Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee staff/AV operator]: They're live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're live. So, the patient committee, we're back after a short break. Fifty five afternoon of February 11 and we are shifting gears quickly to S two thirty two, the library bill, and we have From the Agency of Education specifically because he wants to expand his learning opportunities program, which is referenced in the bill with whiteboard. It's given the critical priority within the STEMI think that you write through. That's what I was talking about in particular, but I see that you also will have this small presentation. So what we can do before we start, Ruta, you haven't been here yet this year, so

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: we'll introduce ourselves. Not a machine set up for Lonely County.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: David Weeks serving Rolland County. Seth Bongartz from the Bennington Senate District. Terry Williams, Rolland.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: Steven Heffernan, Addison County District. And for the record,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you are. My name is Johannes Hinsh. I'm the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager for the Agency of Education. That means I oversee the team that supports all of the state and federally funded after school and summer programs around the state. That's what we

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: I am.

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: On behalf of the agency of education. If you came by during our open house a couple months ago, a few weeks ago, would have seen me, or if you came and got some ice cream last week, I was scooping. So, yeah, so you've got you've got the presentation for us. Yes. I've got some questions afterwards. A quick presentation that I'm also happy to answer your questions. We want to understand the program, so that's great. Absolutely. So I'm here today to speak about s two thirty two, which is the bill to expand the afterschool summer learning set aside to specifically highlight and raise up the word libraries and some of reading. I'm here today to provide a little bit of context on the work that's already happening with the agency of education in that space, and then also to provide a little bit of insight about sort of work that is developing in that space. Just seeing the full picture, because obviously I'm here to answer any questions, comments, or concerns you might have to the best of my ability. So just to start off with the eligibility question, in 16 PSA section 51, we already have the language in there that the agency of education is distributing these grant funds to programs that are public, private, and nonprofit. That language is pretty clear, and we lead very closely to that. What I concluded in that presentation, the way I did set there, is a screen graph of the exact eligibility clause that's in every one of the grant applications we put out funded by this after school special fund. So something that

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: yes sir. Public, private, or non profit that's everybody. Yes sir. Wanna make sure I wasn't missing something.

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: Nope. And that language comes directly from the legislation as it was passed. Well, would It was excluded. Pull back with you that it does exclude private individuals. So we do require an entity that's coming to submit an application to be registered with I believe it's IRS, they have to provide their what is the spot and I am not remembering the name for it. So it can be somebody who just decides to go to summer camp?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: Yeah, yeah. Not that they're it. Yes. They have to be an incorporated entity of some kind. There's pretty flexible structure on that, but they do have to be more than a one person operation. You'll get to it, I'm sure, a woman. So I think we're interested in this thing. Yeah, absolutely. That's not in this presentation, but I'm happy to. So just as you as uniquely pointed out, libraries are already included within that criteria. They are public entities. So they are already eligible for every one of the grant competitions we put out. I would also point out that from a programmatic standpoint, we already have what we call program track grant. That's our smaller funded grant opportunity specifically for smaller initiatives, things that aren't full year programs, things that might be an expansion on existing programs, things that might be a just a startup or a standup of a single kind of focus activity. So that would already, I think, well cover the idea of a summer reading program. Moving into the next slide, you provide little context around the sort of relationships between the grant competitions as we run them and library specifically and then literacy programs generally. To date, we've had three years of grants going out since the Address School Special Fund was created. There have been five individual grants. But during that time, we've received just over 150 applications from organizations ranging from public schools to independent schools to licensed child of cares. We think it had some museums. How much money do you charge? We are because it's pegged to the sales and use revenue from cannabis, there's a little bit of flexibility in there. In the first year it was $4,500,000 in the second year 7,000,000 in the third year it was 9,000,000 Okay. It looks like it's starting

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: to level off around September. Okay? Yes. I could. So this is a note that I made early on last week. Had this briefing. I'm wondering so you're you're absolutely right. The language the preexisting language in the in the legislation already said public private or nonprofit. We're adding public libraries. And my note at the time was, what's the problem? Like, what why why are libraries struggling to get this funding? So why do we even need this change?

