Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: We're live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Good afternoon, everybody. Now, February 3, afternoon of February 3, the Senate Education Committee. We're going to start this afternoon, first of we'll introduce ourselves as well as the Senate. But we're going to have some special education administrators talk to us, sort of give us some thoughts about how the needs of our special ed programs on special ed kids intersect with F-seventy three, just things that I think you want to make sure we keep in mind as we're moving forward. So we'll start by introducing ourselves as we actually do, and so start over here.

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: Hi, Nader Hashim from Windham County.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Good afternoon, Weeks, representing Rutland County.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Seth Bongartz in the Bennington Senate District. Terry Williams, representing Rutland County.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: Steven Heffernan, Addison County District.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So you can go in whatever order you want to. Should I just follow what's on the agenda? Does it make it or do you have an order of your own that you'd like to do?

[Mary Lundin]: Yes, we do.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, that's fine. So just introduce yourself as you before you speak and tell us a little

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: bit of who you who you are, and

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: off you go.

[Mary Lundin]: Alright. Good afternoon, chair Bongartz and members of the committee. My name is Mary Lundin, and I serve as the executive director Council of Special Education Administrators. My perspective is grounded in a career dedicated to Vermont students at every level, having served as a special educator, a special education administrator, and a superintendent. I'm joined by my colleagues today to testify on the intersection of act 73 and special education. While we have prepared information and specific recommendations to share, Our primary goal is to engage in a meaningful dialogue with you regarding these critical issues. For over forty four years, VCSEA has served as the backbone of special education leadership in Vermont. We are the practitioners who bridge the gap between state policy and the daily realities of serving students with disabilities. To assist the committee's work this session, we've provided our twenty twenty six legislative priorities and a fact sheet on maintenance of effort MOE. Our testimony today focuses on priority three of our platform, ensuring fiscal integrity to protect IDEA and students with disabilities. Under this priority, we ask for your careful consideration of two topics. One, the special education weighting design within the new foundation formula, and two, the development of cooperative education service agencies, CESAs. Before we address these specifics, we must highlight the federal compliance standards that serve as the mandatory framework for these decisions. I will now turn the floor over to my colleague, Heather Freeman, who will discuss federal maintenance of effort, MOE, requirements and the risk they pose to statewide funding if not approached with deliberate intentionality.

[Heather Freeman]: Thanks, Mary. Good afternoon. Thank you for, having us here today. My name is Heather Freeman. I am the director of student support services up in Orleans Southwest Supervisor Union, Hardwick, And I'm also the president-elect of the VCSEA. I have been, I'm newly elected as president-elect, but I've been, in this role as director for twelve years now. Before that, I was an early childhood special educator and a preschool teacher. So I've been with OSSU for twenty one years. I get this is my twenty second year. So, yes, as Mary said, I'm gonna be talking a little bit about maintenance of effort. The important things, just so that we all understand around the same page about it, is that it's a fiscal requirement. It's under the federal IDEA law. It's relevant to any local education agencies that receive IDA Part B funds. Those Part B funds are allocated specifically for the education of children with disabilities. It is our responsibility as LEAs to both budget for and spend the same amount of state and or local funds from year to year. So this law really helps to ensure that even as methods of funding may change, the total amount of financial support for students with disabilities does not drop. So in other words, it provides us with a level of fiscal responsibility for our LEAs to serve students with disabilities. If an LEA fails their maintenance of effort test and cannot document that allowable exceptions have occurred, some of those allowable exceptions are things like a decrease in enrollment of students with disabilities or the end of long term costly expenses. The state has to treat that shortfall as an unallowable expense, use of federal funds, and the LEA may have to repay that out of non federal sources. So the supervisory union or the school district, in order to remain compliant, must meet that MOE requirement. And they have to demonstrate that compliance in two different ways. The first way is around budgeting. And again, when we're thinking about the next year budget, we have to make sure that we're spending at least as much as we've spent in previous years to educate our students with disabilities. And then the second, the second factor around that, the two pronged effect is the, the actual spending. So in the current fiscal year, we need to make sure we're spending as much, at least as much as we spent in the previous year. So we did include the MOE fact sheet, with our testimony, then it goes into a lot more detail, but I just wanted to provide, a little bit more context. So now I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Chris, who will speak to the foundation formula and the weights.

[Chris Benway]: Great. Thank you, Heather. And thank you all for allowing us to come and speak to you today on behalf of VCSEA and special ed directors across the state. Before I talk about the testimony, I just wanna note something because I think in a lot of the conversations around 73 and other legislation, there's been comments about the amount of transition and turnover and the lack of leadership in special education. And I just wanna note that I think that's true within the agency of education. Unfortunately, I think we've had four or five directors in the last six or seven years, and that certainly has a significant impact and creates a struggle with capacity, depth of knowledge, and the lack of understanding of the impacts of sweeping changes or small changes that may have sweeping impact. One of the things that I did wanna point out to you today is the folks that are testifying before you today come with vast experiences in special education, early childhood, as Heather mentioned, higher education, mental health, policy development and leadership. By the way, I'm sorry, I'm Chris Bennington.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're having a hard time hearing you. I don't know if it's because you're not close enough to the mic or maybe even have to turn your camera off. I don't know if that will matter or not but it's fading in and out going up and down.

[Chris Benway]: Can you hear me now?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Chris Benway]: Okay. I'll try to stay still and stay up close.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. That's good. That sounds good.

