 Welcome, everyone, to Synod Education Wednesday afternoon, January 10th, 130. Ms. Richter, you mind joining us at the table? Okay. Julie Richter is, is your title fiscal analyst? It's senior fiscal analyst. Senior, that's, yeah, no, I knew it was going to be something more, I miss, yeah, I get it. We want to be accurate with the joint fiscal office. Yes. And we're really happy that you're here to talk to us. Some of it will be a review, some new information. What the committee is interested in, if I could just sort of tee it up for a minute. Not only with your testimony, but later we're going to hear from Beth St. James, and I think a little bit from you again at the end of the day, on trying to understand what's happening out there in the education front, particularly around the education front, fund taxes. People have heard a lot over the past several months about increase in taxes. So we thought, we, well, I should also mention, we've heard quite a bit about the possible impact of the weighting, which was Act 127, which this body passed two years ago. And so we thought we'd kick it up with you with going back, talking a little bit about the education fund, helping us understand it, what's in it, all that sort of thing. So with that, unless I'm missing something, committee, okay. And we have with us, a Finn is from Orca, and he is going, so folks know, be videotaping us as well. Thanks. Please, floor is yours. Thank you. And the record, really, right through to the joint fiscal office. Nice to see you all. I think this is my first time in your committee this year, so great to be back. There are a few documents that I have prepared for today's testimony. I was a little late getting them to Morgan. So I don't know. Would you, would you like me to share my screen, do folks want to pull it up in front of them? How would you like to do it? I think polls would be great for your screen. And if anybody wants to pull it up. Would I have a, could I have a Zoom link, please? I'll send it to you right now. I'm the website. Yeah. You did say you just got into Morgan a little while ago. I did, yes. Okay. Morgan, do you have those documents? Well, they are on, they should be on the presentation. Okay. Let's see. So in the Tuesday folders? In the Tuesday folders or at least Wednesday. So Wednesday folders, right? Yes. Great. Are you seeing those? We don't see them. But I think we should get started. Sure. I'm happy to pull it up on my screen. We'd like to pull it up on your screen for sure. And I'm just joining the Zoom link now. Thank you. And while we're working through all of these technical... Yeah. As we're working through the technical things that we're dealing with at the moment. Just a little bit of background in terms of level setting. There is a presentation for the Education Fund 101 to sort of review and level set, you know, Education Fund, how it works, how people wait to fit into the Ed Fund, what comes into the Ed Fund, what goes out of the Ed Fund. There's probably a bit more information in the slides then we may get to today than may be relevant for the committee. So there's a lot in there and it really is hopefully a resource to help move forward. So we'll do a little bit of level setting with Education Finance 101 and then moving forward to the December 1st letter and the corresponding for estimated forecasted property tax bill increases. What those mean, what they don't mean, what is bought into those estimates. All right. Perfect. Thank you. And we did ask Morgan to put the... And Morgan, just send us, let Megan know when these documents are in our folders. Yeah, we're not. Absolutely. Thanks. Great. So, is that a good size for folks? Yep. All right. So this is a presentation I've given, I think, to this committee before as well as to other committees and your colleagues' house side. And so essentially what we're going to do, big picture overview, Ed Fund and Ed Finance. How does it work? We're going to dive a little bit into education expenditures out of the Education Fund and then dive a little bit deeper and talk about education funding, the property taxes, the non-property tax revenue sources and people waits. And before going diving in any deeper, I do want to say that we're talking about state education funding, so I'm not bringing in federal funds into this conversation. We're just talking about state dollars. So, big picture overview, Vermont's education funding system is different than other states. It's unique. That's because it's a statewide funding formula that's coupled with local property tax administration. Essentially, what that means is that school district spending is determined at the local level. School boards set budgets that must be approved by voters. And in the legislature, the General Assembly sets education yields. We'll talk about what that means in tax rates, property tax rates, annually at the level necessary to fund education expenditures. And this is different from other funds that we talk about in the state because the general fund would say, okay, we've got this much money. This is how it's getting parsed out, right? Education fund, it's, okay, what are all of the things that we need to pay out of the education fund? And then how are we going to make sure that there's sufficient revenue to pay out all of those expenditures? Two types of property taxes. We'll talk about that in a little bit more detail. There's the homestead property tax and the non-homestead property tax. And then finally, since the Brigham decision, which was a Supreme Court case, now the homestead property tax rate is a function of district per pupil spending decisions. So this is different where it's not a function of property wealth. So regardless of a district's property wealth, its homestead rates are going to depend on its per pupil spending and not on how much can be raised on its grand list. Yes. Is it okay if we ask questions? Oh, of course. Yes. Could you unpack for us a little bit how the legislature sets the education yields and the property tax rates? Because I think for a lot of folks that's kind of shrouded in mystery. Definitely. I'll say it's an annual process, starts traditionally in ways and means, and then moves through the building accordingly to make sure that there are sufficient revenues raised. And thinking about the calculation of that and where those numbers come from, I think may be helpful to dive into a little bit later when talking about the setting of tax rates, if that's okay. Sure. I'll set how do we know how much money needs to be raised and what does that look like? So while we're also on the brigham decision, so would you help the committee understand how when you say Vermont's property tax or education funding is different? If you go over the border of New York, Massachusetts, what's happening there that or in other states that's not happening or happening in a different way? Yeah. So really varies by state. Education is funded by some combination of both state revenue or state funds as well as funds that have been raised at the local level to help fund school districts. So Vermont is all state education funded, whereas other states have this town component and a state component. Vermont also has local decisions in terms of its school budgets. So in other states, often when referring to pupil waiting, for instance, it's okay, this pupil weight corresponds with X number of dollars extra that that school district receives for having students in certain categories that may or may not be less costly to educate. Vermont does not use pupil weights in the same way. Here they're used more to adjust tax rates and tax capacity. It is not saying here's X number of dollars because you have X number of students in grade five. Instead they're saying, okay, we're going to adjust your ability to draw funds from the education fund for a certain tax rate. There are also funds that come out of the education fund that are determined at the state level that are written into statute. So certain special education dollars, transportation aid, universal meals, those are some examples. So does it matter, and this might be helpful for everyone here. Does it matter where you live in the state? Does it make a difference how much your school might end up getting? Does that play a role in any way? Historically in other states where you live, generally your school is going to historically, I think you can get more. Does that make a difference in Vermont? It does not make a difference in the sense of if you live in this community, this school district is going to receive X number of dollars because it's this community. It makes a difference in terms of the makeup of the student population in a district and how the property tax rates are calculated through pupil weighting. Thank you. Sure. So yes, please interact me with questions as I go along. This is a lot to unpack and I'll say high level. Okay, I'm going to ask you a stupid question today. So homestead versus non homestead, which one's in state, out of state, second home? I just have not really dealt with the concept. Sure. So, yeah, maybe I'll just move forward and we can talk about, or I'll talk about this in a second. Homestead, non homestead. So homestead is essentially someone's principal primary dwelling and all of the corresponding land acreage that goes with that dwelling. Homestead taxes are where the income sensitivity portion falls in the property tax credit. Non homestead is everything else that's subject to property tax. That's not a homestead. So that includes apartments and apartment buildings. It includes businesses and commercial properties. It includes second homes. So that's a uniform tax rate across the state for anything that's not a homestead uniform before the CLA. And can you just say that 10,000 feet give a sense of the relationship between the two, like one is 75% of the other? Yes. So this is, I haven't had a chance to update this chart. I've been a little busy with lots of folks trying to understand the Ed Fund. But this is the Ed Fund sources in 2022 just to have a sense of what we're looking at. So the green boxes, those are your property taxes. So the dark green far left, you'll see that non homestead is about 40%. And then the lighter green is the net homestead education property tax. It's net because it's including the property tax credit, the income sensitivity portion. Okay, this is good. But my question really is a second home versus a primary home. How are they taxed? So a primary home would be subject to the homestead property tax rate for the school district that it's in. And a second home would be subject to the non homestead property tax. So like a, again, at a high level, how do they compare like a second home, non homestead tax rate is 50% of homestead. Oh, I see what you're asking. So you're asking about the relationship and the tax rates. Correct. So that's a policy decision and that varies by year. We will talk about, and I can, it's posted on your mind. It's an example. Okay, so. This year or last year or 10 years or anything. Just to get a sense of it. Okay, so I will preface this with, hold on, I'm having a little bit of trouble. Just give me a second. Can you still see my screen? Yes. Okay. So this is the December 1st. I found out, look, I think that before we dive into it in great detail, it would be helpful to have a little bit more context, but the homestead property tax rate does vary by school district based on spending decisions. So the average is just that. It's an average. That being said, and this is equalized level. So the uniform non homestead property tax rate in FY24, 1.391 and for homestead 1.311. Okay. That helps. It's very close. Sure. 1.32. It's really a, it's, it's really a policy. I'm not trying to be opaque. It's really a policy decision and it depends on the year. So it's up to the journal assembly every year. How the tax rates are calculated. And it's the policy decision really is what I'm doing the modeling and looking at, okay, what are we going to, for setting the property tax rates? How are we going to do that? The question is usually comes back to what is the average bill change going to be in the different classes? So what would be the average bill change for non homestead property tax payer and what would be the average bill change for homestead property tax payer? And that is a policy decision. So for instance, last year I was asked to solve for the yield and the non homestead rate so that the average bill change would be uniform for both property classes. So because we're thinking about a tax bill as having two components, the rate, the property value, a direct comparison of rates is not always going to tell the whole picture, right? Because sermon properties may be growing more or less depending on the community that they're in. So I think we talk about the average bill change. Does that get away from you? Okay. So going into education expenditures that pay down the education fund. This is I think a helpful place to really ground the conversation in terms of starting because you'll recall that the ed fund is different where the total amount that needs to be raised by property taxes directly corresponds to how much needs to be paid out of the ed fund. So starting at the local level, we'll talk about the local level and then the state level because local school districts are building budgets that are then put forth to the local voters. Each year a school district builds an annual budget. It requires local voter approval. And in general, and this is a high level presentation, in general, we can kind of think about these school budgets as having two parts, sort of two buckets. One is the offsetting revenues. And this includes things like state categorical aid. So how much is the state saying you get, based on what is written in the green books, you get X number of dollars for special education or universal school meals. It also includes tuition revenues that are paid to that school district. So other schools are sending kids and the school district needs to educate those students. Prior to your services or deficits, reserve funds. So those are the offsetting revenues. And then the remainder, which is everything that the school district has built into its budget that are not offsetting revenues, that's referred to as education spending. And that's one of, when we talk about homestead property tax rates and how they vary by district, this is one of those big components that we're going to keep coming back to, is that education spending number. So the school budget minus the offsetting revenues. And so then the state level. We've talked about this, statewide aggregated costs of public education includes all school budgets. That is not the federal