Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: Welcome

[Chair Peter Conlon]: to House Education. This is Wednesday, 02/04/2026. We're gonna start today with some testimony from the Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators. Opportunity to sort of hear from the field and whatnot about act 73 and sort of their take on it. Understanding, of course, that tomorrow we're gonna be getting a special ed report from the AOE as well. So there's a lot around. More importantly, I'm gonna have to slip out in about five minutes. Taylor will take over

[Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: and

[Chair Peter Conlon]: apologize for my need to. Anyway, we'll get started here with Mary Lelandine. And Mary, I see you're up here on the screen and the floor is yours, but we don't see you.

[Mary Lundin, Executive Director, Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators (VCSEA)]: Oh, you don't see me.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: No. No camera.

[Mary Lundin, Executive Director, Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators (VCSEA)]: Is it working now?

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Is not you have a cover over your camera by chance? Nope. Okay, well, that's okay. Go right ahead.

[Mary Lundin, Executive Director, Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators (VCSEA)]: Okay, good morning, Chair Conlon and members of the committee. Thank you for meeting with us today. My name is Mary Lundin, and I serve as the Executive Director for the Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators, VCSEA. My perspective is grounded in a career dedicated to Vermont students at every level, having served as a special educator, a special education administrator, and a superintendent. I'm joined by my colleagues today to testify on the intersection of Act 73 in special education. While we have prepared information and specific recommendations to share, Our primary goal is to engage in a meaningful dialogue with you regarding these critical issues. For over forty four years, VCSEA has served as the backbone of special education leadership in Vermont. We are the practitioners who bridge the gap between state policy and the daily realities of serving students with disabilities. To assist the committee's work this session, we've provided our twenty twenty six legislative priorities and a fact sheet on maintenance of effort, also known as MOE. Our testimony today focuses on priority three of our platform, ensuring fiscal integrity to protect IDEA and students with disabilities. Under this priority, we ask for your careful consideration of two topics. One, the special education weighting design within the new foundation formula, and two, the development of Cooperative Education Service Agencies, CESAs. Before we address these specifics, we must highlight the federal compliance standards that serve as the mandatory framework for these decisions. I will now turn the floor over to my colleague, Heather Freeman, who will discuss federal maintenance of effort requirements and the risk they pose to statewide funding if not approached with deliberate intentionality.

[Heather Freeman, Director of Special Education, Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union]: Thank you. Welcome, Heather. Good morning. Thank you so much for having us here today. Like Mary said, my name is Heather Freeman. I'm the director of special education for Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union in Hardwick. I have been an administrator here for twelve years. Before that, I was a preschool teacher and an early childhood special educator. So I've spent twenty two years in public education in Vermont, all with OSSU. Like Mary said, I'm here to talk a little bit about maintenance of effort. There are four important things to note about maintenance of effort. It's a fiscal requirement under the federal IDEA law. It's relevant to all local any local education agencies that receive IDEA B Part B funds. IDEA Part B funds are allocated specifically for the education of children with disabilities. And the LEA's responsibility is both to budget for in the coming fiscal year and spend during fiscal year, the same amount of state or local funds over year to year. This law ensures that even as the methods of fundings change, the total amount of support for students with disabilities doesn't drop. So in other words, provides LEAs with a level of fiscal stability in order to serve our students with disabilities. Now, if an LEA fails to meet the maintenance of effort test, it can document allowable expenses. And some of those allowable expenses are things like a decrease in the enrollment of students with disabilities or the end of long term costly expenses. For instance, if you know, there's a student with a disability that has been costing significant amount of money and they are now graduating or aging out. So those are sort of allowable expenses. But if the LEA cannot document those, if they fail the test, then the state's required to treat it as a shortfall of unallowable use of federal funds And the LEA may have to repay that amount from non federal sources. So, from local or state funds, local funds. So, in order for the Supervisory Union District to remain compliant and meet this maintenance of effort requirement. Again, there's these two ways that we demonstrate compliance. So the first way is around budgeting. And again, each year as we're developing our budgets, we must maintain that level of plan to spend at least the same amount as they did in as we did in the previous year. And then the second part of that is the spending piece. So during the the fiscal year, we have to demonstrate that we did spend as much as we had the previous year, at least as much as we did the previous year. And if we if we don't, again, like I said, if we don't sorry. If we don't if we fail either of those two tests, then we have to ensure that there's we can document those allowable expenses and it risks us not being able to get those federal dollars, which are so critical to support our kids with disabilities. And again, the MOE fact sheet that we included in our testimony goes into more detail about this fiscal requirement, but I just wanted to sort of give you the shortened version of it today. And now I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Chris Benway, who will speak about the foundation formula and the weights.

