Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: This is House Education on January 23. Changing topics, are twofold here, presentation and some context and some understanding of the state's chronic absenteeism problem, but also how we deal with it. And then this is under the category of miscellaneous Ed bill, because there will probably be some language for us to include or discuss in that bill that the AAE has put together. With that, the floor is yours. Thanks for joining us.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Good morning, Good to see everybody. For the record,

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary and Chief of Operations for the Agency of Education. I'm joined by Courtney O'Brien and Anne Bordenaro, who

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: will introduce themselves. Go ahead, Courtney. Good morning, folks. Nice to see some of you again. My name is Courtney O'Brien.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: I use sheher pronouns, and I am the agency's new Safe and Healthy Schools Division Director. And Anne is on screen. Anne, can you hear us?

[Anne Bordonaro (Senior Policy Advisor for Federal Policy, Vermont Agency of Education)]: I can hear you. And hi, everyone. Anne Bordenero. I'm the policy advisor for federal policy. And the reason I'm here in relation to this work is that I've been involved in this work at the agency since its inception almost three years ago.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: With introductions, think you can speak on. I'll say a few

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: just kind of brief words, just sort of reminding you some of the context of the changes that the agency has made. And then Courtney will be leading the presentation. So you heard from Secretary Saunders two weeks ago now. It feels like we're in our third week about a major reorganization that the agency underwent over the past six months and also our strategic planning process. So you've had that presentation from her. And where chronic absenteeism sits in all of this is one of our major pillars in our strategic plan is safe and healthy schools. And addressing chronic absenteeism and reducing chronic absenteeism is one of our accelerated initiatives. We're getting underway. We've been doing this work for several years now and are ready to bring forward kind of the major step one, which we'll be talking about today. And in order to be able to do this work effectively, we did create a Safe and Healthy Schools division, which Courtney is our division director. And what we have really been diagnosing, Courtney and I have been really embedded in this work for several years, is that our health initiatives, our mental health initiatives, our emergency operations, school safety facilities were sort of dispersed across the agency in various positions. And that also created challenges when we're working with our other agency partners. Where is the home for this work in the agency of education? And who can the field be working with to really make sense of a lot of disparate initiatives and requirements? So that was the impetus for creating a safe and healthy schools division. And we're pretty excited about this because we've been able to move into one integrated team. A lot of the work that we think of is like that whole child work that's so central to our ethos of education in Vermont. So we'll probably be back throughout the session as you all are thinking of other safe and healthy school topics. You'll be seeing more of Courtney. And you already know Bob Donahue sits on that team. He's our school facilities manager. And there's a

