Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good afternoon, everyone. This is the Mawhouse Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. Today's Wednesday. We are still Wednesday right at the third No. We're Thursday. Yeah. 01/22/1926, at 01:07 in the afternoon. So we're here to have a discussion about adult education and literacy funding report that we shared with the agency of administration to take a look at it. We have Nick Kramer with us. Nick, you'd like to come up and go over the report with us, we'd appreciate that.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Alright. And thank you, committee, for your time.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: For the record, Nick Kramer, the Chief Operating Officer for the Agency of Administration. Think this is the first time this year, at least, I've been in this committee, maybe with this constitution of it, so it's nice to meet you all. Appreciate you all having us in. I recognize I'm one of quite the roster, the lineup for testimony today, so I'll try to keep my remarks somewhat brief. But I'll set the stage for the work that happened over the summer with regards to adult education and literacy. Leading off, I guess, with the kind of obligatory caveat that nobody that I know of at the Agency of Administration is a subject matter expert in adult education and learning, right? Really, the Agency of Education is the primary point department for the state in terms of oversight, and you've got experts in

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: the room who work

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: deeply and for a long time in this space. But what we do at the Agency of Administration is budgets and funding, and occasionally when we're called upon by legislature, some neutral convening. My understanding, though I wasn't part of the conversations last year in this building, was that there was a desire to have kind of a non a neutral third party to help facilitate a conversation around specifically the funding formula for adult education and literacy. So to that effect, as the committee knows, there was language in the big bill last year, 2025 Act 27, Section E504.3 that requested a series of meetings, I think no less than five, to bring together adult education and literacy providers and state stakeholders to discuss the issue. So we at the agency convened those meetings. We met, I think, July through November of this last year, we had five meetings, five very productive in person deliberations. Appreciate everybody taking the time in some cases to drive up from Bennington, and I think we really covered a lot of ground. So again, leaning into the caveat that I'm not my expertise in this topic goes back about six months. My understanding of some of the context for why we're here talking about this is that for years there has been a statutory formula, I think it's 16 VSA 4,011, which governs both the total appropriation of state funds that will go to supporting adult education and literacy, as well as in the same language, it governs how those funds are distributed to adult education and literacy providers. And so apologies committee, if any of this is redundant information, I'm just trying to be comprehensive in the background here. But I think it's helpful to set the table what we learned throughout this process and working from our with our agency of education counterparts. So adult education and literacy funding is part of the WIOA, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which is a piece of federal legislation. And per that, the terms of that act, the state funding needs to be issued through a competitive grant process. So there are three, believe it's always been, though somebody else could confirm, three year grant cycles. The agency of education goes out and issues a series of competitive grants. Folks apply for that funding. The term of those grants runs for three years. So we're in the second of two years now in our current grant cycle. I'm looking to phone a friend if that's wrong, but we're mid grant cycle. The terms of those grants typically mirror statute and dictate how the funding is allocated. The recipients of funds really ultimately boil down to who is awarded those grants. In fact, over the last couple decades, it has been the same for incumbent AEL providers, the tutorial center, the NEKLS from Northeast Kingdom Learning Services, Vermont Adult Learning, and Central Vermont Adult Education. Adult. Yeah. Okay. Adult education. So we've had kind of the same players in the space for a while, but I think it's just important to note that it is a competitive grant program. There's nothing prohibiting other entrants into the field. It just hasn't happened. These services are somewhat niche and it takes some infrastructure to support them. So our charge was really to come together and look at the current formula. I think there have been some There has been discussion in recent years about, in particular, the discrepancy in per pupil funding under the old statutory formula, certain The way it shook out based on the metrics that governed the funding, certain counties and therefore certain incumbent providers were receiving a much higher per student allotment, you could say, of state funds than others. And that obviously has some implications for equity. But once you start peeling back the lid and understanding what it takes to provide the services and the infrastructure that needs to be in place and the differences in providing services for say English language learners, of which there are more in some parts of the state or in very rural places with sparse populations. It's just not a, we quickly discovered throughout the course of these conversations, it's not simple, right? And I gather that's why we were charged with having these discussions. So we met five times. Our conversations focused, and I guess just to orient committee members, I believe both of these have been shared with the committee. I'm gonna first talk about the longer report, which is a compilation of all the findings from everybody who came together. And then there was a secondary charge specifically to the secretary of administration to come up with some follow-up recommendations if they differed, and I'll get there later. So the report really walks