Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Your Okay,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: this is the Senate Education Committee on the afternoon of April 3. We're gonna start with a lot of things going on. A number topics today. We're gonna start though just stepping back a little bit and looking at literacy programs in Vermont schools, where we are, why we might have had some skill control over the last several years and what we're going to be corrected. But before we start, I know you know Senator Ram Hinsdale and Senator Hashim may be coming in in the middle seat there, but next to him. David Weeks, representing Rowan County. Great. Seth Bongartz from the Bennington Center District. Terry Williams also from Rowan. Steven Heffernan, Addison County District. So then for the record, you are?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: For the record, I'm Laurie Quinn, and I serve as President of Stern Center for Language and Learning. We're based in Williston.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, the order's yours.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Thank you. Happy to be with you this afternoon and appreciate the chance to think with you a little bit about the importance of reading in particular. Dear to our hearts at the Stern Center, though we cover other academic and social emotional areas as well, We've really been a reading focused organization in the nonprofit sector for a long time. Deep Roots here in Vermont, forty three years of helping kids and families. We plan several decades now of supporting our teachers to do the very best by their students, something I firmly believe every teacher wakes up in the morning, ready and hoping to do. It's a tough job and supporting them is an honor for us as it is to support our kids and families in learning. So I want to start by saying thank you for the work that this committee has already done around the science of reading. I think you've spent some time hearing about the reading crisis. You've learned some about how we arrived at a place where Vermont scores are, for a while, stuck and are now starting to slide in terms of performance on reading. I do believe there's a reading crisis and I believe it is a solvable crisis and that if we pull together, it is one of the best things we can do for the youngsters of Vermont to make sure that their reading is leading the nation and not in the mediocre middle. And so I start from the premise that all of us want that goal and have some thoughts for you about how we might accelerate the pace of getting there. My second appreciation to the committee is around specifically the complexity of what you are coping with at the moment. I know that you are in the thick of very challenging work on maps and funding and governance and all kinds of complex issues. On this Friday afternoon, I'm hoping to actually keep it a little simpler than that. I'm hoping to give you some clarity around a very specific lane of educational improvement, and that is really around teacher coaching, specific to reading.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So could you, maybe you're

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: gonna do this, can you talk about, you've recognized this slide, stuck it in a slide, can you talk about that, what you think is going on, the setup that you're remedying. Sure, yeah, happy to. For

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: a long time now, we have been trying to figure out what works with the majority of students when it comes to reading instruction. We have, in the roughest of numbers, about a third of our kids are going to learn to read pretty effortlessly. Almost any teaching method is going to still result in kids getting the skills that they need, figuring it out. Was I lucky I was one of those kids, so I know what that felt like. It's a great feeling to read like this. About another third are gonna really struggle and are gonna need some kind of specific instruction that is in the early grades, phonics based, that really, really helps them map the brain pathways between sounds of letters and the words on a page. Figure those two are the two extremes, and then in the middle we've got about another third that really benefit from the specific instruction, but can pick it up a little more quickly. Yes, ask you, do we step away from phonics for

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: a while and realize that it actually is very important so we lean back for phonics?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: That is a piece of the puzzle, yes. For approximately twenty years, give or take, curricula were much more focused on the joy of reading, the exposure to print, and those things are incredibly important. But without a solid foundation in decoding through phonics, you don't get to the joy of reading because you're not reading. Yes, phonics Very plays a critical necessary, not the total picture. Other initial comments or questions? Yes, sir.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Carl, is that part of proficiency based learning?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Is reading or phonics part

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of it?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Going away from the phonics.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: That's a good question. I think that they were correlated in time, but I don't know of any direct relationship between the two. Okay. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we there was a time not too long ago when our and and by the way, I I'm well aware the test scores built by a long shot film of that story. Of course. But we're our test scores were in a good place and we were doing well with reading and bad about your hair for reading or literacy, but then they started to slide. I'm really interested in what precipitated that slide. By the way, I just want to state for the record, and perhaps, at least for my part, when we ask these questions, I'm with you. I know that every teacher gets up, granted that I don't want this to have a process because that's not the point. The point is systemic, what's happening systemically. That's what we need to get at, I think you're, but what, you know, where does that, where'd that come from?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Experts in the research will tell you that the combination of factors that got us into this mess are exactly as you say, it's a system. Take from the beginning the training of teachers through our post secondary system. I worked in higher education for a long time. I know how slowly things change in higher education. I know that when new research came along, this would have been, gosh, forty years ago now, give or take, that began to show how the reading brain actually worked, what's actually happening up there in our synapses when we are learning to read, that that research was extraordinarily slow to be brought into our colleges of education. And the slowness with which that learning about the reading brain actually made it into classrooms was a huge contributing factor to the decline in reading scores. We also, in education, as you know, there are movements and trends, and there was a trend toward what's known as whole language, which then became balanced literacy. These are approaches that, in the case of balanced literacy, try to combine both what we've learned from the study of science and other science reading practices and practices that were more popular in, let's say, the 60s and the 70s, when teachers were taking a different approach to the teaching of reading. Phonics was perceived as too drill based, and I understand that for teeth. But it can be extraordinarily frustrating for a student to be encouraged to read whole words and to focus on comprehension when they can't sound out those words. At the Stern Center, we have a strong belief that the earlier we can get that decoding down for kids, the more likely they will be to become readers, to enjoy reading, to wanna read more. Whether they're reading about science or sports or whatever they're interested in, they need that foundation. So, make no apology for believing in that science that says you do have to start with engaging students in the sound sports and helping them make sense of the code of reading. So you're back using the same phonics in this case? Yes. Yeah. Yes. But phonics is one piece of several components in reading that reinforce each other. So yes, you've gotta have that clear decoding and the ability to connect the sounds to the letters, the letters to the words, the words to the sentences. You also want awareness of the sounds playing. We're the CERT Center for Language Alerting because the processes of understanding language, whether it's oral or written, those processes are connected. There's been a lot in the news lately about whether dyslexia as a learning disability pulls people back. Sometimes it does. But one of the things we also know is that dyslexic learners, because they are so capable at interpreting everything else around the sounds of language, can be some of the most creative entrepreneurial thinkers around. So dyslexia, some people think of it as a superpower. We also see a lot of students at the Stern Center for whom it has become a huge barrier to success in school. And we go back to those phonics basics. We go back to let's get the code down, let's build the muscle of interpreting the words, so that these extraordinary minds can do what they're supposed to do in the world and not be held up by feeling like they're less than. When you think about that being as many as up to a third of our kids, I think that also helps explain those numbers.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I'm on

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Yeah. I think it's become more, good for you for saying so, it's become more acceptable to acknowledge that not everybody reads at the snap of our fingers. And so what brings me here today is to underline for you the incredible power that we have when we support teachers in gaining this knowledge. They are the best and most directed, right? The road to reading improvement is right through their classrooms. They can make or break a big initiative. And so I appreciate what you said, Senator, about starting with the promise to support your teachers. It's a hard job. There's a lot going on with our kids. If we equip teachers with the kind of coaching that actually changes practice in their classroom, I believe we can turn things around for more kids more quickly. What that looks like is practitioner led and frontline led coaching. A lot out there right now about professional development for teachers that I think is capitalizing on the trend around coaching being sort of new in school and really maybe mislabeling Sort of standard professional development where you share the content, hope people use it, and call it a day, and that doesn't work. We know that what works when you are a professional trying to learn how to change your day to day, practice, build a muscle. It's called coaching for a reason. When we coach in athletics, we coach the specific athlete in the specific sport. We do reps, we make sure that that muscle memory is there. Our teachers need the same thing. And I think we can really harness that drive that they have to get it right for every child if we can provide that kind of coaching as part of our performance.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That sounds like after the fact, or at least in part after the fact, is there? Same. Would you say that the only issue is in regard to teachers and being ready to teach is the training in the first instance?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Absolutely, I mean of course if we can get upstream through the training programs we're gonna be in a better spot.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And what's happening there?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: I can speak a little bit to it. I have been very encouraged to take just one example from our higher ed institutions, very encouraged by University of Vermont's increasing openness to the research on reading that the Stern Center has espoused since our founding back in 'eighty three. Under A. H. Sheppard's leadership as dean, we have seen a different perspective come into the curriculum. But as I said earlier, higher ed tends to change very slowly, and so really looking at the field today and beginning where we are with all of the teachers out there in classrooms, I think requires some support that is kind of a just in time model that says, Maybe you've been teaching for twenty years and you're just starting to figure out how the science of reading actually works with your students. We hear that regularly from teachers at the Start Center. It's pretty incredible how many times my team hears, I can't believe I didn't know this. I can't believe I didn't get this in my training.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So how do we get what you're talking about into schools across Vermont, a lot of schools?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Yeah, it's happening and it's happening school by school. We take the approach of when a school comes to the Stern Center and wants to work on reading, we have a pretty in-depth conversation about where are your teachers now, what does your data say, What's the level of openness excitement about taking this on? Bottom line is when a school decides collectively, from the teachers on up, we're gonna change reading scores, that's the dream scenario. Then we can tap into that and give them all the tools and information that they need. It's trickier when it's a top down mandate. Just it's, as I said, it's frontline led change at its best.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And so you go into schools? We do. We do. I do, Dan.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: We do. We work with customized contracts for professional development for teacher cohorts. For example, we've done quite a bit of work in Madison Northwest and worked with superintendent, principal, and teacher leaders there to focus in on the early grades in elementary to really get that foundation strengthened. I've doing that