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: whole host of really talented and knowledgeable folks there. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Courtney. Okay, thank you so much. So we'll move forward again, kind of restating. Today is really about building foundations and understanding the why. Something that I do want to just nail down for everybody, this topic can feel somewhat existential and big, and there are very practical solutions now. And so we're really approaching this work with, yes, this is a long term project. It is a multi year initiative. We will need a lot of partnership from other state agencies and community entities, but we can't do it. This is a problem that we can find some very practical, somewhat immediate solutions for. So I urge you all to keep that in mind as we move forward. And so jumping right in, why now? There are many other large initiatives happening right now. Why would we approach this at this time? Couple of reasons. Number one, we are making significant investments into our education system as a state. In order to take advantage of that, students need to be present. And so we are are looking for ways that we can support our students across the Vermont equitably with quality resources, quality education, and lots of community supports. And if they are not attending school for any number of reasons, they cannot take advantage of those resources, and they will not be able to reach success. So that's really more immediate. On a long term basis, chronic absenteeism is one of the best indicators or early warning signs for high risk behaviors or negative outcomes later in life. So at an academic level, chronic absenteeism is linked to difficulty learning to read by third grade, lower rates of achievement in middle school, and lower graduation rates. This information is reflective of national information and data, not just in Vermont, but we do see these trends reflected in state as well. Holistically, absenteeism impacts all of us. It is a community based problem. It's not just one individual missing school and therefore the impact stops there. It's something that impacts our workforce readiness, our existing workforce, public health, and both individual and community health outcomes, and just community wellness over time. So a little bit of background about how we've been involved in this work. It's not something that has just begun. We have been, I would say, working in this field for some time, but really intentionally starting to jump in and understand your cause and where we might be able to take this work over the last two years or so. And so I appreciate Anne being here today. Anne Bornero has been deeply involved in this work for several years and has really provided the launch point for this work that you'll see today. Nationally, chronic absenteeism is a problem. So we are seeing similar issues across the state. We did see an increase, excuse me, across all states. We saw an increase post pandemic that has not really declined to the place that we need it to be. So there are some small decreases over time. We'll talk about Vermont specific results in a bit, but we are still seeing this as a persistent issue. And again, it's an early warning indicator of many other issues to come. We had prioritized some early and regular engagement with the Agency of Human Service and Services and Department for Children and Families, specifically because of the places in statute where the rule over two rules overlap around truancy. So title 16 provides currently requirements for schools and districts in the escalation of absenteeism into the court system. DCF also has some provisions that are either impacted by a student reaching that point of truancy or, again, overlap with those processes, particularly around educational neglect. So it's really important that we're in lockstep in this work so that we are not working against a partner agency and so that we can be supporting each other as we move forward with change. Another really important piece of this work has been very robust and deep stakeholder engagement. So this is not a project that was born out of the AOE and now solutions are coming forth. We have been very engaged in understanding existing state root cause, potential solutions, systemic challenges, really any and all of the above with our education partners, with Ed leaders, with staff who are providing student support services in different ways, with community partners, such as some of our county and other restorative justice centers. We have partnered with healthcare providers. That's another key lever in this is making sure we are in sync with what the pediatric healthcare system is moving towards. So we've been really pretty robustly engaged with these folks for quite some time. Some examples of this work include meetings starting in 2023 with the Vermont Interagency Prevention Working Committee, again, seeking alignment, making sure that we are not working out of sync with our partner agencies on this and then perhaps exacerbating the problem. We have been able to access national data, trends, information and expertise through other partners across the state and country, such as Attendance Works. And we have hosted as recently as this past fall and into the early parts of winter, some dedicated focus groups that were supported by a paid consultant at the AOE to really, again, dive in with folks across the communities, not just educators, really a wide range of perspectives were involved in understanding what is happening now and where can we take it. So to start with some definitions, chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10% or more of the school year. It counts all absences. So this is really the key difference here, is we're not talking about excused versus unexcused or what's an okay absence versus not an okay absence. We are talking about the collective impact of missing school. So that's anything from, I didn't want to go to school today and my parents didn't make me, I had to go to work because my family needed the income, or I am traveling for a sports event and I have missed three days of school for a tournament. This is overall impact of all absences, excused, unexcused, and suspensions. And a really key difference here is that chronic absenteeism is focused on, again, collective impact and not individual blame. And it is currently a nationally recognized measure both for equity and accountability. So shifting to a chronic absenteeism model is certainly a far more equitable approach than truancy, which tends to be more punitive. And it also provides a very strong metric for us to understand how we might be succeeding as educational systems in other areas. So a very small example, if we are dedicating resources at a state level into harassment, hazing and bullying efforts, we would expect to see more kids in school. We would hope that we are not seeing a downward trend of attendance. And that's just one small example. So thinking again about the difference between the two, truancy, which is what is supported by our current state policies and statute, counts unexcused absences only. So it's really focused in on this was not an excused absence. It's driven by compliance largely and not connection or understanding of why are we not attending school, what's going on. Includes Excuse me, it's grounded in legal escalation and is often inequitable as a result and is very much driven by penalty. So this is really thinking about where is that point of escalation when there's a handoff to a judicial system, and the outcome here is that there is a penalty applied for student not being in school. On the contrary, chronic absenteeism counts all absences, excused and unexcused, is very much rooted in prevention and support. So thinking about how do we prevent reaching that point of truancy? It's supported and focused in early intervention. So again, not waiting until we get to this point where a student is regularly and routinely not at school, very much equity centered and is driven more by partnership. So thinking about how do we have a community approach to this work versus one person driving that penalty approach. For a little national context, again, this has been a persistent challenge post pandemic. So we've been looking at chronic absenteeism rates since just prior to and then since the pandemic. Rates nearly doubled during the height of COVID-nineteen pandemic. And we are still far above pre pandemic levels. So it's not that we saw a spike for a period of time when we've returned. We're really seeing this as a persistent challenge. Nationally, as well as in state, this very disproportionately affects students in poverty and in marginalized groups. And worth noting, at this moment in time, are many other states and state education leaders that are very focused on this topic and really, again, using it as a driver for change. So we are in a great time to be leveraging their expertise in this work moving forward. Bringing it a little closer to home, Vermont is seeing similar trends. So we have preliminary data about the 2024, 2025 chronic absenteeism rate shown here. I will note for my friends in our data team, this has not been published officially yet, but these are our preliminary data to help support our work here. So you see similar trends. In 2022, we rose to forty two percent. That was a significant increase in absenteeisms from prior years. We have seen a slow but somewhat steady decrease, but not nearly at a rate that is meaningful or is indicating to us that there is solution in place right now. We are still seeing persistent challenges and we don't expect that to continue to decrease in a way that would be sustainable for student outcomes. So we also would like to point out again the equity issue. In 2023, for example, so this would have been school year twenty two-twenty three no, excuse me, twenty three-twenty four. Thirty percent of all Vermont students were considered chronically absent, thirty seven percent of students with disabilities, forty one percent of students living in poverty. So that's a significant amount of a significant gap there. And then the big concerning one here is that sixty three percent of students experiencing homelessness were considered chronically absent. So arguably, some of our most vulnerable student populations were also the ones missing the most at school.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: Picking up for a quick second. Did you

