 Welcome everyone to Senate Education this Friday, February 23rd at one o'clock. We are going to start with, looks like we have a great group of people here. Ms. Emerson, however, said hi to Scott. And please Secretary Boucher, please join us. And we are on track to move a bunch of things by town meeting vote. Even before town meeting week, and well before crossover hopefully for a couple of other things. But right now we're working on, and one of them is the CTE bill. So we have a copy of the bill in our files or no. That'd be great, yeah. But while Morgan's printing one out, good afternoon. We are going to get started. Great. So thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Good afternoon for the record. My name is Heather Ruchet, and I'm the Interim Secretary of Education. Happy to be here. Happy to talk about CTE always. Great. And thank you for the opportunity to testify. Now I should say there is, you know, more and more good excitement around CTE stuff. It's generally out there in the air with her monitors. Certainly in the state house. I walked in with Representative Marca this morning. I know the house is eager to work on this. I think they're going to work on it with the House Committee as well as I think they call it economic development there. But it's nice because I think the governor has really talked about CTE's since he first arrived. And I know this is really important to him. We really appreciate the government's support about it. Thank you. It's nice to hear that. And I do agree it's a very important joint policy space that we, you know, we have been able to share in this space. And I think it's a real source of pride for us and our agency. And I think part of that pride is that we've really partnered well with the General Assembly over the past several years to actually move the system forward. And we do still have some challenges largely around funding and governance. And, you know, the hope is that this bill will allow us to start to really tackle in a way we haven't before the fiscal challenges for the CTE funding. And what we have proposed, and I think that we're in alignment with our CTE directors on this, is that, look, it's really a huge lift to do fiscal and governance. So let's do fiscal first and then let's cover governance because that's going to take a bit because it's so complicated. There are so many different models of governance. So what I will share, and I'm hoping to come back and really dig more if it's okay, Mr. Chair, into the fiscal model itself next week. Our General Counsel is sick with a really nasty cold. And, you know, she's just not available today to actually help us get into this, but we're definitely working on it. And we're working with Beth, too. And to say Jim's just right. Hi Beth. I think we're working with you. Stephanie Allen, they're guests. You have one. I was waiting for that. Have you had the direction of the show? Yes, yes, yes. But we have one and it's because some of us are sick. So I apologize. There was a disconnect there. And there's definitely one coming plus a grant. Okay. So the other piece I want to certainly mention is that for us, the whole purpose of this is to improve access for all students to the beauty that is CTE. The hands-on, the experiential, the exposure to career pathways and different kinds of opportunities that, you know, some students just might not ever understand if they're really getting a more traditional classroom experience. So it could be anything from the culinary programs to welding to all kinds, you know, health sciences. And we have some just fantastic examples of kids really knocking it out of the park through their engagement with CTEs and really setting themselves up, particularly some of our kids who come from historically marginalized backgrounds, really, really leveraging the CTE system for all its worth and really having some amazing outcomes. And I think we saw some numbers at one point that were some research that shows that if you do get involved, because our dropout rate is pretty high in some districts. Yes. So you can get engaged with something like CTE earlier, get more jazzed about it, carry you through high school. Our graduation rate is 97% for students who are in CTE concentrators in CTE. That's great. And the average is about 86 to 88% depending on the year for our regular high school population. So it's a 10% advantage. I've got a, yeah, please go ahead. I've got some really recent data that UBM sent us on that. And we have some districts that I think are, whoa, 70%. Graduation rates, things like that. Yeah. Which worries me. Well, Winooski tends to always be the lowest, but they also have a pretty unique population of students because they have a lot of new Americans. And so I don't want to, you know, we recognize that. But yes, there's definitely variability within that. So the other thing I would note, which I think you've alluded to already, Mr. Chair, is that given the dire economic and workforce employment issues that Vermont currently faces, it's just really critical that we take full advantage of our CTE system, ensure that we've got seamless entry, seamless exit. And you're going to see that in the components of the bill that we're really supportive of. So in the testimony that I provided to you, and I am working off of the portion that is listed under S. Is it back 203? S-304. 304. I'm just grasping at numbers because they all seem the same to me. So that's really the version, the latest, I think, version that I have found. I know that there's a whole other section that I believe will come back into S-304 that we're working on the fiscal component. Is that the intention? Or is that going to be a separate bill? If we would put the fiscal component in this, really, frankly, we're looking for as much direction from all of you as to what you would like us to send it out, then we'll make our decisions, but we are open. So our plan is to actually have that language for you next week. I know you're going to get this out of committee. So that's the plan. S-Great. S-Sufficiently more detail than- S-Fiscal language. S-Yes, the fiscal language. S-Sufficiently more detail than I think I realized there was a- S-It wasn't enough. So we're going to- What we put in place first just wasn't quite where we need to be. So, and I can talk more about that when I get- Because I'm just going to kind of walk through the bill a bit. And so when we get to that section, I'll talk more about what we anticipate that looking like. So, and I can start, actually, in the introduction. So one of the things that I think got a little confusing, and I will take ownership of this and apologize, is that we are, we're moving the intent is to move away from a tuitioning model for CTE. And the idea there is that it will actually allow for more seamless entry for students. It will remove some economic pressures that LEAs feel if the money for CTE is coming off the top of the ED fund. They don't have to worry about it being in their local budget. It will just be taken care of. And so that's the whole premise of why we're trying to work on the funding. And what that would look like is ultimately providing block funding to the CTE centers. For a transition period based on their prior year operating costs. And that's the piece that didn't come through with testimony earlier this week. And I want to talk about, and we'll talk about more fully next week. So the idea is we're not going to get into the full-time student estimates right away. We're actually going to use the previous year's operating costs just as a block. Send that out to the CTEs. And, you know, we need a couple of years to do that. We want to look at, like, where there are problems. I mean, this is a big change. It's a big change. So we want to look at, like, what was the impact of that? Did it go smoothly? We're going to obviously do everything we can to make it go smoothly. But we need to kind of seed that construct first of, like, getting the direct allocations out to the CTEs. Then, in fiscal year 2080, the idea is we would then move to what are your FTEs by program? What are your other overhead costs? And really have that more robust model that really gets into a much more in-the-weeds, very, very... I mean, they're both accurate, but it's just it allowed that ultimate part would allow the state to have more say in what programs are actually invested in. I think that we're going to need to have some conversations in the General Assembly and with the administration about that. I think that is also a substantial change. Right now, the CTEs, you know, are doing their very best to meet local and state need. And this is by the way, this is actually in response to the request from the General Assembly to take the findings, results, suggestions, recommendations from what we call the APA report on CTE fiscal finance and governance and present our implementation plan to you all. I forgot to put just high-level signposts that, like, that's where this is coming from. And in that report, that's where the notion, because other states have done this, and I think that's where they're getting it, that's where the notion of this program-by-program allocation is coming from. We would argue we probably may want to get there, but we need some other steps in the meantime, especially right now, because we don't want to completely destabilize the system as we already know. There's a lot going on. So that-I'm saying that because I'm suggesting some slight changes to that first bullet point under the introduction to flesh it out a little bit more. So it's not really-it's not changing the construct. It's just making sure that we're also identifying that there's a step-in our view. There's a step-wise process to get there. Okay, and I'm just going to pause for a moment. Miss St. James, feel free at any point. If you have any questions. I already have calendar advice. Ex-officio member of the committee, just let us know. And do you have this? I do. Beautiful. Please continue. Also, item four under the introduction, requiring the agency of education to create an SUs to adopt a model comprehensive career development policy. I think at one point, by the way, I think I saw that there was a change to having model CTE policy and we don't support that. And I want to talk a little bit about that. So this really is about a model career development policy for us. And the idea here is that our students from 7th grade on have PLPs, personalized learning plans. They do a nice job of largely capturing and helping students plan with close adults at school and their families about what courses they're going to take, what opportunities including CTE or other flexible pathways they should be engaging in. But we're still missing a component that I think other states have really knocked out of the park with. So Tennessee as an example and some others where they just have a really robust way of actually ensuring that each student has a very concerted conversation and, you know, very in-depth conversation starting back in middle school about like the career, their employment development, those kinds of things. This is not meant at all to blame or knock down our public school system. It quite honestly is a function, I would say, across the board because our school counselors are now being faced with all kinds of different challenges. You know, we do have a mental health crisis. We do have a lot of students in need. And so, understandably, our school counselors, the first one of the things to go in a wholesale way has been the focus on career advising, career counseling, those kinds of things, which many of us myself included had access to in high school. So our approach to that is to actually have both the SUs and the CTE centers because they really shine in this area. I mean, they're part and parcel of how we're building a career development system for our state to really have them partnering together so that each student will have a career, you know, so that each district has a comprehensive career development policy in place. And we're very happy to develop a model policy for that. We're happy with the language that, you know, the supervisory union could just take that and that could be it. And this is number four still. Yeah. So requiring the use of education to create and have supervisory union implement, okay, in partnership. Eastlux new is really making sure that it's in partnership with CTE. That's kind of why it's in this bill. So because again, it's a capacity issue at the local level and we think that to the extent that CTE would like to partner in those efforts, that would be a good thing. Thank you. Thank you. I remember when I was working in a library and I used to help art, we had a career director and we would put on a big career fair every year. And one of the things that we talked about a lot is that the careers that these kids will be going into or don't even exist yet. They haven't even been able to know what they're going to be because of technology living so fast and now with AI. So I guess how does this, how would these plans kind of play with or work with this notion of, you know, a future that is so incredibly unclear and certain? Well, we haven't done the model policy yet. But so when I think about what that might look like, I think we would very likely interlace it very closely with the transferral skills that are already in flexible pathways for personalized learning plans. And really, I agree with you, it has to be about your learning. It's not about necessarily this is the job or career you're going to have, like the minute you step out of the high school graduation stage. It could be, yeah, for some students if that's what fits their personal trajectory and plan and that's what they want. But it also, I think, just as much will need to focus on here are the transferral skills that you're already very familiar with students from our Act 77 work. And here's either how they specifically translate to thinking about your career development or here are some additional transferral skills that you really can think about. So, you know, for instance, how are you going to sort of, how are you going to, I'm thinking from a student's perspective, like how are you going to make peace with the fact that things are constantly going to be changing? I mean, they already know that because they're so immersed in social media. But to kind of draw those threads together of, you know, you're even saying that to them would be part of what we would recommend, right? Which is like, so the world is changing a lot. There's good aspects of that. There's bad aspects of that as you're a person kind of experiencing that. So I think it's a really good question. Yeah, Senator Weeks. Can I go backwards just a little bit to the very beginning of your testimony? So you mentioned that you wanted to put the fiscal aspects first and the governance aspects second in priority. So I'm wondering as you're going through the bill now, are you recommending that the governance sections be struck or just kind of de-emphasized? De-emphasized. Because there still are, in the fiscal piece, which we'll present next week, there still are a couple of governance pieces we have to actually cover first for the fiscal to work. But why we want that to kind of be step two of our hopeful final state push to really, really improve the CTE system is because there's so much complexity in our governance that it will take a lot of work to really figure out. Like, I think there's general agreement. Like, that's not what we want, but it's what is it that we want? I think that's probably going to be like the whole session, in my view, like next session. I don't, I think it would be hard to actually even make a full decision. And I would look to my colleagues in the CTE centers to also weigh in on that. I think it's hard to imagine, unless there really were, which I don't think this is the way we want to do things, unless there really were, here's what's happening, boom, make it happen. That's not typically the way we make policy in Vermont. That's clear. Yep. Yeah, so there's four different governance structures right now, including two kind of satellite campuses, which really, that's not really governance per se, but that's where education's happening. I did want to also note that requiring the Agency of Education to develop a statewide school calendar, we actually support this. We think it's a good thing. I think, though, I question whether it belongs in the CTE bill, because I think it's actually a much broader education piece. And there are a lot of dependencies. It certainly would assist in streamlining CTE participation. There's no question about that, but there's a lot of other dependencies and aspects that need to be worked through for the whole education system to actually get to a statewide agreed upon calendar. This has been tried many, many times. Senator Weeks, I think you have a... Oh, no, I'm watching for your way out. Yeah. Perhaps the committee already talked about that. Now we just heard, you know, for years, since I was in the House, people talk about these statewide calendars. And my understanding is, you know, there's just... It's really hard because, like, I think right the south and the north kind of have their off a week or something like that. And so it becomes, like, a game of chicken, like, who wants to change their whole schedule. What we would actually support instead, as perhaps a step to get there from a CTE perspective, is to require at the regional level around the CTEs that there are shared bell times, which is a different way to align calendars. And so... And it's what I hear about a lot is, you know, students, because I get complaints. We get complaints at the agency. And so, you know, hearing from students or... And sometimes from our CTE colleagues as well. Like, we have a student who routinely has to miss the first 15 minutes of their English class because the calendars don't align. And that's actually, that's a problem. We're not doing our job of actually providing that equitable education that our Constitution actually mandates us to do for that kiddo. Or they have to miss, you know, fake example, half an hour of... Like, they have to miss the second half hour of their manufacturing program in CTE. Also the same issue. Like, we can't have them missing things. So how do we actually figure that out? And given the current government structure, that really has to be at that regional level, because, as I'm sure my colleagues who run CTE programs will say, there's just a lot of different high schools, each with their own calendars, that are all feeding into the CTEs. And so what can we do at the state level to really facilitate that and say, okay, you've really got to get together and figure this part out? That's a huge lift. But I think it may be easier to do if it's at that regional level than a full statewide school calendar. So I certainly understand the complications of trying to synchronize bell times and calendars and such. But as far as like a legislative vehicle, you said maybe this is not the right vehicle. Is there another vehicle that you're eyeballing that would allow this language to be introduced? I think that there's a miscellaneous ad bill, yeah. So that's what I was thinking, Senator Weeks. Okay, so then my question is, is that a viable vehicle from which point? It is, we're under the same time constraints, but the House, I believe, has agreed to send us one, so we could always add it there. So it's not a crossover crisis? Yeah. And just to follow up, sorry, just to follow up, I mean, I do think there probably would need to be substantial testimony on that. Yeah, so