 Welcome to Senate Education. It was Tuesday, January 24th, 129 p.m. We're going to start our day by spending some time really jumping into the governor's proposal for school safety. After that we're going to hear from the State Board of Education and the Secretary of State, Sarah Brooklyn Hansen will be in to talk about civic education. And then we'll wrap things up with Act 72 and overview and that's the school facilities bill that we passed a couple years ago. We'll be back into school construction. These are just some highlights tomorrow with the federal delegation, maybe more than one hopefully we've got one here now and I think he's still waiting to hear from others. And State Treasurer's Office will be in and then on Thursday is spending a chunk of time on career technical education. Friday Sharon Academy and a Sharon Academy St. Johnsbury Academy and teacher evaluations. Those are a little bit of the highlights. Thank you St. James. Thanks so much for joining us really appreciate it. You have the administration's language, I believe, for a proposal and I asked you, I believe to draft it into a possible either Brian champion bill committee bill, however we might use it. And I don't know if he has a copy of it in front of us. Okay, so it's not. So with that, we're looking at draft 1.1 introduced by the committee on education up to so choose to do so. And the subject is education school safety again this is the administration's proposal. You are yours. Thank you that same Dames office of legislative council is chair campaign mentioned this is language that the administration is proposing I put it into our drafting format. I've formatted it as a committee bill but again, sir can be inside week reform at that, depending on the committee's pleasure. The agency's language, I have not provided really any edits or anything with the exception of technical things and I'll point them out. But this is this is language from the agency just put into our drafting form. Um, it begins with amending section and what we're doing now is this is your first walkthrough. Is it your first walkthrough? First walkthrough. We've got an high level, hey, here's some language, but this is, I'd like a walkthrough. Sure. So, when we do the walkthrough, it's really the committee's pleasure on how detailed and granular I get. This is an easy one to walkthrough, giving you kind of a broad overview. But so I'm just going to start by orienting you to where this language will live or is proposed to live. So you can see section one there. You've got 16 BSA section 1481 is amended to read so we know we're in title 16 right your education green books that I'm always going to come here with. And then section 1481 that section lives in chapter 33 of title 16, which is the fire and emergency preparedness drills and safety patrols chapter. It is a very thin chapter there are only three sections right now. This bill proposes to amend one of them and then add three additional sections to that chapter. The first proposal is to amend section 1481, which is currently in your green book. Any language that you see that crossed out is current law. And the proposal is to strike it to get rid of it to delete it to change it somehow. And then what you see that is underlined is new language that's the proposal that's being added. And any language you see that is neither underlined, nor struck is just the law, and there's no, this the draft in front of you wouldn't propose any changes to that language. So actually, we're starting with subdivision, or I'm sorry, section a on page one 14. The recommendation here is to strike the language in the current language in section a subsection a and replace it with starting online 18 a requirement that each supervisory union or supervisory district, the operating school shall adopt the policy of mandating each school site to conduct an options based response drill each year and the fall and spring of the academic year around page two. The policy shall require that drills be conducted following the template developed by the Vermont school safety center jointly with the Vermont school crisis planning team and a superintendent shall report completion of the by annual drills to a OE format approved by the center machine. Can you provide a definition for what, for what options based responses. That is a great question I cannot provide that. Or is that for a future witness. I encourage you to ask a future witness. It is not currently defined in title 16. And it was not included in the language provided by you. I wonder if I should ask this or not which are the business change. Is it also for our academy. That's that can be okay. So on page two starting online six. We're going to strike out everything that's in current line subsection be and replace that with underlying language starting online 11. And that it's basically the same requirement for approved and recognized in the past school. And then you'll see at the very bottom of page two starting online 18 subsection see that language is needed struck nor underlined current law and was listed that I'm curious to be going back up to the line 12. It's a different vehicle that covers universities in different states, states on universities is there a reason why universities and colleges are exempt. I believe because this language is meant to apply to K for 12 or 12. So the intent of excluding universities or colleges. So it's really meant for the chapter itself is really addresses K for 12 but and Ted behind that language you'd have to ask a way. So I'm just pointing out that subsection see is current law and there's no proposed amendments there for this draft. And so we're going to move to page three. We have we're adding a brand new subdivision here and it's a requirement that every year the Vermont Safety Center and the Agency of Education review the report submitted. According to the subsection a and B for public schools and independent schools and ensure compliance and identify future planning and training needs. So that's the amendments to this chapter everything else is that's proposed as brand new that there was a lot of brand new language in there but it was amending a current statute. So we're going to add section two is adding section 1480 to title 16 entitled emergency operations plans were on page three line five. So it's a requirement that each supervisory union and supervisory district, adopt an all hazards emergency operation plan that is at least as comprehensive as the template maintained by the Vermont school price crisis planning