Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Peter Conlon]: This is House Education, April 8. We are taking further s two twenty seven, an act relating to creating immigration protocols in Vermont schools. We have testimony this morning from a couple of superintendents and the executive director of the Superintendent's Association. And with that, turn it over to you. Welcome. Thank you for taking the time to be with us this morning.

[Chelsea Myers]: Thank you. For the record, Chelsea Myers, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, but more importantly are these two.

[Wilmer Chavarría]: Hi, I'm Wilmer Chavarie. I'm the superintendent at the Winooski School District.

[Amy Minor]: And good morning. I am Amy Minor. I am the superintendent for Colchester Schools.

[Chelsea Myers]: Amy is also our president, as most of you know.

[Wilmer Chavarría]: Thank you for inviting testimony from the Vermont Superintendent's Association on this pressing and important topic. At its foundation, this bill is about ensuring that every child can access a public education safely and without fear. As the agency of education pointed out in their testimony, the US Supreme Court made the principal and Plylar veto four fifty seven US two zero two nineteen eighty two, holding that public schools may not deny access to students based on immigration stats. For Vermont superintendents, this is not theoretical. It is a daily responsibility, Ensuring that every child feels safe, welcomed, and able to fully participate in school is central to their work. Superintendents across the state take this obligation seriously and have been actively working within their districts to prepare for the evolving landscape. At the same time, we recognize that we can and should do better and that meaningful improvement requires partnership. The more or they can step in to provide coordinated training, ongoing guidance, better resources, and clear leadership, then better positioned school districts, particularly those with limited administrative capacity will be to meet this essential responsibility. As with everything in Vermont, with 119 school districts, there are 119 different ways of doing things at the local level. Legislation that establishes clear fundamentals while allowing appropriate flexibility for local context is ideal. And I'll let Amy continue.

[Amy Minor]: Thanks, Wilmer. Between November 24 and January '25, many superintendents work with their districts to develop administrative procedures specific to their local context. VSA collected and shared examples to support this work to facilitate cross district collaboration. We lean heavily on our national organization, AASA, for up to date training, briefings, and leveraging the broader capacity of this organization and their resources. For Colchester, this meant that I attended two AASA trainings around immigration, and we have developed our own set of immigration procedures. Those procedures now live as part of our district wide safety plan, and we have trained all of our building level administrators, as well as all of the admin assistant secretaries and folks that work in the office. We've also developed a set of for classroom teachers that we are about to deploy. We are ready as an organization to support implementation should this bill become law, but we cannot do it alone. Further statewide legal guidance and coordination is needed. The intent of the following suggestions are to ensure that the law is written in a way that best supports implementation. Thus, it is important to clarify the distinction between school board policy and administrative procedures, so that the remainder of our testimony, possesses these technical questions and suggestions, is grounded in that framework. School board policies are formally adopted, binding broad statements of direction set by the board. Administrative procedures are the specific step by step actions developed by the superintendent to implement those policies. Policies define what is required. Procedures define how the policy is carried out day to day. In general, we hope that the majority of this work can live within administrative procedures, aligned with clear training for all employees, especially those who interface directly with building security and entry. While significant progress has been made to clearly delineate between board policy and administrative procedure, there is still work that can be done to ensure that the intent is clear and implementable for every single school district. I'll turn it over to Chelsea who will do our suggestions.

[Chelsea Myers]: I have the fun part of the technical recommendations. A lot of this comes from experience of things like the behavioral threat assessment policy and procedures, which was not clearly delineated and significantly delayed the implementation because of the way that the law was written and the implementability in the field. So we want to just make sure that as we look at this potential legislation that it's as implementable as possible so that we do not delay or make it more challenging to coordinate statewide. So with that, in section 2B number three, it says, foster to the greatest extent possible a relationship with a legal or immigration advocacy institution that will provide assistance to a student with regard to immigration related concerns, including a situation where a guardian of a student has been detained by immigration authorities while the student is in school. Please consider rewording this provision to the following and including it in a section that would not imply that the super superintendent would provide all of those services. Because currently, the clause ahead of it is the superintendent shall, but this would be a school district wide statement, which would be to provide wraparound support to the greatest extent possible to a student with regard to immigration related concerns, such as connecting the student and family to immigration advocacy institutions, providing access to school mental health professionals, or other supports deemed necessary to directly support the student in school. So why is that? Why are we making that recommendation? Well, I think that the supports provided to a student in any situation, but particularly this situation, require a more comprehensive look. And we should not be so overly prescriptive that we're not limiting the way in which school administrators and personnel in schools are able to support that child. I also spoke with some other superintendents that are in more rural regions, and they are concerned about the resources that might be available in some of the rural areas. So if we make it very specific to the type of organization, we might be putting some limitations around the rural areas that might not have those resources readily available to them. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be trying to foster those connections and those relationships. But we should recognize that it is more difficult in some parts of the states than Upstate than others, and that is also why a statewide coordinated approach is also an important part of this legislation. So the second part is section 2C, student records. It says schools are prohibited from using policies or procedures to engage in practices that have the effect of excluding a student from school. And then it goes on to talk about different data requirements. Schools are likely not the appropriate term in this section. Should be

