Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: We're live.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. We'll bring it back. It's for a point of discussion after a joint hearing with the House Education Committee. But I guess, you know, we just haven't had a chance to sit and talk. And so thinking a little bit about, you know, reactions to today, Direction, I can tell you some thoughts I have, which is that anyone might want to assuming the house is interested in doing it, just spend some time getting reaction to what we heard today, what we saw today, and then try to go back forward. I, okay. Wait. Give him a minute. He's walking right in. He standing in the right direction. Right? Right. Yeah. Okay. Up, doc.

[Unidentified Member]: Up, Look. He's gonna be hunched. Yeah.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And so when he gets here,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm gonna that's okay. Just there people wanna go up and go and and pay for one pepper. It's I do. Yeah. Pro tem conversation. Okay.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Not like you have anything going on behind your judiciary.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So just taking a minute to debrief and think about path forward and what we want to focus on for the next couple of weeks and obviously saying that perhaps what we want to do is spend some time in reaction to what occurred today, but let's put that out there.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We have some tools that we didn't know we had. So that that that's quite a that mapping tool is quite interesting. I think that, you know, as we woke up today and went into our went into our cars is that, you know, are we gonna plan like we did last year in separate corners? And then at what point do we get together and start making policy? This is really gonna be we need to almost do it together, I think. And I mean, I think there's some benefit in having each committee do what we're doing right now and then use the, chairs, you know, to take that information and sit down and decide which path we're gonna take forward.

[Unidentified Member]: Yeah it would be helpful not to, it would be helpful not to try to influence what the house is doing, but be aware of where the house is going and some of their rationale and logic as opposed to just getting filled. It would be, I think, could be a good use for a time, you know, once a week, couple times a week, be with them, have them, you know, explain what their thoughts are. That's certainly the discretion of the two chairs, but could be helpful.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: I mean, I kind of feel like, I mean, appreciate receiving that, but it also just kind of feels like we're back to not the first step of where we were, but the second step where we got the foundation for them, we're working out to figure out the two maps. And they came in, initially, I think they listed five maps, or five districts, and now it's 14 or thirteen? Twelve, thirteen districts. All districts. So I don't know, it feels like we're just kind of back to step two of this process, and I feel like at the beginning of last year's session there was some testimony, at the very beginning of it, advising us not to spin our wheels on the maps and get lost in the weeds on maps, and so I worry about that and I worry about getting lost in the weeds on the maps. That's my initial reaction.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And if we didn't get lost in weeds on the map, if you would suggest that we do what?

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: You don't get lost on the community. Yep. We don't. Honestly, the recommendation of getting all the superintendents, so you could figure it out.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. And I'm not

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: opposed to that. I mean, because none of us are the subject matter experts for this or, you know, all of the schools in the district. And, you know, we don't know the on the ground approach or the on the ground issues in bordering towns and bordering districts. You know, even if we spend time talking to somebody on the phone or having them come in to testify, it pales in comparison to two superintendents saying, hey, it makes sense for us to emerge, or it would be a terrible idea for us to emerge. We have to make that clear to the legislature.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Well,

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: it sounds like people were some people hadn't known the the incredible value of John Adams until now. Know, maps can unlock a lot. They are great conversation pieces, and he can produce a lot of really interesting thought provoking maps. I if you ask me what I think is gonna happen, I feel like we're gonna end up back with the CTE center 17. Like, I I don't think it's useful to look at a regional high school map that maybe indicates we're gonna end up with something like 12 regional high schools. I don't think that's that's realistic or feasible, especially if not over a longer period of time, and hopefully we don't keep losing students. So if if there was any value to the concept, I think it's setting a set of criteria for what a regional high school would be, and then trying to look at somewhere between 18 to 25 areas where we could start to move towards saying the state will invest in one excellent regional high school for this region of this map. And we're asking everyone in this region of this map to contribute bond wise as well. So that we're not I I really go back to, I think, the problem Vermonters were asking us to solve was that they don't wanna all keep paying facilities cost to keep subpar buildings open when there's no direction about how we all start paying for regionally excellent high schools and not just catching up on deferred maintenance.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And so what do we do with that? What are people thinking about directionally for this? Because this committee has to do it. I do whatever it is, by the way, there's a lot of it's potential.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: I want to be sold on why for example, this map is a good idea. You know, aside from just saying, well, if we make a big district, it'll be more efficient and people will save money. I'd like more specifics and evidence about that. I mean, from what I've been able to discern from the rediscriminating task force, and not just their report, but the research that they cited, there is research that in heavily urban areas, these larger districts can't say buggy. I think there was one article that referred to Philadelphia and the merging of six schools, and that would not just save money, but it was an improvement. There was more efficiency for the students. Class sizes got better and more efficient, and there were more class offerings, and all around it was good. But Philly is very different from Old Oak Vermont, Burlington included, and the other pieces of research which were cited show that generally speaking, cost savings are nebulous at best when it comes to rural areas, and that it can be hit or miss on the improvements for what students get and that the people who take the biggest hit, maybe not the biggest hit, but the people who had the hardest time going through the murders, the rural areas were the teachers. And I think Arkansas was one place where it was highly problematic. Yeah, that's my, those are my initial feelings.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So you heard my speech. Yeah.