I don't know, ours doesn't sound like we would have the time. Well, it's not just a CTE policy decision. So I think that's why we're saying, like, we're a little worried about it being in this particular bill. So you're saying, so you're just, I think, Senator Weeks is bringing up a really good point. We have two weeks left. We're not going to probably get to it given our other pressing issues. Is that going to be okay? We didn't suggest this language didn't come from us. Got it. So we would be fine with that. But we also want to understand, like, we understand where it came from and why it's a good idea. I think, Senator, I have a question. I think I answered my own question, but thank you. Okay. I said right there, Senator Weeks, I just did give you a minute to look at it, that we recommend moving this item to the miscellaneous education bill or similar vehicle. Yeah, I'll just talk about that. Under Section 1552 of the proposed bill, we would recommend removing Section D because this is still framed around the tuitioning model. And we're moving from that to a block allocation, as I've talked about. Similarly, 1561, we recommend changing the title from tuition reduction to funding allocations. And here's where I get into. I've lost you. Hey, I'm sorry. I'm back to my testimony. Right. I understand where. I am on the first page where it says, in the middle of the page, it says Section 1561, and it's crossed through. It's off the block. It's on the 14th page. It's off the block. Thank you. Can I? Yeah. Block allocations mean different things than people. Yeah. Can you just prepare briefly? Yeah. It seems like a major concept show. So what we're proposing is that for a transition time of two years, that we would pilot, if you will, or have a transition where we're getting a block grant out to the CTEs to really finesse and fine tune that mechanism. So the whole point is that if we're doing direct funding, we would also base it on the previous year's full operational expenses. We'd have a system for the CTE centers to say, hey, we're building a new program. Our last year's operation expenses aren't quite going to be right, or they could even say, like, we're getting rid of a program. And so our operation costs have gone down. So that would be part of the process. And we would do that for two years. And then we would go back to the FTE model, where we're getting much more deeply into the allocation itself. So the money simply would not flow through the LEA. It got back to the CTE. Correct. And that's back to what I said originally, which is it's not to penalize or anything like that. The LEAs, in fact, many of them I think would be happy to not have to worry about when they get late tuition aid or things like that. It's just already kind of taking care of off the top of that fund. What about when students are kind of 50-50 between the LEAs? Well, we think that would be captured on average, right? And we would also, you'll see next week, we'd also have a hold harmless and things like that for those two years. We think that would be still captured by the estimate of their operating costs in there before. But eventually, and our governance, who knows, our governance model might end up saying, we want all CTEs to be one FTE. They're not right now. They're half and one. So we do need to get that back in. We do need to get that FTE piece back in. So what we're asking is a more simplified methodology based on the previous year's estimate of operating to really directly allocate those funds out. And then after that transition period, moving into a more robust methodology for calculating those allocations. Would this, would the implication be though that for those two years, the operating costs are essentially frozen? Meaning they can't, if you're anticipating like student growth, if you're basing it on the previous year's budget. Yeah. And then you go into the second year, the second year's flat. But you're hoping for growth or new programs. Is it kind of flat? It's not flat. So, I mean, the start is flat. Like the CTEs will have an opportunity to make an argument like we have a new program kick in or we need new resources in this area that would raise our, excuse me, would raise our operating costs for the next fiscal year. And that's spelled out in the language that I'm going to come and talk about next week. So what's the downside of doing this? I mean, is there any risk in doing as a block grant for two years around operations or do you see any concerns? I think it'll be a big shift for the LEAs just in terms of what they're used to. I think it'll be a big shift potentially for the CTEs because they're used to getting. And I would certainly want you to ask them. They're typically getting. I don't know the mechanics if they get all their funds together. I don't think so. They get like a base appropriations from AOE that might come earlier and then they get their tuition amount I think a little bit later in their academic year. Okay. So, you know, the one part I will say in all transparency is the part that makes me, what's different is we're relying on those operating costs without voter approval those two years. However, what made me feel okay about that is we do the same thing for early college. We do the same thing for dual enrollment. We do the same thing for some of our other allocations that come off the top of the Ed Fund. Voters don't really vote on those other than in terms of their overall. The line item, for instance, on early college or dual enrollment. And I think once we actually get the full model working when we actually really move into the governance that we want as a state, we could eventually see that, that, sorry, because I know that Joe, you already told me. It would be great not to have to warn a budget, but I do think we have to get back to that. That has to be the model. And so, that is the part that, you know, I think that there's, we have to be comfortable with for this two-year transition period, we're going to focus on the direct allocation piece off the top of the Ed Fund, and then we're going to actually get much more into, okay, that worked. Now, how do we actually really fine tune what that budget is, including voters actually getting to weigh in? Senator Weeks. Oh, I was just curious, you started talking about FTEs for, you know, two years down the road. Does student weighting have an impact on all that conversation? In terms, well, it could. You mean in terms of, like, their demographic variables? Yeah, I think that's something that we should probably think about. Well, I'm a little hesitant because of, you know, the conversations right now about our people weighting. But it could. What we frame this as largely is around what it costs for kind of, I guess, an average student to actually participate in the program. Like, and it's, and that it changes, you know, those costs are different from program to program. So there's a different cost to educate a student in a culinary program as there is to educate a student in the auto mechanics program. So that's the way we framed it. But this is a good question. It's perhaps something we should be thinking about as we, and again, I think the timeline we've put out gives us time to really weigh, you know, really true on some of those, some of those questions. Could I just finish on one thing? Yeah. So I think the part of this to your transition is we also want to keep things stable for the CTE system because there is a lot going on right now. And so that's what we're trying to do. It's like, all right, let's directly allocate, but we're basically going to keep things stable other than you'll have an opportunity as a CTE center to say we need a little bit more money or we need a little bit less money. I am excited about these changes because I remember in Essex, it was at the Essex in years ago. Were you at that? We had a big get together with a bunch of CTE folks, yeah. And the two CTEs for that. Yeah, and that was great. And we were talking about all this, so I'm so happy to see that it's coming to fruition. I'm a little concerned though as I think about the financial debacle that we're in the middle of right now and just that sort of chaos that this is going to be sort of coming on the heels of that. Hopefully it won't be problematic. And I'm also thinking about the block grants in terms of operating costs of CTEs and inflation. I'm just so concerned. We'll have that in the next week. We'll have an inflationary adjustment in there and we also have a whole harmless, like so we have some of those pieces in there. The other thing I would say, I'm just to extend that, we're not anticipating this would be some kind of new massive ask of the Ed Fund. There might be due to inflationary costs and things that we're already talking about, there might be like little bubbles of increase. But it's already being paid out of the Ed Fund. We're basically trying to change how it's delivered to the CTEs, if that makes sense. Second time in a row I think, you just answered my question. I didn't think I was psychic, but perhaps. He gets it. Congratulations. I would say remembering that this is going to go to the house, wherever you bring it to us next week, it's sounding more and more like this is going to go to finance. So we are not going to be able to get everything done. So Jess, I would say keep that in mind before we see you next Tuesday. Yeah. Just we've got to wrap this up in knowing that the house will add whatever you might not get to. Yes. I think we're going to be in really good shape. I do. It's been sketched out already. We just need the attorneys. If you need time to take testimony and understand the ins and outs in our finance committee. Yeah. Just know that I'm a cheat secret concern. What I was going to say is, from my perspective we need Ledge Council and General Council to just make sure that the. And Miss St. James is ready? Yes. To make sure that the line is just in full legal format. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Under section 15. Is this an okay pace? I feel like we're just kind of throwing it on. Okay, good. Under section 1541A. And by the way, if I haven't noted sections, we've got no changes to make. We think that it's delightful the way it is. So I would recommend we recommend removing section three because that also stipulates tuitioning and we don't need that given our new model. Section four under number four under that section. We had intended to have virtual experience. Because we want this to be flexible. So after speaking with CTE colleagues actually yesterday, they reminded me of that need for flexibility, which I wholeheartedly support. And so I apologize that this highlighted language was supposed to be in the original because we weren't intending that every year, every student in middle school has to go to a CTE center. That would be really, really tough to maneuver. Yeah. I think Senator Gillick also may have raised the cost. The cost. No time. Yeah. And so we're, and I would also love to hear from CTE director colleagues because I've put in some language around equivalent virtual experience. I think the point is we just want this to be flexible enough that it gets students exposed to what we want them exposed to. But the way that happens is flexible and can be dictated at the local level. I will say, given that though, that never visiting a CTE center throughout one's whole middle school, I think will be problematic because we really do want them to set foot at least once on that campus. It's kind of a different campus. Just like when you're talking about the post-secondary realm, it's like much more compelling and meaningful for students to actually set foot on an actual campus than to visit it virtually. So we're mindful that we want it to be as flexible as possible, but also don't want to completely lose the campus visit. And I think we're pretty much all in agreement in terms of the centers and us on that. Yeah, please. So section three, the one I'm recommending we remove. Yeah. So which subsections go away to? Are any of those like there's A and then there's one, two, three? We're keeping all those, right? We would just remove any that pertain to the tuitioning itself. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I should have clarified that. It should have been probably three A or whatever that letter is that speaks to tuitioning. Apologies. Thank you. I already covered subsection 1547 A1 in terms of the role of CTE centers and assisting SUs with the comprehensive career development policy. And then the final section, and I wanted to kind of talk about this a little because I think I heard from our folks that there was a question about the post-secondary program alignment. So we haven't yet engaged with the VSC. And part of that is because as you know, I'm really well, as you know, they're under tremendous stress fiscally and operationally and organizationally right now. And so we think this is a good idea. So this is actually state requirements around CTE progressions to the Vermont State Colleges. CCB does this already in many ways. So it would really be the general assembly kind of really requiring that more of the four-year part of Vermont State University. But we hadn't approached them because I didn't want them to kind of, until we got sort of like some feedback from all of you that it was something that you were interested in pushing forward on, I didn't want to kind of freak them out for like a better term. And so because I am very sensitive. They've seen the language. Okay. Yeah. And if they've seen it, I mean, I don't know if they've... We gave it to them. Okay. They were in here. Okay. They are considering it. Okay. So great. So we're primed now to talk with them. Well, I think they really need a phone call. Yep. Yeah. Yep. And I know I saw a break in the fall earlier. She was going to pop in and just generally say they're looking at it. They definitely have some questions and concerns, but they really appreciate hearing from the agency. Yep. And I'm happy to just flag out for them, like just lay out for them what the thinking was on that. Why we didn't... I really was trying to kind of protect them. Like if this was not going to fly and like no one was interested in it, I didn't want to... They're really... Okay. Under the gun. Yeah. Right now. Oh, no. I thought you were pointing something. No. Nope. Too good? No, I'm actually quite excited about the first... This is the first reference to a K to 16. I was thinking to myself, because of our involvement with health and welfare, how should birth to 16? Mm-hmm. Grade 16. Mm-hmm. We'll go ahead. Where are you? I'm in her test tomorrow. Yeah. 1594 section. Yeah. Our page 2. Yeah. You would not know this secretary... Secretary, I am sorry. Senator, we... You want to be secretary. You got that wrong. Not so quick. I am sorry, Mr. Chair. I know that we're... Oh, no. It's Friday. There is a PK-16 council that the General Assembly has actually put into law, but we... It's a lower-short silence. We have a net in a long, long time. I think it's just been one of those projects that was doing some good work. And just, you know, the state all around, not just the state agency, but all partners. We just moved on to other stuff, but I thought you might find that interesting. We have a lot of stuff on PK-16 in there. It's what, why? I was reminded of that. That's all I have. So I'm looking to see if the legislature has any questions for the secretary at this point. No, I did not. No, you did not. All right. I, since I'm getting a sense that generally I think the committee's okay with these, why don't... If you can stick around, we will actually hold off from hearing from the legislature so we can... Sure. Because I think that would be really brief. And here, from our other witnesses from the CTE programs, if that works for you... It certainly does. Well, I appreciate that. But I was asking Mr. Farron to send her something. Let me text Melissa Connor because she thinks that at a different time and see if she can join us. We can always, we can always have her also at another time. Ms. Emerson, while you're here, would you mind joining us at the table? I am fine with it, but actually Scott has the first... Oh, we had like a group effort. You did. And sections sorted out on how we were going to approach this. Yeah. You can even see it in our testimony. Okay. And we'll talk to the chancellor. And then we might need to take a break. And then we have our... We're at three. We just wanted your help. Yeah. Yeah. We're just trying to move it along a little bit. So I would love it if that would be well for us to do that. Okay. Ms. St. James, great to see you. Committee, any questions from Ms. St. James on any of these sections or proposals to the agency of it? Yes, that's St. James Office of Legislative Council. We walked through S3 or S4 as introduced yesterday. Wednesday. Wednesday. But no, it does. If you want some high overview, if you have anything at all, we've got some time here. So not trying to fill time. We're going to take a break, but this is a great opportunity. So I know that I'm not anticipating a normal fiscal note, but is there a fiscal impact? We can ask... Let me rip her for that. I'll do that. Do you mind just kind of giving us a very high... We know it was Wednesday, but we've all had a lot going on in committees and out of committees. Sure. Thanks. So let's go to page two, section one and two. Sections one and two are proposed amendments to the tuition for CTE centers as it exists now, moving from the sixth semester average or the average of the districts through prior years to the years full-time equivalent. You just heard testimony that there's a recommendation to not include those. And I have a meeting with AOE scheduled for Wednesday. And so we'll talk about effective dates for that. When I meet and whatever draft you get next, we'll have that incorporated. Sorry. Can we back up and get back to page one? We talked a little bit about... So you're going to take the tuition piece out, right? Number one at the beginning of the page. Yes, potentially. I have some questions about the effective date of that and whether or not it would need to remain in law for another year or so. Okay. So we're not talking fiscal year 25. That would be utter denial. Yes, it would. Very frightening. Sorry. I'm sorry. No. So my other question was just around four. Number four on page one. Do we want to add language there or is it not necessary in terms of including transferable skills or PLPs? Or do we want to make any references to sort of work that's already being done around... For the comprehensive career development policy? Yeah. I'm looking to the secretary. Secretary Pichett, what do you think of that? We talked about it for a while yesterday. We're on page one, line four, or lines 15 and 16. Number four, career development policy. Could we expand that so that we incorporate all the different things that you talked about, the transferable skills using the... The PLPs. The PLPs. Personalized learning methods. All that kind of thing. Absolutely. And I have another question that I should know because I'm a school board member. But when the agency of Ed develops a model policy, it is at the discretion of districts to use it. Right? It's not a mandate, correct? It depends on how laws work. Right, okay. Agreed. And in this case, it doesn't sound like... So the way this section four is drafted currently, and I will go back and your next draft will have references to the secretary's testimony of those additional concepts as far as the comprehensive career development policy. If you look at page five, line five, subsection B, it requires