Welcome, everybody, to Senate Education Thursday, January 11th. We are doing some bill introductions today, and we have, so we have about 10 or 15 minutes with each of them. We may not need that much time. We may have some breaks here and there, which would be great, but we're going to start with Senator Gulick's bill, S-203, which is in our folders, and S-203 is a bill enact relating to the appointment of the State Board of Education members, and I'm wondering, Senator Gulick, do you want to say a few words, and I, then we do have St., does St. James here to take us through the bill? She's up there. Wonderful. She's up there. Okay, great. Yes. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks for putting in the bill. Hello, everybody. We're pronouncing my name correctly. You're one of a few people who can do that, so thanks. Well, thank you. So this is S-203, and this is something, it just, it came to my mind as I was thinking about education in Vermont, and how the Ed fund is such a behemoth in terms of taxpayer dollars and the billions of dollars, and how, you know, we the legislature and the agency of education are tasked with, you know, education in Vermont, and making sure that it is equitable and high quality while also keeping an eye on the cost and the outcomes. So it got me thinking about what an incredibly important role that we all have in education, and as I was looking at the state board and thinking about how the state board is made up and who makes it up, the members of the board are appointed exclusively by the governor, and it seems as though this should be a shared responsibility in the legislature as well. So that's what this bill does is it creates a new appointment process. So instead of having the governor appoint all of the members of the state board, it would, as you can see, and I know back is going to take us through, but if you go to section one, and as Ms. St. James likes to say, this is all in statute title 16 BSA, which is where all the education information and statutes are, et cetera. And subsection 161, and so this would have the 10 members of the board be comprised of someone with experience as a principal, a superintendent, a teacher, a school board member, someone in the educator preparation program, a special educator and a parent, and the governor would be able, oh, sorry, I shouldn't forget the students, two of the members shall be secondary students enrolled in a public school, approved independent school, or secondary career technical education center. And one of those secondary students is a full member and does have a vote, and then there's a junior member who does not have a vote. So under this new appointment methodology, four members shall be appointed by the governor, including the two second, sorry, the both secondary student members, so ostensibly the governor would end up with three appointments that are folks who vote, and then the Senate committee, noncommittees would be, that would be the mechanism for appointing three members and the speaker of the house would also have the charge of appointing three members. Those members would all come through the committees. So the ones that would be sent to the committee on committees would come from Senate education, and the one that would go from the speaker of the house would go through house education. And right now, folks who are on the board would see their appointments through to the end, their term, sorry, through to the end, and then there's a, what I think is a pretty good process to kind of start the reappointment which you would find on, this is on page four, it sets up a whole plan of how these new appointments would work. So for example, for the terms that are expiring in 2025, one shall be made by the Senate, committee on committees, and one shall be made by the speaker of the house, and then it goes on to continue in 2027, 2028, 2039 and 30, alternating, you know, who gets the appointments, and then ultimately you would, you would have everyone who has at that point been appointed under this new system. So that's basically the building, the building, that's basically this bill in a nutshell, and the effective date is July 1st of 2024. Any questions? Senator Starr, are you okay with time? If we have, if, do you mind? We're going to be about 10 minutes on this bill. Does this, does that work for you? Yeah. Okay, all right. I'll just shorten here appropriately. That's why I asked. No, I, I, all right, thanks. Okay. Thank you. Any questions for Senator Gullick? About the bill? Yeah, please. More curiosity. So there were 10, there are 10 members now, there will be 10 members if this bill is successful, but one becomes a non-voting member. Does that change of, that's correct, right? Yeah, that's currently the way it is as well. Oh, it is? Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, I see. The junior student member is a non-voting member. Okay, great. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the question. Senator Sheen.  I am curious, when it comes to appointing one member who's a parent, I'm, what are, how will that be figured out? I mean, a parent, like, what, will there be any other qualifications or just any random from out there? I guess any random from out there, who's interested in serving. Yeah. Sure, parent, do we have that now? I mean, there might, I think there are parents on there, but they're not necessarily, I mean, none of them applied as a parent. Who appoints the parent? Is that the, or does it not matter? It's more like we could do it, the governor could do it, the house could do it. Okay, this is great. Yeah, okay. Yeah, Senator Williams. I'm thinking about process we went through in health and welfare where the vice chair got a list of names together for potential, we went around and brought them in. Is that something that the Education Committee would be involved with? That's a great question. Senator Weeks was really organized us in health and welfare and put together the color coded spreadsheet and we contact folks and we ask them if they would be, these are folks who were already on committees, I believe, and we were asking if they wanted to be reappointed, which in the case of the State Board of Ed, these folks serve out there six years, I believe it is, and then they can't run again. So you just get the one term. But we could certainly set up a system that might be similar to that. Well, the reason I'm asking is because we just recommended people from committee to the governor. Right. The governor appointed them. And what happened was we waited until the end of the session and people that were already fulfilling that board responsibility were already functioning in capacity before they were appointed. So is this going to take down the same process as it won't be had? It seems so, yeah. I think so. Is always that likely given the process? So you're serving, yeah, and then before you're confirmed. Before you're actually confirmed, yeah. Even judges, I was on judicial nominating this summer, we put forward a bunch of judge names, the governor chose them, they were sworn in, but they still have to go through the Senate for confirmation. Yeah. Related to Senate 203, what's the rationalization for the change? Like what's the basis for besides a different approach, new concept? What's the problem we're trying to solve? Yes. As I said before, just to me, we're charged with this incredibly important job in this task, not just in terms of finances in terms of the overall budget of the state, but also in terms of oversight with Senate Education and House Education, as well as the AOE and the governor. And it just seemed like it was, you know, it was a very consolidated process, just having one person make these appointments seem to fit better with the model that we have in terms of Senate Education and House Education to share in the process. So make it more equitable. I guess equity is something, it's a word I use a lot in a term that's important to me, and just seem like it would be more equitable to spread that work out. Thank you. Is there a hit cost to this? No. I mean, I say that, not to my knowledge. We can always get a fiscal note, but I don't see. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions for Senator Gulick? Ms. St. James, do you mind doing a walkthrough and then we'll move to Senator Starr? Sure. Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council, Senator Gulick did a great job of walking you through the bill already. I will just try and highlight the highlights. So this is a change to how our board members are appointed for the State Board of Education and the expertise, which is required for those appointments. Currently, there is a in statute and this bill doesn't touch that. There's a kind of hopeful statement that to the extent possible, members shall represent the state's geographic, gender, racial and ethnic diversity. But there's no other requirements. This bill adds a requirement that members have expertise in certain areas. And then it really doesn't touch the student members other than to be explicit that they may be from a public school and approved independent school or a secondary career technical education center. Currently, as Senator Gulick mentioned, all State Board of Education members are appointed by the governor and this bill proposes to change how those appointments are made. So it would mean four members appointed by the governor and that includes the two student members. So it would be two student members and two non student members appointed by the governor and then three members each for the House and the Senate. And the way that those appointments occur is that the Senate Committee on Committees makes the appointment, but they choose the name that they are appointing from among not fewer than six candidates proposed by the Senate Committee on Education. And it's the same process for the House. It's the speaker and then the House Committee on Education. So you all would be tasked with proposing not fewer than six candidates to fill an open seat. And then the Senate Committee on Committees would make those appointments. For the governor appointees, there is no requirement that there be any confirmation by the Senate. So it's just a governor appointee. And then depending on who made the initial appointment, so if a member is appointed by the House, the House would continue to appoint someone to fill a vacancy in that chair. So whether that's the expiration of a term or someone leaving the term early, whoever made the original appointment, this bill proposes that they stick with that seat. I'm just looking, let's see. If there is a vacancy, I'm on page three, line seven. If the Senate or the House filled that vacancy originally, they're going to stick with that seat. But the vacancy should be filled by choosing from among the original list of candidates for the vacant term proposed by the applicable Committee of Jurisdiction. So let's jump to the transition period. Obviously, you don't need to, you don't need to do anything, right?  