 Hello and welcome. This is the Education Committee in the Vermont House of Representatives on January 21st, 2022. And today we are going to be looking at covert related learning challenges as well as work that was done a couple of years ago in this, in this committee. So, with us today, we have Nate Levinson, who is the retired president of the district management group and the district management wrote a report for us in 2017, referred to as expanding, expanding in expanding and strengthening best practice for students who struggle. I wanted to just briefly let committee members introduce themselves. You've met me, Kate Webb, Chair, retired special educator, Representative Coupoli. Good morning. Larry Coupoli, Rutland City. Welcome, Nate. Good to see you again. The Vice Chair and our ranking member representative Conlon. Good morning, Nate. Nice to see you again. Looking forward to what you have to say. Representative James. Hey, welcome. I'm representative Kathleen James representing the Bennington for district representative and to them to Good morning. This is representative Hooper. I represent five towns of Brookfield Braintree Randolph Randall and Roxbury. And I'll be joining via video shortly. Representative Toof and then Williams. All right. Good morning. Representative Toof. I represent St. Alvin City and St. Alvin's town, which is Franklin 31. Welcome. It has two youngsters. I'm representative Williams. I represent Essex, Caledonia, Wisconsin towns of Concord, Victory, Granby, Maidstone, Yoho, Lunenberg, Brunswick and Kirby. Representative Austin then Brown. Yes, I'm Sarita Austin and I'm from Colchester, nine to and I'm a former educator and school board member and I read your report in 2017. Really, really liked the report. Thank you for the work you did. Representative Brown and then Brady. Thank you. I'm representative Jana Brown representing the Chinden one district, which is the town of Richmond. Nice to meet you. And also worked on work on early literacy. Yes, that's right. I work at a nonprofit that does literacy programming for young children. And representative Brady and then Aaron. Hi, representative Brady. I represent Williston and I am a social studies teacher, 15 year social studies teacher at school here today. And school board member and I teach graduate education students at St. Michael's and I also read the reports a couple years ago so I'm excited this is like a celebrity sighting for me. Representative Harrison. Good morning representative Harrison first year legislator from Weathersfield Cavendish. And we also have our legislative council in the room whom you've met Jim Demeray. And our wonderful legislative assistant, Jesse Tracy, who's organizing everything for us, no small task. Okay. Welcome Nate and I'm so pleased to see you again. I also understand you've been doing a bit of work related to covert relating learning challenges. We're going to be introducing Act 173 to the committee. What that that act was for, but wanted to start with you to talk about what you know about how we meet the needs of students who are struggling. Good morning everybody. It's great to be with you wish we were doing this in person. Some day we will do that again. This is so I just very briefly, my background as you know, I have spent a lot of time and from opt at this point I have probably worked with, I want to say more than half the districts in some meaningful way. And for better or for worse have presented 20 or 25 times to statewide efforts spent a lot of days and hours miles across the state, going back almost 10 years now. Bringing to this work is I have been a superintendent, I have been a business owner and I have been a school board member for six years I've seen these challenges from lots of different perspectives. The one that matters most is, and I think the most important experience is as a superintendent. My team and I were able to close the general that special ed achievement gap by 40 points. We reduced the number of struggling readers by two thirds, and we did that during an era of cutting the budget every darn year. This is an interesting conversation to have because I will tell you that act 173 is near and dear to me, because it, we've spent so much time trying to help struggling students. And when the pandemic came, and not just in Vermont but across country efforts to reform and improve special education efforts to improve literacy efforts to improve supports for struggling students. But they hit a wall. No two ways about it. The world changed. March 15th you ever take it there to everything froze moved into this period of education during a pandemic. It was an incredibly accurate and overused phrase was unprecedented. There was no playbook. I'm a firm and many others moved into uncharted territory as we started to help guide districts through a year like none other. And everything we have done in the last six months as an consultant or as an advisor to school districts and every district in your state. They've been making it up as they go, because nobody has had to do this before. Something really odd happened about a month ago. And I guess, not that this year is over, but public educators school systems folks like yourself are starting to turn to the question of what do we do next year, and the year after a phrase that I refer to as covert recovery. I did not point that phrase but I like it, because there's so much to recover from. And here's the part that's just fascinating beyond expectations. There is in fact a playbook for covert recovery. There was no playbook for pandemic education, and we're still got six months to figure and muddle. But essentially what the pandemic has done is it's created a much larger group of kids and strong. Unfortunately, we had a lot of those kids before the pandemic, and more unfortunately, we have more of them now than we've ever had before. But they're not actually unlike their pre pandemic struggling peers they are struggling to read they fell behind in reading because reading instruction was interrupted they fell behind in math. They're going to be being disengaged they're going to be social emotional challenges, because quite honestly hybrid and remote learning doesn't work for a lot of kids. But the part that is just really surprising as we and others started to study, what does it take to catch kids up. And let's define catching kids up this is not just kids with disabilities because obviously, we didn't get more disabilities during a pandemic we got more kids who fell behind catching kids up means we have to make more than a year's game in the course of a year or they will never recover. And the research is pretty clear that the pandemic induced struggles and the pre pandemic induced struggles are very similar. And what I want to share this morning I'll spend about 15 minutes giving you the highlights and then take plenty of time for your questions. What is the research and practical experience show. How do you catch kids up who have fallen behind. And how do you meet social emotional behavior weeks for kids who are more, you know, dealing with trauma or disengaged. And it turns out that Vermont is in a better place than, and I've worked in 30 states now for month is any better place to address COVID recovery, and I think any other state, because, quite honestly, the work we did a few years ago the work that it was done after that and at 173. Really, if you didn't have all of that. That's exactly what you should have put in place, starting today moving forward, because it does turn out that at 173 and COVID recovery are two. One plan for two challenges. So what did we learn just very briefly you know the research we did. We spent about a year. We studied 10 s us in 11 actually before the emerge 11 in incredible detail. We did one on one and face to face interviews with over 500 people across the state. We did 40 days of interviewing. Can't tell you how many miles we logged. We got the schedules from over 1000 practitioners across the state. Prior to doing that study, we had actually worked with many, many, many districts in the state already. And I'll tell you we've worked with many districts since and all of it is a very consistent story. This is one of the things that is, I will say, it's the right phrase. I'll just call it funny. Some people won't laugh. But one of the core findings was that every single person we visited Vermont said I'm so glad you're here because we are so incredibly different from every other school in my district from every other district in my SU and obviously from every other town, city and county. And that just turned out to be not true. And yes, there are differences by size and differences by region but there are so many more commonalities than there were differences. So what did we find. And how do you help kids who struggle, whether we call it act 173 whether we call it covered recovered we just found a good education. This one's going to be foremost and this one's going to be really important for our recovery is that tier one instruction and I really will try to minimize jargon tier one instruction is just called what the classroom teacher does. This is, you know, six and a half hours a day with class general education classroom teachers, what they do matters more than what anybody else does. It's important because across the state too many people don't believe that what happened unintentionally, and with the best of intentions classroom teachers would see a student who struggles behind in reading struggling with math maybe has a disability. They said to themselves, I care deeply about this student. I am not skilled enough. I don't know what to do for them. And thank God, there are special people called special educators or interventionists, somebody else down the hall will know what to do. And as a result, there was less ownership. The classroom teacher not out of indifference, but out of caring of kids who struggle. There was a hope that somebody else would solve the problem. That is impossible students who struggle spent six hours a day with one teacher 30 minutes a day with somebody else is not going to catch them up. So it also meant that kids who struggle, and this if you write anything down right this one down kids who struggle, spend less time with their classroom teacher, the kids who don't kids who struggle get less reading instruction from their classroom teacher less math instruction from a classroom teacher than a student who didn't struggle to read or math. And that's why I said that because they're leaving the room to go get some quote extra help. You know if I had a nickel for every time somebody said oh no Nate's leaving to get extra help. Well it's not extra. It's instead of the other thing that is somewhat surprising. It is, you know, back in the, I don't know 60 70s 80s we had this thing called the reading wars. I don't want to relive it. Over the last 30 years, almost everybody has agreed reading is the most important thing you can possibly do to help a child that if you are reading on grade level by the end of third grade you actually are destined for the middle class and if you're not. That is very much at risk for reasons that are, I can't tell you why but I can tell you it is there. There was less focus on early literacy, early meaning K to three, you can even call it K to five. There was less focus on literacy in many, many, many of the classrooms we visited across Vermont than I've seen in most other states. But that just sink in for a moment because I know we have a number of folks on this call or educators. This is settled science. But there just isn't nearly as much focus and rigor on literacy in your schools as there needs to be. Why this is doubly important. It's not surprising almost 40% of students at least when we lasted the study 40% of students elementary students struggle to read in Vermont. I can only imagine that number is probably approaching half or more given post pandemic. Why are these things important for recovery. One is if classroom teachers and school districts are thinking we're going to need massive infusions of intervention to catch kids up. And we'll get to intervention a moment that is not the right place to start. We need massive upgrading of poor instruction, massive investment, and I don't mean money necessarily time during the day. Planning during the summer in to make sure that core instruction is even better next year. And let's face it you have more struggling readers and ever. That is that harm students for life. If you don't catch them up very quickly. So that the first big finding was core instruction matters more and reading matters most. And I will say that intellectually your teachers or principals your superintendents know this, but on the ground reality. We're not seeing it. Not because they're bad people, and we can get to why it's not happening perhaps later but to know that it wasn't happening. Now, second, if you had that great core instruction you had a great focus on literacy that will help all kids, including kids who struggle, but on top of that some kids will need more. They'll need extra help. It doesn't go away but it's a second step. It's not the first step. Now, extra help research is really, really clear. Again, settled science whether it's John Hattie's visible learning to what works clearing house national reading panel. We've just stopped debating this, at least in the research world, kids who struggle need extra time to master the skills that they didn't master if I struggle in phonics spend extra 30 minutes a day teaching me phonics if I struggle in fractions spend 45 minutes a day teaching me fractions. If I am a ninth grader who struggled with seventh and eighth grade concepts, but you can't teach that to me during ninth grade math. That whole period is taken up with something called ninth grade math. So you need another period to teach me seventh and eighth grade math news. So ninth grade math presumed I knew seventh and eighth grade math. This