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: That's a a fair question. I will identify the the sort of it's not a surprise to us that libraries aren't involved. That's something that we're cognizant of. Not involved or not applying? Not applying. Are reaching out to us in almost every round of the competition except for the very first one. We have had conversations with library directors, town managers. I've even gotten phone calls from just concerned parents who want to speak about the wonderful library programming in their town. We know libraries are running this programming. We just haven't been able to convert that interest into submitting applications. That is one of my slides later on. I do talk about some of the limitations we've identified that are kind of preventing that conversion from happening. This, by the way, is that question is the reason easier is to figure out whether this makes any sense. Yeah. That's exactly. So just to finish off the third slide here. So the fact that we haven't directly granted awards to any libraries shouldn't be understood to have been that we haven't been supporting libraries for literacy programming. Have 24 different libraries across the state are named as essential programmatic partners in 18 different applications. So we do have school based programs that are saying and we partner with the local library to provide this element of our service. And then if we look even more broadly just at literacy instruction and literacy targeted programming. Of our 61 awards, awards, 40 of them have some form of literacy enrichment, including 15 that have literacy centered tutoring programs. And just to make sure that the difference between those is clear, enrichment would be something that is intentionally using the skills and proficiencies of literacy, but in a more project based student directed in class based way, whereas a tutoring program has a specific curriculum and has a teacher giving some sort of targeted instruction. So as an example, something like a creative writing club or a book club would be an enrichment activity, something like an expanded school year or a learning loss program would be a tutoring activity. And then there is a link in the virtual version of this that connects to our poll. As it relates to the program, what's the importance of that distinction you just made? As it relates to the program, the importance of that distinction is tutoring tends to have a slightly more intensive component to it. So if somebody is submitting a proposal that includes a tutoring program we would expect that to have a smaller student impact. You know, if you can't provide that same intensive level of support to an infinite number of students without really committing a substantial amount of faculty. Enrichment activities tend to be a little bit more, let's say, cost effective. So we can put a slightly more paper for that approach. I I wouldn't I wouldn't say we we weight one or the other at more highly than the other. It's just something we consider when we're looking at the I know we're not the budget somebody has proposed is reasonable. Okay. If two programs are supposed to be exact same budget, if one says they're going to do, you 50 students worth of enrichment. The other says they're going to do 50 students worth of tutoring. That's a negative to us that maybe one of them is not quite calculating their cost. Now I think we can move on to the next slide. As you asked, Senator Weeks, we have been really curious about why we're not seeing a plagiarist coming here. We know they're in this space. We know they're doing this work. And just speaking personally, I can say that my local public library is one of my daughter's favorite places in the entire group. There's no doubt in my mind that libraries are serving Vermont's youth and that libraries have a place in a robust kind of network of after school support. We've identified kind of three key stumbling blocks that are causing some trouble getting that interest into an application. The first is immunodiction. Because our eligibility criteria is so broad. We're talking to every entity, public, private, and nonprofit that is currently serving youth or that is interested in standing up a new program that will serve youth. That's an extremely broad mailing list. The agency of education here set up really well to talk to students within any given Wednesday. It takes me five minutes to get a message in front of every principal in the state, Getting messages to every licensed childcare provider, to every library, to every nonprofit, that is a more constantly evolving process. Why is that? So it's only only because we don't maintain those communications lists internally. The agency of education doesn't have a standing list of every library. So we've

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: you know, continue our mission, Bob.

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: So we've been really leveraging Actors World Summer Learning Programs Advisory Committee and really asking the folks in that space to push out communications into their list serves. So we have we have gotten messages out through kind of partner list serves. But as it is, it it's it's a little bit of whack a mole because at the end of every competition cycle, we always find out about this group that didn't hear about it until the last minute. We could front load and add them right up top of the next round of communications we send out, but then we'll find out about the next group that wasn't aware.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And that's life. So in my world we call belly buttons, right? So you have to have a list of belly buttons you're gonna push. Who can push the other belly buttons? So, you have to state librarians, you have you know, somebody at one of the state agencies that oversees daycare releases a primary contact that's another value but you're not supposed to have everybody on speed dial you just can't it's not really low levels.

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: And absolutely what we've been doing to kind of continue growth in this momentum and roll these messages out. So the State Librarians Office has been helpful with us in kind of sharing this communication out, but that was you know, a learning that we got after feedback we received after our first and second round of communications. So that's an evolving process. It's something that we're continuing to improve, but it is a a Herculean task. I'm confident that as soon as I get the emails to every person at the stage who is eligible, half of them will retire and the other half will be replaced by supplementing. That's nice. The next limitation is our grants management system. The agency of education uses an electronic grant management system. This is the only platform we use to put out grant opportunities, to collect applications for grant opportunities, and once awards are determined, this is the platform we use to distribute funds and do ongoing fiscal monitoring. It's a system that was purpose built for a job, which is distributing funds to schools. And we are kind of pushing it in directions that it was not necessarily designed to. We are able to create new entity profiles for non school organizations, but it is a process that takes some time and it requires some additional some administrative hurdles that folks have to go through. Things like providing that IRS data to indicate, yes, we are a registered entity. Things that all of the schools had to go through when the system was first rolled out however many years ago. Now we're having to do this for folks who are not in that space. And it's not an impediment. We're we're creating accounts for, you know, between thirty and fifty new organizations every time we run one of these competitions. They don't always end up submitting an application, but it is a speed in the process. So do you have a

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: list of schools or municipalities that have for faculty school programs? I

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: do not. I have a good sense of schools. I have a list of schools that have programs and I have a list of community based organizations, just kind of a catch all term or use it for non schools that have AOE funded after school programs. But creating just a general list of all after school programs, that's something that I have been, something that the agency of education had been working with DCF which manages the licensed childcare programs around trying to get an incorporated list but similar to the problems with the email list, it's it's very much a situation of every time we find a new category of folks that have a program, we discover a new category of folks that have programs.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: You have a list of any, probably don't have a list of all the municipalities that have after school programs that use the schools because they're out there? I don't but I'd

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: be very interested to see that. They have such a list existed and I Right.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: What I'm getting at is there should be. Yeah. Because I went to a town in my district that does a recreation program. It's after school, it's during the summertime and they said you know there's money available for this program why don't you take advantage of it put in put in an application for his wife. We want to. We they do it out of their mind. They like the way it is. The state's not involved in it. And so I mean, but I see that as an equity problem. Mhmm. Is that there's money available and you're not taking advantage of it. Yet the town is giving you money to run a recreation program. So the town's paying twice coming.

