Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: In advance.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Good morning. It's the Ways and Means Committee. It's Friday Thursday, March 26 at 09:15. We are beginning our work. Did you wanna go in the hallway for your conversation? That would be super awesome. Thank you. So we're still in the midst of crossover. My head is certainly in 12 different places. I don't know where all of your heads are. We have so many bills on the floor this afternoon. And I wanted us to do a hard reset on what we've done so far on education transformation and what is still I for us to wanted to create a document before we did this, but I did not have time to do that. And so we're going to do this all together messy in real time. So fun? So fun, messy, real time. Okay. So this might be a good time for the whiteboard. But you're eating your breakfast, so I'm gonna do my breakfast.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: I'm excited about that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: You're excited about the whiteboard? Okay. I'll talk slowly so you can eat slowly.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: You don't need to provide syrup. Oh, that's just true.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. So this is a list in no order whatsoever, and then let's go through the list. That sound good? And then let's all add things to the list. Okay. So there's special education. Act 73, updated funding for special education to account for house spending in current law is split between district general fund dollars and district special education dollars. So we heard testimony feels like twelve years ago, but I think it was just a month ago, in a joint hearing with House Ed of the need to focus on maintenance of effort, regardless of how the new funding formula works. Because we have, in our JFO's contract around the weights, there's special work being done on special education funding. So the Council of Special Education, I think What is it called?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: What is their association called? Anyone got it?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Vermont Council of Special Yeah, I just wanna make that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay, great.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: That's called the Special Education Association. Yeah,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: ZPSEA. Those people shared very specific language that they are recommending we include in next steps in Act 73 to make sure that maintenance of effort, which is a federal requirement, continues to be a vote. And we have that language, and we can pull it up later.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: If it's a requirement, do we need to put it in because it's a requirement of federal law?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: No, but yes. So let's talk for each other once we put the whole list up there and then see

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: if there's anything else we wanna add to that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay, tax classification.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: More to that thing?

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: Go on. Yep. I think

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: we have to have Medicaid in that group as well.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Because Medicaid funds a lot of Let's just do a whole list and then we'll have things to it.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: All right. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Because I'm scared we won't get through the list if we do everything as we go. Tax classification. Act 73 set in motion of division of renomino homestead properties into two categories. I'm just gonna say all of it so that we're all remembering things. Is very helpful to me. And I this I will will share it with everyone once the typing is done. Act 73 set the motional division of our non homestead properties into two categories for the purposes of taxing second homes at a higher rate. The comprehensive report from the Department of Taxes, which I wanna continue to thank the Department of Taxes for, it was such a lovely report, recommends next steps for legislative decisions, form development by tax, until rates could be set in the future to cover the cost of lowering all homestead rates to the lowest rate in the state. We have been moving forward with next steps regarding definitions so the tax department can move forward with their form development. We can't set the rates yet because we don't understand what properties would fall into the new classifications, and we don't have the processes and data that we need to do that. We are finalizing language. We have spent lots of time finalizing that language. I think it's almost ready to tie up in a bow, but we need to look at it one last time.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: We need data still, and we've talked about the processes, and then we'll have the forms left be created by the Department of Taxes. Yes.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Another piece is reappraisals and regional assessment districts. We have a statewide education tax. It's functionally a statewide grant list. However, our properties are valued very inconsistently across the state. We've taken so much testimony on this. We've been working on it for as long as we've been working on the non homestead stuff. It's been multiple biennium. Biennia? Biennia, the plural? Biennium. Is that how? Is biennium the plural? Biennium. Biennium. Anyway. Somehow that's- I've definitely lost English at this point. We'll look it up. Great. It will create savings and efficiency and equity in our system, and we are finalizing the language on that. And we looked at that before crossover. School construction and school debt. Our school construction program ended in 2007.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: And

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: we know that it's been incredibly and consistently across the state since. In order to realize the goals of Act 73, I think everyone agrees that likely some new regional high schools will need to be built. I think everyone agrees that some elementary schools will need to have some additions. Some high schools will need some additions. Lots of things are needed. Act 73 had recommendations in it. For guidance, those are with the agency of education, school construction division. There's a school construction advisory board. A bunch of thoughts and a lot of different puzzle pieces. And we need to somehow bring those together. Trying to get a list of witnesses for that, for us to work on that next week. Reserve guidance. Is it working for you, Charlie? Yep. Okay. Keep it up. In the last few years, difficult education spending, it became very clear to us how some districts are spending differently, some districts are saving differently. If districts are gonna merge, there needs to be equity before or after the merger. And at the request of some business officials, last year, we asked the agency of education to set clear reserve standards and guidance. Was that last year? Two? Anyway, whenever we did it. And so we're taking the next step of clarifying that language. We have that language, too. Pre K. Current law waits for pre K are arbitrary. We've kicked the can on them since Act 27. Human services is working on an update to pre K language to achieve parity in payment and requirements. That language is going to leave the Human Services Committee hypothetically tomorrow. Bless you. It's going to be sent as a memo to the House Education Committee. The House Education Committee is gonna it into is gonna work on it and incorporate it into the bigger Act 73 next steps bill they're working on, and then it will get sent to us. We are gonna need to figure out how to shift From what I understand thus far of what they've done, and we're gonna need to take more testimony, We're gonna need to work on a shift from pupil weights to a categorical grant and what that will look like. So we'll see what happens there. But that's how that information is flowing.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: And it's open, whether it's categorical grades, ways to go.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think that's the direction that that committee is going in, but we will see when it gets here. But we have the choice about that. We get to work on the financing. We have the choice whether it's capital or it's brand. Yes, we get to work on the financing part of

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: it. Transportation

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: equity. We didn't just say transportation equity, we don't Is a key piece of any changes to governance, finance, or education delivery. Heard yesterday that different districts are doing this very differently from each other. The cost of it is very different from district to district. A refundable grant at 50% would not work with the foundation formula. We're gonna need to do lots of things. I think the most effective next step for that would be we form a small informal working group with folks from transportation, folks from here, and folks from Ed to just even figure out what the next steps on that would be.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Yes? I don't even think we have information to Okay. So that would

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: be And so

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think the working group would just say, What information do we need to do next steps?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Okay. Just clear. I also think how you answer any of these is gonna depend on how SED sends to 100%. So House Ed sends to Us. Us. I is

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I should have started with that, but it was further down on my arbitrary list that I've not managed yet. So the next thing I have is CISA support and merger incentives. So House education is likely, but they're planning on voting on a bill around Wednesday, gonna send us a bill that moves towards strengthening the CISO system and then having the CISOs facilitate mergers from there. So when we receive that And that's gonna be the bill that we receive that we're gonna put all these other pieces in. So when we receive that language, we're gonna need to be working on what kind of incentives and disincentives would go in place, tax policy wise, to support the work and the funding of the CISOs and those mergers. I don't know if that's sort of an act 46 style tax thing, another style tax thing. We all need to

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: be thinking about that. Yes. Is this something that JFO can help model? I mean, part of the problem is the districts that didn't merge, the small districts are overwhelmingly tuition towns, and they're already buying education retail. So merging them doesn't save money because they'll still be buying retail. So as we think about costs, squeeze versus juice, Is there a way to model that? Because we could be doing a hell of a lot of squeeze for no juice.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I do not know, but we will find out. And then two more. College education is sending us a bill with CESAs and incentivized mergers, then we will need to add different contingencies to the foundation formula, and we will need to add clarifications to the foundation formula. Bridget's been working on some language for that. We will look at that tomorrow or next week, something like that.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: What about the current formula with that under there?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: The current law formula? Yeah, that I think changes to that can be part of merger. I would put them in the category of update changes to merger incentives personally.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Oh, update changes to

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: merger incentives.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And then the last thing on the list.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I should have told him how many things before he started

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: writing it.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: It's good. Thinking about what I can place. So just

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: so I'm clear on something, chair advisor, there's CISA support, which is strengthening CISA who will facilitate mergers. That could, And since we are finance committee, we would be looking at financial things that would do it. But the merger incentives, we could get started off sooner. You're saying with 6068, the next sixty, sixty eight, the current finding. What do you want? 27 or 24 financing formula.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: That's what I

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: would We wanna make changes to that as we get

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: As part of a transition incentive And I would think of that more in the context. I think Act '46 might be a good place to start, but I'm not sure.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: It's just such a different There's no comparison between '73 and '46. So I think as soon as '70 could be able work the way '46 did, I think it should be very naive.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Thank you for calling me naive. Okay. The last thing is updated appropriations.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Same one.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: In the budget, the budget that is on the floor today, we're gonna have such a great afternoon, everyone. So many great things happening this afternoon, so many big bills. We have transportation, we have a budget, we have the miscellaneous tax,

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: we have a yield bill. It's gonna be

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: like a ladies and means party down there.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: Brian.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: So in the budget, there is updated appropriations to the Agency of Education. There was this huge 3 point something million dollars that went to the Agency of Education last year for contracting. Updating that language to better align with the work that house education is doing.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Do we know if they spent that money? They did not.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And so it's Shifting the appropriation of the remaining money. Can I just ask a question about sex? And we can look at that language.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Can I ask you a question about sex? Second. House Ed is working on, as in what they're working on

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay, in terms of the

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I just need it. I'll spell it out so I'm not assuming anything.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: So to summarize, we're gonna get a bill about CISOs and mergers, voluntary mergers, supported mergers. I'm sure that'll have great ways to describe it. At ten ish, 10:30 ish, Erin Brady is going to come up and give us an update on what they're doing. These are all of the outstanding pieces that we set in place in Act 73 and assigned to ourselves for next steps for this year. What have we left off this list?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Foundation formula analysis for the consultant through JFO.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Foundation formula updates. Did you not write that down?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: I've put conditions to foundation formula,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay, it's not really the same let's just call it foundation formula updates.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Rebecca? I'm sorry to be beating a dead horse here, but there are errors in the current funding formula that are distorting incentives currently, and I think it would be helpful to understand that so that we can understand how the incentives in the current funding are contradicting some of the things that we're seeing.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Talking about Section 127 Whites, Act 100

