 You can hear us all, okay? I think so. Good. Okay, great. Good morning, everyone. Representative along is here to present a bill. And we're relating to the education of children, of parents who are homeless. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay, you're on the floor. Thank you. Martin Malone, representative from South Burlington. I'm here to do a brief introduction of H638, which on its face is a fairly straightforward bill, but I just doomed it. Because, of course, once you guys get into it, I'm sure there'll be all sorts of issues that you'll have to deal with. But any of that. Pat Humbert, the principal from South Burlington, was on the phone to join us. He and I were discussing this probably last fall when he raised this as an issue that a child who is at school, who has been homeless, that individual can really go to any school. But in such a situation, that child could be at a particular high school, established some routine, some sembles of normalcy in his or her life. And then happily, the parents or guardians could find a permanent residence in a different location, a different district. And under the current law, that student would have to transfer to that other high school. Which, the problem is that, you know, a child like this has dealt with a lot of adversity. And it may be better for that individual to be able to complete high school in that school where he or she has started. I mean, that's the crux of the bill is to be able to allow that to happen if the student has gone through a sophomore year, so has established those relationships in high school, that that student should have the opportunity to finish high school at that particular school. So that's the crux of it. And I'm happy to take some initial questions and we'll probably defer all the hard questions to Patrick. And I neglected to say that Patrick Burke is on the phone with us this morning. Any questions? I'm just trying to pull up the bill, but Martin, I know we have talked about this before. There is provision in the bill for the parents to be involved in that decision, right? I'm sorry, I'm just looking for that in an English. It's towards the end, it's on, I believe, around line 17-19 on page three. Unless the child's parents. Yes, okay. Right, so there's a distribution. So you're sort of a buy-in process. There is, yes, that's correct. Okay, the only other question I had, I don't know if this is more for Jim, but did receive an email from Amanda Garces of the Vermont Human Rights Commission who had requested that we consider changing the word parent for caregiver or guardian to address the interests of kids who are being raised by grandparents and some close friends. Yeah, I think something along these lines makes sense. Yeah, we certainly want to have whoever is in charge of that child's upbringing to be involved in that decision. So I think that would be a fine change. You described this as it would allow this to happen. I'm sorry, I haven't read through it in great detail, but essentially it would take the decision out of this. Right now a school has sort of the leeway to allow it to happen anyway. No, not really. Yeah, so I can leave that for Patrick, but very quickly I understand that a school can have transfer students, but the student is not counted as one of the students in that school. And in this instance it would be. So the money would follow or stay with that student. So it's not residents. Right, right. Anyway, would it require then a school to allow this to happen? Yes, that's correct. So if there are no other questions I'll run off to my other meeting. I can share just like a scenario of what this looks like in practice. So Patrick, you should probably say your name for your... Sorry, I didn't mean to take your... No, that's okay. Patrick, can you introduce yourself to the committee, please? Sure. Roger Burke, I'm principal at South Burlington High School. Okay, thank you, go ahead. Sure thing. So I mean, you know, without going into too much detail about the actual language of the proposed legislation, the reality for us is that what happens is we'll have some students who will one way or another kind of lose their permanent housing and they'll end up classified as homeless. And because there's a federal law mechanic event which you may be familiar with which allows for homeless students to maintain the educational residence in the district that they were originally enrolled in when they became homeless. So we do have already, we'll have students who are residents of the city of South Burlington, they become homeless, then let's say that they end up in a shelter in Burlington or in a hotel in Colchester. They can continue to enroll in South Burlington because of McKinney-Vento, which is a federal legislation or regulation. But then what can happen is they can then find a permanent residence and let's say they find a permanent residence in Winisby or in Burlington or Colchester and then we're in a situation where it's like, okay, now you've lost your educational residency that you had because you lived in South Burlington and you've lost your McKinney-Vento status and so now you need to transfer to Winisby or Burlington or whatever. And my perspective is that obviously it's hard enough for these young people and I also understand that maybe if it's somebody who's in sixth grade or seventh grade it would be fine for them and probably beneficial for them to enroll in school in the town in which they're residing. But when it comes to someone who's really playing out the end of their educational career and has established relationships at high school, probably with social workers and guidance counselors, let's let that kid finish and not create another bump in the road for them and the way that we can allow for that, the happenings for them to be able to maintain their educational residency in the community that they had established it when they became homeless. So that's it. It's unfortunately something that happens more than you would think and particularly in South Burlington where the housing market is very tight and I don't want to overstate it but they are memorable situations where you really feel like you want to be able to support the student and help them finish what they started in your system. And that's it. It's really that simple and I explain that to Martin and I don't like being in conversations with families where I have to say like, we would love to have your child see her but they need to transfer to whatever brought him. Patrick, Representative Coobley, do you find that this is a growing problem in our schools? Have you spoke to other principals throughout the state? Thank you, Martin. No, I haven't spoken with other principals. I would suspect that this issue is one that as the... you're more populated areas in the state, it's more significant. And so, you know, I would suspect... perfect, now we're doing morning announcements here at the high schools. I suspect that... and you know, a lot of times in Chittin County like even where the lines are drawn, you know, is difficult for people. So I've got folks who are like, look, I'm going to stay homeless until I find a place in South Burlington. They think they find a place in South Burlington only to learn that, oh, it's actually not in South Burlington. It's in the south end of Burlington or, you know, something like that. So I think it is more common in Chittin County, probably also in your more densely populated areas that have multiple school districts that make up like a metropolitan area. So, you know, it might happen down in other parts of the state, but I think it's something that happens. You know, it's hard to move out of the Newport the North Country Union School District. You know, it's like... I think it's like a hundred... I have a few though, so I would suspect that they experience this a little bit less than we do, but... and again, I don't want to overstate the number of times this happens, but it does... it's not infrequent, and it is a situation where I really feel like we can just fix it and help out kids and families who are already in a tough spot. Peter, do you have a question? Yeah, this may be a better question for our Legislative Council, but I'm starting this as a system that could be gained in some way. In other words, you live in South Burlington, you've got a kid who's completing 10th grade, you sell your house, you live with grandma and grandpa for a couple of weeks to... right where you're homeless, and then you move to Winooski, and then you can sort of claim this, even though what you've really done is just sort of moved, found a loophole to keep your kid at the high school that you were just in. Are there legal definitions of what is homeless? And so I'm just curious if this system can be gained in any way. Is that for me or is that for legal counsel? I don't know who the best person is. I guess you have a response. I have a response. I mean, to be honest, I don't see how that, even that situation, how that gains the system, because all that's allowing to happen is for South Burlington to continue, for that family to continue their educational residency for their 10th grade or beyond student for the final three years of that child's educational experience. So even in that case, Winooski's not losing a student. The money's going to South Burlington already anyway, and so I mean, that's kind of the next layer to this issue are other families, you know, mom dies or dad takes off and they lose their house, and they're now housing insecure, but