Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: We're live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Senate Education Committee.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: They have the April 1.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Busy week in front of us, we're gonna spend most of our time on each 09:55, and building that with our work tomorrow afternoon. We have a two and a half hour session with the the Senate Finance Committee going over the pieces to build and have finance including Julia going over the investment. Today, we've got a number of things going on, including completing our walk through of the House Education portion of 09:55 later on this afternoon. But we're starting with a few minutes on the miscellaneous Ann Bill. We have two witnesses prepared for two different purposes. Starting with Eric Lafayette.

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: Hello, everyone. I'm Eric Lafayette. Yep. So obviously- ten minutes? Yeah. Perfect. Okay. All right. Ready to go. I'm Eric Lafayette with Energy Efficient Investments. We're a performance contracting energy service company out of Williston, Vermont. We employ 18 people in the state right now, and we work with schools, municipalities, hospitals, and universities to help reach their energy efficiency goals. Performance contracting is a delivery method for school districts in the state and the K-twelve public school system, where they can evaluate their buildings on an energy audit level, investment grade audit, and then provide energy savings recommendations to help reduce their operating costs. Those energy savings help go toward paying for the project and the upgrades at the schools. And the issues that we're dealing with in regards to that is that currently there's not language in there. It's kind of like a gray area in the bill about allowing additions as part of performance contracting.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And Where are you exactly? In the miscellaneous bill, Judith?

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: In the miscellaneous bill? Not currently in it. Think it

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: would be in the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: same said language in the bill book? Oh,

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: in the performance contracting 3448F is the statute that we Okay, search Sorry about that. And in it, it's just, it doesn't specifically mention additions, and it's come up as a gray area on some of our projects that we've tried to push forward. It comes up a lot when we're dealing with non compliant, non code issued buildings. So over the last fifteen, twenty years, a lot of school districts have brought in like modular buildings that the fire marshals have granted on a temporary basis, but they don't meet a lot of different code requirement and life safety upgrades. At the same time, we're trying to do more comprehensive energy improvements to the facility, and we're not able to do so without addressing the code compliant buildings that they have on-site. So doing like a fuel switch, moving somebody off of oil right now into say a biomass wood chip boiler system. For a school district, say like Dallas Falls, that's spending, that's used to stop 50,000 gallons a year, they're facing a $250,000 bill coming up. The space for their boiler problem is may too small to house a new wood chip boiler and silo that would be required to do so. In that case, going with a wood chip system would save them, if it saves at $5 a gallon, about $200,000 a year, but it would require an addition to the building. They're also missing out on some storage space, so as part of that addition, they want

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to include some storage that they need. So the problem is that right now, drilling to new construction?

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: No, the problem right now is that it just doesn't specifically list additions as being part of performance contracting, so we're looking to have that added into the language in there, just because a lot of times when we presented this to different school boards or superintendents, we have to go and get legal opinion on the statute to say, yes, this is allowed. So just trying to save that step during the process and allow these projects to get expedited a little bit, that sort

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of thing. Do we have specific language?

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: I'd send it to you over to everybody right now.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Yep. Forward to that thing, she can post it.

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: Yeah, so this, we've had a lot of success around the state doing these energy upgrades, especially right now with the cost of fuel oil going through the roof, it does look like that's going to be coming down anytime soon. This is becoming even more important. So, for instance, oil right now is twice the cost of propane. So this is part of the analysis that we do when we work with schools. I went down to Green Mountain School District, Green Mountain High School in Chester, Vermont. They have a fuel oil boiler. They burn about 34,000 gallons a year of fuel oil. Three months ago when I presented the project, propane was about 5% cheaper than oil on a cost per therm basis. In the last three months, that gap has widened, and now we're paying 50%

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: of the cost that they

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: were for that same amount. So I'm going back in front of the school board in another week and showing them the updated cost comparisons so that they can make a good, long term decision.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: the vehicle would be miscellaneous? I think so.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Think it would get me to get it done. And all you're, almost all you're looking for is the word additions. That's it. Yeah. Just looking to add the word additions into the- Absolutely complicated.

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: I know. There's a list of cost saving measures, means any facility improvement, repair, or alteration to equipment fixtures or furnishings. We're just looking to add additions added as well. Okay. Well, can we count?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's too easy. We don't do simple. Okay. I think that's good. Addison's given us language. We'll get it if that should come in. Great. We have your contact information in case we need it.

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: Good luck, professor. Appreciate it. You. Appreciate it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So a second Stolen Miscellaneous Ed Bill, piece of miscellaneous proposed edition.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Yes. Good afternoon. Sue Seglowski here from Vermont School Boards Association, and we are asking for a small addition to the miscellaneous Ed bill. You have the language there in front of you and I do have some brief slides if it's okay if I share those and I'd be very brief because I know you don't have a lot of time.

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: We're okay, we're okay. You are, okay. Pull fender.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Okay, thank you very much. So, at the outset I just want to be clear and I think all of you know this, that healthcare costs are impacting the education funds in a major way and they are very significant and growing pressure on the education fund and on school districts budgets and these costs directly compete with resources for students. That's covered in that slide.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: If I'm right, you've gone from what, 10% to 15%

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: in Since the 2018, yes, and some districts are approaching closer to 20% at this point. So this is very much not theoretical. It's something that boards are grappling with every single budget cycle and the trade offs are very real in school districts across Vermont. One thing that we wanted to clarify is that these costs are not absorbed into budgets, I mean they are absorbed, I'm sorry, they're not added to budgets. So they're not simply layered on and their impact on taxes is often hidden. So what does this mean? It means to manage these costs, boards are forced to make difficult decisions and it will mean reducing staff, scaling back programs, and deferring things like maintenance and capital investments. So you may see a budget with only a modest increase, but internally there are significant shifts that are happening and a growing share is going toward healthcare as we just discussed. Over time this is eroding programs, program quality, and limiting district's ability to respond to students' needs and even when the budget appears to be stable this is happening. So our goal with this proposal is to get you as legislators the information that you need to make informed decisions that balance fiscal sustainability with workforce stability and student outcomes. And so our proposal you have in front of you is language for a joint fiscal office report that would be due in 2026. And first, it addresses affordability. What is the actual financial ability of the education fund to sustain these costs over time, including the HRA and HSA contributions. Second is a regional comparison. How do Vermont's benefits compare to similar public sector employees across New England and New York, and this includes not just premiums, but plan design, employee contributions, and employer funded accounts. Without that context, it's very hard to know where we stand.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: And third

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: We don't already know that. No.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: At least not all in one place. Third, true value. This looks at the full actuarial value of benefits, including employer contributions to the HRAs and HSAs and compares them to plans available through the Vermont Health Connect. Premiums alone do not tell the full story. Taken together, this will give the legislature, school boards, and the public a shared factual foundation which is essential for making fair and sustainable policy decisions. Without that foundation, there's a real risk of unintended consequences including cost shifting, workforce disruption, and inequities across districts. Healthcare reform in education is complex. It intersects with collective bargaining, tax policy, and long term financial planning, which is why structured analysis is so important. So this approach allows the legislature to return in 2027 with a clearer picture and a stronger basis for action. And in closing, school board share the goal of financial sustainability in our education system that uses resources effectively as possible for students. We're asking for a path forward that's grounded in data, transparency and careful consideration. With information from the JFO 2026 report, the legislature will be positioned to make critical decisions about public school employee health benefits in 2027. And that is all I have for you today.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes, so

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: it's an interesting summary. What kind of results would you expect from the first first bullet point, assessing the financial abilities, something that we don't already know?

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: I think that we would be receiving information about the full impact of providing the health benefits to school employees, what the dollar amounts are, what the percentages are, and the growth over time.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I was having trouble with the section two. I almost wanted to use that language. It'll be what she just referred to. Yeah. Okay. So actually books. It's

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: It's been recorded. Yeah. I think I've said the full impact, the percentage, and the growth over time. That's what I said.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: But again, don't we already It's

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: changing every year, and so Changing

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: every year. We've changed it every year in the past.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Yep. We know that those changes are That's probably the easiest piece.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's probably the easiest piece to add onto this, so it's all in one place, I guess. So

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I'm gonna translate that with that. How come, or let me take it from perspective. Is the Vermont School Boards Association, are they able to conduct this type of analysis themselves and provide us instead of tasking JFO? Most of this, we already know what the impacts are. We know where they came from. We know why we're suffering from this. We have routes to mitigate it into the future, we think. What more will we gain from this that we don't already And how can your association more support us with what you do know?

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: I think we have supported you with what we do know with information that we've provided throughout this session that is posted under my name on your committee page about the impact of healthcare costs on Go to the end

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: of that. From the cause and correction is kind of where all this is going, right?

