Vermont Legislature Senate Finance - 2026-02-24

Meetings

S.212: Municipal Water/Wastewater Connection Permitting and Fees (00:00:00)
DEC’s Bryan Redmond reviewed a proposed general permit approach, a new design manual, and a reduced tiered fee structure, noting the need to reassess impacts of Vermont Neighborhoods fee provisions before the committee takes action.
S.157: Recovery Residences Certification – Overview and Fee/Reporting Issues (00:18:25)
Legislative Counsel outlined the voluntary certification program and rulemaking timeline; the committee agreed to add language requiring legislative approval for any fees and to include data and annual reporting on program effectiveness.
Joint Briefing with Senate Education: AOE State Report Card and Accountability (00:43:12)
Secretary Zoë Saunders and team presented Vermont’s ESSA accountability framework and 2025 report card results showing low proficiency and widening equity gaps, discussed graduation and growth measures, and described planned improvements and supports, followed by extensive Q&A.
Committee Votes: Amend and Advance S.157 (Recovery Residences) (02:34:32)
The committee adopted the amendment adding 'volunteers,' requiring program-effectiveness reporting, and prohibiting fees without legislation by a 7–0 roll call, then voted the bill favorably as amended.

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[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And we are live. We can start. Okay. So we're gonna take up and hopefully vote out this week two twelve, which is the accolade to foldable water supply and wastewater system connection. I think we got a good walkthrough and kind of a history of the bill. And today we have Brian Redford. So, Brian from the Agency of Natural Resources. Oh, we might let Katie know that she was not going to testify. She wants to come earlier. She could come earlier? She's not gonna testify at all? She said we could reschedule her. No. We don't. But she can't do it too bad. Okay. Well, we we are not here from the legal cities and towns. You know the routine, I'm sure. Just introduce yourself. Welcome to the finance committee, floor is yours.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Okay, thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Brian Redman. I'm the Director of Perth Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division, which is a division within D and C, Agency of Natural Resources, in terms of where we're housed, and our primary responsibilities are overseeing water, all the drinking water systems, as well as some of the wastewater systems in the state, so soil based wastewater systems, as well as the connections to water in wastewater systems, and that's what we're talking specifically about today, is the connections. If it's open with new chair Cummings, I figured I'd just do a little short history, it sounds like you have gotten that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It always helps to refresh. I learned things from the last history.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Okay, great. I'll start with a short history, highlight a few key provisions of the bill, including the fee provisions that we're here to talk about today, and then try to answer any questions that you all may have. So a brief history, the issue of water supply and wastewater connections has long been debated in this building, at least going back to 2020, and possibly a bit earlier.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I started in the mid-90s, in another capacity.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: A perennial It

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: has been around for a while.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: So in 2023, the Vermont Home Act Act of 'forty seven established a stakeholder group led by the Agency of Natural Resources, and it was comprised of representatives from the Agency of Congress and Community Development, the League of Cities and Towns, Municipal Public Works officials, engineering consultants, and environmental groups. And the group came together really to evaluate the Connections permitting process, and really look at, its shared and stated goal of reducing administrative burden and cost for applicants. Ultimately, the recommendations of the stakeholder group were a component of the administration's housing bill that the Connections language ultimately did not make it across last session. What did make it across was a $50,000 appropriation through the ANR budget to work on and develop a design manual specific to municipal water and water connections. So there was a $50,000 appropriation specific to this work, which we're fair enough to do. Jumping into sort of the substance of the policy, I think the bill has evolved slightly from what the work of the stakeholder group recommended back in 2023. As the person sponsoring that group and leading the group through the discussions, I do feel very confident that the work that we've come out with and that's represented in this bill is reflective of the intent of that group. It's just changed a little bit. I also don't want to speak for others, but having been embroiled in these discussions for the last couple of years, I do think there is a general sense of alignment on the path forward in the approach outlined in the bill. So really the heart of the bill as I see it is on page four, line 13, in draft 6.1. I think I'm working off the current draft. That's on our agenda, on

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the committee site today.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Okay.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: So the heart of the bill is in 1973 ks one, and this really outlines the approach that the agency would like to take related to municipal water supply and wastewater connections, and what it directs the agency to do is to adopt a general permit for these types of projects, and that under this permitting program, we would generally rely on deference. It's a may give deference, we rely heavily on deference, but there some reasons that were discussed in the Natural Resources Committee of why that's a may. But in the administration of the program, we would be basically moving this to a certification program by the licensed professional. So that is the key provision. In the same section, you'll see there is the director for the agency to facilitate and work through this process for creating the design manual related to municipal connections, and that's a really important piece of work for, to support this program. These regulations are housed in the Chapter one Environmental Protection Rules, so the first Environmental Protection Rules authorized under the agency, and they're raw. They're specific to septic systems, potable water, private drinking water wells, and then they also have standards for municipal connections. So the intent of this design manual is to really bring that information forward in a more of a schematic way that makes it more accessible and transparent for the licensed professionals that are doing the work on behalf of their applicant to follow and submit a general permit by the agency. We do intend to do some amount of auditing of that permitting program just to make sure, and that's the key reason why the May is there, is that we would like to be able to check the work periodically to make sure it's functioning as we envision.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Just to be clear, we had Michael O'Grady walk us through, I believe it was the bill as submitted, What we have and what you just went through today, is that the bill, is that been voted out? So this is the proposal that is or has come to us, is two twelve up there. Yeah, and I think this is

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: what my goal is to be.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: I think you're thinking of solving it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No, is just another one. Okay. I'm just making sure. Alright.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: And these are just municipal connections?

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Correct. Or not Doctor. Private.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Private water, wastewater? It's the connections to both municipal water and soot. Right. A building getting connected and public water, public water system, wastewater treatment center doesn't touch private. On-site wastewater systems, septic systems, private drinking water levels. Yeah, okay. Out of scope here. Gotcha. But in the scope of the rules, but out of

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: scope of what we're talking about.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: But I mean private if it's flipped to the municipal.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: No, I'm saying like you're on-site septic, your system fails very well.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, or your well. This is working up through a municipal system.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Let's say that this building to the city of Mount Pillars water, you might suppose, Yes, it does.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I'm assuming that this originated in

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We would have a sewer plant.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I'm assuming this originated in natural resources?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah. We have it, that's what I've been looking for because there are fees in it. Can you speak to the adequacy of the fees?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: I can, I can touch specifically on the fees? So we had worked to propose a fee structure similar to what we have in our baseline program, which is we have five baseline fee categories that increase by the size of the project, is determined by the flow of the project. That's what exists in our current fee structure today. We did something similar here, so created a tiered approach, we shrunk the categories down from five to three, and have proposed some amounts with those three categories. So this is,

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: this is all on

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: page five, page 11, excuse me.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I've got 10 online. Oh, so just use that wrong graph. Yeah, you've got a few. Section five. Yeah. That's

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: So we've consolidated this down to three categories, and we've reduced the amount an applicant would pay when compared to the current fee structure. So there is actually a reduction in the amount of fees paid under what exists today. We looked at three years of data on connection permits basis as to understand what we were creating here. Our projection right now is about a $9,200,000 gap created by the reduction of fees. But what is in the bill that is important, two things that I think, is creating this new product, this new general permit, think will result in some additional permit activity. But I think more notably in the bill, there's repeal of current exemptions that are in place for certain types of connections that would now require them to come through this program and receive a permit from the agency for the connection. There will be some increased activity under this model that's currently exempt now. So those two things will mitigate some of that piece. The part that was late recognition, I'll say, is we have a part of our fee statute around the Vermont Neighborhood Program that reduces the fee down for wastewater permits to $50 if they're contained within a Vermont neighborhood. What I understand is that there's gonna be an expansion of this designation under Act 181, and these are all the areas certified municipal water and sewer. So I'd like to respectfully request a little bit more time to work with Joint Fiscal to evaluate what that impact may look like. I've talked with them and we have an approach that we think we can do some analysis to really see what kind of gap we can expect. So I was hoping to kind of share, bring good news, but I do think that it would behoove us to take a step back and just evaluate this potential impact, and then happy to come back in once that work is completed.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: So,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we've got the new feelings that must be the executive structure of the day as an agent. So you would like us to sit on this, that you wanna send down the other one?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yes. I'd like to be able to do a little more work with joint

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: pain. I was hoping I could go down tomorrow, but I would rather have you get the numbers correct than what you do let us know because we're gonna have to rely on you as to whether or not these are adequately covering your costs.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Can we have a little bit more time because this we have children This in that regard for

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: this, I came to us, but I'm trying to get as many as I can out. Yeah. Of course. They're relatively simple. So

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I'll wait.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: But this is new since the

[Deborah (Agency of Education – Accountability and School Improvement)]: bill was defined in natural resources.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Didn't know if it's correct. Okay. Okay.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: It could be significant within the context of the connection, so it does does require some evaluation.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: $50 is do we have any Vermont Neighborhoods?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: We do. I don't have the list right now in front of me.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Right now we're doing Just how many?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Vermont neighborhoods, don't know the exact number, but in this program, we're doing about 15 to 20 permits in Vermont neighborhoods a year. Okay. Per year. In general We're building that much? They're in the cities and larger towns which have bigger projects, higher flows. Okay. And when you look at our fee categories, our highest fee category, our highest amount of flow is 13,500. So it wouldn't take many of those and an expansion of that to cause some potential issues. We do need to evaluate that and see.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. So as soon as you get that, let us know and we'll have you back in. We'll do what needs to be done. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. And I don't know

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: that I ever understood this or maybe I did and now I've forgotten. But if you look on on page 10 paragraph K, the the current fees, you're keeping those but for not a potable water system or wastewater system connection. What is an example of not potable?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: A potable water supply, technically the connection is a type of potable water supply, but the most common example of a potable water supply is anything that's not public. So you drill a well and you don't serve a public population, that is technically a potable water supply. So we're keeping our fees in place for the private wells for a different term. And then all of our on-site wastewater systems, all the septic systems. And we talked a little bit about this in committee. It can range from your single family residence to a skier account. So there's a variety of types of septic systems that we permit and approve. So these fees would continue to apply to all the other aspects of this title that we permit under. Okay, but

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: why are they considered not Isn't potable drinkable? Like if you're digging a well, would

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: you Oh, want should get the word not here. Yeah. Yeah, it's saying not, it's not, it's not a connection, is what it's saying.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: That is not a potable water supply or wastewater system connection. Oh, the not is connection.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Yes.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: The not is to connection, not to potable. Ah. Yes. That is a little confusing.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: It is. So if we're gonna do an amendment, we might want to clarify it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Not connectable. Was to feed. Feeding it to house. Yeah. Yeah. That is confusing.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah. This is all drinking water.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I just read it like four times to try to figure out

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: and looked back and forth and I

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: was like, wait. No. I I think yeah. Oh,

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I just thank you. So Burlington's building some really large apartment complexes right now in the city, and I would imagine once the high school's out

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: of the Macy's building, that'll probably be another big

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: project. They fall in the category five, that design flows greater than 10,000 GVC, GPV?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: It would depend on the connection. Okay. So, a high school would have a much higher connection, so we would look at the design flow associated with the connection, and that would determine the fee. So it's not the host system, it's really what's getting connected to that system and the flow associated with the use at that building.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: And is the 13,500, is that is that for the whole building? Or is that per unit or per application? I'm sorry.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I think there's only one connection. Is it there to the main lot?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: It would be the difference between here and Folk Avenue. Different size connection, different amount of flow. So the higher flow of the state house would be assigned a higher fee.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: But big apartment building is one connection. Yes.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Part of this, Burlington participated on the stakeholder group and they've been a town that I often consult with because they're interested in this topic. The delegation provisions that are in here, we've maintained the ability for a municipality to do this work on our behalf. Burlington is one of the the cities that have expressed interest in potentially pursuing that. And we do have a $100 administrative processing fee in here, and that is really to get the information from a delegated municipality into the state so we can maintain consistent records for land transactions. That's a big one. And just really maintain statewide consistency. I personally feel that's really important in terms

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: of records. Thank you. Okay. As soon as you have those numbers, let us know, and we'll get that out. Okay.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Appreciate everyone's time. Thank you.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's lot of have pain with that. Because we got S157, which set off a flurry at is this on recovery residences? Oh, yeah. That's I got a note through the chair within a minute of it being referred to us. The lieutenant the chair has explained it to me. The lieutenant governor has explained why we have it to me, and the secretary of the senate because there is no active fee in this bill. Katie, can you give us the 2,000 foot and do you know or do you want

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: me I would love for you to say. I curious.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Was getting down here. On recovery residences and it sets up a certification. They can get certified as certified recovery residences and how that's done will be done by rules. The Secretary of the Senate is concerned that because it's a new certification, somewhere in the rules process, a fee might get added. There is no fee in the bill, in the underlying Distraction. And I know we can go forward as is, I think, or we can say you shall not add a

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: fee without coming back.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I thought that might go without saying, but that's why we have it. The advocates are very anxious to get this bill out, and so we've got fifteen whole minutes to get it out of here, if possible, But, we've got Katie, so we're gonna do it.

