Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Gary Holloway]: I drive a lot.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Good morning, everyone. Today is Wednesday, February 11. This is House Commerce and Economic Development. We're here this morning to hear more about the Rural Technical Assistance Program. Gary is here with us. Good morning. Good morning. Introduce yourself.

[Gary Holloway]: Yeah. Yeah, my name is Gary Holloway. I'm the Downtown Program Manager, Department for Housing Community Development. I've been sponsoring an advisory role in this Vermont Evaluation for Rural Technical Assistance. Share Shall my screen now? I do have, if anyone wanted a hard copy, I included copies to the assistant. But if you need any hard copies, I'll have some here. Just let me know.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: A hard copy, Nancy?

[Gary Holloway]: Anyone want a hard copy? Yeah. Some people are different. You don't know if you're available. Assistant posted On you'll the see this sheet here, it's kind of like a snapshot. Maybe you can press that one around at least.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Can you email this to Megan Panella, Nvidia Assistant?

[Gary Holloway]: Just just here. So I'm here today to talk about the Vermont Evaluation of Rural Technical Assistance. This has been a partnership with Department of Housing and Community Development, UVM, the Center for Rural Studies, thanks to funding for the Hawaii Institute for Rural Partnerships. And I'm gonna There's a lot to this, but I'm gonna do my best to kind of provide a high level overview of the research and the findings throughout the past year. There we go. So the project steering committee was really crucial for us to ensure we were, aligning the research and the recommendations around ground proofing what's actually happening on the ground. And so as you can see through these partners, this makes up a pretty good bench of TA providers and funders that we collaborate together to support municipalities across the state. Some of which are here today and you'll be hearing from. So this is a snapshot of town that you all might be familiar with. This is a fictitious town, but a town that is in need of a lot of repair that's being strained by administrative constraints and ability to access resources, the complexity of navigating difficult funding streams. So really, this program was designed to kind of help serve the needs of these types of situations. Communities that really need the help. They know help's out there, but how can we best coordinate our efforts to better align funding streams and support their needs the best we can? Were in F-one hundred eighty one. We were tasked with accessing the rural technical assistance system, identifying the challenges and gaps that may be there, and then provide practical recommendations that could be actionable with different levels of ease. Easy, medium, and more difficult to complete. I mentioned the steering committee. We participated in a series of listening sessions across the state with regional planning commissions and citizens and municipal staff. There were surveys with 195 respondents. We interviewed five different states to really understand how they're delivering technical assistance and providing support to municipalities. So we did real in-depth interviews with five states. There was research done in 13 other states to really gather as much information as we could to help inform the decisions we're gonna be making moving forward. And then there summit was back in the fall that brought together over 125 people from around the state. It was a very interactive session. So it wasn't just listening. They were participating on roundtables and really diving into some of the challenges. So, they could have dialogue between each other. So, like I said, really try to look at this from a lot of different angles and get input from as many different people as we could. And not surprisingly Oops, sorry. I jumped around here. What's going on? Jumpy. Not surprisingly, the findings were pretty consistent across the regions. And I think as I go through some of the findings, I don't think some of these are gonna be shocking to you. We've been talking about a lot of these for years. Technical assistance, it exists, but it's fragmented. It's hard for small towns to navigate the myriad of information that's out there. And really, a lot of the problems tend to be specific location based issues, which also could be common shared issues that other towns may be facing as well. So how can we best learn from each other as we're identifying solutions? So capacity, you're gonna that word mentioned a lot today. That's kind of the root of the problem, sustained capacity. But the question is, where can we provide the capacity at the state, at the regional level, at the local level? Where's the best place to kind of insert that capacity to kind of help them advance the challenges that they're facing at the local level? So I'm gonna skip past. I kind of mentioned that already. So the four actionable priority areas that I'm gonna talk about today. The steering committee identified four priority areas with low, medium, and high effort goals within each area. And state agencies and TA providers need to increase participation in solving some of the systemic barriers and persistent challenges that local communities face and increase engagement resources to support them. By improving coordination between state agencies and TA providers and removing administrative burdens, municipalities will have better access to the resources they need, resulting in greater impact in Vermont communities by aligning investments, technical assistance, other resources towards shared goals. So now I'm going to outline the four priority areas, and then I'm going to show you some examples, kind of some high level examples of how low, medium, high action items that we may consider to kind of keep the momentum going. So problem statement around increasing state agency participation and solving local challenges. We can't continue to expect small rural communities led primarily by volunteers who turn over frequently to navigate this spider web of state resources. We need to evaluate our programs and coordinate a structural agencies to design better systems and communication strategies to make it easier for municipalities to access the resources and technical assistance they need. So let's take a look at a lower effort example of how we might be able to move the dial in this area. Vermont Council Rural Development is in the room today. They've been hosting community visits for years when municipalities invite them to facilitate a community discussion to identify actionable strategies for communities to determine the most important priorities for that community. Our agencies and other providers participate as visiting team members offering resources on their advice to help guide them. But I think we could do a better job of coordinating after the fact on how to come back in and support those communities after those community visits with wraparound services and resources to kind of really help them implement the priorities that they've identified. So that's just one example of a lower building off of something that already exists. A medium effort. Agency of administration could convene other agencies on really taking a look at our grant programs and our communication strategies, and how can we best align those, share best practices? Can we align grant timelines or requirements, or loosen some of the requirements when able to? And then get, you know, really implement direct feedback from municipalities to help make the process easier. This wouldn't be an easy lift, but the findings in the report made clear that municipalities really want and need an easier way to access state resources and technical assistance. By creating a municipal service coordination hub, we could develop a common place for municipalities to inform the state on what their needs are. And the hub can direct the municipalities to the appropriate resources to support their needs. How nice would it be for a volunteer select board of planning commission to have a one stop shop? Once again, not easy, but I'm just providing kind of the range of types of actionable items we we might be looking at. Priority two, municipal and regional shared service tools. Municipalities don't need to reinvent the wheel and duplicate efforts when they're they're good systems and tools that are working in other communities and information that's available to support them. But maybe it's hard to navigate where to start. As TA providers, can better support municipalities by making it easier to access shared services and help set up the framework for their shared services. So an example of how we might be able to build and move the dial in this area, standardized templates, contracts, and procurement guidance with step by step guides to support shared services. That could be something we could do without without any any funding, just determine what the best way kind of set those templates and and have those lit. A medium effort would be creating a platform, municipal shared services, and determine the best place for it to live. Maybe it's VLCT, maybe it's ERPC's. We're not sure. Could they provide a platform for them to access resources? Some of this already exists. It's, once again, building off of what already exists, but maybe making it more robust and more known, followed by some trainings to support municipal volunteers. And then once again, this is a much higher lift, but revisit the regional governance study and evaluate models for shared municipal services. Looking at other state models as an example of how we might wanna restructure that. Priority three, local engagement and leadership development. I'd say we need to double down on our support of volunteer pipelines through training, education, engagement. We know that volunteer burnout is real. We're seeing a real drop off in volunteerism. How can we engage volunteers in a more meaningful way to help achieve the goals we have for our communities? So, one way we can do this is build off of what VLCT and others may have already designed with trainings and toolkits based on municipalities' needs. And work with them by listening to municipalities and understanding what kind of trainings do they need, how frequent do they need to be, do they need to be in person, virtual, maybe a combination of both. So just really bolstering up our volunteer training and knowledge so they do their jobs and planning commissions and select boards most effectively. Medium effort. Online platforms to help matchmake volunteers and community needs. There's a new app called the Bee App, which as a citizen, I could say, I'm interested in these types of things. And then that match makes into the community by the community saying, We have these needs. And it match makes and helps make that connection to volunteering a little bit easier, just as an example. And then, once again, is a higher lip, but modernizing municipal planning requirements, directing DHD and RPCs, municipalities access, requirements are necessary, which ones are there just because we've recently gone through a couple programs in DHD and realized that we could make things a little bit easier. They're not actually statutorily bound. So, going through those programs and figuring out how we can better make access to those programs easier. And finally, I'm gonna talk about priority four, which is increasing local capacity and flexible resources. Flexible funding of towns, are in the right stage of readiness to implement a community or economic development project, ideally aligned with state level goals, such as housing, childcare, water, wastewater. And so how can we best align and look at directing our resources towards communities who might be ready to receive those resources? So a little barrier effort may be rebooting the Collaborative Funders Group about ten years ago. Some of us from DHCD and USDA and VTV started this kind of circle of funders who would find themselves at ribbon cuttings and say, Oh, you funded this, too. Interesting. So rather than finding out after the fact, really trying to coordinate together during or prior to really make sure that our funding is going as far as it can go, and they're using the right pocket funding. So bringing that group back together to help strategize and look at communities or projects across the state that we might be able best support with their readiness. Medium effort. We have good programs such as NTAP, the Ready program, which we're gonna hear about in a moment. Municipal planning grants and the Rivers program. We need more capacity and TA provided system and better coordination and flexible funding to municipalities. So once again, how can we better work within the landscape we've already had? Or maybe there were some areas with a program that didn't go as well as we anticipated. But how can we not just throw that away, but build off of that energy and look at investing for resources, programs that were designed to help low resourced communities. Medium effort. Look models in other states. I mentioned that we interviewed other states. There's a lot of really good examples of how we might structure ourselves within state government or within regional models, such as Mass Developments Program to insert fellows almost as project managers, helping support multi year efforts within communities to help them achieve their goals. And then a higher effort, look at programs with the many pro state agencies that may be best combined or better aligned to simplifying duplication. I talked a little bit about that before. And then for us, this is kind of an education timeframe for us. We don't want the report to just sit on the shelf. We actually want to see action put behind it. So we're educating you. We've had meetings with the Community Investment Board and the Royal Caucus, and we're just looking to be able to kind of spread the word about the findings of this report. There's a long version of the report that UVM put together that is available to you all as a link. And there's the shorter version, the steering committee and BHCT put together, kind of really trying to point out the specific action items that I just went over with you. I think we need to continue this momentum forward, though, in whatever way we can. We recognize that resources are limited, but there's some low cost or maybe medium cost things that we might be able to start moving forward now without having big buckets of funding. And then we can also identify longer term actions to start kind of positioning ourselves for that in the coming years. So that's kind of the work of the steering committee to keep continue to meet monthly. Fortunately, we've had the services for a limited time of Rebecca Sanborn Stone with the community workshop. He's helping to facilitate the discussions with the steering committee. It's kind of a neutral party. And so we have a little bit of money left over through the LIHEAP funding to probably about six more months of that facilitation. But beyond that, we don't have as much of a capacity or coordinated staff to help keep the steering committee on track. So we have to kind of think about that, what happens after we don't have that facilitator. So that's what I have. And I don't know if you want to have questions all at the end or if you want to ask me questions prior to having our partners from BCB and BCRD present.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: It can be easier while you're there, Gary, everyone has questions. Okay.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Perfect. Thanks very much. I think you did a

[Unidentified committee member]: great job of diagnosing the problem in terms of what some of these small is facing, and you put out a I think, you know, confidence and vision.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Is

[Unidentified committee member]: there any kind of I'm trying to figure out what is bailiwick of the administration, whether it's the legislature. Is there any other legislative or funding issues that would be needed to support this?

[Gary Holloway]: In my position, I'm not doing a direct ask for funding, but I am in a position to say that we all recognize that these are concerns and issues that we need to address as an administration, as well as our partners who's been communicating to address these problems. I think we, as I outlined in some of the slides, there's some things that we can We don't need legislators authority to kind of move Right? We can look at our internal systems within the state and figure out how can we make the processes of communication a little bit easier. Right? How can we make the coordination stronger? So I think those are some of the things that we're going to be working on at a state level in lieu of having additional funding for this. So I can respond to that.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Laura? Hi. I'm Will

[Emily Carris Duncan]: Terres Duncan, Wilmington, Lightnington, Halifax. I am curious how this all links in with the Homes for All initiative. Yeah.

[Gary Holloway]: Well, obviously, Homes for All is an initiative that we're working on through our department, and Chris could speak more clearly to that. But in terms of identifying the need for housing in the state, I think as we're working with municipalities and municipalities are looking at how to better align their zoning, to make housing more easier to build in their communities, certainly, that is right in line with what we're trying to accomplish generally with Virta. We're trying to make processes easier for municipalities and as it addresses homes for all and moving the dial to try to get more housing built in communities, I think those two things kind of go hand in hand, right? Make it a little bit easier for them to access information and resources, whether municipal planning grants so that they can adjust zoning bylaws. They can then accommodate housing in lots in their communities, and that's

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: a win win situation. Yeah.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: You want to testify?

[Gary Holloway]: Yeah, I could add a little

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: bit My to name is Kirk Chris Cochran. I'm the director of Preview Planning and Specialization in Collinsville. It's in our Bailey Lake as well. There was an article in Vermont Digger this morning with a lot of public talking about it. We've been quietly working behind the scenes on it now.

