If we'll all get in our places with sunshiny faces. I've been in too many early education schools here lately. All right. Welcome everyone to the Legislative and Governmental Affairs Committee. Could I get a roll call,
please? >> Roll call. Mr. Appel. Mr. Appel present. Dr. Armstrong. Dr. Armstrong present. Mr. Berkin. Mr. Berkin present. Mr. Castillo >> here. >> Mr. Castillo present. Miss Champon.
Miss >> Miss Hampone present. Dr. Clark. >> Dr. Clark present. Mr. Harris >> here. >> Mr. Harris present. Mr. Gao >> here. >> Mr. G present. Miss Holloway >> here. >> Miss Holloway present. Miss Meerine.
Miss Meerine present. Mr. Mars. Mr. Mars present. We have a quorum. >> Thank you. Um what do we have? We have a little bit of business we have to take care of from the last uh or excuse me from earlier this morning. So Dr. Clark,
>> I would like to recuse myself from 4.2 B AEF. Mr. Castile. >> Yes. Uh Mr. Chairman, with respect to the administration and education finance committee meeting, I also would like to recuse relative to 4.2.
>> Well, I didn't say all that. Yeah, me too. >> Just clarifying for the record what we're referring to. >> Thank you. Uh um I appreciate you letting Dr. Clark what she know what she was doing that. Very good. What's on the agenda?
>> Yes. Your first agenda item is 2.1 found on page three, consideration of an update report regarding the return on investment analysts report regarding industrybased credentials earned by high school students. The recommendation is to receive.
>> Okay. Uh we have Mr. Ben Vincent from the Blanco Center and uh and Mr. Jim Garvey. I remember you from somewhere. >> I've been around a little bit too much. >> Yes, sir. Mr. Turn it over to y'all. Mr.
Garvey, welcome back. >> Introduce the issue first. What's it? I need to sign in. Okay. Sorry about that. >> While we while we wait, Mr. Garvey, I was um briefing the board earlier today
on how with Louisiana Works curating the list of credentials um both bundles and uh advance that, you know, we feel very confident that we're going to be more responsive to the actual workforce needs and communities, but also that the
quality of those credentials will be even higher because it's in a shop that does that every single day as the purpose. And increasing the quality is one of the things I was going to mention towards the end of this presentation. Uh because it is something that Secretary Shinan
takes very seriously. Uh you'll see a slide that talks about how much more students make once they're in the workforce if they have an IBC. Um and it is more and it's a significant amount, but it's not as much as I would have hoped. and we would like to increase
that so that children or young adults uh can get a bigger benefit from the IBC program. >> Well, I would I would suggest or infer that possibly the reason that that value isn't what you nor I would like to see it is because too many of the
credentials have been of lower value and not of higher value. >> Exactly. Exactly. And that's what we need to try to address. But I'd like to introduce this uh this uh issue today by saying that this is a uh a research
project that the workforce commission or Louisiana works as is known now paid for. We uh retained what what name do you go by for this? The Blanco Center or Louisiana first or University of Lafayette or >> Blanco Center? The Blanco Center.
>> Could have done it without Louisiana First. >> There you go. We hired them to do this report. it was uh demanded by statute by legislation. So with that, I will hand it over. >> Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Mr. Chair and members, my name is Ben
Vincent. I am from the uh as stated the Blanco Center. Um recognize a couple of you from my legislative staff days, especially you, Mr. Chair. Um >> Sure. Thank you. As as Jim said, we are mandated by statute now um as of enacted
last year to uh to perform. We I should say the workforce commission and the workforce investment council are mandated to do a return on investment analysis on these IBC programs uh as a whole and uh that's supposed to include at a minimum um wage outcomes and uh and
employment outcomes. So, um, as I mentioned really briefly, the reason the Blinkco Center was in a position to do this at all is because of the existence of a, uh, a data system that links individual level data from several agencies and allows us to have a kind of longitudinal record of a bunch of uh,
students as they grow up and become uh, college students or post-secary students and then workers and we can we can look at an individual level at their earnings. So this affords us the opportunity to uh to assess programs like these just depending on the data that we have. So um on this slide of
acknowledgements I I just wanted to uh to give a shout out to our data engineers Ash and Ashish and Jen Ha Rachel Veron who is the director of our program of the LA first program and system is uh actually present today in case there are technical questions on
the system itself. And uh I wanted to also um give a also a shout out for the purposes of this analysis for some of our key partners on the things that we could uh pull in on this quick first iteration of this mandated analysis. Um
specifically Maggie at workforce um Kim um and also Laura Budro and Tristan who I don't actually know in person and u apologies for the typo. It's supposed to be Den Lee not Den Lake for Tristan as well. U moving right ahead. I wanted to give a quick background um on the IBC
program and I mean very very quick. These are just credentials that are issued or um approved by third parties, independent third parties. They're primarily training around um secondary students. Uh they're just there to affirm knowledge and skills in relevant
um in ways that are relevant to particular occupations that we decide to prioritize that are priorities to policy makers or just employers. Um the workforce investment council approves a list of these certification programs or credential programs. Um and that focused
list allows these policy makers and priority um and employers to prioritize the IBC's as we're hoping to improve that process with this effort. >> Mr. V, could for the folks watching on the internet, could you please uh tell us what IC is?
