Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Good morning. Welcome back to Summit Economic Development Housing and General Affairs and we welcome senator Ram Hinsdale who's joining us via Zoom who is

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: we know has walking pneumonia so thank

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you Kesha for joining us David isn't here and we meet we meet you as a quorum member so thank you so much we I appreciate you are not feeling a 100%. But this is a subject near and dear to your heart, and Randy and I are here. So Tom is out for me. David should be here if we hope any minute. So we welcome it's there, right now. Sorry. Elkhart. Elkhart. Yikes. Making laws is gets stupid over making rules. Welcome, David. My apologies. That's okay. We are just starting because we it doesn't matter. Welcome. Today, just to remind people, we're gonna be doing housing on Tuesdays and Fridays, and we're going to be doing economic mostly economic development related subjects on Wednesdays and Thursdays are gonna be devoted to labor workforce, and then of course our interesting and non swathable subjects of consumer protection, liquor lottery and cannabis will fit in as necessary. The today we are following up on some of our work of the last several years and I would hand it over to our wonderful Commissioner of Labor,

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Kendall Smith, to get us started.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Sure, so good morning everybody, Kendall Smith, Commissioner for

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: the Vermont Department of Labor. I am actually going to speak to Savannah Hassell in just a second, but wanted to kind of kick us off in terms of what we have prepared for you in terms of collaborating together as a cohesive team over the next hour and fifteen minutes or so. First, the Office of Workforce apologize, strategy is about Minh is going to testify and is gonna talk to you more about the broader workforce vision, how it's going with the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: board, the actions of the new office, then the department of labor. I will come

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: back up, and we'll talk about some specific department level initiative updates that are in service to some of the board goals and work with that broader broader vision. And then I

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: know

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: after, Liz will take a break, and we'll come back on data. So kind of going with the funnel, big to more and more levels of detail. So hopefully that'll create, you know, a nice narrative for you guys to follow and ask questions about. Before I get up, I will just I wanted to read handout. We gave

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you these letters. Great.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We are. In case you would like them again, can pass us around. These are Vermont's most promising jobs. This is a brochure that we put together with the McClure Foundation every two years,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and it guides a lot of our work in

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: the workforce realm. If you open it up, what you will see is ten year projected openings as well as wage data from where we have some of the most pressing workforce needs in Vermont. So this is something good just to hold onto because over the past few years, when we figured out where do we want the best time, money, and effort, we'll often refer back to this. It uses economic data from our

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: labor market information division, as

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: well as some art in terms of conversation within the FERR Foundation to pick out what you see here. This is the 2526 edition. We will begin this year starting early in the twenty seventh, twenty eighth edition.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Correct. So it will be sort of updated every two years.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: That's the whole yep. That's the current

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: we always think we know what

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: our most critical sectors are. It changes. And it changes. And so that's great and it's a great partnership a great public partnership. And

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: we'll talk a little bit more about some of our other partnership work that we've been pursuing over the past year when I come back. But I will hand it off to Drake and to Sabrina. Thank you. Great.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you very much. And before you leave, how are you enjoying yourself?

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I'm enjoying it. It's been a really good year. I'm really yeah. It's been great.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great. It's terrific to have you in this part new partnership role. Yes. Thank you. Alright. Great. Welcome, Savannah and Drake.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I think you know us all. Yes. And so I'm not

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: sure what we need to be reintroduced. Nope. And we're gonna give you an overview of the office, and I'll let Drake go first on the closeout with the last two years and what we've accomplished.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great because you have only been created in the last year I mean really you hit the ground running.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: One year and two days. One year and two days.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Good morning.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: I'm Drake Charter, deputy director of the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development. The office is one year and two days old, and I joined back in the office. So we're really excited to talk about this morning, and there's a lot of really exciting foundational work that we've been able to accomplish over the past year and much more to come.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So just to kind of give you a little bit of

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: an update on what we've been up to and some, you know, forecasting of what we're prioritizing moving forward.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. So I'm gonna go over a little bit of background information. Some of

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: this is for my own benefit, but also to sort of get us on the same page in terms of what's brought us to this moment, including a discussion of some of the roles and responsibilities, both of the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development and the State Workforce Development Board, because both entities play really important and complementary roles in our workforce system. And then I'm gonna give you all a brief update on what the or excuse me, the Round Workforce Development Board has been up to, and then Sarwina's gonna give an update on what the Office of Workforce strategy development has been up to. It's a lot of words, so I apologize if I start to blend them all together. So by way of background, I know there are a lot more chapters to this story, especially with the softwipe work that really was the genesis for our office And of course, the state workforce development work existed for many years, but wanted to highlight two pieces of recent legislation that have given us a lot of our, for a lack of a better term, marching orders when it comes to this work. So act 146 of 2024 is what created the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development, which was a recommendation from the SOFWIP work. And that act also reorganized the state workforce development board. It's a federally mandated board for Vermont to be able to accept WIOA funding. We must have

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a state workforce development board. WIOA is

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to take care. Some states have multiple workforce boards. We have one, which is often the case in Vermont. But the board previous to this act, I think, had over 60 members. So it was a very large board. And I think to recognize that that may be a little bit too big, the legislature, you all in your wisdom, did some reorganizing. So now we're at 27 numbers. And so a lot of the work to start to think differently about how to organize workforce development was catalyzed by that piece of legislation. And then last year, Act 65 2025 added some additional clarification when it comes to roles and responsibilities of the office, of the board, and of different state agencies when it comes to workforce education and employment and training. So if you are in search of some light reading, there's a lot of good stuff in there. And then I also just

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: want to spend a little bit

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: of time clarifying what the roles of the State Workforce Development Board are versus the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development. Especially since we're a new office, I think there's work that we have been doing and are continuing to do to let people know we exist. We're a small office. It's the two of us. But to let people know why we've been established, the value that we add to the system, and what we do and don't do. So just wanted to spend a little bit of time going over that. So the state workforce development board, as I mentioned, is federally required under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, and there's also some state statutory responsibilities for the board. But simply stated, the Workforce Development Board is really responsible for strategy and oversight of the workforce system. It's a governance board. So the board sets statewide workforce priorities and goals. They advise the governor on workforce policy and strategy. That's a really important role of the board. There are a lot of functions under WIOA that the board is responsible for. So approving Vermont's WIOA state plan. There's a whole one stop American job center system in different offices that the board has an oversight role in, and we won't go into all of the initiatives there, but there are a lot of NEO responsibilities for the board

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and major system initiatives. And just the importance of this in terms of a funding point of view, to remind our committee, we all fund significant percent of

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: our workforce. Yeah, there and I won't get ahead of know, Jay Ramsey probably can speak a little bit more eloquently than I can about that, but there are a lot of different titles under WIOA that fund services to adults, dislocated workers, youth, vocational rehab is under WIOA. There are a lot of different services provided to Vermonters that WIOA enables in The States.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Because Yeah. We're used to thinking of labor being 90% federally funded. And I don't know if that's still the case, but we'll learn more about that as we get to

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: be honest. So the board also really has a very important accountability role. There are a lot of different points of interest to the board is reviewing performance data, making decisions, changing course if that's required. And then

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: there's an important role for