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: skip over the slide of 2025?

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: This one here. Slightly out of order. Sorry. Yes. And so it's diving a little bit deeper and these the texts are small on these, so I'll read out some of the big pieces here. This shows the number of percent of students chronically absent in school year 2024, 2025. So this would have been last school year just completed. Again, very similar trends here. The students experiencing homelessness population are at 57%, So significantly more than any other student population that's measured here. Other student populations that are above average for chronic absenteeism include those who receive are free or reduced lunch eligible. So we typically consider that our poverty metric. Students on an IEP, students in foster care services, and migrant students. So we're seeing, again, those very vulnerable populations are not they're not in school as often as their peers. Some other important grounding. And so again, this comes from a combination of Vermont stakeholder engagement, national expertise, and data patterns across the country. Students are not in school for a number of reasons. It's important to note that they are driven both by out of school reasons and in school reasons. So this is not something that can be resolved only by our education systems. If we had all of the resources in the world and just had the most, I guess we don't know what that is yet, but the most perfect school system we possibly could achieve, we are still going to see some cause here because these are reasons that are occurring out of school. Some of those things include health and mental health needs, housing instability, transportation being a big issue, caregiving and economic stress. And some of our in school reasons that we have been exploring are bullying or other safety concerns, academic anxiety, weak adult connections, so again, thinking about where are those relationships being built between student and educator, and exclusionary disciplines such as suspensions and expulsion. So a bit more information about who we talked to or who we are currently talking with for deeper engagement around these root causes and solutions. We have ongoing communication with the Vermont Interagency Prevention Committee. This has been incredibly valuable to us because it does bring together a number of members from different state agencies and a number of folks within the agency of human services. So we're really making sure that we are staying connected and in sync with the work that they're doing and thinking about how each of us can support this larger effort moving forward. We have a very strong ongoing relationship with the Department for Children and Families and the Vermont State's Attorneys and Sheriffs, they've been critical in understanding the needed changes to statute in order to move this shift away from truancy and into chronic absenteeism. We engaged in a review of those proposed statutory changes with a number of education leaders, education professional organizations, community partners, restorative justice. For example, the Memorial Restorative Justice Center has been key in this work. They've held a very successful model in reducing chronic absenteeism, and so we often work closely with them. And representatives from Vermont's legal community. And again, the important shift there is that those representatives are also key to this process. Truancy does not go away with these proposed changes. It is a tool in the toolbox to help achieve better attendance. And so the goal really is to prevent the escalation to truancy. But then once it does once we do reach that point, we do need to have consensus and understanding from our legal partners to make sure, again, we are all driving in the same direction. From about July to November, we engaged through a contracted partnership to run focus groups, both virtually and in person, across all of geographic Vermont, which invited a wide variety of partners. So again, educators, administrators, health care providers, school nurses, school support services providers, school counselors, community partners, etcetera. And we have been very fortunate to partner with the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program or VCHIP, which is run out of UVM, which is engaged in some very in-depth research and understanding of family engagement and very specifically family input into this work. So that's been a great support for us as well. Most recently, we were also fortunate to co host an Everyday Counts Summit in November, which again, some of you may have been able to attend. Brought together these same partners and really spent some time examining current state, what's working, what's not, how do we scale up and move forward. That's a number of people we talked with, but what did they say is what really matters? And fortunately, there were some very strong themes across all of the stakeholder engagement. And the biggest takeaway is that these systemic barriers that exist in Vermont are limiting our ability to create progress. So we do have some barriers to break down. Step one of that is in making improvements and refinements to statute so that we can move towards this chronic absenteeism model. We also struggle with inconsistent definitions practices around attendance. So we mentioned before, current process really emphasizes truancy and excused versus unexcused. I would challenge you to speak with three different school systems and ask them how they define, track, and report excused versus unexcused absences, and I bet they will all give you a different answer. And that is not their fault. It is because we do not have consensus across the state of what this means, how to examine it, and how to report it. Also, we do not have clarity in our current system around who is responsible for which part of the system. So again, we've got some really big players at the table here. We have the schools who are providing support and care for these students and looking for additional supports and interventions from Department of Children and Families. We have an escalation path into our judicial system. And again, there's not a lot of clarity about who is supposed to be doing what and when. This, in turn, has caused a lot of confusion process. And so the hesitation to engage, maybe a lack of understanding about when to engage, when you have to, when you should. And as a result, it's worth noting this very often leads to an overreliance on schools to be taking charge of the entirety of the process. Our schools are not resourced to do that. It's not always appropriate for them to do that. And something that is listed later in this slide, over time, this does lead to an erosion of trust with families, which brings us back around full circle to an inability to connect and provide the right interventions. So we're pulling further and further apart. Similarly, we do see an uneven response across regions. So our state's attorneys that are supporting this, again, do not have clear definitions to work from, and so they've developed regional approaches to this that are different and an overreliance on punitive tools when intervention is needed. So something we are seeing nationally is that these punitive tools, legal fines, the kind of judicial side of this is actually not very effective at returning kids to school. So you may receive response from a family at a quicker rate, but we're not really seeing any sort of return on investment and improved attendance.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: If I can interrupt you for

