 Welcome back to Senate Education Wednesday, March 1st, 310. We've been talking about school safety, and one of the things we've been saying in committee is gosh, it'd be great to get our heads around sort of a on-the-ground understanding of how all of this works. And Mr. Moreno was kind enough. Mr. Moreno, you're the principal, right? At the Williston Central School? Hi, I'm lead principal at the Williston School. So I support both Allenbrook and Williston Central. Great. And we should ask you what you're filming with this film, just so I'm curious. Great, and so we're thrilled to have you here. We're going to take advantage of having you here, not only to talk about school safety, but we will also have a couple other questions for you. And we really appreciate it, since we know you're on break right now. I don't know if you ever really get a break from the incredible work you're committed to, but we do appreciate you helping us out with our conversation around school safety. And your name was given to us by D. Barbic, the director of the Violence Prevention Task Force, from us, the director of Violence Prevention Task Force. So you could just tell us, Mr. Moreno, a little bit about your work and how your role in your school, and then also a little bit around the role you play as it relates to school safety. That would be great. Certainly. So my name's Greg Moreno. I am in my eighth year as lead principal at the Williston Schools, which is part of Champlain Valley School District. For all that time, I have also served as the chair of the Williston School Safety Committee. I've also been involved in co-leading the district safety efforts at CVSD with the chief operations officer. Previously it was Gene Jensen. Now it's Gary Marquess. I have been a school administrator in Vermont, involved in school safety work for 16 years since I moved here with my family in 2007. And this is my 29th year in education. So in my role as the chair of the safety committee, the school safety efforts are a big part of my responsibilities. Terrific. So can you tell us a little bit about, you have a task force? We don't have something called a task force. We have a school safety committee. OK, could you tell us a little bit about that and how it works? Certainly. So I think all of the schools in CVSD have a similar type of team. In Williston, we have a school safety committee that consists of staff from both Allenbrook School and Williston Central. That staff is intentionally inclusive of classroom teachers, support staff, technology experts, people responsible for running our access control protocol. In other words, people who work the front desk and buzz people in every day. We have a mental health. We have school nurse. We have partners on the town as part of our committee. That is inclusive of the school library because they share a driveway with us. So the school library representative is there standing members from Williston Police Department, Williston Fire. We also have the REC department director as part of the team. And then our district facilities director comes and sits in on many of our meetings. And our local Williston facilities director is part of the committee. We meet monthly for about an hour and 15 minutes, hour and a half. And the purpose of our meetings is really to help support faculty and staff being in our systems and structures to be more prepared, more aware and knowledgeable about school safety efforts and an effort to help keep everybody safe. So what would you consider to be an incident or something where the group that you just mentioned needs to come together quickly? OK, so the group that I just described is our safety committee. And that is a little bit different than our behavioral threat assessment team. Our safety committee is a standing committee that does, that works on the work. So we're doing the work around procedures, around protocols, supporting practices and drills around our options-based protocols, trying to give information to staff that they need to be successful and to build those skills. And then we've had a number of people that are on our safety committee, as well as other professionals in our schools, trained to be part of our threat assessment team. So our threat assessment team, again, there's carryover from some people on the safety committee. And then also we have other folks like our school counselors, I know I mentioned my nurse already, a school psychologist. And so those folks have been trained in behavioral threat assessment. And then if something comes up, a concern comes to our attention where we are concerned that it could be a threat of violence. We then pull that team together. At first we do an initial review because the protocol we've been trained in has a few screening questions that a small group, usually it's a few administrators and one or two members of that team that's been trained to do that initial screening to determine is a threat assessment appropriate in this case. If so, then we pull threat assessment team together and we run through the protocol based on the situation. Could you tell us a little bit about the protocol? Certainly. So the first, as I mentioned initially, there's a screening exercise. And that screening exercise asks first and foremost, is this an emergency? Like it's someone in imminent danger. Obviously, if it is, you wanna make sure you're following your procedures for that. And then beyond that, it asks, is there a need to run an assessment? Has the person threatened violence or made any other communication about intense to threaten violence or intense to do violence? Have these concerns, are they being experienced by other people? Have behaviors raised concerns about violence to self or others? Is there a fearful victim or third party? And