Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Okay, this is House Education, 04/01/2026. The committee is switching gears here. We're gonna get some testimony on some of the language that we looked at yesterday concerning pre K. We have some superintendents with us who asked to testify on it, and we look forward to their input as we consider what we need to do with this. We've already sort of looked at making changes. But anyway, I'm just going to turn it right over to you to get started. Thank you very much. Introduce yourselves and

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: Good morning. I am Chelsea Myers. I'm the executive director of the Superintendents Association. I will go first to talk really specifically about the bill, and then the superintendents will explain from their scenarios to reinforce some of the points that we make in the testimony. You want to introduce yourselves?

[John Muldoon (Superintendent, Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District)]: Sure. I'm John Muldoon. I'm the superintendent at Mount Mansfield Unified Union.

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: Elaine?

[Elaine Collins (Superintendent, North Country Supervisory Union)]: Hi folks, Emily Long Collins, superintendent for North Country Supervisory Union.

[Amy Minor (Superintendent, Colchester School District; President, VSA; Chair, Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators)]: Amy. Hi folks, I'm Amy Minor, superintendent of Colchester Schools, also the president of the VSA, and I am also the chair of the Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators.

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: I wanna be clear that we are speaking to draft 7.3. We did not respond to the most recent draft. And I also wanna share that this is joint testimony that we just submitted in writing, so sorry about the delay there. And that's from the School Boards Association, the Superintendent's Association, the Principals Association, and the Vermont NEA. So on behalf of our associations, thank you for the opportunity to testify on this bill, an act related to the provision of publicly funded pre K education. Our understanding is that the committee is working on this legislation with the expectation that it may be considered for inclusion in broader legislation responding to the implementation requirements of Act 73 of 2025. The scope and pace of education related policy before the general assembly is very significant. While some committees are focused on cost containment, other proposals under consideration would increase costs without clear understanding of their impact on quality and opportunity. Our associations are currently tracking nearly two dozen bills, several of which, if implemented, will increase education spending. Last year, Act 73 was passed as a sweeping education transformation initiative. However, there remains considerable uncertainty about its implementation. The universal pre kindergarten system is complex and operates within a much larger public education framework. We hope to support the committee's understanding of these complexities within the specific context of this bill. Our associations believe that high quality pre K education is one of the most important levers to improve quality and equity in our education system. Today, we ask you to consider three guiding questions. Does this improve quality across the whole system? Does this make the system more or less equitable? Does this add costs and or uncertainty to the costs of providing pre K? In addition to these questions, we ask you to consider how this language fits within the broader context of Act 73, which references pre K in multiple places. Most specific to this conversation is to establish an appropriate weight for pre K students, address inefficiencies of education delivery through updates to pre K, and the submission of the JFO report on waiting for pre K students in the foundation formula. The Joint Fiscal Office delivered on this requirement through its presentation, and Ways and Means subsequently translated this work into legislative language. We would also like to note that we are generally supportive of the Joint Fiscal Office report that recommends bifurcated and streamlined funding for both public and private providers. It also appropriately weights public pre K in the foundation formula where districts would receive the full weighted education opportunity payment for pre K students. This would be a solid foundation from which to hold discussions about pre K funding. Now we offer section by section comments. Section one, there appears to be broad agreement about the intent of this language. However, we do not believe the draft legislative language as currently written achieves these aims. In section two, it talks about a provider shall employ or contract for the services of at least one teacher who is licensed and endorsed in early childhood education or in early childhood special education under chapter 51 of this title, including through the issuance of provisional and emergency licenses. Ensuring high quality and licensed teachers in all pre K settings has long been a goal of our associations. However, we have concerns about the parallel process currently under consideration in S two zero six, which would create an OPR certification pathway that differs from the agency of education process. If passed, this will result in two credentials with different requirements being labeled the same, which will create confusion. Our associations are not supportive of the added language reinforcing an existing practice that places superintendents in the position of overseeing provisionally licensed teachers in private settings where they have no operational oversight. And Amy can speak more about this process through her lens on the standards boards. This creates a challenging situation for school leaders and raises concerns about accountability. We believe the system should move toward clearer lines of responsibility and oversight, not less. Section four, a school district shall be responsible for ensuring resident pre k children have access to publicly funded pre k education pursuant to this section. And then it goes on to say, to develop a regional plan to further expand capacity, including through the issuance of provisional and emergency licenses issued by the Standards Board for Professional Educators. This language continues a pattern of assigning additional responsibilities to local education agencies without corresponding funding or authority. At a time when school districts are being asked to manage costs carefully, this provision would require districts to ensure expansion of pre k programs without additional fiscal support. This approach will increase costs for local school districts, including staffing and coordination responsibilities. It also does not address current funding structures that discourage expansion of public pre K programs. Superintendents will speak further to this issue in their testimony.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Chelsea, I'm actually gonna ask you to pause a moment. The area you were just commenting on, you said was section four? Yeah, section three. So subsection three of that.