[Chair Peter Conlon]: think got the same advice yesterday from the judge counsel or no, from the attorney general's office.

[Chelsea Myers]: Right. It is also important to note that data privacy and limitations on what is collected is critical at all levels of the system. As such, the committee should expand data provisions of this bill to include state entities where appropriate. Their data lives in multiple places across the system, and we should ensure that only what is required by state and federal law is what is being collected and held. Section two gs, the policy required. Currently, the language only specifies that a model policy reflects the requirements set forth in this section. This clause is vague and may be construed to mean that all of the provisions are to be added to a model policy as written or any other range of interpretations. The section includes provisions that would be more appropriate for administrative procedure and not school board policy. So, again, that's properly delineating between what is going to live in school board policy and what should live in procedure. And we have a lot of school board folks at this table. So I'm sure that we can work together to make sure that that's clear. Though all of the specifics are not included in this testimony, VSA is going to support the committee in ensuring that the bill is appropriately sequenced and delineated based on how implementation will occur in school districts. For example, it might be more appropriate to sequence the language as four distinct sections: one, definitions two, state resources three, required policy and four, administrative procedures. The more clearly the bill spells out state level support, the better implementation will be. The state should provide the necessary resources and coordination to ensure districts can properly carry out the law. Vermont students deserve clarity in well supported schools to ensure their safety and rights. This cannot be unfunded. As other witnesses in the senate and legislators have noted, managing this work in isolation is costly and burdensome. Let us ensure this is coordinated it is a coordinated statewide effort, and Vermont students depend on it. I have two brilliant superintendents that I'm sure can answer questions that you have about how things actually work in school districts.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Great. Thanks very much. I appreciate using the experience that you've had with the Safe Schools in order to make this very clear about policy versus procedure, and to make that to the extent you can help us be laying that out in a sequence that you have there would be terrific. But as I read through the bill, I didn't see, other than connecting people to the best extent possible with outside organizations and distributing resources that are provided by the Office of Attorney General, Where do you see costs coming into this?

[Representative Erin Brady]: Do you all want to start?

[Wilmer Chavarría]: Talk about our experience. Phoebe, do you

[Representative Erin Brady]: want go?

[Amy Minor]: You can go first, Robert.

[Wilmer Chavarría]: We talked about this as a group, I I don't wanna speak for the people that drafted this, but I get the sense that the intent is that a child and a family really, whatever is happening to a family in a moment of crisis ultimately affects the child. And we see that oftentimes in when something bad is happening, how the world changes for a child, and it has ripple effects on the rest of the classroom or the rest of the community. It would be unthinkable for me to know that a child is struggling with something like that and for us to continue business as usual, because it's sort of not what schools do, quote unquote. And so if the intent is to at least affirm the fact that a child is going through active trauma in this moment in front of us, whether it's related to math or science or whatever or not, that a school does what it can to recognize, at least this speaks to connecting them to resources. But the truth is that each case is going to be different and the teachers are going to be the best position to know what type of support that student will need in that moment. And just last week, I participated in a home visit where we assessed the situation and we realized that the best we could do in that bad moment was just to give the adults some cash for the electricity bill. We couldn't solve any of the trauma that was going on, but we could at least contribute one little thing to make it a little more manageable. But we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't gone out of our way to go and sit down in their living room and have a conversation with them. And there's nothing that compels us to do that. In fact, we found out about a lot of these things because we asked questions, because the teacher brought it up, because other colleagues and volunteers decided to go above and beyond to figure this out. And so the truth is it changes depending on the circumstances, but it always costs money. And I think that it we're lucky that we have so many educators, staff members, teachers who will don't care that they're not getting paid after school to go do a home visit, to give a ride home to someone, to go help somebody figure out a passport or things like that. They're not gonna charge the district for that because they're doing it because they feel like that's their responsibility as an educator with morals. But that teacher is still, I think the least we could do is to have some money somewhere to provide them with gas money or give them shot as gift card so that they can give to their family and stuff like that. There's always money involved. I cannot tell you right now exactly, it's not predictable. This is the nature of this crisis. That

[Chair Peter Conlon]: is true of any trauma that may fall upon a student. It doesn't necessarily be immigration related.

