 One thing you're going to get is a lot of history. If I give you too much, I'll just say, you know, you're born in New York City. Promise? Last year when we had the board of school violence, I'm going to shoot in the house in Fairhaven. To Governor, we were... That was when? That was in February, right? In February. So we were pretty well along in putting together our capital budget. And Governor, of course, had already proposed this budget. And it wasn't anything in there for school safety. So the Governor was proposing $450 in the capital bill, $1 million coming from the Department of Public Safety through their homeland's utility grants that they get from the federal government. And the goal of that was that the Department of Public Safety, along with the Agency of Education in the interim, would be doing some assessments of all of our schools in the state in terms of what was needed for school safety. It could be cameras, locks on the doors, maybe some change in the Wabi and how this laid out. So it wasn't for personnel, it was for actual construction of something. So then the Department of Public Safety, that $1 million was supposed to be used for maybe any training or operational costs. So we did that. There was also an amendment that was put on on the floor that I remember from Barry. Topper. That's the top of his life. Quickly you forget. A little up top, Tom. And I mean that in a very good way. And there was a school safety advisory, that was it, right? They were supposed to develop state-wide guidelines for best practices for training school safety and the prevention of school shootings. And there was a list of people that six folks that would be on that group and look their hours and duties for. So that was added on after our bill hit the floor. So we put that on. So the plan of grants, the grants have already gone out. We put $4 million in our capital bill for best practice last year and a million was to come to Department of Public Safety. Department of Public Safety is the one that really handled both sets of money, basically. And what was put out was $25,000 per school, not per school district. So that's the general history of it. Becky is going to walk us through. And we have a family sitting on the side. I don't know. Thank you, ma'am. I'm the Andrew Brewer. I'm working with Patty Conroy. And you're representing what entity? The Gabby Giffords Association. The Gabby Giffords Association. Thank you. And that's for prevention. That's right on the school board. So Becky Wasserman, Legislative Council. The chair walked through most of what I was going to talk about. But I will add some more detail. So there were two sections in last year's capital budget adjustment bill that had to do with school safety. And as was mentioned, there was the school safety and security capital grant program. And then there was also the creation of a school security advisory group. So I've cut and pasted the language from both of those sections of the bill. And I also, in this document, added there's a definition of schools that's used for the purposes of the grant program. So I included that definition in this handout. And then finally, at the end there, which is only helpful on the iPad, I included a link to the report that was submitted by the advisory group. So on the first page there, in section 26 of last year's capital bill, created the school safety and security capital grant program. That grant program is administered by the Department of Public Safety. And the purpose of it was to enhance safety and security in Vermont schools. And there's a cross-reference of a definition in there in section 16, which I will get to later on that I think is important for figuring out who is eligible to receive these grants. And then there's a line about the amount appropriated in section 10 of this act, and that is the $4 million that was appropriated in last year's bill to support this grant program. In subsection B, there is language on how the grant can be used. So these are capital grants. So they could be used for planning, delivery, and installation of equipment. And that's for upgrades to existing school security equipment or for any new school security equipment that is needed by a school. And in order to determine if that is something that a school needs, there is a threat assessment planning and survey that was done by the Department of Public Safety to determine what would enhance building security. And there's some language about that later on on the next page. There are certain guidelines in subsection C about how these grants can be used. So they are only, the funds can only be used for capital eligible expenses. And there is a list there of some types of capital eligible expenses. This is not an exclusive list. So it could include video monitoring and surveillance equipment, intercom systems, window coverings, exterior and interior doors, locks, and perimeter security measures. As I mentioned above, there is a requirement for a security assessment that would be done in the schools in order to be eligible for these grants. And that security assessment had to be completed by the Agency of Education and the Department of Public Safety. In subdivision three, there is language limiting the amount of grant funds that a school is able to obtain through this program. So it is $25,000 per school. And there's also a 25% match requirement for the grant and the school has to, had to provide that match through dollars and not in kind services. The grants were, are are administered by the Department of Public Safety in coordination with the Agency of Education. And finally, in terms of reporting the Department of Public Safety was required to provide notice of any awards granted under this section to the chair of this committee and to the chair of the Senate Committee on Institutions. There was also some sunset language included in the bill. So this program is repealed on July 1st of this year. So for new members, you'll hear the term sunset used a lot. And sunset means that, means that