[Chris Benway, President of VCSEA; Director of Special Services, Slate Valley Unified School District]: Thank you, Heather. Good morning and thank you for allowing us to be here this morning and speak to you. My name is Chris Fenway and I am the current president of the Vermont Council of Special Ed Administrators. I also serve as the director of special services for the Slate Valley Unified School District, which is in Fairhaven, Vermont. I am in my twenty eighth, just started my twenty eighth year of service as the director of special services in Slate Valley, and also have experience in higher education, developmental services, adult services and community mental health. So that is the perspective that I bring to with my comments today on behalf of ECSEI. I also wanna note just before I break in my specific comments on Act 73 and the foundation formula specific to special special ed in Vermont, because here with my colleagues today, the four of us share a cumulative total of one hundred and twenty years of experience in special education and in public education. Most of those years here in Vermont, some of those years spread throughout some other New England states. But while there's been a great deal of transition within leadership, of special ed at the state level, many of us have been here in the trenches on the front line, for several decades, since the 1900s, as some of our students would say. So just wanted to recognize that and collectively with that, the different experiences that we've had and the years of leadership that we have, we certainly have the philosophy and the will and the expectation that together we can figure this out. So we look forward to this as being the beginning of ongoing conversations with the house and other representative bodies to ensure that the needs of all Vermont students are being met with the legislation that we're being proposed, that is being proposed. So again, we thank you for this opportunity and we feel confident that together we'll be able to figure this all out. Specific to the foundation formula in special education and the weights within Act 73, the current special education funding design under Act 73, we believe is fundamentally flawed and that it must be addressed. Most critically, the weighting formula does not provide sufficient dedicated support for special education. Instead, the districts will be forced to rely on the general education foundation formula funds to fill that gap. Placing special education and general education in direct competition for the same limited resource, fiscal resources. My colleague Erin could certainly speak in more detail about some modeling she's done in her district. We haven't done the modeling across the state as a whole, but in some districts in her specifically, there's an estimated $6,000,000 shortfall that would come in terms of, dollar to dollar, year to year differences, that would have to be made up through the use of the foundation monies. Act 73 shifts Vermont away from a census based block grant model toward a weighted funding system tied to disability categories. This change, we believe, creates a harmful incentive in which diagnosis may drive revenue versus individualized Disability student categories are broad, inconsistent, and often ill suited as a basis for funding decisions. There's significant variation and intensity of need within each disability category, and many of you may have heard the saying, if you've met one student with autism, you've met one student with autism. That speaks to the individualized needs and the variety of needs within one disability category. I might have a student who is identified as being on the autism spectrum, who only needs minimal supports and accommodations, and the cost for that specific programming may only be $1,000 a year. I may have another student diagnosed being on the autism spectrum who requires intensive programming, out of district programming, a variety of specialists, and that programming may cost upwards of $300,000 a year. I may have the most costly programmatic, program in my district that's supporting a student with another health impairment. Mary may have, or Heather may have the most costly programming in her district being used to support a student, with an emotional disturbance. Erin may have a student in her district whose most costly programming is for a student who's on the autism spectrum, so there is great variability with regard to intensity of need within any one disability category. Most importantly, linking the financial resources to labels risks undermining the individual focus required under the IDEA, and while this design may work from a financial lens and modeling at a larger state level, tying funds to disability categories is not sensitive to the experiences of individuals with disabilities, and the decision seems to be absent a voice from those with lived experiences. Some of the fiscal modeling may demonstrate savings at the state level, because of a larger size, but the modeling does not work for funding school districts in Vermont, given the small size, the scope, the variability, and the geographic mobility of our students. It also sets up a false sense of individual entitlement, and the categories are far too diverse and variable for use as a model in individual schools and districts for funding. We do not want the funding of special education to be on the backs of students with disabilities. With that said, VCSEA is not opposed to a new funding approach. It is important to recognize that this would be our third special ed finance design in the last five years, and this level of policy churn creates challenges for school districts, making long term planning very challenging, making any kind of year to year comparison very nearly impossible, and making an understanding by constituents, including policymakers, taxpayers, and educators, makes that understanding very difficult. We're also deeply concerned about the lack of impact analysis, especially as the funding changes intersect with proposed redistricting. It's hard to really do estimates as to what it would be for your specific district if you're not sure what district you may belong to. The constant changes equate to more impact and disruptions to the field while also decreasing the understanding of taxpayers, policymakers, and other constituents. For these reasons, we urge you to provide districts with a clear and enforceable commitment, a promise of stable, sufficient funding that ensures essential special education services can be delivered without undermining general education or risking MOE noncompliance. Vermont districts cannot afford to lose their federal funding. Vermont must adopt a funding design that ensures sustainable dedicated support for special education. We do not wanna create competition between general ed and special ed for the same funds. We can accomplish a new system of funding for special education through the analysis of the weight needed by school district per eligible student to ensure MOE. We can look at that and we can determine that district by district, and then we could move toward the determination of an overall special education weight per eligible student, not disability category, but per eligible student, and we could include a glide path for implementation, as you did with 01/1973 and the creation of the census model. Whatever model is developed needs to have a glide path. We can't afford, literally or figuratively, to fall off the financial cliffs. Again, we welcome this opportunity and that hopes that there will be ongoing dialogue and continued communication about these critical aspects. We understand that education finance in Vermont is complex, and the delivery of services to all of our students is complex, but we're confident that together we can figure this out. I wanna turn things over to my colleague, Erin McGuire, who's gonna talk to us a little bit about some ideas we have with regard to options as well as cooperative education service agencies. Thank you.

