 Welcome everybody. Senate Education May 21st. We're continuing our remote hearings during the COVID emergency. Today we're looking at both UVM and the state colleges just to recap the meta situation. Both systems are looking at huge shortfalls in the coming year. VSC also had controversy around potential reconfiguration. Each, the president of UVM and the chancellor of the state college system each put in requests for $25 million in appropriations over and above existing appropriations. So just a word to anyone watching but also to our witnesses. This committee has expressed strong support for both of those asks and some of that will be able to be paid for with COVID-19 cares funding. Some of it won't but the committee understands and and I think appreciates the fiscal needs at both institutions or sets of institutions. So with that said, we're looking today to hear faculty perspective. We have heard, as I said, from the top administration at UVM and at the state colleges. Today we'll be talking to faculty. In the coming weeks we'll talk to students and we will go back to faculty and to top administration as the weeks go by, especially in the case of the Vermont State Colleges. Where that stands right now is there's a third party being hired to do an independent financial assessment of the state college system. On the basis of that the legislature will determine funding to bridge for the coming year up to the stated figure from Chancellor Spalding of $25 million. So with that let's go to our agenda and I'd start with Professor Helen Scott and I just want to say in full disclosure I teach at the University of Vermont. I teach in the College of Arts and Sciences. I'm a member of AFT and those are no secret those affiliations. With that said, there is controversy at UVM over funding within the College of Arts and Sciences and I believe that's where we'll start today. Welcome Professor Scott. Thank you. Good afternoon to everybody and thank you to Senator Baruth and all of the members of the committee to give us this opportunity to testify today. The University of Vermont is a deeply unequal institution with great wealth concentrated at the top but widespread poverty distributed at the bottom. There are extreme pay differentials. Top administrators make high six figure salaries while many staff earn well below a livable wage. The pandemic has both laid bare and intensified these inequalities at UVM as globally. The impact is falling hardest on the poor, on people of colour, on the vulnerable. Through sickness or lost jobs and income many in our community have been directly harmed. Those with little to begin with are least able to cope with such calamities. The UVM administration's response will exacerbate these inequalities. Their planned budget cuts will impose an undue burden on the poorest. They will damage our educational mission making it harder to retain and recruit students. What's more because the cuts and reductions fall on those who are lowest paid the savings will be relatively small. This approach will bring maximum pain with minimum gain. The leadership of UVM has not presented us with a clear strategy. They have not explained the nature of the fiscal crisis or how much they need to save or why. Their messages about the state of the budget have been contradictory and their approach has been piecemeal and uneven. But the common thread is that those with the least will suffer the most. In my college Arts and Sciences the Dean has announced a hiring freeze on staff and part-time faculty and a 25% reduction for many lecturers. Our non-teaching staff many of whom already earn well below the level wage face uncertainty and precarity. Many are expecting to lose their jobs at the end of the month. Part-time teachers are certainly in jeopardy. They teach essential courses for little compensation. They keep programs running and ensure continuity for our students. They are paid between $6,000 and $7,000 per course without benefits contingent on enrolment. The savings from cutting part-time faculty are poultry. As a colleague recently said, if you think of the budget as a container of large boulders they are frantically picking out the pieces of gravel. Lecturers who make an average salary of around $60,000 face a 25% pay cut that will bring many below the livable wage. These cuts will also hurt tenured and tenure-track faculty who will be expected to take up the slack. In my department in English we are scrambling to cover more than 20 lost courses. In addition, the Dean has cut stipends and course releases for faculty who direct special programs. These include programs that are central to our commitment to equity and diversity, sexuality, gender and women's studies, Jewish studies and critical race and ethnic studies. These cuts will damage our programs, our students and our morale. The administration's approach is the product of the corporate model that has come to dominate higher education. As state funding has steadily decreased, UVM has relied more and more on tuition. This leads to an emphasis on image at the expense of education. We have seen the inflation of student tuition costs, exponential growth of high paid executives and managers, investment in amenities, branding and consulting over teaching and learning, a board of trustees with little or no academic background, a centralized decision making that excludes unions, faculty, staff and students. One of the most dramatic shifts has been the sea change in faculty positions. At the end of the 1960s, the vast majority of university teachers were full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty based on the model of the scholar-teacher with an expectation of security and longevity. Now, non-tenured track faculty, lecturers are the majority. These lecturers who do twice the teaching at half the pay are highly qualified but receive no institutional support for research, service or advising. At the same time, therefore, the workload of the shrinking body of tenured faculty has increased. The administration's regressive and damaging cuts are the logical outcome of this model. At this time of unprecedented crisis, we need an entirely different approach. We should protect faculty, staff and students and invest in the lifeblood of our institution, which is the pursuit of knowledge. The administration of UVM should tap into the considerable wealth of the institution and come up with alternative budget models. If after taking these measures, UVM is indeed in fiscal crisis, then it should be saved by state funding. But such money must come with anti-austerity guarantees. The point of the bailout surely is to stabilize the economy and protect the community by saving jobs and investing in our youth. It must not be used to sustain six figure salaries, perks and country club memberships for an elite top administration. Finally, UVM does not exist in isolation. We are part of the entire education system from early childhood to K through 12 to the state colleges and universities. If any part of this interconnected body is injured, we are all hurt. That is why we must push for full funding for the whole system. As you've probably heard in his comments earlier this week, the Fed chair Jerome H. Powell said that there was really no limit to what the central bank could do for the private sector. Quote, the one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that the Federal Reserve will be doing everything we can to support the people we serve. But why do businesses get bailouts and schools get budget cuts? We need a people's bailout. If we were to return to taxes on the level of taxes on the wealthy to the Eisenhower era, we could restore vital services, protect jobs and lives and assure a healthy, vibrant education system. Education is a fundamental human right. And it's crucial to the health and well being of the people of our state. Our schools, colleges and universities will be essential if we are to forge a response to the pandemic and the associated economic crisis that is humane and just. Now is not the time to compromise the future of the month. Thank you. Thank you very much. Questions for Professor Scott. Senator Ingram. I was just wondering, Professor Scott, are you a tenure track faculty member or are you one of the part time lecturers? Thank you, Senator Ingram. I'm a tenured professor. I'm a full professor of English. So you're actually advocating on behalf of your colleagues. You're not, you're not, in fact, just being self focused. I am advocating on the behalf of my colleagues. It pains me to see such valued, beloved teachers and scholars be hurt in this way. And I do not think that it's questionable for me to sit back and say nothing. At the same time, I do feel strongly that by advocating for my colleagues, I am also advocating for myself. Because as I've tried to explain the turning of full time, tenured faculty positions into part time and non tenured lecturers is part of the bigger process, which I think is damaging to the well being of all of us. And I also know that my course load will increase with no extra pay as a result of these cuts. Thank you, Senator Perchlick. Yes, thank you, Professor Scott. Is there a land grant college, university or other public university that you could point us to that has done this the right way or in your view? Because that these cuts are happening across the country. And I'm wondering if there's places that you would guess we look to you on how they have balanced their ship. Yeah, according to your your view is the better way to doing. Yeah, thanks for the question, Senator. My colleagues are at this moment researching that very question. And I believe that Professor Cornblue is going to look at some models that will help that I'm an English professor. So as you imagine, budget design is not my strong point. But we are actively looking at the models so that we can share them with our administration. Thank you very much. So not seeing any other questions. And with a full witness list, let's then move if we can to Professor Cornblue and