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: And now I'm gonna tell you why I believe it is one of the best ways to think of it. One, this one, Senator Dick said here, is eventually we will need bigger district high schools. But what are we gonna do in the interim? You know? So if we make one or two districts, and if we make two districts, the Green Mountains separate it, that way you've got both sides that are, because the mountains do literally separate us from each other. I know it doesn't fit the criteria, but we, like anything, we can amend that. What I heard from the principals, the supervisor union, was that if we did a co op, we're sharing, and it's gonna create a more efficient buying power, so that helps you a little bit there, plus use of resources such as teachers, maintenance groups, stuff like that. We pick, if we make one district, and then obviously there's gonna be, one superintendent's gonna need, you know, a slew of help. But then we can, each school, rather than having a district, can have an advisory board, and that's where the real local control still sits. How much power will the advisory board have if they're having problems with the teacher? Because the money really, 90% or more of the money's already taken when it comes to the school. It isn't like they're gonna decide where their budget's going, because it's teachers pay, teachers help, buildings, maintenance, and then whatever's left over, the gym needs a little attention or this and that, that's where that money comes in, then advisory board. On advisory boards, you pick from if the schools like, like, or at the canon under 200, it has, like, three advisors, and as it grows, we decide how many. And then per county, the advisory boards meet, and between then they pick one, and that's who becomes, goes up to the superintendent to talk on the whole behalf of their county schools. The other upside is, as we do consolidate, community will have more input. You can sit down with the community and say, I understand you don't want to hear school folks, but here's why I asked. And that may work better and may have a better input. I also, buying power, I know that was a bad reference to use at Taco's on Tuesday, but it could, you you have a uniform menu that they're all buying from, so they, again, it creates more buying power for our safety. And we're not that big. We are unique. But as far as, how big was your school? How many kids did it happen at one school?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: My high school was 4,600. And

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: we had what, 83,000 total students, right? Or 79, yeah. And I survived.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I don't know about

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: 4,600. Well, the other thing I want to get back to is if you have, like, down Slate Valley and we have so many other schools that are doing it under Why should we even mess with class sizes? If the the school is running efficiently, why should we even mess with it? It's the ones that are not running efficiently that are gonna have to be worked on. And then, of course, we got we have to figure out legislation for independent schools. Have But the employer said we can all rewrite that. And it's huge, but yet then again, it's not, because if we all become one, then I believe we just would have, I'm not gonna say save money, but we will become more efficient, and as we become more efficient, that's where we'll start saving money.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes, Cindy. Okay, so we already have our parameters that we have to plan in. And I just if you wanna quantify it, got two hundred and fifty six hours left to put this plan together. And it's only sixteen four day weeks for us to do it. Right? So that takes all the week off or all meaning to week. Well, I think that, you know, what I had said from the beginning was that we need a map to start fleshing out the plan. And we're we're already two years into this. Mean we've got one legislative year gone and we need to I don't want to rush it or make it a time sensitive issue but we really we really need to have a map to work together with the AOE and the other committee so that we can throw throw this plan together. And then I'll go back to what I said yesterday, the superintendents. And I got a district in my in my legislative district. The the three towns that are in make that up have already voted that they will they all approved of closing one school. Alright? So so they know that as act 73 plays out over the next four years, it's gonna be obvious to me what schools have to close and what don't. But they don't want the state of the law telling that they have to close a school. Let them realize what they have to do and do it. Know, that's what I'm talking about. You're talking about the more