[Wilmer Chavarría]: But right now, a lot of the things that schools are required to do, it's been widely accepted that they need money and we resource them. For example, homelessness. We have resources for that. We have grants for that. We have a whole system and the state understands perfectly what the protocols are for that. And I would compare these to homelessness and beyond because homelessness always happens when it comes to these crises. That's one of the things that the family I visited last week is going through. But for everything else, we don't have a plan for. And certainly, we don't have resources for either. So we're having to come up with money. We're to we're having to find people to donate. We're having to just ask the community to give us money. There's really nothing, no help beyond what we can get locally.

[Amy Minor]: If I could add, I think there's two places in the bill specifically that makes me think of finances. On the bottom of page two, the recommendation that one individual will serve as a resource for immigration matters. If I think about school districts across the state, that we would have to designate an employee to do that. And so I then think about some of the smaller SUs or SDs. Know how we're doing that here. And so that will require in many cases, training and time. And so that I would not see us necessarily adding a position in every district to do that, but it will be an add on to the job. So I would suspect there would be some costs connected to that. Not saying that that's a bad idea, but I think if we're identifying where might there be some hitting costs, I think that would be one. The other one is the line also on the bottom of page two, it starts at the top of page three, to the greatest extent possible, a relationship with a legal immigration advocacy institution that will provide assistance to a student with regard to immigration related concerns. And so I would hope that we would get some free support from organizations, but it raises the question, what if those organizations then require a fee in the law, or will we delineate that the school district is then paying for that fee? So I think that's an area where there may be some potential costs as well. And the third area goes right to what you Chair Conlon and Wilmer was just talking about. There are things that educators do that are just good practice for kids, right? And so I imagine that if I am going to have a situation where we're getting near the end of the school day and I have a student in crisis connected to an immigration matter, employees are gonna stay late to make sure that that kid is getting to where they need to be after school to be supported and safe. And so that might be some after hours time for either the classroom teacher or a support person, and so But we would do that anyways with any other crisis that any student in our school district would be going through. So those were the three areas that stood out for me connected to cost.

[Chelsea Myers]: I also see, as we have noted, different areas of state are likely more well equipped than others, and it could take some state coordination and resources to determine exactly what is available in certain regions and to be able to strengthen those supports that maybe don't exist currently across the state. So that could take some resources and certainly some time to make sure that everyone is well equipped should this happen. Representative Brady? When you say state coordination, are you

[Representative Erin Brady]: talking about AOE? Can you spell that out a little bit more? Yes. Do you see then us needing to spell out in the bill, nor exactly what the agency would need to do or provide?

[Chelsea Myers]: Likely. I think that's why in our suggestions in terms of the different categories that really clearly spelling out the responsibilities, by putting in a state resources section that includes the guidance section that's already in there. And then also how the state is going to help support the potential areas that might not have the resources readily available to them and the relationships. And that's not to abdicate responsibility excuse me, I'm sorry responsibilities from the school district. But it's much better if we're all in it together.

[Representative Erin Brady]: Do you know if that I listened to testimony yesterday that they're supportive of the intent of the bill. Do you know if that level of detail and discussion happened in the Senate in terms of family role, state coordination, etcetera?

[Chelsea Myers]: Or is that something we need to flesh out more here? So we provided a pretty big laundry list of recommendations. And to their credit, they did incorporate quite a few. But when they were receiving multiple recommendations from different places, I think things just kind of got lost along the way. So it's not things that they wouldn't have already heard from us. It's just things are moving fast and lots of things are coming in at once. And so I don't think that this would be a surprise to people that had seen the testimony that we provided. In fact, a lot of it's similar to that.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: I think there's a lot in this language where it says to the extent practical, and I think that's to reflect that, as you say, parts of the state simply don't have the resources. And I think that language is to say, it's not the school's responsibility or the district's responsibility to meet all of these needs. Are they gonna choose to in many cases? Yeah, sure, probably. But I do think that that's meant to say, to recognize that in an area that may not have a population that is endangered, but might have one or two kids, there probably aren't that level of resources available. In terms of talk about what is the what's an unfunded mandate, what's not here. But I definitely hear the fact that there are potential costs here. It's hard to quantify them, but it's also case by case.

