10 years? So, yes, I can detail. So there's two packages, right, of policies and programs that would cut child poverty in half. So the first one is what include improvements to the early income tax credit and the child and dependent care tax credit. These also include improvements to SNAP, so increasing right benefit amount, especially for those families with older children. We know eat more, right, might eat as much as adults, but those families don't get often increased amounts. It would also include increases for summer meals and kind of expanding some of the pile routine around delivering summer meals. It would also include increases to housing vouchers. So, you know, the second one that kind of housing vouchers do would actually increase the amount of housing vouchers. So that 70% of families were eligible for those vouchers, vouchers could receive them. They probably couldn't model it to a hundred, so they thought 70% is pretty good. You know, that's another part where we did a lot of analysis around implementation is key, right, family has to be able to use that voucher in order for it to be effective. And so we know there's a lot of protections that need to be in place to ensure that a family can use it and be able to also stay in that home, right, and hold on to that voucher. And so that was another area. And so that, those four things that I mentioned would cut child poverty in half, as well as de-poverty. And then the second package that would cut child poverty in half would include the child allowance that I mentioned, that 3,000 as well as the year. For this one, they asked me to model it to be 2,700, for whatever reason, but it's pretty close. They would also include a child support insurance, so about $100 a month for families who have a child support order. So the idea is, right, those orders could fluctuate or, you know, so the parent might not be able to to get the order fully raised, paid, due to barriers that non-spotty parent might face. And so at least that child kind of has, again, a floor of resources, the parent's trying to get that order. So it's not the incentivizing child support order, right? It's kind of just providing a little bit of a cushion. And actually that child support assurance payment along with a deep child poverty in this country, according to what I'm finding. So we thought that's a really way to kind of package that. That package would also include the earning of tax credit and the child with the pending tax credit. It would include an increase in the minimum wage and it would include expanding access to benefits for children and immigrant families. You know, to give you an indication, they model all these packages, right? They look at their cost. They look at the effect of employment and earnings. And the employment and earnings effect, even if they are more negative, don't affect how much child poverty would be reduced and people have defeated some of those earnings. And employment numbers, you know, you have to definitely look at it in tandem, right? Because if the earnings, if it wouldn't affect earnings that much, it usually means, right, it's a minimum wage job that maybe mom doesn't have to work that second minimum wage job. And so, you know, the amount of earnings is minimal, that would be a lot. They also look at, so they look at the effect of these packages on overall child poverty, deep child poverty, as well as 150% of poverty, right? So those families that are just above the poverty line, they also look at the effect of these policy programs on how to reduce disparity. So they model it for black children, Hispanic children, immigrant children, children of single parent households, as well as they, so then a lot of them are here, right? Which is helpful. I will note that they don't include certain populations in the study, which we have talked to them about. They claim that they couldn't model it. So they don't include, for example, this does not include the territories at all. Their children of poor grief and other territories are not included, even the base number. They don't include, they have American families, Asian and Pacific Islanders, because they claim they couldn't, you know, so their children are included in the base number, but they can't parse out the effects of their children in particular, given smaller populations. But they do, there are a lot of different ways to make license data. Again, we have about a 25 page analysis on the study that models a lot of that and includes a lot of charts and ways to make it a little more digestible. I didn't want to overrun you today with the many slides and all of that, but so it was definitely available. So they also look at- Kara, I'm sorry, I'm cognizant of our time, and we were going to allow our friends from Voices for Vermont children to give us a little more of a context in Vermont. So, I'm sorry, again, can we bring your portion to a close? Yes, no, definitely. So I'll just say that quickly, so this is a chart of the effects for each state, so we'll just look at the effects for Vermont. So I'll just quickly say what we're doing about this, which is that, first of all, this is what we call the US College of Action Group, which is a partnership of about 20 national organizations. We launched a campaign around the study of February called NCAL poverty US, which is a national but also cultural poverty in half. So we, there's nationalization we're working on to do that. We've been doing a ton of activities around the study, as well as kind of kind of getting momentum by building a network to get some good stuff happening. So our website's there at the bottom. We have a list there for on Twitter. And so we'd love to send you notes to work with you to see every sort of field that would be helpful from your perspective for us to do. But yeah, thank you so much for your time. Sorry, I took up a little more of it then. No, thank you. It was very interesting, very informative, and we appreciate it very much. Great. Yeah, great. Thanks a lot. All right, thank you. I actually wasn't able to grab the new poverty numbers this morning that were released. Thank you. So this is the state level data that you'll see comparing up and down trends and states to each other and things like that. So child poverty in Vermont has decreased its 12.1% as of this morning, which is 13,712 kids. And of that, the rate of kids in deep poverty as Karen was talking about, is 5.8%, that's actually not a decrease. So what we've seen is below the official poverty threshold with some families doing better as the economy improves, and we haven't really seen much movement in that deepest poverty category. So basically half of all kids who are in poverty are actually in deep poverty, well, 6,500 kids. So the second graph you'll see at the bottom of the line is that- I'm sorry, how was deep poverty developed? It's half of the poverty line. Half of the poverty line. So in a second or if you want to, now you can flip to the back of the page. Those thresholds and dollar amounts are actually at this top table here, which is a partial table of different family compositions and the dollar amounts that reflect what the official poverty line is. So you'll see in gray at the top, the single parent poverty line is $17,308 and the two parent, two child poverty line is $25,000. So when we're talking about that 12.1%, we're talking about 12.1% of kids being below these dollar amounts according to what their families is like. And in contrast, right below that you'll see Vermont's basically budget amounts and how much higher those are for those same family compositions. And flipping back to the front, this line graph at the bottom reflects different levels of poverty. The lowest 50% poverty, that's deep poverty. I just wanted you to have actual numbers of kids and percentages of how many kids fall into these different categories. And this 300%, we like to use as sort of equivalent to what an actual sort of self-sufficiency amount or basically each budget amount might look like. There's no real exact cross-reference between those two things, but it's about that many kids. Just give me a profile of what is life like at the poverty. We're talking about living in a hotel or what is it? Yeah, it could be. Talking more over, I mean, what is this? I mean, if you are thinking about, so say you're a single parent or one child and 100% of poverty is $17,000 of cash income a year, you'd be looking at half that amount to live off. And so this is where those safety net programs are first of all absolutely critical and we know fully and adequately to actually get you to a standard where you can have any kind of sustainable lifestyle. I mean, it sounds to me like living in the car. Sure, yeah. Whatever you could do. I just want to point out that I don't think it's just living in a car because there are a number of people who are renting or who are doubled up who would fall into that category as well. And so without the safety net, without TANF, without housing