Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Hello. Okay. Welcome to House Education on 02/17/2026. The committee is continuing its conversation on a committee bill addressing chronic absenteeism. This bill does a few things. One, it defines chronic absenteeism because we didn't previously have a definition. Requires the agency of education to come up with a model policy that schools must implement that or something stricter. And it suggests a few changes in the truancy laws to make it perhaps, like we could say, a little less punitive. We've had testimony from the Principal's Association, the agency, others, and we're gonna continue that with the Vermont School Counselors Association testimony on the bill before us. With that, I'm gonna turn our attention to our two guests today. You can introduce yourselves and we look forward to your testimony.

[Abby Allen]: I can go first, Michaela. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for your time today. My name is Abby Allen. Hi, Kate. My name is Abby Allen. I am the school counseling coordinator at the Center Vermont Career Center. This is my eighth year as a school counselor, fourth in Career Tech Ed. I spent four years in traditional education and just really appreciate your time today.

[Mikayla Rath]: Name is Mikayla Rath. I'm a school counselor at St. Albans City School, and this is my third year as a school counselor. I work primarily with early elementary K through two, and I'll get us started with our testimony. Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify on the issue of chronic absenteeism. We appreciate the committee's focus on this important issue, and we would like to offer our assistance in any way that may help you. As school counselors, we can play a critical role in addressing this issue. Across Vermont and the nation, chronic absenteeism has risen significantly in recent years. We know that students who are chronically absent or missing 10% or more of the school year are at greater risk for academic decline, disengagement, mental health challenges, and ultimately dropping out. Attendance is fundamentally about students' belonging, engagement, and support at school. Absenteeism is not simply about attendance. It is often a symptom of much deeper challenges. Anxiety, depression, family instability, transportation barriers, housing insecurity, bullying, academic frustration, or a general lack of connection to school. School counselors are uniquely trained in mental health support, family engagement, academic planning, and systems level interventions. As student support professionals, we can help to identify root causes and provide early intervention. When given adequate time and resources to provide direct services to students, school counselors can do the following: identify patterns of chronic absenteeism early through data analysis provide individual and small group counseling to address anxiety, depression, and school avoidance, partner with families to reduce barriers to attendance, collaborate with teachers to create engagement strategies in the classroom, connect students to community based services, lead school wide prevention initiatives that foster belonging and connection, develop strategies to reduce repeat absences, and reduce long term costs associated with remediation and dropout. Research consistently shows that when students feel connected to at least one caring adult in school, attendance improves among many other things. School counselors are often that adult, and when attendance improves, so do academic outcomes.

[Abby Allen]: So I'm gonna just briefly talk about some comments and suggestions, because overall, we are very supportive of this bill and appreciate the work that has gone into this. So just a few thoughts looking at the bill and the new changes. First, around prevention. So absenteeism is not solved through punitive measures alone. It's often solved through relationship building, early intervention, and coordinated supports. Prevention is more effective and far less costly than intervention after disengagement has already taken root. Every day a student misses school is a lost opportunity, but every day a student feels supported, understood, and connected increases the likelihood that they will return and stay in school. As school counselors, we are always working with students and families to prevent or curtail absences from happening. In our work with students in schools, we are often confronted with a lack of resources to help prevent absences from occurring. We would be in a much better position to curb truancy if staff and resources are available. Some suggested proactive interventions may include staff for home visits because that is in some schools and not all schools, time to connect with care teams, community resource collaboration, and additional school based supports. Another thing that we are seeing in schools are transportation barriers. So based on our experience in Vermont schools, we are acutely aware of the number of students who have transportation issues, which can result from homelessness, financial situations, just to name a couple. And we feel strongly that students should not be penalized if they are not able to get to school. Well, another suggestion or something that we, have talked about are student records. We know students, transfer from school to school often for a variety of different reasons, and currently, attendance is not always included when students transfer from school to school. In order to properly track and report attendance data, we would like to ensure, and we should ensure that attendance is included in transferred records. Lastly, when it comes to clear guidelines in the model policy, we feel strongly, the model policy should have clear guidelines as to what is an excused absence. Currently, the bill set forth, a list of what a superintendent may excuse. In the model policy for consistency across the state, we suggest that a definitive list of reasons why an absent would be excused, especially, given the possibility of criminal action, further down the line if their truancy issues continue. We thank you for the opportunity to testify and your commitment to Vermont students, and welcome any questions or comments that the committee might have.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great. Thank you both very much. One of the things that always makes me nervous in legislation is when we are creating lists, so like lists of what would be an excused absence and what wouldn't be. Then I sort of wonder what's the How effective is a list when you might wrap it up with can't get to the list here, Bill. Other reasons not specified with the approval of the superintendent. I think that that sort of leeway is probably important to have, but then I sort of then what's the point of having a list if you're sort of giving the superintendent sort of the leeway to make a judgment call on every student? Have you looked at the list that's in there, and do you have any comments on it?