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: work

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: for approximately four years now through one of the teacher training areas at the Start Center.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we call you in school called to begin? Yes. It's usually the early bed, obviously. What's the timeline? What's the timeline? How long are you gonna be there? How long does this go?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Depends on where they start, of course, but usually we look for at least half a school year of commitment. That's kind of the baseline. Can't do much in less time than that with everything else that's bearing down on educators and school leaders. But with regular weekly, biweekly coaching, we do start to see instructional change pretty quickly. After class, sometimes dorm class, how's that work? This is where the customization's really important. It depends on the school. Some schools will say to us, We want a fit decision school day. Our biggest challenge is getting subs in order to make that happen. Others will say we got a designated time every Tuesday after school, right? So it's

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: pulling the teachers into a setting like this, sit down training. You don't do it in front of the students. It's more one on how many teachers that you're gonna be dealing with.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: We've seen good success with what we call the small group coaching model. Usually that's three to five teachers who have a similar, who are coming at it from a similar perspective. It might be three kindergarten teachers are coming together to talk specifically about what are we teaching right now, how might it change based on what we're learning about the science of breeding, what does our data in the first grade say? If our data in the first grade says, actually we're doing okay in kindergarten, it's really in second grade that things are starting to fall apart for our kids, then we might target there. That customization is really important because I think there's a lot of trust in the coaching relationship. You're asking folks who are comfortable with a particular way of approaching that material to look at doing something a little different, to see a different result. In asking that, we gotta build trust first. I don't know where they're coming in. The big question. Yes. How much does it cost? Well, it depends on the contract.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, I'll give us a, I want you to come in and do four features for six months. Just a rough idea. I'm not gonna

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: hold you to anything, but Sure.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: To know roughly what, you know, as a school or municipality wants to or state says, hey, this is very important. We wanna start an implement. Yes.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: What's gonna cost this? Well, I'll give you an idea of how it priced out in our largest initiative, most recently. So, back in the 2024, the Agency of Education selected the Stern Center to deliver the first portion, what turned out to be the first portion, of the Reed Vermont Initiative. We put together a proposal that was during the fifteen months, I believe it was, of that contract, that was a series of workshops, developing a model for helping with assessment of outcomes, and a very strong piece that was coaching. That was about a 900,000 contract over the entire fifteen months to cover up to 130 educators. In that model, all 130 would receive the small group coaching that I'm speaking of. And so that gives you a sense, just a rough sense of the scale. What was that amount again? It was, so the total contract was about 900,000. The coaching portion, I wanna say it was in the 600 ks range. And that was for, you know, about a school year and a half. And do we start seeing our reading levels decrease? Well, we engaged in that contract from October '4 through the March, at which point we received notice from the federal DOE and Secretary for the demand that the funds were pulled back, right? So that was the now all pause letter. We did not Our timeline in the agencies were different for getting off the blocks with the coaching. So we began actually in the fall with our workshop series and it wasn't until February '5 that we got into the coaching component with teachers. So we were about six weeks into that when the world stopped with that funding. The reception there now was pretty good from the future. Yes, Schools were excited. It was largely an opt in model, so there was interest from the field. We saw good commitment to the coaching and good engagement with it for the short time we were able to do it. And we used a combination of virtual learning and visits on-site, so. To a

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: number of schools and us. 130. It's 130. Each was, you went to a number

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

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: number of schools, exactly right, yeah. Senator

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So I think about three years ago, we had a bill in this committee that's enhancing reading literacy. I think it was senator. Didn't that pass? Yep. And we talked about modules that were gonna be available at AOE. Did you contract with AOE?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: We were not the contractor for those for Okay. Aesthetic

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So could you provide that?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Yes, we do work like that. Good. Yes. And that was designed to be a self paced learning process. Right. And while that has some real value in helping everybody get to baseline understanding, It is not, in my view, as effective, but would it actually change what happens when the classroom door is closed as it is to build a educator coaching model. Makes sense.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So, yeah, Doctor. Bluntett, it's good testimony. Got two questions. First, going back to Senator Williams' point, can you characterize your relationship with AOE as literacy experts? You know, they have literacy experts. You're a literacy expert at the you know, the government community of others. What's the relationship? Is there a friction between you guys and AOE or how would you characterize it?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Traditionally, the relationship between the Stern Center and the agency has honestly been pretty minimal, and so the contract that we So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it's not like,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: or a good thing?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: I don't know. I guess I'm sort of agnostic on it. I think when the state got to the point of, like so many states did in the last few years, of kind of facing these reading scores and trying to figure out how to tackle them together, I was, personally, I've been at the Stern Center leading it for five years, so my tenure's not nearly as long as my predecessors. I followed a founder. But I know that there was talk over those decades of really wanting to be part of that conversation about systemic level initiatives at the state. But as you know, we have such a strong tradition of local control that I think for the starter center, the most effective way to do this work has really been to partner directly with schools

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: and that

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: frontline led work has proven to be the most effective in our experience. With that said, we had a good working relationship with the agency during the time of this contract. We were excited to help our state in this way and we had the same goals around science of reading based practices. And there were a bunch of factors that undermined our ability to do that work in a sustained way, and that was disappointing for sure, but the work continues with ourselves.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, second question. I have a frustration with this building in that everybody that comes in is bright. Okay? So my question is, how do we know where the right path is? And my real question is how they're currently, because I do believe every teacher, every profession comes into work, they can do the right thing for the good of the group or what have you company. Are there different camps now on literacy approaches that conflict with where the Stern Center is? How do how do we we as non professionals in the literacy world or what have you, how do we adjudicate on who's got the right concept?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Short answer, yes. There remain different camps. I would describe us as in the middle of a pretty strong pendulum swing toward science and reading based practices. But what happens in a trend swing like that, of course, is that people sort of figure out what the right thing to say is at this time and so they talk in those terms. My contention is that if you really want to change practice, you've got to get in there behind the classroom door, win the trust of teachers and put these practices into play every day in classrooms because otherwise we'll be making ourselves feel better that we are now embracing the science of greening. But will we actually be doing it with every kid? That's my concern, and I think that educator coaching of the sort that I've described to you today is the secret sauce to making that change happen. It's not easy, don't get me wrong, but without it, you can't see the kind of changes that you all have been reaching for.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Just as a follow-up, guess. So Senator Williams alluded to a bill that came through a couple years ago on Liberty City. I think last year we had a bill on, it's gotta be evaluated, you know, testing, more of a testing to make sure that, you know, early, like, grade one, two, three, something in that word, that that we're catching the kids. So if they need any assistance as you were referring to

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: at the

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: story, we catch them early. Were those good approaches? Did we miss something? Do they need to be massaged?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Those were indeed good approaches, and they to me represent the beginning of a science breeding initiative here in Vermont, like the one that has been so successful over now twenty years in Mississippi, where they've really changed the data. Okay. Over and over again, in both the popular press accounts of that transformation in Mississippi and in the research literature on what they did and how they did it, educator coaching comes up again and again. Trust based support for teachers, getting in the trenches with them, helping them make choices about what the reading lesson looks like, is consistently cited as one of the most critical levers to that change. So that's what brings me here today, is to really say you're dealing with a lot, there's an enormous mouse whirling, and in everything if you ask what is going to move those outcomes, I just say don't forget coaching for our teachers and recognizing that the gaps in their knowledge are part of how we got here, and we work with a lot of great teachers to say, Yeah, I do have some gaps in this knowledge. I wanna work on them. You know? How do I get there? So that's, to me, that's great role modeling for all students to have a teacher who says, I'm still learning.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So under the OCs concept or CSAs, now that you, what you provided, be like another tool in the toolkit for cooperative education services.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: That's right, and we worked with, we worked in New York State with some of their VOCES model. The Stern Center's in more than 35 states in a typical year, and so we see lots of different models of teacher professional learning, depending on the state structure.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Dwight, you get hired by the SBU level? Typically, yes, yes. And so you work only with, you work with teachers?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: In our work at the Stern Center, we work direct to students. We In fact, made you a little one pager which you have in the materials that just summarizes my focus today is on professional learning for teachers, which is a very big part of what we do. But I didn't want to leave out the work that we've done now considerations with individual kids and their families.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's interesting. Since we have the recognition that we need to do intervention with children, and you're now you're talking about actually neurofemoral features. Yeah. So it's on both both levels. Yeah. Still in and around, pretty critical, I'll say this, it hasn't quite helped us get our finger on that if we were doing well fifteen years ago, why are we not? Why are we not now? I think you touched on the right thing, but you talked about so teachers are being trained in all language. Correct. Okay. That's really your answer. Is that correct?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: That's primary driver, yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. That's primary driver, for sure. And as a result of that, kids were working for kind of sound outwards. Correct. And then got frustrated, good grief, and good grief. Yeah. Lost some it.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Blossom of the ground. And I would say that good intentions, right? Let's take a little of the old way and a little of this new way and mix them together. That's sort of how we got balanced literacy and honestly, that's more of a jumble. It confuses more teachers and more children than it actually helps. And so making the embrace of verge of line way of teaching, making that really thorough, I think has to be a part of the conversation of reading improvement. Now, that your personal thought, or that is the professional thought that it's a general It's both. It's both. You'll see a lot in the education literature that talks about how balanced literacy was a kind of attempt to strike a compromise between these two trends in the field, these two, it's called the reading wars, regrettably. But, you know, I don't wanna fight a war. I just wanna help some kids. So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Are you, so I sometimes wonder, you know, I'm a little slow to hear a lot, but you know, you're kind of offering a service. Do you have a specific ask?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: I don't have a specific ask today, other than that as you navigate all of the complexity that's being thrown at you as the education committee. Here's one more. Here's one more. I'm here with one more, but I am here to implore you to keep those outcomes front and center in every decision. There are so many that are about that big picture of the maps and the funds and always behind every one of those decisions, right? There's a group of kids in a classroom and there's a teacher trying to do right. This DERM Center is really committed to helping in that work in any way that we can and we are espousing teacher coaching as essential in that. To the extent I haven't asked, please don't forget. Those outcomes in that teacher coaching are gonna help the kids in our state what

