 Okay. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Senate Education on Tuesday afternoon, January 10th 128 p.m. We have a relatively light schedule this afternoon. So everyone knows we have chairs meetings every Tuesday at 4 p.m. So we will need to always adjourn generally, you know, a couple minutes before 4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Yeah, so we'll transition and get right to it. We're going to start today. We're gonna hear from Secretary French again on goals and priorities, then we'll hear from Jeff Francis and Chelsea Myers. Nice to see you I've already said a little Jeff a little bit about their updates and introductions and priorities and then we'll have a sort of an introduction to education policy and recap from the last session from Edge Council. So for those watching and those here, I suspect we'll probably end around 3 30 here With that, Mr. Secretary, you don't mind joining us at the end of the table. It's great to see you in person. Thanks for joining us last week Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon, Dan French, Secretary of Education and As you know, we've just asked you to come in a little bit and talk about goals and priorities for the agency this year. So with that, the floor is yours. Well, thank you and I think we had some slides. If you have them, I see hard copy and there's a screen behind me As I mentioned on Friday, it's Dan French, Secretary of Education. It's good to see you in person And Mr. Secretary, I apologize for interrupting. I will just let people know that I believe You should have these saved for you. You ask for everything to be online. Is that still What you'd like Let me think about that. Okay Do you want to okay? Yeah, okay. Janet, could you mind hurrying up a copy of this? Yeah, so she has it great Please floor chairs the This is a follow-up from Last week and the chair's prompt. I thought I'd still continue sort of on an introductory sort of line You know, it is education policy. I think it's one of the more complex policy areas Congratulations on working in it The application pool is huge this year. Absolutely. So these are the four that made the guide And it is try not to use acronyms, which is really hard I think I could win that contest among my colleagues in the cabinet who could use the most acronyms I'm pretty convinced education could could dominate that pretty quickly So I thought I'd what I do in the slides is just continue to provide an introduction and Talk briefly about policy priorities and You know, we say that the agency's policy priorities the agency doesn't have policy priorities per se The governor has policy priorities in education and I'm happy to talk about those but I would acknowledge that The governor talks about those formally first and inaugural or state of the state address and then more specifically in a budget address And that budget address isn't scheduled until later this month. So The policy priorities I'll talk about today are ones that I think are already being circulated and we've socialized with Educational leaders, but there'll be others coming and I'll talk more specifically about them after the governor's budget address So in terms of I thought I'd start off by providing an introduction to the agency of education state agencies are are different And give you opportunity to ask me any questions on this information and all this is sort of foundational information the as I mentioned I've been working in vermanus education leader for about 20 years or so I think one of the key things I point out. Hey, if you want to go to the next slide the From a structural point and I didn't put it here wasn't too long ago that the agency of education was a department of education and that occurred sometime around 2012 or so and that's important because the My predecessors for the most part were commissioners of education hired by the state board of education. So That that didn't lend itself necessarily to a direct responsibility to the governor The commissioner of education the department Largely was supervised by the state board of education and that's that That structure is still in the dna if you will Talk about the session In 2012 the law was changed And the department of education became an agency of education The secretary of education became an appointee of the governor That process still involves the state board. So for instance when I applied for this position Of the law specifies that the state board of education conduct the search And surface no fewer than three candidates for the governor's consideration and the law also specifies The background the qualifications if you will of a secretary of education. So And the construct in law Basically requires someone of secretary education to have experience in education In brahmat and it does involve the state board of education the state board advances candidates for the governor, but I'm As secretary I'm very much. I report to the governor from the member of the governor's cabinet So again, you know the issue about policy priorities The policy priorities i'll talk about are the governor's policy priorities and we have a role And creating those for the governor, but um, there are his priorities If I may interrupt. Yeah, it was come back in 2012 when it was representative joey donovan. I think in particular took the charge Of making that change and several of us really did end up being convinced that If you're the governor of the state of vermont He or she should be able to run on education issues and be able to hire and fire His or her own secretary of education rather than leave it really to this unelected body of appointed people And over the next few days, we'll get a good sense and hopefully secretary friend to be willing also to talk a little bit About your interactions with the state board because if you think about education policy in general in the state Certainly think of you you think of all of us you think of the state board You think of school boards and then things kind of trickle down from there But it was a very I'd say contentious discussion and debate should should the governor be able to You know appoint his or her own secretary I ended up being they say converts become you know zealots and I really believe and I have bills in also over the years That have said enough with the state board even being involved I really felt as though