Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Good continuing morning, ways and means. 10:10. It's May. We are continuing our testimony on h nine forty nine, the yield bill.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: We have two folks that we

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: were not able to get to yesterday. I'm grateful that we can hear from today. First up, we have Cindy Senning, if you'd like to join us. Thank you for being here. From Harwood Unified Union School District, where I believe I have gotten more emails about this bill than from any other district. So I'm super excited to hear your testimony. For being here today.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Thanks for inviting me. Appreciate it. I just want to just start by saying I'm Cindy Senning, and I'm here to talk to you all about how dire the situation will be for us if this reduced spending threshold actually goes through. A 112% will be devastating for our district. I just add that. First of all, thank you for inviting me to testify. We appreciate having the opportunity to do that. I come to you all as a representative of Duxbury on the board of Howard Unified Union School District, and I served there as the vice chair. Our chair, which has been away through the school vacation, just got back a day or two ago and didn't feel she'd be have the time to adequately prepare to meet with you all. I have lived in Duxbury for over fifty years, and I have been a parent of two children who attended Duxbury Primary in Harwood seven to twelve. I'm reminded that one of those children you all know, Will Senning, has been with you guys for many years, just a few years ago, but anyway. He went to Duxbury Primary School, as did his brother, and they went to Harwood for seven through twelve. I'm a grandparent of five children currently in preschool, Duxbury Primary and Crossett Brook Middle School, all in my district. I was a health ed teacher and school nurse at Harwood, the principal at Duxbury Primary School, and has served on three school boards, Duxbury, originally, Waterbury Duxbury, and Harwood Unified Union School, which is strictly where I am now. I attended graduate school at UVN where I received my master's in education and a doctorate in educational administration. My dissertation was on local control in a small primary school in Vermont, not the district in which I lived and served. I would be remiss if I did not begin talking to you about my strong belief that we have an excellent public school system here in Vermont, and I am really hoping we do not do anything to bring it down in our efforts to improve it. In particular, I'd like to list some of the accolades that back that belief up. US News and World Reports worked on a digital media company just last year using data from the US Department of Education to rank over 70,000 public schools on four indicators, math proficiency, reading proficiency, mathematics performance, and reading performance. Let me mention that last year in the Vermont ranking, our district had three of top 10 elementary schools, Wakefield, Warren, and Moretown. Needless to say, all of us on the hardwood board are very proud of them. If any of you wanna know the other ones, I'll it's in that testimony. It's a minor theme here. As cited in the World Population Review in 2024, on a national level, Vermont reportedly has the highest graduation rate in the country, ninety four point six percent. That's number one in their rankings. In 2024, Forbes ranked all states in standardized test performance. Vermont ranked in the top 10 nationally. Vermont's ranking has been, for the last twenty years, exceeded the national average in SAT scores. Often we talk about how poorly we've done on certain tests, and you pick a specific test and mention it. I just wanted to mention some of the areas where we've really excelled. Also, on a more personal level, my two children returned to Vermont to raise families here, in large part because they valued their public school experience highly. Understandably, he believed Vermont for jobs, economic reasons, and housing, but rarely do I hear of someone leaving Vermont because of our schools. Quite the contrary, they come to Vermont for our schools, for the small personal community they experience in. I'd I'd encourage you to take some time to talk to your schools in your district and ask how many students do go on to colleges or the trade schools of their choice. I am confident that our public schools prepare students for the future. We all can agree, we all can agree, that despite my above comments, we do need change in our education system. That change encompasses a number of factors, and I think it's important for us to think about them. We need to, of course, focus on declining enrollment. We need to focus on current funding. We need to focus on a funding formula. We need to focus on property taxes and other forms of income. We need to focus on those cost drivers that you've all been hearing about that are pushing us into unmanageable budgets. I'm going to just repeat them because it's important that we all be aware of the implication they have for us, especially as school board members trying to develop budgets that fit our district. Health insurance, mental health services, transportation, underfunded special education mandates, and energy costs. And that just names a few of them. There are others. Many of these are essential social services for sure, and schools are being forced to provide that for them in their education budgets. School nurses, mental health workers, special services for the handicapped, and others. The governor's proposal and h nine forty nine do not address these issues. All they do is cap budgets loaded with these noneducation services and push for consolidation, large districts, large schools, and large classes. I recognize the legislature can't change at all nor can we, school board members. We know you are all working hard to manage some of these budget issues, but you can take the fiscal responsibility for getting these non education services out of the education budget. Right now, we are feeling pressure pushing us in the wrong direction with the September reduction of the excess spending threshold from 118% to 112%. This reduction imposed on our educational spend brings us to a level that will have an adverse effect on students in anticipation of a funding formula that may or may not be established in years to come. In the meantime, the reduced budgets will add to the cuts that we have already experienced, cuts totaling one third of our budget in the past three years. Among other things, we already have cut more than 50 positions. Of those positions, 36.3 are teaching positions. Three are administrators, 14.8 are support staff. That leads to a total of 54.1 positions. We also have eliminated all primary school foreign language programs, cut a school nurse position, reduced a number of bus routes, reduced coaching and supplies in the athletic programs. Next on the chopping block, should this forced reduction in excess spending threshold come about, the only way to describe it is as a as chopping I see it, could be reducing course offerings, particularly electives, advanced coursework, and specialized programs that enrich our student experience. Reducing academic supports and interventions that help struggling students to succeed, scaling back enrichment programs such as STEM initiatives, career and technical education opportunities, field trips and associated transportation and experiential learning. Reducing student support services, including counseling, behavioral support and specialized instructional services, athletic programs. And here I ask, would you want to choose between soccer, hockey, basketball, wrestling, golf, tennis, or gymnastics? What would you choose in your communities? Also, limiting extracurricular programs, clearly affect students. Skiing, outdoor studies, environmental studies, clubs, theater, arts, and music. All of these have a direct effect on students.