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: Yeah I certainly don't disagree I think that there should be a list that exists so I think that we should be making this funding available to everyone who is eligible for it and could benefit coordinate. If there's programs that don't want to come in for whatever reason, we can't twist anybody's arms, but at the very least we should make them aware of the opportunity. A couple of questions. What's your, what's the grant range that you're getting out? Dollar amounts, just give us some sense. I believe our smallest grant at the moment is around $6,000 a year. The absolute cap would be $150,000 a year. Is your average toward the middle or is your average more like 30 or? It runs the gamut. That, There's more information on this in the after school report. But it's summer also, right? So that's the only question I have to sum up. How much are you doing a lot of summer, doing a lot of summer programs mostly after school or? So like I mentioned, we have sort of two tiers of programming that we're supporting through two different application processes. We have the program track, is for sort of smaller, we just want to add this club or this activity. Then we have what we call the center track program, which is we want to have a comprehensive full year after school program that's offering four different activities, four days a week, year round. In that program, almost all of those have a summer component. We require they deliver 100 programs, one hundred days of program in their first year, building up to one hundred and fifty days of program by their third year. So it's very difficult to get one hundred and fifty days of program with censure and summer. So what you're talking about, you're talking about some of your grants that are multi year. Yes, sir. Or how far out has you? Or for the program track, we use a three year model and for the center track we use a five year model, which is aligned with the federally funded 21C program, which is funding for multi site comprehensive centers. That would be, you know, if an entire supervisory union wanted to add programming to each of their schools for a full year, that would be funded from the 21C program. So your, the work you do is beyond the nine or ten billion that comes into cannabis? Yes, I oversee the cannabis funded state after school work and then also the federally funded 21 C. So just talking about the cannabis money. It's part of what you were just talking about. No, I've only been speaking to the Okay. After school And you kept saying after school, but just- Sorry, also meaning summer, right? Yes. When we say after school we really mean out of school time. Okay. So that's after school programs, summer programs, breaks, weekends, vacations. Okay. So Senator Weeks asked the question and I think we probably haven't let in the committee make the same mark on their bill. Would it sort of prioritize library funding? They're like, why? Is that is that you know, what's it competing against? So, I'm listening to you thinking whatever is or one of that he could be applying. They got the same shake everybody else gets. They've got criteria Yes, I don't object to anything you're saying. I think libraries are already captured within our eligibility criteria. I think the existing funding grant programs could very easily support the types of programming they're looking at. How complicated are the applications? We estimate that it should take an applicant between ten and twenty hours to complete an application. Well, don't know. Jesus. Well, that's what I believe. Yeah.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: But that's for, like, up to $150,000 Yes.

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: Right? But $150,000 a year for five years. So you're potentially talking about, half $1,000,000. So we don't even feel bad about putting a little bit of diligence on All your funding is multi year? Yes, sir. Okay. As low as 6,000 a year as high as 150 a year? Yes or no.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: Okay. And is the 6 and 105 the same application, one application for everything?

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: No. We have the two tiers of application, program track and the center track. The program track tends to be smaller. That's where the 6,000 is. The cap on award amounts for the program track is, I believe it's at 75,000 now. The applications tend to be on the smaller side. That, those applications can be done then. That's closer to the ten hour, to the ten hour mark. Will you chew up all your funding every year? As close as we can get. Well, so I will say we, I'm a naturally nervous person. I don't want to commit every dollar we have. So what we're doing is we look at how much will it cost to award this full the term of that award over the full life of the award, and we consider that the kind of commitment that we're making. So we commit every dollar. Of that year's money.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: Like, if I'm committed to five years at a 100,000, that's 500,000. You take that 500,000 out of that 10,000,000 and just, it sets somewhere and it draws from it.

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: Because we have kind of stacked cohorts, it works out that every year, you know, we're we're pulling out of the same fund and we have set it up so that we are never pulling more than we we have available. So each year you actually have 5,000,000 available, because you've only, in year one when you give out grants, you actually get them all out of year one money. Exactly. Just keep it. Okay. Does that sit and I find that also rate out of its interest? That is a question I think I've been struck by. So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: in my town, I was talking about the community library is part of the actual is actually taking it so you know why can't we get these small mom and pop operations taken? Is it more observable to have boys and girls strokes do it?

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: No I think the the the limitation is the the smaller operations small amount of operations that you're running into issues with just the the the application process, the enrollment at GMS process, and then the sort of ongoing monitoring oversight and delivery process. We are trying to do everything we can to streamline it and make it as onerous as possible, if that's a word, but you know there is a certain amount of a certain amount of diligence that's required in you know fiscal monitoring. We need an operation to have at least the capacity account for every dollar. If it's a one person shop who is somebody who's really well meaning and passionate and dedicated to the program, they deliver but not necessarily up to able to perform that accounting standard,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: we would have a difficult time awarding them. So the standard, the criteria for after school programs out there, does it require a full time director or not?

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: For the center track we do require a full time director. For the program track we don't require a full time director but we do require that there be some dedicated personnel. It can be a shared responsibility and can be you know this is an existing person within your organization if you assume this as their third half a job.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So programs, the programs can be unique as long as