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: many things would do. So I see a head up from Senator Rutland. Hi.

[Speaker 0]: Shoot. Let me I'm on two different screens, so hold on.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. Anymore. I had my computer going in one room, and I was on my phone in another room. So I just wanted to start with a comment. Know, Laurie actually really helped me just over lunch, having a one year old boy and a three year old girl. I was able to say, somewhat intimately, just over conversation about how coaching works, that I feel like it was easier to help my daughter with literacy. She thinks a lot like me. She has a long attention span. She can sit and read a book. My 18 old son can't do that. You know, I felt like, oh, God, I'm not reading to him as much because he won't sit with me and read a book. Laurie gave me some tips about using tactile engagement and the sound that things make and having a hands on approach to literacy. That was not true for me as a kid in an Indian household either, sitting and learning cursive and having

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: to sit still for a

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: long time. And so, you know, just having that tool as a parent too was really valuable. And I think sometimes when you're coaching teachers, they're also able to coach parents too. I've had a lot of conversations in the early childhood spaces where we're having our kids or thinking about having our kids about the latest thoughts around literacy and different ways of learning. And it's, you know, I can already see a difference in a couple weeks with my son. So I guess that's just to say, you know, I think people hit on some things that, you know, Laurie, I just want you to know, I didn't plant anybody. The Agency of Education is asking us to invest more in Reed Vermont, and I thought it was really important that people hear from a really successful organization that was working with the agency early on. But when we have AOE back in, I'd love to talk to them about who have they hired now to continue with Read Vermont? Is it all in house? Have they hired an outside of state consultant? You know, and really, I didn't feel qualified to ask them how their program is doing until I talked to somebody like Lori. So, you know, I'm newer to the committee and it just felt really important to understand the science of literacy and know that it's a mix of things because kids are all really, really different.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Thank you for that. I'm happy to hear that your son is playing with language sounds. If you came to some of the classrooms where we're working, would see students clapping out the syllables of It's a great way for little ones to learn and that multi sensory approach where little kids want to play and we want them to play. That's how they learn and understand the world. They can play with language sounds. We've done some really fun programs with Head Start. Capstone Head Start did a partnership with us recently and watching those littlest kids discover language is fantastic. Not only because it's fun to watch them discover language, but because you know you're building the foundation that when you first put a book in front of that little kid in kindergarten, they're actually gonna be reading ready. They're gonna know how language works because they'll play with it. It made sense of it that way.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So since we have you here, Anwe, are you doing any work with the agency at this point for you?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: At this moment, no.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Just with the school districts.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: That's right, and a little bit with, yes, direct to schools is the work right now, and a little bit with libraries as well. Did a presentation for the state library to help introduce Science of Reading Aligned, Story Hour, that sort of thing, and make sure that families that were using their community libraries also had awareness of these kind of core concepts of the Science of Reading.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Been helpful. So you're working with pre K teachers as well?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Yes. I see a lot. That project with Capstone Head Start, we have now done two years and are in the works for a third. We just received some private funding to help us get the third year done.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So how many people are at the service agency?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: My team is just under 80 people, give or take. Many part time. About 40 of us are full time. People work for what? No. After the pandemic, our organization really became a hybrid workforce. While we have a building in Williston where we see kids and do a little bit of training, the vast majority of what we do is either virtual or out in the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: field when it comes to teaching. Do you work only at Vermont? No.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Complete year we worked with 155 Vermont schools, about 1,100 Vermont teachers out of the 2,200 or so teachers that we worked with. Still by far our deepest roots here in Vermont, but some brands out there with other states. A few other countries do.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, just to ask a question that's kind of asked before, but if you could wiggle on, who else would you be doing as a committee? What would you

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: say if you'd waved the wand?

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Think that if you are putting funding toward educator coaching in particular, I hope that what I've shared with you today about the critical nature of meeting teachers where they are and ensuring that whatever model you use, they are driving the change. You can require that the professional development happen, but the specifics of how it happens, I believe needs to be in the hands of teachers in order for it to stick. High end? That's it. You can change the world of buy in.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Anybody? This was, this was helpful.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Great, my pleasure. Thanks for the time. Thank you for your time. And happy to help in any way, I'll go. Thanks, Marie. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thanks for coming in. So we're gonna we're trying to get you out over here. Right? So

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. He should be available.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. It has. So we our so we're just so that people our section of the gift of the building space is understanding. It was gonna cut sentience with such a body. We all have it. Aye. Census grant? Yeah, which is a big section of

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: the bill if you'd like. Oh, it's for a special education.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, the census grant is such a special language. And I think they're just being in the ways that setting the how how the grant gets sent. It's not like what's the base amount that time to be

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: a button.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I read it.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Them I believe Jahna is joining. Oh, okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Right. They'd be scared. She might need a room already. You're. Yeah. K. I saw that. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: John. Afternoon, John.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Hello. How's it going?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're fine. We're in the sky.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I think we all are. Yeah.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sorry. Sorry. I'm not there. I'm feeling a little unwell. Yeah.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, senator Ram Hinsdale is home as well, for the same reason. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Brian Child in the background. Yep.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not envious. I'm stuck.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we don't normally get the yield bill, but we did the share I think because of section five as I understand it. But since we have you, probably doesn't work for us to gain a little bit of understanding of the first several sections and really focus your weight on section five.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sure.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And we're gonna do this in reverse because we have Representative Kornheiser coming after you to introduce Since you're first, just give us a little, take us in this however you want to, but we all have hard copies of the bill. Sure.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I will screen share just so we're all looking at the same thing, but feel free Actually,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: 700 Vidsville does not have a hard copy. Perfect.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, love that screen share.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So John Gray, Office of Letterford Council. I'm gonna pull up h nine forty nine, which is the yield bill. I will call out that sometimes the yield bill is of varying length. Right? Sometimes it just sets out the yields, so which are required yearly bill setting the yields to establish the property tax rates. But in certain other years, various other mechanisms are included. Sometimes it's used as a larger vehicle for education, finance related matters. In this case, it's the yields setting plus a couple of technical provisions, including the section five that you had called out. So I'm just gonna walk through section by section if that is okay. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: That's good.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So section one is setting the yields themselves, and I will just note that it and section two can be thought of as linked together because the yields and nonhomestead rate that you're gonna see here are reflective of reserving a particular amount of general fund money, which is addressed in section two. So section one itself sets the property dollar equivalent yield, the income dollar equivalent yield, and the non homestead property tax rate. I think that Julia is likely to be there shortly and can speak to the actual figures themselves. But just as high level background on what this does, the House Ways and Means Committee was debating different options for buying down taxes or not and over different time frames. The figures that you see reflected in the yields and non homestead rate here, reflect applying half of a total $104,900,000 general fund transfer, half of that money to the f y 20 '7 taxes, and so that's what's reflected in the yields here. And the other half is reserved in section two. So that's eye level what's happening in sections one and two, and they these are the yields that are then used to determine folks' homestead property tax rates and their property tax credits. So what you see here, property dollar equivalent yield of 9,170, income yield of 12,576, and a non homestead rate of 1.698. Section two is the reserve that I spoke to. So it takes half of that 104,900,000.0, and it says that in fiscal year 2027, 52,450,000 shall be reserved in the Ed Fund to offset education property tax rate increases in f y twenty eight. So that's the subsequent year's setting of the yields. And before I jump to the next sentence, you'll recall that each year we receive the December 1 letter from the commissioner, and that December 1 letter is reflective of estimates of budgets that are coming in. Obviously, it's relatively early, but it's also reflective of a number of assumptions that the commissioner makes when determining the yield recommendation. And so what the second sentence is saying is that when the commissioner does the December 1 letter, this upcoming December, they need to account for that reserved 52,450,000.00, which would be applied to FY 28 taxes. So on lines 18 through 21, the commissioner of taxes shall assume that the 52,450,000.00 reserved under the section is unreserved and unallocated and applies to the calculation of the FY '28 yields and non homestead rate when making the recommendation required pursuant to the title 32 statute that describes the December 1 letter. The reserve created under this section shall be considered an authorized use of Ed Fund monies pursuant to the Ed Fund statute 16 VSA forty twenty five. So sections one and two are your classic yield pieces. In some years, you don't have a section two. You only need the section two if you're actually creating a reserve right. So that's what's happening here is you have yields, non homestead rate reflective of using half of that 104,900,000.0 and then reserving the remainder for following year property taxes. Yes. Is it okay if I go to section three or are there questions I I can't necessarily see very

