 Morning. This is Houseways Names. It's Thursday, March 24th. We are going to spend time this morning talking about financial structure. That's the general title and we have a staff with us who are going to guide us through whatever this discussion actually the person who's going to guide us through is Emily. And plus there are any questions or announcements that turn it over to Emily. But let me just pause and not speak for one second. Because I want to be sure that there's nothing going on today that we need to be concerned about. 703 is on the floor, but we got briefed on what the best workforce bill we got briefed on it yesterday. George is here, but I assume he'll be here in the afternoon. And because he's got this part of that figured out and I don't see any amendments on our other bills. So I think we're, I think we're good. I've heard on S53, I, after consulting with the speaker, I just postponed it for weeks so that we would have time to think about it. And probably this is going to end up in a conference committee, but I just added, there was no rush so I figured it makes sense to have it just sit on the calendar for a little bit while we figure out the best path forward. Is there anything else hanging over from yesterday that people want to ask about or. Emily, it's all yours. Good morning again. So we have the joint session at 1030. So we're going to break ourselves up and break the morning up into two different pieces. One is sort of the last piece of we were running through a checklist of pieces of the task forces report and just making sure everyone was sort of caught up on all the pieces of that. And the last thing is one more sort of go around on the cost equity proposal from Julia and Catherine. And then we are going to shift gears quite significantly. And we're going to hear from Jim and Abby about the recent court decision boy versus state of Vermont, which was the whiting ham residence and whiting ham. And the school sued the state of Vermont on education equity grounds. And it sort of had the potential to be another brigham that was decided in the state's favor. And so we will hear about sort of the implications of that for education finance in the future. So that's a fun like non numbers shift in conversation. Any questions thoughts or jump in. Julia, I think you are first up with Catherine. And we have something on our patron you. Okay, good morning. I'm Julia Richter with the joint fiscal office. There's a presentation put together on cost factor adjustments from Catherine Benham and myself, and it should be posted on the committee's page under my name. Does everyone have it in front of them before we start going through. Okay. So, so we have a presentation that we've put together outlining cost factor adjustments, and it's really put into two parts. So the first part is more of a broad overview and words just as to what cost factor adjustments are. And then we'll go into a specific example and look at some numbers that might help to iron out some of the details. So, so I'm on page three of the presentation. And cost factor adjustments are similar to pupil weights in the sense that they account for potential higher costs to schools with certain demographic characteristics. So, these cost factor adjustments are set payments allocated to each district to account for the portion of students in a certain demographic category. These categories correspond with the same categories that are used for pupil weights in the task force report the, the adjustments came from the same categories as the pupil weights in the task force reports. And the major difference is that cost factor adjustments are offsetting revenues for school districts. So, moving on to page four. These are the cost factor adjustments that were proposed by Professor Colby, and the rest of her research team for FY 2023, and you can see in the left column these are the different categories that I just spoke about. And in the right column, those are the specific cost adjustments for each category. I won't go through all of the specific numbers unless a member of the committee would find that helpful. Okay, great. Then, then moving on to page five. This is really just a reminder as to how the homestead property tax rate and the income tax rate are currently calculated under current law. So as a reminder, the tax rates are adjusted based on the spending, the education spending per pupil in a district. So as you can see, for both the adjusted property tax rate and the adjusted income tax rate, it's really that base figure so the $1 or the 2% multiplied by the per pupil spending, and divided by the yield, which, which the committee just was working on the yield bill as you are all aware. So you can see per pupil spending is currently calculated as the education spending divided by the equalized pupils and the equalized pupils captures those pupil weights and the education spending I've broken it out there. We've broken it out there in terms of total spending and then subtracting all of the other offsetting revenues. So these are things like categorical aid, tuition revenues, prior year surpluses or deficits and reserve funds. So that's really just summarizing how these rates are currently calculated. Moving on to slide six outlines the changes that that would be happening with cost factor adjustments. So there are really two main changes that would occur. The first is that the calculation of education spending would be changed. So this is where cost factor adjustments would be subtracted from total spending. And this is is frequently referred to as being taken off the top of the education fund. The second change is that equalized pupils are no longer used. So because cost factor adjustments would account for districts with certain demographic categories