categorical aid. And we can again think about two buckets. Here we can think about the education payment, and that's just summed up all the education spending across the state, across all school districts. And then there's everything else. So there's the categorical aid, there's one time appropriations, and then there's other costs at the state level. Yes, the center of shame elements. What is categorical aid? Yes, so categorical aid are those dollars that are being, the term is often used off the top of the education fund. And those are dollars that are for a specific purpose that are going to a school district. So that's special education, state place students. I've got a whole list of them here. And can you call it a block grant? Is it the same thing as a block grant? Essentially. So that's what, so going into the ed fund outlook to get to your question specifically, Senator, we see that all of the categorical aid here in lines 11 through 19. So I know that's small. See if I can make it bigger. We've got special ed, state place students, transportation, tech ed, small school. So some of these categorical aid areas are, I'm getting a sense they come from policy decisions that are made here saying, all right, here's money for X, Y, and Z. And then the general expenditures, I think it was called, those are coming from the local school boards which go to teacher salaries and all that stuff, all the other stuff. Yeah, so somewhere in the ballpark of 70 to 80% of education spending I've heard is related to personnel costs. And of course, these are costs that the school district is building into its budget as this is what we have to spend or this is what we're choosing to spend. And there's no value judgment when calculating the ed spending. Essentially it's just taking the school district's budget, taking out these different pieces, and then everything that's left over is education spending. All right, so we already looked at this. This is a snapshot of the ed fund outlook which is kind of like a similar to an operating statement which spells out all of the numbers in the ed fund. This is what I'm presenting to you every week when talking about the modeling. And it is posted on your website and we can walk through it in more detail if that would be helpful. But this is just a snapshot of this is where all of the appropriations are listed out. In the outlook. So we're all on tour. Expenditure is coming out of the ed fund. I'm now going into ed funding unless there's questions. Okay. Would you say that the ed fund has gone through in the past, and I'm not sure if you're able to answer this now, but in the past 10 years there's been an effort to remove things from the ed fund that might not belong there. I remember some of these conversations and a little bit of this work. So with respect to the money that's coming out of the ed fund, I would really need to defer to policy makers in terms of why things have or have not fit into the ed fund. Great. So education funding. We've already looked at this. We can see those two buckets. We can see the sort of the breakdown of the way it's thinking about sources that flow into the education fund. So again, with the whole two buckets and the way it's thinking about things. Here we can see the two buckets. One is property tax. The other is all of the other non-property tax revenue sources. So as we spoke about earlier, you've got X number of dollars that need to be paid out of the education fund or put into a reserve or any policy decision. And then we have a number of non-property tax revenue sources. So that includes sales and use tax. It includes a portion of meals and rooms. A portion of purchase and use. Water transfer, et cetera. So we've got all of our expenditures. We subtract out all of those non-property tax revenue sources. And the remainder, usually about two thirds of the dollars that need to, the funds that need to be made up are made up through property tax rates. So there's that flexible lever of the property taxes. That's not good. I don't want to go down the rabbit hole. No, go. I know, I believe recently you, Joint Fiscal did a study on income tax versus property tax based at funding. Is that correct? So there was a study committee two summers ago made up of six legislators who looked into an income tax instead of a property tax. It was staffed by JFO and Ledge Council, but it was, it came from a group of legislators. And I believe in the end there were no definitive answers or any definitive suggestions, but I'm wondering if JFO did a deep dive into what the two different, two systems would look like. How different they would be or similar. Did that work get done? Yeah, so the committee was really looking at exactly that question. And, you know, our role is really to help policy makers answer questions. One of the questions is, well, if there were to be an income tax, what would the structure of it be? So that was for the committee to discuss. And there's a report that spells out the recommendations, the big picture things that they looked at in a lot of supporting documents. I'd be happy to share that with you if you're interested in looking through it in more detail. All right, definitely. And were there, will the paint a financial picture in the end of what it would look like under any income tax system or? There were some example. There were there were certainly examples and there was modeling that we did and the committee did not reach I want to use the word consensus but didn't necessarily get far enough along in the deliberations for there to be this is what exactly what it would look like and this is what the rates would look like for instance the committee didn't say there are going to be X number of brackets and this is how much these are the brackets that we want and these are the corresponding rates associated with those brackets. So there was a model that was like here a couple of different potential ideas based on the committee's requests but they were not but they were not recommendations. Right. Okay. Thank you. So it sounds to me like generally like the work wasn't like fully fleshed out to the extent where it would need to be to make any changes. Yeah, I would I would defer to the legislators who served on that committee. Ms. Richter, would you be the best person to just sort of take us through this that report? I could certainly take you through the report. I think that would be great, right? Okay. Even if it's not I'm the remaining staffer still around but also staffer committee. Um, young man sir? Okay. I'm going to bring this to Senator Lyons. Okay. And Morgan Morgan would you have Ms. Richter in next week with that report? Absolutely. Thanks. Sure. Great. Going back. Going back. All right. So going back, we're talking about education funding sources and revenues. So this is where they are on the Ed Fund Outlook, the revenues. This is, we've already spoken about this, the non-property tax revenue sources and the property tax revenue sources. And so now we're going to do a little bit of a deeper into property taxes. Um, for I think the remainder of the slides that I put together, how we work in general. So we've talked about how they're set to keep the education fund balanced. We've talked about that there's two property tax bases subject to the statewide education tax. It's important to note it is statewide. Um, and that the rates differ by base as, as Senator Brown asked about. So that's the non-homestead property and the homestead property. Here I've pulled out um, part of the definition of homestead. And it's that principal dwelling where someone lives, the surrounding acreage. Everything else is non-homestead. So we'll start on non-homestead because it's a little bit simpler. Um, this is in context. If the property is non-homestead and subject to property tax, there are some properties that are exempt from property tax. Um, non-homestead property is subject to a uniform non-homestead property tax rate across towns at the equalized level. Um, and when I say equalized, that's important to note. That's talking about before the application of the CLA. Um, thinking back into what the CLA is is essentially it's a tool um, because there's a statewide education fund and not all towns are praising their properties at the same time or by the same person. There needs to be some tool to make sure that all properties are being taxed at their market value. So essentially what the CLA aims to do is it serves like a statistical re-appraisal. Basically it's calculated annually by the tax department and it looks at, okay, what are the what are the um, properties appraised at in this town and what are properties actually being sold at in this town and calculates a ratio. And so that ratio is then used to adjust the tax rate. It could also be used to adjust the property value. It would mathematically be the same. That ratio is used to adjust the property tax rate to make sure that all of the property taxpayers across the state are paying their fair share regardless of where their town is in the appraisal process. Um, so a little bit of a rabbit hole but I think it's important to context to have when thinking about uniform non-homestead tax rates. So if everyone was appraised at fair market value there would be no CLA and everyone would be seeing the same non-homestead property tax rate on their bill. Getting back to your question senator, um, this non-homestead property tax rate is set in statute and it's annually not withstood by the legislature. It's set in session law. Usually it's referred to as part of the yield bill. Um, and this is that calculation process of how much do we need to raise and how much or how much, um, does the general assembly see for an average bill increase in non-homestead and an average bill increase in homestead. Um, and then I and others work to calculate those yields and rates using a yield model which has all of this information in it. It's got revenue streams and grand list values and spending decisions and um, it's a lot of work and a lot of data going into the calculation of a couple of numbers. So I'll pause there because that's all I was planning on saying about non-homestead property taxes. Yeah, please. So there was some chatter about what comes first the, uh, budgets were the property tax rate and I'm wondering if you could just give a, you know, quick overview of that process. Yes, so careful, I'm going to scroll up in slides so I don't want anyone to get emotions sick. Um, I did we ended up skipping over this to get into some of your questions but this is a timeline that might be helpful. So these two kind of go hand in hand. So school boards and school districts that I will defer to folks on the ground in terms of when that process begins. That's very outside of my daily work but starting in the fall I think they're building and preparing those school budgets and then they will be warned. And then, so those school districts and school boards are building their budgets and then statutorily honor before December 1st the tax commissioner and consensus would direct fiscal office and the agency of education needs to publish what's called the December 1st letter and that is really a starting point for deliberations. It's written into statute. This is how we have to calculate it. No policy decisions are made in that modeling and it's based on the best available data which is not great because we don't have school budgets yet. And there's a number of other factors that will continue to be updated as the process rolls forward. So that's the starting point. And then March town meeting day school boards or school districts present their budgets, voters vote on those budgets and then we continue to get better data and update it and then the legislature general assembly then passes the yield bill to set the yields and the rates. Does that answer your question? It does. Can my mayor editorialize just a little bit? Of course. Thank you. Which is just that it's really really difficult for school boards and districts to try to make these decisions based on incomplete information and also information that changes. We just had a whole bunch of budget scenarios and then the CLA came out and we had to completely change almost everything. So I just want to shout out to the work that's done by districts and boards because it's very difficult without having all the information up front. Thank you. Are you willing to kind of put a little detail on that? So for example, the December 1 letter forecasted something like a 20% or 18% 18.5% Okay. So how does that impact you at the school board level when you're trying to develop a budget? Did you see that as a benefit or a drawback that the rates would go up? Does that mean you'd get more cash in the end? Or does that mean that you're going to austere? So it complicates the story for sure because suddenly there's this letter saying that tax rates are going to go up what was it 18.5% whereas we're trying to build a budget to educate our students and our staff, etc. And so and then you build out these scenarios but in this case the CLA which I think just came out last week then further complicated the situation because we had made assumptions based on different numbers because you have to you do have to use some assumptions when you're doing the work, right? And the people that the voters approve the budget. Well I haven't voted down four times because people got angry when they saw 18.5% And actually even when you vote in March there are still some decisions that come out later that will change things. So then the 18.5% doesn't necessarily reflect some of the special projects that you might have at the school board level say for a new gymnasium whatever. I mean correct me if I'm wrong but that's also based on a bunch of assumptions. Right I get the assumption bit I get that bit. What I'm asking is taking the December 18.5% and you as a school board member projecting, building your own budget. Do you now then theoretically have to add on top of the 18.5% if you're going to do a special project specific to your history? I think it's safe to say yes to that question. And I think that a little bit of clarification may be helpful and I can certainly not speak at all to school districts school boards the decisions that they are making. Getting to the school construction question and the gymnasium for instance. So because it's a statewide education fund the cost of that gymnasium will fit within the school district budget which is then going to flow into the statewide education fund. So there's not a separate pot of money that the school district needs to raise for gymnasium or other construction projects that's going to be baked into that education spending number. Statewide