Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Situation here in Vermont. Goodbye. No. Welcome, everyone. Welcome, everybody. It's just house education on January 28. Snowy of Montpelier, Vermont. We're going to begin this morning. We've learned a lot about BOCES, CISAs, ESAs. Now we're going to get more of a national perspective about how they work. Welcome to Joan Wade, the Executive Director of the Association of Education Service Agencies, kind of give us a little bit more perspective. Thanks for joining us.

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: Well, thank you very much for having me. It is an honor to be with all of you today, and I hope to share some information with you. I do have, I don't, I'm just going to be totally honest. I don't like to do PowerPoints, but somebody told me I really needed to have a PowerPoint for all of you. So I worked on it last night. I'm going to share it with you. And but what's really important to me today is that we are going to spend some time talking about the national perspective of ESAs and answer your questions as they come. So my name is Joan Wade. I'm the Executive Director for the Association of Educational Service Agencies. I've had the pleasure of holding this position for the past ten years. Prior to that, I served for fifteen years as an administrator of a CISA, which is a Cooperative Educational Service Agency in Wisconsin. I also have served in the Wisconsin State Assembly prior to that and included some time on the education committee as all of you are doing. Educator by heart, but also dipped my toes into the political world. Glad to be back in education. I appreciate all that you do as you serve the state of Vermont. Very important work. So again, thank you for the opportunity to provide today's testimony on ESAs often referred to, when we talk about their work nationally as educational service agencies, even though they go by about 20 different names. So CISAs, BOCES, you're starting to get familiar with. Sometimes they're IU's intermediate units, sometimes they're RISAs, Regional Educational Service Agencies. Just have all kinds of different names. And while their names differ, the work that they do is very similar in that their goal is to help local school district operate more efficiently, expand across the state to give expertise to school districts, even in the most remote rural areas, and to implement state priorities in a cost effective and equitable manner so that doesn't matter where you are in the state, but you're still able to access services. So my my testimony today is really intended to provide some context support to support your discussion around this idea and the notion of mandatory CISA participation versus what I understand you now have with the BOCES being more voluntary. So I'm going to really focus on four things in my remarks. First, I want to give you some of the national and historical uses of educational service agencies. I'm going to go over a couple of governance models that are commonly used in various states. I'm going to talk about funding structures and the financial considerations of those and then types of services that educational service agencies provide and the efficiencies that they create when they provide those services, especially for rural schools and small schools. I'm really not here to advocate one way or another for specific legislative outcome but rather I want to share some of what's happening across the country from decades of experience with ESAs. Does that sound good?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Six two one six two one six.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great. Thank

