Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: As well for the first hour of this conversation that we're going to have on CTE. So today is Wednesday, 03/11/2026 at 09:03 in the morning. And so I wanna welcome our education committee. Thank you for joining us this morning. I'll ask our legislative council to join us. Beth, good morning, and thank you for joining us. Unfortunately, we only had Beth for an hour this morning. We've we've asked her to draft some language according to a letter that we received from back then on some of their thoughts so that we will see what that language looks like and how we can work the languages out.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council. I assume you'd like me to share my screen.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yes, please.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sorry. I'm kind of monopolizing the space up here. So as your chair set you up, this is language based on some of the recommendations from the Acted that you all heard two weeks ago at this point before the break. And it's not really formatted for any particular vehicle, so you'll see it's section A, B, C, etcetera. And depending on what you do with this, we will make it fit somewhere. So the first section is regarding rulemaking. It requires the State Board of Education to engage in a comprehensive update to their CTE rules In consultation with the career technical education directors, the board is required to update the CTE rules to address the following to reflect the current technical education system as it exists on 07/01/2026. Updates to definitions, including definitions for programs, credentials, embedded academics and satellite models, credit standards and competency based pathways, work based learning sequencing aligned with occupational safety and health administration standards and federal hazard orders, minimum safety space and commitment standards, data and reporting alignment with Kirk and V, explicit allowance for differentiated regional delivery models, and a clearly defined implementation intervention and escalation pathway. This is all policy. Can decide what you want updated rulemaking to focus on. And then on or before, so we're still in the rulemaking section, on or before 01/15/2027. Again, dates are subject to your policy decisions. The board shall submit a copy of the proposed CTE rules developed pursuant to everything we just walked through in subsection A to you and the education committee and your counterparts in the Senate. And the board shall not file the final proposal of the rules until at least So the reference there, three BSA eight forty one is the filing with LPAR. Until at least one hundred and twenty days from the submission of the proposed rules to the general assembly or 07/01/2027, whichever date occurs first. Do you wanna keep going or do I wanna talk about MS section A at all?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Any questions? Prepare.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: We've had a lot of testimony about some mismatches in terms of different service areas for CTs in the statute activity, but some question about how that statute does that issue come within any of those delineated we will make in subject?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by mismatch and say Yeah, that

[Herb Olson (Member)]: remember we had some table, someone presented, that showed different CTE areas and some had a lot of vacancies some had a lot of,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: are these?

[Herb Olson (Member)]: Weightless. Weightless, right. And I'm wondering if that issues encompassed within any.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Bless you. I don't think explicitly that is mentioned.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: It is a policy decision for you

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: all of how specific you want to get and your direction to the state board. I am not a practitioner in this area and I am not in the field. So perhaps someone who is in the field says, oh, well, if you put three, four, and five together, that might get what you're talking about. But explicitly, no.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay, thanks. Is there any questions from members from House Education Chair Conlon?

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Are we muted? Oh, I'm muted. Good. Nope, we're all set.

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

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, section B, I'm on page two. Minimum standards, measurement standards, rules. This is current law in Chapter 37 and Title 16, Section fifteen thirty two. This is where the current authority for the state board to adopt CTE rules lives. Excuse me, the only amendment here is requiring the state board to review and update the rules and procedures adopted pursuant to the section not less than every five years. Section C, I've got a C1 and a C2 because I really didn't know what to do with this. And this is real, this is all policy. So if you don't like what I have done, great, just give me direction and I'll try again. So the direction to me was, let's come up with a new definition for comprehensive high school. And so what I have done is, and I don't know if this definitely needs work. So what I've done is C1 is kind of some aspirational intent language. And then C2 is an actual attempt at modifying the definition of a comprehensive high school in statute. So C1, the intent language starts with repeating what the definition currently of comprehensive high school is. And that is a public or independent school other than a career technical center that provides secondary career technical education approved under section fifteen thirty three of this title. As Vermont works to transform its career technical education system, I'm on page three now, to increase the access, quality and opportunity of CTE programming available to Vermont students. The concept of a comprehensive high school should be expanded to achieve these goals. And it's the intent of the general assembly to move toward a model of comprehensive high schools that would offer all opportunities available to students within a public education system. To be defined as a public or independent school other than CTE center that fully integrates the provision of CTE with the provision of general education in one school building or one school campus with a single source of funding for both CTE education and general education. There is nothing to operationalize this in this draft And whether it's the term comprehensive high school, regional high school, comprehensive regional high school, this is literally all policy for you. And then different way to address this concept is just outright amending the definition of comprehensive high school. And it's the same as what we just walked through above, fully integrates the vision of CTE with the provision of general education in one school building or one school campus with a single source of funding for both CTE education and general education. So a starting point for

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: you all.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Questions?

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: This

[Rep. Kate McCann (House Education)]: is Kate McCann from House Education. I'm wondering what fully integrates means. Does that mean that they have to have all of the programs that a career and technical education center would have? Or does it just mean that somewhere on the campus, they're running some sort of career technical education programs that can be accessed by all the students who go to school there.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think that's a vague term that would need further policy clarification from the legislature. And I wrote, I picked that bag, John. Yeah.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: So Beth, the beginning of that trade, C2. Yeah, so needs a public or independent school other than a career technical center. So I guess I don't understand. It seems to kind of play two types of schools. Comprehensive high school and then as a separate matter, career technical center. Am I reading that correctly?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: So what would the career technical, how would this career technical standards differ from the comprehensive high school?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It would be a standalone. This is a definition straight future state with no other context around it. So the assumption I have made in drafting is that all of the other current definitions and systems stay in place. And so the way I would view this is a CTE center would be a standalone CTE center the way they are now. And then a comprehensive high school would be a CTE center and all of your general education in one building or campus facility. Again, whatever the policy terms, parameters you want to put on it, it may be that you decide there should not be a difference between those I don't think I had enough policy direction to draft that out But the way this is drafted, yes, there is a vision of two different types of educational institutions that offer CTE programming.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: I just think it bears mentioning that we need to keep in mind that this is very half baked, that this is designed to give us a foundation. Know, that's the way I'm looking at this, that the world is our oyster. We can look at this and say, we like this, we don't like this, and change just needed.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And I think, as we've had discussions with Secretary Saunders as well, that we're not going to build these regional comprehensive high schools overnight. And so, we need a bridge. And so, what's operating now will need to continue to operate until we change the whole system if we get to that point.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Hi,

[Rep. Kate McCann (House Education)]: this is Kate McCann again from a house education. I'm wondering if, yeah, I'm still thinking about that fully integrates. I'm thinking about just my own school, U32, and how we have some space in the building. If we were to have a phlebotomy program, which is something they have in the Career and Technical Centers, be able to fill that space. And let's also say that we knew that the Career and Technical Center in our area had more people on the waiting list for HVAC, let's say, and we had space for an HVAC program so that we could have one in our Career and Technical Center and one within the Building of U32, I think I would like to be able to see high schools that can offer some space for some career technical center programming be able to be labeled as such as these comprehensive regional high schools. The fully integrated makes me think that it needs all of the programs. And I'd like us to just be mindful that maybe we need to work with our Career and Technical Center and see what programs they're missing from their center or which programs are most popular and they need extra space for and figure out what we can do to get more kids in those seats in the buildings that we have and also in the buildings that we stand up.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do want me to comment on that if I have? I think, Rep McCann, that that is what a comprehensive high school is now. It's a public or independent school other than a standalone CTE center that's providing CTE programming. Again, I'm not in the field. The only knowledge I bring to you is the green books. But I would say what you just described fits under the current definition of comprehensive, would fit under the current definition of comprehensive high

[Rep. Kate McCann (House Education)]: school. Then why change it?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Policy question for you all.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I and I guess what I would say is that I think aspirationally right now, we're we're looking at how do we transform our system. And if we're looking at regional high schools, then we should be thinking about regional high schools that are that integrates our career technical education into one place. So I think we don't it's gonna take a long time. I think if we we have comprehensive high schools now that they continue to operate. And I think down the road, as we start looking at possibility of building these new new regional high schools, that we wanna make sure that they're fully integrated with career technical education. Other questions?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section D. This is an amendment to section fifteen forty five. I believe we talked about this the last time you had CTE testimony, I think I testified from my little seat over there regarding credits and CTE credits and acceptance of credits by the school district and graduation. This is the stat ute that I referenced, section fifteen forty five in Title 16. And so you'll see that this is all current law. I've kept it so that you could see it. Grades earned in a course offered by a CTE program cannot be altered by any public school or approved independent school and shall be applied by the school toward any graduation requirements in accordance with rules adopted by the state board. Any state board rules regarding earning of credits shall allow flexibility with respect to the integration of CTE education and other academic courses. The credits earned for CTE programming shall be honored by any public school within Vermont. If necessary, again, is all current law, if necessary to enable a student to participate in CTE technical education and graduate, the credits earned shall be applied toward any school district or independent school graduation requirements exceeding the minimum number of credits required by the state boards. The school board of the high school from which the student wishes to graduate, current law says shall make a determination as to whether the credits shall be applied for graduation requirements. And the change here is a shall apply the credits earned for CTE education toward graduation requirements. So no discretion, taking out that discretion. A decision by a school board may be appealed for the secretary, and then there's a provision related to the Vermont Academy for Science and Technology. I cannot stress enough that just because I think the law says you can do something or the law should work, that is not I don't know if that works for the field. I think that this is a common refrain you've heard in this area is perhaps under a generous reading of the law, some practice is allowed, but it's not happening. So I think this is one way to get at your desire to have credits earned by CTE required to be applied towards graduation requirements. You also have statewide graduation requirements that will be coming out in a couple years. And I'm making an assumption that CTE will be a part of that. So a little bit of a TBD, but perhaps a bridge.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions, Jonathan?

