 Good morning, everybody. Well, point meeting between the House Education Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, this what we could call a member listening tour where we don't have to go anywhere, but they everybody come to us. It's really an opportunity for us to hear from our colleagues who have also been doing a lot of deep thinking on the issue of education finance education in general. And we wanted to offer all of them an opportunity to come and speak to our two committees. We have a good long list that will take us well past 11. We do not have a built in break in our schedule. So members as you may need to leave go ahead just do it quietly and as as quietly as possible. Everybody has a six minute time. We will sort of offer gentle reminders as you get close. But I think with that will just get rolling everybody feeling ready here around the table. Is someone taking like no for minutes about what people are saying. There's no official note taker, but there's lots of pads of paper here if anybody needs them. Okay, and if you want to be the official note, please feel free. I go with the trends. Yeah, thank you. All right. Let's let's get rolling so we don't already get behind schedule representative Laura Sebelia. Your first right up there. Thank you. Good morning and I did submit my testimony. Thank you. Start right up. Thank you all for pulling back on the tax cap earlier this year. Before most budget budgets were voted. That was extremely difficult. And I appreciate the communication and the time that local officials. I think that the measures had to adjust was really short. I do not believe we have time or political cover to change the education fund mechanism again this year. Changing the rules on funding after most districts have voted on their budgets. Some have also already re voted will add more fuel. I'm aware that the governor and the legislature have created over many years. I'm preparing my testimony. I have reflected on my own family's experiences. We encountered significant challenges, including poverty and abandonment. A small public love my isolated southern Vermont town played a pivotal role in where I and my 11 siblings find ourselves today. Accessible quality public education is one of the most important publicly obligated opportunities. Rural and poor kids will have to change their destiny. We are committed to advocating for these kids every day. 27 years ago, act 60 was introduced to reform Vermont's education finance system, aiming to equalize funding among school districts, reduce property tax rate disparities and ensure equitable access to education resources. It also was intended to preserve local control. It fell short in addressing differences in educating various student demographics, resulting in funding disparities that adversely affected rural and poor students and taxpayers for two decades. That was the people waiting issue. While act 27 eventually rectified that injustice after more than a decade of effort. The correction is one of the things causing a shock to the financing of our. Another is our repeated failure to provide proper state level technical support and guidance to a distributed system undergoing massive demographic change. And the governor and the legislature on that. Another is opting to buy down the rates rather than provide long term sustained help for our local districts to adjust. And the governor and the legislature own that. Another is the governor and the legislature continually trying to buy more things out of the education. I thank you for inviting this testimony. I would like some suggestions. First, I think we need to acknowledge that one of the main drivers of these difficulties facing students and our taxpayers are our actions and the actions of the administration. Multiple administrations, multiple legislators. We need to acknowledge that there are deserved trust issues in the system. We need to avoid deceptive practices or attempts to conceal information from the stakeholders, taxpayers. We need to be really deliberate about clarity. Building consensus on the problem to be solved and the goals to be achieved. My goal, my vote would be to ensure more sustainable and stable governance and funding system capable of delivering high quality education throughout the state. But let's do the work to find consensus on what the problem is we all want to solve in room. I would really encourage us to recognize our limitations. And please seek appropriate help designing public processes to reengage our communities in goal setting and problem solving and then public publicly implement implementing modernization of this. We cannot act hastily in this moment. Again, be intentional about providing clear and accessible information to stakeholders. I would encourage us to get qualified public education leaders in the administrative seats as soon as possible. I sponsored a proposal for this. I've sponsored several proposals, which are in your various committees. This one is h851. This is an act relating to creating a department and commissioner of education and amending the duties and composition of the state board of education. In order to make this imperative, we need to depoliticize this system. Do whatever we can to depoliticize the system. We need to draw bright lines around the education fund and differentiate between local decision making and state directed spending. This will help us to be more accountable. Let's do our job of providing oversight. Same rules are the same dollars. I propose multiple examples to your committees h113 in ways and means h258 and house education. Let's stop making no problem worse in the interim. You're really fragile right now. I propose a suggestion on this to house education this year. This is a proposal for h634 related to school closures. It's going to take us time to write the ship. And we are really vulnerable in rural parts of the state, our education systems. And finally, we need to stop buying down the. I think we hopefully all know this. This is exacerbating the problem and also delaying really needed conversations. And I encourage you not to seek easy answers. And I thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you for being very well timed to them. Representative Dickinson. For the record I am representative Lynn Dickinson. I represent St. Alton's town and thank you for letting me take this meeting. I serve for eight years. I serve for eight years on the board of trustees of BFA St. Alton's, which was an independent school that served as the high school for St. Alton students in the city and town, among other communities. There wasn't anything independent about it. All of its revenue was local state and federal money. The trustees were appointed by the city council and the town select board. The residents of the city and town had no voice on who represented them, nor could they vote the BFA budget. I worked over many years with others to make BFA a public union high school. We succeeded in 2004 when I was elected to be a board member of the new union high school. I learned two lessons from this experience. Number one. Number two. We need to work better for students in the schools if K-12 is integrated within the administration and the school board. And two, we need accountability financially and academically for our students, administration, staff, faculty, and especially for our taxpayers and community. Financial accountability. There was a lack of accountability that results in unfocused administration and program curriculum development. I saw that especially at BFA. As a school board member, I observed over many years that money is often not the only and sometimes not the most important reason for a budget to feed. It often is about other reasons like a difficult and hard to resolve issue for a student or teacher. Parents may feel the school is unresponsive or not listening to their concerns. In academic accountability, what I observed is what appears to be a pattern of moving students along despite little or no evidence of academic mastery. Leaving many students behind unprepared and adrift. Here in Vermont, we take pride because we have a very high graduation rates from high school. But 45% of our graduating seniors do not pursue any post-secondary program after high school. The superintendent, my area pointed out recently that we have few graduation requirements and we need to fix this. My experience as a high school student in New York state with having to take a subject matter exam as a final exam. Regents exams created accountability for students and for the school as well. I have two suggestions. One, we need to adjust our decks discounting to return more accountability to taxpayers, school boards and administrators. This change could be phased in over several years, such as five years. Taxpayers and others need to be reconnected to the actual problem. So they have to have financial consequences for their votes. And number two, Vermont is the size of Rochester, New York. And I feel we can develop a region's type exams statewide for a region's type diploma, maybe a green and gold diploma. That establishes graduation requirements and more accountability. Exams could also be developed for non-traditional courses such as CTE students and others. And if you'd like any more information or clarification on my statement, I'd be happy to talk to you privately, but thank you very much. Thank you very much. Say overall very impressive turnout so far for the crazy roads we've had representative Holcomb you are next. I guess it just notes be posted on your website testimony people. Yeah, if you have written tests, I think a lot of people have submitted their. That's already posted, but grace have it and have not sent it in that would be great. Thank you. Let's rewrote this morning. Representative Anthony there is space at the table if you would like to pull your. Good morning. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for all the hard work you're doing. I'm Rebecca Holcomb. I'm from Norwich. I became a principal and a small Vermont rural school years ago where it was surrounded by three small schools with even greater issues. We read across roads. People sound familiar family infrastructure, persistent high turnover of teachers, high poverty in some of our towns, uneven results, inequity across the districts, unsafe and inaccessible buildings, neighboring high schools that were saying they might not be able to accept or enroll our tuition students. We turned education around. We put communities together and we started by talking about what we wanted all our students to know and be able to do and how we would know that they were able to do those things. This will sound familiar. We had shared goals. The goals are what drove the process and reform. We measured the process and we used to it to identify whether we were on track. You had to float a bond to put our children into fewer buildings and putting our built our children into fewer buildings saved us the money we needed to do to make the educational improvements. It was different then we had strong state leadership for education and pursuits. We had coherent policy not policy that worked across purposes. We had higher expectations and high trust. We had construction aid, and we didn't think parents, especially a vulnerable children should have to fight to get access to a good school for their child. We didn't just see the education fund as the go to purse to fund anyone in everyone's bright new idea. This was also in the wake of Act 60 and some of our districts had new tax capacity to support those changes, but it is not about money. You heard that is about how you choose to spend your money. And what the state did at that time is supported us with the Vermont Institute of math and science and onsite. We had state supported graduate level courses at our school sites to support payments and literacy instruction. We also, I tell this because right now our school personnel are working so hard under deteriorating conditions to be the change their kids need, but this sense of that we are going to do this together for all of our children. This is what we're losing right now. We've lost the focus on making our schools better and instead we're focused on just how adding new but usually poorly supported programs and choices at every turn will make the difference. This deterioration is starting to really show every system and here on education system is designed to get the results it delivers. And that is true of education in Vermont. If we don't like the rising and unaffordable property taxes in diminished performance, we have to change our strategy. You know, just for more money. I did write three pages of suggestions through them out because I'm here today to implore you to start with the education system. Focus on figuring out what the purpose of strong and fair public education is in the 21st century. Until we figure out that purpose, we can't tackle the incoherence and the fragmentation that is currently undermining our educators and eroding opportunity for our kids. And they have one chance. Before we talk about funding, we have to talk about vision and structure. A journalist I know told me that he knows he's hit it right when everyone's mad at him. Our policy decisions this year are probably going to be the same. Everyone's going to have to give a little to get us to a place that's better. One of my districts to my districts are actually going to have to pay more. That's okay. I can push them on that. One of them is going to have to accept some limits on tuition because people in those other districts, they're not going to pay to send other people's kids to prep schools in other countries where they don't serve kids with disabilities and they are not going to pay to fund religious education in violation of their own constitutional rights. You know what the others are, but here are some of my high level suggestions. We have to start with sustainable scale, particularly at the middle and high school level. Some of our schools cannot provide students the support and the breadth of opportunity they deserve. They have one chance no matter where they live. For towns that operate, this is going to mean targeted consolidation. That is a hard, hard conversation and we have to support them through it. But this effort is futile. It is a waste of time and it could make efforts worse if it doesn't involve limits on tuition. If you need to go no farther than the Black River High School, which the district closed because it was too small to offer opportunities to kids, but which is now home to an even smaller private school that is taxpayer funded. And that actually doesn't even have a teacher on staff. Right. So think about that when we're talking about quality, do we even know what we're getting and we're certainly paying more to get it. We also need to depoliticize education policy and the state board. I was secretary under two administrations, a Democratic administration and a Republican administration. I will tell you that this body lost access to nonpartisan, clear, consistent, high quality data that you actually need to make decisions. We need to pull the a way back under an independently representative state board representative meeting to representing the diversity of the state, instead of tying it to an unstable two year political process. This would also enhance your access to data and ensure greater nonpartisan transparency that you need to make decisions that are hugely consequential for our children and our communities. We also need to address cost shifts from state to local budget. There is no fire hose big enough to fill the leaky buckets our public education fund has become. I'm just going to say that again. Unless you get control of the cost shift, you will not be able to raise enough revenue at a rate that taxpayers can afford and sustain. Moving forward in