each SU board to develop, to develop, adopt and ensure implementation of a policy that's at least as comprehensive as the model policy. I think we may have talked about this in the very initial high level walkthrough and then I failed to mention it on Tuesday. Policy development is usually a school district duty. It's specifically enumerated in there. In this particular situation, if you're looking for a larger policy to be supervisory union-wide, I don't think there's anything illegal about that, but school districts are usually the ones developing the educational policies for their districts on that level. Right. But anyway, to answer your questions, I'm going to give you this does require the adoption of a policy. The comprehensive career development policy? Yes. Page five. To create and supervisory union to adopt, right, got you. That's the key to adopt. Okay. Are you okay with that, do you think? I don't think so. I might have to think about it over the weekend, but I think I, yeah. And then there's some implementation. Section five is implementation dates that I will certainly take direction from AOE on. And then there's the intent language on page six on the construction aid career and technical education, including them in any new state aid for school construction program. Section seven is the CPE oversight changes where we're substituting secretary for state or to reflect the change in oversight from the state board of education of the agency of education. How does people feel about that, Willis? What do you need to hear from? Do you want to hear from the chair of the state board? What do you think? Yeah. I mean, I'm also just looking at the secretary to say, maybe give us some more live. We were a little bit, yeah. I realized, well, I didn't talk about this one. I realized that. It's a big change. It's a big change. Largely for us, it's coming from the agency does have and we're making authority ever since we've been an agency. We've done that with district quality standards so far. It really is for us. And we do think we have the capacity to do this, especially we're asking, you know, in the budget, there's a new CTE person. That's right. Which, by the way, sorry, just a pause. Can we talk about having that person in this? Yes, we talked about putting it in the next draft. Beautiful. Okay. The CTE rules in rule right now have literally been sitting there for about 20 years. Maybe a little more. Maybe even a little more. At the state board? Yes. And so that does not have a state board. It's truly a capacity issue. And there's a lot that the state board is being charged to do and will continue to do. So really, for us, it's about we can get this done. We did it with DQS. We wanted the CTE. I think it makes total sense. I do too. You know, when you have a bill on the state board, I've got some ideas. Yeah, I think this moves this in a good direction. Having a secretary do it, you know, the agency. I don't know enough to know. Okay. And it would be helpful to have a test money. Yeah. The affected individual, the chairman of the state board, the chair of the board. Yeah. Mr. Chair, can I clarify? Yeah, please. So we would actually follow the same exact process, because that's actually specified in law. So there will be no difference in the rulemaking process, whether it's the state board of that, or whether it's the agency of that. We have to follow the L car, I car, all of that stuff just to clarify. Yeah. John, what I'm saying, I don't mean that as a counter to what you just said. I just wanted to clarify a little bit. My hesitation is, you know, I don't know if there's a power play. I don't know what the dynamics are. Sure. And the individual sits there and says, yeah, this is a great idea because of capacity or whatever the rationale is. Good. Right. Fantastic. Have you talked to the state board? Did you ask them? Um, did I on this one? I'm not sure. Okay. But I will. Would you? That would be great. We'll still have Jennifer in, but that would be terrific if you'd be willing to reach out to the board. Absolutely. Go ahead. And if, I mean, hypothetically, if it is a power issue, then it's up to us to decide, right? Yeah. But I don't know what the issue is. Right. Okay. Well, it sounds like it's a capacity issue. Yeah. If that's as simple as that. Instead of having me ponder this adoptive model policy bit over the weekend, I just have some experts in the field that might be able to speak to it. Sure. So I don't know like the V's, the V's, I guess, right? Or a superintendent or, because I mean, I don't, I'm not exactly sure what it would be. So this is the same process that you all used in the school branding model policy adoption. I believe it's the same as the hazement, hazing, harassment, and bullying policy. And possibly the direction we're going in with. Well, that didn't require the adoption. That didn't require the option to share. Yes. Model health. Yes. Yeah. So there are areas of the law where that exists, but how that works on a field level, you're absolutely right. It would be the most likely the V's. Right. We're coming out of time. That's all. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't mean that. Well, that's true. We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. Here we go. S3 or 4. The V's. Two days of them. Great. Please. Keep going. Section B is the transfer rule. Making authority from state board to a week. Yeah. And then section nine is the post-secondary program alignment, the requirement for the articulation. I think that's between secondary CTE centers and the Vermont State Colleges Corporation for the specifically enumerated subjects. Yeah. We wanted to add building trades to that, to those four making it five. Sure. Okay. Welcome. This is young man. He's got the trophy. It's all the truth. Any answers to his own questions? That's right. You can better. That's right. President Berg and Drake are going to be here in 10 minutes. So let's take the 10 minute break. Welcome back to Senate education. Following up on Senator Week's question a little bit for the end of committee, we are going to have a conversation about PCBs. We are trying to figure it. It looks like we do have a vehicle. H486 was not voted out of this committee. So we might use that as a vehicle to have a conversation about PCBs. But we need to hear from the Attorney General who's coming in next week. Agency of natural resources. So either we will look at it or the House will look at it. And also the pro tem is out. So of course we need to have conversations with our various parties about it. But the short of it is the agency and the administration has taken, it seems like a shift around whether or not, you know, from testing PCBs, mandatory testing to now putting a pause. And I think some people feel as though maybe the larger institutions, the most dangerous institutions out there that will learn certain period of time have been covered. So it says nothing to you with you, Mr. President. I appreciate you being here. We just wanted to sort of clear that up for our many folks that follow us, including who was invited today by someone who's still figuring it out, Ethan. That was a pleasure. Dr. Burke, thanks a million for being with us. We know you are serving as the intern president of Vermont State University. And we've not had you in. And we have met the Chancellor and we'd just love to know a little bit more about you. Any goals or objectives you might have while you are in this role. And some information on, you know, that Vermont State University in general and how things from your perspective, which is a really unique perspective, the interim, you might, I don't know if you're looking for the gig itself full time, but it would be great to hear your thoughts on the university overall. Well, I just want to thank you for having me today and to thank you for your support, which, you know, has been invaluable as we're in our first year here at VTSU and moving things forward. Let me talk a little bit just briefly about myself in case you're not familiar with my background. But this represents a return to Vermont and the Vermont State College system. For me, I previously had spent 19 years at what was then Johnson State College. In fact, I talked this out to the organizers so it's a little dated, but... So also, you were the president at Johnson State? I was now the president. In my final position I was in there was I was Dean of Student Life and Community Relations. So, but I had been there for 19 years in student-facing roles at Johnson. And I'll just note that the last probably half-dozen years that I was there, I had a number of roles at what was then the system level. Of course, now these are... The series of campuses are now part of VTSU. But I chaired the Student Affairs Council, which were the deans of students at the various campuses, Johnson, Vermont Tech, Lyndon, and actually worked with CCB at the time as well. And so had an opportunity through that to spend time on all of the campuses and to develop a colleague and friendships across the campuses. And then I also advised in the last several years that I was there a group called the VSCSA, which was the student leadership from across the various, again, then separate colleges and actually would accompany students here annually to the State House as part of that for their legislative day. I had experience across the various campuses prior to my return. And I think I was interested in coming back to this. And I was following, obviously, I followed the situation of the last few years, have many, again, friends and colleagues who have been here throughout and with great interest and concern. And so when this opportunity came up, the reason that I really was interested in it is because I've seen firsthand the impact of these campuses on the State, how they provide opportunity for students and for monitors especially, that weren't found in other places. And also I really appreciate and understand the impact that these campuses have on the areas and the regions that they're located in as economic and cultural driver and real hub and anchor for those regions and communities. And I believe when the system was established, I mean, these campuses were intentionally located in areas to serve traditionally underrepresented areas. So I think for those reasons, I mean, I see the importance of maintaining a strong future for now VTSU. You know, I'll be frank, I'm three months in, we have our share of challenges, right? And I think where I'm devoting a lot of my time and effort right now is just simply building trust, making sure people feel that there's genuine input and inclusion in terms of setting the direction of where we're going from here. So I've spent countless hours talking with students and staff and faculty at all of our campuses, speaking with alumni groups, speaking with local and regional leaders in the areas where our campuses are located to try to make sure, again, that we're all rowing in the same direction. And I think we're really making headway there. So that's kind of, you know, and I was saying before the meeting started, if I had kind of a quick description of what I hope to see really emerging in this next year or so, it's for our students and our faculty and our staff and our communities to really begin to see these, see how we can retain the individual character and culture and even history with some of our individual campuses while seeing the benefits of being part of a larger institution and the resources that can come with that on behalf of our students. And I know you've met the Chancellor. I think I've got about a month and a half head start on her. So Chancellor Mao, who has been great. And one thing that she and I share is that, you know, as we move things forward, that always keeping, you know, what's in the best interest of our students as the driver in all of our planning efforts. And if we do that, I think we really can't go wrong. So that's where we're at. I mean, we have work to do for sure. No doubt about it. But I've really been heartened by the response that I've received and had in those conversations. The support that I've felt across the state, I mean, has really been affirming. And I'll share just one last thing that even in my conversations that I've had on the campuses, I mean, people have felt very comfortable in sharing their concerns and their worries, you know. But, you know, what I think really resonated for me is that there's not resistance to change. There's not just resistance for the sake of resistance. I think almost everyone I've spoken to has acknowledged that for VDSU to be successful, that change has to occur moving forward. It's just that they really want to be sure that there's inclusion in those discussions and informing our direction and making sure we're tapping into our own internal expertise to the extent that we can in those conversations. So that's what I'm committed to. And I said that was the last thing I'll say. I'll say one last thing, which is that, you know, everyone on the campuses has experienced so much change so fast that I keep saying, if nothing else, what I want to offer in the short term at least is an opportunity for folks to catch their breath a little bit and, you know, understanding there's more work to do, more change to come, but to really have us refocused on our work supporting students and to have that be the primary focus of folks' times rather than, you know, feeling like they're in constant response mode to, you know, the latest change to come down the pike. So given all that, again, there's hard work to do, but I think we're pointed in the right direction and I've really been impressed by folks rallying to support them. So it's the two presidents, you and Joyce Judy, you have all of the campuses that Judy basically doesn't, that Joyce doesn't have, and then the chancellor, or the two of you report to the chancellor. Yeah, the two of us report to the chancellor, yes, right, who is the direct conduit to our board of trustees. Okay. And you've been able to get around to your campuses. Yeah, so our campuses, just so everyone knows, Williston, Randolph, Johnson, Linden and Castleton. Williston, tell me about Williston. Yeah, Williston is probably the least traditional of any of those. If folks have, it's sort of, frankly, is a former kind of strip mall set up. It's four buildings in a circle off of the kind of heavily trafficked area right there at the corners, right off of the interstate at Williston. And that originally was part of Vermont Tech, so it was affiliated with what's now our Randolph campus, and that's one of the places where, you know, a lot of our nursing programs and the like have operated out of, but there is a residential facility there as well. And, you know, that was kind of the last, I say that the campuses were originally positioned where they were, you know, to kind of represent underserved areas. Those legacy institutions, as we refer to them, are sort of the other campuses. Williston is comparatively newer. Two gentlemen represent Castleton. Okay. There we are. We were, a couple of us were up there this year in the fall, very impressive. I thought the students were, I was thinking for myself, the students we interacted with, I felt, had been at a range of institutions in the United States. Really talented, interesting people. So, that seemed very positive. Yeah. Is there a campus that has your concern, you know, that you have an eye on that, listen, we all have issues in our workplace, areas that we feel are thriving, areas that we might want to improve upon? Can you say something about that? Well, I would say that they, you know, they... Not really fair, completely fair question. Right. But anything you could... Yeah, no, it's a good question. I think that the issues and concerns are slightly different per campus, right? I mean, they all, again, have their individual cultures and history. There's an interesting dynamic in which, so a little bit of additional recent history, as some of you know, is that it was probably about seven years ago now that Johnson and Linden affiliated to become Northern Vermont University. So, in some ways, they already kind of went through and have become expert in some of the growing pains that comes along with this sort of exercise. So, they're sort of in a different place on that than, say, Castleton, for example, for some of these challenges they're experiencing for the first time. So, you know, I, you know, in terms of the campuses themselves, and I'll just say that I think the next big, one of the next big initiatives that we're going to be looking at over a period of many years and being very inclusive in this process, it's looking at our physical campuses and needs and the preliminary work on that in terms of a master planning process started before I arrived and some of the initial work that they've done with, that we've done with the consultant indicates probably in total somewhere around 30% overbuilt across all of our campuses in terms of physical spaces. And so then the question becomes, okay, so how do we make these campuses the best they can be vibrant, effective spaces for students? I mean, at the same time that we might be overbuilt, we know we need to invest in some of the spaces we have to improve them. And so I think we're going to have really some exciting conversations, I think with campus community members and regional planners and agencies and partners in the areas where we're located to talk about creative uses potentially for space that we may not need. I mean, recognizing these campuses were built in a different time with different teaching, learning modalities and certainly with a different demographic base. And I do want to say regarding Castleton, I've really enjoyed, I've had the chance to connect with some of the folks in the Rotland area. I had a meeting at the hub space, the club space downtown, which is just a remarkable, yeah, Lyle Jeffs and I met with him and representatives from the mayor's office there. And I think that we see all kinds of ways. I know that there's been such a strong partnership between the city of Rotland and Castleton University and we don't want to lose that for sure. Is there some little Castleton office downtown? Is it dorms? Yeah, there's an art gallery, some residential space. It's an economic gallery for Rotland. Sure. I mean, when you came in, we were talking PCBs. We were talking school construction stuff in general. We have a lot of schools out there that are in rough shape physically, even with PCBs aside. Is there a room, or I guess I would just say something to think about. I've always loved the partnership between secondary and post-secondary. Kids on college campuses, kids using college spaces for 9 through 12, just as you're sort of looking at spaces and talking to community members, for all we know, there could be a school right nearby that isn't such that the physical plant. The only option is to raise it and could they then have a, if you're over 30% overbuilt, perhaps, is there those kinds of opportunities? Just something to think about. I think those are the kinds of opportunities that I'd be excited about. I mean, when I talk about kind of the ideal for, so if we have spaces that aren't needed in their current fashion, are there local regional agencies or organizations or schools that have space needs that might want to lease or rent space on the campus and have perfect if they had a program or did work that connected with one of our academic programs where then our students could intern right on, you know, at a campus location and kind of bring a class, vibrancy, energy. So those are the kind of things