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: Again, section that's talking about the school district being responsible for ensuring resident pre K children have access to publicly funded pre K education. The removal of geographic limitations in this section would also move the system toward an even more expansive voucher model. At the same time, local education agencies would continue to hold responsibility for services for students with IEPs, English learners, and students experiencing homelessness. This would occur across a much broader and more complex network of providers, increasing logistical and oversight challenges while maintaining district liability. Again, these additional costs are unfunded under the current draft bill. And so what I mean by that is you can imagine a student in I'm just going to use an example of South Burlington goes 30 miles to travel with mom or dad or guardian to the pre K provider of their choosing. That happens maybe fifty, sixty times over the course of the school district's provision of pre K. They are still responsible for providing those services, special education services, to all of those students. So that oversight would be tremendously difficult if the geographic bounds were unlimited. In section six, this section proposes another study despite the December 2025 study already required and completed by the Joint Fiscal Office under Act 73. We encourage the committee to consider the legislative language that emerged from the report. Given that this analysis has already been completed, it is unclear what additional value a new study would provide at this time. The primary objective of this work was to prepare for the foundation formula by establishing a weight for pre K. This draft language does not fulfill this objective. In summary, we respectfully ask the committee to consider whether the language before you aligns with the intent outlined in section one. While the intent is commendable, the current proposal does not appear to strengthen the overall pre k to 12 delivery system. It will create challenges for public systems by increasing responsibilities and liabilities without corresponding funding or authority for oversight at a time when you are asking for reductions in spending. We are willing and ready to work with you in regards to the charge of act 73, creating a more efficient, equitable, and high quality model for PK. We respectfully urge the house to reconsider this approach approach and to give careful consideration to the language that emerged from the JFO report originally commissioned under Act 73, which would establish a more appropriate weight and funding mechanism. I want to just add additional commentary commentary just from the Vermont Superintendents Association that when I went out to superintendents to ask if people would be willing to testify, even those that were not available stressed how important this topic is and felt so passionately about the development of pre K programs that they're doing in their own communities at a considerable cost communities. And so I just wanted to stress that it goes far beyond the three superintendents that are sitting here today, but they're gonna tell some give you some great information that kind of supports what we talked about in our testimony.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: I had a question. The geographic boundaries. Yes. My sort of conceptual understanding is that actually very few districts enforce that. And first of all, is that an accurate statement? I don't know. I'm only going based upon memory of testimony previously to this, which could have been three committee months ago, but it wasn't very widespread. However, tricky issue that I think you brought up was the provision of services out of district. And that I think, I guess, how does it work? We can ask superintendents how this works in practice, but I understand it also was that school districts were allowed to say, you're out of the district, we're not obligated to provide those services in the pre K that you have chosen.

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: I don't know the extent to which the statement about whether it happens or not is true, but I'm sure the superintendents could talk about how it works within their system.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Yeah, at the end of their testimony, each of you would sort of check me on my understanding of things.

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: Leanne, would you like to go first?

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Sure.