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: you. Okay. So our, we're going to start with some of the national look at what educational service agencies are. It's not a new concept. Matter of fact, included in the document, you have this state by state report, which AESA put together about five years ago already, and it lists for you by region in the country every state, and if they have statutes that support the development of ESAs and how many ESAs are in those states. A little bit about how they're structured. So I think that document will be very helpful as you try to get your mind around how common are these organizations across the country. The earliest regional service models were really created in response to persistent challenges in American public education. Many local school districts, particularly small and rural school school districts, just did not have the ability to scale or the resources to implement IDA when it came around for special education, doing all the technology advances that were coming around. They couldn't comply with increasing regulatory requirements from state and federal government. They were struggling with implementing statewide initiatives effectively for the Department of Ed. And so oftentimes many states really wanted this regional concept and a lot of times it was embedded in county offices of education, which is where a lot of ESAs got their started until they formalized into more regional service, more formal regionalized service organizations. A lot of them started in the 50s and 60s across the country. Some started in the early 1900s, so it's not a new concept for us. Over time, states really developed ESAs to serve as that intermediate area layer between LEAs or the local school districts and SEAs or the state education service agencies. So today we have ESAs in 44 different states. They serve as shared service infrastructure for public education. And while in most states they have statutory authority, they are set up in state statutes with some kind of a funding mechanism and a governance structure, even though those vary from state to state. We're going to talk about that in a little bit, but their underlying purpose is really consistent nationwide and that is to serve the needs of the local school districts. So historically, ESAs emerged to do a few things. One, they emerged to reduce the duplication of services across district boundaries. They also wanted to pool resources for high cost, low incidence needs, particularly in special ed. We're going to talk about that more later, but really when you think about visually impaired students, deaf and hard of hearing students, those teachers are really hard to find, especially in rural areas in states. And so having an ESA share those services is really helps a lot. They provide equitable access to expertise regardless of the size of your district or where you're located in a state. They improve consistency in implementing state and federal requirements, as I said earlier, and they provide a lot of professional development to educators and educational leaders. So importantly, ESAs are really designed to support the local districts, not to replace them. If that is something that's being talked about, it's not the case. It just really helps local districts be successful to meet the needs of students within their districts and keep them in their districts. In most states ESAs don't operate schools. However, there are some states where ESAs will operate alternative schools or alternative placement schools for students that just aren't aren't being successful in the local school district. Some states allow them to run magnet schools and some states allow the ESAs to be authorizers for charter schools. So there are in some capacities where ESAs do serve as an authorizer of school districts, but not public schools. Let's take a look at some of the governance models. So there really are, I can change my slide, there we go, a variety of governance models for ESAs. Often it reflects the local state context, the political culture, and your geography. There's really no single national model that works the best, but here are four that are pretty common. One is the governing board for a CSO or a BOCES could be a local school superintendents. Oftentimes that is the case. Those served by virtue of their position within the region. A second type of governing structure is local school board members who are appointed or elected to the regional board. And so while they still serve on their local board, they also serve on the regional board. And then you have a mix of governance models where you sometimes have local school board members appointed and superintendents that serve together on their governing board. And you have some boards where it is teachers, so many teachers, so many superintendents, so many school board members representing the region. Finally, probably really common with county boards of or county sorry county offices of education, California and Arizona, for example, they have publicly elected boards that are chosen by the voters within that service region, they're not necessarily a local school board member. Each model, I would say, have its trade offs. Superintendent boards often emphasize operational alignment with the school districts in their in their area, and they have a really close handle on what are the needs of the school districts that they would want the CISA or the BOCES to be able to meet to make them the most advantageous to student learning that they can have. The boards that include local school board members sometimes are really good about identifying district priorities and represent the communities really well. Publicly elected boards, while it can enhance visibility and public accountability, but sometimes it also introduces additional election costs and complexity because it becomes part partisan. And I always think that one thing you don't want in public education, if you can help it, is to make it partisan politics. I tell my members all the time, stay neutral. You don't need to be getting into the mix of politics at a partisan level if you can help it. At the same time some of our members are elected superintendents of regional this is kind of a side note of a regional educational service agency so they're elected on a partisan basis. Again that happens in California and Arizona as county offices of education. That's just a little side note there. Okay so with the ESAs the difference between voluntary versus mandatory participation, I want to spend just a little bit of time on this as well. This is another key governance distinction among our states and that's whether a district is mandated to participate in a certain region or if it's voluntary for them to participate in a certain ESA in a certain region. So the voluntary models really allow districts to opt into which ESA they want to serve on. Ohio is a great example. Every in Ohio, every school district public school district is assigned to an ESC they call them there, but the school districts can purchase services from other ESCs outside their region and if they want they can pay membership into another ESC if they don't feel that the ESC they're in is meeting their needs. So that is oftentimes the case in states where the funding model is fee for service. So districts are going to buy services from an ESA and they're going to buy those services where they want. Not always, but in some cases that's how states operate and set up their ESA. And the other example is mandatory or universal participation models that are typically paired with some kind of baseline funding and the focus is on sharing equitable services throughout the state. And so states will mandate each school that public school district to to be a part of a certain educational service agency or CISA. A district will be a member of that. They'll decide what services they want. The state will pay