 Okay, welcome everybody. May 7th, 2020, remote meeting of Senate education. The main purpose for today's hearing is to have hopefully a somewhat long detailed conversation with the Secretary of Ed about reopening plans. I might have mentioned before I was talking to some people in a couple of districts. They seem to think that May 8th, i.e. tomorrow was a big day for renewed guidance for schools. So that's my first question to the Secretary is, is tomorrow a day when AOE is going to come out with new extended rules or changed rules? And if so, can we get a preview of what those might be? But the main question goes to something we've talked about a number of times, which is will schools be opening? If so, when? Burlington announced yesterday that they're going to be running summer programs. Who was that? Was that? That was me testing my microphone. I got to figure it out. Okay. Good to hear you. So I'd be curious to know if AOE is going to be encouraging opening during the summer for summer offerings or if they plan on waiting until normal start time for school before they formally open things. I know others of you have had questions along these lines. So we have about 20, 25 minutes before the Secretary gets on. Any thoughts about what we should be asking? One, I mean, it's not just schools, but I know he's not going to do childcare, but one that came up yesterday and something I got is some of these people are asking for a month's notice before they reopen. How's the administration going to be on my concern? I feel like two weeks is a long time. But are we going to be looking, if we got to give a month's notice for childcare and a month's notice potentially for schools because they have similar concerns, are they taking that into consideration? A month seems like a long time for me to prepare for something. If that's what it takes to prepare, are we asking them to do too much, if you will? Yeah. So that's a good general question is what's the appropriate amount of lead time before you can make the decision? I imagine they want to wait as long as they can to see whether there are secondary spikes in our infection rates. I was also thinking about to what extent as the NEA and the teachers union been brought in on the discussions, our discussion last time touched on the possibility that reopening might wind up with additional numbers of classes for teachers, additional hours of classes for teachers. Those are not the kind of things you want to spring on the teachers union several weeks before they're supposed to go live. So to what extent have they been consulting with the teachers union and are they developing things in tandem? That would be a question I would want to ask. Other thoughts? Yeah, Ruth. So just a couple hours ago I had a conversation with one of the superintendents of my district and AOE issued a bunch of new guidance yesterday that's relevant to some of the questions that we were just talking about specifically summer. And so they did issue at least preliminary guidance on summer and I think that they are putting that out there as a possibility, although not specifically about how you would do summer, but that summer education specifically for some districts that get special funding. So we could ask him more details about that. And then I think one of the things that people are anticipating for tomorrow is guidance on how to deal with high school graduation ceremonies. So that was a big thing that a lot of parents are waiting for. And I think that's coming out tomorrow and they allude to that and the guidance they issued. I can email this to you all that my superintendent sent it to me. Okay. I think one of the things that is problematic for superintendents is they're kind of being overwhelmed with guidance. Like do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. And so I'm not sure and some of it's contradictory, you know. So it's not clear. But to Corey's point about the month in advance, I think for a big operation like a school district, they're going to need a lot of time to plan. And so springing it on them in the last minute would be difficult. It's hard for me to imagine, given the moves that the administration has already made toward you know, quote unquote reopening. It's hard for me to imagine that they're not planning for normal enrollment come August, September in person congregate instruction. I could be wrong about that, but all signs point that way. So I'm imagining if you're a superintendent, your your planning is directed in that fashion. If not, I would, I would think they should be issuing guidelines now saying don't plan for that because that's the natural flow of these decisions. Especially since they're talking about come June hotels being able to operate again, book guests, have guests in the in the building in restaurants with social distancing being practiced. But still we'd be somewhat back in a more normal environment. Other thoughts on where we should go with the secretary. Yeah, Debbie. Well, yeah, so that brings up. I mean, I'd be curious about what kinds of healthcare protocols they're going to require. They may, you know, may not know all of them in detail now because I know we're continuing to monitor how bad the situation is going to be. But yeah, are they going to require kids to wear masks? Are they going to make them spread out, you know, in their classrooms? Are they going to check temperatures, you know, when they come in, you know, what, you know, will they have the authority to kick the kid out even if their parents aren't keeping them home if they're showing symptoms or, you know, all these kinds of things. And how are they going to do, how are they going to make these decisions? Are they going to, you know, work with VDH? And is it going to be a statewide thing or are they going to leave it local school boards or the local, you know, superintendents, all those kinds of questions. Yeah, great, great question. I don't know if you guys have been walking around your neighborhoods the way I have for exercise, but, you know, every day there are more groups of kids playing in more yards, clearly without any social distancing going on, none of them in masks. So again, when we get to September and kids are back in school, it's hard to imagine masks being a real part of what students are doing. I don't know about teachers. I don't know about, you know, custodians and food service workers and bus drivers. But I assume those will be covered in whatever they put out for guidance. So why don't all those questions are great ones. Why don't I'll ask the Secretary of the General question, let him make a presentation and then the four of you who just offered those questions, feel free to to offer them to the Secretary. Andy? Jim had his hand up, too. Oh, I didn't see. Jim? Go ahead, Andy. I'll go after you. All right, thanks, Jim. I had a question about guidance about if what they're going to do if there's another flare up or if there's students that are teachers or staff that come down with COVID-19, it seems like it would be good learning what we learned from the closure before to have a plan ahead of time, like if this happens then, you know, we are going to close down or if this happens, this is what we're going to do. So people are prepared for that. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, my other committee is judiciary and I have had a something of a running dispute with acting Commissioner Baker about testing in the prisons and my feeling was our prison population compared to national standards is minuscule. So we now have about 1400 prisoners. I asked him, why aren't we testing them all? It seems to me you could get those tests at this point in time and within a three or four day period you could probably test the entire population and they are, you know, stubbornly in my opinion refusing to go down that road. So what they're doing is if somebody shows symptoms, then they test that person. If that person is negative, they conduct no further tests. If that person is positive, then they test the whole prison population. And so if you take that logic and you map it over onto public schools which, you know, have far more, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of more people involved, are they going to use the same logic? So to go back to the question that Andy asked, if two students come down with COVID-19, do you test the school? Everybody in the school, do you test everybody in their class? It's going to require in terms of testing kits and protocols and money a lot more preparation than we've seen so far. So that's the $64,000 question in my estimation is there are going to be COVID cases that crop up in schools. What do you do at that point? Yeah, Ruth. Well, based on what we heard last week from the commissioner of health, they would, they're implementing that sort of phased in increase of testing and that would include contact tracing and testing of anybody with whom someone has come in contact with. So if you had a second grade teacher test positive, presumably all of the students that she's been in touch with in contact with and all of the, you know, staff and everybody would also have to be tested on out 14 days prior to her testing positive. So that was my understanding of what the commissioner said. So if that's not what they're doing or what they plan to be doing, I'd be curious to know why. And it's a good question. What does contact tracing look like if you have, you know, 200 students in a building and the building is L shaped and the students are everywhere as are the teachers over a 14 day period. I would think contact tracing, if you were faithful to the concept would include testing everybody in the building. Yeah. But if we say, Oh, we're only going to test this other students in that teacher's class, then it seems like we're making a compromise that we should at least bring to consciousness. If that's the way it's going to be. So, okay, so that's plenty for us to explore there. So, go ahead, Jim. Yeah, I just want to go back to summer camps if they are going to open up. I'm hoping that there'd be a good possibility that maybe having a nurse on staff if these kids are going to summer camp. As we know, the kids are excited to go to camps and the parents would love to send them out seeing the adamant inside for like the last two months, two and a half months. I was wondering if they're going to plan on taking their temperatures and if they are sick, if there's a place that they could probably seclude them from the other kids until their parents come to pick them up or I'm sure something similar to this will happen at school when that opens, taking kids and segregating them from the other ones until the parents can come and pick them up. I was just wondering if there's going to be enough staff in the nurse's office and enough that they don't leave the children alone if they don't feel well, you know, there's got to be a separate room for some of these kids that they do come down with this. So I was just wondering if there's some kind of a plan there for the help with the nurse station and also for your checks. No, and that goes back to that question of more resources being necessary. We talked last time about mental health professionals, but it's a good point nurses are usually kind of one per operation, sometimes part-time, but if you're going to take temperatures, if you're going to isolate kids that are experiencing symptoms, then you have to have people who are going to be there all the hours of operation maybe more than one because I could see one person getting really stretched, especially if that person is going to be maintaining the correct procedures around the school. So okay, great question. So one of the two new committees met already and that was Debbie and Ruth's. You want to give us a quick anything of interest happen that we should know about? They asked us to, they presented us with was it five, four or five broad areas. And then they asked us to rank our preference, they want to form subgroups of two people each and they asked us to rank our preferences. One was education, one was economics, one was health care. Do you remember Ruth, what was the? I can't remember. I wrote them down. So I'm guessing Debbie put health care and Ruth put education number one? Yeah, well, you're right about me. Well, I put education number one, but I haven't actually sent the email with my number two. So I haven't figured that out, but we only 25 minutes, so we didn't really get two into it. It was just a preliminary. Yeah, I put education number two, but out of the people who are on the committee, I mean, there's so much to learn about health care and all the, you know, it's announced, I thought I actually think it would be the only ones. It would be better for us in a way if you were on the health care. Debbie and Ruth was on education, and then you could feed both streams back into us. Yeah, yeah. Oh, judiciary was one of them. Judiciary. Right. And Alice would be doing that. And Alice would be. Okay. One thing I brought up, and I'd be curious what the secretary's thinking about this too, is the whole school finance situation with the education fund where it's at. So, you know, I asked Richie about that, who's Senator Westman and Senator Campion, who are chairing this transition committee about whether or not the committee is going to be talking about that kind of level of things, the finance and budget stuff, or if that will be the money committee's talking about it. And I mean, their response was basically like, hey, if you have any good ideas, I'm sure they'd love to hear them. So I don't think we'll be talking about it directly, but I am curious what AOE's thoughts on it are. And I am trying to work out a few possible options. Yeah. Well, I mean, as you all know, there's a fight going on in Washington. The Democrats and the Senate and the House are fighting to loosen the restrictions on the Money in the Cares Act to allow us to backfill budget holes. And if they can get that in a trade, even if it's a painful trade-off, then that would help us immeasurably. Jane was talking this morning on another call about, she has this worry, Mitzi echoed the same thing. They have this worry that we will have to wind up sending back hundreds of millions of dollars because we can't spend them by December 31, according to these very narrow guidelines, which would be just be lunacy. But we'll see. I'm hopeful that the pain in the red states is growing as well because they're now experiencing their peaks and their economies are going to experience the exact same things that all of the rest of us have been dealing with for the last couple of months. So that may change the calculus. Okay. Our committee met as well. Oh, yeah. What happened there? They divided up by the Senate committees, basically. And then they had three subgroups, and each subgroup has the different Senate committees, plus a couple extras. And then, so the subcommittees are going to go out, and then some of our parents are going to be on the Education one, and I'm going to be doing the Transportation one, and things like that. So it sounds similar to what the other committee was doing. We're doing pre-K through 16. So any concerns, thoughts that we could do better in that? Just drop me a note. I'm meeting Tuesday morning with my group on that. Our first mini-group meeting is Tuesday morning. So we have a few days. Did everybody get, I sent the memo to Campion and Westman. You all got that? And you should feel free, Andy, to take that into that committee as well, or Corey. Corey's right now. You know, if it's helpful in one way or another. We're very impressed that you were first out of the gate and among the