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: So seven in the

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: the CESA support and merger incentives,

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: think Representative Ode asked about that as well. So changes to the current law formula would go under CSAs, court orders and incentives. We're looking at how we're supporting incentives for the policy direction we wanna be going in.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Might be too much detail, but I'm confused and I don't know about the first year of preschool, the three year olds. I'm unclear if that is or is going to be only for children who need special help and if that will all be reimbursed by the federal government for the special

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: ed costs that we incur. At some point, the House Human Services Committee was looking at moving from three and four year olds to just four year olds. But I think right now, the bill they have in front of is both three and four, they have the bill in front of them as both three and four year olds, but we'll see when it gets here.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Okay, so would wanna ask

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: for better. Sounds good. What was brought up with special ed is Medicaid. Now, my thing, what I want

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: to do about Medicaid reimbursement,

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: you already know about, I've brought up a committee,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: no money falling bottom line, but you said Medicaid, so what did you mean? My point is Medicaid supports both IEP related services, which remains in special education conversation, but in theory, it also supports non IEP health related services. So Section five zero four plans, things like that, which is under the ADA as opposed to IBEA. Can we quantify all that when that bill comes over from human services? Yeah, we'll

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: do that. But that, I think, is what Representative Holcombe said is different than what Let's talk about, let's name other revenue sources and the future of those other revenue sources. How does that sound?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Where we're putting that? If we're talking about all revenue sources,

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: are we also gonna put Act 76 up here? What's Act 76?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: The pre K subsidies, the CFAP program. That will be part of our

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: work on pre K.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Pre K,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: okay. So other revenue sources into the education fund.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: That's a whole separate category, no? Indeed. That's why it got

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: a dash and non star.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Well, that just is time. And

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: revenue sources that are leaving their education fund to go over to the transportation fund over time if that's what they're So should we put that down?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think that

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Sources maybe we can change to

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: and from the Ed Fund. How about So once we figure

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I'm not being the world's best communicator today, team. I'm sorry. So after we see what else we need on the list, I wanna go through each section and clarify the status and what we need to do for next steps on each one. So is there anything else that needs a primary category, representative of all?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: So this is not a weight issue, but we have regions of the state where school districts depend on schools that make parents pay 4,000 to 36,000 additional dollars to enroll. And that shields the district from tax exposure in a way that distorts who's impacted by the excess spending penalty. And unless we address that, I actually think this formula is not going

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: to work. Which one, which formula? Any formula. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Somewhere. I mean, have foundation formula updates, we have current law.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Think it's in the process of support and merger incentives.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think it's because it's supporting Okay, are there any new categories anyone wants to add? Jim, represent Burkhardt. You can use it. Okay, you feel like we've covered all the categories? Yes? Okay. Okay.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: But just to flush out new school construction, school debt. There's some What are existing debt? Existing. Yeah. Existing school debt. Assistant. Looking at bonding and better resources for. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Do we have our list? Yes. It's done by then. Watch. Like, next Friday. We have found a huge amount of work on many of these, and I think maybe that's part of why I want They've been separate. I would like a new term for orphan language. I feel bad for Do we even use the term orphan to refer to humans anymore? Why would call the language orphan? There some technical, lawyerly term for it?

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: I've been told not to use it.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I know. So like, you're tired of using it because you've

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: to expect us to call it that.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: I can call it language.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Just language? I have some language for you. I need a modifier.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: You Unattached.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Language that's not a language not that's

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: not language.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Anyway, what happens?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. Anyway, we have it all as separate language, not together language. I think they were the language.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: They were the words.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: So

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: we have all this separate language, we haven't put it all together, and so I think it's easy to forget about the pieces. So I'm hoping we can start putting it together just so that we can find it all in one place. So let's start by Does anyone have one they want to start with?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: I think school construction would be a good place to start.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Are you serious? No. I think we

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: have gotten the most, but that we feel like we

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: have the most under our belt. I love that.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Check the box.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Yes. Tax classifications. We looked at it eight bajillion times. I feel like it's almost tied up with a bow and we probably just need one more look at it. Is that where everyone else feels we are on it? Some bows will be nice and red and shiny and some will be black. It's drama of it.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: This ain't not everybody likes it. Everyone wants to

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: go in the minority.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Totally. That's okay. Sometimes I go

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: along even though I'm in the majority.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: I know, and I appreciate that.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: Yeah, appreciate that about you, Okay,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: so

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Let's just put it, let's look.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Maybe we could look at it, not when we're fresh in the morning, but at the very end of the day, because we've done it already. The hardest problems we should put in the morning when we're fresh. But that one,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I feel like I was fresh three hours ago, I'm not anymore.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Me too. Four hours ago. Let's do that one now.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: So we

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: can get a structure what in our

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: this process will be.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Tax classification. It's written out.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: I'll pull it up.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: If so, don't have to send it.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: They probably.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Can I add one more thing to Liz? Yeah. We need to talk about timelines.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Yep. You mean for August? Yes. I

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: would use another color about

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: our markets. That's the thing we should

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: talk about. First of we need new workers.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Yeah, then we should do it first.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Well, we have to know what we're doing. I mean, time will be different. You're senseless,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: and if you're doing it, all things take three to five years.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Of when things come into effect? Yes. She said,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And I imagine the bill is going to come from House Ed with a timeline in it, and then we can work with that timeline. But if someone can remember to ask Erin about that when she arrives, that would be cool. It's still a week before we get that bill, though? Isn't that great?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: We have other things.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Because we have so much to do to prepare for it. Once we get it, we're not gonna be able to keep it for a very long time. Because that's how ways and means.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: So we've got a concept, yeah.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think we did a similar thing last year where we worked on all this stuff, and then we only had the actual bill for a couple days.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I remember. Yeah.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Herbert, you're so good to deal with that swim right where

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: it works. Can't even, this is our best.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: This isn't bad? We're all in agreement on it.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: Really always appreciate this committee. Very organized. So draft 3.2 is what we are looking at. Sorsha has it posted on mini website. The idea, as I understand it, is you are all talking about things that could be included in the Ed bill, so we are just looking at wayward classifications language that will make its way to the Ed bill, it sounds like, is the plan.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And I'm going to ask you and John to So what would happen if you put all the things and just want all the different language into one big document, even though you know you would have to put it all into another document after that?

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: I'm guessing with the practical aspect, if we put that all together, that means any changes that we make, we have to coordinate, so it just makes a little less flexible. Kirby Keaton, Legislative Council, quick walk through of the language that we have so far for classifications. The way this will work is section one, we have a change to the grand list under this language, the listers and assessors will start to include on the grand list, the number of dwellings using the definition that we've talked about before, and that we'll cover it below for a parcel.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Last time I was here,

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: there was a little bit of talk at the end with like involving Jake about how exactly things will work out. So I will touch on that because it seemed to be a little bit of an open question last time and relates to what we're looking at. Jake had mentioned that he was under the impression that the brand list would cover number of dwellings and also something to do with the use of the parcel. That is not what we have in the language right now. The way that this language will operate, just 10,000 foot view, listeners and ancestors will identify number of dwellings, the dwelling use attestation would be where the owner lists the use.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Much more appropriate division of responsibilities and more in alignment with how current practice works and would be more comfortable for everyone.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: And so there would be a lot of concern from assessing officials if they were given that responsibility. So I do want to make sure that that's all clear, so that we're all on the same page. I don't recall from the Taxes Act 73 report that they were asking for assessing officials to do that work. It was something through this committee process that it's been landed on that's going be a dwelling use attestation of responsibility. Make that entirely clear. Section two is a new section of law being added on property tax classifications. It establishes the new system. It defines the classifications as homestead, non homestead non residential, and non homestead residential. The term dwelling is used and defined here to identify what is non homestead residential or what is non homestead non residential. Dwelling is somewhat relevant to homestead, but we are using current law for that and it is already well established. Something is not a dwelling if it is not fit for your round habitation, so in that way, seasonal camps, for instance, would be considered non homestead, non residential under the classification system. Homestead has the same meaning as current law. If something's a long term rental, that means it's going to be non homestead, non residential, and We have a definition for a long term rental here that involves being rented out for at least a period of thirty days and for a total of six months in calendar year with a bonafide landlord tenant relationship. Also part of long term rental would be employer housing, both regular employer housing and also for farm workers, for farm employees, is the term we are using here. We have the definition for non homestead, nonresidential, which is the way this definition operates, basically the other bucket. If you do not fall into homestead, and you do not fall into non homestead residential, then you end up as non homestead non residential. We have the definition for non homestead residential, it's a dwelling, or it's a parcel with a dwelling, so automatically if there's not a dwelling that doesn't meet that definition, it's not going to end up in this category. With a dwelling that is not a homestead, printed out as a long term rental, you have decided to also take mobile homes and make sure that they are never considered non homestead residential, so we have that. And also, parcels that are used exclusively by the owner of a homestead on the same parcel, so this is the case where there is an extra unit on the parcel, but it is effectively being used as part of a homestead. So you have made it clear that we are going to make sure that is never considered a second home for purposes of classification.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Can you give me an example of what would then be non homestead residential? Non home, they're not renting out,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: not One renting

