 Okay, welcome to Senate Education, Wednesday, January 19th, 1.30 in the afternoon. Senate Education is being joined by House Education this afternoon to talk with Secretary French and Dr. Levine about the rollout of new guidelines for our schools as it relates to COVID-19. So thank you both for being with us. We really appreciate it. We know your time is is pressed, given everything you have going on. So the floor is yours. Well, good afternoon, Dan French, Secretary of Education and Dr. Levine. And I spent a lot of time together. So Commissioner Levine, if you're OK, I'll start. And I'm sure he'll chime in if I say something wrong or just to embellish what I'm saying. But good afternoon. And you appreciate the opportunity to speak to both bodies at the same time. I think it'll be useful in that regard to provide you an update on our pandemic response. Just to back up a little bit on context, early this morning, I did send out some sort of what we call the foundational guidance documents behind this new approach. I'm not going to speak directly to them, but I thought you might be useful for you to have them if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. But in terms of context, as you know, we've made a change in our pandemic response. I think it's fair to say there's been three elements to our pandemic response in K-12 education since the very beginning of the pandemic. One is vaccination. A second one is contact tracing and testing. And a third are the mitigation recommendations that we provide to school, otherwise known as guidance. Last year, of course, we didn't have vaccination when school opened and we really didn't have testing for a while. So we put a lot of emphasis on the mitigation recommendations for schools. And I forget how many pages that ultimately resulted in, but it was rather extensive, well over 200 pages of elaborate guidance, you know, this is where we describe sort of a layered approach because we didn't have any other tools in our toolbox, so to speak. And sometime around November, we implemented surveillance testing, PCR surveillance testing. And then it was only later in the spring when vaccination came online that we had all sort of all three of these layers presence. Of course, going into the school year, vaccination, by far and away, the most important of these three approaches in Vermont achieving a higher vaccination rate than most states, we relied heavily on vaccination to see us through the opening of school. And therefore, our mitigation recommendations were fairly minimal. And we adopted contact tracing and testing as we did last year because we saw them to be successful tools. And we had a lot of operational experience implementing contact tracing and testing. And that's how we started school. Delta, of course, proved exceedingly challenging us for us to manage and for schools to manage in that regard. And I think, you know, particularly sometime around of October, so we started to observe, I'll say, the operational challenges, particularly with contact tracing with the elevated case counts that we saw from Delta. And we heard from school nurses in particular that it was unsustainable. I think the word unsustainable started to emerge on a consensus basis sometime around Halloween. And again, due to a little higher volume of the cases associated with Delta. On the other hand, we were unwilling to let go of that strategy because we knew it worked. So we did what we could to support people. And sometime after Halloween, Test to Stay came online, which certainly was a useful strategy in a lot of ways. I think the first time we really deployed antigen testing in particular in schools. But from an operational perspective, Test to Stay added another layer of complexity and, you know, operational complexity to school districts because nurses to a large extent were in charge of both doing contact tracing and Test to Stay. And there is a relationship between those two approaches that required a lot of work on their part. And that's how we entered the holiday season. System greatly fatigued, wondering what was going to come next. And I would say, by the way, of holiday because I still remember sometime around Thanksgiving. I think it was the day after Thanksgiving. I learned of the first time of this new variant, Omicron. And I can remember the feeling coming back into school that Monday. And there was a broad sense of deflation across the system as we contemplated, you know, how this variant would unfold. And we didn't know a lot about it at that time. So we, you know, we certainly paid attention to what the experience was in other countries like Israel and so forth to understand to what extent the variant was more contagious, to what extent it caused more severe illness and to what extent it could evade our vaccination. But we didn't really know. And as it just amazing how quick Omicron spread around the world, just just phenomenal to reflect upon that because we really didn't know anything about it going into December. And it was really in that four week period in December into January that we started to react to it. And of course, we had a major school vacation in there, which was desperately needed by folks. But it was over that vacation that we also saw the CDC start to make adjustments to its isolation and quarantine recommendations. Vermont had been contemplating, I would say, similar revisions. But Omicron, I think, forced everyone to start to move quicker. And we reopened school after the holiday period, basically in the same disposition we were before the holiday doing contact tracing, test to stay and so forth. And we saw immediately more school closures as a result of staff availability issues as Omicron was starting to play out in our landscape. And sometime shortly thereafter, our epi team came to conclusion and consensus that contact tracing and surveillance testing were going to be inadequate to address Omicron, largely because they're too slow and they're too time intensive. So once we had that sort of public health consensus behind us, we had always had operational concerns about maintaining and sustaining contact tracing and test to stay. Once we had that broader public health consensus, that really shifted our thinking and required us, I would say, to make some adjustment. So we met with our teams internally with the pediatrician community, our infectious disease experts and Dr. Levine Concern Color, that process in a bit. And we formulated an outline of what we thought would be a good approach, which I'll describe here in a little more detail. But basic theme is to more broadly deploy antigen tests into the community and not just try to protect the perimeter of the school, per se, but seeing schools function more as distribution centers. As well, one of the reasons that we wanted to make the pivot, as we saw with contact tracing and the test to stay approach, is those systems were only good during the school day, per se. That there's a lot that went on in the communities that schools didn't really have control over. So when we, for example, would hear from superintendents that students sent home to quarantine, were not