[Abby Allen]: Yes. We did look at the list, last night, and I think I think you're exactly right. You know, there is that there is that leeway, and superintendents have, some opportunities to say what is an excused or unexcused. And I think really what we're, you know, looking is, you know, the agency's model policy, making some more definitive, lists. And, again, you know, the list itself on the bill, I'd Mikaela, correct me if I'm wrong when we were looking at that, We did not have any issues with that. I think what we find across supervisory unions and school district is that there are differences when it comes to what is excused and what is not excused. And when students, especially when we're looking down the line in their criminal action and there's, you know, the state's attorney involved, it can be difficult if a student has, previously in a different school district been, you know, considered excused and then at the new district is un excused. And so the inconsistency can pose some challenges when it comes to, you know, how schools can support and move forward, especially when it comes to the possibility of that criminal action. I can give an you know, one example is I, you know, was working with a family once, and they were already connected, with the state's attorney. And, you know, we were excusing absences because a parent or guardian was calling out. And so we were told, like, don't contact us unless they hit 20 unexcused absences. Well, they hit 40 excused absences, so they were never, unexcused, and so we weren't able to contact the state's attorney. So having some more consistency, and I don't disagree that list can be, you know, challenging and there's some leeway there, but it does it does pose a challenge, especially if students are transferring from school to school when it comes to that consistency piece, at least for schools and at least in our position as school counselors when we are working with families, and, you know, getting close to, you know, talk talking about calling Department of Children and Family, and, you know, wanting to have as accurate information and data as possible knowing that each superintendent has a little bit of leeway.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. That's actually, quite helpful, especially the small example you gave there where with inconsistent rules, 40 excused absences could really mean 40 unexcused absences if all a parent has to do is call in and say, I'm excusing my child from school today. Yeah.

[Mikayla Rath]: And I see that at the younger level too. So that is a consistent issue where we really encourage caregivers to call in when kids are out. But if a caregiver says that their student is sick, that is automatically an excused absence and it can build up over time whether it's, if that's the case or not.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: See, what does it say here about medical sort of still allows that because it says they can be excused for physical or mental illness of the student, which probably, as you point out, needs a little more clarity because couldn't a parent, especially if an elementary school student, just keep calling in and saying, my student is sick. I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: was at an Ag breakfast this weekend and they, I brought this up before, but they repeated the request that FFA and four H is not on this list. And I told them that that was probably covered under the discretion of the superintendent part, but they are really pushing that to be added. Just putting that out there.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, yeah. Right, again, the challenge of making lists.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: I know,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: it is Vermont though.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yep, well, I mean, there are many clubs that probably have many activities that aren't necessarily agriculture related that are just as deserving. I'm not quite sure what we do with that. Yeah, Kate, go ahead.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: I'm wondering what gets in your way at school of building the connections, of working on the prevention part so that you can get that before it needs to become intervention. What's happening in your schools that gets in your way of making that happen? I mean, if we're serious about improving the mental health of students and we're serious about reducing costs, what can we do for counselors so that you can do the work that you set out to do?

[Mikayla Rath]: Abby, I can go first a little bit.

[Abby Allen]: My thoughts.