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Right, yes. And I think that what you'll gain is a report from a neutral entity that has, all of the information in one place and it's up to date as of December 2026 and it will provide you with information that you need in 2027 in order to make some needed changes to the law. Which law? The law regarding statewide bargaining for school employee compensation. Okay.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That's alright. Okay. Play Can devil dog? Yeah. Okay. Again. So, I think the fundamental problem with health care is going on. I call this the forty sixty principle. 40% of Vermonters will pay for their own health insurance and they pay for the other 60%. We become very very generous in our health care entitlements, gifts, whatever you want to call it. Until that balance shifts, those that work, who I know you're representing simply the working teachers and educators and such. They pay. And that's why these sixty day, they pay for themselves. They pay within that other 40%. They're also paying for the 60%, the other 60%. Nothing in here is going to tell us how to alter I that

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: think something in here will tell you how to alter that balance because it's going to be comparing the benefits that school employees have to the benefits that are available on Vermont Health Connect.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: But they're all suffering from the same problem. The pool of payers is small, getting smaller, none of this corrects it. It's just a validation that, yep, costs are going up, got a problem, then what? Seeking, this isn't leading to any solution. It's not leading to recommendations, which is where we are. We all know it, we all see it as well. So I don't think we're all nodding our heads to how we got into this scenario, but we're in this scenario. Educators are a prime example. They're working, they're fully employed, or they're employed, and we're not correcting the problem. So what does the study do?

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Well, again, I think it provides you with a factual basis provided by a neutral entity and there is a bill pending in the House, but it's on the wall in House General, H. Eight forty two, that we support that does make changes to the state guardian process. That hasn't moved along, and so then we

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: We agree with that, okay? So why is, let's go ahead and pull it off of the house. I mean, that, that we agree with. A, but that is a minor, minor lever. But important, or at least, it happened, it'd be consequential to some minor effect. But I'm not sure that this gets us anywhere closer to the answer to how to affect the overall cause. This isn't just, again, from our health and welfare committee experience, This isn't just an education problem. This is a Vermont problem. It

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: is a Vermont problem. I think that this language is focused specifically on the education piece of it.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Right. I mean, tricks the whole problem. You know I don't think we're gonna learn anything more than we knew when we were in that committee you know four years ago. That's my, sorry to be sick. I understand what you're doing and I support putting language in there but I don't think whoever's sitting here a year from now is gonna have any different answers based on that report.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, I I think, frankly, what you're hoping is that it sort of suggests that that bill makes sense.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Yes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: As an acquaintance seen in or understood. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Well, how about a different perspective? How about, in bad age, eight forty two and said, listen. And he said, there you go. You know? You gotta be it. Yeah. Let's do something tangible. We can all walk away and say, well, at least we, you know, we pulled this little minor lever and but, you know, I'm selling the whole hip bone.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: If we did, you would support that if we could do it.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yes. So

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: how do we believe there's positive?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We don't have well, we don't have to. Think it was. Can't steer us. We make it. I

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: got it off my butt. Right. Right. Yeah. I was talking to a rougher. I'm sorry. Alright. Well,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we I think we understand what you're looking for. Yep. And put this on a list. Take your patience. Yeah. Thank you. Don't mean to give you a hard time because

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I'm really looking for some other stuff that's taught. Right. We started studies when we for all stages. No problem.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Now we're we're switching gears to H650, which is the technology field.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You know

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: By the way, I it online, people can add to this list if they want to, that we are within range to get out the miscellaneous bill, the tech technology bill, the PCP bill, and the chronic absenteeism bill. We'll try to collab some of that. Last somebody that is saying I don't want to do that. Miscellaneous Miscellaneous bill, the tax the tax bill, chronic absenteeism, and the PCP. On switching gears to the technology products, still the first person we have, first witnesses, Andrew And I see him on the screen there. So Mr. Liddell, introduce yourself for the record.

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: Yes, my name is Andrew Liddell. I'm with the EdTech Law Center in Austin, Texas.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. We have a good amount of time for this. Yeah, we're interested in your testimony on how to handle tech in schools.

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: Okay, well, would be very honored to be here today. I've prepared some short remarks and so I'd like to deliver those into the record if that's okay, and then we'd open it up for questions, unless you think you have twenty minutes worth of questions, in which case I'm happy just to skip the remarks and answer your questions.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No. Go ahead. No. Your remarks will be helpful.

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: Okay. Then without further ado, good afternoon. My name is Andrew Liddell of the EdTech Law Center, a consumer protection law firm in Austin, Texas, and I'm not being paid to be here today. H650 is an important step in ensuring transparency and accountability for the education technology that has taken over the K-twelve classroom. Over the last fifteen years and counting, the ed tech industry has preyed on the public's inherent trust in schools and educators' concerns about preparing students for the future to pump schools full of technology that does not keep students safe, does not help them learn, and flagrantly violates their privacy rights. Compared to the robust vetting process that supports curriculum adoption, where subject matter experts and everyday citizens have a chance to weigh in, which is conducted in full view of the public, EdTech adoption has been ad hoc, cloaked in secrecy, and driven by Big Tech's desire to hook students young and create customers for life. As a result, students' privacy rights are being invisibly invaded daily by products they are forced to use to receive the education they're legally entitled to. Flagrantly distorting federal laws that are meant to protect children's privacy rights online and student records while in school, the EdTech industry asserts that under COPPA, companies are schools, and that under FERPA, schools are parents so that functionally, no consent or disclosure is required to begin pervasively data mining children as early as kindergarten. This is not what these laws actually require, mind you, but the practice is really pervasive. So accordingly, regarding the attestation requirement that appears on page three, lines four to six of the draft bill that I have, When the bill is passed, I would consider making available form attestation language that identify that identifies all applicable laws and spells out the requirements in plain language that anyone can understand. Take COPPA, for example. This law requires that companies obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from a child under 13. The companies allow parents to see the information the company has collected about their child, and that companies honor parents' requests to delete their children's personal information. There are no exceptions under COPPA for companies that operate at school. But for the better part of two decades, EdTech companies have used COPPA to circumvent the parent notice and consent requirement by claiming that under COPPA, schools are parents' agents as a matter of law who can authorize companies to collect information about children even over their actual parents' objections. And companies rely on COPPA to deny parents access to the information that has been collected about their children under 13 at school, claiming that the school must act as the intermediary with the company. My law firm, the Addison Law Center, has challenged this interpretation of COPPA in court. The Federal Trade Commission, which is the federal agency charged with enforcing the law, twice weighed in in our favor under consecutive presidential administrations with a friend of the court brief, denying that COPPA permits schools to act as children's parents. And last week, the ninth circuit issued an opinion confirming that COPPA indeed contains no such provision. I have provided these briefs and the opinion to the committee for your reference. So all this is to say, rather than allow ed tech companies to write their own attestations along the lines of the undersigned hereby affirms that the products identified herein meet all federal and state privacy laws, including COPPA, the agency of education or another applicable authority should provide a more detailed form attestation that says specifically what all those requirements are. Switching gears slightly now to the certification process. Certification is urgently needed to ensure that EdTech platforms not only help with learning, but also keep kids safe. My law firm has heard from hundreds of parents about how their children have been acutely and immediately harmed over and above privacy violations by the one to one devices that they are being made to use at school. The most common complaint is pervasive distraction, which is an obvious result when Google, whose Chromebooks dominate the EdTech market and which makes money by following users around on the Internet, is given free rein to shape the classroom environment with designs that serve Google's bottom lines and not students' educational interests. When a kid spends all day watching YouTube at school, he's not misusing his Chromebook. He's using it as Google designed it. At the other end of the spectrum, rare but still frequent and disturbing, are the harms that follow when young children are served violent or pornographic content in response to innocent search queries or when adult strangers contact children through school devices that their parents assume are safe or may not even know that connect to the Internet. I hope that when developing the criteria for the certification process, the agency of education's report will reveal and quantify incidents like these. We know they're happening. We know they're happening more frequently than parents understand, but we don't know exactly how frequent that is. And so I would hope that we can start gathering data to shed some light on these issues. So in conclusion, h six fifty is an important first step in ensuring that any device or program that comes into the classroom is shown to be safe, legal, and effective before it is ever used by a student. These are sensible requirements that parallel the safety and efficacy standards of everything else in the school environment.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: It's not half time for

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: Big Tech to play by the same rules as the companies that make textbooks, desks, paint, insulation, and playground equipment, the rules that they must obey. So thank you for inviting me to speak today. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Do we have your testimony in writing?

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: You do.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Questions? Senator Heffernan. I would have I don't know

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: was first, but Go ahead. You first. So are are you looking for Vermont to sign on to that amicus brief?