that may be higher costs to those districts. There would be no pupil weights and there'd be no equalized pupils. Instead of equalized pupils the average daily membership would be used to calculate tax rates. And this is also referred to as ADM. So you can see on slide seven how those changes would would be implemented in the calculation of the adjusted tax rates. So you can see that cost factor adjustments would directly affect the per pupil spending in two ways. First, instead of being divided by the per pupil spending, instead of being divided by equalized pupils, it would be divided by average daily membership. The second change is that education spending would now also subtract the cost factor adjustments. So that would be included in the offsetting revenues. So that's that's the broad picture in terms of what cost factor adjustments are. I'll pause now to see if Catherine wants to jump in to add anything, or if there's any questions from the committee. I think we're good. Thank you. Okay. Oh, yes, sorry. If you did cost factor adjustment for one thing, I'll say poverty, and you did a change and waiting for another factor. I don't I never know which is a numerator or the denominator. What do you use ADM or do you use equalized pupils. I'm just trying to understand, can you mix and match and what happens to the formula when you do that. So, so I guess that the, I guess it's sort of two, I guess I see two answers to that question two parts. The first part is that the task force report. I'll let representative cornheiser speak to the task force report with regards to what would happen to the formula if you're looking at this slide seven. This would be a policy decision so it would be really up to the committee in terms of how they wanted to adjust this formula. If you were to have equalized pupils. This would likely take the place of the denominator so the bottom part of that ratio where where you currently see ADM. I guess my question is what, so what, what's logical, what, what makes sense. I mean, why would we choose one over the other. I think Catherine. Okay. Sure, I think they're both trying to achieve the same thing I think mixing and matching would be complicated. I would say you can't do it but I don't think you could actually probably use the way that Tammy Colby and our team calculated the numbers I think you would have to go back and revisit those calculations and trying to be provide clarity to people so they can understand what's happening and why it is it seems like that if you're dealing with demographic issues you might choose to use the same system for all of them but I think, I think mathematically we can probably make any of it work it would just require I'd have to think a little bit more about the math on it. It doesn't matter I was just trying I was the first time I've seen ADM as the divisor, whatever it is. And I was just trying to understand, sort of, is that a, that's a commitment to change how we do that and we would if we made that commitment, it sort of pushes us in a certain direction with all these factors. That's what I was trying to understand. Yeah, I get mathematically could probably do almost anything but some things work better than others. Okay, thank you. I think it'd be profoundly confusing. Yeah, so I'm glad. Thanks Scott did you want to add something. No, I said I agree with you would make her already complicated system or complicated. Well, I don't think complication is, you know, everybody feels this is complicated no matter what we do but anyway, a statement I realized, but what if we, what if on slide five. You didn't include the education spending did not include all the things under total spending like federal state tuition prior your services and reserve funds what if it. What if that's not what that numerator work. So, so, in terms of slide five, and I apologize if this is confusing based on the formatting this blue box that you're seeing here with education spending equals it's actually saying total spending and then subtracting all of these factors below total spending. So when you're calculating the per pupil spending, those, those things that you that you're seeing here are are subtracted from from education is part of it. Okay, it's a subtraction sign on a dash. Yes, I can see it looking like that. I was including it. All right, well that explains that a good idea that we already do it. Thank you. Let's see I guess either. For everyone's answers to this question, just click work on cost factor adjustments is the same as what we were calling cost equity amounts across the payments and the same as what Professor Colby is called the reverse foundation formula. Is that true, or is there any subtle differences. So, so cost factor adjustments like for instance what you're what you're seeing on slide for this is the same as what was referenced in the task force report as, as cost equity in in professors Colby's January memo which is included here. It is, she did, she did and her team references as cost adjustments based on school level cost function models. So it really is referencing the same idea, I will invite Catherine or representative corn hyzer to interject if they had anything else. And that's the same as who use the word reverse foundation formula is that unrelated to this. Or is that what Professor Colby, I just want to see there's like a third Professor Colby called it that in testimony, but in her like official memo she refers to the most cost factors. But yes it's all the same idea. Does she refer to we as a cost factor to or is she only the math that leads to the weights she described the team describes as cost factors when they're describing their methodology. Okay. Yeah, I think this language cost factor adjustment is more straightforward and easier to understand. I