Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Welcome to House Education, 02/11/2026. This morning, we are gonna begin with testimony from the bill regarding proposal bill about chronic absenteeism. Again, we've created this into a committee bill because there's a lot to it rather than shoehorning it into a miscellaneous ed bill. That's why it's got the long number. Anyway, we had testimony yesterday from the Vermont Principals Association that resulted in a couple of good suggestions that the committee seemed to agree with, but look forward to further testimony from the superintendents around the state. Chelsea, floor is yours.

[Chelsea Myers]: Hi, everyone. It's good to be back, kind of. I'm Chelsea Myers. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association. I am going to be really brief because I want to give most of the time to the superintendents here and education and graders that are here. And hopefully, I've read the testimony. It's fantastic. I think it will be a good look at chronic absenteeism from their lens. But what I wanted to just say is I hope you'll invite the School Boards Association in around the school board policy. What I'm really hoping to see is what that policy would do, like what the aim is, maybe a little bit, even if it's not written in law, like what the vision for that policy is, what it would include, and what the ultimate purpose of that school board policy is. But I will defer to my friends at the Vermont School Boards Association to speak more about the specifics of that. And then Wendy Baker is going to talk a little bit about the letter that you received from us yesterday. But we're hoping that you might consider adding a couple of provisions around home study as they relate to chronic absenteeism. And really, that's just a return to regulation and law that we had pre-twenty twenty three and was dropped, I think predominantly due to the pandemic and just a lot of pressures on the agency of education. But you'll hear firsthand from Wendy the impact that fallback of the regulations has had on students, some of our most vulnerable students. So hope you'll consider adding that. And with that, I'll just turn it over to Libby and Wendy.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great. Thank you. Libby, think you're up first.

[Libby Bonesteel]: I am, and I want to invite my friend Nick, who I think is in the room to come sit in the hot seat.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great.

[Libby Bonesteel]: There he is.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. If you'd both introduce yourselves, that would be great.

[Libby Bonesteel]: Yeah. We will most definitely do that. Thank you. For the record, my name is Libby Bonesteel, superintendent of schools for the Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss a challenge that has remained front and center in my district since the pandemic. I'm joined today by Nick Connor, our director of student engagement and data. If the committee has technical questions regarding the nuances of chronic absenteeism or the mechanics of intentional student support, I will happily yield the floor to Nick. He is the leading expert, not only in the state, but nationally on this topic and has been instrumental in transforming our district systems. We want to thank the agency of education for elevating chronic absenteeism to the legislature. While this has been an indicator of school quality in over 35 states for years, We are gratified that Vermont is finally giving this challenge the attention it deserves. The Vermont Principles Association has already testified regarding the why, the immense academic and social emotional toll absenteeism takes on a child. We concur entirely. When a child is not accessing their education, there should be enormous red flashing lights signaling that something is significantly wrong. However, the critical question isn't whether absenteeism is a problem, but how we respond to it. As written, this bill essentially codifies a failing status quo. We have ample evidence that current truancy practices do not return students to the classroom. Specifically, the mandate that a principal notify a truancy officer after 20 unexcused absences leading to a DCF report and a former letter of obligation is a cycle of judgment and shame. Parents are already acutely aware that their children are missing school. A formal reminder of their legal obligation does not solve the underlying crisis. It merely alienates the very families we need to partner with. And to be clear, most of the families we are supporting with a high rate of absenteeism are those who are also experiencing poverty. Furthermore, we must address the distinction between excused and unexcused absences. Lost time is lost time. Regardless of the label, the instructional loss is the same. The provision allowing preplanned family commitments is laced with systemic privilege. It might imply that a family vacation is a valid reason for absence, while a student staying home to care for a sick sibling because a single parent cannot miss work is a violation. This language, as drafted, risks penalizing poverty and stigmatizing the struggles of the working class. At MRPS, we have shifted from a punitive system to a multi tiered system of support for attendance. Our results speak for themselves. Our chronic absentee rate peaked at thirty two percent during the COVID-nineteen years and has plummeted to sixteen percent, even admits the current flu and sniffle season at elementary schools. For reference, the national average hovers around twenty four percent. Our framework prioritizes engagement before enforcement. Tier one or universal is engagement and belonging. Kids come to school when they feel they belong and are challenged by high quality instruction. We monitor attendance data weekly to ensure no student slips through cracks. In targeted intervention or early connection in tier two is when a child misses just two days of school. It's the classroom teacher, the person with the strongest relationship with the student, reaching out to the family. They don't call to scold. They call to ask, how are you, and how can we help get you back to school? And tier three is their very intensive remediation or wraparound services. This for us is code red. We deploy social workers, conduct home visits, and provide tangible support like transportation. We treat absenteeism as a barrier to be removed, not a rule to be enforced. Punitive action must be the absolute last resort, not the first. We cannot prosecute our way out of an attendance crisis. Support from outside legal agencies should only occur when every internal tier of supportive intervention has been exhausted. We have significant concerns with any legislation that defaults to punishing family students and families before ensuring schools provide essential support. We urge the committee to reconsider the punitive triggers in this bill and instead incentivize the supportive frameworks we know actually work. We would be more than happy to come back and testify about legislation currently in action in states like Connecticut that stands on a supportive frame. Nick and I are happy to take any questions you may have. And like I said, Nick is the expert, so probably direct it to him.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. It seems that when the agency of education came in to testify, one of their goals was to step away from the previous punitive or the current punitive action and make it less punitive and a little more restorative, maybe, might be the right word. But are you saying that even what's being proposed, it remains still too punitive?