>> Certainly. Thank you. Backing up, uh, industrybased, some people say certifications, some people say credentials, industry based or IBC's, I I'll use them interchangeably. Um, I guess credential would be the more general. So, I'll just say industry
based credentials, that's what's on the slides as well. Act 187 of the regular session last year is what mandated this analysis. um and the minimum components um which we hope to exceed in uh very clear terms and um relatively quickly
with this effort, but we at least need employment outcomes and wage outcomes um at least in the broad sense. Now, we do want to refine down to is this IBC more effective than that one, but we got to start somewhere. Um a quick plug on the
ROI analysis process itself. um we need a quantitative basis for these kinds of decisions. Um ultimately we really are just comparing the investment or the expenditure to the benefit or the return. Um that basic concept it
typically just um it's a situation where you know what the investment is or the cost in a sense you know with some level of probability or risk um how likely a good outcome is versus a bad one. And you also know the magnitude or how valuable the good outcome is. And uh
importantly like in a um a corporate finance class or something like that or an investments class, you know, you can once the future happens, you know what your return was. It's a little murkier when you're analyzing policy because it's it's it's unclear to which uh to
the extent you can assign blame or credit to this government intervention or that one. Um do we want to say that the IBC is responsible for um an engineer's entire wage? the fact that they're capable enough to be an engineer and trained at a school that can train
an engineer at least gets parts of it. So the effort here is really to kind of disentangle how much credit we can give to the IBC at least eventually if we want to have a very credible thorough reliable analysis and if we want to break it down by separate IBC's um we
would we want to do that and we think we have the capability eventually with this system. I think anything short of that allows you to u sort of thumb the scale on the value of an IBC either on purpose or not. Um I think you need a sort of exhaustive investigation. So um that's
what I want to kind of talk about how we've laid the building blocks towards that process in this first iteration. Um, one quick other data note. As far as local education agencies go, we need in princip and excuse me, in practice, we
need their um a sense at the local level to uh to link secondary students records in our data system. Um, we don't have that for all of them. Um, last estimate that I have um is that our our system covers about twothirds 67% or so of our
secondary students. And um that means that that sort of data exclusion also extends to our IBC completers and participants that we have in the data today. Um out of the what I would call IBC completers we had about 365,000
statewide over the window uh the historical window going back to 2009. um in this analysis about a third of those about 31% or 113,000 that is the estimate given to me by our data scientists but we're not allowed to look at them individually so I can't mention them anymore in this um and I wasn't
allow I wasn't able to actually link them to anything anyway we just don't have that capability but I want youall to just keep in mind that those are excluded from this analysis >> just uh Mr. Morph. >> Yes sir. >> Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm trying to make sure I have the right interpretation on this. You have apparently have twothirds of the students in the system that are participating. Is that the right
interpretation? >> Are covered by agencies that have given us permission to to look. >> So why wouldn't we have 100%. And what is the benefit of opting in? >> I can only speculate.
