 school discipline we are we have a bill that I think we're getting close to to moving and then Senator Ron was kind enough to grow that all in the air no no not at all was kind enough to put in a bill related to school discipline and did you need to get that senator okay no do you have like a dollar jar I should Venmo you for sorry and so before we we take any steps it's important to try to see if there might be a place for this in s16 I know you've talked to Senator Sears and so with that I thought what we could do first if it works for your schedule Jim is just have Senator Rom tell us about the bill the genesis of it what you hope to do and to see if maybe there is a spot where we could place it given that we have just you know one more week after this to to handle work before crossover so with that senator Ron well thank you chairman campion and committee and I do appreciate you giving this kind of another look before passing it out and the chairman asked me to be very prepared to have lots of charts and graphs and studies at my fingertips in case people want more information but I'll just really start with the genesis of this and Jim was there for the play by plays I introduced legislation I believe starting in 2014 to try in the house to try and limit the use of suspension and expulsion as a behavioral tool you know being a new senator senator Sears and I started talking about collaborating on this issue very early on and we thought you know let's have one bill where we're we're co-sponsors of more of a you know study and let the schools and districts decide what to come back with and what makes sense for their communities and once and we had talked about how my being the lead on a separate bill that would really ask us to to call this to question a bit more and limit fully start limiting the use of suspension and expulsion as a tool and set and what we would call excluding kids from school as a way to manage their behavior once this study started moving I really didn't want to put out a whole separate bill that seemed to kind of contradict what we were asking the districts to do from outside of the state house you know it can be very complicated if you say we're putting this out as a conversation piece the few things that I just couldn't let go of and may end up deepening the study component in some way are the experience of suspensions and expulsion particularly expulsion of children under the age of eight and actually as I was doing my research and what became clear and clear is a lot of other states and maybe the committees looking at this as well are actually starting to look at the pre K experience of expulsion because pre K's without being regulated the same way as K through 12 education tend to expel kids at a rate about three times higher or more and within pre K's so within childcare centers and early education settings they are they are the racial disparities and other types of disparities are even worse so I have some studies that I could share with you to that end but the pre K to prison pipeline is a real thing that a lot of states are looking at but at the same time that would require a kind of more nuanced approach to this legislation to deal with pre K's so I my bill I believe with which does two things and one is call for us to stop expelling children under eight would then you'd probably be looking at the data from kindergarten first grade and second grade about how many students are separated from their school because of an expulsion the challenges the data that I have from the agency of education happy to share this chart with you is by grade so it starts with kindergarten and you will be able to see and I can share my screen if it's helpful for folks that about 10% of our separations from school happening kindergarten first grade and second grade and what's the quick question certainly truck this morning so by separation from school that is suspension and or it's both and all they tell you in these charts is the average number of days of the separation that even follows into high school so I'm sure by the time you get to high school they much more clearly breakout who got who got suspended for a day or a week who got expelled forever who got sent to a different school but what we is currently tracking is separation from school and the average number of days and so it's fewer days the average number of days is about one that kids from kindergarten to second grade are separated from school but it's not possible to tell which is suspension and expulsion and if you wanted to take more testimony on this particular issue either agency of education or an or in addition JDS from the ACLU are the ones who've been tracking this most closely J's on vacation but even from his vacation he helped point me to this chart so I could get you you know that specific information and one thing that he added is that it to based on their work and the we had this included in our 2014 bill to stop expelling children and at a very young age meaning separating them from the school environment excluding them from the school environment he would advocate that it's fourth grade and below you know that seems to him to be a pretty good cut off for a very young child who needs interventions rather than exclusion from school. You have a sense center around why students are being suspended or expelled from kindergarten. Please go ahead. Sorry, please go ahead. They have elementary school middle school and and and high school sort of broken out of like really in all cases about less than 10% and definitely an elementary school less less than 10% are violent in nature. It's it's a lot of behavioral issues disruption, etc. And then you know this the whole experience with the four to five year olds the kind of pre K issues. Many have to do with parents not being able to get their child to school on time. The child acting out you know exhibiting inappropriate behaviors but you know a lot of it and that relates to the second piece of this which is also encouraging the committee to study how truancy is handled around the state. We have some we have some you know counties that have said or districts or counties because it's a county level issue if it gets kicked up to the state's attorney as a kind of more criminalized issue. But we have some counties and districts that are saying we're not touching truancy at all in the pandemic. We have others that are very much you know calling on families to do better and still sending cases to the state's attorney. So if a school feels like they can't intervene in the appropriate way with a family or they