 Just hit your mute button. Good. Okay. So welcome everybody. Couple of clarifications before we get started. First is that, you know, Jeannie and Peggy have been doing. Yo person's work trying to get us scheduled, but inevitably there are some miscommunications. So today was meant to go from two to three 30. But the Zoom invitation said two to three. So I just want people to know that we may well run over. Three o'clock from three to three 30. And it's important that everybody who is invited to testify be able to say what it is they want to say. The second thing is we are attempting to work with the health and welfare committee this week. So hopefully they will be joining us on this call. I'll be joining us on this call as participants. I'll be running this meeting. But as each witness finishes, I'll go to Jenny Lyons first. And ask her if she has any comments. Assuming she. Makes it onto the call. And when I open it up to. Committee. Discussion. I'll open it up to both committees and make a list as we do in the all Senate call. And then call people's questions according to. That list. Then the other thing is for Thursday. We will be that is Senate egg will be joining the health and welfare. Call. And Jenny will give us a reminder about when that is, but I believe it's in the morning. So we will not be doing a two o'clock call. Then on Thursday. Our meeting will be during health and welfare time. And we'll be joining their call as they're doing with ours today. Is that clear for everybody? So Thursday we'll have one call and it'll be during the self. Senate health and welfare time rather than ours. We're just going to cancel the two o'clock. Call. Okay. Ruth. What if my other committee is scheduled to meet Thursday morning already. Okay. Well, if you can't join both, you can't, but we, we don't want to have double, double, double committee time. So. Jenny and I worked it out this way. So they'll, they'll be on our call. We'll be on their call. And then. If, if you have questions, we can pass them on. If you have to be in agriculture room. Okay. Okay. So, um, As everybody knows the, the school order, the general dismissal order has now been extended. Uh, oh, I see Richie Westman. I see Debbie Ingram. So health and welfare is here. Uh, welcome everybody. And, um, We're, we're all muting if we're not speaking. So, um, The general dismissal order has now been extended for the rest of the semester. And that obviously has implications for all of the different subject areas we've been following continuity of education, food delivery. Um, and especially for today's purposes, delivery of special ed services. So, um, We on our committee have been concerned about this. I know in news accounts, there are. Um, There are very honest, um, Um, Valuations of ongoing planning that it doesn't yet make clear what's going on with special ed. So we want to try to follow up and, uh, Provide oversight with the understanding that this is coming together as we speak. So no blame for anybody, But we want to make triply sure that we're not leaving any students behind. So with that said, I'm going to move on to the next slide. Um, I'm going to move from our agenda. And that agenda has Aaron McGuire, special education administrator for Westford Essex school district. Um, To speak first. And so we're looking to hear whatever any of the witnesses want to tell us. But in general. How have special ed services been going. And are there things in particular. Um, That could be a statutory change if it's absolutely necessary. So with that said, Aaron McGuire, If you want to unmute and tell us what we need to know. Sure. Great. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. So while I serve as a special education director in Vermont for the Essex Westford school district, I think it is worth noting that I also serve as the president for the council of administrators of special education, but I also serve as a special education director. I serve as a special education director is around the country and have been very involved in national work as it relates to advocacy for students with disabilities and the work nationally happening around IDA under the pandemic. Um, and I've also been pretty involved at the state level with some of the work that's been happening with the agency and some of the recommendations that have been coming from there. Um, and I'm also happy to talk about state wide issues and the national issues. I think it is important to note that, um, IDA is a federal law that is pretty specific within the context of the federal statute. And so, um, much of what happens around IDA and special education derives from that space, that federal space. And so while there are some aspects of special education that are, um, driven by local rules and regulations at the state level, um, there are a lot of protections for families that are situated in law and those have not changed since the beginning of this pandemic. IDA is intact. It has not been waived. Um, and the most recent cares act that came through and was signed by the president, um, provided an opportunity for the secretary of education at the state level to request what flexibilities might be necessary, but the only, um, entity that can really provide any kind of flexibility as it relates to IDA is Congress. So I think that's just an important contextual piece as you think about the work in Vermont that you as legislators, uh, might do as senators to be thinking about special education in Vermont. Um, I'll also say that I feel really confident that, um, Vermont has worked very hard to keep the rights of families parents and children at the center of the discussion as we've been working forward around how to do this body of work. Now all of that said, the ability to provide high quality special education from a distance is very challenging. So where you as a director or as a special education teacher need to try to figure out how to deliver what's called a fake free appropriate public education that is guaranteed by right under IDA to children without being physically present with them. What that looks like under those circumstances is definitely a challenge. Um, in Vermont, many school districts, and this includes my own, we are working hard to develop what are described as distance learning plans that sit next to the IEP that where all the rights are applied to those constructs and we are working with families to figure out, um, what we can do from a distance that includes things like video conferencing with students and delivering instruction through, um, person to person instruction, but over the internet, uh, it also includes a deeper conversation than ever before about how much consultation a parent might need to be able to support their child inside of special education. So that's kind of a new conversation right now. That's happening. Um, while all kids are at home now, um, their parents play a new and very unique role in their educational program. And one of the things we've been focused on in Essex, Westford is trying to figure out what families need. Um, that is very different family to family in a way that is actually not always attached to the students individual disability, but sometimes it's attached to the family circumstances. So one of the things we're trying to do is be very flexible with families and try to understand what their needs are, along with what we can do for students without being physically in contact with them in the delivery system, trying to make sure that's all documented, that families have an opportunity for input into that process and that that results in a document that parents can have, that families can have and see and understand. Um, we are also working with, um, all of our educators to do training about how to deliver instruction in this way. It's new for everyone. Um, there, there is, uh, an attempt to completely reorganize the entire educational delivery system in a matter of days. Um, and that is an incredibly tall order and that involves special education as well. I did want to mention my worries about equity issues as it relates to the delivery of special education during this time. There are equity issues because of internet access. Uh, there are issues because of, um, single parent households with more than one child trying to access education and also still work and be able to make a living to, to manage through the circumstance. There are circumstances where there are families who are sick from the pandemic and how that interrelates to the educational program that can and cannot be delivered and so just a couple of examples that can share with you the varied approaches that we're having to take. We're used to being inside of a, a sort of a controlled space where we can say this service is what this child needs to access this at this given time. And that's because of the impact of a disability or the circumstance around that individual child. Circumstances just really changed quite drastically to include every home in Vermont that has a child in it. Um, and we're working really hard to figure that out. Uh, but again, it does, um, elevate some equity issues about families who have access to lots of time and energy. And those who don't families who have, um, socioeconomic variation, families who have different access to the internet based on where they live, trying to be creative about, uh, telephonic work. So how can we be on the phone and providing print materials to the greatest extent we can in a way that safe, um, to be able to meet the needs of students. So that's another, um, perspective that we're trying to use