team. And the plan should be updated on an annual basis including collaboration with local emergency first responders and emergency management officials. Subsection B is the requirement that the Vermont school crisis planning team maintains that template. Quick question the Vermont school crisis planning team is that something that's already in existence or would this bill, if enacted create that team. I think you have no it's already something that's in existence and I think you have a witness coming from the school safety vendor, who would be able to speak more about what that is. It's not free. Thanks. Is that accurate. Yes, I'm section three. We're adding another section to this chapter entitled 16 we're adding section 1484. And so the philosophy here is we're adding section numbers. And, you know, just kind of rolling with the numbers 123 fitting them in where it made sense to fit them in. So online 15 page three section a requirement that each supervisory union or supervisory district shall adopt a policy that at minimum requires all school sites and supervisor union and supervisor district offices to the central offices, lock their exterior doors during the school day. The policy shall require that all visitors sign in at a centralized location prior to gaining full access to the school or office site, and then subsection B is the same requirement for approved independent schools. We're on page four line one. The last section, the skill to add to title 16 is section 1485 entitled behavioral threat assessment team. Each supervisor union or supervisory district and each approved independent school shall appoint a behavioral threat assessment team to be comprised of at a minimum administrators mental health professionals school counselor or school nurse nurse and local law enforcement officials. Members of the team shall be trained at least annually and best practices of conducting behavioral threat assessments. And head of independent schools, so reports data related to behavioral threat assessment results to the agency, and then annually, the supervisory union district or approved in a school has to report the names of the people on that team. Yes. So what if a municipality doesn't have a law enforcement organization. What is it going to do that this doesn't. Okay, it's a requirement to collaborate with local law enforcement but it doesn't define what local law enforcement is. Okay. I think the error can probably help us with something she has. The last section you will see in every bill unless it's orphan language that you're just going to stick in someone else's bill is an effective date section. This bill has several effective dates and they were proposed by a week. So the first effective date is the effective date section, which she'll take effect on July 123. So the recommendation here is that sections one and three take effect on August 1, 2023, and sections two and four take effect on July 1224. Any other questions for the council I know you have a move. It actually got moves that's not quite the same. So just our first walk through the draft bill, we're going to hear from witnesses today and then we have a number of witnesses coming in later this week, principals, superintendents, etc. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Yes, please. We have some new faces in the room also while we're waiting for the commission let's just go around and introduce ourselves. This is the agency of education policy specialist just to either tether myself here. I'm currently a graduate social work student at UDM also I'm an internet software consultant. And where's that consultant from. It's located on failure to consult for social services agencies. Great. Thank you. Thank you. And I am the lead administrator for school safety center and co chair of the school crisis grant team crew. And I'm the director of violence prevention. Great. Thank you all. Okay. Chief Morrison. Good morning. Good afternoon, I guess we're in now. Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. You know the bill that we are looking at. And so we're looking to hear your thoughts in general on school safety and the proposal before us. Thank you. And for the record, my name is Jennifer Morrison. I am the commissioner of public safety. For the benefit of the committee, I wanted to just give some very high level remarks and then turn you over to the capable hands of D and sunny who are the subject matter experts on this particular area. And I also wanted to start by thanking you for your hard work. I know it feels like it's just begun, but it's a lot of work and we're all, we're all appreciative of all that you do. And I think the school safety center, I think sometimes people think that there's a brick and mortar building that exists somewhere in Vermont, but that's just not the case. It is a construct. Where the Vermont emergency management, which is one of the divisions of the department of public safety partners with the agency of education, as well as the Vermont intelligence center to create a resource and a website and staff space on Vermont school safety, but I just wanted to sort of lay the foundation that there, there's not an actual office somewhere that people could go to, to, to visit. I don't want to get into too much detail that D and sunny are going to give to you. I wanted to quickly just say that Vermont emergency management of course is one of our divisions but so is the Vermont State police which is home to the Vic, the state center that I referenced just a moment ago, as well as within our purview we have the division of fire safety, which has only a little intersection to the bill and this work that we're talking about around school safety in that they promulgate rules around fire drills and fire safety and other things that relate to school safety, but are not exactly in this wheelhouse. So these three parts of the department of public safety that intersect with this work. We are all supportive of the direction that this package of proposals is going. We also have the radio technology shop, the Vermont crime information center, the Vermont forensic lab, and the finance and administration division so those are the other parts of the department of public safety just to give you the opportunity to take shape at the beginning of the session of the things that fall under our purview. I think with that I'm going to turn it over to Sonny and D to introduce the proposals and I will stay on the line to answer any questions that you might have of me, if that works for you. So Sonny