 Let's get started. Emily Harris talking about school safety. That one's on the phone. Hi Dylan. Hello. So my name is Emily Harris. I work for Vermont Emergency Management as the Northeast Regional Emergency Management Program coordinator. Part of that job is I'm also the Vice Chair of the Vermont School Crisis Planning Team. So the Vermont School Crisis Planning Team actually started in 1999. It was a group of volunteers who got together to say statewide we need some school safety best practices that we can share with schools. In 2016, the Secretary of Education and a Commissioner of Public Safety decided to formalize that team by adding additional members coming up with formal voting structures and also creating the Vermont School Safety Center. The School Safety Center is actually the group that makes the formal recommendations to say here are the things we're seeing at the national level that are going really well and our best practices. And those are the practices that are shared with schools. Those are available through the School Safety Center website, which I will advertise I guess right now. It's schoolsafety.vermont.gov. And that includes a lot of resources. So one of the big things that the School Crisis Planning Team put together is something called the School Crisis Guide. And that's a suggested plan for schools to use if they don't already have an emergency operations plan. Do you have a question? Oh, sorry. Okay, okay. There's also training resources available on there as well as exercise resources. So schools when they have the time can go and just click buttons and watch videos that we've created for best practices and emergency preparedness exercises where scenarios are given to them and they then say, okay, how would we respond to this? Also we have in the back, he's going to be testifying a little bit later, Rob Evans. He's our school safety liaison officer and he actually will go into schools and help them identify those areas for improvement. And in fact, this afternoon we're going up to Richford Schools to help the supervisor reunion to say, hey, where are you at and what are the next steps you can take to improve your plans, your training and your preparedness. So that's my little spiel and I'm here for questions. Questions? Yes. So I will ask, you know, it seems like a topic that the legislature is poised to get into aside from the $5 million in funding. I question whether it's necessary. It seems like there's already a lot going on. I'm on my school board in the Middlebury area and I know that there are a lot of informational resources available in training. So I guess if you were to say, I like the legislature to do this or that part, we got this covered. What would you say? So I would say there's a lot of good work that's been going on. There are conversations happening tomorrow with Senate institutions, I believe, specifically about that grant program. So that's really a question higher above my pay grade for my commissioner and my director to be answering. So I don't feel comfortable answering the question about, you know, is that money necessary? Oh, no, I wasn't. Money seems good. But just outside of the grant program, you know, what should we be dipping our toes into or not? Yeah, so one of the things that we've been focusing our attention on is training on the incident command system. So is anyone here familiar with the incident command system? Excellent. I think there's a couple of folks. So the incident command system is what first responders use when they're responding to an incident. And a lot of schools don't know what that system looks like or how they would integrate into it. So we've been promoting that schools take a three-hour class that we go out into their school and deliver. I actually delivered one yesterday where there was a principal and a superintendent there so that they understand what their role might be and how to communicate with first responders when something happens. We're also this summer going to be focusing on crisis communications. So a lot of schools struggle with what messaging to put out to parents, how to communicate with the media. So we actually have a little training that we offer to schools and supervisory unions on that. So we're doing some really good work in this area, and we have been for a while. It's not a new thing that we started doing this year. It's been going on for years. Thank you. It's great work. I've heard that 9-1-1 calls, there's like a 55% availability to our schools. So I call 9-1-1. They may go 10 miles away from the school on that because they're going to the central office type of thing. Is this, is that true? So that's actually not something that my group works on. That's the Enhanced 9-1-1 Board with Barb Neal. And I believe she's testifying either today or tomorrow before a committee. Isn't it actually this committee? No, no, it's not this committee. So it must be tomorrow before institutions because I know she's testifying immediately after us one of these days. But she actually does do the reports where she makes the calls out. I don't, I don't have the data to tell you what that answer is. Representative Beck. In regard to school safety and the different organizations in the state of Vermont, I mean, do we have too many cooks in the kitchen? I mean, 620,000 people, 76,000 students. It seems like we have a lot of different organizations that are doing things. Is it too many just right, not enough? So I would say that the real benefit of the school crisis planning team is it's pulling together