as of that day that particular law is repealed. But the thinking behind putting in a sunset is that it's not a, it's a definite repeal but it is not a definite repeal in that it triggers that word sunset triggers the legislators to say, hey, we've got to review this before we really do repeal it in case we don't want to repeal it. So it's a check-in. Does that make sense? No. Of course it does. Yes it does. It's a check-in before you make sure you don't want to repeal it or you do want to repeal it. So when you talk about, if you remember, public inebriates, when Mike Tuchette was seeing and talked about public inebriates, being housed in correctional facilities, that we wanted to get rid of that practice. So we said as of a certain date that is on the sunset that practice and we have never found a way to do it any differently. So we keep extending that sunset date. You remember Mike Tuchette talking a little bit about that. That's what was that. So here we have, it's a repeal. But the title at the top is Sunset of School Security Grants, which means we don't know if this program is going to continue or not. And that will be up for discussion for the FY21 cabinet. Does that make sense, Kirk? Thank you. Thank you. Bunch of exactly what you're saying. Huh? But you just kind of took rather a little bit of time to get to what you were saying. Took a long time to get there. How would you upset it? Same one. This is the one we're interested in. Yes. On the third page, I've included the definition of schools from 16VSA 3447, which is used to determine which schools are eligible for these grants. And so it references incorporated school districts, joint contract schools, town school districts, union school districts, regional career technical center school districts, and then independent schools. But as you will see, there is essentially a five-part test that the independent school has to meet in order to be included on this list of schools. So the independent school has to be, well, it has to be an approved independent school. It must meet educational quality standards, which there's Section 166 of Title 16 lays out those quality standards. It must be designated as a public high school for one or more towns or cities under Section 827 of Title 16. It must receive principal support from public funds, and then it must be conducted within the state under the authority and supervision of a board of trustees, not less than two-thirds of whose membership is appointed by the select board of a town or by the city council of the city or in part by such select board and the remaining part of such council under conditions for that purpose at Title 16 in sections 347 to 3456. So this is very specific. I don't know the answer to how many schools actually qualify for this, but I just the independent piece. I've had some discussions with our education attorney who doesn't know specifically either but says it's a very small amount of schools that are like a handful or less. Because you're really dealing more with the high school level number one, and you're also dealing with, particularly how it's financed locally, but how it's supported by public funds and also within the authority and supervision of a board of trustees, not less than two-thirds of whose membership is supported by the select board of the town. So some independent schools that we think are independent schools may not have that structure with the local community. That's correct. So you have to dig in. So this is an important part of this. Also if you look at 3447 school building construction, state bonds, for those of you who have been involved in school boards or maybe even select boards, we on the state level would help communities where there's school construction projects where there were eligible construction projects. There were eligible for school construction dollars. And we had a program that was the state would pick up 30% of those eligible costs. And it would determine that if the construction, what would be eligible for state dollars, would be set through those school standards. It's done by, I believe it's done by the Board of Education. If a project eligible costs the project was a million dollars and it was eligible for 30% of state aid school construction dollars, we would pick up 330,000. That would be our share of that money. We were again to the point about 10 years ago. 14 years ago. We had 100 million dollars about the tuition to our school districts. And we only appropriated that time, that 8 to 10 million per year of our capital and school construction. So we put a moratorium on that. The moratorium means that program is halted. It's not delayed. It is halted. So it gave us a breathing room to catch up on our obligations to our local school districts. Right now, that program is under the moratorium. We have not done school construction dollars. Just for emergency projects? Just for emergency projects. That's 50 pounds per year. So this section, school building construction state bonds is, it refers to those school construction dollars in our capital bill. What form does that moratorium take? The form that it took, we put the language in the capital bill, the form that it took is as of a certain date, we wanted to make sure that that town meeting broke that was going to occur that year. So I think it was after March whatever of that year, those projects that had been approved up to that day would be funded. Anything after that would not have been stated. But the moratorium is in statute then? No, it's in session law. There's also a requirement that in order for it to be lifted, a new funding system has to be put in place for school construction. But it doesn't apply to emergency projects which $50,000 has been included in the capital bill every year for that purpose. Emergency projects, we wanted like life and safety. Does that apply to the drinking water issues? Was that used at all? Okay. Was that a yes or no? No. There's a lot of knocking on the door for school construction. A lot of knocking on the