Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Okay, everybody. Welcome to the House Education Committee, February 26. I'll go right on that. Anyway, for our final block today, we have folks from the Vermont Special Education Legislative Advisory Committee, which I suspect I have that wrong, but I'll let you correct me. Is this just for the committee context and for you folks as well? So obviously special education funding is one of the still unaddressed parts of Act 73. So much of that funding discussion and decision making will happen next year once more information comes in. We have had testimony from folks about the numbers, but also about important things such as maintenance of financial support at the state level and maintenance of effort at the district level. So we really have kind of a combination of policy issues and dollar issues. So anyway, these folks like to, or wanted to come in and testify and give us some advice on how to move forward. The floor is yours. I'm gonna let you decide how you wanna move forward through this and welcome and thanks for taking the time on a Friday afternoon.

[Katie Ballard]: Thank you so much, Chair Conlon. As you can see, there's a group of us here today. We are we came together through senator Keisha Ramp. She approached Erin McGuire and said, hey. We have a need for a group of voices that is separate from the agency of education, separate from these other groups that we've all heard from, and is a combined group of diverse experiences, diverse backgrounds, and brings together that professional experience and the lived experience. And so Erin McGuire, who you all know very well and has been testifying, is on vacation, but is is here with us today. Today, our group really focused on providing some some experiences from folks of lived experience. So just wanna preface that by saying the folks testifying today really are coming to speak to, the different aspects of our proposal that was shared with you that they have some lived experience with or share impact with. Erin, is there anything else? I I guess I would also just say there's a number of members of our group that are not here currently. In the biography document that we shared with your committee. It includes biographies from everybody in our group, as well as those not here today. This group met together for more than twelve hours to come up with some really sought out and responsive proposal language, and also just in general, some great conversation.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Great, thank you. I wanna make sure everybody introduces themselves before they speak, if they would.

[Katie Ballard]: Oh, my apologies. Katie Ballard. I am one of the co chairs for this group, as well as a parent advocate and the chair of the state special ed advisory panel. And I live in Essex, Westford, Vermont. Why don't we let every do you want to introduce ourselves before we start anymore?

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Sure. That'd be great. Yeah.

[Katie Ballard]: Great.

[Erin McGuire]: I'll just reintroduce myself and reiterate that I think Katie has done a good job at sharing where this group came from and the concepts behind it. I'm Erin McGuire. I am the director of equity and inclusion and co director of student support services from the Essex Westford School District. You all have heard from me a couple of times over the last few weeks, and my voice will not be particularly present today. I'm here in support of these amazing people who have worked with me and a couple of other special education directors and teachers, parents, advocates, and just super grateful that this group came together to come up with some collective recommendations that we agree on. This is a diverse group of voices and I think it's a unique group. We are self named, just to be clear. No one tagged us as the advisor to the legislature for this purpose, but we decided that it was important for the legislature to hear from a collective group of diverse voices as opposed to some of the silos that you so often hear from. I'll hand it over to Kelly. You're next to me, and you can introduce yourself.

[Kelly Cray]: Thank you, Erin. My name is Kelly Cray. I am an English language acquisition teacher, a neurodiversity studies educator, and the EL coordinator for an independent school serving the public through Vermont's tuitioning system. I also identify as neurodivergent and disabled. And I will pass it to Palace.

[Palace Zaporin]: Hi, everyone. I am I am a public health professional and a lecturer at the University of Vermont. I'm also a former school board member in a large district in the state of Maryland, and I am the parent of three boys in South Burlington. And I will pass it to Christa.

[Christa Yagjin]: Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having us here. My name is Christa Yagjin, my pronouns are she, her. I live in Guilford, Vermont, so in the Southern part of the state near Brattleboro. I have been a special educator and a reading writing specialist for over twenty years. Most recently, I have been teaching new special educators at UVM and through Vermont Higher Ed Collaborative. And I'm also the proud parents of my son named Nate, who has Down syndrome. And I'll tell you a little bit more about him in my testimony.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you.

