 Welcome to Senate Education this Wednesday, February 21st, 2024. Miss St. James, in our folders, we have updated CTE bill, I believe. Not updated. Not updated, sorry. It's a policy decisions. So it's as introduced. Yeah. Okay, it is as introduced. So as I said to Miss St. James, my dream, would include moving CTE literacy libraries, center machines bill on, on refugees, something to do with electronic devices all by a week Friday, and that leaves us missing as Ed. Some things having to do with boards and commissions, and maybe a couple of other little things to do when we get back. That's. But. Make it more. So. The St. James, if you want to just take us through before we hear from Mr. Smith. CTE where we're at some of the decision points. So I think that's a great. Sure. That's the office of legislative council. What we're working with today is at three or four as introduced into committee bill. And I, we did a very high level. I don't think it even took two minutes through it. So I thought maybe we could do a little bit of a deeper look at it and I could, you know, answer any questions or, you know, we're going to work on any sections. Do you want to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. So the finance, we're still, I think, trying to figure some of the finance stuff out. I'm looking at my agency of education point person. Still quite a bit, but we need from all of you on the finance section. I'll leave it there. I know the sector is coming in tomorrow. And so if she and others could really come in with some. Financing components to this bill, that'd be very helpful. For the record, Ted Fisher reminds us of education. I'm the agency's director of communications. One of the affairs. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have had some conversations with that and she's given us some questions and we're answering those. And we, I think there's still some more drafting work to do between, between the agency and, and that, but my hope is a lot of something ready by Friday. Not be ready tomorrow actually. Secretary Boucher is actually on the calendar for Friday. Oh, you should try. My college spent in Friday, but I would encourage you to be ready to date early. Here's the thing. I've seen some of those edits. I think you guys should really have to have some serious conversations before you bring that forward. I'll be frank. I think the agency really needs to do the end and bring a solid product to the committee. I appreciate for now. Miss St. James, if you would take us through the sections that are not related to finance. Sure. Section one. So we're going to work the bill is introduced and we're going to jump right to page two. We're going to skip over the statement of this. Section one is, and you'll see there's. Reader assistance headings. That's what we call the language in between the abstracts. So there might be several sections kind of grouped together. So I think it might be easiest to look at each topic. So we'll start with each tuition. And if anybody has any concerns at any point things you like or don't like, let's jump in and have my color pen ready. So the first section one under the CTE tuition. Freedom to cutting would be an amendment and we're primarily working in chapter 37, which is the CTE chapter here. So secondary student tuition is the statute section 1552 is the statute. That. Talks about. High school. Secondary student tuition. So there's adult. CTE and then secondary CTE. So we're talking about high school here. How. The money's flowing and how tuition is charged to a school district, which is the model right now. So this bill is proposing right now tuition is charged to a school district on the average of the districts. Three prior years. So we're talking about. Full time equivalent student enrollment in the CTE. And the bill proposes to just base the tuition on the districts prior a year. So going from an average of three years prior, I think. You care referred to as the six semester average. Going down to just one here. And there's a. Yes, please. So are you ready to speak to the logic of change. Yeah. Yeah. It must have come from somewhere. Why we're dropping it down. It's implausible. Take it more. Yeah. So we have a CTE report that we went. We did high level overview of last week. It comes from that. We'll also hear from Mr. Smith, who's represents the CTE's. We'll talk a little bit about the logic behind it. Please. My retail number dealers association. Thank you. And. But it's. Interested in this topic. Yes. And then we had some testimony last year about getting kids in early. Sooner, the better. And that's sort of the logic behind it. Is that because the program as it exists now doesn't include them. And if it was three years prior. It always seemed like that we've been was three years or one year. Those become. So as they're recalling, we'll have Jody Emerson and to take talk to us a little bit more about this. But last year, one of the things we talked about was how. Yeah. When you get there really late in your educational career. It's number one. And I'll ask you this can take part in it. Yeah. We're still, we know that we have a lot of kids that are leaving school. Dropping out of school that kind of thing. I think that's one of the reasons. Those are great reasons. I support that. No worries. Okay. It's about figuring out what the tuition costs. Oh, the tuition costs itself. Mr. Fisher. The rare 10 Fisher again. So the six semester average. That is in the bill currently. And we're actually asking to be struck effective this coming fiscal year. What it what it is. What the effect has been. In recent years, it's been that it is depressed the amount of funding they receive based on the tuition. And that's partly a COVID effect. We have lower participation rates in the, in a couple of years back. So, so CG centers have more students this year, but to the amount of tuition that they're getting is based on that six semester average or that three years. And that's a little bit of a problem. And so, this was one of the recommendations of the APA report that I referenced last week. It's a recommendation that we would like to do immediately, because then we think it will help. And in the out years, there's, I think you're going to want to hear more from us next year about. You know, if we move on. In terms of CTE finance as part of implementation, it may be that several years of data becomes a useful thing again, but that's a, that's a little bit of a problem. Okay. No, I'm still going to respond to Senator meets his question, but. Great. So thanks to the conforming change along the same lines. So this is. Making a performing change when we're looking at tuition charged. We look on page three. Instead of looking at that six semester average of three year prior average, we're looking at the one year full time equivalent for all things. And then we're going to go to section three on page three, line five, CTE opportunity for grades six through 10. So section 1554, section 1551 a, the responsibility of local boards and sending districts. We looked at this language a little bit last year when we were looking at lines. Okay. So we're going to go to page three section three. Thank you. If you look at lines nine and 10, we talked about, well, nine through 12 really. We talked, we looked at this language a little bit last year and these are the grades right now that state law requires. To be offered for, right? 