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: the board's plan, engaging stakeholders and employers statewide, right? All of the meetings of the board are open meetings. We are excited to work with the board to do some more sort of outreach in communities of board members. We have representation from across the state to really make sure that the strategies that the board has identified are true to what folks are experiencing on the ground and are moving us in the right direction. So that's sort of a quick snapshot of what the board is responsible for. And just

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to remind us, the state workforce development board has

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: gone

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: gone

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: from 63 down to 27.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: 27, right. Big improvement.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: And then if we can transition to the roles of that office for a moment. So as you mentioned, the board sets the direction and provides oversight, and the office is really responsible for coordinating, implementing, and executing the strategies that the board has identified. So the office is responsible for implementing, as I mentioned, board group priorities and statewide workforce strategy. They have a really important coordination role that the office is designed to play across state agencies and departments and external partners as well. And then there's a funding lens to that too. Like having one entity that is more neutral to think about how can all of different agencies, organizations, community partners that have a stake in workforce to help create more coordination, more alignment than existed previously. So that will be work that will continue as we move forward. And it does, it's really important work that also takes time. So we're excited to continue on in that function. The office is intended to align programs to those shared goals and in an effort to reduce fragmentation. So there are lot of ways that we're Have been working on that and will continue to work on that. There's also a lot of work to do to manage data reporting and system analysis. Are some we'll talk in a little bit about how we're thinking about workforce data with the report that we submitted to you all last month. And I think there are a lot of also reporting functions when it comes to WIOA that we support the board in fulfilling. And then, the office is also really working on identifying where are there gaps, where are there opportunities, where are there overlaps in our workforce system to support the board's work and also the work of all of the partners at the table when it comes to our workforce system. I think I'm just gonna pause for a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: second because I think senator Ram Hinsdale has a question.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Kesha, do you have a question?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: Yes. And I'm I'm quieter than usual, so I hope you can hear me. Drake, I was on your website for current board members. Is that up to date?

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Yes. I believe the the current membership list is up to date, senator.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: Okay. And I don't know if the sort of in in another section on governance and bylaws, there's reference to who is supposed to be represented on the board. It looks like there's it's considered there's one open seat right now in the business community. There's a lot of education based nonprofit partners, and then there's some elected and appointed officials. I think you've received inquiries about our intent in statute that there be two members selected by our labor organizations. Are you working to fill those positions, or is that no longer something you all feel required to include?

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Yeah, thank you for the question. We have received some inquiries on that issue and are looking into it to figure out sort of what's happening. With that, certainly it's our intent to be fulfilling

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the letter of the law as the

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: legislature has passed it, this has been signed by the governor. So we'd love to follow-up with you on that. Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: I'll just say, if we're talking about actually developing the workforce, I think it's really good to talk to our labor organizations. You know, that's really different than a VSAC or a school or CTE function. You know, these are the folks who really represent the rank and file workforce needs of employees in the state. So I think it would be really important to make sure we're meeting the spirit of the law and sooner than later and getting those two labor members appointed.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. So we will we will definitely follow-up with you all on that. And I also This is not the same thing, but we will be talking about some of the committees that we're looking to stand up for the board's work in the coming year. And our intent is for the membership of those committees that are focused on the goals I'm gonna be talking about that the board has approved. It's our intent and our commitment that the membership of those committees will be very expansive and include board and non board members. So that's a separate issue to the one that you identified, Senator Rutland, and we'll follow-up with you on that as well. We just wanted to flag that. Thanks, Kesha.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Okay, great. All right,

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: moving on. So again, I just wanted to As I've coming up to speed in this role and sort of learning about the history of the board, one thing that I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: think is perhaps a little bit different about this board that is possible because the membership has been slimmed down,

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: is that this is a board and Savannah and I have had a lot of one on one conversations with board members, approaching the end of the first calendar year of this new board to sort of hear from folks how it's been going, what's worked well, what folks wanna work on in the future. And I think every single person that we've talked to has expressed her real desire to be proactive and get to work. So I think the slimmed down nature of this board really will allow for more agility and movement because folks, I think some of the work in the previous board, there were a lot

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of WIOA responsibilities that the board is responsible for, but

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: we know that the population of folks who are eligible for WIOA services does not encompass our entire workforce. So I think the lens of this board is really about serving Vermont's workforce, as well as that smaller population of folks who are experiencing barriers, who really need dedicated support to be able to enter, advance, and meet their career goals. But there's a broader focus of this board as well. So I'm gonna show you in a moment what our board membership looks like, but we have one open seat as Senator Ram Hinsdale mentioned, we're working to fill that seat. It will be a business member, but we the board has been fully reconstituted with with new membership. We have really balanced representation from business, education, state agencies, higher education, and geographic representation as well. So it's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a labor representation, which is done. I mean, I remember serving with the head of the electrical union, we always had strong labor representation. It's and just not we're not current. I

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: we're we're looking into it. There's know, we're still just sort

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of figuring out, you know, there are different

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: term lengths of different board members and trying to get our hands on what the the admin and then determine, you know, what do we need to do to make sure because we want as many people at this table as possible, right? So this is gonna be a very small slide. We can send you it in a different form, but this is the current membership of the board. We're feeling really positive about the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: level of engagement of these folks. And, you know,

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: I guess that's all I to

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: say about that. It's a great board, and we're excited to continue. The first year of this board was a lot of foundational work, ground setting, learning about aspects of the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: workforce system, which is really important work.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: But I think folks are really eager in the new year to sort of hit the ground running and figure out what's the impact that they wanna have on our workforce system.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Great, I think I just have

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a couple of slides left

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: and then I'm gonna pass things over to Subhana. But one of the main outcomes of the board's work in 2025 was to approve four goals that really are gonna guide the work with the board moving forward. And one of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: our board members in this

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: room was instrumental to getting these schools in place. So thank you to that board member. So the four goals that the And these were approved in at the final meeting of the full board last year, was in November. So they're really A lot of these goals are not new. These are issues that folks have really wanted to make part on for many years, but some of them are also responding to more current conditions that we're seeing across the state. And they've also really been grounded in work that's happening in state agencies to be sure that we're really aligned with what's happening in the agency of commerce and community development, the agency of education, for example, so that we're all rowing in the same direction. So briefly,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and you all have a copy of the goals as

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: they were approved by the board. I can hear I may have printed this out for you. So thank you for that in case you wanna see more. And again, the goals have been passed in November, and this is really the year where we're gonna start to sort of march ahead and determine what board members wanna work on first in these sort of larger buckets. So to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: just elaborate And in all fairness, there are two people work really hard on these bills.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: I mean, other Well, are many people. There's many people who work very hard on this too. But you're the only board member in

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the room, so go. Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry, Kendall. Yeah.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I'm I'm so sorry,

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: So two board members have worked really hard on these schools. So the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the first will I'll just

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: briefly run you through what they are, and then I think we'll hopefully be talking about them many more times, both at the office, but also the departments and agencies that are working on these issues. But the first goal is to make progress in increasing the supply of workers in key sectors. A lot of the work that's starting to frame up this goal was informed by Matt Eris and our labor market information with, along with Commissioner Smith, to think about what are some of the sectors in Vermont that really have a high need workers. Are also, of course, many more, but the five that have been identified and that folks will be working on moving forward are construction and trades, manufacturing, healthcare and social services, professional and business services, which is sort of more of like the IT tech side of things, and leisure and hospitality. So there are a lot of folks, and again, this is not work that's going to be done purely by board members. Gonna need many, many folks at the table. Anyone at

