 Good morning, everybody. This is House Ways and Mates. It's February 24th, and this is Thursday. So we're going to talk about ed finance. We're going to spend the first couple hours on that. And we are going to spend a little time on the proposal to move to income, to the income system. And then later this morning, we're going to take up S169, which is a fairly narrow bill dealing with property tax overpayments. So before we get started, and I give this over to Emily, if anybody have any questions or concerns, do we have a bill on the floor today? I don't think so. And we're on. Don't think so. Just sleep. John noticed yesterday that I think it was notes appropriations. 697 and the current use bill is on notice and the other bill that we did is the appropriations. So and also to tell the committee that the letter that we talked about, we all got copies of it before it ran up to appropriations. But it was a long, I don't think there was anything different than what we had discussed. So with that, it's all yours. Thanks. So we have spent, well, however many weeks we've all been in session, I really have no idea anymore. But we've been going sort of back and forth through what? Each week. Thank you. You're always there for the number. Every number is needed. Thank you, Scott. So we spent eight weeks sort of going through the different pieces of the task forces recommendations from the summer. And we've done a deep dive on a few of them. And I thought before we get to crossover week, it would be helpful to sort of go through them again and just hear from folks on where you feel more comfortable and where you still have questions. Not making any sort of decisions, but almost sort of just to check in and see where more content is needed. And so Catherine is here to help with that. And there is just to have an object for us to look at. I trimmed up the PowerPoint that Ruth and I went through seven weeks ago, perhaps, so that we can just use that as a tool to sort of talk through what the recommendations are and where people might have forgotten that we ever talked about it or to flag that we still haven't talked about it or whatever that is. And then we're going to totally pivot and talk about income-based education funding proposal with Abby. So Catherine, I did not show you that PowerPoint for you off the door. So I'm sorry. OK. And so it was my PowerPoint, not Catherine's, but she's going to it's just a way to organize the conversation. And so did you just want to start with the top of it? Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. Twice about. And categorical payments, I have done slide three. And these are similar. These are all using the same, if you remember, are using the same chemical report numbers. There are two different ways to administer them. I'm afraid I have no idea what everything that you've discussed on these topics. And I think the question that Representative what other information do you need about thinking about ways versus categorical? So can you speak up? Oh, I think the sound, there's a lot of sound going on over here. Sure. So the weights versus cost. And I can't turn the volume up. We have this versus cost equity. And I think the question for you all is you've heard some information about it. Is there additional information in life as you think through the trade-offs between those two numbers? Those numbers are that both of them are based on the memo from the Tammy Colby was in January. Sometimes it's January. So they're meant to reflect the same inputs. I guess the question is, how do you administer? And Representative Cornice, is that what you were thinking we're talking about? So information that people need when you think about those two options. And so I would go, the first question is, does everyone feel like you have your head around how the cost equity proposal works? And then there's just a conversation about pros and cons. Oh, hello, George's dog. Or do folks want to have some time at a future date to have more conversation about how cost equity works? I could have just a simple refresher in how it works. I mean, I think it would be good to recalibrate my perspective. So you want to try that really quick now? Is it where you're asking for that right now, Jim? When it works best, how we're working forward with this sort of stuff. Great. Thank you. That's an interesting thing, but I can't see myself. I might go square, but anyway. We're sort of all used to looking in a mirror. I'll look into that. Heather, do you want to explain sort of quickly how the cost equity works? Sure. So instead of having weighted students, you have a dollar amount for the people that would go to the district based on how the dollar amount is assigned to a poverty, how the dollar amount is assigned to the second area. There's a whole string of weights that's not weights, but that's the cost equity is translated as a translation from weights into a direct payment to schools. That's a simple explanation. I don't, it honestly has other implications about how it rolls out. What? That's a good start. And so on the next slide, which is slide four, sorry, not that one, on slide three, it sort of lists what those factors are. The students living in poverty in the middle and high school students, the small schools, and the sparse districts. We had conversations last year about why those factors were chosen and how those factors were