SmartTranscript of House Education, Senate Education, House Ways and Means, Senate Finance - 2025-02-14 - 1:15 PM

[Zoe Saunders]: Live. Okay. We are live in this room, and you're live. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Okay, everybody. Welcome to a four committee joint hearing, this afternoon. This is between, House Education, House Ways and Means, Senate Finance, and Senate Education, a presentation from, the Agency of Education along the continued theme of educational transformation. Just for logistics, we'll go through the presentation, and then we'll just go room by room for questions. And I'll sort of call on each room to see if you have questions in the meantime. For now, if you would mute yourselves, and then if you do need it [Nate Levinson]: if you feel the need [Chair Peter Conlon]: to raise or to to ask a question during the presentation, if you hit hit your Zoom hand, that would be very helpful. Otherwise, let's get rolling, and I'm gonna turn it over to secretary Saunders. [Zoe Saunders]: Good afternoon. I'm Zoe Saunders, secretary of education, pleased to join you today. This is a follow-up from our conversation regarding the funding system. So as a brief refresher, the governor's education transformation proposal is a comprehensive approach that recommends changes to our funding system, our governance system, and also how we measure and support education quality. Important to note that all these policy levers are interconnected. And as we, put forward the recommendation for the foundation funding formula, there was a lot of intentionality around ensuring that that recommended amount would provide a robust education for all of our schools and ensure equity, across the state of Vermont. So within this model, implicit in it is ensuring that students with similar needs receive similar resources, and those students that need extra help, get that extra support. Also built into this framework is adjustments to scale. Part of these adjustments allow us to create more robust central offices, to provide specialized resources and support, to our schools and directly to our students. As we put forward the foundation funding formula, we know there have been questions around how we would do budgeting within this model and what that looks like in concrete terms in terms of how the new districts would develop their budgets. The approach to the foundation formula was the evidence based model. We've made adjustments for the Vermont context. And we also want to note that there's a lot of flexibility within this funding so that districts are able to customize, to support their specific communities. And so what we received questions around what would that actually look like in practice. So we have brought on additional resources today. We've partnered with Nate Lemonsen from new solutions k twelve. Many of you may be familiar with him and work that he's done within your district, or being a subject matter expert that's called upon often in Vermont. He does have, his firm has national expertise in education finance, but he also has a really nuanced understanding of Vermont and Vermont, school districts and provided a lot of on the ground support. His firm was not involved in actually developing the funding formula, but they have been involved in helping provide additional budgeting support to the field, over the past budgeting cycle, and also giving us some recommendations around some other structures within our system, such as the education services agencies. So today, Nate Levinson is joining us. Us. He'll walk through a presentation of, you know, as if he were superintendent, how he would actually use this budget. He'll walk you through a prototypical Vermont school district based on some indicators that he'll run through and and some of the choices that can be made in order to deliver on education priorities so that you have a better understanding of what that would look like. I'll also note that we are interested in bringing this road on the show on the the this show on the road, and I've already started talking with some regional superintendents and business managers around how to structure this to provide support so that there's an understanding of how this new model would work. So without further ado, I will turn it over to Nate Levinson and allow him I think he'll be controlling from your computer, correct, the slide deck? [Nate Levinson]: Great. Good afternoon, everybody. Very excited to be in front of all of you to share my thoughts on the the transformation plan and specifically I think really trying to just share one person's opinion. I'm hoping it's perceived as an informed person's opinion. What could a superintendent do if they were in fact overseeing one of these new districts with the kind of funding and the kind of rules that have been proposed? I I do wanna stress two points before I get into the specifics. One, this does represent my opinion. I am certain other superintendents would probably spend the dollars a little differently. Second, as secretary Sanders shared, I was not part of developing the funding formula or their transformation plan. So this is not a pride of authorship here. Just given the plan that's been put forward, what would I do with it, and how do I feel about having to where I do have to lead a district under these circumstances. So So that that just kinda sets the background. Let me share my screen. I'll walk through a presentation and then leave plenty of time for your questions. I'm hoping folks are seeing. [Zoe Saunders]: We can see your screen. Great. [Nate Levinson]: As the title of my presentation, why the proposed education transformation plan and can be great for the students and educators of Vermont, It is definitely my conclusion, having looked in great detail, at the plan and the funding, that I think this would be really, really good for the students and educators of Vermont. So I have definitely, having been deep in the details, came out the other end thinking, this is darn good. Just a little bit about me to put my comments in perspective. I bring to this work a bunch of different perspectives. One, as a former school board member, I spent six years, a small district, a regional district, a supervisory union. So I have had to manage in an environment that is very common in Vermont. I've also been a superintendent superintendent of a district that had tight budgets and one that dramatically raised achievement despite tight budgets. I've advised more than three hundred school districts nationally, including very deep dives in at least twenty in Vermont and have spent at least fifteen years, training, speaking with, working with, school systems across Vermont. Generally considered highly experienced with a fair amount of expertise in school budgeting, some funding formulas, and staffing allocations. I think at this point, I have written four books on school funding and school budgeting. I have trained more than a few thousand superintendents or aspiring superintendents in budgeting. And I think I do have a pretty good sense of the Vermont context. I've been involved in act one seventy three, involved in act forty six, played a meaningful role in the creation of the new Vermont Learning Collaborative. I definitely tried to really put on my Vermont hat as I looked at the transformation plan. And as I said, I did not create the transformation plan. So as I was working through and coming to understand the plan and its funding, the thing that just kept coming into my head was, woah. This transformation plan and the funding formula, it's practical. It is grounded in reality and aligned to nearly all the teaching and learning best practices. Having looked at funding in a lot of other states, I hardly ever get to say funding formulas are practical, grounded in reality, and aligned to hear we all teaching and learning best practices. This one really was. I I was very, very excited as I was coming to understand it because it really did put teaching and learning first. And and I think just an important message I'd like to share is, well, I know part of the reason we're all meeting is there is concern about how costly education is in Vermont. And so I know there's a financial side to this. But as I think you're all very aware, the outcomes in Vermont are not really what you'd like them to be. Growth has stalled, particularly since the pandemic. And as I viewed this plan, I really thought it it supercharged teaching and learning, not just saving a few dollars. I thought it really aligned to both education and management best practices. And I I saw in the plan, it reflecting your values of local control, of having local schools, and of equity. So what I knew of to be important to you, seemed like this plan actually brought that to life, preserved it, and then I think some ways improves upon the current situation. One thing that I liked about the plan, and I know it's so important to Vermonters, is from my perspective, there is still a high degree of local control, but in the most positive sense of that word. Because what I saw was that the and this is where I think the the agency and the plan found the right balance. So you can't figure out, is there enough money to do education well if you don't take some model and say, hey. We want class sizes of a certain size. We really like instructional coaching because the research says we should. We wanna see mental health provided. We wanna see intervention provided. So I've never believed you can really figure out, will there be enough money if you don't have some idea, some fairly specific plan for how you would deliver education? And this definitely has that plan. That's the EV adjusted model. But then they did something that I really liked because this is Vermont. If they said, okay. That was that's one reasonable plan. But you know what? We're not dictating how you spend the money. We're ensuring that there would be enough money, and that is backed by one particular plan. But you have incredible latitude to spend the money differently within some, hopefully, reasonable guardrails. So as I was looking at this saying, hey. Given the amount of money we would have, you could different districts could spend their money differently to reflect different local priorities. So, for example, you could keep smaller elementary schools and staff them differently. And that's like and I'm happy to share, you know, when I think about