[Chris Cochran]: It's kind of our big debut. And what it is is back in the day, Sears wrote like you could order a home, a catalog, and would come out in a railcar and build it yourself. So the task is for a while. We're trying to do the same in communities across the state. So these friends are going through an extensive vetting process, are these the kind of homes that you would welcome in your neighborhood? If this was built next to your house, would you welcome that? So that process is ongoing. Our goal is to have a set of replant or embellish your mom for dowel, and then build these traditionally, like stick built, or you can build these in with an advanced manufacturing assembly, like, I think, kind of general to tip it out. But to your question, sorry to get the question, our smaller towns, the challenge is people, and you can't make things happen without people. You can put a goal out there. You need to put money out there, but you need somebody there who's willing to do it. So a portion of Homes four All is actually doing new developer trainings all across the state. I saw on your desk, you have a schedule of trainings. I encourage you to share that as members, because we just need people wanting to build homes in their backyards. But the last one I want say, infrastructure is key, and thank you for your support of the CHIP program. Last year, we're hoping our smaller communities can take these tools and put them together in a

[Unidentified committee member]: catalog and put in the infrastructure to

[Chris Cochran]: get cost free, especially in all the funds considered.

[Jonathan Cooper]: Do Okay. You have time for another question? All right, Gary. Hey, Chris. Gary, one of the comments you made that sort of caught my attention was showing up ribbon cuttings and saying, Oh, you funded this program too. And it led me to wonder, as you looked at other states, I'd like to know which other states did you look at? And in looking at what they were doing, did you see a similar patchwork of independent state agencies like VHCB, nonprofit organizations, state agency of commerce, etcetera, what their sort of mix of resources was? And ultimately, in those ribbon cuttings, how often are the different funding pots that you're seeing all tying back to the state of Vermont to begin with?

[Gary Holloway]: Chris, you might have to remind me of the states that we interviewed. But I know we met with Mass Mass Development specifically in their program. It was really interesting. I mentioned a little bit in terms of their fellows program. They've identified communities that qualify based on certain criteria ahead of time. And then they kind of go out a few communities at a time over a three year period and provide direct funding to the municipality in the way of these fellows that can help serve as project managers to help facilitate community conversations, to help advance implementation of projects. So that one was really interesting. We interviewed with New Hampshire, Maine, Alabama, and Wisconsin. And Maine's actually going through a restructuring of They got rid of their Department of Housing and Community Development. We don't suggest that here. But they are now going back and trying to kind of recreate what they didn't have for a long while and kind of really trying to rethink how they're structuring their support through that department. I forget what they're calling it, but it's more like a HOKA. HOKA. So it's kind of economic development housing, and really trying to align some of their investments more strategically. So they just have their first staff person on board now, and they're trying to kind of reposition themselves. So we're in discussions with them and trying to learn a little bit about that model. Jonathan, I don't know if I'm answering your question entirely from the ribbon cutting standpoint.

[Jonathan Cooper]: I understand.

[Gary Holloway]: What's that?

[Jonathan Cooper]: That's a little fun here in terms of a question. So one thing that I did wanna hone in on, is is there an equivalent or what is the equivalent in Vermont of mass development, which I understood to be a much more centrally sort of centralized entity?

[Gary Holloway]: Although we have a structure for that in Vermont, really. We don't we don't really have that, Jonathan. We don't have that structure at the state level or within regional level either. Yeah. Yeah. So we do have kind of the patchwork. We have regional planning commissions and we have regional government corporations and we have Vermont Council for Development who's providing services and VLCT. So we have a big bench and a big team doing great things. And it's, once again, part of this effort in the research was trying to help, what are we doing well, and how can we do a better job of it collectively together? And that's really the key. And I think that Funders Collaborative Group is an opportunity for us to convene and get together and have just purposeful discussions around specific issues, whether it's water and wastewater issues that our community is facing or whether it's a specific project, like a big development opportunity in a community they're grappling with. Yeah.

[Kirk White (Ranking Member)]: So first of all, thank you. I like the sound of where this is going. One of my towns is population 300, And the three select board members are also the ones out taking the ditches. They don't have time or capacity in their brains or their lives to engage in any of this stuff. And so whatever you can do ease that would be great. The teeming metropolis in my district is down about full population 2,100. Just been truthfully, we encountered a lot of these same obstacles until we were fortunate to have someone move into our town who was the convener of your summit or the Europe. And it showed us that a large part of how that worked was just she knew people to talk to. As you talked about uneven and personal conversations and stuff like that, that made a big difference. And I'd like that not to be the case. But I think my question is, so in my town of Bethel, Bethel shelf, Bethel area food shelf is coordinating with a whole lot of the small towns around it that feed into that. And they've partnered up with the Catalyst Cohort from Vermont Food Bank and Vital Communities Upper Valley Reliance Network. And then the Lawrence and Mary Swarkey Fund and Rural Vermont Communities and Preservation Trust. All these other organizations, they've sort of convened them all together and are holding community forums talking about housing and food insecurity and health issues and worker development, all these kind of things. And I'm wondering if when there are these little groups like this, you're accounting for and trying to figure out how to make that part of the process rather than a parallel process or something that would come in and sometimes we see as the state comes in and says, oh, we stopped doing that because we have this thing now. And so I'm just wondering how you're envisioning that. It starts at the local level.

[Gary Holloway]: The ideas need to be brewed and realized from the local level, from these groups who understand their communities the best, not from the state level down, right? Like, we need to be able to understand your problem. That's why having these convenings and, you know, having the community visits, you know, like the VCRB does, like really underspring the community together, around the common issues. To us, that's the heart of where you start. And I think it's great those groups are doing that. The question would be, is there other opportunities to then take the learnings from that group and make it more accessible to other communities around the state who may be in a very different, maybe not as in a strong of a position, would value having that information shared with them. So that's, once again, what we're trying to figure out is how can we better provide that access to that information. Sometimes you can do it through events and bringing folks together. But sometimes people most need it. They're working and they can't access it because they have a job and they can't participate in that event, those learning. So how can we make it more accessible for them? But it's at the local level, though. It really needs to

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: be studied. It's just their reach.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Hope that feels crazy.

[Gary Holloway]: You're lucky to have someone who needed such a strong leader to help.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I guess I don't know that I have a question. I just have a comment. I have real concerns about adding another group in when you've mentioned so many groups that are providing these services. And if the issue is that people don't know how to access the services that we have, that kind of falls in your department. That's really a, how do we train town clerks? How do we train town managers? What is that system? It's not developing a whole another suggesting organization. No, we're

[Gary Holloway]: whatsoever is to start something, you know, to start a new organization. We have a good really good organizations. It's how can we better coordinate and collaborate together, and who's responsible for what? Sometimes that's unclear, right, who's carrying the water in certain areas. Certainly, the state government carries a lot of responsibility that we wouldn't expect others to take on. But we also need to look at each other's strengths because the state has its weaknesses where we might be able to rely on VLCT or VCRD or VHCB and other partners to do certain things that they, in their wheelhouse, do really well. So that's really kind of the art of this, is this. The steering committee that we're hoping to keep together is that group, and it's not entirely encompassing of the entire bench. We're looking at other opportunities for other players that might wanna participate in that that coordinated effort. So we're not creating something new. We're just coordinating together better and stronger.

[Ryan (REDI Program Manager, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Next up it says Yeah.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Chair's here. Yeah. It's cool.

[Gary Holloway]: Pull up your Thanks. Pull this up real quick. Share again.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: You're off.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yep.

[Ryan (REDI Program Manager, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Good morning, everybody. Great to be here and see lots of new faces and some old faces too. So I'm Ryan. I work with Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and I manage our REDI program, which stands for Rural Economic Development Initiative. Gary just gave a great presentation that really covered the gamut of this really wide partner network of technical assistance providers. And we are part of that network. So we were really excited to engage in the Ruta effort as part of the steering committee. We've also been a part of initiatives like Municipal Technical Assistance Program, otherwise known as MTAP. And we're also just really grateful to be here with you all today and extend a lot of gratitude to you all as REDDI was a creation of the legislature back in 2017. So at that time, it was really created with this idea that small rural communities in the state and working lands businesses really struggle to access these significant and complex funding sources at the state and federal level. How do we support them in doing that? Let's create a really hands on direct technical assistance program to support them. So that's how Ready came to be. So again, really thankful to you all for your continued support in that effort and growing the program over the last few years. So I'm really here today to provide a really quick overview of the Ready program. I know it'll go a little fast, but I'm happy to come back and answer further questions at another time. And then also really here to provide an example of one of the pieces of this technical assistance pad work proposal and how we really do rely on each other and really lean on that network. And also just to share a little bit more about the needs that we see on the ground directly working with these small under resourced communities around the state. So again, thanks for having us here, thanks to this great team for all coming out today.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: See if I can get something. There we go.

[Ryan (REDI Program Manager, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: All right. So with that, I'm just going to jump into a quick overview of the Ready program and what we do. So again, there's a lot on this slide, but

[Unidentified committee member]: I'm just going to provide a

[Ryan (REDI Program Manager, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: quick overview and again, to answer some additional questions. But we support small towns across the state of less than 5,000 people. That's directed in our legislation as well, with accessing significant and complex funding for their economic development projects. So how do we do that? We provide small grants, usually up to about $7,500 for professional consulting support. So that can include things like hiring a professional grant writer to apply for a large USDA or Northern Border Regional Commission grant or something along those lines. Who can be pretty cut and dry with that type of support. But we can also provide other types of direct technical assistance. So we can hire other consultants on behalf of projects to do things like architectural engineering support or other predevelopment activities or assessments of a site that would be required to apply for or receive one of these significant government funding sources. So we work with a variety of client types. So we work with small towns, again, those that are under 5,000 population. But within those towns, we can also work with nonprofits, community groups. I'm really excited to hear about the work happening in Bethel and would be more than happy to connect with that group and see how we can support as well. And we also in terms of kind of the private sphere, we also work with, working lands businesses, which includes, farm, forest, and food based, businesses in Vermont, again, in those small towns. So our legislation also directs us to focus on some particular areas of economic development. So that includes community based economic development, a really big bucket. That includes everything from Main Street revitalization, community centers, childcare, and then harder infrastructure like water and wastewater projects as well. Our other focus areas are outdoor recreation. So again, trails, connectivity, parks, and then working land sector developments. That's again where we're working with those farm, food, and forest producers in the state. So the program has actually grown quite significantly in the last few years. We started initially back in 2018, 2017 with this appropriation of about $75,000 a year. We've been able to grow the program. Again, many thanks to you all and the support to do that. And so basically, at this stage, we are able to work with initially probably about 12 communities a year. We're now upwards of 60 projects a year across the state that we're working with. We've also been able, over the course of that time, to utilize about $1,200,000 in investment, Most of that, thanks to state funding with a little bit of federal funding in the mix there. And that has enabled us to support over 100 community projects with accessing $35,500,000 in grants to realize their transformational economic development projects. Next one. As Gary highlighted in his presentation, we are really a part of this deeply interconnected network of technical assistance providers that support communities with meeting local needs, again, really starting from that grassroots approach and realizing these critical projects for their communities. So throughout this VERTA process, it really underscored a lot of what we are seeing on the ground in terms of in our work every day with small communities and local leaders. So some of those needs that we're seeing include, again, as Carrie mentioned, we'll talk about capacity all day long. So that it's just that that lack of capacity in small towns with little or no paid staff to really launch or manage these projects in the long term, a high need for really holistic wraparound assistance, and those specific expertise to manage these complex projects from real estate development or taking historic or dilapidated buildings and turning them into what the community wants, all the way through to, again, these complex multi year water and wastewater infrastructure projects. And then again, the other piece that was really underscored that Gary had mentioned is this really strong existing network of TA providers, which again, yes, I think can be understood as perhaps a patchwork, but also a really resilient system of a lot of really clear expertise at different stages of a project's life cycle and also different kinds of projects as well. For example, REDI is a part of that system. We are a tool that is really best leveraged at a particular time in a project lifecycle. So it's really when project has been There's been community engagement on the ground. That community has created a vision for what they want to do. They've created a case statement, have developed what that project is, and it's really ready to go after these significant sources of funding. Our ability to help projects advance and become realized really hinges on all of these other partners in the system who are operating at those early stages of community engagement, of project development. So again, some of those partners, and Gary had mentioned, include the Regional Planning Commissions, the Regional Development Corporations of Vermont, Land Access and Opportunity Board, our friends at the Vermont Council on Rural Development, Preservation Trust of Vermont, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, and others. So again, they're supporting from visioning and early stage project development to feasibility assessments and permitting. And then it's really when all of that has come together that a tool like ours can really be best leveraged for these communities to then really pull in these big dollars from outside of the state and within the state as well. So I just wanted to also just note really quickly around the Municipal Technical Assistance Program. Efforts like MTAP also showed us that having a container for all of these partners to really intentionally collaborate with flexible funding, allows us to meet communities where they're at, allows us to make efficient handoffs between the partners so we can reduce delays and start stops in projects that really can derail projects, again, that are being led by these community volunteers, and ultimately really get these projects over the finish line. So ultimately, what we see as the keys to ensuring success for small under resourced communities include support available across the full project life cycle. Again, we need this full network. Maybe we call it less of a patchwork and more of this quilt that we can wrap around communities. We need really intentional collaboration throughout this system to reduce gaps in assistance and, again, reduce those delays and start stops. And then, again, the availability of funding like MTAP style funding that is really flexible to those needs that are coming up from those grassroots organizations and what's happening on the ground is also really impactful and supports us to really do our work and not say, Oh, this is a great idea, but we just don't have the pot of funding to help you do that great thing. So with that, I'll pass it over to my colleagues at VCRDA. I guess I can also take some questions if that's Okay in this moment. But again, I know that was a really quick high level overview, and I'm happy to come back at any point and share more about our work the writing program. Thank you guys so much. Is

[Jonathan Cooper]: there time for a question?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: A quick one, yeah.

