State officials review Act 76 pre-K implementation report; committee backs keeping 10-hour weekly benefit and starting expansion with 4-year-olds

State education and human services officials and early childhood stakeholders briefed the House Education Committee this morning on the report of the Pre‑K Education Implementation Committee created by Act 76, the 2023 childcare and pre‑K expansion law. The committee’s report — submitted to the Legislature on or before Dec. 1, 2024 — recommends maintaining the current 10‑hour weekly publicly funded pre‑K benefit and beginning any expansion with 4‑year‑olds while asking for more financial analysis before adopting a specific statewide implementation plan.

The report matters because Act 76 directs the state to expand pre‑K “on or before 07/01/2026,” including options for delivering services through public schools, contracts with private providers, or both. Katie McLennan, Legislative Council, summarized the statutory charge: “The pre k program under consideration would require a school district to provide pre k education to all children within the district in either a public school or by contract with private providers or both.” The committee was also asked to examine the minimum hours that should constitute a full day and infrastructure, special education, capacity, and cost implications of expansion.

Officials described Vermont’s current mixed‑delivery Universal Pre‑K (UPK) system as publicly funded, portable and inclusive for 3‑ and 4‑year‑olds, and noted differences from K‑12 rules on full‑day definitions. Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel, explained the existing attendance rule in Title 16 that lets districts set school‑day hours within a state minimum: “For the minimum hours for a kindergarten program to be considered a full day is a minimum of 2 instructional hours. However, in any calendar week, 5 school days may be counted if the total number of hours of instructional time is equal to or exceeds 10 hours per week.” Committee members and agency staff emphasized that UPK has typically been defined in statute and rule as a 10‑hour‑per‑week benefit (for about 35 weeks a year) and that Act 76 contemplates a shift to providing a full school day in some form by mid‑2026.

Deputy Commissioner Dan McLaughlin, Department for Children and Families, and Secretary of Education Zoe Saunders reviewed committee work: the group convened beginning July 2023, used subcommittees for capacity, quality and systems considerations, accepted public comment at every meeting, and produced a report with draft legislative language. Officials said the committee’s work did not produce a single detailed implementation plan; rather, it produced a set of recommendations and identified areas where further data and analysis are required.

On the committee’s recommendations, officials said there was clear agreement on several foundational points. The committee voted to maintain the existing 10‑hour weekly UPK benefit for 3‑ and 4‑year‑olds and recommended expanding access beginning with 4‑year‑olds; that motion passed with unanimous affirmative votes and a small number of abstentions. One abstention asked for stronger language describing a 10‑hour entitlement rather than a benefit; another abstained because of concern about imposing new costs on school districts during a difficult funding environment. Officials emphasized the committee’s request for more rigorous fiscal analysis — including updated cost‑of‑care estimates, reexamination of the statewide tuition methodology, and a review of pupil weights — before recommending a specific, statewide implementation approach.

Stakeholders and advisory groups that testified or provided analysis during committee work reinforced several recurring themes: maintain mixed delivery (public and community‑based providers) especially to preserve family choice and rural access; strengthen data systems to identify gaps in access by region; analyze and align funding streams including district foundation formula dollars, tuition payments to community providers, and the Child Care Financial Assistance Program (CCFAP); address workforce recruitment, retention and pay parity; and ensure continuity of services and access to special education for children ages 3–5 under IDEA Part B (Section 619).

Building Bright Futures and the Head Start Collaboration Office emphasized child outcomes and vulnerable populations. Doctor Morgan Crossman, executive director of Building Bright Futures, told committee members that “children who have attended a pre K program before entering kindergarten have higher rates of readiness than their counterparts who hadn’t,” and recommended stronger monitoring and data capacity to track who is served and who is not. Renee Kelly, Vermont Head Start Collaboration Office, noted Head Start’s federal role serving low‑income children and families and flagged the need to coordinate federal Head Start slots (about 1,273 funded slots in FY24) with state expansion plans to preserve wraparound services for eligible families.

Officials and stakeholders also discussed how the governor’s broader K‑12 transformation proposal — including a shift from 119 to five operating districts — could create central office capacity to coordinate pre‑K, unify reporting and simplify tuition and payment arrangements, and support work to align pay and regulatory standards across settings. Secretary Saunders said the governor’s proposal “builds off of the recommendations of this committee” and that her agency will provide additional data and modeling in the coming weeks to refine assumptions about costs and phasing.

Remaining questions identified in testimony include the geographic distribution of UPK access (border communities and some rural areas still lack local slots), how full‑time and part‑time definitions will map to funding and CCFAP eligibility, transportation and after‑school/summer wraparound needs if UPK expands to longer hours or days, and how to protect access to special education and Head Start’s comprehensive services during any transition. Officials repeatedly stressed that additional financial modeling and updated cost data are needed before the Legislature adopts statutory implementation language.

Next steps described to the committee include written data and modeling to be provided by the Agency of Education and Child Development Division in the near term, continued coordination between agencies to braid state, federal and local funding streams, and legislative consideration of draft statutory language and funding adjustments informed by that analysis. The Act 76‑created committee’s report and supporting materials remain posted on the Agency of Education and House Human Services web pages, and the agencies plan to return to the Legislature with further detail before the 07/01/2026 implementation target.