uh the law requires all the school systems to send the data to us. So theoretically if you look at the law we should have 100% participation. There's no teeth in the law is the problem. There's no enforcement uh mechanism and
some schools or I would say a significant amount of schools have decided not to participate. Uh we have >> so what's the incentive to participate? Is there an incentive to participate? >> Well, uh you uh you you would be
following the law, which a lot of people think is a a a good incentive. Uh you would not be subject to potentially a lawsuit uh by someone if you could find a plaintiff that was interested in enforcing the law. Um we have kicked
around ideas such as maybe asking Bessie to issue a resolution calling on all school systems to participate. uh I could give you some more background as to which systems are participating and which ones are not. there costs to participate or >> no this data is already being collected
and sent to uh I don't remember the company that uh that that collects it and uh that company sends to or has sent to Louisiana first um the information that has been collected but only for those
systems that have uh opted in as they uh label it. So the data is already there. It's just not accessible by Louisiana First until the school system says yes, we will uh release it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>> Thank you. You can proceed. >> Yes, sir. >> So all of the optouts um cannot be mentioned again in anything that follows this slide. That's really why I brought it up at all. Um including only the opt-ins. Um what I have um
first is a just a sort of broad summary of what we've seen in the programs uh since since they began and and began reporting in the data that we receive. So in total um since 2009 I have records of about 640,000
IBC completions uh cumulatively. Now um any person can get multiple. So, um, just keep in mind that this represents the amount of actual people getting a certification or a credential of, uh, of some sort. And this is broken down by year. Um, as I
said, um, they began in 2009. We have, uh, just to be a little extra cautious on confidentiality purposes. Um, for presentations like these, we suppress anything below a certain threshold. So, you'll see in 2009, 10, and 11, and 2025 in the in the slide, no uh, no data
populated into the chart. That's that's the reason that'll be the case. and uh anytime you see that in this presentation as well. But really just the point here is we see starting in 2012 13 that academic year a sort of a 10-fold increase um another five-fold increase the year following just
skyrocketing up um through 2015 2016 and uh in terms of the number of credentials earned in a year 2017 and 2018 being the peaks um and after that um kind of a slide down 2019 and following COVID things have sorted to sort of started to
settle into 60 to 70,000 completions per here. Um, as far as who these students are within the the broader student population, um, all I'm showing you guys with these these two stacked uh these three double stacked charts is um the
number of total students that count as um secondary completers in um in DOE data. So about half of those 361,000 and again this is cumulative over the window of data that I have again going back um sometime around 2011 I believe for DOE
roughly half of them about 192,000 of that 360 have IBC completions and that's complete TUR about half of those secondary school completers either GED or or actual graduates um had an IBC of
some kind for uh higher education for a post-secary that includes includes um credentials uh those seeking credentials from LCTCS or region systems um about 1.3 million um participants in those programs again over that same cumulative
data window about a tenth of those are 127 128,000 um entered with IBC's and as far as credential completers which will include people with uh JDs or one-year certifications um any any type of
post-secary certificate um almost 490,000 of those cumulatively in that in that window of of a little over a decade and of that about 29,000 of them had IBC's and again the um this will this will settle out to an actual
um historically typical percentage as this as this program kind of ramps up. But since a lot of these completers, as you'll see in in a slide in a minute here, um didn't really complete IBC's till 2017 or later, then um these these these comparisons are still going to be
in flux. You're probably going to wind up seeing a greater portion of all of these categories having IBC's when all is said and done. But um year by year, we'll get to that point and it'll it'll settle out eventually. I do think we're some years away, though. As far as a
really basic trying to get close to an applesto apples comparison of wage outcomes, the uh the initial results are kind of shocking, but um if I just take everyone that I can match in the 2024 wage data,
this is quarterly wages, not annual. That's what those dollar amounts represent. um quarterly wages of all nonIBC completers was about $13,000 a quarter. Whereas, and that's that's the top of that really pale almost
translucent blue line in the left column. If you go to the middle column for IBC completers, irrespective of what level of education, the average is closer to 5,200 a quarter. The issue with most of that discrepancy is the fact
that our wage completers include everyone who earns a wage. We have a real topheavy age distribution and it's a wellestablished empirical fact that age and income rises uh pretty tightly. These IBC completers given the age of the programs are likely to be under 30
years old. So it's just not a fair comparison. a a crude adjustment for that gets me to the uh the fully deep blue in that left column where we still have a higher average about 5,800 a quarter for the IBC um I'll say non-completers
um that are of roughly the same age as what your typical IBC completer is again under under 30 or so. And just as one other little point of comparison, we do have IBC incompleters and in other words, those who attempt it and don't finish for whatever reason or they are
just still um pursuing it and haven't completed it yet. The average earnings of that population is a good bit lower 44 30 um a quarter. These are um I would say really premature if we want to like use this as an ROI. I think
there there for more reasons I'll talk about towards the end why I think we need several more years of data for things to settle out on these but um in terms of employment outcomes we have a quick comparison as well that I think is also premature but it works in the
opposite direction in terms of IBC completers that are in the wage records we see 61% of them with a match in other words 61% of our IBC completers had a a wage earning job that was in the system where um total DOE enrolles um
irrespective of whether they had an IBC or not it was a far lower percentage almost half it's 34%. So what we do see is a much much larger chunk of the the IBC completers working. We don't have enough information yet to say really
why. It could just be based on what they are what they want to do. Some se several of the um the non the non-enrollies could still be in higher education. We're just going to need more time to to let that settle out. But it is a pretty striking difference initially. Thank you. Uh Mr. Morris, you have a question.
