Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. This is the House of Operations Committee. It is Wednesday, 02/04/2026. We're continuing to go through the FY27 budget. And this afternoon, we're delighted to have with us the Agency of Education. So welcome, and some of you have been here, but some of you have not. So we'll go around and introduce ourselves first, and then we'll have you introduce yourselves give us your presentation. Okay?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Good afternoon, I'm David Yacovone from Morrisville. I represent the Lamoille Washington District.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Welcome everybody. John Kascenska from Burke and I represent 10 towns in the Essex Caledonia history. I'm not gonna list them all today. Ask me anytime.

[Michael Nigro (Member)]: Hi, I'm Mike Nigro. I represent Bennington and Powell.

[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Top students from Waterbury representing the Washington Chittenden District.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Martha Feltus from Linden, I represent Sister Linden Sutton and Sheffield, Bluemle from Newark.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I'm Robin Scheu from Middlebury.

[Tiffany Bluemle (Ranking Member)]: Tiffany Bluemle from Burlington.

[Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Trevor Squirrell, Underhill, and Cherokee.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Wayne Laroche, I gave Franklin Berkshire and Berkshire.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And Representative Mike Moricki from Putney and Dummerston may be coming in. I'm not sure if he has a meeting. I can't remember what he told me. And Lynn Dickinson from St. Albans Town is not in today. So that's our team. So tell me about

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: yours. Good afternoon. I'm Zoe Saunders. For the record, I'm the Secretary of Education. This is my first time being part of your committee, so I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting us. I'm joined by our fabulous team in our Finance Division at the Agency of Education. I'll start with Cassandra, our CFO. Yes, thank you.

[Cassandra Ryan (Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Education)]: Cassandra Ryan, I'm the Chief Financial Officer at the agency. Relatively new in that position, so under a year. But I've been at the agency for about twenty years.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Emily Byrne worked with you.

[Cassandra Ryan (Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Education)]: Absolutely, yes, she did.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Just learned that. Both of you, actually, right?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Yeah. I'm John Kascenska, I'm the Deputy CFO. And I've been here before.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Probably glad to have some friends with you. Welcome. Okay, so we have spreadsheets and a presentation, and you can orient us to where you want to go, please.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So I'll start us off by providing an overview. I think in a moment, Cassandra will bring up our slides. So today, we're here to share the fiscal year twenty twenty seven budget recommendations for our agenda today. We will start with an overview of the agency. I will share the priorities that we have identified and how that is connected to our budget. We will share the budget overview and key drivers. We will also talk through the specific education services within our budget and the education fund as well. So just as a reminder, when we think about the purpose statement, the agency of education is responsible for implementing state and federal education laws, policies and regulations so that all Vermonters have access to a substantially equal education. We accomplish our mission through the provision of leadership, support, and oversight of Vermont's public education system. We're orienting you here to our new structure at the Agency of Education. We have completed a reorganization over the summer, and that was done intentionally to align our expertise and resources as an agency to meet the most pressing needs of the field. We are organized into four key areas. Under the secretary's office, we have a policy and communications division that actually expanded this team with the recognition that we are focused on customer service and looking to differentiate the ways in which we connect with stakeholders across Vermont. Also, recognize that policy is an annual job. It's also about implementation. And so we'll talk a lot about how the budget is reflective of our implementation priorities. And then our legal team is also under the secretary's office, provides a lot of counsel on a range of issues on both state and at the federal level. Our operations team is organized to support, under that is finance, data management, a couple of new divisions that we've created, safe and healthy schools, grants management, which is really to maximize all federal and state dollars available to our districts and education program approvals, also a new division to ensure that we have a high quality of education in every context where we deliver education across the state. We have established a new academics area and this is intentional to elevate and strengthen our academic leadership and support. Within this vision. Within this area, we have special education that has been elevated within our organization, given the level of focus. And we've created new divisions. One is focused on curriculum and instruction, another in really thinking about education programs and ensuring that there's a continuity of quality and alignment across pre K all the way through adult education. And strategy and accountability is another area within our new reorganization. Under that, we focus on ensuring that we are really driving towards our goals as an agency and being really clear eyed around our strategies. Assessment falls under the purview of strategy and accountability. And we also recognize that it's not just test scores as we think about school and district quality. So within this work, we're aligning all of our different accountability tools to ensure that there's one coherent framework by which we're setting expectations for school and district quality, and that we as an agency are organized to provide additional support in that area, which is a focus of our school improvement and district support division. I we an org chart anyway, but- I do have an org chart a little bit later, so we

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: can see how all works. Okay.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: It all fits in. Yep. I think the main point here is we're very much this reorganization was intentional. It followed our environmental scan, which identified where we needed to focus our efforts as an agency. Since you have me there, we have small picture.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: That's

