 Um, committee, we were doing S 16 next and I saw Cheryl Hooker was on but left. Um, Chrissy, do you know she had to leave or I just zipped her and Jim and note that you guys are ready to move on to S 16. So we're hoping she'll pop right back in. Okay. Is that and Dick, that was one of your bills, right? It's on school discipline. And Senator Sears and I introduced the bill. I thought you were had an association with the bill. Okay. And you want to create a council. Yes. I'm going to tell you, well, Senator Hooker. Yes. Senator Hooker is connecting now. So we, you know, planning rooms, huh? Um, when my son was in second grade that actually they had a big box, I don't know, it was probably like a one of, I don't know, an appliance might have come in. And so they didn't have planning, but I think my son might have spent quite a bit of time there in that cardboard box in second grade. I would have loved that. You know, I don't, I don't think he, I don't think he ever objected. I want you to know that, yes, it's, it's very hard to imagine listening him to him on VPR, which I've not done to know what a screw off. I guess this is on, I guess I'm putting myself on the record, but academically, shall we say his K through 12 experience was not stellar. Jane, I just want to say, I've heard you say now three times that you haven't listened to your son. I do not believe you. I think you clicked in and listened. No, I have not. I have not. I have not clicked it. I have not, I don't even know how to do it. And so he's on zoom too much to do that. Yeah. I feel like I've been in front of a screen. So I, I, I don't know, but I, I do know, I think Senator Ballant was talking about planning rooms. And so it reminded me that we had a lesser cost version of that, which was we, we had some boxes at my house too. So so I think it probably that was not such a bad punishment. All right. So Senator Hooker, we're sorry we pulled you out and then you that was a little bit of school discipline, right? There you go. I think so. I think so. So we are on S 16. And it's around an school discipline advisory council. And we have Senator Hooker here to give us an update. Obviously it because it has a council, the council gets compensated. And that's why we have the bill. Yes. Well, thank you, Chair, Chair, Cheryl Hooker for Senate Education Committee. I'll be reporting the bill on the floor. I think this bill, as you've said, proposes to create a school disciplinary advisory council to assess school discipline methods in Vermont public schools. There will be 15 members on the board, which will begin meeting on September 1 2021. And the council will meet for no more than six meetings. Members of the council shall be entitled to a per diem compensation, which is $50 per day. And JFO standard method of calculating expenses is $76.25 per diem for public members. Unless they're otherwise compensated by their job. Okay. Yeah. Therefore, the total compensation for public members and expenses is $126.25 per day. All 15 members attend all six meetings. That means it'd be about $11,500. Is this an ongoing advisory council? They will report to the general assembly. There are only six meetings. Oh, just a minute. Wait a minute. I believe, you know, I'd have to check on that and see what we ended up doing because there was some talk about making it an ongoing council so that we would keep track of what was going on in the schools as far as discipline. The purpose of the council is to gather data to work with AOE and the school districts to get accurate data on the types of discipline that is happening in our schools. Currently, the information for Vermont's disciplinary actions is incomplete. And we would like to have a more accurate and more precise indication of what's happening and who's being affected by this. I do have to check to see. So, what we're talking about here then is the just the reimbursement. I had a question. Are the membership, is it to get to develop sort of best practices in terms of how discipline is defined or to guide practices within schools? Because I know that the reason behind the bill, obviously, is not to escalate and to really know how to manage some of these situations in a way that kids can stay in school and succeed in school. So, is the composition to get that kind of expertise on the council? I'm just wondering. I realize that isn't money but in terms of the thinking of the bill. Yes, exactly. That's one of the charges of the council. Senator Baruth. Senator Hooker, I'm just wondering. I remember this discussion over the years. AOE has been unsuccessful getting this disciplinary data so they can't necessarily do apples to apples. And I'm wondering, how would this task force or council have greater authority to get that than AOE? It seems like a district I could imagine being less likely to give it to an advisory panel than they would be to give it to AOE. Is there some accompanying language that gives them more authority or what was the discussion on that? I'm going to ask Jim Demeray to talk about the authority piece and where the authority lies here. My understanding is that the council would work with school districts and the agency of education utilizing some of the data that the agency already has but then asking for more data from school districts. Am I correct in that, Jim? Well, the data comes from the agency of education. That's in section four. So the agency is supplying the data to the task force, which is going to analyze that data and then make recommendations on how to approve the data collection process. But if that's the underlying, they can only give the data they have. So I think Senator Bruce' concern is the sort of the positive and comprehensive or the consistency of the data that is provided to work with. I just want to understand the question that you were raising. Right. So in other words, well, the last part maybe speaks to it. We're asking them in part to develop different ideas to make the data more comprehensive because the question has always been should we have a stick to enforce compliance. So for instance, Senator Sears remembers this for sure. Last session in 2019, we had a piece that said if you didn't provide your traffic stop data, then you couldn't get state grants for your law enforcement agency. And the thinking was that was the teeth that would allow it. And it seems like in this case. But that was the law, that was the law, right? In that case. No, we added that piece