 Great. Thanks everybody. Sue Siglowski please join us at the table. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. New group of faces here in Senate Education. Those of you that do not know, Sue Siglowski is the Executive Director of the Vermont School Board's Association. I have been in that position for a little over three years and I've been with the Association for five years. And I can speak to her knowledge and expertise and great to have you here. Thank you very much. So we've asked you to come in and talk just a little bit. You know introduce yourself. Give us some updates on what you're seeing and hearing from school board members particularly with an eye toward COVID recovery and things in general and some of your priorities for this year. Absolutely. So for the record I'm Sue Siglowski, Executive Director of the Vermont School Board's Association. Thank you very much for inviting me in and I'd like to start just by briefly talking about the role of school boards because it's really important to understand school board's role when we talk about the work of the VSBA and also our priorities. So as most of you probably know school boards are not involved in the day-to-day operations of schools. We always say to school board members that it's their job to make sure the schools are well run. It's not their job to actually run the school. And so they provide student focused oversight and assured delivery of an effective education program in their communities at a reasonable cost for their taxpayers. And so that in a nutshell is what their their job is. There are six areas of responsibility that school boards in Vermont. The first is to engage the community to establish a vision for the school district and this is a really important aspect of school board service. They also adopt policies and their policies oftentimes are aligning with that vision that they have. They hire the superintendent and establish clear expectations for the superintendent. They develop a budget which a lot of them are working on right now finishing up their budgets to be presented to the voters and they provide financial oversight throughout the year on that budget. They monitor progress towards the vision so it's not enough just to establish a vision but they need to make sure that progress is being made toward that. And then lastly operate in an ethical and effective manner and that relates to things like conflict of interest. So we like to say that serving on a school board is upholding the great American tradition of a free public education for all and this tradition forms the foundation of our democracy, a well informed citizenry. It's extremely important as you all know for students to develop critical and independent thinking and that they understand how history can impact our future. So simply put education is crucial for the future of our state and school board's playing important role in the system. A little bit about the VSBA. We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and we were founded in 1961. The vision and mission of our organization has evolved over time and just this past year the VSBA board of directors went through a comprehensive strategic planning process to develop a new vision and mission and as part of that process they developed eight beliefs and I'm not going they're they're all in my written testimony I'm not going to go through all of them but there were a few that I just three that I wanted to highlight. One is that public education is the foundation of and for democracy. Another is public education in Vermont is critically important for a healthy democracy is the engine that drives economic development and is the core of a strong community. And then third school boards and their communities need to understand the jobs roles and responsibilities of school boards and their members and boards need to have professional development to be effective and efficient in their roles. So that is a very important focus of ours always and specifically now. These eight beliefs are the foundation on which the vision and mission are built. The vision is that the SBA is a trusted leadership organization advancing the essential work of Vermont school boards so that each and every student is supported in their educational journey. We used to have much longer vision and so it's nice to have it be one sentence. And then the mission is also one sentence which is develop and provide systems and resources that support school boards and their members informed through inclusive community engagement. The BSBA is a membership organization and an important point is that we understand that not all school board members see every issue the same way. The SBA has clear processes for taking positions as an organization and it's possible you're going to hear from individual school board members who have a different perspective and we welcome all school board members to share their views with BSBA and also with all of you. The BSBA has a 24 member board of directors. There's a president, immediate past president and 22 regional representatives. We have 11 regions and two representatives from each region of the state. The current president is Neil O'Dell of Norwich and you may see him come in here and testify on issues for your committee. The BSBA is governed by bylaws, resolutions and policies and I'll just take a minute to talk about resolutions. These are positions taken by the association on issues that are important to Vermont school boards. They can include recommendations for actions by the BSBA. They could also include recommendations for actions by the legislature. They are guidance for our staff and board when they're working in the public policy arena or also developing programs and services for our members. And important to know about our resolutions is that they're voted on at our annual meeting by membership. And so we typically have our annual meeting in October. New resolutions passed by BSBA membership in October of 2022 covered the following topics public funds accountability district quality standards funds to assist school districts with PCB and radon remediation and universal meals. And so when I come in and testify to your committee on on these topics, I'll provide the specific language of the resolution that was passed in my written testimony and I provided a link to the full list of resolutions in in my written testimony today if you'd like to take a look at them. If there is not a resolution on the topic that I'm coming in to testify about, I get direction from either the BSBA board or its legislative committee. So that is the process that we use. We are a small organization. There's only four full time staff, including me. And with me today is Sandra Cameron, the associate executive director. And you'll see Sandra in here quite often. We also have Phil Gore, who is the director of board services and Kerry Lamb is the director of operations. Now I'll talk a little bit about the services and resources for our members. Senator Campion, I know Hayden mentioned that you have some questions about training for new board members and and existing board members. So that that's where I'll cover this. We provide many training opportunities for school board members, including monthly webinars, which are free for our members, workshops on the essential work of Vermont school boards. We provide board retreats, customized board development where we will have a meeting with the board chair and anyone else on the board who wants to participate about what the needs of the board are and then develop our program specifically to meet those needs. We also offer workshops on team building and advancing educational equity. We have a lot of resources online on our website. We also hold an annual conference in the fall for school board members. And we have regional meetings in our 11 regions where we share best practices and foster a learning community among school board members. Resources and services have long been informed as I say by best practices, research and examples from across Vermont and thought it would be important to note that we're updating our curriculum this year to support a school board success in meeting and exceeding the upcoming district governance standards. I'm not sure if anyone has talked to your your committee yet about the governance standards. So in last year in Act 127, which was the waiting study bill, there was a requirement that each Vermont school district meets school district quality standards adopted by the rule of the agency of education. And those had to cover business, facilities management and governance practices of school districts. So the secretary of education contacted the SBA over the summer and asked us to develop draft governance standards for his consideration to be incorporated into those newly required district quality standards. So this past summer and fall, the VSBA did this work by convening a task force of 11 school board members from across the state. Before outlining their work, the task force met with the secretary, and he provided them with some guidance of what he was looking for. And then they spent a significant amount of time this fall meeting conducting their work, they reviewed national research on best practices and governance, particularly those studies relating to how school boards can affect student outcomes and close achievement gaps. They invited input from publicly elected school board members, superintendents and representatives from the Act 1 working group. The final version of the proposed draft standards was approved by the full VSBA board in November. And we then sent it to Secretary of French. And he has included it in his draft district quality standards without any changes as far as I am aware. It recognizes that effective governance by school boards is an essential component in district quality and outlines three categories for effective governance. Those are priorities, protocols and processes. And I provided a link in your testimony to the document that was submitted to the secretary. Next, consulting services. We just pause there. Does anybody have any questions about training in particular? The only thing that I was going to ask is, do you have a sense of the percentage of people, percentage of school board members that go through training? Because it is optional. Right, it is optional. I could try to get that data for you. We do keep track of who participates, but as you say, there's no requirement that they do. The only thing that is required is under 16 VSBA, I think it's 561B, the superintendent and board chair required to do eight hours of training annually. And again, that's not really tractor enforced by the state. But there's specific areas that training is supposed to cover, such as educational leadership, open meeting law, Public Records Act, collective bargaining. There's a couple other things in there as well. So we provide that training, that joint training for superintendents and board chairs. And I would say a pretty good participation right in that training. I hate to have you waste your time. But if you could, I'm just trying to get a guesstimate like 50%, isn't 25%, I don't want you to sit there and cowl. But if you could, come back with some kind of just idea of who you're, you know, what kind of, you know, are you getting folks or not? Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. That would be great. Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to do that. And we do also offer training specifically for new board members. And that really focuses on their role. And on the six areas that I spoke about at the beginning of my testimony. So that's that we really encourage all new board members to do that training is when there's really a lot to get up to speed on when you join a school board. The other thing I should mention is that every single new board member, as long as they're a member of the VSBA gets this book, that we revise every couple of years to keep it up to date. And it's the essential work of Vermont school boards, and it's got a lot of valuable information in it. Senator, we used to curiosity question on the training availability. So every new member and such, what about the candidate, you know, going backwards a couple of steps, because lots of folks want to get involved, and I'm quite sure what they're getting involved in. And, you know, school boards are no different. You know, if the training were available, or the, you know, to gain those insights, it could be, could get them better prepared for their essential duties. And if they don't have success with the campaign, at least they understand the board process better. Yes, that's very great. Senator, we used to run years ago and realize that this is what kind of education was coming. Exactly. We do have a webpage for prospective school board members. And that's something that the idea that you put out there is something we've been talking about and hope to do, which is a webinar for people who want to run for school board so that they can learn more about it. So yes, we've been talking about this recruitment idea to get teachers here. Kind of goes along the same lines. Is there do at least in Bennington, sometimes there's a hey, who's going to run? Can we fill this spot? And I don't know if there's any kind of thought to getting it out there more. I don't know how to do it. But to really put some kind of recruitment document together, come serve on your school board, help build up our democracy, help young kids, that kind of thing. Yeah, we do have a brochure that we send out to the town offices that people can pick up. We also have a public service announcement that we that is on that perspective for members website. But I'm afraid I'm making years, like young people, I can't even know what a brochure is. I know I know it's all there, you know, so yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah, probably should be using social media to get it out there. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, it's hard enough to get volunteers to do anything. I know. So if you need a requirement, maybe in terms of people out there, maybe the training requirement. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's good to this option. Right, right. Yeah, some states make it required and others don't. It kind of varies across the nation. Any more questions? Okay, I'll just briefly touch on consulting services. We support boards with operational and management challenges. So if they have a particular problem they're having, we will help them try to navigate through that. Also strategic planning, which is a really important aspect of board and not enough boards do it. And then we have specialized services available to help them with superintendent searches, superintendent evaluations. And if they use policy governance, we have information for them about that as well. Soon asked the question about the consulting piece around strategic planning. You know, closing these achievement gaps. We've seen these test scores well before COVID started even out. I mean, is there a way and perhaps this is going to be coming to us in some of those something that we've asked the agency to kind of provide for us. But is there almost I'm just thinking when we do like renewable energy policy, we have town plans, we have we have things that say, we don't want this here, we want it there. Is there a way for us to get kind of super focused on schools and say, Hey, this is this schools or this district is how they're going to close their achievement gap. I think that the district quality standards are going to help with that. Yes. Yeah. Next is legal and policy services. This is a really important aspect of what we do. Of course, we can't really we can't provide legal representation to school districts. But if they have general legal questions, we can often point them in the right direction. We give them updates on changes to the law. We provide legal training for boards and superintendents. For example, on the open meeting law, which is a really important aspect of law for them to understand. And then we also publish model school board policies. We have over 50 of them. Those are on our website. If you want to take a look at them, some of them are what we call required. Those are the ones where you or the four Congress has said that they must have a policy. And there are many of those. In addition, there are some others that we recommend. And those are on our website. Next is communications. We keep all our members up to date on what's happening here in the legislature while you're doing your work. And then at the end, we do a final comprehensive legislative report that lets them know these are the changes to education law that have happened this year. We send them weekly update emails every Tuesday throughout the year. We've always got something that we need to make sure that they know about. For instance, yesterday, when I sent the weekly update email, we included H 42 that the house passed yesterday. Senator Williams. Can you go back to, you don't provide legal service, but they have most towns have a attorney on what they do for the slack board. Right. I love the modeling of cities and towns. Do you work with them at all? Are they interfacing all the school boards? They don't interface directly with school boards, but we do communicate with them quite often on different legislative issues and that type of thing. It's not really their lane. Right. They're sort of like their equivalent for school boards. We do for school boards, what they do for towns. I guess that's what it was. Yeah, yes, yeah. Communications. I also wanted to mention that we publish the education law book, and that's a green book that has all of the pertinent education laws for Vermont. We do that annually. This year, our publication is a little bit held up by our publisher, but it should be coming out soon. I know everybody's been waiting for that, and then I already mentioned this essential worker for Vermont School Boards. I wanted to talk a little bit about educational equity, because that's an extremely important part of our work. We have a definition of education equity that's in our model equity policy, and we have collaborated with two consultant teams to address educational equity in a variety of ways. One of them helped us with 11 of our model policies, working on some language changes in them, and the other one provided real-time support to board chairs and superintendents that had challenging situations that they were facing, and it was really quite valuable. We've also provided some webinars to advance equity through those same consultants and also through outright Vermont. In addition to providing these resources, we're currently developing a curriculum and related materials for school boards to support their work in analyzing and responding to data on student achievement outcomes. So that relates back to your previous question, I think, Chair Campion, too, about looking at outcomes and how can we close the gap. Somewhat related on the equity issues. I don't know if you were talking about some of our priorities and we were looking at, again, it's not necessarily a rural urban divide, but there are a lot of small schools that don't have the same thing, same offerings. And I wonder if you could say a few words on that. You having probably one of the best views out there of the whole state. What sort of discrepancies exist? I can be more specific. How serious is the problem that some kids can just go to high school and get one class of Spanish. You can go to another high school and get five foreign language offerings. You've got a kid that all he or she wants to do is study calculus, but it will only go to state calculus, like that kind of stuff. Yeah, do you have specific data about that? I'm wondering if you have some of that. That's what we're trying to pull apart. Is there a big problem there? Or are we, I mean anecdotally, it's, I've heard concerns in years ago, you probably remember when Tom Sullivan was the president of UVM, it went around here a lot. The kid that didn't get into UVM because the school only offered two years of math. Right. And they, of course, made an exception to the rule. But can you give a sense, is that a problem out there? I would love to see some data on that, because I don't think I'm able to respond without being able to look at that. But I can tell you that if it is, there is a big discrepancy. Yeah. One of the things that I think is going to help is the district quality standards. And I also think it's going to be interesting to see how the implementation of the new weights plays out and whether those, that helps to level the playing field. Yeah. Yes. Your point kind of goes back to what I said for one of my priorities is that Act 60, which was the equity in education bill, I think it was over the years, that was 1979, that maybe we kind of got away from that. And that's a, that's a law that's been through the Supreme Court of Urdin versus State. And we keep rewriting the definition of equity. What that did to a lot of the schools that had excellent programs so that they were equal. They were out. I don't think they intended to tear down schools with a good program, but it tried to make the curriculum equal across the board and in all the financial here. I think that we have, and I think we're going to talk about Act 60. Yeah. 60 and 68. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting history. And I don't know, I don't remember what was sort of there before, but I am concerned that what's there now does need beefing up and how again, you know, if you haven't even born in a certain area, you know, how do you make sure that, you know, you get what you need. Yeah. Last on equity, I just wanted to let you know that we've been awarded grant funds to develop an affinity group for school board members. And the purpose of an affinity group is to share stories, experiences and ideas and provide a space for school board members across the state network and make connections on issues of educational equity. And our first affinity group is going to bring together school board members who are black indigenous people of color. So we're excited to get started on that. Next is the last of our services to our members is advocacy. So the BSBA provides representation of its membership, which I should mention is over 900 locally elected school board members in the General Assembly and also in public policy development with the Agency of Education and the State Board and various other education organizations. And at times we're also tasked by the General Assembly to be a member of task force groups and advisory councils and the like getting toward the end of my testimony and wanted to provide you with some information about our priorities for this legislative session. First, I wanted to highlight the significant facilities needs across the state. The state hasn't provided support for school construction since 2007, I believe, and it's really starting to show in the condition of our school buildings. And though that condition is causing significant health and safety issues in some places. And really, it's also an equity issue because some school districts are able to garner the local community support to pass a bond to do renovations or construction and others are not able to do that. And research shows that the quality of school facilities impacts student achievement. So comes right back to your question, to your campaign, I think there's so many aspects. Yeah, that'd be great. Yep. So inequities in school buildings can lead to inequities for students. Along with serious concerns about the general condition of school buildings, the BSBA advocates that the legislature allocate funds to assist school districts with PCB and radon remediation when contamination is identified under state mandated testing. And we wanted to make sure to include that because that's one of the resolutions that was passed by our members at the annual meeting. Second, I wanted to draw your attention to the increasing mental health needs of Vermont students. And this topic has been mentioned by several other witnesses. So I'm not going to go into any great detail. But we certainly do hope that you will take the mental health needs into account when considering how to handle any excess in the education fund. Rather than returning that money to taxpayers to reduce property tax rates, we recommend using it to provide facilities aid and to address the mental health needs of Vermont students. Additionally, since it appears that the surplus exists at least partially due to lower special education spending, please consider using part of it to help school districts address their special education needs. I've heard from a lot of school board members about their districts facing challenges under the new census block funding for special education that was implemented with Act 173, specifically that the block grants are substantially less than expected and causing them to actually have to eliminate some positions. And finally, VSBA advocates ensuring educational equity in the wake of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Carson v. Wilkin. The most recent VSBA resolution related to this topic passed in October of 2022 at the annual meeting. The resolution calls for public funds accountability and advocates that all rules, regulations, policies, quality standards, reporting requirements and laws regarding public schools in Vermont must apply to any school that receives funds from the statewide education fund for any reason or for any purpose. That's directly from the resolution. As part of the Education Equity Alliance, VSBA supports the values of equity, transparency and accountability and we're open to any reforms that align with these values and the past Supreme Court muster. And with that, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and certainly look forward to working with you during the upcoming session. Thank you. That's great. Thank you. Questions for Yeah, please. Of course I have comments. I just want to say and I'm not just saying this because the executive director is here and the assistant executive director, but this is just an unbelievably wonderful organization. It's it's one of the most high functioning organizations I've ever been a part of. It's well run. It's student focused and student centered and we often don't agree with each other, but we're very respectful because it's such a high functioning group. It's, you know, we get stuff done and we get it done in a really collaborative way. So I just wanted to make that plug. But I also, as a school board member, have found their resources to be so incredibly helpful. I must have watched your little 12 minute video on school funding like 25 times just over and over and over again until it was like, OK, I think I got this. So those resources, but also, you know, a lot of folks get on school boards and immediately feel like they just want to like take over and fix everything and it's really hard because that's not really your job. And it was really important for me and it was a learning process and the BSBA helped me with it. It's like, you're up here. You're high level. You know, you're not operational and that's a tricky one because people want to be operational. And one of the things that I've worked hard to do in my community is educate the public about what our jobs are because you wouldn't believe how many people will come up to you and say, I won't even give you any specific examples of something very inappropriate about what they want you to do. And you're just like, that's really not my job. Please email the principal or email the teacher or email the superintendent. So they don't understand. They really think that you are going to be having your hands on the leads making these changes. And that's really not your job. So it's been really helpful for them to work with our board as to what it is we should be doing and not doing. And Phil Gore came and helped us this summer to retreat. That was wonderful. So that's my perspective. I wanted to share it with you. And thanks, Sue and Sandra. Thank you, Senator Geithner. What do school board members get paid? That varies by district. From zero to yeah, I mean, some school board members get paid, you know, thousands of bucks, maybe, yeah, or 500, you know, it varies. But it's not not very much. It's approved by the voters of each district. I think this is accurate. You know, a school board race in the city of Los Angeles costs somebody hundreds of thousands of dollars in playing box to be elected. Overseeing L.A. public schools. It's a big job, big campaign. It's a big job here. But I don't know. I wish we could round more people up who are interested in doing it. So sure. Yeah, that's we're always working on that. So if you have any ideas, we're happy to hear them. Yeah, get off the brochure, maybe. That's my only thought. You know, maybe we do kind of move away from the brochure and kind of do some kind of work that's on social media, you know, hire some young guy or something to get it out there a little bit. Yes. Yeah. I might send my sorry. Yeah, please. My observation is that folks tend to run when things aren't going well. But as long as things are running smoothly, they tend to just sort of, you know, we have to I will be actively going out trying to recruit someone to take to run in my position. You know, yeah. So. Yeah. Anything else? Just you can come in with many demands. That's about if you have a magic wand, knowing the limit in a long time that this committee has to work on important issues, which ones do you think would be the most important? Yeah, well, I'm hoping that you could work on all three that I mentioned, which is mental health and the facilities and addressing the equity issues for the Carson decision. Actually, long now, long I assume you testify in front of other committees. Yes. Is your list different for other committees? No. Is the list consistent? No, the list is consistent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we budget a little bit too much time for this, which is great. So we get a little bit of a break before Beth is going to join us a little early. She's going to join us at 2.45. So people have, you know, 15 minutes or so to stretch their legs and make a phone call. Welcome back to Senate Education Wednesday, January 18th, 2.47. We are jumping in on Acts 60 and 68. And I've asked Beth St. James to give us an overview of the legislation, how it started, kind of a historical perspective and some of the impacts that we've seen from that. So with that, I'll just pass the the time to you and get started. Great. Thank you, Beth St. James Office of Legislative Council. As Chair Campion said, this presentation is meant to be very foundational and basic. You will see that there are dates in here from the 90s and the early 2000s. Do we have a copy of that? Do you have a presentation? I do. Oh, you do. That's right. Do you hear me pass it down? It's in the pitter-patter fire. Great. Thank you. This is meant to be foundational and relatively simple to orient you. My understanding is you will eventually have someone from JFO coming in and doing school education financing one-on-one. Is that accurate? We did some education financing one-on-one with Brad Jenkins yesterday. OK. Yeah. Well, then hopefully this will help. And if you have anyone from JFO come in, this will hopefully be again foundational. Great. If you have a question that I am not... I just want to make sure everybody sees that it is in the stable packet if you need it. It should only be six pages. Great. Oh, sorry. Thanks for that. This presentation is really meant to just highlight what the state was doing before a seminal case called Brigham v. State. And then the kind of fallout from Brigham and the legislative action that came from it and not prepared today to discuss education funding as it exists today. OK. All on the same page. OK. It's a very scary subject. So if you want to turn to slide two. So the case we're going to be talking about today is Brigham v. State. And it's referred to as Brigham. And that happened in 