[Erin McGuire, Special Education Director, Essex Westford School District; Past President, VCSEA]: Good morning, everyone. I'm Erin McGuire. I am grateful to be here in person. I'm testifying twice today and it's been a while. I've been online quite a bit with folks and it just felt like the right moment to be here in person. So thanks for having It's good to be with you. Am one of the special education directors in the Essex Westford School District. I also serve around equity and inclusion work, hazing, harassment, bullying, Title IX, as well as curriculum directorship. And I'm here though today as the past president of the Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators. And I'm also currently the past president for our national organization for special education directors, the Council of Administrators of Special Education. Before I dive into a conversation about cooperative education service agencies, which is sort of my part of the presentation, I just wanted to reiterate the challenge that was just described by my colleagues related to this idea that the current weights in Act 73 make it appear as if at least in our modeling that we would be expected to spend at least $6,000,000 of the dollars that were allocated from the foundation formula to the Essex Westford School District. And in every legislative conversation I've had with different legislators, it sounds to me like that was not the intention, that the intention was for the weights to cover the special education cost. And because of the variability of the special education cost per district, the ability to apply a single weight in order to make that happen doesn't really work without the kind of glide path that Chris had referenced that you did with the census model in Act 173 to kind of get us there over time. Otherwise, and the reason we presented on MOE, the maintenance of effort, is because we would be in this catch 22 of either using foundation formula funds to cover the difference or not getting our federal funds. I mean, we estimate that we would be short about 6,000,000 in EWSD. And so we would have a choice of either cutting 7,500,000 out of the special education budget or spending 6,000,000 foundation formula. Before we move into cooperative education service agencies, which is part of the redistricting group's recommendation, as well as part of the conversation that's being had with the agency of education. We testified yesterday with House Education, and it was sort of at this moment that it did make sense to take any questions that you might have about that sort of specific funding issue that we are seeing, at least in some districts. Granted, we have not done the statewide analysis of how much did each district spend last year. If the weights had been applied, how much money would be applied to that school district, whether or not that matches or not. So I want to be upfront that we haven't done that work. It would take quite a bit time. And it does seem like maybe that work might be necessary if this waiting design is going to stick. So I'll just stop for any questions. And if none, we can move on.

[Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: First of all, I appreciate you raising the maintenance of effort requirement because that is going to be something that we will need to focus on with this whole thing. We don't want that to get lost in the bigger conversations or everything. So definitely appreciate it. Was there any questions from many at this point? Thank you.

