Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're live. Okay, it's the Senate Education Committee in the afternoon of April 7. We're doing a few things today, we're starting with some analysis by the one fiscal office. Part of it, the first half, if you will, is Julia Rutland and really doing a bit of a refresh for the committee about where we are, finances work and what the financial gaps or issues are that we're trying to address with this and just really kind of the we might have seen most of this but not all of it before exactly the same way but put a bit of a reset, a reminder of why we're doing what we're doing And then as you know that in the back of the end of the bill, we put in really a placeholder for committee discussion, raising the base based on from the related education spending, increased in time for the last couple of years. As our client will be up after Julia has done an analysis about the impacts of that. So we have two hours set aside. We may not be the whole thing up. I'm not worried anybody take about a break if we have one. So start the shooting too, but you have a hard stop at

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I have a hard stop with the committee executive, my portion.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Oh, you don't have hard stop. You have to

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I have a soft have a soft stop. Okay. Perfect. And I'm I'm booked into house ways and means all day, every day this week, and they understand that I'm here. Okay. Alright. So soft stuff.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, good.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Soft stuff. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I went through this, the presentations with Julia and Ezra yesterday. It's just I think they wanted to test clarity on me, and I'd love to work with her. So, off we go.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Great, thank you. I'm Julia Richter, I'm joined the fiscal office. There is a slide deck posted on the committee page under my name. I see you have it printed out in front of you as well. Would like you me to go ahead and share the slides?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Maybe only for people watching. Sure. I don't have the hard copies.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, so as the chair mentioned, he asked me, asked us to put together some charts and graphs really outlining how the education fund has changed over time and education fund costs in the state of Vermont. I would say most, if not all its analysis, we have done at some point in time in the last few years, but some of it we did need to update for these slides pilot all here. You all know that we're nonpartisan, unbiased, providing information for legislative consideration. So, sort of four topics that we've got to talk through today. One is how education fund costs and revenues have changed over time, and what that means moving forward. Two, again, how education fund costs have changed over time in relation to pupil changes. Three, how pupil spending varied across the state of Vermont in FY 2026. And lastly, student to staff ratios in Vermont. So just sort of level setting, I think this is a helpful graph because it talks about when we're talking about education funding, we're talking about the largest area of unduplicated state funds. So what we're looking at here is the appropriations by area of government in fiscal year 2026. There's two colors on this slide. This blue bottom bar refers to federal funds and the gray top bar refers to state funds. I put a green circle here around K-twelve education. So when we're talking about state education funds, we're talking about $2,500,000,000 each year.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And the difference between the 2.9 and the 2.5 you're talking about is the blue at the bottom.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Exactly. So as you can see, the vast bulk of funding for education you'll see comes from the SAFE education fund. Of course, Vermont has a education finance team that's different than other states where all of our education, local and state education funds are all coming from the state level. We have no local funds, all state monies. So looking at how those costs and revenues have changed over time, this first chart is showing the total uses of the education fund going back to fiscal 2009. None of the numbers in this slide deck have been adjusted for inflation. And what we're seeing here is really how they have increased over time. Total uses generally refers to the total appropriations out of the Education Fund. So how much money is flowing out of the Ed Fund. We can see in 2009, it was below 1,500,000,000.0 and now we're a little over 2,500,000,000.0 projected in FY 2027.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Is that line accurate? Because I know around 2019 it went up because of COVID, didn't it?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So, interesting question. So what we're looking at, I will say yes, the line is accurate. I think that perhaps what you're talking about that this graph is not capturing is the total funding for education in the state of Vermont. So here we're looking at solely the state education fund dollars. To your point, during the COVID pandemic, there was a slew of federal funds that came into the state, those ESSER dollars, and that's where we really saw that increase in education funding that has since sort of tapered off at the federal level. This is showing, in addition to federal monies, how much has the state kicked in.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So did we have to show, did we have to do like a state match to that federal funding to get that increasing on?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: For the COVID dollars, no. I don't, I would need to come back and talk about all of the monies.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So if we had an expenditure line it would be different, right?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes. Yeah,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it would be higher than

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: And if we had all money going to school districts it would be different. This is capturing, and this whole slide deck is only looking at funds coming out of the statewide education funds. And I also wanna flag too, it's important to know what does the education fund capture? I don't have it in these slides because we're talking about it. You'll recall that there's a number of policy decisions that have been made over time as to what is included within the Education Fund. In addition to the state share of school budgets, we also have all of those categorical aid programs, so special education, transportation reimbursement, career and tech and universal school meals, flexible pathways and on. You also have the other appropriations on the Education Fund, like the normal cost of teachers pensions and OPEB. So that also is included in total uses of the good fund.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I think that I may be mistaken, doesn't the governor's budget say 2,100,000,000.0 for education funding, is that all state money?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I don't remember off the top of my head the numbers that are in the gov rec budget. What I'm guessing, or what perhaps you might be talking about, is the education's payment. Right. And that we're talking about, I have in a few slides, there's a whole lot of different ways to talk about education funding for the state. Education spending is a technical term, and I know we've talked about this months ago, but as a refresher, education spending is the school district's total budget minus its offsetting revenue. So everything it's getting from the federal government, the categorical aid it's getting from the state education fund, if it's pulling money from local reserves, if another school district is paying tuition, we subtract all of that out. And then whatever is left is what that school district needs to have from the education fund, and that's their education spending. And when we sum up all of the education spending, that's called the ed payment, and so that would be closer to the number that you're referencing.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Is that why the DN shows pretty close to what I think is part of your college team? This one. Okay.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's worth noting that it took fifteen years to go up by, what, 700,000,000 to get to the 2,000, and then only five years to go another, almost the same business, right? Second.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I think, too, that raises an important point, which I think is often lost when talking about solely the percentage change year over year on any sort of funding level or cost. The larger the base against which a percentage is applied, of course, the larger the increase. So, when thinking about a increase or a percentage change year over year, we need to think about the base at which that increase of percentage is being applied against. So, this is how all of the uses, the appropriations out of the Ed Fund have grown over time. What we have next is non property tax revenues and how they are projected to grow into the future and looking at the past as well. So you'll recall that the Education Fund has a number of non property tax revenue sources, sales of use, males in rooms, perilous and use, lottery. And the way that property tax amounts are determined are by taking the total education fund usage, what we just looked at, subtracting what we're getting from non property tax revenues, and everything else needs to be made up by something. And absent another policy choice, that's made up by property tax revenues. So what we see here is that while non property tax revenues were growing really strongly in '22 and '23 at almost nine and then 8%, they're tapering off to growth between 23% in that company cares. That's just the growth in those sources of revenue, not how they compare to the property tax. Correct. Yeah. Okay. So so this little yellow box that I put around Yeah. How the total education fund non property tax revenues are estimated to grow Okay. Compared to the prior year. Did we anticipate this in any way with 2022? Did I can assume now a little bit. Did we forecast this because people like, what would you say explains a sharp drop off in 2024? So, I think the state economists would be best suited to speak I to would say that for context, we're looking at the tail end of the pandemic where all of that stimulus money coming in. Okay. Right. And so I think it's a question of is it a steep decline or is it more leveling out to what it was pre pandemic? Right. Like, it's so interesting because in 2025, the lottery just took a nosedive, but then went back up a little. They all have stories to tell about, like, why what what Vermonters are investing in or feel Absolutely. Absolutely. And I will also say too, this is, I think, one of the things that you're getting at in terms of all of these differences and changes. When we look at the individual differences, the smaller the revenue source, the smaller the amount of change is needed to see a big swing percentage wise.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Senroshi, thank you. Can you just tell me how much, what the percentage is from each of these funds that goes to education?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Sure. So, all of sales and use tax goes to education. And I will say, and I can send this to Daphne when I'm done, whenever I was in here last, the run on the education fund outlook that has all of the sources. And so that'll show you that over time, but I can send it again.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Thank