is called extra time intervention. Most of the intervention across the state, particularly two years ago was not extra time. It was during ninth grade math. A teacher special educator or a paraprofession would go into the classroom and try to help. So very, very few kids in the state, a de minimis number actually got extra minutes during the day to catch up. But they need that. Most importantly, if the extra time is important and it is what mattered even more is who is providing the instruction during that extra time. So let's face it, if you go to a doctor and you're healthy, you see a generalist, and if they say, whoa, Nate, your heart's not doing so well. We should send you to a specialist. This is a person with even higher skill levels, more training and expertise that a generalist didn't have. I never send you to a person with even less training or not even a doctor for reasons and Vermont is not alone, but you are amongst the 50 states, definitely at the very, very, very top of using power professionals to support struggling students. Let's define a power professional. This is a really well meaning person who cares who does incredibly hard work for not a lot of money on average, very, very few probably less than 1% are teachers, often less than half are college graduates. But in Vermont, if a student struggles to read, they are vastly like 20 times more likely to get reading help from a power professional than from a teacher. So I want to say that again, the student struggles academically. They're about 20 times more likely to get help from a power professional than a teacher. They must not be shocked that they're not catching up. There's this theory at work that says, hey, I would rather have one less skilled adult work with one student. So this one on one will be the magic. But the research says three or four kids with the most skilled reading teacher is vastly more effective, weirdly enough, it's less expensive as well. But most importantly, one is a path to reading proficiency and one is not. So breaking this habit of thinking one-on-one power professional support. Now, power professionals super important for kids with severe disabilities, super important for kids with behavioral challenges, health and safety, they play an important role. But they do not play an important role in academic instruction in catching kids up academically. On average, I think we found that Vermont had two to three times as many power professionals as the national average. Some in some cases five and six times as many as high performing districts. So this reliance on power professionals is deeply ingrained and not helpful. So those three taken together, this focus on core instruction, especially literacy, extra time for kids who struggle, that extra support from highly skilled teachers, that is the three-legged stool of academic recovery. It is the act, it was the three-legged stool and the foundation of Act 173 as well. And it is what recovery will be. And it's not, this is not special ed. I know sometimes people refer to 173 as a special ed rule or act, it's really not. You have four more kids who struggle, even pre-pandemic who don't have a disability. About 13% of your kids have IEPs and 37% of your kids struggle to read. So it is far bigger than special ed, but it's certainly special ed as part of it. Now if you did those three things academically, you still need to address social and emotional behavioral needs. Pre-pandemic, every district in the country had reported over a five and 10-year window, a significant increase in the number of kids with trauma, the number of kids with severe behavioral challenges, and as idyllic and at times rural as Vermont is, teachers, principals across your state are reporting the same thing. You know, some of your towns are really, I have 100% I work in New York City and some of the challenges in those schools I see in your schools. Here's the difference. There is science on how to meet the act and exclusively the social and emotional behavioral needs of kids. There is good research. The problem is, in Vermont, you have small districts. Even post act 46, you have small districts. Meeting the social and emotional behavioral needs of kids takes very specialized skills. People who have masters and PhDs in behavior management, people who are highly skilled therapists and counselors. Many of your schools and even many of your districts are too small to afford full time experts in this field. Generally, you need at least a few thousand kids to maybe even four or five thousand students before you can afford the kind of talent that your teachers and principals are begging for. So our recommendation was to think about creating some shared regional approaches to building capacity and having expertise around social and emotional behavior. And it's not because of people in the districts aren't smart enough. It's just these highly specialized people are expensive. A district of 800 doesn't need or can't afford a full time person. But what you do instead is you ask these incredibly hardworking special educators who do not have necessarily any training in this. They don't have a master's in behavior management. You're asking them amongst all the other things they do, put on one more hat and be the behavior expert. So they are the behavior expert volunteer, but they're not an expert. And so we do think that infusing expertise and to do it cost effectively probably on a regional or shared basis will really help kids and teachers. And if you don't meet the social and emotional behavioral needs of kids deal with trauma deal with behavior. So really great ideas. I think they're great ideas to raise achievement. Don't work. The fourth are reading writing arithmetic. The fourth is readiness. You have to be ready to learn the social and emotional behavioral ethical and moral right thing to address. But it's just from an academic achievement point of view. It is a foundation. You have to be ready so that all those other good things I've talked about can really make a difference. The last recommendation we had is probably the only one that is not also recovery specific. And that was for students with very severe disability. This is one or 2% of all the kids in the state. Vermont is a leader of including those students in the general education setting, which is phenomenal. There's some fine tuning to how you serve them, not a retreat from inclusion, but making sure that they're getting very specialized skills very specialized instruction to meet with their life what's going to be most important for them. That has not changed. So those students who have been just horribly served through remote and hybrid learning. Nobody's fault. Nobody has figured out we have checked in with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of districts. There isn't a good pandemic plan post pandemic. They're just going to need a lot of support. So those are the five recommendations for I believe are central to recovery. They're also central to 173. The last thing I want to share and then I will stop talking and take your questions is how do you move forward, you know, we shared this back in 2017 a lot. Some has changed. Here's what we know in the year six, one that these strategies really are cost effective. And I know that you all are dealing with the waiting study and there's a whole financial side to this. What we have said is to lower costs, you need to do this. And I think the folks who have looked at costs said to lower costs, you need to do this. I think you should do it because your kids need it. It is a plus that it is also going to be more affordable. Here's the downside. This is systemic change. This will require systems thinking you can't just change a little. You can't pick and choose and say hey I'll do the extra time but I won't do the content strong teachers or I'll do this but not that. You have to the worst news is you have to do it all. Which means it's going to take multiple years to do this. So it's unfortunate we haven't gotten as far as we would have liked the pandemic clearly through a wrench in this. But you want to get started soon but you're going to need to continue for years to get this fully up and running. So you have two implications. You have small districts. The central offices, and I've worked with so many of them, they still wear two and three hats. They're managing COVID and they're going to manage your recovery. It is unlikely, all but one or two of your marches districts have the bandwidth to implement all of these changes on their own. The district manager and group me anybody outside help is very expensive. I know that you don't have to tell me that you need to, I believe, to do this economically have regional or statewide support. There's also a lot of research that says moving together 510 20 districts at once. Not only is it cost effective it actually gets you there faster. You create what's called positive peer pressure, where you say when one one one one one principle says this will never work. And three other principles say actually we've been doing it for a year now, or we've rolled it out and here's how we overcame that. And last I want to end on what is really the most optimistic note. So the idea that special ed COVID recovery can end on an optimistic note is since 2017 since we shared this report we have presented it. I want to say probably 50 or 70 times at this point. And across the state, there is so much will and desire to implement these ideas, I have never seen this anywhere I have worked before. When the special ed directors quite honestly you always hate kind of change like this have been the strongest supporters, we have been asked to present to their membership time and time and time again. And sometimes who aren't always that excited about special editor have wanted and asked for our help time and time and time again. This idea of finding extra time through the AOE. A year or two ago we did a series of presentations across the state on how to find that extra time out of 500 presentations we have given in the last decade. The largest attendance as a percentage of your district's attending was in Vermont, when we talked about how to find extra time for struggling students. There is a groundswell, a word I seldom use at the parent level at the teacher level at the special ed director level at this principal level superintendent level to implement these things that was before the pandemic. I think we double that after the pandemic, but they are hungry and need some kind of regional support. Because I just, it's too big of a lift for small districts to do on their own. Let me stop there and love to take your questions or hear your thoughts. You want to thank you so much for this presentation. What do what is your sense of what is holding us. What is holding Vermont back from this level of implementation from your observation. So I think two things, you know, as you all know this will be no surprise to you. You guys like local control. You like your small districts. This is too big to go out alone. And I think people know that, but you do not have as a state, an infrastructure for regional and statewide support. And I think that is a legacy of leave us alone. We can manage this a district of 54 I don't need anybody else. So I think you have a legacy of independence, which unfortunately is not helpful in this case. I appreciate local control don't get me wrong but some things need a group effort. So I think that's number one. I think number two, I think the agency of education which I do generally believe supports this approach hasn't. I don't think they figured out what their role is, or how best to support this, and whether it's statewide whether it's a bunch of regional efforts. I think that as you know, just before the pandemic agents of education had a lot of vacancies, you know, want to turn over. So I think their capacity was limited. I think there is always a challenge of whether an agency provides direct support with their own staff or outside third parties. I think that is a discussion they are still having. And then I think the pandemic came and rightfully, all of this froze but you don't have a history of regional multi year sustained support. And you're going to have to create that in some way, shape or form. And I think from a capacity point of view, your agency of Ed is very small. You know, we have advised and studied many, many agencies of Ed. I mean, some of them fill like 17 floors of downtown high rises. I'm not exaggerating. You know, all of your senior leaders can fit in a conference room that the bandwidth to do something of this magnitude may not live within the agency either. And then you add this everything related to COVID. You know, whose job is it, everybody's wearing 10 hats. Thank you. So opening up to questions, comments, Representative Harrison. Thank you, Chairman Webb. Vermont have barriers in place to, let me rephrase this. We have risk, risk capacity with other states for allowing educators to come in. I guess we're going, I want to lower any barriers that we have that might prevent educators from coming to Vermont that may have all the qualifications, but we don't have a reciprocal agreement with that with another state. And it seems to me that there's probably people out there that are at rise to the level that you described, but may have some kind of barrier in place that doesn't allow them to come to Vermont other than physical problem. Great question. So I think if we break the need into three categories, so you need break classroom teachers, that's because that's where the core instruction starts. I don't think you have any more barriers than anybody else. I think we're some barriers to do arise is, you know, when you think about these extra help folks. One of the large pools that we've seen is retired teachers so you want to look at, and I have not, but how easy is it for a retired teacher to come back to work a few hours a day. I think it's about teachers