 Okay, so welcome everybody. Senate Education May 26th, continuing remote delivery of the committee's hearings in the COVID emergency. I see Becky Wasserman now, so we're good to go. So what we're gonna do today is pursue two related discussions which we kicked off at the beginning of last week. And that has to do with the House bill. I think it's H209, school construction aid and the idea behind their bill being to get an inventory of what's going on in the schools and also to get the state ultimately back into the business of helping with school construction more directly. So in the course of that discussion and speaking to Mr. Edkind, we developed a kind of parallel track where we were thinking about air circulation systems, HVAC systems and the necessity of making sure those are updated and replaced if necessary before school opens. So I'm getting some feedback from somebody. I suspect it's the treasurer. So we'll see when you speak to us, Beth, but what I'd like to do is start with treasurer Pierce and have her speak generally to the idea of extending aid for school construction again. And I know she did that in the House committee. So we'll hear her thinking and then we may bounce a little between the two discussions but the idea as the agenda lays it out is to deal with general school construction and that would include David Epstein who's joined us from Truex Collins in Burlington and then second to go to the more specific discussion of air circulation systems due to the COVID crisis. So treasurer Pierce, welcome. And again, what we'd be looking for you to do is lay out your thinking generally about whether the state should or how should it properly get involved again in school construction aid. Well, thank you very much for the record, Beth Pierce, the state treasurer and appreciate the opportunity to speak with you on this issue. So from the outset, I would say that we do need to work on our school construction to modernize some of our buildings. There's a lot of deferred maintenance, although we don't know how much and how much it costs at this point and that's a big issue is you're trying to develop a funding and a financing plan. For me, those are two different things. Financing is something where you capture or you leverage a stream of revenue and then pay it back over time so that you can use it in the current period. Funding refers to generating a stream of revenue and that's important as well. A few years back, actually it was longer than that, 2009, we worked on something called the Transportation Infrastructure Bonds to program to assist us in taking a look at our bridges and the quality of our bridges and the needs for improvements and a way to fund it. And we did both. First, we'd identified a revenue source which was a motor fuel transportation infrastructure assessment and then looked at ways that you could leverage those and get some work done on the early side. So I think that that's kind of the standard that I would have is I'm looking at these things and how you could do it. One of the problems we have is that there's a great deal of need, whether it be clean water, housing, energy efficiency and obviously school buildings as well. And there are merits with each one of those pieces. We have in our capital budget right now, that institutions committee works with, we're in the second year of a biennium. So when we recommend that would be the CDAC committee, which looks at the debt affordability that we have in any given year. And we actually do this on a biennium basis and our combined biennium, which is worth right now fiscal year 20 is the second year of that biennium, I believe it's 123 million, 180,000. And that is, again, over a two year period, we, and I'm gonna take that back. I think it's the second year that's coming up for a new biennium. But the amount that we're issuing is actually more than we're retiring. So the state debt, outstanding debt going up, expected to continue to rise from 2020 to 2025. And then remain in that range of kind of a steady period until about 2030. So that creates a mismatch. So you have limited resources and you have a number of pressures to basically fund or finance, again, that word to our debt authorizations. We are gonna look at the parameters in the metrics related to our debt. This is going to be in the fall. And the committee, the CDAC committee will be taking a look at what are the metrics that we use and how do we compare ourselves peer to peer, taking a look at other states that are highly rated. But more importantly, from my perspective, the rating is extremely important, but more important is the cost to the taxpayer. And for us, that creates a little bit of an issue with how do you fit all those various needs in there? So I'm a little confused and I will listen to your testimony about some of the dates. I saw a period suspending ends on 6.30.19. So I'm a little, I'm trying to work through all the dates and the mechanics of that. But for me, in order to do this, there are a couple of steps that need to be done. Number one, you need to define what the need is, how much, what is the situation in terms of our school infrastructure and how much is it going to cost and when do you need to do it? And secondly, you need to identify a revenue source to do that. And before you remove any suspension, you need to have both of those pieces. And we're willing to help, I know that finance and management is actually taking the lead role in the bill 209, but we're willing to have a conversation and help where we can. We are kind of limited to our resources right now. But I think that before you say how to spend and let's start doing this and the mechanics of that, you need to know how much is it going to cost and when does that service need to be delivered? So the how needs to happen before the financing or the what, excuse me, needs to happen before the how can happen. I think that there is a concern that I have is that you may be setting an unattainable expectation by schools if the funds are not available to do this. And you open up for some type of renewal of this process before you know the scope. So I would recommend again, that those steps need to happen to identify the need. And again, where is it, what type of need, what's the cost and then identify a revenue source to manage that. If you take a look, one of the programs that people talk quite a bit about is the Massachusetts School Building Authority. And they did both of those things just as we did with the transportation infrastructure bonds. They first identified what that resource would be and they took some portion of a penny or I'm not sure the amount of the sales tax to fund it. And then they identified a process, an infrastructure procedural process and they did it within their existing capital structure. So for me, that's important to be able to take those steps and I would encourage the committee to look at it in that sequence of events. Thank you, Treasurer. Can I just clarify? So you started out talking about the difference between funding and financing. So in other words, you would be against financing but you are tentatively for funding if there's an identified source. Yeah, I think that you have to fund it whether or not you finance it would have to be within the constraints of what's a amount of debt that can be financed by the state and be affordable by the taxpayers and within the confines of our peer-to-peer relationships with the rating agencies. But again, taxpayer comes first in this one. But you need to identify a funding source and then you may need to finance to leverage those revenues and bring them forward in the process. So what you're doing there is you're leveraging a stream of revenue and paying it back over time. But there are two pieces to that. One, the revenue needs to be identified and second, that it needs to be within the limitations of the Capital Debt Affordability Advisory Committee. And again, I would say that we are gonna look at our metrics but there's a lot of competition for