 So, let's take a look at the current state of labor, 226. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, for the record, Jim DeMiro is constable. We are looking at draft 4.1 of your immediate to SQC6. It's color coded. So, the yellow are what I believe the two size NEA and school board association have agreed to. Before you go any further, Jim, just want to point out that we do have NEA in the room. We do not have school boards because Susie Glasgow couldn't be here today. She's scheduled for tomorrow. So, although it originally said markup and vote, we'll just be getting a sense of what's here. Maybe a little bit of discussion, but I don't want to do much of anything without her in the room. Okay. We've got to make that make sense. Okay. Blue is NEA, additions, and green is school board association additions. So, the first is a simple change. On line 18, we have a defined term, school employer, which includes SQ, is a school district. So, I've used that term here. Do you want to change? We go up to page four, compensation. So, now we have on line 15, that commission members shall be entitled to receive per team of compensation and reimbursement expenses. As permitted under the session for not more than 10 days per year. It will come on to an appropriation section later on where the John Assembly will be funding this money now, this per diem. And then G is for this time the school district employees and member of the commission or an alternate member of the commission who represents school employees or school employers So, we have the commission member of time officer, sorry, the member to attend means the commission. This next block that's green, I believe, and we'll ask Susie Lasky tomorrow, but I believe that that was my suggestion that we put it in the draft. I think if I read her testimony right, she emailed it. I think they don't support this. I can't quite remember the reason, but anyway, don't worry about it. Just to note that that may in fact not be the school board's proposal. Are we walking through and then discussing it afterwards? I'm just curious, and maybe what you just said makes this move. We're going to have appropriation for the per diems, but the substitutes were going to be shared amongst the two parties. Why would we do it that way? You mean, why would we have to state pick up the cost for the students? No, why would we have them also share the cost of the per diems? Fair enough. I mean, it was just part of the original drafting of the bill, and we were remaining a state. This committee, the House and the Senate together, had a real interest in passing the legislation, and so I think it was a sweet error. Oh, it's in current law. It's like we already have an appropriation to pay for it? We don't have an appropriation, but we have a piece that says that they can get per diems. But they didn't get them. That's why I've said that when this goes to appropriations, I want to try to iron that out with them. So this will leave this committee. It'll have to go to appropriation. Yeah, that's fine. So I will talk to Jane about how she wants to handle that. If they're, you know, the proposal from the school board's association said, if the state's not going to provide this money, it should destroy the passage where it says it's going to provide the money. And if we're going to leave it in, which I will argue, then there should be an appropriation attached. So we'll see where that committee comes down. Okay. Basically, we'll be out by. Okay. Moving on to page six is where the appropriation is. So this appropriates $17,500. Where are we at? Page six. This appropriates $17,500 for the commission. I'm not sure what source you want. It's a bracket. For this year 21. And then the commission shall request the governor to include, and the governor's annual budget request the same amount for the same purpose in the future years. Flag coming around. Really good. Fire and rescue. It is. Really good. How come we did it? For month, fire and rescue. Thank you. They're like every committee. They gave you. Do you have another one for Jim? And also Corey. Corey. Corey. Corey. Corey. Corey. Corey. Now we'll set Corey up. We have a manual here. What's that? That's like a super cup. Okay. Okay. Okay. So that's the appropriation. I'm going to be short. Yeah. I'm not sure if it's that. And then the next page was struck on page seven in blue. So this is the NEA's position. There's a strike out this language that says that they should be the same. And to clarify, this is to make this bargainable rather than here it's explicitly forbidden. So it's not, it's not making it mandatory, but it is saying that it could be bargainable. Yeah. Yeah. And the same thing on line 13. We respect the out of pocket. Yeah. And then like new language from school board association on line four, page eight. Commission, when it was issued with mayor or shall negotiate agreement procedure for disputes concerning public school employee health benefits. And my, my memory of this is that this again, this was my idea to put this in explicitly as a may because Jeff correct me if I'm wrong on this, but they could already bargain a grievance procedure if they wanted to correct. So this is stating the obvious, but I think it's not a bad idea to include it. If, if it's a concern affairs and they are seeking to have it added to the bill, this gives the heavy and the light touch for us to decide on that a later point, whether it's a shower or a matting. So that's why that's sitting there. And then we go into the session on negotiation. So we have new language in blue, which is the hanging position, which says that before the November one of the year prior to commencement of bargaining, the commission shall request from the parties any, any data and information that it is based on the negotiation in a common format. And before February one of the year of bargaining, I shall submit to the commission information. And that one, as I remember, the FDA has some problem with, but I have a hard time because it's, it's just standardizing and requiring information at the right time in a common format. They didn't like the timing because of over, or as a difficult time to gather data. Well, it's his honor before. So it could, you know, it could be February. That's page 11. We have language, I believe it's been glee two and yellow. It's on lines nine and 10. Which says prior to the issuance of the arbitrator's decision, nothing shall prohibit the parties from settling the matters in dispute. Isn't that obvious? It is, but again, there was this explicit request that they agreed on. It's so bad. Prior to the, because of the sun will rise. Well, instead of the sense they could modify their plans. That's all. Yeah. And then language in green is from the school board's association on the lines 13 through 15. So the arbitrator's decision has to include a comprehensive cost estimate to determine the proposal with a breakdown of costs borne by employers and costs borne by employees. That's pretty rugged. Well, so that's similar to a clause we pulled out of another sentence elsewhere. But this one, this was from the V.S.P.A., right? This is from the V.S.P.A. Jeff, if I could just quickly ask you, I had been assuming that this was already the case that when you met with the arbitrator, there were cost estimates with the proposals and a breakdown of costs