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: think we're good for section three.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section three is truly a technical fix. This is related to the application of the statewide adjustment, which just for context, you'll recall that the statewide adjustment is something that was developed in recent years, and in part it was trying to address the issue that when folks receive the presentation of their property tax bills, they see a rate pre CLA, and then they see a post CLA rate, and they end up attributing a lot of the blame for the changes or increases in their rate to the CLA. To avoid that kind of discrepancy, The statewide adjustment is meant to be a mathematically neutral tool. It is not intended to change anyone's taxes, but it affects the presentation of your tax bill, basically. And the consequence is that it produces a free CLA rate because the statewide adjustment is built into the yield that is closer to a to the post CLA rate. And so there's less variation in a taxpayer's tax bill that is attributable to the CLA. It's really truly intended for presentation purposes, and if it starts to have a mathematically substantial effect, you know that there's an issue. And so that's what led to this. This is an amendment to 32 VSA sixty sixty one, which is from your chapter that is covering the property tax credit. And I don't know if it's interesting to describe the math at all behind this, but basically, in introducing the statewide adjustment throughout the statutes, pieces were handled that addressed netting out the statewide adjustment application as applied to the yield and the property side of the equation, but they did not apply to the income side of the equation, and the consequence was that the property tax credits were are inaccurate. They're not reflecting the right relationship between the property yield and the income yield. And so what these measures do high level is they basically insulate. They wall off the property tax credit chapter from anything related to the statewide adjustment. And the way that they do that is by basically creating a definition of the statewide education tax rate for the property tax credit chapter that returns you to the pre statewide adjustment yield. Again, this is not a change in anyone's taxes. This is addressing the technical problem that resulted from introduction of the statewide adjustment, which is intended to be mathematically neutral. Perfect.

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

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section four. You may have seen measures like this before in sort of miscellaneous tax bills and the like. And in fact, there was an extremely similar measure last year for the city of Barrie. This is an Ed Fund refund to the city of Barrie TIF district because they overpaid from their TIF increment in FY twenty one through '24. The genesis of this is that there was an error in the software that the city uses, and it over calculated the increment that needed to be sent to the Ed Fund. So this is compensating the city for that overpayment. And what you see is that it not withstands the Ed Fund statute to ensure that you don't trigger the poison pill. And it appropriates about a 150 k from the Ed Fund to the Department of Taxes in f y twenty seven to pay to the city of Barrie to compensate them for overpayments of that Ed property tax in f y's twenty one through '24. They the measure that you may be familiar with, if you recall this at all, is that we had the exact same section in last year or the preceding year's bill, but it addressed the overpayment from fiscal years 2016 through 2020. So this was an ongoing software issue, And the testimony that I have heard, although I was not part of it, is that that software issue has been fixed and that you should not expect to continue to receive these requests from the city of Barrie.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Hey, John. I got a question.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Software, is that, something generated by the state for the tip, or is that something that is commercially purchased?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hold on just a second. I do not I don't think it is state software. I think it is through the New England Municipal Resource Center. I don't think it is through the state, but there might be others who know better. But I I don't think that is state software. I think it's through the new New England Municipal Resource Center. But I would double check that. That's just a quick Google pulling up.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So this this tip is not unique to Vermont. It's, something that's common nationwide or

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, tips tips are used all throughout the the country. Yes.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So Vermont doesn't recommend a particular software for tips for Vermont municipalities?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know of any specific one, but, again, that would be a little bit outside of my wheelhouse. It might be helpful to talk to VFC or maybe even the city of Barrie just to hear about their experiences with the software and if they were recommended the software or if it's sort of a standard. I'm guessing that it's a standard one folks use, but I I just don't know.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Mhmm. On the section five.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. So section five, as you were discussing, I think this is the reason that it landed here. Again, this is another technical fix, but it's gonna look a lot more substantive than that. This is touching your special education chapter of title 16, and it's dealing with the census block grant. And the problem that it is trying to solve, before I jump into the text itself, is that years ago, the census grant amount was set, I wanna say back in, I mean, it's set many times, but I wanna say back in 2019, legislation was passed. And it basically anticipated districts were receiving different special education amounts, and it was forecasting into the future what the uniform base amount, so the per pupil amount for determining these grants would be. And it was on the basis of prior year appropriations plus inflation plus a number of things. And so it was forecasting into the future what the uniform face amount should be for grants. At that point, school districts were paying different amounts in these census grants. And so at the time when this was done, and I think it was just an oversight in the drafting, they did not build in inflation from f y twenty seven forward. It had inflation for f y's '19 through '26, but nothing going forward. And so before I jump to the text, just to frame what's happening, you're gonna see a ton of struck text because this is a section that spells out transitional measures. It's gonna make more sense once you see the text. But all that's happening here is the house codified what the AOE forecasted figure should be for f y twenty seven, and then it built in an inflator moving forward to ensure that your census grants are reflective of increasing costs as measured in that inflator. So if, again, this is a technical correction to an oversight to not have an inflator in the census grant. The first pieces here, this is just stylistic updates from our drafting operations staff, so no change here. I can you know, this is giving you student counts supervisory unions. This is the high level way to think of the concepts embraced here. And the real piece that we're talking about, the change that's happening is here on page four, and it's changing the definition of uniform base amount, which again is basically what you can think of as the per pupil amount that's gonna be multiplied by an SU's average daily membership to produce their overall census grant. And so if you look at the struck language, like if you think about what existing law is, which is what is reflected in the struck language, you can see all of these transitionary measures. Right? It's an amount determined by dividing the average appropriation over a given number of years, increasing by an annual inflation change in certain specific fiscal years, and then giving you a different inflator in the following years. It's quite messy to read. I will say that this is something where had I relied exclusively on the logic of the text, I would not have arrived at the correct figure. But this was a happy instance of a bill section where Ledge Council, Joint Fiscal Office, and the Agency of Education got together and came to see what the proper number is. So I would say this was a good example of all staff kind of getting together to figure out what the appropriate number is. And so the language of this truck is related to these transitionary measures. Obviously, you don't need to call out anymore what the appropriate number would be in these fiscal years because we're now past them. And it's just codifying outright the $2,350 figure, which is the per pupil. That's your uniform base amount for f y twenty seven, I e, the upcoming budget year. The piece that I do wanna call out sort of a policy choice here and explain a little bit background on is the choice of inflator. You can apply all kinds of different inflators. Right? And you may recall that there were discussions related to inflators in act 73. Typically, we see in the title 16 context for education using annual changes in NIFA. What is proposed here as an attempt to reduce volatility is a three year rolling average annual change in NIFA. So that's what you see on lines 16 and onward. The uniform base amount shall be adjusted for inflation each fiscal year beginning in FY '28 because you already have your FY '27 figure. So beginning in FY '28, that amount is adjusted by taking the preceding year's uniform base amount. So it's accumulating over time by the most recent three year average annual percentage change in NIFA, and it uses the standard published index that we use in this context, the implicit price deflator for state and local government consumption expenditures and gross investment, and then round upward to the nearest whole dollar amount. So that's really what the bill is doing. It's just adding an inflator, but it looks much more complicated. If you wanna look at the context of the statute itself, you can see that this is the state committing to satisfying its special education maintenance and fiscal support requirements, and it's saying each supervisory union shall receive that census grant each fiscal year to support the provision of these services to students on an individualized education program, use that funding and other available sources to provide special ed services to students in accordance with these IEPs as mandated under federal law. They may use these to support the delivery of comprehensive system of educational services, but shall not use them in a manner that abrogates the SU's responsibility to provide special ed services to students in accordance with their IEPs if mandated under federal law. I frankly can't speak at all to the education policy, but this is the context of the census grant. My role in this was really correcting the inflator and, again, striking all of the transitionary language. We don't need to speak to what happens in FY '23 anymore. Just like this call out here is reflecting what was envisioned at the time of enactment, that from FY '27 onward, you would have this very clean statute. And that's what you will have if you imagine getting rid of all the struct text. You'll have a much simpler statute that just says in the subsection c, the amount of the census grant for a supervisory union shall be that uniform base amount, twenty three fifty as adjusted for inflation. It's multiplied by the supervisory union's long term membership and, again, striking more transitionary measures here. Lastly, the effective date is 07/01/2026, but I'm happy to scroll back up to section five if you had questions on this.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Senator Hashim. Thanks,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: John. I I guess this goes section five. Does this in any way address concerns that we've heard about the maintenance of efforts issue and the gap in funding that a number of schools or a number of districts will see as a result of the foundation point of view?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I I don't fully know the answer to that, but my answer would be I would assume not because this is really intended as a technical fix to a lack of an inflator. And I'm just guessing that those conversations are not about the absence of an inflator, but I'm sure that there might be others who could speak to that.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah. Thank you.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So this doesn't really incentivize any control? Yeah.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This reflects existing practice for census grants and truly just ensures that you don't have a stagnant number beginning in FY twenty seven. That that's all. Because up to this point, you've had an inflator built in. So each year, that census grant amount is growing, and everyone's being every supervisory union is being brought to the uniform base amount. And now that you've arrived at the uniform base amount, just to ensure that it's not stagnant and keeps pace with inflation, however you might measure that, that's really all that this addresses is it doesn't change anything about current practice. It just changes the dollar figure that flows with the census grant to ensure that it tries to keep pace with inflation.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And it's it's automatic instead of being reviewed annually?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. And you can think of that as consistent with the way that it was done before. Right? If you if we scroll through the section, for instance, you can see all of the inflation measures that were built in for each of these pieces. Now it's true that someone has to actually go in and look and calculate the percentage difference, the relative change in the index. So you check it on a given date, and you check it on another date, and you compare the difference between those two dates to basically determine a percentage change in the index. And then you reflect that growth, assuming that it is growth, in the change in the census grant. So there is a human element involved, but this is continuing essentially a practice that was already built into statute, but for whatever reason, didn't contemplate inflating moving from FY '27 forward.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So we don't have any any idea how much this is gonna cost at the street I

