Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good afternoon, everyone. This is the Barras Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Tuesday, 03/17/2026 at 02:10 in the afternoon. So we're back from the floor, back from lunch, back from caucuses. We will have, I think, just a committee discussion on CTE, where we're at right now. We've seen a couple of proposals or some draft language. Just trying to get a read from the committee of where they are, where you all are, and just have some open dialogue, I think, as we move forward. I think s three thirteen will be coming here Vehicle. Sometime as our vehicle. We should keep working to figuring out where we wanna go so that we can just hone in on that. I think we've looked at the language prepared based on AOE, what AOE brought to us, just the governance structure. I think there's a lot of that. There's still some outstanding questions that we had. Met last week, and I think Ruth was taking those to AOE. Haven't heard back yet of Jonathan at bad side question yet. We also have some language that we ask Beth to prepare based on what bank had brought to us. Know, rulemaking, and a few minor changes, finding the statute. I'm just wondering where people are, what are they thinking? I mean, what are you thinking about ESSA the model that AOE has brought to us? And I guess let's start there.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: I can start. I can start talking. So the SM model, I don't have the presentation in front of me. I liked the way it was laid out about what we want, the sort of vision of what we want, which is essentially the way I think of it is a regional high school that is comprehensive, includes CTE pathways, that includes regular education pathways, that includes the ability for students to do both. Yeah, just flowing in between seamlessly. Exactly. And the vision, I've been very excited by the way they And they've listed off the variety of pieces of that vision. But I struggle with how the if that's our vision and it's a long term vision, maybe there are certain high schools that can do it earlier. But let's say it's a twenty year vision. I struggle with how the ESSA model gets us. The ESSA model seems conflicting in a regional comprehensive high school that allows I don't get that. So that's my struggle with the ESSA model, is that if we start with what we want as a vision and then reverse engineer a governance model that would fit that and would get us there, And when I asked my question, they really couldn't answer that as well. Didn't really have an answer about how it would fit with that vision. So that's my concern.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Next to Y.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: I share what Abbey's saying. Agencies draft, I thought had said a lot of good things, but I didn't see how it would help get to where we want to go. And where we want to go is much better access to CTE for our students. And ultimately, I'm thinking about the roadmap kind of thing. And what ultimately, I think we would love to see would be, or at least I would love to see would be a regional comprehensive high school that integrates CTE into its program. So, do you get there? There are a bunch of pieces I think we could tackle, kind of short or medium term, maybe we can get a lot of common ALD around that. I don't see the concept of a statewide governance structure as compatible with our goal, because it seems to be to perpetuate a bunch of the segregation that's occurring now. I just don't understand how a lot of this would work. I don't understand how, you know, funding, providing programming, you know, aligning a lot of these issues that people have talked to us about. I don't see how that is supported or helped by having two separate

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: structures.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: So what that governance structure is supposed to be, that's a good question, but I think ultimately, I sort of have in my mind this idea of a comprehensive regional high school that integrates CTE and to form a governance structure that's compatible with that ultimate goal. Then we could build in a bunch of the short term pieces that I think we need to do around calendars, around tuition, around transportation between districts that have a lot of capacity and those that don't. But I think unless you have sort of a vision of where you want to end up, it's going to be tough to get even those pieces in the right place.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Yeah, to build on what's already been said, and to go off of the question I asked when they were here. I mean, yes, I think the long term vision is plausible. I'm not sure that they've been really clear on how this would get us there. And that's why I asked the question. As this process moves forward, if they created the visa, how did the duties and jobs that are currently being done, how do those get distributed down to the district level or at the ESA level or up? What jobs get eliminated? Because of redundancy, what new jobs are there that they haven't really clearly identified that are going to meet some of these needs that they're talking about that they want to it did not seem clear to me that they actually had a real strategic map on how to get from here to there. And so some of the things that they were pouring out and suggesting that USA would be doing work, things I found myself saying, well, should the agency of education be already doing that? And so, why are we creating another body that's just complicated things, especially when that does not seem to fit in with whatever goals back '73 were. So like the idea, just am not sure that I trust that the

