Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Welcome to House Education. It is still January 22. We have, for our final testimony today, an update on frankly our POCES law, but really more importantly, the creation of our first POCES in the state, what it's been able to do, it's good time to sort of figure out how it was formed. But anyway, I'm gonna turn the, since it's getting late, I'm gonna turn it right over to the two of you. I know you have some prepared testimony and we're looking forward to hearing it, thank you.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: Thank you and good afternoon members of the House Education Committee. I know you've had a very busy day, so hopefully we can end on a very positive note with our presentation. First, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to all of you today around the potentials of BOCES in Vermont. I am one of the eights, I'm Cheri Souza, the superintendent of Mountain View Supervisory Union, and one of the eight superintendents who are represented in the Vermont Learning Collaborative. I'm very excited to share with me introduce you to Jill Graham, who is the executive director of the Laurent Learning Collaborative. She has diverse experience in the formation and implementation of both these type programs, and is also a native Vermonter. So Jill will lead this conversation, and I will be here for backup support.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Excellent. Thank you for the kind introduction and thank you everyone on the House Education Committee for having us this afternoon. I know you've had a long day, so we appreciate your time.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: So I wanted to speak to the most recent events in the Vermont Learning Collaborative. As was said before, we have I am seven years into this process, and it was begun prior to my becoming a superintendent. But in the last months in May 2025, our articles of agreement were finalized by the agency of education staff, and the second reading was completed by the Vermont Learning Collaborative Board. In July 2025, our articles of agreement and ratification motion language was sent to all of the eight current members. By 12/03/2025, our final ratification agreement by the eighth member school board received submission of Southeast Vermont Regional BOCES document to the agency of education. And we celebrated on 01/07/2026 with our approval memo that we received from Secretary Saunders launching BTLC as the first established BOCES in the state.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: So it's important to remember that Vermont Learning Collaborative was previously established as a private nonprofit agency. So now as an approved educational service agency or BOCES or CISA,

