 Welcome the House Education Committee and the Vermont House of Representatives on Wednesday, Wednesday, April 7, and we are here right now listening to Sharon Academy and some of the challenges that they're facing. And so I want to welcome head of school Mary Newman. Thanks so much. Again, my name is Mary Newman. I'm the head of school of the Sharon Academy and I'm here with my colleague Andrew Lane, who is the director of the middle school, who's here to answer any questions that come up that he might be better positioned to answer than I am. The Sharon Academy is a small independent school in Sharon Vermont serving about 160 students in grades seven through 12 from as many as 14 different towns, 85% of our students are publicly funded. The case is that we are required to set our tuition, no higher than the Vermont average announced tuition or AAT. But the AAT is not representative of secondary spending in Vermont. In other words, it does not cover the cost of educating our kids. With the AAT provides inadequate funding. We have to raise about $275,000 in an annual appeal and charge each student an annual fee, which for next year we think will be about $650 for middle school students and $750 for high school students in order for us to meet our operating budget. This fee is really a tuition surcharge and families are having a harder and harder time paying it. Many families in our community are not able to contribute on top of that fee to the annual fund. So again, to meet our operating budget, we have to charge a fee for every student that more and more families are struggling to pay. And then on top of that, we have to raise $275,000 in donations. So we've been thinking about how to solve this problem, which has been growing for years and one path we have explored more recently is to be exempt from the AAT by meeting the education quality standards. But as soon as we started to pursue that, what it would mean for the Sharon Academy to meet EQS, we learned that doing so is not possible. This is because when the EQS were updated from the previous school quality standards, language was removed that allowed the standards to be applied to independent schools. Specifically, the current standards direct independent schools to statutory language that has since been repealed. So our understanding after consulting with the Vermont Independent Schools Association and the AOE is that an independent school cannot meet EQS. So without a way to set our tuition at an amount that covers the actual cost of educating our students, TSA cannot equitably provide an education to all students in our area. We are forced to increase that fee that tuition surcharge, which makes us less accessible to the families in our community, which erodes one of our major core values of being accessible to all students in our area. So the solution that we have come up with is statutory language that amends 16 VSA 824, stipulating that by meeting certain conditions, the Sharon Academy can set a tuition amount that is different from the AAT. I believe that you all have a copy of the suggested language, but I will quickly go through the those conditions that would allow us to set a tuition different from the AAT. The conditions are open enrollment, which we already have special education to all eligible students, which we are currently working towards. And two thirds or more of our tuition would have to come from school districts in Vermont. In other words, at least two thirds of our students would have to be publicly funded. By passing this amended language, TSA would meet many of the goals of the education quality standards and be able to set its tuition at a rate that adequately meets its operational costs without a surcharge to families. The last thing I want to say is that TSA has no intention of becoming more expensive to taxpayers than other schools in our area. The goal is to deliver our mission to the students in our community, regardless of their ability to pay extra for it. So thank you very, very much for listening and happy to take any questions. Thank you. I think it might help to get a perspective on how the funding works. So why don't we go to Brad James from the Agency of Education to give us a foundation. Our committee has not had that foundationational understanding yet. So, thank you Brad for helping us understand how we fund our. So, so for the record Brad James Agency of Education and I was sent a few questions that people asked me to respond to her to kind of outline fill in. And I believe, I believe that Jesse has those posts because I just sent to relate again as usual. The first question is how are tuition rates set for approved independent schools and basically independent schools at their own rate. They can do whatever they so choose to do. Most of them do what exactly Mary was saying is they they go to the average announced tuition and that's that's what most of them do because we get lots of phone calls when the average announced is published saying what is it if or what is it going to be published and that's what people tend to set their rates. So the vast, vast majority of approved independent schools in Vermont do set their rates at those amounts. The statute then sets limits on how much school districts can pay as tuition rate to to an approved independent school and approved independent school becomes a very long wordy thing for me to say. So I'm just going to say independent school meaning approved independent school. There are different types of independent schools. That's what we're really talking about your approved independent schools are the independent schools in Vermont that public school districts can send public money to. Okay, they cannot send other independent schools such as recognized independent schools. So I'm really just talking about the approved independent schools such as such as Sharon Academy. So for elementary students and I know this is really more conversation with high school students for elementary students though statute says that unless the voters choose to pay a higher amount that that the tuition is the average amounts tuition for you know, elementary schools tuition charged by the approved independent school itself, or the average tuition rate paid by that district for all of its elementary students generally speaking it's the first one the average amounts tuition. So for high school students. Again, this isn't as Mary pointed out section 24 C of title 16. The tuition will be at a rate no greater than the average announced tuition, unless the voters approve a higher amount. That's where they are right now. So that kind of addresses how tuition rates are set for approved independent schools. The second question was for those approved independent schools charging different rates please show a table with tuition rates, and why they're able to charge higher rates when Sharon cannot so the tables down below I just want to address a few things first. First of all, to a Sharon Academy can can charge whatever they want. There are no limits on it they're not required to charge afternoon tuition list of their board says, but they could they can charge whatever they like. They have chosen charge the average announced tuition, and I understand the reasons for that. But if Sharon Academy was charged higher tuition rate, then that cost, the difference between that cost the higher rate and the average amounts tuition would fall on the parents and kids to the to Sharon Academy. If the second thing they could do is the Academy, the Academy could ask the sending towns to approve a higher rate that has happened in other places or does occur in other places. I'll come back a second, at which point if they chose to do that the voters approved and especially more reading for that or partner town meeting the specific article for it. And that would be the rate that people would do and they would vote on that annually. And so you could have a rate higher than the average amounts tuition at that point. And lastly, the third choice that I can kind of really come up with here is the Academy could pursue designation as the public high school for the sending towns. Mary said there are 14 towns, I doubt a 14 towns would do that but Sharon would concede with it because most of their kids need to go there if I recall correctly. But they could pursue designation if the sending boards and the Sharon Academy board all agreed on designation, the voters approved