 Certainly, I think what I noticed last week seems like months ago. At some point, the CDC commissioner and then the president won on TV and from that day on, you know, it's spurred, we basically set up, we're going to have the inside the agency start to structure a different communications response and start planning for this. And we felt pretty good about that at the end of the week, last week, Friday, you know, and for some of the weekend, we had our first announcement of our first presumptive case. And so Monday morning, once again, we started in a different place, communication lines, and certainly in the last 24, if not 12 hours, where we're seeing nationally closure issues happening, whether it be sports games, schools in some states and so forth. So it's been a rapidly evolving situation. I will say that, you know, just to frame this out, quickly the issue of school closure, you know, I'm not a public health person, I'm an educator, but I've been in a lot of those conversations. I think the framing of it from a public health perspective is we have two kinds of strategies to deal with the virus of this nature. One are containment strategies and the other are mitigation strategies. Containment strategies are essentially designed to stop the spread of the virus. Mitigation strategies are designed to slow its spread. School closures, based on CDC guidance, which really was the result of H1N1, fall into the mitigation category, not a containment strategy. At this moment in time, and a reminder, my perception is that we are doing both. We are doing both containment and mitigation, but that's rapidly evolving. So when I say containment, what I observe is this idea of contact tracing. So as we test someone, we find out, the Department of Health finds out that they've tested someone, they then begin a reddit regime of tracing back who that person had contact with. And, you know, containment invokes strategies like quarantine and so forth. You've heard about all that in the media. School closure falls into that other category, where we're mitigation. This is where we start to assume that we're not necessarily going to stop the virus. Our chief objective is to slow it. And that's where we start to consider the social distancing and school closure kind of falls into that category. So we produce guidance on Tuesday that essentially starts to provide that common vocabulary for school districts, so they understand containment and mitigation. And our guidance largely conforms to the CDC guidance that we've developed as a result of H1N1. So we talk about a couple different types of school closure in that guidance. And we talk about reactive school closures and pre-emptive school closures. So reactive school closures, which I think we did employ in H1N1, are implemented when you have large numbers of students sick or showing up to school in the NSAC home, or your staff are sick. So basically you're left with a question, can I operate the school or should I operate the school? We haven't had much of that yet in terms of reactive closure, but I would say that the closures we've had to date kind of fall into that category. We've had, for instance, staff that are ill, they're being quarantined, what have you, and folks are reacting to disinfect their buildings and so forth. So it's sort of a type of reactive school closure. But we haven't had a large outbreak yet to the scale that reactive decision-making has been implemented. Pre-emptive school closure, on the other hand, is done before the outbreak occurs, but that's done in the context of a severe outbreak. So teaching around the world, school closures are used as sort of the last measure as part of a social distancing strategy really to be employed to disrupt the spread of the virus, to slow it down. So we've been evaluating that and we've been alerting schools we are evaluating school closure measures. And if you saw in the last 24 hours, there are states that are employing those measures, so it's being actively considered here in Vermont as well. But as Dr. Fauci, if you've seen him on national television, he's probably our preeminent specialist on these things. He makes the very blunt argument that school closures are an important tool and we've been communicating that to the Vermonters. You can make them too early. You can make the decision to close pre-emptive school decisions too early and have no effect whatsoever on the spread of the virus. And you can make those decisions too late. So the timing of a pre-emptive school closure is critical. That's where we're at right now and sort of considering the timing of that. We also know that this virus is sort of an exponential variable. And spread is not going to increase on a geometric scale, but on an exponential one meaning that just because we have two cases today doesn't mean we won't have 10 tomorrow and then 1,000 or whatever. So we have to be prepared to act in that kind of dynamic situation. So we're very attentive to that and we're working very closely with Department of Health. So I think I just sort of conclude in my comments to say I think from a science standpoint we're working very closely with a scientist in our state and I've grown and always had a lot of confidence in them but I continue to be impressed with our Department of Health and folks we have clinicians at the local level. All those communication channels are open and working very well. But a lot of these decisions happen beyond the realm of science. So the science is only telling us so much and there's a lot of unknowns about this virus. So we also have to be prepared as leaders to act based on larger concerns of public health and so forth and we're prepared to do that. But I feel like we're well informed by the science to the extent it can inform these types of decisions. I will also just go beyond the issue of school closure. Just talk about we are also considering sort of related issues to that. I think school closure is probably the