[Erin McGuire, Special Education Director, Essex Westford School District; Past President, VCSEA]: Great, thanks. So moving on to the cooperative service Agency design. I want to recognize first and share with you that I grew up in Vermont and I went to Rochester Elementary School, which is no longer there. But there were 90 children between grades K through 12. I then moved to Castleton and attended sort of that mid range Slate Valley where Chris is the director. And over the last most of my administrative career, I've been in Chittenden County. And one of the things that I think is just so important to recognize in this opportunity with cooperative education service agencies is that a one size fits all design is not likely to meet the moment. But that some flexibility around the ways in which those Cooperative Service agencies, which is sort of a new level of administrative and service function in the state, right? It's mid level design where services are available to school districts regionally, but not at the agency level. So it sort of inserts a middle level. That those are able to be designed for the specific region that we're talking about. The needs of rural school districts in the state of Vermont are very different than the needs of school districts in Chittenden County. Both of those needs matter and need to not really be in competition with each other. I'll give you an example. So for the Essex Westford School District, we just developed two new programs. They are separate schools. They are therapeutic schools. You've had lots of conversations about private therapeutic schools. We've developed public therapeutic schools inside of our own school district to be able to meet those needs. There were not enough slots in the area to serve all the kids. And so we developed these. They've been very successful. I could do a whole another set of testimony on that topic. Then there are other places that are not big enough to do that. We have the scale scope and number of student needs that allow us to build that out. That is not true in other places in the state, particularly in rural areas. And a Cooperative Education Service Agency in Chittenden County is likely to be more focused on very unique needs of children where we don't have enough students in our own school district to build out programming versus a more generalized need that could be addressed with a cooperative service agency in another place where there are less services. I have an occupational therapist. Actually, have two. I have a physical therapist. I don't need a cooperative education service agency to provide me with those services. There are many school districts across Vermont, especially outside of Chittenden County that do not have a full time need for physical therapists. And so I think we just need to whatever design gets created if we end up in this direction, it needs to make sure to address staffing shortages, which again are different across the state, strengthen regional collaboration, but be uniquely situated to address the needs in that area of the state. And so, therefore, we really do need to consider those factors. Another thing I think is really important to consider is if we move direction of Cooperative Education Service Agencies that we do not increase segregation of students. These Cooperative Service Agencies should not be locations where kids go. They should be services that can be purchased and allocated in the school district from that cooperative service agency. I also just want to note that we cannot transfer responsibility of special education to these entities. These entities would be partners with school districts. The responsibility of providing a free appropriate public education to children on IEPs must stay with the school district. So I think that's really important. We also need to make sure that in the development of these designs that we include the voices of individuals with disabilities, disabled people. I am not a person with a disability. I work with people with disabilities regularly. I think about students with disabilities. I need to hear from parents. I need to hear from individuals who have these experiences in the design. And so whatever we create really should, must, I would say, include that voice at the core of the design. The CESAs really need to supplement and not supersede school district services. We need to avoid dismantling services that have been successful in school districts in the creation of these CESAs. And therefore, it makes me worried about any one size fits all, any sort of agency directed design that's going to be all inclusive of the entire state, and really want to value local voice as we do the development work in this. And so if you end up in a place where you are writing legislation to think about what CEASAs will look like, I would just encourage us to be thoughtful about all of those pieces. With that, I do want to take a moment to return to our legislative platform and recognize the need for completion of Act 173 implementation, as well as some of the challenges we've experienced with incredible variability of implementation of a lot of different things in education and point to the need for the agency of education to both have capacity and expertise in special education. We've been lacking that incredibly. And we've had, I think, four different leaders in special education at the agency of education over the last four or five years. Right now we are without a special ed director, again, at the agency level. And I think it's important to recognize that the design of the agency to do quality work needs to start by looking internally at the agency instead of always looking outward to school districts. And that is a conversation I have with the agency, but it felt important to just share with you as we continue down the road of maintenance of effort and the intersection with the foundation formula and whether or not this suggestion is appropriate or not, and the analysis or support or not supporting this from the agency, knowing and understanding sort of the lack of expertise right now that the agency has in special education. And then also seeking some clarity around how the agency provides accountability to school districts and how they provide technical assistance. They are supposed to serve both functions. And so as we create legislation, making sure that we're always focused on that part of the puzzle, as opposed to the end point, because I think that's been a little bit of a challenge. I am, as with my colleagues, always happy to answer questions, be available, be of support to you all. We did get a question in Senate Ed that I just want to share with you all. The question was, well, where were you last year when we were doing this? And why is this problem here right now? And you all have been moving very quickly. And the implementation of act 173 after what went on at the end of session last year, testify. I think committees were just too busy to hear from us. And I also think that that's probably why you're hearing so much about X-seventy three now. And we just want to be part of the solution. We are not opposed to change. We are not opposed to thinking about how do we make our systems better, both from an outcomes perspective as well as a financial perspective. That's why you hear us testifying on both finance as well as the outcomes and the services delivered. So we're here to help. Thank you for having us today. Feel free to let us know what we can do and we are happy to take any questions or comments that

[Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: you have. I do have a couple of questions. So you kind of opened up the door for this one a little bit when you were talking about the public therapeutic schools. Right now we have a moratorium on independent and that is kind of lumped in the therapeutic schools. So we cannot open up any new independent therapeutic schools in the state right now. There's discussion on if we should be lifting the therapeutic side of that and allowing more therapeutic schools again to be created in the state. It's kind of looking for an opinion. I know you might not be able to give opposition on it, but looking or maybe you can without it. Thoughts?