But this bill contemplates the transition period, right? How do we go from all governor appointees to this staggered approach? And so I won't go through each, but all I did was I took the terms of each board and when they expire, and then I just went, you know, one, two, three, one, two, three for appointments. And so this does not talk about the transition period currently in this bill is introduced does not bake in what qualification like special education, parent, teacher, superintendent, those new qualifications that we're adding on page one of the bill. The transition period doesn't propose that any vacancy has to match any particular qualification. So I think in the real world, how this would play out is for the first appointment, if that was a teacher, that qualifications off the board for the next appointment and so on, you could should you choose to take up this bill, get more prescriptive in that the first appointment needs to be a teacher, the second appointment needs to be a special education professional, etc. And then the bill. And then once that initial appointment is made again, the appointing authority keeps that seat. And then this bill is proposed to take effect on July 1 of this year. Thank you, Miss St. James. I think we're going to shift since we have Senator star here, but we can return to this later this afternoon. Anybody has any additional questions and I have a list of potential witnesses. So Senator star. And I don't know if everyone knows this, but Senator star was you were the chair of this committee. Yeah, back and maybe 10 or 1220 10 or 12. Yeah. Yeah. And I served on four years prior to that on this committee. And when I first came to the legislature, and you know, to start out with, I spent 21 years on the school board, and left Troy as well as served as chair of the Super Junior. So education has always been a big part of my extracurricular activities, you might say. And in the span of a lot of time, helping to improve our educational system in my district. Once I got here, we were, I represent five towns. When I was in the house for 26 years. And everyone in my schools in my district, where we built the new school, so we, we, you know, did a good job up north, improving our education system. And so I've always been very interested in how education is gone, especially in our rural communities, where dollars are short and costs are high, figuring out ways to help them. This over the years, our literacy has dropped in our schools. We used to be basically at the top of the ladder, or pretty close to the top.  And when this Dolly Parton Literacy Program came along, you know, there's always new things popping up. And you take it with a grain of salt, and you watch how it goes. And over the years, at this point, they're doing, this is for children through their fourth year. And the books are all sent out. And I have copies of them, or a couple of copies in that you can get money passing those around. So we can see the kinds of stuff in the one that on my right, that was put together by a guy from Westbrook, your mom. And they send out now over a million books a month to these young youngsters in our country, plus four others. So it's, it's pretty well distributed nation life. And the, in my district, my Senate district, I believe, well, in Vermont, we have about 5,900 children that are enrolled in this program. And there's 17 different affiliates throughout the state that what happens is the books are free, but the postage and the handling is a small fee that costs about $26 or $7 a child per year to cover that. And in my district, I'm very fortunate that in the last two, two and a half years, about every town in my senatorial district, we've gotten signed up. And children from each of those. And you take there's, like in Maine, there's 4,400 children in Connecticut, 5,700 children. And in, in Vermont, we have, we're at the top of the list. But we, we don't have any state affiliate to, to kind of look after this. And in some states, they have a library department, look after it, sort of spearhead and when, when I thought about it, the problem is in educating our children once they get to preschool or first grade, why wouldn't this be better administered? The library has no money. And you folks know, as well as I, that we're spending 2.2, 2.3 billion dollars to educate our children K through 12, preschool through 12. And in this bill, there's an appropriation of $100,000. Well, you try to get 100,000 out of the library or add to the library department, it's a pretty big lift. But to squeeze 100,000 now in 2.2 billion, or find it, you know, it just seemed to me that if you want money, you got to go where there is some, or it's not going to work. And so anyways, you know, we have, we have a good enrollment in this. And like up north, we're two years into the program. If we do this pilot for three years, then we've got one group of young people, children that have started at zero age, and have gotten to the first grade. So there's, if you had three, we would have one whole group that has completed their five years of participating in this program. And we could measure it to see whether there's been improvements or or not if the children enrolled in this program. And you take middle class families, they're four times more likely to read to their children if they have these books there. And the big differences on lower income families, they're eight times more apt to read to their children that these books are in the household. And it's pretty obvious that that lower income they have no books at all 61% of the lower income families have no children books in their household, but so ever. And so as the children grow with the program, the books come in the children's name. So they're the owners of the books, the children. And it seems that if you give ownership to your child of certain things, they learn to take better care of it because it's theirs. And so that helps and in the process is as well. Yet, and I think you folks know that by the time the child gets to the third grade, if they aren't doing well in their literacy, reading abilities and skills, they're in trouble. And if you track that, which I think years on the school board, and if the same children that score low in the third grade, they're also scoring low in their later years in school. And and then we also know from facts that low scoring children in literacy also drop out of school. They become delinquent and get into trouble. Then they get incarcerated. And you know, it just adds to their problems is as they grow older.  Yeah, it's going to cost us a little money. But anytime with any problem you have, if you can, the quicker you nip it in the bud, the cheaper it is. And if you let it just let it keep going, it gets worse and our own scores prove that. And you know, my bill was was put together. It's short, barely quick. And there needs to be some changes to it. And where it says Vermont Imagineer Library, it should be DPL or Dolly Parton Imagineer Library. But the main thrust of the bill is to get a statewide affiliate, which I proposed in here that would be your department of ed instead of the different civic groups and different library groups from all over the state and broaden this out so that we cover more children from a bigger part of our state. Yeah, we've done well up north with it and Caledonia as well as Caledonia and Memorial County. But Washington County doesn't have an affiliate here.  Are you on a time limit? I do have to be in Seneca operations in 230. Okay, okay, good. So we had a child move from our area to the Washington County area. And there was no affiliate to help with the postage and handling. And we figured out a way to cover that from hours up north. But I think we could get more children involved in this. And yeah, you're going to save too many of them to make this thing pay 1010 or more. Well, and one of the things I have so much respect for Bobby for is that he always goes into those early ages, Senator Starr, whether it's feeding kids or getting to read and you recognize that those are in your work on kindergarten up north. Recognizing that those early ages really make a huge difference all down down the road. Yeah. And Mr. Anderson, do you mind just point your chair up and sit with Senator Starr and maybe take us through the two of you can we have Senator column or coming in about 10 minutes. We had a little time.  Well, I don't say we care. Right. For the record, you might just take us through. Absolutely. For the record, Tucker Anderson Legislative Council, by having more to do in the past, it's lovely to work with you today. Thank you. Look forward to working with you again in the future. S 200 Senator Starr's fail establishes the Vermont Imagination Library. Good point to pause and state that the reason it's called the Vermont Imagination Library here was because this has come up in the past. And there was a little hesitancy about attaching a specific person's name to the program. In case there was some sort of controversy in the future, you could always change it to the Dali Park Imagination Library. That's well, Dali is fingers crossed. We'll ask. We'll see if we'll get her to zoom in. Why not? Right? I mean, she's done so much with this program. It'd be great to thank her and understand a little bit more about the program. The bill establishes a three year pilot program for the Imagination Library. So it would exist for three years in initial appropriation of $100,000 to fund the operations of the program. All of the duties that are assigned in the bill are assigned to the agency of education. Essentially, the agency would be required to coordinate with the representatives from the Dali Park Imagination Library to implement the program throughout the state. They would be required to manage the daily operations of the Imagination Library for purposes of the state. And that would include monitoring and overseeing the special fund that's created here where the state is going to put the $100,000. As Senator Starr pointed out, there are states where there are intermediary nonprofits that act as the statewide partner with the Dali Park Imagination Library. Here the state itself is just going to be the party that interacts with the program. The agency would be required to, I'm on page two now, moving slightly quicker than I would, because I actually only have five minutes before I have to leave now. They're required to create a public awareness program to make sure that guardians and parents know that this exists and they can sign up and get free books. They are, and I see, required to create a public awareness program that makes people aware of the opportunity to donate to the special fund. This is also something that's been discussed in the past, whether the state wants to be soliciting donations essentially into the state fund for this purpose, but it's there. This allows... Is there a precedent? There are some precedents, particularly where the state acts as a trustee over certain funds. I can point you to a couple different examples where public trusts are allowed to solicit donations. Libraries are one area in particular where you see a lot of this so trust libraries at the local level are allowed to solicit donations. There's provisions in here for consultation with the Librarian of Congress. That would be the Secretary of Education. It would be coordinating with the Librarian of Congress. Subsection C establishes that the