welcome. Please feel free, Felicia, to introduce yourself or jump in anywhere you like. Okay, can I be heard? Yes. All right, very good. So thank you so much for hearing us, Senator Baruth, and everyone on the committee. I'm going to probably read more of my testimony than I ordinarily would if we were all together and my pillar for the benefit of those who may be watching on YouTube. But I do want to start with two framing points that aren't in my written testimony. And the first is just to say, we love our university, and we're so proud of the work we do, educating Vermonters and non Vermonters alike in critical thinking and research and other skills. And we absolutely think that you should help maintain a robust system of higher education in Vermont. So under different circumstances, the fact that the Vermont Senate is considering and the legislature in general is considering $25 million for the University of Vermont and Vermont State Colleges would be the most welcome news. And even under these circumstances, we do want you to sustain the University of Vermont and we want the institution to survive. And we also want to talk to you about issues of equity and fairness and democracy. So the second point is, we may not know all of the policy levers that are available to you. As you work with the University of Vermont to help sustain its finances, and also to help it be true to its values and Vermont values, as it does so. There may well be things that you know that we don't know, but we're, we're just willing to work with you and to ensure that our university is proceeding according to the values of democracy and fairness. So that having been said, I'm a tenured professor at the University of Vermont and a former president of our Faculty Union United Academics. But today, I'm here just as a member of an ad hoc group of concerned members of the UVM community that we call UVM United Against Cuts. This group formed just two weeks ago in response to the draconian unfair proposals that UVM administration put forward just as our spring semester was ending. At a time when UVM's top administrators could have provided solace and a positive vision for the future, when they could have drawn on the amazing work that my colleagues did in saving the spring semester by pivoting rapidly to online instruction. And they could have underlined the value of our humanistic and scientific research in the time of great national crisis. Instead, we were appalled to discover them offering a cramped vision of UVM as a hierarchical institution in which those who are closest to our educational mission are asked to bear the brunt of proposed budgetary cuts. Members of our group, UVM United Against Cuts come from a cross section of the faculty, tenured, non-tenured, full-time, part-time. Our group also concerns students, include students who know that their educations are imperiled when courses are cut and faculty are mistreated. And it includes UVM alums and community members who know that UVM plays a very special role in our state. And that when any employees are underpaid and disregarded, we're all at risk. We've been driven to act by the administration's hypocritical talk about shared sacrifice. As we see it, there's been plenty of proposed sacrifice, but no sharing. The president of our university, Sirish Garamella, has pledged to cut his base salary from $480,000 a year to around $440,000, although that's just his base pay. His real compensation is more like $630,000 a year. Several deans have offered modest cuts in their own pay of around 8% per year. And at the same time, by contrast, the deans of the colleges of arts and sciences and the Rubinstein School of Environmental and Natural Sciences have informed 72 of their non-tender-track faculty that their workloads will be cut from 100% of their usual number of courses to 75% with a concomitant cut in their income. The average salary, as we estimate it, of 72 top executives of UVM is $251,000. The pay cut needed to produce $1.1 million in savings from the ranks of these highest paid university employees is 6%. So 6% of the highest earners would give us $1.1 million. That's the same amount of money that would be raised by a 25% cut to the 72 non-tender-track professors. By contrast, the average annual compensation for these professors is $59,000 a year. And if administrative proposals succeed, and their income is cut by 25%, then it will drop to $44,000. So we ask you as elected officials of the state of Vermont to demand four things of UVM's administrators before you approve the dispersal of additional state or federal funds to help weather this period in our history. Number one, open the books. The administration says that all these cuts are necessary because of the effects of COVID-19. And certainly we don't want to underestimate the pandemic's impact on the society or potentially on UVM's finances, but we can't judge the administration's claim because they refuse to reveal the complete figures that are driving their proposals. So you must insist to the administration that they answer the question, what is the bottom line number that they are seeking and savings and why? They must share all relevant financial data with the university community and use those data as the basis for engaging in deliberation and negotiation with representatives of the UVM employees who may be asked to accept cuts. And here I'm thinking particularly, although not exclusively about the labor unions that we have chosen democratically to represent us in negotiations with our employer. Number two, chop from the top. If indeed cuts are necessary, then they must come from the people with the greatest security and the highest incomes, not the people who work hardest and make the least. And here is where I have some information about comparative situations, comparative universities. The administration tells us that its proposals are unavoidable. But we know that, for example, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, a very excellent land grant university with a fine research program, the chancellor has instituted a 15% pay cut for top administrators and a program of progressive furloughs. So those making over $150,000 a year will take the most furlough days, and those making less than $50,000 a year will take the fewest. We're also aware of the situation at Longwood University, whose president took a 25% reduction in full salary, and each of whose vice presidents took a 20% cut. All other reductions for the following year are to be progressive, with those earning the least facing the lowest cuts and those earning the most facing the highest cuts. That's unlike the UVM approach, which is precisely the reverse. Those at the top taking the high, the lowest percentage and those at the bottom taking the highest percentage of their of cuts. Number three, use all available funds. If this is a crisis, then we must insist that UVM treat it like one. The administration and consultation and negotiation with representatives of all the stakeholders must access endowment and other funds that exist to sustain the university in extraordinary times. Financial resources don't exist in a vacuum. They exist to preserve our educational and our research mission, to serve our students, and to ensure that everyone in the UVM community is compensated decently for their labor. Fourth, and finally, we must demand, you must demand that all tenure track professors who have been informed that their employment contracts will be reduced, will be restored to their full teaching loads and their full compensation for academic year 2020-2021. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Questions for Professor Cohn with Senator Hardy? To unmute myself. I don't know if this is the right question or if you're the right person to ask Felicia, but I'm wondering if what the enrollment estimates are that the college or the university is using for the fall, based on the impact of the COVID crisis, and what the class size estimates are, given that they have determined that they are going to try to do classes in person. My assumption is that both you'll have a lower enrollment because fewer students will choose to come back, but that your class sizes will also likely be smaller because you'll have to accommodate social distancing. So I'm wondering how that is playing into what they're communicating to you regarding the budget situation. Yeah, that's a great question. So there probably are models that the top university administration is using that form the basis for some of their proposed cuts, but we have not been given access to that information. United academics as a representative of tenure track and non-tenure track faculty has not been given that information and neither has the faculty or the student body as a whole. There is a planning group at the central administrative level called UVM strong. And in its initial formation, there was no faculty representative on that body. It's now being recreated and some members of the faculty Senate will be joining it. But the union does not have a seat at that table. And I believe that students do not have a seat at that table either. So that's exactly the information that we'd like to see. We have only snippets of information, for example, in the College of Arts and Sciences, which is experiencing some of the greatest proposed cuts. So far, we know that student deposits for the following academic year are on pace with expectations and projections. So we would very much like to know exactly what those what those estimates are and and, you know, have a serious negotiation and deliberation about any any necessary cutbacks from that from that point forward. So this tags on to a question that I had in and Felicia, maybe this is for you, maybe for Sean, but I had thought that the union had the ability to get financial disclosure, not not complete or of every set of figures, but that its abilities to to see the books during negotiations, which are ongoing, was was stronger than the faculty as a as a whole. Any sense of that, Felicia? And