[Erin McGuire, Special Education Director, Essex Westford School District; Past President, VCSEA]: Yes, thank you for that very important question. I want to say a couple of things. First, in the most recent agency report, there was sort of a lens painted that we have too many children in independent schools. And on the backside of that was like, there are too many kids in 80% or more in general education. I think it's very important that we deeply value the high levels of inclusion that we have in Vermont. They were talking about sort of a missing middle where kids are part in more sort of therapeutic program and part in general education. And I think it's appropriate to really look at our continuum as a whole. In the current environment, it is really important that we see the difference between private therapeutic schools and private schools, because our private therapeutic schools are an essential part of our current delivery continuum. And the closure of schools paired with the moratorium of new therapeutic schools without school districts opening up their own schools resulted in harm to children with disabilities in Vermont. So you have a couple of different policy issues that I think are leaving kids without programming. We have, I am part of another group of a very diverse group of representatives, parents, advocates, individuals with disabilities, and we've actually developed and we can send this to you as a group, Chris is on that group with me some perspectives about what needs to happen for students. And that group did say that we really feel like we need to repeal the moratorium because even if we lift schools up in order to have cooperative education service agencies, and that's going to develop more access to independent, more therapeutic schools that are publicly designed through the CESA, for example, that's going to take time. That doesn't just happen. And we have kids right now who are not able to be part of their public schools and there is not a slot for them. I also feel like there's been a little bit of negative press and negative perspective about our private therapeutic schools. And while I think that accountability is essential and there are some concerning things, there are some really incredible things happening. And for VCSEA, and my colleagues should feel free to jump in, we do see our private therapeutic schools as a critical part of our continuum that we value and are not looking to have no more in the continuum. We need a variety of different options for kids. Kids, a therapeutic school can serve a group of students, but they don't have the expertise to serve any student who needs a therapeutic option. There needs to be a variety of different therapeutic options and places that have scale and scope to open a therapeutic school. I actually think that our decision in EWSD to do this, read up some slots to try to resolve some of the policy issues that have created this lack of slots. In Chittenden County, we lost a 100 slots for students in therapeutic schools. Mosaic closed, and we've had a number of losses. CenterPoint closed, and there was no way for the private design to help fill that gap. And I think the question really for me is about what do we want to see in Vermont? And it does seem to me that we value public private partnerships in Vermont. I think they need to have accountability structures. And I don't think any school in Vermont who is serving children with public dollars should be exempt from all of accountability features that we put onto public schools. That is my position on that issue. I'm gonna look behind me. Chris, no.

[Mary Lundin, Executive Director, Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators (VCSEA)]: I can jump in. I would just like to share my experience with therapeutic private schools. So I I would like to just reiterate what Erin said. It is an important part of the continuum. So under IDEA, we have a responsibility educate students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. What that means is where is that student able to receive their education? Where are they making progress? And oftentimes, it may not be in the public school that they would attend if they didn't have a disability. So when that happens, the IEP team, which are the ultimate decision makers for students with disabilities, that team needs to look at all of the data and say, here are the things that we tried, they're not working. It could be that you even had your own, therapeutic programs within district, but the student is still not being successful and the student requires something more restrictive. What I would say is those decisions are never made lightly, and we look at all of the data. The families are part of that decision, and we have a responsibility to try everything before we would send a student out of district. So it they're they do fit into the continuum. I agree with Erin. I think what we need to do is just make sure that there are clear rules and accountability pieces in place for the therapeutic schools, and that may be something that we need to look at.