really quarantining. They were out in the community and so forth. It just highlighted this idea that we were working so hard to protect the school, but really we had to pay attention to what was going on in the broader community, particularly with Omicron. So the larger theme here is a more broad deployment of antigen test screening that gives everyone more actionable decisions, making it a more timely basis for information and so forth. And that's sort of the broader theme of what we're endeavoring to do. As I started to outline that, I met with various stakeholder groups and particularly the superintendents asked that I produce a heads up memo, if you will. That was the memo that went out on the first Friday. And that was in large part due to their interest in having a signal as to where we were going next, because it was pretty clear we couldn't stay where we were. And as you know, that memo had caused some concern on the part of Vermont NEA and also your need to hear testimony on that. My point and reaction to that was, you know, there were a lot of questions about the public health rationale for making this change. And all along we said, you know, Dr. Levine and his team would be more than happy to meet with groups to explain that as they've been doing, as they've done throughout the pandemic. They've always been very generous with their time. But we subsequently had to translate that signal and change into specific guidance. And those are the documents I shared this morning. So there's a couple of components I would just highlight. Again, I'm not going to read them in detail, but just to highlight and sort of, I'll stop and give you also an update of where we are now and then turn it over to Dr. Levine for a bit. But the basic idea is that schools are stopping the contact tracing process as we did it before, which was sort of a one off process. A lot of labor and intensively process on their end to track folks down and build line lists and so forth in favor of doing this broader notification process. And really, I would say to pivot off the new isolation quarantine guidance that the key distinction for schools is who's vaccinated and who isn't vaccinated because that's that's how our guidance rolls out relative to the use of antigen tests. So schools stop doing the contact tracing. And then what was test to stay previously is now called test to home. Basically schools distribute these kits and parents are responsible for administering of the home. So that's a key element of what we're doing here. Schools are no longer sort of with that disposition of protecting their perimeter, if you will, but in this theme of more broadly deploying the kits into society and putting the responsibility on parents and so forth. There's a tradeoff there. Yes, we lose control of some of the data. But what we gain from it is a broader deployment of these tests. So we think that more and more will compensate for that difference, but also more to the point allows us to keep pace of the speed of Omicron. Another key element of that, which sometimes gets lost in the conversation, is that we're also deploying kits for nurses to do back to the sort of more traditional clinical role that they have. So both students and staff will emerge as symptomatic during the school day. Nurses will have the tools in their office to screen individuals on the spot, either using antigen tests or what we call LAMP tests, either of which provide some confirmable information on what to do next, so to speak. So that's a key element. I would say the other thing that what I just described is largely supply driven. So a key element of what we're working on now is to ensure that we have the supplies necessary to do this. That was as we had confirmation of orders in our supply quantities and so forth. We wouldn't have embarked on this change in policy if we didn't have a strong sense of security in that. But actually, you know, putting tests on the ground in the form of schools. That's been an ongoing issue. We did a basically with our guidance, we said to schools, they could begin to make this change as soon as they felt they had adequate supply to do so. We did an initial deployment out of our existing stock of supplies last week and over the weekend. We have large orders hitting the ground right now as we speak. So a lot of schools, you'll see implementing this new approach this week. And I've seen a number of requests from superintendents and so forth for supplies. I know they're they're working on and sort of implementing this new approach. Why don't I stop there and see if Dr. Levine wants to provide a little more context and be happy to engage in conversation on this. You've got a really thorough job, Secretary French. I'll just emphasize a couple of themes. Theme one, I guess, would be responsiveness to changes in data and science. And I think we've done that every step of the way in the pandemic and certainly done that in our evolution of the guidance to schools now. Because in the end, we don't only utilize the data and the science. We actually help create it on the ground as well. And I consider this to be another part of that process. We already know that this virus has morphed into something that is far more transmissible, far more rapidly transmissible, highly contagious. And that practices of the past and the past could be just two months ago are no longer as relevant in the present. Contact tracing you've heard is really, you know, a foundational epidemiologic and public health tool, and it isn't disappearing. There are plenty of other diseases we can use it in very effectively. But with regard to this disease, it's just not nimble enough. And it's not responsive enough in as rapid a fashion to a situation that can evolve very quickly in terms of identity. And that's one of the most unifying cases, obviously, testing is something we're not abandoning. You've heard about the approach we're taking, but we are again, I'll use the word evolving from a testing policy in the schools that was much more surveillance driven to one that is now more management driven and case driven and driven to the extent of how to keep kids in school immediately. All of the things we're doing are really to satisfy what I guess I could term the prime directive, which is obviously in person education for all of our children. And that means you need to have very rapidly responsive protocols in place to allow that to happen. I won't get into all of the issues around the problems that occur when you don't have in person education and you're more in a hybrid or a remote aspect. But I think we all understand where the downfalls of that have been. So we were very quickly confronted with Omicron, as was the world and the country, and we needed something very flexible, something that allowed us to be very nimble and again, evolve but not discard successful public health practices. But the Secretary said about the school as a part of the community is particularly germane here. I think a lot of times from the viewpoint of some of our public as well as parents, schools were feared to be the locus of transmission of disease and almost a dangerous