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: No. No, sir. The the Amicus briefs have already been filed. They're there for your reference. Basically, as as evidence that whatever the industry understanding of of COPPA is has been really wrong, and has been shown to be wrong not only by the FTC, which enforces the law, but also by at least one recent opinion in the Ninth Circuit saying that COPPA doesn't say what the ed tech industry says it does.

[Unidentified Senator]: Thank you. So I'm still trying to understand, the bill originally is for apps, correct? That is what I'm interpreting six fifty to on apps that the schools pick. But yet, if they get on YouTube and that, I don't know how the teacher or the school can prevent that from happening unless they just So ban it from the

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: this gets to the problem of how these products are designed. They're designed not for the school environment. They're designed like anything you just walk down the street to an electronic store and buy off the shelf as an adult consumer. That's not usually the case for most things in school, and understanding that on a Chromebook, there really is no difference or any Internet connected device, I say Chromebooks is the most pervasive. There is no difference between an app and a website. It's just really how it's presented from a user interface perspective. But they are the same thing. They all operate by being connected to the Internet. And so it really shouldn't delineate between apps and websites or browsers. It's all the same thing.

[Unidentified Senator]: And and there is a way to regulate that, you believe?

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: I I believe that that's possible, and I think that this bill, you know, sets out a a good framework for for doing so.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So your main suggestion to us is to be more specific about the attestation?

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: Yes, and that wouldn't necessarily need to appear in the bill. I'm thinking that in the federal context where you have the law and then the implementing regulation that the administrative agency works with. And so I think just understanding, having dealt with those things in the federal context, as clear as you can make it, will be beneficial to everyone. And so I think the law is fine as written, but then understanding, I just wanted to point out my experience about these attestations where companies attest, again, in my experience, to whatever they need to attest to in order to get in schools. But then there's not the follow-up of vetting and auditing. And then also there is this really deep, I would say, charitably misunderstanding or less charitably just willful misinterpretation of what the law actually requires. And so I think if you can help do the industry's job for it and lay out administrative implementing rule or the Vermont state equivalent of these are the laws that apply, these are what the requirements are in plain English. Do your products meet these requirements? That would just make it easier on the industry frankly.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: So, Andrew, you you live within this world of EdTech and such. And I'm wondering, instead of having 50 states all bumping into each other trying to create appropriate legislation, can you comment on where the federal government is in review of this topic?

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: So the federal government doesn't have as much of an authority to regulate this as we might think. There are two basic laws that provide students and young people extra protections at school, but their spending bills or their bills, really their spending bills. And so FERPA, for example, that regulates student records at school. It's a funding bill that controls federal funding to schools. And it doesn't regulate industry even though industry tries to free ride on it and basically pretend that it is school. And then we have COPPA, which only applies to children 13 online, and again, there is no private right of action, there's nothing to set out exactly what the protections are. Privacy law tends to be a creature of state law, education obviously is something that's always been left to the states, and so the federal government generally speaking doesn't have as much regulatory authority as we'd like to see, and then practically speaking has not been as engaged on this issue as I personally would like. There's certainly a lot more that the FTC could have been doing and still can do under COPPA with respect to tech at school, but they've really not enforced that law, and again, private lawyers like myself can't enforce COPPA directly. And the education department has been very similar, where they have not robustly investigated violations of FERPA at school by these products, and that's largely because they only have one mechanism, is to deny the offending school federal funding. And that's not what I want either, and so I think there is this attitude of, well, we can't investigate because the only penalty will be withdrawing federal funding from public schools, which I don't think the education department would want. And frankly, I don't want either. But I do think that those things don't have to live in tension and that we can respect children's privacy rights at school while not denying our public school's federal funding.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: one more. You've obviously read the bill. And I don't see where we can pass it in the law. What mechanism would you recommend that we put in there for oversight on this to make sure it's it's happening? I mean, do we just count on the schools to do it themselves or AOE?

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: No. No. And I I think what I really like about this bill is is that it's taking it in steps. And so I like the reporting requirement first where we have to investigate first. And then once the investigation has been completed, I would imagine there would be subsequent legislation to get more specific about what oversight would look like. But just kind of thinking about what I would like to see is essentially the same robust process that's applied to curriculum adoption be applied to technology adoption. And so certainly I'm speaking only from my experience here in Texas, but I assume that everybody is good or better even in Vermont where it's a long process. It occurs on a cycle. I think it's every seven years for one of seven major subjects. And it's up, then there's a panel. Are subject matter experts and there are members of just citizens from the state. And it's not prescriptive, but it defines an acceptable world of this is the acceptable curriculum. It still allows local control for school districts to pick from that menu of approved content. And so in a similar way with technology, that basically there should be a design standard. Because that's really, if you think about textbook adoption, it essentially is a design standard. It has to be age appropriate. It has to convey certain information that we all have agreed is important for kids to learn at a certain age. It has to convey it in a way that they can understand it. And so if you really think abstractly, that's a design standard for school curriculum, and there should be a similar design standard for technology. And that begins with the interface between the student and the device itself. And so I could probably spend the rest of the afternoon going through all of what that should look like. But ultimately it should be that just as in our school, the physical environment and also the information environment, companies must take into account the age of the user. Technology companies should do the same. And so the analogy that I like to use is imagine if I hired a building contractor to build me a school And they filled that building with nothing but high school chemistry labs. And they said, look, you can make this safe for your elementary school. You can take out the poison gas and the chemicals and the glass and the tables that are too tall. You can go do that yourself if you want to. But we build schools and this is what schools look like. Right now it's the same thing that's happening with technology where there is room in school for a chemistry lab. Seniors who are mature and who have the grounding to appropriately behave in this dangerous environment, but there's educational reasons for them to be there. Right now, respect to computers in school, they're giving everybody the chem lab and saying schools, you figure it out, you find a way to make this inherently dangerous thing safe, you find a way to adapt this environment for little kids in a way that I would say is functionally impossible for them to do. A better way to approach it is, well, what does a kindergarten classroom physically look like? What does a third grade classroom physically look like? And start applying that same type of thinking to the devices that if our kids must use them, that they will use.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, thank you. Say it around pizza.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I'm not gonna ask that we take all afternoon to figure out what a design standard or a design code would look like, but that I mean, we did spend a lot of time in past years on age appropriate design code. I do think it's the only way to not end up playing whack a mole or after the fact trying to regulate products that constantly evolve and relying on them to certify that they don't do X, Y, or Z. If you could get us a list of the things that would make sense for an end tech age appropriate design code or standard. I I feel like I'm put in the position to just support this bill because we're upset about the issue. And I I just don't see trying to regulate all of the products that might get registered on a list as an effective way to do that.

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: I I I would tend to agree. I think designing to a code and having, you know, an outside auditor basically judge whether it applies to the code and then the vet auditor not be somebody that is funded only by industry. And so that's a problem to solve. But I like that this bill incorporates the age appropriate design code. Then the things that I would think about that would be in addition to the age appropriate design code would have to do with really the school environment. And so that basically part of school, it's an environment where we intentionally shape and direct students' attention so that that attention plus their effort becomes knowledge. And right now, we live in this attention economy where attention becomes money for somebody else. And so as we think about that, that would caution against browsers that allow you to switch tabs frequently, right? Or have multiple tabs open, things like that. It would give parents control over what's happening at school and basically allow them to say, At home, I don't let my kid watch YouTube, and so I don't want them watching that at school at all. It would allow and prevent unwanted contact, whether that's from peers or from strangers. And so I could see the industry saying that these are collaboration tools and this is necessary. And I would say, no, no, it's not. Really, if what this is meant to be is the magic textbook and the magic notebook where lessons are delivered and homework is done. Well, there are other ways to collaborate, frankly, better ways to collaborate. And those ways are in person. And so I'm happy to put pen to paper and give you a list of things over and above the appropriate design code that be appropriate. But this would really be thinking about how do you direct and preserve the attention environment at school. And that might require a pretty radical rethinking of what these devices are, but my argument to that would be no one's making you sell into schools. So if you want the privilege of being there, then you should design it for the environment.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, you should, but I mean, having been the lead author of Kids Code, they can. Can make magical things happen when they want to. If we said you do not get a contract with the school unless these design codes are met, watch how fast things change. I just think like this four year registry process, is that the way to actually effectively change the industry and make sure schools and parents are in control?

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: Well, I won't actually weigh in on that, but I do love the appetite for more radical and immediate action. I think for my work, I've been doing this for, gosh, seven years next month, and so I've had to learn to be pretty patient and gradual with it all. But certainly if there are more immediate steps that you wish to take, I'd be very happy to collaborate on what those could look like too.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Thanks for coming, and we'll look for whatever you can give us additionally. And that next is Doctor. Orba.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: All right, yes sir. Thank you

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: all very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for having Thanks, me

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: have a good day.