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: a second, today's system sounds like it's kind of criminally based. The tendency is basically you rack up a number of unexcused absences that becomes a true agency, it gets turned over to law enforcement.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Not necessarily law enforcement. We don't have truancy officers in quite the same way that we once did thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Truancy officers are often responsible for gathering information and attempting to make connection with and then being able to escalate that to a state's attorney. And so that's where we see that integration. I don't have all of the specifics, but at that point, there are also some connections that need to be made with DCF around child neglect. And so again, there's a level of specificity that I am not prepared to share today, but they would be the best resource for.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: Would it fair to say that on a more current system, everybody's got a piece of it, and therefore, nobody's got it. Yes. I think that's a great summary.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Okay. So, again, I'll bring us back to the beginning. Nobody panic.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: There are solutions to this. Feels big.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: It feels it feels big. And, again, we kinda start with, like, this is a Vermont community issue, and it certainly is. But the good news is there are some really concise ways that we can make improvements. Will it solve the problem overnight? Absolutely not. But there are some things that we can do somewhat immediately, particularly around providing that clarity and consensus of roles and responsibilities and terminology involved. So our levers for change, these are the immediate things that AOE is engaging in. Number one is to elevate what works today. I would be remiss if I didn't call out that there are school systems that are doing this work really, really well and have made really great investments in this. They spent a lot of time working with their community partners and have been have put together processes and models that are working. And so we want to understand what are the conditions that allow those systems to have that success and how do we replicate it? So how might we be able to lift that up in other parts of the state? Again, this is not an unfamiliar concept to you all, but we really need to focus on preserving the balance of local control and also creating clarity and equity statewide. So how do we ensure that these decisions around escalation points and what's needed for each of our regions? How do we balance that with also understanding there is consensus and needs to be consistency around when do we escalate? Who does what? Who's responsible for those steps? And what are the steps that need to be taken? And similarly, we can create a statewide expectation. So again, we're all coming to the table. This is not a one year solution. It's not something that can only be achieved by just the agency of education or just a local school district. It's something that we do need to have some statewide shared commitment to so that we can continue to move forward with this unified goal. Key deliverables to expect from the AOE coming up. Number one, this is kind of the start of our conversation with you all today. We are recommending statutory changes to Title 16 to reflect the shift away from truancy as the desired outcome and towards chronic absenteeism. So the changes in summary do not again, they don't eliminate truancy. Truancy becomes a tool or one part of the puzzle. Chronic absenteeism and reducing absence is really the goal. AOE will be creating a model policy for attendance and managing chronic absenteeism. We have already begun that work. It's been informed largely by our recent stakeholder engagement, but again, also by our national research and partnerships. And then moving forward, this will require a lot of ongoing training and support and coordination, and AOE is prepared to be kind of at the center of facilitating that. So we will likely need to rely on other partners to come to the table with that, but AOE will be there at the helm. I'll skip ahead. Again, why is statutory change needed? It really is the beginning of the changes that are needed. It's the core of how we define this, and it's what ultimately describes our goal in this work. And currently the provisions don't align with that. It does center truancy over prevention. We've talked about the lack of clarity and definitions, but it's been already called out. It's really focused on penalty and more of the judicial punitive side, and it doesn't align with current evidence based practices for absenteeism. What are those? Excuse me. What are examples of success actually, as I think more impactful here? So again, we are not alone. We are in a great time to be engaging in this work. One study in California found that rewriting truancy notifications to focus on very clear, actionable data instead of state mandated legalistic language saw an increased effectiveness by 40%. So they re centered on engagement and clarity of communication with their families and moved away from that very uniform, here is the law, please not even please. Thou shalt follow it, and otherwise there's penalty. So 40% is a very big number. In South Carolina, one study found that students involved in the juvenile justice system not only didn't improve their attendance, but it actually worsened their attendance rate. So on average, they missed five or more days than they had in the previous year. In similar restorative justice efforts, specifically those shifting away from that punitive kind of judicial system based intervention in Pittsburgh, Minnesota and Houston, reduced suspension and absence rates some sites also seeing reductions in differences by race and socioeconomic status. So again, seeing that reduction in the equity gap is a really big component of this work. What to expect in changes being proposed? Clear definitions. That's really that's the primary goal of this is making sure we do have that consistent understanding of the core parts of this policy, specifically around what counts as an absence, whose role is it when and to do what things, and at what point do we escalate into truancy and into that judicial harm. This language also ensures that all requirements of this part of the statute extends to all schools receiving public tuition dollars, so our independent school population receiving public tuition. It enables AOE to create a model policy, which becomes the standard for all school and district policies around managing and addressing chronic absenteeism. And removed the application of ineffective punitive fines. So there are existing provisions in statute that lead to fines. They are not proven to be effective. And in many cases, actually that enforcing the issue. So next steps. So how we move forward with this now? Jill provided a really great introduction to our new Safe and Healthy Schools division under the new agency strategic framework. So we will be establishing a steering committee for the Safe and Healthy Schools division. And the North Star of that work will be in reducing chronic absenteeism. So our main efforts will be mapping back to this and really thinking about how we can align those efforts with an ultimate goal of increasing attendance. And we will lead development of a model policy for schools and districts. We say lead because it's not us drafting it alone. So we do expect to engage in another round of robust stakeholder engagement around this so that we can get feedback about what's practical, what's effective, and again, utilize those best practices that are already out there. Coordinated statewide delivery of training and technical assistance delivery of training. There's some of that that can be done now, and there's some of that that is best suited to wait until the development of a model policy. So making sure we all understand how to use those documents. An ongoing goal is data alignment and evaluation. So again, something we talk about a lot in here is how do we improve our data collection, how do we make it meaningful, and how do we collect it connect it back to this work? And so that will be a question that we will be considering and and resolving through the next twelve to eighteen months. And then lastly, some ongoing work will always be cross agency collaboration. This is a space where, for the rest of time, if we are successful with these efforts, we will need to see some cross agency commitment to it so that we are not providing a different direction to schools or creating contrasting priorities for schools around attendance. The Okay. Reason we're here. We always like to close with these two little stingers. We do.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: I love these kids. We do.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: They're not. It was a photo that

