 Good afternoon, everyone. This is a Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. We are coming back from a short break. We're here to meet with some high school seniors that have gone through VZAC to find out, to go to help them on their career pathway after high school. These are four students that were on a Zoom meeting a couple of weeks ago that I was able to attend. I thought it would be good for the committee to meet them and to hear from them and actually have a round table discussion with them. I think what we're really wanting to do is pick your brains a little bit to understand how your travels through the education system went and some thoughts that you might have on questions that we may have for you. So welcome, it's good to see you again. I know it's a little difficult to see us, especially with a mask on, but pictures are a little on a small side as well. But I thank you for joining us this afternoon and taking time to talk to us. Patrick, thank you for setting this up, I appreciate it. Is there anything you wanna lead off with before we talk to our students? No, I'll just say thank you for taking them into your committee and talking with them. You definitely wanna hear from them. They had some great things to share with us when they met in our panel conversation and I'll leave it to you, Chairman Markott, to kind of facilitate. Thank you. Do we have someone who wants to start us off? Maybe Brayden? Yeah, my name's Brayden Bixby and I'm from North Union, Vermont. I'm on the fire department currently. I volunteer at Clarendon and I also am an intern at Rotland City. I'm 17 years old, senior. So what are your plans after high school? I wanna become a firefighter slash paramedic and I wanna go to New Hampshire, it's a great school over in the colonial that I wanna attend in the fall. I've already been accepted. Now I'm just looking to be on a department as a student living so I can work and get the experience, go on calls, work 24 hours shifts, everything like that. Excellent, congratulations. Thank you. Melody. Hi, I'm Melody. I'm from Canaan, which is right next to the Canadian border. I am obviously a senior. I'm taking a lot of college course classes as well as a internship because our school does school to work. So I'm able to go to a dentist's office and observe them to kind of get an idea if that's something I'm interested in. And then after high school, currently I'm planning on going possibly to St. Anselm because they have like good health programs. So I wanna go get my pre-dental, like the prerequisites for dental school and then possibly go into orthodontics. Great, congratulations. Reagan. All right, hello. My name is Reagan Decker. I am from Enosburg. I went to the high school there but I'm doing early college. So I'm actually living on the Johnson campus and taking like all of my high school classes as college classes. I'm hoping to come, well, I got accepted, so I'm coming back next year. I'm gonna be in the education program because I wanna be a high school English teacher as of right now. So I think I'm gonna do that. I don't know if I'm gonna stay here the whole time but I know I'm gonna for the next like year or so. Great, so just make sure you keep up with what we're doing. There's a lot of different scholarship programs that we're putting together in our workforce development bill, which is H-703 that we'll be reporting on the floor next week. And there may be some advantages for you to stay in Vermont and take your courses. We may have some money there to help you out if you promise to stay in a state and do some work for us when you graduate. Thank you, Leah. Hi, my name is Leah Biler. I'm from Newbury, Vermont. I attend Oxford High School and I also go to River Bend Career and Technical Center. I'm in the Health Times program. I plan to go to college this fall and currently next week, actually, my program is starting our LNA courses at Cottage Hospital. And when I get to college, I haven't chosen where I wanna go yet. I'm still deciding on where I wanna go but when I get to college, I do hope to have my LNA. And I hope to become an RN in labor and delivery. Okay, so I think maybe Mr. Laduke had some questions that he handed to you all that you could probably answer before we get the committee to question. But before we start that, I think maybe I'll just ask the committee to introduce themselves to you so that you know what part of the state we're all from because we're from all over. So I'm Mike Marca. I was on the Zoom with you a couple of weeks ago and I'm from Coventry, Vermont and I chair the committee. Stephanie. I am Stephanie Jerome and I live in Brandon and represent Brandon Pittsburgh and Sudbury and I'm the ranking member of the committee. I'm Kirk White. I live in Vefel and I represent Vefel, Rochester, Stockbridge and Pittsfield. It'd be good if you raised your hand so they could actually tell who we are and who's speaking with a mask on. It's hard to see. I'm Wayne LaRouche. I represent Richard Berkshire, Franklin and Highgate and I live in Franklin, Vermont. Hi, I'm Lynn Dickinson. I live in St. Alvin's town and I represent St. Alvin's town and I'm glad to see you here. And just so you know, Lynn's husband is a dentist and... Yes, Melody. And so they run a dental facility in St. Alvin's. Yes, and I'm also the chair of the board of the Vermont State College System. So we're gonna, I'm glad to see you're at NVU. John. Hi everyone, thanks for being here today. I'm John Kosenska. I'm from East Burke, Vermont and I represent Lyndon Sutton and Burke in the Northeast Kingdom. I'm