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: organic approach then. Correct. Okay.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And let the superintendents be involved in the process, that we can't have too many cooks because of both the brothelbits world, but they know, they've already gone through act 46, a lot of them, and they know what's, what need to close before it's done.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Alright. I agree

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: strongly that that that towns will not wanna hear from the state government coming in and saying, hey, you folks need to consolidate or you folks need to close your schools. I mean, I would not like that. And yeah, think that if it is left to the people who know their towns and know their neighboring towns, I think those will be the ones who will have to, who will know what's best for their area, and will have to come to the realization that perhaps they do need to merge, or perhaps if they merge, it would actually be catastrophic, and we may not know those nuances.

[Unidentified Member]: So I have three points, but first I just like to say that we're not talking about consolidating schools, we're talking about consolidating districts. Those districts theoretically have a bigger footprint to look at about making that local decision. Now the local decision is not about the town of X or the town of Y looking at their own district, current district. It's about a superintendent with a bigger aperture. I just want to keep reiterating, we're not talking about closing schools. We're talking about consolidating schools, we're talking about consolidating districts.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Can I ask a clarifying question on that? So, and I'm not trying to be obtuse here, but what is the point of that, of just having a large district so you can have just one superintendent instead of three or four or 10? Is it because they, you know, if they're required less superintendents, then we don't have to pay for them?

[Unidentified Member]: Well, that's part of it. That's a small part of it. It's an inconvenience. The bigger part of it is the education quality for the student. So if in our district we're running seven high schools, can we create better academic programs? If there were fewer schools, those teachers who exist, programs exist, they're in a consolidated school, regional school, whatever you want to call it, but in a school that can offer more programs because there's more students and the teachers are all working together as one team as opposed to seven different teams operating independently. So if,

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: how many superintendents do we have now?

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: 52.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: So if we go from 52 to 14, how many millions of dollars will that save? I

[Unidentified Member]: want to make three points. Oh yeah, sorry. That's part of it. First, I think that I I would like to ensure that the gov ops committees are beginning to talk about governance because if they're two months behind us, then we're gonna have a problem. They need to at least be talking about, well, what could what could the new shape look like as an advisory board, whatever it is. How do we even want to lead that? That's not our purview. Second, to Senator Hashim's point, we really do need to see cost benefit analysis of a smaller number of districts. And I really don't care if it's five or if it's 12 or whatever it is, we should task JFO, not AOE, but JFO with their new school financial guru specific to this topic. Take one of these options and give us the math. You know, and then let people pick it apart and say, No, man, this matrix is very nice, but you're missing several supervisory levels that cost bigger money than teachers. We need that cost analysis because everybody's afraid, everybody's been saying that none of this will have a positive cost impact. And frankly, let's let the math prove it, yes or no, because I don't, you know, we saw the answer a year ago, but now we need to see the answer again with fresh eyes and a year's worth of wisdom. So, the cost analysis. And third, I do like the idea of the superintendents getting together and coming up with a recommendation because frankly in my district, this concept came from superintendents. They were the ones who said, hey look, I've got a thousand students, this is costly inefficient, and I agree with them because they're very, very professional. They can handle more, they have a bigger vision than looking at their feet, they can look over the horizon and look at the region and give us some recommendations. So maybe formally or informally, we need to key the superintendents in to providing maybe some options. Maybe not just one solution, but some options.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Superintendent's Association probably, you know, if we wanna cut the number down, you know, want 52 involved, maybe they could pick 10 or five to come out and come in and work with us. But, I'll go back to my parallel planning point with Secretary Saunders yesterday. Eventually, we're going end up with a world class education system in Vermont. People are going to move to the state to partake with them. And then we need to be able to have a plan for maybe some of the buildings that got repurposed or whatever that works for this. Now we're going to have to be able to expand with school construction. So just think it out of the box. Somebody needs to be parallel planning for for this.

