SmartTranscript of House Education - 2025-01-15 - 1:05 PM

[Zoe Founders ]: Anytime, and you are live. Great. [Speaker 1 ]: Thank you. We are the house education committee. We are meeting on Tuesday, January fourteenth twenty twenty five. For our listening audience, everybody else, this is really about the second time we've met as a group. We still get to know one another, but we're also here to get to know our state and really lay a good foundation for all of our new members and what's always good to have anything education related repeated for our, for veteran members. And we're continuing that work a lot of this week. Yep. See. So, today we have our regular crew from the back. We're going to see a lot of each other this week. And we're going to get a report really. Often people say, well, what does what is the data of our entire state? The kids do we have. Sometimes you hear eighty five thousand. Sometimes you hear eighty thousand. How many schools do we have? How many. All of that and so, we're here if I need that. Those questions answered today. I think we'll just dive right in and have you reintroduce yourselves and go go for it. Still, right now, we have a a we get through on the screen. There. Those are really subject matter experts from the AOE available for any questions that may pop up as as we go along. Yeah. Great. Thank you. [Zoe Founders ]: Thank you. Thank you for having us. I'm Zoe Founders, secretary of education. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: And I'm Jill breaks Campbell, the interim deputy secretary of education. [Speaker 1 ]: I just want to tell the committee and everybody else. The documents are not yet posted. Any will they are now? [Zoe Founders ]: And we're also joined by Emily Simmons, our legal counsel. We do have a number of our subject matter experts on the call. What I will do is walk through the overall presentation. And then if you have specific questions to get into more of the weeds, we do have others who can expand, and provide more context with around the data or the programming, as well. So just to begin, this data presentation is part of the report that we re released, the state education profile report. This work has been really important in driving our listen and learn tour. It was really critical to us at the agency that we'll need to engage in these conversations. [Emily Simmons ]: We do this in [Zoe Founders ]: a way that's really data driven and building an understanding of our current education context. I wanna recognize that all this is a range of data that we'll be walking through today, and it really has been a collective effort of our entire staff. So our data division and all of our programmatic staff have been working really diligently to enhance our data reporting, and we've done that in partnership with the field. We actually built in a very intentional data validation protocol through our listen and learn tour so that we could address long standing data issues and ensure that there was coding consistency, across all of our districts and schools. So we're we're really pleased to be able to to share this with you today. So today, we'll walk through statewide trends. We're looking at the supervisory union and school district level. We do have supplementary reports, that drill down further, which we can share with you and [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: make sure you have access to. And, also, can I note that all of the data that you'll see here is also available in the open source data file? We're happy to send the link. It's on the agency website, and that was really critical to us that you'd be able to dive into the the validated data to recreate it. And the state profile report actually also includes what we call recipe cards. So for every one of the sort of analysis that we presented, you actually have [Emily Simmons ]: the ability to go recreate that data, which [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: is really important and will be sort of standard practice for us moving forward. [Zoe Founders ]: Yeah. We're really excited to bring that into our standard process. It's really important for us to promote transparency and also understanding of the data. As Jill mentioned, this allows for you to recreate the analysis and also for those in the field as well. It was part of a very explicit process to ensure that we all were working off of the same dataset. And I think that'll be critical, for you and your policy making decisions that we're bringing you validated, data from the field. So the same profile report will look at a range of indicators. We will walk through, trends related to enrollment, student demographics, student outcomes, staffing, and expenditures. It's really important for us to bring in a comprehensive overview, of our education system. When we started this work, we counted the number of reports that we provide to the federal government. I think it was the upwards of three hundred different reports data reports that we are required to produce in federal government. So we have a lot of data. And our intent was how do we bring that data together in a way that's gonna be really meaningful to drive decision making. And part of that effort was pulling together a lot of disparate datasets to make broader meaning around, the holistic, overview of our state. And so that's what we'll share with you today. So things to consider as we walk through this presentation, there's a lot of different data collections, that we oversee as an agency. Many of those are required for federal reporting. And this is, really one of the first times that we've brought together all these different data collections in a way to make meaning holistically. So what we've done throughout this presentation is we'll clarify the definitions of the data to make sure you're understanding what is represented in that. And that was some feedback too we received from the field just making sure that we could really provide clear context. Because as you mentioned, how many students do we really have? It depends on how you count the student, And we'll talk about that throughout the presentation. But as we mentioned, the data that we're bringing to forward today has been validated by the fields. I really wanna thank all that were involved in that because that was a very detailed process going into, health care team that they were looking at historical data and making some corrections, to ensure that we have a really high quality, dataset to drive our plan in this cycle. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: And so can we just take a note? So, of course, we would love to be able to bring you, you know, last year's data and and this year's data. But because of that validation and the reporting cycle, most of the information that you're going to see here is f y twenty three, and that is the most recent final and valuable data. So, for example, the f y twenty four expenditure data, we hope to be able to actually update and provide last year's data, but that is still going through validation of the field. So there's always that lag, and I know that it can be something where it looks really eager to get the most up to date, but there is a a full sort of review and finalization process that is really important to do. So that's that's where we're at more to come. I think that so we know I would love for this to be a report that you all get annually with annually updated information. Either, you know, it's been a dream of mine for a long time, and I think we're actually at a point now where we can generate this kind of reporting that we we all will get at the beginning of the session, right, that you'd be able to introduce. [Speaker 1 ]: That'd be great. [Zoe Founders ]: Wouldn't it be? Yeah. [Emily Simmons ]: I think [Zoe Founders ]: we're dead. [Speaker 1 ]: Just for everybody's clarification, we're talk about FY twenty three. We're gonna talk about twenty two, twenty three school year. [Zoe Founders ]: Yeah. Absolutely. And as we're bringing together all these data reports, it's intentionally designed to drive continuous improvement. As we think about getting into a regular cadence, that's gonna be important for us as state as we're really monitoring our progress towards goals, that we're establishing, really working with the field, and looking at those best practices and being able to elevate things that are working really well, to share that across the state. So we're we're really excited about, doing that in a very data driven way. So we'll start by just high level overview to get a sense of overall, enrollment patterns, and our structure. So this is an overview of the Can I ask Yeah? Could they [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: introduce someone? Yeah. [Emily Simmons ]: Yeah. Yeah. I'm Emily Simmons. I'm the agency's general counsel, so in charge of the legal division and helping out with policy matters and supporting these experts. It would be fun if you would throw me a question about this data and you could see how much I do not know about that here in the upper work. But if you have a [Zoe Founders ]: legal question, I would love to talk through them. [Speaker 4 ]: And we just wanted to make sure that you got to [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: meet Emily Simmons, and she'll be here on the Flash this week, which is very exciting, and we could even see you again tomorrow as well. Okay. So I [Zoe Founders ]: think we'll switch out. Yeah. Yes. I don't know anyone. Oh oh, okay. Okay. So this is, at a glance. So overall, as you can see in the chart, we have over eighty three thousand students that are publicly funded, in our education system. The majority of those students attend a traditional public school. Four percent of those students attend an independent school, and among those of the vast majority attend, one of the four historic academies. And then you can see too that we have, a little over lessons to come through that attend a therapeutic school. Therapeutic schools are separate schools for those students that need extraordinary support beyond what the public school can provide for special education services. [Emily Simmons ]: I'm wondering how I've been. Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: It's important to remember that students attend their [Emily Simmons ]: student schools from districts that operate school at Albright as well as some districts that have tuition for the purpose of general education. That's the. [Speaker 1 ]: One quick question before we go ahead. Students enrolled in public schools or or the total number, does this include pre k or just not? [Zoe Founders ]: This number, I'm gonna go we're gonna break down all the different types of enrollment by program and then couple of slides [Speaker 5 ]: so you'll be able to see that in the overall time of [Emily Simmons ]: the time. The next slide is [Zoe Founders ]: map of Vermont, and this is our current structure, for our supervisor unions and school districts. So I believe you received the presentation from JFO on our overall governance structure in the state of Vermont. This is based on, the twenty twenty two twenty three school year. Since then, we have actually added another supervisory union and another district. So the current is fifty two supervised reunions. And then under those structures, we have a hundred and nineteen district as [Speaker 5 ]: of this [Zoe Founders ]: current year that operate two hundred and eighty seven schools, serving a little over eighty thousand public school students. As you look at the boundaries, you can see that they vary. Some serve a very large geography and some are smaller geography. Overall, the total number of students served range for [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: about four hundred. It needs to be a thousand. That's in my [Zoe Founders ]: notes, so I could just validate that. So there's a [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: lot of variability in this terms [Zoe Founders ]: of how we're organized and the number of students served. Another point here that we're in this map, we're looking at enrollment. So this is representing students that are attending a public school. Not necessarily all of