MUST NOW TURN ATTENTION TO TEACHER QUALITY

Washington, D.C. —  Vermont continues to demonstrate national leadership for its commitment to pre-K access even as many states are faltering in their efforts to deliver high-quality preschool education to children most in need, says a landmark national report capping 10 years of research.

The State of Preschool 2011: State Preschool Yearbook shows Vermont has made tremendous progress in expanding access to early education over the last decade. Ten years ago the state ranked 18^th for access. By 2010-2011, the Green Mountain State served a higher combined percentage of 3- and 4-years than any other state. Enrollment of 4-year-olds improved to 3^rd after increasing enrollment by 17 percent for 4-year-olds over the previous year. Vermont also ranks 3^rd for enrollment of 3-year-olds. The state has lost ground in its resource ranking, due in part to the delay in funding based on the current funding formula. It has not made commensurate gains in quality, meeting only four of 10 research-based quality standards benchmarks.

“For the second year in a row, nationally we’re seeing declines in real spending and per-child spending that strip resources from pre-K classrooms, many of which are already funded at levels below what it takes to deliver high-quality programs,” said Steve Barnett, director of the nonpartisan National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University that has surveyed state preschool programs on a number of measures since 2001-2002.

Vermont Business Roundtable President Lisa Ventriss responded, “Vermont has become a leader in expanding access to early education through sustained bipartisan legislative efforts and gubernatorial support. Now it must turn its attention to improving quality standards which have not seen progress for years. While many local programs may exceed these standards, Vermont must improve statewide quality requirements to ensure the investments in pre-k are paying off, and that all children have the best possible outcomes from high-quality early education for long-term benefits.”

Nationally, the report shows a different picture as states that began or improved pre-K programs are now reducing their investments. In fact, many children who need access to high-quality pre-K programs still cannot attend.

Twenty-eight percent of all 4-year-olds and 4 percent of 3-year-olds were served by state pre-K programs in the 2010-2011 school year, raising total enrollment to more than 1.3 million. But some states have opted to expand enrollment rather than maintain quality, resulting in greater access but lower standards. “If ignored, states run the risk of substituting inexpensive child care for preschool education,” Barnett said.

State pre-K generally has enjoyed bipartisan support during its expansion over the past decade. An overwhelming body of research shows that high-quality pre-K prepares children to succeed in school, enroll in college or career training, and helps more students ultimately get better jobs that can help the nation’s economy. This year’s report highlights national trends in pre-K programs over past 10 years.

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That’s not a macroeconomic, United States – wide statement.  Yes, we are all linked, but doesn’t the recent data suggest we in Vermont are getting stronger?  Governor Shumlin spoke last week at the Best Places to Work event, giving a clear sense that Vermont is the best place to work.  Companies I got to speak with reported they were doing well, and making their workplaces attractive for employees.   Arguably not a coincidence.

Vermont’s unemployment rate has fallen steadily to less than 5% from over 7%.   VBR’s most recent CEO survey shows less than 10% of companies expect their employment, sales or capex to decrease in the next 6 months.  90% or more see growth, or at least stability.  So, without abandoning the way we all got very good at risk management over the last few years isn’t it opportunity and growth focus time?

Growth gets me thinking about who in my company can lead those efforts, and who the customers of the future are going to be.  As we heard from our member Green Mountain Coffee Roasters at our winter meeting, and right after they had announced significant expansion plans, training people is a commitment employers need to make.  And it takes time.  If I want to roll out a product in six to twelve months I need the employees here today working to make that happen.

Now whether we’ve chosen the right product to launch requires us to understand how customers of the future behave differently from those we know so well.  To gain some insight into that one, be sure to attend our Summer meeting, and 25^th Anniversary Celebration, which includes generational marketing experts from Bridgeworks.  Hope to see you there.

On our highest policy agenda, Education, the Roundtable has testified on several topics including:

• Evidence-based home visiting: an extension of our pre-K work, this two-year push is aimed to improve the accountability, transparency and outcomes of the state’s home visiting programs. Vermont is spending over $5 million each year to help at-risk children and families improve the quality of care provided to children 0-3 years old in the home setting. Roundtable CEOs Laura Dagan, Chair of Champlain College Board of Trustees; Tom Dee, Southwestern Vermont Health Care; Bill Stritzler, Smugglers’ Notch Resort; and Steve Voigt, Board Chair and CEO of King Arthur Flour addressed the joint hearing of the House and Senate health and welfare committees.

• Education Governance: efforts to improve the governance of Vermont’s public preK-12 education system were advanced when H.440 was approved by the House and now resides in Senate Education; the bill largely included a recommendation made by the Business-Education Alliance to improve the alignment of policymaking by elevating the Commissioner to cabinet-level Secretary. Under discussion now is the treatment of the State Board of Education, specifically whether or not to eliminate the board all together.

• Dual enrollment: This has been a long-standing recommendation of the Roundtable to enable interested students to accelerate their post-secondary educational attainment while in high school. Of concern is the funding mechanism for the long-term support of the dual enrollment program; both House Ed and Ways/Means committees are working to craft a solution.

