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[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Know.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: This is House Education on May 10, 03/10/2026. We are turning our attention to our committee bill about chronic absenteeism, which is largely a proposal from the agency, but has had a fair amount of support as we move forward. I think it'd be good to do another walk through, any changes we want to make. We won't vote on it today, but we will vote on it very soon. I do have in front of me a couple of suggested changes from the School Counselors Association that I'll bring up after we go through it. But anyway, let's turn it over to legislative council who is remote, and we will walk through the new yellow or highlighted language. Great, thank you.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hello, Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel. Do you want me to share my screen?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, please.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Okay. Let's see if I can
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: make that a little bigger. How's that?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It didn't change.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, well, it changed for me.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay. Well, that's all that's important. We have it all have it up there.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have faith that you can deal with it.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this is draft 3.1. There is no draft 2.1. That was just something that I was working on, and now there's draft 3.1. Language that's highlighted in yellow are changes from the last time you looked at this, which would have been draft 1.1 before town meeting break. I will just highlight off the bat that one of our major conversations related to the penalties for truancy, the consequences for truancy, that that has not I have not been able to flesh that out. And I'll leave it to the chair on how specific he wants me to get. But that language has not changed. So, the first section we're on page one, this yellow highlighting is in the definition section to the definition of absence. And this is language based on the testimony of Oliver Olson. So absence means a student who is for at least half of the school day when school is open, not physically on school grounds or who is not receiving or attending educational co curricular or athletic services or programming elsewhere pursuant to a program or plan approved by. And then the district, if the student is enrolled in a public school or an approved independent school, the student is enrolled in an approved independent school. That leaves out folks in recognized independent schools, and I don't know how home study fits into this. So I think that's something that would potentially consider more thought. You want me to just keep going?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Please.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: K. No if there's no yellow, there were no changes since the last draft. So I'm just gonna skip over all of the the unchanged language. Let's see. Where are we going?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Everybody needs to pay close attention because somebody's gonna present this on the floor.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I do it by watering.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The next the next change is on starting on line 17 on page four, section eleven twenty three, school absence may be excused. This is where we list all of the reasons for a student's absence to be excused. We added, for number 12 on line 18 of line five, other reasons with the approval of the superintendent of a public school or designee or the head of school of an approved independent school or designee. I'm gonna pause you there a moment and take everybody
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: back up to page four, line 19. So this is a proposed change from the Vermont School Counselors Association, which is an interesting one. It says a superintendent of public school or designee of a head of school, independent school, may excuse. It doesn't say shall excuse. And so there is a request that we change that to shall excuse. Well, I think part of the concern would be that we have a bunch of listed reasons to be absent, so we're making it sort of optional for the person making the decision.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I see it now. Inconsistencies across the state.
[Robert Hunter (Member)]: Right, right. If there's at least they should.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't wanna make a hard decision on this right now, but it's tough to
[Robert Hunter (Member)]: think about. No, makes sense, makes sense.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you wanna see that change for the next draft?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: To be determined.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yep.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Who's keeping track of these? Me?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Sure. Okay.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm gonna be real candid this week, guys.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Actually, may I jump in? I
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: was just
[Robert Hunter (Member)]: thinking there are certain things here like college or other post secondary program visitations. I mean, let's say a kid's visited 50 schools. Yeah, make them all. And then the superintendent's like, You know what? Mean, if you haven't found one, you're like, I'm just saying that's maybe that's why it's
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: a decision. That's why we didn't make a decision on that.
[Robert Hunter (Member)]: That's why it's a
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: man. Right.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, are we ready to move on?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay,
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so we've talked about page five, number 12 there. The next change is on page six, line 10, section eleven twenty four response to chronic absenteeism. And this is adding the in consultation with for the model policy. So and we flip flopped first, the first sub section was the school boards adopting policies and then the agency developing the model policy. So now we've got the agency developing the model policy first. That's why subdivision or subsection A is highlighted. So the agency in consultation with the school board's association, the superintendent's association, the principals association, and visa develops the model policy. And then on line 17, page six, the policy
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Before you jump ahead, I will just for the committee's benefit, the School Counselor Association has asked to be included in that list. Consultation list. Okay, thank you.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, hold on, let me make a note of that.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then we're on page six, jumping to line 17. This is the model policy the AOE is required to create. The policy shall also include a template for standard documentation to be provided to parents or guardians pursuant to section eleven twenty seven of this chapter. And then the requirement to adopt the model policy remains the same. Section eleven twenty six, there was so eleven twenty six is the failure to attend. For Vermont resident students, the head of school of an approved independent school designee shall notify the superintendent, the district's residents upon review of the truancy reporting protocol, the superintendent shall notify the truant officer.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: What
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: did we have previously?
