Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: We're live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We are live. So, we're back after a quick break, set of education on January 28. And we're gonna spend a little bit of time this afternoon hearing from the chair and the lead vice chair, right? Of the State Board of Education about the work that the board has done on small by necessity and the and the sparsity rules that you've developed over the course of the summer and fall consistent with the requirements of, I wish I get the action number. I'm like you, so many acts like we're saying The big education bill.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: 73? Wow. Okay. Don't define me.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yeah. So,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: so frankly, we'll just turn the floor over to you because we've been waiting, waiting to hear this this a little bit from you to bring us fully up to speed.

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: Sure. Well, thank you.

[Jennifer Deck Samuelson (Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Good to see everyone again. Jennifer Deck Samuelson, chair of the State Board of Ed. I'm joined this afternoon by my vice chair, Tammy Colby, or the vice chair, not mine. And I'm really going to let Tammy do most of the talking with regard to the work that the State Board of Ed did with regard to recommending a framework for how the legislature can consider small by necessity and sparse by necessity. When this work was assigned to the board, we created a committee that was tasked with coming up with recommendations. Tammy joined that committee. She'll get into that. And then the committee brought the recommendations to the board at its December meeting, and the board voted it out unanimously. And I just take I wanna take a moment here to recognize, first of all, the the amount of work that went into creating this framework in terms of canvassing what other states were doing, and really presenting the different elements, the rationale considerations. Like, I I found it very helpful when the board was considering it. I imagine that the legislature will as well, but I really just want to acknowledge the work of the board and Tammy for putting this all together. So I will turn it over to Tammy. Thanks.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Thank you, Jennifer. Good afternoon. For the record, Tammy Colby. I'm here in my capacity as the vice chair of the State Board of Education and not in other capacities. So as Jennifer mentioned, the State Board of Education was charged with developing a framework, for the legislature to consider. This is not in rule. This would be something that the legislature can take to craft, language that would go into statute, or you could direct it back to us to put something in rule. But right now, this isn't something that we've put in rule or regulation at this point. This is just us coming back to you with recommendations for a framework. So I'm gonna share my screen. One of the challenges when I share my screen is I can't see you. So if there's a question or something, maybe someone there can just flag and let me know, because I won't be able to see. So let me bring this up. And just so everybody's clear, these are the same slide these are the same slides that were shared previously.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You all have them by the paper company if anybody doesn't provide some. Yep.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Just to review, there was a legislative charge for this work section 37 of act 73, established support grants for both small and sparse schools. Statute defines a school as small as if it has less than a 100 students and a school is located in a sparsely populated area if it's in an area with less than 55 persons per square mile of land. Again, both of these are things that are defined in statute. They were not things that the board reconsidered. Act 73 also stipulates that to be eligible for additional state funding, a smaller sparse school, that is a school that meets the above criteria must exist by necessity. Right? And so the state board's charge was tackling this term by necessity. We did not again tackle sort of the qualifications for whether or not a school was smaller sparse. And, we took on that work by virtue of statute, section eight of Act 73 directs us as the State Board of Education to propose standards for schools to be considered smaller sparse by necessity. As Jennifer mentioned, we stood up a process to do that in July 2025, the State Board constituted a special committee to develop a proposed framework for defining what a school is small by necessity and or sparse by necessity. The committee membership consisted of Cynthia Stewart, Brian Campion, and then myself as chair. The committee met five times in the 2025. We had one public listening session on 11/07/2025. We consulted with and received data from the agency of education and we also reviewed other state policies and practices. And as Jennifer mentioned, the committee recommended a framework back to the full board and the full board voted unanimously to accept the committee's recommendations at its December meeting. So before I get into the criteria, I want to sort of step back. One of the key things that we did as a committee is we said, well, we need to get our heads around this in terms of what are the definition considerations when think through what by necessity might mean. And we really grounded this in the fact that Act 73 is a funding statute, right? So this is about whether schools are eligible for the supplemental aid that the state would provide. And so with that in mind, we defined by necessity, defined by necessity broadly that is a condition that should be a function of unavoidable or demographic circumstances since the criteria for small and sparse are already defined in statute. And if we pull that string a little further, a by necessity definition then therefore should distinguish between schools that are small and sparse because of geography or isolation, and therefore funding eligible. And schools that are smaller and sparse due to local organizational decisions, preferences or policy choices, they would be funding ineligible. So our starting point was then to define a school as smaller source, again, by necessity, where a school cannot reasonably increase enrollment or consolidate without creating undue hardship for students, specifically in terms of travel time, safety, or the lack of feasible alternatives. So we took those definition considerations and then we created a framework to it's for thinking about how you might implement that. So the proposed framework has five components or criteria that could be used to identify whether or not a school operates by necessity. The first criteria, and I'll go through each of these in more depth, but I just want to give you an overview. Travel time or distance threshold, two, safe transportation limitations, three, lack of feasible consolidation options, four, the community population trajectory, or in five, closure consolidation would include substantial increases in costs reflecting the interest in the state, the interest of the state in maintaining an efficient educational system. So now I want to talk through each of these criteria in more depth. The first one is travel time or distance threshold. And the possible criteria that we identified would be average one way student travel times exceeding forty five minutes for elementary school students, sixty minutes for students in grades seven through 12, or road miles to the nearest school of the same grade span exceeding 10 or 15 miles, depending on the train. Let me break this down a little further. The time limits, Would be average. We did hear from superintendents that an average time was really important that they didn't want a hard threshold on this because that could, I mean, bus schedules are already challenging for school districts. And then you could have one student that creates, right, the travel time could create challenges for a bus schedule. So they wanted averages. The forty five and the sixty minute thresholds were grounded in a couple things. One, what other states have used. Two, a review of the existing research literature on the impacts of travel times on student performance and other student outcomes. And if you look in the memo that accompanies our work, you can see footnotes for that. And three, testimony that we took from, superintendents and educators in the field about existing average travel times. The reason we have two components of this, have sort of busing times, and then we have, road miles is because not all school districts provide transportation. And we also need to consider sort of what is a reasonable driving distance for a parent or other caregiver to, transport a child, to school. So again, the rationale for these is that Vermont geography makes travel time the most sensitive and equity relevant measure. Most rural states rely on travel time for by necessity determinations. And again, the suggested thresholds are consistent with existing research and the effects of travel time on student outcomes and the criteria been used in other states. And again, the committee received testimony of the existing bus time for children exceed sixty minutes in many places in the state already. Second related criteria are safe transportation limits. And under these limits, a school would qualify if terrain winter road conditions, unpaved roads, mountain gaps creates unsafe or unreliable transportation that's certified by a supervising union or the agency of education. So for example, bus routes required travel over winter, over roads closed for winter. For example, the, Lincoln Gap, right between Warren and Lincoln. Mountain passes that can cause more than sixty minute detours if they were close to inclement weather, and also the condition where there might be only one road in and out of a town, a single ingress that's prone to closure. So the rationale for the safe transportation limitations is that coupled with the travel time limitations, that this would provide additional consideration for specific geography that could impact travel times and student safety. Third criteria are lack of feasible consolidation options. And again, part of this is, right, the state is like this, since this is a funding statute and the state is making a determination whether or not to provide additional resources to mean that would go to a school, a small school or school located in a sparsely populated area. And by providing those funds, there's an implicit assumption that the state is providing additional resources because it's in the state's interest to keep that school open and operating. And so that means that as a part of our criteria, we need to take into the cost benefit calculates, right, for whether or not there are other feasible consolidation options for a small school to exist. So with these options, a school, would qualify for by necessity if nearby schools, both within and outside an existing district boundary, lack capacity to absorb students and still meet the state's educational quality standards, including class size minimums. Or two, the cost of renovating or making an addition of a receiving school exceed the projected savings from closure. Or three, tuition raises out of raises per pupil costs or creates an equities and program access. And the particular concern here is that there could be a situation where a small school might, if they didn't receive the small school would close, they didn't receive the supplemental funding, but then there wouldn't be no other options available for students with disabilities who require special education services or other specialized learning needs that cannot be met by nearby public school. The rationale again here is that this addresses the feasibility of consolidating students into these nearby schools. And these again are the criteria that are most commonly used in other states necessary small school calculations. We also need to take into consideration in developing a framework, community population trajectories. Remember that our criteria are cliffs, right? And so if you fall below a 100 students one year, or for a number of years, for example, that would throw you into sort of the small school bucket. Well, we also know that we have demographic changes and community changes. And so we need to take into account sort of not just the immediate criteria, so the application of the criteria in the short run, but also consider the long run. So because of that, we suggest that, an additional criteria would be a school would qualify by necessity if the census block town or town cashman areas is projected to remain below an enrollment that would support a viable larger school even with consolidation. And the reason for this is that this provides flexibility in places where schools may temporarily fall below 100 students. And it also recognizes the state's interest in maintaining small schools in geographic areas where there may be future demographic or economic changes that will result in an increase in the number of students to a school. So for example, if you can imagine area of a state where there might be a new business coming into the community, and right now the school is small, but three years from now, five years from now, that school would no longer be small. Or if you have a school that's small, meets is below a 100 students now, but they have a pre kindergarten class coming in that and you sort of look at that trajectory and that school's gonna be much larger than 100 students in a number of years, it would not be in the state's interest to withhold the supplemental funding for that school that then resulted in that school closing. The last criteria that consider, this is related to sort of some of the other points we've made, is that closure consolidation would impose substantial increase in cost. Remember that again, the by necessity criteria here is related to implementing the funding statute. And so we're taking into account again, the cost benefit nature of providing a supplemental payment versus sort of a school remaining open. And here a school qualifies of closure or consolidation will create substantial measurable increases in the district's average per student expenditure, including but not limited to tuition and transportation capital costs at a receiving school or new facility requirements. So what does that mean? That means that if by virtue of a school not being defined by necessity, that that school would close, that this then would translate into a substantial increase to taxpayer costs and the average per pupil expenditure to the district, then that would be that would trip wire saying, that's that's a condition for the school staying open underneath the byness receiving supplemental funding, excuse me, by under the by necessity clause. And again, the rationales, these conditions recognize the interest of the taxpayers in controlling education spending. In addition to those general framework and criteria, we also considered some implementation, identified some implementation considerations. The first one is we've got to figure out determining which schools meet who determines, right? Which schools meet these criteria and which don't. Our recommendation is that the agency of education be charged with responsibility for determining whether a school qualifies as small or sparse by necessity. However, the specific criteria documentation requirements, timeline, and the data elements for that, that would be used by AOE would be established and rule and incorporated in education quality standards where we have these other kinds of criteria. That way expectations are transparent and would be consistently applied. The other implementation concerns is the timing for this, right? So again, this is all about funding. And so we need to think about a timeline for making the determinations that align with school district budgets. And so our recommendation is that schools be designated as smaller sparse by necessity annually, and on a timeline that aligns with district budgeting and annual town meeting decisions so that districts can have a clear determination of eligibility in advance of developing and adopting budgets for the following year, and therefore they can plan responsibly. I can stop there and take questions. And again, accompanying the presentation is a detailed memo, that the board prepared. There are two attachments to that memo. One is a is a is a I will call sort of an exemplars of other states. It did not necessarily a complete 50 state scan, but it does give some examples of other states, and how they've implemented it. And then there's also attachment B, is a synthesis of the criteria. And for each criteria, it marks it it identifies states that have used similar criteria. So if you wanna go look and see how specific criteria have been implemented, you have that as a guide as well.