place to be in. And I do not believe any of the data we've collected during 2021 supports that thesis at all. In fact, with the abundance of mitigation strategies layered on, including vaccination, masking, et cetera, the schools have actually probably been a microcosm of being a safer location, not a more dangerous location. But we have learned very quickly with the most recent variants that the schools are a very much an integral part of community. And when disease enters the school, it is just a reflection of what is going on around the community that surrounds the school. You'll note that a lot of this new guidance is in parallel with new guidance regarding isolation and quarantine and what those mean. And the implications of the number of days that have gone by for people in each situation. Some of these guidance is more pragmatic in terms of it will achieve greater compliance of a population if you can safely return them to their workforce, to their learning environment, to wherever in a shorter period of time. And part of this guidance is really, I would say, recognition of the fact that we are dealing with different variants now. And this latest one, we feel that the safety factor is still built in as we try to relax the guidance because we again have this as a layered approach, not just number of days you're out, but number of days. Plus you have no symptoms, plus you've not had a fever, plus you will wear a mask when you get out. And plus you may have some testing associated with that to assure you're no longer infectious. A lot of this is really a, if you will, gradual transition towards endemicity. I don't want anyone to think that I think we're at endemicity today. This will evolve over the next several months. And hopefully we will be there March, April, who knows when, which will be much more welcomed, I believe, by all to give you a flavor of the kind of thing that Secretary French was just talking about. You know, we're literally talking about 400,000 antigen tests coming into the state yesterday. And now not every single one of those is going to the school environment, but the majority are. And those are the kinds of purchases that are being made. Those are the kinds of supply chains that we're actively pursuing all of the time to keep this program as successful as possible. And that's why it couldn't just be launched on the Friday where the preview was given, but we needed to ensure that a whole bunch of schools had already had deliveries and that the schools that were still requiring deliveries had a light at the end of the tunnel. So they would know within the week that this would become reality for them. So I will stop there as well, because we've made a few independent points and we made a few points in common and hopefully you've gotten enough to work with. Thank you very much, both of you. I'm just going to kick it off with a question. I think this would be for Dr. Levine. So the 4,000 that are coming in, and you said most of which are going to schools, do you have a sense of the next, you know, ship load? In other words, are we going to be OK? One of the things I think we're recognizing is that as you're pointing out is if the nurses office can have as many as they need and families can have them at home, that's just that's the ideal. People can get tested if they don't test at home. And we understand that some families may not test at home for one reason or another. Somebody comes to school, they run a fever, and the nurse has one there as well. So are you feeling comfortable around the number of tests? And I guess the follow up would be how do families get these tests? Is it on them to purchase them or are these being sent home? So the answer to the first part is there are several supply chains where the purchases are made and the delivery date is to be determined. OK, they will be coming, but the question is exactly on what date. And there are not much like we did with testing in the very beginning, way back two years ago, we learned that you need to have a diversified portfolio. And so the portfolio here is diversified in terms of the types of antigen tests, the supplier, et cetera, so that we can try to exploit as many pathways as possible. The second question is that this is actually, I think Secretary French referred to it, the school becomes a distribution center. So let's say there's a classroom where a case has been identified. The entire classroom is notified that there was a case and that everyone in the classroom was a potential contact. The nurses will be able to distribute antigen tests to the members of that class. The numbers of tests based on the vaccination status of the student that the student takes home and then utilizes in the home environment with the appropriate guidance. So there's no purchasing. There's no needing to have something. It's sort of connected to the fact that there's a need for that center. Classmates to have testing done. So it really is. There's there's a tight it's a very focused approach. In other words, it's not as though, you know, we're sending home thousands of these tests just to kids every day. It's really when an incident occurs, the need is recognized. Those students will get tests sent home with them before the end, they'll have to test before they come back, that kind of thing. I don't know if Secretary of French wants to jump in there. But Dr. Levine, if you want to. He looks like you're going to jump in. Yeah, I'd say not quite. But, you know, it is. I think it's important to situate this specific school policy in the broader policy that we're invoking for the state. You know, this idea of broad deployment of testing. So we'll be airing, you know, we're using schools as distribution point because it's a very convenient way to provide testing to families. Coincidentally, it also allows us to enable keeping schools open. One of our policy priorities, but the logistics behind that is really part of a larger societal interest in deploying these tests widely. So it's there's going to be as we're seeing now some conversation around when who gets the test and what have you. But basically schools, particularly, I would say in the next couple of weeks. And I was going to call that up previously. I think Dr. Levine would agree. We're in a specific moment. It's important to acknowledge as well as that endemic is often a horizon. But right now we're surfing this amicron wave that's in front of us, where we will err on the side of putting more tests out as, you know, as to sort of as a discrete strategy to navigate this particular moment. So I think, you know, there'll be some of that iteration with schools, like, you know, when did the test go out and so forth? And our policy certainly describes, again, the big fork in the road is vaccination status, but there'll be a general inclination to put as many of these out as possible as the supply allows us to do that. Senator Hooker and then Senator Chitenden and then a representative web. I'll look to you if you if there are any house questions. Senator Hooker, I just wanted a clarification on who was getting the tests. And it was my understanding that if a child