gets absorbed by everybody? Yes. And it gets absorbed by everybody who has a perfect segue back into homestead property tax rates because local spending decisions local per weighted people impact the school district's homestead property tax rate. So while it will be while it impacts everyone it most directly impacts the homestead property tax payers in the school district. And we'll talk about how the mechanics of that work here. Yes. How often has the legislature said to school districts you know you cannot have more than 5% growth 10% you know when you're looking at your I remember I think during the Schumann administration something there was a back and forth some kind I may be I'm just remembering it. So I'm not aware of that and it hasn't happened. I'm not familiar with the case where that happened because the structure really is that there's the local school district budgets that are being approved by local voters and then they need to be funded with state revenues. Is that something familiar to you at all and it might have been just a sort of a vague a go back and take a look dig a little harder that kind of thing. It's ringing a little bit of a bell but I don't think it was exactly as you described. So we could look into that. I can jump in also. Thank you. So Homestead property tax we've talked about how it's dependent on its locally approved education spending for people. We've talked about what that education spending number is right it's the budget and it's the offsetting revenue. The remainder is the education spending. I have words and a formula on this slide because my brain works in equations and I know that other people's brains work better with words so both are saying essentially the same thing. So I'm going to walk through the equation because that's I think a helpful place to start. So essentially what we're looking at here is can you see my cursor? It is the way that a school district's homestead property tax rate is calculated. Remember this is before the application of the CLA. So we've got a number of factors here that we're going to kind of walk through one by one. So what's highlighted in green is what varies by school district. And then in the denominator here we see the property yield and so this is set annually at the statewide level. So how does this work? So we see that by school district we're calculating the education spending of this is sorry this will be changing this coming year until long term. We did ADM. We did not update that but so essentially what we have is we've got the education spending number being divided by and I apologize this should say long term weighted average daily membership. Essentially the number of kids on average who are sitting in the school plus all of the pupil weights that that school district receives based on its student makeup. So it's got on average how many butts are in chairs plus a factor called a pupil weight but it counts for kids who students who may be more or less costly to educate. So that those categories include English language learners kids from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, kids at different grades etc. So that's what we're seeing that's all this green factor is and it varies by school district. You throw the term long term weighted daily average daily membership average daily yes and I will send an updated slide deck to Morgan so you have that that's what's coming in with the new Act 5.7 So that's that local adjustment factor and it's all divided by the statewide property yield which is set annually by the legislature so you can see how a school district's decisions and a school district's weighted pupils impact its property tax rate. This isn't saying this is how many dollars you get. Instead it's saying this is how we're going to calculate your property tax rate based on spending and weighted pupils and then it's all divided by the statewide property yields which is a number I calculate I know it feels like a black box but it's coming out of this model that's taking into account everything that's happening and finding all the grand list values. You just touched on it but the property yield can you say that again? Sure. The statewide property yield one way of thinking about it is if every school so one way of thinking about it is the amount of education spending per a weighted pupil that would correspond with a dollar tax rate. In other words let's just pick some round numbers of let's say that the statewide property yield is 10,000 so if a school district had per pupil education spending of 10,000 its tax rate would be a dollar if it had per pupil spending of 11,000 it's greater than the property yield so it's tax rate would proportionately be adjusted upward to account for the amount it's spending greater in the statewide property yield. Is that helpful? So that's the crux of it right here Homestead property tax rates are adjusted by the local spending per pupil and then also what we're called a property property yield is statewide and so that's calculated to make sure there's sufficient revenues in the education fund so because property tax rates are a function of spending per pupil decisions and not a function of property value the school district gets back to the earlier point that we were talking about about a gymnasium and how that fits in yes it's going to increase the spending per pupil of the school district and we need to adjust the property yield to make sure enough money is being raised to fully fund that gymnasium That's something that from a local perspective that as a local select board and the town manager are developing their budget in one room school boarders over here are developing theirs never the 20's shall meet in a lot of cases but they're interrelated so my experience as a select board member was that we're always trying to keep the tax rate down because we don't want the taxpayers to have to hit a big increase but there was always the question mark what's the school budget budget because in my community 81% of our property taxes go to the page for our education fund and every town is different so if I could ask can I just put me on the hot seat we're only ten bonded for a school correct that's the top of this conversation oh yes and that school bond fits into the education fund so that's part of when we're calculating Burlington's homestead property tax rate that school bond and that the annual payments for the bond fit into the budget flow through to the education spending number which then flows through to the calculation of Burlington's homestead property tax rate okay so to put it slightly different did the rest of the state contribute to the bond as a matter of practice that's the way we've been that's a team we had that I remember one year I was going up left pierce was treasury it's going to go up to 11% and everybody tried to adjust for that announcement and then it actually went down to 9% because they found some funding they had and this year we've got the education tax over the surplus it's got to go back to the tax pierce for education so that 18% that has been announced includes that surplus going back in so the 18.5% and I it's an average bill change so that's the overall average estimated increase in liability it includes everything in ed funds so part of the statutory modeling requirements for the December 1st letter that we need to this year we needed to assume there was a tax rate offset reserve the general assembly set aside $13 million last year we had to assume all $13 million were going to uniformly lowering tax bills same all of the funds the surplus you're referring to the funds on the bottom line have also applied to uniformly lowering tax rates following on this senator are you good? weeks this question regarding senator gulitz jim or the bonding that jim's dad prior to act 60 we weren't fault chipping it yeah and so exactly that's something that is sometimes challenging in the discourse of thinking through this because of the way that education funding has changed in the state over the last 30-40 years so before there was a different education funding system where towns were relying on their own local grand list in part and the state would make up if they couldn't raise sufficient funds on their grand list and then there was the Brigham decision that said that that was unconstitutional there needs to be equitable funding I would defer to lech council to talk about the Brigham decision but essentially it led to this system where all school districts regardless of their property wealth have equitable funding opportunities yeah just curious so what's the lever that inhibits all of us from this bonding and having the cost dilute across the state so again a policy question the the conversation has included the fact that property tax rates, homestead rates in districts that are spending more are going to see a greater increase than homestead property tax rates in districts that are spending less for people historically there was the excess spending threshold which essentially was school districts spending up to X amount or above X amount are going to see a greater impact for those additional funds that was suspended during COVID and then further suspended in act 27 right the direct link between spending decisions and how that's felt is in the homestead property tax rate thank you thank you just going back to something that was brought up earlier regarding the surplus and having that go back to tax payers does that when that does go back to tax payers is it to reduce the homestead non homestead tax rate or is it both? great question and I know I keep saying this but that's a policy decision do you know what the current policy so it depends every year so last year I was asked to calculate the yields and the non homestead rate so that the uniform bill change would be so that the bill change on average would be uniform for both homestead, non homestead and inconsensitized tax payers and so it's up to the general assembly you could say you know we want to increase the average bill of this class x percent while decreasing the average bill of this class by x percent as long as there were enough revenue raised to fully fund the fund yeah so I mean I guess just generally a comment where we can I imagine well I imagine this is in the finance committee where we can I would like to see it on the homestead tax rate for the folks who are currently living in our state rather than you know second home owners but you know that that is a policy decision for well it's it's not just second home owners it's also apartment buildings you mentioned apartment buildings businesses it's every property that needs to pay property tax that's not a homestead right yeah that's senator Williams and then senator Huo so act 60 was the equity in education so when a school district has to cut back on the price per pupil that they're spending because of their tax implications that kind of takes away from that equity in education where back to a rich town they can afford more they can have a higher that has more of a grand risk and have more for to wait their pupil for pupils spending their talented husbands would you say that's accurate do you mind rephrasing that last I'm not questioning him I just you know if I'm just saying that when act 60 came out there were a lot of towns that I mean because with this school district had a really good school program they had all the perks but once the state came in and got involved they said you can't do that anymore because we're going to take that and give it to this school district that doesn't have as much that's kind of a generalization I mean our wealthier districts are able to benefit from their wealth where poor districts cannot so I would say that school districts can include in their school district budget what they see as what needs to be or should be included in their budget so the state with act 60 didn't say this school district can no longer provide you know this class or this service so that the money is taken and given over here instead it said we're having a statewide ed funding system where your tax rate is going to be adjusted and so if you if the school district spends this much for pupil then it will pay a higher rate than districts that spend less for pupil hence my 81% my municipality of act 60 and wealthier your hometown and its constitutional requirement that we provide an education for our children doesn't say they'll pay property taxes they'll pay for it my question was actually just for senator hasheen and we can speak offline but I was just wondering if you would be willing to explain your what you talked about earlier that you think with the with non property surplus going back no it was more about the burden of the funding being placed more heavily on the homestead tax folks I think we're talking about the same thing no it was just a thought going back to the surplus that was mentioned earlier by senator Williams going back to taxpayers and whether or not that is used to lower homestead tax rates and my initial thought is the first thing that pops into my mind when I think of non homestead I think of second homeowners but it also as was mentioned encompasses apartments and so and you know landlords property owners are going to offset the costs of property tax increases onto their tenants and so I'm just trying to think of what is the best way to evenly or equitably try to relieve or mitigate some of the tax burden for folks who are living in our state but like I mentioned apartment buildings fall under the non homestead category so do you want to question anything else? I appreciate that it is affected in the rent too no I appreciate the clarification because I wasn't sure where it was and inadvertently then increase the tax rates for places that have more apartment buildings compared to plenty of single family homes and so it's a kind of a balance we gave it this about an hour so can we do some closure kind of things in 10 minutes but no center weeks question for center do it turn on the spot it's very good it's a great conversation I'm happy to come back I've gone through what I was hoping to go through instead of in terms of the level setting I think one helpful thing to add to your conversation your thought process is you're looking to decrease the property tax burden there's a few different levers that exist within the education fund one is to reduce expenditures where and how they're reduced is policy thank you center real quick reducing expenditures earlier was mentioned that 70-80% are personnel costs right education spending sorry so regarding reducing expenditures do you have specific thoughts on which expenditures or is that more so a policy firmly in the policy camp in act 2027 you