borne by employers and employees. Both sides hired an actuary. Jeff, end of the record. Yeah. Both sides hired actuaries, financial experts to go through their cost estimates. Yeah. It did so with the arbitrator, with the backliner and later with the arbitrator. So they did. So this is nothing new. The problem here is a comprehensive cost estimate. We think this is fairly onerous and perhaps not. How does it differ from what you did in the first round? Do you think it's the word comprehensive? Putting it in there might, if somebody then later argues that this isn't comprehensive, it opens up the possibility for another side challenging their argument about cost. If we hold the word comprehensive and it said including a cost estimate for the term of the proposal, which is the same thing, I think comprehensive there is just rhetorical. What would you accept it at that point? Don't answer that. Yeah. So comprehensive, put a question mark and we'll pick it up tomorrow with ceiling. Yes. Okay. So this language here is about what the members have to submit to the arbitrator. The next page is about the decision of the arbitrator on 912. Got it. Again, it says the decision is shown to the comprehensive cost estimate for the term of the award. Each of the last best offers submitted by the parties bracket and a full explication of the basis for the decision. I know that there's a duplication here because line 11 and 12 requires explaining in appropriate detail. So that has to be resolved somehow. And then we use the cost estimate shown to the breakdown of cost blown by employers or cost blown by employees. That language on line 11 and 12 of page 12 where it says explaining in appropriate detail the rationale for selecting the last best offer. Yeah. Is that agreed upon? I thought so. Okay. But then this language kind of completes that a bit. So. Okay. Well, you know, tomorrow we'll have both sides in the room and we'll have a more markup style discussion on that. Yeah, we can. All the many. To put it in. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have this new section eight. So on page 15, it says it's the retroactive application to the arbitrator's award in December 2019. This is the purpose of the arbitrator's employee health benefits award of December 19. One, the supervisor and managerial employees who were otherwise not covered by the definition of school employee or a definition show for the purposes of determining which benefit level is applied to the award be treated as a teacher or administrator. And then to not supervisory or confidential employees would be treated as municipal employees. So what does this mean? This is the superintendents. This is the issue that the blocker on a lot of this isn't to them. This is saying how they would be treated in terms of that award. So I'm wondering if this still makes that mean that they're in this weird awkward position where they generally work for management but are working on the employee side in the negotiation or even more so will be the next round. I'm wondering if they feel awkward about it and maybe we should ask the superintendents or Vazbo to weigh in on how they feel about it. I don't know what the solution is for them to be in or out but I also just think it's odd that the superintendents and business managers usually are at the table with management. You know in the negotiation collecting the data doing the analysis. Didn't we hear from Jeff Francis? He has not testified. No, okay. Well we can certainly specifically ask him is that who you want? Yeah, I don't know if Vazbo has somebody who's usually here but I guess I'm just concerned that they're going to be in an awkward position and that there may be issues of trust and I don't know I mean I don't know if you've talked to this yet I can't remember what you had to say about it Jeff but I understand it's in an awkward position where if they're not included what happens to them but at the same time they really are in management. My sense was that both sides agreed that it was an odd situation but that they were okay with this change. But we have concerns about this language as drafted. The parties that are actually trying to work this out they did in fact reach a TA about this issue and both sides understood during the bargaining so we're concerned about this language as drafted reaching back into essentially a tentative agreement as reached. Moving forward is the conceptual but I think that we both agree that we need to address it which I think we did in section one on page one. Right but I'm just, I guess I would feel more comfortable if we could hear from Fazbo or Supertenants or both and hear if they have concerns about it and if their members feel like it's putting them in an awkward position. Jeanie could we send Jeff Francis an email? I think he's likely to be available in short notice and ask him if he can come in tomorrow when we do this. And can you tell him it would be speaking specifically to pages 15 and 16 of this draft? Well and also the, where is it, earlier in the draft, Jeff? Where did it get? You don't know it's probably the contract. Page one. Page one and two. Oh page one and two. It just changed the definition of who's covered by the... Okay. So, you know, we could just leave the section out and because what we're trying to do is face an odd situation. We could just leave it in an odd situation. We are coming up on a crossover so we have, after today we have three more days this week. Week off then we come back we have four days. We have seven working days till we end a crossover. So, I'd like to get, ideally, I'd like to get this and the state board out this week. That may not be possible. But this one for sure I think is close enough. We really just need NEA and school boards in the room to make their final clarifications about their positions and then we have to vote on how to construct the final draft and then do a markup. Okay. So, we can ask about that. But questions for Jim about any of this on this draft? Jeff, is there anything you'd like to throw out now? I think probably no. I think tomorrow with Sue in the room I think it would be better done. Okay. Have you seen their response to this? Because they did send us. Jeanie, did I call her to use Susa Glowski's email that had the testimony? Yes. Did you? Okay. Was that the original? No. No, I didn't. Is this the original? No, I didn't print it out yet. Okay. We'll hold the testimony. No, that's all right. Yeah, I mean, they basically have, I think, three points. I think NEA is out there. So, we should be able to do it in one block of time. I'm just looking to remember field trip. We are still doing field trip. When is that? Why? I think that's the... What's the reason? Yeah, really? Because it's bright for the new scheme of road. So, we're going to do it. When's the day of the field trip, Jeanie? March. I'll tell you when I can. I mean, I can't get to it right now. Okay. Sorry, Jeanie and I settled on a date. And I had a chance to run it by against you. It's on that Thursday, isn't it? It's the Thursday. The 12th? The 12th. And just for your calendars, the 11th, we're going to have a public hearing on the waiting study. What? In the afternoon? In the late afternoon, so four to six. At which date? I'm sorry. On the 11th. 11th? So, what we'll do is run committee until, you know, 15 minutes before everybody