for some of those services and and the ESA will also purchase some or develop some that are fee for service that districts can purchase from them. So what's consistent across both those models is that ESAs are structured to support not to dictate how districts operate. It's really a support mechanism for K-twelve districts. So let's talk a little bit more about how they're funded. There's really some common funding models and it's so true with public education. So often I just have to say, well, it depends because it depends on how they're structured by the state and it depends on what school districts need. But basically there's four different funding models and the first one is when the state totally funds at least a baseline of services and they get a direct appropriation. The ESA gets a direct appropriation either from the state legislature or from the state Department of Ed to provide services to all districts across that region and then all regions get the same appropriation so that all regions are giving the districts that same level of service. Oftentimes these are general purpose revenues, GPR dollars, or flow through dollars through the State Department of Ed. That used to be common. Most of the ESAs in the country used to operate on state funds 100%. In the last fifteen-twenty years that's really changed and our funding models have become much more entrepreneurial, much more fee for service where districts work together with their ESA or their whatever you decide to call them, CISAs. They work with the CISA to decide what purchase services are needed and then the CISA develops those services or finds them at a lower cost and the school districts then purchase those services. I always say that ESAs that are entrepreneurial are really tight with their customers which are the K-twelve public school districts because the public school districts are the ones determining what are those services that they need and the ESAs have to stay really attuned to federal law changes in education to state law changes in education so that as those changes are occurring they're ready to support the public schools as they're implementing those changes. What's really become common now in across the country with ESAs is some kind of a blended or a hybrid model of funding. So they'll get some state funding as a baseline and then they'll do a lot of fee for service or entrepreneurial services. An example of how this has changed probably eight years ago, the state of West Virginia had eight RESAs Regional Educational Service Agencies 100% funded by the state. Everything that they offered to school districts school districts got for free because the ESAs or the RESAs had that funding coming from the state government. About eight years ago, the state decided as funds were drawing drying up at the state level that they were going to change that funding mechanism. They changed the statute so all of those RISAs could redefine themselves as educational cooperative, cooperative educational service agencies, kind of like CISAs, but they call them ESAs. And out of that school districts now had to start buying the services that were no longer free, and the ESAs had to develop fee for service models. So that was very new to them, and they had about a year to get that done. Was a very hard change for them. Now in the state of Western Virginia, there are really two viable ESAs that are functioning. One really strong and and one is a little bit smaller but still serving the needs of school districts in the state. The funding models have changed quite a bit in the last twenty years. One other way that ESAs are funded is by giving them taxing authority. We only have one state in the country that gives the ESA the authority to levy a property millage, and that's the state of Michigan. So they do a lot of really good work in Michigan, but I don't have any other states that allow the ESA to levy the taxes. By far, the most common funding mechanism is some kind of blended model where the state gives them some seed money to get things started, and then the ESA is entrepreneurial. So I know one of the things that you're probably concerned about and talking about is the startup cost. And again, I wish I could give you a definite number, but I can't because it depends on what you want to do. I will say that ESAs are often misunderstood as creating new administrative level layers, especially when they're new to a state. In practice, I really think they're typically funded by reallocating existing expenditures. They consolidate duplicate to functions and they leverage economies of scale. The startup costs will vary depending on state and district expectations, But I tend to feel that they're really modest because ESAs often will start out, especially when they're new, they'll start out using existing facilities or shared office spaces. And that might be co locating in a K-twelve building. It might be co locating in an institution of higher education. I've seen both models and states work. And I've also seen that that's sometimes where they get started with their facility, but then they get large enough that they eventually build their own. And that depends on statute too. Sometimes ESAs are not allowed to own property by statute unless they get permission from their school districts within their region to buy property because ultimately that property, if the ESA were to dissolve, would go back to the school districts. You can set that up in statutes and I can, I'm happy to send you some examples of where that's different from state to state. I would also say that it's efficient because in some cases staff come either from district level positions that are now shared across the region. Speech and language pathologists in the special ed area is another one that's a really hard to find position for K-twelve school districts and having that as a shared position is often a quite a cost savings. And services are usually for new ESAs phased in over time. So it while it would be a dream to get a lot of money to start up and be able to offer school districts everything, that's never the case. It usually starts small and grows over time. So over the long term we see states consistently find that ESAs reduce costs through cooperative purchasing, through shared staffing agreement for specialized positions, for reducing administration duplication. A lot of schools and we'll talk about this a little bit but they'll share special ed administrators or they'll share business office officials payroll things like that into the shared regional roles so those operating costs really help schools save money. Services are, as I mentioned earlier, also phased in over time based on those regional needs. So let's take a look at what some of those core ESA services are. Those services that ESAs offer are really designed by the needs of the local K-twelve school districts. Yes, states have influence on that and especially State Department of Eds will have influence on that, but a lot of times the best strongest ESAs are the ones that are tight with their public school districts and they're designing the types of services that the school districts really need. So for example, special education services, I've said that more than once, but that including those low incidence high cost support. It allows districts to meet the legal and instructional obligations without duplicating expensive services. Many states, my own included in Wisconsin, which is where live. The CESAs in Wisconsin oftentimes will hire a special ed director that works with a multitude of small rural districts so that each district doesn't have to have their own special ed director, but they share that position, as well as hard to find staff of some that I've mentioned earlier with deaf and hard of hearing or visual impaired or speech and language pathologist. Another primary service that a lot of ESAs do is professional development instructional