Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: We're live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Senate Education Committee on Thursday for the week after a short break was shifting gears here to drive its education. Andrew? Yeah. Yeah. So we're looking at s two fifty nine. We have a lot of witnesses lined up. So if we can I'm doing the math here. Something like five or six minutes each would be great. Spread it over a little bit. That's okay. So, you are you are on to introduce yourselves for the record. Sure.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: I'm Pat McMahon, and I'm with the Vermont Farm Motor Vehicles Apportionment Safety Commission. I supervise the education unit, which oversees the school bus driver trainee, the motorcycles training, and the driver's ed and CDL private schools, so that if you become, or higher schools, the agency of education works available to speak to, but they do the high school programs.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: My name is Justin McLean. I'm the

[Justin McLean (VT DMV, Driver Education Coordinator)]: drug retention coordinator for the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Department of Motor Vehicles. Welcome to the two of you. You got a boom. Let's go, so go ahead. We're looking for, like, hasn't even fully decided to fully take up to 59, but we'll, I think we will have that discussion after today, depending on the complexity, but we want to I hear your

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: want to thank you for inviting us to come over and testify. We were in the Senate Transportation earlier this morning, testifying for the same bill. What I'd like to do is, first of all, there were some misunderstanding, maybe misinformation given in reference to the way instructors are trained as well as some other things. So I just wanted to clarify those first. There's a rumor White Mountain Community College is inadequate. I want to strongly say they are not. So inadequate for what? For training instructors.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, so you're Okay, yeah, because we took some testimony that there's a shortage of opportunity for instructors to be trained, your response is?

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: That, right now we have 16 Vermonters that are enrolled and have taken at least one class this semester at White Mountain. There's another 11 that are somewhere in the process. The eight classes that we require to license our instructors, we license our instructors through the front of our motor vehicles. The eight classes that we require are required by White Mountain. They were required by Key. They were required by Kesha Ram Hinsdale. There's no difference. And that so, yes, Key might be a four year program. White Mountain might be a two year program, but the A classes are the same required to do it. So they are not getting any more training from team. There is also a thought that White Mountain does not do behind the wheel, that everything is done online. That is also not accurate. Their classrooms are done online, but they are required to go to White Mountain and do all the behind the wheel training with White Mountain's instructors.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So just to back up for a second. I think we're here because at least my understanding is that there is not enough opportunity for young people to get driver's ed, and that goes to the issue of people trained to do it so help us. I don't know, both had our hands up here, so is that the case? How can you help us with that question? Whether the shortage of instructors is the issue or opportunity for the instructors to get trained? What's going on? Why do we have a shortage? That's what we're really trying to get at.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: The State of Transportation had the same question this morning. We didn't have an answer for them. We told them we'd get an answer. They didn't have an answer to that. Justin has made phone calls to some of our schools regionally, our private schools, and our for higher schools. What we found is that their classes right now, the ones they're running right now are full, But their next one in line is not. They have openings. So there is availability there. I can't speak for the agency for education. They would have to speak for themselves. But on the private side, the for hire side, there are openings. Our instructors on an average are running a class every five weeks. So there are OBs. Yes.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So I'm really at a loss. I'm not sure what problem we're trying to send. Right.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That that's what I'm trying to that's what I

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: was doing. I think there's some misinformation Yeah. About the White Mountain to start off with. How do you know where White Mountain is? No. I'm not sure. It's even Germain. Two years ago, we met with we we actually had one on the line. We had somebody here from the Vermont part of it, and they were trying to work a deal with White Mountain to get instructors certified. They couldn't don't think we were able to do that. Not not that they were inadequate. It's just that we couldn't have come to the dream of my brother to make that happen.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: So on the for hire side, back in 2022, we had 56 standard instructors, standard of the car. Okay? Right now, 2025, we have 79. Well, 78, one person just retired. He informed us today. So we're at 78.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: 78 instructors in Vermont to teach driver's ed to students.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: For the for hire side. You'll have to talk at AOE about the Bayer side. There's two ways, either the agency of education provides driver's ed or they serve in these private schools. In 'twenty two, we have 46 schools, private schools. Right now at '25, we have 48. So we increased by three. We have some that are going through the process now to become licensed, but we have multiple instructors working for several different schools. Yes.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: But how many do you need? I mean, a number doesn't mean anything to us. A number in relation to the number you need is relevant. You need to see what the problem is.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: As I said, when we reached out to the schools today, because we were trying to get that answer for Senate Transportation, what we're finding is that, yeah, our instructors have their classes right now that are full, the ones that are running right now, which we want, but their next class in line, is a couple weeks down the road or at the most five weeks, are not full. So the availability on the for hire side is there. Can we always use more instructors? Sure. Any program that you have, any educational program you have, is going to say you need more instructors. I used to teach at the police academy. We always said we need more instructors. That's But the slots are there for the taking.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: When you say the slots are there, you talking about students, the young people's slots? Yes. Okay. Okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. The driver's educations instructors have to be teacher qualified.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: Thank you for the agency of education. Again, I'll let them speak for their side. For our side, no. But they have to have those eight core classes, driver's ed classes. And then if they're not already teacher certified, if they don't have the credentials, then they have to do student teaching without a qualified instructor. And they have to have so many hours of student teaching. So most of them will get a mentor, and they'll work under that mentor.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Do want

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: Unless you have more questions for us.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So just to go back through it, the reason we're here is at least a perception that students are having students are young people that are are having a hard time getting the driver's education as they get their license. And your part of this is the the people who teach the classes. And so I think one question that that sort of issues was moving to was do we have a a shortage of people teaching driver's ed? So in the so I I understand the two sides. Some of it's in school and some of it's private provider. And your answer is that it is enough. We have enough people teaching it and and thus your one class will be able to not quite fill. So what's your

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: Before higher side, fiber side, the side that we do would, I think at this point we probably, again, we probably, but right now we have an adequate number to handle the need that we have.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And how long do people tend to do it if they become trained? Is there a high, sort of high quick burnout rate? Do you have to, is it a constant churn or do people do it and teach them for twenty years?

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: So I've been in the position I'm in for, since And twenty there's instructors that outdate me in this position. So I can speak for

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

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: motorcycle side and it in part relates, motorcycle instructors, we have some that are hardcore. I've been teaching the motorcycle program for almost thirty years. Some instructors turn out after five. So the average motorcycle safety foundation says it's heavy for an insurance. Good.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. You're gonna stay close. You're hang around and answer some questions or questions? Yes. Okay. If I

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: can just make one more comment. The online program, because the commissioner of motor vehicles I've had conversations with him, we are for the program with some modifications if you choose to take it up.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And when you say, so the online portion is a classroom part of the people's driving. And do you have a quick couple of points for us on modifications?

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: Our modification would be that it's written that DMV and AOE in cooperation come up with all the guidelines, policies, procedures. And the reason I say that is we've also looked at the schools that have, or the states that have online training now. And all of them, they have it, but they allow, or they leave it up to the school itself or the instructor to say, yes, we're gonna accept that or no, we're gonna not accept. And this is why from the for hire side, I am limited, we limit our schools to 30 students. That's the max that they can have

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: in the class because time wise.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: If I have 25 students that are in person and I have five students that are online, those five students are taking a seat. So they're still gonna pay the same price that they were taking an in person home and that. So we want the schools to be able to decide whether they're going to accept that or not. There's other things that we look at. We would like to have like six, we would like to have six hours in person, requiring them six hours in person, sort of like meeting does.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So your basic point is guidelines.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Yeah. So the U. Agency can follow-up the guidelines. If he provided language for that, that'd very good. But, obviously, that's Does say, is there a

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: problem in the bills that they're working in cooperation to develop this? Did basically, what what Commissioner's point was, we don't wanna see

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: it where we have to it or that the school has to access it,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: is what I'm trying to get to. That is a lot, it's up

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: to the school to decide.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So why don't we go out of the order next and full exam within a few minutes and go to the AOE? Yep.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: For the record, Andrew Krabin. I'm the director of the Education Program Approvals Division at the agency, so I oversee educator licensing, a few other programs, as well

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: as driver's education. Tammy? Tammy Krazian, I am the driver education consultant for Gainsborough Education.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: Okay, yeah. Yeah, so, and I can, and our our that's the only payment today. So I did make some printouts if you wanted them, and then we've got some other numbers that we had kinda ran after watching this morning. You have that. Yes. Yeah. From us, and most likely, can give it to you. Just trying to keep it to to one page this this this year for y'all. So from the agency of education, we have kind of three three different pieces that we wanted to talk about. Right? To to the question of online driver's education, which really this bill is is about, you know, from our read of it, statute already allowed it. Right? So and we have examples of online driver's education. The recent changes within the flexible pathways statute specifically around virtual learning, and that's cited and linked on that testimony, that's title 16, VSA nine forty eight. You know, we we believe that that applies pretty much any any classroom content, including driver's education. And we have, over the years, we've worked with the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative to to to experiment with pilots to provide online driver's education that is supplemented by the in person, in vehicle instruction as well. So, it's been a small highlight that hasn't fully expanded to a large statewide component yet, but it's something that is already allowable, so our concern is if we have additional statute around online education that's specific to only driver's ed, that could create some some differences between and maybe even conflicts with our existing statute around virtual, sorry, itself. So so your testimony is almost don't really need the bill for It's a great idea. You already did it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. You

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: know? So so Right, so exactly. So, so that's that's kind of the the specific piece on our rates. You know, it's it's already allowable. It's not like that we do not allow online education for driver's education. That's fine. Another concern is is, you know, within within the education agency of education little p policies that we have to supplement around driver's education. We are really strict on the in class instruction and the in classroom instruction happening pretty much at the same time. Right? That's that's where we have integrated and concurrent. You know? So our concern would be is if we have a lot of students going through the the in class online program without that in car instruction, they'll end up having to retain class ultimately, which is added time, added cost for students or for districts. So what we found, and including in that pilot with the virtual learning collaborative, you know, it's it's relatively easy to get that in class instruction online and get students access to it. Really, the challenge then is that in in car driving structure. And again, it's really important that that's happening at the same time. They learn about something about driving the car, they practice it. They learn some more, they practice it. So, I think without addressing that issue, we're not gonna be solving this problem that we're trying to solve. And then the third piece that was concerning is that, ultimately, even if we do have an online program, we would still need a Vermont, a licensed Vermont teacher, to be the teacher of record in that case. We can't get to a point where we have an online program that doesn't have a teacher, right? So, again, I think that that challenge of getting instructors would still be a barrier in place. And to answer some of the questions too, think, you know, what we see on that that public education side or independent schools as well for driver's instruction are some of the same workforce trends that we're seeing for a lot of endorsements, like school nurses, school librarians, PE teachers, right? So, there's a lot of those positions that may not necessarily be a full time position for one school building. A lot of times, it's a partial FTE. Those are really hard positions to fill in our current system. So having lots of different districts with different schedules, an individual trying to piece together four different jobs to have a full FTE is is really difficult. So, you know, as we move towards regionalization, whatever that looks like, whether it's BOCES or or larger districts, you know, I I you know, our our our theory, working theory, is that as we have that, you know, shared calendars, you can have more opportunities where an individual could have a full time job with a district or a post lease, whatever it is, and they can serve multiple schools without having to navigate multiple contracts, multiple different schedules.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Go ahead. So, that's a good concept, but if there's a shortage of instructors in car, I think we've kind of finally boiled this down, what the problem is, and that's an in car instructor. We have a shortage of in car instructors given a 119