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: this table would like to work

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: on Yes, the more the merrier, for sure. So that's the first goal. The second goal is also a very robust, big, audacious one around supporting adults to reengage and advance in the Vermont workforce. So that goal is really exciting. I know that Senator Rutland, you've been really involved in in trading that one out. And there's a real focus on coordinating a lot of the different folks that are providing services to adults, including adult CTE and adult education and literacy. Those are gonna be really important partners on that work. There's a role that the board can play in creating a definition in Vermont of credentials of value, which is work that has the previous board has made progress on, but there's still more to do. And I think a lot of progress has been made on outreach and awareness of the different programs that are available to adults. So there will be a lot of work to do on that goal. The third goal is around supporting businesses to expand and relocate and stay in Vermont. I'm gonna add a third component to that goal. And this goal was really informed by Secretary Kerley and her team to figure out how can we better align economic development and workforce development in service of businesses in the state. And really ensure that businesses are aware of and have access to all the resources they need. And then the fourth goal is to increase post secondary graduate retention. And I think we've had some really great initial conversations about the types of work that the board could be engaged in, including digging a little bit deeper into what are some of the barriers that a secondary grad experience, some of the perceived barriers that may actually ease the truth on the ground, but that are causing young folks to move out

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of Vermont or not think that this is the

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: same for them. Obviously, yes, housing will we'll be there. But I think we're we've had some interesting conversations about the importance of community integration and engagement, service messaging. You know, there could be some interesting work there. And then aligning higher education and workforce development, a lot of exciting and important work that could be happening there. So my Yeah, thanks.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: as your organization spans, matures, etc, are you

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: going to offer metrics Yes. In this

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: And when do you think we'll see the first wash? How do

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: you track? So that's the

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: perfect segue into this slide. Thank you, Senator.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yes, so now that

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: the board has passed these fuselts, and we did keep them at a level at which when we create subcommittees to really dig deeper, it's not fully formed for them, right? We need folks to be engaged and determine, you know, what do we want to be tracking, what does success look like, how do we measure it, and then what are the strategies and activities that folks wanna pursue to make an impact? So I think probably tomorrow or next week, we're starting to work on standing up the whole base subcommittees.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This is our structure,

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: current and future. The full board is sort of the big picture. We have an executive committee, which meets monthly, 70% of our executive committee, as well as commissioner staff, which is great. There's also been a group that's focused on healthcare workforce development. That has continued to meet even when the board was sort of paused. So there's great work there. That may be a group that you're interested in hearing from this session. Focused on developing a strategic plan, and obviously there's really exciting opportunities around healthcare workforce development with the Rural Health Initiative. So lots of exciting stuff there. And then we're gonna be working to stand up for goal based subcommittees, hopefully as soon as possible, to start to get more of the information of, you know, what are we looking at, how are we measuring it, etcetera. We started by surveying board members to learn which committees they're interested in joining, but we also want as many folks as possible to be participating and not working if they're not board members.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So we have had some folks reach out

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: to us, I think that I'm hoping that the groups will just evolve and work to meet the need, but really, we know that successful, we need to be as representative as possible of all the stakeholders that are involved in these issues. And then one last thing I'll mention before, stopping shocking, so that you can hear from Spagna, is that there's a new federal program that will be coming online this summer, we think, that is really about workforce Pell, short term Pell grants for folks.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Remind everybody what the Pell grants are for.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: They're for education typically, they're for lower income students there's a you know a threshold of family income that had focused more on two and four year degrees and so workforce Powell is broadening that opportunity to one year training programs etc. You know stackable credentials that will get you started.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Pretty exciting, it is exciting and there will be a lot of work to do to stand up that program. The board has a role to play, our higher education partners have work to do, so we're already working to convene a group just to start to strategize.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And Ruth and Jay are pretty engaged with that too. Yes, yes.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Dave? Does the workforce Pell grants are they specific to like 18 to 24 or is it also?

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: That's a good question and I don't know the exact answer however I would believe there's not an age requirement but there will be a lifetime cap if you will so that a student can only I'm making it up right now. Only receive up to $8,000 in health grants, and so I I don't know what that cap is going to be, but

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: yeah. Yeah.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: We'd be happy to to share more information as as that work is moving forward.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You know, we've been in a lot of conversations with both at CCD.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: I'm necessarily on top of it, and other higher ed institutions are gonna have to.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, the workforce also kicks in at a lower age too for kids who may not be as fully engaged but are fully in high school but are fully engaged at CTE and have found their bliss and wanna leave and follow that bliss. Right. Would that workforce help follow them at age 16 to finish their Yeah. Think there are a

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: lot of questions. Those are questions. Yeah. So so we're we've only recently started to receive guidance from the federal government.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: There's a there's a lot of

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: work that will go into getting programs approved to be able to offer and participate in workforce health. So a lot of question marks, but it is an opportunity for the state and for Vermonters.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So we'll keep you updated on that, but that

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: will be another group of the board. So, yeah, lots lots going on, lots more to do when it comes to the board, but folks are excited. We're excited, and we'd love to.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And actually, you know what is exciting? I think the board is excited, which and we've had some very strong leadership in the past Adam was a terrific chair but I haven't had I've served on the board now for five or six years and this is the most excited I am and engaged I have felt to board so and I think we're all excited about having created these goals now we're excited about working on them yeah and I think this board works best in subcommittees focused on very focused on this so

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: and making progress yeah that's

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: that's the board update and and now so I think it's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: gonna provide an update on what we

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: can do at the office.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Thank you. Thank you, Greg. As Drake just said, I'm gonna walk you through the office and the board's accomplishments for the last year and what we're looking forward to doing in year two and beyond. My talking point that I was hoping to say is we're one year and two days old as of today, which is exciting. And it's been a very, very action packed year. Creating the new office, the new state entity had a lot of operational behind the scenes, you know, figuring out how we're gonna, you know, operationalizing obviously. Then Drake joined us on August 11 and started to build the foundation for what I would like to call a collaborative concierge with everything workforce development where we're gonna start to connect with state agencies, with our outside partners,

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: with

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: educational institutions, with training providers, with community organizations, employers, and not not last but not least, the Montrose themselves when they're trying to move forward with their careers and workforce opportunities. As you know, we we relaunched the board and it's begun its work. They had four meetings last year as we talked about the executive committee is meeting the first Monday of every month. And we used the first couple of meetings to give the board a foundation in WIOA WIOA training because it's quite complicated at the federal level, but the requirements are for the board to do. And then we start looking at and the board did start looking at opportunities and goals for the future for everybody. As Drake mentioned earlier, if you get the OA funding, have to have a state board state workforce development board and we're in a very small cache of single area states with only one state board rather than a state like Pennsylvania, which may have 11. I'm making it up, but yeah. And so it's a little bit different structure, and in some ways, there's more work, and in some ways, it's more collaborative too. So that is that's what, you know, just a little FYI. And part of that is is that we need to do all we the board needs to be able to approve and make sure that the LEO funding that Vermont receives that we're in compliance with their regulations. And so there's that big. It's required and it's important and but