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: reason why there's a lot of nuances and details in here is because property is used in lots of different ways, and we're trying to at least hit on the biggest uses out there, so that there's not ambiguity with the system. That's why there's a lot of ins and outs. But the standard property that's going to fall into non homestead residential would be, say, a single family home that is not used as a homestead, and it's just sitting there unused a lot. That would fall into this. That would be considered a second home. Also, a unit that is being rented out for short term rentals or being unused often, like to say, like a company owns a condo and they're just renting it out occasionally, but they're not renting it out for any kind of long term usage or at least it is not long term enough to hit that six month mark in the year for it to be considered long term. You could have scenarios where a property is being renovated and temporarily it falls into this category because it is going unused while it is being renovated, that could happen, just so you are aware, I think that would be the, as far as what I can think of, if there is any unintended type of usage that gets caught up in the higher rate, it would be probably that when a renovation is happening.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Just to make sure I am just checking my own understanding, but because we are choosing finished, it actually would likely benefit, it would be more like it would be used because it is finished or not counting it.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: That's for the finished, which we'll get to, really comes into play when there's a mixed use. If it is just single family home that is being renovated,

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: unless

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: the work being done is so extensive that it's not even livable for the season, then it would probably end up not being considered a dwelling anymore. So in that way, yeah, it wouldn't get caught up in

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: And in the context of the non Homestead residential, you're still being surgical when you use the word finished. I'm just trying to say it's minimizing the hit the

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: property tax payer.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: Let me get to the finished part. We're almost there, right? Mixed use, how this language handles mixed use. This will come into play specifically when there is a parcel, on that parcel is a dwelling that is being used as non homestead residential, as in a second home or short term rental, something like that, and there's also a part of the parcel that's being used for some other purpose that's not a dwelling, like a business. Or I suppose it could come into play if part of it's being used as a hotel, if there's a hotel and also short term rental situation on the same property, something like that. You start to get into like our laws about registering lodgings and stuff like that. So, you know, will become complicated quickly, but the point is, when you have got a mixed use, right, How do you handle it? A parcel with two or more portions qualifying as different classifications shall be classified proportionally as follows. Buildings shall be classified proportionally based on the percentage of finished floor space used. That's the newest addition, that's what representative Holcombe was just talking about. Finished is not defined in the language right now, which means that you are leaving to the Department of Taxes to possibly put out some guidance on how to make calls for what's finished. Again, a lot of this stuff is going to come down to the dwelling use attestation, it's going to be the owner making a judgment call about what is finished, And then it would be up to the department to decide how much do they want to spend their resources in going out and trying to verify whether that's truthful. But this is intended to cover situations such as, there's a large unfinished barn, there's a second home, because the barn is more floor space than the home, a person could try to say, oh, I've got all of this non homestead, non residential, aka lower rate property here, so I shouldn't have to really pay very much at the higher rate because in comparison to that barn, I don't have a whole lot of second home usage going on. That's when the department could come in and decide whether that barn is actually considered finished property, whether it's actually legitimately should be considered non homestead, non residential in the first place. And it could affect the tax rate applied to the overall

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: parcel. Representative Ode, my advice is that, because I can imagine

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: you

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: have a second home and then you build a barn with a lot square footage in it that you never use as a barn, but that just gives you the rate that you've got a better tax treatment. So, would it also not just finish, but also whether it's actually used? I can imagine an environment is this tool

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: and it just, it takes a lot of floor space. This is for chickens.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Yeah, it

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: would be for a lot of fun. If you just wanted

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: to, and then you're going to

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: get around the pond that way.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: Well, that's why finished was decided to be included here.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I was suggesting it must be used. It could be finished. It'd a beautiful finished, 1,000 square foot, 5,000 square foot farm that is just tiny. That's not really used. It's just big farm. A waste of money.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Guys, I was really hoping we were just doing a quick check-in to remind ourselves of Yes, this I appreciate that. And I want make sure that we can touch on each thing on this list.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: Generally, what I would say is that there's probably going to be some really unique situations that come up as this gets implemented. I mean, something that's trying to affect 're trying to tailor something to every type of property usage that exists, so it's safe to say that in years to come, if you put this into law, you will hear from the tax department that they encounter unique situations, and there will be needs for adjustments.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: And

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: it may be that the situation comes up so often that you would want to actually do some real Until more

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And these are on Charlie's desk if anyone, or between mine and Charlie's desk if anyone wants to look at them in the insurance column. I borrowed them back from Jake, who we have given them as a gift. Which I'm sure he just appreciated so much.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Kirby, on that one place about being a long term lease agreement, we just in September gave the tax commissioner the ability to ensure that it was a bona fide transaction for the purpose of property transfer tax. I think we may also want to give the commissioner the authority to determine if that long term lease is a bona fide lease unless it is somewhere else in there.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, that is why put it as one of the requirements. That's why we have this third requirement. It does do that. It's not expressly saying the commissioner, but all of this stuff is going to be enforced by the commissioner. Okay, good point. What

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: about renewable energy sources? What do we do about that? Like if somebody puts up a structure that can hold panels and it's a solar farm. Representative, I'm gonna ask

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: you to follow-up on that after committee work through the whole thing and then come back to us if you do think the change is needed. Okay. That's a good idea. Because if we left a scenario out of flip cards, great. And if we didn't, great. You'd fine. Okay. Thank you. I don't mean that to put you off, mean it to

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: like I thinking about it, and I'm thinking about the aura's. I'm not that put off in the slightest. Back to you, Kirby. Sure.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: If there's a fixture on a property that doesn't have floor space to it, its use is not. Kirby, keep going.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: Notwithstanding any provision of this subsection of the contrary, so as I said before, we have a provision here where homesteads is handled like homesteads like now, including business use of a homestead is handled like it is now under current law, trying not to upset that system. There is also a provision addressing the time issue, which exists under current law when it comes to deciding the business use of a homestead. The law looks at square footage currently, but when the same square footage is being used for more than one purpose, we don't have an answer for that. We haven't had an answer for that. So there is a provision here about the primary use of the floor space being what is determined when you're trying to decide the square footage usage. There is forms of course for the commissioner to issue for this. There is use value appraisal saying that nothing in the classifications area of law should be taken to alter how current use is done, and I'm not aware of any conflict that any obvious conflict that would come up either. The appeals will be handled in the same matter for property valuation appeals. This has been worded, noting that in RADS, you've changed how appeals work. So I tried to work this in a way in which it's not affected by those changes in the other area of law. We have the dwelling use attestation, which presumably will be done similarly to the homestead declaration, with the homestead declaration, where owners will report their usage for purposes of classification. There are provisions here about when there are errors, what will happen. When there is errors that are so bad that it looks like fraud, the commissioner can look into it, and then there is associated penalties with these things. The penalties tend to be oriented toward if there is an error and the error benefits the taxpayer, there's going to be penalties. When there's errors that don't benefit the taxpayer, it gets corrected, but there's no penalty.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Does this involve another piece of paper the owner has to fill out or are they already attesting to the use of their property?

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: For some property owners, there will be new paperwork. It will be the dwelling use attestation. The way it is kind of envisioned now, we don't actually have one of those in existence to show you at this point, but the way it is envisioned is you put down the number of dwelling units, you put down how they are used, in other words, is it long term rental or not?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think of it as right now we only ask homestead payers to fill out a form and now we are going to ask certain That homestead

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: is one way to put it. Every property owner will be filling out something like a homestead, either a homestead or the other thing. Property tax classifications, transition, so we have the transition language, this is from Act 73, This is about the year in which transitioning to this new system, the tax department is going to have to collect information for the first year to get it going. This language would repeal all of the redundant parts of Act 73. It's not meant to make any substantive change, it's just we have language in here replacing each of these things, so we're repealing the old. You do have the contingency language for tax rate multipliers that is the intent that this entire system will be looked at again, when you go to set tax rate multipliers. That was from Act 73 where the multipliers were not set. This language also does not set the multipliers. It does everything to set up the system, but does not actually change the tax rate at this point. That will be presumably a discussion for next session. We have the perspective repeal language from Act 73 that if you don't create new tax rate multipliers by 07/01/2028, then there's a repeal of this, and then we have all of our effective dates, and those effective dates involve the same contingencies as Act 73 had, including the bulk of this is only effective provided that the new school districts contemplated by Act 73 have assumed responsibility for the education of all resident students, and that the expert tasked with developing the cost factor formula, foundation formula has provided a report.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And we're going to need to change all the contingencies and timelines to line up with the bill that's coming to us.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Okay. So that still needs to be done? So this is not ready to go

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: So that's the, from my perspective, that's the one thing that needs doing unless representative Ode discovers something. Great. And we have contingencies and timelines already written down on our list, so we know we still need to do that. Check. I would rather not go through the regional assessment district language again. I'm gonna ask people to do that. We'll put it all together, but if folks can do that sometime today, here on time, that would be great. Thank you. Red. Red. Let's look at the special education maintenance of effort language that was requested by that association that shall not be named? I think it's posted on our committee page under

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: Beth's It's committee.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Beth drafted it. Beth is not very available these days because she's busy downstairs, so we're gonna do what we need to do without her. Maybe someone can send her notes. We have notes for her.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: So what do you wanna do, madam chair? Just

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Let's just all look at it with our eyes. How's that feel? Do folks want it

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: on the screen?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Yes, helpful. Special ed funding is

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: 84 pages. We're just putting it up.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Can I get it? I

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: have such concerns about all this, in part because when Act 173 was passed, the whole assumption was that there were a bunch of instructional shifts that would happen that would enable the finance. And the agency treated it as just a finance bill, but it's actually a practice bill. And I think the same is true here. If there isn't changes, if there aren't, remember, it's horrible today. If there are not changes at the state level, and there are not changes in how districts are supported and how they're delivering services, none of this is going to work. And so That