will have 15 minutes preparing. We'll do a two-hour hearing. But we'll be done by six. Is it joint with the house or just us? Just us. So, and speaking of that, apropos of our conversation last time, I started thinking about Jeff Francis' testimony, what Ruth was saying about her feelings about how quickly we might or should move. So, I had a thought, and maybe it's building out a thought that I ran out then, but it would be this, to ask Jim to write us a draft that would call on agency of education to draft a plan to implement the waiting study, that they would bring back to the legislature in January. And then, in the interim as well, ask the state board to be holding a series of statewide educational sessions about it, where they also listened and gathered public testimony. So, if you remember when Dan French and John Carroll were here, one of the things that they agreed on was that the board could have taken a politically sensitive topic on the road and gather public input in ways that the agency isn't as good at or isn't set up maybe to do. So, the idea would be that the state board would hold these meetings over the off season. They would pass their testimony and other things that they gathered. Is that the 10th, Jimmy? Yes. Jimmy says the field trip is on Tuesday at 10. So, it would be all, what time of the week? What day? Do we do it on Tuesday night? No, we'll do a half day. So, we'll come here in the morning and then we'll get over there. I think it's 1.30. So, we would leave here, you know, 12.30 and drive over there and then everybody's free to go once we're done at 3.30 or so. So, we'd stay there through the end of their school day and then have a few of their superintendent principle and then we'd be done. I'm sorry, can you just have a minute? New to four. New to four. Okay, thank you. New to four is on the 10th of March. Are we also going up to the Northeast Kingdom? Did you say that? I had ideally planned to do that. That might slip. So, we might wind up with, I had thought we would do one day where we would go do both. But it's, the time is running really quickly to cross over. So, I think that's probably the best. So, back to where I was. So, the idea would be, instead of paneling a commission or a study committee, we already had a study committee and it was, I thought, highly authoritative. But what I think there are still questions about is, how quickly should we move over to be the consequences, making sure we don't avoid, making sure we avoid pitfalls. So, if the agency is tasked with producing a plan that can be acted on, and that includes public comment that the state board has gathered and also that they've gone top to bottom in the state and let people know what the waiting step is and why it's on the table, we would come back in January, a plan would be ready for us that we would then deliberate on as a committee pass out as a bill. Assuming that we like that. So, it would, and it might or might not include a phase in, that would be a question we would leave to the agency. But thoughts on that? I like the idea of having some kind of intro that's not a study committee. I appreciate that. I'm wondering, and obviously we could get into this once we actually have a draft, but first of all, specifically what our charge would be to them. What would our marching orders be to make sure that they do actually produce a plan that we could act on. And two, is there a role that we should play in the off session, you know, legislators to make sure we're prepped for it, and other actors? Well, of course we could go to the meetings with the state board and sit with them at the table. You know, that might be an interesting way to do it. You know, they come to your area, you know, you show up, they come to Rutland, Jim shows up, and I do Chittenden County. And then, you know, do they, the agency, and this is obviously more of a question from the secretary, but does his people have the bandwidth to do the analysis on the off session, or are they going to need extra people? Because I think some of it is going to require to doing what Chloe has done for us. You know, re-running things like, oh, if we did it this way, and with this timeline, or if we included this cap, or if we included small schools grant or not, or whatever, then there are different analysis and analyses. And does, you know, Brad James have the time to do that, or are they going to need more people? I think they do, because the lion's share of the work has been done in terms of gathering the data, you know, the updated data in the simulations. We can, in our charge, eliminate a number of questions for them. I think, personally, we should not add the special way of waiting for the formula, and we should not try to eliminate the small school grant program either. So that's the B-1 simulation. And that's what I had Chloe prepare as either a one-time shot or a phase-in. So when we hand all of that information to AOE, all the number crunching, not that they won't crunch a bunch more numbers, because they will, but I think they could handle it with their current staffing, but we'll ask them. And State Board as well, we'd have to ask, do they want this kind of a charge? Yeah. It is exactly what John Carroll was describing when he came in and talked about what they would be good at. I guess maybe we need to finish the State Board bill first. Yeah. Oh, and an update on that. So you remember Secretary French came in with a list that was this big for what rulemaking authority the Board would retain, and John Carroll's list was about this big. So I did the pretty much obvious thing of coming up with a list this big, and they both in concept agreed to that list. Did you have the proper rationale? I believe I did. Logical, logical, whatever. And logical. Did you just change the font? So what Jim has been doing is adopting that duty split and then making the conforming changes. So the next time we see that bill, and we're also going to meet with Emily from AW tonight, Jim and I, and have a session about wording, the wording differences. But so the next time it goes on the table, it will have substantially more agreement between the parties. All this agreement won't be eliminated, but we'll be here in the same way that with this bill we're now here, and there'll be a series of decisions for us to make, final decisions, and then we should be able to have hopefully a draft that, in each case, both sides can agree. Now in this bill, the bargaining bill, I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that there are a couple of things that if we agree to do them, the other side will say, now we can't support the bill. When we did act 11 originally, I can't remember if you would remember, but we rebalanced behind the same bill that we set up this system. So everything was agreed on in that bill, except for the rebalancing of the high, and that's when I went to the floor, that's how I presented it, is that there's one piece that the two sides don't agree on, we had to take a vote, we did, but everything else is agreed upon. So I imagine this bill will be the same way, we'll get final agreement on everything, but maybe one quite possibly two, and then that's the way it'll have to be. So questions about any of that? So field trip on 310, public hearing on 311, and then 313 is cross over. So that's the week after this, it's going to