Let's get going then. Welcome to the October 2021 meeting of the Racial Disparities Advisory Panel. I'd like to begin, as always, with introductions. I will go through the lists that I have on the side of my screen and hopefully get everyone. Sheila, can you start us off, please? Yes, hello, everybody. This is Sheila, I'm in the 508 number. Sheila, she, her pronouns, calling out Abradaba of Vermont, appointed by Attorney General and representing the Roup Social Justice Center. Thank you. Robin. Hi, this is Robin Jones on the phone, Director of Research Crime Research Group. Great. Abigail Crocker. Hi, this is Abigail Crocker. I'm at the University of Vermont and also the National Center on Restorative Justice. Great. Tyler. Good evening, everyone. Tyler Allen, I'm the Adolescent Services Director for the Department of Children and Families. Great. Crime Research Group admin, I'm not sure what that means. That might be what I'm at. This is Christopher Horace, Research Associate Crime Research Group. Ah, OK. Thanks. Susanna. Hello, Susanna Davis, Racial Equity Director for the state. Great. Judge Greerson, you're muted. Some would say that's a good idea, Aton. Brian Greerson, Chief Superior Judge. Good evening, everyone. Good to see you. Ian. Hi, Ian, Loris, Aton's note taker. Great. Karen. Hi, everyone. Karen Gennett, Crime Research Group. Great. Loretta Sackie, please. Hi, everyone. Loretta Sackie, Policy Analyst for our Council of State Governments Justice Center. Thank you. Great. Mark Hughes. I mean, it's Mark. I am with the Racial Justice Alliance. Thanks, Mark. Evan. Good evening, everyone. My name is Evan Meenan, and I work for the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs. Great. Representative Lalonde. Hello, everybody. Martin Lalonde, and I am representative on the Host Judiciary Committee. Thanks. Alana Tate. Hi, I'm Alana Tate. I am the Compliance Manager with DCF. Thank you. Rebecca. Hi, everyone. Rebecca Turner from the Office of the Defender of Generals. Monica Weber. Good evening, everyone. I'm Monica Weber, and I'm here representing the Department of Corrections. Great. And Judge Zone. Hi, Tom Zone. I think the official title is Chief Superior Judge in Training for a few more weeks. Great. Thank you. And welcome to all. Have I forgotten anyone? Yes, I can see someone who's just come in, Jennifer. Hi, everyone. Sorry, I'm having some technical issues tonight. This is Jen Furpo representing the Vermont Police Academy. Great. Anyone who's been missed. Julio, I didn't call your name. Oh, my. Well, we carry on. Announcements, does anyone have any? The only one I have is what Rebecca told me that Jess Brown is unavoidably detained and will be in as soon as she can be. Anything else from anyone? OK, seeing no hands, moving on to the next item, approval of the minutes of our last meeting, discussion, corrections, addenda, errata, et cetera. Aitana, I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. OK. Y'all know the drill. Emotion has been taken. I'll second. It has been seconded. Fine. All in favor of approving the minutes as submitted, please say aye or raise your hands. Aye. All opposed? All abstentions. Minutes are accepted. I'm sorry? I wasn't at the last meeting, so I'm abstaining. OK. One abstention. Ian, if you would note that, please. However, yes, the motion does dairy. And the minutes are approved as written and as submitted. Moving on now to the main body of the evening, which is the report that we are preparing for submission on the 15th of November, you all should know that, well, you have seen it, that the working group has been just doing Yeoman's work, in my opinion, at least. And that work is represented on SharePoint. The link to the folder which contains all of that work has been sent to all of you. You have been able to look at it. I ask that you take a look, particularly at the draft, which was the first file in that folder labeled, well, I don't remember the entire title, but it certainly began with 01, Act 65 draft report, I believe, with the date 92721, if my memory serves, which who the hell knows. In any event, I was hoping, as I wrote you with that note, that you would now have taken a look at that between your receipt of that note and now. There are some big questions that we need to put before you and get feedback from you all on, so that when we go back to work on Monday next, we have some direction from the full body. There will be one more, I believe, meeting before the report is submitted. And let me also be clear, that one meeting is within 48 hours of when the report needs to be submitted. I'm not pulling an all-nighter. I'm just letting you know that now. I'm not doing it. I don't mind copy editing. I love doing that. I live for this. But no last minute. Oh, we need 16 appendices. No, the time for that is now. We need to be clear about what we need as soon as possible. The other reason for that is you will know and you'll remember that there will be a moment when we will be working with legislative counsel. So there really won't be a lot of time for last minute major rewrites. And that's partly why we have this set up the way we do now, is let's do the rewrites now. There were a lot of discussions last night, which I will let other people relate. I will begin just by saying that there are two main issues that came out of last night's discussion. You should know that that meeting was really dedicated, at least in my mind, to get the working group all on the same page so that they could present a case to all of you this evening. The two issues that were largest were still the situation, where this body would be situated. That is still, as you will all remember, this has been a major issue since we came up with this, if not the most major issue. The second concerned the connections between the governing body that is mentioned in the draft and the executive director of the data entity. Is the word that is used is govern in the draft. There has been discussion as to whether it should be informed, whether it should be advised, and those all have very different valences and definitions, which you can be appreciative of, but those are important. It's one of those rare instances where that one word actually has a tremendous amount of import, so that's another issue. But also because it has to do with the relationship of this governing body that we have all proposed to the staff of the data entity itself. The last issue, I guess, would have to do. Rebecca, I would have you frame that for us, if you could. It was you raised it very nicely last night.  I thought you were just being very clear about basically questions four and five from Act 65 and the document that has been written and is in the folder in regard to the data integration plan. Can I ask you to weigh in on that, please? Sure. Although others from last night should jump in. Sure. But I think, as Etan said, we spent most of the night processing the contributions from Karen, Robin, Witchie. I think Monica, I don't know if you were involved, who did the heavy lifting leading up to our meeting last night on those sections. And really, it's the nuts and bolts. How will this actually work? And again, addressing questions three, four from Act 65 specifically. And so what I understood was where the work was drawn from, what you'll see here. But particularly, I think it's the second document in the SharePoint, which is pulling from what's the organization? It's been a long, NC JRP, and to spell it out for everyone here who may not be familiar, the National Criminal Justice Reform Project. And as I understand, it's a parallel effort that that committee, a separate committee, made up of some overlapping panel members, but government stakeholders. So DOC, state's attorney's office, the defender general's office is on. There's this general committee relating to this NC JRP. But that there was a focus project on data aggregation of criminal justice data. So it had been parallel. Data integration, not aggregating integration. Integration. In parallel to what we were working on. And so Karen shared a draft of how that group had been working towards conceptualizing the structure of, again, how to integrate these various data sets from different government offices and agencies. Again, I think my understanding was that it was from the criminal justice system, specifically not the juvenile justice system. So the concerns there, it's a sketch. You see it on the SharePoint. My, I think what Etan is asking me to highlight here now is the concerns seem to be creating a governing structure within sort of the bigger structure. So what Etan just showed you, we were talking about where to situate the entity, the governing boards, interaction with permanent staff, and then this separate structure of governance concerning the integration of the various sources of data from the different government agencies. And the proposal there came from some guidance from, again, I don't know where Mo West is from with organization Arnold Ventures and Search, specifically, which my concern was that it is not approaching this process from the same place that the AISP toolkit is approaching it, which has been guiding our work. AISP is Actionable Intelligence Social Policy out of UPED, and they produced a useful toolkit that's been guiding us throughout the summer on how to ground data integration work and projects from a racial equity perspective, how to integrate concerns of racial equity throughout, not just sort of that sort of this level of community input at one point, but throughout all the stages of the data integration