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: plan and process has been effectively articulated.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: Hello. I agree with everything that has been said so far. It's very nice to hear the goal articulated that hands on, the goal is for comprehensive hands on learning to exist throughout the system, either through a CTE program or through these early intervention, early touch programs in the rest of the system. And so I guess with the conversation about even engaging with middle school or even elementary school, I am left with that same question. How exactly is the ESA going to fit in with the rest of K-twelve? And it seems like one side or the other has been milled into the other to make this thing work. I keep coming back to the structures that we once had in our systems with various types of electives and hands on learning. I'm wondering if there's a way to bridge the gap between what we have now in this larger twenty year structure that we're thinking about. So how are we going to, in the interim, roll out some of these programs and get the alignment and continuity with the CTE programs that we already have? It seems like there is some desire among the CTE schools to They didn't throw the ESA idea out the window entirely, so I do take that for something. But it would be nice to hear from the agency how we're imagining the governance side of both of these systems to play nice together.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: So I recognize the problem I've had against high schools. I think that's great. But I also share concerns. This is the right way to get there. I'm building off family because I have fond memories of being in sixth, seventh, eighth grade. And we had this class where it was broken down into three things. I did woodworking and metal shop and bike repair, and then it went up to electricity and auto mechanics, and it really helped spark that interest. I still have, in my office, the three tier shelf that I built in South Sea. So that's really, really important to me that we have this that children are exposed to stuff as soon as possible. And I also think, also important is the high school experience. You know? My own wife was torn out of her school. She went to Colchester grades k through 11 and then was taken out for twelfth grade. She spent her last year. She didn't was capable to graduate with any of her friends. And, mean, I she's okay, but it was something she really had to deal with. She really had to work through that. And I would not want to wish that on anyone. But I find myself, the ESA looks great in concept, but of course the devil's in the details. And I find myself saying, okay, well, let's say for the sake of argument, we say, you know, the CSA thing doesn't work. Well, then what? Do we have a better idea? And if we don't, then we either go with the ESA, or if we don't have a better idea, we kick it down the road. And what if we don't have a better idea next year? We take it down the road again. So I I feel like we need to do something. We need to take some sort of action. What that is, I don't know.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: I don't know. But one thing that, certainly the portion of the states, I think we have a pretty good example of what people are trying to move towards, where the high school and current technical education center are on the same campus. They share some walls, there's a little bit of a, they walk from one end to the other without going outside. And that's valuable.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: I was

[Herb Olson (Member)]: distressed in, I guess the draft of the bill, Another important component of where I live has to do with students who are arrested in the Windham Southwest Supervisor, you're getting enrolled at public expanse of the Charles H. McKinney Technical School, or the Franklin County Technical School. This is something that's getting cut out, an agency where something to smooth people's concerns is elsewhere in that, because that's all in Massachusetts. Why is that's the closest curriculum education centers that is in Vermont is more than, I think twice as far. So it's an important How we address that, I'll be very interested to see, because that matters to people. Anyhow, I think the ESA, and talking to people at

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: the technical

[Herb Olson (Member)]: center in Southwest Tech, doesn't seem so, it seems relevant. It seems to make sense. And that's, I was glad to hear that in conversation. And I guess a lot of rise to that on how we feel good about the five members, I think, that would be sort of the governing body of the ESA. That seems like an important election of not even a half dozen people talking about, you know, sort of working with that assistant or the executive director. So I would like to feel like that makes me feel lot of confidence in how that quintet is assembled, because I think that would be lots of people in terms of how it's able to hear the different parts around the state, the different voices around the state.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: So can for the funding model with the ESA, I feel like it takes away that confliction there when you have it separated. I I'm not opposed to the statewide process of that. I think that the benefit of that is if, you know, some trades are not offered in Burlington, but they are offered in Barrie, we can ship that kid right down to Barrie. You have to have the comprehensive side of things, right? Because you can't do half days in those situations. Those kids have to be there all day long. And that my personal opinion would be to combine our high schools and our CTE centers altogether and just put it all under our jurisdiction. That's probably a little much, but I think of, we don't, I'm in an insurance, but they're in education, they're the agency of education, so I have to think that they've done all the research on this and it's kind of where I'm sitting on that for the professionals in the room.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: Really, the agency of education made a good argument for just having one statewide school district.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I would

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: say this.