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Thank you.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: And of course, we will continue to include those programs the legislature has mandated. Need I say without funding, pre k for all children in our district. We are only one of a minority of states requiring pre k valuable essential services. They are indeed, essential, and they are quite expensive. And universal meals, to name just two. It is without a doubt that to make the changes required will take time and resources. I'm talking about human resources here. Legislators, educators, parents, community members, financial experts, and students. And I didn't even add taxpayers, but also taxpayers for sure. We cannot expect to make well thought out changes to our entire system in nine months or maybe a year, it would be by the time we're done. We cannot expect, in in nine months. Excuse me. I know this from personal experience. Twenty years ago, Waterbury and Duxbury needed the change for different reasons, granted. Those two boards, on one of which I was a member, got together. We consolidated two school districts into one. We built a new middle school. We switched the location of grade levels. And then the grade levels, Waterbury and Duxbury, seventh and eighth graders came back to the Waterbury area to Crossett Brook Middle School from Harwood. Fifth and sixth graders from Waterbury and Duxbury primary schools went to Crossett Brook. A section of Harwood was expanded and developed into a middle school for seventh and eighth graders from the valley. And Duxbury kindergartners through fourth graders went to what is now Brookside. Preschool had already been merged and took place at Brookside. The Duxbury School was finished and is now an apartment building and day care center. And I just add and say housing question mark, you know, what do we do with these buildings? And certainly housing is an issue for us. It took years, many, many public meetings, four votes, many, many board meetings, and state funding for the construction of Crossett Brook Middle School. And now the talk is about forced consolidation for the whole state without adequate time or gathering of those human resources needed. Currently, our board is studying our district made up of five primary schools, two middle schools, and one high school for potential consolidation or revisioning our building use. We will be looking at cost, educational values, buildings and community support. We are aiming to focus on and deal with decreasing enrollment and increasing cost per student without diminishing our sound educational programs. We know this will take time and people while continuing the work of educating our children. Want to end by reiterating the loss to our education system that will be caused by reducing the excess funding threshold to a 112%. However, even more significant than that loss is the devastation that it will cause our children and grandchildren. I implore you to maintain threshold at its current rate. Thank you for all your efforts and your attention to H949.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you very much for coming in. I really appreciate it. I appreciate what you shared about the excess spending threshold. And I also Michael, the superintendent in your district, like later, thank you, was really quite excited about all the experience that you had had with the mergers that you described and those transformations. And I wondered if there's I know that's not the of the bill in front of us, but frankly, all the bills are about to get all mixed up together in the next few weeks. So I'm curious if there's anything else you'd like to share about sort of the experience and the timeline of those mergers.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Well, the timeline is pretty clear. It took several years, and I described you the number of meetings. We had four public four major votes in the whole district, district level votes, public votes at the time. First, we had to get approval from the governor to even consider merging. We had to it was governor Dean at the time, and we had to get approval from the governor to combine to do consolidate, although he was encouraging consolidation. Then we actually had to have a vote that consolidated us, that allowed us Waterbury and Duxbury districts to become one district, the Waterbury Duxbury District. And, then we had to look at the the way our district contract that we have at the time was worded, that we couldn't take our seventh and eighth graders out of Hardwood. And a big part of this, I could go into where the cost savings came in doing that, but a big part of moving the seventh and eighth graders back up to Waterbury, one was financial, and second was the Waterbury community wanted their seventh and eighth graders closer to home, more involved in the Waterbury and Duxbury issues going on. So that was we had to have a vote on all the schools in our district, all the districts that made up our district had to vote to approve the withdrawal of our seventh and eighth graders from Harvard. That was that was a very unnerving vote, but they did it because what they included in the ballot and the vote vote for that was that if in the future those towns wanted to withdraw their students, they could. They wouldn't have go through the vote again. So that that was a big one that a lot of people didn't realize. And then the final thing was the building of the construction of Crossett Brook Middle School. At that time, the state's funding for school construction was 30% of the cost of school construction. However, because Dean was trying to encourage us to consolidate, they agreed that if you had to bill in order to consolidate, then the state would pay, 50%. It was. So when you drive by Crossett Brook Middle School, if you ever do down there, I'm at 100, you look at it, that was 50% funded by the state in an effort to consolidate. It's all part of this same issue. Anyway, so that's that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Is there anything that we could be doing now to other we certainly what you said about school construction is something that we're trying to put in place right now. We just sent that over Is to the there anything else that you think we could be doing to better enable that, to make what was a fairly difficult process a little easier?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Well, and I know you're working on it a lot, but those cross drivers are killing us. They are 70% of our budget. I sit down as a school board meeting, and a figure that came up, I think in a letter that we'd sent out recently talked about the fact that our board is only responsible, the board I sit on, we're only responsible for 25¢ out of every dollar. The rest of it comes from all of these cost drivers, so anything we can do. But I also think, this is a personal opinion, I also think that the issue that I make about moving some of these cost drivers out of our education spend. They're not education spend. When we cut the school nurse position in the Valley last year, the Valley was very upset because they were losing clinic in the whole health business going on. They were losing clinic and they said, the nurses at the school are the only people that kids can go to for health services. Well, that's health services. I firmly believe that the money for the school nurses should be at least in part coming from the health budget. I know it's tight too, I understand that, I really do. But just looking at what some of the cost drivers, don't believe belong in mental health is another one. I think that that our mental health budget should be looking at the mental health that's provided in our schools. So that's one example of what I would think