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Does the sentence that begins on line seven about his decision of the school board? Yep. That been made redundant by Michelle? Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep, I should probably strike that, thank you. Well.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: I was getting other different I'll

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think about it from my perspective and yeah, thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions from House Education?

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Doesn't appear to be, thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section E is a study committee. This is very bare bones as far as what is the study committee doing? What is it made up of? If you choose to move forward with some sort of study committee, you're really going to want to add some clarification here. So there is created the Career and Technical Education Governance Study Committee to study and make recommendations to transform Vermont's CTE education governance structure. Real creative name You may wanna think about that. The committee shall be composed of the following members, three current members of the house, three current members of the Senate, all appointed by the Speaker or the Committee on Committees, one member of Commerce, one member of House Education, one member of Ways and Means, and then their counterparts in the Senate, one member of Economic Development, one member of Education, and one member of Finance. In consultation with the agency of education and the Vermont Association of Career and Technical Directors, the committee is required to study and make recommendations to transform Vermont CTE governance system, including a transition plan that ensures no disruption to safety access or programming. For purposes of scheduling meetings and preparing recommended legislation, the committee will have the assistance of legislative operations and meet. No report here. Proposed legislation would be the deliverable. On or before December 15, the committee shall submit its findings and recommendations in the form of proposed legislation to the general assembly. My office would call the first meeting to occur on or before August 15. The committee would select co chairs at its first meeting, one a member

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: of the House, one a member of

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the Senate, got a majority constituting a quorum, and the committee would cease to exist just a month after the legislation's due 01/15/2027. And then this is a legislative study committee, you would be entitled to per diem according to 2BSA23. I put in there not more than six meetings because that seems to be the most average request to start with, but again, this entire section is a policy choice.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions? Any questions from House Ed?

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Nope. Not at this time. Thank you. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I didn't receive a minute.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you, Beth.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: You're welcome.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I know that secretary Saunders has to go by ten after ten, So we will have our discussions with her, and then we'll have broader discussions with CDC centers. The head of Baghdad. Eric Remmers is going to join us at 10:00. Good morning, Secretary Salmon.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Good morning. Thank you for having us. As I'm joining for the record, I'm Zoe Sanders. I'm the Secretary of Education. I do have a hard stop at 10AM. I'm meeting with students from Outright Vermont for a focus group, so do not want to be late for that. I'm also joined by our CTE state director, so I'll let her introduce herself while I'm logging in.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Hello, I'm Ruth Jerke. I'm the state director of Career Technical Education at the Agency of Education, and it's a pleasure to be with you this morning. Good morning, Ruth.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: We have shared a slide deck. Given that this was a joint committee, we thought we'd provide some additional context. We haven't had the opportunity to dive as deep with all of the committees that are

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: in the meeting today.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So we'll share a slide deck that provides a little bit more context of how we arrived at the recommendation. This was our first time reviewing the proposed legislative changes that you just walked through. So we will review that in more detail. We obviously haven't had the time to absorb that and provide focused feedback. But I would share that we're not supportive of standing up a new study committee. We have studied CTE for the past three years. We're very clear around the challenges and we have a proposal to move forward that will help us to address the barriers and to achieve the goals set forth. Also would have some questions around the rationale for asking for the state board rules to come back to the legislature, that's very much out of practice with how the rules are made, and I think may have some confusion around the different roles and responsibilities around the state board versus the legislature. I'm trying to understand the logic behind that and the intent to provide more focused feedback on how we could satisfy some of what the rationale or the goals would be for that particular part of the proposal. And also think some of the legislative edits are really better served and defined through our education quality standards, as opposed to in statute. So in our education standards, we should have an emphasis in ensuring that there is a coordination of curriculum that involves access to and integration of CTE programming. So we want us to further understand some of the intents are to those changes, and then to provide feedback around where those revisions would be appropriately served in terms of being in state board rule or being in statutory language. So just initial first blush reaction sitting on the side as that was reviewed, but we'll look deeper into that to provide some more focused feedback that could be productive and moving us toward what I believe are shared goals for expanding CTV access. I am going to share my screen, and in the interest of time, because I do have a hard stop, I'm going to orient you to what we'll cover, we'll go through it pretty quickly, and then spend more of our time focused on the goals and responsibilities. That tends to be an area where we need to have a deeper dive, and there should be further clarity around how we will operationalize this particular proposal. So I'm going to share my I'll first turn it over to Ruth Derby to provide some context as to how we got to this moment in time.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: There we go. I'm always always getting that for us. I will say to follow-up, the General Assembly first had the joint fiscal office contract with APA Consulting, who did the first CTE study. And the report was submitted to you in 2023. And then a follow-up study that was submitted in 2025. And so the national context that we have to share this morning really is based in the work that came out of those two studies that really looked at where Vermont fits in the national picture of how CTE is delivered. So there are three other states that are using a system very similar to our current regional system, and they actually are our neighboring states. So Vermont, Maine also provide CTE in a very similar context to how we provide it in Vermont. In Vermont, we do have 17 regional CTE centers and they provide CTE under multiple governance models. That's something we'll talk about a little more in a moment, but we have 21 states that deliver CTE at the district level. They tend to be very large states with large districts. And so they have the ability to fully integrate CTE programming at the district level. In Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Think the decision has deliberately been made at different points in time that because the cost of providing career technical education can be significant and can require very specific lab and shop spaces that doing so regionally maximizes the is the best return on investment for states with smaller student populations and more limited funds. And then 26 states use a blended model. And I would point out that our other neighboring states, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, I believe are all states that have that different option as well. So they have CTE programming that operates very similar to what we have in terms of a regional model. And then they also have the opportunity for CTE to be delivered at the district level, simply because of their overall student population size. But so our model is a lot, the way we deliver CTE is aligned to our neighboring states, our regional systems of career technical education. It's just that as a smaller state, we've really focused on that regional system historically. And there's the list for you, with thanks to APA and their partners for getting such good research to inform it. We have funding models that operate in other states. Again, other states have different ways of funding public education in general, but the most common approaches nationally are a weighted funding within the state's overall education formula, categorical funding, unit based funding, and reimbursement. Different states have different incentives for students who they they some states provide a bonus or per additional funding for certain student outcomes that are met in CTE centers. Some rely pretty exclusively on a weighted formula. But there are multiple ways CTE is funded and we can talk more about those if you'd like to, but basically you'll see that we are in a unit currently with other states including Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. So the current state of CTE in Vermont, we have 17 regional CTE centers that provide state approved career technical education programs. And back to Ms. St. James' presentation, currently all CTE programs offered in Vermont have to be state approved by the agency of education. We do that through our CTE team, and they have to meet certain education quality standards. They have to meet certain federal program quality standards, as CTE is defined nationally. So we do that currently through these 17 CTE centers, but with 17 regional CTE centers, we have four Regional Technical Center school districts that have a governing board of their own and operate as a Regional Technical Center school district. We have 11 CTE centers that are hosted by public school districts, and they are governed by the board of that public school district. But they also have a Regional Advisory Board that informs their work as well. And they all serve students from multiple high schools and districts. And then but the one board, the one governance board is the board of the district in which they're housed, which sometimes creates inherent tensions. I think APA again, highlighted those well in the two reports that they did. And then we have two independent schools that provide state approved CTE programs. Those are St. John's Bray Academy and Linden Institute. And we have two comprehensive high schools that provide CTE programs. Canaan does so under state board rule because they are geographically so isolated, they can't easily send students to a regional CTE center and then Miss Iscoy Valley Union High School provides only state approved agriculture programs and there's nothing that I can find written in statute or rule that says that they have the authority to do that. But it dates back to a time when I think it dates back to Vermont's agricultural history and to a process that was in place long, long ago. That I think before CTE really was established in Vermont through regional technical centers, We had high schools providing CTE agriculture programs as we know them now. When I started working in career technical education in 1999 there were four high schools left that were doing that. They gradually phased those programs out or turned them over to their Regional Technical Center. Mrs. Cue is the one high school left that is still doing it.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: We've got

