Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good afternoon, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Wednesday, 01/07/2026 at one in the afternoon. And so before we go to the floor and be the governor state of the state, we had with us commissioner Smith. Commissioner, if you'd like to join us, we're here to talk workers.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So if I invite our workforce director to join me up here.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You can use that chair. Jonathan's on watching us from behind. So

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: good afternoon, everybody. Commissioner Kendall Smith from the Vermont Department of Labor. We're here to give you an update on registered apprenticeship, of which our department is the registered apprenticeship agency. We'll just give you a quick refresher on what is a registered apprenticeship, who's involved in this space, give you kind of a point in time snapshot about how many registered apprenticeships we have in Vermont in terms of employers, sponsors, demographics, and then talk with you a little bit about our 2026 goals and aspirations for registered apprenticeship. I do know we have forty five minutes, so we'll do our best, to be efficient. We do have a slide deck we'll be working from, which I'm wondering if that will be shared on the screen or not for the committee. I'm getting a nod. And we'll be in your possession if you want to follow-up with us on anything and go back and look through any of the slides at your leisure. Just before we dive in, I do want to introduce some of the other individuals we have from the department here with us today. I know we might be back to do maybe a more formal, like, what are our department priorities? But wanna start the year off. Last time you saw me, I was deputy commissioner. I am now commissioner, and we have welcomed a new deputy commissioner, Chris Winters. Chris, if you just wanna they probably some of you may know Chris, but just, like, two sentences about your background and Sure.

[Chris Winters (Deputy Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Most recently was the commissioner of the Department for Children and Families. Did that for about three years. Before that, I was deputy secretary of state for several years and a long career in the Secretary of State office, where I worked on things like the Uniform Commercial Code and Business Portal. Spent some time in this room maybe ten years ago now, but it's good to be back.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Yes. Chris has been a great bridge for us in terms of our interaction with DCF around workforce issues, as well as Secretary of State Office of Professional Regulation and Professional Licensure, so he's had a lot of experience, so it's going be really helpful at the department. And then also since we were last here, I know a few of you know Rowan Hawthorne, but Rowan is officially our policy director and legislative affairs director, which is a formal change. And then I have with me today, Jay Ramsey, our workforce development director, who you know, and I I think there's very few other members of our team that work on apprenticeship, just depending on what your questions are. And so you can put these two names. Jay, do you want to introduce Sarah and Cindy?

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Yes. I would like to introduce Cindy Robillard, who's an assistant director in the workforce development division responsible for programs and partnerships. And Cindy's been with the department for