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: it's time consuming as well. So the reason we created this office and that we work on Safra and Kendall and Jay and I worked on this at Mike Marcotte for a long time is that this committee and commerce both were desperate looking at the hundreds of workforce development programs and they were all managed separately, they all, but we needed them to be better coordinated so I think one of the key things that we're hoping for and I'll speak for the committee because I think this is really what we're hoping for is that workforce both in and out of state government is coordinated, aligned, defragmented and and that we will that you will speak you will be in many ways the funnel for and and and DOF. You've got together will be the funnels for articulating our workforce priorities and needs for the state and come to the legislature with basically a single voice saying these are the priorities. This is where what we would like you to be focused on and fund this year. So I think that one of the words I'm missing in this slide is really coordinating in and out of state. I mean, all all the all the programs so that we can Yeah. Know that we're not duplicating effort, which we have been in the past, so that we're clear on how they build on each other and how all these different workforce programs serve Vermonters in different ways because we have so many different needs in Vermont but and and there's so many different ways that we're serving Vermonters in the workforce arena. So I think you know that can be I remember in that 2017 looking at that long list of totally uncoordinated workforce programs and so we're very excited that you guys are really tackling taking that piece on.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Yeah and thank you for saying that and where I use the word collaborative concierge is coordinating concierge. We wanna become the one stop place for all of the in state, you know, state government and out of, you know, partners, communities, employers that they know they come to the website or they can come to us and we can help them figure out where what their next steps are. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. And I would just

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: add if I'm sorry to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: my note that I

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: think a really important foundational step to the office being able to do that successfully is in the relationship building and the trust building with state agency partners, with partners outside of state government, so that they want to contact us with that information and that they trust us to communicate it accurately and help them connect to where they need to be. So the relationship building piece is really well sweet outside of that coordinating role. Yeah. Yeah, Ray. I think it's

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: particularly important also that there'd be good tools and goals for measurement in terms of performance. And the performance is not just what's happening in Vermont compared to what happened yesterday and what's happening today, but where are we from a performance standpoint compared to other states, at least particular states that are either similar to us or the same geographical area? Do we lose more people per capita than they do? Do we hire people at higher or lower salaries than they do? Do we have skill sets that we desperately need and others also need that are doing better than us or worse than us? And why? That issue of performance measurement and metrics and also success rates compared to others I think is particularly important.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we'll definitely be digging into that with the data management model conversation. Yes. Agreed. Mhmm. Yeah. Great. Okay. Okay. So moving on to what we see as our opportunities and our challenges, and sometimes they're both. The federal requirements with WIOA are do compete with other longer term opportunities and for workforce development that the board wants to pursue as well aka the goals. So because they're, you know, they're meeting four times a year, they have an executive committee once a month, know, making sure that we're getting it's two lanes of work, making sure that we get everything done. And just as a couple of examples, we have to do the biannual did you wanna ask a question? Oh. Kesha had a question. Oh, sorry. Again. It's Ram Hinsdale. Yep.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: Perhaps there's another slide after this, but it looks kind of like a capstone slide. I think you're hearing that people want specifics. This is a a decent laundry list of opportunities and challenges. What is your goal for this session? I have an idea of what I think your goal should be because I feel like I need help making CTE central to our education reform conversation. But I think you need to put a marker in the ground about how you're actually gonna show up in a really pivotal legislative session.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Okay. I I appreciate that.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: We we do we do have just a couple more slides, senator, but I appreciate that the comment. Yeah.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: I was saying that we're working on the required biannual update to the state plan, and we're meeting with our court partners about that with the modifications and that's due in March. We just finished updating the MOU with required partners by the American Job Centers, also known as the one stop operator system that will everybody has signed off on. So that's in good shape, and that is effective as of January 1 last week. The Pell implementation work begins next week. We have a smaller task force to start to dig into how we're gonna walk through all the new not new new opportunities, and there are federal reporting requirements regarding such things as 70% of the people receiving the workforce PEL are getting are employed within a certain time frame that they are earning within a certain salary range and that that there's also a requirement for the board that we are clear on what the priority sectors will be for those workforce bills, and that will be governor will be making, you know, will have to sign off on that. That be So but that's dictate what the priority factors are? No. Each state can show Oh,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: we can show. Okay. Good. So we start I mean, we've identified. We've articulated it. Think the other part

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: has identified what I see is

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: But then we've been there's a process for making sure that it meets that environment and then the last interesting that we need to dig into is with the workforce health program is that who can offer the training or the credential needs to be accredited provider, and there is a time frame of that. It has changed a couple times. Think now you have to be have to have been accredited for at least a year. So we, you know,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: all our CTE centers are accredited. I mean, we have a lot of and they're CCD and we have so much already accredited. Right.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: But it will have to make sure that the Fed agree that it's considered accredited. Right. So there's a that we get to ensure that we're met that. Right. Okay. So and as Drake and senator Ram Hinsdale mentioned, we've been working with the legislature on prioritizing CTE and adult education. It's a big deal. And it it comes up in conversations all the time. So we'll continue to be working on that, and there's also a new opportunity for what we're calling our service to career pathways so that if you're in public service that it that we show how that becomes a career, and Jay will get into that a little bit more as well. We will be collaborating with AHS and others on the new rural health care health transformation grant. There's a number of workforce development programs involved with that. So all these are great opportunities, and they're also, you know, challenges to moving moving as quickly as we all want to. And finally, we're gonna be continuing to work on our data management models. And as you mentioned earlier, the inventory of programs, we we're we're chugging along with that, but it's not ready for you know, it needs it needs some more work, but that's not to be that's not a surprise anyway.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. So could turn our time check. I'm just gonna Yeah. Yeah. May we check-in on time. Yeah. We're gonna yeah.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: What we've been hearing, but maybe we can just switch to what we're what we're gonna be planning to work on for a year or two. Being being a presence in in the State House and and supporting the work that's happening.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well And we've appreciated your presence, Kesha, I appreciated it in the CPE work this summer. Yeah.

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: That's been wonderful. Thank you.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: So we're moving on to our 2026 priorities. Thank you. So the board is gonna get be digging in way more, and we have we're gonna be establishing committees in the next few days.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: we have scheduled four full board meetings, one in February in Bennington County, one in June in Lavoyal, one in September in the Washington Orange County area, and one in December up in the Northeast Kingdom, both in person and virtual opportunities, obviously. The subcommittees will start meeting. They will be meeting six times a year is the goal. They'll have chairs, they'll be board members and non board members, particularly people who are interested in the topics and the goals, as well as those who have the subject matter expertise to bring to the you know, reaching our progress and gathering the metrics and the key performance indicators that we've been talking about all along right now. Well, you know, as we said, we're gonna be continuing to work on the workforce health, which is very cool. We wanna make sure back to the collaborative coordinating concierge that we're aligning our funding goals and our programs so that everybody deduplicating that's not, you

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: know, you're not only, etcetera.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: And then the website needs to be redesigned and updated so that it's it's not that it's not easy to use now but we want it to be easier to use and so you can find this and say here's the important part it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Anything workforce related has got to be easy to use and exciting and Yes. Right. Engaging. Yeah. There's a there's a lot of Yeah.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: All the above. All the above. And and so that's that's one of the goals that that we're gonna be focusing on. And we've been meeting with people all along this past year, and that's going to continue that. So we're gonna keep reaching out to more and more people, employers, community organizations, our sister agencies, and departments. That that is, you know, we just have to keep grading and knitting everything together so that, you know, it takes a while for people to, you know, so more than one year old and so they know that we're here as the central gatekeeper if

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you will. Well we have an example of it with ACTV just two days ago. Yeah, it's important that all your state partners and our state partners appreciate you work with the need to

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: be coordinated. And it takes time but I think we're, I'm really excited about the opportunity, this session, to make progress and learning more about how we could be of service to the state, to Vermonters, to our sister agencies, building those communication pathways and and really taking advantage of opportunities that exist. So I think it's gonna be a really productive session for us.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: That we're and that we're a resource. We're here. You know? Yeah. Oh, you have

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: that question? Have you talked to the office of workforce strategy yet? Yeah. You are. We hopefully will be an incredibly deep resource there. Yes.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Madam chair? Go. Go. Go. Yeah. Kesha.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: Is this website redesign going to cost money?

