SmartTranscript of House Education and Senate Education - 2025-03-13 - 3:00 PM

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Sounds good. Alright. Welcome everybody to a joint hearing for each senate and house education committees. This is Thursday, March thirteenth twenty twenty five. The purpose of our gathering today is to kinda switch gears from our own worlds and get a better sense of what the news is coming out of Washington, what we know of the current impacts, what we might be able to predict for future impacts, which I know is gonna be really hard. So we're gonna begin with the point of view from of the agency of education and then get some information from folks in the field who have been part of national conversations as well. I I I think we're probably gonna be limiting it to sort of the k twelve arena. We'll be showing other impacts at the higher education levels as well. Anyway, welcome. Anne, you just give a formal introduction. Sure. Then we look forward to your testimony. [Anne Bordenaro]: Great. Hi. It's good to be here with everybody. I'm Anne Bordenaro for the record. I'm the director of federal and education support programs at the agency, and my job has never been so exciting. So so I prepared some testimony, and then I don't know if you also got the updated testimony. It doesn't make too much difference. I only changed one little thing. But as you can imagine, just about anything you put on paper is obsolete about thirty minutes later. So I'll do my best as long as everyone takes with a grain of salt that, you know, there's just so many unknowns. Monitoring extremely closely everything that's happening in Washington. We have some really good informants, which I assume are probably over gonna overlap with the informants of some of the folks from, who are also gonna be joining me today. So the Council of Chief State School Officers and, the Broomen Group who regularly presents to, the National Association of Leaders of Education Programs or whatever, NALPA, which is sort of the national ESEA organization, and our congressional delegation. So they're all monitoring this on a momentary basis. The funding situation, as I said, is in extreme flux, as you know. We continue to get funding information. We continue to get new, guidance and Veer Colleague letters almost on a daily basis. We're trying to dissect those for people. We've also in my division, we also operate the child nutrition programs in the state. So there's also USDA to monitor as well. So, anyway, I'm happy to come back as many times as you all need to keep you up to date on what's going on, but I'll tell you what I know as of today. First of all, f y twenty five appropriations. I think you're probably aware that the senate, maybe as we speak, is, going to be voting on the continuing resolution that the house passed a couple days ago and then left town. It's unclear what will happen. It all the latest prognostication is that the senate will, in the end, vote for it in order not to be blamed for shutting down the government. If they don't get the votes, the sixty votes in the senate, then, there will be a government shutdown tomorrow. That's not the first time we've dealt with a government shutdown. What happens in those cases is that we get very concrete written directions about what to do, but basically our programs continue. The only real problem for us is, when we need to talk to staff, depending on how long the shutdown happens, if it happens, you know, they obviously, except for the core skeletal, essential staff, aren't there to answer our questions. But we're not particularly concerned about that. The alternative is that they could pass appropriations bills for f y twenty five, which is, I know, what the Democrats and the appropriators in, the senate would prefer, but that doesn't seem to be on the table today. So we'll see. The bill that did pass the house, the continuing resolution, just continues funds for one more year, essentially, at FY twenty four amounts, which in our world is good news at this point. That means that ESEA, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, IDEA, Perkins would continue basically with the funding we had this year. So that we consider a win. But things, as I said, could change. We're not anticipating significant education cuts in f y twenty five, however, regardless of which path they choose. The other thing to know about education funding is it's what's called forward funded. So we're actually still [Chair Peter Conlon]: Not anticipating cuts in what year? Because I think you said twenty one. [Anne Bordenaro]: Five. Oh, five. Sorry. Yeah. I might have said twenty one by mistake. Yeah. No. We're we're halfway into f y twenty five, but we're not anticipating significant cuts in FY twenty five, that would impact any of our major formula programs. [Chair Peter Conlon]: What is a federal fiscal year? [Anne Bordenaro]: That's what I was gonna say. Federal fiscal year is October one to September thirty. It's very confusing because education programs are also forward funded, so we're still operating on FY twenty four funds, which we got in July of twenty four and October of twenty four. So for f y twenty five, we will get our first well, we hope to get our first allocation on July one of twenty five, and the second would come in octo October one of twenty five. So it's basically the twenty five, twenty six school year. So the bottom line of what I'm saying is we are not anticipating cuts of any substantial size to our core education programs for the twenty five, twenty six school year, and that is good news. Child nutrition programs are, different than education programs. They are a sort of entitlement. As long as the child qualifies through for a free or reduced price meal and the school serves them that meal, the school is entitled to be paid for that meal. And those reimbursement