then maybe we can ask Sean if he has anything to add. Yeah, so I'll just say briefly. The current president of United Academics shared with me a series of emails that I believe she also shared with your committee in which she she sought to have a conversation with the provost directly with her with our current UVM provost about financial planning for the following year and about the the COVID crisis. And the provost has essentially refused to meet with her. As I I did get that email. OK, good. So that's one thing. And then just in terms of in terms of financial data, yes, United Academics and the other unions that represent UVM employees are entitled to request financial data. Often they have to file FOIA requests in order to gain that information. And of course, they have to know what precisely what they're asking for. So what we're saying today is that we that we want to see the same information that's available to our top administrators as they pursue the the planning that they're pursuing. And we wanted to actually, you know, what what their what their bottom line what their sense is of their bottom line need for cuts and what the rationale is for that. And we want to be able to deliberate and negotiate with them about if you know if the if those cuts are are necessary, who will bear the brunt of those cuts. So that's that that's the information that we do not currently have that we would like to have access to. And that makes sense. I just my understanding of the email that I read was that the provost was saying whether you bought it or not. She was saying that she didn't want to have an auxiliary meeting, but wanted the negotiations and the normal channels to be the way that that information came out. Back to the original question. Can the union get that, which I think you just responded to. Yeah. And I'll just add. Yeah. United academics, which represents all of our faculty is currently in negotiations about our next faculty contract. So those are going forward. But this is a separate thing. This crisis planning and and we believe that the union should have a distinct seat at the table, which is different from its collective bargaining seat at the table, you know, in this process. No, I I I get it. I think it it becomes difficult when you for both sides, when you have ongoing negotiations. But Professor Montesano, let's turn to you. And after that, to Sean Whitters, and then we'll be moving to the Vermont State College situation. Professor Montesano, thank you very much, Senator Baruth and members of the Education Committee for hearing us today. I'm a senior lecturer at the University of Vermont and the Romance Languages Department and an affiliated faculty of the Global Studies Program. I'm also a single parent. In 2019, the Vermont legislative joint fiscal office published The Vermont Basic Needs and Livable Wage Report, which states that for a single parent with two children living in Chittenden County, an annual salary of eighty one thousand three hundred and seventeen dollars constitutes a livable wage. After the sanctioned twenty five percent reduction in my salary as a lecturer at UVM, I will still be a full time lecturer, but my salary will now be forty one percent below the livable wage. During my thirteen years at UVM, I have worked hard to pay for day care, diapers, housing, food and heat for my family. While at the same time striving to exceed UVM standards for teaching, I have done my part well as have my colleagues. However, the pain of this fiscal crisis is unfairly falling on us. This fall, I will be paid seventy five percent of my salary while teaching a full course load. I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to work my full time job at the university and find time for a part time job that will make up the difference in pay, especially during a pandemic. This pay cut means means food and housing insecurity for me and my girls. What would a twenty five percent pay cut mean to the top earning administrators at the of the UVM community? Would it mean food and housing insecurity like I face? The numbers tell me that clearly it would not. If indeed we are facing a fiscal crisis, then the administration's lack of transparency only adds to the financial peril of the state as a whole. The disproportionate cutting of salaries by the administration is undermining both the UVM community and the Vermont economy. A state university should contribute to the economic vitality of the community in which it operates. After working so hard for 13 years, I have only recently been able to relax about spending money. Now, after this twenty five percent cut to my salary, I'm right back. I'm right back where I started. If the burden of these cuts falls mostly on the lowest wage earners and thrusts us on the public assistance, it means decreased spending power of hundreds of Vermonters. Less money spent by clothing, purchasing homes, going out to restaurants and supporting local businesses. These cuts these cuts won't just hurt the staff and lecturers at UVM. They will hurt the Vermont economy. When I look at the institution that I work for, this doesn't make sense to me. A twenty five percent cut to my salary at UVM yields hardship, frustration and pain for me as a single parent. More proportionate cuts from the top earning administrators salaries would not affect them as these cuts affect me. I believe in the public university system and its mission. I know from personal experience that higher education is a great equalizer. I believe that Vermonters expect a state university to be run in accordance with the ethics that it teaches. I should not have to put myself into financial instability in order to educate our Vermont students. UVM is making cuts without being transparent. Your legislature is doing its best to hold the state accountable to transparency during these times. Please hold UVM to the same standard. Thank you. Thank you very much. Questions for Professor Montesano. Senator Hardy. Yeah. Thank you, Professor Montesano. Again, I'm not sure if you're the right person to ask this question, but I'm wondering what the administration has said. The focus has been on faculty, but have they announced also similar types of cuts for staff for non non faculty staff members who work for the university and how have they laid that out? It's if I don't have the right information here, one of my colleagues can jump in. But I as I understand it, staff are in a holding pattern right now. They're not being told either way, but some of them are anticipating maybe being cut by the end of this month. Has the university announced how much how much money they're trying to cut or a percentage they're trying to cut? They're just or you don't know what it is. They OK. OK, with with that, thank you so much. Sean Witters. Please feel free Sean to to comment on anything that's been said or to make an entirely new proposal and presentation. Thank you, Senator Ruth, and thank you, everyone else. It's really an honor to be here and talk with you. I want to say that part of the reason I'm here also is because of the courage of the faculty that are here that are speaking up about really surprising situations that I don't think much of the public really has a good insight into the assumption as we teach in higher education. Therefore, we're paid as well or better than secondary education folks. And that always isn't the case. And I just like to really highlight my colleague, Professor Montesano, is moving testimony in this regard. And also note that to date, I believe she has not heard back from a president, Sirash Garamella, in this open letter that she wrote to him, which is incredibly moving in which I think you would do well for everyone committee to read carefully and consider as we think about the ethics of education in Vermont. I'm a senior lecturer in the English Department. I'm faculty in the College of Arts and Science and also in the Graduate College at the university. And I'm really here today to speak about my experience of returning to and trying to stay in Vermont, a vital issue for our state, especially under the present conditions. As my colleagues, Professor Scott and Cornblough have detailed, covid has not just created inequities. It has revealed and compounded equities that have inequities that have existed for a long time. Our discussion today isn't simply about covid. Let's make that clear about UBM. This isn't just about covid. This isn't just about covid for the Vermont State Colleges either. What has been revealed at particular UBM in what I'm seeing are gaps between UBMs intended or expressed or taught values and institutional practices. And we need to talk about what this means for the state of Vermont and what it means for Vermonters. In my time at the university, I've watched as UBM administrations have endlessly talked about economic hardship. This isn't new. All the while pursuing, as you all see, massive building projects and huge increases in executive pay while seeking to impose more and more precarity on those at the bottom of the institution or even at the middle of the institution. We have money for a three million dollar bridge from a dormitory to the library for a ninety five million dollar new gym. But not for the deep institutional knowledge that resides in the faculty and particularly in the lectures who do the majority of teaching at UBM now. Fifty four percent of the teaching as of spring 2020. Only one out of every three instructional dollar is now spent on on teaching at UBM. Where is this money going? What priorities are really guiding such planning? We need a clearer picture, which is why we're asking UBM to open its books and to reaffirm its principal commitment to faculty governance. I want to tell you a little story. Because I think it's a familiar one that I share with so many workers in Vermont. This isn't just about the university. I think senators you'll all agree that this is a deeper story across communities in our state. And so I want to speak in that context. I grew up in Norwich, Vermont. Just over