[Erin Roche (Vermont Director, First Children’s Finance)]: Take your questions. I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: think what happened at the end of last session, or not the end of last session, but as four fifty four was leaving our committee, is that this really detailed, you

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: know,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: thorough, multifaceted analysis was kind of reduced down to us looking at under 100 students, 100 to two fifty, above two fifty. And I made the point, I think as we were voting it out, that could be really easy to get wrong which schools are small or sparse by necessity just looking at those numbers. The middle group, for example, of 100 to two fifty might be as efficient as a community can get. It could be pre K through 12 in Canaan, basically. And so one of the one of the challenges is making sure that how this is very delicately framed here translates well into a foundation formula and any penalties you might receive or not because you are small by necessity or not by necessity.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Can I follow-up on that? Yeah. Because if you intuitively you might say if there's one school in Vermont small by necessity it's Canaan. You might say that intuitively but it's actually not because it's pre k through 12 and it has 120 something kids or whatever it is.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And it's multiple schools.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well it's all well it's also one. It it the 15 feet between them but

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But I think they get frustrated that they're treated as one school.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But putting that aside, even just that aside, the fact that if you could have a high school with 99, which would have 25 kids in a grade, and then in cadence you go pre K through 12 with a lot fewer kids than that per grade but it's actually not small by necessity because it has more than 100 kids. Now it probably gets picked up by the sparse by necessity so it actually gets the treatment that it should get because I'm sure it's less than 55 per square mile in that neck of the woods. But that's not anything that you're doing with the statute as it is. We were just commenting on the fact. I'm just picking up on the point that Senator Ram Hinsdale made that we have to keep in mind whether we actually have the definitions right? And by the way, I think this is really good work. I'll just start by saying that. Thank you for this. But yes, several weeks. Yeah, I'd like

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: to commend the the committee or subcommittee. And from the product. It's good work and then the overall stated Board of Education for reviewing and endorsing. From my perspective, the intent was that small by necessity sees benefit. Not penalty. I think we all need to change our mindset. Like what we're trying to do is help those schools which are small way necessity. But I I am curious and I think you touched on it at various times in your briefing about the limitations that the statute gave you on small as in less than 100 students and sparsely populated area, less than 55 people per square mile. Did you ever challenge that amongst yourselves when you were having this conversation? No.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Right. So our charge was to consider the by necessity portion of this and think about what are the criteria that you might consider applying to determine whether a school was small by necessity or not? The definition of both small and sparse were in statute. We explicitly did not take that on because those are that's that's in statute, and that wasn't our that wasn't what we were directed to do.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, just to reiterate what Senator Weeks said, I think everything you you that you developed is follows quite logically. So, Good work. Actually, what happens now?

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: I think that's up to you. Our charge was to come back to you with sort of a framework, I think as a matter of next steps that the legislature's task now is to craft a definite a working definition of by necessity. And I think you have a continuum of sort of the extent to which that definition details specifics or not, right? So you could think of a general definition and then delegate to the state board in rule, right? To clarify some of that and the data and the timing and things along those lines. You also at the other end of continuum could be very, very specific about that and there would be no delegation and that would just be in statute and that's how in the implement, all of the implementation criteria would be in statute. Typically the legislature is someplace in between, But I think the next job for the legislature to sort out is to come up with a work with the definition and where, and part of that is figuring out where on the continuum, like with regard to specificity, where you're going to be on that continuum and how much you're going to delegate back to rule versus having statute with respect to its implementation.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And I've did the statute say that if we if we had it in some portion of it done by rule, is it the board or is it the department, the agency?

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: If you were to put it in the education quality standards, which is our recommendation because then it would be consistent with all the other things that they have to do, that rule is currently under the purview of the State Board of Education. Yes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: anticipate your answer, but I'm going to ask you anyway. While you had very good people working this problem, Again, appreciate that. Did you have any discussion on like a a graduation of sparks we populated like, you know, in the statute, it's less than 55 people per square mile. Did you ever talk about, well, 100, you know, less than a 100 people per square any anything like that.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: We did not take on the definition of small or sparse at all. We only took on the because our the charge in the in statute to us was to define by necessity. We did not take on the definitions of small and or sparse.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Fair enough. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes, Senator Heffernan.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Did you, did you apply it to the Vermont at all as far as saying, okay, these are locations or did you Yeah. Just

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: one of the things that we did as a part of the committee, and this is available to you as well, it's up on our web it's up on the website, is we asked the agency, but the agency was unable to do it. So we had another state agency do it, where we took all of the schools that currently would qualify as small and or sparse. And we had them do a mapping exercise in terms of driving distance and miles to the nearest school with the same grades, right? Both within the district and outside the district. So you can see sort of what those driving times and what those criteria might look like and what that would do in terms of sort of the perimeter of schools around them. That's an Excel spreadsheet. And that differs from the existing tool that is on the web, that I know is being used for in conversations around consolidation. Our question was very different, which was if I had school a, what within how many drive right within these within these sort of parameters that we said, which are the elementaries? For example, I have elementary school a with grades, I don't know, k through six. What are the other schools within this perimeter, whether or not they're within the district or outside the district, right? That are within that bus, within those driving limits, right? And so it names those schools. And so you can start to see very quickly those places where there might be a might be another school that would qualify. Now, what we couldn't do is because the data don't support this right now is we couldn't tell whether or not that of that. So you may have a school that's within the perimeter of this school of this small school. We could not speak to cap these other things like capacity. Right? Facilities. Like, those those quote sorts of things we couldn't speak to. But we did go through the exercise of having that mapped and that Excel spreadsheet is available to you on the web.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Is on your On the

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: State Board of Education website under the committee materials.

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

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: That was our first cut. That's an exercise that if the legislature was interested in further refining, you certainly could ask, right? The same people we asked to further refine that. We did that because we were interested, we had identified these travel and distance criteria and also some of these consolidation criteria that out of other states. And we were trying to get a sense of how those criteria would overlay in Vermont and to the extent to which they might be implementable, right? That's all. And so what that spreadsheet showed us is that the criteria largely implementable.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So on the slide, travel time and distance threshold, I thought that was interesting. And the final comment on that slide was in many places in Vermont, the existing bus times exceed sixty minutes. In terms of that in any way, like the number of students who are currently potentially traveling in excess of

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: So the agency of education doesn't collect information on that. And so we we interviewed number of superintendents that operate large districts that have rural schools to try to get a sense of what that looked like. That was largely in response to public comment that we received when we started to stand this up, there was quite a bit of public comment that said forty five minutes and sixty minutes was too long for students on a bus. And what we found was is that there are many, many students in Vermont who are on busing time, that are on buses much, much longer than this already in Vermont. And that these in these averages might actually reduce the amount of on average, the amount of bus time that students for students compared to what the what we have now. But the agency of education does not collect data on busing time.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Perfect. That

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: was in our initial request. And so we sought out that information. You know, Randy Lowe, for example, is someone we spoke with, right, from talented superintendents who operate large districts who have to contend with busing schedules.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, because the first one on the bus, even if you're just in the five mile range, you're on for a while.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: That's right. That's right. That's right. I do wanna I do wanna highlight though that that the and I think this is important consideration is that, you know, the travel time and distant there are these two components and we were very careful to not just think in terms of busing time, but also the amount of the driving distance for caregivers, right? Yeah. And what might be reasonable for a caregiver, you know, 15 miles is non inconsequential. If you are a single mother who needs to drive their child to and from school for even a half a day, think about that, right? And so we were trying to be very sensitive to the fact that not all districts provide busing transportation to students and that burden then would fall to a caregiver.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think what you did there was very thoughtful. Any other questions? That was really helpful.

[Jennifer Deck Samuelson (Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: So if we are done with the discussion on small by necessity and sparse by necessity, I did have a point that I wanted to raise unrelated to that. I don't wanna cut the conversation short, but

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You're on.