eligibility for the program is any person under five years of age is eligible, provided that they're a resident of Vermont. There's a provision in Subsection D that allows the Agency of Education to collect some administrative cost from the fund, if that's necessary. Subsection D sets out that this is actually a 50-50 match. The $100,000 is matched by the Dollar Department Imagination Library, so they're dealing with $200,000 for the three-year period that can be spent to implement this program statewide. There's a catch-all and a little bit of a security blanket here on page three in Subsection F that if the General Assembly doesn't actually appropriate any funds to the special fund that supports the Imagination Library that this shall cease, that they shall cease to operate. And I was going to recommend taking Subsection D. The program. So there will be a technical correction. There's a technical correction that needs to have that there too, but there's a required report annually during the pilot period to allow the Senate Committee on Education, the House Committee on Education, to see what is happening with the program, what the status is, how the money is being spent. And there is a repeal section here that the Agency will include in its report a recommendation as to whether the program should cease to exist. Section 4202, page three establishes the special fund. This is somewhat boiler-fake language for this. Subsection D, which is on page four, is the provision I was talking about where the Agency would be permitted to accept gifts and donations soliciting that. Section two contains the $100,000 appropriation. Section three is the sunset because this is a pilot program. So three years from July 1st, 2024, July 1st, 2027. That's the type of math I'm really good at. The effective date is July 1st, 2024. This is terrific. Thank you so much. Thank you, Senator Starr. We may have you back in at some point to answer some questions. Any pressing questions right now only because Best St. James doesn't have a lot of time to kick us through the next bill. I can hold my questions for the next time. That'd be great. I'm thinking about the Agency of Libers. It doesn't have any money, but there's money tight. Right. And that's really right down there, garlic? Yeah. I did spend quite a lot of time thinking about it, and they're so, they're very small.  I just felt that this is a main, it's a very major issue that our education department should be very concerned and should be sponsoring, you know, their own budget, but they aren't.  And I don't want to take a lot of your time, but I think here a long time, but never supported a bill and promoted a bill that didn't pay off for the people of Vermont and Big Tum. And whether, you know, not a lot in this yet, but this could save a state of Vermont millions of dollars down the road and help our workforce, help young people pick complete school. It's just sad that we spend all this money getting children to their 16th birthday. Right. I mean, we spend hundreds of thousands to get them there. And they walk out the door because they're frustrated because they don't understand the English language. And it just makes sense to me, business point of view to the welfare of our citizen that something like this would pay back many times over. Thank you so much. Just on a quick note, last year we spent, like proposed to the Appropriations Committee that we spent $2 million on helping farmers pay the DNC payment in that past. We spent $2 million and we got back $29 million. So I could go on and tell you the same stories. If this wasn't worthy of the $100,000, I wouldn't be here asking for it. Anyway, thanks. Thank you very much. Senator Collamore. Yes, sir. You're my joining us. And we have Ms. St. James before she leaves. She's going to take us through 216 quickly. I'm sorry. Mr. Chair, I can't hear you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Senator Collamore. Ms. St. James has another meeting in about five minutes. So we're going to start with her. You stay right there. She's going to take us through a high level of S216, which is in our folders. And I see that we have Collamore. This is a bill that Senator Collamore has sponsored for the past few months. And so, that is a bill that we have been doing since the last few months. And, uh, weeks and millions are co-sponsors. So as much time as you can, if you would take us, that would be great. Sure. About St. James office of legislative council. Um, I do only have about five minutes left. So this will be high level. If there are specific details you'd like me to come back it on, you know where I live. State Colleges Corporation and one thing I just want to say from the the outset is something for you all to think about this session is I in my drafting life as a member of legislative council and all of my colleagues there's been a lot of confusion over the change of the name of the Vermont State University and the Vermont and and how that fits into the Vermont State Colleges Corporation because that name is sprinkled the Vermont State Colleges is sprinkled throughout the green books in various different places and so whether you take this bill up or not it may be a good idea to think about looking at the Vermont State Colleges statutes and see if there's any cleanup that needs to be done there and there is a section of this bill that provides for that on just what's the name of this institution going forward and how should it be used throughout the green books technically speaking I don't think there's any change necessary because the Vermont State Colleges Corporation is comprised of the institutions it is comprised of so it would naturally sweep in the Vermont State University and the community college system but we're not the only ones who use the green books and so there's just been a lot of confusion over what to call what to call this institution so just doing a plug for a little cleanup or at least a thought towards that so section one again does away with the position of Chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges Corporation which again right now is comprised of Vermont State University and CCB and the statute currently section one is the is current law it currently provides for a president for each institution under its control and so that doesn't change this this bill does not propose to change that so the structure would just be two presidents and no chancellor the second section of this bill is a change to the the trustees the board of trustees so currently there are amongst other other trustee members four legislative trustees this bill proposes to strike that down to two and in their place have one faculty member trustee and one staff member trustee and those folks would be appointed by essentially the unions representing staff or faculty and then and then a lot of this bill is conforming amendments so starting on page five again there's many places and this is there's many places throughout the green books where the state colleges are referenced and so there's conforming amendments when there's the mention of the chancellor the position of chancellor and if you choose to take up this bill these sections I would suggest deserve some thought because it may not be a one for one swap of a president or both presidents for the chancellor but I don't based on time and where you are with this bill I don't think we're going to go into each conforming amendment but just know that since this bill does away with the position of chancellor there would need to be a lot of cleanup on anywhere that the chancellor's mentioned and I'm going to jump to page 10 line 1 section 10 is that conforming revisions section that I made a plug for I'm not so sure that what I have suggested here is really what you should go with but it's a start of the conversation and this is just directing ledge council to make conforming amendments based on your direction and then there is section 11 page 10 line 10 a change to we walked through this a little bit at the very end of last session the directive to the Vermont state colleges in their structural deficit reduction and all of the work the legislature asked legislature asked them to do one of the things they asked them to do was to reduce their structural deficit by five million dollars per year through the end of fiscal year 2026 for a total of 25 million what this bill does is it kind of prorates what's left so this act 74 was enacted in 2021's there's already been a couple years of these structural deficit reductions so this bill proposes to for fiscal year 2025 instead of a five million dollar savings it's asking for a three million and then in fiscal year 2026 oh 1.5 million and then the effective date of this bill would be July 1 2024 and that is all the time I have any immediate questions from the same James before we hear from the lead sponsor and others the same James I believe you need to leave so thank you we have thank you we're in good hands with senator column work and yep and if you wouldn't mind just taking us through a little bit your thoughts sure the genesis of this all that kind of thing thank you mr chair and I guess that's already on I was going to thank her too so for the record Brian column or state senator from Rutland county this bill was drafted as a response to a meeting that was held at castleton university on October 29 2023 it was attended by about 10 of the area legislatures for Rutland county which is where castleton is but it was also attended by senator champion I was from Bennington county and made the trip up that day and I believe took a tour of the campus afterward and it was great and I thank him very much for being willing to join us that day during that meeting there was a list of asks presented to legislators and three of those are represented in s216 and beth has done a really good job going through those I had maybe a little bit more to say about each but that's okay that's where I came up with the idea so we met again it was a legislative breakfast there was faculty and staff there I'm going to guess probably in both senators actually I don't think senator weeks was available at the time but senator Williams was there so there may have been 25 30 people in the room something like that we had breakfast and then we listen to a group of professors and staff address us and that's where the requests came from I do want to point out that the Vermont and this is from their own website so we'll just go through it VTSU which is a Vermont State University budgeted for an overall dip in enrollment of 6% and a new student enrollment dip of 15% in the current year so we're not in a position which is sustainable unless we reverse that number in other words we don't want a continuing situation with fewer and fewer students enrolling each year we wanted to go the other way and we want to attract more students in but in total Vermont State University system enrolls about 5200 students this is 4,000 undergraduates about 500 graduate students and then also 700 and what are called apprenticeship programs full-time students are 72% part-time 28% in state and this is important I think to remember is about 72% of the students that attend the Vermont State University system are from Vermont