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: No. We're I we're really just need to do some formatting and redesign. We're there's no budget associated with that as I far as I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: I think I think you both know. I just I'm pretty triggered by words like clearinghouse and resource. You have to be a driver of this work. A strategy needs to be driven and and managed, not kind of gazed at. And I we I've been doing the economic development work long enough to see so many entities be the clearinghouse and be the coordinators and the conveners and the aligners. I I don't see anything here that tells me you've learned from those efforts, and you're going to do something different.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think the way we have seen this,

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: I think the way that, at least in my understanding, the office and board have been organized in statute, is that the board is the governance mechanism. They're the one setting the strategy and the goals. And the office is here to support that process of goal setting and priority development and implement. So I think

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But I think I think Kesha, I think we would all agree that we're helping people drive them this along

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: To me, that just sounds like a real passing of the buck. I probably shouldn't get my heart rate up because I I'm not well. But

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Are are you Like, who

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: is gonna tell us what the strategy is then?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think what hopefully the right office

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: In two years?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This is this what this slide, senator,

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: is about our priorities for this year. This is year two of the office. And so we're we're I think we're on the same page. I I fully agree with with what I'm hearing from folks. We want to be meeting the need. You know, we're

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: I feel like by now we should hear the strategy. And if you're not the people who are saying you have the strategy, but your board does, are they coming in I I don't know what we are doing here.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think what we're doing here is having watching an office being set up, which is going to be exactly what I think you are hoping for, Kesha, but it is also needed to be set up, and it now has a team that is moving forward and and setting the groundwork to enable being the voice of workforce in in large letters of the state along with Jen, and who will drive workforce growth and development and align all that work and be the driver of workforce vision for the state. That is certainly the hope.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay, think with that we're gonna pivot and if that's okay, are there additional questions?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Just have one question. So the reality is in The US we're all feeding from the same labor trough. We're looking at the same workers all trying to attract into our state those workers which we need and we desire. Who's communicating with our federal delegation about labor strategies?

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: I think there are I will defer to the department for a moment, but we have we will be meeting more regularly with the US Department of Labor, and I think it also depends on the program and what, you know, what we're pursuing there, but I think you'll be in a better position to answer that. Yeah. I know you guys are in contact with us way more of it.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: It's up for you. You're next.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Smith, commissioner from the Vermont Department of Labor. If I could just pick up so I just don't forget on

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: your question. We and I would

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: say myself over the past eight years have been in frequent contact, particularly with Senator Sanders' office. Off and on, as there's opportunities, we have really successful collaboration with him in the after school and summer season in particular around seating and soft skill development into those and figuring out ways that that can also be space for future development and exploration opportunities. I also think back to a lot of work I did at his office when we were getting ARPA money in terms of health care workforce support. They reached out to us about workforce health and with his position as chair of the health committee. He is particularly well situated to know what is going on and to work with us and

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: state government in terms of of work for solutions that are advantageous to Vermont in

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: the context of congressional lawmaking.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I will say we were very grateful to him when he comes back

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: to the after school in summer. He was very integral and part of the ARPA money that went to schools and dictating that a certain percentage of that had to be used particularly for after school summer programs that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: helped many states, but we were ahead of

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: the curve on that, and that dwells in our favor. But to your point, we all across the country travel in virtual mortgage right now. So, Randy, we were asking how are we comparing to other states. We've been diminishing pool of workers here in Vermont, and we are kind of a canary in the cold line as we know with our aging demographic, and other states might be a little bit further behind us in terms of the extent of the crisis, but are certainly starting to feel it themselves. So it's we're not, you know, we're unique in some ways, but we're not unique in all ways, and this is something that everybody is grappling with when

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: we talk to our national partners in

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: other states at convenings, conferences, webinars, etcetera. So it's important, though, so we can think about how do we stay on one thing that's always

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: in my mind, how do we

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: stay on that the leading edge?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: How do we continue to be competitive in areas that we

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: can be? You know, every state is having the same thought right now.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It feels like an arms race of

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: who's gonna get there first. So who has that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: marketing edge? I know you've heard

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: from the agency of commerce and community development yesterday, but when you think about recruiting workers here, making the case for people to stay here, there's a marketing component because other states are

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: are doing that. They're doing it well, and I'm sure you've

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: done some

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: more other on your ads. Yeah. So, anyway, that wasn't where we were

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: gonna start the conversation, but I just I am so enormously know about we do a really great line

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of communication with I will take

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: the department of labor, senator Sanders' office in particular, but of course, Senator Welch and Senator Beiland, we also speak with them for several times. So I'll

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: talk little bit about that.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So we're gonna take you down another level into the Department of Labor. I know you all are familiar

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: with us. I'm not gonna

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: necessarily go too far in the weeds of how we are set up, but thought it would be helpful to give you kind of the twenty twenty five year review in

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: terms of some of the significant work that we've done,

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: where we've seen successes, where we also see opportunities, challenges. We'll talk a little bit about our 2026 legislative priorities and thought it would be important to give you guys over here an update on the unemployment system modernization. We have a new UI system that I know you guys are aware is being built. That is going to be launched this calendar year in 2026. So we are literally months away from that, and we'll go into that a little bit more detail here in just a second. Senpai Glass left you in the spring.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We've been really focused on three kind

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: of overarching core areas and there's definitely more detail under each of these but ensuring we have effective, nimble, flexible supports across our 11 regional offices to serve job seekers and employers, continuing to grow our partnerships because we know solving the workforce needs and is something we need many people at the table for, many partners. Department of Labor can own a piece of that, but if we're gonna be successful, it's going to be because of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the strength of our partnerships with

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: other organizations and agencies across Vermont. And then as I just touched on, doing everything we can to ensure we have a smooth UI launch this spring summer. We have about twenty minutes, so we're gonna try to go through this.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think we can take another five.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Appropriate level of detail, you do have these slides, so if we don't go if

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you see something that interests you and

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: we don't get to it, you all know how to find me, Jay, others, so reach out. We're always happy to come back. I will say off the bat, you're not gonna necessarily see a robust multi bill, multi funding request package coming to the shoot to you this year from the Department of Labor, but that's not to say because there's not good impactful work going on that's going to move us closer to our goals. I actually think there's a little bit of a good news story here, and we're gonna go through this in a little bit more detail. But in terms of what the federal government is focused on, workforce is

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a priority for them, and they are putting a significant amount of federal funding into different workforce initiatives such as apprenticeship.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I was just trying to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: do the quick math in