1112. So if you go to page four, this section proposes to add several requirements to this statue. So for grades six through eight, the bill proposes to require school districts to provide those grades with career enrichment and exposure, including at least one annual visit to the school districts, regional career and tech at center. And then for grades nine and 10, the bill proposes to require school districts to provide a genuine opportunity to participate fully and pre-tech and exploratory career. Any questions before we move on? Okay. Section four of the bills are on page four, line eight proposing to, and I think, what are people saying in the first year? I just made me nervous when you all changed pages there. Section four proposing to add a new statute to title 16. And then in chapter 37, comprehensive career development policy, which would require the secretary of education to include in consultation with the commissioner of labor to develop a model comprehensive career development policy and implementation plan for all high school students. The secretary would be required to review the model policy not less than every five years and make a determination as to whether it needs to be updated. And the policy has to adjust the following items. The role of CTE centers in providing career focused education, which supervisor unions career education and counseling policy practices align with the CTE programs of study, how supervisor unions will work with CTE centers and other supervisory unions in the region to develop common and joint courses and approaches to CTE, career exploration and CTE exposure on page five now. The model policy has to have a plan for meeting the pre-tech and exploratory CTE requirements that we just walked through. Those were the new additions for grades nine and 10 and six through eight. And then the model policy also has to provide a plan for meeting the career enrichment and exposure requirements. So that's nine through a grade six through eight and then sub division four is grades nine through 10. And then each SU is required to adopt a policy on this topic that is at least as comprehensive as the model policy adopted by the secretary. And if they don't, they failed to adopt the policy or procedures. They will be presumed to have adopted the most current model policy procedures published by the secretary. And that's similar to what you see for the school branding model policy requirement and cave in craft, eventually model policy. Thank you. Thank you. I was looking at the effective data. It's July 1, 2024. When will this section be required to be completed? Because we still don't have a secretary. Yep. So if you like section five. This is the transition or the development for affection for. Thank you. Yep. So let's just walk through that. So, thank you. I want to answer this. She just did. Okay. Each supervisory needs a speed on page five. Is that so these are schools that don't necessarily have a career and a full center. No, this is each SU is required to adopt a comprehensive career development policy. So that seems to be separate from CTE. A career development policy can be anything. And what this language. So you can make this whatever you want, right? It's title career development policy. And then the model policy has to include several items. And it's all centered around CTE. Career and technical education. It's all centered around career and technical education. So career development. I see what you're saying, right? There's no guidance counselor referenced here. Right. Yeah, there could be other things that go into career development. So you could certainly change the name of it or add items to the model policy. Okay, I'm just you're just don't correct me if I'm so you're concerned like it's so broad. Yeah. I mean, you could come out with her comprehensive career development plans that have nothing to do with CTE. Yeah. It's odd and see, I mean, it starts getting into the question of like, what is education? It's kind of. I don't know. It's strange to me. I appreciate that. That's a whole other conversation. Do we really want to put that number out? Maybe. Tell us again. So tell us what exactly every SU would be doing here. So the first thing, so SU could be adopting a policy based on a model policy that only has to tell. Right. And that model policy is the one that we just went through that talks about CTEs. Correct. Yeah. So that's it. That's it. So they would be, so SUs are required to adopt a policy. Yeah. At least as comprehensive. As the one that we see on page four. While so. So this is, yes. So section four. Lines 16 through. Four. On the next page line five. Or page five. So subdivisions one through five. Or putting into law. What the model policy has to address. Yeah. So on page five. Line one. Between the words comprehensive and career. Why would you drop in CTE? Keep it focused. But Senator Julek's concern. Correct me if I'm wrong. Senator Julek is page five. Line six. Comprehensive career development. Yeah. Yeah. No. So what we're trying to do is we're trying. And I want to get correct. This is Senator. Clarkson's. Good work. Something she's been involved in. She drafted the bill. It's kind of enough just to add my name. And now it's. How do we improve career technical education? State how to get more kids fall. All that kind of thing. So I think maybe. For now we do just drop in. Make it. Career technical education. Consistently throughout. So that the studies and everything reflects that work. Would that make you feel. It's still really. I don't know. Still. I have to sit with this a little while. It just seems odd. And I guess I. Would like to hear from people in the field. Yeah. Because I have mixed feelings. I think career education is super important. And I think. Encouraging kids to think about their careers, but there's also. Learning. For learning's sake and the joy of learning and just. I don't know. I'm not having it like. So. So. So that's all. That's what. And that's. What. And that's. That's what. That's what. That's what. That's what. That's what. That's what. So that's all that's what. And that's. And this doesn't seem necessarily connected to a CTE program. It seems to kind of like. Dropped it. Yeah. Yeah. Please. Well. My understanding of the bill is we're not trying to. Solve all of the career development. Problems in our high schools. For the middle schools. For that matter. And the bill probably. Majority of language in the bill is all about CTE. So the study, for example, policy development. Policy. Page four on 16. It's about CTEs. Line 18. It's about CTE. Each, each bullet is about CTEs until you get to. Development of the report. Essentially. Does every supervisor of the union have a CTE? There are. No. No, there's no, there's far more. But that's part of the problem. See. They don't, what do they, how do they address the shortage. The shortcoming. And they need to develop. A strategic plan. A perspective. On what's, if it's lacking. What's lacking. If it's strong. What, what enhancements could they use? What, what districts could they. Partner with to solve. Shortcoming. We were not trying to solve all of the high school career. Ambitions here. We're trying to solve this particularly. Shortcoming. That's all. Mr. Fisher. Again, to the Fisher agency of education. I agree with everything that was just said. I love this. So. And with. Thanks to you, Mr. Chair and the Senator. I appreciate that. It was just said, I love this. So. And with. Thanks to you, Mr. Chair and the Senator Clarkson, this language was proposed by the AOE. We, I, and I understand your question about it being limited, but then the term comprehensive. To to your question a moment ago about where is CTE access. The problem that we're trying to, one of the problems we're trying to solve with the CTE bill is the fact that every district flexible. CTE is a flexible pathway for all students per month. It is a, but we see from the data that if a, and most of our CTE centers are hosted. Or on the same campus as a high school. And we see from the data that the students who go to school next to a CTE or are geographically closer to a CTE are more likely to go to the CTE center. There are some of it's just geographic barrier. But in the many of these places. When you're talking about getting into the later years of your education, exploring flexible pathways, CTE is a valid decision making. And we see the data where, you know, just decision to make as part of that. And I absolutely see it here, your, your point, Senator, if you look about, it's more than just learning from our perspective. And I, and I understand that this is focused just on CTE. We talk about comprehensive career development, both from our perspective. This is one flexible pathway of many