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: you. So all of sales and use tax, one third of purchase and use tax, and this is in current law, One quarter of meals and rooms. All of the lottery transfer. Medicaid is weedy, that's with respect to the money coming back after the school based Medicaid program. So it's dedicated to the education fund, but there's a split where some of it is going back directly to school districts, some of it is through the Ed Fund. And then there's other sources.

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

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: And the transportation department? Well, could actually even pull that up. They have Hotline tier at the bottom, the revenue forecast. So, is a really If you haven't spent time in it and you're interested, I would really recommend it. It's a super interesting document. There's a lot of narrative upfront. It's prepared by the state legislative economist. Avert your eyes way down at the bottom is where you will be able to find all of the revenue forecasts. And this is that revenue forecast process that's done every year in January and July and adopted by each board. So here you can see the available education fund revenue. It's available because the ed fund doesn't get, as we just spoke about, all meals and rooms. So this is automatically divvied it up for you. And then here, Senator Hashim on page 49 of the revenue forecast is where you can see the transportation revenue revenues. You really want to be looking at available because this is incorporating those splits.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Anything, any cannabis tax in education? No,

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: think that the cannabis tax that you're talking about is that's dedicated to the after school special fund.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So all that tax goes to after school? Yeah, then 13,000,000. Well,

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: a few different cannabis taxes. Where they're all dedicated, I don't know. I would need to phone our my colleague, Ted, unless any of my JFO colleagues. Is it fiscal issue brief? Isn't there a Canvas? Oh, maybe. We can follow-up with resources about cannabis.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think is that I think that perhaps the takeaway from this is that these splitter taxes that make up the other part of the Ed Fund are increasing at a rate lower than the rate of increase in the Ed Fund, which means that much more pressure on property taxes. That's my take on my part.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Absolutely. And that's what we see in the next slide.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Is, what we see here in the next slide are those two, sort of those two metrics that we just spoke about overlaid with each other. So this top line, this blue line is showing us those education fund uses that we already looked at, how much money needs to come out of statewide ad funds each year. This bottom line, this orange line is showing the projected total non property tax revenues. So because property taxes need to make up that difference like we just spoke about or another revenue stream, one time general fund money works too, but something needs to cover the difference and that something is, that need is growing each year. This only goes back to 2018 because there was a change in revenue streams in 2018 and so this is our way to do apples to apples. I thought that someone was going to ask the numbers associated with each of these green bars, and if you had asked that, I was gonna be ready to show you. So, that's what we see on slide nine. This is the same chart that we just looked at, except now with numbers. So what we're seeing here is the total uses, again, going from 1,600,000,000.0 up to a little over 2,500,000,000.0. And then the share that's being made up by total, our non property tax revenues, and then our property taxes or one time general fund. So you see that increase of the need for property tax revenues going from 1,070,000,000.00 in FY 2018 to 1,700,000,000.0 in FY '27. And this is why property taxes are going up.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Is it possible to go back to 2008 at some point, 2018 to see if you ever had almost the same, any type of it? Because you went back how far?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: To 2009?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah, just to see if we're way out of sorts, and then we gotta figure out why it's gone short healthcare and all that good news. So I

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: would say it is possible, and

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: It's a fairly easy, because it's not.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: And, and I've and we've already done we we have this split of revenues prior to FY 2018. The challenge is that in FY 2018, there was an act that I don't remember the number of that was passed that changed the way the Education Fund is funded. Prior to FY 2018, there was the general fund transfer, and it didn't have all of these other non comp the same amount of non property tax revenues dedicated to the F Fund. So, it's it's we could go back and say, you know, here's how much money was coming into the Ed Fund before property taxes and show that, but looking at what it's challenging because there was that big But I do have slides that I actually already put together about this in the last year or two, so I can send those to Daphne for you to see the look. And I would say there's two questions as to like, why, why has this happened to your point? There's the more fiscal piece that I can answer. And then there's like the narrative piece that I can't. The fiscal piece is that, as we just looked about, non property tax revenues are generally growing at a pace closer to 3% and Ed Fund uses are growing more than that. Which means that in the money committees, it's often talked about as the alligator turret, you know, the mouth opening, those lines just continue to get further and further apart. Why Ed Fund uses are growing at the pace that they're growing at is a better question for the field of agency. So, that's use, that's usage and revenues over time. Now looking at Ed Fund costs and pupils over time. So, this is that chart I was referencing to your question, Senator Williams, showing the Edson uses an education payment. So again, this blue line is the same one we've already looked at however many times. The line below that, the green line, this is the education payment. So that's the sum of all of the education spending, which is of course of school budgets minus offsetting revenues. So, you can see that they're both generally moving in a similar direction. And the difference between the two is reflecting other uses, other costs out of the education fund beyond the education payment. So so that difference is capturing all the categorical aid, the pension, any one time appropriations. But not things that we put in as a separate line item. The difference is that what you're putting in as a line item. So the total uses of the Ed Fund, I thought we were up toward like 3,000,000,000, A little over 2 and a half billion for the amount coming out of the statewide education fund. We're closer to 3,000,000,000 when you're looking at all of the education dollars unduplicated out of the budget, but that includes federal.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Got it, okay. Helpful.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So is how costs have been rising in the education fund, this is how pupils have been declining in the state. I wanna know if this access is not to zero. What we're looking at here is that what we generally use to measure the count of students, which is long term average membership, essentially on average, how many kids, butts and seats are there. And we can see that the pupil count has been declining generally since 2009. And we're closer to when it was closer to 95,000 and now we're closer to 80,000. So, when we overlay those two graphs, which is what we're doing here, again, we can see those costs over time corresponding with our left hand axis, and the decline in pupils corresponding with our right hand axis. So if you think about people talking about how the cost per pupil is going up, it's a function of the two. We have fewer people, fewer pupils, and we have increasing costs.

