Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're live.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're live. All right. Senate Education Committee, afternoon the third year, April 28. And we are, as usual, jumping around a little here, one thing to another over the course of the afternoon, but starting with, it's an act relating to miscellaneous changes in education law, age nine thirty one. And we had one request, with regard to, performance based, contract and, counsel. These just flags, something we

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: wanted to make sure

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we were aware of. Recall that the lang that language change was to add the word, addictive to the areas within that do we have a copy of that language?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it's sorry.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: We have. We

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: have to go out the street with the words addition. And so we wanted to let counsel just sort of remind us what complicated energy, energy, bonus contracting works. And then we have the proposal here as well, starting along with that. Just to spend a few minutes and make sure that we are going into this. Still have the.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I appreciate that intro. So, Chakra, I would be on the council. I don't think this is gonna take especially long, but just wanted to flag to you some potential effects of this change. It's not to say that it's good or bad, it's just to make you aware that it could be potentially a bigger change than you might anticipate. Just looking at it, so I'm gonna pull up the existing law just to show you what that is. I don't you know, I can walk through the whole of the section, but I can also just kinda explain to you what this is. This is a section within your state eighty first of all construction chapter, which as you know is currently under a moratorium, but this is a particular piece related to energy performance contracting. So what is that? Let's jump to performance contract definition. It's a contract with evaluation recommendation and implementation of one or more cost saving measures for the purpose of realizing energy and operational cost savings or payment by the district is contingent on energy or operational cost savings results. There's a couple of defined terms that are included in there. We can jump up to them, but you can think of this simply as a contract for implementing a cost saving measure related to energy or operational costs, and the payment of that contract is contingent on achieving those savings, at least in some part. Cost saving measures, that's what you see here and that's where a change is proposed. It's any facility improvement, repair, or alteration, or any equipment, fixture, or furnishing to be constructed or installed in any facility that is designed to reduce energy consumption and operating costs, or increase operating efficiency of facilities where there are cleaning functions. It's cost effective, and further defined by State Rule. So, State Board Rule supplements this. It's a measure that is an improvement, repair, or alteration, or a construction or installation of equipment, fixtures, or furnishings in a facility designed to reduce energy consumption, operating costs, or increase operating efficiency. It's a certain kind of thing that achieves a certain outcome, energy consumption, operating cost reductions, or increased operating efficiencies. That'd be some more understate board rules. Energy and operational cost savings are what you would expect. Any expense that's estimated or decreased on a long term basis, eliminated or decreased on a long term basis as a result of any cost savings we measure, but does not include shifting personnel costs or similar short term cost savings. Performance contracts are a kind of contract to implement measures that are intended to save money over time. We heard about this last week, and payment is contingent on achieving certain results. Part of the way that they work is you're essentially financing them through the savings that you accrue over time. The change that Sorry, before I jump to the actual text itself to say that the addition would be made, it's just worth noting that this section works a little bit differently than the core school construction section, which has a dual application process with a preliminary application and a final application. This kind of goes outside and has its own individual process for authorization. So, in B, we see that a district can enter into these contracts for a period after C, twenty years. There's some procedural hurdles that are included, so you have to send out an RFP to do this, and one of the key pieces that's required for implementing this is a financial grade audit. If you think about achieving those savings and ensuring that you're paying out that basis, you need to ensure that the determination of those savings is accurate. So this is that financial grade audit, and it would be integrated essentially into the contract that the district is pursuing. You'll see that payment can be done to different methods, installment payment, lease purchase, But the real thing I just wanted to call out is the difference between the existing program. So application for construction has the process specified here, and you can see how it's specific to the nursing work is contracted. Written application to the secretary that specifies the need, form, purpose of the project, including details of those cost saving measures. The client details in terms of qualifications, the person that is entering into that contract, including detailed information regarding the assistance received for proficiency Vermont, School Energy Management Program, similar entities, detailed information on the proposed cost savings, detailed information concerning the amount and schedules payments to be made. As you can see, all of these factors are very specific to energy performance contracts and the unique ways in which they work. There's even a separate prioritization process for these kinds of projects. They aren't put on the list with all other school construction projects. The separate list for energy performance contracting, and then the total amount of weight of A shall be 20% of the equivalent cost with a particular permitting zone. So the reason I call that out is you can expect certain kinds of projects to flow through this avenue, and they wouldn't go through the traditional school construction application process. Why that matters is if you make a change to the cost savings measures conceivably, and I don't know, just throwing out that conceivably, it could affect the incentives for districts to push a project through one route or another. That's all that I'm going to say. So if you put here any facility improvement repair addition or alteration, that means now that additions that would reduce energy consumption and operating costs or increase the operating efficiency could be shunted through this application process. You may be fine with that. I'm saying that it's good or bad. I just wanna call out that sometimes when you hear a request to make a language change, one chat is an obvious one. Does this embrace the kinds of projects that I want captured, and does it fit within that language? I think that's the step that you guys have already taken, and you feel, as I understand it, fairly comfortable with the kinds of projects that are contemplated to meet this language phase. The second thing I wanna raise is that you also should be asking the question, well, does the addition of new language allow for things to flow into this that you don't want to capture or shut through the application process? I can't really predict what the kinds of things that might arise at the results of this, but what I would say is that under existing law, if someone is trying to do a little addition, like a new facility to a part of a project, the only way that they can go through this process is to frame what they're doing in terms of the existing language. They need to say that the addition that they're doing is an improvement, repair, alteration, or it is the construction or installation of equipment, fixture, or furnishing. Only if it can meet one of those additions would it then fit. So they're kind of forced to make an argument that it fits within the scope of that language. As I understand it, the request comes from a belief that things that you would like to pursue does conceivably fit within this language, but there's some lack of clarity. And so making the language change would make it easier to get projects through that. And I see Andy Rice. Yes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I guess I'm missing something. This came about all of our new We've talked about this in the committee a couple of weeks ago, the you have to explain this. Yeah. Sure. And we were inclined just to do it, to have the word addition, and counsel just raised the issue, wanted to make sure that it'll be understood that it might have implications beyond what was caught in my opinion.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly. I just mean that it could be more expansive than you might initially think. Maybe it gets kinds of things through this application process that you would like to have, but just wanted to make you aware that maybe certain things would also start flowing through that you would expect. I'll call out reasons why maybe that risk is attenuated and you don't need to especially worry about it, but I just want you to know. So if you add the word addition, then sorts of then obvious additions, which would have needed to go the route of the standard application process to have even a chance for state aid, could now have this option. But I just mentioned that maybe there's an attenuate place. Maybe the risk isn't especially large of something malicious or bad happening. The reason I say that is, in any case, what is being proposed, if someone's bringing an addition, it still has to meet all of the other conditions here. It still needs to be something that is designed to reduce energy consumption and operating costs or increase operating efficiencies. It still needs to be cashed out in terms of those cost savings that it would produce. Still need the financial All the things that we just spoke about would still have to recur. I don't know how big the risk is that someone could start essentially trying to circumnavigate the standard application process to use energy performance contract entity. Presumably, energy performance contracting is only available really for certain kinds of things in the first instance, and so it may be that this is not a huge deal. I just wanted you to know that it's not merely clarifying. It does expand what constitutes a cost savings measure, but that may be fine. That's really all that I have to say. I'm happy to try to answer questions. It's not an area where I could predict what a new facility is that would fit into this language that wouldn't otherwise fit into it, but just raising that not a neutral or technical change. It does have to substantive. Does that make sense?

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. What happened?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Right now, when there's no money in the

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: construction program, is this working at all? Think folks in

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the field could speak to this, what is currently happening, but one thing I did want to note, under existing law, if I was just reading law, would think that nothing is happening on this front. Because if you look at the way aid works, any legislative appropriation made to fund the line item for performance contract shall not exceed 20% of the appropriation made in the same year to fund state aid for school construction under Section 348. Well, because you're not funding any school construction under Section 3,448, a percent of zero would be zero. So I don't see how under law this would be happening, but there may be other information out there. In any event, this could be a live question with the expectation that a state program is expected to come online. I don't know about revenue sources, but given that you have a youth program going effective this summer, perhaps that's some of the thinking.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So in some ways, what you're seeing one thing you're you're suggesting, and again, without saying what's going back, that this could significantly expand the scope because right now it's like pictures and things that now this is actually a little addition. And again, not good or bad, but

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And they would still, you know, the new edition would still need to be a kind of thing that can be cashed out in terms of cost savings that are designed for these purposes. I think my point about if I was making an application under the current procedure and I was trying to do something that could conceivably be called an addition, I am forced under current language to make an argument that what I'm doing is a facility improvement, basically to fit the existing language. At the point that you change away from that and add the word addition, you no longer have to make that kind of argument that it's kind of part of an existing facility and you're just making it more efficient, it could outright just be a new thing that increases the operating efficiency of facilities for their appointed function. And that would still be a policy question. Maybe you want that, right? So, I mean, it's just to say that it's a difference.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Eric Lapien is here, but gonna make the initial suggestion to us. So I don't necessarily disagree with anything that he said in that process.

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: I mean, for us, the addition aspect was a clarifying language and doing these performance upgrades. I gave the example about doing a biomass plant where they don't have space to house the equipment that we'd be placing in there. It's an addition that essentially creates energy savings at phase for the project. So it falls within the guidelines of the statute. It's more of the clarifying language of adding additional storage that go along with that picture, as it could still fall within the guidelines of those cost saving measures. It's not a huge incremental cost to the project. It's more along clarifying that intent of it, where they can kind of rope more stuff in with the energy signals to

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: make this. So I guess the question for it's kind of deglaze perhaps is, could they're waiting with classrooms qualifying?

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: I wouldn't anticipate that we would be looking at doing stuff like that. I mean, us, we're looking at operational efficiency savings and GNC systems. Where it's come up is when you have non code compliant buildings on sites and the bioremerchal makes you do additional upgrades at the site prior to issuing the state building permits to do the rest of the energy upgrades. A lot of times you're already in those facilities, we're working with them. We have plans to improve their energy efficiency use and it would make more sense to add maybe that small addition under the performance contracting statute just to expedite it and to keep

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: the cost down for the other.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And would it have to improve energy efficiency of the entire building? Oh yes. Yep. So you could adding the wing in and of itself wouldn't be enough saying we're building an efficient wing. It would have to be enough to improve the energy efficiency of the entire. Absolutely, yeah. So we'd

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: be looking at reducing the energy consumption at the school, you know, usually around 30 to 40% is what we're shooting for when we do these energy upgrades.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And the, go ahead.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, the key language there, just just to back that up is the qualifier that is designed to reduce energy consumption. So it's not just that the addition itself would be net new folks on. It's like it's designed to reduce energy consumption and operating costs or to increase the operating efficiency of facilities for their appointed function. One other thing I would toss out is that in any case, the application process requires a discretionary approval. So, you would imagine, I don't know, but the secretary could have the opportunity to say, We think people are circumventing the main application process and doing strange things to shock projects into the energy performance contract. I don't know exactly what would happen. Just saying that the approval itself is not a mandatory thing, you have ABC, it's met, the discretionary approval process. So there are some mechanisms that exist to try to, again, attenuate or mitigate the risk that we're identifying.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Senator Williams. So if you decided they decided to put a a biomass plant in, that's gonna save energy consumption. But if it's not insulated to coal, it won't really save anything. Right? I mean,

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: it's gonna be cheaper than you are. Yeah. When we're looking at facilities, we're doing a complete analysis. So when he's talking about operational savings, lot of times we're looking at, you know, the VCT tile that they have on the floor that they have to wax every year. And we're providing options for different types

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of flooring that will cut down

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: on their operation facilities. But when we look

[Speaker 6]: at them, we're looking at

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: building envelope, the lowest cost hanging fruit and all these is usually insulating the perimeter ring joists, or sorry, usually insulated. So for us, our incentive is to stack as many energy measures as we can for the project to get that payback term as quick as possible. So then we can add in measures like a window project that might have a forty year payback that I can't get within that twenty year period. But if I can stack LED lighting and a fuel switch on with it, then all of sudden, you know, we could get to that under one year term for potentially a district that has never been able to pass a bond vote. We have a strong incentive to

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: make sure that our paybacks fall within those time periods. So that's twenty years payback also is not an income.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. One thing just to call out is the economics of why your this contracting exists in the first place, right? It's payment by the district is contingent on achieving cost savings, energy and operational cost savings. If the project that you proposed didn't produce that, right, and that has to be integrated with that financial grade audit that is part of the contract itself. Yeah, I think these are the things to think about when you're done.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But some questions do we want to we want to add this section to the miscellaneous bill with the recognition? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. But I really really appreciate you raising your shirt. Okay. So, we'll add add that we'll note that. John, do you do this section? Do you add this section?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I will let Beth know because I think she's gonna be the one with her again for 09/31. Yep. Okay. And it should be quite simple to add this one version. So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we're John is also here just to give us a little bit of a deeper dive into what's in H95 as it relates to physical construction. And fully understand what we're looking at here. We can pull

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: out your copies. Happy to There's a few different ways I'd proceed here depending on committee preference. One is just to look again to the exact text of ACE-nine 55 so you can see what's there. Another is to provide some framing of the longer term history that has led to the language that you had. Exactly. Let's do that. Okay. So I do have a PowerPoint presentation I put together. I'm not gonna some of it is just giving you information so you can have later. I'll go quickly past the slides, but there are others I would like to linger on, so I will screen

