 It says now streaming on my screen. Oh, all right. Yeah. OK, so welcome, everybody. We're going to be looking at two basic things today. One is a snapshot of higher education. We're going to hear from state colleges, UVM, and independent colleges. And then following that, we'll have updated language on what we're calling default budget for districts that aren't able to get a positive vote by July 1 and then a delay of Act 173 by an additional year. So with that said, just the one other thing I want to make sure committee members know, we did receive approval from the Rules Committee this morning to move ahead should we decide to with those two pieces of language that we'll be looking at later. So with that said, let's start with Chancellor Spaulding. Welcome, Jeb. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. And before I get started, I'll welcome questions along the way. And would you just give me a little idea of how long each one of us should be? I was thinking about 15 minutes. OK. And then maybe a question or two, but we would need to move on. And we'll try to take notes and figure out where we need to follow up with either of you or all of you. OK, well, great. Thank you very much. It is a wild world in higher education these days for most colleges and universities, very unpredictable for sure. We can be pretty clear on some of the shorter term revenue losses that we've experienced. And predicting forward about what might happen this summer and this fall is extremely difficult. And I could just tell you, speaking for the Vermont State College is recognizing that we have four very different institutions within our system. So how community college Vermont might be affected will be very different than a Castleton or Northern Vermont University or Vermont Technical College, which is like 85% Vermonters. So each one might be different. But the decrease in deposits around the 1st of March, they were actually varied by college, but not that bad. By the 1st of April, the deposits compared to last year were down a lot. Now, whether that's temporary or not temporary is anybody's guess at this time. But most of the people that I hear and listen to out there are worried about what, even if we can open up in the fall, which we're optimistic that we can do that. But there are still going to be a lot of skittish parents, parents that aren't working, students that may want to stay closer to home, or various things like that that will affect your revenues for next year. So let me just take a step back. The Vermont State College's system has been in a fragile financial position for a long time. I hope that doesn't come to a surprise to you guys that we come every year and say that we are really on a very, very fine balance to try to make sure that we can continue to provide education in an accessible and affordable way and provide the kind of student supports that are necessary. We went through a process last summer and fall calling serving Vermont students by securing the future of the Vermont State College system and basically pointed out that the demographics were really challenging for us, that the low state support was definitely an issue making our life a little bit more difficult than in states where they're funded at a higher level, that the pricing competition from the college is trying to attract a smaller number of potential students means that they're cutting their prices. So it's getting more and more frequent that even as a public state college, our tuition, particularly for out-of-staters, is just not competitive. And then you get the disruption. I mean, it was a great chart in our presentation that showed enrollment over 10 years of four-year privates, four-year publics, and two-year publics, I guess it was. And they're basically flat for like 10 years. And you look at Southern New Hampshire University, Western Governors, Phoenix, and they're going straight up, or not straight up, but up like a lot. And that kind of disruptive technology and changing student and employer preferences is also a challenge for us. So the COVID-19 has really accentuated a difficult financial position for the Vermont State Colleges. It was already there. So I really can't underestimate and not trying to do anything other than be straight with you. I mean, we are really in a difficult financial position. I think the state of Vermont's in the state of emergency. You know, every state in the country is declared a state of emergency. The city of Burlington's declared a state of emergency. And it's a crisis situation for many colleges and universities. And I would say, although different for different colleges in our system, overall, it's a crisis situation for us. So that is the fact. If I could just ask, I agree with everything you said. I'm wondering, and I understand that any attempt to give figures is a snapshot in time that may change tomorrow. But when you say April deposits were down a lot, what is a lot in terms of a percentage? Well, let me get to the dollars and cents. So like, okay, we were projecting at the end of the second quarter and in December, like a operating deficit for this fiscal year of about $4 million. Now, there's no question in my mind that presidents would get that work down to maybe $3 million or maybe even a little less than that. But, you know, we really were, and some of that was, we knew because we've been on a track record of multi-year projections with Northern Vermont University to get us into balance in FY 2022. So, you know, some of that's not a surprise, but still we were operating at a deficit then. Then when this hit, and you know, first of all, obviously we're focused on the student safety and the safety of our communities. But, you know, like virtually every college and university in the country, we determined that we needed to do refunds on a pro-rata basis for room and board for our students that had paid and were no longer on campus. So, that's gonna cost us about $5.6 million. And then there's additional money for like extended family leave that's COVID related that, you know, the private sector is gonna get tax credits for that higher education is not eligible for. And other costs like, you know, lost conferences and events in May and June of this fiscal year that are just not happening and people are canceling out. So, you know, on top of the three to four million, we're looking at another seven to eight million, seven million call it, of room and board refunds and other lost revenue at the minimum. So that got us up to like 11 and a half. We are gonna be receiving money under the CARES Act. There is money for higher education. For the Vermont State College of System, it's about $6 million, just over $6 million. Three million of that and there's nothing wrong with this at all, but about three million of it is dedicated for assistance for students that have suffered through COVID-19. And whether it's housing or food or, you know, all kinds of things that students need support with. And that's a wonderful thing, but that means there's about three million that's there to help us buffer the losses that we're experiencing. So, you know, we really get that back down to, after you back the three million back out, maybe eight and a half million dollar operating deficit for this year. Now, rolling that forward, you know, for us, if you just sort of think about it, every 10%, and this is, I see, I saw somewhere that President Garamella's on the phone that they're obviously a bigger institution than we are. Suresh, how are you? Thank you. Good. But, you know, for us, a 10% decline across the system and enrollment would translate to about $12 million. So, you know, if you thought you were gonna, you know, have a 20% decline in enrollment, you're looking at, you know, 24, $25 million of revenue loss, which for us would be, you know, absolutely devastating. So, you know, we appreciate the money we've gotten from the federal government and the CARES Act. You know, we have asked that, you know, the governor consider us for, there isn't in the