 Welcome to Senate Education 132 Monday, May 8th. Closing days, we have two pieces of business. The first, let me try to articulate as best I can the budget conferees are meeting. And one of the things that's come up has been the issue of adult basic education. And what the agents, what the Senate conferees would like to do is to put a study in there to help us remove some of the barriers. Well, let me explain it this way. We may need to have them commit. Funding for adult-based education isn't where it should be at. And one of the things we're trying to figure out is how to remove some of the barriers for ESL students who are not passing the exam, therefore not getting their GEDs and can't enter the high school completion program. And they would like to put together a study committee to review and report on the decreased HSCP enrollment in subsequent, that's the high school completion program in subsequent adult education funding issues. So this would be two house members, no, a current house member, a senator, folks, somebody from the agency, somebody from the Office of Racial Equity to look at this issue this summer. And let me just make sure I'm getting this, I'm happy to pass it around. The committee would submit a written report to joint fiscal general assembly and the agency of the administration before January 15th with its findings and any recommendation for legislative action based on the analysis that they conduct. And just to go through this again, I'm just going to read it. The high school completion program is experiencing decreased enrollment due to COVID policy changes within the program and lower literacy skills of limit acceptance into the program. Adult-based education programs overall are experiencing funding due to decreased enrollment. This again would create an adult education literacy high school completion program student access study committee to review and report on the decreased enrollment in subsequent adult basic education funding issues. Does anybody object to that or have any concerns? Anybody wants to see it? Can you repeat where this is coming from? So this is coming to us from Senator Westman who they must have identified this during their back and forth. You may recall we did have adult education listed as one of our priorities in terms of funding. I suspect they didn't meet that amount and so they're trying to figure out some of these other issues and therefore would like this study committee to come back and report on it. As long as everybody here, and today I have three, so I get three or we tell Senator Westman to come down and talk to us so I can get Senator Kitchell down unless people are concerned about it. Looks good to me. Okay. Do you need more? No, I think this is fine. They said if I don't find them by three o'clock it will be okay with it. Maybe actually could you just maybe email Senator Westman. You're good with all the language? All the language. So that's a don't end, not CGD. That's not CGD. So then the second piece of business is the letter that is in your file. And this is the letter we talked about last week. This is the School Meals Policy Division's food and nutrition letter. And I'll give people an opportunity to read through it. Remember what this hopefully would allow us to do is to get additional federal funds to offset the cost of universal school meals. Every time? Yep. Okay, they'd like a roll call on this. So if you don't mind calling the roll. And we did send it to Senator Hashim. He is, is it okay? But we wouldn't mind. That would be great. So start off with Senator DeWitt. Yes. Senator Hashim is the yes. Senator Williams is the yes. Senator Campan. Yes. So we will send this out. And you can tell Michael Brady that we did take, he was going to recommend we take the final form of vote. We'll take that. So I was just in finance, thank you, on 461. And? So here's the good news. Throw a roll. Good news and bad news. They are going to yank the driver's ed section. Okay. So normally because they don't like the pressure on the ed fund. Okay. So what they will do is they will have an amendment under normal circumstances. Because the pro tem is, seems firm. Friday, etc. Okay. Checked again. Yeah. This would not make it this year. However, guess what? What? You can vote, we will vote on, if we need to, we will vote on it on the veto right now. Oh, okay. The House vote. So it'll make it this year. And S138, school safety. Again, we're going to have a possible amendment, which is aimed hopefully at getting some more people on severe and pervasive. You'll see it. It was just proposed to me. I think maybe Sena Hashim will bring it forward. It's going to be a study so that we can get. So when we return, we might be able to get there. And again, that would slow it down. So it wouldn't make it, but it will make it this year because we have the vote veto over it. It actually will allow us to complete all of that work because we in the House will be able to vote on those things. And there'll be other things to vote on also on the veto over right day. So what will happen to all the other pieces of the miscellaneous bill? So what we'll do is what I thought tomorrow, what I was hoping would happen is you would go in there and they would be fine. And they would just concur when we send it to them tomorrow. The problem is if we don't get rule suspension or something like that. So we'll vote on the whole thing tomorrow. Oh, great. Except minus the driver's ed. And then this will stay in play likely until the veto over right day. Okay. Right. Okay, so just basically this is off. Yeah, and she will get up and explain that. Jane. No, Cummings for somebody. I bet it'll be Chittenden. Okay. Great. Well, that's a bummer for all those drivers ed folks. They are, you know, and I say, just so you know, I say it's dead. They hadn't heard from Ted Fisher yet. So he could convince them otherwise this afternoon. But yeah. Okay. Great. So tomorrow I'm still going to present the other pieces. Got you. All right. I think that's, that sounds good. I really want like this National Guard benefit. Yeah. So then, and if the house, if we get it to the house in time and they concur without the drivers ed stuff, we're done. If they don't have time, if they get it on Friday or sat, you know, every day, they can concur when we get back. Okay. Anything they can concur on school safety. Okay, great. When we get back. So that allows us to get, they just pointed out a bunch more things done. Okay, great. Does the house know what's happening? They don't. Okay. You're going in tomorrow at 9.30, right? Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to mention it to them? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I figured 9.15 now because Senator Broode was like 10 o'clock sharp. I can't imagine it would take very long. If you don't feel great to text me in the morning, I can go in. Okay. Whatever works. Thanks. You're just taking it through it. Thanks. All right, great. So that is actually, we'll get, and I don't know, you're coming back in June for a few days. If you need me. I'll actually, my email might be turned off, but we'll have to click that back on my page. We can text you. So that would allow, that Beach Override Day actually gets us. A little more time. Gets us everything. Yeah. All these extra things done. So it's good. Okay. Good. Great. And tomorrow, because we have two people absent, we need Senator Hashim here at least. I know Senator Weeks won't be here. He was the presenter and lead on school safety will have them take us through school safety tomorrow. How's that feel? That sounds good because we're still not 100% sure what worked. Yeah. So you should, if you, you do have the side by side on school safety. Yeah. And there will also likely be an amendment to 138 that hopefully it'll be a study so that we can come back and do severe and pervasive when we get back. And again, timing wise, I think the house, they would need to concur with us on this by the time of the, like on the day of the Beach Override. But remember, they sent us this. So we know that they're good with this. Makes sense. But this is the side by side of it's helpful. I know. I'll take it. Look at it tonight. I'll look at both of these. All right. Great. So that's good. That's good. Good work. Okay, everybody. That's it. That's it. That's a wrap. That's a wrap. Tomorrow we'll pick up school safety.