Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Hearing of house education and senate education on January 27. We are getting our first look at the AOE proposed budget for f y twenty seven as well as an overview of some of the changes at the agency as well. We're running a little bit late, so I'm gonna turn it right over to you all to begin with your presentation. Thank you for being here.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: For the record, Jill Briggs Campbell, deputy secretary of education and I'm joined today by Cassandra Ryan and Sean Kuzino, who will let you introduce yourselves. Thanks, Joe. It's Cassandra Ryan, Chief Financial Officer of the agency led by

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Sean Kuzino, the Deputy CFO.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: So I will give the brief opening remarks, and I'll run through some of these slides high level because you've already heard some of this from Secretary Saunders. So our look at our strategic plan and our agency rebar, and then I'll touch briefly on some of our high level priorities that we're aiming for. And really happy to dive into all of this coming further with you tomorrow at our legislative open house. So thank you all so much for the folks that are able to attend. We're pretty excited. The whole agency was prepping for welcoming you tomorrow, so it'll be fun. So our agenda for today, again, just a brief overview and the secretary's message, I will be communicating as deputy secretary, budget overview and key drivers, the D five zero one education services appropriation, and then the education fund. So purpose statement, I think you've probably seen this every time you've heard the agency at the beginning of every session. This is the Agency of Education's purpose statement. We implement state and federal laws, policies, and regulations so that all Vermont planners have equitable access to high quality opportunities. And we do this through our mission, through the provision of leadership support and oversight of the federal system. So again, brief, we have gone through a major reorganization in 2025. We've actually gotten some detail on this, and we've got a visual of this. But we reorganized ourselves around three main areas, and then the secretary's office. So the secretary's office contains our policy and communications team and our legal team. Operations, which is my neck of the woods, includes finance, our data management and analysis division, safe and healthy schools, grants management unit, child nutrition and education program approvals. Our new academics area, which is under our chief of academics, Erin Davis, includes special education curriculum and instruction and education programs, so called Cradle to Career programs. And then our strategy and accountability, we're actually in the process of hiring our Chief of Strategy and Accountability, which is kind of our final piece of the puzzle. Will include strategy and education initiatives, assessment, accountability and evaluation, and school improvement and district support. So this is really a fundamentally different way of operating for us, putting all of those final pieces into place during the winter. And we'll be ready to really rock and roll as we move into next year. So Secretary's message what are some of the high level either pressures or also major policy that we're looking towards? So the theme continues. I didn't even have to change this spot bullet when we were looking at redoing this from last year. Education spending growth, we still see the same pressures. Inflation and increased costs, including healthcare, and then an increase in student needs. I actually was meeting with the Vermont Principals Association Executive Council yesterday, which principals, they were really articulating the growing student needs. We've heard this across the state, both those needs that are happening because of what's happening in their families or communities, and then also just what the students are bringing in in terms of social and emotional developments and mental health needs are really increasing as well. Just signaling, you already know, because you've had the governor's address, the governor's FY27 budget proposal includes a plan to stabilize FY27 property tax growth. That's all being sort of worked out in real time with an attempt to reduce the amount of tax pressure on the Vermont taxpayer. As I've already signaled, the agency is underway on the development of our strategic plan, and we completed a major reorganization in 2025. Critically, what you'll hear kind of over and over again today is that we are aligning our strategic pillars with accelerated initiatives. So work that's underway, right? We're not waiting until the plan is finalized as we're really starting to do some major work and defining shared measures of accountability. We're also really focused on expanding our support for the field to improve education quality and service delivery during a period of increased pressure and transition transformation. We're leading accelerated initiatives while maximizing all available funding sources. And as Sean knows and Cassandra knows, I'm constantly like, what have we got in that bucket? What can we squeeze out of this bucket over here? And as I always like to joke, we're checking all the couch cushions right now for every single penny so that we can really devalue these initiatives. So we're really looking to maximize our funds and to support the field in maximizing their use of funds as well. This is a real focus for the agency. So key policy initiatives that we're bringing forward, the CTE transformation and modernization, we've already presented on this. Chronic absenteeism, you heard from myself and Courtney last week and Ann Bordenaro. And then of course supporting you all as you're making final key decisions in Education Transformation at seventy three. So whatever is that we can support you with data or modeling, we continue to say please let us know how we can help. You're facing some really challenging decisions and complex decisions, and we want to be there to help. Just a reminder, I told you I was going to breeze through this quickly. These are our strategic pillars. So this is what our strategic plan is built around, And every major initiative that we're engaged with right now fits into these. We're really trying to align our work resources and priorities into these major pillars, and then really helping the field to organize their own work and priorities into the same pillars so that we're all kind of rolling in the same direction. I've commented before, and I'll just share again, during COVID-nineteen, I ended up tasked somehow with being the COVID Federal Emergency Funds Project Manager. And so that was $500,000,000 of federal funds that came into the state of Vermont in one giant chunk at the same time. And one of the things that I really observed is when I was talking to other states that had strategic plans, they were really able to use those dollars to leverage and accelerate that work in a really focused way. And we saw that those states tended to be the ones that rebounded the quickest. And I remember being in COVID and feeling like that lack of having a really clear load star for where we were going and the way that our districts were really trying to use every dollar. And they did a fantastic job of actually spending all of those funds, which was incredibly challenging and doing it to the best of their ability, but really felt that lack of strategic plan. And so I'm really excited that we're so prepared about where we're going here. These are some of the accelerated initiatives to get you scenes from Secretary Saunders, you'll be hearing more about this tomorrow. And there's a lot more work going, so think of this as like a whipping sampler of some of the things that we're doing, but there's a lot of other work happening. Under academic excellence, if you know about READS Vermont, we're also gearing up to do a math pilot in some of our districts. College and Career Readiness, you've heard about statewide graduation requirements. Those recommendations have been sent to the State Board of Education, and they've got their next tranche of work that we're supporting. If in healthy schools, you've heard from us about chronic absenteeism, and we're also really focused on HHB prevention is sort of our next twelve to eighteen months really wrapping our hands around how to do that work effectively. Under operational effectiveness, improving, building a data reporting center and enhanced dashboards to improve the timeliness, quality, and usability of all of the data that the agency collects from the field. And then under special education and differentiated supports for all learners, really implementing ACT 173 with fidelity, which we know has been a long time project for the state of Vermont. So all of these accelerated initiatives, as I said, we're being what I like to call scrappy in finding every penny that we can to support and resource this work. And as we move through this, we will identify where we think that we may have some resource gaps that we need to bring forward. But for the coming year, we're really maximizing the dollar that we have. And then, again, you've already seen this reorganization chart, so I'll just skip past that one. Okay, I think I believe we have broken the land for the record of review.

