 Good afternoon, welcome back to Senate Education. Today is Wednesday, March 10th, 3.46 in the afternoon. We are back and going to continue our work by having a walkthrough of an amendment to S16, which is the school discipline bill. This is an amendment that senators Ballant and Hardy and others have come to me to talk a little bit about data collection and the need for greater data collection. I apologize, I must have missed the vote on this. I do remember hearing testimony around the collection of data and aggregating that data. Aggregating, is that the word I want to hear, Mr. Dimmer? Yes, thank you. Sorry. It's aggregating, thank you, the data, yes. And so, that is what this amendment does. And I will let colleagues, anyone who is interested in co-sponsoring this with senators, Hardy, Campion and Ballant, please feel free to do so. And with that, Mr. Dimmer, if you don't mind taking us through the amendment. Sure, do you want me to put this up? Would you be so kind? Sure, yeah, can I share the screen? Great, thank you. Okay, for the record, Jim Dimmer of this console, we're walking through, ooh, nope, so we're not walking through that one. Sorry, one second, please, let me just put this up again. Is what's on the website the red draft, Jim? It is, I just had it open, it shut down, so I was trying to get it open again to share it with you. Would you prefer, Jim, that we just use our iPads? I don't prefer either, I have it right here. Okay, great. Let me just get this open. And right there, okay, and then, okay, here we go. Okay, here we go. So for the record, Jim Dimmer of this console, we're walking through an amendment on behalf of Senator Campion, Ballant, Hardy, and Hooker to amend the report of your committee on S16. And what this does is it amends certain of the powers and duties of the task force. So it's striking out subsection D and centrality and inserting this language here, beginning on line seven. So there are no changes until we hit the yellow highlighted parts. So all this is the same as in your report, your amendment by the committee, but we go down to here and now we get into some different language. So we're in the subdivision that has the task force compiling on a school district and approved independent school basis, the available data and the data collection processes regarding suspensions and expulsions and compiling additional data necessary to inform the work of the task force, including a number of things. So one was every four, total number of instances of expulsions and suspensions in each grade, total number of students in each grade who were expelled or suspended in a number of instances of expulsion or suspension or both for each student, duration, the infraction. And now with five, we get into some new language. So five says now each instance of referral to enforcement authorities, the juvenile justice system, community justice center, state's attorney's offices, department of children and families or other juvenile justice related authority. And then six is new, it says each instance in which a civil criminal or juvenile citation was the consequence for a school related infraction. And seven, each instance in which an excluded student received re-educational services as well as the duration of re-educational services per day, per week and per month. And then after seven, four, as to recommend changes to direct collection. And G was seven, four, which is reviewing how other states address exclusion on discipline. And now two and three are new. So two is where we decided, so it says all days specified in subdivision one E and that's the entire entirety. So when we say one E, we mean all this guy here, one, two, three, four, five, six, all the way through here. So all of that data will be in this aggregate format by MMM, the following subgroups and categories to the extent permitted by federal and state privacy laws into the extent information is available. So that would be people who are white, black, Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, Pacific Islander, Hawaiian Native, low income or reduced lunch, limited English proficient or English language learner, migrant staff, students receiving special education services, students on IEPs or education plans under 504, gender, sexual orientation, foster care status, homeless status and grade level. And then these are all specified in the same division one E. So we cross tabulated by MMM, the function categories to the extent permitted by federal and state privacy laws and the extent information is available and that has to be done by school, school district, race, low income free, low income or free or reduced lunch, limited English proficient or English language learner, migrant status, students receiving special education services, students on 504 plan based on gender, sexual orientation, foster care status, homeless status, grade level, behavior and fraction code, intervention applied and educational services provided. And that is it. So I have run that language by Senators Hardy and Ballant and they're comfortable with it. Not looking for police center lines. Are we going to hear from the Department of Health regarding the Youth Risk Behavior Survey? That's my first question. Because this is a significant amount of work on their behalf. Some of the work that they do is slightly different. They use, remember they use individual survey data and self-reporting. So I don't know how this is gonna fit with what they're doing. We'll find out. And they may have other ways of collecting data that I'm less aware of. So the other question I have is where it talks about disaggregated data information. Where did it go? Uh-oh. Well, I'm wondering if what we mean is aggregated by the following groups. So if you disaggregated, it means you may be looking at individual individuals. So the goal is to