[Jennifer Deck Samuelson (Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Alright. So in full disclosure, I had a conversation last night with senator Bongartz with regard to scheduling him to come before the state board of Ed now has a legislative review committee. So we're talking about that because just to forecast all of this, we're supposed to have a meeting on Monday. I have to cancel it because I'm traveling. So that was the conversation. But in the course of that conversation, I did mention something to senator Bongartz, and he invited me to share this with the committee today, which is to say, I just wanna point out this little, incongruity in act 73 with deadlines with regard to class size minimums. So the issue is if you look at act 73, section six says that the class size minimums go into effect this July, 07/01/2026. And as you guys are all aware, districts are currently in their budget making cycle for the 2627 school year, which is to say they are looking at what's in section six with regard to class size minimums as they're developing their proposed budgets for next year and trying to figure out how to make sense of those requirements. At the same time, section eight of act 73 directs the state board of ed to open up rulemaking to address class size minimums by 08/01/2026. So the month after the guidelines go into effect and given the eight month APA rulemaking process, any rules that the board implements, if we open up rulemaking by 08/01/2026, those rules won't become finalized and effective until the 2027. So all of that is to say, what we've heard is there is a fair amount of anxiety among school districts. There's been a lot of outreach to the agency of education. And even the agency of education is not charged with creating these rules, the state board of ed is. It might be helpful at a minimum if the legislature could assure districts that

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: this is

[Jennifer Deck Samuelson (Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: not a bright line, July 1 cut off, this is a process. There's not going to be instant conformity with the standard, particularly because we've not even begun rulemaking to support that. It could also be the case that the legislature might choose to kick that 07/01/2026 deadline out by a year to allow the board to create the rules and have this communication with districts and take testimony from districts, frankly, as to what makes sense because a lot of the terms surrounding class size minimums are not defined. Like, what is a class? What is a school? So there are some really fundamental definitions, foundational definitions that have not yet been created. So I just wanna put that out there because I am sensitive to the fact that we've got districts that are really trying to do their best job to understand something that has not been flushed out yet.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: And just to clarify, we have a committee that started work on that, right, already where we're working on those definitions and we'll be taking testimony from districts and key stakeholders around the state all spring. I think the concern is that the actual rulemaking process doesn't start until after the implementation date for that. So anything that we would promulgate by the end of by this spring through our committee process would be advisory, right? Because it had not gone through the formal rulemaking process. And anything that we would able even be able to promulgated guidance certainly will not be in play before people are voting on budgets in March.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Wasn't it the case though just to help me make sure I understand this fully that the class size minimum is a three year average and that averaging wouldn't start until July 1. Or or are you reading it differently? I think my had been with It would start July 6. You are correct.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: I think the concern is is that even though it's a three year average in in small districts, right? Where this is largely impactful, they are already trying to plan out a number of years for how this might look. Right? And there are key things. Right? So the statute says, you know, class size, here's your ranges, these all things by age and grade and topics and all in your subject areas. The issue is that whenever we do class size, the measurement of class depends on how you define the instructional unit, right? We also need to consider, right, it's supposed to be an average. Well, we have to define how you calculate an average, right? And we also instead currently neither in statute nor Well, let me back up. Neither in statute nor rule do we define class or school currently. So already that's a challenge. Then we have to think about, okay, so we've got to find those two things for the purposes of calculation. The existing statute also unclear how to count students because there's a numerator and a denominator in this. And so those two things are not defined. So we class don't defined, we don't have school defined, we don't have student defined, and we don't have average defined in terms of how we calculate that. So what that means is districts are asking a lot of questions about those particular things. And then you overlay that on on top of the challenge that all of this requires districts to potentially collect new data. And then you overlay that on the top of the fact that those exact same sort of parameters are supposed to apply uniformly to both public and non publicindependent schools. And the independent schools operate with staffing ratios currently in terms of their accreditation. So there has to be an additional crosswalk developed, right? That takes sort of our class size minimums and crosswalks those to what independent schools, how independent schools currently operate with respect to staffing ratios as a part of their accreditation.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So, okay. I mean, that's a helpful further explanation. So I think in part you're saying it's just causing anxiety, people say anxiety. In part it is to the extent that the idea was to have three years once we get this trans people to react, a year will be gone before they even know what we're talking about.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: That's right. That's right. Right. That's That's right. That's

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. Senator Ron.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So, Jen, you said this was unrelated to the small school conversation, but maybe I'm missing something because the last two pages of the presentation say AOE really needs to be designating what a small school by necessity is. And that seems really important to giving districts some sense of whether or not they have to be making class size calculations and determinations based Right. On

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Right. So I think you'll notice in our criteria we say that, right, a key criteria will be whether or not a school can operate and meet EQS. Right? And a key component of EQS is gonna be the minimum. It's not gonna be class size minimums. And so if you're a school principal or a superintendent right now and you're doing budgets and you're trying to make decisions about staffing and schools and, you know, kids and busing, you're operating with you're trying to solve equations with multiple unknowns, which is almost impossible for them to optimize on. And that's what that's where this chafing is coming up with, right? Because they don't know what the by necessity definition is going to be, So they don't know whether or not schools and their districts are going to receive additional funding or not. And two, they also don't really know how the class size minimum definition is going be sort of implemented. And right now there's really no guidance from anybody that's systematic with respect to either of those two things. And so to sort of yeah. Even though we have a three year time horizon, you know, like budget one is almost done. You're now into budget two. Right? And that's coming up really quick.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So if it's I'll I'll say I'll say it's almost done as we just we should push it back when you to give

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: to push it a year.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yeah. Okay. And

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: the other advantage to doing that is remember we also have graduation requirements kicking on there and that also has implications for all of this. And the rule making timeline for the graduation requirements is 08/01/2027. So we also have a situation where we might have to, under current statute, we have to open up the EQS this August to deal with class size minimums and then potentially reopen it another year later, right? That in the EQS is sort of the cannon that governs the day to day operations of school districts, right? And all of these things work together or they don't. And so there is some strength to the argument of saying, let's open up the rules once. Let's open up the independent school rules once, let's open up the EQS once, let's deal with graduation requirements, let's deal with class size minimums. And remember that there's other things that the EQS and the independent school rules are going to have to be updated for to reflect Act 73. So it would make sense from sort of a policy coherence perspective to deal with all of those things at once, not just in terms of administrative efficiency and opening rules, but we also need to make sure that all of those components are working together. And if we're doing these things piecemeal, that's going to be, first of all, it's going be hard to do, create coherent policy. And second of all, it's gonna be really hard for the field to know how to which way to blow here, right? Which way the wind's blowing. So I think our perspective is is that it would make sense to change the rulemaking deadline to August 2027 for all of these things. Then with that, true up the implementation timelines for some of these other permits.

[Jennifer Deck Samuelson (Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: The effective dates.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: The implementation timelines.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You're saying now I have been hearing one thing and now I'm realizing you're actually saying something slightly different. You're actually saying don't start the rulemaking this August. You're saying start the rulemaking in August '27.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: '27. Well, I mean, have a choice. You could make it go '20 if you did it 2026,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: then

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: you would have to do all these other things at the same time. I don't think that's practical.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's okay. I wanna make sure we we really understand what you're saying. Yep. And so you're saying, I think, delay the rule making, beginning of rule making until August 27 then everything come into effect on July.

[Jennifer Deck Samuelson (Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Yes, yeah. I think to summarize, where where I started with all of this was reciting the deadlines that are currently in act 73, and those current deadlines create this problem of class size minimums going into effect as it is written now in July. Don't start rule making until August. So that right there is an issue that I think could be cleaned up and it would be helpful if it were. And I think Tammy's bigger point is the idea that if you look at act 73 and the state board being tasked with rulemaking, it is true that we are looking at already as per act 73 opening up EQS in August '26, again in August '27, and then depending on what happens with the foundation formula, we would have to open it up again to incorporate all of that new all of those new requirements. And we would have to do a similar exercise with 2200 with regard to independent schools. And I think Tammy's point is from an efficiency and policy coherence standpoint, it might make sense to not just neaten up the deadlines as written in Act 73, but actually take the opportunity to have a more comprehensive approach to the whole thing.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. And as we think about this, we should remind ourselves that the state board is volunteer.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I was gonna say it's a budget, which is like you're still getting $80,000

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Could I recommend that you put that, what you just said in a concise little That look and send it to way we, I'm sure they were because that's good recommendations from you from you.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: And it's a pretty straightforward change, right? Just change the rule making date to 08/01/2028, right? And what that does is it trues all of these things up. It gives the state board time to make sure that the class size minimums jive with the graduation requirements, that the graduation requirements jive, like all these things that need to get done at once.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yeah.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Because the concern is is that whenever we do these things in small increments, we end up with sort of Frankenstein kind of rules. Right? Like, we wanna make sure that we have a coherent set of rules that are implementable and all of these things interact with one another.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yep, we got it. That makes sense. That makes yes.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Is

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: AOE bringing in like one of those charts, I forget what they're called, like what have to go in place for other things, a Gant chart. I mean, otherwise, they need more money because they they need to someone needs to bring this to us, and I don't know why Well,

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: I mean, we've already delegated to our committee on the on the state board, both the grad requirements and the the cost size minimums. And I'm chairing that committee and we have a work plan to get those things done. It's my understanding that the agency did do some work around cost size minimums this fall. We haven't seen it We weren't part of those discussions and they may have been giving some guidance already to districts. We're just unaware of what that guidance might be. But ultimately all these things are in rule and they have to go in the EQS. And so they really all are things that the State Board is going to have to deal with. The agency has given us propose a proposal for graduation requirements that we are going to use as a starting point, but I suspect that there will be a very thorough vetting process of the what they've proposed. Okay.

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

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Can I say I I just wanna say that I think maybe you note this informally, but I I spent a a lot of time on CTE the last six months? Yep. And there was a lot of concern into December about how EQS does or does not work with CTE. So I just wanna raise that to you while we have you. That's a huge

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: CTE rules need to be open. We need to deal with CTE, but we've talked about it and they've been sort of on our docket to think about opening.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: We have a committee. But I think

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: the trick is that we've been waiting for statutory changes. What we don't want to do is go in and do an overhaul in the CTE rules to reflect current statute and then the statute underlying CD fundamentally changes and then we have to do it all over again.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Right? So

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: please land the plane on statutory changes to CTE and we open up the rules.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Maybe there's an in between iterative step that we can engage in.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: I think we're happy to talk to someone.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Ultimately,

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: do want

[Jennifer Deck Samuelson (Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: EQS, CTE, and 2,200 to have the same guiding principles so that there is consistency from one set of rules to the next to the next. Because, you know, to quote Tammy, a student should not be governed by a different set of rules when the kid walks across the hallway. CTE rules have not been open for a very, very long time. They are well overdue. My understanding is that there was going to be some work on CTE in this legislative session. And so we decided not to open the rules yet because that felt premature, we we could certainly I mean, we have a committee that has been stood up.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It just feels like a chicken egg problem because it's like, how does that student get across the hallway to the other program first?