the appropriations and you're going to hear from someone else in appropriations, you may say as well, but we get to see how state underfunding of state initiatives dries up local costs in local school budgets. And also undermines the actual kinds of two generational solutions that we need. That is hard work. That is our job. So we need to get on that. And just to close years ago, I used to travel all over the state to speak with school districts legislators communities about education. I had a slide I often used to close that had a picture of a goose and a golden egg. The goose was the education fund, the goose, the end the egg or our shared commitment to the shared well being of our children. We are losing that we are moving from a system of public education as a public good to public education as a public benefit. My fear at the time was that we would kill the golden goose by asking it to lay too many eggs that were not part of our shared vision for our children. In the past several years, we drove a knife into that goose from our failure to respond to the Carson decision to the predictable and unaffordable property taxes that we're all coping with this year. We drove a knife into our shared responsibility for the well being of our children, as well as our ability to do it in a way that people can afford. I am so grateful to you. I am so grateful to you for the hearings you have to develop a nuanced understanding of the opportunities and the risks that is the right kind of leadership. I implore you not to move too fast because we have to get this right. We need your leadership to help us build back our shared sense of purpose to make the high level strategic changes that have to happen so that our schools across the state can deliver on our vision and our promise to future generations. So thank you so much for your work. Thank you very much. Representative Harrison. Morning. Good morning. Appropriations is really turning. You see a lot of money. I'm intimidating. Good morning. Good morning. To the record, my name is representative Jim Harrison from the community of Chittenden. I have some rambling thoughts, so please bear with me. I don't have the answers. If there were easy answers, I'm sure we would have found them and implement them. I don't have he, I can't even make my picks and March madness correctly. But like many of you, I have heard plenty about the projection for hikes and this year's property taxes. I recognize we need to balance any solutions with court decisions on equal opportunity as directed at past court cases. CLA changes can greatly outpace a person's ability to pay, even when the budget doesn't increase much. Last year I heard from a number of Killington residents because their taxes went up 18% some of it due to an increase in their budget. But much of it due to the changes in their CLA. And just because their home value went up doesn't mean they have an ability to pay higher taxes. Rises in CLA likely mean they will also be less help if they qualify for a property tax credit. This year's CLA went down another 10 points in my town of Chittenden as well as others in our district. And they will automatically mean higher taxes. Killington will be looking at an effective tax rate $3 and 19 cents for education this year. That is 29% increase on top of last year's 18%. When we vote on school budgets, it needs to be clear on what the proposed budget does to our tax rate. It has to be more transparent. It can't be both to approve $6 million, $10 million, whatever the number is. We don't even have a comparison with last year. We need to know the effect on taxes when we vote. The school budget in Chittenden and Menden for Barstow was voted down on town meeting. It's going to be revoted later this month. It was reduced by a whole $29,000. Perhaps we should vote on school budgets in November for better participation. In a normal year having 25, 28% to vote on them in March is not helping us with buy in on the result. We need to incent or mandate more consolidation. One of our local papers publish the salaries of various administrators in one Rutland County school district. 163,000 for the superintendent, 138,000 for a special services director, 123,000 for the finance director, and much more. This is what the market is for these positions. We need to do what we can to spread out that overhead to more students, which can be done through consolidation. Have the state take over school budgets, as long as the legislature is going to be charged with setting statewide tax rates without any control on the budget to prove is not helpful and does not lead to good results. With 640,000 residents, we are just a medium size city. How many school districts would you expect to have in Boston? Probably one. Give each district the same amount per student as a base. And everything above them is on them is on them. And we think about that. You want to operate schools with small enrollments in your area. You pay for the extra if it's inefficient and above. No one wants to lose their small school. I get it. But we all pay for that. We need to change that. You have a difficult job ahead of you in the coming. I encourage you to think about different solutions. Not just resort to raising new taxes, which just throws for money at spending increase. Thank you for listening representative carpenter. Thank you for making this opportunity for all of us. I would like to testify today to share our ideas and to continue this important conversation concerning the current state of public education. I am not an expert in school policy or educational finance. I come to you today as a representative of my community as a mother of a student with special needs. And as a former middle school teacher and principal, you ask for specific and actionable and I'm going to do my best to be brief. I have five key points. One is that policy leads and funding follows public education in Vermont needs to serve all children, supporting our students educational opportunities that are equal and quality that are equitable inclusive and affordable. This is a big ask and because it is this redesign needs to be led by the experts in education policy, whether it be by our education committees, a task force informed local and national experts or some combination of this. Pre-creating a unified mission and vision for our public school in our state is the first step. Then our funding formula should be developed to rework operationalize this vision. My second ask is for a reexamining of our education programs and priorities. I'm not asking any teacher or school leader, and they will tell you there are so many needs mandates and competing priorities. The strain this puts on our people and our pocket books is tremendous and I would ask our task force to reexamine what programs comprise our current system with an eye for prioritizing and consider what can be removed from the public education domain. I'm not asking to shift things out of education funds simply to be funded by general funds. I'm asking to look for efficiencies and ways that we can better use our human and fiscal resources. So one example to point how this might be addressed is how we address mental health care system and care and our students for our students in public school. We prioritize and strengthen mental health care services through partnership with our designated agencies. Designated agencies can provide services to students, wrap supports around families and flexible ways and draw down federal money through Medicaid. This could decrease the burden on schools and eliminate redundant service models that often compete for the same workflow. We cannot, we would also not leave federal money on the table. Both these is another example of possible ways to fill deficiencies and I hope that we will continue to look for others like these. Third, I would ask that we, as we look towards console consolidation, we adopt a policy of school designation. If a school district closes an existing school, it should provide education for its residency by designating other public schools to serve in this capacity. This keeps our precious state dollars in public school system. It also provides receiving and designated schools the opportunity to plan for incoming students. This type of stability and predictability is essential for educators to meet the needs children they serve, strengthening our system rather than draining it. Fourth, if we are going to have a strong statewide system, we need to rearticulate what every student deserves, define our measurable outcomes and collect data from every school that receives public money. How else will we know if we are making progress and where we need to change. There is so much good work being done in our schools and I just want to pause and say that for our educators out there. Thank you. We should highlight and build upon existing models of success and data will inform our process. And finally, we need to listen to our communities and find short term fiscal help for them. They're asking for this help and I feel it is imperative that we provide some aid now in this legislative cycle. One of the things we should not do I feel is race to fix the formula out of policy work or buy down the tax rate and dig the hole deeper. Things we could explore using revenue like the cloud tax or streaming tax or perhaps something else to pay for some of the initiatives that we have already instituted like universal meals. The high quality public education is the backbone of democracy. It touches every child and family in Vermont and must be the top priority of this body, just like housing, just like climate resiliency. I look forward to working together to bring the best that we have to the children of them up. And thank you for this time. Thank you very much. Thank you. I think we are actually a couple of minutes ahead of schedule here. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Mike Marwicki State Representative from the William Ford District. I want to thank you all for doing this. I think it's indicative of how, how deep you're willing to dig to get input and help us move forward on this. Thank you very much. I am sharing some notes from constituents that I reached out to who are active in educating our children and on school boards, along with some of my own thoughts. So, first, I want to state that I support the priority of educating our kids to the best of our ability. I recognize that the children of today will be taking our blood pressure tomorrow and we certainly want them to be able to do it best of their ability. And we want to expand even what they do beyond that. The first suggestion I've gotten from a constituent was about non homestead tax rates. Their property types lumped into this but second home owners and short term rental properties are contributing to a crisis that we're now spending tax dollars to fix. These types of properties are responsible for the challenges and they should bear more of the birch. Another suggestion is a longer CLA look back. The current real estate market swings might be a bit improved by a longer look back on the CLA's, especially in small towns where a handful of properties really skew the numbers. The tax rate increases due to statewide spending increases, not market changers, but is a thought to make rates a bit more predictable. It might be helpful to identify new channels to subsidize the social service components of our current educational system. Schools are acting as social service agencies, which I think they should. And I'll say a little bit more about that. However, the end fund is covering this as it never was before and we are diverting funds to handle this. This is a consensus from our district, including myself that would be helpful. We'll look back to whether we're getting what we thought we would from act 46 is their research. This provides outcome and indicators saying. We delivered what was promised. I will share that I want to suggest. Lastly, I support for community school. 20 years ago, I worked for a small private. Social service agency, which was originated by the principal and school counselor of our school. My idea was to based on Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of needs. Address the concerns which weren't necessarily directly educational, but we're affecting the education of our children, whether it was the food shelf childcare after care. We provide these services and I think as we move along. Expanding that to some other schools where schools for point of service for medical service for counseling services. I think this is the direction to go and I'm wholeheartedly suggesting that we move forward with community school. Those are my remarks today and I again want to close with thank you all for making this this is taking this opportunity to give us time to share. Thank you very much. Okay, representative Quimby is on zoom representative Quimby welcome to our meeting room. Morning. So, I don't have things as prepared. I wasn't even sure I was going to join but my history. I taught middle school mathematics for over 33 years in Orleans central art and graded school. And always very fortunate that the community was very supportive of our budgets and our needs. Consolidation is always a tricky issue. I went to a small school high school that ended up closing a few years ago. But when we combined from several districts into one. It didn't end up being a cost saving. And when we had serious discussions last year about consolidating because we cannot staff the buildings, we just can't get the staff to cover our 6 elementary schools. I thought, well, there's 3 principles that we will eliminate so we'll save some money, but we were told they would actually have to hire additional administration if we close schools. So, but I think, you know, it's a hard conversation if they're having very serious conversations again this year because of staffing shortages. And I've seen over the years that education tends to be very reactive as some other people talked about today is a shiny new penny. Let's jump on it. So the math program or their reading program or whatever that we spent thousands of dollars on a couple of years ago is going in the dumpster and we're getting a new one. We're not going to sit at individual desk we're going to get tables so we get all new furniture. Well, then covids we need to go back to desk. Put up a wall take down a wall. Small things, but it becomes cumulative. So, I didn't have a lot of other thoughts to share on short notice, but certainly willing. To talk with the education committee anytime you have questions that maybe I can give some input on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Representative from stead. We are ahead of schedule, but the folks who are on deck are going to maybe open some time for a break. No, no, no. People after you. Okay. For the record, I'm Jessica from stead representative in the Champlain Valley school district. So, first, I appreciate your holding this important hearing giving us an opportunity to, to talk with you about what we're hearing. We received emails phone calls, you name it from Shelburne and St. George residents. And we're really one of the more urban districts, I think, since that we've heard from this morning. And so it also gave me an opportunity to, to put together my own thoughts and recommendations for change. One of the record already said this, but I'm one of the representatives from the Champlain Valley school district. We just cut 5 million from our budget couple weeks ago. Most everyone feels and seems worried and confused. We care deeply about educating our children and supporting our incredible teachers para educators and staff. So many wonderful people who have helped many of our children. They had a hard work every day. I cut some outs and you can stick with time. So a few thoughts and even a few recommendations. Here