Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: We're live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay we're live so we're back after a quick break at Education Committee on the February 10. We're sort of continuing this little segment we're going to do is to make sure the committee understands nothing else the difference between an announced and allowable tuition form we're going to be hearing and I suspect more about as we go forward here. And some things are based on announced tuition and which is very different than allowed in tuition and sometimes the two can conflated and not able to understand the difference between the two and the five extraordinary committee does. So asked the education department to help us help us with this and so we have Ted Gates, a lack of themselves. Brooklyn from the agency of education. So, why don't we do? We haven't had you in here at least recently, have we?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: I was here last week but I always say we're here for two things.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So, over there, we have senator Robin Hinsdale.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: How can you help? He's probably in Stelchick County.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That's not an ashamed Woodham County.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Good afternoon. Dave Weeks, Robin County.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I'm going to send it Senate District. Terry Williams also in Rolls County. Steven Heffernan, Addison County District. So then introduce yourselves, brother Rutland. The floor is yours. Okay.

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: I'm Chittenden, Deputy CFO at the Agency of Education.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: And Ted Gates, senior fiscal analyst, face to education.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I can see. I can tell already you're going to speak up.

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: Yeah. You're the most I've got. Well,

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: good afternoon. So talking about announced versus allowable tuition. So you're going through the slide deck. First, we can find some terms talking about tuition. A district can either be a sending district or receiving district. So depending if they send children or receives children, and sometimes they can do both, particularly like with tech centers or schools that operate a district that operates a tech center. So a receiving district, this is just kind of a rough summary of how the process works. So a receiving district announces their tuition rates, and in statute sometimes that's calculated net costs. So they announce those by January 1.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So just to make sure at least on the page here, when we talk about tuition, we're talking about both to independent schools and to public schools that receive tuition from Yes. Other Yep, okay.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: So the receiving districts announced tuition by January 15 for the following school year. So it's on January 15, couple weeks ago they were announcing their tuition for next fall. So we'll call that the tuition year. So then when the tuition year is completed, the AOE calculates the what's called the allowable tuition, which in statutes often called net cost per pupil or quality it was called that. And we do that based on the submitted expenditure and revenue data that we receive from what we call the stat book expenditures that they've submitted to us every time. We adhere to the statutory and state board rules for how to do those calculations. And then we publish the allowable tuition by statute by November 1, which is about twenty one months after the districts first calculated their announced tuition. So there's a long leg time here. Then if the allowable tuition that we calculate is plus or minus 3% different from the original announced tuition, then districts shall true up with each other through either payments or credits. There's some statute around that. This page just mentioned some of the areas in the statute where there are rules surrounding the tuition rates. And then the state board rules also have some set of guidelines for how to actually do that calculation. So high level again, tuition, the tuition rates are actually calculations. So it's the net instructional costs, so specific costs divided by the number of students. The tuition rates that we use are calculated at the district level and not the school. Sometimes they can be the same thing. The district just operates one school, but it's a district wide tuition rate. And then the allowable tuition that we calculate the AOE is only calculated obviously for public school districts because we don't collect expenditure data from private schools. And then some notes on the denominator, the per pupil parts. The state board rules define allowable tuition, the denominator as FTE student membership. So the FTE is calculated using the end of year student data collection, what's called DC04. So for example, if a student is enrolled for the entire school year, their FTE would be one point zero. If a student is only enrolled in a school for half the year,