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Hi.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Ed comes from the St. Johnsbury area. And Sarah is our apprenticeship director, serving in that role for two years, and comes from Essex. Then before that, worked at Center for Technology in Essex. So we lean heavily on the knowledge of the CTE system to make the connections and apprenticeship.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So we have a great team, and now we will dive in. And I'm actually gonna kind of hand it over to Jay to start with a little bit of a refresher again. We'll try to go through this part quickly about what is a registered apprenticeship versus maybe you just hear the word apprenticeship all the time. What does making it registered mean? Why is that special? And how this program works.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Okay. So I'm gonna put you in a time machine and we're gonna go back three years to when this committee helped us refresh the statute for registered apprenticeship. So that modernized the system. The department is the registration agency. We have the apprenticeship council that advises the department on things related to registered apprenticeship. Registered apprenticeship is a national system. We're a part of a national system. There is reciprocity between the states, and what it means to be registered is that we have a set of standards that we expect employers and sponsors and other entities to align their programs to, and they submit documents to us. And I know some of you probably heard that that's a burdensome process. I could explain what the burdensome parts are, but they have to document that there's a training outline, that there's progressive wage increases. There's a few other elements on one of the slides, which I'll go into more, but just generally, there's a set of standards that a program has to align to in order for them to be considered a registered apprenticeship. It just means that the company wants to take someone who doesn't know anything about an occupation, pair them up with someone who does, and train them, and the person takes classes. When we are talking about just apprenticeship and some places say little a apprenticeship, that's, in my mind, just an earn and learn model where someone is paired with a person who knows the occupation. They're just training it without without a lot of standards being met, just trying to teach someone how to do a job. And maybe they're paid, maybe they're not paid. Maybe it takes less than a year to learn that. Those are some of the criteria that would go into it. So when I'm out and I hear someone say apprenticeship, my follow-up question is, is it registered? And so I'm saying that to you so that when you're out and you hear constituents or companies talk about apprenticeship, you could ask, is it registered? And if not, why not? And then maybe refer them to us so we can help them. So I'm going to move us ahead to this career pathways model. We're gonna situate apprenticeship in this model, which seems very busy, but this is what the education system uses to understand how to align an educational program to the needs of the workforce. And it shows you how high school students would come in through an organized program of study to get to a job, to get to college. Where does apprenticeship fit in there? Apprenticeship is a job and it's a training program for the job. And we, it exists in a space after high school graduation. We wanna make sure there's alignment with high school and CTE programs, so someone doesn't have to repeat a bunch of time that they spent learning something. So you're gonna hear me talk about pre apprenticeship, you're gonna hear me talk about youth apprenticeship. Those are terms of art that speak to how we align experiences to a formal program. So you might see this come up in other presentations that we did, but this is a formal kind of theoretical structure for how apprenticeships connects into the workforce and the education system. So this is a chart of all of the essential components of a registered apprenticeship. First and foremost, it's led by business and industry. They're the ones saying we need this training program. They're the ones saying we wanna take on, training someone and, figuring out the the structures and systems that they need to have to get that person from point a to point b. Those points along the way are the structured on the job training. There's a training outline, there's a mentor, someone who's experienced that is helping to support that person, learn the technical aspects of the job and connect the theoretical through technical training to the technical aspects. While that apprentice is in the program learning, the company commits to paying them wage increases along the way. That's a hallmark of this program. You're earning money while you are learning the job, and the company is committing to paying you a lot more along the way. And some programs incorporate what we call interim credentials, but there's something like maybe they finished a certified production technician and that's a marker for them that they have a certain skill set and that makes them eligible to go into the next part. At the end of the program is a credential for the apprentice that we issue as the registration agency that is recognized across The United States. So it's a portable industry recognized credential. And that's what the beautiful thing about the system is across the country that the apprenticeship system exists and those credentials are portable.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So I wanna just underscore two key takeaways from what Jay just went through. Terms of if you're in a registered apprenticeship program, the credential that you receive at the end is recognized across state lines. Versus if I, Kendall Smith LLC, say I'm starting an apprenticeship program and you're a graduate of Kendall Smith LLC apprenticeship program, that credential doesn't have as much value in terms of being recognized by more employers across the country as if I had registered my program with the Vermont Department of Labor and was operating it through this framework. And then the other thing I hope that folks kinda zeroed in on in terms of what Jay just said in terms of business and industry leading, the Vermont Department of Labor cannot just decree there is now a registered apprenticeship in social work. There it is. We can't do that. We need employers to come to us and the related training providers to be buying in to say, we wanna stand up this program. Here's how it will look. We would work with them to create the curriculum and the framework for it, but it's not something that I think might be a common misperception that we just can get on, I can get on my soapbox and say, I decree there are five new apprenticeship pathways in Vermont. We really need that business leg of the stool to come to us and be the partner to create the pathway.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And the programs, are those typically provided the business?

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Business will pay for them and businesses have all sorts of arrangements for how they do it. They want you to pass the some want you to pass the class and then they'll reimburse you. Some of them pay for it all upfront. Some don't pay at all, and we refer apprentices to VSAC for trade scholarships and some of those funds. And then we also make sure we're helping if a company wants us, the department generally to help, then we run the apprentices through an eligibility screening to see are they eligible for WIOA and or any of the other state funds that are available. So it's about the cost of the training, it's about the books, It's about any uniform requirements that they have. If they're, you need steel toe boots, any of those things, some employers pay for, some of them don't, but there's not a program requirement. So employers that