[Chris Benway]: Okay, great. I'm Chris Benway, by the way, and I represent the Slate Valley Unified School District. I am also currently president of the Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators, and I'm here to testify this afternoon on their behalf. What I was just mentioning was that in many of the conversations around policy development and new legislation, it's been commented that there's been a lot of transition and a lot of turnover in special ed leadership. I just wanted to acknowledge that I think that's true at the Department of Agency of Education. We have had four to five different state directors in six to seven years, and certainly that impacts capacity, depth of understanding, historical knowledge, and also the knowledge and impact of how small decisions may have a larger impact on the field and on our students with disabilities. I also wanted to note that the folks that you have testifying before you today come with vast experiences, not just in special education, but as Heather noted, her experience in early childhood education. Some of us have experience in in higher education, mental health policy and leadership at both the state and the national level. I do an activity at the start of every school year with my staff and we add up how many years of experience we have in total. And so we did that quickly before jumping online with you. And the four of us together, hold 120 of experience in public education, with the majority of those years being here in Vermont, almost equivocally throughout Vermont and New England. So I bring that to you, because while our students will tease us about the fact that we've been working since the 1900s, I think we come with a depth of knowledge, historical knowledge and understanding, as well as expertise that we're here to offer to you and to the field and wanna be part of this solution. So one of the things that in the five seventy seven years that my district special ed staff hold, I'm always telling them that together we can figure this out. And I wholeheartedly believe that together we can figure this out for the students in the state of Vermont. So I wanna talk to you about the foundation formula for special ed and the weights within Act 73. Currently, the special ed funding design under Act 73 is fundamentally flawed, and we feel it must be addressed. Most critically, the weighting formula does not provide sufficient dedicated support for special education. Instead, districts are forced to rely on general education foundation formula funds to fill the gaps, and this places special education and general education in direct competition for the same funds, not a dichotomy that we wanna promote. Act 73 shifts Vermont away from a census block grant model toward a weighted funding tied to disability categories. This change creates a harmful incentive that may drive I'm sorry. I lost my thought. Sorry. Act 23 shifts Vermont away from a census based block grant model toward a weighted funding system tied to disability categories. This change creates a harmful incentive in which diagnosis may drive revenue rather than the individualized student need. Disability categories are broad, they're inconsistent, and they're often ill suited as a basis for funding diagnosis. There are significant variation of intensity and need in each disability category, and many of you have heard the expression. If you've met one student with autism, you've met one student with autism. The most. The most, the highest, the educational programming that has the highest cost in my district might be provided for a student with an other health impairment. The highest, most costly programmatic, program in Aaron's District might be for a student who's on the autism spectrum. The most costly programming district might be for a student with emotional disturbance. There's great variability and levels of need in any one disability category. The categories are too vast and our communities are too small to employ this type of model. And most importantly, linking resources to labels risks undermining the individual focus that's required under IDEA. This design may work at some levels through a financial lens and modeling at a larger state level. Tying funds to disability categories though is not sensitive to the experiences of individuals with disabilities, and the decisions to do so seem to be absent a voice of individuals with lived experiences. As I said, while the sum of the fiscal modeling may demonstrate savings at a state level, it does not work for funding school districts in Vermont, and given the small size, scope, and variability and the geographic mobility of our students, it sets up a false sense of entitlement, and the categories, are too variable for use as a model for consistent decision making or for stability in funding. We do not want and do not support having a weighted system that is based on disability. We do not want the funding of special education to be on the backs of children with disabilities. With that said, VCSEA and special ed directors across the state are not opposed to exploring a new funding approach. It's important to recognize though that this would be the third special education finance design in the last five years. This level of policy churn creates significant challenges for school districts, for business offices, for practitioners, making long term planning and comparisons nearly impossible. In the last three years, we've tracked costs by town, or five years, we've tracked costs by town. We've tracked costs by a supervisory union when we moved special education into the supervisory unions. We then tracked costs by school district as a unified school district, and we are now dissecting those unified budgets to be able to track costs based on buildings. So we're deeply concerned about the lack of impact analysis, particularly as these funding changes intersect with the proposed redistricting. The constant changes equate to more impact and disruptions to the field while also decreasing the level of understanding of policymakers, educators, taxpayers, and many other constituents. It's for this reason that we would urge you to provide districts with a clear and enforceable commitment, a promise of stable and sufficient funding that ensures essential special education services can be delivered without undermining general education or risking MOE noncompliance. Vermont districts cannot afford to lose their federal funding. Vermont must adopt a funding design that ensures sustainable, dedicated support for special education. This can be accomplished, it can be accomplished through the analysis of the weight needed by school district per eligible student to ensure MOE, and then we can move toward an overall special education weight per student, not by disability category, but a weight per student, and this process would need to include a glide path for implementation as you did with 01/1973 and the creation of the census model. We need to have a change and we support a change in education funding. We do not support a change of a weighted model by disability category. We do not support funding special education on the backs of children with disabilities, and we recognize that together we can figure this out. We wanna be part of the solution and be engaged in continued conversations to do so. What I'd like to do now is to turn it over to Erin McGuire to talk about some of the ways that we think we can do that and the discussion of cooperative education agents. Thanks, Chris.

[Erin McGuire]: I appreciate it. And this is just a sound check. Can you all hear me okay? Excellent. My name is Erin McGuire. I am currently a special education director in the Essex Westford School District. I also serve as the past president for VCSEA, the Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators, and I'm also the current past president for the National Organization of Special Education Directors, which is called CASE, the Council of Administrators of Special Education. I come with experience as a paraeducator, a special educator, a general educator, but most of my career has been as a special education director. And thanks for having us today. Again, really appreciate the dialogue before I move to a conversation about Cooperative Education Service agencies. I do want to just briefly build a bridge and make sure the message is clear about the connection between maintaining effort as required by federal law and our concern related to the current waiting design and act 73. In the Essex Westford School District. We did the analysis and the weights that are placed in Act 73 would under fund us by about $6,000,000 and we would have to dip into the money provided by the foundation formula $6,000,000 in order to meet our maintenance of effort. That requirement that we must spend at least as much as we did the year before in state and local funds in order to get access to our federal funds. I think all of you are very well familiar with the instability currently with federal funding. Fortunately, IDEA funds both from the current administration as well as the current Congress are pretty well established to be a bipartisan effort, and I think it is a a federal fund that we can pretty much count on, and so it's really important that Act 73 does not counteract the ability of a local district to get access to those funds by expecting a reduction in spending in special education by underfunding special education through the new waiting design. So I hope that sort of frames up the reason that we're having this conversation. I see a hand. Did is that a question?

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: Yes, just a quick question. Sorry to interrupt.

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: Yeah, that's okay.

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: I just want to make sure I have it right that you would have to backfill $6,000,000 and you would have to draw that from the foundation formula.

[Erin McGuire]: Correct. So my understanding and every legislator I've talked to has agreed with me on this that your intention in Act 73 when you passed the foundation formula was that the weights would provide the funding necessary in order to add the additional funds to educate those students beyond what a student who didn't have a weighted category was educated foundation formula was for purposes of general Ed and that the weights would then cover special education. I think our ask is that whatever you do, and I think, you know, trying to be very open to the design, we've been in a reimbursement formula, we've been in a census block grant. This is a proposal to go into a weighted formula that the amount of money that is on top of the foundation formula covers special education costs to the amount necessary for maintenance of effort. That's really the clear ask and why Heather and Chris talked all about maintenance of effort and where that comes from, as well as what we might propose to address this kind of issue. But the current way it's just don't fund all of the school districts. Maybe there are, I mean, this is an impact analysis, right? I have not done an impact analysis on every school district around what these weights mean related to what they spent from the prior year in special education. If I did that, maybe I would find some districts that would be able to cover all of their special education costs with the weight that's provided. But I can tell you for my school district that when I did that, when I modeled out the Act 73 design for Essex Westford, I was short $6,000,000 in special education that would have had to come from whatever funds are issued to districts through the foundation formula to meet my maintenance of effort requirement.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So another question. Yeah, if

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I could. So 6,000,000 sounds like a lot, but can you give a sense relatively, like what percentage of the budget that really equates to?

[Erin McGuire]: The total budget? Yes, I I need to pick up a calculator. Just one moment. Outside of special education funds,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: and

[Erin McGuire]: this is just really rough. Hold on one second. It looks to me that it would be close to 9% that we would have to come up with. But again, I would much rather my expert business manager or finance director answer that question. But I think that's the kind of question that makes sense for impact analysis on the issue. So thank you for asking it.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, if I can. So last night, Chris was actually, I was with Chris in Slate Valley. Chris hammered us pretty hard on special education funding and and such in relation to the foundation formula. Yeah. So, what we've been talking about this now for about a year.

[Chris Benway]: Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: What happened last year when all these foundation form factors were discussed? We had,

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: I

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: think, point seven categories, eight categories, and and frankly, I can't remember offhand. We landed at four or five. How come no, how come we didn't hear from you guys last year that the subject matter experts may have gotten it a little wrong?