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you, appreciate that.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I'm wondering, when was Hardwood built? I'm trying to remember that.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Hardwood was built in the mid-60s.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: So there was, at that time, a lot of union schools were built. That's when, I'm from Woodstock, and we had, I think we're very similar in the sense that we pull from some pretty rural geographic areas. I think now you've got kids coming from Hancock and Granville maybe?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Not quite far south, but Granville for sure, yes. And I don't know if there's a Hancock neighborhood.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Yeah, don't know.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Yeah, we have that extension. We have a weird geographic district, don't know, from looking down and down as far south as Granville and back up the transportation costs for us. And in Moretown, we invited Moretown to join this consolidation that we did back in the nineties, and they couldn't do it because they sent they live all their kids were going to Harwood and to the middle school there. Their kids, they live on the Moortown Northfield border, the Moortown Middlesex border, a little bit of Montpelier border, and then up on Route 2, Moorestown Waterbury Duxbury border. So for them, wherever we put if we put all their kids at at Waterbury, they have kids from Northfield coming to Waterbury. It's crazy. It's just the transportation piece is a big piece. Yeah. And

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: even in conversations about where the best location is, do you see any further consolidation as an advantage for the hardwood school districts? You mean

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: the others would be? Yeah. I know that there's discussions going on about where they could do it and where they can where we can combine some services, the cost of some services that that people talk about that CISA business. I think that's where our board sees the best chance for our students.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I may have misunderstood this or something, don't know, but were you trying to say that we should reduce our services to pre k or No. What did you mean about that?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: I just wanted to make a point that we have some mandated programs right here in Vermont from our own legislature that we are not putting on that charting block list at this point, but that they're expensive and may add to our education budget for sure, just where we increased it.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: also wondered about this, underfunded special ed mandates, do you know specifically what some of those services are under something?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: It's all federal mandates. It's federal mandates. It's not you guys so much. That's right. When I was a principal at Duxbury, I had some students with some very severe physical handicaps. And at that time, feminists had just done some of the mandates that made us have to have them in our classrooms. And we had people coming up from Kentucky to look at the Duxbury primary school for the way we managed it. It was good, what we did. If there have been changes in how

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: we support special ed, just, and I wasn't going to say this, but in answer to your question, we provide a lot less technical assistance than we used to, and the state has struggled to reach the director of special education, which is part of why we're showing some of the challenges that we're showing. I appreciate. I was in a merger at the same time. They closed two elementary schools, and actually three districts gave up choice and built a unified high school. And I know the construction date was critical to that, but what was also critical was the process leading up to it. And I just wondered if you could talk not just about the length of time, but what actually yielded a successful merger in your context in terms

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: of community engagement. Well, numerous community meetings, board members we split into teams and then we arranged for coffee hours and time. So for smaller groups to be able to talk about what the, so a lot of community information, but we have lots of different things. The other big thing that I think had a lot to do with us actually passing the whole deal was that moving students from seventh and eighth grade to a middle school reduces the cost per student because the cost per student in high schools at that time was higher considerably than it was when we looked at the middle schools and the surrounding areas. And so we saw that if we moved our seventh and eighth graders to a middle school, the cost per each of those students went down. And by the time we did all that, we made that move and we had the 50% funding for the building, the construction and everything, people's taxes actually went down. We had some charts that showed the change in their taxes, there was going to be a five year time period that people had reduced taxes. We had that in school, we moved our kids back home where we wanted them. So I would say looking at the finances of it, we had a fellow who was very good with the finances and he had developed a whole spreadsheet that showed how that would work and what our taxes would be over the next five years, presumably.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I'm interested in your observation on student support services because the national data collected and reported by IES through the F-thirty three collection suggests that Vermont spends about 2,000 more dollars per child on student support services than neighboring states, because in other states they provide that with state budget. If you cut those services, what would happen?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Oh, wouldn't want to cut those services.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm not saying that's I'm just saying.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: What would happen, those students would not be receiving what they're entitled to in our state, as far as I'm And is

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: that because you are a mandatory safety net of last resort when state government fails or is it because you understand the impact of cutting those services?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: I think more because I understand the impact of cutting those services. Those kids just would be the losers. We were at one point, one of the things that we were talking about, we were talking about shifting the costs in school and what we're doing is we're shifting them to our students essentially. That's the way it looks. It just just is really devastating. Mean, I wanna go back and make the point I started with. It would be devastating for our budget to have that excess spending threshold down at 112%. I I know that that's what we're basically talking about here. And I just wanna tell you, I've been on a lot of school boards, I've done a lot of education stuff. It will kill us. It just will really be destructive to our children and I implore you to even keep it at a 118 and let's figure some other ways to make the money work. Representative Ode, who's inside the computer, has a question.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: Thank you. Thank you, chair. I had the question that that representative Holcombe had. I my question is play it out if the mandates that you are complying with if you don't comply with those mandates. Play it out on the federal side. Play it out on the state side. And I understand I I didn't understand till I heard representative Holcombe say this, but what is this mandatory last resort versus the versus a yeah. So if you could do that, all three things.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: You know, I'm I I'm not exactly sure.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: Alright. What happens if you said, you know, these cuts are so huge. We are just not going to follow we're going we're not going to fulfill the the a federal mandate. What would happen to you?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Do you would probably if if we don't if we don't meet the mandates that we have, we're gonna have penalties that we have to deal with. But that's not even to me, it's important as if we if we well, if we don't fill them, we'll continue providing those services to kids presumably, but I believe that we'll have variety of fees and Okay.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: Just want everybody to to hear it all at once because and I think that's what happens, but I wanna hear the testimony. And then the second thing is, what if you were to cut a state mandated requirement? And I and tell me about this mandatory last resort. And maybe Rebecca Holcombe will have to do that.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: We can answer another time. Do

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: you want to answer that?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: I don't think I really Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Great. Okay. Okay. Crazy.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: Would like to hear what this mandatory last resort is because I have have to I've never heard of that before. Can can I hear that from Rebecca Holcombe?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Why don't we have, rather than having committee members testify, why don't we invite some folks in to testify on that next week, representative Ode?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: Alright. Thank you, Jeremy.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: But but, basically, I what I hear the witness saying, and I I thank you so much for this testimony, but is you know it's the right thing to do to fulfill the state and federal mandates. But you're anything that's mandated has to be funded. If it's not mandated, it's regular education. And so where the cuts have to come is from regular education. Would you say that's a fair summary?

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: I would ask you to repeat that, please. You you

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: When when you are required to fulfill mandates at that are state or federal, then you have no choice but to to use your money in that way. If you the only place you can cut then in your budget would be regular education.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: That's correct.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: Okay. So and regular education and were you saying that that's 25% of your budget? Or is I'm

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: not 25¢ at every dollar. Right now is what we as a school board can control, can ask our administrators to cut or not cut.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: So that's what I mean, I used to be on the school board, so I get this. And it's just so I know you're smiling over there. It's just it is so frustrating. I did hear someone say this morning something very interesting. She said, it's it's about costs, the costs of of what we're trying to provide. And that those are mandated costs. So thank you. Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Right. Miss representative, thank you.

