Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: We're live.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. It's Center of Education Committee, March 31, back after a. Last item of the day is to hear from Advance Vermont. Tom was in earlier, but just commenting on CTE, on CTE as it hasn't really been here until about what you're doing. And he's here today in part because we need to be working on our budget letter. By the way, on our page, we'll have to handouts for everybody, we have last year's budget letter so you can look at it for reference, see how we did it. And

[Speaker 0]: a

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: discussion starting point for this year's budget letter. The only thing I've done with it is just listed the organization and what they're asking for. That's it. That would cut itself. And those committee recommend comes after that. Just so you know, sort of setting up for budget letter, I did an outline, did a committee, so that's ready. I list everybody could report from and how much they've asked for. That's it.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Should I recommend that the matrix included with what they got last year? If the governor's budget was added, any any input and what what the recommend current recommend or

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the current? Yeah. Think I put in most of them that I had it. I put whether but how much it's over COVID or something. Yeah. But what I don't have is last year's. So that'd be helpful just to have over here. Yeah. So but you're actually talking so generally today so welcome. Thanks for the record. For the

[Speaker 0]: record I'm Tom Chi the executive director of Advanced Economy. Good to see you all again. Thanks for the intro. You did it for me. It's in charge of what I'm gonna cover today. So as a quick refresher, I know I've seen you all last year. The work that we do at Advanced for Modern is really focused around career navigation. I'll spend some time kind of talking about what that is. But really, our vision is that every high school student will graduate with a plan for their next steps, and that working age Vermonters adults will feel empowered to advance in their career. And that's the work we do. We'll talk a little bit more about the specific as we go forward. We're a small nonprofit. It's just two and a half of us right now. We have funding from the state. Thank you very much for past support. The federal federal delegation through congressionally directed spending and foundation supports. We're working on getting support for funding as well. Part of our work is really partnering with state, with nonprofit partners. So we're talking with agents of education, department of labor, the office of workforce development, maybe a higher ability in Vermont as our kind of our core state partners, VSAC, and a lot of other players in this space. So before I talk more specifically about our work, I want to just frame it by talking a little bit about what career navigation is. And it's, career navigation's kind of having a moment. What states are realizing is that they've done a lot of work to build programs, example, dual enrollment, early college, CTQ, work based learning, but they haven't necessarily packaged it in a system. So you have these programs, and they're being used in different ways, sometimes really well, sometimes not so well, and we haven't packaged it in this system called career navigation, which is the ongoing process of learning about options, making informed choices, and then taking steps towards education and work in a way that help people move forward with careers. And why we need that is so that folks aren't kind of floundering, trying to figure out at the last minute when they graduate from high school what's coming next or a deadline for to apply for CTE is coming up and they're not sure what CTE options are. So we have to make sure that we're building a system for youth that is really focused on exploration, and then transitioning to planning. And then we also, on the adult side, need to create something similar. Today, we'll mostly focus about youth, Cause that is a lot of where this committee hits and where some of our work is supposed to start. Other thing that's valuable to note is that this isn't just a process that kids or career and education seekers go through, but also there's folks called career navigators. And so navigators, it's not necessarily, in some cases it's actually a title, but more generally, it's a term to kind of talk about those folks who help folks, their adults play a pivotal role, whether it's youth, supporting youth or adults in their career and education planning. So these are educators, not just your school counselor, but your teachers, extracurricular coaches, a fun office staff in a school, parents and guardians, of course, and others, career advisors and coaches, and community organizations that support folks in certain ways. Here are the kind of five critical ingredients to successful career navigation. First is you just need information. You know, what are my strengths? What are the jobs? What are the