Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We're live.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're live, back after a very short break,

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: switching gears once again. And this time,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we spend time with John Adams the director from the Center of Geographic Information Agency of General Services. We had a little introduction to this a few weeks ago in a joint hearing but I wanted to just bring turn into some marketing so we can all make sure we have a real deal for the capabilities if to extent we look at that, again, to think about how things the way the land. So I just, a way, almost redo that a little bit of what it did before, but then to have, it looked awful for us to ask questions.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So with that, I'll put you on.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Great. Hi again, I'm John Adams, director of the Center for Geographic Information, part of the Agency of Digital Services, and I think I sent over a slide deck, and I will share my screen here. So I will go over some of the mapping tools I went over in the short hearing, but before doing that, I thought I'd just step back, give a very, very quick high level overview of the Vermont Center for Geographic Information. In case you're not familiar with, we were established back in as part of Act 200 in 1988, and our purpose has remained the same throughout that time, and that's been to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy for the development use of a geographic information system. We are part of the agency of digital services and service all different agencies, but also coordinate across different levels of government and work with municipalities, academia, and have a fairly broad constituency user base. So what is a geographic information system, GIS? It's essentially a computerized system of where we manage information and its relatable location on the earth, and once we get multiple spatial datasets, we can create map layers, and they can combine into a system, so it's going match layering on top of each other different pieces of information like where our roads are, rivers, water bodies, buildings, what we do or what's our role here, kind of put it into three buckets. This is a simplified sort of picture of what our duties are in statute. We build those foundational data sets, what we call our spatial data infrastructure, and that includes things like aerial imagery, elevation data, statewide tax parcel data. We believe the use development of the GIS, so there are elements of governance and cat herding there where we're trying to coordinate folks and make sure we follow the same data standards and things work together, and then we work to empower folks to access that data and visualize it, so build tools that are easy to use and make that information useful. You go back to our first annual report from 1992. Yeah. Is Corferso. Is a Featured

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: for the end of that.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Bruce Westcott, our first director of BCGI on a call in show here on Orca media. In 1992, we had 107 people fill out catalog orders, and we sent them our state database, which fit on these 12 floppy disks, 17 megabits in size, but a lot of hard work and forward thinking people back then. Today, we have, with 23 partners, published over 1,000 data sets and had over a billion map server requests, and we see around 100,000 unique IP addresses every month hitting our servers. So it's gone from this very niche technical thing to a basic government service. Jeez, can we put a tax on that? Everyone uses it. We don't send out floppy disks anymore. You can access our data similar to what you most people access movies these days. Sort of street, you can stream the data online, like in Netflix or Maps. You can view it, most people do view it in our aggregates and applications, and we federate data from municipal and regional levels and different agencies and make it all available in a single place. If you're interested in seeing sort of what that looks like or some other use cases here, there's a link to our year review with 40 or so examples of how this technology is used across state governments. And I'll transition now to the Act 73 tools that we had built in support of the school redistricting task force. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, these tools, the majority of them, were actually built before the first meeting of the task force, looking at the timeline that they had and the legislation, we thought it would be best if we put something together to present to them when they did meet that they could either give us feedback or use those tools immediately. So these will tell the majority of them back earlier in the summer.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. So, like, for your you got a tool where you can actually check, like, bus routes and distances and times that we saw last week. Yeah. How'd you get that data? Did people ask specifically for it at some point?

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Bus routes, we don't have. Okay. Drive time was one that was requested and that is worked on to do to build the dam for the redistricting task force. Specifically, we have what we call a routable road network, and we can configure different parameters. So, drive time, we used Tuesday and January, it used bus telemetry, so buses to estimate speed and then create these drive times from the schools, create those areas. I'll show you that application first. Well, do, I have three here. Think of them as like the district builder, so one that lets you create districts and look at various metrics from whatever configuration you've created. One is the Explorer, so this is one that has a lot of different layers in it, and it lets you look up or see different information about schools, school districts, and anything else you may be interested in, and then the drive time mapper. This was our school district filter, all built with open source technology, and this is accessible to anyone, so anyone can see exactly how we built this, everything can go into and free to, like, make a copy of it and create their own version of it if they're interested in it.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: How long, when you take the time to build build Bonebeats, how long does it take? We give you parameters and or they obviously gave you parameters. How long does it take an individual to get it set up so I can start using parameters that you have, just for knowledge, you said you

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: could complete. Yeah, I guess it depends on what

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: when they answer for this, for the distance, drive a timer's map, how long did it take somebody to sit down and build that so they could go in and use it? Yeah,