out. And hi everyone, I'm Emma Mulvaney-Sannick. I represent a portion of Burlington, part of the Old North End and New North End of Burlington. There's 10 reps there, so the crew. Hi there, Mike Nigro and I represent one of the districts of Bennington. Hey, and one of our members is on the Zoom with you. Representative Kits Miller. Hi, thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to say hi. You can't really see me, except for a little face on the screen back there, but I'm just working from home this afternoon. So I knew that Lynn was going to mention that her husband is a dentist because that was going to be pretty close to one of you. So I'm very, very interested in hearing what you've got to say. Turn it back over, thank you. Thank you. The only one missing is Vice Chair Kimball. He's from Woodstock. He is actually in the House Education Committee right now, going over our workforce development bill, age 703 with the Education Committee. So welcome and so let's go through the questions that were given to you. Chair Marco, why don't I just go ahead and verbalize at least the first one to get things kickstarted. You and I kind of chatted on the phone for a second and kind of crafted a couple of topics that are really kind of a continuation of our panel conversations. So our students were shared so much there. This is a great opportunity to have them continue to give us more information. So the first question that we came up with was really what's your perception of how CTEs is presented in your school? We talked about that a little bit in the panel, but what would you guys say to that? So when I first got to Oxbow, I mean, they pretty much put it out right in front of us in seventh grade. I think, like I said before, I think I toured it maybe two or three times. The first time I toured it was actually an elementary school. So I knew about River Bend from like the fifth grade. So I did, we did, we knew what River Bend was. We just didn't really know what it was all about at the time, I guess you could say or how it would help us in the future. But when we got to sophomore year and we actually took a tour of it and they explained to us that you can get college credit for a lot of your classes, that's when we really knew like, oh, this could actually come handy and this could prepare us for our education in the future. I think Eunice Berg was in the same boat because they definitely made it known that we had Cold Hollow. And I'm pretty sure it was like ninth grade or so where they made us take a class over there. So we'd have to walk over even if we weren't interested just so they could teach us about like what the building was and what the options were and how it would help us in the future. A lot of students did Cold Hollow. They allowed us to actually partake in it starting our sophomore year, I think. I think so. 10th grade, yes, it was 10th grade. They told us about it in middle school but we didn't really know anything. We were just like, oh, cool kids go to Cold Hollow. That's great. I didn't know what it was, but I knew of it. So they definitely taught us a lot in our freshman year and then obviously sophomore or third senior years when they actually let us do it. So. I wish for it, okay. So I personally have not been in a CTE program but I talked to one of my friends who also goes to my school who has gone through it because they didn't really have like a big program until 2020 which they did it through our business teachers class. So I'm just gonna read what she told me if you don't mind. She said that it has been widely promoted to students. So it's a very well-known thing now ever since 2020 and that the teachers like very good at what she does and that it's really good for teaching students whether since it's business related so any students that wanna be like in the business workforce or anything like that or even for students who are unsure of what career they wanna do. It's all kind of like based on students deciding on what they wanna do with their future whether they do wanna go for a business or not. And it's really helpful for them from what I've heard from students who have been in that program. And I think at one point wasn't Canaan tied in with North country at Newport, the career center? I'm actually not entirely sure. I just heard of this program newly throughout our business program. So I'm not entirely sure on that answer. It would have made it pretty tough for you and Canaan to I think the North country, the career center had a satellite there maybe. You're kind of you're far up in the Northeast that's for sure. Yeah. Brayden? Yeah, I feel like I didn't really get exposed to the career center until my freshman year. And I looked into it. I was thinking about doing culinary but that shifted my goal shifted. And I was looking into the public safety program but it was more focused on like police like the police side and like military side. So I wasn't really interested in that. So I decided to go back to like normal learning but I feel like if we did it at a younger age down in the river, I feel like it would have been more successful and got more kids to go through the program. Thank you. Actually for Brayden. Go ahead. Brayden, I have heard of people speak about oh, and this is Stephanie Jerome and I am from Brandon. So I know a little bit more about Stafford the Stafford program. And I've heard people say that it would be really great if there was an EMS or firefighter training program at Stafford. Do you think that there would be a lot of interest from students in the river or other local