education options? What are the financial aid supports that are available? We kinda make sure folks have access to the time we have today with them. People need skills and credentials. Most of the jobs, the high pay, high degree jobs in the state of Vermont require some sort of piece of paper after high school, all require some level of training. So we have to make sure folks don't access those. We don't need social capital, right? And this is where guidelines really comes in. We're talking especially a need for that guidance and the social capital for people who have first family who attend education after high school, people who are, you know, low income, rural, or another historic historically marginalized group. We're gonna have wraparound sports. So this is where you talk about financial aid, technology, transportation, child care. And then finally, you have to create the social structures, the ecosystem. This is really the enabling policy conditions that allow these other four things to happen. So this is your letters that you get to. And if if we have all four of these or five of these, you have a strong career navigation system. There's a lot of states that are this is a relatively new space. Like I said, people are have organization or sorry, legislators and organizations have built these wonderful programs, but not done it in a cohesive system. And that's what a lot of states are trying to catch up on. So what does this look like in pre K to 12? It would look a little bit like this. So ideally every school district would be simultaneously doing these four things. And it's an all hands on deck approach, so it requires buy in from education leaders, so your building and your district leaders, your faculty, staff, and community partners. So the first is career awareness and exploration. So as young as you can go, it's a combination of informational resources like My Future VT, which I'll talk about as our career education planning platform, and embedded exploration opportunities, both at school and in those kind of greater school communities, so the new centers or different organizations or. You have to do individualized planning. This isn't just the fifteen minute a year conversation with your school counselor, but really thoughtful guidance. And it's not necessarily formal. In a lot of cases, this is a coach on the way back from a game. It's the front office staff that you might hang out with or the lunch people, but who are those folks that people have, that kids have connections with in a school? We have to make sure that they all are able to support their students and into an individualized plan. To make sure we're aligning pathways, so it's really career connected learning should not just be integrated into CTE, but it has to be integrated into the school day. We need to be more purposefully finding these opportunities to tie in career and education exploration from middle school. And then finally, work based learning. So kind of the cherry on top is if you've done these other things, you can go out and test drive, essentially, in different ways, a career that might be of interest to you. So now I was gonna talk a little bit about how we're doing in Vermont. So we know that our core products of our K-twelve system is really students cross the graduation stage and have a clear path, a plan for what comes next. They don't need to know what they're doing forever. They need to know the next couple steps because those structured supports of the school fall away and folks are left to navigate an increasingly complex world on their own. The challenge that we're facing is that for far too many people, graduation marks the end of a cliff rather than a bridge at what's next. And it really is about half of the students this is impacting. So those consequences, of course, are personal, but there's also statewide implications as well. So stalled ambitions, underemployment, and a workforce that struggles to meet the needs of employers. The truth is our system was built fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, right, around kind of one role within a school, really within a community, to own and carry Korean education exploration and planning in a school. And that's the school counselor. And they do an incredible job. We've added since. We're face learning coordinators in a lot of places, but not every place, and they're doing wonderful work. But we have to acknowledge that with the complexity of the education options we have, the economy that we have, we need an all hands on deck approach with educators, with parents, with employers, all having an understanding and working off this same playbook of how to support. So here's just some stats that kind of illustrate the challenge that we're facing in Vermont, and kind of what this cliff really looks like. So out of 100 students, 82 or so will graduate high school. 70 three will say, I'll continue, I'm planning to continue education and training. 