most significant social mitigation strategy we have available and we have other issues we have to attend to as a result of that. Primarily because K-12 school closure is much more disruptive. Vermont schools are community schools and our schools are tightly integrated into the community. So some people have been asking well the colleges are closing how come not K-12? It's a great question. Largely K-12 schools are closing K-12 schools is much more disruptive than college. We also know from this virus from the science that this virus does not seem to affect younger students. It's pretty clear that the elderly have more risk and certainly students could be spreading the virus to elderly so we have to be cognizant of that but it appears from the health data that students are not nearly as risk. K-12 students are not nearly as risk. Closing K-12 schools is very disruptive action and most states don't contemplate that until it's sort of towards the end of your social mitigation strategies. But along the lines of being disruptive we are looking at issues of social gatherings and so forth. We have sports programs, field trips you name it, schools are once again very involved in community activities. So we're actually going to put out new contents on that today. We're pursuing the financial implications of closing schools which are significant as well. We've put in a waiver with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on congregate meal feeding of students so we'll be prepared to even if schools are closed we'll be able to produce meals for students free and reduced meals. Most states are requesting those waivers now and we have a conference call this morning with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They're pretty well, they're granting these waivers pretty much on a large scale at this point. So that's I think well taken care of. Let me just keep going because I'll lose my track. We have implications on federal monies so we're pursuing conversations with our partners. This is done with partnership with other states. Issues like Title I money and so forth. How do we dispense those funds? To what extent are federal testing requirements going to be waived? So we're in contact with all those sort of logistical issues with other states. We're not alone in this. All those issues are being considered and are being discussed in detail. I expect in the coming days you'll see more closures of events, more cancellation of events. We'll be discussing school closure more directly as the situation evolves. I would say the way we operate in Vermont, we're fortunate to have a very flat sort of organizational structure to a certain extent. So I have daily conversations with superintendents if not hourly. So that's been the primary chain of command we've relied upon is the superintendents as sort of under the law they're charged with administering their school districts. And I have hourly if not more frequent conversations with superintendents as their issues emerge. Also communication with Jeff Francis on a regular basis as well. So we're understanding what their communications needs are and their guidance needs are and trying to respond to that as quickly as possible. I would say as you've noticed the impact on the agency, we started to plan as we saw what the challenge would be with us. We started to plan on sort of structural changes inside the agency. You've noticed you haven't seen Ted Fisher around. He does. He wanted me to express his sentiment to you. So we had to plan on changing and augmenting essentially our communications team. So Ted is in a role now. He's our chief liaison to the State Emergency Operations Center. He's there right now actually. And we pulled people from other agency sections to augment our communications team. So we've created internally a sort of an ad hoc structure to respond to this. And we've employed some new tools to do that lists and so forth using video conferencing. So we've had to modify our structure to support the field. You'll see Emily Simmons probably more directly pushing a lot of the policy work over to her, which she was always very involved in anyway. But you'll probably see more of her in Ted's former role as Ted has brought directly into managing communications on this. And that can change. But for now, that's all of it. Why don't we stop there and happy to address any other questions? Getting back to, it's encouraging to hear that the conversation is going to happen with the U.S. Department of Agriculture about, I think you said congregant. Congregant. So we have requirements under the regulations that we can't provide for a reduced watch. Most of the kids are all eating together. So we're going to waiver from that requirement. Okay. So it's a waiver so they don't have to all be together. That's correct. I guess I'm just curious what thought has gone into the transportation distribution of those meals and whether that's something where school districts would have the ability or authority to, you know, utilize existing bus and contracts. I'm not sure. I'm not trying to provide an answer. We're just curious about that. Right. So at this phase, we need to have the appropriate regulatory authority to enact that. That's all details, right? Yeah. Important details. But first, where we are now is just getting the appropriate regulatory authority or the waiver from the regulations so that we can act as we need it. But obviously, at the local level, that would be implemented. I'll go to the speaker's office. Okay. So those are all, you know, at this point, questions like that we accumulate. And those are topics for former, future guidance. But at this point, we started a conversation last week about requesting the waiver. So we're, you know, we're a week ahead of sort of requesting these things. But now these things catch up with us and we're not ready to implement it. I will say another waiver. I'm requesting a state board similar kind of idea. I'm