through in much more detail and eloquence than I will today, how much we met. I think the high level takeaways are we had a lot of really good discussion. We started the series really taking a step back, trying to think about what are the common principles before we dive into the nuts and bolts of a funding formula, like what is it we're trying to achieve here and what are the values that should be guiding the conversation? We settled on, I think, equity, simplicity, and transparency. Those are really the key features of any successful funding formula, and so we used those to guide the discussion. Participants were incumbent AEL providers, representatives from the Agency of Education, representatives from the Department of Labor, and we occasionally had some participation from other folks who had attended grant informational sessions for adult education and literacy, somebody from UVM who was there somewhat consistently and kind of providing an alternative perspective. But the majority of the conversation were between the state and the incumbent providers. So after kind of starting at a high level over the series of the next couple meetings, we dove in pretty quickly to, all right, the nuts and bolts. What should a formula include? There were lots of points of consensus as a neutral facilitator, and that's my background prior to coming to the state. That felt great. We were able to align on a lot of things. Spoiler alert, everybody in the room didn't align on everything, and I'll talk about that in a second. I'll emphasize the points of consensus first. One thing that was, I think, pretty universally agreed upon is that the current formula, which is 16 BSA 411F, to be precise, is actually adequate, everybody thought, with an asterisk, currently adequate for determining how much funding should go into the system. There has not been an issue. I mean, everybody always, of course, would love more money, right? But that we felt by and large, the size of the pot of money was not the problem. It's really how it was allocated. And as I mentioned at the outset, the challenge is that the current statute does both. It both sets the size of funding and how it's distributed. So one of the recommendations that is in both reports is to decouple those two pieces to have the size of the annual state appropriation for this arena set by basically the current language in 16 VSA four eleven for ten eleven, and then to have some additional language that would specify how it's distributed. That is the asterisk there is providing nothing radical changes with regards to the base education amount, which is a piece of the formula that would determine the state total pot size. So if that went radically down, was cut in half one year for some reason, then of course everybody reserves the right to say, wait, this isn't enough money anymore. Right? But based on kind of the current trajectory and recent experience, if folks felt like that was adequate. So there And I won't walk through every single bullet point here because some are maybe more important than others. But other points I think of really salient consensus were that, again, we wanted to sort of take a step back and look comprehensively at the landscape, question all the assumptions. It was agreed upon that counties still do make sense as the base geographical unit for distribution of these funds. There's a lot of different ways of carving up Vermont, as anybody in this building knows. You could do school districts or future school districts, or pick your AHS service area, right? We talked about a lot of different options, ultimately settled on no counties really do make sense. The current incumbent providers have been aligned with serving different counties. And with that said, it was agreed that there is a certain baseline amount of infrastructure that in order to provide AEL services to a county, you really need to have just the brick and mortar, the staff, the physical presence. So there's kind of similar to other education funding conversations. There's that piece of, well, there needs to be a baseline that's geographically distributed. We had some conversation about how much that should be based on current provider costs. The consensus was around $80,000 per county is at least a baseline that you need to set up that infrastructure. And so then you multiply 80,000 by 14 counties, right? That's immediately, I think, doing math in public, which is dangerous, but it's over a million dollars off the top of the total appropriation, which has historically been about 6 change. So you do that. This was the proposal. You do that, and then there's some amount of funding left to distribute. And that's where, you know, the bulk of our discussions happen towards the end of the series. How do you distribute the remaining funding? And there were really two schools of thought emergent between different incumbent providers. One was distribute the funding solely on the basis of students, number of students served. And that has a really specific definition that's already in statute. It's the two rolling, it's the two year average of the last two completed fiscal years in terms of students served, and that's data tracked by the Agency of Education. That's been consistent. That exists already in statute. And so there were three out of the four providers that felt like, let's just distribute the remaining funding after the county based payments on the basis of students. And then the final perspective, which was shared by Michelle, who I'm not sure if she's on or not, Foust from Northeast Kingdom was she's on her way. Okay, so she could speak more length to this. Was that, yes, that makes sense, but there are things that There are components of service that aren't necessarily captured in that statistic. So if you have a student that is being served for ten hours versus a student that's being served for one hundred hours, there are different costs involved with educating that student. And the perspective was that an allocation based solely on student count would fail to capture those discrepancies, right? So we had a lot of discussion. The final couple of sessions were really about this topic and going back and forth. And I won't, in the interest of time, regurgitate everything, but I think my high level summary speaking with Michelle, there