then it asks, does the student have a behavior intervention plan, a 504 plan, an IEP plan and or health plan? And then it asks some questions about whether or not the behavior could be a manifestation of our baseline behavior for a student on one of those plans. And that helps determine whether or not to run the threat assessment. And then the threat assessment itself, if we decided that it is appropriate, it just asks, first of all, the premise of threat assessment is to collect as much information before you're making, from the training, the phrase is collect the dots before connecting the dots. And so that phrase collecting the dots really speaks to bringing in as many people who have real on the ground daily knowledge of this particular situation. So people who interact with this person of concern or this behavior of concern, people interact with them daily. So we wanna make sure we're talking with all of those people and not making any assumptions based on the report that came in. So that could be the teacher who, maybe the report was a result of something a student wrote in a journal where they wrote some explicit language around causing harm. So that teacher, we'd want to have that teacher at the table and ask about that. We'd wanna certainly talk to the caregivers of that person. We'd wanna talk to other people that that person interacts with on a regular basis, people who would notice changes in behavior, people who would have real day-to-day information that was reliable about that person. And then the protocol goes through and asks you to consider these various questions. I think there are 11 or 12 questions on the protocol. And at the end of the process, it essentially asks based on these, based on this information you've collected, based on the responses to these questions that the team has responded to, to the best of their ability. Do you think this person could be on a pathway to causing harm, either to themselves or to others? And if the answer is yes, then essentially the protocol directs you to create an intervention plan. And in this part, frankly, as an educator, if a student, if a concern like this has come up where someone's wondering about safety anyway, you're likely gonna create some kind of intervention for that student anyway. But this, when folks, when something comes our way that makes people think about yikes, this student might be unsafe or I might be unsafe as a result of what I just heard or this other student is feeling unsafe. It has been very helpful to have a really objective process to sort of lean into where you can take a breath, collect the information, use the questions to objectively look at the situation. And then at the end, build a plan of intervention to support that situation. It could be in the form of like an educational support team plan, like an ESD plan. It could be some other type of intervention plan where you're pulling in variety of supports that the school has at its disposal. But what I have found about the threat assessment process is in moments where it could feel pretty uncomfortable and pretty, you know, you can get some pretty unraveled folks, understandably. It gives you this thing to turn to, this tool to turn to that's very procedurally based. It's very objective. Not all the answers are crystal clear in terms of like, oh yeah, the eight people here all unequivocally agree the answer to this question is yes. It doesn't always work out that way, but at least it gives you a process to collect, to have the conversation. And at the end, this decision whether to build an intervention plan or not for the student. I hope that kind of get at your question. Senator Gullick. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for your testimony, Principal Marino. I was wondering how often your behavioral threat teams typically meet? Is this a rare occurrence? Is it more regular? And also just wondering if the assessment has ever ended or any of the assessments have ended in suspension at all? That's a great question. So I can... Okay, no, we have never expelled a student. And so the question about how often at Williston, I would say in the past, since we've been trained, so last year, half of this year, we have probably run four threat assessment processes, maybe five threat assessments in the last two years, four or five. In terms of suspension, we don't use the threat assessment process as a way to determine our response to a particular behavior. The threat assessment process really helps determine severity of a person causing potential harm or not and how to intervene and build a plan of support around that to interrupt that. But regardless of the threat assessment process, we still have our code of conduct. We still have all of the responses to different behaviors at our disposal that we could apply or not apply. We don't use the threat assessment process to determine whether or not we would suspend a student. We would make a decision to suspend a student based on the circumstances of the particular behavior. We don't make those suspension decisions contingent upon a threat assessment, but two parallel processes that have slightly different purposes. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Yes. So do you obviously have this plan written down? Did it come from an experience someone had or from some training? Obviously, this information gets condensed down to your situation from other schools where things have happened, but is it something that's on your school website so people can look at it and so they understand what you're doing in a situation? Great question. Well, in terms of how we got to the process that we use is we were trained in the Sigma process. The state offered free threat assessment training for Vermont educators starting, I guess about a couple of years back. We took advantage of that training. We had probably 16, 17 professionals from the Williston Schools trained in threat assessment. Recently, I went also additionally took the train the trainer workshop that was offered this year. So that feels pretty fresh for me. Which state agency? Say that again. Which state agency did the training? It was sponsored by, you know, it came from the AOE Field Memo. It was sponsored by the School Safety Center, but I think Sigma did the training, but you know, it's sponsored by the AOE, I believe. I was in the training with a number of AOE for Vermont educators. In terms of the process being on our website, I don't know the answer to that. I don't think it is. I don't think the threat assessment protocol is posted on our website. I don't see a reason why it couldn't be. That could be a question I could bring back to my superintendent and communications director. So the reason I asked was that sometimes it sounds like you got a good plan. You've had some situational training exercises that were realistic. You do like an after-action review after the situation and sit down and go, you know, we did this right, we did this wrong, this next time it happens, this is what we're gonna do. And if it was in writing, then other schools that haven't got the protocols you've got might be able to get a hold of it and adopt it. I think that's a uniformity that I'm looking for. Yes, I mean, I think that's one advantage of having it become statute, you know, in that, you know, you have a shared foundation of common training across schools and a shared at least framework for a process. So people aren't having to make it up or, you know, call around, you know, send me yours, send me yours. It's here it is, absolutely. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you. So good testimony. Curious in your threat assessment process and based on your experience, to what scope do you have the parents involved in this process? To whatever extent that we can. So most of the time that means that they are quite involved. Whether it is, I can think of one instance in the last year where they were in the room with a larger team, actively participating, going through the protocol and that always feels good to me because it feels transparent. You know, we, much like our ES, our educational support team process, it's nice to be able to say we have this protocol that we've been trained in to help support situations that we encounter with that where somebody could be at risk of causing themselves harm or somebody else harm. So it's nice to be able to say that we have this process and this thing that we've been trained in. So I can think, I remember that day sitting in my office with that team and the parents being at the table and it didn't, it felt very collaborative. Then in other situations that where it's not practical or possible for the parent to be in the room, we would be having a separate interview with that parent whether over the phone or in person, collecting the information, explaining what we're doing as the threat assessment. So parents are involved to the extent that they can be. Thank you. Committee, any other questions from Mr. Moreno at this point? It's very helpful, very helpful. We've been looking for some, you know, some understanding of how things are working in individual schools. We're going to keep our going. We're going to have a walkthrough of a new version of the bill now. And then we'll, you know, if you're able to Greg, you know, we might be back in contact with you. We understand you're a busy person, but we might follow up with you and ask you to testify again or weigh in on certain things. Before you do go though, Senator Gullick, I believe you're Senator, right? I am. Yeah, you are. Oh, no, it depends on where you live. I don't know where you live, Greg, but I'm wondering when your school was built. Your school is the one with the blue roof, correct? That's one of our schools. So I live in Williston and that's, which is also where I work because I'm lucky enough to live there as well. So we have the two schools, Allenbrook School, which is pre-K through two, and then Williston Central, which is third through eighth grade. Allenbrook School was built in 1996, I believe maybe 95, 96, and Williston Central started in 1949 with a little brick section and has grown and grown since then and a lot of iterations since then. Okay, thank you. The one that was built in 96 has been pretty good shape then. Well, we're coming up on 30 years and it's got its issues comparatively what other school districts and locations are dealing with. I'd say it's an okay shape, but it's got its issues, especially related to building envelope. The way the building was constructed really didn't give the attention deserved to the exterior envelope of the building. So we also happen to be in a little space crunch as you may know, be aware of what they're doing the graphics in Williston. Yeah, thank you very much. You're welcome. Senator Gulick is leading the charge on getting our schools, those that can still continue to be renovated, but really how can we get some new school buildings in this state for 21st century learning and it's, we're hearing then the need is there for sure. Well, that's for sure, right? Yeah, absolutely. Any other questions for Mr. Moreno? Great. Okay, thank you, Mr. Moreno. Good to see you. You're welcome. Thanks for this opportunity and thanks for the work you do. Thanks for the work you do. Okay. The same teams is gonna be in here in a second to take us through a new version of the school safety bill. Welcome back to Senate Education 336 PM, March 1st. The same teams. So based on yesterday's testimony from D. Barbic and the C. Lee and others, we have a