chairs to get your memo. Yeah, I just stayed at my desk for a couple of hours after our meeting. We have five minutes, so I just can't help but passing on this. So I read today in the paper that Donald Trump's valet tested positive for COVID-19. His personal valet. So he's obviously very freaked out. And so the White House has been saying for the last couple of days that they don't want to do increased testing. They're not saying anymore that they're going to do it in time. They're now saying they think it's a bad idea to do testing, as Trump said, because it makes us look bad. And yet in the White House, everybody who goes into the presence of Trump has to be tested, including his valet. So this proves, first of all, the false sense of security that the testing can give. Second of all, it proves this double standard where Trump is insisting on instant testing in a bubble around him and then saying other people aren't going to have it. Now here's the final layer of hypocrisy. Because of this, he's now insisting that everybody off-camera around him wear a mask. So in other words, you won't see people wearing masks on camera, but off-camera around him, people will not only be instant tested, they will be masked. As he's telling America, don't wear a mask and you don't need tests. So this is what we're dealing with at the highest reaches of the government. With that, I just want to again say, I think our administration by and large has done a fantastic job. I think the House and the Senate have worked hand in glove with them. If you look at our numbers, they're going exactly in the direction we would want them to go. I think the small turns of this bigot that we've been doing are about right. Again, we're blessed with a Republican governor who has no problem contravening the president on all of these things. Yeah, go ahead, Debbie. I was just going to comment that along those lines. I make jokes with my sister who lives in Savannah, Georgia near where we grew up, but it's really not funny to have the opposite, to have a governor that pays no attention to health indicators to continue the science and is just making these decisions based solely on the pressure that he's getting, political pressure, and trying to appeal to his base. Because I really fear for her health. Well, yeah, my mother-in-law in Sweden is 85, and in Sweden, they've been pursuing a different strategy. They have the highest rate of deaths. Their rate of deaths are about like ours, as opposed to the rest of Scandinavia, where they have much lower rates of death because they've locked down in more the German model. But at this point, the data's all out there. There was a really interesting graph that showed out of almost all the countries that are dealing with this, there are four, the US, the UK, Sweden, and Russia, that have a much different outcome where their spike is still going up or plateauing. It's not coming down. And you start to wonder to what extent this is an unexpressed strategy at the national level. I know for the first few months in England, they were pursuing a herd immunity strategy without copying to it. And Sweden, similarly, they won't admit that's what they're doing. It sounds to me more and more like the administration here is moving toward admitting that that's what they're doing, that everybody has to be a warrior for the economy and take more risk. So, you know, all the way of saying that this is not over for us. And the decisions will get harder as we leave unanimity about what to do. Well, it's not really going to be completely ever until there's a vaccine, right? Yeah. And even then, you wonder like if it mutates to the point where the vaccine can't deal with it. Yeah, I was thinking back to like, you know, the polio and, you know, I can remember, you know, like my grandparents telling me stories about how revered, you know, Jonas Salk was because he came up with the vaccine and because everybody just was, you know, there was always fear, you know, the fear until until that was a possibility. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I remember my mother telling me about she went swimming with some friends in a swimming hole when she was little and her mother came and got her and was furious because in their area it was supposed to be a place where you could catch smallpox. And so she was punished really harshly out of this incredible fear that she'd catch it. So, Jeannie, any word from Secretary French yet? Not yet. He has a couple minutes. I know that he was in another meeting, so. I see. Oh, here he is. I'm admitting him now. Perfect. Welcome, Secretary French. You're muted. There we go. How are you, sir? Good. How are you? I'm good. Thank you for joining us. Much appreciate it. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the agenda, but you're mostly the only thing on the agenda. And that's because we're hoping to have a somewhat longer thoughtful conversation with you about what, in your opinion at this point, the opening of schools might look like, what a timeline might look like, and then all the attendant questions on that about testing, you know, whether the union has been brought in on those consultations, whole host of questions. So why don't we just start with you speaking about whatever you like along those lines, and then we'll, when you're done, we'll ask questions as we see the name. Sounds good. Good afternoon, and French Secretary of Education. I think I'll start with sort of a chronological approach to this topic. I'm sorry, but you're a little hard to hear, Jerry, or other people having. So it's a little faint, but yeah, the volume's not very high. Something. Is that better? That's better. Yes. Okay, there we go. So Dan French Secretary of Education, I thought I'd perhaps start this on a chronological basis a little bit, because it's going to get into complex interrelated sort of decision making. Our first thinking on this, and I would say the approach to COVID-19 from an educational perspective and perhaps most areas is, I think fair to say it's gone through a series of transitions. And we're certainly one of the big ones we're about to embark upon is closing out the school year. And that milestone is really centered around tomorrow. There's a deadline the governor had given me originally of May 8th to produce guidance on end of year celebrations and graduations. And that was when he then enacted the Stay Home, Stay Safe Order, which expires on the 15th. He still asked me to maintain the May 8th deadline on end of year celebrations and graduations. So the idea there was to go as late as possible to understand as best we could the trajectory of the virus, but also knowing that schools need ample time to plan for the rest of the year. So it's sort of that compromise that sort of May 8th figures out. So that guidance will be coming out tomorrow. And it's a part of the governor's press conference. So we'll be producing that and I'll be participating in the press conference and then formal guidance will be coming out shortly thereafter. So the first part of this was to firstly just sort of engage in a conversation about how to end the school year. And then what's been emerging almost simultaneously is a conversation, I would say nationally through my organization, the council of two state school officers and other states around the country thinking about how to deal with summer and what is the purpose of summer. And what appeared there to be sort of a fork in the road. So to speak of choice between two options of framing that conversation. This was I think pretty much last week we're in sort of the initial framing of that. So one way to think of the summer was as it typically would be like summer school, you know, basically a remediation opportunity to to look backwards to the spring, the semester and say, okay, what, you know, what do students need now the