[Cassandra Ryan, Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: So now I'm going to turn

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: it over to Sean to dive into the numbers.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Let me just make sure there aren't any questions for you before get

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Could I come

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: to the dive into the budget? Great, thanks. Now you or Sean? So

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: our budget request this year is for 2,730,000,000.00 and increase of 3.91%, mainly driven by the ad spending number. We're looking at a 2,100,000,000 for that currently. And as far as I know, that's the best estimate we have until we get more budget data from the school districts. We have 10,000,000 in other Ed Fund grants, for instance, transportation and special ed. We're seeing a decrease in federal funds primarily due to continuing expiration of pandemic funding. And then a $17,400,000 decrease in special funds as the Medicaid LEA can shift to AB checks. You should see an increase in their budget for that. This slide covers basically our agency except for grants. So it's our personnel costs, contracts and operating costs are increasing. So we're looking at $42,300,000 for those. It's an increase of 1,130,000.00. And the drivers are mainly personnel costs. We are seeing a decrease in contracts, the 1,400,000.0. Again, where the pandemic funding is continuing to come and coming out of our budget. And then we're refocusing some of our resources and not redoing tracks. And then within the personnel costs, we're seeing a 10% increase in health care. We have the normal administrative cost increases that were given by the state administration.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I'll just pause for a quick second. So I always, when we have the AOE budget presentation, I always sort of, in my mind, divide it into there's the Ed fund spending, which is one thing, and then there's the operations of the AOE. And is the so is sort of the operations budget for the AOE, is it up to 42,000,000, or is there more to it than it is missing?