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: that application was interesting. That probably took us maybe around a week of time. It took a lot, there was a lot of processing involved there, so we pre processed the data, then we tried to figure it out, figure out a way to make it available in a web application. But some of these things, like the School District Explorer, if you wanted us to add a layer, for example, that's not there, you know, agency of transportation maintenance districts or something like that. That we could do in a matter of minutes, add that and make it available so you could visualize some of these other things that could take longer. So this is the district builder. I think one of the key things to Oregon understand about this is we used municipalities, so towns, as the base unit, the building blocks. So we have the ADM, the student enrollment by town, and from that, we can aggregate those out to create the different districts. One quick note here, we did simplify the TAM boundaries in the application, so if you were to see a point in and notice something maybe like a little slightly off, we did that just for the performance as an application, but these aren't the precise app boundaries in the application. So, you can have screenshots of it here to leave you with. I can do a live demo of it also after if you're interested in. I will note that you can toggle on schools in this app, and if you click the different types of schools, you can filter them on the map so they can decide which type of school you'd like to show there. If you were to select one of the districts and then start clicking on towns, those get added to that district you selected, select a different one, then start clicking on towns, and you notice those change colors there, toggle down the district and you'll see what schools are included in those, in whatever districts you've created along with their facilities condition index and their enrollment. If you're not interested in just starting from scratch or blank, you can, we have a few preconfigured districts in the app, if you look in the dropdown here, we have county, school board association, regions, superintendent association, CTE regions, and regional planning commissions. So if you were to select those, it would assign towns to those different districts, then use that, and then add another district to create them or change however you'd like. Each dot, if you were to select and click over to the Supervisory Unions tab, each dot represents a tab, and you can see the tab and what surprise reunion it exists in. This might be helpful to say to see this example, it's showing, like, the the Bennington Rutland SU Regional Planning Commission would have split that as you see your chance, for example. So at a glance, you can see if any have been split.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Oh, so you're saying that if you did that one on the RBC regions, you'd end up dividing some existing districts. Correct. Okay, so that's interesting.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's interesting to have that capability to show, yeah.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Yeah. You can you can then quickly see or scan down, and when you see dots of different colors in the SUs, that means you have a town. You have an SU that has towns that have different districts. Each, let's see, in terms of saving this work or sharing it, there are a couple different ways to do it. The simplest way is to, when you go, you can find more, you can hit copy shareable link and you will get a long URL, and that contains basically instructions on how, if you were to send that to someone or reopening it, it sends instructions to the application to tell it, open it, exactly how this user had the state of it when they clicked on copy shareable link. And then another way is to click on CSV assignments, and that will download a table with a list of the towns and then what district you've assigned it to, and that's probably a more stable way to do it if you spend a lot of time on a particular map, that would be the safest way to download it onto your hard drive, then you could import it back into the application if you get on board, hit import, just drag that file over and reopen the same way that that you that you figured in what those look like. So you can see that that URL can be pretty long and ugly there, and the table example of the fields that that can download in there if you were to hit CSV assignments. If you were to click generate report, things get aggregated up into different charts and tables, including the average date of membership, the grant list, per student, other information, the ten year change, the public schools by type, SEI categories, and whether or not your supervisory meetings are intact. If you keep scrolling down, you select different districts that you've created and what they're those profiles would be including total grand list, the breakdown by accounts served, school information. So that's the district builder. I can run through the school explorer, but maybe I'll stop to see if there are any questions about the district builder.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: What I don't I can go to the website, but what I don't see okay. So the orange is CT. I was looking in the schools for CT.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So, look at orange the orange dots, CT. Right? Mhmm. Dots. Yep.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Yeah. So this on the screen is the Explorer map. This is the one that lets you visualize different types of map layers. When you open it by default, it's just the the schools and the the tab batteries that show up. If you were to just click on a school, then you would see some information about that school pop up in the information tab automatically there. Go to the, select the map layers tab, you'll see this long list of different layers you can toggle on. So, school districts, for example, and there are a number of different overlays that you have school districts that could be, you can have two or three that are overlapping. It can be challenging to visualize those so that there are overlays with hatching that show that, and then if you were to select, just click on one of those on the map, you'll see, it gives you information on the town as well as the district, you can see if there are multiple districts, and the supervisory union, if you were to talk about other layers, you can see related information, Information was related to those layers. And, yeah, these are, most of these were front layers requested by the school redistricting task force, but the committee had any interest in seeing anything that's not there, that exists, it is pretty easy for us to add to this.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Population data is for, so I'm gonna speak, how are

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: you doing this? Yes, these are population distributions, so each point represents a search number of people going from two to 30 at a very high resolution.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Let me ask a question. I'm curious just because it's come up so much. Are you

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: are you

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: able to I don't know how this would actually be visually represented, but choice towns and where they send their kids.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: I'm not sure. I'd have to look into that. We do have Some of that data, I think, is I have available in the table and then figuring out how to show it on the map so that it's not just

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And we could just say, like, nine through 12 because I think it gets really complicated if you're trying to say, okay, they have, like, elementary school, but not middle school, etcetera. Like, where do people send high school students from chance?

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Some of this maybe I can have. And I know sometimes, like, this some of these definitions can be challenging. They may differ from these different people, so, like, a drug. So Yeah. I did put on

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Non operating or high school. Yeah.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: For example, we had there was a request to see the towns for, like, the forest, the cabins where those are coming from. So this is showing you from those schools where how many students by tab, I think there might have been a threshold or a cutoff, like there had to be more than two students or something, or I can't remember what we used here. So these lines are showing, for example, for Bergen Academy, the thickness

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of the Ah.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: If you click on it, it should tell you.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It's really interesting.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: But with Londonderry to burn their head.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: 92.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Can you scroll up?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It just That part part way up to see. Yeah.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Well, that's And it went about way

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: up in the corner. This

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: is just the four.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I'm sorry. Sorry. Oh,

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: so we can't see any other high school.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Is the request was to see previous school or I don't know. If you wanted to do every high school, that's. Not

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: every high school, but every high school that receives tuition dollars, but it's a good fit there. If

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: we had it, we could try to put it on a map. Maybe tore it out. It doesn't exist. No. 19

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: schools that are still eligible to receive. Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Actually, most

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: most tuition gets go to public schools.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Actually curious about I guess that's true. Like, I'm curious about is is where the choice school students go. Like, if the Rutland test nine, we would see a huge lag from Like,

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: much of Grand Isle Yeah. Is is not is not operating.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Exactly. And thus gets almost all good posts.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. And we know, like, they were getting emails. Right? Two of the towns probably go more to Franklin and two of the towns go more to Chittenden. So I don't know if there's a way to see that. Like, the not I was more curious about the non operating districts and where they sent students for high school, not necessarily the independent schools and where they get students from.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Yeah, think so. So you can't control. Deferred it to her

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: and Yeah.

[Ruth Durkee (Agency of Education)]: Yeah, I believe we provided data to that extent to the task force last fall. I don't know if it all got incorporated in the mapping tool, but I think that data does exist, though.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Last fall?

[Ruth Durkee (Agency of Education)]: This past fall, yeah.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: To who?