school year is over? How would we use summer to help remediate those that situation? The other school of thought is to say, well, even though the school year is over, the emergency is not. And though things are getting better, we still arguably have have to manage that that context. So that that's that scenario focuses our planning on a successful launch in the fall and using summer to help prepare that. So instead of sort of say looking retroactively from a remediation standpoint is to look proactively forward acknowledging that the emergency isn't necessarily over. We're certainly optimistic about the ability to have students in our school buildings in the fall. But, you know, that's going to come no doubt with safety protocols. And we're also going to need to attend to doing remote learning even better than what we did before because there are no that will come a time where perhaps not all schools will be closed, maybe they will, but certainly we can anticipate some schools being closed as you know, an outbreak occurs and we seek to react to that. So that sort of framing is where I'll come back to in a minute because I think that's sort of I can embellish that conversation a little bit and talk a little bit about some of that sort of national understanding around that. I think the third leg of the stool on this is funding, you know, so we can talk sort of, you know, or intellectualized the issue of strategic planning and our hopes analyzing public health information, how we might control things, but the bottom line is we're going to have to figure out how to make the investments to do all that. So whether it would be remediation or sort of proactive planning for the fall, either way, we'd be relying on financial resources in particular federal funds to finance those activities. My experience summer school, for instance, is largely funded on a title $1 to a certain extent pretty consistently across the state. So we have other pots of money also, but now of course we have CARES Act. So part of the understanding of where to go next has also been informed by the CARES Act funding, which, you know, just to give you an update, and when I'm talking about CARES Act, I'm talking about the elementary secondary school emergency relief fund, which is a, you know, the subsection of CARES that's the better, the bigger pot of money that's reserved to school districts. That's in Vermont's case, $30 million of which 90% has to be delivered to the LEAs. So the state of Vermont, the agency of education has applied for that money. We've been approved for that money. We're in the process of turning on an application to local school districts. We're in a bit of a sort of seeking clarity along with other states on some particular guidance that the U.S. Department of Education put out last Friday night relative to equitable share of those services with private schools. But once that is stabilized, then we'll be able to turn on that application. So, you know, the bottom line is, I think now we have greater clarity on the financial resources, though, as you know, we have a number of school districts that still don't have a stable financial context relative to their budgets. But I think what we're starting to do is engage in a planning activity, certainly at the high level in cooperation with CCSSO, about how to approach the fall relative to that sort of second lens, like using the summer as an opportunity to plan for the fall, as opposed to using the summer for more of the traditional remediation activities, thinking that the fall was going to be just returned to normal. Because we're pretty confident it won't be returned to normal, though. Once again, we're very, very hopeful that we'll be able to have students inside the school buildings to a certain extent. So, I think, you know, trying to weave it together in a complex way, I hope, chronologically, that helped a little bit. I could talk more specifically of some of those sort of broad strategic planning tools that are emanating from CCSSO. We had the first draft of that last week. There's basically four sort of containers of that. One is continuity of learning, you know, the issue of preparing for more remote learning. We have the issue of student supports, which is a big area of activity, social and emotional supports, mental health, anticipating those needs, preparing the facilities themselves and staff for that work. You mentioned working conditions, so, you know, what are the disinfection protocols? You know, what are the hygiene protocols? What are those thresholds we're going to use? And then we have the fourth bucket, which is back to sort of the policy and financial, you know, how are we going to sustain and what policies or guidance might be necessary? For instance, I do a weekly call with superintendents and in today's call, you know, someone asked, would it be possible to, you know, to have some students stay in remote learning where others are showing up physically and still have that count as, you know, an attendance day, if you will? So, those kinds of issues will emerge from a policy perspective, and that necessarily require change in statute. But, you know, we can work within a framework of the emergency order, assuming that it's in place to provide clarity on those kinds of issues. We are working on the issues of truancy, obviously, that's the old regulations aren't really pertinent to the situation. So, we're working in partnership with the AHS and the state's attorney's office to work through the sort of guidance on that issue. But if I could ask a very basic question, so I understand the idea of using the summer to make a successful launch in the fall, implicit in that is the idea that all the planning is going into congregate education in the fall. What's the thinking so far on will social distancing be in place in classrooms, you know, if you've got a classroom that ordinarily seats 25, and it's full with the teacher, do you run that class at 25, or do you run it in shifts? You know, what's the thinking? Yeah, I think it's, we're going to have to get to a place, sort of a fish or cut bait, for lack of a better phrase, deadline by which we're going to have to run with our best public health information on these things. So, what we're doing once again through CCSSO is we're gathering how other states are doing this, we're also gathering how other countries are doing it. So, we've had, I think so far, some general guidance produced by VOSHA and Department of Labor with coordination with Department of Health on how, you know, as we're opening up the broader economy, how social distancing should be enacted in workplaces. I suspect we're going to need very specific guidance for the school place setting. Because it's fairly unique in our ability to control necessarily what children can do any given moment. And certainly, when can anticipate that guidance having to be developmentally responsive to the different ability levels of students to follow direction and be safe without, you know, direct supervision. Younger children obviously need more direct supervision. So, those are all good questions. I think, you know, right now we have, let's say in the broader economic standard from Department of Health, we have a limitation of 10, you know, the group of 10. I think we certainly would expect that number to increase. But I think once again, we're going to need specific guidance in the school setting on how schools should behave in that regard. And we have, we're starting to pull together those examples from other places in the world and CDC is starting to weigh in a little bit on that as well. So, I think, you know, the next, we're in the middle of May now, I would say by the end of June, we'll have a real solid understanding of the answers to those questions. But I think it's fair to say just to embark on the planning process that we're