CARES Act an education emergency relief, and I think Vermont's getting four and a half million dollars. We, you know, we would like to be considered for a major chunk of that. And we've been trying to figure out, and you may be able to help me in your positions. Is it possible that some of the 1.25 billion that's coming to the state of Vermont under the CARES Act, it would be available for, you know, I'll just say for the Vermont State College and System or other higher education, as a matter of fact, but I don't really know the answer to that, but, you know, I would say, you know, at the very least, at the least we're gonna have to plan for a 10% decline in enrollment. And if I had time to stay around and listen a little bit to the other, you know, Susan Stigley and Wendy and President Garumel, I'd be interested to hear what, you know, what the other ranges are. But I know it's gonna be a serious revenue loss. So what are we doing about it? Well, we are, you know, looking at all of our options. And, you know, I've been pretty clear with our employees that we're trying our best to hold on to people during this time, but we need to hoard cash. We need to, you know, slow down the spend. And we're gonna have to do some personnel actions. And we're looking at what those might be. We are looking at a reconfiguration, like, okay, you know, how do we get smaller? Do we get smaller everywhere? Or do we reconfigure campuses or consolidate campuses? And those things are on the table. And, you know, we will need to make a decision pretty soon about what direction we're gonna go. And our trustees are working on that now. And, you know, as I've said to people, all options there are on the table. You know, some of those options have been under consideration for a long time. But I have to tell you, this COVID-19, you know it better than I do, because you've got all your constituents that are dealing with so many things, but this is a new world. And I don't believe higher education is ever going back the way it was. And, you know, I mean, we have to recognize that and have the courage to take action to ensure that the Vermont State Colleges System as a corporation has the ability to maintain and sustain our mission, which is to provide access to Vermonters across the state. And that means everything for us. It means like we need to protect our community college of Vermont, number one. We do believe that Vermonters need to have access to a career-focused residential experience. But how many can you sustain? Is, I think, a very fair and important question. And we are trying to work our way through that. And, you know, so how many residential campuses can we have? And, you know, we also really wanna make sure that we protect our ability to deliver the in-demand and high-need programs through Vermont Technical College. Some of their manufacturing and construction management and the nursing programs and things like that are absolute must-to-keep. But we gotta figure out how we can do it in a way that's less expensive and allows us to, as I say, in a very different world, sustain our ability to deliver for the state of Vermont and deliver for Vermonters. So I'll stop there and be happy to answer any questions. Okay, great, Jeb, thank you. Just a question. You talked about reconfiguration and said the trustees are actively working on that, everything on the table. What is your timeline for them reaching a conclusion? You know, potentially as early as next week. Okay. All right, very good. Senator Ingram. Thank you. Yes, and I was wondering if one of the options that you're considering to, you know, what we're finding in this crisis is that doing things remotely seems to be a big, you know, big option. And actually, I know a lot of colleges and universities do a lot more classes online anyway. Is that part of the package you're considering? Yes and no, Senator. It's a great question. And, you know, all of our, like, every educational leader in this session here delivering all our programs remotely for the rest of the semester and probably much of the summer as well too or at least planning to have to do that. And so we are, you know, on the one hand, I could say it's amazing. We've had some, like, you know, people have made this transition very quickly and going relatively well, but I'm sure you've heard and read it doesn't work that great for everybody. If you don't have internet access and you can't go to the library, that's kind of a problem. If you have certain learning styles that are not suited, that's a problem. But, you know, overall, you know, we do. I mean, before the COVID-19 situation, community colleges from about 50% of the courses they delivered were delivered online. So, you know, they actually went to fully online, you know, pretty smoothly and are planning to do that this summer. Hopefully, you know, starting to, like the governor's turn on the faucet start getting people to be able to get back face to face. But they are able to do that. We do have Northern Vermont University is like trying to, it's been working over the last several years to expand their online, but they recognize that that's very important for particularly, you know, I mean, the increasingly large number of adult students that are maybe even parents and working and trying to get to college that online really helps them. Then there are a lot of our students though. I mean, you know, we have a lot of student athletes and we have students that come because they want to participate in student government face to face and we get to know their professors and, you know, really, you know, experienced students on a personal level from around different states and countries and so forth. So it won't be for everybody, but, you know, my belief is, you know, that this is, I mean, you know, I recognize I'm in Heady Company here with, and I mean that sincerely Suresh, you know, somebody's really been out there and came from Purdue and, you know, there's some big actors out there, you know, like in the online area, Purdue Global Southern New Hampshire University. I mean, you know, even the University of Massachusetts are trying to gear up big, you know, I mean, you know, whether we can really compete on that level, you know, 100%, I don't think so, but, you know, we do have a lot of Vermonters that are, you know, it's interesting that Northern Vermont University Online can do it from anywhere, but by far and away, it has the largest percentage of Vermonters of any of our, you know, on-campus campuses at Northern Vermont University. So Vermonters are using that as well, and they like to go to someplace they know, and, you know, they recognize the name. So we will be doing more of that, but I think in the end, for me, it probably accentuates the enrollment challenges that people have for a face-to-face residential experience. It's not that there aren't gonna be plenty of people that wanna do it, but, you know, people have, you know, I mean, you worry about some of the students, a lot of our faculty are going, hey, wait a minute, I didn't know this was such a good idea, but guess what? I think I wanna keep doing this next year. It's working pretty well. So what does that mean in terms of the number of students that are gonna come into your dorm? You know, and that's, so that's where I go with that one. Thank you. Thank you for that, Jeb. It's about 218, so I know you have a meeting with the governor that you have to go to. Any other pressing question from the committee? Otherwise, we can follow up with Jeb as we go forward. Thanks very much, Jeb, I appreciate it, and I know you're going through as we all are, but you have a lot to think about. We have to, you know, we have to, on the one hand, folks recognize how much, you know, uncertainty and fear and stress and all that there is on folks, and it's probably not over, but on the other hand, we need to look at these, these situations as an opportunity to try to figure out how we can, how we can, you know, do better and come out the other side and still be able to, you