and, and make sure that where we again are very, very flexible. One of the things I've been saying a fair amount lately is that IDA wasn't built for this. And so we are struggling with compliance around special education timelines. Um, we are expected by federal law to hold an annual IEP meeting once a year where we review the IEP. It's an expectation that we go through that IEP with a fine tooth comb. We think about where we would want the student to be a year from now. Um, there are a couple of different challenges with that. One of which is that some families are not in a space to be talking about where we're going to be in a year from now right now. Uh, we are in the middle of a national, a global crisis. And to expect people to do their best thinking about their own child in these moments is really a tough, tough, um, expectation to hold for some people. However, we are working to do that where families are ready. So if a family really feels like they'd like to move into their annual IEP meeting and we can do that through zoom and have a conversation and bring teachers to the table and, and do that work. We are trying to do that. Evaluations is another area that is of great challenge because, um, um, uh, evaluating or assessing a child from afar is very hard to do. And it is an expectation that we complete comprehensive evaluations of children that are well done and designed to think about what their educational program should be. So where we can't do that, we are running into some problems as it relates to the timelines. Um, we're also, I'm a little bit worried about maintenance of effort. So as we start to talk about fiscal responsibilities, the idea that we are spending the money that we would have been spending outside of this crisis scenario may not be a viable conversation to be having. There is a federal expectation that all local education agencies maintain financial effort in special education. That's actually an area where the secretary of education is one of the only areas in idea where the secretary of ed has some flexibility under a crisis to waive that requirement. Um, so those conversations are actively happening at the federal level. My national organization, along with Jackie Keller, her's national organization, um, the national association of state special education directors, um, are co-authoring a letter to the U S department of education to request some flexibility as it relates to timelines, some of the procedural pieces of idea that aren't built for this, um, that are really hard to meet. None of us want to be in violation of the law. And yet this pandemic is causing some circumstances where it's all, it's nearly impossible to comply with the expectation. Um, I'll leave you with another sort of piece. I think is very important for everyone here to hear and be aware of, which is that the office of civil rights, OCR has been very clear that accommodations, uh, there's been a lot of changes in the process. Um, there's been a lot of modifications and accessibilities for individuals with disabilities to general education materials that are coming through this new delivery system. We made accessible. And so that's another area of focus that schools are working really hard to, uh, really change the way we're doing something that's brand new. For accessibility. Jenny, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And then I'll come to you when Erin and, uh, and it's time for questions. Okay. So I think, um, uh, Oh, I will offer one other piece as it relates to, um, the challenges with this whole delivery system, which is that social skills are really important part of a lot of kids plans. Um, and so the challenges that focus in on social engagement, both with adults and with each other. Are very challenging to deliver under the current context. We are working on that. We're working on bringing kids together through zoom and through being able to maybe come in through a phone call into a zoom meeting. If you don't have access to internet. Um, and, uh, also just small group instruction with special educators. Um, And so we're also working on, um, trying to build small groups and continue to practice those skills and make sure kids have those opportunities. Um, that is also, uh, it is a different environment when we're all sitting here, not in the room together, but sort of in a room together. Right. Um, and what that looks like, it's a new skill. It's also an important skill. There, there are benefits to learning in new environments for sure. But, uh, that's just one other area that I think is important to understand. Um, Um, Um, I think it's important by saying that ID is in place right now. There are no federal federal flexibilities at this point. It is the expectation of the agency as well as of school districts themselves that we are complying to the greatest extent we can in good faith effort to provide children with a free appropriate public education to the greatest extent possible under these circumstances. Um, Um, I think that's one of the things that I think is important to understand. Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, You could, it seemed to me you could send an email that was put forward changes. And then the parent could agree that way and that way you wouldn't need even a remote meeting. If they didn't agree, then it would go to a remote meeting either by teleconference or by Zoom. Is that the way you saw that? That is the way that I see that for amending and adding in this new type of learning plan into the special education program. So we've had to redesign what services will be available to families. During the continuity of education timeframe where we're maintaining progress, we're about to sort of step it up, right? Into a place of making progress for students. And so we're really needing to reframe what those services look like. So we're able to do that without a meeting as long as parents are okay. It is the desire to say that families have input into that. It's more challenging to do that as it relates to the annual IEP review. So adding sort of this new type of plan, a parent and a special educator could have a conversation, agree to something, agree not to have the entire IEP meeting process take place to create that agreement for now but what's going to take place. And there are ways to document that and do that. There are not really ways to do that when it comes to the annual IEP review, which is that annual requirement, those happen all year long, right? Those aren't all happening at the beginning or the end of the year. Kids have annual reviews throughout the year, depending on when their year is up. And that review process is very challenging to do without a meeting. It's not really appropriate under the law to move through an annual review of a whole IEP and redesign the IEP for another year without an IEP meeting. So there is a difference between that amendment process and trying to manage an entire IEP review outside of an IEP meeting. Great, Ginny, anything you want to draw out or ask? No, thank, no, no, Philip or Senator Baruth. I think I'm set. I came in late on the testimony but I will keep listening. And if something happens, I will raise my hand to ask a question. Okay, thank you. Yep, so let's do it this way. If you have a question for Aaron, understanding that we have other witnesses who will speak for AOE or the special ed advisory panel or different organizations. So you don't have to get all your questions out now. But if you have a specific question for Aaron, show me your hand and I'll make a little list. Debbie, Ruth, okay, Debbie, go ahead. Thank you. Thanks, Aaron. So I appreciate that you brought up the fact that the situation is causing inequities in how a special ed is being approached in homes. Do you have any further information, especially those families that are already living in poverty? I would imagine that they're facing particular struggles. How are you trying to help those folks? I think I'll just go back to really being focused on trying to figure out what families need in this time. Our goal is to be there for families based on whatever it is they need. And so when we approach families to talk about the special education piece, we don't sort of hold barriers. So what are your needs as a family? Do you need anything as a parent? What can we do to be helpful? Is it helpful to have three different service providers or do you just wanna talk with someone once a week? Trying to read where families are, certainly trying to get a read on whether or not there are any issues with food insecurity, any mental health supports that might be needed. We do have a great deal of mental health support available to families from our designated agency. Again, though, it's all from afar. So it means that there's an appointment online, there's an appointment on the phone. But I do feel like we actually have a pretty robust array of people to offer in that way. One of the things I'm watching happen is some families have space for that and some families feel actually quite overwhelmed by that and so trying to read where a family is and just doing everything we can to meet their needs. I think that that is certainly the disposition of my school district and I'm quite sure most school districts right now, we just really wanna be there for families and provide a lot of flexibility. That said, spending time with kids online can actually help families. So having an educator present with a student doing some instruction can free up a parent to go do a meeting and so recognizing that that might be helpful to a family. That's