the students that a district would be responsible for. So average daily membership is another map that will show you that actually shows also those students that attend an independent school. So when you're looking at the map and on the next slide, we'll be able to show some broader tuitioning patterns. But here, I just wanted to make that note that, you can see in certain areas of our state, there like, so for example, in the Northeast Kingdom, there are more students that are served in independent group than are represented on this chart. This next slide, is looking at tuitioning patterns across the state, and this is tuitioning to, an independent school and also tuitioning to another public school. The blue is indicating, that they these districts fully operate a k twelve system. The green is representing a hybrid. So within, these structures, they might have some like, it operate maybe in elementary school, and then they might tuition for middle and high school. The yellow is representing those that fully tuition, and do not operate their own schools. And then the reddish color is overlapping classification. So that would be an example where would in the, you would have a a district that offer it via an update date, and then there's an overall up lane high school that they would feed into. Anything you wanna add to that, Pinnas, on the district? Moving on to how Vermont compares on some key indicators, we tend to have very small school very small schools. So we're ranked forty six in the country in terms of smallest schools. We tend to have very high for people expenditures. Depending on the report that you reference, we can be ranked either number five or number one depending on the data source. So definitely within the top five as we're looking at overall spending per pupil. We are also very low when you look at the teacher ratio, teacher to one hundred students. We are first in that in the country. So that is a very lower, [Speaker 1 ]: you know, [Zoe Founders ]: lowest class sizes ratios. And that holds also not just for teachers, but also for staff. Moving into looking at some assessment data, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is the one test that we have where we can compare how we're doing in Vermont, to other states. This is administered every two years. It is a random sample, and it's an interesting gives us an interesting perspective of our overall performance. So we tend to do, tend to outperform, in reading. So we look at it. We are, in fourth grade reading, we rank eleven. And in eighth grade reading, we're fifth. One thing we'll show you later is kinda the trend over time that we're also paying attention to. In math, we're scoring a little bit lower as we compare ourselves to other states. And in fourth grade math, we rank twenty eighth, and in eighth grade math [Speaker 5 ]: on twenty first. So [Zoe Founders ]: this is the beginning to the question around who's included in that overall enrollment number. So we're showing our our trend back to two thousand four. The bright green line is looking at our total enrollment in public schools. So this is all students in ten. This would include pre k, include CTE students as well. And then the dotted blue line are those students that are enrolled in a k twelve public school. One thing to note here is that we've had an over twenty percent decline in enrollment on a k twelve public school. Much of that decrease in enrollment, occurred before the pandemic, and has been continuing. When you look at the red line below, that is looking at our enrollment at independent schools. This is both for those students that receive public tuition to attend an independent school and those that have private pay to attend. We can see that there was an uptick as we think about the COVID years during that enrollment. One thing I wanna note as you're looking at these trend lines, you probably noticed when we received questions. Why don't the trend lines all go back to two thousand four? Some of this is just around data availability. So as we have discussed, we're really in a process of doing some data infrastructure improvements. And what we thought is important to go ahead and present what was validated to see that is accessible back to two thousand four. It will just take us some more time, to pull that together and validate, if we felt like, the number of years we could present still is a really valuable timeline. So that's what we're bringing forward. So overall, CTE enrollment has, remained relatively, consistent over time. The blue line is representing a home study. And so what you can see is home study definitely increased during the pandemic, and it's kinda come back to pre pandemic levels. Next, we'll look at student demographic trends. So in the table, we're looking at the statewide averages along with the range so you can kinda see their variability when we're looking across our state. On the statewide average. So we're looking from two thousand nineteen, twenty to the two thousand twenty two, twenty three school year. Something to note here is we are reporting a reduction, in the number of students, that qualify for free and reduced lunch. It's also important to note that we have changed to universal school meals, and so we might see a decline just in terms of, how we're collecting that information because parents may not be submitting the form. We have been doing a big push, to to get those forms collected. And, also, looking forward, we have Medicaid eligibility, which will be a helpful resource for us to really have more stable measure of poverty. And then we also are looking at, special education services, and then these are the number of students that, have an an individualized education plan. And you can see too that there there's certainly a range, when you're looking at this data, you you know, from six percent to thirty five percent. And we'll talk a [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: little bit about some of [Zoe Founders ]: the patterns that we're seeing, in terms of need. Same with, English language learners. We'll show on a map in a couple slides, that it there's different concentrations of where those student needs are are presenting. So there's, overall, five point two percent, are English language learners, but you can see in some districts that might be as high as thirty four percent. [Speaker 6 ]: So as part of [Zoe Founders ]: our analysis, we started to look at trends by size of our supervisor unions and school districts. And so you'll see that throughout our presentation today. We grouped them accordingly. And so I think what what we're seeing in terms of overall trends is that our smaller, supervisory unions tend to serve higher needs students, and we see that in terms of the percentage of green and blue, slunch, and special educations, students as early as the English language learners that that, trend does not hold. It's more geographic. Sure. Here, we're looking at the overall distribution of food and reduced lunch students. Looking at the the map here, and you can certainly see that there's certain areas of our states where there's higher concentrations of poverty with our student enrollment. And then looking in the venues in area or just, you know, for example, I guess, some higher rates. [Speaker 1 ]: I have a quick question on that last one. Right? You can open look at the Northeast Kingdom. The the Newport one is much more purple than the next one over to the right. And I also think that the Michelin device tower with the Kingdom Choice area. So it is they're more of a function of not having the data one way to two different it's it's very, like, the same geographic area, same demographic side, I imagine. The ones that they know and and I'm is it safe to assume that's because team choice is probably harder to get the data from? [Zoe Founders ]: I mean, it may be. Again, a lot of this is dependent on the data collection that we get from parents. So we we may not have that. I don't know, Amanda or Justin, if you wanna weigh in on anything specific to that area. We've seen any additional patterns. No. Nothing additional nothing nothing additional [Amanda Brown ]: to add, Zoe. I think I think you're exactly right. This is really only as good as the data that districts receive from families and report up to AOE. I do just wanna highlight, you know, this is the three year average that we were seeing fairly consistent reporting across the three years that we used. But, yes, there still can be district to strict variation in in the forms that they receive from families that would impact this. [Zoe Founders ]: Thank you. And, Amanda Brown is with ABA Consulting who's been supporting us, so thank you, Amanda, for for writing. [Speaker 1 ]: And the little striped part of the map, I'm assuming that is Lincoln. Okay. [Zoe Founders ]: Alright. So moving in, this is the representation of English language learners across the state. So where you see they're grayed out, there's a a very small number, so it's not representing the data or there are not students. So I think the the main picture here is it's concentrated really by geography. We see more English learner learners in the Sherman Valley region and the southwest region. So the kids' pockets also in the northeast kingdom. So, again, just something to contemplate as we're thinking about kind of differentiating support based on need. So I'll I'll pause there and just see if there's any questions. So that's kind of an overview, just broad enrollment trends and demographics. We're gonna move up to the next section talking about student outcomes. Just wanted to know. If you have any questions at this point. [Speaker 4 ]: Well, you skipped by the special education map. I'm not sure. [Zoe Founders ]: I didn't. So I actually hit that map only because one thing that called out to me that we need to correct as you can see for those who got on their screen. Breaking bells coming out as a very dark blue, but I I think there's a data arrow and an interstate, denominator. So that's something I'm looking to correct and will be published for you. [Speaker 6 ]: Okay. I I you can see the percentages when you look at the actual map. It would be great to be able to see those beside each. The numbers beside Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: As a table, would you like Yeah. [Speaker 6 ]: And it would be great if the on all of these, if it was listed there [Speaker 4 ]: as well. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: This is the stage for following for Zoom. [Speaker 6 ]: Got it. It just Yeah. It's easier to see. It's It's a link to each SU. That's all. [Zoe Founders ]: Absolutely. So something else we can show also, we can bring up the state education profile. We can go to the appendix. And if there's still additional detail how you want those tables created, we can do that so you have that. Instructions. So moving into the next part of the presentation, we're focused on student outcomes. And, you know, as we talked about with the listen and learn for, we've heard I apologize. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. [Speaker 1 ]: But we went back in the the previous one, and maybe you're gonna touch more on the student outcomes. We were looking at LEAP scores. Mhmm. Do they only test up through eighth grade? [Zoe Founders ]: They yeah. That's correct. [Speaker 6 ]: And is [Zoe Founders ]: And it's a randomized sample so that it's representative of each state. [Speaker 1 ]: And is there no information on higher grades because we continually switch assessment tools, or is higher grade data considering being really ridiculous because kids don't take it as a high stakes test. [Zoe Founders ]: So we have different indicators at the high school level within our state accountability plan that we can bring in. We're gonna talk about some of those including graduation rate or some college and career readiness indicators as well. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: But NEAP is one test Yeah. That hasn't changed. So Yeah. We're gonna you're you'll see when we get to this date, the student outcomes that we'll be looking at actually several different assessment. NEAP is a good measure in that it it has been consistent. You can go back fifteen years and really look at that trend data, you know, kind of long term and be able to compare state to state. We can't do that with really any other assessment. Erin, did you wanna have because then in, like No. [Speaker 4 ]: I I see them in these waters. There is no national high school [Zoe Founders ]: Yeah. [Speaker 4 ]: Assessment that you compare every state. You would say SAT, ACT data, but, obviously, that's a can be a very skewed some places are using it universally. Some places, it's just kids who are clearly college bound. So it's not really a national measure of comparison. So NAEP is the gold standard in terms of Right. And I just have to note that in terms of the narrative out there, the NAEP results are far higher than I realized. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: In reading. Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: Yeah. We're out reporting and reading. [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. That was a real And we'll see that it's thrilled to see it. [Emily Simmons ]: And Yes. [Speaker 4 ]: I'm yeah. Yeah. There's a very false narrative, I think, around some of our outcomes. I know there's And that's one of your challenges in our outcomes. Yeah. I feel like that NAEP data is very fierce. Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: Yeah. The Yes. The good news is [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: that we are on the higher end literacy. The bad news is that we're all everyone is trending down. Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: So across the country. So it's and that's why you're seeing a lot of states. Like, we are are focusing on literacy because overall, we're seeing that decline. But, certainly, as we compare ourselves, we are performing well in literacy, but but we know that there's real opportunity to better prepare our students. And that's across the board, across the country. There's a big focus on this. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: And so before before you dive in, I just want to let you know we we have our our photo friends. So Anne Bordenaro who leads our best team and has the child nutrition team underneath did confirm kind of your instinct there, which is that in the Northwest Kingdom, there's so many tuitioning students, and that would lies in the independent school census for FRL data, which is generally less, high quality. So you were you're on the money. Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: And so if we're looking at these maps, it's it's interesting because there's so many things you can layer on top of them. And so you can start to see those trends when you look at it side by side, in in terms of those patterns. And so appreciate you picking that up. But also as we look at outcome data, we we do have, some assessment data related to ninth grade. And then beyond that, we have different college and career readiness indicators, which we'll walk through. But as we, you know, we reflected on last Friday with our listen and learn for, Vermonters really value holistic measures of student success. And so as we walk through this data, we will talk about the core fundamentals and how we measure those, and we'll also talk about gaps and p and m and those factors that contribute to the conditions of of student success in mind. So here, you're looking at this is the Vermont assessment data. So just as a point of context, we have changed our step. This is looking at results from the smarter balanced assessment. We now are administering the Vermont app assessment. It's hard to hear those after the staff is, but we certainly will be able to share kind of persistent gaps that we're seeing as we look at subgroups. So this is just looking at the Smarter Balanced data. During the COVID two thousand nineteen twenty era, we did not administer the assessment. The next year, there was a lot of variability in terms of participation. I'm Talking to a lot of folks that are educators and schools that you're very well aware. And so those are a bit blocked out. It is really hard for us to make those types of, comparisons. Here, you're looking at the the line for elementary school, middle grade, and high and the high school. So you can certainly see from two thousand to twenty twenty one, which you did see a decline. And another large, factor of that was because of COVID. In terms of math results, when we're looking at these trends, we're seeing a lot more variation by grade band, which is important for us to focus on. So overall, we're seeing a lower performance in the high school grades. And so that's just something we we need to be prepared for as we're thinking about parent our students. And overall, our math results tend to be lower, and that's consistent with what we're seeing on the national assessment as well. So we've already highlighted, you know, where we are in terms of ranking using the NAEP assessment both in reading and the math. This is showing us the trend line for fourth and eighth grade comparing Vermont, which is represented in the solid green line to the northeast, which is in the dotted line based on it when compared to the national average, which is the blue, dotted line. Something that we're focused on here as we look at reading is that there has been more of a deeper decline, in terms of our reading performance. And so that's we're trending more towards the average. So that's an area that we certainly are focused on as we move forward, re Vermont and other initiatives. So this is looking at our our math data. So as we've noted, our math data were not as strong, in our overall math performance. Then you can see again the timeline of declining from, you know, fourth grade from forty three percent to thirty four percent, and then eighth grade from forty two percent to twenty seven percent. Percent. So this is certainly an area we're focusing on. We will have a new release of the NAEP data at the end of this month. So we'll certainly bring that back to you to see what the how the trends are are paying to now. [Speaker 1 ]: Fairly, very much shows the impact of the pandemic. [Zoe Founders ]: Yeah. Right. Exactly. So as I mentioned, we transitioned to the Vermont comprehensive assessment program, which we call Vermont CAP, in twenty twenty two, twenty three. This is the first year of that assessment data. This is the most recent final published data that we have. And so what we've shown here is, the overall results for ELA and math by by grade level, which I think is important to note also, as we're looking at kind of the early grades too and some of our, you know, pandemic cohort of kids in math, we're seeing slower as well. We do have preliminary results that we have published for the twenty twenty four, twenty five school year, and the final results will be published this winter. We're seeing pretty consistent performance relative to last year and overall a consistent gap as we're looking at the subgroup comparison data. So on this slide, this is where we're starting to talk about really that that conversation around equity and making sure that every child will also perform at high levels. We're comparing this chart to different assessment, but we're still seeing that there's pretty consistent gaps. I think there's, like, thirty percent gap. Right? As we're looking at performance for those students that are bringing reduced lunch. So that's definitely something we are focused on to ensure that we can close that achievement gap. Moving into graduation rates. Overall here, what we're showing is graduation for a four year cohort and for a six year. Looking back to two thousand seventeen to the two thousand twenty two, twenty three school year, Overall, we have seen a decline in our graduation rate over time, and we had kind of a a spike there right around right before the pandemic where our rates were improving. So something also to keep in mind is we're comparing graduation rates across supervisor unions is that there's different variables that are determined from a proficiency based graduation requirement. It sometimes make it challenging for us to compare graduation rates for one, this supervisor even to another. This right now is an aggregate, so it is looking at the the overall trend. But that is something to know, as we drill down deeper and and compare the points. So we know that, chronic absenteeism really contributes to students' overall performance. We want them to be able to be in school, benefit from that direct instruction, and support of their teachers to be successful. I will do a little bit of definitions, and then we'll show you some data around chronic absenteeism. So that is defined by students missing ten percent or more of the school days in the academic year. And this is an area where we look at our next slide as you're seeing overall trends. We have definitely, this is an area we're focusing on one in about one in three students, are chronically absent. We definitely, we're seeing the spike of after the pandemic, and it's an area that we're focusing very intentionally on. This is also an area where we have opportunities to partner, with community providers and the pediatric community, like, gave grand rounds, and partnership with UVM to talk about the importance of chronic absenteeism and the role of the whole community, and being able to reinforce the importance of, you know, participating in attending school. I think one of the really challenging parts of this is we look at chronic absenteeism is that it's higher for our more vulnerable populations. You can see that on the chart here. We're seeing higher rates of chronic absenteeism for our students that are unhoused, our students that qualify for free and reduced lunch, foster student, foster care students, migrant students. So this is really an area of focus for us We're really thinking about how do we close that achievement gap. So we looked at the data before and saw that there was a no big gaps in terms of performance by subgroups. And we know that participation in school is a factor of that. So we are focusing really closely with our agency partners and then we'll be able to to really support higher rates of [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: school. And if I can just decrease [Speaker 4 ]: this this. So there's actually [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: quite a lot of conversations happening around. I'd say this is a priority, not just for our agency, but it is revealed. It's for other agency partners. And as Zoe mentioned, we have sort of the pediatric community is sort of coming online and really understanding there's there's how do you think mental health kind of contributors? There's there's a whole variety. Part of the reason that chronic absenteeism is a hard thing to tackle is there's a whole variety of reasons why students may be chronically absent. And so really trying to understand all of those sort of factors, address kind of your high leverage strategies. Right? You know, what can we do with the transportation and [Zoe Founders ]: the barrier? What can we do? [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: You know, there's some really great evidence based practices. The major focus of the Department of Education as well right now is it as suitable as having someone who calls and reminds parents every day? Right? Is that a high leverage and low investment opportunity that we can really kind of expand across the state? We have some really great shining examples of districts that are doing as well. And we're trying to spotlight those, kind of have a network of, you know, participants. I think one other piece of this that is also important is just engagement. Right? So there's lots of factors, but one of those is also just student interest and a sense of the value and worth of their education. And so that's a different piece that we have to address for all students. How do we really get them to understand, feel that they're part of the community, that there's value in their education, that what [Zoe Founders ]: they're doing has real world kind [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: of usefulness for them. And so that's another piece of it that I think we're trying to address