mean it is what it is without going through some other language to try to get to the same thing. That's my opinion. It's helpful. I have to think this use of the word foundation is kind of a loaded word because we actually had a something we called the foundation formula in Vermont I think. So I think that word is always confusing. I mean, I would look at our existing system. I would almost could call that a foundation formula because the foundation right now is federal and state categorically to I mean those are found those are foundations that districts use to build their budgets I mean so kind of by definition I would call our existing foundation formula of sorts, but that's not what we call it. The foundation was pretty big and it's kind of right. Julia I know we um, the, the fact that tax rates can't go below one. Can you explain a little bit more about sort of what that means for the minimum amount of districts going to spend. Sure. So, there is currently in statute, as you just mentioned that that the tax rates can't go below one so that that's essentially sets a floor in terms of what would make sense for a district to spend, even if they were to spend a lower amount than the even if they were to spend a lower amount than would be the minimum level that they would need to to spend to reach that $1 tax rate they still need to spend at least $1 for their tax rate. So, for that, for that reason, there there's there's a floor in terms of what makes sense for a district to spend. Does that make sense. For me, but I see where it's based on the yield for that year, essentially right. Yes, thank you. I don't think it actually tells the district you have to spend more. You just send more money to the education. Correct. Thank you. Yes, you don't get anything. Yeah, you may know the answer to this question, but I wonder whether there are any districts currently spending close to the yield, or or even less, you know, have been examples of districts that were on the cusp and decided they would spend a little more money, because why not. Great question. I would have to go back and consult our model to see exactly how much districts are spending per pupil but I do know that there's quite, quite a range in terms of what districts decide to spend. I'm happy to go back and look at the model and get back to you with a more firm answer about that. It's possible that Brad, who is there, there, I think, I don't know if you will magically. Yes, magic. Hello. Good morning. Yes, yes, there are normally one or two districts that are under current law, they're spending in a dollar, their tax rate is a dollar, which means they're spending is right around the yield right at or slightly below the yield. I think you said, if you go too far below you're just you're kind of, you could have free money for all practical purposes, because your rates not going to change to get up to $1. And my memory of looking at some of the various models of implementation of cost factor adjustments with various methodologies is that a few more districts were close to that one. Sorry, it was your question. Well, yeah, I just sorry, Scott, but it just seems to me like going forward from a policy standpoint, we want to think about this a little bit more. If it's incentivizing districts in theory to spend more than they otherwise would be happy to spend, just because it doesn't cost them any more at the tax rate. And then there's also an interesting dynamic that's starting to crop up in my district caught up in it. Not caught up in it. It's fine but we have, I don't know if it's a $2 or $3,000 split between the income yield and the property yield right now. So my district are pupils for people sending fell between those two numbers. We're actually leaving money on the table for our income household income payers, but we're not for our property payers. And I suspect, so that's a range of between about 133 and 163 I suspect we actually have quite a few districts that are in that, in that window. Julia, can you be mindful of that window for sort of future models that we're looking at and flag. Thank you. Anyone else on the this slide or Okay. Back to you Julia. Thanks for popping up red. All right, so, so now moving on to an example. We've got that slide eight just saying that we're moving on to an example and then slide nine. This is the groundwork for what we're looking into. And I really before going into it I do want to state that these districts that will be talking about our fictional and have been created solely for exemplary purposes. So, so here we're going to be looking at two districts district a and district B. Both districts have the same total education spending. They have the same level of categorical aid and offsetting revenues as under current law and the same ADM. The main difference between these two districts is that they have different numbers of pupils within the cost factor categories that we were just talking about. So, so we see that the average daily membership in both districts is 500, both have total education spending of 8 million and both have offsetting revenues of 2 million. And the big difference is those cost factor adjustments. So, Julia one second. So, I think I've had this trouble before you use the phrase total education spending, but what you're talking about is the voted budget right. Correct. So, by using the term total education spending in line two and then again in line five. I'm afraid it's going to confuse people, because we've always used the word education spending as a term of art, it means budget, minus all this other stuff. So, anyway, I think you have pointed that out before because I think it's anyway. Thank you for that for that clarification. Yes, so the total education spending that's referring to the budgets or voted for