 This is education, finance, policy, and the budget. Big topic. I've been lucky to have which been a part of Brad James' presentations now for several years, and they're terrific and really helpful. So why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about what you're planning on doing. It was Senator Williams that really started getting us to think last week about, what's in that budget? You know, we hear it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that. So why don't we kick things off with that, and then when we have to leave, we'll leave and we'll come back. Sure. First of all, I'm Brad James. It's your education. This is not going to be a dynamic talk. Sorry. This is not something that's exciting to talk about. That's how I sold it. Okay. Well, then we'll pretend it's dynamic. Basically, I'm going to talk about basically what the Ed Fund's doing. I don't know too much about really what school districts are doing for FY24 because they're in the process of making budgets right now and haven't seen any data from them. So what I will talk about is more details of the FY23 Education Fund because I do know what happened for that number and such. So you guys are all kind of new to me except for Senator Campion. I'm Education Finance Director at the University of Education and basically what I do is, I kind of run the Ed Fund. I guess it's kind of what I do. And what that means is that I make sure that school districts get the proper amounts of money and things. I take out and make sure the taxes, you know, I tell the towns what to do with the education proper taxes they raise, somehow to direct that money because it's state money. Where it should go and when it should go. I work with school districts. Largely with the business managers. Helping them to understand everything that you guys are doing and how the process works and what the funding formula is. And, you know, I basically take, I guess if you really cut it short, I basically take school budgets and turn them into tax rates and working with the tax department. And that's kind of the process over the year that we do. And so I do all those things behind education funding that nobody likes. That's what I do. So what I have here is, this is FY23 because I don't have... This is FY23 because as I said, I don't have... This is FY23 and I kind of knew that because when I let Excel do it, it looked like this. It was kind of lighter color. I didn't want to suck down all the tone of the printers. So what this is just kind of relative size of the different parts of the education fund. FY23, the total here is 1,000, I should say 1 billion, 966. These are in millions of dollars here. It's 1.966 billion dollars. So almost 2 billion dollars. For FY24, we are projecting to be just over 2 billion. So 2 billion, I want to say 72, 76 million, something like that. Okay. But what's happening within this... I'll hold this one up for you guys to see. What would happen is the relative size of these won't change with one exception or won't change significantly, I should say with one exception. And I'm going to go into this in one more detail, but I'll get to it. The one exception is universal school meals. Last session, the legislature put in 29 million dollars is one time funding for FY23 universal school meals. And that's that block right there where my finger is. That's that block. If I was to do this same graph for FY24, that block would not be there because right now it's zero. I don't know if you guys are talking about putting more money into it to continue this program forward, but right now the way the law is currently constructed, that would not be there. That's the real signature. Otherwise, things would look pretty much identical almost. So we'll come back to this one. And so if I had to get this organized, it's not always my strong suit. What I have now is just kind of what the education fund itself looks like for FY22 and 23. Have you seen Julia Richter in here? Right. Okay. So Julia is for those who do not know her. She's a joint fiscal analyst. And she kind of keeps track of the entrance and sends things out. And we'll keep going. We'll get you guys back there. Yeah. You have one for our assistance. Yeah. I think you can set three up this way. Thanks. You're welcome. Did you go and set three up here? Yeah. Thank you. So what this is, is this is the sources and the uses. I'm the actual head fund balance. It says appropriations not uses, which is truly what it is. The use of them is uses. But this is just kind of showing you what's happened, where the money comes from. But what we're really focused on today, I think, is what the money's being used for. Okay. And so you can see that in FY24, if we look down at the bottom, there's one else. Oh, it is. Okay. Welcome back to Senate education to 47. In the afternoon Tuesday, January 17th. We were just briefly interrupted by a fire drill. We're now back with Brad James in the chair. Mr. James. Where you left off. Please wonder where that was. I believe we were talking about the end fund outlook. Looking at FY23 versus FY24 uses. And the FY24 again, as I think is what I was saying when they told us that the alarm was going off, was that these are numbers that are not, we don't want to know what the numbers are yet. These are our forecast numbers. What the December one letter was based on from tax. And then the FY23 numbers themselves are actually not finalized. Remind us to put the December one letter. Sure. For those who haven't had an opportunity to read it. What the December one letter does is, is it's the tax commissioner who works with a number of us, me from AOE, junk fiscal people, to the two state economists, the tax department, the fifth floor to make idea, to make an educated guess. It's probably the best way to put it, what the yield would be based on what we think is going to happen, what the ends are on the Ed fund and what the source is coming into the Ed fund are. So what he's doing is he's, he's recommending the property yield, the income yield, and the non-home set property tax rate. That's what he's doing. And the yield, the property yield is what drives your tax rate. It basically says, if the yield, I think it's $15,457,000, I think something like that, 15,457, I believe, right around there. What it basically says is that for every dollar you spend on your students, and when I say students, I mean, in my role as an equalized pupil is how we count students for funding purposes. For every 15,457 dollars you spend on that student, your tax rate is a dollar. If you spend 10% more, your tax rate is 10% higher, so a dollar 10. If you spend 20% more, it's a dollar 20, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's what the school districts are doing, and they're looking at these numbers that the tax commissioners come out with on December 1 to help them plan their budget as to what the tax rate is going to be. That's what voters tend to look at a lot of times. Not necessarily how much they're spending, but a lot of them are looking to also what their tax rate is, as opposed to what they're spending. So that's kind of what the December 1 letter is doing. The other side of it is the income yield. That's for people whose household income is below $90,000. And that number was $17,600. And I can't remember what the non-home said tax rate is, but what the tax commissioners' letter said was that tax rates will go down, tax rates will probably go down on average across the state, but taxes themselves will actually increase by three to three and a half percent. And that has