40 will enroll in college. Now that's a proxy, because we don't have good numbers on people enrolling in other options, but it's a few percentage points higher, but we're probably still underwater in terms of under half enrolling. And 28 people out of that 100 folks in that senior class actually graduate college. That's a pretty big problem considering that the high 53.7% of the most promising jobs in the state require a bachelor's degree, just as an example. So our pipeline isn't working in the state of Vermont, and that's a real challenge. So we did a landscape scan. We actually went out to youth, parents, folks we call navigators, so educators and those types, and employers, and we said, we asked them a series of questions to get a sense of what our career navigation system looks like in Vermont, what's happening in different pockets across the state. What we found was, basically three out of four say, alright, the education and planning that they're experiencing in their schools or organizations are only somewhat effective or less. They say that future planning is not integrated into the school day or in the organizations in a meaningful way, it's siloed, it's inconsistent, and it's really dependent on geography than it is on a system where we can see it consistently across the state. Schools, students serving adults need support. Universally, when we asked, Do you need help? They said, Yes. We need professional development. We need assistance to figure out how to do this. Said yes? Is, you put navigator text, the educators, again. So, our role in this, two things we'll talk about, My Future VT, our state's free online platform for current education planning that I've spoken about last year, and Graduate with a Plan, which is really where we're working to embed career navigation into the greater school communities, greater school communities all across the state. So this is what the homepage for My Future VT looks like just to get you acquainted with it. Folks can come here and explore careers, find education, training options, basic language supports. We know that information via technology is really important, but the supports from adults are incredibly valuable as well. So Vermonters rank in terms of the source of information and support for their current education planning process, top three, top five, depending what survey you're looking at. Vermonters need a web based tool to do this, and it really needs to be place based, located in Vermont with Vermont specific information. This is the only tool for that in Vermont right now, and it's not just for the youth or the adults who are exploring their next steps, but it's for those people who support them and guide them as well, and in many cases, them to this tool. We did a survey last couple of years ago, nine out of 10 users reported that My Future TV set needs, looks good, feels good, has the information they need, is easy to get around. And what kind of astounded us was that nine out of 10 took a step forward after using the tools. They said, use this thing and I either have a better sense of my plan or I applied for a job or applied for an education program. So in the last year, I don't if you get the leads on this, we've continued to build out the tool and really one of the shining stars of this work is the only place where you can find the vast majority of the post secondary credential program information in the state. So before My Future VT existed, if you were to say, I wanna figure out where I can go learn welding, right? You'd have to figure out who are those providers that do welding in the state, and then you've gotta go to their website, navigate their website, find that program information. We have that all here right now. So you can actually compare side by side the options. And since, and it's a long process to get this information up because we verify it with every single provider. So we're now at around 50 education programs and have only a few more to add. We've also grown the database of support services. So this is when people need that extra help, we have a database that can go and say, Hey, I'm an adult. What are the supports out there that are for me, Army youth? What are the supports out there for me, know, for my works for women, or for my partner of labor, or whatever? We're really growing our impact. We can see that our impact is growing because we're getting more and more growth in people coming to the site from what they call referrals. So schools, libraries, other organizations are sending their clients out to My Future Meeting, and that growth is actually really growing pretty quickly. Any questions about anything I've said before in My Future Meeting, on us? To me,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: do high school kids actually know this exists?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, well, yes. I'm not gonna sit here and say everyone's. We have a very small budget to get the world word out. We're primarily going through those navigators, so school counselors and others, to make sure that they are using this tool with their students. You said school counselors, are the others? Work based learning coordinators, other educators that we catch in our orbit. We go to a of different conferences, we go to schools, we do presentations either for the staff or for youth. So you try