please also as well. I see you in person. You as well. Thank you sir. If you don't mind just introducing yourselves for the record and work. My name is Steve Arctic. And as I mentioned, I'm the director of violence prevention for the state of Vermont. And I'm Sonny Erickson, Vermont Regents Management at the school safety grant program manager. So first thank you very much for taking the time to have us here today. I wanted to just talk a little bit about some of the proposals that Council had gone over a few minutes ago. As I mentioned that my position is the director of violence prevention and I work with the violence prevention task force. Just to give you a little bit of history and the character of the Vermont State Police where I spent a little over 26 years. And after that I worked in the area of school safety for more goals healing whereas the project manager for the Vermont School Safety Initiative in 2019 2020. I'm currently completing my doctorate at the University of Vermont in educational leadership and policy development with my focus on school safety. So the violence prevention task force was developed as part of the governor's 10 point public safety plan. And it's just, do you want us to start following along. We have your presentation. That is. We'll wait on. Yeah. Okay. So the violence prevention task force was developed as part of the governor's 10 point public safety plan. And it's comprised of the secretaries of the agency of human services digital services and the agency of education, as well as the commissioners of mental health, children and families public safety corrections, and the Department of Health. We also the department of state attorneys and sheriffs, as well as the attorney general's office also are part of the task force. We work very closely across state government, and we've developed a larger policy package of safety initiatives and this school safety is one section of that larger package, which is what we're here to chat with you about today. I'm very French had testified roughly two weeks a week and a half or so ago, and then let's counsel is just had an opportunity to run through the language of the school safety portion of our package. You have clearly seen that there's four specific areas that we're addressing related to school safety. And I would first ask if there were any questions you've had about any of those particular four sections before I. I think there's one question. I knew it was the question of options based responses. Okay. I can go into that a little bit and I think sunny is prepared to go into that more broadly. We're really in the world of school safety, we're moving away from just a lockdown to a threat or school emergency and we're moving to an options based approach. And what that does is, you know, the, the environment in school safety is changing all the time, and not every situation is going to be met. A lockdown is going to appropriately meet the needs of that given situation. So we're transitioning away from that and into the options based methodology which provides a variety of options to choose from depending on the dynamics that are unfolding in a given situation. And again sunny can speak more about that, but it again options basis exactly like it says instead of just being given one option, lockdown. You may run high flight is an example where an option maybe to run in a given situation that maybe to hide it maybe to fight. Again, it gives you trains and choices and what is the best choice and to make in given situation. So this might be sunny feel free to under who would be making those decisions in schools at that moment, which option from which to choose. So in the classrooms, teachers would be making those decisions. And again it would depend on where they are in the building and where the threat is in the building. And again, it wouldn't be like the entire school is going to choose the option to run or the option to hide it really depends on, again, where they, they are in the school in the building and what the situation is that exact moment. I did want to touch on the behavioral threat assessment team portion of the policy package. So let's go into a little bit of information about that. What oftentimes folks aren't familiar with behavioral threat assessments so I just wanted to describe that a little bit. So basically an assessment and management process is a preventative approach to threats and acts of violence with the primary goal. Being to assess and then manage a situation or, you know, potential situation that might develop the effort is to enhance the safety of the individual and the well being of everyone involved including the school, the individual concern, the situation in the school community at large. Again, this is this approach is to identify concerning behavior and provide services to an individual which may include counseling, mental health support mentoring other resources that are available but basically to provide supports rather than the zero tolerance approach that has historically been used. And it's part of a broader school safety approach with a caring and collaborative school community. So it's, you know, again I just wanted to sort of give you an overview of what that approach is all about. And when the team was mentioned to who's going to comprise these behavioral threat assessment teams probably picked up that it's a wide variety of individual school administrators, mental health counselors, nurses, school counselors and law enforcement and the idea is to bring in a multidisciplinary approach to a given situation. And it allows people from different perspectives to bring their expertise to that situation that condition and identify what are the next best steps we can take. And, you know, again I mentioned it could be mental health counseling for an individual, it could be other support services. But again, this is to identify this potential threat before it involves to an actual threat. And this is always someone who's in the school building. Is that correct or is it the school community at large? The proposal that we put forward is identify school districts and supervisory unions. So what this proposal would be is that not every single school would have to have its own team. It could be a school team but it could also be a district or supervisory wide team. And again, that's in keeping in two things in mind. Really one is that not every school will have the capacity to have a team. So we have said okay, a school district team may be in some cases a better option. You know, a