to do with the value of the properties and everything at this point. So even though the rate may go down, the taxes people pay will probably go up. So that's what the December 1 letter is. And then as time progresses and as school boards approve their budgets, Business Manager will send them to me. And then I'll start talking with House Ways and Means saying here's where I think these numbers are going to come into. And then they'll start looking over what the yield should really be. And then after telling me we'll have a better idea. And at that point, somewhere towards the end of the session, he uses what happens, the yields are finalized and sent into statute. You're not in a statute session. Okay. So that's what the December 1 letter is doing. What is the starting point for all that? All right, please. Are we on this fiscal year 24 education plan outlet? Yeah. Just a curiosity question on TechEd. It's like a 50% drop. Yes. It's curious. Footnote. Footnote. Oh, footnote. A down there. No. I didn't ask you. Last year at the end of the session, again, what the legislature did is they took $15 million and they did a one-time payment to CTE centers. That's what we've done there. But they did a one-time payment to facilities and to upgrade programs. That's what it's for. So it was one-time money. So it was forward spending? Yes. That would be one way of thinking about it, I think. Well, was it surplus money? It was from the bottom line. Last year there was a very, very large surplus in the head fund. A lot of it got used to bring the yield up, tax rates down, but they also used $15 million to that. They added that line 19 there, 15.1, the ongoing normal cost of teachers. Oh, that's supposed to be P-E-B. I have that backwards. I thought I fixed that. I did it on another sheet. My apologies. It's to be O-P-E-B, not O-B-E-P. Because it's other post-employment benefits. My dyslexia must be kicking in or something. That was the first year for that. They put in $50 million. And then they all seized $29 million for the universal school meals as a one-time payment. So that all came out of the bottom line of the head fund last year. Please. Okay. And on line 18, teachers pensions, normal cost. By putting in the caveat normal cost, obviously you're driving towards there, so there's more between the longings here. I'm not an expert on pensions by any means, but my understanding of the normal cost is based on actual value. So they said, this is what you have to pay every year. And I think that's what they mean by normal cost in order to bring down. Then the state, the left side of the times, puts out the money on top to bring that cost down. And just a curious question. At some point, is there a pension subject matter expert that comes in and discusses status? Yeah, we absolutely can. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to do that. It will not be me. So, I talked about this at first. What you see is that this year, this is in millions again. So it's 2076 million that we're forecasting for FY24 versus that 1,966 million for FY23. A large part of that increases that very first line, the education payment. And the vast majority of that, roughly everything, but about a million dollars is what we think or what we projected school districts are going to actually be spending. When school districts build a budget, what they're doing is they're taking all their expenditures, what they're going to do, how much they're going to spend. That's what we need to know. And then they build a revenue budget to offset it so that they sum to zero, is the idea. Within that revenue budget, within that expenditure budget, there are certain costs that have dedicated revenue such as federal funds. So part of their budget is covered by federal money. So you can back that out. We don't have to pay for that, because that's covered by federal money. The state also gives other categorical grants such as special education aid, transportation aid, we do small schools and merger support grants. I said transportation. Those are monies that are coming out of the education fund, which we'll talk about in a momentarily. But that also reduces what's called education spending. So you take, you start with their budget and you start backing out certain revenues. And you come up with a figure called education spending. And that's the number that goes into the education fund on that line, what I had there at line number 10. That's the vast majority. So during the COVID years, were there any savings at all? There were. And were they applied? Yes. They were applying. My understanding from talking to business managers, they were applied over a couple of years. Initially, what the legislature had planned, because the extra money was coming in unexpectedly, because nobody expected that here, was the extra money was able to take, to replace some of the state and the local money. And that's not going to go in the state money because we don't have local money from on. And so there was money that was coming. Some of it came back, we had to fund out that year, I guess for the fall of the year. But other school districts kept it as a surplus and rolled it forward. So we've had some pretty high surpluses being used these last couple of years. And a lot of it has to do with the extra funds. Great question. Okay. Please. Okay. So what you can see here is that, I'm not going to talk in billions because it's easy for me. On line 10, in FY23, this number is pretty solid. We're going to spend about $1.58 billion, billion with a B. And we're projecting $1.71 billion in FY24. That was based on me talking to the business managers and saying, what do you think is going to be happening? They said, do you think our costs are going up? And is that, I'm curious, the inflationary sorts of impacts that we're all talking about? A lot of inflationary, there's a lot of money that was put into sourcing benefits for the staff. There are a lot of unmet capital needs they need to do that they've been working on. There's, I said inflation, that would cover the fuel costs and things like that. What about healthcare costs? Thank you. I mean, healthcare costs are going up too. So all these things are just kind of adding to it. A lot of it's out of their control to a degree. So based on what they said, I took the districts that reported to, which is over half, that said this is what we think our education spend is going to be, not the total budget, but the education that's subset, what the education spend is going to be. And I looked at what they spent last year. So I'm comparing, here's where they think they're going to be here. And I looked at what that percentage was on average for the state. It was 8.3%. Some of them are at 16% increase, some are 15, 10, 12, some are down to five. I'm not sure anybody went south or went degrees. But so my recommendation that is behind the education has been part of the December 1 letter. Was it 8.3 increase for the state? Hopefully that's the right number or too high, preferably too high, which would mean that the yield could then go higher, bring tax rates down as opposed to working the other way. If, unfortunately, like this current year we're in, based on what Business Manager said told me, I put in a number, I think a 5.1% increase growth, 5.2, something like that. And the numbers came in, I think it's 5.4.1 or 2. And the numbers came in about a percentage point higher, which meant that there was a bigger demand on the Ed Fund than we had anticipated. So things changed, but we had this huge surplus commitment saved the day for