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: districts, it's going be the same problem with OCs or whatever district. It can be from what I've heard is one of the challenges and I know we have some educators may be able to speak to this, but from my understanding is that as a lot of these positions have been cut down from a full time position, right now folks have to piece, and again, this is true with school nurses and lots of other positions. They're trying to piece together a full job, and the simple schedule between districts does work. So some schedules are one day on, one day off. Others, it's three days. Right? So if we have shared calendar, shared regional schedules, then it'd be easier for an individual to be employed for this larger region, if that makes sense.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: How real is how is problem for young people trying get their drug services? Yeah. Do you

[Millie Manchester (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: want So

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: the schools that don't currently have an in house instructor, those schools are contracting with private driving schools. So, currently, we don't have any school, any public school. I can't really speak to all of them both independents, the public schools, we don't have any that aren't providing driver education to their students. If they don't have a teacher, they're contracting through a private driving school. And I recently was hearing the same thing that those private driving schools are able to get students into their classes immediately because they do have, they're not running courses, semesters, they have their own schedule. We do have fewer teachers, because as teachers retire, the FTE gets cut. Nobody wants a quarter time job. There's no appeal, I guess. Could be part of the problem. For the in vehicle piece, I think that maybe an online program may cause a little bit of an issue there, because they're only putting through, you know, 30 or 40 stations annually. They can't put through more than that because their staff does provide the in vehicle piece. If you have more students going through the online course, how are you gonna keep us working with students needing the in vehicle And I

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: think too, it's like, like all things, it's hard to say statewide, this is an issue for everybody. There's definitely reachable differences and such. There's a lot of complexity, but I think, like, from my perspective on this is that, like, the the workforce challenges for driver's education are not unique and and that different from workforce challenges for education positions generally. So what I'm hearing is that right now we have a

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: few problems but we don't know a year from now what we're gonna have to do problem because you may have more FTE, their retirements. So so we who's got the who's gonna handle?

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: There are more individuals. So

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Did I have the data sheet? No, of course.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: So right now, there are 88 individuals that have to fill a different information in those. Of those eighty, forty one are working exclusively public and

[Millie Manchester (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: are post

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: independent schools. 24, both in the AOE and the DMV endorsement, of those 24, seven of them work exclusively for DMV. 41 teachers teach classroom and behind the wheel, 14 teach behind the wheel only, and then there are 23 other individuals that hold this endorsement that aren't teaching driver education at all. So there's opportunity for 23 more people to teach driver education in our public schools. I don't know why they aren't. So I don't know if there's necessarily, there may be a shortage, but there's 23 other people here, 16 currently taking the course to right balance, another 11 that are somewhere in the process.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So sounds like a good solution that when the school can't attract the teacher to provide the collateral duty as a driver's ed instructor that was the case decades ago. Good solution to contract out with the commercial providers, fill in the gap. Are there any students, schools, which have a shortage? That's what we're really trying to think of.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: So that's kind of hard to determine. Guess maybe the teachers can speak for their own school, but driver education has to be provided to the students for free before they graduate. I think what you may be seeing with students that are going to private, or students that are, well, I think that maybe some are going to prep because driver education is not necessarily available to them right when they run it, right when they get their permit. So it is available to them. It's the fact that they maybe don't want to wait. And it's the same thing with home study. It is available to home study students for free. It may not be available right when they find it. They have to be put on the list because schools make their schedules in advance. I I believe most schools are probably serving their sophomores and juniors, and maybe not so many seniors, but if they have seniors, seniors first, then juniors, then sophomores.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: But no empirical data from schools that it's a six month delay, it's a one year delay, anything, we're trying to understand I what the problem

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: have asked that question before and the responses were, well, we have 500 students in our high school, we serve this many students per year, but no real information about if they have a backlog. The larger schools will have one classroom teacher, multiple in vehicle teachers, so they're serving a large number of students.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So just to get my answer on this, if there is a shortage in some areas of the state and you have to do the in car in any event, It isn't actually helpful, could it be helpful to be able to do the classroom portion online? Because theoretically you can do have more students access.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: That's the problem that BTBLC has had. They provide that classroom online, but you have to have an in vehicle instructor to provide the driving concurrently. Right. The schools that are using BTDL, see, they don't have a teacher, so they also don't have somebody to do the driving. They could potentially maybe use a private driving school to do the driving, but they're still paying for that driving school. So, now they're paying for the VTBLC and they're paying for the private child.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: How old is the classroom portion?

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: So, it depends on if the school is running quarters, trimesters, or semesters before or if there is a private driving school.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But it's an helpless number of hours, though, right?

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: Oh, so thirty hours of classroom, six hours of driving, six hours of office procedure.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, So senator Williams, but then senator Rashim. So for DMV, you're you're talking about instructors, which are primarily talking about test cases. Right? Sure. You have do you actually have people that are involved in survivor education? Yes. Have forty-

[Justin McLean (VT DMV, Driver Education Coordinator)]: Third party testers?

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: No. How many schools do we have? 48 standard schools. 48 schools that teach drivers at the thirty hour classrooms six and six. Now we have our third party examiner.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I understand it's that schools, when you say schools, we think brick and mortar, K-twelve. You've to differentiate between-

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: So if I say for hire, would that work?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, some sort of commercial.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: Oh, commercial. So we have commercial schools that do the classroom and behind the wheel, 36. Out of those, we also have what we call third party examiners who can actually give the exam also. Some of them will only do their own students. Some of them will do any student. We recently, within the last year or so, well, a little over a year now, we also allow our third party examiners to now give the exam to adults. And so we basically go through the full implementation. We don't require our instructors or our schools to do the third party testing. That's totally up to them. But we do have actual or higher, or commercial schemes. Sounds complicated. Yeah. It can be. I mean,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: wouldn't it be better off if one agency or the other had the responsibility?

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: Yeah, mean, no surprise, you know, Vermont, we're unique in how we do that.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I guess we are.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: It's a mixed delivery system. Right? So I think my understanding is is the statute for that that allows for functionally that free driver's education. Right? The way we look at it is the school's first, they hire a teacher, it's a licensed teacher. They do the same courses now through White Mountain Community College. It's it's the one provider in the region. They do those courses, they go through us, get that teacher license, get on the teacher contract or an employee of that that public or independent school. When schools don't have that, then they'll contract with one of the commercial schools that have the licensed instructors through DMV. Same courses, really, I mean, the the qualifications are very, very similar. They have to meet the same standards. It's it's really a difference of employment and also degree. The we have the for classroom teachers, have to have at least a bachelor's degree for the most part. There's a few different exceptions. So the qualifications on the instructors on sort of checking off the standards, taking the coursework is is very similar, They're in the same classes too.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: And our curriculums are similar. What we approve as curriculums are similar.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, some are our students.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Thank you. I think it's getting back to a question you had asked earlier. One of the things that I'm trying to understand is, is there a concern that student is doing online training and then there's too long of a gap of time in between that online training and then behind the wheel training?

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: Right, yeah, sort of a caution that we have is if we if we push a bunch of students through that in class online training, right, and they don't have that in CAR, it's not like, okay, now we have the next CAR, two years later you do it. We have we have our own rules that say that they have to do it within a certain time frame. Yeah. So our concern would be is if people do that online, of course, and they're waiting for the HINC card, they're waiting for the HINC card, they pass that time that we have set, then they'd have

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: to take the class again.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: What is the current time? Depends, or

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: So, depends, again, on whether or or trimester is starting. Generally, we don't want them to go beyond a year Without taking away the online course piece, we have had some schools, some of our larger schools, years ago that were putting through all of their 15 year olds. So anybody that was of age, whether they had their permit or not, they were putting them through the classroom portion. And then maybe they would get the in vehicle portion, maybe they wouldn't. So we've had a few schools, some were 200 students behind, some were 150 students behind, and a lot of them just aged out. They never got any in vehicle instruction at all. That's a safety concern.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, so actually, did you have a question?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Well, no, it's I wasn't aware that it was a graduation requirement.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: So it's not necessarily a graduation requirement. Rather, the schools need to provide driver's education, it's through a licensed public education. That's right. Right. Perfect. We get a nice, modest reimbursement.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. So has the AOE considered, like a time limit between the course whether it's in classroom or online that if the school can't provide the certified teacher to provide the in car instruction that you authorize the expenditure of the commercial driver, in car driver, instructor to wrap this thing up. I mean, instead of just waiting for like a year, I couldn't even imagine. I was 15 or whatever, was waiting for a year. It's not responsive government. We make a requirement. We allow the opportunity, but the tools aren't available, but in fact, tools are available in another shed. Why can't we just look at something simple?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: So Yeah, don't think anything would not allow that. And it's probably happening. It's not happening anymore. It's

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: not happening because we don't allow it, or it's not happening because it's practical, or there's two different sets of certification.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: I didn't speak for the teachers, but in conversations that I've had, they would prefer to teach the students the classroom and the driving themselves, and not wonder what the other teacher actually taught the students in the classroom or where the student got off into driving. Yeah. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: that's part of what's okay. Part of what's going on is that the instructors are not always interested in doing just the Yeah. Vehicle portion. They wanna do the whole thing or not.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: A few years ago, did under secretary French, we we went through a few different rule changes to really separate out. We had heard from some teachers about other subjects who said, I'll teach drivers that, but I'm not getting in the car with kids, So we made some some flexibility to allow them to do in class only, and then we took the bachelor requirement from the in car, because what they did in New Hampshire was actually partnerships between schools and then police officers. So a lot of police officers who have an associate's degree that are trained, other police officers how to drive, right, to do that in car instruction. So we had done some of the rule changes to try to mimic that, and it just didn't take off. There were a few a few districts that have local law enforcement who are a driver's ed instructor, but it didn't scale up the way that we

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: had hoped to avoid.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Let's hear from some students. Yeah. Because I wanna get a sense of the what's the issue on the ground. Perfect. Thank you, Todd. And then we'll come back along circle around others, but I gotta jump ahead. I think the first student on the list is H. Yep.