[Jonathan Cooper]: All right. All right. Back to the slide that talked about the $1,200,000 input and maybe 35,000,000 or so, if I recall correctly, received. Do you have one thing that I would love to know more about is where those 35,000,000 were coming from? What percent was federal dollars? What percent was state program funding that was already within the state, clarity around that would be really helpful to me.

[Ryan (REDI Program Manager, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Absolutely. Thank you so much, representative Cooper. I would say I don't have the exact statistic right in front of me. I would say that the majority of those dollars are federal funds. Again, that's where we're looking at with a lot of these small communities where we've helped them pull in Northern Border Regional Commission or USDA funds or some of the ARPA Treasury dollars, for example, that came to the state through the libraries. That's really where we're seeing the $1,000,002 $3,000,000 awards coming into the state. Similarly, we just supported communities with the Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery funding. That was a huge piece of work for us in the last year to really help communities pull in those funds. So I think we were able to help communities support them with accessing a little over $7,000,000 of those dollars. So I would say the majority of those big dollars are coming from federal grants. We are also supporting folks with state funding. CDBG is an example where that's actually federal funds that flow through the state. So it's a little bit of a nuanced question. But I would say our role is really to support folks with accessing the funding they need that is just at a level of complexity that would just be too difficult for these low capacity communities to really get into.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Anything else?

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Real quick.

[Denise Smith]: Thank you for having us. Thank you, Chair Marcotte, for inviting us. My name is Denise Smith, I'm the Executive Director at the Vermont Council on Rural Development. I know there's been some acronyms thrown around today, so if I say something and you don't know what I mean, please ask me and I can help, maybe, because I don't know them all yet either. I'm also joined today by Jessica Savage, who's the Director of Programs and Strategic Initiatives. For those of you who do not know us, the Vermont Council on Rural Development, otherwise known as VCRD, is an organization that's been around for about thirty years, a little bit more. We were authorizing the Farm Bill back in the nineties. We are an independent well, back then we weren't now we're an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan state, and we work statewide. So we work in a lot of communities that you probably represent. I actually looked, as you were talking about Bethel, and we had done a regional community visit in White River a while ago. And I'm happy to send that report out if people want to see it. We provide facilitation services, convening, leadership skill building, technical assistance, and on demand support to Vermont's rural communities. We also convene statewide policy discussions on issues impacting rural Vermont and Vermonters. So we've held policy discussions on broadband, the creative economy, working lands, so multiple policy issues that affect and have actually led to policy decision making that this body's undertaken over the last thirty years. Most recently, we did the Vermont Proposition and out of that came the Vermont Youth Opportunity Initiative and report that we did about two years ago. So the other thing you should know about us is our board. That's a partnership of federal. So we actually have federal state agencies as well as local and nonprofit leaders on our board. It's a board of about 25 people. They're really the council of the organization. And it's a partnership that goes both ways. It informs decision and approaches at all of the levels. So it informs federal states. So we're kind of one of the conveners of the statewide organizations that impact decision making. So the other thing that we've done, so our community visit comes up a lot. That is a form of technical assistance that we provide to communities. It's our signature program. We also run a climate economy. We're also partners on the Village Trust Initiative that is with Preservation Trust and the Vermont Community Foundation. But we work really at that local level, helping communities identify what they want to work on. So ideation to action, we have a very robust program that we work only when invited. So select boards have to invite us to come. And we always work as part of of a strong network of state, regional and local technical assistance organizations. We bring, as somebody, I think Gary said, we bring a visiting team and a resource team with us from the state. And we create these resource teams. They're customized based on what the community is looking for. So if a community says we want to do housing, then we bring that resource team that can help support that community around that. I'm going to hand it over to Jess. She's been the lead for our community based programs and technical assistance over the last few years. So she's going to share a little bit more about the work that we've been doing and what we're noticing. The other thing you should know is both of us, our VCRD, served on the steering committee for the Virta report and the Virta work over this last year. I actually did bring, I have a couple of the smaller reports that the state has, and then we'll pass this around as well, which is our recommendation in terms of what we should do. I'm going to leave. I'm going leave but I'm happy to come back if

[Gary Holloway]: you have questions.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I'm going to leave the room.

[Unidentified committee member]: Don't leave the room. Okay.

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: Great. Yeah. Hi, everybody. I'm Jess Savage. I work at VCID with Denise. So I'm just gonna advance these slides by pushing a button. Was that how it worked? Yep. No?

[Ryan (REDI Program Manager, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I have to scroll down as strategy. Gotta go over here.

[Zoie Saunders]: Oh, scroll down. Oh, because it's a PDF.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You might go page down. Page

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: up, page down.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: It should

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: be like that.

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: Nope. It's not working.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Sorry. No.

[Gary Holloway]: It's okay. We

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: don't need it. We don't need it.

[Unidentified committee member]: We don't it. We're just gonna talk. You talk. Thank you. So

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: we're here today to complement the testimony that you just heard from the Department of Housing and Community Development and our friends at BHCB. As one of these Virta steering committee members, we were really pleased to see the state take this charge very seriously. So the state could have just taken the charge in Act 181 and done a cursory report. I used to work for the state, and we would do report for legislature. But they worked with, UVM. They got a grant, and they really deeply listened to rural communities, which, as Denise notes, that's what we do. So it was really, really wonderful to see our partners and friends of the state really take this seriously. Did I mess it up again? I did something. Okay, so Denise went through what we do, but I just want to underscore this final piece here. We are your state rural development council. So there's a bunch of these around the country. Our job is to elevate issues that are happening in rural communities to decision makers like yourselves. And that's really what we're here to do today, is flag some of these important issues and make a request on behalf of rural communities. So the findings of the Virta study resonate with our experience working with rural communities. Towns need coordinated simplified access to not just information, but navigation. They need flexible and patient funding and support for all phases of project development. You heard Mariah say that, heard Gary say that, and I'm sure it resonates with your experience. They need us for a entrepreneurial technical assistance provider network to work well together, to talk to each other, and to have the time, staff, and financial resources and expertise to support them in their locally defined projects. We're here to ask you should I push down? Nope, not working now.

[Gary Holloway]: I'll just sit next to you. Good

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: luck. I don't know what I did something over here. So so we're here to ask you to provide $500,000 in the FY twenty seven budget to make good on what rural towns told us they needed. They've told us for a long time, and these findings just underscore that. Our proposal is simple and allows for implementation of some of the most impactful recommendations in the VERTA report. This proposal would provide backbone and admit Do I push down? Okay. Gary. The proposal would provide backbone and administrative support to design and implement a technical assistance and funding program that directly benefits our underserved rural towns and villages, technical assistance resources, staff, and consultant time to provide custom resource teams for each community selected for the program. And direct support to towns. Funding would be used directly to support communities through a grant process, where towns will work with their resource team to use grant funding to pay for services that help them make meaningful progress on community driven economic development goals. Projects could include housing, infrastructure, childcare facilities, climate resilience, and more. While this sounds ambitious for a one year proposal, this is based on work that we are already doing and familiar with. As highlighted, MTAP was a great pilot. It allowed the state, its TA partners, local leaders to make significant progress on projects like wastewater, water, community and economic development tools. This funding just ended for most TA providers, and this proposal allows us to build on that foundation while incorporating recommendations from the BRDA report and the partners who are already at the table. Rural towns are being asked to do so much, with decreasing federal fundings and increasing complexity of the problems they face. Despite that, we know there are dedicated local leaders, like you highlighted in Bethel and I'm sure in the towns you serve, who show up every day for the towns they love, especially when given thoughtful support to make their local dreams the future. I think I have one more slide. Don't push that. Oh, it's careful. So I just wanted to highlight some of the program design that we're talking about here. Again, we're not creating a new organization or a new thing necessarily. What we're doing is building on the recommendations of this report, the experience, decades of experience on the steering committee. And I put plus because I do think there are several stakeholders that need to be brought into the fold. And the core concepts and principles, again, are it's community driven, coordinated services, flexible funding, and complementary to state development goals. With that, I'm done. Happy to take any questions, Denise and I, Nisthal.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Quick. Right at the end the Okay. So

[Unidentified committee member]: I'm interested in when we look at I was looking at your website with the various reports from over the years. So for example, the power panel report 2017, where they have communities, very interesting reports where they have very clear goals. And I'm wondering, do you follow those communities about, are they able to achieve those goals? And also looking at what were the barriers? I feel like we talk a lot about technical assistance, but there's also like, how do we reduce the need for technical assistance by reducing barriers? So I'm wondering kind of where that, how you see your role in that. And are you looking at the long term ability for these communities to implement the plans? And what were the barriers if they weren't able to? So it's interesting that

[Denise Smith]: you picked panel because the overall chair for that committee is now our board chair for VCRD. And when you ask her, she says, yeah, they've implemented almost everything in the report that we delivered on. And for VCRD's role, we absolutely follow-up with the communities. One of our favorite things is we say, you're our forever friend. And that's the technical assistance that we provide after the fact that is unfunded work right So we're a nonprofit so we can fundraise for it, but that is really part of the work that we do. We've also received TA grants. So we do do a lot of follow-up. We're actually in the midst of organizing a thirtieth anniversary of all of our community visits. The first one we did was in Richard in 1996, 'ninety seven. So we're in that cusp. But we can now look back and look at the impacts that we've had across the state in all the communities that we've worked in. And so it's a great question. It's a question that I ask myself every day, what is our impact? I'm a purpose driven leader, so I want to know that what we do matters. And I think the model that we have and the fact that we bring in resources from across the state to help support small towns, honestly, if I were to answer that one question, capacity at the local level is incredibly important. And also, in my mind, the transition of leaders in communities is what often impacts the projects moving forward. And so if you were gonna answer that question where how do you reduce technical assistance providers, you would have to invest incredible amounts of money at the local level in every community, unless you design some sort of regional model that really serves the towns of three people. Denise's answer. I don't know if that's the state's answer or VCRD's, but when I look at that, that is really the crux of the issue, is leadership at the local level, the transition, and not having the capacity in our regional and statewide organizations to be able to support those towns. It's always been, in economic development in the state of Vermont, has always been the issue.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: Thank you so much for all of this.

[Denise Smith]: So you had another answer? Was there anything else?

[Emily Carris Duncan]: I'm wondering if there is just a straight up list that lists all of the folks doing technical support and all of these various organizations and what is the purview for each one and what the kind of lines of communication are and how municipalities get put through the system. One of the concerns I hear from folks running my various towns is that they don't actually know exactly where to go for what needs.

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: Yeah. Yeah, so that's a really good question. And I think part of what we're bringing to you is a bit of a solution to that, where we have this group of people who are already meeting a very strong foundation of technical assistance providers. One of the findings in the Virta study was exactly that. How do we get the right navigation support for all of these systems? And in my experience, having provided direct technical assistance with communities, even if you give them a giant list, we have a spreadsheet that is tabs and tabs and tabs long of different technical assistance resources. If you handed that to a human being, they would go, woah. They need a human being to help them navigate those systems as well. And that service can be provided any number of ways. But I think there's a bothand solution that we need to be thinking about, I think, in what you're asking.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: That spreadsheet would be really helpful for us to be able to see a better understanding of

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: we're what the landscape looks rewriting our community leadership guide, and in so doing, have created a spreadsheet of resources aren't that gonna be evergreen. And so we don't wanna print them in a guide. But who keeps up to date on all that stuff? How do we maintain that information? And how do you make it accessible and navigable to small towns? And in my experience, you want those forever friend kind of entities who can fall up at your RPC, at PCRG, at Ready, who can be like, oh, it's actually not me you need

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: to talk to. You need

[Zoie Saunders]: to talk to so and so. And having that deep knowledge within that system is kind of we're saying is really important to invest in.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: Oh yeah, no, I completely agree and totally understand. Would it be possible for us to get that spreadsheet?

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: Sure. Yeah, it's kind of messy right now.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: That's all right. Yeah, for sure. We are a little bit over time. We have to go on

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: to our next subject. So thank you very much for joining us this morning. I think we will probably have you in again for more discussions, I think.

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: Great. Thank you so much. We'll be happy to have that. Did we share our handout with you? Because we do have the handout.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: It's on our website. It's on

[Denise Smith]: your web page. We do

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: have paper copies if anybody wants that as well. Happy to come back anytime. Thank you.

[Unidentified committee member]: Thank you very much.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Have a great day. Thank you very much. Thanks for your time. Thanks, everybody.

[Gary Holloway]: And of course, since the

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: entire boat is locked off, there's a car accident. You're what? Then you had all the rubberneck

[Gary Holloway]: that had in the car accidents. What happens is that means all the alternate routes are all all clouded. They they they're not designed for the volume.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: I know. Will put that in.