were vaccinated, they would get one to have testing five days later. And if they weren't vaccinated, they would get multiple tests to be tested daily. Is that still the case? Yeah, pretty much. I think, you know, we sometimes say one or two. It's, you know, they come in packs of two tests. So a student who's vaccinated will get one kit of two tests, one ideally to be administered on day four and one on day five. You know, it's important with the antigen tests that they're done in a sequence. And if you remember, test to stay, the idea of a student participating in a regular sequence of testing, that's very similar to what's going on here for the unvaccinated in that they would be given enough tests to take them through five days. And every single one of those days, if they test negative, they would still be allowed to attend school that day. And they would do that through a series of days. Again, these are for presumed, what we call presumed contacts. So these are not people who are symptomatic or have been tested as having the disease. These are folks that have been in the proximity and so forth. So this allows us to maintain some alertness relative to their symptomology and contagion. So you are right, though, the vaccination status is the branch point. And I might add, you know, in terms of conserving tests, we have a very highly vaccinated student population, particularly at the higher age levels that have been eligible for some time now because they're all in the 70 plus percent range higher. Even our five to 11 year range, we're approaching 60 percent for at least one dose, which may not seem like a lot to people on this testimony, but the reality is we are like the second place state is not even in reach of 60 percent at this point in time. It's way behind that. So for my parents, I've really stepped up in a big way to get their five to 11 year olds vaccinated. Thank you, Senator Shinden. Oops, I'm sorry, Senator Hooker. Why don't we go? I'll wait until Senator Shinden's finished. Are you sure? I'll pick, yeah. OK. Senator Shinden, you're up. Really quick. So I definitely agree that our primary objective is in-person learning. And I think we would all agree that we want safe in-person learning. What I'm seeing in the documents that we just received shortly before this meeting, as I've skimmed them, I'm seeing some distinction in grade levels. So I see some characterizations around kindergarten or elementary versus high school, middle school. I know this is focused on testing and other guidance, but I'm getting a lot of questions in our committee has brought up the topic of remote or remote hybrid or remote if able. Could you give us an idea of your thinking and if there's any delineation in your mind as a parent of a high school or a middle school or an elementary kid? I understand the differences in in-person learning and the importance across those different grade levels. As you're fielding remote questions, remote days that might be counting as school districts struggle with staffing, is there some distinction or thoughts that you would be willing to offer these two committees as to where you are with those exceptions and otherwise as these school districts struggle to maintain open? Yeah, sure. And I'll try to draw a through line between the testing and the new approach we have a test at home relative to I think the issue you're raising, which is the waiver issue in remote learning. So there is a distinction, I think, in our new guidance around elementary and high school. And this is what's playing out honestly right now on the ground. And this has to do. Dr. Levine would characterize as the evolution of contact tracing and what we'd call the response notification approach. And if you could imagine, you know, many of our elementary schools are under 100 students. They're relatively small. We have a lot of those in the landscape of Vermont. The response notification in that type of school is going to look different than, let's say, Champlain Valley Union High School. You know, if you have, you know, I'll say a hundred kids in elementary school, largely one grade per class versus a thousand student high school, you know, with lots of different classes during the day and how the schools approach the notification process that we are describing our guidance is going to be totally different. Literally in that small elementary school, they're going to be able to say grade four had a case today. And if you're vaccinated, do this. If you're unvaccinated, do that kind of thing. Whereas in the high school, you're going to have far more cases because you have a larger student population in the context of Omicron. And your students are mixing through the day much more dynamically. So you're not going to be able to say, oh, science nine had a case because you probably have multiple sections of science nine, you know, to begin with. But more to the point that student is going through multiple classes and many of our, I would say, not even smaller high schools, a lot of high schools, those students are mixed at different grade levels. So you can't even say grade nine had a case. So I think the notification process of the high school will evolve, particularly at this two week period, I'll call it two week period. That's, don't quote me on that, but that's, you know, I'll say this specific moment of heightened Omicron cases where it's going to be very dynamic and we're airing on the side of getting the tests out. I think the notification for high schools will become more general. You know, there was a case today in these grades. It's almost like a daily thing. You know, it'll be out there and you're, if you're vaccinated or unvaccinated, pay attention, that'll be the fork in the road again. But in terms of, if we bring that over to sort of remote learning, and I think it is what we're seeing playing out, particularly after the holiday, and it's honestly playing out across all sectors of our economy and our society, staff availability, I think, is going to be sort of the unique or the more unique feature of Omicron than perhaps Delta, particularly with schools with Delta. We saw schools closing because they had cases in a grade and that grade went home and quarantine or what have you. Again, the inefficient approach to contact tracing that caused a lot of that to happen. What we're seeing immediately with Omicron is staff availability issues and meaning staff are either ill themselves and have to quarantine or excuse me, isolate or they have to stay home, take care of children, that kind of thing. You can have a ripple effect. And we're seeing that now play out across all, like I said, all sectors of our society. So the first part I make with that is that there was an assumption last year when we say go remote, that staff are available to teach in remote. If the staff are ill or needing to do something else, they're not necessarily available to teach. So that's the first thing I would pension. And then yeah, to your point, I think it's an important distinction that remote learning as a whole is far more efficacious at the high school level than it is at the elementary level. So the