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to get the whole faculty to understand, the whole staff to understand who you are and think, okay. Yeah. So in the hallway conversation with the kid, they might say.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Okay. What we want is for the schools to adopt this as a key tool that they're using for their students. And we found that's really the best gateway. But we also have, you know, online ads and different ways that we try to reach folks directly. Yes. Are you going to offer at some point in your presentation the metrics of growth or success or These are good points. Yes.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yep. Yep. But as an, you know, an online presence, there are certain metrics that people resonate.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. So we've had, you know, about a 160,000 users, unique users come to the site. Each I don't have the stats in front of me right now, but in each year, we were tracking how long are they staying, and each year they tend to stay a little bit longer. So that's that's an indicator of, you know, their interest in the in the tool. We are tracking where they're going on the site, and they're really, really interested in the career information, followed by the education opportunities. Like adults versus kids? It's pretty similar, is my recollection. Like fiftyfifty? Oh, sorry, thought you were saying how they're using the site. That is harder for me to peg because it's hard to get that analyzed out of in terms of that demographic number.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I think I'll look into it, but

[Speaker 0]: I think that's gonna be a hard one to get. What we found when we did our survey was that, and that's what we get, really good data, is actually surveying the users, and what we found was that we had a very good demographic breakdown, and actually, I don't have it in front of me, I'll email you, but did I have a breakdown of pages, I remember it now, based on that survey? We also are reaching every corner of the state, and kind of like pretty, pretty good breakdown in terms of being representative of the population.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay, so it's 160,000 active users or registered users?

[Speaker 0]: These are users since we launched five years ago. Okay, and return? Return users, I don't have that number in front of me, but that is one of those numbers that seems to be nice over time.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Click throughs, revisits. Yep. I don't know what the metric, I'm not a

[Speaker 0]: web guy, really. Yep, yep. Our click throughs are also going up. We actually just were working on a report for a funder that's due tomorrow, and now I'm gonna forget the staff for you, but we've been specifically tracking those click throughs, and they've been growing pretty dramatically.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: How about where they come from? Like, this site before your site?

[Speaker 0]: Right, so that's what I was kinda noting right here, the growth in libraries, schools, and others. We were taking a look at this information earlier this year, just a little foggy here in terms of the specifics, but tremendous growth there. And we're talking dozens of organizations that are sending their folks our way. And it's not just schools or education oriented entities or libraries, but it's also employers. So I actually had a slide that was a picture that I took out of this presentation but it screenshot of the Vermont Department of Labor driving people to site and I guess the Franklin County Industrial Corporation as well. So, it's a variety of local.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And he likes and I don't know if I'm using my terms with like dwell time where they're.

[Speaker 0]: Dwell time. Yeah, that's what was talking about earlier. You know, people are staying on. Okay. The the site longer.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That kind of, again, we're talking about, it's a money request, right? Yeah. To prove your. Yeah. Value. Those issues would be germane. So I'll

[Speaker 0]: get you more specifics, but that's where we're at, is there's improvement year after year in all of those areas. Graduate with a plan is really the other way that we have to get to where we're really addressing this career navigation system. So we have a tool that provides information that's really important and that's essential, But we also need to make sure that youth are graduating with clear next steps. So the way we're approaching this work is by focusing on the adults who are supporting. And I already kind of talked about who those people were. What we know is that students benefit from relationships from trusted adults. Almost every student's gonna have a relationship, someone in the school building or in the greater school community. Adults need, as I mentioned before, training tools to be effective in their job, understanding what their role is. Schools and organizations need resources and tools to help build this into their day. And then we have to be really focusing on collaboration. Find my notes here. So the three areas of graduate planning are navigator training, framework for current education planning, and then really working on continuous collaboration. So what's an elevator training? So this is us going in and going into a school or organization that supports youth. And we help them to identify their role in career education planning, and then give them the skills and tools they need to be effective. So this may be messaging, language use with youth, and awareness of the different education opportunities sort of that are out there. So we know most people who work within middle school or high school have a bachelor's degree or more, right? So we need to make sure that they understand other, those other options as well. And then we have to give them the tools they need to implement career education learning into their day, into their course. So we're on track to train well over 300 people this year, and that we think will impact about 1,500 students. Working with students, bringing that work back to their relationships with students. So this framework for career education training is actually a guidepost. It is a roadmap for how schools can implement this into their day, in a meaningful way. Like I said, now, a patchwork. It's very, it's, we'll do a career fair here, we'll do some fifteen minute conversations there. Has to be very purposely integrated. So what we're working on is actually scope, is competency standards from sixth grade up for how you could do this, and then also adding different activities and like actual curriculum that people can use and implement in their schools. And in the next year, we really wanna help implement that. That planning guide is almost finished. We wanna implement that in schools starting next year. It takes coalitions. So this is the third area. As I mentioned before, we partnered with AOE, Department of Labor, FSAC, CCPE Mentor Vermont is really crucial to talk about mentoring relationships, and a number of other organizations, including the Vermont School Counselors Association. So that's that work. I have a little more, but I'm just curious how many visitors a day, you roughly know that? So to my future VT, I don't, I'm trying to remember what it was. It's in the neighborhood of one or 200. It adds up over time. Yeah, CHAT, VT says 147. Okay, there we go. With that 30 thousand, 38, 3,845,000, which is pretty impressive. Yep. That's pretty good. I guess that's, I should've just pulled that up a second, I'm not sure if that's right, Andy, but that's about right. Yeah, okay.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I can't ask questions regularly.