not specific to socioeconomic status or any other inequity that might be taking place for a family, but we really are trying to approach families and children circumstance by circumstance and identify what makes the most sense for that child in this situation without of course violating CDC recommendations and keeping the health and safety of everyone first and foremost. Okay, Senator Hardy. Thank you and thanks Erin for being on the call. I'm not sure where to look, you're all probably on different spots and everybody's screen, but I'm glad that you brought up the whole issue of the annual IEP review. I've talked to a number of parents for which that has been problematic because of the timing of it happening right now. And I know you're about that issue and I'm wondering if that's part of what you're reaching out. My guess is that a lot of IEP plans will need to be altered after this crisis is over because a lot of students will have not been able to make progress. And so there might be sort of this whole rush of trying to update IEP plans and wondering if that is part of what you're advocating for because the added stress of having to think about a year from now is really hard for anybody, let alone the parent of a child with an IEP. So that's just a comment just asking that you add that to what you're advocating for because I think that's just generally what I've heard from a lot of parents that I've talked to it's problematic. And then that sort of leads into what I'm interested in, in addition to what is happening now is from all of you who are witnesses about what you're thinking about that we might need to do to alter anything at the state level. And if you could comment on that in your testimony during this emergency situation and then afterwards what you think might be helpful because I know that for this situation, it's gonna be really important that we have the supports in place for when we're through this crisis. So I'm wondering, you didn't really talk about the after effects and wondering if you had plans or thoughts about that. Sure, so a couple of things, definitely there will need to be some analysis about where we find ourselves upon return and that will result in new conversations around special education. There's no question about that. I think it begs the question of what does, if we come back in June, what does the summer look like if we're able to return to collaborative spaces at that point? And that offers opportunity, I think, to have solid conversations about what we need to be doing to try to ameliorate some of the issues that will no doubt show up upon return. As it relates to advocacy at the federal level, we are advocating for an extension of timelines, not complete relief of timelines, but an extension so that we have upon return, we have 45 school days to remedy all of the compliance issues that took place during this departure. So if we can keep with compliance, we should, but where we can't, we're looking for that extension from the federal government. As I had indicated earlier, there are these pieces that have to be done federally. As it relates to what you all could do, there's a couple of things that I would say. First of all, anything we can do to ensure internet access in rural areas in Vermont, which you all have talked about for a long time. I'm really well aware of that, but we have serious inequities because people cannot have access to the school devices that we can provide that can get onto the internet and provide a level of window into other spaces. So it's a powerful tool, and for kids who can't have it, that's an inequity that I would implore you to continue talking about and anything you could do in this moment would be amazing. And then in addition to that, I would say I'm deeply worried about families who are moving into some very serious socioeconomic crises right now. That goes for obviously families of kids with disabilities and many other families too. And anything that we can do to hold families in ways that doesn't cause tremendous socioeconomic decline in these circumstances given their situation. Certainly know that the recent CARES Act at the federal level is trying to address that, but anything we can do locally in Vermont to make sure that families are in less as little stress as possible, particularly around finances at this time would be really helpful. And I think food insecurity continues to be an area of challenge and trying to make sure that we uphold everything we can to ensure that families have access to food and basic needs being met. I don't have a request specific to special education. Maybe some of my colleagues who will testify after me might because for me there is sort of this federal piece and there is this really clear obligation of local education agencies to deliver faith under the circumstances to the greatest extent possible. And the agency has been clear that upon return we will likely need to ameliorate issues that have shown up due to the lack of educational programming just given the circumstances that we're in for special education. Okay, great. Thank you very much, Erin. That's extremely helpful. So let's move to Kirsten Murphy, Executive Director of Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. And Kirsten, same guidance. If there's anything you want us to know, please let us know, but we're especially interested in things that we might do if they're necessary to be done in statute. Senator Beruz, could I ask a question? Is this Kirsten? No, this is Jane Kinshel. Oh, yes, Jane. Okay, we've talked about the educational supports, but for many of these students, they're also receiving medical supports or school-based health services many with significant abilities. I can just ask, who is your question for? It's to Erin. And that is now that those services were provided to the student in a school setting, now they're home. So could you speak to how those health-based services that have been provided in the school setting are getting transferred to that student's home? You've talked about the educational piece, but I was just wondering if you could tell us how that part of the plan is, and needs of that student are being accommodated. So part of that results from the consultation to families, we are fairly limited in what we can do in person in homes due to the danger that we would put the family in by being physically present as educators inside their homes, but the consultation and planning is something that's taking place. I've also watched Howard Center in Chittenden County, and I'm sure other designated agencies for developmental services be a critical service provider inside of the circumstances and trying to support families as best they can. I'm a little bit worried about the inability to provide service because of the pandemic and what kinds of situations that's putting people in. I also sit on the Medicaid and Exchange Advisory Committee and that committee has some deep concerns about skilled nursing care, as well as other areas of healthcare. The ability to support families with supplies, the abilities to support families with plans, and then using the attending physician to help reframe, and then our school nurses are also available to help provide consultation, but again, we are not able to provide specific in-home services under the circumstances. Okay, I see Ginny's hand. Ginny, did you wanna get in on that? Got to unmute. Ginny, you're muted. Now Ginny is, there you are. Ginny. I'm trying to unmute her myself and it doesn't seem to be working. Okay, we're gonna, Ginny, if you don't mind, we'll move on and when I see your mute button goes off, I'll come back to you. Oh, okay. Okay, so we were going to move to Kirsten Murphy. Oh, now Ginny. I think that the host unmuted me. I don't know what the glitch was. So as you're talking about some of the services that, and you mentioned the school nurse, right now, does Westford have a full-time school nurse? And I'm thinking of other schools where nurses are part-time or travel from place to place and they have as big a job as you do. I mean, just in terms of maintaining contact with individual students, can you talk a little bit about the personnel issue and the access to folks who are in schools and maybe extend it a little bit if it's appropriate to school counselors and their availability for help. So interestingly, at this point, we have a great number of professionals available for distance support that includes school nurses and includes school counselors. I have seen amazing offering from school nurses to do regular check-ins with families and support families as it's related to health issues, but they're not going in the home, but they are very available. We do have a whole large number of full-time FTE of nursing in our school district and they are tracking children with health needs and supporting families and making contact on a regular basis. And I would say the same for school counselors. They're also running wellness sessions and providing activities to families for them to be doing in their homes to support wellness and doing individual sessions on Zoom or the phone. So all of the things that I was describing under special education are really happening for general education teachers, school nurses, school counselors. There are a large number of people who can be of support to families. We get back into the question though about exactly how many people can a family talk to while they're also trying to educate their children. I'm hearing and seeing a lot of stress from families as it relates to all of these responsibilities shifting to them because of the events of the pandemic and how stressful that is. So while school nurses and school counselors are available, special educators are available and general education teachers are available, sometimes it is overwhelming for some families. I'm sure there are some others that will likely speak to that issue. I guess, yeah, that would be really helpful as we go forward thinking about how a family coordinates all this knowing that the people out there have their own professional schedules. So yeah, I can see the problem. Thank you. Okay, I do wanna make sure we get to our other witnesses. Thank you so much, Erin, I appreciate it. Kirsten Murphy. Yes, I'm here. Would you like to give us kind of an opening statement and then we'll ask questions. Yes, please. I just wanna make sure that people can hear me all right. I'm having to do this by cell phone. Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, great. So for the record, I'm the executive director of Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. CD councils exist in every state and territory and we have a statutory requirement to make sure that individuals with developmental disabilities and their families are part of these types of policy conversations. I would also say that I'm a parent myself and raised two young men on the autism spectrum. So I have a lot of familiarity with special education supports and what a difference they make. I have the really uncomfortable job having to raise concerns that are serious and at the same time not look like a spoiler or someone who is disrespectful of all the incredible work that's going on in Vermont right now. But the expectation that is put on council is that we kind of take the pulse of people with disabilities and their families and then bring those matters to your attention. So I really apologize if I look like I'm not being grateful or I'm being critical in some way because it's not my intention. I don't think it's really appropriate that you're meeting jointly and that we get to talk to you as a joint group because I think for the families in the most dire situations right now, it doesn't really matter in their minds very much whether it's special education or a medical service or it's a therapy. Those things all kind of work together and Medicaid seems to pay for a lot of them in different ways but they don't sort of put things in one bucket or another. So I spent the last few weeks reaching out to not only my 16 public members on our council but to many, many other families, 34 families that have been graduates of our leadership theory to find out what their experience has been like. And there's a group of families that I'm very, very worried about. These are the higher needs situations. And in almost all of those higher needs situations, what's happened is it's not safe for anybody to come into the home. Either the child with the disability or the parent or both are just placed at much too high ramp. So the situation becomes really only the household members can be providing the really high level of care that some people with disabilities need at some points in their lives especially during a stressful time like this. So one of my members talked about, I'm just gonna tell you a few stories, episode over the weekend where her son who is a very charming young man with autism does not have a lot of work with communication has become very, very frustrated because very abruptly his transition services which rely heavily on spending time in the community with behavioral support. Very abruptly those ended. The mom in this family and the individual with the disability have underlying medical conditions that make it very, very unsafe for them to get in any way near a possibility of being exposed to the virus. And this young man has become very, very violent and frustrated and finally has to be removed by another family member from the house, their farmhouse and rule for not this weekend because there just wasn't the ability without his regular behavior support to redirect him. Another mom, one of my other council members from Southern Vermont to the lovely 10-year-old at home and she feels really well supported by her local designated agency. She sends many things about them. They're checking on her regularly on her son. They're helped to make an emergency plan if someone in the family got sick. But he isn't even at the point where a specialized instruction needs to return for her son. Again, she can't let other people into her home because of her son's underlying medical concern. And she's a special educator herself. So she's working 24-7 just as hard as all the teachers are trying to figure out how she's gonna be able to support her students. So you understand another window onto these families that are really very isolated right now. A third is one of the families that we think of as the high-tech nursing kids. But there's a family with three kids with all the IEPs, one of whom needs 24-7 medical care and really the only people that can provide that care are a skilled nurse, which they can't have come into the house right now for the parents. And they haven't even begun to figure out how they could be implementing special education for all three of their children at the same time as taking care of this very medically fragile child. So in the arena of special education, we have three sort of immediate concerns. And one would be that it would be really very helpful if the A&E or the A&E in collaboration with a parent who has put some guidance together, just basic guidance about what families should have got in their special education services. I'm literally astonished at how many parents I've talked to you mostly over social media who do not even understand that right now they're not really, especially I don't have to be delivered, but by the, you know, weeks from now when general education resumes, they will be needing that, how their children will be needing to have the special education services. That even that very basic timeline is not, it's not sort of family. Second, I'm really concerned about the higher needs special education students, either, you know, like the families that I've described before. There are just some services that can't be provided by technology, especially behavior-based therapy, occupational therapy, another one. And, you know, I know there's not any of the answer, but some kind of safety net for those families needs to be in place. And our third concern just has to do with the delivery of compensatory services when we get to that place, sort of post-crisis. I was a little, a little concerned when reading the AME continuity of education plan 2.1 where there's some fairly specific instruction about how the team needs to consider whether they need to kind of deduct some points, I guess, maybe it's a point system, I don't know, from deduction because maybe the parent has rejected services or the students placed them or others at risk, well, it tends to seem they took off for the service, there's a language in there about how, you know, unreasonable conduct on the part of the family might count against their ability to access compensatory services. And I, you know, I just hope, can be in a position to be very generous about compensatory services, especially for the higher needs, you know, there's just been a big regression and we hope that, we hope that in summer, we can begin to address that, like Darren was talking about, because I, oops. Sorry, I did wanna ask, can you just give us a quick definition of compensatory services and what they look like traditionally and what you might be looking for that would differ from the standard set of compensatory services? I'm actually, I actually think Aaron would be a better person to answer that question just because I'm not an educator. Okay. I can look into that. Okay. Do you want me to go ahead and do that? Please go ahead, Aaron. So compensatory education is a legal remedy where a school district does not appropriately implement the IEP and it is a legal remedy to address that lack of implementation. There's been some conversation around the country about whether that is or isn't the right frame of reference and I think OSEP at the federal level is sort of thinking about that, but Kristen is absolutely right that where children are out of school for this amount of time, we are likely to see some regression and for some kids where the electronic and internet oriented services are insufficient, we may see a significant amount of regression and how we think about that. And so I know that Jackie Kelleher has been working with in the context of the OSEP guidance as it relates to compensatory ed. So I did just want to note Kristen too that the work that the agency is doing is really related to federal guidance that they're trying to implement as well. And I think that there needs to be some clarity nationally related to this issue of what is this going to look like when we get back and how will we think about it? I'm not sure we've seen the end of that issue yet because the application of the legal constructs of compensatory education relate to a school district denying FAPE. And I'm not sure that a national crisis is exactly commensurate with the traditional definitions of compensatory ed. And I think we're likely going to see sort of and a kind of analysis that everyone's going to need to do around this issue upon return to address the issues. Although it's a little bit different from my perspective than the historical framework on compensatory education. So just a little bit of a contextual piece from