those key organizations. On that team we've got the Division of Fire Safety, Emergency Management, Agency of Education, Visbit, EMS, Department of Health, Motor Vehicles. We're pulling together all of these organizations to say what are the best practices, disseminate them back out through your organization, let us know what you're telling people so we can have a consistent message. So that's the real key of that team is having a consistent message where we're all promoting the same best practices. Okay. That sounds really good. That's fantastic. Yeah. It's one of the reasons why we formalized that team back in 2016 was there were some agencies that were missing from that table and we said we really need to have representation from these areas. Yeah. Great. Other questions? Thank you very much. Excellent. No problem. Actually I would ask, I'm sorry, so there's been this proposal from the governor to use capital money to help schools be safe. Do you interface with that money at all or does this strictly go to public safety or how is that projected to work? So I believe that that's going to be discussed tomorrow at the Senate Institutions Committee exactly what that looks like. My understanding is that a bill has passed the House right now that does have Department of Public Safety being the people who passed that money through, but we'll see what happens in the Senate and they're going to be discussing that tomorrow. And is that your understanding is the best way to utilize those dollars? To have it come through the Department of Public Safety? Yeah. I think that's effective, yeah. Great. Thanks a lot. I'm a little bit selfish working for the Department of Public Safety. Hey. Sorry. Tom Anderson, please. Commissioner Anderson has Emily and Rob here in his stead. And I'm Erica Boronan, Director of Emergency Management and I also work with Commissioner Anderson today. Okay, so whoever speaking for him is next on. Yep. He did say. Does American and Canadian fly? Yeah. Anyone would say one more thing? Yes. First of all you need to identify yourself for the record. Yes. For the record, Eric Hortman. I'm the Director of the Division of Emergency Management. I'm the Director of the Department of Public Safety. And he did say that he had something that pulled him away, but he's only about 15 minutes away. So if there's a sticky question that you would like to have answered, and they can only be answered right here, I'll give them a call. Okay. Well, you'll just decide whether you have an equity answer or whether you need to call them in. That's why I'm here, sir. Welcome. If you identify yourself for the record, please and give us your testimony. Yeah, good morning. My name is Rob Evans. I'm the School Safety Liaison Officer for Vermont's Agency of Education and Department of Public Safety. And I'm coming not only from that formal title, but I'm coming from a parent that raised three children in the Essex school system and also had those three same children that were in those school systems when the tragic events took place back in 2006 and also had either a fortunate or unfortunate past experience to lead the tactical response to the Essex school shooting back in 2006. So very, very aware of the sensitivities about school safety and how long and the comprehensive work that has been done over the years since that took place. All of this work that Emily brought up, you know, is steeped in traditions that go back all the way to 1999. This is, you know, close to 20 years' worth of school emergency preparedness that has taken place across the state. And it first started in the Essex community by Chief Leo Nayou from the Essex Police Department and those school safety stakeholders in Essex that began to try to have a conversation about how we raise the level of emergency preparedness in our schools across the state and being sensitive to the open and welcoming environments that we want, all of our kids and our faculty and staff to have in our schools, but also being sensitive that they don't learn if they don't feel safe. So that work has been in place and continues to go on for close to 20 years. As Emily mentioned, I see what we are doing in Vermont and I have a perspective nationally of what's taking place as well in other states. We are on the forefront in the state as far as what we are doing for school emergency preparedness where we have brought together for years collaborative partners from Mental Health and Red Cross and Fire EMS and Law Enforcement and Principles and Associations, Superintendent's Association, School Board Association, VisBit, anybody that's got a stake in school safety has had a seat at the table for years. And to answer your question, are there too many cooks in the kitchen? I see that as years ago we had just that where there were pieces of school emergency preparedness in one pot and another pot and another pot. Now they are in one big pot. I see that needs to have a seat at the table has a seat at the table. So I think we all should be very, very proud of the work that has been done. And I commend the Commissioner of Public Safety and the Secretary of Education and the Governor that when they formalized the process through the School Safety Center, that really in my opinion was a home run because now there's one thing that folks can turn to to say if I need a resource or I need expertise, this is where I go to for that. Nobody in the state in this world should have any doubt that there are resources that are available and I'll talk about some of those right now. Over the last