door. Particularly for the consolidation issue. Could be for the drinking of lead issue. It could be for the radar issue. Lots of knocking on the door. The work that we're doing with school construction will not go to someone sometime. So, in addition to Alice's which is very good, thank you. The reason that this language is very important and the reason I pulled the green book out is that many last year wanted to make sure that we included independent schools that independent schools would be eligible for these grants. A member from St. John's Berry and a member from New Manchester. They have academies. They have St. John's Berry Academy. There's other schools like the Montpell School down your way. We wanted to make sure those schools would be eligible for grant. And it's funny because we opened up the statute book and there's Alice's undermining the language. Last year? So, the Department of Public Safety actually mirrored that language in their grant application. They didn't fund any public school, any independent schools at all according to a little bit of research I did on the subject. So, I personally think we missed a group of schools that we hadn't had. I think the committee intent was to cover those schools by the speakers being out of turn. So, the question that comes to me is do we rectify this? Let's say after we get the government budget or do we not, there was a public independent school in Long City that actually brought it to my attention that they were similarly pulled by the Department of Public Safety and the agency of Ed that they were not held for these grant funds. So, can I just interrupt? Were those independent schools part of the survey that was done? They were surveyed. They were surveyed. This school that contacted me was surveyed. It was surveyed but you don't know about St. John's. I don't know about CJA or Burma. We can find out. So, that's why this language I think that you just forward for discussion on this like particularly St. J. or Burma they're basically publicized. They are publicized. The other piece that Al has just pointed out the language, further language that you don't see there is kind of the definition of independent schools and you don't talk about public elementary schools. Independent elementary schools. Just high schools. Just high schools. So, that would be another glitch that the statute really needs to be maybe repaired and fixed on that. That's a discussion for another day. That your school could start. Right. So, if you're going to you could just create a new definition that you want to use. Specifically for school safety. For school safety. Because this was, I think the idea was that this was another example of where public funds were being given to schools. So, it was the reference point to use, but obviously it didn't encompass the intent. I guess we had a very long committee discussion about independent schools and whether we wanted to include them in the grant program or not in the committee agreed that we did. I guess that's the target. Right. If you amend this section of law, that would also just be getting into the policy decision of school construction. So, you know, you could you could do that, but it would be expanding what the, if the moratorium was lifted, it would be also expanding what schools were eligible to receive school construction. Then you'll have an amendment on this. Yeah. So, I hear you say that that's up to the committee. That's just a consideration that if you're going to amend this section of law for the school safety program, it would also have implications for the school construction program. We don't want to open up that door. So, there's another avenue we can take. The question then is if we could find out how many number of schools were really talking to them. How many schools were talking to them? How many buildings were really talking to them? Yeah. So, all the money on our four million has been used. We won't have to get a list of where those dollars are. The language required the department to send that to you. The governor you should just pick up four dollars. Or where the money went. Okay. But it would be good for committee members. Okay. Do you know how many schools applied? And then how many were denied? Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. It came from the administration. Is that a public report? Yes. Yes, it was posted. I just wonder if it's on our sometime in the fall. Perhaps it's on our time before the election. Yeah. Well, it was actually a press release. Now it's the school safety. Yeah, but we got it. We got an e-mail to the school. Yeah. I can get that for you. So, one issue with the school safety. There's probably three issues here. This is the first issue. Doesn't look like it's on it. How do we define independent schools? And was that really our intent? And if it was our intent, then the four million do not go to any independent schools. So then that means if we want to do that, then we'll have to see if we want to put money in the shoes capital format. And then that would be sort of specific to just independent schools. So, just independent schools and not open up the door to other schools. That would be a policy decision we have to make. We only have to make a decision before making money in. Oh, there you go. Because the governor may in his budget put money in it, and he may not. If he doesn't, we can't because he's so choose. The other issue is how much are the one million from public safety? One million. Oh, there's four issues. Another issue was later on in the legislation. As I said, there was a four amendment to the school safety advisory group which I heard did not meet, did not do anything. There's a report. Yeah, but it wasn't in that group. Oh. School safety advisory group. Was there a report? Yeah, it was just later. The language required it, I think, to be done by July. And this is dated. We heard from Topper that Andrew would be able to do it. So we'll have to check. And then the fourth issue is Fairhaven. Fairhaven is where the initial threat