everybody. So when we're doing the December 1 letter, we try to err on the conservative side because towards the end of the year, it's better for everybody, including you guys who have to pass things, to be able to raise the yield from the December 1 letter as opposed to bring it down. Because right now people are looking at what their tax is going to be based on that December 1 number. And you prefer to come down towards the end as opposed to going just to go slowly now. So that's kind of where we are with this. But that's the biggest drive that you're seeing, that's $23 million, that's a $35 million increase, I don't know, $135 million increase over FY23. Senator Williams. Is the education percentage out to the municipalities so they can do their budgets? Yeah, the December 1 letter goes to all the superintendents, all the school districts, they all have it put out on the paper so everybody knows kind of what it is if they want to know. The school district buds and the town buds are separate, they are separate. But I know that in the past, when money came in from one reason or another from the left side to drop school tax rates, town tax rates tend to go up to fill the gap. So taxpayers didn't really get any relief. I was just recently dealing with the town budget as a swipe brand. That was probably the problem. We really couldn't come up with this. Yeah, it's hard. So this is where everybody's up there right now working on what we think is going to happen. Yeah, what is going to happen is this time progresses. Mr. James, I didn't prepare you for this question, but I'm just curious, where you're sitting, has Act 46 saved the state money? I don't think so. I haven't gone out and asked. I think it has in some place, I know they're talking to business managers, a lot of people said they are able to do things far more efficiently. But a lot of places have also hired more staff because they were addressing needs that they had cut for. Okay, so they found some efficiencies maybe they hired some additional staff with those kinds of savings. That's a lot of what I've heard was the anecdotal point. So while costs themselves have not necessarily gone down, hopefully what's happening with the students has increased a lot better. But that's my understanding of the talking to people. So back to this just very quickly. On line 11 is now special education. FY23 is the first year of the census block grant. We used to be a reimbursement. So this is actually a lower number than we usually have on this line. And with the way the formula works, if there's inflation, it's going to go up to from $240 to $226 million. Then state play students, costs have been going up with those, so we made an estimate to increase it. And if we're over, we always give the money back for the next year. Tell me what the reminders state play students. State play students are those students who have been removed. Joan is speaking by DCF, Division of Children and Families. Yeah, I think that's it. And they're living somewhere else. They're not with their parents. And it's not a huge, huge population, but it's an expensive population. And unfortunately, they move quite often. And a number of them are going out of state too. And that also causes costs. Thank you. Getting back to special ed costs. In FY 2022, when we were still doing the reimbursements, what had had the number compare? If I recall correctly, it was higher than in the 23. I want to say it was around $229 million. I'm not 100% sure I'm right on that. I didn't bring my computer. Yeah, thanks. But it did drop down. It doesn't mean overall costs went down for districts. Because the block grant, people used to want the block grant. So we want a census block grant. And then they got it. So we're not getting as much money. That's what a block grant is. It's an average amount. We're working through that now. But it doesn't necessarily mean that special education costs themselves have gone down. Interesting. Transportation is a formula. It grows by the NEAP index, the New England Economic Progress. It's a consensus figure from the two state economists. I want to put myself there while during the fire drill. And then we just talked about tech education on line 14. That 30.5 has that figure, has that $15 million in there for one time money. So it's closer to 16 million in reality. Small schools. There may be... I increased that one a little bit. It's actually fairly flat. Just give the community a little background. Small schools grant. Small schools grant. Yeah, I forget. Small schools grants are basically grants of the legislature set up years and years ago under Act 6. And then they expanded it a couple years later. And it's basically to give us additional funds to a school that has a small population. And basically what it's looking at now is it's looking at your average grade size. If it's 20 or less, you're considered to be a small school. That's your average grade size. That's a two-year average. With the mergers that happened during Act 46, that Senator Campion just referred to, we don't have such small school districts. We used to have multitudes of small school districts. Now we have far, far fewer because the mergers have made larger school districts. So they're not eligible. And so the law got changed a little bit to say schools as opposed to the district. But what happened was as an incentive to merge, the legislature wrote Act 46 to say that if you merge, then you can take your small schools grants that any of your districts had two years prior and get them as a merged support grant and keep them in perpetuity until you close that school or until the legislature changes its mind. And so that's why I said the numbers have become fairly consistent now around that $8 million figure because most districts are not getting a small school grant per se because most districts have become unified and they're getting merged support grants. What happened in the Leading Bill Act 127 that I think we'll talk about some other time is that the researchers came up with a wait for sparsity which is based on having a small school and sparsity on a low population. And so what they did is the legislature, when they passed it said we think that because we're going to have this wait in there, we're not going to give additional money for the small schools grant which is a calculation. Merge support grants still go forward, but the small schools grants will end, I think, in FY 25. So there's one more year. There's one district that will probably get it and maybe two that will probably get it this year. So, does that cover small schools for folks? Line 16 then, essential early education. Again, that's formula driven by the New England Economic prior to the need inflation, it's in statute so it just grows. And that's for kids who are ages 3 to 5. Flexible pathways, if you want to talk about that I'm not the right person, I can give you a quick idea and there's more information on the next sheet that we'll talk about or I'll just tell you and we'll blast through it. But that's really college, dual enrollment, high school completion. There you go. We're paying for that. Then we talked about teachers' pens is normal cost of what I think it is. The ongoing normal cost of my teachers' OPEP, not OPEP. University school meals we talked about and then there are other uses. Accounting, auditing, probably other costs that I don't necessarily know about in the background but it's about 3.4 million dollars. And that's kind of what is happening. So you kind of compare the two years to see how it's changed. Now