schools in a program like that? Yeah, I've been talking to a lot of junior firefighters throughout the state. A lot of good friends with some people from Fairhaven and Burlington, even from down south like Bennington Way, Danby Way. And they would come up here to go to this program. I think it would be really great if Stafford opened it up to more like fire science, EMS based, not just police, because there's a lot of interest. It's just, I feel like kids don't know how to capitalize on it. And so you're serving now in your local volunteer fire department? Yes. That's great. That's good because I know that all the fire departments certainly need, or volunteer fire departments always need more members and love younger members as well. Yeah. And it's good to know and get all the knowledge I can before I go off to school. It's nice being actually there on the incident and actually being hands-on, getting to see everything operate. It's awesome. And what kind of training do you, have you been able to take advantage of as a student? Are you able to do any of the firefighters training that happens at the police academy in Pittsburgh? I am not yet, because I'm still underage. But this Saturday, I actually have a propane training to get a certification for propane and just to work with propane. And then there's a water rescue course. So there's stuff available that I can get, but not widely available, like SCBA. That's like airpack training or like interior work. I can't do that yet, because I'm not certified. And it's because of your age? Yes, strictly. You're just too young? Yes. How old are you? I'm 17. You're 17. OK. OK, so everything's available for 18-year-olds? Yes, 18-year-olds. Right. OK. Thank you. And did we, was there another question, Patrick? Sure. Yeah, they kind of leaked into the second question. So I'm going to jump us to the third question that we came up with, Chairman. Should CT courses be offered even earlier than they are now? And I think, Reagan, you mentioned you took one in sophomore class, sophomore year. How early should CTE classes be offered to students in your minds? I was not actually in a specific program for Cold Hollow. They just made us, well, OK, well, they did make us. They made us take a course about Cold Hollow. Got you. So we had to walk over there in the winter and just sit there. And they'd be like, all right, this is what our center has to offer. This is a specific program. And this is how it can help you in your career when you're older. And they taught us all about it. So we were very well informed for freshman year. So by the time we were sophomores, we already knew if we wanted to do it or not and what the process would be. So if you were to build on that, should all of that started years before that, or is that the right time? I think it's the right time. But that's just me. I know if I was in middle school and I had to walk over there to the high school career center and then learn everything and then I'd have to wait. And then I just think it'd be very intimidating. And you wouldn't really know as much as you should or have a high school experience to where you're like, oh, I want to take normal classes. You should be given the option to just have a normal school day and regular education before automatically jumping into half of my day is going to be at the career center. And then the other half is going to be an actual regular high school day. I just think it would be weird to not have that experience like the first year. Good point. Others have a thought on the age of when we should start thinking about career center? Yeah, so I talked to a few people that have been part of the program. And surprisingly, I got a lot of, and I'm sorry if there's background noise, a people who said that it should start if it has to at sophomore year because ninth graders, it may be harder for them because it may be at a difficult level since it's like preparing students for college. That's what I've heard. I think there definitely are students who could probably handle it. I think it is based on maturity of the students. That's just in my opinion. But I do understand where they come from, where maybe they should be exposed to it but not completely a part of the program because they might not be entirely prepared for it, whether that's with the coursework that comes with it or whatever happens in that program. Other thoughts on that question? Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to even start maybe at sixth grade to get people exposed to the career center and maybe bring them up through middle school, add on slowly until sophomore year where you can fully enter the program. But I think sophomore year is a great time to start. You get your first couple of years into middle school and high school and then you can choose what you want to do. But I think it's really necessary to have at least one year of normal high school. OK. Malia, any thoughts? Well, I obviously can't speak for every vocational center, but at least for River Bend, like I said, they've done a really good job of putting it out there. And I do know that even though the three-period programs that are reserved for juniors and seniors, but I think freshman and sophomores can do like one-period classes and everything. So even though it's not the three-period programs where you can get college credit, you still get exposed to River Bend in some form just through one class. And I know people who have taken it. I haven't taken those classes myself, but I do know people who have and they really do enjoy them. So, yeah. I think you can all