Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: For my committee members. Okay. Welcome back. We're in House Human Services and we are taking up, I'm sorry, the number of the bill, representative Burroughs? Page eight six one. Page eight six one regarding, the creation of, an Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator position within state government. And this is a drive by bill of a bill that came out of House General. Excuse me. We have the reporter of the bill with us today. So welcome, Representative Burroughs. And this is on our committee page. So, members, you can find it there, as well as the amendment from appropriations. Oh, it's on it's already there? That's what my committee assistant Fantastic. Yes.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Well, thank you so much for having me in to talk about this bill. For the record, my name is Elizabeth Burrows, and I represent Windsor One, which is Heartland, West Windsor, and Windsor. And this bill the purpose of this bill is to really, at long last, address the state's inconsistent fidelity to the Americans with Disabilities Act. I'll read you some of the data that I put together. More than one quarter of Vermonters have at least one disability. That makes us legion. Roughly sixty percent of all of the Human Rights Commission's cases are related to disability discrimination. Approximately fifty nine percent of adults with a mobility disability and sixty five percent with a co disability in Vermont earn less than $25,000 a year, which means they are reliant on state agencies for support. And those supports may be spread across several agencies without coordination or consistent understanding of the Americans with Disabilities Act. For example, HR deals with employment while BGS deals with building accessibility, while HSA transportation obviously deals with transportation issues. And then there are other agencies we know, especially in your committee, you know, that provide other services. And those may be not maybe. Those are dealt with completely separately. The application of the Americans with Disabilities Act is siloed. And it may be an add on to a position. In many states, the ADA requires that an employer with 50 employees or more must have an ADA person on staff. But it does not require that that person be separate physician. So the application is really uneven, and the training may be completely inconsistent or a one time training. Or it really varies from agency to agency, department to department, and also in our towns. So this position creates a permanent and authoritative voice for one quarter of our population that's left out of decisions that are made about them. It creates a hub for consistent ADA training and procedures at all state agencies and even at municipalities, which helps municipalities and agencies and our state to avoid costly lawsuits. It creates the ability to locate grants that are actually available that we don't have consistent access to for compliance and upgrades. It creates the ability to Oh, it creates a way It could create a way for municipalities of any size to grow capacity to address disability by pooling and coordinating resources on larger scale. It can save municipalities a lot of time and money. It saves money through efficiencies within state government by coordinating programs between and among agencies. It saves money through lawsuit avoidance from nonadherence. It prevents complaints for state agencies and municipalities through prioritized planning. It also educates all levels of governance on ableism, which also saves money. And it creates a level of accountability where none currently exists. And it provides advisory resources and capacity for our legislature. I'll come back to that one in just a second. It could provide guidance on digital access and adherence to the new federal rules that are currently in effect. An example of how it could provide advisory resources for the legislature, this is just from last week. There was a group of students at Dartmouth who did a really great presentation on accessible housing in the Upper Valley where I live. And one of their they had their you know, they write their research, and that one of their conclusions was to for our legislature to add money to the Vermont Center for Independent Living. And I thought while I was sitting there, you know, my brain went clickity click, and I thought, well, we already have that at VHIP. We, in our committee, added this pool of money to VHIP to be able for people to be able to upgrade their homes to make them more accessible. It's not a ton of money, but it helps. And I thought, wow, if we had had a state coordinator, they could have put those two pieces together, that BHIP has not dispersed this funding because they had not agreed on what the definition of what the upgrade would be. And then, Rutt Centers for Independent Living didn't have the funding. And yet, if we had had a state coordinator, we could have had someone say, when we were working on the VHIP proposal, oh, maybe you guys should get together and and coordinate here. That would have unblocked both of those entities from or it would have encouraged, collaboration between those two, and that flow of money could have come more easily. And that's just an example of, you know, being high up enough in governance to be able to have a perspective on the whole picture at all of the different levels.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Thank you. So I have a couple of questions. So I know that, well, first off, when I did a scan through the bill, you had mentioned something about advice to municipalities. I don't see that in the bill. Is it there and I'm just not seeing it?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: It's not explicit in Okay. But it about all levels of governance in the state