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: my head that over the past few months, they've released over $300,000,000 to businesses that want to take advantage of different apprenticeship programs, which is

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a change. There's also a lot

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: of philanthropy even here at the state at the table now. The McClure Foundation, of Melissa McClure's final gifts was $25,000,000 to work for, so for the next five years. So we're working to partner, obviously, in terms of pushing out resources, in terms of what's available federally, but also with philanthropy philanthropy, sorry, private partners, which can potentially free up for you all state dollars for other quality of life supports that also go into making sure we have a strong workforce like housing, like education transformation, like affordability. The other reason too is a lot of the things that are challenging for our workforce right now aren't necessarily things that are normally workforce issues.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Like it's not like, oh, we don't

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: have enough training programs. It's housing, which we'll talk about. It's for CTE, we'll talk about education and CTE, it's affordability, it's things that's childcare, right? It's things that are not normally tagged as workforce or necessarily directly within our purview to control or be experts in, so that's also kind of a unique place that we

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: find ourselves in. I will

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: say just again to the launch to the UI system rolling out in this springsummer in a few months. We're not gonna say an exact date right now because we want to take our time to test test test it some more and communicate. We will obviously eventually communicate the dates and it will be here later in the session, but that's that's our number one operational priority for the next few months. We've invested with state dollars over $30,000,000 into this. I know you all get constituent calls probably more than you would like about turnaround times, about the funkiness of the existing fifty five year old system. So making sure that this rolls out as

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: smoothly as possible is something I hope we can all be invested in, and we are so invested in. And fortunately, why don't

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: you have any the crunch time for that perfectly aligns with discussion.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So if you see

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: me getting a little bit more crazed the closer to the spring weekend, that is why. We have had introductions,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a few leadership changes since we were last here. When I was here this spring, I

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: was here as deputy. I am now the commissioner. We have welcomed a new deputy commissioner to the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: department, Chris Winters. Chris, I don't if you

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: wanna say hi or say a few words.

[Chris Winters (Deputy Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Good morning, everybody. We know each other. I'm just I'm really excited to be at the Department of Labor. It's a great compliments of my past experience at the Secretary of State's office, the Corporations Division, the Business Portal, Professional Licensing, and then coming most recently from the Department for Children and Families, all those human services issues really kind

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: of attacking those those issues from a

[Chris Winters (Deputy Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: different angle, different perspective. There's lots of

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: connection that we have, and you'll

[Chris Winters (Deputy Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: see some of that in the slideshow today with the human services agency as well. So just really excited to be on board and love the leadership team and what's going on at

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: the department of labor. I've been there for three months now.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We're very happy and lucky to have Chris. She is not here with us today, but we also have a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: new unemployment insurance director.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Her name is Christine Murphy. She was at JIS Talk. They did a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: new lunch hour talk, so you may have

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: seen her this talk and I think you were able to connect with her as well.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So you have an opportunity

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: to meet director Murphy at some point over the course of the session. Then, who you all know is officially our department policy and legislative affairs director.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: She will be the eyes and ears here at the State House for the session. She will be in the eyes and ears and she also has an incredible amount of knowledge. We utilize it. All right. You all know Jay. Jay Jay is not new. You know Jay. So I'm gonna pass it

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: off to Jay. We'll try to obviously ask us questions as we go, but

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: just knowing that time is

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: short, we'll try to give you

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: enough but not well, you have tried it appropriately. Yes. You have tried it. Okay. I mean, we we can

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: do it. Four to five years away. Okay. Thank you.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Do you wanna? So these slides have a lot of words on them. I don't plan to read them to you. We could read them. But you can read them. I'm going to pull out a few things on each slide to talk about. And just for

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the public, just remind the public what you're the director of.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: All right, I'm the director of workforce development at the Department of Labor, which means I'm responsible for all of the employment and training programs and for the operation of our 11 offices, which we also call job centers. Registered apprenticeship is also under my area of responsibility. So there's four categories here that you can see on this slide, job seeker and employer service transformation, training programs, modernization projects, and federal programs. Under the job seeker and employer service transformation, I wanna talk about a couple of things. So we have two customers, employers and job seekers. Our job is to connect the two. We connect job seekers through training, support services, funding, when they're eligible. Our regional job centers have for quite a while operated job fairs in partnership with other organizations in our local communities, but I don't think we've ever run a statewide job fair on the same day in in every region. We have five regions. So we took a step in November to do that for part time and seasonal employment. So we had five job fairs. On the same day in November, we changed our operating hours so that people who are getting off of work could stop in and visit with the employers and learn about our services. We saw about two and thirty people across the state with about 30 employers. So we we were trying to be simple about it. We operated those in the in the offices where the job centers are. We're planning another one in February with feedback from the construction industry that says our spring job fairs are too late. So in February at the end, the last Wednesday in February, we're planning to do a statewide job fair for construction and the trades during the we use it as a field trip.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Oh. It's another field That would be wonderful. We will let you know where we're posting those 15 to field trip, but because we're doing them in multiple different areas of the state, if we're doing one in our job center that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: is in your district or county, you might wanna go to your home base. Oh, that would be fine if it was all on Monday. If it's not on Monday, that's true. We would probably want to go to one that was near here.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: That is

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: true. The closest one to

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: here is our office in Barrie. Will just want to say what's been really great about

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: this too is this is a

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: new approach to us to be more responsive in real time to what we're seeing as demands both from employers and from individuals. With the part time job fair and some of the newsletters we send out,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: we're starting to see much

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: higher engagement rates with people looking at the part time jobs that were listed in terms of click rates. And also that coincided with the holiday seasonal push rate around retail and other leisure hospitality service industry employees. I and Jolie popped into the job fair and very Christmas down to Springfield. We spread out to support our teams. There were high school students there. There were some middle aged folks there, but I have to say the majority of individuals there were older Vermonters that were saying they needed to reconnect back into the labor force for any number of reasons. So one of the things, too, we don't have this represented in our slide deck,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: is we're trying to think about how we

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: can better support that older demographic that we're seeing being interested in returning back to work at not necessarily full time level, but at some level what they need for support in order to do that. And then the construction one, we were hearing from the construction industry that some of our activities were a little bit later than they needed them to be in

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: terms of how we can

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: be helpful in terms of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: getting their spring, summer, fall workforce. So this event was in response in terms of bumping it up to that feedback, and production

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: and trades is a core sector that we're focusing on, kind of harkening back to how this all leads back into the

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: larger goals and strategy.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: And so just some other work that we're doing that's new and novel for us is sector focused sprints. So the staff that work in the job centers that primarily serve businesses are going to be going out during this month to construction employers in that industry to interview them about their pain points and do they are they aware of our services and do they use Vermont JobLink? And if not, why? And can we help them post their jobs so that when we have the job fair, we can drive everyone to the job board so that they can see all of the jobs in one place or as many of them as possible. So we're gonna replicate that with other industries throughout the year. So the next one coming up is in February construction. We do plan to do another seasonal and part time one in October next year. The part time job fairs, in addition to what Commissioner Smith said, are really important as a resource for the social service programs that have changing requirements where people may need to go and try to find supplemental income so that they can stay on. So we practice this all, sort out, and we're going to be replicating it again in an effort to respond to the changes in federal programs, which we'll On about the next bullet there, training programs, we're talking a lot about service to career pathways. So just what that means is, let's talk about AmeriCorps. There's three fifty to 400 people who choose to come to Vermont to serve in AmeriCorps. So there's a built in relocation. And what we're intending to do with the service commission, who is also represented on the workforce board, is to build kind of plug and play plans for those people who are in service programs. You're here to serve in Department of Environmental Conservation, but what if you had a pre built plan to become an electrician in the apprenticeship program? That's what we're trying to do, lay out the pathway for people so that when they arrive here for their service, they can see that the state is also investing in efforts to keep them here and get them connected to the jobs that are in the economy.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So we have about 70 to a 100 AmeriCorps, just AmeriCorps alone. We have Vista workers. We have all sorts of service. You know, Vermont, just like in the art sector, Vermont I think is the top number of nonprofits per capita in the country. We have huge service core businesses here in Vermont and we have quite a few people who come here to work on service projects. For us to reach out to them to try and keep them is really a great, I think a great effort and what I