tell that we have a bit of a bias towards CTE because over the years that I've been here and we've been hearing about the real need to expose students to the Career Center. And not everything at the Career Center follows a college credit. There's other courses there that you get a certification from. And so listening to the governor this year during the state of the state, we actually talked about the need to elevate the Career Center education to the same level as a college education because there's some people, some students that are destined to go to college, and that's a great path for them. But there's other students that aren't. But we want to make sure that they have a skill as well when they leave high school and possibly maybe move on to college in a slower way, maybe through certifications that would help get to them, get an associate's degree at VTC or something. So have all of you been exposed or know about dual enrollment program that we do? And so we're looking at creating something in the same as dual enrollment, but for adult CTE programs for certifications. So like Leah, you could have an LNA program certification paid for because right now you can't go through dual enrollment with that if it's taught at the CTE and possibly CDL for students to go through the CDL program. So when they turn 18, they could go and get their permit for CDL and all kinds of other different things that are taught on the adult side of the CTE. So do you think that has any potential? Raiden? Yeah, I think that would be great if younger kids could get at least exposed and maybe not take like practicals, like really like hands-on. But if they could get all the bookwork done for like their fire one to get them interior certified, like as soon as they turn 18, I think that would be so beneficial because I would do that. Yeah, and we're also thinking about making sure that if there are students that are financially have a hard time financially being able to attend the class because of transportation or other issues that need equipment or anything like that, that we just like dual enrollment, there would be that back-end help to make sure that all students are able to access at least one course. Yeah, I think that'd be great. Anyone else? Reagan? I think it would be helpful. It would definitely be a cool experience for a lot of kids to already know that they want to go into like, because some kids know from a young age that they're like, oh, I'm going to go to a trade school. I don't want to go to college. So if you know already, you're like, yeah, college isn't for me. And you're actually given the opportunity to go and figure stuff out and try and see what you like on the trade school end of things. I think that would be really helpful because they do really drill college into your mind from a very young age. So I think it would be cool if kids could actually be like, oh, well, I don't really want to do college. So can I do some cool classes and get help towards trade school already and get it done? Because I'm doing early college. So that's like a year early for me. And I don't think they have anything like that for like, if I wanted to go to a trade school and do something, I don't think my school would be like, yeah, just go do that. So I think it'd be cool. It was an option for both college classes and technical center classes. I don't know what you'd call it, but you know what I mean. Yeah. Any thoughts, Melody or Leah? Kind of like what Reagan was saying, like having programs available for like specifically to what you want to do, like if you know exactly what you want to do. And I don't know if this is similar, but I know my school does school to work, which is basically you go to a workplace of some sort of where you have a career interest in. Like for me, I go to a dentist's office. And you go there and you observe and then sometimes from those programs, you can get certifications, depending on where you are or like what the career is. Because obviously I can't get any certifications from observing at the dentist's office, but it's definitely a leg up in the college field or even in the trade school field. You basically have options to go anywhere where a place of business will let you go in and observe. So it's really helpful. Leah, do you think that if that had been available to you that you may have taken an LNA course maybe in the 10th grade and gotten your certification? So the thing is sophomore year, I was still exploring what I wanted to do. I think at the beginning of sophomore year, I still wanted to go into English. But I think with last year, I think we were supposed to do something with LNA but because of COVID we couldn't. But for other students who are sure of what they want to do, if a sophomore is sure that they want to go into health care, I think it would be a good idea for them. So this would start in the 10th grade and it would be after school. So it would be a night course that you would have to take. So it's got to be for somebody that's really motivated and know what they want to do. And there are a lot of students like you out there that have that motivation. And we've heard from CTE directors that this has been a real hindrance for students that just want those certifications and not a college credit. And so we're going to try this out and see if it works and just wanted to know if you thought that that would be helpful. But also, how important do you think it should be for you to understand everything that's available to you? So the career center is available, college is available and so you get all the