[Speaker 0]: The floor I can, here I can. I'll tell you what's interesting is you can see a spike on the day, you can see a spike, I see 200 kids or something, hope a class was doing this today, which is kind of cool to see. So Gradually with the Plan is kind of a different ballgame. This is where we're really trying to build those adults up so that they can better support their youth and then build the system around them in a really meaningful way, as I was talking about earlier. So, this is what I just wanted to kind of say. There's, like I said, there's a lot of great national work happening. I yanked this graphic from Jobs for the Future, which does incredible work here. And these are like the core policy elements. So, these are the things you need in order to say, hey, we've built the system, the right system. First you gotta craft a statewide vision for career navigation. That's what we're doing with our framework for current education plan. Then review existing supports and services. What's going on out there? That's what we are doing as part of this work as well. The invest and expand and access to grid navigation is the job of funders, such as the legislature. Then integrating technology and platforms, that's my future VT, is covering that base. Adopting quality standards for career advising, we're essentially drafting those in the Career and Education Planning Framework. We would hope that they would be adopted in policy or in practice by the state at some point. Incentivizing cross system collaboration is what we're doing through this work. Expanding exploration and exposure activities, 100% the goal of all of this work. And then we're building the research base by doing these landscape scans by being very connected to national efforts that are really trying to figure out what's working and what's not in space. So I just wanted to kind of end there just kind of giving you a sense of where we are. I will now reduce my budget request, if that makes sense. Then I'll go back.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yes. Before you get to the money part, I'm just curious, are you targeting parents, students?

[Speaker 0]: Yes, yes, and that's something we wanna do more as we go further. And this year, this is the first year of the Graduate Movement Plan work in a meaningful way. Talk about Graduate Movement Plan specifically. And so we're really focused on those who are, you know, embedded within a school community, the professional types a little bit more, but not at the expense of not doing anything with parents. So we're working with Lake Michigan High School as an example, did a great event with them this fall, which was with for parents and families. So we want to build more and more of that, but a little bit of a test case now to hone our message with the professionals who are working with youth every day. 100% need to go there at least, because they're the first or second person on that list of who do you go to or what do look at.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And if you're trying to go to schools constantly because parents, that's what you're gonna be doing.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, so the key is you build it within the system, right? And then you train the trainer as well so that those educators, those school counselors can have those conversations too. You provide a number of the tools for how to So engage with that's part of it, and we'll have a larger focus on helping them engage with parents as we So, do you ask why I dove a little more into the current navigation piece? Because I think it's relevant to Pre K-twelve transformation and CT efforts that are going on here. And anything that can be done from a policy perspective to lay the foundation for career navigation, I think this is a right time to do that and happy to get you that conversation with some specifics. Then we're asking for $600,000 and continued state funding. Last year, we received $150,000 Thank you for the support of this committee. We received $3.50 the year before, and it's basically been $3.50 or 150 for the last five years. One year, didn't come ask for funds. Didn't get any time here. This year, we're having some federal funding going away, so we really need to get up to about $600,000 to really do these programs right, and the House gave us 201 time. We are asking for base funding, but they did come over with 201 time, which we are appreciative of and hoping to build on here in the Senate. So with the current house budget, they sent over Yep. To Which is something. Yeah. And we're appreciative of, but it's not, it would really be difficult in this year where we lost federal funding to actually continue to do these programs, even where we're doing them now with those funding. So go through that a

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: little bit. How much federal funding could we do this?