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: Alright, Katie then asks the Legislative Counsel. Here is the committee report from Health and Welfare. I'm not gonna walk you through all this, but adds a definition in our chapter on substance use disorders of what a recovery residence is. It's in section two, gives responsibility over recovery residences to the Department of Health's Division of Substance Use Programs. In section three, there is an amendment to existing language about what is necessary to immediately transfer or exit somebody from a recovery residence. This was set to sunset, and that sunset has been removed, and there's also some language that makes a few changes to what is required to exit or transfer an individual. And then, here's our sunset. The language, I guess, that you're most interested in is the, on page six, the rule making language. So, this delegates to the Department of Health the responsibility for establishing a voluntary recovery resident certification program by rule. They have to file an initial proposed rule by a certain date, 09/01/2027. There are a few parameters as to what will be in that rule, and the final rule is to be adopted by 12/01/2028. Specifically, or at a minimum, the rule shall require that a recovery resident seeking certification from the state comply with the certification standards of VTAR or another organization approved by the department, and set forth minimum data collection and reporting requirements for certified recovery residences, including data elements and frequency. So, it is silent on the question of whether or not the department could include a required fee.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: See where this is going to take some time and they might like put in a fee. But I don't see this as giving them permission.

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: It's silent, which means that they could potentially bring back a fee if that's something that this committee is concerned about occurring. So, it doesn't direct them to do that, so there's nothing telling them to go

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: into

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: But

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: if they couldn't enact a fee without legislative approvals already?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: That's a good question. What I was

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: going to say is if you wanted to challenge a rule on the grounds for legislative intent, it's always helpful to have some language indicating what your legislative intent is to do so.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Since it's been flagged. I think the safest thing I'd say, if the department determines that it would be necessary, they bring that. They would need to come to the legislature for for approval. Sounds good. I'm sure you can put that in more. But if we can do that Would that work for everyone? Yeah. Anyone wanna know what you want about recovery residences?

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Is this

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: this is moving authority for them to the Department of Health? Like, they'll be the oversight for that? They this

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: is I'm sorry. Is it moving the from department of There's From Is it Dale? There's no

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: structure really in place for recovery residents So, right it's creating some structure, it's voluntary, so our recovery residents sort of have to opt in to be certified, but right now there isn't a legislatively identified point person. So, now this identifies the health department as sort of that responsible entity and directs them

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: to come up with a voluntary certification program. Got it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And one of the main drivers is led by the tenth law. I started yelling with this when I was in Right. Because it's a residence, and so Did you get it? Can't just expel someone if you're Mhmm. Mhmm. The wound. And there's paragraphs, if not pages, explaining that under what circumstances someone can be removed, under what circumstances someone can go into your room which is different than landlord tenant, because if this is a sober house and you're bringing alcohol on the premises, you're endangering everyone, but it also puts some parameters around not just throwing you out onto the street and saying, setting up some structure for you at least have to try and find some place for someone and have a plan for finding, but realizing that these are people who were there by their own choice and the organization's primary obligation is to protect staff and residents in the house. So we've been through it a lot in health and welfare. Think Senator Gulick and I could probably recite the paragraphs. But for the folks that are working in the field, this gives them legitimacy to be able to say we're certified. You don't have to be certified. I could open a recovering residence tomorrow.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: You would have to get a connection permit, though.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Yeah. We'd have to get a

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: putting it to our water. Well, so you've already done. Oh, I'm so sorry there. But yeah. So it's it's setting up some structure for these things that have been just rolling up and, know, around the state. Yeah. So we just can say NEP will have to come back. They determine that a fee is necessary to carry this out. They

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Sure. I can do that.

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: You wanting to are you wanting language this afternoon? No.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I don't. I Okay. Know your time is tight. I'm listening and occasionally popping up to testify,

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: so I I could potentially If you can

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: get it. Draft. I don't

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: know if you'll get me back here, but you might get the language back. Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: If we get the language back by the end of the day, we can pick just put this possible vote on 02/12 the next, and that will

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Okay. I'll see what I

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: can get done and what the There's

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: a thought going like he

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: has I a just

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I wonder, and I've read

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: this very, very quickly. Yeah.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Is there anything in here that asks whether or not they're working, whether or not they're doing what they're intended to do?

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, in the rule, there's that language that the rule has to seek minimum data collection and reporting requirements

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: since The they are

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: bills introduced had more reporting requirements, but this version does not because the original version sort of set up the certification program in statute. This moves it to rulemaking. So a lot of those specifics were moved into the rulemaking.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: The thing that you always worry about when you establish and you start something new is you start spending money on it. And then two years from now, it'll be back, we'll give them some more money, but nobody knows whether or not it's doing what it's intended to do, whether or not it is, in fact, working. There's been no analysis its workings and effectiveness, and there's been no Pope's due diligence. I wonder when we create things like this, should we not have something that says there's got to be a methodology established for determining whether or not it's worth doing.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Would you mind if I just was going to say

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: that I think one of the things that this bill does is it provides a structure for exiting folks who are not helping the other folks who are present at the facility. We took a lot of testimony that this system works really well and is very beneficial for people, and it will be more beneficial and more helpful when they are able to remove certain behaviors that actually are problematic. So, I know that's anecdotal, but we did hear that it is very successful for certain cohort of people.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I'm not sure there's any state money going into these, is it?

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, I think there's appropriations for our Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: The opioid settlement funds. Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: But that's No idea. But you seem

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: to know that everything that the state does, somebody ought to be looking at it, saying, does it make sense? It producing a return on investment? And it's something we should continue doing.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: What would you like to add here?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I would simply like to add a point in time in which we do, and it could be the agency and so on, does an evaluation and reports on that evaluation to the committee's jurisdiction.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: They might have data, not sure. Might be able to go

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: back to work. Go ahead.

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: I was just gonna say that concept could be folded into this subdivision A2, which is talking about that the rule has to set forth the minimum data collection reporting requirements, and we could put something in there about including annuals, I don't know how often you wanna receive them, but annual reports about the program efficiency,

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: something Program like

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: effectiveness One even the

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: thing we also heard too, though, is that recovery is not a linear trajectory. It's very bumpy and people come in and out over the course of many years, so it might be hard to Yeah,

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: determine what the measurements ought to be, and in fact, the agency could probably tell us what the measurements ought to be, But I can't imagine that you go and produce

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: a plethora

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: of recovery residents, you have no idea whether or they're working or not. And the people who are voting to spend the money on doing it, which is us, have no idea whether they're working or not.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's hard to collect the data because we did have recovery day, and people talk to us. Sometimes those people move around, and so if I'm in recovery here and then if I move back home to California, we don't know if I stay recovered or I fall off.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Well, I think that the agency if at all, ought to be able to tell us that. It was rather we dictate it to them to tell us what it is and then we incorporate that in.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Senate Education)]: Did we say

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: it's part of the certification rules?

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: That's how I was originally drafting it. That would only capture programs that choose to be certified. Right. So if that is what you're looking to collect data on, yes, I could pull that into subdivision too.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That would be of good to know.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: It may well be that there are industry standards for doing measurements of this. There may be standards that there may be some national certified organization or organization that reports on this. Again, it's just a question of looking what's available and what's generally accepted as valid for measurement. What do other states, municipalities, organizations do to measure this? I'm sure there's somewhere, there's something that we can use at least as a starting point, and the next time we look at it, we see what we get. From what we ask, we say, well, we need to do better, and then we devise it at that point.

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: There's a national organization,

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: and then we have

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: a Vermont chapter, VTAR, that's referred to here, that we would be following the VTAR standards. But I don't know what VTAR or the National Organization says about data collection as a best practice.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No. We could ask the Department of Health to

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: recommend standards. Nobody has anything that determines whether or not these things are working. We ought to be the firmatives. One of those few critiques that we ought

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: to do first. The Department of Health has a dashboard that has substance use data and reports, substance use scorecard, public health data, and Vermont overdose dashboard. So there's quite a bit of data right there.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: But not about whether or

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: not recovery houses are doing better than recovering on your own or do I think all the tests show on it we heard said they do, but are they better than AA?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Are some better than others?

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: On 10/03/2025, residents outcomes for fiscal year twenty five. I mean, that

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: would be a report we could look at. So it is fee reporting.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Senate Education)]: It looks

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: like it. Well, it

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: looks like it is. Well, it is an I. In fact, it's

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I could print this out.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Is there some sort of an industry standard, if you will?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I think it's repetition.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Well, length of recovery. I'll

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: give this to Sure. They also have grant contracts because they get state grants either through opioid settlement funds

[Deborah (Agency of Education – Accountability and School Improvement)]: or other funding sources that are So they have grant agreements with the Department of Health as well.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Since they did they do seem to keep that up. We can vote this out and then get the Department of Health to come in, and if it needs tuning, you could do that as a form.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: And certainly they can tell, they are the theoretically experts, they should be able to tell us how do you measure whether or not a program like this is working in delivering results and actually helping people. That's what we want. And they can figure out how to do that and combat and tell us. And then we can structure it into a measurement standard. And after the first two years or whatever period of time we take, we could have a better sense of, does this make any sense, and is it giving us the kind of intervention we're doing?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: We

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: can modify it at that point.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Katie, I'm trying to think about me too.

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: I think I can still try to fold in this concept because you're already delegating authority. They're already coming back with rules. So they're already going to be proposing what would be part of this reporting as part of their role making process. So I don't know that you need a list of measurables from them right now because that would be baked in. What I think you need to do is tell them that when they're making the rule, are factors that they have to be-

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: To consider.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Right. Okay. Okay. Let me see what I can come up with. Okay. There's a lot of good data.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: You sent it to her today? I sent

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: it to Charlotte. Thank you. She is the conduit for this. Okay. Can treat us? That she Witnesses that ice cream is being circulated or fashion. Lucky maybe is forbidden to go, but I don't know that they're obeyed. I'm fanning ice cream at the State House. Oh my god. That is Draconian's I know.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I mean, is it

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: possible ice cream, no pizza? This is committee time. Okay, we're gonna keep going. Actually, we

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: gotta wait and let me contact senate and see

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: if they're ready to join. Oh, that's right. Senate Ed is joining via Zoom. We'll see if they are as efficient as we are. And I have to run across the hall at 02:30. Okay. We will still be going when you get back. Can you go to the book? Yes.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Hi. Good luck. Thank you.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I do not see any documentation from you because we were there.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Oh, we presented, we updated our share of slides and the report.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You didn't receive it. Okay. No.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Oh, no. I wanna go with the tenant and the patient about I'm

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: following up right now. Okay. Or you could put it up on We certainly can screen. Yep. And then just make sure we get it Okay. I don't how to open that. Well, it's a very spring like tie. Thank you. Very springy. History. It's I was hopeful. It is. It is hopeful. As we look at the 37 inches. Well, the it's like a baby chick.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: My kids who are in college, Massachusetts, they got two and half feet.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: They're making, like, huge igloos. They canceled classes yesterday.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: I mean,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I I remember there were cars buried on our street in Boston.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Right.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Then you come out and chose yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You didn't move your home. Alright. Got you.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Oh, right. Sorry. I think that was the same button. Here it comes. Yeah. We hit that same button. Coming.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Center. Yes. We have the best presenting if we send that

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: to you. Oh, yeah. Okay. No.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. We have waited for synagogue patient. Okay. I'll make sure

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: I can share my slides. And kitchen with them. Yeah. Coming right now. I

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: thought I heard them, but I didn't see them.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Oh, everyone's here now. Everyone is here, so we can start. Welcome, centered education wherever you are. Thank you. I'm answering you. Can they hear us? Ask them. Usually, I'll see them up on the There they are. Okay. Okay. So we are getting set Oh, somebody there needs to turn up. You? It's on my end, Elizabeth.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yes. Says you're talking. So it's irritable.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Hear us? Yeah. Good