information you need and try out everything and then make your decision on your pathway going forward. I think it would be a really good idea because as I said earlier, all they really drilled into my head was college. So I feel like if at a younger age, if I knew more about different career paths, I would have been like, oh, maybe I don't want to do this or maybe I want to look into something else. I think it's a good idea if you were to do it as a night course or outside of school because then if you're really motivated, you'll do it. But if you're just like, oh, I want to do it, but I don't really want to take it seriously, then you wouldn't, you know? So it would like help us know like, oh, you actually want to do it because it's like a night course. It's going to be a lot. So you're going to need to be motivated. So you wouldn't have to be motivated in order to do that. So I think that would be really helpful. Thank you. I also think it would be beneficial for not only students but maybe community members who want to go into healthcare because I know that one of my family members actually approached me and asked me if River Bend did night classes. I think they do, but I don't know. And they also asked me if River Bend offered LNA courses. And I said, well, you know, we're going to be doing our LNA through cottage, but I think it would be a nice thing for all, not only for younger students, but also for others who have graduated high school, who want to go into any sort of vocational career. So, and we do have grants out there for them. We have the advancement grants that are available to people that have already graduated high school. That's why we're creating this because we found a hole here where adults that have graduated can access it, students that haven't graduated yet, but are going for a college course can get college credit paid for, but students that are in between that are still in high school but want to do a, you know, get a career certification at the Career Center in the evening instead, it's not available to them. What I would say to you, if you have those community members asking you, ask them to talk to VZAC, have them call VZAC because they do, they have career counselors, Mr. Leducan can tell you that he's one of them and he has access to all of that. So, you know, I think we all want to make sure that people are able to get the education that they're seeking. Committee, do you anyone have any questions for these students that we have with us today? It's a great opportunity, Lynn. Yeah, it sounds like you're all pretty mature and one of the things that I'm going to ask you in your experience, obviously, the four of you are looking either at college or some higher education post-secondary education and you've got some pretty good idea of your path forward. Are a lot of the youngsters in these programs in the CTE programs or in your high school, are they looking at going on to college or are they looking for trades or apprenticeships or what are they looking for? And second of all, I just want to know, can you talk a little bit about the hands-on experience of the CTE programs that are not just theoretical out of a book, but are real hands-on courses, you know, experiences, right? Yeah, I'd like the fact that you can actually be hands-on. I just wish it was more directed towards fire science because that's what I want to do. But I understand that like kids definitely need the hands-on experience because if you're not hands-on, I feel like I can't learn. I'm just reading it. I need to be hands-on and reading a book, you can do that, but I just have to read it from a book if you're not. Yeah, which allows it to do so. I say in my school, it's kind of like 50-50, a lot of kids go to this career program, Stafford, but they end up not following what they did in the program, maybe like switching it to a different career, which is totally okay. But then another 50% of them know what they want to do, go into that program and then this year, graduating to hopefully go into a trade school or college. But I feel like it would be a lot more helpful. Reagan. Cold Hollow, like our career center is very hands-on. Or in any way that they can be, they are. Like I know the business program, they had a bagel place for a while that they like actually put in town. I know our forestry and construction and everything like that, it's very hands-on. And everyone who does it really likes it and they're very involved because it's like half of the school day. So you have to like really like experience everything because all of the things that are being focused on are very hands-on like pathways if they're gonna go that way for their career. A lot of the people in Cold Hollow are definitely like, oh, I'm gonna go to trade school. Like I'm doing Cold Hollow because I don't want to go to college. That might just be like my area. I'm not sure if it's like that for everybody, but Cold Hollow is very like based on like things in the community that a lot of people already do. So like there are a lot of kids who go into forestry because like their dad does the same thing or like it's their family businesses surrounding that. So they're just gonna do that and then like keep doing it throughout their entire lives because that's what their dad did or that's what their uncle did or like mom or you know what I mean? So a lot of them are definitely like, oh, I'm doing this because I don't want to go to college. Yeah, melody. Yeah, so kind of what like Reagan was saying, our school is also, and she's had like a really good explaining it, not only in a