they aren't homeless, and they have that exact situation that you just described. Worst telling those kids they have to talk for all though, which is, if you ask me, nonsensical, but at least this bill takes care of students. And I don't know, I read the proposed bill and it looked like there's some language in there that talks about what it means to be homeless. I know McKinney-Middo has definitions of what it means to be homeless, but I don't have any concerns about anybody. Educational residency in itself is an interesting dynamic because, you know, there's no, if a student moves, it's almost like, when Winooski and Juana stay enrolled here, well, Winooski's not losing a student, it's the student stays enrolled. I don't really, I should be okay too, you know, and regardless of the reasons, but for now I think it would be nice to take care of the kids and families that are clearly in crisis, much less as opposed to other students who just are experiencing disruption. Thanks. Thank you, Patrick. Any other questions? Yeah, I got one. Kaylee? Yeah. Go ahead. Representative Elder here. Just curious how many students do you think this might have applied to roughly over, like, you know, it could be over a five-year period even. I mean, are we, and I know these dynamics are changing in schools, but over the past five years, is this kind of a problem that exists in single-digit numbers or in dozens? I mean, can you just kind of give me a sense for the scale? Yeah, I was going to say ten. Okay. So yeah, I would say five to ten. Five to ten. Over that, over the past maybe five years or something, or would you say that? Yeah, I think we have one or two a year that probably fit into this category, and as you're saying, that dynamic changes. And your school district, how many students or equalized pupils or whatever measure? Oh, I mean, I have 940 students at my high school like bodies. I don't know what that changes. Right, right, okay. But at the high school, it is. Yeah. Right. All right. Well, Patrick, Representative Coupoli here, I serve on the Child Poverty and Strengthening Families Advisory Board, and I think the information that I receive is that this is a problem that's growing due to poverty in our state. And homelessness is growing as well. So I would suspect that we're going to find more and more of these issues popping up with our schools. And I certainly thank you for your testimony. And if there are no more questions. Sorry, I do have one question. Yeah, this is Representative James from Manchester. One of the first things I asked Martin about was this clause at the very end about basically getting parental and district buy-in. So that, you know, I was envisioning, I guess, a situation that I didn't think would be ideal where maybe a student was being allowed to stay in that district over the wishes of his family or over the wishes of the receiving district. And I just wonder, you know, if you've seen that scenario or how you would see that playing out. You know, I guess I was very happy to see that the parents had a voice here. And I wonder if you could reflect on that just a little bit. I think it's, I haven't seen the situation where the students and family did not want to stay in the district where the child resides. I think what would make sense to your point would be that if they wanted to, if they want to have their educational residency shifted to where they now have a permanent residence, of course they have the right to do that. I'm not certain that it necessarily would benefit or would have the impact of the intended legislation if you give the, if you give my school the option to say no. I think that when the student has established educational residency as public schools it's our responsibility to educate them regardless of their situation. And so this legislation should give that student and family all the rights that a resident of South Burlington would have in terms of accessing a free appropriate public education in South Burlington. And I say that because you know, honestly there are times when you know obviously students and families who are in crisis and are experiencing insecurity relative to housing like they, there's often affiliated difficulties that can make my life harder, you know can make a school life harder but that's our job and we should you know not create an additional hurdle for those students. I mean I think if you really looked at a student in that situation who's already finished 10th grade the chances of them not completing high school just completely multiply exponentially if you're not telling them that they have to enroll in a new school that has maybe different graduation requirements where they have no friends and they don't have a social worker or they don't have a guidance counselor. So I don't think my schools, if this legislation happens I think those students should be, it shouldn't be up to me or other high school principals or school boards or whoever makes those decisions to close the door on a student that has established educational residency in their district. Thanks. We want to hear from Ledge Council on this issue where I can walk through the book, right? Okay, that would be great. Thank you. Okay, so let's start with existing law. So on C-1, line 18, oh sorry for the record, Jim Daymore of Ledge Council walking through, what is this? H what? 638, thank you. Okay, so E-1 on line 18 says for the purposes of this tile the legal residence or residence of a child, parents who are homeless, is a child of school of origin to come back to and unless the parents in another school district agree that the child's attendance in school in that district, will be in the best interest of the child. So already we have in law this involvement of a parent in another school district to make the decision, which is replicated below. The reference to school of origin is above, that definition is on line 12, says as used in this section, school of origin means the school in which the child was enrolled at the time of placement in the custody of the commissioner for children and families or in the case of a student already in the custody, the school, the student most recently attended. So the default for a homeless student is school of origin. Okay, the definition of a homeless student is a child of parents who are homeless needs a child whose parents lack a fixed, regular and adequate residence or have a primary nighttime residence and supervised publicly or privately operated shelter, et cetera. So this bill doesn't deal with what happens when you're the child of a homeless parent, it's already in law. This bill deals with what happens when the parents are no longer homeless. They were homeless, now they're no longer homeless. What happens to that child, okay? So line nine says, now standing in provisions to the contrary under this section, if a child of parents who are homeless was enrolled in complete grade 10 in Vermont Public School and the child's parents either during that academic year or during the following two academic years are no longer homeless and take a residency in a school district other than the school district in which the child enrolled in complete grade 10, then the child should be considered to be a legal resident of the school district in which the child completed grade 10 which is time that takes the student to graduate from high school unless the child's parents in the school district agree that the child's attendance in school and that school district will be in the best interest of the child. Picking up from the earlier language about being homeless and having the parents be able to override the school board engine, okay? Questions? Peter? I'm just running through various scenarios in my head. So I'll try to do this one thinking a little bit out loud. So you are a non-operating district that tuitions all of your kids. Let's just take one of my towns, Hancock, your family who lives there, Hancock tuitions your child to Harwood. You become homeless and then you move to Vergems. The parent's version, yeah, okay. Does that, would this obligate Hancock to continue to pay tuition for this student to attend Harwood? I would say yes because the student is entitled to continue his or her education at Harwood for two more years and the only way that happens is due to the tuition payment. So we're going to talk about tuition here expressly and that's the result. So this bill relates to high school. 10th grade. 