[Speaker 0]: So we had, it was a two year grant that was just under $300,000 A year or? Total, sorry, in total. So, you know, 150 a year.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: This year he survived on the 150 from the legislature, plus 150 from the federal government, plus a little bit

[Speaker 0]: Plus plus some other sources, some other smaller sources.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So survive about 315. And and without just two months, you'd have about 250 because you'd lose some 100 and something. You're looking at a, if you just look at the house, you're looking at a $100,000 company, basically. Easily.

[Speaker 0]: Based on a 100,000. Easily, and, and, you know, we're trying to launch and build this work too. And so, you know, we really need to make sure that we're in in that higher- Sure.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You pursue any philanthropic grants? We do. So there's

[Speaker 0]: not a large philanthropic community focused on this area east in Vermont. So I wish there were more opportunities, but we're throwing grants out to like one today, before it came in. Thank you. Really what we wanna do is continue to do my contributive team, implement Graduate with a plan in a meaningful way. Then there's another piece I didn't really I kind of mentioned, but is there's a statutory charge the state published lists of credential bearing programs and support services. If you recall, was talking as I was discussing my future VTE, we have a database that is you know, it's nine fifty education training programs in the state that we're continuing to grow and expand. And then a whole list of 169 or so educate or education support services. So these are the services that help people like Department of Labor Vermont Works for Women. There's a you all passed a bill last year that turned into acts five, which required the states to publish those lists. And we are supporting the state in basically having those for folks. So continue funding for My Future VT. We do wanna boost in users by really making sure we've got dedicated staff to do that. We want to continue to make sure that things functioning. This Act 65 connection that I just mentioned. JobLink, Vermont. Beall's JobLink is a job board, and they're working to replace it. It had been for about seven years. We wanna make sure we're aligned with that effort, that would support that work as well. For Graduate with a Plan, as I was mentioning, it's really around making sure that we're getting this new framework implemented across the state, that we're training 300 adults, and which we estimate will reach about 1,500 students each year. Remember, they'll reach them the next year, and the next year, and the next year after we train them. And then we want to launch a statewide navigator network, actually a learning community of these folks who can learn from each other and share best practice and that kind of thing as well. And prime opportunity to do that when you're going into schools and doing these trainings and then creating a community around it. You don't wanna lose that opportunity. Well, I

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: noticed that your hand up, I don't want to expect from Senator Ram Hinsdale. Oh,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, you know, I appreciated your question, mister chair and the answer. So, I was just listening to that before I sort of felt like I wanted to back up the request for funding. Okay. So I could wait. Okay.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So you wanna so you're gonna wanna so what you wanted to say?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Sure. And I'm sorry, I think I was unmuted for a while and I have a sore throat and I don't want to be in there and get anything else to get our small room. Tom knows this, I'm a harsh critic, I want to make sure we're getting value for the money, and we've been giving a small amount of money to Advance Permit. And just from my vantage point, between economic development and education, you know, we're, we spend a lot of money on on economic development programs in the morning that are not reaching people early enough, are not easy to navigate and access, and are not as nimble. And, you know, as everybody talks about their budget priorities, I always worry about the things that one committee might have funded but is showing up in a big way, for example, in the schools where we start to maybe lose interest in economic development. So, you know, I really, I worry that we, I mean, I vouched for lots of other things in other budget requests from both committees, but I worry that this one might be the most important metric we could have between economic development and education about how our kids are doing and how our economy is going to do in the future, and I just want to put in a strong plug for this being a high priority. Okay.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Thanks. Do you have more time? Actually done. Okay. So, okay. We understand we have that slide presentation, Yes. It's posted. Okay. Yes. Do you advertise? Like do you pop up and tick the documents? We largely do Google Ads. Good. That's