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: right. So within the message here today, we'll talk about our education spending growth. This is largely consistent with what we see year over year. There's some inflation and increased costs largely due to health care. We also see growing student needs, both from mental health support all the way to additional academic interventions that contribute to that spending. Within the governor's budget proposal, he has included a plan to stabilize property tax growth. And we can talk a little bit more about that through the presentation. But we also are in the process of developing and starting to implement our strategic plan. As I mentioned, our reorganization was an outgrowth of our strategic planning process to make sure that we were able to deliver on those objectives. Our strategic plan is structured across five strategic pillars, which is recognizing Vermont's focus on a whole child education and that being a value of the work that we do. We also are expanding the support to the field. So we've established key norms for how we work as an agency. So we're data driven, collaborative, and we enhance customer service. And so we see our role really as a partner to the field, which is why we're doing a lot more in terms of training that's really embedded across the state and are also looking to regionalize in different ways. Within our strategic planning process, we've identified that while we're developing this long range plan, there's immediate needs now. And so we'll talk a little bit about those and how those are reflected within the budget request. Our key policy initiatives for this legislative session are to transform and modernize our career and technical education system. This is a chief priority that I think many of us share to expand access to career and technical education. So there's work that will be introduced to the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee around that legislative language that builds upon three years of study of our current system. We also prioritize chronic absenteeism. Many states have been really struggling with this since the pandemic, and we are no exception. We have seen a large increase in chronic absenteeism and it's really important that we're putting strategies in place to ensure students are in schools, they benefit from the learning. Legislative language is being introduced to update the statutory definition so that there's clarity and consistency across this process and that there's real transparency to roles and responsibilities because this is an effort that extends beyond the school. In this case, we've been working really closely with our sister agencies to support this work along with our health partners across Vermont. And then we are here as an agency in a variety of ways to support with key decisions around the education transformation. Chuck, a couple

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: of questions. I have one that's going away.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: You go first. Chronic absenteeism, any patterns in that?

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So we have seen, like many other states, an increase in chronic absenteeism. And we are seeing that when we look at the trends and we disaggregate, we see that students that are unhoused are more likely to have chronic absenteeism, our students living in poverty, also our students with individualized education plan. And so as we think through those strategies, it's important that we're concerted efforts to reach those particular populations and ensuring that they're getting the level of support that they need. We have great examples in districts that are doing this work. So, over the last several months, we've engaged in focus groups to lift up some of those strategies that are working really well. And we've also partnered with UVM Health. We hosted a large conference in the fall. It's really part of our Everyday Counts campaign to share those strategies that are really effective in reducing chronic absenteeism. And our strategy is very much about being proactive. So there's a legal compliance requirement when it gets into truancy. But research has indicated that just focusing on truancy alone is not addressing the challenges, the root challenges, and that's why we're focusing more proactively. Portion or magnitude problem is self stated, just in general. Yeah, So I can follow-up with the exact numbers, but I think it's about a thirty three percent in chronic absenteeism, are you?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's a lot. It is. It's true.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: It's nationwide. It is nationwide. But I do want to follow-up to make sure that I give you the accurate numbers. Maybe Torin, our Director of Policy and Communication, if you might, we had a presentation, if you might be able to, I'm going to phone a friend over there to get the actual data. And so we have been following national trends. We're a little bit above the national trends, but it's still a dip that is concerning. We're finalizing the most recent data to share out. Hopefully, we're going be seeing some improvement because it has been an area of focus that we have shared with districts across the state.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And so if there's something, if there's a presentation, you can always send it to Autumn and she'll get it to us. Okay, great, thanks. Try to keep

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: all of those numbers in the back of my head, but I

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: just wanted to make sure. Education has a lot of data. Jonathan and me.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: So the work that you're doing with CTE transformation here,

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: 've done a little bit

[John Kascenska (Member)]: of work with our local CTE programs, some instruction and certification courses for students there, which has been a great benefit for them moving on to potential workforce opportunities here. But as you're looking just globally at all the CTE programs out there, what couple of things are you seeing in common across maybe a majority of them that will help them to move to better direction to modernize, upgrade what they've been offering for some time?

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Right, so I would say that we see a lot of variability. Actually, I'll start there. We actually see a lot of variability with how we're delivering current technical education. There's different governance models that we have in place in the state. When we did an analysis of different programs, there's variability in program quality based on the performance metrics that are tied to these programs. There's also great variability in terms of the cost of those programs, even for the same type of program, but it'll depend on where it's offered. So the legislature actually started this work by commissioning a study of our CTB system. We at the agency have continued that work over the last two years. And we have a number of reports that I think would be really of interest that go deep into the variability and also the recommendations that we're putting forward. Something else that we see is that students' proximity to a tech center is very predictive of whether or not they'll take advantage of CTE And so part of the longer term strategy is really moving towards regional comprehensive high schools where CTE and high school are co located. And so what we're doing with our modernization plan is making sure that no longer is CTE just available to a select few of students because of where they live, but that it is really a universal access for CTE. And it's just part of the way that we deliver education in Vermont, ensuring that we have high academic rigor and that we're giving students those hands on learning opportunities that are connected to industry. Another key area of improvement is early exposure in middle school. And so at the locations where the tech centers are able to provide the pre tech programs, we're seeing a lot more participation and engagement. And in terms of looking at outcomes, overall as a state, we're seeing a decline in our graduation rates. But for CTE concentrators, we're seeing really high graduation rates. So just reflective of that level of engagement and interest. We

