Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It's Tuesday, 03/17/2026. It's 02:45. We have been running late, so we rearranged the schedule a little bit. You're going to hear 08:17 now, and then HH61, which is related to establishing an Americans with Disabilities Coordinator. We'll hear that tomorrow morning at 08:45, so check your agenda on that. And then we'll go and we'll do part one of H938, the homelessness response bill. But in the meantime, we have eight thirty seven, and Katie is here. And then we'll have Nolan, and then we have Rebecca here from who's a reporter at Community Health Care to answer any other questions. H817. Yes, it should be on our

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: committee page. All right, take it away.

[Katie McLean (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you. Good afternoon. Katie McLean, Office of Legislative Counsel. Could I have sharing capacity, Adam? Please. Sorry. That's okay.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Yeah. Here we go.

[Katie McLean (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this is a report of the committee on Health Care eight seventeen. It's one section, but it does two things. In subsection B, it establishes a mental health literacy training program that allows a public school to apply to DMH for a grant to provide mental health literacy training to educators and other school personnel. The second piece is on subsection C. This is peer to peer mental health support. This allows a school, an after school program or a youth mentoring agency to establish a peer to peer mental health support program. The specifications are in the language. And then subsection D authorizes the Department of Mental Health to provide guidance for both of these programs. So that's what's happening in subsection D. There's a reporting requirement on both of the initiatives. And I think the language that you're most interested in is this language in subsection B, subdivision B1, line 15, to the extent funds are available of the public school. I'm on page one, subsection B1.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, there we go. Excuse me,

[Katie McLean (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: at the end. You. Yeah. So to the extent funds are available, public school may apply to the Department of Mental Health or designees for a grant to provide mental health literacy training to educators or other school personnel. And then it goes on to say what topics might be as part of this training. You'll hear more about the committee process from representative Becco. There was or Becco, I'm sorry. There was some conversation about the possibility of obtaining federal grants for the purpose of funding these programs. I don't know that state money itself was ruled out. That sort of encompasses some of the conversation that happened.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And so stay right there. And Nola, do

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: you want to talk about the fiscal we're

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: going from short fiscal notes to long fiscal notes to short fiscal notes today.

[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sure. There is a fiscal note, I won't bother posting it or coming up on the screen. Think we need to. So, Stady, just kidding, Stady. We are both crazy right It's been a long week. So, as Katie mentioned, Section one states that to the extent funds are possible, the public pool may apply to the Department or it does need for a grant to provide mental health literacy training for educators and other school personnel. The bill does not include any specific appropriations from the state to DMH to award any such grants. As Katie mentioned, the bill is kind of envisioning maybe federal grants. If there are any federal grants that were to come through, they would go through the JFC process, grant approval. But the bill doesn't necessarily direct EMA to apply for grants. It's not clear you know, the process for getting federal grants. Then Section one also requires EMAs to provide oversight and guidance for any school after school program or youth mentoring agency seeking to establish or maintain a peer to peer mental health program, etcetera, etcetera. However, the bill does not identify or appropriate any resources to support that program. So again, it sounds like I wasn't in the room when the committee was talking about it. It sounds like they were considering more on the federal grant side, but the bill does not include any state appropriations to do this work. So I think the question is, would any of this work get done in the absence of federal money?

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. Well, and my other question is on this section requiring DMH to provide oversight. Are they expected to do something if there isn't any money for any of the rest of it? Or are they still expected to do something if somebody decides they want to start or establish or maintain a peer to peer mental health program if they haven't, if there isn't one now and there isn't anybody, but somebody figures out a way to do it without us involved, is DMH automatically supposed to do that? So this language says that they are to develop age appropriate guidance, but it is tied to

[Katie McLean (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: any mental health literacy or peer to peer support program established section. If there's no money to establish those programs, then there's no need for guidance.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: CMH does not have to do work unless there's nothing. That's how I would guess

[Katie McLean (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that the guidance is contingent upon there being programs in place who need guidance. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Questions? I'd love to hear from from a member of the committee. Just, you and I briefly talked about this before and you want Why don't say you come on up? Oh yeah, come on up.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: You can introduce yourself.

[Rep. Rebecca (House Health Care Committee bill reporter)]: Rep. Rebecca, ranking member of House HACA subcommittee. Yeah, so

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: with that in mind, what's the use of this?