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

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: This is not adjusted for inflation, correct? None of the dollars in this in this slide deck are adjusted for inflation. Has anyone asked you to do an adjusted for inflation? Oh, if health care looks way over you know, like that, even when you adjust for inflation, that's a huge number. I wouldn't think education is as dramatic when you adjust for Yeah. So I have I have done similar charts, not this year. I can send them along or I can come back with these charts adjusted for inflation showing that. One of the questions is the appropriate inflation index to use. And the other the other point too that I would say is even if adjusting for inflation were too many times, so that you Right. Excuse me, are completely flat over time, because we have a decline in student count, we would still see an increase in the per pupil cost. Because if you're holding the cost constant, but you're dividing by a smaller and smaller number, just naturally the per pupil cost will rise. So that's really in part what this is showing is that when talking about increases in the cost of education, when looking at it at the per pupil level. It's not just talking about the fact that costs are going up. It's talking about the fact that pupils are going down. Right. Costs are so I mean, I wonder if there's a way to like, how do you look at this data to to make sure you're getting the full picture of what's happening? I'm not saying that like, where where are those fixed overhead resource? I mean, in a way, it's like, how do you tell the story that we have too many buildings and that those fixed costs maybe are, like, continuing to eat up resources as per pupil amount goes down. Not we have to pay people more, we have to pay for healthcare, etcetera. But is there a way to pull out our overall spend on facilities and say, we can't keep spending this much on facilities while this network is going down? I think that's an excellent and hard question. I would say, can certain types of costs be pulled out? Absolutely. Yeah. Assuming that they have been appropriately coded Right. In the expenditure data. Right. We really only have a uniform chart of accounts going back to 2020. The other piece of it too, and is, or a couple of thoughts. One is that, what is a fixed cost in the education space? 70 to 80% of costs are personnel. I I do not know Mhmm. What the appropriate staffing levels are Mhmm. In schools. Right. And in the education space. With respect to facilities, absolutely facilities are included here. They're not the large share Right. Of this. And then one of the questions too is with the school facility, school facilities that we have, as we know, school construction, the studies have identified a significant need, as you all know better than I do, in terms of what is projected to So, be there's that difference of should more be spent at one facility? Right. And if you'll bear with me, was whenever we were able to say, hey, healthcare costs are going like this, but ER costs and prescription drug costs are going like this and that's contributing to this. Like, where how do we take whatever is coded to say, like, this part needs to come down. I mean, and I just say that because I think Vermonters are asking us to look first at facilities and administrative costs. You know, they they get upset when they feel like the budget could be cut, but they don't wanna lose their favorite teachers or whatever. So how can we start to look at charts that show us, like, you know, which codes are Driver. Driving where. Yeah. Like, where how do we just visualize? Would be a great question for the agency. Okay. They they a couple of years ago, I believe it was Nicole Lee, who used to be the director of education finance

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

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Did a deep dive into all of the cost drivers. I did a survey with the school business managers trying to identify some of those cost drivers related to the points that you're raising, health insurance facilities. Another one I looked into was mental health. Mhmm. I honestly just don't know, I don't remember if the agency has presented that this year, but that would be a good question for them.

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

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Do you know who like, can I email somebody? We'll we'll we'll do Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You're trying to identify the tribos within those cross. You know it's Personnel. Personnel is really where it is.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Right, right. It's really personnel.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And then within personnel, we're gonna do it.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Right, and if they tell us, Oh, we're not coding this all correctly, that's also instructive because it makes it really hard to tell what savings we plan to achieve or whatever if it's coded badly or inconceptive.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. The right sense is the lot the savings are gonna come from efficient expenditure of bodies of of personnel.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Oh, no, hear you, but it's like, then we could look at policies like different ratios and say, okay, this will have more of a financial savings than cutting the number of school buildings down by 25%. You know, we're doing rough math. Okay. Okay, pivoting from looking at just the statewide costs. Actually, before pivoting, I guess I would say one more thing, which is really saying to this conversation's point, what this is capturing is the total amount of money coming out of the education fund. It's not talking at all about where it's going or how it's being used or what policy decisions are or are not impacting that money via the federal, state, or local level. It's solely talking about what's in the head of that fund. So now moving on to how per pupil spending is varying across the state. So a reminder that per pupil spending is actually a technical term in statute. It's the education spending divided by the weighted pupil count. So, again, the weighted pupil count is the total number of students in the state plus their weighting categories. Excuse me. And in FY '26, this is 142,564. That's in comparison to the total number of kids, which is closer to 82,000. Education spending, we've talked about this as well. School district's total budget minus its offsetting revenues. This is about 2,000,000,000 in fiscal year 2026. And because it's essentially a fraction, right, it's the education spending divided by the weighted pupil count. Because there are those two pieces, higher or lower, weighted per pupil spending could be a function of increased education spending, lower weighted pupils, or some combination of the two.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just to make sure, going back to the earlier slides, we say 2,000,000,000 here and the slide numbers show 2.5. Difference is?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Difference is two things. One, this 1,990,000,000.00 is referring to this green bar, the education payment, rather than the total uses, which is this

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: blue. Which includes retirement.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Which includes retirement and all of your

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That's categorical

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: what brings us up there. Retirement, the pensions and OPEB in FY '26 together is about 60,000,000. 60? $6.00, coming out

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: of the education plan. Okay. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you said we put some retirement, and, you said two things.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So the 60,000,000, that's the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The difference between the 2,000,000 or 2.5, you said,

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: both in environment and Categorically. Categorically, okay. So that's special education, safe place students, transportation, tech eds, small school support. Yep, got So that's the primary difference. The other difference is here, these charts are capturing FY '27, that's our right most data point. When looking at the distribution of per weighted people spending, we're looking at FY '26 because we already have all of the final data for that, and that is still projections.

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

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So, that's how we're calculating per weighted people spending. What is the range? Well, the December 1 letter is required to report on the range of pervaded pupil spending. So this is a quote from the December 1 letter that in FY '26, the range of pervaded pupil spending among districts that operate at least one school is 10,846 to 19,090. Couple of caveats with that range. One is that's among districts that operate at least one school. So that's not capturing those districts that do not operate any schools. And two, that includes adjustments for excess spending. So you'll recall that if districts are above the excess spending threshold, then the amount they're above the excess spending threshold is double counted. So that adjustment is included here. A lot of words, a lot of numbers, what does it actually look like? That's what we see here on slide 17. Slide 17, each one of these little dots is a school district. This is an FY '26, and this is showing you the range of per weighted pupil spending. So what we can see here is the school district that was spending the least amount per weighted pupil is this far left school district spending around 9,000 per weighted pupil. And the school district that was spending the most per weighted pupil was sitting right above 18,000. Which district that was?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No. I