[Andrew Liddell (EdTech Law Center)]: Hi, Drew.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: Ciao, Andrew, how you doing? Doing good, man. All right.

[Dr. Orba (neuroscientist witness)]: Uh-oh. I'll see you. No, we've crossed paths before. That's awesome. Hello guys, and thank you guys so much for letting me chat. Similar to Andrew, I won't take too much of your time and I'm kind of the odd one out in this conversation in the sense that I've read through the bill, I see what you guys are doing. My focus is on learning, is on how does EdTech impact learning? Because my argument has always been, man, you can make sure that these products are safe, can make sure that they don't steal any data, you can make sure that they're not harming anyone in any possible way. But at the end of the day, not harm has never been a goal of education. Learning is our primary goal. So my argument has always been if we can demonstrate that ed tech does or does not impact learning in any way, shape, or form, then we can make better arguments as to whether or not we need to be having all these other arguments. So that's kind of where I sneak in. Now you may have heard me speak before or not, but the data is alarmingly clear that digital technology does not improve student learning. In fact, in almost every instance we have, it harms student learning. Whether you look at international PISA data, whether you look at international TIMS data, whether you look at international PEARLS data, across 90 countries, anytime that country goes heavy digital, learning performance starts to drop. In The US, we have the same thing. We have the NAEP data. Anytime you align any state's data along with when that state adopted edtech, not any particular calendar year. It's when did that state go tech heavy. So for, like, New York, that was 2017. For Texas, it was, like, 2009. I did my work. So Vermont, it was, 2014. That was when you guys adopted standard, excuse me. Yeah. Standard balanced digital testing. So basically, that's when schools required a digital infrastructure in order to do your state testing. Before 2014, between 1992 and 2014, your scores across fourth grade math, reading, eighth grade math, and reading were increasing on average two and a half points every single year. That's massive. Since 2014, your scores on those four tests have been going down over three points on average every single year. We've wiped away twenty years of growth in less than ten years because we went tech heavy. And I it's not just us. I mean, like I said, it's it's it's across every country we've ever explored. And the reason becomes why or the big question becomes why. No data supports that ed tech has ever helped learning. Why would it be so harmful for learning? And that's basically where where I come in. I'm a neuroscientist who studies learning, I can explain all the different mechanisms by which digital technology does not align with human learning. For instance, we are biologically built to learn from other human beings. We have inbuilt biological mechanisms that says when I am with another human being, our biologies will start to resonate and learning goes up measurably. Other mechanisms are things like multitasking. Arguably, the worst thing you could do when it comes to learning a memory is multitask. When you multitask, your brain flips into a secondary memory network, which means your your accuracy goes down, your speed goes down, your memory tanks, basically, learning goes away. Now what is the one thing digital technology is built to do? Multitask. That's all it does. Digital technology is what's called a serial or excuse me, a parallel processor. It can do 10 things at once. As human beings, we are serial processors. We can only do one thing at a time. So when we use a tool that can do multiple things at a time, we try to do multiple things at a time, and our learning goes down. So as you kinda think about design elements and safety elements, just remember the only pillar holding that entire argument up is an evidentiary pillar, that these things are worth having in schools. And I can talk to you for the next two hours, demonstrate there isn't a lick of evidence that suggests these things should belong in schools. In fact, they absolutely shouldn't. And anytime they are used in schools, they should be driven and directed by the teacher, never given to the student for a one to one connection to the Internet. That's when all learning is gonna go down. So if you're worried about what a what would a design element look like, I have no clue. But what I could do is tell you what a an efficacy design would look like. It's very easy to set up a standard that says, if you want to be in schools, you have to demonstrate efficacy to this level. This is our standard in education. That's a simple mathematical statistical procedure that doesn't require a lot of discussion, a lot of debate. You put that in place, literally 100% of all ed tech will go away tomorrow, and they're gonna have to go back to the drawing board to say, how do I actually make this effective rather than just engaging for students? But like I said, so if you I I'm kind of the odd man out just because I'm taking that next step when it comes to the ed tech, but I'm happy to kind of address any questions, thoughts, ideas on the learning aspect of digital technologies in the classroom and where that all kind of fits up. So over to you guys, happy to kind of just follow your lead then.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Several weeks. Yeah. Appreciate the, appreciate the, testimony. Appreciate the graphic on,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's not competitive.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Oh, it's not. Were given a graphic that backs up what you were saying.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: Perfect. Perfect.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I I did want to know if you would comment on It's brilliant.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Going digital. That's not what we've

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So going digital in respect to the learning performance effect, access. Is it something you it's not something you mentioned. But that's the one enormous benefit that I see going digital, access to knowledge. That it's just like

[Dr. Orba (neuroscientist witness)]: That's if you if you think about it, the reason why schools exist, the reason why modern schooling was built was largely because of the printing press. The printing press gave people access to knowledge. The problem was it gave them too much access to knowledge. And after about seventy years, we decided we needed to institute what are called curricula. These are ways to help people organize themselves and their thinking through the overabundance of knowledge because mere exposure to it was overwhelming and not enough. So cut to today where now we have things like the Internet and everything. That's only made exposure to information way higher. But if exposure to information was enough, why then in The US, where we have about ninety eight percent of people boast effective Internet access, why do we still have a functional illiteracy rate of around twenty one percent? If looking at words was enough, mate, we should all be literate. No, we still require structure and development and teaching and learning. There's a reason why schools exist. And so if you actually look at at the data of just pure access, it turns out something like E Rate, which gave everyone access to information. E Rate correlates absolutely nothing with learning development and growth. The more money E Rate spent, actually, the more learning actually started to go down because people started to assume because kids have access to the Internet, we can destructure learning. Kids can start to do some things on their own. They need they need guides instead of teachers, and that's been the biggest mistake. So believe it or not, when it comes to the access issue, access is one of the biggest drivers we know of of the learning performance gap. When you allow access, the kids who are already really strong, they've developed enough skill to kind of drive their own learning, so they suffer minimally. They only drop one or two points a year. It's the kids who haven't quite developed learning ability where you now give them access to the Internet, they drop wildly. And this is why the the gap between the top and the bottom has been expanding since 2015. It's now wider than it was in 1992 because access has never been enough. Structured classroom curricula teaching, that's what's required to help kids develop, not simply access to books and knowledge.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Thank you.

[Dr. Orba (neuroscientist witness)]: Thank you. I know a lot of this stuff, it sucks. It's counterintuitive. A lot of this stuff feels good until you dive into the literature and you're like, oh, it's not actually going the way we thought. And that's because humans I think we mistake as adults, we mistake what we're doing as experts with what kids need to do to develop expertise. We look at adult performance and we assume that's what we've always done, but we forget what it took to get to the level where we can perform as adults. And that path is very different than where we're at now. And that's where I think a lot of ed tech tries to hit us where we're at today. Here's what we do in the workforce. That's what kids should be doing. Nope. The the path it takes to walk to get to the stage where you can effectively be a part of the workforce is very different than the skills it takes to succeed in the workforce. They're two different ball games, and I think we've just conflated them, unfortunately.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Questions? Thank you. Thanks for coming in.

[Dr. Orba (neuroscientist witness)]: Thank you all. You guys have a great afternoon ahead.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: Lisa,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Lisa Velasso.

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Hello, good afternoon.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Chief.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Are ready?

[Unidentified Senator]: Yes. Yes.

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Hi, thank you so much for the opportunity to testify today. I wanted to ask a couple calibrating questions before I dive in And I do have written comments that I was unable to send ahead of time, but I will provide them afterwards. First question is, are any of you familiar with the work that Internet Safety Labs does?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: My guess is no.

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Uh-oh. Alright. I'm

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: familiar with the work that Camel Labs does. Internet

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Safety Labs. That what we

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Internet Safety Lab.

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Yes. Oh. ISL. Internetsafetylabs.org. If you go to our website, you can take a gander around. Okay, do you all and I don't know. I I'm I don't testify a lot. So I don't know how much you look at the house testimony at all.

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: Fair enough. Rarely.

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Okay. I thought that might be the case, like, just about an hour ago that occurred to me. So what I've written up is is it's really intended to be a cumulative of all of the testimony that I provided. So I'm gonna kinda wing it a little bit to give you and point you in the right direction of things. If I may, I think what I wanna start off with is just, I wanna give you a look at a safety label. Is it possible to share screen?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah, Daphne sent you a link or something.

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Got it. Thanks. Okay. So, never mind that. Never mind that. Oh, good grief. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Stop. Share. Just okay. Let me get what

[Unidentified Senator]: I need. Yay. Yay. Okay. Sure.