be a busy, busy time, plus that we were going to, if we don't finish both of these, and the Salinas bill as well. So let me just tell you my thinking about the college tuition bill at this point. My feeling is that, I guess my rationale for it was always to connect it to the Canada legislation and try to move it that way through the appropriations process. And we did have what amounted to a test vote on the floor about cannabis, which did not go well. So I can't see sending it out with anything having to do with cannabis. I also can't see sending it out with an eight million dollar price tag that's supposed to come out of the general fund or the education fund. So in my thinking that bill would have just sort of been suspended animation. It's better to keep it in suspended ammunition than sending it along to a certain debt. Yeah, because I don't want to have, Jane has been very explicit that without a funding source, they're not going to fund it. So if we send it out with just a normal appropriation, they would thank us for our time and it would sit on the wall and then it would die. I would rather know where the money's going to come from when it comes out of committee and have Greece the wheels all the way through. Which is to say, so again this is my hobby horse. I cop to that. But I believe that when the tax and regulate bill passes the house, which I think it's going to do, we're going to have a conference to meet. I don't know if you saw, but the appropriations committee in the house just passed it out with money from the after school program in it. So that doesn't mean to go finish up that way, but it means that going into the conference committee after school will be on the table. So I'm convinced that once it passes, once we know what revenues are going to look like and that's more like next year, we have a bill now that I think is really pretty strong. We haven't done the final work on it, but it's in a pretty good place. So I guess I think we should leave it in a folder and when we come back next year, we will have a tax and regulate system that we've passed into law. At that point, you heard them on the floor say, Dick said that our current version of the bill puts all the decisions in the appropriations committee. And that is indeed what the bill says. I'm going to try to change that in the end because I think it should be a broader decision. I don't think it should be made by only the appropriations committee. What happens to that register? So I think that should be either a caucus decision or a larger decision. A way of saying that the funding piece is completely unclear and I think it would be kind of throwing a bill down a mill to send it out. Thoughts on that? Of course I have thoughts on that. Well, you know, obviously, different thoughts than you on the Canada's piece and they're fair. But the bill itself, I'm wondering, we took testimony on it, officially one day, maybe one and a half. And I guess for the long-term strategy or potential for the bill, I guess I'm not clear as to why you think if we don't pass it out and we leave it in a folder, that's better than saying, hey, the education committee has support about this. We don't have a funding source for it right now. We're sending it down to appropriations and we think this is good education policy and we would like the appropriations committee to find funding source for it. They could come back and say, we don't have a funding source for it this year. Thanks very much for your time. That's probably what would happen. But we would have at least made the statement that we think this bill is good education policy. And so I guess my question is, I know we don't have much time, so is there time to work on it a little bit more to make sure we think it's where it should be? And if not, what should we or I, or as the sponsor, do in the off-session to make it stronger? I don't feel like I know right now. Okay, so I guess generally I would say I try not to go to the appropriations committee unless I'm going to get a yes. So I don't want them to be in the business of feeling like our bills are frivolous financially. In other words, that we're just, you know, we believe there's pie in the sky. So when I had a couple of conversations with Jane earlier in the year and we talked about tax and regulation money, we talked about the idea of a revenue stream that would come off it. She didn't think it was a crazy idea. She was very clear that it couldn't go anywhere without a dedicated funding stream that doesn't currently exist. So, you know, that doesn't have to be cannabis, but I can't see anything else. I mean, the governor's talking about Kino or whatever. So I won't say that there aren't any other possibilities, but it seems like the major one is still a fight to be had in one over what will happen to that money. So, you know, just a personal belief on my part, I think if we, so we'd have to rush the bill out and then it would go to appropriations and literally they wouldn't, I doubt they would even discuss the policy because the money just isn't there. You know what I mean? They don't have the, even if it was $6 million, it would be $6 million right now. Well, but we talked about expanding it to... And actually, in talking to Stephanie about that, her estimate would be far higher than $2 million because of the incentive effect for state college students to then just go for a two-year degree. So she said it would add multiple millions of dollars onto it if we added that. That's what she told me in the hallway. She hasn't done that physical estimate because I... And could well be, but let's say it's $6 million. It's $6 million that no one has accounted for in the governor's budget, the house budget, et cetera. So it's, you know, I hesitate to say that anything is impossible because I've seen semi-impossible things happen in the building, but I would be amazed if it turned out to be anything other than sitting on the wall until it dies in January. But what you're saying is you'd rather have it pass and die there and then... Yeah, I mean, I just feel like if we as an education committee say this is good education policy, we believe in trying to find ways to support higher education, we are clearly mixed on whether that should be through Canvas or at least I have level one. That would be the best option. And for a lot of reasons. I mean, it's just my philosophy of how you budget, you know, do it that way. But there are a lot of bills that are right now have a fairly high price tag that there's an obvious funding source for that are. That there is an obvious? There's not an obvious. I mean, the justice reinvestment, I understand that eventually we're going to save money, but it doesn't happen right away and we're going to spend money too. But that's a kind of a special circumstance because it's justice reinvestment two. Justice reinvestment one already happened and we did realize. No, I understand. It's a little bit different case. And then there's another, I think, at least the parent-child center bill also has a really big price tag. And universal school lunch. Yeah, which we're not moving on for the same reason. And so I guess I just... I think it's good public policy, the CCB bill. And we came down on the price tag significantly and to just say, look, we think this... We still, we understand there's not a funding source for it right