 Education Committee, House Education Committee, and House Professions and Institutions Committee here looking at H-409, excuse me, a bill related to school construction. We're gonna do this in kind of three different groups. We're gonna be hearing sort of a statement of the problem from some of our school districts, kind of get an idea about what's happening on the ground. Then we're gonna have David Epstein and Jeff Francis who are gonna totally solve the problem for us by telling us how we're gonna address this, or at least the truth is they're gonna be telling us a little bit about what's happening in other states and as well as listening to our treasurer, Beth Pierce. Because of time, I'd like to invite the treasurer to come up first and just because she is named in this bill as someone who would be looking at funding options, so we are delighted to have the treasurer and glad to see you. Thank you very much, pleasure to be here. Uh-huh, okay, so I'll just get this out of the way for those who are looking at my things I felt. This is winter and things happened and you clearly hired me for my number skill, not my race, and so thank you very much, but I gotta get that out of the way first, so. I have a science teacher when I was young, named Mr. Horner, seventh grade, and he taught a scientific method and he said the first step is to find the problem and that's as far as I've got, okay, so I've got some issues from background and some concerns and I don't have a great number of solutions at this point, but some comments on potential solutions, so. As we all know there's been a moratorium prior to that, when that moratorium was set, it was still paying down roughly about $10 million, I believe, out of the capital bill a year, something in that range, and I believe that was paid down around 2016, if memory serves me correctly. The first question I have is, are school construction costs a good fit for bonding? And I would go back to a report, frankly, that Captain Venom made, did in 2008 and I think the other one was 2012, there's some very good information in there, I think she did a great job on it. But essentially, the pain you share through a capital fund comes at a cost because this is the reimbursement piece and now you're putting that into a capital bill. So the one issue is, is that the most appropriate way to do it? Second, the amount of money that we currently have for capital authorizations, the chair was looking at me and not too happy with our numbers. Over the last six years, we've had a 23% reduction in the amount of money that's available for authorizations to the capital bill. Our current level is $123,180,000 for a two-year period. We do this on a biennium now. You also kind of supplement that with recycled unused dollars from completed projects that haven't been spending or maybe dropped in something called Bonn premium, which we won't go through here. But the bottom line is that there is some additions to it. On the other side this year coming up, we were advised that the housing bond, the 37 million dollar housing bond is net tax supported debt. So that's gonna be added to our calculations going forward. We should put additional pressures on the capital bill as well. And we're doing that when we think that at this point, at least my recommendation, I'm the chair, but I'm one vote, is that the transportation infrastructure bond should be included as well. So there's gonna be some upward or downward pressures, excuse me, in terms of the authorizations. On the other side, we do see a kick up of bond issuance right now and that may be deferred maintenance folks have had. We're not quite sure, but we don't know the level. So what I'm saying, be careful, recognize there are pressures on this. It could go up, I would say frankly, it's more likely to go down a little bit or stay the same don't up. We won't go into the fall, we're gonna get, let's call it the Moody's Debt Mediums to take a look at that as well as working with Jeff Carr and the Revival Numbers, the economy and putting that all together. And we won't have a number for you for the next biennium until September. But putting it into the, putting any school construction into the capital bill, you're crowded already and it's a policy question your folks are gonna have to make. But again, I think that there's a lot of needs, capital needs and you're gonna have to make that decision but it's problematic, say I'm telling you to find the problem, sorry. You know, currently AOE has capacity, the capacity to administer these are also a problem. You know, a lot of the staff that used to do this work are gone and you know, ratcheting up is gonna be a problem if you were to do that. It's not something that can easily be done and you know, and I would cite a 2012 report that the AOE and I'm gonna quote this although my handwriting is terrible, so here we go. The department is only reviewing projects at the request of districts wishing to exclude the costs from their excess spending calculations and a little later in the report. Practices and measures which were required and approved as a condition for state funds have not necessarily been completed during the suspension of funding. So you've got some issues in terms of whether, you know, who approves the projects, what are the criteria, you know, are they meeting code or the procurement processes, something that you're comfortable with. There are a lot of issues if you were to take a look at the agency getting more involved in that approval process and reiterating that process. I can't speak to the agency of education what their capacity is. I can't speak to whether they think this is a good idea. It's something that they would have to say. But based on the 2012 report, I would say there's some concern about capacity and the ability to move forward on a dime. Turning the motion line on a dime doesn't usually work and you need to have some discussions. With staff that are very good, I have a lot of respect for the folks over at the agency of education. The other issues that I would see, again, this is defining the problems. There's no, to my knowledge, and maybe there exists one, not a company's inventory of the conditions out there and the need for infrastructure. I hear reports of about 550 million of bonding. I don't know whether that, you know, how that fits into prioritization of what's in need of immediate repair. What are some of the conditions out there? There's another question that I think would have to be answered if you moved in that direction, which is what about retroactivating for projects that were completed already? And again, the capacity review and analyze projects at AOE. I can't speak for them, but I think it's something that should be reviewed. The continued process of bonding poses other risks. Impact on the education fund and equity across all schools is something that you folks have been tackling. I don't need to go further into that. And again, no control on school construction approvals. And I won't repeat that piece. I guess they were completed in a different way. So let's say you're not gonna go through that process and you see the bonding that's out there. And as I said, I've seen reports of about 550 million. I've talked to Michael Gahn at the Bomb Bank and think that's probably a close to number of what we see in terms of things. What passes and what doesn't on town meeting day will impact that. But if it's completed through the Bomb Bank and Michael can speak to these issues, there's gonna be a concentration risk in the portfolio. Right now the portfolio, I think is around, and Michael might be here, 600 million. And you're talking about a big piece in one sector and how the radio agencies would look at that. Is there a need to create a separate deal for these schools and how would that work? There are two other issues with that. The way that the Bomb Bank gets reduced a lower credit risk. So they're doing, you know, get a lower rate on their bonds. There are two ways. One is through moral obligation where the state is saying, we will put our moral obligation on these bonds. And while it's not a legal requirement to pay if the debt service was not met, there's certainly a moral obligation. We would have difficulty in the markets if we were to, we'd have done that to be very frank. I'm not as worried right now about moral obligation because you have your full faith in credit behind it, the municipality or the entity that's receiving the funds. After that you've got Bomb Bank reserves, you've got other reserves. So ours is a little belt of suspenders to the process. But there is an issue around that I'll get to that in a second. The other way they do it is the state intercept which is if someone was not to pay and that's not been the case just for the record, it's been very good. But the rating agencies want to have some security that you're going to pay the bonds. And we have a state intercept program right now so that if ABC municipality did pay its payment, you could hold other aid that the state has and intercept it. There's not a one-on-one match to these in the schools in terms of because some schools it travels different ways to the local treasurer and so on. So that's gonna be a little bit of a matching problem. The Bomb Bank is looking at several alternatives. I would say as a member of the Bomb Bank and as a treasurer I don't think we have the answers yet on that. The other issue with moral law of getting back to that is that we have an informal policy. When you look at the rating agencies they've done some look at moral law across states. Everybody uses it a little differently. They did recommend some changes in language that made it a little more secure several years ago. But we've had an informal policy which is in our capital data affordability advisory committee report, it's a long statement and I'm gonna make it even longer. The 200 to 225% of our net tax supporting debt outstanding is the limit we would put on what we would extend to moral law. At 200%, that means about roughly $201 million in capacity and you're talking more than that in outstanding or potential, I should say that potential bonds. So that is an issue and again some of them can go through the intercept rather than that. But it does put some pressure on that and as you know VEDA and other agencies, VHFA is usually looking for capacity. Right now, most of them are under capacity for instance VHFA hasn't used all of its moral law capacity, VEDA has and typically looks to increase that as the work that they do. So that's gonna be another pressure in this process. So in summary what I would say is that using the capital bill well there may not be enough capacity in the capital bill, also considered across the borrowing. The current Ed fund expenditure process and essentially and I mean I've read Act 68 a couple of times and I'm still busy and what I would say is that I see some potential equity issue in that. The inventory is needed because what school needs it versus what doesn't. The capacity issue to approve, review them is an issue and borrowing continues as I said it could press up against the state's moral obligation issue and so that's my end of the problems. I'd be happy to have conversations with you at the rest of scientific method there and what are you gonna do and research, state your hypothesis I would really encourage you not to put me as the lead on a process. I'm already on 30 boards and committees and I'm trying to delegate some of those and what can be helpful I don't think we're in a position our budget is actually lower than it was in 2009 for state administrative budget. So we're a lead but