have sent a certain number of communications out the case goes to the state's attorney's office. Now I don't always want to use Chittenden County as an example but they had a whole countywide task force to say is there any way we could stop criminalizing families for truancy. And so they looked at a lot of you know checkboxes and other and other things you need to do to offer wrap around services to the family before a case goes to the state's attorney and it's resulted in a much lower number of truancies that get advanced to the state's attorney's office. I have looked at other states. I have some of those charts and graphs available and where they have implemented statewide interventions pre before sending a case to you know the judicial system for truancy. They've seen an all you know cases of truancy that result in the criminalization of either the youth or the family. In Vermont we don't criminalize the youth. We're one of a handful of students that doesn't criminalize the youth but we still do potentially criminalize the family for truancy the parents or the guardian. And so states where they've stopped criminalizing the family as well and looked at ways to intervene in cases of truancy. They've significantly dropped the numbers of truancies the the days missed of school. The you know really intervened in the appropriate ways into what that families might be in crisis or might be lacking some key resource that helps them get their child to school on time. So those are the two pieces. Sorry to jump around but no no it's it's helpful and I appreciate you being here and having a discussion with us since we are you know timing you know we're not there but you know we would like to start to advance some things and I know this is something that the pro tem is interested in and others you know school discipline in general particularly as it relates to if you will minority students you know and students disabled students but one of the things I'm wondering I mean trying to get your sort of thoughts on is so if I'm speaking honestly I worry a little bit but my committee may completely disagree that we as a committee would be making sort of that kind of policy decision and I wonder if it makes more sense for it to come from the agency of education. As I mentioned to you Senator Rom on the phone I mean I'm just wondering is there it's the legislature sometimes in the state sometimes does say never ever ever ever but I do worry that there are going to be cases where a suspension or expulsion is warranted what I want to make certain happens is the educational experience continues but might there be something where a teacher comes to a principal or the school into you know personnel and says you know this really does warrant suspension even though I know the gravity of what that would mean for the child I mean that's I again just thinking about it you know to be sent home as a kindergarten or as at any age but particularly young young age suspended or expelled is something we would want to avoid at all costs so that's just some of my thinking and the committee might say no perfectly comfortable with moving in this direction as you've outlined or do we kind of somehow incorporate it into this overall study that we're looking at and saying for the agency to come back and make some real decisions for us along this I don't know if you have thoughts on that or I do you know because I I can understand the gravity of this particularly approaching crossover without a lot of additional testimony I would say and I'm happy to you know work with Jim further on some drafting but I would say there's three things that the committee could possibly do to strengthen the existing study you know after doing all this research and really appreciating Mr. Chair for allowing me to come back in and keep chewing on this with you all you know one many states are starting to track the experience of ex of expelling children from preschool even if they have no control over that they are starting to sort of pay attention and keep track of you know which child care centers are expelling a lot of kids is that an experience and and they are seeing huge racial disparities and income disparities and who's getting expelled from from pre pre-k as you might imagine when it you know when it comes to this this issue of what's the right age to just say we really shouldn't be expelling children I would love to see the agency of education come back and say here's the age it's second third fourth grade it's some age where we say you know that we really can't find a good reason that we should exclude this child from a school environment have their whole family and them go through the trauma of what do you do now where do they go to school how many days do they miss school while they're trying to be placed somewhere else what does what does it mean to be in that new school um you know and then and then um you know this truancy piece just sort of adding that for your consideration because it's sort of another way that we punish families for crises and other things affecting the young person's absence not behavior in terms of what they do at school but just their lack of presence from school is sort of often another sign of some kind of distress that we're not intervening with uh properly or carefully yeah committee questions for senator romp at this point senator perchlet please yeah thanks for for being here and thanks chair the question again or it was a question or a comment um that you think senator remis d the bill isn't a study that you know the one you corresponded the other one it's a task force to say it will we will end expulsion for everybody from so so it seems like we're already there but I just reread it and I thought we could strengthen there because it says make recommendations to end expulsion so maybe we just say implement a prohibition on expulsions or something but it does say except for the most severe circumstances or something like that but I wondered if you felt that was you know if you thought we need to change that word because it seems like taking your your new 84 bill and just adding it to 13 is the best way to go since your sponsors are both and if you thought that language that we had in there so it was just a study it seems like we don't need another study but since it's kind of like okay how do we implement this it seems like that would be the way to go right right you know I mean it this is just a data point of one but having I mean you know the reason I introduced this bill originally years ago was you know really traumatic experiences where where