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: is I just wanna be clear, you're saying that that's something that is needed in special education, not necessarily something that's a critique of this particular language. It's something you would wanna do in addition to this language.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: No, I'm saying this whole thing will fall apart if we don't implement it on the administration side. I mean, it just doesn't work. And that's what we're seeing with the 173 census block. You just totally lost control. And part of it is, and it's bad for kids and it's also hard on taxpayers. I just think that we have to be so attentive to implementations because if we pass tight funding constraints and then don't pay attention to implementation. We're actually just setting everybody, including ourselves, up for a higher cost.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: So I think one of the things that we haven't decided yet is what the funding constraints will be or won't be. What I'm saying. Part of the contractor What do you call it? Joint fiscal. The joint fiscal contractor. And that's something we're gonna need to work on more this year. And so this was the request of the council. Let's look at this and then figure out what else we would need to be doing from here.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: It may be in the BOCES. I mean, I'm pleased that the agency has got 20 more positions than I was there. But the reality is the state used to provide a lot more technical assistance than there was currently, and if they can't do that, then this state's not gonna work. I was just gonna be super clear. That's part of why we're in the situation.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Let's look at this language together.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Yeah. Or

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: would people rather do it? It's a magical time where Beth can

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: be here. Oh. Oh. It okay

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: to just read it? Okay. Great. So the first part of it is language that does not yet have a landing spot, and then the second half is language that's in the budget. Goal here is not for us to change the language now, but to figure out, bless you, what we need to do for next steps in order to finish the language.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Madam Chair, section two, it's all about reorientation of the appropriations.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Does anyone have any, well, let's say it's section one, sorry. In terms of the first section, is there anything that, what? Explain to me what the height two means.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Thing are you looking to? Me too. I need that explained to me. There's section B. I'm wondering about that. No, section one B. Two, if someone could explain what they Yeah, think of

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: nine fourteen, is that what you mean? Yes, okay.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: The way I read it is that while general education is through foundation formula, special education is not. The current Some categorical grant.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: So is this consistent with the census block approach, Or is this signaling a shift? I just wanna know what people mean by

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: supplemental reimbursement. So what I think of as next steps from what you're saying is that we need to have the special education association back in to talk us through this language and make sure it's what they were looking for and explain their sort of intents and desires with regard to that.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Just don't understand if this is intended to preserve the current symptoms block approach or if we are trying to shift that approach. So I think that's a great question to

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: ask the special education association. Do I hope when they come and tell us what they're called? Yes, Doctor. Branagan. Right now, there is some local cost for these children. Very much. So yes. So this would take that away? I do not know. This is what we were going to figure out with our next steps.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: So this is their language? This is their language. That's what I need to understand.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Their as in

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Newfoundland. The Special Education Association, which I can't wait to receive an email with someone telling me what

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: it's actually called. Colin, do you

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: just know? Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators. Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators. Yes, Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: That's what we have as VCSEA on

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: the board. And it's all the words should I keep on the Okay.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I guess, don't know what reflects me, so I wanna know that. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Listening, tell us reflects me. Okay, great. So that is a next step that we will take.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: That's it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Is anyone else thinking that they're gonna need anything else with regards to next steps on that? If you could just anticipate your thinking into the future, that would be helpful, even though I know it's hard to.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: This is for the education committee, think, so you can tell me that and I won't ask it. When they talk about least restrictive environment, that's something for the education community.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: This, I think, it would help me to know what the education community intends in terms

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: of the seesaw before I even forget those because

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: how I feel about it in part reflects what the role of the seat stops is, particularly with the extraordinary reimbursement and the students with very intense things. Okay, that's your question.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: I think it's going to talk about section two.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Yes, we're going get there in one minute. Anything else on section one? Okay.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: That it's not specific to either the school district or CSUN. So it could

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: apply to both the way it's written. So

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I'm going add, how does this need to be adapted to traditional language?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: My assumption is that Haussaid is going to define the LEA.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: Anyone else?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. So that's yep.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I'm just I'm really having trouble with this kind of whatever house that is dying, I'm just going say, because we don't know. But I think in terms of proportional effects, I think, I'd like to, this is Dee. There's so many things. And then the other thing is, I don't even know how a school district can be sure they are providing FAPE when they are paying tuition at this point, because FAPE is free and appropriate public education. And if schools have different standards, I don't even know how you can ensure FAPE in a non public setting at this point. So there's just so many

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: issues you'd like us to do about that.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Until I know what Chauced is recommending, it's pretty hard to know. This

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: is all new wording. Where'd the wording come from?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Came from the Council of Special Education Administrators Okay. So

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: can we ask them that when we have them test for Yes, we are going to, yes. I can answer all this. I think that's a good question. I'm wondering about that too. And

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: the whole point of regional services, particularly for students with intensive needs, is that actually even the districts of 4,000 probably aren't big enough, and so the regional solutions, they might take over some responsibility for supporting development of IPs, but also creating substantially separate settings. Okay,

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: let's see what they have to say.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Let us go to appropriations, language, which is section two. So, will you scroll, please? For us, thank you for letting us use your computer. I want to fully acknowledge that in addition to the fact that everything changes There might be some in the room across the way.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Yeah, think I will.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: In addition to the fact that everything changes when it gets to the summit, budget language changes monthly. And so I'm assuming that even though this isn't a budget now, the budget will pass. It will go to the Senate, and then we will coordinate with the Senate about updating its language to line up with the education bill. And what we can also do, which is JFO and legislative council's favorite thing, is we pass different budget language in the Act 73 follow-up bill, and then those have to be lined up later. That's an especially confusing and delightful thing we can do, but it works very well sometimes.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: They love it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: It's fair enough.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: I am really struggling in this section. I'm trying to understand the order of operations because if you go down to line 17 on page three, It talks all about transition grants to facilitate transition to new governance. But the agency shall be prohibited from warding grants pursuant to this subsection until new school district boundaries have been enacted. How do you get to new school district boundaries without some kind of transition? I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: think the idea was that some of the money goes to the CEFAs that can provide technical assistance to support matchmaking, studying, whatever, I don't feel it worth. And then grants are awarded for the legal support, back office business support from there that goes directly there. I don't

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: This doesn't quite make sense to me. It's to reflect a map. It reflects we all have to decide in this room, or not in this room, this body, your district map, and then grants can start flowing. My understanding is that going toward the seesaw direction is more of a matchmaking process, as you called it. So this still feels like archival language from when we were thinking that we were enacting a map and forcing district mergers. So that's why I'm confused about why that.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I have the same concern. I agree that the same way. I would like to say if in the Senate, in the conference committee, things get changed, it becomes something mandatory, I'm not saying it would be, but if they adopt boundaries, then this has to maybe work both ways. So, we have Lyme versus says, if new boundaries, then it's this. If it's not

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think this is a good question for staff. So could this be new boundaries for CESAs? And I know that this was Beth's language that she drafted. So I think maybe these are questions for Beth.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: But I'm in Friday.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: So if Jon Gray opts legislative council, it's only not paying attention, but I think you're talking about

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: the top of page three.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: No, it's closer to the bottom of page three. The sentence we're kind of stuck on is line seventeen, eighteen, and 19. So that talks about not awarding grants to support transition to new governance models until new school district boundaries have been enacted. So I think the chair was asking, could that also mean boundaries for seesaws?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: I think you need to

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: be a district, but I tend it to be tightly defined. Yeah,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I have a real problem with that language.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Context and Act 46, there were both planning grants, and then there were transition grants. And I think this is, there's a lot of cost in transition. Understand that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: My understanding of the goal of this language was that it was making funds available for both of those scenarios and that the money would move slightly separately in both of those instances. But we can check-in with the education committee about that.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: That's what I understand to be in B, further down the page. Is that not correct?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: That's what we're talking about.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: But B modifies A1.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: Can you restate what you said about

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: B1 on page three halfway down?

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: Yeah. It

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: talks about self funds appropriating subdivision A1, which is model of the section toward transition facilitation grants to school districts and cooperative education service areas to support the work required to transition to new governance models.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: But then there's an

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: sentence at the end

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: that says that none of those grants are going to be awarded until these school district foundries have been enacted.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: So you have time planning and map making on your

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: own for money, And then you get money after you've done all the work. And so what I'm going say as a next step for this is that we need to make sure that it is Wrong tab. My note taking. Give me a second here.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Sorry, got it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: But it is fully flexible to speeches and the voluntary process. So

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: you'd have an eitheror idea? I'm just worried that whatever's going on that goes on in the conference committee.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Well, I think we're talking way before the conference committee.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Yeah, but if we have it all set up for the season and technical assistance and flexibility for the seasons involved in the voluntary process, and then something else is decided later. And if there are no ceases, then it would be awarded after bandage agreement.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: So Beth wrote it, but

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: did you know who proposed it? It was a very complicated process with theater and JFO. It was a lot of fingers. While the bill was They've changed the bill a bunch of times.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: The administration been involved in that?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: We need to Clear on what the next steps are for

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: us to figure out for that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: That still needs updating to line up with where the education committee has come to. Next thing.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: We're stocking these off.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Sure, yeah. From my perspective, I think we should wait on pre K until we actually see what they're doing.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I agree. I'm just so concerned. Just have say I have so many concerns about this because I don't know what this is. It's a ed language. I can let it go right now because it's just a draft. But the notion that the strategic plan that we received is going to address what needs to be done, I think, is hugely problematic. So I'd almost rather not reference it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. But the next step for that is to talk to the special education administrators and the education committee about that?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: I think it needs to be, yeah, which I

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: have in mind. Rebecca, can

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: you talk to the education committee about that language as well? Yes. Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: They come in next week or tomorrow?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I think so.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: We'll figure it out. Let me talk to Ed first. Yeah, well, I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: think we're gonna, we'll schedule the administrators in and you can talk to Ed.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: And just because you have, you just mentioned the pre K, what do know, any idea when that's coming?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Yes, we were discussing this before you arrived, sir.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And the pre K language is expected to be voted out of human services tomorrow ish. And then it's going to go to education as a memo of sorts to be It'll be full statutory language, but it won't be a committee bill. It'll be sent to the education committee so they can incorporate it into their bill. And then it'll get sent to us, which might be next Thursday ish.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Thank you.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: But would we wait until then to have these folks in?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: For pre K, I'm back on we've closed up special education. We know the next steps for that. Pre K next steps.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I'd

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: like to wait until human services finishes what they're doing and maybe even education finishes what they're doing on it to figure out what happens next on that. Does anyone have anything?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Mean, they come back with is status quo. Do we even bother to do anything?