that you couldn't get the grant without. No, I understand. But we were saying you aren't going to get it because you're failing to comply with a law, which might be different than... Well, I believe AOE has the authority to compel this data. Am I right in that, Jim? They do, to the extent that it doesn't violate privacy laws. Right. So if they aggregate the data, then there shouldn't be a problem, except in a super tiny school, maybe. Anyways, I'm fine with this and we'll vote for it. I was just curious if there was some plan to get around that basic problem, which is that many districts won't or don't report. Well, and I think, too, that what Jim said, what Mr. Demery said about the collection of data and the process that's used is going to help to ameliorate that and help to bring that more into focus. I'm trying to read through the bill again, as passed by Senate Education. Will the report provide demographic data in terms of race, socioeconomic, other factors that have shown agenda? And that studies have shown there's a site here. Students who are suspended are at significantly higher risk of academic failure of dropping out of school, entering the juvenile justice system. Nationally, students of certain racial and ethnic groups of students with disabilities are suspended by a race. Will we have data on that so that we can look? There is an amendment to the bill that would ask for that, for the data to be disaggregated. That's one of the important things. We don't have that data. Yesterday or this morning, there's an article in the Bennington Banner about a school, the high school or middle school, role playing with using stuff from 2006 that had people role playing as either an immigrant or a nice age. And what we've seen as one of the persons in color who was in the class was the immigrant and discriminated against. So a lot of those things that are happening even today. So I'm curious about getting that information. What led me to introduce the bill is basically those studies from Texas that showed a high correlation between going to jail and school discipline, even as young as the elementary grades. The reason that we didn't take action on the bill until today was to allow for an amendment. And I just want to connect maybe this discussion with the amendment that may address this question about what data or information being collected. So I don't know, did the amendment, is that going to be offered, Cheryl? Yes, yes it is. And the information, the data would be disaggregated according to race, gender, needs, special needs, all of the things that are already collected in some cases. The problem, and I think what really spurred this, and I'll ask Senator Sears to corroborate this, is that we don't have accurate or complete information about this in Vermont and we'd like to know. I mean we can anecdotally say that Vermont is like the rest of the country. There are expulsions and a lot of the kids who are expelled are kids who meet, are in these different groups. So we need to be a little more accurate about that. Also the bill has a section that would ban expulsion or exclusionary discipline for kids eight and under. Oh, no planning. Interestingly, well interestingly, one of the statistics that came out was that preschool kids are less or more likely to be excluded than other kids and I, you know, I suppose they cry or have temper tantrums or something that that may be annoying, but it just shocked me to read that statistic. Until you can admit you have a problem, I think Vermont hasn't looked at what is the scope of the problem of suspension and expulsion. I could tell you the kids that I used to deal with really preferred expulsion and suspension because there was nobody at home and, you know, they could pretty much do what they wanted. Well, we did hear the story of the kids who knew that in a day when they weren't supposed to have cigarettes in school and they would purposefully bring cigarettes to school just before hunting season so that they could be expelled for the two weeks of hunting season or three weeks or whatever it was. But and that's another thing that was found out in the research that a lot of the exclusionary discipline was due to minor infractions, I mean, you know, taking cigarettes to school or whatever. So these are things that we want the council to look at and to come up with best practices. Other questions of Senator Hooker? I moved the bill. Okay. No, moved up. Is it 15,000 or 11 to five? 11, five, I think is the approximate. The bill had 15,000. I'll second that. Is it 15, Jim? 15, yes. Okay. I thought the JFO. Well, it may be, but the bill says 15 right now. I bid 20. So we have we have a motion made by Senator Sears to move the bill favorably. It carries an appropriation of 15,000 to support the work of the council, seconded by Senator Westman. Other discussion? If not, the clerk shall call the roll. You have to give me more of a heads up than that. Well, we work fast here, Phil. Westman used to be able to do this immediately. And I had to again do the sheets. I can only aspire to one day be as good as Richie. Okay. One second. Talk amongst yourself. Well, this Friday afternoon, I've been a long trip out of me to Bennington. We actually are going a little later. We used to give you quite a bit of deference, particularly on a snowy winter day. Okay. Ready. Senator Ballant. Yes. Senator Baruth. Yes. Senator Nitka. I think she had to leave. Okay. To go get her flu shot, maybe. Senator Sears. Senator Sears. Yes. Senator Starr. You're muted. Yes. Okay. Senator Westman. Yes. Senator Kitchell. Yes. Bobby, we can't go unless you say it out loud, because someone could be holding a gun on you too. Oh, God. So, 601 and the reporter of the bill. We went through this before. Senator Ballant, do you want to delegate your reporting to another member of the committee? No, I'll do this one. It's fine. Okay. All right. I know it's an area that's close to your heart. Yeah. All right. Senator Ballant, then we'll be the reporter. Thank you very much. According to my calendar, I mean, my schedule, where we are finished for the week once we voted on S16. So, Cheryl, I hope you're, you have to go back to committee. Are you done? Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much. And this will be on the floor on, it'll be on Tuesday, the floor on Wednesday, probably. Wednesday. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. So, thank you, Jim. So, we are adjourning the