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[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You're live. Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Tuesday, 02/03/2026 at 09:34 in the morning. So we're gonna use this twenty five minutes or so to begin a walkthrough of H650, which is an act relating to educational technology projects. I know we've heard from the sponsor of the bill a couple of weeks ago that this is something that the committee was interested in. Have our legislative council with us, Rick Segal. Rick, good morning. Good morning.
[Rick Segal (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, H650 should be on the screen shortly. There we go. Alright. So we have a bill that proposes to require EdTech educational technology products registered annually with the state. It also requires the Secretary of the State to create a certification standard and review process for these products before they can be used in schools. So the first language change is not really pertinent to the bill. It's a tech correction that I noticed as I was drafting this legislation. So we have a section on student privacy that was enacted several years ago, and just changing the word chapter to subchapter, just a tech correction to make sure that we are limiting the enforcement to that specific subchapter. Okay. Page two. Subchapter a new subchapter three b, educational technology. Definitions. Educational technology product and product means any student facing software, application, or platform that may collect, process, or transmit student data and that is used for teaching and learning purposes in a school. Provider of an educational technology product and provider means a person that operates an educational technology product that is in use at a school with or without a contract with a school or school district. And school means a public school or an independent school approved pursuant to 16 VSA one sixty six. Annual registration. You'll note that there is a little bit of a duplication here from the current data broker language. Annually, on or before Jan January 31, following a year in which a person meets a definition of a provider of an educational technology product, the person shall register with the secretary of state, pay registration fee of a $100, provide the following information during registration, The name and primary physical email and Internet address of the person, the most recent version of the privacy policy and terms and conditions in use by the product, and list the names of all the products operated by the provider and which products, if any, have been certified by the secretary of state pursuant to the subchapter. A provider that fails to register and provide all required information pursuant to subsection a is liable to the state for a civil penalty of $50 each day, not to exceed a total of 10,000 for the each year. It fails to register pursuant to the section. An amount equal to the fees due under the section during the period it failed to register pursuant to the section, and other penalties imposed by law. Does not otherwise limit the provider's responsibility to comply with the provisions required of rider set forth in the subchapter. The attorney general may maintain an action in the civil division of the superior court to collect the penalties imposed in the section and to seek appropriate injunctive relief. Product certification. The secretary of state shall have the sole authority to certify an educational technology product as set forth in the section and create a form on its website where a provider of an educational technology product can apply for the product to be reviewed by the secretary of state for certification. No school shall use an educational technology product that has not been certified by the secretary of state. The secretary of state shall develop, publish, and annually review the standards for the certification of an educational technology product. In developing the standards, the secretary of state shall consider the following about an educational technology product. Their product's compliance with state curriculum standards, advantages of using the product compared with nondigital methods, whether the product was explicitly designed for educational use, design features of the product, including any geolocation tracking, use of artificial intelligence, targeted advertising, personalized recommendation systems, access to adults unknown to a student, and features that would lead to compulsive use. Also, the data privacy practices of the provider of the product and any other factor the secretary of state believes is relevant to the education, privacy, and safety of students. Notwithstanding subsection b of the section, a certified product shall be compliant with all federal and state privacy laws, including the COPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, include clear and easy to understand product information, provide the following to a parent or guardian of a student, what personal information of the student is collected by the product, how the personal information collected is used, maintained, and shared by a product, and the ability to access, correct, and delete the personal information of the student. It shall also not collect student data that is not essential for the product to function effectively for the purpose for which it's being utilized, demographic data of a student, except for the name and grade level of the student, behavioral, interactional, or sensitive health data of his and shall not use any data collected to sell or share with a third party or create a student profile for noneducational uses, which includes targeted advertising and disciplinary actions. The secretary of state shall post on its website and regularly update a list of education technology products that have been certified by the secretary of state pursuant to the section. They may list products that are under active consideration by the secretary and products that have failed certification. Nothing in the section shall be construed to limit or alter obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section five zero four of the Rehabilitation Act, or the Americans with Disabilities Act. Schools shall provide reasonable modifications and necessary assistive technology to ensure free appropriate public education and equal access. A provider that fails that violates a section commits an unfair and deceptive act in commerce in violation of the Vermont Consumer Protection Act. The attorney general shall have the same authority to make rules enforce basically enforce the law pursuant to the Consumer Protection Act. Okay. Section two, certification transition. A school shall submit a list of educational technology products that are currently in use at the school to the Secretary of State on or before 12/15/2026 in a form and manner prescribed by the Secretary of State. A school may use an educational technology product that has not been certified by the Secretary of State on or before 06/30/2027. So the act takes effect on 07/01/2026, except that the certified product requirement takes effect a year later on 07/01/2027 to give time to develop that process.
[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So I'm wondering if you should excuse me. I'm wondering if we should prompt the dates just because it's gonna be a lot for a school to hopefully Yeah. We'll figure that out when we take testimony. Okay. Rick, when you were drafting this, did you have conversations with the secretary of state government?
[Rick Segal (Legislative Counsel)]: I don't believe so.
[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So they're gonna have conversations with us. I'm thinking that on page seven, last sentence in sec two, School Meet is an educational technology project, has not been certified by the secretary of state. I'm I'm not sure. That's a lapsed supposed to allow them to be able to use it until that time? Yep. Correct.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: I have a couple of concerns about the certification. Number one, does the Secretary of State have the capacity or really the background be making judgments on what a good product is. I mean, it's not about item four. The data privacy, totally on board with that. But I have a couple of Basically, we're telling them if it doesn't meet the state curriculum standards, they can't it's borrowed from the schools. And I can see a place where this could be abused. And whether the product was explicitly designed for educational use, I think we're we're really we could be limiting ourselves. There are two games that I can think of specifically, SimCity and Minecraft, which were never approved for educational use, but both have been used heavily in the school system. Those are my three things.
[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Any questions on the language here? Because I think everything else will come out when we have witnesses come in and we start talking. On Friday afternoon, we'll be talking about this with the Secretary of State's office. We may have to have other conversations and try to figure out where we should sit. I worry about certification. Who has the educational component of knowing what to certify, how to certify all of that, their national certification, how to prepare in the country that does things, I don't know. A lot of questions I think that keep to ask on this one if we're going to get it. Any questions, other questions on the language that's before us right now? Great. Thank you. Think we'll see you this afternoon at one. It was up. You. I think that's it. Right before it and Back here at one to look at age six seventy four, which is the fact related to the creation of the Vermont Sister State program. Possibly trying to go through the headlight. That's what we can assist. And possible. Got this after this. You'd hear from my five twelve. Hey. I just wanna give you all a heads up because there's a lot of things coming at us now, and so some of these things that you want to get out with 512, 639, 205, suspicious activities, all of that stuff, if we can get them to a point next week we may wind up staying later just to get those things out so that we can start clear in the deck. Here at Friday afternoon, House General and Housing wants us to look at two pieces in July, and they'd like to get that moving right away so we make it. Might decide We the budget we have to deal with. Having language right now drafted on CTE that we got from AOE that is going to take quite a bit of testimony and massaging on that. Lots of things on our plate are suddenly appearing. So we can clear the deck on some of the stuff that that we're working on right now. We'll do that. I think we can go off