CTE program, but in our entire school, I feel like it's split kind of 50-50 between college and trade school. And I feel like a lot of students also do what their parents do. There's a lot of LNAs here because of the nursing home. So I know a lot of students from here are going to nursing school. And if they're not, a lot of the students are going to trade school, kind of like what Reagan was saying, like logging, working on like automobiles and stuff. And I think that's great. And a lot of the programs our school offers allows exposure to those things to make sure those students enjoy that. Unfortunately, I wasn't a part of any CTE programs because I felt like my school didn't really make me entirely aware of it, but I know a lot of other students in my school who were able to be a part of the program have definitely benefited from it and are learning what they're interested going forward after high school because of those programs. I know a lot of the students who are in the business CTE program are like, I want to do business. This is like great for me and they've learned a lot from it. A lot of the programs that we've been are very hands-on. I think that's pretty much to the crux of all the programs. For mine, definitely. We've learned a lot and we're actually going to be getting our basic lights, basic light support credential tomorrow. So there's that. And then I know the Cosmetology program has, they also went through inspection and I think they're now an operating salon is what I heard. So very hands-on and also getting that real world experience as well. John. Each of you has chosen to take advantage of CTE or dual enrollment like Reagan has here. Based on your observations, conversations with your fellow students, are there any programs that are not being offered that you'd like to see be offered at CTE? Yeah, for me personally, living in such a small town, I feel like we don't have as many programs for CTE on like a broad range. The only ones I'm aware of, I think one of them is building trades possibly and then business program, but I haven't been told about like a broad range of these things because I felt like I would have been more aware of them if we had more. So I feel like towns like mine that are like really small. Not only I feel like some of the students to be more aware of it because I wasn't and I know some other students may not have been. That's just for me personally, but I think where I live, we definitely need more CTE programs because I feel like we don't have a lot of available to us. But that may be different for other schools who have more students. Reagan. My area is also kind of small. So I definitely get what you're saying about like the limited choices because all of the stuff at Cold Hollow is essentially like forestry, like construction, like fixing cars and like very like specific things. There are, there's a couple little like programs that aren't focused around that kind of thing, but they're not as popular. And I think because we're in such a like, we're not a little area, like area, but like it's not being like, we're not in a city. So there aren't very many opportunities for us to like get outside of town and be like, oh, I want to do this, but there's nowhere in Enosburg that would like help me out here. So I guess I'm going to have to drive to St. Albans. Like that's not really a thing. I feel like if we had more opportunities that would be really helpful because there are only like at most maybe like eight programs in Cold Hollow and there are like two or three that aren't like super based around the outdoors. So I feel like it would be cool if they had more possibilities. Like, like someone said, cosmetology, like we would never have that. Like that would be something people would be interested in, but we're not going to have it because like we sugar and stuff. So I feel like it'd be cool to have a variety of just the same things. Trees are cool, but not everyone's into trees. So I feel like it'd be nice. What's your opinion on that? Fair enough. Your thoughts? Yeah, I wish that they did more at Stafford. I feel like they definitely have enough kids to expand the program and maybe generalize like a direct career path instead of like you can go in for public safety, but it doesn't like really define like what public safety you're going into. It's like what they direct it more towards like the military and police, which is okay, but it would be nice if at Stafford they offered something for fire science because I would definitely do that. Or even I heard some people would like to do like more into like engineering. Like I feel like the engineering program at Stafford isn't the best, but it's something at least. At least they have like something to work off, but I feel like if they advance more and do more inside the program, I think it would be very successful. Riverbend's pretty diverse in their programs. I think we have well more than 10. I can't, I don't know for sure how many programs we have, but they're very, we have a very large variety. Anything from agriculture to like media design to automotive, carpentry, all sorts of programs. And yeah, that's about it. Thank you. Other questions, committee or our students. Thank you all very much for joining us this afternoon. We really appreciate your time and your willingness to answer our questions really does help us either validate what we're trying to do or gives us some other information of other areas that we may need to look at. So we are, but I do again, want to make sure you look at 703 once it gets through the whole process and