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: Sounds good. Thanks for that, man. That's fine. My main concern is safety. Deep your name for the record. My name is H. Jordan, and I am a student at William Sound. I took Bever's Ed last semester, but my main concern is safety. And if we go to online classes more rather than in person, it might impact, like, just how well somebody can drive. And that concerns me because I know like, I've done online courses before. To me, they make me not as interested. I don't obtain as much information, and just looking around and seeing how everybody does, like, on computers and stuff is hard. I know it's hard to obtain information, and I believe that I can make just the roads unsafe, unsafe.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The, does the online portion, or the quadrant portion has tests as well, right? Yeah. So you'd have to still do that with the online, but what you're saying is you just don't absorb it the same way. Well- Is that true?

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: I've, I just feel like, I think an online course could, it still could be good as long as there's like direction from an instructor at the same time throughout the whole thing. Because it, it like makes you focus more and just makes you stay more, like, you can't kinda be free in the in the sense of, like, just what you what you want.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: It

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: should've So so you if you're saying, like, you get to a point where you got a question, you could stop the phone line and turn to the teacher and say, I got a question here, you know, that would help you more. Yeah.

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: I believe you should have access to a real instructor at all times. And I mean, being watched over, I think that would be be good. I mean, to have, like, on like, online stuff like Zoom, I think that could be acceptable. Mhmm. It doesn't necessarily have to be all, like, in the classroom. But so I just think an an instructor should always be present.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So okay. So you've been instructed to speak with you on the Zoom. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. So somebody who can actually stop it, and then as senator Williams, I think, is to be able to ask me a question that I should go. Okay. Thanks. Let's.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Are you done? Yeah.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: We'll connect.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's okay. Are. Yeah. Ellie Hayes.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: Hello. My name is Ellie Hayes. I'm a sophomore at Williamson Middle High School, and I'm currently a student in driver's ed. I would like to thank you for this opportunity to present my opinion today. I'm here to oppose this proposal because I believe that making a driver's education classes entirely video instructed is a terrible idea. If all instruction is done online, you're assuming that every student is going to pay attention and not just walk away from the computer or get sidetracked. It's also just unreasonable to expect students to not have any questions and then not have a structure there to answer them. During the pandemic, just for context with remote learning, was a lack of educational support. And I personally was left with a lot of unanswered questions, which made me really insecure going back to the classroom in person. So, by making driver's ed entirely video instructed, you're also expecting an entire course of driver's education to be understood and mentally maintained with no guidance or potentially inaccurate answer subtextions if you're expecting parents to be like a guide, which similar to what your remote learning was, it's just training insecure, nervous drivers who don't properly understand the road because they're not getting in car with instructor time, they're not getting in class instructor time. They're kind of just left to do it on their own. I understand that not every student has access to driver's education programs. I was almost left, like stuck waiting until my junior year. I was fortunate enough to get in my sophomore year, but I wasn't expected to be able to do it until next year. And some kids just can't get into it fall, but by making everything digital, like I said, you're expecting parents and guardians to teach them if they don't have access to an instructor, which I also believe is simply unreasonable because not every adult has the skills or understanding or the mental strength to drive with a license as it is right now. There's a lot of very unsafe adult drivers, and to then have their child be in the car with them can be stressful,

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

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: can be nerve racking. Some kids experience a lot of pressure, some kids experience no Braddens

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: at all.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: Don't know if they're getting the practice that they need with the skills that they were taught through the class. It can it I I think it just leaves a lot of room for nervous or insecure drivers or very overconfident drivers that are making bad decisions and putting other people, into dangerous positions.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So your testimony is would be this recognizing that there's gonna be six hours in car, either way, testimony is still that that portion that could conceivably be online should be in person as well.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: It's just only in person.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. And what if an engaged said that perhaps if it were an instructor online, that that would perhaps work?

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: I do think that that would work. I have a friend who did his entire driver's education program through Zoom and everything was taught through an instructor, but he couldn't get into the classroom. But that works for you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So you're I think you're both saying that it it's not just a matter there's really there's a two two possibilities. One would be just do it entirely digitally, and you're both saying that's a bad idea.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: Yes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The other is that it could be on Zoom with an instructor, and that might work. Okay. Did you have trouble getting into a class?

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: No, I just got into it first semester of sophomore.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, okay. Oh, a couple questions. Had a

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: question actually with the three young drivers. Is there a drive for young I've seen that I heard a lot that young drivers just don't care to drive now, that there's

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: not a need. Like, I was excited to get my license.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Is that still the trend of young people to get their license, or it's like

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: I think a lot of, like, a lot of kids want it easy, and they wanna just be able to get it, and they don't wanna put in the work to get their license. But, I mean, I was very excited to drive. I just got my license. I love driving. But, yeah, I just believe The kids' recorders?

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: What do you what do you

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: think that? I think most kids are still pretty excited to drive.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: I I agree.

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: It should just be a lack of effort. I think online would make that worse.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Alright. Thanks. Thank you.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I think this is a question for AO. Let me ask. Like, the, I was just looking at the bill and I'm seeing that the curriculum has to meet the standards for the novice teen driver education and training administrative standards. Is that who who establishes those standards?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: So so we have

[Justin McLean (VT DMV, Driver Education Coordinator)]: the Vermont Association National Association. Let me say your name again. Justin McLean, Vermont DOB, driver education coordinator. So we have our Vermont Association. We also have the American Association. It's national, and they create working groups that then create these standards. They've established them as optimal training standards for driver's ed. So the bill, like you said, it does mention that whatever we use would have to beat that, the concurrency and integration of the behind the wheel in the classroom that Tammy, was talking about is part of those standards even. Thank you. Was just curious who made standards. Thanks. Can I also add one other thing, actually? So DMD does allow the hybrid or virtual classroom already as well, and I think day a

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: week Right. Right.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: As well.

[Justin McLean (VT DMV, Driver Education Coordinator)]: Yeah. So the the Zoom option is currently an option.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Zoom within a structure. Okay. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Billy Manchester. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

[Millie Manchester (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: Hi, I'm Millie Manchester. I'm a sophomore at Illinois Summer Middle High School. I took driver's ed last semester, and I'm being to express my concern regarding the proposed bill. So, I did some research and from what I have learned watching videos at a driving, or not driving display, a learning experience that's called passive learning, which is an unreliable way to retain information, especially when it is proven that information not properly retained, reduces performance rates by 40% of endurance laws. And when the task at hand is a life of death ladder, I think that number is highly significant. And I think changing the criteria of driver's education to simply watching videos and all being online is an idea that really frightens me. And it makes me reflect on how hopeful I am that I've got an opportunity to pass driver's education to supervise practice, both in the classroom and in the car weekly. And I think without that, it could have ultimately affected me and the people around me. I don't think I would have been a confident driver. I would have been a very good driver. So,

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

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: It's an appropriate place to

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: be at the education committee. Daphne helped me with a PowerPoint. Do you want me to, like, on the computer, I can just, I I think everyone's got

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: They got it out.

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: They got it printed out so I can just go through it? Alright.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we have to move quickly. Yeah. I'm gonna

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: go pick the Yeah. It's important stuff. Alright. I will go quick. In restatements. For the record, my name is Dan Goodness. I'm AAA North Dakota. I'm a Niagara Public Safety. I also oversee our three driving schools, three drivers, Richmond Motors driving schools. Two in Niagara, one in Maine. One in Maine does allow online driver ed to represent, and New Hampshire doesn't fully. Happy to answer any questions about that. Say that again, please, sir. I oversee three driving schools, two in New Hampshire and one in Maine. The one in Maine, as was referenced by DMV in Maine, allows online driver to come hybrid model, twenty four hours online and six hours from classroom. Okay. So that's how we operate our main operations. Okay. So happy to answer your question, at any point, about that we operate in two different models. Just gonna go to page two, and that's why am I here? AAA, for over one hundred years, has been involved in traffic safety. They have the best job at AAA. We did research on everything around how to make vehicles safer and how to make our roads safer, from the effects of legalization of marijuana to all the new technologies that's in vehicles to distract the driving. We're at the forefront of doing all the research on what's in the effects of cell phones on our brain, our eyes, our cognitive. So just tons and tons of research, and so I go out there and try to work on policies in communities, high schools, all throughout Maine, again, from Vermont to try to make our roads a little safer. Alright, so let's get to the nuts and bolts of this. One of the aspects that was mentioned that I think is missing, that hasn't been talked about, is that fewer teams are taking driver's They're waiting till they're 18. They don't have to take driver's ed. They can just get their license, and I think that's the kind of group that we wanna capture, those people that are skipping driver's ed, and we're hearing one of the big reasons that they're skipping is for a multitude of reasons. Geography, they don't have a driving school close to them. That's an invention, short term instructors, and schedules. Kids are much more, they're playing basketball or playing sports. It's so much more consuming than it was ten, twenty years ago. They have a job, life is more expensive, and so you think online driver education can help them, as well as motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for a 15 to 19 year old, so we really wanna work on policies that put safer drivers, have safer roads here in Vermont, because we know from our research, triple A research, that teens that skip driver education get into more crashes, more citations, and more faint crashes. Alright, the next slide. So this bill, S-two 59, clarify, it is just for the classroom, keeps the behind the six or seven hours behind the wheel, and it is an option. It's an option for the schools. It's an option for the students, because we know some students thrive in the classroom. Some students maybe thrive working behind their computer. Online, you can take modules. You can review complex materials at your own pace. You can spend additional time, as much time as you want, on this material. In Maine, it's twenty four hours. It's a minimum of twenty four hours. The two can spend forty hours, fifty hours on that because they're replaying the same information because they really want to get it right.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Question. Yeah, sure. So do they have like driving modules that they're using in any of these schools or it's not such an excuse?