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: afternoon and thank you for having us. I'm Sylvia Sonders, Secretary of Education, joined by my team, leading the Accountability and School Improvement Act.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Jennifer Rodgeberg, the school improvement space.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Trevor Bloom, and also in the school improvement and accountability space. Doctor. Aaron Davis,

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: I'm the chief academic officer.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Can you hear us over there?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Think probably me.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Something more is yours.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So for the backup documentation, we did provide this presentation and also the full report that was released last week. I understand that your committee may not have received the backup documentation yet, so we have asked our executive team to resend that to you, make sure that you have access and may have only gone to Senate Education Act.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: This is a little bit outside our normal jurisdictions, except if things we're interested, since we have to figure out how to pay for education, what we were paying for.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Sorry, quality is our central focus. So I wanted to share a little background on the State of Vermont's accountability framework. It is a federal requirement under the Every Student Suitivities Act for each state to develop an ESSA state plan, which identifies how they will measure school quality. We'll walk through today the parameters for that and the role of the state agency in supporting that quality and school improvement effort. The accountability system is the same since 2017. So this has been our accountability framework for some time. The efforts that we've done over the last couple of years are to bring more transparency to that accountability system, so there's a clearer understanding of the framework, so that we can really support the field with ongoing continuous improvement. Our focus continues to be on elevating quality, and so this data on an annual basis helps us to understand, get a snapshot of our performance, identify areas where we need to strengthen our support, and is designed with the idea that every single student can succeed in recognizing that certain schools and students may need additional support, and this is an important part of our effort to differentiate support. We also, through this process, are able to identify those schools and district systems that are exceeding expectations and through the school improvement planning are able to identify those best practices that can be scaled and leveraged statewide. So as we are increasing transparency around our accountability framework, we are at the same time increasing support. So what you'll hear today, we're going to walk through background so you have an understanding of the accountability framework. We will share the results from this year's state report card and then focus on the work that we're doing in the field to really analyze the data to support continuous improvement efforts, along with highlighting several statewide initiatives that are designed to address the areas of weakness where we'd like to strengthen overall academic performance statewide. So, that, I'll turn it over to Deborah to give some context. Thank you.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: So, recognizing that we want

[Deborah (Agency of Education – Accountability and School Improvement)]: to set a stage for you all, we're going to start with the ESSA, with Every Student Succeeds Act. So, is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that was updated in 2015. Previously, was No Child

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Left Behind, just for context.

[Deborah (Agency of Education – Accountability and School Improvement)]: Some of the kind of core goals that shifted with ESSA were the shift from the compliance driven mandates that existed in No Child Left Behind to a more meaningful support for student success. A few of the highlights that I want to bring forward here is it maintains accountability expectations, particularly for the lowest performing schools, schools where student groups are consistently underperforming, and schools with persistent low graduation rates. Really, at the bottom line, ESSA represents an evolution, not a retreat, from accountability. It really does set down these clear requirements that statewide accountability systems must expect more progress from the groups of students who have been behind. Base school ratings on the progress of all groups of students and expect action when any group of students is consistently underperforming. We'll move through some of those and get to those action steps towards the end of the presentation. So Secretary Saunders did mention our state plan. Our state plan is our leading document, how the state does meet these accountability measures as laid out in ESSA. We hold SUs accountable to ensure continuous improvement to better serve all of our students, and that's really laid out within The the state original one was approved in 2017, and USED encourages us to amend that state plan. The state plan should be a living document. It's similar to an SUSD level strategic plan. We've certainly had a renewed focus on amendments with Secretary Saunders in office. And since she's joined the AOE, we've submitted two amendments, both of which were approved. One January 25 and the next one September 2025. These amendments have been primarily compliance driven. As you know, we were monitored by the US Department of Education, and some of these amendments were really driven by what we learned through that monitoring process. We're currently preparing our third amendment. And all of these amendments are done with stakeholder engagement and they represent a collaboration across the agency. Everyone within the agency looks towards the state plan as one of our leading documents. So, our current state, just as we think about the reorg that the agency has gone through, this is one of the things that we in this space of accountability and school improvement look at, this current state of these accountability structures that are They're not quite connected, but when we look at them with our trained eye, we see lots of connections. So, right now, we have the state plan. We have the EQS and the DQS, which are our state rules. We have a number of other federal programs and requirements like IDA and WIOA. We have annual assurances that are signed by our superintendents, and then we have a number of other state laws. And all of those contribute to our accountability system. This is where we want to go. So we want to align these systems. We know that that exists. We can see similarities as we look at them. And one of the goals of this area of accountability and school improvement is to work to align and then provide guidance and guiding documentation to the field so that we can best support them through that alignment. And here's just a more detailed list of what goes beyond ESSA, and it is also not inclusive of everything. So, you see we have a number. We have a number of state education laws. Ganna mentioned the annual insurance. We have Perkins. So, all of these contribute to our overall accountability framework. I'm going to pass it to my colleague to speak a little bit more about the measures and then go into the school identification. Hello everyone. I'm going to talk a

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: little bit about the measures for school performance. And so those are the things that you're going to see in the Safe Report Card document as well. So school performance is built through a number of different data points, and not every data point is collected at every single grade level and every single school in part because of the different structures of schools that we

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: have in Vermont, which we'll talk

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: a little bit more about. K-five schools still have graduation rates in their school performance measurements. So these are a list of school performance measurements that we pull from. The VTCAP is obviously a large part of that school performance measurement. For our high schools, we also have things like graduation rates, college and career ready outcomes, as well as performance or at least involvement in college and career ready assessments. So those are all the things that we say go into, these are the ingredients for school improvement, but not every single school will have, not every single school has the same soup. It is a number of different ingredients based off of n sizes for one, but also the structure of the schools. So there is not a large EL population that will change the weights. There's not a school that does not fix science that will change the weights. So we weight based off of these things, so we can have a composite score, we can be comparing apples to apples, not oranges to bananas. And so this is part of the weighting process. So for high school, for an elementary school, as you can see for this example, the elementary school's performance is driven entirely by VT Cap scores, but that's not the case for a high school. So in the report card and also on some of the materials that you can see on our website, we talk a number of ways of measuring these school performance indicators. So, of the ways is current performance, which I think we can all understand as what's happening right now. Performance change, so that's comparing from last year to this year. And then we have these other equity measurements, and so these are the gaps between student subgroups. We're going go a little bit further into that as well, which is the current equity index. So subgroup might be historically marginalized populations, non historically marginalized populations students with IPs that are not English. So that's some of the subgroup comparisons. So you can have, again, gaps and changes in those gaps, and that's where the equity index changed. I wanted to bring forward a note about this too, is that some folks see on the snapshot or they may see in some of the reports that they've been given, there is a difference between accountability versus reporting. Certain students are in school counts for accountability purposes, and some students are reporting purposes as well. I'm happy to provide a little bit more clarity on that, but that's a nuance that I think is sometimes challenging to put a finer point on. We just have to have a higher level of trust in the accountability, specifically with you don't want to be holding a school accountable for a student that showed up on tests, right? They want to be part of the education system. So we have some style gaps that we put in, but for reporting that may be slightly different. So I just wanted to flag that as conversations too. And federal guidelines do require states to publish both for reporting purposes and accountability purposes. So some of that we just went through cycles with identifications. I'm gonna talk a little bit about what do those different identifications mean. So ESSA requires the states to identify certain schools for specific reasons. And we have a low performance, so those are our schools that are in the bottom 5% of Title I schools. Those are what we refer to as our comprehensive support schools. We also are required under ESSA to identify schools that are in need of targeted support. So those are schools that have some of those large subpopulation, equity gaps that I mentioned. So these are requirements under ESSA. Our state plan provides enough further nuance to how those calculations are done. But again, this comes through our federal requirements. So this is a simplification of complex process, but we essentially have two tracks, and I mentioned this too kind of in relation to the measurements performance, And I'll go into this, what does priority one mean? What does CSI mean? CSI is that comprehensive support of schools. We also have equity gaps, and there's some levels of equity gaps that we've discussed. But ultimately, as I'll show, the further up you go, that means that you've had sizable gaps and a bit persistent. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a months. But these are our tracks, so to speak, on basis. So for our equity gaps, we have in Vermont, this thing called Equity One. It is a Vermont thing. It is not a federal designation, but it's used as an early warning system to say to schools, we're noticing some performance gaps between your student subgroups. What we see for TSI is that persistence. It's adding that this other element of these gaps are continuing over time, and that's where we get this targeted support and improvement designation, or TSI. For ATSI, it's that these gaps exist, they are persistent, and then that student subgroup population performance is particularly low. So if you had a student group, for instance, a historically marginalized student population, at a whole, school has performed much, performance has been much lower than their peers. So that's where we get it for ATSI.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: And just a

[Unidentified Senator (Senate Education member)]: clarifying question. Can you explain

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: to me what the difference is between specific student groups and subgroups? Yeah, absolutely. So we have a number of subgroups that we do comparisons between to say, you know, it's written into our state plan to ensure that we're measuring between performance between student groups. And so, historically marginalized, non marginalized, IEP, non IEP, free and reduced lunch, non agreed and reduced lunch. So, there's a number of indicators that we kind of compare these two subgroup populations. And then those performance measurements are the group that those different subpopulations. So what specific student group, what does that mean? So, for instance, historically marginalized was the sub group where you're seeing that gap exist, and then we would look not just if there's a gap, but we'd look at, okay, how is that historically marginalized population just by itself performing in relation to other schools with historically marginalized student So we compare within schools and then outside of schools for that measurement. Okay. So we have in Vermont also, Vermont term, this construct of priority one. And so priority one are those schools that have declining performance and particularly low performance. So if you think about a quad graph, it's that bottom left group that has that low performance or declining performance. And that group is where we select our comprehensive support and improvement schools out of. In some years, that group can be really large. You could have a lot of schools that are declining and a lot of schools with low performance, and we have to do some other high breaker mechanisms. I can say for this year, we did not have to do that. So we had our priority one schools are our comprehensive support schools. So they are the schools that are not meeting and they're declining in their performance. And just to be clear too, CSI and ATSI are three year cycles. So we just identified and won't be identical. And we just ended a three year cycle. So we have a number of schools that are exiting their patients. So as I said, 14 of the schools that we identified three years ago have exited this identification of comprehensive support and improvement. Yeah. We have the two schools that continue to have that low performance and low growth on their school indicators. We have also 12 new schools that were brought into this cohort. 11 of those schools were because of low performance. As I said, it's low performance, low growth. We also had one school who pre entered, and so there are some caveats and do not pass goes for identification. If you have a cohort that's had persistent equity gaps that have remained, then you can move, go up to a CSI designation. And so that school was already brought up into the CSI designation. For ATSI, so these are where we see equity gaps. We had one middle school in high school for TSI, so that is persistent equity gaps, but not severe subpopulation performance issues where we see that with ATSI. So one middle high school is entering a target score of improvement and three elementary schools. And so for high school, as I said, that could be differences between graduation rate between students populations, not just BTCAP performance as well, because again, the suit is different for high school students.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Alright, thank you. I was just going to wait till the end, but I think I might forget. So I was hoping to ask what your thinking was to do the identification based on school rather than district.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Was there a high school? I think so. That's a- That's laid out. That's a federal requirement. Yeah.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah. There are other mechanisms by which you said if you didn't find support districts, but they're not within DQS processes. But we don't have a standardized requirement process that the federal government sends for districts. I agree.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: It was part of this process. We did calculate those ratings at the Supervisory and Supervisory District level to really support that system level intervention and that's aligned to who are preparing our

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: district health districts. So, then I'm looking at this page. I'm still on page 18, I think, but when we think about high schools, middle schools, and then elementary schools, typically, scores at the elementary level tend to be slightly higher than high schools and I'm wondering if you've got a district that doesn't have high school or a middle school, are you guys factoring that in in terms of their scores?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: No, because we measure at the school level no matter what, high school, middle school, elementary school, and we compare create this weighted indicators, so we're comparing apples to apples. So school level measurement or identification is not impacted by the district that they're in, unless it's specifically a small school or an 80 school, which we have some nuances for. For districts, that might be true, right? And so I will say that it's actually often the reverse because we see a lot of high schools that have indicators like graduation rates, college and career readiness, and those weighted indicators can actually lift up in schools in ways that are not. So our elementary schools are, as we said on this slide, we identify almost entirely elementary and middle school.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Great, and since you brought up graduation rates, and maybe you're going to get to this, because that's been a big topic of conversation, When the student does early college, I know they have to unenroll from their school. Are you counting those are those students being counted as graduating or is it really up to the school to report back to you that they've now re enrolled at the end of their senior year? I'm worried that actually skewing the graduation rate. So the latter. So school might not report back to you or it might.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So, they're required to. The district is, we get all of our data from the district and then we also have a certification process to ensure that they've had the appropriate time of due diligence to review and then certify to the agency that the data are correct. With respect to early college, the districts are required to enroll when they're in early college and then before graduation to enroll them back into the system. So there are guidelines for how to do that and a process for them to confirm that that has been reported accurately. And

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: you feel confident that that's happening, like, across the board? That they are re enrolling their students right before graduation that they get counted as a graduate?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So I would say overall, we have impressed upon districts the importance of certifying their data. And when there had been a review, there were a few this session that have been going through review, and there have been reported data inconsistencies coming up to the agency for a variety of coding issues that are occurring at the district level. So, part of the reason that we have added additional certification is to ensure that at that level of the school district, they have the space and opportunity to review each and amount they appoint, every share with us.