she is, is that it's one of these tricky issues where there's not really a right answer. It depends on what perspective you bring to bear. I think there were really good point. This is me speaking as a neutral observer. There were really good points made in both instances. And as with any funding formula conversation, it's really easy to start to go down the slippery slope of trying to perfect it through adding this and then a small percentage of this, and then what about this population? And you can quickly slide into this complex swamp. And so that was another thing that we talked about was trying to balance those principles of equity, but with simplicity and transparency and something that's a bit more streamlined than the current approach, which everybody agrees is somewhat Byzantine and relies on these State Board of Education rules. So in the end, what you'll see in the report from that is a summary of all of the large group stakeholder meetings is a list of points of consensus, the section that points out the differing perspectives I just described. And then I should say that the agency of education had kind of a third perspective that emerged towards the end of the conversations that they raised the flag, as did others, that there is a lot happening in this space right now in education generally, certainly at the state level, that will come as no shock to anybody in this room, but also on the federal level, right? As we were having these conversations, various iterations of congressional budgets were being tossed around, some of which didn't have funding for adult education and literacy programs. And so there was an acknowledgment of the fact, well, we have been traditionally driven in part our state architecture for distributing these funds has been governed by WIOA, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act I mentioned at the outset. If that were to say go away, then the state would have an opportunity to at least ask the question, is there anything you want to change? Right? And so that combined with the fact that there's comprehensive education transformation conversations happening led the agency of education to recommend, well, we think this may be a little premature to settle on a final formula now. Let's just continue to distribute the funds on the same basis that they were in last year's big bill, which was, by the way, hard coded. It wasn't according to the statutory formula, but it was kind of a compromise proposal between two perspectives that were brought, I understand, to the legislature last year. So the agency of education said, let's just keep doing that for the next couple of years while we figure things out and do perhaps take some time to do a more comprehensive study and dig into this some more. So all three of those perspectives are represented in the report. There's some language that There's some charts that as like a data guy, I find particularly helpful. I hope committee members would as well, showing what the total allocation amounts to each county would be based on the various scenarios. They're color coded. There's the same chart. This is on page eight of that report by student count. So really trying to identify that those points of first student funding divergence that I mentioned earlier that I think drove some of this conversation and how the various recommendations would or wouldn't address that. And the report concludes with recommended draft language, two sections of it, one which would implement the changes recommended by 300 providers, one which would recommend the changes proposed by Northeast Kingdom Learning Services. And so we, in that report, just gave a summary of the conversations where, as an agency agnostic, there's no additional recommendation as to which to take, but provided both options. I'll just keep chugging in the interest of time and say that then the follow-up to that report was due in November, November 15, I believe. The same section of the big bill E504.3 subsection B charged the Secretary of Administration with an additional report, basically if we had anything to add or wanted to say anything differently from the report that represented everybody's deliberations. Since there was no consensus, and since we were cognizant that this legislative body was asking for a recommendation, we took that charge seriously and tried to think of, okay, based on the conversations, again, with no subject matter expertise, but hearing the different perspectives, is there kind of a neutral midpoint between the various perspectives we could land on? And so that's really what's reflected here in the second report from the Secretary of Administration. It's laid out largely similar to the first with the legislative charge, the context, some of which is duplicative to what I just said. But the punchline is really since the points of divergence were whether to distribute So it also recommends $80,000 per county base funding, and then the remainder of the funding and that the total pot be determined by the existing statute, we are also recommending that. And then as for how to allocate the remainder of the funding, Again, the one perspective was solely based on student count. The other was, I think, in the end, 25% based on well, 75% based on student count and 25% based on hours served. That's other metric capturing kind of more high touch. We're recommending 85% based on student count and 15% based on hours served. I think in acknowledgment of the fact that we felt like, yes, there is a valid perspective that hours served is a different angle than just student count. It does seem like there could be some differing costs. It also felt like there were really some valid points for keeping the funding formula primarily based on student count. That's kind of the metric that has had the longest tenure, I guess, in this space. Providers have been managing to that for a long time. They've sort of expected that as a metric. And like I said earlier, one can very easily go down multiple rabbit paths of, well, we should wait this population and not wait that, and should this be 16% and this 15%. And we felt like this kind of compromise proposal was slightly more nuanced than just solely student count, but was also sort of simple enough that if I can understand it, right, the average person could. So that Well,