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: So right now, if the CTE rules were opened up, they would be updated to align with EQS as written, including Act one, and any other changes that have been made in statute since the rule was last hope. What what we could not do if we open the rules now is contemplate future changes. Right? I think that to Jennifer's point, we've been trying to thread that needle because we've seen that there's been an active conversation, both in the legislature. We know that there's been strong interest on the part of the field and the agency right around this, and that there's been a number of conversations around statutory changes. So I think what we've been trying to do is thread the needle and making sure that, again, wanting to create coherent policy, right? In terms of an efficient way and rulemaking and not open these things up multiple times. But if the legislature has a strong interest in us opening up the CT rules to true them up with EQS, particularly with respect to Act one, that's something we certainly can do.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Really help really helpful. Really clear and really helpful. So why don't we

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Thank you.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Thanks everyone. Take care.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay so we should basically go right into our next but why don't we take two minutes to stand in our seats if we want to. So, we'll start in two minutes. We'll start our first. Go ahead up into the chair. We're we'll stay live. Just taking a little stretch break.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: So I had a hot hot water. All good. Gotcha.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Both be at your chairs.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Left.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Get that in.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: Thank you all.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Entertaining?

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: Very. I worked in a

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: I worked in Athens before it was consolidated with Raptor. So I worked in a school with less than 20 students, K-six. And I've worked in health towns in Windham County. And I realized that the issues of small and star theories are the same in Windham County and it's heartrending. Thank you very Thanks.

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: Thanks Daphne.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Good information.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: K. Two minutes are up.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: I know that. I didn't get logged in on one side. Yeah?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Are we you? Or No. We're actually fine. It's actually something that's wearing. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So while you're coming up, I'll just set things up for especially for people who might be assuming in on this and and We have for enough about amongst within the success of what we've been doing with childcare in Vermont. We have begun to realize that despite the overall success, there are parts of Vermont that may actually be going in the other direction in terms of availability and so we really wanted to get a sense of whether that's actually true. If so, why it might be happening and then and then what we might do about it and one of the issues that came to mind for me is when I saw some data suggesting that we've lost a lot of home daycares. They they had a role within the system and one of them just.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And we're taking testimony on that in economic development. As well.

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

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: You can take it here too just

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: given that it's that housing.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Which childcare are we talking about? Infant, toddler, pre k? Not connected to school.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Zero to three.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Zero. Yeah. Or or near There were more.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Or more. Yes. Because they can they can be not connected to the school system and be four and five too.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes, that's right.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Or basically, if you're in a family child care home. Yes. I'm happy to Right. I saw the question that got from the committee, so some of it, my presentation, right, is a little bit of an orientation to the system and what the rules are and what the trends are we're seeing. Good.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Yay. I Yeah.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Think I'm waiting to get that into the meeting. Okay.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: That's a sad time.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Test test. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: that's this one is. That

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: will be Aaron who's gonna go through This that

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: one's on the community website.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yep.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: I only got twenty four

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: hours since

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: working on my slides, so, yeah.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay. There you go.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Great, sorry. Yeah, it's okay. Slow, quiet, lead up. So, hi everyone, I'm Janet McLaughlin. I am the Deputy Commissioner with the Department for Children and Families that oversees the Child Development Division, and I've been in this role for almost three years. So that means that I joined the team right as Act 76 was being debated, and then had been part of the implementation team, but had been working in this space before then, And I was delighted to get a chance to come in and talk to you about this because family childcare homes are a really critical part of the early childhood education ecosystem in Vermont. And we do need to be really thoughtful about how we're supporting them and how different policy choices interact for our family childcare homes. I saw that the title was around sort of rural childcare, but also the questions I got were family childcare specific, so I'm really focusing on my family childcare, but that makes sense that that was the title because really family childcare homes are a critical piece in our small communities around the state that may not have enough young children to support a larger center or the way community families come together, family childcare homes can be a really wonderful option for some children and some families. Big picture, because I know you guys are Ed and not necessarily all childcare all the time, like I mostly am. I will say my role at Child Development Division, we oversee mostly all things childcare, and that's childcare financial assistance, childcare licensing, and childcare quality capacity building. We also oversee children's integrated services, which is providing support for families whose children might need some extra supports for healthy development, so that's thing mentioned. And we also co administer universal pre kindergarten along with the agency of education. So big picture, regulated childcare in Vermont. Right now, there are about a little over a thousand regulated childcare programs in Vermont, about five zero nine center based childcare preschool programs, four zero one registered and licensed family childcare programs, and 150 regulated after school programs. And the after school programs are the ones that are getting better. There's other after school programs, but these are the ones that are regulated by us because those, typically it's because they want to participate in childcare financial assistance. And can

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you parse for us the register and process license?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yes, my next slide The is current capacity is licensed capacity within child care, as listed on this slide as well, it's about 33,000 overall and that is almost 20,000 center based programs, a little over 4,000 in family childcare, and about 10,000 in the school aged childcare programs.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So, in your presentation, in the next five months, trend lines? Yep. And

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: multiple trend lines. So, and I just wanted to, this is a new tool, this map that's up here is a new we have our child development division website where you can search for specific, you can look in your community and see what the childcare programs are, what the mix of childcare programs are in your community. But obviously from this slide, you can see that there are childcare programs, most

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: of the places people live

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: in Vermont, right? There's a few places that are blank, but there's usually not very many people around there. But we know we still, you know, don't necessarily meet the demand for regulated childcare in the state.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: If you look at Ascie Scottie, can't Yeah.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: So, in terms of just a little orientation to family childcare in particular, I wanna be clear that CDD does regulate all childcare facilities in the state, but if somebody's caring for children in their own home, they can care for children from two other families besides their own without needing to be regulated at all by the state. So there's, people have all those sort of informal care relationships all over the place. And also, if you are related to the people you are taking care of, like they are your grandchildren, you don't need to be regulated. So I just wanted to clarify, there's all sorts of arrangements taking place in families and in communities that aren't gonna be tracked in our data.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: And is there a threshold that doesn't matter? Like if you got a family of 10, grandma's watching them, it don't matter? There's not a threshold.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Some states have a threshold, we do not. And, there's also some thresholds related to, like, the other exceptions in there related to, you know, if it's just for the few weeks during the summer, it could be an exception, if, you know, if the children are related to ages, so there's a little bit more detail to it. But just wanna say, it's not everybody has to do it, but there's people that are, you know, often people who want to be a family childcare provider because they want to make a business out of this, right? They want it to be part of how they're supporting themselves and their families.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Are those two families, even if they're related? Yeah,

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: they're two, yes, they're two, I think it's

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Like, let's say grandma's watching cut those from three different

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Well, if they're all, if they're all her grandchildren, she's fine.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. But if it was

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: like two two families families that that then they're Yeah. Oh. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I mean, I'm just saying, like, is not Yeah. It's it's it's again, There's we're dying to some words around that too, maybe get into all of those details, but I just want people to know that we're not knocking on everybody's door because of this. The regulations that we have really are designed to meet the foundational health and safety requirements for young children. I just wanna say children, especially zero to five, are an incredibly vulnerable population. They can't speak for themselves, nobody's, they don't know quite, they can feel what's right and wrong, right? But they can't go home and tell their parents what happened. Family childcare homes, also usually there's one staff person, right? So this is a vulnerable population. So the rules that I just wanna offer to you are really driven by federal and state statutes or rules for the most part and also some best practices that come from the American Academy of Pediatrics. So, registered and licensed family child care homes. So, we've got two different categories. You kind of think of them as small and large, but we call them registered and licensed. So, a registered family child care home can have up to six children under five, or five and under, I suppose, then, plus they can have four school agers during those out of school time hours. There are sub rules under that. Only two of the children can be under two, right? That's again for safety reasons, like if there's an emergency, like you need to be able to carry those babies out. But you can have additional, you can have your school agers full time during the summer and you can have six school agers during the summer as long as they've been connected to your program before. So, that's, again, typically with one staff person on is the expectation of registered child care home. The requirement, the qualifications here, all you have to have to become a registered family child care home. You get a high school diploma or GED, forty five hours of child care training, which you need to get within your first year. There's some safety trainings like infant toddler CPR, mandated reporter training, like some pretty basic, you know, first aid, like those kinds of safety trainings. And then you should do fifteen hours of PD annually. So that is the base requirement for being a registered family child at your home. And then we have some facility related standards, right? So we do have indoor and outdoor safety standards. These are kind of what people think of just as child proofing your space, you know, thinking through, you know, especially if it's in a home environment, right, you have to think through what do these little kids have access to, and then it also does include blood and water testing, right, because again, these are little bodies, and we want make sure they're safe.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: How does that work with standards to you? Yep,

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: we go to, we do pre licensure inspections but then also we do annual inspections of every program and then also if we get complaints we go out and do additional visits and investigate complaints.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And what's involved, or some events involved in, say, just animals?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Oh, that would be like you, like if there's a creek running through your backyard, like then there's a fence so the children can't get in the creek. Or you've made sure you have a way to make sure that any of your cleaning supplies are out of reach of children. That kind of thing. You have an appropriate sleep and bedding plan for young children as well, right? So that kind of stuff is in the standards. And then, licensed family childcare homes, you can have up to 12 children five and under based on your staffing. So typically a licensed family childcare home, there's the lead provider and then that person, she, would have an assistant. There might be one, he. There's a few, but I will probably just use she as my And that really, it really, there's like a whole chart, right, that's like, okay, if you've got two staff, and the children of these ages, then you have this many of children of this ages, and it tries to get through to just try to get to what is a safe standard, because, again, they're not children, they do need both supervision for safety and they also need like interaction for their healthy development. Disqualifications are slightly higher for licensed family childcare homes. You do need to have at least a child development associate credential, which is really about one hundred and twenty hour childcare specific training program. You do need to have that before you become a licensed health care home.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Are those training programs specifically available?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yes, yes. So, will say, CDA is, I mean, it's a nationally available program in Vermont. Like online? Yes. But I will say, in Vermont, actually, we have fewer and fewer people doing the CDA. We have a lot more people maybe taking, you know, child development course at CCB or an early child development course at CCB. Kind of, we're able to pay for those for people, and we want to