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah. No. That's exactly what this is. So we've got all grants. So Ed Fund grants, federal grants are.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Right.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: But yeah. Yep.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: I get this one. Okay. So for the FY 'twenty seven budget, we have, I would call it, one and a half requests. So the one new request is the limited service positions for past 17 are in the governor's budget request for the So those positions, we've kind of delineated for you what all of those different roles are, both to support education transformation and district and school quality. One of the really critical elements that has been a really important thing that we've heard from the field is that prior to the Great Recession, the agency had a lot more field facing staff. And we're trying to rebuild some of that capacity. And these five positions are going to be really critical for that. So we have been engaged in the hiring process for them as limited service positions. A reminder, they were funded for eight months. That's challenging to hire for. And so we've really been looking for excellent candidates from the field. And we do have those candidates. We actually did some pretty great interviews, But we're finding it to be understandably a challenge to lure those folks away from their jobs with eight months' worth of funding. So we're hoping that we can turn these into permanent positions. And as I said, we have really focused on getting folks from the field who understand field operations. And we have some really great folks that are interested. So that is our one new request. Then the other request I want to signal to you, this is not new money. It's a reversion and then a reappropriation. And this is a little bit of a long story, so just bear with me for a moment. When the state so these are not US ed funds. These aren't ESSER or GEAR. These were ARPA SFRF funds that went to the state. And about $4,000,000 of those were appropriated to the Agency of Education for IT modernization projects. We've been able to come in under budget on those projects. And as those funds were expiring, the agency of administration did kind of a, what do we call it, an administrative action that they were allowed to do that turned them into general fund. So their current identity is they are general fund dollars. And we're actually asking for a reversion of those funds and then a reappropriation back to the agency as general fund dollars that we can use to support Act 139 literacy initiatives. The reason for this, again, bear with me, is that we were originally using state level ESSER dollars to support literacy initiatives. The Trump administration reversed its policy and we lost access to $700,000 with federal funds. So what we're asking to do is to replace funds that were originally federal dollars that were into general fund dollars, and we'd like to use those for exactly those same accuracy activities that we had to stop last year when we lost access to the federal funds. So it's a circuitous route, but in essence, this isn't new money. This is money that's already in the AOE budget that we would like to use for a different purpose than what was originally.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Right. The $7.16 for the five permanent positions, that's part of the 42,300,000.0 operating Yeah. Okay. I'll wait for it to get to the REITs here later.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Let me know if you have questions about that second one, but yeah, it's a

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: long Well, I guess the final question was, is it just coincidence that both numbers happen to be 700,000? No. Yeah, go ahead.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah, so we originally had about $700,000 worth of work to do. We had to stop that. We do of this general fund dollars is about $1,200,000 But we reserved what we needed to finish out the IT projects. So we're just being conservative about needing to finish those projects. So those projects were modernization of our education licensure system, our dual enrollment system, and our adult education system.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: So as we reorganize at the agency, we have the opportunity to change how we budget, and we've combined two of

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: the Another question just occurred to me. Well, so I guess the question would be, how did you manage to add five positions, all the other costs and still keep your operating budget increase under 3%?

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: We didn't. It was a request that they approved the additional money.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Okay. Yeah. Alright. I'll wait for the rest of the presentation. Thanks.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Alright. So our budget, our operating budget that we discussed used to be split into two appropriation lines in the budget, B500 and B501. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that we've combined those into one and we believe it's going to remain being five zero one at surface, so just something we're hoping to do if it's good to be. And now we've just got the the numbers and the budget broken out by right half spending capital, personal services, operating, grants. We already went through the drivers of these, but these are the actual numbers showing the $102,000,000 increase overall. This next table shows our general fund appropriation, and here you can see a personal survey from about $3,000,000 which includes that 700,000 for those three, five positions, and some increases in operating. The grant increases are driven mainly from the adult phase basic ed program, and those are based on estimated counts and the base education payment, so that's a formula driven amount. It just grows, the cap grows in the base. This table shows our federal, special, and intercomparable rental transfer plan. And here we're seeing a large decrease in head services. That's the Medicaid moving to AHS 17,400,000.0 and the reduction in in federal experience. I think

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: just a note on the just a reminder that those ESSER funds expire September 30. So they snuck in to the first quarter of our FY '25 from last year. That's So why you've seen that little bit of carry forward both and the reduction between years.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: And we're still working with, as you said, hey, something's fun. So we making good progress.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: We are? We are.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: The $1,800,000 in personal services and staffing reduction in contracts, federal contracts, after school, where that appropriation was increased up to the anticipated receipts. So it was $455,000 increase this year.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: So before you leave that page, we've got on this page, adult basic education, dollars 940,000. And then if we go back to 17, the previous page, we've got adult basic education.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Question.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Just