[Katherine Klockstein (Executive Director, Central Vermont Adult Education)]: that's

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: the whole, Mr. Chair. I'll stop there.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: I'm happy to take any questions.

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: Were there any other metrics considered?

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: Yes, representative. I think we, various points, talked about specifically English language learners, a metric that had to do with kind of population density and morality, looking at poverty, looking at poverty as defined by certain federal census data points, looking at the percentage of the population that had a high school diploma. So there was a pretty comprehensive list. And I'll just take the opportunity to mention one of the challenges we ran into in thinking about this is we also wanted to find a data source that is predictable, state owned, and easy to pull annually, and some of those things are not necessarily right. They come from the community survey from the Census Bureau, and we all know that federal data can have its challenges sometimes. And so we wanted to stay in house.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm curious, was there a conversation about whether providing money based on hours served would incentivize keeping the students in the program longer rather than helping them move through the program? Make sure that conversation happens.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: Yeah, of course, representative. There was both that conversation and its counterpart, which is does student app does just student count incentivize just like trying to get as many students and move them through the system as quickly as possible? So there was discussion about either route that you go, are there potential incentives that arise? Don't encourage student learning. And I think nobody, of course, is suggesting that any of the incumbent providers or anybody would set out to game the system, but it's just a fact that when you're about when you're setting up a funding formula, things happen, and the architecture of how funds flow can sometimes impact the way programs are set up. So yes, in every instance, I think we had a of a gut check of what impact would this have.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I mean, it's a conversation in general, Ed. Does seat time mean that there's learning? And I think that I

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: I would hate to set up a system that is counter to best. Great.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you very much.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: Thank you, committee. Appreciate your time.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Be more people testified. Like, hopefully, keep it, like, the ten minutes speed if possible. Because we have a hard stop at two. We have security briefing at that time. Catherine?

[Katherine Klockstein (Executive Director, Central Vermont Adult Education)]: R and I were gonna testify together. Okay.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That's fine.

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: Yeah. And we also have, Sean Marie on the Zoom as well. And then I just also wanted to make reference to David Justice, who is here, as part of the VAL team as well.

[Katherine Klockstein (Executive Director, Central Vermont Adult Education)]: For the record, I'm Katherine Klockstein. I live in the small town of Faesten, and I'm the executive director of Central Vermont Adult Education, which is based in Barrie.

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: I am Tara Brooks. I am living in Virginia, but originally from Structsboro, Vermont, and I'm a native of Vermonter, and am the, director of the, Vermont Adult education in South VAL, so Vermont adult learning. And then we have Sean Marie on the call with us, who's down in Bennington.

[Sean Marie Oler (Executive Director, The Tutorial Center)]: Hi, I'm Sean Marie Oler. I'm the executive director of the tutorial center, and we cover Bennington and Manchester.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you for joining us.

[Katherine Klockstein (Executive Director, Central Vermont Adult Education)]: So I just wanna thank Nick for setting the table with all the the background information so it'll help us be a little bit more speedy in the message that we have to deliver. But I just want to say thank you for taking the time to hear testimony on this issue and that we're grateful that this committee continues to spend some time and energy on adult education and literacy. We began working with the legislature several years ago to modernize the funding formula. Nick gave you a little bit of that history. Adult education literacy has experienced historic funding inequities that have created an uneven playing field for both the students and the providers across the state. That's sort of what put us into this arena coming here to the legislature to talk with you all to figure out how we could move forward and kind of modernize the funding formula that had been in place for over three decades and was not really serving us all very well. So there's a lot of you know, in our written testimony, you'll see there's a lot of stuff about this this sort of history and that, like how we got here. And I feel like Nick did a very good job of of covering, that piece for us. So I will just say, Tara and Sean Marie and I are part of the adult education and literacy network, and we represent 11 of Vermont's 14 counties serving approximately 90% of Vermont's adult learnings. Adult learners. And we're just here to respond to the two reports that you received from the agency administration on the adult funding formula submitted, as Nick mentioned, one in November and the other one in January. So these reports are important for the discussion. Did not, as you heard, they did not result in any sort of consensus from all of us about where we should land, which is unfortunate, but it's where we are now. So, I don't know. I mean, I guess I can turn this over to Tara. I mean, I think really kind of at the base of it, we look at there were kind of four scenarios that were laid out before you. But when we get to the base of it, it's really we agreed on several metrics. We agreed on the county formula. We agreed on using the number of students. And the one piece where we sort of differ is whether we want to add this other metric in the hours that the student spends engaged with us. Yeah, and really what we want