that students could choose, but it's the one that has some of these issues. And that's why we want the comprehensive career development policy in every SU to be focused on how do we make sure that students have full access to this one flexible pathway. Okay. That's not going to solve the problem by itself. There are questions of transportation and logistics and bell times and other things. But we do know from, from data and from conversations that students who don't go sometimes who, who don't go to high school in the district that operates the CTE center are sometimes even dissuaded in most extreme cases from going to CTE. Yeah. And that's one of the problems we'd like to address by part of this. And so I, if you think that there should be more language about inclusion in flexible pathways or that kind of how, that's included in the broader flexible pathways, maybe happy to work on that with you. But that's the focus. It looks like this is going to be a policy that sits at the school board level. Yes. Okay. And that's the intent that will be behind our drafting of the model policy, which is that if we focus entirely on just solving the CTE center's problems, we may be missing part of the conversation. Okay. I think that's, I think that helps me get, I think that would be a good point to highlight a little bit. Do you want any edits at this point for one, if we're doing okay. Like some superintendents are just, we're going to get them all to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just. Because usually when you have a policy at the board level, obviously it should trickle down. That actual day to day. Running the district at a certain, so I'm just wondering what that would be. of general what's been about the curriculum. I mean, is every CTE center going to be cookie color as far as teaching the same technical ability? No, I think they're very different. Yeah, they're very... So is that specified in here? Well, that's how they've sort of, I think, evolved. For example, I don't think we have, we have a little bit of a forest management program that I think we've got a bigger forest management programs in St. John's Square, depending, I think, on the job of reading the piece of the town and, you know, all that. The local economy. Yeah, yeah. And the needs of students. Yeah, but they're interested in giving them the challenges. Yeah. I think I add a little bit to that, just from experience. But I do feel like tech centers are getting better about mutualizing. And I think, for example, like Burlington and Essex both had a food program. But then when we lost our high school, we lost a whole bunch of kids that boosted the program and Essex had such a good one that we were like, let's just let them do food. But Burlington has a great aviation program that is so specific to like being here at the airport and that other schools will be able to do that. But it's so... So that's right. But yeah, that's really, that's a really good point to be thinking like regionally in terms of... Well, we're trying to make this general enough so that we can let each school board decide which what they're going to teach. Yeah, we're not gonna, we don't want to interfere with that. We just want more people to be thinking about CTE education and project. Yeah. So I'm curious, since AOE's in the room, I mean, how far back do you want to take? Look at this. And create, you know, do we want that? Do we want to foster their conversation amongst the S news and amongst the CTEs about specialization, you know, like Burlington, Scott, you know, aviation and they could attract more than just, you know, their district and strong districts, forestry, you know, whatever. We want to really foster subject matter expertise, you know, like specializations. You know, my point, my question is, should we give that question to AOE and let them come back with their recommendations based on, or is that too broad? Yeah, there is a suggestion, do you remember from the AOE suggestions for next year to be thinking about or looking into the one CTE state which could accomplish that? Well, we're not, okay, so my question is, should that be part of this policy development now or is that policy development in the future? I don't know what AOE is ready to do. How would you phrase that question in this if we were saying put it in the, Bill, how would you phrase the question that you'd want AOE to look at? So brought up by Michael, do we want them all to look alike? Maybe a simple answer is no. So what do we want them to look like? What are we trying to enhance? We're trying to enhance regional expertise in industrial or geographic or whatever. So, you know, I'm not sure how to... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but that's helpful, yeah. I'll just note that this is, yeah, sorry, I got Ted Fisher. I'll just note that this is a, this has been a long standing question and conversation and that is, and we, as Senator Gulick just said, we are punted on this this year. We are actively involved in the governance. The questions you're trying to solve is the governance issues and it gets even deeper. So like, we have one aviation program right now, I'm 90% sure. It's really difficult for students from Southern Vermont potentially to come up to that aviation program. So maybe we need more, but where does the boundary go? Right now at a Senator Gulick's example, if your program doesn't operate a program, let's say you don't have a culinary program, you can send to another district. But if you have a culinary program that's full, you can't send, you can't send the students who didn't make it into that program. So those kind of issues are what we'd like to tackle next year and maybe it's a CTE district, maybe it's other things, we are actively working on that. Yeah. I mean, we know from Mrs. Emerson, there are a lot of kids that wanna go to the military. Exactly. So part of that finance conversation is also like maybe we need to incentivize more access to certain programs, if you remember my comment from last week, but some of that will be coming back. I just checked in the bill because we had at one point asked for a sunset on this because we really are serious about governance. We don't wanna do, we wanna do as much as we can this year and get us working. I don't see a sunset in this version of the bill, but to sunset the finance change is we don't do governance next year. We had suggested that you sunset the changes before they take effect, if the general assembly next year doesn't act, which is something that you can consider doing when we correct them. Senator Rashima. I mean, I was trying to think of language for getting to the issue of not having cookie cutter CTEs and trying to incorporate language about the needs and available resources that are in an area. I mean, if Brownbro doesn't have a culinary program, for example, and there's just no one for miles and miles, if you teach that, I don't know that it would make sense to force that requirement, but if it's not available there, I think there should be a way to see what type of interest exists among the student body and who wants to travel 45 minutes or an hour to anything that's available to us, culinary program right there, so. But aren't we forcing it? Or is it, you say, oh, no, I don't think we're right. Right, and I'm not sure. Yeah, no, I don't want to, I don't want to. Yeah, right. So we're looking for more flexibility. We want students to be able to go, like Senator Sheen said, if they're a group student. So that's kind of what we're trying to do, also figure out, I don't know if there's language there that you can, I'm sorry, Senator Williams, my apologies. I think from, I attended a couple meetings with Stafford and there were quite a few CT centers that involved that, you know, the centers, and the primary thing they want from this bill is governance. They don't necessarily want us to tell them what to cut, but they want to set the guidelines that means sort of there's consistency. That's a great reminder. I think what we're also all thinking about and grabbing to this, can there be at some