we, obviously our student needs are going to be our driver but how we can look at community and regional needs in terms of addressing some of the spaces we might not need for our core functions in ways that are mutually beneficial. I mean, that's pretty exciting to me. I should note that when I was at Johnson, the last several years that I was there, I chaired the board of the Regional Planning Commission there, the Memorial County Planning Commission. So this kind of intersection between, you know, how these campuses can really truly be resources to the broader community is really important to me. Thank you. Please. I want to echo what Chair Campion said. Senator Leese and I were on the School Construction Aid Task Force and it just became clear the crushing amount of money that it can accrue pretty quickly with buildings that are not kept up. So I guess I would just hope that you would prioritize the building, the buildings and grounds and taking a close look. And I know it's, you don't want to rush into major changes, as you said earlier, which makes sense, but and from my lived experience building a high school in Burlington of the construction costs just keep going up and up and up. And I mean it's astounding. So the sooner you can get on that, the better. I highly encourage you to do that. And then I had a second question, actually. We do have a bill in this committee that you're probably aware of around the board of trustees. And I know that you don't, it sounds like you don't report directly to the board, but do you have a comment or an opinion on the proposal? Yeah, I mean, I guess first I'll just be honest that in the course of, you know, my focus has obviously been on these five campuses since I've been here. So it isn't something I've had time to give a lot of review or consideration to. I believe that our board chair, Representative Dickinson, and I think the chancellor have testified on that. And so, and a lot of it is our policy determinations to be made. I mean, so I mean, I think, you know, I'll work with the board that we have to work with, I guess is what I would say to that. Right, I am sort of hearing what you're saying, though, in terms of consistency right now for the short term, trying not to shape things up as there are so many changes already in the works. And so I'm hearing that, and I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. So how long do you plan to be around? Well, so I have an agreement. This is usually, this is our closer. This is a question I've been fielding. I mentioned I've been making the rounds. I met with the staff federation union group at Linden. Well, part of that is out of my hands, I'll just say. So I agreed to come in and do this on an interim basis. It's a different interim arrangement than the one that Mike Smith had, right? So he came in, it was a very immediate need. So here's the quick version of how I understand this, understanding again that I wasn't here for some of this, right? But there was a full national search conducted that brought in to bring in the inaugural president of VTSU. And full national search is time consuming and it's a lot of process and expense around that. And unfortunately, that didn't last long term. And I think with the departure of the initial president, there was just a need for immediate filling, which Mike Smith very admirably did. And I think there had been a commitment, as I understand it, at the time to the faculty and staff that there would be the likelihood of considering another full national search process, but there just simply wasn't time to be doing that with all the things that needed to happen in the immediate term. And so decided that a reasonable timeframe to consider filling to enable another full search if that was to be what was to happen would be through to get us through the 24-25 school year. So that's a long way, I apologize, of saying that my contract takes me through the end of June 25. So it's a lot of time. For an interim contract, it's enough time to really, I think, have an impact. Again, really kind of affect the impact, the culture. And again, hopefully to help continue to build things forward and stabilize. And what I've committed to staff and faculty at the university, because their concern is, again, this is another area where there's been rapid change, leadership, and that can kind of feel disruptive and disorienting, is whether or not, if it's not me, if I'm only doing this interim period, then what I'm assured is that we're going to be moving things in a direction that will be consistent, that there will be a smooth transition to new leadership and there won't be any kind of abrupt shift and focus at that point. But I have, just so you know, because I've been asked this, sometimes interim contracts preclude or prevent you from applying for it full-time. There's nothing like that in my agreement. So conceivably, if I was feeling it was going well and others were feeling it was going well, I could conceivably throw my hat in the ring and right now it depends on the day, but honestly, if I... Yeah, the center of view that's pointing around stabilization is so key and there's been some instability. Yes. And listen, that kind of thing happens in all sorts of institutions across the United States and so appreciate your stepping in and willing to do this and taking on such a long period of time. Thank you. If I could. Sure. So thank you for coming in and testifying. It's nice to meet you and fully recognize that you've got a full plate already on hand. But I'm curious though, if you're thinking over the next roughly 18 months of your initial tenure, if you've created any kind of goals for the first six months or 12 months or 18 months, is there any hot burning topics at the forefront? Yeah, well, really the biggest thing I've kind of alluded to in a little bit already, one is just kind of stabilizing, just to be honest. Things were so disrupted when I came in that I think just the need to project and for folks to feel some consistency and comfort in what they're doing and as I say, to start to really kind of appreciate and understand the benefits of being part of a larger university on each of the campuses and I think we're really making headway. I mean, feedback from faculty has been about how great the experience already has been with some of the mixed classroom experiences where you have students from different campuses. But I think starting this work around the physical campuses, I do think is really kind of the next big thing, the review of the physical plan, the master planning and so my goal would really be to have that on a path forward. I mean, you know, a lot of what that work will involve, we won't see the fruits up for 10 to 15 years, right? And the world will be a very different place in 10 to 15 years. I always say, you know, five years ago who would have predicted a global pandemic. So I think what we can do is in the next few years make some really smart decisions and position ourselves with these campuses so that we can be prepared to pivot in the direction that, you know, facts on the ground take us to between now and then. But I do think positioning the work of the master planning, bringing increased ability to the campuses. I mean, again, what's amazing is you think about it, this is the first year still of this university. I think we've got some really exciting... This is the first year really that we're seeing like the test run of the new name being out there. I mean, Vermont, the name Vermont has cachet and means something and our admissions folks are saying now on the national recruitment scale, like when they're in Denver and Pittsburgh and in Texas, that they're seeing a lot of big uptick in out-of-state interest. And I think, you know, we don't have year-over-year data to compare yet in terms of what the impact of this new entity will be, but I think it is gonna generate some attention for us, which is a real upside. And related to that, frankly, the other thing that we need to do is just stop shooting ourselves in the foot, you know, and having controversy swirling around in the hard of our admission cycles, which has really undercut some of the efforts in recent years. And I think in that regard, we're in a really good place because I think there is, I really do share a sense of commitment in our faculty and staff to kind of doing everything together to advance the university. Thank you. Thank you. Challenging times, for sure. Yes. I've been at Bennington for the last 18 years. Democrat shifts, you know, all sorts of issues related to costs, higher education, making certain that middle-class kids, lower middle-class kids, Pell Grant eligible kids kind of for higher education. It's incredibly challenging. Also given all the costs that are associated with higher education, hiring the best faculty you can possibly get, vision to inflation, and all the other sort of struggles that we outline, including, of course, that physical planning. Yes. Glad you're there. Please, if there's anything we can do to be helpful, I think we're all happy to chip in. I appreciate that. And I really thank you for this opportunity. And again, really, we couldn't be doing this without the legislature's support and the governor's support. So we're very appreciative of that. So thank you. Great. Thank you. Any final questions? Okay. Terry, it's time. Just a couple. Here we go. I think we've seen the words behind this, for sure. Good. And you got a commitment from faculty and staff, even students to hold together and fix whatever you decide needs to be fixed. So if it's bad news, I think they can deal with it as long as they know what I'm talking about. Right. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Very much so. Great. Thank you. And of course, you've got great people like Drake on your team. Indeed. And I think we'll leave it there. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you. And Drake, just so you know, we have, you and the secretary will have a conversation, I'm sure, regarding credits, section nine of the CTE bill. And so she's going to reach out to all of you. And vice versa. Great. Hello. There you go. Sorry you get to the back of my head. Ms. Emerson. Yes. Please. And Scott and Melissa, you said that, I'll let you all organize. How are you, Melissa? I was going to give you a nice chair. Oh, you weren't. Thank you. Come on up, Scott. We've done this as a group. Now, previous testimony, so we figured we'd stay with it. It's terrific. And you appreciate, usually we see Mr. Far up in the upper right-hand corner. So appreciate you coming here. It's a school vacation week. And it's a sunny day. Why not? It's not a vacation week for me. Because we do not have an online calendar. But in all seriousness, for you to come in on a school vacation week, when we want faculty, staff, administration to take a break as much as they can, I really do appreciate it. It means a lot to us as we're trying to work our way through this. Thank you. So what I think he's saying is that during town meeting week, he's available for meetings at the city fair. Right. He'll switch. He'll switch. Right. No, my understanding is he does. He does. He does. He does. So for the record, Scott Farron, the superintendent director of the River Valley Tenant Center School District in Springfield, Vermont, and the current president of the Tech Directors Association. And I'm Jodi Emerson, superintendent director of Central Vermont Career Center in Barrie, and apparently the incoming president of BACTED. Congratulations. And I'm Melissa Conner, the director of Staffer Technical Center in Rutland, and the very happy past president of BACTED. Great. And the joke is Melissa made me do it because we used to work together years ago. So we looked at the bill. It's changed a little bit since we started first looking at it. So we're going to try to adjust on the fly. We're also trying to match it up with some thoughtful asks that we would have based on the APA report that came out in April. We knew that it would be a dialogue around all of this, and we wanted to make sure we had a dialogue of all the technical center directors in the state. And we even crafted a couple of letters. Our point of view of future conversations out. We're going to go back to that, and I think you can see that in the documentation that Jodi shared with you. As far as governance, and it's not directly in the bill, we felt like we needed to at least have a reaction to it, is governance should be done thoughtfully. We should have in mind that the governance model should best serve the mission of career technical education, and our students is too important to rush, and we want to do it right. And we also recognize the bigger conversation of all the education system in the state of Vermont. It's going to happen over the next few years, and we wanted to make sure that we fit in nicely with wherever all of that goes. And we didn't want to be ahead of the curve. We wanted to make sure we fit very well in that and give an opportunity for the state's doing that Willis and I are participating on to play out a little bit as far as the governance piece. So we do share the secretary's view on that. When our conversation started talking about the funding of CTE, we could predict or see, well it wasn't predict, but we could see that with the increase in health care costs, that the federal funds leaving, public ed, and then 127, we didn't see it at the time, but the transition in funding of the rest of the system, we thought that this might be a good time if we can to move quickly to have a non-competitive funding system because our partners in the rest of the system are really going to feel it this year. If we can move away to what APA has pointed out and we have said for at least a decade I've been involved, let's not put pit us against the people that we share the students with so that we can best deliver on the mission. If we can get out in front of this, this may be a great time to do that. And our original letter of ask back in November said, hey, if we could do this, it would be a really cool thing to do. Now we recognize that all of our budgets are well down the road and that probably isn't possible, but the thought was the timing could be good to do something bold. That ends my section in the first part. And so we wanted to address points two and three next. The one in talking about requiring or providing access to grades six through eight with career centers. So we know you're referring to the bill itself for your work. Yes, yes. And we went more with the starting bullets than being deep into the language. You took a bigger picture of it. Beautiful. So one of the things that Interim Secretary Boucher kind of alluded to earlier from some of the conversations we've had with her is that every tech center is very different. I can speak, you know, for myself here in Rotling region, we serve 34 middle schools. And for us to try to have every middle school student coming through our building would be a big ask. It would be, you know, hard on our instructors. Well, we're also trying to do recruiting for our students that want to come here and pursue, you know, two years here at Stafford. So what we would ask for in something like that is to really think about that flexibility. I think many of us around the state have some really great models in place and we would hate to lose some of that. So while we think it's important that sixth or eighth graders get access, we do want to include that flexibility. The other piece too that we've been talking about is really looking at, we have several that are positions within CTE that are required and we would really like to see a middle school position required for every prior and tech ed center with salary assistance similar to those other required positions. That would ensure that every middle school student around the state has equitable access to CTE and that there is a plan and there is somebody that that is their point and their purpose within the prior and tech ed center. When we talk about grades nine through 10. I'm sorry Melissa, I started to interrupt your testimony. I think I'm curious about that the second point on the written testimony that we have because at least what I was thinking in my mind was, you know, there's that there would be, you know, an annual field trip essentially to the CTE. Are you seeing it more as creating more programs for grades six through eight? Is that how the language would be interpreted by you folks? I think there needs to be flexibility about how that not necessarily, I don't think it necessarily has to be a visit. You know, here at Stafford we have a menu of offerings for all of our middle school partners and they look and they do what fits within their work of study which fits within their budget as far as busing. Some of our middle schools don't have the budget for field trips and so we want to make sure that we can meet their needs and we can still provide exposures so it might be us going to them instead of them coming to us and so just allowing that flexibility and we have some middle schools that have literally 50 students and we have some that have close to 300 and so an experience looks very different between, you know, 50 students and 300 students. Thanks. So is your vision like a video, like a production, some type of audio visual here's an introduction as an option to a site visit? I think that could be an option. I think in many cases tech centers are going to the middle schools and bringing students to the middle school students bringing actual activities for them to do to give them exposures. We have a staffed approach and I know many other tech centers do. We want to make sure that every time that they have an interaction with us it's a new and different experience so that as a sixth grader they're not getting the same thing as a tenth grade visit to our school. So I think every tech center does it a little bit differently. I think we're hitting our middle schools but it's what works best for our middle school partners and works best for the size of our center and the staffing within our centers. And so I would hate to have a mandate for a smaller center because it simply doesn't have the staffing in order to do that. Thank you. This would help us at Central Vermont to expand what we do with our sending schools, middle schools. Right now we do have a school counseling coordinator who visits each middle school and makes presentations brings tools from those programs and then all of our eighth graders do visit us annually to ask us to have the sixth and seventh and eighth. All visit us wouldn't be possible and I heard the interim secretary say that's not what they anticipated but looking at kind of what Melissa just said a step model of in sixth grade we do this and seventh grade we do this and in eighth grade we do this based on each center and their sending schools relationships. I think that's important. Yeah I would quickly add that actually I view this one session as kind of limiting there's a lot more already happening as far as middle school outreach. We all have a package of five or six different programs that we do. Many of us have been doing it for many years and we've been doing it with grant funding. I think it's important enough that it just becomes part of what we do and that there's a person that is designated to do that to be an ambassador or liaison with our partner schools to set up a program that makes the most sense and there's a lot of really cool things happening. I don't even have time but to hear what different centers are doing to introduce ourselves to middle school is it one visit there's way more happening