[Erin McGuire]: Yeah, that's a great question. We tried to testify and we requested to testify and couldn't get a spot testify on the issues. So we're grateful that you accepted our testimony. And you know, I think it's just so important to have the field testifying regularly. I that's not a blame statement. You all were incredibly busy trying to put this together under an incredibly shortened timeline. And so the ability to hear from all of the people that you would have needed to hear from related to the impact of the work you were doing, my guess is it was really hard to make that happen. And so that's sort of how I interpreted that inability to kind of get in and have a conversation about these issues. And to be fair too, we were all trying to understand what was happening in a really rapid timeline, right? And now we've had some time to consume Act 73, understand the intersections between 73 and special education funding the federal funds. And so do I wish we could have made all of these points right at that moment in time? I actually was surprised to see the waiting design for special education come through X 73, primarily because my understanding that that wasn't the recommendation as the original conversations were happening. So it was just a lot and and no excuses and apologies that we weren't, you know, advocating really hard at that moment in time, but it's my interpretation that those are probably some of the reasons. I don't I don't know if you have others that that might make sense.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So, I get it. Here we are. We're in a moment in time. Can you characterize anyone of you, characterize the relationship between your group and AOE so that the conversation can mature to the point where everybody agrees that these are the right factors and and I'll I'll take one step backwards and say, we're never going to get it perfect with, you know, because it's individual students, every every student is unique, circumstances. So, we have to create a scale that tries to cover the known expenses. So, anyway, going then coming back forward, what's your relationship with AOE and can we fix this?

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: With the and again, a very shortened runway.

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: For sure.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: In the next iteration of 70 three.

[Erin McGuire]: For sure. Yeah, thank you for that. We meet regularly with the Agency of Education, and some of us sit on their steering committees for purposes of their action planning work and strategic planning work that they're doing. And we've not proposed an alternative specifically to the agency, but I'll go out on a limb and and say that BCSEA would definitely be interested in being a partner to try to resolve some of these issues. Chris mentioned the number of people who have turned over in special education leadership at the Agency of Education. The implementation of special education is no simple thing to understand. It's complicated, especially when you talk about the financial factors. And I do think that the agency would benefit from a deeper understanding of the impacts of decision making, and we certainly could provide that. I mean, I think that's why Chris was talking about our collective expertise. You know, we we do have a lot of expertise. We've been through a lot. We've done the whole reimbursement formula. We went through the whole glide path for Act 173 in the census based model and trying to get us all to the same census spending over time with CPI increases and all kinds of complexities. And so I'm happy. I think we're all happy to help. I also, you know, I think it's helpful to know from the legislature whether or not it is your intention that the foundation formula waiting for special education should cover special education cost, that that is your intent. And then the sort of logistical expertise necessary to help that happen is something that we definitely could talk with the agency about. Chris talked a little bit about the idea of creating individual district weights that meet the MOE with a glide path to bring us to a common weight. That's just an idea we came up with. We haven't done any studying about it. I mean, I think the issue of tying things to disability category has to do with the scale and scope availability in Vermont. You know, we have very small districts. We value our rural school districts. And yes, there's some scale problems, but we also have communities. I grew up in Rochester, Vermont. I went to school there. That school is no longer there, but there were 90 students from kindergarten to twelfth grade when I went to school. Like we value our community schools and trying to figure out how to fund special education while also holding that value and kind of managing all of the change you all are talking about, I do think requires time. And I think this logistical expertise in partnership with the agency is necessary. It's my opinion that they do not have anyone at the agency right now who can do the kind of work that would be necessary to help resolve the problem that we're pointing out that you're pointing out. How do we get this fixed? But it's, you know, I do think we could come together and help resolve the challenge.

[Chris Benway]: I would just echo what Erin said in terms of a capacity issue and the amount of transition and turnover and change within personnel at the AOE. I think sometimes, you know, when we hear, you know, about high cost students would be a for example, we, you know, those of us that have the historical context know that the rules changed, and when the rules changed around the reimbursement for, high cost students, those rules actually created an increase in the amount of reimbursement going out to districts across the board. So when, you know, there's different information that we can share having been here for a period of time and having seen those changes over a period of time and understanding the impacts of those changes. So we do partner, with the agency of education as Erin stated. We meet on a monthly basis as an executive, committee, and we have representatives from the agency of education that attend regularly, to those meetings. We're appreciative of the time and energy that they put into that. We have had the agency, reaching out to us to seek input around, some different things around monitoring and other issues that impact the field, and we're greatly appreciative of those communications.

[Erin McGuire]: I want to also recognize that you all have been clear that your interest in implementation of Act 173 is not just about the funding component, but also about improvement related to the outcomes for students, including students with disabilities. And so I'd like to go ahead and just make a brief shift to say a couple of things. And the first thing I'll say is tied to this issue of capacity at the Agency of Education. We woefully under executed on Act 173 in my opinion, and there are pockets of excellence across the state in the implementation of 173. And I would place that directly into a conversation about the capacity of the agency to actually do technical assistance work, the accountability work, the professional development work necessary in Act 173 has not been present. And so, you know, the same kind of issue that we have where the legislature passes legislation, whether it's about a funding implementation or it's about an improved service design, it is essential that there is enough expertise at the agency or there is some kind of design in accessing expertise in the field to create the implementation outcomes that you're seeking. So that's just a general piece I'm concerned about. And I'm going to link that now to the Cooperative Education Service agencies. BCSEA is excited about this concept. We're not opposed to the development of Cooperative Education Service agencies in order to help us with staffing shortages, in order to support us related to the strength of collaboration regionally to make sure that we actually may reduce some cost in the concept of scope and scale of offering very specialized services in parts of the state that may not have access to those. And so we're excited about that, but it is also important to make sure that there are some guardrails on this design. For example, the Cooperative Education Service agencies cannot replace the district responsibility of decision making in special education. That will need to stay with school districts. I think about these cooperative service agencies as a way to gain access to services that I might not otherwise have access to. And where I have a student with a very specialized need, where I cannot hire sort of a full time teacher with this expertise, because that wouldn't be appropriate. I don't need a full time teacher to meet this need. But that a cooperative service agency might have a teacher with that expertise of which I could purchase a part. And so that all makes sense to us. But it is also important that as we do this, we're not dismantling things that have already been created. I'll give you an example. The Essex Westford School District over the last two years has developed a therapeutic school design within our school district. There were not enough independent therapeutic schools to meet the need for students in EWSD. We built out a third through eighth grade program and a ninth through twelfth grade program to meet our own needs related to students who require therapeutic schools, separate school settings that have been determined by their IEP teams. If we were to develop a cooperative service agency in Chittenden County, and it opened up a therapeutic school under it, I don't want to have to close my schools. We just spent a whole bunch of time developing ScaleScope and the possibility of serving our own students in our school district, and I would like to maintain that. I have my own occupational therapist. I have my own physical therapist. I do not need to purchase an occupational therapist or a physical therapist through a cooperative service agency, I have enough to be able to hire a full time person. That is very different. I'm in Chittenden County, that is very different than in more rural parts of the state where there's geographic sparsity. There are schools that are all spread out, so it's just important that we consider that as we design these things that pretty much anything one size fits all in Vermont tends not to work very well given the nature of how we're designed and just wanting to make sure that before we do the development that those entities are not they are supplemental. They do not supersede district level special Ed decision making that they're not reducing our inclusion rates. We value our inclusion rates. They should not increase segregation. They should also be, I am not a person with a disability. I need people with disabilities informing me and these CESAs must have disability boys in the development of them. I think that's just also another example. They really end up as partners with school districts as opposed to governance designs. They're not really a governance design. And so I just wanted I think we wanted to provide some of those clarifying pieces for you to make sure that you heard them, both the support of this design. And lastly, I'll just say a little bit of a warning that in developing these kinds of things, there are times where it costs more upfront, and it's not going to save you a bunch of money immediately. So the system has to kind of work itself into a new service design. We cannot stop serving students with disabilities in any way, shape or form while these structures get created. There may be some immediate savings. There may be some increased costs in order to get them built. So just wanted to kind of say that we are running out of time and I think our interest is to hear questions from you as well. I hope that this has been helpful for you all to hear some of these perspectives that we hold and that the written material that we've provided offers you a place to kind of center in in the perspectives that we're sharing. But I'll stop there and see if there are questions or comments or asks that you have of us, we are here to be of support to you in your decision making. Thanks.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So good testimony across the board. I've got a fundamental question that a constituent asked me and I frankly didn't know the answer and that was foundation formula currently in Act 73 recognizes different disability or special education categories that are funded but there's also a significant layer as you guys have alluded to, of federal funding. So, on top of the costs. Anyway, I think you get my question.