it's never happened, but I really feel as though the governor should be able to say You sort of leave the state board's involvement behind that it was ended up being a compromise They would come up with candidates from which the governor would choose You know only one Of you on his cabinet correct that has that kind of process I believe so I'm not overly from it. I believe so Um The um and certainly I think uh, you know the issues a lot of the older structures are again They're still around so the issues of the state board and so forth We've made accommodations for those things. I was thinking of um You know we're in 20 around 2012 2010 to 2012 I was president of the superintendent association working with jeff and I remember Um this debate was contentious inside the superintendent association as well You know because the concern was the over politicization of education, right? And I I very much view education as a non-partisan issue You know, it's it's integral today. I think to broader societal development and economic development certainly Let a little human development being the morally right thing to do Um, but even when prior really governors could say hey, that's not my area Yeah, that's right. You know, it's the state board. This child isn't being educated You know, that's something to talk to skateboard. Yeah, and I think it's I I was always an advocate for you mentioned being converted. I think I was an advocate and came out of that process even more so than advocate Yeah, um, and I I always think about that moment Now a secretary when I'm sitting in an inaugural address because one of the things I referred to you back And I think it was 2012 Was that the commissioner of education wasn't even in the room for the speech was in a hallway listening to the governor's speech at a secretary I'm you know, we're directly involved in the speech, you know, we're the governor mentions education so that that Approach has been realized to a certain extent that governors are more directly involved in education policy previously so, um, you know a lot of you know, certainly, um You know almost have to put a pause in this narrative for two years as a result of coven, you know, but um And that we should talk about coven at some point as well because that's had a profound impact on A lot of what we're going to talk about but prior to the pandemic In what you have in front of you in terms of a purpose statement was work that we started in 2018 It's still very much in this sort of trajectory of well, what is the role of the agency compared to a department? What is the role of the secretary who reports to the governor? And we started some work internally inside the agency like, you know, I was new as any new leader What's what's our purpose and sometimes this kind of work is viewed as mission and vision work We concluded pretty quickly that we don't have a mission and vision because that comes from the constitution of vermont, you know It's not for us inside the administration In the agency of education to decide what our purpose is you tell us what our purpose is the people of vermont have told us What our purpose is education is one of those few things that's mentioned explicitly in the vermont constitution and So when we look at our purpose statement, it's within that understanding that our job is basically to implement the laws fundamentally And as the chair mentioned a key feature I think that is distinguishing between other policy areas is we Delegate a considerable amount of authority for the service of education to local school districts So part of what you'll grow to understand is what's the role of the state? What's the role of the local school districts? What's the role of the state board the division of roles and responsibilities? Works well, but it's a delicate balance and it requires everyone to do their part more or less So, you know The agency of education plays a critical role in the success of not only Fulfilling its responsibility, but also facilitating that partnership So primarily our job is to fulfill the charge of the constitution and a charge of the law That talks about a commitment to high quality education for all students, you know To drill it down into two simple words. It's quality and equity Those are our two sort of bylines and that's that's what we just said to do So then the question is the purpose statement. How do we do that? We do that through three things One is leadership Again, that's You know, I start talking about the different roles responsibility and a lot of the facilitation or Coordination of those roles that falls to us often to provide that leadership So in support of your committee in support of the superintendents and support of school boards Uh, you know, we we sort of sit in the middle and provide the blue if you will Sometimes that means doing more than just what the law requires. It means acting You know, I'm what's right or speaking out on issues and I'll use an example like literacy For example, which emerged as a major policy priority for the general assembly A lot of that conversation Comes from or initiate from the agency saying look at our dad. Our dad isn't good. What do we do about it? You know, so we just raise that issue. That's a leadership function. That isn't anything I was required to do But that's that's a responsibility that you would expect us to be able to perform. So that's an example of leadership The other two functions are really critical to the success of the system and that support and oversight And they're really a continuum And I would make the case that oversight is actually a function of support It's a it's a form of support tough love if you will maybe But it's important to provide technical support to people but also Help them be responsible and ultimately hold them accountable To the state and to taxpayers So we have a variety of things we do along that continuum A lot of you know, I'll get into the structure of the agency if I take special ed as an example Right, which is one of the more complex areas of supervision that we have inside the agency We provide direct technical support on how to provision special education But we're also responsible and part of the federal government to do monitoring to actually come in and make sure you're doing What you're supposed to be doing because you have an obligation. It's a civil rights entitlement So