committed to having students in the buildings as much as we can. So, therefore, we have essentially a series of problems to solve in order to do that. We might come back and test our some test those assumptions at the beginning, but it's hard to go forward with the analysis if we don't come up with a sort of the assumption of the leading assumptions that students would be in the building. And then we have to work through a series of problems relative, can we do that safely? And what are the public health conditions and so forth to do that? So, one more question that I'll turn it over to the committee, because I know they have some. So, when we were at the beginning of the emergency and there was a quick attempt to stand up essential childcare and districts were being asked to do that. Some teachers were being asked to do that who chose not to. There was an immediate standoff between the NEA and the administration and it wound up with the administration to its credit, I think, loosening what it was doing and allowing for more voluntary program. I'm assuming there were lessons learned there and that the teachers and staff are being or will be brought in on these discussions about what the school day looks like. Is that a good assumption? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a fair characterization of the beginning of this. It was an emergency, so we had to take certain actions. And I think it's also representative of sort of these transition periods. And it is an iterative process, I think, as much as we can reflect back on and say it was a process. But certainly, we knew there were tension points for that policy. And we also knew that some of these issues would be resolved literally as every day goes on. The issue of childcare, for example, we were ramping up a need for services, but also starting a policy of stay home, stay safe that we knew would essentially undermine the need for services, meaning that we were asking people to provision services, but also starting to send a signal of parents to stay home with their kids. So those kinds of transition moments were awkward. And I'm sure we'll have more going forward. But I think the issue of communication, now that we are through that period, I think we've enacted a very stable communication structures that will serve us well into these next phases. Because we do, the difference now is we have a planning opportunity where before it was very much a reactive process. So we have, and it came to me, it wasn't what I organized. The V's, shall we call them, including Vermont NEA, reached out to me with the offer of help to say, you know, it wasn't so much we want to be at the table. It was like, what can we do to help? And every Friday we have that meeting with the leadership of all those organizations, largely focused on what can we do to help? It's not, it's not about, well, we have issue with this or we want to see that. Though we certainly, as you can imagine, get into those kinds of conversations. But we've really tried to keep that space like in terms of, you know, how are we going to work this through together? You know, but the labor issues are challenging. And I think, you know, we'll, what's going to, you'll hear tomorrow, I think, from the governor's is some conversation about opening up childcare. And it's just the one thing I've learned from this is, you know, all aspects of our economy and society are interconnected. And it's really hard to turn things back on. It was much easier to turn things off. And it's hard to ramp some things back on without turning other things on as well. So it'll be a challenge, I think, but we're, you know, we're not alone as a state in navigating those issues, but we'll certainly do that cooperative cooperation, all stakeholders. Okay, great. Committee members, questions for the secretary. I know you have them because I wrote them down. Senator Hardy. Thanks. And sorry, I had to step out for a second. I had to deal with my son, who's home remote learning, quote, unquote. But I had a couple questions. And if you already covered this while I had to step out, I'm sorry, but the for the summer plans, are you thinking about the summer would be like summer school or more of summer planning for the fall? Is the summer part of the compensatory education kind of plan? And then second, related to summer, and this may be a question for Rosie, but I continue to be concerned about school lunches over the summer or school meals and wondering, I know that you applied for a waiver and to be able to continue to provide those meals. And I'm wondering what the status of that waiver is. Okay, so summer first. Yeah, so I think it'll be a mixture of things. I see us having to and people desiring to offer traditional summer programming, I'll call it. So you'll see that unfold certainly within the public health guidelines. But you'll also see resources. Once again, the financial piece is an important part of this. I think you'll see resources dedicated to planning because that's sort of the dilemma we're in. You know, if you, if you, I'm sure you're well aware, teachers work a finite number of contract days per year. Part of our strategy with embarking on enacting the April vacations, the schedule was preserved maximum number of teacher days in the June, so that we would have the flexibility to start looking at some of these issues. And likewise, I think we'll start to hear conversations pretty quickly from schools about how can, you know, how can we compensate teachers to come in for additional days? That's pretty commonly done for professional development. But I think it'll, you'll start to see patterns where it's not only for professional development, but also for planning. Once we understand, once again, what that context will be. And if the context, if we start to agree now that that context will be as much as you're enjoying remote learning, we need to make it work better. It's not something we're going to abandon as a tool. I think it would be on wise for us to do at this point. Now, once again, our, our goal should be to get all students into school. But I would not be surprised if many schools, if not all schools are closed at some period, during the coming winter or whatever, as this until this until we have a firm or handle on the contagion. So we need to plan for doing all all of the above. So I think summer will be a mix. And I think, you know, feeding kids has been a priority in our state much to our, you know, I think credit and it remains a priority for us. So we, you know, as you know, Rosie, as his leadership has been phenomenal on this. And we, we work hard with our congressional delegation to, you know, address issues. And we are part of a regional group in New England that's been pretty good on that. But US Department of Agriculture has been challenging to work with at times, you know, and so we have to put pressure on where we need to. And I said the other day to the superintendents, I'm confident in our ability to sort of problem solve through some of the regulatory burdens. I'm my concern right now, honestly, is sustainability of the programs. They're, they're running straight out in a manner they were never designed to do. And that means a burnout rate on staff and also facilities we count on during the summer to have a shutdown of those programs so that we can take them apart, clean them, do inventory and prepare. So they were never designed to run nonstop as they are. So we have to start thinking about sustainability, not only from a financial and personnel standpoint, but just the facility standpoint. So, but that's going to be ongoing and we're going to have to figure that out as a state. But we don't want to back away from our commitment to support families and kids. But we'll, we'll continue to tackle those regulation issues as they emerge. But we're still, I don't have an