Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: All

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: right, we're good. You're live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're live. Okay, we're back. This is the Senate Education Committee. Final portion of our day is in the Rutland School System. This is the public hearing portion of the program. We spent most of the day doing site visits both at Stafford and some off-site programs and then tour the high school itself and spent some time talking with teachers and special educators. And now we're on to the final portion of the day, which is opening the floor to the public. But I'm realizing as I'm saying this that I never introduced a committee today, since we're at the public portion, it's probably a good time to do it. Why don't we just start down on this end?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: Hello, Steven Heffernan from Madison County District. Terry Williams, Senator from Rutland District.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Kesha Ram Hinsdale, Chittenden County

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: and Seth Bongartz from Bennington Center District. So we've had a great day today, we got treated very nicely by our Superintendent, the Principal, everybody, assistant superintendent and everybody who gave us a lot of attention, kids included by the way, a lot of time with kids which was great. I think we've learned a lot today, but here we are. And so what the protocol that we actually don't have, it appears like we don't have a number of people to offer testimony during this portion when we were at Woodstock, we had to use a timer to be ruthless about to shut people off after two minutes, but we don't have to do that today, so we don't have to worry about talking a little fast today. So we start by just introducing yourself, your name, what town we live in, and whatever you want to offer for us. Sure.

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: I'm Melissa Thees, and I reside here in Wetland City, but I'm also one of the CTE School Counseling Coordinators at Stafford Technical Center. I realize that you are looking at a variety of things related to education transformation, but I'd like to speak a little bit today on statewide graduation requirements and common course sequencing. So at the VTE Center, we have the unique experience of seeing students from all around the county and sometimes beyond. After working at Stafford Tech for five years, I've become increasingly concerned about the impact of differing graduation requirements between school districts. All of our partner schools have different requirements for graduation. This leads to inequitable experiences between students who attend the tech center. Students coming from schools that have less requirements typically have more time to access their program and co op, which as you can imagine, creates a much more robust experience for those students. Students from schools that have unique graduation requirements often have to take an independent study or a course that may interfere with their ability to co op, so that they can stay on track for graduation. Access to coursework looks very different at our partner schools within the county. For example, some students might have access to two science courses in their freshman or sophomore year. Others only have access to one science course per year. This variance can create a very different experience for a student, especially during their junior and senior years. Students in larger school districts have access to a wider variety of courses with things like AP classes and honors level courses. This inequity continues to impact students as they apply to colleges. Common sequencing of courses is equally important. For example, if we can be sure that all juniors take chemistry across all of our different partner schools, then we at the CTE Center can plan on accommodating one single class. At this point, we're trying to accommodate different needs and sequencing. It costs the center and our partner schools who support us time and money to meet all of those varied needs. Independent I'm sorry. We often use independent study courses to meet those different needs. Independent studies are not always a great choice for our students for various reasons, and I worry that they particularly hurt students who are applying to four year colleges. We also have students and families that move around the state from one high school to another. Differing graduation requirements and inconsistent sequencing can make it difficult for students to achieve the necessary credits to graduate within four years, and at times can present barriers for students to access CTE and other flexible pathway experiences. To me, starting with common graduation requirements and course sequencing is a no brainer in education transformation. Not only will we create a more streamlined educational system for students and families to navigate, but we will also make it easier for students and schools to provide flexible pathways experiences, which has been an ongoing priority for our state. Common graduation requirements and course sequencing is the solid foundation on which our education system should rest. Thanks for your time today. Thank you for spending the whole day here at Rutland.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: Do you have that on

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: our terms? Yes, I submitted it in a few.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Are we allowed to have a small exchange? We have time. So, you know, my main focus this year will be CTE. One of the things that I'm concerned about is, as I understand it, some of the more recent EQF meeting that AOE has led have not even had CTE at the table. So I'm just concerned right now that there's a big disconnect between what we would like to have standardized for AOE and how we're going to need to work independently to make sure we aren't failing our kids in the near term in terms of them having to, you know, take an online class here and maybe not even get into a program. I guess short of short of EQS standardizing class schedules,

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: how do you see Stafford being able to take more students? What would you need so that you don't have a wait list? I think that's a complicated question and one that maybe I alone can't answer. We have limits to the number of students that can be in a heavy lab at a time, and those are limits. So I think space and staffing are a huge part of that conversation. And I would can I call on our director to I think it's not a simple solution? Right. And I think, you know,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: one thing It's just also not simple to get EQS to accommodate CTE, I think.