a child was you know had had an accident or did something on the playground and you know were suspended or expelled and and you know a lot of parents of color were coming to me and saying I don't know what to do I don't even know if I can live in the state anymore so you know I have seen certainly so much of the urgency and the trauma of removing a child from school I think the only thing that might balance that out is the trauma of being on the receiving end of some kind of behavior and and being triggered by having that person in your immediate presence and some schools may be so small that there's no way to separate them on a larger campus or put them in a classroom that's much further away so I really do still try to balance you know that experience of you know what it means to be a victim I I was saying to the chairman I was arguing with my fiance about this who grew up in Charlotte you know I mean he was seven when his his friend on the school bus made him made him spit a spitball at the bus driver and they both got suspended and he said it like straightened him out and made him a better person you know and then I said well what happened to the other kid he said oh you know he's in jail now or something so it was like okay well you know if you have a family structure that says what you know what did you just do and really intervenes and uses that as a tool but you can get that intervention without that suspension or expulsion where another family might say great forget it you're you know you're never going back or what what are the case may be so hopeful you know when these ideas were proposed a lot of them were in that restorative justice framework of if you're not going to you know expel or suspend a student what are you going to do to repair harm to the victim of whatever they perpetrated and make sure they don't have lingering trauma that goes unaddressed and you know help that person be empowered to repair the harm so that they ultimately take more responsibility for their actions in the future i i so i you know i know we're talking about restorative justice to jump it all over so senator perps like you're proposing that you know given the way our q.1 is written that we and s84 that we you know way merge both of them it seems like the easiest way to do it yeah yeah senator lions want to weigh in that was actually a suggestion i was going to make and and then the other the other question is um senator ron ram if you have any of the data that you would like to share with a committee to support um our decision that would be really helpful would it be preferable in an email to the committee kind of as a package of information would be that would be terrific that would be great senator hooker senator chinden any concerns with that uh movement to to merge these two i think i i would support that in that you know we have important pieces of each of them and so put them together rather than trying to do one or the other and certainly yeah okay senator chinden okay it's good to have people from chinden county on here that you can influence even though well you know i mean we're a team it's a team effort that's right i i do have a question regarding um alternative situations for yeah to have you know perhaps serious issues you mentioned senator ron that you know a small percentage are uh because of violence some that kids are expelled um we do have um alternative ed you know here in rotland and i know that there have been some very young children who have been you know put in alternative classes how would something like this intersect with the bill or the the attempt to sort of ban expulsion yeah i mean you know i'm sure your committee is constantly trying to look at are they it what a separate but equal look like you know whether it's special education or english language learning or alternative programs um you know are are they is the intent ultimately to help return them to the school environment or is it a place for them to get relegated for the remainder of their time in school and if that happens to them at a very young age you know then then what what is the next step do they ultimately get returned to the um feeder you know do they is that a feeder school back to the middle school or high school or um you know do they get sort of left in an alternative program for for the remainder of their days we should have more data on these things and you know we should know i mean what we get often as as senators is stories that break our hearts that seem to not add up to you know the full picture and then we know that we're probably not going to necessarily hear the stories when something pretty horrific did happen necessarily um so you know better data to know is it a temporary move to an alternative program do do they get put back in with the regular school population so much of the language of these reports about exclusion and separation remind me a lot of special education in ELL where you could just end up feeling like uh you're not a part of a larger community for a long time and that can have a really detrimental effect on your outcomes and your ability to function in society and you sort of end up on that continuum to feeling like an outlier from society which is what we end up calling the school to prison pipeline yeah no i really feel like we're tackling something uh important here and we're going to look to your support on the floor uh when we get any questions especially sorry go ahead oh i was just going to say very eloquent committee members i don't know who's reporting i'm sure they'll do better than that senator chitin did so to disappear off the screen uh thank you thank you for being with us thanks for your advocacy uh we do have about 11 other bills of yours in this committee that we are working to advance uh you know one one other in particular though we heard wonderful testimony this morning or this afternoon like 20 minutes ago uh from a mr yin uh from when you see who also spoke of the incredible work that a multi multi-cultural liaisons do uh and uh so uh that's also hopefully something we might be able to package up into uh we're hoping to our miscellaneous bills so senator thank you for taking the time from government operations uh please remember our kindness when you redistrict all of us um just by virtue of this being my second or third visit um i'm biased but i can tell you're doing really amazing work and it couldn't come at a more critical time for our kids who are feeling really isolated and lost and like they need a sense of belonging again so thank you for everything you're doing thank you and