[Katie Ballard]: Okay. I think other than that so a lot of us are gonna speak to different parts of the proposal. If it's okay, I think I will kick it off and get started. Full disclosure, I work overnight, so I only got a few hours sleep. So I apologize. Please stop me if something doesn't make sense. Again, my name is Katie Ballard. I am from Essex. My children have gone to the Essex Westward School District. I am the mom of two boys who are in special education, one who graduated last year and one who is currently placed at Bell Kate. After experiencing some challenges in the Essex Westwood School District. I want to talk about a few different components of our, proposal. The first thing I really wanna share is as a family who's experienced homelessness in the past, part of our proposal includes some reaffirmation of civil rights and IDEA compliance. One of the things that I do outside of being a parent and an advocate here in Vermont is I also work with an organization called the National Council of Parent Advocates and Attorneys. And one of the things that I've learned through some of the work there is the National Law of McKinney Vento, which supports the students, the education of students who are homeless, is one of the laws that might potentially be at risk in the future, just given the tone of our current administration. And as somebody who's experienced homelessness in Vermont in the past, I just wanted to put a plug in there that it would be really important for us to remember those students experiencing homelessness in the education system if that law ever does get walked back or changed. The next section that I really wanted to dive into is on the statewide leadership capacity and accountability. Both in my role as a parent of a student with disabilities and as the chair of the state special ed advisory panel here in the state of Vermont. I have had the wonderful opportunity, I'm gonna say a wonderful opportunity to work with the agency of education in multiple capacities. One of the things that I want to just share that I don't think is a surprise to anybody, but the constant turnover in the special education division at the agency of education is harmful to the families and students with disabilities trying to get educated across the state. A lot of the inconsistencies in implementation or follow through of different policies or practices or conversations tend to get dropped every time we get a new state director of special ed. In my role as chair, I have worked now with four, no, five state special ed directors. And every time that happens, it sets our panel back at least four or five months, if not longer. And it leads to a lot of breakdown of conversation, especially related to accountability. The other issue that we've run into, I think Erin mentioned it a little bit, is we've seen a lot of silo, especially as it relates to special education. In my role as chair and as an advocate, one of the things that I am a huge, huge passionate advocate for is the intentional inclusion of voices of with lived experience. In the AOE, oftentimes, they hear from the same voices. We all know the v's, love the v's as we have them represented in this group. But it would be great to see a different set of voices and a different intentional proactive inclusion plan to make sure those with lived experiences are in the room where conversations are happening. I also want to just briefly touch on the therapeutic schools and continuum of placements, as I know a couple of my fellow colleagues are gonna talk on this more. As a parent of a student who's currently placed in an independent school at public expense, I just wanna mention that when we're thinking about lifting the moratorium or what our next steps are gonna be for students who are publicly funded students in independent or therapeutic schools, we need to think about the accountability structure that those schools have for the services and the experience that they're providing to our children. As somebody who has a student in an alternative school or an independent school, it is really hard to know that there is often this, I'm gonna say gap between what your local school district thinks or believes is their responsibility as it relates to the individually individualized IEP and what the independent school believes they are responsible for. And so just making sure that there is oversight and accountability for all students and all of those programs would be really recommended. The other thing I just wanna touch on is we talked about home placement and services. There are far too many students and families, especially of those who have disabilities, who are live who are at home, who are in home placements or tutoring programs because there are not any available placements. Those students are not getting the adequate services. The tutoring isn't appropriate or meaningful in a lot of cases. One of the things we've done as a panel, and I know we talked about as a group, as a committee here, is how do we monitor those numbers and ensure that those students are being provided. That's something I know we are waiting to hear more information from the agency of education as they continue to work through whatever their strategic plan is called at this point. I'm going to let my fellow colleagues on here also talk about collaborative education service agencies as that is definitely not something that I'm totally on board with. But I think the most important thing to remember is as we're changing our structure, to think about all of the ways and places that people without power fall through the gaps and to make sure that those people are in the room and having conversations with the decision makers to ensure that those voices aren't lost. The last thing I do wanna talk about is special education parent advisory councils. I know I've testified about this to your committee in years past. In Essex Westford School District, we were the first district to uplift a local district level parent special ed advisory committee. I believe we uplifted it first in 2020 with our first meeting in 2021. CPACs are a local district level way to collaborate with families and school districts and are oftentimes supposed to be represented or mainly led by, sorry, majority parents or people with individuals. My son came downstairs. I got distracted. Welcome to vacation week. Those CPACs can really create a place for parents to have a meaningful part of the the process and a place to have their voice heard. As one of the folks who have been advocating for this for a long time, I've spent a lot of time researching the CPAC laws in other states. Massachusetts and New Jersey require them by law, which that makes it so there's a lot more strict parameters and kind of more rigidity in terms of how those can look. What we've seen across Vermont, and you have a number of folks on here who are in CPACS, Erin McGuire, of course, from EWSD is one of the folks who uplifted the hours with us. So there's a number of us on here, and we all have very different CPACs. So you could ask questions about what they look like. We're more than happy to provide more information, but I would just continue to encourage us to create spaces where parents and people with lived experience are brought to the table and given an equal opportunity to provide meaningful feedback into the system before rules are put in place. That proactive, inclusion of people with disabilities and their families is really meaningful, and the impact that it has can be long term. Lastly, I just wanna share that one thing we need to think about as a state, and this is something that I'm only learning recently as my younger son who's in an alternative placement is now talking more about the isolation and his experience when he was younger, being put in a seclusion room over and over every day for the first two years of his education. It became so normalized for him that we actually, as a team, had to work hard to get him to take instruction outside of that small segregation room. Far too often, these rooms are being used. They're not being used appropriately. The documentation that is required is inadequate. It doesn't allow for parents to be appropriately informed of what is happening for their students. It does not require districts to report to the agency of education certain circumstances that meet the that do not meet the threshold by law, but continued experiences that don't meet the threshold still impacts students and the families that have to live it. Now that we have my son in an appropriate placement where he is starting to thrive, it is both a blessing and a curse. Because getting to hear your 12 year old talk about how they have no strengths, how they have no skills, how that nobody has ever told them anything positive about themselves and their entire academic experience is heartbreaking. We need to do better for these students, and we need to have accountability structures to make sure these experiences are not happening and to allow districts and LEA proper ways to handle them when they come up. I want to thank you all for the opportunity to testify today and just continue to remind you that the voice of lived experience and those of advocates supporting families is incredibly important, and we appreciate the opportunity to bring our group here today to testify. Thank you.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Great. Thank you, Katie, for preparing some pretty concise and well put input. Beth, who's next?

