Title: 0118DAIL
Last saved by: Diane Scott

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>> Do you have to assign captioning to White Coat? 
>> Yep, I did that already. 
>> OK. 
>> Laura, while I have you before people jump on, did I just got the email from Olivia, is that her name? Yeah. 
>> Mm‑hmm. 
>> Yes, I did, as well. 
>> Yeah. Did you get an email about testifying? 
>> Yes, I did. 
>> For next week on the 24th? 
>> Correct. Yep. 
>> I'm going to send that to Deb and have ‑‑ have them ask Deb to be on it because not having participated in that subcommittee, I don't want to be ‑‑ I'll be there to support. ‑‑ and ask questions on a higher level so they have it for the council, but I'm not to prepared to go to the level of detail that you and Deb can go to. 
>> All right. Great. Yeah, that makes sense. 
>> Give it a few minutes here. But I'm not really sure where everyone is. 
>> I don't have any sound. Is that ‑‑ on my end or your end? 
>> We can hear you, Deb. 
>> OK. Great. 
>> You didn't have sound because no one was talking, I think. 
>> That's why I'm double checking. 
>> Yeah. 
>> Good morning. 
>> We'll give it a few more minutes. I know some people are going to be late. I think Bill Hudson is on vacation today. In Arizona, if I believe that's correct. Julie Porter, I believe, was going to be late. Tracy is also going to be late. Do you know if Sherry's going to join us? 
>> I believe she's going to be tied up. She's got major budget meetings. 
>> That's what I thought. I wanted to confirm. 
>> This is Linda, although, Sherry's on the Zoom, I think. Her name is there. 
>> It is there. Maybe she'll be in and out, then. 
>> OK. 
>> This is Will, I'm happy to monitor the chat, just to let you know. 
>> OK. Thank you. 
>> I think we'll go ahead and get started. I know that people will continue to trickle on. Megan has ‑‑ let me know yesterday she will be on or may not be on. She has to take up some meetings. She is in a new role as interim commissioner for DAIL as Monica White has left her position for a new role. 
    So congratulations to her. I don't envy her, though. So first on the agenda today because of timing, we have Eric Formand, joining us from (inaudible) management. And we asked him to come in and provide an overview of operations and allow for question and answer period. I do know that he is on a hard timeline and has to depart. So I will open the floor to Eric. 
    
>> Thank you. Thanks for this opportunity to come give this presentation to your group. I apologize, I have a bit of a cold. So I sound a little bit stuffed up. In the virtual world, I can still give these things and not contaminate anyone. So that's good. 
    So the director did ask that I come and spend some time explaining the SCOC, our organizational structure, how we function during an emergency, and then, have some time for questions both from the group to kind of ask how we do things or communicate better is something I'm looking for and I like to take the opportunities to both explain how we work or how it might be that we could work better. I want to leave time at the end for questions. I do have some slides, I'll run through those. 
    Let me just share my screen. Calling this a SEOC101. Can I get a thumbs up you see my slides? OK. All right. So starting off, that's our SEOC. That's a picture of our big room, it's in Waterbury, 45 State Drive. That's where we go when we activate, although, now after COVID, we do also have a virtual option. 
    We are able to go fully remote. Normally, we would like to go in person for the ability to speak quicker to the different groups, but, for example, during COVID, we had to do it, but also, if the weather's really bad and it makes less sense for us to travel, we might do something remote. The SEOC is organized under the National Institute of Management System, NIMS, it's a FEMA structure. 
    And then, we're outlined in the state emergency management plan. That gets updated every 5 years. It's being updated this year. It's on our website. Outlines the sections, the structures, our responsibilities, how we respond to events, all of that is outlined in the SEMP, the State Emergency Management Plan. 
    And it breaks down into some sections about response and recovery. But it's all outlined in that. And that's how we function according to that plan. 
    I always like to include this slide just to make it extra clear that the State Emergency Operation Center is not an incident command post for those that know ICS. Those are on the scenes, right next to the event. They're running the direct response, we are not that. We are the coordination center. We coordinate and support the incident. We try to plan ahead for what might be needed. For example, if the local flood happens in Barre and the incident commander is using their resources and they run out of something, traffic cones, they might be able to call us and we might try to source more traffic cones. I like to outline, this center does not have resources, we don't have a big warehouse full of things we can use. 
    We leverage off our partners, which are other state agencies. For example, if we need cones, we might reach out to AOT and see if they can provide some. And we have the ability, I'll talk about it later, to reach out to other states for resources. 
    We can reach out to the guard for resources. So we don't necessarily have direct resources, but we have the ability to reach out for resources. So, it is a big difference between an incident command post and an operations center. And we are definitely the operations center. So the coordinating and support entity that lives in Waterbury. 
    Another picture of our room. Wanted to talk a little bit about activation. We have two levels of activations. Partial and full. So basically, what you'll see is a full activation involves all state partners, all sections, all positions. But we can scale that back, for example, if it's a smaller incident and we don't need all of the state partners. 
    If some of the state partners don't have a direct tie into whatever the event is, we don't need to bring them up. We will only have a partial activation. If it's large, statewide, affects everybody everywhere, everything, we bring in all of the partners and that's a full activation. 
    That being said, we are always quote, unquote, active 24/7, 365 through the watch officer, that person is always available. They're dealing with the smaller stuff that doesn't get to the point of escalating the SEOC to a partial or full activation. 
    But they are working through things every day 365 days a year LT we can open the operation centers for anything, if local agencies have outstripped their own resources and might need us to step up and provide them something. 
    So we bring in our structure to help facilitate that. But we'd also be able to handle and assist lots of municipalities with some of the smaller stuff just through the watch officer. 
    So it's an escalation process, as the director and the SEOC manager, that's my job to make sure we're right sized. I don't want to bring in 90 people and make them work 24/7 for 5 days if we only need 5 people to work a couple days. We want to make sure we're cognizant of what is actually needed. 
    For example, for the flood for July, we were fully activated for probably 25 days, but we are partially activated for 54 days and we still have work being done in relation to that. And then, we have the December flood, that one, we did a partial activation for 12 hours. 
    And then, we did go virtual, and then, we did de‑activate. So each flood is a little bit different, each event is a little bit different and we have the ability to scale up and down. 
    And the last bullet says we don't need a state of emergency to be activated. For example, if there was a large tanker truck fire up in Fletcher, couple weeks ago, we could've activated for that if we wanted to, or we have activated for, like, the train derailment in Northfield a couple of years ago. Those are things we can do. 
    And we can escalate and step up more resources if needed if the event gets larger, or we can de‑escalate if it ‑‑ it basically figuring itself out and all of the processes that need to be done are done. 
    So we have a lot of flexibility in what we do. And we try to make sure that we are consistently right‑sized for what the event is. This just talks about providing centralized and coordinated support to both locals, so mostly we deal with local municipalities through the emergency management director, each town, by statute has to have an emergency management director. We try to keep our communications to the town through that individual. 
    Basically, it helps keep everything on track. What we saw a little bit during the flood was select more (inaudible) try to call us. Town administrator might try to call us, EMD might try to call us and three of them weren't talking to each other. And we work hard to make sure the EMD is the focal point of all of the communications coming out of the town. For example, if a local resident needs something, they would talk to the EMD who would reach out to us. If the foreman needs something, they would talk to the EMD and they would reach out to us. A way to keep the lines of communication clear and specific and make sure we don't get overlapping information. 
    Disseminating information, we do a lot of data collection, making sure we understand what's going on in the towns. The big push for data collection is damage assessments. If the state as a whole hits a threshold of damage, it means FEMA might be able to get us reimbursements, we are making sure money is brought in if it's available. So those are called major disaster declarations. We have two of them during the July flood, one July, one in August. 
    And we will most likely get another one for the December flood. So those are things that we're always tracking. Lots of communications with the town to make sure that we understand what's going on. Locally, making sure that we understand what's going on with other agencies because they can also get FEMA reimbursements. And then, we're looking at future needs, what might be coming down. We also look for future events, for example, doing planning for the solar eclipse that's happening on April 8th so that should be a big event where we could potentially get 50 to 100,000 people coming into Vermont. So we're doing planning for that. 
    Again, something that the SEOC can manage. And we will activate that day to ensure that things go according to plan or to help if they don't go according to plan. 
    So this is a lot (inaudible) slide, but I wanted to give a picture of SEOC as a whole. There's 5 colors. The gray is what we call the command staff, the SEOC manager and their staff, red is the mission and support group. We call it the MARS, mission and resource support group. They basically get things and track things, situational awareness is the group that does the data dissemination and data collection. 
    They bring in all of the data assessment information. They analyze it, make it into reports that we can provide to others. They share the information with others. For example, FEMA, to have them understand what's happening here. The center support group is actually the group that supports the SEOC specifically. So the building, the people there. 
    That's what their role is technology, food, those kinds of things. And the planning group, they do reporting, they work on schedules, who is going to be rostered. What's the next incident action period plan? They work on those things. 
    Those are the groups. Talk a little bit about each group. So the mission and resource support group is our largest group. That's made up of the state partners. So every agency that has some interaction with the SEOC during an event or could potentially have one, you can see on here, even like forest and parks, they have teams that can help us clear trees, they might have issues at the state parks, like they did during the flood. So we bring them a representative into that room and they sit there and they're a conduit to that agency. 
    If we have questions to the agency, they will work through it. If there's a resource request they may be able to take care of, like a team to take clean up trees, we will put that through them through our ‑‑ what we call web EOC, which is our software for ticket resourcing. So all of those individuals sit in the room, they could potentially be broken into branches, if necessary, to kind of lower the span of control. But then, there's also a couple other individuals, the SEOC liaison, we'll talk about in a minute, individuals that we can send out to local municipalities to help them, not at the incident command post, again, but each town has an emergency operations center run by the emergency management director, we can assist and be the conduit of information flow. 
    External resources and finance unit. So if you look at here at the liaison. They go to the town office, the local emergency management center and help them work through this state emergency operation center. Kind of doing the paperwork, we'll say, to get that done. Also, it's very helpful at the state level. We don't know what's going on in the towns if they don't tell us. It's helpful for us, sometimes, to send someone out to gather that information. Because the town is so busy trying to fix whatever the problem is, they don't have time to talk to us. 
    But we need to know the information so we can plan ahead so, potentially, we can get the FEMA reimbursements. So for example, during the July flood, we ended up sending out National Guard members to all of the hardest hit towns. They went in, asked them how they were doing, what they needed, and they provided that information back to take the ‑‑ take that pressure off the town for having to do that. Branches I spoke about. 
    That's just a way to break down the span of control. So each branch would have a subject matter expert in it so we could make sure that everything for that branch is being covered. And that branch will then work and adjudicate issues that fall kind of into that sector. External resources is something we use in the bigger events. A lot of times, we can handle stuff in state. We have enough resources in state through agencies. 
    But for example, the July flood, we brought in, I believe it was up to 20 external search and rescue teams for swift water rescues. So that's through a process called EMAC, which is emergency management assistance compact. 
    So it's a process that we, in the SEOC can do to bring in external resources. They can bring in teams, they can bring in dump trucks, that I can bring in firefighters, a multitude of things, but that is run through the SEOC. 
    And then, finance and admin, you eventually have to pay the bill and track the resources. We bring them in to track that. So the support like I mentioned, on the left is specific names, on the right is what they do. They basically support the SEOC itself, they don't do things for external agencies or external municipalities, they take care of the support of the SEOC itself, so columns into SEOC, food, security for the  SEOC. 
    So, for example, during the flood when we were at the Dill building, lots of citizens tried to come into the building to talk to FEMA, but that wasn't what that building was set up for, we had to have security to send them in the right direction to the proper locations. And there's also technical support. We have communications equipment and computer apps and people logging in. 
    So they help with that. Situational awareness is basically our data collection center. They bring in the data from the towns, they compile it into useful mapping. We use lots of mapping for quick visual references. We provide that to the Governor's office and the commissioner's office so they understand what's going on. We need to have this group collect that information and process it in a way that makes it digestible, as well as they gather all of the information that's provided for FEMA for recovery efforts. 
    So all these groups are very specific and have their tasks, just to ensure that we stay on track with what we're doing. 
    The planning session, those are the different positions inside the planning section. They do, for example, the incident action plan, which is the outline of what the SEOC is going to do for the next day. We're forward‑looking. What are we going to hit tomorrow? What are our tasks for tomorrow? What's our strategies to get to those tasks? 
    So the planning group is doing those. They also do all of the rostering. If you're doing 24/7, 365, it starts to add up a lot of time. Making sure that everyone has all of the positions are filled throughout. We use mostly VM employees, we start with VM employees, but for the bigger events, we go outside and go to bigger state agencies or bring in regional planning commissions or the Vermont National Guard to back fill. 
    When the SEOC is fully activated, could be up to about 90 people. There's quite a few positions. So the planning section, they developed action plan, guidance, current and future resource requirements. They're that forward‑thinking group to make sure we're on track. And they also keep track of all of the files because we generate a lot of paperwork, a lot of reporting, all of it's necessary for the recovery effort downstream. 
    And they do the rostering. And then, at the end, they are the one collecting information about areas for improvement for the next event. And we're always liking for the next event and trying to figure out what we can do better next time. 
    And then, they just talk about long‑term objectives for the IAP, they oversee the development, they run a lot of the planning meetings. And they coordinate set agendas for the meetings throughout the day. 
    I do want to touch briefly about notifications. Specifically, as it relates to sending out emergency alerts. We don't usually send out emergency alerts out of the SEOC, they come from the local municipality. For example, Cambridge, they have the capacity to do that. Not every town is signed up to do that. We can backfill for towns if necessary. We also use VT Alert for missing and vulnerable persons or if there's other events we feel get to the level of needing state alert notification. 
    But it provides alerts to two subsets of individuals. One is the individual that signed up for it. You go into VT Alert and say I want information about Bristol as it relates to roads, school closure, whatever the case may be. 
    You can sign up for that and we call that, you know, that's a subscriber. You call it out and said I want information on this stuff. The second group is the one where we can send out information to individuals in Bristol whether they ask for it, or not. I could send an alert that says this is occurring right now, get to high ground. You're not a subscriber, you've never gone into Vermont alert. But it'll call your cell phone and read a recorded message that says what to do. 
    Or it sends you a text message that you can read. Those are things that we as the state take very seriously, we're pushing it to folks that didn't ask for it, but if it's a life safety event, we'll do that. So that is really the ‑‑ one of the ways we communicate other than your typical public information officer has, you know, the Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, pushing that information that way, press releases, all of that stuff gets processed in the normal PIO way where it gets reevaluated, gets looked at, it gets sent out to the press release groups. 
    So that's kind of on a comm side, that's what we do, a lot of our stuff is internal, and we're not looking out to speak to citizens, per se, we are speaking more to state agencies or municipalities. But we do have general, you know, safety messaging that goes out or general precautionary messaging that goes out. 
    So, some of the things I wanted you to take away from this, we're not directly an incident operations. I talked about we're not an incident command post. We have the ability to be flexible and scale up or scale down. 
    And then, we have our sections for different, different parts of the event. Meaning that MARS can do the support, situational awareness talks about information collection, and then center support keeps us, the SEOC running, and leadership to manage everything. 
    So in a nutshell, that's kind of our system. I didn't want to spend a huge amount of time on that because you can get into nuances. And we have SEOC orientations that take a full day and other trainings that take up to a week to get individuals in the SEOC and having them understand what we're doing. 
    But I wanted to take kind of a high‑level view of ‑‑ this is ‑‑ when the SEOC activates, that's what's going on behind the scene. That's the entity that's working. And with that, I'll open it up for any questions. I know that we wanted to talk mostly about communications and how we can improve, potentially, communications from not only this group, but any group with the stuff that's coming out of the SEOC. 
    I know I've been working. I became the director in June, so I've been working to make sure that we do share as much information as possible. Obviously, we don't want to inundate citizens with too much information, but for example, when December 18th and 19th flooding occurred or when the wind events for the January 9th occurred, we didn't activate the SEOC, but I sent out some messaging to local EMDs, giving them a heads up this potentially could happen, kind of giving them the National weather Service brief, sharing that with them. And then, explaining that, you know, we were there for a resource if they needed us. We also pushed out public messaging for safety. Which is something we always do through the PIO's office. 
    So again, even though the SEOC wasn't open, we were still sending messaging to try to make sure that citizens were safe and secure. 
    