[Unidentified Member]: Let's do this. Me think. Yeah.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: School construction is part of

[Unidentified Member]: it, but I think that the administration's fairly recognized because they Wilbert tells me, okay? That they're that school construction is a concept, that they are serious stuff. Second, any school that gets closed, this is way down the road, okay, again we're not close to schools, but if this happens, I'll say it a thousand times, every school that's slated to be consolidated needs a false lesson, needs a follow on story before they take action to close some communities in major downtown buildings.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I kinda wanna sit back in my rocking chair and say we're having a conversation very similar to where we were ending up in act 46. We you know, there's a lot of reasons we landed in that place. I think we learned a lot from that process. I think you're seeing the value that was created, you know, from everybody that's come in and said we were really mad at first, and then we did it. And now we have, you know, better instructional consistency, etcetera. I thought Sherry Souza's presentation was really valuable. I think those the the superintendents who have done this have, like, incredible wisdom. It's it's hard to get them to go on the record. I mean, right? I tried to ask them questions when we were out in the field. You know, wouldn't it be nice if this town join joined you? They can't really do that very easily publicly. Having been through act 46, which was, you know, voluntary and we set the parameters and we provided funding incentives and funding disincentives. I think we, you know, we either need to move in the direction of the kind of work we're looking for from the districts. If we are going to make maps, I said this before, it has never been a single committee in the senate that has made a map, not even redistricting. GovOps did not make the senate redistricting maps. They created a group of 10 senators from very geographically diverse places to make those maps. I know that we had a task force that had, you know, the makeup was was labored over about, you know, how we do that. I I think I think where we are, yes, is step two. I think John Adams is very good at helping us look at different options. I personally feel like there is a lot of immediate education policy work to do to help create more success within the system that we have. And I would support a a redistricting to group to look at these maps and take more input from very specific sources that were helpful over the last year and come up with maps that are a map, that is realistic for our communities to be able to have input on and for us all to look at and see if it achieves value. That was my point. Right. So I guess all I'm adding to that is if we're gonna move in that direction, we should go quickly. I think you said that as well. And I have never seen it be a policy committee. Right? Map making is otherwise in the purview of gov ops because maps are governance tools. I don't think we're going to drive better education policy by having the senate education committee have the exclusive curfew over making maps.

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: We don't though at the end.

[Unidentified Member]: Yeah. But we learned that or Yeah.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, I I think our committee has a lot of other things to do that are education related, and I think a couple people from here can spend all the time they want on those maps just like a couple people from GovOps and from wherever can do that. But there are some really serious education challenges right now in our state, and I I hope we are making significant time for that. Because this could consume all of our time and it would still then go to a body that is far more geographically diverse.

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Why don't we decide to get some SU-

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I just wanna hear, to open up the initial thinking, yes.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: So maybe I missed this, but why aren't we look, why aren't we going to consider what the recrypting task force recommended? Why do we have to go to these maps?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But that's part what

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: What kinda upset Sandy is that we did, the task force was there, given a task, they totally diverted away from what they were supposed to do. And things that they brought up, why weren't we, this crisis has been going on for twenty years almost. And it's gotten to this point, oh, well, then let's do co ops, that's gonna help. We should've been doing co ops ten years ago. That was truly what everybody wanted to do. That's just my point of view on it. It's like, we know with how many SUs there are. I think it's 52 SUs in 52 districts, I understood Jamie. 122.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Fifty two and one hundred

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: and nineteen. Yeah, but does each have a superintendent? What do districts have? Districts. Yes. So 54 school 54 But No.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So 119.

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: So we have a 106 total super superintendents then?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No. Exactly. No. 52 superintendents. Super supervisors? Super Superintendents. Yeah. Super for the SUs.

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: For the SUs. How many super superintendents are there for the districts?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So so there's you've got so there are SUs and there are SDs, and then there are districts. Districts are different than SDs. Okay. SDs are kind of like an SU that's consolidated into a single

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: And I think you told me fifty two and fifty two then.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. A 104. No. Total of 52. For instance, in Chittenden County, where when we went to CDU, that is that's an SD as opposed to an SU. You have SUs, I have SUs, you have mostly district, you have an SD, but within SUs there are districts. That's why there's 119 districts overall. And there are 52 either SBs or SUs. So total superintendents is only 52? Yeah.