have to publish a report part of it included doing research into methods for cost containment like what the literature says so that is a resource with respect to cost containment I can share it with you are you talking about that at 330 any of that you're zooming in though I'm zooming in for a phone a friend if need be and we're happy to talk about anything I think we're talking about act 2027 so just to fully close the loop so reducing expenditures policy decision and then the other option is changing the revenue into the end so if you want to reduce the property taxes either expenditures need to go down or change the revenue need to go up or maybe the data will come in and we'll see a different picture but changing revenue sources that would be you know changing revenue sources that are flowing into the education fund and or changing tax expenditures associated with those revenue sources and or adjusting property taxes and who's seeing which average can I suggest that we have your back in to dig into this a little bit more because it just seems like we're scratching the surface of what kinds of levers we have to kind of offset what's happening in the right now and that's like another big conversation so yeah absolutely so next week I think just on that specific sort of the the levers the what can what are the possibilities that the legislature could do to address this yes I mean just will carve out that for that specific so my quick question yeah please so back to the comment that Senator Heshi made a moment ago that landlords typically pass on property property taxes to tenants why are apartment buildings not considered non homestead why are they in the category of non homestead being that they're policy is it okay okay I get that but any any good old history or just it's a good question yeah that's the mirror out right this has been terrific really helpful Morgan is going to have you back next week to talk about specifically around levers that we can pull and then we also have we had one other thing Morgan that you were going to put on the calendar education income tax education income tax you there yes okay that's okay take ten minutes and we'll shift gears and we'll come back to waiting welcome back to Senate education we're going to shift our focus now to S204 an act relating to reading assessment and intervention and we have Ms. Siklowski Ms. Myers and hopefully Mr. Nichols this is listed as the agency response but I don't think we do we have anybody from the agency coming in Morgan okay so let's get the agency response let's push them to Friday if you would okay okay great Ms. Siklowski thanks for joining us thank you good afternoon my name is Sue Siklowski I'm the executive director of Vermont school board association thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on S204 BSBA has a shared commitment to improving student performance in reading we work closely with our colleagues at the Vermont superintendent association the Vermont principals association the Vermont curriculum leaders association and Vermont council of special education administrators to support better outcomes for students I did written testimony I know Morgan's having trouble uploading that but you will have that when that's able to be added to your website school board support improved student outcomes including literacy by creating and sustaining conditions that support excellent teaching and learning we do this by setting school policies hiring and evaluating the superintendent adopting measurable goals to support student academic progress and by developing an annual budget that aligns with stated priorities and provides an equitable distribution of resources to helping the goals that are set by the school board we leave the how to our superintendents who under Vermont law are designated as the chief executive officer for the supervisory union or supervisory district school boards relying on the professional expertise of their superintendents to chart the path of reaching the stated goals in the area of literacy I provided you with a couple of examples in my written testimony of goals that a school board could set based on the data that it has for its students and the formula for these type of goals is to move students from X to Y by Z so one of the examples I give is our school district will increase the percentage of students who are proficient or above in third grade reading as measured by the and you insert whatever measurement you're doing from X percentage in spring 2023 to Y percentage in spring 2028 so that's an example of a goal that a school board might set provide to their superintendent and you know ask for a plan of how are we going to get how are we going to accomplish this goal an example of a goal would be in our school district the gap between all students and low income students in third grade reading achievement identified as non-proficient or partially proficient as measured by whatever the measurement is will decrease from X percentage in spring 2023 to another percentage in spring 2028 so you're trying to narrow that gap so once the goals are set the superintendent puts a plan in place to achieve the goals and school boards monitor the results school boards can also adopt policies if needed and they direct resources to meet the goals through their budget process and school boards can use the superintendent evaluation process to hold the superintendent accountable for making reasonable progress towards those goals S204 is a bill that gets at the how to improve student outcome and literacy and as such VSBA is very interested in VSA and VPAs and VPAs analysis of the bill so really what is the legislature's goal and then in VSA and VPAs professional opinion does the bill provide the steps that should be taken to reach that goal and I'm sure that Chelsea Meyers and Jay Nichols will provide you some more substantive information about that in their testimony lastly I would like to comment on the reporting requirement in the bill on page 6 line 16 that requires each school board to annually report in writing to the agency of education on or before September 1st of each year information on the prior school year by grade school in town and I was just curious about why the bill assigns this responsibility to school boards rather than superintendents for the reasons that I laid out earlier in my testimony my initial responses that might be more appropriate to require the superintendent rather than the school board to submit the required reports thank you for your commitment to improving literacy outcome for Vermont students and we certainly share that commitment and that concludes my testimony so if I were to sort of do a little synopsis correct me so but I'm wrong you're really interested you support literacy of course the school boards you're really interested in having the principals and the superintendents weigh in on this bill since the school boards really believe that these are the people that you're hiring to do this make to fulfill these obligations yes correct great yes and do it thank you for that that's very helpful do you think it's fair to hold a superintendent accountable for progress or outcomes when he has been or she has been or say have been victims I'm going to use the word victims of a sort of an inadequate system of teaching literacy or a system that clearly hasn't worked to its full potential I mean do you think that's fair I'm just curious well I think it's important when setting a goal to have a reasonable timeline so that the administrator has a chance to use the whatever tools they think are the proper tools in order to reach the goal okay I just wonder what happens when the tool that we think was the best tool turns out it was not the best tool and we have you know new learning new understanding and shifting science around what's best it just to me again as you guys hear me say this multiple times every day but as someone on a school board I don't feel comfortable trying to measure my superintendent's success especially around literacy when for everything I've learned points to the fact that we've been doing it wrong and we didn't necessarily know that we were doing it wrong but we're realizing now as we kind of peel back the layers that there's just been some faulty I don't even want to say science because I'm not sure it was science but faulty pedagogy so anyway that's more of just like a rhetorical thing I wanted to say you don't need to answer that per se do you have a sense of magic if that's happening out there is that the superintendents are losing their jobs because of reading scores not being I don't think they're losing their jobs but to Mr Glowski's point that is our job as a school board like we are there to assess the success of a superintendent so it is part of our job it's a big part of our job to evaluate outcomes and success so who sets the policy for the techniques for teaching reading is it AOE well I mean we're considering we're looking at one right now let's say that's superintendent in terms of design it decided to go with hooked on phonics and that wasn't the latest teaching that then he jumped up and down and probably would have got fired for that I get your point your point is you deal with Andrew Dell and if it didn't pan out you can be replaced talk reasons thank you Chelsea how much do you support your point I know if I'm going through that way there's something I wanted to say but I didn't say it we can talk later I guess I also submitted my testimony to Morgan and I was informed that it wasn't there there are some links to resources so I recommend looking at the virtual offering thank you for inviting testimony from the Vermont Superintendent's Association on the important topic of reading instruction and outcomes quite frankly literacy is a human right and foundational to being a lifelong learner and all Vermont leaders should treat it as such first my name is Chelsea Myers I am the associate executive director of the Vermont Superintendent's Association and this testimony has been reviewed and contributed to by several presidents and a reading specialist early in my career I had the privilege of serving as the lab manager of the laboratory for educational neuroscience at the University of California San Francisco where I conducted neuroscience research on early literacy development publishing and peer review journals and book chapters the testimony I aim to provide to you today will one speak to literacy policy and reform overall and two speak directly to the proposed legislation and I do have some suggestions and those are in the spirit of collaboration not to say we oppose it at all but just to help inform some of the language and I should mention Ms. Myers was incredibly helpful when we did Act 28 I don't know about that incredibly helpful but they received transmission bill that we did two years ago so the first section is titled equity and culturally responsive pedagogy equity must be at the fourth round of this work data indicate that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds BIPOC students, English language learners and students with disabilities are disproportionately not getting what they need from the system to succeed in learning to read and write at the benchmark set for all students equitable access to high quality instruction must be a top priority in supporting this work this is particularly challenging given the workforce shortages of highly skilled professionals in some regions of the state VSA actively participated in the ethnic and social equity standards advisory working group for its duration reading instruction is interwoven into the principles of creating culturally responsive inclusive environments for all students the availability and use of texts that are culturally relevant and representative of historically underrepresented voices is critical to ensure that all students can connect their experience to the texts they are reading though often unintentional implicit biases impact the expectations for students expectations for students impact the way that educators interact with students and ultimately are correlated with student achievement for these reasons we ask that the senate education committee consider ways in which the legislature can support the successful implementation of the anticipated revisions to the education quality standards which came from that group the next segment is titled early learning learning to read and write starts long before first grade and has long lasting effects learning to read and write is an ongoing process from infancy contrary to popular belief it does not suddenly begin in kindergarten or first grade from the earliest years everything that adults do to support children's language and literacy is critical and that's from the near report in 2006 early language and other literacy skill development is of utmost importance to later literacy achievement for this reason comprehensive literacy policy should focus on these earlier years for example policy considerations could include looking at early learning standards related to literacy across the pre-k delivery system are they consistent with research in early language and literacy development are they consistently applied providing second providing training and support for early childhood educators in evidence based early language and literacy skill development and screening and third considering elements of programs like Providence TOPS that aim to close the work gap the next segment is teacher preparation the report early literacy and Vermont findings from the Vermont education educator preparation program course syllabi review commissioned in act 28 found that 60% of educators recommended for certification in early childhood early childhood special education and elementary pathways are served by the six educator prep programs studied by the researchers just one moment yeah more again committee members are really wanting to see this document I think I would I would resend the email I'm sorry I would just send it with just the yeah that would be great I think I may have found it okay no maybe not thank you go ahead that's focusing on educator preparation programs in Vermont could be an influential policy letter since it accounts for 60% of those educators serving our students generally the survey in the report found that the six educator prep programs cover the six reading components however reports from the field suggest that many educators are not confident in their ability to teach reading and education administrators at anecdotally report a decrease in the readiness of early career educators as they leave higher education institutions this might be related to the pedagogical intensity findings found