not me and I don't think we have the capacity or the particular expertise to do this kind of work. But I would be happy to have conversations and work with someone but I think there's a lot of work to be done before you come to what that answer is or getting back to Mr. Horner stating your hypothesis. So those are my comments and I'd be happy to take any questions. Questions? Representative Conlon. Would you just ever repeat a paragraph I was trying to write down numbers and I got behind it was when you were talking about the 225% debt outstanding and what that translated to? Well I get it at 200 because what we do is we take our debt outstanding and I actually have a chart which I'd be happy to let me walk through it. So right now our debt outstanding states debt up, net tax, net tax supported debt okay and I know you left a word there but it's 659,838,000 and when you take a look at that and say that 200% of that it's about 1,318,000 we're actually at 1,117 and change which is roughly 201,000,000 to go and that that is in the past I'd say yeah I got plenty of capacity but if you're looking at school building in this process and what's coming due. Now Michael's great and Michael does some good work on looking at what's the cash flow because at the bond rate we will be dropping off money as it's outstanding. We need to take a look at the cash flows post town meeting day and see what that looks like before we can finish that process but I hope that answers your questions. Thank you very much. Yes sir. What effect does a recession have on these bonds should they? Well again if we're backed by the full faith and credit of the municipality it starts there. I do get concerned when I see large amounts of money and the ability to pay that during a month and the market decline. You have to pay it, it's full faith and credit and the bond rate would use the intercept program where necessary but it is something we need to look at. I don't know the inventories and I think that's the biggest if I were looking at this I'd say the first thing is what's the need? What's the real need out there? Not just what's out there for bonding but what's the condition of our schools and how do we get our standard on that is the first step. And yeah, bonding full faith and credit is a good thing if you're putting your GO from an investor's perspective because a revenue bond it's a little more dicey but that's not what these will be. So I would say when we did the water quality bill you were the lead on that in terms of looking at options. Unfortunately, you did a really good job. Thank you. And for that, I'm sorry. Yeah, so from what I understand you're saying is do not make me the lead. So the last time I was in clean water I was not in the room when it was assigned. Good point. So I was violent told or something like that but I'm here today. We want to be helpful but I don't think it's our expertise. We would be happy to be helpful in this process. And I think frankly right now we're working on a housing project not just looking at a housing bond but how do you relate housing to economic development homelessness needs for individuals with disabilities and that's a pretty extensive project. I have one policy director who's behind me Ashlyn Doyard who's very, very bright but there's a limited capacity that we have to pick this up. We would be happy to help you but I'm hoping that you are not designated as the lead on this. So you approve of the idea that we have in the bill of getting that inventory? Absolutely. You agree that we need to look at other options other than the capital bill? I agree with that. We'd be funding and don't make you the lead. It don't make me the lead. The other thing I would say is that when you're looking at this, for instance, Massachusetts is a dedicated revenue source but they're a bigger place and they do things a little differently than here. You can use existing revenues. You can use the fund if that's your policy decision. You can dedicate a revenue source to this. The bottom line for me on this would be that if you do whatever revenue source or existing funds that you use they need to be reliable, dependable over time getting to your point about a recession and something that's measurable which you can do each year. And that's kind of the criteria we use in the clean water study as well. And the other point I would make is when we did the clean water we looked at 60 different revenue sources because we had 23 stakeholder meetings with 1,000 people. And we had an individual over at the tax department who's now the deputy auditor who's an economist and we modeled each one of them. So it's an extensive process. So I have a question. And I don't know if it's more appropriate for other folks if you're a state treasurer but our state construction dollars, school construction dollars that in the past when we had the program did not cover the full cost of that construction for that school district. And it was about 30% yes. 30% of eligible costs which there were criteria that went along with that. Yeah. To do an inventory, wouldn't it be more appropriate to have that criteria as a basis so that we could figure out what are the wants and what are the needs out there? I think it's a very different point. The wants and the needs are very different and any state dollars goes more towards the needs and not the wants. I was there at the beginning. I certainly can't speak to this but the beginning of the Massachusetts process. I remember the person who came up with the idea of the revenue source but wasn't me by the way. But they put criteria around the approval process. And if you're going to do that I think you need to know when you're looking are you categorizing inventory? What's with then something that the state would, so what's the full inventory? What's the full need? And what are the things the state got a policy with when you have to set that policy would consider something that they would be eligible for reimbursement. So I think that it is a complicated process. So I would almost think you would need to know what the criteria is before you figure out that you're going to open it up to state dollars. You need to know what you're funding and not have the funding first and then figure out. Absolutely, absolutely. Anything else? I think that's a good point. I'm wondering, would it make sense to wait a little while to see how that plays out in terms of consolidations and maybe do the highest priorities of school districts of look at, you know, which is going to consolidate or if efficiencies are realized? That's a good point. I, you know, a lot is going on with consolidation. It's having an impact by the way in the pensions. I'm just, I'd like to throw this one in, but you know, I always look at costs, you know, as like a balloon and depress a balloon at this end in terms of consolidation and costs. At the other end, you have choices that teachers might be making or other folks might be making around their retirement that are not what we expected in terms of the time. So they're going to be in retirement longer. Maybe it gets complicated, but you know, those are the kind of things. And I think the same analogy works here. That as you're looking at this and you're looking at what's happening at the local level and they're making changes, it has an impact on our costs in terms of construction. And I don't know whether the answer is to wait again. I'm not the expert there, but it certainly has to be factored into the process. We're looking at that now from a retirement side, you know, pressing that balloon. You need to take a look at it in terms of, you know, the whole cost of construction and making sure that our students are safe at the same time. I mean, that to me is the most pressing thing in this, is making sure that our students are safe and doing that inventory helps that because you know where you have the emergencies and where you know you need to reach out and make changes so that every child in the state has a great teachers and a great place to study and grow as citizens. Representative Taylor. I'm wondering if you can recall when we're talking about the criteria for loans, whether, how detailed the Massachusetts loans. It was detailed, that's again, I left before they got through all that process. I was there when they identified the revenue source and the basic planning structure. I do have, we talked and I think you're having some folks come in from Massachusetts and they did a presentation to you folks back then, several years because this presentation that was done two treasurers ago and it was a long time ago. We are gonna have some presenting on that. And I think the public has people answer that question. Yeah, okay, yeah. I mean, I've looked at and I've talked to these folks, but they're the best experts on their own state. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. So we have a lineup of superintendents and perhaps someone bringing along a school board member. Because we have so many, I'm gonna limit you to five minutes. I'm gonna limit you to five minutes. We'll give a, and Kathleen, if you could just do that. She's gonna do some time and so she'll give you the way. I'm just gonna give an extra minute to bring it to conclusion. So that's an extra, it's an extra 10 or 15 minutes because there are quite a few people here. So we can do that and committee members, the two chairs have talked about holding your questions until everybody is finished. So I would, if you have a question for a specific person, I would make note of that and then you can ask it when we finished all these. This is quite a few people here. So first, we'll be Kingdom East. So that's Jennifer. And Bonzo George. Bonzo George. And you're here alone, correct? I am, yes. Yes, and Patrick Wien from Able Beyond Deck. Okay, welcome. So thank you very much for hearing me. My name is Jennifer Bonzo George and I work at Kingdom East School District, which is in the Northeast Kingdom. This is my fourth year prior to that. I worked at Chittenden East as the assistant superintendent and then I was the principal in Mount Mansfield. Prior to that, I worked in Montpelier and prior to that, I was at Rock Point School in Burlington for seven years. I'm gonna do three parts of a presentation. I'm gonna show you photos of specific examples and then I'm going to talk about the big picture and then I'm going to say next moves. Cut me off whenever you need to. This is a picture of sewage ejection pumps that are in classrooms in Bluenburg School. Now, it would be nice to say let's get rid of these sewage ejection pumps, but we can't because they are on a slag foundation. Actually, can I have someone hurt this one on a slag? They're on a slag. The septic system cannot be repaired because of the infrastructure of the town and this is also because of the residential neighborhood wells and the water district. So I go to school where young people are sitting right next to these pumps in their classroom. That's Bluenburg School. The next one is going to be. You can line them up down here if you'd like. This is Concord School. Concord School, the gym was built in the 1960s. So pre-fab, pre-built piece of equipment, no insulation in the walls and the idea is the heat from the gym would melt the ice and that's how you get the roof done. There's no insulation. We did an audit, $1.4 million to fix the heating because the heating can't keep full throttle melting the snow. There's an issue with snow melt. Right now, if there's more than 10 pounds of square foot on the roof, we have to close the gym. Last year, the gym was closed for over 40 days. No sports, no athletics, no