now, but we as the Education Committee think it's good public policy. But I mean... Well, I, you know, my hesitation about it was that I think as written, if we don't include the state colleges, I have concerns about what happens to them if we did implement this benefit. Because I think it's arguable whether it helps them or hurts them. So I had wanted more work on it with Stephanie and to enlarge it to include them. Yeah, what happened to that? Why did... She was working on it. I told her that I thought she should stop working on it because it didn't seem to me we're going to be passing this out. And do you know what the status of the state college budget request is, the sort of generic one that they were asking? I'm not sure. You'd have to ask Dick McCormack because I think he's the one that they have been working with. But I know Jeff originally wanted $5 million a year for the next five years I think was what it was. But we can look into that as a separate matter. But any other thoughts from anybody else about... So you probably picked up what we were talking about. My thought was after the kind of test that we had on even using cannabis wording in the after school bill that we couldn't write the appropriation section now to talk about that. And I can't myself see passing it out with the $6 million price tag without some funding source. No, and I think the long-term implications are passing something out that isn't going to happen if we pass out the $6 million price tag and they come back, they don't pass out which is more like what we're going to have this year. And the next year you come back with a state college proposal tenderly, roast that committee, you know, the last year or six of what's going on and you immediately start negotiating against yourself. So what? I think you wait until you have sign of leadership or a funding source or a government, you know, that's a priority for them. To do that kind of a list, $6 to $10 million program would be a legislative priority for leadership, not just the committee. And, you know, the house, I can't remember if you were in the room or not, but the house has passed the tax and regulatory bill to their appropriations committee. It's going to go to the floor. They're going to wind up in a big conference that will probably take weeks, I would say. And then I imagine that we find something both chambers can agree on and I would imagine that the governor signs it. So I think the most likely thing now is that we've got a tax and regulatory bill that produces revenue in two years. And there would probably be some start-up funding forwarded by the appropriations committee to fill the gap so that we can begin the licensing of other things. But in other words, if we come back next year, then it's going to be the question about what to do with the money. And what I heard people say on the floor, Dick's here, Jeanette White, et cetera, I heard them saying that it's premature to have the discussion now, fair enough. But when we come back next year, there'll be nothing premature about it. It will be everybody trying to make their case. House appropriations has put after school in the bill in terms of funding for it. Whether that stays in in the conference, I don't know, but let's assume it does as a sweetener for the governor. Then there will already be money moving to an educational program. Does that make it more or less likely that more money's looking at education? I can't say at this point, but that's the fight to have, I think. That's the most likely path that I can see from that bill. But it's one that I think by the explicit terms of the vote we took on the floor, I can't see having a discussion before next January. So that was my thinking about why we should table rather than send it out. Well, if anyone has advice for the opposition, besides getting reelected obviously. It's not a bottle drive for the six million. A bottle drive, yeah. We need to increase the five cents a little bit more than maybe we should. Five bucks per bottle. Laying on red and big. You go over the bills that you thought you were going to get out by crossover, it's like the 226, which is the school health employees, the miscellaneous bill, and the bargaining bill. The bargaining bill and the health care. Yeah, just those two. And the Board of Education. Board of Education and the bargaining bill. And the Board of Education. Did I say that one? State Board of Education. Board of Education, miscellaneous, bargaining. And then the miscellaneous will include a couple of other bills that we've dropped in. One of which I'm hoping will be UDM trustees. The gender parity bill. I had an idea about that, which for reasons of my own, I will wait until tomorrow. Because tomorrow we have the incoming chair of the Board of Trustees on the phone as a witness. And so I asked to have a little piece of language written up on the table tomorrow. But hopefully that will be acceptable to the committee and to the other people who are concerned. She gives me some pushback in the house. Oh yeah. Because all the legislative trustees are outside. Yeah. So, but... Yeah, really? Yeah. And so... What? Why don't you want to be on it? Is that a good opportunity? No. It seems like work. It's extremely done. Yeah. I have one more to request. At the very beginning of the session, I went through this in the Special Education timeline. I mentioned that the adjustment he made at the end of the last session, pushing out the date for one year, didn't deal with the budget dates inside the bill that has to change for a line to that. So right now we have an accuracy that in turn it doesn't work. So you have to... I think you're going to get a much past bill, if you will. So you're promising us to be rich in passing. So where's one? I've built just another one thing. Actually, I think it would be better if we put in miscellaneous. Okay. Because it gives miscellaneous more... more weight. Okay. And I don't think, at least at this point, I don't think there's any miscellaneous that the House will find, you know, impossible to swallow. I think they'll get behind the feminine hygiene products piece. Other than that, there's nothing in there that's really... Is it the... is it the ethic? Yeah, it's the... Can I go ahead and put you in there? So I don't think they will care about that. Actually, at the conference last year, you both had a different... almost the same version of that language. Right. And then it needs to change this from sex, right, to support it, right, to whatever, but it's very much a lot. Bobby Starr's small school support. Yeah. The trademark, Bobby Starr. Well, this came up, the wellness policy... What's that? The wellness policy work. Actually, why don't we pull that bill out and take a look at it? Yeah. I was just wondering what was in there. It's job 2.3 of S224. 3.0. Just want to put it back. So, we'll just save... Field trip. All right, she's going to go back first. 3.3. 3.3. No, that's S224. 3.3. Yeah, 2.1. And then... It wasn't... There are two folders together. Yeah. Definitely. I have three of this. I have three of this. Oh, yeah. 3.3. Yeah. So, that means... I have... 2.3 in there. So, it's 3.3, right? 