measured. Is there anything about those four factors that are used for cost adjustment that people still want to dive into? Yeah. I still want English language learners to have their own bullet point here, but that might be a conversation for later. OK. I'm the number that was recommended for ELL and the pre-pupil on a student basis and the costs that we had at least one school district, Winooski, revealed to us their ELL costs on a pupil basis. Those two numbers are like not even in the same hemisphere. And I'd like to, one's about 7,500, and the other is like 27,000. So I still have some questions about what the right number is there. So, but for students living in poverty for middle and high school students with small school students and for sparse districts and they caught us for first districts. Are there other, yeah, Tara? Well, following along that line of thinking, I guess we might want to have testimony about how much people are spending on middle school, high school, small schools, sparse schools, poverty. So that we. I think there's two different questions out here. Do you want to answer that, Tara? Because if we're going to go based on what Winooski said, then I guess we need to know what, if any decision that we make is based on that one piece of information, then I guess I would need to see that piece of information for each of those other things. Wait, that's not information that can be picked out of a budget. I wouldn't think so. So I don't know how this one person who said one thing once is relevant to that. Winooski's superintendent. Let's put ELL aside for now. The way that the other weights or cost equity payments sort of the determination of those, that seems like no one has this feeling like, if we somehow made all the other decisions, those pieces, those pieces feel solid to you now or does anyone want to dive in deeper into another playlist? I'm comfortable with those pieces. Okay, thank you. Can you restate that? I'm not sure if you're understated. So the sort of weights or payment determinations for students living in poverty, the idea of weighting middle and high school students more that we weight small schools with fewer than 250 and fewer than a hundred students differently and that we adjust costs or adjust values for our school districts. Yeah, I have mentioned this to a couple of people. Yeah. And I've asked Brad actually, if he would respond to just a question I had about the middle and high school students, the grade level weights and whether in the grand scheme of things, I'm just recognizing that it does in fact cost more, accepting that does cost more to educate those students, whether it was really necessary to have those weights given that all Vermonters have a single blended tax rate that reflects the K through 12 student population and that across time and across districts, there shouldn't really be a lot of variance from one district to the other on the makeup of that student population. So, which is not to say that, again, it's not to say that it doesn't cost more to educate the upper grades and that in some towns, there's gonna be from one year to the next a lower population of kindergarteners or of 12 graders, but given that we're looking at a fairly significant impact in the cost equity category, if we went that direction and we're talking about moving money just looking at that weight, it's quite a big chunk of it. So anyway, there's a question I did ask Brad about and he has agreed to give it some plot. So I think about what, when you said it to me first was just that like all of those kids will eventually be, or once young and will eventually be, I mean, for the most part, probably will eventually be older and it's sort of an interesting thing that it does. Yeah. So I've done it. I'm shifting gears off that. Did you, are you responding to that? I can respond directly to David. I'm not sure what you care. I get your point. It is a blended tax rate. I think the problem becomes though is that when you have, let's say you have, for example, and we do elementary school districts in the state of Vermont and then we have a high school district. Yes, their rates are blended, but if you don't give them any weighting or a cost equity, their pupil spending that they're showing voters starts to separate. And I think that it provides a difficult narrative and difficult perspective for the voters. Like how come this district is spending 15,000 and this district is spending 18,000 and I'm paying taxes for both of them. And I think it kind of causes that problem. Yeah. I think that's true, definitely. And it would probably, in the same way that if the weights aren't correct today, it's forcing putting pressure on decisions in a direction one way or the other. So we agree, yeah, that is definitely a concern if we didn't have that weight. But on the other hand, I guess I'm putting it out there. What are we really getting? What is it? Does it really, so that's what we're getting and is there a cost also to having this weight either in distortion, one way or the other, just putting more money into the system, possibly increasing spending overall? Yeah, I think the thing where you're getting is putting every district on a level play field. That's what you're getting. I didn't understand the question. I just, I need to understand what you're asking. So very basic of the question, do you need to have a great level of