lot of our communities too, we see that our school district, we have very tight school communities, we're very fortunate in Vermont to have that. And oftentimes the districts are very familiar with, you know, families and kids and the greater school community. So I think, you know, in our, in our very specific area of Vermont, we're fortunate to have those close to that school communities. And that I believe allows us to have these teams be district wide or supervisory union. I'm sorry if you mentioned this but line seven. Could you just tell me what the best practices are. I'm just reading that members of the team should be trained at least annually and best practices and just wondering what the best practices are and where they come from. Oh, I'll turn it over to Sonny to talk more in detail with that. So we are through the school safety center. We have been offering for us the year and a half or two years behavioral assessment awareness level introductory training. And that's we've partnered with contractor who is a national thought leader. It was formerly known as stigma threat management now they've merged with onto technologies. And the folks that run those programs and are providing that training to educators throughout the state and those have been virtual due to the pandemic. They have been in the Secret Service as the head psychology folks they've been really immersed in behavioral threat assessment and how beneficial that can be for decades and so we are, you know, partnered with these thought leaders and they bring to those things what they have identified as the best practices and who should be at the, you know, at the table for those big bro for assessments, what you should be looking for what to identify as really concerning behaviors or what just might be something that's worth mentioning but doesn't really need to be fully investigated. So the folks that we have contracted with that are delivering these trainings are the ones who are coming to the table with the best practices. They're evolving as, you know, as school safety and evolution is very quick and changes it feels like almost on a weekly basis. And if new practices pop up very, you know, as we move along and they will bring those into the training as well. Great. Thank you. So instead of bringing emergency management coordinators for directors into this from municipalities. Actually, for the behavioral threat assessment trainings are open to anyone so we have law enforcement is resource officers. So the, you know, folks from the township or municipality. It is open to anyone who is interested in this stakeholder in the community is we encourage this many people to participate as possible because that's only going to strengthen your community responses. You know, again, this is just a, you know, an overview of our proposals and ledge council is able to go into the specific language on those sections. I would actually, unless anyone has any questions for me, I can turn it over to Sunny and she put the presentation. Great. I see that you folks have printouts so that's wonderful. We do be great. Probably bring it up also. Yeah, yeah. So while we're getting so. Yeah, good question for you. Well, while your, your colleagues getting so curious on page three, we're just operations plans. Is the intent like to drop the template that each school entails to its own physical facilities and stopping levels. What's the level of effort following the introduction. The template already exists. It's been developed and it is available on the Vermont school safety website and it is being utilized by some schools. But this would encourage all schools to be on the same template the same format for the emergency operations plan. Is there, is there then a follow up kind of validation that they're doing it or they're tailored it appropriately is there a subject matter expert that says he got it. It would be through the school safety center. Is there a button in which I can move that along or should I just. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm sunny Erickson. I'm going to start with the emergency management and on in charge and overseeing a number of school safety initiatives and programs through the school safety center. And as I mentioned earlier, I work very closely as the co-chair with the Vermont school crisis planning team. So what we do is go over some of the current safety programs that are ongoing right now, and then if there's any questions on, you know, previous work that's led up to where we are now or future plans so you can chat about that afterwards. And Sunny, while you're doing that, if you don't mind telling us which ones are kind of required under optional that sort of thing. Okay, what do you mean by optional. And we do mean this is, we would be, as I understand it from Secretary French, we're taking some different programs that are happening throughout the state right now, and making them require. So it sounds like there's some opt in some, you know, options there right now in some of our schools. Okay, but correct me if I'm correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, you're, you're not incorrect. Okay, because as the draft language, you know, proposes there are requirements for behavioral assessment, including having to take some of the trainings and reporting back on, you know, who's on the team and that they're confirming their training requirements have been met and things like that. So those would be overseen by ALE, but they are proposed to be a requirement for each of the schools. So those are the programs that we offer are open to any educators within the state, K through 12 grade, grade wise, and any of the trainings are free of charge but are not specific requirements I guess it's the best way to describe them, any behavioral assessment, maybe a requirement to be to have the training to be on a team but the other trainings that we have are not things that are required as far as I know by individual school districts. And all of these things fall under the purview of the school safety center so we'll talk about that a little bit first because I'm not sure that how familiar any of you are with it and if you are familiar with some of the stuff we can skip ahead. Can we move to our next slide up here, thank you. So the school safety center as Commissioner Morrison had noted, when you think of that you think of a building you can go to with people, you know, bustling around doing school safety work in some states that is the case but in Vermont. As the Commissioner