resources. And going back to one of my concluding remarks, I think that if you were to do this without having all the knowns completed, you would end up creating an expectation that can't be met at the local level. If I could just ask one more question built on that. So the House bill appropriates a million and a half dollars to higher parties capable of determining the need and creating an apples to apples compendium of deferred maintenance and projects around the state. I'm trying to figure out, are you implying at all that creating that would produce the expectation and we shouldn't do that without a defined revenue source? No, no. As a matter of fact, I think that's the first step you need to take is to do the study. And I would say that that study needs to emphasize the cost of doing it as well. So going back to what we did when we created that revenue source, the Transfusion Infrastructure, mode of fuel Transfusion Infrastructure Assessment that's a long-winded way of saying it, but we first looked at the conditions of the bridges, the time period of what you needed to address them. So some timing and then identified a revenue stream to go with it and then talked about financing. And I think what's changed since then is that we recognize that our financing levels need to be constrained so that we're not putting undue burden on the taxpayer. Recognizing they also want good schools and I clearly agree with that, but I think that you have to identify a viable predictable revenue source. And I think that's not one-time dollars, but dollars that are predictable over time that are reliable and measurable. And if we do that, I think we can meet this need. Questions from committee members for the treasurer. Senator Parchley. Thank you. Thank you, Treasurer. I guess it's kind of a comment. Just want to hear your opinion on one of my questions of the house bill was that it's going to take a year and a half to do the study. We'll have a dollar figure based on some standards that are developed. But without knowing what the funding is, that could get old, quick. And then in five years, if we still haven't figured out a funding source, as it took us a while to find the funding source for the Lake Champlain cleanup, you have to go back and do another study on the numbers. And I wondered just kind of what you're thinking of how exact that has to be, because we know generally that's a big number. And I don't know how much it matters if it's 700 million or over a billion. Does it, how exact does that have to be before we start talking about the funding source? Well, I think that I used the old example of 2009 and you're correct that we did a similar process with the clean water. And our office was tasked with the first step, which was to identify the costs and the sectors that were impacted. We did not do that ourselves because we are not experts in that area. What we did is work very closely with the agency of natural resources, agriculture, economic development, work with our partners. We had a fairly extensive process of 23 stakeholder meetings with a thousand people involved. So we did our homework, but we identified upfront what the needs were and what the costs associated with those. And then we delved into what the financing opportunities were, whether it's federal money, whether it's state money. And if you take a look at the report, we did change some of those revenue sources over time, but it served as an instrument to keep the focus on the issue and to work out a model for financing. And that involved a number of folks on the Senate and the House side. And I think it was very successful because we took those steps. And I think that that's what you need to do here. That doesn't mean you can't spend time investigating revenue sources and looking at that while you're completing the needs assessment, but they do need to be coupled together. And I would say that we were fairly comprehensive on our costs. We also recognized the costs were not in there, for instance, general maintenance of those facilities. So this was all capital investment that we were looking at, but it was successful because we took the steps in that order. Maybe you could do the same with school construction. Well, we'd be happy to assist. I will tell you that right now, we're working on a number of projects, including one on housing, including one on the colleges. We're kind of maxed out. If you take a look at our budget, our general administration, not our pension funds, but our general administration budget is less than we had in 2009. So we're a little stretched in. If you'd like to give us the resources to do it, we'd be happy to give it a shot. Touché. Any other questions for the treasurer? Okay, treasurer Pierce, thank you so much. Please feel free to stay on for the rest of the hearing if you like, but I know your time was tight today. We appreciate the help. I will stay on as long as I can, Mr. Chair, but and I wanna thank you folks for taking up this issue. It's extraordinarily important. I try to approach things with a measured way of doing things because I believe that's the most successful and the hope is that we get to a robust program for school construction. If I may, may I add one more piece to this, sir? Please. Okay, so I was looking at the infrastructure bill that was produced on the House side of Congress. And it was first introduced and it was fairly sizable. It's over $900 million. And I think it's a very good bill. I know that's been put on the back burner and there will probably be some significant changes in that bill if and when it gets to both the House and the Senate. Couple of things that I saw in it. Number one, I was very pleased that it was green, that there was a lot of money for environmental issues and that was something I was very pleased to see. But what was noticeably absent was school building as an infrastructure category. And I would recommend to the extent that we can convey in that to congressional delegation and to others that if and when they pick up the infrastructure bill again which might provide some really needed assistance at the state level that there'll be a push to make sure that it includes two things. One is school building and secondly, is affordable housing. And that would be my second recommendation I would have for you. Thank you. Okay. So the treasurer I guess will hang on and listen. Secretary French, welcome. Before you joined us, I was saying that we have two tracks going on today. One is general school construction, the discussion coming out of the House bill H209. Love to hear your thoughts on that if you have any to share at this point. The other thing is Mr. Edkind who you see on your screen probably got us thinking about planning for the fall and specifically air circulation systems in buildings because those have such a powerful effect on spread of the virus or inhibition of spread of the virus. So I'd like to stay with the general school construction theme first. We also have David Epstein from Truex Collins who's going to speak to that. But I wanted to ask your time constraints. Can you be with us for the whole hearing or do you need to leave at a certain point? Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Chair. I'm here till 3.30, that's what I have on my calendar. Oh, okay. Well, let me ask you this. Do you have, well, let's just to keep it simple. Let's move to David Epstein staying with the general school construction theme. Just a reminder that the house bill called on AOE to help create new standards for buildings and then to hire a third party to conduct a needs assessment around the state at a cost of about $1.5 million for that. So David Epstein is an architect. Is that correct, Mr. Epstein? That is correct, thank you. Right, and he has a special interest and experience set around school construction. So welcome and feel free, Mr. Epstein, to tell us whatever you think we should know. Okay, well, thank you first of all for inviting me. As the chair said, my name's Dave Epstein. I am a architect. I've been working in schools for a long, long time. I've been working on K-12 schools all over the state and internationally and I got involved with this effort. I think it was not this, probably two years ago, there was a, there was the first H-2-9 arose and I was active in trying to educate legislators about the need for school construction aid. And then the last session, there was also a similar push and there was also a miscellaneous ed bill that called for a study group. And when that didn't pass, I decided, why don't we have a study group anyway? And so I organized a group with Jeff Francis' help from the VSA of superintendents and facility managers, business managers. Secretary French joined us on occasion for a few meetings as well. So we had a very robust conversation, series of meetings in fall of 2019 and spring in anticipation of this session. And so this session we've met several times with house education, with institutions, we've met with Secretary Pierce. And so Jeff Francis and I, he's been instrumental in helping spearhead this effort to raise awareness about this important issue. I prepared a very short presentation that I'd like to walk you through if that would be okay. And I will share my screen if that's okay. I don't know what the, can I, can that be made possible or? I, you know, Jeannie? Or Jeannie, can you put the presentation up? I did send it. It may take me a while, I was not, do I have it? Let me see Jeff. I think I emailed it to you. Can you allow me to share my screen and then I can? Jeannie, did you put it up on the website? Yes, it is on the website. Let's do that then. So everybody can easily go to the website, pull it up and then they can toggle back and forth between these images and the thing. Whereas if you share the screen, we're all locked into. Okay, well I may be, let me, okay. Well, do people, let me know when you have it up. I have it up. Okay. Yep, we're all set. Okay, good. Let me just arrange my screen here so I'm not looking off to the side. So this is a very similar presentation that we gave to house education and house institutions back in February, but I've modified it, I've shortened it. And basically it's organized into four areas. Just we wanna set the table in terms of providing the context for this whole conversation, talk about the opportunities, talk about what our group felt was important, was important framework for a program because it's more than just providing school construction dollars to local districts. There needs to be a whole ecosystem rebuilt that includes standards and other factors besides just giving money. And then what we can do moving forward. So I kind of went through. I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm just wondering, Secretary French needs to leave at 3.30. Not sure how long this presentation takes, but. It's pretty quick. Okay, so if we can have a time certain of, five or 10 after, three. I would say 10 after should not be a problem. Okay, great. I'll just loop back to some of the points if, if. After the secretary goes, you can come back and finish. Does that sound good? Yeah. Okay. Yep. Sure. So these are some of the groups that were part of our ad hoc working group, superintendent's architects, facility directors, the eduCIV education, the Vermont community bond bank. We, I'm going to the next slide. This is just a very brief history. Ironically, there were 2,500 school boards in 1892 and the state forced them to merge into one school district per town. And that was called the vicious act of 1892 because people couldn't believe that they had to consolidate from their one room schoolhouse, school board to whole town. So it's really nothing new. The resistance to consolidation. But basically what's happened is there was a big building boom in the post-war area era. And then in the 1990s when the population, there was a population boom and there really has been little to no significant work since the 1990s. So there's many buildings, you know, that are 67 years old. There's many buildings that have had additions. And those are now almost 30 years old. So, and there hasn't just been a lot of work done since then. And the next slide just shows deteriorating conditions on one of our projects. It's, you know, it's pretty disheartening to see these districts are just not able to keep up. There's also, you know, I think one of the things that's really important to understand is that it's not just that the buildings have gotten old. It's also that education has changed. It's changed from teacher-centered instruction to student-centered learning. There's, the schools are providing way more support services than they used to, you know, the school, post-war school had, you know, a multi-purpose room, a small administrative pod and a bunch of classrooms. So now we have school-based clinicians. We have speech and language pathology. We have special ed. We have a whole group of supports, a whole array of support services and they have no place to work. My wife is a school-based clinician and her last job, she's working in a gym closet. While balls were, you know, what gym was happening and balls were being thrown against the wall, this is typical, often they're in copier, you know, storage rooms sitting alongside copiers. So this new paradigm of educational delivery has different space needs than the past. And so the buildings were built for one educational model. That model has changed, the buildings haven't. So it's not just the infrastructure. And I can't emphasize this enough. It's also that education has changed and these buildings have to be modernized. That's why our group is focused on the term modernization and not, you know, infrastructure repair because infrastructure is like the roof, the HVAC equipment, the windows, but that doesn't get at how spaces should be arranged so the kids can learn best and the kind of spaces that should be provided so that kids can learn best. So now I'm gonna go to the next slide. Obviously part of the context is declining enrollment. And you know, one of the things that this, getting the state involved with school construction would be, would also give them a way to forward their policy goals in terms of that. Then finally, we have the moratorium where, you know, there's been very small amount of work done since 2007. And there's a huge backlog of projects. And one of the really troubling aspects of this is the inequity that has resulted between towns that can afford to do work around the buildings in towns that can't. And that just continues to grow wider and wider as time goes on. Working with the Vermont Community Bond Bank, I don't know if people have seen this slide before, but if you look at the column with the totals on it, at the bottom it's $915 million, that's all of the construction projects since 2008 since the moratorium, plus the ones that are on the books. Now they did include the South Burlington one because this was done before the bond vote, but take that out, you still have 700 million. They're probably gonna do something in South Burlington. So maybe it's not 200 million, but maybe it's 80 million. It's a lot of money. Right now, if you look at the column proposed in planning, you know, it's like 575 million. And I'll talk about like some other states, I'll tell you now, like Rhode Island when they started this process recently, five years ago, let's say they were guessing that they had a billion dollars in this kind of need. And it turned out to be $3 billion in need. And if you look at their numbers, terms of numbers, schools, it's pretty similar to Vermont. It's not that much different. So we'll talk about that in a minute. So this slide I think is pretty powerful. This is the next slide that shows the surrounding states. There's only 11 states in the entire country that don't have a school construction program. And Vermont is the only state in the Northeast that does not have a school construction program. So, you know, other states have found a way to finance and support the modernization