weights? Oh, okay. And then I understood the answer, so, okay. Thank you. Actually, just a thought about that conversation which is interesting is as we've moved to unified unions, how many school districts do we have with its own tax rate that's only elementary school or only high school? But I don't need an answer of just, it seems that that's fewer and fewer. It used to be like we used to have a K-6 and Alice, we don't now we're part of this unified union, much to our DNA. So we have one tax rate that's adjusted by the CLA that's the same for all the towns. Anyway, that was just a question. I had something else I was gonna ask and it's just, I don't think I've ever understood the sparsity weight and the small school discussion. And I don't know that I need to have it all here, but it feels to me that those are doing similar, but not the same thing. And if we're gonna actually implement this sooner than later, I'd like to understand whether we're over counting or under counting somehow or that impact. And I know people have spent lots of time thinking about it, so I'm not questioning the validity of it, but at some point I need to understand those better because those feel to me to be kind of similar. So, Jen, are you saying you don't understand what the weights are doing or what the relative impact of- Well, you have a weight for small schools and you have a weight for sparsity. And clearly there are schools that are gonna fall in to both categories, they're gonna be small and it's gonna be sparse. And I'm trying to understand why we have both and what we're counting with one that we're not counting at the other. And just sort of a detail of it that I forget sometimes is that you can only have the small school weight if you're in a sparse district. So it's an if-than is how it goes. But we can dive deeper into that one. Thank you. I just have, I know the discussions have happened that- So- Listen closely. So you've got the bullets here from small schools, if you were in 250 or 100, and then the sparse school, are you lumping those together now? So the way it- Heather, do you wanna split up? Okay, great. No, it's okay. I did. I did. It's a great question, yeah. So the idea is that there's a weight for a specific weight for a school that's less than 250 students, and then a bigger weight for a school that's less than 100 students. And similarly, there's a weight for, there are three different weights that get progressively larger for a density of 100 students per square, 100 people per square mile, 55 people per square mile, 36 people per square mile. And so it's essentially five different weights that we're looking at there. What happens is you only get that small school weight if your school is getting the sparsity weight. So if your school has the sparsity weight and you have a small school in that sparse district, then you get the small school, one of those two small school weights. It's one of those things that I think a flowchart just makes it easier to understand than saying out loud because it's contingencies, but does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Okay, cool. Thank you. So the part of it, and I think about explaining this to people, the part of it that doesn't make sense is to do it in two steps, you know, that you... So if you're trying to explain to somebody how this works, I don't think people are gonna get it. Yeah, the way I think about it is that there are these huge debates about geographically necessary small schools that got... There's a really fun memo from AOE, from State Board of Ed folks, about how possible it was for them to determine that. And this is sort of a statistical method for determining a geographically necessary small school. Yeah. So the way that I am thinking about it right now, not necessarily the way I have them, is that if you are in an urban or a population dense district and you have a series of small schools, that's a choice that you're making, as opposed to if you're in a more rural area where there just aren't a lot of students and your small school is small by necessity. I think that's a valid way to look at it. I also think that what the study authors are saying is that they saw an effect of the different, of the relationship between dollar spent and educational outcomes in these categories. And they didn't see them in those other categories. Otherwise it would have modeled that way. I hate to say this, but can you repeat that again? I want to make sure I got that. Yeah. And so Tammy's coming in in two weeks or something? The 10th. And so she'll do some more talking about that. But the idea is that what the study authors found is that there was a statistical relationship between dollar spent and educational outcomes for kids in those particular categories of lived experience for those students that they didn't necessarily see in other places. Of dollars spent and outcomes. The relationship between dollars spent and outcomes. And so any of the weights, the idea that there was a relationship between dollar spent, more dollars spent and better outcomes. And that's how the weights or the cost equity payments. I'm gonna try to use, say cost adjustment as a way of describing the weights or the cost equity just so I don't have to use six words each time. What are you gonna say? Cost adjustment, but it's, I'm just gonna try it on today, see how it's going. So what I hear from folks is that