rates are set in federal statute. They change. Once a year, they're updated. At this time, we don't we haven't heard anything about any problems with those reimbursements. So, we've advised schools to continue to serve meals and that we will continue to expect funding for those meals. One thing we did do, though, is, with our amazing child nutrition director, you probably know Rosie Krueger, is, anticipating that there might be a shutdown, which could impact access to the staff to process the reimbursements, put out a call to folks to, to go ahead and put their re reimbursements in if they could, as soon as possible. So we did a, larger than usual reimbursement, for meals over the last couple of months, I think last week. In terms of title program allocations for school year twenty five, twenty six, we expect those to be late. They've been late many years in the last, you know, five, six, ten years. What we tend to do, we have processes for that. We tend to do a preliminary allocation of a certain portion of the what we inte anticipate to be the full allocation for an LEA. So we say, like, we're gonna give everybody eighty percent. If we hear that the f y budget f y twenty five budget has been passed, continuing resolution or whatever, we can anticipate what the funding is going to be. Even if we don't have it in hand, they haven't given us the spreadsheet, we'll say we'll give everybody, say, eighty percent, and then we'll reconcile it, you know, when when the final numbers come down. We've we've got processes for dealing with that. In terms of FY twenty six, that is more complicated. FY twenty six, we expect the presidents and the administration to release their budget proposal probably in, sometime in the next couple of weeks. That's that's what they're signaling. We also anticipate that they will probably try to use, excuse me, what's known as a reconciliation strategy to pass it, which means they wouldn't need any democratic support. So that wouldn't be the first time that an administration has done that. But if that happens, that makes more likely that a lot of the cuts that they've been kind of signaling might be included in that budget. Republican leadership in the House and Senate are looking for substantial savings to offset proposed increases in military and immigration enforcement, funding, extension of the twenty seventeen tax cuts, lifting up the debt ceiling. Those are all expensive. And so they're looking for ways to cut, to, you know, balance out some of those increased expenditures. So some of the things that we're tracking, because they would be a big concern, are reduction in the federal share of Medicaid funding to states and increases in eligibility requirements for Medicaid, and also cuts in SNAP funding and increases in eligibility requirements for SNAP benefits. I think it's premature for us to go into what that impacts those might have, you know, several steps down the road for us in education yet because we don't know what's gonna happen. It's still pretty far out there, but we're tracking those. The other thing is that last year's House ed budget proposal called for significant cuts to ESEA programs, Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs. They did not pass. The Senate blocked them then. We anticipate that there will be some proposals to cut ESEA programs again in the FY26 budget. But again, we don't know by how much or which programs. All we have to go on is what was proposed, you know, last year that, that did not succeed. The one thing that works in our favor in this regard is these programs serve every school district in America. So they have strong constituencies, IDEA, Perkins, ESEA programs. Everybody gets Title I. Everybody gets IDEA. So, so that helps, you know, when there, whenever there's, conversation about major cuts, there are many groups who raise their voice, in defense of these programs. In any case, because of forward funding of education programs, any cuts that might be enacted for FY twenty six wouldn't impact schools till school year twenty six, twenty seven. So we're looking, you know, a year after next year, at the earliest for significant cuts, if there were any. A couple more things. I'm sure you heard that Department of Ed, staffing was substantially cut two days ago. And on top of the voluntary resignations and some of the Doge cuts and probationary employees and all, they're now looking at about half as much staff as they had, you know, a week ago. As best we can tell, the major cuts have come from the Office of Civil Rights, which investigates, you know, discrimination complaints. Institute of Education Sciences, which is the research arm of the Department of Education, so the, National Center for Education Statistics and the National Center for Education Research. And then the Office of Postsecondary Education, which deals with student you know, with higher ed and student loans and Pell Grants and all that. The Office of Special Education Programs, the Office of Career and Technical Education, and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which are the three that we really deal with, in k twelve. They have not sustained significant cuts and, are still communicating with us. We're still working with them. So I'm sure it's very difficult for them right now, and we anticipate that there have to be some reductions in their ability to be responsive moving into the coming months just because people will be picking up statutory responsibilities that weren't theirs. But for now, our programs are intact and our staff appear to be in their offices, the ones we usually deal with. Ed is supposed to be issuing guidance in the next day or so regarding all of this and who's in and who's out and who to talk to about different issues and all. We haven't received anything yet, but that's what we've been told. Do I have time to switch to executive