know, meet the needs of our moderates. So that's what we're gonna try to do. And I wish I could stay because I would love to listen to Susan and, you know, Suresh and Wendy, but I can't, unfortunately, so thank you. Okay, we'll be in touch. Thank you. Thanks very much, Jeb. President Garamella, please. Thank you, Senator Ruth and the rest of the committee. I'm glad we all met in person when we could so that your faces and the names are familiar. This would have been very awkward if I didn't know any of you. So thank you for the opportunity, Phil. I'm glad you're hosting all of us. This is, again, you've heard this a thousand times. It's a challenging time for Vermont and around the world. It's clearly a challenging time for higher ed. So it's difficult to comprehend the scope and of the economic loss and the difficulty that faces our state. But again, every state in the nation seems to have similar issues. So as the state's only land-growing institution, you've heard me say land-growing often, UVM stands ready to help Vermont recover from this public health emergency and thrive well into the future. So my main message to you is we here and we will do all we can to partner with the state and there are a lot of things we can do together. I wanna start on a positive note in terms of the ways in which UVM is already deeply embedded with the efforts in the state and helping with response to the COVID crisis. So I'm sure you've seen some of these things in the newspapers and stuff. Our Patrick Jim, it's unrecognizable. It's fully outfitted now and prepared to accept surge patients. I'm hoping we don't need it. I truly, truly hope that the flattening works and we don't need it. The Converse Hall parking lot has been transformed to be able to accommodate patient hospital, patient screening and triage. Our Davis Center kitchen facilities are opening to enable preparation of meals for personnel both at Patrick Jim and at other surge sites, including Essex Ferrograms. We've provided parking close to the medical center for hospital staff who need it. We did it soon after the need became available, although that it seems to have taken a while to percolate. We've arranged for, I think this is something particularly exciting, 95 of our nursing students are graduating now on May 1st rather than three weeks later to enable them to join the workforce. We gave them a choice and every single one of them wanted to get ready early and join the workforce. I think this will just be a great relief to the overstressed healthcare workers. Our Larna College of Medicine has prepared over 4,000 test kits for Vermont along with the people, the equipment and the expertise needed to deploy those test kits. Our scientists have designed a new emergency ventilator. Many of you have not heard about the Vermont ventilator then you're not checking your tweets enough. It's a simple and inexpensive design to meet that need. And many have called it innovative and elegant and such and I'm very impressed with it too. We've got over three dozen clinical engineers and biomedical technicians that have found out across the state to create additional ICU spaces at hospitals large and small while also reprocessing ventilators and PPE coming into the state to ensure appropriate quality control. And I could go on and on. I tried to pick a few critical things. I would also say that an interesting aside is that our medical faculty are sharing their expertise and distributing videos on topics, over a range of topics including the importance of social distancing and hand washing and things like this but also care for cooped up children. Care for the mental health of children and young adults. So, and our medical faculty are also standing by to redeploy to assist with emergency and ICU physicians as necessary. So, I'm very proud of my colleagues, of our staff, of our students for how they are contributing to the state and we will do more. Again, we all wish that less is needed, but we're prepared. And Philly also asked about a quick update on our campus. We normally host about 5,500 students. We're down to 117, 117. In keeping with the governor's stay at home directive, we worked on getting that number down. These are students, a large number of home or international students who couldn't go back and we're providing for them here. I actually have a team's event like this, a Zoom call with them this evening just to make sure they're doing okay. Most employees are teleworking other than a small number of custodial physical, planned residential life and critical lab folks. We have committed to keep our staff employed and paid through the end of May, regardless of whether they're able to telework. This was a big step for us because we're self-insured. We don't get funding from elsewhere for doing these things. Our emergency operations group continues to meet daily to address current needs and to anticipate future needs. We're working closely with the Vermont Department of Health and other experts in this. And I think you're aware that our admitted student visit days which are really our most precious offering to our students had to all go virtual where we've converted them to online. And we've really had very good participation and we're sending regular communications and videos, the care packages from Burlington, et cetera. So I think that we're adapting those events quite well as far as I can tell from the feedback we're getting. All this, of course, you heard extensively from Jeb about financial challenges. I will say that certainly the whole state, everyone in the state is going through their own personal challenges healthcare-wise and finance-wise. We have incurred a lot of costs and have a lot of financial challenges as well. The biggest challenge in my mind is that things are uncertain. We cannot quite put a number on it. If we could, it would be easier to plan for. So there's a whole bunch of scenario on contingency planning going on. So our revenue, it's hard to predict what the revenue would look like because we don't know about a second wave and how things will progress over the next two months or so. Certainly, things we already know is that five and a half million dollars went back to our students when we returned it to them, when they left the dorms. In addition, we gave them refunds and meals. So together, that exceeds 10 million dollars that's being returned to the students. We incurred unbudgeted technology expenses in excess of half a million dollars to enable the transition to telework for employees and the online delivery instruction. And that's an ongoing and increasing cost because we wanna do the right thing by our students. We anticipate a significant increase in demand for financial aid. We're seeing it every day from our students, the students of their families have lost income and so they're coming to us and we wanna do our best. The Families First Act requires us to provide 80 hours of additional new paid sick leave and 10 weeks of paid leave from FMLA. And while private employers will recoup those costs from the federal government, we as public employers do not. So we do not get that money from the federal government but we do that to our employees. So as we looked in the future, we have a critical need to evolve our educational model to offer more online classes in order to recruit and retain students. So I do agree that the new normal will be quite different from what we've had before where I think there'll be a much greater infusion of high quality online education. You know, the one question that comes up sometimes, sometimes honestly, sometimes cheekily and sometimes in an uninformed way. So I wanna address it head on that our endowment is not the answer. It is restricted when donors give us money that tell us what to do with it. It is not up to me to decide what to do with that money. We can only draw 4.5% of the endowment value which of course is dropping like a brick. The money we do draw was about a $19 million but now it's again the market conditions will lower that even further. Even