[Cindy Senning (Vice Chair, Harwood Unified Union School District Board; Duxbury representative)]: It's also our income, just to say. It's not just the cost. It's also the way we if you notice, one of the things I suggested we focus on is our funding and our funding systems and the potential funding systems coming down the Turnpike too. We need to focus on where we're getting our money to pay these education costs.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Agreed. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Elizabeth, are you there in the Zooms? I am here. Yes. Hello. Nice to see you. Trying to shut

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: off my turn on my camera there. There we go. Hello. Nice to see you. Thank you for

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: coming in two days in a row. Really appreciate it.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: I listened the entire time yesterday, so that was great. That's fine. Try to try to work while I listen, but which can be a little difficult to do.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm not very good at that,

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: so I appreciate having me and I appreciate listening to all the testimony yesterday. That was great to be part of that and hear what everybody else had to share. Sounds like today's topic for you all is a little bit different than what I have for testimony.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Oh, it's the same topic. Are on yield bill, excess spending, the things, yeah.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Okay, great. So my testimony, I have something in writing, which I did submit yesterday. And then at the tail end of your meeting, you did ask me a question about giving a little bit of commentary after my testimony in regards, I believe, specifically to the potential exemptions to the excess spending that is built into the current draft of Okay. H-nine 40 So I'll start with my testimony on the yield bill as it relates to VASBO. I'm the current president for the Business Officials Group, and I'm also currently employed in the business office at South Burlington School District, for anyone that is not familiar with me. Earlier this year, I partnered with the Joint Fiscal Office to deliver a presentation designed for new school board members, superintendents, new business managers, and that was through VSBA that we did that. The purpose of that session was to improve the understanding of the December 1 letter and particularly the property yield, the process that is used to develop it and its effects on school district budgets. The joint fiscal office provided detailed insight on how that yield is calculated and the inputs required to prepare that estimate. My portion of the presentation focused on how school districts are already well into their budget development process at that time when that letter is issued and how that yield provided in that letter directly shapes the local budget decisions that are being made, tax rate projections, and what's presented to voters. Historically, the December 1 property yield has provided a relatively stable and reliable foundation for districts to estimate their education tax rates. While there have always been some adjustments during the legislative session, communication from the agency of education and the legislative partners has typically allowed districts to respond thoughtfully when changes were apparent. However, in a recent year, this process became highly volatile. Yield estimates shifted dramatically and frequently, sometimes on a weekly basis. It created significant disruption for school districts attempting to finalize their budgets and present accurate information to their voting population. Many districts were forced to make independent assumptions about the yield, leading inconsistent approaches across the entire state. As a result, numerous school budgets failed that year on their initial votes. Some of them required anywhere from two to three votes in order to pass. Several factors contributed to those outcomes. A primary issue was a loss of public confidence. Voters questioned whether our school districts were presenting accurate and responsible financial information when tax rates ultimately differed from what had been communicated, regardless of whether those differences were higher or lower. It eroded their trust. Even when the final tax rates decreased due to legislative adjustments, the discrepancy itself led many voters to doubt that the validity of the information provided during the budget process was accurate. Many voters hear the initial projections of what their tax rates will increase from the December 1 letter, and they believe that to be factual and firm versus an estimate at that particular point in time, it's difficult to convince them otherwise, even throughout the legislative process. We are concerned that a similar condition may be emerging again, despite the fact that most of our budgets have passed this year. The December 1 letter identified a property yield of $8,849 and early legislative proposals increased that figure to $9,170 and the current draft reflects $9,395 I believe. These fluctuations represent meaningful changes for districts and taxpayers, and they create challenges for maintaining transparency and credibility with our voters. We recognize that some adjustment to the yield is expected as updated data is available to you all. For example, this year's initial estimates reflected approximately a 6% increase in education spending while preliminary January data suggested growth closer to a 4% increase. That type of adjustment makes sense to us understanding the framework of that formula and what goes into that December first letter and the yield. However, additional increases to the yield that are not tied directly to underlying spending trends, but instead reflect policy decisions such as the use of one time funds to offset tax rates raise important concerns for us. While such measures may provide short term relief, they introduce longer term instability. Using one time revenue to support ongoing expenditures creates a structural imbalance that must be addressed in future years, often resulting in steeper increases or difficult budget decisions. School districts face the same similar challenges. In some cases, districts may use surplus funds to temporarily reduce their draw on the education fund, but this is typically done with the understanding that structural adjustments must follow. If those adjustments aren't achieved, the underlying issue persists and becomes more difficult to manage in subsequent budget cycles. Property yield is a critical component of Vermont's education finance system. It is intended to function as a stable and predictable mechanism that supports thoughtful local decision making and maintains taxpayer confidence. When the yield becomes highly variable or is used in ways that appear disconnected from its original purpose, it can undermine both of those goals. We are concerned about provisions within H-nine 49 that incorporate the elements of S-two 20, particularly the reduction of the excess spending threshold from 118% to 112% of the statewide average per pupil spending. While this approach differs from a strict spending cap, it is likely to produce similar behavioral responses from districts. In practice, districts will work to remain below that threshold often by reducing staffing or limiting educational programming. This dynamic does not address the underlying cost drivers and their increases, instead it risks expanding the existing inequities between districts, those already well below the threshold, those who are near to it, and those who are significantly above it. Ultimately, the impact is felt most directly by students through reduced opportunities, potential declines in educational quality. We do appreciate certain aspects of this approach. In particular, we support the continued use of a threshold rather than a hard cap. And we agree with the provision of excluding voter approved debt service from excess spending calculations. These elements reflect an understanding of the need for flexibility and local control. In closing, we urge the legislature to carefully consider the long term implications of the yield volatility and the use of one time funds in any education finance system. Stability, transparency, and sustainability are essential to maintaining the public trust and supporting effective local governance. We also encourage continued focus on addressing the root causes of the rising education costs rather than relying primarily on mechanisms that constrain the spending without resolving those underlying pressures. And then I thank you for your time and consideration. I'm sure you have questions. I heard a lot of more elaborate conversation in regards to the 118% and the 112% portion. I also did listen to folks that gave some commentary about the exclusions for the excess spending. So I don't think anything I will say will be a shocking surprise there either, But I'll stop for a moment and just before I go on to that and ask if you have any specific questions for me.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah, I represent this. Thank you very

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: much. I don't know if this is much a question, ma'am, is a confirmation that we hear over and over about the impact of cost drivers on which, in this committee, we can do very little about, but we hear them so repetitively, and I don't mean to use that word in a contrary term. But if we're not aware now to what extent the cost drivers are screwing everything up, we haven't been paying attention. So thank