we have a responsibility to agency both to provide support and oversight in those kinds of situations Maybe I'll pause there. Do you have any questions or Okay Hey, do you want to go to the next slide? So getting into The structure of the agency itself. I just you know in general introduction again And this might help a little bit with when you start receiving testimony from people We can provide a much more detailed organizational chart and so forth if you're interested in that kind of Issue that I thought I just saw a startup again at an introductory level The agency of education has approximately 160 employees We're located on in national life Love to take you on a tour sometimes you want to come up and visit Coincidentally just to pause we move the agency Back to the same time we were doing the purpose statement Pretty much the next thing we did was move the agency from Barrie to Montpelier And that was part of a very complex Inter multiple agencies at least six agencies. I think we're involved in moving spaces around And that was a result of a fire. I think that took place on the fifth floor of national life That resulted in I think the agency of transportation moving to alternate locations And then just doing an analysis of how to best utilize space among the different Spaces that the state leases coincidentally the agency of education fits quite nicely Into the national life footprint where some of the other agencies were spread out among multiple buildings and so forth So but it was tricky because you can imagine to move multiple agencies at the same time And we were also revising our org chart and so forth. So it was very complex At any rate, we're 160 employees We're organized into divisions Divisions have 20 to 30 people in them So this is you know, we start thinking about social policy in vermont to draw the contrast between the agency of human services For example, one of the partner agencies that we do most of our work with The agency of human services is like 3,500 people somewhere in that ballpark They have departments that are much bigger than our agency So, uh, like dr. Labien and I who work so closely in the pandemic his department of health is approximately 500 employees and I have 160 so The reason I point that out is when we talk about in many of the cases integrating social and education policy How our agencies and departments come together matters because we don't have necessarily a deep organizational chart Or kind of flat relative to some of the other organizations. So it's it's a little different how we how we integrate So we have divisions In the division starting with the first one and I'll just say I'll say the other thing This is always a work in progress because how we organize the agency is a direct reflection of the laws you create In the policies we have to enact so This changes as a response to the work that we have to do and the work evolves over time Some of these things are fairly stable However, due to federal requirements, and I'll talk a little bit about the federal involvement in that Student pathways is an example of a division that changed over time as a result of vermont policy This refers essentially back to something called act 77 flexible pathways. The reason why hayden is sitting here today is This used to be a division in the agency that was probably called curriculum and instruction You know that had things like math specialists reading specialists And I can remember a time even when those specialists were in a separate organization of non-profit called vermont institute of science math and technology And then commissioner cake when he was commissioner brought those things back inside the agency But we enacted what we call flexible pathways in vermont 2013 And the agency's organizational structure changed to accommodate that so this is just a careless who I think you've seen already She's got a wide portfolio of things in that division Things like cte on one end Could be our education on another and the pathways that go in between so pretty much everything you think about instruction Other than adult that cte or in that In that pathway structure But the idea of putting them in that structure, you know Just to anticipate a pathway for students moving from particularly middle level high school and sort of myriad of options That are available for kids to pursue their their hopes and dreams Data management Is a fairly new division that was one that was created right when we were doing the purpose statement previously all the data Staff where the agency were embedded in the different teams and we brought them together and created a single division Largely around the same time we were implementing the first statewide longitudinal data system in the state's history and It was problematic to try to that that That project was way behind schedule It was really hard to deliver on that without having a single person in charge of it And a coherent staffing pattern around a division and data to deliver on that project so That division is fairly new but Feels a better part of what we do at the agency is dealing with data and responding to federal compliance issues and so forth Data reporting and we can talk more about some of the data tools. I think jill Was jill and she did she show you some of the dashboarding and stuff like that that we can do a little yeah Yeah, she did great Education quality This is where we have teacher licensure or educator licensure And education quality from a school improvement perspective. So those two things are under one division called education quality. So Educator license we regulate teacher licenses. I would say teacher license anyone who's a licensed educator. So Superintendents have an educator license principles curriculum directors anyone that has a license We regulate that we have regulations on licensure Who oversees that department that section Patrick Halladay We have to go to uvm here. Okay, it's weak When I just mentioned this one because this is an area we we get into issues that are often in the media We have enforcement power over regulations. Okay, the Vermont agency of education does not Investigate criminal behavior. So when you'll hear something like So this this licensed educator committed in a crime That's something the state police would handle or law enforcement We get interested of the education licensure ramification. So