10th grade. And then having two more years, or as long as it takes to graduate from high school. How do we do, how does this issue, are we not including children in an elementary school who are homeless? No, no, grade 10. Said grade 10 on it, I think. Yeah, that's what the bill means. My question is, what about all the other kids who are homeless? Maybe that is a presumption. I'm sorry. No, I mean, go ahead. I mean, I guess my interpretation is that with a younger kid it's just maybe not even possible, you know, that you'd have to essentially be going where, where you're, the kid in 11th or 12th grade might have that degree of mobility to get from one new ski to South Burlington. Or, you know, that's what I was kind of hearing. Maybe I've got that wrong, but just the practicality of doing it. And also doing it over, you know, if it happens in fourth grade you're going to keep this kid in a different district than the one they live in for eight years. You know, that's what I was picking up is just... And they would have the time to build those, those social networks. Well, to me the transportation for elementary would be the biggest thing. Mom and Dad would... I'm sure a bus is not going to come out of a district to take you to another school. So we're back to being rural and not having transportation for young people. No, I'm just thinking about what Peter said and that's really a phenomena scenario. They're paying twice, basically. Because regens are still paying. Wherever they live, that property tax is going. Schools. Why are they paying twice? Yeah, I don't understand that. I didn't say they were paying twice. Not twice, but in... The community that's tuitioning is now tuitioning. A student that no longer lives in their community. In their community. So, technically, if they move into a house that they're paying property taxes on, that property tax, regardless, is still paying twice. Right. Well, actually, that's a really good chart twist. I haven't thought about that. So the parents don't remember living in Hancock in your scenario. So, usually, it goes... It's a parent's resident that decides where the child goes to school. So the child... If the parents move from Hancock to South Burlington, right? I think then, the kid still gets to stay in Hancock and the school... I'm not sure what school it's... Harwood, let's just say. They're not in there, but it's tuition down. Okay. So they get to go to the school they've been in. But in terms of who pays for that, I don't think it would be... Because the rest of them don't live there anymore. So that doesn't make sense. I think it would be Harwood under this bill because that's how the students legal. But Harwood would be counting them as equalized people. And they would be... Which they wouldn't be if they were being tuitioned. Because you only count for Indian purposes, you only count students of residence and the kid would be a student of residence of Harwood. Like I said, if we were to move forward with this, maybe... Yeah, clarify that. Gotta discuss that a second time. Well, I think it can get sticky, especially if it gets into greater volumes. And I co-sponsor this bill. I think it sounds a good idea and I think it's based around basically compassion and wanting to keep the momentum someone has with these services to finish a high school. So I'm all for that. But it gets really tricky, right? And if you're talking about Chittenden County, if you're talking about South Burlington and Manuski, you're talking about different housing costs. You're talking about something that could be created to be kind of helpful for a small number of students but then could... Now, nobody's looking to be homeless for any period of time just so they can move. But it is true in the case that Kathleen was talking about what if a student is homeless and is then placed actually with a new guardian who doesn't live in that town in some ways that would be a benefit that he'd say, hey, well, I'm being placed with a new guardian in Richmond but I'm gonna be able to keep going to South Burlington. It's fine as long as there's a couple kids do it. But as soon as anybody starts to say, oh, well, this is a good way to keep kids in this district that's really desirable and with people that are in all kinds of different communities with different tax rates, it just takes the CLA. It could really make things tricky if that were crept to more than like 1% or if people didn't want to try to game the system. Any kind of gaming in the system would be really... would need to be guarded against carefully. But I like the basic concepts. Any other questions? Thank you, Patrick. Okay, very good. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Back again. I wanted to go through... Before we go through the bill, we've got basically a dumpster fire on the current definition of the teacher requirements. So before we go through the bill... I thought we had like a literal... A dumpster fire. A dumpster fire. Yeah. So I wanted to go through the current laws and rule with you to see where the issues are. Then we get to that section and we can have a more robust conversation about what to do about it. Because I'm not sure what to do about it, frankly, and it's confusing. Was it a dumpster fire? Yes, that's why it was... That's why it was... Well, it's an expression for a reason, you know. There we go. Okay, so let's go through the current law. This is 829. It's actually on a pre-K. Okay? And this is a qualification requirement. It's called pre-qualification in current law. We're not calling it that, but what it says is that a program of pre-K education, whether provided by a school district or a private provider, whoever's both, shall have received and then have the accreditation requirements, right? And then they have to have a licensed provider question mark there. I don't know what that means because we're going to use that term in the statute. We're going to clear what license means by whom or whatever. Okay, that's a question mark. So a licensed provider shall employ... Oh, gosh. So employ a contract for the services of at least one teacher who's licensed to endorse etc. Okay, it doesn't say how many hours and not sure actually who applies to it. So can I help with that? So, the way that the CDC regs are set up, there are licensed center-based childcare facilities and then there are licensed and registered family childcare homes and whether they're licensed or registered depends on their size and their ratios. So when we see licensed provider we're wondering does that mean all licensed facilities meaning the licensed center-based and the licensed family childcare homes and then on 3, line 13 registered, does that only mean the registered family childcare homes or was it just unclear at the time that it was drafted and somebody was using licensed provider as a shorthand for center-based facilities generally and registered home provider or all home family childcare homes we're not sure what the original intent was. Was it just being qualified for providers? These are the requirements to become qualified and it's first applied to a school district and a provider so is the school district a licensed provider? I'm not sure about that either. So anyway, there's a lot of confusion as to what this means because this one here a registered home provider that's not licensed and endorsed okay a licensed a home provider is not licensed and endorsed, a teacher is so I'm not sure what that means because it only makes sense really you could have a teacher who owned a home center and so on but that's not necessarily the norm. Right that's what, well that situation could happen and that's what we were talking about this morning when we were going through this language but the way that the bill defines a private provider, it defines it as a program not a person, so even in that situation this language is a little bit unworkable. So I was just wondering if there was a registered home provider that's not licensed and endorsed in early childhood education shall we see regular active supervision and training from a teacher who is licensed and endorsed for 18 to 20 hours but this is what they have to do so it's a supervision and training so unlike this one which doesn't say what the teacher has to do at least this one gives some direction that it's about supervision and training but it doesn't say how many hours that's current law current rules this is rule 2605 so it says that in addition to being a pickleball early childhood program there are other staff requirements so teachers in PK classrooms in public schools shall hold a valid education license with an endorsement didn't say what they have to do didn't say how many hours and then it goes into say private pre-qualified um uh providers are service shall apply for the services of a licensed teacher um it says it has to be for 10 hours it doesn't say what the teacher has to teach or supervise so we're not clear on what the teacher has to do but 10 hours have been put in by rule and then the operator of a family has three options to meet this requirement the first option is that the operator holds a valid Vermont education license at this point that's one option or the operator employs a contract to the services of a teacher who holds that license for at least 10 hours per week so that tells you that it's 10 hours but again doesn't tell you what they have to be doing in the classroom and then see we're talking about a home based and we've been talking about three hours that says 10 hours and three was somewhere in a statute so the three options are occupying here one the operator holds the license two you have 10 hours of teaching time or 10 hours of teacher time not teaching necessarily and then see the program receives regular hands-on active training and supervision from a teacher who holds a valid Vermont education license for at least three hours per week so just to clarify then A is if you're licensed B is if you have someone coming in for 10 hours and C is if you have someone coming in for three hours per day all three are options so so when we talk about we talked yesterday after your opinion about maintaining the status quo this is the status quo and this is really confusing so as we try to put the status quo into this draft into the format of this draft we're not even sure we got it right frankly so we'll go through but that gives you the background for why it's difficult Jim what's the difference between B and C B and C so these are all options starting up here for a all options for a chalk your home right but B is says 10 hours in contract and then C says three hours with a teacher so why would