noted, it is a resource center and information clearinghouse a place where you can go for templates, you can get online training information there there's tabletop exercises that, you know, the planning teams and schools can download and run through on their, you know, weekly or monthly meetings with their teams. There's a lot of really wonderful information that's house there. And the school safety center has been around since 2016. It's a partnership between AOE and DPS. It's manned by myself and my colleague Rob Evans from the agency of education and he's the school safety liaison officer. And we co chair the school crisis planning team which helps put out these got the guidance of the templates and the recommendations through the safety center. So our goal in the safety center is to promote preparedness measures, get folks as much training as they can work on emergency operations plans all hazard approaches to planning. You know, counselors and teachers and principals and superintendents, really the whole spectrum of folks that are immersed in the education world. And we provide the best practices and recommendations and those do change pretty often so we are constantly doing some outreach for, you know, the best practices as they are, as they come about. Next slide. Thank you. This slide is listed some of the services that we provide through the safety center. As he had mentioned, we do a lot of planning training and exercise assistance actually, that's how I first met D when she was running the planning training and exercise emergency operation plan development training through the school safety center. And now the template that came out of that is available for folks to use as they're doing their own emergency operations planning, both on the individual school level and at the district and supervised reading at level. We also put out planning guidance, the drill guidance as we work with the fire safety division to make sure, you know, we're putting out information that is, you know, safe in the time in which that guidance is issued so we had to go back and you can have large people gathering we had to alter that guidance for egress drills and bus evacuation drills which are required on the yearly basis so some of those change based on the situation that we find ourselves in in the world and the school safety centers on that promotes them which is that information out. We also have information for parents and guardians for how they can respond in emergency situations. And we give some templates there for schools to communicate with parents and millions. We work on crisis communication and offer crisis communication classes for schools that may need to be issuing some of these communications in times of high stress to help them, you know, figure out how to get that information out there. So, work on the technical assistance side. There's 400 and about 440 schools in Vermont and a lot of them, especially in recent months have been asking for individual audits and assessments of their physical security. So what we would do is, as long as we have the capacity to do so we will go out and it takes about half a day to walk through school to measure, you know, measure and assess their infrastructure their locking mechanisms or public assistance system their camera use their lighting use on the outside of the buildings, things that, you know, are are really important, but I feel like there's always something that can be done in most schools and so when we are able to their field doing those assessments and audits as well. I'd like to pause it for a moment while we're on the school construction topic. So we are, the state of Vermont is likely to make a big investment in school construction over the next several years hopefully sooner rather than later. When you build in school, when things happen, are you looking to require certain things, for example, safer glass in case of a wind or a weather event or a gun, you know, or anything like, you know, we're to sort of come through that region shopping for anything like that being looked at or examined as new construction pops up. Are we. Does that make sense or. I would say that there's recommended measures. Okay, there's like film that you can put over windows that is shadow proof for just I guess maybe it's more of a FYI. I think I know this committee and I think the legislature in general is looking to improve our school buildings and really start some new construction. So I hate for us to then say after the buildings up. Not that anybody really would but gosh, given some climate issues, we never put in these kinds of things and I'm wondering if that's what we could look to all of you for for some recommendations on that kind of you know, again, as new buildings are growing up this is what you show. Yeah, right and I think we would look to a we to follow some of their thoughts would be in some of their metrics that they would hope that, you know, new constructions would meet. I believe that they would also be including public safety and some of those conversations because they're subject matter experts in safety. Yeah, but right now there's not as far as I know I don't think there's any requirements to push out for new construction but it might be conversations that are, you know, a part of at this point. Thank you. I guess the last piece on this slide is just the emergency operations plan development. I know we get trainings exercises. I was just doing an options based response training for seven different schools down in the Bellas Falls area, we do a number of trainings based on, you know, the requests and our ability to get to those certain regions of the state. We are trying really hard to offer as many trainings and exercises as we possibly can. And we can go to the next slide. This is just an overview of school crisis planning team you had asked if it was something that's newly formed. It's, it's a team that's been around for quite a long time at this point. It's wonderfully devoted representatives from a number of state agencies, principles association, superintendent's association, we have the chief of police, the police association. We have representatives from the Vermont State Police as well. We have 211 American Red Cross, mental health folks, school counselors. We're all around a table was a virtual table at this point once a month and we talk about the things that are going on current trends we talked about what guidance needs to change what trainings we'd like to bring in the future. And it's a, that's where the recommendations