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: some information on CTE enrollment and Basically, we have seen that we reached a high immediately after the pandemic and then had a dip and then have leveled out some. But I'd say in any given year over the past several years, we've been consistently in the approximately 5,000 students, and our highest over the past ten years has been approximately 5,500 students. Most the programs with the highest enrollment are architecture and construction programs. Those can include building trades, engineering and architecture. They can include electrical, plumbing, HVAC programming. Programs are typically full and typically have waiting lists. We have transportation distribution and logistics and in Vermont those tend to be our auto technology programs and our diesel technology programs. Health sciences is another area where student interest and student enrollment is robust and where there is room for more programs, as I think one of your committee members mentioned earlier. And then arts, tech, and all the related arts technology, digital arts, audiovisual technology, communications, those programs have strong enrollments. Those programs, I think in Vermont historically have been especially well enrolled because they provide an in-depth level of technical arts instruction that some of our smaller high schools can't provide. So students may take the available art courses in their high school and then if they're really interested in the arts, the CTE Center allows them to delve into far more depth to earn more college credits in those areas and also to earn industry recognized credentials in those areas. And we have a statewide arts portfolio process so that as students are graduating from high school from a CTE arts program, they can submit their portfolio and earn a post secondary credential for that. It really is aligned with post secondary employment and post secondary education opportunities in the arts and what a skilled professional at an entry level or a skilled college student at a high performing arts institution would need to demonstrate. Our lowest enrollment, you can see there too, and that our lowest enrollment doesn't reflect labor market need. For example, information technology and education and training are areas where we have strong labor market need. We just don't have as many high school students choosing to enroll in those programs as the labor markets could support.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: First, said you're little jackpot.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: We do have the waitlist information. We've collected this for the first time this year. It was not data that we were required to collect by federal or state law, but we did it because we knew we needed to better understand. And so you have that information there. It's as CTE centers reported it and the data we collected from them in October. You'll see that we have areas where we have geographically far more need than we can meet right now, which goes back to how we explore how we expand opportunity and access for our students. So basically I'd say this all boils down to our CTE center pay range with our 17 CTE centers with four different governance structures. The salary differentials for CTE teachers is high and in our lower paying CTE centers, it's not competitive with industry. So what I've seen in the six years I've been state director of career technical education, had to stop and think about that for a moment. But in the six years I've been here, what I've seen are a few things. I see our lower paying centers often lose teachers who go back to industry just because they have to make the financial decisions for their families that mean that they choose to leave teaching because they can make more in industry, or they're hired away by higher paying centers. So I know of three or four examples just in the past year where the CTE center one or two towns over hires away a very skilled professional and pays them significantly more for doing the exact same work. We currently have a system in which we're poaching from our own people. We're poaching our own people and spreading them out in ways that mean some of our CTE centers just because of the current systems in which they work, teachers are paid under their collective bargaining agreements that don't have the best provisions for supporting education professionals changing careers with industry experience. We have systems that better recognize that experience, systems that don't. APA studies both noted that our current system means that we don't consistently recognize those credentials that CTE teachers bring or that what they give up to join an education system, a retirement system mid career when they may not see the same return on their teaching investment time as teachers who start on a traditional educator pathway and can work thirty or more years as professionals. We currently have I think APA study did an excellent job of highlighting some of the current challenges in our CTE system. One of those is our current tuition based model means that the funding for CTE follows the student, and that can be a disincentive for high schools to send students to CTE centers. And we consistently hear of those tensions, and everyone wants to do right by students, but we also have systems where the high school seeks to lose will lose funding if more students attend the CTE center, which can impact their own staffing, and so there are inherent tensions in that system. And students I've had calls from students in the time I've been in this world telling me about messages they've received from their sending that discourage their participation in CTE that directly tie to the funding model that we currently have in place. And again, we've already touched on teacher qualified CTE teachers, pay parity out of industry, pay inconsistency statewide. And we have economies of scale challenges, but we also have opportunities where we our current system means that we may have back to that waiting list information. I'm gonna use Franklin County as an example. We have Cold Hollow Career Center that has outstanding programs, amazing faculty. They're a great little CTE center. They often have space available in in their programs. They may be at two thirds capacity just because they serve two small high schools. 18 miles away, you have Northwest Career Technical Education Center in St. Albans. Many of their programs have wait lists. Our current systems don't easily allow students to access openings at Cold Hollow even though they're only 18 miles away. They technically can, but their family has to provide transportation. There are other barriers in scheduling and timing. Our systems are not designed to maximize student enrollment currently. Zoe, did you want to step in here?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Certainly. So it's important to recognize the changes that are happening already under Act 73 that will be supportive of expanding access to CTE. One of those is the state moving towards statewide graduation requirements. The agency of education provided our recommendations to the state board of education to review and they have, they're in the process, they've established a committee to evaluate these recommendations. It's also important to understand that these recommendations and this movement to a statewide graduation requirement will satisfy a finding of the US Department of Education. So when the US Department of Education visited Vermont back in 2024 as part of our monitoring visit, they identified that our graduation requirements and our flexible pathways are providing uneven rigor. And so that goes against the statutory obligation of the state. So they are encouraging us to move forward more quickly, actually with the statewide graduation requirements. We've shared that information with the state board with a goal of approving those statewide graduation requirements by December 2026. We have spent a lot of time within that process of evaluating how it connects with career and technical education. And so there's within our recommendations, you can actually see that there's a lot of intentionality around allowing for deeper experiences within CTE and create that as a profile of a student that would be navigating through the future system with these graduation requirements. We involve the CTE community in providing input around those requirements, because we know that right now there's a high variability in terms of the credit and the CPE experiences that count. We are really working to solve that through the statewide graduation requirements and also updates to the state board rules. And so as we walk through, Ruth did a fantastic job of providing the context. We have studied other models across the country. We have evaluated the challenges of achieving our vision for universal CTE access, and those have been widely documented. Where we are now is using those findings to move forward on a proposal that will allow the state to advance our vision. So we'll start with the timeline and the overarching vision here. The vision is to reimagine CTE to make sure that CTE really is universally accessible, and that there is a consistent level of quality and access across the state. All of the studies that we have done result in a clear understanding of inequity and occurrence of access, and also great variability in terms of quality, along with variability in terms of how we fund the system. And so as we walked through and shared a little bit of context of what informed these recommendations, the vision is for every student in Vermont to have access to grant technical education so that they're ready for life after graduation. We want to ensure that this promise, can actually deliver on our promise as a state, because right now, CTE participation is largely affiliated with your access in terms of your proximity to a CTE center, and we want to make sure that CTE is not just available to a select few, but is really a universal way in which we deliver education. We see CTE as foundational, not as an alternative model, and in this vision, is something that doesn't just happen at the tech center, but CTE is a way that we're delivering our education around a coordinated continuum of learning that's really emphasizing the industry aligned learning experiences much earlier, specifically in middle school. And then in the future state, as we're contemplating building new high schools, we would love to build new high schools that are co located with career and technical centers, so that there's a seamless integration around programming. We recognize that that will take some time. And the example that was highlighted earlier in the conversation was around what if we have space at our high school to offer a program? I think Rep. McCann mentioned at U32, they may have space and there may be an interest in developing phlebotomy. There may not be the expertise in place at U32 or within the district to do that. But within this ESA model that we're proposing, they would be responsible for providing that level of expertise, developing the program and supporting with the delivery of that type of career and technical education within the context of our existing high schools and middle schools where there's space available. So the equity challenges have been well documented, that's really what we're trying to solve with the proposal. Our framework is a comprehensive proposal, it does represent a very different way of how we'll deliver education, so it's very closely aligned to the principles of the broader K-twelve education transformation approach. So in this model, it will be moving to one governance unit, which we are referring to as a statewide CTE education service agency, and we'll walk through in detail today, more of the roles and responsibilities, because there are many other factors that play an important role in ensuring that we can deliver on this vision effectively and ensure that we have high quality curriculum, early exposure in middle school, that it's integrated across the design and the learning experience of students, and funding is a key piece of this puzzle. We'll talk a little bit about the choices around funding and how that fits within our future state. I'm going to breeze through these, because I think most folks have seen this vision, but we can come back to make sure we center and ground our responses and an understanding of what we're hoping to achieve. So let's go to roles and responsibilities. And this is also in the interest of time, so I don't have to leave you in

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: ten minutes, I'm sure Ruth will be

