Meetings
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[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Do you need one? There's like a whole stack at the moment.
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Oh, Yeah. Great.
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Oh, here we are with me in still the same day of the week, which is Wednesday, April 29. It is
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: 03:15. When
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: we receive the yield bill, which should be soon from the Senate, there are updates to education spending in it because more numbers came in after the yield bill left us, which happens almost every year except for last year. And so wanted to have the agency in just to update us on the projected education spending as they understand it. Ted, the floor is yours. Thanks for joining us.
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Hey, it's warm today, isn't it?
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I haven't been outside yet.
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: I'm not wearing my long johns anymore.
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: We give you a chance to get outside.
[Unidentified Committee Member B]: Snowy it's snowy
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: for us. They keep it cold there, yeah.
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: I think it makes you productive.
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Yes, perhaps. For the record, Ted Yates, senior fiscal analyst, agency of education. So education spending, we are in between our preliminary budget collection and our final budget collection. But I went to the effort of trying to track down the updates to the districts that had not passed their budgets and re warned. So with that new information, the current warned budget expenditures, and this is all districts, 119 districts, nobody's missing. See that, right? Yeah. Current warned expenditures, 2,300,000,000. Oh, sorry, 2.457 this year compared to 2.373 last year. So a 3.5% change in expenditures. Offsetting revenues is up 1.3% from last year, which is a little bit better than the last time we were here. So the anticipated education spending is 2,066,000,000, an increase of 3.9%. And last time I think it was 4.2% when we were here before. But it has come down a little bit, obviously, because some of the districts had debris worn and coming with lower budgets. Some of the districts that we didn't have before and we were projecting, we were projecting them at a 4.2% increase. It looked like most of them, there was only three or four, but they came in higher than 4.2%. But because the other districts reduced their budgets, they re warned, it's a net decrease. Before, it was 2.07, I believe. So I think it's down about 4,000,000 head spending from the last time we were here. Long term weighted ADM, dollars 141,000 for an ad spending per long term weighted ADM of 14,621, compared to the excess threshold of 16,004 and 70. We have eight districts currently, same as last time that are over the threshold. 18, I think districts didn't pass the Fur On Town Meeting Day. So since then, they've all re warned and nine of them have successfully passed a budget that's as of yesterday because there was three districts that voted yesterday. So down below, Kingdom East voted yesterday. They failed significantly, I think. Echo Valley failed. I'm not sure what the margin was, but Paymountain at least one out of three did pass yesterday. So as of today, that puts us at 90.1% of proposed spending has passed voter approval. And then there's the schedule for the remaining districts when they're scheduled to revoke and then the thirty day waiting period after assuming that they pass. And again, these are preliminary data. That's fine. And that's all I have.
[Unidentified Committee Member B]: So the sorry, the drop in the long term weighted ADM from the initial estimate, now is that in line with the initial estimate for FY 'twenty seven, or does that change?
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Initial estimate, like the December 1 letter?
[Unidentified Committee Member B]: Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: It's definitely different because this is the actual data that we collected, I don't remember what it was for the December 1. Our estimate was very, very close. I think we estimated about a 1% decrease. But it's very close to whatever that December 1 estimate was.
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Bridget, welcome. So in the sense of what the decision to start transitioning to in state, if that is going to have an impact on long term weighted aid again. There are people who are never going send their kids to school and Vermont, And so over time, we would expect to see some of them if they weren't, continue to go where they would have gone, but they wouldn't be funded by tax dollars. Are you seeing any evidence consistent with that?
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: I haven't addressed that question, but if there is an impact, it would gradually phase in because we have the student grandfathered it. Yeah, sorry.
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: My favorite piece, Echo Valley
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Geographically?
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah. I don't know where it is.
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: It's Central Vermont School District, and I honestly don't know where that is. I'm not born and raised in Vermont. You're here,
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Montpelier, not
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: sweetie. Anybody?
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Is.
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Echo Valley is the town's Orange and Washington. Just looked it up on the website, I did not remember that. Any other questions?
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Was a Easton Artfield in Waynestown. It's being gotten
[Unidentified Committee Member B]: close together.
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: They are
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: already next
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: to today's.
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Any other questions for Ted?
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: I'll be back tomorrow morning, I guess.
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah. And so tomorrow morning, I was hoping the yield bill would have passed both readings of the Senate before we took that testimony. But I'm just gonna hope that it doesn't get amended massively on the floor. Just for the purp I mean, maybe it'll be amended in a direction that I would like, but just for the purpose of testimony. So would love testimony about the whole bill as passed the Senate, but particularly curious about the agency's thinking on the structure of the excess spending penalty and its exemptions that they built in.
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Okay.
[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Thanks.
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: I would probably do a side by side, like what we actually, the districts that actually had excess spending for over excess spending compared to what they would have been if the rate was at 112%, something like a side by side thing like that.
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah. Julia can give us that, but the policy considerations of that from the agency's perspective. Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you for coming over here for five minutes.
[Ted Yates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: You're welcome.
[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Folks, we are done for the day.