the line from South Stratford, actually, and not too far down the road from the Elizabeth Copper mine and from Justin Morrill's homestead. I attended UBM and was inspired by amazing faculty, some of whom are actually here today who I'm honored to now call my colleagues. To become a teacher and a scholar after graduating from UBM, my future wife and I moved away and we sought her higher degrees. For her, it was a master's degree in urban and regional planning and I received my PhD in English. When she was offered a job by the state of Vermont to work on water quality and stormwater from the Elizabeth mines that I grew up nearby to Lake Champlain, we chose to move back to be near my family and to start our own. I'm not long after I began teaching in UBM at a lectureship and I chose to stay in this lectureship. Not seeking a tenure track job elsewhere, though I have a PhD and an active research program. I chose to stay at UBM because I love my department because I love UBM and because I'm committed to returning to and staying in Vermont because I want to be with my family and because I value the state. And this puts this whole struggle in context for me in a human sense because this isn't just about UBM again. So I've been on faculty at UBM since 2006. In terms of institutional costs like many of my non TT colleagues, I'm affordable, experienced and flexible. Like many others, I bring a high degree of specialization to teaching a very wide array of courses. I'm routinely called on in my teaching to teach modern and postmodern literature, literary theory, critical race and ethnic studies, composition and rhetoric and film and television. I'm a recipient of UBM's Krepisch-Morris Award for Excellence in Teaching and co-director of my department's annual student symposium. I'm presently writing a book on representations of addiction in media and culture, a project I began because of UBM's commitment as a moral land-grant institution to respond into the needs of our community. By the way, those courses which I'm planning to teach on addiction studies next spring are possibly on the chopping block. I just want to make that note. The opioid epidemic has altered the story of Vermont. And so I chose to use my scholarship and teaching to respond. That's the ethical commitment of teaching. That's the ethical commitment of a land-grant institution. UBM's responsibility is to quote President Suresh Garamela's 2020 op-ed from the Rutland Herald to improve the economic and cultural well-being of the people in their state. That's why I'm here. And that is the commitment I see being imperiled by the cuts that will disrupt the vital work and teaching of so many talented colleagues and threaten the ability of talented teacher-scholars to stay here and to work with the amazing young Vermonters and out-of-state students we see in our classrooms. Keeping this commitment in mind, note that under the present UBM administration's plans, I will be reduced to making $44,000 a year. This is below Vermont's estimated livable wage for a two-income, two-earner, two-child household. Like many of my generation, economic survival requires a dual income. I think we all know this. My wife's ability to work for the state and contribute to vital water quality projects is reliant on my income from UBM and vice versa. That's what we do to get by in this state. We'll be able to squeak by this year, probably, I think so. Thanks to the reliability of at least one of our jobs for the time being. Is this sustainable? No. And I have to tell you, I'm not just worried about about income loss here. I'm worried about my job. Under the prevailing vision of UBM where cuts always come from the bottom first. I know that I'm not alone in this and I know that for my part-time colleagues, especially this is actually already reality. All right. So the part-time faculty have already been cut. Their jobs have been turned to staff attribution for the following. These are going to be redistributed amongst the faculty. Increasing workload, decreasing advising time for faculty, decreasing time we have to spend with students. And for me, my commitment, the reason I won the teaching award at UBM is that one on one commitment to students, that kind of work that everyone here, I know deeply values their educations. I know this from learning a little bit about the senators and the panel. This is very clear to me. You know, you all had a teacher at some point that made that connection with you. I want to have the chance to do that with my students. That's that's what I really am asking for. The cuts they've talked about, first of all, I just need to say they're not standard. I won't get into the CBA, but I'm glad to talk about that one. If anyone has questions about why I think this is the case. This is a pay cut. There are also tons of hidden cuts going on. Increases in workloads, some of which will be grievable. If I could just alert us to the time. Just wrap up. I've got one. So we've already noted, by the way, that other institutions, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Duke University and Longwood University are treating COVID as a chance to model equity and sustainability. Other institutions are seizing this opportunity, looking at the other side of this crisis. The other side of COVID is the chance to create more equity, more sustainability. I'm here today asking our elected officials, community leaders and University of Vermont leadership to take this opportunity. That's the story that matters for me and the story for Vermonters trying to stay in Vermont and to make Vermont work. Thank you. Thank you so much. Unless someone has a pressing question, I'd like to move to the state colleges. Obviously, today is, you know, a double-sided coin and it's very illuminating for us to hear about both situations. I hope it will also be illustrative to all of you that we have a lot of things on our plate. We have the situation at the state colleges, which is which is dire in certain of the institutions. We have also childcare, adult learning, the Community College of Vermont, which is our instruction that goes on in the prisons. So we have a great deal of financial need out there and I just want to make sure everybody's aware of that. But let's turn to the Vermont State Colleges and just a quick reminder. Chancellor Spalding put out a plan that called for the closing of three campuses tumult ensued and the chancellor is no longer in his position. That plan has technically been pulled back. But the financial circumstances which the trustees say brought on the plan are still very much in play. And so we have heard from the acting chancellor and the ex chancellor. But I wanted today to hear from some people representing faculty around the state college system. So first I'll go to Professor Shaw. Thank you for joining us, Professor Shaw. And thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak before this committee. I appreciate it very much. My name is Tyrone Shaw. I'm a professor of writing and literature at Northern Vermont University, Johnson, where I also serve as chair of the faculty. Family demonstrating clear and practical vision. The Vermont legislature in 1961 created the Vermont State Colleges to be and I'm quoting here supported in whole or in substantial part with state funds close quote. The current level of state support obviously doesn't meet that criteria and that in fact the ratio of public funding to tuition has declined steadily over four decades from 49 percent in 1980 to the current level of 17 percent. For twenty eight years, I've been teaching within the Vermont State College's system. Successive chancellors, boards of trustees, presidents, faculty, staff, associated unions and students have struggled increasingly in the face of dwindling resources and higher tuition. We have now reached the tipping plate. Although some modest increases have been realized recently, they are by no means sufficient to turn this lamentable situation around. On the contrary, pressures at every level within our post secondary system in the state colleges continues to grow despite our considerable efforts at both cost cutting and the sweeping reorganization of Johnson and Linden State Colleges into one entity two years ago, not quite two years ago, Northern Vermont University. Vermont has won the race to the bottom nationally in terms of state funding for higher education and consequently to the top for high tuition. This is some of what decades of disinvestment in public higher education have brought. The consequences have been real and they've been negative. Meanwhile, funding for public colleges and universities in our neighboring states, our competitors now stands at an average of 30 percent, putting us in future generations at an even greater disadvantage. If we're to stop the exodus of Vermont's youth to other states, we must reject this status quo that has driven thousands of students deeper into debt with each passing year that has put post secondary education financially out of reach for many remoders. And that has contributed to the crisis we face today. To be sure, we have ominous demographic trends and a pandemic compounding all of this. But the underfunding issue has been longstanding, a slow moving train wreck that has finally gathered speed with catastrophic results. Those enabling statutes of 1961 reflect the realization that public higher education is a manifest good, a wise investment in our youth and Vermont's future. There's also the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. On average, those holding the bachelor's degree are likely to earn 66 percent more in a lifetime than a typical high school graduate, which translates to more than $20,000 a year. The recent public outcry over the proposed closing of Northern Vermont University and Vermont Tech's Randolph campus has taught us how well remoders have come understand this manifest good. Aside from the opportunities afforded by a four year degree, the economic benefits to Vermont of the Vermont state colleges cannot be