Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: We're live. So

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we're back after a quick break, the Senate Education Committee, and now we're switching gears, and we kind of have an annual update from Building Bright Futures, and today is the day. And with Margaret Costner from Building Bright Futures. So the floor is yours. Introduce yourself for the record and the floor is yours.

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: You. Well, good afternoon. I'm Doctor. Morgan Crossman for the record. I am the executive director of Building Great Futures, which is Vermont's Early Childhood State Advisory Council. And what that means for you all is I am your primary advisor on kids and families, prenatal to age eight, across every system of service that is touching kids and families. So not just childcare or pre pay, but really thinking holistically about the system of services for children and families. My job is to bring together an entire network of partners. There's over 500 partners who are coming together over the course of the year to serve in this advisory capacity. So, our job is to advise this group, but also the governor's office and our federal delegation, and to bring those partners together to understand the needs of kids and families on the ground, to be documenting what is happening actively related to law and policy in the early childhood arena, to elevate voice and really be able to share lived experience as qualitative data with you all, but also to very formally monitor the system of services. So, we are the, you know, the source of highlighting all of the data that you generally are hearing on behalf of kids and families. Today, I'll give you a big high level snapshot of some of that data. I'll also talk about the act six monitoring data, so the child care law that was passed, and really focus efforts on pre k as the priority that will be tackled this year as part of education transformation. So any question on our role?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just remind me, are you legislatively established?

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: Yes. So we are named in both state and federal statutes. As your primary vibes for our kids and families, we do receive a legislative allocation that's routed through the child development division. And we partner really closely with all of the agencies, departments, and divisions, as well as community based partners to centralize all this data for you all. So, as you're thinking about our role and this session, any of the questions that you may have around what data exists, which partners to connect with related to pre K or early childhood or elementary education, happy to be a resource in that way. Alright, just wanted to give you a quick view of the current configuration of my board. So again, being named in state statute, we have very concrete roles and requirements on our board. On the left hand side, you're seeing our public or agency leaders. The ones at the top are those that are required to be a part of the board across mental health, maternal and child health, or family and child health, Head Start, Commerce, our Belton division, secretary's office seats. You're also seeing that we collaborate really closely with nonvoting public members, so working really closely with the governor's office, as well as some of the other deputy commissioners. We do have legislative leadership, so right now, representative Garoppano and Senator Gulick serve on our board, and we also have a range of required community based and other partners across the system of service to bring their content expertise. So, just as a reminder, this is that configuration of the board seats. One of the things that I wanna orient you to briefly today is the next five year strategic plan for kids and families. So one of the roles that we play, sitting just outside of state government as that non partisan data advisor, that were charged with building and then holding the vision for the state strategic plan for kids and families. It's a five year strategic plan. It was just published in the last couple of months. So I'm not gonna do a full orientation today, but we have now established after, you know, from over 300 Vermonters over the course of a year and a half, this new statewide shared vision and roadmap for kids and families. It's meant to be a plan of plans. So, partnering with all of those agencies, departments, and divisions, but all of the community based partners to say, what are the needs, and how are we documenting continuously what the needs of Vermonters are? But then also really having it grounded in lived experience and the data that we have over the last five years. And so, what's really interesting is we heard so much from families and those on the ground that basic needs needed to be at the foundation of all of our work. So you're seeing that first goal really grounded in basic needs, economic security, food security, housing, and transportation. We're gonna This is a publicly available document, so I'll send you the link to that, but in terms of how this group can use it, I will walk you through what's in it specific to education, and then point you to different areas and data as well. But just to give you that sense, goal one is really around basic needs. Goal two is focused on health and safety. So, do we make sure that children are being raised in safe and healthy and healing environments? Goal three is all about opportunity and making sure that children and families have access to high quality, inclusive opportunities for development and learning. That is where you're gonna see the majority of the pre K and education transformation components. O four is workforce. That's a new goal for this strategic plan. Again, mapping across every sector, mental health, education, paraprofessionals, really thinking about how to support the early childhood workforce. And then goal five, also really important for the committee, is that both center and family voice, but data driven decision making, and making sure that we are actually, as a system, saying, are we doing what's in the best interest of kids and families? How do we know? Is it resourced to the right level?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Sure, go

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: ahead. Two, all children raised in a safe, healthy, healing environment decides what that scope looks like. Because the way I might raise my children is different from the way you raise your children. Absolutely. So how does the decision come to say, okay, this is the right way?