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: share. So

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I am gonna probably skip over these first slides. Can You have them in a deck, but just noting the origination of the state aid program, and the thing you can really know is that at origination, this was according to the feds' creditor to issue bonds to assist school districts, and this flowed through your capital build process. It divided some responsibilities between the state board and the agency of education. It awarded aid as percentage of eligible construction costs based on the project type. We'll get to this later, and it granted rulemaking power to the state board. But, you know, I think one of the biggest things to note just because of what you're gonna see in h nine fifty five is that it authorized the treasurer of issue blinds to assist school districts, which, as we know today, the way that it works under the moratorium since 2007, essentially, is that school districts themselves go out to bond full cost of their projects, and then their payments are factored into their education spending, which blows through their local incentive tax rates. Yes.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: 40,000 foot question. Which committee in the state house has jurisdiction over the bond?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is an interesting one that's actually changed a little bit in ways by this. You would think intuitively that institutions get earnings would be the ones right, and if you look at the old program, the way that it worked is that requests for school construction aid flow through the capital bill and the requests for legislative appropriation for annual state aid went from the state. The state board requested the institution's committees a particular amount of money for projects. What's contemplated in September is that kind of AOE would come in with a request for school construction broadly, which could include projects funded by state bonding and something like ARC, and those would be directed to the educations and finance committees, essentially. So education of waste on the house side and finance on the senate side. But in addition to that request for a corporation, which is quite different from the old approach, right, where the request went to the institutions committees, there would additionally be a kind of capital budget check that goes to those committees plus the institutions committees so that the institutions committees could see the impact that any proposed additional state funding capacity is having on the overall capital budget request. Because at least the intention here is not to take away any of the existing state bonding capacity that those committees use for the capital bill, but to supplement with additional without impacting the credit rating of the state. That is the thinking. Thanks. Yep. I'm gonna skip past some of these. Just know that if you wanna have a deep dive into how the moratorium happened, the really early stages of this, you can look to this presentation, and I've included links like all of these, that you can see the various positions in the moratorium. At the start, the moratorium, which was in the 2007 Capitol Hill, was not intended to be permanent, it was intended as a stopgap measure to allow folks to plan long term, and then you can see it just kept getting extended, kept getting extended. Finally, in 2013, the legislature expressed intent to maintain that suspension kind of in perpetuity, but would honor all of its existing outstanding state obligations, and then in 2016, the Capitol Bill of State finally paid out its last construction aid obligations. So current practice, this is kind of the main place I wanted to jump, and I say current practice, this is in the absence of any effective or function of the state aid program. Moratoring continues. The state has awarded emergency aid directly interim, which is subject to a pretty low cap. But note that no state aid is available to projects arising from significant deferred maintenance. I'll talk about this again once we get to h nine fifty five, because there's a provision directly related to this. As I noted at the beginning of this, school districts in K pursues old construction projects on their own, but they're gonna need to know that essentially what they can pursue it on their own. These projects increase that district's education spending. They also impact property taxes across the state, because as you know, spending is raised statewide. It doesn't more dramatically impact that district's rate, but a local decision to pursue a school construction project under our current structure raises taxes for average on the state. There were some attempts, 2018, secretary to accept applications for planning grants for capital construction that would result in consolidation, whether it sounds familiar today, but didn't appropriate any funds for that, those planning grants. And then a time limited Facilities Master Plan grant program, which I think you've heard a little bit about when my colleague Michael Brady was in here talking about PCBs. The Master Planning Process, that is current law, is to encourage the development of SU level vision for all school buildings that meet the needs and goals of the SU. It is time limited, so if this is intended to be a permanent feature of what you do, you should feel that at some point in the next three years because it was a way in 2029. I don't think that's really come off yet because it's a little voice obvious. I'm not gonna belabor this, but just know that existing 3448 is where the moratorium application for This application for saying that is under moratorium is set, that includes both the preliminary and final application. There are discretionary considerations for the executive education, there's also mandatory eligibility conditions. The way that it works under that program, following preliminary approval and a vote to authorize funds, the state board places that school on a priority list and assigns priority points. That point system is actually spelled out, unlike what you see for the new program, that point system is spelled out in log. And it's set up here, first priority, first projects over 100 k. Second priority, projects addressing deterioration of a building or equipment over 2,000, and the remaining priorities are based on a twin system.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just something you said just triggered something. So I know Woodstock up in high school. They they want to take out bond. You know, they put it up for a vote. It it failed. But if they had passed and they got that bond, that meant that all the time they found the statue, they brought the big side to build a new high school. That

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: is correct.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Kinda like voluntary?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Just just like any education expense that a district has, when any district increases its ed spending, those funds are raised statewide. It translates directly into an increase in their homestead rate because it affects the per pupil spend, which is how the homestead rate is set, because the funds are raised statewide as a response to breakup in 1997. Yes, it affects the Even though government's

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: a moratorium on school construction.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, there's a moratorium on state aid for school Oh, okay. So this is just speaking to the program that provides aid to districts. There is no moratorium on school construction. Schools can pursue construction currently. They're just not gonna receive any help from the state beyond the standard way in which the state raises funding. And if you're one way historically that you might have expected folks to be dramatically affected by capital expenditures is through the excess spending threshold. You would expect that a small construction project could have a meaningful impact on your per spend, could kick you above the excess spending threshold, and then you would be subject to double taxation, any per pupil spend above that threshold. But as you'll know, currently, there's an existing exclusion from the excess spending calculation for any bond payments voted prior to 07/01/2024, and in fact, proposals this year will get an outright all time exemption. So one of the natural ways you might have expected districts to more greatly internalize the costs of their school construction decision making is removed because the excess spending threshold doesn't really apply in both instances to that piece. Not to say that it does affect folks' decision making, because in any event, their school district is having to weigh capital expenditures against operating expenditures in the budgets that they put out. So they're having to make the decision every year, regardless of the fact that funds are raised statewide. It's still a constraining effect for every district that pursues it.

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: Great. You, Jeremy. How long ago was this bill? It's probably law written, because emergency project's over 100,000 now.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: That's pretty

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: easy to do, nowadays. Long ago was that?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this is from probably 'ninety six, I think. But in any event, this is not what you will have starting this summer. This priority system will go away Did nine fifty five pass. Even without nine fifty five, and I'm gonna come to that in a second. Act 73 updated this. So there is, I should be clear, when I say current law, I'm talking about the program that is effective today, but under moratorium. But in a second, I'm gonna talk about Act 73, is effective. It was enacted last year, and it's a state construction measure school effective this July 1. So, you don't really need to worry about these pieces. I just wanted to show some of the ways it's changed over time. One thing that you can see is that Act 73 responded to a quite outdated program, and in part it makes sense that it's outdated, right, because it's been under moratorium for twenty years. No one's really been taking steps to update it. As you can see at the bottom here, although Senator Weeks is in a room at this point, his earlier question about the construction funding request, that was the State Board to the institution's committees. I'm just gonna show you, this is what's currently under moratorium, different kinds of aid awarded. Most projects, 30% renewable energy, get 75% approved, specifically related to that renewable fuel source. You can see some increased aid available to consolidation projects and CTP as well. These are just miscellaneous measures. I wanted to note repayment as a condition of aid if you sell off a building. You're required at the end to pay back aid essentially, subject to certain contingencies. We've talked a little bit about emergency aid. It is a fairly low cap there, and it's not even The total project cost is not the total aid, would be 30% of that, so 30 ks available. A state board head roll making authority under that program. Appeals are available, and significantly, I wanna hit this again because it is in September, No aid is available to projects where the secretary finds that the need for the project has arisen from significant deferred maintenance. Given the age of existing school facilities portfolio, you might expect that a large amount of school construction would be prohibited by that. Yes. So

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: when you say that the burden maintenance section is in nine fifty five, are you saying that the policy that's being described on that

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: slide is what's in nine fifty five? What's in nine fifty five is for moving this provision.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Thank you. And the repayment as a condition of aid, is there a timeframe in which, like, let's say fifteen years passes after aid has been provided, the district decides to sell a building, would they still have to pay back a percentage?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I can jump to this section if helpful. These are all blank so I can fill this up, but I don't think there's a temporal limitation, so let me just jump real quick.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Is one more. I don't think we need to. If you got 30% aid, you have to pay back 30%.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep, and it's subject to, you wouldn't have to pay back more than the worth of it. So if you had severe degradation, you're not being forced into a position where you're having to

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: pay back more than something. You pay back 30% of what you sell, is that correct? Right, right.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I can 30% of what you sell at,

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: but not the 30% that you receive

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: as a I think so,

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so you're correct. We can, just a second.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Since it's a score, we don't really want to spend it.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I can also talk offline if you want to hear about that. But yeah, I'm happy to clarify at first. I'm sorry, I'll have that just at my fingertips. Okay. Things I wanted to flag about leading up to both Act 73 and, H nine fifty five is there has been a attempt since at least I mean, really, they go back a long time, so I just wanted to note that legislative response. In 2021, the journalist simply, required a facilities assessment, a statewide portfolio, and then in 2023, the school construction aid task force was created to respond to, that facility assessment. They put out a great report that recommended a number of measures. And then the following year, and then including things like centering on the efficient use of public funds to modernize school infrastructure and align it with correct educational needs, using eligibility, prioritization criteria and certification to drive funding for a state vision for projects. As you can imagine, if you develop criteria that direct toward what you want, it's a good way to ensure that limited state funds are only going to the kinds of projects the state would prefer constructed. So you have the facilities assessment, you have the task force. The task force recommended that the generals will be engaged in a longer planning process, and this led 2024 to the creation of the working group, which last session, that working group introduced or the members of those working groups introduced bills in each chamber that set out the proposal of the working group, and then Act 73 last year effectively enacted the recommendations of the working group. So what you got in Act 73 last year reflects a fairly long term process for providing the language that you have there. And here's kinda where we are today. So what happened in Act 73 last year, this is largely effective July 1. There's one piece of it that is effective immediately, which is the standing up of an advisory board, which I'll come to. But Act 73 established a new state aid program in the AOE, so instead of having that divided responsibility between the board and AOE, an assigned responsibility for review will make an annual school construction funding request to the AOE. He'd stood up a time limited advisory board, and that board has already issued a report, things with Sunset in 2035, I believe, Community's full construction and special fund, which would provide aid to projects, grants for the master plan grant program, and funding for administrative costs and emergency aid. As of yet, there is no funding source for this. You may recall discussions at the end of last year to have in the future supplemental district spending, the extra portion that's raised there, kind of waterfall to this spot instead that in the debt being dedicated to reducing following year tax rates. So there's no revenue source for this. It built an approval process that is similar to what is in existing law, but it added some new eligibility criteria, and it's asking the agency with adopting rules to establish new priority points, which is to get that outdated first, second, third priority, including those under K that you're seeing outdated. Importantly, the form that the aid was going to take out of this program is quite different from the old program, right, which was routed through the capital bill and had state funding. This would award aid in the form of a debt service subsidy at a base amount of 20% of eligible costs with up to an additional 20% of award available in the form of bonus incentives. Put simply, what that means is school districts would go out to bond for the total cost and then the state would provide annual aid in the form of a percentage of their annual debt service costs. It could be anywhere from 20 to 40%. Any kind of project that was approved under the program and awarded aid would receive at least 20%. And the bonus incentives, which are additional kinds of aid, so maybe you get 5% more in aid for pursuing a project that results in consolidation. We don't know. The bonus incentives are being built out in World Bank. You can get up to an additional 20% in those bonus incentives. You get a base 20%, and then if the state essentially liked the kind of project that you're doing, meaning that it met the standards of the bonus incentives in rule banking, you can get additional aid. That is Act 73, put very simply, the school construction measures.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So the agency is doing rulemaking?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. And there's also a piece of H-ninety five that supplements the rulemaking, but does not replace it because there is already a grant of rule making authority to the AOE. And one thing to note on that front is that because there are existing rules for the current program, they may be able to leverage essentially because they might get, like, find terms that are useful. The state board's existing rules in Act 73 are transferred this summer to the AOE, and then the rule making grant they have is basically to update that rule set. So they would be beginning from upline slate, although it might be that substantial changes were required to meet what is set out in Act 73 and potentially divestitures in h nine fifty five. So here is what is in h nine fifty five, and the first bullet is really the thing to understand. Like, if you take away nothing else, just recall this first bullet. And the thing to contrast this first bullet against is, the final bullet in the preceding slide. If you'll recall, act 73 says aid in the form of a debt service subsidy, 20 to 40%. The first bullet here for h nine fifty five, it proposes leveraging state bonding capacity within CDAC recommendations. And the language that you'll recall, or that maybe heard talked about, is intent to catalyze the state aid program using an additional $50,000,000 annually in state bonding capacity. This would be more akin to the old program, right, which leveraged state bonding capacity to extend the aid to school districts. But I do wanna note, and we can look at the text of the bill itself and see, that this is not to the exclusion of the debt service subsidy that was proposed for an asset in Act 73, it is to supplement, basically saying there are two possible, you could say three, there are two possible forms of state aid under the program. You get that debt service subsidy, or you could get state bonding support, which would essentially reduce the amount that you need to vote locally and bond it. Right? Because you would bond for the full amount if the state was taking on bonding to support that construction project. The reason I say three forms is that you could also have a package that had both. You could have debt service subsidy plus safe money and investing, and I do yeah. Hang on. Just go ahead.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Sorry if you already mentioned this, but what does the debt stand for again?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's a Capital Debt Affordability Advisory Committee. They are the entity that each Y and M sets out the recommendations for how much the state should buy across the biennium. It is their framing. The simple way to explain it is part of what they're doing is issuing a recommendation intended to protect the state's credit rating, so they don't want the state to take on a huge amount of liabilities and impact the state's ability to go out and increase its own cost of financing. So they issue a recommendation, and basically each biennium, the institutions committees operate within the box that they provide. So for the current biennium, there's 50,000,000 annually for a total of 100,000,000 across the biennium. The institutions committees, when they put together the capital bill function within that box to ensure that the state isn't bonding beyond what the CDAC has recommended. The idea here is the House committees heard testimony that potentially the CDAC recommendation is, I guess put simply, relatively conservative, and there might be additional state bonding capacity available that wouldn't hurt the state's credit rating. So the idea is that if there happens to be this amount, and to be clear, the intent was not to, as you'll see in our later section, not to violate, would see that correctly. I don't say that the state has yet violated it, in fact, diverging from a CDAC recommendation is a potential, I don't know, sort of a bad look. The intent here is to talk with CDAC and see if the recommendation you get could reflect additional bonding capacity without hurting the state's credit rating, take that additional piece, and apply it to the state aid program. Does that make sense? Yes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What's APBH after H-seventeen-four?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Has passed by a house smoker. Why don't they all fit on one line? I think I did this last year, someone asked ANR, and I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. A lucky one from me today. Okay, so just remember that first bullet, if you remember another one. Leverage state body capacity, fit those CDAC recommendations. Other piece is authorizing staffing for the school construction division, but none of those positions aren't funded in the budget. We need AOE to come back and request those in FY '28. Significantly, it's just a small thing here, but direct specific rule making, this is to the chair's point, facilitating the goals of the bill. AOE already has authority for rule making, or will have this summer from Act 73, and they're gonna receive that state board transfer of rules. But one thing you can do is that when you guys grant rule making authority, can have that discretion right and say, we want you to act within these parameters. That's what this section is doing. It's saying, when you build out the bonus incentives, which are things that give additional aid, and when you build out prioritization points, which are what determines who gets first access to state funds, huge ways that you can shape how the program is gonna produce results across the state, this gives some guidance as to what AOE should do in those areas, and basically what it does is give a call out to the goal of the act. It says, do rule making on these two fronts to encourage the consolidation of school governance structures and improve educational access for public school students. It also tasked the advisory board by identifying opportunities for school construction, so there would be a report coming back at the end of this year, where basically the advisory board, which is that new entities stood up in Act 73 last year to support the AOE in implementing the program, They would come back and say, We took a look across the state and think that you could have regional approaches across the state, identify opportunities for school construction, give a siting study for each of those, where would they be, how much would it cost, What other factors are relevant to if there was appetite for school construction in those areas? Then lastly, consider them together because it might be that certain projects are not compatible with others, so consider different statewide configurations if there was an effort to pursue, say, multiple projects of this kind. You would get a report back. It's not mandating that any procurement process happens, it's just saying gathering information on potential opportunities for school districts. Senator Hinsdale? Quick question. Which section of

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: the bill are the duties of the advisory board in?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You can look to existing law, I wanna say it's either 3442 or 3443, and once I finish this slide, I'm happy to pull that There is a small piece of five fifty five that touches the section, so when we go through dot 55, can call it out at that point, but you won't see the full of their responsibilities there. But you can think of them as almost duplicate of what the AOE's responsibilities are, except that it says, Advise the AOE on these things, and it includes, importantly, advising on rulemaking.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Thank you, and just a quick follow-up. Is there language for this board regarding making sure that they get input from every single school? Because I I don't know how I mean, there's there's a lot of schools, and I don't know how they're going to necessarily find out sure what opportunities exist in every single corner of the state. It's a big lift. I just want to make sure that they're