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: able to expand on the other questions you have. So the role of the State Board of Education is to establish statewide graduation requirements. They have until 07/01/2027. However, because we have a finding from the US Department of Education, US Ed is very eager for us to move forward more quickly. They are concerned by that timeline of 2027. So I'll be getting, I've already signaled that, as I mentioned, to the State Board of Education, we will likely get that in writing from US Ed this month. And they are encouraging us to accelerate the timeline to actually approve those graduation requirements in December 2026. That not only is important from a compliance perspective, it's important for a perspective of planning the field. These graduation requirements do represent a shift, and it's important that we're giving the field the appropriate time and planning to ensure that those offerings are made available to students. The State Board of Education is responsible for modernizing our CTE rules. We've had lots of conversations around the need to update the rules, and also to clarify the regular cadence upon which those rules should be evaluated within our overall cycle. The role of the agency of education, we remain responsible for the state level oversight of current technical education, ensuring that there's a high level of program quality, improving system monitoring and ensure equitable access to CTE. So what does that mean in terms of the actual tasks? We monitor, we are part of monitoring and compliance related to federal and state requirements and funding. We conduct site visits to the CTE centers as part of our overall monitoring approach. We would approve the curriculum that is developed by the ESA and the credential mapping to make sure that the curriculum implemented is aligned to the state board standards that have been adopted and approved. We are responsible for completing required data management and analysis that is due to the federal government and a variety of other entities in order to be in compliance and to promote quality assurance. We are also responsible for coordinating with post secondary workforce partners as appropriate. We prepare guidelines and best practices and establish clear quality measures for programs and centers. Ultimately, the agency of education across the pre K-twelve space is responsible for establishing clear accountability and measuring quality along with ensuring that there's the appropriate support in our system to elevate opportunity and outcomes. And so this does include requirements for administering assessments, it upload keys or others, and understanding the overall accountability for student outcomes and after they include the completion of the earning of industry credentials. Teacher licensure continues to be with the agency of education. The role of the education service agency is similar in many respects to a school district, with the added responsibility of providing services and pushing those in to sixth through tenth grade. So, we look at the Education Service Agency, they would be supporting centers statewide and really offering and overseeing the CTE programs, As I mentioned, beyond providing the support for the CTE programming that will be traditionally called the tech centers, they would be developing additional coursework and ensuring that there's that early career exploration that's happening in middle school and in the early high school years. Within this model, we would be able to pool Perkins funding in a way to be more equitable. It would be the responsibility of the Education Service Agency to engage in budgeting that is really mindful of the statewide needs and then distributing funding to the CTE centers, working with the CTE center directors to develop those budgets. The CTE directors continue to have a part of that process in the comprehensive needs assessment. The ESA is responsible for some acting policies that would have statewide enrollment and admissions policies, statewide student information systems and data, including CTE center calendars. Keep in mind that the agency within Accessible Three is responsible for putting forward a statewide cap, so some of that will become much more streamlined in the future. The ESA would also be responsible for teacher compensation, system wide professional development, curriculum development, teacher preparation and induction and mentoring of new teachers. This would actually help when you think about a statewide opportunity to cultivate for those professionals that have been in their roles and could be really strong advocates and champions for new teachers. The ESA is responsible for developing career exploration materials, so again, beyond operating our CTE programs at our centers, it would be establishing curriculum and programming that would start much earlier to create that continual learning from sixth through twelfth grade. And this might require the agency of education to further develop standards and oversight to really comply with an elevated expectation for what integrated learning looks like when CTE is fully embedded in the experience in the early next school years. They continue with some other responsibilities at the ESA. They will be managing the centralized systems for contracting, human relations, filings, payroll, general feds, related functions. Moving from our multiple governance units now that are managing that to one central unit to achieve economies of scale. They would coordinate facility use agreements with the districts where we're providing programming and other shared facility spaces like maintenance and things like that. Coordinate the annual Perkins application, So really thinking intentionally about where those dollars could be maximized to address what may have been long standing issues of certain centers being underfunded, creating an equity challenge. They would be responsible for ensuring consistent and high quality program implementation, coordinating transportation with sending districts, I want to name that there's still some outstanding policy choices around transportation that would need to be determined, but the ESA would be the primary point of contact in helping to broker the coordination across sending districts. Partnering with state and local workforce development officials, boards, and employers, again, in this context, we want to make sure that the programs we're offering are belonging to the industry needs, and that they're graduating students that are prepared to take on meaningful careers in those fields. When we shared with you, there are some gaps that we're seeing in terms of program enrollment and the needs of the Vermont workforce that we'd want to potentially attend to. The CTE ESA would have a governance board. We've suggested an approach for our Caldac board would be established, there are a variety of different options that you could entertain. The primary responsibility of the ESA governance board is to hire and also to evaluate the CTE PSA executive director and advise on the policy, CTE program offerings, and providing the financial oversight and stewardship of both state and federal dollars. The role of the CTE centers in many respects remains largely the same in terms of maintaining the oversight of the day to day operations, if you have a half day or a full day program. So the CTE centers would oversee all center programs and service delivery for students, they would oversee all center based staff. Those center based staffs are employees of the education service agency. That's similar to the current framework, where CTE staff are employees of the district. Except instead of multiple districts, they're now reporting to one ESA. Managing center budgets that would be developed by the ESA and approved by the ESA board and managing personnel at their individual centers. All of the centers will be part of participating in the comprehensive local needs assessment. That requirement is foundational to ensuring that budget decisions and program decisions are aligned to the needs of local communities along with its statewide workforce needs. The centers will continue to forge work based learning opportunities as part of HCT program of study and have that ongoing local employer engagement. So those relationships will continue to be cultivated and sustained to ensure that students are getting access to those work based learning opportunities with industry employees in their communities. The CT directors will continue to manage enrollment and course selection that will be conducted within the established protocols of the education service agency, because we know right now that there's variability in how that is managed. This would also put the CTE centers responsible for ensuring that there's sufficient counseling services for their CTE students within both the resources available at the ESA and the collaboration with the sending districts. This was a point that has come up in our conversations with CTE directors. And it's really important to ensure that counseling services can be situated at the tech centers. We need to make sure that our staffing models can do that, and that our funding supports that. So these are one of those areas where we have to be really clear about what is required to have a quality program delivery, and ensuring that the funding is applied in ways to resource the system to deliver on that. And so in this case, as we're looking at sample staffing models, that would be an area that I would look at as we make some strategic choices around how budgets are applied. And then they would maintain the day to day operations of the CTB centers, both for half day and full day programs, taking a statewide book, you could also be more strategic about how and where we offer half and full day programs within the future state. The role of the sending districts, the local districts will retain the CTE student as the student of record and their responsibilities would be to still provide some of the counseling services related to graduation planning. The district is a local education agency. And so in law, they are required to provide delivery of special education services. And that would continue to be their responsibility. Additionally, it would provide access to extracurriculars and athletics outside of the CTE programming. The sending districts would work with the ESA to coordinate transportation, we know that that's a big question, there's also some other policy choices that need to be made around transportation to fully solve this particular question and barrier. And then the district would grant the high school performance. I know I walked that quickly because I'm gonna have to exit in five minutes, and wanted to make sure that we had the opportunity to kind of map out where we see the roles and responsibilities lying and to hear from you where some of the questions are around that so we can further expand, and Ruth will be able to stay on the call, she doesn't have a hard stop right now, so she can entertain further questions that you might have.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Peter, I'll leave it up to you if there's questions from your committee. I know you need to get going, but.

[Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Yeah, looking around the committee to see if there are any we do have one representative long.

[Rep. Long (House Education member, first name unknown)]: Hi. Thanks for, sharing all your thoughts. I just have one quick request, that is that the PowerPoint that we have access to is different than the one that you use. So could you please send that as soon as possible?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Thank you for noting that. Appreciate it. Yes, we will.

[Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I apologize. I was here a little bit late. The funding for the CTE ESA would be a combination of the federal Perkins dollars, but essentially mainly funded off the top of the

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Ed Fund, is that correct?