>> Yeah. Couple questions. So if I understand it correctly, at this early stage of your evaluation, you haven't differentiated between the high quality IBC's and just the total pool of IBC's. Is that correct? >> We don't have the stat statistical power
with the data that we have and the length of the existence of the program quite yet to do that. >> Going forward, you expect to do that analysis. Okay. Second question. help me with the process. How given all the data security concerns and whatnot that we have in the world we live in, how how
are you able to track that? I I took IBC's in high school. Look, I get that. But how are you able to track the that individual's uh wage earnings going forward? So within the LA first system across all of these disperate data types from this
agency and that um we can't use social security numbers when it gets to the analyst me from our our data folks. What we do internally is mask that from the analysts the data engineers mask that from me and they give an LA first ID that I can use to link across data sets
and sort of construct. Okay. If you go down, if you go down to the root, it is social security numbers, but then it's mass going forward when you get to the analysis stage. >> I actually don't know that it is social security numbers in every case. Um I I I think so. Okay. >> Um as far as I'm concerned, all I see is
the LA ID. That's how I'm >> I appreciate that. Good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. >> Thank you. You may proceed. >> Thank you. >> Getting to uh the IBC's that are being earned in the data that we have um on IBC completions. um and pursuit. We have
389 distinct IBC's as recorded as um being pursued during the uh the historical window that we have. Um there's no way this is going to be readable in here and maybe even not on a uh a stream screen, but that heat map is intended to represent yearbyear starting
in 2009 all the way up to 2024. Really that last black column is 2025 where we just don't have a lot of uh final information yet. um by IBC code, excuse me, by IBC code, how many were completed in the year. So, at the top where the
the the little uh fields get brighter, that's your more intense levels of completions. Um you see in that very first one sort of a general uh credential uh known as ACT, National Career Readiness. Um multiple levels, silver, gold, gold, and platinum. You
see Microsoft Office credentials um featuring pretty heavily in the top half of the graph. Um really all we can kind of do is look at it in a almost anecdotal sense like this. There's just not enough information to uh to pull quantitative meaning out of this. Do I could present
with a straight face just not at this point. >> Um Dr. Brley has a question. >> Hey uh Ben one one um one comment and one ask. Yes sir. >> So very very good information. um to the extent that we can be helpful in terms of data collection like let's continue
what whatever that dialogue may need to look like. Um just wanted to go with the comment first. Um so it speaks to what Mr. Garvey and I were talking about earlier which is quality of the credentials. So like on our on our
internal data like if you take for instance someone um getting credentialed in Microsoft Word like just the program of Microsoft Word that would be pretty low level. Um in 2018 for instance there were over 9,000 credentials earned in
Microsoft Word. Well this last year that number was 1,500. So, you know, I don't want to I mean, I think that that's what we want because we want to see a replacement of those lower level with higher level. Another example, PowerPoint. So, students getting a credential in PowerPoint. That was in
2018 it was 7,700 and now that number is 1,000. So, we we see a movement away from some of those lower level credentiing. But if I look at the heat map, we're seeing in in a couple of these categories that are are
positive. So if I look at for instance um there was one on welder that I was just looking at uh and it okay NCC welder level one if you go back to say um uh just look at 2020 or or so you see
that number is like um yeah so that number is now at 303 in 2023 it was 259 and then it was 274. So you see a little uptick. So, what we want to see, I know as our agency, we want to see some of these that are of of
greater value go up while the ones that are of lower value going down. Um, and so that's what I think the revised accountability system and working with Louisiana Works is going to really help us do. So, that's my comment. Um and then my ask is that as you continue
these types of presentations um to the extent that you're comfortable sharing that that's kind of where we are as a department that we're we're trying to limit those lower level credentials and increase those higher level credentials through a collaboration with Louisiana Works. >> Yes sir. I think that's the highest
value that this effort can can possibly yield identifying the the actually valuable and most and least and allowing the prioritization Certainly. Um the next few slides may or may not be quite so interesting here, but um as far
as the higher education programs, the uh the post-secary programs that IVC completers do pursue, this is not at a very deep level of detail. It's at the uh the two-digit um classification of instructional program level, but it does pull out a a pretty striking result at least for the uh the the category that
dominates that being liberal arts uh and sciences, general studies, and humanities being the uh the the largest chunk by far um of a of what our IBC completers that uh that enter postcary education do tend to
pursue and that's pursue in terms of what they actually tend to complete. That is a it's a similar kind of breakdown. Those liberal arts and sciences, general studies, humanities also kind of dominate as far as um what IBC completers tend to go and complete in post-secary education. As far as the
the level of education that they have tended to complete to date and just keep in mind there's several of these IBC completers that have only completed their IBC's in the last two, three, four years, may not even be out of high school yet um and may just be in the
early stages. But you see a large number of uh of balora degree earners um and uh second to that one-year certificates, certifications um which are most likely professional type ones. Those are sort of um where IBC completers are tending