On other critical issues,

• The Roundtable has testified before a Joint Hearing of the House Natural Resources/Energy and Commerce committees, against legislative interference in the GMP/CVPS merger docket currently before the Public Service Board. Our chief concern is to maintain the integrity and exclusivity of the PSB jurisdiction over regulatory matters, and thereby sustaining the predictability and stability of that rigorous, non-partisan process. For a copy of Lisa Ventriss’ testimony, click here.

• Led by Frank Cioffi, GBIC, the business community, including the Roundtable and its affected members, has weighed in on the VT Tax Department’s new tax on the sales of cloud computing/software as a service (SaaS). A few issues of concern: (1) the Tax Department created this new tax via tax bulletin, however, taxation is the exclusive domain of the Legislative branch; TB#54 effectively denied the open and active involvement by affected parties prior to creation of any new law; (2) the economic/fiscal impact of this new tax has been difficult to quantify, but must be a part of the policymaking process; and, (3) VT is a member of the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA) and is required to comply with existing SSUTA uniform definitions and rules, which does not consider the concept of “mere access” as applicable to the prewritten software definitions .

The House Speaker, Shap Smith, has indicated adjournment could be as early as April 27^th. Seasoned State House denizens anticipate going a week longer to tidy up loose strings.

We salute the following Roundtable companies with less than 149 employees

• Hickok & Boardman/ Financial Planning & Group Benefits  – www.hickokoandboardman.com

• Gallagher Flynn & Company, LLP – www.gfc.com

•  Sonnax Industries, Inc. – www.sonnax.com

And we salute these Roundtable companies with more than 150 employees:

• Entergy Vermont Yankee – www.safecleanreliable.com

• King Arthur Flour – www.kingarthurflour.com

• Merchants Bank – www.mbvt.com

•  Green Mountain Coffee Roasters – www.greenmountaincoffee.com

• Vermont Energy Investment Corporation – www.veic.org

•  Comcast Cable – www.comcast.com

Through work on the Roundtable’s 2010 Pulse of Vermont:  Quality of Life Study, conducted under the leadership of Saint Michael’s College professors Vincent Bolduc and Herb Kessel, Laura’s contributions to VBR predates her official start here.

Please offer her your warm welcome when you see her at our Summer meeting on June 14th, if not earlier.

Welcome aboard, Laura! We are delighted to have you.

To sweeten the festivities, all net proceeds of the 25^th Anniversary Celebration will benefit the Nordic Educational Trust, the  scholarship fund entrusted to the Roundtable by its founders, Ross and Gail Anderson. Your participation will, in fact, make a difference. So, mark your calendars and don your party hats. It’s time to celebrate!

Formal invitations to follow the first week in May.

Succession, leadership, talent management, diversity, social media – name a hot topic in business today and you better bet that generational gaps are getting in the way. That is why it is our great pleasure to announce that our dinner speakers for the 25^th Anniversary Celebration will be generational experts and founders of Bridgeworks, a consulting firm that has become the authority on solving the generational puzzles, Lynne Lancaster and David Stillman. To learn more about our speakers, click here.

With four distinct generations (and each with its own core values) in the mix at work, in the marketplace, community and at home, there’s bound to be friction and room for improvement in how we all relate and communicate.

Vermont has some unique issues with relation to the generations. We have heard from other experts that our population is aging and the state’s young educated workers are leaving the state. Our generational experts will shed light on how to bring out the best in every generation, what to do to retain the younger talent.

This is a not-to-be-missed event full of opportunity to invite dialogue from those of multiple generations in your close circle. Start planning your multi-generational table now and make sure your calendars are marked. Thursday, June 14^th, 5:00 – 9:00pm, at the Burlington Sheraton. Be there or be square!

Remarks by Lisa Ventriss

April 10, 2012

Good morning. For the record, my name is Lisa Ventriss, President of Vermont Business Roundtable. The Roundtable is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of 118 CEOs of Vermont’s top private and nonprofit employers, representing geographic diversity and all major sectors of the Vermont economy, with an aggregate global economic impact of $292 billion, over $1.8 billion in corporate philanthropy, and employing more than 10 percent of the state’s workforce.

On behalf of our membership, I speak in support of the process underway by the Public Service Board to solely deliberate, on behalf of all Vermont citizens, on the proposed merger between Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service.

In the interest of full disclosure, both Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Power are members of the Roundtable. Mary Powell, CEO, of GMP is Vice-chair of the Roundtable.  Having said that, as a 501(c)(4) civic welfare organization, the Roundtable is obligated and committed to sustaining a sound economy and preserving Vermont’s unique quality of life by studying and making recommendations on long-range, statewide public policy issues that benefit all Vermonters, not merely the business members of the Roundtable or the broader Vermont community.

The Roundtable’s chief concerns center around the process used to evaluate the merits of the proposed merger between CVPS and GMP, in particular, the involvement by the Legislature in a domain that has been the express jurisdiction of the Public Service Board; an entity that was created by the Legislature to deal with regulatory issues affecting the public good.