point, some overarching language that talks about, you know, encouraging diverse offerings, making certain that we're not limited kids who get close out of programs, if they can't go to maybe another program that's 20 miles away or that sort of thing. So that's maybe something you can think about. I think that's all allowed under law now. There's just not a pathway for it. Okay, I think if that's wrong, someone in the room, please correct me. Senator Hushim's constituents, if need be, could come to Bennington, permitted, given that, as long as the school board says, okay, we can take five or six students from Senator Hushim's district, bring them over to our district. School board okay, is it? No problem. I don't think there's anything preventing that. I don't think there's anything legally preventing that, but there may be practical challenges. Of course. Transportation, weather, the geography of the state, and capacity. Yep. But I don't think there's anything that limits in state law. And this is, I'm not an expert on chapter 37, the way that I'm intimately familiar with our tuitioning statutes, right? So I could have missed something. I'm not aware of anything in here that ties attendance of a CTE to. Your residence. I think. There are CTE. If the career, I'm reading from section 1541A, the responsibility of local boards and sending districts. If the career tech center for the region does not offer a course of study desired by a student, then the school board has to pay tuition on behalf of that student who applies and is accepted to another CTE center that does offer such a course of study. The district of residence is not responsible for providing for transportation. So that seems pretty explicit. But again. That seems pretty explicit. The black letter of the law doesn't always mean that's what's happening out there. Continue with the bill in the first place. Yeah, I thought it was going back to the question. Yeah, the original question. Yeah, it was on page five, one, 11, comprehensive career development policy. You know, is that, is it, is it really, is it really ready to embark on a comprehensive career policy or are we really focusing on CTEs? Or is it intent to really focus on CTEs? Be intent as to focus on CTEs. So that would be an interesting helpful language change. Yes. The record Ted Fisher reminds you of education. I know that, so CTE as a unit lives within the same division that does the other flexible pathways work. So when we develop this policy, we see no concerns with the language as currently written. I'm sensitive to Senator Gulick's concerns about making sure that the right things are signposted but are, and yes, it will be focused on CTE because the goal is to ensure that there aren't barriers to participation in CTE. But we don't, we have the capacity internally to do this work and to make sure it's aligned with other flexible pathways. And it's responsive to the, you know, responsive to those needs and how that would be structured. We're not concerned about our ability to deliver on the policy. And we also have some experience in terms of, this will be adopted by boards. So we have some experience in developing these kind of board policies. We also have a close working relationship with our good friends, the School Board Association who with love and due respect to my colleague in the room here, they will of course share feedback with us in terms of if something isn't workable for the districts. And we have in the past had a public comment on this. We'd be happy to, I actually don't have a language in front of me. So I don't know if we have a public comment requirement in there right now, but we, you know, we've developed these before. We don't have no concerns about the capacity. If the committee is interested in signposting slightly different things for us, we'd be very open to that. You changed the language and a lot of differences since you talked to us about it. Yeah, so when I'm hearing from you is that you'd like me to change the language, the title of the policy. That will not change the fact that A&E is only directed to develop that policy around CTE, right? So section five around age five, line 11. Section five is the direction to A&E on the timeline with which to develop this model policy. These gates, I'm sure A&E would like to see the agency would like to see changed. They are very tight, so that's a policy decision that you all can make and it's easy for me to change. But subsection A would require A&E to develop the policy by a certain period of time and then subsection B would require each SU to develop a policy based on the model policy within a certain period of time. And we can make changes to those dates as you see fit. Section six on page six is some intent line with removing answer a different topic on construction B. So section six is basically saying if you make or you make changes to the state's construction aid program, please don't forget about CTE. The intent of the general assembly to ensure that career and technical education centers and their associated facilities are appropriately and equitably included in future plans to the state's construction aid program. Can I ask a question about that? If and when the school construction aid more important is looked at, I'll say when. Is it really important that career and tech aid be explicitly named in that looking? Yes, for the record, Ted Fisher, agency. We got you. Got you, sorry. No, it's just, I hate to have you always repeat yourself. So we think yes. We don't want to open up to two conversations on this. So we think that intent language is probably the way to go. I'll say that for example, because your colleagues in the house have been looking into the facilities report that the working group came up with because at our request working with the treasurer's office, we included language about CTEs and those recommendations to try to make sure that both processes are going down the same set of tracks. But we're hoping that we don't, even though CTE very specifically the report that you all contracted for us to implement said due to facilities, we don't want to be duplicative or conflicting. So we're hoping it can stay in that area, but just making sure that everyone's attentive and having some intent language, I think would help with that. Thank you. And I can just add it's chapter 123 in chapter 16 that contains the current language around state aid for school construction and career and technical education facilities are already included in that. Okay. But there is a possibility that the legislature decides to create a new program. And so I think that language is meant to say, in fact, it does explicitly say future updates due to our inclusion CTEs. But the current language does include CTE facilities. We're on page six, lines eight and nine. We're on a new topic and that is career and technical education oversight. So the next couple of pages are making essentially the same change regarding who has responsibility for oversight of the career and technical education system currently. Your statutes contemplate it's the state board of education's responsibility. So if you look at page six, line 14, current law reads the state board has overall responsibility for the effectiveness of career and technical education. This bill proposes to change that to the secretary of education. And so the next several pages make the same conforming change where it was state board of education finding an oversight function and the secretary or the agency is inserted into there. That stress me is incredibly logical and efficient. But tell me why Ponsy wants this. Yes, so we agree there's a policy reason and there's a history reason. And the policy reason is that for two decades, we have not updated the state's rules for career tech. We have of course Perkins five and the federal regulations and funding and program. We haven't updated our statements. And that's not to knock the state board but I know that they are very conscious of their capacity and their role and those conversations aren't going. When we're touching, when we're doing policy work