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: get people on the path to credentials ideally. And those, I mean, there are just some places in the state where it might be hard to get to CCV.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Well, it's almost all CCV's courses online now.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. Okay. Yeah. So you're saying these are online? Yeah. And through CCV, you help pay for them? Yep.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Okay. And, but I just put CDA there because it's the lowest requirement. It's the lowest option. I mean, there's a bunch

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: of different ways you could

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: I mean, and I will say also, there are people that dramatically exceed these requirements, right? There are AOE licensed teachers running registered family child care homes, running licensed family child care homes, people who have master's degrees, right? And, you know, decades of experience. So, really, these are the minimum qualifications and there are many really talented people running these programs and working with children all over the state. Many of whom who have taken, have gone from a high school diploma to a teaching license during that period of time. It's pretty impressive. Then for licensed family childcare homes, again, have these same safety standards, and then there are some additional fire safety and wastewater standards that are also applied because it's just a bigger group of people there as well. And we have a team of licensors, our licensing techs that help walk people through this process. That's the basics of what registered and licensed are. I'm gonna do national trends first before I get to Vermont trends, because I am not bearing my lead, which is really that Vermont's trends in family childcare homes align with the national trends. Nationally, we have seen a tremendous decline in family childcare homes. It has, so this, the slide on the left is from a 2019 report. It looks from 2005 to 2017 and you can see that there was a 48% decline in family childcare homes nationally. And then on the slide on the right, there's kind of like a COVID issue happen, some of the analysis that's been done. So slide on the right is a 2024 report from Child Care Aware of America, and it is showing that nationally things have started to even out after COVID. So, I just, I want to point that out, that our trend in Vermont look like the national trends, That's something to consider when we're considering whether or not it is Vermont specific policy, or a national, just changes in the way that preferences in childcare, preferences in employment, other things that are going on, potentially access to housing might be an interesting reason why people can't open their homes that right we're seeing.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, it's trend before COVID.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Well, the slide on the left of 02/2017.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I couldn't read it.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Oh, sorry. It's 02/2017 on the left. That's showing, right, this was a long time trend. Okay, so now, here's the one you're waiting for. Here is Vermont's trend from 2,005 on the left to twenty twenty five on the right. So, there has been a massive drop in the number of registered family child care homes in Vermont over the last twenty years. And the biggest drop was between 2016 and 2017, and that is when the childcare regulations went into place. It is also when universal pre kindergarten started to go into place as well. But the trend line was already there, is something I would offer. So, again, we have to figure that out, like in a way, what impact do you think the policies have? And then you can see now, oh, it's flattening out after 2020, and even went up in 2024. So, the trend line is changing.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Did you think that uptick was due to?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: I do think it's due to increased investments, and so I can show, and I have a couple slides on that. From the state, the state, three out of 76, yeah. I mean, reimbursement rate we pay family childcare homes is more than double. And then this is licensed family childcare homes, and you can see that number has increased. Again, it's a much smaller number, there's only 27 programs, but those are the bigger, those are the programs that can serve up to 12 children under five.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So statewide, only 27?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: There's only 27 of those, yeah. Because you do have to, I mean, need to have space in, I mean, it needs to be your home. It needs to be your residence, and you need to have space, enough space for 12 children

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: to ultimately live there.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: This is not like a

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: center, yeah.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: This is just, no, this is licensed family childcare homes. And then we have licensed center based workouts as well.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Was there a part of regulation back in the previous slide, when you talked about the regulations, sort of making it, being a little back to a decline in British problems? What what have you identified as the kind of main factor for that?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Okay, so I did, I mean I did start working in this field in 2016 so was paying attention back then too. And we feel like what we were hearing back then is there just were people that were like, I'm not making enough money to follow all these new rules. A lot of what the rules The rules had not been updated in twenty years. There were a lot of new federal requirements who had come in. So it was a really big jump in the number of rules from what it was before to what happened in 2016. A lot of it was making it, spelling it out. Whereas like the rules before mine had just said, like, you must maintain a clean home. And the new rules spell out what is a clean home. Which, you know, is potentially helpful because, I don't know, my husband and I have different definitions of what a clean home is. And so to have a licensor come in to your house and say this is clean or not clean, right? We wanted to spell, the rules spell that out now in more detail.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: It has to be your home.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: For a family childcare home in Vermont, is your own residence, yes. There's some states who have done some interesting things with thinking about these small programs or these micro programs in a non residential space. That's not something that we've done quite yet in Vermont. It's definitely something we could think about more of if we feel like that's direction we wanna go.

[Unidentified participant (logistics/aside remarks)]: And this might be

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: a good time to say, I have a piece of a bill the, the bill and economic development and a family coming in to testify about their HOA. Mhmm. Including their participation and essentially shutting down their

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: home

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: child And care we have a lot of HOAs in Chittenden County. So Yeah. That's interesting. That's gonna if any, I can tell people when Yeah. Do that or something, but there's a family that wants to

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: do it. Yeah. Well, maybe we could testify about that. Great.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Tell. Economic.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: So Don't mess with me some for the other.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The problem is being unwell, but these are all economics and education

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We would also recommend we need the HOA to come down talk about why they we always need

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: the counter argument to hear what they actually I think they're looking for HOA people on a

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: lot of things. Their HOA should be invited. That's a full story. We can't have enough story.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: We don't usually do that. Well, shop. Right?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We should see what once

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Ah, very good. Boy drama. And If the

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: if HOAs have, like a representative of someone tonight,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: otherwise we'll look for Sure, it'll go over it. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, so the new lines here.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Okay, new lines, okay. This says family childcare home openings and closings, right? So opens are in green and closings are in this reddish orange. And on average, about five to 10% of family childcare homes close each year. These are small businesses tied to people's personal lives and their homes. You really do see the typical pattern you see with many small businesses, have a couple people, some people who try it out for two or three years, decide it's not for them, some people who do it love it, stick in it for decades, and then other people who are saying, this fits for me when my kids are young, and then I'm done, and I'm gonna do something else. Sometimes what they do is open a center, or go be a director at a center. We don't necessarily lose their expertise as early childhood educators. So again, this is thousand and three, 2004, state fiscal year 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, What you can see, one, is that closings are down since 2003, so that hopefully is a good trend for us. But we can see that openings haven't kept pace with the closings except for in, let's say, fiscal year twenty five, and openings not keeping pace with closings, know, that, if we had that twenty year trend line, we'd see the same thing on that as well.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: But it's interesting that the license has continued to go up, but yet the homes for the licensing has gone

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

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: the overall capacity in the state has gone, because centers, right, centers could be licensed for 100 kids, right? And so, but family, no, no, we're talking about licensed, yeah, yeah.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Yeah, go back to your other chart, and that shows the steady incline, and then we come over here, but you just don't miss

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Well this is right, but there's more of them. There's four zero six registered, I think that's what the number was, and there are 27 licensed.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Okay, gotcha.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: And a lot of times, we do have people that move from registered to licensed, we've tried to clean them out of this data, but it can be complicated. Okay, so then the question is, right, okay, how do we make, to me, a five to 10% closure rate, that's a pretty, like we wanna keep the closure rate lower, but may, these are, again, personal businesses, that might be about where it lives over time. The thing we need to do is make sure new programs, new people are supported to open these programs. Really, part of the challenge here is that 30 ago, the profile of a person who started a family childcare home, right, was a woman who had a spouse who had a steady job, usually with health insurance, benefits for the family, and they owned their own home, and then they were starting their family about that same time. That profile is much more rare, right, in Vermont than it was twenty, thirty years ago. So just, some of it is just, it's our housing market, it's our demographics in the state that are making it so that opening a family childcare home isn't necessarily, it's gonna be a viable path for as many people as it has been in the past. So, I wanna just say that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It's also, I mean, healthcare is hard to afford. Yeah. You know, it just like, they're-

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Just some things

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: out. Right. So just like any workforce challenge anybody talks about in the state, it's the same issues of aging, housing, healthcare, that are also impacting this workforce. So, in terms of strategies to support family childcare homes, I feel like as a state, we're trying, like this is a priority population for us to work with. And so we know we need to make it viable to run programs and to make it easier and more enjoyable. And, you know, We are doing everything on this list. I have more details on CCFAP and for you on the next slide, as well as some other analysis. Erin, when she gets to talk, she is our partner on startup and expansion grants and business related technical assistance,

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: so she will be able to tell

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: you all about that. We also provide a ton of grants and scholarships and student loan repayment for people that are working in regulated childcare. So you really should be able to get additional education at no or low cost for yourself if you work in regulated childcare in general, and you should be able to get And if you're working regular childcare right now, there is also a student loan repayment program available to you through the state. In terms of the numbers here, family childcare programs have benefited from major increases in the childcare financial assistance program rates. The first three bullets on here were tied to changes in Act 76. The final change on infant toddler rates was a requirement of the budget last year. And so you can see that in July '3, for a family childcare home, for an infant, the rate that the state would pay on behalf of a child for whom we were paying a full subsidy was $225 a week. Now it's $4.00 $7 a week that we're paying on behalf of that family. These have been game changing numbers for these family childcare homes. And you can ask them and they will tell And at the same time, we've made more families eligible for childcare financial assistance. But I do wanna say, not everybody's eligible for childcare financial assistance, that, right, you do have to have a service need, right? This is not just free childcare for all. You have to be working, you have to be in school, you have to have a Or like, maybe you or your child has a medical reason, like there has to be a reason why you need care, and you have to meet the income limits. So we're certainly, you know, there's people for whom CCFAP, they feel they're still in a

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: gap with that program, and it's

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: not sort of as they want, but Some of it, it's actually ended up costing more because the price has gone up. Know two families that they're paying more now childcare because they don't meet any of the criteria. And that, you know, where it's good for the person watching it, it's not good for the person