it, then Sharon Academy would act as the public high school for whatever town designated that. And at that point that they could get, but they could set their tuition rate or whatever at the district would pay that. So the charge at the bottom has the four, for approved independent schools and they're really the historical academies, the four big ones that used to act as public schools many years ago. Certain areas that they are the ones who currently to the best of my logic only for who have a higher tuition rate than the average analysis tuition. Why don't we pull those up so folks can take a look at that. This is on your written testimony. Yes, it is. Yeah. Yes. I know people had in front of them or not so. Yeah, and feel free and run me anytime folks that tend to go fast. So, let's see. Jesse, maybe you could bring that up. Yes, true. I have it right here. Thank you so much. And scroll down to the bottom, but not almost to the bottom to get to the table. Oops, but yeah, there. So what I have here are the four academies. Thank you. Thank you, Madam chair. So what their rates are for FY 21 and FY 22 burn Burton is one of the is has the district or not district army, the independent school that has that the voters in the surrounding towns who send most of kids there have chosen and approved a higher tuition rate for $1 that number is $179900 versus I had to look it up because I didn't know it versus the average announced tuition of $16233 so roughly a $1700 increase of the average house tuition for FY 22 the burn Burton rate will be $18490 versus $16842 for average announced tuition so roughly a $1600 increase in round numbers. That's that's what the parents who are sending their that's what the school districts who are sending most of their kids to remember our pay. If a parent who is not one of those districts who has approved the higher rate, since their child to burn burden to cost them more for 22 would be $20,490. So basically what they're doing is they're charging more than the average announced tuition, but they're giving the towns who are sending most of kids there a break. Both Lyndon Institute and St. Johnsbury Academy are able to charge a higher rate, because they together they act as an area career technical center CTE regional technical center, and that's allowed by statute. The Fetford Academy meets two different things for internal who they are. They are a designated high school public high school for Stratton and Fetford. So they those those districts pay their full tuition. And then they've also been deemed to meet education quality standards from years past, rolling forward. And, and so other districts that are sending in their students, or other parents who are sending their students those to separate Academy, the districts are paying full tuition to separate Academy also questions on that chart. Yes, they're, they're, they're, you know, before I ask the question hang on for a second, Madam Chair, there is a mistake I thought I corrected it before I said to Jesse I did not. On that for the Academy at the very last says the statutory citation at the very bottom says 16 BSA has sections 824 a and B that just say 827 a and B. Why, why can. So, so that's that for it meets one because it's designated. Yes. And to they meet the, the EQS that Sharon is not able to address. And how did that happen. That's a good question. And I was, and I was, I did, I was unaware that that independent schools, according to what the EQS standards themselves say which I have to admit I have never read are unable to to meet meet them, because the statute says that they can that's that's section 165 F. So I'm not sure what the education quality standards say it sounds like they're referencing old language that has been repealed. But again, I don't know that. Let's check in that. But years ago that when we had it was I guess before trying to remember it was before the education quality standards are after I think it was before. I don't know what we had before that because again, this is not my world that I deal with, but the Stanford Academy met whatever standards there were in place at that time is decided. And then I believe that is when they change and I pretty sure before the education quality standards when they change to the education quality standards just kind of roll forward. There's some discussion about I, I'm not sure where it all stands but my there there's somewhere there's letters saying that the reason I know this definitively is because the auditors state auditors were, we're looking at our tuitioning thing information, and they were diving into that deeply. So somewhere we have a letter saying that the Academy at is has been deemed to be these education quality standards at this point. My understanding is going to be reviewed again later down the road. Because again, that's not a part of it. So just looking at burn Burton. So, burn Burton so Manchester. Are they designated for Manchester. No, no, no, Burnburn does not want to be designated. They, but they, but they do. Did they basically tell the towns that if you choose to send most of your, if you send most of your students to burn burden and it's not just matches somebody other towns around I can't remember the whole list. But if you choose to send most of your students there then we will give you a discounted rate. And every year on the ballot of those towns there is a there is an article saying to choose X number of dollars to pet center students to burn. I'm in a sending town. And I want to send my, my child to burn Burton. And is, is that my child's access to that based on my town's agreement for what they're what they're paying. It's, yeah, that's not the access per se it's how much it gets charged and who pays. If you're in Manchester, when all one of those towns right around there and sending your child. I think when I was doing it still, then you would pay for FY 22 you would pay that $18,490, and it wouldn't cost you as a parent anything out parents, anything outside of your, your, your product education property tax. It would be a public cost. If you were in a town outside of that, say you're down in. Halifax, and wanted to send your child up to burn burn that's not one of the towns that has approved higher rate to burn Burton. So what Halifax would do is they would pay the average announced tuition which was about $16,800 for FY 22. You as the parent would be paying that difference of roughly roughly 16,000 $4,000, 3800 something like that, the difference between 20,490 and 16,842. And it just don't be it would have been nice if I put the average announced tuitions in that chart, but I didn't. Sorry. I just got a little bit mixed up on the math. Yeah. So, let me go a little more slowly. Yeah. Okay. So, so you're, you're there, there are two sets of towns you were talking about our school district talking about one who one who has chosen to pay a higher rate to burn Burton, and the other who is not. All right, so the first one would they've chosen to pay the higher rate for FY 22. So you're paying the town, the school district or not the town, the school district are paying that that tuition of $18,490. You, you as a parent would pay nothing else. Right. Okay, that just be in your problem and you know that just go to your education property tax rate. Okay. Then I have to pay the difference between 16,842 and 18,490. No, no, and 20,490. In that, in that, that, okay, it's not highly there. I didn't put a dollar sign kind of it because I'm lazy. But for someone living in Halifax who's to school district has not approved a higher tuition than the rate is $20,490. I pulled this off their website. That's where I got the number from. And so you as a parent would be paying the difference between that 20,490. And the tech and the school district Halifax would pay 16,842 you'd be paying that difference. So roughly $30 $600. Okay, thank you. Plus your education property taxes. Yes. Any other questions for Brad representative James. Make sure I don't know if we're going to get to this in a minute. But it seems to me that the core core of the issue here is the average announced tuition rate. And so I wondered how that is set, and whether it's an adequate number. I cannot address whether it's an adequate number because I don't work in school districts. But it is basically it is a number that is calculated it's in statute and state board rule, and it's based on actual costs of this of the. I'm