my perspective. Great. So did you have more or would you like questions now? I would just like to take one more minute because we were lucky enough to have the health and welfare committee here. I just want to put in a plug for some increased flexibility around how families might access the budgets that they already have assigned to them for home services to a Medicaid waiver. So families are telling me that, you know, the issue of maybe compensating the parents on a temporary basis for the level of care they're having to provide, maybe not flexibility. As a temporary measure would be a good thing. Maybe there's a need to free up funding to pay some of the support teams that aren't able to come into the home, but we want the team of people to remain employed and not quit so that they're there in six or eight weeks. There's some thinking about trying to have additional flexibilities around that Medicaid funding. And then I would just like to close because I asked my executive committee this morning, you know, what do you want me to say? What's the most important thing you want? You want the senators to hear. And what they said to me very bluntly was that they want you to know that there are, there are families who are waking up every morning, literally just terrified that they will lose a loved one because of the virus or because of the other risks that that individual sometimes has and they don't have the staff to help them anymore. Families are literally having conversations like this. This is a story shared with me. If our daughter gets the coronavirus, she will almost certainly die. And if she is taken to the hospital, she will be separated and put in isolation and then she'll have to die alone. So this particular family has had a serious conversation that they won't seek medical treatment. And when I shared that story with my council members, they didn't find the astonishing at all because they are also thinking those same really horrible thoughts. Thank you. Okay. Vinnie, anything for Ms. Murphy? Yes, I have a couple of questions and the last bit of your testimony is extremely moving. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're here. So we can figure out how best to help these folks who are in this situation. I will make a comment first about the Medicaid relief that you're looking for for folks. We will be, that was one of the reasons why we wanted to have the joint meeting and to have a discussion with Diva on Thursday. So we will do that. And with if there are specific suggestions that you have, but really we're trying to sort out a system that will help people and be most effective during the emergency. My question is, you mentioned the high tech, the need for a high tech safety net. Define the safety net for us just so we can understand what that means to you. Not the high tech, you said high needs. I'm sorry, I'll go back. So I think it's probably the most expedient thing because we can't yet send people in to these houses. Initially there may have to be some financial relief because these families are also quitting jobs so that they can be, how parent can be that 24-7 caregiver. And these are families that usually have existing Medicaid budgets that could be taxed. I also think in the longer term additional rec fit will certainly have to happen for these families. And I've been really concerned about making sure that in some instances, providers just have to come into a home. It just has to happen. And so staff must protect their equipment. And I know that the agencies have been working really hard on making sure that those staff do have the appropriate equipment that they are still struggling with their sleep. Can I ask a quick question? Compensatory education, that piece. Is that a federal requirement? I believe so, yeah. Okay, so it's not something that the state can offer relief for. I see some of this. I hear it because I'm much more nuanced. Okay. I'm understanding of this. I'm gonna mute myself too. Okay, go ahead. Compensatory education is framed within the context of IDEA. You have Rachel Selig here who is also an attorney that is deeply knowledgeable about special ed law. And because I work really hard to implement FAPA lot, I don't have a lot of experience with compensatory education because it's not something we often have to offer. Every once in a while, something will happen. So I think Rachel, and I know you all need to move on. It is not something though that is defined by state law, which I think is what the question is. Great. If we could take this opportunity and move to Rachel to make sure we get our other three witnesses in. So Rachel Selig, if you wanna just quickly answer that question and then go to your statement, that would be great. Sure, I'd be happy to. So for the record, my name is Rachel Selig. I'm a staff attorney in the Disability Law Project at Vermont Legal Aid. And my job, a lot of my job is to represent students with disabilities who are having challenges with accessing special education. In terms of the compensatory education question, like most things within individuals with Disabilities Education Act, when compensatory education is on the table, it's very much about individualized need of the students. So it can look like a lot of different things. If a student has missed out on a semester of intensive reading instruction, then it probably is gonna look like reading instruction. If it's a student who was supposed to have a behavioral interventionist and didn't, it might look like social skills groups over the summer. So it's a very flexible concept. And the idea is to make up for what was missed because the full faith that the team agreed to or because there was a delay in even getting the student and onto an IEP to try and make up for that gap and what we would have expected the student to be getting. Sometimes it looks like a bank of ours that a family can kind of flexibly draw down. It really depends on the individual situation. And I'm happy to talk, I actually was planning on talking about compensatory education. So I'm happy to get back to that if you don't mind me jumping into some of the other testimony that I have for you today. Not at all. Okay, great. So first, Erin mentioned the CARES III Act that Congress recently passed, which did not provide members for special education, which is a very good thing because at one point there was some language in there that would have essentially waived special education. That came out. And I think she's right that we in Vermont have always wanted to be committed to making sure all of our students, including our students with disabilities have access to their free and appropriate public education. And the secretary, Secretary DeVos is still gonna have the opportunity to come to Congress and make recommendations about waivers. When it comes to the issue of the rights of students and the rights of parents, we would strongly object to any waiver of those rights. It's so important, especially now, that students continue to have their right to that free, appropriate public education, that the parental rights to be full participants in the IEP team, to have access to dispute resolution if they need it, to be given prior notice of changes. Those are, that level of communication is more important now than ever. And so my hope is that this committee would kind of preemptively act to make sure that even if the feds do go do something that really degrades the rights of students with disabilities that we here in Vermont recommit and don't waive those rights. The CARES Act also includes a tremendous amount of money for education across the country. It's about 13 and a half billion dollars. It'll be distributed on the same formula as Title I funds. And the use of that money is pretty broad. So I think it's incredibly important either for this committee, for the agency of education and for LEAs like for one Aaron is part of to make sure that those funds are used in an equitable manner. This crisis has absolutely exacerbated inequities that were already present in our system. Aaron talked about technology and complete agreement that the technology piece, if that's something that these funds can be prioritized for, that should happen. These funds are allowed to be used for extended school year services which can be provided during the summer but also during breaks in the school year and not just for students with disabilities but for other marginalized students, students who are homeless, who are low income or minorities. So I think it's really important that we make some decisions quickly. We don't know exactly what the timeline is for that money coming into the state in terms of how that money should be prioritized and it's in the amount that's gonna stay with the agency of education and the amount that's gonna filter into the district so that it is used equitably. And so there's some accountability that might look like a report back from the agency that on how that money is being used. One of the things that our schools are being asked to do among many other things right now and I think they're doing a good job on a lot of them is to provide care for the children of essential workers. And the agency of Ed has kind of defined what students that should be provided for and it's essentially enrolled kindergartners and otherwise six year olds through eighth grade I think is where they set those parameters. And I would just encourage the agency either to choose to do this or for this committee to talk to them about creating some flexibility for students with disabilities of essential workers who fall outside