[Erin McGuire]: Yeah. So, you only get your federal funds if you spent as much as you did the year before special education between state and local. And the federal funds, my understanding is that it would be dedicated to special ed funds above and beyond the foundation formula. But keeping in mind that the allocation in between those two things has to equal a certain amount in order for you to get access to those federal funds. But they are used to meet the FAPE obligations, the free appropriate public education obligations for school districts. So I use my federal funds to provide IEP services. That is what I do with them. If those were gone, those IEP services would still need to be delivered. So they do help us in reducing the state obligation that we would have without them. And so it's essential that whatever we do, we behave in ways that allow us to maintain access to those.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, so you've said that the federal government, you essentially need to spend what you spent the year before. I've got a lot of experience with government contracting both inside outside the government as a contractor. I understand the principle but at the same time, we all have to recognize the fact that students as they move through the education pipeline, every year, students are, you have, you have different cadres of students, know, you so over the course of ten, twelve years, whatever. It's going to change. So, the amount is never really going to be the same. The need, it's not necessarily always going to be the same as it was last year. It could dip. It could rise. How can you justify just saying that we need to spend, we need to allocate spend, whatever we had last year, it's so long headed from a taxpayer perspective. I need you guys to react to that because we're gonna get For sure,

[Erin McGuire]: yeah, I hear you. There are some exceptions and we've provided you a document that shares with you, for example, if we have a student who moves out who's very expensive in the program that they need, we can take that off in our maintenance of effort calculation. So there are examples of where you can reduce your spending if you have a situation like that. But you can't, for example, just if you have two special educators, each with a caseload of 12, you can't just cut one of those and give the one person 24 kids. So there are things you can do to reduce your spending and still meet maintenance of effort. There are things you can't do, but which you know, so that's why it's so important that it's sort of at least initially this like district by district lens of what's MOE. That is how we should be considering what we fund. It's a very specific calculation and it is required by federal law. And if we walk away from it, we will also be walking away from our federal funds. And I know that can be a difficult thing to be thinking about from a taxpayer's perspective. It is the federal law. And so if we wanted it to change, we would need to talk to our members of Congress, you know, and IDEA would have to be reauthorized. That's not, you know, this is just this is part of the funding structure in the country related to the expectations of special education that need to intersect with the way in which we are changing the funding formula and the way that we're providing funds for special education and what that means about the foundation formula versus the weights. It's just is. In the same way that you said you have a lot of experience and how some federal rules you might be able to kind of, might be a little flexible, this one's very clear, and it does not appear to me to be flexible other than the exemptions that are allowable on the sheet that we provided to you.

[Chris Benway]: And And I think that the premise around that is that we don't want supplanting of funds, right? I mean, that's really what it's about is trying to avoid utilizing, in some cases utilizing special ed monies to provide services or activities outside of special ed. And that's one of the reasons for the MOE test as well.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Question over here. Yeah, real quick. I'm wondering if it's a proper takeaway from this conversation that you guys will talk to AOE about foundation formulas, special education, levels. I'm not sure what the right term is but and, and try to find some kind of common ground so that we're all working with the same map.

[Erin McGuire]: Sure, happy to take that as an ask and initiate that attempt. Feel free to share that expectation with them as well, and happy to get in a room and try to work it out.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: talked about the reductions, but what about how do you get an increase if you have an influx of specialty children? And if we're blocked with the same money every year, and we have actually the acceptable reductions, how do you get an increase?

[Erin McGuire]: Well, I mean, we budget currently in the design of how we fund education, we budget it, and we spend it out of the local side of the general fund. So right now, because of the way budgeting works, special education spends much more than the census based model that we have currently. As a matter of fact, that only seems to cover, we'd have to look, the agency would be a better person to ask, but I think it's close to like 50%. I think there's almost 50% that's in local and 50% that's in the census based block grant that comes from Act 173 work that was done. So we have that flexibility. I suppose we would have that flexibility, but you all just need to understand that it would be pushing into the foundation formula under the design in Act 73. And I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent. Does that make sense?

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: Yeah. Trying to,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: when you have an increase and you're saying the state of, and we're talking federal budget, must understand, right? That they say it doesn't change. You better not spend less, you better always spend the same. We're not, we can, reductions are How do we get it increased? On the federal side, not on the state side.

[Erin McGuire]: Oh, no, how do we get the federal dollars increased?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: Yes. Because you're telling me about the reductions, it's like, how do you know, if you all of a sudden have an influx of special need children, how do you get an increase from the federal side?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Think, Karen, I think it

[Mary Lundin]: would be helpful. So IDEA money, when congress passed special education law back in 1975, they promised to fund special education at 40%. They are currently funding special education at 17%. And IDEA has been in place for fifty years. And so that's advocacy that we have been doing at the national level, working with our Vermont congressional delegation to advocate that Congress fulfill that promise of 40% because that will alleviate some of the pressure on the local taxpayers and on the states. And so we all need to have collective voice about advocating for this.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just one clarifying question to make sure I understand this. When you talk about the maintenance of effort, is that on a district by district level or is that across district by district?

[Chris Benway]: Both. We do a district by district test. There is a test done that we we just got our notifications in the past week. We successfully passed our test in in the Slate Valley District. So, it's done by individual district and then it's done collectively as a state.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So it's a two part, if the state failed to do it, you would get nothing at the district level or how does that work?

[Erin McGuire]: I think that the agency again would be best situated to talk about their MOE and if they failed MOE. I don't think Vermont has ever failed MOE if I'm accurate. So, I'm not sure of the answer to that question. I don't know if anybody else knows. I know that at the local level, if we don't pass it, we do an analysis around it and it is possible we may have to not get part of our federal dollars. So it but it is. It is not something that has happened very much. This is this is, you know, given that 80% of our budgets are salaries and benefits and those go up at the rates they do, the likelihood and and our percentage of eligible students has gone up. The likelihood we're spending less year over year is not particularly frequent. The agency could speak to how many LEAs have failed their MOE and what has happened. I've not failed it, so I don't know.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Well, let me just reiterate Senator Weeks and I guess hope that you will talk to the agency and you can collectively come back to us with something.

[Chris Benway]: Great.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, good. Thank you very much for coming in. I'm sure we'll be in touch again. Wonderful. Thank you.

[Mary Lundin]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Bye. Thanks.

[Chris Benway]: Thank you. Bye. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we're now going to switch gears to rural technical edit. Kind of the same question, I think, working to see if you can find about CGD essentially. I'm just going ask them to break. Sure. Go on. I do have a

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: written testimony to share with you all.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I hope that's the way you had

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the question, or it's ridiculous. Say that again? I hope that's the way you had the question articulated to you in the first instance.