new draft of school safety bill. I suspect it's not gonna be our last, but let's go through it. I'm gonna make an opening statement if I may. The purpose of it seems, and I could be reading it wrong. It seems like there's a lot that could be done to streamline some of these comments. In other words, it says approved independent schools and it says the next one's public schools. Is there a way to sort of, I thought we were, publics and independents were all gonna be kind of doing the same thing. I just wanna make sure that matches the introduction. They are. Okay. And you can provide feedback to further streamline that. I do think it's... It's accurate. I think it's, yes. So that's St. James Office of Legislative Counsel and I apologize, I do have a hard stuff at four. The changes between the last draft you looked at and today are all highlighted in yellow. Okay, let's focus on those. So I will just say everything before the very end of page four and all of page five, are changes made based on the feedback from the V's. Some of those are just small word choices. Most of that is adding approved or recognized independent schools and requiring a policy where public school is required a policy. There are separate sections. So for example, under section 1481, which starts on page one and goes on to page two, subdivision A is applicable to public schools and it talks about requiring the drills, following the guidance issued by the school safety council, et cetera. And then subdivision B is for the approved, this still has language in there that is, I think, very broad and I would encourage you to take testimony on the intent behind other educational institutions. What line are you on? 17. Okay. But each approved or recognized independent school shall adopt a policy, I think before it was procedure, mandating the school to conduct options based response drills with the consistent with the requirements of subsection A above. So just referring you back to A that has all of the requirements there. And then because superintendents are different than heads of school, there's just that second line there about the head of the school does the reporting instead of the superintendent because some of those terms are not the same. I do think it makes sense to have like a public school section and an approved independent school section. Not all of the language is repeated. It refers back to section A for the substance of what those schools have to do. Yeah. You could certainly combine them all into one subsection. I just think it gets wordy. Page three. Again, section two, emergency operations plans. There's an additional requirement for approved and recognized independent schools to adopt those emergency operations plans. Again, consistent with A, which is the public school section. And page four, section three, access control and visitor management policy. And access control shall adopt an access control and visitor management policy. I think I added that language. Don't have to go back and look at the V's testimony on that. But that is what the section heading is. And then again, subsection B is requiring a written access control and visitor management policy consistent with subsection A for the approved and recognized independent schools. So we're not repeating out everything there, we're just referring back to subsection A. So there's no requirement now to have an access control and visitor management policy? No, there is. That's what this says. Oh, okay. And there varies. One of the things we heard early on, you may recall, a lot of this is happening in most of the, most many, many, many of our schools. So this is kind of inconsistent. Please. The big change is on page four to section four, the behavioral threat assessment team. Yes, and this I asked you to add in response to the C-leaks. Please go ahead. Correct. So the direction I received was to add language to make it clear that behavioral threat assessment should not be used for a punitive or disciplinary purpose and then to require more specific data to be reported every year regarding the behavioral threat assessment. So I added subsection B on page four, line 20. Yep. So behavioral threat assessment shall not be used for a punitive or disciplinary purpose. A behavioral threat assessment shall not replace a manifest determination review for students on an individual education plan is required under the IDEA. And then I refer to the federal statutes there. And then subsection C is annually each supervisory union, supervisory district and approved independent school shall report data related to behavioral threat assessments to the agency in a format approved by the secretary. That language is already there. Yeah. But what I added was at a minimum, the annual report shall include the names and members behavioral assessment team was already there. And then so I added the number of behavioral threat assessment conducted in the preceding year and for each assessment conducted, a description of behavior requiring an assessment, the age and grade of the student requiring the assessment, the results of each assessment. And then the number of students referred for manifest determination review, a lieu of behavioral threat assessment. I did not, I think I caught the very tail end of Ms. Felix testimony on this. So I have not seen all of her testimony. This is based on our conversations with Senator Campion. And so certainly you can beef it up, beef it up, take things out as you see fit. Ms. Sealy, we have Ledge Council here for another about 10 minutes. So why don't we have you weigh in on this section. What would you like to have added to that data collection? Sure. So Rachel Sealy, I'm not relaying the record. So first, in terms of the data section, I would want to see added in addition