ignored. For example, using a conservative economic multiplier of 2.5, NVU, for example, annually contributes $113 million to the economy of the northern tier of Vermont. In addition to enrolled students, the university brings in tens of thousands of dollars more for the local economy by attracting nearly 18,000 visitors each year. NVU also serves the highest number of Pell eligible students in the entire VSCS system. Forty six percent of our students are Pell eligible. This speaks to the incredible service of the NVU provides as an access institution to the state of Vermont to our region. These students will choose not to go to college rather than to go elsewhere in the state or out of state. In other words, NVU serves the most vulnerable students and some of the most economically vulnerable regions in our state. It employs 500 people and serves approximately 2,200 students. Collectively, the Vermont State College's system serves nearly 9,000 full-time Vermont students, including CCB. Each of the colleges and universities in this system fulfills vital functions in their respective regions. The public reaction to the specter of those proposed closings speaks eloquently to the importance of the VSC in these localities. That reaction is also the first time in my memory that the people of Vermont have communicated clearly to their legislators that these institutions are vital parts of their lives and need to be adequately funded. I hope that outpouring of support will help this committee and those governing in the people's house to find the will and resources to put the VSCS on a sustainable financial footing, not just for a year, but for generations to come. I suspect that support from the public will only continue to grow as this process moves forward. So what is to be done? Any committee convened by the legislature will be charged, I assume, with a comprehensive look at the Vermont State College's system, including the future of the chancellor's office and all of us welcome that process. We would like, in fact, to be part of it. Any number of changes is possible, including a single accreditation, which could effectively create something like Vermont State University with campuses in Johnson, Linden, Randolph, Castleton, Welliston. Some degree of specialization at each of these campuses would further define these sites. This is a model well established in other states, albeit on a much larger scale. As the process of reimagining the state college's system unfolds, I urge this committee to take a hard look at the composition of the Board of Trustees. I do not mean to impugn their its integrity or its dedication, but this board, along with the chancellor, the former chancellor, has undermined public confidence in both NVU and Vermont Tech through the white paper fiasco last September, when rumors of the closing of the Linden campus surfaced, and most recently with the former chancellor's proposal to close NVU and the Randolph campus in Vermont Tech. Serious harm has been done to these institutions and by extension to the system as a whole. All of us in the Vermont State College System recognize the need for fundamental changes within our system and within the respective institutions. NVU, VTC and Castleton are now engaged in thorough review initiatives, brainstorming, sweeping changes within our respective institutions, the findings of which to be reported to that Board of Trustees in June. None of us believe the status quo is sustainable. Finally, a few suggestions about additional revenue streams to support public higher education. I fully appreciate the pressures that this committee and this legislature endure daily in the face of a severe economic out. First, would it be appropriate to consider public colleges and universities as an extension of K through 12? How could a K through 16 context change the funding picture? A former Senator has proposed raising the purchase and use tax by one quarter of 1% and directing that money to the state colleges. His estimate based on Vermont Department of Taxes data that would yield upward of $4 million annually. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, in 2015, 1.7% of Vermont's budget went to fund higher education, while 2.9% went to corrections. I'd like an update on those figures, but that's the best that I can offer this committee today. What does this say about budget priorities when we spend nearly twice as much on prisons as we do on public higher education? Where is the better investment? We could better leverage our unused campus spaces to rent to satellite space for state agency offices and other organizations as well as where applicable space for community college. Other things certainly ought to be considered in including the longstanding portability provisions from Zsak. Another idea that is floating around right now would be to take future portions of tax proceeds from the tax and regulation of marijuana to fund and if you'll pardon the expression higher education. It is certainly something that's worth considering. And finally, a serious consideration needs to be given to the future and scope of the chancellor's office. At stake now is nothing less than the future of Vermont, its youth, its prosperity, its industry and its workforce. The greatest challenge facing higher education today is not the dreaded demographic trough as real as it may be. We have among the highest high school graduation rates in the country and the lowest in terms of those who go on to college. The real culprit here is affordability. And the solution to that problem can begin right here in this committee today. What we are asking for is a sustainable, predictable, consistent level of funding that will guarantee the future of the Vermont state college system, not only for next year, but for generations to come. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Professor Shaw. I just wanted to make two comments. One is that in addition to education, I also serve on judiciary and I was amazed to find out that the number of prisoners we actually have in Vermont is less than 1400. So when you're talking about how much more we spend on corrections, that's for less than 1500 individuals, which gives you a sense of how lavishly we're spending to incarcerate a single person, not lavish in the sense that they enjoy being there, but in the sense that our system is designed to consume a huge amount of money. And let's see, I can't come up with the other thing I was going to say, but questions for Professor Shaw. Oh, I remember. I have tried to make it our unofficial model in this committee, tax, regulate and educate. And we worked Professor, sorry, Senator Hardy, and the committee worked on a bill trying to move some of the tax and regulate money into free college, or at least greatly reduced tuition for college. I'm still pursuing the idea outside of tuition, just as a direct revenue stream for higher ed. But I imagine that will resurface in the weeks ahead, given the profound hole we find ourselves in. So the governor, as of the midpoint in the regular session, seemed to be moving toward a situation where he could sign a bill if the revenues were used in a certain way, and if there was some solution to the roadside roadside testing problem. So all of the incentives are now much stronger than they were then. So my hope is that before the session is done, we might be able to pass a tax and regulate bill. And as I said, I would be arguing very strongly for a dedicated revenue stream for higher ed. Any other questions or comments for Professor Shaw? OK, let's move to Professor Luce. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Baruth and members of the committee. I really am thankful for a chance to comment on these issues. Since time is short, I'm going to cut to the chase on a couple of things just to underline what Tyrone was saying. The national average for the ratio of tuition to state funding at public universities in the United States is about 0.97 according to few charitable trust data. In Vermont, the ratio is 5.6. We are way off the scale in terms of the level of state funding. And this has really, really damaged us in a severe way. The demographic trends have been cited a lot in the chancellor's white paper and others as to why we're supposedly having problems. But a point I want to make to you today that is that our enrollment problems cannot be attributed to demographic trends. There's two reasons for this. First of all, the level of funding is so low that we have been cut to the bone in terms of staffing, in terms of program development and advertising. So I have provided a document sort of from the grassroots of the faculty here to you. Over the last 24 hours, I've solicited hundreds of comments from faculty on 19 different questions. One of those questions is the staffing cuts that have been made to their department over the last 10 years. Many departments have been cut down to the point where we only have one person on a topic where we used to have two or three. So we're basically at a skeleton staff at this point. Equipping programs has been almost impossible. Most of the equipment that we have obtained has been gotten through course fees, which has meant extra high tuition and costs and debt burden on students. And about 15 years ago or 10 years ago, essentially all targeted advertising for programs ceased. And most of our advertising has been sort of a generic sense. This is exactly against the trend of advertising in these times. And that has crippled our ability to basically grow and recruit new students. One counter example is Castleton. Castleton's enrollment has been growing the last couple of years. And they have seen more investment by about a factor of four than the other three or the other two campuses. I'm not taking a shot at Castleton here. This is the level of investment that should have been made in all of these these campuses. And I think they provide a good illustration of what is possible and what should have been done. So so there is this fundamental issue of this. And we are now at