work. So the concern was when we overlaid and Karen brought this work in from that committee, that was not the same place that that work had been done. So that was it, and also the fact that we didn't know a lot about what was going on through that process, whose voices were part of that planning process. That was my concern that the Defender General's Office had not been participatory in that process. So it was just highlighting sort of the newness and sort of learning about what those governing structures were about, how that worked with what we were proposing within the AISP toolkit framework. Thank you. So on that note, Eton, can I add something to that? Please do, Karen. So I was reviewing some of the AISP work, and in particular the toolkit, but also one of the previous documents the AISP put together, it's called, it's actually referenced in the toolkit, and it's called Introduction to Data Sharing and Integration. And there's a link in the toolkit. It's one of the first pages. I can't remember which one. It might be page one or page two. And in that document, it really goes through, and Robin and I aren't wedded to you putting the NCJRP work in the report. We're not wedded to that, but that is, and I think Julio made this comment last night, that that is some of the foundational work that has to happen. And in this AISP Introduction to Data Sharing and Integration, they actually go through the same steps prior to doing the racial equity lens. So I just wanted to point that out, that the steps for data sharing and data integration are somewhat similar across the board. You have to set the table before you can do some of the other work that needs to be done. So that might be something that people want to look at as well, just to see the parallels there. Great. Thank you, Karen. Hey, Tom, can I just add one quick thing that Rebecca, when I went through the, this is Robin, by the way, when I went through the toolkit again and the data integration plan that was submitted to Arnold Ventures, the one thing that was missing and that I put in that data document is that you're right, we have no community members on here. At one point, I think that the CJCs were more involved in this than they are now, but that was the closest we got. And so recognizing that in the request for funding process, there were no community members involved in that request for funding via this project, I added in that document that we should add community members, regardless of what our data does. We really should add community members. That it didn't come out of a racial equity lens is like half true. Part of the reason why we got here is because they were pushing a tool that they said was racially neutral and that wasn't going to have disparate impact on people of color. And I said, I don't believe you. And so I'm going to test that. And so we're still testing that. That's how we know that we didn't actually have a really big failure to appear problem. So a few meetings ago somewhere, you and I, we're exchanging numbers on how many people failure to appear. So we're still working on that study. But that's where we pivoted, because that tool probably isn't racially neutral as they claim and doesn't work for Vermont anyways. That's all. Great, thank you. That all sounds extremely technical. And this is where we're at right now. All of you who are not regular participants in the working group, this is where we're at right now. This is the moment where I'm hoping. I mean, my fantasy is that all of you who need to have, I mean, I know that the SharePoint link has been sent out to everyone. I did that in concert with Anne Walker of the attorney general's office. So I know that's been out. I know my note went out. And this would be the point where conversation about what works for you and what doesn't work for you happens. I would remind you of two points. When I wrote that note, the one I did reference my time in the 80s with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. And I noted in that that people didn't at that time get to make criticisms without also being willing to construct something. It's really easy to tear things apart. It's not quite as easy to tear them apart and build them back up. That meant in ACT UP, if you weren't willing to participate in solutions, you didn't get to talk about the problem. So I want to remind you that that might be a way that's operating. Because if you don't work on the solution, you're expecting other people, co-panelists, to pick up the labor for you. And I don't think that's particularly right. The second thing would be, don't get caught up on the wordsmithing. We are nowhere near that yet. And also remember, as I wrote in that note, this is not going to be remembrance of things past. It's really not. It's a legislative report. It's not supposed to read beautifully. That's not the point. It's just supposed to convey information. On that, Evan, please, please, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Etan. I just wanted to briefly take a moment and identify two things about the five questions that we're supposed to be answering that I think we spent a lot of time discussing and did make some progress on that may not be fully captured in the written materials on that SharePoint site. The first one is question number five, which deals with the best methods for the Bureau to enforce its data collection and analysis responsibilities. I think that the documents on the SharePoint site do a good job of trying to frame out how the data collection and analysis should happen, but we didn't really make tons of progress on the enforcement piece. In other words, what happens if there's an entity that has data that should be reported, that chooses for one reason or another simply not to report it, what would be the ramifications for that decision? And we didn't really, at least in my mind or my recollection did not come up with a tentative proposal to answer that question. So that would be something for discussion. And then the second thing I wanted to flag related to the first question we're supposed to answer, which is where the Bureau should be situated. And we didn't come up with a single recommendation, the working group did not come up with a single recommendation for the entirety of our DAPT to consider. But what I think we did do was make some significant progress by identifying three potential homes. The first one was some sort of newly constituted version of the Office of Racial Equity, which already has some statutory obligations to collect data. And the documents relevant to that idea would be the third and fourth documents on that SharePoint site. But there was also two other entities that were identified that could be suitable homes. The first was the Secretary of State's Office and the third was the Auditor's Office. And now, just speaking on behalf of the department as opposed to trying to report back from the working group, any three of those entities probably could get this job done and get it done well. But they should probably be consulted by the legislature in some more detail to figure out exactly what their existing capabilities are. And some type of asset slash financial study should be conducted to determine how easily each of those three entities could absorb this additional work. So I at least think it would be reasonable to lay out those three entities in a report and the pros and cons and the additional work that would need to be conducted in order to finalize a selection as opposed to RDAP having either this meeting or next meeting come up with some sort of agreed upon home. Thank you. The other thing I would add there, thank Evan, by the way, thank you because I'm obviously scattered. The other thing I would add, and Robin, you may want to weigh in on this. I remember you saying, and it's just coming to me in the last half hour, that the one problem with the Secretary of State is that they don't have the data agreements. Is that correct? I don't recall saying that, but that would be true. Okay, never mind. Yeah, I don't know. I think that what we had talked about in the working group is that the whole structure, right, of who you hire, what it's going to look like, it's dramatically different if it's in the agency of administration versus one or the other. It's just different. Okay. Yeah. Okay, thank you. But right now, the office, any agency, right, and no matter where you put it, those data sharing agreements and the MOUs are going to have to happen. So there's no preference that way for one office or another. Thank you. Thank you. That's what I needed. Thank you. Rebecca, your hand was up. Yes, to expand upon Evan's point, those organizations we talked about and we talked about it specifically in the context of overarching agreement, overarching principles of agreement that we wanted the entity no matter where it was placed to be, right? And we have talked a lot as a group the importance of independence. Other words that were thrown out, that were critical, that we recognized critical to the success of its mission is that it be have integrity, that the work that it produces can be trusted and acted upon, right? So what does it mean to have integrity? You know, there's a lot of built-in ideas to package there, right? You know, transparency, accountability, best practices standards. Other, another big pulling back to the high level principles we wanted the data entity to have or encompass was impartiality. Again, separate from independence, related but separate. And key to that is to make sure that it's not linked to any, you know, to public safety, to