was made. They went ahead and did some improvements that would have qualified for that four amendment. Did they file? They filed a report. Were they assessed when they went through the assessment? Yes, they were assessed. But they had already done the work. They had already done the public pressure. Now they're on nickel. So they're saying, hey, we should have retroactive work for this $25,000. So that's an issue that's circulating around right now. So we may have to address in the FY20 capital budget or the FY20 general fund budget. We don't know. Yeah, that's going to be handled. There's weeks. And there's one more issue that we need to I've got four already. We don't need any more. Okay, I have the list of what they were giving grants for. And many of the items they were giving grants for in my opinion. Of our four million. Of our four million. We're not capital. We will learn about that probably from the treasurer. When she comes in about what capital dollars can be extended for. And that's a whole additional thing. A lot of stuff within their grant application that they were looking for. As an example of the Colby Gold bag which had stuff in it. In case of emergency. Can you stick? Yeah, it looked like Fairhaven was actually on this list. Yes, they got $927. $950. $950. They were going to expand. Well, that's woken into that. So it looks like there were 236 schools that were awarded grants. Could you forward that to Danielle. So Danielle can then post that on our webpage. Sure. So we'll be spending some time on this independent school and on the Fairhaven night. So they considered that the report? Of the school safety advisory group. That's the title of it. Yeah, it looks like it has. But the thing is, we, this is where we're going to be. We're going to be this is where this is where it gets really complicated in that we have passed out this budget. I'm putting the pieces together. We we passed out the capital budget in a march. And we had the assessment security assessment was to be completed by the agency then by those folks that are focused on security. Our bill has not passed yet yet. I don't think that would have gone on in the Senate when the gun bill came out. Either way, so then the gun legislation came out on the floor. The background checks, the waiting period, the stocks, high capacity magazines. The top iron amendment on the floor, some folks had an amendment on the floor that the unsafety bill in legislation was not going to be protected in our situation. That was not going to happen. So Topper had an amendment that put in place the school safety advisory group which basically we do the same thing that we'd already put in the bill but there was some legislators that really wanted the school safety advisory group to develop statewide guidelines that best practices concerning school safety and the prevention of school should it. So it went a little further than just the security assessment and there was a membership of the secretary of administration, secretary of education, commissioner of public safety and executive director of the school board's association and the and a representative of the principal's association and then they were to study the issues and guidelines for so that was starting to really bog down all the discussions on the floor. We had this security assessment on capital bill which was kind of at the same time. So we made an agreement that we would pick this up with this language in the capital and that's why it's here. So it's sort of the same as the security assessment that we already had with the secretary with the agency of education and the department of public safety but it went a little further in terms of setting up guidelines. So last week first week in the session Topper came to me and he said that this advisory didn't do their work and never met so I don't know if that's true. So the advisory group under the language was supposed to submit a written report by July 1st of last year and and the group ceases to exist on July 1st of this year but as you saw that was dated December 20th so I don't know if from the school safety advisory right I don't know if there is it was more an issue of they met later than the law required right so the school safety advisory group found many of the resources best practices and guidelines for school safety throughout or while established. So in conclusion they made several policy and best practice recommendations for continuing to improve school safety in Vermont schools so then they attached stay where you are so the attack report includes resources developed by okay so Vermont school crisis planning team and the Vermont school safety center so I'm a I would think that's okay the school safety centers supported partnership between the department of public safety so that's the connection that we had was the agency of Ed and the department of public safety for and they considered that the school safety center so they're merging those two and they're merging what we had agency of Ed department of public safety they're merging that with the advisory group that has added on to our they're merging those two at least one thing so tariff are the same but maybe they have a different arena questions confusion no I was just looking for the recommendations section of the report it's 258 pages long yeah that's the drawback of the lifetime so so what page did you find those what page did I find a recommendation it says it was separately yeah I don't know if I can was that a separate that that was on this report no it was a separate this is just the cover sheet for the report the report I know but the report that you just sent to Danielle I just googled that's that's separate that's just the grant award that's the list that grant award there if we can get where did that if you went to the previous page for that that is under the emergency management emergency management yeah where did you get the report the report is on are the legislative website under reports and research but in the in the handout that I included