that's a pool of people have looked at, and then on this area of the behavior specialists. There's a national shortage. And so one of the things that I have suggested to anybody who will listen is, you can't import them. And there are almost there are fewer than a dozen I think in the state currently to, you know, it's like the number, you're going to have to develop your own. There are ways of doing that that are very cost effective. But again, this is where the individual school district cannot afford to know the program to train a behavior specialist, but a state or regional entity could, and then that very person would be shared I think the behavior folks are going to need to grow interventionists and extra help folks. You just want to make sure that part time retired folks can jump in. I think on the classroom teacher side, the bigger, I would say, sort of bigger obstacle is philosophical, if you believe a power professional is the best possible solution. You will run a mad, you will find them, you will fill them, and you will feel good. And we have to stop feeling good about that. Thank you representative Brady. Right all it's the impossible question, but how do you I mean I'm in schools it's yes absolutely all of that is true. How do we change. Aside from the technical the skill part the mindset, the philosophical, it is so ingrained in the way that classrooms operate. So, and where are there are there examples to point to especially, you know in New England of successes in doing that of really rethinking the role, the primary role of the classroom teacher. So the good news is, and I agree with you, it is, it is a huge mind shift. The good news is because we have been at this and banging this drum for coming on a decade now. There are in fact school districts in Vermont, who are three and four years into the implementation. Who have reduced the number of powers increased the number of reading teachers, seen their achievement rise. Because I will admit that if I showed every district, somebody from New Hampshire Vermont from every district, somebody from Massachusetts Connecticut and brought up to Vermont, you guys don't care. But the good news is we are at a point where there are actual examples in the state. And again, I think that the, what's different here from what I've ever seen before is that the leadership level, special ed directors principles, they get it. Normally, and I do believe that leaders have to lead that they have to make this a moral issue. They have to really believe it. And again, we're not starting from zero. They do believe this now that here's what I probably don't know. I'm not sure that they realize that the plan we talked about that was called act 173 is actually the covert recovery plan. Yeah, that one, you know, we haven't had a lot of that conversation yet. But I think they will get there quickly. But I really think that what they're telling me, or telling anybody last is they are ready to implement this. But they're, but they need like the moral suasion of a team that positive peer pressure. And they need some technical assistance, like they go and look at their schedules and said I don't know where to find the time or they say, Hey, what would you do during those extra time periods or how do you identify those kids so there's definitely the philosophical shift. There's definitely the technical shift. You need to address both of them simultaneously but happily, you have leadership momentum, which is unprecedented in a positive way for a change. Can I ask a follow up question there too. How does this apply to all teachers versus like K to three. So this is 100% true at middle school and high school as well. The idea that in middle schools and high schools across your state, if a student struggles and I'll just use math as an example, like a student who doesn't struggle gets one period of algebra one 47 minutes a day. A student who does struggle gets 47 minutes of algebra one and maybe a special education feature comes into the classroom during algebra one. Almost no kids in the state, get a second period of math at the middle school or high school level, where they say hey, I know you're learning algebra one at nine o'clock but you are still struggling with fractions, which is central to success and algebra one so we're going to spend some time this afternoon and every afternoon catching you up there. So the need for the extra time is actually as important and in more short supply. Middle school and high school. And again, we're seeing more middle schools and high schools, recognize that and want to think through how to staff it, how to schedule it, but it's as as important as the elementary. I see a real concern at the high school level that there's probably more skill within schools to deal with math catch up and recovery, but when it comes to literacy and a 1415 16 year old who's really behind in literacy. And I say that as a social studies teacher. I'm essentially going to sort of my gut and what I know and the fact that I'm teaching my own little kids to read but I there's a tremendous lack of skill I think of what does it mean when you get higher and higher, especially in terms of literacy. We're seeing the best practice is that middle and high schools, you get in a perfect world, there's never a sixth or ninth grader who struggles to comprehend. We don't live in that perfect world. What we're the best practices, first day sixth grade first day of ninth grade you are screening. It's usually not phonics but it's comprehension and fluency and kids who are struggling to read, get a class called reading. So it is credit bearing. And to your point, most importantly, it is taught by somebody who is a trained secondary reading teacher, you know English teachers, sorry social studies teachers, not their skill set. And it is a skill, people get degrees in it, they know how to do it. You know, it's not that 50% of your kids need it but for that 10% or so. It's life changing. It's a very weird thing that if you look at the course catalog of every high school in America, fewer than 1% have a course called reading. And yet we know from the late, you know, 2025% of those kids need it. And then I'm going to, sorry, I'm in a medium sized school and we don't have that kind of reading specialist, even here. And it's the complexity of if you're adding something by your six and a half hour day then you're subtracting something and you have worked with with districts on how to create turned six and a half hours into what Well, so here's the nice part is we do not need to lengthen the school day. And almost none of the districts we work with do. Here's what we need to do. Say out loud reading is too important. And then all of us and then actually get creative so here's a two very quick examples of creative. One is kids with disabilities, often have a period called resource room. We're quite honestly not enough learning takes place. One of the key fundamental thoughts behind Act 173 was that a student with a disability should still get their instruction, not just from a special educator, not from a paraprofessional, but why couldn't a gen ed reading teacher meet an IEP that period is already in their schedule. If you look at say at a high school, kids who struggle very seldom take four years of foreign language, they very seldom take four years of any subject that isn't required to have four years to graduate. So rather as a freshman, taking all the classes, you know, science, social studies, foreign language, any of those courses that could be put off a year. So you don't, if you're only going to take three of them, take the extra help and math or reading as a freshman. So that when you do take the social studies class a year later or whatever class you're delaying for a year, you're going to do so much better at it. We have a lot of history in our schools. Our schedules are very traditional and just rearranging when you take things can open up the space. Thank you. Representative Austin. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Lemonson. I wrote down a bunch of questions last night. I'm not going to ask him Kate. Thank you. We have room for others to ask us to. One is just being an educator and a for former school counselor I'm wondering if you could combine social emotional intervention with literacy. I just, I just feel like reading and writing, you know, could really in a creative way meet that social and emotional needs of kids. So that that's just one thought. And then how, you know, the whole word of struggling. I'm trying to understand like how does a teacher know when a child is is just struggling with a new acquisition of skills, as opposed to struggling that they're not getting it. Two great questions. I think to your first, what you described is a really great strategy. It's called the integration of social and emotional learning into the core content. And I think reading writing social studies tend to be the three places where that has been most easily done. When I say easily, and again, this is where the challenge of being a small district. When you ask a teacher to do that. It is hard. Asking every teacher in the state to do it on their own is foolish. Asking teachers to come together as a group probably across multiple schools to do it together is just so much easier. And so as a group effort because it's a great idea. It takes a fair amount of planning. So just how do you plan at scale and efficiently, but it's a great idea. Is there is there a resource or a book that, you know, or that you would recommend. But let me look into that and I will get you back a name. There are definitely folks who have mapped this out. Thank you. So the other question about how do you know who's struggling. So part of core instruction part of great core instruction is to monitor learning, checking for understanding. And yes, some kids learn at different paces and sometimes you got to go back a couple times what schools need to do and a fair number of yours. They don't do enough with it, but they are assessing kids, you know, say three times a year and reading, we see a lot of that. What we don't see is the right stuff happening afterwards. And so, you know, my general rule has been that you can identify struggling kids in a couple ways. So there's this test called phonemic awareness. This is not what you learn. This is how your brain is wired. You can assess that the first day of kindergarten. And if you struggle with phonemic awareness, it's not because we weren't taught. It's because it's the way your brain formed and wired, and you can start intervening there on the second day of kindergarten. For kids who are learning to read. Yes, certainly. If you know, sight words or sounds you might you want to fall maybe six months behind. You can and then you say okay I don't want to wait a whole year. It's less than a year. It's more than a week with the one exception around phonemic awareness. And then you just fine tune it. We've done these studies where you go back and you say hey, we're looking at all our kids who are struggling in third grade. We have all this data back from the first day of kindergarten. Where did we start to see them fall off so we should have intervened sooner. But again, I think there's pretty good data across this. I think there's not enough happening and have you seen. Any good data about lowering the cost of special education, when these interventions are put into place K3. Yeah, two things happen so. First of all, all of these interventions that we're talking about are just less costly than what you're doing today. I think that you have this irony of you have said hey we're going to use low skilled folks who don't get paid a lot, but some places give them benefits, which is very expensive, but more importantly, you said, and we need an army of them. So just going to like say skilled teachers. You know right now like a power professional helps two or three kids. So three power professionals are helping six or seven students, a full time skilled reading teacher across the country helps 35 kids on average. So you actually, you created a system that says we need a boatload of people. But not, but, and having a far smaller number of highly skilled people would make a much bigger difference. Your group sizes are going to go up you're going to have five kids in an intervention, not one and two. But it is less expensive. You will also see fewer kids ultimately referred for special needs, because 40% of all kids in the country have an IEP, not because they have a disability, but because we failed to teach them to read because they have to read in ways that are different, not necessarily disabled, but different. So, and then of course, most exciting. These interventions in a year or two can catch you up, sometimes in as little as six or nine months. Special education, I want to add that's a 12 year run, it is very rare that anybody has exited special ed services. It differs, said the retired special educator. I do know that that are that my district, which is a large district did in the work that that did with with DMG, I believe turned 20 got, got rid of 22 pair educators and and hired three master level teachers. So that was an example of some of the ways that that we're using money in a in a different way. In a more professional way. You're good then three to represent of James. Thank you. I think that our previous conversations have answered my question but I just wanted to make sure that I'm totally understanding that in order to implement this it requires obviously leadership and a culture mind shift. It does not require additional funding. What it requires is two levers you need to pull two levers scheduling and who you hire. Yeah, so scheduling and who you hire, definitely. I think it will require that kind of mind shift, you know for people to you can't make people do this you know an IP team gets together. If they write the worst possible plan, it's still the plan you have to do. And