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: to highlight is that adult education in Vermont is proficiency based, not seat based. And that's something that we really want to highlight and why we have concerns with the seat based metric being put into this. Funding tied to hours of service creates instead of that conflict with effective adult education practices, it can increase administrative complexity and relies on data that is not currently audited or monitored by the state. This is not metrics that the Agency of Education has been traditionally asking us to provide to them and has not been a metrics that they have monitored traditionally. So this would be a new metrics for them to be monitoring for adult basic education. So we wanted to make sure that you were aware of that. Scenario one, which is the one that we're advocating for, really balances kind of the per pupil funding and the equity around that. It includes the base amount that we had talked about. And it also kind of creates a more equitable, more sustainable program for us to be basing this on in the future. So that's really what we would like to highlight. I'd also like to kind of point you to the graph that we submitted, because I think this kind of really can outline, it gives you a visual. The one here is the one that the scenario one that we are recommending. And then the last one here is the scenario that the agency of administration was recommending. And you can kind of see what that does to the inequity. And you can also see here, this is the traditional one that we had been based off before, and it kind of is color coded by the four providers. So, you know, our bottom line is that we really feel that the, you know, scenario one is the most fair, stable and practical solution that aligns with adult education. It actually works with creating a foundation for continued modernization of funding formula. Any questions for us?

[Sean Marie Oler (Executive Director, The Tutorial Center)]: Can I add something? Yeah. So in response to one of the representatives question, just before Catherine and Tara took their seats, there was a question around looking at other metrics, and Nick did a nice job answering that. One of the metrics that we looked at and that there is data around is the higher cost for ELL students. There was a report put out by the Joint Fiscal Office not even a year ago. And while there had best practice and a lot of evidence behind it, the population of the ELL is we even though we had a huge influx,

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: it

[Sean Marie Oler (Executive Director, The Tutorial Center)]: is not something that we know is is stable. And so even though there really was a lot of evidence behind that metric, it was one that we dismissed because of the the unpredictability of what is happening. And what we really wanna base this amount of money on is the things that Nick mentioned in terms of equity as well as the simplicity behind how one, can figure it out. So I just wanted to add that response to I'm not sure who asked the question, but I was listening.

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: There was also the the question about, you know, the rushing students through the process and sort of kind of the counterargument towards the seed time. And I think one of the things is that there are really specific requirements that students have to have to graduate. They have to meet the graduation requirements that are now in statute around the Portrait of an Adult Graduate, and they have to work with their high schools to meet those graduation requirements or pass the GED. So you really can't rush them through the process to a diploma. That's really possible.

[Katherine Klockstein (Executive Director, Central Vermont Adult Education)]: Right. And at the same time, if you have someone come in whose goal is to get their GED and they just need a couple of hours to brush up on their skills, you don't want to hold them back and say, you know, we need to meet a certain threshold of a number of hours before you're going to take that test. Know, we really want to meet the students where they are, give them the learning that they need to get to their goals, and then send them on their way.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Question? Yes. Maybe it doesn't matter. Did anyone in course of the discussion talk about transition from one, you know, where we're at now or what was passed last year and some new fund funding formula? So you don't have too much of a gap between or difference between?

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: It's actually in the graph too, here you So can see on this scenario that we submitted, under the current one, which is this one right here, is the second one in? That's what currently is the model of funding that we're under.

[Katherine Klockstein (Executive Director, Central Vermont Adult Education)]: That's the funding that we got for this current fiscal year, FY twenty six.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: then the other three scenarios that follow are the options that we're looking at, so you can see how they kind of go down from there and who they impact.

[Michelle Fost (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Learning Services)]: In the raw

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: Yeah, representative, I think if your question's specific to transition in the ADL funding formula, Right, yes. Yeah, that's right, exactly. I would note that I think what Tara is just pointing out is that what was appropriated in the FY26 big bill, the budget, was a departure from prior practice. That's right. Was kind of an incremental step. And so, I don't actually, I'm sure it would be well if you're still in the middle chart, but as for which final recommendation this body lands on, there's already been that half.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah, there isn't as much in

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: your mouth. That's right. But that was a conversation, particularly for, I think, I'll call it out, for any KNLS who under all scenarios would be receiving the next funding. So that's something we're trying to be cognizant of as well. Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you very much.