folks are good with the students living in poverty in terms of like sort of getting your head around it, but there are still questions about weights for different ages or kids. And there's still a few more questions about the rural and sparsity. Yeah. And then I would have to say, I don't, I can't remember how this turned out, but if we're going to rely on what Walewski superintendent once said, I don't know the context of that. I don't know what was in addition to some other money. I don't know anything about that. So for that to hold water for me, I would have to hear from that again, and I'd have to hear about all the other things that are spent otherwise. Yeah. Okay. I'll send that testimony to sources, so she can show us the picture. And we'll spend a lot more time on yellow as well, the education today. Okay. So next slide. And can I just? Yes, please. This is the representative answers question. I think it's understanding it, but also I think it's explaining it from the point you have a summary explaining the nuances of it a little bit more clearly so that it's clear. So you avoid the question, like you only get a geographically necessary small school. I think it's sort of what I'm the context. So that's just the point I'm listening to. The next page is the further recommendations. So now I can get to the English language learners. And it sounds like there's some questions on the table or perhaps we're visiting that testimony and trying to understand how we have two essence that are so different. Is there anything else on the English language? I think there's a lot of English language. To discuss more? Yeah. And then counting students living in poverty. We spent some time on that, but I think that was quite a while ago. So it was a shift from the number of folks in a community who were enrolled in food stamps plus some other stuff. And then I'm using Korean reduced lunch as the measure instead and then a universal income declaration. Yeah. There I would have to say I ended up we had some testimony on it. I think was when we were listening to the child tax credit and someone in state government who works on the SNAP program testified that the enrollment in SNAP, there's some national award that they won for enrolling people in SNAP so well in Vermont. So I guess I just I want to hear what other reason there would be to expand it to free and reduced price lunch enrollment. And then to understand the difficulty that I read that Winooski would have, I can't remember where, but they would have difficulty with how they get the children, how they get them signed up for free and reduced lunch because they have some difficulties there. So I would have to know if we were going to go from SNAP, which is something that exists, you are, are not in SNAP. And that's an unknown to something that's free and reduced price lunch enrollment. Then how do we fix the way that, how do we help the school districts help families to make sure that everybody who should be signed up for free and reduced lunch is so that kids are not left out. So, you know, either we do something that we already have the data for, or we have to figure out, I think, how we make this expansion work. Thank you, Carol. We can get more testimony on that. The Universal Income Declaration Form is sort of the solution to that. And that's what Winooski uses, the Prattlebury uses, they're already sort of using that form, but we will get some really good storage. Using the SNAP was a disaster for certain districts because we had an entire town, the town of Richmond, which according to the human services folks, and you can never get the right person to tell you anything from human services. I tried for weeks to get that information from them, but they had the entire town of Richmond without a single person being counted. Now that's absurd. And we had a town of Underhill with I think three people being counted, it was single digits, whatever it was, because, and you just can't find anybody to tell you why that is. It was extremely hard to get that information, but it was clearly not a system that was working adequately. So we need to go to something different. I think that for you to reduce lunch is a really good plan. Jim, and then? Yeah, briefly, Carol, you're right, getting an accurate count is very important, but I think at the end of the day, parents bear some responsibility here. I mean, it's there if all your kids properly listen and not many within the school, I don't know whose kids are, so no system been perfect, but I agree with George for a number of reasons and others that for you to reduce lunch will be a more accurate way until we go to a universal declaration form. Well, did you ever do that? Did I ever do anything? No, Scott did. Okay, Scott. I just thought we took, the task force took testimony on SNAP and the SNAP uptake rate varies dramatically across the state for a variety of different reasons, but they know that the uptake rate is not consistent across the state. So there's a suggestion in Montpelier this year that we go to universal free lunch. What's that going to do with this? So the way it's been discussed, so there's a number of districts around the state, Berlin, Kamenewski, Brattleboro, do you have a district that already do universal meals? St. John'sbury does. St. John'sbury does. And so what those districts use is this universal income declaration form and then there's other districts in the state that are still doing free and reduced lunch and some kids have to pay and they use the free and reduced lunch form. But anyone who fills any of the districts that use the universal income declaration form, that's then reported to the feds as free and reduced lunch numbers because we still have to report to the feds on that number. And so the idea would just be that everyone in the state would be using the same form, the universal income declaration form instead of sometimes using one and sometimes using the other, but all the numbers being sort of reported to the family. So it's all uniform. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was just gonna add that on Bill that it's helpful, but it's, I believe 50%, if you have 50% of students in a district that would qualify, the federal government historically has then picked up a cab, essentially for a universal meal program. And that's been different in COVID, but that's kind of the dining room. And Hunger Free Vermont does a great job of sort of explaining the uptake rate of the different forms in the different programs. So small school and merger support grants. The idea is moving from the grants to the weights for small schools, but keeping all the merger support grants that were sort of part of various iterations of Act 46 and after. Yeah. I wouldn't want to take away anything that was promised as far as merger support grants, but I do wonder what the dollar impact is. I remember it being low. If we could get some. Yes, but we can get the actual number. We're facing out, right guys? There are fewer students. That's a good question. Some of them are not chasing out though. Some of them are not chasing out. Some of them are forever. We'll grab that number for you. Yeah, I think maybe not just a number, but how does it affect individual tax rates where it would be maintained? So I'm sorry. Is it that there are some small school merger grants that never, never did you say ever go away? Merger support. No, not. Yeah, so not the small school grants, but merger support grants which may be the same thing. Actually, I'm not sure you can explain that. I don't know. I'm glad you're a clue. Do you want it? So and then last year we passed something that sort of added a third new category. I remember that. So but I thought that the merger support grants were to help. I think I'm forgetting what they were, but it was to get to as part of Act 46 to help schools and to give them extra incentives to merge or help to merge. And then after a while, they didn't go away. They just keep going. I will flag that as I'm talking about. Yeah. The folks want to understand that. OK, we are going to talk about transition mechanisms more because seeing that modeled out. Is there anything we talked about that last week? Are there particular things about thinking about transition mechanisms that are just paying out for people? Yeah, I think that the transition timeline should. Be at least as fast and maybe a little faster than the Act 173 timeline. And some of the books use a five year. You know, I'm not sure whether this life that will start by then, but I do think that. That's a good thing to look at kind of because there's a big change that we have established the blackboard. I also think that it holds that maybe something on like a three year time frame or something like my work. So I would say looking at that as a template, at least to get a good reference. And then I personally would like to see us go with the most aggressive timeline that seems practicable, especially since we might be doing some tax impact mitigation with some surplus. And I think that a shorter time frame to count on that surplus is probably wise. So those are my thoughts about the transition. So I think last week I asked if anyone sort of had thoughts about a reasonable percentage change in order to sort of game out the number of years. Anyone have any questions that would be helpful to answer to even think about that? That's my question. Are you talking about a percentage change year on year change of tax rate that we would be looking for as a sort of maximum acceptable year on year change? I'm just thinking a little bit, I'm thinking out loud. That's what I'm doing here. That having a long transition that's reflected in tax rate adjustments at some point really disconnects people from the decisions that they're making. You know, we did that. We've been still carrying the F-46 incentives and there's always this, you know, you get some explanation of something and then there's a footnote, but, you know, these are all actually not real. And I worry about that a bit. We did that with the phantom students. You know, we had an equalized student count, but we had phantom students and we always had to explain them away. And so I'm just expressing some concern about having actual tax rates that are, I don't know which ones are the real ones and which ones are the not real ones, but having sort of two sets of books. But is that the right way to describe it? And for a year or two, that's probably fine. I would really worry about doing that for a long period of time. Because the world will shift and we'll be still dealing with two sets of books that are gonna start being wildly different. Yeah, what I think about in that context is that if we're sort of building out a model to make that work based on what education spending