of those parameters and also have access to that childcare if the disability is such that the student can't safely be left home alone while the essential worker is working. I think that's a really important accommodation for students to have. We also can't forget that census-based funding is still something that is in the pipeline and I would encourage this committee to consider delaying that further for a year or two because right now all of the energy that school districts have is going to fundamentally transform how education is provided over the next few months. Hopefully just the next few months, but we don't know yet. And to ask districts to be continuing to prepare for this other fundamental change I think is probably going to break some people and we just won't be able to handle both of those heavy lifts at this time. In terms of the actual implementation of the IDEA in this new environment, I've talked with a bunch of families over the past couple of weeks. Some have had good reports. I spoke with a family actually in Erin's district who said their behavioral interventionist for their high needs child is checking in for about 45 minutes to an hour a day to work with the student virtually that they were sent home with speech and occupational therapy activities that the family could support the student in doing. And so that's great to hear. On the other hand, I've heard from some families who also have really high need kids and they don't even know what their student's schedule was supposed to be at school to provide any level of continuity. They know their student had an incentive system as a motivator at school, but they don't know how it worked or what to do with it or how to try and use it in the home. And so I think there's a combination of what Erin talked about earlier in terms of some families not being able to take too much information in and then other families not getting any communication at all. And IEP teams can meet virtually, as she said. And I think that needs to be happening as much as families can have it. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the whole IEP team but that home school communication is more important now than I think it's ever been before. Another piece in terms of IEP implementation that some additional funds may need to be directed to is parent training. Parent training is a form of related service where the parent gets education from the educators on how to support their student whether it's in school or after school. And parents are suddenly in the position of being their student's general educator, special educator, physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist and they are not trained for all of those jobs. And so that parent training on a regular basis I think is going to be incredibly important. Let's see what else do I have here. Okay, extended school year and compensatory education. So our Vermont rules for special education allow a student to be eligible for an extended school year program if they have in the past shown significant regression during the vacation or their disability is severe enough that they are at risk of showing significant regression without recruitment in a reasonable time. Our rules also allow students to be eligible for extended school year if that time is needed for them to have the opportunity to set reasonably set IEP goals. And I think this is gonna be a summer assuming our schools can reopen by summer where more students than ever are going to be eligible for extended school year. And so some of those CARES Act funds I really think are gonna need to go to having not just like a four or six week extended school year program in some districts but like a full summer extended school year to try and make up for this time. Compensatory education I touched on this earlier and talk about it again now. The parents that we're talking to we are really encouraging them not to agree to reduction in services but rather to reduction in implementation of services with the understanding that the rest of the services will be provided in the future. We can call it compensatory education or not but if a student was supposed to get three days a week of speech therapy and they're gonna get one remote session a week of speech therapy then we need to find a way to provide those additional services in the future. And again, I think with this CARES Act money coming in that needs to be one of the priorities in terms of how it's spent for educational purposes because a lot of students are not gonna be getting especially those related services or those behavioral or mental health or emotional support services that it's so hard to provide in the home environment. I think we have to expect that some of those high needs kids that Kirsten was talking about are gonna show not just stagnation but regression over this time where our schools are closed even with all of the good faith effort that our schools put into trying to support those students. And so we have to have plans developed and put into place so that those students will be made whole when our schools can reopen. Okay, if I could break in there. Yeah. We only have about 23 minutes left. Our next witness is Jackie Keller who's the director of special ed for the state. And I wanna make- I'm happy to stop. I did submit some written testimony to Jeannie with a couple of other points. If you wanna look at those, I'm happy to answer questions with them another time. Great. And if it's all right with everybody, I'd like people to just hold their questions. I do wanna make sure we hear from the states. Number one, special ed person about everything we've heard so far. So if we could just move to Ms. Kelleher, are you with us? Hello? Yes. Can you hear me okay? I can hear you okay. And you've heard the previous witnesses, I assume. So feel free to- Yes, I, no, thank you. So Jackie Kelleher, I am the state director of special education at Vermont. I'm also the parent of four adult children with disabilities, including twins with autism and echoing everybody else. These are indeed challenging and complex times. I know everybody is working so hard to do this right and well for our children and youth with disabilities. I really appreciate it being able to hear Erin and Kristin and Rachel and their perspective and their concerns. And this is indicative of the need for ongoing conversations about how we collaborate and how we do this together. I did put together a few thoughts. I do speak on behalf of the ALE special education programming team. They're fully aware that our educational communities and students and families are experiencing the tremendous challenges that you've heard today. And we'll continue to produce guidance and responses that frequently ask questions and provide technical assistance, which I'll get to in a moment. I wanted to highlight some of the guidance that we've been giving out and also some of the things that are coming down the pike. And also echoing what Erin is saying in some way. You'll hear in some of the themes. Just a reminder too that for ALE and school obligations it's to support and serve students ages three to 21, utilizing federal and state guidance. And the guidance may change. And we seek to update as often as necessary to make sure our schools and our families are informed. But like as Erin was saying, and as we're working with our districts and our families, faith has changed for all students. And we will work to get it right. And we must maintain rights or obligation. We also need to acknowledge the, to be afforded the ability to try brand new things to meet needs in new ways. And we need to think about what is appropriate and reasonable in light of the current circumstances. I really appreciate Rachel bringing up another consideration is how we're utilizing parent training and counseling as a related service, which is an often underutilized aspect of the IDEA that we need to ensure is accessible for families. Families are stressed right now through this maintenance of learning and becoming the teacher as folks are saying. And that's part of AOE's responsibility is help to promote that important aspect if this is a related service and what does that look like in this pandemic crisis. Also just echoing too, IDEA doesn't specifically address a situation in which schools would be closed for an extended period of time due to pandemic emergency. And we still must provide faith consistent with the need to protect the health and safety of students. And I think we've been promoting that that is paramount to educational services is recognizing health and safety and food security needs. And those individuals providing education, specialized instruction and related services, they're affected how these services are provided. And school districts may not be able to provide all the services in the same manner that they're typically provided. And we are moving forward through this uncharted territory together with our schools. And the AOE seeks to support our educational partners in providing faith. Districts know that they're doing everything that they can to provide faith and they need to document all efforts. But we're in a new world in how we deliver special education or related services. Distance learning for some, as we heard from Kristen for some of our students with significant needs. This is challenging. And our schools are focusing on how to ensure appropriate instruction. And for example, when we were talking about distance learning there are very factors for the team to consider regarding student characteristics. Not every student is a good