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: Yeah, so when we think about the context that children live, grow, and develop in, we have our family units, and that is where we're absolutely saying families are really important, and here are the values of each family, and here's where there's discrete opportunity for raising our children based on those values. In terms of this strategic plan, what we did was go out into communities across the state of Vermont and say, tell us, how do we create the best positive environments that are going to contribute to a child's potential development? So, what you're seeing in that one is things around safe communities, like how are we thinking about playgrounds, how are we making sure there are sidewalks, and access to what a community should have? Do we have the right educational and institutional facilities? Do we have the right things in place to ensure healthy environments such as climate, right? So, in terms of the decision making on the strategic plan, not just this one, but overall, we had, again, over 300 partners, but then the full state advisory council do a formal vote. We had advisory committees and a year and a half long process to essentially narrow down. Here's what families and communities said in this year in particular. Here's what the data over the last five years across all of the sectors tell us. And then we triangulated all of that, meaning we brought all of that information together, really tried to understand, you know, how do we narrow this down, and how would we make measurable goals in a five year period, and then how would we transition those five year goals into one year goals. Thanks.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. So I fully understand this is aspirational. Absolutely. To my colleague's point, goal number one and number two are the period first blush to be more family centric, which I think is what, was talking about, asking. So that's like, from my perspective, that's like two thirds of the day is kind of family oriented, family responsibility. And there's a heavy criticism now that there were a lot of family responsibility has migrated to state responsibility, just come with a cost. So we're talking about mental health in schools, etc, etc, which all have a price tag and I'm wondering if you recognize kind of like if there's a saturation point when it comes to say treasury on how we achieve these goals and which are kind of lower cost, low hanging fruit versus what's additional investment, make sure that all, whether the family unit is or is considered like, not providing some of these basic structures, that it becomes a state responsibility. Where's the benefit? What kind of conversation do you have?

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: Yeah, so when we were doing the information gathering with families, originally he said, tell us, what does it look like on the ground, and where are you really struggling? We talked with providers, and not just the family, but what are we as communities providing? Stay with basic needs for just a second, the things that kept coming up were housing, income, transportation, economic security, the things that really contribute to, for this committee in particular, kids' ability to show up ready to learn at school. And one of the things that we worked really hard on was to say, yes, there's a big lofty goal. What you're not seeing is that within each goal, there are also four objectives, and those are more concentrated in each area alongside then strategies to actually move. Because, again, these five goals that you're seeing on the screen right now are things we could work on forever and still not meet. So the conversations are, again, what is the responsibility of the state? Where are we mapping state and federal dollars to meet some of these needs? Where are we using grant philanthropic dollars to support these efforts? And then where are community partners actually stepping in to do some of this work for alongside families? So, in this year of the strategic plan and implementation, what we're doing is actually going out and having those conversations with each of the agency leaders, each of the different departments, the treasurer's office, and others to say, where is there already work happening and state level responsibility for specific pieces? Because it's not going be that any one agency or any one community program is going to be solely responsible for economic security, for example, right? And then, what are the goals and the work you're doing in each year to really say, here's what we're prioritizing related to the strategic plans? So we haven't mapped, for example, here's exactly how much state and federal and community funding is going into each area, like housing or food insecurity, but that is part of how we are talking about it with each of those agencies, is how do we understand where our resources are allocated, and if this is really the broad vision that we as a state have agreed to, How are we making decisions based on these things? So if we know we need to prioritize food security, we know we need to prioritize housing as a state, here are the things that if you, as a committee, are talking about sticking with basic needs, housing, the things that these community partners and state agencies and anyone who's working with kids and families said you should be considering when you're making those funding decisions or potentially positive changes.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Alright,