in the report so please consider further investigating pre-service programs in Vermont as a policy lever and then I like a report from the education commission of the state's outlining policies that other states have employed in this pre-service arena early screening intervention in act 173 is the next segment that I'll talk about research underscores the critical significance of early literacy screening and intervention in shaping children's educational trajectories studies consistently demonstrate that early identification of literacy challenges significantly improve outcomes early screening as proposed by this bill has a two-fold purpose one identifying struggling students and two also informing the system of the efficiency of their tier one is that universal general education instruction for the latter purpose the district management groups report titled expanding and strengthening best practice supports for students who struggle which laid the foundation again linked in the the virtual version which laid the foundation for act 173 of 2018 for districts with large numbers of students through small group or individual tier two sorry for districts with large numbers of students who are not meeting goals it's not desirable or practical to serve all students through small group or individual tier two or special education interventions many of these students can and must be helped through improvements in primary universal tier one instruction so that's again high quality general education instruction a core underpinning of the multi tiered system of support MTSS model is that extra intervention serve 10 to 15 percent of students across the state of Vermont approximately 45 percent the status a little bit old of students did not score proficient in ELI on the state assessment phrase three through five for the 25 through 2016 school year investing in the effectiveness of core reading instruction is critical for students in general education and students with disabilities and can ultimately reduce the number of students in tier two and special education reading interventions that's not to say to leave them behind it's talking about the efficiency of that tier one instruction that putting resources into that tier one instruction is an important part of the whole literacy system and that focus from the district management first part these questions if you want to finish curious if when you look at I'm still getting to know this numbers S204 yeah S204 do you see this as a as a bill that is primarily in tier one yes yeah I mean okay me too I was curious if you were on the same page I mean it does influence the other tiers when you identify students who are struggling but screening is really looking at that universal instruction how are we doing and that's when you take it in the aggregate and then also to figure out what interventions might be appropriate for a student that is not being served well by the tier one instruction so it's kind of two fold and that way yeah right and that I mean and then sorry another question this gets kind of pedagogical but could you foresee where like the tier two targeted instruction could take place in a sort of just like within a tier one differentiated model I would defer to a reading specialist my sense is that that would still potentially be considered tier one in certain circumstances and sometimes tier two depending on the intervention but please don't quote me on that okay now I think we're on the same page so far yeah thank you investing in universal instruction is imperative for sporting improvement in reading achievement early assessment tools can and should inform systems on how to improve tier one instruction what does investing in universal instruction or tier one instruction look like ensuring that educators are equipped with the training and coaching support necessary to provide high quality reading instruction to all students the purpose of S204 significantly overlaps with the principles that were foundational to Act 173 of 2018 a law that was implementation plan and technical support from the field despite a well crafted piece of legislation there have been significant challenges with state level support for implementation seen in both the professional learning requirements for the agency of education and the rulemaking process which did not live up to the expectations of flexibility for the field this is to say that Act 173 is an excellent and comprehensive systems for serving students who struggle and a valuable policy level VSA asked that you consider doing a deeper dive into the history and present day of Act 173 monitor whether state stakeholders have fulfilled the responsibilities under the law and reinvest in successfully implementing the best practices that laid the groundwork for that legislation so now specific to S204 thank you to the sponsors of the specific bill and the education committee for their commitment to ensuring that we improve reading outcomes for students in Vermont the following is specific feedback related to the proposed legislation and again this is in the spirit of collaboration it is not in any way saying that we oppose the bill I do go like certain line page line just to let you know if you have the bill open please take testimony from school district administrators and the agency of education about how this bill fits within the context of the larger education delivery system including but not limited to local comprehensive systems MTSS local comprehensive assessment systems MTSS Act 173 and IDEA any new initiative should align within the context of these existing educational structures the requirements laid out in S204 require significant training and expertise at a time when school districts are attending with very notable workforce shortages that is to say increasing the information that we have about students by means of early screening is important however screeners are only as good as the knowledge expertise training and experience of those administering the screeners interpreting results and providing instruction and interventions published lists of approved screeners from the agency of education so that's page 2 line 11 the superintendent that informed this testimony agreed that having a list of universal screeners at no cost to school districts could be a helpful resource they expressed concern about the limited expertise at the agency of education which did expand under F28 but might not be sufficient to lead significant reading reform please consider adjusting the language to the following the agency of education shall identify and publish a list of approved universal screeners reading screeners in consultation with no fewer than three school district based reading specialists the universal screeners and screeners for dyslexia characteristics that language on page 2 the current language switching between universal screeners and screeners for dyslexia characteristics is difficult to follow and distinguish screening is a critical component of an effective MTSS and a solid comprehensive assessment system as part of an MTSS can and must adequately adequately screen for literacy skills however universal screening as defined by the international dyslexia association is used to determine a risk a student's risk for reading difficulty and the need for intervention this is inclusive inclusive of but not exclusive to dyslexia please consider revising the language in S204 to say at risk for experience reading difficulties or at risk for experiencing with reading difficulties including risk of dyslexia what is MTSS? multi-tiered system of support so that is referring to kind of what we've been talking about with the core instruction like with what you would get in a kind of regular classroom setting and then intervention strategies are the subsequent tiers yeah um page 4 line 5 a dyslexia screener will be administered when students show deficits in reading and spelling words despite receiving evidence based instruction how are deficits defined in the context of a dyslexia screener how will a dyslexia screener fit within the context of diagnostic evaluation and the rights of students under IDEA for the rights of students to qualify for an IDP the characteristics outlined on page 2 and 3 of S204 should be properly vetted by school district based reading specialist and informed by evidence this is outside of my expertise and the testimony that I can provide today page 3 line 10 please consider revising this wording to inform the instructional strategies for students in need of additional support or suggest getting rid of a little bit of the language in there to just allow for flexibility within the system in terms of how they address those needs page 4 line 13 what does more regularly mean in this context and then individual reading plans VSA recommends that the committee learn more from administrators and educators about how an individual reading plan fits within the context of personalized learning plans and IEPs if this is too tedious to do this line by line please stop this is helpful we will have you in again but this is helpful as we do mark up I realize there was a lot page 4 line 10 at this time VSA recommends focusing on what it must include or what the intervention must include rather than what it may not include you're talking about the queuing system and one of the reasons we suggest that pending case law around a state that have banned a particular methodology so if we do outline what we want that will for sure be included in the strategies that educators are using and I did link to a little bit of information about that case law at the end of the document as well page 16 line 16 please consider changing school board to school district to outline the reasoning for that and whose responsibility it is page 6 I think right oh I'm sorry yes page 7 line 4 how is deficiency defined Vermont educator preparation programs implementation of reading instructional programs on page 7 line 13 as specified earlier in the testimony graduation as a policy lever is of interest to VSA how would this be monitored in a steps so thank you for including that in the bill recommendations I'm just wondering in more detail how that would come about and then on page 8 line 9 it says a school reading specialist shall provide while VSA agrees hardily with the intent of this provision not every school has a reading specialist as defined by someone holding a reading specialist certification. Perhaps the committee could consider expanding the definition to include other professional credentials at its essence to skips that the recommendation found in the DMG report for students who struggle to receive instruction from highly skilled educators. The early literacy screening guidance from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is a comprehensive, and it's linked there, is a comprehensive tool that addresses many of the points that I surfaced in this testimony in, I think, a really great way, and could be a useful tool when considering the revisions offered today. The guidance is in support of Massachusetts Regulation 603, CMR 28.03, which requires schools to screen students' reading ability from kindergarten to third grade, at least twice per school year, use DESE-approved screeners, determine appropriate actions, and notify parents within 30 school days. So some parallels with their law in this bill. A comprehensive approach to improving reading outcomes will work to ensure that quality instruction is happening across the state, that our teachers have the skills they need to teach reading, and that our intervention systems have the skills and resources needed to address those who struggle. Thank you to the committee for examining this issue. The essay shares your concern about the state of reading in Vermont. There are a number of reading specialists, special educators, curriculum directors, and superintendents who would be great assets in informing how to address the state of reading in Vermont. I would be happy to connect you with those experts. A short video is linked for your consideration about how reading policy evolved in 2023 and what's ahead. Thank you. Reading policy nationwide? Nationwide, yes. Did they talk about that lawsuit around the 3QA method? Okay. This has given us a lot to chew on, a lot of possible witnesses. I would, if you would, email Morgan in a copy of Senator Gulick, she's the sponsor and myself on some witness ideas. That would be great. Specific names, anybody, when you say superintendents, folks like that. That sounds cute. That sounds great. Okay. I do have one question for Lindsay. And I don't, this may not be the time for it, but it'd be helpful if at some point, if possibly you or someone at the BSA could speak to, I'm trying to find where this question was. Basically, professional development. Was that your second bullet point? What was that? The training needed to be able to administer and probably utilize the screening. Yeah. So I was just wondering if someone could speak to the training needed to really bring this to fruition and really give it teeth and make it a success if we are able to go in this direction. But also just like inform our committee on what kinds of professional development opportunities are out there, are available, what do schools require of their teachers, what kind of monies are available to teachers for, you know, all of that would be I think really helpful to give us a little bit of context around what's possible. Yes. That would be great. I'd be happy to. Also in that Massachusetts report, they outline a framework for professional and around the screening to just, I think, helpful more broadly the specificity I can certainly bring people. Yeah. From my perspective, it seems as though school districts have both time and resources sort of baked into their schedules now for specifically for professional development. So that could be a really nice opportunity to do some of this work. Yeah. I'd be happy to recommend some folks. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Can you stick around? No, it's actually a good testimony. It's helpful. We can go back, we can reference it. It's great. It's helpful. And feel free to stay right where you are. Jay is zooming in. Hey, Mr. Nichols, how are you? Doing well. What's the volume? I know you have testimony. It has been emailed to us. It should be close to the top. It's from Morgan. This is from the Vermont Principles Association. We're going to turn up the volume. Hold on. Say something, Jay. Oh, how are you? I know. One more time. Okay. Hello. How's everybody doing? That's not doing anything. I was just doing a small event here. Morgan, how do you turn up the volume? It should just be the little in the bottom right of the iPad down there. Okay. How's that, Jay? I can hear you folks. All right. Let's go with that. Okay. Floor is yours. Do you want me to share my screen? Sure. Well, we have it right in front of us. Got it. Okay. Perfect. So I'll be brief. I would like to, for the record, Jay Nichols, Executive Director of the Vermont Principles Association. I'd also like to say, for the record, whenever we have anything to do with literacy from now on, I'd prefer to testify before Chelsea Meyer, so I don't look as bad. Chelsea and I did talk last night. I did tell her I was going to say something like that. So first, thank you, Senator Gulick and Hashim for signing onto this bill and the Senate Education Committee in general for your strong interest over the last few legislative sessions and looking to assist schools in improving instruction and ultimately outcomes and reading performance for our students. Nothing is more important in the academic realm than helping kids become good readers by the end of third grade. In the first section, the VPA supports the concept of universal screeners to be identified and published by the Agency of Education. We ask that while the agency continues to identify appropriate screeners, which they've already done some work on, they take careful stock of what districts already have in place on universal screeners. Systems that have effective screening mechanisms already in place should not have to make unnecessary changes. Screeners being available at no cost is very important as it ensures we don't unwittingly disadvantage school districts with less financial resources. And to that point, there would be human resources involved too with people doing the work and any training that's necessary. But anything you can do to mitigate the financial costs of the actual screeners would be very useful. The requirements for the screener are aligned with previous work that resulted in Act 28 of 2021 and is supported by the work of the Advisory Council on Literacy. I'm especially heartened by the requirement that the universal screen process be brief. When I was in superintendent, we were using Fontis and Penel type assessments and we were spending 45, 50 minutes at a time on a kid, individual kids. So teachers were out of the classroom trying to do the assessment and then you can't be instructing the rest of the kids at the same time. So I'm hopeful that these universal screeners will be very helpful. Obviously, there'll be some students that will need additional screening and in some cases further diagnostic assessment. However, a strong universal screener can easily assist professional educators in a manner that can change instruction to better meet the needs of each individual student and focus on any reading deficiencies that should be addressed sooner rather than later. A couple concluding thoughts related. One, I think it makes sense to make sure the Advisory Council on Literacy does not sunset. With research and application changes in the field and reading, which have been happening since the 1970s, it's important to have a group who oversees and continues to make sure that literacy improvement is front and center in Vermont. And I didn't mention here the language in the last sentence that says which school reading specialist shall provide might be too restrictive. School reading specialist is an actual endorsement instead of Vermont. I feel more comfortable with language that is less restrictive. The key is that the services are provided by someone who's qualified to provide those services. Again, I'm a big fan of reading specialist, but I don't want someone to inadvertently, something to inadvertently occur that would actually restrict potential services to students because the school could not get someone with that endorsement. And then my final comment subject to any questions is let's be very careful about prescribing anything that would be considered curriculum or requiring a certain program to be used. I know you're not trying to do that here, but there are a ton of commercial for profit groups out there that sell screening programs, curriculum packages, make billions of dollars who claim to be able to produce better reading results. And often they develop their own paid for research that supports their product. Let's try to make sure that we're really careful of that as we go down this path with reading. The only other thing I wanted to say, Chelsea had talked a little bit about, I caught the end of her testimony, about the language in there being, making sure the language is not restrictive throughout. She made some very good suggestions and I know there's going to be more conversation and testimony on this. I know you've had Gwen Carmoly in already to testify. I think she's a very strong person to have testify again to talk about specific attributes that Chelsea brought up. And I would consider it really important that you again keep this advisory council moving forward and reading. I think it's one program. I hate committees the last forever. This is probably one that probably should natural. Anything else for Mr. Nichols? Great testimony, both of you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. A lot of work to do, but I'm feeling really good that we'll we'll we'll say confident that we'll get there. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Thank you for your work on this, folks. We do appreciate it. Appreciate you. Have a great rest of the day. Thanks. Well, am I supposed to talk about 127 or am I all set? You're welcome to stay on for 127 if you want to. You mean act 127? A couple waiting. Yeah. Why don't you stick around? We're going to take a we're going to come back here in about 10 minutes. Why don't you stick around if you'd like to weigh in a little bit. That'd be terrific. We'd appreciate that. Very, very short. Yep, that's fine. Okay. And Morgan, if you would take us off. Absolutely one moment. All right, you're off. Okay. We'll come back in 10 minutes. We'll come back to Senate Education last 45 minutes or so. We are going to start a conversation about waiting and senators may or may not recall. Let me just pull up my agenda here. I apologize. Act 127 was passed I think two years ago, an act relating to improving student equity by adjusting the school funding formula and providing education to quality and funding oversight. And I've asked Miss St. James to update us. We have update and walk through the bill. This is really what we would like Miss St. James to do is tell us what the bill was supposed to do. Bring us back to two years ago as much as she possibly can. We also had Miss Richter here to weigh in and I've asked or Jane Nichols was nice enough to volunteer to stick around a little bit. So, Miss St. James. Thank you. Best St. James Office of Justice Council. And I'm going to make you some tech issues this afternoon. So I did send. Do you all have a copy of Act 127? Yeah. Okay. We can do a couple different things. I made an outline that was mainly for myself, but when I realized there might be some tech issues, I cleaned it up a little bit. And so if you all would like copies of that, I can pass that out. I have copies for you. It's kind of an outline of the bill. And or I can share my screen with the app. Okay. So I don't have the app. I just have the outline. Yes. My question is, is why am I not able to find this on are you in the correct session? Yeah. So it's not going to show up in 23 and 24 as an act? Nope. 22. 22. If you are on the legislative home page, if you go up to bills and resolutions and then you click on search, bill act and resolution search. Yeah. What I'm doing here. Do you see where it says change session? Yep. But no, I know how to do all that. I just I bought once an act was an act. It was sort of available in all sessions, but apparently. I thought so too. Okay. Okay. So here and again, this was originally intended for me on clinic. Thank you. So keep that in mind, please. And then I will send a copy to Morgan's proposed. So act 127 came out in infancy bills come out as if they are movies. So I apologize for that. It was enacted in 2022. So not that long ago. And it contains at the very beginning, which is not referenced in my little summary, a couple pages of findings. And so it starts with a reference to the Brigham decision, which if you all remember from 1997, and to just simplify it down to its simplest form, it was the state Supreme Court really committed, excuse me, making it clear that is a state obligation, education, the state obligation, and that in order to fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide education, the state must ensure substantial equality of educational opportunity throughout the month. So then that led to a series of funding changes. And you all remember we talked about act 60, we talked about act 68 last session. And then we were in the education funding landscape that we were in prior to really July 1, 2024, because what we're about to talk through doesn't, most of it doesn't take effect. The meat of what we're about to talk about doesn't really take effect until July 1, 2024. But it is being used now as schools are calculating their budgets for the next school year. So it is very relevant. So the findings really talk about that substantial equality of education concept and how we fund education in this state. In 2019, there was a report commissioned by the legislature to look at pupil weights are weights applied to student counts. That's a very simple way to put it, to account for the differences in costs of educating different students with different needs or circumstances, right? So generally speaking, an elementary student is going to cost less to educate than a high school student. How do you account for that, right? If it's not a one-to-one, how do you account for that when you are trying to figure out your education spending? In this state, we apply what we call pupil weights. And one of the main things that Act 207 did, and what we'll talk about, is it updated those weights. So in 2019, there was a study commissioned to look at Vermont's weights and see if there were changes necessary. And then there was a task force created. I don't believe anyone on this committee was on the task force. There was a pupil weighting task force that occurred in the summer fall 2021. And they came out with recommendation. And then in 2022 session, the legislature created what became Act 127 and updated those weights and made some other changes that we will touch on. So the goals of this Act are laid out at the very beginning. And that is to ensure students receive substantial quality of educational opportunity throughout the state. And then there's some more specifics there, but in the interest of time, I'll just skip over them. But just know that there are some goals spelled out in the Act itself that you should, if you're interested in that table again. And then my handout starts with the intent of the Act. So this Act updates and adds new pupil weights for fiscal year 2025 thereafter. Remember, fiscal year starts July 1. So if it's fiscal year 2025, that starts July 1 2024. So this Oh, do people want to bill on the screen? I'm happy to share. I don't know that I have a I just wonder, like, is anyone's watching tuning in? They might want to be following along the bill. Well, there's four of us on the only four of them on it. Only four are logged in. If Morgan wants to send me a Zoom link and give me permission, I'm happy to share. But Morgan, will you send a Zoom link, please? Absolutely. Do you want me to wait for that? Please keep going. So section one of the bill was a finding section, section two of the bill where the goals and section three of the intent section and section four starts the substantive changes to law. So section 4010 in title 16 was formally called or currently called determination of weighted membership. And you'll see that as of July 1 2024, which is when this section takes effect, this section will be called determination of weighted long term membership and per pupil education. And this is for lack of a better way of putting it where the weights live. So this section, section four is there are there's lots of media sections to this bill, but when we're talking about the weights, this is this is it. So I just got the Zoom link there with me to share my screen. So this is page five section four. That's the title and this is we're in title 16 in the green box, which is your education title. We're in the very last chapter, which is chapter 133. And it is that is the education button chapter. So you can see this was the old law all across out. Start here with some new definitions. And I'm going to jump right into the weights. So we can talk mechanics after I'm going to point out the weights first. So the weights start on page eight. So what this section does is it requires each school district to report to AOE every year, certain by certain category, the number of students each of these categories. And it's a little more than that, but I'm just going to talk broad strokes here. I'm sure Julie is cringing as I say that. So these are you'll see this is all underlined. These will be the new weights that take effect July one 2024. But as I said, they are being used now to calculate the fiscal 2025. So the pre-tending arm weight was actually not changed. That is work to be done if that is going to change. You'll see we go right from pre-k to grade six through eight with a weight of 0.36. So what happened to grades k through five? Well, they're not listed here because they have a weight of zero. So then grades through nine have a weight of 0.39. And then those are the grade weights. Then we get into some different weights. And I think my handout is a little easier to read, at least for me on what those categories are. So there's a poverty rate for pupils whose family is at or below 185% of the federal poverty level. And those students will receive an additional weight of 1.03. Then there is an EL weight, which is for English learners. And there's a whole separate section. There's a small separate section of categorical aid for certain school districts with EL learners. But all EL pupils will receive an additional weight of 0.49. And then there is what we're calling the sparse city weight. And I should say, everything I've just talked about the weights, they already existed existing current law. Act 127 updated change except for food. Sparse city weights. I'm on, I'm right here on Subdivision Tour. Here are the pupils living in low population density school districts. And you can see on page 11 of Act 127 is where those weights live. I've pulled them out. So if it's, if the number of people per square mile is fewer than 36 people, it's a weight of 