and making policy recommendations of the legislature, we think carefully about whether we wanna touch move the rules over. And that gets me to the historical reason, which is that when the agency was a department responsive to the state board, the board, the word board was often used in place of where the legislature would use agency now because the board was the governing entity. So the rulemaking that was done in the past was created by, was done by the agency for post the board and adopted by the board. And right now most rulemaking is still done that way. The board gives us their directions for state board rulemaking. We draft things, they go through the public hearing process because they are a volunteer board. I'm not saying that they're heavily involved in that as you know, they've been really grappling with rule series changes. But in this instance, particularly because of the governance changes we think that it's a good policy decision in addition to your updating statute that hasn't been updated since the agency was established and that change was made. Section eight, we're gonna skip to page 10 I'm mindful of the time here. Page 10 and section eight is transfer rulemaking authority. So this section would transfer the statutory authority to adopt rules on current technical education from the state board of education to AOE. It would actually deem the rules that are currently in place that the state board of education wrote. It would deem them to be rules of the agency of education. And then it would require AOE to file notice to the secretary of the state about this change. So this is just, you would see the same language in any area of the law where we're in Vermont where we're changing rulemaking authority. And then the last substantive section is page 11, section nine, post-secondary program articulation agreement. So it requires, so remember post-secondary we're talking about high red here. So it requires a DTE center to all high school CTE centers to have articulation agreements with the Vermont State Colleges Corporation. So that would include Vermont State University and CCB in the following programs, manufacturing engineering, health sciences, education. And then I've added a definition section for articulation agreement that we can change as you see fit. But it's basically, it's an agreement allowing secondary students to earn college credit for the work they're feeding in the secondary programs, kind of like a pipeline into the post-secondary programs. Are we saying to the state university college system that they have to take these preference? It requires the CTE centers and the State Colleges Corporation to work that out amongst themselves, but they would have to have forced articulation agreements related to the following programs. How many credits that entails them is not specific here. But yes, it would require articulation agreements between all secondary CTE centers and the Vermont State Colleges Corporation and those specific subject matters. Okay, do you want to say something about that? Absolutely. So this is one of the, again, responsive to one of the APA recommendations. We have picked these programs because you think they're particularly high need for now. It's worth- Right now. For right now. It's worth discussing, and I think we have in one of our report back, potentially whether we should expand that or undertake other things to encourage participation in certain groups. I'll just emphasize from our part what Beth just said, which is that we are not specifically not asking the, we're not asking you to require anything of the, anything specific of the higher education system, more that they would be able to figure out what would be, what does it mean, what would be acceptable? And this is, I think, and I'm not an expert, but this is similar to what we do with early college and dual enrollment, where we have students who receive credit for courses taken at higher education institutions that count for their high school and often count for college credit. We also have- I'm just saying that they shall maintain programs and course articulation agreements. So some courses are gonna be developed based on this language. I think it's more of a determination and I can double check and confirm, but I think, and Secretary Boucher can probably speak to this better on Friday, but I think it's more a question of, okay, so a student has done two years of engineering in a CTE center. How does, and then they're going to CCB or they're going to Vermont Tech as part of Vermont State University. How does that get factored into them now being a student at Vermont State University and the Tech program, for example? Did how many credits do they get? What does it count? How do we understand so that you don't have those gaps between, okay, the student took it, but it's not quite up to the standard of what the university wants for a degree program. We iron out kind of the wrinkles and lead to seamless transitions. Let me say, James, does this language allow state colleges to say? No, thanks. This does not meet our requirements. We appreciate you taking these courses, but we're going to pass for now. What does it say? We've got to set, you guys have to set something up to start to accept classes. It's not specific to what classes. Right. But it does this language as drafted, I would say, does require the Vermont State College Corporation to have program and course articulation agreements with all secondary CTE centers in the following programs. Is that one credit for manufacturing, 18 for engineering, seven for health sciences, and four for education? I don't know. But I would say, yes, this does require articulation agreements, but the substance of them is not specified yet. Chad, would you please pass the secretary make sure that on Friday, you have a response from Chancellor Malk as to whether or not this is acceptable? To consult with them. Whether they agree with this language or not. Yeah. So we can either move forward or end it. Yeah, Senator Chief. Thank you. So I guess just as a note, also in preparation for Friday, I would like to hear more about A&E's capacity to take this on. And I don't mean that in an offensive way at all. I've been in capacity and couldn't take things on either, but I just want to make sure that the agency has the staff available that they have the time and bandwidth to take this on because it seems like a big transfer to go from port of education to A&E. And I don't know if I'm overthinking it, but I do just want to cover that topic. Yeah, thanks very much. So you're talking specifically the section that transfers the power from state force. Section, that would be seven. And then I think it would be the rulemaking on eight. Right, section eight. So I appreciate the question of concern because oftentimes when we, additional work always gets added every year and sometimes we get additional resources. Sometimes we don't. And so I appreciate that. In the governor's recommend, there is a position for the CTE team to do, to support all of this work holistically. We think very carefully about our capacity every time we bring you something. And so we're confident that we can both engage in the rulemaking process as well as support the other requirements of this work. And we don't, we wouldn't be sitting here asking for it if we, if we weren't, we'd take that really seriously. I mean, you've heard, you've first said it by, my comments about legislative reports and our ability to sustain that because it's a large unfunded mandate every year. And so when we ask for a report back, you know that my eyes have been looking on it because I, my team has to support that work. And so, so yes, we feel confident in doing so. I think that we, and this is just a broader statement, but since you asked, I'll just say it, there's a lot of conversation about Hayley's capacity and its ability to do various things and whether folks agree and we're happy to always have that conversation. I think that some of that is grounded in true reality and some of it is grounded in concerns about the agency's role or other, other