that we put out for our standards and best practices and our operational guidance that all comes with after having gotten the approval from the school crisis planning team. And the HD is also on that team for us as well. Is there any questions about school crisis planning team. As the secretary, Secretary French was here recently talking about this and we were hearing about it. A little bit earlier, the Department of Public Safety has been working closely and myself see and Rob Evans with a we we've been working with the legislative council from a we on drafting some of this language, we presented it to the school crisis planning team and provided the feedback that they gave to that draft language back to the agency of education. We're excited to have some of these focuses, perhaps become, you know, mandated and inscribed in statute statute so I'm very excited about what this, you know what this could look like in the future and those are four places that we mostly focused our energy on where it was the access control the emergency operation plan development, the drills and the behavioral assessment. Each of those have been things that the school safety center has been working on for a number of years with the school safety grant program with the governor for two years to consecutive years he invested 4.1 and then $1.5 million and we always in the structure a lot of that went to access control with the patient systems lighting cameras blocking mechanisms, the emergency operation plans we've had, you know, D and her group, giving trainings and exercises in in association with the emergency operations we've been working on the drill pieces and that changing guidance in the face of pandemic for a while and now we have the current behavioral assessment program that's up and running we've trained over 300 educators and states actually tomorrow and then the following day we have a train the trainer session a two day session that we're trying to build up the capacity of folks that can go out and work with the individual teams. And we have our first train the trainer session starting tomorrow that's very exciting as well so all of these areas that are now being drafted with their language these are all near and dear to our hearts and we've had programs that are working towards this goal for a number of years so it's very exciting that these things are being talked about now in this room. Go to the next slide. We are very excited to have partnered with the US Department of Education. They have a readiness and emergency management for schools program. We are bringing them up in April to meet with my educators work on the federal recommendations for emergency operations plans and developing those. We are currently working to identify where we're going to hold that but we have committed. We have made a commitment to provide that in April to our to our education stakeholders and that's very exciting we haven't had the US Department of Education present or provide one of these trainings I think in about six or seven years so we've had our state level ones this is bringing in the federal government to provide some additional guidance, which is very exciting. The next slide is the options based response training we spoke a little bit about this, did a really good job of covering what that really means and historically the lockdown mode has been the most go to the case of an emergency. We're moving away from that because sometimes that's not the best option and providing educators and administrators with the idea that there's not just one universal response mechanism that empowers them to make other decisions that could save lives or prevent injury. We have been traveling around through this partnership with the state police and the school safety center, we traveled throughout the state and provided 10 options based response trainings with a partnership with the Vermont state police and we held those in schools throughout the state in the month of August. And also you may have heard of Alice training Alice training is another way that options based response training follows pretty much the same ideas of run hide fight except run hide fight is sort of an easier to recall in the moment approach to option space response training much like stop drop and roll, something you all can recall from probably kindergarten. So, we have trained with options based response training I think we were at about 400 folks in attendance over the one month and we've provided that same training at the Vermont emergency preparedness conference at the. Governor's safety conference, and we've provided a couple of those to insert educators during the in service day trainings throughout the state as well. So, I think you are doing a great job. Speaking about our behavioral threat assessment program. We did mention, you know, some pieces of this earlier. This was initiated through a Department of Justice award. We got over $350,000 partnered with Sigma. Now Sigma on tick and have been offering these trainings for the last year and a half. So our next trainer session starts tomorrow on the next day. And we were also recently awarded an additional $250,000 through the Vermont Department of Homeland Security, which will allow us to continue off offering these behavioral threat assessment trainings and additional training sessions in the future so we just were awarded that about a month ago, and we're excited to be able to continue that, because we do have the additional funding source and that's a two year grant so we'll be offering those trainings, and the training trainer sessions for the next couple of years as well. And the last slide is just an overview of the current challenges that you folks will probably hear about as you, you know, talk about school safety. These are things that are popping up on our monthly calls with the school crisis planning team. Actually, most of my conversations with any educator in whatever role they happen to be in. These are things that are popping up the student behaviors coming out of pandemic there's a rise, a severe, like a severe increase in outbursts of violence with students and they're seeing even younger students to, you know, you will find some of these things very concerning in elementary school, where you typically in the past would not have seen this and that could be part of the isolation from pandemic and the social, you know the social impacts from that but we're seeing it across the spectrum came through 12. There's a lot of behavior challenges right now, an incredible lack