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: are We're going pick one, we promise.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: I do appreciate that. But we are able to participate more fully with our regional stakeholders. So for example, as a recognized state entity, our agency now has a greater ability to pursue more expansive and more responsive programming for our members across all domains. That includes instruction, operations, special education, professional development, to name a few. We're currently investigating cooperative purchasing opportunities for our region that include curriculum resources and high quality on demand paraprofessional training. One of the largest implications, however, as an ESA, and you'll hear me use that word, which means educational service agency and is encompassing of all titles. But one of the largest implications is that we are now eligible to apply for state and federal grants as a regional entity on behalf of our members, and also as a grant administrator on behalf of our members. And this also expands our hiring capacity as eligible staff are now able to access Vermont tables, which gives us greater flexibility to hire directly when that is appropriate and useful for our membership. This slide and the next really serve to ground you in who we are and what our agency has defined as its purpose. Our overarching mission is to conduct educational services and programs for our members in a cost effective manner in order to increase opportunities for our students and to build the capacity of the staff who are serving them. And this statement is purposely broad to capture range of needs from our members. As Sherry mentioned, this work has been ongoing for quite some time, and as a result of the original feasibility and needs assessment that was conducted by the VTLC board in 2021, these four main areas were identified as the high priority needs of the region. They included high quality educational and therapeutic services, programs and evaluations, high quality and relevant professional development, staffing support for hard to find positions across both general and special education and coordination of resources to provide cost effective goods and services. Our goal as a regional partner is to be responsive to our members. If there's another area of need that regional stakeholders identify, we would work with the board to pursue that service. We formally relaunched in the 2023, and our initial services began early in 2024. So in 2025, we conducted a cost analysis of our services versus those of non BOCES providers used by our members. And across each of these service domains, our early data has demonstrated the capacity for cost savings for the region. So this includes under the area of staffing. For example, our members are able to access part time, full time or per diem staff positions to fill their needs, which can save them up to 50% or more of an FTE position. And I referenced this as an example of sharing a specialty staff. Our evaluations and services as a regional service provider, we've been able to save our members anywhere from 20 to 50% on evaluation services. And what's most important as well is our ability to provide timely and efficient services in this area that ensures that our members are meeting their special education compliance timelines. Our consultation has focused on strengthening supervisory union programs for high risk students. And this has helped to build capacity to reduce out of district placements for students. And use of us as a regional service provider has yielded a savings up to 62 compared to other non BOCES providers for consultation. Professional development has been another area for us where we've yielded an average savings of up to 66% of professional development costs by using BTLC as a regional provider and sharing those professional development opportunities versus individual SUs or districts hosting those events on their own. And lastly, we continue to partner regionally to explore the creation and the provision of localized programming in least restrictive environments. And by offering that local high quality programming, we know that districts will be able to save substantially on their transportation fees.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: And if I could speak to capacity, one of the reasons that I joined as a superintendent was that my district did benefit as being a member of a collaborative when Hartford Collaborative was forming and had very strong programming. So as a previous special educator and special ed director, I was able to access that collaborative to design some highly responsive programs within our district at the elementary, secondary, and establishing our own alternative day program. As a result of being very active and engaged with a collaborative, we were able to reduce the number of students involved or identified as needing specialized services or an individual education plan. And when students began to demonstrate behaviors or needs greater than might be the capacity of our mainstream classrooms, we were able to create internal programs that could interrupt a path that might later be a day or residential placement. And to this day, based on agency of education reports, we have some of the lowest numbers of students in other district placements. So because of that success, when I became superintendent and saw the work of the Southeast Region to develop their own collaborative, I knew that I had to support that work because I saw the capacity it built within our district and the significant cost savings in keeping our students close to home and impactful in that students were so easily returned back to the mainstream classroom once their specific needs were met. So the capacity building on all these levels, as Jill has described, has been definitely experienced in our Mountain View Supervisory District.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: And I'd like to just use the next two slides to provide you some specific case studies for our region. The first one is around professional development. And on the left hand side, we can presume a conference that is being attended by a staff person in either the Burlington or the Boston area. The conference fee that is listed is most likely quite conservative. But if that staff person is traveling, the SU is then assuming other costs for that staff that are ancillary to the actual conference cost. On the right hand side is an example of one of our professional development trainings. We have been able to provide expertise locally within the region at a reduced rate for our members. Conferences may be in person, but they're often virtual to provide best participant flexibility. And over the last year, we've been able to source local expertise as well as nationally recognized speakers to build capacity and bring evidence based practices to the region. You can see the average cost savings here range anywhere between around 40 to 60 percent. Another example is through special education evaluation services. And again, this data comes from our spring twenty twenty five cost analysis. And you can see on the left hand side are services rendered by a private clinic, and on the right hand side are BOCES evaluation services. And the savings in each area range. Under academic evaluations, the eval savings range is around 46%. Autism evaluation savings range from 39 to over 50%. Psychoeducational evaluations range from 33 to thirty six percent and SLP evaluations are around 24%. And there's significant cost savings in travel by using BOCES providers versus a private clinic provider as we only charge for mileage. It's really also important to note that we have no waiting list, so our response is immediate, allowing the supervisory union and the school district to maintain compliance with their special education regulations, even sometimes under very tight timeline circumstances.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: And the other thing to note is that we have no overhead. So there other than the individuals who are delivering and it's a cost for service, there is no office. All of our employees are remote working, and it has allowed us to be a very lean operating system.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: I'm gonna just ask you right there. Many employees are employees of your BOCES?

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Sure, currently full time we have two. Have myself and one other individual who is fully contracted within a supervisory union. And then we have a team of about six to eight per diem providers who help to provide our evaluation services and professional development.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: It looks like your testimony's about to turn into sort of a of the national picture.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Yes.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: I might wanna just make sure there are questions about sort of your situation specifically. I got a bunch of anybody So this is great. One of the, when we were doing the BOCES bill, now law originally, one of the things we talked about with BOCES is that not every BOCES needs to be the same as another BOCES. Some specialize in one area, some might specialize in another, and you still provide a fee for service potentially for districts that may not be officially part of your BOCES, but may wanna avail themselves of the services you offer. Very long way of asking, are you providing services to school districts that aren't part of your BOCES?

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Yes.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Would you say at this point your BOCES is kind of specializing in services for students who need extra supports?

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Right now, that is a strong area of support for us, without question. We have an opportunity now that we are a recognized state education agency to revisit what the needs of the region are as that assessment is five years old and determine what else does our region need.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: And your board of directors is made up of superintendents and school board members?