coincidentally, it's against regulations to commit a law If you're a licensed educator But our recourse is to pull your license or to discipline you on a licensing We don't we don't convict you of anything, you know, we we just our enforcement capabilities around your licensing staff Center Quick question. So does that mean that your agency conducts the administrative hearings when there's something that Is enforceable or that that's regulated and you can enforce? Yeah, up to a point and then we transition that over to the office of professional regulations Yeah, so we have initial oversight of that. So it's described in regulation and in law to a certain extent. So If there was uh, and this would be just like a typical event We might we get information from all different avenues. So we might read something in the paper So and so it's arrested this weekend on a dealing charge So, okay that we we take a look at that and we investigate that Um, and if we found that to be true, we we would go through a due process Basically, there's a hearing panel that would be formed to review the accusation of the evidence of that hearing panel Found that there was substance enough. There's sort of like a grand jury They would make a recommendation to me to open an investigation and I have the ability to say yes or no If I say open investigation then the formal investigation begins which would have findings that comes back to another hearing level And until we did the switch to OPR it would go to the state board for the following Follow-up, but now it goes to OPR So there's a rather elaborate process involved. I just try to distinguish it again. We don't investigate crimes So we've had information sharing agreements with dcf in particular department children families if there's some Information that comes up through a dcf will investigate child abuse and neglect If they find in the course of that investigation that a licensed educator was involved We have an automatic sharing agreement. So they would share that information with us And then we would do our investigation based on the licensing aspects vice versa If we were investigating someone for something and we found out that there was a child neglect abuse involvement We would refer that to dcf to do their portion of the investigation But uh, we don't do criminal investigation Um, so that's the education quality is involves the educator licensure and school improvement stuff. Yeah, go ahead just um Evaluations of teachers you do manually or I do they Do they continue to be evaluated after the 10 years? Yep, uh, we don't do any teacher evaluation So this is you know one of the I think the key design on let's say is to figure out for you what the state board does what the agency does and what local school districts do Uh teacher evaluation occurs at the local level. That's a local responsibility, you know, and that's that's by design That's how it's deployed The state got involved a few years ago about helping develop a model evaluation process, but it never became a requirement But that's a local decision For school boards and superintendents to understand So does your agency evaluate go around and make sure they do it? No Again what we do or what we don't do is required by law So that's never been something we've investigated because a lot is required to do that Sort of folks, uh, senator Williams. Did you follow? Did you have a follow-up another fault? No, so So we do do we mandate that teachers are evaluated? No, no So the senator Williams questions. So a teacher could arrive on the scene Uh, be teaching a few years and just transition into a tenure Spot Yeah, so, um, I'm giving you short answers to complex questions. You know, I understand. Yeah, but this is if you don't mind This is an opportunity for us all to myself and I think you know my my Approach today would be a surface topics of interest that we could come back and provide more detail Information to you so I'd start off with a strong distinction between, uh, teacher Um, or again, I'll use the phrase license educator. So it's not just teachers but teacher discipline and, uh, termination Which is specified in law. So the process for disciplining or suspending And firing a licensed educators laid out in the law very clearly, you know And it is different for teachers versus administrators, but this is laid out in the law So when you talk about tenure, we it's not a phrase we use in vermont But it becomes harder to terminate someone after a probationary period than it did when they're first hired Uh, I would say the law doesn't describe best practice relative to supervising someone to enable that process to happen in a respectful way um, but the best practice in the field is that people are regulated that are Are reviewed, uh, are evaluated on an annual basis to formulate those recommendations It would be hard in my experience as a superintendent to recommend Uh, termination of someone if they haven't had a regular cycle of evaluation and course of improvement involved So the statute might incidentally mention those things, but it's not a requirement of fatically mentioned in the law So that's that would be the law you look at as a termination suspension But teacher evaluation, I would you know right now before you would walk away from that saying that's an issue because One of the things you have to understand and I think we're grown understand is what's most appropriately done local versus state And I will bring to you when we get into more explicit policy ideas things where I think we can get more consistency Uh, this is one that's already fairly consistently done, you know, like I I I don't know of a school district that doesn't evaluate the teachers on an annual basis I can't say it's done necessarily well I mean I used to run a principal development program at same lengths and that's one of the things principals have to learn how to do Well, um, and there's a lot of science on how to do that. Well, there's a lot of research and so forth But it's not It's not standing out to me as a significant deficiency of the education system that people are paying the value that they are Um, could it be improved? Absolutely Could it be more effective? Absolutely But that's that's just part and parcel of improving and figuring out how to do it. It's not necessarily I think a problem that I would Think needs to be solved by mandating