candidate for distance learning services as you've heard today. And we are fully aware of that. And so careful considerations need to occur. And things like the complexity of the student's condition and the context in the environment in which the student interacts, how comfortable the student is with using technology if that's the mode. And the nature and the complexity of the service that we talked about, some of the other services there's all, in addition to counseling there's occupational therapy and physical therapy in addition to nursing and behavioral support. But I hope folks listening understand that special education and students with disabilities this is priority work for all of the AOE not just our special ed team members. We are working across other divisions and departments making sure that we're at the table to advocate for the needs of our students and families as we are going through these new initiatives and practices to try to ensure access, equity and opportunity for all of our kids. Like you all, we're frequently monitoring the Office of Special Ed programs, Office of Civil Rights, the guidance that has gone out and we certainly have some concerns that we're hearing from the field with respect to Office of Civil Rights and some of the considerations about accessibility because education services whether they're online, paper-based they must be accessible for everyone. And alternatives need to be available and this all happened fast and quick and in trying to come up with those equitable tools that takes some time. And we also have folks who, there's a need for people to do routine testing of online activities and routine checking for accessibility including PDF files or certain websites. So there's a whole host there in just talking about the civil rights aspect. We've also, as you've mentioned we've been delivering some of our initial guidance that does reflect the federal, the federal aspect or we're trying to keep it Vermontized at the same time and listen to the needs of the field. We did deliver our first Q&A item based on Vermont Council for Special Education Administrators some of their questions. They were provides some very thoughtful things for us to consider which led to talking about initial evaluations and reevaluations and being able to use COVID-19 as an acceptable reason for the delay but only when detailing specifics of the situation and the delay must be individualized determination. So these were some of the considerations that we took. We came up with a parent letter template that went out also reflecting federal guidance. The AOE continuity of education plan guidance 2.0 came out. I think most of you have read that with considerations for special educators, recommendations for approaches to the continued implementation of IEP services, paper-based and virtual learning, parent and family involvement, considerations of service modes, so on and so forth. And also we begin the conversation of the considerations of compensatory services and we will target this area as part of our upcoming technical assistance as well. Someone also mentioned our memo with respect to amendments into IEPs in this context of COVID-19. And that was as discussed, the idea was not to have to redraft the entire IEP. But being able to make changes that are appropriate, that could be written in a separate document rather than the overhauling the entire IEP right at this moment was we wanted to give some flexibility to our districts to be able to do what they need to do now. And to, as we also talked about, go back, our IEPs are going to have to be examined in light of everything at this point. This was just immediate flexibility. We do have some for some upcoming AOE support. Please, I want to make clear that we do have a 24-7 technical assistance phone and email system, AOE.specialedatvermont.gov or 802-828-1256, where we are fielding questions from the field and from our families. And we do have somebody who responds typically between one and two business days to that. We're trying to be much quicker and have a COVID focus for many of those items coming in. We're working on Office of Civil Rights, FAQs, tools to help, excuse me, tools to help and guidance on the implementation of these Continuity of Learning Plans, homeschooling your students with disabilities, homeschooling as a parent, paraprofessionals and remote instruction. How do we work with transition and post-secondary guidance? Online resource list, we just had that released recently. Our- Tell her. Hello? If I could just break in. We have about 10 or 12 minutes. I really would like the committees to be able to put questions to you if you wouldn't mind. Oh, absolutely. I meant your disposal. If I could just say that echoing what my, what the other witnesses has said in terms of the Senate and what it can do around ensuring internet access, supporting our families with significant socio-economic needs, helping us address the inequity issues. And a lot of folks are asking, how do we fund this compensatory education and extended school year? And how do we, you know, what kind of supports are gonna be necessary? And that's something that my team is positioned to do at this point too. And I thank you so much for your time. There's so much to say and so many good works underway, but this definitely is complex and challenging. Okay, so I will ask a quick question. Then I'll go to Chair Lyons and then the rest of the committees. My question is the idea about compensating parents who have now become their children's speech pathologists, behavioral specialists, teachers. Is, are there any discussions underway at AOE to allow for compensating parents financially? Wow, that is quite a question. No, that has not come up. Not to say that we can't discuss, but that's something that we've not been talking about, but I've made note of that and that's a very, very interesting question. Thank you, sir. Sure, I'm thinking also about the concerns with maintenance of effort. So if we're, for horrible reasons, we're saving a certain amount of money because we can't go into the homes and provide specialists who would be paid. So one possible solution that might work all the way around is to compensate parents directly. With that said, Chair Lyons, question. I'm sorry, is that back to me? No, actually, I was- Yeah, my Zoom is a little stubborn today. Doesn't let me get on mute. So as you're speaking about all the different folks who you are engaged with and working with and I understand the principle of local folks being responsible for what they're doing, but at your level in the agency, are you seeing opportunities for a coordination of effort? Maybe that's somewhat more directed and an emergency response is what I'm thinking about. So can you speak to that a little bit? Are you trying to work to respond to the emergency that we all sense and feel? And certainly the parents who are home with their kids are feeling it. Paying them is one thing, but all the other services that we've talked about, is there an effort on the part of the agency to coordinate services to ensure that people have some structure in their lives? That is another excellent question. And there are coordinated efforts underway and in suggesting that special education, we're not operating in a silo, we are absolutely working with other departments and divisions and agencies at this point. This is in terms of coordinated services, that is another piece that we are attending to at this point and what does that look like? We are, this is a full crisis mode in terms of getting information within our own special ed team and AOE and working in partnership with the community. But please also know that we are involved in national efforts. We are working with the National Center for Systemic Improvement, National Association of Directors of Special Ed, Codray, which is legal, Cipher, which is fiscal, IDC, which is data, we follow our case updates. I can assure you that everyone is trying to figure this out and we're collaborating together and we are in crisis mode. Okay, questions from other committee members for Ms. Kelleher and AOE, Senator Hardy. Thank you. Thank you, Jackie, for your testimony. And I just wanted to pick up on something that Kirsten mentioned in her testimony and she and I talked about a couple of weeks ago and that I've heard from other parents is the differentiated communication that parents may be getting, especially parents of multiple children. I myself have three kids, so I've experienced it myself. And I'm just wondering, I'm looking at the guidance on the AOE website right now and there's not specific guidance about communicating to parents or there's not specific guidance that the AOE has communicated to parents about what they might be able to expect. I think some school districts are inundating parents with information. Some have the sort of right, it's like Goldilocks, some have the right level and then some are not communicating well. And so I'm wondering if you're providing guidance on what the appropriate level of communication may be specifically for parents with students with disabilities so they understand what they can expect from their school district. And I think, I don't wanna generalize but it may be especially for students in high school because I know a lot of high schoolers are communicating directly with students, which is obviously age appropriate, but for students with IEPs, making sure that the parents are looped in on what they might be able to expect, I would think is important. So just wanted to ask you about the communication piece. That's another great question that we can also be exploring, well, not exploring, doing something about from our end. I mean, the ALE has certainly been recommending that administrators and teachers engage in frequent communication with parents and guardians to ensure that they're informed about the individualized approach to their child's education and to support collaboration with families. So we were saying, get in touch with your families, get in touch and now the same thing we're hearing some of our students' families are reporting, the number and nature of contact. So certainly being able to give guidance on the appropriate level of communication after consulting with our districts is an appropriate guidance for us to produce at this time. I thought I heard Jim with a question earlier. Jim, was that you who tried to break in? Okay, maybe not. I do want to make sure we get to Anastasia Douglas who is our parent on the agenda. So not seeing any other immediate questions for AOE. Ms. Douglas, please. Okay, so I wanted to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to talk to us. And I wanted to thank all of the people that testified before me for all of the hard work because this was obviously unprecedented and I know that everyone's trying their best to make things work. So I'm just gonna read through the written testimony I provided. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify about special education in the time of school closures. My name is Anastasia Douglas and I'm a resident of Berrytown. I'm an attorney employed, has a 50 state legislative analyst, currently working from home with my six-year-old son, Miles, and three-year-old daughter, Rose. Miles and Rose are enrolled at Berrytown Elementary and Bout school in kindergarten and preschool. And Miles has a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. And I apologize in advance of either child needs my attention during my testimony. Some of you might have already seen Rose pop in a couple of times. So since the closed closed, I've struggled the role of a full-time employee, teacher of a preschooler, teacher of a kindergartner, special education teacher, and speech pathologist. Most of which I'm supremely unqualified for. Many parents also have to take on additional roles like physical or occupational therapist. My son is a wonderful team and they have provided online check-ins, instructional packets, and remote learning opportunities. They have been very responsive over email and phone. Despite all of the resources provided, I have found myself at a loss for time to provide Miles with many of them. I reviewed the agency of education special, education during school closure due to a novel coronavirus outbreak guidance document as updated on March 21st. And there were a couple of questions that I had about it, which I'm sure other parents probably have. How is this information going to be given to parents in an understandable manner? How will parents be trained? This is a concern given many parents are already balancing multiple roles right now. Will schools be providing parents with the material their children use in school? I already had to make quite a few purchases to provide Miles with the materials that he typically uses in school. What will compensatory services at a later date look like? Is summer school expected to happen and could compensatory services be provided then? I'm also concerned about step four of the five-step decision-making process listed on page 10 that asks if the team should consider a deduction based on the student's reasonable recovery of progress once school resumes. And this is a deduction related to compensatory services. And it asks if a deduction should be made for exceptional and unreasonable conduct. For example, if a parent rejects services and supports offered. I know that in the next few months, I will be put in a position to reject services because I need my computer and phone for work and have to balance my work with allowing Miles to access virtual instruction. So I actually had to reschedule one of Miles' meetings with his case manager to be on this committee hearing. So that's an example of having to balance my schedule with his work. I have to stop my work to give Miles my laptop and her phone and to also just supervise him because he's only six years old. This particularly concerns me because I don't want children to be precluded from receiving compensatory services because parents are being asked to manage an impossible task. It will be difficult to provide many special education services remotely and compensatory services will be vital to ensuring that we don't leverage kids receiving special education behind. Thank you for your time and I'd be happy to answer your questions if anyone has them or if we have time. Thank you very much, Ms. Douglas. Questions for Ms. Douglas? If I see a hand, I do not. And we are at time. Thank you very much, Ms. Douglas. Thank you. Appreciate it. Who is that? Somebody was trying to speak? Nope. Okay. So committees, double committees, are there any final questions for anybody we have in the last minute or two? Debbie Ingram. Thank you. Actually, I want to direct this to Rachel Sealing. Rachel, you mentioned the changes to the funding for special ed, the census-based funding that we had been working on. One of the goals of that was to make the moneys more flexible and easier in some ways for schools to use. You spoke against making the changes, but so you can envision in any scenario that it might actually be helpful to have that different kind of funding. I think there is a lot. I think this is a big issue. And both, we had the DMG report and the UVM report and I think those have to be looked at together when we talk about moving into census-based funding. There are a lot of recommendations in terms of how special education should be provided. And there's in the DMG report. And there's a lot of variation among our school districts in terms of readiness to be implementing those recommendations. I think some school districts are there and they're doing that, doing things as recommended and others are not. And changing the funding formula without changing the practice is not, I mean, it's very similar to what we saw with the STEM grant with healthcare where $36 million came into the state to do healthcare reform, to change the way that healthcare is paid for. I don't know about you, but I have not seen changes in how that healthcare is delivered to me as a result of those changes. Those two things have to be together. And so if we haven't done the professional development and haven't been able to do the planning for how we change services, then I don't think that it makes sense at this moment where we have to be putting all of that, how do we change services into doing remote learning into how do we change services in order to be ready for the changes that census-based funding really needs in order for that change to be successful? I don't, you already might have some thoughts on that as well. Well, actually we're over time. Oh, I'm sorry. That's all right. Yeah. The only thing I'll add is that in one of our meetings a couple of weeks ago, the NEA actually publicly called for repeal of Act 173. I told them I didn't think that was a starter, it was a non-starter. Delay, however, is something that I think we should be taking a look at. So let me suggest to the committee, to my committee, that I schedule a meeting in the upcoming weeks where we only consider Act 173 delay, whether to do it or not, not only from the special ed perspective, but from the perspective of the DMG report and the change of the culture that was supposed to happen through professional development. So with that said, we are over time. I wanna remind everybody this is part one of a two-part hearing and part two will be conducted by Chairwoman Lyons on Thursday. Ginny, can you just remind us when that meeting will be? This is fun. Yeah, it's Thursday morning. Let me just, I'm going to double check our schedule. 9.30. Thank you. It's been changed a couple of times. So we're starting at 9.30 with you guys and it'll be a meeting where we can look at some of the financial issues, the Medicaid issues and can continue this conversation. I think it all does seem to, not all of it, but a good deal of it does seem to come down to resources. If you're talking, whether you're talking about technology or payment for parents and so on. So we'll look at some of those issues in the context of Medicaid. Okay. See you Thursday, yep. Great. And the format for this will be reversed. So on Thursday, Ginny will run the meeting and all of my committee will be invited to participate. I want to thank all the witnesses. You're all extremely eloquent and well-informed. It really helped us to hear you in sequence from parents to the state, you know, system at AOE. So with that said, and assuming- Can I say one thing before we end? There's somebody that called in that is unknown, unidentified. I was wondering if you could give me your name so I could put the name. It's not James McNeil, it's not Jackie Keller-Hur. It's somebody else that's called in, but there's no identification. And I just unmuted you. So Peg, I called in, it's Jim Dameray. Oh, that's who it is, Jim. Thank you, Jim. Hope you're well, Jim. And Jim, I do want to catch up with you after this call if you're available for a question. I am, you want to call me? Great. Let's do it by cell phone, Jim. Yeah, okay, yeah. Okay, so committees, thank you very much. I think we're done. Have a great afternoon unless you're getting on the joint rules call.