>> Thank you, Eric. A fair amount of questions. One question is, are you able to share this presentation with ‑‑ 
>> Yep, I will send the slides over to Laura. 
>> Send to me and Laura so that I can send out to the council so they can look at it. 
>> Yep, and someone asked for a copy of the mission and resource flow chart? Is that ‑‑ one of the slides? 
>> Um ‑‑ 
>> David asked that. 
>> Yeah. I don't know if you have to have a mission statement, you have your own state agency website, you have a mission statement on that? 
>> Yes. 
>> OK. So we can find that and direct it. I just have a couple ‑‑ one question, maybe a couple of questions before we open it up to the floor. Question about the Vermont Alert. So, ultimately, is that an opt‑in process for people? 
>> Well, it ‑‑ 
>> Given the population we're dealing with here, you know, being deaf and hard of hearing, recorded messaging and answering machines is not viable. So text messaging is the next best way to go. But is it an opt‑in process? I do see Vermont Alerts on Facebook and on Twitter and all of that. 
    And I only ask because because all of us, somehow, miraculously get national weather service alerts regardless if there's squalls or horrendous thunderstorms coming through. If the Vermont Alert is opt‑in, is there a way we can get around to saying people get them no matter what? 
>> So Vermont Alert is two‑tiered. The first is the opt‑in, so every citizen has the ability to go into VT Alert and sign up to be a subscriber ‑‑ you can check off, you can pick what town you want information for. You do have to put in where you live. But then, it says, which counties do you want? Which towns do you want? Which information do you want? 
    They list all of the different categories of VT Alerts. Montpelier sends out parking bans, if you don't live in Montpelier, you do not want it. You can get the national weather service alerts through VT Alert. That's the opt‑in section. 
    But then, if what you talked about was the snow squalls. So the national weather service or the Federal Government has the ability to say, something's bad enough that I don't ‑‑ it doesn't matter if you asked for it or not, I need to give you this information and need to give it to you now. That's the ones that you saw this weekend that went to everyone's phone everywhere and all rang at the same time and was giving information on the snow squall. 
    VT Alert through VM can do the same thing, for example, if we have a missing and vulnerable person alert, we can go in and we have certain criteria about how far and how long it'll last. But we can hit every reverse 911 phone line. We can hit every cell phone in a certain area, and whether you asked for it or not. We feel it's important enough for the life safety of the missing person we can push this out to you. 
    It'll come in a text, or it'll come in a voice mail. Regular phone call. Those are all options that if you sign up, you can pick which one you want first. I want an email first, I want a text first, a phone call first. Whichever one you want, you can set that chain of events in your own system. There's a multitude of ways it goes out. 
    The one thing we're working on that we are ‑‑ haven't been able to solve yet is translation. We're working to see if Google Translate can help us out. It's not super effective right now. So we're trying to make sure that we get one that works really well and conveys the message we're trying to send. 
    In an emergency situation, a couple of words different here and there means a lot. We want to make sure that we get it correct. So we are working on that. But those are the two levels of VT Alert. We recommend that everyone in the State of Vermont should have a VT Alert account, at least at the subscriber level to get the information for the local area as to what they think they should need or should not need. 
    But then, if there's a bigger problem in the state, we can push stuff out to those. 
>> OK. Um, so ‑‑ 
>> Couple questions in the chat here ‑‑ not everyone has a phone or a computer. So ‑‑ 
>> Yeah. 
>> That is one of the hang ups of VT Alert. So most of the messaging that goes out is through well VT Alert is all electronic. Then, there's social media, all electronic. Facebook, electronic, you know. Twitter, electronic. 
    So this subset of individuals that don't have that electronic information, that's the subset we're looking to try to increase communications with. And any suggestions on how to do it is something we're looking for. 
    And then, address, yeah, VT Alert/Vermont.gov that's correct. 
>> Um ‑‑ 
>> And then, we have not coordinated with VCIL, VTAD and HLAA to make sure they have an opt‑in option. That option is available for every state citizen. So we're trying to not necessarily push it to just groups, but everyone in the whole state. All 635,000 people. We push marketing for all individuals to have access to VT alert. We think it's a good product. We use it a lot. We think everyone should sign up for it and we continue to push it to everyone. 
    
>> Thank you. And David Krueger, you have your hand up if you want to go ahead and ask a question. 
>> Yes, thank you for the presentation. I do have two questions. So last year, I went to on a trip to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, that area, and at that time, there was warnings for tornado weather. And so, I got messages in my phone, I hadn't signed up for anything, you know, it came through automatically, and TV stations were all broadcasting those warnings. 
    And so, I was just thinking about, you know, the floods here last year in Vermont. I didn't see that type of kind of response, you know, on like the TV stations. You know, I saw, there was a press conference, but there weren't interpreters available or provided for that. 
    And I didn't get those notification on my phone. So just thinking about even though it was just happening in certain parts of the state but it didn't look like ‑‑ didn't seem like to me last year, it was pushed out to the whole state. So I'm just wondering what type of things would kind of qualify to that level where it would be pushed out to everybody? That's the first question. 
    I'll let you answer that before I ask my second. 
>> Thank you. Yeah. It's a great question. Basically, that's a national weather service criteria as to what gets pushed out through IPAWS. The international ‑‑ it's a coding system that the Federal Government has. That's what you saw for the squalls this weekend. 
    They have certain criteria that there is an immediate threat to life and safety, like tornadoes. It wouldn't be, for example, hurricanes or snowstorms, something you have an inkling that it's coming along. For our situation this summer, it was more the floods. So there was lots of press briefings about the flood. There was lots of national weather service alerts about flood watches and warnings. So that was the way they put them out. But there wasn't any immediate threat to life and safety. So they didn't rise to the level of a national weather service pushing out one of those IPAWS alert. What you can do through VT Alert sign up for NWS. 
    And I live in Addison County, I get alerts for Addison County. Every flood alert immediately shows up on my phone as a text, I click on the link and read where it is. It links back to the national weather service. So it's accurate and timely. But what it is is a way for me to just instead of having to go to the national weather service web page and look at it, it gets pushed to me because I ask for it and I can read it and it shows up on my phone. That's the best way to do it. 
    And that's why we advise all citizens to sign up for VT Alert. And you can pick, there's a lot of categories you can pick from, traffic alerts, weather alerts, you know, local fire alerts, safety alerts. Sign up for what you want. And if weather's one of them, it'll show up on your phone every time and have a nice link to a text written page at the national weather service. 
    