[Katie Ballard]: I I don't know if you had the list specifically, but I believe Palace. Was it Palace?

[Palace Zaporin]: I think I am next.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Perfect.

[Palace Zaporin]: Hi everyone. Thank you, Katie. I am again, Palace Zaporin, and I am here today to share my lived experience navigating Vermont's special education system as a parent, and also to amplify the experiences of dozens of other Vermont families and explain how these experiences directly informed the legislative recommendations that our committee has submitted to you. So in the 2024, Vermont Digger published a story documenting what happened to my family as we tried to navigate Vermont's special education system. It became one of the most widely read pieces that year and it prompted dozens of parents across the state to contact me with strikingly similar stories. In that Vermont Digger piece, it recounts a multi year ordeal that began when my eldest child who's now 10 years old entered a public elementary school in South Burlington to begin his kindergarten year. And what should have been a joyful milestone quickly became a nightmare. Within months, our autistic son was spending near full days in seclusion in a windowless room. We received multiple calls each week reporting self harm attempts to leave the school building. And twice we were told he had left campus and narrowly avoided being hit by a vehicle on a nearby busy road. I did not know that a six year old could experience suicidal ideation and I learned painfully that they can. In one heartbreaking conversation, my son said, mommy, my brain is broken. Why did you build me this way? I want you to unbuild me. By March, the district told us they could no longer keep him safe in the school setting and we were advised to keep him home temporarily so he could recover. Well, weeks turned into months and the trauma was so severe that even driving through the neighborhood near the school caused him to scream in fear. We were told then that outplacement to a therapeutic setting was necessary, but after this legislature enacted a moratorium on the creation of new therapeutic schools, many placement options had disappeared. In Chittenden County alone, which is where I live, an estimated 100 therapeutic school slots have been eliminated over the last few years. As we waited, my son missed first grade and then he missed second grade and my husband left the workforce to care for him full time in our home. So our son ended up remaining at home for two and a half years waiting for a placement that never came. And our story is not unique unfortunately. After that article in Digger was published, other parents and I conducted a statewide survey and we received 53 responses from families in 23 different districts across the state of Vermont, representing every region of the state. In that survey, parents consistently reported insufficient special education services at the district level, a lack of accountability when districts fail to meet their obligations, a one size fits all education model that does not serve all students, and a failure to recognize the potential of children with complex needs. Parents called for better special education training for educators, state level accountability mechanisms, expanded access to appropriate alternative placements, and a meaningful seat at the table in education reform discussions. And I wanna share with you directly a few of the words that these parents submitted in this survey so you can hear from them yourselves. So here's one. My child is capable of being educated but cannot attend his public school. He has been rejected by all alternative placements. Districts are not held accountable and they know it. My son has been home for over seven months waiting for a placement that may never come. Here's another one. I am tired of hearing. We cannot support that here. Stop pushing children and families out the door. And another one, there needs to be more options for children with the most complex needs. When districts cannot meet those needs, outside options are limited and wait lists are long. These stories, combined with the expertise of my fellow committee members, informed our legislative recommendations. I wanna be very clear about what we are asking for you to do. First, protect special education funding. Any implementation of act 73 must safeguard special education budgets and maintain compliance with federal maintenance maintenance of effort requirements. Second, establish clear guardrails for the Cooperative Education Service agencies. CSAs should bring expertise into local schools, not function as default regional placements that segregate disabled students from their communities. At the same time, we must acknowledge that some students require highly specialized placements that districts, even large, more resource districts, cannot always provide. Third, repeal the moratorium on therapeutic schools. Vermont needs a diverse ecosystem of educational options that meet their federal obligations. When districts cannot provide a free appropriate public education, families must not be left with children at home for years without services. And finally, support the creation of special education parent advisory councils. Like Katie said, states like Massachusetts and New Jersey require CPACs in every district. Parents and individuals with lived experience must be partners in reform and not afterthoughts. We cannot afford to leave this system broken. I know that resources are stretched and reform is difficult, but our most vulnerable students must be protected and federal law must be upheld. I wanna end with this. After the article in BT Digger ran, one of your legislative colleagues contacted me privately. They described their own childhood that was remarkably similar to my son's marked by therapeutic placements and intensive psychiatric care. With the right supports, they are now here serving this state. Another legislator reached out about struggles their own family is facing, struggles they did not feel safe sharing publicly. These are not hypotheticals, these are Vermonters. They are your colleagues and these are our children. I urge you to center the voices of neurodivergent and disabled students and their families as you reform Vermont's special education system and education system more broadly. Thank you for your time and for your service to our state.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you very much. I was debating here whether to have questions at the end or not, but the fact is before you all came on, we were just having informal conversations about the moratorium And all new I think one the reasons why it sort of has sat untouched since it was first implemented is that nobody has really said, Hey, lots of people wanna open therapeutic schools, you need to lift the moratorium. In fact, nobody has. The only request we have is for one to buy another so that other one doesn't go out of business. So I'm not, I hear what you're saying. And I think the limited access that we have in the state is not good, but are new slots, are people, is there a desire for independent therapeutic schools to exist? I just don't know.