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Yes, so there are essentially two ways that we, I'll say our objective is to ensure that CTE is funded and resourced as the state priority that it is. There's really two ways that we can do that within our future funding model. So we're moving towards a foundation formula. In this new construct, every district will get a budget, right? It'll be a line item. So let's say you have 10 or you have 20 districts. Those are the amount of line items that you're gonna have where every budget, every district is gonna get their money from the state. There's two ways to ensure that CTE is accounted for. You can either have a weighted approach, which we shared with you last session, where every CTE student gets a weight for CTE. And that will need to be accounted for in the line item for the district budget if you go that direction of having a weight. Alternatively, if you move towards having appropriation, which we have introduced as an option this year, that would be another line item for the budget. So just as you would have a budget line item for every district that the state is paying to deliver education, you would have a line item for the education service agency to deliver a CTE. So we are flexible in terms of how CTE is funded, but think those are the two options that are most viable and that need to be modeled as JFO is completing their study and you are making your final recommendation around the overall funding system.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. I think we're set here. Thanks, Peter. Edye.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Sorry, working on getting my voice back. Just, you mentioned, but it wasn't in the slide, the date that the Department of Education is asking the state board rules on CTE to be finalized by, and I just didn't get a chance to write that down. If you could repeat that.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: So just to make sure

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: I'm

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: clarifying, the US Department of Education has a binding with the uneven rigor of our graduation requirements and flexible pathways. And we have to have an action plan for that. Part of our action plan is to move towards statewide graduation requirements. And that's really what US Ed is focusing on. They want those statewide graduation requirements to be implemented earlier. I have asked them to clarify for us what timeline would be acceptable. We have suggested December 26, which was included in our recommendations to the board, and I'm awaiting input from US Ed if they think that will be acceptable. And there'll continue to be conversations on that. US Ed is not required that we update our state board rules. So I just wanna make that distinction. However, we believe that that is needed. State board believes that is needed. And we have outlined within our graduation requirements, specific areas that the state board rules need to change.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Great, so then that's really helpful. And that leads me to my next question, which is two things that we've done through Act 73 is have statewide graduation requirements and a common calendar to make it easier for students to attend CTE. And those haven't been put in place yet, and we're still looking at making more changes to CTE and how we do it. And I'm wondering if we're not jumping the gun.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Yeah, I would say that statewide graduation requirements and a statewide calendar are enabling factors for the CTE modernization that we're proposing. The statewide graduation requirements establish that there is consistent quality expectations across Vermont and that CTE is appropriately accounted for. And then the shift to the statewide calendar ensures that there are common professional learning days, that there won't continue to be challenging negotiations between different sending schools and districts. So to me, those are absolutely enabling for the larger transformation that we think all want to see happening to achieve the vision of expanded CT access.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Okay, thank you.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Doctor. Bren, but I leave you, and as you know, tremendously good hands with Rutland, and she'll be able to expand on the conversations and we can follow-up and I'm happy to be back for further discussion. Again, just wanna thank you for your commitment to this work. We understand that it's quite complex and even though all share some goal for this, it still requires some really big policy choices. And we're here as a partner to provide the data, provide the additional responses that could be helpful to you in making your decision.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you so much. Annoy?

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: I'm curious to know how adult CTE fits into the funding conversation and the kind of overall good in general.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Happy to talk about that. And then I also want to just hold, give myself a little placeholder. Want to circle back to the Perkins funding question too. So I'll answer your question first, and then we'll go back if you don't mind and give me one minute to give you a little Perkins lesson. But for adult CTE, while it's not specifically included with what we shared today, I believe the conversations that we are having within the agency of education with the Vermont Department of Labor and with others, as I look at the ESA structure, it provides a nice framework to house adult CTE in that ESA and to find its right landing point there. And then to determine how many full time and or part time adult education professionals we need in our CTE system, where they would be based and what their responsibilities would be. Our current system says that each CTE center is supposed to have an adult education coordinator or director, but we don't have funding that follows that requirement. I would think that an ESA could determine the true cost of providing an effective adult CTE system and could then figure out how that can be built into the cost of into a line item within its budget that when we could determine how best to fund.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Okay. Is that lack of funding due to the federal government or is that something that the state is responsible for?

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: The state piece basically there's no federal, there's federal funding. There's federal funding that's more tied perhaps for adult CTE to the community college system than it is to our adult CTE system. And so there's been this gap in funding for the whole time I've worked in career technical education which dates back to 1999. And there used to be some state funding that paid salary assistance at a slightly higher percentage than we have done in the past, but it was it's always been a requirement without a dedicated funding system to support adult CTE. It's been a gap in Vermont for a long time.

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I'm going to circle back just for the Perkins piece. Vermont receives $5,900,000 in Perkins funding. So Perkins funding is important to us, but our CTE system is not Perkins is only a small part of our funding available to our CTE systems. And the one other piece I will share is we're required currently to provide funding based on a federal formula that goes to that's based on the districts that are served by each CTE center and our current governance model. And so our current Perkins grants range from $85,000 to Cold Hollow Career Center to $530,000 for the Center for Technology in Essex. That's an inequitable distribution of resources because Cold Hollow never gets enough. Essex gets substantially more two to three times more than most other CTE centers. All centers do really good things with their Perkins money, but a different change in governance would allow for different flexibility than we currently have in distributing those federal resources more equitably. What else can I answer?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: The questions, and I just want to recognize, we have Jody Emerson and Eric Remmers from the Career Centers. Are both directors. Eric is the head of back desk. So, I think we can open up questions that we can ask of Eric and Jody as well as Ruth as we continue to have these discussions.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Sorry, with one quick follow-up also, it's the funding for adult CTE comes from LEO funds, is that correct?

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Here's how it currently works. Currently, each CTE center that has an adult CTE program and not all do gets a small amount of money each year in state funds from the Vermont Department of Labor. They're looking to change that to do three larger grants instead moving forward. And then the CTE centers basically run their adult CTE program as an enterprise program or an entrepreneurial program. If they're going to run for an example a particular course and let's say it's a health sciences course and they're going to have people preparing for a health sciences certification they may have openings for 10 students in that course based on various licensing requirements and they may have two of those students who are paid for with WIOA, they may have two that are paid for with VSAC funding for non degree programs, they may have an employer who pays for two, they may have one or two who self pay, and they just have to always be looking for it's a tuition driven system and there are multiple sources of how adults cover those tuition costs. And sometimes the money that's available for financial support to help adults enroll in those programs runs out mid year.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: It's kind of like trying to build our housing. We have to find the right stacks of money in order to be able to pay for it.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Right.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Other questions? Ruth, has the agency looked at what the cost would be to implement the ESA?

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: There have been, yes, there have been pieces. I think Zoe could speak more fully to that than I can but what I have seen in the past is that there's a sense of what we currently spend on our CTE system in Vermont and that the starting point would be to spend no less than what we currently spend And then to really have that first year of ESA implementation to develop what the true budget costs would be for each CTE center and for the ESA. But there are certain cost modeling that I know has been done. I've been on family medical leave. My dad had a stroke, so I have been less directly involved in the most recent conversations about that.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: If you could just Yeah, highlight that as a that'd be great. I think for us to better understand what just setting up the ESA is going to cause.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: There also was work done. And I, again, I can find out exactly where this stands on sort of what the level of staffing would be for the ESA, how resources would be redistributed. My own personal thinking is that we have many CTE centers that have wonderful staffing resources. We have some that are operating I'm going to use Eric because I'm seeing him here on my screen. Operates with the bare minimum. Jody somewhere in the middle. We have centers that have more resources. But as I look at that I think that's where deliberate work with the ESA, the CTE centers and the agency of education could really look at what resources are currently available and how those are distributed to best fund an ESA and to ensure adequate staffing at each CTE center. So there are resources at play. And when we look at really how those can be best used, then we can determine what additional resources would be needed.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: If I could use a little clarification about the study that you were talking about, Ruth, and what JFO is doing with the contractor, and are the expectations for what they're both gonna try to accomplish, and I guess when it's gonna be available.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: What I can say is the two past studies were done by APA Consulting, and you have those two reports, and I can make sure you have the links to those again. And they really highlighted the things that we should be collaborating on to make sure we address in whatever we design for changes to our CTE funding and governance systems. The current study, I believe, is really about what the right funding model should be and what the different options for you to consider in adopting a new education funding formula. That's my understanding. I could have missed something.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: Aside from what model is better, will that report include information about data about what it costs now and what it will cost.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: JFO is really leading that charge. I think they could best explain to you exactly what the parameters are of what they've requested.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: Okay. Thanks.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I'm copied on certain emails, but that means I only see a slice of the puzzle, not the whole finished product.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Other questions? One thing that concerns me when we're talking about equity is that we look at a center that's doing really well, that has staff, that has, and then we have other centers that really need more help. And I wanna make sure that we're not going to take away from the centers that are working really well, that have the staff that are I wanna make sure that we're lifting up the centers that need the help and need the staff so that we're not taking from one, robbing from one to help pay for another.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I share that concern, and I think that's where between state board rule making and legislative language, there's the opportunity to really build some specific parameters. And I'm gonna step back a second, and I'm gonna use again, I'm gonna use ERIC as an example, I'm going use Cold Hollow as an example. There are two of our centers that have really strong student outcomes and do so with the bare minimum of resources and staff. We certainly don't want them to lose in any way in this process and they each have room to have more available to them than they currently have. Jody Center I would say is appropriately resourced. We don't want her to lose any of those resources. She may know of some unmet need that I'm not thinking of but overall, I'd say Jody Center is a center that is efficient, well resourced, has some positions that other CTE centers can't in ways that benefit student outcomes benefit our overall goals for career technical education. How do we learn from the what Jody Center has in place to say that some of those positions should be available in every CTE center or should be shared by two smaller CTE centers? Because again, some of our CTE centers are within 20 miles of each other, our current systems mean that if they don't hire their own person they don't have anybody. So how do we best look at our strategic need for certain positions that we know are effective in improving student outcomes and make sure that all CTE centers have those without some CTE centers forfeiting some of the great things they put in place? I think about that a lot. And I think it will be really important and whatever is designed to provide an adequate time of transition and some clear checkpoints and benchmarks to make sure that unintentionally, the strengths of our system are not lost in transformation.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah, I think it would be important for us to understand too. And I think the last time that we spoke with the secretary a couple weeks ago. I think we asked if if there could be if the agency could put together a road map of the times, you know, here here's where we need here's where we see we need to get to at this point, then at this point and this point, in order to make that transformation happen.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: And who's noted that?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Edye?