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Okay. That was there. The the only reason I say that because that would have been a problem for me, to be honest, because we would be creating an expectation that we would not be able to fulfill if we included all municipalities. The ethics board or whatever it's called is an example of that, which they've essentially closed down and now it's supposed to be a place where municipalities are able to access. Anyways, so I didn't wanna recreate what's what we can't already identify.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: And and really, like, if if the if the position if you think about it, if the position is creating trainings for people and, you know, all state workers, then there's no reason why municipalities couldn't Couldn't access it. Access it. Yeah.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Okay. Got it. And then my other question is on page two where it talks about the hiring of the position. Shall consider only those candidates nominated by the following entities. So I don't have a problem with the entities. I'm just wondering, does that mean that they are going to get together and they're going to give a slate of candidates? Or does that mean each one is going to say, well, we have this person over here who we can recommend for the position, and then all four of them do that?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Yeah. We actually we talked about that in our committee, and we purposefully left it vague because

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: So they could decide to get together if they wanted or they could just issue their own recommendations? Yes.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: And and those entities work together often in in this area, so, you know, they either will or doesn't really matter, as long as there are qualified candidates that have been vetted by those groups.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Some of them are, I guess I would describe one, like coalition for disability rights is, I guess I would loosely describe it as a group. It used to be something much different than what it is now. Yeah, right, right. Other Okay. Questions from committee members about this?

[Rep. Esme Cole]: Yeah. Just trying to see where this individual will be in state government.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: In the AOA. In the AOA. Yeah.

[Rep. Esme Cole]: Good.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: That's on Sorry. That's right, page it's up to page It's right at beginning, yeah. Line 13 on page one. Yeah.

[Rep. Doug Bishop]: I guess a statement and then a question. You referenced how there are people within different agencies and departments that are doing some of this work sometimes, or probably most frequently, as an add on to something else that they're doing. So for me, seeing this position, I think it would amplify what they are doing in a good way and strengthen what they're able to do and build up stronger resources. And I think it's good that there's sort of pentacles out into different it's that'll be improved by a central coordinator. Question with respect to the oh, what was it? The overseas self evaluation processes.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: That's required by the ADA.

[Rep. Doug Bishop]: Yeah. Can you

[Rep. Esme Cole]: tell us a little bit more about that?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Yeah. The ADA requires that entities with 50 employees or more do a self evaluation and a self inventory of how they're doing with regards to adherence to the ADA. When you think about self evaluation and you think about really a self evaluation for a department for whom ADA compliance is an add on. And the potential for, know, the, let's just say, the potential for the difference in fidelity to the ADA. And you think about one department that's checking a box versus a department that genuinely is geared towards providing autonomy for people and access to whatever programs they have, they're gonna be they're gonna be self evaluated completely differently. But if you have an overarching office that walks through what that self evaluation is supposed to be and what it's supposed to look like, it would help provide consistency across all of those entities. That works out your bottom.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes, Clerk]: Yeah, thank you for this. I'm curious if you're envisioning this coordinator convening

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: the

[Rep. Daniel Noyes, Clerk]: appropriate state agencies that kind of have some role in ensuring compliance and if that should be explicit. If you're envisioning like a convening like twice a year to kind of come together to make sure that we're doing all the things that we have in compliance, we're identifying gaps, we're thinking about education and all that. And if that's the case, should that be explicit? You know, we did talk about I had in the original So first, it was

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: a short form that was maybe one sentence long. And then it was long form that had the whole kitchen sink and everything else in it. And then we pared it back down, and we decided that we didn't wanna be too terribly prescriptive in the beginning because it is an enormous job. Yeah. And it will be an enormous job for a good couple of years. And we wanted to be able to allow that person to prioritize how they need to in the beginning. Then we could go back and change it as it goes along, but we don't want them to get stuck. Originally, it had this person fielding calls from individuals. But it was like, yeah, no, don't do that. Don't set them up for failure. Just let them do the prioritizing. They're gonna be at a high enough level that they will have the power to do that. So we did list that they are to work with the other agencies and organizations.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Yeah, I mean, think you give, you know, there's a list of 10 different things that provides direction, but, is not overly prescriptive. When you said it's a big job, that's part of a little bit of my concern, to be honest with you. That much as we've seen in these other offices that we have created. So Office of Child Youth and Family Advocate, Office of Racial Equity, Office of the one I was referring to at the beginning, conflicts of interest. The ethics. Ethics. The ethics board or whatever it's called, that we can't keep up with the volume of work that then the individual undertakes. I'm not saying that's not a reason to consider, let me just finish. I'm sorry. To consider the position. I just think that it makes me wonder, I guess, about how we could make the job doable without necessarily expecting in two years' time for them coming back and saying, there's no way I can possibly do all this and with one person. And while I see they have the support, legal, administrative, etcetera, support of the agency of administration, that's not the support to actually do at least 10 things across all of state government. So that concerns me a little bit, not that, but just statement. So yeah, sorry,