and there's always a temptation I think an education in vermont initially to say well, we should mandate something and I'm like, well, I'm always suspicious of that I think we're to the local level but It's a good question to follow up on it is center blend gfo So there's there's no standardized How about hiring is there a probationary period? Yeah In terms of standardized evaluation process there is no standard for it There are best practices that actually I could say fallen like two camps. There's like two major theories of action around doing that Just from the research and the models are out there, but there's no standard per se You were asking me about probation or Is there a code if somebody's hired is there a probationary period? Yes, if they don't make they don't meet the standard within a certain period of time Yeah, you know talking about teachers a little differently than administrators But the the idea of due process is enabled in the statute that It'd be I would say it becomes more difficult To terminate someone after the probationary period. You have to have just cause and reasons. It's it's a it's a higher due process barrier Not to say you can just let someone go during the probationary period, but It's a lower standard than it is after the experience window is kicked in Center rushing. I'm sorry. I have a reason for asking the question Where I in a former life evaluations were critical in education Not in education. Yeah, I'm sure it was in the military But yeah, and what what happened a lot of times in different units was you have some standard Officer or even an MCO they would Give them a good evaluation So I'm down the road. Now you're doing passing prime, right? So the quality is that important I I wonder how you can do it if there's a standard? Yeah, no it has typically Like I worked as a superintendent to create a standardized process within our organization So we among an organization would be unusual to have a different process among the schools even today I think pre act 46 may be a little bit more But for the most part you'll find a single evaluation system being used across the school district It might be different than the neighboring school districts process But it will be the same inside of that process And I I think all superintendents know the importance of doing evaluations consistently It's it attend to quite a bit of time of professional development Not only were teachers, but with their staff the administrative staff principles to implement that system It's a critical part center rushing in a center bullet I think this kind of tails off what you were just talking about so there's So there's no Universal Evaluation from the state correct. Yeah, but are there universal standards? Yes. Okay. I think so I think they would follow two camps. There's there's a you know, a couple of theorists that are well regarded I'd be surprised to see if something else out there in the field Would you have a day or have the data dedicated next week to you know? What is it like to be a teacher in Vermont? Sure, how do you get there all those kind of things? Because I do think the direction you're heading in is really interesting and important. Yeah Center good I just wanted to add A couple of things from the perspective of having been a teacher having been evaluated and also as a school board member First as a school board member in one of our most important jobs is evaluating superintendents And one of the ways we you know evaluate our superintendent or one of the things that we look at is, you know Is he evaluating staff and so that's just an important piece of sort of the the puzzle And then from a teacher standpoint I've always I've always I was always evaluated and We use an online tool that we Go in and you know, we write our goals and what our Priorities are for the year and then we have meetings with our principal or assistant principal throughout the year and And then we write sort of a finalized summary at the end of the year So there is like a process in place, but I feel confident on both ends of that spectrum that It's happening But it's a good question Please I understand it's not the military but In fairness to the other teachers If you go substandard teacher and there's no standardized evaluation process And one isn't performing the other one is how do you keep that good teacher here? I agree. Yeah, that's my point. Yeah, and I just I would just say you know when you say standard I'm talking from my slides state. There is no state standard, right? But it is very standardized within single school districts, you know I don't know of any district that use different evaluation systems for different schools Yeah, I mean it's standardized and it's usually I would say it's not something that's bargained collectively But it's definitely something that teachers as a whole take a great deal of interest in so it's it's very standardized within the organization So that's education quality federal programs This we administer a lot of federal education programs when I talk about our budget being 156 million That is an 156 million out of the general fund a lot of our money comes from federal Dollars so a lot of our positions in the agency those 160 positions Many of them are fully funded by federal dollars. So for example special education Many of our staff that are involved with special education are funded by federal special education dollars federal program division inside the agency. This is where we have things like homelessness student kneel program, which is a big policy issue for for the general assembly The title grants, which is the major source of federal dollars for school We couldn't operate the school system without those federal dollars title one title, you know So all the staff around that Medicaid administration all those federal programs We just put them into one division even though they're not related to what they're related to is dealing with the federal government in the U.S. Department of Education. So in Bordenaro, I mentioned Patrick Hall, he's leading the quality and Bordenaro is the director of federal programs complex Group programs, but it's it's incredibly important to keep keep the organization and the school system running Student supports, this is where we have special education Related things to special education like MTSS multi-tier support systems all the supports