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: Thank you.

[Michelle Fost (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Learning Services)]: Hello. For the record, I am Michelle Fost. I live in Irisburg, and I am the executive director of Northeast Kingdom Learning Services. And we serve Orleans County, Essex County, and Caledonia County. So I provided rather lengthy written testimony and a couple of tables that I thought really laid out the differences between what the AOAs proposed funding versus the compromise funding. And the compromise funding was the average of funding between what the old SPE rule was and what was in statute. Okay? So that's how those numbers were calculated. And it shows what the difference would be with this funding formula versus what everybody received last year. The other table shows what the impact would be as compared to the old formula, which was the formula that we all said for years didn't work. It was three decades old. It pulled on information from a variety of weights and measures, and they were not current, and they were pulled. So it was data that was dated by the time it actually impacted what was happening in the field. So I'm not going to go through all of that, but if you have questions on that, I'd be more than happy to answer it or by all means, email me with your questions. What I'd like to focus on today in my time is the importance of having that 15% of instructional time and why instructional time matters. Engaged learning and instructional hours matter. Grant compliance and performance measures is one reason. Instructional hours are directly tied to multiple federal and state performance measures under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and are essential to demonstrating program success. Performance measures. 80% of our students will qualify for the federal report. To be counted as a reportable individual I'm sorry, my throat is dry. Each student must complete at least twelve hours of instruction. This is goal setting assessment instruction within the fiscal year to be counted on the federal report. And by the end of the year, eighty percent of our students served must qualify for us to meet that performance measure. The second performance measure is that forty five percent of our students must have a progress assessment. The way a student qualifies for a progress assessment is they must receive a minimum of forty hours of instruction, and at least thirty one days must have passed since the previous assessment. Each student must be assessed at least once per fiscal year to count towards that measure. Performance Indicator one is a measurable skill gain. The target is that thirty seven percent of our students annually will achieve a measurable skill gain. One way that a measurable skill gain is earned is demonstrated through improvement in an educational functioning level in reading, writing, numeracy, or English language acquisition. In order to meet that, they have to have met the federal report, which means they have to have had twelve hours of instruction. They have to have at least received forty hours of instruction and had thirty one days between assessment. And they have to have showed a measurable improvement on the subsequent assessments. A lot of times, multiple assessments need to take place for some of our students because they're not coming in at high levels. Some students are coming in at the lower levels. And some, it takes more hours of instruction than forty hours to get them to move on that needle. Learner engagement. Engaged face to face instruction time builds trusting teacher student relationships, hear connections among learners, and enhance student motivation, confidence, and persistence. These are critical factors in helping adult learners stay engaged long enough to achieve measurable skill gains and reach their goals. There are and I also cited in it then you can look at this testimony that I also submitted. There is an article that speaks to the correlation between adult learners' hours and their outcomes. The goal for Vermont adult eds funding modernization was to create equity across the state, ensure simplicity and transparency, and provide predictable and sustainable funding. The formula must be designed to withstand fluctuations in enrollment while continuing to meet the needs of adult learners and communities over time. Each AEL provider receives annual targets from the state for the number of students to be served and the number of ESL students to serve under our state grant agreements. A formula that recognizes both students served and the intensity of instruction delivered ensures that funding remains aligned with the true cost of providing quality instruction and education in every county. A fair and effective AEL funding model must measure not only how many students are served, but also how deeply they are served. Enrollment shows our reach. Instructional hours shows our depth. Relying solely on enrollment rewards programs that register large numbers but fails to account for time and instructional investment required for students to make measurable progress towards earning a credential, improving English proficiency, or developing workforce skills. A student who participates in two hundred hours of instruction demands and deserves more support than one who attends ten hours. The cost difference is substantial in staff time, instructional materials, and individualized support. Equity in funding means recognizing that the cost of service delivery is not uniform across Vermont. In rural and less populated counties such as Bennington, Caledonia, Essex, Orleans, Lamoille, Orange, Addison, Franklin, and Grand Isle, programs often operate with smaller class sizes or one on one instruction to meet learners' needs. Instructional hours more accurately reflect this reality than enrollment numbers alone. Table A that I submitted reflects that the cost to serve a student in these counties is higher than the average, whereas in the higher populated, more densely populated counties such as Washington, Chittenden, Rutland, Windham, and Windsor, the cost to serve a student is lower than the average. A base allocation of 80,000 per county establishes a consistent foundation for maintaining essential AEL services statewide and supports the predictability of a minimum of funding for all counties. Building a foundation, distributing the remaining appropriation 85% based on the two year average number of students completing the diagnostics portion emphasizes the two year student average, which is of great importance to Central Vermont Adult Ed, the Tutorial Center, Vowel, and 15% based on the two year average of instructional hours, which, while a much smaller percentage, values the merit of instruction towards outcomes and performance measures, which is important to NAKLS, and balances efficiency, quality, and equity. The dual metrics provide the predictability necessary for long term planning that can lead and the depth of instruction and student engagement that can lead to lasting learning outcomes. It creates a funding structure that values both access and achievement, ensuring that every Vermont adult, regardless of location, has the opportunity to reach educational and career goals.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: So