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Hi, thank you. Ruth, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit to what rep McCann said about pushing more, about what happens, what works, what doesn't work when you push CTE programs into high schools? And is that a model that you're looking at going forward? Because we can have regionalization and we're rural, we will still have students that can't access those regional high schools in a way that is going to be efficient and effective for them.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Graning, I think there've been multiple, I've been involved in so many conversations about that, that I'll share sort of my own takeaways from that. There may be others who have additional things to share. A few things. I think our current system, because of the competition for funding, means that we sometimes have high schools that are starting things that are CTE programs or partial CTE programs, but may not be offering the level of depth or rigor or student outcomes that we would intentionally want to design for. And that's just because of resources. We could so we should design to take that out of the mix and to make sure that anything that might be based in a high school, we know what are the foundational pieces that they're preparing students for the full CTE program and what's a full CTE program. I also think that we have limited facility space in our CTE centers. And so certainly conversations we've had at the Agency of Education what programs would lend themselves well to being in those vacant school spaces. And that could be in a high school. But I think internally at the agency, we've also talked about we have other school buildings in Vermont that are underused. Where can we intentionally have CTE centers partnering in new ways to provide state approved programs in facilities that they don't currently have access to, but that would improve student opportunities and success? And how do we make that happen? And how do we define that? And currently all state by state board rule, all CTE programs have to be state approved. Have certain program quality measures they tie into those EQS measures that Zoe was talking about. How do we intentionally design so that if we're looking to really be more deliberate in where we place programs and provide more access to programs we ensure that those requirements are consistent so that a student receiving a program in one setting is not receiving something different in quality or outcome than a student in another setting. And then the final piece I'll say about that is I think about this a lot. Some of those programs, and I love the HVAC example, and the phlebotomy example that were shared earlier, those are we have so much need. Those are program areas to where to be qualified to teach that the credentials that are inherent in those programs, people need very specific industry experience, they need very specific. They have to meet very specific requirements in law. And that's where when I'm sometimes I think if we don't have a good way of providing the right oversight, hiring support and systems, we run the risk of having a program that either can't deliver fully on what it promises or that has safety risks to the district where it's housed in ways that are not fair to anyone involved. How do we design for that? Eric has an HVAC program. I've learned so much from his HVAC teacher about how many things can go wrong. The thing that means I can sleep at night is knowing that Eric and his teacher know those things and are intentionally every day ensuring student and facility safety. Someone else might not know those and without any intention to cause harm could inadvertently cause harm. So how do we design appropriately for that?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Eric and Jody, if you want to weigh in, please do.

[Eric Remmers (Director; President of VACTED)]: I think Ruth's assessment is spot on, quite honestly, it's just understanding that our facilities and our instructors are specifically tailored and oriented to providing safe instruction for students at the age level that we deal with. So I appreciate her calling out my HVAC instructor. I think he would tell her all about HVAC, whether she wanted to know about it or not. But that is a solid example, and there are risks associated with placing a program like that in a center that isn't or in a space that isn't designed for that sort of learning. So I think as we talk about expansion of programs and things of that nature, certainly the directors want to explore these things, but we also want to do it in a way that's safe and able to provide students with the outcomes that they came to us for. And so, I agree.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I guess the idea is great and how do we and I think we talked about this last fall when we were going around to the different centers is, you know, how do we how can your center or a CPE center work with another you're sending schools to help provide some of those educational needs that that you can't that those centers that the schools can't get sending to your center, but they have the room in their place. How can you work together to make sure that we're having quality, that we're having safety, that it might sit under your program?

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I'd like to just start because the staffing models that I've seen modeled, and I don't know, as again, I've been on leave, I'm not sure what's been shared and what hasn't been shared where and with whom. Some of the things I saw as I was preparing to head out on leave were that there's really that point of the agency's vision, I think, for an educational service agency means that the ESA would have dedicated staff members to forge those relationships with high schools and middle schools to determine exactly how that could look and what who would play what role and how that's defined consistently statewide. So in some of the modeling I've seen about how an ESA might be staffed, there would be a position specifically to coordinate with high schools on what on what entry level courses might be provided at consistently at high schools, what programs of study for CTE might be well distributed because they don't have some of the costs or facility needs that other CTE programs have. How do we maximize the use of our existing CTE center facilities? How do we develop and replicate programs that would fit well in high schools with the same level of quality assurance? I think staffing models I've seen for a proposed ESA really take into effect that it will take a specific person or persons to help define that system and provide the professional development support and continuing technical assistance to ensure that quality statewide. But I do think that's part of the ESA staffing design that the agency has envisioned. I don't, again, if that hasn't yet been shared, will ask about where we are with that and what might be possible to share.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah, that would be great. Think we'd like to see what we're talking about in the ESA space.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I've made a note of that too.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. Anything that you want to add, Eric or Jody?

[Eric Remmers (Director; President of VACTED)]: Jody, do you have anything?

[Jody Emerson (CTE Center Director)]: Thank you. I guess I actually wanna go back in time. I was able to, and I'm sorry I was late this morning. I was able to log in and listen to a little bit of the review of the bill that you started with this morning that looks like it's based on our request from our previous conversation and the back to pieces. So I just am really grateful for that and to see that. I appreciate that. And I I wish I'd noticed it was up sooner. So I just found that this morning. So I was just relieved to see the measured steps to update state board role and to provide an opportunity to move forward in a an approach that allows us to really think about potential governance change. I had thought we were being invited to respond to the agency's presentation this morning, and I was very concerned about not seeing it in advance. We did get a little view yesterday of a draft. And I shared my superintendent director work plan with Julie from the agency yesterday as part of that, because I felt like it was really difficult for the agency in yesterday's meeting and in previous meetings to answer to the questions that directors have about who has what role. And so it was good to see, I think, an even more up to date version than what we saw yesterday as far as what does the ESA do? What does the director do? We're still I think if we have the time to collaborate and work together on that and really answer the questions that directors have, we'll be much more able to understand why an ESA is even on the table. Why is it an ESA? Why is it not a school district? Why do you want to separate what feels like separating CTE from our the spaces that we currently exist in? If you're going to put us back together, those are things that we need to answer through this discussion. And so it feels like maybe we're starting that discussion. And maybe this committee is a part of that work, and that discussion and helping to move that along. So I appreciate that we're having conversations. And I feel like there's so much that is still unknown that it's hard to really weigh in on. So I still have, I love the fact that we're not gonna get less than we're currently funded, Ruth, that's super helpful.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And

[Jody Emerson (CTE Center Director)]: I still wanna know how do I build access for students who are trying to get into my center as this year where we're turning away less, but that means we're waitlisting more, right? So it's just a shift in language, because we don't have that many more seats for students, But we're we're adding to that waitlist so that maybe we have a much more accurate list of how many students really wanna be here at Central Vermont and are not getting access to the programs they're interested in. Is there when you I really appreciate Ruth, what you said about redistribution of resources, what that might look like, because I think that's what scares some of our centers is they're going to lose some of the things that they really need. And and I would rather see that we bring those centers that should have it up and not as Mark, as you said, taking it away from other folks like, let's bring everyone up to this better level, even if it's somewhere in the middle a little bit, but not bring everybody down. Right. And so I think we really have to when we're thinking about that funding, have to think about how do we what does that look like? What are the resources that we're redistributing? Which of them are new because we don't have enough to redistribute? And then where do we need school construction? Because that's still regardless of if it's that comprehensive high school that you redefined earlier or it's just finding access in certain regions, how do we do that? And is it as simple as transporting students to another center that's 20 miles away or more or less? Or is it

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: something There are things we can do and there are things we haven't explored. You're absolutely right, Jody. And I was thinking as you said that too, I think too about we currently have in our system some places where we have state board rules that define certain expectations. For example, in state board rule, there's salary assistance for an assistant director in a CTE center if the CTE center meets certain FTE requirements and certain balance of enrollment among sending districts. We have CTE centers that don't meet the state board rule, but they currently have an assistant director and they have far fewer students than centers that also that don't, that probably should. So again, how do we define things in a way that's really focused on the best use of resources? And perhaps again, going back to does every what's the right level of staffing, especially in some of those non direct, I think it the terms of our teaching and student support roles. We're pretty strong. We're not as strong when it comes to how many lab supervisors or paraprofessionals do we need, and we're not as strong when it comes to how many administrative positions do we have that don't necessarily directly relate to student learning but relate to other systems pieces. And how do we look at those systems pieces more consistently? Because we have needs, but they're just not consistently met statewide.