he answer that because I interpret this and this is my own guess that 10 hours here is really for direct instruction because this one's for after supervision and training so if you're not going to do 10 hours of direct instruction then you have to have someone that's just my guess as to what that 10 hours means so why would you nobody would do this I think nobody probably does this because I can't do it if I haven't operated on it well it's interesting that C doesn't even refer to contracting or employing it just says receiving I guess it's hard to be supervised by somebody you don't know what to contract with but it's just interesting that you say employ your contract with the services and then down below just say yeah you receive it you can just have a friendly licensed teacher that swings in it's interesting to see how often that is happening I think there is a solution to all of this which is not in the current language of the bell but they do have the back of your bell this group that's studying all this stuff I think we can put back in the very half language about recommendations as to how things should work which would be more specific about there and say how should it work for Sarah-based, for home-based for home-based that has an operator with a license for that one all the variations you get a recommendation a year from now as to how our office should play out so we will be getting if the when this bill ever passes we will be getting a report back on sort of current practice and then this would be asking what is what is our best practice what's your recommendation I think a bell would not have imperfections but going forward hopefully we'll get it right because we'll get a recommendation did you just say proficiency no, no I'm avoiding that topic for now I'm avoiding that topic for now okay so that takes us are we okay with this? it's very clear that going back to what's currently in the statute is not very clear or in rule and what you're saying is we can't solve this easily the better approach would be to let the sort of study committee I think it's two things it's like to me it would be good to get a recommendation no matter what but the solving currently maybe the agency because there's practice happening out there and we should probably write staff's call sort of our current practice I'm not sure whether it even is so maybe we can push it that way for this draft I I think that sounds a little loud with you I think that sounds reasonable we tried we'll come to where we tried okay should we go into the draft? thank you thank you for clarifying the confusion I was just expressing it I was just clarifying alright where we start here let's do it alright so we have this definition of pre-k education we used to have more words after this the last word standard here that was talking about how you go about teaching pre-k with qualified teachers etc that's been taken out of here and you'll see it later on in the back of the bill as we talked about findings and purpose behind the study that you're doing there's a homeless section on that and you'll find that language back there again I'd like to advocate for having Vermont early learning standards being capitalized that's not how they rent you talk about how you write bills where things get capitalized yeah we have as long as they know there's a document that people should be using it's called Vermont Bells Vermont Early Learning Standards it's a specific document it's not just something you know is that with that if you read that would you know to go to that document I don't even know what the document is but you probably cross-reference it that would be great but where's it with I'll just ask them if that's necessary this is the conventions that they use it even added a few years ago that sometimes it's capitalized they used to have nothing capitalized well this here is current law so whatever they're doing now is a change here I personally don't see the need to do that I don't know if other people do I guess I would be concerned if you capitalized it we are getting really down here in the weeks that it would limit it to just the document and wouldn't be allowing the other standards that might exist that aren't in the Bell's document to me this is more inclusive of not only Bell's but any other early learning standards can I just can we put that aside for now it's probably one of the most important things in this bill as far as I'm concerned but it's actually comes later in terms of how they assess progress and the data that they take but we'll deal with that later alright then we're going to go up to up here okay so we define what it means to expand a pre-K program so it says it's used in the subdivision 4 the expansion of a pre-K education program means an increase in the number of children served in the program where the increase would require additional teachers for classes and that's the definition of secret rules that Sandra gives I have additional teachers in classrooms okay um okay okay here we get into the dumpster fire and I'll give it to Kate okay wonderful I was here so what we've done is we still have it broken down into two paragraphs and then the first paragraph deals with just center based child care programs so if you remember the existing language talked about licensed providers a licensed provider technically is a family child care home it could be because they can be licensed but we kept all the family child care home together in paragraph 2 we were thinking that was closer to the intent so in paragraph 1 for a private provider that's regulated as a center based child care home employing or contracting for the service of at least one teacher who is licensed and endorsed an early childhood education or early childhood special education this doesn't say anything about what the activity is is a direct instruction as a supervision it's silent on that and it doesn't say anything about the hours as in current law second paragraph um for a private provider that is regulated as a family child care home the word regulated encompasses both the licensed and the registered homes and it says so for a private provider regulated as a family child care home that is not operated by a person who is licensed and endorsed in early childhood special ed so somebody without a teacher's license the provider shall receive regular active supervision and training from a teacher who is licensed and endorsed in early childhood education so if you're a family child care home you don't have a teacher's license the provider shall receive regular active supervision and training from somebody who does have a license it doesn't specify the number of hours so in current law that was the one where it was three or ten right it was yes it was broken into three different categories then the state board rules not under current statute this affects current statute this we think affects current statute so this could actually take us backwards as possible meaning meaning that the amount of time that had a teacher in the classroom could be reduced so right now the current statute doesn't say anything about hours it's all in the rule and this doesn't change the rule I see yeah four times okay go ahead right I guess the part of that was my question that Chris asked but I had a comment from before after we looked at the situations that currently exist which is in some ways it makes sense given how much variety you saw on your 28 program tour and we can see just on the Aston County tour that I was part of the one day it in some ways makes sense that we can see the level of just permutation that we see within these programs because these rules are between the rule and the statute is pretty pretty open to interpretation and that does seem kind of borne out by our current marketplace and we'll be looking to just to tighten this up my question goes to line 16 I guess what does regular mean line 16 yeah it's not regular active supervision it's not a defined term but it comes from your existing law so it's what you currently have in the statute regular active supervision and training and then the rules the rules that are defined well regular means 3 hours yes yeah 410 410 so I'd be curious if the agencies come in and tell us that this is not reflecting current the review of current law practice I think because we're guessing that stuff we're not guessing but we're trying to use our best it's a pleasure alright so moving on from that so the public side so now we're on the public departments so again we've gone back to just putting the current law for public programs which is effective for a contract for the service to at least one teacher so under the previous version of this bill this had that had to be instruction and had to be teaching for the full day of the program that's what current law says this is what current law says so we're going back and putting that back in again I'm trying to keep this as well that's just for the private this is public now there's some challenge I'm hearing to that if we include that language does that mean that we also bring the whole agency of human services back into oversight with the stars part with the stars part this is the requirement to have a teacher in a class so last version of the bill for public programs said that the teacher had to provide direct instruction and had to be there for the entire day I guess I'm going up to last one or two and we reversed back the current law on this so there's no talk now about direct instruction or on a number of hours this up here this qualification