have an identification of the number of black, Hispanic, white kids. But if you say it's disaggregated, that means you're gonna have some identity. So that's a question. We can ask them there. They know the Department of Health does this all the time. And then those are the two big questions I have right now. And a lot of this stuff is available so that a lot of it won't be difficult to get. Again, we're focused on the yellow are the changes. And I was gonna have agency in and a few other people, I did run it by some of our advocates and those who have been working with us a little bit on this kind of thing, but just wanted to again put it out there, Senator Chitenden. So I'm really fine with this language but similar to what Senator Lyons was just mentioning, I'm looking at page, the last page, page three of five, I don't know if it line 10 shall be in disaggregated format, but then it's softened by at the end it says and to the extent information is available. So I'm always worried with that shall when I also remember hearing Secretary French saying the data collection can be problematic. And so he wanted as much leniency in the language. So the shall gives me pause, but again, I yield to Jim and his expertise and how to write language like this. And the other comment I wanted to make is the reeducational. I've never heard of this term before reeducational, but if that's a known term, then great, but I don't know the definition but reeducational services, that's unknown to me. Jim, did you want to say anything about the shall or anything? I think the shall is fine. I think you want shall here, but it is conditioned based upon privacy and availability. Yep. Okay. Senator Persley. I'm a little confused about the crosstabulating part and maybe it's just cause I'm not sure exactly what crosstabulated means or what I think it is. It just seems like I understand crosstabulating when you have different data points, but you're crosstabulating some of the same thing like race and race and migration status and migration status. We're looking on page four just so everyone knows. So we have a list of things that need to be disaggregated and then we have a list of that disaggregated data gets crosstabulated by these other things, but a lot of those are the same. So I don't know if the goal is we do that so we can see what should these students have more than one of these characteristics. So you would know that they could have them, you know, they're either race and their gender and their migrant status. That's the purpose of the crosstabulation. That's one question. And then the other point I have up in E on page two. Yep. Line five, when it says compile on its school district and approve independent school basis, that makes it seem like that the data will be, I guess, compiled by school district by school district, but not, you know, but compiled not disaggregated by the school district until you get down to that other section, do you know what I mean? It seemed, I just didn't know if we're just, we're collecting the data in a disaggregated form as far as school district goes. Cause then down below we say disaggregated, crosstabulated the disaggregated data by school district. So that's my question, if it makes sense. Go ahead. So what's the goal? I mean, when you see the data, what do you want it to look like? That's the question. So you want to know by school district, the number of kids who are in each of these categories. You're not, and if you have a school that has one of them, that's gonna be problematic. Right. By, permitted by federals. Right. So, but you do want to, so it will just have to, the other thing is, I don't know that, well, do you want to know specifically these numbers or is this something that if we're gonna, if people are gonna go into individual schools and gather the data, that's one thing. So the school would have that information. If you're asking the Department of Health to do it, they're gonna do it more, as I said before, they may do it by survey. And so they'll ask the kid, are you Hispanic? What is your ethnic background or racial? How do you identify racially? So they could say Hispanic or whatever. So yes, it would be important to hear from the people who are actually collecting the data to make some recommendations about how to, how they would do it. Because then that'll maybe make some changes to the language. Well, I think. Go ahead, Sam Ritchley. It does say it's compiling the data. So it's almost, the way I read it is that they're not creating any new data. They're just compiling the available data. Right. There. But are they gonna put it, let me go back. Hold on. Go ahead, I'm just looking. No, I think the only thing I wanna add is that we've got a few days for this, couple of days for this, wanted to get it out there. I was the one who worked with drafting this and as usual, completely open to suggestions, edits, et cetera. But I will line up a few people for us to hear from tomorrow, center lines. Yeah, so I'm going back to powers and duties. And it says. What page are you on? First page, right, a line eight. Yeah. So make recommendations to end suspensions and expulsions, but all for the most serious student behaviors. Correct. Okay. Taking into account the Vermont Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Correct. Okay. So all the language can be voted out, save for the yellow language again, which would be the amendment. And I think there are some good questions related to this. And I think we should have AOE, ACLU, Department of Health in tomorrow to help us with this. So... Please go ahead. Yeah, no, I'm still processing this because we've got the state's attorneys in here. And I wanna ask why. Could you direct us to a line? I'm sorry, a page two line eight. Yeah, line 18. So, huh. So that would be something I think we'll probably get some feedback from the ACLU on that. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Senator Hooker, I'm sorry, Senator Lyons, did you have something else? No, I mean, when we go through and we look at these things, we're always looking at the very most extreme. So we're looking at civil and criminal citations, which are in and of themselves sufficient for a kid to be put somewhere special or treated in a different way. I'm trying to figure out what we're trying to get at. That's all. Yeah, and I think, yeah, a couple of different things are happening here at once. It's the, you know, just aggregating the data that I think Senator Ballant and others raised. And then along the way, you know, there were a few other edits, but we can again adjust according to Senator Hooker. I, originally, the bill, I think, was intended to gather more information about Vermont and compare perhaps it to the information that's already been gathered in other places because the, you know, the research shows certain things. So how do we compare with this? Are we doing, you know, better or worse than other places in the country? And the complaint, it seemed to me, was that we didn't have the kind of information that was necessary to really understand what these, this type of discipline was how much it was occurring and what it was doing, what kind of effect it would have. And with regard to the reference to, you know, state's attorneys and stuff, the idea that expulsion was directly related to an increase in juvenile activities that ended kids up in the court system, you know, something that we wanted to take a look at. At least that's what I'm getting out of the bill. So, and I do share your concern and I know that the secretary had talked about the disaggregation that might lead to identifying, you know, personally identifiable information. We certainly don't want that, I don't believe, but how can we gather that information about people of color, people with disabilities, whatever, and maintain the privacy? Yeah, as best we possibly can. So what we're really getting at is to characterize the kids who have been expelled or suspended in each grade by grade level and then by characteristic. That's what we really wanna know. So then the question is, if we don't have that information in the first place, so we know that somebody's been suspended, how many years back are we going? I don't know. Who has this information? If it's on a record somewhere, you have a name and you have a date and you have the period of suspension. The only way you're gonna know everything about these kids and all this information is if you know the kid. They're trying to figure out how we're gonna get it all, that's all. Because if we look going forward, we're gonna get it because then- And that's what we're talking about. Yeah, okay, we're not talking about going back, okay. Right, we're not talking about going back, we're just talking about going forward. I'm getting there. Nope, this is all helpful. It does mention that the task force will be able to get data from AOE, the data that they have. But again, the data seems to be incomplete. So I don't think we're going to get the disaggregated points that we would like to get moving forward. So for me, I wanna know that the social issues and the social determinants for me are so much more significance than some of the things that are listed here. Frankly, sorry. Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, so is there someone addicted living in their home? Yeah. That's a key question. Are they in a family with a single parent? That's significant. Just because you're Hispanic doesn't mean you're, that's not really gonna be one of the, I don't think it's gonna end up being one of the driving characteristics, but. Well, we hope not, you know. Yeah, well. Anyway. Find out, yeah. Okay. I know you've done a lot of work with ACEs, Senator Lyons, and do we make reference to those types of experiences that kids have had? I mean, all right. It's tough. You know, it's tough to get there. The question that I just would ask the question, what is it that you wanna know about these children that would help characterize them with respect to suspension and expulsion? Well, I think just speaking for myself, if we were to get data back that showed African-Americans and students of color, members of the BIPOC community disabled, you know, students, ESL students, ELS students are being suspended and expelled at a higher level than, I mean, that's powerful and important information. Oh, yeah. No, I don't disagree with that. And that's, you know, I don't wanna speak for Senator Ballant, but I believe that was the genesis of. I absolutely don't disagree with that. Right, right. All right, well, we will table this until tomorrow from when we hear from more people. And, you know, again, this will likely be on the floor on Tuesday. So we'll have a little bit of time to work on it and see if we can move in a direction and make the amendment that everyone is comfortable with. Yeah, so, and I think that if you look at the list, just going back to that list one more time on page three, some of these things are the things that we talk about the most, and we're doing that currently within our social environment. I guess I would want to put in here somewhere a relationship to social determinants of health. Somehow there's a link in there and I'm, Okay. Maybe it's too much, I'm, you know. Well, think about it. We can let the house do it, I'm not. Well, think about it, you know, it's, you know, again, we'll return to it tomorrow and we'll, at that point, we'll hear from some folks and we'll hopefully get more clarification and then hopefully to the point where we feel like we can, we have some kind of agreement by Friday. If not Friday, Tuesday, Friday, actually. Anything else at this point? Okay. Thank you.