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: go ahead. I believe that there is quite a bit of federal funding that's being pulled at the table. It's not being accessed. When a state does undertake to upgrade adherence to the ADA, the federal government does have a pool of money that can be provided for that, and we're not accessing it right now. And so it could be that once the person gets in there, however they decide to prioritize it, they might be able to partially self fund their own office for some of

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: that activity. Because that's the one thing it doesn't say that was

[Rep. Daniel Noyes, Clerk]: gonna say, should we say something about looking for that should be one of their main responsibilities, to identify grants that are available, or at least prioritize the things that we need to be in compliance with to make us eligible for those grants.

[Rep. Doug Bishop]: I would argue that would be I like the idea of that, but do we require How many other officers do we require for functions you want to carry out to self fund themselves? I wonder, would we want to

[Rep. Daniel Noyes, Clerk]: Yeah, I'm not necessarily thinking about self funding. I wasn't thinking about self funding. Was just thinking money on the table. If there is available funds that we can have access to, if we do X, Y, and Z, I would feel like that should be a priority, or at least it should be stated that this is what we want in this position, this person to be working on as one of their charges. Rutland?

[Rep. Esme Cole]: Yeah, we did allow the Office of the Child Advocate to write grants and to look for funding, but we didn't prescribe, say, you should be doing this. We just provided them to be able to write grants because money would go, any grants they got would go directly to the Office of the Child Advocate. And maybe some language around giving them the ability to apply for grants might be helpful in that setting.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Yeah, represent Cole. I'm wondering, Rose,

[Rep. Esme Cole]: if there have been other times in the legislature when we have discussed better maximizing our drawdown of those specific federal funds that you were talking about through any vehicle whatsoever.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: I'm sorry. Can you repeat that question or rephrase the question? Oh, yeah.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Are you meaning with specific regard to ADA? Yeah. Exactly. Grants in general. Just are there have there been opportunities or places where we have asked other organizations within state government to be accessing those potential grant funds? I mean, when you said I believe, I it's I think we need maybe something a little more definitive than I believe. Like, I don't know personally know whether there are grants or there aren't grants, and there may very well be.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: I do know that one example is the digital upgrade, because I think it was two or three years ago that the rules changed, and the federal government provided funding for digital upgrades that we have not taken advantage of. And it's actually pretty clear from our website that it's not In

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: terms of making our websites more accessible to individuals. Yeah. Thank you for that example. Okay, so I think folks, I would have you pull up the appropriations amendment. It actually does something unique. It doesn't actually pull the money out. It just says that the position would be authorized if there is money appropriated. So that means essentially they're moving the bill along. The appropriations process is not complete. And so it's a contingent essentially. So I just wanted to make you aware of that, which is a little bit different than what they have. To me that says they saw the importance of the bill and of the position, but can't guarantee that there's gonna be funding for it.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Yeah. They want to it was my understanding they wanna get it get it through the house, have it go through the senate process, including some other you know, we don't know what committee it would go to in the in the senate per se, go through the senate process. And then if it gets through all of that, then maybe at the end, during the budget reconciliation process, maybe I'll be

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: up for discussion at least. All right. So how are members feeling? So I'm wondering if we should be explicit about the giving sort of along what Ref Noyes was saying, giving them authorization to apply for grants, not necessarily.

[Rep. Esme Cole]: I was trying to find that.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Yeah, not necessarily. It's not intending, Rep. Bishop, to make them have to self fund, but to enable us to further provide accessibility. And I appreciate the example that you gave Brett Burrows, because when people think accessibility in the general public, they do not think about language. They don't think about how things are written. We do in this committee, you'll often see some of our bills written in plain language, things like that. But in general population, when you say accessibility, they're always thinking about physical accessibility, which of course is very important, but it's not the only thing when it comes to accessibility. And so, think, of course, is, what is it, thirty years now? I think it's thirty years, the ADA. I would say Vermont has been behind the times in terms of what How many other states did you say had some similar type of position? It's interesting.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Mean, not exactly. I can't remember, but it is somewhere around 15 other states. Yeah. And they are either very populous or very unpopulous. So some of them are, you know, populous, and it's therefore unwieldy for them. And some of them