[Heather Freeman, Director of Special Education, Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union]: I'm sorry, after

[Chris Benway, President of VCSEA; Director of Special Services, Slate Valley Unified School District]: I was gonna say, I'll add real briefly. So I think a lot of Mary and Erin's experience most recently has been in Chittenden County, so when Erin talks about losing 100 spaces in therapeutic schools, I would be overwhelmed and ecstatic if there were even half that number of placement options available for students in Southwest Vermont. We don't even have 100 spaces in terms of eligible spots if you added up the out of district alternative programs that would be within a reasonable commute from my district. So I think that that's really important to note is that many schools across the state have developed in house programs. But as Mary said, there are some students for whom their needs are such that the least restrictive environment may not be within those mainstream environments or those school based programs. And so there are hotspots across the state, if you did a heat map in terms of like independent therapeutic schools, and there are some really frigid zones and it doesn't have to do just with our current temperatures. But we have been struggling and dealing with the shortage of those spots that was only exasperated by the closing of a couple of local programs in the last couple of years and the inability to add, both because of staffing shortages in the moratorium. So just wanna underscore that the obligation to have a continuum of supports is a legal obligation under the federal rules, and we would be happy to come back. And I know that especially from the other group that Erin mentioned, the advisory group, there are many constituents on that panel that would love to give testimony with regard to the hardships, no harm that has come for their students or for their children as a result of the lack of placement options for kids at Vermont.

[Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: I just wanna be mindful of time, I know Ralph Long had a question to pose.

[Representative Emily Long (Member)]: Thank you. So regarding this, I sat here in the education committee when we were taking testimony on the development of Act 173, remember. And one of the drivers of us making changes in the way we delivered and funded special education services was because we had a number of students in outside placements, and we were told pretty clear, I'm giving my perspective, but we were told pretty clearly that students are best served in their local school district if at all possible, obviously, that's not always possible, and that we had an outsized number compared to other states of support staff delivering services to kids. It drove a change from my perspective in the system, the whole system. And I'm hearing everything you're saying, and there's nothing I could push back on. But I'm questioning about whether it was just the lack of implementation in 01/1973 that's driving the need again for what we said really wasn't the optimal way to we didn't say we were told wasn't the optimal way to deliver services to kids. And I'll just add on to that. I'm asking that question, is it because we didn't fully implement 01/1973? And, is the lack of expertise that we heard at the AOE also playing a role in this? This is pretty concerning to me if we're talking about lifting moratorium to increase slots for students. I want students served just like you do exactly in the location that's best for them. So I understand needs of their own. So if somebody could just share thoughts on that, Erin, I

[Erin McGuire, Special Education Director, Essex Westford School District; Past President, VCSEA]: know you're sure. A couple of things I would offer. One is that I think it's hard to create a binary response to that because it isn't really one thing or another. I think certainly the more high quality our first instruction is, the higher the number of students who are reading on grade level by third grade, the research tells us will reduce the number of children who need higher levels of care. We know that to be true. We also know that there are individuals who have very unique needs that indicate a need at least for a period of time in a design that isn't able to be universally designed into a classroom, no matter the quality of Act 173. I do think that there is though a relationship. I mean, is a hypothesis. I don't have data to say this definitively, but that the lack of implementation of Act 173 has not resulted in a decrease in the number of children whose disabilities are creating eligibility for special education. Because remember, you can have a disability, but if your first instruction meets your needs, you may not need special ed. And so I do think that the continued increase of eligible students and potentially the challenges particularly related to the behavioral intersection of placement is a function of the whole system. And so I think that all of the things can be true, that we do need to have a continuum for kids who have a really high level of need. Even if we had fully implemented Act 173, I can say that as a system that in my opinion, EWSD fully implemented Act 173. And I could tell you that story. We do have pockets of excellence in this state. And at the risk of tooting our own horn, I really feel like we embody what is in Act 173 at this point with implementation. It has not stopped us from meeting our therapeutic school placements because sometimes the unique needs of individuals are not fully met. We still have work to do on universal design for learning though. And that also, I think, plays a role in potential reduction of need for placement, where we really are able to universally design first instruction to meet the needs of all learners that are in there. So yes, there's a relationship, but I don't think it's a binary. I know you're out of

[Heather Freeman, Director of Special Education, Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union]: time, but that's fantastic.

[Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: I really appreciate all the testimony. And we might have to have some of you or all of you back because I think we've touched on a lot of surface stuff here and we might need to dig deeper as we move along here.

[Erin McGuire, Special Education Director, Essex Westford School District; Past President, VCSEA]: Return anytime. All you

[Chris Benway, President of VCSEA; Director of Special Services, Slate Valley Unified School District]: have do is call out on the opportunity.

[Heather Freeman, Director of Special Education, Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union]: Thank you. Thank you so much.

[Mary Lundin, Executive Director, Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators (VCSEA)]: You so much. Thank you for having us. Thank you.

[Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: Alright. We're gonna keep the Zoom alive. Yeah. Well, unless people need

[Chair Peter Conlon]: five minutes.

[Vice Chair Chris Taylor]: Yes. Yes? Alright.