3.3 of S224. It'll be in there. Not in here? No. No. It's 3.3. It should be in here. It's not in here. Does this have a special education? No. No. Thank you. No worries. I'm trying to... Deserve all my progress. I'm catching whatever... Yeah. I couldn't find my... You couldn't find your assets. Okay. Deserve to my progress. So, it's 3.3? Yep. Okay. 3.3. I didn't even have to wait for the clock. You need some chocolate, Debbie? No. Debbie, you're out. Okay. So, is there anything new with us? I don't think there is anything new with us. This is the yellow just because... You're done. Where are we at? The yellow changes, yep. This is about what... We haven't looked at this in forever. Well, we looked at... The menstrual hygiene was at page 8. Last week, we looked at a book about language. We went through the language on the school language pause for the last week or so. Did we? So, I... Is this updated? Is this updated? Okay. I still had a couple of people I... I'm still not fully comfortable with this. So, I had talked to a couple of people. I didn't know we were going to talk about this bill today. So, can we... We're not obviously passing this today. So, the hygiene... We can straw boat any of this. Yeah. We should not comfortable with weekend. The school wellness policy study? Yeah. The wellness policies department is still... I think as they've got... Now, it's pretty... I mean, in my... It's pretty... Harmless and may well do good. So, it's got... Ruth had problems with the model that they were using before, but they've now got a model that includes a number of the things you were worried about being excluded the first time around. And it calls for a model wellness policy that will be distributed. I can't find a lot, not a lot. Well, I mean, I could... I just want to talk to the couple of people I had talked to. Okay. Yeah. On the menstrual hygiene products, where there are different changes in their skin. I'm not from the basket, no. Well, so, you still haven't figured out how to... What have we decided? Well, so, now we've got five through 12. School nurse determines which gender neutral bathrooms and bathrooms designated for females. And it has to be a majority of gender neutral bathrooms and bathrooms designated for females. I think that sounds good. Does it seem majority? Yeah. Live 16 on page eight. So, you know, if it allows a school that has 10 bathrooms, let's say, they might wind up with these products and five or six of them. And it's pretty exciting to have them. Yeah. I think that way we would... Oh, that was the last problem that I could foresee, which is you've got an elementary school that's one through five, okay, through five. And then, so you've got, let's say, 10 bathrooms in that school and you've got one grade that's covered by this. You'd still have to have 50% plus bathrooms supplied with these products. Do you think that's problematic? I would say the majority of relevant gender or grade appropriate or something like that, but put in another modifier. We say majority of gender neutral bathrooms used by the targeted group. Yeah, yeah. There's probably that in the one to five classroom maybe they only use one or two bathrooms in the rest of the room. If you could make a note to that one. Yeah, I think... Right, because it might even be in a different building. Yeah. I'm thinking in a cabin where there's two different buildings, but they have a new majority. Right. Okay. And we've got this language from Martha Heath. Right. And what I like about that is... Martha Heath, please. Yeah. It's actually preserving the status quo rather than changing the status quo. Section six. Section seven. Yeah. She's sent a note to you on that for your question. Yeah. Okay. I'm a spiritual. Okay, so tomorrow, as I say, we'll have testimony from the incoming chair of UVM, the ward. Jeanie, could you also reach out to the chair of the state colleges board of trustees for testimony on if we were to extend the UVM trustees bill to include the state college board of trustees. They may not have their items, so if you can just point them to a copy of the bill and say, we're considering expanding to state board but on our state colleges board of trustees. So, the thinking on that is one of the complaints that I've heard from UVM trustees and lobbyists is that they believe a bill based just around UVM's board is too targeted or lied us and not everybody else. We should just do the old land grant. Yeah. They want to give up their land grant status. Yeah. Well, I don't think it's a bad idea to extend it to the state colleges as well and start with them. State colleges have near parity now so I think they're at six and nine. There are two seats coming up or did those happen to others? Yeah, but we already elected one. And they were incumbents, right? So it hasn't changed. I think at six, nine there's 15 total. Are they appointed the same way as the UVM trustees? I'm not sure. We'll have to check that. But in other words, they're very close to parity. If you changed one, they would fit the definition of Chris Pearson's original bill which is either parity or off my line. So I don't think they'll be too worried that we extend it to them. But so that's up for tomorrow. Ideally, what I'm having drafted will meet with the committee's approval, meet with the board of trustees approval and then we can drop it into this bill. As Corey points out, that may be something that the house is not excited about. But I think what I'm thinking of will be how it is going on. Okay, probably doesn't make too much sense to go through the state board and I know what we should do. Proficiency-based learning discussion. Because that would be what the chair never did. Isn't that how we do it? How did we do it? So generally, we do have a bill where we could put anything we do, if we do something, into the miscellaneous problem. But the question would be, given what we heard, and we heard a decent cross-section, what's your thoughts? Should we be doing anything better? So, what did you think? It seemed to me that from what we heard, we heard strong opinions on either side before and against, but it seemed that what we heard fairly consistently was that where there was good professional development and a framework that was laying down for parents and teachers and administrators to discuss how it would work and how it would be reported. It worked well. It did a lot of things that it's meant to do. So, I'm thinking minimal amount of input from the legislature, even maybe just a letter or something to the agency to encourage curriculum directors to look at best practices in some schools where it's worked well and maybe try to offer professional development to discuss how to roll it out into schools more effectively. Okay, when you say a letter, do you mean letter from the committee to AOE? Yeah. I don't necessarily disagree with our son. I'm just going, but I think just one step further, we're developing a finding section to again state so I do see us putting something in the piece of legislation, but having a section stating kind of how this came about in a little bit of fact, right, not a ton, but just a few. We didn't require you to change your grades. This wasn't legislate. You know, clarify that piece because everyone says the legislation makes you X, Y, Z. That put together some kind of a study committee task force, what not with school districts, principals, AOE basically tasking them to put together best practices type situation, a couple case studies put something together that then can go out to