that is restricted to donor specified purposes. So, and of course the current economic challenges will reduce the ongoing philanthropy. So there's not a simple answer there. If there were, we would have used it. So I guess what I want to bring to the Senate Education Committee is that we will have significant needs in order to thrive. I know you all want UVM to be that shining light. We wanna be that shining light that supports the state that helps our students that brings great jobs and workforce to the state. We ask the state to consider the following emergency funds to assist us because there is a significant federal chunk of money coming to the state. So certainly maintaining our annual state appropriation of $42 million is critical because half of that provides economic support for monitors to attend UVM. A quarter of it goes to support our extension activities. I was on the phone where extension staff, 160 or so of them, they are so critical today for exactly the reasons to support the kinds of challenges that our state is facing. And a quarter of it supports medical education. So any changes to that state appropriation will see a direct hit in exactly what you want to do for the state. $4 million is approximately a conservative estimate of what we will need to assist in providing the additional sick leave and the FMLA benefits to our employees. Again, these benefits are good for our workers, for the Vermont workers, but it's an additional burden for the university because we cannot draw from the federal government and it actually diverts from our core educational needs. A reimbursement for the unexpected, five and a half million return to the students. We encouraged them to go home because we wanted to comply with the governor's orders. We spent an additional 500,000 to enable the pivot to remote instruction. None of this is recoverable. It's all extra expenses for us. We are asking for $5 million in addition to help us build the UVM of the future. If we are to retain and attract the best, the talented student body that we all look for, for workforce, we need to quickly develop a more robust online platform. Jeb was referring to there being significant players in that space, some in the neighboring state that we need to compete with, collaborate with as needed and provide high quality experiences for our students. We need to train faculty how to use this new medium. We need to provide assistance to our faculty to use it. Course designers to do this, et cetera. Of course, I've come to your committee asking for $2 million for the office of engagement. I was asking for that before we had COVID and yet to me, it seems like it was prescient in some ways. We need that office of engagement today more than we ever did before because the kinds of services we were planning to provide through there are more needed than ever before. And finally, I think that we'll have the tsunami of financial aid requests. And so I think there's approximately an $8 million need that I foresee to provide additional financial aid to students. So Phil, I'll be, you know, Wendy will share a letter with you that lists some of this, if that's helpful to you. I'm writing a letter to the governor. So that will come to you, let's say by tomorrow. And so you'll have some more detail on this. I'll point out also, not that you don't remember but we voluntarily froze tuition for next year. Again, before any COVID stuff. And that decision to me is even more important today than it ever was as families are struggling with tuition. It deprived those of $10 million of revenue. And we did that voluntarily. So I stand by that decision. We will still honor that. We will continue to do that to make education affordable and accessible. So in closing, again, I thank you for the opportunity to share with you our situation. We value our partnership with our state, our land grant mission, which truly you've heard me. I hope you're aware of my commitment to the land grant mission. It demands that we engage with the state. The financial support from the state helps for monitors that it helps UV and provide them a quality education. These help us to remain strong during this crisis and beyond. Our success feeds Vermont success and we stand ready and hope that the state would help. So more than happy to answer questions if there's any, but thank you again for the opportunity. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say personally when I saw the first pictures of Patrick Jim turned into a surge facility, I was very, very proud of the institution for reacting so generously, but so quickly. There are a lot of states that fumbled that move and I think it's happening much more smoothly here, partially because UVM stepped up. I do wanna ask two questions quickly. You said that 10 million was being returned in terms of rooms and meals to students. Has that gone out and in what form did it go out? Right, so the five and a half is what we're returning based on the room charges and that is all being provided as a credit in their accounts and if they're graduating students or leaving campus, they get the cash. So it's all cash out to them one way or the other. Sorry, was there a second question? Well, that was the one question. The other one was, and I truly don't mean this to sound cheeky or I don't know. In terms of the endowment, I was curious when you said that there were limitations on it, I understand that. I always assumed, I suppose, that there was some kind of doomsday mechanism that if the university was threatened with collapse or dissolution that the endowment would be there. Is there such a fail safe? So thank you Phil for the question and I am very happy to address that question and I didn't mean, certainly it's not cheeky for you to ask, it's your responsibility. I just think people don't understand how endowments work, I'm not suggesting you in general because an endowment is an intergenerational promise. It's alumni that left four years ago that want to support their alma mater, support the students, support the research, et cetera. And so every contract that we sign for getting their funding is different. Some fair amount of the money is actually in terms of bequests and what will happen once a person passes away, et cetera. There's all kinds of conditions on it. I can tell you there's as many varieties of agreement as there are, people have a lot of money and they want to give it to us. Of course they get to dictate how they want it used. And so I would also say just to make it very clear because this is a public meeting that I will do all that's in my power to avoid a doomsday scenario. UVM is not going to go away. We're not in a doomsday crisis. We have significant financial challenges. The world's changing. I think we have addressed things as well as we can. We quit. Every day we take another look at our decisions. So, Phil, I want to come back to you in person. When that's allowed to your committee and a few months from now, I'm hoping that we'll be able to share good news that look, despite all these challenges, UVM has risen to the occasion and has pulled all these things together. So it's not quite, I just, doomsday is so far to one end. What we're talking about is that we're a large organization primarily dependent on our state tuition. Again, our contribution from the state is five or 6% of the budget, but it's very critical because in its absence, these important things that the state appropriation supports would be challenged. And so I'm looking not to somehow survive this. I'm looking to make UVM even more nimble, more user-friendly, more with the times, if you will, and provide what our students want. And for that, I think there'll be some significant plugs of funding needed, but we're also doing all we can to tighten our belts and redo the way we do things. So, multiple administrators are saying they will forego there some salary or a far lower, et cetera, et cetera. So we will do all we can to tighten our belts and be more efficient, but we do need help to the state. The other