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Right, I mean, will say, in the law, it doesn't require people to raise their rates for their private paid families, and people can still offer discounts to their private paid families. Well, I mean, they were charging them $225 before. There's nothing in the law saying you now must charge those families more. So, is just very different. And then I will say we also did a cost modeling report for children's finance. So Erin's gonna talk, she's with the Vermont office. We work with the National Office of First Children's Finance to do some cost modeling related to, both the, I will say at both the child level and at the program level, right? Because the mix of children in your program and the mix of children that have childcare financial assistance are that makes a big difference in the ultimate program. So these are models, right? They're not the same for every program, but ultimately, right now, the model shows that family childcare can be viable in Vermont in a way that it was not a little over two years ago. I will note, it does say if you kind of look to aspirational wages and benefits, which would be paying people very close to this is assuming a high quality program. This is assuming program rated level five within our STARS system. If you were paying them at comparable with sort of the qualification, not these minimum qualifications, but qualifications you'd expect to find at a five star, somebody running a five star program, then the cost model doesn't necessarily cover that full aspirational wage of, which again is other aspirational is the word we're using. Some people would just call it fair. Right? And then but, again, we can see that, again, when that enrollment is kinda maximized with this with the different options in place, it really can support compensation and quality and sustainability for programs. And, yeah, and so that's the main things I wanted to tell you. I just wanna offer to you on the like, make it easier and more affordable, more enjoyable. Ultimately, the better trained you are to do your job, the easier it is to manage all of these children in your care, and the more fun you have doing it, including engaging with the parents. And so we do provide a lot of high quality and low cost professional development. We have coaches that are available who have been family childcare providers here in Vermont themselves available to many programs. We support peer networks across the state. And then I will say we also are really open to what are the licensing or other policy levers that we could pull that could potentially make things easier when they are aligned, again, with what we know about children's safe and healthy development.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, if we could, just an observation, you had a lot of good graphs about the trend lines over time, I'll call them childcare seats, you know, opportunities, but they were all like individual trends and I'm curious if you can just comment on the number of seats over time over the past, let's call it, you know seven, eight years, so we see the effective act 76. So we have registered homes, we have licensed homes, have centers, they're not individual, they're not taken individually, it's all part of the whole ecosystem of childcare. I wonder, cause we've seen

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: some very

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: positive impacts, right, '76?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yes.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Can you just comment

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yeah, on didn't want to confuse things too much, but ultimately, overall childcare capacity is, over the last seven years, has actually been pretty even in terms of licensed childcare capacity. Not whole

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: seats, not one category or another.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: No, no, licensed childcare, like it means, sorry, regulated childcare capacity. Like, the number of slots that are in all of the regulated programs. Right. Right. A number of seats in all of the regulated programs. That has been pretty even over the last seven years. Good. Again, the mix is changing. Right? We're seeing more center based programs and fewer family check, more seats in center based programs and fewer seats in family childcare homes. So that mix has been changing. But ultimately, the capacity has been pretty even. We've started to see some up We have started to see some up tips, but it's, I will offer it, this part gets a little tricky because there's actually kind of three numbers you have to think about, right? There's what is the program licensed for, right? Which is based on literally like the square footage that they have available and the staffing plan that they're planning on, which means So people wanna get licensed at the top of their license, right? Like at the top of what their space allows, so they have max flexibility. Then there's people's programs really like desired capacity, right? It's like maybe they could have 10 toddlers in that room, but they, for themselves, for their own program philosophy, they wanna have eight toddlers in that room, right? Because that's what they think is manageable and best quality for them, right? And then we also know enrollment goes in and out, right? Like people move, right? Things happen. You have a slightly lower number for each one of those, and that's the place where it's tricky. So right now, at the offset, there are places, especially because of workforce challenges, where people haven't, maybe they have rooms that they're licensed for, but they're not open because they haven't had the staff to open them. And part of what we're hearing from people is that part of what X76 has helped them do is to be able to pay enough that they could actually attract the workforce, that they can open that classroom again, but that doesn't show up in the licensed numbers because they were already licensed for that number of children.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So senator Williams and I were on health and welfare when Act 76 came through. We took a great deal of testimony. I I believe in the end, we spent somewhere near 260,000,000 per year for this enhanced childcare. Yes. And the five star plan from the RAND Corporation was 900,000,000 per year. We didn't go that far, but we did do the lower level, which was, I don't know, the stars are less than too long. But for you to say that the number of seats hasn't dramatically increased given that investment, and you Yeah. Any explanation?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Well, I think, well, like I said, I think some of it is this JAF challenge because I think people were operating below their

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: licenses, and Tuition assistance and

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: I would also, we've only been, it's been a year since we've been fully implementing Act 76, so I don't think, I think we're on the, at the beginning still, and then I think we have, and I would say we have, I mean, there's 5,000 more So just

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: it needs to be trained for a licensed home, three weeks. That's all.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: We have family, I would say we have, again, you have to have the home. You have to be that person who has the home that wants to do the work. But we you know, we do also have five, you know, we have 5,000 more families that are participating in childcare assistance. So a lot of the money has gone into affordability for families as well.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So are you advocating, so right now when we left it in Act 76 you were reimbursing child care up to $6.20 percent of federal property index level?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: It's five seventy five.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, five seventy five, it's roughly $210,000 per year for a family of three or four?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: It's like 184. Yeah, it's in that ballpark. It's 24 for a family of four, so it's lower than that.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Are you

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: advocating increasing that?

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: I'm, no, I don't know,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: I'm just getting ready to Oh,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: it's more of the CCFP eligibility and rates.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: No, well I'm saying we've already done it. I'm saying these are all the strategies that we know can support family child care homes, and I'm telling you that we're already doing all of these ones. It's It's been one of big decisions

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: two before many years, it's it went into effect, but everybody was planning it up. Remember everybody was quite eager to hear this news and have this act come through, but we're not seeing the number of seats that skyrocket.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: We're not seeing the number of seats skyrocket, Major league investment,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Hundreds of millions.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: I

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: wanna make sure my It's 125,000,000

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: extra.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I think the first year they were supposed to report back, we actually had somebody come into our education committee to report that wasn't feeding the citations as far as the number of families that were taking advantage of them. I don't know if it was because we didn't have the families or

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: don't know

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: what the expectation was. Mean we're half 50% more families And taking advantage of

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think just to round out the discussion the other part of this is for instance I got contacted by our drug care center, they had trustee, they almost keep internally operating drug care in Vermont and they were on the road trip closing because they couldn't hire staff the amount of money they were getting and so one thing we did was hopefully stop the bleeding because we had the down low even above the place like the North Shore High School has been down for sixty years. It's under and so I think we one thing we did put up that point, but part of the mix is stop the bleeding.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: And that, I think that is what the data shows.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, so, okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Because of, just a, we saw the bleeding, but we haven't, you know, the patient is still-

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Yeah, Yeah, we haven't fully turned the curve, and we do have, again, this cost analysis that I was showing you, well, I mean, that cost modeling, I didn't wanna get super wonky, don't wanna get super, like, it does show that we still, you know, for many program types, is still hard to cover your costs with the desired quality level, the expected mix of families that you would have in a program if you're trying to serve infants as well as preschoolers. I mean, it's right. It's complicated, but I do think so. That's her. Erin, I think she has great information. We should go back to that. I'm on Erin. She has great information on this.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Unless you have something really Right. Okay. Okay. Yes, we should do that because we We

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: got Allie, sorry.

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

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: Hello everyone. Hello. For the record, I'm Ally Richards. I'm co chair of Lunchkin Action Network It's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you all so much for having me. I'm really here to give a very high level update on child care progress to Senator Weeks and Marie as well. But I'm really here to segue to Erin Rowe. You've heard her mention many times from First Children's Finance Vermont. She has really good data, very specific data that I think gets to your questions about capacity. But let me just give you a quick high level overview, particularly with a focus on rural childcare. I just need to thank you all for doing this inquiry, because as we know, rural Vermont faces distinct challenges. Traditionally, that has meant less childcare due to less infrastructure resources, which means long wait lists, people dropping out of the workforce, having to drive farther. Hopefully, we know that we cannot sustain that right now in Vermont. We need to support these working families and make sure they have what they need, especially to get into work on behalf of our economy.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So And I just wanna say thank you, having a one and two year old, because the horror stories and the sort of, like, get on the list when you're thinking about having kids, you know, has turned into, like, we can make this decision when we want and, you

[Erin Roche (Vermont Director, First Children’s Finance)]: know, drop

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: our kids off five minutes away. So thank you so much. And places that are so wonderful and expanding and getting health officials and doing amazing things.

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: I'm happy to hear that. And let me just quickly give you sort of before I move into some of the numbers, specific context about the childcare landscape of those of us who've been working for over a decade with deep community conversations with the childcare providers themselves, the early child educators, the communities and economic development folks. Let's Grow Kids was a ten year campaign to help solve the homeless childcare crisis, and we sunsetted as designed after the ten years last year. So, Let's Grow Kids no longer exist to sort of back away from the additive nature of things in Vermont. Now, as we know, we have made incredible strides to solving the cross traffic crisis. We can go into the details a little bit more on that. But we are not done yet, as you heard from Janet. Right? We have made huge functional strides in childcare capacity in Vermont. And that shows both the progress that what we said would happen is happening, but that there's more work to do. So here, to do the continual sort of work is Let's Release Action Network, a much smaller organization, and as well as First Children's Science Vermont, and Vermont AYC and others. I just wanna and building my future. So I just wanna quickly say, one of the best things you all did as a body when you passed Act 76 was you put in place some really smart, government measures. And a lot of those were around data and accountability. So you're actually he can hear some of the best data and analysis on a government program through childcare because of what you put into act 76. So Building Right Futures is in statute. It does many things as a policy advisor to this body. But one of the things it does is in statute it comes back to you all with real data about how Act 76 is doing. So I highly recommend looking at that monitoring report. Erin is gonna go next, I wanna keep this very brief because she has very specific data as well. Yep.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So is the, I know we had a family care center in our, in my town, then she got married. She moved in with her husband. Now it's no longer home. So she had to go through the whole process of becoming a childcare center. Yeah. And she said that she could have fewer kids. So she could only have four now instead of six, and that she was getting out of it, she was just gonna go to work at the school system because she has a bachelor's degree in all the child education. Are we competing with the pre That's that's a great question.