this third sheet that I just can't, that I put on your desk, again we're still talking, we don't know about 24, so I'm talking about F-23. This is just kind of breaking things out in more detail as we just talked about. So if you wanted to go to, if we were talking about Flexible Pathways, number line 17, of course I don't have the numbers so it's pretty useful. My apologies. Just realized what I did. The Flexible Pathways is number four on here. Nice, nice job Crosswalking brand. And it's 8.4 million dollars and it kind of gives you these are the parts of the Flexible Pathways. The last one, dual enrollment, half that comes out of general fund. What is dual enrollment again? Dual enrollment is when juniors or seniors can take up to two college courses. Oh, great. So it's like not early college, which is full-time college, but it gives you, you can get two college credits. Hey, did you dual enrollment? So where did you take your two classes? One virtually through CCB, another one in person taught by a Spalding instructor about via CCB. And a lot of them are taught by high school teachers and a lot of them are taught by college. Is there now college credit for you? Yes, great. Where was it from? Right. So I'm not going to go through this, but it just kind of details a little bit of the information that I know out there. Tech Education kind of says what those pieces are plus that 15 million dollars and write that in there. If you go to the last one though, line 12 or on the backside number 12, that's the big one for what's number 10 on the first sheet that how about that 1.5 7 7 billion. What this did is, what I did is I took information from budgets when I collect budgets to calculate tax rates, I get information at a fairly high level. So what I did is I broke it out into the major pieces and gave you the numbers. Now these are budget numbers, they're not education spending. So they're not talking about backing out these revenues out of some federal money, special education, things like that. These are actually budget because I don't have that detail when I collect it to be able to say this it. So the total of this is like 1.94 million, 1.94 billion dollars versus 1.5 7 8 here roughly. And that's because I did not, I didn't have the information to back out the offset revenues to get to education money, but it gives you an idea of where the money is going and what it's being used for. And you can see that the largest one is at the very top, that 1.1 billion, that's for size and benefits. That's by far and away the largest. So, yeah. What line item will we find construction and renovation? Is that enough? It is. It's like right here where it's 4,000 facilities that are in construction. That's 1.4 million. No, 10.8. Oh, there. Yep. About halfway down. And I did, we talked about surpluses. I'm not sure who asked, but I did look to see, it's not on here, it's the revenue. But I did look to see what were the surpluses for FY23 that were used. It was about 46.7 million dollars. It was a large number. Yeah. And I think in the past it probably closer to 20 million dollars statewide. Sorry, I just have a quick question. So, regarding the school construction, where exactly does that money go? And the reason that I'm asking is because and correct me if I'm wrong, but we heard that a new school hasn't been built in how many years? A long time. Yeah, I'm not sure. So, what does that money do? That's my question. Right now, well, I mean, when people do serious renovations, major renovations when they, or if they did construction of some sort, not the whole school, of like an addition or something like that, they usually bond for it. They've used it for 20 years. And so, what we're looking at here, the principal interest payments each year is what we're looking at here. Oh, from the bonds? For the bonds. Yeah. And that would also go back to your 1.4 million down there too. That's part of that. So, that's kind of what's going on. We have not had construction aid from the state since 2008 when it was, these were suspended or more termed as one of the other, and we just had the money to put it in there. I believe Secretary French will talk about that with you, I think, later. And, Hayden, would you ask Treasurer P-Check to come in next week and let's jump into the bonding and school construction stuff with him. Okay. You mean, oh, did you say Treasurer P-Check? Yeah. Okay. So, that's kind of what I had, unless there are other questions. I didn't want to overlap with you. No, it's helpful. That's a great resource. People probably know he has a contract for life, so you can't hear until that day comes. That's an awful lot of questions. You may not have the answer, but at 46, the municipalities gave up their school building if they bought it. If the school districts closed a building, the municipality could buy it for a normal sum. And so, I think some did. I don't think a lot did. Because they haven't closed a lot of schools. They've closed some, but not many. And that's, again, going back to Senator Canyon's question, has Act 46 dropped the cost? You're not going to drop the cost you start closing buildings, frankly, because buildings need people. And that's where the cost is. And you're going to still have a lot of people. And, you know, that's good and mad. I'm not putting it out there. But that's really where the cost savings will come in. And there have not been that many school closures since Act 46. Now, people are talking about them. But that's why you saw Ripton thinking about getting out. That's why you see Lincoln pulling out now. They'll be their own school district. There are a couple of us who have talked about it, but they haven't gotten it. People in small towns want to save their local school. Thanks very much. You're very welcome. Nice meeting everyone. I'll be around for questions. Great. I just need two minutes. So let's just take two minutes and then we'll come right back and we'll jump into PCBs. Welcome back to Senate Education. By last year, the legislature passed a bill that started a process mandating schools be tested for PCBs. We had done lead testing maybe two years prior to that. Working on that issue. And then PCBs we started this process a little bit last year. And what we've asked Ms. Capolino and Ms. Briggs Campbell to talk about is where things are at. Thank you. To back up and tell us a little bit how we got here and the legislation itself. Thanks so much both of you for being with us. So it looks like most of you might have a presentation. We do have a presentation. So I'm going to go over how we got to where we are and then where we are and then I'll open it up for all of the questions that you have. So we'll start with what are PCBs so they are a group of human made chemicals that were coming used in building materials and electrical equipment before 1980. They were used in cocks, paints, glues, plastics I like to say think of the building product that you would like to see stay elastic and it was added to that to keep the elasticity there and then also used in fluorescent lighting ballast transformers and capacitors mostly for their electrical insulating properties. So wide uses and everything. In 1979 the US EPA banned these PCBs. There's a lot of different ways we refer to PCBs and just so that you understand there's 209 different types of PCBs so 209 single types of PCBs they're called congeners. Monsanto took these different PCBs and they put them into their own separate mixtures to be used for all of the different uses I mentioned and those are called air floors