to age and grade, gender, race, eligibility or non-eligibility for free introduced lunch as a proxy for low income, as well as disability status. And disability status can include 504 or IEP eligibility. Your prior witness talked about as well, educational support teams. And I think I mentioned to you last time, coordinated services plans are encouraged under Act 264. And some students also have individual health plans that are operated by their nurse. It's not a substitute for a 504, but it may also be a piece of data about kind of the special needs of the student who is the subject of this. I would also be interested in whether a student is subject to repeated behavioral assessments, as well as whether those plans have changed in the meantime. If a student is subjected to two or three or four behavioral threat assessments, was their IEP or 504 plan amended? Was their behavioral intervention plan amended? Because the student is not necessarily the threat. The student is not necessarily getting the services and supports they need to have the behavior to be safe and strong. And I don't want this to, some of my prior testimony has discussed results in treating the children as the danger, right? They deserve to be protected, too. A couple of, now, is it off of this? It's still on this, but it's not on this list. It's manifestation determination review rather than manifest determination review. And it shouldn't just be IDEA, it should also be section 504 in terms of students with disabilities. Is, can I ask a question? Please, yes, absolutely. Is, so I think, is a manifestation determination review required under section 504? Because if it's not, that's a, the committee needs to understand that and that's a policy decision. In Vermont, under our disciplinary rules, manifestation determination review is required for both 504 and IDEA students, as well as students who are being considered for those plans, or maybe are not eligible. So that's based on rule 4,000, the state board of education rules. It's actually section 404. It's in the 4,000s here. Ms. St. James, is there any, remember when we were doing data collection for other things over the years? Is there any, are we in an area where it's, we can't get this information, anything like that? Do you remember when we were doing the school discipline bill, I think it was something we couldn't get. We're okay? So you're not gonna be able to get identifiable information, right? Right, right, right. No, thank you. I think most of this is already, a lot of this may be required, especially if there's an excess suspension or expulsion. But I can start, I will certainly ensure that anything moving forward, I don't have a concern about. Senator Wicks. I have informed my question here. Okay. I've got one percolate. All right, all right. Percolate. Let us know when you're ready. Committee, just thoughts? What do you think? I was looking for a judicial committee guide. But, I don't know, I don't know. I have to think of something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Being that on page four, line 17, we're including local law enforcement officials. I'm just curious. What do you have, Jim, sir? Page four, line 17, we've already written in local law enforcement officials as part of this team. Yeah. I'm just curious if these reports, you kind of give the full landscape of these, the need to initiate for assessments. What about the legal law enforcement record associated with this? You know, I mean, in some way, so we've got things happening in the school, we've got things happening outside of the school. You know, there's got to be a cross-pollination of some type where you've got, you know, we're stove piping. And I'm just, it's just a theory. I'm curious if there's folks might think about that. Would the help of breaking down some silos? Exactly. So it's not just the school recognizing there's an issue that needs to be dealt with, and how they deal with it, and it's got all the biographical data behind it, but, you know, is this consistent with what's being potentially experienced outside the school, or the same people who are necessary to create threat assessments for? Just seems like I'm not projecting, trying to project an answer. Ask them a question, ask them a question. Are you saying that a lot of the incidents of violence in schools has been perpetrated from, without, as opposed to from, again? I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that the experience of what might be, the experiences inside the school might have a parallel outside of the school. It's germane to the data being collected. Because right now, I'm getting a sense that, you know, the schools are being accused of being a bit too harsh or too derogatory or too aggressive. And in fact, there's an whole aspect of what happens outside the school that might not be reflected in the sense. Yeah, I know, I hear you. And I, having worked with teenagers my whole life, I just, they behave erratically and I know Beth needs to go. I just... You're okay for another five minutes? Yeah, it's a half till four. Okay, yeah, no, this is helpful, please. I want our schools to be safe, obviously, but, I don't know, like your story that you just told, that just like really is disconcerting that number of threat assessments. To what end? I mean, were any of them real threats or were they just kids being kids? I guess I would want to know. Let's say it sucks that a real, real. Real, okay. But you're worried? Yeah, I mean, you know, from where, in my world, where I live, we've been trying really hard to get sort of cops and law enforcement out of our schools because of exactly the things that Rachel was bringing up. So, I don't know, let's just think about it. Yeah, we already have the police, the law