[Palace Zaporin]: Yeah, I mean, I would say, I mean, I could share my own experience with this, which was that as my son was home for two and a half years and we were desperately looking for options, I started to investigate the possibility of coordinating the creation of a new therapeutic school that would serve our region. And I started to call people in other states to see if they would be interested in directing it and putting the pieces together. I secured a location. You know, this was something I was taking on because I was so shocked at how few resources were available. So I had the site and I had, I was able to find someone who was interested in being the director if we could put the pieces together. I reached out to the AOE and was told, up, there's no path forward for this. You can't do it. The moratorium there's no way around the moratorium. Sorry. So I don't know if those requests have been tracked. I don't know, you know, if anyone recorded that whole interaction, but I can say even from my own experience that we did attempt to put something together. We interviewed the former director of Center Point and other places that had closed to understand why they had closed and were not sustainable. So Center Point, by the way, was one of the therapeutics that has closed in Chittenden County since the moratorium came into effect. There are several others. That's for a whole lot of reasons, including the shakeups in education during the pandemic and a lot of people leaving the education workforce among other things. But I think when you speak to people in this area, we have a lot of parents and families who are on multiyear waiting list. I mean, the average waiting list is over two years long to get into any therapeutic school. I don't think AOE tracks the waiting list either, which I think is something we feel is really important because it's hard to really understand these shortages. But ask any family or any school district that's working on these placements and they know you can't just say, up, this kid is in a crisis. We need a therapeutic placement and get one tomorrow. It doesn't happen. And so there's a need. And, yeah, I mean,

[Chair Peter Conlon]: yeah, hopefully that answers you. That's a really helpful answer. I think Erin wanted to jump in I on that.

[Erin McGuire]: Was just going to say that EWSD has opened a 35 slot continuum in our own school district because of the challenge. What I would just reiterate that Palace was explaining is that and I think Katie said it too we really need sort of a whole variety of different types of placements. So even like the placements that we created in EWSD serve a solid group of students and different needs, but will not meet every need that ever happens in EWSD. And so because of that, I do think it's important that we have a variety of placement options. And we have some really incredible partners in our independent private therapeutic schools that when schools close, it really has broken my heart because the kinds of services that they provided have just sort of disappeared. I do think that there would be more schools opening both for the school side as well as the private side if we didn't have this repeal. I mean, there's this sort of perspective now that thou shalt not ever open any of these, and it's really reduced the number of options for students. And I though do want to reiterate what Katie said, which is the accountability system on top of it really needs to be solid. So I just want to make sure you hear that the recommendation from us is not just to lift the moratorium, but also be very clear and increase the accountability system around it.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Great. Thank you. That was really helpful. Kate, did you want I to know