[Libby Bonesteel]: Go ahead, Nick. I can see you lean in.

[Nick Connor]: Yes and no. I think the context of a young person missing twenty days of school unexcused, needing to then go to DCF and court by submitting an affidavit to our state's attorney, having that so firmly in place can lose a lot of context as to how we are best supporting that family. Young people that go into a courtroom to talk about attendance, we talk about things like recidivism with young people who may go into court, like the same is true for truancy. So that touch point of court is very real. And so I think the mandating of that process where we've seen in other places like Connecticut, who has banned the use of courts in response to attendance, that is not to say educational neglect is not a thing. It still is, it is very much less so than what we think it is and what we see in our courts. So I think the hesitation on that front is more along the lines of having poor intervention at twenty unexcused days. This tipping point of like, now it's the court can be quite harmful. I've been in a lot of truancy hearings here in Vermont and throughout Colorado. There's never once been a young person in that hearing that was not also living in poverty, not one time. So that is a huge concern.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I just really appreciate you raising that, the ten day, I worry that this is a sort of permissive, like, go travel the world for ten days on the family vacation front, and that there's a real values juxtaposition here that I find on people.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Lydia, you said rather than sort of going down the punitive path, they should be incentivizing strategies. Could you be more specific by what you mean by incentivizing strategies?

[Libby Bonesteel]: Yeah, I think I'd have to look at some other legislation. But as Nick pointed out, there are some states that are working towards more supportive frameworks within their legislature. I'd wanna take more time with those to really think, how can that look in a law or a bill. I also placed some resources here. The attendanceattendanceworks.org website, which I attached to my testimony, has a lot of research briefs that talk about how to address chronic absenteeism at a state level as well as a district level. And so I'd want to dig into those. Nick works very closely with Attendance Works, so he probably has some right off the top of his head. But the other types of bills that are in law in Connecticut, I think he think Massachusetts is one that has a pretty supportive bill. We could look into and see what what how could we replicate that for Vermont so we have more supportive framework in place. Nick, what what would you add on to that?

[Nick Connor]: I I would just add that practices that are promising around restorative justice community panels in response to student attendance can be a way forward and still bringing forward a level of accountability with families, but from a place of support and bringing resources to the table. When we file truancy, my hope is that it brings more resources to the table through a DCF referral that may bring in Vermont stabilization services. However, sometimes I feel like with families, that's the only way I can get services to families is to put them through court. So having restorative justice panels, community based panels be responding to attendance referrals where families still go and sit with a panel of their community and they're developing a plan about how to move forward and assigning resources that way, that gonna be a really solid practice.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I appreciate that. Often my question is, well, who's gonna do all that?