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: was taken, and it's sort of in our slide deck template. But both of us have young boys, and I'm like, yep. Those kids look familiar.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yes, I think lighten the hair color on that woman front, and you've got Courtney O'Brien, Jr. Happening there.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: I brought some questions.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: Thanks very much. So here's just some on the ground things. I think that we always need to be cognizant of are we increasing the burden on schools, are we lessening the burden on schools? And I think that is an important thing to think about.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: Was that a question? We always love to hear I right?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: At least we go here to lessen the birth count schools.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yes, and I feel very, very confident that these changes we're proposing are a direct result of a very loud ask from our school systems and from our partner systems as well. So we heard similar requests in our community partners, from our judicial partners, from the state's attorneys that clarity is really needed in this. And it will reduce a lot of time and effort and confusion for all parties.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: And part of that is if we're in the truancy framework, so I think one of the slides said, it's a late intervention. Right? So things have already gone sideways by the time you get there. And then it's an incredibly complex and burdensome process, the bulk of which falls on schools. And then what they've expressed to us is they are doing what they understand to be the right steps to do. And then by the time it gets up into the judicial system, the outcome may not be satisfying for anyone. So it's burdensome, it's complex, it's opaque, and the result doesn't actually get anybody in the system what they want. So our existing kind of status quo just isn't working for anyone. And so the clarity that we can bring through statutory change. And then again, I'm with you that anytime we are changing requirements, it always has to come with support. So there's a plan that goes with this. Part of that is that development of that model policy, which again is bringing clarity to districts around roles and responsibilities. What are those steps that you need to take? When we were sharing this out with superintendents yesterday, And one of those things they asked for that we can sort of provide in the short term, some guidance and help around is what is it that everyone who plays a role in this process, what is the information that they need? So by the time, again, if we have a case that goes all the way to the state's attorneys, or if DCF is involved, what does everyone need to know? What are the steps that everyone needs to have done? It's really unclear to our partners in schools right now. It's something that they're asking us for, and this actually gives us the leverage by which we can start to do that work. So I agree with Courtney. I think this is actually