running cost effective, high quality, small elementary schools, I believe you can get close to that. It means that you would have, for example, multi age classrooms, but schedules that allow you to teach math one grade at a time even though you have a multi age classroom. It would make sure that you had mental health services and speech and language and tutoring in those small schools, but you're probably gonna have to do some of that virtually. And the research has said that could be incredibly effective. It says you're gonna have a different model for a principal. It says you're gonna have other changes, like, very part time art and music and PEE staff, for example. But I I felt that if you wanted to do this, you could. But or maybe you say, hey. I our values, we don't like any of those things you just said, Nate. That's not the way we really want to staff or run a a smaller school. So it turns out that you could say, hey. I'm not gonna do that plan Nate just suggested, but I'm gonna consolidate and become much more efficient at the middle and high school. I'm gonna share staff. I'm gonna line belts with schools. I'm gonna change some great configurations in our buildings, and that would have freed up funds to staff smaller elementary schools a little differently. But that'd be a local choice. Or you could say, hey. I'm going to get efficient at all levels and really double down and go well beyond the EB adjusted model and provide much more mental health and behavior support services. Or you could say, hey. Based on our community, there are certain electives, there are certain special programs that our community wants, and you could do that. So I I think it was important to just note that as I looked at this, I felt that I had a lot of latitude to go in different directions, even though the the plan was built off of a particular, idea of what high quality education and smart spending would be. When I started to build that plan, I wanna be really clear. I ended up building a budget, which I'll share with you in a moment, that did not completely align to the EB adjusted model. I took advantage of this freedom because based on my experience and my understanding of the community, I would have done something different. But, really, as I was working through the budget, I found that the formula provided more than ample funds for an extremely high quality education. I have built as a sitting superintendent budgets. As a school board member, I have reviewed and had to approve budgets. But as a consultant, I have helped hundreds of school systems build their budgets. I have reviewed probably five hundred budgets or more in my life. So I think I got a sense of, you know, what's a hard budget to build and what's a really tight budget. So what I did let me just take a second. So I said, hey. What if I were the superintendent of the school system? So I took a school system. I created one. And, again, I will share you the details. It had fifty schools, five zero. It had a little over twelve thousand students, but those students exactly represent the demographics of your state. So forty five percent of the state kids live in poverty. Forty five percent of my hypothetical district lived in poverty. If, ten percent of your elementary schools, I'm making up these numbers, had fewer than fifty kids, ten percent of my elementary schools had fewer than fifty kids. The sparseness, the ruralness of my district matched the state average. So it really was I created a district that is similar in size to four of the five proposed districts and has a demographic makeup and a school building makeup that is really identical to the state average. And I did this to, make sure this was real realistic for what new superintendents of these districts would face. Given that district that looks an awful lot like Vermont, I was able to dramatically increase supports for students, meaning a lot more academic supports, a lot more intervention. I I was able to significantly expand mental health and behavior services, well beyond the EB adjusted model. I was actually able to fund and run two magnet school systems, meaning from a k to twelve. You know? And, again, having some sense of local parties, whether the community wanted a a STEM's path or a arts path or a music path, I felt that there was enough funds to create two in district magnet school pathways from k to twelve. Definitely was able to expand career readiness and programming supports. I was really surprised and very excited that I could provide a ten thousand dollar per teacher pay increase. I know the adjusted EB model calls for a five thousand dollar increase. I was actually able to, and I'll show you how I did that, trim central office further than the EB adjusted model suggested. And, definitely, a central office, I would be very happy to have, but that freed up money for greater teacher pay increases, which I strongly support. And I was able to keep, at least in their opening years, the small elementary schools open, but we staffed them differently. So, again, I'll get into some of the specifics in a moment, but just know that at a high level and this is a, you know, a role by role, line by line budget I built. I was pretty happy with what I was able to accomplish and just felt there was enough money to do this well. Now to for all that to be true, you know, there there is, as I say, no free lunch in this world. For all of that to be true, I definitely had to get my class sizes on average, twenty to three to be thirteen, and about twenty two students in all the other grades. And I know the, proposal calls for higher, class sizes. I think fifteen in the younger grades, twenty five in the older grades. I'm a pretty practical person. I wasn't sure we would actually, at least in the first year or two, be able to get to fifteen and twenty five. I did think it'd be realistic to set the expectation and budget around thirteen students in the younger grades and twenty two in the older grades. I don't want anybody to read into this that I if I could have gone to fifteen and twenty five, I would have. I do think that's sound educational planning and prudent use of resources. I just didn't think if if I was on the hook that I would want to commit to that in the first year. I would want to move to that in the coming years. So then the question that may be on some of your minds, I think it probably is, if if I'm saying this is a pretty reasonable level of funding and I can, you know, staff a a a really strong district and it's supposed to save the state money, how does it do that? And as I was looking at my math, it really became clear to me that there were four ways in which the transformation plan was gonna be good for students and for taxpayers, meaning we could provide great education and do it for less. And I'm gonna actually spend a few minutes walking through each of these four ways in which it doesn't. So let's just take them one at a time. The first is a more effective governance structure. Having fewer school committees is helpful. And I say this as somebody who spent six years on a school committee. I was chair of the committee. I was on a regional we were part of a supervisor union. We fed into a regional school district. And because and and I'm I'm kind of embarrassed because I did it myself. When you are elected to represent a single town or one or two schools, you do take on a very focused focus, I guess. Like, you're really worried about your town and your schools and your kids. And as a school board member, like, the greater good really wasn't the first or second thing I thought about. And I've worked with a lot of school boards across the state, and I think it's just human nature. I have found that often when superintendents bring to their school boards, and many superintendents have and I've helped train a lot of them, they have brought thoughtful decisions to be more efficient, to take a district wide approach. They have been hard to get approved. Some school districts have, some SUs have, and others have not. So, actually, as a superintendent, really appreciated having a school board while representing different parks, you did not have people who could be there to represent a single town. And and I think that gave me hope that better, more thoughtful budgets could be passed that were good for kids, but for taking a district wide viewpoint, not a town by town or school by school viewpoint. The second place we're gonna free up money is reduced central office costs. There are significant economies of scale in having a larger district when it comes to the central office. Obviously, you go from ten superintendents to one for superintendents, assistant superintendents, business offices, special education directors, and, yes, you're gonna add a whole lot of other folks. But when I modeled and, again, I will show you the specifics in a minute. The central office I would build is about fifty percent less expensive than the central offices of, summing up twelve thousand you know, SUs that serve twelve thousand kids. So that freed up a lot of money, almost actually, over seven million dollars in my hypothetical district that I got to reinvest, and I had a central office that I would much prefer over what a lot of the smaller districts were able to fund today. So money to be saved in central office and a in my mind, at least, central office more able to support kids and teachers. And what I really liked about my central office is I started to build in I have a dedicated director of literacy because there's nothing more important than literacy, and I want somebody spending most of their day district wide. But I also had dedicated directors for math, English, science, social studies, world language, music, arts, and career readiness, a different person for each of those. I had a dedicated director for mental health and behavior. And I also added two positions that no small district can afford, but no big district should be without is I have a director of cost containment. That is a real position that I have used in other in my own district when I [Speaker 3 ]: was a [Nate Levinson]: superintendent. That was a person that saved me more than a half a million dollars every year, year in and year out. I also have added a special education cost analyst. Again, a real position that I have had before. It saved a couple million dollars. And so as I built this central office, it was less costly, but a