[Deborah (Agency of Education – Accountability and School Improvement)]: And I just wanna harper back to one of the earlier slides where we were looking at all of those different accountability tracks and particularly your question about identifying at the school level versus at the SUSD level. That's one of the things that we're working towards is we have this federal requirement to identify at the school level. It is one of the few places in federal law where we as the agency have kind of the authority to come in and work at the school level, but at the state level, much of our authority is more of that district and supervisory level. So we're really looking to align those two in ways that are easier for the districts and the schools and

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: perhaps frankly to be able to work with them and hold them accountable too. I

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: don't think we have a lot of time to talk about what this means with our next steps but I'd happily come in. We can discuss that further because there's lot of work that we're doing now to get in alignment with our but also just to for best practices in the state of which you'll see some of that in the report. So I just wanted to flag that before I go

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: over. And again, this is designed for continuous improvement. Those schools that have been identified for CSI do benefit from additional school improvement funds. And so part of our team's job is to really work with the school at home district teams and evaluating the data and being strategic around how those additional dollars can be leveraged to support the goals that they have identified.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: So, this slide shows you the breadth of the findings that we included in our report. We've done a thorough analysis of student outcomes data, the graduation data, the CTF, college career readiness, as well as the subgroups that get blocked to all through. One thing that I want to highlight about outcomes data like that is that we always want to be looking upstream. So, are a number of upstream conditions within these schools or the districts or supervisory unions that could be leading to these outcomes. Some quick examples, the availability of quality instructional materials for teachers vary across the districts and supervisory unions. If there's a lack of a coherent instructional vision for a district supervisory union or even an individual school, you're going to see a decline in student outcome data. Additionally, strategies, including scheduling strategies to ensure that student learning gaps are able to be addressed adequately are all different conditions that can impact the outcomes data that we're seeing here. I'm gonna walk you through some of these outcomes. We've included additional information about each of them in the appendix. All of it is in

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: report. But just kind

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: of wanted to preview to you all, you know, as we look at the outcomes finding, to ask you to hold in mind, thinking about what some of the systemic challenges that may be leading to this in our state are. And then I'm gonna close out this section by sharing with you some of our plans next steps to support schools and districts in addressing these gaps. Okay, so to begin with, just want to remind everyone that all students in grades three through nine are required to take the state's annual academic assessments in math, English language arts. And then in grades five, eight, and 11, students also take the state's annual academic assessment in science. Most students fulfill that requirement by taking the Vermont Comprehensive Assessment Program. You've heard us already shorthanding that to VTCAP. So that's what we're referring to. Students that are on individualized learning plans that have the most significant cognitive disabilities may fulfill that requirement by taking the multi state alternative assessment. But on the whole, students are primarily satisfying this through VTPAC assessment. Then what you'll see is that across Vermont, the student proficiency in English language arts, shorthanded to ELA, mathematics, and science remains well below the OCA state long term goals under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Specifically in ELA, no grade level exceeded 60% proficiency. And in mathematics, the rates rarely surpassed 50%. Science performance is somewhat higher than math, but remains clustered in the low to mid 40% range. And that these results overall indicate that a majority of Vermont students are not yet meeting grade level academic standards, which underscores the need for sustained instructional improvement across our content areas. We not only look at the results by student outcomes, but also by student performance. So, when we look at whether or not a school is meeting, approaching, not meeting or exceeding, and additionally, whether or not their rating itself is declining, not improving, improving or excelling, what you see on that kind of matrix image there. More than half of our Vermont schools are rated as not meeting or approaching performance expectations, and additionally are either declining or not improving compared to the prior year. And only 26% of schools are meeting or exceeding expectations, but just 12% of meeting expectations and demonstrating improvement. And these findings indicate that sustained academic growth improvement are not yet widespread in the state. Our achievement gaps are expanding. So, when we look at the equity designations that Ian walked you through previously, those nearly doubled from prior years, which reflects the widening achievement gaps among historically marginalized student groups. The number of schools that have been identified for equity concerns increased substantially, specifically for the subgroups of students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, and English language learners. The sharp increase suggests that disparities in outcomes are not only persistent, but also are intensifying, requiring focused and sustained attention with interventions that meet the needs of those subgroups. And so, that has been a sobering set of findings for us, we are already being proactive in our statewide approach to meet the needs of students in our schools. The first one, I'm glad you looked at some questions around the data itself, is to really focus on data driven urgency. By being more transparent with our findings, we are hoping to inspire some additional attention on this. We know that our statewide results show inconsistent performance and that that requires coordinated system wide action. And it requires ensuring that the data that we are working with and that the schools themselves are looking at and setting their goals are accurate so that they can make informed decisions about their next steps and monitor their progress toward it. We're also leveraging best practices. Anytime we look at aggregate data like this across the state, which of course, we also did look at the school level as well. But we know that there are some real bright spots. There are schools that are having success that are exceeding the performance and closing that faster. We're being intentional about identifying those schools, partnering with them, understanding what's making the difference for their outcomes, and then highlighting it and scaling those practices to other places. We also have a literacy and a math transformation initiative going on. Act 139, of course, is supporting our Read Vermont initiative that's focused on driving evidence based literacy implementation statewide. And we also have Count On Vermont, which is advancing our Pre K through 12 data driven math improvement strategy. I also want to highlight that we are building inclusive and coherent systems. So Act 139, we published a significant report on that back in September, And we continue to stand by the fact that what is in Act 170 is the right legislation. That's what needs to be happening in all schools. And it's really a matter of stronger implementation. So, we have a statewide approach for inclusive education and integrated approaches. And then the statewide graduation requirements, which you all also mentioned earlier, is intended to provide a clear shared finish line for all students in Vermont that will clarify the expectation and ensure that, as Ann said, we're comparing apples to apples rather than apples to bananas. And lastly, I want to highlight our stronger improvement in accountability systems at the state level. So, as we mentioned, the agency did undergo a significant reorganization. Ian and Deborah have been leading some really important work in this area. We are continuing to use evidence based continuous improvement. We're committed to faster assessment reporting. We are providing additional supports from the AOE to the identified schools. We're being proactive in finding those early warning indicators and not waiting for schools to be identified before we're providing them with additional support. And lastly, we are ensuring that there are clear growth measures that link data to the actions that the schools are taking.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Whatever it takes out, thanks. We

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: started the conversation by focusing on the purpose of the report card, I wanted to conclude with reinforcing the need for the state report card to drive continuous improvement. This is how we are approaching it at the agency. Through our reorganization, we have made clear that it is the responsibility of the entire agency to support our schools that are struggling and also our responsibility to identify and lift up those promising practices for scale. So that means that we are continuing to look at a comprehensive set of data and identify proactively where there's a need to provide more targeted support along with learning from those best practices across the system. So with our reorganization, we have a renewed focus on accountability that has created specialized teams to focus on accountability and district and school support as part of this effort. We see this as a core responsibility for the agency of education to partner with the field to elevate academic outcomes. We are accountable to multiple stakeholder groups. We have mentioned to you our responsibility to the federal government. I wanna highlight a couple areas where we have been out of compliance historically as a state, and we are focused on achieving compliance and also really leveraging that as an opportunity to drive performance improvement. So specifically, we have been out of compliance with the state with our assessment timeline and the peer review process. I have had the pleasure of leading school improvement in multiple states across the country, and can attest that the state of Vermont releases this data very late. I'm used to this report card and the data being available as early as August, latest October, and Vermont has consistently published those results in So the we are working internally at the agency to completely reengineer this process, including changing and reevaluating our data collection, our business rules, to be able to deliver the state report card in the fall, and that will require the field to also provide us data in a different cadence and to have certification much earlier. So as early as this week, we'll be meeting with our superintendents to walk through how this process will be unfolding. There'll be a series of webinars and engagement with business managers, data managers, special education directors, so that everyone who's involved in this process understands some of the shifts that we need to make in order for these results to be available at a time that is more supportive of decision making for school planning, school budgeting. So just note that this is an area of intensive focus for us at the agency that has the commitment across multiple divisions and will require really strong changes with how we collect and certify data. I see Ann has some more. Thank you. I'm in her peripheral vision.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I'm not in your peripheral vision, I'm in her blind spot. Thank you. That's really good news. I think that would be so helpful for districts because they could know early on what's going on and then make improvements. I had a couple questions. One was about the data, how long the report card has been around? You mentioned it earlier. How many years was it? This particular SM plan was established in 2017,

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: and it requires me publish both a snapshot, which has an interactive feature dashboard and a state report card. You.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: And then in this presentation,

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: there's

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: a lot of data from '22, '23, '24, '25. Is there any way we can see a longer range data chart or any kind of, you know, ten, maybe ten or twelve year or beyond?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So we can. I think the caveat there is that we did shift our assessment. I know, and that is so frustrating. The Smarter Balanced Assessment, and then we shift it to the VTE cap. And so as you look at those trend lines, it's important to recognize that change. However, that that data is available. I would say our trends are largely consistent with what we're seeing on the NAEP results, which is the nation's report card. So that's helpful for us in kind of affirming overall trends. One of the things we would note is as we're looking at the increased equity gaps, you know, part of that may be because we have actually raised the bar and the expectations moving from Smarter Balanced to VTCAP. That's actually the responsibility of the state, right, as we're really trying to improve performance. But those are some things that need to be kept in mind, sort of thinking about the longer term trend. Okay. Yeah, remember I was still teaching when we moved from whatever it was to SBAC then, I mean, takes a lot of effort, time and effort.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: And is that, is that always like a federal mandate or is that a state choice or Cause it is hard to look at data over a long period of time if you keep changing the testing. Is that a federal thing?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: It says state choice. It's state choice.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: And now we're at VCAP? Yes, VCAP. VCAP.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So the timeline is an area that we are focusing on. It's also included in our strategic plan framework under operational excellence. That's one of our key performance indicators is accelerating reporting for the state report card for this very reason. Additionally, we received a finding from US Ed that they did not provide the level of support for the continuous improvement plans, ensuring that there was the right set of rigor and support in reviewing those plans. So our team here that you have is really out to lead the efforts in enhancing our support in that area, and we'll continue to focus on providing that level of data driven evidence based review of continuous improvement plans. To the state, this data is important because it gives us an understanding of educational quality and a way to benchmark our progress to achieving statewide education goals and to aligning our work towards that broader statewide vision. To students, families, and communities, we recognize the importance of having transparency around school quality so that we can all share in the collective responsibility of driving elevated academic performance. And as we work with schools and districts in evaluating the data, we also bring in other qualitative inputs that are important to understanding the overall results, because we take a very comprehensive view when we're supporting school improvement to understand what are some of the contributing factors or barriers to achieving improved performance. And then as we're aligning with the budget that is available and certainly federal dollars, that those resources are being maximized in a way to bring in evidence based resources to support our teachers and to support the right level of intervention for each student. So with that, we have left a lot of room for questions. In the appendix, you can see a tremendous amount of detail. We did lift up a number of the charts and analytics that are included in the report to that there for reference. If any of your specific questions are related to a particular indicator, we can certainly go to those slides and be able to show you those results over time. We'll wanna open it up to questions. Yeah,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: it sounds appreciated. I

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: didn't recognize you, Erin. It's out of context. We're the rotary together. Is great. I really appreciate it. And you're really focusing this presentation on school by school performance. The question I keep coming to, and I'm not to completely derail it off this topic area, but with this panel, I'd love to hear your thoughts as to the high school graduation rates. Not necessarily, is it the schools that we're seeing lower graduation rates or is it a more of a demographic characteristic of which which kid groups are are increasingly not completing their high school degrees in Vermont at an in my opinion alarming rate?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Graduation rates are a little bit complicated, so we're going to unpack a few things there. So when we look at the overall trends, we are seeing a decline in our statewide graduation rates, so this is demonstrated on the slide here, both when looking at the four year cohort rate and the six year cohort rate. We also need to recognize that this is an area that we have to have substantial focus as a state because our graduation requirements are locally derived. Sometimes it's not comparing apples to apples when we're really reviewing school by school graduation rates. We, one of the significant finding that we've received from the US Department of Education was that our graduation rates have, our graduation requirements do not meet the statutory obligations because they demonstrate uneven rigor in terms of expectations for our graduates. And that part of the reason within Act 73, you have directed the agency to make recommendations on the statewide graduation requirements. We have done so under the leadership of Doctor. Davis, and that's now with the state board to review. So it is important to have that just context as we look at overall graduation rates and understanding if we're consistently preparing every high school graduate for college or career. And so as we look at these graduation rates, I think it's also important for us to connect it with some of the college and career readiness indicators, because we are seeing that fewer than sixty percent of our high school seniors are demonstrating proficiency in a college and career readiness assessment, and fewer are actually entering a post secondary after enrollment. So, when we think about graduation rates, yes, we are seeing a decline, but there's actually more work that needs to be done to ensure that the expectations are set in a way that is both rigorous and equitable, and that it's translating into our students being prepared to enter the workforce or to enter college. You wanna add to that?