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: Right. So let's just speak to Maine, where we offer a student can take it online. They still have a Maine fifteen, ten hours behind the wheel. And so, it's concurrent, and I was gonna I'll get to it now. So, that driving instructor has the admin privileges so they can see where that student is in the online class, and it's, they have a parent night that first night where they explain, okay, after chapter three, that's when we're gonna do your first lesson. Then And once you get to chapter six, we're gonna do your second lesson. So if it works concurrently, what is needed so the students get that information. They get that information at the computer, in classroom course, in the course, and then they build the real world experience behind the wheel. And then the court, farther into this presentation, has pictures of some screenshots of the videos and quizzes and very interactive. Our course has been designed, high level courses have been designed to be extremely interactive, so there's no downtime, things like that. So, Patricia, have an issue, thank you.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Just, well, I I I don't wanna make assumptions, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I would imagine that if this bill were to pass, triple a would have an interest in offering course to Vermont students, and I'm just wondering what the cost is compared to what students are paying now at compared to what they're paying now privately.

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: Yeah. Good question. So the way it works in Maine is that the school offers the online program, and then also offers the behind the wheel. So the student is paying the instructor school, in essence, so I don't think the cost has changed at all. Does that make sense? Is that okay?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: That does How much would you charge students if they were to go through the program in Vermont, if the program was offered here by AAA?

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: In the model that we use in Maine, and it could be different here, we don't charge student. That's the driving student. Charge the student.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Got it. Who do you charge,

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: or is it offered for free? Yeah, we charge the school, and I think it varies by state. Some states want a lot of security to make sure that that's being, there's keystroke verification, there's biometric, there's security questions. The more that goes into it, the higher the cost of the developing is. So I think the highest we've ever seen it is, I don't know exactly, but I think $59.95 is maybe the most we've ever seen. But we haven't, in Maine, we're not charging, we charge the same as we did. We wanna be competitive to schools that are offering just the classroom. Because it's just an option to these students.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Is that $59.95 is that on the higher end? Is that per semester, or?

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: It's a charge to, let's say the average cost of, let's say the graduate school enrollment is $500 That includes the classroom portion and that includes behind the wheel. That school would pay triple that. That school would pay whoever that online provider is or if it works, just as they do the most used curriculum in Vermont is AAA design curriculum. Kind of driver's curriculum is on the first driver that handles it, and it's the most widely used curriculum. The schools pay AAA to use their curriculum. They don't charge students, so it's Is that my answer or not?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yes, yeah, mostly. I think, I'm just trying to get an idea of how much the cost would be to individual schools or districts. But I understand that there's a range based on what is being asked for in the curriculum, so it's hard to tell. Yeah, just trying to get an idea of cost because that's important issue in Yeah, Provolta,

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: it does not raise the cost at all. As we've seen in the states that have offered, it's not raising the cost of driver education at all.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah. Okay. Thanks.

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: Yeah, yeah, of course. The next slide, slide five, or page five, excuse me, is just the number of states that currently offer online education. 26 states across the country offer it. In Maine, we graduate 13,000 students every year using going through the online model, as mentioned, it's twenty four hours online, six hours in the classroom. The state has decided, they let us know that in rural, they're going to eliminate the requirement for the six hours of classroom. They think that just the online portion is fine. They've been very satisfied over the last four years, so they're eliminating that requirement. They're leaving it up to the schools themselves to make that decision of how many hours you want in the classroom. Another example is Idaho. Very rural state. They've been using online since 2009. They've seen a 3% annual growth in Drive Red enrollments every And no real difference in amount of we're just taking fully classrooms. Just more students taking it, it's more accessible, and that goes on.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Have there any correlation between accents and that? Is it from just going on to online to coming up to it? No, no, no.

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: It's the question I've been asked. I've been with AAA for twelve years. The question I've been asking for twelve years. When can we get data on exactly that compares crash statistics with these states? And it's not out there. Okay. But I will say that no state that has gone, that has allowed online letters to rule through legislative policy has ever gone back to say, This isn't working. We don't want this. Next page, page six. This is just, you have this as just some studies that show the benefits of online learning. It's used all over from colleges, high schools, White Mountain Community College that teaches instructors. That is mostly taught online. And so this is some links on the benefits of online learning. I'm trying to be real quick here. Page seven. Expect the impact of the councils. We expect is that, you know, our hope is that we have more drivers that graduate driving schools, which means safer roads. And so we did a survey three years ago, AAA did, of 24 states, 101 driving schools, on how online has affected them. 80% of drivers report increase of enrollment, stable increase or stable enrollments. 78 reported stable increase revenue. 83 reported no reduction in instructor staffing. This is the one that I find most important. Their opinion on online education increased. When we first asked them, it was 39% before the adoption of online education, and after they've been using the online program, 75% of driving schools thinks online is beneficial. Page eight, you can see that's just going online is used throughout the state. Various happens from high schools to community college to four year colleges to law school. Can't be able to vote online for safety, so they allowed people to drive votes after taking a voter safety class. Page nine, these are just some state testimonials from different driver education folks, the DMV's in Maine and Idaho that use online driver education, is very beneficial. And so this is where we get into the AAA program. In Maine, we have adapted it. We worked with the state regulators to, what do you want in there? You don't want to have the same curriculum that New Hampshire or Vermont, so we made it very state specific. We have an opening message from their Secretary of State that oversees Driver Ed. They have the entire driver handbook, all the laws, all the policies and procedures that the state has that are embedded in this program. Alright, page 11. Specific to the AAA program, we have worked and worked to make this as engaging and interactive and self paced as we can. Use, as Ben mentioned, it meets the National Driver Education Curriculum content standards, and it applies the latest research throughout, from AAA Foundation Traffic Safety to MITSA, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Centers for Disease Control. It's evidence based. It's extremely interactive, and it uses, it's, The students, I've been through it many times. They're always clicking on something, always engaged. There's no way for that student to not be fully engaged throughout it. Page 12, it has 19 chapters. There's a quiz before each chapter and a quiz at the end. The state determines what that student has to, that passing grade is 80%, it's just what they have to say, they take whatever they want. So they're getting that information, and they have to know it before they proceed. Alright, next one on the- just

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: came out.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Kesha, can you do?

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: Our program incorporates interactive traffic scenarios, video based simulations, and as I mentioned, lots of embedded quizzes, changing the reflection prompts, and scenarios of real life situations for these students to interact with them. Page 14 is a screenshot. This is called DriverZED, which stands for Zero Aero Driving. It's a hazard perception and training scenario. This was developed by Doctor. Don Fisher. It's kind of preeminent professor at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and it's about risk awareness and perception training. It has actually shown to actually reduce crashes on this sort of training, and sign up Tom Brady kind of used it when he was with the Patriots, maybe not with the Bucks, but he used, not exactly, he used this risk and awareness and perceptive training from Don Fisher, which I thought was pretty neat. So, the STUV goes, it's a car that goes through, it would've been neat if I had a video, but they have to identify the different markings, the scenarios that are happening as they drive down the road. The next one is that's target zone exercise. It's designed to train new drivers where it's searching, people learn, it provides instant feedback, decision making, it goes over complex situations so that student, all those, know, the individual on the side of the road, that car that's parked, that car that's up ahead, it gives them all the information, that's what they have to work And then, you know, that next room will go behind the wheel, and that person will talk about, hey, you gotta look ten to twelve seconds ahead of you, and we're gonna talk about pedestrians today. So it works concurrently with the behind the wheel. Page 16. This is probably my favorite part of the time to drive. I'm the Band Cam Crash Analyst. Many years ago when we did some distracted driving research on teen drivers, we put about 75 to 800 cameras throughout the country, cameras in cars. When they went out, they went in. At first, they were the best drivers, but after, as you can imagine, after months and months, they just kinda forget about it, maybe, and they start texting, and they start using their infotainment system. And so we're we're these students get to watch real life crashes, and then and then explain what happened. Why did that person crash? Oh, they were they were looking at the phone, or they were they were driving too closely, or they All these different real life scenarios of teams like that, and that's what young drivers want to experience is, as they're excited about, kids their own age. Alright, page 17 is just an example of a quiz that we have. So it tells them if they've it. As I said, there's over 40 quizzes. There's the final test, and then they all talk to the final exam at the school. So there's tons and tons of interactive quizzes. This is just an example of one for you to see. Following one is another one. This is just not even a quiz. This another interactive knowledge check that just pops up after maybe the module on seat belt. Here's how it flexes on seat belts. Alright, page 19, we really want to engage the parents, so there is parent component, the parent coaching guide, the driving log, they get a student workbook that they fill out while they're going through the online course, which includes assessments, some of learning exercises, activities. It is so important for that parent to be involved as well. So there's parent component as well, and then I will end with, you know, we hope you consider this bill. We want more kids taking driver's ed. Kids who skip driver's and they wait till they're 18, they get more citations. We feel that this can really help Vermont roads. Just an option.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Can somebody in the room deliver with the help of

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: some understanding how many kids actually do that and do you want them? Wait till they're 18? Take them, wait till they're 18? Yeah.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: I can get that number for you. It'll take me a couple days.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Because That's actually testimony. That's some potential restrictions.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: I will tell you there's no way that we can track how many crashes of anybody over

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: 18 How many skip drivers that get deployed to? Right, because we don't ask that question amongst the crossroads there.

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

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: Right, I couldn't, I tried to find that information nationally. It's twenty five percent of 16 year old cross country, again, their license now. That's the way, you said 16 year old. What about those who bleed pill or anything? That's the question. Yeah, I don't know the impact of trying to Yeah, go okay. Right.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. So you have you bring an interesting perspective, a multistate perspective on the driver training and the impacts and and what have you. I'm just curious from your experience, how similar are the instructor training programs from one state to the other?

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: It's unique. Every state is dealing with an instructor shortage. Don't get risk of becoming an instructor.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Right, that's a different question. Programs themselves to train the instructors, are they fairly

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: similar to, are they roughly the same? My opinion on seeing over three states is that in Maine, they don't have as much of a shortage because they don't No, no, the programs help. Right, right. They're not required to take six or eight college courses. I believe to go to Wahgnion City College, it takes over a year. So that's a year of these people aren't getting Many of these people aren't getting paid to go through these courses. They're not getting paid by that driving school while they go through that. So there's not a huge incentive to go through that unpaid for a year. So I think that's a little strenuous. There are other methods, I think, to

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Are you stopping curriculum difference? Yeah. Is that

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: what you're Qualification. However, they get their qualification in the end. In the end, is the is the end product the same from a main in car instructor to a natural in car instructor. So go for the same?

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. You're following national standards. You're you're using ZIP. Yeah. Okay.

[Justin McLean (VT DMV, Driver Education Coordinator)]: National. The same document that the bill refers to also points to teacher standards, I believe. And that's what we follow. Teacher training standards. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thanks. We are way behind, And so this is Mark Schoen.