1997. So the slide two is what was in effect before Brigham. OK. And the state funded its education for what was referred to as the foundation plan. So the state set a foundation property tax rate annually, which was meant to be a reasonable rate of local property taxation that was supposed to raise enough money to cover the foundation amount or cost, which was the minimum needed to provide a minimum quality of education. And that concept was set by the state. And you just made sure about it. And we're on the slide two. OK. So the state set a property tax rate purpose and it was annual and the purpose of that property tax rate was to raise enough money to provide a minimum quality of education. And that concept was defined by the state. If based on the grand list of the school district or town and municipality that we're talking about, if based on that grand list and the foundational property tax rate, if the school district was not able to raise enough, the state provided a grant to get them to that minimum, the foundation amount, the foundation cost, what the state decided would be needed to provide a minimum quality of education. I'm seeing some confusion. Is everyone? This is... So why wouldn't they raise their own revenue sufficient to maintain their own schools? Are you talking about the towns? Yes. Let's get into the example. OK. So remember, this is foundational, right? This is the base floor, OK? So an example, we've got an example town and the foundation amount that the state says you need to provide a minimum education is $5,000 per pupil, OK? The base tax rate that the state said is 1%, and the grand list in this town is $400,000. So they don't hit that 5,000. You don't understand the grand list. Yes. The property in your town is the taxable property in your town. And that what the property that is taxable change a little bit as a follow-up to this, but for this conversation for the foundation plan and the grand list. So they can't raise based on the minimum tax rate, right? And the property they have to tax, they can only raise $4,000. So the state comes in and says, OK, we're going to give you $1,000 to bump you up to them to get you to that 5,000, which is the minimum necessary to educate people. The same page? No? No, for the slow student. No, no, this is good. So what prevents the town from increasing the base tax rate or is that determined outside the town? Slide three. OK, so remember, this is what used to happen, OK? And so this is just a very, on slide two, this is not about choice. This is just setting the foundation for what is the foundation plan. That's literally what it's called. It's providing a minimum level of education for students. So on slide three, now we're looking at equity here, OK? So you've got two towns, one with lots of property wealth and one with little property wealth. Both towns want to spend $10,000 per people, OK? They're making a choice that for their students. So the state isn't saying you should, the state isn't saying this is what's gonna educate a kid to pretend that this is what they're deciding? The state is saying the base foundation to provide the minimum necessary education for students with state of remit is 5,000 per student. These two towns are making a choice. They're saying, well, we want to invest in our education and we want to spend 10,000 per people. Where it is, how do they get that money? So we've got a property poor town with a grand list of 400,000 and a property rich town with a grand list of a million, OK? And we've got that 1% tax rate that the state is saying. We're looking at everyone, to get everyone kind of on the same page with that minimum amount, we're gonna say the tax rate is 1% for the state. So the property poor town can still only raise $4,000 on their grand list. The state's gonna kick in $1,000 is the foundation grant to get them up to that minimum necessary. And so then they're only at 5,000 at that 1% tax rate. If you look at the property rich town at that 1% tax rate, they can raise that $10,000 without having to raise their taxes or receiving money from the state from that foundation grant. The property poor town could choose to raise its tax rate to make up that difference to get to that $10,000 per people. That's what's in the green. That's what's in the green, yes. But you've got two towns with different resources and their grand lists and the property that they have to tax in that town, making the same decision to spend money on their education and that affects their community differently. It affects their tax rates very differently. And it may affect the choices that they're making on education spending, right? Do they wanna raise their tax rate to go up to that $10,000 or do they wanna keep their tax rate low and it's hover around that foundation, the foundation formula for the minimum necessary to provide education. All on the same page, okay. So that was the foundation plan. That was what was in place prior to 1997. Then we go to slide four. We're back with our friend, the Vermont Constitution. The Education Clause. You should all be expert scholars on this by now. The Vermont Constitution says that a competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town unless the General Assembly permits other provisions for convenient construction of youth. That's it. That's it. That is. That's it. I will know as the Brigham Court notes, it's not on the slide, but I'll just note this. Education is the only government service that is in the Vermont Constitution. So there was no provision for... Roads, healthcare. Healthcare providing for the vulnerable populations. Education is the only government service provided for in the Constitution. Then there's also the Common Benefits Clause, which I think we touched on a little bit when we talked about Carson v. Lincoln. And that says the government is or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the people, nation, or community not for the particular emolument or advantage of any single person, family, or set of persons who are a part only of that community, right? So government is for all. So. Government is for all. Government is for all. Whatever you'll pay. Right? We've got, remember our foundation plan, right? Where we talked to where there was the property rich town who could keep that 1% tax rate and raise $10,000 per people. But we have a property poor town that could only raise $4,000 on its own. Well, that concerns some people. And they filed suit. There were actually three different classes of plaintiffs in this case. Just for your, I know there were some questions last time I was here about could a tax pay or sue. And so I just wanted to highlight for your interest, there were three different classes of plaintiffs here. There were students who alleged that the state's method of financing public education deprived them of their right under the Vermont Constitution of the same educational opportunities who students lived in wealthier school districts. So these students lived in a town not as much property to tax. And they said, hey, my neighbors in the town next to me with a whole bunch of property tax, they have different educational opportunities to meet them, that's not fair. There were property owners from property poor districts who claimed that the current school financing system compelled them to contribute more than folks in a town that just happened to have a lot of property. And then there were two school districts who had kind of the same argument that they were claiming that they didn't have the sufficient ability to raise money and provide their students with educational opportunities that richer towns could. So those three groups of plaintiffs were all kind of bundled up together, just highlighting not to show you the different classes of people who were concerned about the education financing for reasons that we will not go into today, the court really only focused on the students' complaints. And so you can kind of ignore the property owners in school districts. And the students basically said, again, town next to us, very different educational opportunities to work at. Yes, yes, yes. Equity, it's about equity. So ultimately the court held that, so the plaintiffs are saying that the foundation plan violated the Vermont Constitution by creating inequities between property rich towns and property poor towns. And ultimately the Supreme Court held that the education financing system in place at the time, so the foundation plan just went over with those graphs. And this is a direct quote, with its substantial dependence on local property taxes and result in wide disparities in revenues available to local school districts, deprived children of an equal educational opportunity in violation of both the Education Clause and the Common Benefits Clause of the Vermont Constitution. And in doing this analysis, the court really focused on the history of the Vermont Constitution and the fact that education was the only government service provided for in the education. And what that means to being integral to Vermont and the functioning of the state and the government's responsibility for providing education. So the state was arguing, yeah, we're gonna conceive that this isn't really fair, but this is a local issue. This isn't a state issue. So this is not the students suing their school districts. This is the students suing the state, right? So the state was saying, yeah, it's not really equal here, but this is a local issue and that means that we should let it be a local issue. And the Supreme Court said, no. Providing for education in the state of Vermont, it's a tribe in the Constitution, it's the only government service provided for in the Constitution, is actually a state responsibility, not local, funding of it. Doesn't take away from the fact that local decisions can be made, but the requirement that education is provided equally, right? Under the common benefits clause, substantially the courts are substantially equally. Competent schools. Competent education. Yes, that's right. Competent number of schools. Enough to support the population. So the court said, no state. This is your responsibility. So to fulfill its constitutional obligation, the state must ensure substantial equality of educational opportunity throughout Vermont. Now the Constitution does not say how the state should do that, right? The Constitution says state, you have to provide for education of Vermonters, but it doesn't say how that education system should be funded. That, the court emphasized, is the legislature's burden. So the Vermont Constitution is silent on how this obligation, the educational obligation must be funded. And they said, although the legislature should act under the Vermont Constitution