coaching, which supports a consistent implementation of your state standards and your state initiatives. That's very common for both teachers and administrators, paraprofessionals. A lot of that professional development is done through the ESAs. Another focus area for many ESAs is technology, technology infrastructure, cybersecurity, data systems, really trying to work to reduce risk and improving system reliability for school systems, both for students and for staff. There is focus in some ESAs around human resources, so shared payroll, financial services, freeing the district leaders to really focus on instruction and not on the operations of the HR and payroll. A lot of ESAs do cooperative purchasing and contract management for their districts. Compliance reporting is a big one. Accountability support, helping districts navigate across complex requirements at the state level and at the federal level. Also doing crisis response. We've got a lot of members now that work in the mental health field, bringing in coordination with mental health providers providing regional support during either a crisis situation or on a daily on a daily basis when there aren't mental health professionals in the area because it's a rural area and we're all and there's a shortage of mental health professionals as you well know. ESAs also work hard in the CTE area the career pathways development particularly in the regional areas. So these are the types of services that allow districts to access expertise that they otherwise would find unaffordable or unavailable particularly in small rural districts but it's just a snapshot of some of the services that our members provide. Are some of them do transportation so our ESA will run the transportation system the busing services to take that off the plate of school district administrators. Some examples of ESA services I thought maybe I could give you a couple that are specific to what kind of cost savings there are. In Wisconsin, those CSAs provide special ed staff, which I think I've mentioned. They also through their cooperative purchasing program, most notably saved significant money for health insurance for the school districts. CISAs have documented more than $50,000,000 in savings for participating in health insurance pools that are operated by the CISAs. In Iowa, the AEAs deliver a lot of regional special education, a lot of instructional media services and professional development. The AEAs coordinate a huge statewide cooperative purchasing program with districts. Districts report savings of 20 to 25% on commonly purchased instructional materials and operational items. That's pretty significant for those districts. In Pennsylvania, the intermediate units operate regional special ed programs, a lot of professional development, a lot of compliance services. They do a lot with Medicaid and helping districts file for Medicaid. They do a lot around E Rate for technology and helping districts with their E Rate filings, particularly again those small rural districts really turn to their IUs for that kind of help. And then in Texas, another example, there's 20 ESCs in Texas for 1,400 school districts. They provide statewide professional development, much of the things that I've already talked about technology integration they do a lot of technology support they do a lot of data systems or support and implementation assistance for statewide initiatives reducing the administrative burden. So that's just a few we have members in 44 different states we have just under 500 members in AESA we don't have all the ESAs in the country. Some don't belong to AESA, but we do know that there are 44 states that have ESAs in them. Really I want to focus a little bit on efficiencies and rural sustainability and why is this important. I think it's one of the most significant benefits of having an ESA structure in your state is the impact that it has on on rural sustainability. ESAs, as I mentioned earlier, they don't have the authority to close schools. They don't usually have the authority to run schools. That's really up to the State Department of Ed or the local school districts, depending on the state. They don't have the authority to make decisions about district consolidation, but they often play a critical role in helping small schools stay open and viable by reducing those administrative burdens, by sharing that specialized staff, by supporting compliance when they don't get support elsewhere and by lowering operating costs through cooperative purchasing programs. So there have been national studies and state examples that consistently show that ESAs improve efficiency while still expanding access to service and that's what we want for all of our students no matter where they live. In several states there have been documented savings from cooperative purchasing program and these shared staffing programs to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars annually. I'm happy to send you some of that information, those details if you'd like them. But just as importantly, ESA support equity by ensuring that students in rural or underserved districts have access to comparable services as students in larger systems. So I think when you're thinking about your next step as a state, there's some key considerations for Vermont that you should, I'm hoping that you'll have lots of dialogue on. One, the governance structure really needs to reflect your size, your geography, your traditions, and I'm happy to answer questions pretty soon about what that might look like. Funding models that should balance equity so that all students have access to the same types of services along with local flexibility. So there are regional needs that are going to change from region to region just based on the region and what the local school districts want. The funding model should balance that equity with that local flexibility. There should be some clear accountability and reporting expectations so that you're building that trust with the public that this isn't just another bureaucracy that's being laid on top of the K-twelve school district because that's not at all what it is. Also some kind of phased in implementation often allows school districts to get used to the idea of going to an ESA for help and support and for regions to adapt over time. So many states have found value in beginning by piloting services which in my mind is a bit what your new BOCES is doing. It's a good experiment in what kind of services can voluntarily those districts cooperate on and then growing into a more expanded thoughtfully based structure for mandatory participation, which I think you're doing. Think that's really wise on your part is let's start with something that's voluntary that people can get used to the idea first and then let's go into something that's more structured. So the bottom line in my mind is that ESAs are an important part of the educational system in the majority of states. It's that really that go between between the State Department of Ed and the local school districts and making sure that when the State Department of Ed have statewide initiatives that need to be rolled out equitably across the state, it's often those ESAs that help them do that. They really help improve efficiency, equity, and capacity in public school systems. And while there are no two states that implement ESAs exactly the same way, our experience really demonstrates that these organizations can help states stretch limited resources, support rural communities, and strengthen local school districts. That was a lot of information and I'm just going to shut this off so I can get a better view of you. I really appreciate the opportunity to take some time with you today and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great, thank you very much. This was a lot, but a lot of really good information. I perhaps the whole BOCES, ESA concept, I think we're sold on it.