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: are paying for the training, there's also an expectation that as the training goes on, they're increasing wages at the same time. And

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I should say underneath all of this, there's a registered apprenticeship program can only be for occupations that take more than two thousand hours or more than a year to learn. So the range is between one year and five years. Electrical and plumbing is a four year program. Some of the manufacturing programs are a year. And then we'll get into some of the other details of the way the program works, but there's three methods. One is based on time. Time spent learning the job, one is a hybrid and one is just competency based. Just a couple of things to flag also on this, sometimes the employer sponsors struggle with getting mentors teach because maybe you have to have the right person to mentor someone. Maybe they don't have the right person or they need to develop that skill set in someone before they can register the program, before they can launch it. The other piece that we get hung up on sometimes is where the related technical training comes from. CCV does a great job, Vermont State University does a great job, but they don't cover all of the areas that all of the apprenticeship programs would need. So you're gonna hear us this session while we're talking about CTE, we're gonna wanna talk about adult CTE as part of that system that connects to apprenticeship that might come up in a couple of other slides too. So if we go onto the next slide, this is not an exhaustive list, but I'm just trying to give you a sense of who the partners are that we work with. So any employer, including ones that find their way to us and ones that we seek out, licensing entities like the agency of education and the department of public safety, all of our, any program that is connected to a licensed occupation has to be preparing that person for the licensure. So our electrical and plumbing programs are preparing someone to sit for the licensing tests for electrical and plumbing. In order to be able to sit for it, they have to show that they have the certificate of completion of the apprenticeship program. The related instruction providers, Vermont Psychologists, CCV, there's some out of state entities. Companies can also do their own training in house. That's totally up to them. It's their program. We just have some requirements about who can teach and what the topics are. And then the intermediaries, these are the go betweens. These are entities that are doing work on our behalf. So on the brands page, you'll see that we give a grant to the Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center. They're a trusted industry expert in Vermont. They go around and meet with companies to talk about their services, but also to talk about apprenticeship. And then they make a referral to us to work, complete the process of registering a program. ABC of New Hampshire and Vermont, Ski Vermont, and the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative are some of our I put them in their category of intermediary because they're doing they're not exactly a sponsor. They're doing outreach work. They're helping to coordinate and organize.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Does OPR have anything under their wheelhouse for apprenticeships? In the

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: statutes for OPR and in some of the licensing rules, and I'm not speaking for OPR, but I've missed this research so I could speak to it. Their rules use the word apprenticeship. So sometimes like a cosmetologist or barber or taxidermist, those types of occupations mention an apprenticeship. That's not what we're talking about because their threshold for a number of hours is a little bit below a thousand or 2,000. There are maybe 15 occupations that OPR regulates that do align well with registered apprenticeship. Property appraiser, I think, is one of the ones that we've been looking at recently. So we try to be aware of where those connections are. And when a company wants to build a program, we might suggest that they set that up to be aligned with the licensure requirements.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Just keeping an eye on the time. We're gonna try let's try maybe next, like, five or six minutes to get through the rest of the refresher.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: All right. So we'll move on to this next page. The next two slides are about on ramps to apprenticeship. So an employer has to be able to say what skills they want someone to have in order to hire them as an apprentice. Sometimes people don't have those skills. So pre apprenticeship is intended to develop those skills so that an employer can hire them as an apprentice. We require, you helped us require this, that a pre apprenticeship program has to have an employer sponsor connected. So in the last year, we've certified these four pre apprenticeship programs and we're in the process of working with Vermont adult learning to certify their weatherization program that would lead to the weatherization program that CVOEO has registered and the related instruction is delivered in Barrie at These are the eight elements of a pre apprenticeship program. I won't go into the details of it, but again, this is a program that helps on ramp people into registered apprenticeship in the same way that a youth apprenticeship in the tech centers aligns with a registered apprenticeship and creates an advanced accelerated path for the people that are in them.