if you go to the last page I included a link that should work yeah so you can find it there too but that's a school safety advisory that's a school safety advisory I didn't include the list of awarded grants so the school safety advisory group did not list where the grant body went that was a separate report that was that sounds like something that the administration produced that wasn't required under the legislation what was required under the legislation was the Department of Public Safety providing notice to the two institutions committees of any grants awarded and that would be what was presented there when was the advisory group when was the date on that December 20th so they did the work but they didn't do it for July 1st right and perhaps it sounds like they the as you were saying the resources and the best practices that they attached were developed in another context and they adopted those as their best practices but but but they did what they did and did they achieve the same results right as long as they did it it's just a different time they didn't want to do it at all they didn't want to do it at all I think it was a bit of a dust up so if you do want to consider if other schools should have been eligible you would have to change that sunset date right if we did the independent schools if you wanted to give them more time to apply have the grant program last for a longer period of time you would have to push out that sunset date and in addition if you wanted this advisory group to do any further work that is ceasing to exist on July 1st of this year as well so you would have to push back that date too the sunset advisory group that is terminating on July 1st of this year if you want to come to the beginning so we've got a lot of issues here small and around this little school construction thing I'm just sort of writing down because it's more than three or four so we have three I would say school safety not construction so let me go through the list real quick because if somebody can also track this because we'll have to do that so we need to really clarify the independent school issue and do a separate definition of that we need to look at the current four million dollars in terms of the board of projects a group of hundred dollars and we're the one million dollars plan so we have to address the fair haven issue of retroactivity sunset advisory group in what way do we have to look at that because it's sunsetting if you do nothing it just won't exist anymore so you would have to do something this legislative session in order to have it continue so when you say sunset that's your darkened sunset of the school safety yes six legs right now we really didn't understand the demand we did and we didn't and that was part of why there was that assessment done the demand right now is the retroactivity for fair haven and the independent schools that's the demand right now yep and the independent schools from our understanding they were assessed by the department of public safety and agency and when the department of public safety put out those grant applications it didn't include language in our caliber language in terms of school construction it didn't include independent schools but none of the independent schools received any grant for school safety though they were assessed for their safety and we need to find out where that 1 million that will be an important you got it Mary so anything else Becky that's all I had are people really confused or are you sort of clear I know it's overwhelming the institutions committee you deal with every part of state government in a different place we're exposed to a lot more things in this country than being like a natural resources or education or agriculture we're able to have those specific areas only but when you go to the capitol bill and we're doing we're going to get into wastewater treatment facilities you're going to get into household overflows you're going to get into the school construction piece you're going to get into armories you're going to get into department of public safety in terms of state police barracks you're going to get into courthouses you're going to get into art and state buildings what am I missing so you're going to touch everything you're going to get into maybe the auditor wanting a new building a new space I had a question around the intention of the sunsetting and I was wondering if it had anything to do with what's going on with the mergers was july 1st so it doesn't have anything so it was done as a way this came in as a result of the situation and really failing that our schools needed to and we quickly put this together quickly found four million dollars in our budget and an additional one million we didn't know what the needs were going to be we didn't know what the response was going to be we didn't know if the four five million was going to take care of that four hundred and that's why we put in that sunset to say we'll look at this come next session to see where we are what needs another year or two or if everything is going to be and july 1st is usually picked because that's the start of the next fiscal year thank you so what we're doing is a lot more moving in this first first state state anything else Becky? are you planning on staying for the next little section? I am I might need some help it's moving from lease space to other lease space fee for space water bearing the end of it I guess the beginning a year into it national life where we put in six million dollars for renovations national life that was a big step because we were putting in state money into a building we didn't know why it's so much money now we're going to pull P1 and we didn't we do about two million of the six three million we knew we were under part six million but I'll say Chris did notify about me about possibly moving part of AOT out to the national life and the industry I'm there and I voice to him and I say that they aren't an AOT together purposefully okay, anything else? people want to take a quick break?