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: have

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: a full slide deck on that as well. And really happy with it. The proposal that we're bringing forward is building upon three years of studies. It does contemplate governance changes for CTE, also making sure that we're funding CTE at a level to ensure that access and creating early exposure in middle school. The other key piece is that there's a consistent level of support for training around the high quality programs as well. So we're really excited about what's moving forward. We know that the proposal will continue to be refined and improved as it goes through the legislative session. But we really feel like this is the year.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Those are great examples, thank you.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Great, so I was going to ask about funding and governance structures. So it sounds like those are being addressed in And maybe also, I imagine that the education transformation is going to impact this potentially as well. CTE doesn't operate in a silo from the schools. So one of the things that I have heard anecdotally, and I'm not the world's expert on this, but that there is, for example, students can't always get to other places. So the Rutland CTE has a waiting list of people who want to do certain trades things. In Middlebury, the Haniford CTE has openings for it. Because they're across school districts or county lines or I don't know what, it wasn't about transportation, they weren't allowed to come to our place where there are openings, and that just doesn't make any sense to me. So, I hope there's a lot more common sense in how we're going to

[John Kascenska (Member)]: be organized. I can raise that because that happens in my area. Yeah.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: I mean, they should be able to go where

[John Kascenska (Member)]: there's no It's a distance thing there. It just isn't.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Well, that's something we've focused on, particularly last session. Our CTE director, Ruth Durkey, has been working really closely with CTE centers to make sure that students can take advantage of those opportunities when there are openings. It is allowable. Sometimes there's not the awareness. And so we've been supporting districts with that. And we have some examples of how that's worked really effectively with the type of partnerships that are being established across CT centers, particularly in Bay Area, we had some examples that we were able to share around Spaulding as well.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So this is all in commerce right now. So if we want to explore, commerce is the place to talk about it.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: It is. We presented to a point committee that included Senate and House committees and we expect that the legislative language will be introduced very soon in which case then we'll have a lot more further conversations but we're excited. Did you

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: have a quick follow-up with the

[David Yacovone (Member)]: roadblocks at the district level for the cross, what are you talking about? Hearing the reviews for the CT school in another district, that's the roadblock at the district level, there's one saying no. Who's saying no?

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So sometimes the roadblock is awareness that students are able to enroll and sometimes students may not want to take advantage of another program that's not at the tech center that they were applying for. But if the committee is really interested, had a lot of conversations around this last session because we knew it was an issue And we learned from some best practices of tech centers that were actually able to do this really effectively and reduce their waitlist because students were then enrolling in another tech center. So have some lived experience of how we can manage through it within our existing statute to support those students that are interested in making sure that we're getting all those seats filled where there are open spots.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Not a fix is needed, not a legislative fix or anything.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: There were some adjustments last session to emphasize the opportunities available within statute, and our agency made commitments to provide further outreach to tech centers to make sure that the communication that was going out to students and parents was really clear around their opportunities.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Move us along because we can spend hours always on communication and I want to be respectful of everybody's time. Okay. That's part

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: of the reason I haven't been here because when we get so excited, I get derailed, we don't get to talk about the budget. So these are our strategic pillars of our strategic plan. As I mentioned, we are taking a very holistic approach to our education plan. We are set out to improve statewide academic performance, expand college and career readiness, promote safe and healthy schools, support operational effectiveness, and ensure high quality special education delivery and differentiated support for all students across Vermont. Next slide. These strategic pillars, we have identified key goals, and we recognize that even though we're building this long range strategic plan, there are needs now. So these are the accelerated initiatives that we have already launched. So one that I will point your attention to under academic excellence is Read Vermont. And this was designed to support the implementation of Act 139, which is Vermont's most comprehensive literacy legislation to really promote statewide improvement. And we'll talk a little bit about how we've been trying to maximize all the resources that we have to fund these initiatives. And I think you're going to hear that in the presentation. We're coming forward with a budget request that is really strategic. We've been really thoughtful around what the biggest priorities are. And we have reevaluated and realigned our teams as an organization and also used every penny that we have to fund some of these key initiatives. And then you had asked about the organizational chart. This is a high level overview of our new organizational structure. We can also follow-up with a memo that was sent in the fall that provides more description around how we came to this structure and what's included. And I'll just note within this, everything that has an asterisk represents a new division. And so that you'll see tied really closely with our strategic pillars. So we see that a safe and healthy schools division. We have a safe and healthy schools as a pillar of our plan. Academic excellence is a key focus. So we have a whole new area on academic excellence with an emphasis on curriculum and instruction and special education support. I'm going