[Committee Member (Unknown)]: Sorry, just to clarify. So the idea is that the pre apprenticeship program would be for folks that are not tied to an educational institution, just like a normal

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: normal.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Yes. It's sort of like a training program, and it has the added benefit of being aligned with an apprenticeship.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Cool. I will note that is an area that I think, as we're doing education system conversations, there is a little bit of tension around if you have some enterprising youth that wanna go right into a pre apprenticeship program instead of maybe a CTE center or something else. So just it's it's fine. But just flagging that is one of those areas where it's like who's on first base, who's on second base, and what are the right pathways, depending on what you're interested in and what your needs are. Is there a role for corrections in a pre apprenticeship or apprenticeship program? So we had DOC on our, actually, our apprenticeship advisory board for a long time. That individual actually just retired from state government because they were in a seat where we're we have two two seats. I think there's two seats for people that work with underserved populations on the advisory council. And I don't again, I'm gonna look at, like, Sarah, Cindy or David course correct me here, but I don't believe we are currently doing a lot in the corrections field at the moment as it relates to apprenticeship.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: But generally, we're gonna have some joint testimony about work that we're doing with corrections. The work that we do is at the case manager level going into and meeting into the facilities and meeting with certain folks who are about to exit. So one success story there is a case manager working with someone who is interested in being an electrician, and we facilitated that person doing coursework and, I think, taking a test so that they were aligned with an apprenticeship. And we have companies now that are eagerly awaiting to hire people as they're exiting. So that that's the alignment work. And if they happen to exit a facility and we're working with a community partner like Vermont Adult Learning, that's how we would get

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: them onto the pathway. We'll be hearing more on that next week. Wednesday, we'll have a joint hearing with institutions and collections on this subject.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: This slide here I talked about, where the registration agency, that also means that we have to do monitoring and compliance checks with the registered programs. There's a set of federal regulations that we have to monitor them for. We register a program that's on a probationary registration, and they get a permanent registration once we review them. Broadly speaking, the department's role is to help with outreach promotion and recruitment of apprentices to get them hired into those jobs. We do some program development work with other agencies like AHS or Department of Health or public safety. Skip over to recruiting because I mentioned it before, but it's really important that we're helping companies recruit. The Apprenticeship Advisory Board is there helping us, advising us. And then just for the sake of a scope conversation, we have three FTEs that make this program work. And two of them have been doing the work for a couple of years, and we just hired the third one on, and maybe she's in her second month. So that's the capacity of the team. We have to be always very clear about what it is that we are able to do and not able to do. Zooming out here, bigger picture. This is a picture of the apprenticeship and on the job training fair at Missisquoi Valley Union High School. There's a similar fair in around Springfield last year. So our regional job centers are participating with partners on these events. And then we tried to encourage them to include apprenticeship. And so we've done a couple of really unique and innovative things, bringing information about apprenticeships to young folks still in school. I'm sure you have seen the headlines called the tool belt generation, but it's signaling a changing expectation of younger generations about what happens after they graduate high school. Many of them and their families don't wanna take on debt or college, So, and they're looking to apply learning and learn with their hands. So this is the nexus here of registered apprenticeship for us As the registration agency, we'd like to see more young people get involved. And in some of the stats, I intend to show you that seems to be working. So part of the work of the team is handling development inquiries. So this little chart here shows you last year, we held 47 discovery calls, and that's just like an hour where we're meeting with a company, asking questions and helping to figure out what it is that they want or think they want and helping to solve that problem for them. We're diagnosing problems and making referrals. Of those 47, 13 of them converted to registered programs, and that led to three new occupations that hadn't been registered in Vermont before, weatherization technician, And then UVM Medical Center has surgical tech and sterile processing registered. They don't have any apprentices in them yet, but they're ready to go for that. And then five have a pending design completion. There's some things that they're still working out, like being an instructor or finding mentor. So we get to the next slide, and this is just this is in the report that we sent you, but just to call it out specifically in the last year, general funds funded the program at $8.48, $7.20, and that pays for salaries, program administration. We give a grant to Vermont State University to be the sponsor and administrator of the electrical and plumbing program. We give a grant to VMAC to expand our capacity for outreach and manufacturing, because that's such an important sector here in Vermont. We have operational expenses, advisory board expenses, and for the rest of this fiscal year, we're planning to do some work in human services with the psychiatric hospital and the Battleboro retreat, potentially CCV. There's there's a an area here where we could develop some pathways with apprenticeship. We plan to do an apprenticeship one zero one convening with the RDCs and the chambers of commerce so that they can hear about apprenticeship and be prepped to have that conversation and at least make a referral to us when it's necessary. And then recognizing that Chittenden County and the Northwest part of the state has a construction academy now where companies are sending people to be trained. Southern Vermont doesn't have a similar thing. So we're hoping to do some work in Southern Vermont on construction apprenticeships and in that space. So we'll have more there. The other thing that we did for grant funding is St. Johnsbury Academy's adult CTE program received a grant to develop a year one curriculum for electrical that they were sharing across the state so that the adult CTE programs can deliver year one curriculum for electricians, and it would be hybrid, and it would be in the evening and on the weekends. So that's another way that we're trying to serve more people. The Vermont State University program is only online and it doesn't work for everybody. So we're trying to expand the opportunities to reach more people for electricians at this point. The stats speak for themselves, so I won't spend a whole ton of time, but there are 29 active occupations in Vermont. And the next slide kind of outlines them and organized by the delivery method. So competency based, they're being assessed along the way to make sure that they're learning the skills and applying them correctly. The hybrid is a mix of spending time on something and being assessed for something. And then the most popular one, because it's a little bit easier, you think is time based, that's just measuring someone's time spent on a certain task on the training list. So you'll see there's a good representation, at least from my perspective, of sectors represented here. Manufacturing is there, building trades is there, healthcare is there, the municipal systems, wastewater treatment operator and water systems operations, really important.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: That was really important thinking flooding with our aging infrastructure and workforce, have workforce needs as we all know in every sector, but that was one that came up quite a bit over the past few years in terms of just those sustainable systems and human components to them, not just the bricks and mortar.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: And you'll see T. Cure in two columns there, a K to eight and a