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: It's Joe's just a call.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Oh, it's it's Schoen. I think

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: they've all been out there waiting, so

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: Good afternoon. I am Joe Bartsch, and I will give you my full credentials. I teach part time at Montbansfield unit. I swole in vehicle and occasionally will sub in. I have taught for almost thirty years driver education, six years of teaching social studies. I am 2007 Teacher of the Year for Vermont and Teacher of Excellence for the American Driver Traffic Safety Education Association. I've served as president for both organizations, and I've worked with some great national experts through my experience at ASEAN. Would like two things to do before I take on a lot of questions, to help clarify some previous questions to give you more accurate information. The first is the elephant in the room. Two quotes. I'm gonna embarrass them today. I wanna get as much as I can for as little as I need to. That was a quote that was given to me when I was 14 years old, working, painting a house for my father, and happened to be a student going into seniority to happen to mention that. Unfortunately, I think that's what we're looking at as opposed to what Aristotle said. We are what we repeatedly do. Act something is not an act, but a habit. I think that we need to have habits on the road to drive safe. With that, I'm gonna skip right to the Antetus, give you a free synopsis. In 2003, in Montana, there's a fatal crash with a driver, a teacher, and three students. It was tragic, so tragic that the National Transportation Safety Board held an investigation where they realized they didn't know what was happening across the nation driver education. They held a symposium. I attended that. What we saw was appalling. It was 50 different states. Some states offered, some didn't. Permit age was different. The one glowing part was when, at that point, it was the Department of Education. Their consultant of driver education, Barry Ford, came and spoke about how teacher training was done in Vermont then and was seen as a model. From that hearing, they called upon NHTSA to come to bring a group of stakeholders together, and they're called ANSD. This is the Association of Novice Teen Driver Stakeholders, and it was at CF, which is American Driver Traffic Safety Education Association, the Driving Stores Association of America, Triple A Foundation, Triple A, the people who do the licensing. All the stakeholders came together. They were charged to come up with APS. The current version's two fifteen pages. Section two deals with training and education, and what section two does is it refers to the content standards as a addition, a submission in the back of the bid that relates to the ATSC standards and the standards that the SAA uses. From that, we've developed these standards nationally collaboratively with a lot of stakeholders. Just to give you some background on that, for instance,

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: I think what I can do, but

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: I can go into a lot of it. I will say that the asynchronous, I think we have to be careful about it, not mixing things up, self paced, on your own, without the support leaves some possibilities of gaps. There are some concerns there, I'll be honest. Especially with the public schools. What we're fighting with in public schools is just what you've heard. Students are busy playing sports, working jobs. They're trying to squeeze in as many classes as possible, and what we need is, we have a classroom of The limiting factor is that when we step out Bansfield, we can put three students in the car. We have seventy five minutes to get a lesson in, but the beauty of that, it spreads that out over the eighteen weeks, spreading it over time, gives you a better product. I've talked privately, just retired, gave up my business. I would have people call up and say, When's your next class? I'm still getting emails on that. And I will tell them, I said, Can you get an into your school program? I said, You're gonna get the same information. Instead of having it over six weeks, you're having it over nine or eighteen weeks.

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: You're gonna get a better product.

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: You don't have to pay for So I'm just starting my driving with students this week, and I'm looking at their permits. All the students' permits that I'm looking at right now that I'm servicing at Mount Mansfield, their date, their year long date is out a full year, pretty much a full year when they can take that. So they're in pretty good shape. At our school. I can't speak to all schools. Their expiration date is a year out, so they're gonna be in pretty good shape, but that's because I'm working part time. I work with a colleague who's in the classroom, we share the office, share students, and we're communicating back and forth. I do want to take a chance to talk about quality education, where we meet different modalities, students learn differently. And it might be classroom discussion, it might be video, it might be hands on activities. An example of you, had a spring, I went in, I needed to cover for our classroom teacher last week, and the lesson was how to turn. Really basic, really important. So I went in with the materials I had, asked questions, did a quick slideshow, because slideshow's already important, and then took a video where I had to go from my head and show just what that looked like in the car. And I'm going through, and I had students show me the concepts, hands on, so I could check for understanding. I get through all of that and I have one student period to ask, Any questions? Yeah. What's a corner post? And it was such a fourth question that in a left hand turn, when that corner post winds up the middle of the lane, it's not that you start straightening out the wheel. If she didn't have the opportunity to ask that question, she would not have understand the whole point. It's a difficult concept. I've taught them to teach her training courses or assisted them. That is a tough concept. They will get it in the car, but if they have a preconceived idea of what they're expecting to do, it's gonna be a lot less stressful for them. What we're finding is how do we get scheduling for the classroom and the driving and keep that concurrent? Because if I wait two or three Yeah, we're coming into a school break. I'm rolling my eyes. It's like, I'm gonna have to teach this. As this week, I'm working with the students. They've got it. The first thing I do at the end of the drive is, okay, what connected from this experience in car to what you saw in the classroom? So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: are you saying that, because I've been thinking that the classroom was always first and then the driving started. A sitting started.

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: I'm coming in right now. They've already had, but we're now four weeks, three weeks into the semester. Sit down there for the first two weeks' classroom. We're on a split schedule, so every other day students meet. So I'm coming in. I don't

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: have to go in.

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: It's a great retirement day, I'll be honest. I don't have to go in until students are ready to drive, but they've already had three, four classes to prep.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Then they continue classroom and driving from Yes. The stages of

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: Alternately, generally the same week. What holds them up? Getting their homework done. We make a point. Your work has to be curbed. You have to demonstrate and take it quiz, and I'll even ask questions. And if they're not ready, I'm

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: just like, You're not ready. I'm not gonna let you go out there.

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: So it's about the quality of instruction and the different modalities that, you know, the social emotional, the hands on. Some people can hear a lecture, that's great. Some people need to read, but we need to use them where they are. And I think that's what's important. And then there's probably a lot of questions to be used. Like I said, with TMT, the content standards are not a major part of the full document. Two point zero goes through 2.1 to 2.7. 2.7 deals with a hybrid virtual, asynchronous, in class, which probably has a lot of promise, could open up maybe some more driving time if students were able to do more. Side note of that, the one student that came in, Oh yeah, I got my homework done. We looked at the time stamp, it was 11:00 at night before. So if students aren't doing well with time management, these things are happening at eleven to twelve or later, which one, the classroom teacher doesn't get a chance to grade the material, but two, we know the studies show that students need more sleep than your average seven to eight year old or your average adult. When are they more really working on that material? I think there's been, AAA Foundation has done some work with that. That particular study, Doctor. Dan Tassel, there's some great experts there, but it's like the point, it's best for students. And unfortunately, rushing things may not be what's in their best interest. It's a skill to be learned, to be practiced over and over again.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So let's just let me sure I'm clear here. So your testimony, are you saying, or is your testimony that the entirety of the process should be in person?

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: No, I don't think, I, as a matter of fact, what I've done as a commercial private teacher is I've said, hey, we're gonna meet, but I will give you credit. Here's the activities that I want you to watch a movie. Give me a post. Give me a response about that. Here's a worksheet. Here's a video with two minute clips from Andy Pilbara talking about vehicle new vehicle technology that's coming out, which I can't cover. But I say, for each one of those, here's a question you need to ask. They can do that mundane work on their own. Absolutely. Don't have to take in classroom time. I can bring in guest speakers, such as Mr. Carter. Right behind you. Good. I can bring in law enforcement officers. That's great. We don't have the school resource officers like we did before COVID, where I could go and say, Doctor, can you come in? And they're like, Let me know the day I'll come in, and that's engaging. When I've had the same officer come in, it was a two hour block of time, and the students were riveted. So they had an opportunity of hearing different perspectives of why diverse means of giving us different information. I'll take questions.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, it's fine. So you do your own sort of hybrid sometimes?

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: Well, I'm gonna qualify that. I just gave up my private business. But when I was doing that, I would give them about four hours' worth of work outside of the classroom, and then we'd read in the classroom, and then we would work out this driving schedule, usually the weekends, sometimes after school, depending on daylights. But here's the thing. What happens in the classroom preps for the success and the less stress the car. Matter of fact, when I came in, actually, at Mount Rainesdale, were gonna start last week, and my colleague who does the classroom portion said, Kids don't have all the work in. They didn't have enough time, and they're struggling with a couple concepts, so we had to reteach those beginning of this week so that we were able to go through and do a far better job in the vehicle.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Okay. So two more. Evan Massey? Yes.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I've just I I have to step away. I have the leadership of my hospital that drove up Colorado, so I don't if we can do that, but I will watch the video. Alright.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you, Well, are you ready? Name for the record.

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: Yeah. I'm Kevin Massey. I'm a driver's ed teacher at Mount Abe. I've had Steve's children at Mount Abe. I've been teaching at Mount Abe for about seven years. I started my experience as a driver's ed teacher at Northlands Job Corps Center. I share that with you because I think that gives context to who I am and what I believe in and why I'm here today. My opinion is based on what's best for kids. My opinion is not based on Kevin Massey having a job. My opinion is not best based on someone trying to make money. Because I believe that's part of where we're at right now, is this is also being pushed because someone's trying to make money. I am mindful, though, that public school education is expensive. When I started teaching at Northlands Job Corps Center,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't know how much experience and knowledge