several years we've highlighted a couple of training perspectives and priorities and initiatives across the state. We've provided incident command and behavioral threat assessment training, crisis communications training, anything that executive leadership teams in our schools might need to help them deal with a specific crisis. That has been the focus of our training for the last several years. We've provided school crisis planning, response plans and planning templates so that if folks are beginning to put those plans together they don't have to develop it on their own. There are templates and plans that literally they can go through and put my school here and my name here and phone numbers for that. So it really makes it easy for them to develop these comprehensive plans and for years what we heard from school leadership teams where we get the need but we don't have the resources. Well now they have some guiding principles and some practices that are in place that can help them with that. We've worked hard to meet with local and state level school safety partners on a monthly basis to talk about best practices in school safety. We've met with local and regional emergency management directors to give them a heads up about what's taking place and how they should be a part of the school safety and emergency preparedness process. We've posted four, I think five, Governor's School Safety Conferences over the last several years where we have brought in close to 300 school safety partners once a year from schools, from first responders, from mental health, school counselors, school nurses into one conference to talk about the things that are on the cutting edge of school emergency preparedness. There's two things that I think thankfully we were on the forefront of that. One of them is the behavioral threat assessment process and what I mean by that is identifying ahead of time risk based behaviors that may have a negative impact on our school. And for two solid years we brought in national thought leaders from Sigma Threat Management Associates to come to Vermont and teach our school safety partners how to do a comprehensive assessment of threats that may have those types of negative impacts at our school. And I'm proud to say that the folks at Fairhaven High School use some of those very same practices and policies to evaluate that threat and thankfully because of some of the work and lots of other work that was done down there, I'm confident that we obviously stopped one of those awful things from happening because of some of the work that had already been done in the state. The last conference we focused on individual and organizational resiliency in an organizational environment. And what I mean by that is how do teachers and administrators and first responders remain resilient after a critical incident takes place. This all came about because of the tragic incidents that took place at Harwood Unit High School where we had obviously five of our students killed up on the interstate and you can only imagine the traumatic impacts of that incident still remain there today and we felt it was important with all of the incidents that are taking place across the state, South Burlington last year, Essex, Fairhaven. These things have a stress-based impact after these types of events and we felt it was important that we give the educational folks as well as the first responders an opportunity to learn best practices and how to remain resilient as an individual and as an organization. This last September, the governor had a governor's proclamation proclaiming the month of September as school safety month where we kind of asked first responders to go and make a visit during that month and check on the schools, make sure they've got emergency contact information and I think that was just another awareness type of thing that we put in the minds that, hey, this is important for folks at the beginning of the school year. Every twice a month schools across the state through the Agency of Education's weekly field memo get what we call a what if Wednesday. That is a survey tool that I send out and I craft that goes to every single principal and superintendent that literally is a survey tool that says if this happens today, what are you supposed to do? If there's a bus accident, what's supposed to happen? If there's smoke in the building, what's supposed to happen? In 30 seconds, principals and superintendents can share that with their staff so that for 15 or 30 seconds in the morning, we're thinking about safety and security in our school. With that tool, we're also able to get some feedback. When they push the wrong bar, push the button and it's the wrong answer, we then can identify we've got a training need because we're seeing the feedback critically from the schools that are doing these surveys. We've mandated school lockdown and fire drills throughout the year so schools are required to alternate lockdown drills and fire and evacuation drills. I provide on-site school safety assessments throughout the year so if schools or supervisory unions like Emily talked about want us to come in and do an assessment. It's a 30,000 foot assessment, but they come away with what they're doing well and probably more importantly, what they have to fix. I spend a couple hours talking with their leadership team, do a very quick walk around the building and give them some ideas and also share some resources about where they might want to go for the next three, six, nine months. And probably most importantly, obviously at the