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: they're FTE point five, etcetera.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: The total FTE per school will not be the same as the October 1 enrollment number. It won't be the same as the ADM number that the AOE publishes. So district managers may not know what their FTE numbers are at the end of the year. Most districts don't calculate that themselves. It's something that's done strictly for statute, the AOE also for federal reporting. Because it's in the denominator, like with any ratios that you've worked with, small changes in the FTE in the denominator can significantly affect the final allowable tuition amount. So that's a bit key to mind. And then the tuition here FTE that we use for allowable tuition cannot be known in advance twenty one months earlier. And it's difficult for business managers to estimate that number when they're announcing their tuition twenty one months earlier. So there's again, twenty one months of where a lot can happen. In terms of independent schools and other sorts of exceptions to the rules, the statute states that the tuition rate for approved independent schools shall not exceed the average announced tuition of Vermont Union schools, high school, be it elementary or high schools or elementary, depending on which tuition rate we're counting. And just as a note, union districts at the secondary level account for about 72% of total. So that's most of the kids are in the youth districts at the secondary level.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So what what's that mean? What's the union secondary as opposed to percent of total? What was that mean?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: So the allowable rate, the average rate that independent schools use is based on the state average, but it's not just total state average. It's only for union districts as opposed to like a town district. And so I'm just saying that union districts are most of the kids account for most. Also school districts may enter into tuition agreements with each other for agreed upon tuition amounts that don't adhere to the calculations they come out of the AOE, provided that they offer that same tuition rate to all districts that send students to their schools. And the AOE does not track which districts use those agreements, so we don't have any insight to that data. So the actual calculation, we calculate two different rates, one for elementary students, K through six, and then another rate for each district for grades seven through 12. So to calculate each rate, we use the actual district expenditures that we need to be at, and we need those expenditures to be identified in the data to either elementary or secondary. So in the uniform chart of accounts that school districts are supposed to use for their accounting, there is a code called level which designates whether those costs are identified as elementary or secondary. There's other level codes for pre K or post secondary. However, some expenses, if you think about it, can't practically be split into elementary or secondary like administration or facilities. And so we have a separate code for those level codes called location wide. And then when we get those location wide costs, we prorate them down to either elementary or secondary based on the ratio of elementary and secondary students FTEs in the school or the districts. Makes sense. And that's kind of complicated and just be aware of that. So, and then the state board rules dictate specific costs. That can be included or excluded in that calculation. And in the very last slide, there's some statutory language around those rules. So the AOE is required to publish by November 1 the allowable tuition rates. And preceding that, we produce an online interactive Power BI. It's an application that is online reporting report that lists the expenditures, the specific expenditures and revenues that are included or excluded from the calculation. And then we share that with district visit vendors so they have a chance to see how that calculation works and to validate that. The AOE responds to all inquiries from the districts related to their allowable tuition calculations. And then we work through any issues that might be arising from that data or the questions that they might have. And then once the data issues are resolved, the AOE publishes the allowable tuition report on our website. Then by statute, the receiving districts are required to notify the the sending districts by December 15 if they overcharge or undercharge by plus or minus 30%. And again, the AOE does not track payments or credits for those overcharges. This data shows the announced tuition rates going back to FY '16 through FY '26 with ten or eleven years worth of data. The blue line is, the lower line is elementary grade announced tuition and the upper line is secondary grades announced tuition. And then looking at the growth rates over those ten years, the average growth rate for elementary was about 4.5% per year and 3.9% growth for the secondary.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Difference in those, what's the gap between the blue and the red or whatever?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: A thousand dollars.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So that's about

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: what percentage is that? One sixteenth, 7% difference, maybe. Just 7%. Call it five to 10%.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But that's on the announced side.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: On the announced side. And you're

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we're about to see the well, who I take it?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Sadly, no. I didn't take a graph of that. But and, again, this is only union districts, so this is not the statewide, but it's just it the just it gets used to that average. But it gives you an idea of what the rates have been doing over time. But to your to your comment, though, I did I did look at the allowable I have in the past. I've looked at the allowable rates side by side with the announced rates, and there's wide variation between them. As you can imagine, in fact, only a handful of districts come within that 3% threshold, both of them are outside the 3%, and sometimes by 5%.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, it seems to be like twice as much. Yeah. Yeah. So the allowable the other way to put it is, that allowable is actable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and announced it's just the kind of gas that they're getting along with being. Yeah. Yeah. And some of the students taking you on, but it's still plus or minus 3% so they can have their own agreements. Right? Is that what

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Yeah. I I don't have insight into which districts might do that. Okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: This doesn't recognize any doesn't match any of the special education one? No. This

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: is Completely. Yeah. Okay.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. But what the plan is actually if a student does go, a special ed student does go to another district, what kind of thing goes with the special ed additional dollars while it's a student. Right? Or they just got the what is it? Well, like, when a kid from Random House goes to because most of them go to other public schools, commissioners to other public schools, what happens when they are a special ed kids?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: When they aren't. When

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: they When are special

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: they're carrying weights, so the weights go with them.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: The weights are applied to the district where the student lives, so the weights would go to the sending district.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And to the So if a special ed student is coming from that district, does the district often pay more than just the allowable tuition? Does that support a non managed student, right?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: I think in some cases, I'm not an expert on the special ed side, but I think in some cases, certainly if there's excess costs, then those are treated completely differently. Yeah, about as much as

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: I can say on that. Yeah, don't have any if you