lot more focused and could do some things that, currently very few of any districts in or SUs in the state would be able to do. The third thing I did, and this was really central to how I could build a budget that did all the things I wanted, and it's something that I have done as a superintendent, and I have advised and helped a lot of school systems across the country do, is it is my strong belief, and I've written about this in more than a few books, is if you want to serve kids well and to do it cost effectively, you must share a lot of staff between buildings, and you must end the practice or dramatically curtail the practice of what I call rounding up. Rounding up means that when you run very detailed calculations and you say, hey. How many art teachers does this school need? And the answer is zero point six, less than one. So a lot of people round up to one. If you run the numbers for a math department in a high school and you need three point six, a lot of people round up to four. That is a common practice in Vermont. It is a common practice in many other states, but it is a practice that it is falling out of fashion as budgets get tight. And so I have long time been, and I've done this as a superintendent, so this is, like, not theory. I was relentless in not rounding up, and we found it to be really effective. And I wanted to just share with you three examples from real districts in Vermont. These are all former clients. Asked us to work with them for one project or And there's a lot of rounding up going on in Vermont, and it's costly. So one Vermont district, they did not share elementary art, music, and PE teachers. They did round up. They were spending about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in additional staffing per elementary school. That buys me just I could have added a a behavior expert and a mental health person to each school just by not rounding up. We worked with one supervisory union, that did not share staff between, its middle school and its high school. They had a rounding up that exceeded seven hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. I work with another, as as excuse me, in another district that had a high school, and their rounding up was about four hundred thousand dollars. So I just wanna point out that there's nothing in the rule in the funding formula that that requires you to stop rounding up. But if there is the support and expectation and the governance system that allows you to round up much less, that freed up a lot of funds for me to do a lot of the things that I would wanted to have done as a superintendent. And then last last point, if you're going to run cost effective, high quality school systems, you have to move towards more typical class sizes. As you know, and I don't wanna repeat what you've all heard before, but Vermont's got some of the smallest classes in the country. I've worked in thirty states. I've just never seen anything quite like Vermont, classes. And it's unfortunate that the research and your own experience says these very small classes have not actually improved outcomes. I was talking to a school board member of a Vermont district last week, and they said, you know, it's kind of weird. We have only nine kids in our first grade classroom, and more than half of them do not read on grade level. That's as small of classes you would see almost anywhere in this country, and that is not a particularly great outcome. What I where I get more concerned as well is that small classes in Vermont have reduced teacher pay. You do not pay your teachers particularly well. And the money that is going into small classes, the research said, would have been more effective going into better teacher pay. That's why in my model, I pay the teachers more. It's also limited the dollars available for mental health, academic support, and career readiness. So, and weirdly enough, again, looking at the Vermont context, the other thing that made me very nervous is you need a lot of teachers because of the small classes. But because of the low pay, you don't have enough people who wanna be teachers in Vermont. So you have a lot of provisionally certified staff. And as a superintendent, I really wanted to eliminate the use of provisionally certified staff, and the larger classes allowed me to do it. I ran some relatively quick numbers and said that just hitting the class size targets in the transformation plan would save the state hundred million dollars or more. The reason they are rough numbers is we don't have I didn't see or couldn't find a really accurate. What is your current class sizes? But based on my best estimates. A one hundred Million dollars seemed a reasonable and conservative estimate. And then I think the other piece just to it, and I know this will feel odd for some in the state, but when you have these, quote, larger class sizes, at the elementary level, your, quote, larger classes would be considered not just small, but would actually be considered very small in almost every other district in every other state I work in. And at the secondary level, they would be considered very typical. So I don't want anybody to think, certainly, I wasn't thinking, well, to get all of this, I have to really have terrible class sizes. I was very, very comfortable with what came out of it. So, last thing, and I'm nearly done. And I'll just show you two two spreadsheets and then take your questions. I thought the proposed plan, as I said, good for kids for sure, because they're gonna offer the things I would want as a superintendent. But I also thought, good for teachers. Higher pay. You know, the the, adjusted EB plan had a five thousand dollar pay increase. I've added five thousand on top of that to so a total of ten. And I thought we would really be able to support the teachers who are with high quality curriculum because we've got more curriculum folks supporting them, better lesson plans because we have people who could produce those plans, more instructional coaching, much more instructional coaching, more professional development. And I know if we wanna make teachers' lives happier, we need to expand behavior and mental health services for students because teachers also bear the burden of unmet behavior and mental health needs of kids. So I thought it was great for kids, but I also thought it was pretty darn good for teachers. And then I thought about, hey. Can you really pull this off? Because this is a big shift. And I I came to the conclusion that, yes, districts could successfully manage this challenge, but only with a bunch of support. And I I you know, this is different. I think they would need guidance and training on what's effective governance. I think we're going to produce some examples, multiple examples of what does a cost effective small school look like. I think there need to be a lot of transition planning. To go from where you are to where you wanna be. I think there would need to be technical assistance, not just training, but, like, hands on support, a team to help with precision staffing, to help with the sharing of staff. You cannot share staff if your schedules aren't coordinated, but I think technical support and scheduling is gonna be needed to make all this come to the and I think you would want to provide not one, but multiple models of what would AE thoughtful central office look like as well right down to job descriptions, roles and responsibilities, recommended staffing. Because all of this is gonna feel very, very different to a superintendent who spent if they've spent their whole career in Vermont. So that was really what I wanted to share with you. I I will share just some things. I'm not gonna drill through it on Zoom, but to know that it exists, and I know I think it's been shared with you to get a sense of let me make this a little bigger. And I know there's nothing worse than looking at Excel sheet on Zoom, but I just wanted you to see the level of detail that I went through where I created the sample district, twelve thousand or so kids, the breakdown of the schools. I also calculated, and you can follow it using the the proposed funding formula. You can see exactly how much money each school, each student, each grade level generated, and, ultimately, it comes to I would have two hundred and thirty seven million dollars to spend. And then I walked through in pretty high detail, you know, how many pre k to three elementary teachers would I have, what assumptions I made about the staffing ratios, what assumptions I made about the cost, how many I would actually have. Did this for every type of teacher. Here you'd see the extra staffing for that k to twelve magnet pathways, and I did two of them. Here's the eight million dollars for the extra five thousand dollars per teacher. You'll see that I saved about seven million in rethinking the central office, which has helped me pay for the extra pay for teachers. I then took a look at, you know, providing coaching at the different levels, and you can see right through it. I I wanna acknowledge that I did not follow the EB adjusted model in every place. I actually targeted my coaching a little bit more so I could free up funds elsewhere. I've made a huge investment in interventionists, people to provide extra help for kids who are struggling. Essentially, I have said that, one out of every three students in the state would get small group intervention from a highly skilled certified teacher. So this is not unskilled or uncertified paraprofessionals providing that support. Really wanted to dramatically beef up supports for we don't have a lot of EL learners, but wanted to provide a lot there. Provided a great deal of social work. Here's just two lines that I use the EB model for mental health. But in the EB adjusted model, there's an assumption that the mental health folks also do behavior. My experience is those are different skills. So, essentially, I took all the staff for mental health in the model and said, yep. Let's hire them. But then let's also hire a separate team of, mental health professionals excuse me, of behavior specialists. So I have, twenty four behavior specialists. I also have, near a little over sixty, what I call, behavior technicians. Some people this is a a role that's becoming very popular across the country. These are noncertified staff who are specifically trained in behavior management. They work under the direction of a certified staff