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: And then the rest are principals and And school boards. And school boards. Yeah. The school boards are really they're they're That's that's why a paid position in in that.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And that's why SU superintendents have to support with some of the school boards because there's and and within an SU, there are can be a lot of districts.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, and Sherry Souza made a pretty case for school districts over SUs.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And then Jamie Murray made the opposite, which was okay. We just, you know yes.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah, just in response to part of what you said, you know, I think that it's not the best idea to disregard what the task force put together merely because it diverts from what their original charge was. I think that I suspect and I trust that they tried to meet what we tasked them with, but it is very but the fact that they couldn't get there, that by itself is a red flag that we should look at and say, okay, we created this objective for them. They weren't able to get there, why? They presented that when we had the joint hearing, but maybe we have them in again here, but why couldn't they get there? Let's think more about that instead of, well, they didn't meet what we asked them to do, therefore, we have to do it ourselves. I think that we have to really ask, why couldn't they get there? And we have to take whatever warnings or considerations they also took into consideration in reaching their conclusions to afford disregarding what they got.

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: But was it fair to say they might have not had the intention to have it work?

[Unidentified Member]: Mean, yeah. As small as

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: we would expect it. Yeah, it's hard to say, but if you The Secretary of Education came in, broke down five, said, Here's why it does work, here's my statistics, then it got chewed apart and said, No, it's not gonna work. We have our side, I'll say our side, their side, saying it's not gonna work and here's why. And that's, we're gonna run into that on anything we do. There's, even what we're talking now, if we just go with theirs, there's gonna be an opposition of where's the cost savings? Where's So we're in a higher spa, but taking care of the kids is the end goal, and getting more efficient is what we need to do. And with 119 districts and 52 USSUs, there's not, and they even told us there's not efficiencies there. There's so many inefficiencies there. This session is doing it one way, this way is doing it another. If we combined our forces, we're gonna be a more smooth running machine. And that's okay. If we don't change anything, then we sat down and said, Hey, okay, here's the school calendar, here's the school, we give them direction and they'll follow that. And then hopefully with that becomes efficiencies that save us money. Short term, I don't think any of us really know what's gonna happen because taxes are key going up. Can we look at another funding source other than property tax? But that's always been this staple of income. But we're almost doing what we did last year. Almost doing, you know, we can't, we can't, we can't.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And we gotta start marching forward. Right, yeah. I think we have to get right here an example of what we need to do, is, I think have a different funding formula in place before we're done on the how do we do it? What are the pieces?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: A foundation.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: This has been it's been helpful. I just wanted to just wanted we don't have to make any decision. I'm gonna talk to Peter, come and we'll see about what we can do for a few more joint hearings soon and try to

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: move towards something. One more takeaway from our school visits. I didn't go see. Yeah, never really had a chance to talk about They, you know, one two things that I heard from everybody, including the public, was, you know, don't take away my school choice. And I I never heard anybody say that I-forty six was a good thing. I heard two of those superintendents that we went to their schools say the best thing ever happened to us was act 46 because it made us sit down and look at our schools and look at the efficiency and how we could make it better. They did that on their own. So I think it's important that they it's about global control. And,

[Unidentified Member]: you know,

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: if we let them buy into it by having have the supervisory as union or the superintendent association use their peers and pick five superintendents to be involved in this process. Right? I think it's it's important that they have a say in it. They're representing their districts and their SUVs if they do it.

[Unidentified Member]: Yes. I'm gonna echo what you said in regards to I think it's really important to reflect on the fact that what happened last year with Act 73 following into today and into the future, has stimulated a huge focus on the schools, the quality of the schools, the facilities, etcetera, and I think that's very positive. And I'll leave that there. I do want to make one recommendation that there's lots of folks out there recommending funding schools via different sources as opposed to property tax, property tax versus income tax, and I'd just say that's not our, it's not in our bailiwick, and I don't think our committees go there at all. We're focusing on academic excellence and the effect on property tax, is the total sum of the cost of space.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The only other thing I would say is I like I very proudly and loudly defended the foundation formula in the interim period. I said to my constituents, you can either vote on your local school budget or you can have tax certainty. You cannot have vote. That is the ultimate truth of the financing piece of this. So, I continue to believe in the foundation formula and think it would be very fruitful for us to spend time on that, And if another group wants to do maps

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, I think we have to understand in what context we wanna look at financial performance. We these things do have to go together, so we've got we've got some decisions to make.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think we could get some national expertise about how they go together without drawing lines on a map.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So that's what you're suggesting, is not drawing lines on a I got one big