if if the press is listening hopefully they captured that you have a you have a great chair committee i have said that before goodbye thank you senator ron thank you mr demaray uh i think um seems like a very straightforward uh even though i'm usually the one that needs walkthrough is more than anyone i don't know is there anything uh overarching that you'd like to say about the bill it looks like it's the committee's preference to merge the two um and again it it does look pretty straightforward um it does look like we'll all need a fiscal note and i'll request that from joint fiscal before we vote it out uh but i am hoping to to move this if at all possible in the next day or so so you want to merge them um do you want to turn the prohibition on expulsion for uh students under age eight into uh part of the report the study uh for recommendation on that or do you just want to put that in as a requirement the way i'm reading the committee and please correct me if i'm wrong if i'm misreading the committee is that we should put that in going forward as a requirement is that i mean that looks to me or is or did i misread in folks really feel senators feel as though they would like this as part of a study senator perswick you made the initial comment please well the the way it is the maybe the we need to change the wording of on s16 or whatever the number is a little bit 18 to say that it's clear that we're any expulsions except for the most extreme situation so that includes people under the age of eight under the age of eight so i don't know if we if we need to include that specific language in in the other bill but i we might want to be clear that that they're that the recommendations are basically here's the new policy they're there we shall not have expulsions how how does that work in a school how how is each district going to deal with because if you just say you can't have expulsions i can see just a bunch of questions coming back from every school district saying okay well what about if they bring a gun to school or well what what's our responsibility for those children that we that we do expel under the extreme situation so my understanding of this task force which i don't think we should call it a study right the task force is saying we will not have expulsions here's how you deal with except in these extreme situations here's what those extreme situations are and here's how you implement it you know we talked about in the in the bill about let me get to that language on page four i think yeah the if right we're asking muscle to do the data collection and analyzing but just kind of how they're how they're going to to make this happen in every school right to inform strategic planning by statewide local decision making yes yeah like all that stuff right i mean that's the way i i see it i don't know if that helps yeah that gives us you know that that's going to help answer i think a lot of concerns out there again that this task force is looking at this and going to be strategizing and working and informing school districts how how you know how to work with students of that yeah please okay i can ask a question yeah please the gym do you think that the language where it says make recommendations and suspensions is is ending suspensions or is it just making recommendations to end them you know so like at what point if this was how it passed with with suspensions and expulsions and at some point in the future and we would need further legislative action or or would this be sufficient so you get you get specific language now in the bill right and um at 16 yes what where you're looking exactly lines like line seven on page four yeah right mine doesn't have page numbers let me try where i am it's section section two the creation of the task force third line of that task force and school reform report all right in the creation section um yeah they're recommending they're recommending to you um making recommendations as to ending suspensions and expulsions but you would have to take action based on those recommendations and change statute the statute currently permits these practices so you have to make a separate change there to implement that okay so if you wanted to you could take a center ramps language and prohibit expulsions for children under eight and then add to this study a line that requires them to look at how school districts could implement that in terms of how they would help school districts decide how they would deal with the fact that they can't explore these kids so you can add that to your your task force if you want i'd be for that and also and maybe the wording is already enough there to say that yeah we are going to end that expulsions for those under that age how do we how do we implement that but then also tell us where to draw the line for the extreme expulsions and i wondered if we need what i would be so my point of view i would like to have it say that kind of it is the policy that for even over eight we don't want to have expulsions but maybe we we need to draw the line somewhere i i agree what i think the chair was saying to center rom that there are these situations like we heard from secretary france if somebody brings a gun to school i think the school should have the ability to say okay you're not coming back home tomorrow we need to figure out what's going on so i don't want to just say there is none but somebody needs to figure out where that line is drawn so well that's what this is doing i think already right right yeah i guess it's back i i i guess i was reading it wrong to your original question senator campion is that we do sounds like we would have to add that language from s84 about the not allowing expulsions under age eight yeah i'm just wondering if there's a way to say something like so the extreme example would be if the individual was going to go cause harm to himself or others him or herself or others that that provides for some um protection and allows for decision making that isn't that the that's usually the phrase that's used um in a variety of areas so yeah the potential to harm yeah others so they may not have actually done it but they have a weapon or something like that center personally well i wondered if senator lian making that comment in reference to the eight-year-olds and under which which i'm okay with maybe but yes that's what i make that's what i'm referring to you were looking for the extreme cases or would seem to me that would be about as extreme as you can get you know so i mean if it's harm to oneself then you would want to ensure that the school would have