law enforcement, to corrections, right? To any particular government entity, again, which overlaps with the principle of integrity that we want, not just, and I stress it through the importance of being able to rely on the work but also critically important that we recognized in this working group was to protect the individuals who comprise the data, right? And so it is not also just an issue of privacy and considering confidentiality laws and all of that, but it is also back to what is the purpose driving this entity itself? It is not just a statistical cold machine, right? And I don't mean that to say, we don't understand what the data means and that it means that it comprises human beings and human lives, but specifically in the context of our work, which is addressing, understanding, addressing, correcting racial inequities in these criminal criminal justice systems, recognize as we have recognized previously that they are built upon and continue to operate within a system of white supremacy, right? And so how that works is that it is and so how that comes into these general pullback, high-level principles of impartiality, integrity, right? Independence is a sense of protection of the people and the individuals whose perspectives are captured by the data themselves. So that in a way in a reading, rereading the AISP toolkit that's built into it, built into it as such a degree that it's not just having the representation from these communities and individuals of lived experiences at a certain board, but that it's a principle that goes into every step of the way, choosing the algorithms, choosing what data to put on a dashboard. How can this dash, the information be used as a weapon? Because that's not the goal of people who comprise the data, aesthetics, the affirmative use, right? How do we use it? Again, we're trying to build trust and relations with people and to understand, again, that this isn't a law enforcement, public safety-oriented mission. Again, back to the impartiality. I would just point out in terms of Secretary of State's office here. I did reach out to Jim Condos and he is, I understand talking, so he's aware of this. He's aware that his office has been recommended and they're discussing the feasibility of it. And so sort of bringing them in the loop. I wanted to add that I think their objectivity is a pro. I know it was sort of discussed here sort of as a con, perhaps in their lack of familiarity with MOUs with these court systems. I actually think it's an advantage similar to the recommendation of the auditor's office. Getting that objectivity, the expertise that's built into those two organizations, expertise on the level of best practices, compliance, protections, the laws in place. They're just a resource. Okay. You finished? I wasn't sure, Rebecca. Yeah, no, I'm finished. Okay, okay. I didn't want to cut you off at it. The computer made it sound like suddenly you cut out. So anyone else? This is a good point. Well, there's one thing, Ashley, I do want to add. And I haven't been able to get to it yet and I need to make a public apology. Sheila passed on some interesting criticisms and I have not been able to incorporate them into the draft yet. I just simply have not had time. One of them had to do with the namings of the different groups that would be included within the governing body. Sheila, I don't want to put words into your mouth. Do you want to take over from here? I mean, I'll do it if you want. Sure, if you can help me, if I forget anything that I wrote to you, please let me know. But one of the things that I brought up was we talked about the governing body. I really appreciate everybody talking about that governing and that word and what we're going to call that because it does mean different things and I think has different quote unquote teeth or power. And so I wonder when we talk about community, we do a lot of broad sort of scope of who we're talking about. But then when we get into the nitty gritty, we're just like, oh, community partners, but are those community partners actually people who are supporting people who are most impacted by what we're seeking to do? Are those community partners in favor? We're not explicit about who is at the table, we just have a broad stroke, except for community partners. And then we're very more specific when we were naming state entity people or people that we want, but a little less broad in the community. And I think that we need to have it fluid and open, but I also don't wanna set us up to be like, anybody can be sitting at that table who might be adversarial to what we're trying to do to dismantle the white supremacy in the system that we're doing. So I wanna be mindful of that moving forward. I also had a lot of criticism around, and I'm not sure, because I apologize that I wasn't at the last meeting. And I also want to thank those of you who did reach out to me with the death of our co-founder of the Root Social Justice Center. So thank you everybody, for those of you who were able to reach out with your condolences. But I'm concerned about the name, the Social Justice Bureau, whatever it is that we're calling it, because that's not exactly what we're doing. We're doing racial justice. And again, it's a watered down version of naming and claiming and doing what we need to do. And we keep on talking about how that needs to be focused. And that is all the language throughout, which I think Evan or somebody else pointed that out in the comments in the draft. But yet we're still seem to be resistant to actually naming that and claiming it once again. So I'm asking that the name be about racial justice. I'm also asking that the data that be collected has to account to which I think, which she pointed out and has some comments in there around the intersectionality of our communities of color and that, yes, it should be focused on racial data and those raised points in which it intersects with different populations of how we navigate and identify. And was there something else, Etan, that was that I had said as well? That's what I have in my head. I don't have, I mean, if I looked through my email right now I'd lose the meeting, but that's what I had from you. Great. And the other basic overall comment, so I wanted to deal with Rebecca said, and the other basic comment that I wanted to make is I really would like to make this accessible to our communities. And I know that we all have a different lexicon that we choose to use when writing this stuff, including your A-tod. And I wanna ask us to sort of use words that are accessible to more populations and a younger population, maybe a reading crowd that doesn't know those sort of words that we might be using. When I was reading through drafts there were words that I'm like, hmm, like that's interesting. It makes me pause. And even though it sounds smart and nice and whatever, I think that we can communicate what we're trying to say in different ways that makes it more accessible for the community to be able to digest and understand it. And I think the more that our communities are able to digest the information that we are either creating together or presenting the more likelihood that we're going to have more and more community people who can be engaged and involved and will want to do this work with us. Okay. Thank you. Other people, other more feedback. And by the way, also bear in mind that given that it's on SharePoint, you can go in and make your own comments and it will keep track of them.  Nobody immediately said, Aitan, you're wrong. Aitan, this is Sheila again. I just had that question that I keep on sort of asking. It is around, I have an extreme ignorance around what the different bureaus do in terms of where we're trying to suggest the placement of this. And I hear people talking about, oh, well, the difference of this and this and that and would it be good here? And again, I'm not sure if I'm really fully understanding the complexities of like why not? Like what do the don't do? Like you definitely don't want to put it with the secretary because this completely goes against what we're trying to do. Like Rebecca was pointing out to different the three different entities and so were other people. And I just, I think it's, I don't know, I'll just be vulnerable that I think it's been hard for me to digest where to put it with being very ignorant really the complexity and the scope of work that these entities are even doing or might be able to do. So it's a little bit confusing to me. And I do like the suggestion of putting out those three places but at the same time, I think that we as a group should have a little bit more direction if we feel like there are other, if within those three entities it could be compromising of our work. Okay. I mean, the broad question has, that's been coming up over and over again has had to do with the connection between various proposed bodies and their connection to things such as law enforcement, public safety and other state apparatus that are seen as being antithetical in some ways to the project. That's been a very broad concern. I won't take it further than that. There are others who are better at that. And one of them has their hand up and that would be Evan. So I think what I can offer to do or attempt to do is try and identify some of the considerations that we thought would be important in determining where this place should, where this office should reside. We just, in addition to the things that Rebecca identified, such as independence and impartiality, we also flagged that this entity is probably going to need some type