support, without SNAP, to live off half of that amount of money, right? And so at the last table I gave you was just the top five expenses according to the last basic needs budget and those lower amounts. And if you look at them, you kind of realize that there's actually, we know there's not actually added by safety net support for most of those categories, right? Like housing, is lacking, childcare, healthcare, transportation, so these are just things that we know are not flexible expenses and necessary expenses. And for most people, so for 53,000 kids are in families that are going to require some help with some of these categories. So I, I'm not going to read my full memo, but I just want to pull out some highlights. So I think one of the things that drew me to the work of first focus in the end child poverty US campaign was it, you know, the data and the research came out right as we were in the middle of the legislative session kind of weighing the merits of different approaches, different policy suggestions to address child poverty and child well-being. And it felt a little like rather than arguing which policy is going to be the best, we should actually be looking in a more holistic way about a package of policies that'll move child well-being forward. And so the policies that are modeled in the NAS report are federal level policies. They do also have, there's so much, so many kind of ways to access that data. And there's models that look at how each of the four, they were actually told four packages that they modeled, how it would impact child poverty in Vermont. So you can see how when you overlay those federal policies on our own policies, what impact it would have. But we know that things are moving very slowly at the federal level. We can't expect those policies to change very quickly. So I'm really interested in putting together a suite of policies that are really specific to Vermont so that would build upon what we're already doing well in Vermont and the gaps that we know that exist. And to really look at disaggregating our data in a way so that we target the interventions on the specific geographies or other kind of disaggregated groups that need more support. So let's see. So the three, the kind of three section, the three groupings of policy interventions that came out of the NAS report, our work supports means, tested benefits and then universal supports, which I think carigates a lot of great examples of what that would look like. So in work supports, EITC Vermont's already highest in that country with our add-on for EITC. But one example of how we could disaggregate the Vermont experience and then make an adjustment to our policy that would really help folks that are most impacted by poverty. If you, Kara said that children experience poverty to higher rate than adults and that's absolutely true. When you break down even smaller groups, you find out that kind of those young adults who are still adolescents, those 18 to 24 year olds experience poverty at the highest rates. So that demographic is experiencing the most poverty. And so we know that's also the population that is most likely to be a minimum wage jobs. It's also the population that is not eligible for EITC. And so we could do something, other states are doing this where you make EITC, eligibility expand down to 18 so that those young low income workers could access that benefit, which is one of the best tools to end poverty. Let's see, so that's the example. Me has tested benefits. So as Kara said, TANF is a little tough because we obviously have been fighting for increases to reach up base grants and we will continue to do so. But the way that TANF is executed in different states means it's very, it looks very different in how effective it is. We think we can still make Vermont's TANF program more effective and we're exploring a couple of different ways to do that. One is Colorado has passed a, I think 2015 passed change their rules so that child support payments that are made to custodial parents who are in their TANF program fully pass through. So most states use child support payments, most of child support payments to offset the cost of benefits to families instead of basically repaying the reach up or the TANF grants. Colorado, stop doing that. With some, there's some cap, like if you're getting more than $500 a month or six months, then they might start copying it. And it drastically improved the resources going into families. It also had some unexpected benefits of increasing the overall participation and payment rate for child support payments. And so people, parents were kind of like, oh, this money's actually gone to my kids. I feel more regretful about paying it. And it improves some of that between those family relationships. So there's a lot of good things that could come out of these kind of small tweaks to our programs. We did increase reach up face because you didn't mean, yeah. Yeah, about a 10% increase. And so yeah, they want to thank you. Yes. They just want to say, we did a little bit of it. And as with the child care financial assistance program, we acknowledged that those were important increases and oh my gosh, the goal line is still quite a ways out, right? Yes, okay. So let's see, most I want to say really quickly. Oh, snap. I think the other piece is in terms of the relationship between Vermont policy and federal policy is with the rule change that's under consideration right now from the feds around snap, means $7 million in resources leaving our nutrition program. And so we would just really strongly urge the legislature to be prepared to backfill those because as you saw in the presentation, snap is one of the most important anti-poverty programs for families with young children. The universal supports, this is an area I'm most excited about and I think as we think about reach up and other programs that have requirements and that actually require families to come into almost a surveillance relationship with the state that there's really a growing body of knowledge and research that shows that just giving people cash is the best solution and it feels hard I think for policymakers to think, to do that because it feels like they should earn it, they should have some skin in the game, but in fact what you see with basic needs or basic income measures is that when families have that slack, when they're not spending so much time like tuck and roll or going from food shelf to food shelf and they're actually able to meet their basic needs, amazing things happen in terms of employment and entrepreneurialism and child well-being and so I think moving ourselves away from this kind of sense that you have to earn the right to have your basic needs met would really improve the lives of children in Vermont. So we feel like this kind of work, any kind of a coordinated campaign like this requires ongoing consistent conversation and work that the structure of this committee is somewhat limited and that you only meet in the fall and for short periods of time and so we're really eager to create an ongoing body that would coalition, that would basically be a coalition of coalitions because there are groups already working on minimum wage and family leave and other things so bring us all together, figure out how we can be moving all of these issues forward rather than sort of pushing one at a time and we'd love to figure out ways for the council to bridge with that work, including, I think I mentioned the memo and I've talked to Representative Lanford before about having a child and family caucus that where these issues could be alive during the session and we could kind of keep holding each other accountable for the goals that we have. I think that's facing it. Oh and then just, I want to have a conference because Kara's going to be speaking out on number six so save the date, we'll be more about this and hopefully by then we'll have a better sense of what this campaign will include in terms of policies. Thank you very much. All right, thank you, I'm sorry just. Thank you for having me on the other room. Really, should I say, yeah. I have a question, I just want to say I really loved the information you gave today and the fact that you said people shouldn't have to earn the right to have their basic needs met. I thought that was really powerful, so thanks. What was the date, did you give the number six? November 6th, November 6th. Yes, sir. Here. Help, I have to deal with the constituents. And I've read that there's a proverb in India that the poor hate the poor. I get angry, angry complaints from my constituents about in particular the suggestion that we just give people cash. Pretty much the good sense of which I can say but how do I answer them? The perception is that the people are going to mis-spend. That the serious actors are going to use the cash and buy beer. Well, I think one of the things is that we keep circling people around to the fact that these are programs for children and that if you, well