[Eric Remmers (Director; President of VACTED)]: So I'd also then like to just share from the perspective of VACTED that VACTED and our directors group are in many ways are aligned with the intentions and goals of the agency in the bill that they've put forward. You know, we all want expanded student access to programs. We all want to address program wait lists. We all want to support our work based learning opportunities. We all want to ensure sustainable program funding and staffing and make sure that that is as equitable as possible. You know, and so our organization put forward our legislative priorities, which given the fact, and I've testified on this previously, that our organization in terms of the ESA structure or a single governance structure is pretty divided right now, We've put forward other legislative priorities that are in alignment with the agency and with everybody's goals. And should the legislature, you know, choose not to take up this idea of of governance at least for this next year, could we pursue other options like opening up state board rule around CTE regulations and things of that nature? There are aspects that we think could make that next step to improving access and understanding around how we operate and how we can better connect with our regional districts and schools to ensure that we have the enrollments that we all want.

[Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Questions? Kirk? Thank you, Jody, for talking a little bit about the questions around roles and structures and how things are gonna be realigned. As I was looking through the division of labor between the ECA governing board, the ECA, the district, the centers and the schools and all that stuff. One of the questions that kept coming to my mind was, what's the current situation? And who is getting moved from here? Whose role is being moved from one place to another place? What roles that the districts are currently doing that are being moved into the ESA? What ones that are being taken away from them? And are there new roles being put in to fulfill needs that aren't being met? Are there roles being taken away because they don't need to be met? It wasn't clear to me how that all was going to be laid out. What knew was going to happen that was going to make it better? Or is it just a shuffling of the chairs? And so I don't know if that's something Ruth generated in some way to make it more clear how things are being consolidated or separated out those campaigns?

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: There's been discussion about that. So I've made a note to follow-up on that. Will talk to Secretary Saunders and others here to see what the timeline is for how that's evolving and to share that. So I've made a note.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that that will help us all understand how the plan is going to make things better. I think it will help, certainly help the CTE directors.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: It will give the agency feedback on what we've got, what we've thought through and what we haven't. Absolutely.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Eric Remmers (Director; President of VACTED)]: I think, you know, given that I'm representing two minds on the subject, just will stress that the idea to some of our members, particularly those that have, you know, that are significantly staffed, there is significant anxiety over what that would look like. And I don't think I'd be doing my due diligence without saying that that you can take some of our bigger centers, and I'll point to CTE Essex as as an example there, of, you know, where where a center in that space has very intentionally created a system with the staffing that they feel appropriate to build the the opportunities, community, and structure that they that that they feel appropriate to support their students. And, you know, the anxiety there is, will that center be able to operate in the same way or be able to offer the same level of academic or support opportunities? So, just understand that CTE directors are also having those conversations and there is significant debate over how that plays out. And so finding more or seeing more details about how that might be represented in an ESA structure would be really helpful as you guys mentioned for the directors.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: One thing, Eric, I would just say from my vantage point is when I think about Essex, for example, and their overall student population and their staffing, it seems proportionate to me, like, I know that it's a concern because so much is not yet fully articulated. But the number of counselors, number of special educators, their number of work based learning coordinators, their number of academic teachers for what they provide to their students does not seem like they it seems very well intentionally designed to provide what they have committed to do. I would hope that as we design systems, we take those into account. So I think we share I think the agency and Bactaid share that goal as well.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. I I think there's some fear of the unknown. And I understand that. And I think I think the more that we all can work together and not work in separate spaces, but communicate. I think communication is what we need to have, make sure that we're all working together and listening to each other and making the right decisions going forward. Other questions? Any questions? Know, when when I guess in the in the the draft that Beth ran us through, when we look at a study committee. It doesn't have to be another study committee. It can be a working group that we set up to continue to work on how this transformation is gonna go forward. I think you're correct, Ruth. And and I think Zoe was correct as well that that we've had we have plenty of studies on how our system works. And we have some recommendations on how we can make those changes. We're just not quite sure yet if ESA model is the right model. And I think we need more information in order to understand how that system will work and how we set it up and what it takes to get us there. And making sure that, again, we're not taking away from some of the bigger centers and to distribute that to to smaller centers. So and and I think, you know, we've heard Ruth say that that's not the intent. The intent is to lift up the centers that need the help, which I'm glad to hear.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: So CTE centers right now that don't have any academic support for their students. That worries me.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yep.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Not worried about Essex. Essex is providing a robust model that we have so much to learn from, but there are centers that are struggling to just provide the bare basics.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. But I think when you hear the word equity, sometimes that means we're going to take away something from someone to make someone else better. And I think I think what we wanna do is make sure that we keep the ones that are doing a really good job to continue to do those good jobs and learn from what they're doing to help bring up the other centers that need that help.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Fully agree. And one of the things I think about a lot in my current role, and perhaps it's why personally I have been in support of an ESA is we have so many pockets of excellence in our CTE centers, but our current systems don't replicate best practice and don't provide true professional learning communities for the people who are leading that really important work. We do it in isolation or we do it in one building and then we have other buildings trying to start from scratch without benefiting from that. I just, whatever we design, my goal is that we better fully articulate the current strengths in our existing CTE centers and have better systems in place to support them, ensure they sustain changes in leadership, and also ensure that they're replicated statewide. Kirk? And Jody can tell you I also have a goal that some of the problems that persist and that just bubble up every single year, we designed to minimize those.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: If I can just, I think there's some questions expressed about how the ESA model and the funding for different areas and programs and stuff, how that'll come together. I think that I'm maybe putting a lot on this JFO study to give us It's some more information about kind of tough to make those decisions when you don't have some of that basic information. I would add though, I think another issue around, or another question about the ESA model from my perspective anyway, is how that fits into a vision of a comprehensive regional high school. How that will work if you have a governing model focused on CTE, and then having a sort of parallel governing model around regular high school or whatever you wanna call it. And whether that difference will add or detract from the goal of a comprehensive digital high school.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I've noted that question as well.

[Eric Remmers (Director; President of VACTED)]: I just say, I just also say on on again behalf of ACTED, there's significant concern around the idea of a legislative appropriation to fund CTE just in terms of stability of funding and ensuring that the appropriate amount would be going to an ESA structure. So, you know, that's something to discuss down the line as well as is, are we going to be able to ensure that we're adequately funding CTE year over year through a legislative appropriation process?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And I I agree with you. I think one thing that concerns me is when we talk about equity again is the dollars. Right? So, you know, if we have a finite amount of dollars, I mean, least they're they're at least they're not gonna be any less than what we're giving right now. But we wanna make sure there's that how do we, I guess, how do we stand up the centers that needs the help? They need more dollars. They need more staff, which equates more dollars. And does that mean that we take money away from some of the other ones that have bigger budgets? And so in that way, we may be we may be causing a center, a large center to reduce their staffing or reduce their the number of students they can help to help another one. So I think the the funding is is fundamental as well. And how we are going to distribute the money, how the ESA will distribute the money amongst all the senate. I think that's probably the biggest fear than than anything else.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I understand that, and I've made notes about that. So

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: Thank you. This has been a good conversation. And I guess I this is kind of piggybacking on what Herb Olson was saying, which is that in sort of looking at it sort of very high level and when we're kind of keep returning to this sort of friction or tension where if the long term twenty year vision is to have these comprehensive regional high schools, where this, taking from Secretary Saunders' slide, students no longer forced to choose academic or technical. So how do we design sort of governance and funding models that allow for that? Because it just seems like if you have a regional high school where you have two different governance models and two different funding models, but your goal is to have students have an embedded experience of academic and CTE. I mean, it's really just a big question of how do we get there? And what is that long term governance model? And then what is the transition? So I don't know if that's a question or just just a don't know what

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: that is.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: An important point. Yeah. And I think that's where we can come back and spend some more time. A very important point.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You got a question?

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Emily? Yeah. Was actually this is for Eric. I was curious with your back to the head on. Is there a conversation about the weighted model versus the appropriations?