parents, publicly in school districts. And so, you know, what I see this going is we're not touching it where it works well and we're keeping our hands up, but we're also requiring AOE, I don't know if a letter will hit them with that, they'll put that together if we require them in statute to pay by October 15th or November 1st or whatever day we come to. You have to have this document out to school districts stating this is what best practices look like based on experiences. So again, I see, to me I don't think actually that heavy it'll lift for a lot of these organizations skipping their route. And like we said, we already know what the criteria is, but having someone put examples together, put, you know, saying we hire a graphic designer to design the to design the transcript and we put thought to this, you know, I do realize I come from the district that I might have done this the worst. They didn't communicate with his parents, they didn't have a good professional document, they have a nine page transcript. It gets all the advice that we give in our testimony, but I think I don't have complete faith in AOE that the letter will get them to put together anything. What we can ask them to is maybe that they're already in the process of putting together some kind of troubleshooting package, you know, that you know, one of the great things about Donna Russo Savage when it came to Act 46 was she would go in and she knew everything that could be done all the resources. She was like a one person troubleshooter that she would just go in and, you know, a lot of people were angry at her because they felt like she was doing something to them, but she was a godsend in almost every community she went into because they didn't know what to do and they were at their wits end and she knew so, you know, even if they have a person, a point person that they could send out to a district that's having trouble who could spend a day or two there working them through what might be glitching them. Again, my concern is I still have a policy statement of this hasn't worked in every place kind of catches the attention of the place that's not working because, again, you come from I think there's arrogance and again, I'm using close to only the leadership of the district thinking they'll just figure it out and they're not necessarily getting that help or trying to you know, AOE comes in with something and the parents can say AOE put this out or whatever. You know, guys they're following it. I think that's and if AOE is willing to do it and we have a way to hold them accountable to having something done in a relatively reasonable timeframe if I'm not putting a decision, I just don't think they'll do something and have it done in a relatively reasonable amount of time without Well, Debbie second suggestion was professional development if we decide to do something on that it has to go into the bill in which case for findings we have the state boards a little report that they generated from their day meeting and so we could just pull out some of their language and drop it in as findings I just, you know, my goal on this is to not mess up where it's working well but to provide the resources and at least to help in the common place where it's important to go and try to do it better It's obvious that more and some of the districts need much more help not only for the teachers and the administration so that you can help them understand how to disconnect some places it's because it's been going to be disconnected but I think we need to get more people on board on that if this is going to work the way we want it it's going to prove that some districts have done very well to help people flip it over especially for their parents that are bringing up children I mean we have to explain the great system in them I don't know, I think something has to be done more what they're doing right now I think the single single most effective thing that people did other than bringing their parents and their stakeholders along is the hybrid notation system maybe we could theme the professional development around that if you do not currently have a hybrid system and you want to move to one we will give you a resource in the form of time from people from AOE or money or whatever it is that would allow them to redesign their notation system because I hesitate to get into the whole pedagogy of professional proficiency based learning and professional development around that which is a much more far from topic I do think it would be helpful for them to hear some best practices from some teachers because we certainly heard that there were teachers who are communicating to students that they don't need to try until the very end or they don't there's no way for them to exceed they're always on an efficient and those are not messages that are meant to be communicated to them so if they heard from teachers they should do it a different way I think that would be really helpful too I mean I can talk with the agency and see what they think might help from us I mean obviously if you had ten million dollars and you threw that you would have all the dollars but if you were likely to have a very small amount of resources to hand to them what would that look like if you really wanted to target it to help districts I'm wondering what AOE already has done in this area having heard testimony from proficiency based learning AOE my speculation is that some of the mixed messaging communications may have come from AOE to begin with so I'm a little hesitant to have them then communicate again on it I could be wrong there and I'm happy to be wrong in that case but I also wonder what they have already done for professional development I'm also curious who is actually like is there who is responsible for professional development because it sounds like all of the problems we've heard this at last session the theme was delay everything this session the theme seems to be we need more professional development on everything clearly they're related but I'm just wondering some districts seem to be able to do it very well themselves but is that part of does AOE have a professional development team Pat Fitzsimons is the proficiency based learning team leader we did receive testimony from who was it Pat Fitzsimons is the proficiency based team leader oh thank you I'm from the proficiency based oh there you go hi I'm Suya Saloni I'm the health education specialist for the agency so you've heard our discussion so no I don't thank you so there are a lot of resources they're actually being updated at this point so there is a clear action going on Pat Fitzsimons is the lead just to Carlos is our director and I believe they both the director of what what is the title? the student pathways division oh okay so there are a lot of resources on the AOE website it is a local control issue because all schools have to figure this out for their context of their schools so there's one big tripping point I totally agree with you about the professional development is needed how could we best manage that if we were going to be helpful and not hurtful right I believe that would be a discussion to have with Jess and Pat most likely because they're the leads for the team and I wouldn't want to come up with something and they go hey so it's Pat Fitzsimons Pat Fitzsimons and just Carlos excuse me just one more yes