there's actually a fair amount of evidence, which maybe I can put together some talking points that when people are giving cash, they're not buying beer, they're paying back rent, they're buying clothes for their kids to go to school and so I think combating misconception with fact is probably a good place to start. And then sure, there's always gonna be bad seeds, right? I mean, we could talk about, we don't wanna make those exceptions the norm, right? That happens, there's corporate bad seeds, there's law enforcement bad seeds and so none of those entities want to be defined by the very small number of people in their midst who are kind of going against the norm, but. If you can just get us an attack on the location, I would appreciate it. Yeah, because there are pilots and in research now, I find longer term studies that have demonstrated. One more question. I see nothing in here about education. I mean, we need to somehow educate our adult population so that it passes down to the children. I know that we have issues with 3K and so we're needing them not getting that. So how do we address educating parents these poverty-stricken children? How do we do this? Can I check that? I thought it was really interesting what Kara said about the two-generation percentages and that they weren't able to model the things like that would address the needs of the parents furthering their own education, for example. In this particular study, but that might be something that as a Vermont-specific package, what we pay a lot of attention to is two-generation strategies or multi-generations strategies for an overall lift of everybody. I mean, it would be interesting to see if there would be any effect on children if we had some kind of parental placement of education. Yes. I'd also like to caution us in thinking about placing a group of people who are poor and who are struggling some way as if they don't. They aren't educated or they don't care about their children's education. There's plenty of research and study that shows that it's actually the opposite of what we hold as kind of a, we hold that as a society that somehow poor folks don't care, they don't care about their kids or about education, and it's really not true. So I think if we could rethink about this differently and actually talk about what's actually going on with families and around education and be taken care of, we would be surprised. It really is a stereotype. Do you think it would be possible to see an increase in accessing education for parents or adults if they weren't able to have their basic needs met so they would be able to maybe qualify for funding or access different funding or have the time to actually participate in a class when they're not going from food shelf to food shelf or in IEP meetings or at the Economic Service Office checking in every week or month or whatever? Yeah, I think they're seeing as a support that's what happens when you reduce that load, that kind of mental load from people's lives that it creates space to do exactly that. Well, that's why I also want to ask you about what's it like? So just thinking about, there's a lot of great data here, but it has to have some case studies. Just because everyone has someone in their mind, their real or fictitious that you go well, so it's nice to have something concrete. Definitely. We're working on it. Great, all right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good morning, this is Travis Kuhlman. Hi, Travis. This is Debbie Ingram in Montpelier with the whole poverty council here. And sorry that we're running late and kept you waiting. No worries. Thank you for testifying before us in this manner. And I'll just go ahead and let you get started. All righty, being a relatively newbie at giving actual testimony, I'll read off some information about the VITA program. And certainly if anyone has questions, I can answer them at the end, or you can just yell out and interrupt me and I'll answer them as we go. I'm gonna start as though you do not have any information on what VITA is. I will give you just a brief background. VITA stands for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program. This is free tax preparation offered to moderate and low income households with earned income throughout Vermont. CVOEO, my agency, the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, one of the five TAP agencies that provide services throughout the state of Vermont is the lead agency for this IRS matching funds grant. Every year, luckily now every two years, since the IRS made it a every two year grant, we submit an extensive application to the IRS to participate in this VITA matching funds grant. It's called a matching funds grant because the IRS requires that you show that you have matching funds for the money that you are asking for. Now those matching funds are provided via the value of volunteer hours. So for instance, this past tax season across the state of Vermont through the community action programs, 128 volunteers provided 4,560 hours of service. Valued based on the Vermont median hourly wage for tax preparation as listed on the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those hours were valued at $102,000. The IRS grant is a $54,000 grant. Sometimes it's a little less, hopefully this year a little more, but in general it's spent between a $49,000 and a $54,000 grant with some fluctuation over the years. Five community action agencies do have a long history of providing free tax preparation. CBOEO has had a tax preparation service in place since 1980. Capstone has offered their VITA program to clients since 1999. The Northeast Kingdom community action has been coordinating and operating a return service since 1995. SEVCA began offering free tax preparation in 1994 and Brock has had an official VITA site since 2008. All together, the VITA program itself actually just celebrated its 50th anniversary this year or as they stated on a plaque that the IRS has sent us this year, one tax season at a time since 1969. It's awfully pretty, we're thrilled to get it. So that's the VITA program in a nutshell. It is funding through, well, I should say, the VITA program is volunteer income tax assistance preparation, free tax preparation for households who meet VITA criteria, which in general is households that make $55,000 or less in the year and who work in the state of Vermont. So for instance, if someone worked in New Hampshire and in Vermont, they would be considered out of scope, meaning that the volunteers who are actually doing the taxes were not trained and certified to do other states' income tax returns. They're only trained on Vermont income tax returns and federal income tax returns. If it's out of scope, we're not supposed to be able to assist. The VITA grant does not actually provide funding to pay someone to prepare taxes. It provides funding that is used by the community action agencies primarily to hire VITA site coordinators who train and supervise volunteers who actually do the tax preparation. I'll use the money for taxes done leaves with a copy of their tax return in order to be certified by the IRFs. And the site coordinators who also have to pass an IRF certification process at an advanced level are the final eyes on all of those completed tax returns before they are submitted electronically. So in general, every tax return has at least three sets of eyes on it before it is submitted, not counting the actual tax, the actual applicants themselves who are there, of course, while the taxes are being prepared and who have to agree that everything is correct and accurate before we go ahead and submit. 99% of all VITA returns are completed and submitted electronically. Really, the only reason that we might not submit a tax return electronically is what we know from the initial conversation with someone that they, for instance, might be asking us to help them file a previous year's tax return or an amended tax return, which has to be sent in by paper. Both federal and state of Vermont income tax returns are completed. Each community actually needs to be... Do I have a sub-sorry? Can I interrupt you for a second? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for that information. So of course, we're the Child Poverty Council. So could you maybe say a little bit more about how this particular program helps maybe lift people out of poverty? Does it help them to, do you help them make sure that they're aware of the Earned Income Tax Credit Program, for instance? Oh, yeah. Or do you help them qualify for other programs? Me, could you speak about that a little bit? Absolutely. I'm going to skip on my notes down to the 2019 outcome. As you brought up, Earned Income Tax Credit, we know, I don't have language in front of me, I wish I did, we know that the Earned Income Tax Credit is a fantastic mechanism for helping to lift people out of poverty. Last year, the Vermont Fight a Coalition helped prepare 4,538 state income tax returns and 4,595 federal returns, which included 743 returns that were actually completed without the volunteers being involved via the My Free Taxes Program. It resulted in $60,000 in Child Tax Credit over $700,000 in Earned Income Tax Credit, 73,000 in Education Credits for a total of over $3 million in Tax Credit, plus, of course, over $5 million in ReFunds for a total value of over $8 million in ReFunds and Credits. Now, in addition to just, you know, here's your cash, in addition to actually preparing the tax returns, what these outcomes do not show, in addition to providing the assistance with federal and state income tax returns, the community action agencies also helped complete Vermont Homestead Declarations and Rent-A-Re-Vate forms because these forms don't count, if you will, to meet the minimum returns required by the IRS as they are only concerned with federal income tax returns. Many of the households who need help completing these two state forms are on fixed limited income, social security disability, you may not have any earned income to report. The data itself also does not speak to the true service provided to via clients. In addition to actually helping them prepare their tax forms thereby saving these families hundreds of dollars each in tax preparation fees, the community action agencies display information on and facilitate referrals to their individual financial capability and education services. Here at CVOEO, that's called Financial Futures, Growing Money, Gillian offers a series of amazing educational classes on credit, on handling money, on understanding and working with it. We screen clients for participation and supportive services such as Three Squares, Vermont. We schedule follow-up appointments for those households who are not receiving those benefits and want help applying. Really by the very fact that divided sites have primarily run by community action agencies, the folks who come in to get their taxes done also have access to staff on site who are familiar with fuel utility resources, food shelves and other services to help them meet their basic needs. So yes, absolutely. I would say there is a strong advocacy and information and referral aspect of the fight of program to help people live out of poverty, to help keep them stable as much as possible and safe in their homes. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you, Charles. One other question. One other question I have is. Don't go over the other question. Okay, how do you make people aware that you offer this service? Yeah. We do, we definitely conduct outreach. We post on Front Forge Forum, which constantly amazes me how many people read Front Forge Forum throughout the day. Front Forge Forum and then Joe and our development director just walked by my office. Twitter, Joe handles these things. Twitter, let's talk to him about social media but I know that we have. And in Chittenden County, well, actually throughout the state, we also work with Vermont 211. I don't know if they know about our program so they can refer people to us. In Chittenden County, Chittenden Community Action Program of CDOEO runs the single largest fight of site in the state of Vermont. 27% of all fight of returns are done last year here at this Burlington site. Tax appointments, our revised site coordinator working with community volunteers and college volunteers creates a Google calendar that we provide access to for Vermont 211. People call 211 to schedule the appointments. They fill in the Google calendar. They also remind them of when their appointment is going to be and review what is necessary for them to bring into their appointment to help get them as prepared as possible. So we definitely do outreach in the past. I've actually gone on channel 17 to advertise this service. Really though, in Chittenden County, it is word of mouth. We have many, many, many repeat customers who once they get their taxes done for three years and realize the level of service and the quality of service, thank you very much for the 98% accuracy rate, the highest ever in fight of history. And by the way, that's fight of history nationwide. They just want to keep coming back because you know, we try to vary hard. They get extremely busy and you always worry that something is going to get lost in the chaos but it's a managed chaos. We try very hard not only to provide an amazing service in terms of getting your taxes done accurately, timely, but it's work community action agency. We're CBOO. We want people to feel welcome here. We want them to feel comfortable here. We want to ally their concerns, which is why we work so hard with the New America population. We work with refugee resettlements and AALB and telephonic interpretation services. In fact, AALB, Association of African-speaking Vermont and the refugee resettlement program both work with us to schedule blocks of time, entire days, where they themselves schedule the tax appointments and then come in with clients who are new Americans, non-English speakers or English as a second language certainly and help provide interpretation services on site. It's been a wonderful model. That's great. That's great. Thank you. So we have some other questions. Yeah. Hi, Travis. It's Karen. Hey. How are you? I'm well, thank you. Could you just speak to, I know that this program is run on a shoestring and you get federal money, but we don't get any state money and it is only subsidized. Could you just talk to the availability, meaning are there people who want to have this program that you can't serve? Oh, yeah. I know in some places, yeah. Let me do a special note of appreciation and I can forward my little note that I've been typing up prior to this conversation. I'm gonna do two special notes of appreciation. For this past tax season, the state of Vermont actually provided the five community action agencies $15,000 each as a VITA expansion grant, supporting our tax preparation efforts and encouraging the expansion and growth of these services. These funds were extremely helpful, particularly for the Northeast Kingdom Community Action Agency which has long struggled to have the resources necessary, including people resources, including volunteers to revitalize their tax preparation program. NEPA actually pulled out of the Vermont Coalition and did not offer any tax preparation services two years ago. They have a new executive director and this last year they did do taxes again. But these funds from the state were extremely helpful more than helpful really if they were necessary for NEPA to sort of get back on its feet in terms of tax preparation services. Across the state, the funds were used to purchase new laptops, printers and scanners by some of the agencies because changing tax preparation software which is mandated for us to use by the IRS, the software is called tax layer. Some of our aging computers meant that agencies were actually losing their technical capacity to run the program, they couldn't run the software. So this created a nice infrastructure, some foundation for a lot of agencies to get back on top of the software and the technical requirements of running this program. They were also used, the funding was also used to expand hours of service in some agencies and to provide staff the opportunity to receive advanced tax training. We will not only help them last year when they were preparing taxes, but that kind of training for staff helps them throughout the year when they're working with people through their financial capacity services. I also wanna know a special note of appreciation myself locally for CEDO, the Burlington Community Economic Development Office. As I previously mentioned, we run the single largest VITA site in the state of Vermont in any given year or half of the VITA participants at this site are Burlington residents. And CEDO provides us grant funding. We've only just one year since I started working here that we were not able to get that grant funding. They provide us grant funding to help bolster and support our tax services and quite frankly, without that CEDO money, we would not be able to offer the evening and weekend hours that Community Action here in Burlington offers. We prepare taxes from eight in the morning until five o'clock at night, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays. We offer evening hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we prepare taxes on Saturdays throughout the tax season. And that is in large part because we're able to get CEDO funds to bolster the IRS matching grant money. You are absolutely correct. Running this program is to keep up with the requirements of the IRS matching funds grant. It requires intense oversight. You really, I mean, Community Action agencies are very respectful of confidentiality. We really try hard to be honest and direct with people and we understand the details that are necessary to be involved with housing services, fuel and utility, all of that, despite a program taken to another level where we're extremely conscientious