[Johannes Hinsh (Expanded Learning Opportunities Program Manager, VT Agency of Education)]: they meet the criteria of the application. Yes. We've written our applications so that they can be as flexible as possible because we really wanted to capture the broadest possible range of programs. Have you thought about, we're digressing actually from once and for most us, since you're here, have you thought about a third track that's like a very long white track, you know, 6,000 to 20 and with a two page application then a one page, one of the columns here. We have thought about that. Where we've kind of come down on that is a little bit of a situation where the juice isn't worth the squeeze from the amount of time it takes for an applicant to get enrolled and create an account within our grant management system and complete an application. Then there's the process on our end of reviewing all the applications that come in and then ongoing oversight and monitoring of those programs. It gets to a point where if an award is small enough, it's difficult to justify the expense of funding the competition. When I've seen, can you do more monitor light and accountability light, you know, since it's a smaller amount of money and then, I'm just, I'm thinking about owning one of our libraries in rural Vermont or whatever, small thing about Rutland with less capacity. It sounds like they would tend to get you might get left out of this because and you know I've seen a lot of award systems where you can do a two page application and you just fill out something once a year, you know, that's pretty basic. Built, there's some trust built in in how you understand the want for accountability, but on the other hand, if that becomes the impediment to getting it to where it's our, I think about that. Yeah. Yeah. I will say one of our kind of mandates in the authorizing legislation is promoting programming in spaces where communities are underserved. So we are we are doing, I think, a fairly good job of getting out into the rural spaces and getting to those communities that don't don't necessarily already have robust programming place. One of the things that's included in the report is a map of where all of our locations are. But by the way I will say it's clear to me you're trying hard. You're doing good work. So it's good to me you care and you're doing something. I appreciate that. Put that out there as we talk about it. So any other questions from the committee? Think, you know, I think you were here just to help us get a sense of what, to the extent we're talking about giving libraries a leg up and what it is they're competing against and why that might make sense now. Does anybody else in the room want to take a moment and switch out for a minute? Thank you, Professor.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Bennington. So you're be standing there. Bennington, by yourself for the record.

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: My name's Catherine Del Nau. I'm the state librarian and an commissioner of the Department of Libraries, and it's been really helpful for me to hear from Johannes, so thank you, Johannes. I do think that, like you said, shared, the folks in AME are doing good work and have good intention. I think when we're talking about the public libraries, some of your final comments about the small libraries and the capacity. Even the the the total grant amount size, it would potentially overwhelm a library that could do quite a lot of good in their community with a much smaller grant award. And when we're looking at the need in Vermont's public libraries, remember, the Department of Libraries' entire summer reading program grant right now is $50,000. That's not $50,000 to one public library. That's $50,000 to all of the libraries that have the capacity to apply for the grant. Each one of them receives $350 total from the State of Vermont Department of Libraries each year for programs for youth. I'm gonna say that again. Each public library in our state has an opportunity, rare one time a year thing, to apply for $350 for one program each summer. When we are talking about a pot with what is becoming a regular $10,000,000, I need to ask the question of you folks in this room, does that sound like the public libraries, which have received none of this money directly, are having access to the cannabis funds?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's what I was trying to get at here. So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: that's exactly, yeah, we're trying to figure out, sounds like the competition for the money is maybe a bit bureaucratic and more risky. No offense intended. But it's a government, there's reporting mechanisms and whatever accountability, but if they're not applying for it they're not going get So $350 you're right. Probably doesn't go, you know, more than an afternoon paying for somebody's time. But at the same time, if there's 10,000,000 or whatever the right number is, you gotta apply for it. Yeah.

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: Yes. But I think that there's so when you look at the the language in the bill, adding public libraries to the list, and I think we can all agree about, you know, if all of the animals are welcome to the party, we don't have to call out the dogs and say, Come, dogs, come to the party, except that the public libraries aren't in the AOE environment in the way that the afterschools are, and they are, first off, not understanding that they can take part in that. Secondly, typically they receive grants from the Department of Libraries. So, you think about a public library that wanted to have a summer reading program, they're already used to applying for a pretty easy to get grant, has reporting and accountability through the department. Now they have to create a profile, use their unique uniform entity identifier, their UEI. They have to create a profile. They have to log in. They have to do a twenty hour application. They have to conceive of a completely different type of program, of a completely different scale. So a public library could probably benefit in the summer from having an extra $2,000 or $3,000, even a small public library, but the smallest amount is typically a $6,000 amount. The public library is used to doing maybe a two or three hour application, but here they're looking at a ten to twenty hour application. It's possible that in our conversations, are really evolving, and I wanna give credit to colleagues in AOE, they've invited us to participate at the table. My colleague, Janet Schaefer, assistant state librarian for library advancement, has been welcomed to meetings. Part of what this bill does would be to say that the department is is a part of the actual group that makes decisions, and perhaps we could find a way to have an easier streamlined model for public libraries that the Department of Libraries could assist with granting out funds. We're also a Department of the state. We're not trying to make it more burdensome. We're just trying to find a way to work together to have it so that public libraries can access this money because they desperately need it to support youth in after school programs, programs during school breaks, and summer programs.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So to get to what I was talking about and you're kind of talking about to an application light and monitoring light, does that require a statutory change or is the structure you described and all the rules are those are those rules established? The agency or are they implicit in the statute? They are not implicit in the after school summer suicide statute. Where we would run into difficulties, I think, is the uniform guidance for grants and contracts from ADA.

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: AOA.

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

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we then specifically okay.