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: Unless we But I tell about hoped that my comments would also come across as a CTE center, we're looking at students from a county perspective. And really, have students that are from Middlebury as well in Stafford, so it's more than the county perspective. And to see that variance across schools, that just concerns me as a citizen, So bigger than CTE, I look at statewide and how our process is not streamlined. It's confusing for our families to navigate, especially if they're changing schools. And I think we have all these good intentions with flexible pathways, but there's so many different ways for a student to access those and so many different barriers that might present themselves depending on where a student is from. That was really the point of what I was hoping to get across today, is that I understand folks really appreciate local control, that's one of the things

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: I love about

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: Vermont. But I also feel like we're spending a lot of resources to try to meet all these needs when they're all different. Whereas if there was a little bit more uniformity, we could better pool our resources. Right. And sorry, is Agency of Education here?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I just want to ask because this is the third meeting we've had that they have not attended.

[Erica McLaughlin (Vermont Principals Association)]: I apologize. I just want to say

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: all of PT in my comments.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I'm

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: going ask governor.

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: So I apologize that I didn't fully answer your question.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You made your main point you wanted to make.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: Do you just select any more calendars?

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: I mean, we've seen a huge difference, I think, this year with having a common start and end time for our center. Previously, we had different courses that met at different times throughout the day to accommodate different lessons schedules. That's really hard to plan for, and also presents a lot of barriers to students if I only have one section of a class that is for a set number of students. So again, I think that the more that we can create some uniformity, despite our challenges that exist, I think it will be better for our students and a better use of our resources.

[Unknown Committee Member]: And that is uniformity throughout CPEs that we're all you can even as long as we're all following the rough draft of what should be if I came to your CPE and then maybe went up to Hannaford that there might be a little different because our teachers are a little different. But the core value is the same. Is that is that

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: I think when you're talking schedule, it's very different when you look at a full I've worked in both full day and half day centers, it's very different, the experience is completely different. So I think there has to, if we're sticking with still having two models, full day and half day and CTE, there's going be two different versions of what is needed. When I look at, you know, we have embedded academics within all of the program standards that we teach, what can be accomplished at a full day center versus a half day center is very different, because we have all day with our students, we have pretty much control over their academic schedule, whereas at a half day center, they have control over 120. They don't often have a full academic staff like we're fortunate to have here at Stafford. So we

[Erica McLaughlin (Vermont Principals Association)]: have to

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: be careful when we're making changes, because the impact could be very drastic on one versus the other. So I think that's saying that we're going to have kind of a universal model for CT in the state of Vermont, if we maintain two different types of scheduling.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Well, those are two different models. That's

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: But one of the if we're talking about, you know, even statewide graduation requirements looks different in a full day center versus a half day center. If we're talking about a schedule, you know, having a set schedule, it looks very different in a full day versus a half day. And I think, you know, that's the first question. Do we maintain having those two models? From my experience, I was a teacher in a half day and an administrator in a half day. For some students, that's appropriate. You know, they want to just come for their core and they want to maintain being at their partner high school to be part of that partner high school. For other students, they want a more immersive experience. So I think having both available, you know, we have some students at Otter Valley, who, you know, we might be full, they will go to Hannah first, and they like having a two hour experience versus a full day experience. You know, I think having the options for students is a good thing.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: But would you like to have no waitlist?