[Nick Connor]: Yeah, I think it's a fair question. There are restorative justice centers throughout Vermont that are doing some of this work. Lemoyle County in particular has a great program up there. And we'll actually see, I might file an affidavit and ten months later, something moves. So I'm not sure the current system is one that is effective as far as timeliness and efficiency.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All right. Thank you very much. I don't mean to I just I thought we a little bit of a post here bill, given the testimony we heard yesterday. And given that the AOE had elevated this, but what I'm hearing, I think, from the two of you is that really the whole, when it moves from sort of absenteeism into legal truancy is kind of a challenge that needs more attention.

[Nick Connor]: Yeah, I would just add Sorry, let me would like, over my shoulder.

[Libby Bonesteel]: I would think that we haven't you have an opportunity here. Like, there's a spotlight on chronic absenteeism, and that's an opportunity. And so I take our time and really study places that have a more supportive framework and see what we can do with those if we're opening this up anyway, right, instead of instead of going with the status quo. Nick?

[Nick Connor]: I I would just also add, like, I've worked a lot with Ann Portonaro and Courtney O'Brien and the team that has been working on this, and I also would like to just give them a great deal of credit for moving this work forward. I cannot say this all needs to be done in this session and we need to formalize this court response. However, I do think the bill as written does provide a really important step forward of centering chronic absenteeism and how we work to prevent young people missing school. Timeline wise, if we're talking about court intervention and beyond, I think it is really important that we keep it in mind, and that should not get in the way of moving the work forward this session, as long as we can continue to stay mindful of how do we continue to ensure we're not bringing about more inequities on how we work with our families. So I think both things there, and I would give credit to the team at IoE putting this work forward.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I often, the chair of the committee, I have to think about, okay, what are we capable of here, a group of citizens who are here for four and a half months, and really what's the work of the field and the AOE together? To me, this is one of those things where we're not really equipped to necessarily come up with what's best for kids and chronic absenteeism, and what's the role of DCF? So, this is one of those ones where we really lean on the AOE and testimony from the field. Because given our short time, short attention span, and other things that we're dealing with, I worry that the effort to raise this up might fall apart as we sort of say, well, it needs a lot more work. Jessica, did you want to add something?

[Jessica (unidentified, likely AOE or staff)]: I was just going to say, I can take responsibility to try to operationalize some of the recommendations and come back with specifics for you to hit that.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That would be very helpful.

[Jessica (unidentified, likely AOE or staff)]: It's just been a quick turnaround, so we have a nice chance to

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: do that. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. That was very helpful. Representative Brady?

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I just so appreciate your This is largely about poverty. These are so many multilayered issues here, but I just hope none of us have the sense that changing a bill is going to improve absenteeism when they are deep challenges and very much about poverty issues far beyond our committee's jurisdiction and issues that are weighing heavily in our society right now.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you both very much. Wendy, if you're there, you're up.

[Wendy Baker]: I am. Good morning, everybody.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Morning.

[Wendy Baker]: Thank you. I'm happy to just read my testimony into the record and then and then can take some questions and and and join Libby and Nick in the conversation if that's useful.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's great.

[Wendy Baker]: So thank you for the opportunity to testify today. For the record, my name is Wendy Baker, and I serve as the superintendent for of the Addison Central School District. I wanna begin by saying that I strongly support the intent of this bill. Our district's chronic absentee rate is eight percent. As a district of approximately 1,700 students, we employ five social workers, spend over $800,000 in support of mental health services for students and families through the counseling services of Addison County, and invest heavily in structures that intervene early and deeply. Chronic absenteeism is often not about attendance alone. Sometimes it is the first visible sign of deeper issues, including family instability, neglect, or harm. In these cases, the school's role is to notice, document, and connect families with help. What