requirement if you want to comply by getting four stars you have to have to comply with AHS's requirements under that program is there a way to make sure we're not dragging the whole agency over as well so you have language can we skip to page 11 page 11 when we talk about regulatory oversight and rules we have on line 10 we shall have sole regulatory oversight of pre-k education programs offered by public providers with the exceptions that we have two exceptions so the first is you receive CCFAP then AHS oversees compliance with CCFAP but the second is if the public provider chooses to satisfy program quality requirements using the four stars then DCS shall have regulatory oversight of the providers compliance and stars only not the whole program but their compliance with stars and that would be public schools choice if they want to do that well there's a choice between you can only have a choice between stars and DCS I'm not sure how intrusive stars oversight is I'd say no maybe that's for the agencies that aspire I know that that's a concern I like it as a concern that we've heard because I think the reason to have the stars was that it was something that parents could compare and the stars was useful for that but if it it's just that concern okay so let me go on from here so if you were on page 7 sorry I'm going to change it just there's really not it doesn't seem plausible that AOE could administer stars qualification I mean that doesn't seem too credible right so it's sort of like um if a public's program wants to have the stars I don't really see that there's any other way for them to get it than to go through the people that regulate stars so maybe it's just like if NACI is the other option maybe the question is like is NACI going to work for the public schools and it's much it's a much higher standard so do we think the public schools are going to want the stars if the questions that we'll ask them when we get the publics because that does seem like a pretty big threat to trying to bifurcate our regulation and we have the school boards in the room so we'll be asking for feedback from them on that okay so you asked for findings and purpose um so we had talked a little bit about language legislative intent around the direct instruction concept why are we why are we asking for all this information back so in subsection A you're kind of building your case as to why this information is important first in subdivision one pre-kindergarten education is provided in Vermont through a mixed delivery system by a combination of private providers which are regulated either as center-based child care programs or family child care homes and by public schools in subdivision two a private center-based provider is required to employ a contract with a teacher with a valid Vermont educator license and an endorsement in either early childhood education or early childhood special education which we're calling for the purposes of this section a qualified teacher a family child care home is also required to employ or contract with a qualified teacher unless the operator of the family child care home is a qualified teacher subdivision three while public schools retain qualified teachers to provide direct instruction to pre-k students under current law private providers retain qualified teachers to either provide direct instruction to pre-k students or training in supervision to the provider's staff or both subdivision four the general assembly finds that it is best practice for pre-k education to be delivered through the implementation of high quality effective direct instruction by qualified educators who use evidence-based practices with an intentionally designed early learning environments that's pretty much the language that came from subject subdivision five however the general assembly recognizes that there may be some challenges to requiring private providers to retain qualified teachers to solely provide direct instruction which may include a lack of qualified teachers in Vermont and the financial impact this requirement may have on private providers and families six therefore the general assembly is commissioning the study under subsection B of this section to better understand the issues and concerns that may arise if private providers were required to retain qualified teachers to solely provide direct instruction for all or portion of the pre-k education hours that are publicly funded I was waiting to be recognized that's okay I'm just going to be polite type one solely sorry I'm not sure you've got solely spoken thank you the thing I'm confused about I thought I saw something earlier it was one of our yellow highlighted sections that implied to me that licensed teachers were not required to provide direct instruction at public schools and that was news to me and I don't know where I thought I saw that I should have flagged it at a time it's here let's see while public schools retain qualified teachers to provide direct instruction it doesn't say they require you under law but they do in fact right so I was careful in that sense that you have to make it like a legal requirement okay so up above where I saw that it looked like they weren't required to that in fact is true but they all do in practice and the current law is not clear what they're supposed to do in the public classroom so I'm dragging us back into the flaming dumpster yeah you are sorry sorry about that I'm dragging here and we were carefully drafted to say it's a legal requirement but I do believe that public teachers are teaching under contract in public schools so that's why I wrote and then this says under current law part of the virus can either do either direct or voice supervision it's a very smart you understand I understand what you said okay thanks okay I think going on B is where we have the language of the study which we've done three before number of teachers who are qualified that's true there's some new language here and that new language is in 8 there it is sure so this is all the different factors that are going to be looked at in the study and there's a new one on 8 recommendations on how many hours of direct instruction by qualified teachers should be required in center-based child care programs and family child care homes if they're qualified under this act taking into account the general assembly's goal to have pre-K education be delivered through the implementation of high quality effective direct instruction by qualified teachers to use evidence-based practices with intentionally designed early learning environments that's that same language this is where I think we could do more so this is where I think we could say recommend but recommend that not just like for these categories but list out by list regularly at center-based family homes that have an operator who's licensed to have they'll have it so make sure they're looking at every category how many hours and what they should be doing if they should be doing in those times and we're already going to get information on what they're doing now we're going to have that information of what it looks like what the landland is now so this should be revised a little bit further I think just to put that list in great Serena, I'm just wondering again I think it might be helpful for us to have a definition of evidence-based practices because just not every evidence-based practice every practice evidence-based is just whether it's good evidence and we there was a really good definition of evidence-based not in here but I'm just wanting just to when we say evidence-based what do we mean by that is it you know validated is it I don't know actually I mean it came from language that but there's a definition out there that could be used we saw our definition a while back that I thought was excellent it was embedded in the definition of structured nursing part of that was around the US based I really like that definition I'm just wondering if we could use that as that's what we mean when we say evidence-based this is what we're using I would imagine that that if someone has evidence people have evidence that vaccines will kill you people have and I'm jumping into your fire along with Kathleen what would the harm be if you just had a reference to a definition we can look from it and I'll ask you to see if you can kind of the definition Jim you know the definition that I'm talking about I know it's in the right I'm not sure if it defines the evidence-based but it uses the term I'll look to I'm the I'm sorry I'm the the other change here is on page 26 this deals with the census-based funding advisory group which is doing a few things remember it was doing looking at pre-K students and ensure that they attend an Iowa district program they still get special services and two below here which you can't see talks about making sure we're not paying twice for for the education but now it says up here that the advisory group in collaboration with private pre-K education providers pre-K coordinators and pre-K teachers were represented as if each of these three groups are selected by the advisory group where each group represents different geographic regions within the state shall study so it's a collaborative effort now those groups so the advisory group was having those people they were consulting with those people in collaboration in collaboration and then we have a placeholder for section pre-K coordinators grant program which is to come and then we had to adjust the a little bit to reflect section changes that's it this is why we pay you the big