than that already. So the position that you'd like sounds like you'd like to add position in CTE to be a middle school liaison does that require legislation do you think? Or is that just something that will be incorporated into budgets? I think that there are a handful of positions that are required positions like career and technical education directors, school counselors co-op coordinators those are all partially funded by the state as a funding stream for the Ed Fund that it's important enough that that should get that level of recognition as far as the work. If you look at the co-op position that's really transitioning students that well we should have a position that helps transition students in and make sure there's a solid level of experiences that move them from career awareness exploration and really to career development for what happens at the tech center. That would be our recommendation. So yes it would require legislation. And my other question is sorry to go backwards but to the funding piece number one were you in agreement with the interim secretary's proposal? Is that what I heard? It's changed a little bit so when she opened she was talking about going back to a single year FTE model and that's transitioned to an interim kind of way of funding that sounds like it would work we'd like to see what the secretary presents next week but it sounds like we're going to keep it whole with a chance to move whether an increase where is necessary that sounds really good but administrators who are conscious of the bottom line what does that really mean to us in the end but it sounds good at this moment sure. Is it non-competitive? We don't know how it impacts our sending schools and us yet. So we have the secretary here can you say is everything competitive grants? No. As far as the tuitioning of students like when I think about what we were asking for a non-competitive our sending schools right now get some portion of their students tuition and we get some directly and then we build them for a portion still and so it's a disincentive for them to send kids to us if they really need those funds right and so how does this impact them I don't know that we know that yet. So my understanding is that so my understanding is that it's appropriation that's given to the LEAs but it's really on that. It's given to the CTEs and it's given to the LEAs for CTEs that are not independently right the two of you but my understanding is that then there's a direct tuition model back to the LEAs and so that they pay out of their budget and so I'm not seeing where there's a loss for the LEAs to me it's just we're taking the money that already would be going through those that it goes through and actually giving it more directly to the CTEs. Yeah our hope would be that they don't even it's not in their books at all that you send as many kids as you want and there's no direct impact particularly for a small school can serve as a disincentive that's been a decade of conversation and send them you don't even see it in your books send us five more you don't even see it in your books that's what we hope we would all want them moved to. And I apologize to interview you but actually you were midway through. I think that was I think you just answered it yeah thank you very much that's helpful. Item number three requiring school district to provide students enrolled in grades nine and ten a genuine opportunity to participate in pre-tech and exploratory career and technical courses one of the questions we had is you know what really is a genuine opportunity that was a real ambiguous to us and for us you know some of the challenges when we have pre-tech exploratory programs which are really just kind of introductory courses to our programming for a full day center like many of us are around the state we have OSHA limits for the number of students that we can have in hard labs so for us to be able to have pre-tech exploratory programs we can't have them in the labs because our labs are full and we would be violating OSHA rights so it really comes down to some challenges around some of the pre-tech exploratories around space having space to be able to have them having the staffing and then because they are short introductory courses when I have a partner school that's perhaps 45 minutes away doesn't make sense for them to be able to come here to Stafford for a 70-minute class and then return on a 40-minute bus ride and return us going out for satellite programs while it's been done it is another challenge because again it's additional staffing that we have to have and it's hard enough to get staffing for our regular programs there's additional cost and also ensuring that any of the spaces that we're going to be working with meet the requirements for CTE in terms of safety around different equipment so that's a challenge for us we definitely are in favor of doing it and how can we make that happen in a way that's not a burden to the current system and is a good quality experience for our students and I think it's still me so the other one around requiring the agency of education to create supervisor unions to adopt a model of comprehensive career development policy this is one of the areas that we really feel that we would love to see it worded in a way that it's a partnership between us and our regional high schools within our regional district there's several reasons for this one obviously to be able to do a lot of this middle school work that we're talking about that would make it helpful but it also gets into the areas of high school graduation requirements I've said this to this committee before so I apologize if I sound like a broken record but we're dealing with anywhere from 10 to 11 high schools that all have different graduation requirements that makes it a challenge for us to be able to meet all of those needs of all of those different high schools as well as giving them the technical education the Vermont agency of education has worked with all of our instructors to identify embedded academic credits within each of our technical programs and we would like to see those mandated to have to be recognized in our high schools for more than just English and math elective credits the example I'd love to give is our engineering program the science curriculum that they do is a physics class they're studying physics as part of that and when it goes on most high school transcripts for that science credit that's embedded it's listed as an elective science credit so when that student is going on to apply for post secondary an elective science credit it doesn't look as enticing to an admissions counselor as a physics credit so that's something that we feel is really important and we think by having a career development partnership with our partner high schools that could help us have some consistency and some clarity so that students around the state are getting credit for the work that they're actually doing in their technical programs that was a question I've had a personal experience with guidance counselors that had students around college track and then all the cool kids were going to Voltec to do the things that they wanted to do they wanted to change their career field their career path midstream and got some resistance from the guidance how do we get around is there an experience that so we do as part of our comprehensive local needs assessment that is part of our Perkins plan one of the questions we ask our students in our survey is whether or not anyone discouraged them to apply to tech centers and we had this year about 10% of our current students so that's just under 30 students that said that they were discouraged and about half of those were discouraged by school counselors they're able to put comments and one said that their counselor said they were not dumb enough to come to a tech center that's disheartening that that is still existing I will say it's gone down last year we were at 17% we're at 10% now so we're making gains but the stigma that still is out there it's disheartening Miss Connor can you say something about the other where some of the other discouragement came from or is it just so such a mix a lot of it was parents exactly parents discouraging peers not wanting their friends to leave but I would say the majority out of those that were discouraged it was through school counselors and I think in a lot of cases they don't understand because they never experienced career in tech ed they went through the traditional school pathway so I think it's making more awareness and I think with a career development partnership between tech centers and the supervisor unions we could improve that I just realized that my piece of this is the same as what Melissa just shared with you so good job Melissa we got that cover and you can cross that part out I will add that one of our colleagues indicated that he wants to come on to bring up the fact that we do take adult students who have diplomas for example in my program I have cosmetology for two years and so a lot of times the second year cosmetology students may be adult students and we can only charge 40% of our tuition for those students and so that also is not helpful in keeping our programs alive so it's one area that that individual wanted us to bring up in our testimony today so I just wanted to share that with you quickly so where does the remaining 60% go from just absorb it we absorb it just like we do any other changes and shifts and we could have in any year or six semester average could be greater than or less than the number of students we have in the building oversight of CTE by the state board of education to the secretary of education I think our comment would be the rules that govern us are over 20 years old and we would welcome a change in those rules so the system is to where we are now versus where it was 25 years ago as far as who makes those rules changes and who has the authority to do that I'm not sure how that happens in state government is it who is it well we should do that then whoever usually does that they should do it again and change it after 20 years of one way so we would love for it to be collaborative yes do you think it wasn't 20 years ago no idea you were not even we appreciate that it feels like a shift from a state board to the secretary position it could go at the whim of whoever is in that role I don't know that it would but it feels like it could as long as we are consulted or at least brought in and that there is recognition I think that AOE has clear recognition of what is required of us for our Perkins for example which is really high stringent accountability data and information so I think they would be but it's a concern that the group would share one way that I think counter that which I think is a reasonable the piece of house is shifting the statute could require the agency to actually engage in rulemaking every six years so that would actually protect against some of that variability of it being an agency I also just wanted to remind so baked into rulemaking it has to be collaborative that's the whole reason there has to be public there has to be a lot of opportunities for the public including obviously the CTE centers themselves to weigh in on that number six and this is the one around requiring the state colleges to have articulation agreements with our CTE centers and Jody kind of alluded to the fact that we have very stringent federal accountability measures for our students one of them being that we have to actually offer dual enrollment credits which is different than articulations and so an articulation agreement is basically a student is doing college level work at their tech center but the only way they actually get that college credit transcripted is that they actually attend that institution whereas dual enrollment which is what our federal requirement is is that we have faculty on site teaching those college level courses is actually transcripted with whichever institution that instructor is actually working with as an adjunct professor and so that provides portability and while I understand there's probably a desire to have our students continue on at Vermont institutions for some of the programs that's just not an option so when we think of culinary right now there is not a culinary institute in the state of Vermont for our students to take part in and you know some of the other programs their specialty areas that they might not be able to find out of Vermont institution that they would want to go outside of the state for and they would want to be able to take those college credits that they earned so that is one thing and in the packet in our testimony we provided these are the requirements that we have for all of our programs going forward for next year and each year they will increase and this is again federal requirements that we are provided measures on and we have to address in the next year and if we don't meet our targets we have to take 30% of our funding and address it to fix that and so we have several programs starting next year that are going to require at least six transcripted credits or combination of three transcripted credits and an IRC so for us it's really important that when we're looking at this if possible that it could be rather than an articulation a dual enrollment agreement so that we can be working with our state partners at the post secondary level but also meeting our post secondary agreements so that is one of the things and then for seven which is the school construction facilities construction yes please keep us in there and keep us in mind we definitely have facilities that need work and as you've heard me say more than once I do not have enough space in the facility that I'm in my board just signed on agreement with two architects together the ones that are working up at Burlington as well and we're looking to a 2029 new building so there is work in progress and we're going to need some funding so please don't forget us there and I know Melissa you're going to need some too absolutely so not only are we expanding we've doubled the capacity of three programs they're not in the most ideal spaces we've converted traditional classroom to hard labs which is not ideal but we're making it work and we also have some of our outbuildings which were original in 1974 that have seen better days that we're actually working on a study right now we're meeting with architects next week about rehabbing those buildings or replacing those buildings to find out the cost of those now I'll chime in quickly my center doesn't need we're new we're less than 20 years old and it was part of an effort late 90s early 2000s that had a plan they evaluated the sites which which region should get a new tech center Southwest in Bennington River Valley and Springfield Newport Green Mountain and Hyde Park think Hannaford had a recent new building yeah so there was a plan before that is very similar to what is happening now and looking at all the buildings then it all stopped when it all stopped for everybody so we just want to make sure that we're in the conversation and if we're providing some genuine access for earlier years ninth and tenth grade we're going to need more space for that too can I just yeah please go ahead well I'm just looking at graduation rates in some of certain districts here so Springfield there is a tech center yeah okay I mean graduation rate 68% you know would love to get more kids engaged in tech if that will you know or what if it's of course what they want to do but also if um keep them in school for a longer period yeah you made a good point I had the latest data from the last year is just coming out today but I think we were at 94 95% in the last round for students in the Tender River Valley as far as they were specifically Springfield yeah I couldn't tell you okay thank you declining enrollment across the state which is probably going to continue even if we bring more people into the state I assume as you're looking at plans for construction and growth that you're looking to take over possibly empty spaces in the traditional high school because I would is that is it a shift going from traditional to CTE or our lab spaces are cannot take place in traditional classrooms so that it would be probably more costly to transition traditional classrooms into CTE lab spaces okay we're not necessarily looking at that but as we move into the site selection phase I know that there are a couple of my sending school high schools that may have interest in our building near them or on their campus so there may be a campus that has quite a bit of land and they could expand and then we could share the academic pieces and build our workshops there thanks the other data that is that the reduction of student enrollments as far as as high schools and regular school districts isn't totally reflected in what happens in CTE that CTE is kind of state level or increased I think some of it is what was talked about in the committee is that more students are considering that that's the way that they should go I think it helps with dual enrollment and all the certifications take some of that stigma away and more students are seeing that as a pathway so we've stayed level I believe is what the data would show as a CTE system in the state of Vermont my applications have grown every year you last year you said now is this thinking more in terms of actual physical space and you were here when we had the president of state university locations there's any way of partnering with I'd say our state universities we've talked about the credit piece but also maybe facilities we have the Howard Dean Education Center on our campus which used to have five or six college classrooms nobody really takes a class in person these days so we've moved that to early in child care four classrooms of that on the fourth floor because there's a little local need for that and it's a lab for our students in human services program so we transitioned that based on the need that we had in our region where would Winooski students be able to go if they wanted this kind of CTE experience Winooski students? Is there a career technical institute I presume they would go to Essex or Burlington they would go to Essex or Burlington and is there an opportunity for kids in Essex North just again looking at graduation rates Essex or Burlington Essex North but they don't have the full range so they have some limited programs up there they have tried to do some costy work in New Hampshire but that has kind of fallen hard they're on our area Essex County just tagging quickly on the construction piece the ratio of students available to the size the number of spots available at the tech center Jody's Center is 1960 and what has happened to the population in this region there's been a shift in that some of the tech centers were built at a time when there was less students we should consider we need more capacity just because the demographics have grown in that region so I'm going to take you down a slightly different path so you started the conversation with kind of a remarkable difference between CTE graduation rates versus traditional high school graduation rates you also have the comment that you're always I guess mostly receiving more applications than you have spaces for I'm not sure that's I know it's true at Stanford but my question is the cadre of students that apply but don't get in is there any figure about the graduation rate of that cohort do they tend to become demotivated and say well heck with it I'm not in a traditional high school path can't get into the CTE I'm out of here I don't have that hard data from my sending schools