[Ruth Durkee (Agency of Education)]: To the redistricting task force. So yeah. So I think that file exists on the interactive data website. So you can always look at the data. It's not visualized. Thankfully, it should be on there.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. Yeah. So, like, not necessarily gonna ask

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: you to do that, but

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think that'd be very interesting. If we weren't I mean, that those are the kinds of emails we're getting from people who are saying these maps make decisions for us that don't reflect our current patterns, right, from Grand Isle. We've been hearing that. So In essence. Yeah. So if we were to look at maps at all in the future, I think we would need to know where those choice towns are sending most of their students now.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: So, yeah, we can we can happy to look into what's available and if we

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: can put it on the path.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, that's an interesting question.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: And then finally, the last application we had created was the the DriveTime Explorer. And this so you can look at it from two perspectives. You can look at it from the perspective of the school, you can select a school and then you can set a max drive time, and then it will go out and show you an estimated number of student age population broken out by each town and then the drive time for those estimated students. We don't have the actual location addresses of students. So what we did was we used the number of town and then using the number one addresses, distributed like a fraction of a student to to come up with the estimates.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Looks like something from the huddle screen. And

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: then and then in this application, if you toggle that show housing unit density, it'll where those areas where it's brighter, that's where you have concentrations of. We're inoculation. We're in cycle. This would be selected Twinfield. And then if you look at it from the TAM perspective, here I selected Plainfield as an example. Set that price tag, then you can see how far different schools are for your population. Got the tab tab right here. See, most people are within that ten minute ten minute. I think you could feel that you can scroll down and see other schools, small, so on and so forth, and it would be the breakdown of the estimate by school there. I also there was request for some eleven by 17 existing districts and supervisory unions. Try to make it as legible as possible on those those paper ones. There there are links to the 11 by 17, but on the last slide here, I also included links to PDFs for larger scale maps and not necessarily the idea that you would print them, but if you open these, you could zoom in and these have additional details like school. And there's a version that also has average annual daily traffic, so that's what these orange lines are, as well as areas of higher elevation. So those aren't on the 11 by 17. That would have been looked too cluttered or hard to read, but I did add links to those if you wanted a static map or a PDF that had all the existing districts, all the existing test units, and a few more details there. I will note when you open the SU one, for example, supervisory groups, those that are showing supervisory union and supervisory districts, the titles that that just so often, the only thing that does also include the supervisory district.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Can you break those supervisory unions out, boys and girls, so sort of look at them into their jewelry? The

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: it's separated out the supervisory unions from the supervisory districts?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, from the map. So if you wanna look at it, one issue, what's in it, as far as the the schools and the towns that support it, just blow it up. Right?

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: In this for this case in this case, you would just yeah. You could just do it because you went to it. Okay. On the school school district explorer as well, you could just just go to it on time. And

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: you're available as we need to. And

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: I'm available. You can also ask legislative counsel if you have other questions. We're happy to coordinate with them as well if they're dealing with different committees. So feel free to reach out to me or to council. Yes.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Following the last time you briefed, I think it was in joint committees. Went in and exercised these tools and I found them incredibly intuitive, and extremely beneficial. So I appreciate the refresher. Thank you for your adversities. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. I

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: like your.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Are you invited to the?

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: This is my great grandfather's curling club in Lenoxville, Quebec. Oh, Quebec. 1943.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: John, are you related to the Greeneks' Drama?

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: I I am not. Oh, shit. My my grandmother did try to claim that once, but her story didn't.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Everybody's doing well. Okay. Switching gears once again.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Next, again, Doctor. Hughes. We're gonna

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: take a first look. We had one

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: secretary's proposal for a CTD proposal, and we sent Senator Robinson to Mr. Saul, who we have S-three 13 that that came out of support with the. And I think you're gonna introduce it.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Do you

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: want me

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: to sit at the end?