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: You're welcome. All

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: the cost drivers that have been described a few times are all pieces that we've worked on in the context of September and other legislation that's working on. They're important parallel tracks and they all take time, right? None of happens overnight.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: And I think some of those cost drivers are somewhat addressed in various ways when you talk about the education transformation plan, you know, however that ends up shaping out. I think there are things like class size, you know, information and things like that that will assist in kind of driving or at least guiding what school districts focus on for their spending. So I think that that's important too, but yeah, you hear a lot about health insurance rising. You hear a lot about negotiated contracts for salary increases rising and everybody's kind of in competition with each other to maintain their staff level, right? So you're competing against each other for the same staff and trying to keep those schedules in line with each other, but it just keeps ratcheting up higher and higher when you're doing that. Yeah, is there any other particular questions before I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: No, oh yeah, sorry, Representative Higley.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Elizabeth, thanks. It looks like you support the provision excluding voter approved debt service from excess spending calculations. I have a concern, you know, we heard from the joint fiscal office yesterday that said that absent any other policy changes that would result in other school districts tax rates increasing to make up the lock penalty. I just wonder what your response is to what JFO put out.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Okay, so can you repeat that? I kind of lost the, so you're saying that excluding the debt service that JFO shared that it would risk other school districts doing what?

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Tax rate increasing.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Tax rates increasing. And that's assuming because before the language excluded up to a certain date, So if you had debt service that was as of a certain date, it was an exclusion. I know that with the previous law and the threshold rules, you were able to exclude debt service. So in my time working for school districts in finance office, I have seen only the threshold and the exclusion of debt service was allowed to be an exclusion as excess spending to get you below the penalty. So that's been kind of a long time thing. And so then when the language was actually put in to say only debt service is excluded up through debt service that was taken on as of this date, that was actually new. And so it made it so that only new debt service was no longer an exclusion. It was almost a disincentive to be taking on newer debt because you were no longer going to receive that credit against your excess spending. I think that the Joint Fiscal Office is probably correct in one instance, in the sense that if they were a district that was up against that threshold, really close to it, and they had a choice between going out and getting a bond to do a project that they needed to have done or using existing capital improvement money that maybe they have in a reserve to do that instead. They might choose to go out and get the bond because they would get that credit against their Ed spending for the debt service, and they would still have their capital improvement money in the reserve. I think there could be some validity to that. And then of course, the debt service payments go into their budget for every subsequent year and ends up increasing the amount that they're having to charge in taxes. So I don't totally disagree with that. I think there's always been a little bit of a controversy about whether or not to use capital reserves if you have them or whether to bond and which was the better option. And I think it really depends on the particular district, the board, whoever's kind of overseeing the finances, trying to make prudent financial decisions on behalf of that district. And there's not a lot of districts that have a ton of capital improvement reserves at this point, I don't believe. So at this point, it probably wouldn't be as much of a decision making. It would be more like have to take on the debt if they're going to do a capital improvement.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: A couple of thoughts on that, if I may. I think what Representative Higley was getting at, if the school districts were not then paying the excess spending penalty, then they're contributing less to the Ed fund, which means that everybody else's property taxes have to increase to make up for the difference. I think that's not necessarily what behavior would change, but I am curious about what your thoughts of astute business managers throughout the state, how they would react to the off ramps that are proposed in S-two 20. One is the maintaining the per pupil spending, and the second is maintaining the overall education spend, and how that then works within the levers that they have available to them or what that may do in their behavior. Could you speak to that for a moment?

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Yes, absolutely. That's actually what I had notes on, so I may have worded it a little bit differently when we first started talking, but I do have some notes on that because that was what was being talked about yesterday was those levers that are built into there for folks. And I think in the law, actually says that their excess spending would be zero if the following conditions were met. That's the section you're talking about? Yes. Okay. So I would say, as I looked at ed spending overall, and it says if the ed spending overall was not greater than the prior fiscal year, and my thought was if it's not greater than the prior year, but they were already, that district was already over the threshold in the prior year, then there needs to be some tweaking to that language because basically it would be saying that your education spending overall in your school district is not currently over what your ed spending was last year, but last year you were already over the threshold. And then this year, you're now gonna be exempt from being over the threshold because your ed spending is the same. That doesn't seem like it would be a good way to calculate that. You know, basically they already went over the year before, now they've stayed the same and they really still should be over, right? That

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: they

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: haven't reduced their ed spending, they haven't changed that dynamic. So that's my first thought. And I think I heard maybe Jake from the fiscal office say something that alluded to the same idea. I think that applies also to the ed spending per pupil, like that same you'd kind almost have to say something that would indicate that that was an exemption if they weren't already over the threshold in the prior year or something to that nature.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Can I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: ask you a question about that, Elizabeth?