[Elaine Collins (Superintendent, North Country Supervisory Union)]: As I said, I'm Elaine Collins, superintendent for North Country Supervisory Union, my fourth year in the position. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. I always value being able to come to you in person because I value that give and take that happens when you're in the same room. And so I apologize that I have to be remote today, but duty calls. So because context matters as a reminder, I wanna kind of do the rundown of the towns that are incorporated in North Country Supervisory Union. We have 11 schools plus North Country Career Center, and we include the towns of Brighton, Coventry, Derby, Holland, Jay, Lowell, Morgan, Newport Center, Newport City, Troy, and Westfield. The farthest span we have is from Jay Westfield Elementary School to Brighton Elementary School, about 65 miles or an hour and six minutes without bad weather or cows. So there is, as Chelsea stated, there's no doubt in anyone's mind today that preschool in our schools is value added to our systems. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Since COVID, the needs of our schools have shifted. It used to be that the neediest population was our older middle schools or early high school students. And now both in scope and intensity that has shifted to our youngest children. Some of our young children with lower speech and language abilities struggle with emotional regulation and social interactions. Since behavior is a form of communication, we see increased behavioral challenges from students who lack the words to tell us what they need. Instead, they show us with increased tantrums or increased aggression. Additionally, many of our K-two classrooms across our supervisory union have students who are experiencing challenges with potty training. We want our K-two teachers to concentrate on early literacy and math skills and concepts rather than helping to potty train a student. So we have had to increase support staff positions to help manage that. Without preschools in our schools, I can't imagine how badly this problem would be magnified. In our area, as with many other areas across the state, there is a lack of high quality daycare facilities. With a good intention to improve the care that our youngest children receive, the additional rules that have been imposed by the state has regulated many home providers out of the business, limiting the number of choices that parents have for daycare or early care. It's critical we can continue to provide this early intervention for all students, but especially for our neediest and most vulnerable children. However, this service doesn't come without a cost. For North Country for the current FY twenty six year, the cost of having preschool in all of our buildings is $2,376,319 For our operating districts, this ranges from $72,000 at one of our smaller part time sites in Lowell to over $550,000 at our largest elementary school in Derby. We recouped some of these costs through a small IDEA grant for special education, which pays for our early childhood coordinator position and a couple of other small things and through the addition of revenues from the long term weighted ADM that's added from preschool students. Likely, if we didn't invest in our youngest students, we would see an even greater percentage of students who would need to access alternate day treatment programs in grades K to two. Although we're exploring ways to collaborate on creating programs for alternates with our neighbors, right now those day treatment facilities cost anywhere from 65,000 per student to over 130,000 per student, not counting transportation or summer programming. Preschool is simply a good investment to make. There are some challenges though. So both in terms of the way it's currently implemented, as well as in terms of what's being proposed. So sort of commingle those ideas. The current rules require that superintendents sign off on licensing for preschool educators and private programs, programs that we do not oversee or supervise directly. There are challenges with both quality of programming and liability if the person who's provisionally licensed under our licenses, the superintendent's license, does something egregious. Since we have no control over the private program and no direct oversight, this creates a tenuous situation for superintendents. The proposed changes would sort of cement that expectation moving forward. When our identified preschoolers require special education, OT, PT, ELL, we are on the hook for providing those services, whether the student is at home, in a private program, or in our schools. This requires early childhood special education teachers and other service providers to travel to where the child is to provide the service. With the proposed change of requiring supervisory unions or districts to allow students who expand that region to virtually anywhere that works for the student or family, it would be difficult to provide services in a much larger region. Getting service providers to those locations would be more expensive for transportation costs and make the system less efficient. Longer distances means fewer students getting services and more people we would have to employ to cover those services. Something that makes it challenging to implement preschool in our schools is that we have different regulatory oversight in our preschools that are in our schools. The agency of education doesn't oversee preschools, so we deal with two regulatory agencies when trying to implement preschools in the school setting. If we were to decouple that and make the agency responsible for oversight in our preschools that are housed within a school building, that would make more sense, I think, for both our staff and our students and families. Requiring supervisory unions or districts to be responsible for expansion of preschool opportunities in our regions, making the school system participate in focus groups or connecting families with a preschool program that would work for them, adds another bureaucratic burden to an already complex system. We already have a coordinator, if this were to become a requirement, we'd likely need to employ more people in order to carry out that requirement, adding to that $2,300,000 price tag for preschool. I saw in the end of the proposed changes that there was some conversation about whether to move from weights to a block grant, which would increase our overall spending per long term weighted average daily member, and would likely require us to make cuts in other programming to offset the increased costs that voters see in their ballot box. We did some modeling and in North Country, if we were not allowed to count preschool students, it would increase our spending per long term weighted ADM by almost $300 to almost $1,200 per student, and it would actually increase the cost per student disproportionately more in smaller schools. It's just additional downward pressure towards not passing budgets, making cuts in other areas to make for this provision. In closing, I'd just say from an outsider's perspective, looking into the legislature, it appears, sometimes happens in schools too, right? Siloed committees that are working on things that have really great intentions and really great purposes that sort of work against what's happening in other committees. House and Senate is very much working hard to try to contain costs in education and then some other committees like in this particular bill trying to do good work and with good intentions, but in the long run would add cost to the overall spending in education. In this case and in lots of other cases, I just ask you to consider whether the benefits of the proposal outweigh the potential negative consequences and that you consider whether the proposal will add to the cost in schools in either finances or in the human cost of trying to implement a system. And then ask yourselves, does it make sense? My dairy farmer mom and dad would be very proud of that pragmatic common sense thing I throw in at the end of every at some point of my testimony. And if the answer is no and it doesn't make sense, then perhaps now isn't the time for the proposed changes. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Elaine, does North Country have a geographic boundary? We do. We We're