[Representative Joshua Dobrovich]: Yes, Joshua? With all of the things we keep adding to the plate of superintendents, FAT 73, whatever we're gonna do this year, how does this add to their ever growing pile of things to do and resources they have to expend to do this work? Like how is this going to impact superintendents or designees adding to the work that they currently have?

[Representative Erin Brady]: I'll leave space for you all

[Chelsea Myers]: to address this, but I can also

[Amy Minor]: I definitely think it adds to the plate. However, I think the intent of what this law is trying to do is really important to ensure that our students and our families feel like we're doing what's right for them to make sure that students are ready and able to come to school and to learn. So I just wanna balance that piece. I think the job of a superintendent is really complicated, and these jobs are not forty hour a week jobs. And so when you think about all of the things that we need to do, there is a layer of middle management that will also be impacted because they have to execute all of the tasks. I think what would help superintendents in this vein is a very clear list of resources, especially for districts that are in areas that have less access to legal support or experts regionally that have immigration knowledge, I think that's one of the resources that's critical for either the AOE or the state's attorney's office to clearly delineate for us, so that when we have an immigration issue that is impacting our students, every superintendent has some point person with that level of legal expertise that we can automatically call that will support us. Even when we're thinking about school law and our school attorneys, they're not always immigration experts, and they don't always have access to or knowledge of the resources to help our students and families. So for me, this really is part of school safety and school health, so it's going to become a part of our school safety plan. Being in this business as long as I have, when I first started, our safety plans were really thin, and there was only a couple things in it. And now our safety plans are gonna include an immigration component, a cardiac care component. And so it's making our our work, I think, more complicated because no one person can be the expert on all of these different issues, but we have to know who to go to in the state to be the expert when we need help. Hopefully I answered your question a little bit.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. And clearly you're gonna deal with this whether we have a policy or So let's make it clear what the roles are and what the policies and procedures are.

[Chelsea Myers]: I think the answer to all of the questions and just the focus here is that this helps it to be all of us in it together. Coordination with the state, with the local school districts, because it has been a little bit of a go alone process right now. And so this could potentially help to coordinate a stronger response across the state and for districts to not feel isolated. I

[Wilmer Chavarría]: also take issue with the question. I don't think that question would be entertaining it if we were talking about special education, homelessness, things like that. When we frame it as an inconvenience, as a add on, as something else that he has to do, it makes some superintendents believe that this is optional, and I don't believe that. I think that leaves some of us alone on an island having to do the work and having to answer these questions constantly. So I just want to make that point.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you both very much. Chelsea, to the extent you could provide some guidance into kind of reordering what we have in front of us as to what is policy and what procedure, that'd be really helpful.

[Chelsea Myers]: If you can wait until nine fifty five passes out of the house potentially. In other words, a little bit of time would be

[Representative Erin Brady]: Yes, very

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you both, all three of you, very much. Really appreciate your time this morning on this bill. Okay. Thank you, buddy. Now a quick switch to 02:14. Lift up.

[Representative Erin Brady]: Yeah.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Yeah. It's doing this. Okay. So we are now going to switch again back to s two fourteen. This is the NEK pre k provision. We have some folks from the AOE here to talk to us about it. Looking forward to that. Long as they just say, oh, really is fine, you have no suggestions for improvement. Anyway, it's all yours. Take it away. Thank you for coming.

[Janet McLaughlin]: Okay, great. Hi. Good morning. I'm Janet McLaughlin, and I am the deputy commissioner in the Department for Children and Families within the Agency for Human Services that oversees, co administers universal kindergarten along with the agency of education. We've got Emily's office.

[Emily Simmons]: Good morning, Emily Simmons, general counsel, AOE.