to make educational opportunity available on substantially equal terms, the court was realistic in recognizing that they were never going to create a system or the legislature was never going to create a system that was perfectly equal for every student, right? There's variations. There's going to be variations. So the requirement is substantially equal. So the specific means of discharging that duty is up to the legislature. So the Constitution does not require education system to be funded on property taxes. It does not require a foundation plan. It doesn't require people waiting. It leaves that up to the legislature to decide, but the legislature has to make, whatever system they come up with has to provide for substantially equal educational opportunities for Vermonters. Any questions about Brigham? Okay, this is, and I should say, this was a case that was decided by the Vermont Supreme Court in 1997. It's still good luck. You will hear the, you will, I don't know if Brad talked about Brigham at all or wanted to touch on Brigham, but when you're talking education finance, if you're talking any sort of history, there's always a reference to Brigham. So this is the case that we're referring to. Does anybody have any questions at this point? Over here, okay. So post-Brigham, last slide, legislature has some work to do. The first thing they did was in 1997, they passed Act 60, which I know you have all heard because you've asked me about it. So Act 60 was the legislature's initial response to the Brigham decision. It did not change the way education spending is determined. Education spending is still a local decision under Act 60, but it moved funding of education from local funding to state funding and created the Ed Fund, which funds all of the districts. It created a uniform tax rate across the state, supported a minimum block grant. And any spending above the block, block grant is less than a higher tax rate for that town. And so I have a little example here. And anything raised above, revenues raised went into a state level share, state level share pool to be redistributed based on spending. So if you have town A, let's say they have $1,500 of property value per pupil, and town B has $500 of property value per pupil, but they both want to spend $1,000 in per pupil spending above the state block grant. Both towns have the same tax rate because they're spending that they want to spend the same amount of money. So the tax rate is correlated to spending now. Town A is gonna generate $1,500 per pupil, but they only needed to raise $1,000 more than that block grant. So they've got a little slush there and they've got $500 in excess. That's gonna go into the education fund because town B can only generate an extra $500 per pupil. So they're $500 per pupil short of what they want to spend on their kiddos. And that money is gonna come from the education fund and that's funded through the excess. There's other funds in there that we're not gonna get into for this presentation, but it's partially funded by that extra $500 from town A. So they made a choice to spend the same amount on their students, which means they have the same tax rate. That tax rate is applied to their grant lists, the property that they have there. And if they needed that money, the money would help that they're per pupil spending. And if they didn't need that money, because it was an excess that we go to the education fund to help out all of the towns that couldn't raise money on their own. So it's tying, X60 is really tying the property tax to education spending. Quick question, I guess it's just semantics, but is the block grant pretty much the same as the foundation amount prior to the Brigham decision? Yeah, for the purposes of this conversation, let's say yes. It was set annually in statute and it was the amount of money that the state was going to kick in per pupil for education across the state. Okay. I don't know if the map was the same, but for this conversation. Yes. And it took several years for this to actually be implemented. I think it's a full implementation goal of 2001. And then in 2003, Act 68 moved us a lot closer to what you see today. And the big takeaways for Act 68 are, it split the grand list into homestead and non-homestead property. And there's different tax rates for those now. That was not the case prior to Act 68. So it created a homestead property tax rate that varied again based on education spending. And then it created a non-residential tax rate that was uniform across the state, which means it didn't change based on multiple education spending decisions. And it also made the town's education property tax rate proportional to the spending approved by its residents, not on spending above the block grant approved by all towns. So it was really tied to the community itself, not a statewide decision. So just to confirm, Act 68 basically got rid of this system developed by Act 60? No, it amended the system. So the big difference in Act 68 was the splitting of the homestead and the non-homestead property tax rates. So under Act 60, every property in the community is taxed at the same rate for educational purposes. Residential homes and vacation homes or just non-residential homes in general. And then Act 68 created- Split them. Got it. So now, under current state law and under Act 68, the homestead property tax rate is gonna vary depending on education spending. And what that looks like today, I assume, Brad, either went over or you're gonna have J.A. Boe come in to do that. But it varies based on education spending. But the non-residential tax rate is not affected by educational spending. It's the same no matter where you are. And those are the big takeaways for Act 60 and 68 and Brigham to kind of orient you to where we are today. A lot has happened since then. Service. If you can take the non-residential tax rate issue to the next step, was it intended to be lower, higher? I have no, I'm not a vacation home owner. So tax questions, I really encourage you to reach out to the attorney who's probably- Just the philosophy of it in 2003. So I don't know about the intent behind the splitting of that. But again, for tax questions, that is not my area of expertise. So the fallout from that and what that meant for non-residential homeowners would really be a question directed for Abby Shepard. But for purposes of our conversation, Act 60 was the thing, the piece of legislation that made that split and education funding go hand in hand. My ability to speak to it really stops if it's not in Title 16. And all of the tax concepts are in Title 32 and that is Abby Shepard's area of expertise. And I did reach out to her, she knows, I was presenting on this and she knows she may get some questions. Sorry, wait a minute. Oh, thank you. Could somebody today say, could a kid or a family say what's happening? My child went through school district B and here she came out of school district B not being able to read a grade level, do math at grade, that kind of thing and say, okay, we've got a problem. My kid, maybe a better way to do it is my kid just doesn't have the same opportunities in terms of classes that another school has in terms of offerings and we're going to try to set this record straight. Could that kind of lawsuit happen today? Yes, my standard question at any time anyone asks me if any type of lawsuit could happen is always yes, because anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time, at any place. Doesn't mean they're going to be successful. So there have been lawsuits. There is a case that's in the Vermont Supreme Court now that we're waiting on a decision on any day that does make an argument under the common benefits clause that children in school districts that have a brick and mortar school are not getting the same benefit under the common benefits clause of a student who lives in a town, a school district that doesn't have a brick and mortar school because that student in the town district, the tuitioning district, gets to go anywhere they want. They get to handpick those courses. They get to handpick those extracurricular activities and the students who are growing up in a town with a school don't. They are, unless their parents want to pay for them to go somewhere else, they have the opportunities available in their school district. So yes. No, it's good that you're bringing this up because I followed this case a little bit. So what is, so tell us a little bit more in terms of is it the family looking to sort of expand their opportunities or are they concerned that different areas have opportunities? So there's two types of challenges that can be brought to a lot. Yeah. I think I'm, maybe I'm missing what you're saying. To go back to answer your original question, yes, someone could say that because they have different opportunities in their school district than someone else, the educational opportunities are unequal. It would really depend on every case, the facts of the case, right? Yeah. But what is their argument? Are they saying that it's because of educational funding? Is it because they're, it's the choices that the school board is making? Right. Is it so it really, it really depends. It's not requiring certain things to be offered. Exactly, right, right, right. So, but yes, there could be. And I think there have been, I don't want to speak out of turn, I think there have been various arguments that bubbled up here and there, students arguing, families arguing, students arguing that their school didn't provide enough extracurriculars or it wasn't fair that their school didn't have to see extracurricular opportunities as another school district. And none of those cases have really had traction yet. But the case that I was referring to that's in the Vermont Supreme Court now, there's kind of two different challenges that someone can make on a law. There's as applied and there's facial. So as applied means the law has been applied to me and that application, there's something wrong with it. It's unconstitutional. They didn't actually follow the law as the law was applied to me specifically that something illegal happens there. I deserve a remedy here. I deserve a fix. And then there's a facial challenge which means that the law in and of itself is not okay. And that would invalidate it potentially for everyone. This, the case that we're talking about from the Vermont Supreme Court is a facial challenge. So they're arguing in general, for all of Vermont's not fair that some students get the option to tuition and some don't because the right to education is foundational in Vermont's constitution and it's a common benefit. So they're arguing that there's an equity issue there. So could the court come back and