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: I hate to bring up something very obscure, but if we're gonna have language that eliminates fines, that affects the revenue of the state, we're gonna need to know how much revenue

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah, it's

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: like a would G4 be Yeah, I didn't have to go to Woodside. This sounds crazy, know.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: I think we're talking small potatoes. Potatoes are very tiny.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: Yes, Yes, that's probably even below.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: Presented marble.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: I'm just wondering about the model policy. Sorry for not understanding this. But if we create or you create the model policy and then boards have to vote on whether or not they want to adopt it or they're required to adopt one that is as robust or that one, which is it that they can vote?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: They have to adopt either the model policy or policy strongly.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: So they couldn't vote not to adopt. And we have some examples of this that we've done in recent legislation. So it's sort of become a model for us is that we pass the statutory requirements, the AOE will develop a model policy by engaging the stakeholders. So we're working with the field. What's critical is that we develop a policy that's implementable, So by the time we get to the publishing of the policy, excuse me, we've engaged in a pretty intensive process with the field. So we actually did this with the cell phone policy as well recently. That was like a multi year engagement. We started with districts that were doing it well and said, show us your policies, right? And then we sort of offered options to folks to do so. So it becomes the minimum standard that school boards have to adopt and they can always do more.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: And would you be working with the state school board association to Yes. Write Okay. I see you soon. I see you both.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: So our current system of dealing with truancy, like, what does this date back to? When's the last time this whole

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Courtney made me feel old by referencing thirty, forty years ago,

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: I was like, Oh, that's when I was

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: in high school. So, I mean, yeah, those are sort of the last touches. And Anne, do you want to weigh in on that? You probably actually have the

[Anne Bordonaro (Senior Policy Advisor for Federal Policy, Vermont Agency of Education)]: I think, sadly, it's even older than that. It dates I was told '65, I believe. And a lot of the language in the current statute, when you read it, very much reads like the 1950s and 60s with truancy officers finding boys with black leather jackets roaming the streets and throwing them in cars, and that's literally how it currently reads.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Outsiders. Yes, exactly, exactly. Needs a little modernization. Right.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: Okay, so our job is to look at the language that you would like to make the changes in chapter 16.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: We're happy to come back in once you've had a chance to take a look and then explain how we arrived at those decision points. I'm sure you'll have questions as well.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Committee on Education)]: Speaking about how the language now could be extremely outdated, is that 10% mark? Is that outdated itself?