[Elaine Collins (Superintendent, North Country Supervisory Union)]: already so large, it just becomes prohibitively expensive and not practical to expand it.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Okay, and do you have a significant population of pre K students that are in private settings as compared with public settings?

[Elaine Collins (Superintendent, North Country Supervisory Union)]: We have about a third of our population that are in private settings, and in some of our larger buildings, actually, we have fewer full day program opportunities for students, and that feels like an equity issue. A lot of our smaller schools have the ability because they have smaller numbers to run full day programs, and I think that's really value added to both the family and to long term outcomes for students when we're able to have them for full days. But if you are in Newport City, for example, or Derby, you sort of have to weigh the benefit of having more slots available for fewer amounts of the day. So in most cases, the schools on having half day programs for students and running transportation for the families to either a daycare or back to home. But it means that kids are in school for shorter periods of time. But we just don't have the capacity for, in those larger settings, being able to offer a full day program for every student that might be eligible or need it. And that means that either those students go somewhere else for a full day program, or they don't access it, or they end up with sort of a fragmented day being at school part time and then heading off back to home or to a daycare.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: One of the parts of the language that we were provided is that much of this already sort of exists, at least in practice. As I assume, currently, superintendents can sign off on provisional licenses for somebody to fulfill that role in a private setting, that practice exists. Is that fair to say? I mean, it's not dollar likely.

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: Yes, but it really puts superintendents in an untenable position. So instead of modifying this further, we would prefer for that practice to be revised because it's a very difficult thing to ask superintendents to hold a provisional license under their supervision without actually being able to supervise.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: I appreciate that. Again, my feeling was more along the lines of we should codify something that is already happening, and isn't it okay just to let it happen if it's a choice?

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: Amy, we'll probably be. Well,

[Chair Peter Conlon]: okay, let me, if I have follow-up questions with the circumstances up there, but I don't think I do, thank you too much. Whatever order you have.