goes. Vermont has too many small schools and small school districts. Why not one school district. The state could even take over. This drives a lot of direct education delivery and administrative spending that we just can't afford. This issue also impacts spending on salaries and health benefits as the effort to manage these costs are fragmented across the large number of school boards we have. So much so that our education system in Vermont is dominated by small schools. History shows scale saves money autonomy costs money. The structure of our education system in Vermont seems somewhat inefficient and expensive and we need to figure out how to dress this first before we spend more state dollars. We are burdening our two. So second, we are burdening our education budget with a myriad of social services that should be funded out of the agency of human services, not out of our education spending. These services may be needed, definitely needed in my committee. I can assure you of that. And the schools might be the most efficient and effective delivery mechanism. The cost should be removed from education spending and funded out of AHS. Universal meals is another example of a state mandate that should not be funded out of education spending. How about a sugar tax to fund healthy meals in our schools. It doesn't solve the overall state budget problem but brings better clarity to what we are spending on education versus social services. If we do this right, there's a good chance we could match some of those funds with federal funds. The combination of the income sensitivity provisions of our property tax system and the subsidies for small schools is distorting decision checking around school funding. Too many taxpayers and too many small towns are insulated from the cost of paying for the current system and these distortions need to be addressed. On the small town local control ethos in Vermont these policies are seriously hindering further consolidation and optimization of our schools and school administration. Fourth, we need to create a panel of smart experienced individuals from a variety of different sectors in our economy. Let's look to academic folks who are tax experts and education experts to help guide and recommend possible changes to our current education system system. I would add that the work that I did this summer on government accountability we used NCSL to help us look broadly at what other states are doing that have similar demographics as ours that are rural places. This can really show show us some incredible positives and negatives. We need to reevaluate what we are trying to achieve have a vision for what success looks like and put in place accountability metrics that can help us measure success uniformly across all Vermont schools. I'm talking to me as I've looked closer that we don't have that we can't equally judge how our schools are doing. We all know this isn't easy work or it would already be fixed. I know that as a legislator that's been here for four terms, we have amazing legislators, and we would be fixing this if it was easy so I can't say that enough. I think this commission or committee can take a look around our country of what is working, the opportunities that other states are taking advantage of, and the challenges they are overcoming. We need recommendations from the experts in education and tax policy. We need to look at our education system holistically, including how we raise tax revenue to fund our schools. How this funding is allocated the structure management and cost of our statewide education system and the results we are getting that are comparable comparably measured so the data can help us make better informed decisions of now and tomorrow. Transparency is necessary so that every Vermont or this would be my fifth transparency is necessary so that every Vermont or can know and understand how we are funding our schools and why it is important to do so. This would create buy in from everyone, wherever they live. I recognize this is going to be a very difficult political challenge, say political challenge, particularly as it relates to the pressure that will result from further effort to consolidate any aspect of our system. However, the status quo is clearly not sustainable or we all wouldn't be here and change, perhaps, fairly radical change is called for. We need to have a sense of urgency on this issue and I know today as I was listening, I'm writing down. Oh, I like the way that sounds better or I think this should I say that, but I, I really believe that this is urgent so let's bring everybody in on that can help us and get it done. Thank you. Thank you very much. Representative Lipski. Morning. Morning. I'm representative Jed Lipski. I represent the Moio one district. So like to first of all thank. Chair, the checkers, Colin and cornizer for and their committees for inviting us and me as well to this joint committee meeting to share that you're hearing some ideas for tackling some of the complex issues that we face. It's been a privilege to serve in my second year in the house, bring my experience and expertise as a small business owner, former school board member logger and long time for monitor these conversations for months incredible place to raise children and our schools for amazing educators and students. I'm here today as I worry we are losing the trust of our communities and taxpayers and town meeting day over third of the school budgets were defeated. This represents the largest number in recent history and demands are urgent attention. The owners of signal signaled loudly they cannot afford the significant property tax increases that have resulted from an unprecedented level of education spending across the state with the declining population aging infrastructure and shifting demographics. This is a crossroads moment for public education for one. The current models reports terminal spending voters approve and then legislature is responsible for funding these decisions due to our incentive structures and the political dynamics that lay out in each town. Spending does not always result in improved student outcomes. Quite often. Districts that should be investing more decide to use taxing capacity to reduce tax rates. Districts that should be spending less decide to use taxing capacity increase spending even more until this year many voters have not truly understood how closely we're tied together with our local spending decisions. For the Brigham decision we have a constitutional choir and provide equitable education to every Vermont student. The current funding formula is not meeting that requirement until we have a new formula in place quality education for all Vermont students will not be possible. This will take time and should be a top priority for next legislative session. In the meantime we must contain costs and prevent this situation from occurring again next year. In conversations with school leaders community members and other legislators. I asked committee considered. Too long of the following thoughts. First, please reinstate the excess spending threshold. This was a tool that has been used successfully in the past to hold districts to reasonable increases in spending. In a shared system we must ensure there's enough for everyone without over taxing our residents. Secondly, please reinstate ballot language that is transparent to voters. We must rebuild trust by providing voters with the actual spending increases per pupil with new terminology such as long term weighted average daily membership. Voters believe the system is designed to intentionally confuse or make it appear that spending is less than it is our communities will make responsible decisions if they have the right information. Voters need to understand what the increase is year over year spending. As mentioned, these are only short term steps until a more thorough comprehensive plan can be put in place to redesign the funding form. Again, I appreciate all of your commitment and time. I did send some this testimony to Sarsha was on one of your committee assistants and maybe it'd be possible that could be shared with the education. Thank you very much. Thank you. Do a quick jump around here for those of you who are following the list just because we're ahead of schedule. So now we've got folks who are ready and others who are on their way. So we're going to go to representative Dolan who is joining us on zoom. Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity to present to you today. I am representative Kerry Dolan from Washington to district. And these comments are from me and my district mate representative territory. I first want to preface my remarks by acknowledging the important work of our schools school staff show up every day to get our kids to school and to teach mentor support and inspire them. As you are fully aware, the historic number of failed school budgets following town meeting day is an indicator of affordability. Marking how Vermont has perhaps reached a tipping point regarding the lack of affordability of our education funding system in its current state. One of our concerns with the local control component of our funding system is that it is a system of high stakes. Having the school budget vote as the only cost management strategy is fundamentally unfair to our school boards and superintendents. Additionally, failed budgets affect staff morale and our ability to attract teachers to the profession and the cohesiveness of our communities. I thank you for the committing to get all interested parties to the table in the perhaps with respect to the coming legislative session. I do ask that you consider the following seven points. First, one more injection of state funding to address this year's shortfall, accompanying by timely information to school districts in fairness to school districts and taxpayers. Districts faced substantial increases in cost beyond their control, but received little in guidance from the agency of education and from the legislature in managing those costs. Two, a simpler system that has more that more closely ties local voting on school budgets to the property tax rates. Taxpayers and school districts need more predictability and transparency. Three, a commitment to address the statewide drivers that have shifted funding from the general fund via state agency budgets and special funds to the education fund, such as in the delivery of mental health and counseling services, or in the remediation of PCB contamination. Addressing this concern pertaining to the delivery of mental health and counseling services will have an equally important benefit of restoring the strength of our mental health delivery system for families and students statewide. For a system designed to improve both the delivery of quality education program and greater economies of scale. Five, partnerships with communities in public school districts using school infrastructure funds as an incentive to help schools conduct maintenance and capital improvements. Such incentives must cover any fit up costs necessary to achieve economies of scale targets such as in class size or in staff to student ratio targets. These guarantees of non-discrimination in the use of public education funds. And finally, my seventh consideration of formal replacement of a portion of the property tax with other state revenues, such as the income tax revenues. So we'll provide greater clarity and how the system considers income sensitivity eases up on property taxes and restores more of the property tax for municipal use. Thank you for your time and opportunity here. Great. Thank you very much. We will now go to representative granting. Good morning. Representative. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I have my notes in lots of different places and I'll do my best to be concise and also. I apologize that I'm going to probably repeat I have been in committee focused on that and really not paying attention to what's going on in here I plan to listen later so thank you for doing this. We're expecting testimony to be focused on what we can and should do this year. I don't know that I'm going to accomplish that homework assignment, but just looking at this year I do appreciate the possibility to use the cloud tax to cover the cost of universal school meals. It's really important that we think about that we think about when we're adding costs to the I find that we figure out how we're going to pay for those and I think that's, I appreciate that tremendously. We also need to make sure that every Vermont sure knows that we heard they're paying their feeling from the tax increases and a lot of that is, you know, because we bought down the rate for the past couple of years. But it means still that people are paying more taxes so both and and we just, we need to be responsive. Okay, so I want to look to the future and I plan to stay really big picture here. We can and do use tax policy to influence behavior. We know that we do that. And I want to acknowledge that. I decided I'll come back to it, but I think that it's important that we have that as part of this picture. And then look at what we're listening to. So when we hear from public school leaders, they're asking us for clear statewide vision. What do we want our schools to do. What do we want those outcomes to be how do we want that to, how do we want that to look. And keep filling the gaps as they're required to write every student that comes in they have to take care of them to the best of their abilities or better. Are we all moving in the same direction. When we asked our independent schools what they want, they say don't change anything hands off give us our space. And I think that's something that we need to tackle. The issues that we continue to avoid when we consider education reform and costs rise to educate all students, but public schools are told to make cuts. The data on student outcomes is not up to date, nor does it share our public and independent school student outcomes are similar or different. What is clear is that there are two different systems. The first one is when the funding is being mined, the allowed use of the funding is vastly different. It was a small issue when we had four academies and many public schools, but we continue to increase the amount of funding going to independent schools since 2020. And we haven't adjusted any controls on how those funds can be used. Or are we tracking our students are better served in this system. We have to start here with the fact that we have two very different systems that have very different implementation requirements and inadequate data to manage to understand how we're impacting students. So I'm going to go back to the fact that we need a statewide vision with clear outcomes for schools and students. We need to take our dual system education where we fund public and independent schools with the same tax dollars. And figure out how we do that with best practices. How do we get students ready in the 21st century. When we have a system that dates back to the 19th century. And we really have to change the way we look at that. What do we want. How do we want to do that. And use our tax policy where we can influence behavior to focus on that system and how we're going to make sure that we achieve those goals. And really want to make sure that we're not acting for the sake of taking action this year. And that we're not doing any additional harm. Because schools have been. Tugged and pulled as all have heard in so many different directions this year. And they can't keep just responding. They have to have clear goals and outcomes and be able to look to the future and figure out how they can best educate students. All right. Representative Roberts. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Tristan Roberts. I represent Halifax, Whitingham, Wellington. I'm really grateful for this opportunity with the committees. My constituents. Most of their biggest topic for me is their local schools and I often just have to tell them. Talk to your school boards. So being here today is great and I appreciate it. And I just want to take a minute and voice some of the realities from my district. Plenty of my constituents frankly wouldn't mind seeing our high school close. They have quality concerns that the taxes are high since act 60. They feel that the school is shrinking anyway. They used to be two rival baseball teams. I said point out now they can't build one. And then that leads to more tradition that kid who was coming to school for sports. Pills up. So you could come in and make a rational argument. And I'm not going to say I'm speaking for all my constituents by any means but you can make a rational argument. I think that the district of this size with its facilities with a student population should focus on having a great middle school. Maybe even merging that with another town, then giving choice for high school. So if we did have choice closed our high school some of those kids would have been an hour away from Brattleboro Union High School over back root nine. It's not good and aware. And some kids love BHS, but for some it's not a great fit. So choice. I've got choice to say a lot of kids in my district are really happy. Going to Franklin Tech in Massachusetts, Northfield, Mount Herman Academy, Charlemagne and yeah, even Grace Christian School in Bennington. So could closing the high school or looking at merging middle schools reduce costs and help us focus on meeting kids early and getting them where they need to be. Speaking from my one district I would invite the school to look at consolidation. I'd be in favor. My thought was do a blue ribbon panel like the federal base closure, really non partisan, except what they tell us kind of panel, make these hard strategic choices and then reinvest in local culture. And we have some success on that. When Wilmington consolidated with Whitingham. They took built a high school in Whitingham and then took the old high school downtown and Wilmington was left empty and now over time that's becoming a real resource for the town where. Two ends of the population scale are getting great services with pickleball for seniors being really popular. There's a great daycare that's now expanded. Thanks to act 76. This office space is local organizations. Back there sometimes scratch their heads. So the school district walked away from this building because it was too expensive and now the town's caring in any way. So, we should be careful about just pushing costs and other ledgers. And I think there have been some great points about participation in school budgets. People don't participate in the school budget process. Maybe we should look at that more on a state level and just say, hey, this state is the level at which that is feasible to look at and where people are engaged with Montpelier. They're sending us a message, even though it's local control. A lot of my constituents are aging out of their homes and they know that sooner or later they can't age in place, but they would love to stay in at least the same town they spent their whole lives in. So could we take that old high school convert to more housing, more pickleball, business incubator. There's a bond deal with that. So again, the state could deal with this kind of thing in a way that uniquely we couldn't look. We don't have the tools to look at that locally. I'd like to see all our committees look at economic development at the town level, something we don't always do to say, look, maybe this town's demographics are no longer a fit for having this high school. But again, the senior housing, childcare, local machine shop, you know, looking for space, maybe they want to take over that shop building, give jobs for local high school graduates. You know, it's really compelling to hear that 45% of our high school grads are not pursuing higher ed. So as we look at the state on a systems level, let's look at those dead ends in our systems and forge new connections and we could do more with less and even grow our economies. Just I want to offer and this relates to my committee correction and institutions, school construction, we know something about that. And our committee and I'd love to talk more with anyone interested about things like standardized prefab construction with standardized designs really human scale, good designs that could be built in Vermont prefab manufacturing facilities. So this set of strategies is one of the few ways that this design and construction industry could contain costs or even bring down costs. Looking at school construction statewide and a $6 billion market for that. We could make on a market with some new Vermont based manufacturing facilities for that. But as I wrap up here I want to come back to quality. So some constituents there's, I would honestly be honest, there's not a loyalty to the public school system, either sending kids into it or sending tax dollars into it. And I think we'd be talking less about costs that people are really happy with quality. And this also hurts us and hurts our kids we can't protect our kids from discrimination. And constituents even for whom they don't like to see tax dollars going to schools that discriminate but if that's a collateral cost of a pre choice system, some are going to make that burden. And I think that's very unfortunate and very concerning, but I want to voice that these, you know, appetites are real out there. And it reflects that we're in danger of giving up on our Constitution and giving up on our values. I want to report the right guys to the district. I want to be clear. I have met myself and many of my constituents are strong supporters of the public school system. One of my constituents is for my representative David Larson, the chair of education and many other roles, and he encouraged me to support 43 and the strongest possible form. So I want to thank the committee for their hard work on that bill. I know there are major problems and this isn't easy, but I just want to encourage us to think hard about choice. Think big about meeting our kids where they're at and stick with them. And specific suggestions and closing. I'm excited about bocies and I've personally been a beneficiary of bocies program in New York State where I went to public school. And I think we have consolidation by a blue ribbon panel, economic development, looking at towns and body as John Dewey Vermont resident said we teach today's students the way we taught yesterday's we robbed them of tomorrow. Thank you. Maybe we'll take a very quick eight minute break while we await the arrival of some more of our speakers. So let's be back in our seats by 1010. Welcome back to our joint meeting of houseways and means and a house education. And we are continuing hearing from our colleagues on our education system education finance with what they're hearing and what their suggestions are. We are welcoming representative Hank. Good morning committees representative Lisa Hango Franklin five for the record. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I'm here today with a very simple message. I represent three school districts and one supervisory union across my legislative district. And I share those with not only my district mate, but three other legislative district representatives. I'm also a school board member in one of those districts. I think it's statements about our region schools may seem improbable. But in this case, I feel that I represent all of them with my sentiments. If you look at a statewide graph, we are among the lowest spending districts in the state. My district's proposed spending in this budget cycle is $9,900 per student. We continually hold spending increases to a minimum and have not had a budget fail in a very long time. This year, due to the public size tax project projections, our budgets were uniformly defeated. We faced the very hard work of trying to cut budgets that were already near airborne phones. Our informational sessions are just beginning as we attempt to educate the public on how close we are to the $1 tax rate, which means that any cuts below that rate will start sending revenue directly to the statewide fund. Our boards looked long and carefully at spending cuts. Even though we had very little left to cut, it made a good faith effort to implement difficult cuts, including those affecting public safety in our schools. I'm here to call for higher spending districts to follow our lead and cut their budgets. With the current statewide formula remaining in place, those high spending districts that continue to spend because they can will cause our property taxes to rise, even as our ability to provide services to students declines. It is imperative for all voters to understand how they're spending across the state in all districts affects all taxpayers, and ultimately all students. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right. Representative McCoy with the next morning. Morning. For the record, Representative Patty McCoy representing Rutland, which is the western part of Rutland County, representing Pultley, Ira, and a little part of Wells West of. Group 30, which is weeks in Catherine. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. And for the record, I'm going to be channeling former representative Larry Coopley and state one school district. We are current student population probably hangs around 75 to 80,000 students statewide. Which is pretty much with the city of Providence, Rhode Island has student population. I know that we need to increase our student population in this state. But we can't do that because the number one reason is housing. So we have a lot of issues to solve and the housing before we can increase the student population. We have issues of lower student teacher ratios in our school. I know in Pultley when my children went to school, the average class size was 24 to 26 students today. It hangs around 12 to 15. And we have not reduced teachers. Any teacher staff, no teacher staff or, you know, individualists, I don't know what they're calling them now, paraprofessionals. I think we've increased the paraprofessional population in our school district. We need to cap spending. I have no magic wand to tell you that this is it. I have the solution. I do not. I have far more intelligent people working on that, but I do know we somehow need to cap spending. And from my perspective, my district, my supervisor union has done everything that the state has demanded of them beginning with Act 60, Act 46, Act 173. Increase in our budget for this year that was passed in March was 1.57%. And then I have to tell these taxpayers that their increase in their property taxes is going to be double digit. I may only increased 1.57%. I cannot ask anymore than the school what that supervisor union did. And yet I have to go back and say, well, you know, because we pool everybody's money and everyone else spent 241 million. You now have to chip in for what they, when my school district does what was asked of them, they should not be punished because other schools have gone way beyond 18%, 20% increases. And you're penalizing my supervisor union. I do know that what we do, we need to make the decision based on what is best for our children and our students. You know, I'm not an educator. You know, I did the best with my three daughters and they are fine, upstanding members all went on to higher ed all have well paying jobs. I know we need to do that, but I don't know what the solution is. I do know that the current formula is way too complex for any average citizen or even many of us in this room today to even understand. It needs to be less complicated. And it needs to be, you know, as a school district treasurer and supervisor union treasurer for 26 years. There's a huge disconnect between what happens at a school budget and when people receive their property taxes because you give the credit right that to individuals. So there's this disconnect when they go, oh, that's not bad. My school taxes aren't bad because those lower income individuals are receiving that credit immediately on their tax bill. There's a disconnect when they go to the polls when that happens. So, that's all I have to say. Thank you very much. Good morning. I am just going to read something that I prepared since like the best way to get my points across so to give us an introduction. Yes, so I am Kate Lally. I represent the town of Shelburne. Chittenden six is my district. And I wanted to thank thank you for this opportunity to comment on education financing. So everything that we do in government is shaped by public perceptions around our ability to balance services with affordability for constituents and the message that I am hearing from my constituents is that we're failing at this. We all recognize that certain students cost more to educate than others and are committed to ensuring a quality education for Vermont students. The revised equalized student formula from Act 127 coupled with desire for districts to retain the services they become accustomed to must be balanced against the loss of pandemic pandemic era funding and the true costs of local control. This has meant no investment in facilities, no accountability for outcomes for the kids in the districts and significant redundant administration. All in a context where the school population is declining each year, particularly, I believe this is the case in rural Vermont. So as the rollout of equalized student adjustments proceeds, it should be paired with strong incentives to rein in spending statewide. The school shared services model is a really important first step towards efficient and more cost effective delivery of many essential services at scale and I'm looking forward to seeing how this rolls out. The weighting measures in Act 127 do not take it into account cost of lending differences across the state. The median housing price in Chittenden County is 60% higher than the statewide median and is two to three times that of our rural counties. This is playing itself out in what districts need to pay every staff person. So we need a more balanced view of the actual educational cost distribution across the state. We all want equal equality of opportunity for our kids formulas in Act 127 are not reflective of cost realities. In the CVS and CVSD district, which is my district district staffing costs are approximately 80% of the budget driving up salaries for staff are employees shortages. As the work in schools becomes more challenging and in Shelburne, a median home cost is now $734,000, if you can believe that. At the same time, we have rising costs for heat, transportation and to maintain fraying infrastructure. Shelburne is revising its zoning to encourage lower housing by increasing density and balance cars and transit, but building housing in the quantities needed in our region is going to take time. We already have among the highest cumulative tax rates in the country, so we need to focus as a state on where we see the returns on investment if we're going to ask ever more of our taxpayers to benchmark what's a sustainable level of statewide spending to look at outcomes in some other states seems informative. We spend 22% more per student in Vermont than New Hampshire or Maine. And without necessarily better educational outcomes, this is just a brief look at some of the Department of Education US Department of Education data. This is coming at the time you're spending very near the bottom nationwide in school facilities, which is, you know, we're accumulating an ever larger deficit this area. So just to wrap up the dollars that we invest in education are those that we aren't investing in other needs drug treatment climate mitigation affordable housing walkable and bikeable communities and other worthy