>> I have a followup question to that. 
>> OK. 
>> Is that ‑‑ like, if we know, if we know that there's the potential or know it's going to flood. Like this summer, we knew it was coming. And there was fair enough advance warning. Is there categories, is there ‑‑ has this SEOC ever considered formulating almost like preparatory warning alerts versus just last‑minute flash alerts, you know, imminent flooding, get to high ground? A lot of times, people don't go to weather.com and they don't necessarily watch the news, right. 
    And so, it's kind of like if there's, you know, preparation alerts coming from ‑‑ 
>> That's a great question. 
>> That says this is not a joke. Be forewarned. Yeah, you'll get the immediate crisis alerts, but, take action now to prepare as they do on the news stations around potential blizzards and snowstorms? 
>> Right. And that's somewhat what they do for floods, as well. There's a flood watch, which means there's a potential for that flood coming up. And if you signed up for weather alerts through VT Alert, you'd get the first one that says there's a potential for flood. Get ready, understand what you need to do. Get your plans ready. 
    And then, that escalates to a flood warning, which means a flood is potentially imminent or is occurring now. That's the second stage. There's a two‑step process. There's also a an advisory, which potentially comes out earlier, for the most part NWS National Weather Service will do an event a warning. If they think there's a high probability and they use lots of statistical modeling. But if there's a high probability there's going to be a flood, they will outline that area and say they are now under a flood warning, meaning, you should be ready for a flood. 
    You should prepare and watch, be on top of what's going on and understand what the ramifications are. 
    So those are steps that you could see through VT Alert. And that VT Alert makes it easier. You can go to the NWS website and watch these but you'd have to understand and know that there's the potential. But when you sign up for the VT Alert, you become this receiver of the information. It's pushed to you. And you're going to get a text and it's going to say, there is a watch now, you know, that gets you ‑‑ that gets you thinking. 
    And then, there's the warning, which gets you actually responding. So that's the process that national weather service has. 
>> OK. I just had a second ‑‑ a second question, though, before you went ‑‑ and that kind of goes right into my second question. Which is, specifically to deaf and hard of hearing people and their connection to the emergency services, so I'm just wondering about communication access, you know, for signing and captioning. But so ‑‑ just making sure that those things are considered. 
    And thinking about where an interpreter, if you get an interpreter, how that person fits into the frame of the newscast. And it's not going to matter much, you know, to folks who can hear, but it is going to impact, greatly, people who are depending on the visual communication. So just wondering about your thoughts on that. 
>> Yeah. It's a great point. And someone mentioned that during some of the press conferences early this summer, there was not an interpreter. And that was an oversight on our part. So we do apologize for that. 
>> Yeah, and then, just the narrow framing, even if there is an interpreter, sort of how it's cut or how it's framed sort of Zooming in. You can see once in a while a hand come into frame, but you can't see the whole message. If you're watching it on TV, thinking of how it's framed as having that person provided. 
>> Well, that's a great point. I did not see that. I'd have to ‑‑ that's a good point. We'll have to talk to the news centers how they frame it and making sure ‑‑ 
>> Yeah, and we have tried to talk to people about the frame and how it's cut and, you know, it's always, well, you have to talk to this person and that's not my job and that's someone's. So just thinking about making sure that the access that you're providing is being used and is useful because it's in the frame.  Of ‑‑ 
>> I had not heard that. 
>> And oftentimes we hear, there's captioning, but captioning is ‑‑ I don't know if you've ever depended on captioning, but it is, sometimes, especially the last‑minute events, it's not great, it's way blind, misses chunks of information. And many people who use sign language to communicate, English captions are not going to be good enough. In emergency situations, it's important to get it in your first language. 
>> That's a great point. I never heard that as a problem before. So I will talk to our PIO and have him develop a plan to see how we can work on that. But I appreciate you bringing that up. As to having an interpreter there, we've now made sure that's in our process, in hour procedures that when we are scheduling a press conference that they are contacted. 
    We have on ‑‑ I guess on standby, interpreters to make sure that we have them available for those kind of last‑minute things. So trying to make sure they are ‑‑ 
>> Great. Great. 
>> I'll run (inaudible). 
>> That's perfect. Thank you so much. 
>> Thank you, David. 
>> Will, I know you have your hand up, and I think that's because you're going to ask the questions in the chat box. So I ‑‑ being mindful of the time, we only have about 5 minutes left. Couple quick questions around ‑‑ mentioned you offer an all‑day training for the public. If someone is interested, where could they sign up for that? 
>> The all‑day training is usually for municipalities that are using it. We don't necessarily have a training for citizens to sign up for it. But I can look into that, as well, to see what are available. Mostly, it's you go to the website, it explains what happens and you can create a log‑in and choose the categories of emergency alerts that you want. And it's very nicely laid out to kind of explain itself. And then, once you start getting alerts, if you're like I don't want that alert anymore, you go back in and shut it off. If you find there was an alert you didn't, you can turn it on. 
    It's a very self‑explanatory system for this the citizens to use. We also have on our side, we're called the alert system. So we use it for much greater things. That's the individuals that we have a full day training on. Municipalities that can use it. 
    So even, for example, if the town doesn't have ‑‑ isn't going to send out a VT alert but the local municipality can if there's an incident. They don't have to go through the state to get it done. I'll go back to my town of Bristol. If Bristol was having a flood event, they have the capacity to go in and do a quick VT Alert. 
    If all of the people in the town were signed up for, they would immediately get it. That would be the best way for the system to work if every citizen in the state was signed up for it. And then, every municipality had the capabilities to use it, they would be the front line, instead of the town having to call the state to tell them what's going on and having the state having to set something up. The town EMD just had the capabilities to go in and immediately make this message and immediately send it out. That's how the system works best is if everyone's involved in it and everyone uses it. 
    
>> Somebody asked if an interpreter on the flow chart arrangement already. I don't think people could really see. And if not, is it possible, you know, we go back to that previous conversation to make sure we always have, you know, interpreter on standby. Somebody mentioned there's still no captioning provided for emergency press conferences. Is there any effort underway to address that issue? 
    Deb, do you ‑‑ when you say captioning, you talking about CART captioning or captioning on the television? 
>> At this point, we would accept just about anything with letters. But captioning ‑‑ CART is best. But in an emergency situation, just captioning something. It does ‑‑ hard of hearing community absolutely no good to watch an interpreter if the vast majority of hard of hearing people do not know sign language. You know, providing an interpreter is excellent. And it needs to be, you know, interpreter needs to be there for the deaf community. 
    But too many folks think that, you know, if you have any kind of hearing loss, it's sort of like this gift that falls on your head, suddenly you know sign language. It's just not the case. So there really needs to be interpreters in, you know, that distinct box so they can be fully ‑‑ see. And there needs to be captioning. 
    70,000 hard of hearing people in Vermont. The press conferences, the emergency alerts, ton of good information, and it simply is not accessible to people with hearing loss. 
>> I ‑‑ and I'm going to jump in there quickly. So I think from a television standpoint, captioning, if I'm not mistaken, sometimes, it becomes difficult for networks to caption realtime if it's a live event. That being said, there are ways to get around that. Saying we have prepared statements. If the governor has a prepared statement. If someone from SEOC has a prepared statement, it should be given to the networks prior so they caption, you know they have the captions ready to go as the person's speaking at the live event. 
    More often than not, none of these are press conferences are on the fly. Just speaking, you know, without having prepared statements. So I think there are ways we can continue to figure out how to make this work. 
    