to go. So, um, in terms of prioritizing, as um, as Superintendent Brumley was was getting at, it might be worth also thinking about if, um, if IBC's are really contributing to the, uh, the the bachelor's level, you know, you know, degrees and in what ways and, um, how,
um, in terms of prioritizing them, but that's really just kind of background information as far as um, as far as the impacts that we can see to the limited extent that we can so far in the data that we have um what what I'm showing
you here is the the number of IBC completions by year and again they peak 2017 2018 that's the uh that's the the more firm blue line the earnings of someone in 2024 their quarterly earnings
in 2024 based on when they earned their first IBC credential and the reason I'm even highlighting this is if you look at 2012 2013 2014 when we first started seeing people get these and um um in large enough numbers to where I can show them in this
presentation. Um you see earnings that are far higher than your typical IBC earner and actually a good bit higher than your wage adjusted nonIBC earner that I was talking about in the earlier slides. You see something like $10,000 or more quarterly. whereas the uh the
kind of uh population average over the same um for all for all IBC completers and non-completers is something more like just shy of $6,000 a quarter. Um the point is when we have so many of our IBC completing population for the
purposes of this analysis having done so in those years where those people are earning far less 6,000 a quarter or less as we get more and more years of data rolling in I expect that we're going to see that average for IBC completers earnings
go up dis I want to say disproportionately quickly but quickly and at that point it it may be a pretty fair apples to apples rough comparison where we see a pretty large wage premium for all IBC's. Um whether they're what we want to consider high priority or
not. That is my expectation just on the basis of what I see now. I do think again it would take a few years for this effect to kind of trickle in. But um Sure. Sure. Um as far as substantive stuff, that's that's really it outside of I have a
breakdown of Oh, thank you. Um that is just our IBC averages and quarterlies. um broken down by the level of um educational attainments. So that first column just represents the large number of IBC completers overall about 250,000
that I can look at. Um and their average earnings again that same um roughly 5,100 a quarter. For the ones that have only graduated high school, slightly less on average. And um somewhat surprisingly for those who have completed high school and are in some
kind of post-secary participation, a little bit more of what appears to be a penalty, it could just be that they're um they have less time in the workforce because of their additional study or they're just studying and have less time to work. And then a very obvious wage advantage for those who have some kind of postsecondary credential. That average jumps up to about just shy of
$8,000. Um no no huge surprises there, though. Um, I could talk about the next steps with what we have and um, what we're hoping to get soon or um, but I've alluded to most of it already. If it's all right, um, could move on or do questions, whatever your pleasure, Mr.
Chair. >> Very good. Do we have any questions from the committee? U, I want to go ahead, Mr. Marsh. >> This might be a little in weeds, but I'm just curious. There's I've heard Secretary Shaolin talk on a number of occasions about disengaged youth. So,
uh, 18 to 26, I think, is the is the group, uh, who are neither in school or employed. Um, have you guys looked at potential impact for IBC's to that population of individuals or am I if I take if I have the IBC's, am I more
likely to not be in that group uh that I am actually employed? Is there any correlation there? Just curious if you thought about that. I think to uh if we once we can really isolate the effect of the IBC strictly speaking and maybe put aside the the
fact that it's washed out partially by the education level or whatever else, we'll be able to get those kinds of effects. It's not included in anything we have to date. But I think we're going to need a very credible estimate of what the IBC's are actually worth by IBC before being able to do that. Well,
>> two of them I'm going Jim. >> Yeah, I do. I do. And it uh heads into what I wanted to use uh in closing. Uh this is our first attempt to make this analysis relevant and as relevant as
possible. We would like to go through several changes to make it even more relevant. It has some good information in it. Now I think we can get better information like uh you know some of the information that you just asked about if we uh just think about what questions we
want to ask and have answered. So I would like to ask you guys uh send in any ideas you have about how we could manipulate this data to get more answers that would be good for you guys to use uh in making decisions. We are passing
this uh study around some national education groups asking them the same thing asking them what other ways can we manipulate this data to produce uh relevant information that can help decision makers. We just got this data in January access to it. Um, so we did
not have much time to uh to work with it and uh we expect to have several years going forward from here to to analyze it and think about other ways that we can manipulate it. But any input from you guys would be very helpful. Uh >> yeah, I think I think it's really,
>> you know, and and you you have been so helpful on this this particular matter and I know I've mentioned it a few times, but I think it's really worth noting in the report, particularly um as you share it with stakeholders in the state as well as externally the the courageous action that this board took
in terms of of accountability because so much of the work around ensuring that students are graduating with worthwhile credentials or uh albeit AP or or or dual enrollment college credits should have the impact of changing a graduate's
life for the better um beyond high school. Um and so that is that is action that that this board has already taken, but it's not reflective in these data because that that change will not have gone into effect until this particular year.