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: able to do. There is nothing in the report to report.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: The VP of the superintendents, who leads up through that hierarchy? Yeah.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Other pieces, so in addition to changing the potential form of the aid from just debt service subsidy to debt service subsidy plus state bonding capacity, bonding support, it updates the actual amount. You'll recall from the previous slide, Act 73 had 20 to 40%. What you have now is 50 to 95%. I don't know exactly, but I think some of the thinking from the House side is that districts are reclaiming for pursuing necessary school construction projects, so that an amount of aid that really moves the needle is what's suggested here. So you can imagine if you get 95, that's near total coverage against state aid. So updates to aid provisions to provide 50 to 95% aid for total approved project costs. It's not the total cost, it's only the approved portions, which could be the total project, just depends. That may be, as I discussed, in the form of a debt service subsidy, safe body support, or some combination of both. It additionally establishes eligibility for 100 aid covered legacy construction debt, that is school construction debt for a district that exists as of the end of last year, 12/31/2025, but importantly, no revenue source identified for them. So while they would be eligible for it, there's no funding to do it. We're just very similar to fifty-ninety 5% paid until you actually have some type of a state bonding front or some alternative record source. Neither of these are essentially operational. They set up a program, there's no funding there. Look, of those provisions speak to what is coming July 1, absent other changes. The next piece is related to the future if contingencies are met before the roll out of the foundation point. So you'll recall that in the future, you get an educational opportunity payment, considered to capture cost for educating students, and if you need amounts above that, you go through the supplemental district spending route. There was concern that if you had to route school construction through supplemental district spending, raise those funds locally, that the cap on supplemental district spending, is 5% of essentially an unweighted EOP, that you might not even be able to fit the construction cost within that 5% cap. So there's a change in September to exempt school construction expenditures from that cap. Basically, more school construction expenditures, you could go up to any amount in supplemental district spending. However, I do wanna note something unique about supplemental district spending, which is distinct from how current debt spending works. As Senator Williams noted earlier, was going down the line of questioning of some of the boats on a small construction project. It impacts tax rates across the state. In the future, self loan checking spending is raised exclusively locally. If you were pursuing a school construction project, you would raise it at the same rate that any district would have to charge. That's the equalization measure that is included in Act 73 and Future Foundation Formula. Everyone has to pay the same rate to raise the same funds. It's something we'll interest you're spending, but it would be needed to be raised locally. So that's different from current structure. Lastly, nine fifty five updates the ballot language to clarify school construction under supplemental strict spending. This is not something that had to be included, but it was perhaps helpful to folks. As you can imagine, in the future, you may not always have a budget If the contingencies are met and the boundary formula is rolled out, in the future, you may not, every year, have a budget vote because the EOP happens regardless of budget vote. You're having a budget vote for something on a different spending. Let's say that you vote for school construction one year, but that gives you an annual cost that you have to pay for the foreseeable future. What about if they don't vote a budget the next year? They still have to pay a supplemental district spending tax to raise those funds on an annual basis. And so the valid language that's included here is clarifying that there's kind of unique valid language that is provided at the authorization of a small construction project in the future that says you're authorizing ongoing annual costs. This is your one time authorization for this piece in supplemental spending. And then any year in which you're doing sort of non construction supplemental checking spending, you would go out and vote as you normally do for an annual budget vote. So it's just trying to provide some clarity around the ballot language. See if you just look Before

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: you go off the slide, I wanna ask a question. Let me wait until you finish with this.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, I'm all good.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, so in the business world, have a mantra that, Can't say anything for the first two minutes when you rejoin a meeting. That probably violated that one. Going back up to line one, the CDAA recommendation. So is this envisioning and correct me if this is, like, a continue continuation of act 73 language or some other language. Who who makes the recommendations? Who pushes the button that these recommendations so this is theoretical for the future. How does the money start if you're getting dedicated?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. So that's a good question. So CDEC, which is the Capital Theft Affordability Advisory Committee, they're the folks who set out those annual recommended state bonding amounts. Right? That's what Priorities for schools. I so sorry. Just really high level. They they come out with a recommendation for how much bonding the state should take on without hurting its credit rating. Oh, okay. So that's like a just a functional piece. But your question still stands, is what happened then? What is contemplated in H. 55 is that the treasurer in consultation with CDAC would annually recommend amount for total state body support that fits within the CDAC recommendation. So try not to affect the credit rating of the state. So they would say, here's how much money is available. So that's the first piece, just how much money is actually out there. At that point, AOE needs to make a recommendation as part of its budgetary request, which it makes on an annual basis anyway, and then if there was aid going to be offered through state bonding, it would also need to be part of the capital budget request in a state bonding supported project. So there would be a so first is treasurer comes in with that CDAC consultation and says, here's how much money is available on state bonding support, and the legislature will think about what to do with that. Right? AOE comes in with budgetary requests and says, here's the projects we think are appropriate to funding. Here's Identifies the ones that would be funded with state funding support. So it might not be all of them, maybe some of them are just debt service subsidy. Then those recommendations would go to the committees of jurisdiction. In this case, as we talked about earlier, education and finance on the Senate by Ed and and Ways and Means on the house side. They would look at their recommendations and come up with what they think. Then they would have to convince the remainder of the legislature to support those priorities. So it starts with a recommendation on the amount of support financially available. You receive a budgetary request from the administration, then the committees of jurisdictions take a look and say, here's the ones we think happened, and then you guys have to vote for corporations to actually support those projects, and those amounts have to be voted every year. So I hope that Okay.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Good. If I can. Let me just continue if I can on that. I I got a one apple which I'll jump in. So Newton's first law of physics, an object of motion tends to remain in motion with its active object. Static remain made side of the words to that effect. Who's gonna prompt the CDAAC that and the treasurer that increased state bonding for whatever reason, whatever utility is a benefit to the state. Otherwise, they'll just keep doing what they're doing.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right, right. So the requirement in September, if it passes as currently constructed, it's an annual requirement for the treasurer to do this, but I think your point is, how to get that some of the functional division between what the legislature does and what the treasurer's office and what CDAC does. The request is it doesn't say in there, treasurer's office, take account of the fact that we want 50,000,000 additional. It directs them to put together what a recommended amount of bonding support would be. It's almost technocratic in a way. They're trying to tell you the box, and then the legislature and the AOE have to decide what to do within that box. If you wanted something that is more along the lines of, We're making a request to you, we want extra dollars, I think that would be different than what is an H-nine 55, and I would also just point out, in some ways, it's not especially for me to say, but you're meant to receive a recommendation from CDAC and folks with expertise in these areas as to what should be done, rather than dictating to them what should be done. I think that's the needle that is trying to be threaded in H-nine 55. That's why in the intent section, you see language that's more specific and says, We wanna leverage an additional 50 mil, but the actual substantive section does not say 50,000,000 additional in state bonding capacity is available. Instead it says treasurer's office and consultation with CDF, tell us what can be done.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Simple mind that, you know, when we were hearing the original parts of Act 73, in your sections, I heard, and I've said this to other people that once the foundation formula goes out, municipality will never have to vote on school budget again unless they want to do additional spending.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So if they, or if they want to do construction funding. So at what point, you know, it's not just gonna cost them, it's gonna cost everybody. Is that what SEAG is doing?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. Let me back up a little bit. The future, if you meet the contingency for the foundation formula, it's quite different from the current education What payment you just characterized is correct. If you're just receiving EOP and not doing any SDS, supplemental district spending, would just wouldn't need to go out and budget. If they do a school construction project, they do need to go out and have a a vote on that project. That would be a kind of supplemental district spending under the proposals here. But the difference that's worth noting is that the project itself is raised locally through supplemental interest spending, unlike the current system of choices education spending statewide. The reason I pause and of gave up a yesno answer is that we don't know how the state aid is funded yet. If it's the state bonding capacity, maybe that's fine, right? But if it's some other form and you need revenues to support the monies that go out to a debt service subsidy, well, how's that been raised? Maybe that's raised in a way that impacts folks across the state. It's to say, don't know the answer to that, not because I lack the dollar personally, but because we all do. Any event, let's say the state takes up bonding, the future was just state bonding, you have to cover the debt service cost of that. So, at some point, money has to be raised. The question is, where is it different? Is it property taxes or through some money mechanism? Part of what the bill is trying to get at is that the way our current education is set up, pressures currently fall for school construction quite heavily on property taxes. So anything that can kind of complicate that or spread that out might be what happened.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we have witnesses waiting on something, so go ahead. Okay, quick. I'm piggyback on Senator Williams' question.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So the split, it's down to 50 to 95%, currently that eight ceiling is, in the current language, is 20%. 20 to 40,

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so 40 to 50 max. 40 with, what if it meets the Yeah, bonus.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Bonus. So this raises, the floor would be 50? The floor would

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: be 50, so it's higher than the 73 Siemens.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, so that kind of goes to Senator Williams' question of, you know, right off the bat, there's a significant change of what the state would potentially figure. Can I offer some, I'll

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: be quick on this, but one thing to think about changing from 2040 to fifty-ninety five is it doesn't necessarily mean the state could spend more? It could mean that the state funds fewer projects. If there's just unlimited amount of funding available, let's say you have 100 ks, you got five projects at 20%, you fund the five projects at 20%, in the future, if you're coming 95%, maybe you're only funding one project in state aid. So it doesn't necessarily mean there will be an increase in total spending. It does mean there could be really limited access to the state aid provisions. Maybe only a handful of projects may be.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Just one question

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: is, bond payment is not, doesn't have to be within that five percent, so well spent, doesn't

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: work as a That is what is included in H. 55. It excludes school construction expenditures from the 5% cap, but that was not the case in Act 73 and the upper part of why it wasn't is because no one ever decided where supplemental, where school construction funding would be raised. And I think I know this during my walkthrough, but it is implicit in the decision to exempt school construction expenditures from the cap that they will now be raised through supplemental insurance spending, and that doesn't necessarily have to be the case, but that's what's here. Yes,

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: so you typically spend a lot of time in finance, is that correct? So were there conversations about where that funding would come from? The real school construction access funding, above the 5%, etcetera.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I would say that the decision that school construction expenditures would be funded through supplemental district spending was not a heavily debated topic, and that's why I say the implicit end. I flagged for them that excluding from the cap means embracing the idea that you're embracing school construction through supplemental Sorry, supplemental strategic district funding. Funding. Guess I would throw out that think, per the thinking on a lot of these fronts is you can see every time I say there's no revenue source, there's a long game here, so they're like, Oh, there's time to figure out this and that. So this may be something that changes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You don't understand. Well, bill that's equivalent to the House anticipates bonding. Yes, Yes. Yeah. Okay. The vote is Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's really everything I have. If you're interested in the slides, I just have some policy levers that are easy things where you can tweak stuff. If you wanna drive the program towards certain things, you can change rule making to say, We want these projects prioritized, But I realize I'm running out of time.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thanks. Sure. I'd like to be done with that. Sounds good.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Is that yes? No, no. So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: switching gears to H930, an acronym related to addressing and presenting chronic absenteeism. By the way, we have this important thing to say that, well, hope this that you can get a flow for chronic absenteeism and the miscellaneous bill out of your mark. And we'll see if that ends up being real stupid but absenteeism, just moved. So I'm really hoping to wrap up the lab parts

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And rather formally, I'll just let you. DC Daniels. We talked about one last one.

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

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's supposed go through both money committee, so it's supposed to get out of finance today probably go across. Be on a floor related suite.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Appropriations case is over ready. Right. Like zero, zero, seven, zero.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. We, last time we talked about spill, we talked about one of the steer from the ground, if you will, about how the system actually works, the way that it it is, all this, I think four fast testimony. It's not punitive and it's not punitive and interpretation. It's depended. And so I we'll be with a lot I know her. Erica Garthage, the state's 23 Bennington County who's been involved in this on as long as it turns out that I think Erica has been as much involved. To just come in and talk to us about the way it actually works on the ground and what they actually do to help try to get kids to in the school who are in absence. So, I think I'll just turn the floor over to you and let you just talk about, you might talk about this a little bit, well, a couple of days ago, just, you know, how it actually works and what how you implement it and some of the things you've been involved in.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Okay. So this actually will be easier for me because I've been involved in the We started a truancy project in Bennington when I was actually And is my volume all night because I have a fan.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's okay. I forgot to introduce the committee. Do you know everybody on the committee? We'll go around just to make

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah,

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: I know that I do.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Senator

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Rutland. By name or reputation Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale, Chittenden County. Nice to see you.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Hi, Nader Hashim. Great to see you again.

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

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So there's Senator Williams. Senator Terry Williams also representing Rutland County.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: I think we've met. Yep.