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: have any. Okay. So what's this last slide doing?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: This gives you an idea of how many students. So the snap book collection, do a collection called supplemental worksheet number one, SW1, where districts report the number of students that they have sent to other schools and the amount of tuition that they have paid and then designate which, whether it was for private school or public school, in state, out of state. So this gives you an idea of the number of students that have been secondary, this is secondary students only. What that is what the sending districts have reported to us. So they sent nonpublic, which includes independent schools, obviously, in state, 2,600 students and public school students in state, 2,200 students.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So I just wanna be clear while we have you in the witness chair. What we passed in Act 73 means there will be no difference starting some fiscal year in the tuition paid for a nonpublic school?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: I I did not I'm not thoroughly well versed in x 73, but I believe they're just the tuition at that point would just be the foundation formula amounts.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. So it is it is contingent on us taking affirmative action on the foundation formula?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The foundation formula right now with statutes written requires the foundation for another take that right now. And you're right, by the way, that one of the foundation formula, the weighted, the money follows the weighted student. Right.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: That's what I was

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So it's uniform? Yes. It's uniform. Uniform. Yep.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So we still have to do something

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: affirmative. To make the commission. Okay.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Not be nonpublic out of state. That will end next year.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: It's my well, unless these students are grandfathered in, yeah,

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: it's my understanding that we're

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: taking longer fund out of state. So it's 96. The public out of state can continue without like the those are the those are the I think one of those are the assets against them for what about the essence testing meeting?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The public out of state? Yeah. Not the non public out of state.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Right. The non public out of state is, as you suggest, ending, right? It's winding down, but the public out of state is constituent. And so here we have that we have this within the tuition program as it's going go in the success of going forward. Have about half the kids who tuition go to public schools. Okay.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Do we know what the the 96 non public what type of students they are?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Their digits average? No. They're they're just have their districts, they're kids who are in non operating districts who use their tuition dollars to go out of state to school. That's such a minimal amount. Mean, why we're reporting this? Yeah, it's supposed to be pretty minor, but whatever. It's over. So I think So the key here, the A key is that just as we are understanding these terms, allowable tuition in and of itself doesn't really it's not reflective of much except some guests at the beginning of the year the real number or actual costs is the allowed motion not the announcement. Right. But

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: it it does come down to how you define the costs. There are very specific rules about how those costs are defined. I think that might be our last slide. So I won't read through the whole thing, but it's just an example of some of the statutory language around the costs. So elementary, secondary, current, it's called current instructional costs, less, so they don't count special ed expenditures eligible for reimbursement, vocational and technical costs, expenditures for transportation to and from the school, the resident students. And then it's reduced again by certain revenues from local sources that serve to offset some or all of the costs of providing service. It also excludes state and federal sources that must be used for a categorical or restricted purpose, so most of the federal money is not counted in tuition amounts. Specifically excluded our expenditures for non instructional programs, such as food service, self supporting enterprise operations, adult or continuing education programs, community services. And then it also says facilities, acquisitions and constructions is not included, it's excluded, but there's a separate category where business planners can identify certainly long term facility costs, construction costs, and service that can be included in the cost, but it has to be manually identified by the business units. So you you you take the core instructional cost, and you actually add the per student facility alternate facility's cost on a benefit to give it the final allowance. It's kinda strict how it works. And that is all I have.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Just a generic question. Do do independent schools approved independent schools, if they receive federal dollars as well as state dollars. I don't know.

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: I think some may if they have some if they're working with the the districts, if you get the title, some of it may flow from the district. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: It's not necessarily a prohibition to be I know. From the federal government anti independent school.

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: Not that I know of.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yes. So if the foundation board, though, takes over, will they publicly allow tuition data kind of disappear? Because we're all on the

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: That would be my guess. Yeah. Would Your professional opinion, I guess. Yeah. Haven't haven't thought about it that deeply, but that would be my my understanding. Okay.