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: I don't know.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: It's a good question.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: I'm very much super happy to come back on. I'll take a pass through it, take a look through it so that we get it current in our

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: brains here.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Do you mean do it

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: out before they're done? When appropriate given the schedule, you have a mind of it's going from here to there and eventually to us. That makes sense. Mean, just wanna make sure.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I'm gonna ask folks to read what they vote out over the weekend, and then we'll talk to the education committee about how much time they plan to spend on it.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: That'll work. Thank you.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Yes. If we could also have a fiscal note with the pre K piece, I think one of my concerns is complexity is cost. And some of the costs are booked in the state, but some of

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: them are in the districts.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: To the extent that we aren't actually reducing complexity, but we're increasing categorical grants or requiring new positions. We should just be mindful that we're education spending without necessarily changing what people receive.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I imagine there's going a fiscal note for everything.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I think I'm asking a different question, which is

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: that very often when we get

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: a fiscal note, all we get reports on is what's the impact on the state budget. Many of the decisions we make drive higher spending on the education fund. And I'm thinking if our purpose here is to figure out how to constrain we need to not just get a fiscal note on what it does to the state budget. We need to also be talking about implications for school districts. To say For the education side. Yeah. For example, if we mandate that everybody has a pre K coordinator, even if they're providing all their pre K in house, that's an additional demand that it's gonna require them to hire an additional staff person who's gonna drive additional healthcare costs. We have to think about our decisions and how they impact school budgets.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Of course. I love to say, I love that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Great. Any other next steps on pre K for now? This is not the final steps. This is just where our next steps are. Transportation. I'm gonna go back to that. It seems like the next steps from yesterday, and I left a few notes before it ended, are we need to figure out what we need to know in order to figure out next steps. And it seemed to me that we had a lot of questions for the agency about how is this spent? What is the disparateness of the spending? And how is the extreme We had a bunch of questions we didn't even have answers to yet. And so what I was imagining the next step would be is an informal working group actually just putting together a list of those questions.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: And respectfully, could we also maybe get the advice of JFL on this? Because I think what I'm finding helpful is to run decisions, like any spending data, I'm running it against, personally trying to against operating structure and poverty rate. And what you do see when you actually go beyond just the budget numbers is some very interesting patterns that really speak to the system. And I think it would be helpful to do that as well. I mean, why do some districts not operate, not offering transportation at all? We ought to know that.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: And there is a reason.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: And there are patterns. So when we just look at

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: the budget numbers, I think we miss the story. And so I think that's some of the questions that we're gonna need to ask to make a decision on this next year, probably. Next year, we can make this decision about that. I think we have a lot that we don't know yet, and probably we're gonna need to request we learn over the summer. I think that's great. And so for this informal working group of folks to figure out those next steps in this question, Teddy, you said you wanted to do that.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Say again what the working group did

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Figure out what questions we want to include in statute for next steps for a report from some combination from the AOE. So, and did you talk to Woody?

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: I haven't gotten to Woody yet to know

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: about to Representative Thompson. Okay. But yes, this is also going to be a new data collection for districts too. I mean, because I don't even think the AOE has some of the data we need. So for example, there are districts that reimburse parents $300 a month if they wanna drive their kids to school. Really? I'm telling you, you do- That's amazing. No, it reflects It's amazing to know that. Your whole point about whether you amortize the buses or not, my point is that there are very strategic decisions being made that are being made for local reasons, and we don't understand those. And the agency doesn't necessarily flush your data. And so I think that's the kind

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: of thing that we want to understand, and we're going to need to ask questions about to find that found out over the summer.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: That falls on security.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I'm going to Wait. Can you finish my whole sentence? So Rebecca, can you make sure you work with Teddy to get those questions in?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: I'm going to ask Jamie also if she might

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: ask So the working group will absolutely work with staff to make sure that we're asking all the questions. Is there anyone? So some folks from transportation, maybe someone from education, trying to get a nice mix of rural districts and urban districts, high spending, low spending districts, mixed parties. It's operating versus tuition. Is everyone okay having Teddy and Woody take the next steps and everyone can talk to two of them about it?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Yes. Absolutely. Great.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: He assigned when he wasn't here.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I did it yesterday when he wasn't here.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: I'd say I want to do.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. Well done. Well, construction, I think the next step is to put together a list of witnesses who can share a little bit more about school models that seem to be working somewhere else that might be part of a solution. Bridget, can you help figure out who those witnesses are? We talked a little bit about Prince George counting. I think Connor has a bunch of leads if you want to talk to him. Thank you. Exactly

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: how people are helped today in the formula, so that we all know exactly what today is. I have no idea what you mean by that. I mean, mean how people are the middle of construction right now,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: how is the current? Yes, can be part of the testimony, yes. Okay. Thank you.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Okay.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: And I think one of the, so many questions about this one too, I'll pass it on over to Jessica.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: And I want, when I'm saying what I said I would like to see, I mean specifically, so I understand. An example here, an example there, not just a bunch of words where men don't have a blood to the

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: We could use Burlington as an example.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Or Colchester. Colchester, Burlington. Right, right. Do

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: we just talk about what's happening in current law? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That sounds great.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Yeah, don't know what stop the bad stuff.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Yeah, Colchester and

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Bunusky. Bunusky is a significant outlier in how they found their school. Okay,

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: great.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think that's gonna be, of all the nuts, that will be the hardest nut. You for Pretty much. Working on that And Shirley and Bridget have been working on this.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Question about Windsor. When you do this, unfortunately, the problem is people choose the construction financing model that fits their funding formula. So if you're going to bring Maryland or Prince George's County or Rhode Island, I think you also need to bring the underlying funding form. Yes, that has been part of the discussion. That is one of the

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: hardest things about all of this. It's part

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: the discussion because, as you know, I've been working with a committee on language about how we want to instruct in more detail. The consultant is going work on the foundation formula. And it's kind of this process where you think we need move forward together. Can't really figure out how we're gonna fund school construction unless you have the consultant also thinking about what our possible model for school construction is, because the funding formula is gonna have to work with that. We can't have two conflicting ways. Because of the lens we originally had, I was concerned because it said all of the grants to help with debt service were going be subject to appropriation. But having taught schools being subject to appropriation and not know if they're getting money from the state, but then be on the club and then have a foundation for

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: me that doesn't allow you

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: to raise extra money to service the debt. I've got it.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: One more request about this, if you could also talk about a transition plan. I'm thinking just in my immediate area, there's one district that is doing private fundraising, well, one of the schools is doing private fundraising for $5,000,000 There is a school district that would need to get their funding because they were afraid of emergency is what we're now doing, and there was another two districts that have put off weatherization energy efficiency transitions because they're afraid of what we're doing.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: So we're going to have such a If you could talk to Bridget about that to make sure that

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: It's a small project.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Before we go to Terren

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: It's huge.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: So all of the different components that we're thinking of for next steps are all going to need to be shaped around the work that Education Committee is doing right now. And the two parts that we have not talked about yet in terms of next steps on our list here are how do we fund CESAs and merger incentives in an ongoing way, and what do we need in terms of changing foundation formula contingencies and clarification language. And so I think those are both two great things to actually hold until after Erin explains what the education committee is doing. Erin, hi. The floor is yours. We've had a quite wandering conversation today. Much whiteboarding, as I'm sure you all have been whiteboarding.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: Sorry, do we have any

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: documents like that?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: No, Erin's just here to give us an informal update.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: If you want to look at it on our committee page, we just got draft 4.1 from Ledge Council that we are looking at. Still many decision points, but Ledge Council is doing a fabulous job of keeping us organized with a list of decisions being described. Thank you. In fact, you might find useful the document posted yesterday, which was our giant list of decision points. So we really want to get in the weeds.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: It's really fun. Yeah. So

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: the draft we are working on really has two major components, again, with lots of outstanding decisions. The first would be to create mandatory collaborative education service agencies. So the testimony and the work we've heard a lot of from the field, from the redistricting task force, we created BOCES law here a couple of years ago for this very reason, because we know we need to be doing more regional collaborative sharing. So the CESAs will be mandatory. We are still working out the boundaries.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: We

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: are probably at like seven, but not a hard and fast number of how many there will be. But working largely with the superintendents and the school board's association around where the natural regions are of some partnership already. Quite frankly, COVID created some of that. They started to have to collaborate more just during that time. So we'll be creating CSIS. Much of it will follow existing law that we have from our BOCES law, except that they will be mandatory. It will not be voluntary. And we will call out specifically that they are to be working in. There's a whole host of areas we know that likely this is going to be useful for both efficiency and for improving delivery. But top of that is special education, as we all know. We're working on how specific or not to be around special education, knowing that the extraordinary costs and some of the high needs work, the out of placement districts that are costing our system a lot right now and are not necessarily keeping kids close to communities or delivering the best education is a likely area of really good work that CSIS can do. And it's already happening in one in Vermont. So there is some, as the chair always says, proof of concept here. This isn't just theoretical, like doing it in one region of the state, which has been wonderful.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And we've got a lot of