>> The technology ‑‑ 
>> (Inaudible). 
>> The technology is such that I can sit down in a coffee shop and have captioning anywhere with anyone immediately. Is it 100% accurate? No, not always. But if the technology can give me everyday captioning for my life, somehow the television stations ‑‑ and emergency management and people who have vital information that are going to save people's lives, they can figure it out, too. 
    You know, get the engineers on it. We need captioning. 
>> OK. 
>> I'm sorry, I just ‑‑ if I can do this, those guys can do that. 
>> Yeah, I appreciate the feedback. That's something I'm definitely going to look into. 
>> I ‑‑ there's a lot of questions here and, Eric, I know you have to leave. I'm going to cholate everything from the chat box. And maybe what I'll do is send them to you with questions and suggestions and then, maybe you can respond to that. 
    You know, there's bigger questions like, you know, does the agency have a language access plan? And if not, you know, how can we help? How can we, you know, you know, help you get that into the process? To help improve the overall messaging? 
    So, yeah. Yeah. If you could go ahead and send me the PowerPoint. 
>> Yep. 
>> And any other relevant information you have, I'll make sure the council gets that and I'll send you all of the questions that popped up in this box for you to review and, you know, try to answer and get back to us if that works. 
>> Yeah, I've been reading through them. They're great questions. I look forward to trying to answer them. And thanks, everyone, for the great questions and I think this is a good opportunity to try to make the process better. I look forward to it. And I'm happy to work with you. 
>> Thank you. 
>> Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Bye. 
>> Thanks, Eric. 
>> OK. So ‑‑ we're a little past that. So why don't we jump into some updates and then we'll take a break. So, Val, do you want to jump on and give an update for VCIL? 
>> Yes. Everybody see me OK? Hopefully, this is all right. Yeah. A little back lit. Sorry. Let me see if I can change that. Let me relocate. 
    So hello, I'm Val Hughes and work for the Vermont Center for Independent Lives with deaf independent coordination. I work statewide providing services to deaf and hard of hearing consumers. Updates from VCIL. Right now, I mean, we've got a COVID coordinator at VCIL, their name is Kate Larose, she's been doing such amazing work collecting all of the COVID tests and distributing them for free. 
    So she did get 150,000 COVID test kits so far. I do have some in my office, in Brattleboro. So, I have another office in VCIL and there's other locations that do have them, as well. If you need COVID tests, contact VCIL at any point in time, happy to get those to you we also have masks, the N95, plenty of supplies, if you need them, let us know. 
    What else? Super busy these days. I am relocating up north. I'm a little bit discombobulated these days. Trying to get resettled and situated and getting into the office. I haven't got an office space as of yet. I do have the office in Brattleboro, but trying to relocate up north and I'm working from home, currently, as you can see. 
    But I am working with a lot of clients in general who are struggling with getting social security, which has kind of been, you know, par for the course. Also working with folks who are currently experiencing homelessness. There's been a rise of that. 
    Which you're all well aware of. I'm also helping partner with other organizations to make sure all of our people get what they need. Thank you so much for having Eric come from the emergency management team. I'm really hoping with this, we can have a great partnership and seriously improve the access for all of our community that we desperately need and deserve. 
    Yeah, I think that's pretty much it for me at this point in time. Thank you. Any questions. All right, thank you, everybody. 
>> Thank you, Val. Next up, we have VANCRO update. Jessica? 
>> Hey, good morning, everybody. This is Jessica from the VANCRO. Sorry about the background. My daughter who is 6 months old is on the floor. So I'm trying to make sure I keep an eye on her so I'm on the floor, as well. Anyhoo. It's been cold the past few days, I am trying to, you know, make sure I think about all of the things I need to do while I'm also unthawing my brain. 
    We just wrapped up a cohort 1 for the VANCRO apprenticeship for Vermont interpreters. We had 3 apprentices that came to Vermont for this program. So, they relocated and they have been doing their apprenticeship and really going well, of course, you know, trial and error because it was our first cohort. We had things we've learned from the experience. 
    Especially for our second cohort, which is starting tomorrow. Actually. So we're super psyched about that. The first three in the cohort love their time in Vermont and benefitted a lot. They've gotten a sense of Vermont, New England, the interpreting experience, the deaf people, the deaf/blind folks. We're hoping at least one or two will stay after their experience. We shall see. 
    But they really felt good about it and it went well. Had some really great mentors they worked with. So grateful for all of those mentors who took their time to work with them, to talk about the field of interpreting in Vermont. To work on observations to allow them to come on‑site with them. With the next cohort, we have 3 new people who are coming, again, they're starting tomorrow. 
    And that will go for the next couple of months. Really great program to have. If you have questions or thoughts or comments about that, please let me know. Happy to say more about it. It is run by another staff, Sarah Collins at VANCRO. She is one of our regional program managers for VANCRO. So she's taken the lead on this specific program. But of course, she and I work together to look at different assignments that might be beneficial for these apprentices to come through. Because I live here, and she does not. 
    So we're tag teaming that. The Vermont SSP program. I would say, in general, it's doing OK. But we need more SSPs, we really do. We are searching for more SSPs, so if you know of anybody, let us know. We're hoping to get the word out there. I'm so grateful that we had, I think yesterday, or last night, we had WCAX have a blurb go out that talked about one the deafblind person, talked about the program, that was a wonderful news story. 
    Also, our vice president Cory Bruner did have a little bit of a spot on that, as well, talked to some local news entities, to get the word out there. Thank you for putting that in there, Laura, I was going to add the link to the chat, but now it's there. Take a look when you have a chance. 
    So, please, watch it, take a look, spread the word, we really want this program to survive and thrive. We are capped, currently, at deafblind folks who receive SSP services, and we do have a wait list. 
    So we need more SSPs. We want to serve everybody, we want to serve more, but with a limited number of actual SSPs, that's tough. And we do know that the grant itself is a grant and it's pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things but trying to do more outreach to say, hey, our funding is short‑term. We need to figure out how to make this long‑term. This is a pilot program. Once the grant runs out, what do we do? We're trying to show that there is a need within the State of Vermont and get people's attention to keep it going. 
    Val, did you have a question? Oh, nope, sorry. Accidental camera on, anyhoo, questions anytime are welcome. That's the SSP, share it widely. We did get a few interpreters who actually relocated to Vermont. 
    I don't think it was intentional for the work, but they just happened to relocate and ended up being like, hey, I can do some work in the state. So that's great. We've got wonderful interpreters coming into the state and more and more, happy to have them. They're both hearing interpreters as well as deaf interpreters, it's so exciting to have them here. 
    Let's see. I would say overall, our outreach continues to be going well. Of course, we would love to do more outreach, but we're doing as best we can. We're setting up really great connections. We've got some biweekly trainings at one hospital in Brattleboro. So I co‑present with DVAS on that and we've been doing that in other locations, now we have a set schedule, the staff at that hospital are delighted to have us there and they're learning so much. 
    So it's oftentimes with new staff as well as seasoned staff. So they're coming to learn more about working with deaf patients. So we're hoping that this will spread further afield and more hospitals and more places will come onboard and have recurring trainings. So they really understand how to work with our community and how to work with interpreters and what that looks like specific to the medical setting. 
    Um ‑‑ I think that covers all of my list at this point. Let me just double check. Hopefully, I didn't miss anything, but let me know if you have questions, thoughts, concerns, comments. Anybody? 
>> Any questions for Jessica? 
>> If anything comes to mind, of course, contact me, email me, let me know what's going on. All right. Thanks, everybody, thanks for your time. 
>> Thank you, Jessica. OK. Vermont Association for the Deaf update, David? 
>> Yes, hey, everybody. This is David Krueger here. And I'm president of the Vermont Association of the Deaf. Quick summary about updates. So I have been president for a while now and we do have elections coming up. We're supposed to have elections back in the fall, but due to some conflict with schedules and other deaf events, we have been putting it off. So we tried to do it January 6th, unfortunately, we did not have a quorum. We did not have enough people attending that event, so we could not hold elections, gosh darn it. 
    We're going to try, again, February 11th. Mark your calendars. Please, tell everybody to show up at this event. This is how the voting process has to happen. We need people there. So I am not planning to run for president, again. At this point, not sure who the next president is going to be, what that's going to look like. 
    But with VTAD, in general, we've been pretty active, we're really doing our due diligence to get people involved with the organization. We're definitely seeing that a lot of Vermonters, deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, don't fully understand what it's like to work within the Vermont government system. Like, what is it ‑‑ what does it mean to actually be someone who goes to task and lobbies and works with legislators? 
    So we'd like to have somebody come from the National Association of the Deaf to educate us about how to do more work as an association of the deaf at the state level. In terms of bills, we're going to hopefully have Rebecca Lalane come from DVAS to talk about the Bill of Rights, how you put forth a bill and what that process looks like, hopefully, Rebecca, you can talk a little bit more to that. 
>> Hey, everyone. So yeah, happy to talk about the bill right now. I already shared the information with Spenser and the council. The current update on the Bill of Rights, Senator Hashim has submitted. It's in process, it's been introduced officially, you're welcome to keep tabs on it through the website and I'll keep an update with the senator and let you know anything that's going on. 
    As of right now, they're at the beginning of the legislative session, it's the first step, but it has been officially introduced. 
    
>> All right, thanks, Rebecca, keep us posted. So, again, we're really encouraging people to help out with that, work on that, and I think that's pretty much it. It's winter, finally, it's arrived. I'm super psyched about that. Any questions? Any comments? 
>> I have a question. So ‑‑ 
>> Yeah. 
>> So this is more of ‑‑ what happens if you do not get a quorum of members at the next meeting for election officers? Around trying to get, you know, members of the deaf association involved in the governance and in the organization in order to be actively involved and vote on. And if that doesn't happen, is there a need to reassess your bylaws so that you're not constantly facing this problem? 
>> Hmm, that's a great question. So in terms of the quorum, that's based on membership. So, yeah, in order to have enough people, I mean, we don't want to reduce the number of the quorum to kind of have people just not show up. But anyway, we're trying to figure out how to best do that. It's sad ‑‑ we don't want to set a bad precedent. We want to make sure we're not always tweaking our bylaws and don't want the bylaws to be fruitless. We do need to figure out how to really get people excited and onboard, January 6th, we did have a presentation. Franly had come in to give presentation on restorative justice, wonderful guest speaker, it was awesome, super great presentation, I had seen him do it last year at the National Black Deaf Association. I was blown away by it. I thought, great, he's going to be our draw to get more people. He's a grad student currently at UVM. Can you come give a presentation? 
    I advertised as much as I could for 2 months and then, I don't know, I think people didn't understand what restorative justice was and didn't fully understand, you know, they weren't comfortable with the new concept. And I don't know, maybe it was just ‑‑ they didn't know what they didn't know, so they decided not to attend and that could have been the low numbers. 
    For February 11th, I am, hopefully, having the draw with the super bowl. Trying to get a chance of people coming together for the super bowl at least, we did get a big auditorium with a huge screen, 40‑foot screen to watch the super bowl. So I mean, who wouldn't want to come to that? 
    I feel like we'll have more numbers there, it's a higher percentage to get, at least, 40 people. That's all we need. We need 40 people to get this going. So I think we can get 40 with the super bowl event. It's in central Vermont in Randolph, so hopefully, that's going to be a better draw, as well. It's at Vermont State University, same location where we've had the DBHI plus event in April. People are familiar with that area, hopefully they're willing to come, again, super bowl, familiar location, it's right off the highway. Easy, peasy. 
    I suspect we'll have enough numbers, again, it's Central Vermont, a little bit easier to get to. We shall see. Again, come, have a good time, watch the game, and vote. So we'll see. We'll see. 
    
>> Thank you. I look forward to seeing how it goes. And, you know, if you end up having a situation where, again, you don't have a quorum, you know, there are other ways that you are able to achieve, you know, election of officers not having to do it in person. You could set up a process where it could be done electronically with candidates. 
    So ‑‑ 
>> Yeah, we did actually talk about that. And we did talk about the notion of voting online with the caveat that, you know, the average person in Vermont is not really comfortable with Zoom. And I've seen that time and time, again. Especially with our previous online meetings. We didn't have great attendance for that. 
    So we had a town hall meeting over the summer that I went to St. Johnsbury and went to Bennington and Rutland and talking with people, I asked, hey, what about the Zoom meetings and they said, no, technology is not my forte, I don't get it, I don't know how to pin people, it's confusing, it's choppy. Knowing that from our constituents and that technology is not everyone's best friend, we probably need to do a training or ‑‑ I mean, it depends. 
    We could also figure out another option to, I don't know, get out there and make sure people understand how to do online voting, how to do online meetings. And once everybody's comfortable with the technology, then we could potentially have a quorum through an online platform as opposed to in person. Yeah. 
>> Anybody have any questions for David? 
>> Thank you. All right. Seeing none, I guess I'm good. Thank you, everybody. 
>> Deb? HLAA update? 
>> Yes. Hi, everybody. Good morning. I'm Deb Charlea Baker. Well, it's been an interesting fall. We had a number of illnesses throughout the steering committee. So ‑‑ but the work continues. You know, we still take calls and emails and inquiries, people asking for information and resources and we provide that sort of support. A number of us are involved in sister organizations that ‑‑ of disability and hearing loss. 
    We did not have a meeting in November for logistical and illness reasons. But, we're kicking off the new year, we're really very excited. We're going to have Cory Bruner of VANCRO come and present to us on January 30th from 12:00 to 1:00. And she's going to be explaining the SSP program, which is really very exciting. 
    On two different levels. One for our members who do also have vision loss along with their hearing loss. But also, for members who may be very interested in, in providing services, getting training and providing services. 
    So we're really looking forward to this meeting. And hoping that we're going to get a big turn out to listen to Cory's presentation. I did happen to catch the SSP presentation on WCAX and was very impressed. It was ‑‑ it was a very exciting resource. And anyway, other than that, my report's going to be short today. 
    As I said, the same kind of thing, there will be a winter quarter newsletter coming out shortly. If you're not on the mailing list, please let me know and I'll definitely put you in touch with the ‑‑ with Carol, to make sure that you get that information. 
    The annual convention for the national HLAA this year is going to be in Phoenix, Arizona. June 26th to the 29th. So, I have not seen an itinerary yet, but it's always chock block full. And if you're curious, if you go on the national website, you'll be able to get the details. But that's ‑‑ I highly encourage people to look into that. 
    So, like I said, it's going to be a short ‑‑ a short report today. Are there any questions? 
>> Thanks, Deb, I know you'll be giving an update later in the meeting about the work of the subcommittee. So that'll be more comprehensive. 
>> Right. Right. 
>> Any questions? 
>> That's part of why ‑‑ 
>> Anybody have any questions for Deb around HLAA activities? Deb, thank you very much. 
>> OK. 
>> Laura has a question. 
>> Yeah. I was just going to say, do you want to mention about the presentation that are coming down the pike. Those 3 presentations. 
>> Do you want to speak to that? 
>> I mean, I can. 
>> Laura, why don't you cover it in your update? And then ‑‑ 
>> Yeah, sure, I can just include it in my update. No problem. Sure. 
>> OK. That's you. And then, we will have a quick update from Linda on EHDI and we'll day care a break. 
>> Good morning, this is Linda Hazard, the Vermont EHDI program director as well as the director for the deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind education services program. I just have a couple quick updates this morning. The first one is, you know, EHDI is busy in grant season right now. 
    We have applied for the HRSA5‑year grant and are in the process of the extension of year 5 for the CDC grant. They decided not to do a new round but just to extend the current ‑‑ the current grant. So we're excited about that. It makes life a whole lot easier. 
    The other update that I have is around language assessments. We have been partnering ‑‑ we have a supplemental funding from HRSA for language assessments for our birth to 3 populations. So primarily at age 2, 2.6 months and 2.11 months prior to children going into part B services. And we are partnering with the University of Colorado Odyssey program, which is a CDC special project. And they are looking and hoping that maybe we can extend into 4 and 5‑year‑olds, which feels like it aligns nicely with the Bill of Rights that has recently been introduced to look at kindergarten readiness. 
    So we are ‑‑ I'm thinking this would be a great way of partnership with all of the providers across the state that are serving preschool students to look at language assessments for 4 and 5‑year‑olds. And also, work with our districts to see if we can put a plan together. And that, I think, the rest of my updates are pretty much already reported in the legislative reports. 
    So thank you so much. If you have any questions, please let me know. 
>> Thank you, Linda, does anybody have any updates or any questions for Linda? OK. Thank you. Close to catching up on time here. So it's 10:40, we'll take a break, short break. Why don't we reconvene in 8 minutes 10:48 ‑‑ 
>> This is ‑‑ 
>> Back on our schedule. 
>> This is Kate, yes, Kate? 
>> Go ahead. 
>> Yeah. Just ‑‑ just do ‑‑ a really quick update just before we go to break. 
>> OK. Go ahead. 
>> Do you mind? 
>> Yep. 
>> So I'm Kate Parrish from HireAbility Vermont. And so, I just wanted to let you know, just a couple of things that are in the works right now. The first is that ‑‑ HireAbility Vermont is focusing on apprenticeships and training for participants. And I'm working to make sure that we can L work together to be prepared if a deaf and hard of hearing participant is interested in apprentice or training, we have a process sort of ready to go to make sure those needs can be met. And we're talking some about what we need to do for making sure they're accessible and have accommodations ready. 
    Ready from the start and so that there is, you know, a delay in getting things set up for that. So that's something we're having real conversation about. The second thing ‑‑ is trying to focus on improving or increasing referrals from schools, for transition services and transition age youth who are deaf and hard of hearing to our CD counselors. So I'm working with HireAbility transition coordinator Kara Haines, and we're working together to kind of talk with transition counselors to think about how we can have a better connection and think about how they can refer to the RCD program. Rehab counselor for the deaf program. 
    Connecting with students and increasing the referrals so we can work with students and provide more services for them and just be able to plan for their future a little bit better. Those are two things I'm working on at HireAbility. 
    All right. That was it. Thank you. 
>> Anybody have any questions for Kate? OK. All right. Thank you very much. OK. So it's 10:42. Let's keep it at 8 minutes. Why don't we come back at 10:50. 