[Katie Ballard]: do. I just want to jump in and add a couple of things. One, I think it might be important to just remember there has been a challenge with the therapeutic school and independent school process long before the moratorium went into effect. And one of the things that I've heard and there's a a school director. She used to work in the public school. She actually left and started her own alternative placement. The process that she went through before the moratorium was mind blowing. She actually came to the state special ed advisory panel multiple times to talk about the lack of support from the AOE, the changing process, the lack of transparency, the lack of understanding from both the AOE and other staff on what the process looked like. So I do think it's just important to remember that there may have already been some challenges with the system and the structure that we had in place. And I think that's made it harder for other people to wanna open these new placements because it's also a matter of there's a lot of different opinions about how things should be handled and what that should look like. And I think new schools, especially after the inspire school incident, have been hesitant to jump into that conversation with the state of the AOE on top of of the moratorium. So I just wanted to add that. And also, I know Chris Benway has been testifying, but she's not here, and we would be remiss not to mention this impacts students outside of Chittenden County in a much more significant and different way. They don't even always have the same they don't even have a 100 beds I'm sorry, a 100 placements to send students. So I just think it's really important to remember across our state, have a very different experience with access as well.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Great, thank you, thank you. Christian, I think you're up next.

[Christa Yagjin]: I am, thank you so much, Chair Conlon. I am also here to share my lived experience related to special education in Vermont, and I'm so grateful for opportunity to do this. So again, my name is Krista Yaggin, I live in Guilford, Vermont. I have worked as a special educator, as a reading writing specialist, and most recently I have been teaching new special educators in higher education. As I shared, I'm also the parent to my very determined, he's very curious, punk rock, I am not too crazy about that, music loving son Nate who is 17 and who has Down syndrome. And for those who are unfamiliar with Down syndrome, this means he has a chromosomal anomaly that has resulted in three of the twenty first chromosomes. So this means he has an intellectual disability and a variety of multiple additional health issues. Nate is currently a junior. He's in eleventh grade at Brattleboro Union High School. In addition, I serve on the state special education advisory panel. We call that the SEEP. You have heard about that from Katie Ballard, who is our chair. And I'm also on the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union Special Education Parent Advisory Council. So following Katie and the work in Essex, we also developed a CPAC. Both the CPAC and the SEEP are essential for elevating voices of parents, of caregivers, and of individuals with disabilities. And it ensures that policies and practices reflect the needs of those most by these decisions. And CPACS in particular, I'm a big fan of them. They bring parent voices into district planning. They clarify and help parents and caregivers understand the policies and practices that are happening in their district. They allow us to connect to one another, which has been super important. And I really think that it improves communication between families and schools. For example, most recently, something that happened in our group, our CPAC identified a need for really helping general educators be more prepared for IEP meetings. And so the administration in our district brought a presentation to our CPAC and asked us as parents and caregivers and community members, what do you think is missing? What do you think about this presentation? What for you and your experience would be better? What should we change? I really wanna talk about our experiences with inclusion and access for NATES. While Vermont's current state of special education delivery notes that students with IEP spend a higher percentage of their day in general education, more so than the national average, our experience has sadly been different. We've had to fight for Nate to have meaningful access to general education classes since he started school. As we know, inclusion alone is not enough. We know that the quality of instruction and supports must be strong for inclusion to be meaningful and not just a physical placement. I really believe that at my core. This year when Nate returned full time to eleventh grade, I will tell you it was a bumpy rocky start. The school expressed difficulty finding a skilled para because of the closure of the Inspire School, which we were just talking about in Brattleboro. This was a therapeutic school for students with autism. That school closed for a variety of reasons. You can read the report, but really due to a lack of adapted curriculum, inadequate documentation of student progress. Like I said, there were a lot of issues. My colleague, a local occupational therapist in this community shared the challenges she had getting answers really for like who is responsibility for ensuring that these students are really receiving the education that they are supposed to be receiving. So getting Nate into, this is at the start of the school, you're getting him you know into academic and art related general education classes was really challenging from the start. For example, I just want to share again our lived experience. He wanted to enroll in chorus, but he was discouraged to do so because of concerns around his ability to sing on pitch or to learn complex songs in German. After advocating, I learned that students in separate programs and our sub separate programs in the school where I think they would have preferred Nate to be a part of actually had no access to music classes, no access to any music or singing classes. So again, I was like up for the fight for him to be in chorus. Because the chorus catalog, the course catalog required prerequisites only that you need a willingness and ability to participate fully, I was able to advocate for him to be in chorus. He participated proudly last fall in his first ever music chorus performance at the school. It was amazing, I cried. And it