or spending on education is right now, and like you said, in four years, it'll be so far away from whatever model we modeled that it will be meaningless to, yeah. So that's only saying that I'm not sure how to do the transition, but I don't think that an adjustment in the tax rates is, if it's over five years, I think it's somehow a problem. I just don't, I don't know a better way but I throw it out as an issue. I think you're entirely right. When we present things to you, we're all presenting, we're using FY20 data and we will show you, like we can transition them in and show you whatever it is, but that's in that segment here in your entirely right. It will be actually spending different amounts in the future for many good reasons. And you also wanna make it administratively easy. The agency of Ed is gonna have to figure out what that, and so it's easy for us to say, oh, this time one's gone up, I don't know, 50 cents, and so you're gonna make them go up 10 cents a year or whatever it is, and so, but it actually gets caught, we have to figure out how you set it up so they can administer it, and it's pretty easy and clear. It's actually sort of a variation of the difficulty of explaining the CLA, that people think they're voting on something so I could just imagine a few years down the road and the school board trying to explain this is what your budget is that actually it, and this is the tax rate it should get to, but actually the one it's gonna get to is this over here, and I just, I worry about it. George? On the other hand, this is gonna be a very big tax increase for some districts, and dumping that on people once could be a reason to fail a whole lot of failed budgets in those particular towns, or it's gonna lead to cuts in some services there, because it is really substantial. So I think we need to be very thoughtful and careful here about this and need to look carefully at the numbers and the increased tax rates that this is gonna cause for some people. So I wanna be clear, I think there does need to be a transition, I just worried about how we set it up that it needs to be done in a way that keeps people anchored in reality. And I think there's this anchoring in reality factor that needs to, is really important and there's the not crashing any school systems during a very difficult time in people's lives, and that's part of Fort Worth. Lex, thank you. Yeah, I just thought maybe some testimony could be helpful. The Act 173 thing, yeah, I know this is different, but it has a sort of tail year and part of that has to do with the maintenance of effort around federal special ed rules and you don't want it to like go down anyway. It's complicated, but I think some technical weighing in on whether they're, I understand this is not related to special ed and so there may not be federal pitfalls to be aware of, but I do think some technical testimony to that effect of what do we need to be looking out for in this transition so that are there kind of federally to education rules to be sidestepping the way that we are with that tail on the 173 like that? And are you also asking if maybe maintenance of effort provisions might be a helpful piece of the mechanism to float into this as well? Maybe we're really just to kind of have somebody flag whether a cost adjustment pertaining to these categories of need would flag something such as maintenance of effort on the special ed side would be different, but just understanding if there is some sort of state federal interplay there that would need to inform that mechanism. Anything else on the transition? Testimony? Recommendations, anything? Okay, so the next two on the list are Education Tax Advisory Committee and the Comprehensive Evaluation Mechanism. Those are both really fleshed out in the field that the Senate's working on. And so I think it might just be helpful to wait for them to send over their fleshed out words and figure that out from there. So, and then we know we're gonna talk more about a unified income-based taxation system for K-12 Education Funding right after this conversation. So then in additional recommendations, just slide five. As opposed to further recommendations. Yeah, that's pretty silly. I cut out some slides, and so I think the title gets sillier from there. I think they might have made more sense when there were more slides between them. Thank you. Slide five. Yeah, additional recommendations. So monitoring the implementation of Act 1673 special education block grants, which seem to be actively moving right now, I think what's helpful for me to understand is that as we're just modeling out transitions is making sure we're layering in the 173 money and the ESSER money and that we're getting a full picture of what a district's budget looks like from all of the different sources that are rapidly changing. Yeah. Is it possible to create a little simple chart? Not simple, but we have these cost equity or weights or something like that. We have transitioned money in some form and 173 money. It would be nice to just sort of be able to visualize how they intersect, interact. And I don't know who would do that, but I tend to look at things visually to try to figure them out. So. All right, do you mind my asking? Are you looking for, are you looking to like seed in the towns? Tell me what your general broad categories. Just like what 173 money is doing to that, okay. If that's