    
>> Spenser, I can share my screen, right? 
>> Yeah, although it's Laura's screen, so I think she has to authorize it. So ‑‑ all right, I'll call the meeting back to order. Hopefully, everyone's back on. See the captioning is. So why P don't we jump back into it and have Sharon provide the update on the school‑age subcommittee. 
>> Great. Hello, everyone, great to see you on this chilly day. Couple things. We had a very successful provider and parent education session back in November. Around 48 or 50 attendees with Cheryl Deconde Johnson as our keynote speaker. 
    And one of the things that came about ‑‑ and she certainly emphasized was some of the data that's collected here in Vermont or not collected. And most importantly, not shared with the council in an appropriate way. And so, you saw all of the emails back and forth, July, July through October, so where the council was requesting data from vendors, and it was not forthcoming, it was coming forward in a way that didn't make a whole lot of sense, wasn't consistent, et cetera, et cetera. 
    And this has been going on for three plus years or so. And given our legislative mandate to assess services for the school‑aged children, it really makes it difficult for us as a council to move forward in a sort of meaningful way to make progress and make sure our kids are receiving the services that they should be receiving and more importantly, are they achieving the academic outcomes that we hope and know they potential little could? 
    So, the school age subcommittee has undertaken an effort to begin a data standardization format so that we could, as a council, get data that would be meaningful and would help us answer important questions that we as a council are legislatively mandated to do. 
    And one of the emails that was forthcoming last fall was, well, if we knew what data fields you wanted to have before the grant cycle started, we could better respond to some of the questions. So, the subcommittees ask to the council was going to be, to consider the data fields that we are recommending based on the experts that are on our subcommittee. 
    And when we meet, again, in is it March or April, Spenser? That the council would vote to endorse the this effort and then the council would make a recommendation to the AOE that the future grant recipients of the AOE funding, if that model remains would report these data not only to the AOE but also to the council. 
    I'm going to just briefly share my screen with you ‑‑ everyone seeing the screen now? Yesterday evening, I sent you an email. And these are the 8 data fields we are considering at the moment. This is a draft. We're meeting, again, in early March to finalize this a bit more. But there'll be data related to demographics, data related to diagnosis, communication mode used by the students, the technology, the type of student plan that is in place. Data related to the student services, including the number of hours and the type of service. 
    Then, there are a couple of predictive factors that we're interested in because the literature shows that they're highly predictive of future success. And one is age at identification. And the second is whether or not the child has participated in early intervention. 
    And then, the last big data field is related to educational assessment. Both the state standardized testing and reading, writing, and math. And then, any sort of language assessment that is done by the qualified professional who is working with that student. 
    So those are the big domains that we're thinking of ‑‑ and on the PowerPoint I shared with you, the data that was ‑‑ Dr. Johnson presented in November was some of this data here, which is really only a subset of the students that were served. We don't know whether it was a subset of the IEP students or the 504 students or who these students are, but it's only 146 of the 300 plus students that were served by the UVM CARES team or the UVM ESP program. And we certainly don't have any data on other students across the state served be I different vendors. 
    So our system is very fragmented. And consequently, our students are not being served well, and things are really falling between the cracks. But you look at this and you see the number of students that are one, two, and three grade levels below their expected performance. 
    So that's what is driving our effort is to have a complete data setup so we know who we're serving and then, we having a sense of how well they're being served. And that would be a beginning of fulfilling our legislative mandate. 
    So, the subcommittee will meet again in early March. And then, once we finalize our recommended data set, we will send it to the council, hopefully, giving you a week or two to review the data fields so that you understand. And then, I will ask Spenser and Will to hold a vote so the council members can vote whether to endorse it and make the recommendation to the AOE that AOE grant recipients going forward in the future would report these data fields annually to the council and, of course, to the AOE. 
    So let me just stop there and ‑‑ and see if there are any questions with regard to what we're doing, why we're doing it, and the process. 
>> Quick question on that, I'm just looking ‑‑ I'm ‑‑ factoring in the timing of this. So are you going to be finalizing the proposed data ‑‑ 
>> Early March. 
>> In March. And so, we have a meeting later. But that meeting's coming before. I'm just wondering ‑‑ when that's finalized by the subcommittee and I'm assuming this is what you plan on doing is to send it out to the council to at least get them to get up to speed on it prior to discussing it at the council meeting so that we're not learning about it on the fly. 
    And then, people can follow up with you if they have questions about what you're proposing after that subcommittee meeting for the larger council meeting. 
>> I'm sorry, what's your question, Spenser? 
>> Well, my question is ‑‑ I'm trying to figure out from a timing perspective. You're going to present what's being asked ‑‑ it's just more of a procedural question. Are you going to be asking the council to vote in person at the council meeting in March? Which comes after your subcommittee meeting. You're finalizing what you will be voting at the subcommittee on March 6th what you're asking the full council to vote on at its March ‑‑ whatever meeting, you know. 
    I just want to allow enough time for the ‑‑ the council members to be educated on what the data fields are and if people have questions. So I'm assuming you're going to email the full council what the recommendations are before the full council meeting. 
>> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry if I didn't say that. Yes. As soon as this ‑‑ subcommittee meets in early March, I will send out the full, full list, but of course, what I'm showing you here today and the email and just now on the screen share was the general flavor of the 8 data fields that we're going to be looking at. 
    So if you have any other data fields that you would like to see that would help us answer meaningful questions about this population, by all means, share them to me. But the 8 data fields were the ones we're sort of honing in on now. I'm just sort of priming you what to expect in early March. 
    From the subcommittee. And Julie raises an excellent point, and I've made a note of this, is that there are students who are ‑‑ who have a hearing loss and ‑‑ are learning English as a second language. And so, that of course, needs to be considered, as well. Thank you, Julie. 
    So if you have other thoughts about data fields or this process, please feel free to email me. And we'll ‑‑ I'll bring it forward to the subcommittee when we meet in early March. The other thing to be aware of, and I sent this in the email yesterday, as well, is that we are offering another education session on March 26th. 
    So, both for parents and providers more geared towards parents to sort of really slow things down for parents a little bit more and help them understand the checklist and how to use the checklist so that they can help advocate for their child and make sure their child is receiving services by qualified providers and what a qualified provider is and is not. 
    So, if you could forward the save the date flyer to anyone in your circle or beyond, that would be great. We're doing this in collaboration with the Vermont Hands and Voices ‑‑ excuse me, committee, and the Vermont Coalition for the NASDI guidelines. So emails will be forthcoming, hopefully, in the next week, if not sooner, so we can get the word out and get a good turnout as we did in November. 
    And I will ask Sherry if there's anything I've forgotten or anything she wants to add, given that she's my co‑chair on this subcommittee, this very busy subcommittee. 
    But she may have stepped away. She's in the thick of budget season right now in the public school system. So, welcome any input. And oh, the other thing is that ‑‑ at our subcommittee ‑‑ oh, there she is. Our subcommittee meeting, it was just last week, I think it was on the 10th, the subcommittee had an opportunity to meet the new state director for special education services, I'm not sure that's exact title, but it was a position that Jackie Kelleher held and the new director is Heather Doxy Willis, and she brings with us her from Florida of all places during this very, very cold snap, a wealth of information and experience that will help us move the data effort forward. 
    I've been emailing with her quite a bit. And the other thing is that the two representatives from the UVM CARES team has resolved, apparently, their conflict of interest that has been a barrier to their participation for the last two years. I'm waiting to hear the details on what resolved ‑‑ because I don't want anymore of these impasses getting in the way of moving this work forward. But Patty Dickman Hodgedon and Pam Hoover are now going to be active members of the school age subcommittee. 
    So really looking forward to their input. So now, Sherry, if there's anything else I've forgotten, please, jump back on, again. You may have disappeared, again. 
    Oh, well, she's gone. So anyway, look forward to working with everyone and please email me with any questions or any ideas or other points you think the subcommittee should consider. 
    And this is a very hardworking, busy committee. We've accomplished a lot. I appreciate everyone's input and help on these efforts. 
    
>> Will has his hand. 
>> Will? 
>> Thank you so much for all of your work on the subcommittee. I did take a look at ‑‑ through your PowerPoint with the statistics that you shared. And I was just wondering if you know, you know, which school in Vermont has sort of the largest number of deaf and hard of hearing students? You know, is it ‑‑ like, is it Burlington high school? Just trying to think of big schools. Is there one that has kind of a concentration? Or just curious. 
    