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

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: We wouldn't need to calculate anything. We're we're we're we're you know, how much money is being spent for between districts, but

[Deputy CFO, Vermont Agency of Education (name not clearly captured)]: we're looking to do it.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: What kinda cost savings would that be up at the up at your department? Much because there must be hours and hours spent on this.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Oh, cost savings in terms of Yeah. Not doing this work? Yep. I don't know how much time it would take me, certainly, people had to have that time back in my life. And

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: it's not just you,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it's several people. It's mostly. Oh, sure. Okay. Well, under the so one along those lines, under foundation formula at the base amount of the weights that go to a district, there it would be they're at the same at this moment in time for high school and elementary school. It's all the $12.15 $0.33, plus the weights, but districts can allocate that in ways that they want to. So would you you still be tracking the actual dollars spent on, like, for instance, seven through 12 versus elementary? Or would that happen? Or we had something more written into the economy for the on the fact that it's The

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: main reason that we track elementary and secondary right now is for the allowable tuition calculation. There's always somebody who wants to slice the numbers some way like that, so we would probably be prepared. We would still have those level codes, but it's different grade levels so that we could calculate the cost differences or whatever, but I don't know if there's any reports that we currently do besides allowable tuition.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You have to, they have to get the right information in the district about how they're, okay. Yeah. So, if we did want that to continue in some fashion so that we can track the actual dollar spend at which levels we would probably want to rent something into the bill. It's all. Okay. That's

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: If you wanted it done on an annual basis at a regular point in time, then yes, yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Okay. Good. Any other questions? Okay.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: You're all experts now.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, just, I want to make sure we do the real interesting analysis and allowable because it's actually fundamental to Yeah. Okay. Thank

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Thank you you. All. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Let me ask you actually since you're still here. How do you do you have any idea or anything anything? Like, in some instances, the announced and the allowable are dramatically different.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: They can be. Yeah.

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

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: They shouldn't. They, I mean, in in theory, they shouldn't be. Yeah. But actually,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the chart that I've, the charts that I've seen really shows a lot of districts being significantly overannounced with the allowance. You have any sense of what's driving that?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: I don't have any insight into how they calculate announced. We supply them with the worksheets so they can identify their instructional costs and then divide them by the number of students. Obviously for smaller districts where they have fluctuations in their student counts from year to year, that could do it. One or two. Can run into small numbers problems with small districts. Or districts that by statute, maybe they need to produce their announced tuition, but they only expect to receive one or two students, then it's not that big of deal to them, maybe. So, but I think that for the districts, they do a lot of tuition for receiving. I think they try and stay on top of it quite a bit. They're gonna be they're gonna be the districts that are closer to that 3%.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I thought what you were gonna say is that there were some schools where if they're receiving from a non operating district, they can they can ask the families to pay more tuition.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, that's a whole different that's a that's a subset of the independent schools.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But that would have been

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't remember exactly how it would have been. What I was talking about is that there's a announced tuition is what Like for instance, some of the schools that receive kids from Grand Isle, public schools receive kids from Grand Isle, announce a tuition saying pay us $13,000 But after twenty one months later, after the whole process, they actually can get paid for the amount that actually the actual cost versus the announced. Now there's a parameter of only 3%, but often the actual cost of educating, the allowable tuition is significantly higher than the amount. Right. So this is the real cost.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But then wouldn't they want to end people being able to take the foundation formula somewhere and then pay the rest off?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No, that's a different issue, and yeah, but-

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I hope we end that

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, but it's a totally different issue.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: This is just me. I was just asking a question about, as it relates to that gap, well, using grandiose as an example of the schools that they pay to, how could it be such a difference? I think part of your answer is it tends to be a district that only receives one or two kids.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Yeah. They It's hard to

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: calculate because if they got Yeah. Yeah. But why would that make the ratio? Because the announced tuition why would it matter if they were born? Because it's the tuition. If they said $15,000 they got two, they'd get still $15,000 What would skew it so much that it actually costs so much more to educate those kids than they estimated?

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: There's so many factors. Yeah, like

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: an emergency repair, because I know that's what we've heard from some of the schools say we accept the emergency repairs. Well,

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: the construction costs are excluded as last seen. The business vendors have the opportunity to identify specific costs. It's included or not included. They I mean, if they did include that, they might

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Well, thank you.

[Ted Gates, Senior Fiscal Analyst, Vermont Agency of Education]: Oh, sure.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. So we we're ahead of schedule, but actually, I could see that Jay is here, so we're ready for the next.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: I don't