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Okay. Internet Safety Labs, we started in February 2019 and one of the primary missions that we that drove us from the start is exposing safety risks in digital products, and I'll explain that in a little bit more detail in a minute. But this safety label, which you can view at at microscope.org, we, in 2022, we conducted a US wide ed tech safety and privacy benchmark. The first of its kind. We looked at 663 schools across The US, and we assembled more than 1,700 apps that we found either recommended or required in those schools. And we audited them carefully and looked at the network traffic and looked at the lots of different things about the software. Ultimately, we produce safety labels for these apps. And this safety label is really our primary kind of product. And this what you're looking at is version1.o, but we have a new version that we're working on that includes a lot more information. This label right now includes mostly privacy risks. And you can see this was the worst app. This was a a Palm Beach community engagement app used in the Palm Beach County School District. And this app had, for instance, 21 data brokers observed in the network traffic. It had a 156 unique companies found in the network traffic. This isn't theoretical. This isn't hypothetical. It's observed network traffic communicating little bits of information about the student potentially if its student is using it to these third party and to all these third party companies. So we look at a variety of safety related behaviors like are there ads? Are there behavioral ads? Who are these third parties? What do they do? How risky are they? Do they monetize personal information? And you can see here critical risk means they're monetizing personal information which means they are selling it in some way or another. And you can see here just how many of these companies are in there. So we we go to quite a bit of detail. We are software nerds. We are that's what we are. We are not education experts. We are safety experts and so, I wanna say a little bit more about this. I'm gonna I gotta revise my statement here on the fly. One of the things I wanted to mention about the apps that we audited in 2022, 78% of those were found to be sending data to advertising and marketing platforms. 78%. Also, when we think about how many of those apps were licensed by the schools or the district, about 30%, 70% of the apps that schools are recommending are get it off the shelf. They have no relationship with the school. This behavior we saw consistently across across the schools. We saw one school in Colorado that had something like 1,400 apps that they were recommend and and requiring students to use. So really big numbers. We have enormous body of work that's published on our website. Like it's way too much for me to talk about today. I mean, there's so many, so much data. We are rife with data on this stuff. We also in 2023, '24, and '25, we worked with Brigham Young University for the Utah State Board of Education and we audited a 100 apps, the most popular apps that were used in Utah to compare them against the data privacy agreements. And 85 of those apps did have data privacy agreements, and we compared the app behavior to what was in the DPA. The majority of the apps did not behave with what was in the DPAs and I'll say a little bit more about that in a second. So all all of which is to say, we are immersed and swimming in actual concrete empirically measured data about what EdTech apps are actually doing. Okay. So I wanna talk about two things today. I wanna talk about digital product safety and data privacy agreements. My previous house testimonies focused on our empirically measured safety risks, but I wanna share a little bit more about my background in software. I've been working in commercial software for thirty eight years. Forty if you count two years in college where I worked seasonally at the University of Michigan Medical School Information Systems Organization. At U of M, I received two bachelor of science degrees, one in computer science and one in philosophy, which at the time so it's 1988, confounded nearly everyone. And I wish I could say it was prescience about, you know, knowing where technology was heading, but really I was by I I was following my bifurcated heart and and brain. In 2000 while working full time at Motorola as a software engineer, I received an MBA from Arizona State University. I was in the second cohort of what was called at the time the high-tech MBA program. Most recently in 2024, I was selected as a technology and human rights fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School working under the guidance of Shoshana Zuboff and Mathias Risse in the Car Ryan Center. My project in that fellowship was a continuation of the digital product safety work I do every day at ISL, but with a concerted look back at the history of product safety, mainly in The US. The resulting paper, a product safety playbook for the digital age was published in February and I have a link in the in the right up here. In the paper, I make an urgent case for adapting and evolving product safety strategies for digital products. Given my long tenure in commercial software development, I'm uniquely placed to see and understand what I now call digital products. I define a digital product as having three key qualities. There it's driven by software. It's connected to the Internet, and it interacts with humans. The product has these three characteristics, and increasingly, all products do, it seems. It's a digital product. Digital products are everything from mobile apps, websites, smart TVs, vehicles, smart home products to implanted medical devices, and everything in between. These above three qualities of digital products enable a novel, they enable novel types of product safety risks. But outside of our work at ISL, there's really never been a holistic concept of or standard for product safety for digital products. There are several reasons for this that I won't go into. But product safety as it has developed since the dawn of the industrial age and even before has yielded a rich array of successful strategies and tactics to help us get to safer products. And I'll just pop up a slide here. This is in the paper. But this is a sort of synthesis of all the tools that we have in our toolkit. Since the dawn of the the industrial age to systematically demand product safety. And it's things that industry can do up here in the market. What we can do through private law like what Andy's doing in in AdTech for example, what the political system can do, what we can do in a regulation perspective, what we're doing here with H650 and also what consumer actions can do. So we have a lot of things at our disposal to do this. Bringing back focus to EdTech, one of the things I most appreciate about H650 is that it requires two separate but crucial types of independent qualification. One is digital product safety for children and the other is educational efficacy. And I think you're seeing that pretty clearly by you know the the the testimonies that you're hearing. These are different expertise. Products say digital product safety is a different kind of expertise than education advocacy. And I I I can't say it strongly enough that we have nothing to contribute to educational advocacy. We are not that that person, that organization. But we have everything to contribute to digital product safety because we have been swimming in it for nearly eight years. In a world where there's neither testing nor a standard for digital product safety, it makes sense to call this out as a necessary separate assessment. Hopefully in the future, digital products will be as robustly screened for safety risks as the non digital products in our lives are. But that's not the case today. I do wanna make a brief note, an observation that I'm sorry, I don't know is it is it senator hang on. Let me see. I wanna get the name right. Hinsdale? I think it was something you mentioned earlier. I wanna I wanna make a note on the intersection of the age appropriate design code laws and independent digital product safety audits. The South Carolina age appropriate design code law recently passed this year calls for annual independent audits. I wasn't even aware of this. I I should be maybe perhaps embarrassed to admit that, but I wasn't aware of that. We've never been involved in the age appropriate design code laws. Just mostly due to a bandwidth and a you know, we just haven't. And these laws, including Vermont's own law, are rightly specifying digital product behavior requirements, not software code design as the law name might suggests. And this is super important. This is how any digital product safety law should be written. It should be specifying the digital product behavior that which then can be independently audited by third parties. And independent auditing is crucial as product safety history bears out. We can't trust manufacturers to objectively grade their own homework. They never do. They won't. It just doesn't happen. And I think with the recent meta legal decisions and the growing demand for digital product safety, were the start of a movement towards systemic independent digital product safety testing. Okay, shifting gears quickly to data privacy agreements. I've mentioned these in the house testimonies, I wanna underscore a couple of points. I am in strong support of DPAs but they don't ensure digital product safety. As evidenced by both our 2022 benchmark and our work for the Utah State Board of Education. They're only effective as effective to the extent that they're audited and enforced. And in short, they aren't audited. And they aren't enforced. And manufacturers know this. When when we looked at these, the vast majority of the apps we audited in Utah did not comport with the DPAs as I mentioned. And number two, while the DPA is buying data processors, the agreements don't require the manufacturer to list the data processors. And without knowing the intended data processors, LEAs can't be sure if student data is being shared with marketing and advertising entities. And as I mentioned earlier, it is. And we have just everything we look at is sharing information with these entities. Number three, DPAs only cover data sharing behaviors. They don't cover other product safety risks like dark dark patterns, you know, manipulative user interface design, and risky chatbot behaviors and other kinds of product safety risks. And finally, while they're theoretically enforceable as contracts, the legal enforcement of DPAs would be inspect expensive and impractical for LEAs and the manufacturers know this. And and nonetheless and it would always require that there is somebody doing some kind of audit of the app's actual behavior. So they DPAs make us feel like we're doing something and that it's it it is a good thing to do. No doubt about it. But they're inadequate. They don't ensure digital product safety. So finally, just a couple of notes on the on the bill as passed by the house. Number one, this is hearkening back to my comment on the AADC. There there may be some overlap on item on page four item five b four, design features of the product. And I hope that they're in the report that that is a product of this. I hope that there'll be some synthesis of the AADC product requirements as outlined in the law and the recommended ed tech certification process. I think that is a really efficient thing to do and and I would champion that. And then on page five, item five B six, the data privacy practices of the provider of the product. As written, it only covers, it only requires the manufacturer to provide information on their corporate data privacy practices. And what about the privacy behaviors of the digital product itself? We regularly find that companies who assert that their privacy by design or, you know, have some rigorous privacy practices, it it doesn't really matter. And there's a reason why we don't measure that. We started off our days in in the earliest days in in 2019, we were gonna do that. We were gonna assess corporate behaviors. And we realized really early on that, no, who cares what they say? We wanna look at what the product is actually doing. We wanna understand the actual risks in the product. So it would be more impactful to require manufacturers, again, to list all processors and joint controllers and explain the purposes of all the subprocessors. And if a digital product manufacturer can't control its software and data supply chains, its products shouldn't be used in k 12 schools. As simple as that. And I yeah. Thank you again for this opportunity. I I welcome questions. I have so much information in my head. I'm sorry that I skated over things and please ask me questions and don't hesitate to reach out to me at any time.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Questions, yes.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So I want to make sure I understood all that I was on your website and I appreciate the work that you're doing. I'm trying to make sure I understand how a registry would work even if it was complaint driven. And so, for example, I tried to go on our Secretary of State's website of registered businesses, and there's I searched for common apps, like ChatGPT, OpenAI, things like that. They're not they're not registered. I know this would have a requirement that they become registered, but I'm worried like, let's say you test a product and people go look for that product, but it's under a different trade name that they registered, etcetera. Like, how might someone use your work on a software tool that has a very low score of safety or value and then do something about it? Like what's your advocacy wig look like? Would we go to the school and say this has a low safety score, you should stop using it?