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Yeah, sure. So

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I don't think that exemption makes as much sense as it could, to say sort of as gently as I could. And I think what they were trying to do was deal with, at least on the per pupil spending, was to some degree deal with the phantom pupil. Like, to create a phantom pupil provision without creating a new phantom pupil provision. And I'm wondering if you have any ideas and I'm sorry I didn't say this yesterday or send you an email or something. But I understand, like, how out of control the phantom pupil situation got. And I also could see how, like, averaging long term ADM over five years could get out of control in a lot of ways. And I don't know. I understand the problem that we're trying to solve, I don't know if maybe there's a better way to solve it.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Yeah. I was gonna make a little bit of a comment in regards to ad spending overall in this provision versus ad spending per pupil. I do see something positive in using the overall ad spend on a district versus using the per pupil ad spend on a district in this kind of exemption scenario. And the reason is many of our districts are experiencing situations where their ed spend overall actually might be dropping. They may be trying to curb expenditures, maybe they found another local, you know, a way to raise more local revenue. And so their ed spending overall could be dropping. And yet when they get to their ed spending per pupil, they're still going higher and increasing and possibly breaching the threshold. That's where I see something troublesome. It's basically because of either declining enrollment over time, but it also could be a dynamic that's different in their population of students in that school district and the waiting, you know? So it might not necessarily be that they're dropping in student population enrollment. They could be, you know, maybe their poverty rating or their sparsity or something is going away and they're waiting, and so they're losing counts in that area. And therefore they might breach this threshold when actually they are, you know, doing the work to be good stewards and trying to reduce ed spending overall. So I do see a more positive kind of swing to leaning towards the ed spending overall versus using the pupils and the waiting. I think it's pretty tricky with the pupil counts and the waiting and it being a two year average. I think that the two year average does help districts some because it softens the blow if they have a reduction in enrollment or something in their waiting that has changed drastically instead of just having it be a one year. I think it would be problematic to try to do it on a five year average. I agree with that. It almost seems more abstract. You're running the risk of the data being incorrect over time. I don't know if that really answers that question.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I guess the final sort of question to put a point on is, like, do you have an idea of how to do it better to address that same issue? And, like, you can get you can think about it over the weekend and, like, send an email if you think of something. Yeah.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: I do have a couple more notes about these and maybe it will Yeah. If we think of something while I'm going through this, then I'll add on that topic. I did think of in the ed spending overall not being greater than the prior year, if I was a person financially trying to kind of manipulate the end result of that in my budget building. What levers would I actually have to be able to do that? And I think a well resourced district with ed reserves or surplus dollars from a prior audited year could be able to force that ed spending to be the same as their year before within reason. So let's imagine if they had an ed reserve, which not too many school districts have it, but some do, or if they had surplus dollars from a prior year and they're working on their budget for the new year and they see that they are, say, dollars 500,000 higher in their ed spending overall in their current budget draft than they were the prior year and they wanna make sure they don't get this excess cost, they could apply 500,000 from their reserve or 500,000 from their surplus to keep it the same to avoid that cost. There again, that's kind of like using one time money to get themselves there. Not always a highly recommended thing for us to do as business managers or school districts, because you just create yourself that larger cliff the following budget year, but it is a way that districts could, if they are more well resourced and have that funding available, make it so that they are not getting over the threshold or in either the per pupil or in the overall. And then, you know, in the pupil overall, the per pupil spending, I think the trick about that, that the only thing that's different about that situation than the overall ed spending is that long term weighted pupil number fluctuating. And I know that it's been challenging for everyone to come up with what the weighting system should be and are they adequate weights for different things in that calculation? And I think that's always gonna be a conversation. It's problematic in the sense that if it keeps on fluctuating and changing, that's just gonna, you know, exacerbate all the change between districts and what they will expect to receive in their funding formula. I think the only way to really solidify, I don't think going more years in the average weighted ADM is a good idea. It just makes it more abstract, but I think that we do need to continue to looking at the weights that are assigned and are they adequately, are those weights adequately funding the services and the needs that they're intended to. So basically those weights are supposed to be appropriately assigned for what the cost of those particular student populations requires. And if it was adequately paying for it, it seems like that amount of money should be enough for a district to be able to pay for education services for that group and population. And then the only other thing I had written down is in the third exemption. I think there was an out that talks about three superintendents, three business managers, and the secretary of education being able to be on a committee of sorts that basically would determine whether or not there was an acceptable emergency reason why a district was over the threshold and be able to exempt them from that. The concern I have about that is it can be political. You've got three superintendents, three business managers. I don't know how many of those group of people would feel comfortable basically passing judgment on a sister or fellow district as to whether or not their situation was emergency or not. So I think if you were going to do that, and we all deal with that, right? Like you as legislature, you deal with the politics of that, any decision you make is not gonna be positive for one group or another, right? Like it's like you can never please everyone. So I think if that was going to be a provision for excess spending and being exempt from it, there would have to be really clear definitions of what qualifies as an emergency so that those folks aren't being asked to really make a decision, it's they're looking at the facts, making a decision based on the law. Yep, it qualifies or no, it does not qualify to make that decision really easy and not politicized. And I'm thinking of, you know, let's take capital improve, emergency capital improvement situation. I think that was one of the ones that was mentioned. So who gets to decide what's emergency? If I'm going to replace my roof on my gym at my high school because it leaked and it's an emergency. Obviously, I have to replace it. It's gonna cost me X amount of dollars. It put me over the threshold. Is it an emergency though if that roof is beyond its life expectancy because you've got deferred maintenance. So how would you, like, I can see where this would be really difficult to manage and for people to decide what was considered an emergency. And we do have failing facilities, right? We have facilities that have deferred maintenance and the like, and those folks aren't choosing to defer the maintenance. They don't necessarily have the funding to go and fix it when it needs to be fixed. And so therefore it becomes an emergency when something actually fails and they have to do it and they weren't expecting to have to do it in that particular year.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And there's also the question of like, is an emergency cost the patching of the roof or the full replacement of the roof? Right? Like, you'll also wind up in that. And I imagine that you would be one of the people who would have to sit there. So I appreciate particularly hearing from you on that.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Right. Right. And I agree. Like, is it the Band Aid that you'd be able to, and who would be the qualifier that says, Nope, this band aid wasn't possible on this particular roof. They had to replace it because the whole thing was gonna fail, which there again could be deferred maintenance that caused it because it's already beyond what life expectancy is supposed to be. You'd almost have to be calling in like the contracting firm to verify that, yep, that was an emergency. They're working for the school district. Gonna say yes anyway, right? I appreciate the effort of folks to put exemptions into this. I just think it's really challenging to really put parameters around it and make it be something that you all can actually enforce, right? Like, can it be enforced and how hard is it gonna be on the people that are assigned to enforcing it to determine whether or not it's an exemption or not for a particular district. Appreciate that. Representative Ode has her hand up.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: Thank you. A little while ago, you said, something about other ways to raise revenue, in order to put down your overall education spending. So what did you mean by that?