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I think that Julia may have information on this, and I expect that what you will hear, not to steal her thunder, is that this is consistent with what the AOE was forecasting for these costs this year. I will stop speaking for her and let that come out on

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: its own.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: John, thank you. If you could stay on it might be a good idea just to Oh, sure.

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Julia is in the room, and is ready to go up and take the seat. We hope you feel

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

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Good afternoon. Julie Richter joining the Zoom now. I did send Daphne a couple of links or a couple of documents right before coming down here. So do you want me to go ahead and share them or do

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: want me to just

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: talk through them? What makes the most sense?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Or do

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: want me to just answer questions?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, only reason to share them is because the Neuron Proteinstone doesn't have Actually, none of us have those failures. Yeah, go ahead, Cheryl.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay, so there's two documents. One is a fiscal note for the yield bill, the other is the Education Fund Outlook. I'll go ahead and share the fiscal note. And before I do that, I will just say sort of the two differences are that the fiscal note is walking through section by section, the estimated fiscal impact of each section, the education fund outlook, I don't know if I presented it here this year, but I know I have in the past in this committee. It's essentially a snapshot, kind of like an operating statement, but not technically an operating statement of the Education Fund. So it lays out the revenues, the appropriations, the reserves, etcetera. And that's what finance and what the needs committee use as they are examining, pulling all the different levers in the education fund, what's supposed to happen. So going ahead and sharing my screen. Right. Okay. So this is the yield bill that John just walked through. I don't think you need the bill summary because he just did a great job. Fiscal impact, this is the really the big picture of fiscal impact of each section of the bill, right? So, there's five sections of the bill. The first two relate to the Really,

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: can

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: just walk through them one at a time. So, section one, this is setting the yields and the non cent rate for fiscal year 2027. You'll recall this needs to be done annually in section law, because if it's not done, it automatically defaults to something else's statute that would result in much larger tax increases than if you pass more than That would raise more property tax revenue than is actually needed in FY '27. So the yields and rates are estimated to result in an approximate 7% increase across homestead, non homestead and income sensitized property taxpayers in FY '27. I do really wanna emphasize that that is an average. You'll recall homestead property taxes vary across the state by community based off of income level, property level, local spending decisions. And so dependent on both growth and property value, local spending decisions, CLA, you'll really see a variance both below and above that 7%.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Any copies of this? I think we have posted. But by the way, I was initially intended this to be today just to be a bill introduction, and Julia volunteered to come over and be here. And so that's why we don't have conference, doctor Hopkins, because this is a less beneficial insurance. I'm so curious. Yeah.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You can also, on that, find it on Daypost. All of our fiscal notes are available on Daypost's website in the top right corner. If you click bill number, you can type in the bill number and see if we published a fiscal note. And it's also available on the bill page. If you click fiscal information, not everyone knows that. But you'll have hard copies soon, sounds like. So that's what section one does. And these rates and yields have been set at the level estimated to be sufficient to fully fund the education fund in FY '27 based off of the budget, the school budget data that we have available and forecasted non revenue. And a few other outstanding decisions currently being contemplated by the General Assembly.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And the main, the real issue between one and two is whether everything goes in this year, reduces the rate to four percent of some vaccine.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, exactly.

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

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: that, yeah, so at least in the section two, and it also really speaks to, it's an iterative process by the Finance and Ways and Means Committee because we need to make sure that Ed Fund is fully funded, they need to contemplate all of the policies that are impacting the Education Fund. So we're working with all of the bills that touch on the Ed Fund to calculate these yields and points. So this assumes that the 104,900,000.0 from general fund as recommended by the governor and included in the house budget as passed, that 105,000,000 from the general fund would be transferred to the education fund. Then the policy question arises of, well, how do we use that 105,000,000? Do we use the entirety in FY27 to find out rates? Do we use it over a course of several years or the housewife when using it over the course of two years? So using HAP in FY '27 for lowering property tax rates, and then going into section two remaining, reserving that other half of the 104,900,000.0 within the Ed Fund with the intent to use it to offset property tax rates in FY '28. Section four, John spoke about this. This is that transfer from the Ed Fund of about 150,600.0 to, well, technically it's to the tax department and to the city of Barrie, but to compensate for the city's overpayment. This is estimated to have a different impact on the education fund because it is a contract to be a fund, a small amount. And lastly, as John mentioned, section five is setting us that's this block grant uniform base amount in '24 FY '27 at 02/1950 and then inflating it forward in future fiscal years. Also, as John mentioned, this is what was included in the agency's gov rep and what was assumed by the agency, what's been communicated to the field. So this is, there's no fiscal impact because this is what everybody was expecting, it just, it needs to be included in statute for it to happen. The other piece I will note, I know that John mentioned this too, is, as you likely know, there's a lot of federal requirements regarding special education and maintenance of fiscal support. So it's important to ensure that the state is needing maintenance of fiscal support so that the federal funds can continue to flow into Vermont Special Ed. And this helps maintain that before the foundation formula kicks in.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: People have, with some districts,

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

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I don't know. I think that that is something that people are looking into, certainly on the house side. I know you all are talking about that as well. Part, if you recall, part of Act 73 charged JFO with hiring a contractor to look into a number of pieces of the foundation formula and explicit areas for them to look into. One of those pieces is a review of special education So when we do get that report with recommendations, it will include recommendations regarding this recommendation.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: we're really we're raising taxes again right now. If without the one time spending, what was the actual tax rate?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: About I to I need to pull that up. I don't I'm too I have too many different iterations. Give me one second. And while I'm pulling that up, I guess I would say, yes, this is forecasting for property taxes to rise because, and I'm actually, I think I'm going to be coming in next week to talk about this in a little bit more detail, but because of the way that the education fund is structured, we sum up how much is being paid out of the Ed Fund, primarily school budgets, subtract non property revenue sources, and then the remainder needs to made up with property taxes or another source of revenue. So what we see, and I guess I'm spoiling next week's testimony, but what we see is that education fund uses are growing at a faster pace than non property tax revenues, which means naturally something needs to fill the hole. And in this instance, in this policy decision, it would be property taxes. But yes, if there were