a crossroads where we're hanging in the balance. We're facing a really difficult time this fall with what to do with the COVID crisis. So what I want to appeal to you to say is the following. NVU and VTC in particular need some extraordinary and specialized help to get through this crisis in tact so that we can continue. If we downsize another 20, 25% and this is I think supported in all the faculty comments that I've submitted to you today we or most of them we will essentially become non viable as a university especially as a two campus university. That will essentially be our death now I think. So I would advise you to hold the line against that as strongly as you can. If you don't, we will lose a tremendous number of programs that have been built up over many years that are well known that are extremely well run and efficient and attractive to people and really just need a little bit of help to be able to advertise properly and staff properly. On the issue of the consultant that's been hired there's a lot of skepticism among faculty I think about this and I think the root of it is that bringing in an out of state consultant who doesn't really know us well who's going to only be paid about $17,000 it's I think it's hard for us to imagine that that person even if they're well-meaning and professional could really have any real sense of the value of the state colleges to the local communities and all the issues and detailed issues that we face. It would probably take something more like 10 times that amount of money and time to really get a handle on that. And I think there's a general concern that what might be happening is that those that would like to see the state colleges dramatically reduced are essentially furthering their agenda by bringing in somebody who's more or less known for cutting programs and not really seriously looking at what's really good for the state. So that's our concern. As Tyrone said though, I think all of us are open to ideas about how to improve things. This is what we do in fact we've been working at trying to make things more efficient and to revise our programs and consolidate especially during this merger to improve the colleges. So we're no strangers or opponents to change or improvement. It's I think just the concern is that the push to have us restructured right now may be deriving more from a motive to cut us down in size and possibly put some of our campuses out of business than it really is to improve us. So I would just strongly urge you to look very carefully at the real intent of things and what happens. As far as efficiency goes, if you look at what has happened over the last 10 years, we have already significantly downsized. Lyndon in particular and Johnson, I can't speak, I don't know the numbers as well for VTC but for NVU, we've decreased about 20% something like that and staffing. This has been the this attrition of faculty that has brought us to this sort of bare bones point. And in the process, we've also gotten very highly efficient. I think it's a testament to our efficiency that we've been able to survive with this level, with this ratio of tuition to state funding and in this competitive environment. We've actually been doing pretty well actually considering that very low level of funding. So I would urge people to take that as a sign of health actually and believe in us and look for that extra special boost that's gonna help us survive through the crisis that we're facing this fall. I'd like to finish by mentioning, I've been looking into this issue a lot about what we should do this fall. I'm a scientist, I'm a physicist, I'm a very hardcore data-driven, science-driven person. I try not to let my politics or biases get or even self-interest get in the way of my thinking. I don't personally believe that it's gonna be safe for any campus to open in the fall in person. And I'm very concerned that what we're gonna see is campuses saying that they're gonna open in person in the fall in order to latch on to students. We're gonna see kind of a bloodbath of people trying to steal students from each other. And in my view, what we need is something, a statewide, some kind of coordination to get all the campuses to basically declare that they will go online this fall. That's my own personal bias. And that is going to make it even more difficult for us because I did, on the Facebook group that I started, which has a very large following now on this, I ran a bunch of posts and I saw that huge numbers of students really don't wanna come back this fall for an online instruction there. We're gonna lose a lot to that. That's just the hard reality. And I think that's why a lot of universities are saying that they're gonna open in person this fall. And I think that just underlines the fact that we need more, we're gonna need some very special support to remain intact through this. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just one note, my sense is that that third party who's been hired, part of what they're doing is corroborating the trustees numbers and trying to figure out the precise amount of bridge funding necessary for the coming year. And then also looking at the question of the broad-based financial health. But I don't think that that $1,700 consultant is the whole of what will be laid out in terms of a redesign. I think that's the initial step just to give the Joint Fiscal Committee some sense of security about the numbers that are being thrown around. If that's the case and it's really focused on that, that could be really great actually for you guys to be able to have that picture. I just hope that the consultant doesn't buy into the idea that demographics have been causing the enrollment downturn. Yep, and don't wanna say that that person's report won't be used in a redesign because clearly it will, but there will be other pieces of that redesign. Senator Hardy. Yeah, I thank you for saying that, Senator Beruz. I just wanna underscore that. And I think it's really telling the difference between the Vermont State College system and what we just heard from UVM where there seems to be a lack of data that's out there in public on what's actually going on with the finances of UVM and we hear them saying we want more data. And that's exactly what we're trying to get about that will be public for the Vermont State Colleges so that we as a legislature are able to make more informed decisions about the funding situation, especially given that we're in a position where we don't have total flexibility over the funding dollars that we have with the federal funding. So I think it will be helpful to have that and I don't see it as something that would be used to just shut the campuses down. I have been calling for repeatedly having a broad-based discussion about higher education across our state, including the state colleges, CCV, UVM and our independent colleges to make sure that we're really looking broadly at this situation and including everybody in that conversation. So I will continue to push for that even beyond trying to get a plan for keeping the Vermont State Colleges open for next year. Thank you. I think that will come as a great relief to all the faculty watching us today. Thank you. And thanks very much, Ruth, for saying that. I just wanted to say as well that in some way, we're talking about impacted financial problems produced by underfunding over decades and then the overlay of COVID-19. I thought it was interesting to hear that you personally, as a scientist, are not convinced that campuses can open safely. I know that UVM is shooting for in-person opening with asterisk of procedures in place to protect public health. What those will actually look like, same with the K through 12 system. If you have 25 or 30 kids in a classroom normally and you're gonna open safely, is it that we will do shifts with 15 people in person on one day and then having those 15 people be remotely the next day or some variation hybrid form of online and in-person. We really don't know yet, either K through 12 or higher ed. But that's the big unknown is to what extent will enrollment be driven by last-minute decisions about public health. So just one other general piece of knowledge for everybody watching, we are working right now on a budget adjustment to adjust the budget that's already in place. Then we're working on what's known in the legislature as the skinny budget for the first three months of the coming year because no one is confident that if we tried to do a year-long budget, it would be accurate four months out. So we will be back in the end of the summer to finish a yearly budget. So in other words, we're dividing the budgetary process and the appropriations process into three parts. And all of those are gonna be determined by the best public health and estimate models that we have in place at each point. So with that said, let me move to Joan Richmond Hall. Welcome. And please feel free, we've preserved your full time. So feel free to tell us anything we need to know. Thank you. And I wanna thank the committee for allowing the VSCS to join you today and especially to making time for me. So thanks, Senator Baruth and Ms. Lowell. My name is Joan Richmond Hall. I'm a biochemist by training and I was actually a vaccine researcher at MIT before coming to Vermont. So ask me some COVID questions. I'm good. And just parenthetically, I share my colleagues doubts and we've been meeting at Vermont Tech for three scenarios for teaching face to face, trying to do rotating shifts sort of as you're suggesting Senator Baruth or remote. And it's a particular challenge for us and I'm gonna describe that challenge to you a little bit. I'm also moderator of the faculty assembly at Vermont Tech and I have to tell you that I have a brother who's a Vermont Tech alum, lives in Vermont and works in mass and he did not take the governor's money to do that. He did it all on his own. So go Christopher. So I'm gonna start by just giving you a short picture of VTC because I'm concerned and many of my colleagues are concerned