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I

[Wendy Baker]: have to share with you today is not about broad trends or most families. It is about a small number of cases where the current law creates an unintentional loophole, students to exit oversight precisely when their risk is highest. Though these situations raise not only educational concerns, but child welfare concerns that deserve the committee's attention and dedicated language within the bill under consideration. Recently, we had the experience of working with a family whose student had missed approximately 40% of the required attendance days. While in school, the student was an attentive learner, engaged with peers, and responsive to adults. Multiple offers of assistance by the student's trusted adults to lend support to the family in creative ways went unacknowledged. The family was eventually notified that the case would need to be reported for the court's consideration by our district's truancy officer. On the very same day that deputy state's attorney Rick Nolan called my office to discuss next steps the court might take to engage the family, the parents submitted a home study enrollment letter to the school, and the student was denrolled. At that moment, the student exited public school oversight. The chronic absenteeism framework of effective practices no longer applied. The situation involved prolonged disengagement by the family, not by the student, leading our team to develop a growing concern about the student's well-being. During that same period of time, our district also received a home study enrollment letter for another student for whom we had filed multiple reports with the Department of Children and Families based on disclosures made by the student alleging abuse taking place within the home. That student also left public school oversight at the very moment when concerns were becoming most acute. Schools cannot and should not replace child welfare systems, but when educational disengagement and safety concerns overlap, the absence of even minimal educational verification removes one of the few consistent points of visibility for a student. I have deep respect for families who intentionally choose home study and provide thoughtful, high quality instruction to their children. The reinstatement of more rigorous application criteria and accountability measures designed to protect the educational rights and well-being of home study students reinforces what the vast majority of home study families are already prepared to do as they look in to engaging in home study programming. The recommendations put forward by the Vermont Superintendents and Principals Associations in the letter before you are not about limiting choice. Clarifying triggers for oversight, requiring submission of assessment records, and restoring limited authority for the Secretary of Education when credible concerns arise would not affect most home study families at all. For the small number of cases like the ones I've described, these tools could make the difference between a child being seen or not. If we believe that every child in Vermont deserves access to education and protection, then our chronic absenteeism framework must apply consistently across all compulsory attendance pathways. I urge you to include targeted home study provisions recommended by the Vermont Superintendents and Principals Association so that students who are already vulnerable do not unintentionally disappear from view at the moment they may need us the most. Thank you for your time and your careful consideration. I'd be happy to take questions or engage in discussion.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Some of us were here when we, I would say, loosened the oversight of home study several years ago. I think that part of it is that we felt limited confidence in the system, especially the DCF system, that when you had situations like this, that they would be there as the backstop. Are they?

[Wendy Baker]: So what we've learned is that, DCF, only considers educational neglect as it relates to, absenteeism up up until age 12. After age 12, DCF, will not, engage in conversations about that. And, you know, there are probably some reasonable reasons that their leadership has for that. We're all working together to solve the myriad of of social issues that are connected to those challenges. I think I think my testimony really encourages you to to do something simple within your power to do, which is to replace some checks and balances that I'm sure secretary Saunders would take very seriously in her procedural approach. For example, you know, if there were, just simply a, a check on a homeschool application with a superintendent's office to say, are there have there been DCF reports from your system, or, you know, are there truancy issues at play? It that alone, right, would be enough for the secretary to then determine what she felt was important relative to a homeschool application. I think right now, we don't have any of those parameters, and, and and that's we're seeing those situations in our district. And and for some of you who might have been at the all members meeting just a little bit early, you may have seen me in preparation for talking about this with you ask other superintendents to raise their hand if they had had similar circumstance. And I Jeff Francis tells me everyone in the room had their hand up. So this is a statewide problem that could be fixed, I believe, with some technical language, that allowed for some additional steps to be taken, you know, at the at the AOE level that I probably are especially now that their agencies coming together are likely not onerous.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. It is, I think, important to point out that that sort of relaxation in homeschool oversight happened under previous secretary, and frankly, a previous reality. So I appreciate that. To the extent that perhaps you could work with Chelsea to provide some specifics, as simple as what you just suggested seems completely doable and reasonable, and if it could protect these situations. Yeah. Abs absolutely.