[Unidentified Committee Member]: are

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: unpopulous and just have not addressed it. And I think that part of the thing to me is that we don't as a state necessarily understand that the ADA is a baseline, and it's supposed to be for autonomy. It's not an add on. It's not like, as I was saying to the appropriations committee, like, yesterday when the back elevator was down, I'm not, like, whining about the elevator being broken again. I just I can't get down to the mezzanine, and therefore, can't or when this elevator is down, I can't get up here. Yep. Like, it actually prevents me from being able to and people don't really think about that. They don't they think that I'm complaining about the elevator being and then the elevator problem and then this and that. But it actually prevents me from being able to effectively The public housing, not just public housing, but other I have

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: a place in Waterbury right now where down street housing, one of their buildings has had an out of service elevator up and on for leaps now. And literally people who utilize a wheelchair are not on the first and they've not been able to get out of

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: the building. I've heard the same at Lamoille. Yeah, that happened in Montpelier last night at the end of the session.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Just right around the corner. So it it's an issue. It for sure is an issue. And I'm not sure what we can do about elevator repair people, but so

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: I Yeah.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: It's not the issue is not the elevator.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: The issue is the access and the Exactly. Autonomy. I mean, really, it's about autonomy. Yeah. Yeah. Being able to just live without having to ask for everything.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead, Representative. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm just sending a quick question. First, my apologies for being tardy. I appreciate you being here. In the hiring for the coordinated positions, secretary administration shall consider only those candidates nominated by the four entities and the candidate also has to have lived experience. I'm just wondering where the rationale was coming in regards to just those four agencies can select and also how are they gonna be able to assess with the experience? How's that being defined?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Well, that came from the idea of nothing about us without us. Right? Being actually because there is no actual voice or authority for people with actual people with disabilities. So the idea is to create that. Right? And so it is a unique hire like, literally unique hiring process. But that is in part because it is a voice, because it should not be a person who does not have that lived experience to to, you know, be be in that position.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Oh, no. I agree with, you know, the person having that lived experience. I was just getting that you have these four agencies that you listed shall consider only those candidates nominated by these four agencies. And then the person who's a coordinator with the lived experience, I agree with all that. My concern is how are the candidates that are gonna be nominated from only those four entities gonna assess what tools gonna be utilized to assess that lived experience.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: But you can't really ask about disability when you're interviewing

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's what I'm getting at.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Yeah, I'm sorry. Just thought I would put it out

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, no, I don't want And my head

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: if that is a requirement of the job description, then one would think that

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Applicants would self identify. Applicants would self Yeah. So we have a couple of options, folks. I've heard some question about whether or not we want to authorize the position to see available grants to help implement the responsibilities of the job. Or we could act on it as it's presented. So what's the and we have another witness. So our lunch is gonna be a little late. Just letting you know. What's people's pleasure? Wait. Why why don't we hold on this? Yeah. Is this do what's the schedule for the floor? Is this on the floor today?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: No. If it gets through appropriations today, then it'll be on the floor on Friday.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Okay. Alright. We don't need

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: to do it

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: right now

[Rep. Esme Cole]: if we don't have the session. Well,

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: we can still do an amendment. Mhmm. Okay. Thank you, representative Rose. Thank you very much.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Yeah. Thank you very much

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: for hearing me. Thank you

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: for bringing this bill forward. We appreciate it.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Oh my goodness. It's it's huge. I mean, you might not realize how huge it is, but it is so huge.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: I I I do realize how huge it is, which is actually awesome giving me some concern, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: I just mean it's huge for the disability community. Oh, yeah, to see it. Yeah.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Erin, thank you so much. And my apologies for being a little tardy here. Our schedules kind of gotten a little kafloy. Good morning.

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: Good morning. It is still morning. So

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: I'm not sure if you have seen the draft that dropped this morning of the bill.

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: I just did a quick skim of it.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Okay. So the floor is yours. I don't think we need to go through all of the We know about First Children's Finance, so you don't need to give us the background. Excuse me. My apologies. Floor is yours, Erin.

[Rep. Esme Cole]: Thank you. For the record though, I will introduce myself.