[Gary Holloway]: Despite my attempts to work around it,

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: because I knew when I went up, there's nothing there. It has.

[Unidentified committee member]: I would stay with like, in their house, and

[Emily Carris Duncan]: then they taste and make a smile.

[Unidentified committee member]: So Oh. Just had to wait. Get snakes. Yeah. Get out of my way.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So switching gears now. We're gonna say,

[Unidentified committee member]: update the CPE draft

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: draft committee bill that our legislative council, Beth St. James, is going to walk us through, and then we'll be hearing from secretary Saunders and others from the agency of education on the draft. Good morning,

[Beth St. James]: Good morning. Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council. It is a pleasure to be with you all. I'm just pulling up the draft. Would you like me to share

[Gary Holloway]: my screen?

[Unidentified committee member]: Yes, please.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: How's that? Good. Okay. I just want to let the committee know we're not going to be taking a break, so if you need to take a walk out, go ahead and do it. Just don't do it en masse.

[Beth St. James]: So we're gonna walk through draft 2.1, you haven't seen draft 1.1, so don't worry about that, of a committee bill entitled An Act Relating to the Transformation of Vermont's career, technical education, governance and funding systems. This is language provided by the agency. So I will do my best to answer any questions, but I may not be the best person to ask questions to today. So you're lucky to have Aoille in the room with us. So I'll just defer to the chair on who's the best person to answer that question. So we're just gonna walk through, there's a lot of strike through here, there's a lot of new language. This is a transformation bill. So hang on till the end, it might all come together. Okay, so the first thing we're doing is we are making amendments to Section one is making amendments to the definition section. So this bill lives totally in Chapter 37 of Title 16, which is the CTE chapter. CTE is pretty self contained within that chapter in Title 16. There are concepts all over Title 16 and other areas of the law that may apply. But when I am, as your education policy attorney, I'm thinking about CTE, this is the chapter I'm thinking about. So there is a definition section to this chapter, and the first section makes amendments to that section. So anything, as you know, that is not struck through is current law and not underlined is current law, and there's no proposal to change it. So I'm just gonna skip over, scroll language where there's no strikethroughs, there's no new language. You can see retaining all of these definitions. And the first change would be when we get down to the fifth definition of sending district. The proposal here is to change that definition to mean a school district that sends a student to a regional CTE center for CTE instruction. When I said, hang on, this may not make sense until we get some more of the concepts here. The proposal again is proposing to strike the definition of receiving district as a term that's not needed under this proposal. Same for the definition of service region on page three of the bill. And then the next change in this definition section will be to CTE tuition. The proposal here is to change that definition to actually be defining the term CTE funding. And you'll see that the entire current definition of CTE tuition is struck through, And then there's new language on lines nine and ten. So CTE funding means the statewide for the statewide CTE ESSA. ESSA, ESA? ESSA. Hang tight, we will get there. Again, keeping adult career and technical education, that definition, post secondary career and technical education, keeping post secondary student, I'm on page four now, Keeping the definition of high school. We come to a brand new term.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: We'll read just the 15. Can we actually look at 14?

[Beth St. James]: You want me to read the question? Okay. So right now, comprehensive high school, this is a term I see misused all the time because it is such a lovely colloquial meaning. Comprehensive high school is this is a defined term, as you can see, it is defined as a public or independent school other than a CTE center that provides secondary career technical education approved under section fifteen thirty three of this title. Comprehensive high school does not mean a regional high school that offers CTE programming by definition. It may include a school like that, but under Vermont law, I believe we only have four comprehensive high schools. St. Johnsbury Academy and Linden Institute, Canaan High School offers CTE programming, but is not a CTE center, and Missisquoi offers CTE programming, but is not a CTE center. And this proposal is saying we're gonna keep that concept. You wanna go on?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. But as we continue discussions, we may want to we will talk to the secretary as well as a new structure for this definition of a comprehensive ice cream. I

[Beth St. James]: really should have taken my eye doctor up on the bifocal option.

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: A journey. No,

[Beth St. James]: I don't need it for the reading. I need it just to see the chair. Okay, so CTE Educational Service Agency is defined as the entity appointed by the agency of education to oversee and ensure the provision of CTE programming at all regional CTE centers and comprehensive high schools and to receive an appropriation in support of secondary CTE for all secondary students in the state. The CTE ESSA shall be a public body, and this is the definition of public body in the public meeting law and public records section of Title I, shall be subject to the requirements of open meeting law. And that's it for the definition section. This definition will be important. This is the concept that the whole draft intends to build out and flush out as the CTE ESSA. So keep coming back to this definition. Section two, now all of our sections are gonna be amending entire subchapters in chapter 37. So section two is amending the subchapter that is currently entitled State Board of Education. This proposal is proposing to instead retitle the subchapter to Agency of Education. And the first section here currently is responsibility of the state board, and this proposal or this draft is suggesting that we change that to the responsibility of the agency of education because the substantive change here is that currently the state board has overall responsibility for the effectiveness of CTE education. And this draft is proposing that the agency would take on that role. You can see anywhere there's board, agency is swapped.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So the question is for Beth or question is on language.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Regarding that, not even the language, but just a question about whether or not is that a normal frame for other states where the AOE is?

[Beth St. James]: The Agency of Education is our department. It the highest regulatory body in our state. So for education, every state does things differently. I see no legal reason why this would not be. It's a policy choice.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Correct. I was just wondering if it's normal for the ARE to be the highest.

[Beth St. James]: Every state, if a state has a State Board of Education, every state has their role differently. There is not one model for every state. So again, keeping the same overall responsibility for the effectiveness in career and technical education, the concept the same, but changing who has the ultimate responsibility. On page five, you can see none of this language related to what is having the responsibility mean. None of that has changed till we get to subsection B. The proposal here is to strike through, to repeal subsection b entirely. Do you want me to walk through the language that's repealed or just note that it's repealed?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Well, I think it's important for us to understand what's what proposal is.

[Beth St. James]: So currently, in order to provide regional CTE services efficiently, the state board designates a service region for each CTE center. And I think we did a lot of work around that last year looking at those service regions. And then the board can designate a service region for two or more comprehensive high schools. That concept would be repealed in this draft. And then again, for a school district that is geographically isolated from a Vermont CTE center, the state board may approve CTE in another state as the CTE center that district students may attend. And then there's information about transportation assistance and some specific language about Windham Southwest Supervisory Union. All of that is struck through and related to school budgets and funding. All of that language is struck through and repealed here. Section fifteen thirty two, we're still in that sub chapter, which is kind of like the oversight sub chapter of Career and Technical Education, minimum standards, measurement of standards. This section keeps the state board as the rulemaking body for career and technical education. They currently own those CTE rules, and this draft would keep them owning the rules. Again, all of this length, no strike throughs until we get to subdivision six on page seven, line 13. The change suggested here is that the rules would need to include accounting procedures and standards, including methods for calculating tuition, instead of just calculating tuition period. This proposes that it would be the rules would contemplate calculating tuition for out of state students receiving their CTE education in Vermont.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: So if we're doing away with the state board above, is there a reason why we're keeping them down here?

[Beth St. James]: They would retain rule making authority for career and technical education.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: But is there a reason why we're doing that instead of shifting it over to a new as well?

[Beth St. James]: I think that's a policy choice.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Right.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: We'll get it for later. Again,

[Beth St. James]: no changes to any of these requirements of what should be in rule until we get to page eight subdivision three, line nine. No longer would the rules be required to have procedures by which the secretary will review and comment on the employment qualifications of candidates for positions at CTE centers for whom state salary assistance will be requested. Spoiler alert, the concept of salary assistance no longer exists in this draft. We're gonna repeal that. And then on subdivision four, instead of requirements for CTE centers, it's requirements for the CTE ESSA to provide programs designed to acquaint prospective students with their career and technical courses of study. So taking it from a center responsibility to a state level responsibility with the CTE ESSA. Procedures by which instead of the secretary will review and approve use of course of study credits, the CTE ESSA would be responsible for that. And that's it for changes to the, essentially, rules section.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: What was the stricken language just above there?

[Beth St. James]: Secretary is replaced with CTE ESSA. Maybe

[Unidentified committee member]: it's later, but I think there's a rule that talks about title minutes of CTE. It talks about students being able to go really to any tender. And I'm wondering if when you're changing the service area, striking that and then how that rule might be affected to better get access to at least that's the latter part, it's not here.

[Beth St. James]: Yeah, I think once you have a bigger picture idea of the system, it may not answer your question, but it may clarify your question. There is a section at the end that talks about updating the CTE rules.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Sounds good.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yep.

[Beth St. James]: Okay, so we're on page nine, section fifteen thirty three, CTE Center of Law. So again, keeping the majority of this language the same, at least once in each period of five years, the secretary shall evaluate the effectiveness of each CTE center, The language struck would be in coordination with the Vermont Advisory Council on CTE. The evaluations that the secretary would be performing, The language remains unchanged for the rest of that section.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Just wondering. Something I have to talk to the secretary about, but I'm just wondering why it would be in coordination with DISA.

[Beth St. James]: Good policy question for Course of study evaluation, very similar concept. At least once in each five year periods, the secretary shall evaluate the effectiveness of each course of study offered by the CTE ESSA. Again, that in coordination with the Vermont Advisory Council on CTE is struck. And instead of the course of study offered by any individual CTE center, it would be the course of study offered by the CTE ESSA in general. And then what that evaluation looks like remains unchanged. We are now on page 11, line six, section three. We're now in subchapter three, local career technical education programs. Brand new statute to this subchapter entitled Responsibility of the CTE Education Service Agency. That's what ESSA stands for, is Education Service Agency. So the CTE ESSA shall have responsibility for providing secondary and adult career technical education programming in regional CTE centers and in comprehensive high schools. The CTE ESSA shall be managed by a governing board, as outlined section fifteen forty two of this title. We'll get there. The CTE ESSA shall annually propose the budget for operation of the CTE ESSA and its programs, ensure regional CTE centers offer programs designed to acquaint prospective students with CTE programs that do not require an enrollment commitment. I'm on page 12. After giving due consideration to efficient and cost effective use of the center, establish fees for building and equipment use, establish a CTE tuition rate for out of state students attending Vermont CTE centers, make the center's facilities and equipment available for providing CTE education to adults, use and maintain all facilities designed and constructed for CTE in a manner consistent with that purpose, except when those facilities are not needed for CTE and the secretary consents, and arrange with school districts to provide professional development for coordinated CTE exposure curriculum in middle and high school. So brand new statute, brand new concept. These would be the duties essentially of the responsibility of the CTE ESSA.

[Unidentified committee member]: Who would pay those fees or is that covered later?

[Beth St. James]: Cover later. So unsatisfying, I know.

[Herb Olson]: Okay,

[Beth St. James]: so section fifteen forty one, we're in the same chapter, sub chapter in title 37. Currently, this is the responsibility of local school boards that operate CTE centers. Now we're going to amend that to read responsibility of local school boards that house career technical centers. So a school board that houses a CTE center, the school district would no longer be operating the center under this concept. Within its district facilities, has responsibility for providing access to the CTE ESSA to provide secondary and adult career technical education services. Subsection B would be repealed. It's the requirement to establish a regional advisory board for a school district that operates a CTE center. And you'll remember that of the different operational models in our current system, we've got school boards that operate a local CTE center, that's the vast majority, I believe it's fourteen, fifteen, right? Then you've got those two comprehensive high schools that are also public schools, so operated by a school district. Then you've got four standalone CTE centers that are operated by a regional CTE school district. That's different by the school district that operates K through 12. And then you've got the two independent schools that operate CTE centers that have been designated as regional tech centers. So this language is saying, if you are a school board that currently operates a CTE center, we're now no longer referring to that as operating, we're referring to it as housing. It's located in your district. And the requirement to establish a regional advisory board for those school districts is repealed. And then subsection C is what the school board responsibilities are. Current law is that the school board that operates a CTE center would consult with its regional advisory board and then has the following responsibilities. This draft is changing it to a school board that houses a regional CTE center within its district facilities, and we've repealed the regional advisory board concept above in subsection B, so we're repealing that language in subsection C. So this is what the school board is required to do. Enter into an operating agreement with the CTE ESSA related to the CTE center's use of space, technology, staffing, utilities, shared spaces, staff, student, and visitor parking, and other aspects of facility usage and permit the use of and maintain all facilities designed and constructed for CTE in a manner consistent with that purpose, except when those facilities are not needed for CTE and the secretary consents.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: And then the So this means that the school district will hire staff in contract with the ESOP?

[Beth St. James]: I don't read this language as having anything to do with staff, and I think we may get to that later on. I read this as just the buildings.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Because it says technology staffing. Oh, it does.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: I wonder if that's like facilities.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: That's why I asked our council what

[Beth St. James]: I think that's a great inconsistency with my understanding of the plan. And so an area to clean up depending on where you decide to go with this language. Thank you. Okay, so Subdivision 3 is repealed. Sorry,

[Gary Holloway]: but this may be

[Unidentified committee member]: later, but under this language, is the board responsible for maintenance of those facilities?