things. What I'll just say is we're the most staffed I've ever seen us be. We are with the lowest rate vacancy rate in years. We've been adding positions when needed for critical work like this. And we would hope that you and your colleagues in Senate appropriations would support the governor's request for an additional position on this, because we think it's- But just to reiterate Senator Sheen's request when the secretary is in it for her to confirm all of this that we have- Oh yeah, should be happy to speak to it. She's supposed to- Senator, please. Thank you. I like the program alignment a lot. For years I've thought there needs to be more conversation between Heinrich and Peter 12. I'm wondering why the university wasn't included in this. Ted, I guess that's the question for you. UVM? What is UVM? You mean in the course articulation agreements? I'm not certain I can check back. Senator Weeks. Yeah, I'm just curious, Ted, going back to your comment. Is AOE's acceptance of this effort predicated on something, some staffing increase that's in the governor's budget request? Or are you able to accomplish this? Well, we could just mention. Yeah. Yeah, the one point, the person that they were. Okay. You wanna repeat that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'll just say more directly. This is one of the governor's largest education priorities this year. He views it as must do. I get that. But can you accomplish the comprehensive policy of that? We're asking for a position in order to do this. You do wanna do the date? Did you wanna wrap it up with the date? Sure. Section 10, page 11, line 17 and 18. this bill would take effect until I launch my draft. Yeah, please. One of my final questions, as I may say, is this is, I think this bill's primarily around governance, supposed to be anyway, around governance, but it does seem to get a little operational here and there. And I, so I'm questioning, like on page four, when you're talking about providing students with enrichment and exposure. Oh, good one. One, two, it's up top, and then in nine and 10, genuine opportunities to participate fully, which by the way, I'm legally in big row. So I'm just wondering if there, if there needs to, like, is there an appropriation attached to that? And what exactly are we asking the schools to do? Because that does seem like added work. So I'll just leave it, yeah. And it feels a little operational, but anyway. And we'll ask you to have these questions answered by the secretary. I'm also having to speak to that specific one right now, which is that in Act 127 of 2022, we were directed to the JFO contracted with the APA to come up with a report and study on guidance. We were directed to implement that report. And so that is specific. And I, the report's deep in my bag somewhere, but that's specific to one of their recommendations. I recognize that it would be probably some costs on schools. And I know that we are concerned about the cost of education. I know that the V's probably would have a similar perspective, where we think carefully about those things. We still think it's an important thing to do. It would be, again, we have one position request. We would be issuing some guidance related to it. I'm sure in assisting school districts as we do with everything on technical assistance and things, we still think it's worth doing. And it is specific to one of those recommendations. So to your point about it being, we are punting very specifically on the governance. Everything else we're trying to get done this section, that was in the APA's recommendation. So it's directly aligned to one of those. Thank you. More of a crisis question perhaps for yourself. And a little like this, how come this is the intent of what the entity wants to do? All good afterwards. Why is it the finance piece? Like, why is there this paragraph about the FTE? That's where the governor's FTE request comes from. It comes from the contents of this. Yeah. Hopefully we could just... Yeah, it's a great question. We could easily, so I'm not sure the answer, why the draft, they didn't put the FTE person in here, let them answer that, but we certainly can. And I think it's a worthwhile thing because we keep asking how, you know, if we've known that we're born in there because we haven't gotten the budget yet, that might... It just seems to be a very pervasive problem that we have legislation. And then way over there, in a different conversation, we have talked about the cost of the legislation. That's a great point. Would you mind putting the person into this bill? That would be terrific. And I suspect it would just be taking the language, the same language as the budget or no. Unfortunately, no, the budget language usually contains dozens and dozens of positions. So I'm happy to add that language. It is, in addition, there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's nothing wrong with that. You're gonna want someone, mainly all of us, are gonna have to track this position and the budget language. Sure. So that there's not... I get that too. We're seeing it in other committees as well. We talked about efforts, all good efforts, and then we talked about costs as like a second half of all. All policy decisions for you all to manage. It's an interesting question. I wonder if we've evolved that way in part because people are afraid there might be mistakes where we double... It did extra work for all of us. You all and staff will try and watch multiple bills that are trying to achieve the same thing. And then at the last minute, decide which one's gonna go forward, right? Yeah. That's not to say that you can't... That's not to dissuade you in any way of putting positions in your policy bills. But that's helpful. Yeah. I like the idea of putting this position in here. I think it would really help for our colleagues and others to explain that, hey, this moves forward. If it's not free to drop that CTE's this position, how the work is gonna be done. So that would be great. Do you... So that usually comes with an appropriation. Do you want me to just create the position with no appropriation or do you want me to add the appropriation? Would the governor's budget have the appropriation in it or no? I don't... Ted seems to think it might, but at least the question is for you, so. It may, usually the way, but usually the way that the budget comes out is that for position, I'll look into it. But it would be something for you all to think about as far as where this bill goes, right? You have the appropriation. Yeah. Well, we know that I think all of our bills so far are going to appropriations, but so. Interesting. You don't have a lot of money in your bills. Well, literacy is going there, CTE. Right. Prior to this, it might not have gone there, but I believe Senator Sheehan's bill would go there. But I think the refugee bill, as you were acting, unless Scott Giles comes in and says, we can deal with it within our budget. When I was counting it looked like some, bunch of things were gone, but I could be completely involved with the bill. I will add the position. Beautiful. And I will add the appropriation. And what Jane usually does is yanks the appropriation out and still the bill goes forward and then hopefully we see it in the end. But I guess we could put it in here. Am I sticking around for a few minutes? Well, Mr. Smith testifies. Oh, sure. And then we're going to shift the libraries. Please come on up. Use yourself and tell us your thoughts on S304 and then we are going to shift the libraries. Yeah. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. Hi, my name is Bill Smith, Attorney in Northfield. And I also have a lobbying practice that includes representing the Mott Retail Womburgill Association. That group has an interest in this 304 that I've discussed with your chair. Seems like numerous times already. So I- Bill, we're going to go around and choose ourselves. So we know, you know who's around the table since you're pretty new to this nation. Attorney, Attorney Geroin's brother. Still Senator Dave Weeks, one brother. Richard Sears, Bandy County. The young Richard. Our team, we're off, you looked up, Borelli said this. Dr. Shane, good to have you. Thanks Bill. Well, so my job is to sort of to tee this up for more, you know, more detailed discussions with two of my board members, Tim Combs. Madison County and Ed Drew from Winnup County. W. W. Bill, again, good, no longer respected. Reverse thing. So my members are out about 45 locations around the state. They provide the building materials for most every general contractor out there has their accountant, one of them out there. So if you want to build homes, my members will sell you the type of thing you need to. Which is great. They also take part in the building trade CTE programs, both on the boards of some of the tech centers. They certainly interact a lot with students themselves and know that either the students might come to work for them someday or they might be accustomed. So they decided that they've seen how it plays out. They understand the demographics of the month and we need more young people coming through the building trades. And S304, our board members met with the some age education staff and the governor's staff online for a session or give them a heads up about this map that we supported. The short answer is we do. And so not to spend time getting in the way of you doing something we agree with. I can give you this in about five minutes if you'd like. You know, looking at the reports, the APA report as you call it, looking at the age of education, doctors they gave them on February 13th about the leadership support and oversight. Looking at Scott Farrer's testimony for the GTE instructors prioritizing the recommendations. In large part of our members agree with that and support them will do whatever they can to make sure that S304 gets passed. It would say that slight, there's very slight distance between age 7, 16 and age 304. The only one that jumps out to us that we would prefer on age 7, 16 is session 10 of that will have a specific deadline for doing the state-wide calendar. So looking at September 1, 24th with the 25, 26th school year. It's in the house version of the calendar. It's in the house version of the calendar. So we understand that we'd like to flag as an issue for you, that's something that we, these are building trades and there's deadlines. You got to organize and get yourself done and do it customer wants it. So we like that. That's why we like section 10, 7, 16. So it's section 10. We'll give you a table for that. One of the things I think it might have been addressed in either Scott Farrer's testimony and his understanding of where does the academic department or the embedded academics come in in this bill? I think it might be possible to do it by rule. I think it was, I would like to make sure that's either a clear assumption or if not to write me something in. There's embedded academics is key. You've heard this before. I know Mr. Chairman, particularly where, your English, your math could be embedded in in your building trades class because you're measuring things here. You're reading blueprints, you're figuring out how to ask for the right equipment and materials to get it up. If you have to come back to school and go back to take another math class or take another English class, it can slow graduation or it could make it so you have to work a lot harder to graduate than your peers are doing. They're doing work that you're already doing. It seems inconsistent to me around the state when I look at it. Some CEDs do that, some sending districts do that and some don't. So if there's a way to unify that perspective on that we would definitely ask for that. So another thing in your, oh here, this is an interesting time today. Section nine, where you, by the post-secondary program alignment, I just point out that the old, my tech center, now we Randolph campus from upstate colleges has a very active, engaging with the building trades programs in. So if there's a way to get college credit and BSU, excuse me, for what they're doing in high school, like our other programs, I would just say consider maybe adding a number of fives in their building trades to give that some thought about how that's what education wants to do if that's 400, but it's certainly something to think from because this program is pretty to, our key to having folks after they can build these new homes that we've been talking about in the government you've been talking about this year. Sorry, would you bring that back and Ted to the secretary for her to comment on Friday, number five being building trades? Thanks. Section nine. Section nine. I guess I kind of guess we should, for teeing up here for Tim and Ed next week with you folks, I understand I think you're coming in on the 28th. So I'm looking over at Morgan to say 28th in the afternoon. I think that's the general idea. And that will also lead into a reminder to you folks and you'll be hearing from us later on that Tuesday, March 26th is when we're doing the building trades to every tech center in the state that's building trades is coming to Randolph campus as you want to say university and chairs been there in the past. Great. The events we're chaining around this year we'd rather have you kind of meet with your district's building trades students and instructors, they'll be there. And they're doing a have lots of them and talk to the students directly and find out what they need. I think that's the best for us all to understand what they, our students need for career development what they see as being important to them going forward. So we're not all on this, this beautiful bubble in the middle of the dome here and we're listening to what our future general contractors might want. And we're certainly listening to them. That's why we have this program that you guys have been here in March down at the Randolph campus. So committee intro, we'll be inviting you down to that. You'll hear from us after the- 28th of March. 26th, two to the 26th of March. I heard you coming in February 28th. That's so infusory. Okay. So I kind of just chucked a lot right there. I hope I'm trying to get you back on- It's really helpful. No, that's helpful. And what would, I guess maybe you're thinking about or if you have for me, I can deliver to them. What would you want to hear from some of us on the board and those who are building supply company artwork because one or two will be there next month. Thank you. Yeah, Senator Sheen, may you have the apprenticeships with these contractors? I think that would be, because I know sometimes you have to get creative and sometimes there isn't the brick and mortar building to send a student. Right. Are there apprenticeship possibilities for a high school student who wants to learn carpentry but that doesn't have that program available in a nearby area. That's probably one thought. Okay. Okay. I'll make sure that they speak out. Thanks. Thank you all very much. Just one quick question. Actually, it's maybe more for the Ted's attention. That's the question. The house bill, the related house CTE bill, which has common schedules, common bells or common bells. I was just wondering if maybe we had a comment on that. At this stage, it's a fairly significant show. Yeah, and why it wasn't recommended for this bill. I suspect you drafted theirs as well. Yeah, again, sorry. And again, for the record, Ted Fisher provides us with education. So the agency requested sort of, so there's a lot of interest just back up one step. There's a lot of policy interest in a uniform school calendar requirement, which this is a longstanding issue. When former Secretary of French was a superintendent, it was an issue and he was part of a budget that we had to develop and commission. We've been unable to look for it right now. We have common calendars by CTE regions, but they don't match up fully. Sometimes there's an in service day that isn't shared. There's also a problem of what we call common bell time. So periods don't end at the same point. If you remember my comments last week. So we wanted to try to align the bell times and make sure that- So that's what we