>> So, Will, the data is presented to the council in such a way that none of those important questions can be asked or answered. So that is one of the one of the importance ‑‑ things we perhaps could address. And of course, all of this has to be taken into account to respect any sort of FERPA requirements, and of course, the FERPA guidelines are not forthcoming with what cell size must be suppressed. So we have to look to the State of Vermont to see what Vermont has decided. And I've asked for that information and that has not been forthcoming either. 
    So if you can forward to me, Will, other questions like that that you think would be important to know or to be able to be answered, you have to structure the data set in a way that it can answer ‑‑ questions. So if county is an important factor that you think is important to know, then please forward that to me. I think ‑‑ does that answer your question, Will? 
>> Yes, thank you. 
>> And I'll just add it goes to, you know, it's obviously a HIPAA issue getting to that level of detail. But there could be ways around it where you focus on it at a regional level. Even at a county level, you're getting to a level of detail that could be considered too close to being violation of HIPAA. So, but maybe, perhaps, at a regional level, you know, if you're looking at northwest and versus the northeast and, you know, doing it in the aggregate, it may make it easier so you have a sense of where the numbers reside within Vermont at a regional level. 
    And still get by without having too much detail. 
>> I think, also, you know, again, if you read the HIPAA regulations very carefully, they don't specify cell size, everyone defaults to N of 10, because that's where the center of Medicare services regulates. Again, I'm looking for an answer from the State of Vermont what the State of Vermont requires and that hasn't been forthcoming. But maybe Sherry can jump in here. And then, we'll have to answer the question from Cassie. 
>> Yeah, I think ‑‑ for us as a school district, it is what size ‑‑ it's personally identifiable information. So based on the number of students involved, would you be able to determine who that individual is because of the size of the group? And so that's what we really have to be careful about. And I'll defer to Cassie on this one. I think that's what she's going to talk about. 
>> Yeah, I was just going to name what everyone said. It's a protection for students that isn't something we can necessarily get around. And my understanding is it's an N of 10, what Sharon and Sherry have said. And I don't know who Sharon has been in touch with who hasn't been forthcoming, I've talked to the data team and shared these fields. I think they're happy to explain what we're talking about. 
    I just don't know if they've received that question as it's been specified in this dialog. Just something to keep in mind. 
>> Mm‑hmm. 
>> Yeah, and I ‑‑ sorry, I apologize. I'm coming from the health care world. But yes, PII is, you know, the personal identifiable information. And to that extent, even if it's an N of 10, I sometimes always say that's still a little bit too, you know, too low of a ‑‑ of a cell size to do it. 
    Given, you know, given our size of our population that we're focusing on here. Because people can easily figure out, you know. So Cassie? 
>> One other thing to add I didn't mention. This data is only collected for students on IEPs. And I'm not going to be able to articulate all of that very beautifully right now. But that has more to do with federal law. And Sherry might be able to speak to some of that. But yeah, only IEP data, there's not data connected to 504s or ESTs, which ESTs are Vermont‑specific. 
>> Yeah. And so, Cassie's absolutely right. We've had extensive conversations about this. The federal law only requires that the State of Vermont report students on IEPs to the federal government and guess what, the agency for education reported an N of 61 students last year who are deaf or hard of hearing. And of course, based on the data that I've showed you and what vendors have reported, it's upwards of 300 students being served. 
    So even at that level, it gets tricky because not all students who are being served by providers, deaf and hard of hearing providers, if that disability is not marked on their IEP, then there's no way for the State of Vermont to know that student has a hearing disability. So there's lots of problems with the data, which is why the subcommittee is beginning to jump into this can of worms because we don't even know who we're serving. 
    
>> No, and I appreciate the numbers. I want to share one more thing because when we present this data, I want to be clear, that number of 62 or 61 is data from two years ago. We don't know last year's number yet. And the 300 number is a combination of ESTs, 504 and IEPs. We don't have the 504EST numbers, but I have to name we're comparing two different numbers across two different years. 
>> Yeah. And so the Vermont Agency for Education reported 61, and the UVM CARES team reported 146 students on IEPs. So ‑‑ the discrepancy is there, and there's multiple sources for the discrepancy and we're trying to track them all down. 
    Sherry? 
>> I ‑‑ just a quick question here ‑‑ based on what Cassie just said, Cassie saying there's basically a two‑year lag time between when AOE reports the numbers to the Federal Agency of Education? 
>> I'm just not going to be able to describe it with justice. And that's where I call on Sherry. But I believe it's based on child find data or child count. And the numbers for last year just haven't been released yet but they've come soon. And I think Sherry might be able to articulate that better. 
>> Yeah. I know because the federal bureaucracy, a lot of times there's always a two‑year lag of data and we see it in health care all the time. So Sherry? 
>> Just real quick. So ‑‑ the 61, are those students who have been determined to meet the disability category under deaf/hard of hearing. So there are many students who may have support services around this area but do not meet the disability category. So I think what Sharon's really trying to say is, there were individual students who have a range of needs that maybe served either through an IEP or through ‑‑ sorry, CARES support services. And so how do we ‑‑ how do we create a definition that allows that? And so we have a better representation? 
    IEPs, 504s, I think there's other ways for us to collect that information. The fields are not developed, the federal requirements are not structured in that way. 
>> Federal requirement for reporting on 504 students, which is another ‑‑ unfortunate situation. 
>> Right. And remember, 504 is really a series of questions. It's not, you know, the questions that allow us to provide accommodations and modifications. So 504 is a very different support system as to IEP, IEP is mandated, 504 is supports toing a success through education. And there's no mandated need to provide ‑‑ so they're not ‑‑ they're not apples. Another kind of apple. They're apples and grapefruit. 
>> I think Linda Hazard has a question or comment. 
>> Yes. This is Linda Hazard, and I do have a couple comments. Number one is, that in that data, there were an additional 79 students served under the deaf/hard of hearing/deafblind educational service program last year. Of those 70, were on IEPs and the other 9 were on 504 plans. So I just wanted to add that to the numbers. 
    And we also have Champlain Valley School District and Bennington districts we don't have numbers on. But I think our numbers are closer to somewhere between 450 and 480 for the state, which has been pretty typical. And the second comment I was just going to make, the EHDI program, which is not the school‑age program, but birth to 3. We are required under our grants to report patient de‑identified level data annually. 
    So on every child, but we have to ‑‑ it's done statewide. We have 20 ‑‑ what were 2020 goals, now 2030 goals in public health. And we've never been able to break it down by county because the number of children identified was so small that it was easy to figure out who the child was. And I think we will definitely run into that in the regions in Vermont because our students are so spread out through the state. 
    So as we look at the data, we're going to have to really, really think about how we can present the data without going below a certain number. 
>> Mm‑hmm. 
>> Thank you. So in other words, this is a thing we have to tackle with the Federal Agency of Education. OK. Anybody have anymore followup questions for Sharon? I want to be mindful of time here. So ‑‑ 
>> Deb? 
>> Yeah. OK. It seems that the de‑identifying students is really been a problem ongoing. And this may be thinking way outside the box. Is there any way to break Vermont down into a grid system and de‑identify the geographic? Say, like, section 1, section 2, section 3? There are so many deaf students on IEPs in section 1, but you don't know if that means a corner of Brattleboro or the Northeast Kingdom. So is there a way to ‑‑ is there a work ‑‑ sneaky work around? So that you have more solid information? It seems that ‑‑ I understand wanting to de‑identify the children in the community and the school and the rest of it. But is there a way to get the actual demographics in mysterious squares? 
    
>> I can't imagine ‑‑ 
>> There are from a data perspective, absolutely. There's ways to do that. But I don't know the legality of that, Deb, so I'm going to defer to Sherry on that one. 
>> I think (inaudible) I have to defer to Sharon, she's doing an amazing job. I think our best way to collect that information is from those providing the services. An expectation in terms of how they receive support. So I think we need to go to the service providers. Sharon's got a good plan for that. 
    When you are talking about federally protected, confidential information, we do not have the authority, nordoes AOE to find workarounds. And for someone who spends lots of time in court, I don't want to go there. Don't want to go there. 
[ Laughter ]

>> I understand that. It just ‑‑ it's just been an ongoing issue and problem and it's very unfortunate. 
>> I think what you're getting at is ‑‑ 
>> Great job. 
>> When we think on the big pictures of, you know, a regional day program or any of those other things that have been floated out there, knowing the geographical data would be important, but ‑‑ that might ‑‑ yeah. I don't think that we can ‑‑ 
>> Yeah, I think really it's going to come down, it's going to boil down to trying to get at what can reasonably get out within the confines that are allowed? And so it's basically saying, well, yes, there could be a workaround, but the workaround is do it by age bracket statewide and by level of services. Even that is going to be better than, you know, what we've had in the past. 
    So ‑‑ 
>> OK. 
>> OK. I'm going to move this forward and Deb, since you're already on, I'm going to have you go ahead and give an update on the communications subcommunications access ‑‑ subgroup. Which is relevant based on the conversation ‑‑ based on the presentation we just heard this morning. And of which I sent around a report to the council this morning along with the full legislative report. But we'll talk about that after Deb gives the update. 
>> OK. Thank you. I just want to say that the subcommittee on the school age, I'm just blown away by the excellent work and the gargantuan task you're tackling. So kudos. So the subcommittee on accessibility. Our primary ‑‑ first of all, let me identify the people on our committee, Bill Hudson, Laura Siegle, Michelle John, Val Hughes, Kate Parrish, and myself. And Kate McCarthy from FEMA has also joined our, you know, sat in on our discussions, which has been really helpful. 
    Our primary focus, this fall, has been to discuss ‑‑ make clear what the issue is, give examples, concrete examples of what the issue is. And provide a visual illustration. Really looked at this in terms of among the deaf and hard of hearing group and the council and the rest of it, we all know each other, we work together, and we have our jargon and we have our ‑‑ you know, we understand what the issue is. 
    But this, we wanted to write a report for hearing folks who really have no clue. One of the frustrations we've had is that when we've individually gone to try to do advocacy, we're sort of met with a wall and met with a blank expression like, you know, so what is the big deal? We're trying to say, this is what we're talking about, this is the way it's done and this is what we need and why. 
    So we wanted to compile some recommendations. And then, also, really push for protocols. Because it's one thing to establish, you know, to approach an organization or an agency and say, gee, this is what we need, but unless there are some specific protocols, things asked for, there sort of, again, you throw hearing people into this venue and they don't know what to do with it. 
    So if people have had an opportunity to see the report that's been included in the legislative report, I encourage you to read through that. And we are visual people, so we even included ‑‑ visual examples. This is what we're talking about. There's an interpreter in the box in the corner and there is captioning here and you can see the face of the person who is presenting. 
    So in hopes of break ‑‑ finally breaking through, it's just been rather surprising at how casual our concerns have been over time, over months. And so, that was job one this fall. We decided at our last meeting that we would come to this meeting, have a report submitted. And also, that was wonderful to have Eric join us. That was very helpful to see the structure and the rest of it. 
    We have not set up our next meeting because we wanted a chance to see where things, you know, the lay of the land. And we do have some questions in terms of moving forward. We're all natural advocates. We know how to do the advocacy thing. But we need some clarification on the role of subcommittee within an advisory council. Of in terms of ‑‑ we want to identify key players. Where does the buck stop? 
    Who can we inform and educate and support? And are we going outside of our role in doing that on a face‑to‑face direct kind of way? Is this supposed to be coming through the council? Is this something that our subcommittee can, you know, get out there and make those contacts and grow those protocols and ‑‑ and do the actual on the ground level work? 
    So I guess, that's sort of the question for you, Spenser and Will. Where does that ‑‑ you know, our next ‑‑ our next phase? 
>> So, it's an intriguing question. In this context, because this is a widespread problem affecting all populations that the council is serving, and we ‑‑ and by we, I mean you and members of the council have taken it upon yourself to form the subcommittee. I see no problem for any individual on the council and anybody outside the council who has their hands on this report to advocate for this. 
    With their representatives, with their legislators, with the administration. So it's interesting ‑‑ you kind of segued into it. The report has already had an immediate impact in terms of the fact that the legislative report went in late last night and senator ‑‑ Senator Hardy, Ruth Hardy of the government operations committee emailed last night or this morning or I got the email this morning. But they are already looking for people to come in and testify next week on this exact thing. 
    Not thing, but this report. So ‑‑ to that end, the request came to me and Laura. And Laura, I know, will go in as part of the subcommittee. But in this case, I'm going to basically go back to the committee and say, I think it's best they hear from members of the subcommittee and the chair of the subcommittee, which would be you, Deb. So I'll pass that information on to you. But they are already within the government operations planning on introducing a bill about how to beef up emergency management operations in the State of Vermont. 
    So I think here it's kind of a two‑pronged approach. We had Eric here this morning, and he was a little bit on the hot seat, but I didn't realize that he's fairly new to the role. So I want to take that as an opportunity to not dwell on the past with him and say, we want to work with you to try to improve this. So let's ‑‑ work with him on the side. And then, also, do what we need to do to codify as needed in state law allowing what the process is going to look like going forward for emergency management response in terms of communications and transparency and access. 
    So, you know, I don't know that the buck really stops at the subcommittee. I mean, you are more ‑‑ for next week, I would say that, you know, you're there on behalf of the subcommittee of the council as the chair presenting the findings that were included in the legislative report. But you can also sit there and say, I'm here as an advocate as a member of the HLAA and I'm also advocating for myself as a Vermonter. 
    