[Eric Remmers (Director; President of VACTED)]: There has been some in previous discussions, particularly last year, about what appropriate weighting would look like in a foundation formula for CTE. I think the thing that we have stressed is, you know, we've for years been trying to find a non competitive way to fund CTE. And, you know, and I recognize that the agency and in this bill is essentially trying to do that as well. That has been a barrier to access for too many years across the state and certain regions in particular. So if we were to do a weighted model then we would absolutely need to know you know what an appropriate weighting would be. And I don't think we have a number that we can throw out there other than what APA already put out last year, somewhere around the 25 to 27,000 range or something along those lines. I think in our legislative priorities that we put out there, and this is sort of high level in terms of funding, but what we're hoping to have happen at some point, just like what may be happening with the ESA structures, that funding for our centers, we would hope would eventually come directly off the top of the the Ed fund and rather than going through a tuition process through the sending schools. That tuition process is the place where the barriers exist, you know. Sending schools are looking at costs and budgeting for these things and that's where they begin to think, oh, we better start, you know, holding back or perhaps we don't want to spend as much. So our recommendation was to find a way that we could go strictly from the Ed Fund to whatever governing body exists for our centers, whether it be, you know, supervisory districts or an ESA.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Thank you. I really appreciate that.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Sure. Other questions? To get back to Emily's question about adult CTE, I think a few months, a couple months ago, when we started discussions so the adult side of CTE doesn't sit under anyone's umbrella. And I know there's very little money that DOL has put into the assistant directors. Is is the proposition now that adult CTE would fall under the umbrella of AOE?

[Eric Remmers (Director; President of VACTED)]: I know.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I think ultimately there's funding that comes from labor. There's funding that doesn't exist. And then there's a delivery system that could be where the ESA could be fully involved if it were an ESA. I think those are areas where we need to do more work.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. I'd I'd really like to find a place where the adult side sits under. And because I think we're I think we've been losing the ability to educate our adults, educate more adults than we currently do because of the design of our system.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I share that concern. And I think about how well resourced our CTE centers are and how some of the opportunities they could provide to adults are simply not met due to our current structural challenges.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Emily?

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: I guess this is actually a Department of Labor question potentially, but I do wonder about the potential in having things like VOA dollars and even Perkins dollars go into the Ed Fund and then be disseminated out. Are there limitations? I guess I could talk about the Perkins dollars directly here, but are there limitations for Perkins dollars to go into

[Zoie Saunders (Secretary of Education)]: the Ed Fund directly? Yes,

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Perkins is very prescribed. So Perkins of the money we get, we're required to keep 5% here at the agency for grant administration, we keep 10% at the agency for required state leadership activities defined by law. They also those administrative and leadership funds also pay, for example, for some of the CTE team's salary and benefits here at the agency, as well as some of our travel, and other statewide professional initiatives. Then the remaining 85% by law has to be granted to eligible institutions. And currently, that includes Community College of Vermont at the post secondary level, and then our regional CTE centers at the secondary level. And so 7778% of what has to be granted out goes to the CTE centers 22% goes to CCV currently. The current distribution is based on a federal formula. If we were to change governance, we could, there would be different entities who would be eligible to receive that. So if it were an ESA, the full 78% that currently goes based on a formula to those CTE centers could go to a single education service agency that could then decide how to distribute the Perkins resources within all CTE centers.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions? Any questions on what we heard from Beth on the the draft that she ran us through? Any questions on the on the rule making to update the CTE rules? We have people here that can answer questions.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: I don't have any questions, but we'll probably have some discussion about that.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Exactly. Yeah. Ruth, can you ask Zoe, if we could if they you can fill us in on what what rule updates that you're looking at for CTE, and do they match what we had, what BACTAD, and what we drafted?

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: Oh, yeah. We can we can certainly look at the agency of education back to Ed and and your sort of approach to rule making and and and and and have more conversation about that.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. It should be good to know if if we're all on the same page or not.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I'm making another note.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. Okay. At the time. Yeah. But it's for us. Okay. I think does it seem to make sense that we at least have some language wherever that does make sure that state board continues to look every five years at the CTE rules and make sure that they stay up to date, that we're not waiting twenty or thirty years before we we update them again? I'll take that as a yes.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Jonathan? On that topic, something that I said, excuse me, had mentioned, was sort of trying to understand how the seven items in that subsection A, updating definitions and credit standards and work based learning sequencing, does that cover it? Are those the seven places that you need to be looking to accomplish that goal and to not have any incidental component left out?

[Eric Remmers (Director; President of VACTED)]: If you're asking me, I actually I I I wasn't able to make the beginning of the meeting. I was running a regional advisory board meeting this morning. So I have not seen Beth Saint James document yet. I understand that some of it was based on some of the legislative priorities that that we had drafted. So I'm not entirely sure what you're looking at there.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. I think, you know, if you if, you know, like, we asked Rutland, if everybody can take a look at at what the draft is and then what, you know, I think we need to understand what AOE is contemplating as well, and make sure they're aligned. And there may be some things that AOE is looking at that that's not in what we received from BACTIV. And but we just wanna make sure that we're we're asking they're telling the board to update these rules, we wanna make sure they're comprehensive. And and I think that's the low hanging fruit right now that we can really make some changes on as we continue to walk down the journey of the complete overhaul. So we should be able to do as much as we can now, and then keep working on and come up with a plan on how we continue to move forward.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: Yeah, so along those lines, and we need to have a discussion, I think, about whether that list of seven is you know, something that we're okay with. I can see some items that are missing. So but that's probably for our further discussion. I just wanted to highlight maybe for Ruth and others that, you know, we're gonna have that discussion.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. But I think, you know, we need to hear from AOE as well as, you know, what were their thoughts. We've got back to heads. We'll hear AOEs. We may have some thoughts.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: And we'll talk yeah. We can articulate that then.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. And I think, and I know Zoe is not here. I know one of her, you know, one of her thoughts were that we don't see very often where we ask that the rules come back for the legislature to take a look at before they're implemented. So I think we want to make sure that everything's been covered before it goes to health care. And I think that's the reason why we we have that language included in there.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: And I think that's not unusual.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: No. It's been done before. Know we've done it before. Edye?

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I just wanted to add a little bit of context around some of the delays from the state board. During the time that the rules were not updated, the state board was changed. Well, it became, I guess the agency of education became a standalone agency and wasn't under the state board anymore. So the state board lost a lot of funding because they used to be the one that had the money. And so when they had no more money, it became harder for them. I think, what is it? $500 a year, some tiny number. It's really hard to actually do the work of the state board. And so right now they do have funding. And so we are asking them to do something for which they have funding, which is great. But I just, sometimes we take things out of context and don't have the whole picture. And this is just adding to that picture a little bit.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. But that's just that hasn't been that long, but it's been quite a while. It's well, it's probably been I don't remember when we switched from commissioner to a secretary, made it an agency, but in it from from 1990 or to at least twenty years.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: It's been way too long. Yes. Since they updated it. Is it twelve or

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And maybe and maybe in our language, we need to make say something about, you know, some funding needs to also accompany the five every five years. I know we can't tie another legislature's hands, but we can certainly make sure that that whoever is in our spots five years understands that that the board needs the dollars in order to be able to accomplish what we want them to accomplish. Thank you for that, Edye. Other questions? Okay. We will schedule again. I'm hoping that my my counterparts in the senate will be able to move the bill, a CTE bill that we can use as a vehicle to continue to work on this after crossover. So we will know by the end of the week, and we'll certainly set up more times. And and I really like this format is to have everyone together sitting at the table and having just a discussion of what we feel needs to be done, what information we need, then sharing that information as well. So, it seems to work better than having everybody sit in the front table and individually take their time and talk. And I think it works much better in table setting than it does in the regular testimony. So, I think that's the way we'll continue to have our discussions on CTE as we move forward. So Rut, thank you. Eric and Jody, thank you as well. We'll be in contact and try to set up some more time quite possibly next week to and then, Ruth, you can you or Zoey can let us know how you're coming with the with the answers to the questions that that you've taken down so that we can have those conversations.

[Ruth Jerke (State Director of Career Technical Education, AOE)]: I am sure that Zoey and Torin will be regularly in touch, and then they'll let me know exactly where I fit in the mix as well.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Perfect. Thank you. So I think without any other questions, that'll do it for this morning. I know we have a luncheon today with the childcare advocates at noon. We're back here at one on 385. I understand that appropriations is is getting ready to pass 674, which is a sister state with the amendments. So soon as they do that, we'll have Rick in to go over the amendment with us and do a straw poll on that too. So that'll probably be tomorrow. So with that, thank you everyone. Appreciate the discussion this morning. I think it was helpful. And we'll be back at 01:00.