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: So our theory of change is that we provide evidence for regulators to enforce, for policymakers to craft meaningful and impactful law that can be can be enforced. This is one of my sort of pet peeves. I'm not a policy expert. We you know we're again we skew technical but there's a big chasm even between the language that is used in law and what, you know, technology manufacturers use that trips us up in lawsuits. They they they they use that as a as a mechanism to slither out of accountability sometimes just by saying like that's not what we call it. We call it something else. So this this chasm between the technical precision and know how and the laws is something that I observe. So we we do exist for people to use our data, to use it as evidence. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent product safety testing organization. We do conduct expert services for private litigation, know, literally evidence collecting for for that sort of thing. For every a strain we're a consumer advocacy organization, but we don't have the funding to really drive our app microscope to be optimized for everyday people. It skews technical. We know that. So, it is really used for people to start a discussion, for people to bring it to their schools. For example, concerned parents bring it to their schools and say, hey, how do you explain this? Bring the label and that's a that's an opportunity then for the school to go have a discussion with the vendor and say, hey, help us understand this. Is did ISL get it wrong? Is it too old? Have you changed your product in that time? All of these things could be

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Or here's an alternative that you've rated higher on the scale. I mean, school board should just this would be a good thing for them all to do. I don't know if the school boards association, you know, feels like this feels like a very good place for for school boards to be a hinge between concerned parents and stakeholders and the school districts to spend some time making sure that EdTech contracts are vetted through these lenses. Do you think school boards are doing that?

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: No. I I don't. Sadly, not all of them. When we finished the audit, 663 schools. We sent emails to two or three people at every school that we audited. We did 13 in each state. And we found two or three people either at the school or at the school district or superintendent. We sent sent emails saying, hey, here's a link to your results because we have a tableau that's published. It's on our website and you can you can look up Vermont. I think I shared that in in one of the house testimonies. But we sent it all out and we got no response. And we're like, you know, we're this isn't a solicitation. We're a non profit organization. We did all this work. We, you know, love it if you made use of it and contact us if you have any questions. Crickets. Not a one response. I have some hypotheses around why that might be the case but they're untested. So.

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

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Helpful. Sure. And you're welcome to stay on. We have one more witness.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: With the attorney, this new branch councilor. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we're going next to David Weeks.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: I'm David. David Hall. I'm the director of the Business Service Division, Secretary of State's office. I'm here to I'm here to help how I can.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. We so any did you have any bigger say in the start of the board?

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: I mean, we're obviously implicated in the administration of the bill to the extent there's a registration function. Mean, you know, substantively, we're agnostic on the policy. That's a it's a legislature decision, but if you choose to proceed, then we can certainly do the work.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: know if you heard my last question.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: I didn't hear that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It's fine. Because I have a small series of questions. Sure. So did you have a cost estimate to do this work?

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: Rough with our middir. You know, we're not, at this point, probably not at all gonna ask for a fee increase or for an appropriation because there's another bill actually was just passed by it's not by the governor relating to franchise agreements. It's gonna require a similar sort of construct to change the flow of our system builds. So, let me take a big step back. In December '4, we, you know, we built a new online business filing system, and, you know, that's to register every business that's required to be registered in this state, which is most, if not quite all of them, and throughout the registration process, there's the initial filing phase, whenever you're going to come and file an amendment, you're going to file an annual or biannual reports. There are a lot of touches that businesses have with the interface, and our plan is to sort of thread these requirements into each of those workflows, and, you know, after chatting with a vendor, sounds like the most efficient way to do it is in one fell swoop, and it's gonna be sort of an aggregate cost, and we're not trying to break that out right now by filer type at this point. So, I think it will cost us $6,070,000, maybe $80,000 between the development phase, implementation, you have to go through testing, have to roll out, that's why there's a delay in the effective date, and I think that total package will put us in a place where this other bill, seven thirty three, for franchisees, franchisors, and then for this bill, edtech software providers, will be a searchable sort of aggregation of data related to those specific types of entities. I think it's probably likely down the road that the legislature will, you know, want a similar construct to other types of businesses. There's also probability that we will, on our own initiative, try to expand sort of data collection and sort of data display exportation to be a source of voluntary information, whether that's, you know, demographic information as far as geography, employee size, you know, woman owned businesses, those types of things that people voluntarily want to disclose to us to build out their profile. So all that is to say, this is sort of a functionality that we've been anticipating and to add it in in this way is in line sort of with our expectations. So,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I wanna tell you my skepticism.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Okay. You tell me what you're hearing about. Right.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: An entity has to self disclose a pet tag in your website somehow. Yep. It's a lot of apps, let's say. Their house commerce came in with this notion that every business that operates in Vermont already files. I don't know what we mean by operates in Vermont because there are plenty of businesses that I think you can access their website in Vermont, and they do not file anything. When is a business required to file with you? What is the nexus that requires fire?

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: It's a great question. And, you know, it's a hard one, and sort of a counterintuitive one, the way that the statutes are written. They don't say, if you can check three of the five boxes, you're doing business in Vermont, you need to register. It's this reverse construct where it's like, you know, you need to register and all of the stuff in this section may mean you're doing businesses, but not necessarily. So, for instance, if you just have a bank account in the state of Vermont, you're maybe not doing business here. Or if you just own some property in Vermont, maybe you're not doing business here,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: don't have to do this.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: So, it's sort of like the more touches you have, the more likely it is, but ultimately, it's a decision for the business to make.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: And we are not the registration police. Right. We're the registration facilitator.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right? You're not going to enforce what someone else believes should be a business that's registered in the state. Right? Like OpenAI is not registered.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: I have no idea.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I looked. Okay. OpenAir dog park or whatever is registered, but not OpenAI. So Mhmm. I know many people have OpenAI's products Mhmm. Downloaded on their Right. Whatever. Sure. So you're not gonna you wouldn't even know what who's what company is supposed to be associated with Mhmm. An ed tech software program, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You're just gonna make a checkbox thing that they can fill out.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: I mean, basically, yes. And, you know, it's different dynamic too for a domestic versus a foreign business organization. You know, like, if if you're a domestic entity, you only exist by virtue of having filed with us in most cases. Yeah. There's a few exceptions, but like, you you don't actually have a Vermont LLC until you file articles of organization, and the state Right. Through its constructs, breathe life into that business. It's different for foreigns. They exist by virtue of some other states or countries' authority. They have an affirmative duty in law if they're doing business in Vermont to register with us as a foreign business entity, and if they fail to do so, then there is enforcement available. It's the AG's office that has the duty to enforce that failure to file. It's also self executing to the extent that that entity can't avail itself of our courts or remedies in our courts until they do file as they're required to. But so it's a question, you know, maybe I'm doing business with Vermont, maybe I'm not. I'm a foreign. It it's pretty easy to sign up with the Secretary of State's Office. Certainly, this benefit outweighs the cost, but that doesn't mean that it happens 100% of the time. It doesn't. So, the way it would work is you've already got this duty, you come to us, we'll just ask you to check a box. I do or I do not act in this state as an ed tech software provider. If you say no, you just keep going about your If you say yes, then sure, all these additional questions are gonna pop up for you to answer.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I guess, we, can I, sorry, Can I can you follow this thread? The bill right now says with or without a contract with a school. Let's say for now, we we said with a contract because I don't even know where we could get something that wants to consult ed tech, doesn't have a contract. So I don't know what we're talking about. But let's say we were talking about with a contract. Instead, could the check down say, check here if you if you are registered as an ed tech product through a school district in Toronto? Mhmm. Like, we need to get more specific. I don't know who identifies as ed tech or who doesn't.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Mhmm.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: If we like, would it would it be more actionable if it said you have a contract with with a school district?