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: So the definition of chronically absent, that is more current. So that is based on a nationally federally defined construct by the US Department of Ed.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Committee on Education)]: Obviously with COVID and all that, I think families' philosophies have changed a lot, especially when it comes to illnesses and sending their students into school with any kind of illness now. Back before that, was you're gone, whether you have a 102 fever or not, since you need fever.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: 102 is still living.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: But I'm just figuring it out.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Committee on Education)]: Obviously can be you.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Go ahead.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: You're naming something really important, which is that this also bridges into the health care industry as well. And so we're very fortunate to be in very close connection with V CHIP, which is a UVM based initiative. And they're kind of leading the charge on the healthcare side and exploring exactly this. What are the gaps? I'll tell you some of the things that we're hearing. Parents not understanding school policies and or procedures about when to send the kid to school. Pediatricians not understanding. There's this question of when is a doctor's note required or not and why. So there is that's another example of the parallel running that I think is happening with this as as well. Our work will be focused on what is the impact to schools and then helping to bridge those communications as well. So if a school is hey, we're getting doctor's notes from pediatricians that say, can't return to school until their hair grows five inches more. Right? How do we help to break down those barriers across industries?

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: And this partnership, we're really lucky to have it because one of the other pieces in this that I think is new in the area of chronic absenteeism is the mental health aspects of this. And it's really important that our schools and the healthcare community, the pediatric community are talking to each other. And so, V CHIP is really great in this. We have Doctor. Heidi Schumacher who led this work in Washington, DC, and is bringing this incredible wealth of knowledge of how to do this kind of partnership. Because critically, what we're finding is, say school nurses and the pediatricians, they're not speaking to each other, right? And so if you have a young person who is meeting with their pediatrician and they're expressing a lot of anxiety around going to school, that pediatrician may not be thinking about chronic absences as a really detrimental impact to that student, and they may not be reaching out to the school. So V CHIP is actually helping both schools and the pediatric community understand that there are things like FERPA and how actually information can be shared within the balance of FERPA. And then also changing that mindset in the pediatric community. There's a reason that some of these slogans are like, Every day counts, all in for attendance. It's really important, and we've said this to our partners in the field and the school community, chronic absence is not just for schools to solve. And Courtney spoke to that at the very beginning. This really is where if you're going to tackle this, and we do have examples of states and communities and districts that have done this, you can solve this problem, but it really isn't all in for attendance. And so these statutory changes, it's step one, right? It's just laying the foundations of shared understanding and clarity of expectations. And then how do we start to build really a momentum? And starting actually with the connection between school and healthcare community is a great place to start because that's where kids are going when they're not feeling able to go to school for whatever reason. Anne has

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: her hand up. I was

[Anne Bordonaro (Senior Policy Advisor for Federal Policy, Vermont Agency of Education)]: just gonna add in relation to the specific question about the 10% of school days. That's a pretty recent metric. It came from the United States Department of Education. They did a lot of research in consultation with other national partners within the last ten years to come up with that definition. It is clear that that's the tipping point at which a lot of these bad outcomes start escalating. So, they're behavioral outcomes, academic outcomes, whatever, it's not like the minute you hit ten percent, boom, suddenly you're not going to graduate high school. But in all of these correlational studies and all, they've found a consistent pattern that 10% is kind of the tipping point into a lot of escalating negative outcomes. Having said that, that does not mean that we wait until they've missed eighteen days of school, which is what approximately 10% of the school year is. It means that the policy starts with, Have you missed two days in the first month? And if so, why? School's beginning to ask why at that point. Maybe the child had the flu and it's appropriate. Or maybe they're already starting a pattern. The patterns that they start in September, we also know from research, follow them until they reach the ten percent. And truancy doesn't happen at that ten percent. We have a separate definition that's much further along for truancy. We don't want to get to the ten percent, much less the truancy. What we want to do is honor the research that shows that being in school matters and that we have to report, frankly, on nationally, and then build from the first absence on a pattern of tracking that and intervening when necessary to make sure that it doesn't continue. So that's where the 10% comes from. There's no definition right now our statute related to truancy or absence. It's up to local communities to decide, and chronic absenteeism is a really good framing for the problem based on all the research.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: And I I think also one of the other things, we of course wanna be focused on the student and their long term impacts, but I think some of the educators in the room can speak to the impacts on the classroom when you have students that are missing a lot of school. And so there is also that broader community impact. And then again, particularly as students get older, what is the impact that's happening in the larger community? But also what's the impact on families at home and working parents? And so it really is a really broad thing. But I think for folks who are in the classroom, when you do have students that are consistently missing class, it impacts everyone in that class because you've got to figure out how you're going to differentiate that support to catch that kid up. It's really challenging. So it's a really good canary in the coal mine for sort of the health of a student's educational journey. And so it's a good one for us to focus on as a key measure of the system.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: I'd be remiss without, thank you, noting that I have no idea if there's any quantification of it, but I think it is consuming a lot, a lot, a lot of teachers' time. And the more teachers care about their students, probably the more time. But it takes away from improving instructional methods, from growing, there's only so many hours in the day, you can stay after school to help the kid who you are trying to help catch up, or you can meet with a team to plan a new unit or to learn a new literacy technique. And I think that we are increasingly, we're just piecemealing so many things that people are good humans at their core, so they're sort of doing the human thing, but it is, my perspective, from what I see and feel as a high school teacher, it is dramatically impacting how my professional time is spent, and it's wrapping around and caring for kids who are often our most vulnerable, It comes at the expense of instructional, first strong instruction for all.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: It's the opportunity cost, right? Yeah, absolutely.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Worth noting what comes down the road from this. I think you bring up a really good point. There's still going to be impact on educators. We know this. And one of the lenses that we will be taking as we build out resources beyond a model policy, it's one thing to say, here's the policy, stick to the rules. It's another to say, here are the supports, is we will be looking at the places where the state can reduce the burden of thought and effort there, like templates, communication templates, or providing a state level training on family engagement instead