could you reach out to Pat Fitzsimons at AOE and say that we've done an interesting trying to craft some kind of professional development language surgery to come in tomorrow or Thursday Pat Fitzsimons my name Susan Yesolomia Y E S A L O N I A and if you don't want Jess and Carlos you don't remember Jess and Carlos sure they would like to both come and how big is your team we are a team of six not including the director so we have a specialist for each of the content areas that are identified in the education quality standard so I'm health NPE and then we have global citizenship, math ELA and science and then Pat is actually the generalist, she's the pedagogist specialist on the DBL side of things and then we work directly with school leadership and teachers on implementation as they need it a professional development workshop for health and health and P.E. teachers how to implement we already do it we don't get a lot of high attendance because now you're talking subs and money and both can I ask in terms of efficiency based learning so the reason we're talking about it is because there was some spectacular incidents of balls being dropped in the districts around the state so is there is there an action plan that AOE has underway to reach out to those districts resource those districts districts can request technical assistance at any time understood but if they're not if no and that would be something to talk with Jess about I do feel that would look like this is a loaded question but do you feel like you have a sufficient team to handle this and is a loaded question and you're probably not authorized to answer it honestly how do you say this correctly we are challenged to someone like me I have two content areas so I have all the health educators to work with I have all the PE teachers we have a new state assessment in physical education it's difficult but I don't get a lot of questions on how to and primarily because health and PE are skills based content areas meaning these health education standards are skill based so to achieve and say that you're proficient at a skill there are already a lot of supporters materials out there to support teachers so we practice so my professional learning is how do we do a performance assessment create a bank of them for teachers to use and see so that's I'm running a professional learning community right now that does that for both health and PE so it's trying to meet the educators where they're at and where they need the support and we have done surveys to ask them what are your needs at this point so disseminating information is tough not a lot of people go to our website look through our website and use the resources that we've done are created and I know that it's true for every content area for the PBL pages that have worked very hard on so ok well we will definitely try to get pathogens and it's a it's understandable get them local control as you say it is a little concerning to hear that there's no stepped up action plan on proficiency based learning even after all the kind of let's come up in the last month they're gathering information ok so we're searching websites looking at how different school districts have approached their proficiency based learning system and their schools so we are gathering information once we get them gathering then it's like alright what do we do now so that's that action plan phase so we'll try our best to talk to Pat Fitzsimmons to see if there's some way we can be helpful in that process sounds like you're understaffed and it also sounds as though there's only one person who could conceivably be covering anything new to do with proficiency based learning Pat she's the primary researcher on that pedagogy so the pedagogy of proficiency based learning we all are always trying to support but yeah thank you that's very helpful yeah basically anything I'm not calling for such issues but I think we need to definitely make sure that AOE juncture folks are collecting data that will be able to tell us 5 or 6 years from now this change impacts student behavior and obviously negatively and my concerns still are kind of the issues our student workload tends to students seem to be lazier they tend not to do assignments on time I think there are a few pieces that are highlighted and then I just would hate for us as a state to be in a position that those consultants were in 7 years from now if there are still some kind of issues people are going how do you know it's work but we don't until we've been 7 years right and with test scores declining overall so that's never good alright so is there anybody so that's a rough outline we just sketched out which is findings from the state board report um professional development as we might conceivably craft with Pat Fitzsimmons help and then open question about whether we do something in this bill we end a letter or whether we let one or the other if we only write a letter which we could do we could say to A we we believe that there needs to be a priority placed on assisting proficiency based learning we think this person or whoever should come up with an action plan faster than is currently happening I tend to think it would be good to have something in the bill because this will evolve as it goes through the house as well and may get something better by the end of the process from AOV as a result so what we what would you think Debbie why don't we hold off on a letter and see if we have luck crafting a segment of the bill um do with an appropriation attach or something in the way of the professional development resources and see if we can do that in the time frame that's left so can you affirm that okay other things from anybody I'm just looking at our agenda that we were doing what's 224 that's the miscellaneous that's miscellaneous it just has the old name yeah so I think that's about what we have prepared for today Jim and I are going to as I said meet with Emily from AOE we're going to hopefully clarify enough things to have that draft for work tomorrow then we'll also tomorrow have both sides on the health care hardening bill in the room so tomorrow hopefully we can advance on both of those and then we'll also be talking with UVM chair board of trustees about the piece I've written up on gender balance yeah so I have no idea I have no idea he's not he's no chair oh well that's good I think possibly I don't know but this is the new chair right new chair so we'll see there's also tomorrow at 3.30 there's UVM's land grant mission in action in the cafeteria does that mean we'll land probably something from the ag school kill accounts growing in the dirt but I thought that was good timing we can talk to them about the issue and then it's not a dinner is it it's just a poster session see you're pretty or a cafeteria so they'll probably they'll have ice cream from UVM dairy bar blah blah blah Lancers ice cream okay I heard that Trump's doctor ordered his ice cream hid from him and then Trump got on that because he read in the paper that they were hiding did you see here Hindi we should probably come off to where you're at okay yes okay so thanks everybody we'll pick up those three bills tomorrow and see how far we get with them did the vice chair update you on the testimony I heard you took a vote we voted out like six bills yeah I came in and I saw it here and I was like yeah that was good