has totally increased his friendships and has changed perspectives around inclusion of kids in music in the school. There've been also other challenges too related to getting Nate's needs met. Despite having a significant stutter and language processing challenges, he was only offered one remote speech language session per week. So again, thinking about barriers schools are experiencing, there is no in person speech language services offered for him, for a student like Nate. He also has fine motor challenges. He doesn't have any handwriting skills and he was only offered one remote, I think consultative OT service by the district. It's always hard to know, like, is this because of staffing challenges or is this because of culture? Like, what are the barriers? I also will say that due to federal funding cuts, receives no transition or employment readiness services, even though he's already decided, as I said, he's going to be helping some punk rock band in the future as a roadie. Communication with general education teachers is also limited. All communication that I experience has to be routed through a special education case manager who has said to me, I can't do it all. Nate is currently in a math fundamentals class that actually has no curriculum. So even though this is a class that he's enrolled in to get high school credit, basically he's coming home with inaccessible second grade worksheets and tells me in reports that he spends the entire ninety minute block with a para rather than engaging in math instruction. I asked the para, are you getting training and supervision? She says, it was mentioned, but it really hasn't happened yet. He's taking an English two class and even though the general educator is listed as the primary teacher, the special educator is expected to do most of the instruction. This is what I was told. These challenges reflect the theory of action in Act 173. You have heard from other teachers and administrators where we still have barriers around implementation of Act 173, which emphasizes systemic improvement so that every student, whether or not they have an IEP, has access to high quality instruction and timely interventions. Despite the obstacles, Nate's inclusion in general education classes has allowed him to connect classroom learning to real world events from understanding a local bus driver strike, we had one in Brattleboro if you read about it, through the lens of US history, his class, learned about labor unions, to reading, he read the other Westmore in English, which was super exciting for him because Westmore, as you know, is now the governor of Maryland where I am from. I tell students and families, every new concept that you learn is like charting a new path on a map. The more paths you chart, the more routes you can take to reach even farther destinations. And I feel that way with Nate. I see the ripples that it has when he has access to content level specialists. In the past month, things have changed for Nate. Nate hasn't wanted to go to school. He has shared that teachers don't know the technology that he needs for in order to have access to learning. They don't understand him and that he doesn't have any friends to eat with at lunch. He's gone to the nurse, I think, I don't know, five out of the eight past school days. And I worry that he experiences system just isn't prepared to support him. It's really heartbreaking to me because having him there is really meaningful to me as a parent and as an educator. So my recommendations, I will say that from both of my professional and personal perspective, I've experienced this disconnect between what I teach new special educators and what my son experiences, what is talked in committees and what actually happens. What I hear is recommendations from the AUE, and then what our lived experience is. To better implement IDEA in Vermont, there's some things that I definitely think that would need to happen. And there's so many, and I'm just gonna share three of my priorities. One is technical assistance. Schools need regular relevant support from the agency of education. As Katie shared, current staffing capacity at the AOE impacts this. This is something that really needs to be thought about and considered as we move forward because without that, schools are not getting the supports that they need. Parent input, policies and practices must be informed by those who have lived experience. Expanding CPACS in Vermont would provide a stronger parent voice in decision making. I hope that you continue to make the space to hear from those who are most impacted by decisions related to special education. And last funding and MOE. Special education, I just wanna tell you the culture of the conversation in my community, it's often seen as a taxpayer burden, which is really hard. It makes me feel like supporting children with disabilities, supporting children like my son and what he needs is a financial burden. I really feel this way as a parent. Funding formulas must protect maintenance of effort to ensure that all districts do not reduce special education spending to save money and that costs are not put in competition with general education programs. MOE protections are essential for guaranteeing students receive the services they are legally entitled to under IDEA. In closing, I just wanna thank you again for taking the time to hear all of our testimony. I am so grateful for your work and the opportunity to share how Vermont can improve access, inclusion, and quality instruction for students with disabilities like my son, Nate. Thank you so much.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you very much, Christa. And thanks to all of you for bringing up the CPAC concept. I think that as we consider newer, larger districts, which many fear sort of makes governance less accessible, that we need to think about ways to make it more accessible. And I appreciate you bringing up that topic as well.

[Katie Ballard]: I do just wanna mention on that, there's a lot of research and information that members of our group could provide you as well as the Education Justice Coalition has a group that's working on it, and so is our state advisory panel. Just as you're continuing the conversation, if there's support or information or resources that there are many of us that could help provide some of that with you.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thanks very much, Katie. Kelly, I think you are up. You may see me slip out the door. I have a meeting at two, but I apologize for that. The vice chair will take over.