the governor signs it because there is a lot of money in there that will go to help students going to college to help pay for scholarships, help pay tuition, help to keep you in Vermont if you choose to do that. But we also wish the best for all of you in your future endeavors after high school. Just make sure that you go make us proud. So again, thank you for joining us. Patrick will talk to you again on bringing the other students to meet with us try to make possibly next Tuesday again. If this time works and then we'll talk about the adult students. I'm sorry I missed that last night. I wound up having to work. So I couldn't get on, but I'm sure that the next students that we talk to that are graduating and then our adult students that will be joining us will be helpful to us. So have a good evening everyone and thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. So committee, I think we're done for the day. I guess maybe people that visited a few committees today if you want to just fill us in on how that went. Emma? Yeah. I mean. So Lane and I went to go to the House of Corrections and Institutions to speak about section six of H703 this is the justice involved individuals piece of it. It was interesting. And I think by the time we got to the end of it I stayed a little bit longer because there was some confusion around funding sources. A whole world of corrections that we don't necessarily know much about collectively as a committee around money that gets returned when it's not used for folks that they house in correction facilities outside. The state apparently comes back to the state of our money goes into the general fund and there's a whole discussion around it's all the same money, it's different money, et cetera. So they didn't have as much critique about the policy but more about the funding sources which I sort of anticipated. But I think they got to a place at the end of the discussion where they're going to probably make some language recommendations to have their fingerprints a little bit more on this corrections piece which I said is totally fair. And we were putting a lot in in our timeline was very quick last week that it was not ideal for anyone. We, I was very light and respectful about that. So we might make some adjustments. I mentioned that we have a amendment already in the works for H703 because there's so many moving parts. We would be happy to hope I didn't over speak but happy to work with them. That piece in. Yeah, for sure. And they said on the money part in the end they didn't take the vote yet but they were very clear that they did a straw poll on the money, specifically the $417,000 that would go directly to Department of Corrections in here to basically enhance their current vocational training both the facility locations based stuff as well as looking at curriculum and redesign of their training programs. They did take a straw poll that says that would not come from what they call the JR2 funds which is the justice. And they are return. Reinvest money. Which is where the confusion was all originating from. So they said that we're not going to mess with that. They already made appropriations recommendations to the appropriations in their budget letter on that. So it's not coming from that. And now they moved on to something else that they hadn't quite decided about how if they were going to recommend our approach of this coming from other general fund money that's confusing when here but we were never looking to compete with what they had already earmarked or hoped for for JR2 money. So it was promising by the time we got to the end. It was an interesting hour and a half or hour and a half or long that was there. So it was the 300 from ours for one, that's fine. That was fine. So the upper amount, they will vote on some dollar amount. Yes, and they spoke as one the 417, to be honest. We didn't talk that much about the 300, but seemed much more straightforward to them. And I think again, it's because 417 was coming with this JR2 confusion piece. And I guess also representative squirrel who's their appropriations point person was coming back with some variations on their JR2 proposal. So they were talking about several things all at once. So I can tell that they're back to us on where they think our 417 would be. And they might change the number so that everyone's like, so please. 417, maybe. Easy to get along with. Easy to get along with, yeah. Well, good. Yeah, so I went up to human services just to kind of walk them through some of the sections of the bill. They were very excited about a lot of the sections. They're really excited about the Medicaid rate attempt. There. They seemed to feel like it was a long shot themselves, but they definitely, they sounded like they were very supportive. I did not get, you know, straw poll or formal vote from them, but they asked a lot of great questions. They did. It sounded like they may have wanted us to put in more explicit language that called out adult education, as opposed to just the findings language that we had in there. And adult, some of the adults, just making sure adult access to CTEs. I told them that I thought that that was in there with the CTE governance structure and reports. But, you know, they just questioned that they didn't really read that out of it per se. So that was kind of their only comment was just that they felt like maybe older for monitors were not as explicit in our language either. But my opinion is that it's all intertwined with all the nursing restructuring and everything else that's in the bill already. And they