they're, if they're writing a plan that's not great it's because they think it's great. They have nothing but good people writing so I totally agree in a scheduling and his people, but if we don't get the mind shift. That's the I think the third ingredient and I think that there is going to be like all change because it's such a, this is a cultural bucket of cold water, because you have such a long history of doing it the other way. I think there's a small investment very to help people through that change. But as you represent a web shared you know the ability to fund this through small changes in their budgets are very real, but we just, you know, I talked about this, and I hope not glibly. This is powerful. It really does work, but I want to be respectful for it feels so different from 2030 years of practice and you know, and that is actually no we're humans change is not our forte representative Brady. It seems like, you know, despite every horrible thing that's happened this is actually an opportunity. It's going to pass us by really fast to pair this sort of cultural mind shift, sort of package it in covert recovery and re and re engagement in a way that I think maybe takes away some of the defensiveness of like as if teachers are doing something wrong. And, and something that I think all teachers are aware which is that this year has been a crazy rough year for almost everyone. It just seems like it's like, it's a moment here where there is an opportunity with leadership to do that. I'm fearful that the demands on the logistics of how far away kids can be how many can be on a bus what the things where the plexiglass is going to have to be will will be so big that we won't use and leaders won't have the capacity to give them the space to use this moment for that but I do see this in a way, an opportunity to speed up some cultural philosophical shifts that otherwise I'm a little baffled at how we really get to them, aside from some really strong leadership. I want to build on that because I would agree, but added an extra. So I believe this is an inflection point in the sense that is an opportunity for change. And if there's a silver lining, this could be it. But it's also though here's the, but it could also be the time in which bad habits become hardened even more so in a in a crisis. All revert to what we know and are comfortable with. I just believe in my heart of hearts based on no facts that we have folks across her state thinking cares act money is coming. Kids are behind. I know exactly what to do twice as many powers. Every time as much intervention, pull these kids out of core instruction, even more so too busy to rethink the schedule. gearing up for more kids to be referred to special ed. So I think because there's this moment in time, either we're going to do more of what we are so comfortable doing and take all that extra money and there is some money coming to get. I can see you having 50% more powers a year from today. Or I could see people saying, this is too big a moment we have too many kids who are struggling. The past practices didn't actually catch them up. This is very much the time. And to your point, it is a, it's a no insult. This is not a criticism moment, because we can't really think that next year should look just like last year. So I agree with you but I'm also, I'm optimistic and very nervous at the same time. Thank you. I have representative Conlon be the be the be the last, the last one. We're going to take a five minute break and then we're going to have, we will have Jim Demeray is going to present act 173, which was our bill that was attempting to implement some of the, the goals of the report that the structure of schools that was talking about. And some of the things the challenges we ran into in terms of our current way that we fund special education that actually is restricting our ability to implement some of these things. So representative Conlon and then we'll take a five minute break after you're finished. Following up on the previous question, you know, there will be this SR money, SR to money that's going to go directly to districts. And it almost seems like a good use of that would be to have expanded planning time, otherwise known as paid planning time for educators before the start of the next school year, in order to do this professional development and really pivot as quickly as possible. Do you think that would be a sound investment with the money or do you think it should go elsewhere. So, I would love to see the extra dollars used to help make these changes happen. So I'm with you there completely. This is a phrase a few times systems thinking professional development, which I would define as like a smart person coming into share knowledge or bringing a bunch of people around the table to share with each other. That is a component of making this happen. But if we brought all the teachers together. And they said, well, we need to have reading teachers. Well, teachers don't have that authority. So you brought folks together and said, hey, we need to change what's in IEP as well, like a PLC or planning session for PD doesn't allow that. So I definitely agree with you that we need to do that kind of professional development. We need to give teachers time to plan. But it's such a. This is the bad part of everything I've shared today. You have to get five or six things to happen together, change who you hire change what you wrote to IEP is change what the schedule looks like. Help teachers navigate this. And if you just do one or two of them, you will in some ways just create a lot of frustration and more awareness that you're not doing what needed to be done. So to me, the question is, is how do you get all four or five of the necessary pieces to happen simultaneously. And that's why it didn't with all the willingness of folks in the field to do this, why it hasn't taken off is it takes structure organization planning, and each of your districts are pretty small so it's a heavy lift for them. Yes, it's part of the answer, but we need all the parts and pieces. That's what states. But it's so great if you can actually do it. But the change for kids is just remarkable life changing in fact. Thank you so very much for for bringing this back into our committee we've been sort of drowning in education finance of late and getting back into what we're actually doing in the schools I think provide some relief. We are going to take a five minute break. And then we will, we will look at at 173, Nate Levinson, if you're available to stay in the room we would welcome your presence, but if you need to know and get some exercise or live your life we understand that too. I do have another meeting to join. So, I will have to leave you always happy to come back anytime you want or continue this conversation with any of you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Much appreciated. Okay, we will go offline and take a break. We'll put up the break thing everybody just, I'm just going to put myself on mute and get rid of my, you know, take myself off video and we'll just take a five minute break. Thank you. Thank you. Jim Demeray, our Ledge Council, who is going to give us an overview of Act 173 that we passed in 2018. We passed it in 2018. Then there was a huge staff changes at the Agency of Education, which I'll tell you about at the time. We had a change in Secretary, we had change in, we had change in leadership, five of the five of the people that were the agency that worked on on this bill with us, all retired or left so it was an interesting move when we got to 2019. So, Jim Demeray, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning everyone. I'm Jim Demeray, Ledge Council. The Act 173 is a 60 page bill. So I'm not going to walk you through that bill. It's very complicated. But what I do propose to do is start by just talking about how special education funding works now and how the bill will change that. And then I'd like to share my screen, if I could, and bring up the bill and go through some of the findings and the goals, and then discuss your few sections. So that's okay. Yeah, Jim, are you going to explain why we, why we, the Census based funding came up in the first place to moving away from, okay, reimbursement model. Okay. So there were two that John Assembly commissioned two studies. And these studies were commissioned back in 2016. Okay. One of them was the one you just heard heard about, which was DMG. This study was looking at delivery of special education services, how best are special education services delivered in Vermont, one of the best practices to use. And you just heard about that from Nick Levinson. The second study that was done was around funding, how best is special education funded. And that study was done by UVM, like Henry Colby, what keeps coming on shortly. So there are two studies done, commissioned at the same time that we deliver at the same time. And the combination led to act with a three, which basically changes the way special education is funded and delivered. Okay. So let's start by just explain how special education is funded today. We have a reimbursement system. Now, and the way that works is that for students on the IP. The cost of providing services to those students is shared. The, the state picks up 60% of the cost of those services. And the local school districts pick up 40%. There's some federal funding as well. Not much. I think it's about 6%. So when you after the 6% federal funding, then you get to this 6040 split 60 state for your local. And what that means is, is that over the course of the year, school districts are, are accounting for the costs of providing those services for these students, and is submitting basically an invoice to the state for 60% of those costs. And so just stopping there for a second. What we'll come to in the bill and from these two studies is the view that a, it's expensive because it's reimbursing all costs with no pressure to lower those costs is just wherever they are, they're paid. And two, there is a belief that there, this causes an over identification of students for IDP, because it's a way of getting funding. So there are a couple of things happening with our current system that came out in the funding report by David Colby and UVM. And those things, the reimbursement model also impedes adopting the best practices that you've heard about from, from Nate Evanston. It's hard to move to a new system, a delivery when you're on a reimbursement system. The other thing about our system today is I mentioned it's a 6040 split. Except for very for students who require a lot of support. So if you're, if you're, if you have a student on IUP that is costing more than $50,000 a year. Then the reimbursement of the first 50,000 is 6040, but above the 50,000, the reimbursement is 90% by the state 10% by the school district. So there's more state support for students who are very expensive to support. So that's how it works today. What we're moving to under Act 173 is a census based system. And what that means is rather than paying reimbursement for these services. Instead, school districts will count every student whether they're on IP, not IP whether they need support or not, every student that's enrolled in that district is counted. So let's just say you've got a school district with 1000 students. And the way the census grant works is that they'll be funding by the state on a per student basis. So let's say, for example, that the formula says we're going to pay $3,000 per student. Okay. A school district with 1000 students use multiply 1000 students times 3000 and that's the amount they will get for that year. And that money, that money is not tied to having, sorry, that money has more liberal use around it. So that money then can be used to support students who struggle. So now we're taking basically a reimbursement model that's targeted toward just IEP students to a census based model that's based, that's targeted to any student that struggles for any reason. So if you're having trouble meeting or math, if you're not on IP or 504 plan, if you're having any more support, this funding is designed to support you as well. But first priority for this money has to be students on IEP, because that's a federal mandate that you have to put those students first. But the idea of this new funding system is to move away from reimbursement to funding a per student basis for all students in the school district and can be used more broadly to support these students. I had one little little piece here. One of the other reasons to move to the census based funding model is let's say you had a child who that was on an IP for a reading disability. You could be reimbursed for services of a special ed para educator. You would not necessarily be reimbursed for the services of a certified reading teacher master because they're not certified special ed. So there was there was confusion there as well that sometimes the current model was restricting kids from having access to some of the people who could who could help. Is that accurate. That's accurate. I saw one more thing about that too, which is because of the special education rules basically at the federal level. The way it works today, I believe is if you say you have a class of 20 students. And math. And three students on IP. Okay. And three students are not IP but the struggling with math. Okay. The way it works today, I believe is the three students IP get taken out of class are given special instruction by para educator or someone else. The three students who are struggling who are not IP are not taken out because you have to account for your costs of those three special education students IP. So it's very hard to bring out or to give more services to a bar group of kids are struggling because your funding is tied to one group. The other sister space funding is it's more liberal. You can target that extra educational time to all of the kids are struggling not just to ones who are