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: I think, you know, ACT 77 really had a clear stated purpose of increasing the number of Vermont students who are completing preschool and prepared for post secondary experiences. One component of that is the flexible pathways opportunities. That's another area that we were identified through the USED visit as being inconsistent in terms of the rigor of what those experiences are. And so, Secretary Saunders has done a lovely job of identifying just the variety in current graduation requirements across the state and what she just described. Quick talking point on that. It currently ranges from 16.5 credits to 28.5 credits. So, it's a really significant variation. And then, as I said, within that, in terms of the ways that students satisfy those requirements, flexible pathway opportunities vary from one high school to another, and that of course would also affect the graduation rates themselves. That would be the one thing to

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: add.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah, would just also add 16.5 to 23.5 is not correlated with graduation rates too. So we have some systems that are, yeah, it doesn't, it's not logically as many would consider matching onto with higher graduation rates meaning lower graduation, sorry, higher credits meeting lower graduation rates. We saw a lot of nuances to that. Really variable.

[Unidentified Senator (Senate Education member)]: For anybody, my slide 32. Anyhow, this this grade eight to grade nine, really significant decline. Any thoughts as to what what is going on there?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So, I'll kick it off and then you can talk about something about This root is another area that we've had a finding from the US Department of Education, in that we're, we can track in readiness for students to make those critical transitions and that includes, you know, for pre K to kindergarten, fifth to sixth, eighth to ninth grades, that's present also in our data as we're looking at overall readiness. So, I think much of the readiness conversation that Doctor. Davis can really unpack this, is making sure we're very clear around the grade level content standards so that students have the opportunity to master those standards in the content area, at grade level, so that they're ready to take on more arduous coursework as they advance through their learning continuum. Yeah.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: And so, when we think about a high school that may be receiving students from a variety of sending K-eight systems or middle schools that are feeding into it, we often hear from educators in those high schools that they can, without looking at a student's reference, kind of guess which sending school they came from, which again speaks to those findings around the variability from one place to the next, even within the same district sometimes, the inconsistencies from one school to the next in terms of those curricular materials, instructional materials, instructional practices, professional learning focus from one school to the next, again, even within the same supervisory union or district. So those inconsistencies make it difficult when students enter ninth grade in a new, you know, high school in a new setting and are mixed with each other. There's, of course, social elements to the social emotional learning that's different about being in high school as well. And the gaps that we're seeing in terms of our student outcomes around proficiency and academics are informed in part by the lack of coherence.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I was just going

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: to say that was one of the things that I've heard over and over again this summer when I was doing the redistricting committee, was hearing that that's a big problem with supervisory unions, so there isn't like a cohesive K or pre K to 12 experience. So sometimes at the high school level, you get these students coming from different districts that have different, whatever, expectations, standards, maybe even strategic plans, and all of a sudden they're in this high school and it takes a while to get everyone sort of on the same level. So I appreciate you mentioning that, because I think that's so important that pre K to 12 cohesive learning experience for kids, which we don't always have in this state.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: And it's really, in my opinion and there's quite a bit of research around the importance of teacher collaboration. So in my opinion, it's it's a missed opportunity. Right? If we've had more coherence, yes, it would benefit the students. It would absolutely also benefit the teachers to be able to talk to somebody who's teaching the same grade level, the same subject areas, you know, at another school and be sharing and learning from each other, which, again, ultimately benefits the students as well.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: You know,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we've known for a long time that Vermont students coming from small high schools by a national standard I have a kind of a shock reaction when you go to UBM and find out that your English class is in the auditorium and there's 300 students and nobody cares what your name is. You are a number. Are we tracking it all? We have some really small schools. You've been with the same x number of students for eight years, and suddenly there you are with all these new students. And you may have had the same four or five teachers, and now you've got 15 to 20 teachers. The just that kind of social adjustment could keep you from, you know, being at the top of your game academically. There's just there's a social life going on that there didn't used to be. And I'm wondering if there's gotta be a national kind of standard for that social life transition, but if that's one place we not having being with the same people where it's a very secure feeling for a child, young adolescent, can be pretty frightening when it's gone, and I'm wondering if we are tracking that at all.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: At the post secondary level it's been more challenging for us to track student persistence. Now

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I'm wondering about eighth into ninth. Oh, eighth into ninth.

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: Sorry. You mentioned Neon, and I think I might have left

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: a question.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: We do have an action plan that the US Department of Education is reviewing in order to strengthen the transition planning from eighth to ninth grade. But there's also other critical transition years within our system that we're adding to that review to make sure that those students are prepared to the next grade level. Thank you.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I was just going to piggyback on Senator Beck's question about the EL or English language scores. I have a lot of new Americans and English language learners in my district, and I do see that the scores declined from anywhere from last year or 24 to 25. Is that a trend that you see kind of mirrors the general English proficiency test scores? Or, I'm just wondering if you can shed any light on what happened there or what's happening.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: We're still looking closer at this finding. We do know there's been some shift in terms of where our English language learners are across the state. Increasingly, it's not just in Chittenden County. And so that's been a shift for some of our more rural schools to be prepared to meet the needs. And also, if we think about the number of students, when it's spread more geographically in the more rural areas, than the multilingual learner teacher is traveling in order to meet the needs of a small number of students across multiple schools, the level of embedded support becomes more challenging. We've actually been partnering with UVM and some of their professors on some research, specifically in low incidence, is what it's termed, rates of English language performers across the state to be able to be more strategic in meeting their needs. Because we also changed the weights and

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: one of the primary beneficiaries of that were schools that had a number English language learners, so it would be interesting to know if putting more money in there actually helped. But if we would expect that scores would improve when you improve funding. Right.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: We have a national expert on our team in this area. If you want to share a little bit about sepsis levels. Yeah, Stephanie Begle, the

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: national organization specifically for supporting multilingual students. She is the one that's partnering with Doctor. Rebecca Callahan at University of Vermont. We've really been attending to this very closely. And so, as I stated, I think it speaks to the complexity of meeting the needs of our learners. Yes, we infuse some extra dollars and as the context shifts and the locations of them, students who are learning English shifts, it does, in some cases, tend to be a more mobile population of students. It's not quite as cause and effect of a referral as we might hope

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: to see. I mean, anecdotally, I think we've had some new American families leave our districts of the housing costs. They moved to more rural areas where they leave the state altogether. Housing is so expensive.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: We're definitely seeing those shifts.

[Unidentified Senator (Senate Education member)]: One last question, Serge. Looking at the last slide of your appendix, the percentage of schools by rating achievement and growth. And I mean, I read this and

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I looked at

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: it, it's like

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Ready to get this much.

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: Yeah. The

[Unidentified Senator (Senate Education member)]: scale is like, we have we have a lot of schools that are struggling or at least students in our schools are struggling. But then when I look at the growth it makes it makes me think they're knocking it out of the park. Right. I mean is this telling us that like kids when they arrive at school are just really far behind? Or what is that telling us?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: There's a couple of things to understand with this chart. So to your first kind of hypothesis, in order, yes, that is partly true. So, in order for our students to be performing at a higher level of proficiency, they need to be exceeding growth targets as opposed to meeting growth targets in order to be able

[Deborah (Agency of Education – Accountability and School Improvement)]: Well, to get what are great?

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: I don't know that we can say there's a finding about them entering school in kindergarten, right? By third grade we know that they've got gaps in terms of proficiency to the grade level standards that you're seeing.

[Unidentified Senator (Senate Education member)]: So green is kind of the big green bar means they're we're treading water.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So what this means this is a school wide measure of growth looking at chain from the last year and so they're at the point of meeting but in order to kind of jump to that next level of overall performance they actually would need to be accelerating and their getting to at an exceeding level. I want to also call out that our growth measure in the current accountability framework is a very crude measure of growth. This is an area that I believe we need to focus more on. We've already established a technical advisory committee to inform our review of a growth metric so that it is more refined, really being able to measure learning gains. So what this is looking at basically is a change in performance level. So, it rolls up, if we start with the student, the student is getting a level one and they've grown enough to get to a level two, they would count for growth. But that student might actually earn a number of scale scores, but not earn enough scale scores to get to the next level of growth and the level of proficiency, and they wouldn't be counted as growth. So when you, it's a really kind of a blunt measurement of growth that I feel we should further examine and actually have a better measure of learning gains that is accounting for the change in scale score performance within proficiency level. That's important for us to understand if we're on the path to getting to proficiency. So it's important when you're developing an accountability system to have a balance of looking at proficiency. We want students to be operating there and have that mastery, but we also need to account for growth. Our measure of growth is not as refined as other states, and I think it's an area that we need to focus on. So that technical advisory committee has been, we're standing that up right now, and that includes experts in assessment and also practitioners in the field to evaluate how we can make some of these changes so that when you're looking at charts like this, it's actually easier to show how much growth do you need to actually be able to shift overall performance. That's good to hear because I've heard a

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: couple discussions on why are we paying attention to test scores, but you really should look at is are those kids improving here or That's right.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: I would argue we would, you know, what we're focusing on is thinking about how to refine that. That takes some time and you have to do it well, right? And there's a lot of complexity as you think about the actual statistical modeling for how you're going to establish those cut scores within each performance level. And so it does take some time for us to do that, and we want to do it well. That's why we have formed this technical advisory committee to support us in that effort. In the meantime, we have conducted alignment studies for those local comprehensive assessment systems that are most widely used across Vermont. So the local comprehensive assessment systems, every district must implement based on education following calendar and they do three assessments a year within the academic year to evaluate how their students are progressing. So, we have done alignment studies between the two that are most widely used, which is STAR and Ready. And they are very closely aligned. So if your school and district is using those systems in tracking student progress and growth, it's going to be very predictive of how those students perform on the VT cap. So just as a measure.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Chair, Senate Education)]: Chairman, can we jump in?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes, please.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Chair, Senate Education)]: Have a question for Mr. Rowe. Senator Williams. Thank you.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Senate Education)]: I got a question. We've come down a couple thousand feet. We're talking about NAEP scores and Vermont being evaluated nationally. What is there a national standard for proficiency rating? Are we looking at some kind of a numerical grade system, or just a proficiency base? And I'm trying to connect this to the graduation rate. Many, many years ago, we used to the people the students didn't need to grade. They stayed back or they or they got additional assistance during the off school months to become proficient. Are we looking at that level?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So we have

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: a couple of connected questions embedded within that question. Let me start with the graduation rates. Right now, as we shared, those are locally determined and we're seeing a variety of approaches to how students are demonstrating that they're satisfying the local recommendations. We do have the recommendation report that we submitted to the State Board of Education as an agency back in December. And according to Act 73, they have until 07/01/2027 at the latest to finalize their decision on state wide graduation requirements. So that shift is coming. And then another part of your question that I heard had to do with what's considered proficient. And so you heard Secretary Saunders mention level one, two, three, and four. That's currently the approach that we use with the VTCAP scores to determine based on the level of proficiency that a student is showing for each of the content areas. It categorizes them based on that performance in terms of whether or not they're satisfying it. And then a third thing that I think you kind of knuck in there had to do with retention.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Senate Education)]: Yes. Yeah. I mean, lot of people, if you tell them they gotta stay back and they're a junior or a sophomore because they don't meet the standard of proficiency level, they may just say, well, I don't want to I don't want to participate in it. So, you know, are we have we got like a grade where we're going to start to focus because I hear things from professors in post secondary education that say students are showing up in college that are not reading at the beyond the seventh grade level.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Senate Education)]: That,

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: you know, is reflected on our data as well as national trends. And so, terms of high school retention, I would say that that's less common because typically they're mapping their progress towards satisfying the graduation rates. There are of course ways that it gets mapped onto, but typically it's a set number of credits for freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year. And once you've satisfied that total number of credits for each one, that says which class you're in. In terms of retention earlier, I mean, the research says that the earlier you retain, the more likely it's going to be effective. There's also research that shows that if it's the conditions of the school classroom that are leading to the student having those learning gaps, that retention is not going to make the impact that we would hope for it to have, right? If there's gaps in terms of access to quality education, having a student repeat a grade or repeat a course is unlikely to yield a different result than it did the first time. So we want to be really careful about exploring that because of course there's detrimental effects to students by being retained, that unless we're very confident it's going to result in the outcomes that we would hope for, we certainly wouldn't want that to be an initial strategy to be used.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Senate Education)]: So I I guess the final final question, been told that's probably a policy question, but you know, are we gonna allow people, the students to go on to the next grade if they don't meet proficiency level?