[Kelly Cray]: No worries, I will keep mine pithy. So I'm here as both an educator and someone who's personally affected by the rhetoric surrounding disability in this moment. And I want to start by naming something that's often invisible in policy conversations. Advocating for yourself as a disabled person is not easy, even in the best of times. I'm 40 years old and I still struggle with it. It's hard to disclose your disability in professional spaces. It's hard to ask for accommodations. It's hard to hear praise when you don't. And it's hard to explain your needs without being reduced to them. Especially it's hard as a child, and it's hard when public narratives suggest that people like you are burdens, cost drivers, or problems to be fixed. And for many disabled people, particularly those whose disabilities affect communication, executive functioning, and interoception, which is like understanding what your body is telling you, the signals both emotionally and physically. The ability to recognize and articulate internal states. Advocacy can be really, really taxing. Some individuals struggle to verbalize pain, overwhelm, or even basic needs in real time. And it's not lack of insight, it's a neurological reality. When systems become more adversarial or cost focused, the burden of self advocacy increases, and the people least equipped to fight loudly are often the ones that need the most protection. Nationally, right now, we're hearing language suggesting that people like me should not exist, that there is a quest to eradicate us through cures. Locally, we're reading headlines framing special education as a reason taxes are high, and that narrative is very powerful and it's very, very dangerous. When disability is framed primarily as a cost, policy conversations begin to center on containment instead of rights. The Individuals with Disabilities Act isn't a discretionary program. It's a civil rights law. People fought very, very, very hard to make that work. Maintenance of effort is not optional and FAPE is non negotiable. As Vermont reforms education governance under Act 73, we must be explicit that implementation cannot weaken compliance or embed structural bias, because systems create bias. When special education funding is not clearly protected, implicit pressure develops to minimize services, narrow eligibility, delay evaluations, or steer students towards less costly placements that do not, and this isn't because of bad intent, it's how incentives operate. If cost containment becomes the primary frame, disabled students become financial variables instead of rights holders. Clear safeguards protect students and they protect districts from non compliance. And I also want to address something else that's hard to say publicly. Special education in this country still contains assimilation based practices. I'm really, really lucky to be at a neuro inclusive school, but many models continue to center normalization, meaning helping students look less disabled, act less autistic, or conform more closely to dominant behavioral expectations, rather than building environments that are truly neuro inclusive. There is a well documented and well researched connection between early death rates and suicide to assimilation practices that occur like this. And it doesn't mean that educators lack care, it means the system was built historically around deficit models. I'm deeply proud of the neuro inclusive approach at my school, but I know that not all programs subscribe to this ideology. And in moments of fiscal strain, systems often revert to compliance minimums instead of inclusion maximums. If we're going to create new regional structures through cooperative education service agencies, we must ensure they're not replicating older compliance driven or assimilation based frameworks. We need oversights. We need that oversight embedded within the public education system where transparency requirements, reporting obligations, and accountability structures are already in place. See, I went to a school as a child that was not the school I get to teach at now. I went to a school where I'm a suicide survivor because of a lot of my own experiences being educated. This is especially important because federal enforcement has weakened. The Office of Civil Rights has in recent years rarely followed up meaningfully on disability complaints, and families increasingly feel that federal remedies are slow or inaccessible. CSAs must remain infrastructure, not placement authorities, preserve IEP team authority, maintain parental procedural safeguards, demonstrate data showing inclusion rates are stable or increasing, and show they are reducing contractor dependence without increasing segregation. Oversight is not distrust, it's just good governance. Embedding CSAs within the existing public system makes that oversight clearer and more enforceable than if they operate as quasi independent entities with diffused accountability. Regionalization should strengthen inclusion and neuro inclusive practices, not inadvertently scale older assimilation models. We also need to strengthen Vermont's in state continuum of placements. When appropriate therapeutic placements are unavailable, families wait, students destabilize, districts face crisis spending. Crisis is expensive financially and emotionally. This cost is not due to disability, it's due to structural gaps. Building accountability and state capacity reduces both cost, fertility, and human harm, but leadership capacity off also matters. Administrator ratios aren't bureaucratic excess. They ensure someone has time to oversee faith, instructional quality, dispute resolution. When leadership is stretched too thin, compliance errors increase, conflict increases and cost increases. Representation matters too, including neurodivergent adults and caregivers and governance structures improves policy design decisions about disabled students should include disabled voices, particularly in a moment where public decourse dehumanizes us. Finally, I want to mention multi grade classrooms. In rural high schools, especially in electives, multi age classrooms expand opportunity. They make low enrollment courses viable. They increase access to arts, technology, and specialized electives. They support mentorship across grade levels. They allow individualized pacing for multilingual learners and students with disabilities, and they provide flexibility for students whose academic pathways do not align neatly with age based cohorts. Rigid grade silos can reduce opportunity no matter the size of the school. Thoughtfully designed multi grade electives can increase it without lowering standards. Flexibility can be equity. I understand Vermont faces fiscal pressure. Communities are worried about taxes, but disabled students are not the cause of systemic fiscal strain. They are children with federally protected civil rights. And I will say this plainly, when we make it harder for families or students to advocate, the people who lose first are those whose disabilities already make advocacy difficult. Act 73 is structural reform. IDEA is civil rights law. This legislation must ensure that reform strengthens inclusion, reduces structural bias, prevents segregation, and does not scale assimilation based practices under a new name. In a moment where federal oversight feels uncertain, Vermont's design choices matter more than ever. Thank you so much for your leadership during this complex and sensitive time, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank Kelly. Thank you, Kelly. I think when we talk about the cooperative education service agencies, I think we are all envisioning them as you do, as sort of being additive and taking on a role that should not be there. So I just wanna assure you that that's not something that we contemplate and appreciate the suggestion of guardrails. And just before I duck out, I also just wanna thank you. We do talk about special education as a cost driver, in part just because the numbers show that it is. But I appreciate the reminder that how we talk about that really matters. So we appreciate that input. Do want to throw out to the committee for any other questions or follow-up. Yeah, go ahead, Erin.