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: May. May? I think it was May.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So then section eleven twenty seven is the, this is where we had the big discussion over. You can see that the proposed language takes out the criminal penalty and uses the phrase, where is it?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It's line 12, page nine.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you, the state's attorney shall take legal action instead of shall prosecute. And we had a whole discussion about can you have a criminal law without a penalty in it? And what is other legal action mean? And I don't know how detailed you want me to get on the work I've done since last time.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I guess I would love to hear since we all had the same question, yeah, what you have learned since then.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I will preface this by saying this is all secondhand. This is not my own analysis. This is me reaching out to both AOE and the Department of States Attorneys and Sheriffs. And so I would highly encourage if you have any questions about what I'm about to say that I am unable to answer inviting those folks in to hear directly from them. I
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: did
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: reach out to AOE and asked what the goal was here with this language and my understanding from that response is that the goal was to have truancy matters handled through the CHINS process, the Child in Need of Services process. And if that is the policy direction that you choose to go in, I think we need to make some further changes to this language to make that clear. The CHINS process, I have verified independently that the CHINS enabling statutes do allow for CHINs petitions to be filed related to truancy matters, so there's already language there to allow for that. But prior to getting that feedback from AOE, I had reached out to the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs and talked to their legislative policy attorney more generally about can you have a criminal law without a penalty and kind of the questions that we were all grappling with last time. Oh, let me stop sharing my screen so I'm not tiny, I'm sorry. Just looking at a Word document. And I'm still awaiting, well I shouldn't say I'm still awaiting, I think it's up to you on whether or not you want to pursue any more information from them and I don't feel comfortable representing any of their positions. But I will say I think you may want to hear from them on whether they are in a place to be able to provide you with some insight on how truancy cases are handled throughout the state, and it sounds like they are handled a little differently everywhere, and that some folks do rely on the misdemeanor statute, which is eleven twenty seven, and some folks do go the CHINS route and some folks do want both options. So I think this is an open policy question for you all, and I don't want to misrepresent anyone's position on on where to go with that. I do think if you were to invite the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs in, they would have a lot of information for you on how these cases are currently handled and what would happen if you did away with the criminal penalty.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great, thank you. I do think we're gonna get a little stuck here, but we have no definition on line 12 of take legal action. We need to be more specific about that.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And my understanding from AOE is that that language was meant to reflect that it wouldn't be a criminal prosecution, would be a CHINS petition. So that's why I, you know, if you choose to go that route, I think this language needs some work.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: But
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I also just want to, I feel like I have an obligation to flag that there may be other policy opinions out there of the folks working on these issues.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah, you. Appreciate that. Yeah, go ahead.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Does it help at all if we,
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I don't know if this says,
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: but would it help at all if
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: we just left it shall prosecute the person or take legal action? Like if we, instead of totally removing what currently exists, just to sort of, I don't know, maybe that makes it squishier.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think that's a policy regardless of the language, the ultimate language we use. That's a policy choice for you all of whether you leave the criminal penalty and if and the Chittenden Avenue or you restrict consequences of truancy to one or the other. And that's a policy choice for you all. And and, further, what let's let's say for the sake of argument that you wanna leave both options open, we need to build back in the the criminal penalty, and we need to build back in the language about prosecution. So then I think it's an open question of is what is it? Is 1,000 the appropriate fine at this, in 2026? Is there from the criminal bar, are there other changes that need to be made here? I mean this is a criminal, this is essentially a criminal statute. So if you want to leave that avenue open, I would suggest that you reach out to to DSAS for their policy opinions on that. Or tell me what your policy objective is and ask me to work with DSAS to come up with language that meets your policy objective regardless of what their policy objective is. You have a number of different options you can take.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. Why don't we finish up the walk through and then circle back here? K.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I have made no changes to 11/27. Eleventwenty eight is that, let's see, that you find the kiddo on the street and take him to school statute that we're repealing. Jurisdiction of non residents, we haven't made any changes there. This is another made a shall, so this is we're out of section one, which is all of the changes to your attendance and discipline chapter and or sub chapter, and now we're in the same chapter, different sub chapter suspension or expulsion of students. This is the discipline one. Keeping that entire statute the same, but adding new language here about providing access to educational materials during suspension or expulsion, well during suspension. This used to be a shall on page 11 line two and it's a May now, so may provide access. And then section three was where we had AOE, the subsections where were A and B are now B and C to adopt the model policy, and then the timeline for the school boards to adopt the policy. We've added language asking AOE to submit a written update to you all. Oh, I didn't say who to submit the written update to, so that will be in the next draft. Do you want to break in?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No. No. That's great. Oh, okay. So just Usual suspects. Get the get the report.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. The usual suspects, but I think we talked about adding this so that you could have an opportunity to provide feedback if the model policy wasn't going the way you wanted it to go. And they're required to provide the draft model policy and draft templates to you all. And then section five is brand new and that is asking AOE on or before December 1 to submit a written report to the education committees with recommendations for updates to Vermont's home study program law to improve oversight of home study programs and to ensure home study participants compliance with attendance requirements.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great. Okay, everybody. Let me sort of take on a couple of the smaller things. So let's go back up to the May versus shall part, which we were kind of going round and round on a bit. I think we were settled on shall and then Rob, your monkey wrench into that.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: It's an excellent melody, though.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Here.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Maybe the problem was that for some of the items on that list, would want it to be a may and for others we would want it to be a shall, but we only have one list. Yeah, They're lit,