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: just pause here for a second because I wanted to find out when are statewide graduation requirements supposed to be implemented? Isn't there going be a statewide calendar too? Is that the same Yes.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So the first cohort for the statewide graduation requirements will be for the year 2031. And also trying to make sure I get the right year. We were responsible at the agency of education of putting forward recommendations to the State Board of Education. We did that by the end of the calendar year. We did a lot of community engagement. We hosted a strategic planning retreat where we had over 100 educators part of our full day planning to think about those graduation requirements. We did additional sessions all throughout the state leading up to those recommendations that are based on an evaluation of current graduation requirements and evaluating the best practices across the state of Vermont. So those recommendations are now with the State Board of Education. They'll go through their rulemaking process, and we're continuing to support them as they really think through the operational nuts and bolts of how to implement it. The statewide calendar is supposed to go into effect when? The statewide calendar, we don't yet have a proposal, but I have a plan

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: for how to come. That's all I need to know.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: To be announced, yes. And so with that, I could talk about all day, but I'm going to turn it over to Sean Kascen to go through our budget details.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: All right. So first slide, we're going to talk about key drivers for our budget. So our budget this year is $2,730,000,000 over all of our appropriations. We have 14 of them, I believe, and it represents $102,800,000 increase over last year. And what's driving that increase is mainly the statewide education spending grant. 113.5 increase is estimated based on the current budget information we have. We'll refine that throughout the session. So that one appropriation is most of our budget, 2,100,000,000.0. There's some categorical grants coming out of the Ed Fund that every year increase a little bit and that covers or accounts for $10,000,000 of the increase. And then we have a couple of decreases this year. Federal funds, we're continuing to remove some of the pandemic era funding from our budget. So 4,700,000.0 And then 17,400,000.0 is a decrease in our special fund grants, and that's the Medicaid LEA grant program, which you may see show up in

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the AHS budget. So it's a shift across. So, are those two, those last two, we knew Essex and GEA were going to be ending, are there position decreases? Is that part of the 4,700,000.0 and $17,400,000 There are no reposition decreases based on that?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: No, we didn't fund any positions with any full time positions with those funding. With that money? Yeah.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Largely used for contracted services to deliver strategic projects. Only absorbed getting the grants out to the LGAs. If somebody was doing this work, so they're now not going to be doing some of that work, So they can move to shift to other positions within AOE.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So I think our agencies run pretty lean. We always talk about hitting above our weight class, I think that was really true during the pandemic when everyone's all hands on deck. But part of our reorganization has also identified those major job responsibilities. So again, that's all aligned to our reorganizing strategic plan.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: All right. This next slide shows the key budget drivers for what we call kind of our operations. So it's all our staff and our contracts and operating costs. So basically everything in our agency except for the grant money. So we're looking at $42,300,000 this year to fund the agency, that's an increase of $1,130,000 And some of the drivers are healthcare, 10% increase in healthcare costs. Normal personnel cost increases as salary steps and more each year. We have a reduction in our contracts. Again, pandemic funding expiring and we're refocusing some of our resources there. And then there's, every year we have administrative cost increases, which are funding we're kind of given and those increase each year. Financing management provides how much we owe in some of these items, like the insurance or the cost of the statewide systems, like our ERP system vision, HR costs, and the ADS IT division, we share some of that cost. We have a couple of new requests.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: So

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: these requests are very much aligned with the priorities that we have shared with you. The first request is for five permanent positions. These were positions identified as limited service positions through an appropriation last year within Act 73. They are critical positions in order to support the activities aligned to Act 73 and also is a way for the agency to rebuild the field facing team to provide more embedded support in driving district and school improvement across the state. So it is within the governor's budget to recommend that these five positions move from a limited service to five permanent positions, because we have deemed them very critical to our strategic direction and important to providing the level of support in the field during some of the transition work within ACT 73, and then in perpetuity, really supporting with the ongoing continuous improvement efforts that we are significantly ramping up at the agency. So if I recall correctly,

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I think we gave you $4,000,000 last year for education transformation. Are you going to tell us what you've done with it? That's in here.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Okay. Great.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So no new requests, but we can talk through how we're organizing those. How you're

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: using the money, that would be great.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: And then the other request within the budget is for a reversion and a reappropriation. I'm going to let Sean expand on that. This doesn't actually represent new dollars, new money. It's a way for us to realign our resources to address a significant need, which is around literacy. So the state of Vermont has some of the sharpest declines in literacy performance compared to any other state in the country based on our NAEP data. Act 139 was passed to address that. The agency is seeking these resources to provide job embedded coaching for principals and teachers across Vermont to train them in the science of reading and with those evidence based strategies to help our young students learn to read, because we know that that is a critical equity measure, is being able to read. Sets them up for success later in life.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Going back to the five permanent positions, they were limited service last year.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Have you filled them all? We are in the recruitment process. I will share being an eight month funded position is challenging for us when we're making the offers.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, are any of them filled right now? Were they supposed to be filled in FY26? So,