[Erin McGuire]: Before we do that, just, Chair Conlon, wanna remind us of the impact of the census model from Act 173 related to special education as a cost driver and remind the committee that special education has grown 12% over the last five years with a total overall increase in spending at 37% and so I continued I do continue to worry about placing the language of cost driver into special education in this moment in time given the variance of the cost increase of special education compared to the rest of education and that includes considerations for the health care increases within the context of special education as we think about the increase. So I do feel like special education has over the last four or five years really sort of shifted the curve in a way that the rest of education hasn't and while I understand special education is a cost the concept of driver at this moment in time has shifted a little bit for me after reviewing the agency of education report on that issue. So hopefully that's helpful.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: I really appreciate that. It's a good dose of reality. And the characterization of, especially the extraordinary costs as not a cost driver, but as a structural crisis is, I think, probably a much better way to describe it. Because we are unable to provide many of those services sort of where they need to be provided. We have to rely on a system that doesn't have them and therefore it's expensive. Yep, and I think what you said, Kelly, about the crisis being expensive is really important. And I see you made an end the school there today, good job. I I just wanna clarify something about the funding. I just wanna make sure that we're hearing you correctly that you are cautioning against sort of lumping in the sort of cost of special education as a weight along with the rest of the foundation formula, because it would, I think in the term you used, be in competition with other money. Would sort of the maintenance of the system that we have today under Act 173 with the Census Block Grant, is that a better option? This is still something that's very much in discussion.

[Erin McGuire]: I'm happy to let others take this if you want, but if you would prefer I answer just given the complexity of it, the special ed directors in the group definitely spoke at length about the cost design because for families to understand the complexity of some of the special education funding, but we did collectively come to the agreement as opposed to supporting weights or supporting a census model or supporting a reimbursement model that the place we came to as a group was that whatever design comes into being related to Act 73 and the foundation formula that it must fully fund special education and must not be in competition with general education. And you can do that under a census model, although you cannot do it with the current census model because the current census model only covers about half the special education cost. So you would need to raise the census into sort of a more 100% providing cost and money to cover special education spending. I think though it is also worth knowing for this committee that Emily Kornheiser and Lori Houghton had asked for the maintenance of effort language that was developed by this committee and has been provided. There is a bill in your it hasn't been looked at by Ledge Council. It's just those of us who are trying to put together language to help you think about how you might write a bill to adjust for the maintenance of effort necessity when you if you move into a foundation formula under Act 73. The special education funding will need to be separate from the foundation formula in order to not be in competition with general education. And that is the design of the bill that this committee put forward together as a group. I don't know if anybody else wants to add anything to that comment. I

[Katie Ballard]: do just want to add that and it's not necessarily totally connected, but I think it is worth mentioning as chair of the state advisory panel, I've sat in a lot of meetings listening to agency of education staff talk about funding, talk about different programs, talk about positions at the agency of education. And I just think it's interesting as we talk about special education as a cost driver, as we talk about all of this kind of in a negative way. One of the things we aren't hearing about is it sounds like there are times where it is possible that there is funding that maybe is special education funding dollars that goes to supporting general education programs or general education mandates and things like that. So I would just also put out there, if we were having more accountability on our financing and what is happening at the agency of education, some of that special education funding may not be as taxed by the general education programs that it is providing to.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you, Katie. Thank you all very much for taking some time with us this afternoon. Appreciate Thank

[Katie Ballard]: you so much.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: And hope you have a great weekend. Thanks. Thank you.