sorry, I'm one step ahead. Let me back up ignore everything I just said except for the fact that I don't know how it's done. It's based on a public schools have to announce their tuition rate annually. And when we collect that information, one of the things that is collected is for a union school district, regardless of grades, we collect how much they're charging for grades. And how much they're charged for grades seven through 12. If they have a seven to 12 or nine through 12 or nine to 12 or seven eight if they're a cave, whatever happens to be its basic divide between secondary and elementary secondary means seven through 12. So what happens then is that the average announced tuition then takes those average announced tuition for the union high school so great seven through 12 either seven and eight, or nine through 12 or seven through 12 those kind of great ranges we look at, or that they're out there, and they just average it. And that's, that's what it comes out to be it's it's whatever they're charging at that point, some union high schools charge a lot. Some high schools charge don't charge a lot so it comes out to you know whatever the average happens to be that's exactly what it is. Okay, but that's not. Alright, so the public schools all around the state announced their tuition rates, and then that gets averaged. And then only for the union schools, only for the right so in other words Burlington would not be part of this of Springfield will not be part of this round city would not be part of this. A union, a union school would be. Okay, and then do the do public schools have to live within that rate. Well, these are public schools. Then are they held to it. No, they know, but a public school consent, whatever tuition rate it's going to be there is a there is a reconciliation down the road, which is what I was starting to talk about when I realized I was wrong. I'm coming back shortly, but public schools, it just just like an independent board comes up with every rate they think is necessary to educate their students, and they announced that, and then that's what that's what people are going to pay. So what you're looking at here is a subset of all those. All those announced tuitions for all the public schools, you're looking at the unions and then a subset of that as the high schools themselves. And that's what the number is that 15,000 plus number that we're talking about. But they're not bound to that because what the law says to really directly answer your question. What the law says is that a school district will pay the full tuition to a public school. The high school elementary doesn't matter to a public school district in Vermont and out of state and country for that matter, and then has a few other things in there too. So the, I'm sorry I just and then I'll move on to make sure I'm understanding this. So the, so the data that's gathered from public schools is used to set the average announced tuition rate. That public schools then it's not like they are bound by that or have to adhere to it. They can bring whatever budget to the voters they want to bring to the budget, but it becomes a very important number for independent schools. The budget and the tuition rate are two different things. The budget of what people are going to end up paying so if you're, if you're in. I used Halifax so if you're in Halifax and you're tuition in your high school students out, whatever that tuition rate is that where the schools are going to that becomes part of your budget. So in a place like Halifax they may have people go they may have students going to three or four different high schools, all of with all of public high schools, all of which have different may have different tuition rates. And they may have some students going to independent schools which then have more more restriction on what they get on on how they're paid from the school district. But they can charge whatever they so choose representative Austin then come. Excuse me. The other a Brad, why does the AOE choose to only use union schools for the averaging. And the reason I'm asking that is I'm looking at a list of all of our sending are the schools that we send to my district. The only one on the list that's a union school is Green Mountain, which is a fairly small union school. Yeah, and all the others are almost 2000 at least $2,000 more than Green Mountain. It almost looks like the union school numbers are skewed for some reason. The reason AOE does this with all due respect is because the legislature passed the law that told us this is how we do it. And in place, I can give you a quick idea. I don't know how long it's been placed, but since I've been here, which is way too long sometimes. Yeah, I'm looking at both the what went when I don't know the history of them, but both the elementary tuition and the high school tuition were first added to title 16 in 1969. I'm sure they've been changed over the time, but I don't know how they've gone back and looked, but it's, it's, we do it this way because that's what statute tells us to do. If you guys would like to change that that's fine. It's, you know, we just, we would, if we wanted to do something where we were looking at all public schools then you would, we would just collect that and slightly certainly as well we still collected that way of grades secondary seven through 12 but again whatever great configuration that happens to be, and then the primary elementary grades down below. It can all be done it's just, we don't do it that way because that's not what the law says to do. Thank you. Yeah, on other spending, if, if we were to change something to give them greater fun. I'm sorry I didn't represent common I'm sorry. You go, why don't you go first represent. Thanks, Brad just a very quick question. When they when a school calculates it's a at, are there certain expenses that are not included in that and I guess specifically for example, transportation. Yes, yes there are off the top of my head I don't know what they are. I can name some of them. I can look them up, find them fairly quickly. They take away transportation costs. They take away a that portion of costs that's provided by direct grants from state or federal sources so like titles of things like that for salaries and such expenditure for maintenance payments of principal interest for expenditures for special education tuition payments for CTE students so it takes some stuff away. It's, it's a, it's not a they don't do the calculation we do the calculation once we receive their actual information. And then we send that back out. And so it's a calculation done at the state level based on actual expenditure and revenue data coming in to us at the end of the year. And that's what they compare to what they announced the previous year that people paid and that's where the reconciliation comes in if it's over 3% plus or minus. Right. So, so fair to say that what a school talks about its per pupil costs at budget time, and this, there's a reason why they're not the same. Yes. And also again, the average announced tuition is an average. So therefore, you know, people are higher people are lower. So, you know, some people right near it some people aren't. Yeah, or even schools announced an individual Union schools announced tuition is less than its per pupil costs. Yes, because many of those expenses are backed out. That's right. So some people may want a lot of students tuition students they'll give a good rate and then not worry about a reconciliation later. What if we were to make this adjustment that the Sharon Academy is asking what are the implications for other independent schools. For other independent schools, it would depend on who met the qualifications that are that are they, you know, it turns out specific they are, and what other what other independent what other the other approved independent schools are doing. I can't tell you without really knowing what they aren't that we have to go back in and look to see what's happening. As, as, as Mary said that they're working towards providing special education to all kids and they're not they're not they're not how close there I don't know that's a question for them. And I don't know where the other independent schools stand on that either some of the big ones probably are in the same place where they can do it. The cost of the sending district. Yes, it goes back to the cost of this but they have to provide it that's