and that was Monsanto's brand name for the use of PCBs and so when you look at what we report out and how we look at these we compare them to air floors that's the type of sampling that we're doing at these schools. There also is a lot of discussion around units and measurements I wanted to make sure I covered that also so there's different ways to measure PCBs and it's really by media and so for indoor air we measure PCBs as a nanogram per meter cubed and that's a part per trillion. In water we measure PCBs as a microgram per meter that turns into a part per billion and then for solids like soils and building materials we measure it as a milligram per kilogram which is a part per million and so when we go from part per trillion which is the smallest up to a part per million which is the largest that's the way you should look at our measurement so a part per trillion is really small and what I say to most people when I'm talking to them about our standards and how we look at different ways of measurement as the smaller it is, it's usually the worst it is for you and so we're measuring something that's really small and it's also causes health issues. So I'm going to talk about that just for a second the PCBs do cause serious health problems the potential for health effects from PCBs as with other chemicals depends on how much, how long and how often you're exposed to them but numerous studies show that PCBs can cause effects to the nervous immune reproductive and endocrine systems and they are considered carcinogenics so they can cause cancer and they are also by cumulative in the environment so they build up that tissue and will persist for many, many years so that is a quick 101 on PCBs if you want to jump into how and why we're here I heard you talking about Burlington High School and that was really how everything started and I'm happy to jump in and talk a little about Burlington High School but I'm going to jump right into the legislation that happened after the findings at Burlington High School and so we started in 2021 which was H439 everything that you see on your PowerPoint or print out that is not bolded came out of the 2021 legislative session in 2022 there were some changes made and that came in H740 and those changes were that we extended the date for the timeframe that schools needed to complete all the sampling to 2025 it was initially 2024 and then in the end where there's the release language it was changed from all buildings to public schools and approved and recognized independent schools I did want to step back just for a second and explain why the release language is important and it does tie into Burlington High School a lot when all of the work started in Burlington the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Health really had no regulations on releases of PCBs and indoor air our release language is very specific to releases to the environment so think about releases to groundwater, surface water, sediments not indoor air from building materials and so the release language was changed to allow for the agency and natural resources to have some jurisdiction in regulating these releases to the environment now and then in 2022 you'll see at the end that there was some funding provided to the agency of education to help assist where PCBs were identified in schools so we started our program there was a lot that the agencies and the specific agencies that are partnered on the school program as the agency of natural resources was given the direction to be the lead agency with assistance from the agency of education and the Department of Health so the three agencies have been working very closely to try and pull together a program this is the only program in the nation right now that is sampling for PCBs in schools one of my colleagues like to say therefore it is the best program in the nation and I like to keep it that way but there's also a lot of interest in what we're doing and I get frequent calls from other states that are also looking at this or finding this issue in their schools and looking for guidance from us so back to our program and our health and the agency of education the first thing we needed to do when legislation was passed was to determine how we were going to prioritize the schools for sampling so we put a survey out we identified that there are 324 schools minus 40 that were still waiting to respond so 364 potential schools in the state that are built or renovated before 1980 that need to go through this process we asked a lot of questions in the survey basically construction dates if they knew it whether or not there was any work that was going to happen and we looked at the percentage of re-reduced lunch population within that school based on that information we prioritized the schools to put them into timeframes for when we could move through the process to sample them looking at that there is a schedule on our website that talks about which quarters of the year schools are expected to start their work the next thing that we did was agency of natural resources contracted with consultants and that was the $4.5 million that the legislature gave us to do inventory and indoor air sampling it's a two-step process that we have the consultants do the first step is they go to the school and they do a full inventory of all the spaces in the school the potential PCB containing materials that might be in those spaces they take that information and they put the spaces into groups within the groups we asked the consultant to sample 30% from each group this has been proven to be very beneficial for us in identifying the specific sources and being able to carry that information into the other groups that are sampled and identifying those PCB sources just a curiosity for this in context that's actually kicked off that'll be the final slide I think part of this process also involves us having school action levels so we need to have a standard to be able to compare what our indoor air values were and so on February 2nd, 2022 agency of natural resources adopted interim standards that were given to us by the Department of Health those values are below there based on age before pre-k it's 30 nanograms per meter cube the part per trillion, 60 nanograms per meter cubed and 100 nanograms per meter cubed after the indoor air sampling happens at the school there's a joint letter that goes to the school that discusses what the results of the indoor air sampling was and then provides occupancy options to the schools that kids can stay in the spaces that they're learning in use of those spaces that continue to stay in classrooms after we send the letter we give the school 10 days to look at what the results are and make a decision on what occupancy option they want we also schedule a meeting with them with the three agencies to go over the letter and make sure they understand it and ask us any questions that they might have and if I can just interject for the reason because all of the work that Trish has explained the development of the standards the inventory, the grouping all of those processes that was the program that was outlined in statute the actual testing everything that follows after you get the results that sort of was not addressed in the legislation so what do you do when you actually find PCBs has been something DEC has been the lead on with health and ANOE providing support but that's really had to be a convented whole cloth in the past you know six months or so as we've really been engaging with schools and learning lessons as we've gone through so