and probably some of them are like that because I'd be curious if there was like this if there was data that showed that it would be great ammunition for you to say hey look really do need more seats because we're losing kids and we're not going to regain them maybe when they pop back up after getting tired of working in McDonald's for adult investigation I think one of the things that was proposed in the agency's latest paper that I think was presented last week is more flexibility about accessing a different service region when the programming isn't available in your service region and we work pretty closely with Hartford who was to the north of us hey I got a kid that needs carpentry can they come to your center do you have a spot I think the agency is looking at a way to make that a little easier to do how do we look at transportation to do that because right now if that Hartford student has to figure out how to come to Springfield to get the training that they want so I thought you were raising your hand out of the corner of my eye so I think we can do that with the rulemaking in the same way that we have designated more than 20 years ago in the CTE region that's a piece that could go into the rulemaking to actually crack those rules around like what to do in those situations and allow that permeability so I'm thinking primarily this is probably going to Melissa and I really don't know what I'm talking about but you know right now the mayor of the city of Rotten have an ad hoc working group they need housing and have you got a plan to tie in with the the rhetoric or the people that you know they can't find enough people absolutely we actually have a reconstruction technology probably about three or four weeks ago with Mayor Dunn and we're actually coming up here again to talk about the housing development and the housing development and the housing development for both our construction students and our plumbing students and then we have our natural resources for our students and we have some landscaping so we are definitely talking about that okay so how about the Vermont National Guard they had probably 25 years ago now they had problem with civilian acquired skills so then if a MD soldier had a civilian acquired skill that would fit into his military they kind of they built a curriculum a curriculum around that so that you got credit for it is that something you have a curriculum that's been dictated or can you build one? we have the NCCR curriculum that is for several of our programs so the structure of the curriculum and then the construction level construction that is something that is restricted by the state that we use in our construction like the plumbing and the welding program those are the ones that are going to be up to all of them is there a way that any of those could be applied towards like military requirements for enrollment or for credit that college credit? at this time I don't think there is any set of reasons I know that we have there are many conversations before the merger of the college the DTC and the construction development program but the merger was happening so I think that was something that we should pursue I guess the reason I'm asking is because we need things and we need what you produce so there may be a 10 year period when that shifts and we don't need as many so I'd like to see something get off the ground because you guys are providing it let's see you get to talk about calendar we want to take a round I know I'm waiting for all the eye rolls and people to walk out of the room they always give me this one but you know the need for a statewide calendar particularly around professional development for our career and tech ed instructors if you think of a traditional high school they have departments and they have three or four English teachers or three or four math teachers or whatever the size of their faculty for us our instructors are the sole person in their department and so for them to be able to really work together and network and be able to learn from one another it's really challenging and what happens now is that they're able to go statewide and then they pick a couple of days during the school year which means that we could have potentially four to five teachers out on a school day when students are in session we have to struggle to get guest teachers I think I could probably speak for Scott and Jody we as directors have been subbing in classrooms because we are short subs so that we can ensure that our teachers go to these and even if we could baby step this in have four guaranteed professional development days for all career and tech ed instructors now that's a challenge with the different bargaining units when we have so many different unions around and everything is different depending on which district you're in but that would really be helpful also looking at aligning some of the vacations Scott and Jody or Scott particularly can speak to this better than I experienced it as a teacher when I was in Springfield many students if the vacations don't align they sometimes don't get a vacation because they're in session at their partner high school and then the tech center is in session the following week so the students never actually get a break and it's also challenging Scott and I experienced it this year we share Mount Holly and we have his school would be on vacation and he has staff there as part of the elementary as part aligns with my calendar and so their kids were off and his teachers were working so there's lots of challenges for parents for students and for educators to have that and I think those were the key points and you know and I think when we were talking about there was a mention of a bell schedule I've been working this is my ninth year at Stafford and it's taken me nine years the same arrival and departure time I still have one school that's on the outlier but it's obviously it impacts the time that students spend in their program and in their academics in a full day center but it also impacts the experiences that students have to be able to connect with their back at their partner high school with athletics with arts with clubs that they want to participate in because one of the things that we always I think we all tech centers do a really good job of is making sure that the opportunities for students back at their partner high school still exists for them so that they are feeling part of that school community as well and sometimes when we have varied bus schedules and departure times it impacts whether they can make it back in time for practice and so we want to just make sure that our students are able to have a set arrival and departure time that's going to ensure them opportunities back at their partner high school as well the calendar and that's what happens in the school where families are split teachers go to different districts and it's childcare it is much as we want to think about our school to suggest that this week what is the impact on our larger communities one of the unintended consequences of Act 46 going a few years ago is that Mount Holly got a little bit more choice and their dance partner is in a different region so we work hard to coordinate around our region but then some of those bordering towns is different in Vermont there are three different school vacation weeks in April I think there's two now it really and somebody in when we were testifying house education they were talking about what a challenge was and I know well I think I remember we used to bargain healthcare individually but we don't do that anymore either so really we should be able to figure this one out and we're already required to have 171 days all of our sending schools in common with their CTE their regional CTE so 171 of the 175 already need to be in common so if CTE is just aligned their schedule that would force everybody else to align their schedule so some of this yes we'll have to be taken up in the house I mean we are getting close to crossover as you know but when it comes back to us you know we can add we can continue these conversations but we're going to do our best between next week and the following week to move this I would like to just go back to senator week's point if there is any way to track students how many students did you not accept last year 200 200 and you know we have 17% on average our Vermont students are not graduating from high school or dropping out but we have them as you know some schools 50% so if we can track those and help these kids get excited about education it would be terrific and I realize it's heavy lift I mean it's not an easy thing to do I would assume if I was a CTE they didn't accept a category of students they kind of drop off the CTE's they go back to the home school to the sending school and at that point it's their data management right but if you were to ask them hey these are the 200 students that didn't get you know weren't accepted last year you know that kind of stuff really very compelling very compelling just one question something I think you had said about the unions gave feedback on the common calendar some of it wasn't positive there was some resistance somebody maybe he's talking about healthcare we testified in house education and one of our asks have been for years to have a common calendar and the committee said well that may be more of a challenge than you think and that's what I said but similar to the unions have resistance there's language that the union has can weigh in differently in different places for the number of days so for instance we have 180 student days and so across all our sending school districts they might have different variants that's the one and then when you get literal thinking about the bell schedule thing you can't actually have the same bell schedule because of the bus you don't need to go that way which union teacher's union yes so should speak more specifically we're trying to like understand what the speed bumps are between here and voting out this legislation NEA yes I'm just curious like who should we testify who is resistive of the idea we identify that then we can have a conversation we have a long afternoon ahead of us any final comments I just say thank you met with this committee over the years and it seems like things are gaining momentum to some changes so we can do absolutely the most we can for our state works secretary asked us about what we're excited about and we're excited that maybe some changes can happen to help us be even more effective than we already are great and I think I'm back Tuesday yeah yeah I have the data from the state for my center because it came through today before I left and so you can take a look at what information we get back from the agency around our accountability the first very first one is our graduation rate so mine is 96.47 which is pretty good so this is the kind of data that all of the CTEs get so if you want more of that information you can I just have one copy so we'll take five minutes welcome back to senate education this Friday afternoon right on time I want to thank senator sheen for bringing us back to S120 which is something we worked on last year there was a study committee I know that we have representative rachel sin here there's a companion bill in the house regarding some of this but I want to turn it over to senator sheen and tease this up a little bit more for us so as the chair mentioned this was something that we worked on last year we got testimony on it and came to the conclusion that we should continue studying it over the summer and the intercollegiate sexual harm prevention council did a lot of work over the summer including with different subcommittees to put together some more language put together some proposed edits and come back with something that hopefully reaches some sort of consensus and that's what we'll find out today so I think I wanted to make sure that we revisit this bill that way the work that we did last year and the work that was done over the summer isn't lost so I think with that it would be best to pass it to the folks who did the work over the summer and then or Beth Beth Beth St. James office of the legislative council I'm happy to do a very high level walkthrough for you but I suspect that the folks who have done all of the hard work are going to do that anyway so whatever I'm just mindful of time and everyone's got a lot of people in the room who know more about this than me but I'm happy thank you thank you good to see you all it's always good it's always nice to have the the last thing you do on a Friday so thank you for your patience yeah and for your time today and thank you so much for returning to S120 just a quick reminder because I don't think I've been in here yet this session the Vermont network is the leading statewide voice on issues related to domestic and sexual violence and we represent 15 independent nonprofit organizations who provide services to victims of domestic and sexual violence across the state and in 2023 those member organizations answered 23,300 hotline calls from individuals here in Vermont seeking support and provided in-person advocacy to 8,494 victims and survivors 23,000 calls 23,000 calls last year and that has increased over the past several years as well for too many students in Vermont their time in college also includes experiences of sexual assault or sexual harm women who are ages 18 to 24 are four times more likely than women of other ages to experience sexual violence and the impacts of sexual assault on college campuses are disproportionate to other kinds of victimization for example individuals twice as likely to be sexually assaulted on a college campus then robbed for these student survivors sexual violence that's experienced in college has detrimental and material impacts on their education on their future earnings their overall health and well-being and despite the prevalence of campus sexual violence only a very small number estimated at less than 10% of these cases are reported at all and a smaller number still wind their way through campus judicial processes or through criminal prosecution and Vermont's not immune to these traditional trends and statistics it was only 2021 when hundreds of students walked out in protest over campus handling of sexual assault at Vermont's largest public university so it's definitely an issue that is top of mind for many college students across Vermont so your committee took up S120 last year and there was significant stakeholder input from various stakeholders and educational institutions regarding the bill as introduced and after the legislative the concerns that were raised during the legislative session the intercollegiate sexual harm prevention council worked to address many of the concerns that were raised in testimony and to work together on proposals to move the bill forward this included several subcommittees that met monthly throughout the summer and fall and provided language proposals as well as many opportunities for input and feedback at the December meeting of the intercollegiate sexual harm prevention council the council walked through these revisions section by section and these proposed changes were supported by almost every stakeholder on the council with the exception of the University of Vermont who you'll hear from later today these changes are intended to create a framework for a consistent response to campus sexual harm while offering generous operational flexibility to institutions to implement the law as the basis of my testimony today I would just like to walk through the progress that was made by the council over the summer and fall and the most substantive changes to the bill as introduced that resulted from this work and I've provided some detailed proposals for amendments to Senator Hashim but we'll walk through these changes at a slightly higher level today just for the purposes of testimony and would be happy to talk about those in greater depth so section one of the bill as introduced was about a sexual misconduct campus climate survey and while the network who I represent continues to remain strongly supportive of a shared campus climate survey there was not stakeholder consensus or agreement on a shared climate survey so our suggestion would be removing section one of the bill at this time and we would continue to work with the intercollegiate sexual harm prevention council to ensure that campuses are conducting climate surveys and there's also the potential that some upcoming new Title IX administrative rules which should be coming down federally in the coming months may also be relevant to the kind of campus climate survey discussion section two is about resource advisors on college campuses in this section of the bill the changes that the intercollegiate council worked on and that we would propose replace the term resource advisors with advocacy coordinators throughout the section we also propose to only require that an advocacy coordinator is available at institutions of higher education with 1,000 or more full-time residential students and this change was meant to address any burdens that could be experienced by residential institutions in addition we are proposing to remove some of the specified requirements for these positions and remove the confidentiality privilege for these positions that was originally proposed in the bill is introduced section three is around memorandums of understanding between institutions of higher education and community based sexual assault programs we do not offer any proposed changes to section three of the bill this is one item of significant importance and in part that's because community based sexual assault advocates enjoy crisis worker privilege which is found in Vermont statute and allows them to offer confidential support and advocacy with protections from various requests or protections from subpoena and it's essential that these partnerships exist so that students who experience sexual harm can access support on campus but can also access confidential support off campus section four is related to amnesty policies there were no proposed changes to the amnesty policy recommendation this is one of the earliest sections of the bill that enjoyed near unanimous support of the council most neighboring New England states have the same or similar language in their statutes protecting students who are victims or witness to sexual assault in reporting such incidents section five is around annual awareness programming and training the changes were very minimal here which just kind of ensure that proposed changes brought in a range of stakeholders and that all on campus and off campus reporting options are included in annual training that's provided by institutions of higher education and we're also proposing that this training or related information is available on the institution's website so that it's not just a one dose one time training but that someone can go back to it and refer to it over time and section six is about the intercollegiate sexual harm prevention council I'll just note that this is really a body that brings together a diverse set of stakeholders many many stakeholders from higher education institutions as well as the law enforcement community advocacy communities has student representatives and so it has been a really important body to moving this work forward and the only proposed revisions to this section include replacing the original bill had that the council would host an annual conference and changing that language to the annual training opportunities and repealing the sunset of the council in 2025 when it is scheduled to sunset so that's a pretty high level