of working with people respecting their confidentiality, protecting their confidentiality with all of that sense of the data that we're getting. It requires enormous amounts of oversight. I was on a recent conference call, I'd say why one, where there was a gentleman speaking from Massachusetts and Massachusetts has an amazing tax program. And he said what people don't realize is that this is effectively like starting a small business every year where you start from the ground up, you have to revitalize, get more volunteers and organize their hours, monitor their time sheets and activity logs, which all have to be provided back to the IRS. It's an enormous amount of work and then you shut down your program six to seven months later and you start all over again the next year. So yeah, it does operate on a shoestring, a $54,000 federal grant by far does not cover the cost of running this program. Agencies are using individual donations, CSBG dollars to try to fill the gaps. And as I said, it's really this multi-legged stool if you're gonna have a successful program, you have to have volunteers available to do the taxes. And those volunteers have to be willing to give up a certain amount of their life during that two and a half months of tax season and just prior in order to get certified. You have to have the infrastructure necessary. You need physical space in order to see people. You have to have the software up and running. You have to have a good Wi-Fi connection. You've got to pay attention, you've got to have the administrative time to make sure that all that they've worked is getting done and that all costs money. So yes, are there people that want to get their taxes done that we're not able to assist? I would say absolutely. Here in Shinden, which is an area I can speak to the best, here at our office, we get front-loaded, if you will. The calls come so fast and furious just before the tax season begin and at the beginning of the tax season, if people aren't able to get a tax appointment with us within the first month and a half, they start to get frustrated or scared. And we know that we have people that opt to go to H&R Block or another paid tax repair and they end up spending a couple hundred dollars to get their taxes done because they're worried they won't be able to get in to see us in time because all of those appointments have been filled in so quickly in the first few weeks will be scheduled for a month out easily. And that's always scary, that's always frustrating because these are not taxes that are generally hard to. Travis, Travis, we have a couple of other questions that are limited time, so I'm just gonna be long. So Representative Coopley. Travis, Representative Coopley from Rutland City. Hi. Hi, how are you? Do you do any work with the Benneken Rutland Opts really Council? Oh yes, the Brock is one of the five community action agencies that participates in the invited grant. And let's do the do. So I mean a simple answer to your question is absolutely Brock is one of the participants. They do offer tax preparation services, Brock Neckar, Capstone and CDOEO. Also a member of the Vita Coalition up here in our area is the United Way of Northwest Vermont. But they do run a Vita site, although they do not take any money out of the Vita matching grant program. They provide their data to community action so that we can utilize their numbers to meet our minimum requirements. They simply do not take any money out of the grant which is frankly amazing. We work with them extremely closely. I could actually pull up Brock's data if you were interested, but I know we are on limited time. We are. Yeah, thanks. But you may absolutely participate. Oh yeah. Thank you. See anything? Hi Travis, this is Sandy Parritz. I'm from Vermont, Lila. I just thought this would be a good time to just mention to everyone that we have a low income taxpayer clinic. So if you have constituents who have controversies with the IRS, it is an IRS grant and it's a matching grant, so we also struggle. We have to get volunteers to help. But we do it because it is such an important anti-coverage measure. So. Absolutely, and we advertise your tax clinic. Yeah, so we partner a lot with Vita and we do a lot of education and outreach, especially into new American communities. Great, thank you. All right. And there's 3.4 million dollars into the hands of low income people. Yeah, that's a remarkable figure. It is. Yeah. Representative Landford. Thank you Travis, Diane Landford here. I was just wondering, you know, because we think, well how come people don't know about it, but then you're booked up. So. So we don't want to market to something that's just frustrating at the same time. But. I thought it was a fine line for us to walk. It absolutely is. I want to advertise. I want people to know about it. And yet we, here in Burlington, we booked up very quickly. What's the earliest somebody can schedule with you? I believe, I'll have to double check the Vermont 211, but I believe that they begin scheduling the last week of January. It's always a sudden rush to the finish line, if you will, because half of our volunteers here and students are college students. So we have to wait for the college students to come back from winter break, be available. We schedule an actual in-person three day training at Champlain College. They donate the space. And we invite all of our volunteers to attend this training in class for two and a half days and then the last half of the third day is... Because I don't mean to stop you, but I know we're running out of time. I mean, what time, not just when they can start to prepare the Texas, when can I call your office to schedule my appointment? It's usually people can call 211 starting in the last week of January and we begin preparing back to the February 1st. All right, so it is a, okay, you can't call in November and start to get scheduled. No, because we don't know what the students' schedules are. We have to get the students back, train them, look at their availability, organize our Google calendar based on their availability and then advertise that to 211 who then can fill it in. Okay, we get... All right, we have one more question, one quick one. This is Theresa Wood. Travis, I'm just wondering, I know that RSVP also does free tax services for people. Do you coordinate with them, make referrals to them if you're full? Yes, to some degree. The eligibility criteria for PCE or tax credit for the elderly is slightly different than FIDA. So we do communicate back and forth, but they are totally different programs. Yeah. Great, all right. Thank you so much. Sorry to rush you, but we seem to always be behind schedule. And just one last thing. This is a rough number, but on average, we're preparing basic federal and state income tax forms in Vermont. If you go to a paid preparer, it's between like $180 and $200 to do all the basic forms, which means that we saved Vermonters over $900,000. If you take the number of tax returns we prepared, times say $200 for an average cost, that's also money that they saved out of pocket. Yeah, that's remarkable, thank you. All right. Have a lovely day. Appreciate it, you too. Bye-bye. Thank you, Charles. I think you can just tell us your name and position. Amen. Sure. Go right in there. Sure. So I'm Dylan Geometes. I'm the director of Outreach and Financial Literacy for the Treasurer's Office. And I get to take a leave every so often to come here in the legislature and serve in the house education today. So really excited to talk to you today about financial literacy initiatives in the state. Be happy to take any questions. I can go through a presentation if you'd like. When I'm wearing a bureaucratic hat, I try not to be too bureaucratic. So I'll try to play with your knives and make it interesting for you. And I'll try to be as quick as possible. So depending on your time limitations, feel free to speed me up or slow me down or do whatever you need. So in short, the Treasurer's Office has a pretty robust focus on financial literacy. And this goes back many years to around 2007, around the time of the financial crisis, there was a growing awareness nationally and at the state level that there was some need to take a look at what was going on with people's personal finances. And that, of course, was just highlighted when the great recession occurred, people, the issues not only of saving for retirement, but also preparing for the future rainy day funds and financial emergency were pushed to the forefront. And the Treasurer's Office at that time around that time, 2007, hired a full-time staff. My duties are split not only between financial literacy outreach work and education work that we do. I also manage variety of outreach work in unclimbed property and other office functions. So it's a busy schedule. The Treasurer likes to do a lot of things. Treasurer Pierce has been a real advocate in this area. And what we have done is we've tried to go where there is need to