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: would need a follow-up. Okay. I will say that it's the agency does have a great resource where they publish all of the of the per pupil study data. So,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: just said between basically $11,000 and $19,000 is the, and that's total weight of the student, correct? Of the need of the student?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So that's, to rephrase, tell me, I'm going to rephrase what I think is the answer to your question and you're going to tell me if I answered your question. That's capturing the per weighted student, the amount of dollars per weighted student. So say that I was a student who was learning English as a second language, and I was an economically disadvantaged background, I would count as one just for being me, plus one point whatever for being economically disadvantaged, plus 2.49 for being an English learner. So together, I would count as like five or so weighted pupils. That's, and then we would, that's what's done for every single student. And then we take the education spending and we divide by all of those weighted students.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: What gets me is we've got $19,000 and our actual spending on students we do now is at $24,000 So, where's that other $6,000 that's special needs? Why? Because if we were at $20,000 think

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: that what you're getting at is the difference of if you were to look at it, not by weighted student, but if you were to look at it just by student, regardless of additional needs or circumstances or additional weights. So, the other way to think about it is here we're looking at per weighted pupil spending. So that's incorporating the additional needs that are included in law for these different circumstances. If you wanted to know literally per body in school, regardless of circumstance, how much would it be, you would take the total education spending and instead of dividing it by the 142,000 of weighted students, you would divide it by the 82,000 number of kids.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And that's how we come out to 24, basically 24,000 of students, but when we look at this number, it's all these 20 tens.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So it's, yeah, I guess I would say it's It

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: just Yeah, same dollar to more students. Yeah, it just, you know, it's worth a foundation formula. Basically, we're saying $16,000 but we're basically $6,000 short per child on our current spending. So it's like this, I'm lost of where that other 5,000 to $6,000 is on the 19,000 when we broke this down, and these are the numbers for '25, 26, and we're way over that per school.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I think that the big difference is this is capturing all of those weights. Yes. And what you're talking about is, and I honestly haven't done the calculation, so I don't know if it's 24,000, assuming that it is, that difference is the fact that these numbers appear lower because it's a larger student count that's being divided by which are those weights.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Do you understand where I'm coming from? We we get these numbers, but when we do the math, we're at 22,000 to $24,000 a student. And it's like, where is that, where is that extra money going? Where, why?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Are you talking about the foundation formula?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: No, not just the foundation formula right now. You go, we got 82,000 students divided into the 2 point whatever billion. That's a quick manner. So And I'm just, you know

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: just Trying to make some sort of

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Well, I'm just where is that other money?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We just have to always make sure we're comparing apples to apples. If this is weighted student showing the way yeah.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: This is weighted student, and it

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: has the high and low, and at the high end, we're still at $20,000 yet we spent.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And I'm I'm trying to figure out where that extra money goes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's it's that it's for accounting as five rather than one. But that just takes

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I guess I would say I I guess I would I would take a little bit of a step back.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I am. But I'm saying asking these questions.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: A few things. One, I would say that this, what we're looking at here, is a literally a direct quote from the Department of Taxes about the way the student counts. So I wouldn't say it's it's mine. I would say it's it's the Department of Taxes. And then the other thing that I would say is to your point, there are different there are different metrics that we can look at. And so this is one metric, and this is why we are, like, we really wanna make it very clear. We're talking about per weighted people spending. If we're not looking at weighted people spending, and this would be totally up It would be

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: all the way down to

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: It would be 2.1, or whatever this is, billion, divided by our just student count, which is around 82,000. 2,500,000,000. Two point I would say 2,100,000,000, because that's the the educate total education spending rather than the total uses, divided by 82,000. Or these are all round numbers. If anyone's watching at home.

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

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: totally going off the cuff here, but to make an illustrative point.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: 82,000.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Two

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Why he's doing his math? So when we when the foundation formula said every student's gonna get $15,033, is that that doesn't include the the additional weighted?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: That yeah. That's that's per weighted student. Okay. So that that would be comparable to this range. Albeit, we're changing funding systems, and we're changing pupil weights. But that too is per weighted pupil. Right? And I know I was gonna talk about this in a little bit, but Catherine Bennington, the Joint Fiscal Office. Julie, what is the total for the long term weighted accounting? 141. So it's 141 students versus 82,000 students. That's what's driving the difference there. And there's valid reasons for looking at both those numbers and you just need to understand which number you're using whenever you're having this conversation.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So we're taking the weighted into that, that drives the cost down but really doesn't.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Right, because you're using the 141,000

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: in these, right? Got Cost per student down. Right. But it really So

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: in theory, if I had known the conversation, we were going to have this conversation, I could have made a second slide that said the range of per non weighted pupil spending was and then take in the education spending divided by the bodies, and that would be getting at the numbers that you're referencing. Right.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So where is that? $4,000.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So the districts that have more able formular rooms that have higher, do they benefit financially from the foundation program than the districts that don't have those students?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I would say, all else equal, they will receive a higher education opportunity payment. And this gets back to the policy decision and the decision of what is the appropriate level of additional funding to provide to certain students or schools based on circumstance and that's a policy choice.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So assuming we have the weights right there's no benefit assuming we have the weights because that's what it actually costs. That's a factor of all that we went But through, assuming we do,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: that's It goes back to, is that weight to have that one student taught by one teacher,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: or if you have five of them,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: now that cost goes down, but how do you figure that?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Sorry to just Before we leave, maybe we're still on the topic. At some point, I'd just like to throw out there that I went to a listening session in Windsor County with their education leaders, and someone said something like, we're one of the only states that and it was something like funds social services through the property tax. They were making a more distinct point about sort of where resources come from or how they flow to schools and that we're kind of an outlier in sort of just lumping it in with mental health needs in schools, they're kind of on their own or in another state of

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, and all the things we're doing, because we are all our schools are on what level community schools, because they try to do all those things, the whole things together. And there are costs in there that are not you could argue with not commercially integrated with the patient related to it.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Right. And I can I can ask Becca if she remembers or Joe, like, if they remember exactly how it was a break?