that's the thing. So what would the implications be the implications would be that in the case of burn burn if they so chose, then they can all the school districts could pay that would pay the higher amount that individual parents pay from non approved or non voting, sending districts, but that that hot that 2490 number. Basic basically what it mean is regardless of what was charged the school districts sending kids there would pay that that's a sense of means what that would mean is that for those towns, when they set when the tax roger set. There's their, their, their education tax rates on home sets would be higher. It could conceivably depend on how much change it can, it can see we have a smaller impact on all the other towns in the state because it affects the Ed fund is a greater demand on the Ed fund which could conceivably affect the yield. Usually there's enough wiggle room in there that that probably you know we're not trying to talk to huge dollars here that that it wouldn't really affect the you know but it has the potential to which would might would impact other districts but probably not to a great extent, it would certainly impact. I'm just going to share as an example, the town of Sharon, the taxpayers and Sharon, because they're their tax rates will go up because they're paying a higher tuition. So they can vote to pay more anyway, correct. Yes, they can. Sharon can say where we did it we're going to pay where we get it we're going to. Yes. They could vote that, but I imagine that they don't. They haven't I don't know if it's ever been brought up or not and again I'm not I'm not sure how many of the roughly 160 kids are from Sharon. My guess is probably the majority, but there are other towns around there too so. Okay, I just want to leave room for for Mary. Is it my turn yet. Yeah, go back to you. Well, starting right there, I would say it's really important to remember that so many towns around here really enjoy school choice. And so having students from coming from 14 different towns doesn't necessarily mean that all of those 14 different towns are going to designate or agree on a tuition rate for the Sharon Academy because, you know, choice is important. And in the case of that for the Academy, I would just want to clarify that that for currently the town of that for does the only town that designates that for the Academy as their designated high school there was a very recent change in the town I live in to D designate that for the Academy. I have to ask is that Strafford. Yeah. Oh, you designated. Yep. I haven't heard that. Okay, thank you. Um, so I just, yeah, I just want to say a couple of a couple of additional things that to this idea that we can set our own tuition, and it's just a matter of families paying the difference that's exactly what's happening right now to the tune of $750 for the high school fee right so we keep our tuition at the average denounced tuition and then we tell every family that for every student they have they need to pay this additional amount and that's what I'm saying is becoming increasingly inequitable. And so in the case of burn Burton that raises the, the tuition from 16,200 to 18,400 that's the amount extra the taxpayers are paying and then additional additional amount for the 20,000 rate that they that they charge the families that do not live in that particular district so I completely understand the ability to say that our tuition is higher than the AT and put it on the families to pay. And I think that that is really inequitable. I also want to really recognize that the AT is the problem and that was the first path we went down. So Representative James the question you asked is exactly the question we asked and it seemed so big to try and move that needle that we took this other path which is carving out the values for the Sharon Academy to set its tuition. And lastly, and but then I would love Andrew if you have any thoughts to chime in because Andrew has done a tremendous amount of work on the AT thinking. But the last thing I would just want to say is that the amount that we are that we are considering if you think about the $750 annual fee that our families are paying per kid. What we imagine being a tuition that we could set that would make a significant difference in meeting our bottom line would be 18,500, for example. I just want to I just want to throw a number out there so that you have something to hold on to when you imagine what that would cost for our for our towns is a tuition of 18,500. Andrew, will you speak to the things that you have been thinking about. Yeah, thank you. I think a couple of things. I mentioned the idea of 165 f and that actually is the place. The section of the statute that is repealed. So you actually the educational quality standards say hey go over to 165 f and 165 f is if you look at the remote statues online, which is where I'm looking at shows that section 165 f is repealed so it makes it impossible for us to use that pathway so I just want to clarify that one piece because that's certainly, you know for us the educational quality standards will be a pathway forward. Also to know that in the example of that for the Academy, right. There are some towns that come that are not designating that for that go there and pay that tuition rate, because they are deemed to meet the educational quality standards. So, we're certainly not looking for you to change that for them at all. We're just looking to have a similar pathway to be able to experience the, you know the parody for students where we're not putting it on the backs of families to pay the tuition. You know I think that kind of the big issue here is is what you're asking for is to be able to set your tuition as does a public school, I put it at a level that covers your expenses. That's exactly right but but without any of the public school accountability that goes along with it such as a board such as audits such as public access to to what everybody has public access to with the public school. And I guess, you know that's, I think that's the challenge here is that you want all the benefits of being a public school, but without the, the rest that comes with it, teacher licensing, you know union salaries, all of that, and I guess I'd like to hear your response to that issue. I think that that is what that is that is the thing that we were in pursuit of when we looked at the education quality standards because we are 100% open to figuring out if there are standards we can meet in order to have the same privilege as public schools, but we were cut off at the past and so I am more than happy to hear what standards an independent school that can set its own tuition should meet in order to have that privilege. Andrew, if you have anything to add go for it, but I know that's I think exactly right I think for me it's that that if you look at the four. There are currently in VS a one, you know, 168 24 right. It talks about the idea that you can independent school is allowed to set its own tuition if it has a tech center as Brad mentioned, or if it has a vote of the towns. Or if it has, if it meets the educational quality standards. And so there are these four schools, they currently set their tuition above that, and don't do I think what representative common is is is wishing for. And I'm not saying we're opposed to that either representative common but they don't do those things right and they're able to set that because they have that carve out for those different qualities that they exist in. And for us, I think the hope is, Okay, let's let's meet the educational quality standards. Oh, well we can't do that, but we're not large enough to have a tech center and we have students coming from all of these different towns. So the idea of having a vote, you know it would be unfair to say oh the people who came from from Stratford voted the people from Sharon didn't people from ton bridge did but the people from Chelsea didn't the people from Rochester did but you know it just goes on and on. Yeah, just go to Brad games we're going to have to pull this together fairly soon. Right James. Yeah, I just want to go back to what you said Andrew. Subsection F is not repealed title 165 either in the current law book nor online I just looked. I don't know if it says in order to be doesn't have independent school we can quality standards. Yeah, so we can talk offline on that but it's it's not repealed. You might be