identify issues. And so we've had this three-pronged approach that we can see collaboration and development. We don't like to step on the toes of all the great work that's going on in the community. I think anyone who works at the community level be it CDOEO or Travis's work or otherwise, they have a firsthand perspective. And they're essentially addressing poverty firsthand and providing services for those in need. We've tried to identify what we can do with limited resources that would have an impact. And so we've tried to develop partnerships to do so. But really broadly, this term financial literacy, I just want to say real quick that I sometimes scratch my head when I hear it, because I had someone point out to me yesterday a pretty thoughtful community stakeholder. Well, financial literacy, if you don't have the skills, it means you're illiterate in this area. And I think that this is a sensitivity that we really need to be aware of. Last thing I want to do is make anyone feel like, because they might not have full knowledge of how an investment works at Roth IRA, whatever it may be that they're illiterate. That's not at all. I think what the core idea here has been, has been, well, let's help people achieve financial well-being, which is essentially, once you've mastered the concept, you put them to work with your life, and you try to achieve good outcomes for folks. So this is just something I'm sensitive to. In statute, it is defined as financial literacy. We've had a financial literacy commission. We have a financial literacy trust fund that the treasurer's office operates that allows us to fundraise money and distribute funds for programs that we create. And it's just it's an interesting piece that I thought this group might find interesting that we certainly need to be aware of as we move forward. I did throw in some information here. Over the last several years, the treasurer's office, the state treasurer, some other members had a financial literacy commission. It was set to sunset and did sunset in 2018. And so we actually, I pulled together some of the data here from a report that they issued at that time that highlights some of the issues that we see in different broad categories. At the time, the Financial Literacy Commission set out to do its work looking at K-12 education, post-secondary education, and adult financial literacy needs. But the one that I really wanna draw attention to is in the third slide here, the PDF, is this top line that only 22% of our moderates have participated in financial education in school, college, or at work. This is data. I believe this one. I don't have citations because it's in the report, so I'd sort of reference that at the top. Believe it comes from a FINRA survey. They take a look at all these metrics, gauging financial well-being and a variety of questions. And so they arrived at this conclusion through a very robust data collection effort that they do periodically. What that tells us is that perhaps it's that there isn't an understanding of the importance of financial education. Perhaps there hasn't been the wrap-around services that we need. But in Vermont, we've looked to address that. So the Financial Literacy Commission actually made a series of recommendations about what we could do, one of which was taking a look at our K-12 education system to update financial education standards. So there has been progress in the State Board of Education in February 2018, adopted the Jumpstart Financial Literacy Education Standards. In practice, that means that right now, thanks to the work of a variety of stakeholders in our Agency of Education, they're working to develop pieces that will be compatible with Vermont's very local control-centric education system. So proficiency-based grading requirements, personalized learning plans, they're putting together models that can be used in the field. And I bring this up because when we started our work in 2007, there wasn't that type of architecture in the public school system. I think it's fair to say that you had educators who felt compelled to address this topic based upon experiences they saw in their community, pockets of need, or perhaps just an interest. So it might be a business education teacher. It might be a social studies teacher who wants to teach about economics. It's really the educators and administrators who at the local level have driven financial education that kids receive. And so I brought that up, and we're gonna focus a little bit on K-12 education, and I'm happy to revisit any of this. There's a lot of good information here, but I know our time is limited. But I'm gonna focus on that because a lot of our programs currently are focused in our schools, but also outside of our schools. So just real quick, a quick sense of the programming of Treasurer's Office has done over the years, kind of a variety of initiatives. We've done everything from the Money Smart Child Initiative, which was a partnership with People's United Bank, whereby we printed about 11,000 materials, which were guides that were sent to schools in the state that were distributed to parents so that they can talk with their children about financial literacy. This is the whole idea that if you train the trainer, provide the resources to the parents, or have a two-gen approach, you'll be able to immerse people in some of this knowledge. You know, we've done other things as well. There was a guard deployment, and in fact right now it would appear that we're up for a deployment coming up in 2021. So we've worked on programming with our National Guard to ensure that our families have information as they prepare for what is a pretty significant financial change in their life. Deployment can lead to significant changes in income and other things. So I already reached out to the guard about hoping to put together a program, and so we're gonna be looking to coordinate with them over the coming months. We've held games and contests for high school age students such as the Vermont Treasury Cup Challenge, which is an annual, I'll call it, this isn't really correct, and I would get beat up by the students if I said this. It's kind of a jeopardy style competition that we hold very competitive, and we do it in partnership with banks, credit unions, and also BSEC, please help us out there. So that is for a high school age population. We've done poster contests across the school age populations to try to get some interest, and without announcing it too early, we're working on a collaboration with the Vermont Jumpstart Coalition right now to update that into a video contest that we hope might turn into some PSAs you'll see on TV. We do numerous training seminars, outreach events. We have partnerships with groups like CDOEO, and they do something like they held annually a Financial Wellness Day event in Winooski each year. We've been partners in doing that work, convening it, setting it up, and making sure it's successful. Additionally, we've partnered with organizations that we've had task force, state sentient commissions, and now we actually have a working group within government that's thinking about financial education and where we go from here. So that's just a quick snapshot. How am I doing on time here? Getting through? Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, probably he done about 20 after. Oh, yeah. That's perfect. And I've got so much coffee today, I can do it in one day. Yeah, I know. But really, I wanna talk a little bit about our youth financial literacy programs. This is, I would call it the cornerstone of the activities of the treasurer's office. We, of course, are not educators. We are spreadsheet geeks. I think it's fair to say. We like to think about cash management, debt management, unclaimed property, retirement security, things of that nature. But when it comes to working with our schools, we recognized about a decade ago that we could look at approaches of other states and think about, well, how can we get some of this curriculum and these concepts into the hands of educators and the kids? And so what we did was we worked on developing a program that we call Reading as an Investment, and we annually develop original curriculum that we bundle up. We work with partners to raise money into our financial literacy trust fund and then distribute the resources that we purchase with those funds to schools around the state. And we're trying to provide kids at an early age with the concepts of entrepreneurship, budgeting, saving, investing, and other concepts. I almost wrote a book with me today from this year's program that's about squirrels gathering for the winter to just demonstrate that this is, you know, we're not going in there and expecting kids to know what their 401k is. We're going in and trying to get them to concept that educators who are really the highly trained professionals can link in a way that's meaningful to the students. This has been a great program and I just want to point out this is not a