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: Well, simply, I think as it was articulated to me, was sort of a high level perspective on what governance is looking like right now with potentially touching in on some of the proposals that are out there right now. I'm recognizing that they're probably limited on time here, so I'll use this to to bounce around a little bit and try and cover as much as I can. Don't throw my position. Okay. Okay. Well, so I just wanna start out by thanking you for the opportunity to testify before the Senate Committee on Education. I'm here today as Career and Technical Education Director, and as President of the Vermont Association of Career and Technical Education Directors, it just happened to fall on me this year that I'm in that position, and it is a busy year for that.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: The committee asked for a

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: high level primer on CPE models in Vermont, and the purpose of this testimony is to provide that primary and to offer context on how current discussions about CPE governance, funding, and access intersect. This testimony is intended to frame the landscape and clarify terms, not to recommend a specific policy outcome or governance modeling item. At its core, current technical education is high-tech workforce training. Students leave CTE programs prepared to enter regulated workspaces, often with industry recognized credentials and post secondary credits. As a result, many CTE programs operate under federal and state safety standards, Department of Labor requirements, and industry regulations, including OSHA standards that directly shape classroom design, staffing ratios, equipment, and instructional delivery. These realities distinguish CTE from any traditional academic settings and are important context for any policy discussion. As Vermont considers potential changes to career and technical education, it's also important to clearly distinguish between government instructions and operational or instructional delivery models. And that distinction is the frame I'll use here for the rest of my comments, is that there's a bit of a blend happening as we talk about governance and broader governance and how we are actually delivering instruction in our schools. So, as you already likely know, governance refers to legal authority and oversight, accountability for educational outcomes, control over staffing, employment. Operational or instructional delivery models refer to how and where instruction is delivered, how student schedules are structured, decisions about program offering, facilities, equipment, and access, and those are two very separate domains. Vermont has two to three governance structures for CTE at this time, and within those structures, we already operate many different delivery models. Those get called models, but they're solving widely different problems based on the region needs for each one of those centers, how those high schools access those centers, and whatnot. Currently, our regional centers are governed by districts or SUs, as one model. A second model is our independent technical school districts, which are supervised by superintendentdirectors, and there are four of those in the state. And the AOE's role in both of those models is the same. So they offer regulation, but they don't operate any of our programs or facilities or anything like that. Sometimes there's confusion as to whether or not this AOE is doing some of those things. But the financial and operational risk is 100% local in every one of our current models at this point. In terms of the operational and instructional variation within the existing governance models, some examples of what that looks like right now is, you know, we have full day centers like myself. Students are there for six hours a day, and they go and complete their program in one year, where they're earning industry credentials or college credits within that time, versus half day, where students are earning those things over two years of their high school experience. There is wide differentiation in how students earn academic credit within our programs. Some of our centers have actually dedicated academic teachers, English, math, history teachers, and whatnot, and some of our centers have embedded academics and do not have specific teachers. Those credits are embedded in the day to day instruction of the actual program. Widely different models. Widely different how we access middle school, to provide middle school support and interest there, as well as early high school. The Fast Forward slash dual enrollment offerings are different across our centers. And then we have very wide facilities and staffing differences across our centers. Some of our centers are in great shape and have been designed specifically with programs in mind to be able to support

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: a full construction base for a construction program, and

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: we have centers whose facilities are simply unable to support some of the programming that they want to offer at this time. So it's widely different, but I think the thing to really make sure we walk away with is understanding that CTE programs operate within a highly regulated instructional environment. There are a number of different levels of regulation and oversight that very typical education that the Rett system just is not, does not experience on a day to day basis. That safety, labor, and credentialing rules dictate our class sizes, they dictate our level of supervision, and they dictate the equipment that we provide students in our programs, and those constraints, the OSHA constraints, those sorts of things, they don't just flex because policy or goals change. They remain consistent throughout. We have to abide by those things unless something federally changes in that regard. So it's important to remember those things are fixed in many ways. One of the things I was asked to talk about briefly here as well was our response to the Agency agency of education CTE plan, I happened to be here when Zoe presented to Senate Ed. And I will first say that I'm representing an organization that is ideologically mixed around the idea of a single central CTE entity or remaining regional as it is right now. What I'll say is that the Agency of Education has articulated an aspirational vision focused on expanding access, improving consistency, and strengthening alignment between CTE, workforce needs, and postsecondary pathways. CTE directors broadly share those goals. The AOE plan proposes a centralized statewide governance and delivery model through the creation of CTE Education Service Agency, or ESA. This represents a fundamental shift in governance, moving authority, employment, and funding responsibilities from local districts to a statewide entity. And so the question for us isn't whether these goals are right, it's whether governance redesign is the first lever in this process of change. So we feel that sequence matters, and one concrete area where legislative action could have immediate impact is in strengthening enforcement mechanisms for existing statutes and board rules. There are things that are in statute and board rules right now that, you know, we, if there was support and follow through in ensuring that these are held across the board, we may not be having some of the conversations that we're having. Some of those examples would be credits being awarded for students accessing our programs and schools honoring the credits that are embedded within program, so it's math or English. Not many of our centers have report concerns over when students leave their programs, their schools aren't honoring the things that they have earned according to what we offer in our programs, and that has been

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: a big

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: concern. There are also state board rules that allow for flexibility in graduation requirements, and there being waivers for certain aspects.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So the same happened even within the SU where the CPE is located, run by the

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: I'm trying to think, so

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Usually the borrower's run by the