[Beth St. James]: The school district Yeah, I'm sorry. I would say that this language is not, well, let's see. It it does say that the school district board would be required to maintain all facilities. So

[Unidentified committee member]: So they would be

[Beth St. James]: I don't know that this language is as specific as that. Again, that's a policy area that you may wanna flush out. Yep. Again, subdivision three is repealed requiring decentralization of CTE programs where it's advantageous to the service region, employment of an assistant director for adult education and a director of technical education that's no longer a duty of the school board that houses the CTE center, establishing admission and program completion policies, periodically evaluating the success of the center, periodically evaluating the quality of each course of study, coordinating use of the center with the Vermont State Colleges, offering programs to design to acquaint prospective students with CTE programs that do not require an enrollment commitment and establishing fees for building and use equipment. None of that remains the responsibility of the school board. A lot of that language should look familiar. We just walked through some of it in the responsibilities of the CTE ESSA. And then this language, let's see, the school. So that was everything we just walked through in current law was the school board is required to consult the regional advisory board. Subdivision or subsection D was the school board's sole responsibility, and that was establishing tuition, making the facilities available for adult CTE, and maintaining the facilities. And that's, again, no longer the school board's responsibility. Section, I'm on page 15, section 54A, responsibility of the local boards sending school districts would be modified to responsibility of just school districts in general. So a school district that operates public education in grade ten, eleven or 12 shall provide students enrolled in grades ten, eleven and twelve with a genuine opportunity to participate fully and benefit from spirit technical education.

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: This is expanding. It's expanding that.

[Beth St. James]: I will say operates. Again, this is a policy choice,

[Zoie Saunders]: but not all school districts.

[Beth St. James]: So if you wanna sweep in school districts that are non operating, we'll need The to work with school districts, in general, would coordinate transportation with the CTE ESSA. And then subdivision three, this is language that touches upon something that Rep Olson was getting to about if your region does not offer a course of study, paying tuition to another CTE center. That language current law is structured and replaced with on line 18 on page 15, the CTE ESSA will work with students when a course of study is not offered at their local CTE center to facilitate attendance at a center where the course of study is offered, where possible transportation shall be provided.

[Herb Olson]: Issue I've been concerned about, as we've heard testimony, is the fact that some CTEs have capacity for specific programs and the adjoining one that's not, but that isn't true of all of their offerings. So will there be under this kind of proposal, some flexibility program by program so that people can maximize and not

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Let's wait until we have the secretary up there because Beth can answer that.

[Beth St. James]: Page 16, subsection B, a school district that maintains a secondary school shall provide the names and addresses of enrolled students to the CTE center instead of for its region. Now those names would be going to the CTE ESSA, and that's a current law concept. Subsection C here is brand new language. So a school district that operates grades six through eight shall coordinate with the CTE ESSA to offer curriculum or coursework designed to inform students about CTE opportunities and age appropriate career navigation and pathway planning. Section fifteen forty two, brand new concept, but we're embedding it into a section that already exists. So the regional advisory board concept is completely struck here, and we're replacing that with the CTE ESSA board. And the CTE, I'm on page 16, line 13, the CTE ESSA governing board shall consist of and then if we go down to page 17, line eleven, five members appointed by the governor. Members shall represent CTE administrators, the interests of employers and employees and school board members. And that's it.

[Gary Holloway]: Page

[Beth St. James]: 18, career technical courses in other schools, we're adding that by rule, the state board may require Let's see. Be prescribed by rule, high schools may include within their courses of study. Or adding the concept of career exploration to what is already allowed, which is pre technical and career technical courses. And then before establishing a program, a middle or high school is required to consult with, instead of the regional advisory board, the CTE ESSA. The CTE ESSA is required to provide support and technical assistance to other schools providing career exploration, pre technical, or career technical courses.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: If there's a school that already has the program, they are excluded from this, correct?

[Beth St. James]: I don't know that this language on its face is that specific. While we Section fifteen forty six, while the draft keeps the concept of comprehensive high schools, the statute that governs comprehensive high schools, there's a recommendation here to repeal that statute. Moving on to section four, line 19, we're now in a new sub chapter in title 37, sub chapter four, eligibility and tuition. A secondary student shall instead of be enrolled in, we're changing that to attend a program of part time or full time CTE at a CTE center, if the student applies for the program, that's current law, and is accepted into the program by the center, that is current law. A secondary student who is eligible to instead of enroll, attend a CTE center, And here's the language, current law about residing in ascending school district and who so applies shall be enrolled for academic education in the high school associated with the Career and Technical Center and what comes with that. All of that language is struck, and instead we have a secondary student who is eligible to attend a CTE center. If you go to page 20, line six, shall continue to be enrolled for academic education in the student's high school.

[Unidentified committee member]: So just going back to the changes to section fifteen fifty one.

[Beth St. James]: Can you give me a page?

[Unidentified committee member]: I'm sorry. 19? Yep. And so it sounds to me like, are you changing kind of what the obligation is from enroll versus the 10, but maybe everything too much into that?

[Beth St. James]: I do think there is meaningful difference in those two terms.

[Unidentified committee member]: Okay, so if that's so, then I was wondering how that related back to that paragraph on page 15, I guess, that talked about CTE, ESAs, I'll get a hint on that. We'll work with students when possible, that kind of thing. One seems like it's sort

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: of like an entitlement, but the other part has a few caveats.

[Beth St. James]: I don't think that this language on its face is that specific or technical.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay, thank you.

[Beth St. James]: Okay, so we are on page 20. Secondary students who enroll in CTE centers may enroll in part time, and we're just cleaning up some out of date language here. I'm on page 20, line 11, section 15.51A, secondary students not enrolled in a high school. Enrollment in a high school shall not be a precondition for enrollment in CTE. That's current law. We're gonna skip down to line 16, such a student who applies for and for whom space is available shall be enrolled at no cost. The CTE SM may require the student to meet admissions criteria set forth in the admissions policies of the CTE ESSA and any program specific requirements. And then subsection B related to establishing regional procedures to require resident students to discuss educational opportunities with CTE centers or the high school that do not interfere with enrollment in a CTE center, that language is repealed.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: That would

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: basically eliminate the funds following the child.

[Beth St. James]: So the plain language says enrollment in a high school shall not be a precondition for enrollment in a CTE center for a student of any age without a diploma. So our compulsory attendance age in Vermont is only 16. So it's possible that you don't have to be enrolled in a high school, but you wanna take CTE courses. So I think that would be those students. But I also read this to be, if you are 16 and not enrolled in a high school, Without understanding how this actually operates, just looking at the plain language, I would say home study is contemplated in here too. There may be a clarifying rule in the state board rules that I'm not up on that may clarify this further. But just looking at this language, anyone who's not enrolled in a high school. We're on page 21, out of state secondary student tuition. Current law, our CTE system functions largely on a tuition system. And so this draft eliminates the tuition system for our in state students, VT students, but does require that out of state students pay tuition. And so this section would require centers to establish charges for out of state students as determined by the CTE ESSA. And then subsection C is repealed. This is relating to our current funding system for CTE. That language is repealed because it's no longer, it's not necessary for the new funding system. Same with the tuition charge to a school district on subsection D. This is no longer how, there's no tuition now. Adult students, section fifteen fifty three, I'm on page 22, line four. Still the requirement that adult students who are qualified shall be enrolled, but the rate, the cost for them is not to exceed 40% of the announced tuition in current law. And now we have the tuition for adult students would be established by the CTE ESSA and approved by the State Workforce Development Board.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: ESSA is establishing the amount Correct. But the state workforce development board has to approve that?

[Beth St. James]: That's how I read this, the plain meaning of this language, yes.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Say more about that.

[Beth St. James]: Section five of the drafts, line 10, page 22, we're in another sub chapter of chapter 37 in title 16, state financial assistance. This is the sub chapter and you'll see related to tuition assistance and the salary assistance for directors and assistant directors, all of that language you'll see a strike through. Section fifteen sixty three was the tuition reduction statute. The proposal here is to strike through all of that language and repurpose the section for state funding for CTE. Here's your new funding concept. If you go to page 22, line 19, annually, the governor shall include in the governor's recommended budget an amount projected by the CTE ESSA to be necessary for the support of CTE in Vermont. Amount should be not less than, I'm on page 23 now, CTE center expenditures for fiscal year 'twenty six increased by NIPA, which is an inflator, and I'm not gonna read all of that. So that's our new funding system for CTE in this draft.

[Denise Smith]: CTE

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: center expenditures does not include comprehensive high school expenditures, or does it? Avert your eyes, I'll scroll.

[Beth St. James]: So CTE center, the term regional center is defined as any of the 16 regional CTE centers. And we definition keep for comprehensive high school and they are not one of the regional centers. So I would say the plain reading of this language, yes, it would just be anything that fits under the definition of CTE center. Again, that would be an area, depending on your intent and where you wanna go, that we could certainly clean up with language.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: And then if there are cost savings by doing this regionally or on a larger scale, they can't be realized because you can never spend less than what we spent in 2026?

[Beth St. James]: I don't know what the intent behind this language was, but that is how I read this in language. That yes, going forward, the amount shall not be The recommendation in the governor's budget can't be less than CTE center expenditures. And I think CTE center expenditures may be a term that we may wanna explore further or define further for fiscal year 'twenty six increased by an inflator. So yes, I think that's how this reads.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Keep it back up to the beginning. So we're telling the governor that governor has to put in his budget the amount that the ESSA is saying is needed to support CTE?

[Beth St. James]: Yes.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You know, we could do that.

[Beth St. James]: Well, as your legislative lawyer, you can do whatever you want.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Was there an idea? I

[Beth St. James]: that's an area that you can explore.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yeah, I guess I had a related question. So the language says governor would appropriately not required, but it would not be based on the number of students necessarily. There'd be a projection, but like if it's not tied to the number of students.

[Beth St. James]: So I don't know. All this language says is the governor's recommended budget has to include a projected amount that the CTE ESSA is estimating is necessary to support CTE education system. Whether there would be refinement on how that number is arrived at in rule, I think is an open policy question. You decide to run with this concept, that's certainly something that you could put into, you could provide further refinement there. Thank you.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yeah, just following up on that, think even before that expenditure might need a little more definition in terms of how it's allocated, operating capital expenses, academic.

[Beth St. James]: Yes. This is not, at least in this section, it's not CTE center expenditures is not a defined term. Again, I don't have the rules open in front of me. Perhaps it's defined there. If it's not, that's certainly something that I would suggest you wrap your heads around and either understand what that means or actually come up with a definition.

[Unidentified committee member]: But we don't have to hold tight. No.

[Beth St. James]: No. This is it. This is it. So again, the rest of the section is struck through and repealed. This is the language related to the funding for CTE. And I'm moving on to page 24, Section fifteen sixty two, tryout, which is a concept in current law, is repealed. It's related to certain costs. So certain programs repealed. Transportation assistance section would be repealed. This is related to transportation assistance between the school district and the CTE center and where the requirement to bear that cost is. That language is all repealed. The concept of salary assistance is repealed. I am on page 27 now, brand new section of the bill, Regional Career Technical Center School Districts for Appeal. This is the Regional Career Technical Center School District standalone subchapter is the enabling language for Regional Career Technical Center School Districts to be stood up and operate. And the proposal here is to strike that entire subchapter, to repeal that entire subchapter, because under this proposal, there would no longer be standalone Regional Career Technical Center school districts. Section seven, we're still in chapter 37 of Title 16. We're in the last subchapter of this chapter, post second

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Let me go back to that again. So we're saying that we would no longer have any Regional Career Technical Center school districts. I'm just trying to understand what that means. So what is right now, what is a Regional Career Technical Center school district?

[Beth St. James]: Those are the four stand alone centers that are formed by the language that lives in this subchapter five a, or they have their own school boards. I believe it's the Central Vermont Career and Technical Center is the most recent example of service region that got together, voted to form its own standalone school district.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Which means that they provide

[Gary Holloway]: everything. No, just CTE. Just CTE.

[Beth St. James]: Yes. Okay. They have member school districts that provide for the general education of their resident students. Yes. And no taxing capacity for those regional CTE center school districts. But this draft proposes to do away with that concept. And I will say, should you take this up and decide to pursue this concept, there's a lot of transition processes that would be required to achieve this vision that's not contemplated in this draft. And depending on who you talk to,

[Denise Smith]: it could be overwhelming.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That is in the details.