governor's initiative, working through public safety, every single, for the most part, Emily, what's the percentages of? 95%. So 95% of our public, private and independent schools got a visit from a local cop, county sheriff, deputy or state police trooper coming to their school to gather some information and do a site assessment for all the schools that will hopefully give us a better picture of what we're doing well, where we've got some operational areas for improvement and we'll hopefully be able to, if the funding does come, drive some of those planning, training and equipment resources that we can deploy to the field for those identified limitations that we have out there. I forget which committee member had asked where the priorities for funding and what can we do more. There are all kinds of things and I wish that I could point to just, you do this one thing and it's going to be safer. It's not just school resource officers. It's not just technology. It's not just threat assessments. It's not just incident coming. Unfortunately, it's all of it and it requires resources and it requires personnel. And right now we're all doing a good job, but it requires more. If we're going to head down this path and trying to enhance the level of safety and security in our school, there's going to need to be more of us and more resources to go out there and do the business of the day. I want to finish my comments by saying our principals and superintendents, in my opinion, they get the need for it and they're balancing the need for safety and security with the need for everybody to come through the door and feel that this is a welcoming environment for them to come and to learn. They have been active partners in this and every place that I go, they are actively engaged in this school safety dialogue and conversation. So I'm very proud of the relationships and very proud of our partners and the work that they have done across the state over the last couple of years. And I'll end my comments and open it up for questions. Great. Thank you very much. Do you have these comments available electronically? Typically we like to post testimony on our website and I don't see anything from you. I can give you the ad lib stuff. Probably not, but I have bullet comments of some of the training initiatives and priorities that I can share with you. That'd be great if you could give the door staff assistance so we can post them. The other thing I'd like to ask, well, go ahead. I'm perfectly happy to welcome you. You mentioned about the 95% of... I've been calling these school safety audits or something from my own understanding of them. And I know my school had... We actually were supposed to have a meeting one day at the school, but we couldn't because there were a number of police officers in there looking over the school. My question is that first of all, I'm assuming we're trying to get 100% of our schools. We're trying really hard. So what is the process from now forward and do you expect that's going to drive the conversation if this money does become available for those $25,000 grants for school districts? Will this be what is informing our school districts still where we need to spend our funds? Yes. That's the rationale in why we wanted to get somebody inside of each and every school across the state. I think 95% return rate on anything, any survey, any invitation, and it wasn't even a full month. We're talking probably three and a half weeks. Think about what that is. That is a huge, huge lift that the commissioner really should be commended for for making that happen. Emily and I were thinking, how do we get this done? But we got it done. So of course the drive is to get to 100%. We know the schools that haven't gotten a visit and we'll continue with that process as well. Our desire and design of this survey was to, the questions were asked and the information is being gathered for specific areas that we wanted to get a look at to say, okay, we're getting this right, or for example, does every classroom door have a locking mechanism? Does every school lock the doors throughout the business day? What type of security technology solutions are schools using? Do you have an SRO? Do you have cell phone coverage that's reliable in your area? Those are the types of questions that we now will be able to take a look at, have the data about where we are for percentages, and then be able to identify where those future priorities for the funding would go. That will be my guidance and I'm assuming that that will be the guidance that we will follow if and when the money comes available. So each school will get a response or are you doing it in aggregate? Aggregate, and right now we're taking a state look. We're not breaking it down geographically. We're not breaking it down by supervisory union. We will be able to tell you how many, what's the percentage of Vermont schools that do this or don't do that. Thank you. What percentage? When we had the capital bill a couple weeks ago, I don't know if you've looked at that with H923, which is currently in Senate institutions, there was a floor amendment to create an advisory group to study issues and develop guidelines and best practices for schools regarding safety. We never had a chance to have that language in our committee. I'm just hoping that you will take a look at that and see what I'm hearing that they're looking for sounds like a lot of what you just presented to me. Tell it to us. I'm of the opinion that we have committees and teams that have existed for years working