something your office could do, it would be very helpful. If you could, if adding examples would help us understand that that would be even more helpful. So at the end of one of our conversations, we sort of came back to this, maybe it was you, Jennifer, I'm not sure. We came back to this core idea that we're doing all of this conversation about dollars and taxes towards the idea of creating educational equity for outcomes that all kids would actually get the educational, get their educational needs met and have the opportunities they would have. But we don't spend that much time talking about it because we're ways and means and not the Education Committee, but that is sort of, that is why we're hypothetically doing all of this, right? And so the education quality standards process and oversight is part of the bill that will come over. It's definitely way more education than ours. Yeah. I'll just add, it's critically important. We do not have a system right now in the state where the agency of education is actually getting out there and ensuring that our public schools are providing excellent education to our kids. No matter what we do with education, finance, if we don't do that, that doesn't even matter. And I guess I would ask the question as a follow-on to that. Are there other pieces? For me, that's where the sort of, if we don't do this, then none of the rest of it matters fits. But are there other things like that that people want to sort of better understand in terms of outcomes for kids and why we are taking apart the entire education finance system and putting it back together? That would be helpful anchoring for this. So the next additional recommendation is properties, having property tax credits correspond with current year tax bills. I think that idea has been sort of set aside a little bit with the focus on moving to the income-based system. And I imagine has been talked about hundreds of times before in this room. Thank you. At least 50. So my temptation is to just sort of leave that aside for a while and see if it's helpful to bring that conversation back in later on. Does that work for people? Sure. About having property tax credits corresponding with current year tax bills instead of past year tax bills. So there's no pre-changes in the pre-K weight recommended from Professor Colby's study. And so because of that, the task force did not recommend any changes to the weight. The reason Professor Colby's team did not recommend any changes to the weight is because no one asked them to look at any changes to the weight. And so it's just a funny thing that sits there and sort of causes a little bit of mess on the edges. And so we just recommended that it gets folded into the really big Act 45 childcare financing study that's gonna happen this summer. And don't wanna open up that Pandora's box since someone's about to spend an enormous amount of time and energy focusing on that question. So can you sum that up for one more second because I lost. So there's a pre-K weight in the current law. And the study didn't recommend a change to the pre-K weight and we didn't recommend this change to the pre-Q weight not because it shouldn't be changed, but just because of momentum around how contracts with Professor Colby's team were drafted to be perfectly honest, I think. And so we're just gonna set that question aside and hunt it over to the Act 45 childcare financing study. Caleb? Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, the 0.46 for anybody who hasn't and all of us, it's been a long time we had the committee room around this otherwise, but the 0.46 came significantly later than all the other weights. It came following, I think it was Act 66 that instituted the pre-K program out of that number wrong. But that number, that 0.46 was really, as I understand it, was a number deemed high enough to incent public school districts to operate these programs. And actually they've been beneficial to school districts in the sense that a lot of them don't operate these programs that they pay $3,500 a year to somebody else. And for $3,500 a year, 0.46 EQPs slam and deal. So if you're short on pupils. So I just throw that out of the little context. It is a more recent number, as a number that was not really empirically derived, but was sort of come up with as a way of, what is a sufficient number to incent public school districts to take part in this public private hybrid program. So it's an interesting, I think adding it to the Act 45 study is a great idea. I'm just putting that out there because it's always going on my head. Yeah, so this is cool decide who does that study. I think so we have an RFP out right now. It's posted, we're hoping to actually have a, I think the kids are doing next week on it. This is the Act 45 and the report it's doing this summer. That's what I was just looking at. So, just a few weeks about who's doing work. I wonder if, so it's one RFP. I'm thinking that the childcare financing is kind of one kind of thing that has to be done. And then if you want the weights to be in line with the kind of research that was done by Tammy Colby, you would have the weights done by her again. So they're consistently derived. I think the study could recommend that we ask her team to derive a weight for pre-K and might, the study might also recommend that there shouldn't be any weight for pre-K and we should fund all pre-K a totally