idea of courses, we talk about learning management systems, which are the technologies that deliver remote learning. They're organized generally around courses, not classes like an elementary school that teaches, one teacher teaches multiple subjects or courses in a single day. So we know high school, much better application remote learning. And again, to draw distinction between Delta and Omicron, what we saw in the fall, and it didn't really get covered that well in the media, but high schools for a large part were very stable this fall, largely because they're higher vaccination rate. Most of what we struggled with with Delta's was an elementary school phenomena. The high schools were, as opposed to last year where they were in hybrid, it would have you by definition due to our distancing requirement. High schools are very stable this fall, relatively speaking. So as we're coming into this time of the year, we're thinking about what the Delta experience were, where, yeah, we had classes going out on quarantine and so forth, but in many cases elementary schools were able to keep open for the other students that were present. So we have a definition in our, this gets to our attendance definition, the statute talks about 50% of the students being present. So in the fall, many elementary schools, yeah, they might have had fourth grade out, but the other students were present, so they were able to count the day as an attendance day. So that was the fall experience. Now we're gonna see more school closures and we're already starting to see that again, as a result of staff availability. So it's provoked more of the conversation around remote learning. I would say that provocation of that question is different than it was last year. The concern last year was about the safety of the school building. Is it safe to be in the school? And there was a lot of political interest locally and people saying we're going to remote because I don't wanna send my kid to school. It's not safe to be in school. That's not the context in which we're reacting now. Firstly, I'm not sure we have significant number of absences from the fall, but now certainly we're seeing them play out, but this is precisely the time of year when we invoke the waiver process that is available to school. So I think my inclination right now is to let that process play out. The superintendents are well aware of how that process works. We've used it successfully for the last couple of years, very flexibly to react to COVID circumstances. So really the question becomes not so much do we put remote learning in place? It's the question of are schools gonna be making up days or not? Will they receive a waiver for days in which they were not in session, meaning they don't have to make them up if they fall below the minimum number required days or are they gonna have to make them up? And right now, again, it's to draw the through line back to the fall. It's not clear to me what the pattern of closure will be this year yet, but where we are entering that time period where the waiver process comes online, the superintendents know that it'll be available to them at the end of January. And I suspect we will see a lot more waiver requests for the last four weeks. So this four week period in January that we'll probably have seen for the whole fall just because of the staff availability issues that are really causing more havoc in the system than what we saw at the elementary level in the fall. So at any rate, that's sort of a long-winded introduction to the concept from a legal perspective or regulatory perspective. And just to echo on Dr. Levine's earlier point, also in the background is from an educational standpoint, our keen interest in keeping kids in school because they're unlike, you know, we can talk about Delta and Omicron as sort of being unique phenomena. We now have an experience of accumulative negative impact on students that goes back a year at least. And we have to be really cognizant of that and also really be focused on trying to move the system forward to attend to their needs. And, you know, particularly those students that were at risk prior to the pandemic are no doubt more at risk now. And we have to be really, I think as you're seeing across the world and across the United States, really focused are doing our best to keep the kids in school and keeping the kids open, the schools open as best we can. Okay, let's shift to the house for two questions and we'll shift back. Representative Webb. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. That actually is sort of a segue to my question. Given that we have a prime directive of keeping kids in school, which I think we all share pretty deeply. And with the change in some of the data you're collecting, no longer really being useful, what data are you collecting? And I think in particular, as we see the number of school days decreasing, the number of times that you need to switch to remote, are you collecting the data on school days lost, schools lost, why is it due to staffing? Is it due to, you know, those wonderful Excel sheets that we'd love to see that will help us have a better understanding of what our losses are during this time to help us respond going forward. Yeah, we'll have two data points on this. And I think you're aware, we haven't like last year, we haven't been collecting data on a monthly basis to monitor hybrid in-person remote because this year everyone's been in-person essentially. We'll certainly see the waiver request data come forward. So we'll see requests from districts that have fallen below their minimum number of days. And we'll have an expedited process for that. Would that allow us to give us some insight as to the reasons why they were closing? And then last week I stood up a data collection that requires, I'll say requires, recommend school districts report to us when they're closed. So we've been collecting that, we'll start reporting on that. That's more specific to this called the Omicron Wave that we're in. It's not so much about learning loss, it just gives us a sense of the operational context of what's going on as we seek to deploy test schools and so forth, a lot of logistical considerations that we're managing are predicated on schools being open. So those are the two primary data points. We don't have any other statewide sort of attendance information. It's a very decentralized school system. We also don't have any statewide academic measures other than SBAC. You might remember last session, I was an advocate for requiring a benchmark assessment be implemented statewide. That would have begun to give us some foundational information particularly at the elementary level, that was not ultimately sustained through the legislative process. Representative Webb, another question. Thank you, and I would like to follow up with you on additional data, but I won't take the time here. Representative Brady here, who's as you may know is a representative, a school board member, a teacher and a parent. So she brings a pretty broad perspective here. So Representative Brady. Yes, thank you. Relative to testing, I know it's a supply issue, but