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: I think that a stabilized approach alleviates some of the things that we've heard such as North Country by the director that some of the students from sending schools were told mid year that the academic pieces that they were getting to add to their CTE weren't going to count toward graduation. That needs to be standardized and stabilized. I like the idea of making it easier for the trade instructors to come in from the trades to teach and whether that's changes in licensure or certification, whatever that takes, have some oversight to that and some cohesive process with that, that would work across the board. Maybe that does need to include a funding mechanism so that the smaller ones aren't at its economic disadvantage with the larger ones. That being said, well, a question I have, know, Mike, you asked at least twice for timelines

[Herb Olson (Member)]: the

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: PSA rollout. And of course we have no timeline because we don't even have a target in place yet for education reform overall. Everybody talks that, oh yeah, we're looking at centralized schools, what's the term? The regional Kachapo. Yeah, the whole shebang. Hopefully spread around the state to kind of balance capacity issues, but keeping that flexibility so that if, you know, two years down the road, all of a sudden the auto mechanics is full here, they can still ship, you know, it's somewhere else. So to me, we are still hitting a moving target. So do we really want to try and set up anything rigid right now as an interim step? Some of these things do need to be addressed and do need to be addressed at the state level, as I opened my remarks with. But I don't know that we really need another harvest or silo sitting out in the back lot. Let's keep it flexible.

[Kirk White (Ranking Member)]: I'd continue off, Dave. Feel like listening to all the stuff, I have nothing new to add to whatever Dave has said except for from being somebody who's not steeped in education and is trying to keep up, this proposal seemed to come really late in the game to I think everybody agrees and have heard that reform is needed, but this mechanism came pretty late in the game to be a very big disruption. And so I guess I generally agree with everybody's comments and just feel like something this big, we definitely shouldn't be rushing, Dave said.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Can I add something? Tony said something that struck me. Well, if we're not gonna do this, what are we gonna do? And the problem is, I think every region of the state is in a bit different situation. So it's really hard to say, okay. This is what's gonna work for everybody. I'll share with you, though, talking in my neck of the woods, what makes sense for them, whether it makes sense in some other area. Really don't. They are, I believe, in Addison County, they're willing to think about a comprehensive regional high school, whether they're in more than one facility, in square one, that's maybe a definition. But having that concept and the governance of that integrated high school be a single entity, At a county level. At the same time, people are not comfortable, you know, with but they'd like to keep their school district, which takes care of, you know, definitely the elementary schools and maybe middle school, And have that operate so you'd have we got three districts in Addison County. Three districts, a unified, integrated, comprehensive high school district, and then I shared services over the whole time. Whether that works, I'm just being straight, we have been thinking about that, whether that makes any sense whatsoever in other parts of the state. Some people are thinking fast, because I don't think they really are comfortable. They don't know how the AOE idea of a single state CTE is gonna work. The more people I talk to people, the more that's not gonna work.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: So, figure that out. And I appreciate that. I would say we don't wanna fall off the other end of the law of having 17 different governance methods either.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: Something that also is coming to mind is, testimony from last year, the concern that some districts have had where they've combined CTE within the district and the CTE funds can get rated or can get used for other purposes. So I just flag that as one of the underlying fears that doesn't always get expressed as much as how CTE's funding, because their funding structure kind of demands a little bit more given their equipment needs and the level of speciality that they have, making sure that they're still able to keep those funds and are able to do the programming they wanna do.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I have a few thoughts. One of them is I almost want a workflow chart. Right? Like this is the problem that we're trying to solve. This is what's in the works right now to solve that problem. This is what's been tried to solve that problem. This is the progress that's been made to solve that problem. And just to talk about CTE in those different buckets. A couple of times around the room today, earlier and now, we've talked about the fact that schedules don't align and graduation requirements don't align. But in theory, I think it's starting next school year or maybe it's the following school year. Those will be aligned. So are we going to solve a problem before the fix that we put in place is set up? Are we gonna keep trying to solve that same problem? Are we gonna let that go for a year or two, which is four years from now, which feels like we're banging our heads on the desk. But do we let it run and see if that actually solves the problem? Or do we keep trying to tinker before we know it's right? And so, when we say, what do we do? I think we have to do knowing what is already in the works. Because education doesn't turn on a dime. It's not one of these things that And really none of government does. So I just don't want us to lose that piece. Are things that have been put in place last year and the year before, in theory, are going to solve some of these problems. And then the funding, I think there isn't a perfect solution, and right now we know what the problems are. Right now we know that the kids in Rutland aren't getting the services, even though there are spaces available in Addison because it's too expensive to send them to Addison. And it's easy to just not provide transportation because it's so expensive. So is there a, you can't charge more, right? Like, and this is just throwing an idea out there. You can't charge more than the local cost, even if a different program is more expensive. Is that something that we can put in place? And that will protect those schools and give kids. So I'm trying to look at what's the and? What's the solution that hasn't been put on the table yet? Because it's probably cheaper to provide transportation but not spend that extra $12,000 or whatever it is per student in addition to what they would pay locally. And then the kid gets their needs met. And so I wanna be open to those ideas. Something we talked about at some point, I don't even remember when, is what's happening after hours and are the buildings being used for adults at that point? And could that defray some cost if there's more money coming in from these other programs? I don't know who's gonna fund that, separate issue, but it could defray some costs if there's more money coming in. I always want us to be thinking about those things. And I keep going back to, we have reports on CTE from 2000, in our file, in our CTE file from 2015 up to today. And they're all telling us the same problems that we're trying to solve. I think that some of the reports, well, a lot of the reports aren't updated based on the changes that we've made in the meantime. And so I think we have to be really aware of that too. When we look back at the APA report, There are things that have been changed since even then. And if we're only relying on that to say, this is what we have to do to go forward, I think we're missing things. You have flexible pathways that haven't been fully implemented yet, even though it's ten years old. And I don't think there have been any fixes to that. So maybe that's that flowchart that we need. These are the pieces. This has been untouched. This has been touched. Maybe that's our project. And how do we help the things that have been thought of as good ideas or have been put forward as good ideas and made it through a legislature in the past get the traction and support that they need to get paid? I