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: know whether we should wait till in case people want to watch this, because they think it's going to be a 02:30 or just go ahead. Okay, go ahead. Going to have to take break anyway because we can't get our next 03:00 until a little bit after free. Why don't you just come up?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: Thanks for that ringing. Somebody get that.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Gotcha. Thanks. Sure.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So before you start, just to set this up a little bit, we had the schedule largely set, then all of a sudden, then the maps appear from the house. So we're trying take a look at it and get a sense of what we, and I will say on the record, what we should have done was have Peter, I'm gonna be here first. But this was a little technical, a bit of a fill in, so we'll get him in to do an introduction to his proposal after a couple witnesses. This is slightly out of order, but we just had some gaps and we just filled it where we could since this came kind of quickly. So we all have copies of the proposal that came out of the House and Education Committee and we're just trying to get a feel for it. So this is as proposed the other thing about the perhaps I should again should have had to go whichever one was there, but we'll take care of that, that the accompanying language says effectively that if you look at all of these proposed districts they are all supervisory districts, the OSUs. Don't want to be okay, that's kind of that in mind. We're just gonna, we're gonna, over the course of the next couple of weeks, just take a lot of tests. And, So I think with that, you're the first person here, we're just beginning to a feel for what the field thinks and Okay, great, thanks.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: So for the record, Jay Nichols, senior executive director of the Commonwealth Principals Association. And I will say that I just testified using the same language with Representative Connors. I was in there testifying about chronic absenteeism and get down to, they had some time to talk and said, Well, aren't you testifying later on? I read up the details what you're gonna say and send in that. I said, Sure. So I'm sharing with you the same story I shared with them. I'm not just flying today on the maps themselves. We just saw the initial stuff last week, as you did, and when I first saw it, didn't he have the names of the councils on it? But we are gonna testify on the language related to it. Be glad to come in later, maybe talk about the maps, although I'd like to stay out of the map business as much as possible, senators, if you can. So, first of all, we want to thank Rosen and Connett for putting out a thoughtful map for his committee. Obviously, other remonters, including Senate Education to consider. It's hard to tell where we're gonna end up in terms of governance constructs related to Act 73, and I've heard many times, including from members of this committee, that they believe you gotta start with maps. Although I'm not sure that's necessarily the case, it is certainly a place to start. So now we've got maps that people can react to, and that you folks can react to in this general suffering. I'm not gonna comment on whether the preliminary health districts are the right combination of birth districts. I don't think there's anybody in Vermont that would look at them and say, Oh, that's perfect. Oh, he's bright up, jumped at me. And he made that clear. And he did. Did. He asked his committee to think about it over the weekend, and I'm really interested to hear their conversation, provide prior to us training, thinking. Our board really has legislative drop in meetings at 07:30 on Friday mornings, so we haven't even talked about that. They were so new. We looked at them out and stuff, everybody was like, just trying to understand us on Friday morning, little bit of time. Yeah. I will say that it appears that you tried to provide district sizes 2,000 to 4,000, which from our perspective, you know that we came in with a 1,000 to 4,000 proposal, I've testified in your area about that. We think their testimony, or the Representatives' is much more aligned with research data than some of the original proposals that were supporting much larger districts or supervisors. So, we went through and did some comments on the sections, and I'll just kind of share that, and then feel free to interrupt me to ask questions on the section where I would be reporting. So section one, we do agree that school districts should be the ones to establish policies and procedures for delivery of instruction to the students since served. We believe in local control and we believe in local school. Obviously for districts that don't have schools at certain grade levels, we are supportive of contracting with public or food independent schools, either within or outside of the district as the board deems appropriate. So we think that that board should be the folks making those decisions. And granted, we know this board is gonna be overseeing a larger body. I think in every single case that those mass school boards will be overseeing a larger body. We may end up with a lot bigger than that, we may end with smaller than that. Makes you have