[Wendy Baker]: Happy to do that. And and to your conversation, you know, relative to the the role of the courts, we we, have a a really wonderful, deputy state's attorney, you know, that's that is now engaging with, all of the superintendents in in Addison County around this topic. And one of the things that we're talking about that it might help you to to know in your conversations is a, a a pre hearing mediation session, where perhaps the parties, as Nick say, oftentimes these moments are best served if we can bring more resources to the family and the situation. So the, the perhaps DCF and somebody from our, you know, county mental health agency can come along with the school district and the family to determine what is the best course forward, which, might look different, you know, but, but but it's a it's a it's a prehearing mediation, that that could happen. So I believe our our deputy state's attorney is attempting to advance that, through the proper channels in the court system to determine if the judges would be supportive of that. So that may be something that's helpful to you in these conversations.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. Any other questions for superintendent Baker? Nick, would you mind joining us again? Sure. So this is just me and other committee members may not feel the same way. I guess I need a better picture of chronic absenteeism, where is it located on the age spectrum mostly? Absolutely. And really what are the main contributing factors? I know we could say poverty, but specifically where are those?

[Nick Connor]: Absolutely, so when you look at chronic absenteeism, which includes excused, unexcused, and out of school suspension, when you look at that, if you look by grade, what you'll see is essentially like a U. If it's a bar chart, you have kindergarten over here and you have twelfth grade over here. It is essentially like this. It's what you would typically see across the country. When we see back here locally. So kindergarten is often one of the highest, has one of the highest rates of chronic absenteeism only behind twelfth, eleventh grade. We know there's a lot of reasons for that. The young people building their immune systems back up, families learning what it means to have a student in school full time, still some families thinking it's just kindergarten will be fine, but we know and what the research says from pre K, kindergarten, first grade, if you are chronically absent, the likelihood of a young person being able to read at grade level by the time they're in third grade drops dramatically. So it is one of the earliest indicators of educational outcome when you're talking about chronic absenteeism, even at a pre K level. So the rates really go from high in the very early grades, tends to drop down a bit in the middle school and then peak again with our twelfth graders.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It might be worth noting for the committee that kindergarten is actually not required. That schools that do provide, I think, are only required to provide ten hours. To me, that's old. And at some point, this community should probably take a look at, like, what is the status of kindergarten? I don't even think there are half day programs anymore. Anyways, yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about maybe the reasoning at the upper?

[Nick Connor]: Yeah, yeah, the reasons are many. To be clear, what Libby was saying earlier, we have everything from a family, a student who may need to care for a younger sibling who's not in school, which is deemed unexcused to a family that is taking a ski trip in Europe, that as of right now, a superintendent could decide that is excused, but look at the educational value of that. So when we talk about the reasons, there's a whole lot behind, and one of the things I would encourage the group to look at, there's been research in Maryland recently, Minnesota and California that describes unexcused absences versus excused absences and who gets what. Young people with marginalized identities are way more likely to have unexcused absences than excused absences. In our district, we see everything from high levels of anxiety. So from kindergarten through 12, young people that can't walk through that door for whatever reason. And that's where our social workers come into play. That's where our social emotional learning staff come into play. We also have a serious health dynamic. When we do root cause analysis in our district, health is the number one reason cited as why young people are out. So at that point, we worked with Doctor. Heidi Schumacher, who was amazing in this space. She has done a lot of projects collaborating with local health centers and schools to have stronger collaboration. So we know health is the number one reason. It takes more than the school to respond to that. It takes our pediatricians locally to get on board with how sick is too sick for school, what does it mean to write an excuse note and beyond. So it's hard to give you one here's why, but it is everything from the barriers of anxiety and mental health to needing to work to support their family, to health, and to even something as wonderful as doing 20 college visits could lead to a young person being chronically absent. It's eighteen days over the course of a school year is to be chronically absent. That's like missing the month of October. So when we talk about, is it okay if I go to Europe for a week? It's like, well, that's five days of school. And over the grand scheme, we're talking about eighteen days is to be chronically absent in the end. So it's not just this trip here, it is a multitude of factors and things are happening along the way.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: How much judgment is allowed right now? So I could see a superintendent say, this kid who's off to Europe for ten days, just like many high achieving kids, they're gonna achieve highly, whatever they are, whatever they're doing, so perhaps not worth pursuing. Where does that judgment come in?