investments. So, when we look at Ed's, Ed's, Ed's spending reform, I think it needs to be undertaken in the context of balancing it against these other pressing needs. And I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Burge. Oh, you were right. Sorry. Morning. Welcome. Good morning. For the record. My name is Elizabeth Burroughs and I represent Windsor one, which is composed of Heartland, West Windsor and Windsor. And for full disclosure, I am a 10 plus a year member of our. Local school board found us got new school board, which I have been on since it was a three member. Board of West Windsor only. And I want to start by thanking you all for the opportunity to. To talk with you this morning, I have had this opportunity burning inside of me since January 10. Oh, thank you for, for allowing me to finally speak. What successful business model. Includes the requirement to annually deplete treasure from its base investment. Into a blind entity with zero accountability for use of funds. Success treatment of employees quality of output. Or adherence to law. In what successful business. Does that happen to the sheer and sometimes total detriment of the accountable entities. Which are cannibalized in service to the blind entity. But education is not a business and should not be treated as one. I'll start by stating the obvious. That we must restructure our education system and support the education committees decisions and actions with the ways and the means. This must include a full examination of our tuition structure. It must. It is perverse. That in districts with small schools all across our state this year. Painful decisions are being made even toward with an eye towards closure. To starve the beast with cuts staff programming. Sapping a common good in favor of supporting entities with zero accountability. It must include a fair accountability in budgeting or in quality or in treatment of the town's most promising investment. It's perverse. But speaking of public of promising investments. I beg you to call for an economic analysis of the real long term. State impact of school closures. Setting aside any immediate savings of the first five years. When a town dies as a result of school closure. When services die out because the town has converted to minority homesteaders. It affects our taxing capability. When second homeowners convert to riot retirees for home services cannot be provided. When people move out of our state instead of in because young families don't want to move to a state that has diminished its public school system. When students who don't go to school in their own towns statistically wind up costing the state in support services as adults. All of these details have real economic impact on our whole state. Right now, at this moment, the means of funding education is regressive. When towns like heartland, which had a more than 30% rise in property taxes this year. And a budget that just passed by nine phones. When towns like heartland have five expensive home purchases take place in the year evaluation. It skews the grand list upwards. The CLA is supposed to create equity, but it is not currently functioning properly in a housing market such as the one we are in. It is regressive. It is regressive for the grand list to become skewed and it's regressive for modest homes to become skewed in their valuation as an equal result. One of my suggestions is to offset the CLA for this year and next, with an end date certain by adding another portion of the property transfer tax, because that is directly related to the cause of the problem, the current problem. Another idea is to look closely at the CLA formula to consider annual sales, to consider annual sales in a way that removes the highest and lowest outliers. Likewise, and this is input from several constituents, rejiggering the common use formula to include a different tier, a different tier for out of state owners who've been buying up large tracts of land would provide a small but meaningful relief. Also, from a number of constituents adjusting income sensitivity to be in line with our current economic conditions would also provide another small but meaningful modicum relief. And I've also heard from a number of constituents both as a representative and as a school board member. People would like to be able to understand exactly where their taxes are going. So, I already talked about transparency as far as where tuition funds are going and whether they're actually what their funding and whether they're funding quality, but they've also asked to offload non educational expenditures like mental health, which has been always have been already mentioned but offloading expenditure such as mental health teacher health care costs since they're negotiated by the governor. Social work, universal school meals and enrollment. This would make it clear school boards, what element of their budget process. They're actually able to address and it would make it clear to taxpayers feeling the pain of increases, what they're paying for. We're at six minutes. Oh, we are. We have another minute and a half left. Okay. Uh, uh, okay. Same money saving same adherence to accountability. One of our, one of the greatest goods has been purposefully weakened, but and this is important. We have everything we need to fix it. We do. We just need the time and space to be able to gather input and wisdom and importantly courage. It's a right administrative leader who has experience in working to draw down federal funding adhere to federal and state law and work to fix a system instead of replacing it. Driven by fairness quality and equitable outcomes and a political as all of education should be. We have the inputs and creativity. We really need to fix what we have. Using the probing equity questions provided by the social equity caucus in the last 2 years, we can ask ourselves whether every student is being treated fairly and getting what they need. We can stop discounting or districts where human rights and dignity are trampled. We can be courageous and look right at the problem and fix it. One of the reasons I have loved serving on the board for more than a decade is that education is one of the very few remaining areas of public life that is theoretically a political all across our great nation. We see people of all parties working collaboratively and creatively to shore up our greatest asset and investment in our collective future. When I started work at our local school board, I had no idea of the political affiliation my colleagues. We all had hands on the same rock. We can get back there. We can purposefully set aside our politics and remember that our job is to protect and foster the greatness of every child in our care. Thank you very much representative ours know you are up next. Thank you. Thank you, Ellen. Thank you, everyone for the record Angela ours know representative from Wilson. So I first want to say that I'm proud graduate of Vermont Public Schools. As a student both in the North country and Randolph school systems is part of the reason I knew that no matter where I went after high school, I would eventually come back to Vermont, so that my kids could go to school here. Whether it was the multi grade primary unit class I was in from first through third grade. I was in the middle of a dance program at North country, and one of my favorite educational experiences of all time, senior project at Randolph Union High School, even as a kid, it was clear to me that good things were happening in Vermont Public Schools. That brand of magic is still happening in schools throughout our state, despite the fact that our system and many of the people who make up that system are in crisis. I have experienced this current crisis from a somewhat interesting, though not altogether unique perspective that of legislator and school board member. I know how it feels when a school board spends years planning for a gigantic shift in education funding, only to have the legislation changed, not at the last minute, but in fact, after you've already warned your budget. Over the years I've been in multiple meetings where folks are blaming Montpelier for the unsustainable increase in taxes, or the bungled roll out of E finance and Act 173, the absolute mess of a switch to a new statewide assessment. The mandated needs to proficiency based education without the necessary supports, the list goes on and on. So many decisions made in rooms like this one, having such significant effects on the people inside our schools and the volunteer school boards working to support them. Because of this perspective, I must borrow from the Hippocratic oath and impress upon us all the intense need to first do no harm. I cannot think about making the important and necessary changes ahead without a clear understanding of who and what will be impacted. And please do not simply rely on past experience, or the agency of education, or tax modeling to predict that impact. Talk to the people who will feel the changes most immediately our students, caregivers, teachers, administrators support staff school counselors, and our taxpayers. These voices together can help us re envision a statewide educational system that starts with a dream for every student in Vermont. Once we have a handle on that dream, we can figure out how to fund it. It cannot happen the other way around. We must lead with education policy and let the funding formula follow. Speaking of that formula, whatever happens next, we need it to be more transparent. In our laudable and constitutionally mandated efforts to be super, super equitable. We have created an educational funding system that is so opaque as to be deceptive. Nobody is trying to be unfuful. But when we work so hard to hide the fact that some districts pay more into the system than they spend, there is virtually no connection between an individual taxpayer, their tax rate, and an understanding of what their money funds. Similarly, we've severed the connection between districts, their spending, and the resulting tax rates in their respective towns. This is evidenced by our school district, Champlain Valley. Our second-warned budget, because our original budget failed, represents a 5.8 increase in spending from FY24 well below the statewide average. Yet our tax rates are estimated to increase between 10 and 18 percent across our five towns. Our failed budget required tax rate increases between 21 and 30 percent. Reducing the tax rate increases required our administrators to cut 42 full-time equivalent positions. 42 positions. And I'll note that we now face a potential second failed budget because our community members are so upset about the cuts that are being proposed. School districts are in an impossible situation. We've also created a system that allows such incredible leakage of taxpayer dollars that we've essentially lost track of what's coming out of the education fund. How many taxpayers know that their money goes to independent schools, some of which discriminate against students of various backgrounds. How many Vermonters understand that school districts are paying for a number of social services, most notably mental health services for students. At a recent school board meeting, our district superintendent shared a quote that feels particularly relevant to this conversation. Economist and composer W. Edwards Deming said that every system produces the outcome that it was designed to produce. Our current funding system was designed to be confusing and it is. That has to change. So what can we do in the near term to clear up some of this confusion and provide immediate relief to taxpayers? I understand the cloud tax is currently written into the yield bill and I think that will help if it's sustainable. But please don't buy down the tax rate as we have in the past couple of years. Artificially suppressing tax rates contributed to the massive tax rate increase that helped defeat dozens of school budgets this year. And to that point, we need to have a plan for districts that don't pass a budget. I don't presume to know where the help could come from, but I do know that school districts have cut and cut and cut. And third attempts to pass a budget will have disastrous impacts on students. We need to plan for something better than the statutorily allowed loan of 87% of a district's most recently passed budget. Finally about the yield, it makes no sense that we ask voters to vote on a best guess tax rate. We can make changes on timing that will again increase transparency and make clear for voters that every district's budget impacts the entire state. I acknowledge I haven't offered a lot of solutions here. My overarching and deeply held belief is that we will likely have to write out this disaster for FY 25. Learn all that we can and make small changes to provide some relief in FY 26. Then celebrate a beautiful new cohesive statewide vision for education and education funding and FY 27. One that takes into account the problematic nature of Vermont's parallel systems and public and private institutions. One that embraces the notion of same dollars, same rules. One that acknowledges that numbers do not always tell the full story of need. And one that centers student opportunities and achievement. A statewide system that points all schools and districts toward a set of common goals that best utilize available resources with your leadership and the magic of Vermont public schools. I truly believe we can get there. Much. Okay. Great. Representative Stevens, you're up. Representative Stevens, can you hear us? Yes. Thank you all so much for the opportunity to speak today. For the record, I am Gabrielle Stevens and I represent Chittenden 13. I'm from the South End area of Burlington. For context, I have a 14 year old and a six year old currently in the public school system. While my 14 year old has no special needs, my six year old has needed additional support and is on an IEP as a result of being deaf due to having not identified the need for tubes from when she was 14 months to 22 months old. First hand, the stressors placed on our public school system writ large and as they relate to the city of Burlington specifically. I implore you to take this moment of crisis regarding how we pay for education and in particular public education. And slow down step back and collect as much data and Intel as possible. We have a phenomenal opportunity to respond to this challenge in a strategic comprehensive way. Thus, I encourage you to focus on the systems work that really needs to occur. Lead with systems and then follow up with funding. Ideally, I would love to see the Education Committee be able to really focus on policy. To identify what's working. What's not take the input from experts and the many, many reports that we've had over the last 10 years to identify the following. What is the size of the system. What are our estimated demographics moving forward. How many buildings do we have how many people has consolidation resulted in reduced costs. This is an opportunity to move forward for the agency of education. We know that the nonpartisan. National Association of State Board of Education based in DC actually recommends that the governance structure for education not be located within the executive branch. Before, Governor Shumlin, it was exactly it was located outside. So let's actually step back, take a look. Does that make sense to revisit where AOE is located. What is the leadership. What is it scope and is the role of that scope well defined. Are they able to provide it. Is it adequately funded and staff. I do think we really need to look at designation and conditioning. What are we looking at in terms of the same dollars the same rules financial oversight of independent schools from what I understand that I don't have any children independent schools. This is a relatively absent privatization and operating a dual