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: I gotta tell you in all honesty, I don't know the answer and I'm agnostic on the substance of what they have to tell us.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: I'm just here to collect the information basically.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: And, you know, I think our, you know, initially we were concerned about this bill because it had threaded the Secretary of State's office in such a way that we had sort of a substantive role in deciding what it means to be a provider, whether it's efficacious, whether these are consistent with whatever educational standards. That's not something we have any expertise in. It's no different than the data broker construct. You know, the statute sets out what a data broker is. If you meet the definition of data broker, then you come register with us. Same as telemarketers. We're not concerned with really, frankly, the substance of any of those policy choices. We just facilitate the registration, the data collection, the exposition to the world. That's not terribly helpful for your, you know, the merits of it, and I understand that, but that's, you know, my seat is not in education policy by any stretch. We're the people who can build the registries, all the data.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. My I mean, my final thing is if if we I mean, often the people who do our who try to meet our legislative intent and write these, they still have to figure out how long is this drop down menu getting? Like, how easy is it to fill out this form? What are we actually accomplishing? Mhmm. Do you have any thoughts on that? Like, how you would they they're they want there to be, like, the submission of I mean, I guess the AOE gets the submission of their documentation. I don't know if the AG would come to you to see who's registered and then see if they filled out all the paperwork that they're asked to fill out.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: Sure, it's a good question. I mean, so once they file with us, it's part of their business record. It's all public information. So, it's accessible by AOE, it's accessible by the AG's office. I mean, you know, it may be a good analog or another comparison is that data broker registry where the statute sets up the duty, it sets up what information we collect. And the AG's office accesses that, uses that, at this point, would use that to compare what we have versus, for instance, what California has on data brokers, and say, hey, you're registered in California, but not in Vermont. Likely, you're doing business here, why aren't you registered? Or, you disclose such and such in California, not in Vermont, blah blah blah. Another option for AT's office or AOE, anybody, would be to look at internal policies of the company. You know, we public company adopts a privacy policy, says we do A, B, C, and then compare that to whatever information is submitted and is on the business track, and if there's discrepancy, that's the source of the comparison. But, again, substantively, we certainly don't have the in house capacity or subject matter expertise to say the stuff that you've provided to us is accurate or consistent or meets certain standards or even is correct. We have no idea. We just got it and it's for the rest of the world to use it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Other questions? We had one suggestion to make the reporting more specific or the attestation Mhmm. Much more specific than is in the bill just saying that we don't understand just to actually lay out what the standards are. Does that do to, you know, from your perspective, in order to do that? Looking at I think it's on page three.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: I mean, you I mean, so from a design build perspective, you know, this is what this looks like to me is, you know, literally two checkboxes, you know. They're they're gonna come to our system, and there's gonna be a box that says, you know, our product meets the standards set forth in subchapter three a of the h appropriate design code, and it meets practice positive right now. And if if so if there if that's not true, there's two things. One, it's potentially perjury because once you've filed a lawsuit, it's false information perjurious. And second, if, you know, what you attest is not accurate based on who some third parties review, AG, whomever, then there's at least, you know, something that's actionable from their perspective about false attestation or substance misincredible. But from my perspective, you could put a whole bunch more stuff here. I'll just build it out more. I'll make more check boxes or I'll have a field that says explain to us how your product does or does not work with the agent appropriate design code. Again, those are just, that's just the structure of it. I mean, that's just what we collect and what's publishable and available to the world. Substantially, don't have a position.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Wonder if whether they do or do not perform is debatable. That's yeah. They'll probably just kind I think it's I think the point was about this kind of one of that we take the position. Yeah we do. Sure. That whether. Yeah. But breaking it down and asking whether more specifically- Sure. Right. But that brought us to the picture out.

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: Well, it is. And I'll also say, if you take a really big step up, I mean, you sort of gotta check-in anything here, right? You've got a subject matter expert in the AOE, or some conglomeration of districts who knows what these products are and what they're supposed to be, what's good and what's bad, etcetera, and you can let them be the subject matter experts, and then charge them to build a registry, which they don't otherwise do, right? Or you can give the registry people the duty of building their registry, and then the risk is what happens with the subs, who's responsible for that, because the registry people can't do the education policy. So as with most things, the way it's designed is that we build a registry, telemarketers, data brokers, LLCs, amusement ride operators, whatever it happens to be. We put in whatever data aggregation collection you say, somebody else does something with that data, not us. Yeah. Okay.

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

[David Hall (Director, Business Services Division, VT Secretary of State)]: My pleasure. Happy to always come back if you need it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So if you need it, what do we think of? What do wanna do here? Do we wanna go through the markup with this? Do we wanna make a stent retentions, or what do we wanna do?

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: Was your idea really wrong? More aggressive stance.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yes. The the more aggressive. I I think it's a it's it's a decision point not about, like, do we wanna be more aggressive, but do we wanna try and solve the problem of unregulated use of ed tech in schools? I think people have heard me after many years of understanding what could be a successful registry or not, that I don't think encouraging businesses who identify themselves as ed tech to click that in a drop down when they may or may not know they need to file with the Secretary of State's office, and they may file with a trade name, etcetera. I just don't think that is going to better regulate ed tech in our schools. So I have started an email thread with Andrew Liddell, with Liddell, of of the ed tech group, and I started talking to Vermont School Boards Association because I I have now I now feel compelled by this problem, and I think we should try to solve it. I would approach it much more from the perspective of school districts have to look at their contracts, look at the available data about what is a safe and valuable learning tool, and start to move toward, you know, being part of this v VITECH, v v I whatever vite that AOE has, that moves us essentially towards a implemented design code for ed tech in schools.

[Unidentified Senator]: When they hit that dropdown and say they're an ed tool, Yes, if they hit that down and they, is there also a system that says, okay, now that you say you're an Ed tool, now you gotta go talk to AOE, get registered. Could that ever happen?

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: Should I, can you explain, well, again, this serves the right way to go. I don't think right now there is. I think the way that it would work in practice is that this would be a searchable mechanism so that AOE would come to our system and would sort results by people who have checked yes. Yep. But if I'm a business looking to do, be an Ed provider in the technical world,

[Unidentified Senator]: and I have to register, it seems like as soon as I hit Ed that it should send, okay, before you get registered, you need to go talk to AOE for us to register you. Is that possible?

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: I mean, easy answer is anything is possible. But I it makes it harder on

[Unidentified Senator]: the person registering, but that's what we're trying to do to make sure Well,

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: it's a bit we're gonna

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: we've covered on AOE that pick up this list, which is just

[Unidentified Senator]: But I'm one who wants to provide it. So I wanna get my product out there. So as soon as I check it and I hit the registry that, okay, I don't wanna wait. Okay, I should have something that pops up, contact AOB to get your registration verified to be able to sell it to schools. Way, know, cause other than that, you have people that are just checking the box. They're to go. Thinking they're good to go. And this way we have, have our checks and balances that AOE is okaying it before. I could be wrong, but

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: I don't think AOE is tasked with approving or signing off on a provider before they do it. I think that's part

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: of They're tasked with studying what it would be.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah. So, I I personally, I think the whole registration process is the cart before the horse. First thing we need is this report which summarizes why we need this. Yeah. Who adjudicates it? Who who registers it, what do you do with the registration information, and then see if you got a problem. Or if you have the problem, you recognize the problem, how do you adjudicate, mitigate, puff. That that's my first blush on 06/15.