on IP. Okay. So, if there are no further questions at this point, which I wait for, I was asked to be co host with Jesse. So to show my, my screen and pull up after 173. Who are also to go Jim your co host. I am. Yeah. Okay, so screen share. This is not working for me, but it'll work. You can see it. I can see the bill. Oh, good. Okay, good. And see the actor. On a different screen. It's on my other computer. Okay, over here. Okay. Okay, so as I mentioned, um, this is a long bill and very technical. Um, so I won't torture you with all that. We lost the bill. It's switched screens. Oh, okay. So I'm going to move it back over to where it was before. Yeah, it's just a little teeny W document. Okay. In my way. And this is Jesse feel free to, to let me know if you want me to share as well. There it is. It's back. Yep. Okay. I'm looking at my other screen. So I'm looking over here. Um, so, um, We're a long bill, but I want to go to, um, Page two. These are the findings we're in. And, um, So, and sub paragraph C at the top. It says, uh, it talks with the delivery of services report. That is the DMG report. You just heard heard about. That report made five recommendations on best practices or delivery of special education services. Uh, one ensure core instruction means most needs of most students who provide additional instructional time outside core subjects to students who struggle rather than providing interventions inside instead of core instruction. Three ensure students who struggle receive all instruction from teachers, i.e. not per educators. Uh, for create or strengthen a systems wide approach to supporting positive student behaviors based on expert support. And five provide specialized instruction from skilled and trained experts to students with more intensive needs. So he's heard about that from, from, from Nate. The funding report, the UVM report, um, noted, uh, Uh, and D here, um, And there's a couple of things. Um, it said that the reimbursement model funding that I just described. Has a number of limitations in that it one is a mission administratively costly for the state in localities. It's misaligned with policy priorities, particularly with regard to delivery of a multi-tiered system of supports. And positive behavioral intervention supports. The three creates misplaced incentives for student identification, categorization and placement. Four discourages cost containment. And five is unpredictable and lacks transparency. Um, so it goes on to say, The funding report says, um, It assessed various funding models that support students who have access to support, including a census-based funding model. A census-based fine model would award funding to supervisor unions based on the number of students within the SU. And it could be used by SUs to support the delivery of services to all students. The final report noted the advantages of a census-based model are that it's simple and transparent, allows flexibility in how the funding is used by SUs. And then it goes on to say that it's also, somebody agrees with this. Um, and then the goals of the act, uh, are to enhance the effectiveness, availability, and equity of services, provides all students who require additional support. Um, So it goes on to say that it's also somebody agrees with this. Um, and then the goals of the act, uh, are to enhance the effectiveness, availability, and equity of services, um, to change, um, the, from a reimbursement model to a census-based model, um, to recognize that students at IEP are entitled to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. Um, and that the changes are intended to facilitate the exercise of this entitlement. Um, and then, um, the act also goes to the language, but the act also recognize that the census-based formula, um, which again is going to be based on a per-person grant, okay, per student grant. Let's go back to my example of $2,000 per student. That in some cases, for some SUs, we have a very high level of students who need additional support. There might need to be more funding, additional funding for the school districts. Um, and so the act said, we don't know how to address that today. So what the act did is said, it said, we need to look into that part further. So while we're moving to a census grant and a sense of great amount would be the same for every student, we might need a supplemental amount per student, certain SUs. And, um, when Tammy comes on to talk about, um, what she's done, part of that work she's done is recommending how to address that supplemental payment. I won't go into that right now, but just know that that's the conversation that's at there. Um, in terms of the bill, again, let's go over to, um, the census based advisory group. Uh, that was created by this bill. Um, wait down here. Here we go. Um, okay. So the book created this, uh, census based funding advisory group. Um, and it's job is to, uh, make recommendations on the implementation of the census based model funding. Um, membership were the V's. Uh, uh, typical, uh, players here to see. Um, and yeah, secretary. Um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Um, um, yeah. Sorry. Yes. You've got a teacher, a teacher. You got a member selected By the Vermont legal aid disability law project. Uh, it got a member who is a family member of guardian and sister of a person being special education services and the commissioner of. Department of mental health. Um, and then one member represents approved in parents schools. Uh, to a ministry of course, especially as an Asian teacher. So that's the group. We will be hearing from the chair of that group this afternoon, Megan Roy will be coming in. Yep. So they're advising, they're giving them a number of reports over a number of years to help advise you as to how this is going. Okay, I'm gonna stop in the below there and I'm gonna screen share with you a different thing, which is the timeline. Let me just see if there are any questions at the moment. Okay, go ahead, Joe. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna close that and see if I can find work. I wanna find, actually, let's go back, Tracy. Oh, Jesse, sorry. And you take over if you would and put up that other document which was called the Sped Timeline for me, thank you. Yeah, with me here just for a moment. And I would encourage folks if it is easier rather than watching it on Zoom that you can pull it up on our webpage under today's date. Okay, so this, okay. So this, it's kind of small. Can people see this? I'm gonna give folks a minute to just pull it up. But at any rate, I think it's just gonna show the flow. Yeah, I'm hoping, yeah. Okay, well, I'm hoping people can see it. What's going on? I apologize, I'm just trying to see if I can make it any bigger here. That's a little bit better. That's better, that's better. Thanks, Jesse. Thanks, okay. So, and then scroll down just a little bit, Jesse. So we get the very bar, bar. I'm not able to scroll on this view only. That's as hard. Okay, so first of all, you'll see this is version eight of this timeline. And it tells you how many times we've changed the date to roll out this change. This is the change in funding. So the box, the box in the middle here tells you that for fiscal year 19, 20, 21 and 22, we're on the reimbursant model. We're not switching until fiscal year 23, okay? And then in the first year of census-based funding, it actually takes five years, five years, one, two, three, four, five until fiscal year 27 to fully phase it in. I won't go through why, this is where it gets really, really complicated. But basically what's happening is we have to make adjustments over time to get all supervisory unions using the same formula for their grant. And so it takes five years, you have one year of moving to grant funding, but it takes four more years to actually have everybody operating the same way. So I can explain that further if you want me to, but just to say it's a five-year phase in, but from fiscal year 23 on, we are under the new census grant funding model. And the way that they're gonna be experiencing it is that some districts are going to see that grant go up and some are gonna see that go down. So it's a way of not hitting everybody, the people that would lose all at once. Yeah, just for briefly on that, what happens in the first year of fiscal year 23 is it's not really a census-based grant that year. What it does is it gives you basically what they got the year before from reimbursement, but as a grant. So rather than a reimbursement, they're getting the money in a grant form, but the same money they got basically the year before. And then what that does is they're all getting different amounts because they all have different amounts of reimbursement and they all have different number of students. So in order to compute the per student amount of grant, you would take the grant money an SU got in 23 and divide by their student count. And every SU would do that. That's gonna come up to a different figure, figure per student for all of the SUs because they're gonna have a different denominator and different numerator. But you wanna get to a uniform amount per student eventually. So what happens is for fiscal 23, fiscal 27, that amount for each SU is moving toward a common number for all SUs. So they're gradually moving up or down until they get to fiscal 27. And then the amount per student is the same for all SUs. So that's a summary of that process. If you look up further above here, you've got, first of all, the reports of the advisory groups. You have a report back in 19. You have a report in, second report in 20 on January 15th. That's the report coming in now. You have a third report coming in 21. You have a fourth report coming in 22. So you have four reports for the advisory group telling you how it's going. And you have above here, you have the support of the operating rules to implement the census-based mall. And you had the waiting report. So the waiting report was also commissioned in Act 173 and it was delivered in 2019. And now, of course, you're dealing with that report now. That's what's to do with it. Down here below, you've got funding for AOE. So AOE was given funding to support SUs for three years in changing this delivery mall. And AOE was also given three staff to help out in this area of permanent staff members. The very bottom line that you're seeing over here very well is a whole different topic. There was also part of Act 173, so I'll mention it, which is independent schools. So independent schools under Act 173, starting at fiscal year 24, are going to be required if they take public funds to also accept students on the IEP. So that's beginning in 24 and that's what this line, you can't see very well, is doing. And just to clarify in terms of accept students on IEPs, is that for all categories of special ed? I don't think it was for all categories. No, it's, that's a whole very complicated topic in itself. But in summary, basically, if the IEP team says that the appropriate placement for the student is with improved independent school and that school accepts students of public tuition, then that school has to take that student and has to deliver a reset category of special education. There are 13 or so categories of special education. So that required to be delivering all of them, but if a student is placed with that school, they have to deliver what that student needs. And that was gonna be it for what I was about to say. So maybe we can come on a document and answer questions. Representative James. Thanks. So just to clarify about the approved independent schools and make sure I'm understanding it. If the IEP team, if a student wants to go to the Long Trail School, that's near to me. And the IEP team decides that Long Trail would be a great fit for that student. And that student needs a particular category of special ed. Long Trail, if they're gonna accept that tuition, the tuitioning money would also have to say, okay, we will provide the services you need in that category. Yeah. Okay. Representative Austin is asking, how does the waiting study intersect with the census model? So great question. So I mentioned earlier that one kind of piece that was left out there was, should certain STUs get more intensive grant funding? So let's go back and assume that the intensive grant funding is 3,000 per student. Okay. The report that UVM did said, that's fine, but certain SUs that have a lot of students that need support, mainly more funding because it just needs more infrastructure support to support all of the students. So rather than 3,000, maybe it should be 2,500 for an extra 500 bucks per student for that school, SU, for example. That question was left out there, but I was picked up as part of the waiting study report. Tammy Colby gave a few options. One option was to basically have a proxy for those students or those SUs to say, if your level of students coming from low income families is high enough, then that's a good proxy for students who need additional support. Therefore, you can grant them more funding. So that's one way of doing it. The other way she said is you could apply the waiting factors that they recommended. They had different models for waiting factors. And one of the models would take the waiting factors and have the weights applied to the census grant to give more money for SUs with students with certain characteristics. So there are a couple of different ways of approaching that question, either by a digital grant funding or through weights. And that's still an open question. It hasn't been resolved yet. So it hasn't been resolved yet whether you even want to give more money. So A, should there be some mental grants in the first place or money? And if so, how? Either through grants or through weights. So that's all a question that's still out there to be answered. And it's also before the census-based funding group, I believe. I think it is. I think they'll have a view on it at least. And these suggestions that