in place some referral system or support system for the kid and if it's to others then you want to make sure that the child is home and the family if there is a family or the guardian or character of her knows so there's a lot of there's a lot of work that schools have to do and so that that i like jim's suggestion as well center person and jim in this context in this part of the statue when it says a student how is that defined is that you know the senator rams point about does that include preschools kids or does it only you know preschools tricky right because um preschool that happens in a school is under aoe jurisdiction preschool that happens in a private care center or family home provider is under human services jurisdiction and they have joint rules that cover these areas but it's not quite clear to me what the expulsion and suspension rules are for pre-k kids in childcare centers and family care homes i'm not sure that that is and it's but it's title 16 only dealing with kind of schools under the control of aoe title 16 in this area is quite complex because it's got joint authority given to aoe and a hs to oversee these programs but the programs are under while they have joint rulemaking authority for both they are sad though in terms of oversight aoe for in school as s4 private sensors so i just don't know the answer to your question about what happens in those childcare centers and home care centers or family homes on this question about how much will it apply to them it's a great question i mean it's yeah we're saying i mean i i'm inclined to think we keep this pretty narrow and it not and it be clear that we're not talking about you know private home centers you know uh something somebody has it you know the parent might have it at their home and i think we tighten that up jim to either say you know pre-k through again it's under age of eight but i can say under age of eight enrolled in a school right that'll carve out the private side right the school is defined yeah yeah public school okay that sounds good okay so am i hearing that you want also to add caveat to her prohibition to say except in the case of extreme circumstances such as are used to write words but yeah yeah yeah okay where you send her lines language that yeah that's what i think center lines yep yep is the way to go yep okay and then well maybe i don't know if that other language needs to be changed about the recommendations right so that's a i think that's you know something we have to decide are these recommendations that they are going to come back to us with or are we asking them to you know implement a policy with that yeah go ahead jim because the um because suspension and um exclusion of policies for the statute so they can't do anything more than like a recommendation to you because you don't have to go change the statute to implement that what is what do people think and i'm trying to think of language so what would the language be jim if we were to if we wanted this to happen immediately i mean we're basically saying i mean no matter what they're going to have to come back and talk to us right i mean unless we were making a policy that was completely overarching and or bad adjective but unless we were saying um we're getting rid of suspensions and expulsions right now any work that's being done in this working group is going to have to come back to us right well this is it's going to call us for they're going to come back to yeah that's what i mean i mean i'm just trying to think i'm not sure if senator persic were you thinking about altering line seven where it says recommend to end or to say um or to end suspensions either way it kind of comes back to us you know what i'm saying i'm not sure if that's helpful or yeah i guess i guess i think that we probably keep it the way it is and that there are complications and you know i might even come up with the under eight year olds but it's better for the task force to look at it holistically and then come back to us and say like okay here's here's how you need to change this yeah it's pretty clear we're going to end it so they can't come back and say oh don't don't end right right we're directing them that that's the way we want to move the task force doesn't have the power to end i understand right yeah so all it can do is come back to me right right right is there a date certain by which that it will end regardless of when the task force comes back so in other words the task force could come back with very compelling reason not to end it and then but in the meantime we could say that it will end so we could say it's going to let's let's just pick a date out of our heads it's going to end it's going to end January 1st 2022 or no March 1st 2022 and the task force report will come back um January 2022 there's two months there for any change to that um effective date is that something we should do or do we have centers feel about that i mean that gives it i think i mean either way is fine with me i'm happy just ending it but um then but you do want the task force to feel like they're actually doing something yeah yeah let's leave it without the date for right now if that's the right center alliance oh i'm fine okay and then um jim do you have enough direction just looking that it's after four and i know we have a chairs meeting and senator lines you need you feel free to go when you need to and i think senator hooker i don't know if you go to those um but feel free to yeah i'm fine i can i can no no problem okay center persecutor center hooker final questions or just verify as far as um under eight yeah the immediate and anything else would be um subject to what the recommendation of the commission is i'm sorry would you repeat the first part of that um banning banning expulsions under eight would be immediate yeah and then the rest would follow as the debt is collected exactly it's saved for circumstances as outlined by senator lines yeah okay okay all right so uh if jim if you'd be so kind as to email the entire committee a new draft when you're done so you give people an opportunity to look at things this evening um we could comment some more uh and i will ask joint fiscal to um uh do a fiscal note senator chin and i want to remind you about four weeks five weeks ago uh we were working on this and it looked like we were nearing completion you said well sausage making is this easy it's fine with me um now we're really into making sausage it'll be great sausage yeah it's going to be great sausage i like that uh thanks everybody appreciate it uh jim thanks again oh sure yep okay bye bye bye