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: With the voters across the line to make that decision, then just try to.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So there's gonna be winners and losers, some smaller districts versus the larger districts. We know how it's gonna affect the district.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So, guess I would say, I just pulled it up, taking a step back. If there were no one time, if there were no general fund monies used to lower property taxes, the average increase would be 10%. That still includes approximately 22,000,000 of one time education fund surplus being used. If you're not using that NIPA surplus, it climbs closer to 12%. How it would impact your district? It will impact your district dependent on your district's per pupil education spending divided by the yield and then adjusted by the local CLA. So what we're looking at here is the education fund outlook as passed by the house. So what we're seeing here is the average uniform bill change, again, an average. So for instance, in communities that are lower per pupil spending and have not seen significant decreases in that CLA, they'll probably fall below the average in communities that are higher spending and or, let's say, lower spending compared to where they fell last year or higher spending compared to where they fell last year. Same with CLA. That's really what's gonna be impacting where they fall. And if you were to wanna do the math, you see here in in row row d, the property yield per pupil. And that's if you think of the calculation of the equalized tax rate, homestead equalized tax rate, it's the per weighted pupil spending divided by this 9,170.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: That's fine. Right.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I think our real focus is Section five, Any questions, especially about sex and violence? Thanks. Yeah. So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: we'll be representing. I'm just gonna comment. We have a

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: friend in this committee this year doing the walk through first and then then then sorry to introduce the bill afterwards. It's happening, so it's happening again. Welcome.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: Thank you. Hi, I'm Emily Martin Luther from Valbro, Chair of the House of Waste of Needle Critney and reporter of this year's Yield Bill. How does

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: she think First of all, could walk over to John. Great,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: thank you. Thanks for accommodating my schedule. We were well, was running with Bennington, and so

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: now I'm not. Good to

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: here with y'all. So, we start our work on the yield bill when the December 1 letter is issued. Usually a few members of the committee start looking at that, and then the first week of the session, if we receive we take a look at that outlook that's in front of you all, and begin our work on it. We hear from Julia Richter every single week of the session, usually every Tuesday afternoon, and we look at how much is needed to be raised because of what school spending looks like. And then it's every other week, the Agency of Education comes into our committee and they tell us what the warrant budgets are around the state. And as more and more budgets are finalized around the state, we come closer and closer to understanding what the final number is that we will need to raise in order to fund our schools for the year. We also, after the e board meets in early January, we have a final number on what the non property tax revenues will be to put into the education fund. And so we close that gap with property taxes. And that's the process we go through every year, usually with the exact same timeline. And then it usually comes to Senate Finance. And so I it's fun to be here. I don't think I've ever sat in this chair before, so glad to be here with all of you. The decisions that we've needed to make the last few years, sort of in the tail after pandemic era school needs, is that as Julia Richter said, spending on education spending and sort of the sum of all the budgets around the state is growing faster than and those local decisions that led to that is growing faster than the rate of our non property tax revenue. And so as a Ways and Means Committee, we have a few choices. We can add new non property tax revenue into the education fund, and we did do that a few years ago as a way of lowering property taxes for Vermonters, or we can add one time money into the education fund. That is something that is sometimes absolutely necessary because we want to make sure we're keeping Vermonters property taxes as low as possible. But it creates a difficult situation because it creates a a cliff for the next year because spending is fairly even in a very best case scenario, spending is fairly steady and likely to grow slightly every year. And so given that and given the structure, then it's local decision making then funded by the state. We're changing that, right? But changes are coming next year. We made the difficult decision two years ago, last year, and this year to use this one time money. What the Ways and Means Committee decided after a lot of debate, and there was some point where on this outlook that you have, I think we might have had 15 columns with 15 different scenarios of how can we make sure this money's getting to the folks who most need it? How can we make sure this money's going to the districts who most need it? How can we make sure that we're doing this fairly? And also, how can we given that what we know from the state economists and our legislative economists, that the economy is likely Growth is slowing and we're not going to have the same kind of general resources next year and the year after that we have this year, what do we want to do to make sure we're minimizing the cliff for property taxpayers next year? And so after a lot of debate, we decided to take that one time general fund transfer to the education fund and spread it out over two years. We talked about spreading out over three years, but we felt that over three years, it wasn't enough of an impact this year and next year. And we talked about doing it in a single year, but we're really worried about what will happen with property taxpayers next year. And so, given that we are engaged in this process of education transformation, that we do have hope on the horizon for a system that, if nothing else, is a little easier to make a difference for taxpayers in, ideally, will make a big difference for educational opportunities as well. We decided that a two year timeline was the best thing that we could do. And so we split this general fund transfer between this upcoming fiscal year and the following fiscal year, and we preserve the other part. There are two other tiny sections of the yield bill. One is a correction to an overpayment from the education fund that we did half of last year and we're doing half of this year. And the other part is somehow when we changed our special education finance system a number of years ago, we forgot to we had an inflator and then it just sort of like disappeared on a date certain, so we're sticking it back in. And those are, those were both fairly minor technical pieces that were on the end of the guilt bill. So that was our thinking.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So is the assumption, well, this isn't, this isn't how we said, we don't, we really only have Section five. Section five, the special education part? Okay. But just that, so is the assumption that there'll be no general fund money to add into next year?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: That is what we, everything that I have heard from and the committee has heard from and our corporation committee have heard from our state economists or legislative economists, I spent the summer and fall going to a lot of different conferences for revenue chairs around the country, and that's what the top people from Moody's say, it's what the top people from sort of all of your major financial houses will say, is that state revenues are leveling out across every state in the country, us included.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Say leveling out, you just mean, do

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: you mean stagnant? Growing much more slowly than they have been. It's certainly not growing as fast as the cost of fuel to heat state buildings or the cost of healthcare for collectively bargained employees.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I guess, question for the chair. Realized halfway through when we first started with John, that we have this in our committee. That is I thought we were just getting, like, a general overview. But so what

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: why Inspection five further than coming here. Yeah. Got it.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Got it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I was just curious. I wasn't inspecting it either, but John said it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: The whole building was surprised. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: but that's why. So what our anyway and so our review really is kind of if we stay within our policy lanes is with regard to the technical things. That Jeff Bongartz referred in section of it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: And as Chair of Ways and Means, I would appreciate that if you ever see a number in statute and you don't see an inflator attached to it, to please spread the word, because generally there should be one.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Questions anymore? Okay. Good. Thank you.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Thank you for your questions.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you for, Mr. Neil, Bill, and promptly as well.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Actually, that would just, yeah, we didn't say that.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Have to talk about it.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Take care. But subscribe.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Are we actually, I think if people are feeling comfortable with this, good vocal sound,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: have other people want more time.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're just gonna have to fix the

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: That's fine.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Power section really is. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Sounds good. Sounds like you may be picking a game down the road, we're gonna have clubs.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Yeah. We're pretty good at it.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We're working on that. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But for us, our section is section five. Well,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: nobody else. They always send stuff to money committees, fiddle with it. I'm not inclined to fiddle with it, but it'd send a signal. I'm gonna party both of them. I can but we can go out there. You

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: don't like it because it's kicking the band of road.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Well, we're What happens with

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: the one time's money? Yeah, is our solution not

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: for it? If we don't That's do this right where I'm at. It's, yeah, I agree. We're kicking the can down the road. We're working on a better school system.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: You know, the lower spending in districts are gonna be effective.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But just to back up a little bit, we do have two twenty that went through, that is actually an effort to keep us from getting up on the plant, bringing down the excess, fresh air conditioning across the next two years. So there's a little bit in there and then foundational formula therapy. And so side. There's a real policy debate to be had about whether it's all the money you bought up this year or next year, but but I'll I'm I'm going to get into that. I'm kind of hoping, frankly, that would be sent. The education will go to the finance committee of the whole of the other two, staying going.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Can I submit that we vote on this on Tuesday? That was

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the opportunity to talk to others. That's fine. Yep. Okay. So, roughly on a Friday afternoon, I was able to get here where it might be And I'm sure that would be a little bit as scheduled. So I think we're good. First, go

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: ahead right back. See you're doing.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: Well, no. That didn't sound good.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thirty. Walk through. 09:30, which we have the hard copies of.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Seterone Pinsdale is, of course, posted.

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

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: very much.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And this is a chronic absenteeism.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You ready? Yes. Okay. Beth St. James Office of Legislative Counsel, we're gonna walk through H-nine 30 an act relating to addressing and preventing chronic absenteeism as passed by the House. Do you want me to share my screen?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We all have our copies. Okay.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: she actually got all the good.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section one of the bill, amends, 16 BSA chapter 25 sub chapter three, which is your compulsory attendance subchapter. So it's amending the entire subchapter. Starting with adding a definitions section. So you can see this is all underlined text, so it's all new law. So as used in this chapter, absence means a student who is, for at least half the school day when school is open, not physically on school grounds, or who is not receiving or attending educational, co curricular, or athletic services, or programming elsewhere pursuant to a program or plan approved by the district, if the student is enrolled in public school, or approved independent school if the school is enrolled in an approved independent school. Chronic absenteeism is defined as a student who is absent for any reason for 10% or more of a district or approved independent school student that's been enslaved within REM school year, regardless of whether the absences are considered excused or unexcused.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we didn't ask you, but what is the bill actually doing?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Amending your attendance laws.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So is it really just for clarity?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I can't comment on the intent behind it or whether it's for clarity. It makes them, it adds definitions that I'm going through right now for what is defined as chronic absenteeism or an excused absence. None of that is in current law.