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: So here's what we have been able to do since 76 passed is before remember, before act 76 passed, childcare in Vermont and in this country was a broken business model. What we've done in Vermont is fix that broken business model, and the data bears that out. And I'll get I promise you this goes to your question. So in other words, three out of five kids who needed childcare in Vermont did not have access before this. Those making it were making the early educators were making $15 an hour without benefits as the average do that work. So no, you're not competing with literally any industry in Vermont. So you can't imagine we will have any supply to meet the demand. And on the flip side, parents paying 40% of their health savings in well night care. So not enough of it, way too expensive, and those doing it can't afford it. What Act 76 did, and you'll hear more from Erin, you can hear more from Billionaire Beatrice as well, we changed the trend line. And you can compare us to the rest of the country on this as well. So as you were hearing from Janet too, more childcare programs have opened than closed since the passage of this bill. So to your question about is it working or not, more childcare programs have opened than every single

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Seats, not centers.

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: So 1,700 new spaces have been added into those expansions. Yep, and Erin has better data than that, but there is a substantial increase. You might have some family childcare homes closed. We actually have an example of two women in Swanton that ran their family childcare homes. They combined to create a center and tripled their capacity because they knew the need was there. Now the business model is functioning more. So what we, in essence, did with a $100,000,000 of new investment back '76, that a 100% goes into the hands of Vermonters who can now pay for childcare. So as Janice said, 5,000 families are are spending much less money on that childcare. That it's not like 10. It is life changing amounts of money. My next door neighbors went from spending $43,000 a year to $15,000 a year. So just to get a sense of what this means for those 5,000 families, the rest of the money goes directly to the early childhood educator to run the program they can, mostly including increasing their own wages. So to your question, we are so much more competitive now with schools because of that act 76 investment. That's why you're seeing more programs open than closed for the first time since, right, the passage of this bill, for the first time since 2018 are you seeing that? So it's a trend that is going down, down, down that we are moving. That's why you saw the business community come in here and say, we have to make this investment and solve this, because the business model was parents were the only payer, they were paying too much, they were not paying enough to run the program and pay a wage. So that's what Act 76 got to the crux of, that broken business model, and that's what you see working. So I really just wanna emphasize that because I I wanted you guys to get to Erin. She let me say this about First Choice Guidance Vermont. You all put a public investment in to a a broken system, and it is now starting to function. And also, we now have the First Jones Finance Vermont, which is like the small business development center, and she can just do a better job describing before the specific industry. In other words, let's stretch every taxpayer dollar as much as we can to do business supports to these childcare programs so they are efficient, effective, maximizing their wages, etcetera. And that's what Erin and her

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: team did. So I just want you to hold this question at what expense. How much is it costing these tax pickers to have this program going?

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: So, would say far less than what we spend to not do this. Many examples of that. Purely the amount of remantras who are now back in the workforce because they can find and afford childcare is actually the same amount of money than the investment of taxpayer dollars. And actually, it will probably far surpass that. That's just one dimension. Over 400 jobs have actually been created in Vermont with the expanded spaces that we're discussing as well. So it's a basically, this is why This was not some ideological experiment. This was a data driven, many year researched, terrible conversation as a community where the business folks came in and said, we are folks who are gonna carry a lot of the burden of this tax, as we're seeing with the employers. We can't afford not to do this, because if we just fill one vacancy, it would pay it back. If we just get this one family back, they can find childcare. And so We started it in our committee on economic development, and

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: they also said, we've spent a lot of money trying to be a childcare provider, and we're not good at it.

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: Right. We don't want to put it on businesses to have to run their own childcare. This is much more of a systemic. Appreciate So, I the really appreciate the conversation, Nader, thank you for continuing your focus on children, families, and early educators, and specifically rural Vermont. I want to just underscore that family childcare home is such an important part of access in Vermont. And that's why in Act 76, we specifically, together, increased reimbursement rates. We we reduced the difference in reimbursement rates from centers and family child care homes by half to make it a more level playing field. And that's what's very exciting to see, it's working. Some small towns that have never had a child care before now have their first job there, and it totally changes a community in that case. So I'm just gonna hand it right

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: over to Aaron. Oh please.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, just had one question. So again, alumni of the health and welfare committee while this was being debated, and it absorbed a lot of the oxygen for those two years. One thing I did walk away from that experience with was to recognize that the first thing we did is we over regulated childcare. We wounded the industry, and then we had a crisis. And then we responded to the crisis. So from a data driven perspective, have the number of seats which have increased. A 700 seats for 276,000,100

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: million dollars.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: My recollection is very different. Yeah. I remember what the five star recommendation was as well, which was 900,000,000 plus per year. Anyway, if it's in that ballpark, I still remember 260 somewhat million. That's a $157,000 per seat for new seat. Now we're talking about is this prudent use of state treasury? That's a debate which I believe we should be having as well.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So can I just say, I mean, when things go to senate finance, we're given the amount of money that we have to spend and that changes the eligibility and the rate at which we can provide subsidy and who gets a full subsidy and up to what income level? So that debate was definitely had

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: We saw that.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Well, and I would just offer.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: 600, it's on federal property. So, we

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: are in a really dire situation in Vermont, as you all know better than most. We do not have enough young families working here. Most of our costs that are increasing are due to our lack We

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: don't have any college here.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: Okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Except for

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Chittenden County.

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: That's the

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: one not well.

[Tammy Kolbe (Vice Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: How do we have

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: an We're growing the symptoms, not the others.

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: So to have an economy, a true economic development tool, is to have a thriving industry in childcare where both people can make wages and then people can go to school because of that.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: But $157,000

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: But I will just say, I think we had a very difficult and thorough community conversation about this, Bill,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: and you were a major No, listen,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I was smacked out in the

[Jennifer Deck Samuelson (Chair, Vermont State Board of Education)]: middle of Critical the less grown

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: to use accurate information.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Having the same conversations, but here we are. 100 and

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: or But a thousand this

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: is what I would respectfully push back on. It's critical to have accurate information. First of all, the payroll tax actually raised a $100,000,000, not 260. Is the correct amount. Also, the money is actually not divided per slot. 5,000 Vermonters are now receiving life changing amounts of child care tuition assistance that is part of that investment. You can't just divide it by the number of spaces. It's just an inaccurate representation. It actually, it just doesn't help continue a real conversation that we should be having about true numbers, what the impact is on our economy and on our people who can now have You know?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: You're absolutely right. Return on investment is huge. We should have that conversation.

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: We'll have

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to rightly stop. So I just wanted to just one question for you. One of the impetus for this day is chalk in rural Vermont. And we have well, we're having getting childcare into rural Vermont. Do have any thoughts about what we can do?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Can I

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Specifically

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: From the doorway, can I just say Let's Grow Kids has been a great part of get to get us language that we're gonna look at this week on Essex County, which is a really unique situation where they can't really use the funds? Are no childcare centers there, and now they can, if we pass it, they can use the New Hampshire. Okay.

[Ally Richards (Co-Chair, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network)]: I'd love to hand the floor over to Erin Roche, because she's specifically doing fine. This work. Yeah, And I will just say that Act 76, the increase in specific family child care home reimbursements really is making a difference. So over half of the new child care programs that have opened, last I looked at the numbers, were family childcare homes. And I just wanna really say, that fucks the trend in the rest of the country. So the rest of the country is really sadly losing their childcare, losing their family childcare homes. We are actually making progress because we've really fixed that business model that is broken. Thank you very much and I will turn it over to Aaron Horsett for Social Science Finance. Thank Thanks.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So Aaron, let me just say quickly, I have a phone call that I have pushed the person off three times. I have to take 04:30. I may just be out of the room for two minutes, but I'm gonna have If you seem to walk out, not because I'm not deeply interested, I am. And I'll be right back, but I I have no choice.

[Erin Roche (Vermont Director, First Children’s Finance)]: Appreciate that. And I realize that we're over the scheduled time or we're about to be over the scheduled time. I seem to follow Ally almost everywhere I go. And so I'm kind of used to being in this, like, compressed for time situation. And I think, depending on your questions, I think my remarks only take a handful of minutes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So first, ask by yourself for the record.