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: K to

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: 12. That's some important work that we've been engaged in for about three years and maybe a little bit more than three years. And I can talk more about that. There's a slide about it. So for this past, these numbers are aligned with the federal fiscal year. That's how our system works. We're using a federal system. So there were sixteen eighty six active apprentices during that fiscal year. We saw seven zero one new apprentices and 197 completions. And you might be saying, don't we see more completions? Well, it's because there's three year and four year long programs that the majority of apprentices are in. So I wanna highlight some four key trends here. We compared the last fiscal year with 2023, which we're treating as the baseline to see how are we doing, what are we doing? So over those two years, we've seen the overall age of apprentices drop. And I need to think more about that. I think it's important that it's not on the slide.

[Committee Member (Unknown)]: Maybe. While you're looking, can I just ask about the completions? If we're looking at three and four year programs, then I would look at the active number and divide it by four and expect that to be the number that graduate every year so that we're at about 50%? How do we compare nationally if we're looking at something?

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: That's a good question that I don't have the answer to. I think probably what we need to do is just focus on electrical and plumbing because that's where the the majority of apprentices are. And then we can we can drill down and see where people are in the process. We need to also do potentially some data sharing with the licensing boards to see of the people who completed, did they sit and get a license? Is there a gap? Is there a leak in that pipeline? So that's some work that we intend to do with the licensing boards, as well as breaking up. I don't wanna say chunking up, but breaking the programs up into smaller, more explicit sections so that Information. Younger person can come in and commit to learning this and doing it for a year and then learning another part and doing it for a year, I think that would help system. So you can read what's on the slide here, younger apprentices overall. The most notable age decrease was in female identifying apprentices. And so overall we saw a drop of one point seven years on average for female identifying, it was a drop of 2.8 on average, going from thirty one and a half years to twenty eight point seven years. And then the male identifying dropped one point six years from 26 to 24. So their apprentices seem to be getting younger. I'll also add that our data collection system is better than it used to be. And the team is focusing on helping employers enter their information in a timely manner, so that helps too. The program availability more than doubled, meaning we're doing a lot of great work expanding and getting companies to register programs, but the disconnect is getting people into the programs and that's a function of the labor market and trying to find workers to fill those roles. I think there's more work for us to do to recruit and make young people aware and make parents aware So that all would contribute to helping companies fill these roles. But this is still in the context of there aren't enough workers to fill all of the available jobs.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: This is also representative employers trying to get more and more creative who may not have considered being a registered apprenticeship site in the past, but again, because there's a dearth of workers are willing to try new strategies.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: True. And then the last point here about this stronger CTE to apprenticeship pathways, we saw nearly twice as many apprentices than the previous in 2023. Again, that's a function of raising awareness with the CTE instructors. It's a function of better data collection from the sponsors that are entering their registration data in our system. So I think we have the right data points in place to be able to measure the flow of students from CTE into apprenticeship and hope to see that this number increases, as the years go on.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Instructors on the adult side for the apprenticeship programs, do they need to be licensed by AOE?