on these issues and systems and practices and connections and probably most importantly relationships, long-term relationships, vis-by-partners, if Jeff Francis or principals associate, these are folks that we're talking with every single week and sometimes more is not better if the system isn't broken. We can certainly add to it if we need to but practices and systems and teams are in place and my recommendation is we've done great work and I think if subsets of those teams need to be developed to do those things then I think that's a great idea but I'm not sure that developing others is... I would encourage you to check in with Senate institutions. Good. As you might imagine... Jeff Francis just walks through the door. As you might imagine as chair of the Education Committee I've been asked about school safety as follows. One of the things that I've been concerned that's been expressed to me is that public safety does all these evaluations of schools. It's all going to be about locked doors and not looking at things like air vents that could be accessed for terrible things to happen. Is that concern valid and what steps are you taking to make sure that you see the whole picture of a school? Do you mind if I actually interject there for a second? Is this an allowable thing? Yes. So I work for Vermont Emergency Management which is under the Department of Public Safety and when we design the survey we look at things from an all hazards perspective so we were asking what plans do you currently have in place? Are you using options based approaches? So things outside of just are your doors locked? Are you following those best practices? We looked all hazards so it wasn't just focused on the locking of the doors. We didn't have air vents in there but we did have a lot of things in there that weren't just active shooters because again from Vermont Emergency Management perspective if you're prepared to respond to a flood or a hazmat event it's going to help you when an active shooter event happens as well. And to dovetail what Emily just said we base where we're going to spend our dollars and spend our time on probabilities. We look at what's the most likely thing for folks to experience and what they might potentially be exposed to from a threat. Is it active shooter? Is it a violent intruder? I'm going to sit here and tell you that the probability of that is extremely low that that type of event would take place. High probability events are I've got an angry parent that comes to school because I got an apple and my kids sitting out of school for three or four days or I have a staff member who's about to get fired or they're smoking the building or I've got flu. Whatever the highest probabilities are where we're spending our smart dollars on but it doesn't mean that we aren't taking a broad picture but spend 75% of your time and what you most likely will be exposed to and spend 25% of your time and resources on that crazy stuff that none of us can ever be prepared for. And that's the way we kind of prioritize is a threat based analysis let's figure out what those threats might be and then spend our time and our dollars on those appropriately. Does that answer your question? The other thing I try to watch the morning news on TV when I come here in the morning just to see what's happening in the world on my way and there was a news story this morning about SRO school resource officers and that we're also working on an ethnic studies bill and thinking about bias and prejudice in our schools in particular and they said that the incidents of minorities being suspended and expelled from school were far greater in schools that had SROs and I wonder if you have looked at that or if you're going to look at that and what that says about bias in our schools. A couple of things. One is that we don't have a lot of SROs in our state right now we have 30-32 SROs that are deployed in school systems across the state that are certified some of those are not active in their schools some of those are part-time school resource officers and school resource officers as I look at them are fully trained fully certified law enforcement officers that are supported and backed up by a sworn law enforcement agency it's a trooper, it's a deputy sheriff or it's a cop all that are people that are assigned to a law enforcement organization and because of that they're backed up with all the training and the experience and the policies and procedures and all that stuff that comes that when Rob Evans shows up as a police officer I come with all of what that department has to offer most importantly the specific training about what being a good school resource officer is and in my opinion like everything it's all about training, selection and hiring and not just putting any cop in a school it's got to be the right cop in a school that comes with the expertise about how to deal with kids at an age-appropriate level and comes with somebody that we are confident doesn't have the specific issues that you just spoke about that happens because we don't put the right people in the driver's seat on those types of physicians and if you don't have the right person don't put that person in that driver's seat from a school resource officer's perspective it's very sensitive to the fact that we can get that right or we can get it really really wrong like other agencies have done across the country and it's absolutely contradictory for what the law enforcement organizations in our state and quite honestly in our country are trying to do in building