[Senator Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Senator Heffernan asked the County District.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Now back to the district.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Okay. So, so we started working on, I'll start this by saying I was probably one of the only truants that existed in Manchester back in 1982. They, the police visited my parents' home. I was extremely opposed to school. I had a very marginalized home life, and so when I actually decided I was going be an attorney and go to school, I wanted to work in that area and really have an impact on kids. So and how school can actually be a good thing. I've been involved in this since I was a deputy. In 2000, I started with the Truancy Project in Bennington. What that's evolved into is school personnel, that means guidance counselors, usually assistant principals, although sometimes principals, the superintendent in both, in my district, it's VRSU and SVSU, we attend meetings, and we create policy for how we're going to deal with truancy on the ground. What that looks like is creating a best practices situation that can work within whatever the statutory construct is. So in this case, we have twenty days is the when truancy petition, we should start looking at that. We're typically very involved prior to that, not necessarily my office, but we work closely with the the same students and situations are being discussed in a in our group meetings. So it might be that the guidance counselor is noticing something happening in that student's life, that maybe their living situation has changed, maybe a parent has lost their job. They've lost their license. What whatever it is. Maybe they're just middle schoolers, now they've decided they don't wanna go to school, and they're at a size an attitude that that they can't be dragged to school. So, you know, the whole process that we're involved in is trying to connect the students to the most appropriate resources or program. We use CRJ quite a bit. Bennington has a great CRJ program. There maybe it's just getting the student alarm clock. Maybe it's there were some significant changes by the school board in Bennington, and I believe it was 2018, maybe 2019, where they stopped busing from one of the major housing developments in Bennington because they thought it was close enough so that they could walk. It was a mile and a half. Well, that's ridiculous to think that someone with, you know, four kids, only two of which are school age, are gonna walk a mile and a half in the morning with all four of their children to get the two to school. So those are the kinds of hurdles that come up, and that's what our policy hopes to address. If it gets passed, I typically get the paperwork within about fifteen days, 15 absences, is when I start becoming involved with the SVSU has, and actually the RSU, are using we don't they're not hiring truancy officers. It's actually pretty frustrating. A lot of the schools are saying we just don't have the money for this, so we're not, we can't have a truancy officer. For a while, I was trying to take, I was just taking truancy paperwork directly from school personnel, the vice principal, the guidance counselor. That became a significant problem because I was really just getting documents saying this kid's not coming to school. And then we'd look into it a little more. Well, like, what a truancy officer would do might actually visit the home and find out, hey. They're not living there anymore or custody of this, you know, youth has changed, and now they're under the guardianship of a parent grandparent in another state. So so I really pushed the two supervisory unions to have someone with the actual title of truancy officer in the RSU. They used the hazing bullying officer who is a retired state police officer. So he's done truancy cases before. He knows what to do. It's not really the case. This is one of those if we had a it really is like a precharge situation where I have the officer visit the home, talk to the family, try to get some real information about why this youth is not going to school. Sometimes they may be bullied. Sometimes, you know, they have to stay. I've had a number of middle school aged kids lately that are not going to school because they're concerned their parent is going to overdose while they're at school, and they have younger siblings that they're worried about taking care of. So those are the kinds of cases where we're just trying to connect DCF, different counseling programs, the guidance counsel. We're trying to connect everyone. The unaccompanied youth, There's a huge population of unaccompanied youth. When I say huge, there's 20 or 25 students at the high school that literally do not know where they're sleeping every night. They are unhoused. Need clothes. They get food vouchers from the program at the high school. Those kids, it it's not about punishing them or penalizing them more, and and it literally has nothing to do with punishing particularly the students. They usually have quite a few other things going on. When

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you're

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: not sure where you're sleeping that night, the last thing on your mind is school. What I would say though, and why this is so important and there is a direct connection, the kids that are becoming involved in other issues like delinquencies or criminal behavior or those are the kids that aren't going to school. It's also the kid and not because they're bad kids, because they're not going to school, it's because they're not playing from the same playing field as all of the other youth their age. School is where a lot of kids are accessing services. They're accessing food. I speak with teachers at the elementary school quite frequently in Pownal where, you know, they're telling me that they, you know, the kid gets to school and they're essentially in filthy clothes and they don't haven't had anything to eat. And the teachers are helping with that. And then, of course, they're putting the student on the bus to go home at the end of the day, which I don't know how they do that. It's It's one thing to be me and do this in court, but to be living that reality every day as a teacher, I can't imagine how difficult that is. But we try our best to sort out the issue is, why the youth is having a difficult time getting is it that they're not getting to school? Is it they have the IEPs or 804s that they're supposed to be getting services, and they're not. Those are the issues that we're trying to address. There are cases where it is extremely helpful to I have probably I can count them on one hand, the number of parents over the last twenty years that I've, I've been the state's attorney coming on up on twenty years and I, in that twenty years, probably prosecuted five individual parents in criminal court for not just not getting their child to school. It's really more than that. It's obstructionist in a very harmful way to the youth, so that's kind of an exception, but it's a very useful tool. What we talk about in our team meetings all the time is that, you know, there just cannot be enough tools in our toolbox because we never know what's gonna work. It might be an alarm clock. It might be, oh, I like to have the truancy officer just visit the home. I don't I don't wanna get paperwork if no one has ever visited the home. I want some if it's a teenager, middle school or up higher, I like to have the deputy that's a truancy officer show up at the house and say to ask the parent why where are they? What's going on? And the parent might say they're still in bed. They refuse to get up, and my son's six feet tall. I can't get him out of bed. Sometimes it's that's not the case. So it really is one of those situations where the statute definitely can use some updating because there have been a lot of things from the the program perspective that have changed quite a bit. But everything you know, it's the area of work I get the most satisfaction out of working with youth because it's really not an adversarial system. It's really half the time, at least, we have the parents saying, Thank God that you got involved. I try to get, as soon as we're in court, we try to connect them with a social worker just to do, typically we start with a family safety planning meeting, which is they bring everybody into the room that's connected to this kid. So teachers, grandparents, uncles, friends' parents. You'd be shocked the number of grandparents

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that like, I

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: have one case that I love because it's kind of this cadre grandfather. I mean, he's not he's not that much older than me, but he comes across very, like, you know, I'm coming over to pick you up and you're going to school. And and I remember that with my grandfather being like, oh, shoot. Grants is coming over. I need to be I better move it. Like, you know, it just is It really does take everyone involved in the unit's life to try to affect that school attendance. It's just so important that we really look at all the different programs. We've done things like gotten kids enrolled in the tutorial center, or maybe someone is 16 but they've already enrolled for the school year. We don't want them to just drop out at 16, so we connect them with tutorial center to get their GED, so at least they're gonna have a high school diploma. I just find that truancy is really one of the few areas that I've been doing this long that I feel like we can actually make a difference. Any questions or any information that you need from me, I'm more than happy to help. I've been in communication with Jamie Craybill from the Agency of Education for years talking about various homeschooling programs and just how we make sure supervisory unions are toeing the line with kids that have education plans that should be receiving more than an hour or two of school a day. I spend a lot of time on the education piece of my job.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So one question, I'll start off with Erica, is have you been following the bill at all following the progress of the bill? Yes. And do you have any suggestions from at least the last version you read? Are you in favor of the bill as written? Do you look at it? Yeah.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: The last version I received from Daphne was the yeah, was from 01/1940 today. And I mean, that looked good. Didn't, nothing stood out for me. I know there was some conversation about the penalty and if it should be community service or be something else. Folks aren't going to do community service. The reality is I haven't seen that the criminal prosecution in and of it, it's a tool. It's another tool, right? It doesn't result in something separate as an outcome for the parent because frankly, not to be negative, we're not going to change the parent's opinion about typically folks that have this sense of education. Both my parents dropped out, the people that have this sense of education. It's generational and it's gonna be very difficult to change their mind. So the best we can do is use the criminal prosecution to hold the parents' feet to the fire. I'm very careful when I look at cases whether I think it's actually a truancy or a Chinn's case. So literally any kid that's under 13 that's not going to school, that's a Chinn's case to me. That's not a truancy. It's your responsibility as a parent to get your 12 year old to school. The kids that are older than that, I look at it on a case by case basis. So sometimes those are still Jim's cases, but just, the criminal piece of it enables us to get the parents separately into court without the, the youth doesn't need to be there. It's the parent coming in and explaining to a criminal court judge. Yeah, why aren't you bringing your child to school and they can make it a condition of release and you know, have I ever prosecuted a violation of those conditions? No, I can't remember that I have. But the people that I have had to prosecute in those handful of cases, it's been really useful to get them into criminal court.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, We testimony to the effect that really what it is is a way to get their attention if you haven't been able to get their attention.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Yes. And also I look at it a little more kind of, and maybe I think about it too much, but I think that like requiring the parent to come to court without the youth, and if I really think it's the parents doing, because I feel like when we're in juvenile court, we're all there, right? The youth is there, the parents are there, everybody has their own attorney. I but, really, I try my best to chastise the parent when we're in court and say this is this is a case where he is not or she is not getting the youth to school. It's not that the youth is doing anything wrong. We work really hard to I don't mind being the bad guy in juvenile court. That's my role. Everyone else and, you know, I want them to like their attorneys and the DCF worker and their school personnel. We do truancy days in Bennington. The Bennington Court sets up about three or four judgement days started them. All of our truancy cases are on in court on one day, and we have all the school personnel there. So everyone can be having conversations in a separate room about their individual student, and then we go in one at a time and address that student's case. And we get updates, and we get, you know, it's always so nice to hear the kids that are actually doing well and making strides. I mean, there's one thing that I had asked years ago from the Agency of Education. There there's supposed to be a ticket, like a civil ticket. So years ago, I had asked, hey. Do you have this ticket book? I'd like to give it to our truancy officer to write a ticket, and it's a it's treated like a traffic ticket, and then I don't have to bring them into court. Just one more thing to kinda push hold the parents' feet to the fire and make them accountable. There's just no ticket book that exists. Like so the statute's there, but it's not. So that'll be maybe something for another day, but I just think that that would be a more streamlined

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: approach.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Senator Weeks, do you have a question?

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I do. Good. So more to Chair Bongartz question, Erica, I think you're a good person to answer the question about two specific sections that are in the bill as as drafted and came to us from the house. First one was a a pupil being taken to the school who lives in the district. So, essentially, it's just as it says, take the child to school. You know, they insurance officer finds them, brings them in. So, that section which is I guess been in statute for well over one hundred years would be stricken. So, that's one. You can comment on that and the other is, there's a section that's repealed which is the penalty for the truancy officer for failing to retreating the students absent from the school. And I'm wondering if you just comment on that because we don't live in this, space so much. Yeah, you can do and your input would be helpful.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: So as to the first, I have a couple of comments on that. One, like I said, most communities, and we're one of them, we used to have a truancy officer, so to speak, that that was what he did all day. The funding is just not there for that anymore within the sheriff's department and within the within the school budget. So we've, again, been thinking outside the box. And, the SVSU, we're using a contract deputy. The school has contracted with the sheriff's department, and, you know, it can be anybody in the RSU. It's a retired state police officer, they're never going to go, you know, so if you have a kid that's not going to school, they're never going to take a child forcibly and bring them to school. So they're not going to deliver them to school. So it makes sense that that would be stricken because, I mean, we talk about this and the reality is, and the best kept secret from the students and the youth that are in the courtroom is, you know, really it's very limited even what DCF is gonna do. So two weeks ago, I actually had a case first time, and I cannot even imagine I can't remember more than ten years where we took a youth into custody because she was not going to school on a truancy Chen's truancy case, which I that just doesn't happen. Right? We don't because we're always weighing what's the least harm we can do to this youth. And if you have a particular situation where their home life is so damaging that they're not going to school, you know, the court and the DCF folks are really looking at whether it makes sense to take custody of that youth at that point. That's the only time, If if we have custody of someone, if DCF has custody of someone, then I could see them transporting someone to school. But a run of the mill truancy officer or a sheriff would never lay hands on.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So in summary, you support repealing that section.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, that makes

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: no Good cut.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And then the second bit about penalty for the officer for not bringing students in. I assume he would also support that.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: The $1,000?

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: No, this is page 12 of 12.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You're on different versions, but no, there's only John's files. No, we have a new version that she's out today, but it's okay. I think you can figure out the section. Yeah.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So final page, the appeal section four. I assume from your comments a few minutes ago that you would also support repealing this section.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Yeah. We're not physically dragging kids to school, like, in custody. Yeah.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Just want to hear from someone want to hear from someone

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: outside of the It's definitely not gonna make them like school anymore. I can guarantee that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Erica, thank you. That was really helpful.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Yeah. So any other questions, feel free to email me or whatever. Happy to help.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. Thanks.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. By the way, you're welcome to stay on if you have Wilson.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Next we have Courtney O'Brien. Do we have

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, apologies. We were looking for an outlet over here.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No problem. Good. Will become more relevant once we walk through this pattern. So, just have it for now. Okay.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: You are all under. Thank you.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: All right. Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Courtney O'Brien. I use sheher pronouns. I am the agency of education's director for Safe and Healthy Schools Division. I'm joined today by my very, very new colleague, Monica Derochers. Monica has just joined the agency as our director of school climate and belonging. This is her second day,

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: so I beg of you all two weeks ago, we could be on her today. Do you want her to testify? Do you want to come up at the same time?

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: No, I'm just

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: gonna care of her.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: One for observation. She's still absorbing all kinds of fun stuff this week. Thank you for the opportunity to come back in. So we have provided two pieces of testimony today, and I'll acknowledge the testimony is in response to what began as amendment related to HIV prevention attached to House Bill nine thirty, and it seems like have now moved into miscellaneous education bill nine thirty one. So our testimony today is really about both of those pieces of work and how they kind of interrelate. Is there a specific focus that you'd like me to stay on today?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No, so you're really No, no, just go ahead. Great. So are you really focusing on a fist like this? A

[Speaker 8]: little bit of both.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: My understanding, so I was out of pocket last week, it sounds like Deputy Secretary, for example, came in with a small team to talk about some of the other provisions in nine thirty, the attendance bill. We have since talked to some of our colleagues in the field and reached consensus on a couple of those sticky areas that came about last week, so we did want to clarify that. And then, yes, I would love an opportunity, if there is one, to just offer our recommendations on the inclusion of DHHV prevention language, which now exists in 09/31. Okay. Okay, and we've included two pieces of written testimony for brevity. So there is a longer narrative that's been submitted with a bit more detail, as well as one of our one and a half with some highlights of this. So I will start there. We agreed that 09/30, as we previously testified about, is really about fixing attendance systems and starting with strong foundations for attendance. We acknowledge that there may be other parts of the system that maybe we need to revisit in future years, but this bill is really about establishing strong foundations for definitions, establishing consistent practices across the state, improving our data quality and reporting, which then acts as a basis and the foundation for other improvements in this work, and really shifting our collective focus to prevention rather than only focusing on truancy and that punitive piece. So we just heard some great testimony from my colleagues at the State's Attorney's Office around how truancy is still a valuable mechanism in this continuum. But the intent of this language is to provide really consistent systems that lessen the number of truancy cases that ultimately get there. We've seen this approach work really well in other states across the country, and we're excited about being able to retrofit that here. In the latest draft, I've seen that it seems that there is no longer a specific list of definitions related to excused and unexcused, and that that has been forwarded to a requirement for model policy. The agency would agree with that approach. We think that that is much more a better adaptable place for that to exist. And we've reached some consensus with our colleague, Ann Conner, who spoke last week as well, and our colleagues from the Vermont Supertitis Association. I will kind of skip over our comments around HHV being included because that becomes noted. We are moving that to model policy. In now in ninethirty one, there is proposed language to revise the scope membership and duties of the HHV Prevention Advisory Council. Our recommendation, very similar to our recommendations around the inclusion of HHV prevention in the attendance bill, would be that revision to that specific section of HHP Prevention Law is something that should be included as part of a comprehensive review of HHP statute and not something that is attached to a miscellaneous education bill. We, I think, have seen and heard multiple pieces of testimony in the past few weeks around the importance and urgency of this work. It's also incredibly complex, and we would want to make sure that any changes to the statewide mechanisms, policies, protocols, statutory requirements around investigation, our approach with this really intentional view. So our

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: priorities. Ahead.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I think though that the philosophy is that take HHP, and this was, like, the only vehicle we had remaining to do anything with it this session. It's biennium. So that was one tactic. It should agree or disagree.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Would say that the agency does disagree because as much as it feels like it may be kind of a standalone vehicle to do that it's really critical that that advisory group is working in partnership and really in compliment to the work of the executive branch of government that is fulfilling this work. The agency is right now involved in a pretty large overhaul of how we provide supports for HHV prevention. That work began last fall related to the revisions of model policy. So if folks aren't familiar, there was an opening of model policy for public comment. We did engage with the HIV Prevention Advisory Council, had been inactive for a very long time, and Secretary Saunders reinvigorated that committee last year. Through that process of going through public comment, we received a lot of feedback indicating that the policy is not sufficient, and I would say we wholeheartedly agree. It's currently rooted in statute, right? So it's mapped to the existing statute, which also leaves some big gaps in how do we actually achieve prevention and support prevention. Some examples of that, right, so the policy is very focused on the investigations process. Again, that's based on law, so it's not just because it's there, it's rooted in law, but it's not focused in identifying the core competencies and training requirements of schools that would actually support prevention. It's not focused and doesn't include any provisions on specific curriculum inclusions that help to support prevention and build those climates that have a better approach to AHP prevention. We have been engaged in I'll say that differently. The public comment period on the existing model policy brought a lot of these same things to light, and I think that's very clear and we were in agreement. At the same time, there is a need to be clear about the investigations process for HHB, which is murdered in statute. Our approach right now is to have two complementary model policies. Investigation and response is a subset of prevention, right? So we have that, we're pretty clear on that. What we're building now is a model state policy for what this prevention looks like otherwise, and it would be those content areas that I was just describing. Annual training requirements for educators, age appropriate curriculum requirements, and trauma informed instructional practices for schools, improved data practices. I know we had some discussion recently around how we are collecting information about the relationship between attendance and bullying or HHV, that's really better suited for HHV statutes, that we can create a system where we are really meaningfully collecting data around HHB reports, time lost, impact on students, the types of services and interventions that schools are using, whether or not they're effective.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: A lot of words. In short, do you recommend holding this topic over to the next session?