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: In the statute, it does say that they have to be a licensed teacher, but I don't some companies, I think, are struggling with that. So that would be something that we could waive.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: You mean to deliver instruction, but not the mentor on the job site. So if I am learning electrical, I would already be, let's say, a master electrician. But I wouldn't have to also be a licensed teacher. But then when I'm going to CCV or BTSU or other places for then the instruction piece, that's where I think you have to be delivered by a licensed educator.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That's been a problem, trying to find instructors.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Just generally in this, and we hear them in the CT CT programs.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Let me just touch So on

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: we wanna provide a little snapshot about the teacher apprenticeship program. As I said, it's been a multi year effort where we're working directly with the agency of education. We're leveraging federal apprenticeship expansion funds to make this work happen. And we have an MOU with the agency where we transfer some of those federal funds to them and it pays for their emerging pathways coordinator position. And they're the point person working within the licensing division to make sure the apprenticeship programs that schools are registering with us are recognizing can, prepare people to be licensed. So it's it's a lot of details, but it's been a lot of hard work on Sarah and Cindy's part and our colleagues at the agency of education to make that happen. And so we started very small in the Northeast Kingdom and with four or five schools as sponsors, and then we've expanded now to where the agency is going to be the sponsor of the program, registering apprentices with us, and that means it's statewide. So that will be some ongoing work. The other thing that I wanna point out here, this work with a teacher apprenticeship program has a lot of support and interest from the McClure Foundation. And they've been trying to tell the story about the apprenticeship program. There's a Vermont Business, article here that you could, pull up that tells the story of some apprentices in the Northeast Kingdom. The other part to this is a connection with service programs like Amerinden. And thank you both for coming to the Service Summit. That was sort of the kickoff for us to explore ways to connect service programs to the workforce development system. AmeriCorps brings in a lot of service members from other states, they're here, they love Vermont, they like our ideals and values, and we need to do some more intentional connecting to get them to stay here and work for businesses. So we're highlighting a connection with a service member who decided to relocate to here. And that's what this image is showing you, service is a pathway to relocate and to stay. So that's work that we'll be talking about through the session with you.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Alright. I am going to try to quickly go through some recent federal changes that I think are appropriate to be aware of as we're talking about where are we in time and space as it relates to apprenticeship. The good news here is money is flowing federally for apprenticeship right now, which is really great for our Vermont employers. And some changes here is that the federal administration is opening up funding pipelines directly to employers that want to hire apprentices, and it's not necessarily coming as money to the states, where we then have to distribute as an intermediary or in very specific ways. So a few things here. If you look through the federal administration's workforce plan in terms of what are they prioritizing, apprenticeship is at the top of that list. The president has a goal to increase apprentices by over a million, and he is linking nearly every workforce initiative he can back to access and growth in the number of apprentices. That's represented again in America's talent strategy, which is their plan, as well as an executive order that he signed back in April. USDOL is still on a continuing resolution right now in terms of the current fiscal year budget. And so we have our eyes on that in terms of what does it mean for workforce funding. But one of the things that has been proposed, I do not think this is going to actually come to fruition, but one of the competing ideas that's out there right now is getting rid of WIOA, which we'll talk about later, transitioning to a Make America Skilled Again block grant in its place. And the amount of money states would receive for that 10% would need to be dedicated to apprenticeship if that was to come to pass. The federal administration also last month announced an American manufacturing apprenticeship fund. That is a fund that the actual the state of Arkansas is going to be administering on their behalf. And manufacturing employers can apply directly to the fund and receive $3,500 in terms of the tax incentive per manufacturing apprentice that they hire. On the funding page that Jay just showed, there was we call them the SAFE, the state apprenticeship expansion funds that we currently apply for and have that are funding our work for the teacher apprenticeship as well as some construction apprenticeship initiatives. And then hot off the press as of last night so it's only a few hours old, so I haven't fully read it and absorbed it. They announced another 145,000,000 for apprenticeship funding initiatives for states that can be used for AI, semiconductor, IT, health care, telecom, and defense industry apprenticeships. So the good news is, I mean, as you saw, we have a relatively small state budget for apprenticeship, but there might be some real opportunities for the states and for employers that wanna pursue apprenticeship and growing apprenticeship directly through the federal government. So I will say that is a bright spot right now if you are interested in apprenticeship, that there are resources out there that businesses can be connecting directly with. And we are starting to, with regard to the manufacturing incentive I just mentioned, we'll be putting together promotional materials for that to distribute starting at the end of this week. And then we'll be looking more into what, I'm sorry if that's coming from my job. What would be announced just to go out for a minute last night. Or, yeah, Chris, feel free to dig around in there.