quick thing, in terms of something like the surge facility at Patrick Jim, the money that's coming to us from the CARES Act is meant not necessarily to address drops in enrollment or things like that, but places where there's been an outlay of funds because of COVID, is there some agreement in place with the state about compensating the university for that and other things like it? So, each of these things, so the state actually has some templates of agreements that they go through for these things. Our primary, and again, here I'm not trying to deflect the answer, Phil, but the moment the need came up, I said, let us do it. We'll figure out how to handle any expenses and such later. Clearly, we don't have excess funds lying around to do these kinds of things, but the last thing I would wanna do is to get hung up on some agreement for making these kinds of things happen. So we said, yes, we're partnering with the National Guard and all these other folks that are doing it, but again, the last three or four weeks in my mind, we're so sort of crisis driven that has addressed things as we can. Over the next two or three months, we will be spending a lot more time planning for the fall, for the spring, and the kinds of things you were talking about as well. And the reason I mentioned is that I think the university should be compensated. Thank you. And it's a convenient way to direct some of that federal money because it's so obviously a COVID related. Committee, Debbie, a question for President Garamel. Yes, thanks. So perhaps you said this and I missed it, but is UVM getting any of the CARES money that's coming to Vermont Higher Education? Right, thank you very much, Senator Ingram. You know, one of the things that's been sort of difficult for me, the answer is yes, is that there's so much uncertainty in what the CARES Act means and what the FFCRA Act means. I don't know if you've looked at these things, but they were written overnight and most senators, most congressmen didn't read that. We have reached out to our congressional delegation and they didn't know what it said. I'm not blaming them for it, it's just it all came together so rapidly that the interpretations of some of these things are so complicated. And you know, the funny thing is that despite what some Vermonters want to say, UVM is a state university. We're proud to be a public land grant and yet we're a state instrumentality. And these kinds of bills don't talk about state instrumentalities. They talk about nonprofits, they talk about businesses, they talk about government entities. So we get sort of left out in this limbo land and I'll tell you, we spend more time trying to understand with our delegation, with APLU, with other organizations, what it means for us. And I would be lying if I said, I am clear today. And so what we're really waiting for is rulemaking, right? You all know that the act is passed, the law is passed and then the agencies make the rules. We are waiting for the Department of Education to make the rules, to tell us really. Now, the predictions by many are that, yes, there'll be some money coming our way. So we probably have about 3 million or 3.5 million that work that comes to the university and other 3.5 million possibly available in supporting student needs. But I, you know, I've been very careful in my memos and messages to campus to only talk about things that I can be sure of because the last thing I wanna do is to confuse people. So these bills in particular have been extremely, they're not dense per se, but they're poorly worded. And Wendy, in fact, spends a lot of time with, we even went to some attorneys, some law firms to try and interpret them for us. And two of them said two different things. So yes, we're supposed to get 7 million or so, but I'm not putting that in memory yet or saying that is a guaranteed thing. But thanks for the question. Okay, other, let's have Ruth's be the last question for the president and then we'll move to Susan Steith. Go ahead Ruth. Thanks Phil, and thanks President Garamalla. And yeah, I just wanna echo what Senator Bruce said, thanking you for all that UVM has done during this crisis and how you reacted so quickly and you know, did it without strings attached. So I really appreciate that. And it is well noted around the state how much you've stepped up. I was trying to write quickly as you were making the list of your financial asks. And I, including your $42 million current appropriation, I think I got it up to 60 million. So an additional 18 million. Does that sound about right? I'm assuming that is for FY21 or, and do you expect that to be state funding or are you hoping that some of that would be from the CARES money that comes in that's more discretionary? Right, thank you Senator Hardy. Very good question. And sorry I didn't clarify that. I would not come to the state for more money at a time that the state is struggling so much with its own budget. I've said this many times, even before all this happened, I came to you all and said, look, we get a small amount of money from the state. I understand that that's hard to change. If you want to support an office of engagement at UVM for the good of the state, please do. That was my ask earlier. So the current numbers I put out there are all one-time numbers. And I'm assuming that if the state gets 1.25 billion dollars, then these are fairly small investments to make for among the state's highest and best ROIs, if you will. So the amounts that we listed and as I said again, I will be, I'm drafting a letter to the governor to make a formal request and I will ask Wendy to share it with Phil and this committee. So those are all requests to come from any federal funding that the state would receive. The 42.5 of course is in your standard budgeting. So that's separate. Sorry about not making that clear. No, no, that's fine. Thank you for that clarification. Okay, great. Thank you so much, President Garimella. I appreciate you taking the time and Wendy, thank you as well. Please send us the letter. I will make sure it's distributed committee-wide and then we'll take a look at it. And I think it's everybody's intention to try to get UVM as much help as we absolutely possibly can. Thank you so very much. And if you don't mind, I probably won't stay long beyond now. And so appreciate being here. Thank you. Feel free. Susan Stitely, independent colleges, we are wondering sort of as with Jeb, there were questions about solvency for some of the institutions prior to COVID. So we're looking for an update now to the extent you can give us one. I think you're still muted, Susan. No, still muted. How about now? There we go. Thank you. Thank you for having me speak today. Yes, as you know, the private colleges, we've seen three, it'll be four when Marvel closes at the end of this semester, have had, you know, are still in a very fragile state. And this situation certainly hasn't helped and everyone is doing the best they can. And I think the federal money, the money coming from the CARES Act will help, but it's really not sufficient to cover the losses that people have. I'll give you some numbers, but just keep in mind they're all estimates. Everything's still under flux and so we don't have any real hard firm numbers if people are making estimates as how much the refunds the students have cost. Most are anticipating that we'll probably see an enrollment decrease and students perhaps up to 10% dropping out before the end of the semester. Everybody's gone remote. The students are home, although just we do still have 609 students on the campuses, mostly international students and students who have no homes to go to. So the colleges are feeding those students, sheltering them in place and have essential staff on campus to care for them. The students who have gone home, the transition to remote learning has gone rather smoothly, technology-wise. It's harder for some students than for others, online learning. Vermont students, we really need to get a stronger internet broadband line here because they're