with some recent press that portrays us as carpentry, dairy and diesel. And that's not false, but it's not who we are. It's not the truth of what we do. We have schools of engineering and computing, nursing and health professions as well as agriculture plan and animal science and professional studies and management. So that's health, construction, management and pilot training, the only program like that in Vermont. We lead Vermont in the number of ABED accredited engineering technology degrees, 10 of them, we've got 85% of students coming from Vermont, 48% first in their family, 85% getting financial aid, half associates, half bachelors, a smattering of master's degrees, but we're now up to half bachelors and we do a steady business in bringing in students who are antsy about even doing an associates and converting them, helping them convert themselves into successful bachelor's degree students. One thing that makes us different is that our students spend 24 to 43% of their contact time on average in labs and experiential learning. So to duplicate that under COVID conditions is an extreme challenge, but we are going to make maximum use of this crisis to find a way to do that credibly and with high quality. And that should allow us to expand the access of these high quality, highly skilled, highly technical programs to a much broader swath of Vermonters. That's part of our way to beat the demographic cliff. I'll end my introduction by saying that we have the highest ROI per student of any college in Vermont, end period, stop. So that's the ratio of their earnings to their cost. So that's great, but our tuitions are still far too high and we need to lower that ROI to become more viable. We're in the 96% nationally and it's great, but the cost of getting in that sticker cost prevents students from having a shot at this amazing return on investment. So the other thing I just wanna mention is that our Randolph Center campus is still the beating heart of our college. It's been damaged as my colleagues have mentioned. It's been repeatedly starved of resources. We've put our resources where they best meet students' needs in the state of Vermont. Recently 1.5 million invested in a state of the art advanced manufacturing lab. And we wanna keep it there and we wanna keep it open and we wanna expand it and build on it. Moving to Williston would forfeit those investments and it would cause the same cycle of underfunding, neglect and decay in another location. The demographic cure for love doesn't work, right? Or sorry, the geographic cure for love doesn't work. The geographic cure there isn't gonna work and it would take an economic engine out of central Vermont. So I wanna talk to you about four specific items. We want to talk about consistency and change in our campuses. We need consistent leadership, consistent and adequate funding. You've heard that before, students, we've talked about the demographic cliff and how we're gonna approach that. And we believe that our college in particular needs transformative change. And I'm quite serious when I use the word transformative. So in terms of leadership, I've been at the college since 2001, just before 9-11. And this president is my eighth change in leadership. Eight changes since 2001. That has not helped us deliver consistent product. Presidents like to put a spin on things. Presidents like to change things. So we need consistency. We also believe that the chancellor's office hasn't been consistent or effective leadership. Aside from the recent disastrous effects, we believe that the chancellor permitted and promoted duplicative and competitive programming across the VSCS, forcing us to compete for students rather than enforcing cooperation and efficiency across the system. And we believe that our institutions don't work effectively together where they must. We realize this is faculty and we don't believe we need a chancellor's office. We are a small state and a small public institution. We don't need so much we can do with less there for sure. We do need that consistent and sufficient funding for success. I know that some of you have proposed the Promise Scholarship for the VSCS S38. And that's a wonderful gesture, but it's a dab of iodine on a gaping wound. So while we appreciate it and while it's going to help Vermont students, today, nobody can credibly argue that we have sufficient funding. And many of us think the state needs to decide whether to call it a day or make some big repairs. So full stop. We can't continue what we do, nor can we make the transformative changes I'm gonna suggest to you without adequate and consistent long-term funding. Others have talked about the demographic cliff. Totally agree with my colleague, Ben Loos. There's been some great research that shows, suggests that the correlation with enrollment in the VSCS is really cost and tuition more than demographics, particularly if we can deliver education to students across a wider swath of Vermont. And the loss of potentially highly educated, high earning tax paying citizens would be a disaster. Many of our students earn $65,000 to $85,000 out of the gate. We need to keep that going. They settle in Vermont, they buy homes, they raise families here, and that's the backbone of what we need to do. So in terms of transformative change, both NVU and VTC have created transition advisory task forces. And I do want to emphasize, I think it was Senator Hardy who said, I see a real difference here. There is a real difference. We are working in teams of administrators, staff, faculty, and students to talk about our budgets, which are pretty transparent in these small working groups. So we know what the numbers are. We're looking at numbers of students. We're looking at five year trends. We're looking at small COVID projections, large COVID projections, catastrophic COVID projections. And I've never felt so blessed as I do today when I've listened to my colleagues at UVM. I feel blessed to work in the Vermont State Colleges. And during this time of underfunding and COVID, that's not an easy statement for me to make. My president is on and watching me, which no pressure there. But she has reminded me, and it's true that our leadership has taken five to 10% pay cuts across senior leadership, resulting in about $100,000 of savings. So that's not nothing. And they don't make nearly what the folks at UVM make. So we need this transformative change. We're working together to do it. Mitzi Johnson has helped set up the ideas bank, which is terrific. We think that while we're focused on VTC, we think that a lot of the changes need to extend beyond our campuses and out to the VSCS as a whole. And our ideas for transformation decrease the cost to students, make public education more accessible across the state, accommodate the needs of working students, allow students to have on-campus educations if that is what they choose. But we no longer want to mandate that you have to live at a state college campus to get the education that that college provides. So in short, transformation should be student focused, cost cutting and those cost cutting inefficiencies where we can make them, they should occur as far from the students as they can be. And I have to say that since 2001, I've had two programs close underneath me. I've seen many colleagues laid off. We can do that again. It's never moved the needle. It has never solved the problem. It's never gotten us out of the hole. That is the old style of change. Cut, fix the budget this year, look over here. We need transformative change, which is a totally different beast. For example, let me give you some specifics. We could shrink our physical footprint on the Randolph Center campus without closing it. We can do that. We've conducted a recent study of students and it indicates that our students, and this is really lucky for us, they prefer a value outcome education. Let me put that in plain English. They're interested in the value of their education, employment, careers and ROI. This was March, just as COVID hit. They're stripping down their expectations. They want to know that there's a job. They want to know that there's an education. We can give them face-to-face instruction, being part of a cohort, networking with their fellows, living on their own, being part of a college community. We can give them that on a slimmed down campus. The VSCS has never been about frills and we don't think we're going to need that to be successful in the future. Now, so that's infrastructure. Administration, we believe that- Professor Richmond-Hall, I just want to, we are coming up on four o'clock, at which point I will lose two of my committee members. Okay. So I had hoped to conclude by then, can you in another minute or two? I can, yep, let me talk about, so a couple of quick things. We think we're over-administered. There's a chronicle of higher ed that suggests that our ratio of administrators as students is twice the average, national average for public higher education. So we think we should look at that. Let me talk about instruction and delivery because that's, I think, why you really want us here. So here's what we're considering. Improving remote delivery with a focus on consistency and labs, the quality of lab instruction. Low and no residency versions of our highly technical programs that deliver great ROI. So that should allow us to increase accessibility for non-traditional students, decrease the need for commuting, decrease the need for dorms, at least in the short term. Year-round delivery and trimesters to shorten the time to graduation, that may help us lower expense. Hybrid delivery to combine small classes and sections across our many locations. Offering senior, highly technical courses, junior and senior on an every other year basis to lower instructional costs. We think we can do that and still be effective. Consolidate programs for a smaller menu. We're considering a two-on-two off residency. There is a freshman. Low residency for your sophomore and junior, back as a senior when you need us to help you