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: tell me what the differences between the two line items since they're both under appropriations.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: The general fund one, that's the state program that's funded 30% general fund, rest is fed fund, forty-sixty split, I can't remember which one. And this, basically, it's the federal program. We get a small federal grant for this case. Thanks.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: If anybody's got, I'm kind of looking at my screen, so if anybody has a question, please just jump in.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Next,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: we're gonna talk about

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: education services. Some of this already.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah, so I think we can kind of breeze

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: through these for the

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: So it's just a description of how we've organized ourselves, what the major duties of each of the units are. So Secretary's office, leadership of the agency as a whole, whole agency projects, support for boards and commissions and working groups, which has been busy for us this year led by our incredible executive admin team, which includes the state board. Of course, we have our legal team who also have been busy this year. And then policy communication. So I would actually say he's been pretty full out in the secretary's office. In operation Can I ask a question? Is executive where the APA consulting contract has lived? No. Where would that be in these categories? That was our contracts in California.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah, going forward, I think it's going to be in

[Cassandra Ryan, Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah, it'll be in federal.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: It'll be in federal?

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: You know, it's a federal Well, I guess that's not how we fund it. Yeah,

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: the APA contract was funded with federal dollars, and those dollars are no longer available, the contract is winding

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: up right now.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: When is the date that the contract will end? Right now, I think it's twofifteen. February 15? Yeah. Okay.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: And so that's represented on this page under grants total and the decrease?

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Contracting service?

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah, it'd be in the personal services.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Personal services, okay.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: So under operations, we have our finance teams. Team is broken up into three subdivisions. So we have our business office, which includes our accounting team, agency contracting, finance payroll, FFATA reporting, which is federal reporting, federal draws so that we do get those federal dollars drawn down. We have our school finance team, which we really, as part of the reorganization, have really beefed up. And so it's now a team of, I want to say, six, including our new Ed Finance Director, who I don't think you all have had an opportunity to meet. She's been over in House Ways and Means Senate Finance, but this is Kelly Murphy. We also have Ted Gates, who's our senior fiscal analyst, and then we have additional analysts on that team. So this is really part of our strategic priority to improve and increase our financial data reporting and really make it more usable for decision makers and policymakers. And then we also have really split out the School of Finance and Special Education Finance. So we now have a Special Education Finance division. We're in the process of recruiting for that Special Education Finance division lead. This also includes our Medicaid school based health services, state place students, and special ed fiscal monitoring. We also have under operations a grant submission provision. So we're really trying to move those highly specialized skills into one division. We're kind of in the early days of that and we're focused on federal funds. But over time, our vision is to bring all our brands under one unit so that we have a really cohesive approach to maximizing these dollars and supporting the field. We've also created the Safe and Healthy Schools. You all have had a chance to hear from Franklin O'Brien, who's our division director there, and got a sense of what that entire team is going to be doing. Our data management and analysis division, and then our new education approvals team. So this includes Ed licensure. It also includes independent schools. We have a home for BOCES now, driver's education, and homestead. So that's our operations area. Our second area is academics. That includes special education, which is responsible for special education monitoring, pre k, early childhood compliance and administrative complaints, technical assistance and corrective action. As you know, special education is a major of focus for the agency. So we actually elevated the team up in our organizational structure. And we're in the process of actually elevating the special ed director and then de recruiting for that. So we're elevating the position as a highly someone with a deep knowledge and expertise of special education. We also have our curriculum and instruction team. This is really a new area of focus in the agency, really trying to respond to what we heard from the field as a leading stronger support in this area. They're going to be focused on high quality instructional materials, evidence based instructional practices, local comprehensive assessments, and differentiated instruction. And this includes our read Vermont initiative. And then education programs, as I said, this is kind of our cradle to career program. So we have our pre K, CTE, adult education, extended learning opportunities, which include summer and after school, and then our flexible pathways, dual enrollment, going to college, workplace learning. And then our final area is our strategy and accountability, and this is the area that we're really finalizing the reorganization. So, strategy and education initiatives. So, this will be the team that's really keeping us on track for our own strategic plan as an agency on strategic budgeting and contracting. So aligning, again, aligning those resources and decision making around those strategic pillars. This team also includes our assessment team who are responsible for our statewide assessment, what we call the BTCAP, and our NAEP administration, which is that national test that all states do reporting and analysis, And our accountability team, this is really a new team in the agency. And they have kind of a wide portfolio of accountability measures that we're actually looking to integrate and bring some coherence to. So this will actually be one of our breakout sessions tomorrow at the legislative open house, just giving you a sense of where we're going here. And then critically, and this is where those five positions would sit in addition to our existing school improvement team. So school improvement and district support. So what you're seeing in this structure here is we're actually trying to align our accountability and reporting with our school improvement and district quality improvement and support, and then ultimately, how do you fund and resource that? And that's where we have our grants division. So we're really trying to align. And back to Sean. So