struggling with internet service when things are online. Students having to go back home and having to get jobs to support their family. One student going back to an urban area and one night, seven people in his neighborhood were shot and one person was murdered. He's got Wi-Fi in the house that's not stable and there's no place to go. So we're having students like that who are struggling, but all the colleges are really making an effort to provide support systems for their students, classes around anxiety, getting the student groups together so people are really supporting students in that way, but it does raise a lot of challenges and everything is so unpredictable. And I think that unpredictability is really hard, not only for the students, but for faculty and staff. And all the colleges are committed to keeping their staff employed as long as possible. They haven't yet started to make decisions. Probably in May, they will have to start to look at the summer. So we have, as far as loss of revenue, we have revenue, room and board refunds now. The switch to technology was very costly for some institutions, conferences have been canceled. Most summer programs have either been canceled or the colleges are preparing to go online with their summer programs. So the rough estimate and keep in mind it's just an estimate it's probably around $20 million in this fiscal year, which ends June 30th of revenue loss for the 11 colleges. I see, okay. And as we asked the other two, have you identified money in the CARES Act? Does any flow to independence? Yes, it does. And I'll send you, I have a list of all the Vermont colleges including the publics and what we're getting. And half of what we get does have to go towards students and then half is left. So all together for the Vermont private colleges, it's approximately 8.1 million. So half of that will be towards students' needs and then half towards institutional needs. So that's four million for institutional needs. And we're looking at 20 million in loss, most likely for this fiscal year. And so is that prorated according to how large the institution is or does each institution get an equivalent amount? No, it's prorated on the number of Pell students that institutions have. So that's how that, and it's a very complex formula, but that's a legitimate as to how that money was divided up for each institution. Based on numbers and Pell students, so as well. So the smaller colleges, of course, get a smaller amount of money from the CARES Act. As both the chancellor and the president of UVM mentioned, the governor is gonna be having his own fund for emergency education relief for K-12 through higher education. And that is also money that could go to private colleges. So given these circumstances, we would ask that that fund and we'll be making a request to the government also be available that when they're talking about how to use it, that the private colleges are also considered given the impact we have on our communities and the economic impact we have in the state. So, and we're hoping with any of the extra federal funds that come through, again, when you're thinking of higher education that you include the private colleges in that thinking. As far as projecting through the fall, again, it's just totally unpredictable. Most institutions are planning on at least a 10% reduction enrollment up, some perhaps up to 30%. Given it's also unknown, are students gonna be willing to travel, to fly to come here? Some are gonna feel safe or closer to the home and some are gonna be needed at home now. So that would really be another significant hit for the colleges in the fall for a loss of enrollment. So that would probably be, again, I really don't want to make a guess on that yet, but I think we're looking at millions of dollars again and loss in enrollment for that as well. Yeah. Well, thank you, Susan. That's very helpful. I didn't want to mention though, the private colleges have also stepped up to the plate to help the state. I'm sure you heard about Goddard willing to house the homeless. That seems to have been taken, is no longer needed. But all the colleges talked with the state and opened and offered their campuses as well. So we're here to support everything and hopefully nobody's gonna be needed. And actually, when I read about Goddard and when I read about Patrick Jim and I thought about Lyndon, for instance, I started thinking maybe, if there is any sort of silver lining, maybe this can provide an infusion of money probably from the federal government to compensate these institutions. And maybe it keeps them with their head above water. So the Goddard proposal is now shelved for the moment? Yes, yeah, that's been shelved for the moment. And the other colleges, Middlebury had us an agreement with Porter Medical Center. Most of the colleges have been in touch with the hospitals. Norwich, there was talk about opening up their ice rink as a moor, which thank God, it doesn't look like it's going to be needed. But everybody was in discussions around this. But thanks to the governor and I think what he's rightly doing that we're seeing less of a surge than we thought we would see. Fingers crossed. Yes, definitely. Committee members, questions for Susan Stitely? Okay, not seeing any. Thank you so much, Susan. Yes, thank you. Just what I mentioned, the students of course need more money. So B.S.X. grants and loans for students I think are also key during this time. And I think there's every intention of trying both at the federal and the state level to make sure that students, particularly students of need, get an infusion of help as well. Great. We very much appreciate all the work that you're doing. Thank you, Susan. Talk to you soon. Thank you. Feel free to stick around for our fascinating discussion of default budget language. I'll probably pass on that. Bye. Bye. Okay, committee. If everybody can bring up the document that Jim had edited and is now ready to be looked at. So it's on our page. And I believe it is the first, yeah, the first of the documents. Is everybody there? Jim? The 173 delay? No, I'm sorry. This is the budget language. So the default budget language, it's draft 1.1 of draft requisition, 20-09-55. Thanks. Everybody got that? Okay, Jim, we all saw the first draft of this last time. There was pretty much general agreement on it, but we wanted to make a couple of tweaks. So if you can just show us what you did in the meantime. Sure. So for the record, Jim Devon ran the console. So the changes last time are to take out the employer. So it's a double-funded default budget. And to make it not mandatory, to give this is the option of using this budget or doing their own budget. So that's basically the changes that were made from last time. The language is worth going through the language. Is that a risk? Yeah. So just to state my purpose first, the bill proposes due to the COVID-19 state of emergency to establish default school budgets for fiscal year 21. Four school districts that do not have voter-approved budgets on or before June 30, 2020, while allowing school districts instead of using the default budgets to seek voter approval of their own budgets after June 30 as under current law. The default budgets would be level-funded from fiscal year 2020 school-desert budget. So the act is entitled and actually into establishing the default budgets for school districts due to the COVID-19 state of emergency. There are two sections. Second section is just the effective date, which is on passage. First section reads, notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, if the fiscal year 21 budget of a school district has not been approved by voters on or before June 30, 2020, the agency of education should authorize an amount of education spending for that school district equal to the education spending amount authorized by the districts 2020 to school year school budget. School districts may actually do the 30 vote to approve a budget or vote to reconsider or rescind an approved budget. And according to law, and if