looking at something else but currently that's not. Well I'm just looking at it says E through G are repealed. F frog. Right. And if isn't isn't F in the middle of E and G. I'm not sure where you're looking because I'm not seeing that anywhere. We can we'll discuss it later it's conversation but they're so I'll get back in touch with the committee after you and I resolved and let them know. That's good. So that would be great if you could get back to that it's an interesting question for sure and of course what also begs the question is have you considered going public, which we've talked about before. Well, I think the equivalent in my mind of that is is meeting those educational quality standards right I think the intention when they were created was to honor the message of what it would be like to be a public school and I think because we felt like that pathway was not available to us from the Agency of Education that this model would be the closest way of creating a parallel to that. Okay. I don't think we're going to solve this problem at the moment, but the committee will continue to bring this up. Happy to let you know when we do that. And I'm going to that shift us. I believe we have the next group coming in we're going, we're doing a mental gymnastics and switching back to as 16. We have the last force on school, exclusionary discipline reform. So, you are more than welcome to say, but I imagine you have other things to do. And we appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thank you. So, I'm delighted to welcome Wendy Geller. This is our data research director at the Agency of Education. And I see an assistant today. I do. My husband had an immovable appointment. So this is our son, Sylvan. Education committee we have all sorts of things going on. We love it. So say hi to the house education buddy. We are looking at us 16, which is great. That's about data and interested since you are the data people to your response to as 16. Thank you so much for inviting us here I just wanted to say that first. So for the record, my name is Dr. Wendy Geller. I am the division director for the data management and analysis division at the agency of education. The folks that I have here with me today, Sylvan not with standing are David Kelly, who is my research and stats section chief here in DMA. And also my colleague director just to Carol is she is the division director for the student pathways division. She's very heavily involved in the equity work as well. So we have some written materials so that you will be able to refer back to all the links are live in those materials. And so they will bring you to the documents and the various different web pages that we've gathered for you there and in these materials. We saw something that might be useful is if we could walk you through some of the places where these data live at the moment on the web, and just kind of show you because we're conscious that folks just might not know where things live at the moment and where they can kind of readily go to get data. We are going to talk about where we already report. We're going to talk today a little bit about how we collect data will go over a little bit of the student data privacy law for which is the federal law that we have responsibilities under and have to meet obligations under. And then, just at the end of the written remarks there's a little table that I put together to provide some corrections and clarifications I thought you might find that useful, and also kind of a list of some of the federal places that we are required to report on an So this is a little bit of a tag team today between me and Dave. Dave is going to is going to we call it driving Dave's going to drive so to speak to walk you through the various different places if that works for everybody. Thank you. Okay. I figured we should start at the beginning of the data life cycle so what I mean by that is all the places that we that we showcase how we collect data. So Dave, just hop in into the knowledge base. We currently collect discipline. Thanks, man. We collect the discipline data from all the public system. Why can't I. It's the next tab. Sorry. Okay. Knowledge base. Here we are. If you want to start. So the method that we deploy at this moment to collect discipline data from the public system is the ad fusion platform. You might know that as the SLDS the state longitudinal data system. We follow all the federal best practices when it comes to our required data collections on this model is actually borrowed from the FBI method of collecting incident data from local law enforcement agencies so essentially what we're showing you here is our, our fully interactive searchable knowledge base, which we launched during the third quarter of last year. It's available on the on the website. What Dave is showing to you right now is live. So kind of like the last time when we talked together. Oh, gosh, that was other than the assessment testimony that was last year. Wow. And folks talk to you a lot about ideas and we really wanted to show you some concrete real live things at the moment so we'll just be doing a little bit of a driving here. And so what the knowledge base does is it, it explains our data collections. It doesn't cover the entire body of data that the entire agency collects, but we have all of our most voluminous collections that DMA manages here and that includes the year and collections called DCL for, and that collection is where the public system submits the discipline data. So Dave if you just want to show folks where that is all readily available to them so they know where to, where to look and where to find it. The links are in the written testimony. The discipline data is here in across four tables using that method that Wendy explained that was based on FBI collecting information from local police agencies. So you have an incident. There's an action taken by the school. An incident is going to have an offender. Some incidents will also have victims. Not all do have victims. But some like harassment for instance are required to have victims. Whenever you get too deep you can always go back of course through typical navigation. There's a lot of information in here. And it gets very detailed. So if I was interested in say the actions that the school could take. Go into the actual specification of actions. It will tell me what fields are being collected in that specification. It goes down to the column names. And as you see there's the description and lots of technical information. This is mainly intended for data managers that need to fill out that information for us. There's also further up a tab that tells you what code sets are used for a particular variable. One of the relevant ones here is going to be action type for exclusionary discipline. We're talking about a limited number of actions expulsion is one obviously this does not occur very much in Vermont. So much so that I've never actually reported a non suppressed number for expulsions here. So they're less than 10 each year in the state suspension and in school and suspension out of school. Those are being grouped together in the report that was the annual snapshot tool report that will show you in just a few minutes here. Both are considered exclusions. Obviously there is some difference. The final one that's included. And this one also does not occur very frequently is this unilateral removal to an alternative setting. So really in the case of a special education student that is going to be removed from a public school long term. And at that time, you put in place some interim services for that special education student under federal law, and look for an appropriate long term placement. So there are a lot of things in this area. There are also FAQs in here. These sort of highlight sort of the frequently asked questions that we get from data managers, how do they do different things. You see that there is a lot about suspensions and expulsions or some questions about unilateral removals. Just clicking quickly. You see it in suspensions and expulsions or exclusionary discipline includes both types of suspension is our answer to that particular question. Is there anything else Wendy that you want me to highlight from the knowledge base? It's just a general sort of encyclopedia of data collections. The discipline data is only at the year end. So I'm just conscious of our time and I want to make sure we're able to