do we have a sense of when schools might have the tests for this shift to test at home and be able to be handing them out? This week is what we've described. What we were able to do at the tail in the last week was to distribute some supplies that we already had in stock, but the larger shipment in particular, Dr. Lane mentioned the 400,000 tests that just arrived in Vermont yesterday. So that's being distributed as we speak. So I would expect districts will be able to enact the new policy this week. And what about testing for teachers? Where does this, you know, all of these shifts, what does this mean in terms of test availability access for teachers? I'm not sure about your question. I think, you know, what we saw originally was some concern about the maintenance of PCR surveillance testing. Is that your question? Well, it seems like teachers want to have access to PCR testing now and I'm unclear as to whether they will have access to what will hopefully be a much bigger supply of antigen testing. If that is more responsive and teachers have concerns, if they know they're in classes where there are cases, which obviously they are, will they have access to those tests as well? Well, firstly on antigen, yes. And I'll have Dr. Avine Chyman in a second if he's interested in this. The antigen tests, absolutely. Those are being deployed at school. Again, we're gonna be airing on the side of putting them out into the broader community as much as possible. Teachers are specifically mentioned in our protocol, particularly if they're symptomatic. But again, nurses also have the ability to screen folks. That's another element of our guidance. And this is where I'll invite Dr. Avine to comment a bit about, because what I've been talking about is drawing the distinction between PCR technology, which is a very useful technology. It's still very much the gold standard versus a specific application of it in the context of what we call surveillance testing, which is no longer as efficacious in this moment of a fast-moving variant. So the idea of surveillance testing, once a week you go in and get tested, isn't necessarily gonna be helpful to us in the context of a fast-moving variant. And initially when we were signaling the rollout of this guidance, I heard from districts and the question would be, well, we found that useful in the past. It helped identify a few asymptomatic cases in our community and all that's true. But the actionable nature of that information taking so long, it takes probably two days to get the results back. And if you're only doing it once a week, it really doesn't help with the broader idea of managing the pandemic in Omicron specifically. So surveillance testing will sunset here at some point. So teachers will not have access to it. On the other hand, I've heard from school board members who are interested in that less so this week. And some of them have asked, for example, can we use our ESSER funds to do it on our own if we wanted to? ESSER funds are certainly available to districts to pay for testing, but we've been trying to stay focused on communicating to them why surveillance testing is you shouldn't, if you had a sense of security from that, you probably shouldn't as much, but maybe Dr. Levine, you can chime in here and correct some of my statements or embellish them. A far beard for me to have to correct anything you said. But first of all, in the guidance we provided to schools, we did include not just teachers, but staff who are presumptive contacts. So they are still eligible to obtain the same kits on an as needed basis, based on there being a contact as identified as one. With regard to the surveillance testing, I almost look at this as, like the way people look at their retirement plans and they've kind of gotten used to something. I know that's probably a sensitive discussion here amongst the legislature, but they've gotten used to something and then something changes and one thing gets taken away, another thing gets added and you're like, well, but I was wedded to the thing that was taken away. And I think that's what's happened to surveillance testing is people got very wedded to it, felt very comforted by it, and it provided a sort of early warning system knowing how asymptomatic transmission can occur at such a high rate with any variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, certainly with the Omicron variant. But it really just isn't the way to go now at a time when you're trying to identify things on a very rapid basis and be able to sort of stop the lines of transmission quickly and not have a delay built into the entire program. Now, having said everything I just said, there's going to be a point where Omicron is now vanishing away and we're hopefully in a long interlude between Omicron and whatever's to follow and we will want surveillance testing programs to occur. Whether they occur in teachers or in schools or in other settings across society is yet to be determined, but there will still be surveillance testing going on in some manner in society, but it's not going to be at a level that you've been seeing it at prior to the last few months where we were very, very intent on having a very large system stood up. It will be a much more selected system looking at much more high vulnerability, higher risk populations. So it doesn't mean it's gone forever, but certainly it isn't going to be valuable now and it's way less valuable than the pivot we're making towards the rapid testing, especially at a time of high community prevalence of virus. Thank you. Senator Lyons. Thank you. Thank you both. This has been very helpful as far as schools are concerned and greatly appreciated. I think the guidance for schools, it's one of the things that you said right up front, Secretary French was that schools are the safe place to be and it is because of the masking that's in place and now the testing that's in place and previously contact tracing and now more incident tracing. So that really is very helpful. I'm gonna take my question to outside of schools, to Dr. Levine and knowing that what parents and children do out of school determines if kids can be in school learning. And so, you know, they're in school, they're safe. I mean, it's just great and the transmission is attenuated because of the masking of kids are vaccine, you're getting tested, it's awesome. It's still a problem and I guess the problem is coming in from outside. So Dr. Levine has just predicted my question. How can we ensure that we are blocking Omicron from transmission knowing that KN95 and other high quality masks actually block Omicron better than they do Delta. So what are we thinking about keeping the virus from actually walking into the school in the first place? Yes, I did predict your question. Not that I needed to prepare an answer ahead of time. Cause really mitigation, the answer is always the same. It's all of the same things we've been preaching since day one. So stay home when sick, being highest on the list, which is a problem. And I think when you talk to parents who maybe don't trust the system we've described here today, or when you talk to work sites