[Mikayla Rath]: Yeah, I think that a challenge is just the amount of time that is available to us. There are increasing demands placed on school counselors and the availability of school counselors from school to school and district to district varies. So if we are the primary mental health professional in the building, that entails a lot of responsibility on top of getting other duties as assigned per our contracts. So in an ideal world, we are providing proactive intervention. To form groups and select students to meet with, I do reference attendance data on a regular basis. That is a very significant portion of my job and how I seek to support students proactively. However, when there are time constraints, it limits the number of students that I am available to pull. And oftentimes once they're starting to disengage, it's requiring a more significant amount of time, what with wanting to do home visits and wanting to make those calls and collaborate with various stakeholders that may or may not be involved. So it really does come down to capacity and wanting to be that proactive figure. So we're not getting to the 10 or 20 unexcused or excused absences and really trying to work with families. But it does take up really precious time with the variety of duties that we have.

[Abby Allen]: I can echo pretty much everything Michaela is saying when it comes to the roles and responsibilities that counselors have. You know, I think especially in some of our smaller schools, they counselors are really the only mental health professional in the building. And when counselors are asked to do lunch duties, that's often a time when lunch, you know, lunch groups is really great. It's a great time. You're not pulling students from academic stuff, but school counselors are assigned to do lunch duty or recess duty, two really precious times. I know it's especially at the younger age where school counselors can do some of those preventative measures. I think, you know, when you're moving up to middle school and high school, there's often testing duties that you are assigned, AP testing, SAT, ACT, the SBACs, all those Vermont state testing that school counselors often get tasked with, which, takes up an incredible amount of time where they are not then able to provide direct services, especially tier one services to students and and those preventative. You know, counselors, there is a recommendation for how much time counselors should be spending giving direct services to students. And I think pretty consistency consistently from what I'm hearing, I think, Michaela, probably from what you're hearing is it's it's it's incredibly difficult to be spending the amount of time on those preventative measures, with all of the other duties that have been assigned to the counselors in the in the building.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: Just a quick follow-up. Have either of you been asked to sub?

[Abby Allen]: Oh, yes.

[Mikayla Rath]: I am typically protected, but I will have to cover duties or gaps in scheduling.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Back to the list for a moment. We had a superintendent say that we should rethink on the list here, I think it's called pre planned family vacations basically, as an excused absence, noting that it's really kind of an excused absence of privilege. Do you have you don't have to have an opinion on that, but if you do, we would entertain it.

[Abby Allen]: I would say I'm at the high school level. I certainly see this quite frequently, especially in the fall time. The population I work with, there are hunting trips and pre vacation vacations. I'm always a little surprised at the number of families that pull their students to go on a week long vacation that is not during vacation time. And, you know, again, that's some of that in the the if a pair if a caregiver, a parent, or guardian calls out, typically, the policy is that is an excused absent. Well, yes, they are missing that learning time. In my in my world, it's program time. Those are excused because the parent or guardian or caregiver has, you know, thankfully let us know. But I I every year, am surprised at the number of students who take week long trips during the school time.

[Mikayla Rath]: I don't have much to add to that, but I think that the variance between communication of caregivers about vacations or preplanned trips can vary, which impacts how much teachers and educators are able to kind of prepare or make up for the missed academic instruction time. I will say that my understanding in our district is that that would be an unexcused, but verified because the caregiver communicated absence, but it is noted as unexcused.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It is noted as unexcused, okay.

[Mikayla Rath]: Is understanding of it, yeah.

[Abby Allen]: Yeah. I think that's an example of the different school districts having different ways of coding those things.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right, and as you pointed out earlier, if attendance is recorded on a transcript or records that move from school to school, that inconsistency would get in the way of you sort of really knowing that student when they arrive.

[Mikayla Rath]: Yes.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Anything else, committee? Great. Thank you both very much for your time and for weighing in on this. We really appreciate it.

[Abby Allen]: Thank you all so much.

[Mikayla Rath]: Thank you for your time.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Our next

[Kate McCann (Member)]: group

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: at 01:30