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: But I want to share our application process, which we still hear from Little Public Libraries as onerous, let me be clear, our process is following bulletin five, which is the Agency of Administration's granting process. Every library that applies for those funds has to go through a risk assessment, the subrecipient versus contractor checklist, they have to have a UEI, even though this is state funds, so technically they don't need a UEI in the way that they do for federal funds. We still ask for that information, and there is reporting that we do now. So, we're doing all of those things already as we make the grant awards of special funds, which are handled as state funds in the same way that these That's for $350. 350. Yeah.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: Okay. Yes. Couple questions. So can agency library apply for $150,000 grant? Yes. So why don't you do that, and then you can distribute It's it

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: like a block grant. Yeah.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: Well And you can distribute that easier through that. And then my other question would be, if, like that fund, if you aren't collecting interest on it, and you can, you know, just a regular interest account, dollars 10,000,000, even 3% is $300,000 there's extra money that can either go to the library or go back into the fund to give out his grants. So if you could find that out, I'd appreciate that.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And my small town library, like, I'm town I live in, participates in an after school program. So they're not overwhelmed. They they phase in so many children to come in this afternoon after school. And then tomorrow then tomorrow they go ice skating or

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: something like that. And that was what I mentioned we have we have a number of after school programs many with schools some with boys and girls clubs who have libraries listed as partner organizations or for things like that. And we are very clear that that partnership can include some funding. So, you know, if this school wants to pay a contract with their local library to say, we're going to come in one day a week and we will give you, you know, dollars $3.50 a week

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We won't get you paying. Ice

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: skating. They ice skate. So these kids can go ice skating today. So so let's because we're wrapping up here. What's the committee's sense of this? Do we want to we've got a few choices. Think we're a company anyway. One is to lead the language given any kind of a preference if someone asks about what works is rely on the system as it is. The other is to write some either maybe leave the bill the way it is or is there a third with some new language that would be helpful? I'm pulling you some money.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: No, was putting pressure on it.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Nice to ask. Yes. So, can we get just like a short bullet point list of the pros and cons versus of deleting the language versus hepatic language? I mean, what's

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So, yeah, don't know the language of yours, for the purpose. My initial response was, why a library, if you have a system with a lot of organizations that can all apply and they're all equal footing, why would you save libraries, get a portion of it, somebody else might not. That was my initial thinking. And then we had to have us come in to talk about how appropriate works and just trying to get a sense of many of which direction we want to and life must pursue. The pros are you could argue that it's an unfair leg up for libraries, but we're also hearing the cause. The libraries don't get any as it turns out because it's the application process is pretty onerous, they're not kind of afraid to do it for for whatever reasons. So, I'm just trying to get

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: a sense of what what people think. Would it be, I mean,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: maybe I'm missing something, but would it be a leg up for the libraries or would it be critical libraries on equal footing?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's why I'm asking. Yeah.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: Don't know. I think

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You kinda heard both. I could you know? I so go ahead.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, I I hate to sort of jump in if I miss something, but I did a lot of municipal after school related work for Burlington, and it's usually parks and rec for the municipality that that is constantly trying to seek out grants and share them with the library and stuff. So I just reread it just I think the parks and rec departments are usually the ones that do the after school work all summer.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, that's interesting. We have had a couple of parks and rec departments apply for funding and receive funding. I don't know that in my observation they're doing the preponderance of the work, but again, to speak to the question I answered earlier, I don't have visibility on the programming that isn't either attached to a tool or receiving our funding. So it it very well could be the case that parks and recs departments are doing this this vast amount of work that they're not coming to the table for funding.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: The prohibition on where the cannabis funding can go is to after school programs not to the LEAs. I remember that from two years ago. That was put in there. So money's out there. It's not is it all bad news? Probably not. No. So, yes.

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: I think that one of the things we really just need to look at is to consider the type of things that we're talking about when we say after school programs, because they're very dissimilar. When you're looking at the work that the park I went to the rec park summer program in South Burlington, Vermont, and Orchard School, and my parents dropped me off, I stayed there all day, and we went to the skating rink, we went down the alpine slide. We went all over the place. But that's not a library program. The library program is a different type of thing and every community's library is doing it every summer. So, we really have to kind of decouple them. And I I would say that the language in the bill helps to call out public libraries so that our colleagues in AOE help us we can work together and develop something specific to libraries and specific that will help our public libraries across the state to continue the good work that they're doing. We had our board of libraries meeting yesterday, the Vermont Board of Libraries asked me to walk them through this bill as best as I could. When I got to this section, I said it's sort of like you're going, your big brother went out, and he went out for Halloween, and he collected a big bag of candy, and now he's gonna distribute it. Well, you can ask for some candy, but, like, wouldn't it be nice if you had gone along for the walk, and you had your own little bucket? Like, we, right now, sure we could apply as a department for summer reading, but can we actually sub grant that money? Because when we asked AOE for support earlier this year when we didn't have the money to do some reading grants, we didn't get a response. We almost didn't have

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: two the agencies here, and I think that we already talked to each other. You highlighted a concern, right? Why can't we, to be honest, point, increase the communication and find solution here.

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: Yeah. But we are doing that. I think that the issue is really what has happened sometimes. I came into the state as a state librarian in 2022, and I've just seen a few different places. One of them was resolved with s two twenty, which became act one fifty, where I'm now there's a state librarian position on the early childhood literacy commission task force. Similarly, this bill asks to put someone from our department in the room when the decisions are made about how to develop a grant program. So I would ask that you not strike everything from this section because I think if we had been there at the outset, we might have been able to work better together from the beginning.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But I guess I'm still just floored by that you said there's no communication back from AOE and that I didn't send the communication on my own. Oh, I should say But my second thing was that you've never heard for Parks and Rec programs for after school. Like, that seems strange.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We have. Right. Right. We currently in funding, so

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I I just don't have awareness of

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: all Parks and Recs. I have

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And they're they're just not getting the preponderance of the money and there's money on the table?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We We are committing funding judiciously as I think I explained this before, he came. I've been

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: wanting to Okay. Get

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Sorry. So let's we can put this on our list where we have some community time set aside on Friday. Think about it in your time when they have back in it. I'm happy to be here. Okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I do appreciate the highlight of the fact that the state libraries is not part of the board that's making these kind of policy.