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: So when we look at studies of policies that require retention, other states have had, for example, third grade retention laws around literacy, which third grade is the first grade that we test for English language arts. They have not seen that those retention laws have resulted in the change in outcomes for students that they would hope for. It's really about changing the conditions and the educational quality in those schools in order to get those outcomes.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: And I think with that is clarifying those grade level expectations. That's a really important part of this process when you're looking at, for those states that have policies for third grade retention, and you look at the level of complexity that the students have to engage in to pass, it is more rigorous than we have in third grade in Vermont. And so again, if we're looking at statewide standards, which we are, I mean, we're adopting common core standards, so they're relatively consistent across other states. What we're talking about is making sure that we're really clear and setting the expectation for what students should be able to do, and then providing the evidence based instructional strategies to target the areas where they need additional support, so that they can achieve at those levels, and be successful as they move on and progress through their academic journey.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Chair, Senate Education)]: We have one more question here, we're gonna have to sign off because we have something else starting in a couple minutes. But one more question from Senator Heppermann.

[Unidentified Senator referred to as 'Senator Heppermann' (Senate Education)]: Do you believe that our scores, they're being affected, that it's because we have so many districts, Like we got 119 different ways of doing different things. And if you do believe that, you believe having less districts, like one, like I want. But having less districts will help with this problem.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Sorry

[Unidentified Senator referred to as 'Senator Heppermann' (Senate Education)]: about the heart attacks there. So

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: I would name that the process that we are going through right now is an annual responsibility for the agency education to evaluate where we are and have a concerted plan in place to drive continuous improvement. The larger policy question around how we organize our system needs to be contemplating governance, funding and quality altogether. And we've been consistent in that. What we are lifting up is that there is variability across our system and that there is a need for more targeted statewide training and support around those evidence based practices that we know are needed in order to support with the type of accelerated learning and growth that is needed in our state. And so our efforts as we look at this data is to be proactive in identifying where there are gaps, what are some of the strategies statewide that we need to put into place, and there is some more consistency that would be needed in order to ensure that there's a clear understanding of those contents, standards, and access to high quality instructional materials. All this does come with a cost, right? The type of, you know, high quality instructional materials, coordinated curriculum, all of that is quite expensive, right? And so we are, you know, our districts continue to be under a lot of pressure. And part of what we're talking about is we kind of step back and think broadly around how to support our systems. How do we align our resources in a way that are going to invest in the inputs and the strategies that are going to be most impactful to teaching and learning. And so those are the choices as we think about a larger policy consideration is how we invest our significant amount of dollars in education to ensure we can increase teacher salaries, ensure that our districts can have access to high quality instructional materials, and that our teachers are benefiting from the targeted training and support. The most effective strategies are really embedded, job embedded coaching. That's also the most expensive in order to support, to really need it in the classroom. So again, all of this is a series of choices in how we're able to have our considerable investment in education go farther to invest in those areas that are gonna be most beneficial to teaching and learning. And so that's, you know, on the larger discussion, I think if you're getting to Act 73, it goes back to what we've always said. It's, you know, three policy levers of starting with quality. What do we want to make sure that we can fund in our system? Then the funding is designed to achieve that and scale through governance ensures that those dollars go further and providing that consistently across the state.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: So it sounds like

[Unidentified Senator referred to as 'Senator Heppermann' (Senate Education)]: less districts would help you.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Chair, Senate Education)]: We have to check out, okay? Different

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: policy conversations around fewer districts, we noted the benefit of that overall system level related to funding equality.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Thank you.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: How do we make some

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: payments now? Okay, they have left us. Thank you.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Oh, okay. So this would be a conversation for an individual. I have not been I guess I still don't understand how larger districts are gonna solve our quality problem, but that again is another issue. I certainly don't see how lowering property tax is going to solve our quality issue, but that's also saving for another day. I do want to ask, and you don't have to answer this because it may not be something that you can or want to answer, but do you feel that you have the support to be able to help our schools improve? And I'm thinking specifically if you, you know, Mississippi is the big, you know, topic of conversation these days and I do know from what I've read that they invest $15,000,000 a year on their literacy programs and they actually do hold students back to repeat so that their, I think their scores might even be a little bit skewed because of that. But I do, you know, I wonder if we have the proper resourcing to do the continuous improvement that we aspire to and specifically, I mean, we were just discussing a literacy program at $700.00 and I think we may have bumped that out till the budget. So anyway, again, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but it is something that's on my mind a lot.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Mean, I can answer that transparently as you look at other states that are adopting or pushing these major legislations, they come with significant investment. So, at the agency of education, we're being very strategic. I often say scrappy, and really thinking about how we can leverage the dollars available to fund our statewide priorities. That's what you're seeing with the agency doing a complete reorganization, what we've done in terms of reevaluating all of the contracts and realigning the dollars that we have available to support the biggest needs. It also means we have to be growing in the same direction with districts as we're all aligning and prioritizing, you know, both federal and state resources to invest in training such as literacy. So hopefully we have your support for the request of the version of funds, because it actually doesn't represent a new dollar amount, it's that we're reprioritizing money we have available to support with literacy, and many other states have also benefited from philanthropy and larger grants. And so, we are being, you know, kind of looking ahead and exploring other opportunities where we can bring additional resources to bear to support this, but we know that it's also important to have this real proof of concept. So what we have structured with Read Vermont with the amount we have available is very targeted, is based on evidence based practices, it's based on what other states have done to drive this type of improvement. And so it's going to be really helpful for us to bring back the data from the work we're doing in Greene, Vermont to show the impact and then think more strategically around scaling beyond what our current resources have. But you'll see overall in everything you're describing, this works looking more of a statewide approach. So historically, we've done smaller pilots or localized smaller cohorts, and we're really pushing our framework to think more about statewide cohorts so that there's a broader impact across. And then, you know, I think you noted another question around larger governance equality. And I would say again, it's all connected about how we intentionally design the system, but when you do have larger governance, you're able to have more specialized support. So one of the first questions you had from this interview was around data. We have some equity issues in just being able to get accurate data because not every district has a data manager that's working full time and at the level of background, right? To focus on the type and data cleaning and quality assurance at the level of sophistication that is needed to ensure that certification. Also within that, would need to have, you know, pre K coordinators and directors who can really help them manage and improve their consistent level of quality and access within the system. Curriculum directors that are specialized by grade level and content area. So when you do have larger systems, you're able to really use your resources differently and fund those specialized resources and support that we know are beneficial to go to providing services to students, but also supporting our teachers in improving their tier one instruction and providing the right level of professional development and evidence based strategies. Those are all great things for cooperative education services because those regionalize and share all of those services, but Yeah. Certainly. So we've been consistent in identifying that there is a role for regional services to play. The first question is, what type of efficiency and scale can you get with larger districts? That's the first question, so that you're not actually duplicating and having redundancies in a lot of the administrative and compliance costs, but you're actually realigning those resources in the type of specialized support that is most impactful to teaching and learning. But, you know, within the governor's proposal from the beginning, there was a contemplation of some of the statewide service delivery and you can post it with CTE, given consideration around scale. Because ultimately what we're talking about is how do we deliver the best educational experience and scale plays a really important role in that.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah, and I think the data support that going up to about 3,000 or 3,500 students per district is beneficial. Then after that, there's an economy of scale that happens that there's actually a decline in outcomes. I'm not sure if that number was correct, but there is a point at which outcomes actually start going down again.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Yeah. So, certainly when you put forward some of the data around the district size, I think I can say too big's too big, too small's too small. When I say too big, that's sort of 50,000. So it's a totally different scale as we're talking about too big. But yes, there there's research around the actual size of the districts and we brought that forward. But then there's actual practical considerations that we need to put take into account. And that's why we're doing modeling at the different scales. Like when it comes down to it, all of this is around how are we gonna resource our systems? And yes, you can achieve economies of scale and we've shared this with House at 2,000 students, but there's a limit to when you're achieving scale, at some point, then you have to make decisions and there's trade offs that you're actually going to reduce the program quality, or you're going to reduce opportunity to increase teacher salaries. So we've done a first pass at some of the budgets, looking at district sizes of 1,000, 2,000, 4,000 and above, and just to make explicit the choices and the trade offs that you would evaluate as the legislature in making those decisions. And we're working closely with business managers and school leaders just this week to look at those budgets and to lift up if there's any additional considerations that need to be contemplated as part of that process. Our own team here and everything is bringing you the decision makers with the resources that you need to understand the different trade offs, and we're working with the field be as concrete as possible and sharing that with you through actual budgets.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I keep hearing about Mississippi and the Mississippi Miracle. You hear about academics, but having gone around with the commission on the future and listening to teachers, the behavioral issues they have to deal with, and the behavioral issues of their classmates that students have to deal with. We put a lot of limitations on traditional discipline, like sending you home or expelling you. So in reading abundance, and, you know, we set up a set of rules to deal with a problem that it seemed like with the little statistics we could get because our schools are so small and there were less than 10 of any group in the school, it was hard to get a lot of data. But in trying to prevent discrimination in who was expelled, disciplined, I'm wondering if Mississippi has the same sensitivity, you know, are we doing apples to apples? But more I'm wondering, are we looking at that? Is that one of those things that we were trying to do a good thing with, but now it's working against some of the goals we had. I think if it were my six year old daughter that was sitting in a classroom and the kid sitting her next door constantly gave her a poke in the arm and didn't stop, I'd start after a while considering moving her, and so I'm, you know, I'm just, is anybody even thinking about that?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So as part of our reorganization we established a division focused on safe and healthy schools. Okay. And within that, a foundation is establishing an effective school climate. We are looking at the best act $230 that we have in grant making and really be aligning that work. So there's more targeted and supportive of helping our districts in establishing those effective school culture. And that includes being clear around the discipline procedures and also thinking about how we effectively apply restorative justice practices, which is very, you have to have a really strong foundation in your school culture and clarity around your discipline procedures to do that effectively. So that's all part of the effort that Courtney O'Brien is leading within our Safe and Healthy Schools team. I think if that's of interest, it would be great to have her present you on the array of strategies and support that we're doing in that area. We're taking a very comprehensive look as an agency in understanding, yes, we see the data, this is outcome data around academics, but we recognize that there's other conditions that need to be in place in order for our students and our teachers to be supported in a way that's going to yield the type of growth that we'd like to see in our system, and that is inclusive of really establishing a strong school culture. So there's a lot of work that we're doing in this area. And as I said, we're realigning some of the grant making to make sure we're more targeted and supportive of the needs of schools. We're partnering with the University of Vermont in many aspects in this work. Additionally, we've been focusing on chronic absenteeism. We want students in school and to reduce chronic absenteeism. And we know equally well that students that are engaged are really excited to come to school, right? And so students feel like they're farther behind. They feel that. And that's a frustrating experience. And that's when that can also contribute to behavior problems. So all of this is connected as we think about establishing the right conditions of success, ensuring that students are getting the targeted supports that they need to achieve their, you know, the grade level standards so that they can participate with their peers and feel really confident in their abilities, that's going to keep them more engaged. And we see just when we look at graduation rates and how important engagement is. So our students that are CTE concentrators have a higher rate of graduation compared to other students that are not CTE concentrators. So again, it's an engagement, it's establishing the culture, it's providing the right support in terms of establishing, you know, discipline, critical, and academic support. It's all