mandated program. We have no mandate whatsoever to provide these programs. We do it because we realized it was the need. And in this case with our K6 educators, flexibility is key. You know, I've wondered how this program would fare over the last several years of schools merging and I was concerned that we might see a decrease in available educator time because we work with librarians. And we all know that when resources are tight, there are some positions that are harder to hang on to in schools. But what I've seen actually is it seems pretty steady at about 140 of our schools all around the state. We even have Essex County because we have Lunenberg and Gilman up there. And what we've seen is that 140 schools, it's the educators who have the interest in driving it or it's an administrator who believes that financial education is important. So it's really, it's a testament to the teachers who deliver this material that is as successful as it is. And with the advent of financial literacy education standards, we're also looking at other areas like after school, which I'll get to in just a moment. Jumping ahead here to the next slide, this K6 program, it's built around three books. We set them out each year. VSAT provides 20 college savings accounts that allows us to incentivize participation with kids. They do a certain amount of reading requirements of financial education books and then they're entered into our contest. So last year, this voluntary program, we're very pleased. We had 5,688 students in the last school year participating, complete the requirements of the program. That's the highest number we've ever had over the years. We saw a spike at one point up to about 5,400. We dropped down back into the 4,000s and now we're back at around 5,700, which is really great because again, this is a voluntary program. So it's librarians essentially bringing this into their classroom and having their students do it. And depending on the census data you look at, somewhere around 25, 26,000 students that the materials built out to, this year the program was distributed to 142 schools in August. I developed it over the summer, then we sent it out. And so I'm in constant contact with the educators right now. They're all over the state. I'm looking out at this table. I've got someone in every community here in this program. I've got her Jen. I've got all these schools going. I've got people in the Robin area. I've got it all. And it's really exciting because what's important is the kids are getting this information. If you look, since the 2010-2011 school year, we've had almost 38,000 students complete this. And they're repeat. They do it every year if they start in kindergarten. They might have done this five, six years in a row now. And there's a couple of cool things about that. If they get a college savings account, we know through research that they're more likely to have a college-bound identity, which can lead to good outcomes. And maybe they'll go get a certificate or some sort of post-secondary education that will lead them to success later in life, or maybe just lead them to that interest that will make a difference. So very exciting work there. And I'm happy to answer any questions. But just as I've been right along, I do want to touch on after-school financial education. There's a second handout in the materials that we gave you. I expect no one to read all this. There's no homework assignments here. But I really want to talk about our after-school program. Because we had the idea about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago now, boy, shouldn't we be taking a look at after-school as another opportunity to reach our kids? The kids who do the K6 program, that five, 6,000 kids, we had a concern of, well, how do we verify what their background is, what their opportunities are? We didn't have good data on are these free and reduced lunch kids? Do they have additional challenges? What's going on at home? All that we knew was how many of our schools were free and reduced lunch based off of looking at where they are, who they are, and whether or not they qualify for certain education funding sources and so forth. So here, given the change with education standards coming online, I started to think, well, where else could we go? And after-school is a natural fit. And we formed a really great partnership last summer with Vermont after-school. We began developing some curriculum. We took an old Federal Reserve Bank of Boston curriculum for financial education. We were able to dust it off, put in some new information. We incorporated three books that we do with our K6 program into it. So we provide some books to the after-school centers. And we actually formed it around a mini-grant program. So we offered, in our pilot class, last this past spring and winter, we offered them mini-grants if they would go in. They had some requirements for conducting pre- and post-assessments. But if you take a look there at the fourth bullet down, the lesson plans are focusing on the core areas we really want to give our kids. Saving once in needs, budgeting, scarcity in choices, goods and services, marketing, and starting a business. And the response we've gotten has really astounded us. We have demand from the field to see this increase. So we're hoping to double the number of programs we have. We started with 12 in our pilot. They're all across the state. I know I have some in the community. Certainly, I got some in Windsor County, Chittany County, Brougham County. And it's super exciting to see what we've got. We've got Washington County covered. We even have on the NASA. But we're hoping to double it to 24 programs. And keep in mind, a program, they're all different structures. They might be centered in school. They might be centered elsewhere. But there's typically multiple sites. So of the 12 programs we've had in the first year, we had 25 sites. And we were really thrilled to work with our sponsors, the Vermont Bangers Association, and the TD Bank Charitable Foundation to offer it free of charge. And again, give them the tools. We send them a toolkit. There's play money. There's all these neat things. And I just think that the play-based learning for learning about money is really important. And we're able to bake in some entrepreneurship by awarding prizes and things of that nature. So some of these kids were able to actually take some of the prize money, which is about $200 per site. And they were able to do things. They might have a local project they want to do, or otherwise, but the key thing is, right, right, right, you might want to do something like that. The key is it's in their hands and they're learning through doing. So I just want to make a shout out to Holly Warhouse and the Vermont average school team. They have been, hey, what's doing this? And I can tell you, I'm over here six months of the year. So these programs that I'm doing, I'm setting them up in the summer where I'm working with stakeholders to send them out. And we need to make sure that we're doing it well because we want to continue to offer these free of charge and continue to entice educators who have no obligation to do it. There's no mandate. It's all voluntary. So we got to do a well to keep them on board. So just a quick overview there. And then finally, we do have a financial literacy working group I want you to know about. This was an initiative that the governor and transgender community in 2017. We've had state communities across state government with different agencies and departments. And we held a series of meetings last fall. We're working on trying to coordinate more, collaborate more. We need to start meeting again this fall to try to put together our plan for the coming year. But the key thing is we're going to be launching a website that will have all sorts of fun financial literacy resources on there, trying to make it accessible that folks can go through to refer to our reputable community resource providers because there are so many. And we don't want in government to be doing work that's already being done very well at the local level. We want to find the way to try to break down those barriers and make the transition seamless for our customers who are coming and trying to get services. So there's an effort there to break down some silos. Hopefully I'll have a better update as we move forward. But we are in that direction. And I think it's my hats off to the leadership of our treasurer who has asked us to do it and to do it well and to do it quickly. So we're doing the best we can there. And I hope to stand some things out that we can talk about with you soon. So there's a lot going on in this space. I'd be happy to answer any questions. But what he's encouraging is that I think there's a rising awareness that in order for folks to achieve independence, to reach their goals for the future, talking about money early is a good idea. Well, yeah, to that point, I was wondering, have there been maybe long term