show everybody like where the discipline data actually have been living on the on the web for a while because I am conscious that folks just might not know where it is. Yes, thank you. All right, so I just a quick word on the data standards because I did pick up on some of the drafted language about creating data collections. I think it's really important to just kind of let folks know that it's critical that we maintain our compliance with the federal government with regard to adopting their data standards and not creating our own. There's a couple of really important reasons that folks might not know about why we need to maintain that and that's because if we do not report as expected to the federal government and meet their definitions, we're going to put the title funds at risk. And the title funds are specifically targeted for all of our most vulnerable students. So, you know, I read this with with view to thinking like, oh, this is a really important thing, you know, equity should be at the center of everything that we do. But there are unintended consequences that folks just might not know about so that's kind of how we need to hash through those pieces together. So, there are link cities, again in the testimony but you know for example, if we were to kind of create our own data standards here in Vermont, we would jeopardize not just our access to the title funds but our ability to leverage free federal resources which are critical to the organization you know whether that is the open source community or the common education data standards so we can have comparability across states so that we can compare our data to other states and see how we're doing and see how we're doing nationally. Or whether that's actually entire reporting tools and platforms that the feds are going to expect us to move to in the next couple of years, in order to meet our compliance reporting. And that's really, really critical that we do not that we do not create our own standards here in Vermont but that we adhere to best practices nationally in that regard. Now that's not to say that we couldn't collect new data down the road but there are costs associated with that. And some of those costs, you know I realized that we talked about this a while ago but like costs are not just dollar costs, although there would be substantial development work on current and future infrastructure who were to make adjustments. But they're time, you know, time and burden costs on the field to adjust their systems time and burden costs here at the agency to adjust ours so just to be aware of that. So to leap forward to where the data already live on the web. Dave is going to drive again, and he's going to show you where the annual snapshot is and I'm just going to walk you through that a little bit. And Dave's also going to show you where all those data are exportable on the web there via the annual snapshot. So, Alrighty. Thanks Dave, can everybody see it. Yeah. Okay. One second I'm sorry I just noticed representative Austin did you have a question. Yes. I'm wondering if you have a data point in terms of when a student is removed from a class and due to his or her safety or and or the other that safety of other children. The reason for removal. Right. The reason they're removed is due to that that student becoming hurt, or, and her or hurting another student, other students. In terms of the discipline data there is an incident type that is a danger to oneself or others. I don't know that that would cover every case that you're talking about represented Austin because sometimes students are sent to a planning room for a period of time, and that that may or may not be a disciplinary incident. So, going to the planning room, going to the planning room to sort of deescalate as part of either an IEP plan or an educational support team plan that may not be recorded in this data. Okay, thank you. So, the tool we're looking at is the annual snapshot again. This is the Vermont tool for accountability from schools and leas around the state under the federal as a law. The reason that the metrics that are in this display are here is they are part of the Vermont state plan, which is also available to change the metrics that appear in this tool, we would have to also change that state plan. As you can see up top there are a number of different domains. The domain that we're going to focus in on today is our safe and healthy schools, and the single measure that we have in here is the exclusionary discipline. So, the tool for the annual snapshot uses a simplified version of sort of data assessment of what was in the data. So, it's kind of like a proficiency level grade at the state lea and school level to say whether this entity is exceeding or meeting or approaching or not meeting the standards that were set out in our state plan. There's also always going to be when we have multiple years of data, a change score that you see. And so that is just, are they declining? Are they excelling? Are they flat lines? Are they the same? And you see that there are two measures here. We have both performance and we have an equity measure. All of the measures in the annual snapshot have a sense of equity in mind. There's some tradeoffs in equity when we deal with Vermont data that we're going to get into later. In general, I think you're familiar with this reason. It's one of the reasons that we group students together in sort of more generically subgroups at times is because those schools are small and we would not be able to display much data at all if it were not for that. If you switch over when you're in the snapshot to this tab that is exclusionary discipline, you'll see that you can start digging into the data in a lot of different grade ways. We have the ability to focus in on all grades or we could say, you know, we know that discipline issues are highest in 789 grades and we could focus in on one of those grades. There's also the ability to freely switch between the student groups that you are looking at in any one of these areas. The ones that have been used here are, you know, standard economic one for free and reduced lunch. We'll go back to racial group in a minute, special education, English language learners and do historically marginalized status last. The racial group we've chosen here is not ideal, but given that Vermont has only 10% of its students being non white students across the state. Schools would not have any data to present in the racial category if we didn't make this grouping. It's, it's not ideal for those. It's better for those schools. It's not ideal for a school where you do have actual racial diversity, like a new ski school district or Burlington. We've chosen to maximize the amount of data that we could display. This last category is sort of a supergroup of the other ones combined so if we consider that free and reduced lunch students non Caucasian IP or English language students are increased risk. We would place them in historically marginalized and then the historically privileged is all those students that don't meet any of those criteria whatsoever. That is a new sort of grouping for us that came in under the law. There's actually a button over here that I have to minimize all of you to see it. This could download what we've seen on our screen now. So what that might look like we're looking at the state level, what you would get out of that download is an Excel sheet that gives us all of the different categorizations for the state by grade level, the numbers that are in there, and the performance that you've seen on the screen. It also gives a value for the numbers out there. These are a little bit more complicated I didn't plan on getting into them today, but the annual snapshot tool itself contains extensive documentation. Here on, we have a user guide we have an overview. We have different facts and glossaries. We also have, and I think these might be the most convenient, the videos that kind of get into, you know, you tubes are nice, not just for students but for us as well. So, again, this comes out in a very easy to use, I think, Excel format. You might only be interested in a particular grouping here. And so you can easily filter on it. It's a file that can be downloaded straight to your computer so you don't have to worry about altering any of our data you're free to do your own analysis as you see fit. I have a couple of questions for just a minute. I'm also surprised