and people are lacking trust, it's because of the fact that there's still a portion of society that doesn't respect the stay home of sick rule and perhaps exposes people to a higher risk than they might otherwise have. Obviously the next things on the list are also very predictable in terms of attention to respiratory etiquette and hygiene. Clearly we advocate for masking at times of CDC substantial or high levels of community transmission, which we have been in for God knows how long now and will be for the foreseeable next number of weeks, certainly hopefully not next number of months, but we will find that out. With regard to the quality of the masks, there's a lot of nuanced messaging going on. Some of it I think confusing everybody because as recently as a day or two ago, Dr. Walensky was saying again, I just want you to wear a mask. It doesn't really matter. A mask is better than no mask, which is true, although we are trying to still very much emphasize that a one-ply cloth mask is really not gonna give you the protection you want and you're fooling yourself more than anyone else if you follow on that pathway. It doesn't mean everyone needs a KN95 either, but apparently the president thinks so because every household is gonna have the opportunity to get one sometime in the next two weeks, I believe. And it'll be up to the state to help determine how we distribute that unless the federal government devises a system using pharmacies or what have you to do that. So I think high quality masking and consistency in masking is critical. Again, to protecting the schools and the way you describe. And of course, we can't end this discussion without talking about vaccination. We are doing incredibly well in Vermont, but again, our booster rate and aggregate is probably in the 60, 65% range at this point for those who are eligible to be boosted, which is leading the country so we can be proud, but it's also not gonna really cut muster here at this point in time with such a transmissible virus. We really need that booster rate up even more effectively. It's occurring, thousands of Vermonters per week increasing those numbers, but it still takes time when the majority of the state are vaccinated Vermonters and you get several thousand in a week, maybe let's call it even five or 10,000 in a week still takes you a long time to get up to the 400,000 that might be eligible to get those boosters. So all of the above will keep our society as safe as possible. And in this time, I would add gathering size is important still. I think people have gotten that message given at every holiday that we've lived through recently. They may not have abided by it, but they've heard the message and the reality is, again, while community transmission is high, multi-household gatherings of any significant size are not really going to be conducive to helping the situation. Schools have it under control. They actually can gather people from multiple households in ways that work better than what happens in most people's social gatherings, which is usually unmasked, eating, drinking, and in closer contact with one another. Does that answer your question? Well, yes, more or less the issue around what's coming next is obviously always on our minds and we don't need to go into the public health data at this point, but it just, I think, really critically important, as you have said many times, to know that Omicron really isn't mild and right now it's the kids who are being infected in hospitals. We aren't seeing a change in our hospitalization. We're seeing very high rates and ICU is getting filled up. I heard this morning that they actually opened up a surgical suite to expand the ICU at UVM. So we're all concerned about this. We don't wanna put fear in people's minds, obviously, but we wanna ensure that what schools are doing, maybe get carried out into the community a bit more. So I'll leave it at that and I know you and I have talked about this before. So thank you. I'm gonna ask that we start now a bit of a lightning round. I appreciate, I mean, we're talking short answers and direct questions only because I do, I know there are so many questions from the house, I have them in Senators. So with that, Senator Hooker. Just a quick question about masks. In the guidance it says schools should require universal masking and in the legislature we differentiate between should and shall. So what is your interpretation of that? That's unchanged. Our recommendation is schools should require. So we are not requiring them at the state level and I don't have the authority to do that. But we are asking school boards to leverage their authority to require them. And as you know, I think that's been very successful except in one school in the state. If I could just another one, I've had a concern from a family about sports and kids who are playing sports who are unvaccinated. Can you address that in any way? Yeah, our recommendation is that all athletes should be vaccinated. There is a bit of a scenario we're working on now relative to our new guidance. I think there, you know, VPA is a big player in terms of putting out guidance for high school athletics. It's not an area where we've weighed into heavily this year. And we're seeing some confusion play out around implementing our new guidance around response testing, if you will, and what that means for athletics. So that's an area we'll delve into a bit. But right now, that's more of a question for VPA but it's not being consistently implemented around the state. Different schools, high schools have different approaches. And we do have a masking recommendation regarding athletes as well. Yeah. How can we get K-95s into people's hands, into students' hands quickly? It's not a problem. I mean, supply-wise it's not a problem. And I don't think it's a money issue either. So that's really, it's an education issue and districts have ready access to supply. We're standing by to help them with that but I don't think the state will be, our response would take several weeks. We can certainly help, but I think districts can solve that pretty immediately. That's a good reminder. I forgot about that. Representative Webb. Yes, Representative James has a question. Thanks. Since this is the lightning round, I'll pick my first question. I understand the problems with sustainability of test-to-home, I mean of test-to-stay. So I have two questions about test-to-home. Both of which you've mentioned in passing, is there anything you can do to try to address the loss of data that's gonna happen as the tests move to home? I'm worried about that. And I'm also wondering what, if anything, you can do about families who really are unable or unwilling to comply? Yeah, I'll take the second one. I was gonna jump in on Senator Lyons earlier question and I think it's important to acknowledge firstly that schools do not operate well when they're positioned in conflict with families and a better part of the wear and tear, when we talk about contact tracing not being sustainable, it's that conflict that really contributed to the lack of sustainability, meaning nurses having to call people up every single day