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: We are made up of superintendents, special ed directors, and we have a curriculum director who is part of our board as well.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: So I assume you get feedback from them about ways that you could expand your services to the area of service.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Yes, if I may, that is the core function of an educational service agency is responsiveness to its members. What are the needs? And they may change from year to year, and therefore the educational service agency's services may change in order to reflect and be responsive to the needs of the region.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: So one opportunity that we're looking at most recently is how can we leverage the Vermont Learning Collaborative as a conduit to accessing grants. And so when you're a district of 1,000, 2,000 students, you really aren't able to leverage your student population for some of the larger national grants. So Jill and I have seen a few and actually we submitted one a few weeks ago, which allows us to operate on the benefit of the other eight districts. And so now our student population is larger, our demographic is larger, and so we're more able to leverage those numbers to really have a seat at the table to some larger grants. So we're very excited again, looking at our needs, in some more financial resources, we can apply for grants and be a credible applicant where I alone would not have been.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Nor would you have had the time probably.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: No, and Jill was a great co author. She was in Puerto Rico. I was in the cold of Vermont, but we got it done. But again, having that collaborative, her perspective, mine as the superintendent, hers as someone who's run a collaborative, knows the opportunities, works with higher education. We brought those expertise together and we were able to get it done within twenty four hours of the deadline.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: You were all sort of headed down this path, BOCES law or not. Can you talk a little bit about the advantage of having BOCES as a forming structure versus doing a cooperative, which I think is probably what you would have ended up doing had we not done the BOCES law.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Right, and so if I may, if we go back to this slide, this is why becoming an educational service agency and a recognized educational entity within the state provides us greater leverage. So we now have that capacity. We have greater opportunity to access state and federal grants. We are then able to help support our members in a better fashion because we have a seat at the table. Many there were actually several times last year where supervisory members reached out to say, Jill, do you think that the collaborative could apply for this grant on behalf of the region? And I was not able to because we were not recognized as a BOCES as of yet.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: On the sort of, has there been any reaction along the lines of, Gee, we're paying a lot for this. Not sure we're getting the return on investment that we had hoped.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: I'm happy that you brought that up. Certainly that has been a conversation as we went through the process of ratification and the support of our board of directors has been tremendous because they have been the visionaries of this process for seven or eight years. And the data of established educational service agencies around the nation, which we will get to, demonstrates that once you are an established entity, your return on investment for your members is significant. And so, again, we are barely two years old, and the reason that we exist is because of the support of our membership. The passage of the BOCES bill is amazing because the timing was so ripe for our agency. The funding that goes along with that is minimal. And, you know, Sherry can speak to the time and the energy and in the investment of the board to get to this point before I even joined them. So we were able to do some cost savings analysis for some of our members. And depending upon the number of services or the type of services that you're accessing, you may still see a return on your investment through the services that you have purchased as a member versus a non member.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: I speak to that just for a minute? What has been powerful and what I really appreciate from Jill is that her expertise in providing specialized programs for some of our most fragile students has been incredibly supportive in cases where we have needed a second set of eyes to review a student's IEP and programming to keep the programming that we have in Mountain Views alive and responsive and evidence based by best practices. Having her review my entire special education program, what I would have had to pay to have a consultant come in, meet with special educators, go to my principals, review my buildings is far below what I'm paying for, far above what I'm paying for membership. That I can call Jill. And I use this example with redistricting. The beginning of the school year, we had a number of three year olds who showed up at our pre K and there is a new law that we cannot refuse enrollment to pre K if a student is not toilet trained. And so here I have pre K teachers, principals, school nurses who have no understanding of the protocol to one, address students who needed that training and two, how to appropriately change diapers. I called Jill within three days, two days, I think it was. She had a whole team prepared to train my principals and my elementary school team on how to appropriately address this need and make ensure that these little little children could access our program. Again, for the membership fee, I paid to have that resource and so now, I have my three year olds in the in the building. I have teachers who have the resource and skills and I have parents whose legal rights were supported. So that could have been a horrible litigious situation and instead called Jill. She had the resources in place. She supported my team. There is no price for that.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: So I'm glad you brought up the membership fee you pay, which I assume is that there's like a baseline funding where every SDSU pays a membership fee, and then I assume that then there are sort of fee for service on top of that. How from, I guess, Jill's point of view, do you balance the, wow, Sherry's probably asking more than her share of the membership versus another superintendent. Just how do you navigate all of that?