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: 27 districts in the environmental end.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: So again, we think it should be the local board, whatever that local board ends up feeding. Section 2A says, This section provides some clinical language as they move to bigger districts, and provides language to require these new school districts to provide the opportunity to designate students when there isn't, locally available public school close by. We say that, of course, parameters need to be established into what reasonable means. Language three or fewer is in current law regarding designation awards. From the BPA perspective, we are not sure if the number three is appropriate or not. And I did just say that in House Ed, and Chair Collins said that he actually has new language that they're working on that looks at the designation number three, maybe considers ways to make that larger. Before you ask the question, I'm just going to say our worry is if you get really big and you have a school, let's say it's on the West side of this new district, that doesn't operate certain grades, and the only place in that new district that does is way over here, or even outside the district is way over here, and there's a school outside of that district that offers those grades. We don't want kids on the bus for an hour and a half when there's a really good independent school or a really good public school that just happens to be outside of their new district next door. We want any decision to be kid focused. So that's why we are a little worried about the designation number of three, which it's current law. But he did say that they were looking at it. Sir?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So, on section one, I'm going back to that. Yes. Increased these units. Now we have school boards. How do you believe that that's actually keeping local control on that size of district? Everybody wants local control. Whether we do one big one or even if we cut down, it's, it's, I don't see that. I think there's gotta be something better than just doing one school board per district. Right. I see a flaw in that. And I'm asking you, because of that, do you feel, or do you believe that you would get good local control having school boards be for 27 different districts. Do you believe we'd have good local control over that?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: I think we could. I think one of the problems right now, if we look at the research on school board elections, almost 90% of our options, nobody runs or one person gets. So there's no competition there whatsoever. In fact, as a superintendent, I spent a lot of my time begging me, please run for the school board in Berkshire. We need you. Please run for the school board in Minnesota, but we couldn't get people to run. I think there's a possibility of that. I think when you get too big, you lose local control. I think when you're too small, you have minor control. Sometimes they'll be on boards just because they have a particular agenda. I want a governance group that's up here that's focused on policy and leaves actual day to day running of the schools, the superintendent and principals, the people that are experts, and they're the ones that set the vision for where the district goes. That would be my answer to that. And you've asked me before I think about advisory councils and things like that. I think folks are created well that can be affected too, so that people in a town can have some input into what's actually going on in their school.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Does that answer that, Yeah, it does. You can go off the dates.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: I think I just did section 2A, yeah. Section 2B1, we think having a contract made sense. Contracts spell out the obligation. If I'm the superintendent of the sending district and I'm sending my kids to another place to be educated, we should have to pick up a contract that says, Here are the expectations both ways. Having it in writing makes sense to us. To go further with that, section 2B2, Representative Connelly put in language around approved independent schools that receive public funds following most of the same rules as public schools. We think this is especially important, so we're trying to make sure our education finance system is responsible and accountable to all Vermonters and that we as a state take appropriate responsibility for all of our children as a common good. So to add, personal and special education, we think this is a simple aberrance procedure, and my perspective, at least my perspective, the four historics are already doing this. Attendance reports allow schools to work closely together to make sure students are actually attending school. There's a bill that I just testified on about chronic absenteeism and what a problem that is across the nation. We had a couple cases last year, one case that I know of where a public school was receiving kids, and it wasn't a Vermont public school, but it was receiving Vermont kids, and there were kids that didn't go to school for like two, three months, and that was never told. And there's another case where a kid was going to an independent school in Vermont, not at one of the stores, an independent school in Vermont, and the kid was out of school for two, three months, the district was still paying the bill and never found out that the kid wasn't going to the school. So I think that this would take care of that. Sending districts should know the academic progress of students when they're paying educational services. It's a major flaw in the system right now. Boards simply pay the bill and they're not privy to how well their kids are doing. I think we should share that information with the subordinate who's responsible for the kid, again, we gotta follow FERPA, we gotta follow privacy laws.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Would they ask for that now? They do ask for