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: one, they were funded for eight months as limited service. They were required to go through the pool. So that took some additional time for us to identify and also to ensure that they're at the right pay grade level because they are new positions. So as soon as all of that work happened, we immediately posted and we are in the final phases of the interview process for those roles.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we put money in last year's budget for that, in the FY26 budget for eight months. I think we probably did eight months because we decided you weren't gonna have them all starting July 1 because you had to go through this process. But it sounds like it's taking longer than we had anticipated. And so you won't be using all the funding in FY twenty six that was we budgeted for this, right? You won't be using all of the funding. Just because of the hire date.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So that would be something to think through in terms of the final budget request.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I'm just thinking for the current fiscal year. If it was going to be eight months of this fiscal year and you still don't have any of the positions and there's only five months left of this fiscal year. You're not spending all the money.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Yeah, I think part of what Secretary Saunders is saying is because they were limited service, even now it's hard to fill them because they expire. This And request gets approved to make them permanent, there's not a lot of people who will sign on to a position that

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: But we do limited service all the time, and this new This

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: a very short term.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: It was just for ASIS, it was only for eight months. It's atypical. Usually, they're or So eight this put us in a really challenging position for recruitment. And these are really high level senior roles. So we're asking people to move away from a leadership role that they have, which is more high paying and secure to take on an eight month position. So that's why as we're doing this review, it's really critical for us even to be able to fill these roles, that there's an intent and a direction to making these permanent so that we're getting the highly qualified folks that we need for the roles.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Did you already tell us what the titles of these positions were?

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Yes, that was all part of our budget request. So there are five positions, and I'll kind of do a deep dive. Two of them are really related more to academics, two are more related to operations and system alignment, and one is related to data. So this team is working in a cross functional way to really evaluate the current challenges and opportunities, both as we think about merging to new districts, but also really our district quality standards, ensuring that we can create some consistency around that statewide, so that all students are benefiting from those.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, this permanently classified or permitted exempt? This would be classified.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: These are classified as special schools. Thank you.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Share a little more about the 700,000. So again, that's not new funding we're asking for. That was some carryover money we had of last year. And it was initially provided to fund some system upgrades we've had, and it was funded out of the ARPA SFRF funds. So again, some more pandemic era funding. And that was $4,000,000 And then we right sized that a couple of years ago, probably bringing it down to about $3,000,000 And then the administration, the administrative action, repoted some of our general fund costs to this money, and then gave it to us as this general fund pot. Now 2026 is here, those systems are going to be implemented this year, and we found we won't need all of that money. So we do have a need in literacy to kind of fund the requirements of Act 139. So we're asking to revert some of that carryover and then reappropriate it

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: so we could spend it where we need it in the Reefer Mom program for the procedure. So that's for FY '27?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: It will turn out to, yeah, we spend in FY '27. It's again a carryover from '25, so it's no move funding. But you weren't going to use it in '26? We're using some of this. Yeah, we're using the federal money first, and then we will dive into the state general fund money from that.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And if you're not spending the money up above, are you going to have carryforward into '27 that'll help fund those five positions?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: From the one time transformation Yeah, for sure.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So I think here what you're seeing is just we've done a really deep review and evaluation of the biggest needs and making sure that we're aligning the resources that we have at the agency to address those areas and maximizing every dollar available. So being the money committee, we

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: ask these detailed questions to find out where it's carried forward, if you're really using it, how much you need, what the time frame is. Ask any questions from us that you're not going to necessarily get in the other business.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Right, right. So the freeing up the federal money that's going show up someplace else in the budget?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: That happened last fiscal year. And so what got freed up, they put it in a special appropriation for this system. Well, it's general fund, but yeah, it's not in our base budget. Yeah. All right, so we'll continue. New appropriation structure. So we took advantage of the reorganization, I can't say that word, to change how we do our internal budget. So for our operations, all of our employees and contracts, those used to be in two appropriations, B500 and B501. We're going to combine those into one appropriation for a couple of reasons, ease of accounting. Where you're used to seeing the two in the budget bill, you will only see the one line for education services, and you think it's going be D-five zero one going And

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: 500 will stay at the Secretary's Office?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: 500 won't be there.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's going away? Yeah.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: On the ups and downs, which I saw you have, you'll see it combined there as well. I just wanted to make you aware of it. Okay, makes sense. The table, this is our table of our entire budget and it's broken out by a personal service who's operating in grants. And we went through the key drivers earlier. This just shows the actual numbers compared to last year.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Grants, that includes the payment to the education fund.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Yeah, that's the bigger numbers. The next table, we're looking at just that general fund and shows our increase over last year. Personal service and soft rating, and we break out the grants. Let's see, adult basic education, that one grows based on the formula. So that was a large increase as the base grows, base payment amount, and then the number of students.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So that's good, because that means more adults are going back and getting the skills they need to be in a workforce at a higher pay grade.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: And then that whole program is funded I believe, 60% general funding, 40% ad funds. We'll see a bump in that line. Question