asking the state board at its meeting next week to give me authority to grant waivers from the school calendar requirements. So, you know, I think they'll be amenable to that and see how that goes. It doesn't give me the, I'm not asking for the authority to waive the requirement. I'm asking the authority to hear the appeal or the waiver. So they don't, so districts would not have to file an appeal of the state board of education. They could do it directly with me and I could expedite that consideration. So, you know, I think you probably asked you this question already. You know, is it, are there state law statutes that we need to be acting on to free you up to do what you need to do? I don't think so. I think, you know, we have available mechanisms inside the administration to work with you on that. So, there's nothing specific to education at this point. You know, some of it's in regulation like the calendar waiver. So I will be working with the state board on those kinds of issues. That was one that emerged last week immediately. So, coincidentally, they're having a meeting next week. So we asked them to consider that on their agenda. Excuse me, and I think they're amenable to considering that. We're just, you know, it's in the theme of the USDA waiver request. We're just trying to make sure there's no obstacles in our path, forward path. It's not about what we're doing now, it's about that forward path and making sure that we will have the flexibility to act if we need to act, and maybe we won't. Can you do a question? Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I understood how you characterize this. So, obviously the big nut is getting the waiver from the USDA, and then AOA will probably issue guidance, and then solutions will be figured out and implemented on the local level for kids to come pick up meals or deliver, however a district can do that. Correct. Okay, thanks. Yeah, and we've provided specific guidance. I could bring it up on the screen. We've provided guidance already, you know. I think we saw that yesterday. So we have, you know, we have just sort of, just gives you, it's a great example of sort of how the iterative approach is happening. So we're pursuing on a macro level any kind of large federal waiver or identifying legal opportunities for us that we're going to need flexibility and we're ensuring we have that. At the same time, we're keeping a field prize that we're doing that and we're also preparing them. A lot of our guidance now is preparing them with a vocabulary or the structural opportunities by which they'll have the flexibility and where they don't have the flexibility, and so everyone's sort of clear. And some of that is we just pushed out some guidance within the hour to the special ed administrators, for example. Similar kind of path because the federal government's providing new guidance on educating central ed students during the virus. You know, we're interpreting that. Everything's being CC to the superintendent so they're getting the macro sort of sense of all the different silos of educational programs and requirements. But we're bringing that out to the field as quickly as possible and we're also trying to translate it and say, well, here's where you'll have flexibility. Here's where you don't. Here are the concerns. Just put on your radar to get you warmed up to the idea that these types of decisions are coming and keep them as warm as much as possible. What are the implications that the governor declared a state of emergency? Does that give you a lot more authority to just grant waivers? You know, I'm not that familiar with that issue. The governor is holding a press conference today at 5.30. That was announced recently. So he's going to be talking more directly about the mitigation. I talked about this mitigation concept or social distancing. He'll be talking about those issues at his press conference. Yeah. So just this morning, like as a teacher, a former teacher, I was just going over and I had what I'd be doing right now right now for my students. And so one of the things I know about kids is their age is now because their parents are ages and their teachers are ages. And one of the best things I know that we can do for kids after a disaster is get them back into school because what they need is that structure. That's right. So the online instruction. You know, I'm assuming this is a really good opportunity for all educators and institutions to be thinking about because I'm sure you can't just get online right now. I mean, I don't know if people are prepared for a situation. So I think this is a really good opportunity, you know, to think about that, like who doesn't have internet, you know, find that out. And then what kind of instruction could we provide that would provide structure for children at home? Yeah. You know, because that would lower their anxiety just to get back into like I have to be at my computer. Yeah, you're absolutely right. The structure is critical for students. They rely on that structure. Yeah. You know, the issue of online learning is one, you know, we don't have a statewide approach that necessarily. And it's very uneven around the state. Access to bandwidth and equipment. Even in places you would think, you know, Chittenden County, there are pockets where students don't have access to the internet readily or at home don't have the device. So, you know, you'll see in the higher ed community, I mean, they can move to online learning pretty quickly because they have that infrastructure. Virtually. I don't know of any higher ed institution that doesn't have a learning management system and doesn't have some ability. So it's not so hard for them, though. You know, they're not all professors are equally skilled at doing that. So they have to make that transition. But K-12 is not the same. K-12, particularly at the elementary level, we don't typically use online learning. You know, so it's one thing to talk about courses. You