good relationships with our community instead of being discipline areas you know the SROs aren't there to discipline the SROs are there for programming for education for information sharing and probably the biggest thing is is to build a trust and faith and confidence with our community members and again if we don't have the right people in those seats we're getting it wrong from the beginning but also just because we have a school resource officer in our school no one should think that that is a hundred percent commitment that one of those tragic events is not going to take place and you only have to look as far as Parkland or Columbine or other shootings that have taken place in our school environments where there have been school resource officers there now we can't know how many of those types of situations have been deterred because there's a cop out in front or because there isn't SRO there but nobody should think that just because we've got it there that they're not going to happen because we know that they possibly can and nothing keeps a dedicated committed person that's off the rails from doing those types of things no matter if we fortify our schools or not if folks want to do it instead of going into the school they're going to do it in the playground they're going to do it in the parking lot that's why when I talk about prevention let's spend as much time talking about how we prevent these things and making sure that the climates in our schools are good and our kids have a connection with that no kid feels like they don't have somebody that they can trust somebody that they can go to they can share information connection to the community is the way to go it's an interesting thing that two nights ago I was at the Essex community forum 60 or 70 parents and first responders were there never seen the technology thing they were able to at their tables or on their iPhone they were able to give direct feedback up on the PowerPoint projector about what each individual sitting in the room felt was the best way to prevent a school based violence incident and none of it was guns none of it was you know securing our it was all about community connection it was all about making sure that our kids feel safe know they're safe have a principal or superintendent or a best friend that they can talk to those are the things that the community felt like you know we really need to make sure in addition to everything else make sure we're getting that right too so long-winded way of getting to your you give me a great level of confidence but it conflicts somewhat with what I heard on TV this morning which I believe was Vermont information so I would ask you to take some time to look at that see if the news stories accurate if it is what changes do we need to make so that we don't continue to have implicit or explicit bias happening in our schools especially around school resources I think was that Dr. Fowler with doing the from the age of education I think because I think I saw the same news last night I will absolutely take a look at that I will absolutely take a look at that thank you this is Dylan can I ask a question yes certainly sorry I can't be there in person I'm pretty sick and didn't want to share it I was at that ethics forum the other night and I know that you probably and other stakeholders have been at a number of these community forums around the state recently do you get the sense from parents and other community members that once they're aware of the work going on with the school safety initiative that's going on at the statewide level in the audit you get the sense that communities and parents feel more comfortable as local education experts share the work is already underway you know Dylan short answer absolutely sometimes we don't do a very good job selling the work that we're doing and certainly from a principal's or superintendents perspective communication with our parents is paramount we have shared communication opportunities with principals and superintendents to get that word out and I know they've done a fantastic job trying to let folks know without divulging state secrets what we're doing in our schools but to let parents know hey we got it and we've got this under control and these are the things and they're advertising when I come to the school or when Essex is doing a community forum Rob Evans and other partners are going to be here to talk about that we're coming to you know Lynn Kota's crew up there in Richford and I know she's going to announce her community after our visit hey Rob and Emily we're here those are the types of things that Dylan I think that when folks take an opportunity to share that it just makes folks feel like okay our communities are getting it it's scary conversations it's scary conversations for all of us and it's scary conversations for parents but I think once they hear that we've had it for years we're doing it and we're going to continue to do it it makes folks feel comfortable that there's smart people in the room that are having those conversations Is it acceptable for me to chime in? Yes it is Emily, I was from all the emergency management so one of the other things Rob and I are planning to do is at the beginning of this next school year we're going to put together a video specifically for parents to say hey parents when something's happening at your school here are the things you should be doing and just as important here are the things you should not be doing we've already got a guide available on our website for schools to disseminate