enforcement's involved. Well, they're already written into a draft, right? They're gonna do a draft. You don't have to have them as part of the team. Right, right, right. Senator Sheen, what are you thinking? I'm thinking of a lot of things, but they're still fermenting them. Yeah, yeah. No, it's complicated stuff. I think what we're all trying to do is make sure that, correct me if I'm wrong, at least I'm hearing that you don't want kids misidentified, for two years hearing testimonies about how serious suspensions and explosions are, what that does to a kid in that school to prison pipeline that really exists that have to give credit, would credits to the Texas Agency of Education. They were sort of in the forefront of that and they were some of the first to stop it. We don't wanna do more of that kind of stuff. And yet, to what everybody else is also saying, we want schools to be safe and we wanna make sure that when threats are happening, they're assessed and dealt with. And I think we'll get somewhere, but I'm understanding the complications of it. Please, yeah, let's go ahead. Sorry, I just had a thought, sorry. I am wondering if anyone, if this could help, maybe, if anyone on the behavioral threat assessment team, if you could put it something in here about like mandatory bias training or mandatory some kind of training to sort of like to have the correct lens, I'm gonna use that word again, going into this, just to at least be aware of your own bias and aware of some of, you know, societal biases that we've all lived in and percolated in our whole lives. I just wonder if that could be helpful. That was one of the suggestions I was gonna offer to you on the training piece was not just training on this assessment protocol. And I think there's potentially also some room to say the agency has to designate which of these vendors are even allowable, right? Like we've done that with restraints, inclusion. There's only certain vendors that are like by default allowable trainers. So I think that's one of these because there are some models out there that are worse than, I mean, I don't like any of this, but there are models out there that are worse and are kind of more kind of otherizing of kids than others. Well, I just wanna, I mean, you don't like any of it. And I understand it's, we're also, I mean, how do we keep our schools safe? How do we make sure, because I mean, that's also something worth living the reality. Well, so when you're hearing from your previous witness, the school safety committee, they have no issue with those. Like I do think that kind of like ongoing process. I think the piece that I don't think actually keeps our schools safe is the targeting of kids and saying this kid is a threat without kind of having, you know, and it sounds like theirs is a district that is maybe engaging in some really good practices that are not reflected in this language, right? Like parents are involved and they make sure to involve people who do actually know the kid. None of that is required in what you have here. Those would certainly go a long way to make me feel less bad about this. But do you disagree that at some point a kid could be a threat to a community? I think that's right, but I think mostly that comes from we didn't meet the kids needs. Yeah, yeah. And so there's an upstream investment on positive behavior interventions and supports and restorative practice and preventing hazing harassment and bullying. And you know, all of those things, I think make it then less likely that we have 54 threat assessments, 58 threat assessments in less than a year, right? Like that suggests to me that these kids needs are not being met. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But I think it's a good time to say, all right, one of those reasons and how can we meet those needs rather than we have it at these needs. And so now we're going to say these kids are not part of our community and keep our, make our community unsafe. Yeah, yeah, thank you. To that end, are we going to acknowledge in this bill what we heard yesterday from Bo Yang around the correcting the standard, the severe and pervasive standard and establishing a new one? You mean for harassment? Yeah. Yeah, but we can't do it in this. Okay, that's separate. I mean, we just, there's this, yeah. Okay. We would do that, hopefully. I mean, I hate to use their miscellaneous ed bill, but for us to get these three bills out, we just can't jump into that right now. All right. But I agree, it's something we definitely after crossover have to jump into. Yeah, I just, I thought the way she explained it was great and it was like an upstream investment. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I just put out there to everyone, including you, Ms. Seagley, is there, so what parts of this, is there a part of this, if this committee, so something's going to leave this committee by crossover, is there part of this that needs to be looked at during the summer or in another way before we get to that? Sure. And that's the only thing, but at the same time, I don't want anything happening in our schools. Right. While we do a summer study committee. While we do a summer study committee and that's a serious issue we know in the United States and in this state as well right now. Absolutely. So that's, I think some of, as we're all speaking honestly here, that's I think kind of what we're grappling with. Why are schools to be super safe? As do you. Yes. At the same time, we want to make sure that we are not harming kids. Yes. I'm happy to think more about this new draft that the St. Jason's put together and if I have additional recommendations where we're not taking any girl threat assessment teams out, but putting in some more of the safeguards that. Like the trainings