studies that you're aware of, not necessarily Vermont, but just in the country, about the connection between financial overseeing and what can be done out of poverty? Yeah, yeah, I mean, there are all sorts of surveys, right? So one of the challenges, I think, is we get a lot of status reports of how are we doing. And guess what? They're never good. There's incremental progress in areas. If you look around the country, there are examples of states that are doing it well. But we know all the states are very different. So there are studies that demonstrate certain areas. For instance, college savings accounts, there's all sorts of research. And there's focus for research ongoing right now with kids who were enrolled in them, particularly in states like Maine, where they had a huge endowment, where they received this chunk of money from a one wealthy donor. They were able to do some of that work. I think that it's going to have to be probably a 10 to 15 year process, though, waiting for a lot of the results of what we're doing in Vermont. On the other hand, I think we know that there's a lot of interest in resources. There are community financial institutions who are putting a lot of money into this work right now. For instance, the Northfield Savings Bank Foundation is just throwing money into developing modules for the financial literacy education standards. That's a big deal. And so I would hope that we would be able to measure some proficiency down the road in this area or see it in math or economics. But it's such an interdisciplinary field that measuring is tough. I mean, finance has touched so many parts of our lives. And our education system alone, trying to build financial literacy into the practice of classrooms, there is no one place to put it. It's all over the map. And so I think that's probably where measuring it is a challenge. But I do know that people are honing it on this. OK, thank you. Other questions? That's really good to hear. And thank you so much for your work, Kistel. Yeah, happy to be here. And any questions, please reach out to State Treasurer and tell me to say hello. So if you have any questions. Yes, I know she was the blogger here. So I guess we ought to read this thing. So please let us know if we can get you any questions. Sorry. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you all. So many minutes left. I know that Erickson quickly might want to give us a little update about our plans for our offsite visit. Thank you. We are scheduled to be at Rutland City November 21, I believe. And we'll be meeting at the middle school cafeteria, 5.30. I've asked Tom Donahue, who is the executive director of the Bennington-Rubin Opportunity Council, to assist in getting people of need there so that we can really hear some stories and the like. So hopefully we'll see you all there. And well, there being an opportunity, I was at a meeting the other day of the wage coalition. And they talked about an interest in testifying for this committee about wages. Will there be an opportunity for other people to come to the public at that meeting? Yes. And I've directed that question to Tom, to ask him to provide, if he can, to provide time for witnesses, et cetera, whomever they may be. You may want to contact. I'll ask you to see Tom at a subsequent meeting. The way it worked in the arts theater was there was a lot of people, not only providers, but then people from the public and then some teachers and different people and individuals. And they kind of came and everyone had a chance to speak. But I didn't know how it was being set up or whether that was just getting worked on or. I think you'll see that that program will be similar. OK. Yeah, and it was like, because we had a small group discussion with us, too. So that would be nice, I think, because it was just a chance to interact with people. Give us the time and place again. The time is going to be 5.30. And it will be at the Rutland Middle School cafeteria. That's on Library Avenue. It's the location of the old high school, the old Rutland High School, which is now the intermediate school. And by Grove Street? It's by Grove Street, yes. And I had 1.30 to 3.30 on my calendar, that's not true. That's not true. That's the one. That is no longer the case. So are we leaving the focus of the meeting up to the folks at Brock? Or are we asking them to focus on a particular area, whether it's housing or food insecurity or child care? I haven't really discussed that with Tom other than the fact that I've told him that we are the child poverty. And that's pretty paramount. And should be on the agenda, as an agenda is formed by these people. But I think that we'll have a wide variety of people there. I do know that. I think that there would be a meal. Yeah, I'm not sure what that's going to be, but I was assured there will be food provided, yes. And I think we have ideas or suggestions about what we'd like to have discussed. And we should let Tom know. So if you want to make suggestions, feel free to let me know. I'll pass along. I know that I had a nice conversation with representative around this route. Like, I'm here to help you. Whatever you need, bake some brownies. I'm not too sure what. But the other question I have is, I think we child care. Do we have a conversation with Tom? Tom about child care on site? I know meals you are under discussion. No, I have not had that conversation. I didn't ask you that earlier. I certainly can have. That would be helpful, I think, yeah. I encourage people who need that to attend. John, let me. Well, I was just talking about last year when we were in St. Jay, when we broke up into groups. And there wasn't a lot of local people. So it really depended on who was in your group. And maybe, if there aren't a lot of local people, is there a way for everybody to hear what those people have to say? Tom is making it. He's putting a lot of information to a lot of people that visit his center, whether it be the food shelf or whatever. He's making it well known that this program is coming to Rutland. And the other thing of having it at the school cafeteria, most of the people are able to get there. They know the location. They have children, perhaps, in school. It's not like having it at the library where it's a little difficult to get to and so on. And they feel pretty comfortable at the school. So I'm expecting a good turnout. I certainly hope there will be. But Tom is really publicizing this, that his operation there in Rutland. And let me see, Mike. This is from last year, some of the questions that we had people discuss. What you can do to get these challenges. Yeah. Can I get a copy of that? Yeah. Can I have that with that? Yeah. Just letting them know. Sure. Yeah. So let's send the address to the Rutland Middle School out to the entire council so that people can get it. Yeah. Thanks, Eric. And I must say, I do think it was kind of good to be able to have two different groups. Maybe it would be nice to have more of a plenary and then maybe just have one time for a smaller group. Yeah. It doesn't need to be the same. No. I just hope there's an opportunity for people from the community to come in, interact, and talk about what they think is important to them. You know, we held the original poverty council meetings in mostly school cafeterias, so that worked very well. Yeah. I still have the original agenda from November, 2007. I mean, that was the intent with my conversation with Tom was the intent to make sure that the local people are there to present or show us. Yeah, I just didn't know. I want to make sure that some people have an interest in attending this that they would be able to come. Yes. Yeah. If there's a contact, if there's a person organizing the event for rock or something like that, it might be helpful to have a contact number person unless it's just Tom, so. It's Tom. Yeah, great. Well, thank you, Representative Capulli. That's great. And our October agenda is pretty full. We had already gotten requests. So we're going to hear about housing and homelessness from Earhart, Help Me Grow Vermont, from Janet Kilburn, ACEs from Auburn Mortarsong, and TCI, the Transportation Initiative from Michelle Boonehauer. So that will be quite full. And then we do need, I think, please keep in mind that our overarching goal is to make some recommendations before the session starts. So I think that's necessitating perhaps a December meeting where we try to call all the different information that we've heard. I was particularly intrigued with Michelle's suggestion that there might be a suite of legislation that voices would recommend. I think that would be something we want to seriously consider endorsing. But please keep that in mind. And if you want to email me in between meetings to make sure that there are certain topics that we discuss, please do. And we'll try to keep moving forward. So I think we're right on time. Look at that. Look at that. That's what we call the agenda. All right. Thank you all very much.