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: know we've been working

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: on already and I think building on that is terrific. It's a great group of people to want to keep and

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: we have a really great partnership with the McClure Foundation who is very interested in the service work and connecting people to the jobs here. So they're really one of our

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: key And are we looking at, in the future, maybe not this year, looking at incentives that the state would provide to continue and support that work?

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: There are several different policy ideas that we're working through. I think the one that we're focused on for the next year is really the nuance of those pathways. We don't need money to do that. Just need to assign people to do it to shepherd it through. And once we have that then potentially next year we would come back with some some bigger policy ideas that would have a a meaningful impact on it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Teach for America, I mean we have we have quite a few of those service the federal service programs here and some I don't know how many Vermont based ones we have but we have certainly a lot of fed people here.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We do. Terms of again, as we brought back to your

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: comment about how are we

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: competing regionally, nationally, who's on the forefront of this? This service to career pathway is something that Maryland has actually really successfully put together this year type program on that it may not be exactly what they come back with as a recommendation, but there are some different points of inspiration out there that we're looking at to see what makes sense for Vermont if we're gonna really go

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: at this in a big way. Great.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So I'll skip to the next category and just say that we were trying to improve the experience of people who come into the job center so we replace all of the public compute the computers that the public use to search for jobs. Our staff are really happy about that, and customers are really happy about it, the ones that come in and use them every day. In the federal program category, this is about our ongoing work as the federal government releases new programs and makes changes to some existing programs. There's generally a workforce development connection to them. And so I'll just say the Housing and Urban Development Continuum of Care grant, the federal government has added employment outcomes to that, and that's there's an area for the Workforce Development Division and our work with the City of Burlington, and I think it's called the the whole of the state as the there's two continuum of care. That's great. Kesha, welcome.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: Well, first, I I just wanna say, because I don't know when the next opportunity will be, that commissioner Smith has responded very personally and thoroughly to several constituent complaints that had broader systems impact questions over the the intervening time since last session. And, again, having been engaged in a committee that has jurisdiction with the Department of Labor for a long time, it I think it restored a lot of trust and goodwill with the Department of Labor. So I wanna thank the commissioner. I I haven't seen something like that in a long time, and and I really think it it's a byproduct that doesn't show up in PowerPoints, but it's really, really important.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You're you're you're here. I would underscore that. You

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, via Zoom)]: heard me talk about IT and modernization, and I think some of my frustration comes from watching really good navigation tools sometimes get sidelined or underfunded. And in this case, I'm thinking about what the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation I don't know. I always get their BDCC wrong, but they launched a compass tool, I think was in the name, like a navigation system that I think was especially helpful for young people and new Americans and folks learning English and learning our culture of how you get a job. I I I think someone from the Department of Labor was there for their launch. It it seemed like a really successful model to build on, and I think they've struggled with funding since then. Can you make sure that we're just talking in these clearinghouses and navigation tools about sort of how often that's been tried and failed. Sometimes it's because it was a clunky, incomplete system, but sometimes it's because, like, really good systems just don't get the continuity they deserve.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I agree. Yeah. Yes. I think that's really important. Can you show that that's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: where I'm searching around? So if that makes me think of it as one of

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: my own personal pet peeves is, and this isn't something that I just I realized I'm not gonna be able to change. But there's so many job boards out there. Right? So it's like, where in the heck do you go to look for

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a job these days? So we have

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: a job board. We have to have a job board. It's one

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of, again, another one of those

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: scheduled requirements. So we're, of course, trying

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to make our job board be the most thorough, robust tool

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: it can be because we have to have it. But now there's also Handshake and then there's still Indeed and there's, I don't know, part from Edo. There's There's probably, right, even more out there. So Or

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you have your state government.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: The state government. And so the parallel I'm hearing too is, right, these different navigation tools that we have different entities launching across the state. And we're not doing anything at scale. I would say it would

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: probably be my immediate reaction to that in terms of why they're not sustainable or why

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: they don't necessarily become all they can be. They also tend to

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: be, because you're a small

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: state, very personality dependent. If you have someone

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: on your team that's really invested in it and driving it forward, then great.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But the minute that person leaves, if the next person that fills with those shoes isn't, then all that progress and that funding and that time and that investment stops.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: And so that's one of the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: things with the office, right, that our goals over time are to figure out how

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: we can try to bring some order to this and decide which are our tools of preference as a state and get that buy in level. That may or may not be easy because, again, we're dealing with private and nonprofit organizations that can do whatever they want. Right? And we say we would prefer you to do this or something else, but that's the goal.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah it would be great to further align all those and to look at companies. Also Tom Chittenden's event for mine, it's not as a job but as a pathway, articulating and creating pathways in it it's not a job link, but it's coordinating all that effort. Yeah. It's good.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So Alright. I'm just gonna we move to the next slide, which is about our upcoming work and just to go down to the modernization project. Oh, David. Before you move on there, if you

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: have a question, so I want to link together that slide with the previous slide. The previous slide, your focus for 2026. That's the CTE in particular. Okay, the next slide, your ongoing department of order. You have adult CTE but not, I would say, like the high school CTE. I'm just curious, know, we're all focused on CTEs. My neck of the woods, we turn away about a third of the applicants for CTE just for capacity reasons. So what initiatives, what efforts to address, what you articulated is more a new war 2026?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'll let Jay take us down another level. So the nuance here is we have more of a funding tie and I'm not going

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: to give quite governance tie to adult CTE. The Department of Labor of the Agency of Education, right, is the government

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I just wanted to work. High

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: school CTE, but we will of

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: the probably see us in the room with them 90% of the time. Time on

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: that conversation. And then Jay, I'll let you kind of take it down another level because this

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: is really something Jay has years of experience navigating, or CTE director for the agency of education actually.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So he

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: has that experience for us.