were, not that they were critical, but they just said that they didn't necessarily read that on their first path. And they may have wanted that to be a little more explicit. Yep. Well, I love that. Yeah, I mean, it sounded like they were generally supportive. I'm really excited about the recovery work, recovery centers initiative. And, you know, a lot of the Medicaid rate was something that they were very, they hope that it succeeds. And I think, you know, it was a little disappointing. I think to us too, that, you know, we talked about people that are retired, older, older monitors. And, you know, we were, we've been trying to find out what the barriers are, but I think most of the barriers that we heard about either dealt with employers or dealt with federal issues that are out of our control. So, you know, I think we were looking for that bullet that we could put in there that could assist, but we didn't really find anything. But maybe we can think about stronger language for just to put in there that talks about retirement and what we could, you know. Yeah, legislator. Yeah. I was thinking along the same lines because I have a constituent who's very, very focused on the older workforce. And I was thinking, especially as I was thinking about responding to him of what is in 703, the Department of Labor, what we were up to in the FTEs, you know, to really expand upon the regional navigator starting to build navigator folks to work with employers and work with matchmaking and really pathway folks. You know, I don't know if there's something in there where we could be a more little explicit. And so I'm sure Sarah and my office really does work, that works with everyone and they're really positioned for that and we haven't had that capacity and resource recently. And so that's a change, that's a change that can hopefully really level up capacity in the region. Would you both like to touch base with Sarah to see if you might be able to come up with some language that we could weave in there with David to strengthen that, you know, that approach that we want to see. Just to make sure that they are collaborating with older Vermonter agencies or? Yeah, well, you know, like they, you know, these navigators are supposed to pull everybody together. So they're bringing rest of the justice, they're working with probation and parole, but are they working with AARP? Or are they working with the area agency on aging? You know, those, so hope, you know, those should be the groups if we're looking to bring older Vermonters and retired Vermonters into the workforce, if they choose. Those are the groups that they could be convening because that's what we want these navigators to do. Yeah, I can send out an email and I'll try to loop in maybe Teresa or Dan too. Okay. And in the memo that Sarah had sent us this morning to go over all the pieces of this new, six place organization, older Vermonters, older workers are listed in that, but it's not strong. I mean, it's just like in the list of. Yeah, what can we do to strengthen that a little bit more? Great. Good. How are we? That was education. Did you get educated? Education was good. They wanted to know really what we had done with 377. And so that was the language that we had in the end with advanced Vermont. And they were happy to see what it was and basically content with the fact that the stakeholders had forged an agreement. They're pretty excited about it. So they had some other questions, but nothing really, you're shattering. There's a number of questions around the CTE program, but Mike was there in the field that was in terms of the CTE construction program. Is there a short thing we can use for that? Holding trades. Holding trades, all right. CTE, long thought, you know, that one. So they had some questions about it, but we were able to answer those. Kind of like, had you come up with 15 million? Yeah. I don't know. I just want to avoid that one. I don't know what to do with that one. Well, while it's here, we'll use it. If you really think about, you know, what we're asking them to do when you talk about blighted properties, you could be talking about some serious dollars just for remediation, not just, and also, you know, we talked about the possibility these students could be working in the summertime. There's money there to pay them to work. So I think they felt comfortable after that, that you're talking about 15 CTE centers too. So 15 million might seem like a big amount, but when you start coming down to it, it may not be. Okay, so I think we're good for today. Any questions before you, Lynn? Who picked up those four kids? They were really impressive. Yeah. All over in there. I think it really means a lot to bring the kids in. And I mean, we've done that before here in the building. I mean, it really, for us, it brings, it gives us value because we see what, what some of the policy changes are policies that we want to do, how meaningful it can be for them as they go through the system. But also it ties them into the state government and all the, there's people here that actually care. It's not what they see on TV all the time. Oh God. What the hell are we on TV now? I don't know how good that is. I know, I know. Let's go see it here. This is what my father watches all day. He watches TV. I'll wait for you. If he was one of the stuff. Oh yeah. But yeah, we actually sit here and we're three different parties that sit here and we all get along together and we all actually are working together. So I think that's really important for everyone to see. So I think with that, we can get off live.