bucks thank you section 8 language to come is that responding to the testimony from let's grow kids pre-K coordinators or re-think? yeah we yeah it's part of the whole process of scaling up what's good wow thank you I like the legislative intent and the study I like how that's all word I'm happy to add that I'm quiet this is kind of amazing yesterday I read through Lori Connors she sent New Mexico's pre-K 217-218 annual report that I got probably through yesterday but it's pretty detailed report on what's going on in pre-K and I wonder if we'd ever get to that point where we would have the AOE providing a report like that do we left this as an outside report? I can't remember who's doing this is this something that the agencies are going to be providing or is this something they're asking an outside group to do but it's a separate it's a different report than this this would be just an annual report this New Mexico report it's just an annual report on how the pre-K program is doing and it looked pretty thorough we get an annual report now but I believe that they might be setting an upstate from government operations so I think we need to I'm not sure what's happening with that but I have a chance to just kind of scan through that because it's pretty I'm very happy to send this to Lori I think I think I do need to see what's happening with the report I'll see if I can find the notice that I got from GovOps that they were planning to sunset that report it was an annual report and they were looking at repealing it or sunsetting it and I'm not sure what so that report was probably in 166 right request for that report probably yeah could have been even in 52 or 60 yeah let's take a look at that that'd be great thank you because I do think this is something we're going to be wanting to continue to get feedback okay so I think we will just get we need to we need to work on the pre-k coordinator grant program I'm assuming that would be money that we would take off the top of the ed fund along with any other matching firms that came from other working states that might help with that now we set that up we need some guidance lots of guidance I really appreciate this work okay how are we doing this is not everybody is going to be happy with everything it's not going to happen my experience is when everybody hates it we've got it right but I think that we're working towards something that's a little bit better than that everybody will hate something thank you you're welcome so we would like to get some feedback from the school boards from the privates on this new plan from the agencies we are going to be hearing from the agencies this afternoon good do you want to respond to this now no you probably don't want to respond to this yes do you want to do something like maybe read it maybe read it there is some good news that there may be some hope coming from the commerce and economic development to help with workforce development so we'll be following that that can help with child care and pre-care it is a quick thing just in age 270 in 2014 which is what turned into 166 the only report I'm finding in there is a report on enrollment and access which was due January 1st 2018 that would have been coming from AHS and the BBF council so we want that so I don't know if that ever came in January of 2018 we got one the report that we went through the other day definitely just not come in January this year came in May but is that this kind of refers to it almost as a one time so I don't know if this is the one you're talking about it doesn't call it an annual just as it's 2014 when they write it and they're going to come back to 2018 so I don't know anyway I don't see that annual in the bill the earlier pre-k bill I've forgotten what number that was 62 62 I think 62 yeah there might be something in 62 let's look at what we want for an annual report and Sir Weedy you're going to work on evidence based definitions and how do we read it with bells what are we going to like reference with bells because those are our standards for long standards why won't we be it's a drafting convention it's a drafting convention thank you it's a drafting convention if you go through you'll see a lot of things like why doesn't that happen but can we put it as a reference that that I don't know do people want to put that who wants to there are standards to me it's clear I just think we need to follow the proofers and the drafters their conventions because they're trying to make uniform our statutes what we perceive to be the correct reference is not what our drafters are telling us and what they say because it's in the green books we control the substance but they really control the presentation it's like if you write a book you listen to your editor which is tough can I just read the introduction to the bells standards can I just read it it would take two seconds to this whole curriculum document early experience matters whether at home with family, childcare, preschool kindergarten, primary grades, neighborhood and community the importance of high quality early childhood experiences that are research based as a foundation for school success and lifelong learning bells, the Vermont Early Learning Standards make explicit the goals for each and every child's learning and development from birth through grade 3 think of bells as a roadmap that helps to guide understanding what a child may know and do across the early learning years so it's very specific in all different areas but I think that's Vermont it's like we have standards we have K-12 standards we have early childhood standards that's what we should be implementing I don't even know if we know if they're being implemented in the private sector so it's all through definitions are in the 2K rules a definition is develop the appropriate and it has to do with being aligned with the Vermont Early Learning Standards so here it is what we can what education is it's Vermont Early Learning Bells it's all addressed in rule and I was villain that I don't want to go over the drafters in the way that they've actually added more the agency and secretaries now it's not like that's not important to me what's important to me is that in private sectors I assume in public sectors they're doing this what I don't know is in a private sector if they're following these it's part of CASCLE and who's monitoring that who's making sure that they're following these standards the agencies and they have a report I think it was in that report that talked about meeting the standards in the way that we saw yesterday agency of education TS Gold results sorry for the record test for the Vermont Agency of Education what was the question the data on Bells on TS Gold we provide a report and that was the one if I remember correctly that's the one that we do in January but we use fall data and fall data is available in January so we give it to you and we love to change and we got it in May and we were looking at it yesterday so I do want to appreciate your just want to make sure that children are being assessed that they're following standards and it's happening in the public and private I just want to state for the record that we interpret that this subsection, subdivision 2 of section 829 as to mean the Vermont Early Learning Standards in capitals I think it's maybe a branding question a little bit but yet the document lives on our website and then you monitor and you make sure the private is also into and see that they're that's a good question for Kate Rogers but when we read the statute that's what it means to us when we did the tour the private providers were talking about some of the challenges that they had in doing it but they are doing it just consistency that it's just being implemented consistent throughout the state I do appreciate your point to make sure that those things are there okay we are now up to each 12, 8-1-12 that is Burke here great this is going to be an update on these people are invited were you prepared to were you prepared to testify are you here listening okay so I think I see Fay hi and I have on the list I have hunger free Vermont I have Waite River Valley school and I have South Burlington District yes Burlington District so I think probably those are the people we want to hear from absolutely great so Anor and we have we have to be on the floor at 1030 good morning for the record I'm Anor Horton I'm the executive director of hunger free Vermont I'd like to thank you Madam chair and committee members for making some time for us today to talk about H-1-2 a bill to provide universal school meals to all Vermont public school students and I we sent you yesterday a I acknowledge long and dense document that goes through the impacts and our public assets institutes cost assessment for universal school meals and my understanding is that the committee in particular wants to have some conversation today about the preliminary cost estimates and some of the other issues that were raised the last time that H-1-2 was discussed was the data that Mark presented from the JFO so that's what I'll focus on today and I want to start by saying that the reason why hunger free Vermont supports this bill is that we have lots and lots of research that makes it really clear that school meals are a critical educational support that when students have regular consistent access to healthy school breakfast and lunch their ability to learn improves their math and English language arts test scores improve their health improves their behavior improves the school climate improves the