know, courses are that whole framework so that high school concept, you know, at the elementary level, we don't structure learning necessarily around courses, particularly the lower-end. Would it be good to start, like, you know, thinking because I think this, the coronavirus is serious. Sure. But it could be a lot more serious. You know, it could be one day when you can't leave your house. Right. And just that would be just so good for children. Sure. You know, just to be able to have that connection to their schools. The technology has been, you know, both a pro and a con with this kind of event, you know, in terms of what it's really, it's a great opportunity to try to pursue these issues. But it's important for homeowners to realize that right now in the state, the ability to do that is very uneven. Right. And it really is more appropriate educationally at the high school level than it is at the elementary level and just from an educational standpoint. So even in districts that are well-resourced and have leveraged those tools, they rarely apply them in my experience at the lower elementary level. You're not going to see learning management systems employed in the kindergarten, you know, because it's just not consistent with best practice of how you teach kids. So we'll explore those things as the rest of the country will as well. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a role or a disease? Do you have a role with higher education? We have a limited interaction with them, regular from a regulatory perspective. We stay in close contact with them, you know, obviously from in the public, because we're all brought together on a communication structure with this incident that we're able to understand their patterns of closure and their decision making and so forth. But we don't have direct regulatory oversight of that. They make those decisions to go online without asking us or so forth. I will say once in the theme of eliminating structural barriers, I was at the standards board meeting yesterday a professional educator, so they're the group that controls licenses for teachers, and they have passed yesterday a waiver to teach online. So we have a licensing regulation that would require you to have a license to teach online courses. How interesting. So they yesterday passed a waiver to that. So that was helpful. Thank you. Is there any opportunity for schools to do any kind of testing or screening kind of at this point, or maybe we think that the levels are low? I know that with younger or further with younger students, they may not be very symptomatic. Testing for the virus itself? Testing for the virus or any kind of like surveillance sort of testing within the school communities or people within our school communities who would be more vulnerable. I'm thinking of, you know, old members of faculty or staff. I just, it does seem that the lack of testing information has got to be affecting the decision-making process in some way, and I just wonder if there's room for any more proactive approach. Yeah, I don't think it's, I mean, the issue of testing isn't a result of lack of manpower, so there's no access to the materials to do it. And, you know, I don't know if it would be even appropriate for school staff to do that kind of testing. You know, it has to be done in a lab. You're talking about extracting DNA from a sample and even taking the samples, I suppose, you'd be asking. I think from the... Or even temperature monitoring. Well, yeah, we already do temperature monitoring. We do those kinds of things, absolutely. And school nurses are a vital part of our changing path relative to the Department of Health, so they report their data in directly. So we have, you know, we have an understanding of absentee rates and symptomology and so forth from our school nurses. But I don't think in terms of actually identifying the virus if that's what you're asking, that's... No, I guess it's interesting to hear that there's some things like temperature monitoring going on. Is that just like standard practice? Is that something particularly happening now? Standard practice, yeah, school nurses work closely with their local health officer and their local department of regional department of health. Yeah, and that's consistent with their role regardless of this specific incident. So if there was a public health issue, they would be reporting that information. And they also talk with clinicians, you know, local family doctors and so forth quite frequently. If there was access to tests, would be testing more? I don't understand your question. I guess you said there wasn't an issue of manpower, but it's really access to the materials for testing. And I'm asking if that access to materials was not a barrier, would we be testing more? Yeah, that's really beyond my... You know, I'm providing some commentary on public health issues because I've been immersed in that, but it's really not my area of expertise. That would be something that's the Department of Health. My observation is that, you know, just naturally people are asking for greater flexibility. I mean, we've seen that sort of unfold, I think, where we started where the CDC was the only entity that could test that we moved to states being able to do presumptive testing, essentially, that then needed to be subsequently confirmed by the CDC. And now we're getting more dynamic on that ability. I was reading this morning that New York State now has some discretionary ability to basically do more rapid testing. So that's, I mean, that's evolving, but it's not an area that we're directly involved in person. I assume you'll be watching closely the other states that have shut down other school systems, how they're handling it, how they're handling all these waivers that you need from the federal government. Especially the whole feeding of children. Yeah, we're in my organization, the CCSO, the Council of Two States School Officers. We've been in regular meetings, and