proposed. The house has taken this, so we need to know, right? Anything else? No, sir, see you next Wednesday. Great. Thank you very much. Anderson. Well, thank you. I think this is gonna be relatively- Yes, exceptionally pretty. I'm sorry. Yeah, we're hoping. So this is the library, Phil. Just given that I believe we have Eric and Patrick pointing out tomorrow to talk about firearm laws and the role of whether or not we are jumping into the area that might be had constitutional implications. I'd love to see a new copy in a brief, highlighted overview of 220, which I believe is probably in our folders. You should have a copy for at one point. One of the committee's amendment is a starting point for progressing through your discussions, high level overview, leaving committee last week. You may have given me direction to remove the electronic literary product section from the bill. And then you had a number of other sections that were subject to further discussion of view, which remained in here for purposes of your discussion to the board with Eric and others. There are only two substantive changes within this draft. They all later in the bill. I first, in section 11 on page eight, have highlighted the provision related to the appropriations for libraries by municipalities. So one of the things that we focused in on in some detail was the clause that read insufficient amounts, that is in space, sufficient amounts. And there was some committee discussion about replacing that with more appropriate term for the time being I've highlighted it and left it as the underlying language that does not have that clause. Thank you. So that you can have that discussion moving forward. Towards the end of the amendment on page 10, a little bit of explanation here. You had given me some instruction to work with the state librarian to discuss whether the rules governing minimum standards for public libraries or something the department wanted and would pursue. And the feedback that I received is that rulemaking authority was not necessary or desired, okay? So that section is taken out and in its place is a authority for the department to discretionary basis develop best practices and guidelines for public libraries and library service levels. Because the rulemaking authority and the electronic literary product sections are removed from the draft, those were the two pieces that had some required connections with an explanation of the general assembly's intent. The rulemaking because LCAR requires an expression of intent every time you are giving an administrative agency rulemaking authority and the electronic literary product because it's been subject to the federal and constitutional talent is under US copyright. With all those sections out, the expression of intent is not as necessary. So for this concern, do you want to say anything? We've recruited that section but I know you've been involved with talking with folks about copyright law. Can I just say a couple of words from there? Sure, thank you, Mr. Chair. Nick Sherman, Lee and I in public affairs representing the Association of American Publishers. AAP's concern was with section two so we appreciate me removing it. And as you said, it related, there's a legal concern and the fundamental concern legal one was infringed on US copyright law. Fundamental concern really being the ability of authors and other content creators having the ability to earn a living under the protection of the copyright law. So AAP appreciates committee's willingness to remove this section and we'll be submitting some written testimony just for your record so you have it that goes into a lot more detail about the concern. Great, yes. I did send you some language just now because I have to know they sent it to Beth just out of the habit. But it surrounds school, library, collection development policies as well as written separation which I think they want a specific language. Okay, great, great. So in this committee and in our other morning committee we've spent some comments about like giving example, page 10, fine one and two, this is a diversity clause. Is it hard? No, no, no, I'm not a lot better. Okay, ten, one, two. So, you know, we keep focusing on race, et cetera, et cetera but we're religious dropped out of all these kind of trying to be kind of inclusive comments. And I'm wondering if the intent was that it's somehow embedded in ethnicity or not. I mean, it's consistent drop out now. And I'll just pull it right up. Most religious guy, but like constituents are noting it as a kind of routine and I'm wondering if that's, anyway. This is written as an exhaustive list. So if it's something that you want to see called out as a policy matter, it should be added to the exhaustive list. I don't quite follow up. So there's two different types of lists that appear in statute. You have the exhaustive and non-exhaustive. Okay, non-exhaustive usually starts with the term including, right? So you would have some sort of general requirement that might be, you know, policies that reflect for months, diverse people in history, comma, including race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation. That means that it's, you know, a much larger list than these are examples. The way that this is written is that this is exhaustive. The requirement is for these specific diversity classifications. So this is specific. So if you wanted to call out in the way that this is structured, if you wanted to call out religion as a basis for the policy diversity, you should call it out. Catherine, do you want to explain this? I think that I can shed a little bit of light on it and also make a recommendation. I believe this language may mirror the language in the state characters collection development policy. The working group actually had more expansive language that included, I believe, religion and also political point of view. One of the members of the board of libraries also noted that I believe the word ethnicity is present but maybe not race or vice versa. It's one or the other. So there may be a better way to address it than the exhaustive list. You might consider looking at either adding to the list, which sounds like a good possibility. And certainly, including religion is very important and it's a freedom to exercise religion is so instrumental in our country, but also our libraries support that with learning and reading. And that's one of the things we want everyone, including you, to have access to. But I would suggest that you might look at public accommodation law, which may have a longer list and might be of use, but certainly the department is open to a very inclusive list here. We want people's political persuasions. We want materials for people on all sides of the political spectrum and all religious backgrounds to be found in the life of us. So by all political use, progressives and immigrants. So if you just mentioned the public accommodation law, that everything would be included, that would be your second. Possibly, but I would defer to council on that because I'm not sure what the public accommodation law is because I'm not sure what the public accommodation law is because I'm not sure what the public accommodation law is. I would defer to council on that because I'm not sure that religion is called out expressly in public accommodation law, nor is probably political preference called out expressly in public accommodation law. When we're talking about public accommodations for a very long time, accessibility, and so maybe what you would want to look at is what Supreme Court jurisprudence is called suspect classifications, but again, you could turn this into a non-exhaustive list, provide the examples that you want to call out expressly to the departmental, and I think the religion, political beliefs. So sir, you can ask us. Do you mind working with Senator Williams weeks and just put together something the committee can look at just to add, I mean, I have no issues with it at all. It seems like it's a lot of things, certainly. That'd be great. Okay, thank you. Thank you, I too. Okay, let's take five minutes.