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: I would love to have no waitlist.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: But that's all I'm asking you I to help me

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: would love to have no waitlist that would look different every year because it is cyclical by programs. There are some years where we have, you know, huge waitlists for a program. The next year we have spaces in a program. So it's hard to predict that. I think the other thing is, you know, we have a lot of students that want to go into some programs, but is the market, the job market, can they absorb that many students? I will look at, for instance, our cosmetology program, it's a very popular program with a waitlist. If we were to expand that beyond what it is now, I don't think that we would be able to have students getting jobs. So, you know, we would want to be careful. Yes, there's a waitlist, but are there is there a job market to put those students in place? And one of our jobs when we're looking at programmatic changes is, is there an industry demand? And is there a livable wage that they can make? Those are the things that we have to look at when we're looking to expand or add programming. So I think that's when we look at electrical and plumbing, obviously, we could add two more sections, we could have 32 more students in there, and they would all be able to find jobs. Is that going to be, you know, in ten years, fifteen years, would that be the same case? Probably not. Hopefully, we're going fill that that glutch that we have right now. But yeah, it's very cyclical, but more space would be phenomenal.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: So is there anything we could do as far as, you know, planning to help alleviate your gaps where you've got a wait list this year or next year by bringing these, the whole school's students in here earlier to experience it and figure out what they really want to do.

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: You know, we started our Tech Exploratory program. This is the first year it's been up and running And that has been a great experience. Our challenge is, you know, we're, we're guided by OSHA requirements for the number of students that a teacher can have with them. So if we were to bring in more students, we'd need more space, we'd need more staffing. And those are our two areas that we have the pinch right now. So if you have a solution, I don't for staffing or space, I would love to discuss it. You know, we were talking about doing a renovation of one of our outbuildings. You all were able to see our electrical classroom and lab today, which is very small when you're trying to put 16 students into that lab to learn. So we were looking at it. We've gotten permission from our board to do a feasibility study on a new building kind of replacing where our construction and natural resources building are to add on to that to have a specific lab for modular homes for our construction program. So they weren't having to leave home, we could help with the affordable housing issue, and have a really nice state of the art lab for electrical. But I'll be honest, when the whole governance conversation started with CTE, our board was a little hesitant to move forward with anything for the, you know, does Rutland City want to be on the hook for a building that Stafford Bay would no longer be part of their district? And I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: totally understand that. We Because of the proposal to have AOE be its own district at the state level. I'm sorry, AOE be its own.

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: Or merging districts. There was so much uncertainty in where governance was going as a state and funding and things like that. So we've kind of been on this holding pattern. You know, if we were able to do that building, that would solve some of our problems as far as space because it would open up a space within our building to be able to have another program perhaps for the younger grades.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: What about a consistent wage scale for instructors? If it was the same across the state, I mean do you see a lot of poaching of he'd come work for us and we give him $20 more an hour.

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: Absolutely. So if there

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: was a standardized with position description that says this is your job, this is how much you're going to make, start it out and have like a step.

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: Think that there was a salary schedule for CTE. As we spoke about earlier, you know, CTE teachers come in with, you know, some with college degrees, some with no college degrees, but when we're looking at them, we're looking at their certifications. We're looking at if they do have a post secondary education, we're looking at, you know, basically years of experience in the field. And every district kind of does that differently. And, you know, some will give, you know, one step for every two years of experience, one gives one step for every year of experience. And that's where kind of some of those inequities come in. I think, you know, if it was a statewide district or some sort of a statewide salary schedule for CT teachers that could be competitive with industry wages, I think that would be helpful, I can

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: see the same thing for all teachers too. I think there is talk about that.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So, okay, so deviated a little bit we have more people here who want to testify yeah so don't go away unless you come back good all right thank you thank you Protocols just announce your

[Nikhil Goyal]: name Of and sound of

[Unknown Committee Member]: course.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And I would just say often we know it like it's a particular news station that's filming.

[Unknown (Stafford Technical Center Director)]: Oh, this is my filmmaker.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: This is your filmmaker?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Okay. Sorry.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Oh, yes.