budget. Yeah. I will I will use that going forward. It does say total education spending in the slides but I'll try to be mindful of that throughout the rest of the presentation and then the local education spending. That's those budgets subtracting the offsetting revenues and then in this example also subtracting the cost factor adjustments. So, so, moving on to, sorry, was there another question or comment about that. Okay, thank you. Okay, then moving on to slide 10. This shows the the breakdown of both districts, their number of pupils within the different cost factors so you can see the left most column titled cost factor. The second column titled FY 2023 cost adjustment. That's what we looked at earlier those are the numbers and the cost factors as proposed by Colby, Professor Colby and her team. The next two columns under district a that's saying the number of pupils in each of those cost factors, and then the cost factor adjustment in each of those cost factors. For instance, in line three, where you see poverty. Each pupil that would be each pupil in the district that that's falling into that category as defined is going to the district will will receive $10,480 and that's that's trying to capture the average cost. And so, so in district a in this example they have 15 pupils in that category. So 15 multiplied by 10,480 brings us to 157,200. So that's the cost factor for cost factor adjustment for that that poverty for district a. You can see district B has 55 pupils in that category. So their cost factor adjustment is going to be higher than district a because there's more pupils that fall into that category. And the same logic applies to to the rest of the rows in the table. I won't go through all of the numbers unless that would be helpful. The only other thing that I wanted to show was in in rows six and seven you can see that both district a and district B have the same number of pupils in those categories and because they have the same number of pupils they're going to be receiving the same cost factor adjustment for those different categories. So I'll pause there and and let you all digest this I know it's a lot of numbers on this slide, and I'm happy to answer any questions about it. I just say, as I said earlier, Julia is much more straightforward I think for the average person to sort through it. So yeah I get it. Yeah, I was thinking earlier this is a really very helpful presentation, the content but also the way you've laid it out so thank you for putting that thought into it. I'm just wondering now though looking at row nine. The small school line. Yeah, so district B has 200 people's schools, but I mean there's three of them, right. Julia did you pass that? I'm sorry I wasn't able to hear the question. So, so line, line, row nine. Yes, fewer than 100 people to so a school if you were than 100, but in the illustration, you're showing there are 200. Great. That's a, that's a great, great question. I appreciate it. I'll have, I have two responses. One is that it is an example district and we've put in these numbers really just to show you the way that the cost factor adjustments would sort out. If we're, if we're talking hypotheticals how could this happen. We are looking at two districts. So in theory there could be. We believe under, under the way that all of the assumptions behind the memo, there could be two small schools within the district. So, so say there are three. So maybe you would have, you know, one small school with 50 students once small school with 50 students and once small school with 100 students. And then maybe even one school that's not a small school of 150 students that wouldn't be content that would still be in the district. Exactly. Okay, so this is, this is a good example. I mean it's a plausible illustration. And for me anyway, it confuses things a little bit so thank you for including it I'll want to think about a little bit more. Sure. So, and maybe you all had this discussion with Professor Kobe was here and I was in a meeting I think I missed a good part of that but. And through it, I can catch up with Julia later but the question I have is the interplay between the small school line and understand that it's an unlikely but possible scenario, and the population density line and what's happening there. That ends up with 732,000 basically taken off the, but you know, we move before we get to education spending. So, so what's, what's going on. Yeah, thank you for that question. We didn't you it was your question you weren't always I think she sent me an email about it later that I, yes, but we didn't actually cover it. I can't visualize what's actually happening that we need that that, that requires that money, that kind of that level of adjustment, I don't know. So, I think that's if it was duplicative. Well, that's part of the question that I guess the. Yes. But the, but I just need to understand what it, what is what is going on that's a lot. I'm adding the small school line for 27 in this example and the population density line of 305 and I'm coming up with 732,000 and some change as a as a total figure that needs to be adjusted and I'm trying to understand why you know sort of just understanding how do you explain to what's going on that would make sense to them. Julia, do you want Brad to jump in or do you want to. Sure. Okay, Brad explain this one. I don't explain it well but I think I think it's because what what they what Professor Colby's team found was there were two different things going on there was there was the sparsity issue which costs more money and that that does the in this case the 305,000 online 12. And then there are there's the small school issue separate from sparsity, which also they recognize as costing more money and then when, when they were doing their