and not necessarily get cooperation. People got tired of cooperating, if you will. And so first thing I'd say is this shift in policy isn't necessarily gonna resolve some conflict that existed prior to the holidays during Delta. That conflict and that willingness to comply was always there. I think what we're trying to do now is acknowledge that a better part of the issue to Senator Lyons question is really not necessarily inside the school building, but it's how do we get out into the communities? And that's a key element of the strategy is how to deploy this, make it more doable. So schools aren't necessarily in the policing of a public health policy, if you will. It alleviates that pressure from the schools. It puts school nurses in particular back in the sort of their more typical clinical role. Yes, it does put responsibility on parents and yes, not all will comply, but the saturation that we're gonna achieve with this broad deployment of antigen tests, we think kind of compensates for that aspect of it. The data is one we, firstly we're messaging, we're gonna have to let go of some of that data. And that's hard for us because we rely heavily on that for our decision-making. But back to the point on surveillance testing, from my perspective, a key strategy for surveillance testing, and I will say to my knowledge, I think we're the only state that deployed surveillance testing regularly last year in schools. That gave us a sense of what was going on in the communities. Just Dr. Levine said, we already know the virus is strong community transmission right now. So having insight into that doesn't necessarily help per se, but we are talking about other metrics. I think you'll hear us talk more about the supply of antigen tests, for example, or the uptake. So there are gonna be some other measures that we can sort of speak to. And we'll certainly, the broader public health apparatus, the public health and physicians' offices and so forth will still be reporting that type of information. And we'll certainly as we have throughout the pandemic focus tightly on hospitalization and ICU usage as indicators. But the case count is gonna be a hard one too. And I don't see how we're gonna be able to continue with that as we air on the side of a more broad deployment of the testing, but. And I think there's just one additional part of the question that I don't think you answered, Secretary French. And I think if the implication is there are going to be families that are gonna be challenged by doing at home testing built into the protocol is the opportunity for the school nurse who we've unloaded in many ways with a lot of other burdens, but there's opportunities for the school nurse to become directly involved with families who do find this to be a challenge and may need some help in administering these tests. So that is a niche that's been carved out, if you will. Representative James. Thank you, Representative James. I did have another question. Just about the waivers. I just wanted to understand as I understand that Secretary French, though you've had the ability to grant these waivers for a couple of years now, is it that every year the waiver process doesn't begin until January? That's just its regular timeline. That's one little piece I've been missing. That's correct. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I mean, just to give you a concrete example, I had a superintendent reach out to me this morning or maybe yesterday. It was yesterday about pipes freezing. This is like, I haven't gone mad in catalog waiver requests, but I would say a lot of them are about pipes freezing this time of year. So the waiver process historically is set up to deal with the second half of the year. The assumption is that maybe some things occurred in the first half of the year and school districts typically would make adjustments like shortening a vacation or adding days on to the end of the year. But as you know, we don't know how snow days play out and school districts are required to put five additional days on their calendar for contingency relative to snow days. So some districts start tapping into that. So they don't really know what their trajectory is gonna be until the second half of the year. So that's when the waiver is designed to be invoked. Okay, we've done that analysis that we're gonna run out of time. I need to request a waiver. So yes, it's January and to January, February. Thanks. I'll tell you, French, you're not great at the lightning round. I'm sorry, I mean, you're okay, you're okay, but I'll tell you. I said years of being in a school board meeting so I can't help myself. And if Vermont Digger could do that headline tomorrow, I mean, I would just, I pay them for it. French fails with the lightning round. Sorry, other questions, Representative Webb. I think we're good and are committed at this point. I'm so appreciative. The one thing I'd like to ask is child care centers. I'm not sure if, I suspect both of you are involved, but I do know a colleague of ours is concerned about early childhood programs. I mean, we're all concerned about early childhood programs. So if you could just say a word about that. Yeah, I think, you know, pre-holiday, that concern started with our rollout of tests to stay. We had signaled we were going to extend that out to private child care and that was our plan prior to getting caught up in the Amicron piece. So I did, you will notice we have deployed that out to child care. So they're very much on our radar. We haven't forgotten about them by any means. Okay, other questions. This is incredibly informative hour. We really appreciate the two of you coming in. Do either of you have final comments for us that you think we should know something we didn't cover or that's in the guidance documents that you don't want us to lose sight of? I appreciate your support. You know, it's a dynamic situation to say the least. I think, you know, I've just underscore the fact, you know, this two week, I'll call it a two week period. We are at a critical moment where we're really airing on site of getting stuff out the door and really trying to push forward. Cause I think if the trend plays out like we are seeing in part, are there parts of the country that started earlier in us where there is some light at the end of the tunnel here. Great. My only additional comment is just to recognize this has been a pandemic long and certainly most recently and even further increased collaborative effort between the agency of education, the department of health, the pediatricians of Vermont, the pediatric infectious disease community in Vermont. Agency of transportation. Yeah. Agency of transportation for delivery of tests and for, you know, educators all across the state. So this has really been an important collaborative effort and I think it's been done very transparently and hopefully it will only matter for a few weeks more to a month or so more. Keep your fingers crossed. Indeed. Again, thank you both very much. I don't see any other hands raised. So representative Webb, thanks for joining us. Thank you. And Drs. French and Levine, thank you both for being with us.