in different ways. Right? You know, how I'm really heard that in the listening. So there's [Zoe Founders ]: a lot of good question. Yeah. [Speaker 6 ]: Yeah. Just really quick there. Thank you for that. That's that's really important. I love looking at models that are that that's so I'm I'm gonna assume, and then you'll correct me if I'm wrong. When I look at this chronically absent, this the the areas where students are more absent, does that reflect in the size of the school district, the rurality of the school district? So I'm trying to get at are the more rural smaller schools are the ones where we're seeing these higher temp trends based on things you'd said before. It would make sense, but I just want [Zoe Founders ]: to I'm wondering if you could call. Yeah. I think yeah. I think, Anne, if you would like to expand on that, any broader patterns that you're seeing chronic absenteeism related to the demographics of the communities? [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: So I believe that we have the data. I have not seen it myself, but I I think that it's data that we could get from our team and break out that way for you all. I would suspect that that's probably the case, but I can't say because I haven't seen it myself. But the data is reported. My understanding is the data is required to be reported to the federal government by each supervisory union. But well, on broken out by supervisory union, I should say. We report it. So we've got it. I just haven't seen it. It's really interesting analysis. [Speaker 1 ]: It it it's a little hard to hear it here. So when Anne Warner said I I suspect that's the case, what was the case that you were saying? Like, you said that there's higher CA in rural areas. [Speaker 6 ]: My suspicion was based on the previous things that you had said about when we look at these yellow lines here, the students that that that will be [Zoe Founders ]: higher, you [Speaker 6 ]: know, incidence of students' absence in rural areas or [Zoe Founders ]: Yeah. Although, potentially, [Speaker 5 ]: let's let's let's let's let's let's let's [Zoe Founders ]: let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let poverty strategy after yeah. That I think it's interesting to do that analysis. Mhmm. [Speaker 4 ]: And Thank you. And [Speaker 5 ]: I know it's happening. Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: As we're talking, I think, in a a future session, we'll talk about kind of college and career pathways overall and some of the spotlights that we see programmatically. And we are seeing that there's some really great examples of schools that are, you know, increasing attendance through, you know, community schools and other types of initiatives that are really having a positive impact. The the other thing around just overall engagement is an important factor. So we looked at the graduation rate data. We also have graduation rate data for those students that are enrolled in career and technical education pathways and saying that they have higher graduation rates. So pointing to what students really feel like they're engaged in their learning is meaningful and applicable, we're seeing higher rates of graduation. So that's something else to consider in addition to the demographics of the school and the community, but the overall engagement with the programming that's offered at school. And and we would expect too that when you look at yeah. I'd like to analyze it early into after school as well. So if there's a really interesting after school program, are we seeing that students are are out of the school? Right? So, again, as we're all engaging in this work, we recognize that these it's really a holistic approach that needs to take as we're really analyzing root cause and also identifying best practices that are supporting the type of success we'd like for students to have. So moving into staffing data, we'll walk through staffing ratio, salaries, and then also some high level licensure trends. So in this slide, there's a lot of different data that we're putting forward. So one is just looking at the average staff per one student. So you may ask why we look at it that way. That allows us to do some national comparisons, and we're also in the process of doing another data collection with the fields to be able to be more refined with how we can depict your class size, because the way that that data is collected needs a little bit more nuance. And so this gives us a really good sense for now, and we know if there's interest in in drilling down further. So, overall, we highlighted that we have some of the highest or some of the most staff in our schools. And that's true. As you look at teacher support service, student service, and leaders, this is the way that we're collecting our data. You have seen overall an increase in all areas of staffing. [Speaker 1 ]: Just a very quick question. When you're validating the data, there's always good questions with staffing because there's a lot of contract staff that might be in the school building where they count it as part of this. It's like if you have if you have a contracted lunch program that where it's a private company or janitorial staff. [Zoe Founders ]: I I believe that this this data is representative of staff, not contracted not contracts. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: Yeah. This comes from the teacher Yeah. Staff survey data that's submitted by districts every year, which I wanna double check this, but I think it's FTEs and not and not like, so many object code, it says one hundred, two hundred is not one hundred. Okay. But as we we can go later in [Zoe Founders ]: the presentation, we think about overall spending. So those contracted services are part of overall spending because we look at special education. Right? So that's not just inclusive of staff. Yeah. Right. So, again, we're starting to do some analysis also by size. And so, you know, I think what what we would expect is that you tend to have, you know, more staffing in our our we just want the economy scale in our smaller, supervisor meetings and settings. And you're seeing that play out, across the different staffing categories, and also across as you're comparing, by by date as well. So our higher needs, we need to tend to have a little bit more in terms of staff and the teachers. Okay. Moving into salaries. So this is looking again at all of those categories and understanding overall staff salaries. So we have seen, across all categories that there has been, an increase, in salaries, since two thousand nineteen twenty. And then we looked at that also by really analyzing that in terms of need and size. We're gonna have a big picture trend that we saw was that, you know, our our smaller supervisor unions tend to to serve higher needs students, which we discuss, and they tend to pay their teachers less. And so that's something that is concerning from a recruiting and retention perspective and also equity as we're thinking about really recruiting high quality teachers for every classroom across the stadium. [Speaker 1 ]: It's like that there is probably more it's a it's a much part more level across support services staff than it is over teaching staff. Mhmm. Yep. Absolutely. [Zoe Founders ]: Something we've talked about. So we do have, you know, probably more teachers and staff in our in our system. It's something to think about is the workforce that we have to build those open positions. Oftentimes, our schools are struggling, and our central offices to to hire staff to build those roles. So what you're looking at here is we have a number in terms of teacher perspective, a really large increase in the number that are on provisional and emergency licenses. And so that's what you're looking at despite with that green line. So, obviously, that also requires some additional training and support for the district as well as their onboarding those those new teachers to the field. The the other slide is looking at retention. This is a pretty unique measure of retention that's looking at those that have stayed in their role for a three year period. The reason this is recorded is it's part of our, annual state plan that's required for the federal government. It does provide some interesting trends, but we're also in the process of drilling that deeper to look at annual, retention rates, which I think is really applicable as you're thinking about planning, the decisions that are made at a local level. Mhmm. But but overall, we're seeing, you know, just on these trends, lower retention or declining retention for our principles and super. I mean, you have certain teachers. [Speaker 4 ]: Didn't say into the superintendent line, which just seems a little bit different than the other two. [Zoe Founders ]: It does. And I actually was one of those that I was gonna hide that was on this project. I think I I wanna [Speaker 4 ]: dig into [Zoe Founders ]: that. I I said I wanna dig into that because just we know I mean, what we've seen is about a thirty percent turnover with our superintendents year over year. Just and so we're checking that data. And that's why it's okay. This is a very unique pleasure of retention with it. We we wanna check on. So if you will allow us, we wanna dig into this and be able to report this back to you so that we're dealing with really accurate numbers for you. We had questions as well. [Speaker 1 ]: We're gathering. [Speaker 4 ]: Do you know how this compares nationally to our assumption piece? [Speaker 1 ]: This is crazy. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: If Andrew is Andrew, do you have a sense for our national comparison? [Andrew ]: No. I I I don't have that. I I will say, though, the the superintendent piece, this was provided this morning from from DMAD, so this is what's going to be published in in the annual snapshot. But, yeah, definitely doing some double checking. I did do some asking around too, like, anecdotally. We definitely had a major hit for superintendents when when COVID came through, and and maybe this this, folks are are it's the same superintendents over the past couple of years, which is why there would be such a jump. But as, secretary Sander said, we were gonna be definitely be double checking that. [Zoe Founders ]: And I think, [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: like, what we have observed at the agency level is a a real fragility in our what we call the central offices of districts and a lot of turnover. So something I think really starting in in during the COVID times, I remember there was the very first year, you know, seventeen superintendents turned over in one year. And we've seen about that much every year. So that's, you know, a third, basically, of our our district leadership turning over every year. And one thing that we observed this last year because we really started paying a lot of attention to it because we have some systems that were very fragile. One thing that we observed is that you might have one system that goes down a superintendent and business manager and maybe a special education director. So that system becomes really destabilized. I mean, we all start to have looking at it and going, okay. Uh-oh. That's when we really need to pay attention to. And what we found is by the time they hired everyone, it had actually destabilized other systems [Speaker 1 ]: Yeah. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: Because they were either hiring superintendents from other systems or what often happens is really talented principals. And so we also have a lot of destabilization in our principals as well. I like to share the anecdote that my children's elementary school went through six principles in about four years. Yeah. And so that that, like, building level leadership, we're not we're not really sustaining, right, which really creates a culture, and it's how you're able to invest and see strategic plans all the way through. So we're almost in this constant churn, and this is one of those places where we we sort of talk about the the scale and the number. Right? And that sort of the complexity of our governance is actually driving some destabilization within our systems. And we we really have started to pay attention to this over the last couple of years and the implications for those systems. You know, just think about having to hire a person and get them trained up, but doing that every year and doing it from multiple key personnel within your system. So it's something that we're concerned about. [Zoe Founders ]: And then and then the the last several months, I think the last spring and in the fall, the agency has been doing a lot of work to support, to stabilize, some districts that are are really experiencing those challenges with maintaining the central office staff. And another practical challenge is being able to bring in additional resources to support in the interim just because there's there's not the the capacity or the the structure in place to help support that when their when their district might need more help, it is really challenging to plug in those resources. [Speaker 1 ]: I just take let's just take a note here in a few minutes. The representative tail height will just step out for a chair's vice chair's training Presentability will be running the show. [Zoe Founders ]: Okay. Alright. Good. So, here we just have a a breakdown of, the the type of, a provisional and emergency license that that are being provided. And so you can see here that in terms of the provisional endorsement, there's a number that highest would be in the special educator category and a lot also in elementary school settings where we're really trying to position a lot of new staff. So, Andrew, do you wanna, you know, provide the distinction between provisional and emergency licenses just so everyone has a perspective of what these numbers represent? [Andrew ]: Absolutely. The short answer is provisional licenses are valid for two years and require certain qualifications in the content area. So a bachelor's degree in math for a math provisional, or they are a licensed teacher in a different area. An emergency license is one year. There's no options for an extension on that one year. And the qualifications are a bachelor's degree in any subject, and the hiring district has to provide evidence that they've made every effort to hire a licensed teacher. So the emergencies is definitely concerning because that's showing that they've made multiple attempts to fill that position. And anecdotally, it used to be maybe a dozen each year of retired educators. It's now about a hundred each year of of, you know, people from the community just just seeing the vacancies and stepping up. And, we've actually even had through the standards board a number of waivers submitted requesting folks who are still working on their bachelor's degree to get an emergency license, which is is definitely concerning and and have been looking at that at a case by case basis. [Zoe Founders ]: As we highlighted on Friday, you know, from our listen and learn for our results in terms of the, increased needs of, for our special education, students and support. So the challenge is that we have a big, workforce shortage of special educators, and you can see this in terms of, the decline of those that are professional licensed. So this is certainly a challenge to be able to staff to support our students and provide these. Next, we'll move into the financial burden. Let's see if you need does anyone have any questions on the deduction regarding staffing? [Speaker 5 ]: K. [Zoe Founders ]: So I'll move into the financials here. So we're we're gonna talk about expenditures in a couple of different ways, and we like to think about this as peeling back the onion. So you can see here, we're going to report expenditures by total expenditures, operating, and education funds. So total expenditures are all the sources of funds. So that's including our federal dollars as well, the total amount that is available, to educate students. So that's helpful for us to think about as we're looking at the overall resources, that our districts and students have access to. Operating expenditures is also factoring in those sources outside of the state funding, so federal dollars. But it's removing those expenses like debt service and capital that are not ongoing annual expenses. And then we'll look at expenditures just from the education fund, and that's based on what the state funds, specifically. That's really where the taxpayer, dollars are. So one thing to note as we're looking at trend line with expenditures, this does not adjust for inflation. And one of the things too is you're looking at these stacked charts as we're depicting the the source as well. So the grant the green is looking at the general fund. So that's our what we call our, you know, ex fund. The blue is special revenues. The dark blue the lighter blue is looking at other funds, and then that trend line is looking at overall total expenditures. And so you can see, an an increase in that. And a lot of, I think something to important to note is COVID really played a factor here. So we definitely had an infusion of federal dollars to provide some additional resources and support, in that time frame. So you're seeing, you know, within the dark blue, the special revenues are also including those federal dollars. And so now those have sunsetted, so we will not be able to draw down as much federal funding. So we know that that has put some specific pressures on schools if the needs are continuing. And and needs to be met, this is done with one of the resource. So can I ask the question? So you're [Speaker 4 ]: saying the dark blue there is largely the covered phone. Because they under cover this. [Zoe Founders ]: Mhmm. What is the [Speaker 4 ]: light blue, the five percent on top of that mostly representing? [Zoe Founders ]: Is there other things? [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: Would you have Amanda? She's Yep. So, Amanda [Zoe Founders ]: or Justin, if you could expand on just what exactly is included for getting into this Happy to [Amanda Brown ]: hop in. So just as you were saying, the the dark blue is ESSER funds. It's also, you know, your IDA or your title fund. So it's really all of your federal funds in that dark blue. The light blue is, other funds that would could include capital funds, debt service, enterprise, which is kind of self sustaining entities in schools, and trust funds. So that's what's in that little little bit of five percent at the top. [Zoe Founders ]: Anything else you wanna add to that plan, Amanda? [Amanda Brown ]: No. I think you've covered it well. [Zoe Founders ]: So as we're looking at our you know, what we're trying to understand too is that we're having these broader conversations around how we fund education. We wanna understand how those dollars are being invested in assistance to support student needs. So here, what we're looking at is both the operating and education fund expenditures, and we're analyzing that in terms of the size of the supervisor union along with the need. And so as we're talking about need in this context, we're really talking about those students that qualify for free office lunch, so being a proxy for poverty. So both operating expenditures and fund expenditures are higher in smaller, supervisory union and supervisory district settings. And so that would be expected as we think about some of the challenges of achieving products of scale to meet the needs of those students. So expenditures are also higher in higher need settings. But when we peel that back, we're not seeing that there's a meaningful difference in terms of the Ed Fund expenditures guy need. And so what does that translate to when we're looking for we're just isolating the funds that are coming out of the education fund? We're not seeing a meaningful difference in terms of higher investment and lower need communities. But some of the additional sources such as federal and title title funding is helping to provide that additional, support for those students that know need additional services and such as just our learning property. I think it also had And and [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: then yeah. So the and so so one way that we think about this because until we had peeled back the onion, that was not apparent to us. That really is the other sources of funding, specifically federal dollars, that are differentiating the amount of resources available for tiny students. But when we look at that ad fund, this is what we build out. Right? This is what we go, you know, really when we're doing our our our town meeting day. Those are the budgets that we're sort of voting on. This is our ad spending. And so we're we really, when this analysis was run, we sort of paused and said, oh, that's something significant to pull out and that we're not actually differentiating and driving more dollars to hire new students through [Speaker 5 ]: the. [Zoe Founders ]: I think this will be really an important part of the conversation, and I think there's just some assumptions and, that we need to bring forward when we're having this conversation. So research tells us that certain students are gonna be more costly to educate. So students that are living in poverty or English language learners have additional needs, and they will need some additional resources. So when we talk about equity in terms of funding funding, we would assume that those students that have higher needs will be getting additional resources in funding. And so what's interesting as we're looking at this, we are seeing that when we look at total expenditure. So when we pull all the different funds together, we're seeing that. Or we're just isolating what's coming out of the education fund, we're not seeing that meaningful difference. Okay. And so we'll talk a little bit more tomorrow about the education funding system and [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: kind of the the theory [Zoe Founders ]: of action and what was established there and what's happening in practice. Right? Because I think as a reminder, it's really clear, and this came through on the list number, but we care about equity. We care about making sure that students should have high needs, get those additional resources. So this is important to consider. This data, as we know, we have lagging data here. So this is what we're presenting here is not incorporating the new weights. However, JFO has done a study for fiscal year twenty five, and and we are still seeing, that trend line. We'll we'll kind of skip ahead if you will just to kind of Mhmm. Share that point. As we're looking at the overall spending, this is comparing, spending to poverty levels. And so, you know, we would expect to see a reverse trend where higher poverty communities are benefiting from additional resources, and that's a closing thing out in purchase. So it goes back to, again, the conversation as we talk about equity as a state. How are we defining that for me and how are we ensuring that those students that have additional needs benefit from the additional resources to be successful? [Speaker 4 ]: And we'll scroll up. So I [Zoe Founders ]: just wanted to highlight that as we mentioned, we are still valid. You know, we'll continue. But some of the state is lagging, but we've brought that in because I think it's important to show that there's continuity of the trend that we're seeing. And even with the new weights with the new ones. So the the [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: whole piece. Right? So we're looking at quite twenty three that was before actually twenty seven, right, and we placed people with a a framework. Now we have the new weights. We're continuing to see the same trend of actually higher poverty communities, not access and the more perfect people. They're spending less. And what [Zoe Founders ]: we'll talk about, I think, there tomorrow, the education funding report, you know, our our current system is really about tax care. But to be not guaranteeing that those students that have higher needs get the just the same resources. Right? So that that's what we're seeing play out in the data and why it was important for us to peel back the onion so we could really understand as we're making decisions for the state about how to fund education and how we think about equity. It's important for us to do this analysis. Another part that we