[Amy Minor (Superintendent, Colchester School District; President, VSA; Chair, Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators)]: Okay, great. Thanks for having me again today. Always great to see everybody. I will just add to what Elaine said, preschool provides a tremendous value for our students. Colchester is currently not looking to expand preschool next year due to fiscal challenges. If we were, we would be looking for some funding to offset those costs. But my testimony today will focus on the licensure piece. I do wanna share that there is a significant concern regarding the role of public school superintendents in the process of signing off on that provisional licensure sponsorship. The primary reason why we have some concerns connected to that is because we have no authority or oversight of a private pre K center. So I wanted to start by giving you some historical history as to what has happened in the past connected to how this worked. Under Secretary Holcomb, Deputy Amy Fowler led an initiative where it was the agency education that sponsored all provisional licenses for private preschools. That system worked well at the time, and at some point that process ended. I'm not sure why, but it did end. Approximately three to four years ago, Wendy Scott, who's an agency employee, she ran a two year pilot program that allowed the agency of education to sponsor these provisional licenses so that superintendents didn't have to. While that pilot was not perfect, it did create a process and a viable path to licensure that did not involve the public school system. Under Wendy's process, it required the preschool individual who was looking for a provisional license to ask a public superintendent of schools to sponsor the provisional license. They would send us a letter, and then we would write a letter back denying that we would sponsor the provisional licensure. That denial letter was a requirement that Wendy had in the packet for them to obtain their provisional licensure. Writing that letter for me, it was simple, took a little bit of time. Once you did one, you can just basically use the letter over and over. So it was a functional step that didn't take long for superintendents to complete. That program ended. My understanding from the agency around why that program ended was due to lack of funding for mentors, because they did provide mentors for those preschool teachers. There was also a challenge because there was a number of private preschool centers that was receiving public funds through Act 166 without having a licensed teacher on staff. In some cases, it was identified that the director was licensed as the educator, but the directors weren't the ones providing instruction, they were kind of running the program. And ultimately, the agency found that there were many individuals who were granted a preschool educator's license through the provisional program, but very few actually completed those steps. So I think those factors contributed to the end of that program that Wendy Scott oversee. So some of the current challenges, I guess my request to you all this morning is that whatever legislation is passed, that you ensure that public school superintendents have no role in the private preschool provisional licensing process. The practice is extremely problematic, and it creates liability not only for that individual superintendent, but I believe it creates liability for the public school district. Statutorily, as you know, we have no oversight and no authority over private preschool programs. So how does it work now? I often will receive emails or phone calls from employees at private school centers in Colchester requesting that I sponsor their provisional license. It's important for you to note that in the vast majority of these cases, in my time I've had this request over a ten year period and only once did I know the individual, I do not interview these people. I do not hire them to work at the preschool center. I do not observe them. I do not evaluate them. I'm not given the opportunity to provide them with feedback around how to improve their practice because I'm not the superintendent of that program, I don't have authority over their program. So all of those things that I would be doing with a provisional licensed employee who works for the Colchester School District, I don't have the time, the opportunity, or the authority to ensure quality. Yet the current process requires, as written, public school superintendents essentially to sponsor their license. When I receive requests, I decline them. I will not sponsor a provisional license for a private preschool. My main reason for that is I love my job. And in order to keep my job, I have