say, okay, we're gonna give choice to the state or could the court come back and say the choice that exists is gonna disappear or of something else? The court is not going to, so the court could come back and say, this scheme is unconstitutional like they did in Brigham. But it's up to the legislature to find a solution or not find a solution and then face another legal challenge and another legal challenge. But yes, the court is very unlikely to come back with a roadmap for exactly what the legislature should do. That's the legislature's purview to make the laws, the court interprets them. But that, I can check in every Friday when opinions are issued because that's an interesting one to follow. But that is not related to, it's not directly on point to Brigham, although they relied on Brigham's law and their arguments. It is an equity argument under the educational clause and the common benefits clause. It's just not directly specific to educational funding. Any questions? Yeah, please. Going backwards to the Vermont constitution, just curious, really no language on what ages that the school requirement should be applied to. How do they ever determine that? And are there challenges now in respect to earlier or later education? You determine that, the legislature. So in Vermont, attendance in a school is compulsory between the ages of six and 16. In Vermont, kindergarten entrance age, you have to be five by August 31st of the school year. Between August 31st and December 31st of the school year, but a school district can make the entrance age anywhere in there. So there are some school districts who say you have to be five by August 31st and there are some school districts who say you have to be five by a different date. I don't know off the top of my head if anyone actually goes all the way out from December 31st, which means that kiddos could be starting kindergarten at age four if they don't have to turn five until late September, October, November. And then on the other end, it's compulsory only at ages 16. I should mention that people are interested, Senator, former Senator Nick, they've put in a bill last year, the other four that said enough of the 16 thing, should really be 18. And we did get a lot of pushback. And we never really, we took a little testimony, but we heard from people, wasn't a good idea for writing reasons, but I'm happy to explore that again. I was just gonna add to the kindergarten discussion. This was something we talked about in the BSBA over the summer, or maybe it was fall, but just because we were asked if we thought we needed legislation around a more specific date for kindergarten entry or if we wanted it to change or if the BSBA wanted to weigh in on it. And I think in the end, we just decided to sort of leave it as is, which is there is some flexibility there. But some states are really strict with like January 1st or... Yeah, no, that's really not where I was going. I was really kind of more interested in the early education, early childhood education. And then, you know, post-sci school, if there was ever an attempt or whatever, yeah, I'm not gonna modify that. What was the argument about 16? I remember why, you know, why we didn't move it up to 18. I don't, do you remember any of that conversation? I don't know that I've been a part of any of that. Yeah, I remember when it was, I think really, what are you gonna do if a kid wants to leave? Kind of thing. I mean, what kind of kids sitting there, something, you know, ready to be done, but happy to pull that conversation back up and people are interested. Yeah, there's also kids who finished school early and go to college early. There's that. Yeah. Yeah. And there are provisions for, like, if a student matriculates early, they're not true, but if they're, if they have felt certain requirements. And then pre-K, early childhood education is different. Provided for differently than the rest of the education system in the month. Do you mind asking me that? No, I was just curious where that was going. Constitutionally, pre-K, I'm just curious of the boundaries. Constitutionally, you know, the Constitution doesn't spell out what age is the status responsible for providing. That's fine. Nobody's ever asked it before. Shh, put it back in there. There's a cool thing called early college, too, which we haven't talked about. Right, we've got some time on the outside pathways. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, this is really helpful. Yeah, let's give it a sit. You can get a lot more detail on this. Act 68 specifically was a huge bill, and it did a lot of things. This was just meant to just be very basic, foundational, and really to orient you to Brigham and the constitutional requirement for the state to provide education for its students in a substantially equal way from funding. Local decisions can still be made around spending, curriculum, and all of that under current law. And you all, as the Legislature, get to decide what that looks like. Anything else? Okay, thanks Beth. Thank you. That's really helpful. We'll come back in five minutes for Christine Holquist, and here's a copy of the bill that we're gonna be looking at right after Christine talks to us, and we'll be done by 415, I would think. Thanks. Welcome back to Senate Education, Wednesday, January 18th, 335. We're gonna hear from Christine Holquist, the Executive Director of Vermont Community Broadband Board, and we'll be in at just a moment for a while, just so you know, Senator. Thank you for letting me in. Yeah, absolutely. And there's Mr. Fish, can you hear us, Rob? I can hear you. Okay, the irony, if this doesn't work. It's not. And is Christine joining you? I had assumed that she was already on. Let me find out. She's joining now. Can you turn the volume up a little bit? First back row. Yeah. This is the fiber that was delivered to the wek yard over the summer. Ms. Holquist, can you hear us okay? Yes, I can. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you both for joining us. So the reason, of course, we're interested in learning how the CUDs and broadband expansion are going generally, but with a particular eye towards schools and of course families, kids who are at home, if they ever needed to be home again as you know, for COVID or some other unforeseen situation that may hit us in the future. But our eye of course is toward education. And you know, toward what I just sort of outlined. So I just want to give you the two of you, the floor, tell us where things are at generally in the state. And then we can talk specifically about education. Yeah, thank you. I would add too that it's not, you know, we'll get to it later in the slides, but it's not just about the school itself, right? It's also about access to knowledge, you know? So we're gonna talk to about our digital equity plan and how people over on the other side of the digital divide are at a disadvantage because they don't, you know, you think about what we use our internet for, especially with this, if you're familiar with this chat NGP program that's out that can actually write papers for you. You know, the world is so entrenched in the digital world these days. So we'll talk about all that. Thank you. And of course it's our favorite topic. So. So Rob's gonna run the slides. We'll kind of give you a status of where we are and why it's important to the communities and take it from there. So of course it's Rob and I, we actually have a pretty good staff right now and our staffing is important in terms of future funding, the actual broadband equity access and deployment program, which is part of the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act. You know, we could be looking at hundreds of millions of dollars, but they want to make sure that we have a strong staff. So I'll talk about what we've done in order to put that in place. Next slide. First, is everybody seeing the full screen right now? Yeah, I'm seeing it. Yes. Okay. For some reason not having my controls sharing this, speaking of technology problems here. I'm really sorry. I'm gonna have to switch this and it's not showing my screen for the presentation side of things. Huh. It was showing for us. Hayden, I hate to put this on. Unfortunately, I'm running a Linux computer. So mine won't show up, right? Yeah, it's showing up. I just can't switch between the slides, but you got it, Hayden. Thank you. All right, so talking about the mission, I'll put this in our words. We have three main missions. One is to get everybody connected. And as you'll hear, we believe we've got the funding and the planning to get everybody connected. The next step is to make it affordable. And that's the challenge we're working on right now. And one of the ways to address affordability is to get as much grant funding as possible because every $50 million we receive in grant funding, we can reduce the cost by $10 to the end customer. And then the third component, which is the point I'm sure that Education Committee wants to focus on is maximizing positive social impact. And what I'm proud to say and happy to say is that is also the goal of the funders. We have $62 and a half billion available from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Equity is an important component of the planning as the national telecommunications and information administration who's managing the fund says, be without equity is bad. Next slide, please. So I'll just hit some of the highlights, the main focus series in 2022. Our focus in 2020 was to build capacity. At the beginning of the year, you know, that was Rob and I, today we have a pretty robust staff. We have an engineering function. We have a financial function. We have a, you know, the whole legal function as well. And this is all really put in place through Act 71. Act 71 was a very innovative piece of legislation. It really has become the envy of a number of states throughout the country are trying to copy what we're doing. You know, we have several years ahead of them in terms of carrying this out, but you know, Nebraska is the latest state that's trying to mimic what we've done. We are leading the country. The NTIA has stated that to our board in terms of everything we're doing here. So I certainly wanna thank the legislature for a very well-constructed piece of legislation. And speaking of construction, Rob will give you a little more detail, but we're providing funds today and we're constructing and getting people connected. And then the other part of our job is to make sure that we have the accountability in place and we monitor the performance. You know, we've got outside plant specifications that the providers need to comply with. And of course, we've got the communication union districts that are gonna hold the providers