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So thank you for the question, the opportunity to add a little flavor here. From the workforce development systems perspective, right, that we have so many adults in the state more adults than there are high school students. A workforce development system needs training providers. We need entities that can develop training and deliver them as part of registered apprenticeship. We need to be able to send people to them as part of our federal programs, and we need the facilities that the tech centers have and the equipment there to be available to the public at large. And the way that that the way the system works is it's primarily geared to high school students. That's a great opportunity. We wanna make sure that high school students have an opportunity to, as Senator keeps saying, find their blitz, But sometimes they miss that opportunity and they get out into the world and they haven't found their bliss yet. So the tech centers could still be there to serve them and help them find their bliss, get a technical training, using the equipment in the space that the taxpayers have invested. That system though, across the state doesn't look the same. Stafford has a full time person, maybe there's another person there. That's working like a rural community college, But depending on your zip code, that's what's driving whether you have access to that or not. And this is the space that the Department of Labor is trying to talk about. We need training providers to be available to offer low cost training to employers, job seekers, and just to supplement our programs. That's what we're coming in to talk about as part of the CTE and adult programs. Okay. CTE does great things, or Muncie University does great things, but they can't do everything. Right. And they don't often have the equipment and facilities that protects their students.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We're trying to rebrand these fatal two careers to fatal three careers

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to account for the ongoing professional development or upskilling we need even as an

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: adult once you We're gonna

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a break in a a couple minutes. So Alright. Okay. Then we can obviously have you back. I I

[Jay Ramsey (Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor)]: know that I know that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Kesha's working. She's not here, but she she's very present in my mind as we think about this because I know she's developing a bill, and I know we have to work with the education committee on CTE and governance and funding. This is gonna be a big conversation. I would just say as an outsider, well, partial outsider to this, that the adult it's the adult CTE even needs more work than our than our up and running very successful CTE programs around the state there's more consistency in RCT programs around the state for high school students than it is for our adults and I think that is a as we look at trying to bring more people back into work it particularly and capture people who for whatever reason have left with the adult TGE for interlater is so essential.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So like five minutes? Let me try to then just in a I apologize this is disorganized call out a few things then that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think that should be

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: priorities just for you to know that we're working on.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Which is nothing that's been disordered.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We've had really great a really

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: great company to wind

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: up in terms of what we're working on that you

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: should know about, whether it

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: shows up again in a bill legislatively or not. We are working to change the way

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: we do our adult CTE grants. We will give you a one pager on that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It is something that director Randy has been talking about with the field for two

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: to three years now. We're trying to align it with the larger education and transformation conversation. However, because it's changed, some people like it and some people don't. So I will look at

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you along the feature of This is your more to fewer. Yes, but larger. More money to fewer institutions. Got it. But also

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: you can partner to apply So for that's one thing that you might hear about. We'll follow-up with you on that at a later date. We are working to support our partners at the Agency of Human Services in various ways. Chris, feel free to jump in here if I don't get it

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: quite right, but at a

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: very high level. As Jay alluded to, there's new federal changes for work requirements for SNAP, TANF,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and Medicaid recipients. It is more or less, do you have earnings or not? So we are collaborating with

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: the agency of human services so we can support people that need employment to get employment along with figuring out what data we can give them for them the appropriate reporting

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: to the federal government on

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: if we're meeting our required targets or not. The agency human services, you probably read about in the news, we've said it a couple of times now, we as a state are receiving an incredible amount of money for our size through the Rural Health Transformation Program project. About 30,000,000 of that is earmarked over the next five years for healthcare workforce support specifically.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You're in Vermont. You're in Vermont.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So later in this slide, you'll see some bullets about how that money has been planned to be used. If you wanna hear more about that, you really should have the agency human services come in

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and talk about that two bucket.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We will join them. We will support them. We can help community and collaborate, but they are really working through the finer details of that right now.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So that's something else that our time, our

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: capacity, our brains are connecting in with. Similarly, the state also recently received a preschool

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: to study what you're called.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Scared of scars.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Yeah. That had a high level. Well, anyway, in that funding,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a million dollars is being earmarked for us

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: to improve our fingerprint supported background check system where right now the turnaround time for that is a workforce barrier. But there's many many more professions that require fingerprint supported background check-in order for you to be employed and right now that can take over eight weeks. If you're I'm thinking, in my experience with some of the areas I've been working in, if you're in an after school phase or summer phase, eight weeks and summer's over. If you're looking to move on, you're trying to move in July. Right? Or

[Drake Charter (Deputy Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: And our schools are right?

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: For field trips even

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: for parents, right? So we, again, we are supporting that effort broadly because it, again, is a

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: broad workforce barrier, but the entities that will really be doing the work on that, if you wanna know more, are the child development division at DCF, are the Department of public safety, ADF is involved, agency of education is tracking it. It's a large kind of interagency effort.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I mentioned that the federal government has turned

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: on this ticket for apprenticeship funding. One of our specific goals for the coming year is to continue to grow our registered apprenticeship programs in the state.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Just remind us how many you have because we we think of electrical and plumbing. Okay. So there's 300. There's about well, there's 20,000,000 current active occupations that you can access in.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Did I get that right Jay?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: 20,000,000 active occupations that

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: are active or 92%. That there's probably now looking at your honor Jay over 500 employers that are registered sponsors, maybe we even have it on this slide, 106 active training programs and over 1,600 active apprentices. We are looking to get more employers on board, trying to register more pathways in the internship space. Again, in terms of learning, we are seeing kind of a demand for experiential experiences and for individuals that can't necessarily take time only to go to school and need to earn money while they learn, important things to remember when you're talking about apprenticeship, apprenticeship is a job.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So if you're talking to constituents, if you're talking to people, remember if you are an apprentice, if you have a registered apprenticeship, it

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: is first and foremost a job, but then there is that learning component to it that then helps you continue to

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: progress in your list of the apprenticeships.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We can get that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to you. We have that our website. On your website.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We yeah. Robin and her team actually created

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a really cool map where you could go on and see where

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: every registered friend's sponsor is for all

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the businesses. You could look

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: for Franklin County and see how

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: many businesses in Franklin County.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We'll get you Senator Brock will follow-up with you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It's on

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: your website, I ought to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: be able to buy it. Okay.

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I will end it. So we are continuing to work on

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: our workforce expansion project, which

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: is something the legislature and we will happily give you an update later. We have two areas of the state that are participating in that, the Northeast Kingdom and Addison County. I talked about apprenticeship, Jay's already touched on sectors and service to career and I touched on rural health transformation, I gave you the high level fingerprint support of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: background checks and HR1 which is an kind of

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Medicaid work requirements. And then the last slide and I'll just end it here and

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I enjoyed after this was just to illustrate we have a variety of

[Kendall Smith (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Labor)]: other partnerships in place right now. We've been working closely with Vampire over the past few months which has been a lot. Association of Mental Health and Addiction Recovery, so we we can co brand their recovery friendly workplaces designation. I feel strongly about leading by examples. We've signed an MOU with the guard to be a prime partner, which means that if the guard refers guard members or their dependents to us for employment, they are guaranteed on this interview. Not necessarily a job interview, but that can also help us then if they're not a good fit for the department, help place them other places. Any private employer can enter into these MOEs as well. We are kind of a pilot trying it out for state governments. And then you'll see, again, a growing list of some of our other more active partnerships at the moment.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I know you have to go is there anything else from the panel? I just think we need a break we can come back and we're gonna do data and anything else you feel you need to add to because we have until 11:15. So I'm I'm just gonna give us till 10:10 of eleven. Give us seven, eight minutes, and then come back at ten of eleven if we could because we have more you know, I don't know how much dated time will take, but then we can fill in with additional stuff that you felt you needed to add because we have until 11:15.

[Savannah Hassell (Director, Office of Workforce Strategy & Development)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Sorry. Yeah. Great. Thank you. We're gonna go off live, and we're gonna take a break for eight minutes.