it's been a tremendous kind of lift from the DEC team to develop this are we in this alone or is the federal government all upset you guys are really smart all the commanding right it sounds like a good question so you're that high so when there are PCBs identified in the school there are options that the schools have the funding that ANOE has now can assist with some of those options for mitigation to allow for students and staff to stay in the classroom a lot of this work is also involved the programs the agency is creating a lot of technical documents FAQs we've been having a lot of outreach meetings that have been spearheaded by AOE for us to try and make sure we're answering questions that superintendents and school officials have and then the other thing is the development of a PCB database that we've created to allow for public access for all the information that we are gathering and so once we do some of that joint letter to the school we have a 10 day clock for the school to get back to us but after that 10 days we also release the information publicly so that parents and caregivers can also look at that information we have provided templates for the schools to provide a letter to their community before testing starts and after testing starts to let them know what we're doing and what we found and what options are moving forward and sending them to the database to find that information so we are in constant communication with the United States Environmental Protection Agency that also has jurisdiction over PCBs the EPA delegates a lot of programs they have not delegated PCBs and so there are certain crossovers where there is dual jurisdiction in this arena and so we are working very closely with them to make sure that any outcomes, directions and work that's done is aligned with both the state and federal requirements so that there won't be any hopefully no changes or different asks when we get to certain completion points the other part of the work that we're doing is we are able to use funding from the Department of Health and from DC separate from the 4.5 million to contract with the University of Iowa to help us work through different ways to identify PCBs in schools and remediate them so there's the University of Iowa Superfund Research Program and their whole program is based around sampling for PCBs in schools and looking at the research available for the best ways to measure and the best ways to remediate and mitigate and so they've been a valuable resource for us throughout this process but just to get back to Senator Williams his earlier question at least in Burlington our situation did not come under the Superfund cleanup can you tell us why that is Marshall Lee? Yes so EPA has similar statutory provisions that we had they do not address releases of contaminants in indoor air from building materials and so it's not something that they could regulate. It is something that we looked at with the EPA removals program to see if there could be some assistance but their regulations don't allow for them to regulate releases of PCBs from building materials if there were releases from the building to soil to groundwater to surface water then there's a different ability from the EPA but that is the main reason why so PCBs were in the soils and other areas then it would be different correct at much higher concentrations they are so as an example there's Superfund site in Bennington that is PCBs only PCBs and PCBs in groundwater and soil and sediment and it's from a former manufacturer that capacitors in the PCB oils leaked everywhere so that is a Superfund site but that is the reason why it's really just the media and how the release occurred so the last piece that I have on this is really that DEC is working closely with EPA as I said but a lot of our documents related to assessments so what happens when there are PCBs detected in indoor air there's a requirement to start looking for what those sources are which goes back to the inventory we've set up the sampling process and then how to actually clean up the PCBs and we're making sure that our documents and directive are aligned with EPA on those pieces that's where most of the EPA regulations start to come in so that's the program that we built and the general process and how it's working so where are we, what have we done how is it looking right now I think is the other question you probably want to hear from me so I mentioned that there are 324 schools minus 40 that we're still waiting for to date we've looked at 58 or created 58 approvals for inventories to start in the schools we've approved up to 39 schools for indoor air sampling right now the number of schools where one sample has exceeded the school action level is 6 the number of schools where there's an exceedance of the immediate action level and I didn't talk about that but we have the school action level we asked the department of health to give us a number that basically says at or above this number you should not be in that space anymore so an emergency action number immediate action level so there's two locations there and then number of schools where the results have been below the school action level is 15 the table I have underneath that for you to see is really where we are with our ability to keep up with what we projected so I mentioned we put schools into quarters for sampling and basically said you need to start your process within this quarter so we were able to achieve everything we needed to for the first two quarters the last quarter which is October to December 31st there are seven schools that didn't start within that quarter and so we're going to be reaching out to the consultants in the schools to make sure that we can get them moving so that we can but that is a zero also I think I missed this when you were talking I'm sorry but SAEL that's safe action level school action level and that's the 30, 60, 100 the values that health created for us and then you have to do something so that six number means you have to do something but that two means you have to do something correct so it means that space can't be used until you can reduce that concentration but the six those six schools can use their space but they have to actively do something they have to actively do something and then it goes back to the occupancy option so based on what occupancy option the school chooses depends on whether or not they can use their space fully or if they're going to reduce the amount of time in that space or if they're not going to use that space at all and that's part of what the joint letter from Health and A&R says when it goes to the school here are your options let's talk about what they mean which one works best for your school Thanks Senator Williams Do they actually have the state do the testing or do you have a private firm to do it we contracted with six different environmental consultants to do this work so is that is that an adequate number to do it is that put a constraint on time there are definitely some things that we've identified as time constraints some of it is the consulting community I think I don't know what's happened with our labor right now but everyone's facing labor shortages my program's facing labor shortages that hasn't been the reason for this this but it's certainly an amazing amount of work happening with our environmental consultants and this is just one more thing that we've added to it there are definitely some major delays that we had with the labs that we were using and we were able to work out most of those issues also so