accountable. Next slide, please. So as we talked, you know, 2023 I need more than a good school for a good education. I talked a little bit about that, you know, it's not just, you know, access when they can't get to school. Of course, we, you know, with all the illnesses going around today, you know, I'm very pleased that, you know, we can have a virtual office because, you know, when I've got a fever I can sit here in front of my computer and the computer won't catch what I got, but we can continue to function. So productivity in the work world has shown to increase significantly. When we talk about school age, you know, education and training, and even into the area of career technical education having those resources available, the knowledge available is critical. And I've, you know, I just finished reading a recent study about, you know, China's education a few years ago was the envy of the world. Now it's no longer the envy of the world because knowledge is becoming a commodity. And it really is about creativity and collaboration, which is important because knowledge can be accessed no matter where you are, assuming that you're connected. So this is, I wanna emphasize how important it is not only be connected while you're in school, it's while you're out of school and even that ties down to some of our technical challenges. For example, you know, we're working with a housing and urban development organizations throughout the state, housing organizations and, you know, some of these multi-dwelling units are provided through cable and the kids come home from school and all of a sudden they don't have the bandwidth they need. So even down to the technical specification to ensure that that equal opportunity for all doesn't, isn't restricted by your ability to pay. Next slide, please. Great, thank you. Thank you, Christine. I'm gonna take a few moments to go over what's happening around the state right now, but I just wanna echo what Christine said is but the walls of the school building is not where education ends anymore. It's the entire community. So that's where our focus comes in and when it comes to educational equity there's only so much you can control at the home. One thing you can control and to assure is equal is providing ubiquitous fiber access to all students and that would be our goal here. The legislature decided that our implementation mechanism is primarily gonna be these entities. These are municipalities that are called communication union districts. This provides both construction but also oversight and accountability for what is happening and a way for the community to respond. During COVID, during the worst of COVID, I'll leave it at that, these entities were incredibly important for identifying Wi-Fi hotspots, for communicating with the superintendents of the schools, providing access and documenting problems and that's only continued as we moved into the phase of where we're constructing permanent infrastructure. We're not into, we're not looking at interim solutions right now. I'm happy to report now that five of the districts are in the construction phase, including Southern Vermont, which is partnered with Consolidated Orphidium Fiber and as of now, they're planning to have the entire district built out by the end of this calendar year. There's also construction happening up in the kingdom, Central Vermont, Maple Broadband and Addison County, Deerfield Valley connected their first customers a few days ago, which is exciting. And then EC-Fiber, the original CUD, we've now reached the point though that 214 of Vermont's towns are members of communication union districts. Each one of these towns has two representatives to the board, this covers 76% of the state's population and 93% of the unserved areas. We're making progress, we're excited for the next year and during the next year, we believe that the other CUDs will also be beginning construction. Next slide. But we are not only focusing on CUDs, they're a primary method for delivering service, but if you don't live in a CUD, you still need to get service and we're happy to report that elsewhere in the state, stuff is happening. Starting in the north, I'm gonna fill in some of the holes here, Town of Fletcher has received the grant from the Northern Borders Regional Commission to build out fiber to the premise. I believe that Consolidated is also gonna be building out fiber in that area this year. Heading south, we've been working closely with Waitsfield Champlain Telecom. They received a grant this summer to connect their, the addresses that are on fiber will be moved to fiber in a phased approach. Further south there, you have the various areas that are TDS, so this is Ludlow and Perkinsville. They have plans to build fiber to 90% of their customers. They're in the contracting phase at this point, but I believe that that's gonna be launched this summer. Then you have the VTEL area where they report serving their addresses with fiber. And then back to Southern Vermont here, even the small town of, small Gore of Glastonbury is now connected with fiber. There's six or eight residents now. So we're making progress on a statewide level through the CUDs and beyond. So next slide. Quickly, I wanna talk about the funding out the door. It's no use holding onto the funds when they're have the capacity, have the accountability and have the skills to move forward. We wanna be getting those funds out the door. We've already distributed $122 million in funding. And this slide actually doesn't include the other, about 2.3 million that we approved last week. Our board meets monthly now. It had been every other week for about four hours. And we put these groups through the ringer to make sure that they have the skills, they have the expertise, have the accountability to get it done, to meet design standards, and to ensure that we are gonna be having 100 by 100 service statewide. Next slide. Yeah, you know, I touched on this before. You know, the challenge of providing service to the unserved areas today is that are the areas that are the most expensive to serve. So, you know, we've got the areas that are most expensive to serve are also the ones that can least afford it. So if you look at the Northeast Kingdom, for example, NEC broadband has 57 towns in its communication union district. And if you overlay energy burden, people are struggling up there. So we're gonna continue to reinforce that we need to get as much grant funding as possible in order to keep right to make it affordable. So grants and creative financing, we're doing a tremendous amount of work to look at different ways we can finance this. For example, one of the low, there's low, if we have to go to the bond market, you know, we're gonna look for low cost bond funding. For example, ESG bonds, environmental, social and governance bonds. We really hit the mark on that. You know, from an environmental standpoint, providing reliable connections, not only is it gonna help the smart grid in order to increase the penetration of renewables, it also enables customers to take advantage of special pricing programs to lower their cost of energy as well as improve the grid's ability to absorb new renewables. So those are the kind of the creative financing, the ways we're trying to attack this thing. Next slide, please. Christine, this might be a good opportunity to talk about the middle mile program. Oh yeah, thank you. Yeah, I'll talk about that. Yeah, so we also, thanks, Rob. We also applied for a grant program that the federal government is offering a billion dollars and they're gonna make 10 to 15 grants available. That means they're pretty significant grants. Initially, we looked at that say, you know, how can Vermont compete with all these other states? But with the reason we are able to compete and we're able to create such a robust application is because we are small and we all work together. So we're one of the only states that put in an application that looks at the statewide network and has the major telecom providers participating with the program. The idea on the middle mile program is we are able to design a robust and resilient network with sub rings throughout the state with geographic redundancy. So if you lose connection because a tree fell on the east, the feed for the east, it'll feed for the west. So we're pretty proud to say that, you know, we did a remarkable job of putting that together. And that would provide another $116 million in funds should we win that grant. So that is gonna require a $30 million match from the state that'll be coming through from the Budget Adjustment Act and we're actually testifying to the Appropriations Committee on Friday about that. I want to talk about workforce development because this involves the career technical education centers throughout the state. This, so every problem is an opportunity. When we look at the project management of this program, you, whenever you do a good project management, you look at the timeline and you say, what are the key constraints? And one of the key constraints, of course, is getting the workforce to do this because we know we need at least a minimum of 200 additional fiber optic technicians. And to get 200, you have to train 600 because you find people can't work in the air and people don't like to work outside, those kinds of things. So it was quite the challenge, right? But at the same time, it's quite the opportunity because we could create a program that allow people to move from lower income jobs into the higher income sector. And we were putting a career development program together with that. We're working with Vermont Technical College who's really big key to this program to provide credits for the program. So people could even go on to become electrical mechanical engineers. They want to go into IT, they can use this program. And the idea is we'll pay people to get trained. And we've made arrangements with all the major telecom providers. As soon as they leave this program, they'll go right into a pay job. So we don't interrupt, we don't interrupt their pay. We have a pay a forward program where that, you know, they work X number of years for the employer that money gets paid back so we can continue the program moving forward. This has been a great collaboration and it'll provide a great opportunity for folks at Vermont. And we've spent a lot of time developing the training because it needs to be actually physically in a pole yard so people can work in the air. So we built a four day training program. The first program will be offered in April during spring break for the schools and we'll be beta testing it with the CTE students and we'll be continuing to offer that into the future. Next slide, please. So, you