of financial and administrative support. And there was some suggestion that if this was part of some type of larger entity, that support might be easier to not only obtain but also protect. In other words, there would be a larger entity that might be able to advocate on behalf of the financial and personnel resources that this office might need. But then there was also some discussion about whether or not there were anything to be gained by not having this office reside within some branch of the governor's office. And instead have it housed in the office of an independently elected official, which at least is my understanding about how the secretary of state's office and the auditor's office is identified. But obviously the folks who identified those two places should feel free to correct or supplement that explanation. And I admit that as one of the people who identified the office of the director of racial equity, that was identified mostly based on it seeming to be an easy or natural fit. Acknowledging that some folks might disagree with that. So for example, it's an entity that already has a connection with a larger entity, the office of the administration. That office is supposed to provide the administrative support. And the office of racial equity already has, as previously mentioned, some data collection responsibilities. But there was a recognition that that office is potentially under staffed and under resourced. And so as a result, what I attempted to do for illustrative and discussion purposes only was to say, what if it was reconstituted into a department? So in other words, it wouldn't just be an office of a few people, but it would be beefed up, adequately resourced, adequately staffed. And there is still some, and I believe there is some language in the enabling legislation that attempts to give the office of racial equity some independence, whether or not that language has done the trick, obviously is a point of discussion and should be investigated. So that was my recollection of how those entities were identified. I don't recall a lot of engagement with some of those offices to directly get their feedback, hear from them directly, do a sort of fiscal analysis and develop a real pros and cons chart. And some of that I think is just a factor of the time that we were given to complete this project by the legislature. And so as a result, the legislature might have to pick up where we left off and do some of that work to figure out which of those three entities really is the best one or is there some entity that we didn't really identify yet that should be investigated further and that's a real possibility. That helps Sheila. Yeah, that helps a little bit. Yeah, it helps a little bit. I really like, I'm more of a affirmative person so I do like to know what is working and what could work for what we're trying to do. And in these types of situations, I wanna know like the crossbars, I wanna know the stops, I wanna know like what is like really not okay. And maybe even some other people in this room might have even more knowledge around those things too, but I'm okay with the response and the direction of moving forward. Okay. Judge Grierson. Yeah, I just, I just wanna pick up on what Evan said. And I'm wondering if we're getting too far ahead of ourselves in terms of trying to identify one entity that we think is appropriate for this vehicle. I'm just wondering if all the work that's been done to frame the type of what we want this entity to do regardless of where it is. Maybe that's really the legislature needs to decide where it goes. In other words, I think we can suggest any one of these. I mean, it's hard for me to sit here and weigh the pros and cons of the auditor versus the secretary of state versus the racial equity panel. They all have components of them that I think lend themselves to carrying on this work. And maybe we're beating ourselves over the head trying to come up with an answer where we're going beyond what this committee needs to do. In other words, we should be telling the legislature the type of work that we'd like to see done what we think needs to be done. But, you know, how are we all gonna feel if we choose A and they say, no, it's gonna be B or C. I mean, I just don't think we need to get hung up on all of us trying to come to the same place. That's all. And we have been fairly purist in trying to answer Act 65 and those five questions and the first of which is where the bureau should be situated and so on. But I think you're absolutely right. But I mean, both you, Judge Gehrsson and Evan, that the, and Rebecca in a sense too with the, if we put out concerns that these are our concerns, wherever it should be situated, it needs to be independent. It needs to be supported. It needs this, it needs that. And then leave it up to the lawmakers who are in fact, in the end, lawmakers. Well, and maybe provide the pros and cons for each of the entities that we've been discussing. And we can certainly, it's the working group turn our attention to that. Rebecca. Judge, it was, it's funny you said it because it was what we were getting to I think last night, even. So realizing this tension of, and the process of this work has been to dive into the details to then just pull back out. How prescriptive we needed to go through this process to understand that, but to realize that, yeah, ultimately this is, these are the calls that the legislature is positioned to make and all we can do is identify the core principles we want wherever it's put, however they want to fund it. This is just how it is. And maybe if we can shift along those lines, like I know we've been talking about where it should be situated again, in the context of what are the overriding overarching principles. One of the things we've been struggling on is the question related to that, again, related to independence, integrity, ensuring this racial equity lens throughout. Sheila, it is about the relationship between the governing board and the permanent staff that we have identified essentially four positions. The architect, the, who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Oh, God. On page, oh, page seven.  The architect, the engineer, the analyst, the project manager. Right. We've identified as essentially permanent staff. We pull that from Connecticut's approach and staffing. And what we were struggling with is, all right, if the permanent staff of four are charged broadly speaking with working with the individual government agencies to get the MOUs, to get the data done and on and on, the collection, the analysis. Who, what is their relationship with this board? Sheila, you talked about being careful that we identify specifically, more specifically, who should be members on it. My concern, and that's absolutely a concern and we need to be more clear. My concern is also, what is the relationship between that board and this group before? What is the relationship of the board members to each other? Are they on equal partnerships? Is it that the members who are not part of government are somehow an advisory, play an advisory role and that the decision makers are done by the different seats or sort of a different status within the boards? I know where I fall on it, it certainly is something we haven't settled on. We've talked about, sort of worrying about, oh my gosh, do we now have to become experts in best governance practices? How big can a board get before it becomes unworkable? Do we settle on five, nine, 50? Do we do subcommittees? And we just started pulling our head, again, back to Judge Greerson's point, perhaps it's not so much our job to come up with the structure exactly, but the overarching principles, mine has been this. We need to make sure that those members who are not of the government who sit on that board are clearly equal partners. B, whoever sits on that board directs the staff of four, the permanent staff of four. They don't just simply advise, but they're the ones who settle on the questions to be asked. The assurance that all of these sort of best practices and methods are happening. So they direct the permanent staff, and so I think though that's the question, because I think we have definitely not settled on that. Okay, anyone else right now? I would throw in that we had, at one point, Susanna Davis and I were talking about the endless proliferation of racial equity task forces that the legislature seems to create. And she very wisely convened a meeting of all of the representatives from all of these groups, and we were all looking at each other going, oh, look, you, how nice. And that sort of led us to talking about why, that the newly constituted criminal justice council might serve as a model because it suddenly went from 12 members, all of whom were in law enforcement, to 24 members, many of whom, half of whom are now community members. And there were some other issues we hadn't thought of. Rebecca reminded us of those and others as well. And so that proposal's pretty much not, when we were talking about situating it, that proposal sort of went by the by, Jen Furpo pointed out that they're already overworked and it really wasn't gonna work. On the other hand, I would still say that the model of the council insofar as people are equal partners has a lot to recommend it.  