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: let's talk about education for just a second in the strategic plan. So, again, I mentioned to you all that goal three was really around all of the different areas of high quality opportunity. For you all in particular, this is where you're going to see things like pre kindergarten education, early learning, elementary education, things around quality, and education transformation as a whole. Some of the things that I would call your attention to, and again, we don't have to dive in deep, but just so you have a sense of where the things live, are things like early intervention, special education, and really thinking about prevention. So what do we know about access inclusion, and how are we reducing things like exclusionary discipline? Discipline? And so there's strategies and objectives there. There's also a focus on the mixed delivery system. So again, the way that we're providing broad early childhood education services is in that mixed delivery model in child cares, head starts, in public education programs. So you're going to see a lot in that area around things like affordability, accountability, coordination, quality, and what's going on between our agencies and districts, and how we're partnering there. One of the key takeaways, if you heard nothing else that I said today, is how are we going to center children and outcomes for children in the context of ed transformation? So as we're thinking about our youngest and most vulnerable learners, and we're thinking about students in pre K, our three, our four year olds, our five year olds not yet in kindergarten, what are the priorities that we need think about, and what are all the considerations in pre k as we'll depict your ed transformation? So I'll talk a little bit about that later, but really wanting to call attention to the fact that when we change one system, like a massive ed transformation, which is really valuable and important, how do we make sure that we aren't breaking some of the other bridges or making adaptations to, again, really think about childcare, head start programs, after school and out of school time care at the same time as we're thinking about ed? Alright, I do get to talk about a little bit of fun data. Not all, hard thing today. But again, as I'm thinking about being an advisor to this group, one of the things you prioritize is providing the most up to date, high quality data to inform decision making for you all. This has also pulled to the point in the presentation that I remind you that I am not a lobbyist. My job is not to come in and tell you this is how you should move on any specific bill, but to say, what data do you need? Let me help you access it, and here's what we know right now. So, in terms of the bright spots and what is going really well in the state of Vermont right now, we have a 58% increase in the total number of children who are enrolled in child care financial assistance. So significant increase and even more so in the infant and toddler enrollment. So that's up by 82%.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So positive or negative, because the negative sign is that you know we're economically stagnated and our families are economically failing. That babies are struggling right and have you is that and more children fall below poverty line that need this support. It's, while they may be, you know, maybe the safety net is catching them, the negative side is that we're not, we don't have programs which are keeping families, the entire family unit away from poverty.

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: That is a totally fair assessment and thinking about where we are from an economic security lens and meeting families basic needs. I do think that because of the way that we've structured the new program in Act 76, we have the highest eligibility in the country for how we're supporting child care financial assistance, and 600%. And so, right, and so as we're thinking about who we're catching, we are catching such a remarkable number of kids and families and one of the biggest challenges that we've had in the state in the last ten years is access to childcare. So, the fact that we have more families, and I actually have a full slide on all of the childcare data for you, to talk about where infant and toddler care has been the hardest to find and to get parents access to, regardless of income level. So, setting aside our subsidy rates, we've always known that from a supply and demand perspective, we struggle to get kids enrolled in childcare, especially for infants and toddlers. So, the fact that we have an 82% uptick in infant enrollment is significant, and not to downplay the fact that our families are still struggling in a range of ways. To talk a little bit about how our kids are doing in literacy at Family Reading, one of the amazing things, and there's another slide on this as well, is that we are seeing our young kids, specifically in the pre k period, do really well in mapping social emotional development. We're also seeing a decrease in the number of children who are in out of home protective custody. So, couple of things to call attention to, both in the bright spots, but also really thinking about what we need to monitor over the next couple of years. And again, it's really relevant to education outcomes, right? So we're seeing a striking increase in the number of homeless children, and this one's really difficult. There's another slide that'll really show this a visual, but we're seeing a two seventy three percent increase in the rate of homeless children under the age of nine, which means they are struggling to show up ready to learn in a range of different ways. We also know that we have really low rates of third graders being proficient or above in math and reading. And we are also seeing, to your point around the poverty rates in the state, we're seeing really wide gaps. So, regional variation in what our families look like who are experiencing poverty, right? So the percent of children and students living in poverty ranges from seventeen percent in, you know, Champlain Valley School District to sixty seven percent in Livingston School District. So again, paying attention to what our families need and how it differs around the state is really important. So when we are talking about the percent and the number of kids who are experiencing homelessness, this is our McKinney Vento data, so our education indicator related to housing and homelessness. And so what we're seeing is that there's an increase of six twenty six students under the age of nine who are eligible for homeless support services, and that's a 273% increase since 2018. So again, just calling attention to something that you said a little bit earlier about what our educators and principals and school districts are facing with children showing up really struggling and ready to learn, whether that is because they are homeless, they are not having food and things that they actually need to come in and thrive in that space.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Sure. Have we coincided this with any, and this might be a sore subject, but for the hotelmotel program, because you're looking, as we see, where it started coming to effect, our numbers started going up, and is it families coming in that took advantage of that and then are ending up homeless afterwards, and we're dealing with that? Is there any statistics on that? It's just a question. I'm not trying

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: to No, I know. It's just we've been watching the rate of homeless families and children rise since the recession. Yeah. So, I mean, I know we have that data.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: But that is, that's a huge rise. It's like, is it because of some programs that Vermont has pulled in?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I guess.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Is there any data on that?