update, nothing's resolved yet on that specific issue. So we're still pursuing that. Great. Other, other questions? Senator Ingram. So, yeah, most of my questions were, were around the, the kind of healthcare protocols, which you, are you touched on? And I know it's a little too early for you to know details, but I'm just wondering things like will anticipate kids being required to wear masks or teachers being required to wear masks or, you know, if you take a student's temperature, you know, when they come in, if they have a fever or you're going to send them home, or, you know, how are you going to work with the parents? If the parents apply one standard and the school has a different one, you know, how will that work? Will it be done more on the local level? Or do you anticipate it coming down from, from the agency? And, you know, just in general, what, what are we? Yeah, I think, you know, I think a lot of those will be decided through the Department of Health, you know, I think that's, we'll use the best science. And, you know, there's some of the things that will be different come fall. I mean, we'll probably have different therapies available and so forth. But it's just interesting listening to you, you know, take through that with Senator Ingram. It just sort of reminded me, like we were having this, I'll call it a false dichotomy discussion, well, should we make the summer remediation or should we prepare for the fall? And just listening to the length of the list of the things you went through, and I could, I could add to that, you know, 100 fold, that sort of just made it a no brainer that we have to spend our time planning for the fall. I mean, we just don't have the time. We have a limited amount of time, as I was going to mention previously with, with the planning capacity. So we have, you know, we to turn the corner now to land the school year takes some time and planning. And then, you know, for the July weekend, we'll be here and gone. And then, you know, really, it's in the second week of July, somewhere in that time period, we need to know what we're doing so we can plan what we're going to need to do. So it's, you know, there's a very limited amount of time actually to plan for the fall. So that's why, from my perspective, I think we're going to put our efforts into using the summer largely to help plan for the fall, though, as I mentioned, we'll certainly have the more traditional activities as well. When is the start date of the school year for the fall? Each their regional school counters for a month, they more or less all start the week before Labor Day to a certain extent. Other questions. Andy, you're muted. There you go. So, Secretary French, I just want to repeat what I think you said is that you're working on the guidance for graduation and celebration that'll be out tomorrow. And we really won't now tell July for the following school to give you time to plan and think about and go through the 101 things that there are to think about. But also, as the pandemic rolls out, you know, things will change. So is that right that we won't really know anything about the guidance for the opening till July? Is that your best estimate? Well, I think we'll, you know, we're going to point our planning towards the assumption that students will be in school, you know, and I think that's the appropriate framing. And from there, we'll encounter a series of problems that will need to be resolved through guidance or, you know, through positioning of resources and so forth. But I think absent the sort of general orientation is really challenging to make the decision. So I think, you know, we'll start with the assumption based on what we know today, it looks promising that we'll have students back in the building. And then we're going to have to, okay, if that's the case, what are we going to need to do to, you know, disinfect surfaces? So what are we going to need to do to provision distance learning? You know, what are we going to do for professional development or to provision distance learning? What are we going to need to do to break students into groups and and so forth? So I think it'll precipitate out a series of problems that no doubt can be categorized and so forth. But it's a once again, the good news is we're not alone. Other states are embarking on a similar planning process. So I think you'll see very quickly an assumption that we're going to seek to have students in buildings, you know, I think that's a reasonable conclusion based on what we see now as a very positive outcome of our social distancing and other mitigation efforts that we've undertaken in Vermont, knock on wood, we won't see that go any other direction. So with that assumption, you'll see a series of guidance documents unfold as we start to have to address certain issues. But I think, you know, the message, the overarching message to parents and students will be, we're going to get you back in school in the fall. It might look a little different, you know, than what you were used to prior to COVID-19, but we think we can come up with some ways to do that. So having survived the several fights in the legislature around vaccines, I'm imagining that as school opens, parents would have to give permission for their kid to be tested if that's a part of the strategy. So if it is a part of the strategy, I don't think there would be the same resistance that you encounter with vaccination, because although it's an invasive procedure, it doesn't involve putting something chemical into the body. But it seems to me another one of the 101 things is securing permission to be able to test children when you're in local parenthesis during the school day. So not that anybody's making it an exhaustive list, but just an example. Yeah. And it's hard to say. I think, you know, I think it was Japan. There's a couple countries that have students testing themselves with thermometers. I mean, so just taking the temperature might be that sort of level of standard that we enact if we're comfortable that the trajectory of the virus is in a suppression phase. And I think that's like below 1%. And we've been consistently around that number, below that number. So we feel pretty good about that. So when you get down to that point, I think, you know, this would be a better question for Dr. Levine. I mean, some of the protocols being enacted are not as invasive. They're more like taking a temperature of students at the entry of schools. They can test their own temperatures and so forth. So there might be other tests available that are less invasive and so forth. So we don't, some of those questions are unknown, but I think, yeah, certainly they're on a list of things. I would say the general concept of how we ensure the safety of the environment, both for staff and students, is going to be a priority. And then once we do identify the outbreak, how do we control that through disinfection and staying at home and so forth. All those protocols need to be mailed down. And once again, Department of Health will have a key role in that. But we're starting to see guidance from other, you know, the CDC and so forth starting to emerge. Senator McNeil. Good afternoon, Secretary French. Just a couple of quick questions. I was thinking on if summer camps, some of them may open, some may not. And I'm sure with Dr. Levine probably suggest maybe temperature checks or whatever. But that's going to, and then it's going to go into the school year. I would think that the nurse's office, she might need additional help. A lot of the schools share a nurse, you know, part morning, part afternoon, and they drive from one school to another within the supervisory union. I was just wondering if there are any plans on helping out the nurse. And if there is a child that temperature is high and sick, a place maybe they could segregate that child until the parents