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: We've been invited, and I don't want to sound like I'm disparaging my our colleagues in AOE. They are very welcoming, and they've asked for our input, and we're providing input. But having a seat that's actually a statute would be helpful, I think, because then we can work together more mindfully to to create a program that does support the Littler pro the Littler libraries

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

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Did somebody ask for a list of all the programs that have been funded last year?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That is in the that was submitted to that search. There's also, there's a link to it in the digital version of this, which should be available to you.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But I didn't even was looking for it. It has a spreadsheet of all the grants and the amounts.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. Absolutely. Okay. We we need to move on. Thank you. But thanks. This looks a good conversation. Absolutely. Thanks. Thank you. Have representative common lists.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: K. I assume you're ready for us. Yes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. So admittedly, jump the gun before getting me in. Got a few weeks then. Yep. Getting some initial thoughts to your thought here, and glad that you're really looking to have the introduction. That's it. We are aware of the knowledge you're saying, but this is a sub concept, just trying to figure it out, put something out there, help people take it through. But so we take it with that and give you credit for putting something down. That's it. So the floor is yours. Right, thank you very much. Peter Coleman, chair of the House Education Committee.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: So that's exactly right. I created this map, which I put together with input from people in the field when I have a question or whatever. As I've said previously, it's by no means correct, but here's sort of the approach. We've heard testimony, we have researched that backs the 2,000 to 4,000 student count as sort of at the point that you reach scale and efficiency, and that as you move above that, you can sometimes lose the efficiency as you sort of need more middle managers to fix along. This is something that the superintendents have spoken to us about repeatedly, so I want to honor that in honor of the research.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: So as you can see, it breaks down to about 27, I call them governmental units. The advantages to sort of this size, and again, I'm gonna say it's not perfect, there are areas that was very hard to sort of make work. There are, you'll see four towns that aren't assigned because they're part of the interstate compacts. That literally requires an act of Congress to do them. But the general idea is two to 4,000, no res views, these would all be school districts. The advantage to sort of keeping the governmental units smaller, address one of my main concerns to be gone through this, is when you create a larger district, you have to renegotiate all the labor contracts, and we keep talking about leveling up salaries. That certainly happened in Act 46, because as different bargaining units came together, they generally go for the highest level because you can't really break people's salaries down. When you have a smaller unit, you're really dealing with regions that are much more alike in terms of the salaries benefits. So that's one of the advantages with that. The other is, and I won't say that this is for sure, but when we had Ag forty six and we created larger districts to get that, we were able to, and they weren't super large, but we were able to allow the smaller districts to decide how they wanted to have representation on their school board. So if it sort of meets legal muster and all that, you could say, okay, we'll use the same process that we used for Act 46 in these smaller units, and you create a transition board that would then come up with the representation model as a recipient remains constitutional. And so it would be sort of a self created model. It could be an append large, hybrid, one tab, whatever it happens as long as it's constitutional. We go to much larger units, then we really are meeting the whole ward working group and government operations coming in and creating whole new voting areas. And I think at a smaller level, that can be achieved much more than we did with I-forty 6. The actual lines that are there, I'm not married to in any way. However, they were built with with me sort of reaching out to people saying, How does this feel? There's a little more of a gut instinct to it, looking at both geography, culture, tradition, capacity. But it's, and I'll tell you some areas where I sort of say, maybe it didn't work out so well, is I'm not sure it, that it should be larger, thinking that we're gonna continue the declining involvement. And so a 1,900 pupil district might be 1,400 pupils in five years. Equally, it doesn't necessarily recognize potential talks that might be going on, or potential sort of building renovations that, or new schools being contemplated that might be going on. So, for example, way up in the upper right part, which is my map, North Country, and the Northeast, whatever, chain of it down, sort of altogether. North Country's got them thinking about replacing their high school, they'd like to talk with Link Region. I don't have those two put together, so maybe that requires reconsideration. But those are really the factors that went into creating this. And again, it was thoughtful. It has flaws. South Burlington has sort of said we'd be willing to be considered part of something else. That didn't solve every cultural problem of, you know, people who don't ever want to be infected. Perhaps that's just something we need to get over. But it was really there to say, you know, to my committee, okay, look at it, here's something that addresses any of the current concerns that have been brought up both among the committee members and among the appeals. And so, you know, let's talk about it, and that's what we can do. Thanks.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You have to get to the person.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Do you how's that? What do you perceive the next couple weeks will look like, given that you've at least put this on the table? Applaud you for that. What do you anticipate?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Well, I mean, we are having some fairly tense and intense conversations right now as, you know, every member of the committee has, let's just say we were doing, say this is what the plan is in Act 73, every member of the committee has a major concern that they either can or can't get over. For some, it is choice. For some, it is the foundation formula is going to result in my district getting less money. For some, it is the potential of a larger board not well representing a smaller town, and more importantly, that smaller town's school. And I would say each one of these things applies to every member the committee. So we have to figure out, can the committee, can each individual committee member get over that, whatever it is that's holding them back? So, for example, in my district, the foundation formula, you know, without, especially without going to a larger district, it is going to squeeze my area significantly So I represent what is absent central, but that's county. Done the same one. They've yours, okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: This is a duckling. This is Senator Longstom. Well, we're

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: simply saying, and so, you know, we are discussing that, and we are trying to put other ideas on the table. I've told the committee, you you can't talk about, Hey, maybe we can do this, then we'll out, Can we do this? And put the idea on the table. So that's really where we're at. We're sort of