0.15. The number of persons and this is just people living in the area. There's a whole separate weight for small schools themselves. So this is the geographic area where the students live and then there's a whole separate weight for schools. So you can see those weights, that's a new weight that was added in Act 127. And the small school weight was also added in Act 127. So for pupils who attend a small school, if the school is less than 100 pupils, they have a weight of 0.21. And if it's 100, 249, those are already considered small schools. It's a weight of 0.07. So school districts are required to report the number of students in each of those categories to AOE every year. AOE applies those weights. And it's, you've got your number of students just flat out, right? So let's say you have eight students, eight pre-k students, you would apply the pre-k weight of negative 0.54 to those eight students. And then you would go and then the number of weighted pupils for pre-k would be eight plus that weighted number. So you're going to do that for all of those categories and then have them together. Julia, have I said anything that needs correction before we go on? Julia Rector, Joy Fiscal Office. Nope, sounds great, Beth. Center weeks. So my assumption is that these weights take into account all the facilities and labor costs associated with education. So there was a study done and the study, and then the study committee looked at all of that. That was actually a little before my time. I would be happy if you wanted me to come back or it would actually be better if you're the author of those reports. But yes, those are some of the things they studied is what goes in, what's the cost of educating students in those different categories? It's total cost. I don't know that I can say yes or no to that because I don't know what total cost means. To my constituents and so the cost of educating each pupil is already always different. So there's a difference. So this is not education stepping. So the district's budget and this is really Julia's area to shine. And so if I see your camera come on Julia, I know I'm going to stride. But the school districts are going to come up with their budgets. And then in order to get per pupil spending, which is I think what you're getting at some of their weeks is that all in cost on educating your kiddos. There's some additional math that happens. These weights we're using to set property tax rates. This is dense and cost. Very quickly. So these weights set property tax rates. They are used to set property tax rates. So in a town that has fewer students that point one five, for example, will be used. Actually, I'm not quite sure how to phrase my questions. I think I'll wait. So the weights give school districts taxing capacity. The draw from the education. Yes. So the weights will give a school district taxing capacity, but it does not dictate how they spend their money or how much they are going to spend on their pupils. So I don't know, this might be a great place for Julia to jump in to explain the taxing. There's also my counterpart, my colleague Kirby Keaton is our tax attorney. And so education funding is a combination of me, our education or our tax attorney and Julia Richter at JFO. And I feel slightly out of my wheelhouse today trying to explain how the property tax rates are set. But the pupil weights are part of the equation to arrive at the property tax rate. But they are not an indication of how much the school district is spending or where they're making their spending choices. Julia, do you want to jump in? I'm happy to jump in if that would be helpful for the committee and or for you, Beth. I just want to make myself available. Jump in. Okay, sure. So, yes. So everything that Beth has said thus far is completely correct. And it gets to the point of what we were just talking about a little bit earlier with respect to how pupil weights are used. So you'll recall that homestead property tax rates vary by district based on that district's per pupil spending. That per pupil spending is comprised of two parts. One, it's that district's education spending. And then two, it's that district's long term weighted ADM. And that long term weighted ADM is where these pupil weights fit in. So they're used to adjust, as Beth correctly said, to adjust a district's taxing capacity. So they're going to fit into that district's homestead property tax rate and how it's calculated. But they're not saying this district needs to spend X number of dollars, or this district needs to spend some portion of their dollars on this type of student and its education. So if they have more taxing capacity, they can make different decisions about how they are using that. They could spend more and potentially keep their tax rate the same, or they could spend less. And I'm not going to say this frankly. That's our school board member. Sorry, there was a theme in hand, the one up there, and I didn't mean it to be. But I just, I guess if I could just add to that one thing that you're saying, which is that the flip side of that is that for all of those years when the weights may have been off, other districts had a more advantageous taxing capacity, and we're doing whatever they wanted with that money. So I'm just trying to, I don't want it to seem like these schools that are now suddenly getting a greater taxing capacity because they have more students in these categories or somehow gaming the system or benefiting in ways that are equitable. But that's all I want to say. That makes sense. And it depends on the decisions that school districts are making on their education spending and how they are taking advantage of that taxing capacity and how their property tax rates will be affected. So it's a very individualized local decision. So those are the, those are the weights. There is a requirement in here that on a report January 20, 27, and every fifth year thereafter, AOE and JFO look at the weights and see if they're still appropriate. And then the general assembly can update the weights. And then we get into some other portions. Are you all ready to move on? No. Okay. So tax rates, the people weights have the potential to affect tax rates. Tax rates may go up and they may go down depending on the number, the way the weights are being applied to their population and their setting decisions. Okay. Section seven creates this tax rate review board. So section seven says, section subsection A says, if you're, it looks like under in fiscal year 2025 when you apply the new funding formula, if the homestead property tax rate is going to go up by 5% or more, it's capped at 5% per fiscal year 2025-2023. Yes. So this, this was a piece that I was wondering about. And just let me know if it's what you're going to cover shortly. And then I'll just stop talking. But so they're capped at 5%. But they can go over 5% up to 10%. And if they go beyond 10%, it triggers this review. Right. So the 10% is the education spending. So 5% is the homestead property tax rate. Okay. So they just, it cannot go above 5% at all? Yes. So the language reads that the school district's homestead property tax rate shall be increased by not more than 5% over the prior fiscal year. Okay. In each fiscal year, for the five fiscal years from 2025 through 2029, so it's kind of a transition as the weights are applied. Okay. So there's a 5% property, homestead property tax rate cap, and you're looking at the prior fiscal year. So the 10% and I'm interested in the 10% so the 10% in relation to education spending. That's where the tax rate review is there. So thank you. My question is for Julia because the cap is creating confusion across the state, I would say. And I'm just wondering if when that January 1 note, is that what it's called? January 1 letter? December 21. December 1. Thank you. When the December 1 letter went out, I'm just wondering, was that 5% cap, was that fake into that number that was shared with everyone? Yes. So the 5% tax rate cap was included in the modeling for homestead property tax rate cap was included for the December 1 modeling because it is due to take effect through Act 127. One important note on this that is helpful, I think, to keep in mind is that the tax rate cap is at the equalized level. So that's before the application of the CLA. So sometimes a question comes up, well, how is it that tax rates, homestead property tax rates are capped at 5% and we're seeing an average bill increase of 18.5% in that December 1 letter. And that's because a tax bill, as I'm sure the committee is well aware, is comprised of the two parts, the tax rate and also the value that's being taxed. So if the tax rate is going up by no more than 5%, however, the values are estimated to grow significantly more by about 14%. So yes, it was included in the December 1 modeling. Thank you. So in fiscal year 2025, if a school district per people education spending calculated using the funding formula that Act 127 creates, if that increases by 10% or more over the school district's fiscal year 2024 per people spending is calculated by AOE under the subsection, they've got to use, they've got to have a number to compete, they have to have Apple staff to compare it to, so we're looking at applying the student funding formula to 2024 as well. So if you're looking at those two years, if per people spending increases by more than 10%, then the school district is subject to a tax rate per year. And then fiscal year 2026 through 2029, if the school district per people education spending increases by more than 10% over the prior year's spending, then the school district is subject to a tax rate review. And that tax rate review is used to determine if the spending was beyond the school district's control or if it was for other good cause. And Act 127 contains what the tax rate review is supposed to consider these factors. And if the review results in the secretary making a determination and the budget contains excessive increases in per people education spending that are within the school district's control and are not supported by good cause, then the homestead property tax rate would be increased by now more than 5% in each fiscal year that would otherwise not be capped at 5%, the cap is gone. Can you say that one more time? Yeah, even slower. So if per people education spending increases by 10% year over year, so looking at the prior year using this new funding formula, the new weights, right? And there's more to just the funding formula than just the weights, but for this conversation. If the per people spending increases by more than 10%, the school district is subject to a review. And the review is looking at why is, where is that 10% increase coming from? Is it things out of the school district's control or is there other good cause? And if, so I'm reading directly from the Act, if the secretary determines that the school district's budget contains excessive increases in per people education spending that are within the district's control and are not supported by good cause, then if that school district homestead property tax rate was going to be capped because it was hitting that 5%, that cap is removed. Yes, thank you. So the school district has to, of course, pass that off on to the property tax. This is directly saying that so your per people spending is impacting your property tax rate. So this is saying if the review board determines that there's no good cause essentially, then that cap is removed and your homestead property tax rate is what it is. And if there is good cause, then the cap stays. And then where does the cost, where does that difference then, how does the rest get paid for? It all evens out, so the Ed fund is self-balancing. So the way we arrive in our property taxes to the use of the yields, it's at all kind of balances out. And I am not prepared today to walk you through how we do that, but me or Julia, because Julia does this day in and day out, can come back in and literally draw on the white board. I think Julia can do some math with us next week would be great. I apologize. That's okay. No worries. And that being Julia, I was just wondering, do you have a number that you can assign to what that 5% cap is going to cost us, at least for fiscal 25? And then is it all coming out of the Ed fund? So to answer your first question, no, we don't have a number for that. And that's really because school district budgets have not been warned or set yet, and we, nor has the yield, right? So we don't know which school districts will see a cap in their rate, and also how much remainder needs to be made up. And it is that remainder that will need to be made up, as Beth said, will be made up within the education fund. And it's a policy decision as to if the non homestead property tax rate will take up how much, how it will be made up. So it can be made up either with adjusting the non homestead property tax rate, adjusting homestead, the homestead property yield, or adjusting other factors in the Ed fund. Thank you. Are you or are folks concerned that there's no, there doesn't seem to be an incentive for districts to kind of stay under the 5% cap. So there's perhaps a scenario where there are districts really take advantage of that cap and increasing their spending quite a bit, even though they might not necessarily, I hate to say need to, but might otherwise not. So I would defer to folks who are building budgets as to where the spending decisions are coming from and if and how the 5% cap will be coming into play. And then with respect to the incentives of that and what you're hoping it does or doesn't do, is really policy. Is there a list of the schools that are spending over, you know, all the attention? So because school district budgets have not been warned or set at this point, we don't have that data. I mean, for the past five years. So the, so the 5% cap is referring to the, the, it's a 5% tax rate cap. So that a tax rate of a school district cannot increase by more than 5% compared to the prior year. So because district tax rates are a function of many factors each year, both at the state level and at the local level, it's not, there's not really an apples to apples comparison that we can use to see, you know, which districts may or may not receive the cap this year. Okay, thank you. I'm going to run through a man full of time. I'm going to run through kind of the rest of it. Several laws were suspended in that point. The first is the excess spending penalty, which is an additional liability for school districts that spend above an excess excess spending threshold. That's in statute. So that is suspended from this year 2025 through 2029. Again, this is a big change. So how do we account for that change? This is, this