out to parents but we feel that the video thing will help as well so we're going to push that out to schools at the start of this next school year coming up Great thank you Other questions? Well first of all your philosophy in regard to Representative Webb's question about this additional study committee that if it ain't broke don't fix it I would recommend carrying that along as you go Going to Fairhaven and so you've sort of said since 1999 there's work that's gone on and it does sound good but despite all of that in the Fairhaven situation despite the fact that you know 25% of the kids didn't come to school they were so concerned about Mr. Sawyer coming back it really it seemed like there wasn't anything anybody could do until this young woman from New York said this guy poses a threat and that's based on what I read and what I hear not based on what goes on behind the scenes but could you comment on all of the work that goes into assessing threats yet it didn't seem to despite even the kids knowing that this was a threat that it didn't seem to stop anything until this girl called her counselor called the police So I can't speak specifics on that case as far as the criminal case but I can speak to how the threat assessment process is supposed to work and did work in this case so we're only as good as the information that folks are willing to share which is why we continually reinforce if you see something say something adage and there are a variety of different platforms that these threats can come in social media we have a conversation a post on a bathroom wall a letter, conversations of folks a variety of different ways that these things can come in the threat assessment process is a comprehensive evaluation as to the credibility of this and what we need to make sure that we get right 100% of the time is if it's credible we've got to get the appropriate resources to action and prevent and mitigate you know the disastrous impacts that these types of things can happen and in that case once that information was made known to specific officials right away certain things got done cops got notified state police is involved fusion centers and information centers are getting all the social media data mining is taking place and very quickly things are happening behind the scenes to ensure that that person doesn't have access to the school once the threat has been identified you know the hard part is if folks don't come forward and aren't willing to have a conversation and it's not brought to the appropriate authorities then it's out there in the gray area where we just don't know about that type of thing the good part about that is as soon as that threat was made known to an appropriate person in position of authority and responsibility it started to roll and it rolled very very quickly with a lot of stakeholders involved in evaluating that process you know in an arrest got made and the consequences got mitigated and you know meetings got taken place after action review that Emily and I did at that school with that staff about what they did well what they could improve upon best practices were shared post-incident by Emily who did the critique on that these are the types of things that are going on behind the scene that a lot of times folks just don't know that it's taken place but it's taken place so with a lot of that taken place had the girl from New York not reported her conversation with him yeah I mean I it was a well-known threat the students at fair hand were concerned about him returning to school there was no specific I think it's whether it's credible or it's that telephone game where I tell somebody I tell somebody else and by the time it gets to that person is it valid information is it two years old is it stale when it was actionable and it was credible then the appropriate resources got dedicated to that threat but that's the tricky part we got to get it right 100% of the time they got to get it right 1% of the time that's why we've done the training and been really really progressive in bringing those those folks together to train our staff and our stakeholders how to do this process so I assume you looked at the parkland to see where there was a known threat you've had an opportunity to look at that and see where mistakes were made and how to prevent you know and after each one of these instance whether it's in state or nationally Emily and I and our partners and our school crisis planning team will have those conversations but okay do we not have these systems in place are these things that we do or we don't have if they got it right how can we steal that and bring it here to this state that's what we do that's what we've been doing it's what we'll continue to do in the future and we don't say we've got it all we're always willing to steal whatever everybody else has got going on it's great and we'll continue to do that but but yeah that those types of incidents and we'll wait till the formal after action review takes place and learn from that just like we did from the Sandy Hook Advisory Committee we we took some of those recommendations and put those into best practices here as well is there anything you need from us support you know you know not just from the committee but certainly you know it takes it takes money it takes resources and I know there's competing interests on a lot of this but if this is going to be a priority then you know for lack of a better term sometimes we've got to put our money where our mouth is and we got to dedicate the resources on that and find