Well, I did take it down. I was, I did take it down, but my thought wasn't fully articulated in my own head, but I wanted to supplement, I guess, what Rebecca and what you were just saying. Because I have worked for a state entity that was governed by a board. And that board consisted of unpaid volunteers with the exception of the chair who was a full-time state employee. And most of the unpaid volunteers were not state employees. They had other professions and jobs and lives that they needed to attend to. And an observation that I made as a result of that experience was that, and I should also add that the board itself had very few mandatory statutory obligations or tasks that it needed to fulfill. And in my experience, an opinion that that constellation of factors having unpaid volunteer, part-time board members on a governing body without any sort of firm statutory task assigned specifically to them made it difficult to get and keep them trained, educated and engaged. And so keeping with the theme of laying out general principles as opposed to specific recommendations, I would suggest that however this is structured, the board or the oversight committee consists of a number of people, like the number itself, who are able to dedicate a sufficient number of time to this task, whether it's deciding what research questions need to be answered and that they be given specific authority in order to keep them engaged. Otherwise, we risk it becoming somewhat of a hollow body that shows up once a month or once a quarter for an hour or two hours or three hours and just sort of hypothesize about what the potential problems might be and how we might wanna find solutions to them as opposed to really zeroing in on the issues that they may already have some familiarity with and really getting the work done. I mean, how we go about doing that, there's probably multiple ways to do it, but I think that that's what I would try and keep in mind in crafting any type of enabling legislation that has a governing entity. I'm a little uncomfortable, I have to say. Jen Furpo, if I can ask you, how has the council been running? Jen, are you there? I'm guessing she's not. It looks like she is. I was hoping to get some feedback about how the council has been going because what I've heard so far is the antithesis of what you've been saying, Evan. And so I guess I'd like to hear from other people who have had other experiences with these bodies. I haven't had enough of experience with the full council to be able to do that or provide that, but I can certainly say that I have heard from a number of people that it's working quite well and those are unpaid positions. They are people who have other jobs, lives, and it's working very differently from what your experience it seems to have been. And so I'm just being mindful of that. Yeah, and I can chime in a little bit on that because I also sit on the criminal justice council and so I have some experience with multiple entities. And the council was not the entity that I was referring to. I was working for the natural resources board, which was a much smaller entity with a much smaller board. I think that there one critical difference that I see between the natural resources board and how its board operated versus how the criminal justice council operates is that the executive director and the chair of the criminal justice council has done a very, at least in my experience since May when I joined the council has done a pretty good job of really taking the council's work and assigning it to subcommittees on which council members must sit and participate. So for example, I'm chair of the council's rules subcommittee and we've been meeting on a weekly basis and not all of the members of that committee are still employed by the state. At least one of the members has is, I believe is retired and still shows up and participates. But by virtue of the participation in the various committees that are actually tasked with getting like real chunks of work done and having producibles that are expected of them, I think that that keeps them engaged. It almost forces them to participate, stay knowledgeable, ask questions and be responsible for the work. And so that might be one way that this could function but it's not clear to me how that model would translate into this because I'm not a data collection guy. I don't really understand that. And so there might be other models where there's a board structure related to a state entity that are very successful and function very well. The point of my previous comment was just to sort of flag some factors that I have identified in my experience that could lead to disengagement. Sure. Yeah. It just seems we could also use that model still of subcommittees and in fact, Robin has suggested that that document is also in the SharePoint folder. Allow me to point out. I believe it's called Task Force. She offered, well, Robin, why don't you tell us why you offered it? Hello, sure. So that just was brainstorming in my own head and occasionally speaking out to other human beings about when, in one of the working groups when we were just kind of all the people we would like to see be involved and that list got really, really long. And what I had started thinking about was a Task Force that we help with, which is the Human Trafficking Task Force and how the Task Force itself is self-selected. And the meetings when we had them in person were huge. They were in different parts of the state, people who just had an interest. I talked about one time I was sitting next to a nun and her interest in human trafficking and victims and what she saw in her work. So it's a way to get people who have an interest in racial justice in the criminal and juvenile justice system at the table who maybe don't get those invitations or can say commit to once a court, or meeting plus self-select for a subcommittee of their choosing because they feel that they have something to offer and want to participate. And that that Task Force, the way it's done for the human trafficking is it's got a governing, it's got a steering committee and the chairs of the subcommittee sit on the steering committee and then there's other people as well. And that has more to do with how, what their goals are. So putting who that steering committee looks like could be however people want to do it. I didn't go that far into it, but the idea that the people broadly defines help support the work of the steering committee and this entity by having these discussions and then also having a two-way conversation. I think some of the suggestions I had was bring in somebody who is a dispatcher and see how they do their job. And so that you understand what happens, so that everyone understands what happens when a 911 call happens, what's that screen look like? How does that decision get made? And transparency about the whole criminal justice system so that we have a more informed citizenry used broadly to help ask those questions and to see how we can do better. Okay. Thank you. Yep. What I'm hearing both by statement and by lack of disagreement with the statements is that people want this governing board to direct. They want it to direct the four figures who are the bureau or the entity or whatever we're calling it. Disagree with me if you want to because I'm trying to get some direction for where to take the working group from Monday on. I don't disagree, Aiton. I think that goes to the point of having a mandatory obligation, something concrete that it's expected to accomplish. And the reason for me chiming in right now is because I think another thing that we talked about either in the working group, this full group or both potentially, and it's something that I've raised independently to various legislators, not necessarily related to this office, but others is this idea of revisiting the $50 per DM, which is my recollection is that dollar figure has not been updated on a little while and perhaps it should be revisited at some point in order to help facilitate participation and volunteer activities such as this new office. And I believe that that was something we were actually, we were discussing that early on as a full panel because both Coach Christie and Martin Lalonde tried to get more money for us for this working group. And that did not make it past appropriations. But I know that, I don't know, Coach, I see you, which is lovely to see you, by the way, hello. And I know that Representative Lalonde is here. If you would like to talk, speak to that effort, that might be helpful or not. I'm thinking or not. I can just weigh in real quickly. I mean, I have had discussion, but this was during the session. So I need to turn back around to the chair of the Appropriations Committee who when we were dealing with this issue suggested that, yes, they need to look at this a little further. And I will reach out to her. This prompts me to, as a reminder, that I needed to get back to her. So there's not a particular bill in at this point, but it's definitely something that is recognized not just by Coach and I, but also by the Appropriations Chair. So hopefully we can make some progress on that. Great, thank you very much. Okay, other comments? This is the time for them. Concerns, questions from anyone? Ayeshawn, this is Sheila. I have a question and it might be digressing, but it's a question that came up a little bit before when we were talking about the MOAs or MOUs. And I was just kind of curious if we have an understanding of knowing if our body can be making up what that MOU says, regardless of what entity it is with. And I'm also, the reason why I was curious about the dos and the don'ts of each of those three entities is is there a need to make a difference between the MOUs because of what those different entities are able to offer? Or can an MOU that we curate go across the board to whatever entity it gets placed