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Sure.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. We'll be a little more formal than than how things were in economic development. Like, good. We have a couple. And for men. Yep. Empathy.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: We introduce ourselves. Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: There it is. I do that.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It is the journey of, like, two feet, but it does feel very different. For the record, senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale, a member of this committee, and importantly, a member of senate economic development with senator Weeks who I will not be offended if he is looking at other things because we heard this presentation this morning. I think to you know, I'm I'm glad to hear it sounds like the two chairs of jurisdiction are coordinating on career technical education because without that, it can really fall between committees of jurisdiction in a lot of ways. And so what we tried to achieve over the summer and fall was getting stakeholders together that I think some more of their locus of where they commonly sit is in economic development, employers, practitioners, trades folks, etcetera. And some more traditionally come into this committee, the actual CTE directors and the district leaders that try to work with them to give students these options and seedless pathways. I think what everyone would recognize is that we have a shared set of problems. There's a there are variations on the same theme if you go around the state, that space, staffing, resources, and and kind of other tangible factors limit the ability of our CTE centers to serve all the students they would like to serve. And if our middle schools particularly are not equipped or supported to offer exposure, then it's really uneven how students might learn that they have these CTE options and that they have this access. We had Ruth Durkey participate from the Agency of Education. We traveled first to the Hannaford Center. That was our first meeting. We went to River Valley in Springfield. We went to Hyde Park. We went to St. Johnsbury, and I was really glad to see Stafford on our committee's trip that we took to Rutland. So, in fact, I think some of the CTEs that I spend the least time in are the ones in my own county. But, you know, we try to get a flavor of a lot of different ways CTE is delivered and the challenges there. What you see written here, I would largely give credit to Tom Cheney from Advanced Armament and Seth Boudin from Vermont Business Roundtable. By the way, we were three years in a row at UVM. Seth Boudin was the student body president before I was, and then Tom Cheney was the year after me, and I helped him get his first job in the State House, so a little bit of career pathway development for all of us as well. I think we're really grateful to be still be working with each other. This is this is representative of what we could all endorse for the most part. Would say everyone's probably still gonna come in and say this feels still highly aspirational and they would need a lot of support to get here, But, you know, that we wanted to create a vision statement that has a little bit of of a of specificity at the end. I will just name two things that really struck us throughout, and you'll you'll see this actually more formalized in other states' work to address career technical education. I think I first learned that this is kind of this is articulated in in Oregon's career technical work, which is pretty advanced at this point. They've had a lot of formal meetings about it. And they look at it as kind of a forty forty twenty model. We, in the last generation, I would say, like, as somebody who everyone said you have to go to a four year college or you will never earn a dime, that you will, you know, be a failure, we have counted the the we have made our entire model nowadays around the model of kids going to get a two and four year degree. In Vermont, that's forty percent of our students, and that isn't a failure. That's the forty percent that probably do need a two or four year degree to go into the fields where that level of academic rigor is required. Another 40% need a certification. They need training in the trades. They need some kind of career technical pathway in order to be able to find meaningful work. And twenty percent of students generally don't need more formal education after high school to go into their chosen field and to be successful in that realm. We can sort of map this with the Vermont's most promising jobs, and, you know, you could take an eight week course at something and be quite successful. But, you know, you can also, hopefully, when you're 16, potentially get access to apprenticing as an electrician. That's what, you know, we heard a lot about students who said, please get out of my way because if I can start apprenticing now, by the time I'm 21, 22, I can get my journeyman's license, and by the time I'm in my late twenties, I can have my own business in the trades. And they really said get out of our way, which was nice that they chucked there. The other data point that struck us is something I mentioned when we were talking about mental health, that really we should start looking at middle school as a time when students don't have to have their lives figured out. They don't even have to have their lives figured out when they're 18. But if they don't feel like they're on a path that is leading somewhere, they start to lose hope and they start to disengage. And most CTE programs start in ninth or tenth grade. And what we heard reported from student after student is that they really had to advocate for themselves to access those programs. It's it's not only not a guarantee, but there are ways that they feel like barriers were put in their way to accessing the program that they wanted. That all said, there you know, everyone at the table, people in academic centers and technical centers, were committed to this system working better for kids. It was nobody's fault that the system has kind of become this way. I think that that preamble kind of covers the intent language here or the findings, I should say. And then the rest is intent language. I'll just point out a couple of things because it it highlights things that came out in committee before we turn to Beth. You know, to me, the really critical thing we drive for between now and maybe a future state I mean, I think if you start to dream big and have this conversation, you all end up in the same place of comprehensive CTEs, which is schools where a student, regardless of their grade, regardless of their trajectory after high school, could take a a shot class, can take an automotive class, can take a performing arts class and explore careers in performing arts. We definitely saw that represented in Saint Johnsbury where where students could explore like they would on a college campus before having to make decisions about what to do with their life. So I think you even heard that echoed in AOE's presentation that if we can get to a future state of regional high schools that have where we kind of incentivize career technical education to be built in, the students are a lot better off. The districts aren't fighting over funding that student. There's not a transportation barrier, etcetera. In most of the CTEs that have been developed recently or redeveloped, you see them do their very best to co locate with their high school anyway. The question is, like we saw in Rutland a little bit, is can they go down both sides of the hallway all four years of their education? Right? There is a hallway connecting Rutland High School and Stafford to exemplary institutions, but you have to commit to four years at Stafford to attend. And that's, you know, simply not that's a hard choice to make when you're 14 years old, frankly. So as we move toward that future state, the question is, what what goals are we trying to imbue into all of our transformation efforts so that we're moving more towards students having universal access? No wait lists, no denials, no being told you're not good enough for a career technical education because that's probably an equal or greater number of our students want that, and they're being told at a very young age they have behavioral issues or they're on their own for transportation or something that means this doesn't become an option for them, and we lose that potentially. One of the things I'd love for us to explore that I think is squarely education policy question is whether or not EQ the EQS standards that are being proposed work at all for CTE education or c I should say CTE since that is correct check of education. You Jason Gingold from Montpelier High School, high high school principal at Montpelier used to be the director of the CTE. He will tell you, as he started to, he really worries about some of the time requirements rather than proficiency requirements for how you would achieve those educational quality standards because those time requirements are not gonna work for CTE students. Jay Ramsey, another good person to talk to who has gone from agency of education to Department of Labor, who would say, we are if we are losing kids after 16, then why don't we just help them graduate after 16 with what they need at CTE and not require that they keep going back to a school that they don't otherwise feel connected to, to meet their graduation requirements. So you'll see in here that the goal ultimately is to either have a comprehensive CTE or let those kids be free to meet their education requirements in a flexible way with their CTE to graduate high school after the age of 16. It's actually funny in a way. We talked this morning about transportation being such a big barrier, and I brought up something that apparently your committee this committee that I've talked about last biennium, which is driver's education. From where I sat as chair of economic development and talking as transportation committee, driver's education is a huge barrier in the state. It's one of our unfunded mandates that we should figure out a way to fund and support. We have a bill on the wall that actually Dave Sharp, former chair of house education, emailed me about because I even have issues with the idea of online instruction training for for educators at driver's education. But I hope we can use it as a starting point to talk about driver's education because there's probably no bigger barrier to a student getting to a CTE center or getting to a place of employment than being able to drive. And we are really diminishing our capacity to offer that mandate of after 15 years of age that you have driver's educational instruction. So that came up in the transportation realm. I think the last sentence of the bill is supposed to say education transformation process, not education transportation process. That's probably on me for not reading that closely enough. And I think another very concrete thing that might be this committee's responsibility versus economic development, and I leave that up to the chairs to discuss, is a huge barrier is the pay scale and the hiring practices in CTE. They are largely tied to the same practices as the academic centers, and they're trying to attract practitioners who, number one, could make a lot more money as an engineer out in the field. They do this out of love, but at some point, they have to make significant financial decisions, and they face requirements that may not make sense for the kinds of courses they're trying to teach and the expertise they're trying to offer. So those are some of the real specifics I hope come out of this, but, you know, we wanted to start with language that didn't make anybody feel completely left out or unheard because our CTEs are doing the best job they can with the students they can reach, and I hope we remain committed to ensuring universal CTE access in the very near term and make this a priority for such. Any feedback from this morning? I think I tightened it up. I think you tightened away. Yeah. I know. This morning, I was kinda waking up.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. This is a hack too.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah. Exactly. Thank you. Buttery.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: It's like anything you wanna do at Cookery.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: That's right. That's right.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So this is all about this quiver is about just creating this direction, intensive direction.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yes. I would I would say so. And I think if we endorse this direction, it should inform the other work we do, whether, frankly, it's mapping or fixing transportation or or addressing other things. But like anything in education reform, every district built their own model, and some of it's working and some of it's not, and they all need different help to be more universal.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So you're really talking ideally, you're