gym. Our PE teacher was having gym inside the school. In addition, the Concord School has a road that goes through campus. There was no theater, no play, and there's immense energy costs. The square footage of the school of Concord is half that of Linden. They paid more than energy costs last year because of this roof. Next one is Burke. This is Burke Town School. What you see here is the middle school classroom. It is a 40 plus year old trailer that was bought from another school. What you see is the skirting underneath, which occasionally gets blown out because it's a trailer and they're skirting. What happened with this curtain last year is that the whole curtain broke. We had backed up septic. We had to close the classrooms. Now, those of you who are outdoorsy, you know that we have over 90,000 visitors per year in Burke because of Kingdom Trails. It's a hub. People come in, population in this town. It is growing our classes. Our sixth grade class has 36 kids in it. We're in trouble. We don't have a space for all of our kids to get together. So, that's Burke. This is Gilman Middle School. I'm very nervous. Can you see me shaking? So this is Gilman Middle School. This is a picture of the basement. What you see here is standing water in the basement. And you see mold. This is below the floodplain. And you also, we had a pump inside there to get that out. They're standing water. In addition to this school, we're not ADA compliant. It's a very old building. We have a little person in our school who has a really hard time getting to classes upstairs. There's mold and there's lead. Thank you. Because of time, I'm not gonna go through all my schools. What I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna go and give you my total district picture. I have two other schools and two other stories that I would just start with. Here's my district picture. Here's my district. This is the total district picture page. Now the first thing I wanna talk to you about is the lead. I have one minute left. So I was gonna go through and talk about lead and air quality. But what I really wanna talk to you about is the impact on student learning. We have had school canceled twice this year because of septic backed up and we couldn't have kids in the building. We've got eight schools. We are trying to figure out what to do. Can you turn that actually? Can you put that one down? Lots of pictures here. So here's the next moves, no other side. Hey, my handy assistants. Here's what I think your job is. I think your job is to legislate. And I wanna talk about this issue of equity. I used to work in Chittin' East and I can guarantee you that in Underhill, Jericho, Huntington, Richmond and Bolton, this would never happen. Because I live in an area that's poor, our children don't get the same education. What my job is, we had a vote, we had a bond vote, it failed. We've now done an analysis. We have analyses this fat of all of our schools. We know what we need to do. We're putting out there 10 different options which includes combining schools and we're working on moving forward to have a plan. But I'm not sure that our communities will pass a bond and we're struggling. So I ask you and I thank you very much for your work. And that's it for now. I imagine that at some point there will be questions. Do you want me to go after that? Do you want me to say, I would do on peace. Do you want me to go after the left? Just leave the left and go after the left. We have Patrick Green and we have Karen Kamai on deck. Good afternoon, I'm Patrick Green. I'm superintendent for the Mount Abraham Unified School District. It's my fourth year in that district as superintendent. Prior to that I was principal in Middlebury at the Middlebury Union Middle School. And I'm going to talk with you a little bit about sort of the Mount Abraham story. You did a great job articulating the story and the kingdom. And I want to also acknowledge some of the financial realities we heard from our treasurer about some of those. And maybe offer a more immediate relief option given some of those financial realities. So I'm going to talk specifically about Mount Abraham Union Middle High School, which is in Mount Abraham Union Five School District. So the Mount Abraham story, the building was built in 68. The doors opened in 1969. So about 50 years old in those past 50 years have been two significant construction projects. 2005 there was an addition of eight to 10 classrooms. And in 2007 we added a wood chip boiler. That's essentially the extent of the construction projects over the past 50 years. The school currently carries no long-term debt. So I want to talk about on a good day what some of the challenges are we face in Mount Abraham. So on a good day we have accessibility challenges. There's a single less than reliable elevator, a band room filled with concrete risers, et cetera. We have several classrooms that don't have any exterior windows. They're sort of landlocked classrooms. So those classrooms lack daylight. Those classrooms also oftentimes are passed through classrooms. So a student who's in a classroom that's sort of on the exterior wall of the building that used to use a restroom walks through another classroom, disrupting whatever instruction's happening there to head to the restroom. We also have outdated science labs. One example being a chemistry lab that has a drenched shower, which is great. Only there's no floor drain in that chemistry room. So should someone need that drenched shower that will create problems in other areas of the building. Bathrooms that are really in bad shape, locker rooms that are in even worse shape. Dated classrooms, dated hallways, dated auditorium, and cafeterias. Some of our rooms don't have sufficient heat. So there are space heaters. The building is not sprinkled. And we have ongoing plumbing, electrical, and security concerns. So those are on good days. Not all days, unfortunately, are good days. So on bad days we find ourselves responding to emergency needs. We have, for example, we had an aging drainage system that led to our gym floor being flooded and ruined our gym floor in October of 2017. October is perhaps the worst time possible to be having to replace the gym floor just prior to winter sports season and physical education, et cetera. That cost us about $250,000 to fix that we didn't really have much option but to fix. In 2018, some tiles fell off the wall in the locker room exposing mold. We had the locker room shut down for several months and we're now in the process of replacing all four locker rooms so that we can make sure that we take care of any other potential mold that's there and other air handling kind of needs that may be needed to prevent the mold from returning in the future. We're estimating that at about $1.9 million and that'll be happening starting this summer. And just this past December, our aging boilers stopped working and it wasn't quite cold enough for our wood chip plant to quite get up to speed so we found ourselves really in a pinch trying to make sure that the building could stay open. So funding-wise, a feasibility study was conducted in 2014. We found that about $17 million was what needed to be, just to bring the infrastructure kind of up to speed, not to mention any of the reconfiguration to take care of the landlock classrooms, et cetera. So the bond ultimately went out for $32.6 million and that failed 27% to 73%. FY17, the Mounting Board put a million dollars into the construction services line in the budget. So it built a million dollars into our general fund because plan A was to get a bond to pass. That was unsuccessful. Plan B could no longer be do nothing. So they put a million dollars in and we've been using that million dollars to make improvements ever since. So in FY18, we put the million dollars in. Now we have about half of the bond cost in our budget already, so it mitigates the impact on the tax rate and still failed two more times to pass bonds. So over three on passing bonds to fix this. In the meantime, our construction costs are going up faster than our pay raises. So the ability to do this work gets further and further out of reach. I know there's a challenge in finding money. I acknowledge that. I've looked around. There aren't any money trees planted on the grounds. There is an option that could, at least in the non-abern unified school districts case, provide some immediate relief, which is the million dollars that we have in construction services that we've been putting into this building does not get exempted from our cost-required pupil. We are currently at the spending threshold. We anticipate having to cut 15 positions a year to stay there. If the million dollars that we have in construction services could not count against us in terms of our cost-required pupil and the spending threshold, that would alleviate a lot of pressures while we figure out can we continue to operate all the schools that we have as we face declining enrollment. Thank you. Karen Conroy from Essex North and let's have Julie Finnegan from Slate Valley on deck. Thank you. I appreciate you inviting me here today. My name is Karen Conroy. I'm superintendent for Essex North Supervisor Union. I have one school. Now I'm a trainer in high school in my area, but I serve the communities of any cake choice. So I have 300 other students that have choice. I'm here because we have been trying to look for ways to continue to provide opportunities for our students and we've been getting creative with our counterparts over in New Hampshire. Looking at how we can geographically work together as a region, as an interstate school district. And as part of this, which I think is important to give you this little bit of background, as part of this option of working together with our New Hampshire schools, we don't have any other options to merge with anyone in Vermont. We have been designated as geographically isolated, so we don't have a lot of options. So we have had support from Secretary French and also the New Hampshire commissioner of education in New Hampshire and has actually created or actually declared our formation of an interstate school district for these planning purposes and for exploration. And as part of this process, the Kansas schools have been identified as the strategic place for a regional high school in our area. We have three area high schools. Our students live within 20 miles of our location and we only have 200 kids going to three high schools. So there's an opportunity that we can work with New Hampshire in supporting the needs of our student providing more opportunity at a better cost to our taxpayers. Through this process though, we have done significant research over the last couple of years and gone into each of these buildings to try to figure out the best educational model for our students, for our area, for our taxpayers. And what we are funding is the schools in Vermont are in a lesser condition compared to the New Hampshire schools. And it's really triggered the committee to stop and say, you know, maybe Canaan isn't the right place. And so through this process, the committee seek out funding and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation has actually given us $17,500 to do a facility study of Canaan schools. New Hampshire is supporting us tremendously because they know that we need to work together to provide opportunity for this geographic area. So they have given us this study, we have this study done and the findings of the study were devastating to the committee. They have identified anywhere from four to nine million dollars in renovations and efficiency improvements