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: So there's very little local revenue that districts have access to. I think the bulk of their local revenue tends to be, and when we say local, it's not really all local, in all fairness, when we call it local revenue, what's coming out of your education spending, you're taking your total spend, you're reducing it by what we call local revenue, but some of that is state revenue. Some of that is your census block grant, which is special education. You can't change that, right? That's a chunk of money that you cannot change. We're given a certain amount per student on IEPs, that's what we get. And then there is also extraordinary cost spending. So if you have students that have high needs and you're having to pay a substantial amount, maybe you're having to send that student out to a particular program, those can be really costly. And so districts are trying to choose whether or not they're going to send out for those services if they can find them and place them, or are they going to hire from within and try to serve the student within their own district and compare the cost of the two of those things. But you do get revenue on the other end of that in addition for special education. Those are probably the two largest pots of money that school districts get that are really not something you can control in that local amount of money that comes in against your education spending. There are a number of other things. So they're little things though. So I think of in my history, we used to have tax anticipation notes that we would take out to be able to deal with the timing of cash flow in school districts. Certain districts have towns that only pay their taxes once a year, for instance. And so let's say that collection isn't till November. Well, you're starting to pay people's salaries July 1, right? So you have to find a way to basically fund that cash flow. Many school districts used to take out a tax anticipation note. The money would be deposited to them on July 1, and they would keep that open all year and just manage their cash flow that way and be able to pay all the invoices that they needed to. They were paying out a substantial amount of interest in doing that. And on the other side though, they were also maybe gaining a higher interest rate in their accounts that they held because they had that cash flow sitting there all year. So it was a balancing act of how much are we paying out in tax or interest and how much are we gaining in interest, which would be revenue. In my history, I was one of the early folks to transition and not do tax anticipation notes. I started doing lines of credit, only borrowing exactly what you need when you need it, and then paying it off as quickly as you possibly could during the middle of the fiscal year. And so what you're doing then is you're paying out a lot less interest and then you're still getting some interest on the end of the investment. So what I saw was an ability of managing that cash flow to actually gain, you know, thousands of dollars more in interest in your accounts that counted as local revenue and saving on the expenditure side as well. So there's an investment balancing act that I kind of played, that's a little item. There also is a lot of opportunities out there and it's growing a little bit. It used to be when you apply for grants, for instance, for school districts, public school districts usually were not qualified. A lot of organizations that were charitable or whatever going to give grants would say you had to be a five zero one(three) or a nonprofit in order to qualify. That is kind of slowly going away. There's a lot of organizations that are listing public schools as being able to receive these small grants and things. So there's another way that if you have someone on your staff that can really spend the time to go out and research what those organizations are, you can be drumming up grants to help your schools do certain projects with students or whatever. They're usually very specific things, but it can increase your revenue in the local side. There are things like indirect cost rate. That's something that school districts can apply for against their federal grants and they can apply for that with the state of Vermont and get approved for a certain rate. And what that does, it actually allows the school district, if they get approved for that rate, to charge a percentage of basically their administration overhead to that federal grant, basically to pay for all the services that like I provide to my district, you know, doing the accounting side of things for grants has to be done, and yet there's no ability to necessarily charge that directly to a federal grant, but the indirect cost rate application is a way that school districts can do that. And so we're seeing more and more school districts applying for that rate. So hopefully they, I think in the past, maybe some of them were not doing that and were not charging that to their federal grants. So that's a way that they can get some more money back into their general operating as local revenue. So it's all little bits and pieces and trying to maximize that local revenue and estimate it accurately when you're building your budget, because that's the other trick too, is most people focus on their expenditures for their budget. You have to focus on really taking a look at what your revenues are and trying to maximize that and accurately reflect it in your budget so that you're not saying you expect to get more money than you actually are or vice versa when you build your budget.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member)]: Thank you. That was really good.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I have a follow-up question about the Thank you for that question, Carol, and the answer, Elizabeth. I've gone through the process for an organization of all the GSA authorizations with the federal government, and it's a significant project to learn how to do and then actually just a significant amount of time to do. I'm curious how, as you say more districts are taking it on, how are they sort of learned how are each individual district learning how to take on that process? Is it sort of like you're calling is it like a peer to peer? Is there trainings? Is

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: are you bringing

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: in consultants? How does that work?

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: What I see as really positive is that I feel like the agency of education has actually reached out. Like, I feel like this application for indirect cost rate has been around for a long while, but it wasn't super well publicized. Know, they would send it out every year, here's your application. I feel like now the agency of education has actually said, this is a really good idea. So whether it's in a training that I've attended or when they send out the application to all the business managers in the school districts, they're really kind of promoting that people apply for that and do the work to get that approved so that they have the access to be able to administer that with their grants and their system. And I don't know if I understand the reason why some school districts choose not to do it. It is a substantial task every year, but I feel like it gets easier and easier after year after year of doing it. So in my experience, once you do it one time, then the agency of education is making it a lot easier because their data filling that application with your old year information as they roll it forward to your new year. And all you're having to do is update the new year information with all your budget information. And so they're making it easier. I think they've got a pretty good process and they're promoting it in their trainings when they send the application. And I think that's making more business managers aware that it exists and aware that it can be a benefit to them and that it can bring in more local revenue to their general operating for their school district.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you. Yeah, Representative Masland.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Yeah, thanks very much, very helpful. Two things, one is just you described your financial management practices in a way that leads me to think that others school districts could learn very much from you, and I wonder if somebody, whether it's AOE or or you guys, your associations and stuff like that, can organize a best practices workshop, which you may be doing already. But you've provided some information that that I for instance think is very helpful and hadn't heard it before. But we'll set that aside for the moment. You, a little while back in your testimony, said, are the waste adequately funding, you know, what thing that whatever they're supposed to be doing? We've heard in this committee, particularly from representative Holcombe, that when the weights are screwed up, the the stakes get compounded over a couple of years or something like that. And I wondered if you had some insights, comments, whatever you wanna say about the weights and their function in this Yeah. Unloaded system that can use going forward. That's a big question, but anything you could help us with would be very