orders? Yeah. Sure. Okay. I'll I'm sorry. I'm talking fast trying to get through a lot, but No problem. Okay. In terms of executive orders, they've been coming like confetti. I picked picked out two that I think had the most significant impact on k to twelve education. One of them is the dear colleague letter on title nine enforcement. And, basically, this letter communicates that the Office of Civil Rights will enforce title nine through the twenty twenty regulations, not the twenty twenty four regulations that were promulgated by the Biden administration and vacated by the court, think, in December or January of this year. Basically, what that means is the biggest difference between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four for our purposes is that discrimination based on gender does not include gender identity or sexual orientation in between these two sets of regulations. So, basically, OCR will be investigating cases based on the definition of gender in twenty twenty regulations. In terms of two others that have caused great consternation among educators in Vermont and elsewhere, there's the FAQ on, DEI and title six, which followed the dear colleague letter on title six. And, basically, these two documents elaborate on the kinds of curricular and instructional and policy actions or inactions that might trigger an investigation by OCR and how such an investigation would proceed. Now in the, FAQ [Chair Peter Conlon]: and [Anne Bordenaro]: in the letter, they acknowledge that they do not have the right to, overstep on First Amendment rights of students or teachers, and also that the government does federal government does not have authority to dictate curriculum to states and localities. So they've they acknowledge that. However, within that, they say that, that the first amendment and curricular prerogatives of school districts do not relieve schools of their requirements to, make sure that they abide by Title six, that hostile environments based on race based policies are not created in their schools, that students are free of racial harassment in their schools, things that we already, you know, fully embrace here at Vermont. The other thing is that the FAQ identifies some considerations that OCR might consider when deciding if if there was a complaint, when deciding if it was justified. It's actually pretty helpful, reading as that as far as those go. In terms of investigatory processes, they lay out what that would look like. And, again, there's a a strict sort of process of due process that has to be followed, in the case of any investigation. And, you know, they acknowledge that, and that's a strong protection for us. It's not like if a parent made a complaint, you instantly lose your federal dollars. It doesn't work like that. And the last thing that's probably caused the most fear is they put out a new simplified web form for parents, students, community members, whatever, to to put in complaints of harassment and discrimination. In some ways, it's actually a good thing because it's easier to access than the old way of filing a complaint, but people have had the right to file a complaint all along. So there's no new right there. The only difference is that it's very easy now to just go online and put in your complaint, whatever it is. That has not changed in any way our grounds for deciding if there's educator misconduct. All of our rules are exactly the same as they were before. And so our general advice to what we call the field, teachers and administrators and all, is to continue to do what you're doing, you know, pursue your planned professional development, pursue your instructional activities in accordance with your own SU's priorities, your needs assessments, state board rules, education quality standards. And if you have questions and concerns about any particular activity that you're involved with, consult with your, you know, LEA legal counsel. But we're not advising people to, you know, preemptively stop doing anything they're doing just because they're afraid they might, you know, be getting in trouble with some sort of amorphous set of standards. And I can say we were pleased that, after our most recent iteration of this recommendation, that, some multistate guidance was put out by the Vermont attorney general along with the attorney generals of thirteen other states, essentially saying the same thing about these dear colleague letter and FAQ that I just described. And their conclusion is that this document was in meant, intended to instill fear, and they are writing as attorney generals to mitigate that fear. So, the whole document again is worth reading. But, two other things in case you're interested. I brought the actual dollar amounts of our various federal grants if you're interested. And the last thing I wanted to say is I won't talk about it unless you're interested, but I know there's been many reports about the, grant to the state that was cut or eliminated, about local foods. And I I'm prepared to, you know, just tell you what that's about if you are interested. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Yes. I think we have time to hear that. [Anne Bordenaro]: Okay. So the local foods grant, dollars one point two million approximately, came about during a Biden era program. This particular program came about during the Biden administration as a, response to the supply chain challenges, during the pandemic. And Vermont got funding last year, and, it was great. And so we put in our application, and we were awarded the funding for the one point two million dollars And of that, almost a million was gonna go to schools. And a good chunk was also going to go about two hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars to preschools and, food banks. And, basically, this was to use this funding to procure local food, you know, from local producers to supplement and and enhance their meal programs. It does not take the place of the Vermont state funded local food incentive program. That program is still, you know, intact. These funds weren't built into people's budgets at the time they were building their budgets, so it's not like money's being taken away from folks. It it is a, you know, it's a big disappointment for our our producers here in Vermont that they're not gonna get the funding they intended, through this, you know, this buying to support their local production. And it's also means that schools are going to have to, you know, use other food sources that are not necessarily local and not necessarily as high quality and might have to potentially, with the high food costs right now, dip into you know, more into their budget than they would have intended to meet food costs. But it, but this was a a kind of supplemental nice program that existed on top of our existing programs, and it was just eliminated across the country. So we among all the other states that, you know, put in their plans just learned that nobody's getting any money. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. Yes. Representative Taylor? One quick question about you talked about how the information and guidance that's kinda come down for educators. How is that getting down to the level of the educators? So I think that's a really important thing. [Anne Bordenaro]: Sure. So our way of communicating, which we reevaluate all the time, is that we communicate through something called the superintendent's update on a weekly basis to superintendents with the idea that they will then communicate to principals and teachers and all with that information. We also have listservs of principals and teachers and, you know, special ed directors of others. So often if the content in the superintendent's update is relevant to those other folks, then it will also get passed along by, say, our special ed team to the special ed directors. So if people aren't getting the word on some of these things, and we've heard that in some cases they're not, we're also exploring other ways, like maybe putting the superintendent's updates or at least portions of them related to, say, federal, communications on our website. It's tended to be you know, there are a lot there's a lot of information in the sup sup state that isn't really relevant except for superintendents. So we don't wanna just post everything. But, but we are looking at other ways because we've heard that some of this communication isn't necessarily getting down to the classroom teacher level. And and that isn't usually an issue, but in this day and age, it needs to be. So yeah. Sure. [Chair Peter Conlon]: So, Rashi, did you have did post a question on the grants, and I was wondering if you can get a copy of what grants you get from the federal government and. Actually, I'm just a copy of [Anne Bordenaro]: the book and branch. Sure. I'm sorry. I didn't I thought about doing this last night after I'd already submitted the because I thought someone might ask. So I can send it or I can just have someone copy it. But, basically, ESEA and there are a number of programs under Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but the grand total is around sixty eight and a half million in this current year. The biggest of those by far is title one, which is about forty two point seven million. But then there's title two, which is teacher professional development. There's title three, which is English language acquisition. Title four, which is, safe and healthy schools. Title four b, which is after school. Twenty one c, it's called after school, and summer programming. There's McKinney Vento, which is the homeless, the homeless educate Education of Homeless Children and Youth Grant. And then there's the migrant program, which we sub grant to UVM and, and they operate that program on the ground. Together, those come to approximately sixty eight and a half million. IDEA, which has various components, you know, birth to, I think, three and then three to five and then back to twenty one and all, is roughly thirty seven and a half million. And Perkins, which is career and technical education, is roughly five point nine million. And I can send this specific one [Chair Peter Conlon]: to send it to Annie and she can share. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. [Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: Senator Haffernick. So I'm just wanna clarify. I didn't I wasn't here for when you're talking about the grants. The grants are we possibly won't. It's not a definite no. It's just a possibly we might not get these grants. Is that what that means? So no. For twenty for twenty four to twenty five, will we still see that money or them grants could go away? [Anne Bordenaro]: We are not expecting any chi any fundamental changes in these numbers for next school year. So twenty five f y twenty five federal, which is twenty five, twenty six school year. We don't have the budget yet. It's being voted on as we speak, but we're not expecting any this is we expect roughly the same amounts for next school year. For f y twenty six, which would be the twenty six, twenty seven school year, we are anticipating that there will be cuts. We have no idea how much or to which programs. All we have is the proposal from the House Republicans last fall or last spring rather that did not succeed. But now there's also a lot of change in Congress as well. So, to eliminate any program requires congressional action. These are congressionally mandated programs, so you can't just get rid of them. However, there's no saying that they couldn't decide to fund them at different levels. And I don't know if you heard me say that I think one of the things that we have going in our favor is that all of these programs are national and every school district participates