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: part of how we approach it or work.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: I was just add that for the schools that are within this comprehensive support and improvement schools, we're not just looking at academic We're outcomes, just part of looking at the system overall. And so that includes every component from what's hanging out in the hallways to what's happening in the classroom. So I think that we really do see, and this is why the reorganization has allowed us to do that. We can bring a lot of resources, human resources to bear on a very small scale, which is these schools that are identified. So our school improvement always, they say, compensate them, save them on the goals. And so we see those, obviously, as an interchangeable interlinks. So I just would add that nuance. It's not just because it's not this conversation doesn't define the conversation.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: That's why we keep emphasizing this is an agency wide responsibility and priority. So we come together as all staff every month to reinforce, you know, how we're going to be supporting our schools and our districts that need the most hardest support in what area, and that's a big shift to how we're operating. Thank you, Madam Chair, and apologies for missing. I had to

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: be across the hall on a different bill. So, you went over this. Specifically, I'm looking at your slide on school indicators weight comparison and the high school versus elementary school. And first question is, are these federally required indicators or data points? Some are. Okay. And, it's for the elementary school, just those three So,

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: that was also the example, sorry, let's jump in, that's an example, so there's not the

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: This is just an example.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah, for elementary school there might be, if you had a high enough English and English minor population, you would actually have that part of your composite score, so there's 's some factors that go into the

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: Well, it's

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: listed, there's the English language, ELA, science, and math. Those are the three things

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: that were listed Sorry, at ELA is English, it's just not for the EL population, that's just BTCAT performance. Oh, you're saying

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: if there's enough English language learners that would also be Yes. The

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: I see.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay. This seems like a very narrow measurement of school performance and particularly at the elementary level. I mean, at the high school level you did add graduation rate and college career readiness and performance on college or career exams. So, it's a little bit more robust but it seems like a very narrow measure of performance. So, I'm wondering why you're not broadening it out to include other factors, particularly at the elementary level. And then, are you also taking into consideration the other, I think you are, but how are you taking into consideration the equity factors like percentage of students in poverty, percentage of students who might have a parent incarcerated, you know, percentage of student, you know, all the things, you know, the education level of parents, because by some measure, one of the one of the most important things for student performance is actually the education level of their parents. So, how do you take those kinds of things into consideration to make sure you're looking at a much more robust accountability scorecard or whatever the heck you're calling it these days.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So, I'll start and then you can expand on that. So, I'm just saying we are fine. I want to be really clear that this accountability framework was established in 2017. So, this has been Vermont's accountability framework that has been approved. Yeah,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: mean, that was my second question, is that this is, it started, established in 2017, and we've just seen, obviously there's a pandemic in there, but we've just seen things go down. So, why is it, why has the agency, why has the administration allowed this to happen in a way that you haven't been doing the targeted kind of support and necessity to?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So, have been incredibly transparent in identifying both my initial diagnosis week one of the job, that has been reinforced by the findings of the US Department of Education, and I've been very transparent in naming where we have had gaps, and proactive in identifying ways in which we're resolving them. So, this particular indicator, one, let's make sure we're stepping back. Within ESSA, there are certain requirements around what a state is required to measure, and then there's a latitude to be able to add some additional indicators. When Vermont initially established this in 2017, there was the intention to add additional indicators, but there was no mechanism to actually collect that data or report that data. To me, that is I think an issue with how the accountability framework was designed.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: In 2017, there were no way to collect the data?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: There were other indicators that were intended to be part of the overall composite score, including what's in Northview Schools and some other indicators. Okay.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Those were, and I just want to make sure I understand you, so before you go in too long. So, those were things that were identified as wanting to include, there wasn't the data available.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So, when I came into the role nearly two years ago, I identified very early on that we didn't have a great growth measure, and that was going to be an area we needed to focus. That our timeline was way delayed. I'm used to leading school improvement in other states where you get this taken August, latest October. Vermont has historically shared this information in winter and we have a finding from US Ed because of that. So I think you were absent from the room and walked that process. We're reengineering the entire assessment and accountability timeline, including data collection, which will involve the field getting us data earlier and certifying data earlier. So all of that is part of the work that we're doing now. And we are being more targeted with how we're identifying the schools that need additional support and providing that support. We've completely reorganized our agency to build a team that is focused on accountability and school improvement to advance on these particular areas. Okay, And our strategic plan is designed comprehensively. We have put forward the framework of that plan, and that will inform future ESSA amendments that we make to our accountability framework. So we have been clear with the field and establishing the need to have shared accountability that is transparent and that everyone understands. And through this process, we will have a much more substantive amendment as we think about additional ways to measure growth and some additional indicators that we think will be important to evaluating school quality overall. Since I've been in this role, we've had two amendments already to ensure that we can get this plan into compliance. That includes that every school is part of

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: our

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: accountability framework. Previously small schools were not included. Also, we didn't have a clear criteria for how schools were going to exit. That's not helpful because we don't know what the clear targets are. So, team has been very much focused in evaluating where we need to strengthen accountability. And let's keep in mind that districts have an important role in this process. It's district's responsibility to measure school quality indicators, report them to their board, and have a school improvement plan that was put into place to drive those quality improvement indicators.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So, to my question about the the indicators that you use for elementary versus high school and how you make them more robust than whatever is on that slide. Could you answer that question?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: About how to make them more robust?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah, I mean to take into consideration things that are beyond just the three test scores.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: I think that those are great considerations, especially in the school improvement space, but our accountability system is to treat all schools as they are, and so some of those nuances are built into our other structures. Like we do look at subpopulation performance when we get additional target support, indirect support. So it's through a definite lens that we look at that. So we would look at the, that impart that we're just looking at by just historically population across those measures and compare it to non historically marginalized combinations. And that might kick them into this other constructs of TSI and ATSI. So it is something that we look at to measure school performance on, again, with end size concerns and questions, as well as equity across how those end sizes interact. It's harder to say with the concrete that we can provide a nuance that may be a perfect match to every single student.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And what about other indicators? So, hear you about taking into consideration subpopulations, but at the elementary level, if you're just looking at these three indicators to determine whether or not school is meeting performance measures, what about other things, particularly at the elementary school level? Is it just that you don't have the data, or is it

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: So, so let me, let me reframe this. This is our accountability framework established in 2017, approved by the US Department of Education. We have had several amendments to address areas of non compliance. The overall process of school and district improvement is beyond these specific measures. This is what we're required to do from an accountability standpoint to evaluate quality. When you look at our snapshot, there's other indicators, but we're looking at access to a high quality teacher. We are looking at measures of safe and healthy schools. There's a number of other indicators and as part of our planning process, we are involved in understanding how that's contributing to overall performance so that we can ensure there are the appropriate strategies in place to develop the conditions that are going to promote and foster high quality teaching and learning.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Okay, I appreciate that. I appreciate that,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: but I was just trying to understand. This is the report that you're putting out there and issuing press releases about failing schools in Vermont.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: That is not at all what our press It release seems our press release said this is our annual report card, which the agency's education is required to produce on an annual basis for the federal government, and it is our responsibility to ensure that there's a substantial level of equity. Our report is saying that this data is important. We have to be clear eyed around our challenges. It's consistent with what we're seeing with national data, and the hard work is now, what we're doing is using this data, bringing in other information, non academic indicators, contextual understanding to drive performance. You missed the opportunity to hear about the statewide approach Okay, madam secretary. I I'm I'm I'm sorry, but

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm trying to understand, and you're being super defensive, and I said that I had to be out of the room to be in another committee on a different bill. I didn't step out to miss your report. I stepped out to do my job as a senator. And I know you're trying to do your job as secretary, but I'm trying to understand the data and the information and your so that's why I'm asking questions. And and I'm it's disturbing to me that we've had a system for ten years under the current administration in Vermont and nothing has been done to improve it. I commend you for trying to improve it and doing the best you can because you did come into a system that was broken, to an agency that was broken, and I commend you for doing that. And I'm just trying to understand what you're doing and how you're doing it. And it would be helpful if you could answer my questions instead of making accusations. I'm asking questions about your slides and your data.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay, Senator, it might help if you could, as I'm hearing it, you're asking if they differentiate

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: when they're doing their data collection between different, sounds like social statuses for students. Well, different populations. But also different measurements of success. Then it sounds like what you're tied to are these narrow things that the federal government is asking you to do, but maybe not. But then, are there other things like, at the high school level, have graduation rates. At the elementary level, do you have attendance rates? Do you have number of senior teachers? Do you have other things that could be indicators of a well performing school that you are using as part of your measurement? If so, why is that not better integrated into the data that we're seeing and that you're presenting to us?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: the accountability framework is looking at the outcome data that gives us an understanding of overall quality. This is what's been established in our SO State Plan. USED does encourage us to make revisions and amendments as we move forward with our planning as a state. We've already done several amendments over the last two years, and we're staging ourselves to do a more substantive amendment through our strategic planning process. Our strategic planning process is organized to identify those major priorities of our state, so that we're really clear in capturing a holistic measure of student success. As we go through this process, there's intentionality to identify areas we think we need to make refinements to our current plan. One of those areas is to have a more sophisticated measure of student flow. That's why we've established a technical advisory committee to support us in that. Additionally, we're looking to have measure middle school acceleration and identifying how we are helping students to earn industry certifications much earlier. And yes, chronic absenteeism is a major focus for us at the agency, something that we put forward as a policy proposal this year. And that, yes, we will explore what does that look like? The question ultimately comes, what is part of your accountability framework and a measure of school quality? And what's part of your review around some of the inputs that need to be in place for your system? It's really thinking about that logic model around the inputs, outputs and outcomes, right? This data is our outcome data, right? This is how we're looking at school quality, and then our whole planning process is designed to understand what's contributing to that to make sure that we can have a consistent level of quality. With all due respect, there

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: are times when, sorry Senator, there's a yes or no question being asked, and sometimes it would just be nice to just get a yes or a no. I think Senator Hardy's question initially was, are these things embedded in the data? If the answer is no, just no.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Okay. That's all. Like, you're so helpful. Just to definitely answer no. I thought we were having a broader conversation. We can go back and we can show you what's included. So it's actually pretty, it is straightforward. Those are the indicators that are part of our assessment. You can share my screen if you want to.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: The answer is no. So those considerations are not like this specific comprehensive support improvement designation, but they are considered in the other additional areas of additional targets or those equity gaps that I was referred to earlier on. So for CSI, those are not included. And so we do have another, as I said, pathway, those equity gaps.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: ESI is

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Comprehensive Support and Improvement. So those are the lowest performing Title I.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So the schools that don't meet these, wait, stay on that first Sure. Sorry, this is the one I have a question about. So, these are the indicators for high schools and elementary schools.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Not all of them. So, these are examples. So, there might be a K-four school that does not have science. May be a K-five school that may have an English language learner population that has shown enough students, and they could actually be included in this to see what their CSI type.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: But to answer your question, in elementary school it is based on assessment data. The difference would be which assessment data that's included. Then, again- Also which growth. So if you're a K-two school, you don't have a tested grade. So your performance measure is tied to the third grade where those students feed

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: into. Okay.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: If you're a K-two or a K-three, you don't have growth because you don't have two consecutive years of tested grades. You're only going to have that one efficiency grade.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Oh, and is it growth on the individual level or on the school level?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Yeah. This has been an area that I focus on and we talked a lot about before you came in. Our current measure of growth is really a change from one proficiency level to the next. So, in our current construct, we don't have cut scores between levels to show learning gains that are happening within, like, a level. And so, you're only qualifying for growth if you're looking at, say, a level one to a level two. That would mean you have, you approve by one scale point and, and achieve it, or you could be lower and you could approve by multiple scale points, but not get to that next performance level and not be counted for growth. So part of what we're doing is really evaluating, are there different ways that it can be more sophisticated with a growth measure that's more closely aligned with learning gains and getting credit to that movement within proficiency level.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay, because it looks like it went to your point about growth, and I'm just looking at the more comprehensive report on your website. There are more schools that are moving out of needing assistance than moving in, I think. At least it looks like that the net is a net positive, like net good.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So it's a

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: different cohort, right? So they're identified for three years, and for the school, the last batch of schools that were identified for CSI for two years, all but two exited that program. Yeah. Those schools are still not meeting performance objectives.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Oh, so exiting doesn't mean they got better, it just means the time ran out?