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: think we need to look at what's in place now that's not being

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: fully implemented and

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: the reasons why it's not implemented, along with I like the idea of one governance structure for all the CTDs. I don't know that ESA is the right one without knowing what our maps are gonna look like. I'm just afraid that we start going down the road of creating this huge bureaucracy that it's gonna be hard to undo. Then it becomes more costly than it is effective.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: Yeah, just to piggyback a little on what both of you said, I feel like we have quite a bit of consensus about the long term vision. And we also have quite a bit of consensus about the problems right now. And to Edye's point, I think what we it's hard to visualize. And I think literally visualizing it with flowcharts and stuff is a great idea. Because to understand the timeline, all the components of Act 73 and the timeline of those pieces, and then right, all these other pieces of programs and legislation that either are being implemented or whatever it is. But anyway, I really like that approach of saying, what can we do right now to solve some of these problems? Understanding that in the next month, we're not going to be able to create a comprehensive system for CTEs that will get us to where we want to be in twenty years. But we can make some incremental progress to solving some of the problems we see in front of us.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I'm just wondering if trying to grab the low hanging fruit right now that we can make it, will be effective. And find a better understanding, flexible pathways. What comes along is that further exacerbating polyp. I think those are some of the things that we need to understand. If it is, how do we divert students to other CPE centres? Is that feasible, number one? And is it good for the student, depending on how long they have to be traveling? And then how do we deal with their other core subjects as well? So, think there's really a whole lot of stuff that needs to be thought out, really thought out well before we really start coming up with a structure, a governance structure.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Any governance.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: Yeah. I

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: mean, in theory, right, the money is going to be fixed when we have a foundation formula. Do we tinker with it between now and then? I mean, it's a question, right? I have enough information to know what a foundation formula is going

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: to do to schools or CTEs. I also don't feel like I have a sense of what the vision is for K-twelve. I mean, we know that we're part of that vision, but what else is the vision and how are we differentiating what we're teaching in K-twelve versus what we're teaching in tech if we acknowledge that technical education is not just learning the technical aspects of it, but there is a whole lot of other pieces of education attached to it. I think that this big sense of separation, like things are just two fundamentally different things, isn't helping.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I'll have to get to your point of, like a pre tech, and we have schools with spaces that are not being utilized, and how do we, what kind of spaces fall under the ESA? Right. And then or does it make more sense where those spaces would fall under the control of your regional textile now to provide the students before they get into the, you know, eleven twelve. I don't know, but it it sure makes a lot of sense to me that we have satellites out there as we're moving from, you know, if it was an agave bridge, you create the fridge, that gets us to the regional boundary. So you're going get your ice cream. You need to get there. And I don't know that having that ESA model, unless you're having ESA and then your regions are smaller ESA models under the ESA, they're controlling what's going on. Then there's the directors. I just see it expanding out, which is not what we want to see. And I'm sure that's not thought, but I can see that happen. And of course, you know, is just the educational umbrella over everybody. So, the ESA would be a statewide super party unit, basically.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: It would work all the employees. Right, they want to hold all the employees, so not exactly.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Not exactly. And this is the part that we're getting. Different.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Because I mean, I'm sure there are teachers, I remember my own experience, those teachers served to they they did multiple classes. What if you're have a a teacher that teaches, like, a math class, and they're teaching an AutoCAD class under the CTE? Well, how do you split up the payment of that?