that are needing, dealing with ventilation, heating, electrical windows, fire alarms, sprinklers, repairs and accessibility. I have two handicapped students right now. Our building is not completely handicapped but accessible to them. We have to move classrooms around to be compliant to offer them. They can't go to the science lab because it's located in the basement of our building. So we have some significant needs for building aid and our small little community of Canaan is not gonna be able to afford to make those changes. And the New Hampshire schools have been right on top of their needs and maintain what they're trying to do. So they don't wanna pay for it either. So we really need, I'm looking for the state's support in helping us. I am putting out a bond to the community in March of a million dollars. Trying to address the ADA compliance issues that we have. I have a roof repair, major roof repair that needs to be done. And some, you know, I have original electrical panels from 1946. My building was built, my high school of Memorial High School was built in 1946 and my elementary school in 1960. And there's been little renovations done since then. So our, as you know, our task base is very limited in our area. Our residents are income sensitive and we do have the highest poverty levels in the state in Essex County. And this is what I'm working with and trying to still provide what our students need for opportunity. And when it comes down to cutting programs, it doesn't seem very fair because I need to replace an electrical panel in my basement or I need to be able to fix the roof. I have been trying to be very creative and reorganizing my classrooms. We have created multi-room classrooms. We're trying to be as creative we tend to save taxpayers money. But we're at a point where it's really putting a damper on our interstate discussions and we're looking for support and hoping to move that forward and help us provide a better opportunity for the students in our work entry. Thank you. Julie Finnegan, Slate Valley and Bruce McIntyre of Addison on deck. Yeah, Francis, are they here? Or so, yeah, so you get to them. Julie Finnegan from Slate Valley. I don't know or so I'm not sure what she's here. So who's McIntyre? Bruce McIntyre here. Okay, Bruce, thank you. Hello, I'm Bruce McIntyre from the Boston Central School District and the director of facilities there. And we have been going through the process of doing assessments on our buildings and just actually completed an assessment of all our elementary schools. And I feel fortunate I'm in a district that even though our buildings are in some disrepair are nowhere near what Jennifer had presented. So I'm thankful for that. However, we do have a statewide problem. Most buildings were built between the early 50s and late 60s. There haven't been a lot of new buildings constructed. Our district's no exception. Our newest building is 20 years old or 22 years old. And as these systems age, people put up a new building think, hey, great, we don't have to do anything. The problem becomes that budgets are trimmed and facilities are often top of the list for those cuts we may do and we run systems to failure. So in the facilities world, the ideal thing is to do preventative maintenance. And then if you can't do preventative maintenance, you do predictive maintenance. And then if you can't do predictive maintenance, you run systems to failure. And that's where most of our schools are at. So that means instead of replacing your boiler after the 40 year mark when they say your boiler shouldn't function, you just keep patching it up until it completely melts down and then you have an emergency. And I feel that a lot of our schools are in emergency mode. And because of that, we are unable to address some of the problems that really affect student learning because we are always trying to patch a hole in the roof or evade the mold that's become exposed when really what we should be doing is planning ahead, taking care of our buildings and planning for environments that will support our most vulnerable population. And I know that you are limited in what you can do financially. There's a lot of different things that pull on the budget. And I think as our treasurer mentioned, we have to identify the problem. I have been working with a few people over the past year to try and talk about that in your presentation from David Epstein and Shurex Collins. And I'm sure that what we've been working on will present much more eloquently than I can say. But I really felt the need to come here and say to you, this is a real problem statewide. This is something we need to figure out. I am all for doing an inventory of buildings. I realize it's not going to be a quick fix, but I would like to continue to be a part of the solution. Thank you. David Young and Bridget Berger. Good afternoon. I'm David Young, I'm the superintendent of South Barlington, joining me as Bridget Burkhart. She's the clerk of our board in South Barlington. And we're here to talk to you a little bit in addition to what you've already heard about school construction. We'll give you a little bit of an update about our project as well. Currently, you know, there's no funding structures in Vermont that supports anything with either large-scale renovations or new construction. We've never had anything that has dealt with renovations. Some say we may have a statewide funding formula that then allows for that. However, when you try to do large-scale renovations or new construction, that system creates major volatility on your tax base and the draw from the ed funds. We in South Barlington have had for probably almost 13 or 14 years a stewardship plan. Looks at roofs, boilers, air handlers, major items. We're fortunate to have been able to do that, but at the same time, trying to carry those major, major changes within your budget is just not sustainable. Those costs are exorbitant, and you heard earlier from Mr. McIntyre about electrical panel or Jen Bonson-Jorn. We're dealing with systems that take up the size of this room, almost, of electrical systems that were designed to bring in electrical heat that are so outdated and so costly to find those replacement parts is ridiculous. Again, as we look to renovate or replace 50 to 80-year-old buildings, it's unexpected that you can put it on the backs of the funding formula system currently in play. Again, there's no documentation currently that exists that I know of for any leaders in the state of Vermont that allows for any sort of information. There's nothing on file that I know of within Vermont that talks at all about warranties, any sort of compliance status for any schools. The import such as ADA accommodations, air quality, electrical systems, structural, mechanical systems are non-existent. So many of these situations come to bear their true issues when a new person steps into the position and says, oh, by the way, we have a problem. It's unacceptable from my perspective that you walk into a position and say, ooh, we've got a leak and come to find out nobody's kept track of the warranties or anything. We are in a tough, tough place. So obviously I think it's critically important that you reinstate some sort of a mechanism. And what I would say is it's deplorable and I'm part of it that we don't have a system. We cannot, I would say, unequivocally after growing up and living all of my life in Vermont with the exception of some service time, this is the largest crisis financially in Vermont. It's not $600 million, it's in the billions of dollars. Systems to replace are exorbitantly expensive. We put in an elevator last year or four years ago at 1.2 million. If you take 5% increase, you're up into the 2 million. Every single one of our systems are matriculating similarly. We need to act and we need to figure it out. Bridget's gonna talk a little bit about our current plan because we know we're short on time. Had a lot of other comments but I'd be happy to answer questions at the end. So as David alluded, we are in the middle of a big project most of you have probably heard about to address issues at our middle and high schools. So our middle school is 52 years old with no major renovations except the addition of an elevator. The high school is 60 years old. Again, the only major construction project on the high school was the elevator and an addition that was done in 1977. There've been no significant renovations to that 1977 addition. We implemented, as David alluded, a long-term stewardship plan in 2008 to address issues as they come up in all five of our schools. We have three elementary schools plus our middle and high school. We've been keeping up with the smaller things. We've been putting those into our budget. We're putting small bonds together between a million and $2 million. But the bigger things that are coming up as these buildings age and as major infrastructure systems get to the end of their usable lives, those things are really hard to put in an annual operating budget or in a bond that a community is gonna pass on an annual basis. So we are, one minute, okay. So what we did is we had a very thoughtful process put in place to do a phase one study that looked at infrastructure. We spent a year doing that looking at infrastructure in the middle and high school. Then we did a phase two study because we said if we're gonna address infrastructure it makes no sense to spend tens of millions of dollars in the community's money only to put students back into outdated buildings that don't meet our educational needs, that don't meet our capacity needs. We're one of the systems in Vermont that actually is experiencing increasing enrollment and we need to make sure we can address that. So after going through the phase one study for one year, the phase two study for a second year that were determined that just doing infrastructure repair without addressing capacity issues, without addressing needs for educational changes that have happened since the 1960s and provide flexibility to address changes that are gonna happen in the future, we decided that building two new buildings was the right way for the community to plan for the next 60 or 70 years of education in our community. Thank you. We have Mary Beth Bonius from Windsor Central followed by Christine Sullivan from Harwood. Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity to address you. My name is Mary Beth Bonius. I am the superintendent of Windsor Central Supervisor Union that includes the towns of Woodstock, Killington, Redding, Comfort, Bridgewater, Barnard and Plymouth. I am also a former assistant superintendent in Massachusetts where we did have a strong school construction fund. We are currently operating four elementary schools. One of our elementary schools is currently shut down due to mold and moisture issues. And we have a middle school high school built in the 1950s that after a two year extensive study, the conclusion has been reached that this is not a renovation. The needs and the issues are too significant that the responsible financial choice is a new build, if at all possible in terms of funding and that we're looking at a cost of about $68 million, a cost that our towns that do not have high populations when you try to put that on the taxpayers is not something that is feasible. We are looking and overturning every rock that we possibly can in terms of trying to look at private public partnerships. Are there federal grants that can help us? But we are in a situation in which we have a real sense of urgency. Many of the different situations that you've heard spoken about by my colleagues such as septic issues that are in dire straits. We have steam pipes that go underneath the floors of our middle school high school and the flooring is collapsing in around them. We have heating issues, almost none of our heaters now work, we can't buy replacement parts. They are more radiant heat, none of the actual blowing of the heat out into classroom works. We do not have fire suppression systems and we do not have the capacity to put electricity in to have the magnetic door openers in case of a fire. That means that all the doors are closed during the summertime. We have windows that we struggle with so you can imagine what those classrooms feel like for students and trying to learn environments like that. The other piece that I would share with you is that this building was built in the 1950s when the model of education was that students came into a classroom. The teacher was the expert that he or she imparted the information to students, students learned it and gave it back to the teacher. That is not the educational model that we face in the 21st century. We know that what students need to be able to do is to be able to grapple with complex problem solving. And the environments that are designed for students to grapple with complex problem solving are not the environments of the 1950s. And so that those, not only the facility issues that are existing in our district and in so many other districts that you hear about across the state, there is also a reality around what learning looks like today. And we need students to be self-directed, right? We need students to be able to network not only with their colleagues, but across the state and across the globe. We need students to try, fail, fix, learn how to deal with different iterations. The learning environments of the 1950s were not built for that. And so it impacts the quality of education that we can provide for our students and their ability to be prepared for their future. Thank you. Finally, I'd like to also add on this idea of mobility that exists with families and that sense of competition, right? That as we look at Vermont and the school systems that we have, my colleagues spoke about what she's experiencing in New Hampshire, families have choices. And when they look at our facilities, that can become a major concern in terms of wanting to remain in the state and feeling that their students are getting the high quality education that they feel compelled to provide to them as parents. And I wanna just close by saying I do not envy any of you. This is an incredibly complex situation. I feel like you're being presented with lots of problems and no big solutions yet. We wanna work with you, but it is an urgent issue and speaking from my district, we need your help and we look forward to partnering with you in any way possible. Thank you. Thank you. Christine Sullivan from Harvard and it's still not been again here or not. And this will be the last presentation Superintendents, unless there are others. Play our role from rolling the school list if you have any questions. I don't. Yeah, so that was a late email for me to. Okay. Hi, my name is Christine Sullivan. I'm a resident of Waittsfield and I'm a member of the Harvard Unified Union School District Board. I've been a resident of the Waitts, member of the Waittsfield Town School Board. I served on our local study committee and I've been on our unified board since its inception. Our board was able to successfully pursue an accelerated merger since we were a preferred model with four small elementary schools, another elementary school district within our district that had a elementary school and a middle school and then our union high school. So our district has had a formally identified and clearly articulated need for a bond at our high school facilities since 2015. Then the Harvard Board identified nearly $15 million in upgrades needed for the purposes of health, safety and welfare or replacement of systems at the end of their usable life. Additional projects were identified at that time as having the potential to improve the student experience. One of those, for example, was upgrading the track which would allow our students to host track meets. At the time that the Harvard Board was ready to go to bond in spring of 2015, the legislature passed Act 46. This deferred the bond as our supervisory union focused on the needs for the merger and the challenges that presented. Like most districts, we've seen the declines in enrollment, increases in net spending and per people expenditures and tax rates. Given those challenges and the difficulties we were having maintaining programming and a quality experience for students, it was hard to think that we could get taxpayers to readily support the bond at the time. From the start, our merger and anticipated articles of agreement, there was a lot of contention due a large part to the need for a bond at one of the local elementary schools and the impact that people will write about merger would have on the community existence of our local elementary schools. I would say that to this day, there is a lot of focus on our elementary schools and as a group, as a district, there's a lot of neglect for the needs of the high school because perhaps there's no, we don't have that local connection to our union high schools. So in part of our merger, the new district took on the bond for our local elementary school and one of the things that stands out to me is that perhaps part of the reason for some of this long-term neglect that's been going on is the changes in tax rates that some of the towns around our state saw when acts 60s and 68 came through. They started to focus on preserving teachers over the structures and student experience in the building but environment does impact our student experience. We've been lucky enough to be able to develop and set aside maintenance reserve funds since our merger and this can handle projects upwards of $300,000 or $400,000 a year but we have nothing on hand that can handle the needs at our high school. So the work of bringing the hard bond or the hard facilities is still ongoing at this time. In five years, much of the work that was priority two has shifted into priority one and now we're looking at $20 million for a bond and an additional $1 million for every year that's deferred. As the last speaker said, ideally we'd be doing more than deferred maintenance and upgrading the facilities and the complete student experience. Public debate around our bond is contentious because we are looking at long-term planning for our district. So if the hope is to let act 46 play out and realizes efficiencies. At some point, I agree with the speaker who said before that maybe our regular spending towards maintenance and upgrades should not be subject to the threshold but I think there needs to be some consideration given to do we need to return to some sort of carrot and stick approach to get our schools and districts to start looking at consolidation as a way to find savings and start reinvesting in our buildings because if we as a state are gonna show the people that come to our state how much we value education that needs to show in the facilities that we have for our kids. Thank you. Claire Wol from Burlington. Thank you. I'm Claire Wol, Chair of the Bonds and School Board. I'm very grateful to Jeff Francis I was able to speak today. We are very fortunate in Burlington with the pass of 70% of our taxpayers recognizing that there was a bond needed and a capital improvement bond prior to three years ago. The infrastructure of our nine schools and our 11 programs serving over 4,000 students and increasing our population each year were a great demand. Our schools range from being built like others have spoken today since 1904 with infrastructure that has not improved or have had band-aids. When I think about this building and UVM being founded in 1791 when we were the 14th state and this building built in 1833 what makes me proud of Burlington and being a host city to the University of Vermont is in January of 2019 UVM under the Moving Bonds campaign raised $581 million. We witness on the daily Champlain UVM increase their infrastructure, provide for their students fortunately 30% of them being Burlington's or not Burlington's but we accommodate for our out of state students who come to this state for their education. And I'm very, I feel very fortunate that UVM and the UVM Medical Center has been able to grow at the length and the beauty that it has, the Lerner Center. In fact, I joined some of your legislators when they were invited to the Lerner Center to see how they were delivering education and the facilities at the Medical Center. And I kept thinking, this is incredibly powerful and how great that they included you to see what they have done there and the money that has been spent on that campus. But we as public school volunteers and educators and leaders, we don't have that ability. We have to look to our taxpayers. We have to go out and support our budget this month on March 3rd and we have to ask for bond votes. And it is very challenging to show what we do with our budgets that we cannot invest in our infrastructure. And like so many people spoke so eloquently about how they're making do with what little they have. So I'm here to say Burlington struggles right now with the accepted bond and good fortune because of the 29 acre rule, our stormwater PCBs that we have to mitigate from our 1963 building. And we're gonna put in tremendous amount of money on items that you won't, the citizens of Burlington won't even see in the physical renovation of that property. So we need your support. And growing up in Massachusetts, I've done extensive research the last two years as being chair on how Massachusetts does it. And we need leadership here in Vermont and what does that look like besides funds on how we can propose to be able to create a sustainable as the Treasurer spoke, a sustainable way to be able to fund these buildings. But we are known for our education and we really have neglected how to fund our operating costs and our facilities, our infrastructure. And I'm here for support as all in Burlington. We come here, I believe all together to share in solving this problem. But our high school is not ADA accessible. And even reaching out to our Senator Lady and Sanders and their call for ADA accessibility when our own home, the city of Burlington's high school is not ADA accessible in 2020 is of concern. So I'm here to help and I appreciate all that you do to serve Vermont. I'm very, very fortunate to live here and serve the students of Burlington. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. That completes our voice from the field. I'd like it to open it up to members of the committee. They would like to ask questions. And if you can direct, figure out who you would like, like your answer from if you appreciate it. Representative Conlon. This is really kind of a question for the superintendents and I'm not going to take on any one I could ask. I think what we heard is that the capacity of state bonding is very limited that the bond bank ceiling we're getting up close to. So if you go into the assumption that we're going to need to sort of control at a more central level, how dollars are handed out for school construction. I think that means that there are going to be some projects that are told you have to wait and it could be a decade while we take care of those needs that are our most need. And I'm just curious to know, many of you have gotten on to that if you were failing or trying to do again or you'll have some of that immediate realizing. And I guess what I think what we would struggle with is coming up with a system of fairness given the immediate need that exists out there. And I guess if you go into the suggestions as to how to address the issue of fairness and if we go into the equitable way to go about this, those who might have immediate plans are willing to wait those five, ten years of lighting to sort of go down and priority us. David Young. Yeah, so David Young sort of ends up early. Why don't you come over here so you'll be on the microphone. Good question. I think the bonding question is a big one. The bond bank can't handle the magnitude that you're hearing about out in the field that's just not sustainable. I think specifically to the question, what would you do? I think it's imperative that you establish some sort of a plan that identifies which schools are in the most critical, like mission critical, going to potentially not be able to open. And we have probably, as you've heard from Jen, we have some schools that are very close to that functionality. It would seem to me that there would be a three tiered or a prioritization system that would say these are the schools most need and then the others. I think that we want to be able to ensure that our children in Vermont can go to school, but we're very close with some of these situations. Either no heat, electrical failures, and they're not just simple electrical failures. As I said to you before, we have systems that are so old with switch gears, oil pump gear, and you can't get them. Again, we have such different capacities, there's big, big items. So I would say three tiered system to look at, the here and now, and then the longer range ones. The problem is, is you've got a real dilemma because to not do some of those things like for us in Sel Burlington, we recognize that we've got a reliability and risk. And I would ask you to look at reliability and risk factors connected. We have some high risk factors with low reliability and that's part of what we're doing that Bridget emphasized. So I think you really need to look at that from that perspective and the plan needs to be done. Again, as I said, to my knowledge, there's no plan currently in place that has any sort of warranties, structural information about our schools that rests here, either with the agency of education or with facilities within the law. All of you, how many of you in your position or something similar where you were leading your school district or a school district when we had school construction dollars available from the state? Pre-moratorium. Did you receive help from the state in terms, during those times, in terms of help and assessing your buildings and what was needed and prioritizing some of those items? We did not receive... Would you mind just coming up to the microphone so we can hear you? First of all, I'm an entire from the essential school district. Yes, I've been in my position for 20 years. We did not receive help in prioritizing projects. The construction aid, we had to qualify for construction aid. There were criteria that we had to meet in order to receive construction aid. However, projects were developed with the incorporation of the school board and the facilities department and determine need at the local level. And then once we had a project that we moved forward with, we would approach the state to work with them to make sure what we want to do fit within the criteria of school construction aid. In those criteria were put in place in 2006 and 2005. Yes. And that's the late, one effect, so to speak. There's no entity to work with the school boards or your local schools. And once there's a preliminary application form that's been submitted to, at that point, the department of education, then that would trigger them working with you folks. And then there'd be a point system for prioritizing your projects. Correct. And none of that, that's still in place, but none of that has been accessed after the moratorium. There's been no check and balance. I don't believe there's been anybody at the state level to review those. And also in terms of school construction projects, not all of the person, or not all of the school project will be eligible for state construction dollars pre-moratoriums and had to be eligible costs. Correct. So you may have a $50 million project and we had a 30% school construction program didn't mean the 30% of that $50 million would be paid for by the state. That's correct. It would be less than that. So another question I'm asking all folks now, how much, when there's requests for state dollars to help with your construction projects, what are you looking for? Is it 10% of that project? Is it 100% of that project? Anything, anything other than that. Something. That's it. Jim, what about deferred maintenance because deferred maintenance is not covered under school construction dollars at this point? So two thoughts. One is that manual, when we put a bond out last spring, we used that manual and went through all the criteria to do our analysis of FERC, Concord, and Mooneard and we produced, it's an incredibly effective document because it asked you to look at everything from the actual physical plant to educational needs. So that document itself, we found very helpful. The second piece is when we put our outlay of our financial liability for a bond last spring, when we put a $24 million bond which failed for one, we used the actual dollar amount but then we said if we returned to school construction aid and we got 30%, this is what the cost of the bond would be. So we ran those numbers hypothetically. The allowable cost? Correct, we ran them hypothetically just in terms of the square footage per pupil or in terms of what would be allowable costs. So what I'm saying is the tool was very effective for us to look at our systems and then predict out whether that's true across the board for the whole state and continuing but it was the only thing we had and my point is when you have a tool like that that everyone is using to apply equally, it's a very effective measure whether that's the correct one, I don't know. So if we had a tool like that and doing the facilities assessment to find out what the real need is out there, would that be helpful? I think as my colleague from South Burlington said that tier one, tier two, tier three it's a way to put different systems and their needs into buckets so then you can move forward based on what the overall need is. But I would bet when I showed you my map I did a little bit of all my schools, I have eight schools, there's four of them that have much higher needs and I bet if you did a map of Vermont you would have a similar type of these ones have huge needs, these ones have medium needs, these ones have smaller needs. But everyone, I mean when you have a state where your buildings, a lot of them were built in the 60s, we're hitting that point. We were built in the 50s and 60s too. Thank you. Somewhere in the 40s. The baby boom, the baby boom. So for anybody that wants to take it maybe we'll talk to Patrick because you haven't been up. This is not a new conversation for us. This is a conversation thing going on for several years here. Should the need arise? Obviously we have walked into a perfect storm now where not a lot of the need is now arising. But one of the questions we've had and it's an ongoing question is many of our school districts statewide have spent millions of dollars to keep their, to expand their facilities, maybe do some maintenance, do some water quality issues. And they have spent that money without state aid since the moratorium has been effected in 2008. What do we say to those communities? I mean, you folks are sitting here looking at us and you're moving forward from one before from today or if something can be worked out from that day. But what do we say to the school districts that are spending money today? My school district, one of the high schools in my school district is spending a half a million dollars this year to put a new entrance into the school because the old entrance has fallen off the school. They're not waiting, they're doing it. So what do we say to those folks? How do we handle that? And that's been an ongoing question for me as we think about maybe moving forward again on the new school construction and state aid for school districts. So Patrick Rain, superintendent for Mount Abraham Unified School District. I guess what I would say is that we fit that description I think in Mount Abraham Unified. I would say folks we recognize you've been putting this money in. We recognize this is a big issue and we're gonna take some time to figure out the right way to address this long term. And in the immediate, we wanna provide you some relief and you don't have those costs that you're building into your budgets counting against your spending for Equalized Pupil because probably many of those districts, true for us, are also facing declining enrollment. They're seeing escalating costs, decreasing pupil equalized pupil counts and are at the spending threshold. I see our costs as being relatively faced. We're at the spending threshold now. Our community I think has no appetite for paying a penalty for exceeding the spending threshold. And so we're gonna have to cut one to two million dollars annually to stay at the spending threshold. Right now for us, one million of that is in construction services. That would buy us some time to figure out what's the long term plan. It would acknowledge the efforts we put in to make sure that we're taking care of those facilities' needs. And to know that help is on the way, whatever that may be, would be, I think, some welcomed information. So I think I hear, maybe I didn't put, I think I hear that taking the exempted construction services from the excess spending threshold would be a big help. Absolutely, yes. Number one, that would be a big help currently. So, and something that could happen more immediately. And as I didn't hear, what do I say to my school district that four years ago put a million dollars in? What do I say to them today when I'm sitting here asking the voter in an issue where we're gonna start school construction funding again and only go forward? What do I sort of folks in my district that, sorry, we missed you? What's the answer? That's a problem that I'm grappling with and I think many others are grappling with that problem also. You're up to answer today, but may I want to think about that a little bit? It's a pretty complicated question. Absolutely. And I guess my only thought on that is, there were some thoughts, I think, raised by the treasurer early on about that same question, what do we do about that? And that may be part of something that's worth investigating. And maybe the answer is, sorry, we can't really think for you, but maybe the answer is we can and I think that's part of the investigation. Thank you. I think that's a good sister to Richard's question. Yeah, please. Very quickly. For the accurate internet. Mary, Beth Bagnos, Windsor Central. I think it's an excellent question. For me, the perspective is that at some points, buildings outlive their useful life. And it's not a question of deferred maintenance, but in fact, the building has outlived its useful life. I'll give you two examples in our particular situation. One is that we have septic pipes that run underneath the floors of all of our schools. In order to get those things out cleaned out, at this point, they're about 70% blocked. We would, once they get further blocked, we would actually have to jackhammer up all the floors and pull them out to clean them because of the way the building was built. Similarly, we