of schools. And, you know, and I know everybody on this call wants to find a way to, but it just, you know, my concern is that we fall behind in terms of being able to provide quality environments for our kids. So this is some research we did about different states. So if you look at, this is the next slide. Rhode Island, its population is a million. Our population is 630,000. They have 304 schools. We have 250 schools. So it's kind of, you can see they have 143,000 students. We have 83, but we don't have that many less schools. So they obviously have more kids in their schools per school than we do. And this is the case where, you know, so if you look at, we have 250 schools. They have 300 there. When they did their study, it came out to be three billion. I don't really know what it's gonna come out to be for this state, but I'm guessing it's over a billion. So if you look at New Hampshire in Maine and Massachusetts, Massachusetts is sort of the poster child for school construction program. They have spent since 2007, I don't know, like $15 billion on school construction. That's just the state share. They've, that has leveraged over $24 billion in state construction, total. And people say, well, that's Massachusetts, you know, they're a big state with lots of industry. You could run the numbers a bunch of ways. And I have, if you look at it like, how much they're investing per person and you modify that for Vermont standards, or you take a penny on the sales tax for Vermont sales tax versus what they're getting, because their sale taxes probably generate more revenue. No matter how you slice it, we would have spent, if we were spending at the rate of Massachusetts, we would have been spending close to a billion dollars since 2007. And instead, the state spent zero. So it's, you know, it's a pretty harsh comparison. So... Mr. Epstein. Yeah. This is maybe a good place. You're just about to go into the opportunities. Yeah. Why don't we take a pause here, because I do wanna give the secretary at least 20 minutes or so to speak to the questions at hand. Then we'll come back to your next slide and we'll allow you to pick up. Sure. No problem. Okay. Mr. French, thank you for joining us. The two questions for you, the first has to do with H209 and thoughts on that bill, but in some ways, I think the more pressing question is, Mr. Epstein got us thinking about, as I said before, air circulation systems in schools due to open up, perhaps in September to physical instruction. So I was wondering if you could let us know what you're thinking and planning are along those lines and with the understanding that it may be in progress, but just as an update about where we are now. Sure. Good afternoon, Dan French, Secretary of Education. Yeah, in terms of 209, it certainly is, you know, was previously described. David mentioned I was involved on and off to the lead to 209 and certainly I think it's, you know, it's an important issue that we have to address at some point. You know, I think last year we predicted the interest in lead and drinking water would lead to a larger conversation of school construction issues and, you know, it's not surprising to a certain extent, but it's how to tackle the problem. And I think, you know, I definitely support the idea of doing a study, which is outlined in 209 and I think also requiring districts to do the planning as another key component. And we're seeing actually more of that, I think now with Act 46 that there was better, I would say oversight of all facilities as a sort of a general observation I'd make. But then lastly and equally importantly, giving the AOE a staff person to administer the program. I think some of you know that previously we had three people administering the old program, just the construction aid program and now we have zero FTEs in this area. So we would certainly need someone even to manage the RFP process to hire a consultant to do the study. So, but I think to treasure Pierce's earlier comment, there's a certain attractiveness to having it be a rational process, meaning we identify the need and plan for it as difficult as that is, but to really wrap arms around what the nature of the need is. And as David mentioned, the issue of equity, how we tackle that so paramount concern is currently districts are approaching this within the modeling of the education fund. So therefore those districts can afford to do it both politically and financially are gonna be able to find a way to do it. And that leaves other places in a tougher spot. So I think definitely interested in 209 and this is an issue we're gonna have to tackle. It's not going anywhere. And would you say, before we move on, would you say that the appropriations, the amount 1.5, is that really supportive of that total? Yes, I mean, it has to be, we have to figure out how to pay for it. But I think the idea of doing a study and hiring someone to do it, and I think I forget how the number was arrived at. I think David had some insight into that with the group. But I think certainly, I think from my perspective, it acknowledges that we don't have the in-house capacity to necessarily do that. But secondly, it can be a politically challenging work. So it would be useful to bring in someone with outside expertise to do it objectively across the board. And we've done that a couple of times in Vermont's history. I pointed out at one point, we did as best as the same way where we brought in a consulting firm to kind of just go across the entire landscape and sort of do that inventory. I think it leads to a better consistent result. So we'll have the same sort of criteria being applied to all facilities. And I think that useful data would be really helpful in decision-making at this point. Okay, great. And if we could transition to the HVAC air system problem. Yeah, so I'd situate that into the larger container of planning for the fall. And ventilation issues are important ones. I've worked with Norma on several projects along those lines over the years. Something I'm very attentive to when I go in and visit a facility because it's a critical element of a successful learning environment. It is, I think now with COVID-19, it's unfortunately or fortunately situated on a rather long list of things that have to be addressed as a result of planning for the fall. The most recent CDC guidance has this on the list along with maybe 20 other elements. So we are in part underway in a larger planning process to open schools in the fall. As we've expressed, it's our intention to open school in the fall for in-person instruction. But we know also that we'll also have to be prepared to do remote learning and maybe somewhere in between, call a hybrid model because we can envision I think next year that there'll be times when maybe all schools are closed or all schools are open but maybe some schools are closed and some schools are open. So we have to have all those things planned out in advance. So we, as more of those sort of plans have become available and I don't think we're in any different spot relative to other states in the country. We sort of been gathering those elements both nationally and internationally of how countries and other states are approaching the issue to distill all this complex work down quite simply. We started with the public health information. So we had a meeting last week with our health department folks about just in a rough way discussing what's gonna be involved in the planning. And then I have a weekly planning meeting with the superintendents, the principals and the school board association, Ramon at EA, business managers and so forth and just the sort of senior leadership of those groups. We've met weekly throughout this emergency. This week we're having an extended meeting. We're adding the health people to that meeting and we're starting to articulate out sort of a blueprint for how we wanna approach the planning process. And I think it'll part of the challenge is to figure out what should be promulgated from the state level