to have a valid license. And if something goes wrong, then my license as an educator in the state of Vermont is at risk. The other reason is I have a duty to the Colchester taxpayers to keep taxes as low as possible. And I believe there is liability for Colchester taxpayers if the superintendent of schools were to provide a provisional licensure sponsorship for an employee that doesn't work in the district. I will share with you that there are some superintendents in the state that do sponsor these licenses. I do believe that it opens their districts and themselves up to significant risk. The vast majority of superintendents are extremely uncomfortable with this practice. Those who do sponsor usually do so because there is limited preschool options in their community, and they fear that if they don't sponsor the license, then the center will close. So these superintendents are acting reluctantly out of a sense of duty to local families, and quite honestly, they're doing so because there's no other path. And ultimately, your superintendents in the state of Vermont should not be placed in this position since they have no authority over preschool. So why is because of the authority issue, and because we don't have capacity to take that on. So I think if you consider kind of an extreme example of something that could go wrong in a private preschool setting that involves a student, that maybe could result in a pending lawsuit or an investigation. If there were to be a lawsuit, the public school system is now connected to that private preschool because we have signed off and given sponsorship to the provisional license. So I wouldn't want public school taxpayers to be responsible The those other is the administrative burden. If I, as the superintendent of schools, signed off on a preschool educator's license, and they were then to be investigated by the agency of Ed or the Department of Children and Families, it's most likely that I am going to now be involved in that process because I sponsored that license. As a result of that, a superintendent's own license could technically be in jeopardy because of that sponsorship piece, and there are currently no protections for superintendents or for school districts to prevent that from happening. I would hope that the agency of ed would not punish a superintendent for something that they've asked us to do, but it would be nice to have some protections if that were to remain in place, which we're of course hoping that it doesn't. So what could be a potential solution, because I think it's always important for us to come with potential solutions. So my hope would be that the child development division, CDD, becomes the sponsoring body for individuals seeking preschool educator provisional licenses in private settings. Janet McLaughlin, who's the Deputy Commissioner of CDD, and Andrew Proudton, who is the Assistant Director for education quality at the agency of Ed, they are currently collaborating on this topic. They will soon be making a proposal to the Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators for CDD to sponsor the provisional license. I believe that this is the correct path, it's the correct move, as CDD is the current organization that has oversight and can hold these programs accountable. So I encourage you to ask Andrew and Janet to testify. I think that would be very helpful. I think the only last thing that I would want to say is superintendents, we can't hold private preschool programs accountable. We can't put mechanisms in place when we're worried about an employee, because these individuals are not our employee. We simply just have no authority in this arena, and the legislative framework should reflect the reality of how our authority works and doesn't work. Preschool is really important. High quality preschool instruction and high quality preschool educators are essential, and your public school system will benefit if we have really strong preschool programs. We just need to ensure that the right agency with the right expertise and the right authority is not only overseeing the programs, but is overseeing licensure and the employees that work in those programs. That will allow and ensure that standards are high and that accountability is in place. I am happy to answer any questions.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. I just wanna be abundantly clear. There was a program in which, in this case, the AOE did sponsor provisional licenses. It worked. And what you're saying is that they are is that CDD and AOE are currently in talks to come up with a proposal to sort of return to that kind of system where it's the state that is sponsoring provisional licenses, not superintendents.