for kids Um pre-k is in the student supports division Finance what it means finance Finance has two components. One is paying our own bills. So is it we're a complex governmental organization We have payroll. We have to buy things purchasing and so forth But then they have a critical role on the external facing end and that's helping manage the education fund which you'll hear a lot about so We have a very unique school funding system. We're the only one like it in the world in the country We have a central basically a trust fund. I call it of approximately eight billion dollars That I always like to make that point. That is not our budget. That's something we administer We take a small little piece of that for administrative cost But most of our budget is nothing to do with that 156 million doesn't get supported by the end fund. I mean very very small amount but we have a critical role in um helping calculate tax rates and administering the projections and so forth We work with jfo joint fiscal office a lot on that This is brad james is the primary person there now brad's going to retire at some point. So he's threatening and we're we're uh, hoping that well, you know, we're trying to Staff around him. So we'll have the capacity to carry on But one of the outcomes of the waiting the waiting people waiting. You might have followed that last year We're trying to we agree that we should have more eyes on this process because it's a very complex piece to administer But that's essentially finance internal external It is secretary. Yeah 156 million that is just to be clear that you're operating. That's correct budget Yeah, and that has multiple funding sources. There's about 12 appropriations there Several of those are just federal grants. They're not you know, and they're stable federal grants They're not like, oh, we got a grant. This is like how every state operates its educations We always give federal dollars for special education. We always get federal dollars for title one. Yeah, it's not going anywhere The eight billion figure is one that it would just at some point maybe eight you could do some digging for the committee What is that compared to other states? I mean eight billion? We're educating roughly how many kids k through 12 80 80,000 Yeah, um, yeah, it's a lot of money Um, you know, there's uh, the ed fund would be a whole separate topic. We do have a conversation probably We can make it ed fund month Right, um, nobody will comment But it's it's an ingenious uh ingenious in a lot of ways solution But some i'm trying to think of some of the policy concerns, you know, certainly affordability or cost has been one Yeah, um, to what extent that number represents spending in other areas like mental health, you know Are we using education dollars to subsidize mental health? um Right. What is really in that? Yeah, what's what's really in the eight billion dollars? But you know, we should also just accept it for what it is. We um, we spend a lot of school construction is one I'm exploring. I don't have a good answer for that yet when we compare ourselves to other states We are one of the top spenders in education k 12 But it's not clear to me to what extent that number also from other states includes their construction fund So we're trying to understand that as we're school construction is a big policy right now So for example, when we look at massachusetts Comparison number eight billion. Does that include their school construction when they do that? They finance that in a separate area You know, they finance it outside of k 12 We have several smaller teams legal teams five people communications legislative fairs you've met lindsay 10 I think you see pet And then the office of the secretary, which is uh myself deputy secretary boucher Who's going to hope to be here today, which you couldn't make it And uh moraine getty since susan spray who you'll interact with to help Always And uh, I just pause there and just say um, you know back this idea interfacing with us versus hs Unlike hs, we don't our divisions aren't departments So those departments don't have you know, like our divisions don't have separate administrative staff Really, they have directors who are technical experts. So you might hear testimony On student pathways. You might see justa carolas. You know, she's a technical expert and manager in her field In terms of broader organizational structure, though, it's really deputy secretary boucher myself the two of us that really can speak To policy issues, you know, what's the governor's thinking on education? What message would he like to convey? Um, that's really the two of us, you know, we don't have a separate policy director We sometimes might give you that answer through ted or one of the legislative staff But that's generally coming from myself or deputy secretary boucher Okay, so if you need a definitive answer cause, you know, we deal with complex things all the time in the general assembly There's one of us, you know, we're Heather or I I think that's all I was going to say here if you want to go to this and then just wrapping up on policy priorities again, um Governor's policy priorities and education These are ones that we've initially started to socialize in advance of the legislative session We have other ones that will be articulated in the governor's budget address School safety is work that we've alerted to folks to the governor formed the violence prevention task force D barbick who I think you'll hear from at some point D has been organizing that work a sub component of the violence prevention task force is school safety So from that work, uh, we've we're bringing forward some recommendations or I'd like to bring forward some recommendations to Strengthen the statutory framework for school safety But the rub of that is basically are things that previously were recommendations. We'd like to make requirements And there's there's three three areas. What is physical security of buildings? And these three areas more or less describe the trajectory of school safety for the last 20 years or so we started after Combine focusing on physical security of buildings. Yeah, the second thing is comprehensive hazards planning safety thinking about safety planning making sure you have a plan That's a lot of the work we did for the last 10 years And then the third one, which is the sort of the newer