in them. So, yeah, so that's a benefit or a protection, I guess, to some degree. [Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: K. And then the final question is just to make sure as far as funding, everything will be good for twenty five, twenty six. It's twenty six, twenty seven that we need to be preparing for looking [Brooke Olsen Farrell]: down [Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: the road to say, hey. This is where the cuts can happen. So if we have constituents that are really well, what's gonna work and happen next year? It's like, well, pretty good for twenty five, twenty six. After that, that's when we gotta start being prepared that we could we could lose major funding. [Anne Bordenaro]: Yes. Okay. I say everything with a grain of [Chair Peter Conlon]: oil because [Anne Bordenaro]: nothing has been passed yet, but every indication is that twenty five, twenty six will be okay. That's that's we're we're pretty solid on that. Our our inside sources are telling us not to worry about twenty five, twenty six. [Chair Peter Conlon]: What's where does Medicaid been with this? And [Anne Bordenaro]: So Medicaid is an indirect contributor to this. And so where to start without going into a long thing? So free and reduced price meals. Eligibility for free and reduced price meals is sort of the foundation of deciding who is low income and who isn't for all the many, many, many reasons that that information matters. So whether it's state weights for the state funding formula, or it's eligibility to operate a community eligibility provision school meals program, or it's, when you do Title I, they do something called ranking and serving, where they have to rank their schools by, poverty to decide which ones to serve, which ones are eligible to be served, which ones can operate a school wide program. Poverty numbers are used for pretty much everything, teacher loan forgiveness. And so if, if eligibility requirements, for example, for Medicaid, including requirements for families with children, not just single adults, were to change, to be reduced or made more difficult, there might be less families with children qualifying for Medicaid, which would then mean that they are not directly certified through Medicaid for free and reduced price meals. Now they still might qualify through a school meals application, or they might be getting SNAP, you know, or some other they might be in foster care. There are other ways to qualify for a free or reduced price meal, and therefore be deemed low income. But Medicaid has turned out to be one of the best ways. We joined the Medicaid Demonstration Project two years ago, and it was hugely beneficial, because it's the program that probably has the most comprehensive uptake across the state. And so we're pretty certain that when, you know, a child is in a family that qualifies for Medicaid, we're pretty sure that we have very good coverage of the children who are, in fact, eligible for free or reduced price meals based on that Medicaid data. That was also the first time that we ever could use a program, a means tested to qualify children for reduced price meals, not just free. SNAP only goes up to one hundred and thirty percent of poverty, but Medicaid goes well beyond. And we were able to work with our partners at the Agency of Human Services to get those children on Medicaid who are in families with one hundred and eighty five percent or less at the federal poverty level and one hundred and thirty percent or less at the federal poverty level. So we have poverty numbers that we're really confident in these days with Medicaid and that are pretty robust. So if there were cuts, significant cuts to either Medicaid or SNAP, we would anticipate over time that our poverty numbers would go down and then the cascade of impacts from that would follow. As I said, it's a lot of ifs. So, you know, but but we are keeping a strong eye on that, as is every other state who's in the same boat. [Chair Peter Conlon]: And thank you very much. That was very, very helpful. [Anne Bordenaro]: You're welcome. Thank you. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Chelsea. Will you and Brooke be testifying together? [Chelsea Myers]: I'm gonna ask Brooke to kinda give, like, a real example after I'm done with some written testimony, if that works. That's true. So, yes, together. Chelsea Myers, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association. Brooke, do you wanna introduce yourself now? [Brooke Olsen Farrell]: Sure. Burk Olsen Farrell, superintendent in Slate Valley. [Chelsea Myers]: And I'm gonna try to be not redundant on the fly here, because a lot of what Anne said is in my testimony, but I'm gonna try to hit some points that maybe are not in were not spoken about. And, first, I just wanna start with the first several months of president Trump's second term. School districts have faced significantly significant uncertainty from a barrage of exec executive orders, congressional activity, and court decisions. This testimony outlines the key developments and their impact on k through twelve schools across the country and here in Vermont. And talked a little bit about the executive orders. I just want to point there's a link in my testimony, of a summary from Ed Council. It's a resource that I've used quite frequently, but it's a running list of EOs impacting schools and kind of their interpretation. So I highly recommend taking a look at that. I did not include, a list of them because it is, kind of getting lengthy. Typically, the office for civil rights has a robust process for investigating complaints. However, activity in Maine suggests a different approach. This is how our national partners, the school superintendents association described it. In Maine, OCR, HHS just just issued findings of title nine noncompliance without investigate investigations