and then what should be delegated or reserved to the locals in terms of doing their own planning process within a framework. So we're in the process of starting that work. I think right now it looks like we'll go down a path where districts are gonna be required to do a plan, not so much out of a regulatory requirement but more out of an assurance or just out of a planning exercise for their own operational viability. And we wanna have that sort of framework launched I think by mid June. So folks can take advantage of any end of year in services and so forth with their staff to start doing that work. But there's, you know, back to sort of this challenge, I think specifically, specifically on ventilation, it's just one element among many that are gonna really require a focused planning effort on the part of districts. And it's the context for the fall is shaping up to be a fairly dynamic one. So it's not as simply as just planning for in-person instruction. It's also planning for transitioning back and forth to remote learning and in-person instruction and what are the triggers and how those decisions get made along the way. So I think ventilation is important but it also has to be, I think, situated appropriately in this larger planning context which will be quite challenging for folks. I hear that and respect that the challenge is huge. I guess what we were thinking was the end of December date for completing work on projects that are gonna be COVID funded, seems like it would involve, you know, extremely accelerated process. So if the districts are putting together their plans in June or July, one question I would have is to what extent could we expect, you know, are there enough? And one of the reasons I asked Mr. Edkind is to try to answer the question of are there enough specialists to complete that kind of work in six months, assuming upgrades, replacements, et cetera. And I know that's all gonna be the fruit of your discussions over the next couple of weeks but any thoughts on that completion before December? Yeah, I don't know. I think, you know, we certainly from a financial perspective have been looking at both the CRF as you mentioned which expires in December, but districts also, you know, have access to the ESSER funds which go out through September of 21. So, I think we're all expecting additional federal monies to come down as well. But I think, you know, just in terms of priority, so much of what we've been doing is sort of a triage, if you will. And, you know, you can imagine how complex some of the planning processes are of these interrelated considerations. But there are cases where this planning becomes quite simple. For example, if we don't have enough supplies to clean surfaces, you know, that in itself could shut down a learning environment so you can just take ventilation right off the table for the moment because no one's gonna be in the space unless we have adequate personal protection and so forth. So there's as much as we're contemplating all these different moving pieces, my expectations as some of this will be greatly simplified for us on things such as do we even have bus drivers available, you know, and so forth. So there's a lot of practical considerations that I think that will also inform the decision-making. But I think, yeah, to the point, are there sufficient experts available to do the work, to line it up in a thoughtful way? I would say, just assume this wasn't a COVID-19 environment, it would be challenging to do that on a statewide basis. But with everything else going on, I don't see districts having a lot of bandwidth to put this as the focus right now because I think there's some more fundamental things that are sort of like Maslow's hierarchy gonna deserve their immediate attention just to contemplate opening schools. I think you're muted, Senator Booth. Questions for the secretary from the committee? Senator Hardy. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary French. And for all of your efforts to plan for reopening schools, I'm heartened to hear that you're gonna require each school to do a planning process because I think that will help them think through all of the steps. I'm wondering, we've heard about ventilation as an issue for the spread of the virus. And if you're in a room with a bunch of people talking at once, that that is one of the primary ways to spread the virus. So I'm wondering, have you gotten a sense from perhaps Dr. Levine or others where that falls on the sort of priority list in the health related realm, setting aside all of the challenges of actually getting the projects done? Yeah, I think it's a good question, Senator Hardy. I think the issue of, I'll say group size, which I think we've become familiar with to a certain extent. We've seen specific guidance for childcare settings is sort of the first, I think, toe in the water relative to acknowledging there's a need to bring people together for specific societal purposes. And what are the risks then? Then how do we manage those risks? It's not clear to me yet as to what those parameters will be for classroom settings. So we're certainly talking about numbers, but it's also a function of predicting on where we are in the fall relative to the virus. But equally important is to what extent we feel comfortable being able to manage that risk. Meaning, what's our testing regime? Like how are we able to control the access to the perimeters of the building through temperature checking and so forth? So we have to consider the risks and get an understanding of what we don't know what the risk level will be come September, but also it's a function of our ability to manage that risk with the tools that we probably will have new ones in terms of testing and so forth by the fall. So if you think about how many students would you fit into a classroom from a public health standpoint? Part of that equation would be to what extent is there adequate ventilation in that room? But I think equally important once again to simplify some of these decisions will be, well, what's the social distancing aspect of that? So I think we use six feet a lot, I hear that a lot from public health folks that there's a good reason to keep that physical separation because so much apparently the virus is transmitted through the aspiration of individuals. So to what extent would ventilation help or moderate the ventilation or the aspiration aspects? Or I don't know how any of that factors into things. I haven't heard that emerge yet, but possibly it will. But I know in many schools that I've been in there's some poor ventilation issues you can tell with the CO2 levels and so forth. I'm not sure how that if anyone's done some analysis of how that functions in with contagion levels. So I don't know I guess the answer and I haven't heard it from the Department of Health yet. Other questions for the Secretary from the committee, Senator Purchlick. Did you know Secretary French, but maybe Mr. Westin knows this too, how many districts do you have a facility person, a building facility? I do not know. My observation was that more of them seem to be centralizing those functions as particularly as a result of merging. I've been in just some my own travels and dealing with districts that I've known previously before Act 46. It was my observation that many of them have started to centralize their facilities personnel. And I think that's also my hypothesis, one of the reasons this issue has advanced to a certain extent because I think now we have in many districts we have better surveillance on issues across a district as opposed to a building basis. So it's not surprising to me necessarily that we have greater insight into these issues. But I don't have a specific number. I don't see any other questions, Mr. Secretary. Anything else you'd like to share with us? I think the planning process for reopening is going to be a complex one. I think it's fair to say we're aiming that in the direction of in-person instruction. And I think that's where the better part of