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Wayne?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Personal services increased quite over 10%.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Yeah, so we worked hard to keep general fund at target and the things that are pushing it over are that adult basic ed increase and then the new requests for the five permanent position. So that'll go into the base, that's $700,000 So those are included? Yes, they're included. Next table are some of our other funds except of our other funds except Fed funds. So our federal funds, special funds, and transfer funds. And here, the big thing to notice is the minus 20,000,000, and that's made up of our grant reduction that we talked about and then the Medicaid.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's the ESSER in here. Oh no, it's the Medicaid transferring it to Both,

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: yeah, because this is both federal and then the special funds is where Medicaid shows up. So the 17,400,000.0 plus the 4 point whatever, 7,000,000 that we're showing a reduction in federal mix up, the change therein. Next, we're going to go into that one appropriation we talked about, education services, and Doctor. Saunders will talk about.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: I think I probably described this early on. I probably got ahead of myself as I was talking about the reorganization. Are there any questions around how we're organized within these new areas of our structure?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I'm wondering I know that the agency has been running low on staff over the last few years, and you're now just hiring these other five, but have you been able to fill vacant positions this last year?

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Yes, in fact, we really are pleased with the talent pool that we're receiving for some of these positions we've created. I will note that through the period of uncertainty during the federal dollars and not understanding if they would be taken away, there was some intentionality around holding some of those vacant roles. And then through our reorganization, we were also looking at, for those more recent vacancies, how we might need to shift those job responsibilities to align with the needs of the agency. And so what that resulted in was us being able to create some new leadership roles within our organization to align with our new structure and provide some additional resources around an expertise around special education, both on the finance side and on the program side, around with academic leadership. So just to share, there was some intentionality for why some of those roles were vacant during that summer period, because we were in the process of really repurposing some of those vacancies into new positions and working with the department team of resources on that and are now in the process of hiring and recruiting. And we've been really pleased with the talent that we've had for many patrols. Loving an excellent team.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: All right.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: This is more just descriptive

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Just more detail if there's specifics that you have around how we are organized. Do think the memo that we provided would be helpful for you. It has a little bit more narrative around how these positions, how these divisions are organized. One other thing I would just note, I've talked about the agency wide strategic plan. We also are doing division level planning. So every single division within our organization is identifying their core work, but also some of the strategic areas where they are supporting with the implementation of these agency wide goals. And that effort is very much aligned in thinking about where are the places where the divisions need to work together, because we're very much focused on collaboration and breaking down silos. So our first division to do this work is really our special education division. We submitted a report in January that's walking you through how that division is really organizing their work aligned to our larger strategic plan, and we're using that and modeling it with every division across the agency.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Just a real

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: quick one here. We

[John Kascenska (Member)]: turned Debbie off, it's okay. It's about school safety. So I do have a question about school safety. That's a big topic here across the nation here. What are you learning from other states that helps us to prove that where we are here today? I know we've got lots of school safety pieces already in play here for sure. So nothing worried about that, but just also from other states.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Yeah, so school safety sits under our Safe and Healthy Schools division, And we partner with the School Safety Center and also Department of Public Health around all of our initiatives there. We have contracted Oh,

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: that's fair.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Oh, yeah. So we are providing some training around behavior threat assessments for schools in addition to thinking about the actual safety and access to the physical plant. There's some work that we've really received great feedback on. We have a national expert who's helping us to provide that training to districts. Also, we host an annual event on school safety that has been well attended as the Governor's School Safety Conference. We bring in experts from across the country to share strategies and also identify some practices that are really effective in schools, tabletop exercises, things like that. But we have a great team that I would suggest we bring in to provide more details. I would say it's personally really important to me. As you probably know, I most recently was living in Broward County and we were the site of one of the largest school shootings in the country, and so have lived through that and understand how challenging it is. So I'm very focused on prevention efforts. It's critically important to me. Thank you.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Final questions on this page? I'm not seeing it, okay.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: This table shows our education services appropriations broken out by spending type and then by fund. So we've talked about most of the big reasons. Oh yeah.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: You just speak though. You hit them.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: I see

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: you in the floor.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: We talked about most of the big changes here, but happy to answer any questions if you had any on this slide. But it kind of shows the federal way at the bottom, the 4,000,000 we've talked about. And And then in the special funds, see the $17,000,000 induction there from the transfer of the

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: grants. Do you have people managing those grants in agency?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Yeah, the Medicaid director is a part of that position.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, what happens when this moves?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: I'm not confident there's some carryover or some, what do would say, we'll have some activity in 'twenty seven left over, I guess. Right.

[Cassandra Ryan (Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Education)]: As you're moving to a new methodology and a new program, there will be a need to operate both programs for a bit. There's a six month period where folks have the ability to claim on the old system even after it closes. So there will be, it's a unique year where there will be a need to really run both of those programs. In addition, that work is not just the grants. That's the largest dollar value with it, but there are some associated tasks such as monitoring the reinvestment of those funds within our districts, state place student work. So there's some other work that's

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: in there. And some people could also be redeployed within the agency where you have new work happening.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Ray? These grants are the federal grants coming in or these grants don't happen. Grant? The grant category grants, four zero nine million those are the federal grants coming in? So you're managing the federal grant process and not necessarily once it's in you drop on it for various purposes you're not granting it out you're not sub granting it out to school districts or anything like that. Most

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: of the federal funds, the $200,000,000 does go out.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So with the grant agreements, have to do so they're managing all the grant agreements to all the places that those aren't.