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: My name is Erin Roach. I'm the Vermont director of First Children's Finance. So I won't I'll skip the preamble about First Children's Finance. And there is written testimony that I submitted this morning. I'm not going to read it at all because time, but I do want to hit a couple of things that I think are just important to note thinking about the proposed legislation and Chair Wood had asked me to talk about sort of increased capacity for universal pre K and while we don't track that specifically, I did wanna put it in sort of a context of how preschool spaces and universal pre K spaces increase as infant and toddler spaces increase. I just thought it would helpful for all of you to have that context. So thank you for having me and thank you for considering all these things about Universal Pre K. Listening to the witness that just stopped, I feel like it doesn't feel as monumental as people getting access to all the things that they need, but getting access to Universal Pre K is also important for the young children in Vermont and being able to do that in a way that meets the needs of young children and their families and what their family situations are is really important in terms of access and equity. So I appreciate this committee spending some time to really consider this issue. So I put some graphs in here, feel like maybe you have some expectation that when I talk that I always bring graphs of data, and so I didn't want to disappoint in that way.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Actually the one that shows by county is actually really, really helpful. The one with The the little

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: orange bubble?

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: The little orange dots. Yeah. That is really a really excellent visual.

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: I thought you would enjoy that. And it comes from our supply and demand gap analysis report, which is an every two years report. Let's Grow Kids had produced it, they called it stalled at the start. We felt like that title wasn't appropriate anymore, it's our report now, so we just called it the supply and demand gap analysis. So this is just the pre K spaces there, but we also have a companion graphs for infants and toddlers. So if you're interested, the link to that report or to access that report is testimony as well. We also produced three supplemental reports this year. One of them is about universal pre K and preschool age spaces. One of them is about part time childcare spaces because supply and demand analysis is really just full time spaces. So I wanted to call your attention to just below that little orange bubble graph. There's a very small table. And what it shows is that the vast majority of public universal pre K programs are part time programs, that is less than forty eight weeks a year and or forty hours a week. And the vast majority of privately operated programs are full time programs. And so I don't say that as like a judgment on anything, I just think it's really important as the committee is thinking about threes and fours and hours and access and equity to understand what the current system looks like. And I also wanna mention that having different choices for different children and their needs and different families and their needs is really important. We have focused mostly on full time childcare, infants, toddlers and preschoolers, but there are families that don't need or want full time childcare. They might only want universal pre K when their child is three or four years old and they might only want it for a few hours a week and then everything in between. And so it's really important that there be choices that meet what families and particularly their young children need. Just wanted to make that quick point. And then I know you all are interested in sort of equity of access, and so there's a table on the next page, on page three, that shows the percentage of children who are three or four years old that in my county, that based on the number of universal pre K spaces in that county would be likely to have access to universal pre K. And you can see it varies from a low of fifty five percent in Franklin County to a high of ninety five percent of preschool aged children in Windham County having access to some kind of universal pre K. And that, to be clear, that is part time, full time, private, public, but it is universal pre K. So it means that those spaces meet that state definition of universal pre K. It's not just preschool spots.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: So can I ask a question about that, course? And maybe I just need to understand the differences between your chart here and what we heard from Building Bright Futures. Yeah. Because they seem to be different. Maybe they just seem to be different to me and maybe I'm not understanding how they compare or are they saying different things. That's right.

[Rep. Esme Cole]: I'm so glad you asked the question. Sorry to interrupt. Actually, in

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: that first page of my preamble that I sort of skipped, I noted that Doctor. Morgan Crossman had given testimony last week. She talked about the number of children enrolled in universal pre K and whether they were public or private and etcetera. This is the number of spaces that there are. It has nothing to do, and we have the number of children in the population, but we're not making any statement about how many of those children are enrolled in anything. This is just a number of spaces that they wanted to be enrolled. Does that?

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: No, that's helpful. I mean, of the things that I mean, families have choices about whether they enroll their children and they still will have that choice. And we are wanting to just make sure that if they choose to make that choice to have UPK, that they will be able to reasonably find something, whether in public or private, in their area. And as you said, it varies, but it's not as why there's big variability, I mean, between fifty five and ninety five or 93. It's not as bad as I had in my at the top. Yeah. Right.

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: Yeah. Mean, it does suggest that most children in the state would have access if they wanted it.