to come to pick it up. And as it is that I can see the parents are getting excited about sending the kids to camp. And I'm sure some of them are going to come, whether they don't feel that well or not. Anything in the works for that? Not specifically, I think at this point, but I will say the nurses have reached out and are part of that sort of group that wants to be actually at the table. Obviously, when you get down to the sort of nitty gritty of how to manage these things, their inputs are invaluable. And I've always found my school nurses to be critical of my leadership teams. I mean, they really can inform so many of the practices on running school building. So I think they'll be connected straight into the Department of Health conversation on how to produce that guidance specific to schools, and I'm confident we'll have those specific issues addressed as we head towards opening school. Thank you. Other questions? Senator Hardy. Thank you. I have two categories of questions, and one is just your thoughts on the school finance situation. You mentioned that $30 million of federal funding that's going directly to schools. My understanding is that that's to be distributed based on Title I formulas, but you mentioned something else, so I'm not sure. And then there's the broader CARES Act funding that we're all talking about ad nauseam. But I'm wondering if this might be a question for Emily, but just if she's done some, you and your department have done some research on what your, or if you've gotten guidance about what if any of that can be used for schools and how we might creatively be able to use some of that. And just what your department's thinking is right now about the school finance situation, which is rather bleak. So that's one question. And then the second question is more related to parents and students. It sounds like you're doing a great job with communicating with teachers and school nurses and superintendents and, you know, the list of all those people and doing regular check-ins. But I know parents are feeling a lot of angst and worry about what's going on. And I'm wondering if there's a way the department more broadly can communicate with parents about what you're doing. I'm trying to do that, but hearing directly from the secretary of education in some way might be helpful for parents. And bringing students into the conversation, they may have some really great ideas on how school could work, especially I'm thinking high school students and middle school students. They often have creative ideas because they know their peers better than we do. So just bringing them in. And then one final thought, which is about graduation and thinking about the graduation ceremonies. I have a lot of friends whose kids are in the class of 2020 and they're feeling lots of sadness about how their high school is ending. But also I have an eighth grader and so kids who are moving on to the next level of education at all various levels, I'm hoping that you'll at least give a nod to the younger kids who may be stepping up and what might be allowable for end of year celebrations or ceremonies for them as well. So that's my list. Yeah, I think I can take these in reverse order. I guess the guidance tomorrow will address end of year celebrations and graduations without drawing a distinction between the two. So guidance will could be applied to sixth grade as it easily could be for high school. So folks will hopefully find some clarity there, largely informed by the public health, you know, look at how things are tracking. The issue of parent communication, absolutely. I think, you know, we're, I think appropriately focused on the nitty-gritty of trying to make the transition to this. But particularly at this, you know, once again, I think we're at a critical transition with this guidance tomorrow. People are anxious about how the rest of the year will go, how the fall will go. And that shifts I think the need for more direct communication with parents. And I've been doing a lot of that along the way. I have one night had a Zoom call into a community of largely students in South Burlington, and they wanted to share with me their concerns about the upcoming lacrosse season and so forth. So I do a lot of those things, but I think we're from a policy perspective need to have the goals and the context just clarify, you know, so people know, here's what we're thinking here, the decision timelines when we reduce it to timelines and, you know, here are the concerns here are the things we're wrestling with. So, yes. In terms, I wrote down the first question as let me do with bleakness. That was the one note I wrote. Oh, bleakness. That must be financial context. Yeah, it's going to be a significant challenge. So, you know, I think the firstly, you know, when I was, I think Senator Bruth was there one day when I was a Senate Finance Committee, we didn't know a lot about the CARES Act, you know, we had some general understanding and it was important as we knew there are significant issues here. It's like an important piece of information we just need to nail down. So we have a better understanding of CARES Act. And yes, those funds are allocated to the districts on a formula. It's very similar, if not identical to how Title I funds are allocated to school districts. So the methodology by which, you know, how much goes to each district is based on the same formula. It's not to say the funds need to be spent the same way as Title I. It just means the allocation methodology is the same. The funds can be spent by locals. And once again, 90% of the funds go directly to the local school districts. The funds, they have significant flexibility in how they spend the funds. They just basically need to be spent in accordance with an approved federal education program. It could be Perkins. It could be Title I. It could be, you know, anything that's legitimate, basically federal education program. The issue that we're sort of alluded to, sort of a bump in the road right now, late last Friday, the U.S. Department of Education put out guidance so that we think, and most states think, is not consistently congressional intent. And it pertains to equal services, and to the what extent schools have to send federal dollars to private schools. And the methodology that historically has always been used under the Elementary, Secondary Education Act has been the Title I approach, which was, you figure out what percent of your students are in poverty in the district and you allocate funds to your private schools, accordingly. That's what we interpreted, and every state interpreted pretty much to be in the CARES Act. And what came out of the U.S. Department of Education late on Friday night was not that. And it was basically you should use a broader number of your total population, not just your poverty students. So it effectively would have a pretty significant impact on redirecting CARES Act, let's say redirecting, but create a greater responsibility for using the CARES Act funds for private schools. So we're in a process working with pretty much every professional education association in the country and our delegation to get some clarity from U.S. Department of Ed on that. That's the only thing that's sort of holding up that next level of the application. So back to the larger conversation, we were working on that just sort of getting clarity on the CARES Act. We're also working on revenue projections and sort of starting to wrap our arms around the magnitude of the problem. And we haven't been proposing any specific solutions from the agency's perspective. We've been sort of working with JFO to just provide the technical support necessary to understand what are probably all bad options, essentially. And on Monday, I think it was Monday, I was on a panel with Mark from JFO and someone from Representative Welch's office, you