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: Not, not typically, it's usually when they are at centers or schools that are outside of that district. Okay. That's more common Okay, in those yep. There are rules around, like I said, graduation waivers. You know, we are unfortunately seeing that there are some unsafe work based learning placements for students, where by statute, students should be accessing career technical education programs before they go into a work based learning. For instance, folks being placed in electrical, with electrical companies who have not come through an program preparation, like through a CTV center, and then there are federal hazard orders around there, so it's happening. And that limits student access then to our programs to some extent. And in some cases, there are times when we've been excluded from IEP teams, and I'm collecting this as a report from all of our centers, not necessarily just my experience. But fixing enforcement would produce some real gains, our organization feels, without destabilizing the entire system. So you say fixing a divorcement? What does that mean? Well, so that's the question, what does it mean? You know, we have rules and statutes on the books. These are the rules that we're all supposed to be playing by. There are Okay, let's see what we're thinking. Right, there are aspirational goals and specific goals in Act 77 around career exploration opportunities and things of that nature that, if emphasized in the way that they were written to do, would be addressing many of the things that the bills that are coming forward and the proposals that are coming forward would potentially be addressed. So, we recognize, and this isn't to sit here and say that the agency should be doing more or pointing fingers in this way, but we recognize that they are understaffed in a lot of ways, particularly as well for support for CT, And so there's, with CTE, there's so many federal oversight expectations that their hands are largely full with the staffing that they have. But we do still have these rules and statutes on the books, and if there are reasonable ways to enforce these things, like I said, I don't know that we would necessarily be having some of the conversations that we're having with some of these bills. I was also asked to briefly respond to S-three 13, Senator Ram Hinsdale's bill, and I first really want to make sure that I express how much appreciation I have for Senator Ram Hinsdale bringing CTE up front to center. We've had a lot of great conversations over the last six to eight months. I've attended a number of the CTE legislative meetings that have happened around the state, and those have been really good conversations about where CTE should go and how it can be really addressed more firmly within the state. So, right now, as written, and I believe she recognizes as well, as written as aspirational, know, these are objectives that we're looking towards down the road. But from a director perspective, the primary concern is order of operations again. You know, we have this big question of governance in front of us, funding stability, safety requirements in our programs, and accountability questions must really be addressed before a lot more operational in program mandates are codified by law. But I think there are places where we intersect and can support a lot of what's in that bill. I just talked about credit recognition. That bill talks about credit recognition. Completely support that. Offer credit recognition, make sure that's enforced. Graduation flexibility as a near term focus, you know, those are things that are in S-three 13 that we absolutely rally behind as well. There are bigger conversations, I think, to be had around some of the bigger ideas, around things like having career and tech ed centers become graduating institutions. I think that's a far, far bigger conversation I think we can launch into right now, but we're happy to have that conversation, it's just there's a lot of governing structures that need to be discussed and whatnot. And then the last one I was asked to briefly touch on is the implications of S220 for CTE, the spending cap bill, and I think the thing that we recognize, first of all, is that S220 is not a CTE specific bill, but I think what's important for the community to know is that there is really no redundancy in CTE staffing. What I mean by that is that we have one program and one teacher or one instructor, so we are at a place of having to reduce, if I reduce my engineering instructor, I reduce the engineering program. If I reduce the construction teacher, I reduce the construction program. That is how most of our centers operate. So by and large, our staffing is one to one in terms of program implementation. On the administrative side of things, our positions there are mandated by statute. So your statutor mandated to have a director, again, for the center, a student support coordinator, school counseling coordinator. They're an adult ed coordinator. Have four positions. And in the case of my school, those are the only positions we have. We have the, do not have access positions, we don't have lots of behavior supports or paraeducations like that, and that is the case for the majority of our centers across the state. So those required positions really limit flexibility when we talk about study caps and possible reductions. And so as a result, cost containment strategies that may be feasible in larger K-twelve systems do not translate cleanly to CTV on top of the ongoing equipment expenses, upkeep, and supply things that we're talking about. We're not talking about we need the world in terms of cost here, but there are very real economic drivers that impact what we do within our centers. So in terms of S-two 20, I think it's really important to keep CTE in mind that it isn't necessarily gonna respond in same way, and depending on whether or not there are some major shifts in how CTE is funded, we'll really have ramifications on whether these CATs will do what they're intended to do, particularly in relation to CTE. So, in closing, what I'll say is that CTE directors are deeply invested in improving access, quality, and relevance for Vermont students. Governance funding and operational design are inseparable, and changes to one inevitably affects the others. As Vermont considers the future of career and technical education, directors believe the most productive next steps include clarifying goals, sequencing forms of reforms strategically, modernizing and enforcing existing rules, and engaging those responsible for operating programs early in the process. These steps will allow Vermont to make inequal progress now, so I'll lay groundwork for larger systems, system decisions in the future. And I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to provide this context and perspective, and I'll move to your questions for me.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: What was your number one goal? I thought you said it back in that it was getting unified system, basically. Well,

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: I was really trying to do was draw the conversation when we talk about governance has really been muddled with operations within, and so I think that one critical thing that could happen, we are talking about governance, if we're talking about overarching structures to support CTE, ESAs, funding mechanisms, all those things, that is one conversation, but if we are talking about operations and things that we want to actually offer our kids on the ground, I think there are places that we could be looking other than law statute. We could be opening up rules for CTE, have not been opened up for fifteen to twenty years at this point. We could be doing some ground level discussion at that level to codify what's already in law around, like, the EQS has aspects of career exploration and things like that that could be better reflected in state board rule. There are aspects of Act 77 that could be better reflected in state board rule. There are a number of things that could be done, and there have been a lot of, there's been reticence, I think, to open those up because of this sort of impending change that may be coming, a broader system change may be coming. So I would say that that is an ask for us as well, and another ask would be that CTE, if there are going to be broader systems change, or not going to be broader systems change, more specifically related to ACCEPT E3, that CTE not be that one little corner of the ed environment that does change, because then we may not fit well onto the rest of the system. We need to be taken into the grand scope of what changes are coming.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yes? Thanks for the testimony. Obviously, it's not just a job for you. You obviously live it, you know it inside and out. One of the things that I know generally in government were really good at making laws, passing laws, and then making rules. And then we don't do we don't provide enforcement mechanisms, and we don't provide oversight. So if it was up to you, you know, where do we where do we start fixing? It's gotta get it's gotta be pulled together as as far as uniformity goes.

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: I I will I I think that opening up state boardroom is is really a a a key place to do that. Think, as I said, there's a lot of legislation that's happened over the last decade, decade and a half, that is supportive of career and technical education, and that can be better reflected in state board rule. But is there going to be any sort of enforcement mechanism that goes along with those things, because that has been problematic in certain areas, and CTE centers work really hard to build establish relationships with our sending schools, partner schools, places like that, to really build knowledge about what we offer and how we can support all students, not just specific students who need that traditional vocational training, what have you, But there are places where it is stuck in this state. Those relationships are stuck, and they need help sometimes, and that may be for students, and I will say, and I don't, again, I don't want to be here throwing the agency under the bus because I, from personal experience, can say that there have been members at the agency who have really stepped up to support really tough situations and interactions, and where it comes between CTE and regular education. What I hear from the director association across the board is that there are limited opportunities for that to happen because of the level of staffing that happens via an agency currently, and therefore they're not feeling that support.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I think generally, the EU has come a long way, but you got the rules over here. But the reason you guys have come a long way is because you did what you had to, to adapt, to bring the program forward. Absolutely. So we need some we need some collaboration, which I think you guys do. And then how will we you know, we need probably your input. How do we how do we make that happen? Is it AOE that could make the difference?

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: I think that's one piece of it. I think that's one piece of it. I think yeah, I think more support at the agency, I'm

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: not trying to think agency is a panacea either, like they

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: can't solve everything, right? But I think support there, but then, again, if you actually go and look at the state board rules for career and technical education, they're stuck in 1992, and they're not really reflective of what's happening on the ground right now. So just gotta get it up to a more modern standard. Yeah,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I think you recognize you're you're sitting in a very pro CTE

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: environment. Absolutely.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: That message. In the mapping exercises that we've done over the past year plus, we recognize that there are CTE deserts. Gotcha. And I'm wondering if you have a you know, with your capacity as a very experienced CTE director, what's your would you support like a CTE satellite or CTE light? You know, not necessarily the big Stafford, but something which fills some of the gaps geographically or programmatically around the state?

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: You know what, yes, in that, and what I would say to that is that there are many instances of that happening already, that go ahead of tech centers that are putting programming in our regional high schools. They are, I will say, it's difficult. It is difficult to do sometimes to operate facilities that are far off campus and are operating. So, I'll give you a for instance, I have two off campus programs. I have the Sustainable Ag Barn in Cambridge, and I have the forestry program in Hartwick. It's an hour drive between the two of them. I'm in

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: the middle of it at

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: the main campus at Green Mountain Tech in Hyde Park. We have to work really hard to ensure that those students who are so far away from our centers are getting the supports that they need because we have kids of all needs and all interests that are coming into those places. So yes, we can do those things. Yes, that we have centers that are doing it right now. I don't want to come forward and say, hey, this is going to cost you money, but it would cost some money to do it in a way where we are ensuring that students are getting the experience and the skills that they need. That includes the employability skills and the modeling that we do within our programs. That's part of the process as well, and so we try to get that out externally too.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes, as a follow on, so I'm not sure if you're familiar with the McClure Foundation. So this is a list of essentially vacant Vermont jobs, career opportunities, comes with salary estimates, it's a good list. So I'm wondering if you can balance that versus what are your most popular programs, and do you, as a director, try to dovetail the two together?