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: Ethan, I mean, I would imagine if you look at the year of tropical storm Irene, you saw a spike because housing was scarce for people, and they couldn't share, continue to share housing and have people sleep on their couches, etcetera. So, that doesn't tell the full story. And I would say, and I promise I will tell you, think that there's such a range of factors contributing to every indicator that I'm sharing, right? We can't point to any one thing as the primary cause, but I also will work with Miranda's team and ESD to talk more about the hotel motel program. We do have the rates of children and families who have been enrolled and involved in those programs, but I would not point to that as the sole factor.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The good news is that you captured this data. How often do you update? I mean, it, do you have like, a decision support template to to identify where you need to go shift your focus to? And and how does the funding tie into that?

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: So hard to talk about lack of funding, but, so, yes, we're all experiencing that, but I think one of the things I would say is that we have relationships now developed with every agency, department, and division that is documenting any data on behalf of kids and families, it involves data sharing improvements, it involves consistent meetings with their data teams, but then also their policy teams and leadership, to determine the narrative, and what are we actually seeing and the interpretation of that data, because there are examples of data that we'll share with you, where sometimes it's really hard to land on a final number across agencies, departments, and divisions, or we need to actually be debating what those contextual factors are that are contributing to those outcomes. So, we do receive some funding from the state of Vermont, but we also write federal grants and private philanthropic dollars at posts to bring funding in for this work. We are not planning on talking about this broadly today, but we did lead the development of a grant that we just received, bringing $12,700,000 into the state, called the Preschool Development Grant, really focused on early care and education in partnership with the child development division.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: I'm sure somehow you click on one

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of those bars and you'll probably buy a county so that you could shift.

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: Yes. And we did just make a really big shift actually this year when we were presenting the state of Vermont's children. Instead of publishing the book that sometimes ends up in recycle bins, all of this data is now centralized in a data portal and is broken down by district or county. And I'll show you how to get there a little bit later and can send those links, but it is all publicly available and we work, I want to say on a quarterly basis, but also as data cycles are available. Every indicator that we work with agencies on, their cycle for data collection and documentation differs. As soon as they have it, we have it, and we make that available.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Great, so we need to keep moving because we a quick question going back one slide. Can you confirm that you said that the that the very bottom line, the 17% of poverty is is in the CBU area? Then the 67 is in Winooski, which is also in Chittenden County. That's the highest in the state. So, you. Yes. Alright.

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: I will go a little bit quicker, and I'm not gonna talk about every chart on here, but you asked about child care data and how we're thinking about this. We're specifically charged in Act 76 to monitor this. So, as of yesterday, in your inbox, you have our Act 76 monitoring report. It has a four page data spread that shows you all of the available data right now on child care and the implementation of Act 76. All of that work is done in partnership with Janet McLaughlin's team, the deputy commissioner for CDD, as well as a range of community partners who are capturing this data. At the highest level, what I can tell you is we've made incredible progress since the passage of that bill. Act 76 is being delivered at scale at this point, and we've seen dramatic extension of access and affordability. So, 12,000 children in almost 10,000 families are now eligible for CCFIP. We are seeing stronger financial footing for child care programs, and where we're seeing that investment is also coming from our quality and capacity incentive payments. So we've made 12,700,000 in payments to over 800 programs to focus on capacity and infrastructure, and our payroll tax is fully implemented, and it's operating in the way that it was intended to. I'm gonna skip some of the childcare data to talk to you all about pre pay, but I'm also happy to come back in for folks who are interested or talk with you separately more about the pre K work. Or sorry, the child care work. So again, anticipating that pre K is going to be a major topic this session, I wanna just do a quick overview of what we know of the data in the last five years. The first is that we've ranked as a state, second, nationally, for access for three and four year olds in our universal Pre K program. That does not mean that we have equitable access to pre K, that just means that we have the highest rates, or the second highest rates in the country for three and four year olds who are attending and accessing programs. It's currently sixty one percent of our three year olds and seventy eight percent of our four year olds enrolled, which is great. From a capacity perspective and where we deliver pre k, I mentioned mixed delivery, so it can be a community based or public school programs. About 44, sorry, 44% of those slots are available in school based programs, and about 56 are available in center or community based family child care homes. What we know about the outcomes is that we are seeing children who attend pre K are having higher rates of showing up ready to learn in kindergarten. We're also seeing again that rise in four year olds exceeding expectations in math and social development. We also know from the national data that two years of pre K is beneficial for children. So

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the hope I'm thinking is that by the time they're appropriate, those numbers begin to go up because the system is peaking.