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay. I think we have two more slides of content. This is the same information that we were just looking at on that little dot graph. Again, this is per weighted pupil spending. So if it were per pupil spending, it would be very different. And we can we can if it would be helpful, come back and and do that analysis as well. What we're looking at here is literally the same information, just in a different type of graph, is the histogram. And the way I read it is, essentially, each one of these bars is showing you within that bin how many districts are sitting in that range. So for instance, there were four districts with a per weighted pupil spending below 10,000. Three districts with a per weighted pupil spending between 10 and 11,000. And then the final slide, this is an update from a couple of, a few years ago, I wrote a report that was required by October 27 about cost containment in Vermont, and part of that looked at the student to staff ratio, and the chair asked me to update that. So, using the National Center for Education Statistics, I looked into where Vermont sits in comparison to the average and in comparison to all other states in terms of the student to staff ratio. So, the student to staff ratio is essentially what is the average number of students per staff member. This time it's real kids, not weighted kids. And the latest data is from the 2022. So, the 2022, Vermont had the lowest ratio than any other state in the country, meaning that Vermont had fewer students per staff than any other state. This table is capturing that statistic. So I pulled the same states that I had pulled from the report a few years back, obviously New England states. We can see here is that Vermont in the 2022 had a ratio of about 4.4 students per staff member. So, this is not just teachers, but this is all staff associated with education. That was the lowest ratio in the country. That's not a good

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: because you have, like, Massachusetts has the best school system. Now it's 6.4. March 13. So less the lesser the numbers, not always the better.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: That can be true. I mean, we are number one at special education delivery in the country. So again, it's worth knowing, like, which I wouldn't be asking JFO to do, but do we have more do we have, like, double the number of paraeducators of the next state to us versus like, do we have a high number of administrators who all make a of money?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And that's something I can't argue with you. What I can't compare to you is that we can't afford what we're doing and it's costing our promoters. So we gotta find a better balance.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So everything we're looking at, they're all data points. You're just looking at a number of data points here for us to keep the monitors working with that work.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I did include a link to the tables. If you haven't seen enough numbers today, there's a lot of really cool information and state comparisons available at the National Center for Education Statistics, worth taking a gander. And that's it. That's everything I prepared.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: There's a very good one. Yeah. So I just wanted to remind all of the rising gap, increasing cost versus for students and also the revenue and where we have to make up and what the pressure is and why and not. It's all data points, but all things for us to think about as we continue our work and. Alright. So, thank you.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah, absolutely.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So the other so Ezraf. So, again, this reminds me what what Ezra was gonna do was test, in part, something that I put in the bill for us to consider, was taking the 15,033 and multiplying it times the average increase in spending for the last two years. And the number that we first used was a little bit high because we did it at 5.8 and 5.5, I think, initially. That's what we expected, the actual number was not

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: 5.5, it was 4.9. Treasurer Holden, joint fiscal office. Chairs referring to the change in education spending from fiscal year 'twenty six to 'twenty seven, and that was 4.2. That's you're getting at. And we'll talk

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: about that. Yeah. And so the bill has a number, remember, it raises the base as it's written, drafted right now, and we go into that, this is really to explore what that, doing that would actually mean, and also whether it actually is the right thing to do. I looked a lot like going through this yesterday, so you won't go on to see if feel comfortable with this term now.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Chair, would you like me to share my seat at this point? Sure. All right, so we've already gone over this slide, but joint disco office, we haven't changed between the two presentations. You're still not part of So that's good to know. All right, as the chair teed up for you, we're gonna be talking about some adjustments to the Act 73 base amount or Senate Education's language that the senator was teeing up for you. I will note I do have some overview slides. So if some of this looks familiar, that's because it is. I was here, I believe, first week of session, January, talking about this. So some of this is a repeat, and then we'll get to some new content, just bear with me here. So first, we will just remind ourselves of a few abbreviations that we're going to be seeing on this presentation. LTW ADL, That stands for long term weighted average daily membership, so those are your weighted students, and that, in a foundation formula, is what is driving the funding to a district. We also have some pupil weight abbreviations, so you see FBL, federal poverty level, and so those are your economically disadvantaged students. EL stands for English learner students, Students link English or have English as a Second Language. And under Add 73, these weights are additive, so if you are FGL and EEL, you would add those weights together. So you can have more than one weight as a student. Big picture, when you're thinking about the formula or calculating the amount of money a district would receive for the foundation formula, you would take a base amount, and then the weights, so here they're based on student characteristics, would multiply the long term weighted membership of taking your students with those characteristics, all students who don't have in place as well. That's all included in your long term weighted ADM, and then after you've multiplied those two, your educational opportunity payment, or EOP, is the amount of funding the district will receive. Now, I'll just flag for you Act 70 three's foundation formula adds in school support grants, and so that's a little different from the base times LTWA, but this is broadly how they work.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So this is going into this foundational information for the foundation programs. Is there any consideration to when a student no longer needs to be considered other people by the language order? But that's not his job. Okay. A policy question. All right, obviously it's a process.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: See it drops as they. How do you decide your English language?

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, the ACT 73 weights for EL students are tiered based on the level of English proficiency. I would say it would probably be up to, not up to, it'd be better if the agency or someone from the field came in and testified about how long it takes a student to advance between those levels.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: They're not going to do it. Oh, well, thank you for clarifying. Is possible.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Alright, so we've taken a look kind of at foundation formulas as a concept, and now we're just gonna get a little more specific with the Act 73 foundation formula. Now this is as enacted, not considering the Chair's or the committee's language. Act 73 as enacted, that is that 15033 base amount that I think everyone in this building is pretty familiar with at this point. That is her long term ADM if you are a student with no weights, but that's also the same amount that you multiply your long term weighted amount. Because if you're, again, like we talked about, your long term weighted ABM are your long term students plus the weights that those students have, and then that is your long term weighted ABM multiplied by the space event. So, just to remind everyone.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So it has been raised in various forums that there is a request out there for the consulting group. Can we hire that consulting group?

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

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Sterns? Sterns. It's Sterns. For the Foundation.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Oh, no. So the flagship? So, ACCENTINUE three Joint Fiscal Office, contracted with the American Institute for Research, or AIR, for ACCENTINUE three. Is that

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Maybe.

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

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Probably. Okay. That's one of the charges as the foundation formula weights and calculation. It not Yeah. Catherine Bennington is a lot. So you're talking yes. The answer is we're we got a study underway right now on-site. You're talking about different study that was done, and then we are continuing to do some work. What I had heard that I'd like to confirm or deny is that a request exists, has passed some committee to add cost of living to their study work or adjustments to the formula for certain districts for cost of living. And I wanted to ask either now or for the future if that exists in other states, if that's something that's under consideration and it's a meaningful calculation that can be made. Granted, I think it's really challenging when people live in different counties that commute to work, and we're a small state. But I don't know what I'd like to be up to speed on if that has made it into some formal request. Mhmm. Do wanna answer? Want me to answer. And And if it's informal, you can say no, but if it's a form

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: of request. So, I don't recall that the original scope of work had cost of living. Don't think that was in Act 73. There are any additional conversations, I don't think I would be

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: able to I do know about it. So they have, AIR does have some information and it's something that they always look at when they do this work. How it will play out in Vermont, I can't speak to that yet because they're still doing their work, but they have, especially as we get to bigger states Mhmm. Had even more disparate economies. They they that that is a part of it. So it's something that they had know about and have think about, and I don't wanna speak yet to how Okay. How it will get used in this study or not. So I don't know the answer. Okay. Just do either of you know or maybe the NA knows because I'm sure it matters to them. Is the house bill contemplating anything about cost of living differential? No. I don't know that you Okay. So with that, that's a good a legislative council question, and that is in the bill. I just wanted to sort of before I go responding to anyone, it's it's it's in the bill that may make it to the floor. Would