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: Yeah, for sure. That is, so this year is, every two years we have to go through a full comprehensive local needs assessment under Perkins V, and one of the six sections, it is a major undertaking for our centers, and one of the six sections is alignment to late market needs. So all of our centers are doing an assessment as to whether or not we are mirroring regional labor market needs, and part of that is bringing in resources like the McCord, I use that pretty heavily as well. So you will find that I would say 85 to 90% of the programs across the state are gonna be found in that first dozen or so areas within a court foundation.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Good, really, thanks. We unfortunately have to move on because our legislature council, they won't let people to still fill in the next bill. Could we get back if we need a picture? Yeah. Someone

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: says, Bill, go ahead and finish this discussion. Yeah. No. I I I kinda thought that might be the case, and, you know, I'd love to come back and drill deeper into whatever area that that we're really going

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to take care of. Okay? Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thanks. Senator Rutland District on 227.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: District, 21 of the lead scholarships, best in 2017. That's two twenty seven is a bill that would require schools and school districts to put in place certain protocols to deal with immigration issues and certain protections for students, community members, families. Is also some language in the bill that codifies, it's, frankly, it's a law of BERPA law that is currently federal, but codifies it into state law that protects student data. I, this bill, I mean, I don't need to highlight why, this bill in this moment. We saw last year the city of Wernuske put into place comprehensive policies to protect students to respond to immigration action at schools, and to protect student data. They've had to enact that policy in a couple of different instances, and because of their sort of forward thinking and really insightful way of doing it, it has worked really well. And I worked quite closely with the folks in Wernuske to look at what Wernuske did, take a big step back and make it more general, recognizing that every school doesn't have the exact same needs, and put into this bill requirements, as I said, that schools and districts develop policies that meet the needs of their students and their populations, but that there are policies in place. And that is sort of the genesis of this bill. I will let Legion Council go through the sort of fine details, but I'm also happy to take any questions or

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So this is different than the, there's also a bill, it's the way from the 1900s

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: that says that

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: keeps agents entering schools.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: Yes, in S209 there is a prohibition on civil arrest with no judicial warrant, and schools are one of the entities that are in that. And this bill does include some similar language. Really, although it does go a little bit further in that the nonpublic areas of the school would not be enterable without a judicial warrant, whereas the S two zero nine prohibited civil arrest. It doesn't prohibit entry with those fixes. And there is it it is there is more than this. There's things in here like a requirement to provide New Year Rights trainings to students that are approved by the Attorney General's Office. Now that does not mean the Attorney General's Office is to make it. You could contract with the ECLU, you could develop one in house, but because the Attorney General is the archer of civil rights, they would have to approve the content to ensure that it is accurate and that it is in line with what are the civil rights. So that is one aspect. Again, it doesn't say who has to do it or how it has to be done. I was asked personally, could a student provide that? And provided it was approved by the attorney general's office, yes, a student could it. And there's multiple other aspects, you know, having resource guides so that community members and students know what the resources are in the community, but really just trying to make sure that students and community members are able to go to school safely, feel safe, and know that there's policies and procedures in place should something happen so that they're not scrambling. They're able to respond really with intention and thoughtfully in the way that I've seen Wannuski do because of their work.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And you stay while we do the walkthrough? Yes. Because I know we're gonna lose such counselors. I'm sure. So if you can do that, let me give you the questions afterwards, okay? Sure. So do we have, that read?

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: Follow-up. I

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: don't see if they're over by

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, we must have had a good question.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Go Well, I put

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: them on screen waiting to come in. So, I think you were first.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, my question is the same as yours about the overlap, potential overlap of two zero nine.

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: Senator Rushing? So, looking at this with my Senate education panel, I'm thinking of what, trying to envision what I suspect the superintendents would have to say. Not saying that this is their position, but one of the things that we've heard about repeatedly just since I've been on this committee are putting more tasks onto superintendents and then having those tasks trickle down to teachers or other staff, other designees, whether it's distributing resources to staff and students, family members, or designating an officer to serve as

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: a resource for immigration related matters. And what I suspect

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: we could hear is that there would be concern about creating yet another unfunded mandate, creating more things that they need to do at a time when there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of work they have to do already. So do you have any response to that general idea?

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: I would respond by saying yes, I hear that, and I would also say that having a plan would overall decrease the work rather than responding in the moment when something happens. And I would certainly suggest speaking to some of the schools that have enacted this as to how that has worked and what has been, if any, increased workload. As I said, I know Wernanusky did something well over a year ago, but my understanding is that U32 is in process of creating policies like this, I believe, Essex, Westford, so some schools are already doing this, and they're, generally speaking, I would imagine that the work of responding to something that happens and may rise to the level of crisis with no plan would ultimately be more than having a plan B, people respond thoughtfully with intention. And I'm fairly sure that there are, because I've spoken to some of them, thought partners in the world of education that would

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: be happy to help. But I agree,

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: and I would be happy to put funding bill, but I recognize that that may not be possible.

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: Can I add something? Thank you. Just very briefly. Hi, everybody. Senator Arntz, Rutland, Chittenden, Chittenden, Senator, think you probably know, and I don't wanna speak for the board, the Vermont School Board Association, they develop model policies. That's that's, like, one of the things they do, and then they make them available to school districts. So I can see the possibility that the VSBA might be able to develop some of those policies and then share with membership at large as an option.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, I was thinking about all the policies, yeah. Yes?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: Will federal law, and I'm asking this question because I do not know, can it supersede what, maybe you can answer this, Senator, supersede what we draw up as law, that they come in and say, I understand you have this law, but our law supersedes it because it's immigration, it's federal. Yeah, so that would be

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: a good question for alleged counsel, but I think the, I mean, over arching question is, you know, does it fall under the tenth amendment? Is that something that we as a state are able to regulate within our borders, or does it go down the path of intergovernmental immunity and regulating their investigations and how they do their job? So, that's, I think those are the two sides of it, and in many ways, it's a, well, yeah, I'll just leave that there. Alright. Let counsel probably get some better insight.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: I think if we're having the same conversation in the judiciary on the sort of sensitive spaces bill and where the bounds of that are, there's a lot of additional things in this bill that are really about how schools are fun, how schools support students, how schools provide resources to students, and I can't see any way in which those do come in conflict with with federal law because it really has nothing to do with how the immigration officers are acting about how schools are providing resources and supports. Alright. Well, what they

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: may say, again, this is hypothetical. What they may say is that that's a authorization to proceed on state property or whatever. That that's what I I believe is as far as superseding a law that we create, that they have that, that access, yeah, I think that counts.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: Yes, and like I said, that's the same aspect we're negotiating into a bank, but this is much broader than that.