which leads 28% out of state and the other important aspect I think of this is that the the students represent 47% so nearly half of them are first in family students and this is a role that is not the same that the University of Vermont or some of the private institutions in the state can talk about but the Vermont State University system does see it I think as one of their missions is to involve people who have never gone to college before never been in that situation and they're first in their family to do that so I think it's an important niche that we remember that that's what we're talking about I always thought for some reason the Castleton University had the biggest group of folks and I think they do student-wise but not acreage so let me just look down Randolph is the largest campus that we have 590 acres and there's 30 buildings including a brand new laboratory down there uh Johnson is second with 350 acres and 14 buildings Lyndon is third with 211 acres and 24 buildings and Castleton is fourth with only 165 acres but 21 buildings and then Williston which is sort of an adjunct if you will to the uh the Johnson campus of 12 acres and seven buildings out of state tuition and fees $26,000 a year in state is about $12,000 a year and there is financial aid available so the first provision as uh Ledge Council presented would eliminate the position of Chancellor many in the Castleton meeting that day back in October and I assume statewide as well since I've been in touch with some of the folks from the other campuses question whether a quarter of a million-dollar salary which is what the Chancellor makes is appropriate for a system that only serves about 4,700 students in other words in the scheme of things there are much larger institutions nationwide with many more students we have you know unbalanced a pretty small institution here in terms of a number of students and there is now one president for the five campuses and then one president for the community college Vermont so there are two presidents that represent the entire system those presidents at the moment report to the Chancellor so in terms of the uh going up the ladder that's the the next person that they would report to and then that person and we have a new Chancellor of course that was just recently hired reports to the 15 members of the Board of Trustees so that's how it goes the president and at one point there was a president on each of the campuses and then they all would report to the Chancellor and then the Chancellor goes up to the Board of Trustees Senator Cormoran there are three presidents correct is there somebody also of uh who does Vermont attack is that one is that part of that I thought one president for some reason was the was the president of unless things have changed okay yeah we have some folks from Vermont State College is one president for the yes sorry great turner the director of external and governmental affairs of Vermont State College is yes there are two presidents Vermont Technical College is now part of Vermont State University great thank you apologies um so again the hope for at least the first provision is that this committee if you agree to take up the bill would take testimony regarding the position of Chancellor and I realize there are people that feel strongly one way or the other this was just an ask that was delivered to me uh you know the Mike constituents asked me to put this into effect so that's what I'm doing and uh I think the committee's jurisdiction here would be to take further testimony on that and there's probably good reasons for having a Chancellor and there's probably good reasons for not but that's not my view my view would be that's where your jurisdiction lies the second provision is as Beth mentioned would realign the members of the Board of Trustees there are currently five members that are appointed by the governor that sit on the board four trustees are elected by the board themselves or itself and four trustees are state legislators who are elected by the general assembly there's also one student trustee and the governor is an ex official member I assume doesn't particularly you know take part in a lot of the meetings but he is technically one of the members of the board of trustees so I've always looked on to this sort of 14 people that are invested in the day-to-day operation there my bill would reduce the number of legislative members to two so instead of four there would be two and add a faculty member and a staff member to take the place of the folks from the legislature that would be should the bill pass leaving if you will and so it leaves the total still the same at 14 but it would be in my view at least a little bit more diverse membership and I think provides some new voices for folks on the board to hear and the third provision would be to reduce the mandated structural deficit request from the Vermont General Assembly it was five million a year for five years which is 25 million in fiscal year 25 my bill was proposed to reduce that from five to three and then in fiscal year 26 it would finally reduce it to one and a half million and then it would be gone I do know that there is and I don't want to say it's a mirror bill in the other chamber but there is a bill which mirrors my first two provisions word for word the third provision with regard to the structural deficit immediately takes the deficit to zero in both fiscal 25 and 26 it would reduce it to zero and zero so that may be again something that this committee would want to look at in terms of should we do anything at all and should it be three and then one and a half should be zero right through should it be four and two I don't you know you can play with the numbers but that's that's what I came up with so that's the trust with it turn machine I just want to thank you for the bill I I'm glad you're introducing this I the the only piece that I'm kind of don't have an opinion on yet is the Chancellor piece I think you know that's something I want to hear a bit more about just voicing my support of having faculty member and a staff member on the board of trustee I think it's a great idea to have people who are actually on the ground to these colleges and air campuses on this board as well so so thank you for that and the the reduction or the change in the in reducing the structural deficit I think that's also something that's sorely needed you know I mean we had the conversation as you know we had the conversation a lot last year and it's it does feel strange to create this requirement to reduce this deficit and then you know get up in arms when they're trying to reduce the deficit by whatever decisions they might be making and then you know the the press that covers this that's there's a connection there with the declining enrollment so I do think something needs to change with how we're dealing with that deficit and I think this is a good starting point to figure out how we revise that so thank you yep the rationale there was in my view it would lessen the pressure to continue to have layoffs and reduce positions if you will and again the numbers you can play with I don't know what the right number is is it go to zero and then no there's no more pressure to make me more cuts I don't know but I think it's worth discussing again I I found this committee to be very fair open thoughtful and you know should you decide to take it up I'm sure you'll take a testimony and make decisions there and so do you happen to know center column work if the if there's ever been you know they did this whole study of the state colleges I think at one point do you know if they looked at the chancellor position and whether or not and I think this is the study that also may have produced where the the structural deficit requirement came out I think you know if yeah I don't have it like the state colleges 2.0 optimization optimization yeah yeah I don't know senator whether there was any fire study about the chancellor's position okay certainly when jeb spaulding sat in that chair we did hear predictions if you will that we needed to do something pretty quickly because again if it and I realized some people get their dander up if you call it a business but in some ways it has to be viewed that way I think you can't continue to run something if you have fewer and fewer customers if you will which is the way a lot of people look on students if it continues to lessen you run the risk of as I think the then chancellor spaulding said you run the risk of say having nothing left there wouldn't be anything so his kind of warning back when it's probably six years ago maybe eight years ago now was that we needed to do something to either track more students in and I'm talking about a lot of like 20 percent increases for a while or run the risk of closing everything up and there wouldn't be any more system so any other questions for senator column or or comments gentlemen and we have the new chancellor I believe coming in next week excellent so that we've heard an opportunity fall in favor say aye oh sorry you missed it we can pass out two things but uh yeah and I should say yeah in all transparency this was done prior to the new chancellor being hired I don't I don't want it to appear that we have somebody that just moved in and said welcome and oh by the way we've eliminated your positions over the month right right I didn't want to do that yeah so this was all done prior to that yeah and again I want to reinforce that this some of this came directly from the request of constituents by castleton and you know the chancellor I mean I know she's only next week she'll have been here three weeks but sooner rather than later I'm sure she will very much have a handle on the deficit spending requirement and whether or not that makes sense or and then and maybe even the opinion on this the switch in the staffing piece for the the board piece yeah yeah anything else for senator that was a great presentation senator palmore I missed it I'm sorry that's okay I guess I can roll the tape and well roll the tape to the tape that's a james did a great job online I didn't get that yeah so all I did was kind of question no yeah no you don't give yourself enough credit it's it was very good very helpful to hear the genesis behind it and like senator collin more said several of us had a great visit to castle and I for one left very impressed I left feeling those students could go to a million different institutions and I was so happy that they chose castleton and I thought the campus looked great just felt really good so excited about that okay thank you very much thank you okay committee we have to take 10 minutes until senator hardy comes in to talk about libraries and back we are looking at continuing for those of you who are watching continue our walk through of a series of bills thank you senator hardy for jumping in and talking to us about s220 and our led council tucker anderson I believe it's great my committee so great he's going back yeah terrific but I have the utmost confidence that you'll be able to tell us the ins and outs of this bill okay so whatever you'd like to share for joy thank you very much yeah mr chair I am for the record senator ruth hardy from the addison district and um swell