relationship of lower income families to the school improves and the experience of teaching and administering schools also improves and in order for school meals to be to serve all of these great educational support roles they have to be equitably accessible to all students and so our commitment to that is one reason why we support H-1-2 the other reason why we support H-1-2 but the way the traditional way that the federal meal programs are structured does not work to deliver that equitable access of school meals to all students so we just want to keep in mind the reason why we're here talking about the impacts and cost of having Vermont as a state support schools in providing universal school meals I'm going to say a few things just based on hunger free Vermont's statewide experience of providing technical assistance to schools helping schools use the traditional school meal programs and also helping 23% of Vermont public schools and 26% of all Vermont schools transition to a universal school meals model over the last six years but I also want to take as little time as possible of me speaking because we also have some real on-the-ground experts here with us today and we want to make sure that you can ask them questions they'll be even better able to answer than I will be since we have a hard stop at 10.30 I just want to make sure that we do get to yes absolutely so given the limited time that we have I'm just going to say a couple things and then give you the opportunity to ask me some questions and maybe we can redirect some of those questions to our school-based experts as well, does that sound good I think if we can get them in the chair and then we can ask questions of all of you oh okay great well maybe we should just should we just do that now sounds good why don't we do that do we have more chairs chairs let's be efficient let's be efficient we have one behind the door we have one behind the door hi Doug come on up to you this is your chair that's mine welcome Professor could you tell us your name absolutely hi I'm Kerr-Votta Simon-Pen-Antoni I'm principal at Waits River Valley school in East Corrine my name is Doug Davis I'm the director of the Burlington School Food Project part of the Burlington School District thank you great alright so I'll just lay out a few points that we might want to talk about and then ask us what you want to ask us so first of all school meal program budgeting is very complex and the way that schools and school districts pay for school meals is very complex and on the first page of the testimony I submitted yesterday we provided a long list of all the different ways that schools cobble together funding for their school meal programs so federal per meal reimbursements and USDA foods otherwise what used to be called commodity foods are critical critical components to funding school meals but they cover about half of the cost of what it takes to operate school meal programs and under the proposed shift to universal school meals in H12 that would all continue so the universal school meals bill as it's written is designed to ensure maximizing federal reimbursement coming into Vermont and going to Vermont schools to cover the cost of school meal programs and in fact it would increase the amount of federal reimbursement that is coming into Vermont by about 10 million dollars a year no it's not so there are movements afoot at the federal level to change the nutritional requirements of the school meal program and we don't like that at all we think it's terrible but it's not a cut to the funding so that is not currently on the table at the federal level so that's one piece another point that was raised that you might want to talk about the way in which schools collect income data from families and how that wouldn't change briefly there will still be mechanisms for schools to collect the income data they need and these two fine people can talk about their on the ground experience of doing that under a universal school meals model it's really an important part of the bill is that it requires schools to use one of the federal provisions to provide universal school meals and those provisions require that every student have the opportunity to eat school meals at no charge to families and we think this is really critical because of the way that it improves the overall operation of the meal program and the way that it eliminates one of the most harmful aspects of the way the current federal programs operate which is that it distinguishes and categorizes students by their family income and it has some students have to deal with not having enough money to cover the cost of their school meals it requires schools to go after parents for unpaid school meal debt and those are things that are just very very harmful in many ways and we want them to be eliminated I'm going to stop you for a minute here because we have heard a lot of this information already and we have two teacher, two people here on the ground so I'm thinking perhaps it would be better for us to hear from them Great, let's do that Hi, so Wates River Valley School this is our sixth, seventh year of participating in the universal meal program this current year we have shifted to the provision to part of the universal meal so we're still acclimating to that however it's been a pretty it has been a phenomenal shift in our system as a whole and in our participation levels when all scholars can have lunch, breakfast and we have the fresh fruit and vegetable grant as well especially around the fiscal pieces but the equitable pieces and the health pieces we provide food that is safe for the allergies and such so there's no food coming in from homes to monitor and shift and look at it's a safe environment within the entire school system so nobody's bringing we added to our procedures and didn't have any pushback that our scholars of course will require some additional food during the day or specific food but that occurs in the nurses space so that all of the building itself where the bulk of the scholars are a safe environment as well again it limits the separation socioeconomic separation of who's bringing what for snacks and such so it's truly an equitable opportunity but I can tell you anything about it specific to what your questions are but as far as receiving the paperwork and such we have never had a problem we have 100% of our families who submit the required paperwork and reduce lunches at the start of the year we clearly tell them that we receive a lot of grants we have title funding our consolidated federal programming component there's so many aspects that pertain to the data that we collect from that even our achievement data for academic progress is based on that information so we do a lot of PR work on that but it's great stuff with connecting celebrating the few families I think this year there were about 12 that we didn't receive the paperwork from I took that opportunity to individually reach out to them and do that paperwork with them so that we had that my name is Doug Davis I have been at Burlington since 1997 I think I'm gaining on 30 years in child nutrition programs Burlington was the first school to dabble into universal meals we started in 1999 so it is something that's been happening in Burlington since that time we entered into provision too because at the time the community eligibility provision that was described in her testimony didn't exist we reached out to agencies of education around the country because it was new to Vermont we wanted to get some information as to how to best implement it here that best information we got happened to be from Ohio at the time because Cleveland also had just gone through that change we're still doing provision two at two of our sites sorry three of our sites however we have now transitioned our other schools of low income to CEP the reason I bring that up is the CEP model has to recertify every four years so we have gone through that recertification process many times since 2000 I think it would have been four or five times by now depending on the way the calendar fell and in order to do that we have to justify that the socioeconomic levels within our community the community we serve has not changed in a substantial way and the USDA defines substantial as five percent up or down and Burlington has been able to continue serving through provision two the provision two model that we use is breakfast only because from a financial standpoint we are not able to provide lunch at this time for the Edmunds complex which is a K8, VHS and Champlain however those schools still need to provide free and reduced meal data because we are still serving a traditional lunch even though it's a free breakfast so we kind of have the split within our school and I can share that that for parents is a little confusing I would love to be able to offer universal meals to all of our kids and see that there is definitely a divide I was in my cafeteria actually Edmunds the other day and this really struck me sitting with a student and she was with an adult the student shared or the adult shared with me that this student had spent the summer in France watching the women's soccer what is that like the world cup and at the same time there's a student in the back of the cafeteria going through the box to see what boots fit so I think that regardless of income and when I say boots fit I mean it's in the lost and found this child is trying to get boots to go out to recess and I think that that is the picture that we really need to have in our minds when