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: I do, and I think if you're looking for an action to take, would suggest something very similar to our recommendations around home study, which is that we would spend the next year developing a comprehensive report and come up with some recommendations for that session next year. So we would be very comfortable with an inclusion of that type where the agency would provide a report by x age with recommendations. But I think it's a very big topic, and it's very nuanced, there's a lot of moving parts, and we

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: would

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Did you talk say in your testimony that you're already developing? Yes. Yes.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Any other specific

[Speaker 8]: questions around that?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No. So

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Okay. I believe that's it.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So your real recommendation of your testimony today is that's your real recommendation is to

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Yes. Would be our recommendation. And also just to to validate that we had some question about some of the things that were shared in testimony last week, we've reached some consensus with BSA and with our colleague, Nick Conner, who testified last week as well around some of those sections. We noted that the most recent version now has the provision for a three year review of policy. We would be in agreement with that over an annual review. The one thing I will note is I see, which I'm not prepared to speak on with length today, but we did see that provisions around home study hearings have been added back in, and I'll reflect back on what I believe was deputy secretary's testimony last week that this would not be our recommendation to include that as part of this bill. I don't remember why. Capacity concerns. So that was it was removed for reasons related to capacity concerns in the past. Again, Jill would probably have the best specifics around that now. The capacity for you to overreach. For the agency, yes, to actually meaningfully engage in that work.

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

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Thank you.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thanks. So I think we're going next to we think we're dropping.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: She is joining on some

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Oh, okay. Present flight. Alright.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Whoops, we had you for a minute. Larry, you're back.

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: Sorry, my Teams to Zoom transition wasn't smooth. I apologize.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: All right, well we could. Can help. Great. For the record, you are?

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: I'm Lindy Boudreaux, I'm the Adolescent Services Director at DCF Family Services. I am going to try to share my screen. Folks see this?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: Okay. So as I said, I'm Lindy Bujer. I'm the Adolescent Services Director at DCF Family Services Division. I want to thank the committee for inviting us to speak this afternoon. I do just want to say that I understand there's a new bill. I just received it about forty five minutes ago and it's only released, but I haven't had the chance to read the new additions, but I understand Hannah who's in the room, looks like for the most part the department is in support of the additions, but the response that was prepared was based on the prior. So I just wanted to explain a little bit for the committee the ways that DCF becomes involved with youth and families who are experiencing issues with school attendance. So there's two avenues that the department has to respond to concerns. The first is educational neglect. So a report for educational neglect is considered for acceptance in It's terms of the been alleged that a parent or the person responsible for the child knowingly fails to enroll the child in school or provide educational opportunities for the youth. And this is in accordance with Title 16, subsection eleven twenty one. So this is what we call a front end response and investigative response. And that is because we're looking at the parents or the caretakers action or inaction to ensure that child regularly attends school. For our policy, we consider educational neglect to be considered for children who are at the age of six and through the completion of the sixth grade. That's how we propose to differentiate between which staff response is going to respond to the concerns and what kind of supports are going be provided and potential court involvement should we get to that point is going to be inaccurate.

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: So we have a question.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: I think the concern about home study and homeschool is twofold. And one piece would be the curricular requirements or some, you know, evidence of of learning. But the I think the most urgent question would be, is there neglect happening for this child? Are they getting no education at all? Are they being taken out of school because the parent doesn't wanna deal with questions about their parenting? And do you all only look at cases of educational neglect as it relates to enrollment in approved school, or do you investigate homeschool education neglect?

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: Well, so what we would open a case for is if the parent didn't have a plan. So no, we're not going to be reviewing, or we wouldn't be investigating to see if the educational plan that the parent has been approved to provide to the AOE is appropriate. That's not, that does not fall under our purview or our statutory authority related to

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: We

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: shouldn't if they're failing to have a school, like a school experience of any kind, isn't that educational neglect and something you should get involved in?

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: So when this topic came up previously, there was extensive testimony provided, and I want to say two years ago related to this very topic when we was looking at making modifications to the home study plans. And so I know at that point, our deputy commissioner and our child safety manager had provided testimony regardless of that. And our position, again, not our job, DCF is not the place to determine whether or not academically what is being provided is appropriate. It's our position that that is something that should sit with education. It's not for us to say, it's not abuse or neglect to say that they're not getting a plan. If they have a plan and they're not following through with that, if somebody were to call in to say, I know that they're not following, you know, if they have this plan through the AOE, but they're not doing it, that is a different, potentially a different response from our system. But to whether or not educationally that experience is appropriate is not something that falls under our purview.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Does

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: that answer the question?

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: I just feel like nobody's really answering the question, but that's okay. I mean, I don't know what else. I'm not gonna Yeah.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Belabor it right now.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I what? I will say I think-

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: I'm worried about actual neglect. I know

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it works. I know it the fact that-

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Right.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But it's a, it's, it's a, it's an issue. Yeah. I know it's an issue.

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: Well, again, like I said, I feel like if the child is not engaging or the parent is not enforcing or following through with an educational client, they can certainly call that in and that would be something that we could potentially look at through this statute. But again, there's other, you know, I know there was a question related to whether or not the plan was appropriate and that falls outside of our purview. But for me, that's the distinction.

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

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you can go ahead.

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: Thank you. So again, when a report of educational neglect has been accepted for a response from the department, we assign a family services social worker and we conduct what we call a CHINS B assessment. And so through this process, there's a few steps that we just want to talk about. We reach out and have contact with the child and the family members, certainly the reporter who's called in to concern school staff and other service providers who may be involved or, you know, providing support to the youth or the family. This will include visits to the child's home and then doing additional fact gathering and doing interviews. Again, it could be with a therapist, could be with the school staff, could be with, you know, any of the folks who are providing supports to the family who have information that can help us make a determination about, really what's at the root of this and what's going on and what are the issues that are present that are causing concerns for the child not to be getting to school. How do these cases come to your attention? Is it mostly through the schools? Yeah, I mean, yes, I would say yes. I am not sure, I'm thinking of our systems limitations. I'm not sure if we can do a query by reporter related to this type, but if that's something that the committee wants, I can certainly look into it, but I would say primarily school.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay.

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: And that information is being called into our centralized intake. Then it gets, you know, again, there's the process for them to review the intake to see if it's accepted.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Okay,

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: so additional information or additional steps that Optum will take place if there's concerns of educational neglect is a coordinated service plan meeting. We may continue to provide additional home visits to work with the family and the youth around development of an educational readiness plan or a response around like, okay, so these are substance abuse or whatever the core issue was, we'll work with the family to say, how can we help you to address the concerns that are present that are impacting your ability to get this child to school? We have certain referrals in the community that address concerns of educational neglect or truancy, which we'll talk about next. Our balanced and restorative justice partners are primarily for fluency concerns. We have intensive family based services and our designated mental health agencies which can provide supports to families and youth who are on the younger end of the spectrum that are experiencing educational neglect concerns. So this was just, we wanted to just give you a little bit of a snapshot of the numbers for intakes that have been called in, sorry, accepted. So these are the cases that have been called in through our hotline, as I mentioned, and have been accepted for concerns of educational neglect. And so you can see a little bit of variation and you'll see these, the numbers with truancy also have a fluctuation and certainly around twenty twenty, twenty one, twenty two, certain school districts were not calling in concerns of educational neglect or truancy because of the pandemic, whereas others were. And so there was, it was a really varied response around the state as far as how those cases were being handled and whether or not those are being called in. And then you can see it kind of level out again, point three, '24 25. Switching to concerns of truancy. As I mentioned, the educational neglect sits with our investigative staff. Concerns of truancy sit with our ongoing staff who provide supports to at risk or justice involved youth because it's a status affair. So we have that part of our field staff respond. And so per our policy, Policy 60, we define truancy as happening when a child has completed the sixth grade and accumulated 20, excuse, absences from school, which is as a result of their own action or inaction. So the difference here is that the shift to truancy really focuses on the child's behavior versus the parents or the caretaker's inability to get the youth to school. It's, I will say, you know, it's not very, it's not often that you get a really clear cut case. Like this is happening just because the youth is like crossing their arms saying, I hate school, I'm not going. There's truancy cases I often say it's a symptom of something else because there's so many other things that could be impacting why the youth is not attending school. Truancy cases are convoluted. And so we have a youth assessment screening tool that we use that's validated for this population that really helps us assess out what's contributing to the concerns of truancy. So as I mentioned, in our policy, we apply a truancy lens or truancy systems response to youth who are in grade seven through age 16 and who are registered for school and not attending. So as I mentioned before, we can also conduct an assessment for these youth that includes, it's called a youth assessment in statute, but there's also the front end response that we talked about when we were talking about the educational neglect. So our response when we're looking at concerns of truancy, so when we conduct a youth assessment, we we can have, conduct a youth assessment at any time. Anytime that there's a concern has been called in or we're thinking about concerns of truancy for youth, we can certainly conduct a youth assessment. Policy requires that we conduct a youth assessment, again between youth who are in grade seven through the age of 16 and in the following circumstances. So when there's an emergency care order that's been issued or the court has issued a conditional custody order, that means that there's court involvement related to a truancy petition, the department's involved, or if there's not a concern of truancy or, sorry, custody being contemplated with the court, a post merits finding of truancy. And that would require us to have an open case with DCF. We'll conduct a formal youth assessment. And again, it's really, it's similar to the front end response for educational neglect in that we're home visits, we're meeting with the youth and their family, we're wanting to have conversations with all of the various folks who are supporting the youth and the family. And the hope is to bring folks together to look at, you know, what are the contributing factors? What is truly happening? Because like I said, it's very rare that it's just simply the child saying, I'm not going to school. There's other things that are contributing or prohibiting the youth from being able to engage in school. So another component of the risk assessment or the youth assessment that is identified through our formal youth assessment and screening instrument is we're looking for strengths and challenges and ways to draw out or highlight interventions that can look at the reasons that are contributing to the truancy. And so again, developing plans around that, that may include more ongoing involvement. It may not include ongoing involvement. Typically it does when it gets to this stage. Typically DCF is involved for a period of time to support the family and make sure that the youth is able to develop or build a relationship with the school again, because sometimes in these cases we're getting calls that these youth have been out of school for forty, fifty days at some point. So it's really rebuilding that connection with the school and getting folks back into school. Again, here's some numbers for truancy cases. These are cases that have been filed in the Family Division. So truancy cases are not always called into our hotline. Some counties do call them in as part of their truancy protocols, other counties don't. Typically how we become involved with truancy cases is through the filing of a truancy petition in the court. And that prompts our response because we're parties to all CHIN's cases. So we would join the case at the time that the petition is filed. As I mentioned, I can see the significant dip here in 2020. There was, I think for the first part of the pandemic, maybe the first, I don't know if it was the full entire year, but there was a different response that we had and also that schools had in relation to truancy cases. So that's where there was a, that's why I believe that's why there's a significant dip and then it rose back up as the school started to respond again to truancy. I don't know what testimony you've all had so far, but I don't know if you've heard from folks in the Memorial Program. Memorial Restorative Justice Center has a very strong program that supports truancy and school readiness. And so I worked closely with that program when I was a supervisor in the Memorial District office. And one of the things that worked really well for that program was the fact that in all three supervisory unions that they worked with, they had one truancy protocol that had clear definitions for things like excused or unexcused. It was very clear what would prompt a systems response for court intervention versus, you know, a community response and really development of restorative plans to work towards getting youth ready for school and back in school in some circumstances. So that really eliminated confusion and inequities that we currently find around the state. So that said, I just wanted to highlight some of the concerns that we currently have with our process right now is that there is significant variation from school district to school district. In all of the districts, my job is to support all of our districts. I have a statewide view of this and it's hard to issue policy or it's hard to provide consistent support or guidance to folks. See Erica's on, so from Bennington to Newport, mean, it's very, very different and schools are, they respond very differently. Even in one county schools are gonna respond differently. And that's really hard for anybody who's trying to do policy or guidance or support or have a consistent response. And so families, some families might feel like their head's spinning a little bit because they have different response and they don't know what to expect. And that's been really hard to juggle, not having those clear definitions. So one of the things that I liked about this bill, and I'm not sure if it remains in the current iteration, is the definitions and really having clear understanding of excused versus unexcused, or even what truancy is, what chronic absenteeism, and really having that clearly defined is really gonna be helpful for consistency and so youth and families know what to expect regardless of where they live in the state. So that was one of the benefits of this conversation. Another thing I meant to mention at the start of this slide was the conversation with the agency of education and DCF, myself specifically, began years ago. So we've been talking about chronic absenteeism truancy, you know, truancy supports a model policy even for about four or five years now. And so we were excited to see this language and to see the model policy being proposed because I really feel like that's what's gonna move the dial. And we're continuing to have conversations monthly. We met last Friday about all of this work. DCF, I've had the opportunity to meet with the consultants that the AOE has hired to support this conversation several times, and I'm looking forward to being able to join, rejoin the conversation about the model policy. I really feel like that's where we're going to see a lot of the change and a lot of the kind of the getting into the kind of into the weeds, the real specific process and county level response to this change is going to happen with the model policy. So I just wanted to let the committee know that we have been a part of that work and that's been great.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Lindy, we are running short on time and this has been helpful. And I can see your last slide and I think people can look at it on their own. And I guess the question I have for you is to extend to Pat a minute, a few minutes to look at the new version or even commenting on the original if you have it. Is there are you in favor of the bill as if I think we're headed directionally? We've expanded the model policy actually to take on some of the things that we could have the statute. Any comments specifically to the people? I mean, is really helpful us to have understanding, but do you also have any comments specifically about the bill?