I'm hoping we're on the right path to completing the work that we said we'd do but those are definitely the hurdles we face in the beginning there's a very limited number of labs that do this right four labs that do this in the country and I just wanted to add a little bit more so the do something here if you're about the school action level the sort of next steps once you're about that school action level you're within the DEC regulatory framework right and so there's some really clear steps that need to be taken we try to do what we call pregame puddle with folks that are going to be testing and sort of outline what are your roles and responsibilities what are the requirements that you need to meet but obviously one of the first steps is to try to identify the source right and once you know the source of the PCBs then DEC provides that technical support us as the consultant in what are the strategies that you can and activities that you can undertake and some of those might be mitigation strategies so strategies that you're going to do on a temporary basis to reduce the amount of PCBs in the air and we're trying to always balance that health and sort of safety risk versus keeping students in school for in-person instruction right having within the context of the pandemic that educational impact is really critical so those are some strategies that may be undertaken and it might be things like wet washing or being out vents or covering up the special paints and then remediation I have all these technical terms to address over the last year remediation is the permanent removal and so that may come quite a bit later depending on you know what the scope of the problem may be and so those are like the you know you said okay school action level what does that mean it means you have to do something and these are some of the things that you may be doing and that would also play with your occupancy of that space if you were taking immediate action to lower the amount of PCBs within your air then it would be safe for students and staff to remain in that space but if you are not going to be able to take those steps then maybe you need to reduce the amount of time that students are spending in that space maybe you have additional space that you can you know instead of doing music class in that room maybe you can do music class in this room so working with the schools on those kind of logistic and operational considerations is part of why we have three agencies involved and really close contact with the schools to make these decisions that's where you're reading my mind I don't know how you do that but so the two schools that exceed the IAL I'm assuming they're included in the six that exceeded the SAAL so is that a total of six schools rather than eight the exceedances of the IAL are actually in ancillary spaces so they were closet spaces that exceeded the school action level so we still use the lowest age that's in the school so if it's a pre-k then 30 is that lowest age and 90 is the IAL for that and we have some exceedances that are in closet spaces storage spaces so it's still an exceedance of the IAL but it doesn't really change what has to happen in the school right away because it's not fully occupied all the time we're still working with the school to address the issue yeah great thanks how do we budget for this which part oh wow from the whole thing we don't know what we don't know so is there some place is there obviously some kind of funding available no so this is on a high so more specifically in James and your budget there's no line item covering any but the testing is fully funded is that correct I mean the testing has been funded from previous there's 4.5 million depending on how well that moves forward it may or it may not cover all of the work that needs to happen well there's some money yeah so I can take a little bit to this putting some brackets around this you have a report coming from the secretaries from A&R and AOE and secretaries more and French will be speaking to this so in some sense I'm going to defer to them but here's our here's our context is that in the last session as part of the ed fund surplus 32 million dollars was identified for PCB mitigation and remediation but of that funding only 2.5 million was made available essentially to respond to immediate needs that were happening over the past year and funding proposal is required of AOE and A&R which you should have any minute now or today at some point hopefully for what to do with the bulk of the funding so the 2.5 million is in the bank in the bank for the agency of education it did require that AOE and A&R go in front of the emergency board which we did in October with a sort of proposal for how to use those funds and they're very specific uses so those funds can be used at an 80-20 cost share so 80% on the state 20% on the district or the independent school I always want to remind us that independent schools are also part of this picture and specifically for DEC approved costs that's our control right they're in a regulatory framework now so when they have these costs they have to be approved by DEC and then that way AOE knows it's okay to pay the check right we're not experts on this for costs associated with the like the development of a work plan by the consultant source material testing right so we know it's in the air but we've got to find out what the source of it is and then mitigation strategies specifically we cannot use any of those funds for permanent removal or remediation of the PCBs so to date we have 2 schools that have incurred costs one of them has a fully DEC approved work plan and the other is sort of underway and I was working on today I'm in the process of building out the grant it's a reimbursement grant the school knows what they'll be reimbursed for so there's no issue right now we haven't paid any cost to date but we do know that we will so the remainder the big bulk of it the 32 million you'll receive a funding proposal on that and I'm sure you'll have comments and questions at that point that you can ask the secretaries so there's no remediation funding authorized is that because we're doing this in phases it's because that's how the legislation was written but I will say that where we're at with this is that the soonest that we would be expecting remediation activities to be taking place which would probably be Cabot school will be this summer so right now the schools that are above the school action level are identifying sources coming up with mitigation activities to keep students in those phases safely so we're in the what I recall is sort of the bridge the holding pattern until the permanent removal can happen how are families responding to the letters you're at home you get a letter your school has PCBs in it what are you hearing and seeing we're getting a minimal amount of questions not a lot of questions I think the big question is we have another Burlington at this point and the answer is no not so far would you email a draft to Hayden of the letter just so we can see it I don't think we're getting those kind of questions from parents they're asking us specifically some health related questions that go to health and some questions maybe around reduction and what's being done but not a large amount of people aren't pulling their kids no and where we've seen in the spaces themselves so I think Cabot's a good example we've had PCBs in the gym and in the art room and at Danville school they've been in some of those ancillary spaces and the school was able to respond they were able