[Erin Roche (Vermont Director, First Children’s Finance)]: Yes. Yep, I'm going to do that. So for the record, my name is Erin Roach, and I'm the Vermont Director of First Children's Finance. And I wanted to thank all of you on this committee for inviting me here today. It's my privilege, really, to share with you some of my work. And thank you for letting me join by Zoom. I'm not often in the State House and it's a bit of a trek from my home in Addison County. So thanks for accommodating that. A lot has already been said. I just want to acknowledge Janet's presentation. Thought it was incredibly thorough, and Janet or and Allie has talked a bit about some of the things. And some of you senators have brought up examples that might be also included in my remarks. So I will go through them quickly. I am happy to pause at any moment for questions as I go. I did submit this earlier, as well as three sort of supporting documents that I'll share on the screen when I get to them, but they should all be wherever it is that you access these things from. So I'm just going to jump in. I'm going to tell you a little about First Children's Finance since I'm sort of new to this. First Children's Finance is a national nonprofit, and the Vermont operation began three years ago this week. Our mission is to grow the supply and business sustainability of excellent childcare. In Vermont, we do that through business training and business consulting services, as well as access to capital for childcare entrepreneurs. We can also provide some guidance and consulting to communities and to Vermont employers that want to create or invest in childcare for their community members or their employees. We also conduct some research and data analysis in service of our mission in Vermont, and Janet shared a little bit of that, and I'll share a little bit more of some of that. All of our services to childcare businesses in Vermont are offered at no charge through a grant from the state of Vermont. We also administer an infant and toddler capacity building grant program to help grow infant and toddler spaces on behalf of the state. Alma just mentioned, 2025, we granted we made 28 grants to family childcare homes to either start up or expand to those large licensed family childcares. We also made grants to 46 centers last year. In addition, we're a community development financial institution, a CDFI, which means we loan money to childcare entrepreneurs, as well as make grants. And we've made two or three loans in Vermont, and you know, least two of them were to family childcares to help them stay in business to address some reason that they had for needing capital. So all of that is the work that we're doing here in Vermont. The Vermont office has seven staff, all of whom live and work in Vermont. And my fun fact is that the seven of us live in six different counties. So we are all over the state. Four of the seven provide direct business training and consulting. Two of them have previously operated family childcares. Two of them have previously run business operations for childcare centers. My background is not in childcare. It's in community development, and it's in business roles in sales and marketing operations, just so you know, that's the lens that I come with. So I was asked to testify about why we're losing registered family childcare homes and what the requirements are and the challenges of rural childcare and possible solutions. Janet did an excellent job, I think, of talking about the regulations, and that is not my area of expertise, so I'm just going to skip all that. And I'm going to focus on the number of registered family childcare homes and the supply and demand for childcare in Vermont, and particularly the challenges and solutions for rural childcare. First, I think, and I'm going to figure out how to share my screen. I think it's important to point out that in August 2025, Child Trends, a national research organization, did a study that showed there was actually a 3% increase in family childcares, which included both the small and large registered and licensed family childcares since Act 76 passed. So a small increase, 3%. But I think it's important because there had been such a steep decline in the past in family childcare, and because it seems like the timing of that increase is related to Act 76. So the second thing I wanted to note is that based on my analysis of the data that they used, and we talked a little earlier about the licensed family childcares and how there's only 27 of them, that the growth, that increase, that 3% increase is mainly from those large family childcares. We're seeing more of them. You saw the trend line that Janet put up there. And also, while we were here, while I was listening to the testimony, I got a message we have a number 28, apparently. Someone else changed from a registered family home to a licensed family home. We just got the word. So anyway, I just point that out because I think it's important to note that as we may see a sort of flattening and previous declines in family child cares, that these larger family child cares seem to be on the uptick. So in summary, about the number of family child cares and why there's a decline, I would say that while we experienced a decline in the number of family childcare homes over a number of years, that trend appears to have been reversed or at least stalled. And I think that follows with what Janet said. So hopefully that wasn't too redundant, since I didn't know what she was going to say until I heard her say it. Okay, thinking more generally about childcare and availability of childcare in rural areas, I think it's helpful to remember that all of Vermont is really a rural state. We have small pockets of more densely populated village centers, and even those would be considered rural almost anywhere outside of Vermont. So my colleagues recently completed a supply and demand gap analysis of childcare, the supply of childcare and demand for childcare, full time childcare in the state. And I shared that earlier, coincidentally, via email, so you might have gotten an email with that attached. But also, I have it here. So I'm just going to share the two relevant pages with you. It may be small, so happy to answer any questions or, yeah, read anything out loud. So let's see. The report covers the whole state, but it looks at it county by county, and it also looks at it by age group of young children. Someone asked earlier about is there a difference in infants and toddlers and preschoolers and availability. And I would suggest that more than a gap in rural childcare, there is a gap in infant childcare. And so the table that I have here shows you county by county the numbers and how many spaces we would need in order to meet the likely demand for childcare in each county. And you can see in every single county, the need for more infant care dwarfs even the combined totals of toddlers and preschoolers. So that's something to note. And then there's on page nine, there's a kind of a graphical illustration of that. It looks at the availability of infant care, toddler care, and preschool care. And and it does it by county. So you can look and find your own county and see kind of how they stack up. So in Addison County, for example, seventy five percent of toddlers that are likely to need care probably have access to childcare. That's toddlers, and roughly the same in Addison for preschoolers. But when you look at infants, it's less than forty percent in Addison County. So and that's just an example. The other thing I wanted to say is that it is not just Chittenden County that has supply of childcare for toddlers and preschoolers, right? It's Addison County, it's Bennington County, it's Caledonia County, Lemoyle County, Windsor County. These are many of them you would describe, I believe, as rural counties. So I just I wanted to point that out. I'm pause. I'm talking really fast. I'm just going to pause for a second. Okay. I'll keep going. A couple of other points from the data and the report. I wanted to note earlier, there were questions about how much how much more supply is there. This report compares to the last report, which was published in 2024. And we found that there is the gap shrunk by just about 2,000 spaces. And that's important both because supply did increase in that in those two years. But also, I want to note that it's also because there are eight percent fewer infants, toddlers, and preschoolers than there were two years ago. And while I find that not the news that I want to deliver, I think it's important to note because I think it suggests some trends and demographics that directly relate to family childcare and its availability? So I'll come back to that in just a second. Second point I want to make that also relates to sort of childcare in rural areas is that we also in this report looked at some municipalities and the availability of childcare in those municipalities. And we found that in some sort of employment center municipalities that you can see here, this is page 10, places like Springfield and St. Johnsbury, the need to meet demand is actually negative. And we expect that is because families commute either for school or for work, they are going to those larger municipalities, and so they're using childcare in those larger communities. I just wanted to note that. Also, I think it's been mentioned that another trend is consolidation in the industry. We see more multisite centers. We see more centers are expanding. That's one of the things our infant and toddler grants can support, is expansions. And as a result, there's fewer childcare programs, but there are more spaces than there were. Not thousands, but maybe a thousand more spaces, and the gap has closed between the supply and demand. And that's not just in our large communities, it's also in our rural towns. So that's the data that I intended to share. I'm happy to talk more about it if there's questions. But I did want to talk a little about the challenges and possible solutions. And so I thought I would use some examples of clients, childcare programs that we work with. I didn't have time to get their permission to share the story. So I haven't included any names or geographic locations because I didn't ask

[Janet McLaughlin (Deputy Commissioner, DCF – Child Development Division)]: for their

[Erin Roche (Vermont Director, First Children’s Finance)]: permission. So one thing I wanted to mention, and I think this was said a little bit earlier, that the growth in the family childcare is coming from these licensed family childcare rather than the smaller registered ones. We have worked with and given grants to people who want to move from a registered family home to a licensed family home. In one case, we worked with the owner to create a business plan, and then we helped them secure financing for a major renovation of their Ground floor so that they would have a family child care that was operating in the same home, but in dedicated space for their family child care. In another sort of similar example, a client came to us for help starting a family child care home, but she wanted to convert a barn that was next to her house into the childcare space. And after some back and forth and discussions with licensing, they approved that. And so again, it was really important to this person to have a dedicated space for the child care that was attached to and sort of part of her home, but not in the same physical space that her family was living in. And I note these, and I think there's other examples, because I think that that is part of a change in preferences among people who own childcares, but also potentially for families, right? Maybe families are starting to prefer more of a sort of dedicated feel to childcare. So I wanted to note those two examples that I think illustrate that interest in moving into larger, more dedicated space. And I think that this is sort of a challenge because it means fewer potentially registered homes, but but also a solution in that they're thinking of really innovative ways to use the space they have. And and I would I would hope that the state will continue to support innovations that make it so that people can have sort of the best of both worlds. I mentioned earlier about the 8% decline in young children in the state. I think this is important because historically, people who start family childcare homes are parents of young children. And so if there's fewer young children, then there's arguably fewer parents of young children, fewer people who would want to start a family childcare home. So I think that's really important to note, that some of the solution to this challenge is probably finding ways to have more young families in the state. And I noted in my written remarks that this is a challenge that is outside of my purview. I do not know how to achieve that, but I'm hopeful that others in the state are working on this. So a couple of other points I wanted to make related to the aging population, which I talked about just now. We analyzed owners of family childcare and found that one third of them have been in business for at least twenty years. And so I think it's important to note that when we see that more of them are closing than are opening, a big part of the challenge is that it's physically demanding work, it's emotionally demanding work, people are going to retire, and we have an aging population. We really need to find ways to get younger adults to want to open up family childcare homes if we're going to have more of them. And as I think was noted earlier, big challenge for younger adults is being able to find and afford a home. If you rent a home, you are subject to approval from your landlord. And as recently happened, I think in Bennington County, your landlord might decide to sell the property, and that might leave you with nowhere to have your childcare. And so that's one thing. Also, someone mentioned about homeowners associations. We were working with a client who was desperately trying to find a new location for her family childcare in Chittenden County because her homeowners association did not allow for home based businesses. And so I mentioned this because I think that housing challenges are really directly linked to these challenges with family child care. And if we want more family child care, we need to find ways to address things like zoning, things like local ordinances, things like sort of land use regulations that will help younger families, younger adults purchase homes, and ones that are sort of suitably large to care for up to 10 children, right, six young children plus four after school. So anyway, I think those things are important to note. One other thing that sounds a little crazy in this meeting, my team tells me that not all family child carers are fully enrolled, and that we have a couple of clients that are really struggling to stay in business because they don't have enough children enrolled right now. So I think it's important to acknowledge that it is not all one way, and that each community is a little bit different. Parents have different preferences, and there's sort of different trends among the population. And I think that's important to note. And then the last thing, for real this time, is that it's not really a challenge or a solution. But I think it's important to note that people who start family childcare businesses are entrepreneurs. Some of them have big dreams. We worked with one childcare entrepreneur who came to us because she wanted to start a family childcare in a rural community in Southern Vermont. And she told us at the very beginning that her dream was really to start a center someday. She didn't know if she would get there, but that was her dream. Well, last year, she started a center in her in her community. And she closed her family child care so she could open a center. And while it might be a little sad that we have one less family childcare, it also meant that a dream came true for an entrepreneur, and it meant a net of more spaces available in that rural community. So I just wanted you to hear some of these stories and and some examples of data that show the trend among family childcare and the sort of supply and demand of how it all fits together. And that is the end of my remarks. I was close. I almost made it.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Senator Williams. Senator, do you have any questions? I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. So really good testimony. Great topic for Education Committee. Some of these topics are just to be aware are being dealt with in the health and welfare. Some of them are being dealt with in economic development. For example, the HOA and the zoning. We've got that over there in in the morning committee of economic development. You know, we're we're trying to find the balance between providing more childcare and the HOA having some type of guidelines on

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: it. It's

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: a quality of life or whatever. However you want to spend it. But in any case, we appreciate it. And I'm not sure if you guys were aware, but again, a couple years ago, last by any, I mean, health and welfare, interesting conversation about whether we really should be looking at like zero to 12 meaning like birth to twelfth grade as an education system. Something to kind of noodle around. But anyway appreciate it. Thank you, Aaron. Unless, if there's any other questions, any questions? I'm going say. So, thank you, Aaron. Appreciate it. We're going to wrap up for the day. Daphne, if you can take us offline, appreciate it.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Thank you.