[Rep. Rebecca (House Health Care Committee bill reporter)]: Well, it's an on ramp, and it also is illustrating the intent that we have to kind of coalesce around guidance and strategy with bringing mental health and substance use prevention supports to youth in schools, or after school programs or through programs like Mentor Vermont. Because what we see is a lot of segmented efforts at this, including through some federal grants that are getting to some schools. But intent of this is to make sure that all of the good lessons learned in that are getting to every community, not just the ones where those grants are being implemented through Project AWARE, And also that schools are made aware that there are programs. NAMI has some great programs. I know through Vermont Care Partners, can do things like teen mental health first aid. So the intent here is just to make sure that the Department of Mental Health and AOE are lifting those resources up where available, and that as federal funding especially comes available, that they have an on ramp to implement that quickly.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: So there's a mechanism and kind of purpose to

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: the legislature has at least weighed in on the purpose and the focus of that kind of work if they were able to apply for a grant. That's right. And I just want to note, not just the legislature. We had a lot

[Rep. Rebecca (House Health Care Committee bill reporter)]: of students work on this bill, and it was a priority of the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. I have a student here with me, Addison Town, who testified on the bill, and she's a page with us this session in the legislature. So this is really well informed by a lot of people who would be impacted by the work and also doing the work.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, I have Lynn and Wayne. I'll

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: go next. You can go next. Okay. In my experience, basically, but not just on a high school board in our community, we have the local mental health agency, the DA, who have worked with teams from the school, the guidance counselors, some of the teachers, administrators. And when they had issues, when I was on the board of the high school, there was a cluster of suicides. Very, very disturbing. It could be any school any time, but we happen to have it that year. The people for mental health, the people who were counselors, their who were charged, in fact, with the community mental health needs of the community would work with the schools in a variety of ways, sometimes in crisis, sometimes just as a resource occasionally. How is that different? And I know that one of the things that has occurred this was many years ago, one of the things that has occurred is the DAs are in crisis because they can't find enough people to do their mental health counseling, and the schools are hiring mental health people and social workers to work in the schools, And there seems to be less of a community based thing and more of a becoming focused on the schools and doesn't really integrate the community and their families as much as it probably did under the TEAMSS scenario.

[Rep. Rebecca (House Health Care Committee bill reporter)]: Is that something that you heard any testimony on, or did you get any? So that is really related what you're talking about is actual mental health services. What this is, is mental health literacy, like improving literacy of teachers and staff at the school. Because right now, they're facing all of these youth who are living through a lot of challenges. And not all of our teachers and school staff are trained with how to respond to those and connect those youth to resources, like a clinician. And then the peer to peer part of this bill is about creating space for youth to talk to each other and connect. And it's not clinical. It's not even overseen by a clinician from a DA. And that's intentional because we're seeing a lot of really promising outcomes coming from peer to peer counseling in schools across the nation. Vermont has a couple pockets of this. And like I said, a lot of these approaches are segmented, so we're not sharing the lessons learned. And the intent here is to really do that.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: I'd sort of like to follow-up. Okay. In our school, now we were a big school, depending on school. We had peer to peer. We had guidance counselors who were doing group therapies. We had guidance counselors who were training teachers and parents, doing things through the mental health agency in the evening. I mean, there's a lot of these things that have been done. I'm just curious as to what kind of research do you have that this is now not being done? Or where is that need? Where is it evaporated to?

[Rep. Rebecca (House Health Care Committee bill reporter)]: So I think, again, you're through the DAs. So that's through a contract, which is limited in scope, time, money. Like my school, when you ski, we're down to one counselor right now for 700 kids. So my kids' counseling has cut back, and that's happening around the state. And so we're limited in that capacity. And this is also It's not clinical in nature. It's about connecting people. What we know about mental health is a lot of it is just people need to connect with each other, not this. And so sometimes it's just kids getting together in an after school program and making bracelets. I saw they did this at my school with I don't know if it was I think it was Mentor Vermont. There's a program Oh, no, it's Vermont After School. They have a program called Dream, where they just get kids together. They have someone who has done some sort of mental health literacy program. All they're doing is connecting those youth to resources. We don't have capacity to give them all counseling. We have capacity to connect them to other resources. Because remember, there's a spectrum of mental health issues, and not everyone needs in-depth counseling. And they need prevention, though. And this is prevention. Does this include advisories? What do

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: you mean? Advisories, they would create. This is not home room. This is a group of students that were geniusly put together. They all get together. This has been done for ten years at least, a month, but I know. It'll go and you have an advisory and your teacher, the home loan teacher, basically connects with the kids. They all interact together. Yeah, think so something that is not just academic or just not taking attendance, And a lot of schools are being instituting advisors. This was supposed to be a way, from what I understand, and I believe it was done, like I say, back in 2015, or certainly a statute, put in statute on the miscellaneous ed bill, that you would have A way to identify students who had issues was during the course of school shootings. You could identify things that needed to be taken care of and then they could be quietly referred out.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Maybe, if they needed it.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: But it would really maybe interact with kids of a broad socioeconomic background, broad group, and have them interact together. I know that they have still a of values that educators talk about recently.