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: it, and sometimes they're told no. They have no authority to get it. I mean, we've had school boards go to the AOE, try to pressure schools into sharing the data, and the schools have said no. That's current status. Independent school. Independent school. Specifically. Not all of them, but certainly some of them. Suspension and expulsion is another area. Sometimes kids get suspended and you don't even find out about I had that happen to me as a superintendent. I had a kid that was paying tuition for family law school in Canada. Some college, it's really high school, and the kid was out of school for two, three months and we were never even told about it, we're still sending him a bill. Finally, we find out from the parent, Oh yeah, he got kicked out of school because of tax, sent him all that money, we didn't get a refund. Issues like that. Of course, we support the Vermont Public Accommodations Act, the Vermont Fair Employment Act, folks pass those laws, obviously we support that. We agree the admission process for students should be a blind process. I was asked by a representative in Health Ed today, what if a person applies to a ski school that happens to be getting public money? And I said, well, if they're crazy enough to do that, you admit them, and they can't be on the ski because they don't know how to ski, like if I try to go there, it's that's my problem, but I think the chances of that happen are pretty slim. We do think that applying process is the most fair way to do it. Again, it's about common good, and if we're using public money for it, then all kids should have the basic dignity to apply. This goes a little bit to you, Senator Weeks, think about you and her relatives. We think knowing how well students do on state or federally mandated assessments should happen. We think that independent schools should share their grades with the public school and with the AOE. That doesn't happen right now, so we, not every place at least, so we think that should happen. We should not be charging students any fees for being a student at any school that receives public funding. So if I have a private school, I have a grandson that, I'm soldier, goes to a private hockey academy in Connecticut, lives in St. Albans, parents teach in Albans. Salmon doesn't pay any money from going to school. His parents pay it or he gets scholarships. If his parents were getting him to go there and St. Albans are paying for that, I don't think that'd be appropriate because they do discriminate against kids. They only accept certain kids to go there if they don't have line efficiency.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That was for hockey school. Yeah.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: It was in Mid Fairfield. We have no problems with assurances for independent school leaders. We know most of the independent school leaders, they're honest people that wanna do a good job. We know that they're similar to superintendents, and they sign those assurances. They're not gonna sign to their name on a dotted line saying they're providing something if they're not providing us. We have full confidence in our independent school leaders. We support statements of non discrimination insurances that state the schools are following, DPAA and para employment practice. We agree again that the insurance signed by the head of school, no public funds are being used to subsidize the tuition of a private payer student, appropriate safeguard. Finally, the VPA doesn't see a path forward in our education delivery system without partnership with our four historic academies. We need them as part of our system. There's no question in our minds that there's a part for them in our system. But we also think there's a part for private payer, non approved independent schools. If I wanna send my kid to a school that doesn't qualify, we need law, guess 18 schools have qualified now, I if wanna send my kid to Rice, or again, my grandson, he hadn't gone to the Fairfield, probably would've gone to Rice, he would've been paid for for the law change. Now he's an eighth grader. Now he wouldn't be. So even if he was to come back and play hockey and he to go to brass, his parents would have to pay the bill. We think that's appropriate because it's a school that can exclude some kids from religious reasons. If the school's open to everybody, then it should be blind initiative. Take any questions you have.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Does the Vermont Principals Association include principals of independent schools? Yes. Yes. In two ways. You can be a member.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: So if you're a member as a principal, then you get legal services from us. Get our weekly memo. You get discounts for all of our professional learning, and or your school could be a member, and if your school's a member, that enables you to play in sports, participate in the GOV, in the trauma program, robotics, all those types of things. We have some independent school members that are, the headmaster is a member of the BPA and the school is. We have others where just the school is. We might even have a couple where just the headmaster is. Like a really small elementary school, they might wanna be a member, but their school isn't a member because maybe only go up to third or fourth grade, they don't participate in sports or such.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So I do recognize that BPA was maybe originally founded around the competitive sports.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: 1915. Sure, okay. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Do your independent schools participate in your policy developments?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: They do if they have a member on our board. Two years ago, the same John's three CTE director was on our board. Right now, we do not have an independent school member. Great question. You wanna know a composition of our board? I'll tell you real quick, 12 principals, active principals, and these are all by our bodies. 12 active principals, one CPE director, and they recommend to us who the CPE director is.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Is that a C, four CTPs?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: It's on our board that has to be an active Yeah, duty one assistant principal, and then one reticators. And that's been on our bylaws since I was a former member back

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: in 1990. And it's just for the VPA.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: Just for the VPA's executive, yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: They're the organization that does the sports, right?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: Yeah, part of what we do is, that's probably what we were found. Around nineteen ninety, ninety one, ninety two, the BP started to get more, well, I'll see it now, we're much more in policy and legislation, but we still oversee sports. What's the rationale for how

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to assist, just out of curiosity?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: Well, to be honest with you, that's a great question. In Vermont, we have less assistant principals than any place else in The United States, other than North Dakota or Tyler. Per what? Assistant principals? Per what? Per student, per principal? All. And the reason for it is we're so small. Now, typically, in most states, the assistant principal gets developed as an assistant principal and moves into the principal pathway. In Vermont, the assistant principal, so a few of them, it's usually a person who is a a teacher classroom teacher, or a special teacher, like an art teacher or an instructional coach that moves right to principalship. So one of the reasons in Vermont, around 2015, the legislature passed a law that said all new principals will get two years of mentoring, because we have principals that come right from the classroom to the principal and they're like, Oh my God, I never had an idea of how two tough Two this job years of mentoring. Mentoring. Mentoring. Yeah. Vermont is one of the few states that has a law on the books that school districts must provide entering the first two years that you're a principal in Vermont.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: This this language would change for most of the most of the kids go to the events between one of four academies, basketball charting, and this would change the relationship between those academies and the towns that they had historical relationships with for one hundred or more years in most cases?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: I don't know. The way, you know, you saw our testimony, we proposed it would be up to the local board. Yeah. This is different because it's Spanish. But the way I was thinking about it was, if I knew St. Jay from St. Jay Academy, these kids all go to the high school and there would be a new board around there and that board could decide when the kids go. You'd have to talk to Representative Connelly exactly what he needs here. Way I read this, though, would be if you were sending your kids to St. Jay Academy and you had a district that St. Jay Academy wasn't part of, then they maybe they couldn't send their kids there? Yeah, I'm not really sure. That's my good point.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So you kind of went through, so you're, and so just to go back to the beginning, you hadn't really had a chance to analyze the maps and what did they?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: No, and I may not tell you what we think, but I think we're gonna be all over the place.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, that's, and the reason for that would be because of specific boundaries or I think