[Nikhil Goyal]: Good afternoon. I don't have the opportunity to speak on Monday at CBU. So I wanted to give my remarks today. My name is Nikhil Goyal. I'm a resident of Burlington. I'm a sociologist at the University of Vermont and I have a PhD from the University of Cambridge. I wanted to speak directly about the education transformation bill that the legislature enacted in earlier this year and is currently implementing. Vermonter sent a very clear message that property taxes were crushing that. And instead of addressing the cost drivers, the legislature decided to pursue a restructuring of our public schools that neither had public support nor basis in research. No Vermonter voted to abolish school boards, close schools, fire teachers and staff, gut education spending, and mass consolidate districts. There is no evidence these reforms will bring down property taxes. If our legislators actually wanna reduce property taxes and strengthen our schools, this is what they should do. The first and foremost thing is that we need a new Secretary of Education. Zoe Saunders lacks the vision and trust to run our agency of education. For the Senate to confirm Zoe Saunders, who worked seven years at the for profit Charter Schools USA, the same entity the Biden administration restricted federal dollars was an insult to the people who work in Vermont public schools. We need an education secretary who supports public education for all. Public dollars going to private schools, including religious schools, has grown nearly 90% since 2009. We should keep as many public dollars in public schools. We should make investments in community schools and we should implement the task force's recommendations with district share services such as transportation and special education. To address the biggest cost drivers of property taxes, we should take on hospitals price gouging patients and invest in community based care to reduce healthcare spending and school budgets. We should build affordable housing so more people contribute to healthcare and property taxes, reducing the burden for everyone. The Vermont that we deserve is one where public education is not for sale, where patients are not price gouged, where everyone has a home, where our seniors can retire with dignity and our children and grandchildren can afford to stay. And if public schools are what Justice Steven Breyer called nurseries of democracy, then the fight for public education is a fight to safeguard American democracy. I would encourage this committee to seek out experts and educators when they consider the implementation of this education transformation bill. It's imperative that they have the trust and the respect of the people that are doing this work on a daily basis in our classrooms. And I'm happy to answer any questions or go into any detail. Thank you.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Okay. Thank you. Anybody

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: else? Well, it would appear that we have nobody else to testify, nobody else here to testify today. Just one more thing that I'll say about our purpose here is that what we've been trying to do is take the opportunity when we're not in session to step back a little bit, enlarge the discussion. And with these visits to schools and districts that we've been doing, try to really focus with educators and with the public on the things that we are doing and that we need to do or continue to do or start to do all that spectrum to provide excellent educational opportunity for every student in Vermont. And I think we've learned, I have no doubt we all learned a lot today, it was welcomed to this visit as we have with our others, but I felt one more hand come up while I was talking.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Good afternoon. Hey.

[Erica McLaughlin (Vermont Principals Association)]: Nice to see you again.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Nice to meet you.