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: testimony from them that is helping to guide this. The other thing that the CSAS will have some connection to is the ongoing work towards consolidation of districts. And so the second piece of our bill will be setting up a process for mandatory merger discussions, not mandatory mergers, but mandatory merger discussions, a voluntary process towards towards fewer more, districts and towards more hopefully regional behavior. So right now, we were actually just talking about the timeline as I left and trying to figure out how quickly we can get that up and running and what the timeline would be then for the fields to be making some decisions or not. So one challenge we are having is that CESAs can be stood up much faster than new districts, which is one of their benefits. However, it will still take some time. And we want to get facilitators who have experience in the Vermont education landscape working in the regions around where there might be some consolidation as quickly as possible, and that might be faster than even stand up CESAs. And so we are trying to figure out who the fiscal agent is that would actually be holding a contract for these facilitators. Because if we have to wait till CESAs are formed, that slows it down a little bit. If we have to go through state like AOE, that puts us on state contracting RFP timelines that are going to also slow things down. So we are exploring some creative ways to deal with that challenge so that study committees can be formed quite quickly. Again, we have not, we're working right now on the timeline. So I unfortunately don't have specifics to give you about the timeline. But the process would be we create we are sorry, we facilitate these. We resource these facilitators. The facilitators are here's where it gets tricky, and I don't know how the chair is gonna report this on the floor without visuals, this is only a draft form, but the facilitators are not just sort of go out and find people that might want to get together and merge. The facilitators are working from a guidance map of some sort that we are still working on. We are using a map somebody at the top of our table created a while ago as the starting Not

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: his map.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: No, not his map. That started

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Non follow-up map. No, it's

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: a guidance map map. But we're having really good conversations in committee because we have people from these regions that are like, this is close to happening here. And if we could put these with these. So none of this is going to require the mergers, but we're trying to create kind of an outline of where study committee discussions could start. And in the field, they can shift those. The facilitator, the field can say, this doesn't make sense, or we should go here, or we really don't want to be involved. It is still voluntary. We're working on kind of the if no changes happen, then what consequence part of it. And that might be some joint decision making between our committees. But essentially, the bill will come out with a guidance map of the potential merger, of the potential study committee groupings and what those could be to try to kind of expedite the process instead of it just being totally wide open. So the connection here that's a little bit challenging, I think makes sense with enough description, but is the sort of CISA and the facilitators. And the facilitators are going to operate, we're envisioning within the CISA regions. And so if there are seven CISAs, if that's where we end up, there would be seven facilitators out working in their region on those potential study committees. Again, not sure they're going to be employed by the CISA because of some fiscal agent questions. So that part, I think, is confusing probably. We're starting to get it a little bit more clear in our community, so I'm happy to answer questions. And unfortunately, I don't have a timeline answer for you, but that is next on our list. And we're going largely, I will say, on really good cooperation and help from folks in the field, current and former superintendents who've been through merger processes, voluntary and involuntary, of how long things actually took and using a lot of that to try to create a ambitious but realistic timeline. Sorry,

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I just wanted to clarify.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: So you talked about mandatory merger discussions, but I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: don't wanna say what you said. Just I thought I heard that there might be an opt out, if there's some district or something that just doesn't want to

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: take part in these conversations. Is that a correct way of framing?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: That they're supposed to, but

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: they could opt out. Is that a correct understanding of what you're discussing?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: Relying a lot of this on chapter 11 and processes that exist from Act 46. So yes, it is ultimately voluntary.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: It's a good

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: I have to think through that one a little bit more. There is, I will say, different from Ag 46, but as the study committee process goes along, so the big order of operations is study committee, so local, regional decision making on the ground. Their report goes to the, well, a drive by of the secretary, but then really the state board. And then if it's to form a new district, then it goes to the voters to make that district decision. So that's the sort of long, like big, there's a lot of timeline pieces we need to put under that. What we intend that will be different from Act 46 is that study committee reports, and so public information that will come back to us and many others, will be both of the sort of favorable and unfavorable. So if study committee works and decides not to merge, instead of it just going away, the study committee will go away, but they will still have to issue a report of why they did it, which is different than what happened in Act 46, best I can tell.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Sort of. They did that too.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. Well, thought that was what ledge counsel had,

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: but this was new language that we did not have released in His section nine. Statute. And so I'll check that as well.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Thank you.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: Have

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: you all started having conversations about how the CESAs are funded or how In the testimony you've taken, has there been conversation about what incentives worked well under Act 46 and what didn't? Which one do you want me to go first?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: Though. Sorry. Right. So CESAs, we already have on the books $10,000 startup grants for BOCES, which we're going to rename CESAs. So that exists. That's really for the sort of legal work and creating the articles of agreement. So the startup costs more than that. We are still trying to get better information about how much that would be, though there should be a little bit of a jump start here because we have one model. And so some of that might be able to now be replicated and maybe not require as much kind of legal articles of agreement sort of work in creating them. So the startup money that is on our ongoing list of how much it would take to really get CSUS up and running. But then once they are, I think we're likely looking at a kind of fee for service model. So they're sort of self funding in a way that districts might pay a small membership fee, and then you pay for the services that you are using or not using, and that helps drive the budget. But there will be some startup costs. On the second one, the Remind me what the second one was specifically.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I mean, theaters. Before we get to the second, the first one. So I know that under Act 46 or actually under current CESAs, the cost savings from having more efficient service delivery gets rolled back into budgets to be spent on other needs.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: That works for her.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: Have you all just talked about

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: that at all yet? Okay. Cool. That's great. I'm just more wondering, trying to find our lane. That seems like that's a good place for our lane. Okay. And then my second question was, have you heard testimony as what worked and what didn't for incentives for equity? Yeah. And it's a loud screaming, the tax incentives,

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: the tax incentives, the tax incentives is what worked. So from our testimony, is, you know, that's what

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: we That worked the places that it worked and didn't work the places that didn't work.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: That is what we kept hearing. So the other discussion obviously is around same one year as school is construction aid and work towards construction and consolidation of buildings where it makes sense and could be done, but it's gonna require a little capital to get there. And particularly middle and high schools, but maybe not even just middle and high schools.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: There's some

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: great work happening at Orleans around regional elementary. I think we're very interested in a committee, as house and committee, as incentives, particularly around consolidation of buildings. We do that exactly. Mean, we have some of the framework because we have Right. Exactly. I know that's what you're talking about. So yes.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. Cool. Thank you.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: Would be a wonderful incentive.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. And did you talk about penalties at all? Did anyone talk about penalties?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: We keep sort of dancing around it, trying to figure out what is Representative

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Ode. Thank you. When you say especially high schools, maybe middle schools, maybe some elementary schools, Is that based on What's that based on? Open handed question.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: That is based on some testimonies just going off the top of my head now. Know it's like some testimony we've had even from Bruce Baker, like where you start to see efficiencies in terms of, or savings in terms of numbers of kids in a building and also educational benefits before you start to hit kind of the wall where it can go either way. And because we know from education research, from child development research, particularly the middle and high school level, having more students, having a more diverse student body allows you to offer I mean, this is no secret, look around at our schools. The larger schools are generally able to offer far more opportunities. You can build more teams, you can have more clubs, you can mix kids up different ways, which is more complicated than that. But that gives you those opportunities that as we are smaller, those are harder to do. And those opportunities generally matter more and are more appropriate at the middle and particularly at the high school level. Education's a little bit more universal at an elementary level in terms of the skills. As you get older, kids are getting more specialized, their interests are. I

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: think that it can really benefit kids not to do the same cohort of children for six years, eight years. Other words, the same 10 kids where you're always, the children need their earnings, whatever. And also, they do have a lot of different needs that somebody really weighs at that, can that really be, I'm not sure that's met anywhere, but, and did you also look at costs per student when you gave those three in order?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: No. What are the highest?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I don't know the answer. Is it the most expensive to run a tiny elementary school or is it the most expensive to work from a tiny high school?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: I think that's a very challenging question that depends a lot on multiple factors. I mean, yes, things cost more when they're smaller, but it depends on geography. It depends on the teacher salaries there. It depends on the weights the students care. I think that's a harder question to just give a clear answer on, but I'm way out of my lane now.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Did you take testimony from Bruce Baker last year, this year? We did get a little bit this year.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: Oh, really? Okay. Cool. It was I mean, you know, he And his testimony, I think, aligned with some of what people are hearing about school construction and all of our hopes and dreams, but it's insanely expensive right now. And so the places where it's the most obviously needed and overdue start there. And he was frankly talking about being a student in Rutland decades ago and saying, like in Rutland County, like, wow, how is some of the same system still there? Some of the same things the task force called out of, like certain regional places where, again, the incentives might come in, but places where none of it's easy, but going to be easiest or is maybe most long overdue for some reconfiguration and wow, start there now.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I think Patty was actually sitting in that chair at almost the same time of day yesterday saying exactly that about rubber. Which

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I asked a question why they haven't moved to consolidate, because you could actually move them from five to two high schools within their current footprint with this current number of students that they have. Just saying. One of the Can I ask a question? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that was so interesting about Act 46 is that the places where mergers happened were areas that shared the same structure. To Konica Green, they all tuitioned at the same grade level, they snapped right up. Addison County snap right up. Where it didn't happen was places like North Country, where they just didn't want to do it and places like most of the rest of the state where it was a mix of operating and tuitioning. How is this different?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: I think we're hitting the same, we are hitting the same walls that the state has hit for decades, right? And our committee is stuck in the same challenges of varying regional interests and being really hung up on the different rating systems. I mean, to be frank, it's multiple times a day that our committee hits that roadblock. And I think in some senses, our options here are sort of do nothing because of that roadblock or continue to try yet again to do some things more voluntarily, more regionally, and continue to wrestle with that very real challenge.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I mean, that is. Yes. So when you close all your schools, what some of our districts have, you actually don't make any decisions anymore. All you do is sign the checks.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: And