>> Right. 
>> So, they're going to ask how you want to ‑‑ 
>> Well ‑‑ 
>> Yeah, they're going to ask how you want to be listed and you can do it. But I would say because you did this work as a subcommittee and the committee is asking for testimony on the recommendations and it's coming from the subcommittee, you go as, you know, a representative of the subcommittee and the council because you are representing entire subcommittee and the entire council on our behalf. 
>> OK. 
>> So ‑‑ 
>> I wasn't sure what hat to put on. And I don't normally go out and ‑‑ I'm representing the ‑‑ the advisory council. You know. That's ‑‑ 
>> Yeah. And I'm ‑‑ when I write back to Olivia, I'm going to CC you and Laura and just say, I'm not the person to be speaking to this because I did not lead the conversation, I did not lead the subcommittee, but you and Laura who are both members of the committee, subcommittee, did. And they can do it. And Laura can ‑‑ you know, Laura's obviously doing it from the background perspective of her role as the director and ‑‑ you know, state involvement and you're doing it from ‑‑ 
>> OK. 
>> From advisory standpoint of the council. Will, I'm going to let you chime in. #E. 
>> Great. Thank you. Yeah. I really appreciate all this information. I agree that it's really worthwhile to advocate as much as we can. Personally as well as members of this counsel. One thing to think about, I don't know, maybe this works, I don't know, in other states. People sometimes really have to take legal action to get things done. I know a few years back in New York State, people were so just beyond themselves because the governor was not providing interpreters for press conferences, similar to here, I believe there was a group of citizens that did actually start the process to litigate the state. 
    So, I mean, I have to be mindful because of, you know, what I say as my role within the state, but it's always an option if the power of the people goes that way. So we've got Vermont Legal Aid, you could always contact them if you needed to take further action to see what options are out there. There's Disability Rights Vermont, there's a lot of options out there to get this pushed. 
>> Thank you, Will. I'm ‑‑ 
>> I would just follow up. I'll just follow up in saying, it's clear that it hit a tone, right? Hit a nerve, for everybody involved. And I'm glad that Senator Hardy, you know, shockingly read the report last night after it was submitted and immediately turned around and wanted testimony on this. 
    So, it means we effectively have done the job of getting that issue out there right off the bat. Now, as Will said, it becomes more pushing to say that we've got to get this out there. I don't think we'll have a problem with having enough people say this needs to happen. And I'm pretty sure Senator Hardy and the members of the committee are in agreement, as well. It's trying to figure out how from their perspective of what can they and can they not do in terms of writing language that gets codified ultimately in state statute? But, you know, like for instance, I don't know what the regulatory authority of the state legislative body is to basically mandate TV stations to acquire picture in picture. That's not something I know. 
    But they have legal council on staff, they have legislative council that can go through all of that. And I don't know if that's a federal mandate. Yeah, so they'll be able to figure all of that out. So what they'll want to know is, you know, how ‑‑ really, it's just to kind of show how ineffective the current situation is and how many people were left behind and really, you know, pointing out that but then saying, these are just ‑‑ simple things that can be done that other states do. Just look across to New York governor does it for the budget address, all of the press conferences. Why can't we do it here? New Hampshire does it, you know, so ‑‑ 
    Yeah. I'm all for anybody doing all they can to drive this forward while at the same time, you know, I think, you know, you, Deb, and Laura and others could sit there and have one‑on‑one meetings or set up a group meeting with Eric from this morning to talk about, you know, here are the recommendations we made to the legislature, here ‑‑ what do you think of this? Are there things you can do on the ground that's not going to involve having the legislature codify this? 
    
>> Right. 
>> Two‑pronged approach there. 
>> In terms of the legal ‑‑ the legal issues, I have, in fact, contacted DRBT as a private citizen. And there is ‑‑ there are legal wheels turning, which everybody knows legal wheels go slowly. I had presented myself as if you need a warm body example of a hard of hearing person who is having a problem here, I'm only too happy to present my face and myself and do that. 
    That case is rolling forward as far as I know without my direct ‑‑ representation. Which is fine, you know, but if they need somebody, I've offered. But that is actually in the works. I think that, you know, we definitely will follow up with Eric because we want to know who is person who can push the button and get it done? 
    And if it's Eric, great. And if it's legislation, that's a puzzlement to me because there's a federal law that says it's supposed to be accessible. And ‑‑ and, you know, for us to have to make more legislation to say, gee, guys, you really have to be accessible, just seems kind of odd to me. But you know, we'll do whatever ‑‑ whatever needs to be done to get it done. It just ‑‑ it just ‑‑ after what? 50 years of advocacy, it's really surprising to me that this is news that ‑‑ 
>> I ‑‑ I ‑‑ all of you have heard me say this in previous council meetings and going back to saying it, again. Ignorance is not an excuse. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. That being said, you know, this should not be that difficult and the solution should be ‑‑ the solution should be arrived at easily. And I ‑‑ hopefully, we get there by the end of this session. 
    Does anybody ‑‑ so that being said, anybody have a question for Deb about the subcommittee? I think, Deb, why don't you and I can talk offline, you know, I'll send you the email about testifying next week on this. I think my question for you is what's next? I mean, do you think the subcommittee has done what it needs to do? And now, just becomes the advocacy moving forward or you think there needs to be more work done at the subcommittee level? 
>> Well, that's at our last meeting, that was part of our discussion saying, what is our next step? We had talked about putting out a petition to ‑‑ I don't know prove our numbers, but I'm not sure that kind of, you know, personally, I'm not sure if numbers really matter. You have ramps on a building if you have one person with a wheelchair or you have a hundred people with a wheelchair, you still have a ramp on a building. 
    So regardless of counting noses, this needs to be accessible. So I think ‑‑ 
>> (Inaudible). 
>> The place. 
>> Can I throw something out there for the subcommittee to consider? We know this is the main body of work. We know that emergency management and governors' press conferences and that, you know, dealing with that body. As we're dealing with that, can you shift focus to other areas that not necessarily are government related but they are government related. I believe I remember, I think it was David, David Krueger mentioned a couple of meetings back, when federal delegation comes on‑site in Vermont and they give press conferences, same thing. Giving press conferences on the public and people ‑‑ they don't have an interpreter on staff. Perhaps, if the subcommittee wants to say, hey, this is the main body of work. And ‑‑ it's not just ‑‑ just stop there. It trickles out to all government sort of, you know, correspondence and communications. 
    
>> The news organizations, they have all kinds of captioning. And when Gary Sadowsky gets up there with his talk, he's not captioned. Now, what WCAX does is they end up putting other words up there. They ‑‑ not what he's saying, but just other information and oh, you know, in Farrisburg, the temperature is this. And Gary's not talking about that at all. It's an interesting fake‑y kind of captioning, which is ‑‑ which is sort of an interesting technique. And I don't know why it's only with the weather report. Because everything else is captioned. 
    And again, might be the, well, if it's a canned script that people are following, we can caption that. But, again, if I can go to a coffee shop and have a live captioned conversation, I don't understand why with all of the technology that television streaming ‑‑ 
>> That begs the question and maybe this comes up as part of their, you know, broader discussion of the testimony around what is the news network's technological capabilities? And what's the minimum requirement? As you just said, perhaps, they're using antiquated captioning services and there's newer things out there that all networks need to be considering. But in Vermont, you know, they're just opting not to do it because it's too costly, which is not an excuse, right? 
    So, you know, these are the kind of questions that need to be asked. And I think, you know, questions that we can ask or subcommittee can ask, can ask of Eric and emergency management because they need to understand better how they can get it more accurate in realtime. But also, questions for the legislature, as well. To say, you know, if ‑‑ as part of doing business in the State of Vermont, you are going to be required to adhere to a certain set of standards. 
    