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: you have at Northlands, but Northlands is funded by the Department of Labor, and that's not in my written testimony detail. Their mission is to enable, teach, train 16 to 26 year olds so that they can be productive members of society. Instead of using social programs to pay for their welfare, help them become employed. I was a social studies teacher there, a math teacher. I taught at Northlands and Virgins and Casa Negra Drive Course Center in Western New York. And while I was in that experience, I had a great education of what it's like for post high school, or also students that just aren't successful in high school settings. And to be direct, I was bit by the bug. The bug being students appreciating getting an education, students genuinely caring for the opportunity that's provided to them. And to be direct, that's why I'm a driver's ed teacher. I love teaching math. I love teaching social studies. I'm very fortunate to be a miracle teacher. I coach sports from little league all the way up to varsity state championship basketball teams. Driver education is the right place for me. And here's why. It's best for kids. And when I say best for kids, it's the current model. Concurrent, integrated, partnership. Looking at my testimony that I wrote, the first section that I talk about is that driving is a social task. When I drove here today from Bristol, I was interacting with me. The driving session that I had earlier today with my students, unfortunately, there was a really difficult situation with this squirrel. A young student, a young driver, 15 years old freshman, a squirrel, I'm guessing it was hungry, but it kept running back and forth with the snowman. So that social interaction, why I referenced that, is most important. Teenagers need to learn it. I'm also going to comment briefly as a parent, I have a sixth grader and an eighth grader, middle school students. Right now, being a middle school student is different than when your children were in middle school, was definitely different than when Kevin Massey was in middle school. It is so confusing for them. There's so much that they are being barraged with. Our school at Mount Abe, I've told some of my colleagues, it's one of the best years that I've ever had as a teacher because the phones are in pouches. The phones are not able to be used. The phones are in backpacks or left at home. They're learning, again, how to properly communicate. The issues that we have at our school, I love Mountaine. I'm lucky my community is the base. It's my alma mater. It's where I grew up, went to school. My dad was on the school board. My mom was an accountant in the elementary school that did the Central Office. So it's my home, but I'm also lucky my predecessors were great teachers. The community is very supportive of driver education. So back to my point, the issues we have at school, the hazing, the harassment, the bullying, that was occurring because of online, social media, texting, kids using Snapchat, kids being in front of the screen. We learned from the pandemic to stay home, stay safe. Kids struggled with it. It could not be successful online. Teachers really struggled with it. And right now, the Mountainees, the Vermont drivers ed teachers are not in a position to do what this bill proposes. Teachers are not trained to teach an asynchronous online website driver education, there would need to be a lot of education to get teachers up to that level. And I'm doing everything I can to get educated. This is something that's really important to me. The second part of my testimony in the second page talks about how the asynchronous online education will reduce the opportunity for involvement with community members. The gentleman sitting behind me, St. Jim Carter, he came and presented to my class this morning. He has a great story to tell you. Hopefully, I know your children have heard the story because they like my class. Last week, we had a national speaker come, Choices Matter. The gentleman that spoke, his name was Fletcher Cleves. Fletcher was a victim of a distracted driving person. Now my point with this is the students of Mountaine met the man. They shook his hand. Some of my advisees, students that I've had in my class, football players, Fletcher had a D on their eye to play high level football. Fortunately, that changed. And Fletcher was not bitter about it. His communication to the students was, If there's something you want, go after it. He also made a point of teaching them about distracted driving and the issues of distracted driving. I have other state people come and share their expertise. There's a program through Locomotion. Locomotion, if you're not aware of them, they're the biking, bicyclists, advocates, girls down on the bike path. They have presenters, teachers that come and share their expertise. They come to my classroom. They have the ability to meet them. They shake the person's hand.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Oh, don't shake it, okay, yeah.

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: You got me worried there for a second, Steve. That's important. Students need to have that face to face, look someone in the eye, shake their hand. Coming out of the pandemic, having students do a project on car insurance, I said, Let's do this. Let's call Eric Carter. Eric Carter's a community member. He has a local insurance company. When I was a kid, it was personal insurance and was Stan Briden and Briden and Bradley. So let's call Eric. He will gladly help you through this insurance process. Students look at right in

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: the eye, I don't have

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: any time, Mr. Massey, can't make a phone call. I'm like, I don't know how to make a phone call. Can I text him? You don't know how to make a phone call to someone that's in Eric's children, Wentz and Mommy and Emma Carter, one of the best basketball players ever. Eric and Emma coach for Middlebury and they got a great basketball team and they're gonna make a good run-in the Division II finals. State of Vermont had a program called Turn Off Texting, golf cart simulation. It was sponsored by the Youth Safety Council of Vermont and supported by Cooperative Insurance in Middlebury. Okay, again, that's an opportunity for that face to face, meet the experts, students to have that collaboration. And as Joe was talking about, and I'm talking about the hands on, kinesthetic, physical, this is important. They're not gonna learn those needed life skills if it's online. Okay, millions of dollars can be spent to make this engaging, potentially engaging online website, but that's not the same as looking someone in the eye, getting their opinion, learning from them, shaking their hand. Car dealerships, local service shop, we've got the Skid Monster. It's a car that uses some apparatus on the back to simulate skids. It was owned by the Driver's Ed Association a couple years ago. There was some service that needed to be done. I said, well, maybe Mountaine will buy it. My school bought it, we own it. My students use it. That simulator prepares them for winter driving, driving where there's gravel, whatever the conditions are. The reason I'm getting to that and using that example was we had an issue with the car. The students knew it. They were right there with me. So let's go out to the car. Let's go out and find out why. I had the students out there taking the battery off, putting the jumper cables onto the battery, jumping the car. How are they going to learn that if that's online? They're gonna watch video? It's a video. What's real? Is it just another social media? Is it just some of what's gonna happen is they're not gonna have those fundamental skills. They won't know how to change the time. They're gonna be more dependent. Somebody come help me. I had a group of students a few years ago. Mr. Massey, don't know what to do. I can't do it. You gotta do it for me. Tell me to do. No, you can't do that. You need to be able to problem solve. You need to be able to communicate. You need to be able to work your way through challenges. So if we go to this online, and I oppose it, I think you can already tell that by my evidence and what I'm saying. Chief of police. My school was very much against that with a school resource officer. Very, very emotional and adamant that our community didn't want that. We have a great shoot police, Bruce Mason. Bruce comes, Ben's not in my class, gets to meet the students. Every day he's at the front of the school, every day he's out there. Students are getting the opportunity to develop a relationship with a police officer. Because right now, if we go on social media, right, and I don't wanna get too political with things, but there's a really great concern about ice. There's great concerns whenever something, it's so easy to put that negative negative negative. So people are missing that ability to have that great relationship. We had a safety fair, it was amazing. Partnership with the community at my school. I'm lucky that my colleagues and I, we developed a safety fair that benefited the whole community. People on how to properly run a change. And there was a whole group of community members that came that were connected to driver education. So having a student watch a video on TV, on their screen, on their phone, is not the same as that face to face.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think we've got it. No. There's, there's more.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Can I finish with one of

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: my piece? Yeah. Okay. And, and I'll try to be direct. My last section that's here. In 2020, 77 was passed. 2020, Act 77 was passed to say that you were going to move to proficiency based lessons for the state of Vermont. When that occurred, driver education is the model. There's a video out there. It was shown throughout the state at all public high schools. What's the deal with proficiency based learning? That was showed by all curriculum coordinators. Within that video, teachers saw that driver education is the model. The model with regards to, again, this idea of efficiency based learning, where there's growth over time, this structure of knowledge, understand, and do. Students need to know that there's loss. They need to understand why there's loss, And then they need to go and demonstrate their knowledge of the laws. That again, would drive our education being the model for the whole state, math, social studies, science. Why change something that we know is right? Why are we considering? And I understand things need to change. And I said 2020, this went into effect for the students that graduated after that. I can't understand. In the pandemic, we were told, cut our curriculum to 50%. My curriculum coordinator told me, going into the pandemic, kids are gonna be in a tough place, cut drivers at 50%, all academics. I looked at my principal and the coordinator and said, I can't do that. I can't cut drivers at 50%. What part do we eliminate? Coming out of the pandemic, the hybrid year, 50%. Some students went to school on Monday and Thursday, some students were Tuesday and Friday. Everybody stayed home on Wednesdays. It was online, we assumed, we Students would say to me, Mr. Massey, can't have my screen on, I can't Zoom. Students are picking on me because of what's in my room. Students are offended because I have a poster in my room about this thing that I like. Students are offended because I have a deer hanging on the wall because I'm a hunter. There's a student offended by this. Again, that hybrid year, I was instructed to cut my curriculum 50% to math teachers, social studies teachers, English teachers. We were all told to do that. This young man, I appreciate you sharing what you said.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It took a while.

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: I don't think I could have done that when I was 15, 16 years old. We are still managing that social emotional issue that students are coming out of the pandemic from. And then I'm pretty confident that my told him correctly said students will do what's easy. If I can do something that's easy and get the same outcome, okay, is that best for kids just because it's easy? Can I write a check?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, I think just to be I think for us, the issue that we're trying to figure out here, ultimately, is whether there's an access problem whether it's doing something else is the only way some kids are gonna get be able to get it. We've heard a lot of testimony today that something formed that question.

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: Can I speak to that? I'll be really brief. I know I've already asked you that one. Well, I think when Brian, I lost track of when it was Brian or Ethan, at the height of my school, we had 1.6 FTE of teachers, myself and Bill Leggett. We were able to service 120 students at that time, okay, with them. The class sizes at that time for Mount A was about a 150 to 160, and it fluctuates. So, when we were at our largest amount of teaching, we were able to almost get every student in that cohort that grade. Right now, this year, I have the greatest number of ninth graders in driver's ed that I've ever had. So the greatest number of 15 year olds in driver's ed. Why I reference that is there's a change. The population has declined, subject to space. In the past, first semester was eleventh through twelfth graders, second semester was tenth and eleventh graders with one or two. Now, because things have changed, so this gets to your question about access, I think we're in that position where things are changing. I think that these things are getting a positive. Thank you for the opportunity. I would love to answer more and explain you more. I think it would be beneficial for you all to learn more about what's happening on the ground. Because I I come from a great community, and for everyone's end, it's just wonderful. Appreciate your time. Yep. Thank you very So,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: mister Clark.

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: Monday, last?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: You're lie.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Clean up. Clean up.

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: Clean up. Well, at least I met it. Yeah. I see. Coach baseball for

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Maces are loaded. You gotta get a bookmark.

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: Yeah. I I coach baseball for forty years in Vermont. I think, yeah, I actually classed when I coached at UBM.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, so by the way, for the record.

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: Yeah. My name is James Taylor Carter. I've had both hips replaced. I'm a little slow. So if I'm batting, hope I'm not running.