[Committee Member (Unknown)]: You. Happy New Year's Best Deputy

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: award. Sorry. Silence, my phone. Thank you. All right. So I recognize, I hear the bell maybe even dinging that you wanted to wrap this up in about five minutes. So maybe what we can do is, I know we'll be back, so we can obviously continue. What we were going to touch on on the next slide, I'm not actually gonna go far too into it, but it's what we're doing for communication, outreach, and awareness efforts over the next year. The most notable thing on this list is we do have a newsletter. If anyone would like to be on this newsletter, it goes out quarterly. Let us know. It has our best engagement rates and the least number of unsubscribes. So it's very popular as far as our department newsletters. Jay, do you maybe wanna summarize in the last five minutes kind of the last three slides in terms of we touched on a few things and how we have grown, things that are upcoming, but really, like, what would you simply say is our 2026 agenda here. We have very little legislative ask, but to give you a sense of where we're going, and then we're happy to round this off later if we need to turn up.

[Jay Ramsey (Workforce Development Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Yeah. I think the I'll start with the legislative ask, which is really about technical corrections. When you passed Act 55, you asked us to work with the office of racial equity to review the language and make some suggestions. That didn't ever land in a follow-up bill, so we're just bringing it back and asking for technical corrections. So that that's gonna come to you if it hasn't already. We we'll continue to come in and talk about apprenticeships, so you have enough information to maybe be dangerous about it. But really to help get the word out to employers and to the people in their districts, help them understand a little bit. The bottom line for your constituents is it's a job. So you gotta apply for it and you have to be hired into it. Our work at the department is really getting the employers to put apprenticeship in the job title when they're trying to hire people. We also want to continue to keep a little bit of a focus on adult CTE in the context of the CTE governance changes and as it relates to registered apprenticeship.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Sure. Thank you. Jay, thank you. Thank you. We appreciate. I'm sorry. I have to get upstairs soon.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Yeah. That's okay. So let us know. Again, review the slide deck if you want us to come back at a later date and kind of finish it out. But I will just say, overarchingly, continuing to grow our apprenticeship program is one of our top priorities right now as a department. If you were to ask me what are your top priorities for the coming year to continue to expand the number of pathways in Vermont where you can be a registered apprenticeship, pre apprenticeship, and continuing to communicate out the opportunities even if we're not turning on the spigot of state funding necessarily for this of what exists for federal resources right now that will be advantages to remote businesses. So Great. Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you very much.