>> I'm very encouraged to hear that our report has made an impact. And I think our committee will definitely, we'll set up another meeting and put our heads together and there has been some discussion about broadening the access. I know on a national level, there is some legislation in Congress about requiring streaming services to be accessible. 
    So Congress has their hands in lots of other things. I'm not sure how quickly that's going to be addressed. But at least it is ‑‑ it's on the table, it's in discussion. And that may also bolster what we're trying to do here. You know, to have that sort of federal back up. 
    But OK. 
>> OK ‑‑ 
>> Can I ask a question? I can't figure out how to raise my hand, sorry. 
>> Yeah, hi. 
>> I'm wondering if the subcommittee has yet or is maybe planning to just make a list of the different situations where they're identifying a need for captioning and then a list of which regulations apply. I feel like sometimes, hear spinning of wheels with that step, and I was wondering if anyone kind of has it all in one place yet? 
>> We have ‑‑ that's a really excellent question. We've certainly had that discussion. Have we actually come up with a concrete list? No. We have contacted each other when ‑‑ like the governor giving a state of the state address and the interpreter was 2 millimeters high off in the distance and there was no captioning, there certainly was discussion in the subcommittee about we need to broaden our mission a little bit. 
>> Is that something, I guess my second question was, is it something you're planning to do? Or is it something you can have somebody else to do? 
>> No, we were ‑‑ our big push was to get this report, and we tried to make it as concise and hearing‑focused. It was like ‑‑ we're going to write this like someone that's never met a deaf or hard of hearing person, you know. We're going to make this clear, we're going to make it short. They're going to be reading pages of other stuff. We want them to get this. So that was job 1. We've got it. We're there. And now what we're saying, what's our next step? What's our next task? No, we don't want to farm it off to other people. We're more than happy to roll up our sleeves. 
    But getting the council feedback in terms of, you know, what we should be doing. You know, we didn't want to wander too far off of the mission. And like I said, all of us on the subcommittee are advocates with other hats. And we're doing other things related to this, but what does the subcommittee ‑‑ what's our role? And again, we're trying to keep very focused because it's very easy to kind of get pulled in lots of directions. But I love that list. 
    We do have a sort of casual list but I think nailing that down is an excellent way for us to start on our next meeting. And I really appreciate that suggestion. 
>> And Rebecca, that's a great point just to wrap this up. I think it does tie back to some of the conversations that Laura was having with the director of operations at legislature last year around making committee hearings accessible, especially during a pandemic when all of you were advocating for hearing aid coverage. 
    And in fact, none of these were actually being captioned in realtime. And so, now all of them ‑‑ and ‑‑ unless you specifically ask for a committee hearing to be captioned in realtime and they have to set it up ‑‑ the fact that they stream on YouTube live the hearings. But YouTube doesn't caption live. And I know the ability for YouTube to caption live. But the legislature doesn't want to spend the money for it because they know that YouTube's going to caption it 24 hours later, and that's not really acceptable for people that, you know, are tracking this stuff in realtime. 
    So the question is, you know, should they even be streaming on YouTube? So another platform where it can be done in realtime and the streaming platform is different than YouTube. So, I think that's a great point, Rebecca, is tying those kind of situations where it is. You know, like ‑‑ what is legally, you know, what is legally required versus, you know, well, we're doing our best within the confines of the law. 
    So, OK, look forward to that. And Deb, I'll follow up with you after this meeting because I have some ideas on how you can kind of lay the land by telling the legislature this is just one bit of a larger process we're going through and I know they'll be looking forward to that. 
    We'll shift over to Laura, now, to do directors update. Laura? 
>> Yeah. So I noticed ‑‑ looks like we're on a time check. Looks like maybe less than 20 minutes. I don't know ‑‑ I mean, I'm happy to just email out my report if there are other things we need to get to. I mean, I was just wanting to check on that. 
>> Why don't you just give a quick update on what you're working on right now, you know, what are your big ticket items that you're working currently on for the next, you know, month or two. Since a lot of what you did, you know, over the last 6 months is covered in the legislative report. 
>> OK. Sure. So I'm just taking a look at my list. So I can ‑‑ kind of go through that. So I was just appointed to become the co‑chair for the policy and procedures committee, which is under HireAbility. 
    So I'll be helping kind of to advise and make things better for their policy and procedures updates. Um, I was just invited by the UVM 2 Scholars there who are going to do some research around deaf and hard of hearing issues. And so I'm going to be involved in some way, don't know exactly how, it's early in the process, but I'm involved in some of their research. 
    The next ‑‑ for this next year, I'll be still involved in a number of different things. I'll still continue to be involved with the digital equity core team. Kind of collecting information about people's internet access and connectivity and affordability of the services. 
    What else? The HAS accessibility committee will be hosting an all‑day event March 13th where there'll be a number of agencies sort of tabling and there'll be workshops provided relating to educating state employees around sort of general disability issues. 
    I ‑‑ we have 3 presenters coming up. I've worked with Deb to recruit for presentation. So we've got Cory, obviously, as Deb mentioned in January and then, we've got Nicole Weston in March from ACI. Which is a cochlear implant organization. So they'll be coming to present. And then, Zach Lafrenta, interpreter's butchering that name, from Purdue University, an audiologist, they'll be presenting. And that is going to be in May. 
    And then, in September, we'll have Dr. Anne Minish who is the founder and CEO of Safe and Clear, the clear masks with the plastic. So those are the presentations that have been lined up for this coming year. 
    I'm also still collaborating with the Department of Fish and Wildlife for their programming. So this summer and next summer, we'll be doing a monthly series about ‑‑ around outdoor activities and making sure that they've got accessibility services set. They've got accommodations and interpreters available. 
    So, when they get those programming ‑‑ that programming going, I'll kind of get involved with them to make sure they've got accommodations lined up. And that's for children and adults alike. I have probably 10 or 12 presentations on the docket, so one of those will be related to communication and marketing, the communication and marketing committee. There's about 70 folks. But the hope is that I'll be able to talk one‑on‑one with each of those folks and talk about how we can help their agencies and departments in making sure things are accessible with social media and website design and all of that just general communication access. 
    And then, in the past year, I've had over 209 referrals. So it's been a very busy time of year, and so I imagine this year, probably, there'll be more referrals even this year. I've already had over 20 in the last, what, two weeks of January? And so many of those are questions around hearing aid information and people looking for some clarification around what's covered and not covered. 
    I think those are the highlights for what I'm doing. I kind of chose some pieces here and there. Any questions about that or anything else? Don't see any questions. OK. That's it for me. 
>> Thank you. OK. So with the ‑‑ last 10 minutes, we will just kind of do a level set for the committee ‑‑ for the council. So right now, we currently still have meetings, I believe, through the middle of the summer still falling on the third Thursday of every month at this time. I know in years past, we've tried to shift that maybe, but it seems like everyone's pretty content with that. 
    And if that is still the case, I would just make the argument to go ahead and keep them at the same time if that works best for everybody. 
    And knowing that, you know, if you have enough time, you know, we can get them on the calendar, enough time to have them scheduled. 
    We are permitted to continue to operate remotely by Zoom and there are a couple of (inaudible) floating around in the legislature around hybrid style meetings that, you know, but Megan, Laura, and I are kind of tracking to see what the impact of that would be in terms of this council if they were to ask. 
    But it feels like Zoom is an effective platform to allow the most people to participate. I am open to having an in‑person meeting, again, much like we did last May, I believe it was, at Waterbury Office Complex if that's something people want to consider to do. 
    We could definitely think about that. And we can try to make sure we figure out all of the logistics ahead of time so that we square away technical issues that we ran into last time. 
    I will ‑‑ as you saw this morning, the legislative report has been submitted. As I pointed out the last meeting, I took a different approach this time, which was not ‑‑ to basically come out of the gate and highlight a lot of the issues that happened over the last year and make recommendations. 
    And we changed it a little bit. We included table of contents and put a lot of information in the appendix. So I don't think much was lost compared to previous years, it was just kind of restructured and reformatted to make it more effective. 
    Obviously, it's been effective as evidenced by the fact that, you know, Deb and Laura are going to go in and testify next week. 
    If anybody has questions about the report, feel free to email Will, myself, Laura, can answer any questions you may have about that. Thank you for everyone that contributed to that report, as well. 
    It's always a big lift, and I'm quite happy we were able to turn it around and get it in almost right around the timeframe they're due. 
    One thing I'd like to consider is much like we did today, having a presenter and much like in the past few meetings, presenters, I'd like to solicit ideas from council members on future presenters on who to invite on topics of conversation. I've heard a lot of, you know, different topics floating around in terms of other presentations and whether or not we think it'll be effective to try to maybe have some people present to the council. But also what are some topic areas we want to shift to and focus on for upcoming calendar year as we look towards next year, you know, legislative session or recommendations? 
    Rebecca, you and I can chat about that. But it's not statute has to be approved by the council. But I ‑‑ 
>> It's not up to you to write the council legislative report. It's not your report. It's our report. And I'm really concerned this is the second year running that you have submitted stuff to the legislature, by this council but not have the council actually approve it. And that's very unethical. 
>> I understand that ‑‑ 
>> I have concerns about this. 
>> Rebecca, I understand that, but I ‑‑ 
>> No, I want you to just hear it not claim to understand it. I think that it's very important that someone sending stuff to the legislature, supposedly from us actually gets us to review it. And I'm sorry there's nobody else speaking up about this. It's not something I wanted to have to bring up, again. But it's important. 
    
>> OK. Rebecca, you and I can have a conversation offline about that process. 
>> I would like to propose that the whole council make ‑‑ I'd like to make a motion that the council decide ‑‑ and we can do it next session, give us time to think. But I make a motion that council needs to decide together the council's legislative report is going to be approved by the council. 
    
>> OK. I open up to the council for a conversation. 
>> I'd like this to be a group decision. 
>> I would like to second Rebecca's concern. I think that we could do a better job timing the work. It is a heavy lift. And I think we could start the work in September or October. And have a draft by November or December whenever we meet. I do think it needs to reflect all of the voices from the council so that all of the issues that are facing people in Vermont who are deaf and hard of hearing from birth, you know, cradle to grave are reflective of the entire population. 
    I mean, I had a lot of input on the school age subcommittee because we have been very busy and active, but it doesn't reflect everyone's point of view or perspective, you know, cradle to grave. So I think we need to do a better job of timing the effort. It's not as though we don't know the report is due in January. It's due every January. Let's start the work in September so we can do it in a timely manner and have the entire council review it, provide feedback, and vote. 
    So thank you, Rebecca, for raising this very important point. 
>> Thank you for that input. I'm not making any excuses, but I will caveat this with the fact that oftentimes when I solicit feedback, I don't hear responses and it's not for lack of trying. And so ‑‑ you know, it's the amount of involvement people want to put into it. And I will be honest that I collected. I basically am going off of what the subcommittee's report and the topics of conversations have been over the last 3 meetings and that's kind of going into the report and the two high level things were the education subcommittee and the transparency access to communication subcommittee, which all of you have signed off on the subcommittee doing that work. 
    So ‑‑ that's not to say that Sharon's correct that timing can be improved. Will and I will talk about that to figure out how we can make this a more effective process. But ‑‑ you know, I'm beholden to a timeline and unfortunately that timeline falls smack dab right in the middle of the holiday season and I know people aren't going to respond. 
    And unfortunately, that's ‑‑ a lift that nobody else on this council really wants to take on. I'm more than willing to delegate so that other people do the writing. But to date, most people have not offered that up. 
    So ‑‑ I will ‑‑ coming up on 3 minutes and I know that interpreters and captioners have other engagements, I do need to allow for public comments. I will go ahead and open up the floor for public comment. Deb? 
>> Do we need to vote on that motion? We've had motion and second. 
>> Motion to ‑‑ 
>> To begin the process in September and that the council ‑‑ the full council gets to see the draft in December at the December meeting? Or the November ‑‑ I guess it's in November meeting. And approve that to be submitted in January? 
>> Um ‑‑ it's more of a procedural process that we could put into the operating guidelines, I think, and then we would vote on the operating guidelines. Or amend ‑‑ vote to amend the operating guidelines. If that's what we want to do, I will draft up language that we can vote on at the March meeting to amend the operating guidelines so that formal timeline is formalized around the report and a process. 
>> OK. Thank you. 
>> Thank you, Spenser, for your work on the report. It is a lot. So I also would really encourage people to read the report and take the time. It has a lot of important information in here. You know, our school age children are not doing well and the legislature needs to know about this and we need as a council to do something about this. We have a fragmented system that is not working, not serving these kids well and it's going to be part of our responsibility collectively working together to try and do something about it. So please, read the report. 
>> Yep, and again, if you have questions around specific stuff on the legislative report as it pertains to the subcommittee's work, please feel free to reach out to Deb, Sharon, and Sherry. Any other last comment or questions? OK. We are at 12:00 on the hour. So we'll bid everyone adieu, and stay warm this weekend. 
>> Thanks, Spenser. 
>> Thank you, Spenser, thank you for your hard work. 
>> I'll email you ‑‑ CC you on the email shortly, Deb, responding back to the ‑‑ 
>> I'll be here.