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

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: It

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: provides specific direction for superintendents or heads of school for what constitutes an excusable absence, there's a list. There is a process for, let's see. Then there is a model policy requirement that the agency is required to develop, school districts would develop policies based on that model policy related to response to chronic absenteeism. There is amendments to what happens, like how many absences trigger action on behalf of the school district. There is some amendments to the truancy process and what happens if you are found to be truant. And there's a repeal of the current law that allows a superintendent or a truant officer to stop a kiddo on the street and chase them to school. And then there is a requirement added to the suspension or expulsion statute that allows public schools or independent schools to provide alternative access to education as a may, not a shall, in the event of an expulsion or suspension. And then there is a report back to you all related to how home study program fits into this piece. The language says for updating Supermonth Home Study Program law to improve oversight of home study programs and to ensure home study participants compliance with attendance requirements. So that is a high level summary of the bill. So I would say chronic absenteeism, but lots of changes throughout.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, thank you. Yep. Are we gonna go line by line or can I ask questions? We're gonna go through. We're gonna be at the end of the section if there are questions. Ask Ben.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so again, so on case one still, these are all new definitions. These are not in current law currently. So chronic absenteeism is defined as 10% or more being absent or 10% or more of a school year, regardless of whether they're all approved or unexcused or a mix of both absences. Excused absence means it's approved by the superintendent or head of school, and throughout you'll hear any time there's an approval process, it's either the superintendent or designee or the head of school or designee. I'm just not, I'm not gonna keep saying board designee or designee, so just, it's there.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Then,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: excused absences, they would include in or out of school suspensions. Parent or guardian that there is a definition for that to account for kiddos that reach the age of majority, kiddos that are independent or unaccompanied youth. There's a definition for truancy, and on page two, means a student who has accumulated 20 or more unexcused absences, either within the same school year or over one hundred and seventy five consecutive days, so that would span potentially some school years. And then unexcused absence means student absence does not fit into one of the categories of excused absences. Let's see, attendance, so I'm on page two, line 19, attendance by children of school age. So this is your compulsory attendance statute. So kiddos between the ages of six and 16 are required to attend public school and approved independent school, recognized school and approved education program or a home study program. Unless, and again, you can see that this is current law with some, I would say, on subdivision one line four, is mentally or physically unable to attend is current law, but adding that, it needs to be per medical recommendation. Draft intervention change on line 10 and is excused by the superintendent. Current law allows for or a majority of school board members, So changing that to just being excused by the superintendent or the head of school for an approved independent school has provided in this chapter, or has already enrolled in secondary school. Page line 13, page three, section eleven twenty two. So, that compulsory attendance age window is between six and 16, but what happens if you have a kiddo that's under six or 16 who's in school? This section basically states if you have a kiddo on either side of the attendance window source. So six, under six or 16, if they're enrolled in a public school or an approved independent school, then the compulsory attendance requirements apply to them. So if you are enrolled and going, then you gotta go. But if you are under six or 16 and you're not enrolled, that's okay under state law because you don't have. Jumping to page four, section eleven twenty three, line five. School absence may be excused. So, this is where the list of what a superintendent or head of school may excuse an absence for. So physical, and there's, this list does not exist in current law. So current law was, it just said that it may excuse in writing any student from attending school for a definite time, but for not more than ten consecutive school days, and only for emergencies or absence from town. So now we're saying you can excuse absences for the following reasons: physical or mental illness with a student, family emergency or death in the family, quarantine in the home, student's medical, dental, mental health, or substance use treatment appointment, family observed and several business holidays, legal activities, such as driving examinations, college or other secondary post secondary program institution, people or administrative proceedings related to the placement of the student by the state, I'm on page five now, absences due to transitions and the student's living situation as a result of student experience of homelessness, pre enlistment or employment activities of the student or student parent or legal guardian, incidents of hazing, harassment, or bullying, or other reasons are not specified with the approval of the superintendent or head of school. And then subsection B says a superintendent or head of school may also excuse a student from attendance for a pre planned family commitment for activities of which the school has been notified in advance and pre approved absences shall not exceed ten cumulative school days in each school year. So that

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: is consistent with current law.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Going back to section a back on page four. There are some bills have come through economic development because there's labor issues in there that take these kinds of absenteeism issues. They put time factors on. Time limits. Yeah. For family leave or whatever. Just curious if that was ever if as this bill was coming through the house in committee, they talked about that concept or rejected that concept or students.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So subsection does not have a time limit tied to it. Subsection does, if that's so not I don't see anything in it in I don't remember any testimony specific to that, but I was not in the room for all testimony. And I should say, if you didn't already know, this was language put forward by the agency. Yep. So, obviously the House Education Committee did work on it, but this came as a pretty tight package from the agency already. Okay, thank you. And then, so on line five, line 16, page five, line 16, the superintendent or head of school may request justification for absence. So, vain, nacho. Section on page five, line 18, section eleven twenty seven, response to chronic absenteeism. So, this is all brand new law and it's requiring AOE, consultation with the School Boards Association, Superintendent's Association, the Principal's Association, the Independent Schools Association, and the Vermont School Counselor Association to develop and review at least annually a model policy on the prevention of chronic absenteeism and truancy. That model policy is required to include specific provisions for how to address the absence of a child with a disability in accordance with applicable state and federal law and shall also include guidance that emphasizes the importance of tailored responses to all students struggling with safety and emotional issues. And shall emphasize emotional, academic, social support to facilitate the successful reintegration for returning students. I will say that the language on lines three, starting with, which shall include through line nine, to the end of that sentence, were added through floor amendments in the House. And the only reason I quite that out is they just said you got a Titan package from AOE and that was not included in their Titan package. I found line nine, the policy shall include protocols to respond effectively to bullying and harassment, acknowledging the unique aspects of each case, including best practices for re entry into education spaces. That was also added through a foreign member. This policy shall include a template for documentation of actions taken according to the policy to address the absence, which shall constitute the truancy reporting protocol. And the policy shall also include a template for standard documentation to be provided to parents. And then to minimize each student's loss of educational and developmental opportunities and to ensure equity in the treatment of absenteeism and truancy for all students and families. Each school district and each approved independent school is required to adopt a policy that is at least as stringent as the model policy developed by the agency. And then the superintendent and head of school is required to develop and implement procedures to carry out the policies. The policy is required to be consistent with the definitions in this chapter. I'm on page seven, line four. A superintendent or head of school shall also ensure that data on student access is collected and recorded in accordance with the agency of education requirements, and any school board or approved independent school that does not adopt a policy will be presumed to have adopted the most current model policy published by the agency.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So you go back momentarily to the section, page six, line three through nine, separate added by floor amendments, can you provide any insight into what it is, what this safety and emotional issue scenario was? Is it is this like a nice thing? Is it like trauma of the mice?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Would encourage you to reach out to the sponsors of those amendments if you want more anything more specific than what I'm about to say, and that is just based on their floor reports. And that is the piece related to a child with a disability was a separate floor amendment, and that was specific to children who may not have a physical or, a part of their disability may require them to be out of school, and how is that addressed in the model policy? Children with disabilities weren't addressed elsewhere, so it was And specifically called then the students struggling with safety or emotional issues, would say, of line five, starting with Anne with Chao, through line 11, the reentry into education spaces, was specific to hazing harassment and bullying.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: See there's no basis later, but no deadline for this happening. It's later. Yeah. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so everyone's required to adopt a policy. Page seven, line 11, section eleven twenty six, failure to attend. So, if a student who's within the compulsory attendance window, so between six and sixteen, who is not exempted from school, fails to enter school at the beginning of the academic year, or being enrolled accumulates 20 or more unexcused absences within either the same school year or within the last 175 student attendance days, the principal is required to notify the superintendent that that's happening. The principal is also required to notify the student attendance if a kiddo under six or over 16 who is enrolled also accumulates 20 or more unexcused absences. And then the head of school shall notify the superintendent of each student's district of residence and approved independent school that the student is attending. And upon review of the truancy reporting protocol that's required to be developed as part of the general policy development, superintendent is required to notify the truant officer and centralized intake and emergency services for TTF. And then section eleven twenty seven is the notice and complaint by a truant officer. The truant officer, once they get that information from the superintendent, they have to do a little investigation into what is the cause of the non attendance. If the truant officer finds that the child's absences are not excused, the current officer is required to give written notice to the parent or guardian. An AOE is part of that model policy development, and is required to provide a template for what that notice should look like. And then, subsection B, if the parent or guardian continues to fail without legal excuse to cause a child to attend school as required in this chapter after they get that written notice, then the attorney officer is required to file a complaint with the state's attorney's office of the county where they are and is required to participate with the proceedings. Subsection C tells you what those proceedings may be. So the state's attorney may prosecute a person or may file a CHINS case. If a criminal information is filed, the person shall not be fined more than $1,000 And then there's language that talks about what the complaint what information that complaint needs to include.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: With regarding both the parent? Yes. To finding the parent with a child's absence of injury.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. This is all current law. Yep.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, it's all good. It's it's underlined.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Because it was what came from AOE was not this. There were some amendments made, and then through testimony, we realized that the amendments that came in the original language needed some more work. And so the Department of State Attorneys and Sheriffs and AOE got together and proposed this language to kind of clean up the statute. But under current law, it is a miss there's an option for it to be a misdemeanor of up to $1,000 for truancy or filing a transposition and those are the two options here.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So the $1,000 it's, it bears the current laws? Yes, yes. We didn't want to increase it for inflation or