system does contribute to financial losses and I want to just call out as someone who's had siblings with dyslexia and learning disabilities, sending those sending my brother and sister to private school was critical for my parents, but we do need to focus on making sure that we respond adequately with the appropriate funding for public education first. What is it that schools are currently being asked to do that could really be considered social services and perhaps be funded as such. And what can we do outside of our education domain. That can really reduce some of the challenges that our public schools are facing. I can't tell you the number of times my daughter comes home and she talks about the kids who, you know, beat up other kids outside of her school. The fact that she doesn't want to go into the bathroom because of the vaping. These are things or the social media and the relation to depression. These are the things that collectively and I'm so grateful that you have a joint session right now. Collectively, I know that the folks on the Education Committee and so many experts outside of our building at the State House, they are very fully aware of all of these challenges. How do we make sure we're really funding education and education needs with our education dollars and other funding sources that address mental health, other issues should be funded separately. I know you've heard this already. The CLA mechanism designed to ensure equitable property tax rates across the state. It has inadvertently contributed to significant disparities in education funding. And so really revisiting that I'm grateful to act 127 and the fact that it really did focus on addressing waiting. This is huge. It's been 20 plus years. Please, let's focus on how we make sure that we are actually meeting the hands of meeting the challenges at me. It's also critical to emphasize that the transition really provided to districts that have been historically overrated. It could be considered at least in my district to exceed what should reasonably required. So revisiting that and stepping back. I understand how challenging it is having friends and family in other districts where they're seeing. You know, losses of potential funding, but this is again, going back to big picture. What are the systems challenges we need to focus on? In terms of health care, as a very short term fix looking at the miscellaneous education bill, we could actually look at the requirement to assess cost containment for health care required costs. And in school construction, there's definitely an urgent need to consider the implications of school construction costs, particularly for districts like mine. Again, I'm really focused on what can we do for all of Vermont, but I would be remiss if I did not just highlight that this is clearly an issue across the state and trying to figure out how to make it as equitable across the state is necessary. And with that, I'll close off. I do have other comments, but I'm not sure if I'm at 6 minutes. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Okay, representative Morgan. Good morning committees. Good morning. Cheers. Thank you for having me. Mine's very brief. It won't take 6 minutes. I'll start off with I'm not the expert. I don't have the answers like several others. I heard say, so I'm simply here to send a message from my constituents as the biggie first from a couple of my school boards. And I know there's a couple of these things have probably been brought up to you already, but I'm probably going to be a broken record. But I know in the state system for health care for educators, we do have a program in place. But I know that it always every system use improvement and the school boards, a couple of school boards asked me to just bring that forward that are we looking at potentially improving that system as a cost savings measure coupled with. And again, probably a broken record, but statewide teachers contract is there, you know, move a foot or an appetite to look at that on behalf of taxpayers. Does that help level the playing field a bit on these budgets so that because as we all know those eat up a very good chunk of your school budgets and does that assist us. So they asked if I would pass it on again. It's probably been said, but I wanted to state it on their behalf. So really what I'm here to say though is here's here's my ask or my message. As probably many of you have had over the last several months, especially when the when the budget numbers came out on school budgets with the very high numbers. One of my towns in the 35% range is just to is my phone texting face to face conversations are innumerable and and people are saying we're hurting. So I have 6 towns I represent all of Grand Island County and the town of Milton. I'm a select man in the town of Milton. We busted our backsides to hold the line on our town budget this year, knowing, especially the fact that the school was going to be hurting. And we did and I got passed and actually I think it's a sign of the times though because it didn't pass by what I thought it would with it only being less than a 3% increase. I think people were fearful in general when they saw the education numbers coupled with that. So I kind of felt very lucky to be a select man versus a school board member because they had not an enviable task in front of them presenting these budgets to everybody this year. So the message I'm here to bring from my constituents is. Let's do something this session, even if it's this big if it's. Ready to vote with her by marching out with their boots and not attempt. We need them here. You need their revenue green. We need their tax base. We need them. We wanted to stay for monitors. We want to keep them here. But they look at the bottom line because they have to. That's how they make their existence. How they make their living. One of them especially I'd say is very capable of folding up their 10 and going away and will be fine financially but feels that they offer a service to the community. They want to keep offering. And so I applaud them for that. I hope they stay. I hope we can keep it so that they do stay. So again, I don't need the 6 minutes, but I just I don't have the answers. I'm not the smartest person rule in this world. But I know that I not promise them because I can't promise them, but I said that I would bring forward the fact that let's do something for them to give them a sign. I don't know if that is crazy y'all and I'm not trying to sound alarmist. I'm just being I think a realist of what I'm seeing out there and. Yeah, I'll just leave it right there. So thank you for listening to me. Thank you very much. So did I. So we take 5, let's take 5 minutes and hopefully our final speaker will be coming at that point. Welcome back to this joint meeting between house ways and means and house education. We are at our final scheduled speaker, but just so the committees know after that we have a couple of presentations from lech council and joint fiscal. So that's what that's what we will be continuing on with after this representative noise. Welcome. We look forward to your testimony. Yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And when I heard to have you were taking some different ideas around education. Made me think of a bill that I had put in back in 2018, which is each 861 have a copy of it. There's a couple of things now. They're like pretty outdated, but the general idea is that right now. 51 supervisor unions. There's 17 career and technical CTS. And so my thought was is to redraw the supervisor unions around the CTS and so you would have basically 17 supervisor unions, but then I wanted to add 1 in for youth in the custody of the state. So originally I was concerned about youth at Woodside or set doesn't exist anymore. So if you look at 861, it does address that, but we do have a number of youth that are housed in out of state programs or in different residential treatment. So I thought having a supervisor union that was really focused in on their education, you know, while they're in a treatment program would be would be important as well. So basically what this does is just reduce the number of supervisor unions from 51 down to 17 and then add an additional one for youth in the custody of the state. This bill kind of goes through how to how to get there. Like I said, some of it probably is outdated, but the general idea was just as a way to kind of reduce some costs around around that. You know, and also one of the thoughts was, you know, having supervisor unions that don't have a career and technical center when you send a child there. You know, obviously the money goes with it so it was just really strengthening our CTS and making sure that if that's a career path that that would be taken into account for that individual based on their needs which I'm sure it is but just it wouldn't the money wouldn't leave the supervisor. Because that would be the supervisory. So that's it. That's what I got for you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate the time and I'll get up anyways. All right, send it to search at that would be sure. Well, all right, thanks. Have a great day. I'll try to be fast. You're also the first person to bring up CTS I think. Pardon me. I think you're the first person to bring up CTS. Yeah. So committees. Thank you for all of that deep listening. I think we've all taken notes. Maybe at some point we can all compare notes. Really, some new ideas, some people canceling out each other's ideas, which is great to have other people do that instead of us doing that ourselves. Glad that we've been able to do this. We have some testimony prepared from Julia Richter from joint fiscal office and then a testimony from Beth from legislative council and we're going to start with Julia, who is going to share some slides with us inside the computer. About essentially like what is the situation we find ourselves in today in a historical context in terms of tax rates and a few pieces like that for testimonies posted it has been updated while we've been talking so about these refresher browser window if you already have it open. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to you Julia. Thank you. Good morning for the record. I'm Julia Richter with the joint fiscal office. Can you all hear me okay. Yeah, it's perfect. Okay, great. Sorry to be remote. I am stuck at home due to the storm so hoping that my power stays on and we can get through all of this. As the chair mentioned, there are some slides under my name on the committee page. Would you like me to share my screen. I think that would be great. Yeah, thank you. Okay. All right. Can you all see my screen okay. Great. Yeah, as the chair mentioned, I was asked to put together some slides regarding ed finance in Vermont over time and sort of what is the what is the picture in which we're in now and we have been in. I will walk through this just a bunch of charts that I've put together. I do want to note that unless otherwise mentioned and I will I will keep bringing this up all of the numbers are adjusted for inflation so we can really see an apples to apples comparison. So you might not recognize necessarily all of the numbers that showed up last year or the year before and that's because they've been adjusted for inflation by Neap. So first starting out on education fund revenues and property taxes I put together some charts to see what this has looked like historically over time. So this first first chart that we've got here is looking at education fund revenues over time since 2009. So here on the x-axis the fiscal year starting in 2009 and then up to 2025 current forecast. I pulled these from the the 2025 forecast is representing what I presented to this committee. These committees last week in joint testimony so of course it doesn't reflect necessarily what's going to happen because as we all know the yield bill has not been set nor has it been passed. So what we're seeing really these green bars are adjusted for inflation and this is reflecting property taxes. So let's see the on top of that the additional revenue sources in the education fund. The general fund transfer was done away with after fiscal year 2017. And then after the same school that we were expecting pre-adjustment for inflation. Julia can you hear me? You're getting a little garbled. I wonder if you could turn off your video and then start. Oh it's our internet. I don't know what to proceed. If you could then start the slide from the beginning. Okay. And please feel free to interrupt me. My camera is off. Can you hear me better now? Yes. Okay. Great. So starting here. Interrupt me if I get choppy again. But what we're looking at here are real Ed fund revenue sources over time from 2009 to forecasted for 2025. So we're seeing on the x-axis the fiscal year. And we're seeing on the y-axis the Ed fund revenues adjusted for inflation. Can you hear me better? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So the green bars are property taxes. We can see the net homestead property tax is dark green here. That's including the property tax credit subtracted out. And then the light green bar being the non homestead property tax. And we can see that in 2018 fiscal year 2018 the general fund transfer this is when it was done away with and picked up by that increase in the other revenue sources flowing directly into the education fund. Again, these these figures are adjusted for inflation. I've brought all of the dollars to $2020 using the NEAP indexes, which is what we typically use in Ed finance. Which is why it doesn't necessarily have the same curve that you would you would see if you were to just be plotting the the nominal dollars over time. Question for you. Thanks for this Julia really cool to see it all in this way and I'm looking at 2022 and 2023. So this reflects a decline in revenue and I'm wondering whether that reflects a decline in total at spending or is there another category of funding like Essar that isn't included in this chart but sort of made up for for added additional revenue that isn't reflected in this chart. Excellent point I appreciate you bringing that up so this is this is reflecting only statewide education dollars so it's not reflecting any federal dollars. I don't know. I haven't, I haven't compared this to federal dollars so I can't speak with certainty if it is in fact Essar that's accounting for this dip but that would make sense given the fact that this is the pandemic. We had the the large swath of Essar funds coming into the state. So this is reflecting what's coming out of the statewide education fund. Yeah. Hey Julia. Can you give us a sense I mean I can see the change just visually but what's the value of the bar in 2009 and what's the value of the bar in 2025 what's the, what's the growth there from in a number. So what's the value of the growth, you know that I don't know that but I can certainly get back to you on that. Okay, thank you. Sure. Back to you Julia. Okay. So, so moving forward the next slide or chart that I prepared was showing just the property taxes because that's what we've been talking about so much so the again this is adjusted for inflation these are the same green bars that we were just looking at. But this is the real education property tax over time and then I've overlaid it with the long term average daily membership so so really how many kids are in schools. So we can see that after adjusting for inflation, relatively constant, maybe a slight uptick here. Over time, and we're seeing a steady decline in pupils in the state. Moving forward, unless I, you're good for any questions. So this is this next chart is the nominal equalized tax rates over time so this has not these tax rates have not been adjusted for inflation. I've plotted what we are seeing here again is fiscal year so this is going back to 2012. And this is the