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: given that, did you consider assigning the LEAs for those non operating districts, assigning that to the seesaws? Why not make it efficient by just moving the LEA responsibilities to the seesaw?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: That is, yes, we have not gone down that policy path. That policy path, yeah. I mean, this is a largely voluntary, sort of regionally community driven process that we are trying to lay out here. At the same time, I think that's the other value and hope of CESAs, and that will take a little bit longer, of course, to come to fruition. But if we start getting more resource sharing, more collaboration, that is an unnecessary stepping stone to more mergers and consolidation. And so that doesn't put us on any timeline of saying this will happen by this date, but it certainly seems that it puts us closer on a path if districts or schools who have not before been sharing are starting to share some resources. I think a lot of the ACT 46 mergers, if they already had a special ed sharing across, that was my district's scenario, it made it much easier to merge because they were already doing some shared services. And so is a more ground up approach or maybe education approach of saying if we can start to share more services, will that help us also start to consolidate and merge? But I know it doesn't fully answer your question, Satisfaction would take totally So if three other people have questions, I also have

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: a question, and I only got Erin for thirty minutes because she has to go back downstairs. So my question is, have you all had any conversations about some of the class and cultural divisions and what to do about those? I'm sorry if I stole your question, Teddy.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: I guess no, except that I think that there's some really thoughtful discussions happening around our table about this and about a guidance map. Again, these are not forced mergers. This is not a new map of districts. But if this is the guidance to facilitators and study committees, there's some really careful thinking around our table about that very piece and being careful that we aren't putting out guidance or creating a sort of first step here that is about keeping various class divisions in one group and then another class division in another, that we are trying to create a little bit more Or Jordanianity? Diversity and not That's a promise of public education, right?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Promise, not Right? Yeah.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: The public education office. Okay, thank you. I think that that is where this We're looking for help. We're literally gonna have to put in, these are the towns or these are the districts, these are the systems that would be in this guidance map thing. So where you see things that we can change, and I will say, Rutland has a really good understanding of this area that's been really helpful. And she also grew up in the Northeast Kingdom and has actually a really good understanding. Rutland has got a really good sense of, Rutland has got a really good sense of, that's really helpful for us to see about. Some of these, I think, are definitely going to shift. That feedback is super helpful right now. And the chair would say, please just be specific. Tell us what you think, what should go there.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Representative Masland, then Waszazak, Ode, then we're gonna wrap.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: Thankful. Thank you. This has been very affirmative, even though it's over, probably because you're touching a lot of different subjects. Yeah. And I have a question which may be better directed to you in your in your chair, but I'll put it out there. Given the traditional roadblocks, I guess you could say, you know, additional or outstanding roadblocks, I'd be curious to know, and maybe it'll be in a cafeteria discussion or something like that, If you have a process in committee that you work through to try to work through those. That's the way I work, and it's not the way other people work. And I'm just curious to know how do you propose to get from here

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: to there? I've just been curious to know as appropriate. I'll give the chair a whole lot of credit for having just an extraordinary amount of patience. And I think, like, willingness to just listen again and again and again with different interests at the table and accept where at points, there are points we're not gonna get to enough people around the table to be able to overcome a roadblock. And so that is part of why we're on the path that we are on of what is possible given that the people in house education represent all of the diverse interests on education that exists in this body that exists in the state of Vermont. So if we're sort of a microcosm of that, and this is the most common and not everybody's probably gonna vote for it, half we can get to, then given the circumstances and democratic process,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: that's where we would-

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: And to reiterate without taking more time, I'm just trying to understand how you and your chair and your committee are going to work through these things, even if you don't know yet. And it's just trying to understand what I just said, thank you, and that's sufficient for right now. Thank you, appreciate it. Thanks, members of the last slide. I think I'm gonna ask you.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Go ahead. I think you

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: got it, what I was just, this is not a question, but the voluntary thing makes me very nervous because it's a glib way of saying it, but one grumpy school board throws off the whole thing, and then we're not gonna realize those same things. Act 46 didn't work for. I mean, Barrie. We have two municipalities of Barrie because we can't agree on so much. Right? So, you know, and I know I've been talking to rep McCann about this a lot. Rep McCann speaks for me,

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: so please listen to her

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: very well.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: She's doing everything.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: This is super helpful. Yes. Yep, President Ode?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Well, I'm just wondering, since it isn't new district lines with forced mergers, which is what is envisioned in 'seventy three, how will this trigger or not trigger going forward with the rest of it? This is the foundation. Psychonautics.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: That's For us to figure out. You mean pledge counsel? No, I mean us in this room to figure out. If it's This is so hypothetical and not a policy proposal. I'll put in my pen now. Thank you.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: Oh, I love that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: That is like Thank you. That really worked for me, Carol. If, say, we have a voluntary merger process, is it that at some point 75% of the districts in the state are merging? That means that mergers are like that we have new districts. Is it that 75% of the students in the state have joined districts that are 2,000 or 4,000 or more, and that means that we have new districts? Is it that 79.3 of all voters in the state are represent or all taxpayers in the state? Or But I imagine if we say, to call the process complete, we're gonna need to name a very clear metric other than just the drawing of lines. And I think that's gonna be something we're gonna need to figure out. Interesting. Yes. I'll think about that. So ledge counsel will say you need to actually define your terms, and that's gonna be requested.

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: What else would be helpful for us to know about where you are in the process or decisions? Again, the timeline is top of mind for us, and the amounts of money are also trying to get ballpark ideas on these is also top of mind.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: We have been working through all of these pieces that we are imagining we're doing in parallel. And after we get the bill from you, some of them are much more finished than others. Some of them are basically finished. There's some pieces that we would like you to look at at some point and some pieces that you totally don't need to. So the reserve guidance language, we basically finished a month ago, but I don't think we've ever shared with you. We had some language that was recommended from this special education association that we would want to look at with you all about maintenance of effort. It came after that joint hearing we had, but we haven't sort of checked back with people or with them about it. And so this whiteboard thing, I'm actually writing up in a tidier way, and I'll share with everyone.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: And I gotta go one last question. The I can pull it

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: through because we're just going to be having the same discussion. We've had every day since, what, January 6?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Good That's one, everybody. Just thinking about the folks that you are dropping in as consultants into areas where you think there might be merger possibilities. Are they reporting to AOE? What is the organization to whom they would be reporting? Who decides where they go?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Who they go? Who

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: decides where the consultants go to try to encourage mergers according to what you said?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: Think it's, Yeah. So, okay. So let's say we end up with This is common map before it's been changed to a guidance map, which it will be, with potential seesaws laid over it in this the dark kind of railroad line, those are the seesaw recommendations that you put in redistricting task force. They're the superintendent repents. We think we're going to shift a little bit. So you would then have one consultant or one facilitator dropped into each CISA region and using this underlying guidance map of, oh, if I'm in this region, I might be trying to pull together three study committees of potential new districts. Or if I'm in this region, I might be trying to pull together four study committees of potential new districts. I'm Which

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: committee is deciding where they go based on the drawing of the CISA maps?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: What do you mean by where they go?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: I don't know about you.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: So you draw the CISA maps. You understand there are some merger possibilities within those. So first you're deciding on the map on the CISAs. Yes. And second then, is it just one consultant per CISA that you're saying go forwards and prosper?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: Yes. But there are also, I think we already have some provisions that it might be because trying to match all of these things up, there might be places where like, oh, they're gonna be in this CISA for now, but the merger, they actually, this district is gonna go with this other merger study committee.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Like there's

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: ability move over the line a little bit in terms of which study committee. Every CISA so you're gonna have

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: a CISA map, and then every CISA will have sort of a sub map within it of recommended district configurations. Guidance configurations. Okay.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: But before the CISO is legally formed, who is that consultant reporting to?

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: That is what we're working on right now because we want them to get started work before the CSOs probably are all going to be in place. And so I'm not sure they're really reporting to anyone. They're facilitating these study committees, which is a process that many went through and laid out in Act 46. That's a community based local schools process. So I guess they're reporting to them. I mean, they're really just facilitating and organizing.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: You're trying to figure where

[Rep. Erin Brady, House Education Committee]: Where the contract goes, we are trying to figure out. And that is the challenge.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: You very delightfully corrected the careful words that I had You corrected my not careful words with your careful words about this recommended math. I am wondering if there's a way to not call I know they were called study committees under Act 46. I wonder if there's any way to not call them that, and to be maybe more specific in what they are.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: We haven't talked about that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Please do. Thank you. Suggestions? Just something with more Teddy looks very excited, he's gonna come off the slacks for you.

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: No. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Thank you. I don't see any other hands, so thank you very much, Erin. Great. As Erin leaves, and good luck to you on your journey. As Erin's walking out of the room, I'm gonna do a little public service announcementing. Thank you very much. So at 11:30, we are going to stop for because the Vermont Superintendent's Association is having their regular lunch. The Capitol Plaza, this is a very good time for us to go talk to superintendents. There's often also school board chairs and business managers there. And it's a really great opportunity for us to be checking in with all the things we're thinking about with them. So would love for people to go. I'm gonna go. I think Charlie's gonna go. I don't know who else is gonna go. So I wanted to leave the committee time to do that. Bill, are you

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: on? No.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: You don't know yet. Sorry. And then at 01:00, we're back here to hear an amendment to the yield bill. So we will once again miss announcements, everyone. So sorry about that. K. Any other housekeeping, confusion, anything? We didn't take a break today. I'm sorry. That was careful of me. Does anyone need, like, a two minute break, or should we just push through to 11:30? We only have twenty minutes left. Out here. Okay. On our list,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: the things we

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: have not talked about yet. Now that we understand the outline of the CIFA support brokered relationship plan, I'm thinking about what kind of testimony we want to take in order to better understand what merger incentives would be helpful. So if folks have ideas on testimony for that, please think about that and let me know by tomorrow at noon.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: You can repeat that each Yes.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: So what I just heard from Erin, like we just heard from Erin, is that they're depending on this committee to be thinking about what incentives would be needed for the brokered relationships of new districts that will be facilitated by and with the CISOs or under the CISOs or with these facilitators. I want to remind people that incentives can be positive incentives. They can be negative incentives. They can be neutral incentive. It's not just talking about pouring money at the problem. There are a lot of different directions we can go. And those incentives need to be about forming. It also might need to be about transcending some class divides between two towns. Lots of different pieces of that. So I'd like people to just, for next steps, let me know by noon tomorrow what testimony you think might be useful to figure that question out a little bit