to see using the word Caucasian I thought we're stopping you stop using that word but maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong. Representative James, and then, oh, sorry. Yeah, represent James and Austin. Thanks. Yeah, just to make sure I'm understanding when you say that it's declining where we don't mean that the number of disciplinary exclusions are declining we mean that we are declining in our progress of meeting the goals or the standards. Correct. It's declining from the previous year for that particular entity declining here. So, for this cell that I'm on representative James this metric decline from the previous year for free and reduced lunch students in the fifth grade statewide. The incidence or the data or the progress, the progress progress. And so just a point of clarification before before we kind of dive further. You mentioned Caucasian representative one. These, these are terms their their code sets that we use at the federal level. So it, there's not a ton of. There's not a ton of creativity I suppose I should say, and how we write code. So it for what that's worth to provide that as clarification. You know we agree at the state level not to use that term but when you're writing software, or you're trying to meet, you know, federal reporting requirements. You, you, you need to ensure that your code will run. And the last way to kind of give an analogy about that is so say you are trying to build a say you're trying to, you have a model that you're trying to build like a little model airplane or something. And it requires a certain type of a screw, or a certain type of a fastener. There's a lot of choices about the types of screws and fasteners that you need to use to make sure that all the pieces will go together. You need to use the screws and fasteners that the model calls for. So, I realize that's a little bit dry of a of a example but just to provide that clarification there. And not so so also because Dave spends a lot of time with us. I just want to make sure folks know that, you know, at the heart of the S estate plan was the commitment to equity, and that that was a huge reason why we created the historically marginalized supergroup. And the, the big stumbling block that we have here in Vermont is our, are exceptionally, I mean, really unique. And I use that word carefully size conditions here in the state, you know, if we, if we want to be able to report data on these types of events, we have to have a large size of events and students more to report those data. We can't breach students privacy. We are beholden to the federal to federal privacy law FERPA. And we have a standard it's, you know, and I have all this in the written testimony so you can feel free to, you know, hop through it when it's convenient for you. But it's, it's colloquially called the nosy neighbor standard. And that's the, it's essentially, you cannot release data such that someone who would be in the school community would be able to with a reasonable. amount of certainty know who those kids are by identifying them. So just just to be clear about that and, and, and I think that we should be mindful that the historically marginalized group allows us to report data in a way that we would never be able to report if we were cross tabulating them down to the specific subcategories, which indeed we have to cross tabulate down to those specific subcategories that you see already readily available there in the tool. It's just that those data are going to be suppressed to protect that privacy. So, so the historically marginalized group allows us to get at that. The committee is definitely aware of that me given our small size and our numbers. I see a question I also am going to need us to stop at 1215. So I also see that just this year I just want to make sure that we get to that and also want to make sure that we know as we're on this bill, you just mentioned that there may be some problems in this related to federal requirements and would be wanting to get that specifically from you as we as we mark up this bill. Absolutely. So we'll crack on here because we want to show you the other places where these data live that you can just readily get them on the web. So we've talked a little bit about the equity indices, and we've talked about the historically marginalized supergroup. Dave, would you mind driving and join them the, the VED. Let me just quickly represent of Austin. Did you have a question. Yes. The question is, and I think you kind of touched on it. I'm wondering if you could do different combinations like you could look at free and let's say you wanted to look at free and reduce lunch Caucasian on an IP in seventh grade. It's possible and I'm a little, I'm curious about the marginalized group because even within that group, there's so many individual individualized data points that, you know, it's just I'm just wondering how do you differentiate within the marginalized group, you know, to really get specific in terms of, you know, a population. Oh, Dave, do you want to take that one or do you want me to go. I think that the specific. I think the specifics here are in more of the free and reduce the individual subgroups for English language learners IP. The historically marginalized and privileged is really more to maximize what we can report. You know, you don't know if the student has one of the criteria to be in historically marginalized or all four in this case. We just know that there's at least one criteria for those students and the historically privileged students had none. So that's how the category is calculated. Sorry, I just wanted to I think because I think representative Boston is getting at. We would so from a from a public reporting standpoint, our size conditions are too small to be able to publicly report data like what you're what you're talking about, but that doesn't mean that the districts don't have access to it. The districts have access to their data so they could definitely dig into into those pieces. It's just that we, we would breach the students privacy if we were to cross tabuli and report that down because we're so small. So does that help. That's what I wanted to know. Okay, gotcha. So we're just going to leave ahead I'm conscious about our time running out. So we're going to show you Dave's going to show you now the remote education dashboard, or we call it the VED. This is live on the web. This is part of number last year how we were talking about modernization. So this is our new fully interactive fully exportable you can download all the data that backed us up from the web. We have a new interactive reporting platform, we're decommissioning that old, you might have known it as the reportal. It was an Oracle based platform. So this represents it's like about 15 years worth of a week forward and technological advancement. We, we would love feedback on this we have a feedback survey on the landing page and just going to plug like give us some feedback if, if you, you know, was would find some time for that. We have to inform our future adjustments on our future development and new releases based on the feedback that we get from from users. Obviously we use the, we have to meet basic reporting requirements that the agency has to meet using this tool, but we definitely would would love some feedback because we, we, we use it, and we, we iterate through our improvement processes. So if you just want to show folks how to use the VED, they can use it, you can use all this today. This is all live. Again, the links are in the written testimony. So what I've done here is I selected the school year. Data available for a particular metric or so we don't have 2021 data for incidents as of yet, and you'll see that that turns up just blank. Incidents in this case are incidents of hazing harassment and bullying. So, hazing harassment and bullying reporting is a state requirement. And it's not part of our accountability system. So the purpose and idea of the VED, and let's go back to a year that actually has real data in it is to fill out some of the missing components from. There's lots of data that's important, not just within the accountability system. And that's what this represents here. And you can see that even with this, there are cases like the hazing where there were no cases of hazing reported and statewide, there are very few cases of hazing ever reported. And it's almost always suppressed. We are looking