[Speaker 0]: about the amount of money we have to spend on the things. Yeah, there it So you'll find if you were to search career, wouldn't be surprised if my contribution popped up there. So what would happen, ask the question, backwards. What happened if he went away? Yeah, if we went away In a patent, a good model. And honestly, a $200,000 it really does put at risk a lot of this work. My Future PT goes away. There will no longer be a platform for career education seekers of all ages and those who support them. And we have, you know, had conversations with different partners over time to say, Hey, because this isn't new to us that, you know, there's funding challenges. We're a small, peepy, tiny nonprofit, and no one's in position to take this on, whether it's state government or outside of state government. So it would be more than likely go away or look dramatically different than it does today. Graduate with a plan, which is really just getting started in a really meaningful way. We've never seen the groundswell of support for anything you've done till we've done this. And we would have drafted a current education framework, which will, which honestly is already getting attention from people doing this nationally. And it will sit on the shelf, kind of like a legislative report. Now, it will not Sorry, I made that joke. That's what I joke yet today. So, I'm really worried that we wouldn't be able to implement that into schools across the state. And, I think there's a huge opportunity for that, for this vision that we're creating this framework to actually become state policy practice. And that would require us working with the Department of Labor, the Agency of Education, and others, and you all to make this a lot of these pieces policy over time. But there is actually not just the bottom up, but also the top down in building a security application system. There is also no one there to do that. There's no one offering professional development in this space the way that we are. And that would go like we would not be having kind of a dedicated organization focused on building a system within schools greater than this. And one one of the things that you heard after we convened, we have an advisory committee group for this graduate with a plan worker, and when we had our first meeting, it was about a year ago now, numerous people came up to me after and said, I've never seen these people in a room, I have not seen these people in a room together in seven years. So we're bringing together all the key players to help drive things forward, and kind of that convening piece would go away this week.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Questions?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Can I add one more thing? Sorry.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But I kind of meant to say too from both committees point of view is if this was diminished or away, we'd also try to find money and future years to do this again. And it would be more disjointed and more expensive. We have given millions of dollars in the past for something like this that frankly just has not materialized. And I will not name names, but every year it's we need a clearing house for jobs, opportunities, and certification, and we thought we might be asking the impossible, and this is building the plane and the runway, and I would just really hate to lose this because this ask exists for other agencies or institutions that have no idea where they're going to begin to do this work. And this is actually a relatively small amount of money compared to what we've tried to throw at this issue before.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And I will say for what's worth as one member of this committee and I think this is something that if we didn't have it, we should kind of figure out how we get it. And if I can, that would then be, being done pretty efficiently. And I like the word centered on Hinsdale used of nipple tends to happen or about profits than.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That's my my sense. Yeah. And I'm not quite sure who to address with this, but isn't is AOE charged with any of this responsibility themselves for career development that they could like sort work this program into their very significant budget to potential for a relationship there that instead of one off funding each year kind of institutionalizing?

[Speaker 0]: We are looking every day to build those relationships. I will tell you our relationships with David Weeks and the Department of Labor and the Office of Workforce Development have never been better. They really are reliant on the work and appreciative of the work, and we partner really, really well. Yes, I think there's absolutely a conversation to be had and to say, Should piece of this work or parts of this work live at AOE or at Department of Labor? Aren't there to be budget directed towards this work their budgets. That the conversation that we have with them on an annual basis and with DASHY made their budgets in the past before this year, but we're certainly hopeful that at some point that will happen. It would make sense for us to have those conversations going forward, and I've always said that with this organization, we're here as long as we're needed to be, and when that feels like someone else is ready to pick up the baton or the work is no longer needed, we're out of the way. Thank you. Yeah,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: that was great, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Great, thank you so much.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we are to adjourn.