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: We, again, are just establishing ourselves and I am training our members that they need to call us first. And the more that they call us first, the stronger we can become in the services that we provide. So. To answer your question, we need to be responsive to all of our members, And at this time, we don't have that issue of someone's asking for more than someone else. As we grow and as our members are able to use us more, that's what strengthens us, and that's what allows us to build our capacity.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Okay, I think I've answered enough questions. Anybody else on the committee? Great, continue on that.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Okay, great. Okay, so I did want to step back and provide you with a national perspective and some history on educational service agencies. They have been in existence since the mid 1950s, and they started primarily in the Midwest. They are recognized by federal law, and they operate in a majority of the states, They provide models for cost effective delivery of educational supports, professional development, as well as instructional programs. The colors on this particular map represent the different regions for ESAs across the country, And you can see that only those states in gray do not have statutes for establishing ESAs. And this map is a few years old, so therefore it does not represent the change of the statute in Vermont in 2024. But the umbrella organization for ESAs is ASA, or the Association for Educational Service Agencies. And they're a national organization which provides advocacy, education, and collaboration for ESAs around the nation. And they have been really instrumental in helping our agency provide education to state level stakeholders around ESAs, and they'll also be providing testimony to the legislature this session as well. So in the next few slides, I wanted to provide you some examples of ESAs around the nation, including what types of services they provide and then the cost savings that they realize their membership. So this first example is from Kentucky. In Kentucky, educational service agencies are called regional educational cooperatives, and they've existed in years. So this example is from the largest ESA in the state called Kentucky Educational Development Corporation. It's a good example of how ESA's services are defined by their local regional needs. So for Kentucky, you can see these columns represent the high need areas that have been identified, and therefore the ESA has developed their portfolio of services in order to be responsive. So they provide a range of services from educational services that span general education, special education, and operations. In Vermont, we may determine different services regionally based on the needs within those areas. This next example is from Ohio, and this summary page is comprehensive of all of the educational service centers within the state of Ohio, and it represents their twenty twenty four summary data. Ohio's ESAs have roots back to the early 1900s when they were considered county schools. And in the mid 1960s, when educational service agencies began to be established, they transitioned to the ESA model. Now these agencies have evolved over the last sixty years with one center establishing themselves in 1995, and then the most recent in 2007. So it really demonstrates the evolution of need within Ohio and the responsiveness of the ESA model to those local needs. So I'd like to highlight just a few of their statistics. They have 51 service agencies across their state. In 2024, they provided over 2,000,000,000 in services and they saved their schools statewide almost $100,000,000 as compared to the cost of purchasing or developing their own services within those school districts. And that's a really powerful example of regionally shared services. It's also important to note that 94% of their ESA expenditures related directly to services within schools and not overhead. This is another example from Ohio that demonstrates their cost savings to their members. Annually, they provide a comparison of the cost of their services to those of a third party provider or if the member district was providing that service themselves. So this particular chart shows their cost savings for their members statewide over the last nine years. And you can see they have provided a range of savings anywhere from 32% up to 40% savings since 2016, with the average being around 36%. And that has equated to millions and millions of dollars in savings across the state. I think it's important to note that in addition to their cost savings, they've also had the ability to procure significant grant allocations for their members. So they've been able to show a return on investment for every dollar of the state operating subsidy, which is a format that they have within Ohio. And they're able to generate over $8 in savings in outside grants. I wanted to show you this information from Massachusetts, which is specific to programming. So this is SHORE Collaborative, which serves the Greater Boston suburban area, the Greater North Boston suburban area. So annually in Massachusetts, they also report on their progress towards their agency goals and the cost savings to their members. So this data that I'm sharing with you here is from SHORE Collaborative's annual twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five report. And the graphic demonstrates the comparison of tuition rates from the collaborative special education programs compared to other similar private programs that are within the state. So should a district have to determine that a student needs a specialized out of district placement, you can see across each of those programs the savings range anywhere from 24 to 40% compared to similar specialized private programs. This last example is from Massachusetts and is illustrative of cooperative purchasing that benefits more than just school districts, but also municipalities. So South Shore Collaborative is located South Of Boston and provides services to many towns within the Metro South Region. So this data is from their annual twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five report, And you can see through cooperative purchasing for natural gas and electricity, both schools and the towns have realized significant savings. And just another example of the power of shared regionalized services and cooperation through a educational service agency. And lastly, linked within this slide deck, I have two more slides. This is an article for you by Doctor. Joan Wade, who's the Executive Director for the Association of Educational Service Agencies. And this article highlights many ESA opportunities, but I just want to summarize two that really uniquely demonstrate how ESA support their immediate school districts and their