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: we talked about most of the key drivers on these. So the personal service and operating is the operational number we talked about, 40 is the million. Here you see the grants being reduced from the Medicaid, so all the stuff we've talked about already. And so we're going to have, like, fund the bottom section.

[Cassandra Ryan, Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: The

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: 17,400,000.0 deduction there. Federal, again, going down. Questions on this one?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: These were explained in the Yeah. It's just referring back to

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: what Yeah. You explained are actual numbers. Yeah. More key drivers. Summarize, and just so we already talked about these. And, yeah, as a reminder, the '26 data, we've combined the two appropriations to align with the. Position. It's a 180. Most of them are in. But the one 2.9 positions is. You can see 42% were the general fund. The The next biggest bid is federal eight sixty six. These are FTEs, but many many of our positions are partially funded with certain services, so but you see the points there. Any questions there? Alright. And finally, another

[Cassandra Ryan, Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: big table. We can talk a little

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: bit about this already, but the numbers behind the increases, see the first line under the grant, taxes and education grant, that's $150,000,000 increase in pristine. We spend a little bit of money out of personal service and operating, but bulk of the equipment goes out as grains. Difficult increases for most of our programs based on either the deep index or other estimates that we use to fund before.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: These are the same numbers I assume we would see on the Ed Fund Outlook document that we have in January?

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: I think at this point, yeah. Could

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: you stay on that for a second? And could you talk about the flexible pathways line item and just give a little bit of a breakdown as to what's in there, and if you can assign any numbers to that, that would be Yeah,

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: I don't have the numbers, but it's early college enrollment, virtual learning appropriation. I believe there's secondary school reform program within them. It's a free instruction area.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Merger support grants, that's a a relative act 46, I assume.

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah. That's what the small school's grants turned into. And