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: It means that they're not Well, no. Okay. So here, this might be helpful because I do think there are a yes and no questions, but also it's helpful to know the overall. So there's this, which is related to their overall performance score. These are the indicators that are part of the score. The variability will depend on if they aren't testing that grade, they won't have science, for example. Okay? Uh-huh. Now, the piece that you're really interested in is looking at the equity gaps. And so there's really two tracks for how we evaluate performance in the state of Vermont based on our current SSA plan. One is looking at performance. Those indicators that we just looked at are really measuring overall performance of the system. And then within that, we're looking at, are there any equity gaps that we need to be paying attention to in terms of performance differences among different subgroups of populations, historically marginalized students with disabilities, English learners. So within the state of Vermont, we have three ways in which we look at that. Equity one is actually a pre identification that's not required by the federal government, but is part of our Vermont plan to see if there are early gaps that we really want to be focusing on. And then those schools that have more persistent gaps would be in TSI and then the next level is AGSI, which is additional target support intervention, which is also a three year If those schools are not closing that achievement gap among the subgroups within the three years that they're identified, they're automatically moved to being identified as a comprehensive school, a treatment school. So there is a relationship, and that's why I've got a yes or no question. There is a relationship between equity and performance of subgroups and our overall evaluation of the schools that need targeted support. However, I would argue that beyond the identifications, there's additional work that needs to be done, right, to evaluating some of those contributing factors that would support the continuous improvement plan in determining what type of interventions or support would be needed to best meet the needs of all students. So, this is just one part of the accountability approach.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: I really appreciate your identification that the timing of this is not ideal in other states. Completely concur. I mean, if this came out last October, I think a lot of school districts could incorporate that into their lens on budgeting and prioritization. Similarly, to connect it with one of Senator Gulick's previous points, there are large districts, there are small districts, but I feel like the framing in this discussion here in Vermont, we really need to talk about mega districts, has been contemplated, large districts, small districts, and what I think we really have are micro districts, and I'm going to connect that to that point about time. Have more than half of our districts have less than 500 actual kids and we have about 20 with less than 100. I'm curious if other states have similar micro districts but my my lens and I'm not nearly as informed as all of you is that once they got this report, hopefully earlier in the year, I also worry that micro districts, not even just small district, but micro districts, they don't have the staff, they don't have the overhead, they don't have the centralized personnel to incorporate this to apply those best practices and consistency. Am I off track that micro districts struggle to adapt to these things and they almost need AOE assistance just because they don't have that overhead and administration that they can spread across a larger, I don't know, budget overall coordinated of services.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And I think this was what

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: we were addressing earlier, right? When you think about quality related to scale and it comes down to how you're able to have specialized resources and support. And that goes all the way from having a dedicated data manager to be able to pull together the data, do the level of quality assurance, do the levels of certification that's needed, all the way to ensuring that you have a curriculum director that really specialized by subject area or by grade band, all of that scale plays a role in a district's ability to hire for that specialized support at the central office level. And part of what we're looking to demonstrate as we're building budgets, what does that actually look like in practice? Right? So we've had a lot of questions, what do you mean by specialized support? And so we've built some sample models, but we're working with the field to understand what would be some of the choices you would make so that we're really clear on the different trade offs as you think about scale and having smaller districts, what that means in terms of funding quality opportunities. And sometimes there's a cap. You're not going to be able to realign those dollars to increase your teacher salaries or to afford that high quality instructional material or that specialized resource that can be really supportive of a high quality and high effective library for the district.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. We've been at this for almost two hours. Thank you. It's a lot of information to cover. We have one more bill to get out, and I know they're waiting up upstairs for us. So Okay. Thank you very much, and we will be back. Thank you very much. Thank you. And after the education department, we'll be back in touch. Uh-huh. And that's on the committee page. Yeah. This is is one point. Oh, oh, oh. Cericulick, we failed. We were supposed to add or follow the tiers. Remember that? That should be but that should be in the bill now. That that there should be an amended bill that has that language. I We amended it in I thought so, but it's he is. Well, maybe this is the No. This either be amended. Yeah. Passing purchase on a regular residence certification. I'm not sure. Seems like they caught something. We thought we caught it. It says employees or volunteers. So, if a resident is being disruptive, threatening to employees or volunteers, because many of these places have a lot of volunteers that work in there to support people. This is require the recovery certification from the state, the requirement for annual reporting from the department through the general assembly of the measures proposed effectiveness, and if the department identifies the need for a fee to support the voluntary recovery resident certification program, they shall first propose the fee to the general assembly. So version 3.1 has the word, well, appears on it. Drafted 3.1. In section 3.9, PSA hashtag four thousand four fifty two, is that where we found it?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: I see it on page four, line 13, or recovery. Yeah, I'm

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: looking at draft 3.1 in the Health and Welfare Committee.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: That's what I'm looking at. Older.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Draft 3.1 last month? Yeah.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: It doesn't have or

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: 1.1 is the finance amendment.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Or volunteers? Okay.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I'm I'm talking about

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I am looking for

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: What time stand is up? I'm say three point one.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: 02:19. Yeah. I got three

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: point one at 9.8AM. So I think there's a white boy.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: But we're gonna shoot. So

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: you should have it ID with the word volunteer. 4452.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Whose page is that on? Our page Sub

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: b one a. To your inserting the phrase or find 13. Before the semi colon. I'm not seeing a volunteer till end of there.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Martine, 113. One

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Go above. There's go above a little bit. The 13 doesn't say the whole bush, does it?

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: It's not supposed to. It's supposed to be on line 20.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah. But right up above, it says, or recovery resident staff or Volunteers, and then down below it says, Or Recovery Residence Staff or Volunteers. So you want to leave it out

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: in one Two or the different things.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I'm trying to find out section three nine.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: It's still the acts of violence.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, you're right. Maybe we did forget it on that. I think I think Katie caught some place where we missed it.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Because it is b. B one a b.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I can't find it in the section.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: And that's b one? She's saying yes.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Who knows? No, she's saying she doesn't know.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: That's B1AB.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's okay. I don't think it's I'm gonna trust Katie. No, I She has this absolutely memorized. And I would say that we did add or volunteers at the last minute as we were voting it out, and I think we missed a section. The one we asked for is data standards and requirements for annual reporting for the department that measures the program's effectiveness. And then if the department identifies the need for feed to supplements, support the voluntary recovery certification program that says they got a report to

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: us. Right?

[Dr. Erin Davis (Chief Academic Officer, VT Agency of Education)]: Do we want to add more volunteers on line 13?

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: That's what's in the amends draft.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It's what's in the amendment.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Don't know

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: it's the amendment on the page now.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yep.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I'm gonna trust KBRS. If I find one other place we

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: One will add point right below it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We'll do a floor on one event. We're considering Would somebody like to move to amend one fifty seven with that's under Mattos.

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: With

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I The amendment is draft number 3.1 to S 57. 02/1926, 09:48AM.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: If I'm not mistaken, madam chair. No, that's the S one fifty seven favorably with amendment using draft number

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: one point.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You have to rule the amendment first.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: The amendment draft

[Sen. Terry Williams (Senate Education)]: number 1.1.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So dated 02/2426 to February. Senator Chittenden has moved that we amend S157 with draft 1.1 dated twotwenty fourtwenty six at 02:16PM. This looks like it added or volunteers one place that helped the welfare myth, so it's if you're impeding, threatening, or making life miserable for points or volunteers, that is grounds for action. Then it asks them to report back in the rules for standards on efficiency and says if they decide they need to put in a fee to do this, they have to come back to the terminal itself. I think that's everything Yeah. We

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I did double check to make sure that's the

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: right location and it is, so. Okay. Yay. Absolutely trust, Katie. Who's doing the Is there further discussion? I'm not looking for a discussion. I'm not seeing any. So not seeing any, would the clerk please call the vote?

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Senator Chittenden? Yes. Senator Beck? Yes. Senator Gulick?

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yes.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Senator Brock? Yes. Senator Hardy?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yes. Senator Mattos? Yes. Senator Cummings? Yes.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Seven. Zero. Zero.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We are honorable. Senator Gulick, would you like to I know. Know you did the main bill.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: No. I was gonna ask you. Who's doing the main bill?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Not me. I don't think it's me.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Isn't it Jenny?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Maybe it's Jenny. How do I do Jenny? It's not Jenny? No. Is it Benson? Oh,

[Katie (Legislative Counsel)]: Benson's doing it. Benson's

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: That's That's fun. Brian. Benson. Benson. Alright.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Senator Worley got off really easily. He did. Yeah.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Oh, he had a nice one.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. I know, but nobody harassed him.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah. So do we Have to

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: vote again on a bold vote? Yes, we need to vote on the bill as amended.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: I just don't have a question for tomorrow. Think that same sheet back it was for more than

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: anything.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Would move favorably s one fifty seven as amended as amended now.

[Zoë Saunders (Secretary of Education, Vermont)]: Okay. You're second to do it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We can do you need to it.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: We can do another roll call on that.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah. So I well, I ran into this in judiciary because we only have one report in our in the calendar will be one report from finance, which would be our event vote.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: So we just vote favorably on

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: On the event vote.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: So, like, we don't have to take two tallies because I was under the same thought.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Always voted favorably as offended.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: That's what I thought Oh, boy.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: We'd always have a separate vote, the

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. Then Well, we never did vote call either.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Yeah. But then I was differently. Because we're only gonna have one vote in the calendar, which is gonna be this one, seven zero Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Alright. Nobody leaves till 70 gets fat. All name in May.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Clarify for us too. We have

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: tradition and we have it in bullying.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: I don't think

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We just voted to amend on 57. Nice. Okay. We've always voted to approve the bill as amended. Our clerk has informed us that no, we will only have the amendment in the calendar. And so we only vote the amendment not to approve the bill as amended.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: That'll be a mini report, correct?

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: He's equipped here.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: We only have one vote.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Am always

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: voting both. Wow, that's with the chair.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: You can do either. That's

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the way I always have.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: So generally, you're really voting a report, and your report is, shall the bill be amended, whatever it is, and so I have the chairs do it both ways, to be brutally honest. And number of chairs do it want, I'm just being honest.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: You're the clerk. And both of them. So I have two of our chairs. Yes, they do.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: And they do it.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: So your committee has usually voted on them to make sure that this finance committee approves it before they do the second vote. That's not all. The committees don't always do that. I don't know what they've done on health and

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: welfare or on government ops or whatever.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: But you can do both, and the House usually does both. My opinion is you can combine them as one just like you can do a pound pound one of standards, but you should be clear that the committee is supporting it, because you sometimes will have people support the language and then still not want support the bill. So there can be two

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: different votes. Yes, that's what I should have. Besides which, that's the way the city of Montpelier does it. Here we go.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: It makes more sense to me.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Which one goes in the journal? The final vote. On the bill committee. Yes, that recommendation. Someone could vote that I like this better than the underlying other amendments we were

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: looking better, but I still hate it.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: But I still hate it. And so you could have a seven zero and then a five two. Then five two, the five two would be in the calendar, not the seven zero.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: I hope that was helpful.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: That was. It was. So madam chair So can I have the bill? I have everybody waiting.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Where do you have an amendment? We need to vote the bill as amended. I have a motion to vote the bill as amended.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Well, I did favorable with amendment. So I guess it's 70.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We can

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: do it do again.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Let's do it again. Again.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: That's doing. What

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Okay. Know what you're saying.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Senator Chittenden, or do you guys have talk about? No. Senator Chittenden? Yes. Senator Beck? Yes. Senator Hewlett?

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yes.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Senator Brock? Yes. Senator Hardy? Yes.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Senator Mattos, yes. Senator Cummings? Yes. There we go. Okay.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: He's inconsistent.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: He's looking for Bill. No.

[Bryan Redmond (Director, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection, VT DEC)]: Because I I think it makes more sense. You take a vote on what your amendment is, and then you take a vote on the bill as

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We are done.

[Sen. Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Just like we do on the floor.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. We are gonna have a clean copy, Charlotte

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