statistical model what they were finding was that small schools in sparse areas also had that same that had an issue. What they're doing here ever said an answer is looking at the fact that it's a small school which has its own costs, additional costs in a sparse area which also has its own additional costs and that's why they tied the two together and get a small school but it has to be in a sparse area. I'm not sure I can explain any better than that that's my understanding from what Professor Colby said. And I'm I remembering right that in this hypothetical model hypothetical could work if line 12 had 400 students, so you could have 400 students in a sparse area but only 200 of those students would be counted in the small school. Yes, that that is that is correct. The population counted for the small school way is the actual enrollment of the school not the not the total population of the school district like in line. I have to say, I've never believed. And it's that much more expensive to do in a sparse area of the population but I thought the construct was that that was done at the district level. So that how could you have 200 students out of your 500 students getting the sparsity when it's done at the district level. It should be all of them. Yes. That's my understanding. I believe I believe with just an oversight when Julie was doing this. I believe that she actually meant that line to be 500. In which case that's a huge huge figure. And somehow, unless everybody is world, which means it becomes sort of meaningless. There needs to be a logical explanation for people about why it would cost that much more. If you're, if you have a small school in an oral area, then if you have 55 kids who are in poverty, I just, I'm not. I'm not sort of buying a logic of it, but maybe it's there. So one thing that's been interesting to me when I looked at this is that the actual cost adjustment for poverty is much, much higher. But because in the for the rural weight for the sparse weight and for the small schools weight you're counting all of the kids in the school and not just the kids in that. So it winds up having this very outsized impact because you're counting more people in that sort of category. And that's our clothing back into explain sort of the math that went to it to a hard time. Yeah, ever that that makes sense. Just, just so far on line with the reality. Yeah, I guess it doesn't necessarily not make sense to me just when we when we refer people talking about scale and the overhead cost of small schools, small districts. But that's not my question. My question is back to the 200 on line nine. And I just want to be sure that I'm hearing is correctly that so we have a district with 500 students. How did we enjoy the police and jump in here if I maybe maybe maybe I misunderstood or maybe you had more time to think about it too but is this a plausible scenario that 200 could be in line nine. I'll jump in if you don't mind Julia. Yes, it is because because it's fast with all the mergers that have taken place. We have a number of school districts that have quite a few people but they still have more than one small school, because the schools didn't necessarily close but the school district merge but not schools themselves. So, so having 200 out of 500 kids going to small schools and school districts not implausible. Three small schools adding up to 200 kids three four to get to 100. Yeah, okay. But lined follow up should be 500. Yes. Thank you. Could there be, I can't, I don't know what a bigger square mile his weekend that could there be 500 kids. When you have fewer than 36 per square mile, but what's happening with that district. You could you could have you could have 100 kids in there. So you could have you could have more students online 10. In that district that would be a possibility because you tell a larger school so we get that small or small school rent. Sorry. The other thing, I mean, Middlebury is a great example. You've got all these schools that around Littleberry which would have qualified to this. But they don't, because the group doing with Middlebury, and it's the whole district, right. So you're saying those schools don't have the extra costs. Just because they're near and sounded, you know, that there's merges with the town that does. Because the district is a whole is a district as a whole. Yeah, and one other thought is that one of the extra costs versus transportation and we're, and we will continue to do that separately. Right. Nobody's talking about building that and so that is accounted for somewhere else. And it's actually controlled for in the study. The cost of transportation. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If I can just jump in for a second. I don't remember what the language access says, but, but I know in Middlebury's case that current, those small schools that merged. And I don't recall off the top of my head, Representative cornheiser, please jump in here. If, if there's, they still get the merger support grant, or if they get this instead, it's, it's one or the other, they won't get both. If I recall correctly. My memory isn't that example, they get the merger support grant, but I could be remembering wrong. So maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Scott, did you? Yeah. I certainly don't want to speak for Professor Colby, nor do I know whether any of these numbers are the correct numbers necessarily. But I think it's, I think the logic basically is, is that, you know, the 85% of our school budgets are to pay for people body salary. We have a four to one staff staffing ratio in Vermont. And I think most of the research indicates is that a lot of our rural areas are really struggling to keep high quality educators and they tend to go to the more urban areas that can give them the bigger salary. I think most of this, this adjustment speaks to what would rural areas need for resources to retain these high quality educators. So I don't know if any of these numbers are the right numbers, but I think that's the logic. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Jim. Yeah, that makes sense. I was looking at this page. The first to easy one, which is purple pupils versus people for a square mile. And that's just read the language, figure that out. Yeah, it's George and we're just talking the differences between figuring this out on a school district versus supervisor union construct does add a little bit of confusion to what otherwise is I think a fairly straightforward reason. And back in care about that. What's potentially an anomaly would be helpful. The piece that I think came up in testimony from someone of education other than Brad. I don't remember who was the idea that there was so much debate over what a geographically necessary small school was. And this was sort of a mathematical calculation of that idea, which is I think sort of an interesting on it. I'm not sure. Again, I don't speak for Professor Colby. I thought that was an interesting way to think about it. Discuss. But there's nothing that says these districts would use this money for salaries. You know, rather than just lower tax rates, there's no guarantees they would. And it might be more than just salaries. And so we're called late for teachers is right now. The numbers of use. Brass. So, Julia, let's go back to finish. Sure. So, moving on to slide 11. I will just apologize upfront to the committee, we re-ran the numbers and I forgot to change. total education spending. So I will adjust this and send it back to the committee, but that line one, it should be 12,000, excuse me, 12 million for district A and B for total education spending, which respects their budget. Should be total budget. Total budget. So I'll change that just so everyone is aware we're all on the same page. That total budget in line one is 12 million. So that correction aside, the logic still holds true as to what we've spoken about. So we've got that total budget in line one and then subtracting all offsetting revenues. Line three outlines the cost factor adjustments. I've pulled that out of the offsetting revenues just so we can all see exactly what's happening with the cost factor adjustments, but there's no real difference in terms of the cost factor adjustments and the offsetting revenues in terms of the calculations are just being subtracted from the total budgets. Then we can see in line four, after subtracting the offsetting revenues from the budgets, what that local education spending would be. And we can see that while they have the same total budgets and the same offsetting revenues aside from cost factor adjustments that their local education spending differs because their cost factor adjustments differ. And that corresponds with the different demographics in these two example districts. We see in line five, they have the same average daily membership. We see in line six, that the local education spending per pupil also differs in correspondence with those differences in line four. And before moving on to calculating tax rates, I just wanna say we're gonna assume there's a property yield of 11,000 and an income yield of 13,500. Those have been chosen just because they're nice round numbers to make things a bit easier to follow. So are there any questions on the slide before moving on? Yes, just a comment, it's a good slide. Thank you, Julia, but this assumes that district B uses none of that tax capacity to improve its school. Yes, thank you. So this assumes there's the same, they have the same budget. Same spending decision, yeah. Same spending decision, same everything so to speak with the exception of those demographics that are affecting the cost factor adjustments. Thank you for that clarification. Yeah, and could you add that clarification to the slide when you fix it? Because I may, if you're... I'm happy to do that, yeah. I'm keeping a list of the clarifications I'll add, so. People who outside the building can follow along and get it right, thank you. Definitely. Okay, back to you. Okay, great. So those clarifications, keeping them all in mind, we'll move on to slide 12. And this is an example of calculating the tax rates. So that first box that we're seeing here, that's what we were speaking about earlier when we were going through the overview. And then the lower two boxes are just plugging in the numbers we were just looking at in slide 11 into their respective places, into those formulas. So we can see that assuming the budgets are the same, there's the same education spending decisions by both districts, that they would have different tax rates, spending adjusted tax rates because of those different cost factor adjustment payments, assuming all other things within the districts remain the same. Yeah, so these charts are really good. And the comment that Scott made just sort of makes me understand what the question is here, is the goal here then to have district B spend, I know that's supposed to be 12 million, but 12 million plus the 1.6 is that because we want that district to provide that level of educational opportunity to all its kids and we think they can't unless they spend it. And is that really what we're, is that what's driving this discussion? And we think they can't provide that level of educational opportunity at the 12 million. Is that what we're talking about? What I think of it is that we want to make sure that every school district has the tax capacity to offer their kids an excellent education. I mean, as policymakers, aren't we wanting those kids to get that level of educational opportunity? And aren't we