wanted to bring into this conversation was starting to do that layering. And we know all these pieces are connected. We're taking a very holistic approach to education, and we've already started to talk about that. How does chronic absenteeism affect performance, and affect graduation rate and so forth. So what we're, doing here in modeling is creating a matrix where we can start to compare, spending to performance, and also bringing in need. So I'm gonna orient you to this matrix. And then on the next slide, you're actually gonna see little dots that represent supervisory unions and districts. So in the top quadrant, you have your higher performing, higher spending, districts will appear there. To the left, we'd have higher performing and lower spending. So that would be really maximizing your efficiency with lower spending to get to higher outcomes. And then on the bottom left, you're looking at lower performing, lower spending, and then to divide lower performing and higher spending. So when we think about a system that is really equitable, we would assume that there would be higher spending and higher in these areas, and they will be higher performing. Right? Now granted, as we're looking at the seventy one average, so you're always gonna see that there's gonna be some that fall into different categories. So on the next slide that we'll show you, you'll see little dots, and those dots are color coded. And also there's so the color and the size are represented. So the color is indicating the level of need. So the red and orange are representing higher need, supervisor units and districts. So those are have higher property rates. The green are lower property rates, so lower need. The actual size of the circles represent the size of the school district. So a larger circle would represent a larger, supervisory union district. We have done this mapping both for ELA and math, but just for illustrative purposes, we're showing it's blank here, however it pans out for ELA. So one thing that we always get, we we took this on our road trip across the state and listen to where is, which one is my circle? That's always a question. We're really not using this to think about specific. We're really thinking about this and from a policy perspective around understanding overall trend. And so the overall trends we see that we've been talking about, you know, are that our lower our lower need areas, tend to so if you look at some green dots, so they tend to be larger. So they're achieving efficiency and scale. They tend to be higher performing and lower spending. And then your our red circles, there's a cluster of those that are lower spending and low performing. This is something we've talked about a lot in the agency as we were looking at last year. So many of the districts that were struggling to cap their budgets were some of our highest new communities that were already low spent. Mhmm. And so we're seeing that play out that they're you know, these cuts, [Speaker 4 ]: you know, [Zoe Founders ]: they're having an impact on performance. Right? And so as we're talking about how to fund our overall system, it's important for us to think about how that helps to support the conditions that's exactly students need and then also looking at their overall outcomes and performance. And then we should talk about this. Moving into special education, we're gonna do a very high level overview in the coming week. We in coming weeks, we will actually release a more detailed report on special education so that you have a better sense of our current education context and both programmatically and in terms of spending. So right now, we'll just do a very high level overview. So overall, as we're looking at statewide special education expenditures, just looking at what you're representing here, we do see an increase in overall spending. However, we're also analyzing that as a percentage of total expenditures, and we're seeing when we're looking at that, there's actually a reduction in spending for special ed when you look at it as the total amount percentage of overall spending. [Speaker 6 ]: Thank you. And this is reflecting when I know data is out, so it really isn't reflecting any of the one seventy three changes that we've made since it's been so slow to roll that out because that is what one seventy three was supposed to do. Right. Increase student outcomes and lower costs. Right. We're experiencing what is it now? Fourth year of reducing the census block. They were in the last year of a reduction, and districts are really feeling that now. And implementing the changes that need to take place to make sure that we're serving the students in our schools has been really hard in some districts too. Right. [Zoe Founders ]: And we've been having a lot of conversation on this. You know, as you look at, you know, legislation, it's not just around funding. Right? There's also a programmatic support and changes. And so as you're identifying, there's programmatic changes in terms of achieving best practices as we as we get about special education delivery. We're for continue we're in the process of doing as a state, and we're getting a request for additional support from the agency to help in that regard. Part of what we'll talk about in the upcoming report is reflecting on, the status of the implementation, and where there are opportunities for us to further, enhance, our special education delivery across the state. So that is something that we're very focused on. And as we said, we put it anecdotally. We have gone across the state where I listen in our tour that can need to have a a broader conversation about how to support special ed. And then we see also in the numbers, where I'll see an increase in the extraordinary expenses, which we can talk about. I'd say, you know, higher achieving the need and how do we support that. Mhmm. Oh, I was [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: gonna say one other the the bottom table is well, one other piece of context there is that this is also [Zoe Founders ]: the period where there was [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: the influx of five hundred million dollars in SIRS funds. Yeah. And those largely didn't go specifically to special education, so that percentage of overall can also be explained [Zoe Founders ]: by that influx of that. It's hard to tease out at this point. So some of you know, as we look at the state of the phone, it's like, what additional questions do we have, and then how do we analyze that to inform policy decisions? So as we continue to to work with you, it's helpful for us to understand, like, what are those questions so that we can prioritize that deeper now. Okay. [Emily Simmons ]: I was just gonna echo. I was I I believe representative wrong. I will get these charts through the thing when the your question comes from. Like, did x one seventy degree it wasn't an experiment. Like, we were actually speaking to drive better experience for students. But if we looked at it as unsuccessful hypothesis that we had right or that we had wrong, I think there's a variable that we did not anticipate and [Zoe Founders ]: could not control coming on [Emily Simmons ]: COVID, and it was the scarcity of special educators that I don't even in five years, my question will be, do we really know that these would be effects of f one seventy three as inactive Mhmm. Or was it the reality of the change that we made and then a pandemic and then led to the dominant gift and the results of the line [Speaker 6 ]: So I don't wanna believe you're this because it sounds like you're gonna dig into it deeper, and I really look forward to that. But I'll just say it has been very obvious to anyone in Vermont who's had any connection to any schools that it is all over the place about the implementation of one seventy three. Yeah. It we all are experiencing the the reduction in our census block each year, but many school districts have done a good job and many haven't even hardly done any of the work that needs to take place if we're going to fully implement one seventy three the way it was intended. Yeah. And that is what concerns me. I agree. So I look forward to the I don't wanna believe it here, but I look forward to the afternoon. Have more weekend. [Zoe Founders ]: We do have Cassie on the call too. Yeah. If Cassie sent to our state director of special education, if there's any, additional context you'd like to provide. [Cassie ]: Hi. Hi, guys. No. My computer is a bit delayed. Can you see me? [Zoe Founders ]: There you are. Yeah. I see you. [Cassie ]: Okay. I don't have anything to add in particular to the financial component of this. I think I can anecdotally express and as someone who who worked as an special educator in Vermont for several years that, the transition was hard and that that district certainly felt it. So the anecdotal comments that are being made here is part of my experience as well. But it's harder for me to speak to the financial pieces of special education. That's not necessarily an area of expertise for me. [Zoe Founders ]: Thank you, Cassie. [Speaker 4 ]: Thanks. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: But more to come. Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: More more to come. And part of what, you'll see at the agency is we're really looking at, when we're doing our analysis, we're bringing in programmatic and financial expertise. Right? Because we need to see the whole picture, and we know that's important for you as we're bringing in our analysis. [Speaker 5 ]: For sure. [Zoe Founders ]: Thanks. Yeah. So I could probably stick ahead. I I would we can go back if there's, like, specific questions around specialized right now. I think we're just doing kind of broad tracks. Mhmm. Overall, what we're we're looking at here is the total number of children with an IEP. And so you're seeing that we certainly have an increase. Something else that we're looking at are the tracking the percentage of students that are served in a regular classroom and those percentage of students that are served in a separate school. So we do see that there's, an increase in the number of students that are serving in separate school, the therapeutic school, and you'll also see an upcoming analysis how we compare to other states, and we tend to have higher above average rates of students that are in a separate school. So that's something that we're thinking about as we look holistically on how we deliver special education services. And then there's been a lot of conversations around the last for many of them separate. Those therapeutic schools, particularly now, which is so great. You put that in. [Speaker 6 ]: If I can just say yeah. Absolutely. That was exactly what we were trying to avoid. Right? We do act one hundred and seventy two was supposed to actually lower the number of students being served outside of their local district. Yeah. Right. And so that trend is very concerning. Right. [Zoe Founders ]: And so that's where we have kind of these broader conversations, you know, around their big schools. It's important to about that within the overall context around how we're delivering special education, which is why in this upcoming report, we are talking a lot about best practices and then thinking around what the agency's role and further providing that support Right. To enable those those changes. So this is looking at the extraordinary cost. So you've probably been hearing a lot about this in terms of the increase in extraordinary cost for those students that have high acuity needs. So this could be related to those American group schools or require contracted services. We know some of the shortage in terms of, the workforce also contributes to this, trend line as well. [Emily Simmons ]: Emily, is there anything else [Zoe Founders ]: you wanna add to? I know you've been keeping [Emily Simmons ]: Yes. And what and we'll work on another report as we can did. I found something great to change the threshold for very extraordinary. But that's another variable that fits right in the end of the timeline. Right. [Zoe Founders ]: So what that means is they can get reimbursed at a higher level for the specialized services. So that's that's contributing as