[Eric Lafayette (Energy Efficient Investments)]: I like that.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So you're saying you wanna go to a

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: report? Well, we have a report. The report section to Yeah. But then, and the section one, half of its definitions. Then the second half of section one is all about mandatory reporting and all the dealing with the privacy policy. And and I just think like, the report is to analyze the problem to recommend solutions. But part of the solution's already embedded in the first section. I'm not really sure that's I just don't think that's appropriate. Study the problem, recommend solutions, proceed with, you know, getting folks like secretary of state involved. That's just my first impression of a very short bill. Thanks.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So senator Rutland, so what are you thinking about new language for us?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I am. I mean, the good news is Rick Rick drafted the kids code as well, and we had a very similar conversation where we tried to figure out every little thing that was a problem. And then we were like, no. They just can't have these types of functions. They can't be designed with advertising. They can't be, you know, designed to browse all tabs at the Internet. Companies can design this stuff very easily.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And but your construct would what are the school boards to figure that out or the superintendents?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, I am look I'm talking to Mark too because I maybe we could hear quickly. I think the right solution that really sticks with parents and and teachers and helps us know what a good tool is and isn't, is not gonna come from a registry. It's gonna come from school districts looking at their contracts and making sure they're part of whatever consortium is sharing best practices. But Mark can speak to whatever they're doing. What are what are you doing?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Doesn't a lot of technology get used by schools without a contract?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I don't I know. I think we should hear from the schools. How are they ending up on

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: social Or not contracts. Peter

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Drescher. I'm a tech director in Essex Westwood. I testified last week with

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the other folks. Yes.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And you testified that the consortium is the way to oh, I can't remember.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Yes. Should I? Sure. Why don't you stop by myself or whatever you got. Peter Drescher, S. H. Western School District,

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: and I'm also a vice chair board. You heard testimony. Yes. I

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: just wanted to chime in, Tom, you were just talking about around, you know, we already have something in place that was mentioned, I think it was at the House Committee earlier on last month, there's an entity called TEC, the Education Cooperative. They already do this work and they have lawyers that there was conversation about like tracking some of these things and following up. This entity does that for schools where you become a member of this organization and they do this work for you. And it's valid and responsive. If I send these folks an email, I get a response within ten minutes. I mean, they are that response.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: These are the entities you have a contract with?

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Have a TEC works directly with the SDPC, which is the Student Data Privacy Consortium.

[Sue Ceglowski (Vermont School Boards Association)]: Okay.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: It's an entity that works and helps to manage that for school districts. The STPC, the State Student Data Privacy Consortium, has thousands of titles, of software titles in there. They've already done that work of cataloging and having all that stuff out there. To have I'm sorry, the gentleman's name from

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: David Hall from the center.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: From the Oh, no. Yes, over there. To have I would all due respect, to have the Secretary of Defense Office do that work again, it's redundant. Mean, there's already that database that's there.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It could be overlapping or underlapping, like confusing, because some of them might register or might not register. Do you have any non contract technology at the

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: In my school district, we have set a policy where you don't buy software unless it can be vetted by the esteemed data privacy consortium.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: And that you have given us some kind of, you know, I don't know, ethics. You've said something that it you you know that this is gonna work for your students. Something. Proof or something.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Because that's what I

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: was saying. That's that's policy, though, at the local level.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But everyone should our

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: LA hit. Everyone should have that. Yeah. It would be helpful to have a spike up push that.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What's interesting to me about this discussion, I was sitting here the whole time thinking one of the things that's not of this bill, some final policy.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: From, it could be based on, you know, the AOE could be based on yours. Share based shared number, but

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Yes, we've tried many to follow-up. Yeah. And we shared that policy with one another, so I would say there is one

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: out there.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think there's a policy question about do we want do we they should probably adopt a model policy at the local level. So they're really taking inventory of what tech is being used, both for tracking data of their students, it sounds like, that may never be student facing. Right. Is separate from this bill.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You don't use it unless a, b, c, and d.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Exactly. We we we we have I mean, you know, of course, COVID was not our friend during this time, right? The company reached out to all the teachers, they got box free software, etcetera, That drove

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: this Right. The policy rate shift.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Yes. And to move towards that because, of course, then we were stuck with free

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: software robotics. I'm getting intrigued by the notion of a lawful Yes. That way

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: One more question. Do you have a policy on when and how tech should be introduced to students? Like, do your little kids only use a computer lab? They don't get a tablet?

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Yeah. We we I mean, it's written somewhere, I'm sure, but we have a general notion that K1 through two, light technology use, when it's needed, etcetera, etcetera. Yep. You know, three through eight, the devices stay in the classroom. They don't go home. They don't leave the room. They don't move around the building, etcetera, etcetera. High school different. They may take them home, etcetera, etcetera. Okay? We that is our standard. Senator Williams.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So I'm a former EMS, and I believe first thing we need to do is stop the stop and believe. So there there are devices out there right now that are causing harm for our kids, and we should tell we should get this thing sorted out. Tell AOE that you need to tell all the schools that they need to stop using what they're using. And maybe, you know, because it's almost the end of the school year. Give them give them a deadline for next year, and then then start the process. But we need a process. We don't have one. So I don't wanna see this thing keep powering our kids for the next two years when we can tell them right now policy is stopped, isn't So Yeah.

[Unidentified Senator]: I saw this gentleman shaking his head on some of the stuff. So I don't I I don't remember who you are, but I'd I'd like to hear you were when he was saying a couple things, you were kinda like, I don't May I? Sorry.

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: My name is Patrick Lawrence. I'm a parent, a bit greater. As the representative of the Internet Safety Lab discussed, Student Data Privacy Consortium influences data privacy agreements. So those are agreements that these companies have signed, but that's not enforced. That's very distinct. So all these companies say that they do one thing, but that does not necessarily mean that they do that. I fully respect the efforts that have gone, that have been put in to register these companies that are doing business, but I think we need to really look at evidence rather than efforts and stated intentions.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Would you say, sir, the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: sorry. That's okay. Go ahead.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. Email is good for you. So student does the SDPC. Are they Do they vet, what's available in Vermont via our state policies? Because we put in our

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: No, but that's not what that's not what they do.

[Lisa LeVasseur (Internet Safety Labs)]: Okay.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: That is a student data privacy. That looks at companies and sets policy for what data that these entities collect on students. That's what that's about.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We have a kid's code that says you can't buy or sell student data. Do they follow that?

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: They follow it. That is what that's about.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And do they follow the best practices or I think the sanctuary school bill we put in stop collecting nation of origin So that

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: I don't know, I can't speak to that.

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: May I just add one more thing? I just wanna say, so my daughter is taught to enter middle school. She's already been exposed to Chromebooks, to some educational software.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: I've looked into the companies that

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: don't provide research about the efficacy. It does not exist.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Can you say more about what it means she was exposed to Chromebooks? Like, she

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: has Chromebooks, she's had one for several years. I've heard numerous instances of students getting distracted. We all know that this is a consumer pipeline for all the companies that are providing these products. Middle school is already a hard time, but I'm really concerned about as she enters middle what else she's going to be exposed to of these products that might be collecting data as we've heard testimony. A lot of them are sharing data with third parties and all these companies that are doing more, they might not be advertising directly to kids in schools, but they are definitely building profiles of students using that data at a future time. I don't think we should take these companies out of word. I think we need to actually have hard evidence that they are doing what they say they do, and also hard evidence from independent sources about the efficacy of these products. Until we sue, maybe we do, I don't and I know everyone in here is really concerned about just making sure that we get this right, but until we do this, my daughter's gonna continue to be a hinder for these anti theft products. I don't think that's really the message we wanna be sending, that the cost and difficulty is so great that we're willing to let these companies run roughshod over our education risks. And I don't think anyone in here should share that at all. I'm not suggesting

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We're just trying to make sure the bill actually Totally, exactly. But

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: the cost of inaction is really high. So, I think the two steps, first of all, making sure we know what's here, what's being used, and then second of all, having that report that actually documents what is some standards that we could all go by. I think those seem very logical to me, and if we have one without the other, then we're just kind of left blind,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So would have So I

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I don't know anything about the student data privacy consortium. Who they work they're working for industry?

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: No. It's an it's a private entity. It's an independent yeah. Independent entity that came about from this need of understanding what these companies are collecting and to put a stock

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: to it.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Their members are

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: EdTech product vendors.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, their members are also school

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: districts, right?

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Yeah, so Yeah, the members are,

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: it's a variety, but it includes the product vendors.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So the product vendors pay to participate in the consortium Correct. And the school

[Patrick Lawrence (Parent)]: From my understanding, yes. I think it's great that it exists, but it does not substitute for enforcement.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: They're in Massachusetts,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the So it exists. It can actually tell us about the how well we thought they're gonna provide privacy, but we have to put something on this school boards or the districts or the superintendent's office to actually make sure that what we're doing works.

[Peter Drescher (Technology Director, Essex Westford School District)]: Yes, I had indicated two entities, the SDPC, which is student day privacy, and then this TEC, the Education Cooperative, which works with that and helps the schools in managing that. They're the ones who have more of a, I don't know, what do I want say, visibility, a look into how those privacy agreements are functioning.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: We do.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We have. Oh. But we also have limited time. So I'm trying to figure out what we're gonna do. We can actually do with the amount of time we have. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We know we didn't get to you.

[Unidentified staff/witness (multiple short interjections)]: I don't if you wanted to add something. I know. Lesser has. It's a question.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Why don't we take a break? We have Beth coming in at 03:15 to continue to walk through the 09:55. In fact, we're gonna switch to actual markup of the chronic absenteeism though.