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: No. Yeah, I mean, like I said, we are in support of it and I feel like any, just being clear about providing those definitions and the importance of that so that we are eliminating as many opportunities for inequities around the state as we can, I think it's great? My preference would be that there would be one model policy for the state. I know that that's not what the bill is putting forward, but at least there's the, I'm assuming the language is still in there around having at least the schools have to adopt the level of, you know, the policy that the AOE puts out or above. So it can't be that they change standards that go below what the AOE has put out. Again, preference would be to have one for the state, but I recognize that that would be a significant challenge. But, as it stands, we do support the bill.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Okay. Thank you. Any questions? Well, before we as if we're going right into bark up and potential vote, One I

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: couldn't vote today.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Oh, we're not. One thing I noticed is just the list of who the agency education must consult are all school based. It's not DCF. It's not the state's attorney's office in their response to chronic absenteeism. I don't know if that's by design, but I don't know if, like, DCF, you know, wants to have an ongoing role in shaping model policy for working with AOE on chronic absenteeism because you're not listed there nor are the states.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, comments from both of you. See. I saw both heads nodding, actually. So, you first?

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Yeah. We should definitely be in there. I Lindy and I have been talking about truancy for twenty years. So yeah. DCF and the state's attorneys should definitely be part of that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Erica, you've been involved for a long time, actually both of you have. Is there anybody else off the top of your head obviously missing?

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: I would say Juvenile Defender's Office. I mean, they certainly have a role in these cases as well. I'm surprised that we weren't on there. I thought that that was I thought we were.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: I see National Association of School Social Workers Vermont, but that's not the same. And I, you know, not to be oppositional, but I would disagree that the juvenile defenders would need to be on a policy making group just because, you know, I think that's been the challenge to trying to actually get policies that are meaningful put together. And these are not policies that are that have to do with defending youth. They have to do with the cases that my office gets or state's attorneys get that we don't need to get. You know, if the right policy were in place, what Lindy's talking about is in Lemoyle is just like what we have in Bennington, and, you know, there are a number of other counties that have the same types of policies. And it would be nice if we had the option to require schools to be part of that policy instead of us constantly preaching to them that they should be following the best practices for truancy and chronic absenteeism.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So Erica, the way for us, the right way for us to, should we say state's representative from the State Attorneys Association?

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Because it could be somebody that I wouldn't want it to be a specific person, like, it's the executive director. I don't know that our whoever the executive director is at the time may or may not be the best person for that committee. This is a very, like, niche section of even of juvenile court. So and I actually have an answer to that the home study thing, and I'm happy to share that with that senator offline because I know we're out of time.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. And Wendy, we should say for you just, should we say DCF or should we say?

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: Yeah, would just say DCFFF, Family Services Division because of first DC. Yeah. Yeah. And we would just, internally, would decide who would be part of that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. We're going to walk through the new version and so you're welcome to stay in the room.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: If there's a moment, I had a quick clarification on just two parts of the language that I hadn't caught with this latest version. One point of clarification, there was Courtney O'Brien, Agency of Education, for the record. There was a comment earlier about the role of truancy officer, truant officer, and I just wanted to offer clarification. That is a role. It's a designation that a school board or school and superintendent must make. It's not a sworn law enforcement officer position, which I think is how it was described earlier. And so across the state, that role is stacked differently. We often have community liaisons or homeschool liaisons or other administrators or school leaders. I think there was reference to a position who is also the HHB designated employee. So it's it's more of a title and a role versus a specific position. So I just wanted to offer that clarification. Can I would just wanna make sure I understand? It is, right now across the board only school, like district compensated officials hold that role, or there are places where a sworn law enforcement officer could hold the role or somebody who's not part of the school. So the statutory reference is 16 BSA one one two five subsection a, and the language is a school board shall annually appoint one or more truant officers and record their appointments with the clerk of the school district on or before July 3. State police, sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, constables, and police officers shall be truant officers ex officio. So they it can be a sworn law enforcement officer, but it needs to be a position designated by the school board to do that. So it may or may not be a sworn law enforcement officer. Correct. Correct. But it says they're ex officio. So are they automatically considered a truant officer? They could automatically do a lot of that's what That would be my assumption based on yes. Based on the language. But I wouldn't I wouldn't wanna speak on behalf of those other entities. But, yes, that would be my assumption based on what I think that's what Right. Okay. It's a trademark situation. Yeah. I think the point of clarification there is that many, many schools are not using sworn officer. Many schools are resourcing that in different ways. And so I think there is a distinction in enrollment. And on the if they're in the school district or under law enforcement purview, they're generally not picking kids up off the street Like, as a we can strike that language and not expect that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're taking it tough. No.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: I just wanna make sure that on both sides, it's not a best practice of any kind to pick kids up. Hardly would agree with that. The

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: second Yeah. I I'm sorry if I could just speak on that. It's Erica Marthage. The issue with that language is schools are definitely not, school boards are definitely not appointing truancy officers in every county in every school district. Definitely not. So what then it becomes is individuals that are guidance counselors or vice principals that are then submitting paperwork directly to the state's attorney's office to be filed, and and that's up to the state's attorney whether they're gonna accept paperwork from an administrative person for a truancy or a Chen's case because, you know, they're, it's replete with problems. So, yes, all of the law enforcement officers are, by default, can be can do Chin's paperwork or truancy paperwork, but they don't. So the particularly like the sheriff, they're not doing that. The state police don't do that unless they're being paid to do that. So, because it is more complicated than just submitting a bunch of paperwork saying they haven't been to school. It's making sure that the family still lives there and not making five phone calls, but actually visiting the house. And schools are not sending their individual staff members to visit people's homes. At least they're not in Bennington. So that's where I think the rub is. Can I ask one more question from kind of, and I'll just

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: say personal experience in my family? What happens with runaway youth? I mean, what if a parent feels like they need help retrieving a binder from an unsafe situation? What is the best practice now for helping them handle that? Because I think others are just more sophisticated. Well,

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: mean, Lindy, mean, I can just speak to what we do in Bennington County, which is frequently, that's probably the main phone call we're getting about kids that are 13, 14, 15 years old. Once they're 16, they can't be considered kind of beyond the control of a parent. They, so they're either making those reports through the DCF 800 number or they're calling their local law enforcement who then calls me and then I say, call it in to the 800 number and here's what we're going do.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: So they're not acting under the auspices of truancy, but sort of helping of a missing child from a parent other criminal? No.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: It says beyond the control of a parent, which is a Gen C. Okay. Yeah.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Okay. Do have one more?

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Very briefly, on page seven, I believe it's the latest draft dated 04/27/2026. Page seven, line nine begins at paragraph around policy and templates. And our recommendation in past testimony has been that templates don't fit best in policy. Templates need to be a bit more adaptable and flexible. A comparable solution here may be that the model policy includes model procedures or protocols, and those procedures may have models the model procedures then create the conditions for the documentation of actions, minimum standards, etcetera, taken in accordance with the policy. So I think our recommendation here, and this is where we have had Here some is where? Page seven. Page seven. Line nine begins, this policy shall include a template for documentation of actions taken according to the policy to address the absence. The second sentence goes on to say, the policy shall also include a template for standard documentation to be provided.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So, you're mindful of the

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Our recommendation would be that the policy should include model procedures to be adopted by the school or district. And then those model procedures can then be inclusive of these items like standard documentation.

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: So this policy should include a model

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: procedure? That would be our recommendation, yes. And that is a, that formatting of model policy for school boards, model procedures, and kind of the playbook has worked well in other recent models.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You also said that AOE was gonna write the policy.

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Yes, so AOE writes the model policy and model procedures. Boards adopt the policies. The superintendents and district leaders then utilize the model procedures as the the protocols, the

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: When The when?

[Courtney O'Brien (Director, Safe and Healthy Schools, Agency of Education)]: Well, I think the date in here is what we've suggested that we would have it published by 07/01/2027. I believe that's the date that's in the latest version. Drafts are already in place. Drafts are already in life. We do expect that they would be published for response within the year. I think the timelines in here are very reasonable. I I don't want to speak on behalf of the school boards association who may be available here as well. I think the dates here also reflect the reality that school boards needing to have time to adopt the policies, so the model documents inclusive of procedures would be available before 07/01/2027, that would provide I think a year according to the current timelines for school boards and districts to adopt, embed, and train on those procedures to

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: go live by 2028.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Beth, that's a hard stop at 04:30, so we should all give that in mind as we always want to hear. St.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: James, the Office of Legislative Counsel. Just wanna, maybe we can use this time to clarify the language regarding the template for documentation of actions taken according to the policy came from ARB originally in their request. So, I just want to make sure that whatever you have me put in the next draft, if it is to be the recommendation of the agency, is settled. Right? Because if you want to vote this out in the next day or two.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yep. So,

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, so I think what the agency is now recommending is setting the work template, reducing model procedures.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: Model policy. Policy.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What's procedure?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It says this policy shall include. No. It's do you have to say procedures there or think we are agnostic to how it is presented. The ultimate result should be that there is a model policy for adoption by boards, model procedures, which can be included in model policy or can be established as a standalone model document that's done equivalent to how we approach HHB. The agency of education maintains the model policy as well as model procedures for HHV. We would like to do a similar approach for chronic absenteeism. The distinction of the procedures is that they don't require that board adoption when there is a need for an update. That's where we see that real time response. Thank you. So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: H930, you have a new draft.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, you have Beth St. James Offslip School of Counsel, you have draft 1.1. This is the first time you're seeing an amendment. It is a strike all amendment, and it's got bits and pieces of things you've been discussing for weeks. So, I may not remember where all of the genesis for every change has come from, but I will do my best.

[Speaker 8]: Just trying to

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So, you're gonna strike out what the house passed and replace it with all of the new language. And what I've done is I've highlighted changes between the two bills. So, the first section is new, section one findings, and then section two is legislative intent, and we will walk through that language. But at some point in the last couple of weeks, you gave me direction to incorporate the findings and intent language from the Vermont School Boards Association. And that's what this is. So, the general assembly finds that chronic absenteeism is primarily an issue that should be addressed through preventative, restorative, and assistance based measures designed to identify barriers to attendance and reconnect students with schools should respond to chronic absenteeism through written attendance support plans, outreach to families, and appropriate academic, behavioral, and community based supports. Truancy is distinct from chronic absenteeism. It constitutes a student's failure to comply with compulsory attendance or harms under Vermont law. Truancy should serve as a reinforcement mechanism only after reasonable school based interventions have been attempted and have not resulted in improved attendance. Truancy proceedings should be reserved for circumstances in which school based interventions have not been successful. Informal legal enforcement is necessary

[Speaker 8]: to ensure compliance with compulsory attendance laws.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then section two on page two, it is the intent of the general assembly that students' attendance policies in Vermont schools prioritize early identification, supportive intervention, and meaningful family engagement in order to promote consistent school attendance and students' acceptance. I

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: wonder if rather than an improvement consistent school attendance, do we really wanna say produce on the system? School attendance. I think that's a goal.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What is it?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: One Promote. Page two one six. Promote the business, you can promote forever, not so we'll get results. We do not want to produce consistent school attendance. Is that our goal?

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah, that sounds good. Sure.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

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

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have made no changes to the definition section. I have lots of scribbles from considerations, but I didn't have any notes that you had affirmatively landed on specific changes to the definition. So, is there anything in the definition section you would like to go over? I

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: think your own corrective action is to have to. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I'm on page four. I've made no changes to section 11.2, the compulsory attendance section. And then on page five, section eleven twenty three, this is where you have the laundry list of reasons that an absence may be excused. So now, this reads, in accordance with the chronic absenteeism and truancy policy required pursuant to section eleven twenty four of this chapter, the superintendent of a public school or designee, or the head of school of an approved independent school or designee may excuse a student's absence for all or part of the school day, excuse a student's attendance for pre planned family commitments or activities of which the school has been notified in advance and request justification for an absence. I don't know that you necessarily need one and two. I think two, absent the laundry list, I think two is wrapped up in one. A student's absence for all or part of the day, and you're starting the entire section by saying that those excuses need to be made in accordance with the policy. But I kept it because I didn't have any specific direction to not call out that category of pre planned family commitments, but I don't I think that's a policy for this. Okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So would are are you almost suggesting to the whole thing go away or would it simply be you go from four line 14 on page five independent school or designee may request justification for the absence.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. I'm I am I'm not actually suggesting anything. I'm just calling your attention to something. And that is that when you've had the laundry list before, you had a list of reasons that a student's absence may be excused. And you had let me find previous draft, which was

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: ad hoc by that.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And you had a whole separate subsection that said also, a designee or a head of school makes student from attendance for pre planned family commitment for activities, of which the school has been notified in advance. And the as cast by the House version had that those pre planned family commitment absences could not exceed ten cumulative school days in each year. And so I'm suggesting that I if you just want to say that the policy should guide folks on how to address any absence, then I don't know that you necessarily need one hand shoe.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. What you meant?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thought you

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: were Okay. Get it.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: However, in as passed by the house, the pre planned family commitments was tied to not more than 10 consecutive, or cumulative, so not consecutive, cumulative school days, While the excuse, the laundry list did not have that same time. So it's a policy choice for you all of whether you wanna keep that. You wanna specify that pre planned family commitments can only be, cannot exceed ten cumulative school days, but it's slightly confusing because you've done away with anything other than a preplanned So, family what are we referencing here? Okay. So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I will pause it, but I think it makes sense to eliminate two.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think it probably makes sense to eliminate one and two. I mean, I I feel like it's it's also kind of obvious that it'd be part of a day or the full day or I think you wanna keep one You wanna keep one. May skew the student's absence. Right? That's what the whole Oh, okay. I thought it was, like, saying it can be part of a day nor the full day,

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: which if I don't drop the box.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So so that that's if you're excusing it out. Yep. Okay. Yes. That's good. And then, yeah, I I would then get rid of

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we're gonna get of two. We can get rid of two. Yeah. Okay. Well and leave three.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And do you wanna keep for all or part of the school day?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: yeah.

[Lindy Boudreaux (Adolescent Services Director, DCF Family Services Division)]: Okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Keeping free, did you say? Yes. Okay. Good. Yep. So here good. Up now, page six.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Section eleven twenty four. This is the model policy section. So, I've added and I got a very helpful note that I think I've gotten the National Association of Social Workers' name wrong, but I will fix it. And now I hear you wanna add the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs and DCF Family Services Division? Yep. Okay. We've changed it from reviewing annually to reviewing at least every three years. And then, here's what the model policy is required to do. The model policy shall provide guidance for the reasons a superintendent or designee or head of school of an approved independent school or designee may excuse a student's absence for all or part of the school day, including guidance regarding absences for pre planned family commitments or activities, which the school has been notified in advance. I think you can keep that in or you can take it out to be consistent with taking out number two previously. This is saying provide guidance for the entire universe of reasons a student's absence could be excused.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Wanted to add a greeting.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right, and so I'm saying starting on line 15. Yeah. Sorry, did I miss it? Did we note the people who should be added to this?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. No, that's what

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you said. Department of States Attorneys and Sheriffs and DCF Family Services Division. Okay. I'm suggesting that on line 15, the including guidance regarding absences for free plan is not necessary, but there's no harm in keeping it. I I think I don't I think there is harm in leaving it. Guess, not, like it just because this seems to be the gourmet the gourmet reason that we're kind of like, oh, you're excused. You have a trip to Europe. You know, you're not excused. You can't make it onto the school bus. Like, I you know, holidays are a whole thing. All kinds of things matter, but calling out some kind of pre planned family commitment or activities strikes me as already valuing certain scenarios and devaluing others.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm I'm taking out. I they're they're gonna it's part of the laundry list too. Any other comments that I agree or disagree?