member. They're not there for academics. I'm gonna be very clear about that, but they have really can make a world of difference in the culture and the support for kids, in schools. You'll see I've mapped out in, again, a lot of detail what I would do for principal assistant principals. You will notice, though, and when you look at the detail, my small elementary schools do not have full time principals. And there are a couple of ways in which I would do that. Either a teacher would get about a thirty or forty thousand thirty thousand dollar stipend if they wanted to be the lead teacher, teach, and help manage. And these are, you know, schools of, fifty, sixty kids. Or some places will share one principal across multiple schools, but I did not staff the very, very small schools like they were a bigger school. And then I was really excited that I could start adding a fair number of assistant principals as the schools got bigger. Elementary schools, when they started to hit two hundred, got assistant principals. Middle and high schools, when they hit a hundred, got an assistant principal. I wanna be really clear. In almost every other state I've worked, these are most followed thresholds, in the district, whereas on the school board, we did not do assistant principals until you hit four hundred kids in an elementary school. So but I was very excited that I could have assistant principals in pretty large numbers. And then I created a central office. And, again, you can see all the detail, role by role. One thing I did and, again, some people may hate this. This is just Nate's view of leadership and management. While I created a lot of department specific curriculum leaders, literacy, math, etcetera, With the exception of the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, these curriculum folks were not full time administrators. And I didn't actually do that to save money. It does save me money. But I actually do that because, like, if I have a head of literacy, I want them actually doing some reading intervention every day. If I have a head of math, I really want them teaching at least one math class every day. And I do that, again, not to save money, but to keep them grounded in teaching and learning. It is a thing, and I say this as a former assistant superintendent for teaching and learning. You can become out of touch. Like, you write these great plans, but they're actually not that great if you have to implement them. And so when I've had leaders have to, as they say, eat their own cooking and implement the plans they've written, they really get immediate feedback. It also gives them more credibility with staff. So you will notice that while my central office does have a lot of folks specializing academically, most of them are not full time. And, again, I've had great success with this. Just the role by role, The business office, I think this is something that might surprise some people. The business offices in Vermont have a bunch more people for their size than I typically see elsewhere and that I've typically had and managed elsewhere. And I think that's because so many of your s u's are really complicated. Like, there there's such this collection of historic budgets and historic contracts and historic lots of things. And so I'm finding that it is harder to run from a business and operations point of view, harder to run your business offices. I'm hoping that with a a fresh start, you would definitely want to do this transition, create an easier organization to run, and that would allow you to have a more streamlined business office. I'll I'll stop there. And the other thing to know that there's a lot of stuff that aren't people, like utilities and maintenance and custodial and student activities. And and when I built my budget, I simply accepted everything from the adjusted EV model. If they said a hundred and fifty six dollars per student is sufficient for professional development, that's what I spent per teacher. So I I accepted all of the non staffing recommendations from the Justin e b model. And the last thing I did is I said, hey. There are a lot of unknowns. This is new. This will be the first time we do this. So I created a number of contingencies. I figured that we will probably overspend in special ed the first year or two because they this has a lot of general education supports that should reduce the need for special ed, but I didn't think that would happen overnight. So I have a contingency. I didn't think I could get all that rounding stopping all the rounding up overnight. So I put a contingency for the fact that we probably can't get there. I wasn't sure how expensive it would be to transport the kids for my k to twelve magnet schools, so I put an extra million dollars in case I needed it. And then for all the other things I hadn't quite figured out yet, because this is new, I left some money for that as well. So let me stop sharing. Just wanted to give you a sense of my reasoning. And last thing I'll say, if you have five other superintendents come in front of you, they will spend the money differently. And I'm not recommending that this is the only way to spend it, but I am saying as a fairly knowledgeable person, the formula gave me both the money and the flexibility to spend it in a way that I thought would create a really great school system. Not that I'm looking to be a superintendent again, but if I had to be, I would be happy to be a superintendent of a district like this and feel that I had at least the financial resources to do all the things that I would love to do. I'll stop. Happy to take your questions. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Anything to add, secretary Saunders? [Secretary Zoe Saunders]: Nothing to Alright. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Great. Great. Thank you very much. I'm gonna open it up with house ways and means and then go to senate finance, then senate education, and we'll wrap up here at house education. So over to, house ways and means for any questions. [Representative Conlon]: Representative Conlon, do you want us to do all of our questions, three questions? Can we have a little more, guiding you? [Chair Peter Conlon]: Let's do let's do three questions. [Representative Conlon]: Okay. My I'm gonna ask the first question, then I'm gonna pitch it to the room. Where did you get the salary schedules that you have in your estimates? Where in Vermont geographically are those from? [Nate Levinson]: Yeah. So those are the the exact salary schedules that were in the adjusted EV model that was used for, the foundation formula, And I believe that these are the what they call the inflation adjusted ones where the salaries would be a couple years from now. So they they use the state average for each of the rules that were used to create the funding formula. Thank you. Representative, welcome. [Representative Erin Brady]: Thank you very much. I'm I'm trying [Senator Hardy]: to understand the numbers because I'm presuming that this is the district model that we need to be looking at to figure out what the costs are for a district. And this model assumes, for example, five schools in one district that each have eight hundred kids. And I'm trying to reconcile that with the fact that in school year twenty three, we only had ten schools in the entire state of that scale. And I'm wondering what that transition looks like if if this assumes larger schools than is the current state. What are the things that have to happen in the transition? [Nate Levinson]: Yeah. So, for the so two two break points. So the two things are, overwhelmingly, and I think that's the one area that you pointed out, the how big will you get some of your schools. What I tried to do when I built this and tried to create, what I'll call the the standard profile of schools, I kept all of the small schools. So the distribution of schools is very, very similar to the state as a whole. When I saw the distribution, and this is something we could dig deeper on and perhaps update, when I saw the distribution, there is a group of schools that are six hundred plus. And we didn't have the data as to how much bigger than six hundred they became. So there I definitely envision that we would have at the secondary level some consolidation of grade level, so we might get a couple schools slightly larger. But for the most part, I am assuming the same number of kids schools, the same number of hundred kids schools, and where I was hoping to see some middle and high schools, perhaps merge over time. Because I it does seem that the small middle and high schools struggle to have both the class sizes you want and the services you want. But for the most part, I tried not to dramatically shift the size of schools. [Zoe Saunders]: Represent that's a proximal automatic question. [Representative Erin Brady]: Representative Berger? So I have [Secretary Zoe Saunders]: a question about how the rounding the lack of rounding up of some of the FTEs fits in the Vermont context because we've tried this. We have a I I come from a bigger school district in the state, and we have tried this. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Part time. [Secretary Zoe Saunders]: And the problem that we have is finding enough people to fill these roles. And especially when we tell them that their role is gonna be a part time role, we not only compete with other schools or other districts or other states for those roles, but even with other industries. Because if we're telling someone that they're gonna have a point four FTE or a point eight FTE in the school system with all of its attendant challenges, they go find a full time role someplace else. So how does that fit with our context here? [Nate Levinson]: So great great question. And it's interesting that I came to this idea of being pretty focused on not rounding up, not to save money. So, originally, this is, like, the Nate personal journey is I have found that, like, there's a shortage of teachers. There's a shortage of highly skilled speech therapists. There's a shortage of interventionists, reading teachers. And what we found is that public education remains one of the only knowledge based industries that is not particularly part time friendly. And so if you are a person who is raising children, retired, looking after aging parents. We have seen in other places, there are untapped folks, not the folks currently working for you. Now the folks working in the schools today want full time jobs. There is another group of people out there who would actually like part time work. We've seen incredible take up on this, but only if you create what are we called part time friendly schools and part time friendly schedules. And if right now, if you're not set up to be part time so imagine you're a part time teach math teacher, but when they build your schedule, you're scheduled into second period and fourth period. They didn't schedule you into first and second period. Imagine you're expected to come to IEP meetings that could happen on any day of the week. So one really important element of this is to create school systems that are very supportive of part time. The second is you can have full time positions if, again, those schools were designed to share positions. Sharing positions means for one thing, you have the exact same bell schedule. I have been to some of your schools in which you have a middle school and a high school either under the same roof or within walking distance of each other, it seems, and they're on different schedules. So it definitely requires you to build a system that is supportive of this. And the last piece we are seeing for certain roles, not many, but certain roles, things like speech therapy, things like mental health counseling, where there's an army of folks who want to do that remotely and part time. And the research is showing and districts who have used these have actually had really they've been very happy with the results. And so I think it is a combination of becoming part time friendly, a combination of becoming easing the ability to share staff and shifting some roles or some some portions of some roles to remote as well, which has been generally folks who wanted part time work also. So and then, again, that's why I put a contingency. I didn't think you could get there overnight, But I believe that every school system in the country, ten years from today, is gonna be doing much more of this because there are neither the people out there nor the funds likely to be available to continue to round up and not share. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. Let's move to senate finance. You're up. [Zoe Saunders]: Senator Party. [Senator Gulick]: Thank you, mister Levinson. First of all, to that point that representative Burkhart just made and your answer to her, Vermont school districts have been doing what you just said for decades. Because we have small schools, they are, for the most part, very part time friendly, and that has been the model for many decades in Vermont. So I think that your assumption about rounding up is highly inflated. And I I think that senator representative Burkhardt's point about the the fact that right now people want full time jobs to be able to make a full time salary and benefits is much more true. But my question is and and it's possible that we didn't get your full budget because it seems like there are a bunch of things missing out of it. I don't see any special education in your budget. [Nate Levinson]: I don't see any maintenance and operations except for the maintenance director and the special [Senator Gulick]: ed director. I don't see any director and the special ed director. I don't see any transportation. I don't see any food service or overhead. And that was just the first thing. I'm sure there are other things. So is this just a sketch of the salaries and only some of the salaries, or is this your full budget? [Nate Levinson]: So yes and no. So the special ed and the transportation, which I I listed at the very, very bottom, are not funded through the foundation formula. So they're they they are funded through separate, categorical grants. And so there is no special ed other than the leadership, and there is no transportation other than that additional money I was setting aside for the magnet schools. The presumption in this budget is that those categorical grants, would cover the cost of transportation and special education. So those two are not in here because they're not funded by the foundation formula. The maintenance and operations is in that third section where it calls out the it's a per student amount. That was again, this is the model that was used in the adjusted EB model where they figured out for a different size of school how much custodial and maintenance staff and services would be needed. And I have to check on the food service. Again, using all of the, assumptions from the adjusted EU model. But the maintenance and operations, custodial, janitorial is definitely in there. Okay. [Zoe Saunders]: Senator Hardy, I would also point you to the education funding brief, which details what is built into the foundation formula and explains the categorical amounts, with assumptions of the dollars that would be available. [Senator Gulick]: Okay. So the the it seems to me that mister Levinson has more information than you provided us now, secretary, but [Zoe Saunders]: the That's incorrect. That's incorrect. So if you go to the education funding brief, we've explained everything that's built into the foundation formula. We've called out where there will be categorical aid, and in several testimonies, we have articulated that. So that's clearly documented in the materials we've shared. [Senator Gulick]: Okay. I I I have not understood that to be the case. So I I've read those documents, and I don't see that level of detail or explanation for how you've gotten to your numbers. But, so you're assuming that maintenance and operations and trans and the transportation right now is a fifty percent reimbursement. So are you assuming that the categorically would reimburse a hundred percent of transportation costs? [Zoe Saunders]: So what we built into the model is an assumption that a hundred percent, would be reimbursed for the, blunt estimation in this modeling. We have doubled the cost of transportation as we define the specific district boundaries and understand the actual busing patterns that would occur, that may need to be, you know, revised. What we're showing today is there's also flexibility within the way that this funding is structured to build in those contingencies for that purpose. So the purpose of today is to really outline an understanding of the full amount of money available, the assumptions that we've built into the adjustment evidence based model that would be able to deliver those services along with the flexibility that the district would have in terms of reprioritizing based on the needs of your district and also in anticipation of some of these unknowns. So in his in, Nate Levinson's model, he'd identified some contingencies there precisely for that purpose. [Senator Gulick]: Okay. I guess I will have to look at it more closely. It seems like there are some significant holes in your model, especially in your cost savings. There's no cost savings or very, very little cost savings to the boards. Boards are boards are volunteers. They there's no cost savings to changing the boards. I can understand maybe the philosophical differences, cost savings to that. And the rounding up, as I said, that's already done across Vermont districts and has been for decades. So [Secretary Zoe Saunders]: So [Zoe Saunders]: let me clear let me clarify. There's no suggestion that having fewer school boards is saving costs. What we're suggesting is that we're creating a regional central office. And as we walk through today, we've explained how you could stack that in a way that also reduces spending, but allows you to specialize the support that is available. In terms of the round of having that personal experience as a parent, that happened in rural community in Southwest Mhmm. Vermont, where they do that very effectively. There that is not happening in every case across our state. Part of what we're doing at the next phase of data collection is being able to get more precise, with some of that class size data. But you're right. There's a lot of innovation happening in our system. This proposal is not discounting that. This proposal is actually recognizing that where there are ways in which you can build and scale upon that innovation where it's happening and working really effectively in the system. And we're bringing in examples of actually Nate's work in the state of Vermont where he's helped to support that. So it's not the only part of this puzzle, but it's a piece of it as you think about budgeting. Also, as he outlined at the beginning of his presentation, a superintendent might articulate different priorities in coordination with the board. And so if if having full time positions is a priority, there's different choices that are made within your overall budgeting around what will be available in terms of programming and specialized work. So this is designed to create flexible flexibility. These are the strategies that would be available to get to a a delivery of an education model that has a lot of support in the system. But there could be other choices that a superintendent would make depending on the prioritization of the school board. [Senator Gulick]: Yes. Obviously, that is clear. But mister Levinson did include in his four points about saving cost savings fewer board members as something that would save money. So I just wanna say he included it as something that is a cost savings. And they did So con [Zoe Saunders]: so yeah. So here, contract negotiation, obviously, if you're able to achieve economies of scale, there's ability to do that if you're a school board and you're negotiating contracts, with a much larger group of schools and students. So there's just some basic business principle that you think about achieving economies of scale in that instance. Alright. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Why don't we move on to senate education? You're up. [Zoe Saunders]: Hello? Oh, do [Nate Levinson]: we more questions here. [Chair Peter Conlon]: I'm sorry. You have another question? [Zoe Saunders]: Two more. [Senator Weeks]: Yeah. That was just senator Hardy. Sorry. Hi. Hi, mister Levinson. This Senator Gulick. Thank you for your presentation. I wanted to first compliment you on one part of your plan which is the combination administration and teaching model. I think a lot of countries use that and I've always been glad that you incorporated it into your budget. I also was really pleased that you called out the complicated Byzantine nature of our, supervisory unions and our district, business offices that that is also true. And thank you for mentioning that. My question is more about the, the bodies it takes to do some of the work that we have in the state. And I'm sure you're familiar that, we have a hundred and thirty three chapters in our Title sixteen, which is our governing, education, laws. Not to mention federal laws, Title IX, IDEA, and then rule as well that EQS and MTSS and DQS. So I'm wondering how you how do you plan to go from ten special ed directors, let's say, to one and still be able to do the work that's needed. And I did hear you at one point say that you would reduce the need for special ed, and I was wondering if you could speak to that. [Nate Levinson]: Sure. So two great questions. So the the first is, and this just it it the perspective of having work in thirty states and three hundred districts. So in the my world view is that, like, the perfect size for a school district is about fifteen thousand students. It is big enough to hedge scale, and it's small enough to actually know your leadership team and to know your principal. So I've always and it's a question I get asked a lot across the country is, hey. If you're building a system from scratch, which nobody has ever actually done, except you all are actually talking about it. So it's kind of interesting that that's a question I've and always been a hypothetical. But fifteen thousand and I say that based on having worked with many, many, many districts that have a thousand students, five thousand students, fifteen thousand, fifty thousand. I've worked with districts that have a hundred and two hundred thousand. So one thing to know that a district that has two hundred thousand students, which I've had as clients, they have a single special ed director, and they have deputy directors. So in my model, we have one special ed director, and we've got a a number of other special ed leaders as well. So but to know that every district of any size has one special ed director and it's certainly fifteen thousand, you would expect one director and some deputy directors or which is in the model. The so you will see more middle management, if you will, but they aren't paid as much. They have more narrow focus, but the the fifteen thousand or, in my case, twelve thousand student district has a central office that is not unlike other central offices for twelve thousand kids who have all those same requirements, all those same laws, and other states put all the other expectations in reporting. So this is I know it will definitely feel different for Vermont. It will feel it would feel extraordinarily every day in most of [Zoe Saunders]: our places. [Nate Levinson]: That was the first question. The second was in the adjusted EB model and in the parts of my budget, I have invested in intervention to provide tier two and tier three intervention with certified staff. I've invested heavily in instructional coaches to improve excuse me, to improve tier one core instruction. What we have seen across the country when tier one core instruction is better, when literacy is instruction is more effective, and when tier two and tier three intervention is intense and provided by folks, fewer kids will be referred to special education. Special education serves two groups of kids, kids with disabilities and kids with really who probably do not have disabilities but have struggled to learn. And it becomes a place that kids are referred to when tier one and tier two and tier three didn't do everything they could or hopefully will in in this model. So over time, it is actually reasonable to see or to expect special education referrals to decline for those kids who really just struggle to read and the interruption and supports weren't sufficient. [Senator Weeks]: Okay. Thank you. [Zoe Saunders]: Hey. Do we have any others? [Secretary Zoe Saunders]: Okay. We will seed our one question. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Alright. Over to you, senate education. You can grab that question if you like. [Senator Chinden]: Alright. I mean, you're looking at me. I will go. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Looking looking for hands. [Senator Chinden]: Sure. Thank you. I I've been thinking a lot about our deferred maintenance and our unmet school construction needs, especially if we're thinking about regionally excellent high schools. And I'd like to understand from you and your experience some of the best ways that when we create a district at a larger scale, we can remove barriers or add incentives for that kind of those central office and physical plant costs to continue to be the areas focused on creative and efficient solutions and continue to make sure money for student success and outcomes is funneled more so to the control of the actual school, the the principal, the those doing the education work. [Nate Levinson]: Great point and definitely very, very relevant having seen the state of many of the facilities across the state. So generally, the way I think about this one is year in, year out maintenance, that should come from an operating budget. And I think having expectations or monitoring of what is a reasonable annual investment in maintenance. And I know as a superintendent, like, if it's like, hey. Do we keep this teacher or do we fix this, patch this roof? A lot of folks would say, hey. The teacher matters more. But then you do that for fifteen years, and now you're looking at a hundred million dollar facility that's in terrible shape. So I do think having some incentives or around just doing basic maintenance on a regular basis is a good long term fiscally prudent strategy. And to know that as a school board and as a superintendent, everything tells you not to do maintenance when budgets get tight. And yet, in the long run, that was not a good decision. And as a school board member, I was on a building committee. We were replacing a middle school high school that should not have needed to be replaced except for twenty years, prior to my being there. They deferred maintenance to the point where it just didn't make any sense to try to fix it anymore. So it was a very expensive deferral. But that's the operating budget. And, again, the adjusted EB model, does have money for maintenance and expects that smaller schools have a higher expenditure per student. So I think they did a nice job, and my budget included there at maintenance, as well. Now for the actual new building, you know, if you need to large renovation or new facilities, consolidated facilities, I know that is not an operating budget expense outside of this funding formula. It is typically a capital plan. And if you when you get to that point, I would probably point you to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. I don't know if it's still their model is still there, but I'll go back, like, ten or fifteen years ago. And I thought they had the most thoughtful plan ever that basically said that the state brought in a group of thoughtful architects to create some very thoughtful guidelines, like, how big should a school be, what should be included, and what should not be included. And they said, hey. We will reimburse you or fund a thoughtfully sized, a thoughtfully organized school if the projection enrollments enrollment projections made sense. We will actually analyze whether repair or replace made sense. So they really had a very, really thoughtful group create the the the rules of engagement. And if you wanted to break those rules, you could not expect the state to fund it, and it dramatically reduced the cost of construction. And I sent my kids to, two schools funded under that plan, and they were amazingly great schools. And you would never have known that they were probably thirty percent less costly than what would have been built on under the old model. So I I think that there are good examples out there, and I think, Nevada also created some thoughtful school construction guidelines, but that's probably discussion for another day. [Zoe Saunders]: Thank you for also pointing out some of those resources. We'll certainly look at that as a model. I wanna share also that within the district quality standards, there are there's a focus on facilities management, including have a five year capital plan and other measures. So that's another quality measure available as we roll that out. [Speaker 3 ]: So I Senator, go ahead. For you. You talked about fifteen thousand as being the optimal size for a district. Can you elaborate on that elaborate on that a little bit and talk about what happens? It would appear, if you said that, that something must something negative must begin to happen when you go beyond fifteen thousand. And and also talk about pick a lower number, you know, of seven thousand or five thousand. Do it from both ends. What what how how did you arrive at fifteen and be a little bit specific about what begins to happen in each direction? [Nate Levinson]: That's right. Great point. And to be clear, this is personal opinion based on I I travel a hundred plus days a year to visit schools, work with school systems of all sizes. What I have seen and to I have been in really schools with a hundred and fifty thousand kids that are incredibly efficient, incredibly well run. They have really strong leadership and management. But that happens to be more of the exception. So what what I've seen is that when you start to get above fifteen thousand, the management challenge, the leadership challenge is really more complex. And what you need is internal systems, computer systems, accounting systems, scheduling systems, and leaders who are very adept at managing large organizations. And the fact that it happens to be a public school reading. Yes. They should know about reading, but they really don't need to know how to teach phonics. Just so when you start to get about fifteen thousand, I find that the leadership and management challenges become leadership and management. And if you have the wherewithal and the culture that says, and we're gonna hire superintendents that are very strong leaders and managers, you can make it work. But if you hire somebody who is a charismatic instructional leader, that may not actually be the person who is going to manage a very a large district of thirty, forty thousand kids well. Then if you look at the other side at five thousand or six thousand students, not a terrible number, but