[Michelle Fost (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Learning Services)]: some of the things that have been mentioned is that you know, fraud, potential for fraud, potential for incentivizing, you know, keeping a student on for too long. Fraud can happen anywhere and in any system. Instructional hours actually are monitored in our system, and I'll give you a couple of examples of how they are monitored. We have quarterly one on one meetings with the Agency of Education. And some of the ways that they are monitoring our instructional hours is they will bring up students that have more than forty hours of instruction and more than thirty one days since their last assessment, and they'll question why those students haven't been progress assessed. Another way that they are monitoring instructional hours is if they see a student who has a significant amount of instructional hours and either hasn't had any progress assessment or has had several progress assessments but hasn't made any measurable skill gain. And those are the opportunities for us to have the conversation with the agency about why having an alternative proficiency option for those students to prove their proficiency rather than an assessment. Because we've tried everything we can with instruction. And the standardized TABE test is not showing what we can prove they know in other ways. The ability to calculate student instruction by the agency is as easy as their calculating the two year student average. So it's not cumbersome. It's not a difficult number. All of the data that the agency uses to determine these numbers is input into the LASIS system by us as providers. Every number that is put into that LASIS, the agency of education can ask for documentation and proof to back up. They are in every quarterly meeting asking for information regarding any student in the database that they see an anomaly on or something just doesn't make sense. Nine times out of 10, it's a data entry error and it's corrected. Sometimes our internal data specialists will discover errors and will reach out to the agency and say, Hey, I notice X teacher had accidentally entered this information. We need to correct it. Can you make the correction? Data entry errors happen. But we all are professionals in all of our organizations, and I know that we all operate with integrity in what we do and how we operate and the work that we do. And I would not question anything that they're putting in their system, just like I wouldn't question what my staff are putting in our system. I think what the agency, the administration has put forward is really a balanced piece. With the governor, you know, really pushing on let's try to resolve some of our education issues, I feel like this is one thing that could easily be resolved and allow all four of us as providers to move forward, concentrating on our work and not so much about advocating for changes. I ask that you support the recommendation. And please take a look at the tables. If you have follow-up questions, please reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to answer. Thank you. Sure.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions for Michelle? Thank you. We will now transition to a security briefing. We feel we have to ask everyone to step out of the room. I don't know

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: if you need find a bunch of other good.

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: My intern from last year just visited.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Oh, we're done.

[Michelle Fost (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Learning Services)]: Just like this.

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: He was in the he's in the building. He was visiting.

[Katherine Klockstein (Executive Director, Central Vermont Adult Education)]: We were visiting.

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: Nice. We don't know if the tape is coming yet. He'll see it. But he'll be

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: as open as he can open the door. Just

[Katherine Klockstein (Executive Director, Central Vermont Adult Education)]: cool.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: The question is, I take us all

[Tara Brooks (Director, Vermont Adult Learning)]: think so.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Hey. I think everyone's here. Monique. Okay. So we will be having instructions on security protocols for this room. I think we have a finding that that information getting added to the public could be detrimental us, the legislators, and anyone else that's in the room. So I would entertain a motion that we go into executive session in order to receive security briefing from our sergeant at arms and from our Capitol Police. So moved. Okay. So it's been moved by representative Priestley, seconded by representative Olson. Sorry. Sorry.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: I didn't mean to interrupt you. Appreciate it.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Is there a motion and seconded? Any discussion? If not, all those in favor say aye.

[Nick Kramer (Chief Operating Officer, Vermont Agency of Administration)]: Aye.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Opposed? Okay. Motion