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: So I will comment on your first comment first. I think what you speak to in regards to us having, you know, best business practices or whatever among school districts, I have been working in school district finance since 2004, so I'm gonna date myself right there. So I've been doing this work for a long time and now I'm the president of FASBO. FASBO is I feel like what you just stated is why FASBO exists. It's basically the association bringing together all of the like business office finance folks together. And in some cases it has expanded to include more members that are maybe an accountant or maybe they're an operations director, whatever, bringing them all into the fold to try to collaborate on best practices in all of our school districts. They do do a mentoring program to try to bring in new business management folks and teach them. We have our website and we try our best to like update. We try to collaborate on like policies and procedures so we're not all reinventing the wheel. Is, you know, being on the executive team of BASBO, it's all volunteer. You don't get paid to do any of that work. And so the structure of it is really probably not sustainable, which is a little bit scary. And we've been talking about that in our recent meetings and with the superintendents association and other V's groups, just kind of, is there a way we could all collaborate together even and still have our own unique identity but have it be a sustainable structure? So I think there is a system there. I think we are doing our best to do that. But being that it's all volunteer and business managers can choose to be a member or not, they don't all have to participate, they do pay dues. And then also that collaboration with the agency of education, I think is vital. And they do also reach out to us and communicate and have us join in and collaborate on whether it's testimony, advice on certain topics, or even in some cases, I remember creating policies and procedures around federal procurement and having both AOE and business managers meet together to try to build the best policy and procedure for that. So that's where I see that kind of it's already happening. I think we could do more in that area. But that was your first comment. In regards to the conversation about the weights, I think the challenge is from a business manager perspective, I'm not the person who, you know, collects all the enrollment data. We have data managers that collect that from registrars and people in our community, their data and putting all of that information into a uniform software system that is then uploaded to the agency of ed. And that's how we know how many students we have in each of those categories. And then there's being weights applied and it's being two year average, right? Like that's kind of like the quick and dirty of like how we come up with what that number is for every district. And if the weights are off or aren't adequately set to serve the needs of the particular population that they're designed to, then I agree, it's gonna be really, really compounded over a period of time because then you're averaging those two year numbers and you're rolling them forward. So if the weights are not accurate, then that school district is either receiving too much money for the challenges that they have to face, or they're not receiving enough. And how you manage that, I think the only way I can logically see is if the weights are being based on something that is statistically sound, and I don't know how you come up with that. I, from a business management perspective, I couldn't tell you whether, you know, the weight for the ELL group of students is enough, too high, too low. I wouldn't be able to judge that. And I don't know who would. Like, so how do you actually gather that data, whether it's from national statistics, from the state, you know, but basically coming up with some kind of methodology and data basis to be able to estimate what those weights really should be to adequately fund the services that are needed for that population. That's not a great answer, it's kind of a little bit out of my reach.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Here's just a

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: quick question. Taking you back a ways to the potential reviews by superintendents and business managers of budgets. The agency came in yesterday and suggested that if we apply the 112% to the 2027 data, it would have picked up about 32 districts. How much time would that take for that group of six field people to review 32 budgets, guesstimating? What would go into figuring out how much time that would take?

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Well, from my perspective, I think if I was asked to be one of those districts to see where I would be in FY27, I have a mechanism that I always used to use to forecast what my budget would be in future years. So I would use that budget projecting model. I would, oftentimes they use, a lot of districts use NASDAQ or something to evaluate what their enrollment numbers might be going forward so they can kind of guess as to what their long term weighted ADM would be. And basically you're mocking up what you believe your budget would be in that FY27 and then applying what you think your weighted per pupil average would be for that year. You're almost acting like you're in that year or you're building a budget for that year and trying to see whether or not you're over the threshold. That's quite a bit of work for one district, so 32 districts. Hopefully they'd had them all working simultaneously. You know, hey, you districts, calculate a budget for FY27, calculate your estimated ADM and tell us whether you'd be over the threshold if it applied to that year.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think I asked my

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: question wrong, so that was a great answer what districts should be doing. I'm trying to figure out if I asked you to be one of the business managers who evaluated the 32 districts that tripped the excess spending penalty to see if it was justified for them to trip the excess spending, if they deserved an exemption. How much time would it take you coming into somebody else's district budget to be able to evaluate whether there was just cause for an exemption? I'm trying to ballpark what we're asking you to do.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Good

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: question. How much time would that take me?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: And presumably you'd want the same team looking at all them, otherwise you could get pretty consistent inconsistencies in panels.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Are you thinking, so just to clarify, when you say, is that on the emergency exemptions or are you talking about Emergency exemptions.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yeah, or potentially, let's just say 32 districts, what would it cost for one district to petition for an emergency exemption? If you had to parachute in and look at another district's budget, what do you have to do? What does that involve? What are we looking at here when we asked you that?

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: So if I had to think about that, I'm thinking about right now I'm at South Burlington. I was at a previous district before, but I still help them out on occasion. And what I found is even being gone not quite a year when they asked me for help, I almost have to get back into the zone of digging into their information, really looking at the details of their accounting and their finance system. Even though I used to work there, it takes me a little while just to really refocus on that district because everyone does everything a little bit differently. And so I'm gonna say to really evaluate and get into their system, especially if they have a different finance system and different ways of financial reporting, different ways of documenting that I think it's key as to whether or not they have proof of their exemption, you know, emergency, like how well did they document what they are saying was their emergency and their exemption. I'd say I need at least a week per district probably, and it depends on the size of the district too, how much data Like do they

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: a week of full time work. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thanks for that question. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Let us stay in touch as we continue to figure these things out.

[Elizabeth, VASBO President (South Burlington School District)]: Absolutely. Great. Thank you so much.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I have a few public service announcements before we wrap up for the morning. One in the context of the yield, which, again, we do not have possession of yet. So we will make decisions next week when we actually have possession of it. But do you want to remind folks that anything we're doing with regards to the excess spending penalty, or really any of it, anything related to the yield, like the yield is, we have passed a bill out of the House that will make the yield be a idea of the past in just a couple years. And so we are working with sort of a three year timeline, four year timeline, right, for the yield. We're not sort of setting policy for in perpetuity. Your time with words today. And so just have that context over the weekend, because I think that does change some of my thoughts, at least. I don't know if it changes yours. Other public service announcements. The work we were doing on our committee bill, which I think was incredibly important. Income inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time, particularly the wealth gap, the loss of health care benefits or the increased cost of health care for all of our constituents also just could upend the whole state and seems to be doing that already. At this point in the session, I don't feel that we have the policy sort of tied up with a bow and tight enough to really be moving forward with it. And so really hope that folks can continue to be thinking about this, continue working on it for those of us who are gonna be sitting at this table next year, be talking to constituents about it, be thinking through the policy much more thoroughly so that what we know now, we could sort of carry into that to make that work a little bit tighter in the future. But I thank everyone for all the really careful work that we've done so far over the last few weeks on it. So next week so we're gonna be back here after lunch because I think the Senate should be done with H-nine 33 by then. And we'll hear from Kirby and Chris on what they have done to our lovely bill. And then next week, we have, I think, at least six bills that we're receiving from other committees that will likely are often things that we've mostly seen before, but came back from the Senate or just coming from the Senate. So those will be mostly fairly fast work. And then we'll do more on the yield bill and miscellaneous tax next week as well to decide if we're gonna be going to conference or not. And with that, see you after lunch.