[Amy Minor (Superintendent, Colchester School District; President, VSA; Chair, Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators)]: Yes, and I would say it would probably be a short term system. And just to be very clear, twice the agency of Ed had that. The first program was under Deputy Amy Fowler, that went away. And then the second time was facilitated and organized by Wendy Cobb. And so those were two separate programs, both were in place for a period of time and both programs went away.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Yeah, but both satisfy the concerns over liability.

[Amy Minor (Superintendent, Colchester School District; President, VSA; Chair, Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators)]: Yep, it protected superintendents from putting their own license on the line for an employee that is not theirs.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. Right, you're up.

[John Muldoon (Superintendent, Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District)]: Thanks everyone. John Muldoon. I'm the superintendent at Mount Mansfield. This is actually my first year in that role and my first time coming to give testimony, so I appreciate the opportunity. MMU serves Huntington, Bolton, Richmond, Jericho, and Underhill, as well as several towns that tuition students for high school. We have nine different campuses. Four of them offer pre k. And it is a little ironic that I would consider myself one of the biggest advocates for pre K in the school systems that I've worked in because of my background as a secondary teacher and a high school principal. I was not an early childhood educator, and I have the utmost respect for people that do choose that profession. But I came to love it, not just for the general services I was aware that it offers for our communities, but for many of the reasons that my colleagues have just expressed. To me, pre K is the biggest equity lever that we have as a public school system. And I think that's a pretty big statement to make, and I would stand by that statement all day long. Know the research on it is very clear. There's been decades and decades of research on pre K. You can find the economic basis behind it. There estimates that range from $7 to $16 return on investment for every dollar we spend on pre K education, depending on the actual scale or time span that you're looking at. And I think the thing that really attracts me to pre k as an equity lever is it's an investment or a tie that truly does raise all up. Everybody benefits from it. And at the same time, the kiddos and the families that actually do need more and need the most support benefit the most from it. So everyone benefits, and those that we want to help the most get that help that they need. And I agree with Elaine about the services that we can provide in pre k being impactful, although I always frame them as pre intervention. So in our public school setting, we have preschool teachers, we have other educational staff that are working there, and then we have really specialized resources that already exist in our school. Special ed professionals, psychologists, speech and language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, the list goes on, behavioral consultants and interventionists. And these are all things that allow us to be extraordinarily nimble as a public school system when an emerging need shows up. We don't actually have to wait for something to take root in order to intervene. In pre K, we've built teams in our schools that have the flexibility to respond extremely quickly and actually prevent the need for a legitimate intervention at a future date. And I think that that is both the key to it being an effective equity lever but also being a very fiscally responsible investment for us as a state and certainly for Mount Mansfield as a school district. I don't really think about pre K as a classroom. I think about it as an ecosystem where we have highly specialized people working as part of a team. I also think the interesting piece about public school pre K is that it's a door that is never closed to anyone. This is true about all public schools. But in pre K, serve just like in other ways, we serve any kid regardless of their disability or behavior. And that does actually serve to concentrate need in our public school pre K programs. So for MMU, we have more than 80% of our pre K students on IEPs that require services in our pre K programs in our buildings. And that is an interesting statistic to me because more than sixty percent of our pre K aged students attend private sites instead of our public pre K. So there's this great disproportionality in where services take place. To your question, Chair Conlon, we do not offer services outside of our boundaries. It is

[Chair Peter Conlon]: But you do the voucher to do outside the boundaries.

[John Muldoon (Superintendent, Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District)]: That's true. And that is really just because we are a true childcare desert. My district is in Chittenden County, and yet most of my towns have no licensed childcare or pre K programs. And the places that do are actually very space constrained. So we have 138 children in our current pre K program. More than 200 pre K age children attend pre K programs outside the district boundaries. So mostly in Williston, South Burlington, and some in Essex. And we have just gone through a very public process as a district this fall and this winter about pre k needs in the community and potential options for expansion. And I will just be honest, we have heard hours of heartbreaking testimony from our families, that can't find placements, that, can't work because they can't find placements, and that drive an hour plus each way to the sole place that they could find a pre K spot for their child. So it is a huge, I would say, crushing community need for our district. And I know that that could be said for many of our communities around the state. And because of that, we're taking big risks actually next year. Currently spend a little more than $2,800,000 on pre K programs. I understand previous studies have shown that pre K students are weighted the same as kindergarten students in terms of actual cost to educate, not what we actually get for reimbursement. I would say they're more expensive, but I would happily take a pre K weight or a kindergarten weight for pre K kids. So of that 2,800,000 and that's just staffing costs, actually. That doesn't include any other costs. About $1,000,000 of that comes back to us from the state. So we transfer about $1,800,000 from our K to 12 funds every year to fund pre K programs in the district.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Just to move things along during the time. You want start speaking toward the bail, that'd great.

[John Muldoon (Superintendent, Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District)]: Okay, Perfect. So we are expanding, and I would say that actually brings me to the obstacles that we face. And I think when I consider this bill, I would echo something that Amy said, which is that it very much to me seems like it's adding complexity and cost or, as I see, additional barriers without actually giving us the tools to expand. So I agree with the intent around prioritizing and funding expansion. I think a more practical move would actually be to increase the weights as had been previously recommended. Or many districts don't fund pre K to the extent that we need because the weight actually concentrates the effect on the excessive spend threshold. You're spending roughly the same amount of money, but the divisor is 0.46 instead of one or 1.5 or whatever the case may be. So it can get you into trouble very quickly with the excessive spend threshold. And for example, S220, which I know isn't in this committee, but it's going for house ways and means, would only make that problem more acute. So I think another temporary measure could be to exempt school districts spending on pre K from that threshold or to hold harmless districts that are expanding pre K space. Happy to take any questions.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: So one of the concerns I brought up as we were discussing this was language that essentially says that if there's not sufficient capacity, that it becomes the responsibility of the school district. And I think about your area, Chittenden County, where we've watched over the years where childcare centers have been closed. And then this, I assume this language would say, can't find a placement, school district is now responsible for providing pre K, which isn't quite as simple as that sounds.