• The Public Service Board is well-regarded by numerous stakeholders around the state.  It has earned a reputation for being a credible quasi-judicial forum for the thoughtful and rigorous deliberation of complex regulatory matters, and whose non-partisan, non-political members use fact-based evidence to reach their decisions. The PSB should be allowed to complete its current work on the proposed merger, and any and all future work on regulatory matters on behalf of the public good, without the interference by the Legislative branch of state government.

• If the Legislature were allowed to intervene, on a case by case basis,  in such a regulatory process as the one currently under discernment by the Public Service Board, it would represent not only bad public policy, but set a dangerous precedent for future regulatory matters. Such action by the Legislature would create an undisciplined regulatory environment of uncertainty and unpredictability, which in turn would make future plans for business growth either unfeasible, undesirable, or unwise.

The Roundtable endorses the “long view” investment and multi-generational benefits that could accrue to all classes of ratepayers with the successful merger of GMP and CVPS, in terms of lower energy bills; job creation; savings through efficiency and weatherization measures; administrative streamlining; and cost savings.

• Practically speaking, ratepayers would receive value well beyond the amount they will pay in rates for the company’s investment in efficiency.  According to GMP and CVPS, that investment will result in gross savings to ratepayers of $45 million and thus a net savings to ratepayers of $24 million.

As has been noted by others, the economic viability of the GMP-CVPS merger is dependent on a number of factors, not just how the “windfall” issue is resolved.  It is vitally important that the Legislature acknowledge the delicate balance that has been achieved thus far by the merger parties, and that interference by the Legislature to achieve “short-term” gain ($75 per ratepayer), rather than allowing the Public Service Board to act in the long-term interest of the entire state (including their constituent ratepayers), places all of Vermont in jeopardy.

The latest results of both our CEO Economic Outlook survey and that of the Business Roundtable show positive productivity trends in key industries such as finance and insurance, professional services, manufacturing and construction; along the theme of doing more with less (employees). As I’ve traveled around the state, post-Irene recovery is evident in many communities and soon the blowing river silt will be replaced with green shoots of all kinds as those communities continue their economic and physical recoveries. The “We Are Vermont Strong” social media campaign has successfully harnessed the emotional response by Vermonters, but these recovery efforts will take more than pride to complete. Please keep in mind the Vermont Irene Flood Relief Fund when you consider how to reinvest in your communities.

Also under the topic of change is a recent workshop conducted by Governor Madeleine Kunin entitled, “The New Feminist Agenda: The Next Revolution for Women, Work and Family”, which is also the title of her new book that will come out in the next month. One of the featured panels, which I moderated, included Bill Stritzler, Immediate Past Chair, and Managing Director of Smugglers’ Notch Resort, and former Roundtable member Jan Blittersdorf, CEO of NRG Systems. The panel focused on the ways in which the private sector is responding to the needs of the working mother: flexible workplace, access to childcare and family leave. But it was the presence of the third panelist, a trained scientist and promising performance musician turned Stay-at-home-Dad, which brought the issues more sharply into focus in our post-recession world.

Whether due to conscious decision-making as was the case with this Dad or, due to necessity because of an involuntary job loss by other fathers during the recession, the issues for stay-at-home Moms are no longer so gender biased. The Greatest Recession was indiscriminate in that regard. Increasingly, whoever earned the most money got to/had to keep working while the other assumes the role of caregiver. All panelists agreed that behind every family struggling to achieve their own unique work/life balance is an employer that values their relationships with employees. Creating a workplace culture that recognizes the changing needs of working parents over time is a competitive advantage for the employer. Expressing the long-term view and placing the appropriate value on those relationships are the first steps in creating that culture, and we’ve got CEOs of highly successful companies to serve as your role models.  Just give them a call.

Key findings from the first quarter of 2012 over the fourth quarter of 2011 include:

• An expected three percent increase in company sales;
• An expected three percent increase in capital spending;
• An expected six percent increase in stable employment levels

“The Roundtable’s survey results indicate an increasing degree of optimism in the economy when compared against the previous quarter,” said Steve Voigt, Chair of the Vermont Business Roundtable and President and CEO of King Arthur Flour. “At the same time, there are several factors at play that could impair greater economic expansion in Vermont, including transportation fuel prices, health care reform efforts, a political election year, and the lingering effects of last year’s Tropical Storm Irene.”

The response rate for this quarter was 62 percent.  Historically, rates have varied from 35 to 73 percent.  The Roundtable’s CEO Economic Outlook Survey provides a forward-looking view of the economic assumptions and attitudes of chief executive officers of 118 of the state’s top employers with an aggregate economic impact of $292 billion, with over $1.8 billion in global corporate philanthropy, and employing more than 10 percent of the state’s workforce.  The members represent Vermont’s agriculture, construction, education, health services, finance, real estate, insurance, hospitality/leisure, manufacturing, information, utilities, professional/business services, wholesale trade, and non-profit industries.

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