[Cassandra Ryan (Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Education)]: Most of the large federal grants have a requirement that the majority would be sub granted to our LEAs.

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So managing both sides, federal money coming in and the grant and everything that's going out as all the small grants. Yeah.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Next, this slide shows our positions and how they're funded. We're looking at a total of 183 positions in our budget, all but 2.9 of them show up in this appropriation. So 180.1. And the table shows 42% is funded with general fund. We have over 10 with a licensing fee money, that's teacher licensing fees. We have some inter department transfer funded positions. Medicaid funds 18 positions. And then federal is our second biggest with 66 positions.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And the federal funds, I mean Medicaid's federal funds too, but you separate out Medicaid. What are the federal positions?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: They support the federal programs in granting the funds out to the districts.

[Cassandra Ryan (Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Education)]: Besides Administering some of the federal programs, there's work in creating the grant applications, managing all of those provisions that accompany the grant documentation. There may be monitoring responsibilities. What are

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the grants that besides Medicaid, I get, but what are the other federal grants?

[Cassandra Ryan (Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Education)]: So there's the titles. Those are very well Title I. Title IIA, Title IIIA, Title IVA, Title IVB. There's IDEA. That's special education.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Yeah. Perkins. Absolutely for the CTB. It's for Yep

[Cassandra Ryan (Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Education)]: and then the AEO does have a

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: So essentially you get a grant agreement, grant agreements going out to every school district. And maybe more one because it's more than one kind of grant.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Right, yes. That's also part of the reason we created a grants management division this to make sure that we're fully maximizing all dollars and being strategic with their usage. And you have to account for that money back a little bit

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: in the year so it has to be dealt with properly.

[Cassandra Ryan (Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Education)]: Accounting for the money, it's doing the reporting,

[Wayne Laroche (Member)]: it's

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Great. Next, we'll talk about the Ed Fund. And I've got a big table here for the Ed Fund that shows how the agency spends this fund. Most of it, of course, goes out in grants under the big education spending grant. The first line under grants there, 2,100,000,000.0. And there's a bunch of other categorical grants that blow out federal aid as being the next largest at $275,000,000 this year. You'll see Universal Meals is here. And we do spend a little bit in the other categories, personal services and operating. We have contracts, statewide contracts that are covered with Ed Fund money. And some of the required spending our portion of the systems, the state systems coming out of the operating side. John, your question?

[John Kascenska (Member)]: I know everybody's heard about this before, but it's been some time. Flexible pathways, just some quick little description about what that's providing.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Yeah, there's several grant programs in that dual enrollment. Early college, there's a virtual learning program, And those are the big ones. Anything

[John Kascenska (Member)]: new from this year?

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: We will be releasing a report in the next couple of weeks that are going to show you the participation in all of those programs, including some of the increases that we've seen, which are a positive thing. We want students to be taking advantage of those pathways for our college and career readiness. So, we'll have some additional information available to you on update on the participation in those flexible pathway programs. Great to see that. Yeah.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: An education grant is an estimate because we don't have all the budgets in, so that number is one of the last things put in once the budgets are all assumed. Should we go up, could we go down?

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: That concludes our slides.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Anything else on your spreadsheets that we haven't heard about? It sounds like it's all pretty This stuff's all resolved in what you just did.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: Right.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yep. Besides paper. Yeah. So I guess I still want to know how you spent the $4,000,000 and I don't see anything about that. So the work that we're doing

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: there has obviously been staged so that we can be strategic in how we're using those dollars. So a first pass that was making sure we could do our reorganization. So we've got the folks in place to help to manage that and then identify what are the areas where we need some additional expertise to ensure that these are one time funds and we're designing them in a way to really build capacity of the agency. So we are finalizing the RFPs that will be released to provide contracted services in some key areas. So one is helping us to improve upon our data dashboards. And that is a really large effort that will support everything we do in really thinking through, evaluating our current data collection processes, ensuring that they're aligned with best practices. I'm working with the field to identify how we need to structure some of these improved data analytics to drive decision making at every level. At our strategic planning retreat, I organized a breakout session where I worked with educators across the state to identify the areas that were most critical as we prioritize the analytics and the data reporting. And that working group is going to continue to be part of our engagement with this contractor. It's scheduled so that we will be able to release some enhanced reporting that's kind of what I call low tech right now, like get information in the field that's helping to drive some of these key decision making, certainly related to redistricting, but also larger around where there's opportunity for system alignment and quality improvement. And then through that user requirement space, we'll actually be able to publish enhanced dashboards, which I know will really support everyone's work, just in the field, but it is designed to also give you information as a legislature. So what I'd like to see is here's $4,000,000 off the spreadsheet. We did this activity across this much. So we'd

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: like something like that. We're the bean counters here for this.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Sorry, I get excited about the work. No, and I said

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that, but that's what I'm looking for. And the education committee can get all the backup detail about it. But I want to see actually how we're spending the money.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Yeah. So we will definitely follow-up with you on that. And we have structured it to provide some additional data analytics on the ground field support around system alignment, curriculum support, and also board development. So we're really thoughtful around how we've categorized the scope of work. And the time spent is thinking about how do we actually really ensure that we have the right structure for those RFPs, right? Because some of these are really different sets of expertise that we need. And we feel really confident that we're in a place now where we can proceed and get the right resources in place to help us work.