of mental health resources that could help assist with some of those behaviors and when they go to seek assistance with local agencies they don't have anyone available for a number of months and so that's that's troubling as well. I feel like educators are so busy doing the things on their daily basis future planning is somewhat difficult. There are a lot of things as always. And we do, we do want to be encouraging in in the future more emergency management and emergency planning collaboration with first responders. And as emergency operations plans are being developed, if you provide you know like a map of your school to your fire department and your police department that's only going to strengthen their ability to respond because you can say I'm in this. This room, this building and they'll have that map right there so having those collaborations and that rapport with first responders is really important. And again the options based response initiative just giving folks in the education community, the ability to have a number of options in order to address and respond and protect themselves. So those are those are the things that we've identified as really needing some, some focus, and hopefully some of our programs and endeavors and initiatives will do that. Are you seeing an uptick in threats against schools and going on right now. Has it has it been, you know, can you say a little bit about that. Sure. And also just to elaborate from within the school for external. I would say that I believe that they are on the increase. We partner. So the Vermont intelligence center, they are the ones that oversee the tip line. They are the ones who receive through either the portal which is able to be reported phone text email. They, they do track that data and I would say that with pretty good confidence that they probably say that they're seeing an increase in threats that are being reported or detected. There's also a subcommittee that reviews after the information center receives the threatening information they do an investigation on their own if it's deemed credible there's a subcommittee of school prices planning team members and emergency management personnel that all will get together to figure out the best response and move forward with addressing the concern. I think that the data would, I'm positive show that there's more, more threats happening. I know that I'm seeing a lot more of them come across, you know, my email and my phone. And then if I were as talking to parents this weekend during the breakfast. How would I could I confidently say that this plan is going to make things safer in how compared to what's there now. Do you mean the, the bill itself the bill itself in your opinion is it just the coordination is it. I think it's going to really make safer with a lot of anecdotally a lot of some of the things that we've been hearing is the schools are looking for for guidance there are a ton of resources that Sunny had mentioned to the Vermont school safety center, all fantastic information, but they're looking for more specific guidance like, you know, what kind of training for behavioral threat assessment teams. You know, what, what is business management, what should we be doing for business management. What kinds of drills should we be doing so I feel like this is the first step to providing them that guidance and those card bills so they know where to where to go and and again touching on what Sunny mentioned earlier is, you know, we asked an awful lot of our schools, and, you know, I would say that probably most teachers and educators didn't get into education because they wanted to develop emergency care for their anxious plans yet. This is the world that we live in. So, in trying to guide and give them all the supports that we can build the capacity so that they're going to do that, build the capacity for the behavioral threat assessment teams. You know, with the understanding that it's providing training the capacity and guidance for them to make the best decisions that they can. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So the behavioral threat assessment team I guess this is sort of picking piggybacking on my initial question I assumed it was sort of school based because I can totally imagine in my mind if you've got a threat within the school. How you how you would handle that where I can't quite. What I don't understand is if there's a person in a community outside of the school that might be posing a threat. How does, what does that look like how do you like proactively identify and deal with that person and I it's obviously I don't know a lot about law enforcement so you know, law enforcement might already have tactics or protocols around that. But can you speak a little bit to that if there is a threat that like a known potential threat outside of the building how you handle that because I think that's in here right. Part of the work of the behavioral threat assessment team. The person's hand is up also to know if you wanted to. Okay. I didn't notice that. Thank you. I wanted to put some context on the numbers of threats and I have the luxury of being at my keyboard so I can pull some stuff up. So when we're talking about the number of school threats reported to the Vic in all of 2022 we're talking about 26. And the number of tips that came in on the school tip line over the course of 2022 were four. So we're not talking about huge numbers. In the first 20 days of 2023 there were three school threats reported to the Vic. I guess if you take that and say that sounds like about one a week that perhaps we could extrapolate that there would be 52 which would be double the 22 numbers. But I think it's too soon to say these things tend to go and fits and spurts, depending on the school year calendar. So I just wanted to give a little bit of context that we're not talking about huge numbers to those and to the question about how we handle threats that are that are generated by external actors who make a threat against a school facility. So this is another area of collaboration where, when the information becomes known that we work with the school to make them aware of the threat or challenge and so that they can do any target hardening or appropriate actions maybe that's a notice of trespass against the person who's making the threat. But of course law enforcement has a specific role to gather information and determine if it's a credible threat or not. And if it rises to the level of prosecution versus perhaps not to that level and again notice a trespass