reach and you might recall mr chair I don't think anyone else in the room was here but during COVID um or just before COVID I introduced a bill to create a status of the library's um working group because I um started in this committee I sat right here where senator williams was and I met the state librarian um who was a super dynamic um guy um jason and I'm glad you're awesome rotten jason brought under has left right yeah he now works for the national archives I believe and runs their um uh able program that for um people with disabilities accessing library and archive materials he was a great guy yeah and I was like wow this is he's I really want to work with library with librarians and libraries to figure out what's going on with um libraries in the state of Vermont I'm a huge library fan I come from a family that uses libraries and always has some of my fondest childhood memories are of libraries and going to get books with my mom on saturday morning and I had a dear aunt who was a librarian for 60 years um ran a branch library in Rochester New York so I have a lot of really fond memories of libraries and then when I moved to Vermont with my kids I spent a lot of time in our library in middlebury so um we developed a bill to create the status of libraries committee um mr rotten and I and um the bill was supposed to be read on the floor on uh friday march 13th 2020 um but instead we shut down the state house and everybody went home so then when we a next session we came back and you were chairing the committee and you all um well I you I don't know who else was on the committee at that time put the that language into a miscellaneous education committee bill and um created a status of libraries working group um yeah he was sitting there um uh so that working group worked for two years to do a really in-depth um status of libraries we had a lot of subcategories about what they were supposed to report back to us on about facilities about staffing about um community resources and programming about their collections about electronics and technology all this huge amount of stuff um they worked very diligently Jason started the program then he left to go work at the federal archives there were interim librarian and then the new state library um Katharine Delnaio who you probably have had in here at some point or should will have her in um has finished it off um and it included librarians from uh local public libraries from school libraries and from academic libraries from um uh colleges and universities so all kinds of libraries and of course the state library um and they produced a report that came out January uh November 1st here's a hard copy of it they gave me this because I created them sort of um with all of you um and it's 910 pages long um uh but 700 of them are um is an appendix with lots of uh public comments and lots of additional information Tucker has it all completely memorized I'm sure but in this are a series of recommendations for legislative action which is what we ultimately ask them for um and so s220 the bill before you is the bill that would implement many of their recommendations not all of them but many of their recommendations um and you should certainly obviously hear from the state librarian who chaired the committee and other members of the committee and not just had a curiosity is Katharine Delnaio oh right that's right thank you she's great that's right um and um she can talk to you in depth I also would recommend um they did a webinar for librarians a few weeks ago and they recorded it if you're interested in listening to the webinar and they have a slide deck from that which you can probably bring to you and then there was a really good um uh Vermont edition interview with her and a couple other librarians in December that I can send you the link to that was really helpful to listen to about this report and what they had hoped to to um accomplish with it um so I Tucker will walk walk you through all the language in the bill but I'll just sort of give you a an overview of some of the provisions and then uh leave it to him to tell you the details but um so there's a lot of findings and intent in the bill and many of those are just sort of setting out the sort of values of Vermont and its access to libraries and its values of Vermont libraries um and trying to cover all three types of libraries with the general types the public libraries the school libraries and the academic libraries and really setting out the sort of um values of um you know principles of the first amendment and Tucker can explain a little bit more about why this is really important but this is really setting the stage for some of the provisions in the bill establishing the state's values for information intellectual freedom use of libraries access to materials and um that sort of public access to things and then that is in the intent to protect libraries and and why so one of the first provisions is about licensing of electronic literary um products or ebooks and as they're sort of commonly known and libraries often um their contracts for ebooks are often really expensive and limiting for libraries so this not only is protecting libraries it also for um those of you who might want to consider the fiscal this saves money because libraries are basically paying for ebooks and then they're getting a limit on the number of times they can um uh loan that ebook out even though it's an electronic thing they're being told you can only loan this out x number of times and then they have to rebuy it even though it's electronic so this would create contracting provisions and Tucker can explain a little bit more because there's been some complicated uh cases about it but that's what the section two of the bill is about ebook um licensing and contracts and that actually goes on for a little bit um and then um there is uh section that I skipped something there's um there's there's then there are provisions about book bans um this is something that we've seen in lots of parts of the country not as much in Vermont but a couple times um about um people wanting to ban books from libraries for various reasons um and this would not establish a ban on book bans which is what some people wanted but this would just establish process and procedures and values around how to handle conversations about book bans and I really encourage you to talk to librarians about this because they were really clear that they did not want to ban book bans but they wanted to have a framework in order to consider and discuss and approach and sort of solve the issues around book bans so they can speak to it much more articulately by me and I think we might have a bill from senator chitney on this also yeah and I think I don't actually don't know his bill but yeah senator guliff was also working on a bill about that this language was what was the sort of agreed upon language I believe that's in this bill there's also some lack provisions about access um and confidentiality of library records that really brings us into the national standards for the age of patrons for for whom their library records are confidential and this brings us in line with the 12 years standard which is what it is the standard nationally and again the librarians can tell you a lot more about this it does create a position of agency of education for a school library consultant which is a position that was eliminated a number of years ago and school libraries are having a really hard time because they don't have a person at AOE to help them and when they have questions or concerns or need assistance or need to know what the standards are or need to deal with a collections issue they have nobody at AOE so this would create a position that was one of their recommendations all of these were recommendations in the report there's training and education for staff and this would create a certificate of public librarianship that would be part of the functions of the department of libraries so that this could be a sort of a essentially a professional development tool for the department of libraries for librarians there's also language about public safety in our libraries and this really brings the public libraries statutes into line with what are the public safety provisions for schools so it makes them a good one about how to keep public libraries safe in the same way that we keep schools safe regarding drugs alcohol and dangerous weapons and firearms there are some provisions about library governance starting on page 13 and this clarifies a lot of the library governance some of our libraries are municipal libraries and some of them are actually privately incorporated public libraries it's kind of a weird thing they're not they're not technically part of the town government they are operated by a library board but it gets a little squirrely because sometimes towns have yeah library boards and they have select boards and it's unclear who the library director reports to or who oversees the budget so this is actually clarifying a lot of the municipal statutes around library governance and this would be really helpful for a lot of towns yes you know i have towns that i'm getting confused about this all the time and then this also gives the department of libraries the express authority to develop standards by rule right now they don't have rulemaking authority and they so they don't have the ability to develop library standards for public libraries and they really would like to be able to so that libraries can sort of come up to the 21st century together and this wouldn't give them that they express authority to do so they thought they would be able to do this just on their own but as tucker and i discovered they actually never got the authority to do rulemaking and so this would give them that authority and then finding at the end of the bill it does provide some funding for the department of libraries 275 thousand to the department and then 225 thousand per two consult library consultants to add some staffing so that they can take carry out the duties of this bill they in their report they have a huge laundry list of things that they would love in their dream world to have funding for they were in the position where they had to say we support the governor's budget so i came up with this level of funding to give them something so that they could carry out the bill but i leave it to you to dig into that a little bit more there also is a huge section of the report and part of their recommendations was about data privacy and this is a really complicated issue that is not included in this bill because it is my understanding that the there is already a separate bill that i think is right now in house commerce i believe that is about data privacy more broadly that is in the same kind of framework as recommended by the librarians and so i didn't tackle that in the bill because it was really complicated and it would have made the bill i think three times longer so tucker can tell you a little bit more about that but it is sort of being it's a separate bill that probably won't come here i don't know where it will go but it's it's being helped uh handled in commerce at this point so that is what is in this bill but you can tell i'm very excited