[Beth St. James]: We're talking salary funds, collectively bargained contracts, buildings, business operations, all of those payroll, all of those things. Section seven, concepts you all have explored before, and I am exploring from here in perpetuity, apparently. Section seven, chapter 37, sub chapter six, this is our post secondary career technical education sub chapter. The powers and responsibilities of the board of trustees of the Vermont State Colleges remains the same, but we are inserting that they're coordinating with the CTE ESSA and its secondary regional career technical centers. Again, the same concept in secondary students and post secondary career technical education programs. So it's no longer that a secondary career technical center can be enrolled in a post secondary career technical course at the expense of the student's school district, it would be at the expense of the CTE ESSA because the CTE ESSA has all of the CTE funds. And then again, we've removed the concept of regional advisory boards. So the school board awarding graduation requirements, graduation credits is required to consider the recommendation of the CTE ESSA governance board when it relates to whether the secondary student would get credit for the credit for the work they're doing as a secondary student. Section eight, we are now out of chapter 37 in title 16. We are now in the school district chapter in Title 16, Section five sixty three. This is the power of school boards. So currently, school boards are required to prepare a budget annually, and that budget is required to include, on page 30, starting on line 11, all revenues from all sources and expenses, including as separate items, any assessment for an SU of which it is a member and any tuition to be paid to a CTE center. The CTE funding system contemplated by this draft does away with the tuition concept, so we're removing that from the requirement to be part of a school budget. Section nine, we're done with Title 16. We've made our changes to Title 16. Section nine is a piece of section law that requires JFO. So Act 73, Section 45A requires a report back to you all from a contractor that JFO is responsible for contracting with to provide specific feedback on the foundation formula that you all passed last year in Act 73. Part of that requirement built into Act 73 is what does it cost, What is the cost of CTE education and how should that interact with the foundation formula? There's a clarifying language here that in addition to that study, JFO is required to report the amount of funding dedicated to CTE within the foundation formula. It is the intent of the general assembly to avoid the duplication of funding for CTE by directly appropriating CTE funding to the CTE ESF and adjusting the education finance system accordingly.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: So we're jumping ahead of this report by making this the law?

[Beth St. James]: I see this Well, we haven't gotten to the effective date yet. But I see this as, in addition to the report, so coinciding with the JFO's report or contractor report, that there would be a very specific report on exactly what this says, the amount of funding dedicated to CTE within the foundation formula. The language in Act 73 requires the contractor to report back on the costs of CTE and how that should be factored into the foundation formula. And I don't know what that contractor is going to recommend. I believe the intent of this language, and it's really something for the agency to speak to, is around this duplication. So if you were to enact this language and you've got one lump sum coming off the top of the Ed Fund going to the CTE ESSA, and you also have a contractor report that says there should be a wait for CTE, right? We're gonna wanna reconcile this. Section 10, rulemaking. So on or before 09/18/2026, AOE shall submit a proposed draft rule to the state board to update the CTE rules. Then the state board's required to consider those proposals and actually update the rules by filing with ICAR, which is the step before LCAR, proposed new CTE rules on or before 11/27/2026. And then I'll take full credit for the poor section 11 effective date. Depending on where you go with this, we'll need to think long and hard about how to be clear in our effective dates. So I just put language in here to make it clear the intent as I understood it for this bill. And so that is that the act would take effect on 07/01/2027. So all of your repeals would be going into effect on 07/01/1927. And again, we're gonna have to think long and hard about how the system what needs to be in place while the systems are kind of dual running until 07/01/1928, when the CTE asset actually takes over operations. This would be an area for me to really play with, depending on where you go with this bill. But I believe that the ultimate goal would be fully operational by 07/01/2028.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: The funding formula that was talking about post secondary, I'm reading it right that the proposal was to have regular CTE and adult CTE funded by the ESF?

[Beth St. James]: Yes. That's my understanding,

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: yes. And

[Beth St. James]: I think there's a difference between adult CTE and post secondary CTE. And that is the draft.

[Unidentified committee member]: Might have missed something. Adult education, is

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: that covered?

[Beth St. James]: No, adult education is not covered in here. This is just career and technical education.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Any questions for that? No. Thank you. Doctor. Salmoners, patient, where are living?

[Zoie Saunders]: Morning. Good morning. I'm also joined by Emily Simmons online, our the AOE legal counsel. If you can't see her, if she raises her hand, please let me know. Okay. Good morning, Emily. I have made note of some of the questions that came up. So would you like me to run through those to address them altogether and then go into areas where you want to more deeply explore?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Maybe start out by giving us your vision of this change, and then we start talking about some of the questions that you heard and then you can start exploring more. That makes sense.

[Zoie Saunders]: Certainly. So the vision for this proposal is to achieve universal CTE and to really fund and resource CTE as a state priority. The measures that are put forward are designed to promote consistency in terms of education quality across the state and allow for strategic budgeting to ensure that we're able to invest in improvements and new programs in areas where they're most needed across the state. This is designed to overcome many of the barriers to CTE access that have been well documented, including proximity to a CTE center. And also, competition of funding has often come up as a barrier when you think about students taking advantage of these opportunities, along with consistency around training, curriculum, and oversight across the state. So within this proposal, we are recommending a movement towards a universal CTE framework, which is governed by an education service agency and would be funded to ensure a consistent level of program quality across the state, along with pushing in programs and services in high schools that currently do not have an attached tech center, and also in middle school and in early high school. So it's designed to create a continuum of support and really embed a career and technical education as the way that we learn and creating that early exposure in middle school and then strengthening the quality, rigor and equity of programs offered across the state. Getting into some of the specific questions that I heard around the legislation, there was some question around the rationale for shifting from the State Board of Education oversight of CTE to the agency of education. This is to be consistent with the statutory obligations for K-twelve. So currently, in statute, the State Board of Education does have oversight. This is largely a carryover from 2011 when the department transitioned to being an agency. We are continuing to recommend that the State Board of Education maintain rulemaking in this proposal. And we have worked with the State Board to develop a process that we think is really leveraging the expertise of both agencies. So later in the draft language, you noted that we as an agency would provide a draft to the state board for the rulemaking process, and then they would take it from there to oversee the public comment period and finalizing the rules. So we mutually came to that approach about a year and a half ago, realizing that would be a way to maximize the resources and expertise of the team and also time involved. So that was one of the questions that was raised. I heard a lot of questions around enrollment across districts. This continues to be a focus of many committees. We want to make sure that those students that want to take advantage of the CTE program are able to do so. So currently, there is the ability for those students that are on a waitlist or were not accepted into a CTE program in their home district to enroll in a program in another district. Act 72 further strengthened that language to provide clarity around the roles and responsibilities of districts to share directories of students and also reinforce the process around the tuitioning if there is a difference across districts. So that is currently in law with Act 72 was signed in to law last year. What this does is it shifts those responsibilities to the Education Service Agency. So the provisions that were put into Act 72, where the district would need to share their directory for those students on our waitlist, they're sharing that now with the Education Service Agency, with the intention of the ESA having visibility to all program openings and offerings and allowing to help navigate for that student where they can enroll in a program based on their interest and need. Additionally, the ESA's responsibility is to evaluate statewide those programs that are in high demand. And so in this future state, through budgeting and planning, we would expect to see that those very high demand programs are offered in all corners of the state of Vermont to ensure that there is sufficient program capacity for students to take advantage of those programs that are strongly aligned with the industry needs of our state and often have waitlists. Some of the work approaching the statewide is allowing us to really make those strategic choices around how to expand programs. This would still allow for, through the comprehensive needs assessment, the ability for local communities to identify some specific industry needs and offer those programs in those parts of the state. But taking a statewide view allows us to really think strategically around how to make program spots available in those areas that are often oversubscribed for certain centers. In terms of the Do you want me to keep going?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Are there any questions? Guess, when I look at what we have now, so, of state minds that we have in RAD, where there's various business members on there, letting CP director know what's going on in the community, and now we're those are going away. What as are you contemplating some type of advisory for the regions in order to let the yes or no what's going on in those regions?

[Zoie Saunders]: We're contemplating content specific advisory boards. So advisory boards that would be aligned to the sector in which those programs are offered, and providing direct support to the educators that are teaching those programs. So if we have a number of programs that are on manufacturing, we would have an advisory board to provide oversight support to all of the instructors that are delivering those programs across the state. And the idea there is really to provide that alignment with the industry needs and maximizing the expertise of those industry partners. We've heard that they're often called upon to participate in multiple advisory boards. And so this is really moving towards a content specific approach, so that there's an ability to provide more consistency in terms of the support for educators that are delivering those programs and to really focus on the alignment of the curriculum with the industry needs and what employers are recognizing as important skills and credentials for them entering into those sectors.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: I know, I mean,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: the State Workforce Development Board, can look at globally what's going on in the state, but there could be different things going on in each region where CTE may need to provide specific education that's not relevant to other areas of the state.

[Unidentified committee member]: That's correct.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So how do we make sure that those voices are heard as well?

[Zoie Saunders]: So the education service agency would be required to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment. And that needs assessment is looking not only at the statewide trends, but acknowledging that there may be different demands based on local communities across the state and across regions. The specifics around the partnership opportunities, we can expand upon, but I would envision them working very closely with the districts that are establishing K-twelve in that process, as well as industry partners. I think there were a couple other questions I can go ahead and proactively address. There was a question around the role of the ESA in school quality. So this would be pretty consistent with the roles and responsibilities of the agency of education and districts when we're overseeing school quality. So it's our responsibility as the agency of education to apply our accountability framework to evaluate school quality of all of our schools. And then to work with the school districts in identifying for those schools that may be struggling, working with the school district on a continuous improvement plan to support the targeted gains in areas where we've noted underperformance. But it would be our responsibility similarly with the Education Service Agency, where the agency of education would be responsible for the monitoring and oversight of program quality and identify the quality ratings. We would then work yes with the ESA on a continuous improvement plan.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: If there was a CTE center that was underperforming, do you work with ESA to bring them back into compliance? Correct.

[Zoie Saunders]: It's programs. So it would also be program specific as well. Could

[Unidentified committee member]: you help us understand the difference between enroll versus attend? There was that language in the bill about a student would attend a CTE, but

[Zoie Saunders]: not enroll in the CTE. And I'm wondering, has that been reflective of other student services? Like maybe they're still getting certain services from their And I'll allow Emily Simmons to expand upon this, but it's a distinction around responsibility for where that student is considered in enrollment. So within this proposal, that student that is attending a CTE program is still enrolled in their sending high school, and they'll receive a diploma from their sending high school. But they are attending a CTE program, which is governed and overseen by the ESA. And they still in their high school they're enrolled in, then are they still eligible for various other services? Yes. And Emily, is there anything you want to expand on that?

[Emily Simmons]: That's exactly right. And to put even a finer point on it, I would say the student's legal educational home and entitlement remains in their school district. And similar to some CTE attendance now, there is a, of course, a need for continued coordination between the district and the center for the students' learning support when they're in program time at the CTE center just like now. But the you know, we always have to make sure that we have not been fuzzy about the absolute legal entitlement and that here remains with the school district of residence.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: I

[Zoie Saunders]: also want to point out a couple areas where you had questions that we could provide some more clarity, I think in the language and wanted to note some of those areas that I don't wanna get ahead

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: of your question. Well, maybe that's

[Unidentified committee member]: a good segue, Ben. Two issues that I was curious about was one, it seemed to me, or maybe I was reading too much into it, that there was a shift from CTE students being enrolled versus attending and trying to square that language with previous language about seems to be sort of an obligation, not really firm around enabling that student to attend FCT, I guess, wherever. And, but some of the language was a little nebulous, I think about how they would effectuate that right to go to a CP program, probably allow transportation as much as anything else, but it was kind of vague. So that was one issue that I thought some further clarity might be helpful. The other issue was this concept of expenses. And that encompasses a bunch of, know, I'm thinking of different categories, expenses, operating expenses, you know, is that gonna be per student or some other mechanism? You get capital expenses, transportation expenses that are really kind of different ball of wax and, you know, be difficult to do it, I think, per student basis on those things. So is that the kind of clarity that you're thinking of coming to us with? Or is that something you can comment on?

[Zoie Saunders]: Yeah, so there's a lot of in there. Let me try to break it down and then we can engage in further conversation. So we always go back to this connection between funding, governance and quality. And this proposal is trying to enable a consistent level of quality and exposure to career and technical education beginning in middle school. So the reason there will be a requirement for every district to contract with the ESA is because the general assembly would lay out terms around what programs and services should be offered. That likely should be reflected and updated in our education quality standards so that there is consistency with how those experiences are delivered for students across the state. Within our proposal, we have focused more on the governance and funding enabling those components. But every single district would benefit from the ESA in training their middle school teachers, their teachers in ninth and tenth grade to deliver the curriculum that's developed by the ESA and provides that early career exposure, pre technical education to engage them in this content area early on and allow them to have exposure and developing their interest and potentially being a full time CTE concentrator when they get into eleventh and twelfth grade. So a lot of what you're talking about how to effectuate is really within the terms of the contract between the ESA and and the k twelve districts. Emily, do want to expand on that?

[Emily Simmons]: Well, another concept in the question is the the concept really does intentionally break down the barrier between a student's full time enrollment in CTE and the money that then follows that student. And that's very intentional because I think everyone agrees that that places a burden on the student seeking to obtain those CTE opportunities because even with the best educational interest of the student at heart, of course, the district does experience a loss now when students exercise that right. And so we just think that that is not necessary in this concept. And so when you're seeing a difference between enrollment and attendance, it's to effectuate that more fluid ability for the student to get CTE without it being a legal change in their status or a formal funding change in how that student is funded.

[Zoie Saunders]: It becomes the way we deliver education. It's offered to all students.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yeah. And thanks, Emily. That's the one I was reading also. What I was trying to understand is how that relates to that other provision. I'm trying to find it quickly here that talked about working with students and transportation, if possible, I guess. And I was having trouble connecting those those two provisions in terms of whether there's a real entitlement for the CT student, as I think you're envisioning.