Tammy Colby made were made prior to the waiting study that looked at changing the weights, correct? Well, she did two things, I think. In the funding report that looked at Act 173, she talked about supplemental funding for these SUs that have a higher level of students who need support. And then in the weight study, she modeled the weights, different ways, to deal with the weights as opposed to grant funding. So she approached it in both reports. We'll have Tammy in to talk about her work on census-based funding and how it relates to this bill. We'll have another conversation with her that's focused on her recommended changes in weights. So don't get, don't feel totally overwhelmed as we do that. Other questions? Representative Conlon? Yeah, thanks, Jim. Thanks very much for a nice, clear, basic understanding of this. It was very helpful. I'm trying to remember, did we have a term for the funding that is sort of in place during the interim period between reimbursement and census-based? I thought we had a term we were using. No, I mean, it basically goes from reimbursement. Well, as I said, it goes from reimbursement to grant funding to census-based funding. So I say that because that first transitional year after the last year of reimbursement goes into a grant that is the same amount that you got last year. Yeah, I thought we had a name for that. I just, I couldn't remember. Thank you. No, if you wanna come up with one, we can brainstorm. Grant funding sounds fine, thank you. Yeah, our committee could really go down that rabbit hole, couldn't it, trying to come up with a name for that. Representative Austin? I'm just thinking with Act 46 with the most recent mergers and the timeline, looking at the timeline, I'm thinking that the timeline would work out because it would take about three years, I'm assuming, for these mergers to just develop relationships and working relationships and an infrastructure so that when the census model is implemented, it might be, it seems like all these things are kind of coming together to be primed for the census model for really looking at struggling students outside of a special ed model. Does that make sense in terms of what Dr. Levinson was saying about, to do what we wanna do, we need much more regional, a much more regional approach. So I'm just wondering, I just see Act 46 of these mergers being beneficial to being able to provide students with more resources and opportunities. I don't think that's a question for me. I would just remind folks that special ed is actually coordinated at the SU level so that if you were a small school, it's still coordinated at the SU level. So in a way, it's already working like a merged district. And actually, I think Nate Levinson is talking about the fact that even our merged districts are still small for the kind of expertise he thinks we need to bring in. Thank you. Right, the special ed was moved to the SU level, I think around 2011 or 2012, rather than individually. There was a lot of pushback at the time. Professor, that's one thing. I'm sorry, with the census-based model, as I say, it's census-based, so it's based upon money per student, but there is still extraordinary reimbursement. So I mentioned before that under the reimbursement model we have today, if a student costs over 50,000, there's 90% reimbursement. That still exists under the census-based model because there's a feeling that if a student's way expensive, census-based planning won't be enough, funding won't be enough. So with census-based funding, the reimbursement now is if a student costs over $60,000, then there's a 95% reimbursement by the state. So that piece is still there. So it's still a small piece of reimbursement living with the census-based model. Special Ed can include students that are minimally expensive and then there are students that can be very expensive. We have students that are in specialized schools, we have students in hospitals. There are a variety of different IEP plans that require some pretty expensive support to allow them to receive an education. And so that's viewed more, it's not a district issue, it's really a statewide issue. It just happens to be in your particular district. So the state takes it on, that this is a child that belongs to all of us. Other questions? All right, we have, is there more, is there more that you wanted to present on 173, Jim? Yeah, I think so. Okay, we are gonna hear from Tammy Colby, she'll be in here at 1130. Just anything anybody wants to bring up at this point in relation to this, I'm hoping tomorrow, or excuse me, next week, we will have a bill that Sarita has introduced, H101, which starts to look at a literacy model that is drawn from 173. So that'll sort of be a bill that we'll start with to look at moving forward with COVID related recovery and 173, but responses to what Dr. Levinson had said. Does that have interest? Oh, representative Toof. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, this doesn't have to do with it. I just wanted to remind you, chair, that I have to hop off in about 35 minutes because we have our county delegation meeting. Yes, thank you. I'll start whenever I see Tammy, and I don't see her in here yet. So we can just go on break for a few minutes, or if she comes in early, we'll be ready to go. Representative Williams. In reference to the previous conversations we were having, a non-educator and more of on the administrator type side, I really like what I've heard. My biggest concern would be the manpower, the educators coming to Vermont to support this program. I remember way back when I was a student and we were starting then to get a pair of educators and they all had degrees and they changed that because they weren't enough with degrees willing to come in for the pay. So it all kind of got reverted and now we're asking more educated people to come in. Are we gonna have those numbers? That's a very good question. And I would, I think that would be a really good question for the agency. And Ted Fisher, maybe you could help us with that. I think it's also a really good question for the school boards when we get them in. So please do hold that question. There is, I believe there is gonna be a proposal on teacher licensing that I'm hearing about, which will allow reciprocity of licensing. So if someone is holding an educator license in one state that they don't have to go through a lengthy process to be re-certified here. Well, I did hear him say that we need to educate within. Don't look for outside, create a program here for that. That sounds like a pretty large task. Yeah, I've seen some amazing pair of educators go on and get their teaching degrees and it was a great beginning. Good. Yeah, Representative Austin. Just real quickly, the thing that really stood out for me was him talking about the five different systems and belief systems and philosophies and changing of culture that need to work simultaneously in order for things to change. And if we do two or three of these, it's just gonna be very expensive and it's not gonna be the outcome that we want. And I don't have any idea how that happens, but I'd love to hear someone, someone knows how that happens, how you get five different systems and a culture to slowly change so that the outcomes are more, that more of our kids are getting the skills they need. That's all. Thank you. So we're just gonna be introducing a few of our newer folks here. So we have some new members, Representative Williams. Can you introduce yourself? Sure, I'm Terry Williams. I live in Granby. I represent Essex Caledonia. My history with education as I was an administrator at Concord schools for four years. After that, I owned a business that employed a lot of these kids and I've been a coach, an athletic director. What sport did you coach? Elementary basketball. Excellent. Oh, wow. Excellent. That sounds wonderful. My most devastating moment was when hairspray came into the locker room at the elementary level. Oh no. And Representative Harrison. Good morning, Representative Harrison, Cavendish Weathersfield. Nice to meet you Representative. Thank you. And I don't know if Representative Brown is back. If he is, you're on mute. Hello, Representative Jana Brown, representing Chittenden One, which is the town of Richmond. And your background and how you ended up on the committee. That's right. So I've spent the last seven years working for a nonprofit that does children's literacy programming across Vermont and New Hampshire. So working in partnership with schools and libraries. And I don't think we'll have Representative Erin Brady. She is a social studies teacher and she is actually teaching. This is her last week. So she's been sort of going in and out between being a legislator and being a teacher. I think we can all appreciate it and thank her for her service. And if I can, I'll add why I was put on the committee I've been told because I add an outside perspective since I don't have an education background. Except that you went to school. Great. So welcome. Jump in and share my screen. Would that be sort of a... That'd be great. Before I do that, I know any of you. I just met some of you. Before I jump into the presentation, maybe just quickly I could introduce myself to some of the new members. I'm Tammy Colby. I'm an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Vermont. My background is in actually, in having worked in state budget offices and working in state legislators, I actually worked for several governors on both sides of the aisle before becoming an academic. And then my academic sort of research and teaching interests are really grounded in this idea of how do we use resources in education and strategic ways to promote our goals. And so with that, I think a lot about resource allocation by districts and schools, but I also do a lot of work around school finance and funding. And so I know a number of you who have been on the committee before know me for some of the work I've already done in Vermont in the last few years. I was the primary author of the report that predated Act 173, the study of special education in the state. And maybe I have some notoriety also now for having been the primary author of the waiting study report, which I suspect we might be talking about again some other time. I think we probably will be. The committee just, where we've been so far, the committee has just heard from Nate Levinson on his part, and Jim Demeray has gone through some of the aspects of Act 173. So now we are delighted to welcome you. And related to my talk this morning and sort of in your request, this summer I spent time working with the National Conference for State Legislators. I think I mentioned that is in my presentation, but I also just wanna highlight that, that I spent time this summer working with NCSL on these exact issues around thinking about how do state legislators and legislatures respond sort of strategically with education dollars and education resources in the wake of COVID. And so it's that package of background and expertise that I bring to sort of my remarks today. So I'm gonna share my screen now, or at least we all hope I will. Let's see, make sure I've got it. It's interesting, one minute. I have a new computer and it wants me to give permission to Zoom. Apologize for now. I think you've been made a co-host, so you should be. Yeah, it's, one minute. And if, so you can also always send it to Jessie and she can take care of it. She has it. Okay. And may just let me know if you'd like me to share. Yeah, it's asking the issue is, is I have a new operating system and it's asking me to quit Zoom. So if you could, I apologize for that. I didn't realize that would be an issue. Jessie, if you wouldn't mind sharing, that would be really helpful. Thank you for doing that. Not a problem. I do just wanna note in your last email where you sent me the updated version, I didn't see that attached. So whatever update you made won't reflect on. That's fine, that's fine. So as Jessie brings it up, by way of background for today's, for my one I wanna talk about today is three considerations that I'd like to suggest to the legislature as they sort of wrestle with these issues that we're all facing around learning loss and also sort of what do we do on the education funding front? Just if you can move the slide down. And my three considerations, which I'm gonna talk about in a moment are really grounded in what we know about what practitioners in the field are gonna need to successfully respond to a broad range of student needs, including learning loss, right? We have to acknowledge that there are gonna be a bunch of different kinds of things that we're gonna ever respond to. But in the wake of COVID-19, particularly practitioners in the field are gonna need to one, develop context-specific and even student-specific responses to COVID related learning loss, right? So we're gonna have to deal with systems and individuals. Two, they're really going to need to build a turbo charge if you think about exist their capacity of their existing programs and practices to respond to student need. And three, they're gonna need to maximize the impact of existing and new funding by strategically out aligning what they have in terms of existing funding but also new funding with critical needs. And with those three sort of three items as background, I offer these three considerations to the committee and policymakers generally in Vermont. The first one is we need to think carefully about what we can do in this moment to leverage the flexibility and how existing federal and state special education funds can be used to serve all students. That's the first consideration. And I'll go into the details of each of these considerations in just a minute but I'd like to preview what are the three considerations up front? Two, we need to prioritize and strengthen our existing systems and programs to provide supports to students. And three, we need to think about targeting any new resources