innovation is threat assessment. So How to actually get out a little further? I'll say outside the perimeter of your school security, but actually being attentive to the dynamics or threat in your community And and among your students and this is this is really about bringing resources to their support kids and families. It's not about Isolating kids or suspending them. It's about really trying to understand how to help kids A lot of the research we're seeing in the last couple years around the school shootings, for example Points of the fact that the people that are doing this the kids that are doing this do it as a last resort Like they don't see any other way out So the idea of threat assessment is to provide them options that don't let them conclude that there's no other way out There's a lot of science behind that Um, so those three things are the elements of our school safety. I'm happy to come in and talk about those Yeah, I think you're coming tomorrow. Yeah, but I just a quick question. Yeah, so it sounds like school safety also would include Natural disasters. Yeah, the all hazards planning would include anything You know, depending on where you were if you were a district in the shadow of a dam You'd have a chapter in your plan about that dam breaking, you know So the all hazards planning template you can go to I'll I'll show you tomorrow that we're on school safety resource website It has templates for how to do that plan. Great. Okay Simplicational home study You know, we we have a very complex home study law So we struggle inside the agency administering our current law We we think we can simplify while still maintaining adequate oversight of the program But it's it's really complex for us to administer We want to continue a thread. We started a couple sessions ago on model anti-discrimination hate curriculum and equity policy As you know, these issues Are becoming increasingly important and I would say also increasingly divisive for our communities and a lot of our community struggle Dealing with these issues without a framework from the state We saw that last year with mascots in the general assembly that We I think we promoted a good resolution of that by promulgating a model policy That gave basically some guardrails to the conversation But still force locals to wrestle with these difficult situations, which they should but they need guardrails In terms of defining language. So we'd like to continue that conversation And then something we've been working on the last six months. It's just basically an observation Being in touch with other states around the country that we should be elevating computer science To probably its own academic discipline at this point It's emerging and it used to be sort of an add-on now. It's sort of emerging as a the body of Solid understanding that could be displayed as an academic requirement inside of school So we'd like to explore doing more computer science with kids So we'll have other policy issues, you know Major priority for the governors on workforce development, you know with the demographic challenges There's a study coming back That jfo is running on Funding and cte. So once that study comes back, we'd like to take a look at the cte funding system Basically do a limit, you know continue to eliminate whatever barriers we could to enable kids to access cte I'm rushing cte. Can you? Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry boy. Uh peer technical education. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry about that Yeah, that's a great topic in itself You know to the point of Hayden's keep thinking on you your Flexible pathways one of the pathways We have to work on is the cte in a career technical education how kids access that program The study I was referring to is kind of identified the funding system is creating some disincentives for kids to attend those programs So we think it could be done more seamlessly But cte plays a critical role in our state. I think it does in every state right now and We want to do more to expand those opportunities Committee questions for secretary french at this point We'll be hearing again tomorrow in particular on school safety and other things. Please center. Thank you very quick School safety does not include Bullying online bullying that that's a different that's a separate policy. I would say yeah, this is really I would say think of physical safety, but it's really dealing with an accident violence. Yeah Explicit acts of violence and again, I think you'll find particularly as we start talking about threat assessment You'll you'll see this is emerging as a body of work nationally And I think you know the issues of bullying and harassment are constantly You know out there and been deliberated on by the external assembly are more important than ever We can have a separate. I think policy conversation on those we have a requirement in law around that And advisory council That is anxious to get more involved And my last question is the last bullet here on the computer science education. It sounds as though You all want to be sort of pulling that out of stem sort of out of the umbrella of stem and it's all making it Its own area. Yeah, I wouldn't say pulling it out so much, but I think there's a couple things there one is We we think it would be time to convene a advisory council on that to really start bringing our industry partners in there to understand it better because I find it's firstly It's a hard thing to define what do you mean by computer science, you know, because it's it falls into so many different groups like cyber security Web design you get into a lot of the art aspects of it that I think would be really intriguing for a lot of our rural kids to explore So there's a lot of elements at programming certainly So to have an advisory group help us figure that out But then to look at things like yes requiring a computer science. How would we create more computer science teachers? So there's there's several strategies there. We'd like to explore. There's an organization code.org It's a national organization that Has been providing us policy support to states and this is where Every state they put out a an annual report that this sort of describes each state's efforts in this area And we were looking at our performance area. So, you know, we've got to start doing some more in this space and We look at