different way. I have no idea. I'll just, I think this is exactly, to send it to a study is exactly what we want to do. I mean, we, I joined house set after they passed this bill and we tried for four years to fix it and move it around. And it was just like, I mean, you talked about it possible. And a lot of it comes down to it's just, you've got two different agencies here. Hey, we just, they, they couldn't even get in the same sandbox, much less play. It was brutal. We're bifurcated comes up a lot. Yeah. It was absolutely brutal. My understanding is that that relationship has improved somewhat. I hope so. Yes. It's wild. Okay. So that study will handle that piece. And then we've talked about school facilities a little bit, but that's also a separate conversation. The task force talked about an early college program, fractional weight, but it's not something that we designed anything to do anything with. I guess I would just sort of ask folks on the committee, if that's like a project you want to take up for the next five years of your life, please. Yes. I don't see why it has to take up five years of my life. I'm willing to take it on because I think it's. Yeah. I mean, I think it is significant. It's. That ought to be done. Okay. I thought you were, I thought you were. And I, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be dismissive about, I meant to say it's, well, no, we didn't do any work on it. And someone needs to do work on it. Yeah. We can talk later about it, but unless you think that there are, you know, obvious particular hurdles or challenges that we could all be thinking about. None jump out to me beyond just that some attention needs to be paid to it. And similar to the CTE conversation, we wind up in a disincentive over incentive. How do we find that balance problem? And I think it's going to be coming to us and it's. It could be folded into that conversation fairly effectively. Interesting parallel. And I'm thinking that. The, the early college program. Which I really don't know a whole lot about. Seems to be. Successful in. Pulling students out of high schools and therefore out of the weight. You know, losing that losing the account. In a way that maybe CTEs aren't being successful. So that might be informative. To. Dig into it. Just adding on to the same. Early college CTE. We might look at homeschool. Tractional weights. It's an interesting subject, but there's more people using. You know, you can take courses at a high school. You have your homeschool. And if you take enough, it adds up to a fractional weight, but it's really tiny. It's kind of like. The amount of money somebody gets. Their song gets played on Spotify. Kind of tiny. It's kind of like that they teach forever to add up. So somebody could take almost like a full course load. And it counts as like. Less than a tentative. So I just think it would be interesting to look at. In a postcode world where there's a different dynamic in the homeschool. And maybe it fits into that. And I know in my area, there's a lot of kids who take a few classes at the elementary school while they're homeschooling. And the school actually really encourages that. And I never thought that it might be because they're getting weight bits for it. Wait, wait. So I think there's going to be a CTE study coming to us soon. And thinking about. How to include or really college is not my thing. Mental health and trauma informed instruction grant. I. That is fairly squarely in the. Ed. Committees jurisdiction from my perspective, but I could absolutely be missing something. I'm happy to be disagreed with. Well, I mean. Yes. If it comes, if it's a mandate, or it comes out of the Ed fund or whatever it is, it's ours as well. So. Yeah. George. Hi. As I've said before, having done a lot of work on adverse childhood, experiences. This to me is the elephant in the room. Other than English language learners. This is probably. More powerful than anything else on the list of. Of stuff we're doing cost equity for. And, you know, and so I. I really appreciate that the task force took testimony. About about this stuff and that. You know, that, that there's some consideration of. Moving forward or at least studying. You know, that the effects of. Of the adverse childhood experiences on. On kids. Lack of educational. Success. So. Anyway, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I think. Those are all of the core. Recommendations. Yeah. I take you to your very last slide. Thank you. I skim to the other ones, but the last slide. I talked about pre K, but the tuitioning. Oh. Thank you. Yes. Which side is that. The very last one. You should look at the other ones. But I think the other one. We're all speaking to the individual. But. Second bullet on the last slide is about. Which is. Each of it. I think you all need to. I don't know what you've discussed about it yet. So. I haven't discussed it at all. Actually, thank you. I'm just going to take a guess. But most of the committee is probably not even familiar with. What average announced two wishes and how it. Comes to be. And we probably. Need to. Understand what that is. Yeah. Okay. But that. I think it's time for us to take 15. That's great. And thank you, everyone. Of course, if anything comes to your mind after. The. This was a great time for us to take 15. That's great. And thank you everyone. Of course, if anything comes to your mind after.