to providing support in locations and for students who are most in need. Okay, so three considerations. Jesse, if you could flip the slide. So the first one is around leveraging flexibility and how existing funds are used. Are both federal and state in particular a special education funding have actually inherent in the regulations and the guidance have a lot of flexibility in how those dollars could be used. In fact, that was one of the underlying premises for Act 173. And one of the findings in the Act 173 study was that the existing reimbursement model really restricted how funds could be to allowable purposes and these restrictions around allowable use were creating silos and barriers to flexibly serving and developing multi-tiered systems of support in schools and districts. And it's those multi-tiered systems of support that we are desperately going to need in order to respond to learning loss as well as to a range of other kinds of student needs in the wake of COVID. And so the first key consideration here is we need to move forward with implementing Act 173. This is the moment is now, the flexibility is desperately needed in the field going forward in order to strengthen MTSS and respond to COVID-19. The second thing is related to moving Act 173 forward and that is to ensure the guidance promulgated by AOE for allowable use in federal and state special education dollars is consistent with the broadest intent in federal law and state law, right? There's a continuum here of how, right? Our guidance in the state can be more or less restricted with regard to how it is that local school districts are able to use both federal and state dollars for special education. And one of the key underlying premises of 173 is to open up that flexibility to build strong tiered systems of support for students with and without disabilities. That does not mean in any way, shape or form that we should be backing away from serving students with disabilities but also recognizing that at the same time, particularly with COVID related learning loss that some of the needs of non-disabled students around learning loss are going to be very similar to those needs of students with learning needs of students with disabilities. And we wanna build flexible systems that where we're able to serve all students in our tiered systems of support without having to create siloed programs that are special education, general education, et cetera. And so we wanna make sure that the regulations, the guidance that's ultimately promulgated for 173 is as broad as possible with regard to the allowable uses. And one of the things that has been sort of a hiccup in doing that has been this understanding around what counts for maintenance of financial support for federal dollars. And I attached to the end of this presentation a policy brief that I worked on with NCSL and I can provide additional guidance on that as well where the feds are actually allow federal dollars to be used quite broadly and we should maximize that. The third thing that we can do in this moment is we can really encourage school districts, supervisory union schools to use their federal IDA funding as a source of support for early intervening services for non-disabled and disabled students. We know that many districts underspend this pot of money called CIS dollars. We need to maximize our use of those federal dollars for early intervening services and those early intervening services benefit all students, not just students with disabilities or without disabilities. They also help strengthen our tier one in our multi-tiered systems of support. And right now, if we think about the kind of interventions and the kind of responses we're going to need to learning loss that is COVID related, those early intervening services are exactly what school districts are going to be really trying to put in place. And so we need to really encourage districts to maximize to the extent possible the use of these CEIS dollars. Could you just animate that the CEIS? Those are the early intervening services dollars that are the comprehensive early intervening services dollars that are set aside in IDA Part B funding federal funding, right? And I can give you more details on that. Try to stay with my 15 minutes. The fourth thing we can do is we can really start to encourage districts and schools and provide them with the technical support they need to do that to coordinate and consolidate criteria for eligibility and funds across federal and state programs. This is known as blending and braiding funding. It's being done nationally. And rather than creating siloed programs again that are tied to certain funding sources which is oftentimes the case. The idea is that we blend and we braid funds within schools so that we can provide comprehensive services without having to identify a student as this kind of student or this right or eligible for this program. The funds are commingled, they're tracked appropriately for federal law but they're blended and they're braided in ways that allow us again to respond in a systemic comprehensive way to student needs. And if we think about what schools and practitioners in particular are going to face here in the next nine to 12 months is exactly that. Needing the flexibility to develop systems of support respond to individual student needs without having to categorize students for particular programs, right? We wanna build holistic systems of support in schools and districts. Could you just say, do you know if the CEIS funds flow through the agency of education? Yes, they do. Yep. They do, okay. Yep, they do. Jesse, next slide please. The second consideration is to prioritize and strengthen existing systems and programs. And I think this suggestion certainly comes out of my experience working with legislators, working in governor's offices is that particularly in moments like this the sometimes we want to respond with new programs and new things and new initiatives, right? In response to crises like this, when in fact what is makes better sense, right? Is to really turbocharge our existing infrastructure both with resources, but also the technical assistance it needs to do an even better job or to adapt to the current circumstances. And so what we wanna do in this moment our second key consideration is to prioritize and strengthen existing systems and programs to provide supports to students. And there are two big systems or programs that are already in most districts and schools in the state, one is required, the other is optional where we can really leverage and harness existing systems. And the first one is our multi-tiered systems of support, which are in fact intended and designed for moments exactly like this, right? Where we provide tiered interventions according to student need or groups of student need. These systems of support right now are one of the most important investments we should be making, right? In developing robust tiered systems of interventions and supports for students as they interact with school come back to school, we identify learning loss we identify other kinds of needs. And so in this moment is going to be incredibly important that we reinforce the importance of these systems back to school districts and back to the flexibility and funding we allow districts to leverage existing funds in a way that they can actually build the scaffolded system and turbocharge that system to respond to what is gonna be emerging and increasing student need. The second we know that MTSS in this state has a variety of interpretations. It sure does. They're from Supervisor Union School District. So there are some that have a fairly sophisticated way of addressing this and some that perhaps not. Some don't. And so in systems where we have mature in districts or Supervisor Unions where we have mature MTSS systems, right? Then the task is to really help them have the flexibility and funding to turbocharge their existing system in supervisory unions that have less robust systems or are more nascent and emerging systems. Then the task is two-fold. One, to help them really to first of all reinforce the importance of this as the, right as the response mechanism to these needs and two, then help them build and strengthen those systems and then three, making sure that our funding models are aligned with the flexibility that those tiered systems of support are going to need to operate effectively. So you're right, there's variability here and that's why I phrase this carefully, Kate, which is we need to reinforce the importance of this and in places where these systems are more nascent, emerging or not as strong, they've gotta be strengthened. And some of that has nothing to do with money. Some of that is just technical assistance capacity and maybe some good old fashioned arm wrangling, right? Like this, but the MTSS systems and you'll hear more about this from Megan Rye this afternoon are really well positioned to be the first line of defense against some of the key student-specific issues that are gonna be emerging here. They already are emerging and will continue to emerge. The second thing is we also have to recognize that in addition to MTSS that we're going to need to leverage and expand existing programs to provide supplemental academic services through extended learning opportunities, right? That are either extended learning opportunities over the summer or after school. And there's a really good body of research emerging on tutoring programs but that are individualized also group tutoring programs. And these are, right? So thinking about what these programs are gonna look like and building the capacity of these programs for summer and for, right? Reinforcement and academic extension in the after school settings, right? And we already know we can harness the existing capacity of our federally funded 21C or 21st Century Community Center Program which in every given year has more applications for federal funding than we have available. There's a demand, right? And we have infrastructure around those programs again rather than starting to build a whole new set of programs let's leverage the existing capacity in our summer programs and our after school programs to provide those more targeted academic services and supports we're gonna need in addition to what students are receiving during the school day as a part of school districts multi-tiered systems of support. Next slide. And there's this question of, well, if there's new money, right? What do we do about that? And there may be new federal money and the state may also put some new money and so whenever we have new money we have to think really carefully about that and we can think about dividing it equally everybody gets the same or we can think about targeting and one of the things we know from in the wake of the 2008 recession is that targeting was a really effective practice. So rather than distributing dollars equally we wanna target new resources to providing support in locations and for students who are most in need, right? So we wanna triage any new dollars that are coming in to target them at places and students who are most at risk who have been most affected and who are going to have, right? The largest in this case, largest learning loss had been most effective but in doing that, right? We're going to have to think about what are the distribution mechanisms? Like what are the metrics that we're gonna use to say who's most effective? How do we make those decisions? And then how do we wait or make decisions about distributing dollars unequally but equitably because not equal is not always fair, right? And so if we say we wanna target dollars at those most needs, we gotta figure out how are we going to do that in a way that we're getting dollars not just in the right hands but the right amount of dollars in the right hands. The other thing that was in the updated slides and this is, I updated my slides in some of these, there's a second consideration here too and that is what do you do with one-time money, right? So the risk is when you get one-time money, we wanna be thinking about one-time investments that build capacity or deal with specific interventions such as a summer program, right? We wanna think really hard about how we use one-time money and not build into our system long-term liability that we can't shore up with recurring dollars later on, right? So if we get one-time money, we wanna invest it in one-time kind of investments, right? Rather than building it into our budget base. So if we create, we put a bunch of interventionists, we hire a bunch of staff, when that one-time money goes away, what are we gonna do, right? Are we gonna continue to pay for those staff? Maybe, maybe that makes sense. But oftentimes it doesn't. And so I'm always, I'm always sort of, I always wanna be sort of cautious when we get one-time money, particularly in this case, when we maybe get federal one-time money, that we're thinking really strategically about how do we use those dollars strategically, right? For one-time investments that really move the needle on important things but don't necessarily create longer-term cost liabilities that we can't sustain with operating budgets going forward. Okay. So those are my three big considerations, right? Open up and maintain, right? Prior, focus on flexibility, maximizing flexibility and exist how we can use existing funds. Two, prioritize and strengthen our existing systems. And three, where we have new money, let's target those resources and think carefully about one-time dollars. So three big considerations, grounded in what the needs will be from practitioners. And at the end of this presentation, if you can move one slide down for me, are links to the two policy briefs that I was involved in writing. This summer, one, I was a co-author on the other one I contributed to. One is on how do we think about maximizing flexibility and we, in using our federal and state special education dollars. And the other one is a brief on how do we think about blending and braiding dollars across multiple federal and state sources so that we open up more flexibility on how dollars can be used. So that's my presentation. So I like to open it up for questions and comments. And Jesse, I think you can take it down. Great, thanks. That's helpful. I try to think in three. It's like, what are three big ideas we can start to work with? And hopefully that provides a good framework. I like to think in terms of policy frameworks, like this is a framework that the committee can start to use as questions and concerns come up. So I know that one of the things that I had sort of been planning on, which as we know about plans, that these are gonna be similar to the CRF funds that coming in that we would actually be in charge of appropriating, but these are the ESSER funds that actually do not involve the legislature. However, I can't remember if ESSER funds are coming related to Title I. Are you, do you know if that's happening or is? I don't know the answer to that question. I think I heard the allocation method of the ESSER funds is still based on Title I. That's correct. I just don't know how they're flowing, right? Is that the question that you were asking, or are you talking about the allocation? I was how it was flowing. And Ted, I think we're eventually gonna get an update from your shop. Yeah, I think that's a question for AOE's CFO, who's very knowledgeable on this and can provide sort of some of those down in the weeds details. My goal today was to be a little bit more up here with regard to like, here's some big ideas that can help guide conversation and consideration as things like that come up. And you have been in touch with Nate Levinson as well, I believe, correct? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So good. It's a small community. Yeah. Other questions, Representative Conlon? Right back on that topic of the ESSER money, which is one-time dollars. Could you talk a little bit more specifically about some ideas for using that money to- Sure, sure. And I think- One-time costs. Sure. I'm gonna couch this with my first bullet though, which is the decisions that we ultimately make are gonna need to be context specific, right? So every school, like the conditions in every school district are gonna look a little different. The needs of students are gonna look a little different. And so I wanna be careful about one size fits all, but I think we can start to think about what might be some of these kinds of investments that we know could pay off. One is summer programs, right? So taking some of those ESSER dollars and putting them into summer programs for this summer probably makes a lot of sense, particularly given the clock on some of those funds, right? You've got a spending timeline. And so investing some of those dollars in summer programs probably makes a lot of sense. The same kind of thing with targeted academic interventions and support. Matt Kraft, a colleague of mine out of Brown University has been doing a lot of work on tutoring programs and seeing a lot of success with that individualized and small group. So investing in tutoring programs, right? That could be district specific, but also maybe they could transcend district boundaries where we're grouping students more broadly. That's another option. I'm always real careful about thinking in terms of using... So those are two on one side. Let me flip to the other side. Things to be cautious about. We wanna be real cautious about investments, like I said, that create longer term cost liabilities and budgets that we may not be able to maintain. And so staff is always tricky, right? And so if you're thinking about tutoring, this might be an opportunity to create statewide or district tutoring programs that are targeted and finite in duration, right? But again, back to my second bullet, which is let's point those dollars to existing programs rather than creating new. So let's use our existing vehicle such as our extended learning programs already, right? Who are already on the ground, have infrastructure where we could turbo charge their capacity potentially, Representative Collin, right? To provide tutoring, right? And it's an influx of one-time money where they provide this. I think, again, being real careful with using one-time money or even any money at this point to start new programs or new... First of all, we need to move too quickly. And second of all, it creates more administrative costs. And third, it creates a potential to this longer-term cost burden. And so that's why I have that second consideration, which is even with one-time money, let's think about how can we invest that in a way where we're turbocharging existing, highly effective programs or using it to improve the effectiveness of existing programs out there. Does that help represent income? We did put together an after-school work group. I think we're gonna be hearing from them. We just, everything happened so late and that was last minute. So I think we'll be hearing from them in the spring. I would say on the after-school though, and this is in my slides, but I do want, and I've done a lot of work on after-school programs too. And I don't wanna slight after-school programs that are not affiliated with public schools. So let me be clear about that. However, in this moment with the challenged public schools and the responsibility that's put on public schools with regard to learning loss, I would strongly suggest that the investments in the priority be placed on extended learning opportunities that are connected to public schools that are connected to these multi-tiered systems of support so that we don't end up, again, fracturing efforts or duplicating efforts, right? So school districts and schools, so the recovery plans are gonna be really on deck to coordinate and figure out the nuances of all of these pieces and parts. And to the extent that we start bringing in other entities, it just makes it makes it harder. And we run the risk of duplicating administrative costs and bureaucracy and things along those lines. So that would be the one thing I would say on that. And again, not sliding expanded learning opportunities that are not affiliated with public schools, but in this moment where time matters a lot, right? And we wanna think really carefully about investing scarce dollars. I mean, dollars are always scarce, but they're really scarce right now. We gotta be really sharp and think carefully about efficiencies, both in terms of return and not generating more costs, but also how do we get dollars out and results quickly, right? Without duplicating and things along that. We just don't have a lot, we don't have bandwidth for that. We don't have the resources and we don't have the time. Thank you. President Austin, do I see your hand up? I just wanna say it's noon, so it's noon. Why don't we, if everybody's okay, we'll allow an additional 10 minutes. Florida doesn't start. I don't know if people have other things that they need to do, but I'm happy to take us till 12, 10, and then we cut out. Is that okay? My time is yours, so whatever it looks like. Representative Austin. Yes, I'm just assuming that, I mean, it seems everybody's assuming that there's been learning loss because of remote instruction, but they may have been learning gained in terms of remote instruction. And I'm wondering if, you know, you don't need to answer the question now, but I'd be very curious about looking, someone must be using this as an opportunity to look at, you know, how we can continue to use remote learning to advance instruction. And I'm thinking after school and tutoring, I mean, you know, we could be meeting a lot of kids' needs if we could do it remotely. So you don't need to answer that now, but I'm curious about hearing about that. Yes, yeah, right. So, you know, crisis can be the mother of innovation, right? And so I think we're learning a lot about how to leverage online learning. And this goes to my third slide around targeting. You know, not all kids have been affected in the same way, right? For some kids, for example, I was talking to some educators at an alternative school for students who have socio-emotional issues. And this has been terrific because going to school, the physical act of going to school is extremely hard. And this has been amazing for them. There are other students we know that don't have broadband access, or we haven't been able to even get a headcount on, right? So that's where this idea of targeting is so important. And the targeting is going to have to be context specific because we have to recognize that these conditions are not just gonna vary student to student, they're gonna vary school to school district to district. Some districts live in areas that have been, I'm gonna just use broadband and as an example represent, access to broadband has been a more significant issue than other schools, right? Districts, we know that household wealth, right? Matters right now in this, right? In that families who have more resources have been able to invest their own resources. So this is where that idea of targeting, I mean, you're right on track, right? We have to think about how do we target programs, practices and resources, all three of those things to the students who need it most, which is why I am cautioning against these flat, if we have new dollars, right? Like just flat allocation because not everybody needs them in the same way. And also hopefully in sort of in the wake of this, we will have that moment where we can look back and say for whom was this a positive, right? And how do we reinforce them? So I think your thinking is right on track there. Others. So I'm sure that a lot of us are thinking, how do we put this into legislative action? And I will admit that I'm struggling on how we move this to legislative action. So this might be a conversation with Jim Demeray, our Ledge Council. And- Well, some of these things aren't legislative activities, right? Right. That's where this gets tricky, right? So I think, certainly your role of Representative Webb and this committee, I think that's a really good question, which is where do you fit in this conversation? I would strongly suggest that these considerations are considerations not just for the legislature, but for the agency of education, health and human service. Like these are the big ideas. And so I think by getting some common ground, like these are, here are guardrails. Like this is how we're starting to think about it, but then thinking strategically about on whom, what responsibilities fall is going to be really important. And I'm not sure all of these things are legislatable, right? That doesn't mean that as legislators in this committee with an important role it has in making policy and encouraging good practice, doesn't mean that you're not part of that conversation. It just may not be something that is handled in statute. Right. But there's a thing called session law. That's right. That's right. There is a thing called session law. There's also a thing called policy guidance and direction and collaborate, right? Like, and so the policy levers here are a little different than maybe in other situations. But I see this committee as being really important in that conversation. If for no other reason than defining what the guardrails are and say like these are the principle, like here are the key things that we should be using. As right across the board. Right. So we can direct the agency, we can direct the state board. Right. And say these are our priorities. And in terms of appropriations, we can write here, here's how we wanna think about that when the guidance is coming out on the Act 173 regs. Does it look like that, right? The question of do we push Act 173 out another year? That's something you can act on, right? You're like, there are things that are legislatable are things where I think this committee can play a really important role, but maybe not in the traditional sense of, you know, statute. Right. I was wondering, did I see your hand go up or were you just nodding along with me? You're muted. No, I was just nodding because I totally agree with you. There are different methods, different ways other than legislation. Which is why I bring the question into the committee for us to remember where our role is really important and where it is not. Where we can actually cause problems. But I hope that in my brief presentation that laying out these three big sort of goal posts or considerations can help start to frame. And there's lots of discussion, more discussion to be had under each one of these, but like that this can start to help frame this committee's thinking around that. And I'm happy to come back and talk more specifically about items, but I thought in this first 15, 20 minutes just trying to get a big, like how do we organize our thinking around all of this might be the most useful sort of point of entry into the conversation. Thank you. Jim, did you want to say anything? No. Thank you so much. Oh, of course. Of course. And I'm happy to answer questions. You know, just email me. I think every, if you don't have my email, I can share it with Jesse. I probably should have put it in the PowerPoint, but I'm always open to responding to questions and having conversations around things like this. So just let me know how I can support you all this session. All right. I see that it's 1207. Thank you, Tammy. Good to see you. Good to have you. And nice to meet some of the new members. I look forward to seeing you, I guess, maybe later this session on the waiting side. Yes, exactly. We've just had a bill presented to us. There's also a bill in the Senate. We're gonna need a time to actually have committee members understand the work that you did. I'm happy to always answer questions. Okay, great. Everyone, be well. It's good to see everyone. Thank you. Appreciate it. And with that, everybody enjoy your time off. We can go off YouTube.