well. This is a a breakdown as we're really analyzing the type of expenses. So this is broken down by tuition. So that would be to, you know, like, therapeutic school, transportation, other services that may need to be contracted services. So I think when we look at overall special education, it's not just the staff. It's also some of the contracted services that have been brought into support and needs those students. So we went through a lot of data. I think on strategy, though. And we have some of the better experts on the call who can dive even deeper into this, but when it's just kind of, you know, give a broad strokes. So what are some of the key takeaways that we're looking at? So Vermont schools, tend to be smaller, when compared to schools in in other states. We tend to have higher student to staff ratios than other states as we we talked about that in, beginning of our presentation. We know that our enrollment has declined significantly, over the past twenty years. And I think it's important to note that much of the decline both in enrollment and academic performance started before the pandemic. And the pandemic has helped me and really exacerbated some of the challenges as we look at our on some of our subgroup data. We do prepare well in reading, so we noticed that to other states. Although we also know there's a broader trend across the country of being able to elevate our literacy outcomes. We are about average in math, when we compare it to other states. And in both areas, we do see those persistent gaps, when comparing, different subgroups. Spending has been a big topic of focus, and overall, we do see that education expenditures have been increasing, and then we're looking at that for all sources. It's something that we're really paying attention to is really isolating spending from the education funds. So we've talked about this already. They're not mainly but higher and higher needs communities, which is what we would expect to see. You know, it's really important for us as we approach this work. We wanna look at the quantitative data and do the analysis. We also wanna understand how this fits within the broader context, and so that's how the listen and learn is really important to us. We're bringing in from the qualitative data as well. And what we're seeing is a a lot of alignment between what we're hearing, our challenges, and those things from the qualitative data and what we see in the in the quantitative analysis. So we know that, you know, we must just believe in a holistic definition of student success. So So as we talk today, we're looking at not just that traditional academic indicators, but we're understanding things like podcast and t SNOT and how that, supports the the overall learning. We talked about on Friday the desire to have a balance to immunity and and freedom. So as we're thinking about as a state, what are the most important outputs for education? How do we really define student success? We wanna be tight on certain things to make sure every child has those opportunities. And so as we're developing our strategic plan as an agency, we wanna make sure we're aligning our work to support those needs so that there is that level of consistency of opportunity for students, and we're providing the the support to achieve that. And then areas where we need to customize, we need to allow for that creativity. And so all of this is around really creating that that right balance. We heard a lot in the listen and learn tour about the need to focus on equity. We're seeing that in the data. We're seeing trends, that we are not able to deliver the same type of experiences in every part of our state. And then we're hearing specifically the need to offer expanded educational opportunities. We know as we talked about the higher needs communities that are lower spending are also lower performing. And so, you know, there's a sometimes a situation of the only choices to cut. Right? And so as we kind of approach this work, it's instead of kind of facing that barrier of cutting, how do we think about actually transforming our system so that we can deliver on our shared goals? And then, of course, we're seeing clearly both in, conversations and listen to our hands. The data, we have more focus on special education, and we'll be providing some more details around how we're doing that. [Speaker 4 ]: Can I just so do [Speaker 6 ]: the looking at things holistically is really important because when when you're going back to talking about how school districts are just you know, you if you have to lower your spending, you cut wherever? And and it may not be that there's less teachers, but it may be that there's no after school or cutting pre k or something like that, which will have a long term effect on our families and our so so looking at this broadly is critically important, and I appreciate that you're looking at it that way because it even small cuts and areas can really have a massive impact on outcomes in down the road. We need to think down the road. Right. [Speaker 1 ]: And I [Zoe Founders ]: think that's why it's really important for us as a state to be really clear on how we're defining strategic plan. Right. Being really clear around the inputs that we want in our system. Right? We're we're we're here in conversations and we see in the data that our our districts and schools are not able to deliver the same consistent array of programming courses and electives, that our students desire, and I think Vermonters all the way are really important to provide. So to that end, I mean, I think we have this you know, we also there may be some additional cuts in federal dollars as we move forward. So it's important for us to really be, you know, future proof as a state. And as we're dealing with a lot of these budget pressures, right, there is a real clear choice. You know, do we have the choice of doing less, or do we have the choice of making some real changes to be able to deliver on our goals for students with that? And that's where we are, I think, at this point. And so, you know, we heard this too because they're listening on board that there's real limitations in a very local level to be able to address some of these systemic issues and a need to think about resource sharing and regionalization services and consolidation, to the degree that it will provide more opportunities for students. Okay. And at a at a rate that is affordable. So we know that schools are are serving a really big role. They're doing more than educating students. We've heard that consistently that they're a hub for community and connecting students to other social services. And we've also heard pretty consistently throughout the listen and learn is a need for a greater state leadership, a need to be bold, and being able to say, we need to be able to address some of these systemic challenges head on, in a way that's going to help us, achieve our our edge educational goals for students, and then the role of the agency being able to be more, a strong partner, in [Speaker 5 ]: that work. [Zoe Founders ]: So these are some of the resources, that we've shared. I think we shared the list in our, report with you, last Friday. The rerelease state education profile report is also available. As Jill said, within that, you also have access to the data, and that's a a very it's a new and consistent practice that we'll be implementing to make sure there's full transparency around the data that we're Mhmm. And then, I believe tomorrow, we're gonna dive deeper into the education funding system. And so that's where, I think it's important to have this context and then talk about what our funding system is designed to do and where there are challenges with being able to achieve that in practice. So Things to do. Things to do. The title. Things to do. [Emily Simmons ]: And I [Zoe Founders ]: think, you know, these are considerations that we have as we're, you know, making recommendations policy recommendations. You know, how can Vermont reduce the inequities and pro and pro people spending? And really here, making sure that students with similar needs receive similar resources. And as we'll talk through more tomorrow, that's not what's happening in our system right now. A student that has very different needs or has a thing need to live in Rockwellington, they may be getting very different amounts of funding. Right? And those are things we need to think about. How can we align funding resources with student needs to drive outcomes and success? So really thinking about this, but back to that matrix of, like, how do we think about those investments that are going to be most impactful to student outcomes and really prioritizing limited dollars to supporting and investing in in those pieces of our education system. And then we've heard a lot around this whole child approach. So how do we do that, really effectively as a state to make sure we're reducing progress and key of them, improving student engagement. We've heard a lot through the list and I'm bringing that that joy of learning, that good spark around that meaningful, and exciting for our first student. We know that cost efficiency effectiveness is gonna be an important consideration for this legislative session, and we're really centering student needs and student outcomes around this work and that being our North Star as we're talking about building a system that is more efficient and effective, really ensuring that that's being designed in a way to support student outcomes. And, overall, we've seen that there's, a great disparity in terms of teacher pay across the state. And so that limits some areas in recruiting high quality teachers. We've seen an increase in provisional licenses as well. So part of the big question, the policy consideration is how to ensure that every student has a highly qualified teacher. And then also making sure that those learning environments are safe and going. So all of these considerations are things that, we've been, you know, contemplating, through our listening monitor and through the data analysis and really are informing the next steps in terms of how we get there in Governor Scott's education transformation approach. We're really thinking about changing the funding to promote equity in terms of student opportunities, modernizing governments and scale to ensure that we can have effective delivery of educational services across the state, making sure that we as state are providing direction and support and guardrails that helps you, promote, you know, high return on investment of our educational dollars. And overall throughout this is really staying centered on improving educational quality and equity. And what we we talk a lot about and we'll continue to talk about it, really what's in the best interest of students. In this case, it's also in the best interest of taxpayers. And I think these are opportunities that I leave you with as we go into a deeper dive of our education funding system tomorrow. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: Thank you very much. Thank you. [Speaker 10 ]: Thank you. [Zoe Founders ]: Questions from. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: And I actually think as as Zoe said, you know, as you all are really diving into this, I mean, we're we're really trying to [Speaker 6 ]: to [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: lay all the groundwork. Right? [Zoe Founders ]: Because you have big work to [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: do in this session. But as you are identifying, like, it would be really helpful for us to see this data. And what if we we have the ability to do some cross analysis now in ways that I would say we weren't necessarily positioned to do in the past, and we get really excited. Like, did you see us? [Zoe Founders ]: We were like, oh, I'll see one. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: That's a great idea. Let's do that. So we are really looking for those opportunities to sort of slice and dice the data in ways that are meaningful for your analysis so that you feel like you've you've got what you need to to make big decisions and be minimal and responsive. [Speaker 4 ]: Two questions for you. One is small grain size and one is huge. Right. Generally, when we're looking at this data, does that include students any student who's being educated with public tuition dollars regardless of where so I know we saw, like, the breakdown of who goes right [Zoe Founders ]: at the beginning. But when [Speaker 4 ]: we get into chronic absenteeism or Yeah. Spending or any of are those numbers, those small, are those represented in that, or is that dealt with separately for [Zoe Founders ]: So my answer may not satisfy you. It will depend. Okay. And so within the state education profile report in each section, we define who's included in that and what what we mean by that student count. And so that will vary depending. And sometimes when we're looking at national comparisons Mhmm. The denominator will be different so that we can compare apples to apples. So we really tried to be intentional about describing who's included in that. So, hopefully, that will be a reference for you. But if you need additional detail, it's not as clear Yeah. We'd be happy to provide more description. Yeah. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: And we for something that chronic absenteeism, we don't collect that data for independent schools. But for something like the Say state assessment Yep. Yes. The publicly funded students are rep to complete that and yeah. And they're represented in their it's part of their ADX as represented in the the supervisor in the home or district that [Speaker 4 ]: their home district. I think going forward, it'll just be helpful and maybe a recurrent question is if we're looking at a lot more data and numbers to be able to differentiate when we're talking about all students and when we're talking about, if it might be information that isn't available for some students, that'd just be helpful. [Zoe Founders ]: Yeah. We we can certainly make that note, so that there's, yeah, all transparency and understanding of who's representing those numbers. [Speaker 4 ]: Mhmm. My second question, and maybe it's more for Amanda even that you you just mentioned nationally too, Jill, is that, obviously, we're in a moment of a lot of blocks and transition and and challenges and opportunities in Vermont. And I just wonder if you can give a sense of, like, how that compares nationally. Are other states grappling kind of on this scale with sort of the entire kitchen sink of how, you know, how they fund and deliver k twelve education? I was in Minnesota over the holidays. There were plenty of headlines that could have come right out of Vermont. How many educators are on provisional licenses? Alternative licensing programs. Decreasing enrollment is one of their largest urban schools. I've heard that some of what we're sort of team to be embarking on looks a bit like what Maryland did just a few years ago. So I just wonder if and this is a question we're gonna put to our our resources at the Education Commission of the States and NCSO, but just a sense of, you know, where we are nationally, other states grappling with this, and the same way that we don't want every small school to reinvent the wheel. Right. You know, are we also looking to other models and what's happening nationally so that we are a small state? We are totally it's reinventing a wheel here that ten other states may be doing something quite similar right now. [Speaker 1 ]: And I [Amanda Brown ]: think No. You you are exactly right. States across the country are grappling with the same issues that you're talking about. Climbing enrollment is an issue nationally. Teacher shortages is an issue nationally, and I think everyone is still struggling with the impacts of the pandemic on their, you know, outcomes for students. I think everyone is grappling with this. I think Vermont has its own unique challenges that layer on that. I think you mentioned it. Vermont is a very small state with very small scale compared to a lot of other states that just poses some unique challenges, but also I think opportunities for the ability to kinda tackle many things at once, that I know that the legislature is thinking about doing this session. So, Justin, I'll let look to you if you wanna add anything on that. [Justin ]: Yeah. I just think when you think of the problems you mentioned, Maryland, they, you know, have a whole theory of action about changing their whole system and funds that drive to it. And I think on Friday, the group who's overseeing that implement implementation actually asked for kind of a pause on one of their key pieces, which is to, change their to a career ladder and and likely add some additional teachers to their system. And they basically said, like, there aren't any other teachers for the system. And so to expect districts to be able to hire teachers, you know, more teachers was just an expectation they think, could can happen. And so they're actually requesting the legislature kind of change their implementation plan because of that. So, I I mean, just that alone, right, is something that's just happening everywhere. There just aren't many new highly qualified staff coming out of the the higher ed systems right now. [Zoe Founders ]: And I would say in this instance, our size can really be an advantage Yes. To other states where we really have an opportunity to come together, be nimble, be agile, so to really make a big impact. I think traveling across the state is really clear that Vermonters care deeply about education, and I think this is a really, really incredible moment where people are saying, let's figure out how we do our system. Yeah. You know, deliver our system differently to meet these goals. So I I see it as a real strength. Of the market. [Speaker 6 ]: Just one quick quick quick quick [Speaker 5 ]: quick quick quick. [Speaker 6 ]: Just a very quick this will be not an answer that we even need to get right now, but when we do the special the IDEA funding Yeah. Has, you know, gone all over the place for many, many years, and it was a you know, the law passed at forty percent. And we would never see forty percent. [Speaker 4 ]: What do [Speaker 6 ]: you know that we signed into what we are getting today? I don't [Zoe Founders ]: have that in front of me. [Speaker 6 ]: Somebody gave me a number, which I'm not gonna repeat if you don't have it. Isn't it? It was disturbingly low. [Speaker 4 ]: Year nineteen? [Speaker 6 ]: No. That that number [Zoe Founders ]: question. I'm sorry. [Speaker 4 ]: But how close we are to fully federally funded IDD. The promise was that the federal government would [Zoe Founders ]: think we're even [Amanda Brown ]: I believe it's less than ten percent. [Speaker 6 ]: That's right. Well, that's enough. That's that's what I I was trying to bring up. I'd love to know what the number is. It has declined over the years recently, I think. And when we get under ten percent, we're really we're really feeling the pain in our districts. And I just wanted to make Nick mentioned that that'd be great to be able to dig a little bit into the trend of that over the years. It's there's nothing we can do about it. Jim Jeffress fuck. Like, for many, many years trying to get us to be fully funded, but Mhmm. But it needs to be noted. Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: Any other questions or considerations? Questions? [Speaker 4 ]: Thank you very much. [Speaker 1 ]: Chewing. Chewing. [Zoe Founders ]: Chewing. Chewing. Chewing. Chewing. Chewing. We'll be back tomorrow. Yeah. Yes. And if you have specific questions [Speaker 10 ]: by then. [Zoe Founders ]: If you have specific questions about the data, figuring out how to digest, just let us know. Mhmm. And we can always bring back additional information over the course of the coming days and bring in our team members. You know, this is high level. Right? And so the one person can be an expert in all the data. Right? So we do have a a really talented team that can come in and provide some additional depth and detail, if that's of interest. Great. And I I hope [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: that you're really hearing our commitment to this, but that we've really invested heavily. This is a real priority for the agency and sort of an all hands on deck. Our our team has team, our data management team, and and our finance teams have really committed to this work and prioritized it because we knew that it was critical walking in the door on day one of legislative session that we were able to hand you information and things that we haven't been able [Speaker 6 ]: to do before. So I I [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: hope you're feeling that, but please let us know if there's one. [Zoe Founders ]: A commitment we made to the field also Yeah. Very early on, getting rid of knowing where there's a need for additional data. So we definitely hit that clearly. [Speaker 4 ]: Representative. I [Speaker 10 ]: kinda have a question. I mean okay. So so the governor, you know, said in a couple weeks, I'm gonna unveil, whatever, this plan. So am I right to assume that that, you know, you you took your tour on the road, you got your data, the stuff you've given us, that you've also briefed him that he's you know, his brain's working overtime. He's working with his team, and he's Yeah. Putting together a plan. [Zoe Founders ]: Yes. Yes. So the the governor has been really supportive of the agency doing a listen and learn for Yep. Yes. And really making sure that we could understand the priorities, the aspirations, the needs of the field, and and bring that back to inform a policy proposal. And it is an an aid and administration wide focus. As as we've talked about, you know, education, is drives so much as we think about running our future workforce, and it's related to housing and all these things. So we know that, this is a really critical and important focus for our entire state. But I [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: need to see this work and the listener you guys see that reflected in the plan. [Speaker 1 ]: It is. Okay. That's [Speaker 10 ]: that's what I thought. [Speaker 1 ]: I mean, it seemed like a logical Yeah. [Zoe Founders ]: And and we've been having these conversations also with the commission on the future of public education. So we've been really, transparent about our learning every step of the way Yeah. [Speaker 1 ]: And [Zoe Founders ]: sharing. Here's what we've learned. Here's what we're thinking about. Here's what we'd like to explore based on the data or the input that we've received, and then publishing reports as we analyze that. Right. So all of this is really a combination of that learning. And so this is a really important forum for us to share what's informing the thinking Mhmm. And the priorities as we move into the government providing a framework for the policy. [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: Mhmm. Zoe sort of says half joking that [Zoe Founders ]: if we document to that [Jill Breaks Campbell ]: area of concern in a report, we're going to try to fix it. [Zoe Founders ]: Right. Right. Yeah. [Speaker 1 ]: Thank you. [Speaker 4 ]: Thank you. Appreciate all the information and data and your time, and it's really you know, as a committee, for some of you who are new, it's nice. It's really great to be able to start the session with a lot of really detailed robust information and, you know, a little bit of a a change. You know, I think a culture change, and you've been very transparent about that and what the challenges of the agency and the field has reflected that. And so I think we're all kind of shifting to all hands on deck. That's why it's it's great to be here and firing on all cylinders from day one. So this is sweet. Thank you. [Zoe Founders ]: Thank you on coffee and purpose. [Emily Simmons ]: So So our our committee, [Speaker 4 ]: we're gonna wrap up for the day. We start tomorrow morning with the commission on, the future of public education and, the entity really that the legislature created last year as we were all really grappling with how do we put more resources and thought into a really volatile moment and moment

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SmartTranscript of House Education - 2025-01-15 - 1:05 PM

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