the school district approves a final budget, that budget should be in lieu of the education spending approved by the agency of education. Subsection B reads, notwithstanding 16 BSA, 4,001 subdivision six, the amount authorized by the agency under subsection A should be the education spending of the school district fiscal year 21 unless or until the school district passes a final budget. And then lastly, C is unchanged from last time it says the school board of the school district should determine how funds should be expended under the section. In addition, the school board shall have the authority to spend any other funds received from other sources including endowments, parental fundraising, federal funds, non-governmental grants or other state funds, such as special education funds. That's it. Debbie. So this still allows for districts that have already passed a budget. They could be reconsidered because that's the law that hardly ever happens but that has been the law for a while, right? Right, correct, yeah. And so this one makes more explicit that if this default budget kicks in, a district could still bring forward a budget that doesn't level fund and seek voter approval but if they can't get voter approval for that or if they decide not to do that, this becomes their default. That's so, Jim. Correct, yeah. Okay, questions for Jim? Yeah, Andrew, Andy. Yeah, so they don't have to have a vote. So if they get the default budget, they can just carry that through the whole fiscal year. There's no requirement to ever go to the voters, correct? And for committee members, the school boards and the superintendents are running a mini email campaign based on our discussion from last time. They were a myth that we took out the inflator and so they've written to everybody, if you haven't checked your inbox, you probably have 10 or 15 emails. I've written back to them all clarifying that this doesn't prevent them from bringing forward a budget that's more than level funding but what some of them are asking us to do is either put in an inflator, which I told them the votes were not there to do or they're asking us to sort of automatically approve whatever their budget was, the one that they haven't brought to voters or that was rejected by voters, which obviously would be contrary to the democratic process, it seems to me. So I've written an explanation of this and sent it back to them. The ones that have gotten back to me so far said, oh, okay, fine. So I believe this language should satisfy people on both ends of the spectrum, people who tend to vote no on their budgets and people who tend to vote yes. Other questions for Jim, Ruth? I just wanted to, I don't know if it's a question for Jim or for you, Phil, but if we end up having a more universal approach to school budgets after looking at the education fund and the state finances in general, we could not withstand this language or exclude these districts in some way or whatever so that they are not double penalized or double messed with for lack of a better word. I'm assuming that is still past this now and then in two months when we have more information, have a bigger fix that might get to all the districts. I'm assuming that is still possible to do, correct? Absolutely, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jim, but we have the default now of 87% borrowing capacity that we could easily not withstand that with or without this language. It'll be the same if we change it to this. It'll just be there as a floor and then if we decide to do other things, we can work around this. But I think for the coming year, it's much better to have this as the floor than what's there. And then if we come up with a bigger, more comprehensive change, this will be top of mind in terms of making sure we don't somehow lock these districts into a level funded budget. Right, and can I just add one thing about that? I talked to a bunch of, couple superintendents and got all those emails like all of us did and and Ruth, you're saying I had to cross the state. You're free. I'm losing what you're saying. Sorry, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, the 4% that is the statewide increase overall was voted on before this COVID crisis. And I think it's fair to say that there's no way we would have a 4% increase if budgets were being voted on right now. So that's not... I think that it's completely fair that we are saying that that's basically irrelevant at this point. And that level funded budget kind of the right direction to go. Yeah. I would be careful about using the word irrelevant for votes that were already done and secured because it may be that we have to change those outcomes but I don't think we wanna give the message that we're doing it lightly or that it's irrelevant what the voters thought. No, no, just that they were voted on in a... Yeah, different. Different. That if voters were doing making the same decisions now and school boards may make very, very and probably would... Yep. So Ruth, we're losing your internet maybe is a little weak or something but just a note on that on Thursday we're scheduled for a two o'clock hearing we'll be joining finances hearing. So two to 330 on Thursday we'll be a joint meeting with finance and we'll be beginning this discussion of ed fund deficit and how to get our arms around the bigger problem. But let me go back to this piece of language. So Tim and I had a call with the speaker and Chairwoman Webb and we agreed that if our committee is behind this even though we have approval from the rules committee to vote it out, we will hold off on voting it out until her committee has had a chance to look at it and see whether that it's something that they can support. So I don't wanna call a vote today but I would just like a straw vote to make sure that everybody's behind this language. If we are, then I will ask Jim to present it to house ed in the form of an email to Kate saying that we're now officially seeking their assistance in passing it if it comes out. And what we would try to do is take their comments incorporate them in our language if they have any before it leaves our committee. So when we bring it to the floor we have if possible secured a kind of pre-agreement on the language. This is pretty short and sweet. So I'm hoping that if they don't need to mess around with it too much, we could move on it relatively quickly. But that's what I'd be looking for today is just a general approval of the language prior to a formal vote. Just a question, question. Thanks. So does this need to be put on like a bill number? These are committee bills now. Okay, so the cross over all that stuff doesn't matter. Yeah, and we have permission from rules. So it doesn't matter that they didn't meet crossover. Then the other thing is that the fact that they are two committee bills was the agreement with the speaker and with Kate Webb. So we are coordinating not just the language but the process as well. They wanted them in the form of two bills because they think there might be more discussion about the budget default than there will be about the Act 173 delay. So other questions for Jim or I about this particular committee bill. Okay, so my question, Ruth. Just a process question. Does this mean we would not be voting on this? Can you hear me? I can. Would you not be voting on it on Friday then during our floor session or you don't know yet? We probably, in all likelihood, we will not. And as you have realized, the house is moving in some ways slower than the Senate. And so I wanna make sure that we have them on board with what we're doing, but I also wanna not rush them. So what I'll do is if Jim presents the language to them today, I'll try to be in touch with Kate and make it clear that we'd like to move quickly. Can she schedule a relatively quick meeting with her committee to take it up? And then we would miss Friday, but hopefully the following week we'd be able to vote it out. Jim. Yeah, just to let you know that this is scheduled to be presented to our joint meeting of the