communities. In the first example, a school district in Iowa experienced the unfathomable, which was a school shooting. And within the first critical seventy two hours, the area ESA team helped to mobilize and coordinate and organize effective response. Their focus was helping the district reunite students and families and also to deliver essential social, emotional and behavioral health services for those that were affected by the trauma, as well as grief support. The district administrators, mental health professionals, crisis communication experts, HR personnel and members of that ESA then formed a multidisciplinary recovery leadership group that helped to address the evolving needs of the students, the staff, the families and the community as a whole. A second example from this article demonstrates how a Colorado BOCES worked with its 12 members and two regional consulting agencies to create and launch a commercial driver's license training program as part of a larger effort to create a CDL program that aligned with specific needs of local employers, which helped to ensure access to a skilled workforce and to create a pipeline pathway. So the article does provide further examples and information about the range of services that ESAs can provide, which really are only limited by the needs and the creativity of the region that they serve. And lastly, you have a copy of this summary, which is written by John Bass, who's the senior advisor at ASA. And I'd like to share just a few summary points with you. This article really underscores the data we've shared with you today, and it provides further examples of how ESAs work across the nation, and they include driving efficiency, which is the underpinning of any service agency, whether it's through shared services, cooperative purchasing, shared specialists, or grant development management. Strengthening district capacity through professional development, technical assistance, consultation, and operational support, to name just a few. And the capacity to scale state priorities by serving as that critical link between the state educational authority and then local members. This can be leveraged to help support fidelity of implementation of state initiatives across regions. So no matter what they are called or what we are called, the purpose of educational service agencies is consistent nationwide. It's to help districts stretch limited resources, strengthen capacity, and help successfully implement state priorities. We want to thank you for the opportunity to share not only our educational service agency model and experience, but nationwide as well. We truly believe that this is a really viable, scalable model in one component to support the advancement of ACT 73. And we stand ready as an agency to support the replication of this model to other regions who are interested in this work by leveraging our experience, our templates, and our national connections to create that scalability within the state. So thank you.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Great, thanks very much. If you wouldn't mind stop sharing your screen, that'd be great.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Sure.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: People who've kind of looked at all the money we spend in Vermont and there were various outliers, special ed is the one that keeps rising to the top and really seems to be the challenge that we face that an ESA can really make a difference. Sherry, have you and your fellow superintendents seen a reduction in out of district placements? Have you seen a reduction in the inability to find special educators? I know down in that part of the state, there was a time where people weren't getting their services because there simply weren't the human beings to do the work.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: So I know what I can speak to as someone who's been here for a very long time. Absolutely, working with previously the Hartford Collaborative, and now with the Vermont Learning Collaborative, it's allowed us to realize fewer students needing specialized services. And that's the bottom line. I'm a special educator. That's my life experience. I want students to be successful in their classroom, in their peers, with their peers and in their hometowns. And so we've been able to do that because we have built capacity with the help of collaboratives within our district. And now Jill is beginning that work with other districts, with the other seven districts who haven't had that experience, meeting with them, training special educators, training paraeducators, training special ed directors, acting as resources. So again, as Jill has said, we are two, three years as a collaborative. I've had a longer timeline to make this work happen. It's talking with principals around, do we need actually need a paraeducator? It's about how do we combine services? So having the level of expertise that Jill has brought to the table absolutely will transform special education and reduce costs. And we focus on the bottom line and John Hattie and others have really shown the research that when students have to leave their classroom to receive an education, the likelihood of graduation or feeling academic success declines. We want to keep students in their classrooms, in their towns with their peers. That's what's just as important, I'm sorry, as the cost. So I know that's coming. It's something we're looking at. The grant that Jill and I just developed is around developing a program where educators or paraeducators can receive special ed endorsement. It is an issue. It is hard to staff. And I will say our higher education programs are not preparing teachers to step into special ed positions. The turnover in special ed and teaching positions is significant. I was really lucky. I had a very strong community based, you know, graduate program. Those don't exist anymore. So we're really looking in at the root causes of those high special education costs. And that is greater capacity in our billings, higher level of professional development, being available when those problem situations have. Jill has, and I will speak to, I hear too, well, have Jill Grant, what a gift. And she is, but there are other special ed directors who would love to have this role. You don't, I'm sorry, you don't have a school board. You don't have a budget, you you have a budget to work within. This is an opportunity to look at superintendents, special ed directors, others with high level expertise to run similar collaboratives or BOCES across the state. So we are lucky to have Jill. We did do a very large scale recruitment, but I know there are other individuals who are highly trained in the state who could step in a position similar as Jill did.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Thank you. That actually answered my next question. Representative Brady.