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: Oh, that's. I

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: coached baseball for four years in Vermont. And And actually, today is the anniversary of when baseball was dropped at UVM and softball 2009. Terrible decision. Yep. Terrible, terrible decision. Some people accuse me of being all over the sound of my own voice. I do have a fairly deep, brief sort of words here. So I'll go through that. But thank thanks for having me on. On 11/04/1990, my life was tragically changed. I'm James Taylor Carter. I grew up in Windsor. I was called Taylor growing up. My father's name was James, aka Nick. He was always called Nick. So I went to Washington University and graduated with Windsor High School. And then I was in the Peace Corps, Malaysia. Jim became my permanent name. After two years in Malaysia, my wife and I returned to Vermont and became a public school teacher, coach. Past six, five years. Milton, four years. Maui, four years. And for twenty years. On 11/04/1990, our youngest daughter, Andrea, a senior at Mount Mansfield High School, was involved in a car crash, a quarter mile from our house, Jericho. She attempted three times to put on a front seat passenger safety belt. The Vermont State Police later found out it was broken. When I retired in 2000 from Winooski, I decided to go to I decided to go to driver education classes and volunteer to do a class presentation on the importance of wearing seat belts in the meaning of being a tissue important donor. They donated to employees, heart, liver, kidneys. Save four people's lives. Two people can see today because of. In my presentation over the years of what on the from my presentation over the years, more than 20 living donors and recipients have joined me in the presentation. I've been I've been invited to over 40 high schools on a semester basis since 2000. I've made over 5,000 classroom presentations. It's quite possible that you know a student that that has been impacted personally by my decision. I thought I spoke to your three kids about And you spoke to me. Wait a minute. About Was it worth anything? Yeah.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: About your peace course, though. It it was. How

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: about can I ask what community you're from? Manchester. Where? Manchester. Manchester. Yeah. I'm yeah. I go to Burnburn every semester. Rockford. Park. I haven't been to Brockton. Sorry.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Round number.

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: Well, yeah. I'm going down to Brown with John Tribune as a primary teacher. Been going down to Brown for years. I have I have firsthand power. I have firsthand the power and the skill and the influence that the public classroom teacher has. I've seen it. I've seen over 5,000 presentations of how influential the classroom teacher is. During the COVID epidemic, when I attempted briefly along with driver ed teachers to teach via Zooming and online, I found it to be very, very ineffective. As a lifetime public school social studies teacher, is there a more important class for adolescents to be involved with with a classroom teacher than driver ed? Is there a more important class as a history teacher, I I start my introduction sometime by saying, this is the most important class you're gonna take because you're gonna drive every day. The war of eighteen twelve, oh, civil war, women getting the right to go, the civil rights union the civil rights there's so much important history. The driver at is an everyday skill. They'll ask you, how many of your parents drove today? Whether it be in Brownboro or or wherever it is, how many of your parents will drive today? Because we don't have no public transportation in Vermont. There's some big cities there. Every parent every kid raised their hand. Every kid raised their hand. My parents go to work. I would, in fact, be saying, oh, there's nothing more important than than graduate education class for kids kids. I don't know what you would say. Incredibly important thing. Right? We have four kids. Three living now. Henry's passed on. I I do have two hats on today, as you know this. I still get Kevin's class today. Only on a bible, I'll look after next with John Truman. And I also had this Vermont hat on because I'm gonna go around to every county except Essex. I don't go over Essex County. There's only one high school. Kingman's the only high school over there. I go to every county, every county in in all 13 counties. And don't get paid for it. I don't wanna get paid for it. I wanna get a message out about the importance of wearing a seat belt and what's it mean to be an organ tissue driller. That's why I do this. But it's such an important class for adolescents. Almost everybody will say, and they your driver ATG will remember the day tell it. Remember the day you got your license? 1 to 1To10.

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: Yeah.

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: 1To10. How how important was it? 10. 10. Yeah. A big thing in kids' lives getting a license. It's a lot better when a classroom teacher does that. Thanks for having me. Yep. Thank you. You were the best for last?

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: You were the best for last.

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: I'll tell you one last quick thing. During the, yeah, the the pandemic, which I thought was one of the worst things that's happened in this country for public education, There's 75,000,000 public school kids in The United States Of America. 20% of them got zero education for that eighteen months. Zero. So if I went to high school math is worth anything, 20% of them got no education. That's 15,000,000 kids. For eighteen months, got no education. I'm really worried about the future for those 15,000,000 kids. And, also, for kids like like, like Kevin said, money Jersey. Monday Wednesday? No. Monday Tuesday. And then third whatever the other two games were. So kids were in school. Thanks for listening. Yeah. Thank you. So I did speak to you. I spoke to your class last minute. What was your tilt? Do you remember your tilt the day I learned that?

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: Yes. You nailed the wood and knocked the seat belt.

[James “Jim” Taylor Carter (Seatbelt/Organ Donation Advocate; former educator/coach)]: Feels good. You gotta get seat belt. Thanks. Thanks.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we're gonna get if people are up for it, stay for a little while. Yeah. And have a a good session about medications on. Thank you.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I should do. You sure do. I'm glad it's bad. Thank you. Okay. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we're done with this area.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: So What happened?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What happened?

[Pat McMahon (VT DMV, Driver Education Unit Supervisor)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Actually, a very important day. Thank

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: you. You.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Dad, you came in. It's helped us understand.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I'm gonna go down and get on my computer.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Okay. The guy who came in to have just never spoke any English, and that's

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: how you learn that language.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You got the same yeah.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: It's the same. Hey, same thing.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: It's the morning to you guys. Thank you. Try safe.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I will. Keep up.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, take a close-up. Yeah, that's it.

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: Close it to the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So we it feels coming right back. It's just gonna switch to her computer. Terry is at our school lives at Senator Williams. It's at judicial retention. They can listen that way if they want to, I guess.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Here's some of these survey questions if you wanna put down.

[H. Jordan (Student, Williamstown Middle/High School)]: Something that people filled out.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: There we go.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: You home already?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I had a race home for childcare purposes and we're piecing it together. Thank God for grandparents.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'll spend a little time to the extent people have the bandwidth to do it. There's little bit of community discussion. One is what do we think about after today about the driver's bill? Do we want to pursue it or what do you want do? I think personally,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: it could go on hold for me.

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: Yeah. Still not quite sure what we're solving. Right.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: That's fine. Yeah. It's I appreciate the attempts to make it more incest. I don't think it's getting, I think it's kind of missing the mark of what makes sense and what is best interest for the students and everybody else on the road at the moment.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Senator Hinsdale, do you want to?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I was glad that it was a vehicle to have a conversation about what is keeping students from being able to access driver's education. It sounds like a lot of factors. The interest I've had expressed to me is more after school programs actually wanting to offer it because those are the who those are the boys and girls school kids and the King Street Center kids who don't have a parent at home who's going to be able to spare that time and a car necessarily to teach them. So the requests I've gotten speak to one of the speakers kind of talked about the biggest barrier is you have three people in the car and they have a lot of extracurriculars and other things pulling at their attention. It's the kids who don't have parents who have a car and the time to teach them how to drive that are at the greatest disadvantage. So there was a bill in the past that had to do with the money for kids who are kind of not otherwise in the system. But really, it just feels like where are the gaps? And after school is probably doing their best to fill one of those gaps, at least they've expressed that to me. So if there could be grants to do more driver's ed, that would be great. I just think it's a huge economic barrier that we don't have more access to it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, but as it relates to this bill, which is about being able to do it online, beginning to get a sense that we couldn't, well we didn't really, I was digging for the problem trying to figure out whether there's actually an inability for kids to access it and to the extent there's an issue, it's not this issue. It's not like our CTE issue where there's a waiting list always. Okay. So the two other bills that we really have a big time putting aside and exit before the next chapter for a minute are the the library bill and two two seven that we've been spending some time on and so my my goal was to get them pulled out of here. And get them to you and we got them at 02:27 each time and So- then we picked it

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So like, the after school coalition did reach out today to say they do have some concerns. I think they reached out to me because their concerns are my concerns, which

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Concerns are that about what?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The section of the library bill that would specify more who gets money. I don't think we ever got enough information to make that change, and now, in case you want to hear from them, the After School Coalition, I think, does have concerns, and we're going to talk tomorrow. But based on just the testimony and information we received, I wouldn't support that section. I don't support that section.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, we actually have, Daphne is trying to line up Mr. Johannes to come back and answer the questions you raised.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yesterday. So we're trying to get to that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, definitely, we might wanna reach out to Amy Schulenberger who represents the after school folks to see if she can get them in to testify.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. You know Amy, right? That happened? Well, I actually remember. Yep. She's at the fifty every day. Yeah. Okay. And then and then two two seven. So, with that 73, we've taken a ton of testimony around this, November and December, and then more recently and especially from rural Vermont. So I think we've set ourselves up for figuring out what direction we want to go. Seems to me we've got four choices or four four paths to explore. One one is the map from I'll check on one. One is do nothing. One is the proposal that I put on the table. The other is the proposal that Senator Heffernan put on the table.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: What was the last one?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: One that Senator Heffernan put on the table yesterday. Oh! And so to my way of thinking, I've been trying to figure out the right vehicle. We'll move this back up one more step. My sense is we must get the foundation formula in place or because if we must control the rate of increase in school budgets, school spending, it might be. And what I've been thinking about the whole time we've doing all this work is what do we put the foundation formula on top of? What's the system, what's the framework and thus the map after all the testimony of the map I put in sort of happened a to approach represent a common yet a different approach. So I just want to figure out which, where we want to spend our time and how people see the best way for us to spend the time trying to figure out a path forward.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Of course I like my math, so I'm fine with that, but I think Representative Compton, he's got too many limitations, I think. I don't, I don't really wanna follow that man. So it comes down to it, yours and mine. And I definitely don't wanna do nothing. Give them two options to mirror out.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Just to clarify, do nothing. Would that would that mean adopting the the redistricting task force organic approach? Is that kind of the I mean, do, I understand, do nothing like, you know, let the, let the activity three, I guess, attribute.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Is that what you're asking? I guess so. Or is that the organic approach? Because it, it, it, well, there's nothing in the test motion report that would not happen naturally. It's not that there's not things in the test force report that on their own are have some viability. But, you know, we only have both seats in the law. So, yeah, I don't know what we do with tax motion work other than what happened to programmatically, I guess. But I don't know, so that's But Senator Ram Hinsdale?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I remain open to any map that will solve the problem I believe Vermonters asked us to solve, which is greater administrative and facilities efficiencies that save money and bend the cost curve. So I've had this conversation with members of other committees. I'm really open to anything whichever lines we draw, we look inside those lines and say, This is how we get shared facilities costs. This is how we move towards regional high schools and regionally excellent high schools, and this is how we save money on duplication. So honestly, I said before, I don't care what the map looks like, it's what the map does, and so some maps could do nothing if we don't really ask them to commit to partnership, and everyone's going to feel a little bit of that. That will be hard, We're not protecting anybody, I think, in that context. I'm open to supervisory unions or supervisory districts, mostly as long as there is the shared facilities and administrative, moving towards shared administrative and facilities costs so that we can move towards regional high schools.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Doctor. Hershey? So I'm more inclined to explore your idea with the SCUs further. I think, I mean, I think the thing that I really want to dig into is what does a voluntary merger look like and when we get to that two year mark, that's when we decide the timeline. What standards and protocols are going to be used to determine whether or not districts are

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: going to be forced to merge?