about it i really hope that you guys will spend some time and and report it out favorably and have a lot of fun with librarians who really want to tell their stories to you do you have a total cost for us um so i believe that the final appropriation is that for the department of libraries is five hundred thousand for the positions and the funding and then the library consultant for the department of the agency of education is how much should we put in here tucker 112,000 so it's a little over 600,000 is in the bill and is that a fiscal note from joint fiscal or those sort of your numbers those were sort of the numbers that we came up with i'm sure joint fiscal could you know hone them and you can talk to them i mean i think the department of libraries is is a little bit hamstrung because they have to say you know we're supportive of the government you know the line completely so um but i do feel like they need some positions and funding to be able to carry out this the some of the things in this bill and frankly to be able to support our public library is better and to do more for libraries in the state that libraries i mean if you take a look at this report which is online um it is there's so much that our libraries do that are beyond the scope of what we sort of think of libraries and they did a lot during the pandemic for access to the internet during um you know they're often the safest place in town for people to go during disasters they're they are they are often you know giving out clean you know socks and you know safe supplies and things like that they are often just the last resort for so many people and crucial for a lot of our really small towns so you know anything we can do to support libraries and help them with their mission i think it's great lost libraries do you know how many libraries closed over the past decade that's a good question i don't know i think that we have lost libraries i think we've reduced the number of hours so that there may still be a physical library building in some lot in communities but there's only open like six hours a week a lot of them have part-time librarians the librarians are usually you know very underpaid and you know for some towns it's all they have they don't have anything else but a library there and um it's really important to you know bring them back to life i feel like i don't know if every library has this button burlington we have the library of things which is so cool because they will loan out gardening equipment and kitchen utensils and appliances it's very cool yeah it's not just okay yeah my knowledge is upper so shoes um you know yeah right ski passes it's a really big thing or they have in the kids library they often have backpacks that are sort of like mixed with games and different things for kids to take out a backpack full of kind of cool surprises and stuff so yeah it's great just thank you for this bill just one thing to flag i imagine with section nine and ten which involves criminal threatening and firearms probably take pass through judiciary i imagine yeah yeah that's great like that yeah thank you for fighting that senator wings i was just thinking it may apply to senator sheen's district too but in my community we have a lot of people from new york state because we live on the border yeah actually when they come looking the town manages the budget in our case the money for them to operate they come looking for more money of course when you know tight budget here they're like well why don't you stop tell the people from new york state they can't come they won't do that it's like so it's it's i don't know if you can do anything about that legislatively but they also i think they have to belong to the my state libraries association you anything about that that i would ask the state librarian about i don't know there is a library association and you should have them in to talk to you as well in terms of the um yeah libraries libraries don't turn anybody away often you have to have a library card to get something and those library cards sometimes there's a fee to get a library card it is true that you know sort of regional libraries often have people who don't technically pay to help support the library who have access we have i'm sure this is true in all of your districts but some of the larger towns have the library and people from the smaller towns come and use those libraries even though their tax payer money isn't funding them so that's an issue i mean a lot of states they have regional library districts actually and then branch libraries um or you know so a library system so you could contemplate something like the you know uh windham county library system and all the libraries are part are branch libraries of it and it's funded at the county level something you know as gub ops chair we think about how how to make government work a little bit better and that's something to consider but it is it's definitely an issue um and your community is not alone in that um and it's a tough nut to crack because you don't want to turn people away sure but it's also difficult to find a good library yeah yes and is the library report link in the package for today online no i can send it on to you guys yeah i can send you a bunch of link i got lots of links and i can give you a list of reference of witnesses that i would suggest but definitely have your own librarians and from your communities because they've all they all know about this they're they're enthusiastic they want to see libraries get some attention i mean that was part of what i wanted to do was just give libraries this sort of their day in the building or their their session in the building where they get to really talk about why they're important to our communities other questions for uh senator party at this point great thank you very very much you're welcome taking the time especially last minute my pleasure and uh mr. Anderson do you want to join us at the table for a few minutes and just give us some highlights things that haven't been covered thanks guys thank you very much senator all right thank you for having me back again tug granderson legislative council and thank you for being merciful with the option to be the high level overview yes well i think she she got to give us a great background excellent working our way from the beginning of the bill i'm going to skip past the findings in not because they aren't important because they are and they are supposed to be an expression of the findings of the general assembly so as you move forward with the bill take a look through each one of the subdivisions that articulates a particular finding and make sure that it is an accurate representation of what the general assembly has found on this matter moved to page four where there is the expression of intent senator hearty flagged but there is legal significance to this this is what the court would use to interpret all of the various provisions that this bill if it needed to be reviewed and there are some controversial components of this they could be subject to judicial scrutiny in the future so some of the important pieces of intent here right at the beginning the intent to protect libraries and contract and trade practices that interfere with libraries duties and corporations that is the one that has been tested the most frequently over the last couple years and it speaks directly to the first set of operative sections that i will highlight for you and that is the licensing of electronic literary products so uh that's page four and section two i believe ago that's all the section we will get there the high level overview of this background this has been passed in a few other states not this language with similar proposals it has been challenged under both constitutional grounds and under the us copyright law and in a few states including in maryland the statutes have been overturned and are not effective at this time this language attempts to thread a very fine line here that makes sure that it is not interfering with copyright holders rights to sell and market their material as they see fit but they would also restrict any contract that has what is being deemed here an unenforceable provision that would interfere for example this is built into the section with the library's ability to loan materials without limits on for example time or the number of licenses that can be issued to individual users if you'd like me to get into detail in the section now i can that's kind of the high level view is that this would establish unenforceable contract provisions that would be deemed under the law unfair and deceptive trade practices so we're going to have to have you back to that would be enforced by the consumer protection division of the attorney general's office yeah we if you when you come back i don't think that time today but if you could go over uh in the definitions digital uh audio books electronic work absolutely okay the electronic literary products is kind of a broad term there but yeah it would cover everything from your living audio book to uh your ebooks things like that from what i understand they're even digital materials like if you've ever been if you've ever been the library and seen the display about books they can even do that in the digital format the next big section of the bill senator hardy highlighted bottom page seven this is the selection and retention of library materials um what will you think of this as policies around book bans and what this sets up is first a requirement that public libraries will adopt a selection and retention policy for library materials that the department of libraries would adopt essentially a standard or model policy that could be used by the local libraries um and the intent here is that you would have first amendment compliant procedures at every public library where if a material was under consideration for removal from the library it would first have to pass through the procedures established in the policy before it could be removed and that is also something where you can get into a lot more detail particularly around some of the different models that have been presented and if there are any constitutional concerns okay continuing on i'm on page nine now next section of the bill dealing with the confidentiality confidentiality of library records uh under current law uh library page and records are deemed confidential uh that includes from an access under the public records act and that is for any library patron who is 16 years of age or older under current law this would amend that provision to lower that age to 12 years of age so any library patron who is 12 years or older uh has the right to confidential library records sir sir a problem we're trying to solve here i'm not aware of the policy behind this that would probably be a better question for the sponsor some of the advocates in this area and when you do get one of senator are these many links that includes the report from the working group there is some discussion within the report about the merits for lowering the age of 12 versus some of the opinions to build is this for many bills to be allowed yeah definitely as to why that it's uh the sort of uh why it's in here yeah yeah yeah sorry um so because