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: you like to get answered? Colorado's a chronic it it it asked GFO to study it.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I think that's how it is.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay. And it's it's came out of we were do we know it's that built out of ways and means? It's in ways means. Right now. And it came in in ways and means, or it was in the house education proposal? Okay. Thank you. Sorry to temper you

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: with questions. Are you? It's good to know. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: $15.00 33.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah. So $15.00 33, that's the base amount we're talking about in Act 73 as enacted. I will note that this is from fiscal year twenty twenty five. The foundation formula does not go into effect until fiscal year twenty twenty nine, and so this amount in Act 73 is inflated by NIPA to to when action comes into effect. The language that Senate Education has been discussing is effectively inflating this fifteen zero thirty three by a different inflator for two years, and then switching back to the NIBA inflator. I would just say the table is here if you all want to peruse the different weights, but just overall, this is from big picture. These are the weights from the Doctors Colby and Baker memo from April. I will note that the special education census block grant that we use in current law is replaced by tiered weights that are on the table, and also small school and sparsity are weights in the current system. Under Act 73, those are support grants. So those are just the big things I would flag, and we can just take a look actually at those small and sparse school grants. So Under Act 73 as enacted, a school is considered a small school, or a sparse school, as defined in Act 73, they're eligible for an additional support grant. To receive a small school support grant, Act 73 says you need to, A, have a average enrollment over two years of fewer than 100 pupils, and you need to be considered small by necessity. And that's currently underfunded. Sparse school, it's similar. It's a two part test, so to be considered eligible for your Sparse School Support grant, you need to be a school located in a city, town, or village with a population of fewer than 55 people per square mile, and again, there is a by necessity test. Here it is sparse by necessity, which is also undefined. And if you are eligible for one or both of those grants, you would multiply your two year average enrollment by the grant's amount, which is detailed in this table here. Again, these are fiscal year twenty twenty five amounts, so that's about a little over $3,100 for a small school support grant per average student, and then about $19.5

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: per pupil for a sparse school support grant. And amounts multiplied by the index as well? Yeah, that's

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: a great question. These would be increased by NIFA. They're not linked to the base, so by changing the base as in the sentence language, and this is something we talked about, these don't change, their inflation metric doesn't change. They're going to stay with NIMA because it's

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: not a function of the base. Yep. Do you have an area that has both?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That is sparsentan? Yeah, think you can, yeah.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah, and so that's additional per pupil. So you could have another additional

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: spy grant per pupil. Yeah, yeah. But they already know for that. Or, like, entire book. I

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: would just note that this is per two year enrollment, so that's non weighted pupils, so the weights do not impact how much a school receives. If your average enrollment, what's in seats, that's what we're What's in seats, so right.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: This is about seats, weighted. Exactly.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Taking a small step forward, Act 73, the dollar amount was for fiscal year 2025, but if we think about if Act 73 were implemented in fiscal year twenty twenty six, we can take a look at how one year inflation would change some of those dollar amounts. I think this is helpful because the Senate's language is contemplating fiscal year 2027, so I think this is one step at a time to kind of move us there instead of jumping from 2025 to 2027. I think another piece of information that's helpful here is noting that if you see some handouts from House Education that we were asked to do, JFO was asked to do, that's using fiscal year twenty twenty six by HIPAA amount. So if you do see that handout, this gives you a little bit of context of where those amounts come from. So if we implemented Act 73, if the legislature implemented Act 73 in fiscal year twenty twenty six, after accounting for the change in HIPAA, I didn't have that footnote earlier, it's the National Ancient Medical Products accounts. There at the bottom of the poll was the price later description. It's a little bit of a mouthful. So that's there. So that would give you a base amount of about 15,456 per your long term weighted ADM, and so you can think about, you started 15033, after one year of using this price deflator, you're now at 15,456. Just to remind everyone, pupil weights are not adjusted by inflation. Pupil weights are multiplied against your base amount, so the face is changing, not the weight. So if a student is an EL student, the weight doesn't change, but the base of that student is what's changed here, just to clarify that. Since we're increasing that base amount, that affects all district's student, weighted student counts. As the base increases, all else equal, the district's EOP, the funding that they would receive under this is increased, this concept. The school support grants are at the bottom, have increased by NIPA as well, so again, not adjusted by any weights or anything, so that's just the flex seats, two year enrollment. And this is one year of

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: thing that we're working okay?

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: And if you just wanna rip your slides back and forth, you can kinda see the one year chance between those grants, if that's of interest, please. Now we'll take a look at Senate education concept, which the chair laid out for the committee. Thinking about fiscal year twenty twenty seven here, the Senate education's bill would inflate the Act 73 base amount by the actual change in education spending from fiscal year twenty twenty five to fiscal year twenty twenty seven. After fiscal year twenty twenty seven, which is when you would take the base amount that's outlined in the language, that new base amount would be increased going forward using NIFA, which is the same as in Accent two. Really, the adjustment is just happening to the first two years, and then the same inflator as originally it takes over. I've said this before, just want hit it again, school support grants are not affected by this concept, because they are not linked to a base. You would need, if one wanted to change that, you would need additional language that changed the, whatever inflation metric you're using for that, because it's not linked to the base, so it's not an automatic change. So to put some numbers up, I believe the chair had warned for the committee, I think it was last week, that you would see a different base amount as the chair is teeing up. The original base amount in the language was using a projection from the December 1 letter of change in education spending. Now that we have received the majority of school budgets, we've actually adjusted that number, and the actual change was a little bit lower. So that's why this base amount is lower than, I can't remember off the top of my head, whatever, I

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: was 50%. Eighty something, I

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: forgot a quarter down. So this is based on changes of about 5.8 and about 4.2% in fiscal years 2026 and 2027, respectively. There's some extra decimals, but I think it'd be easier if we just rounded that up.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah. Quick question. The per pupil spending that we have in fiscal year twenty twenty six, I know that the range is between almost 11,000 and 19,000. Are you able to tell us just what the average is across the state for all students per pupil spending?

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So I would have to come back with that. I don't off the top of my head, and I guess kind of what Julie was speaking to earlier, we would just want to know what we're counting, weighted students or unweighted students, and then education uses, or just the education spending?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: There a particular

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I guess unweighted. Really what I'm trying to get at is to figure out with the foundation formula how it would compare without the added weights compared to the per people spending with the system that we have now.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Is that making sense? We could do something like that. I guess I would just caution that since weights aren't part of the current system, even if you do back out and just say on the average on weighted students, since rates do exist, you know, it's influencing behavior on the ground since districts aren't creating their own budgets, so I guess I would just, I would flag that, but we can

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I mean, weighted makes sense, then I wasn't sure if

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: that would add a lot more challenge to that? So, yeah, we can come back with something. Okay. Kathryn?