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: And as a reminder, not all the $4,000,000 came to education.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: That's

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: true. So there was 700,000 that went to other agencies, some came, even the general assembly, I guess, got a little bit down.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Some for the work that the joint fiscal office is doing around the foundation was funded from that initial That 4,000,000. And then my understanding is that they're close to finalizing a contract for that.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yes, I've heard that as well. Wayne, and then maybe Simon. Just in terms of that dashboard, just a plot of it, what kinds of data are going put in there? And I'm asking if it's garbage and garbage out of data analysis or types just with the rate of types.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So in terms of data collection, just for your benefit, we've done a lot of work as an agency to add another layer of data validation and data certification for all of the pieces of data we collect across a range of indicators. So that includes actually having the superintendent business manager certify everything that we're putting in. So that helps us in terms of ensuring the quality of information we're receiving is accurate and has been validated. And then in terms of the design of the dashboards, we're looking at, we have as part of our strategic plan, we're really clear that this takes a comprehensive approach. So there's academic indicators that would be traditional as you think about assessment data. We're also looking at non academic indicators related to chronic absenteeism, related to dropout rate.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: That's what I'm getting at. So you're directing them what data be gone. I know, for example, educating grading across the state has no consistency in terms of the system, if you use is that going to be correct?

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: We haven't made recommendations as of yet around graduation. I mean, sorry, about grading. So we have focused on the graduation requirements that's been put forward. And then we're talking about how that supports with our instructional practices in schools and grading is the next piece of that, but we haven't made specific recommendations around grading at this time.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Other questions? Dave?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Do you find value in national student test results in terms of comparing the performance of schools, or are there just too many other variables?

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Yeah, So it's always important to look holistically, right? There's not one data point that gives us a signal. However, the NAEP results, which is the nation's report card, is the one data source we have that compares our academic performance to students across the country. And it is valid and it is reliable. And so it does give us an understanding of how we're performing. The state of Vermont used to be the top leader in academic performance compared to other states across the country. We've now dipped, particularly in literacy, to them below the pact, below the average. And what we're looking at when you actually compare the trend is we have some of the steepest decline in academic performance compared to any other state in the country. And a lot of that decline started before the pandemic. We also look at other data points. So we're looking at our Vermont or VTCAP, which is our state assessment results. Our state assessment results largely mirror what we're seeing on the NAEP results, which is that national assessment. We have seen in our most recent data that we're seeing some improvement in fourth and fifth grade literacy, which is promising and we need to build upon and is very much aligned to all the things we're doing around Read Vermont. And then we look at other indicators that we know are reflective of the conditions of success. So we have seen our graduation rates actually declining as well. Chronic absenteeism has been an area we focused on. And this increased we look at qualitative data from the mental health surveys that our youth participate in. So it really is comprehensively that we're looking at our data. And the piece is that we need to be clear eyed around where we're having challenges and not just look at statewide data. We are also doing some more work as we're thinking through evaluating a gap within subgroups. So we're seeing persistent gaps for those students that would be categorized as historically marginalized. They're performing around 30%. There's a 30% gap when comparing their assessment data to their peers. So we know that that's an area we need to focus on in improving tier one instruction, the quality of instruction for all students and making sure that we're providing that level of support for our educators across the state of Vermont. So within that, we look at bright spots. So where are we seeing really promising practices? Where are we seeing across the state of Vermont that there has been some growth in key areas and learning from those schools and districts as well. We see our role as an agency, what we're really moving towards is being able to host more professional learning communities where we're able to more effectively share these best practices and collectively drive improvement because we all own in these results and have a responsibility to work together to create the best learning environment.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We're running out of time, so we'll follow-up. John, and one last question, you can.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Sure. We all are made aware of these in your reports kind of wear from us pants here. When did first see a sharp decline? I don't remember, to be honest with you.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So it was before the pandemic, I think the NAEP results from after 2015 started to decline.

[John Kascenska (Member)]: Thank you. That was my quick question.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Great. All right. Thank you so much for coming in. Always great to hear what the agency of education is up to. We appreciate it. And we'll be in touch as we have more infections, which we probably will, and then the agency of the House of Education also will be don't think we've already been into their interview, but you will. More to come. Great.

[Zoe Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Thank you for having

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Appreciate Thanks

[Sean Kascenska (Deputy CFO, Agency of Education)]: for being here.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So, committee, we're going take a quick break, and at 02:15, we have the adjutant general