[Erica McLaughlin (Vermont Principals Association)]: I'm Erica McLaughlin. I am a resident of Mendon. My children came here to Rutland High School and as you may know, I work at the Vermont Principals Association. I was a principal in Randolph for seventeen years and an educator prior to a teacher prior to that. So I actually have been doing a lot of reading about leadership and transformation and listening to people in our community, the task force meetings, and I just drafted this because I needed to get it out of my head, and so it's quite long, and if we have the time, it's not easy to read it, and I can submit it digitally later. Vermont is at an inflection point in its approach to public education. Proposals to rapidly transform or effectively dismantle the current system are advancing without a clear shared vision of the future system, without data that is convincingly demonstrating cost savings, and without a thoughtful gap analysis between where we are and where we hope to be. Moving ahead under these conditions is less a strategy for improvement than an experiment in which students, families, educators, and taxpayers are asked to absorb the risk. That is true. The FY 2027 school district budgeting resource that was written by the VSA, the VSBA, and the DASCO leaders underscores just how fragile and complex the current fiscal landscape already is. At present, there is no widely owned description of what Vermont's reimagined education system will actually look like in five to ten years. Fundamental questions remain unanswered. What governance structures are we moving toward? What will be the role of local school boards and local boys? How will responsibilities be divided between the state and communities? And most importantly, how will proposed changes concretely improve student learning, belonging, and well-being rather than simply reshuffling cost and decision making authority. In the absence of such clarity, calls for transformation amount to an appeal to dismantle what exists without showing Vermonters what will replace it. Equally concerning is the lack of rigorous fiscal analysis to support the claim that these structural changes will yield meaningful sustainable savings. The FY '27 resource makes clear that the major cost drivers in Vermont education are structural and statewide, not primarily a function of how many districts we have or where the lines are drawn. In FY 2024, general fund salaries totaled approximately $1,100,000,000 an increase of 6.8% over the prior year, and each additional 1% increase in 2027 salaries is projected to add $11,900,000 to Education Fund. Public school employee health insurance, however, already exceeds $365,000,000 annually. Premiums rose 16% in FY 2025 and twelve percent in 2026, and districts are advised to plan for an average of 13.7 increase going into 2027. So health benefits have grown from under 10% of the school budget in 2018 to about 15% today and are on track to approach 20% if current trends continue. Vermont pupil to staff ratios of 4.4 compared to 5.5 in the Northeast and 7.3 nationally both reflect heightened student needs and limited support from other public systems and guarantees that personal costs will remain relatively high regardless of governance changes. Legislative choices have layered additional pressure on top of these trends. For 2026, the legislature used a $118,200,000 in one time funds, 7 77,200,000.0 from the general fund and and 41,000,000 from the Ed fund surplus to buy down property after the vote was already made, leaving an equally large gap in the education fund as districts head into 2027. At the same time, lawmakers have enacted a series of mandates and programs including PCB and lead in water testing, universal school meals, menstrual products in schools, expanded pre k, increased reliance on the Ed Fund for teacher retirement, the childcare employer, I could go on and on. Many of these are laudable and beneficial to students, but they are often underfunded or unfunded at the state level with ongoing costs shifted onto local budgets and property taxes. If So you want to talk about education and spending is out of control, there's a reason for that, and it's not because schools are being irresponsible. Act 73 itself is situated within this already stressed environment. In 2027 document, explicitly states that Act 73, while framed as reform, is likely in the near term to produce fiscal instability and increased costs as new districts are formed and contracts are renegotiated. The law introduces new class size minimum, as you know what they are, and authorizes corrective actions, including potential further or consolidation if schools remain below these thresholds for three consecutive years, all in a context where many facilities can't easily be reconfigured and where no state construction aid has yet been appropriated. I'm going to try to skip because there's a lot. All of this unfolds against broader forces that local boards and superintendents cannot control. The FY '27 memo highlights health care inflation escalating student mental health and social service needs as schools become the de facto frontline and and inflation on fuel, utilities, and supplies. Major cost pressure is out of the district's control. In this context, moving rapidly to dismantle or radically reshape Vermont's education system is dangerous. It threatens to disrupt students' educational experiences for years, undermining the fragile stability that communities began to regain in 2026 after the turbulence of twenty five, when roughly a third of school budgets failed on town meeting day. It risks further damaging public trust by advancing sweeping changes without a clear vision, transparent numbers or authentic engagement, particularly in rural areas and among vulnerable populations that are most exposed to the unintended consequences of poorly sequenced reforms. It also raises the likelihood that after years of upheaval, Vermont will have invested enormous political, financial and human capital into reconfiguration only to find that salaries, health care, mandates, facility backlogs, and federal volatility still drive costs, leaving taxpayers and schools no better off. So calling for care here is not the same as defending the status quo. That is not what I'm suggesting. Vermont must confront escalating costs, persistent inequities, and legitimate concerns about tax burdens and long term sustainability. But responsible leadership requires that structural change be grounded in shared vision, credible data, and realistic capacity. Before dismantling the current system, the state should develop with broad stakeholder input a clear picture of the future education system, conduct and publish robust fiscal modeling and gap analysis that incorporate the documented cost drivers outlined in the 27 resource. Directly address major pressures such as health care inflation, student mental health needs, and strengthen the agency of education so that it can support, not merely regulate districts through any transformation. I hear people put AOE down all the time. But if you have an organization that isn't fully funded the way that it needs to to support its system, then it can't do the things that you want it to do. I'm not an AOE employee, and lately, I feel like I'm defending their inability to do their work because they don't have the resources to do so. I feel like we're tying people's hands behind their back and expecting them to do the work. So only when these conditions are met will true transformation rooted in vision, evidence, and readiness be possible. Until then, large scale structural change risks a constant distraction from the real work of sustaining and improving Vermont's public schools. Sorry that was long. It's okay. Well

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: first of all I just wouldn't I know we can't change the perception of anyone. But I want to say, you know, I don't think any of us believe our districts or schools are being irresponsible and how they're spending money. Today was a wonderful example of the creativity and incredible investments that should be replicated elsewhere I to serve agree.