to keep pre-k kids out of the art space in the gym during one period all students were out of the gym for a bit and then it was established that it was safe for them to be in the gym so we haven't had a situation where the whole school has impacted it's been particular spaces and the schools I think by and large have done an excellent job they know their communities well really clearly with them and saying this is where we're at in this process right and I think as long as there's movement forward Senator Gullick and Senator Wittes a couple of things can you tell us which two schools are benefiting from that 2.5 million I think one is Cabot Cabot and it will most likely be overall once they have a DEC approval program and then can you just to give us context because I think maybe one of the reasons you're not getting a lot of letters is that you really are you know Vermont takes care of its people or at least tries and your levels are fairly conservative and people feel relatively safe and I was just wondering if you could give us a comparison of like what the national level is nationwide or like because I've heard numbers thrown around and same thing with the EU I've heard that the EU has a number I was just curious if you could share that with us or if it's not that simple it might not be that simple I'm afraid to give you a wrong number there's a document out that was from the University of Iowa where they've done a lot of work just providing information on what that background value is and I just don't have it at the top of my head so I can't get that to you right now so the University of Iowa that's probably a public document that if you want to look at we could I'm happy to send it to you or to this committee so certainly a great effort I'm curious though kind of the risks from the past like lead, radon, asbestos do we feel comfortable that we're beyond that? Is that kind of a fair assessment that we recognize those at the time and we move beyond radon testing is actually another piece of statute from 2021 all schools are required to test for radon by June of 2025 that doesn't belong to any particular agency no agency was assigned that oversight over it so this will sort of do it so the answer on radon is we don't know in progress and I would say in infancy your question is a good one it's so then what's going to be next I thought we had just to interject here a complete school inventory at one point that was being done or is that we're looking at almost everything or was it more the building it's the building this is part of Act 72 which will not surprise you I'm always happy to come in and chat about leading that work as well and so we did a self-reported facilities inventory last year and the conference of facilities assessment is underway right now and will be the work will be completed by October of this year but it doesn't it's not testing for radon it's not testing for PCBs it's the facilities condition itself so when you say assessment you're talking about this square footage of this type of room or yeah so looking at the age and condition of all major systems looking at the capacity to deliver 21st century education looking at any upcoming major construction and it's all being driven towards sort of the end result of Act 72 which was an omnibus facilities bill the end result is to have a clear understanding of what our kind of facilities debt is and once we have had a moratorium on state spending on school construction facilities since 2008 and then also to be able to guide school districts in making five-year capital investment plans we'll look at Act 72 next week when we key check in also and also hopefully our federal delegation can help us with some of this I think we're back Alice from Peter Welch's office hopefully can join us and just know that this is what we're facing but everybody in the country is going to be facing just a general question maybe we'll get answers later so this legislature will pass a bill not assigning responsibility to an agency and not assigning budget item are you trying to get the rate on the rate on thing is a good question I think what we asked for and we can go back and take a look is basically in five years give us report what those rate on numbers look like I think those numbers would also go to the superintendents and others so they can act on them but we'll follow up and see your point's a good one and it's well taken that it did surprise me a little bit that nobody's the work is being done and we might have to for example you could test today rate on could be high and the solution could be easy and the schools are the ones that have the responsibility to do the testing no right I understand but to Senator Williams point I think when can we start to see these numbers what are some of the things happening you know if somebody does have a question who do they call up and say hey our rate on numbers are off the chart we've heard that it can be easy as ventilation and it can be much more serious good question please anything else my big question is if Jill got her scarf back oh right it's over there it's over there we were really worried about that oh thank you I need some more scarves as soon as I put it on I think I'm losing that school construction is going to be a big part of our conversations this session without a doubt and how can we help districts with some of these funding issues Act 72 so it's not only you know some bricks and mortar kinds of things but are these 21st century institutions that kids can really it includes an energy audit, a 2 energy audit as well it's a pretty comprehensive assessment you should have all the reports will be completed by October of 2023 and then we'll have a legislative report in January of 2024 with big ticket numbers I would say that just requiring AOE, ANR and health to work together on the PCB piece that definitely has put us into a better relationship not that we had a bad one but a closer relationship with AOE but it does allow for where there is construction work to happen to be you know aligned with some of the PCB work that needs to happen and potentially any of the other work that would be lead pain asbestos at all at once while the school is under construction so that you don't have to go back and do it later so there is definitely more coordination happening around the needs of the school and how to create a better environment and I've certainly seen in my community you know some of those falls uptick and cancer rates from PFAS, things like that I can even think of some personal experiences when family members grew up on Lake Champlain on the other side when they would go swimming through those paper mills when they were kids and now come 72 late 60s and this is myest anecdotal not scientific but these are serious things and certainly I would echo what Trish is saying other states are paying attention here so I think we're on the leading edge which means we're bearing the cuts and bruises of it but you know we do good work in the states I think it's as kids are developing I mean my age I'm not sure how much if I got exposed to PCVs now I mean what if I got would you say we was 20 years left 40 40 but if you're little that's where it impacted so thank you very much sounds like Senator Goulick's done that was great anything else thanks okay committee certain things are coming to the forefront that we'll be working on we'll constructions one of them and as I think this is teaching Vermont cap pain the house will send us a bunch of things how exciting I like that so we're adjourned for today