[Janet McLaughlin]: So Emily and I have worked closely together on this bill along with school board members from the any kid choice school district. Sorry, the basic challenge is that children who receive, who are going to go to, in NDK Choice School District, who are almost definitely going to go get their kindergarten education in New Hampshire. Right now, there's not a vehicle for them to be able to get pre kindergarten education in the same New Hampshire communities that they're ultimately going to attend K through 12. And this has been a long standing issue. The community has brought it up before. And this year, once Senator Ram Hinsdale proposed some language for S-two 14, Emily and I put our heads together for what we felt like would be a sort of simple and elegant solution through that didn't require us to make a lot of new policy, especially given the changing environment that there is around pre K through 12 education overall. So the language that's here actually is language that Emily drafted based on our conversations. And it definitely is our recommendation on easiest way to secure access to pre kindergarten education for those children in any K district, any K choice school district. As part of developing the solution, I did go to Essex County. I spent an afternoon with school board members visiting some programs throughout Essex County, sort of developing that appreciation of the real distances that there are and the connections to the New Hampshire community for those border towns, visited with leaders at the Lancaster School District to hear more about their pre kindergarten education program. So feel like we did our research, had the conversations with any K Choice school district folks. And so, if you get testimony from them, I think they would say that we landed at something that would work for them. And essentially, what the proposal in the bill is saying, it's just making it clear that for that specific school district, those children can attend pre kindergarten in New Hampshire at a public school in New Hampshire. And we did discuss whether or not there should be community based programs built into this exception right now. And as we dug into it more, one, we already knew this, but that the Hampshire doesn't have a universal public pre kindergarten program in the same way. So there wasn't like a New Hampshire structure for us to tag onto and say, well, if it's approved in New Hampshire, it's going be approved for us in the mixed deliveries model. So we didn't have that piece of it. And then when we looked at who were the potential pre K providers, many of them would have been it's not that many, because it's a really small community, but the few that were there were often then the independent schools that laws have changed, right? So those kids now couldn't attend those shows from K through 12. So it felt like that would be a real disconnect for us to return to them now and say, oh, we'd like you to take our Pre K kids, but you can't keep them after that. You can't keep them up K 12. It felt like a can of worms. Didn't want to open. That's our that was our proposal. And then instead of having the agencies have to come up with new definitions of who qualified and have to come up with new reporting protocols, because we don't get quite the same information right from the New Hampshire schools as we are going to get from Vermont schools. What we decided was that a waiver provision would be the easiest way to handle it so that we could let the school district tell us how are they making sure that there is a relatively equitable experience for those children in New Hampshire, those Vermont children who are attending pre kindergarten in New Hampshire. And so there's 11 major requirements for being a pre K program, and they can just take, this is being met by this. This is being met by this. This is being met by this, rather than having us try to anticipate all of the possible permutations that could come up in advance. And we're also talking about a really small number of children. Maybe I think the estimate is an average of seven children per age cohort. So it could be a total of maybe 14 kids in any given year if there's two years of pre K, but it is a small number of kids to keep in mind.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Just for the committee's clarification, so any K Choice district is a school district that operates no schools because it has no schools to operate, and they are part of the Essex North supervisory union which does all the administrative work. So that's why the tuition payments would come out of the supervisory union. Only contemplates, correct me if I'm wrong, only contemplates the current sort of pre K tuition payment going to the public school of New Hampshire, because you can't really transfer a weight or anything of no value to them. Is that right?

[Janet McLaughlin]: The reason we left it as they could ask for a waiver, one of the reasons that we discussed that because right now, the current pre K payment we know it's for non public to school operated programs is about $4,000 And it is for ten hours of pre K. In talking with the Lancaster School District folks, they were all like, well, but our program is a fifteen hour program. We'd want to just have the kids be part of the program. We wouldn't want and so we were like, let's again, leave it in the waiver. And again, and then the school district, right now what happens, right, is school districts can choose how much money they want to raise for, to be able to offer pre kindergarten services. We also know that in the NEK Choice School District, there's the amount of money they would draw down for those pre K students, but there also is any weights that they would get based on income or disability status, the other weights, which means the school district is actually probably pulling down a little bit more money for those kids. And so we were leaving it as a waiver so that they could make the choice and be able to negotiate with those local school districts and try to have a little bit more freedom to be able to fit into that model so that they can truly secure access for those children.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Emily Simmons, did you have more to add?

[Emily Simmons]: No. I understand that Beth walked you through the bill this morning earlier. So if you had any questions about word choice or anything, I can walk you through the language that we chose. Otherwise, no.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Committee, any questions?

[Representative Erin Brady]: It answered the question I had about the private providers and the public Thank you.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: All right, thanks very much. You're welcome, you.

[Janet McLaughlin]: We're excited, this is something that we've all been wanting to sell for a while.

[Chair Peter Conlon]: Yes, it has come up many years, and we appreciate the work on making it happen. Yeah, thanks. Okay, that was supposed to be forty five minutes worth of testimony. Why don't we just take advantage of that? Let's pause and be back here at 11:15.