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: more. I envisioned a couple of years ago was we have to know

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: what the

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: educational policy is, what the education committee here wants to accomplish for us to do this kind of tax policy. So, are they envisioning? I heard them talk about effectiveness, efficiency, but do they have,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: what I've seen in writing, glass size minimums and things like that, are we going toward what's already in writing in 'seventy three? Are we doing We wanna make sure that the work we're doing is fiscally supporting the goals that the education committee is moving forward, both in Act 73 and the updates to Act 73 that are in the language that you have in committee right now.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Okay. And language committee? I have the money. Representative Waszazak.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I appreciate you naming that there are

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: both positive and negative financial incentives, and I think it's important as we move through these conversations to remember that just human behavior and human emotion does not always track to financial incentives. You're not rational creatures. No, we are not rational creatures. And so I think that just per ACT 46, a lot of emotions got in the way of the implementation of that. So as we're talking about what those incentives should or should not look like, I want us to keep in mind we're not rational creatures.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I really appreciate that. And I think sort of one piece of that that's both about addressing the fact that we're not rational creatures and is actually a financial thing is say if a community thought that if they merged, a school might close. And that feels like a loss. And if we were able to create the right fiscal environment, then the work that that community might be doing might be about that new use for the building actually being a huge win for that community. Representative Ode has been talking about that. And so that's a place that the feelings and the story about the process can really line up with fiscal issues. So send me testimony ideas about how we can get from where we are to that.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I just, I worry, I mean, I worry that we're keeping the past, because I think people move when they see that doing a ton of hard work is gonna leave them better off. And unless, I just, I wish we could decide what it is that we actually think is going to make better opportunities at

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: a lower or reasonable price point, and

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I think it's the high schools, and if that is it, then that's what the study committee should be organized around. And the implication could be that you could

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: be part of planning this regional high school, or you may be added to it after effect. I think there's people in America, right now we so reward people for not doing that financially. Why wouldn't they do it? So if you could send me an email about the particular witnesses you would wanna have in to get the testimony about the mistakes of the past that we don't wanna repeat. Representative For general comment in what you're

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: typically asking for, but when we were debating Act 46, Ways and Means, downstairs, one of the things

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I'm so glad I was here then.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: One of the things that I brought up frequently and always lost is what's the role of the school board gonna be going forward? Because boards play a very important part of this discussion all the way around. And I couldn't get people to agree that we should try to work with the definition of what a school board is gonna become. And I have continually had the same concern. And I'm just putting that out there, and there are bits and pieces of what Erin brought in which are very related to that discussion and da da da. So anyway, that's just something I'm putting out there so that you can understand where I, what my concerns were and are still.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And the governance side of it is, I think, where a lot of

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: the work of the education committee is and has been in. Understood. And school board can have several different definitions as we work our way through this potential definition.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: So if there's any testimony you want for that, let me know. Well, it's it's So the decision I

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: would like to hear it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Okay. I don't wanna do all the thinking for you. I want you to do the thinking and tell me who you want to have in.

[Rep. James Masland, Member]: I'm thinking out loud. Great. Good letter of it. Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: Was another hand, but I lost who it was, but maybe there wasn't. Great. Last one, I think. Next steps for foundation formula contingencies and clarifications. I think there's some language that's been drafted that needs to be shared with the committee. I think we can get an update from staff on what the current law contingencies are and the report that's coming, just so we can all remember that. What are other next steps or witnesses we would need on the foundation formula contingencies and clarifications? We would need to figure out, I guess one of those contingencies is that when would this go into effect and why.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: We're on foundation formula updates right now

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: and you want to know what our next steps are.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: Real question is if we have CSAs not school districts does the foundation formula work hope you could have testimony on that. And in that case, which foundation bond?

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: Cost factor, evidence based, etcetera, etcetera?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: We also have testimony, could the current formula continue to work? Both. Because what we're really talking about, we're back to local control now. So if we're out of local control, then the current formula could work if we bake into it new, you calling incentives and disadvantages, new ways to count, for example, what your per pupil spending is, depending on whether you are advancing toward

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: what we're trying to get. Those things I heard from Erin, and maybe that will change between now and when they send us a bill, is that while they are extending the timeline, they're still envisioning an endpoint where we have much larger districts. It's just the process to get there is locally decided. And so there's what do we do with the current law financing system in the meantime? And then there's what does it look

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: like to transition? That's what we do currently will help people make decisions if they decide, no, we're not going to do anything about consolidating, we're not going to, I don't even want to say consolidate, we're not even going to meet with the little committees, whatever they call them, but if the, well maybe this is the thing is, if you can choose not to collaborate, you can choose not to talk, that will impact you in the current heat line because there's a of

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: And so I think that's your, I think that's a CISA support merger incentive topic, but yes. That's true. Okay. I'm just trying to keep, I know all the ideas are

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: on know the steps. That's where

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: that belongs, but if if you're going to get to a foundation formula, which, you know, I don't know, but if that's where we'll add it, you really have got to, I would think we have to take some steps along the way, otherwise

[Kirby Keaton, Legislative Counsel]: I

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: feel that we really need a look back or some other mechanism at the end of the process with the consultants. There's a final sign off on that foundation formula. And I don't know if you're asking for witnesses to testify. I don't know how to, Yeah. I can't envision the person who would comment to testify But I just feel like there are so many moving pieces with that foundation formula that we really need someone who has designed it and thought through all the different analyses that we've asked for and say to us, This is what the impact of this foundation formula will be, because it's really hard to explain to a community the costs and benefits that

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: we really don't know. And so I'm going to put that topic very warranted into what is the, essentially, is the trigger for the foundation formula? And that would tell us next. I think Representative Waszazak is next. I'll

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: try to find some folks that are left from Act 46 in my school district. The current educate just to representative Ode's point about the current funding formula, the current funding formula is strangling my schools right now, and it's completely It's flat. Strangling my schools. It's completely failing us. It's failing my taxpayers, it's failing my students, it's failing my teachers. And I also am very, very nervous about any of this voluntary stuff because the voluntary mergers also failed in my community last time around. So I'm gonna continue to go through this process. I'm going to try to make this legislation as good as it can be under the parameters that are set for us for the education committee, but I still strongly believe that we should be looking at mandatory mergers and we need to be going towards the foundation for.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Branagan? Comment. The reason all of this works for the district that I represent is that half of the district continually votes no on their school budget every single year. It's not working for them. You know, like Teddy just expressed, I'm in that same boat for at least half my district. I've always felt the sooner we get going with that foundation formula, the better. No more fighting about the budget. The board can anticipate what money they're getting, and we can go forward from there. I got a little glimpse of that map that she was using, and I have seen it before. It seems to include my district with a whole lot of other districts, it's the islands, who also have school choice. Some of the schools in the island have total school choice. All of them have grade six or grade eight through 12 school choice. So they've grouped them together, which I also think is a good idea. So there are two steps forward that could be made for my district that I think would help right off the bat next year. Thank you. And if you have

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: members of folks from your community, whether it's your superintendent or your school board chair, who you think would be helpful for us to hear from about what a contingency that they would like to see for us moving towards that, that would be great.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: Is it possible any of this might be implemented next year? No.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I have no idea what's gonna happen over the next three months, but next year feels like a very, very, very fast. We won't even have a report back about what the foundation formula needs to be yet.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Are we having a back unit? Probably, yeah. Talking about Medical

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan, Member]: health expert from UVM. No,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: she is not the contractor on the study, and we can have her in if we want to hear about the existing foundation formula. But she is not the contractor for the KFO work.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm done.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: One I'm second. I'm gonna see if anyone else who has not said very much today is interested in speaking before representative Ode does. Because this is gonna be the last word before we wrap. Okay, representative.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: I was thinking about the

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: look back and virtual treatment. We had a look back from the Clean Eats standard, so whoever put that together. Yeah, that

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: works really well, representative Ode.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: Well, it's a look back.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: I'm not

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: No, that's probably the wrong term for it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: It is basically I'm sorry

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: for looking We need affirmative action to be required from the legislature to put that foundation formula in place. There's still too many unknowns about what it will look like in the end. Teddy, to your point, there's no way that you know that the foundation formula is

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: gonna help your district because we don't know what it's gonna look like after this process. We don't know.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: I understand that the current formula is not working for your district, I get that. But until we know what the foundation formula is that we're actually proposing, you can't know

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: that it's gonna be better for you. You're definitely going get a higher tax rate.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: That's for sure. Can't get worse. That is not for sure. Thank you, everyone.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, Member]: Can Julie help provide testimony of what it would look like if we started raising the floor on Teddy's district so that the transition to the new foundation plan will be

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: less of a shot? There is an idea that's floated around a lot about setting the yield in a different place to create minimum spending, and we can hear some testimony on how that might work, yes. I would also add- Go Yes, go ahead, Representative Lefesh.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member]: I'm very respectful to all

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak, Member]: members of this committee and this body. I would like to be able to advocate for my district in the best way that I know how without being told what is or is not good for my district. And that's been a frustration for me over the past few years.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt, Clerk]: I'm really sorry I can feel like I was trying to tell you what is good or not good for your district. I'm just saying it's an unknown. So think it's an unknown for all of us. And I just wanna make sure that we're making decisions based on data and we're making them with our eyes wide open. That's what I'm asking for.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, Chair]: I agree. Thank you. On that, we are gonna wrap for the morning. We are back here at 01:00 to hear an amendment from representative Logan that's in

[Rep. Charles Kimbell, Ranking Member]: the