have steam tunnels that lie across the floor. When the building was being built, it was fine to put them in. The clearance is about three feet, right? And the floor above them is collapsing, and you can't get somebody to go into there and actually go there to repair them. They're not accessible. So the reality is that it is not, and it's big for our district, I think that our district takes a lot of pride in the care that it's taken for the building. It hasn't been a question of deferred maintenance, but it is simply not possible at this point to do the level of repair or financially wise to do that, that it gets to a point where it needs to be rebuilt. So that's one perspective that may help guests of its own ways. But it still doesn't answer our question. What do we tell the folks, many of them perhaps, that put a million dollars into their buildings without school construction aid? Another answer, a potential answer. Jen Vazzo-Jarn is at Kington East. I think what you would tell him is when you passed at 166 Universal Pre-K, the schools that were already doing Universal Pre-K, you didn't say to them, oh, when you passed at 46, and there were incentives for some districts and not, with Act 173, the schools right now that are doing special ed block grant type programs, we don't move backwards. The second thing you would say to them is, we just had a waiting study, which talks about 20 years worth of inequity in our rural, sparsely populated, high poverty areas. Some of these schools I talked to you about, we have 80, 90% of children from poverty. That's very different than the community that has 13 to 15% children from poverty. And I don't know if you all know who Ellie Perry is. She's the runner from Vermont who just broke the national record in the mile. Our rural kids could be NASA scientists, Olympic runners, just as our kids from higher, more wealthy areas. So that's the question that we've had, is what does the Vermont Constitution obligate you to do for all of our children? So that's what I would say to folks. That's a great answer. I think that is hard on the little mic, but it's different from all of them. Thank you, David. If you want to add something. Yeah, just one additional thing from Jen, I think currently access V8, as you know, the funding formula, all of our needs are made into the total expenditure line. So when you divide that, you know, that divisor is a state draw system. So unfortunately, or fortunately, the yield had to be adjusted to accommodate for that particular situation. And that's not any different than what we have amongst my colleagues that have talked earlier about these high expenses. For us, as we're looking at pushing a bond out that's 209, it's going to be within the expenditure line, and it's going to factor into the draw from the Ed Fund. So to your situation, it would be, although it's not sustainable on a wide scale basis in the state, but it is currently going to be baked into the decision that decides the yield. And as you heard from Patrick, we have a lot of things in play around equalized pupil, our common level of appraisal, and that yield determination that is part of our state system. Thank you, Sam. We have a bill. I don't know who's taking a look at this, but we are interested in your feedback. This is a bill that looks at getting that inventory and looking at possible funding. It does not, at this point, talk about prioritizing that list. It's very clear that we probably need some help in identifying those things that we need to be looking at in this inventory. And just wondering if anybody has any specific feedback or would like to send in specific feedback to our committees on things that your feedback on this bill, because we will be moving forward with something. Please. Christine Sullivan from Harvard. I guess I would just like to respectfully request that in looking at any bill and these requirements and inventory going forward that we're not delaying these projects that need to happen another five or 10 years down the road. I think that would be a real disservice to students that are currently in our schools and to the work that these boards and districts have done. It's not, you know, kids go to school and my children go to school in classrooms that have leaking roofs during rainstorms. And that's just to defer that further out would be an injustice to our students. I have heard swirling some interest from some members of our body to put a moratorium on any bonding until this is completed. So I'm guessing that you would say that's not a good idea. I think that would be a travesty. Look for the moratorium, gotcha. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I don't wanna take down other people's bond projects, but I think Burlington was at 91 million and South Burlington's at 209 million. And everybody else in this room is talking about less than $50 million. And if something, talk about inequity, if something like $200 million gets to go through and this has to wait, that's right. Thank you. Other questions? Felicia? Yeah. Again, this is just a question I'd like to, everybody who testified about their school commission, specifically those that have failed bond votes, do you think if there was a school instruction in program that covered 37 eligible costs, that your over three bond passage rate would switch? Do you think you could get a bond through if there was that 37 eligible cost? So Patrick Green and I agree in that fight. I would say instead of being over three, we'd be one for two. I think we would not have passed our first, just given the margin being what it was. Our second attempt to pass a bond failed 48% to 52%. A 30% construction aid that would have alleviated a lot of the cost, I suspect would have been, the cost was the number one driving factor. I think in talking to a lot of folks, the 30% support on the eligible costs, I think would have made the difference in that vote. And then to kind of what the Northeast community came in and looking for school instruction to start with the state of Monsignor to cover 33%, are you guys able to pick up 70% or $1 million bond? Is that something that realistic needs and needs to be in operation? I think that's a great question. A lot of community members have asked me, knowing I'm just asking for $1 million have come to me and said, is there any hope that the state will help us? Even at 30%, and how is that gonna impact our taxpayers? I think they would definitely jump on it because they care so much about their students. These are small little communities that want their kids to succeed. And so they want to be able to put into the building and provide the same opportunities as they do in other areas of the state. So I think that just this discussion today has given my community some hope that there may be, at least we're talking about it, that there may be help coming. Well, I just want to clarify this 30%. And I just want to make sure, I don't know if you're really clear, if you've got a $100 million school construction project and we say, well, there's 30% state aid to that, it doesn't mean we're picking up 30% of that $100 million. I think that needs to be made very, very clear. It's what is eligible for the 30%. So I'm not gonna do math in public, whatever 30% is, $100 million. Oh, that's what you're saying. $100 million? $300 million, that's about $300 million. Wait, I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. $100 million, you've got $30 million, is about the state share. But it won't end up being $30 million, it might end up being $20 million or $10 million based on what is eligible. Also on the ballot, the way the wording has to be, on the ballot is the full cost of that construction project, not the amount minus the state aid. It is the full cost because the district municipality is responsible for the full cost because the state aid may not come through in a timely manner, so you still have to bond for that full amount. So those are the nuances to school construction. So let's always say, oh, there's state aid, it's not Appleson Act. And we're not sure going forward where that's going to end. Well, how that will relate to the new one. I know Representative Matos had a question, Patrick Green. So you said if you had the 30% eligible cost, you would have won it. One for two, one for two. And I noticed you said you had a study done and said you needed $17 million. And you put a bond out for 32, one double. So that took place prior to my arrival as superintendent, but from what I understood, that was, that addressed the lack of natural light, that addressed the tandem classrooms where people had to pass through. It addressed a lot of other sort of flow and function needs that weren't necessarily infrastructure. So I just want to double from what the study said. So I also just had a question. Some of the problems, not necessarily from you, thank you. Some of the concerns that I heard raised sounded like health violations. And I'm wondering if you've had any problems with health violations. That's probably to you. So about a month ago, we had to close one of our schools for a day because of our air handling systems in one of the mobile units. The fan belt broke and there was smoke and it burned out. We closed the school, we got in, we realized there's no ventilation in this part of the building. So we do air quality tests. However, the lack of ventilation, I consider it a health concern. We have four buildings where that's an issue. We've got five buildings where the insulation is little to none and there's energy costs. We have two buildings where the entrance ways, in terms of safety, that the Lunenberg School, you, the teacher's buzz, it's just not safe. I just want to get back to the question of the Northeast Kingdom, do you think you can pass the bond? St. John'sbury just passed the bond for safety infrastructure changes. It was a small bond, a little over a million. I can't remember the exact amount. And I know in past, Burke has passed a smaller bond. We just merged seven districts, seven individual school districts have become one. So what this word on the street is, why should I have to live in town X, pay for something in town Y? And so we need time to do that work around there all of our children and they're all important to us. And we're taking this year to do that work. And then we're looking at ways also to maybe merge our middle schools versus our high schools. We just did a public information session where we had 10 options. We narrowed it down to four. We're going to research and then go forward with that. So I'm confident and optimistic all the time, but I can't answer that question because I just don't know. I have one question. I have a question of you. I just want to follow up on that comment as well. I'm dealing with the same issue with our interstate discussions. New Hampshire doesn't want to pay for my building needs. And through this study, thankfully that was funded, I'm finding out all kinds of things. This is my third year in the school district dealing with, I have no ventilation. There's duct work, it's been blocked off. I have no heat controls. We open windows because there's no controls in the heating systems. The boilers are outdated. There's so many different concerns that I'm kind of overwhelmed, but I don't want to see our interstate activities fail because I think it's just an opportunity that we can do more for our students for a less cost for our taxpayers. So I have a question of you. When you've testified you mentioned how the New Hampshire school is very much better shape. Is there a funding mechanism over there? How have they dealt with, do you know? We're