[John Muldoon (Superintendent, Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District)]: If I could respond to that, mean, want to expand pre K. We just are lacking the tools right now. So we're taking a risk by expanding next year and trying to access some CCFAP funds to do that. But we're still going to lose money on pre K, which means every dollar we invest is some fraction of the dollar that has to come from other programs. So I think the real obstacle and the thing that the state could do would be to pursue equal waiting or some kind of other funding mechanism for public schools. And I think if that happened, we would all just naturally expand pre K. It's just hard. The language that's in here right now is really hard for me because we already have the desire to expand. We just don't have the means.

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: I would say that would be even more acute under a foundation formula because it's capped the amount of spending that can occur. And so that's why we were pleased to see a JFO recommendation to provide the full education opportunity payment plus waits for our pre K kids, recognizing that the costs sometimes exceed one through four costs to provide and especially to stand up. I spoke to other superintendents, the figures all ranged, but they're putting significant investments into their pre K programs because they believe in this work and they're being financially penalized for it through our system. Wrote to me and said that they were spending $1,200,000 on the program that they've expanded in the last couple of years, and others also shared similar figures.

[Amy Minor (Superintendent, Colchester School District; President, VSA; Chair, Vermont Standards Board for Professional Educators)]: And Chair Conlon, if it's okay if I can just add, we also would love to have that opportunity to expand pre K. I don't have space to expand pre K, and so this is gonna connect right back to your favorite topic around school construction, but that would cause us have a choice. If we offered more hours, I would then be able to serve fewer children in our preschool program because I only have so many classrooms. But again, that's part of the reason why Colchester did our facilities bond so that in our renovation of Union And Porters, we will have a little bit of capacity there, not enough capacity to do all of our pre K students, but it does give us more space than we currently have, which connects to the foundation formula. And for those schools that were outside of the 07/01/2024 date for bonds, why there is a penalty for us as the bond payments get included into our per pupil spending. But we would love to expand pre K.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Representative Brady.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: My concern that I shared towards the introduction yesterday is really around process here. Because like all of you as an educator, I deeply share a commitment to pre K. We could do anything. It would be to really truly have universal full day pre K. And I think that would just be an incredible asset to this state and to so many of the challenges we face. But this bill raises so many issues that I worry we do not have time to adequately work through right now in this committee while we're also. So I guess I'm curious if this testimony was in the House Human Services as well, like the major themes or concerns that have been shared here, whether you had the opportunity to do that in Human Services. Yeah, I'm going to be transparent. You all are keeping me extremely busy. Yes, I know. Cameron, and from the VSBA testified on a much earlier draft of this. So it was not the same language at the time. And I'm sure I don't want to assert that I know the dynamics of that testimony because I was not in the room. So I think Sue would be able to answer any questions, or I can try. But like I said, you guys are keeping us quite busy.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Any other questions from committee members?

[Chelsea Myers (Executive Director, Vermont Superintendents Association)]: I do want to stress again that the charge for Act 73 was to address raisins. The AFO did do that report, and once again, we're returning to a study on that, which does not move us closer to a foundation form, though that moves us further away.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: So I think in terms of the issue of the study, since it's about rates and all of that, we'll let ways and means when they get this bill, it's not what they want to do, but a lot of this is policy defaults kind of in our area. Yeah, all right. If there's nothing else, then great, thank you very much. For the committee, we're back here at one It's probably gonna be more like 01:15, but just plan on the casual one.