in? Thank you, Robin or Erin? Yeah, let me take a short stab at that. I don't know that you would want to create the MOUs, but it wouldn't necessarily change across the entities. The only thing that I've said once before, and I just want to make sure that it gets heard really well, is that whatever entity houses it can't be subject to the expungements because you want a place that what happens is in the course of the criminal justice system is I get arrested now and I get sentenced to a deferred sentence. And I successfully complete that probation, then my case gets destroyed and it gets deleted. And the cops are going to delete my arrest. It's not going to be tied to my name anymore. In some databases, it'll be tied to my race and my gender, but it's not going to be tied to me. I'll be deleted from that database, which is good. We want this to happen. We don't want, you know, there's a lot of really good social policy reasons for these expungements and we do it a lot. We do it daily. We're just deleting things daily. But because we're deleting things daily, we're masking some of the disparities, right? So what if it's only white people that are getting these deferred sentences and then all of a sudden they no longer appear in the data? And you won't know that because the data's been deleted. So that's the part that has to really be clear with this entity that they don't do any expungements. They get the data as it happens, like monthly or whatever they agree on, and that they don't have to expunge any data. That's the one thing you really need in there. But I don't know that you would get anything about writing the MOUs for them.  Does that answer anything? That was really useful. Thank you. Okay. Mark. Hey, Ton. I'm gonna step back for Monica. Oh, okay. Monica. I thought Jen's hand was raised before mine. Oh, you know she was. I'm sorry. So let's go to Jen first. Jennifer. Thanks, Monica. I appreciate that. I really just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the work that the working group has done. And in particular, I really love that this report is going to include a recommendation to the legislators that when they're trying to choose where to house all of this goodness, that they actually talk to the agencies before they make their decision. As somebody who's working for a state agency that often gets fun, fun things added to our plate, I really appreciate that you guys have thought that out and it made that recommendation. Whether they take that recommendation or not, just know that somebody out there says, go you guys. Thank you, Jen. Monica, do you want to go now? I mean, sure. I guess I can. I was trying to respond a little bit to Sheila's question. Hopefully what I'll say is helpful and doesn't confuse things more. But of course, part of the conversation we've been having around the nuts and bolts piece of it is around the fact that data is going to be coming from different organizations and each one of these organizations has its own sets of rules around how data needs to be shared. And so that's when we talk within a lot of the meetings around the agency of digital services, there's rules that they place on data and how data gets shared. And sometimes it's an MOU that we need to have. And sometimes it's a contract. I think one of the benefits of having the entity, because we talked about pros and cons benefits, one of the benefits, although there's also drawbacks around having the entity in the executive branch is that it helps soften some of that. It doesn't make it easier, but it kind of gets that barrier a little bit harder easier to get over. So every entity is gonna have its different sets of rules and MOUs and contracts and different things that are gonna need to be worked out. And I think that's part of what the NCJRP project is also trying to work through to support ARDAP efforts. Great, thank you. Mark, your turn. Hey, thanks, A-Ton, and good evening to everyone. As I'm following the conversation, it's really interesting to see where this is going. And I also appreciate the work that's going into this. Some of the questions that I was asking myself had to do with who's the target for the data consumption and what the target audience data requirements are, who's identifying the data sets that are gonna be collected and when and why the data is gonna be analyzed and by whom. These are some of the questions that I didn't, I'm not gonna consider to ask you for the answers to all of those questions. But it's just something, you know what I mean? It's just something, because sometimes you wanna kind of back into it. Yep. And then the question is also, is the reporting required and how to be sure that it's not biased? So those are some, I think the, one question that I'll just step back and if you can allow me to come back after the answer is, can I ask the question, the Bureau of Racial Statistics, the enabling statute here, it says it's to collect and analyze the data. This is the five points. I can read the five points, but the data related to systemic racial bias and disparities, within the criminal and juvenile justice systems. So I want, the question that I would like to get a response from you on and maybe come back to you after that with a follow-up, if I can be permitted, is this scope of this work limited to the criminal justice, the criminal and juvenile justice system? I'll wait for that and I can come back. Okay, Rebecca, are you on that or do you want me to go or what do you wanna do? Oh, if you wanna answer, I can also respond. No, if you're ready to talk, I'm talking all the time. Mark, your last question in terms of sort of the scope of what we interpreted those two systems to be, I think I would turn to our December, 2020 report where we went through all of the discretionary decision points in those systems and then went within those points, highlighted priority points that we thought should be questioned. So when I think about those decision-making points that we identified, we did not limit it to initial encounter with law enforcement, which may be where you might go, we went even broader. And we were looking and Sheila was a big source of pushing us there in terms of thinking bigger, bringing in the education school's angle and counseling, we got into just for that side of it. And certainly for the juvenile justice side as well, system side in terms of who gets involved, who touches those discretionary decision-making points, who makes the call to report, who does that. Then we got to the other end of it. And I forget where we landed. I don't know if it was expungement, if it was no longer being supervised by DOC or DCF on the juvenile side, but that's how we described those systems to be. If I could please, I don't want to spend much more time on this, but I guess my question is really, is the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics scope of work? Will the Bureau of Racial Justice, the Racial Justice Statistics, is their scope of work limited to the criminal justice system? Or will it be? I think that's, Rebecca, I think that's really what I was trying to say. I may have missed both. Mark, right now the answer is yes. But we are also mindful of the fact that there needs to be scalability built into this entire body, insofar as other issues may come up. And you also need to be aware that there have been a significant number of legislators who are not in favor of this thing at all, precisely because it is limited to the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Okay. Okay, you want me to stop? Yeah, I wanted to just, I echo that and I saw this thing emerging coming out of judiciary and I know the work that the both judiciary committees put into this and always thought this should be broader. Just as Act 54, your enabling statute was broader. Right. And that was the Attorney General's and the Human Rights Commission's Task Force report. Although you have been a little bit aside from all of that, it's all interrelated because at the end of the day it's about systemic racial bias. And I just add to that because in a sense, as much as I appreciate and care for Tutana, she's kind of the oddball in the group because she's the only one of the 13 of you, I think there's 13, well, I guess maybe there's more now because of this policy. She's the only one that doesn't have anything to do with the criminal justice system. Well, I shouldn't say nothing to do with it, but interestingly, her work, and when we were in committee, when we put forward the enabling statute for her in Senate Judiciary, we made it, and if you look at the working papers in that committee and it's memorialized, you'll see that we had an incredibly robust conversation about data, about technology, about building out an infrastructure to support the work that she does. But just going back to Susanna, your enabling statute, it says that it says, quote, to work with agencies and departments to implement a program of continuing coordination and improvement of activities in state government, in order to, quote, combat systemic racial disparities and measure progress toward fair and impartial governance. And it goes on and it gives a few things there, but one of those things is overseeing, as you know, a statewide collection of race-based data to determine the nature and scope of racial discrimination in all systems of state, so on and so forth. And again, this policy, I think, well, I guess all I'm really getting at is it seems like, to me, that it just makes a whole lot of sense that the racial equity executive director somewhere in that ballpark, in that area, that this