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: that's determined every year in the long term medium. When the schools respond to that.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Alright. So, I mean, in terms of, let's say, the non ed fund cost to operate the agency, that's where the 2.71% increase is. That's within the governor's request, the 3%.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Senator, did you?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Oh, yeah.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: I saw you making eyes. So the APA contract from 2023 through to July 2025 was $823,450 I'd certainly be curious how much you think will be spent from July through February 15 at some point, if you could get us that. And that's about a million dollars, potentially. I don't know what the last six months will cost, but let's say it's close to a million dollars. What do you feel like you have gotten from that, especially in terms of the outcomes that will make it into the final legislative product that you're proposing at this point? Sure. So I think if we go back to the 2023 contract, so just a brief history on the state's relationship with APA, who's a consultant, a national consultant for education finance. So originally, APA was actually, the legislature one study on the CTE system and APA was actually originally hired by the Joint Fiscal Office. So they began work on CTE within Vermont. During COVID, CTE was a major area of focus for the agency. And so we used some of those SR State level dollars once that initial study had been done, because it was identified there's quite a lot more work that needed to be done. So they've been really instrumental over the past three years in really defining first the current state of our CTE system, really identifying a lot of the major kind of areas of concern around equity, access, quality, and variability across the system, And then have really been helpful, I think, for both the agency, the field, and for policymakers in developing kind of a platform for CTV. So that was the first part of their work. The second part of the work that they did for us was actually related to an analysis of return on investment for ESSER funds. So they did a study for us looking at how LEAs were using their ESSER funds. And that was really done intentionally before the end of the ARP ESSER to help support districts as they were approaching their fiscal cliff. So how had they used those funds? Had they used them to hire staff? Was it contracted services? Was it discrete projects? And that was sort of the intention of that study. And then as we moved into last, so 2024, and we were contemplating major changes to CTE, we began to understand that we actually needed a much better understanding of, and they did some work around CTE and the development of our current Like our statewide profile. So they really got heavily into supporting us with data analysis and reporting, which the agency wasn't well positioned to do. And so they were really instrumental in that. And then finally, as we were approaching the legislative session and we were contemplating CTE, that's the point where we identified that we needed some real support around the funding system as a whole. So they have deep national expertise in this area. And critically, they have worked with PICUS and Auden in the past who the legislature had hired to do a study on education funding. So there was really nice depth of relationship there, which could actually help us in understanding how we might move to Foundation for and Bluff. So that's the broad breadth of the work that they've done. So I would say in terms of our return on investment, I think they've been really critical in security areas. One is around the CTE system. And they've done really years' worth of on the ground work with our CTE directors and centers to really understand what was going on there. Can I ask a question about that? Were they part of the latest proposal that the secretary brought into our committee that departed from the recommendations that they had made last year? I don't think it was a departure. What we developed was an evolution from what we proposed last year. So I'm just Okay. I guess I don't understand the question. So what they proposed last year, we received So, after the last proposal from last year? Yeah, they've been helpful in modeling for us and continuing to provide support in that area. So, one is in our CTE system, I think they've been really critical in helping the state as a whole in understanding our current state. The second place that they've been excellent has been in our data reporting, which I think seen we've the agency actually producing a much higher level of data reporting than we've been able to do in the past. And we actually call it to the agency to build capacity, which is what you want from a consultant. You don't want them to become a permanent fixture. You want them to help build internal capacity, and they've done that. And then I think the legislature and the administration is considered foundation formulas. This is where they have deep expertise. They've worked with other folks like Pipes and Auden and AIR and have been able to actually help the agency and also policymakers in understanding different approaches to education funding. So I think that has been the real critical areas for women's support. Can I ask one follow on? So I think the auditor's office mentioned to your team last week that the original CTE contract had been sort of when that ended, there was supposed to be a bidding process for any additional work, and it never went out to bid. So I just wonder if you all are taking any lessons away. I think you're going to submit a waiver. So, senator, just to clarify for the record, we actually received questions from the auditor about six months ago and responded to them, and the auditor actually responded back and and approved of our process. So we've actually resolved all of this with the auditor. So you didn't talk to the auditor's office last week? Not that I'm aware of. No.

[Sen. Weeks (Senate Education Committee)]: Senator Weeks? Thank you. Thank you, mister chair. Got, two questions. First, I'm just curious if, how much of the budget is dependent on at January moving forward as currently

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Act 73?

[Sen. Weeks (Senate Education Committee)]: I'm sorry.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: That's all right. We're doing 01/1973 too, Senator Reid. Oh,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I'm sorry. I

[Sen. Weeks (Senate Education Committee)]: So how much of this budget is dependent on Act 73 moving forward in its current?

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: So if we want to be very discreet about it, the five positions that we requested in the limited service from last year are kind of the holdover from IAC seventy three. The agency is the work that we are doing all of our strategic planning, our pillars, all of that effort is really focused on improving the quality of education in Vermont. You diagnosed pretty clearly that some of the barriers to improving quality is the structure itself of our system. And this is long standing. Mean, I can go back to the 1800s and look at state board reports and they talk about the same issue. Complexity, size, scale, structure, right? Long standing issues in the state of Vermont. So in terms of the budget, we're going to resource our agency to the best of our ability to meet the needs of the field. The size of the agency and the number of districts that we have to serve, there's a mismatch there. The more districts we have, the more challenging it is for agency staff with limited resources to be able to meet the needs of all districts. Again, that's a function of scale. So we're going to move forward with our strategic pillars. There are, as I think I signaled, we have some initiatives where we've maximized every dollar that we have. And we may come back in future years and say, we've identified some resource gaps here, right? Act 139 is a great example. Our major literacy initiative did not come with any dollars for it. So we've been very resourceful in securing federal dollars. We've lost the federal dollars. And now we're using general funds, we're using other federal funds to keep this major literacy initiative going. Act 173 also did not come with significant resources. We are utilizing some carry forward funds. We're finding some other federal dollars that we're going to bring to bear. But I think, to your question, we will continue to do this work. But our ability to do it effectively is in some ways hampered by the complexity of the system that we operate in.