know, digital divides the issue, equities the goal and inclusion is the work. This is about, you know, you get down to the basic constitution of what America is about. We're about providing equal opportunity for all. Today, that digital divide has really created a barrier for that equal opportunity. That barrier doesn't just exist in urban and rural as well because there are pockets, there are urban pockets and even including in Burlington where that, you know, there isn't just that much money so people don't get connected. You know, the way it's telecom has been done because it's been done through the market. The market doesn't go where the money doesn't exist and this program is all about addressing that issue and taking care of that digital divide so everybody can be included and have an opportunity for a better future. Next slide, please. So anyway, we cranked through this so we could give you some time for questions. Let's open it up for questions now. Great, did you shake that off, Noah? Thank you both, that was helpful. I'll just kick it off. I'm wondering if you're in connection with the agency of education to understand what schools really don't have access to need access. I mean, do you have a sense of that for your work with AOE? You know, as I presented this committee, you know, I was looking at the list so we just had a digital equity kickoff and we've been working, we spent the last two months reaching out to different organizations and so for example, we've got an advisory committee we have a $518,000 digital equity grant from the federal government to build a five-year plan for inclusion and once we finish the plan, we'll get five years of funding for this and we've reached out to the department of libraries on there, department of disability, aging independent living, rural development, racial equity, refugees and immigrants, but the Department of Education is not on there. So as soon as I started presenting this committee, I realized we missed that. Okay. So you're gonna work, you're gonna include the agency of education in that group. Yes, that's actually right. I took even before you mentioned it, I didn't realize. Okay. And we're talking to the CTEs, but we're not talking to them. Okay. And we'll give the agency of education a heads up also of the agency, not sure if they're in the room, but to help work with all of you to again, understand what those, what schools still need to be connected, what schools are out there. We want to next year make sure that every kid can have, you know, I don't know, Chinese lessons with a native Chinese speaker and it would have to be, you know, of course online, do those kids have that access? Right. Yeah, I agree. And I wanna tell you some initial conversations we've had with some of the schools has been around, the focus has been around, you know, how can we get an alternative and lower cost provider for the CUDs? But, you know, that's just, that's not even tipping the iceberg. I like the challenge you just presented to us. Yeah. Also, we do have that data. We have data for every E911 address in the state. We're just not prepared today to present that, but we can get that to you. We've been a little bit overwhelmed with the FCC challenge process to try to make sure we're bringing as much money to the state as possible. Recovering from that and the superintendents were incredibly helpful in getting word out as well as businesses around the state for the challenge process. But our GIS person is a little bit overwhelmed. We apologize for not having that today, but it is something we have to create for the digital equity process and we'll certainly share that. No problem. So when you say you have that data, you're talking about what schools don't have access? Yes. The capabilities, the highest level of broadband speed available to each school. Great. When do you think you could, I understand you guys have been swamped with things. When do you think you might have that to us? When would it be? Just feasibly, you know, when is it possible? I think within the next few weeks, I'm gonna try to under promise and over deliver here. Okay. But Senator Campion, I think you raised the bar. I mean, I think we've got that information, we've provided that information, but I think you set the bar, I like where you set the bar in terms of, we talked about equity goes beyond the walls of the school. You know, we wanna make sure every student has the opportunity to learn Chinese, you know, wherever they are. I think that's where we want to go from a, what do you stand point? Yeah. And when you go to our three goals, connect it affordable and maximize social impact. You know, we think we've got the connectivity piece covered, but the maximize social impact is the challenge. Other questions, please. It's good presentation. I'm just curious on the slide, which is communication union districts. If the percentages indicated on the slide are populations, for example, 76% of the state's population, is that 76% of the state's population is in a CUD or that the installation is complete? I'm not quite sure what the metric is. Is a part of a CUD, is in a town that's a member of a CUD? Okay, so kind of taking it to the next step, is there any kind of programmatic graphic that shows when installations happen over time and what the percentage of the population is covered now versus next year versus the following year, et cetera? Is that? That's gonna vary from communication union district to district depending on which business model they're pursuing. It's very likely the ones that are doing the public private partnership where they're helping an existing provider may have to build out a curve faster, but it's gonna vary from district to district. Although you will be able to see that on our dashboard. So I don't know, I think you've got that link in the presentation. We're gonna be very, very transparent and provide accountability by, we're quarterly forecasting how many addresses are getting connected. You'll be able to go to the dashboard and see our progress on a quarterly basis on who's getting connected, where? Okay, so where are you currently? Well, currently between Southern Vermont and ADK and others, we've probably connected about 11,000 addresses. But remember, last year was getting the CUDs up to building, last year was about, we focused on getting the designs in place, approving the business plan issue with the grants and getting the CUDs staffed up to carry it out. So, Robert, you're gonna see much fat, this is the year of construction, right? Rob showed you that five of the 10 CUDs are actually in construction now, and the others are very close. Some of those are moving very fast. Once we get into construction, things can move fast. But the past year has been really about building up the broadband offices, we use an outside design firm, CTC, to review the designs, we review the business plans, they review the business plans, and we've issued, we've now got grants issued to get the CUDs constructing. We've also purchased materials ahead of time. One of the nice things, we discovered that, for example, Fiber had a one-year lead time, so we pre-purchased the materials needed for the entire state. It was about a $7 million purchase, but because we did a collective purchase, we saved $2 million. So, it's significant savings by doing that, and also, so we've got everything in place to really hit the ground running. And then we encourage you to look at the dashboard that's linked in the presentation. The dashboard would be key, got it. There's a few things we didn't share. We didn't share in our underdevelopment at this point, and it's going to improve, because transparency is important here, and especially as we enter the construction phase, you're going to start seeing things happen, as opposed to this study was completed, and then we purchased this amount of Fiber. So, we're excited for this next year. All right, Senator Weeks has another follow-up. Same slide. You say 93% of promises are without access to 25-3. What's 25-3? So, 25-3? Yeah, that's the speed. Unfortunately, I don't want to get into too big a sinkhole here, but even that 25-3 is not reliable. But 25-3 means you get 25 megabits down, three megabits up in terms of connection speed. And that primarily means DSL, which is a technology, so they aren't even getting that. You might as well assume that 25-3 is not served. It's just poor service. There's a lot behind this. Unfortunately, we're in a battle with the telecom. We're not in battle anymore. Consolidate actually agreed. Consolidate agreed that 25-3 is not serviceable, and they probably don't get that. Just to back it up a little bit. So, you have the download speed, so that's if you're watching a video. If you're uploading a video, you're using that upload speed. So, when it comes for all of anything with remote learning or having a Chinese class taught by a native Chinese speaker, like that's where you need the upload speed, and you need to be symmetrical too. Yeah, when Rob talks about those, we'll use that, we'll stay with that example. Training in Chinese, you're not gonna get that with 25-3. So, the way to think about it is if you see 25-3, it's not adequate for the needs of education and business. But you're saying here 93% of premises statewide without access to 25-3. Yes. So, it's current state. That's currently. That's either worse. Right. That's better. Yeah, there's proposals out there to up to a minimum broadband speed, but consider broadband is to 100 over 28 up to one million cable customers are receiving today. If you're on DSL or if you're on wireless connection, maybe you're receiving 25-3 most likely. It's more like 10-1, and there's a question of a dependable levels. Anything else? I have 100 questions. Yeah, no, we may have the two of you back actually. You know, we sort of just touched on it maybe sometime next week for another 30 minutes. I think we all have some additional questions, but we have a witness waiting and we need to move on. Yeah, that's good. We can have the data for you then. Okay, that'd be great. Okay, terrific. Thank you both for joining us. Thanks for the overview. And we'll look forward to seeing both of you soon. Thank you. What a wonderful afternoon, everybody. Thanks. Thank you. What confused me is when it says 93% of premises statewide are without access to 25-3, that seems very discouraging. The media on this. That's like copper. Right. Yeah, it's not fiberglass. Yeah. Okay. There's more to explore here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this seems like you're wheeled up, so that's good. Oh yeah, communication is big time. Yeah, because I'm completely ignorant. Not completely, but a pretty big thing. I'm glad you're back. Okay.