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: Yeah. If they have judicial warrant, I mean, generally they can go anywhere that the warrant says that they can go. But in terms of, you know, creating rules for, you know, what happens internally in the state, and we can do that, but again, it depends. But also, I don't think this really says what federal agents can or can't do, but more so, at least from what I'm saying, is it looks more like us giving guidance to what superintendents and schools have to do in terms of sharing information and designating different staff of teachers to be responsible for things that they have.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: That is the broader aspect of it and then, you know, some data protection information, but there is an aspect in there around the prohibition of people entering the private places of the school and found public spaces of the school without a judicial branch. That does exist in there, but it is one piece of of a much larger

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: Where where is that? Okay.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: I am not I I don't know. I'm not looking at the bill. And

[Sen. Steven Heffernan]: then what's another question is what would be a private space inside the school that's not a public spot? So on page two, subsection two,

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: it says a non public area of the school site means an area of the school that normally requires authorization by school to enter consistent with the policy required by section fourteen eighty four of this chapter. It includes classrooms, the cafeteria, gymnasium, playground, and many other locations where students gather.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: That's also in the AOE guidance. Okay. Can say the same thing.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: I'm looking for the Here on page four, section B, subsection two, the superintendent reads, that he shall not allow federal immigration authority into non public areas of the school site unless the judicial warrant is prevented by the federal immigration authority that names a specific individual under arrest or subject to search. Subsection three, in the event that federal immigration authorities enter a non public area of the school to school site without approval from the superintendent or designated school, shall not obstruct the Federal Immigration Authority from entering enough. So this is sort of the piece, and then it goes on to say, Absent a judicial warrant, no school shall reveal the information. So this is the piece that, it is still really guidance to the school, but it does get at a prohibition on that being

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Yeah. So, on page five, section two, immigration resource guide. It says, shall we complete the line eight and nine? Pseudo 16 DSA, etcetera, etcetera. Now what is what is that what is 16 DSA approaching eight six, Darla? And what's the intent of the guide? Is immigration and immigration resource guides? I mean, that's a whole career field.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: First, thank you.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: He has a whole career field and a career field that the Attorney General should be fairly well versed in, which is why they are tasked to develop that guide. And the intent is to make sure that everyone has the resources and knowledge of what are the laws and what are the resources available to them.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: It could be a pretty significant project. I'm I'm just wondering what specifically would forward it.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: I will say I have spoken to the Attorney General in the development of this bill, and they are open to working with us on Congress. But we did not task the schools to create that. Tasked the

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: authorities Good, at thank you. Yeah.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: Mr. Chittenden. Yes.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: You know, perhaps this was already put in sequencing, and I could be wrong, but I think the I mean, the really valuable thing about this is that you were working on it in December. Right? And so we got a communication from AOE that I read because I was very curious about the congruency. And they updated their guidance on January 23 after incredibly horrific events in Minneapolis to essentially match more of your bill. And so if if that hasn't been said yet, I mean, this is a very important pursuit because I think updating their guidance, you know, when things got that horrific, means that we have to keep planning for really terrible scenarios to be invited upon our children in our schools. And that's, you know, that's a reality that should be central for us. So I think this is critical work because you you had already given us something that was ready for a moment that hadn't happened yet, and we shouldn't wait for the next horrific moment invited upon us by the federal government to do something.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Yeah. Think you may have understood. But we were one of our first questions was potential overlap with two zero nine s 2,000, to see where it is different from that, you know, recognizing something needs to be done, but it's

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Right, I do think it's more important for kids and Well, schools are in 209. That's why we're

[Erin McGuire]: This goes deeper.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. We we know that.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: Specifically Yeah. We talked about that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: That's important. I think kids are different. And child cares.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: I don't

[Erin McGuire]: know if that's in the bill, but my thought.

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: We might wanna make a few. Yeah.

[Chris Benway]: I mean, we didn't think

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: that there was gonna be ICE entering childcare facilities, we might wanna add that. I think this is

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: our job.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah,

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: and I think one of the things we're working on on two zero nine is a broader definition of what is a school, and that might be useful here as well. I didn't realize in prepping this bill or two zero nine that we don't have a legal definition of a school. And so, I would certainly recommend connecting with Beth St. James, or working in conjunction with your judiciary committee, which the two of the members are sitting here now on that school definition which would incorporate childcare. This definition probably does not. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Referring to two zero nine, S two zero nine. Who has two zero nine?

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: It's in the senate judiciary. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I agree. I'm normally opposed to fighting, putting something more onto schools, more onto, we should do this, we should do this, and this is different. Because this is critical for kids that involved. But if we're going think about daycares, child care centers, they won't be able to do this, they have to be, there have to be a bottle of wine, there have to be a bottle for them to employ. So not going gobble it on their own.

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: Yes? I was going to share a really short personal anecdote. I'll keep it short, years, many, many years ago, pre cell phones, I was working at a high school in a different part of Vermont, closer down to New York, and word went out one evening that a student was missing. And we didn't know what happened. We searched the area looking for this young man. We didn't find him that night. The next day when we all showed up at work, he was curled up in a corner of one of the classrooms with the school. And to this day, I still remember that as, you know, his safe space was his school. I don't know exactly what was happening in his home that evening, but he ran away to school, and I think we can't underestimate that space as a safe space for kids.

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: That's back when he left it for mom.

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: Right. I know, it's a long time.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So as we think about this, do we think about the agency or the board or somebody come up with a bottle as opposed to each sister do it onto their own? That's Richard?

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: Or about the VSBA doing the model test? VSBA.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And it's, I think we need, and the way we have them with Winooski, they could almost be the model, but.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: Right. Well, and that is the work that I did in here. I was working with Winooski to try and craft a policy that was a model that could be tailored to individual schools. So I did go, we did go through with legislative council every point of the policy and tried to hone in where that makes sense to be global policy and zoom out where the idea made sense, but it might look different in new thing than it does in Winooski and than it might at St. Johnsbury Academy. And and so that that is what we tried to do here was sort of craft a bit of a model policy based on Winooski's policy, which is not to say that there aren't places where it may need to be tweaked, but that is sort of what we tried to put in front of you was that model policy based on the Winooski language, but with the flexibility to be able to be tailored for each individual school district. You know, in Winooski, they had a policy, volunteer tree policy, that was enacted earlier this year when an unmarked car with masked people and it was following a student, they had a plan in place to call the volunteer tree to begin walking students to school and boarding the buses to ride the buses with students. Winooski is a mile by a mile. That works in Winooski. That may not work in, you know, a more rural outskirts. So so we try to really hone in on, find something that works to respond to this issue in your community. But that is what we're trying to do here, was just the start of a model policy. Okay. I'm just

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: not gonna do the walkthrough, but

[Sen. Nader Hashim]: Okay. That's great. Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I think that was it. Yeah. We did.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's okay. We could walk through later.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I don't think it can be understated too, the sensitive information Yeah. Piece. You know, I think we talk about affordability and property taxes. I think my school district, CVSD, is gonna have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on being targeted by the federal government and extorted for student data. That's expensive for our taxpayers. And they should be able to say, I'm covered by the state. The state says no, not we are on our own battling an individual policy. This is expensive and it's traumatizing for kids, and that's just not okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're traumatizing to everybody who works there. Yeah. Thank

[Unidentified CTE Director (Green Mountain Technology & Career Center)]: you. Thank you.

[Unknown Senator (committee or guest)]: Yes, of course.

[Unknown Senator (Sponsor of S.227)]: Coming from another community as well. And that's

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: still And because they're they're they're they're large time different rates, so that's not it. So why don't we just take a five minute break?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Because I imagine Anyone can come to you. Great.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Steve, do saw the race, did you know?