i was a librarian as you all know um sometimes students in uh are not necessarily students maybe they go to the public library they want to access information on a topic that might be sensitive um and this allows them to be you know to do it without fear of um with in in in private i guess is what i'm you know so privately accessing information that could be helpful to them that may they may feel uncomfortable divulging to someone else this is about specific parents right that's the someone that's 12 years old is now well that's middle school grade so yeah good thank you you had a question okay please continue and we have five or six minutes okay and then we have to shift so i shouldn't tell stories about my public biogram but i went to trial got it okay um the section seven establishes a library consultant position of the um agency of education this is spoken to specifically in the report if you want background details but essentially it is a position in the agency that would be coordinating with public libraries material selection policies things of that nature on page 10 training and education for library staff um the department currently has a certificate in public librarianship program this is codifying that program putting it in the law saying that they are going to continue it um and adding it that's essentially to their duties and functions it is a their credit system is um interesting i think it's 250 credits is what's required to get to that point um don't quote me on that i know that i'm being reported on youtube but don't vote me on it uh so under the public safety section section nine and ten as senator hardy pointed out this is adding public libraries and public library library grounds to some of the statues they cover public safety issues for public schools and that would include the carrying of a firearm school grounds this would include public library and public library grounds in there there's a notable exception that is built in this is in section 10 by the way sorry if i move too fast on page 11 and page 12 and that is if it is permitted by the governing body trusting these managers or directors of a public library then the firearm can be carried on to the public library grounds for specific occasions or for instructional or other specific purposes this is also built in public schools for your under safety class would be a good example okay page 13 library governance senator hardy did an excellent job of explaining what this section is doing it is eliminating some of the overlapping authority where both the select board and the library board of library trustees for example have simultaneous authority over a library director and this sets it so that the governing body of the library has supervision and control over the library director not the legislative bodies of the municipalities moving on to page 16 big piece here relating to in section 16 the rules that will be adopted governing the minimum standards for public libraries there are currently minimum standards for libraries adopted by rule and approved by no card from 1987 the intent was to update them this year however when i researched whether they had ever been empowered by the general assembly to adopt rules there was no session law there was no statute it appeared as though it was adopted because according to those rules it had no force of law so it was brought it went through the administrative rule making process and was brought before l car and passed its way through and my assumption this is not specifically research is that it passed through because there was no force of law attached to the rules it was more like a guidance document than it was in actual so here just codifies it grants them the authority to adopt those minimum standards again something to get into detail in the future section 17 carries the appropriations senator hardy did the math very kindly for me 500 000 to the department of libraries to achieve the purposes of the bill to add staff 112 500 to the agency of education those figures i mean you will likely want to have fiscal analysts look at there are a number of assumptions built into it based on the immediate salary of similar positions in those agencies in the department of libraries and what the cost benefits would be you'll likely want to hear some financial specifics about that so that it isn't the government operations attorney making radical revolutions it's true any questions at this point of course we're getting a lot deeper but i think that's a very helpful overview great thank you committee can you give us 10 minutes to get ready we have this chair of the state board coming in we have a pack in front of us if anybody wants to take a look at it and this is to update us on the search for the secretary of education welcome back to senator education we have with us is jennifer sanderson who is the chair of the state board of education and we're just going to go around the room just as a refresher thank you sanitary williams ronald mister uh dave week's ronald district champion vicki county our team you at chitlin central not a machine would we have you and specifically we have a handout right in front of us to talk about the search for a new secretary of education first so and there was a tiny little update i slid in another slide a few hours ago so if that hasn't been shared with you you have the more recent one here and if you don't mind i'm not sure i have not looked at this one of the things that sort of we're looking at the state board in general uh we're gonna have conversations about it if you could also maybe just tell us a little bit about not only this process but if there's how am i trying to say if there's anything um sort of government function well let me think i guess maybe i'll just let you go and i'll interrupt the questions okay thank you i apologize so i'm just going to look at my screen i don't think i need to share my screen because you guys can follow along um and and i'll be honest you know i uh you would like it no no no what about the if there are oh great point yes we we should just in case there are people okay do you want me to share my screen that would be terrific and well i actually i don't have um internet oh mr felton can do it right yeah yeah we'll just take a minute okay we do have we're very popular committee a lot of people watch okay not only this state but around the country if you believe that but while he's doing that i think it is okay for you to kick things off okay sure um well what i was starting to say was um i'll be honest i kind of dusted off this was a presentation that i gave at our November monthly board meeting um so slightly updated um just to acknowledge that you know here before you guys today um and i also put in um i did this last year where i had the state board membership it's changed a little bit we've got a couple of new members and then the other thing that i put in um last year i noted where everyone was from um and there's you know good cross representation from throughout the state um what i said you the email to join the program oh okay so then great so if you go to your email click on the zoom link i think then she will be able to throw things up yes the other possibility more again would be for you to just throw it out so my issue is i don't have an internet connection so i would be give me so is that going to work for you to do that or do you want to send me the password and oh do you just need a password for the why no i think what you should do if you can if you throw it out okay um so what i've added to this year is um we have 11 members including um interim secretary of education but i also wrote down sort of the different capacities or you know how we came to the board you know what it was that um was relevant in terms of serving on the state board of education um so i think you have that you know i'm the chair i'm also the chair of the win-hall school board i'm also an attorney dr. tandy colby is a uvm professor she's also the principal researcher at mohammed joe is one of our newer poll board members he's the director of multi-lingual learner programs at the leasing school district gray farron and i'll just pop ahead to the bottom aliyah will burn those are two student members they're both new this year so aliyah is just serving one year and her term will end in june and then gray will continue on with us for another year um kim leason how much you say where they're from oh that is a good question it's okay if you don't know we're just yeah um i don't remember off the top of my head i'm sorry um i want to say gray is from dirty that's a guess um so kim um has a lot of history um both with bsda and also a former chair of the sx westwood school district she's also a substitute teacher um lyle jeffson was a former wow i mean he this is a condensed version he was a former teacher elementary school principal high school principal director of the stanford technical center um he's had a bunch of different positions um tom love it was a teacher and former head of school at st johnsbury academy jenna o'farrell is also a former teacher um and then she was the assistant principal and principal of the st johnsbury school um and rich warner is the chair of the windows central supervisor union as well as the chair of the river valley school district um so again sort of thinking about our geographic diversity i think we also bring a bunch of different perspectives to the work that we do which is great um because i think it bit really in my opinion is allowed for some really rich conversations um so moving on the state board of education secretary search committee was comprised of myself as the chair and i was joined by lyle jeffson and general carol uh so just for clarification the whole board is not involved in the search ultimately they were but the way the board has been working since i've been a part of it is we've really sort of farmed a lot of our work out to committees in the first instance okay the committee comes back to the full board i see and we have a full discussion and yeah um and i'll i'll get to that but that's a good question um so the committee meetings we met 11 times over two and a half months and i kind of color coded the steps in the process it was really sort of like what right you know we we got a letter from the governor we had you know two controlling statutes and then the question was how do we turn this into something that will allow us to conduct you know thoughtful interviews of qualified candidates and ultimately make that recommendation to the governor um so the steps that we established in the process were to establish the framework develop and advertise the job posting draft questions and create scoring rubric review applications and interview selected candidates and then debrief them after interviews into that i should add then as a full board to talk about the process and our objective was to find the statute to recommend at least three candidates to the governor for this consideration so the next slide really goes through establishing a framework and i'll just you all can read it we when we started this process um we the first question really was what has he done before and what can we do better so there we really didn't find any