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: really talking about the Saint Johnsbury model?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Like, I don't wanna, you know, offend anybody, but that is the value I see of a regional high school. You know, every time I feel like you're able to visit like, you know, we saw it at CVU. They're starting to build their own CTP on campus. They were building a house when we were there. They have a shop. They have welding.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: That's the same thing because those kids can go can those kids go in and out? Yeah. At a time. Right?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Exactly. Yeah. So that's working there. What you're talking about is working there.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I would say so even though they if if somebody wants to do more, they still struggle. Right? Like, I just learned that South Burlington tried to send four HVAC students to Essex and they all got denied.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Because they didn't just have capacity. I believe that.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Wonder why. We need HVAC people. So right. So the economic development issue is from the the demand side. Like Yeah. Employers are begging us to solve this sooner than later.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So these are all inherent problems we've all discussed and seen ourselves with CT. What's the mechanism for it? I

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: mean, out of our group, I was I tried to name some of the specific things that are universal barriers, the pay scale, the lack of flexibility. Where I would differ with AOE is that if our goal ultimately is to have regional high schools, first of all, I would say if we do anything with school construction or any type of consolidation, that it be nudging schools towards having a regional high school that has the land. Yeah. We do have bills. I know. It's always fun. I think we have to make it less fun. Is it a committee bill?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Oh, shit. What come by you? How about that? 161. 161. We don't have a printed yet. It's so true.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: 161.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. And you have a committee report on it? You have amendment to it. Yeah. Okay.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. It's a Swai House. Should

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I check back in a few minutes? Okay. I can, you know, let me, probably go get a scan. Okay, I'll come back in like fifteen minutes. Perfect. I'll be back in fifteen

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: minutes. Thank you.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah. Sorry. So school construction and the foundation formula and governance, I see as areas where we could drill down and start to say start to make hard decisions and say, we're going to allow high schools to start to construct their own CTE facilities, but they're gonna continue to get, like, some hard skills that require warehousing space at Essex instead of, you know, on their own campus. But if if we are gonna use construction dollars or even bonding capacity and support to help create high schools in the future, I believe we should set some parameters, and I believe those should include comprehensive CTE or recognize that they might already have an incredible CTE facility really close by, but there cannot be those waitlists. There cannot be those denials, and what do we need to make sure that doesn't happen? So there's really technical things like like three year rolling, you know, averages for for students to help places like Hannaford that are working on building up their capacity, all the way to the big vision of like, let's let's make school construction in the future contingent upon CTE and let's figure out really at our middle schools what they all need to provide that exposure evenly. I was sympathetic to the secretary wanting to hold on to the Perkins funds and figure out a way to distribute them evenly. But, you know, those are hard thought for the CTEs and the districts to do as much exposure work as they can in middle school. And so without listening to our CTEs about what they need to replace those dollars, for example, or what middle schools need to replace those dollars, it'd be hard to just intercept the money. The money comes with really significant reporting pressures, etcetera, that drive how they spend the rest of their money. At the same time, our academic centers are very reluctant to let students go, and so they're probably okay if a CTE says we can't take that student because of middle school behavioral issues. Yeah,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: so, Nirshan.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Yes, to wrap this, I agree with everything in this and I appreciate it. I'm not at all trying to sound facetious but. Thank you. So, I.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, what's of the findings? It's

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: findings and legislative intent. So, why a bill instead of senate resolution that says the same thing or a joint resolution? Why does this a bill?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Couldn't be a question for Beth in a way. I think there was a timing issue. Like, I just I said, Beth, wanna create, like, a comprehensive regional high schools with CTEs built in. And she was like, well, let's start here because that would I I I would like us to spend time with those CTE directors and some of the stakeholders, even students, to say what is really in their way. And I could get very specific depending on the direction and talk about the pay scales, the educational quality standards. In fact, you heard the board of education's waiting for us to

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: So so this is like a kind of a starting place A marker. So that we can

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I hope we can But Yeah? Got it.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. So that weeks ago, I've been here for this is our third session. Fourth session. And they and the the CTE directors that come in and testified, they talk every day. They they have the they they have the answers to fix the problems. They just need they need our support to make the policy. That's right. So Yeah. Sometimes we would be better off to let them come to us and say this should probably fix it.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: They have all

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And this is what we need from you to get it done.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: They've literally been reading this since it came out. They've sent the

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Documents. Many of them have also have also sent reactions to the AOE proposal. And I personally don't think that's a valuable use of our time to keep reacting to proposals that don't work for them. It's simply to get them in and say, how would you make this work? How would you get to mean, if if AOE had the same goal of of comprehensive regional cooperative CTE, then we should be asking them how to get there. Because intercepting all the money and giving 75,000,000 to AOE and starting a new board, I don't think is the middle path to that.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think AOE only got one one FTE dedicated to CTE also.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: They have more than one. Yeah. There was a handful

[Ruth Durkee (Agency of Education)]: of physicians that would have recommended for that Yeah.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah. And and Ruth Durkey would probably love to come in, and I would love for her to say, here's how I can do some of these things and here's how I cannot. But then it is, it probably does become a capacity and oversight question of do you have a wait list and why? And who's on that wait list and how do you tell them they have other options?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, because went to the Haniffer Center and they had