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: of leaving that up to each school district, or creating some case studies and some examples to work from to try to minimize the amount of time as much as we can and allow teachers then to put their efforts where best utilized. And I think also, we had this slide that was sort of like the out of school pressures and then the in school pressures. And one thing that we know, particularly as students get older is disengagement. And I think I saw you nodding when we were talking about lack of adult connection. And so when we think about the education system, how do we keep students, how do we build the strong connections right from the beginning? And then how do we keep them engaged? And we know from research that there's actually some things that you can get a kid reengaged. Extracurriculars are one of them. It's like a carrot and a stick. If you are coming to school, then you're going to be able to play that sport or do that activity or be part of that club. And it becomes that incentive for the kid to be in school. You heard a presentation around kind of our big CTE proposal. One of the real key things in that CTE is pushing down that pre tech exposure to seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth. We know that when we tell kids, You've got to wait until your junior year, white knuckle it, and then you can do the thing that you're really interested in, we're gonna lose those kids in that young teenage hood, and we're never going to get them back into the system. So how do we start to push those things in early? I would say so that kids find their jam. Right? And then again, it becomes that incentive to stay engaged. So there's lots of other things that we can do in the school system. And part of another kind of major accelerated initiative for Courtney's team is building strong foundations of school climate is another huge area of focus for us. So all of these things are nicely connected. And I think this is why that strategic plan is so critical. We're connecting all of these pillars together and then really identifying the key priorities where we can really start to get our feet under us and gain some momentum. So we're excited about this work. I think it's really important. We've got really strong buy in from the field, which is great. It's something they asked for and now we're coming back around and really engaged with folks. And as Courtney keeps saying, we can solve this. This is not an unsolvable problem, which is hopeful, yes?

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: In all the people that you talk to, I can go back to that slide, I guess. I'm just wondering about mentor programs. Did you talk to the Vermont, because that seems like that's another good way to keep kids engaged too. The community mentors.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: I'm not recalling if we specifically talked to anyone. It's a virtual non mentorship program. We did talk to places like the Boys and Girls Club of Vermont. We talked to some other community after school programs. It's worth looking into. And again, we've got

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: a lot of space to come in this where we can cast kind of

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: a wide net of input. You just

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: made me think about the adult connection. That's a place. Absolutely. Yeah, great idea. Thank you, Jordan.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Committee on Education)]: Thank you both very much.

[Courtney O’Brien (Director, Safe & Healthy Schools Division, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Yeah, thank you. Happy to come back around. Yes.

[Jill Briggs Campbell (Deputy Secretary & Chief of Operations, Vermont Agency of Education)]: Stay warm this weekend.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member, House Committee on Education)]: I love that you referenced the outsiders.