overview of the changes that we are proposing obviously the most significant one is the removal of section one but I would be more than happy to take any questions from committee members on those changes or the process and the resource advisors is this something that institutions are hiring people or it's more the dean of student the assistant dean of students can also be the resource advisor it's a great question to ask the institutions of higher education how they would operationalize that but by and large what we hear is that there are staff who already can serve in this capacity thank you center regime thank you also thank you for all the work that you've done over the summer the question I have it might be a multi-part question but the so first with section two removing the confidentiality privilege for the positions I was wondering about that and then I was also wondering if it in any way interacts with the in section three offering confidential support and advocacy with protections from requests or subpoenas or is that just are these two are they two different positions is that why they're actually two things that go together so the resource advisors are on campus university employees and so they as employees of the institution they really can't have crisis worker privilege in the same way that a community based advocate would and in part that's because their employees of an institution and so their documents their equipment their emails is all the property of the institution and so we wanted to just be clear that these resource the advocacy coordinators on campus can provide information to students can be a resource for students but that if they need confidential advocacy that seeking that from a community based advocate that works at one of our member organizations is going to provide the greatest confidentiality protections so that's the reason that we are asking institutions of higher education to have memorandums of understanding between their institutions and the community based organization that serves their area so is advocacy coordinator a sort of bridge to the crisis worker exactly yes section six I was wondering in revealing the sunset are you asking for it to remain in perpetuity for now you know a policy decision on your part in terms of whether you want to extend that but I think that we definitely see the advantage to bringing this group of individuals together over time and that at a minimum we'd want to extend it for several more years on the climate survey yes campuses are doing is it safe to say a range of things in terms of their approaches to climate surveys but they're doing I think broadly that is accurate and that's what we hear from campuses the intent of the section as it was originally introduced was to ensure that there was some consistency across the state because one of the things we can't do now is people ask how many students experience sexual assault on college campuses in Vermont I can't answer that question really well because there's federal reporting requirements but we know that that captures a very very very small number of the actual assaults that happen and one of the best and evidence based ways to understand the prevalence of sexual assault within an institution is to do a climate survey and schools and institutions of higher education do operationalize that in different ways right now our original intent was to have some similar metrics that we could kind of create a statewide picture and say across the state you know 45% of students report X or Y but it just in our conversations on the council there were a lot of excellent questions raised by institutions of higher education and a desire to use the tools that they're already using that they have faith in and appreciate and so we certainly understand that desire for that kind of flexibility I will say just from the network's perspective we would love to come back to this conversation at some point in the future and I do think that perhaps Title 9 regulations will give us some clarity about campus climate surveys as well and those have not yet been released that's a great question because I think we were waiting last year we were and there was hope at some point that they were going to be released by September they're in the final stages so it should be within the next few months but I feel like I've been saying that for two years now whose report is Title 9 sorry what was that whose report is a federal yes the Title 9 stuff that we're waiting on yes that is all federal Title 9 exactly that we're waiting from the U.S. Department of Education anything else so the advocacy coordinators with what exists currently they don't is there just sort of a patchwork policy like it depends on the university for the college thank you I believe you're unless I have the wrong order here do I no that's the order that I'm going to introduce two of my colleagues who are much more more fluid on this so Emily the prosecutor is the Title 9 coordinator of the University of Vermont and Jennifer the pillow from our office of general counsel can you bring a chair Emily you're the director I'm the Title 9 coordinator yes thanks for joining us I think it's your first time in Senate education it is I'll let everybody introduce themselves so you know where we are and where we're from please Senator Terry Williams from the Brooklyn District nice to meet you Dave Weeks from the Brooklyn District Brian Campion Bennington Martin LaRocke-Dulic Burlington-Winooski Essex I have not our shame Wyndham County nice to meet you all right Emily McCarthy the Title 9 coordinator at UVM but prior to working at UVM I was deputy state's attorney in Chittenden County for five years two of those years I served as the prosecutor for CUSY the Chittenden Unit for special investigations in terms of prosecutions so I thought that background might be helpful you know we can walk through this bill and some of the proposed amendments you know we would be in agreement with the amendment to strike section one for a number of reasons and maybe I'm just going to jump to my experience on the council so in support of that I sit on the intercollegiate council and was specifically on the subcommittee that discussed the campus climate surveys and as a subcommittee we really had difficulty coming to a consensus about this topic because in part the people on the committee we lack the expertise I think required to develop a survey like this there's a lot of nuance that needs to be taken into consideration in gathering this evidence based on particular campus climates and number of questions and the pacing of questions as part of our review we did look at sample surveys and some of those sample surveys felt really intimidating towards students based on the level of detail that the questions asked and the number of questions that we really feared would be re-traumatizing for a student especially when given to them in a very cold way not in a supportive environment who sat on this sub council or a subcommittee and in looking through them she agreed that felt harmful to answer that level of detailed questions you do a survey at UMM it's your own sort of thing that you welcome up with in the climate culture of university so great question yes we do have a campus climate survey that is broader meaning some questions related to campus sexual misconduct and experience on campus we I think try to be intentional about every question that's on that survey and have we have, I'm trying to remember the position title but someone who is their professional in this type of survey work in addition we've been able to gather important information in a number of different ways so while we might not have an exact number where we've surveyed every single person on campus we are are cleary we have federal data reporting statistics that we report our office this year for the first time reported numbers and those were posted in December about numbers and types of incidents and that was going through incidents that were reported to the Title IX office and then also every other month we meet with HopeWorks which is an advocacy organization in the community and we meet with them every month and one of the things, or every other month one of the things that we do with them is we go over trends that they're seeing and so just what are you seeing here, what are you seeing there and we pass along that information to our education provider so that they know what they're seeing tailoring education to those trends I was just curious if the survey you were referencing was that had kind of a re-traumatizing effect was that the general survey or was that like a questionnaire given to a victim so so the question, so some of the sample surveys that I've looked at is it would be to all students it's not just somebody who has reported an experience yes but that was what you were discussing on the council that's not the survey we had exactly, yes so you wanted to take us through so section 2 so section 2 the advocacy coordinator so I'd say we don't dispute that confidential resources should be available to all members of the campus community however we want to do it in a different way than is outlined in either the bill as proposed or the amendments as proposed thought it may be helpful to give you an idea of what we do at UVF and so what we do is we contract with an organization called HopeWorks they're a community advocacy organization and this works well because they provide 24-7 availability 365 days a year through a number of different mediums they're in person, they're over the phone they have a hotline, a text line and additionally there are a number of different advocates who represent diverse identities which has been something that UVM students have found supportive and so a number of years ago prior to taking on HopeWorks we had a single confidential on campus advocate as is proposed by the original bill and that didn't serve our campus well in fact our students asked to move away from that model that was specifically one of their demands during that time of protest because of not having as much availability and some students didn't connect well with that one particular individual and wanted more options so I think the other piece that's important so happy to hear about some of the proposed amendments that do make progress from the original proposed legislation but one concern remains with the advocate advocacy coordinator role and that is that it is specifically geared towards reporting parties we have an obligation as an institution to provide support for all members of our campus community and so if this position is providing support in a confidential it really can't be in a confidential way as was pointed out because of the crisis worker privilege and so we need to be very clear with our students what this position is what it is not if they share information with advocacy coordinator that is noticed to the institution we do need to act on that but we also need to provide that level of support to our respondents and to witnesses in any situation and so we actually have positions along these lines that sit in Emily's office and provide this level of support to all parties throughout the process and so we'd be really interested in working to make if there is legislation to working to make that language really clear and ensure that we are not creating a biased environment in that space and just you're working off of this submission correct we don't have that submission but based on what we have heard yes that what I submitted was what the council approved in December so we had the draft legislation that the council voted on but yes alright so the next section is did you have anything else to say on that the next section sorry I'm a general counsel so I'm an attorney for the institution but importantly I focus in the student affairs space in the compliance space, public safety space and I've been at EVAM for almost 14 years and so I have been through the full evolution of sexual misconduct reporting response on our campus since the 2011 Dear colleague letter from the US Department of Education so I've sort of rode the waves and I'm familiar not just with the legal landscape but with our operational capacity as well so that you will have us here today the third section is about MOUs with the network or with the networks affiliate organizations HopeWorks being one of them we're very proud of our relationship with HopeWorks we're also very proud of that relationship because we had the choice to enter it and it made good business sense we were able to negotiate those terms according to what worked well for us at HopeWorks and so we encourage any institution to consider that having an MOU absolutely have a relationship, engage in information sharing education about processes we really just feel like it's not a one size fits all approach if you will and so don't feel like there is a need to mandate an MOU to be in place I think that's really up to the campus culture what the needs are of that campus we do have confidential resources on our campus that are not from HopeWorks right we offer counseling and psychiatry services and other things we have a contract for services with HopeWorks to provide a certain number of on campus hours of their advocates they also because of the nature of their services and the fact that our campus community is part of Chittenden County our folks are eligible to use their hotline to use their off campus services et cetera as any member of the town would be so that was part of my first question and so I guess the second question is if you don't have an MOU but you have a contract how would an MOU change your current relationship with HopeWorks it likely would not other than that it would not be our choice to have that relationship amnesty so while we very much agree with an amnesty provision and UVM has its own amnesty provision we like ours better than for a couple of reasons the the bill as drafted raises a couple of logistical concerns that we see sometimes in these cases the first is when we have students who make cross complaints against each other so when one student accuses the other student of either sexual misconduct or relationship violence and the other student in the same scenario accuses the other student back of that same conduct the Title IX regs require that we can't pick aside about which one we investigate we have to investigate both and so the way UVM has our provision written doesn't preclude that but that's potentially an issue in the language as it's drafted here the other concern is that sometimes in these cases we don't for example in a relationship in a assault sometimes we don't have a clear understanding of the relationship between the two students whether they are in a dating relationship or not sometimes that's part of what we have to investigate and so when that relationship is unclear we add a charge under the general student code of conduct for an assault to make sure that if the investigation determines that there was not a dating relationship between the two that then there can be a finding that there was an assault even if that dating relationship didn't exist that's how we handle that so agree with the principle we have that principle in place for all types of conduct on our campus most frequently that comes up with if there's concerns about underage drinking we are not going to pursue an underage drinking charge we'd rather hear about the other concerning behavior that has occurred that happens with all types of student conduct on our campus not just sexual misconduct so absolutely agree with the concept it's really in the logistics and precise wording that we would have some concerns the next section is oh sorry we were to mark this up and be more precise and also address the cross complaint issue that was raised would you be in support of it this section with our work yes right we do it now so we're in support it's a matter of ensuring that the concerns of our campus that we have had experience with match what the requirement is so the next section is on annual awareness programming and training again we are in support of having annual awareness programming and training what this comes down to is this language feels very duplicative of many federal requirements that we are already subject to so there is a good amount of training required of our student body as well as our employees around these issues they're mandated by the campus sexual violence elimination act or the SAVE Act which was part of the VAWA reauthorization and so we offer primary prevention programming we offer continuing education we also expect as was referenced to have new Title IX regulations coming out in the coming months which very well could speak to these issues so our concern is not confusing the landscape if you will we are subject to requirements we have flexibility within those requirements to ensure that that programming is tailored to our campus community to our culture is relevant and so we would just seek to remove that section from this particular legislation so that folks have a clear path forward Section 6 I don't know Wendy if you want to speak to this it's about the existence of the council supportive to have a council I think the question continues to remain of what is the appropriate make up we want to make sure that all campuses are able to access this really important information the ability to do resource sharing as comprised right now and I'm sure others will speak to this UVM is represented the state colleges are represented we have a lot of independent colleges that right now have a representative that doesn't necessarily promote the information sharing to make sure all of those campuses are included we'd love to be able to expand on that point I'm sure Susan will speak to that real quick I'm sorry I didn't fully can we go back to section 5 because I wasn't I don't so you're not you're not in support of section 5 is what I we are not because while it is very similar to what's required at the federal level it is not exact and we would rather have one place to refer to of what our training requirements are simply to make it easier to administer understand what our obligations are we don't want to have those competing compliance obligations got it and what are are any of the main differences listed in one of the on this list let me rephrase the question what are the main differences between what's proposed versus what you're already doing there is not a lot of difference between what our campus is presently doing but that said the federal regulations allow more latitude for campuses to design it with respect to their campus population then some of the language that's contained in the proposed bill and so we feel like it's really important for campuses to be able to have that level of autonomy to make sure that what they are doing reflects their campus communities needs and I could go through and write red line exactly what the differences are between federal law and what's being proposed but I think the overarching concern is that we are doing this work we don't feel like additional regulation or additional mandates around that are necessary thank you thank you good afternoon for the record Susan Stitely with the association of Vermont Independent Colleges I haven't seen this latest draft and so some of what I was going to say I will skip over and some of what I say might not be as relevant because things have been changed with draft well I have yes yes so we admire what the council is doing and support their intentions and our colleges work hard to protect students from sexual harm although we support their intentions there are still