[Emily Simmons]: Right, that transportation as possible is intended and we might need to clean this up to cover more of the rare situation where a student doesn't have the program that they're interested in that's close to their normal school of attendance, where there might be more extenuating circumstances. But as the secretary said earlier, the intent is that the CTE ESA is being proactive in evaluating need, and so we would hope to see fewer of those circumstances overall.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Thank you. I just want

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: to keep going down this path. I have a list of questions. But while we're here, when we're talking about transportation, right now, because there's a partnership between the school, the high school and the CTE, most, not all, of the high schools provide that transportation for the students. It's a very collaborative situation in some areas. And in other areas, the students are left at their own devices. What does this contemplate going forward? Is it because the funding is going to the CTEs? Is it the CTE's responsibility now to provide transportation for all the students that enroll in those programs? Or is it still the school's responsibility to provide that transportation? And if it's the school's responsibility, how do they have money if the money is all going? And so I don't see that addressed here. So I think a lot of these specific questions around the money will be inclusive of the JFO study. And so we are meeting with JFO.

[Zoie Saunders]: They have now contracted with a education finance expert to put a clarity around how all of the funds will be distributed. Within the intent language, it's very clear that the funding needs to support the expansion of CTE. So the proposal we're putting forward is a mechanism to do that. And there'll be further conversation as we are crunching the numbers around the formula that goes into that appropriation. And so your question around the

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: We've been talking a lot about the idea for the future state. Is there an idea that you have for what that would look like? In terms of

[Zoie Saunders]: the formula for how the appropriation would be to

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Should turn be providing the transport?

[Zoie Saunders]: So I think there are some open questions from the legislature around our transportation policy. So we did provide some recommendations for policy considerations moving towards transportation as a requirement for equity. And those are some outstanding questions I think that need to be determined in terms of how the state's going to fund that and how it will be included in the foundation formula.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: So one of my other questions is, we're changing a lot of responsibilities to the CTE ESSA. So my question is, how does it work now and how will it work? And just about one specific thing. So there's a requirement for CTEs right now to provide programs designed to appoint prospective students with career technical courses of STEM. And so is that pre tech? Is that what that is specifically referring to? Or what is that specifically referring to? So

[Zoie Saunders]: the ESA would be responsible for operating the programs that we've traditionally considered in the concentrator programs and developing the curriculum for pre tech and career exposure in the middle school and early high school grades and training those educators to deliver that content.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: So we're separating, see, tech ed and general ed even more. We're pushing in.

[Zoie Saunders]: The idea is not to separate. The idea is to push in to ensure that there is an integrated delivery of education in those early grades that does have alignment with career and industry.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Just Okay. So we

[Beth St. James]: didn't really

[Zoie Saunders]: Part of the effort around coordinated so coordinated curriculum is still, you know, an education quality standard. The difference here is that we're bringing in specialized expertise and support to ensure that we're actually pushing in and coordinating with pre tech and career exploration. So the the idea is not for it to be separate, but to avail districts to an additional expertise to integrate that content.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: So so programs designed to acquaint prospective students with your technical courses, is that pre tech or is that something else? Or is it broader?

[Zoie Saunders]: I think it should be broader. I think we've conceptualized it as pre tech, but that's the work of the ESA, is really thinking about this within how we deliver education, which is a coordinated curriculum. I think the expertise that's being leveraged here is ensuring that there is that alignment and early exposure. And in addition to the curriculum piece, they would also be providing support for those college and career counselors and navigators early on in the students experience as they're developing their personalized learning plans and beginning to explore their interest. Is the concern and maybe it would help me to kind of capture that concern.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Is the concern separateness? No, there are many labels. Basic level of concern is that what does it look like now for CTEs to provide programs designed to appoint prospective students with career technical courses of study? Is that pushing things into their sending schools, or is that offering programs at the tech center that are a little bit of everything? What does that look like today?

[Zoie Saunders]: So what it looks like today, and unfortunately, Ruth wasn't able to join us to provide more context, but what it looks like today, particularly for those CTE centers that are connected with the high school, they're pushing in those programs into the high school and the middle school setting to create that exposure for students. But it's variable in terms of how pre tech is offered across the state and if it's offered across the state. It's more likely to be offered if it's co located with a tech center, and this is creating that equity in terms of early exposure and those grades across the state. So it's not dependent on the proximity in the facility.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Then I have one other question. No.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: But just to stay on this for one more second. Is that in the language, I saw six, seven, eight, and I saw ten, eleven, 12. Yeah.

[Zoie Saunders]: We know that too.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That's on

[Zoie Saunders]: my note. We also value ninth grade. For all the ninth grade students out there, we can

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Yeah.

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: Ask me to take a caviar. Well, I

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: guess then that's so what I want to go next to is we have ten, eleven, 12 at the tech center. Is your vision to have nine there or to have nine with the 678? And if it So I guess that's question Stop. I'll stop after I ask that question, and I'll ask my next one. Because when we're adding more tech Right now we have tech for 11 to 12 graders. So

[Zoie Saunders]: in this model, it's intentional in creating curriculum alignment from middle school till twelfth grade. So we're expanding our understanding of how we offer CTE. There will continue to be full time concentrators as there are now for those students that are really interested in delving into that. And our graduation requirements are structured in a way to really support that deepening of learning and this is a flexible pathway. The difference is ensuring that those students in sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth grade are all getting equal opportunity to have exposure to CTE according to how the curriculum will be mapped on at their developmentally appropriate and age appropriate way across this continuum of learning. So it's moving towards a continuum of learning. So there'll be additional curricular resources that will be available in the younger grades to support that. I think the vice chair, you also noted another correction that we can go back to, and I forget the section number where you had asked if staffing should be included, and it should not be in that section. So we can can make that adjustment.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Okay, so the ESA would

[Zoie Saunders]: be responsible for hiring and overseeing those educators that are delivering the career, the CTE programs in eleventh and twelfth grades, what we kind of consider career concentrators. Then the ESA would be responsible for training those staff members in the middle school and early high school grades, but not employing them. And so that would be part of the contractual agreement. So part of the contractual agreement is delivering training and support for those teachers that they do not employ, but are employed by the district.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: And do we know roughly how many teachers that is across the state? So it would be employed by this new entity?

[Zoie Saunders]: So that would I I can get back to you on that, because it would it would be based on how the modeling works is it's based on the program. So it's identifying the cost of operating the program with assumptions around student enrollment and the the teacher ratios within that. So I can follow-up.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: Just so I have a clear understanding about the grade makeup, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth would be pre tech early exposure, and then eleventh and twelfth would remain subject to

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: as concentrated as. So we do want

[Zoie Saunders]: to create some fluidity here. There are still going to be an option for if you're in eleventh and twelfth grade, you could be a full time CTE concentrator or you could participate at a half time basis. So we actually do want to create that flexibility and alignment with other programs that they want to take. Part of our graduation requirements is actually moving towards students graduating all with one Vermont diploma, but with an area of specialization. And that specialization could be as a CTE concentrator, it or could be in another area where they actually take some CTE courses to support that specialization area. So, your next question is funding. No,

[Emily Carris Duncan]: I was actually curious about the separating of ninth and tenth grade students instead of keeping it in the middle school, high school cohort chunk. How come we're adding ninth and tenth grade students into the discovery zone? Understood. Yes.

[Zoie Saunders]: So I think it would be great also to bring in our curriculum and instruction team around this to give it justice as we're imagining what this looks like. So there's going to be levels of exploration. So it should deepen as you're progressing through the upper grade so that it's not the same content. And ninth and tenth graders are getting the same content as a sixth grader. That would be part of the overall continuum. And I think that would be a great opportunity for our curriculum instruction team and coordination with our CTE team to come back and talk through what that course progression would look like for students. So it's meaningful. I think that's what you're asking for, to make sure that they're deepening their engagement. Yeah. Well, I'm also just thinking kind of just structurally staying within that party card. Absolutely. Thank you. There was a question also, I think, about service regions. So in this model, we're moving towards one CTE ESA. And so the idea is moving away from regional services to universal delivery of CTE. That's the intent of that. So it actually would allow us to some of the changes that were made in Act 72 last year were designed to strengthen the ability for students to move across district lines. This allows that really simplifies that even further because the ESA is really looking at where there's program needed capacity. And they have also access to the directory of students that are interested in the different programs to support them in identifying those courses that are available to them closest to their school. And if we're looking at this and saying, okay, this is a huge demand, but there may be a facility constraint at this particular tech center or there's a distance to this high school where where possible, we could push in those resources at a high school that has available space. Those are things that we need to look at in terms of cost and budgeting. But there would be some, not all programs, some programs really do need very specialized spaces, but others could be provided in a classroom maybe that is underutilized right now. And those would be some of the decisions and looking across the state and identifying need and demand and thinking about how we can deliver specialized programming and pushing those type of programs and support where where it's feasible. Emily, anything I missed to clarify? I think I've gone through most of my notes here. Oh, adult learners, we could talk about I think there was a question around the definition of an adult learner in section eleven fifty three. Anyone not enrolled in a high school, could it stand upon what

[Emily Simmons]: Yes. So current state, the ability to access CTE courses sort of turns on whether or not the individual has a high school diploma or not. That's the dividing line. We're keeping that dividing line in this concept. So an adult learner who has not obtained a high school diploma can enroll in CTE courses, you know, space available for no cost, So that will be the same in this model. And then as is the case now, an adult learner who has obtained a high school diploma can access CTE courses or night courses programming where available for the tuition that is outlined. We understand that there are scholarships available through the Department of Labor that are typically a 100% match for that tuition. So we want to keep the connection with the state workforce development board to ensure that there's coordination on the tuition that would be charged an adult learner and the availability for that funding to hopefully 100 meet that need.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So it's not necessarily approved by state workforce development board. It's coordinating with the state workforce development board.

[Emily Simmons]: And we're comfortable that I think that ESA could get their approval if that's a monetary match. But if that's too strong a word, we can definitely look at changing it to just coordination.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. I mean, I I mean, when I think of approval, it

[Zoie Saunders]: Yes.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You'd have to have the board come together and approve whatever you're what the ESA is trying to do.

[Zoie Saunders]: I think you're right. That's an area we can clarify in the language.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Was, I think, stricken language talked about students that had the ability to receive their high school education in the same center as the CTE if they're from ascending school. So now we've eliminated that. We would be eliminating that. It's not wouldn't that be to the detriment of the student not being if able to it's if there's the sending school is far away, to be able to get their full education if they wanted to go to the CTE center and and receive those their academics as well. And especially half day programs. Yeah. Well, there's full day programs. Right?

[Emily Simmons]: Can we clarify the language we're talking about? I think it's page nineteen and twenty.

[Unidentified committee member]: And

[Emily Simmons]: if so, the intent there is only to eliminate the concept of a sending school paying tuition to the CTE center to reflect the overall concept, not to impact the reality of where an interested student would be able to get that CTE programming.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. I think we wanna make sure that we're not eliminating that.

[Zoie Saunders]: So in other words, the ESA would be providing the programming and support in every context. Right? We're we're eliminating that well,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: just wanna make sure there's some students that are going to a CTE center that are getting their academics at that CTE center as well. Right? So we don't wanna eliminate that availability. So I think that we're we're going backwards now. Okay. Can can you I know others have questions too, but just wanna understand ESA. I know we have it in definition, but does it sit under AOE? Is it part of AOE? Are they their own separate entity?

[Zoie Saunders]: The way that we are conceptualizing the education service agency is its own separate entity. I think where the confusion has been is how that entity is established. And so within what we have suggested, the General Assembly would require the agency of education to do the administrative legwork of establishing kind of the articles of agreement and the organizational requirements to stand up the ESA. At the same time, the board would be appointed and hiring an executive director. So we would be following the instructions of the general assembly based on the requirements of how the ESA needs to function and doing a lot of the administrative work to getting that organization in place. Once the board is established, the executive director is hired, they're overseeing and operating CTE as if they were a district in many respects. And our responsibility continues to be oversight, monitoring, accountability to the quality demands. I think we were eager to think through transition planning. And so in that conversation created some confusion around the roles and responsibilities between the AOE and the ESA. We were just intent on being proactive and identifying that there are a number of administrative and transition tasks that would need to take place and that we could be supportive of getting that organized and up and running. Anything you want to add to

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: that? That's perfect.

[Unidentified committee member]: I wasn't quite clear about what else would be forthcoming from your tropes. And I wasn't quite sure whether you were relying on the JFR study to answer, you know, it's, I would find it hard to have a high even a really good policy vision without, you know, some good understanding of the money flows and how that all works with a little more clarity. So I'm just wondering if that's something that you're anticipating that you can provide us.

[Zoie Saunders]: Yes, we are working closely with JFO. So they've just contracted with their consultant who'll be supporting them. We'll meet with them as early as this Friday to we are supporting them with providing data to inform their study and analysis along with additional inputs and these considerations are one of them.

[Unidentified committee member]: Is that gonna be the the session, though, or are you talking about something in the future?