equalized tax rate so our light blue this is the homestead average equalized rate we know that that varies by community. And the dark blue being the non homestead uniform equalized tax rate so this is pre CLA that's what equalized means. And so, I really want to note here that while we can look at the, the change or relatively steady parts of this chart in terms of the equalized tax rates over time. This is not getting at the total tax bills or tax liability right because a tax bill is comprised of two components it's the tax rate. Also, the value of the property where the where the CLA fits in right because CLA is really just adjusting for the value of the property. So that everyone is being taxed at their fair share. So what we're looking at here is the the equalized tax rates over time before accounting for grant list growth and values and properties across the state. Now, one way to think about how tax liability has changed over time. Instead of thinking about tax rates we can think about again how much is being raised on property taxes. So here I have again these are the same green bars that we looked at in the prior two graphs. But here I've also adjusted the property tax rates for inflation. So what we see is that when adjusting the property tax rates for inflation, they are decreasing, but that does not mean that the overall tax liability the overall amount that people are paying in property taxes is decreasing over time. So everyone, Julia is pausing for questions and people are making public faces does anyone want to have any more explanation. Can you just talk longer about that? Yeah, say that again in a different one. Sure. Yeah, sorry. Normally I would like to be able to be there to see if people need more explanation. So I appreciate the verbal cues. So really what we're looking at here, these green bars are the same green bars that we have been looking at in the prior graphs, right? This is reflecting the amount that's raised in property tax revenues. So we've got the dark green being the net homestead property tax. So that's including the property tax credit and the amount being raised in non homestead revenues, the light green. So that's one way of getting at how much is being raised on property taxes? What are people paying in property taxes? And this is being adjusted for inflation. So after taking out increases in inflation, what's being raised on property? So that's what we're seeing here in the green bars. Now we just looked on the prior slide about tax rates and often, you know, we talk about increases in tax rates or decreases in tax rates. And so what I thought might be helpful is trying to put an image to the fact that tax rates are just one piece of the puzzle of a tax bill. The other piece of the puzzle being property value. So what we're seeing here is that tax rates on property, which are these two lines here, when adjusted for inflation, they're decreasing over time. So the actual tax rate itself is decreasing. And that decrease in property tax rates is not corresponding with a decrease in the overall amount that people are paying in property tax bills because we have that other piece of the equation. So this is really trying to show that it's important to consider property tax bills, the overall liability that people are paying in taxes and not just considering tax rates. Is that more helpful? Yes. Representative Anthony and then Representative Sims. Can I just try to repeat back my understanding of what I think this is saying you can tell me whether I'm on the right track or not. I think what would I the blue line show that the nominal rates are going down. But that the we're still looking at property tax increases because the total and spend is going up. Is that is that right. Exactly. And I would just clarify that education spending right is a is a technical term in Vermont's education finance. So I would just make a slight tweak as spending on education. Okay. Okay. No more. I don't see any more questions. Representative Anthony you're. Thank you, Julia. When you say that the asset value, the value of the taxable item homestead or non homestead is adjusted for inflation. What are you using you're not using the CLA or are you. So what I'm to adjust the property tax revenues, I'm using the NEAP inflation index. That's what's used throughout title 16. As the inflation index and ed finance. So I'm really just trying to keep everything consistent. So it's a forecast that's published by our state economists each year. And I've adjusted everything to $20, $20. As you made a comment that the difference between the change in equalized rates. And the revenue. Derived from those rates reflects the change in the underlying asset. Do I am I hearing that right. Yes. And. You have a chart which tracks that asset change, or do I just see it by not seeing it. That is, it's a difference. It's a, it's a residual. Yeah, I, you know, that's something that I. That I sort of went back and forth in terms of trying to put together a chart that would. That would be able to reflect that the challenge is because our grand list is split into homestead and non homestead and the way that we value or determine not value determine which properties are homestead is based on that homestead declaration form. I worried that it may be slightly misleading to. To put together a chart that's showing the grand list broken out by homestead and non homestead each year, because, you know, say, say in, in COVID, there were a number of folks who had a ski house here and they moved here for the year so they, so they filed a homestead declaration form so they could get a property tax credit. In that year, their, their homes, their ski homes would be counted as homesteads, because they were able to file that homestead declaration, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the property itself changed in any way. It was the use of the property. I, I understand, I understand the problem and I have advanced a theory that the movement in the asset prices between the two categories, even if no residences were changed, residencies were changed. The two movements in the asset prices themselves have been different over the recent past since the pandemic. Yeah, that's interesting. I really can't speak to that. I would, I would defer. I don't know if, if the tax department or someone at PVR would be able to provide more insight on that. Thank you. Peter, maybe you can follow up with Jake behind you after we're done with it. Because he's sitting right behind you. I'm done. Thank you. Okay. Back to you, Julia. Okay, great. So that, that was sort of my first pass at trying to look at or show what has happened with property tax revenues and revenues in general into the Education Fund over time. And then sort of getting at a few of the questions. Next, I thought it would be helpful to look at Vermont's spending on education over time. Some of these charts may look familiar, but I thought it would be helpful to compile them all in, in one place to, to round out the conversation. So this first chart here. I, I believe I presented it in both of your committees. But what this is showing is the history of appropriations out of the Education Fund over time. Since 2005 fiscal year, as well as the change in students in school. So what we're looking at are dollars that have been adjusted to $20 $20 for inflation. And these two blue lines are reflecting appropriations out of the Education Fund. And this light blue line is the total uses in the Education Fund over time. And we can see it corresponding here with, with this left hand side axis. And this dark blue line is showing the education payment. So that's what we're looking at over time. We'll recall that the education payment is the sum of all education spending. So right, that's the school district budgets, minus the offsetting revenues, and then the remainder is at spending, which is what comprises this education payment. And we can see that there's a slight increase over time when adjusted for inflation, again getting to representative Sims point we see that dip here in the decrease, slight decrease during the COVID years. And then we've got these final dots out here to ref to show the current 2025 projections from AOE. This is Peter just to follow up on rep Sims comment. I'd say it's not only COVID dollars, but during COVID years because school wasn't necessarily happening in person there was a lot of expenses that didn't occur sports trips, all that so districts were in fact spending less. And I just, while your pause Julia just like again reiterate the fact that education spending and spending on education are not the same thing. And we know in addition to the S or dollars, there's also been a reduction in title funding this year. That we have not spent as much time talking about as we probably could or should. So, back to you Julia Julia. Hey, Beth. You want to give some testimony. There are one or two more side encourage people to look at them and we can follow up with Julia. Tomorrow. The title loss and title funding poorly with the loss of students brought the drop in student enrollment. Probably better for someone from AOE to answer. I don't see anyone for me jumping to answer. So I will say we can have Nicole in to talk about it a little bit but it's more about like the federal budget renewal cycle and that it's it's not about the number of students. Thank you, but Nicole can explain it like 12 times better than that. And I just did. Do you expect that we will have Julia at some point walk through the other slides. Yeah, I think they're really important that we often talk about average spending but the wide. I don't know what the scatter plot is that what you call those things like those are scattered. Where and I just think it is such an important part of our conversation at this moment that we have average trends lines that are clear but also there is still such wild diversity. Across districts and I also don't want anyone to try to understand what our value is which is an important part of those scatter plots without having Julia here. And so, even though some of us were once math teachers, I Julia will be back tomorrow and we can have her go through those actually Julia explained to me what it was last week. Great. Okay. So we will have her in for testimony. We also have an award winning math practicing. Sorry about that. I don't want to explain. Changing topics entirely. Great. Beth St. James Office of Legislative Chancellor, I just texted her and she's here. I can't and I like to joke that she's not good with words, and I'm not good with numbers. And that is going to be really apparent. I have no pictures, no graphs, no colors for you all I just have words. I am, can I share it with you? Let me explain why you're doing this. Yes. So there's, I mean, we all heard lots of testimony just now, but two things that have regularly come up from the field in terms of actions we could take this year for next year's budgeting cycle are bringing back budget language and at the same time, we're all involved. Both of those are pieces of statute that have waxed and waved and changed and tinkered over the years including like, I, you know, I have not seen Beth's presentation yet but I imagine that at some point in like 2015 we reinstated something that we took away in 2009 or something like that. And that was a standard legislative cycle things. And so I was hoping I asked Beth to give us the history of both of these. She warned me. She asked me if I really wanted us to do something quite this boring and I said yes. So, thank you Beth. Thank you. What a great setup. Thank you. But I, it is very dry. So, I'm we're going to look at the school district budget ballot language. And so what I have done is, is just kind of historically gone back to where I could trace back kind of the origins of our current language. So, and I've chosen kind of highlights of the changes over the years and not every time the legislature made a change. For example, we're not going to go over what criteria substituted for commissioner and any of these. So, this is current law. So, in current law, and these are all hotlinks. This is on the website. These are all hotlinks every act and every statute you can click on it if you want to see the bigger picture of the context that the act that made that change was in. So, in current law, this, the ballot language requirement lives in 16 BSA, which is the education title in the powers of school boards section in subdivision 11 D, and this is just the language that you all have suspended. Prior to 2022, which was when the act 127 was enacted and we'll get there. That's the last change that you all made to this law. This was the language that school boards were required to put on their ballot. So we're going to start in 2003. And there's no ballot language here. So, annually, school districts are required to distribute a budget, right? Propose a budget. There's no ballot language here, but this is the first time that we're seeing a requirement that anticipated homestead tax rate and percentage of household income due to income sensitivity is required to be somewhere in the budget that goes out to voters. And then in 2027 and see here. 2000. Sorry, 2007. And you can see here we're changing the title we're still in the powers of school board section forum of vote if budget exceeds benchmark and district spending is above average. So this is adding a brand new concept to the budget process called the maximum inflation amount. I'm not going to in the interest of time and because we don't use this anymore. I'm not going to walk us through what this concept is, but it was comparing spending year over year and to statewide average and what is considered an excess. And if your budget did exceed them, the maximum inflation amount. You had to propose a divided question. Wow. So, all of this is to explain the maximum inflation amount and then we get down to what's the budget question need to be. Shall the voters so question 1 and then question 2. Yeah, that's 68. This is 2007 X results number 82. We talk about excess spending is this, we're going to get the excess spending. This concept, the maximum inflation amount existed at the same time that there was a definition for excess spending. Excess spending has evolved over the years. So, so then in 2009, we are keeping that maximum inflation concept, but we're just changing the language that needs to be on the ballot. It's still a divided question, essentially, right? You've got part A and part B. If part A is approved when you have another question. We also have a requirement of some language that should look similar to you. Well, as the last slide we looked at, but just really stating what the proposed budget is. And then in 2015 act 46 act 46 made a lot of changes to the ballot language requirement and excess spending required concept. We're getting rid of the maximum inflation amount concept. We're actually putting in what we have currently. So act 46 added the language that we currently have on the books for what needs to be in a ballot for school budgets. So that has been the same since 2015. In act 127. We suspended the requirement that school districts need to put that ballot language on their ballot. During fiscal years 2025 and 2029. And then last year in act 1. You also suspended the requirement to use the ballot language. During the calendar years of 2023 and 2024. Any questions about the school budget ballot language. Very exciting stuff. Access a little more exciting. So and I will just warn you my area of expertise is title 16. Kirby Keaton's area of expertise is title 32. Excess spending. The concept you have to borrow from both titles. So I may get a little over my skis here, but I think for today's purposes will be okay. So this is current law. So excess spending is. The per equalized people amount of the district's education spending. Defined in title 16 right we're in the we're in the tax chapter here or title here. Plus any amount required to be added for mechanical construction reserve in excess of 121% of the statewide average district education spending per equalized people increased by inflation. And then this is how you calculate education property tax spending adjustment and the education income tax spending adjustment. This is how you would calculate those. I think everyone uses the term penalty. You'll see that that term is not used in statute. So this is perhaps the most exciting part. And it's the smallest print. This is the definition of education. So 16 USA. 4,001 subdivision 6 B. This is the definition section for chapter 133, which is the Ed fund chapter. And the definition of education spending has a chunk above be right there's going to be more if you have a subdivision to be here. But I'm just focusing on what does for the purposes of calculating excess spending. So for the purposes of calculating excess spending education spending does not include everything on this page. And I have put in parentheses the year that this exception was added. It may be that the concept of excluding one of these categories. Existed somewhere else and I just didn't find that piece of legislation. But in my tracing back of these very specific pieces of law. This is, this is the Genesis. This is the 1st time we're seeing that language somewhere. So, I don't know how are you interested in going through each of these. Do you want me to just point out. Just like a point out a few of highlights. Okay, so capital approved school capital construction. 