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: going through that. Senator Hashim's question. Thank you. Echo what Senator Weeks said regarding just the appreciation for the work and the time that you had to put in this. I mean, my what I'm still stuck on, which is something that I've said in the past is how we're drawing these lines and the analysis that we will have have to do for what should be every single district, every single proposed district, and really every single town. You know, what how do you what what analysis do you propose that we use to determine whether or not this is just for an example, just taking a random random place. What analysis should we do to determine whether or not limit should be in District 4 or District 27? And I mean, the question can be asked for every single town on this map that borders different districts. That's that's really where I'm getting stuck on the idea of making a map. I mean,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: yes. So making a map, we haven't, you know, our discussion right now with our committee hasn't gotten down to, should this line be here, or this line be over here? When we get there, it's gonna, you know, every one of those decisions would probably have to take into account many things, and then we gotta make the call. What's the word from the field? Does

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: have implications, I suppose, financially, or keeping within that goal of 2,000 to 4,000. If you move one here, you then bump something up, so it becomes too big to do. So the specific analysis, I would say, is probably a little more heart than head, or a little more hearing what you hear from the outside and making your best decision. Sort of mathematical or financial or whatnot, the financial modeling, once defined what that means, will largely be based on the number of districts, not on the individual characteristics of each district. So, yeah, where the lines get drawn is going to be a process of of listening to everybody and making the call.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: And as that process moves along, I think what I would be concerned about, yeah, as we get deeper into the feeds on boundaries is presumably there are going to be a few, if not a number of towns or post districts that have strong feelings about whatever the proposals are and how their potential opposition will be probably reasonably slow the process down. And so I guess less of a question, more of a comment. I get concerned about the opposition that we'll inevitably get for any proposed districts and that slowing down the analysis that we will have to do for all of the districts once we start getting into the weeds. Just a comment, but again, thank you for taking Hey, the step up of doing

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Siob, that's what we're here for. But if we want to do any kind of education transformation, as frankly somebody in the administration said to me years ago, oh, it's lose lose. It's politically a loser. You don't come out politically ahead or personally ahead because there's always the opposition. This is the political courage not. Can we overcome those fears and say that this is what's best for the state compared to

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: current status. Anyway, thanks. So Senator Williams and Senator Weeks. Thank you for this.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And I think this should have been predictable. And you started getting people in your committee who are representative of different districts that that this is on a smaller scale, but probably it's it's healthy that we do it at this level, but you all need to get the entire house involved in it because we're all affected by it. And the other thing is that we can't we need to somehow get out in front of the decline in student populations. And and I know that's almost impossible to predict, but I think that we're on the right track here, you're on the right track. We want to be part

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: of it. One of our troubles is that we have a, we declining enrollment has created a challenge at a far greater pace than we've been able to address it.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And that's gonna be what we've targeted, what we're gonna do.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I mean, you know, and you can look at yesterday's vote in Washington Central as a major challenge for the state to be able to address this. The school boards there said, If we close two schools, we can not only save money, but we can really increase opportunity for students. The town said, You're not gonna close our school. I'm not sure that moves the state forward.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And that's happening in our district too. Yeah. We've already had both last March. So, I think we all need to reflect on the fact that super our current superintendents are doing a great job taking care of the the geographic footprints and the the regions that they that they manage. I think, you know, we owe them a a debt of gratitude for that. For me, the whole exercise that we're trying that we're really talking about in Act 73 is is allowing superintendents in a in a different in a different configuration of superintendents to have a view of a bigger geographic area so we can begin to make we can begin to affect the quality of the education system, the schools that we have currently in our hands versus what we project for the future. I think it needs to be said that we're trying to affect the layer between below the AOE but above the principals. We're not we're not changing any of the principals jobs right now. They're the primary contact for parents, students, and such. We're taking, we're looking at the superintendent administrative level. And school work as well. And school work. That's significant, but that's a follow on from, anyway, you're absolutely right. So what I wanted to just highlight is that when we talk about scale and efficiency, are we really talking about the number of students or are we talking about the number of facilities, I. E. Principals? What's more important, whether that's we're talking about 2,000, 4,000 students, or whatever it is, five or 10 schools that the superintendent now has to have a bigger geographic vision. Is it really about students or is it really about schools?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I think it's about students in that when you sort of go past a certain amount, you feed more administrative. This is about, I mean, this is about, frankly, eliminating half the superintendents' central offices across the state. But as you grow bigger, you know, then all of a sudden you need an assistant superintendent for the elementary schools and an assistant superintendent for the secondary schools and then a superintendent on top of that. We want to avoid that if possible. I'd say, you're absolutely right. The work we are doing here in the legislature is about giving school boards and their employee superintendent the tools necessary to, know, blending a little bit more, have a bigger chessboard to address the challenges we're facing. It's not just declining enrollment, it's decrepit school buildings. As an example, in my district, we're gonna talk about closing the school in the town where I live, not because it's under enrolled, but because is it worth putting $20,000,000 into it when six miles down the road there's a school that can accommodate all of the kids.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Senator Ram Hinsdale.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Would echo some of what Senator Williams and Hashim said. I do think the House is the right place to do this because everyone has their Hamlet, you know, and they know who's gonna be mad about what we've heard about. Holly kind of goes on both. They split in half when they, you know, travel to to different places. And to senator Hashim's point, what I worry about then are the places that don't have as strong a political voice. And I could kind of draw a circle around Grand Aisle we've heard from, right, because they are gonna feel left out of something that doesn't give them the full geographic range they need. I think we should put something in the bill that just pushes Congress to give Cayman an interstate school district. You know, it's been probably a decade that things have been seeking that. And I think what you did in Chittenden County, it tracks and at the same time, South Burlington is in a really good position to share overhead and back end costs even if everyone's afraid to level up the salaries to South Burlington. So, you know, it's not a blanket criticism. It's just that there's a way we need to zoom in, but then zoom back out and make sure people feel heard because, I mean, up here they don't, they have one house member and one senator, none of whom serve necessarily on the committees of jurisdiction. So I just wanted maybe make that as a comment, but also what would be then the process that you're envisioning to really ensure they have onboard a clear voice?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Well, I guess, you know, we've been discussing this now for years. We went through with Act 46. We've gone through with this. This began last year. And I would say, you know, there's a counterbalance to of the challenges of House members representing a small number of people is that they feel it's harder to make the hard decision because you're so much closer connected kind of as a senator, you sort of always know you're gonna irritate 50% of the people.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Just 50 would be great.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Get on, Sergeant.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: So, I mean, the process, we haven't even said we'd like this or