[Melissa Thees (CTE School Counseling Coordinator, Stafford Technical Center)]: What do you think we should do about health care? That is not my

[Erica McLaughlin (Vermont Principals Association)]: field of expertise, but it's been education my whole life. But what I do know is that we continue to blame so many other things. There are education costs to increase, but we don't actually look at what the cost drivers are and try to fix the problems. I'm frustrated by watching the news and for years I've been a school board member also villainizing and the education system has to end, and we need to turn our attention to what those cost drivers are so that we can then find some ease on the pressure we're experiencing. Well,

[Unknown Committee Member]: everybody I believe in this room and in Vermont knows the real issues here is that Vermont is a small state of less than six and fourteen thousand people. Our education from when I graduated now we're down to 40,000 more students. Healthcare is up because our population is older than 55 rather than younger. So when people come up and say, you know, what are you going to do about it? We're human like the rest of you trying to figure out the right answer. And I know after going up to Canada down to Woodstock to this school, that schools that are running efficiently and they're doing a good job should not have to worry. The community should be the one like up in my area, there are several schools that probably could close. Now, as parents, they don't want it because that's my school right there. But we're not talking a half an hour drive, we're talking a ten minute drive to save. And if you don't close the building, you're saving no one. If you say, well, we're going to move the kids, but we're going to keep the building open for a community center. You just save your taxpayers now. So it's being common sense driven, understanding that there's certain things that we are losing children that our numbers are way down. Facilities cost more to maintain, Teachers need good pay. You need good health insurance. So it's where do we cut costs? Do we look at the administration when you have 11,000 administrative positions and 8,300 teachers? So there is savings that can be made there and finding it and doing with common sense, not rushing into it. Sit on this board, I have to say when people come up and say you're rushing, it's like that that act we put out may not change any. So there is no rushing and the task force was supposed to draw lines to the police discuss. We weren't talking about school board. We weren't talking about consolidation. It was trying to say, then we can run the numbers that you asked about. Hey, we got five districts. Now we can give you a cost analysis of how this can help if these are the changes. So this isn't going to happen overnight. And, you know, every school we've been to, everybody's doing an outstanding job. And it's just hard on us as a committee to give you the, you know, what that's she asked a pretty question. Well, what do you how do you think we're to solve? Well, that's not mine. And it's frustrating for us. I just I want to get that out.

[Erica McLaughlin (Vermont Principals Association)]: We are one state of 50 and I know in my role there are counterparts in education that I can connect with and learn from and connect with. There's got to be in the healthcare world a similar system. So we don't have to think about it alone. One of the things that I think Vermont often prides itself is that,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: well

[Erica McLaughlin (Vermont Principals Association)]: if it's not done the Vermont way then it's not necessarily the right way. While I'm not the answer to your healthcare question, it would be irresponsible for me to pretend that I was an expert in that. There are people that could be, but I don't see the efforts that are being made to dismantle education made to find experts in health care to try to fix our system. So that's maybe where I would start, to find experts that know better than me to have that discussion. And yes, I agree that one of my sentences, I'm not looking for the status quo. I agree that there are some efficiencies to be made, but that's not done breaking everything and then maybe figuring it out because our kids deserve better than that. I have been a child advocate my entire life, and I'm not gonna sit and watch us roll up our education system with the hope that there's a better tax rate for us later on. They deserve better. They are our future. They're gonna be making decisions for us sooner than later.

[Unknown Committee Member]: And I don't believe there's a legislator out there that doesn't disagree with what you're saying. Thank you. Board is dedicated to putting the children first. Thank you. And everything comes with a cost is trying to get that ratio where we can afford it. Thank you.

[Erica McLaughlin (Vermont Principals Association)]: I'll be back in the second.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Unless another hand comes up. Thank you. Welcome to School District and we

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: are adjourned.