to build out additional metrics on discipline data here. Tom Ferris has approached the data team and I believe he gave testimony on the directions that his team is going with understanding discipline data more and also, I believe, training the field in that area. And you can always, this second tab is nice because it gives all the definition that you can all, if you're done with spaulding, you can go back and look at all of the schools, any of the other schools. In the tool itself, you can only look at one school at a time. And even though there is a dashboard, sorry, not a dashboard, a place to download the entire data set. And I think that one of the things that we can see quite quickly is if we go to school here. We have 21,000 rows associated with school level data. And if we were to completely just only look at the number that are suppressed from that, we get 14,000. So this number is probably almost 14,500 rows of data are suppressed because of the kind of number of students that you see in the grades here. This means that two thirds of the data at that level gets suppressed. And one of the ways a more fruitful level to look at the data can be at this LEA level, or the SUSD level. Again, one of the ways that we can use a data set like this is we can say, well, what I really want to know is I really want to know anybody that is student group IP, and they're not meeting the standards. And perhaps today I'm reviewing middle schools. So I'm just going to select grade seven and eight. And so we, we end up with a short list of districts. This feeds these kind of annual snapshot data points feed into another process that we engage in at the agency, which is the internal field review, a monitoring team from the agency visits. They're doing different issues and supervisory districts each year, and they will dig through the actual files and interview people and get into the nitty gritty of these numbers. I'm just going to stop for a minute because I'm conscious of the clock. And we're getting pretty deeply into this, which is actually fascinating for people like Richard of Austin who are, you know, just want to just go play with this. I also want to make sure that we're going to be getting the guidance that we need from you related to S 16 to specifically get to that language and hoping that. It's really fascinating to see how much data you actually do have, and where it is and I'm hoping that there's a cheat sheet somewhere. Yeah. And so I'm wondering if maybe we can bring this part because I also want to make sure just a careless is in the room did you want to add something as well. Yes, and Jess, I'll turn it over to you for the data literacy pieces and the connection with 173 for the systems. Okay, system saw ball approach. I want to let the committee go and just in five minutes. Can we can we hang on for 10 more minutes, folks. We go 20 and I know that. I'm going to take us to 1220 and let's see if we can, we can get to this, this, either that or come back this afternoon is the other option. Yeah, I would just say for the record, I'm just a careless division director of student pathways at the agency of education and Wendy has Wendy and Dave have compiled that cheat sheet, aligned to specific areas within the school so that you can crosswalk it and I think just generally, you know, because this is such an important issue and the agency certainly supports the focus work of the task force, just that that tension that balance between transparency and so not wanting to put individual students at risk so there is some language to around how the task force would compile data and I think that's one of the things, you know, Wendy and Dave are trying to clarify is making sure that that's within a safe, you know, and structured piece that's consistent with also the recording requirements that the agency participates in so I would just say to is, you know, not to offer my colleagues time. I can do it she's on mute is that even if if you know Wendy and Dave doing that walkthrough with members of the task force to just really sort of clarify like this is that language and then I think we could certainly come back and say here, here's where we make some minor modifications to the bill. We know that because of the move to remote learning, there have been increased incidents of cybersecurity attacks particularly on school systems and state agencies we know that act 89 report is, you know, and there's been a focus in state government and increasing data protections. We don't want to inadvertently create opportunities for students to be exposed unnecessarily and I think that's the focus. I think that initiatives to as part of our implementation of 173 has been in providing the state of literacy training statewide I think we have 33 issues sds who are participating so that we can make sure that there's appropriate collection at the local level that spins up to the state level so that we can report responsibly to address these issues that do exist, but in a way that is consistent doesn't put at risk funding and doesn't put students at risk, most importantly. Thank you. Committee. Any further questions so so just and Wendy and, and I lost your name and David you, you will be able to help us so that we make sure that we get the language right that we don't actually do damage here we don't like to do damage. We don't want to lose money because it's some way we put something put put you would, you know, sending you down some some bad road. This is a question representative Austin. I put it, I put it in the chat but I am I'm assuming the answer is no but is there any way to measure on an offline harassment and bullying outside of school. It comes into school, you know the behavior comes into school but it occurs outside of school. If I think you've got that one. Yeah, I mean, so cyber bullying and harassment to us to still be a harassment or bullying incident. Incident also asked if the internet or a cyber means was used in, in, in the doing the incident that's not very good English I'm sorry. Okay, thank you. Representative Austin would David and Wendy would you be available for representative Austin to check in with you directly because she's going to have for every question. I have she's going to have a thousand. Absolutely. When it comes to data she's a she's our champion. Absolutely. We would love that. Yeah. And anyone that's interested in follow up with us. I think it's really it's I think it's incredibly helpful to know the degree of data that you are taking I know often when I'm looking for things things aren't up to date but it sounds like this area is. Yes ma'am, we in demand have really prioritized the modernization work. I know it was a long time ago when we talked about this but we take very seriously are our first goal in our strategic plan which is the the modernization of the systems and the decreasing the burden that it takes to maintain them so that we can be freed up to do more value added work for folks because there there's a lot of data there and we really need to turn that data into information for folks. Exactly. And we base a lot of good and bad decisions based on good and bad data. Should we mention the piece about independent schools not currently submitting discipline. The independent schools are in the bill here and they don't currently submit discipline data to us and we would not be able to use the same mechanism of data collection for them because they don't submit the other components. The schools are responsible for even our historic academies. Right. We consider them independent schools. Yeah. Yeah. We can come back and get more into the like maybe greedy technical stuff to if you folks would like. Okay, that sounds great. Yeah, we're going to be trying to my hope is that we'll be able to move this bill next week. And representative Brady is going to be helping us with that so she may may reach out to you too. Okay. Okay, everyone I think that on that note we will break. We have for the usual time we will come back after four. And we will hear, I think a little bit more will hear from ACLU, I believe, exclusionary discipline. And we should by then have a tremendous amount of information that we're going to have to sort through and make some decisions. And we will also be hearing from where am I here. We'll also be hearing from our dog hofer our auditor. Current report. And I think with that, if there aren't any other questions. We can go.