it is you don't get the scale for your high school. Like, you can't do some of the career technical programs. You can't have as many electives because it is to be cost effective. You do wanna make sure you're putting twenty, twenty five kids in a room. So having both larger schools and more kids in your district, I've also found that when you can have a central office spread across more folks. I'll give you an example. The IT director and most schools have an IT director. An IT director in a district with a thousand students, you cannot pay them hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year if you don't have the money to do that. And the kind of person you you don't open up the same avenues. When you've got fifteen thousand or at least fifty thousand kid districts, their head of IT could have been the head of IT for a large corporation. So I I do think that some of the specialized roles in central office become more specialized when you get larger or to afford that in the smaller district. So and I don't wanna fixate on the fifteen thousand number, but I would definitely say the ten to twenty is a really very efficient balance of economies of scale and complexity. Under ten thousand, I've you can still run them well and efficiently, but you need to be a little more frugal. And when you get over, you need to be a really good manager and leader. [Speaker 11 ]: We jump in on that, senate education. [Senator Bogartz]: Any other questions? Yeah. But if if you wanna roll back to if if senator Chinden's comment is relatively It [Speaker 11 ]: very much is senator Weeks. If I could just elaborate on that point on the district size, would that be okay, senator Boggarts? Sure. [Speaker 3 ]: As long as we get our one more question afterwards. [Speaker 11 ]: Levinson, this is very very helpful. We've received testimony from the Vermont Superintendents Association that four to six thousand is optimal. They also, in that testimony, said that at ten thousand pupils, it's time starts to achieve diseconomies of scale. My question is, a, would you reflect any, on that? And, b, do you think there's a difference or discrepancy in in the optimal size relative to the geography or the overall breadth, the rurality versus urban entity or urbanity. And so our urban versus rural districts different in your in your experience in considering optimal pupil size? [Nate Levinson]: So I I think I totally hear that question and not surprised, and I have great respect for the superintendents in the state, top many of them as friends. But if you're used to I mean, I I've spent a lot of the area. You're like, I catch myself. I'll say, you know, oh, I was just in a big district, And they're just thinking, oh, like, five thousand? Thinking, no. No. Like, a hundred and fifty thousand. If if you are just so used to, a thousand being typical and two thousand being big ish and five thousand being huge, which has been the Vermont experience. Ten thousand has to feel it. I I don't believe there I can't imagine there are many superintendents in Vermont today who have actually led a ten thousand student district. So I'm not so I just think that they're I'm not surprised that their target number is a little smaller because their world experience is different. It's funny. When I work in Cal when I work in Florida, I will occasionally say, oh, you know, like, they literally said we're gonna have this big districts in this room and the small districts in the other room. The other room had districts with forty thousand students in it because those were considered the small ones. I don't want to forty thousand is a hard district to run. My only point is that what you're used to really colors your thinking. I'll just say having seen districts as small as the lot and districts as large as New York, I've my personal opinion is fifteen thousand is a really good number, where you've balanced economies of scale and the ability to know your staff and know your buildings. And I think your last point about, hey. The rural nature of it, I really have two different opinions here. As the geographic area gets spread out, there is value to having small districts so you're not so far apart from your buildings. Right? And the flip side is managing a small rural district is really hard. I mean, it is one of the hardest things to do, and having that economies of scale having, you know, specialized roles in central office would be really, really helpful even in a rural district. So I I think, you know, how you balance that. Right. Fifteen thousand, if I if it was if I were creating a district to run, I would do it between ten and fifteen thousand if I got to plan my own job. [Speaker 3 ]: Okay. Senator [Senator Bogartz]: Weeks has a question. Thanks, sir. So secretary Saunders and mister Levinson, thank you for the brief. I I find the the data approach refreshing. You've in your in your briefing, you've you've hit the optimal size for a district. You've hit the optimal size for a classroom. Can you talk at least a minute or two about the optimal size of elementary, middle, high schools? [Nate Levinson]: Sure. I I think that in a in a weird way, that might not be the most important question you should have asked me. Ed, but you're prerogative to ask, and I will definitely answer it. When when I think about elementary school sizes, the first thing my brain goes to is, hey. Can we run these in a cost effective way? Because I mean, I am a financial person at some level, and very small elementary schools can be incredibly expensive, but they don't have to be. Then the second question is, hey, if I ran an elementary school, cost effectively, can I run a great small elementary school? And what I've seen sometimes in Vermont is they are small, but they don't have a lot of the services you would want. And so my the way my brain processes this, and I've written about this and I've helped others in other states do this, is how do you provide cost effectively a very high quality small school? And I'll give you just a few examples. One is you're gonna need to have multi age classrooms. That's an efficiency part. But I personally don't believe in that research supports teaching math two grades simultaneously, but it does support teaching reading. Because reading by its nature is often broken into small groups, and we often see first graders reading at a second grade level and second graders reading at the first grade level and it spirals. So if you told me you had a small school and it had multi age classrooms and you staggered when math was taught, I'd say that's a higher quality small school than one that, didn't stagger math, but they didn't change the cost. So I do really look at some of their practices. And then, you know, I wanna make sure, for example, that these kids are getting the same amount of mental health services and the same amount of tutoring. And I don't wanna see a tutoring, quite honestly, from a noncertified staff person. And and sometimes you say, hey. I can't afford to have somebody drive, you know, an hour, unpack, settle in, do a thirty minute group, maybe two of them, and then drive another hour, hour and a half. And so you end up seeing less intervention in some small schools. But we know, for example, online tutoring from highly skilled teachers has been very effective. And so maybe in those schools, you need to do that. So I I just think the I approach it that you can have a small school that is both high quality and cost effective, but you really have to think about it differently. What's fascinating to me, last comment, is I have visited and talked to principals of these small schools who are already doing everything I just talked to you about. They're already doing multi age, staggering math, sharing principals or lead teachers. So I don't think I invented anything that isn't already being done in the state, but I've also been to other schools that don't do those things. So I think you have a lot of good models here. That said, I think it is always easier from to running school district where your elementary schools are in the hundred and fifty to two hundred kid range. If I was just building from scratch, it is easier to manage and serve, but not but I think you can still do the small schools, but you have to do them differently. Differently than some people do. Some are already doing those great strategies. [Chair Peter Conlon]: I'll say it over there, say it education. [Speaker 3 ]: We have another one, but we don't wanna violate the rule of three. We have one more if [Secretary Zoe Saunders]: that's Go ahead. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Oh, go go ahead. Okay. [Representative Taylor]: Go ahead, senator. I was hoping to get a bit more information about CTE. As far as I can see, it looks like there's just under quarter million in this hypothetical district that would go to CTEs. And at least, in my opinion, I'm hoping, you know, CTEs will be, you know, expanded and more supported. And so, yeah, I was just wondering if you could, share some more information there. [Nate Levinson]: Totally. A great point. Huge fan of CTE. I will point out I'm also a graduate of the Boston Welding Academy, and I'm a mediocre mediocre welder. Not I will not get hired as a welder, but, yes, I am hey. So the way that's the way the funding formula and the way the state set it up, which I think was very smart, Most of the hardcore CTE is being run by a CTE BOCES, a regional operation. So as a school district, my job was to actually send money to the BOCES and then to send students to the BOCES who and the BOCES, this regional CTE organization, would, in fact, deliver the services. So it's not in my budget. You're right. So I have a small amount of CTE that would be done in, quote, my district, but the vast majority of it is done elsewhere and very well funded from what I can gather. And, again, having when we talk about scale, even at fifteen thousand kids, a district running their own CTE program, well, you're you're just barely at scale. You will be able to have more offerings and more specialization with the statewide. And the other thing I will point out about, school districts, CTE too often is kind of the the the leftover, the the last thing thought about. And I think a lot of superintendents, it's just not really where their experience is. And so I think in a world in which CTE is and should be more important, having kind of a dedicated group, to just really focus on that Probably supercharges that more than asking a school district going through all these kinds of changes to also figure out how to do CTE really well and at scale. [Speaker 3 ]: Thank you. Thank you. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Nate, I wanna tap a little bit of your long experience in Vermont. You probably know full well we've got a hundred and nineteen districts. So a hundred and nineteen sets of books, a hundred and nineteen checking accounts. We got fifty two s u's or s d's on top of that. So at a minimum, fifty two collective bargaining agreements. You were really kinda integral into our act one seventy three best practices for special education work that we did here. But but we're five years in on that, and I would call the implementation of that uneven at best. But, you know, sir, given the enormity of what currently exists and a movement to such a different model, and and yours even assumes some school sizes that we would evolve to Mhmm. How many years are we talking here to make something like this become a reality? I mean, you've you've got you've got you know what Vermont looks like. You know how it just works. [Nate Levinson]: So so I I wanna so two different comments, and and I think the and this is a big undertaking. Like, I agree. I think the act one seventy three, which is extraordinarily near and dear to me, is a lesson to heed, but maybe not the lesson that some people would think about. So you could look at one seventy three, which was a special education reform effort, and to say, hey. We're five years in, and, damn, we're not nearly anywhere near where we want to be. And I would say that the mistake, if we can use that word, or the reason we're not as far along, certainly, the pandemic did not help. But I also think that, the eye got off the ball. Mhmm. And the it got passed, and then school systems were said, hey. Why don't you go do this? And some did, and many tried, and some made more headway. When we've seen change of this scale happen really, really well, there is a relentless focus by the agency of education in every way, in every day, in every decision for five years. And then it wasn't left to the districts to figure it out. It wasn't left to the districts to keep the focus, and nobody was allowed to take the focus off. So I I I do think that these large scale changes that we are seeing in some states, they just have an incredible role for the Department of Education. And I will say as a former superintendent, the first commissioner of Ed I ever met, Dave Driscoll, I met with them in Massachusetts, and I said, look. I have two requests. One, never talk to me, and two, send me money. And that was pretty you did not see the Department of Ed as somebody who's really gonna help. Now I will say that, you know, act one seventy three was championed by the Department of Ed. They were the people who brought this to the floor. They helped make it happen, and then COVID and other things took the shift off. I've come to believe that departments of you know, state departments of education are just the central player in not doing the work, but in guiding the work, in solving problems for every district, not leaving each district to figure it on its own. And I and I think my lesson of one seventy three was it was the agency of education that helped gave it birth, and but they didn't do enough to to nurture it after it got born. That all that said, you will you should get started sooner than later with some good planning, but just to recognize that it won't go perfect. You will not get all the savings right away, which is certainly why I put a lot of contingencies in there. But at the same time, you really want to be pushing every year. I don't think you wanna delay, like, hey. In year one, don't worry about rounding up and don't worry about what you really wanna say is these are all the changes we wanna see. Let's make incremental steps in each of them year by year so that your people are building the muscles, working out the details, and in collaboration with the agency, figuring out how to do this well. And I think you can get there, but I I I do think the agency's got a quarterback and cheerlead and keep the focus. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. Representative Brady and then representative Taylor. [Representative Erin Brady]: Thank you. I just for a second, wanna circle back to the numb the district size piece only because I I don't want a a false narrative to hang out there. The numbers that the Vermont Superintendents Association brought to us, I don't think were just their feelings. They were research based, evidence based studies on optimal district sizes. And I thought, if I understood correctly, the assumptions and the evidence based model that APA used to give us the numbers were districts thirty nine hundred, which are close to what that recommendation was. So I I just wanna make sure I'm not reading numbers wrong there. [Nate Levinson]: So one, I've not seen their recommendation. I will say that I have not seen any published research that says five thousand is more efficient or more cost effective or gets better return on investment than ten or fifteen. So I don't I can't weigh in on that. And I think the, EV model did assume thirty nine hundred because and my understanding is, one, the EV model is influenced by what folks in the state tell them. Those are those professional judgment panels. And, also, I think they were trying very much to be, I'll call Vermont. Respect the current state in Vermont. It is definitely going to five districts. It's a very unvermont kind of step. I think you may I think that may be a good thing. But I I suspect, and I don't wanna speak for the folks who did the formula, that it going to thirty nine hundred probably seemed more likely than going to fifteen thousand or twelve thousand. But I I don't think that either I don't think they would suggest that thirty nine hundred was optimal any more than ten thousand or fifteen thousand. [Zoe Saunders]: Great. And my question would clarify too Yeah. If you'd like. So you're right that the evidence based model was based on thirty nine hundred. That was not identified as the optimal. It was identified at the base upon which you can achieve efficiency. So the the floor at which you can achieve efficiency, it does not represent the optimal. [Representative Erin Brady]: My question was, did I hear something in the early in your slides when it talks about, a continued high degree of local control? Does keeping smaller elementary schools through thoughtful staffing? I don't see this on the slides. Did I hear you say something about online learning or virtual learning or the that some of the ways of doing that is for students to be somehow regularly engaged in [Nate Levinson]: online learning? No. I no. Not a fan of online learning. So no. The the the kids would be in kids would be in class. What I was saying is to deliver speech therapy where mental health counseling might be done online where I have the research saying kids seem to react very well [Senator Bogartz]: to that. [Nate Levinson]: But that's the only extent of online services. Representative Taylor. [Representative McCann]: Alright. Simple clarifying question that I don't think she caught against our three questions. I'll use the the chair can use this discretion. This budget that you proposed was working within the confines of just the base and the weights proposed and nothing additional? [Nate Levinson]: That that is correct. Yeah. You can actually see on the first tab of the spreadsheet, it applies the proposed base and weights. And that's what created that two hundred and thirty seven million dollar available funds. [Representative McCann]: That's what I thought. Just wanted to make sure. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Okay. Representative McCann's gonna finish it up, and then we all have to go to a new committee room. [Zoe Saunders]: I this might be a question for, secretary Sanders instead. I'm still wondering, about how you how you determine that number to pay your teachers, that one hundred and six thousand one hundred and seventy four. In the slides leading up to seeing the spreadsheet, it looked like you, Nate, had said, ten thousand you were gonna pay teachers ten thousand dollars more. And then in the spreadsheet, I think you reverted back to the five thousand that had been in the, proposal the governor's proposal. Either way, you do this for myself and my colleagues at u thirty two. We'd be taking a pay cut to come to your district. No. So part of this, what we showed today, is a prototypical model. So based on the salary the average salary budget. As we move into this work, there's recognition that across the state, there's a great deal of discrepancy in teacher pay. In fact, that's part of the reason we're approaching this work so that we can achieve more parity with teacher pay. We see very significant differences, sometimes with neighboring districts and certainly as we look across the state, higher needs communities often paying their teachers significantly less. So as part of this work, and we're working with the policy sprint team, is to understand how to do this work in rolling it out, knowing that, we're building on a system of existing teacher salaries. So what that might look like is you, it's an overall average increase. And so as you're getting into the detail around what that looks like in terms of specific teacher pay, that would be negotiated, as part of the bargaining agreement, for that particular district. And so there also might be opportunities to make shifts in terms of identifying a teacher that is really specialized in a specific area. Maybe there's two in a physical area at a school that might be able to relocate to another school to be able to provide that service. So overall, this is an average that we're building on. We offered to do this work in the actual region so that you can look at that level of detail understanding that the salary schedule is different, and the pay is considerably different in the northwest part of our state than the rest of Vermont. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. Thank you both very much. Nice to see you again, Nate Levinson. Come visit us in Vermont sometime soon. Look forward to it. [Nate Levinson]: Thank you all. Thank you.

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