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: the capacity they didn't have students. Exactly.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah so because I asked the questions if 200 seats were vacant.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: If if they magically got filled would you have enough instructors to take care of? She said, yes. Yeah. So that that's an inherent problem.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. And that's you know, so so I'll tell a story I told this morning. It was really valuable to hear from the students. Right? Like and we found that in the academic centers as well. If you understand the barriers through their eyes, it it feels solvable. One student from Southern Addison County essentially said he applied to Stafford and was denied, not waitlisted, but denied for welding because he had behavioral issues in middle school. When someone asked, why didn't you apply to the Hannaford Center? He said, I was, like, 15 years old. I thought I just got rejected from CTE. I didn't know that there's two centers. So when they came in last year I mean, this was not my passion until until the CTEs came in and for better or worse that, like, well, we tell kids they're on their own if they if there's not a place at that program or if they're, you know, can't get transportation to another program. And that crushed me to tell kids at 14, 15, you're on your own if you finally figured out what you might wanna do with your life. And I think that's what the universal part means. Like, how are we spending as much time as we spend on the academic centers, on the for the technical centers to say this should be universal. There should be no rejections.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So should we hear from them?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Sure. Walker,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: nice to see you again.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Nice to see you.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: I'm not sure of that.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: That's Saint James, the office of legislative council. There are no short bills. Sorry. Would you like me to share my screen?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What do people I don't need it, but I think probably people are watching. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel)]: So you've already So this is S313 as introduced. You've already gotten a great kind of overview of the bill in general. I think Senator Ram Hinsdale has spoken to the findings pretty exhaustively. I would suggest we start with section two on page three, which and I'm gonna borrow this phrase that was used in economic development this morning, and that is that section two is like the challenge to you all. So it's all intent language and it begins to realize a strong career preparation system. It is the intent of the general assembly to transform Vermont's CTE system as follows, and then everything that follows is your challenge. Provide universal access to CTE, ensuring that every student can participate in CTE programming, including pre tech and foundation courses by increasing access to CTE in middle school and the first two years of high school, addressing barriers such as transportation, scheduling conflicts and awareness, providing consistency in admissions policies across all CTE centers, and ensuring that new students may be placed on a waitlist or prevented from accessing CTE when there is viable, when there is a viable alternative to a locally accessible program through the provision of transportation. The second challenge would be to enable flexible delivery models expanding beyond regional tech centers that offer multiple pathways for students to access CTE programming and graduate required high school courses by delivering programs attending high schools or in a hybrid format where appropriate to improve accessibility and utilizing shared resources and technology to improve educational access and limit transportation needs. We are on page four and line five. The third challenge would be to align the CTD system with workforce needs by designing and evaluating programs based on current and emerging Vermont labor market demands, to continue robust evaluation of the system through the comprehensive local needs assessment process, and utilize statewide research from Vermont's most promising jobs and VT labor market information to assess student outcomes and continuing through the workforce. The fourth challenge be to create a sustainable student centered funding system that removes disincentives for participation and supports program growth and innovation. Flexible delivery models and access must take into consideration, must be taken into consideration to ensure the sustainability of program delivery. The fifth challenge really gets to that regional high school concept that the sponsor was talking about, explore the viability and impact of CTE centers becoming a diploma conferring institutions or comprehensive high schools. In situations where this is not possible, high schools shall be required to award the credits recommended by CTE center. Sixth challenge is maintaining a strong adult CTE system by building robust adult and continuing education pathways within CTE that meet Vermont's upskilling, reskilling, and workforce aids while connecting seamlessly with secondary programs and regional workforce partners. Such a system shall have a governance and funding model that promotes coordination, quality, program consistency, and sustainability. Can I pause you there? So I'm guilty of treating adult education like an afterthought just like DTE. I think that's an afterthought. And I just wanna say what we heard, and I'm not even gonna represent it well, are that there are barriers for them even sharing space. Like, there there are adult education programs that are barred from using CTE centers in off hours. And I that blew my mind.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And did you say right?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel)]: There's, like, requirements that yeah. Depends on the CTE center. Exactly.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Because our staff are had to get some of their vacancies or seats that they needed. They actually allowed students to participate in these calls.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: They gave them credit.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel)]: I think it depends on their model, like, if they're half day or something, but we heard from people where, like, their daughter wants to use search space. That's so it's like, wow. Let's solve that. See if it's, long hanging fruit. And then the last challenge, seven on page five, line four, coordinate PPE governance by establishing governance approaches that strengthen collaboration across districts, improve consistency and program quality, and better support positive student outcomes. CTE governance should align with the ongoing education. I think we have all identified this should be transformation process with the above goals as the lens through which decisions are made. And that is the bill.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. Well, just just to comment back to your point about, you know, behavioral problems being a barrier. I think when when seeds are are not readily available and they have to be selective about it. Some of the technical centers tend to go with, you know, going through a scale of why people could would not make better Mhmm. Than somebody else. I I didn't say that well, but they have to be selective.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So if somebody's gonna be disruptive in the class and and somebody that's on the other side trying to get in isn't, then you have to be selective. Right.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And and so I think you heard me ask Stafford as directly as I could. Like

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: How do we get rid of the denials and the wait lists and keep your center excellent? Right. Right? Yes. One would think if they could see themselves moving towards being comprehensive, they could at least find a way for the excellent students at, you know, Rutland City High School to go down the hall and take exploratory classes for, you know, some classes that aren't their four year program without disrupting the quality for those students. So, you know, it just it felt like we are we are denying some kids CTE for four years. We're also denying some kids the ability to prove that they can, you know, become better. Right? Like, if someone judged me by my middle school behavior, I would not be here. You know? So that just struck me as, like, I would like to know more about that. And then that student is stuck in an institution that they may not feel good in. Right? They're still at their academic center not doing great. You know? I hear you, and I hear staff are just letting you get past that.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Are CT centers required to have IEPs and five zero four programs?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: That was a whole, like, shadow conversation, was that the flexible pathways have not been implemented fully. Like, if they had if they if they're being implemented fully, there wouldn't be an issue with students having to advocate for themselves. So what's what's broken?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Sort of. On page three, line six Attention. And seven, ensuring that every student can participate. I like the sounds of that, but it's, I think that opens you up that if you can get into trouble of, you were supposed to ensure my student should have been up to get into this, and then there were circumstances that they couldn't, but you said you had an insurer if there's different wording we can use to protect the the definition as well. Sure.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, this is you know, I also wrote the bill eight years ago, I think, now to stop suspending and expelling children under eight. Right? So there's a whole another layer, I think, of, like, dangerous behavioral, questions that might get someone suspended or expelled from an academic center, might also get them suspended or expelled from a career technical center. But let's also make sure there's equity there. Oh, definitely. Right? I know that obviously you could be holding like a weapon or something in CTE and that's different, but let's let's use the same standard of danger to others

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: of your behavior. And I was thinking more of when the class is just at capacity and you know, Right. You got the last person that decided two minutes or a day late they wanted get in, you said, this says I'm insured that I'm gonna be able to get into this program.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So we need, just to, like-