the country is as well. But I think you should be assured that the public health science of that will be our primary lens by which we make these decisions. And I feel we have really good expertise on that. We're also reaching out to other expertise outside of the state as necessary, but I think we're in a good place to do that planning not only with our expertise, but for everyone's involved in those decisions. So I think we'll come up with a pretty responsive framework to do it as best we can. Well, thank you. And again, thank the administration for being science-based. It's not necessarily taken for granted in states around the country. I'm glad that you've added the health professionals to that weekly meeting or the meeting that's upcoming. I would be interested in having you pass on to us as they're developed any guidelines you have around air circulation systems, but also more generally the health requirements and planning for putting them in place by September because that's something that we should all be having an eye on. Yeah, I agree. It's on the CDC list. So by definition, I'll be elevated to a discussion by our group, but I will make sure that's elevated specifically see if we can address some specific guidance to that issue. Thank you. Thank you very much. I know you have to go, but thanks for joining us. If you can hang around to listen to the end of Mr. Epstein's presentation, feel free. Mr. Epstein, do you wanna pick up with opportunities? Sure, thank you. And thank you, Secretary French. And I just wanna say that I hope to participate in the conversation about ventilation because I have a lot of experience with that. And I've done a bunch of reading relative to this, the COVID crisis. So I think I can offer some insights into that conversation as well. But let me continue just with this presentation. So, the opportunities here are both educational quality and educational equity. I think we talked about that earlier. You know, there's no question, you know, I think if you talk to educators that better learning environments lead to better educational outcomes. Not only do they speak to the students in terms of they're inspiring, but they provide more opportunities. You know, when you think about spaces like maker spaces and hands-on learning opportunities and, you know, in a modern school, those are really part of the educational delivery system. And obviously the educational equity piece. Economic development, workforce development, resource efficiency. All these things are opportunities with the right system. In terms of resource efficiency, you know, the state has a hand in helping shape how taxpayer dollars are directed. Helps reduce duplication of effort nearby towns. And as I said earlier, helps school development helps direct it in alignment with state goals. So there's a lot of opportunities. As I said earlier, we look at this as more of a stewardship program for K through 12 schools that promotes high quality learning environments throughout the state, not just an infrastructure program. And we think part of that would be the statewide survey. So we, you know, we're very much of in agreement with everybody who's spoken about the need for the statewide survey, financial incentives to the school districts to modernize those facilities, criteria to rank the school needs, tying the incentives to healthy and energy efficient building standards, and leadership in a person like a facilities director for each school district. And one of the things I didn't go into, but on that table, if you look at it, that shows the different states programs, every one of those programs offers incentives to, you know, if, for example, if you consolidate schools in Massachusetts, you get more money. If you build to certain green standards, you get more money. So some of them use carrot and sticks, but most of them use carrots. They say, here's the base amount. And then there's these adders to try and move schools, districts in the right direction in terms of energy efficiency, sustainability, so on and so forth. So that's another way that these programs can work. Similar to what Secretary French was saying, the idea that districts should be doing their own planning and having a master facilities master plan that they update every five years, that there's additional staff required to support this program at AOE. And finally, you know, we thought that, you know, we're working with a lot of districts who are considering closing schools and consolidating because they just, the enrollments have declined so much and it's just not a sustainable model, the current one they have. And a lot of the conversation focuses on what's gonna be lost, but not what's gonna be gained. And we thought part of this program, if there could be small planning grants for communities, so that they could create strategies for repurposing the schools and their communities that might be closing would help them understand that this could be an opportunity and not just a loss. So there's a lot of stuff here, but we agree very much, you know, our group and myself personally very much supports H209 because as everybody said, funding a statewide assessment is critical in understanding what the scope of the issue is. Having, you know, as it calls out, either whether it's AOE or an official study group to create a specific proposal for the legislature to consider in the next, in the coming years and then having whether it's the Joint Fiscal Office or the Treasurer's Office worked with the study committee to model multiple funding options as critical as well. And then finding, funding an AOE position to support this effort. I don't think that is an H209. I think most of the other things in one form or another are in there. So I think it's on the right track for sure. And at this point, I'd be happy to take any questions people have. I do have a question about, you know, in our initial pass through, we all kind of stopped over the 1.5 million granted this isn't something I deal with every day in my own work life. So I'm wondering, did you have input into that figure? How specific is that? Well, no, I think that came from the Joint Fiscal Office and they, I don't know where they got their information. You know, there's sort of, I think two paths you could go for this study. One is if, and I think the 1.5 million is the better path, which is to build a database that could be a working database moving forward for a program, you know, I think if you spend, if you spend, let's say you could do it for 500,000 or 400,000, you would get like a snapshot in time. And if the legislation took years to develop, it might become dated as was said, but I think if you build a robust database that gets populated on a regular basis and it's designed as such, then it's an investment that the state's making that could be used for whatever the future program is. So, and I think for that 1.5 million, I think that's the kind of product you would get. It would be a useful tool moving forward. My Zoom intuition tells me that Becky Wasserman has something to add. Yeah, I just, sorry, I didn't want to interrupt, but I did want to confirm that Mark Trault from JFO came up with the estimate. And he can talk about it more, but I think it was very much an estimate. So he might have, and this was a couple of months ago that he did it, so he might have new numbers now. We did, I think we did hear from Mark and I asked him whether it was highly specific or sort of picking a number and he, as he does, he kind of smiled. And so I think there's some, a little bit of guesswork there, but on the other hand, you're talking about professional assessments across the entire system. So it doesn't surprise me that it's in the seven figure range. I was just, I always wonder over neat numbers, you know, a million, 1.5. Right, right. So, okay, well, anything else you'd like to add, Mr. Epstein, before I go to committee members for questions? No, I'm all set. Okay, committee members, questions for Mr. Epstein? Did we, we lost Senator