was part of that. So we're going to suspend the whole harmless in the second piece is suspending the whole harmless provision, which is a provision that means the district's weighted long term membership is not less than 96.5% of their previous year at long term membership. And then there was ballot languages required on school budget ballots. There's a requirement in block for there to be reference to the prior year's budget. And that language is suspended for fiscal years 2025 through 2029. The Act 2027 also required A&E to come up to create the universal income declaration form, which I believe they have done. And you got to get all of this demographic information somehow. And then excuse me, this form also has uses in other areas of the education world, especially in when it relates to universal bills. So that Act 2027, if you hear mention of the university income declaration form, that's where it came from. Another big piece of Act 2027 is related to English learners. So you already saw that there is a weight for English learners Act 2027 also provides a small amount of categorical aid for districts that have a small amount of English learners. So if a district has one to five English language learners, they will get $25,000 flat. And if a district has six to 25 English learners, they will receive $50,000 flat. It also requires school districts to offer certain English language services and A&E to provide support and quality. Yes. Thank you. I heard this anecdotally that there was a change in the way that we count poverty, or maybe define poverty in this bill. It's a, you know, let's go back up a little bit. Certainly weight, right? Change the weight. So looking at all of this old, crossed out language. So poverty, all of the ways changed. Maybe if poverty may change, I'm saying just looking. Oh, Julia, it must know the answer off the top of your head. Ms. Richter. Sure. Yeah. So the poverty weight, yes, it changed and also the way of collecting the poverty data changed. So since the passage of Act 127, as Beth mentioned, there was the establishment of the Universal Income Declaration form. So that data is used to count poverty before, in addition, well, so that's being used to count poverty in addition to the metrics that were being used before, before it was solely the free and reduced price lunch data. And since the passage of Act 127, there is also the Medicaid data, which is now allows for students to be eligible for the free and reduced price lunch, which in turn, then is also being used for the poverty weighting data. Excuse my ignorance on this one, but I so are the, I'm looking at the bill. I assume the Universal School meals and the Universal Income Declaration determine poverty differently. Is that correct to say a determination about poverty in a different way? So Universal Meals, it's not that we don't care about that anymore, but everyone gets a free meal, right? So this, so the poverty weight here is specific. Sorry, I thought you were asking about the definition of poverty. So the, it's 185% of the federal poverty level. Which, for which one? Sorry for the poverty, for the poverty weight. So seeing the Universal Income Declaration form. Yes. That is the main, the intent is that that is the main mechanism to collect that data. Thank you. And then so we talked about English language learners or English learners, excuse me, Act 127 added five positions to an AOE. I've outlined them very briefly in this little outline for what they were intended to do. This bill also created a requirement for education quality standards. I believe you all took a little bit of testimony on this last year. So there's the education quality standards, which is all about many different things, staffing, the courses that are taught, etc. And this act creates district quality standards for school districts to meet in business management, facilities management, governance practices. And it also required AOE to engage in rulemaking on that. And I believe that's all that's done. This act creates a evaluation and reporting requirements. So JFO is required to contract for an evaluation of implementation of this act. And that would be due to you all December 15, 2029. There was also this is the act that commissioned the career or set off the career and technical education studies. So remember that was two parts. JFOs was to contract for a study on governance and funding structures for remote career and technical education system, like all of the available options that came to you all in March of 2023. And then it was AOE's turn to look at that information and make recommendations for the actual changes for Vermont. I believe you have a bill on your wall about the career and technical education changes. And I have not seen the AOE report related to this topic, but that doesn't mean I don't exist. I just hope not to see that. So I cannot talk to you about it. Let's see. This act also commissioned the Department of Taxes along with AOE and JFO to submit a written report on income-based education and income-based education tax system. That report was due last year. And it required total reports from JFO. One of them was a report on education, semi-cost containment and equitable education funding. That's just a very blanket umbrella topic. And then there were lots of conforming changes throughout. I'm going to skip over all of those and just look at the effective dates so you all can see. The findings, the goals, the intent, the suspension of the laws, the formation of the universal declaration, the conform, the staffing, education quality standards, the reporting requirements, those all took effect on July 1, 2022 when the bill was passed. And then the meat of the bill, the funding pieces, the pupil weights and the English learner services pieces. And then several other, like all of the conforming changes. Those don't take effect until July 1, 2024. But again, a lot of that is being used now to determine school district budgets. And that is Act 1-27. There's a lot more. I didn't really get my question answered, probably because I'm not asking it properly. And I know it's hard to answer a question with qualitative words like I'm using. But when we get back to how we determine poverty through this particular bill, which system was more generous? And again, I'm sorry to use that. Was it, was pre-introduced lunch a more expansive? Julie, I think I think I'm wrong. I believe it was still a threshold of 185% of the federal poverty level. It's how that data is collected that has changed. I believe it. And I don't see your camera going on. Ms. Richter, we're going to have Morgan have you back in next week to do some, just running some scenarios, if you will, help us with some math problems, kind of just school budget sorts of things would be great. Can you give that some thought and you and I can talk about it? Sure. I'd be happy to talk offline about, you know, if there's anything you'd like me to prepare ahead of time about that. And yes, Beth is right. And with respect to the difference between the free and reduced price lunch and the universal income declaration form, there is a part of the bill, and this is where I defer back to Beth, but there is a part of the bill that was included that did say something about having AOE compare the two measures to see how, which was picking up a higher poverty count in four districts. Mr. Nichols, you have some final words, not totally final. We have some questions, but you were going to weigh in on what you're sort of seeing on the field out there. Yeah, and I can do that real, real briefly in a real general way. Jay Nichols for the record, Executive Director of Vermont Principles Association. In terms of the new pupil waiting and the impact on FY 25 budgets, the cost drivers I mentioned previously to Senate education are exasperating the circumstances. I guess if there was a difficult year to make these changes, it would probably be this year, given those cost drivers such as increased contracts due to the hiring issues we and the rest of the nation have faced in education, the 16.5% increased insurance costs, the loss of the ESSER funds, the changing values of Vermont home assessments after the pandemic and the impact, therefore on common level of appraisal, you know, the increased contractor costs such as speech language services, etc. In the last couple weeks, I spoke into a number of principal groups, including recently the Chittenden County Regional Principals. The consensus there seems to be that for those who are self-described losing a relationship to the pupil waiting changes from the current system to the new system that we're moving to, they're feeling the burden much more so and are in positions in which simply maintain current programming will require significant budget cuts despite the fact that the needs have not diminished in those schools in terms of the needs of the kids. For those who were expecting a lot more financial resources to do the things that in the past they haven't been able to do because of lack of funding, the aforementioned cost drivers are soaking up all of the additional taxing authority for some of them so that they will only be able to keep and maybe even increase program slightly but not to the level that they had anticipated with the passage of Act 127. And I want to make it clear, again, this is just off the top, I had a had a much time to prepare for this stat, I don't think the issues that are arising are necessarily the fall of anybody. I also want to make it clear from my perspective and my association's perspective that we appreciate the work of the waiting study committee and the people waiting task force. I'm not even sure if those are really the right names of those two groups but and the research approach they took to make the suggested waiting changes that the General Assembly ultimately ended up adopting. Like any new change to statewide funding formula, we're going to need to wait a while to see what the impact is and what that means in terms of costs across the board on the system and the level of service is provided. The bigger immediate concerns are the cost drivers that schools are dealing with for which they have little of any recourse to address and that are sometimes getting conflated with the changes related to the people waiting changes. From my perspective, to get into these questions, I think you should invite in for the committee to hear Morgan Debelle, who's the business manager of Franklin Northeast. He's currently the president of Vermont School of Vermont School Business Officials Association, full disclosure, I hired him as a business manager many years ago. Jeff Francis, the executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, who understands this law as well as anybody, Brad James, the school finance manager of the agency of education, and then Sue Sosowski, the executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association, they are much more in the weeds on this than I am and I think they all could bring you beneficial testimony. And also I should say you can't do better than Beth St. James and Julia Richter for questions. I just wanted to push back on the designation of losers. I know you didn't necessarily mean that, Mr. Nichols. I put in quotations because that's actually, yeah, essentially some of those districts have been benefiting from an outdated model that, you know, so I just, I don't think we should talk about losers, but that's no argument on my part, Senator. That's just how, and that's why I said quote unquote losers, because that's how some of them are referring to it. So you're absolutely right. And we think that this system, we testified in favor of this new system, and we think that the direction that we're headed makes more sense. It's more research based. It's not numbers that were kind of pulled out of the air like what we've been living under previously. I just think the the exasperation is the fact of all those other post drivers that I mentioned before. Sorry, one last question for Julia and I apologize for all the questions, but when you came up with December one letter, and you must have done some modeling for that 5% cap, what can you can you tell us what number you use for that model? I'm happy to talk about the modeling when you say what number I used, which number you're referring to. Well, how far above 5% did you go? You know, six, seven, eight. So when referring to the property tax cap, it's all property tax rates for homestead property tax rates cannot increase by more than 5%. So the modeling held to make sure that all equalized homestead property tax rates would follow the legislation and not increase by more than 5%. But if districts do increase their spending above that threshold, maybe I'm just getting confused and confusing myself at this late date. Yeah, I think that it's possible that that sort of two things are being conflated. One is the 5% property tax rate cap. And then two is the 10% upon which a district must go in front, the 10% change in Ed spending per pupil, which triggers a district needing to go before the tax rate review board. So in the modeling, we assumed all school districts would regardless of how much their Ed spending per pupil compared to the prior year increased, all school districts would be eligible for the 5% homestead property tax rate cap. Right. But hypothetically, if the school district raises their spending to the point where normally they would be up at an 8% increase, let's say tax rate increase, but we're capping them at five. That's a 3% differential. So is that, did you use that 3% when you modeled out your numbers for the December 1 meeting letter? Yeah. So that those funds that are not going to be raised by those districts, so in that example to 3%, we say, okay, that 3% additional tax rate above the 5% is not going to be raised on this tax base. So it needs to flow back into the model and fit into the other property tax rates to make sure that there's sufficient revenues in the education fund. And in the December 1 modeling, we are required to model a uniform change so that uniformly went on to non homestead property tax rates and homestead property tax rates that were not capped at 5%. Does that answer your question? So I'll sleep on that one. I think honestly, one of our next steps will be to have the chair of finance and since no matter what we're thinking and wanting to do all this work does, the decisions ultimately lie down the hall. So I think what we should ask in our comments is tell us what you need from us. What are some of the things you're thinking about? Have a conversation with her next week as well. Okay, we're going to leave it there. Thanks, everybody. This has been incredibly helpful.