[Rep. Emily Long, Member]: Is it appropriate to say it sounds a bit like you're doing

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: implementation of Act 173? I'll be speaking to that tomorrow. Well, I hope so. And I think what was interesting, what has been interesting is this is work we initiated as superintendents. So superintendents can play nice. We do work together. We meet once a month, we meet twice a month and we talk about the issues and concerns. And we are in the Southeast really intentional about how do we go from complaining to action? How do we make these problems where all share the same dilemmas? Jill speaking about CDL license. Yes, bus drivers, it's something we don't want to think about as instructional leaders, but it is definitely a problem and it takes away from the other kinds of things we need to be doing.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: If we could get you all to build housing in Vermont, that'd be great Yes,

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: that is definitely a issue without question.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: But I think if you're looking for a model of where instructional leaders, superintendents, special education directors can come together, we all have the same goal. We want students successful. We want to be cost effective. We want to make sure that students stay within our communities. And this is the opportunity that we've identified.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Would you describe it as a sort of low risk avenue?

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: Absolutely, absolutely. Because I'm going to need to purchase these things anyway. I need to do a special ed evaluation and now I don't have to wait six months, which could get me into legal challenges. I can turn to Jill and say, when could your team step in? They have no waiting list, we're done. And so it absolutely addresses that. It empowers us to be much more efficient and effective.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Representative Long, do you have a question?

[Rep. Emily Long, Member]: Yeah, I do. Gosh, thank you for this. I've been hearing about it at my own SU level, and this has been another level that I'm really enjoying. A question I have is around, I'm not an educator, but I know that data collection in an SU in a state is very helpful for driving good decisions that we make. Is there a process where you can see setting up a model for districts to use data more effectively through CISA

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: or post CISA?

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: Well, think that's, and maybe I would say to Jill is how data inform instruction assessment? That's a lot of professional development and support. And I can absolutely see a team coming in. How do you set up a data team? How does a data team operate in a school? How does data inform daily instruction assessment benchmark? I mean, are conversations we're able to have all the time, but not everybody is at that capacity. And Jill, I'll defer to you.

[Rep. Emily Long, Member]: But before you speak, Jill, I guess are we even talking IT, right? Okay, thanks.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: Well, and we were looking at an IT grant and the deadline was before us becoming a BOCES, but there is an absolutely, we have partners in New Hampshire. They are able to apply as a larger scale, receive that grant money and whether it's artificial intelligence, security. I mean, we are getting tried to be hacked all the time and we kind of keep pace with that with one IT director. Absolutely. And you saw that as one of the models in Kentucky, that was a major part of what they're doing.

[Rep. Emily Long, Member]: But

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: I won't step on Jill's toes anymore.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: No, Sherry, well said. And yes, that absolutely could be something if it was identified as a regional need or if it was an initiative that perhaps the state educational agencies said we are looking to create a dashboard for our districts, what have you, is that something that we keep regionally? That's something we could absolutely explore. Again, it's limited only to the creativity or the needs of the region and the state.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: Right. And you can take an expertise and this is what we've done. So my director of technology has done a lot of work with MIT and Dartmouth around technology. He's a great resource. Joe can call him, Ralph, could you do a presentation and members could be part of it? And we could have a work like group. I mean, all those are opportunities that can come together as part of the membership. I

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: just have one, I was looking for the list of the eight SDSUs that you have, but it's not on your website. Could you just give us the list?

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Yes, Mountain Views Supervisory Union, Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union. Springfield School District. Two Rivers Supervisory Union. Windham Northeast, Windham Southeast, Windham Central and Windham Southwest.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Thank you. Committee, any other questions? Great. Well, thanks for making the time for us today. Was very illuminating. It really does seem that we got on the bandwagon just in time for you all being ready to do it. And I think we're very fortunate that we passed the law. The test case two years later is right up and running. So it's really advantageous. Yeah, thanks a lot.

[Sherry Souza, Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union]: Well, and it's a great practice education. We couldn't have done it without you, and for you understanding and appreciation of the work we're doing. So it's a thank you and kudos to you all.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: For two of the timing and we thank you for the opportunity to be able to share we've come and to celebrate our approval.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Thank you. Thank you. All right, everybody. Good afternoon. You too.

[Jill Graham, Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative (ESA/BOCES)]: Bye bye.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair]: Busy day.