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: Good.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We are probably stuck with mandatory, voluntary, how do you go from zero to something? We have an example in Vermont of one that sort of grew organically. They were already sort of in existence as a cooperative, and then became a BOCES. And we have a BOCES law that allows voluntary creation of these, but I guess the question is, how do we take the next step? What is the next step?

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: Right, so to me the answer is you've played, not played, you've experimented, I like that word better, you're experimenting with the idea of a voluntary structure. If you're ready as a state to invest some funds into setting up a more formalized structure where it's not voluntary but every school district belongs to a region and then working with or through the state department what are those initiatives that should be rolled out equitably across the state. That's where I would start with if you're going to do a CISA mandatory membership kind of thing because you want to find something that all school districts are going to buy into because they're going to see it as supportive not as upper handed. So bringing those school superintendents, those school leadership teams together at an ESA to say, okay, the state has this initiative we need to roll out, either it's being mandated by the legislature or the State Department of Ed, You guys work together on how an ESA structure could help. It's gonna it's I think even if you buy statute, put the statute in place where you have every school district belonging to a region, whether it's three or four regions or however many you decide is is the right number. It's still going to take a year for those organizations to get schools to buy into the services to really understand the structure and we're happy to come and help with some of those conversations, work with your state department of ed or whomever you would like to have lead that in whatever way. So yeah, I think if you have done that experimental piloting part, you're in that right now, I think your next step is to put into statute what are the regions, how are they organized, how are they governed, do you want it to be school superintendents that are the governance structure, or do you want it to be school boards that start at their school board and then get appointed to the local board or I mean the regional board, sorry. How do you want that governance structure to look? That's a really key decision to make. And then how much oversight do you want the State Department of Ed, if any, to have over the educational service agencies or do you want them to be pretty independent by what's set up in state statute?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think one of our challenges is we don't necessarily have buy in on the concept at the state level. Vermont's complicated. We are going through also a major consolidation debate as well with some belief that larger consolidation governance units are essentially building scale, so why have two different systems that are building scale? I think you've made an argument here to say it can be both, and that ESAs are really there to support and provide. So I guess the challenge we have is we don't necessarily have buy in at the state level and I think that's probably one of our challenges.