information about the 2016 secretary search no agendas no minutes there wasn't really any information there so we really relied heavily on the 2018 secretary search and you know we did have the agenda minutes from that um that sort of formed a framework maybe and then from there we looked at what we could do to make that even better so the first thing that we did is we invited um really at the governor's office suggestion um the department of human resources and i will say that Beth Vestigy was invaluable and keisha collard um they really helped us to understand you know how to go about crafting a job position um they gave us a booklet which became my bible in the moment and we had everything from you know how to create a scoring rubric how to develop questions which questions are important to others and why um how to send out letters of invitation or you know sorry we didn't pass the stage it was really really helpful so we are indebted to them for their help um the second thing we did um was we had a public comment hearing so this you know i was out on the run one day and i thought you know what this would be really great like we would love to invite members of the public to help us because we are my people and it would be great to get other thoughts and perspectives and in that instance we were really assisted by Vermont school boards association Vermont principals association the Vermont superintendents association because they put out an email blast their constituents and they had two questions that they asked and then they compiled all of that information and submitted it to the board and i want to say there are about a hundred comments that they compiled for us which we then you know used as we were determining what questions to ask of inner of candidates sooner do it i'm so glad you brought that up because i was going to ask that question i felt so lucky to be able to to reply to that survey um and so i'm happy to hear that it did sort of come into play absolutely the process great thank you yeah yeah um and then the third thing we did is before we posted the job description and i believe this is a recommendation of um representative christie was to run the job description not just by department of human resources but also by the office of racial equity so we thought that was a really good idea it actually you know took a few weeks to get a response back but i think it was well worth the wait and it made for a much better product so you know we we posted the interview or was already posted the application in you know multiple different venues um we got 18 responses and the last couple sort of came in in the last couple of days of the application period and you know we were happy with 18 but sort of given those last minute entries we thought you know we'll push it out for another week and see if we get anyone else and so we got one more um we conducted so so um certain drug 18 applicants to be the secretary of education what ended up being 19 the guest me i just strikes me as i don't know what others would think and i realized that many people would probably see this job search and probably sort of self identify or uh maybe immediately recognize that they might not be qualified but i would hope for frankly everything we might have gotten more and so it begs where where do we advertise how do we right right no i understand it's there but you have to be sitting at home checking the agency of education website all the time to know oh that's okay it was posted on success factors school spring education week facebook linkedin diversity jobs indeed glass door career builder and an aoe press release and and i don't know you've probably been more involved with searches maybe you have as well but is that feel good to you guys it's it's a small group but it's what it is and we can't force right the market to respond to me but let me just ask this would you would i would people said hey what i might do instead is i'm not asking that you would have done this but maybe delegated let's take a look at who the associate secretaries of education are in the united states or is there a way to reach out to somebody in another state and just kind of do it that way or is there any kind of job executive job search company that could have done it you know well head on your thing so two things one the other aspect that didn't make it up to the slide was i do know that we had board members reach out to their personal contacts to say hey the position is open you should apply right um and i do know that that did happen um so personal connection word of mouth i think you know that and i my sense is that that probably garnered a few of the applications that we received um with regard to a national firm or headhunter that's a great question my response is first of all the department of human resources didn't feel that it was necessary okay um and i believe that the secretary of education was the only um cabinet level physician that is not appointed by the governor well that's kind of what a little bit of what i'm thinking about is i've always believed i've always been very public about taking this roll away from the state board and allowing the governor to appoint his or her secretary of education since that individual sits on their cabinet they should have the complete in my opinion hiring and firing what we ended up with was a compromise several years ago and that's what we have what we have right now for those of you that don't know at one point the state board did the hiring and did the firing completely without the governor's say whatsoever um and now we have a bit of a high grade which i think many people do feel is working pretty well where the state board does the search place three names forward so yeah center do it i i just to piggyback on what you're saying um even in my small district in chinning county i'm relatively small we hired a national search company to help us find our superintendent and it seems so this is a job that's big enough and important enough that it would have been probably would have been a good decision as far as i'm concerned to have more more help with that suggestion for other members of the public um however again it's a different you know what i understood is that this is different than hiring a superintendent because again it's really someone that if there were any other secretary um the governor would have outright authority and wouldn't you know probably wouldn't rely on an underdue to do that work the other thing is we don't have the budget we have a $70,000 budget and that has to pay for everything and so um we certainly did not have money for an underdue when you say we mean the state board yeah okay um so and i want to assure the committee that we did get you know people that we thought were very well qualified and it did you know lead to some really rich conversations and some hard choices frankly um and and we drew candidates from more than Vermont you know more than Vermont massachusetts in new york you know we we did get them you know from other states that were not contiguous so we i think we got a pretty good cross-section of applicants um um then moving on the committee at this point the committee really moved more from being open to the public to moving into executive session and so you know we had one meeting that was devoted to what kind of questions will we ask the candidates um and you know i think we have a list of maybe 45 or 50 questions that we whittled down to 15 um and then we spent some time the three of us talking about why are we asking this question what would a model response look like you know what are we trying to elicit from this question and on a scale of one to five what would be a five what would be a one um just so that we knew what we were looking for when we actually asked the questions um so we created the scoring rubric as well and then we also framed it and again this was a great suggestion from the department team resources where we asked the same questions of every candidate i asked the same questions lila asked the same questions jenna asked the same questions i've never experienced an interview process like that before um it was really revealing i thought that was a wonderful suggestion because it was fascinating how different the answers were and by sort of having that prep work that we put into it beforehand it really allowed good answers to shine um and the ones that weren't as good to you know reveal that as well um after we met with all we interviewed seven candidates um we then had two additional committee meetings where we had an executive session and discussed the candidates and then we brought all of that you know the questions the scoring rubric and our thoughts before the full board um at our November 15th monthly board meeting um met an executive session with the full board and um had i mean it was a long executive session um but we came out of it and you know it was a unanimous decision to forward three names to the governor so that letter went out you know right after that meeting on November 15th and at this point you know we've done what we were authorized to do or charged to do by statute and um so now it's in the governor's hands and um the three individuals know that their names have been put forward correct i for the seven people who were interviewed i called every one of them and said either the name had been forwarded to the governor and they should expect to talk to the governor's office or they were not forwarded and um just to let you know and then we also followed up with an email and you happen to know i know it's not your responsibility if the governor's interviewed the candidates um you would have to ask the governor's office my i believe so okay and that's what we're at and that was again when November 15th the governor has three candidates we have an interim secretary we'll reach out to the governor's office to um better understand where things lie at this point stand at this point any other questions from the sandals center just an observation seems like the like two months that it seems a long time that nothing's come out yeah well you have two holidays two significant holidays and this is a pretty high level position that's gonna i i think governor's office needs the time that they need two months is not okay excessive i would that's my respect thanks thank you thank you do you have one please yes uh the samuelson's artwork on her laptop is intriguing i'm wondering if somebody paid you that i would guess it's probably no nay but um no i this is more than you asked for um all of my kids are now between the ages of 18 and 23 a few years ago we decided instead of you know one person being santa we have secret santa and so we switch names and everyone has a budget and mom and dad pay for it but you know one of my secret santa requests was i'd like to be laptop cover you know one of my kids picked up for me oh there we go i thought maybe one of your kids have painted no so it sort of slides it's a cover exactly yeah okay it's very nice very nice okay i see no other questions this has been very helpful and informative i really appreciate you coming in and now we follow up with governor's office and see if they have any updates for us or when we might expect