ways that we do what we need to do while keeping our schools the way we want our schools to be and educators focusing on education representing do you think that gun laws we recently passed are helpful you know I'm not I'm not sure I'm in a position to speak from this role in that so I would prefer not to answer that if that's okay let me ask you another question in Parkland in Florida why did the school resource officer or police not going to the building so we'll take you back over many years Columbine was pre Columbine law enforcement's response I like to call it was isolate contain and negotiate where we surrounded the buildings contain it from getting any bigger and then try to negotiate our way out of it and we know it was disastrous results that when the cops waited outside of Columbine high school and Cleveland Harris were allowed to continue to kill inside the walls of the school that didn't go so well so because of that our tactics and our strategies and our practices from a law enforcement perspective changed and they continue to change based upon the threat that we're exposed to so now cops any cop not just a school resource officer like at Essex you put the vest on and you go that's the mentality you know on game day everybody's got to show up to play and it's all good in training it's all good when you go through the practices and nobody is shooting potentially shooting back but on game day that cop's got to make an individual decision about whether I've got what I feel I need to do to evaluate the situation and go do what I need to do as a human being from my understanding had received all of that training and on game day you know didn't run with a ball there are cops that make good decisions there are cops that make bad decisions each and every day we for years have been training with local county state and our federal partners especially up on our borders because a lot of times our border patrol our ICE folks will be the first ones there we have been training collaboratively to ensure that our folks have everything that they need as far as training and equipment and resources to do it but you know again on that day when you're that one cop that when shots are being fired you're either running towards it or you're not unfortunately in that circumstance we didn't it's hard to know that isn't it about a person right anything anybody you know no matter what job you're in but in those first response you know you're taking oath to serve and protect you go it's all good to raise your hands and say oh yeah but again when it's coming your way it's a different feeling you know people say coward and they throw those words out there and you know what still a human being that's got to make a life or death decision and that's a tough one that's a tough call thank you very much for your testimony yes can I just make a couple comments because I can shed some light on questions that you had I was in the Senate Judiciary Committee you identified yourself Jeffrey Francis from our superintendent association three points one part of my job as the executive director of the superintendent's association is to work with Rob he's a great partner I appreciate the work that he does and I appreciate the fact that there's more focus on that work now in light of recent events and the importance of keeping kids safe in school two I was in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday I just checked with Amy Fowler her comment about SROs and school discipline were based on national studies not Vermont studies as a result of what happened in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday I have reached out to superintendents and I'm developing a list of every supervisory union and school that has a school resource officer so if you reach a point where you want that information or testimony from those school systems I'm not sure you'll get there but I can help with that and I've also asked her whether the state has done any study itself of a correlation between SROs in Vermont and the school discipline information in those schools I haven't heard back from Amy on that yet but I thought when I read the media reports that there was some confusion around what had actually happened in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday so I wanted to just point out to you this morning what I knew about what happened there thank you because right after that news story I believe we took testimony last year from Amy Fowler that said there was not bias evidence in Vermont schools racial bias for suspensions and discipline and then this news story came out this morning and my wife turned to me and said well I guess there really is a difference there really is a story to tell in Vermont so that's why I asked the question this morning and information that you may get to shed light on this would be helpful because we are dealing with an ethnic study Bill in front of us and the concern of minority populations that there continues to be bias in our schools and I don't know that there's not a correlation I don't know that it's been looked at I've asked her that question so we'll see what she says she just said no there's not been any study of SROs and school discipline and any correlation thereof not just because Jeff is sitting here but as I spoke before I have a month's speed dial if there are issues we've talked when he's on vacation we've talked when I have on vacation those are the relationships that are so critical in us getting this stuff right Jeff I appreciate you thank you thank you very much