[Catherine Del Neo (State Librarian and Commissioner, VT Department of Libraries)]: we'd Oh, okay.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: But, sure. Do we need public hearings? That sort of thing.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, I think we probably do.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: But at a certain point, this is the challenge, at a certain point, somebody or some group of people known as the House or the Senate has to make the hard decision. This is hard because everybody knows we need to have change. They just don't want the change to happen to them. On my back here. Did

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: they argue over who was district number one? Did he be number one? I see who got it. We can

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: be number one based

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: based on a favor, Steve.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Did you, were you able to, as you put the stuff together, leave districts intact that you've raised?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Yeah, that was, thank you for breaking that up. That was part of this. Leave most, almost all school districts intact. And so for example, a hard one is on Roxbury. You have to drive through Northfield to get you on Hilliard. It barely made sense during Act 46. Just from a mapping point of view, makes no sense. But again, from a sort of like, we started this process, they've all become accustomed to it point of view. Those are the technical corrections we need to make as we go along.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So one thing we should perhaps think about also as we go forward is the the sample that we talked about this morning to kind of complete the district where I live close to small schools and the reason they were able to do it is that the board had the authority. As the articles are pretty good put together and it somehow put together differently than in both parts of the state and they did a long process with with the communities the schools were located, actually the whole district, and then finally voted to close those two schools. It probably, as we just witnessed in the Whitesfield area, the valley there, given it was a veto power, it's maybe we need to think about whether that veto power relation continues exist. Yeah, mean, we're going

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: to talk tomorrow about the recommendation that came from the Commission on the Future of Public Education about the closure of small schools, which generally says the power rests with the board, but here's a process that could go through, that does not have the town veto, but does have room for input and for appeal. Yes. That is going to be one of the stickiest parts of this, yeah. That's, I guess, clean out across the city.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So you're gonna have a couple tough weeks ahead as you wrestle with this issue. I'm wondering We all are. Yeah, but we're focusing on you right now. In your committee, as the chair, are you going to approach this with some type of guiding principles, some goals, some priorities where you're like, okay, this is the number one priority. Gotta keep us in mind. Whatever we do, how have we talked about this? Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. What So, are gonna

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: the answer to that is yes, however, you know, we are having trouble agreeing on what those priorities should be.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Is that an early exercise, or is that a late exercise, where you determine the priorities after you've gone through the discussion process? Well, yeah, I

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: think I would say the priorities are always in the back. We don't have a whiteboard that the priority is listed. Agreeing to what's number one and what's number two is difficult. At this point, we were stuck just talking, and I'd really wanted to put something on the table that we'd You move it know, I think we are all in agreement in our community that two to four thousand is a value that we appreciate. That, you know, the SG only is still up for discussion. Know, wanting it to create the efficiencies and scale that we all wanna see is right up there, as a way of improving student opportunity, that's probably at the top of the list.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. I think part of the process that I put in my mind is, so I'll ask a question, as you were going through this process, did you find yourself saying, gee, if we had a school right there.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Oh, absolutely.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: But that's part of the process that eventually we're gonna have to replace some aging schools. Yes.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Yeah, mean, school construction aid is another discussion. I would say it is absolutely connected and required to be part of this. You want consensus in order to be on one thing, it is absolutely that school construction aid has to be connected to larger districts.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Because they're gonna come back to that if we unveil this, everybody says, well gee, this school is 35 years old, you know, it's in the range. We need to replace the furnaces and all that stuff. That's gonna be part

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: of the conversation. One of the challenges that has been in my mind about this is that we still are making life very easy for school boards. They are still the ones making the hard decisions. The one thing that I can think of that we can tangibly give them to make this work easier is school construction aid.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that. And the bottom line is this has got to be about education quality. So so this is this all fits together. Thank

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: you. Thank you. If you have any questions, really appreciate, the taking the time to get the information.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So while you're going through the process that you're going through prior crossover or wherever this ends up, what do you recommend we do? I mean, to the extent that you have time in your schedule, understanding that you're an afternoon only committee,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: there is, I would say there is no reason not to be on a parallel track, and, you know, so that this doesn't come to you, Oh, we just got it. But to be having, you know, your discussions as well. Very important. Okay. Yep.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: All right, thank you. Thank you.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We're gonna wish you all the time.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: I agree agree with that.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Would

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: necessitate. Said pretty well said

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member, Addison County)]: we should have a breast issue. I'd set the brain to get Okay. That's what we're gonna make sure it's called. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, nice. Thanks, everybody.