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah, mean- I hear

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: what you're saying, but we always need, always need that.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right, and I think, again, I hope people visit some of our CTEs and the comprehensive CTEs because, you know, I'm sure at St. John's Berry Academy, if you didn't do what you needed to do to sign up for, you know, the shop class or whatever, it's not like you could just show up and say, I'm I'm entitled to this. Right. Every school still gets to have their regular standards for enrollment. But yeah, sure, and Wordsmith.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I think the chapter being here for just a year, it's important that you I

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: do wanna say, this came up in the morning, Oregon and Massachusetts might be really good partners to talk to, states where they've really, really taken a look at CTE and CTE facilities and this continued pathway. And there are a lot of nonprofits in the country that help states figure out how to get from A to B and beyond in CTE because it's so important and we're losing the trade so quickly, so there's a lot of interest in helping states get CTE right.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So just thinking about further testimony for this bill

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Mhmm. Which is different than for the testimony for the whole issue Mhmm.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Possibly.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Are there

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: what's the committee's sense about kind of one vote that's in a 10 bill so it's fairly potentially fairly simple. But do we want to have some testimony in for a

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: couple of hours just to really drive home some of the challenges?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Are you saying before we set a direction for where we want to go with CTE?

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Well, yeah. I'm just thinking about that.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, right.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's a little different than what the second cohort is, what we might do otherwise throughout the rest of this year and we'll learn.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So we can either use this as a vehicle for really exploring CTEs We have all these sorts of fun. So I'm just thinking about

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: what's the what are the committee's thoughts about testimony?

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: How much how much would, yeah. Yeah. So I'm suggesting-

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So I, if you want my recommendation, Board of Education told us yesterday, they're waiting to see-

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. If

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: EQS, which frankly didn't include a lot of CTE participation at all, works for CTEs. And so I think as the Education Policy Committee, it's incumbent upon us to understand the EQS recommendations that are exist now for academic centers and see if we endorse that path for CTEs or who are exploring that path. I I think we should talk about regional high schools and asking further, you know, any high schools that are looking at bonding and construction, that if they want to be incented with state dollars of any kind, that they look at becoming comprehensive CTE, and I think we look at the pay scale and the whole HR issue that CTE's faced.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, so I understand all those issues. I'm thinking more narrowly about this. So we could use this as a vehicle for spending a lot of time on CTE, that's one path. The other is what testing do we need for this?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. So is there some way we can include this in as the vehicle of acceptance for you? Well, that's, I think your partial suggestion.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: That's, yeah, that's, that might be great, but- Yeah,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: understandable. Yeah. So,

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: so maybe, I mean, I think it took it took me some educating about, like, we have four CTE models. This proposes two. There's even problems there because there's the half day, and, you know, all of the superintendents who've already talked to us could tell us all the barriers they're having making sure their kids could get CTE, and all those CTE directors can probably bring up other thing. The the common themes we heard were that the graduation requirements living with the academic center meant that the student is caught in the middle for their last two, you know, two or more years of high school, and they might just drop out at that point. We heard from students that have to take a class online and go nights to do this, and that's, like, really hard to ask a 15, 16 year old. So I can think of a lot of barriers we could explore. I could write language for all of these things. So it's not just aspirational. It's more specific, but it would help if the committee had a shared understanding about the problems we're trying to solve.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Senator Weeks. Yeah, to your question, I think that we shouldn't take CTE in a silo. I certainly fully respect I the think that we should be reacting to how to make Act 73 effective, which includes CTEs, so a lot of this language can be can guide us. But I think to Senator Williams' point or question, what vehicle are we going to be massaging for the next couple months to get to an end product by the end of the session?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I'll just say, if you wanted me to tell all of the employer groups and, you know, different trades folks who are begging us to fix this, to fix it, I mean We all did it. So- Yes. So, right, that's happening in economic development potentially, because it's the employer side. I think we should spend a lot of time on this. I'll just say that, that's my bias. I don't see anything that much more important.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't think anybody's saying we shouldn't. The question I think that's in the air right now is what vehicle do we use to make, to to affect this type of change? And I think right now, again, what I'm asking you know in a form of a question if not this vehicle three thirteen what vehicle are we going to focus on for the next couple of months because I really don't know.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I, that's, so I think what we're, I think what I'm hearing is maybe we don't necessarily try to get this out per se immediately as much as we use it

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: as a framework for thinking about the larger issue in connection with incorporated with that issue or

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: things like that. Right. Okay.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: And how are you getting on that part of

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah. If I can stop talking, but, I mean, what I think so what I saw coming last year from commerce was largely what I think our group wrestled with for the last six months and kind of was not necessarily reflected in what you saw per pay a week. The the APA Consulting, their original contract was for CTV and their report, if we want to go back to that, where they talked to a lot of CTE stakeholders around the state, basically said, you should choose between cooperative regional districts where CTE becomes a part of the district or have a CTE district. I think our group spent a lot of time understanding why the CTEs felt divided on that question. But then, you know, the the kind of break the breakthrough moment was, does that solve any problems either way? If kids still have to get their graduation get their diploma from the academic center and they can't get it from the CTE. Like, what does that mean for EQS and all the other academic standards? And so then we saw a new proposal from AOE, frankly, that was more of a other thing that looked like a district, kind of. But if I think the question is, are we endorsing a future state with comprehensive CTE where students have a seamless experience on and off campus to access career technical education.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So, okay, let's follow-up. So what you might wanna do then is just bring in some testimony about the possible various possibilities for direction that I land on one.