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: Yeah, that consolidation is a tough nut to crack. It divides communities and it forces people. I would say what I've seen over the years is it really forces people to make decisions on where is the school going to be located if local communities feeling they they are losing their identity all of those things. Efficiency wise what makes more sense when revenue is tight and it's not going to get any better I'm sure so I think that ESAs really help with that efficiency conversation and some of our largest urban centers have ESAs so when I think of Houston, Texas they have an ESA structure and one of them is located in Houston, one of them is located in Dallas, Texas, one of them is located in California Los Angeles and San Diego they all have some kind of an ESA structure to help them be more efficient so it doesn't in my mind it doesn't really it doesn't just help the small rural district it also helps the urban suburban districts that have a larger population to draw from is especially around state and federal initiatives that have to be implemented.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, I think Vermont's an outlier in many ways for many reasons, but special ed costs are a big one. That's sort of a low hanging fruit when it comes to this.

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: Well, and that is a sweet spot for a lot of, ESAs, and as your what I would propose is that as you continue these deliberations, I just see I'm on two trains of thought one is we're here to help so if there are other resources that I can bring in from other states that have a strong component of special ed services I'm happy to bring them in to meet with your stakeholders, meet with whomever it is that that needs that kind of information. But when I think about our members that have really strong special education programs, Again, goes across the board with large urban suburban districts and really small rural districts that just don't have the resources and the capacity. So it could be anything from sharing that special ed director to help run the programs to applying for Medicaid to those hard to fill positions. We call them itinerant positions because they're shared between two or three sometimes four districts and they're hard to find but the ESA can employ them and then they can farm them out if you will but contract them out with multiple districts.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I had a question about the 50,000,000 plus health savings that you had on slide number 11 in Wisconsin. I'm just curious, or maybe Peter or Representative Conlon, you might also be able to better weigh in on this. Is that a number Vermont could achieve? And is

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: that because they went to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: a statewide contract and what did they give up in their health insurance in order to have those kinds of savings?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Before you answer, the situation in Vermont right now is that we have a statewide healthcare system. It's insured, a self funded system already, as a way to bring down costs. So the question is, what further steps can an ESA provide in terms of that?

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: That's a really good question. So it's not participating in the statewide system. I'll just say that there is a CISA in Wisconsin that participates in the state insurance pool and that particular CISA does have considerably lower cost of health insurance for their CISA and for their school districts and for their employees, but it's optional whether the school districts participate in that or not. They can pick whatever health insurance they want in Wisconsin very local control. CISA that saved the $50,000,000 is based out of a cooperative purchasing pool of health insurance and I don't know the details of where that savings came. I do know that they reported that their members, their employees, and their school districts were very happy with the insurance benefits that they received. I though would need to send you the information from that particular CISA on what those that design looked like. But in Wisconsin it's a very local controlled state so they don't mandate that any school district belong to a particular insurance pool.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We have a problem in Vermont that no matter where you buy health insurance is the most expensive in the country. Representative Brady?

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: This might be too much in the weeds on the special education front, but do you know CSOs in states that are doing work around supporting very high need students, like where districts might have a small number of very high needs students. Currently, one of our special education challenges is spending a lot of money on out of district or even out of state placements for those needs. And there's been some organic work in little pockets of the state to do that on a more cooperative basis and pull some of those services. But I'm wondering if you can point to specific models or states that might especially be working in that area around special education.

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: That's a really good question as well. Because I'm most familiar with Wisconsin, I know they do that in Wisconsin. I know Pennsylvania does that with their IUs. Iowa has a really strong track record around those high need students that have to have out of school placement. There are others, but those are three that I'm most aware of. I will say that in Wisconsin, they are allowed to run alternative schools. And so some of those students that can't fit into the local school district get out of district placement at the CISA. And the CISA will then take students from across the region and sometimes even outside the region because the CISA's there's 12 CISA's in Wisconsin and they often share services and they have those those specialized staff that can work with those high need students. There are also CESAs that partner with providers for mental health services where students might spend some part of the day in out of school placement in a in a mental health type of setting and then part of the day in the CISA alternative school until they get them to a place where they can eventually work them back into the local school district. So their goal really is to bring those kids back once they've had the help that they need to especially if it's a mental health issue to be able to reset their mental health and get them back into the local school district sometimes it's successful sometimes they end up in the alternative school in the seesaw for the rest of their high school career and they graduate from the alternative school but they get a local high school diploma so it's a very cooperative relationship between the K-twelve school system and the CISAs and then sometimes they bring in those outside providers when they're students that they don't have the expertise to deal with.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Yeah.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Other questions? Thank you very much. We will look to you as a resource in the future as well as we kind of navigate all the change we're trying to wrestle with here in Vermont.

[Joan Wade, Executive Director, Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)]: Great. I wish you all the best of luck in the world. It's really important work. I really see in states where the system is strong, when CESAs the are working cooperatively with the State Department of Ed and the local K-twelve school district. It's just seamless and it's better for kids and that's the bottom line right you want what's better for kids and giving resources to those kids so thank you for your time today I appreciate it it was a pleasure to be with you and I look forward to hearing more and watching what you're doing.