we're looking at what equity means because these students are all being served in the same cafeteria the students are all being served in the same classrooms so what we have found is by exercising an entire opportunity for universal meals there's so much of that division within our students now if we move to the new north end where everybody now is free under the community eligibility provision we have seen that really change the dynamics within our school our program folks our lunch team is in classrooms more we're able to really get to our teachers and say to them the same as Carlotta mentioned about the fresh food and veggie we don't have classroom parties that's not true we try not to have classroom parties because we can offer them strawberry, grapes whatever to take the place of Valentine's Day parties or Halloween parties taking into account families concern about allergies and ingredients that are put forward one of the things that I heard mentioned and I'm kind of speaking fast because of your time is that there is a potential impact to Title I and the funding that school has received I talked to our grants manager in Burlington school district we have not seen that change and he said CEP has not impacted the amount of money that we have received the provision too doesn't impact it because we still are collecting those applications and every fourth year we would still collect those applications if that were to happen so I'm going to leave it at that so that we can open up some time for questions but what we have seen in Burlington is that it has been a financial benefit for the program and anecdotally what I hear from nurses and teachers and administrators is that attendance is up behavior is better and students are much better fed I have a lovely lunch at integrated arts there you go I'd love that school thank you I'm glad you were there I just yeah I'm happy to go at the end two minutes questions from the committee Peter so the one of the issues that has been brought up and you touched on a bit is if you have a universal meal program getting the documentation you need for free or reduced lunch would go down because there's no longer the incentive to fill it out in a weights river I can see it's a small community it's probably you can personally handle 12 people but I was curious with Burlington would that be a bigger challenge or do you foresee it being a challenge it hasn't been a challenge up until now it's a lot of income forms it's part of the yearly registration process it's all done online and we have not me but on our office but the data team has gone out and really made sure that they have what they claim is 100% the one of the challenges Burlington has is our community of new Americans we have a team of liaisons that helps with translation and really goes out for those folks to make sure that it's beyond just school lunch for those applications to be sent in nobody is taking that lightly we do need to have that information come forward and we have done a really decent job in collecting it so there's a very limited amount of revenues in terms of the education funding so we have to make decisions about programs like what would be the best program for children to put the money towards I totally support this program what I don't support is the funding because I don't think the two top fifths of Vermont in terms of income earning $150, $200, $300,000 a year I don't think we should be paying for those children's lunches I think it should be a need space and I think it's unfortunate if a formula is that we can't do that even if you wanted to raise it to wherever you thought in terms of children eating for lunch but there are people that really don't need would you like them to respond to the two fifths one fifth of whatever I'm curious with Mark to hear the numbers the I can say as an administrator this is my 11th year at Waits River and my 33rd year in Vermont education in some capacity part of my career from day one talking about food and talking about free lunches and talking about socioeconomic division especially having spent multiple years in special education I don't think of it as there are people who can afford it and so they should pay I think about it as a climate and a community of learning everyone to come in and have the same opportunities the same environment the same culture the same social interactions when I think about breakfast and lunch everybody's blending and having a conversation and going through the line and coming and sitting and such there aren't those that there's no opportunity for someone to say well they must earn more money because they've got their bag lunch and they're in there already and it's exactly that historical picture of who's who and what is what people who qualify for free and reduced lunches are not bringing died lunches and so you immediately have a very obvious division and you also have identifiable aspects but couldn't you have let's say a charge card or people that say in the talk through fifths have the same charge card but a different coding and their parents pay in you know to that and it's like a debit it gets taken up we have that for our paying students right now I'll just, on your two fifths I'm just throwing that out that's fine, I totally get that so in this room we had 20 people you're going to ask me to do the math in my head but there are going to be 6 or 8 people that are in the category that you're speaking of and the rest of our folks are potentially coming to that table with an empty valley the ability of 100% of the folks in this room to focus on the work or the Madam Chair to keep everybody riled together as a teacher and a group of students hungry children within a classroom impact everybody's ability to learn whether they're coming from no no I'm not saying that families of means are going to send their child fed and it is not the case in every situation I grew up in a family that did not require free reduced price meals but my parents were off to work it was left to me to feed myself and I was a teenage boy and that's happening in our schools all the time and I'm not disagreeing with you I'm just saying that we are seeing that income doesn't necessarily impact what we're seeing for hunger in classrooms Ted, did you have something? The Agency of Education Very quickly Ted Fisher for the record from my Agency of Education I just want to say I really appreciate this conversation and the agency is really really supportive of any efforts to try to bring more access to student meals for student meals across the state due to an error on my part of child nutrition programs is not sitting next to me so I apologize for that, her name is Rosie Kruger and the committee is interested in moving forward on this I strongly suggest that you have her in to hear from that just very briefly we have three concerns with the bill as drafted one is the issue of how the federal programs work for providing universal meals whether it's CEP or provision 2 we're talking a lot with our partners in other states, our colleagues in other state education agencies about how they do it in their states no other state does a statewide program some of them have more limited universal pilot programs or various different things and they are learning lessons so we're trying to learn as much as we can from them it concerns us that nobody else is doing that so we're trying to figure out what are the sort of problems of scale that exist the issue of data which folks already referenced there's something that scaling statewide isn't really concerning to us because we don't rely just on the data for the eligibility for the program we rely on free and reduced lunch data as a proxy for all poverty metrics so all of our federal funding is predicated on that data so we want to make sure that as we move forward in this direction that we get that accurate data and we also have concerns about the program cost as sort of what's represented in the program was alluded to I know your JFO has an estimate of $40 million when we did an estimate last year we estimated $50 million for the total program cost I think our I think JFOs is a little bit more updated because we've been providing them some of our data for their estimate I'm looking to mark to confirm so theirs might be a little bit more up to date but our concern is that the bill requires putting school boards to essentially fund this in their budget there's a sort of a weight that school boards will have to make you know they might choose not be able to choose to fund universal meals and make cuts elsewhere and up to the point about the Waving Study and testimony that you folks have been hearing it sets up some difficult decisions but a local level that's something that folks should be aware of so I'm not the expert on this so you should hear from Rosie we also hear from Farm to School has another way to put our money in response to that Farm to School I would say that Burlington's been a leader in the Farm to School programming and I think that both of those programs work together the universal meals bill would give schools the opportunity to invest substantially more money in our local economy, in our local farms and in our local manufacturers and producers I see these as companion bills more and I feel that the Farm to School and the Universal Meals would work well together and I think Farm to School would benefit more if all of our students were able to provide those meals at no charge I appreciate you referring to your students as scholars yeah well that was good too okay