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: And should that actually be separated? Exactly.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: That's true. I felt through this whole process that if what we're talking about is integrated schools, then why are we even having this conversation? It's two parallel tracks. Exactly.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: But I think you need that parallel track because we're not it's gonna take

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: a long time before we fully shift over to regional regional ice. So that to me that says that what we need to be doing is this like you said, can building the bridges and fixing things can be fixed so that when whatever the unified system pops in and we can fit into that first, that ESA seems like a parallel organization. And

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: does it make sense that we abandon the governance structures that all the different CE centers have?

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: Twice. Once now, and then

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: once again for whatever that funnel is.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: How would what? How would that? Well, should we I think we need to think. Should we be upending those three different governance structures, named before? So should we be upending those? Because, I mean, 12 of the 17 is one structure, then there's three other reps. Right? Yeah. Three folks. So should we be upending that, or can we create a bridge that encompasses all of those structures, get us to the point where we want the regional comprehensive integrated system?

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: I feel like that's a bad thing to question.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That's something we need we should be talking about. We pray. What

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: is the bridge? We don't. Right.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: But I think those are questions that we don't have the time to answer during the short period of time in session. I think that's something that a working group can continue to talk about. We have APA's report, we can utilize those reports, but maybe, mean, is that right for Vermont?

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: There was some resistance to the idea of doing a study group, at least from AOE's position.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah, well, it really would be a study. It's not a study, because It's we're not

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: not studying.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: It's study groups. It's a working group to, let's work out these questions that we're having, and answer them, and then move forward where everybody's on board. Let's move forward with this idea. But I think there's still questions that have to be answered on the rest of the restructuring of education.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Like that idea, and it goes into sort of the flowchart kind of thing. We've identified a lot of problems. They've been pretty consistent over the years. And some of them, you really might need a work group to sort out the details. There might be some that we could do this year.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I mean, there's some things. The flowchart- There are other things that we can do before the end of the session that we can But pass in a

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: that's where the flowchart idea comes in to me anyway. Line them up and figure out we've been talking about we know and line them up. And what do we think we can find out this session? And what do we want to get a work group together to iron out the digits.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Let's see if we get answers from AOE on the questions that we had last week. And I think that'll help us better understand AOE's thinking. Are there anything we can incorporate? Yeah. We

[Herb Olson (Member)]: prompt them to provide the non 14 slide thing that's in our testimony, the more full, I think our web page still has that the one that Sony showed us that was much more condensed than the more expanded one. The the

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: one that that they brought last week? Yeah.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Along along with that More detail. We need even more detail. More than that. It's it's really hard to figure out some of this stuff without knowing what the money is about. And, you know, you got this JFO and APA. Right? And then talking it's really hard to figure out some of this without knowing what they envision as a per pupil amount. Well,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: yeah, because it has to incorporate the cost, the administrative cost of CTE as well. It's not just street cost. Right. True, yeah, you could break it up that way.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: But it'd be nice to, come on, give us a- Show us the numbers.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You gotta pay for the ESA.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Even if we not thrilled about the ESA, think, still think that analysis, I think we're focused on under foundation formula, what would be your weighted CTE, even

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: that would be very helpful.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: Also on the funding thing, something that keeps coming up for me is how much of a sort of entity that has fundraising capacity for things like large pieces of equipment that can go in liaison with some of our manufacturers and work out some deals so that we can actually get them the equipment needs that they have.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean, when you look at I'm trying to remember. Audit? Yeah. I mean, they've worked at the tech center to actually bring students in as interns. Right. But how do we I mean, I think that's not a bad idea. You can work with companies within the tech area that could provide some training equipment that could not only help CT students in the up to grade 12, but also the adult side.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: Absolutely. And it'll help train, hopefully, theory.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And remember that multimillion dollar equipment to.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: But it's in their best interest because they're, you know, I mean, they're coming down screaming because they don't have enough people.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: Right.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: And this gives them an opportunity to train their own workers.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: Even if they give it donor capacity,

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: they can trade it off too.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: That fall under flexible pathways. Nope. I

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: guess I think about it in the system. It's not our job to match up the employer with the CTE, but it's our job to make sure system supports this happening and encourages it happening statewide, not just in the place where somebody has the capacity to make that relationship. And so that would be my idea. How do we create the system that allows groups to happen as easily as possible? Oh, it would have