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Kathryn, do you have physical tell me again the question you're trying to answer. Yeah,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I'm trying to figure out I'm really just trying to compare the foundation formula into the system that we have now, and I'll say with the weights, the average amount that we would be spending per pupil in the foundation formula compared to the system that we have now.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay, at 73, is it passed?

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay, so I think we have, just overall, like the total spend across the space, is that what you're thinking?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah, I think that's probably a

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: good question. Yeah, can, we'll work, we'll, I'll talk to you later, and I've got some thoughts on that. We can give them something.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, yeah, and actually thinking, hearing you lay out the question again to Catherine, I think weighted, you would probably only do the comparison by weighted students, that range that Julia was talking about, rather than unweighted students, because this is the amount that would be multiplied against the long term weighted ADM, so I think we would want to probably think about doing a weighted average per That makes more sense, Doug. Definitely. The Ed team will talk and then we'll get back to you.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Why don't we

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: do that?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We'll talk. Thank

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: you. And you're looking at the, do you want to know sort of what the total statewide spend under foundation versus under this?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yes.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah. For a pupil or? Sorry. Yes. Per per pupil. No. I'm getting out.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Alright. That's statewide. Okay. I see.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: The average statewide number. So we'll come up with the total spend, and we'll divide it by the number. We can show you the total spend. Yeah.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay. I'm

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: also happy to talk offline.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah. Why we why we do that? Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You're thinking about, to the extent, that the foundational formula is less money, how much less or more? Yeah.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: What is it? Yeah. I guess, are

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: we spending more or less or the same?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I mean, the doubt, the same, and hoping that I'll eventually think

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it's going be. Okay. We can, got it. Right. Okay.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, we'll definitely, cool. We'll circle back what you said underneath. So during the same timeframe, and actually, me just see. So the 16575, to just get back to where we were, that's increasing by these two fiscal, excuse me, the actual change over fiscal years 2026 and 2027.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So that's 15033 times 5.8, then times 4.2. Yeah, approximately, yeah. That's either '21 and '75.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, so the cumulative change after accounting for a little bit of compounding would be a little over 10% change there. During the same timeframe, the NIBA increase would be about 6%, and so if you use NIBA for that same time period, the base would be 15,936 in fiscal year 2027. So in terms of comparison of the Senate ed language to Act 73, I think those would be the two numbers if that was the comparison you were trying to make, is that 16,575 from the Senate's language? Without the Senate's language, it would be approximately 15,936. So this would be higher than Act 73 as an addict.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So that's $600 higher as well, please.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I do have a summary table that we'll get to, and then the sparse and small school grades don't change by this concept. What you see for fiscal year twenty seven, you would get under Act 73 without any further changes, because that's, again, just update by NIPO.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So let me just refresh people what I was thinking about this and why I did this exercise, was thinking that if we used just the Nipah off of fifteen oh thirty three, when the foundation finally came into effect, we would have a clip. Okay. This is the clip, such as it is, because it's the difference between, or at least perhaps, between the 16.575 and the 15.16 we'd be getting. And there's other reasons we're going see why that's not exactly accurate because it's a lot more complicated than I thought it was the more we get into this. It's always more complicated. But it was that what I was worried about or thinking about was it goes into effect, we can have blood. That's why I wanted to experiment with this, just to refresh my list. So go on.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: All right, so I think this is a nice summary table to kind of just put everything in the last slide into more visually how to perform. So overall Senate education proposal would lead to a higher base amount. All else equal, this would result in school districts receiving a larger EOP, which again, that is the funding that you would receive under Foundation Formula. However, again, else equal, this would require an increased property taxes compared to Act 73, because the amount of funding overall is higher. That's holding everything constant, not accounting for any of those non property revenues that Julia talked about, or any other changes in student counts, anything else, but trying to keep it a little apples to apples. And so you can see here, in this first of the three boxes, Act 73, as enacted, the change between fiscal year twenty five from fiscal year twenty twenty seven is about 6%, and a little over $900 between the two. The center box is the Senate Education Proposal, so that cumulative inflator would be about 10.3% over the same time frame. And so you can see the difference there is about a little over $1,500 starting this fiscal year twenty twenty five, leading to that third box, which is the dollar and relative percentage difference between the Senate education space and Act 73 as an active space, which is the six the roughly $600 that the chair was referring to, which is about 40%. All right, and this is my last content slide I can add. I don't have a slide, I think, talking about the complications that the chair laid out, but I'm happy to try and paint a picture without the slide. But this graph is just trying to highlight that using a different inflator for the first two years of the foundation formula's inflating period. It's not in effect, but it is growing by this inflator kind of in the background before it comes into effect. So using that would lead to a higher foundation formula base compared to Act 73, and the scrap illustrates that after doing that for two years, you've permanently altered the trajectory, and nothing else has changed. So you can see the green line is the Senate education concepts, and the blue line is the Act 73 NIFA only inflation. So you can see that the line is rising. They're both starting at 15,033, but you can see that because the Senate education rate is higher, that line is rising more sharply than the blue one, and then you can see in FY twenty seven, it breaks a little bit and becomes linear with the blue lines. I will note that while they remain the same trajectory because of the percentage, the dollar gap between the two will continue to grow. As Julia nicely teed up in her presentation, if the base amount that you're applying your percentage multiplier against is higher, that dollar amount will be higher. So the trajectory, though, is the same, but the higher dollar amount, and that won't change if this is done. And this I will note that this is estimating out of fiscal year 2030, and that's using estimates provided to us by the state's legislative economists. And so if anything were to change in any of these future fiscal years, this picture would look a little different, because they are estimating out several fiscal years, so just wanna highlight that this is not JFOs as ever. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Post 'twenty seven, you're guessing, just the the projected that the.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So even for fiscal year twenty twenty seven, it's it's still preliminary, because right now, we're in fiscal year 2026. So I think yeah. You have I think everything outside of '26 is probably a preliminary estimate, and the further out you get, the more preliminary that estimate would be. Vice versa, I'd say the closer you are, your estimate is a little bit more solid, because there are fewer years for things to change. I just have a few data considerations. Again, like I just talked about, we have some state economist estimates in there for future fiscal years, so that could change, and that would change this analysis. JFO modeling for the chair's proposal, the senate committee's proposal uses fiscal year twenty twenty seven spending as of March 20. Most of the budgets are in, but there are a few that have not been finalized, so there could be tweaks around the edges, but I wouldn't expect anything dramatic since we do have the majority of school budgets in. The sparks and small school grants, just wanna keep reiterating this. That does not change under this language. It's still HIPAA. Just wanna reiterate that. And that is all I have for content slides. Chair, if you would like me to try and speak to a little bit of the difficulty you were talking about or if you wanna just leave