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: Mhmm.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And then that guide the harm against me. Okay. Okay.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think what the employers and other stakeholders kept trying to bring the group back to was, but does it solve any of the problems, right? If we just talk about regional or statewide,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I think Senator we still have Weeks is right. We all get it. Yeah. And

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: so the question is, it's not so much educating the committee about why we need to fix it, but how we fix it. I think we'll pass the point of recognition.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. We're past the point of why, but then we spent the whole time on how and endorsed and and and I know people will disagree, but I felt that we should look to endorse two models instead of have four, basically. That we should go from having the existing four models that get kids caught up.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So, I think that's a discussion we can have as we move into

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So, that's all I'm saying, is maybe we start with understanding what's not working about four models and how we might loop to two if we're gonna be really concrete. Okay.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That, that

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: makes sense. So I

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: think this guy's written is, is very well written.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thank you,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Concert, it's a component of the bigger issue. Yeah. Which is act 73, how do we fit it

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: in? Right.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And I think that that's the CTEs are working on this as far as the industry goes as we as we speak.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So probably

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: once we get the get the policy set for act 73 Right. This will fit right into.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right, I don't even know how it fits into the foundation formula. Honestly, I think we said try to think about a CTE foundation formula. You mean in Act 73 or in this bill? Did we empower the group that hopefully is getting hired soon to look at that? There was intent language about transforming the CTE system this year and then the report back, you're getting a report back on the foundation formula in general and updating the weights, and I believe there was direction in there about CTEs, so let me confirm that. I think that's the only thing about CTEs in Act 73 right now, so if we want to merge them together, I'm happy to do that. It's just that the EQS and other things did not contemplate the CTEs at all. The Internet is very slow. I'm I'm waiting for the page to open. Anyone has a paper copy of that,

[John Adams (Director, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Agency of Digital Services)]: that paper.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm glad.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Anyway, there's no writing of that. Somebody does.

[Ruth Durkee (Agency of Education)]: I actually already have X-three up on my computer.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Oh, that's so fine. I think it's coming up, but if you can find the I think it's 4645, 45A. 45A is right. Oh my goodness, look at that. Thank you. Look at that teamwork. Okay, so in Act 73, Section 45A, page 89 requires JFO to contract for recommended updates to the Cost Factor Foundation Formula, which is what Act 73 creates. It specifically asks about moving from special education weights based on disability categories. Yep. How to account for the provision of career and technical education with Vermont's foundation formula? That's specifically asked for in the report back, and you all are getting that on or before December year. So, do you like, is someone able to say if the group's been hired? Who's gonna do that? That's a question for JFO, and I believe they are in process, but like, towards the end of the process. Okay. But that would be a question for Julia. Right. So let's just say we there's a chicken and egg problem we have with CTE that I think Tammy Kopey started to point out yesterday. Yeah. Basically, like, what are we asking them requirements to meet? How does it relate to EQS? And how do you fund those requirements? And I think Tammy said there are I mean, we could talk to other national experts. There are weights for like, if you're doing aeronautics versus nursing, you know, but like, I don't know, I could start to look for witnesses in that regard, I

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: just don't know what direction you're off to.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, it's a huge topic on one It

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: could take whole session, like education reform, because it's 60% of our students. Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But let's see when I talk and see

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: to

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: see about how to how to get it down to a point that we have the time to do it and integrate it. Right. And

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I as I said to chair Clarkson this morning, it may be easier if you if you say these are pieces like the trades that, or the employer side that economic development does.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, okay. It's also, you know,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the other, now we're sort of talking but a little which is consistent with what you're suggesting. That's by comprehensive actually. You don't make a

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: lot of sense because you can, in some instance, get a handful of schools where you could go from English to car mechanics and back to history.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Exactly. And cooking and like

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And that's yeah. All things that appear interested in are actually valuable in their own right whether you go into a profession or not.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Right. And there's also now with the ACG, working with things like robotics.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And so as you've got, it's for every kid.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: When

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: every kid schools, you know, could well want to be in more and more CTE.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: When Burlington and Winooski had the Nelly Mae Foundation grant for educational transformation and I worked for the city, they I was like a chaperone for kids from Burlington and Winooski and teachers going to a Met school in Providence, Rhode Island. The met schools were funded originally, I think, by the CDS founder guy, and they have an advisory, right, we talked about advisors in some of our visits. They have social workers, they have like, some basic foundationals their first year, and then for most of the rest of their high school experience, they spend three days off campus in a job, and they're starting their own businesses, and they're working with the police, and they're DJing, like they're and then they come back and figure out what they need academically. And the kids came alive, like our kids wanted so much of that. But

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I also, I had to go with you about that, I need to start this in school.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Because that's what actually worked with these kids.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yes. Like, I still remember going to a bank in, like, third grade and then I became chair of economic development. You know, like, these are really important things.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay so I attended superintendents lunch over at LaPalle I'd say it was very beneficial but they had a question which seeing we have an AOE representative here There was a concern expressed by one of the superintendents that the foundation formula does not take into account the federal funding specific to poverty and special education. Fear of concern is that there's actually double dipping that the state provides via the foundation formula, its share of funds but at the same time the federal government is providing funds via title 10 and what have you and and the question was, does the foundation formula already recognize all federal funding or is it federal funding put on top of the foundation?

[Ruth Durkee (Agency of Education)]: The federal funds would be on top of the foundation formula, Title I funding would be in addition to any economic disadvantage that would be in the foundation.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So the concern is that while we create the foundation formula recognizing poverty and special education needs, in fact what we're put on top of the student via state funds is a significant chunk of money. My impression was that took care of those needs or addressed those needs. But now we have federal funding, may in fact double the palm. And it and what's is that the intent about criticizing it? I just don't know. And it's the superintendent didn't know, so I said I would lease the house. I think it's kind of a it it would be good to at least dispel that notion for the sake of the superintendents.

[Ruth Durkee (Agency of Education)]: Yeah, would say that the development of the Foundation Formula One happened with full knowledge of additional, for instance, Title One funds that would come from the federal government as well.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, so it's recognized by AOE and I guess others that the total cost needed for to lift students out of poverty and special education needs is in fact the sum of the state funding and the federal funding together. That's required funding necessary and appropriate for that lift thing.

[Ruth Durkee (Agency of Education)]: Yes, and so the distribution of Title I funds is gonna be a little different than how a foundation formula would work, but yes.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, so in summary, foundation formula already recognized, in fact there is separate federal funding specific to at least those two categories of Vermont students. Correct, very good, thank you. I told them I'd ask.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we'll we'll continue to attend. We're good for today. Thanks. Alright.