they're pulling things together like that. I'm working closely with our various, you know, legislative staff on the Hill and so forth to do whatever we need to do. We're also, as you mentioned, there's a lot of information between the states. And we're, you know, it's a rapidly evolving, you know, back to this exponential idea that this virus expands exponentially, so we have to be prepared to move very quickly. And we, you know, at one point, I think, for others felt like this, like a lot of people on the East Coast, right? That was like, it's in Asia, maybe it's in LA, it's in California and Washington State. It's in Boston, by the way. So we've got to be prepared to address that exponential increase. But I think that's, you know, important in the last, you know, Monday when I was starting to talk about this, I thought it was important that we start to talk with Ramoners about containment versus mitigation, you know, and just get more accepting of this idea that our goal now isn't necessarily to stop it, it's to slow it down. And now we're asking, you know, it's funny, I don't say funny, but in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, people are much more comfortable with mitigation and be more aggressive on slowing it down. So it's just interesting to see how I think everyone's become more informed and prepared. As I would expect, you know, I work statewide, I know Ramoners will respond well to this. But we have to be prepared to take steps to slow this. It's very serious. Now to say the other thing we're focusing on, as we know, the seniors, the older population is more affected by this than the younger populations. And I think we need to focus our energies on ensuring our most vulnerable population in this area, where this virus is clearly the elderly. So we're going to be looking very closely at how the K-12 system relates. And if you think about, once again, our schools, our community schools, a lot of interaction with older adults in our school system. Perhaps more so than other states. The children always bring the colds and run out into grandma and grandpa's house. Yeah, so we talk about not holding a concert. Think about how many people in that room are over 60, right? Yeah. Think about if we close school, how many of those students are getting their care provided by a senior system. So once again, we know students aren't necessarily adversely affected by the virus, but they could be the transmitters of that virus to seniors. So we have to be thinking about those issues. Any other questions? I have a comment. I just wanted to convey my gratitude, because you know, at the joint hearing the other day for the Human Services Committee, and then through your testimony and through watching the AOE website and seeing the guidance you guys are putting out and seeing the information that's available on the Department of Health, you guys are doing an amazing job. Yeah. And I just feel like you're really stepping up to the plate, and I feel so much steady leadership from the AOE Department of Health, and I think it's fantastic to hear that. Yeah, thank you. We are. I think we've all got the place where we can talk frankly about the science of it, and you know, certainly people are fearful. We're all fearful, but there is science and there's decision making that needs to be made, right? And we're in that space now, or I think everyone's comforted by having factual information and knowing what the criteria are on which decisions will be made. We can count on folks that were fortunate as a state once again. We have superintendents who can talk with the secretary directly. Parents can talk to me directly and they're not shy about doing that. And all that granular information is really helpful to factor into good decision making and good guidance coming down from the state level. So there's very little that we put out that's not responsive to what the field needs. And we don't necessarily wait for CDC to tell us what to do when you certainly work from their framework because it's so critical from a scientific standpoint. But we try to make sure that guidance is responsive to the needs of our districts and that's our responsibility, I think. Yeah, and it trickles down in such a useful way. I mean, I know to have those links to share on my page and my community forums you can just see people's anxiety level draw when they see the detailed information that's available and the plans that are being rolled out and all the strategies that are being considered. So it's been extremely useful to me. You know, down here. Down here on the ground. Part of it's, you know, last week, once again, it seemed like months ago talking with superintendents about preparing for dynamic decision making. You know, like this isn't, you know, initially it was like, well, that isn't what you said yesterday. I'm like, yeah, well, you know, the CDC has changed its mind largely because people were dissatisfied with the prior guidance, you know, and it was sort of that first if you remember it was like, well, if you came back from Italy, you might want to do it, you know, and people are like, well, what do we do with that? So, you know, that pushback, if you will, that sort of inadequate feedback of inadequate feedback, we transferred that up to the federal government which then responded in that case more infatically with guidance, you know. So it's really important, but it is a dynamic situation. It's not necessarily useful to say, well, you've changed your mind. I'm like, yes, we have new information. Yeah, right. We're in a totally different situation right now. So they're asking for more aggressive innovations. It's hard to keep pace with, but I think it's fair to say we are in a critical phase of this incident and people should be prepared to take steps, aggressive steps to mitigate the spread of the virus and as a state, we're gearing up to do that. We'll let you get back to it. Thank you for being here. Thank you.