[Zoie Saunders]: I would hope to come back and provide some updates this session around how this can be operationalized. There needs to be a way to fund CTE, and that's clear that the study is evaluating that. We're proposing a mechanism where we can ensure universal access to CTE and funding CTE first as it's a statewide priority. I'm sure the consultants will have some specific questions around that that we'll be working with them on.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: So going back to the ESA, what I'm trying to understand, when is that going to be a fully independent agency separate from AOE or will it be an agency that's housed within AOE? And then what is the relationship of the BOE to BES?

[Zoie Saunders]: So the Education Service Agency is a separate entity that would have a governing board and an executive director. The Agency of Education would be responsible for overseeing that the quality ESA in terms of like we would a district, ensuring that there is the accountability to the quality expectations and providing that level of monitoring and support that we currently do for districts and schools that are underperforming.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: Okay, and then what's the relationship with the BOE to The USA? Emily, do you

[Jessica (Jess) Savage]: want to expand on that?

[Emily Simmons]: Yes, so the state board, like it does for k 12 education, would have the rulemaking authority. So those are gonna be the quality standards and minimum offerings in CTE programming. So you have the establishment of the the standard that needs to be met by the state board, the actual doing, and operating to that standard by the ESA, and the monitoring that that is happening or continuous improvement where we fall short from the agency of education?

[Zoie Saunders]: Yeah. So I think it would be sorry, didn't recognize the acronym. So we do SPE. So consistent with the state board establishes the standards, we're required to monitor and implement those. And that's the same role we would be playing with the ESA as we

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: would with districts. Thank you. So that's a perfect segue into my question, which is in this version of the bill, the agency is taking over rulemaking for the CTE ESA, and I'm having trouble finding it, but I wrote, and there have been other times, no, sorry, rulemaking is going to the state board. And then there have been other issues where the agency is requesting rulemaking for other education issues outside of the department's purview.

[Zoie Saunders]: But I'm just trying to understand separately in this conversation, but also adjacent to, is there a strategy for what the agency should have rulemaking over versus oversight, versus oversight accountability support? Yes. So last session, the State Board of Education received an appropriation to evaluate the current rules and to begin to make those distinctions around what makes more sense for the State Board of Education to own versus the Agency of Education to own. We are a very collaborative partner in that work. For the purpose of this proposal, we maintained rulemaking with the State Board of Education because we've been proactive in identifying how we will cooperate on these particular rules and have committed to providing a draft of the rules to the State Board of Education first, and then turn it over them to do public comment and rulemaking. We'll have another opportunity at the end of public comment to weigh in on any additional considerations we have on amendments that were made from our original draft language. For this particular purpose, we've done a lot of pre work with the State Board of Education to land on an approach that we think will work for CTE, given that there's a sense of urgency to modernize our CTE rules and there's tremendous interest and shared passion for this work between the AOE and the State Board of Education.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, it's been a little unusual because normally it's the state board, right? The design of the state board is to do the rule making. And so to see that here made sense to me. Every time I see that the agency is requesting rulemaking capability in other areas, and again, not this bill, but I always wonder what is the overall strategy and why is that?

[Zoie Saunders]: I think what you're reflecting on is our original proposal, which had different approach for the AOE. It's different kind of criteria for how the AOE would do rulemaking. What resulted in that was additional study to evaluate and create that rubric around what makes a responsibility for the state board versus the AOE to own. There are times when the state board would like to delegate that authority to the agency of education for a variety of reasons. It might be because of subject matter expertise. It might be because of bandwidth and workload of what the state board is responsible for. So there's a variety of reasons that that happens. I think what we can assure you is that the agency and the state board are working very cooperatively to evaluate what makes the most sense in terms of ownership of those rules.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: So two questions, one is easy, that you probably have to get back with us on, and the other is maybe not. The easy one is non operating districts aren't covered here, and I'm curious if you have a plan for what to do. Only operating districts are mentioned in this version of the bill.

[Zoie Saunders]: I'm sure I'm understanding your question.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: We have statewide districts that don't operate any schools and just send all their schools out to other places, but their responsibility isn't listed.

[Zoie Saunders]: So I think the responsibility of the ESA is the quality of CTE programming for student. And it would be funded to support that wherever those students are receiving their education.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: And then when you presented the slides four weeks ago, two weeks ago, whatever it was, we talked about a final vision of really having tech in regional high schools as part of those regional high schools so that it was very accessible to all students. And this was a bridge to get to that. And I'm not sure I see how we're getting to that in the end.

[Zoie Saunders]: In terms

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: of building structure? In terms of the structure. So what this envisions to me is a fully separate structure for tech from general ed. And if they're going to be co located but fully separate, That's not the vision that I heard articulated the other day when you were here.

[Zoie Saunders]: So the vision is for CTE to be integrated in the way we deliver education. And this is acknowledging that that requires specialized expertise and the districts will be required to contract with the ESA to ensure that there is that connectivity. It's really providing an additional layer of resource and support to achieve that vision of integrating CTE into the ways we deliver education. So that there's consistency and quality. And I think maybe noting where there are specific questions around how we can come back and give you really practical examples of how that would work could be helpful. Because I hear your concern around separateness and that's not the intent at all around this approach. It's really trying to resource our state, both in terms of funding and expertise to achieve that vision. And I think the terms of the contract between the districts and the ESA is a really critical point to make sure that that's being done in a way that's very supportive of those goals and is integrated in our overall education quality and coordinate curriculum framework.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yeah, I think I get that vision, but I find that section where it talks about contracting. Yes. The board contracting with the A. But, you know, a contract, I suppose, is it overseen by you? I mean, if you're just two contracting parties, sometimes you can agree and sometimes you don't agree, right?

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: That's

[Unidentified committee member]: correct. And so, I'm wondering how the vision of having things integrated is gonna be encompassed within that contracting process.

[Zoie Saunders]: Yes. So there would be minimum requirements established by the general assembly that we would ensure are part of those contracts as the agency. So the order of operations of the general assembly through this process would identify what those contractual terms need to be in order to deliver on this educational vision. The agency of education and our work of doing kind of the administrative review of standard of that would include ensure that those minimal requirements are within a contract. If a district chooses to increase their services, they could then add in additional terms to those contracts. That make sense? Yeah. I think it might be helpful to kind of come back and talk about what we would envision or recommend would be part of those minimum requirements. It's actually establishing the expectations for quality integration.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yeah. And I'm just thinking if you're gonna rely on contract process to do that, need to be fairly clear about what needs to be in contract.

[Zoie Saunders]: That's correct. The ESA would be established to deliver a very clear set of services through the contracting process. That is how the appropriation would be determined.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Well, except that can one

[Unidentified committee member]: more. It's not just what services, it's what, how you collaborate, you know, how do you get along together and do the things like calendars and whatever, know, those kinds of things to make it work. And

[Zoie Saunders]: so in this approach, we're assuming that we will have a statewide calendar that's part of act 73. So this will go into place at that same time. And then the terms would be outlined to ensure that consistent quality and that the ESA is funded to deliver that.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Thanks. If you

[Zoie Saunders]: wanna expand upon what the surface is

[Emily Simmons]: if you were still looking for the page, I think it's page 13, lines 11 through 15.

[Zoie Saunders]: And it sounds like there may need to be more clarity as we're talking about the terms of those contracts that the general assembly would require.

[Emily Simmons]: Sorry, lines seven through 10 is where we list. That's where our starting point for what needs to be in that contract. So we want to work on that list.

[Zoie Saunders]: We can come back and talk more specifically on that list because I think that is an important point to talk about this interconnection.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: This might be a little further down the line. I was curious if there was any conversation about teacher training and certification processes.

[Zoie Saunders]: Yes, so the ESA would be responsible for the ongoing teacher professional development for those teachers at the CTE center, along with those that will be delivering some of the pre tech career exploration programming. In terms of licensure, I think the question there might be what are different pathways in order to gain that certificate and we can have Andrew Boutin, who oversees education licensing, come in and speak to that, some of those programs underway.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Michael, It sounds like we're talking for the the contract similar to what Central Vermont Careers Center has with with BUSD. Correct? Because they're a separate entity, but they rent space from.

[Zoie Saunders]: Well, I think you're you're reflecting on a component of the facility use agreement, but the contract would be more encompassing than that,

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: but it it would include the structure would be

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: similar to that where it wouldn't be part of the school, but it's it's in the school system and Okay.

[Zoie Saunders]: It's integrated into the school system and there'll be clear roles based on the terms of the contract, both in terms of how the space is used and how the training is provided to teachers along with how they would operate the actual EASA staff to deliver the program. It

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: works well in our district.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: When you're talking about the ESA creating a new agency, I don't was it contemplated that I know original to get things started, you were talking about AOE providing administrative help to get But it off the are you also contemplating that AOE will also continue to provide administrative assistance or this whole agency will be a new one? It'll be a new. So is that something that's being looked at at JFO as well? We need to understand how much staff it's gonna need and what the cost of it.

[Zoie Saunders]: We'll share with JFO when we need some of the initial modeling we've done and assumptions around what the staffing would look like. And those are definitely assumptions that we would want them to incorporate and review as part of their study.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Just wondering how you settled on five board members.

[Zoie Saunders]: It's just a sec it's a suggestion. There are different ways to configure the board.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. I think we probably want a different configuration, and I think probably small Be

[Emily Simmons]: for that one. Mister chair, I convinced the secretary that my philosophy of boardsmanship is that smaller boards are effective rather than larger boards. But I think that that's gonna be a fun conversation to engage in as we go forward.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I would agree. I think if we were talking about a region, when we're talking about the whole state, I think that it's up for discussion.

[Zoie Saunders]: I think that's where we can have further conversations around the roles and responsibilities of the board versus these content advisory boards and making sure that those relationships are effective in advancing the vision that I think we all share. I also would look at the membership. Think the number will be something that will be debated. We were trying to

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: be reflective of the different expertise that needs to be on the board as well. So it's a helpful suggestion to get started. The agency that's being created will have its own HR department. Correct. And the structure of it, would it cause if that's the case, we would be taking 16 districts that all have business managers, our HR departments, all of that and combining it into one, which would equal officials, it's obvious.

[Zoie Saunders]: So it's I would think about it a little differently. So it's moving from 17 city centers, all governed by a very different structures to one governance unit, which would create efficiencies in and of itself in terms of how you're going to staff the team. And we do have some sample staffing models that we can reflect on. And there would be some flexibility in terms of how that executive director might structure. It's actually you're gonna you're gaining efficiency just in terms of the way that we're organizing one single governance over all of the the CTE programs.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: You.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions at this point? I'll give a time to go for lunch. So let's we will schedule again for next week and have continuing conversation. If you can bring some of the pieces that that give us more insight, it'd be helpful.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And I'm sure that we will be hearing from that pivot flow.

[Unidentified committee member]: We'll start,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: of course, at the same time, we're trying to do budgeting to get our so we but we will come back to this next week.

[Zoie Saunders]: I'd we'd love to come back. And I think just to make sure that we're helpful in your next deliberations, I wanted to reflect back what I heard would be areas to focus on with them. So it sounded like there was a real question around the services that are delivered. And I think that's been reflected in conversation around the contract. But I think we can come back and talk about kind of the expectations and the standards around the service delivery and how that would be fashioned. Does that sound like an important area to focus on? I'd

[Unidentified committee member]: be interested in

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: money flows, I guess,

[Gary Holloway]: in terms

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: and of

[Unidentified committee member]: I wasn't clear whether you can consult with JFO and contact you. I think that's pretty important to know before we make policy decisions.

[Zoie Saunders]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's just naming that it's not clear currently in act 73 how CTE will be funded. And so that's why we're bringing forward this as a proposal to consider an alignment with the intent language of act 73. So that'll definitely be part of the study. But yeah. So how the money flows.

[Unidentified committee member]: And just what it means by expenses and all those components, that kind of stuff. K.

[Zoie Saunders]: I think those are two areas that we can really focus on. But, yeah, we really are seeing this as it's really at the service delivery model. It's a governance unit, but it's really ensuring that we're delivering those high quality services that are challenging to administer within our current construct. Equity and equality.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah, and I think, you know, better understanding what the agency, how role

[Zoie Saunders]: of the agency?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Well, not just the role, but staffing proposals, what are we thinking there? Creation of a new agency and what that's gonna take to do that.

[Zoie Saunders]: Do you hear anything else, Emily, that we wanna make sure we can bring back the following?

[Emily Simmons]: I would point out, I went over the really good drafting that legislative council did, and we discussed some of these same questions as well. So I took away some research that the agency is gonna do to first see if we can show you some models from other states and see if they would make sense within this concept.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. That'd be great.

[Zoie Saunders]: Okay. Thank you for having us.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Sweet. Thank you very much. Emily, thank you. Well

[Emily Simmons]: Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Best

[Gary Holloway]: forced

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: to So thank you very

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: committee, we're lunchtime now. They're back here at 01:00. I'm trying to remember what we're doing.

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: Okay.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Each 06:39 and then we have to

[Unidentified committee member or staff]: look again at eight to five And then at 03:00, we had some people coming in to talk to us about the governor's ADA awards. And then

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: we also have a resolution that's the code we read today on the floor.