House Ways and Means Education on Friday at 10 o'clock. Okay, perfect. So we miss the Friday floor session, but Tim has made it clear he wants to have, I think, one a week at least. So there would be an opportunity the following week. Am I right that everybody's in agreement on the language? Okay, great. So I am going to suggest that we hold off on doing the 173 piece, because as I said at the beginning of the phone call, I need to be on a call with the money chairs at 315. That was kind of thrown together after this was scheduled. So I will put, well, we're having a joint meeting with Finance Thursday. So we might hold this over until the following week, the 173 discussion. But in the few minutes we have left, I just wanted to reference something that Andy and I have been talking about. Couple of people wrote, one was a relatively very eloquent description of the anxiety that families are going through. And the woman who wrote was suggesting that we in conjunction with AOE canceled the rest of the school year after May 1st. And so then Andy wrote me about that email. What I said was, I'm happy to have a discussion, but were we to try to do that, we would be overturning the governor's order. And we would also be displacing the plans that have been put in place kind of frantically by districts and are now underway. So it seems to me difficult to think about shortening the school year for those reasons. But Andy was interested in having a further discussion and I'll let him just speak to what he thought that might be. Yeah, and I kind of want to have a discussion about having a discussion maybe a little bit, but just that I heard from a lot of constituents and also just my own, seeing my own children trying to deal with it and talking to neighbors and things that there's question about the value of trying to get some of the con, go through the content. And this is some subjects really different. Like the one person that wrote an email was trying to teach middle school science and in her talking with parents and to teach the kids, she's feel like it might be doing more harm than good to try to force that through. And then if there's expectations next semester that that was learned content, hopefully when they come back to school in the fall, like it's gonna be so, the difference is gonna be so great between the different students that maybe we keep schools open and we do something else instead of really trying to muscle through all this content for certain content for certain grade levels. So I think is what the conversation was. I was interested in having. Okay, so what I suggested to Andy, we could do is take a piece of one of our meetings and take that up. So I think of that as a discussion about continuity of education and learning on the remote system. So we could hear from some people who are in charge of the remote delivery philosophy and technology at the higher level, but then some practitioners on the ground. So Andy, you had mentioned that you might wanna coordinate some witnesses for that. Maybe people could- I'm willing to do so, yeah. Okay, if you have suggestions for people you might like to hear from, if you wanna send them to Andy and then Andy, you can send me a list and we'll work to plug them in. Yeah. Yeah, Debbie. Well, I think this kind of dovetails into maybe a larger discussion about the scheduling of the school year. And I think I sort of sent off kind of a half-cocked email at one point just saying, why don't we cancel the rest of the school year or not, but take it as a break because there's some school districts in some states where they do this kind of year-round calendar and none of their breaks are longer than six weeks and they do away with this really, really long summer break. And I was just thinking it might be a good time to take the opportunity to have a bigger discussion about what the school year looks like. We get filled in Senator Hardy's suggestion about start times. I don't know if we'll have any appetite or energy for doing that kind of big discussion, but it seems like the crisis also affords opportunities. I hear that the way I look at it is during a crisis like this, the governor and the administration have the ability to issue an order and to have that order followed. Legislature doesn't. And in fact, our ability to move legislation has been extremely hampered by the fact that everything has to be COVID-19 related and everything has to be unanimous. So moving things through the house and the Senate, you need unanimity at this point. If one committee is opposed, it's simply not gonna move. We don't have the leverage to do what we usually do is the house tries to outfox us. We try to outfox the house if they don't agree with us. Can't work that way anymore. And all of the stakeholders pretty much have to be on board. So taking up things like a uniform school calendar or changing to a later start date, those are highly controversial, both of them. I can't imagine a circumstance where everybody would agree to do either of those things. With that said, I'm not opposed to a philosophical discussion, but I would say that it doesn't really meet what Tim has been laying out in terms of emergency-related and in terms of the real politic of getting it through, it's gonna be highly divisive among the stakeholders. I can't even imagine two or three districts being able to agree on a common calendar or start time. So I don't know. I see what you mean about them. Yeah, the practicality of it is not. It would be kind of nice to have a philosophical discussion about it, but... All right, happy to do that. With the understanding that we would be looking for, is there a piece of that that we could think about getting near unanimity for Ruth? And then I think we'll wrap it up after Ruth's comment. Hopefully you guys can hear me. Sorry about all the sound issues I'm having. But I think what Senator Purchick was talking about was more limited than maybe what Senator Ingram just brought up, and it was more just the end of the year, the last few weeks of school after Memorial Day. And does that still make sense to be trying to do a continuity of education kind of system that we're in right now? Or does it make sense to have the end of the school year be something different this year? I am not in favor of ending the school year early if it means cutting out all the services that kids are getting, you know, the special education services, mental health services, the food, all of those really crucial essential services that our kids are getting because school's open. But I do think that there's a discussion to be had about the sort of academic value of those last few weeks. I mean, speaking as among the kids who are trying to get this online education at home, it's not smooth and it's probably even less smooth for many families than for mine, I'm in a lucky position. So I think that's more what Senator Purchick was talking about and trying to, and that I think is COVID related because it's specific to the situation that we're in rather than this broader discussion about school calendars and that type of thing. But I understand Phil about the, you know, the governor's orders and all that, but I just wanted to, you know, underscore that Andy was talking about a more limited thing. Yep, yep, understood, thank you. Okay, thanks very much, committee. I appreciate the time today. So again, looking to Thursday, we'll be in joint session with finance at two o'clock. We're joining their meeting. So their agenda is our agenda and you should be getting an invitation from their administrative assistant with the Zoom information prior to Thursday. Then I will work on the agenda for the following Tuesday with Andy. So if you have ideas about people you might wanna hear from around the issue he was talking about, let him know. And then Jim, if we can do the 173 walkthrough on Tuesday? Sure, yep. Okay, great. Fred, I'm sorry we didn't get to talk to you, but you were so reassuring just having you there. Same Emily. So, all right, everybody have a good afternoon.