[Joe Bartsch (Driver Education Teacher; 2007 VT Teacher of the Year)]: And, you know, will it

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: be taken into consideration if they previously voluntarily merged because the two districts thought it was a good idea. So, that could be voluntary piece but then, coming back around and then being forced to merge into another district just to meet whatever the quota might be for the district number that we want to reach. Yeah, I think there if there is a substantial risk that forced mergers are going to result, not in cost savings, but to the detriment of those communities, then I think that's what we need to get to the heart of. I think if that's the approach we're going to take, we have to start taking the deep dive into each SVU, each proposed SVU, and each Both. Yeah, take a deeper dive into each of those and get as best of an analysis as we can from JFO as to what the financial impacts will be. The other thing is I don't want to go through this process only to once again be here in five years saying, alright, we gotta reduce the number of SUs and SDs again.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: So there's why my benefits. That all that, all the having to redo all the legalese between all the districts will be done, and then organically you're saying you have to look at your, where you would live, your schools. They know, schools out there know that they're getting too small that should possibly think about combining with another school. And we're giving them that opportunity. Then I believe, and I don't know if we can set that criteria, but the criteria then comes down to before that the, if they don't do it, then we set criteria set, you know, cost per student, how's your building? Is your building in disarray that it's not worth keeping open? Like, where's the school? Oh, you guys, we went up to Northeast Kingdom and they have one school up there, I cannot remember, was all sectioned in with temporary double whites. You walked down the hallway and they locked them in. And that's their school and they're making it work. And at some point, that's why I believe the one school system, and then how we divide up from the superintendent down to the administrators, that we have them two to 4,000 kids or whatever that area will work on. I just believe that takes away all the legalese. It makes it easier for schools to communicate to each other to say what's best for our community at first. And then if it's not, that's when state will have to step in. And none of us, none of us, senators or representatives like that idea, but it's our job. And when it's pushed into your lab and it's your job, and we wanna pass it off on somebody else, we could pass it off to the superintendents, but it comes back to our lab that you allowed us to have. And so that's my belief. And biggest is that it lets the student and the parent have choice. So you'll have schools that might just close because the parents and students are like, we like this school better. And now this school doesn't have enough to say, oh, that could happen. And that's organically, that's, and the money's still in, it's the states providing the money with you. The budgets are already decided because we are doing the foundation formula. It takes a lot of the, I know I'm breaking it down a lot more simple than what it is, but it does make it a lot more simple. Sharing resources, sharing teachers, it just takes a lot of roadblocks that we hear that, you know, once you draw that line, I'm not gonna be able to use that resource because it's in a different district. And our gray area of your map, it's like that's such a, you know, But it can be handled by saying, okay, we're gonna put an administrator for this many, this many, this many, and it still comes up to that superintendent. The local control still stays in the school. You know, the voting doesn't change much. In the bill, it's one or more schools, so you could have three schools say, We're so close, we just wanna have one,

[Andrew Krabin (VT Agency of Education, Director – Education Program Approvals)]: for lack of better words,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: school board. I call them school advisories, but, so they can handle them three.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I know Senator Ram Hinsdale has to leave, has another meeting at 05:30, so I'm going about seven or weeks ago before that. Okay, sure. Yeah. She went on in on me. No shooting. So, just want to make sure.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I'll go quickly. I'm just

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: showing you I'm here.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Organic voluntary districts. I don't think it's that's it's not plausible. It didn't happen. It could have already happened. There's nothing that's prevented districts from consolidating for the benefit of the student academic programs over the past several decades. I don't hold a lot of value in that. I do think I I I you know, the more I listen, the more I like the the single district. Although, I think there's a fundamental problem and that is that one superintendent can't oversee every whatever two fifty schools or what have you. That's still gonna be an element of regionalization. So, they're have assistant superintendents. That's that's fine but what that really leads to again is that this is all about who knows who, like, what's the size of the footprint that people feel comfortable where they know the schools, they know the students, they know the geography, they know the routes, and they know where they can make that, that, I believe, is where the decisions need to be made. So, whether it's five districts, 10 districts, or one district with all the with the sub districts. It's really about that how large of a region can they make informed and intelligent decisions about facilities and and students. So that's that's one. The other which I I appreciates Senator Heffernan brought into the conversation yesterday more succinctly is statewide choice. I I don't see why not. You know, money follows a student. We're limiting the money or establishing the money bucket, pursued it via the foundation formula which I support. And I think that the the competitive the the nature of parents selecting the school is appropriate for their their child based on proximity, ease of access, or academic excellence, or CTEs, or what have you. I think that you would begin to get a self propelled movement towards education excellence that we haven't seen that sense of motivation in Vermont for a long time. So, I'm I'm advocating the like I support the statewide choice system. So, regions, choice, and not organic volunteer districts. We put a boarding dog. But they would have worked.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we're unclear how to do this. I'll make one comment that I think the difference with the voluntary workers in where we are now, we're in 1946, is that what it was that didn't happen in 1946 was disparity of wealth and ability, and that created a barrier in some of this. So under the foundational formula, everybody pays the same, nobody gets the same. So the notion of a virtual board district will go away. And for the other thing is they have a hammer at the end. You have to do it. We got two years to do it voluntarily. My own view is that districts will merge. They're going to clamor to merge because they're going to want to do it themselves. Some.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: The counter argument is that community pride will get a and I understand that at a certain point it becomes mandatory. Yeah. But community pride is the is is the issue. It's a stumbling block that has prevented organic mergers for the benefit of students who are for decades.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we try to to somehow keep looking at both and moving forward in some fashion and

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, I don't wanna be the one to to sort of try and kill one path. I really enjoy the thought exercise of thinking about what if there was one statewide district. I would invite Senator Heffernan to work on where the actual financial efficiencies would be of that. The two major examples we have of consolidation are our hospitals and our teacher healthcare, statewide contract, and those both have escalated costs, if anything. So I would I could say about that plan, I'd love to see where the efficiencies are, but I think it's not a great use of our time. We have two fifty two municipalities. They were talking about regionalization, but one statewide municipality is essentially just a governor. So, you know, it would I just don't see that having legs by town meeting or crossover enough to keep these both of these paths alive. I don't see the savings. We'd have to level up teachers' salaries or re regionalize everything. And we're not Hawaii, frankly. Hawaii has seven islands, so they all pretty much operate their own, you know, the way their island culture works. My brother lives in Maui. You know, it's just there's something else that's organizing them than being one state.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Well, am more than happy to do some cost analysis and get that back to you. What bothers me in what you're saying, Senator, is that we're kicking the can down the road again. Whether we have 25 SUs or SDs or one with enough people to do the same thing, the cost savings are gonna be about the same because you're still, your goal is still to share resources, share administration, share. So I know upfront it's gonna be a huge cost, especially in the legalese of getting everything down to one district. The upside to that is as if our population continues to shrink and our student count continues to shrink, we're gonna be in the same, if you will, in three to five years. And then you're just gonna end up spending more money because it's gonna cost even that much more to consolidate down to smaller SUs or SDs. In listening to all the testimony we've been listening to, the schools we went to, the driving factor was we all want direction. It still gives the schools their own autonomy, but it says here's the curriculum that we're gonna be running coming down from, first comes down from the AOE and then over to the superintendent. Everybody's on the same sheet of music, but one's playing trumpet, the other one's playing clarinet. So they're still doing the same thing, but in their own autonomy, in their own niche in the state. And I'm just thinking down the road of one, we have to do this again. Of all the, just all the legalese and all this stuff that always comes up that has stopped our predecessors from doing this because it's such a daunting task. The breaking down of regions in that, what's it matter

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: if

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: it's under one system or 27. It still works out the same except you're answering, we have one person and our accountability in mind that you have a teacher survey, you have that the superintendent has to come to the legislation every year and give a progress report of how the school system That's nothing we have right now. And then school choice, why would anybody be against that? I'm telling you, Kesha, you can't send your kids to another school that you really wanna send it to because I think that the way we have our district set up doesn't allow you to do it. And what brings, you know what's best for your kids. It's not me, I could sit there and tell you what I think is. But at the end of the day, it's the parent, guardian, caregiver that knows what's best. And this is what puts children first. And that's what we said we'd do. So I'm gonna drive this home from here until I'm elected in, which could be this sentence.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So Senator Weeks said, Senator Rutland, I know you have to go. I've got time set aside tomorrow afternoon. Just canceled our last person. We have tried to continue talking tomorrow afternoon. Okay. So but but senator Weeks has one little Just to be brief,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I think we should ask for feedback in the single district from the VEs and a few other not not like, maybe constrained to a single afternoon, not a big because we're gonna gain some insight. Positive and negative. Oh, okay. I'm sure a lot. I think we also should have JFO involved. Let them do what it cost analysis because they need to start that mechanism up because I don't think they're doing it yet with

[Kevin Massey (Driver Education Teacher, Mount Abraham UHS)]: a host.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I would just say they're very busy. They don't have time to just do magic.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Are they hard to hear the person specifically?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, think we heard from the person who's deemed by the governor to be our statewide education expert from his perspective, the secretary of education, and she was proposing one CTE district. I saw no merit in that and I didn't see enough detail to see what cost savings would arise, and how you would affect quality across the state. So I think we've heard a lot about a single district for something and I didn't find it compelling. Just think if we are serious about a map that works, we should get going on that. Maybe Terry would have said the same thing if he was here, but I think we need to focus our attention on administrative and facilities efficiencies. Otherwise you might be getting a single flash in the pan. I mean, you're gonna spend a lot of money to create a statewide district, a lot of money.

[Dan Goodness (AAA Northern New England – Traffic Safety/Driver Education)]: You can spend

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: money anywhere. So seven weeks wasn't just very quickly.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: There was a comment about being constrained by crossover. I don't think we're constrained. We're obviously going to deal with the house. The house is built because I think that's the here. Obviously, you know, the more we talk in-depth about Act 73, the better off we are but I I don't I don't feel the constraint about meetings we can crossover. We know what we know. It's gonna change, you know, over the next week but you know, this is gonna change a thousand times between now and in early May when this really hits the street. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm bringing it out. It's been a long day. Yes. So, let's Right.

[Tammy Kazanjian (VT Agency of Education, Driver Education Consultant)]: Gotta go.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Tomorrow, yeah, thanks. I can you back on. So we meet tomorrow at 01:15 and I just canceled our last witness so they have some time to talk to me at the end of the day. Still get out of here before work. Yeah.