Ingram? Senator Perchlich. Yes, on the shifting on your growing needs slide, doesn't have slide numbers. I think it's maybe number nine, but that summary of historical school construction spending, that was money that was spent, that 900, well, that 9 or 1560 to 2023, but if 2019 above, that's all that was, was like approved by local bonding folks and things. Yeah, so the column that says issued, which is 221 million, that I believe is money that has been spent to date. And then in the planning column, there are, I know that the 57 million figure is real, but some of those maybe have not passed bond votes yet. So, look. So why the state hasn't spent any money other than the fact that we have a statewide property tax to fund education, right? Money has been spent on school construction, but just not with any state oversight or support. Correct. Yeah. Correct. Okay. If there are no further questions for Mr. Epstein, I do wanna get to Norm Edkind, but Mr. Epstein, we're gonna be continuing to look at this bill and I found myself, I can't speak for other committee members. I found myself rethinking my original cautions around it. It seems as though the treasurer makes a good case for it. The secretary makes a good case for it. Both of them found the appropriation in line with what was necessary. So it seemed to me as though, you know, I can imagine us passing a version that's not so different from that. I do think there is the question of staffing, which secretary French brought up and which you mentioned, we can pick that up. But as I said to secretary French, feel free to stay to the end of the hearing. Mr. Epkind, I was hoping could speak to us about his thoughts on what the secretary laid out in terms of air circulation and HVAC and it wasn't really specific enough to do much of that, Mr. Epkind. Well, of course, you know me a little bit, I have plenty to say, so if you'd like, I can chime in on both present, all three presentations. I mean, I think we, H209 envisions the discussion on how to finance these improvements happening three and a half years from now. Now, meanwhile, as you know, all these schools are coming forward based on tremendous need and going ahead with projects without any input from AOE as far as that goes. And with some school districts that desperately need to have this work done, not being able to pass bond votes. So I think you need to divorce, you know, face the reality of the situation, which is what I just mentioned, as well as, you know, the long-term planning and initiatives and so forth. And that's where my proposal, well, you know, let's help them get over the hump by, it's all coming out of that fund anyway, right now. But let's put in some criteria and let's get some of the incentives going to some of these school districts that desperately need this work done. And I'm not going to belabor the point because those are my thoughts on that. So I'll move it along unless people want to have some questions of that. In other words, you're muted. Oops, no, I think so. In other words, can you hear me? You're muted, I believe. No, no, we can hear you. No, he's not muted. I think only you can't hear me, Mr. Edkind. Not sure why that would be. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me? I can't hear you. Can you hear me? Can you hear anybody else? Can't hear anybody. Nope. Mr. Edkind has lost audio. Yeah, I was gonna, he can't hear me. It doesn't, can't have any, can you hear us now? No. You might have to re-sign off and sign back up. I'm gonna write him. You could write him to the chat. You've written him to the chat. Okay, I can hear you now, I'm sorry. Well, you can. Okay, go ahead. I wanna see your sign, Senator Burke. Okay. Okay. Oh, it's... What is the sign? Yeah. It said we'll get back to you, but I forgot it first. The Dear John letter basically, you know. It's reversed. Okay, I'm so sorry about that. I think I might have accidentally pushed on something or whatever. Okay. So all I was gonna say is that the treasurer was very specific that we should do a needs assessment, create an accurate database before we funded anything. You take issue with that. Well, and I'm not an expert on that, but if I understood her correctly, she was looking at how the state was gonna pay for this, not how the Ed fund or the local taxpayers were paying for. She was focusing on the capital bill and how to get money in the capital bill to fund this and or to finance through the capital bill and so on. I didn't specifically address the idea of doing what I said, which is just providing some incentive through the Ed fund and maybe, and establishing some criteria for how that's done. Yep. So it doesn't contradict anything she was saying. Okay. This is, I'm saying, because the timeframe, if I understand it correctly in H209, your version of the bill is that discussion happens three and a half years from now. Which none of us liked on our first read through of the bill. As we first saw it, it was a million and a half going out, none of it to districts. And then maybe five years down the road, people see some kind of infusion or at least four years down the road. So, you know, I don't see any reason why we can't think about ways to accelerate that timeline. I have a hard time imagining that we would, at this point in the session, design the kind of grant program you're talking about. But maybe we can ask AOE to come up with that in the coming year and have that working before we get. Yeah. I mean, I did run a past, one of the best business managers in the state to see if the way I proposed it would actually work. And he agreed that essentially that could happen. Needed some tweaking, of course, but the basic idea was sound and it could function the way I proposed. But moving right along, if you like. I can certainly sympathize with Secretary French. The burden on him is enormous. And I think what really needs to happen is to divorce this whole issue off his plate and move it sideways to, I suggested a task force that would look at this. Some of the changes that need to happen are just changes in the programming of their system. Some of it is replacing filters. It's just getting that guidance out. If there were a task force that can do that, that would be great. Most schools are having work done on their systems over this summer. So it's really feeding into that. And if there were some CARES Act money available, I bet some would move quickly to, while a lot of this work has to happen over the summer. So they have an opportunity now maybe to do this if there's where it all possible. But a lot of it is just passing on, getting the right knowledge to the right people that are already there, like to move it kind of off the secretary's desk and into a task force that would work on this. And that was my suggestion there. Appreciate it. Questions for Mr. Edkind from the committee? Okay. Oh, a question from David Epstein. Well, I wanted to just comment that the schools have planned their summer work and it's, summer is just about here and contractors get very, very busy in the summer. And so it's, and then there's some planning time that it takes to put these projects together to figure out what's the best solution. So my opinion from my work in the field is it'd be very difficult to do any work this summer other than getting your existing, if you have a project that's already planned, getting that obviously shouldn't be a problem or getting your systems, your existing systems working as good as they could possibly work. There's a field called commissioning and a commissioning agent comes in and tests all the systems and make sure that they're working properly. And so that might be a more feasible option for the fall than doing a wholesale replacement of systems now. And contractors and engineers can do commissioning as well. It's not just, you have to, it has to be a special. The unfortunate part is that there's many schools that don't have adequate ventilation and or don't have working actual equipment that works. And so you can't commission