that are bullet mentioned. Like the trainings, like kind of defining what threats are, rise to the level of these threat assessment teams because I do recognize if a student is expelled we're just creating a bigger problem. Right. Your work. But yes, that's what I was, yeah, absolutely. You're absolutely right. Maybe. Often. I mean, I have to, I'll pull up the Texas stuff. It came out of judiciary actually. They were the ones that found it. I mean, that school to prison pipeline was pretty dramatic for all of us over the past couple of years. Yes. Which is pretty terrible. Yeah. But we also want to make sure if there is a threat in the school that threat is addressed in. Yeah. And as a middle schooler, my school had hate bomb threats called it in two years. Right. Like I lived through that. It wasn't, they stopped sending us home and started teaching us on the football fields, but there were never moms. And so it started like making us feel like this is a waste of protection. Until it really out. What's that? Until it really out. Yep. Yep. That's what we're trying to, yeah, great. You'll continue to think about this. The same chance. Go. I just, before I leave, would you like me to make an amendment to the manifestation determination piece in alignment with the state board rule? Yes, please. Any other edits for the next draft? I think let's put the other data collection information in there for the committee to respond to. So as well as the secretary, the data collection criteria outlined by Ms. Sealy. Okay. For tomorrow? Yeah, yeah. And then we'll have the secretary weigh in and we'll let everybody think about this and try to. And I will ask Ms. Sealy to work with you and us to just keep, get it so we can get somewhere on this. Do you want me to share language before tomorrow with Ms. Sealy? Realistically, by the time I get it back from editing, it'll probably be late morning or early afternoon anyway. Then we'll look at it together. That's okay. That's that way we can all. Yeah. Okay. So we don't get too many. I want to root the committee to stay on the same page. I will make those edits. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're making me nervous. Tick, tick, tick. I have to be on each. I do have to be on each. Sorry? Are you staying on this? If not, I have another committee that is on it. I think so. Thank you so much for your consideration. I really appreciate your time. Thanks, great job. So anything right now on anything? Are we still on? Yeah. I got something. We are on for a little discussion. Yeah, please go ahead. Just something I want to say about what you said. You know, we've been trying to get police out of our schools for a long time. You know what? Back in the day when things were better in our schools, the police were your friends, and we trained. They came in, the students got exposed to them, they understood the good things they could do, and I think maybe in your neighborhood, maybe there's a reason for that, but in my neighborhood it's not. And they can still have that for you and be in the school system as a police officer and the kids can know that they are there without being in any kind of a threat. The city of Rockham, they had a police officer that was a commander, he was on the blue line, he took his guns off and went to special training and he was out there trying to de-escalate situations. So it can be done in the general public across if you get done in the schools. So I just think that sometimes there's a lot of situations that happen in schools because there's no consequences for it. And everybody needs to understand that there is a consequence if you do this. And I think we've got away from that. I just had to say that. No, I really appreciate that. And we had SROs in our district that were really beloved by the community and a lot of the kids loved them and they were real positive. But at the same time, a few things. One is, when I grew up, I think we had one kid of color in our school. I mean, the Burlington School District anyway is 50% BIPOC students. And I know Winooski is a majority minority school, or district. And as Rachel said the other day, it has, there's data that suggests that people of color are more targeted than white folks when it comes to law enforcement. And for us, particularly in our district, we just had a lot of students coming from refugee camps who, when they saw a guy with a big gun and a, you know, a bulletproof vest and in that the equipment is intimidating. It was very scary for them. It was like, it was traumatic and triggering for some of those kids. And then the other piece of it is that last I checked, there's not a lot of evidence that suggests police in schools actually make them safer. They just, I have not seen any data that shows a direct correlation between law enforcement in schools and a safer environment. If it exists, I would love to see it. But we took a deep dive in this a couple of years ago with around SROs and there just wasn't any evidence, sadly. But I think the relationship piece is important. I do. Because you want to be building relationships between your community and your law enforcement. We did have, there was an SRO bill to remove them from all the schools a couple years ago. And we did hear a lot of pushback because like you said, people love, there are a lot of people out there all through the state that, and it, you can either add or get rid of an SRO tomorrow in your own district. So we said, okay, we'll leave it to the local folks to the side. And so, you both have good points. Okay, anything else? So we'll look at new drafts of this and Ms. Lania said tomorrow and we're also gonna be looking at our pre-K study language. Okay, we'll get there. Thanks everybody, have a good afternoon. Thank you. Yeah, see ya.