is the only appropriate mechanism at that time. So all threats to a school are reported through the Vermont intelligence center or are supposed to be let me, let me leave that right there for the very purpose of being able to track them and and provide the context that I just provided to you. So each, each threat or threatening situation is evaluated individually, each one is evaluated on the totality of the circumstances on how specific the threat was on whether the person took any over an action towards carrying out said threat. There's a lot that goes into that to determine if it's a threat that generates prosecution versus other supports being provided, similar to what D was mentioning about how a behavioral threat assessment is designed to identify behaviors, and then provide interventions and supports to the person exhibiting those behaviors before criminal justice system involvement. And all that dissimilar from if the threatening actor is outside the school environment that we would seek to try and provide supports through mental health workers, or other methods to bring that person to a place where they are no longer threatening a school environment in that way. Does that answer your question or both of your questions. Thank you yes. I'm sure too as a committee, have somebody in that could talk to us about other things that are being done and also recognized by chair of judiciary center she was on this committee, but to give everyone an understanding of what's happening outside of the school system, like the red flag law, or other kinds of pieces of legislation that intersects with this kind of work. Maybe you could give some thought to that I could certainly talk to Senator she and Senator Sears, just as everybody understands what else is happening out there and I do suspect, once we finish with this bill, probably go down to judiciary at least for a look at some point. But I'd be happy to collaborate with you in any way that is useful, useful to you and in order to contextualize the bigger environmental picture because of course, schools are not silos alone in our community. Right. And if there's violence and outbursts as D or sunny or one of them was talking about the frequency and severity of outbursts and behavioral violent behaviors that are being exhibited as low as our elementary school system, if that is happening there then there are clearly intersections with what is happening in the home, what is happening in the broader community, where do we need to bring supports in to intervene and interrupt these cycles before they become involved with the criminal justice system and so we make hopefully them a healthier happier person or family and prevent people from being involved in the criminal justice system or harming others. Yeah, just as an example, several of us had meetings with our hospitals this week over violence I was being seen in the emergency rooms. I know that the governor puts some money in the budget to help deal with that. Just another sort of group out there, nurses positions others having to deal with increased violence. Just a. I'd like to encourage you to include somebody from the municipality into your response team. We had an example of town and in our district where they had a lockdown with school, and there was some drug activity next door. The phone started ringing off the wall telling us, and they didn't know anything about what was going on. They couldn't feel the call so how do you deal with media communications are all part of the training for the assessment team. That would be part of the emergency operations plan the all hazards or the operations plan and their different sections on how to deal with a variety of hazards, you know, could be, you know, a chemical leak in the chemistry lab it could be no electricity or school bus goes off the road. So that would be part of, and, you know, could be an appendix to the emergency operations plan. And again, it's all hazards so that would fall within. And as you mentioned earlier the, the approach we're, we're looking for and as it's the languages is written now is to involve local emergency management as part of looking at that plan and being a part of that plan because just as you mentioned that that is really important in a lot of mutual responses to, to various. So we are going to hear from our educational partners this week will test and buy on this will also hear from. There's a national organization out there that looks at education issues. I'm going to ask them just to say tell us a little bit of what's happening in other states. Are you pushing things, you know, far enough ahead or are there other states that are making more and that would be something you will also weigh in on it. And, yeah, we'll continue to work on it. I suspect we'll get something out. Yeah, of course. So, so I applaud what you're doing. Yeah, I think that's a phenomenal activity question on the emergency operations planning just because I'm kind of new to this, this arena. I understand when a school has a situation where the issue is inside the school or it's, you know, where it's friends in the school. I'm going to the chairman's point, half hour ago or so about natural disasters in the area where the school becomes more of a focal point for response as opposed to, you know, experiencing a threat inside. And I just got just curious if the emergency operations plan considers how the school is utilized in a, you know, in a community wide scenario. I guess that that the school will be used as maybe a warming shelter or something like that. Okay. That can definitely be worked into the plan and again the template of the plan allows for flexibility, because in some communities that may be the designated, you know, warming shelter or for other, it may be used for other purposes in an emergency. And in those cases where towns do utilize those schools for those purposes, it should be part of that. So it is part of the template or it should be part of the town plan. Right, right. The emergency, the regional emergency management plans, those those already exist. Thank you. This probably memorandum some understanding between the school and the community that would establish it for an alternative shelter or something along those lines whatever it needs to be. Okay, thank you. That's where the importance between the emergency bill of like local emergency management director and the school that relationship is really important. So thank you all three of you really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good day.