[Nick Connor]: It comes in everywhere. It's bias, right? Like that is ingrained into when a young person walks back into a classroom, if they missed yesterday and the teacher says or saw it's excused versus if they see it's unexcused, it's not a teacher blame thing. We are all trained to see unexcused bad, excused good. And so when you start to like baked into everything, we in our district worked really hard to be very clear about what is excused and what is unexcused. And one of the things that is not on the table in our district is Libby being able to say, I'm okay with this one, I'm not okay with this one. We have very strict guidelines that all of our registrars are very well trained in. And that leads to a lot of phone calls, which I love, because some families are calling because they're very upset that it wasn't excused, that they went and did this thing. And I get to have a conversation with the family and be like, here's why, we care about lost instructional time, and that's what we're responding to. I could go on, there's one piece that I wanna also make a note of, which is the ripple effect of chronic absenteeism. Regardless of why that young person is out of school, there's a ripple effect that impacts an entire classroom and an entire school. When a teacher needs to constantly slow down instruction and reteach and also navigate supporting young people to relearn the habits of being in school, which means increased behavior incidents, When you have that, it is not just the young person who's out of school, it is their peers as well, because instruction in that classroom slows down. Classroom management in that classroom needs So to go that ripple effect is also real of, if you have a system at 20% or more chronic absenteeism, that is a systemic issue that you need to address that isn't gonna go student by student. And you need to honor the fact of what kind of impact that has on young people across your entire school.

[Wendy Baker]: Peter, I think there may be some differences in rural areas that are worth noting for the committee regarding sources of chronic absenteeism that we're finding. I don't know if it applies to everyone, but if that's of interest, happy to provide that balance point.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. I'd love to hear it.

[Wendy Baker]: You know, when you think about areas where if a student misses the bus, now they're dependent on their parent to get to school. So so in some of our more rural areas, sometimes students who are small have to walk quite a ways to get to the end of the road because the bus can't go up that road because there's no way for the bus to turn around. You you know some of those roads. So in those instances, sometimes, you know, if kids are not able to do that themselves or, if, you know, they're they're not, they don't they're not able to get themselves out and going in the morning with all of those skills and and the parent is is not able to take them. They're missing school. So one of the things that, we're partnering with, CSAC around is just ensuring that substance abuse supports are are in place and amplified wherever they can be in in order to, be able to ensure that, parents are well so that they're able to, you know, bring their kids to school when they need to. I think, you know, one of the other things that we are facing, is is we do not yet, run after school buses that are activity buses for high school and middle school students. We know that a lot of the things that engage kids, you know, are outside the classroom, that schools provide. And so when when there's a disproportionate ability for students to be able to take advantage of some of those things, and sometimes that gets you over the hump. The basketball game you're going to play in that night is what brings you to school that day. And if you're not able to reliably take advantage of that because you don't have a right home, Your your parent is is not able to get you or is not willing to, you know, to to be able to adjust the family life in such a way that that works, that that that's a challenge. So so those are a couple of other things that that apply to us. And, you know, obviously, the you know, I I just gave you about a million and a half dollars of resources that we already employ that largely, you know, keeps our chronic absenteeism where it is. After school buses and things like that would also help, for us, but, obviously, we're also talking about cost at the same time. And so I I think it's important to keep those things in mind.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Any other questions, committee? We'll move on. All right, thank you all very much for your testimony, enlightening, and appreciate the thoughtful comments. Why don't we take a five minute break and we'll be back right at ten.