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I may be able to. I I don't see it the same way as. I don't see deleting it as interfering with the development of all of this.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Anybody else? We'll support deleting

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: lines when it's unnecessary. Okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so the second thing the model policy is required to do is provide guidance for when a superintendent or designee or head of school of an approved independent school or designee may request justification for an absence.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Let me go back up. The

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: last bit of that last sentence, basically line 17, you keeping that? This is where it's clearly preplanned versus, you know, it's all about family vacation stuff, the preplanning versus the, oh, kid didn't show up today or lost kind of the. Preplanning is potentially a trigger that AOE can use to create their list, but, line 17, I think, so well. Big difference between preplanning react.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think ultimately this is all a policy decision. If you remember back to the laundry list, which was a list provided by AOE to get you started, so one might guess that the model policy is gonna have similar guidance. I think there were some things on that list that you may not be able to have advanced notice of, like student illness.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Right. I just wanna make sure the category of the ill required in advance may be

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I just, like, I think I think what we mean by notified in advance is part of what they're gonna work out and be excused unexcused. And I just see it as unnecessary and possibly leading to try

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: and spell that out now when we're not spelling anything out of that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I actually guess I got down thinking that this is for all the same reasons that's centered around that still, but I think it's going to be in the policy. The authority suggests this came from the AOE, it's going be in the policy, and it is allowed to call that one out.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: It's on to call out free family commitments. It's not on to call out when schools can read of a now exposed tooth. It's already happened. Just the fact that that's my understanding. I certainly agree with pulling out pre family. So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So include so including guidance of which the school for activity, guidance for what actually, students absence for all part of the school day, of which the school has been notified, if that's something fun that we won't get ahead, whatever, I don't think it's going to make.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: So should it not provide guidance or situations when they haven't been notified with the family? Yeah.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's like it's two different worlds. Where is

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: the second world? Let's see.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Both scenarios are equally important. Right, and so

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: I think if you're leaving it

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: in then, you're only pointing to one scenario and not both of the scenarios. You would have to say in which the school has or has not been notified in advance.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah, I mean, regardless of whether they've been notified or not notified, the policy should provide guidance for the reasons the superintendent and so on, getting excused in absence.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Let's just say part of the school day of which the school has or has not been notified in advance.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah. If it's possible, yes.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Could we just say pre planned family activities?

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: You wanna see that? Well,

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: now if okay. I wanted to take the whole thing out, but if we're leaving are we leaving in preplan? Or we're taking something else?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: May recognize that if we're going to say has been notified in advance, we also also have to say, Has not been notified in advance. Or we just delete all three of the

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: lines Yes. And just say, May excuse, astute sapsis for all, or part of this whole thing, and I think that would cover when

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: they've been notified, when they haven't been notified. Yes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think it's gonna be in the policy whether we say it or not, this language came from that same bad thought from AODA. Right.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, yeah.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: All right, during that, the word day.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Even family is like, how do we define, like

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, so provide guidance with us.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I'm on page six, line 18. We just went over that, provide guidance for one of superintendent or designee or head of school. They request justification for an advocate for an an and, I'm gonna get rid of that. Moving on to subdivision C, provide guidance for how to address the absence of a child with a disability in accordance with applicable state of federal law. You wanted to keep that piece of the house passed version. And then we wanted to, in Subdivision D, consider the impact incidents of hazing, harassment, bullying may have on student attendance, including the importance of tailored responses to all students struggling with safety and emotional issues that provide such students with the emotional, academic, and social support to facilitate a successful reintegration for returning students. And then my understanding is that Subdivision 2 is now going to require model procedures, which will include the truancy reporting protocol and the documentation.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So if I can, going back to page six, eighteen through 20, paragraph 18. You know, it strikes me odd that part of this model policy is when a superintendent may request justification for an absence. I understand that it's in here to, again, jar the AOE, but the superintendent can't ask why a student is not in school.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's Right.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Age six, eighteen, nineteen, 20. Provide guidance when a superintendent can ask justification. It just seems like that's shocking. And you're gonna ask anybody, why is the kid there? I mean,

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: my thought is they may already have the justification. So if a parent calls and they say, know, little Timmy's gone to the hospital for the day, the superintendent shouldn't be required to then follow-up and say,

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Why did you go talk? Why are

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: you absent? If they already have the justification, then it's not necessary to ask them

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to do

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, that's not what I was going. Anyway, I'll leave it. I just find it a little shocking that a superintendent, we have to provide guidance when a superintendent can request justification. Why why do we block to? That's not his job. It's reversed. Yeah.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You know, that's because Somebody's gotta say, oh, that's That's

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: why for, you know It says superintendent doesn't need or doesn't need. Superintendent's not gonna it.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So so your point is, normally, let's just say it's normally the principal. Your point is, why do they need an aid? Right. Like, do we need guidance?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Why do they need guidance?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, or why. Is there ever a time you wouldn't want justification for it? Yeah. Wouldn't be that why, so.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, I mean, think that's why. Let's all go back to page five, line 10, section eleven twenty three, school absence may be excused. So, in accordance with the policy, a superintendent or head of school may do these things. And one of those things on page six is request justification for an absence. And then you're asking the model policy to provide superintendents for guidance on when to do that. I think if you take this out or you change page six, lines 18 through 20, you may need to make a change to page five. I think there are probably best practices about requesting justification for an absence. I think that it could be if the child's in danger if you're communicating with a particular parent and and they're not safe at home. I think I was gonna say somewhere in the part about hasting, harassment, bullying, there's also just there's, like, long holidays that certain communities have that, like, if you're asking all the Jewish kids or all the Muslim kids, are you really participating in these things? Is this really important? You're going to get yourself in trouble. So I think it I think there whoever is put together to do this excused, unexcused thing is probably gonna provide that kind of guidance as well about being sensitive to, you know, religious and cultural calendars, That's

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: an interesting point. The moral policy is just that. It's it's a it would never say that the principal I mean, I can envision the principal is going, where were you yesterday? Period. And then Why wouldn't the principal do that? Now I get that they would hopefully be aware of that.

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: Hopefully. So Well, why are you interested in fencing? And where are

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you at?

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: Hey. I had it was fun.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's over. Model policy would never say to a principal, you can't do that.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We don't know what the model calls you're

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: going with that. Practice. It's I

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think we're con I think we're conflating everyday life running a school and the language in front of you. The language in front of you is very specific to superintendents within the attendance and truancy and chronic absenteeism framework. Right? And so the language that the house passed contained language that said the superintendent may request justification for an absence. This new draft ties when that May is appropriate to guidance from the model policy. You could just be silent on this, that's a policy choice, and I don't think that prohibits anyone from asking any questions. You could leave it as is, and I still don't think that prohibits anyone from asking any questions, except you may have a model policy that provides guidance in certain situations, and superintendents may take that guidance as a directive, right? Like, we're not going to be able to guess how A, what's in the model policy, and B, how someone interprets that model policy as part of their job.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think what you said that, well, I'm on to, is that nothing to say to the principal can't ask.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not in this language. Okay.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So this language came from AOE, correct?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. The the genesis of this bill came from AOE, and I would have to trace back in

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: this particular section about the law, I'll see where language came from.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm trying to answer your question. I would have to trace back and look at the actual language that AOE provided. It has gone through several drafts by the time it got here. The concept of having a model policy, yes, came from AOE.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So my question is, since this is going to AOE then, model policy, does AOE need, paragraph b, which is provide guidance on what the superintendent can and can ask why the kids have

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is a policy choice for you all. If you do not put it in here, then you have to live with the consequences of that. Right? And so if you feel strongly that you want the model policy to contain guidance for superintendents of when the superintendent may request justification for an absence, and you don't put it in here, and AOE does not include it in the model policy, then that's on you. That was a policy choice you all made. If you feel strongly enough about it that you just want to be sure that it's included, then it would behoove you to put it in the statute. If you trust that the model policy is going to contain what you want it to contain.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So, to your point, going back to page five, when school absence may be excused, and the top of page six says they can request justification for an absence. I think we've already made our policy, and I think this paragraph B on the bottom of page six is obvious. We've already determined that they can have us. We don't need guidance. Right,

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: well, so that is a policy choice you can make. I would need to reorganize this, I mean, that is why you have me, because the lean in language for that is in accordance with the policy. So I can just pull that out if you don't want it tied to the policy and make it its own subsection.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: My only point is the superintendent shouldn't have any reason not failed to ask why they weren't interested.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I we could change the language. I mean, I'm okay taking it out because I'm okay, honestly, taking any language out, but it's optional. We could instead reword it to say best practices for when they seek justification for an absence. I I think what it's getting at is that it's valuable if a group of people are getting together to talk about who you're requesting justification for an absence from, how blanketly you're requesting that justification if you you know, if if there are civil rights implications for requesting that justification. Like, there's probably just superintendents would probably just wanna be able to think of things they may not have thought of if they have their first Hindu kid or whatever, you know, that are that are of value.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: So nor should we just replace the word may with what request to just. Order could would not would be. Would it designate would request just to change? I guess, away from this idea that it's you know, a permission type situation.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Could this be drafted? Could you that could just be obviously drafted as best practices? I

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: have I would need more direction on where you're talking about. We're working in two different sections with the bill right now, and they're because they're built together. So where are you talking about best practices? I would my suggestion was page six, line 18 through 20.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Guidance follows is best practices. It's the same thing. Yes, I would agree with that. Yeah.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. You're changing one word.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: I like changing that word. I

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: was gonna say, I think you just said this, model policy would inherently contain the best practices. One would hope.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll take, let's take it out.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, just get rid of this. Yep.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We each got something to take out of. So am I clear that your direction to me for the next draft is to remove any reference to requesting justification for absenteeism? Yes. But that means you're saying at the correct top of page 6.1. Is that your direction?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm okay with that too, but what if they get we're saying they may request justification for an absence. I don't know all the, like, latest Supreme Court rulings. What if they get pushed back for requesting justification?

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know why. So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: agency agency had not a go there.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If I if I may, Beth, I'm sorry. I'm, like, directly behind you, so I'm navigating around you. We would be in favor of keeping the language may request justification for this reason that it creates a standard across the state of when, one, it helps to support superintendents and when it's appropriate to ask for that, both as best practices and as kind of a minimum of engagement with families who may not want to engage with that level. Right? So it's it's both a compliance issue and an equity issue together. So we would definitely be in favor of keeping that in both sections, and I'm appreciating this, Counselor, that it's together. They have to be in sync.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Where are we going?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Keeping it all in?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Sounds like it's one or the other. All in, all out.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, Steven. Don't know the

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: the I don't I don't understand what problem you're trying to solve by taking that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. As long as we got those those words that I've heard, nothing's gonna nothing's gonna tell the principal or say because of the.

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: How often

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: does it get?

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: It's a more permission now.

[Jeremy (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Let's move on. We gotta

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we we gotta got people take a in look in there. There.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think this language has superintendent designee, so I think the action happening is probably more often than you would think. But it's it depends on the district, whether it's the actual superintendent.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's usually the principal. Well, I mean

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But they're acting under the gun. Like, we want if there's litigation, then somehow cuts out this.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. If if the loan is not been stolen, they can't or, like, care about. So

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So am I clear that I'm not making any changes now?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The template goes on page seven, as we discussed, the template gets Yep, to the bottle bottle procedures. Okay. Yeah. Next time. Okay. Procedures?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, no changes to the rest of the house passed language. However, you've added a section on page 13, which is the home study hearing after enrollment language. And so this would be an amendment on page 13, line one. This is an amendment to 16 BSA 166 B, which is Community Home Study Program Statute. And what I did was I took directly the language from S 167 from 2024, and that did include this language in subdivision five, line nine, related to the minimum courses of study. That is not at all what you have been talking about, but you have been talking about the language from S-one 167. So, it's an open question to you all of whether you wanted to include this change It in the requires that as part of the enrollment notice for enrolling a student in a home study program, that an attestation is required, that each child enrolled in the home study will be provided the equivalent of at least one hundred and seventy five days of instruction in the minimum course of study per year, and that the instruction provided shall be adapted in each of the minimum courses studied to the age and ability of each child, as well as the disability of each child as applicable. Nothing in this section shall be construed to require a home study program to follow the program or methods used by public schools, and specifically the minimum course of study per year means, and then that falls current law.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And this is the law, this is what was law until it was

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, I can't speak to whether these, what we just walked through on page 13, lines 11 through six, was previous law. The after, the hearings after enrollment was. Okay. I have a big question. I I'm much more inclined to to keep keep this in. I I think we need to rebuild some oversight or some some process with with home study. My big question is, how is it built into average daily membership for students in terms of education financing? Do they completely drop out of our education finance? They're not included. So, I think that should be studied in the foundation formula. I, first of all, would want to make sure we have the capacity and resources to oversee our strong, you know, curriculum, any concerns. If we're saying because no one's paying for them to be home studied, they simply took 5,000 students drop off the map, I'm concerned. And I would want home study students to know they have access to some smaller pot of money for books and field trips or some you know, like, I don't know why we'd say these 5,000 kids, we don't finance them, we don't talk about them, we don't care about I care that they're getting a good education and access to resources. I wonder if the foundation formula study can build in what a reasonable amount would be for home study students to have access to that's split between oversight and resources for them to get a good education.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I agree. If we want to talk about that study, should probably talk about it in the context of September.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Until

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: such time, I would leave this in here and not listen to things about capacity because we should fund the capacity for there to be oversight of 5,000 kids and the value of their education.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I want to want to make sure we leave a little bit of time before Beth leaves or Sue on because she's been sitting there all day. She's Something about the disowed. Just want to make sure we five minute for that before Beth Haskell leaving. I just So, Senator Hashim, you were the proponent burning to this.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: I Yes. Agree. Yeah. So, definitely, going back to whatever, what was our first year, twenty twenty fourth, 2022. 2022. Yeah. That first year, we got the message from AOE that it's not the hearings after enrollment that was taken to much capacity. It was the other section that we took out for the two parts really. The first section being the stacks of paperwork that homeschool kids would and their families would be sending to AOV for review and the understandable notion that they did not have the capacity to review all of that. And so the committee agreed in striking that and what we also struck was the accountability piece in which if there are situations where there's a concern that the student isn't getting an education or DCF needs to get involved, there's no mechanism to to get them here. Yeah. And and so that that was taken out inadvertently in my opinion. And then the following year there was a miscellaneous bill which I think is the bill that ledge counsel elliptical language on. Because we realized the next year, well, we accidentally took out the accountability piece that put that back into law. For whatever reason, the miscellaneous bill died, and that this piece did not go back into law and here we are trying to put it back on. I think that's a procedural history of those but if I'm wrong about anything, I'm not gonna state the right people.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You wanna