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: That would be ideal, and I wish that was what I was going to show you. But

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: think, here's what I want you to know about this slide. First, the bars on the left hand side are not showing you a decline in anything. They are showing you a bar for three separate assessments for young kids. The pink and the blue are showing the outcomes that we use to track how we're doing for kids in childcare and pre K. So what we're seeing in pre K literacy measured by TS Gold is that we have ninety one percent of kids who are doing really well in our pre K and childcare settings. We also have eighty five percent of our children showing up ready to learn in kindergarten. Right? Again, we're not looking at a trend line here. A separate assessment for third grade math and reading, which you all know, which is that by the time we are doing assessments in third grade, our children are struggling, and on the right hand side, what you're seeing is that those characteristics vary based on the populations, and our subpopulations that are historically marginalized and Cape Town IEPs really struggling.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Is your point that this is pre Act 76, potential pre Act 76?

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: No, my point on this one is that we're doing really well in outcomes for kids in childcare and pre K right now. So as you're thinking about investment, as you're thinking about the system and making changes in things like childcare or pre k in the context of ed transformation, to realize that it's working really well. We have really strong outcomes and we have really great access rates. So, as we're making transitions, or as we're thinking about that in the context of ed transformation, how do we maintain the things that are working really well when our outcomes for kids are really great in that zero to five space? Alright. I know that I have two minutes. So, what I'm gonna do is skip this slide and tell you that we have a range of policy recs. The one that I think is most important for you all to hear about is specifically related to universal pre k. Again, this network has come together to say, if you're going to prioritize anything in the early childhood education space, one, maintain access to pre k for three year olds while you are thinking about expansion for four year olds, and to do that within a mixed delivery model, and that is paired with the recommendations that came from the Pre kindergarten Education Implementation Committee as well, also aligned with the strategic plan. The second is to make sure that it's funded in a way that others score going to school districts and community based programs, and to really determine what that pupil weighting is, or how it's gonna be reflected in that foundation formula.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Are you saying that the Pre K weight that's in Act 73 is not appropriate?

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: I'm saying that we really need to focus for Pre K on understanding the true cost, and I think later this, sorry, next week, Emily Byrne from the Joint Fiscal Office is gonna be presenting data to committees and probably to this committee as well, talking about all of the different potential incentive programs and ways that we're thinking about funding pre K, but no, right now, our foundation formula is not focusing on pre K in the same way that it is focused on K to 12 transformation. So, one of the major things that everyone is waiting on is our understanding of what the cost is and what the options are for how to move or work with a foundation formula related to Pre K. The last piece I want to name for this group is really thinking about how we prioritize equitable access. So, yes, we have great UPK, we have a universal program, there are still areas of the state where kids are not able to access pre K, and we really need to prioritize those. And, you know, I know that there are other bills like S-two 14, and others really focus on thinking about that service delivery and how we can provide access. So happy to come in and talk more about those areas. I'm gonna pause to allow any other questions because I know we're out of time and just note that there is so much more data, qualitative data, from the last five years that we've captured, and I'll just quickly screen share, but it's also on your slides that were sent. These are the pre school, sorry, the PEIC's recommendations that we were a part of, and what we have is qualitative data that specifically says, here's what's working, here's what partners want you to know about this system, and here's some problem solving that we still need to do. So, I'm happy to come in at other times once you're tackling pre k and talk more about that, And another day I will show you how to use the data portal or come in and talk

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: about that. Yeah, we've actually, I think it's interesting to have you back. One of the things I'd like to talk about if you had more time is that issue about rural Vermont. I've seen some materials that suggest that while we're doing better overall, it's actually getting worse in rural areas. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'd like to explore that at some point and make sure. And you raised the issue at the end. So that'd be really interesting to talk

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: about Yeah. Would be great. I would love to come back in and talk about, again, the areas of the state where we're doing really well and where we have some good Yep. To

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: should be coming back.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No. Have you back. It sounds like we'll have you back sooner rather than later. A lot of it's got I think a lot of

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: it's It's more if you can answer the question.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Frankly, I'm trying to be respectful of the people on a Friday afternoon. Thank you. I'm glad everybody's feeling very tired of the problem too.

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: Yeah, thank you all for having me.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, we'll be back soon.

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: Happy to

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: okay. So we keep there modal information sheets available. So, we're now on to the stakeholders. They can just

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: The doctor was 03:00. Oh. Scheduled.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, see, this is the one that's when

[Dr. Morgan Crossman (Executive Director, Building Bright Futures)]: I mean, I was with you.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Two 45. Oh. You know what? Don't know if I know the answer for you. No. That's too bad. I hope I'm starting to go about 02:49. Well, hopefully, I'll a break for a few minutes. Thank