some of the strategies they suggest and some of the ones I outlined are once we'd be interested in that So I would just say please include our consumption of technology as well and consumption of technology consumption our relationship with technology AI all of that good. Oh, yeah Hey, it's been very exciting lately, which is that gpt Yeah, senator hashim. I think you had your hand up and then senator Williams Just going back to the cte and you mentioned there were some disincentives for kids entering that I was wondering Just all the simple just a simplified version of what some of those disincentives are Well the specific report or the study is looking at the financial how we finance ck okay, and We part of part of the Conversation there as to what extent it should be embedded in local school district budgets Or should it be just taken off the top of the ed fund and pay for that way? So Basic basic ideas if it's locally embedded in your budget ascending high school as a disincentive to let those kids attend the cte's And it doesn't necessarily play out that way, but it just it creates a little of a headwind Um So if if you were ascending high school and it didn't analyze you either way if those students went to cte You'd be more inclined to support their movement back and forth at home and it's it is hard sometimes due to the complexity of our government structure in the state to have kids move across any boundary, you know Some money doesn't necessarily follow kids and things like that. So we think the cte funding structure Is low hanging fruit essentially it's been studied bill talbot former cfo of the agency did the analysis Um, that's now being brought forward and looked at by a national consulting group ap a consulting which is jfo's contract So that report will be coming out probably mid session and we should be prepared to digest that and make some changes It's been basically studying now for three years Great. It's it's complex though. So it deserves a study center Williams Uh, you mentioned an organization code Code.org if you go their website that's c o c o d e. Okay. Yep code center weeks, uh, just a couple general questions. So, um Cte cte career technical education is part of the student pathways And uh, and there's a state cte director in that division. So No divisions are hierarchical, but there's also positions in those divisions that have their own distinct separate authority Two that stand out are the state director of cte career technical education and state director of special education Those are like named positions from a federal perspective. Okay, but they're within a hierarchy and you um, you mentioned that, um Um Of your budget your operating budget 156 million comes from the federal government. What what percentage would you say? Uh, over over 50 percent. Yeah, we'll uh, We'll prepare our budget presentation for the money committees first But we happy to come in and show you or at least provide you the slides for that and you can look at it more detail Okay, and then we had a we had a presentation last week It was more about kind of covid impact and such and one of the priorities that came out of that was school mitigation like h-back systems and such and i'm just learning, you know, it's not in your policy priorities, right like construction and renovation and refurbishment and such Kind of just a sense of where that might fall. Yeah, that probably will fall I heard you mentioned that mr. Chair that you were going to get an update on current policies that are at flight So the reason it doesn't emerge here per se is that it's already in flight if you will And that's a policy you should get an update on that's x72 And as you mentioned, there's also a lot of work going on Through the federal dollars, especially with covid recovery But we kind of we're able to work with the general assembly to bring those things together But x72 and the work under x72 Is a good is a good construct to view all facilities. That'll get into school construction The survey and the the assessment that's underway Okay, and then a last question. So you alluded to the eight billion dollar fund and Okay, so it seemed seemed a little nebulous It's a little Is there any way to like in a subsequent game just to give us like a like a one page or it's this This is kind of what it is. It's where it comes from. This is how it's utilized We're gonna head fine for what it's working at financing. I think it's next week We've got somebody coming to talk about financing We have a 10 about a 10 page document you probably should have anyway. I mean, I don't think we can get it on one page But we have about a 10 page that describes the history of it and how it's created with x60 and so forth. I think it's good good document Great, we can try to send that out. That'd be great. Okay. Any other questions for secretary french at this point Terrific overview. Oh, thank you. Also, please Again, I've said it but you in the administration as a whole have done a great job managing COVID in our school So it's been a great grateful grateful for that work. Um, yeah A real model for the country. So thank you, and I'll see you tomorrow at school safety. See you tomorrow. Okay Thank you. Thank you Committee we are going to take a little break before we started 230 But we do have the business of electing a clerk That we still need to do and the clerk for what? really does Roll call sorts of things they facilitate Basically, they'll be handed every bill that comes to the senate bring it down here. Give it to Hayden It's not a paid position 401k and benefits very prestigious very prestigious. It's good And I But it we do need a clerk and with that Senator Coolick was you had some thoughts about the clerk I would like to nominate if he is willing to do it. I like to nominate senator terry Williams Senator Williams, you're willing pretty willing certainly For the honor So we have a nomination on the floor for senator Williams to serve as our committee clerk all those in favor I I all those opposed I voted as well. Congratulations. Yeah, and Hayden can tell you a little bit about the job He might know and we'll have you. Yeah Thank you for taking it on really appreciate it With that for me. Thank you. Yeah. Why don't we come back at 230? We'll take a quick bathroom break and stretch our legs and we'll start right off with mr. Francis and team. Thank you