know, sort of, I think it was a statewide Zoom conference that or go-to meeting that had about 400 people on it, what are standard, maybe 200, something like that. So, you know, we're at that place where I think we understand the mag to the problem, but there's no easy way. There is no way, essentially, to redirect CARES money to the Ed fund. We could certainly do something along the line of a clawback and I've talked openly with districts about that meeting that we could short, you know, basically short them money. But all those things, once again, are unpalatable solutions, but it's not clear to me yet, you know, what those solutions will be. But I think my impression of having been not in as many conversations with Senator Baruth, but I've been this time of year in the legislature on financial issues, I think this is that time of year when these decisions tend to come to head. So, you know, we're available to help support that. And just let us know what you need. Thank you. Other follow-up? Just one. Is it one follow-up or several categories? It's one follow-up on the CARES Act, the $30 million. That's a very small amount of money. I know people keep talking about it as if it's a lot of money, but I mean, some districts, it's a couple, you know, $100,000 or something or less when you break it down on a district level. So, I was talking more about the larger CARES money and whether or not that, if you've done any research on whether you think your department thinks that's available, not as revenue fill, but as meeting some of the needs that will be out there. Yeah, I don't, you know, we haven't been directly as involved with that as more, you know, managing the education dedicated resources. I should mention also the GEAR Fund, which is the Governor's Education, Emergency Education Relief Fund. And that, you know, that's $4.4 million and Governors have some latitude in that. And that application was recently submitted and approved. It didn't require us to specify how the money would be spent. Governor Scott's indicating wants to work closely with the legislature to identify how that money will be spent. But just to let you know, we have applied for it and received essentially the green light to start drawing down those funds or at least get the money in our bank account. But I think the larger fund, you know, does affect education to the extent that education is a social service and tightly integrated with our broader social infrastructure in the state. And I throw broadband into that. I throw mental health and childcare. So, I think, you know, it does and we do have conversations, you know, on an integrated basis, that's our cabinet function. So, we are in communication with AHS constantly on these issues. And, you know, I work closely with Department of Public Service on the broadband issues. So, I think we have the structures in place to navigate that. But the prioritization, I think, is really the legislature's job and, you know, but we're poised to enact that. But I don't, I think, you know, I think the issue of using the larger money for education is for K-12 is probably harder politically to make because there are dedicated resources for K-12. But to the extent things like mental health services and other parts of the infrastructure could be addressed, that's probably the place to go. Other questions for the Secretary? Corey, I thought you had one earlier. Yeah, it was just generally the timeline of what we're giving for notice. I mean, we're mostly talking about the fall here. But another topic similar to schools was childcare is mentioned. They want at least a month's notice before they open up. Have you heard that from schools, what they're looking at for kind of restart time? Yeah, in my conversations with superintendents, I think, you know, we're thinking that we need to come to agreement that we're going to put our planning efforts into the fall. And I think there's growing consensus. That's what we need to do. So I think we'll backtrack from there and come up with an appropriate implementation plan. But I think that initial framing is really the critical piece that we need to do first. And then certainly getting the resources deployed to school districts is a critical element of that. We can have a planning exercise, but absent the resources and understanding the scope of those resources is really hard to develop a concrete plan for action. Okay. I think that might be the the bulk of our questions for you at the moment, Secretary. I really appreciate the time you've given us and the thoughtful planning you've got in place. I do think it's good just to be reassured that the the default planning is to start as normal in the fall with obvious caveats around how social distancing will work in that environment. But that's good news. And hopefully that will get out starting tomorrow and become more broadly understood. So thanks very much. And to the extent you have anything you want to send our way in the form of the new guidance, you could just send it to Jeannie and she'll distribute it to the committee. But again, thanks for coming in. Thank you. I'll also share our planning documents as those evolve. You know, we'll start to get more clarity on on those plans and they'll be broadly shared within state government too, because it will require coordination with other agencies to an end. So have a good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So committee, that was our work for today. And so we'll we'll end a little bit early. So everybody make sure that before you go to sleep tonight, you mark down in your calendar that our times will be changed slightly starting next week. So 230 to four Tuesday and Thursday. And there was one other thing I wanted to share with you. Oh, did have a call this morning with the interim chancellor for the state colleges and with the chair of the board of trustees. And joint fiscal today was supposed to be in the final stage of hiring an independent analyst to look at the finances of the system. So hopefully that will be done either today or tomorrow. Beth Pierce has gotten involved in looking over the financial situation. So the first thing on the agenda is to get these other sets of eyes on the finances and then for the money committees to work with the trustees and this independent financial analyst to figure out exactly how much is needed for a bridge for the next year. So that is underway. It's mostly being conducted through joint fiscal and our money committees. But I was invited to be on the call and I'm keeping an eye on it. There is a plan to have a larger stakeholder group at a later point. But right now the focus and planning is on around verifying the numbers. And then once we're sure what the financial situation is looking at different options for levels of investment that the legislature can and should make for the next year. So I'll keep you up to date on what I know which is about that much at this point. But just in case you're contacted by anybody wanting to know if that's dropped off the radar it has not. It's in what I consider a very logical place at the moment which is trying to verify independently what the situation actually is before we start the process of appropriating funds. So any final comments? Seeing none? Have a great I guess weekend because we won't have a Senate session tomorrow. So I will see all of you probably Tuesday next time unless I see you on there's a call tomorrow on climate change which I'm trying to clear my schedule to be on. But if I don't see you then I'll see you next week. Did that ever get settled as to what time that's going to be? I don't think it was quite settled but I had some other stuff I have to do tomorrow afternoon so I may not wind up being on it in any event. I think three o'clock. Okay. Oh is it okay? All right everybody. Thank you. Have a good day. See you soon.