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: it at that, we can leave it at that.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, we started the so at this point yesterday, we started the discussion. I took out my calculator and took the $6,632 difference in f y 17¢ benefit that it would be and just multiplied times 82, what it would be to the $1.42. And I think they came up with 51,000,000 or something like that. And then that doesn't account for the variance in the weights. So I was trying to just see what's this actually going to cost and that led to a more complicated discussion than me taking out my calculator.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So, And I think, to the chair's point about thinking about just like, yeah, the 142, I think it's wise to not necessarily try and take that and overlay that weighted pupil count to this because the weights are changing. So I wouldn't automatically assume 142,182. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, just adding context to why I think that would be wise to not try and overlay the 142,000 over here because there are changing weights. So, yeah, just to add that context. And

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: then and then we but then we, you know, talked about the fact that depending on the study the weighting study, things could change. Like for instance, if we had it in the 10% high school weight or 12% high school weight, similar to what we're actually spending on high schools now, then that number would go and buy a lot more and maybe the base would be that I was sort of proposing to look at would be overly inflated because in some ways, if you didn't count on her being a high school weight, that's just one example, and there's other aspects of this. So it it finally led me to think probably should wait until we know all of that before we try to figure out what the right but I don't know. Mhmm. So I I become you know, there's a part of me that wants to raise the base because I think it will help smooth the transition. Right. And that's a but, you know, there's always calculations for us to make, but so I sort of at the very least realized that it's more complex. Yeah. But on the other hand on the other hand, there's a certain degree to which I think, you know, I'm right at the wise, I say it might if often, if there were, if there were no weights, people looking at weights, there would be that kind of that four percent cliff.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Mhmm.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But then what the weights do to that in the end will affect how big that cliff is.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So just to add a little more context to what the chair's saying. In other words, it's more complicated. Yeah. Well, I would just want to clarify that the 4% clip is only if you're thinking about these two bases here and not a statewide impact, so I just would want to clarify that this is not trying to say that there's a 4% difference between current spending and Act 73. Just to clarify, right here that 4% is looking at the difference between these two inflation Yes. Yeah. Just to clarify that. I know we had talked about that yesterday.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And the reason I think of that as a clip is because the numbers that we used to come up with the sort of senate calculation are real. They're the actual increase spending for the last ten years.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's where the difference in the inflation method comes, just to flag that there are outstanding policy decisions in relation to that could make that different, since career and technical education. We discussed this yesterday.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah, but

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: go ahead. I'm apart from this committee here. That's what I wanted you to do with that.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So a good example of this is career and technical education. If the, it's up to the legislature to make decisions around that to determine, is it in the base or is it not in the base? If the legislature says that it is, that the base needs to cover career and technical education, then you can say, well, CTE is there, it's in the base, it's in Act 73. If the legislature came back after receiving additional information or additional policies and said, No, we need X, whether X is a categorical A, is a way or a different decision, then suddenly CT is not within Act 70 three's base anymore. That's just an example of an outstanding policy decision that would change the whole cliff, or not a cliff, that's just flagging one exam. So,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: yeah, I'm thinking maybe we're taking part too far out in front because my district, that district said, the average student paying it is like $1,000 They're get that much more money. There's gonna there's gonna have to be an adjustment period anyway. Some schools aren't gonna think they get enough money, and some are gonna say, well, what am I gonna do with all this? If we give it to us, they're gonna spend it for them. Right? Yeah. So is there a mechanism for for any surplus that they don't use? It is. And they go into the, like, you know, construction. No. No. They could they can they can reserve it. They can put in reserves, they use it for for instance, construction or maintenance or other things. It's they get x. And they can kind of spend it how they want to. Because I keep telling my superintendents, you know what, you had to drop your pupil spending in some cases to get your budget sense. What do you cut out? Yeah. You know, what are what are you taking? What are you doing about? Yeah. Now they can put that in our head. Yeah. Pensions. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. So, yeah. And I was thinking about also to try to do a little bit of extra protection for the smoothing out the high spending districts, the bill that come into this formula. But all of those factors are there and all the complications came out through this analysis. Was that taken into consideration when we came up with the $15,033 to try to smooth it out through the higher spending and districts? You know?

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So I can't speak to the methodology that went to the cost factor formula. That was done by Doctor. Colby and Baker in the memo reference there. I will note that there is, in Act 73, a transition period where they take essentially the difference between what you spent in current law and what you would receive under the foundation formula. There's an adjustment period that would step you up into, or step you down into. So perhaps that's what they're of, Senator, and that is built into Act 73? Five years, I forgot. I can't, all the top of my mind.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, we had another nine years in our building, United Europe, but a year. Guess it's five years, yeah. So yeah, that's how, so, okay. So we can just, have this now, we've gone through this. Lesson for me, the combination of all this is just that reminder about the rate of increase we're seeing in spending, the factor driving it, and the fact that we've got a gap widening again and again, that we can't go on. You can't widen the gap. It's not sustainable. Just reiterating that on the one hand, but also looking at this specific proposal that I wanted to just put in there for us to explore and we've now done that. Thank you. That was actually really good. We have a, have a, not only until 03:15.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay. Anything, anybody wants to? Just a quick comment because of learning about, more about the way pupil math, it's that once break it down, an additional 61,564 students, if you will, on 83,000. So, it averages out 1.32 for the weighted per pupil. So let's take a school in Chittenden County that may have a bunch of English learners that they need. And is there a mechanism that we have in there because they could get, their weights could be really, really high, especially if they're English learners. Is there any calculation we can build in there that once you have, say Spanish, you have 10 Spanish students who are gonna learn English, so they're gonna, most of them, but even if you break it into

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: five, two classes to five,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: we should have a way to calculate now that school doesn't need, we still need, but it shouldn't need, so let's say it's 2.5, it should lessen down to, because there's a lot of cost savings there that could be for the state.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, I don't, we haven't gotten into that. Generally speaking, I've been trying for us. I know we're doing 30,000. Well, passed it, the financial formula passed last year, and our job was to come up with a fix the trigger, make the trigger mechanism happen, so I've kind of left it at, largely left it at that. Even tinkering with the base that we did was a little bit out of our laneway, I say, what I wanted to, but So I don't know the answer to that. I know what you're saying. You're saying it should get more efficient because there's more Right.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: It's different if you had one student and, okay, that makes sense. I'm pretty sure this is probably how they based it when they did that the I have this one student that has this need, this is what it's gonna cost. But now I have five or six, there's money to be, money to be saved by the school than you use it elsewhere. And I'm sure that's what the schools do, use it elsewhere in their budget if they can.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, I will tell you that my way, I've been thinking about all of this since this time for a long time before the Foundation for Women's and if we'll have time to take a little of that stuff, I've been just trying to really focus on getting the map right if you were just to see Yeah. That's not that it's not that that that's a that's a legitimate question that you're asking. Okay, so we're off till 03:15. So we have one more minutes at a budget discussion. Does everybody have the letter with them, their draft? Remember to bring this, I said that last time.

[Julia Richter (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Bring it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Bring