saying if once we've done all this that the only way they can get it is that if they spend 12 million plus. This is what we think they need to provide that. And I think you have to believe that or you don't want to do all of this. If we want district B to offer the same quality education. As district A, but we want them to do it. We don't want them just to be able to do it. And so a scenario that was sort of demonstrating that more clearly would start with having the same tax rate and working backwards to a higher budget for the district for more adjustment. Right, and that's sort of what I did. That's why these slides are great because they kind of take you to, yes, I think that has to be what we're talking about. And education is working on the EQS and enforcement. Yeah, I know you've talked about that a lot. Caleb? I don't have a question and so I'm happy to wait. I just know we have another topic. And I'd love to be able to make a comment generally but I don't want to do that too soon. I think this is, yes, this is quite done. So I think this is a really interesting presentation. They're well done presentation. Thank you Julia. I wanted to say we've been talking about a lot of these things throughout the year. It's been great to kind of have these education Thursdays. While that's been happening though, the Senate's been working on this and we haven't had a lot of change stuff but it sounds like reading today, S287. The Senate has rejected this concept, you know? And I think that that's, I'm not saying anything about that other than that if S287 passes, it contains none of this. And we're past crossover. And so if we were to go with this instead of what the Senate's done to me as just someone looking at it, that feels like something would be pretty hard to reconcile on the committee of conference. And so while I find this a very interesting thought exercise at this point in the session, I do find myself a little confused over where we would seek to deploy this. And I'm interested and I'm listening. I just wanted to say that because S287 is coming to us and it is a bill that contains none of this concept despite that they talked about it extensively. And so I just wanted to kind of put that out there that this is a good conversation. I'm glad we're having it at some point. I think we're going to have to move from divergent thinking to convergent thinking and that will involve what the Senate's done. So thank you for letting me say that. I think George's going to jump in a second. I just want to say I had high hopes that the Senate would have passed it by now and we would be talking about that bill today. But it's been moved on their calendar a few times. And so I think it'll be fun to look at the details of it very soon. Because there's a lot in their details, George. There is? It's got a lot in it. Yes. I'd say, Kayla, have faith in your conferees. Well, I do think that diametrically opposed in some sense as concepts of committees of conference can lead to no bill. And this is so weighty, it's so important that it concerns me to think of a committee of conference deadlocked over this critical, critical issue of remote students. Trust your conferees. Well, I have seen committees of conference that have not come up with much. Jim, and then we're going to go back to Julia for the last slide. Briefly, Kayla, good question. Good point. It would be a bummer to end up with that. But as we work through this, committee of conference of some sort on something and it would be, this work would be far more useful, completed, corrected, you know, the adjustments that have been discussed this morning in a presentation to the senators so that they see the merits of this approach. And so I would say it's simplistic, but let's keep going and see where we end up because it's more useful to all of us, I think. And I think we regularly, I think each body passes the policies that they think are best and then find their way towards each other. And there's a lot of commonalities between both strategies. They're both adjusting for cost factors and findings are the best way to do it. Julia, you have one slide left. I do have one slide left. So that's slide 13. And this is really just summarizing what we've been through today. So what are cost factor adjustments? They are set payments allocated to each district to account for the portion of students in a certain demographic category. And how would the calculation of tax rates change with cost factor adjustments? As we just went through, many aspects would not change. Districts would still have the voter approved school budgets. They would still subtract the offsetting revenues from these budgets. And the remaining education spending per pupil would still be funded through the spending adjusted tax rates, which we just spoke about. The two main changes that we've been over today to current law would be that these cost factor adjustments would be included in the offsetting revenues when they're subtracted from the budgets. And that education spending per pupil would be calculated with the average daily membership and not with equalized pupils. So that's the summary slide. We're happy to answer any other questions that you all may have. Thank you, Julie. Thank you both. Really appreciate it. And I would love to see the slide as the chair outlined where we start with the same tax rate. The same tax rate. And then we're backwards to why the spending is a spending, how the spending can differ in the two scenarios. Yeah, we can definitely work on that and get back to the committee with that additional information. It's a great suggestion. And it would kind of show the flip side of this construct. Thank you. Thank you both. Really appreciate it. We're going to take a 10-minute break and then talk about court cases.