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: to be something that is housed in whatever governance structure. I kind of imagine it being similar to a very well funded PTA, having the ability to actually raise the funds. They've already AOE has already talked about importance of And the cooperation that they have with industry. So it's being able to actually expand that further and get that kind of regional variety with our manufacturers and the athletics that are going to benefit from this.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: A good example is the aviation program in Burlington. It's run by Burlington. It's in South Burlington by the airport. And that obvious reasons for why that works there. And it has a lot of industry support. And they also have adult CTE programs as well. So it's really good. I mean, it's

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: a good example of something that has been

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: stood up and really successful. Was

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: trying to replicate that.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: And then the question is like, what is the industry that it could support? So it might not be said, unless there's a vibrant airport, it's probably not aviation. Only part, know, concentrates could have a

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Can you say in the latter?

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: Oh, just we were just talking about how do you then stand up programs like that that are are appropriate regionally and where we're offered to the state. Another

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: question to that is, are they able to get enough students to fulfill the workforce that they need in Burlington area, not industry. And if the answer is no, then how can we replicate that in other areas of the state that can then train those students when they graduate, they can come down, they can go to Brooklyn. And they need housing.

[Herb Olson (Member)]: Everything's tied together. So locking in that secondary place to having a glut of training when they've reached reached the quota, and now what can they take

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: it to? Well, had the same issue in Quebec, too, years ago. They did the same thing that we've done, their students to tech, So through the schools, they're teaching tech, tech, tech. And all of a sudden, they didn't have people to build houses and build construction and all of the stuff they were doing. We're trying to get that. Mean, that's one thing we're good at, is we find a niche that needs to be filled and we move everybody to it. We forget about all the other stuff, so it's too late. Remember that CTE is not just about the trades. It's tech, it's nursing, it's a whole bunch of stuff. We have to be careful. The health the health the health scientist Yeah. Piece is really important. Think that I mean, I think this is helpful for us, to better understand where we're all thinking, how we move forward. I think we really need that filter for better understanding. We really need to go after the low hanging fruit right now.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: I don't know if it's possible, but it will be real if we can request that we get just some kind of sense of what they're thinking about for the rest of the K-twelve system. Because I think that's going to really create barriers on what we're able to get accomplished too. Do you mean different from 73? I guess I mean, No, I don't think I mean different from Act 73. I just mean,

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: are they imagining

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: that structure to happen? Because I guess, I have a very hard time viewing these as two separate systems, but I see that there's a process that views them as separate systems. So what are they seeing? And where do they imagine CT From their side. Whose do they? The education committee that has the education committee in the Senate and also the agency of Michigan.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Three different groups.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: At least.

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: At

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: least. I mean, no, really.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: There's just a philosophy. I just want to understand what the philosophy is or something. Well, so you're right on that there is not one direction right now.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Right? There's a Yeah. And so that's why we're talking about what is the low hanging fruit that we can make an impact. Is there maybe what is? Is there some way that we can make an

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: impact while

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: the rest of that is being figured out? Because you're exactly right. We can't do this alone and we shouldn't do this alone as an independent thing. This is part of a bigger system.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: And honestly, we're dependent on that system to really properly legislate this part. Exactly.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: And we don't want to start taking low hanging fruit and turn out that that fruit isn't particularly ripe. To expand the medical research.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think what Boutin has brought to us is the low hanging fruit. Yeah, that would make huge change for them, how they operate. It doesn't get us where we wanna be, but it sure helps get us down the road.

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: So it'd be real helpful for me if someone could start putting together that list.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I thought you were gonna do it.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: I have.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: But I think too, what Edye said is that we should really look at what we already have in law, what's in balance of being utilized or not utilized, along with rule changes and rule upgrades and things like that. Maybe that's, I think, a project for our interns to take a look at what we already have in law that's really not the personal learning plans, flexible pathways. Okay. Well, this, I think, will help get us some direction. We'll keep pushing on AOV to get us answers to our questions. And we'll keep talking with the CTEs and whoever else you think we should be talking to in order to get us to a place where we can attach language to S313. Alright. Anything else? Anybody want any more input? Alright. I think we're that gets us to the end of the day. Sure, we may have an amendment of three eighty five, I don't know yet. And we'll talk about S-one 173 tomorrow, vocational rehabilitation, Start taking testimony on that. We just got it in the Senate today. Which bill is it? S-one 173. The

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: newest bill.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Good. So, I think we're done for the day. I worked last Saturday. You're bank it? No. It's a biggie. It's getting full in them. You're getting soft. It doesn't happen when you're gonna