[Sen. Weeks (Senate Education Committee)]: Second question is, so there are various bills out there about capping or containing education spending. Seen them, I'm just curious, maybe premature to ask, but are you working at plan B in case you don't quite get all of what you're asking for?

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: We have our excess spending threshold that exists right in law right now. And we do see that she provided this question into house ways and means and you can have Ted and Kelly give you an abbreviated version of it. But what we are seeing is that there was about six districts that were rising above that excess spending threshold the last time that we were able to check-in with them. And districts do actively work to bring themselves down under that they do not want that double tax penalty. So that's some cost containment measure that already exists in statute. When we were speaking to business managers at FASBL last month, we were talking about the spending cap proposal. They obviously are going to have some concerns about it because there are some pressures that are outside their control. And so they are concerned about that. I'll sort of say this as considerations, and I think it might actually make more sense for us to come back in and have sort of a dedicated discussion. But I think there's sort of two considerations around that spending cap, two priorities that you might consider. So the first is a need to just contain the growth of the education fund because it's putting pressure on the rest of the state budget, right? And the governor, I think, spoke to this in his budget address, what are you not doing if you're filling that gap? The other thing to think about is how do you prepare our system for a transition to a foundation formula. And so one thing that we contemplated in our proposal last year was something that wasn't quite this cap proposal but was something similar to it, which is you need to start to step the system towards that foundation formula. And so if you have districts that are spending quite a lot, you need to start to bring that down. If you have districts that are spending less, we need to stair step that up. You reflected that in that 73. You actually have a multi year step process. So I don't think I'm prepared to say like yay or nay one way or another on that specific proposal. I think we could come back and provide you with some analysis of it. But there is something to be said for how do you begin to prepare the system for a future foundation formula where the money that you get is the money that you get. But let us know if you'd like to come back.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a request, could I have somebody to send me some of the information on the smaller grants that run through the AOE? I'm thinking, you know, Governors Institute outright Vermont, and just sort of see the ups and downs on those, please. And then just to confirm, one of the five limited, at least one of the five limited service positions is in the area of school construction?

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Yes, school facilities.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: School facilities.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Yes, Yeah. And that's like, you'll get a lot of buy in because Sandra and I, Sandra used to run our school construction aid program back in the day when it existed. I think this is an essential position. And again, this is someone who really wants someone with deep experience from the field. We need someone who is going to be able to help future consolidated districts in understanding their entire building portfolio. And then how do they actually make thoughtful plan for long term decisions? When we were talking to candidates, we were talking about how this position, you're looking at the ten year window. Nothing's going to happen in these facilities immediately. How do you actually help communities to really plan for their building portfolio, how they might utilize these buildings in different ways. So I think for me, it's an essential position for the agents. And it's a piece that we're missing. We don't have a body to go out into the field. We have lots of conversations with folks in the field, but you need someone on the ground who really understands district operations and can speak to the community and help them through this planning process.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Representative Brown?

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Yes, just to follow-up on Chair Conlon's request for information about the smaller appropriations that flow through the agency. I know that in this year's budget, last year there was appropriation to the Child and Adult Care Food Program, but I'm curious about that was included in this year's budget as well. CACFC and AEGIP. We will try and follow-up. We heard from them in committee in the last couple of weeks.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk, House Education Committee)]: Gotcha.

[Cassandra Ryan, Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Senator Mongan. The $1,800,000 for merger grants, is that anticipatory or has that actually been an ongoing expense?

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: The merger support grants?

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah, I don't think we spend that much. I think we spend a little less. That's just been the budget. Okay.

[Cassandra Ryan, Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: So that that has been called upon, though. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: It was it was an agreement if you merged as a an early merger. Yep.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: And then it got turned into the small school

[Sean Cousino, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: grant is what it used. Yeah.

[Cassandra Ryan, Chief Financial Officer (Vermont AOE)]: So let me make sure I'm clear about this. I knew that I knew that that part, but you said it got turned into

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: No, I'm sorry.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Got people were reversed.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Yeah. Got my names back. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for taking my watch.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: All right, looks like we'll make a 04:30 adjournment after all. Any other questions? Great, thank you very much. Appreciate your time. And we stand adjourned.

[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (Vermont AOE)]: Okay.