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: walk through the language? Yes. Okay. Let through. So we're on page 14, line five, hearings after enrollment. And this is almost exactly what was current law in 2023. There were a couple places where a sentence or two was taken out. And I have not noted where those sentences were, but I'd be happy to come back to that. Hearings after enrollment. If the secretary of information unreasonably could be expected to justify an order of termination under this section, the secretary may call a hearing. At the hearing, the secretary shall establish one or more of the following. The home study program has substantially failed to comply with the requirements of this section. The home study program has substantially failed to provide a student with a minimum course of study. The home study program will not provide a student with a minimum course of study, or the home study program has failed to show progress commensurate with age and ability in the annual assessment maintained by the home study program. Notice and procedure. Notice of the hearing shall include a brief summary of the material facts and will be sent to each parent or guardian and each instructor if the student or students involved or known to the secretary. The hearing shall occur within thirty days following that notice if given consent to, among page 15. The hearing shall be conducted by an impartial hearing officer appointed by the secretary from a list approved by the state board. At the request of a child's parent or guardian to the hearing officer, she'll conduct the hearing at a location in the vicinity of the home study program. Order following hearing. After hearing evidence, the hearing officer shall enter an order within ten working days. Order shall provide that enrollment be continued or that enrollment be terminated. An order shall take effect immediately. Unless the hearing officer provides for a shorter period, an order terminating enrollment shall extend until the end of the following school year as defined in this title. If the order is to terminate the enrollment, a copy shall be given to the appropriate superintendent of schools. We shall take appropriate action to ensure that the child is enrolled in a school as required by this title. Following the hearing, the secretary made a petition, the hearing officer, to reopen the case only if there has been a material change in circumstances.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes, just for clarity, it's like on page 13, line eight, dot dot dot, does that mean that that section was never struck back in '23 or whatever year it was?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Those asterisks always, no matter what bill you're looking at, represent current law as of today that we are not amending. So

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: that the only changes are the underlying points? Correct. And do we have the runway left to take any testimony from from scores? This is Appropriate. She

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: They are in favor of this.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: She hasn't been fined. Yeah.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. In that. I should say.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Question a little different. K. So I'll to, like, put this into the law or at least you guys do. Do we open the appeal to any, you know, counter we're gonna work from one person. Do we have any counterpoints? I just we've got a little bit of time left, and we don't have a lot of time. So it's something to just open an opportunity for her to come to school and say, Yay or Nice.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And just to confirm, manages some kind of consortium of open school Right. Parents.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Not all of them. Respect that.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. I'm just I wanted to make sure to me, she was always, like, just kind of popping in, and I wanna she represents who, what is, like, her title.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: If we had to read one, try to get a couple of scores in, I don't wanna get it. So let me I'll back

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: up a step. I'm okay with the section. I'm okay with the bill as we're proceeding, but this is brand new. This is, you know, this yellow highlighted language, first day, day one, you know, ten minutes ago. Do we wanna just pause and let people fire shots at it for a day or two and

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: and then We we haven't talked about it for a couple of weeks.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: But But now we have language.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's most of that language. I okay.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: The I I handed out the same language a couple of weeks ago. That was that was taken from the miscellaneous bullet piece. I know there were some changes as Beth described, but, yeah, there are old schoolers that are in what's not high school. Well,

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm sure they're watching the. And if anybody would like to testify, contact Daphne of the house to get an appointment accepted if we asked for it. It's been here before. If she knows we're gonna hit, we could get her in to test the facts and justify and try to find out if there's any opposition to us. We know the agency is not in that burden of doing this.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Not in Ann Arbor. Not in Ann Okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, there's one testimony you should Well, that's why I raised it.

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: Mine.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Because you read You you testified for that fact A couple days ago.

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: We testified that if you put new requirements on the agency to do new work, you should appropriately resource it so that we can implement with fidelity. There's no resources in this bill. I don't have any staff at the agency at this point. So that is my question. Do you intend to resource this so that the agency can successfully make a new statutory return? Sorry, for the record, Gilbert Scammell, Deputy Secretary.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Back when we repealed the section, or sections of the section, did we pull your manpower away?

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: COVID,

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: the the, number of homeschool students essentially doubled. That number has not really substantively declined since COVID, and we went from having a, because we didn't have requirements for hearings, we went from having a full time FTE to a point two five FTE in the agency. So, don't have people do work if they don't have requirements. So, my current staff in the agency was responsible for the applications, and it's a point two five FTE that does not have the expertise to do this work.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think we have I I think you missed it, but I said, like, maybe there are other states that have it in their foundation formula, a small set aside for homeschool students that's less than the, you know, the per pupil amount. It's a half per pupil or quarter, but this has to happen. So I think the question is what resources would it take and where do we put in that our future state will include the resources? And probably it makes sense to have something in the foundation formula for homeschool students. I don't think they should just fall off the map of who's counted and what resources they have access to.

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: So I can offer a resource solution for you. Either So it's a legal hearing, I so just want to be clear that what we would need is legal expertise. So one way that we address things like in other parts of our work where we have to have a hearing officer for very specific special ed administrative complaints and that sort of thing, is that the agency basically has per diem hearing officers that we can contact with. We just have a standing contract with hearing and administrators. So that would be the resource that would be necessary for us to do the work without adding a permanent staff position, and I would say that this is not a big enough number that warrants a full FTE. That's not a good use of state resources. I think

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm confused because there are 5,000 kids, just about, who are doing homeschooling, and they are submitting a notification that they're gonna do homeschooling, and then from there, the whole system, it sounds like, is complaint driven, and so you're just looking for a hearing officer. I have a problem with that in general. I mean, I don't think we're gonna solve the full problem this year, but I think you are I am looking in the future for more staff to oversee the responsible administration of a homeschool program, and I think it belongs in a chronic absenteeism field because right now there is no way to know it's how This these kids are getting an

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: is why we recommended a report. We we agree that we need a more comprehensive and systemic look at the home study system, which is why we suggested that a report with recommendations and resources necessary to implement those is the next right step, that we would deliver that report before your next session with recommendations. I think that would take a more comprehensive look.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think you can do that without us going another year without any system of oversight.

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: And this used to

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: be the system. Right. We we did one here. I I actually did a little history with our legal department, the agency of, like, in the I will say, in the time that our legal team has can look back to, we did one year.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What was that time period?

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: It was over ten years. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So they were, like, 300, 400 kids from what we saw in the program then, and you had to kind of fight for your like, to legitimize that work you were doing, we heard from the home study coalition person that it's up to 5,000. And so I feel like your testimony is kind of incongruent with, like, we don't know the situation. You did one hearing when there were 400 kids and it was a much more specialized request. I think, I just want

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: to be clear, I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm saying, if you decide to move forward with this, we're only indicating that we do not have the available resources to implement this work. So if you're putting a new requirement on the agency to do new work, please resource it appropriately so that we're actually able to implement the fidelity. If I don't have the staff or expertise to do the work, I'm just indicating to you that we won't be able to successfully do it. And then in addition, maybe we do also say, and we would also like the agency to do a comprehensive report on the current state home study and make recommendations by December. So, you could do a yes and. I'm simply asking for appropriate resources. We do ask us for new requirements. Senator Hashim. The yes and approach makes sense.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: I mean, read this and do the per diem approach. I mean, if they have one hearing over the course of ten years, and, yes, it was three to 400 students, but it doesn't sound like it's something that's happening every other day. But doing this, making this change, or putting this back to law, creating the per diem I guess it's not a position, but this per diem contract, somebody, and then also a study, And I'll see that it's problematic.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So what we need? But if you're you're suggesting is we invest. We add the study and then we make sure that somewhere in $9.55 is something. Would that be? What we're talking about? Okay. So, for tomorrow, we pass.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Is that?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Add the study back in.

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: It it will definitely be more than one. I was just conferring. Okay. So, so I just wanna be really clear where it is a resource need if you're going to put it in place. The way that we would largely be hearing about these tends to be either through like a DCF process, is more unusual, or actually more usually from districts.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: So what specific hints do you have an estimate of how much of what you would need?

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: I can go back and look at our other people kind of comment on this person.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Because I'm I'm I'm trying to, you know, work with you here. You know, I'm hearing about per diem. I'm asking for the per diem. Right. And then I'm seeing that it sounds like one per diem wouldn't work. I would hope to just get some clear answers to what we really need, and then we can advocate for that and get a resource we need so that this can be forward. Sure.

[Gilbert Scammell (Deputy Secretary, Agency of Education)]: I can look back at that. I mean, as you said, this is brand new language, so this is literally responding on the fly.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, in the in the broadest of political pictures, we keep hearing the governor. We keep hearing others say, we are losing students. This is this is one of the biggest areas that seems to be we are losing students. This is at least a quarter of the loss of 20,000 students or what have you that's been guided over the last, however many years. So I would think we'd wanna work to make sure that these students are getting a good education and they're accounted for in our system. And if it's more valuable that they're brought back into a school setting, that's that is 5,000 students that are not filling our schools that exist in the state, and we have no idea how they're doing, if they're

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: just not going to school.

[Eric Lapean (Energy performance contracting proponent/ESCO representative)]: Normally, when you choose to homeschool, you feel like you care about

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: your job. Okay. But so we have no we have no doubt. It's zero doubt.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. This is a this also was something we don't have time to get into in any way right now. So, for tomorrow, let's look at this language with the study and we'll talk more. And we'll look to some I

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: would if you don't even need to mandate that a study happened, because we're you have 5,000 kids who we don't know what's happened. So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I wanna quickly give Sue a chance here. We're shifting gears, but let's say where you are. What you can say.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's a chance.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I know. Sue, just very quickly, you're there too.

[Sue Ceglowski (Executive Director, Vermont School Boards Association)]: Yes, well I'm here following up on my visit to you a week ago today when I was here talking about the impact of healthcare costs on school budgets and how they're taking up an increasing percentage of budgets that's impacting programs. And so we had submitted a request to you for a report on or before 12/15/2026, provided by the Joint Fiscal Office, and we laid out three different areas, for the report to cover. Would you like me to cover those again?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Sure.

[Sue Ceglowski (Executive Director, Vermont School Boards Association)]: Okay. So the first would be assessing the financial ability of the education fund and Vermont school districts to pay for the current costs of employee health care benefits and coverage, including offered health reimbursement arrangements and health savings accounts. The second is compare the current health care benefits of school employees with the health care benefits of similar employees in the public sector in New England and New York. Healthcare benefit benchmarks should include the health benefits plan, medical and prescription drug characteristics, the type of plans offered, total premiums for the plans offered, employee contribution dollars and percentage of total premium and the value of employer contributions for HRA and HSA accounts. And then third would be provide the actuarial value of current public school employee health care benefits by plan where actuarial value shall be calculated inclusive of both plan design and employer funded HRA and HSA accounts and compares that actuarial value with the actuarial value of health benefits available through Vermont Health Connect. And all of this is on a one pager that's on your website, posted on your website, under today's date and last Tuesday's date.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I wanna just plug into the miscellaneous draft for tomorrow.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: To look at?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yep.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If I may advocate for my colleagues at JFO, they should have a heads up that this language is coming. And I'm not, just to warn you all, I'm not sure that this is the in house expertise they have and may require an appropriation. I don't know that they have any actuarial- I

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: was planning to have to have this debate.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But he would like to see this in the draft before talking to JFO?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We might as well have it in the draft only so the people know what we're talking about. Yeah.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: My concern would be not setting JFO up to fail because I don't even know how the other states are constructed if they have a one health care pool or they'd have to go digging around.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't know if Julia was able they were aware of this language lesson being discussed.

[Sue Ceglowski (Executive Director, Vermont School Boards Association)]: I haven't spoken to Julia about it. I do believe that there may be other people within JFO that worked on healthcare that might be able to contribute. We'll check, we'll check.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So Nolan is the person that you would yes. Want to consult Good. Okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Good, so we'll have to reschedule the homework here. We'll see if we schedule it. Yes. We've got a

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: lot of these spooling around at the same time here, but I'm curious if the whole negotiating, the teacher health care negotiation process are made into a bill. I know we talked about it. I've only $8.42. The 10. Eight forty two. It's a 10 again.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, no. I don't think they said it. Yeah. Guess.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, six years in the house and never came out of the house. Okay.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So got a miscellaneous vehicle. I'm just curious there was an appetite for that. I

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: think it would take a ton of time. I we I think they've done that with a lot of testimony. Vulnerability. 5% of our education spend, or education would cost. Well,

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, it's I never wanna miss an opportunity to say the work that the health care committee is doing is already cutting costs. So, you know, the like, I think it was $45,000,000 this past year. So they they are doing that their health care work. This kind of bill touches on labor negotiations, which is economic development, and the health care committee, which is the cost of health care. Wouldn't just sort of-

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, but it's a two year old topic. You know, we've been talking about this.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But we haven't been doing nothing.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: We have do nothing with that particular topic, and why shouldn't we? Look at it? That's my point. So we're running out of runway for the session. I fully get it. Not a huge topic. It's been swirling around for years. If we decide via the chair, committee that we're not gonna do it, we don't do it. But I just, I'm just trying to do like, okay, are there any like lingering issues which we haven't cleaned up? And I guess if everybody's understanding it, yes, that's just dead for the biennium. That's dead for the biennium. I thought we had a conversation, we were gonna try to include it into something to

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm generally fine with trying to get information so we know how to compare our system to other systems. I still think that would be hard for JFO to do, but I think

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: that's the direct topic. This is the negotiation. I'm talking about the last issue

[Erica Marthage (Bennington County State’s Attorney)]: with JFO.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Doing it without being informed about our region. And if this is really a question of

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: This is

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: An outsized

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Mediator in a negotiation, having two options, having to choose one or the other, I have be able to blend it. Yeah.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: A problem too. Well, it's a huge labor law question.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So if the answer is the committee doesn't wanna do it, the chair doesn't wanna do it, then we don't do it. I'm just I'm just in the ninth hour, we're looking at any extraneous issues which we haven't covered. That's one of my issues. It just kinda drifted into oblivion. That's all. So I'm putting it back on the table, letting everybody say, you know, yeah, you're gonna hit it.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'd suggest if you're that concerned about it, we have labor bills coming to the labor committee, and it probably isn't fair to just say, in this one instance of labor law, we'll let them pick and choose, but Somewhere not an

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: between health and welfare, education, and economic development, this issue just seems rather simple on the surface, has just completely died. He's actually never indecent. That's why

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I never gotten the attention of the bill was only in the house.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, but we've talked about it in a number of times. Anyway, I'll leave it if everybody's okay with not even trying

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to pull that from him.

[Beth St. James (Legislative Counsel, Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, we had a new proposal that's about education health care costs specifically

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: that we're talking about. Education negotiations. Not not more complicated. Let us reflection. Okay. Tomorrow, we

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: are looking at CSAs.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I worked over the weekend and

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: put together something to mill the parts of nine fifty five. It was something that we've been doing.

[Senator David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Hopefully, did

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it with a I, who are getting good, yes, with Governor House and we walked through and see what we found. I'm trying to so I spent about twenty hours hoping to get something together that might be a wake up path forward that doesn't end up with a total of a mass. I forgot the question you last a couple of days ago. So and then we have the markup of bronchopsychism. Again, we'll have to see if we can we didn't get the seesaw review, but maybe after we've heard the testimony from people involved in seesaw, so we won't need to do it. Ask them all. Here. We're adjourned.