[Rep. Rebecca (House Health Care Committee bill reporter)]: They're not being done through the Department of Mental Health, and they're not being done in a way where we are actually looking at lessons learned and doing any kind of cross system learning and capacity building. Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Mine's changed.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Do you have a Yep, they didn't realize exactly that. Last night, I took a look at it. And I think something's changed since last night because last night

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We're hearing that Pope thinks it's awful

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: a lot. Last night when I read it, they said something to the fact that a school can pick a program. That suggested to me that the programs could be all different. And I didn't like that idea. I think we should be follow-up on the idea that we need to be able to track and be able to determine which things have good outcomes and which things don't work so well, but you need to have some consistency. You need to have come up at least, if not being really specific about the program, at least have an outline of the program so address specific issues within those, so that you have apples and apples as you go forward to try to learn the best practices for COVID. Unless other states have had something really successful that you could bring up. But who's going to do that? Is that part of mental health going to try to come up with some They did.

[Rep. Rebecca (House Health Care Committee bill reporter)]: They're in this bill. Yeah, I worked with them on this, and they came up with what would be age appropriate for middle schoolers and then high schoolers and sort of the recommended things that should be addressed. And many of those things, what we heard in testimony, is many of those elements that should be addressed with youth to support them and adequately prevent them from using substances and having mental health crises are things that are contained in existing trainings that we have here in Vermont through organizations like NAMI, Mid4 Vermont, Vermont After School, and others. So it's not like we need to reinvent the wheel, but it also, to your point, gives local communities the ability to choose what's right sized for them.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: I understand there could be in dispersed places, but one document. Everybody gets the same document. Here are the recommendations, what you should do.

[Rep. Rebecca (House Health Care Committee bill reporter)]: I think that would be an RFA, where the department, because it would be a grant program, the Department of Mental Health would, upon receiving funding, would draft an RFA and post that, and they would really articulate the specifics of what they're looking for.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Okay, I think you'll lose something if you've got them off juice. We have six accounting systems in the schools. We've got I don't know how many grading systems in the schools. We create something else that is allowed just by the folks out in the schools that are going different directions. We're not adjective.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Other questions? Concerns?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: I'm good with this. You're good with this? Good with it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay. Just going forward. Yeah, so there's no money. I'm trying to move bills where we can. Did we say possible vote on this? There's no money. If there is money, then there's sort of a plan. I would like to vote this out if people are ready to vote this out. Everybody okay with that? Okay. I'll move. Thank you. Okay. The team here, and it's as amended by Midian Healthcare.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Lynn? John, would you start the question? Yeah, I think that this is a very worthwhile idea. I think it's already been done in some places, maybe not all places. That might be something. I don't know that mental health agency is the place to ordinarily do it. I think a lot of schools have been dealing over many years with trying to figure out how to connect their administrators and their teachers and everyone how to connect with their students on a one on one basis so would would have an adult every child would have an adult that they could relate to in Maryland. And this has been done for many, many years, often with guidance counselors

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: who also Depending upon the school district, yes. A lot of different schools.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: And advisory is one way that has been Actually, put a piece in the education that Celanese had built years ago. And it was put in, and it's in statute somewhere. I think a lot schools have been doing it. So, mean, it's not going to take any money. I don't know that it's going to I don't think you need money to do this. I think that it can go and work another way

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: to get this And that may happen as well.

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Yes. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: If the clerk is ready, let's call the roll, please.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Representative Bluemle? Yes. Representative Dickinson?

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: Yes. A yes? Yes.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Thank you. Representative Feltus? Yes. Representative Kascenska? Yes. Representative Rosha? Yes. Representative Mrowicki? Yes. Representative Maglo? Yes. Representative Spero? Yes. Representative Stevens? Yes. Senator Yacovone? Yes. And Representative Chen? Yes. 11 zeros. Thank you.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And what

[Rep. Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson (Member)]: was the vote out of healthcare?

[Katie McLean (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Eleven zero? Eleven zero. Oh, 1001, I believe.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: 1001. Okay, great. So we'll send this off to Nigel. TIFF will be this reporter from us. And that means it will be on the floor Thursday and Friday. That was tomorrow at 04:13, buddy.

[Katie McLean (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you very much.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: All right, committee we have one more bill today and it's I think we have a few minutes.