find a job. We're looking at students buying laptops for consistent and reliable remote learning while not having to maintain computer labs for their cheek to jowl COVID. And we're looking to change the way we do varsity sports. We don't think we can continue to pay for that and COVID won't allow it. Should it be a special fee? Should it be sponsorships? Our students want to focus on e-sports. We have mountain biking and skiing close by. We can get them into our communities. I want to say that, I want to end by saying that we really think that the campuses of the Vermont State Colleges need to provide two essential services. They need to be local places where you can sit and get your education. They need to specialize and have home programs that the other campuses don't have. Yep, and remote delivery will allow us to do it all. And I'll send you some notes. Thank you. I can't hear you. In the Senate, we have something called a time certain. And that's what we're up against. But I did want to have two minutes to thank everyone and to let you know that this is not the only hearing we will be having. We had some students who wanted to be heard and I begun a list of those so that we will at some point hear from students. We will also, as the weeks go by, we will be looking at projections, numbers, appropriations, and we will be back in touch with the president of UVM, chancellor or acting chancellor of the VSC, as well as the board of trustees, and then back in touch again with faculty, hopefully in a setting where you can communicate to one another as well. So thanks again so much. We have your submissions and we will look at those in addition to your testimony. We are now going to transition to 15 minutes of mandated brainstorming about what we did well and what we did poorly in terms of the emergency. Feel free to stay with us if you like. Feel free to drop off if you like. And Debbie, I know you have to go. Cory, I assume you're ready to begin taking notes. So Debbie, if you and Ruth can send Cory emails, that will be great with your lessons learned. So I still have Cory, Andrew. Like Jim left. Jim left? That's our quorum. Well, we can brainstorm without the quorum maybe you can be in touch with Jim, Cory about anything he might have. Yep, sounds good. So I also wanna suggest, Cory, that we put out the compendium for the other committee for Brian Campion's committee. Do you still have a copy of that? I do, I can add that as well. Yeah, I was thinking, we might as well just give them a copy of that. That contains our thinking about what went wrong with the childcare system and the subsidy that they used, the subsidy structure. Andy, do you and Cory have other things that immediately come to mind? What a question for Cory, is that, is it what we, the Senate slash legislature or was it we, the state? So originally, I think it was what we, the Senate, operationally, but what we're getting from reports from other committees, it's we, the state as well. So I think we're looking internally what, how would we address a similar situation? Basically, we weren't giving, we're giving about three weeks to do this task, as you know, and we're just kind of looking what happened, we wanna document something. So when we dig into this, if we dig into this more in the future, we have a reference to come back to. So I think the big piece here is, is focusing on the process. Obviously education was an issue, issues that we heard about in the education system that we can keep on a list that maybe we address in a future legislative session. How do we look at pre-K-12, distance learning and stuff like that might be an example. But I think it's really, think of like bullet points and kind of notes of things that worked well and didn't from a committee perspective, but also the issues that we have jurisdiction over. Yeah, I, you know, at this point, it seems so painfully obvious, but in terms of testing, you know, this isn't the educational system, but in terms of testing, it seemed like the prisons and nursing homes were two places where we should have pushed for immediate across the board institutional testing. And tests weren't available, but theoretically for a second wave, that should be something that we don't have to work our way up to we immediately deploy. In other words, if the governor lifts the emergency order, then in, you know, October reinstates it, I feel like immediately at that point, they should have a plan for immediate institutional testing. And, you know, there should be a plan to test schools as well. I don't know what their metric is gonna be if a teacher or a student turns up COVID positive, do they test the entire school population or not? But I know if I'm a teacher or a parent of a child in that school, that's what I want. Other thoughts, Andy? Well, I was just trying to go think back at the beginning of the crisis in our committee. I think the only confusion I remember is the connection between education and the K-12 system and daycare, child care, I should say. But that's a continuing issue between, you know, Department of Children, Families and Agency of Education on who has jurisdiction over childcare. And so that makes sense. But that, like a lot of things, the crisis highlighted the issues that were underlying there. One of the things that I've found, and I want to run it by you before I throw it in the report or my piece of it is I found there to be this, and we have a lot of issues in education. We have the want and the tradition of local control. Yeah, it seems like local leaders needed more direct on what to do. They were kind of given frameworks I find in some things, but they weren't like, well, this doesn't tell me anything. It gives me a framework. And I don't know, I know sometimes it's this balance where they get mad and mom pillars tell us to do something, yet I feel like at times they were thirsty for more information from us. And so, I know that's a large issue in itself to distill, but that's where I found a lot of tension in all of this was between that because I remember talking to some teachers being like, well, do you want us to tell you what to do? And then you're gonna say, you don't have any control. We don't listen to you at an individual level, or do you want us to give you a framework to make those choices on your own? And we're running into that now with masking. Should there be a statewide policy? Should there be a community to community policy? Tim's obviously gonna push that to the forefront of the Senate's agenda in the next couple of weeks, unless the governor steps forward and does it himself. But it's an uncomfortable discussion to have if the governor's not behind it, because people can accept an executive order, they cannot accept the governor and the legislature being in odds with one another over a public health issue. So I don't know how you square that circle. Yeah, so I just wanna make sure, Corey, that when you work from that report that I wrote, if you could make sure to highlight that childcare problem that asking parents to pay half tuition for a service they're not receiving. It barely made sense the first time we did it in the teeth of the emergency, it will be completely inexcusable if we do it again. Because we know that that's a financial need. So we should be setting up some sort of childcare stabilization fund at this point. Because I don't think it works to just increase the amount we pay because if those wind up closing anyway, we're behind the April. So we need to have a fund where parents aren't paying, the state is paying to keep those open during a second emergency. Other thoughts? Just one other thing that we did on my other side of this committee was recommend that, and this would be just for the agency of education perhaps, what are all the things that they put in place that they struggled for over time? Because it might be two years and then there's another crisis. It'd be great if that, okay, what were the things that we had to do to make remote learning possible and just grab that folder, so to speak. So I'm assuming that's already being done, but it's good to write it down to say, put it all in one place so that you don't have to remember and find the staff person that was around. What did we do back then? Well, my biggest fear isn't a relapse in six months because I feel like we'll have had practice. It's 10 years down the road and there's new secretaries, new senators, new reps, new governor. This happens again and they're like, what did we do last time this happened and can we use this to make that transition easier? Yeah, I keep thinking about schools opening in the fall and I'm thinking about these questions of social distancing in the mode of K through 12 education as currently practiced. So it's all built on a large number of kids in the classroom. The governor over the years has pushed to change our ratios so we have more kids in the classroom. Now we're gonna be working the other way, fewer kids in the classroom. So that inevitably is gonna take us to the possibility at least of increased costs. So first of all, we have to figure out how we do it just in terms of the science and the logistics. Second of all, we have to be willing to pay for it if the government isn't going to allow us to backfill the hole in the ed fund. So those are all tough questions, but we would run into them again because we have a property tax system and we're constantly trying to fit more students into a physical space. Do you think that's enough, Corey, for you to work with? Yeah, I think that's fine. I think I got enough to work with him with your other report. I think I can get some tobacco that's pre-reasonable and I'm sure Ruth will send me quite a bit in Debbie. So I think I'll be able to put some good together. And don't let McNeil off the hook either. I will. Okay guys, thanks. Yeah. Can I ask you a quick question on how we passed H947 which was the municipal budget thing and you rightly brought up the switching into towns and not municipalities. Let's, Jeannie, can you go off of YouTube?