2009 2009 and towards the other 2009. Right, this was that's in that was in it from the beginning. Let's see, spending a tribute over the cost of planning the merger of a small school. That was also 2009. There were a couple added in 2011. So spending that is approved school capital construction spending. Was added in 2011 language about special education spending was added in 2011. And this is spending that is not reimbursed as an extraordinary reimbursement the language change. The concept was added in 2011 and then updated in 2017 to reflect kind of a change in how we calculate special ed funding. There's a number of pieces here related to tuition. A budget deficit in a district that pays tuition to a public or approved in a pet school. If the deficit is solely attributable to tuition paid for one or more students who move into the district after the budget was created that was added in 2011. For a district that pays tuition for all of its resident students and into which additional students with the end of the census period. The number of students that exceed the district's most recent ADM and for whom the district will pay tuition the subsequent year. So, 2011 was also added in 2011. Tuition paid by a district that does not operate school and pays tuition for all resident students. Except in a district in which the electorate has authorized payment of an amount higher than the statutory rate. These are all things that do not count towards education spending for the for the purpose of calculating the excess spending threshold. If you are not calculating the excess spending threshold, then these things do constitute education spending unless there is some other piece of law that has otherwise excluded them. We've got a piece on retirement here added in 2014 the assessment paid by the employer to become members of the retirement system. After July 1, 2025 2016 we're adding we're adding an exclusion school district costs associated with dual enrollment and early college programs. And then finally, we've added the last exclusion in 2019 costs incurred by a school district or SU when sampling drinking water outlets implementing lead remediation or retesting drinking water outlets and those are all requirements under a law. So again, just for the purpose of calculating excess spending threshold, none of these expenses count, and they will all added over various different years. I'm just like thinking about the special ed set or not calculated that are probably 20% and can be more of a school budget depending on so that's not. That's interesting that it's just interesting to me that it's not a lot. It's very specific. So it's the spending attributable to the district share of education spending that is not reimbursed as an extraordinary reimbursement expense. For any student in the fiscal year occurring two years prior. So it's not most of the education, but you know, most of the cost of special education is going to fall outside of this concept. So I'm just orienting us here in 1997 is when we're creating the Ed funds. And then in 2003, we're adding definitions to title 32 for excess spending. And for the how we calculate what the excess spending penalty is. And then in 2005, we're going to. The district's education, we're going to change what excess spending means in title 32. So the district's education spending plus any amount required to be added from capital construction minus. School deposited into a fund to pay for future approved school capital construction costs. Okay, we're in 2005. You remember that giant list of expenses that we just walked through. We didn't really start adding those until 2011 what you're going to see is concepts added to title 32 to exclude from education spending and con in. Calculating the excess excess spending penalty threshold. But then at some point in time, everyone decided to move to title 16. 2006. We are including so we are again minus so we're adding another exclusion here the portion of tuition paid to an independent school designated, etc. That language should look very similar. We just essentially walked through it. The other. The giant slide of tiny print. What slide are you on? I am on. Okay, thank you. 2007. We're adding another exclusion, a budget deficit in a district that pays tuition to a public school. When it's because someone moved into the district after you budgeted. And in the same year and a different act portion of education spending attributable to the district share of education spending and excess of $50,000. This turns into the extraordinary reimbursement for special education exclusion. In 2009, some more changes were adding were excluding certain costs were excluding certain costs and expenses. And then in 2011. In title 32. We're getting rid of all this is minus right this is what these are all the exclusions. You'll see act number 45 section 13 C we're repealing all this language in title 13 or title 32 and where is it going. It's going in to title 16. So set the right the next section 13 D is we're starting to add all of those exclusions to title 16 for the definition of education spending for the purposes of calculating excess spending. So we pulled it out of title 13 we've added it to this definition. And then in 2013. We change the excess percentage. So we started with 120 125% of the statewide average district education spending. And then 2013. Section one changes it to 123%. For budgets and fiscal year 2015. Does anyone in this room remember why that happened. You're talking about the. Yeah, it was part of a negotiation. I don't remember exactly what, but the. There was probably some addition of revenue to the education fund and as a condition, there was a pushback, I think, from the administration to lower that number from 125 to 123. Yeah. And then the same act. I think it's done again later. Yeah. The next section literally. Yeah, there it is for budgets and fiscal year 2017 and beyond. It's lowered from 123 to 121% which is our current threshold. And then in 2014. We're actually going to increase this number by inflation. That wasn't a part of this process before. So it's the excess spending is in excess of, and this, this is just because this is occurring this act is occurring in 2014, which is before that 121% kicks into place. So in excess of 120 something percent of the statewide average district education spending for equalized people. It used to just be in the prior fiscal year. Now we're doing it increased by inflation. In 2015, 2016 acts and results. Oh, it's amended to year 2015. So, this is 2014 we're using the 2014 as the base. And then in 2016, we're actually using the base year for inflation as 2015. And then in 2015 act 46. Added a definition for education income tax spending adjustments. So we had the, the education property tax spending adjustment was high, which is how you calculate that. That penalty. And now we're adding the education income tax spending adjustments. And act 46 also repealed. The divided vote. And then we're adding the school budget. Concept or from the school budget language ballot language, which is where that maximum inflation amount concept was and was repealed. And not part of this brief, but also an act 46 worthy allowable growth rates to control education spending that got ripped out in 2016. I did. I really took a journey and prepared. Yeah, that was a fun one. And also an act 46 further amended and act 65 from 2016. It changed the way access access spending was calculated, but only for fiscal year 2017. And that is the allowable growth and education spending concept. And if you click on this link and you go to those sections, you can walk through that language yourself. I'm happy to pull it up if you want to see what it looks like. The important was part of it's only lasted nine months before it got ripped out. Yeah. And then again act 127 made some conforming amendments to the access spending section in title 32. But most importantly for your conversation is again act 127 suspended the excess spending penalty during fiscal years 2024 through 2029. So that law remains on the books, but it is just in suspension moratorium suspended pause to whatever you prefer. Thank you. I just found this fascinating because I could just sense not being around as long as my colleague from St. John's very but and not hearing those debates, but. You can tell that that legislature was watching the attendee attenuation of the spread of per pupil spending and saying, gee, we maybe ought to do something. And it's sort of tepid, you know, teasing some things in and some things out and changing the percentage, but it's an underlying trend that obviously disturb people they just didn't grab it. And can fix it back along the way. That's it. That's it. Okay. You sure you don't have like 10 more slide. Me. And I just have to go. Yeah, of course. Beth, on the other slide. I think that Julia provided and that representative Sims pointed out the discrepancy and spending across the state is that a result of suspending the excess spending. Well, could it be I'm just wondering, is there a violation? So remember, education spending includes everything that is included for the purpose of calculating excess spending. And so the excess spending penalty is essentially your double taxed essentially for going above a certain number. And that affects your tax rate. It doesn't necessarily affect your education spending in any way. It may lead to different choices. But the excess spending penalty is a tax. It is the result is a tax rate change. Not a change in spending spending. Again, it may influence. I think the purpose of it is to influence spending. Right. Well, that's what I'm wondering, but it doesn't like knock anything off a budget. Right. Representative Anthony. And I would just comment that it also was suspended. As we approach the explosion in the adjustment of the CLA besides. So it didn't stop what was happening because of the CLA. Decline acceleration in asset values for homestead. I know that we did not do all the conforming changes in 127 that we probably should have just in order to not have the bill be 400 pages long. And I'm curious if when we, I know that we suspended the excess spending threshold because it wouldn't have sort of worked during the immediate transition. And I know that we don't have an equalized. We don't have equalized pupils anymore. Did we make those conforming changes or do those still need to open? Well, let's look. So current folks follow my question. Yes. I'm sorry. Okay. I will say, as you continue to work in this area, there is always the. Yes, we did make those. You did make those changes. So. Okay. So I'm not sure if you're aware of that. But I do think that per equalized pupil has been struck. And it's per pupil education spending now. Okay. But I will. Not per weighted people. No, so. Okay. Interesting. As we continue or as you continue to work on this subject. I do think that the. The definitions around excess spending could use a second set of eyes to ensure that they are. Accurately reflect all of the math being done. Thank you. I think with that it's 1153 and we. Did a lot this morning. We're, I think we're back in our committees of origin. After the floor. And I know at least ways and means is going to hear from Julie Richter finishing her testimony. And then we're going to have a committee discussion. Essentially as if we were each sort of offering. Testimony to each other about what, like, what big. What solutions, what solutions we're recommending. Members. I have no idea what the house education committee is doing. When do the smarter people. Checking our. Plans we have some members who are not able to make it in today. So similar. Yeah. We're going to end up at the committee discussion as well. After the floor. And I think representative Sims made this joke, but I will repeat the joke that. When we had 2 folks testify that say, I'm sure, you know, I'm not going to offer this. The smarter people will figure out. I think that's who's sitting at this table is what they meant. And that's a lot of responsibility. I just want to sort of name that representative Anthony. I wanted to. Enter says that strong. You said wait till we get into that. We're going to do that this afternoon. Together. Not joining just way that it's going to have a conversation as part of what I want to say speaks to bring it, which is really thought to be an education ruling. Yes. So we can talk about that this afternoon. Very well. Representative Austin and then Maslin. Yeah, I interpreters person the smarter people were the people in the field. Oh, good. I hope so. That's great. Very rich. I don't consider myself. No, me either. I just mainly it's like everyone wants someone else to solve this and then so we can all have a set, you know, the extra to the day. Absolutely. Representative Maslin. Yeah, just a comment. Maybe. Sorry bar comment or something like that. This is all been very interesting. Some of this stuff we've heard before some of it. We're at least wants their son is very, very helpful. The question that I have for all of us who we're not going to resolve right now is what's our process. We can go back to our committees and do the same old same old, and we won't get anywhere. And there was a woman who was sitting over on the side about a week ago. Who said she was an architect to use the term charrette. People are familiar with that term. Charrette in architecture school is you get some people and you give them an assignment and they're supposed to come back on Monday with a design for a building. You know, it's basically a forced March to come up with a solution and we might employ some sort of a charrette. Where we. Draw on everything we've heard. And come up with an actual proposed solution. And the point is this proposed. You know, but sometimes some really neat stuff comes out of the collaboration of different people, six people or eight people or whatever you want to have it. And sometimes the results are fascinating. So I'm just, it's a suggestion on a, on a different process that we might employ. I agree. I think that's a great idea. And I think I know that house education is thinking about what a working group would look like. And I imagine that we should be doing that in ways and means as well. Thanks everyone.