apparatus is appropriate, if not necessary, not just for the criminal justice system, but for all systems of state government. The criminal justice system is one of them. Right, so of course, I agree with your comment by saying that it must be scalable. And just because it starts with the criminal justice system, we can't have the tail wag the dog to Rebecca's point. We don't wanna build a system that is designed to address racial disparities across all systems with principles and rules that would really tie us into this respectfully draconian type of system that is, it doesn't really comport to all of these other systems. And the last thing I'll say is that I heard a lot of interesting comment about the Natural Resources Board of Criminal Justice Council of Human Trafficking Task Force. In oddly, every single one of those, every time somebody said one of those, I cringed because they're all steeped in. This is the very same thing that we're trying to combat here. So I don't even, I think the two, again, back to Rebecca, your point is, we don't wanna build this thing on those principles. You know, it's kind of like these guys here telling me in Chittenden that we should build, a team that's responding to racism as a public health emergency on a ComSTAP model. It just blows my mind. So I just wanted to note that in closing, there does seem to be a lot of talk about analysis. And this goes back to those initial questions that I asked you, is what is that? What does that really mean? Are we building something that's just gonna enable people to kind of keep going back to the source and bringing us reports, more reports, more reports, more reports? Are we building something where we're gonna engage people, we're gonna, we're building an apparatus where we're depending on folks to interpret and synthesize data for us and come back and tell us what it means? Again, more of that? Or are we building something that we can take that is that is manual, as we were talking about three and a half years ago, that we identify key decision points, and I love the language you've incorporated, high impact, high discretion, remember that? Decision points, and are we moving toward a place where we can automate that process? I mean, and what we're doing is we're building algorithms on the back end that deliver these data to us that roll up into dashboards, because some of the things that we're seeing, especially, when the agency that we're actually evaluating or the apparatus that we're actually evaluating is the deliverer of the message, sometimes those things don't serve us very well, whether it's the sentencing report of 2012 or the Act 64 report from incarceration rates in 2018, they didn't work out very well for us, because again, the information was, it was analyzed and the report was composed, but there wasn't really a independent algorithm that was in place that just delivered us the data. I think, especially in the criminal justice system, a lot of times the qualitative aspect of it is really not the leading story. It's important, but it's not the leading story.  And I think that that's really one of the things that I hope we're focusing on when we're building this is hopefully you can build something that at some point or another, at some level another, it's basically lights out. Mark? He's pulling data, thanks. Yeah, now I just want you to know that there's been a whole lot of discussion. We haven't even touched on it about the importance of qualitative data and qualitative analysis that hasn't, we haven't even touched on that. I'm sorry about that. I appreciate the time, thank you. Oh, thank you. Rebecca? Yeah, I just wanted to address some Mark's questions so that he just clarified here, specifically hoping that, he looking for not seeing it yet, details on how the analysis is gonna be done, how the collection is gonna be done to make sure, because I hear you Mark and I'm with you. The last thing I want is more of the same. It's certainly not why I'm here spending all these hours on this project because this is different. This isn't just government data integration to understand court systems. This is about understanding and addressing, correcting racial inequities in these systems that we know are built in to the institutions themselves. So I'm with you. One of the things that Karen and Robin talked about earlier when we started out this meeting, which we went right to the nuts and bolts section. We talked about the plan that's been being built by the NCJRP, Robin, Karen, you talked about how you were going through the AISP toolkit that you saw a lot of similarities, some varying principles. One of the things that I also did after last night's meeting, again, concerned with exactly what Mark is asking, how are we doing this different precisely? With this tension that Judge Peterson brought up, Monica brought up last night, Evan, all of us, this tension we're trying to do, which is to not be overly prescriptive or even too prescriptive, this tension, but yet not vague, so vague as to leave a vacuum for people to just inject what they think, again, what they think being the risk of more of the same, right? More of the same embedded emphasis of just inheriting the problem. So here's what I did. I didn't get to share this earlier this meeting. This didn't come out last night, but on this shared point, my work today was also to go through the AISP toolkit. And when you go through that, there were sort of these beautifully set out columns. Positive, I think positive practices. Positive practices and then... And bad practices or something. Not negative, but yeah. And what I realized was, what we spent a lot of time talking about last night was part four, the nuts and bolts. What was left unfilled, I thought, in our reportants was the best methods, right? And that's page 12. And what I just wanted to just as an exercise, I went through each of those columns on the AISP toolkit, best practices for data collection, best practices for algorithms, best practices for analysis, best practices for reporting, those things that you've just addressed, Matt Mark. And I, for what it's worth, not just that I suggest we wanna be that prescriptive in this report, right? Because we could debate forever whether we agree with this or not. But I think this gives us here in this meeting, page 12 to 13 ABC, I just pulled out those sections. How different the approaches from what I saw from the plan discussed last night from the NCJRP's work, right? Where this is getting to where Mark is going, which is how do we make sure that it's not just the qualitative data, but how do you go about it? How is it that disaggregating the data to make sure that the individuals and people represented by the data are not monitored invisible, that our small population and small samples don't render these people individuals, again, invisible, right? How do we do this? How do we get that input? Anyways, I thought it was an exercise that made me realize whether we wanna put this much in or not to the report. I think we have to be clear that the AIS tool, P tool kit is our guiding principle unless there are other sources that people here collectively can share. Mark, I'm also gonna point to you of that to share where we should be looking at best practices, standards, I know Abby Crocker I connected with today and she shared some ethical ethics standards for this data methodology work. Karen and Robin have shared best standards. We can look at, I think they said specifically the CFRs there, but I would just encourage, yeah. I'm sorry. No, I was just gonna finish and just say, I just encourage people to share other resources we can look to in terms of getting, because this is, we can't, we don't see much out there besides the AISP toolkit with a sort of dedicated focus of unpackaging racial bias in this methodology, this work. Karen. Gotta get myself off mute. So I completely agree about the racial equity toolkit. I think that is an incredible piece of work. I think the piece that's missing and this is why I mentioned the introduction to data sharing and integration, which was also done by AISP, is the foundational work that has to go into building the system that allows you to share the data. So I would really encourage you all to look at that piece of work that AISP did. It's longer than the NCJRP and much less, much less, oh, I forget what we call those words, but anyways, it's an easy read and I think it's really, really understandable for people who don't understand the process around data sharing and integration. I think it's well worth the read and I think it's the foundational work that has to happen before we get to the racial equity toolkit. The one thing I wanna say about the NCJRP is that work is gonna go forward regardless to lay the foundation of data sharing and integration. It's what we have in process already. DPS is going to be getting a contract with the Arnold Ventures to hire a person from ADS to help us work through all the data sharing agreements, which you guys are all gonna need. I mean, they can be data sharing agreements that are shared. The issue I see, you know, so you guys don't ever have to engage with NCJRP. Our DAP doesn't ever have to engage. You can reap the benefits in the end because we'll have created those data sharing agreements. The benefit you get to being involved with NCJRP is you get to influence the process. And I think that's a huge piece that I think, I haven't stated that clearly at this point, but I think you get to influence the work by being engaged with NCJRP because it's gonna happen anyways. So you might as well be a part of it and benefit from it. And you don't have to, but I'm just putting that out there that you have the opportunity to be influential in this. And again, I would really suggest that you look at the introduction to data sharing and integration that AISP put together because it's longer, but it's much less buzzwords is what I was looking for. It's much less buzzwordy. It's very easy to read. And I think it kind of matches what you see in NCJRP. And I think like Julio said last night, NCJRP's write up is nothing unusual. It's very similar to what he's seen other organizations and other states do when they're looking to share data and to integrate data. That's all I have. Thanks. Okay. Hey, Tom, can I just, I left one thing hanging and I didn't really stress it. Is that- Make it short, if you would please, Bar. Of course. I just wanna strongly advocate that the group would consider the fact that given the responsibility of data as it pertains to systemic racial bias and disparities that this apparatus be squarely placed in the office of the Racial Equity Executive Director and that component of state government. And I think the most important part of that recommendation is just as we suggested from the onset of the creation of that office that you would request that office be made independent, that it would be pulled from the executive agency and that it would be made an independent agency much like the HRC. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, we've got a lot of marching orders for the working group, which feels good actually. Ian, I hope, I look forward to your notes, Ian. There's a lot of them this time, sir. I'm sure there's a lot of them. I'm really looking forward to them because I'm gonna need to organize my thoughts very carefully before Monday's meeting. Is there anything else anyone has to add? We have, we've got a lot. I mean, it's good, but this is of course the time to do it.  We have 20 minutes, but there's a lot here. Okay. I am not seeing any hands, so I'm gonna move us along. Thank you all enormously for this conversation. I mean, like really enormously, each and every one of you. Guests, as well as working group members, as well as regular panel members, as well as legislators, this has been extremely helpful in getting us closer to the goal. And it makes me feel like we're a lot closer than I thought we were even. And I'd like to just remind us when we first got this assignment back in, I don't remember the summer, we were all a little terrified. So I'm really proud of us that we've moved on and have gotten this much done. So our next meeting is, I don't know who has their calendar out, I've gotta find mine. The 9th of November. Oh, coach, okay. Coach, coach, you're muted. Sorry about that. Thank you all. I just wanna reiterate what Aetan said. This is a labor and it's a labor of commitment. And I just am just so proud of this group. And I really mean that from the bottom of my heart. And before we jump off, I'd like to share something that came to me a few days ago, which is a quote from Congressman John Lewis. And I think it speaks directly to what Aetan was talking about. The quote, little by little, day by day, what's meant for you will come its way. Just wanted to share that. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening, coach. And everybody else, have a good evening. Again, thank you. Working group, I will see you Monday. Everybody, please check out the documents on SharePoint and get active. And I will speak with the working group on Monday and the rest of you next month, if not before. Be well. Good night. Thank you, Aetan. Thank you, night, everybody. Thanks, Aetan. Welcome.


How my passion for the Spanish language made me become an English teacher abroad. As a native English speaker, my first major foreign language experience began in 8th grade, where I had the option of studying either Spanish or French. I chose Spanish, as I'd always been drawn to the language and Latin American culture, and hoped to one day live in a Spanish-speaking country. I studied the language throughout high school, but in the years afterward, it wasn't much of a priority and wasn't something I used on a regular basis. Our language classes were mainly structured around learning grammar and following the textbook. In high school, our language classes were mainly structured around learning grammar and following the textbook. From time to time, we would listen to and translate songs in Spanish, or watch a movie in Spanish, and in some classes we would start our day with a page from a news website to translate. While there was some emphasis on speaking, and we would have assignments where we'd be expected to answer questions in Spanish, the questions were usually given to us in advance so we could prepare answers. That mainly led to memorization, rather than actual ability in producing spoken answers. Using games in the classroom was not a regular occurrence, and is definitely something I wish we'd done more often to get us thinking and speaking in the language. I was probably more motivated to learn Spanish than many of my fellow classmates, as I hoped to use it in the future for travel and living abroad, and didn't just see the course as a school requirement. I was able to learn a decent amount of grammar and vocabulary, and improved my listening, reading, and writing skills, but speaking was always the most difficult for me due to a lack of practice. I recognized a lot of the same lack of interest in learning as I saw during my own high school language class days. Several years after college, I had the opportunity to live in Medellin, Colombia while working as an English co-teacher in a Colombian public school. My students were terrific as people, but as students, I recognized a lot of the same lack of interest in learning as I saw during my own high school language class days. While it could be frustrating, I could also very much relate to kids being in that situation and lacking the motivation to learn another language. Prior to moving to Colombia, I didn't really bother to study or refresh much Spanish. I assumed it would come back to me, since I'd already learned much of the grammar in the past, and figured I would absorb and learn a lot from being immersed in a Spanish-speaking country. Friends who had studied abroad in college always claimed to have come back fluent after their time abroad, so I assumed I wouldn't be any different. Unfortunately, I think I overestimated how fluent they had become, as well as my ability to learn by osmosis while surrounded by Spanish. Often there tended to be people around me who were stronger Spanish speakers, so they naturally took the lead in situations that required speaking. It was helpful in some regards to hear the spoken language, but as speaking was already my weakness, I didn't do myself any favors by staying quiet. I was afraid of making mistakes. In hindsight, I wish I had self-studied Spanish grammar before the move, and immediately signed up for either structured classes or found a Spanish conversation partner to practice with. While I absolutely made great strides from where I had started, I spent a lot of time just relearning basics of grammar and communication, and feeling like I needed to solidify the grammar and sentence structures before I'd be ready to speak freely in Spanish. I was able to get by with survival Spanish but never truly felt comfortable having real conversations. I was afraid of making mistakes, which also helped me to relate to my students, so I didn't put myself out there enough, and in turn hindered many of my opportunities to practice. No one would have cared if I made mistakes, and people were very kind and helpful in correcting me when needed, but I let myself get caught up in wanting the structure to be perfect first, rather than just accepting I would make mistakes and diving right in any way. I learned from my mistakes the first time around. After completing my TEFL courses and understanding the most effective ways to learn another language, I now feel much more aware of what I need to do for my own language learning purposes. I will be moving to Spain this fall, and have already begun to refresh grammar to improve my confidence with speaking from day one. I try to listen to and read Spanish news daily, watch movies in Spanish, and write a bit each day. I wrongly assumed being immersed would mean just picking up Spanish, but now I see a lot more effort must go into the process to truly become comfortable and fluent. Fortunately, I learned from my mistakes the first time around, and hope to have much more success during my second time living abroad. Are you ready to teach English abroad? Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


We're here in South Tampa at a level five horde. This is the childhood home of the daughter and she would like to see this house back to the way it was when she grew up in this house. The homeowner that lived here was collecting a bunch of different things. Mainly what we're finding is vending machines, gun ball machines, but we're also finding things like lawn mowers, canned goods, frames, stuff like that. So there's a large assortment, but this house is only 750 square feet and it was filled to the brim. For our benefit, a lot of the items are boxed up. So it makes for easy transport, but there's also a lot of stuff that isn't the kitchen and it is in a major disarray, a lot of pots and pans, dirty dishes, cobwebs, all over the house. We're going to get all that stuff clean. Come with me and let's walk through this level five horde.