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: yeah. Course they're gone.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: So they're like sixty fifth pilot visit, I'll
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: take them to
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the concert.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: And that must have
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: been, I thought that too, that's what their concern was. Or It
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: probably doesn't work grammatically well, but if you took may excuse that, designee, and then for each one, may excuse physical or mental or shall excuse physical or mental illness, the student shall excuse family of emergency. Just put shall excuse in front of the ones that apply shall and may to those that are may. See, this is my thought, but
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: That's why we don't like less.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's why we don't like less.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I'm just thinking that's a way to be very specific. Some of those are not that they're gonna ask for documentation, some of those are more easily proven than Yeah, others, if it needs to
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think it does seem to me that maybe a bay is best served here.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: And they are working with professionals, who care about our tone. That's the
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: part that I guess I'm not
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I don't know what their reason, whether they had specific reasons for it, but a superintendent of a public school is not going to use a May when it's physical on mental health.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Is everybody Okay with adding the Vermont School Counselors Association to the list of folks in consultation with?
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Yes. That's great.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All right, excellent. Let's do that.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Do we have any evidence that this list is being applied inconsistently across the state already?
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't think there is a list.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Right, well, I mean the list that's there now. Yeah,
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think we heard testimony that said, we do not count vacation as an excused absence, and others just said we do.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: So then in that case, don't know, I'm pointing the May versus shall, because it should be applied consistently. It shouldn't be at the whim of the superintendent.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: At a certain point, we have to sort of trust the professionals to make the right decision. And I think some of these will be, you know, like how long can you be gone visiting colleges before it becomes excessive.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I mean, of the things that we champion in this state is individuality. Say that we can't apply it one place
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: or another. At some point we just have to test our professional appropriate decisions. I guess, are folks, basically the consensus would be to stick with May rather than Zhao? I'm more comfortable with it. Mostly nods. We're not married to anything right now. We do have this much stickier wicket of quote, taking legal action. I think we either need to figure out a way out of this, that's easy, or we're gonna have to get more testimony in. To the extent that legislative council said, or you could assign me to sort of figure out how to do this. It's complicated, I don't understand the Chittenden's process. I don't know what would work and what wouldn't. I in a way I do why don't we try to get some testimony in on this and then be able to provide legislative counsel with some direction? But also give legislative counsel the ability to talk with whoever could help us out of this somewhat quagmire would be great.
[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Boy, do I hate to say this or do I love to say this? I think unfortunately this is a true policy choice. Yes. And once you make that policy choice, I would have no problem coming up with the language and checking with the right people to make sure it works to achieve your goals. But unless you have a goal, you may have two different state agencies who are not on the same page, and so I don't know what to do with that.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All right, let's get somebody from AOE in here and hopefully at the same time as very close to the legislative liaison for the state's attorneys and sheriff's agency department. Mostly And the counsel can probably tell you who that is and what the email address is. And you can just send them a copy of the bill that's marked up. Then I'll give you some language for it now. We added in the home study report. A conversation about that. I think it's important to have. So we think things are going well. It's something so tricky. Yeah. Go ahead.
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Is this one of those bills we should get a fiscal note on before These would be our testimony anymore. Yes.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We've heard support from the principal association, superintendent association for this, mostly because it removes the go out and pull the street cuffs off the lane against the alleyway smoking cigarettes. Alright, so we'll try to do our best to get this out, make the testimony that we need. Period, any other thoughts? Anybody else wanna jump in? Anything else? I won't scroll twice. We'll get we'll get the AOE take journeys in. This is one of those ones where you almost wanna say, so let me think about sticking out loud to them. Please figure this out and get back to us. So we may try to build that route as well. Alright. Any questions? Since we have superintendent association in the room, any comment on anything to the chronic entities of Bill?
[Unidentified Representative (Vermont Superintendents Association)]: We would like to see the study exactly changed this year, but the study is the second best.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, thank you. All right, well, we will close this discussion here. This brings us to the close of the day then. So 09:00 tomorrow, nine. No. We
[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: are