gonna have that. For New Hampshire? We have that information. For New Hampshire? Yes. We can show the, how many have to take five of them? We've done some research on four other states. So we can show them last 10 minutes if you want. Are we ready to move on to the presentation? Or are there other questions? I'll reach out to them. Felicia, would you have a question? One last question, and it's a general question about capacity coming from sending a small town that only a per year is made very, very proud. It's abundantly clear to me that the small bonds are contentious, and school construction clearly is going to be a quick or easy fix. It's not going to get to you and this website all over the next owner. Maybe in the next month, there's a lot of groundwork that's been done here before it was going. But with one out of every $3 in the state fund already spent on education, how do you expect us to be able to help your situation? All the problems that I can have are pathetic, and I hear them, and I hear them back home as well. But realistically, we're looking for solutions before we're together. This is quick. So, we're on the ropes for education. We'll be right back. Sure. So Patrick Reed, I'm out of the Unified. So I used to think school bond projects were contentious, so we started talking about opposing schools. And that has shifted my perspective of what is contentious and what is not. I would offer the immediate relief comes in not counting dollars built into budgets for those districts that have figured out how to build it in against the spending threshold. It's at least one less thing that's working against us trying to do what we need to do to take care of the schools and take care of the kids. Okay, were there any more questions for the superintendents or the school districts? Are you ready to move on? At least there may be some hope coming. At least I'm standing here. They are gonna, oh, okay, excuse me. There was one more. I should have one question for Jennifer. Do you know why the vote was voted down four times for the bond? So it was a four to one ratio. Four times as many people voted no than yes. Do you know why such a large number? Money and also the notion of my town, people really aren't yet comfortable or aware of the one district and also the cost. So the cost, and you're in a high poverty area. So it's funded through the Ed Fund. Do they get higher property tax rebates? Not to deal with the full impact of the increase in property tax, those people? So I believe, looking at last year's, Marni Feld is helping with this. I believe we spent 32 million, we put in 21 million, came to me in terms of the Ed Fund. So we do and also we have income sensitivity in all of our towns. Yeah, okay. Excuse me, just did the towns that we're going to receive the construction aid, did they support? So the doctor took that. Didn't it get brought down in that way? The folks are coming. They're coming. I shouldn't know that. Okay, we are ready to move on. We're welcome. Hi everyone, my name's Dave Epstein. I'm an architect and managing principal of Drux Collins. We're an architecture and interior design firm in Burlington, Vermont and with me is Jeff Francis, I'm the Executive Director of the Superintendent's Association. I want to just pause and thank all of you for listening to this testimony and I want to thank the folks who came up to provide it. It's part of the story that we're all trying to work together on and we're all trying to figure this out and I appreciate the fact that you are trying to figure it out, so thank you. As many of you may know, Jeff and I, after the last legislative session, put together an ad group of superintendents and facilities managers, we had conversations with an architect and also we had conversations with the Bond Bank, with the Treasurer, with Massachusetts School Board of Authority, with an architecture firm that does the statewide assessments for them, so we've tried to do a lot of research and we're here to help present some of that to you in an effort to inform the process. So this is a chart that talks about, so well, let me go back. On the PowerPoint, the map shows, just points out, makes it graphic, Vermont's the only state in the Northeast out-of-school construction program. There's only 11 states in the whole country that don't have construction programs. Vermont's one of those. We did a brief survey of some surrounding states, Rhode Island of Hampshire and Maine, and we've had more ongoing conversations with Massachusetts. We've got some slides that the MSBA has provided us that we can share if you wanna go a little deeper dive, but at the top is just the state information and you can see that Rhode Island has a similar number of schools. They have a greater enrollment, so they have about 300 schools. Interestingly enough, when the legislature was grappling with the very same problem, they were guessing 1.5 billion. When they did their statewide assessment, it was $3 million for their 304 schools. That was a boots-on-the-ground statewide assessment. Interestingly enough, all of the states, except for Maine, had a moratorium. Rhode Island was from 2011 to 2015, New Hampshire from 2011 to 2020, and Massachusetts between 04 and 07, and they all came out of that process with a new re-evaluate system. The funding source, Rhode Island funded it with a $250 million bond, and New Hampshire and Maine used an appropriation. Massachusetts has a penny on the sales tax. The only one that has a maximum reimbursement is New Hampshire, at $50 million per project. One of the things I wanted to address, and Alice, you're talking about the 30% rule, is that for all of these states, 30% is the starting point, and then they have incentive bonuses to get you between 30, you can see 30 to 60, 30 to 90, 30 to 80. Not saying that's the right thing to do, I'm just saying that's the other states in our sort of comparable states to our doing, and those criteria and bonus incentives include the health safety and welfare, whether you're replacing the school or repairing the school, consolidation you can see in Rhode Island and New Hampshire is a factor, so what happens is that you start with 30% of eligible costs, and then there's, you add 2%, certain percentages for each one of those categories. Educational enhancements, decreasing overcrowding, increasing utilization, energy efficiency, so almost, well I would say all of these have a base amount and then they have incentives. Now they do also have, they all have criteria, not everybody gets the money, it's not necessarily an except for Rhode Island and we need to drill down a little bit further, because they refer to their program as an entitlement program, but they're all, you have a step one and a step two, first you define the need, and that goes through a ranking system, and then you develop the solution, and that's pretty consistent with all of these programs. The, some of the things that was interesting with Rhode Island was in some of these cases actually in the Mediterranean of New Hampshire, there were some, so maintenance, Massachusetts, a couple of these states have requirements that you spend a certain amount on maintenance per year, like if you have a building of a certain age, say they wanna know that you're doing your part, and you think that's a great thing, in Massachusetts it seems to be a system that has been in place for a long time, but with the other state, I think it was New Hampshire, Rhode Island, it's turned out to be a deterrent because towns don't wanna spend the money to spend to that maintenance threshold, then they're not eligible for state aid, and so it's actually penalizing poor towns that can't spend the maintenance requirement on their buildings. Another thing is that the cost of the planning upfront, many of these, many of these main, for example in Rhode Island, require up to a level called schematic design, which is far more than we do in Vermont, and it's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars you have to spend to develop your project so that the state can say whether, what they're gonna contribute is part of that cost, and that in some cases, some of the states have acknowledged that that is a barrier too because towns don't wanna spend money upfront without knowing whether they're getting money from the state. I do have, if people would like to hear more about Massachusetts, I could go a little bit more in depth about Massachusetts, are there any questions so far? I kind of riffed through that pretty quickly. You're about Massachusetts, wasn't penny on the sales tax, huh? Yeah. It sounds like an easy win for Vermont, doesn't it? That's the question. Oh, excuse me, representative two. Thank you. You said Vermont is the only state without a construction program. We currently spend a third of our budget, our entire state budget on education. Do we know what the other states are spending compared to the, they're like, at spending compared to the state budget? No, no. I mean, that's a number that's easily obtainable, we don't have it. Okay, thank you. The other thing I just know, so in Massachusetts, for example, we also have a different funding formula, right? So I think Massachusetts has done something similar to the foundation formula, so that the sliding scale of Massachusetts awards school construction, $8 based on the need, which is the community income reference. So it's not all incentives. I don't know what the relative. Yeah, we can go into that if people want. But one of the things that I just point out is that it doesn't just keep going. Well, I think the, so just relative to the funding, some of them are similar to the Vermont system where you get your, the state's gonna pay tax, but you don't know when you're gonna get it. Massachusetts is a pay as you go system. That was very important to them. So they, you provide them with actual, your invoices and they pay their share of it on the spot to reduce so that you can reduce the, I'm not sure if they have the bond for the full amount. And there's other states that pay, I think it might be what I don't wear, they pay a, over the length of the bond, they're paying their share in terms of the debt service each year. So they're not giving you cash, they're paying a portion of your debt service each year. And that leverages, I think, more projects with the $250 million bond that we got. So can I just ask a question on that? Sure. That must come out of the general fund that paying the bond costs for those states. Right, the bond costs have to come from some. Comes out of the general fund. Right, right, much, yeah, I assume so. Any other questions? I can, some of this is a repeat. This is the map, these are slides that Massachusetts has provided us. The MSBA, the Massachusetts School Board Authorities is an independent public authority with a separate, dedicated revenue stream that's not part of the Commonwealth's annual budget. They are solely responsible for its debt and it's not a general obligation to the Commonwealth. So it's a completely separate authority. So that's a different model than what we had before. They basically got into the same situation that Vermont did, they got very far behind on their payments, they were not able to promise, even say, when they could pay. It was, one of the things they talked about is that their program was perceived as an entitlement that every district received funding. It was generally like, if you applied, you got it. And so, and there was no dedicated source of revenue. And there was no cap on the number of projects that could be funded. And all of these things they corrected in their minds with the new system.