parts of the bill and the legislation that we can't support we certainly support eliminating the campus sexual misconduct survey I just want to make a few comments about that that might just be relevant to information so 2022 Congress charged the department of education with coming up with a climate survey on sexual harm and the department of education will be charged with overseeing that survey and administering it every two years this is still a work in progress it hasn't happened yet but it is in the works so one of my concerns was why do this work at the state level when the federal level is happening or probably slowly but happening so I just wanted to point that out that that is happening there just a few words about the CLEARY Act which requires institutions to collect data on domestic violence dating violence stalking hate crimes and violence against women act offenses so the colleges collect that data and they are required to post it on their websites one of the concerns and I'll just mention this briefly with the one size fits all, you know we have some really small colleges in Vermont Center for Cartoon Studies has 30 students approximately, Sterling has 70 or 80 so when you collect data with specific information like that in a small institution students know who you're talking about we want that same situation with small public schools we have to collect certain data around test scores all that kind of thing and I don't know if we have a stand on it there's something that does not allow us I believe in the state I have to check with the agency St. James but some data is not collected because of confidentiality so that would have been one concern if we had continued with the use conduct survey one thing about Title IX I have heard recently of course it may be released next month it may not be early February it was sent to the office of budget management and they have 90 days to respond so if they take their full 90 days we're still looking at you know two and a half months before the roads are released I would like to talk again it sounds like there's some language changes on the advocacy coordinator so I'll just propose changes so some of what I might say might not be relevant but we what I had been reading has shall hire an advocacy coordinator and the US has a long labor history that hiring is based on the need is determined by an employer and the Supreme Court has constitutionalized the common law of employment by placing the freedom to contract within the liberties protected by the 5th and the 14th you know is allowing the parties that they should be free to choose their contracting partners and to agree to the terms of the contract without government restrictions as it was originally written the there was a mandate that we should hire an advocacy coordinator and dictated who that person should or should not be it dictated their roles and their job responsibilities so if that should stay in there our colleges are living in challenging times, financial times so we would ask that there be an appropriation if it's required to support an advocacy coordinator essentially that same principle of freedom of contract applies to an MOU even though technically that's not a contract depending on how it's written but we don't think the state should be I'm sorry before we get to the MOU I actually just wanted to throw a question to the lech council real quick Beth regarding the advocacy coordinators and the contracting is it unconstitutional to require this type of position unless you're going to ask me about Beth St. James Office of Legislative Council that's not the type of analysis I can just do fly unless you're going to ask me about Carson and Bacon but I can certainly look into it for you Beth I think I was going to talk about the MOU so we support working with advocacy groups and we do work with advocacy groups but we don't support requiring that we work with a specific advocacy group most of our colleges work with the members of the network already but what if a new organization appeared and we thought it was better then we would not be free to work with who we thought was best as far as the amnesty provision on section 4 we agree with UVM that it should probably be reworked and that it's really best if it's left up to the institutions you know each institution has different needs for example Norwich University may want to have their amnesty read a little differently compared to Sterling College and on section 5 the annual training again all the colleges already provide annual awareness training to students and to employees and if they needed guidance they would reach out to the network but mandating that the network provides the guidance I think is an overreach most colleges already have contracts with vendors to implement the trainings for students and employees so if this was required that they work with the network would we be required to break the contracts and again I think this violates the freedom to contract philosophy as far as section 6 I think it would be good and needed to redefine the role of the council and what is needed before I could support or not support that Thank you I'm wondering what would you say is the problem we're trying to solve with the changes that you lost before In large part in large part it was responding to a lot of testimony last year around allowing institutions of higher education to have the operational flexibility that they said that they needed Thank you very much Ready? Planned Parenthood although you may remember last year when we talked about this bill I was the one that came and talked to you about it from the network so I have been working on these issues in various capacities for many years and excited to come talk to you about it from the perspective of Planned Parenthood and the Vermont Action Fund so you may know as Planned Parenthood of Northern New England that is our C3 side that serves patients in our health centers and provides sexual and reproductive health care we also have Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund which is an independent not-for-profit organization which is our advocacy and political arm of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and at the Action Fund we engage in educational and electoral activity including voter registration grassroots organizing and legislative advocacy and one of the big priorities of the Action Fund is supporting student organizing on college campuses across Vermont through what's called Planned Parenthood Generation Action also known as Gen Action has over 350 campus groups across the country and we have four active teams here in Vermont at Bennington, Middlebury, NBU Linden and UVM and the goal of Gen Action teams is to raise public awareness about reproductive health and rights educate young people about sexual health and create lasting change in their communities Gen Action teams in Vermont have led initiatives to bring sexual and reproductive health care education to campuses by organizing sexual health and wellness fairs tabling to bring resources to their students and hosting sex education trivia events they have also championed programs to bring safe sex supplies to their peers for free like in Bennington where students now have access to free and anonymous condoms, dental dance, pregnancy tests and emergency contraception delivered right to their dorm rooms so broadly speaking as an organization whose mission it is to advance access to sexual health care and defend reproductive rights we believe everyone should have the right to an education free from sexual harm and so we wholeheartedly support S120 as well as all of the suggested language changes that have been brought by the network and the intercollegiate council with one exception in section one which I'll talk about sexual harm is widely underreported in fact it is estimated that only 12% of campus sexual harm is ever reported to Title IX offices so as a result official Title IX data is an ineffective method to understand the true scope of this issue which leaves us without any clear data on how many students experience campus sexual harm in Vermont each year according to Know Your Nine which is a national advocacy organization they estimate about 19% of women 6% of men are assaulted during their years at college and these numbers are even higher for LGBTQ plus students students of color and students with disabilities we know from our experiences working directly with students across Vermont universities that sexual misconduct is pervasive at all of our schools in Vermont however without the data to back up what students are saying it's really difficult for us to demonstrate that to you all if you're not embedded in those college life with those kids and so it is really critical that you all in the Vermont legislature have real-time information from the student perspective on what they're experiencing how they're being supported or not and how they're handling these experiences at their school which is why we really strongly encourage you to consider leaving section one in which is the sexual misconduct campus climate survey this is mostly for that statewide consistency to help you all do your jobs most effectively if this statewide campus climate survey would provide the legislature with the data you need to make informed decisions about how best to support students and universities to navigate sexual misconduct prevention and support this data that would be collected through a survey would better support the state taking a data informed approach to evaluating which proactive and responsive measures are working or not working we know from talking with many students that they would really appreciate the opportunity to share their experiences of sexual harm to help ensure that their experience is not repeated and to promote positive changes on their campuses the process includes of rigorous informed consent which ensures that all students are aware of the risks and privacy concerns of sharing information in a survey and they can opt out of the process at any time under S 120 students will not be required to participate in any part of a climate survey process this survey will not create added harm student voice and experience are a critical part of the discourse on how campuses address sexual misconduct and a regulated statewide campus climate survey is the most effective and noninvasive way for them to do so and I will also just mention that a few years ago New Hampshire passed a similar provision and they have done a lot of research with folks at Dartmouth and have a really comprehensive system for how to do it in an effective and trauma informed way across the entire state that is very similar to ours moving on to section two and three students who experience sexual harms are more likely to misclass experience disruptions in their ability to produce assignments at the level they were previously capable of and even drop out entirely support systems are critical for the long-term management of the physical and mental impact of sexual harm currently the supports available to students who experience sexual harm varies widely depending on what institution they attend sections two and three would provide consistent support to all students in Vermont regardless of where they choose to study and would expand on campus supports to options outside of the federally regulated title nine office and I think this is a really key part of these sections particularly section two because the regulations and requirements of federal programs like title nine can change drastically based on our federal administrations even under the best of national circumstances the rules associated with title nine are often focused on legal processes and risks to the educational institution itself rather than focusing on the individual needs of a survivor with less than 12% of all campus sexual harm being reported to title nine offices students have made it very clear that it is not an effective or acceptable support system for them title nine offices cannot be the sole sexual harm support processes on our college campuses and based on what you've heard today I just want to also highlight that section three the reason that language names the network and the network associated programs is because they are the federally recognized domestic and sexual violence programs in the state and they are the only ones that provide these services so there would not be another organization there's no free market domestic and sexual violence services of which to contract from importantly this bill also recognizes and supports students who do want to pursue legal options through the title nine office in section four by better ensuring students can safely report their experiences without fear or incurring conduct violations currently some students may choose not to report their experiences because they are worried about secondary action or other ramifications institutions across Vermont have widely varying amnesty provisions and many are at the discretion of a particular administrator and so on some campuses students who experience sexual harm where alcohol or drug use may have been involved could risk expulsion or the loss of scholarship if they report their assault section four better ensures that post-secondary students in Vermont can safely report their assault and I will also just note having been doing this work for a while that this was part of the explicit charge of creating the intercollegiate council and the original legislation from this body this was explicitly mentioned as a remedy that needed to be an inequity that needed to be remedied and you know students need to have access to these potential supports and services across the whole spectrum we need to provide all of these different supports for them section five evidence based informed sexual education and prevention training like that required in this section five is critical to reducing the many sexual harm incidences on post-secondary campuses each year again this is a place where this is providing consistency across the state some universities do a really good job some need some additional support and the provisions found here in section five are common sense best practice that should be implemented across all of our schools so students are receiving that no matter where they go and I will note that Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund is happy to support the implementation of best practices in these efforts wherever as possible section six involves the continuation of the intercollegiate sexual harm prevention council as you've heard and these issues of sexual harm on our campuses are systemic and pervasive and they are going to require a multi-year coordinated response and support system and the council is really the most effective way for providing those essential services to coordinate share resources and develop statewide best practices sexual harm is an issue on all of our campuses big and small and it is a benefit to all of our post-secondary schools to have access to this council's shared knowledge and expertise so we wholeheartedly support the continuation of the council and its sustained funding and I will just close by saying that you have heard and probably will hear from other institutions that some of them are costly or unnecessary but let's be clear assault is costly and unnecessary sexual misconduct in any form can have lasting negative impacts on a survivor's mental and physical health 34% of college student survivors will experience PTSD as opposed to 9% of non-survivors well there are few cost estimates on the economic implications of sexual assault 2014 study found that the cost range from about $87,000 to $240,000 per rape and for student survivors costs can also include tutoring, lost tuition and accrued student loan interest if they take a leap of absence there is a significant problem of sexual harm happening on college campuses in our country including here in Vermont and our post-secondary schools must continue their job of addressing sexual misconduct and protecting the students who are in their care and their programs S120 is a necessary and tangible step toward making our schools a safer place for everyone to learn and grow we simply cannot afford not to enact these provisions to change the course of sexual misconduct on our campuses and we must act now to better support and educate Vermont's Rep. Rachel Sin Do you have this companion bill in House Judiciary? Please, questions? Do we have a copy? Anything else? Committee, what would you like to do? Senator? I mean I think the first thing I can see the cross complaint issue and then doing some word smithing there is section four and I think the question is still open as to whether or not we can require a private college to employ a certain a certain person to fulfill a certain role the rest of it seems more like it seems like things that are being done now which I appreciate and am very grateful for but as a policymaker not just looking at next year or two years down the road it's ten or fifteen years down the road and folks who are doing awesome work right now and the folks who are setting the policy on the campuses right now or sounds like they're doing good work they may not be there in ten or fifteen years and so I'm looking at the long end for this and I understand that people don't like being told what to do but that is part of our job when it comes to making policy so those are my initial take away from others one stand out from given the feedback and what's dropped in the bill is the council seems to be something that's unique to the state there's a lot of other federal mandates and such and things that they're already doing but the council seems to be able to stand out that's a unique ask perhaps, yeah that's the only woman on the committee and someone who went to college in the 1980s I feel very strongly about this bill I also, it's really the first time we've looked at it and I'd like to have a little bit of time to think about it thank you anything else anything else from any of our witnesses just want to say that in this realm and many others the network would be more than happy if there's any pieces that you'd like us to connect directly with stakeholders and see if we can come to additional agreement and come back to please do let us know and we'd be more than happy to work on that process I appreciate that and so I think working a little bit with Senator Sheen and maybe you and I and Beth and anybody else who wants to be involved after we hear more committee feedback next week we might get together and have a conversation see if we can move something in the next couple of weeks and this might be something also the committee on committees might give us a little extra time final piece of business, Senator Sheen do you want to let us know of your conversation with Senator Sears without libraries and firearms that would be great and we'll let St. James give some direction to you sit on the library oh that's right, the library and we'll let everyone go home since next week we are going to be busy, busy, busy so please that's going to go into a judiciary bill from the House and they can have it they can have it can you repeat the this is the firearms section of the library so the recommendation from Senator Judiciary is for us to yank it and the House will work on it in a House judiciary bill that is looking at other sensitive places okay sounds good to me sounds like sounds unanimous okay have a great weekend everybody thank you next week is going to be crazy so I know it's going to be crazy and that is the real stuff S23 can we bring that baby back bring that baby back