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That was not the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: scum. Shock value.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You did just hear someone say, I'm trying to make money. Yeah. Okay, so I'm on page 10, section eleven twenty eight. This whole section is repealed and this is the section that says, the superintendent or crew and officer finds a kiddo within that compulsory attendance window on the street and they're not school, they can take them to school.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So it's deleted, but is it replaced? Yeah.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And the amendments to section eleven twenty nine are just updating the term person having control of such people to parent or guardian. On page 11, section two is an amendment, we're in the same chapter in Title 16, but a different subchapter.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Just curious, on top of page 10, this eleven twenty eight, any idea how long that provision's been in law that Right. Police officers got to back to school? It seems like it's part of their law.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: It's okay. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Here we go.

[Dr. Laurie Quinn (President, Stern Center for Language and Learning)]: How much do got to have?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Why not?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Were the second Eleven one twenty eight was added in 1965. It was amended in 1999, and it hasn't been touched since. Actually, it was invented in 1965, which means that it was it's been around since before 1965.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I remember it wrong.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: 1965 and then we got a 1990.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: '99.

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

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And the amendment in 1965 was just the deletion of the word A, and so no substantive changes. And in 1999, substituted the words ages of six and 16 years or a child of 16 years for the ages of seven and 16.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: There's a big difference. Yeah.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, let's see. It looks like oh, boy. If we wanna get really nerdy here, I'm looking at the history sources listed here, and it goes back to, this doesn't mean it's this particular statute, but it means that this particular statute was based on, you could trace it back to 1892.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: They they really used to come looking for it too. From

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: 1892, you were. Sorry, Pat.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: No. No. I was around there. I asked you that. Oh, good one.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let's see. Okay, so we're on section two, page 11, line one. Amending suspension or expulsion of students in section eleven sixty two of Title 16. We're not touching anything in current law. All you're doing is adding a new subsection that says a public school or an approved independent school may provide access to alternative education such as tutoring, instructional materials, and assignments to a student during any period of suspension of three or more days and the same for expulsion. So it's a may not a shall. And then here, section three is the timeline for the policy. So on or before 03/15/2027, AOE is required to submit a written update to you all with efforts made to develop the model policy, and it's required to include the most recent draft of the model policy and the most recent templates. And then the policy needs to be finished up on or before 07/01/2027, and school boards and governing bodies are required to adopt and implement their own policies on or before 07/01/2028. Section four is a repeal of section ten seventy six, which

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: let

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair, House Ways & Means Committee)]: me just I always forget what this is.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Ten seventy six are also, we can trace back to the 1880s. Allows a superintendent or a touring officer to be fined not more than $100 if they fail to perform the duties imposed on them by this chapter. Also allows a teacher to be fined for violating a provision of this chapter, not more than $25 but not less than $5 we're repealing that. Section five, line six on page 12, home study program attendance requirements. On or before December 1, AOE is required to submit a written report to you all with recommendations for updates to Vermont's home study program law to improve oversight of home study programs and to ensure home study participants are compliant with attendance requirements. And section six is the effective date, which is 07/01/2026.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yes. So maybe good news. We already made the policy that we're contemplating making in section five. It's on page forty nine eighty of the senate calendar from 06/17/2024, miscellaneous bill. Apparently, miscellaneous bill died that year. I don't know if it was a conference committee issue or if that was Senator Champion or perhaps Representative Collins, but the miscellaneous bill never passed. And there's a couple of pages of a policy that was worked on in section seven of S one sixty seven that just went into the ether on the calendar. So, we already have that policy to just copy and paste. Do

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you mean subject to section?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah. All bill. Section five. Section. Yeah. Just section five.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. I know there's something to get into this, probably some interest from Yeah. The community. So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: we I think this is, you know, technical, you know, I think we're missing the mark because we're not trying to resolve cause and effect analysis. Is there any any bill that ties, like, any of the mentor program or anything with some of these at risk kids?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You have seen all of the bills. Okay. Or you yeah. This is the last bill coming to you from the house so far. Okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I'm talking about anything on the books as far as.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, no. I mean, this is just as big as the attendance policies get. I will say, and this would be great testimony for the agency and the field to bring in, is that the bill requires AOB to develop a chronic absenteeism policy on how to address it. So I don't know what they're gonna put in that policy, right, related to what you're asking about.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, we could we could think about Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We could I mean, we've acknowledged we have a problem. Yeah. Just think that, you know, I I could've done a problem, but I had actually had a teacher that kinda took me under his wing. He was a head to be a football coach. Marine got. He'd be part of you who said, kick up the pants. And you can't do that now. Look. You know, that that meant a lot.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Think I saw a kick in the fence

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: here. Yeah. That's on the committee vote.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, don't remember. I can look up

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: on their website. We're getting the reporter and hoping this could get them today.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you want me to look that up?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: No, no, no.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Okay, questions for Beth in terms of the water group? Okay, thank you, Beth. Well, she's not done yet. We have another, we're switching gears once again, but

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I have a new draft of the bill, draft 8.1.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Discussion of the last couple of days.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you wanna just go through the changes?

[John Gray (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Therefore, not a lot.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yep. That's okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We're

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the first change, we're on page one. Subdivisions one and two, this is the goal section. Subdivisions one and two were just switched. So improves government efficiency needs to be launched. Now it's enabled higher quality educational delivery. Okay. And Subdivision 4, it used to have It used to say preserves local voice where it demonstrably supports quality cost effectiveness, and now it just says preserves local voice. And then I'm keeping the green highlighting to signify at the top of the key there that it is supervisory union or supervisory district boundaries that I have not been told are set in stone yet. So, just highlighting that that continues to be an area of the bill that we need to do some work on. And it's a very least an area of the bill that I need to be worked on because I need to fill in school districts and alphabetize things, etcetera. Which does take a significant amount of time, so just so that we can factor that into whenever you want to get the bill out. So next changes. On page 15, there was a change on line 21. Just to be consistent with what we're calling, we're in the, for lack of a better way to put it, the charter change section, the Supervisory Union boundary change section. This said boundary adjustment request, and we had been using the term boundary adjustment proposal throughout, so I just made that. That was a drafting error on my part. Page 17, section five. We updated some outdated language. This used to say that the Secretary of Education would be calling a meeting of school directors, and now we're saying calling a meeting of the school boards of the member school districts. And the same with the number of Supervisory Board members that used to say the number of directors. So we're just updating some language there. On line 19, there was internal reference that was wrong on page 20 that I've just updated. Green, again, signifying just supervisor unions. Okay. So we're in section E, the evaluation of the state board of education, page 22. You all had some debate, or conversation, I should say, about what geographically isolated means, and I don't think I quite understood where you landed, so I am providing this as a jumping off point for you to use to hopefully land somewhere. So, as used in this section, geographically isolated means a school district that is physically separated from other school districts in a supervisory union in a way that results in less opportunity for the district's residents?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I do think you've to capture that. Great. And this is a consideration for the board.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Then

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: on page 25, we're in section 10, final state action. So the agency's review and the state board's final plan. This is, any mergers proposed by the agency and then the state board are required to be based on the following considerations and you add and will the merger result in net cost savings?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: So if if the answer is no to any of these questions, then then what happens?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's not a consideration. They consider all of them, but then they make a decision based on these.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: What did you 25. Line seven. The changes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: God's worst is it might not stay well till it might still get approved. That's all. Or present.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Then on page 26, section 11, this is the data that AOE is gonna be, or the information AOE is going to be giving you back with a discussion about how to wrap, how to include getting information back on CTE. And again, I don't think you necessarily landed on a specific thought, so I've added it to jumpstart your conversations. So the secretary shall regularly review, evaluate, keep the State Board and General Assembly apprised of the following. The discussions, studies, and activities among the districts move voluntarily towards creating new larger school districts, including how such activity will impact access to CTE.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: But I

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think that's the last change I've made. Yes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: K. Oops. There's one on this was I think you you went 29 directions. Just wanted to look at that, but you had realized that you had

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, yeah. No longer is that thirty, thirty one. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. And we're working to nothing to do with that, but we're gonna get you in the air as

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: well. Questions about these changes?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: They're all along.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Right. Yeah. Okay. We're good? We're good? Okay. We are adjourning. Take us off now. Have a wonderful Easter. Thanks.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. You as well.