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I'm saying I don't feel like it's a good use of Senate education's times to draw lines on a map. I don't think that's the education policy heart of this.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Back to the foundation for them. The one one thing that I understand is that under act 60, they were schools could not raise funds. They had to they had to stay within the budget, and education property taxes you know what they were, know, I think back in the '27 we gave, said don't exceed the last budget by 10%. Everybody did. So the beauty of the foundation formula is everybody's going to get an ADM plus the per pupil or per pupil spending. And if the school district wants to spend more than that, they can raise money through increasing their budget or whatever. That's not gonna affect my everybody in my district. That's gonna affect that school district. And their vote was the moment when they got happy. So I think it's probably for voting, I was gonna

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: have to go there. And can we define equity then? And poverty, in education, that there's core of that every school at least has to do this much. If you have more AP classes, it doesn't mean that my school, you know, if we went up to Canada and they had one or two AP, right? And then didn't go somewhere they had almost had none as well. And then you go to CBU, we got, I forget how many. Well, do we, that really, Canon was like, we don't know what we don't, we're not missing what we don't see. If we divide this up, say this is an equitable, equal education, these are the five criteria for it, that will get us away from any Brigham decision ever again, because the state is defined. And if I'm a parent and I see that CDU has so much more to offer, I might move that way so my child has it. But if I'm not, I know where I'm living, I'm happy with it. And almost every school we went to, they, the child, or the student, sorry, said, My teacher finds a way for me to learn the thing that I want to learn about. Mhmm. Japanese, be it, and got only one. So, our schools are doing it and it's unfortunate that you get people that will go out, that school's got better off than we do, and I want the same. And it just can't happen because the area you're in.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I don't know that we disagree, I mean, or maybe you're not disagreeing,

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I don't

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: know, but Act 60 contemplated a foundation formula, and we just never had the courage to do it. Sure. It's the only piece that is equitable of all of these things. It's it's it's why everyone's struggling with it because it's actually indisputable equity.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. But the although probably for that statement to be true you have to have large districts that are

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean really great schools we went to are spending less per pupil.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Let me put it another way, or you really have to account for the fact that you have to tweak it. That it takes it takes account of the fact that especially the schools, small, small necessity schools are gonna need more resources. Are there other schools that are because, you I was one of the things that had stuck with me is, you know, that visit to Canaan Yeah. Where I think what we saw was a very or the confines of the school, were running it as well as they could run it as efficiently as they could run it, and they are over the excess spending threshold. Yeah. And spending too much, which for them was a lot of money, the extra $200,000 and so as we put it together we have to keep it.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: AOE, AOE four years, could have been helping them with an interstate district. A in fact, I wanna tell a story about CTE that I think is actually really valuable from our work groups I've met over the summer and fall. After we went to Canaan and and from our visits, after we went to Canaan, we heard, wow. They're losing their CTE programs. What a shame. I mean, that's what the kids want. It's what they're great at, and it's what we need. So I invited, Kaden to come to our last CTE meeting at Saint John's Berry Academy. And they told their story, and And St. John's Bear Academy and Linden Institute instantly said, we have so many ideas to help you solve this problem and get the money back you need to do CTE. All I did was say, like, can we all get together and talk about CTE? And Linden Institute immediately said, let's do a satellite and start working on this. AOE could have done that. It literally took me getting them to one meeting with their peers in the district.

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Do the CTEs meet on a regular basis?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, Kanan, remember, is not officially a CTE, And now they can be a satellite location if Linden helps that. It's like actually a success story,

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I think. I hope it works out. I must be all the up there.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So tomorrow we're just doing some we're gonna have that. Thank you.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: We have at 01:15, Commission on the Future of Public Education of Vermont, report updates. Then 02:15, Building Bright Futures update priorities, and then 03:00 Vermont State College's system. Chancellor?

[Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Yeah, go ahead. Questions?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Do we have a list of the reports that are supposed to come to us when supposed to be here? We have them and we're actually glad you said that because one of the things I think we should do, should be much more we do, is if we commission a report, we should actually have somebody come in and that was involved in it and talk to us about it. And we started, I know we have, the deputy and I have talked about that. He said he wanted to say that. Thank you for gonna make a report for your job. You for misunderstanding. So, okay, we're adjourned. Thanks.