or voluntary resolution opportunities for the state or district. OCR's approach suggests that federal civil rights agencies may be shifting toward aggressive enforcement enforcement tactics that bypass traditional investigative processes allowing them to pursue violations without expending significant resources. And so the reason I put this example, from Maine is just thinking about the way in which processes have traditionally existed. OCR complaints would typically go through a lengthy investigation process, but we're seeing evidence that that might be shifting in terms of the way in which they deal with those complaints. There is an anticipated executive action to dismantle the demark Department of Education pointing to perceived ineffectiveness through NAEP scores and ARP spending. The secretary was tasked with facilitating closure within legal limits acknowledging congressional authority over the department's core functions. The department began cutting over thirteen hundred jobs and closing offices to this end, heightening over the last couple of days, so we're watching that very closely. Lawmakers have questioned what this means for vital programs like Title I and IDEA, the, the law that supports, students with special needs, and concerns remain despite secretary the secretary of education suggesting that those prog programs would persist. I think I heard Anne saying that those programs tend to have pretty strong bipartisan support. They're pretty, favorable in Congress. The Trump administration launched a public portal, ndei. Ed dot gov, encouraging reports of diversity, equity, inclusion practices in public schools, which they label as divisive and indoctrination. This initiative celebrated by Moms for Liberty, who strongly oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts coincides with a deadline threatening schools with federal funding cuts if they fail to eliminate such programs. The portal allows parents, students, teachers, and community members to report instances of discrimination based on race or sex in publicly funded k through twelve schools, effectively creating a mechanism to police and potentially dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives nationwide. And one of the things that we're hearing from educators is that this is stoking quite a bit of fear about what they are teaching in the classroom, and which is why I include it included it. And I imagine Brooke might have some additional comments when she starts to speak about some of the impacts of the EOs on her staff. Anne mentioned the department of agriculture program ending, so I won't go into that. And then in congressional activity, Anne also talked a lot about the federal funding and considerations there. I have a similar read on things. It is unclear whether Congress will move through the remainder of FY twenty five funding for school year twenty twenty five to twenty twenty six via continuing resolutions. The best references we have to what may result from FY twenty six. So school year twenty twenty six to twenty twenty seven funding proposals come from what we know from the last Trump administration and the FY twenty five house appropriations proposals, which I included a chart in there about some of the title funding. The former was marked by block grants and cuts to critical programs. The latter seen in the above chart makes considerable cuts to vital title programs impacting communities serving high proportions of vulnerable populations. Title one, for example, the House proposal looks at about a twenty five percent cut, in that title program. And I can't emphasize enough that, the school districts that will be most impacted are the school districts that most need the resources. Other areas anticipated to have contemplated cuts are the school meals program. You talked about Medicaid. Already restricts Medicaid reimbursement to students with IEP, a restriction that is no longer required. And so more Medicaid cuts around provision of mental health services could have some dramatic impacts on school systems, though it's not a huge pool of money for schools. Another area to watch is the expansion of federal programs in support of private school vouchers. The Educational Choice of Children's Act proposes a ten billion dollar annual federal tax credit program to fund private school vouchers through scholarship granting organizations. The program would divert taxpayer funds from public schools with studies showing that most voucher recipients already attend private schools. And a tax credit scholarship system, individual fund vouchers instead of paying taxes. So the one to one dollar per dollar tax credit, reducing the government government's revenue by that amount. These tax incentives would be available to both individuals and co corporations. Some supreme court activity to watch. There's a lot of supreme court cases that will impact education this season, and a couple of them include the E rate program. So the US Supreme Court will decide the fate of the E rate program as it reviews two cases challenging the funding mechanism. This follows a July ruling by the fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals, which deemed the fund's financing structure unconstitutional. Since E Rate relies on this fund to help schools and libraries access broadband services, the court cases or the court's decision could have significant implicate implement implications for its future. So, again, that's related to access to broadband for vulnerable populations. [Chair Peter Conlon]: So so right now, I think in Vermont, it's showing that rural schools to help them, you know, have access to broadband. They they can get a discounted rates through [Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: the e rate program. Is that right? Yes. [Chelsea Myers]: You'd have to ask someone at the agency how much that's