something that just doesn't work. But that would be a start I think is to have all the systems at least tested and tweaked to work as best as they can before September. Becky, I'm not sure if you're still, there she is. Would you be able to join us on Thursday to go into the actual language of the bill and see what we like, what we'd like to save, what we might change and what we might add? Sure. I do know that the bill is currently in ways and means. So I don't know whatever is sent over to the Senate will be what is worked on. Yeah, understood. But I know from representative Webb, it's their top priority. She's asked me to look out for it especially. So I want to do that. It's a subject that I've been hoping to make a move on with this committee as well. So at the very least, we can maybe get you thinking about another draft. There was the point about an FTE mentioned for AOE and could that person monitor this progress? If we could get that person there and working quickly, maybe that would rather than necessarily the task force that Mr. Edkind is talking about, maybe that person could just begin conducting that work. And then there was also the piece about standards and developing standards. So maybe we can leave that as is or maybe it'll need some kind of modification. But I'd appreciate it if we could have you on Thursday. Sure, great. Mr. Epstein. I would agree with Mr. Edkind also about the timeline. Anything that we can do, you can do to shorten the timeline. I mean, the study might take a year, but the funding, I don't know why this would need to be a three and a half year process. I think it seems too long. It was a reaction I had too when I read the bill and I was glad that Norm put that up. I think, I don't want to speak for the House committee, but I know that they've been moving very gingerly trying not to raise opposition because the moratorium has been in place for quite a while. And it's clear that the ultimate goal was to try to lift the moratorium or a targeted lift to the moratorium. And so I think having it be out three years is sometimes a way to make a soft approach. But I agree and I think the committee as a whole felt that that timeline was not where we want to be. We'd like to be making change if we're going to make change sooner rather than later. So I believe that's our witness list for today. I want to thank Mr. Edkind. Am I pronouncing that right or is it Edkind? I know who you're talking about either way, so it's okay. Okay, well, I appreciate that. And thank you Mr. Epstein for being here. You and I had a discussion about this quite a while ago. So it's good to have it underway. Any additional expertise or insights that I can offer the committee, I'd be happy to come back and do that. So I just want to put that out there as an offer. And we may well, when we're done with our bill, have the witness list back just to respond to the final language just so we can get a sense of whether we've done our work properly. If you have, I don't know if this is appropriate, but I just wanted to share in two minutes, some of what I've read about ventilation, just so you folks are aware, because I know this is really important. There was some question initially that schools or businesses just turn their ventilation off and because it would spread germs around, it spread the virus around. And ASHRAE, which is the body that deals with heating and ventilating systems, came out with a statement that said, no, absolutely, you should run the systems and you should run them as high capacity as you can, because what you're trying to do is dilute the air with as much fresh air as possible. Now, a lot of systems recirculate air, at least partially, they don't bring in 100% fresh air. So that would be the goal. A ideal system would exhaust all the interior air and bring in 100% fresh air. Many systems aren't capable of doing that, but so their recommendations are to boost the capacity, the amount of air being circulated and get as much of that when you're introducing the new air to be fresh air. Now, the problem, the issue with replacement of systems is that many schools have the old unit ventilators, those boxes underneath the windows, and almost every project we do, we take those out and we put a centrally ducted system that says heat recovery in it, because it's much more energy efficient. And that is a unit that sits on the roof and you have to provide ducting to several classrooms. Well, guess what? That usually means you have to take the ceilings down and when you take the ceilings down, you take the lighting down and you do energy efficient LED lighting and a new ceiling. And so what I'm saying is that these projects sometimes are more system related. Excuse me, Mr. Epstein, somebody's got their sound. No, that was, I'm sorry, I had another incoming call. Oh, okay. So anyway, I just wanna say that it's not just always like replacing unit X with unit Y. It's often in fact, with these older schools, a whole systems replacement where you're changing the technology completely and it gets into other architectural components. And that's why to do this right, you wouldn't wanna just tell people to go replace their unit ventilators in their school this summer because it's not the right technology. It's a very outdated technology, which many schools have. So I just wanted to add those couple of bullet points there just so people when they're thinking and talking about this have the benefit of that information. Well, thank you. That's appreciated. And again, thanks to both witnesses. Committee, we're coming pretty much up on time. We'll finish a couple of minutes early. On Thursday, we've got two things I'd like to do. One is, as I said, to Becky Wasserman work on the house's actual language and in advance of it coming over. I think it's more likely that the appropriation will change than the structure of the bill, but we won't go too far in our wordsmithing before we get a final version. The second thing, as I mentioned, before everybody was here, we did get their Act 173, or I'm sorry, their lead bill delay. And I spoke with Representative Webb today. She said that their initial version just changed the date to allow another year for lead testing, but then they got working on findings and some other stuff and it became slightly more complicated. When they went to put findings in, she said some of the findings turned out to be inaccurate and they had to rework on them. So we'll pick up both of those bills. And I guess we're now in the remote version of the end of our normal session where we're working exclusively on house bills. And if 166 goes over to them, we may have the range of the bills that we're gonna be looking at. Debbie. Yeah, I was just wondering if we were going to take more testimony about the UVM faculty situation. We will, and my thinking on that is that our committee would not produce a bill but that we might work on language to pass to the Appropriations Committee for the budget around, so what went out today in the budget adjustment at least was COVID money for replacing hardware, students- Inversing tuition. Right, that sort of thing. What will go out the next time will be more, there will be more of an opportunity, I think to put bumpers on the language. So I'm happy to take a look at that. I do wanna have a chat with Jane Kitchell first because I don't wanna just create a bunch of language and have her say, well, we don't do that sort of thing. So I'd like to find out the exact parameters of what she thinks might make sense and then come back to the committee and have us try to generate those little paragraphs that follow the numbers in the budgets. But again, being respectful of their bailiwick as opposed to our own. So that's the long answer. Short answer is yes. So thanks committee very much. And I guess I will see you all on the Senate caucus call tomorrow morning, I think we have one. And then Thursday for more of a nuts and bolts on the house bills, okay? And thanks again to our witnesses. See you all soon.