[Rep. Esme Cole]: The

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: other data I wanted to bring, and the 2026 Cost of Care Report is something that First Children's Finance National Team did. It was contracted by the Child Development Division. This is also available on our website and the link is available there. I just pulled one graph from that, it's a much longer report and there's a lot more detail about assumptions and what they mean by cost of care. But I wanted to just make one point, which is if you look on page four, the graph shows that for centers of any size, so there are small, medium, and large centers, and then family childcares, that care for infants and toddlers is sort of a loss leader for any size center. They don't make money. In fact, they would likely lose money on infants and toddlers. They make back money on preschool and school age children. And so it's really important, I think, for this committee to understand that any change to the system, even if sort of in the long term it's neutral or positive, a will have a big short term effect because we're talking about businesses with not much in cash reserves that, like I said, even a change that ultimately might be for the positive might really put a lot of stress on that system in the short term. So I just would urge the committee to think about that as you're making changes. The other thing I wanted to point out that's not in my written testimony because I hadn't seen the proposed bill when I was writing this, is that I want to just make sure everybody understands that universal pre K and childcare financial assistance are not interchangeable, that even if the funding amounts are similar, they are differently accessed. So universal pre K says, if you find a universal pre K space, the state will pay for your ten hours. Childcare financial assistance is a means tested program. You have to be below a certain income, you have to demonstrate that the caregivers are in the workforce or in full time education or have some other kind of service need. So not every three year old is eligible, or a four year old for that matter, is eligible for childcare financial assistance in the same way they would be for universal pre K. I want to make sure everybody understands that shifting the way three year olds universal pre K is paid for could have some unintended consequences because those three year olds might not be eligible to have that paid for by the state. And the second point that's slightly related is I noticed in the proposed legislation, it talks about four year olds getting twenty hours of universal pre K. I wanna just mention, and if you were to read this cost of care report, could better understand that most private and even some public schools will blend universal pre K and childcare financial assistance funding to provide for a longer day or longer week of hours. To get full time childcare financial assistance, you need to have a need for care twenty six hours or more. And so if you were needing forty hours of care and now you get ten hours of universal pre K, you would still be eligible for a full time thirty hour certificate. But if you change that and you put them at twenty hours and they have a need for forty hours of care, they'll only be eligible for a twenty hour certificate and that's not a full time childcare certificate anymore. And so I just would urge you to consider the implications on families that need full time childcare in addition to universal pre K and how changing the number of hours that come from universal pre K will have effects on how much childcare financial assistance that family might be eligible for. And then one, well, I guess two last points. One is that because you were interested in how capacity for universal pre K increases, we did a quick analysis of all the grants we've given out over the last couple of years, and we looked at, so these are infant and toddler capacity building grants, so you can only get a grant if you're adding infant or toddler spaces. When we looked at how many of the spaces those projects add and how many of them are universal pre K spaces or preschool age spaces, and I just wanted you to see that, you know, for centers, 47% of the spaces that the projects included were universal pre K spaces.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: So is that 47% of the 36%?

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: No, of the programs that are universal pre K pre qualified, 47% of their spaces in these projects were for preschool spaces. And so my point is really that preschool spaces come along with infant and toddler spaces, no matter that we're not funding them, we're only funding the infant and toddler spaces, that the economics in that previous slide about cost of care are such that if you're adding infant spaces, you're almost always adding preschool spaces too.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what the testimony you're giving is I mean, this is a new piece, this little piece right you're talking about here. We've heard from multiple witnesses about essentially the older kids subsidize the younger kids in terms of that in childcare facilities. Yeah, we're pretty familiar with that, unfortunately, that dynamic. Okay, thank you.

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: Yes, thank you. And just in closing, I would urge you to hear from people who are actually in the field. I think the expert testimony is really helpful on a broad level, but I think universal pre K coordinators and school principals and childcare directors are probably able to speak to what the likely impact of any of these changes would be in a way that I'm only just trying my best.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: So, you so much, Erin. I appreciate that. I appreciate this and appreciate the information that you've provided and the links to the bigger document. That's very helpful. Of course. And honestly, appreciate the presence of First Children's Finance in Vermont and all that you're doing to be part of our brand project to increase access to childcare and early learning for our youngest kids. So thank you so much.

[Erin Roach, Vermont Director, First Children's Finance]: Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity. ACT 76 has been amazing and I am no end of grateful to have been part of that implementation. It's just been an amazing experience. So thank you for all of your consideration.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows]: Awesome.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Okay, folks. Thank you, Erin. Will the floor and then who did anybody see the estimate from Betsy Anne?

[Rep. Doug Bishop]: I don't.

[Rep. Theresa Wood, Chair]: Alright. So we will not be meeting you at this moment. We are likely to we put watch your emails and texts. I'll put it on both, but we may have to meet early tomorrow. That may be the only time we're able to get JFO. We're still trying to work that out. So when I say early, it wouldn't be before 08:30, but it would be like 08:30. So to be arranged. So okay. Great. We'll see.