utilized. I don't actually know how much in the state of Vermont, just that it's a three point two billion dollar program. Another court case, Mahmood versus Taylor. In January twenty twenty five, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case concerning the constitutionality of a group of parents in Montgomery County, Maryland. They argue that their inability to opt their children out of lessons involving storybooks with LGBTQ plus characters violates their first amendment right to freely exercise their religion. This will determine whether the exposure of views contrary to one's religious beliefs is enough to violate the free exercise clause. Another court case, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board versus Drummond, this will determine whether barring a non secular school from participating in a state's charter program is unconstitutional. The only thing that is clear is the tremendous amount of uncertainty that Vermont's educators are contending with right now. Given this uncertainty, the VSA has, and I wrote three on accident in my testimony, it's four, I added one, I got a little greedy, asks of state leadership. So first, ensure there is clear guidance and support for schools to interpret the activity at the federal level. Consistent communication with school leaders is key right now. I had a meeting with superintendents the other day, and they likened it to when we first got into the pandemic. Like, that is the type of communication that they're hoping for moving forward because that's kind of what it feels like when with the barrage of information coming out, of DC. Number two, don't make us a lot more vulnerable to the federal expansion of vouchers and continued course cases surrounding nonsecular participation in choice. Address the lingering disconnect between the tuitioning programs, the Carson v Macon decision, and Vermont's compelled support clause. Number three, commit to and outline a statewide approach for contending with potential funding cuts. If we leave it up to individual districts, the districts with the highest reliance on federal funding, and those with the highest percentage of students in poverty will be shouldering the brunt of those costs. Number four, recognize the impact that all of the information shared today has on the morale of educators and the feelings of fear and uncertainty across communities. Consider the impact as you navigate the education transformation proposal in your committees. And I think Brooke can share some of what I was speaking about related to the disproportionate impact on certain communities. [Brooke Olsen Farrell]: Sure. Thank you, Chelsea. So as I think most of you know, Slate Valley still does not have a budget. Perfect. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Can you just introduce yourself? [Brooke Olsen Farrell]: Yes. Perfogle, superintendent, Slate Valley. So, I think many of you know Slate Valley has difficulty passing budgets at the local level. And right now, based on the cuts that we made the other night, we cut an additional half a million dollars from our local budget. So now we're the eleventh lowest spending district out of a hundred and nineteen districts in the state and still concerned about passing that budget in April. In addition to that, we're one of the highest poverty districts in the state. We get about two point seven million dollars in federal funds, and those funds fund every academic interventionist that we have. They fund all of our school psychologists. They fund some of our administrative positions, like director of curriculum, director of special ed at the central office level. They fund our behavioral coaches and supports. They, fund, Internet services. So to say, if we lost, federal funding, it would be catastrophic is an understatement. We would have difficulty operating. We could not meet, anything really as it relates to Act one seventy three, our MTSS system of supports, is almost entirely federally funded. We would have difficulty meeting IEP requirements. So it is it is pretty critical. And because of the uncertainty at the federal level, the school board did ask me to meet with all of our grant funded, personnel today, at least our title funded personnel today, and write in their upcoming contracts that their positions are contingent on grant funding. So I met with twenty teachers today and let them know that due to the uncertainty at the federal level, because there are no guarantees while while we assume that things will be okay for for next year, Every day, that seems to change. So so they all received contracts today with that in it. And to say there was a lot of emotion is an understatement. And so I'm significantly worried about retention and stability in my district as a result of really funding at all levels. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. Do you have some questions? I would Brooke, did does the what sort of fear has the sort of reporting portal for parents and community created, if any? [Brooke Olsen Farrell]: I haven't heard we haven't heard a lot about it in our in our district per se. I think there's just a lot of uncertainty, especially from our principals, about how to respond to these executive orders and what they what they should be doing in the classrooms and what they shouldn't be doing. And so I just think there's a lot of there's a lot of wonders and I I'm not sure that we feel necessarily that we've been provided adequate guidance from the state level on all of that. But it's perhaps because the state doesn't know as well. So [Chair Peter Conlon]: Anybody else? Thank you both very much for your time this afternoon and for enlightening us on this. I'm not sure we have power to do much here, but we're it's good for us to be aware of it. That's it. Do we have your adjustment? Okay.

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