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: we've got, I think most of our members, certainly our board, is convinced, and many of them are in SHUs, that supervisory districts make more sense, because we've saying, I've given you testimony before how it's the week to show it's better for kids and for protecting teachers in the long run. It for better governance structures, it doesn't have a whole bunch of bosses, it's just one chain of command system. So I think our board, I know our board is supportive of that, but I think when people look at it and say, Well, is our town really gonna be with this other town? Maybe we'd be better off if we were in this town. I don't think we should get into the minutiae about that. The job of the principal is gonna stay pretty much the same, right? And it's an existential change for the school boards or the superintendents. From our perspective, still gonna run the schools on a day to day basis. We do think having a linear chain of command is better than having supervisory unions, these weird structures, having just, like every other state in The United States, nobody else has supervisory unions. Just having a supervisory district makes sense. We have opinions about the maps, and I look at my old district, when I first, it was like, I don't wanna like this part of it, but I don't think it's appropriate for us to really play into that. That's okay with you.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I think it's worth emphasizing that the role of principal, the relationship between principal and parents and principal and staff and principal and students isn't gonna change in any of these scenarios we're talking.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: Same teachers. Right,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: exactly. I'm just saying that from the principal level down

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: You're right, I

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: agree. Nothing's gonna change I agree. For the foreseeable future. I I think we're missing that point.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: I'm missing that point, but I go, many people in the community are, and I try to say with the commission, I haven't heard anybody here in this organization say we should close small schools. I said, she's come out. We said over and over, we're not advocating to close small schools. We're advocating that local communities decide that. If they feel that the school is too small to serve its need, then that is an option that would be on the table.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You need to look at your fiscal, if it's fiscally responsible to keep a school open that your town can afford. And it's a hard decision, but the community should have a very large input on that.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: And are you able to provide the educational services for your kids that they need to have to be successful today and

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: moving to the future?

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: Because that should be our number one guiding north star.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So that being said, that your tuition in dollars, that you're worried, like, you said your grandson is going So to he's going to a

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: Eighth grade.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Eighth grade, and so he's going to a complete school from Yep. A to And if we do foundation formula, why would you, as a parent or even a grandparent, be upset that that money follows him to that school, even though it's a private school? As a parent, that's what they believe their child is getting the best education. What concerns me when people are like, oh, just public schools is, I know my child better. And if I believe, we saw, almost said, if you watch people drive by Rutland to go over to Woodstock, same in this difference, that why that money shouldn't fall to that student even though it's not public dollars. Cause it's not that, it's, I think the average is 85% go to the public school. So my concern or question would be why do people worry so much about that? That, hey, they're gonna go to a private school that does have some restrictions because I had to know some parents that don't wanna send their children to public school because they don't have any restrictions. So

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: I think that's the parents' choice, but it's the parent's choice that the parent needs to pay for. When it's public dollars, this might be Yeah. And I this is The UK, too, we've talked about it over again. When it's public dollars, it's a common good, and there's a certain expectation that the government, you folks, representing government, have to stand and reset those with public schools. In private schools, we can discriminate. So the school of my grands and girls too, and she's had a great experience, they decided they don't want take kids that ever served, say they were religious, they don't happen to be, they could be, they don't want to take kids from circumcision, or they don't want take kids because they think that their gender politics is different, or because their family's poor, or because they're different ethnic, you know, background, they could do that. And we should, in my opinion, we should never use public dollars to further divide our nation. It should all be about coming together. So that's kind of the opinion. Private school? Nothing wrong with private schools. But if it's a private school, if my grandson's proposed to the private school, I think he should get scholarships or his parents or his grandparents should help it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So anything else? Okay. Well, you are our first good testimony on this. Okay. Thank you. And we actually have a break because we couldn't get on the witness until I think that week, 15 now. Yes. Okay.

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: Is that

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: what you're here for? The next one is Okay. The the the the the the the

[Jay Nichols, Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association (VPA)]: the