>> Making a note of that as you can see and we will we will do that. Um, but again, any input that y'all can give us about ways you would like to see this data manipulated that would be helpful for you, we'd appreciate it. May maybe just one more forward uh forward-looking
thought building on Superintendent Brley's comment would be uh to help folks with some appreciation for the the process and and this renewed focus on the quality of the IBC's. what kind of
uh changes, what kind of growth um have we seen um you know maybe towards particular industries or um I think the bundling concept is something also that has been attractive to school
systems you know make sure folks appreciate that concept. um recognition of uh new industries that are coming to the state you know what what what sort of uh how's the IBC process approval process uh engaged
right in the economic development throughout the state um I think those things would be interesting maybe to preface some you know some of your data >> noted noted okay did you have anything else Okay, I
think that that wraps us up. >> Okay, thank you. Do I have a motion to receive the report? Got a motion by Dr. Armstrong and a second by Mr. Burkin. Any oppose? Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Okay,
next item, please. >> Yes, your next item is 2.2 found on page 21, consideration of an update report regarding the 2026 regular legislative session. >> Thank you. Do I have a motion to Mr. Burkin and second by Dr. Armstrong? Ben,
you want to come to the table real quick? Uh, we don't have a whole lot today. You did get a copy of the PDF um that we have so far. I want to remind the committee uh that the last day for
uh the I'm going to the House because that's what I'm used to. The last day to request a bill is going to be March the 28th and the last day for introduction is March the 31st. So, we have a couple of more weeks going uh before we know
exactly what we're going to be facing. But, I wanted Ben just to come up if y'all had any questions for him. Uh I've asked Ben that once we get the legislative uh report or tracker going on a like last year, I think y'all did use Google
Sheets. I'm not sure which one, but you that you will have that shared information and then we'll be talking about that. You'll see where the positions are and we'll be uh really visiting about it. Now, before we really complete the tracker, we may have some
things that are going to be facing committee. I'll keep everybody in informed and those of you in Baton Rouge or New Orleans that can get here, we may ask you to go to committee. So, be on alert for that, Ben. Yeah. So, what I could start out doing is just giving you
a lay of the legislative land. The dates you said uh are accurate. Uh we have about 150 bills that we're following in terms of that are education related. Most of them being going through the education committee. Um
in in terms of filing, a lot of that has ended. Of course, we're going to expect a lot of amendments. A lot of the a lot of people had to pre-file. So they they know that some of their legislation needs work. But uh we're going through June 1st. We'll be sharing that document
with all of you. It's going to be a real time document. It's live. It's updated constantly. And as I mentioned, that's going to include amendments or anything happening. Also, we're tracking this stuff via AI. So we're going to be comparing bills. We're going to be able to tell you what's complimentary of each
other, which ones stand to offset or impact each other uh potentially negatively. So, um, that's what we're doing right now. Happy to answer any questions, but again, we don't have a bill package. So, uh, it's mostly support and information from a DOE and
Bessie standpoint. >> Very good. Any any questions? >> Mr. Harris, I want to add one comment to that. Uh, obviously throughout session, Ashley and Ben are readily available, but also if there's a bill that you would like for us to track and it's not on the list, just let us know and we'll
add it and we'll help track it for you. >> Mr. Burkin, you had a question. >> Did you say 150? >> Nearly 15. It's 141 now with an almost guarantee to go up probably by the time I leave the state. >> More than one per legislator.
>> You seem surprised, but that that is good math. >> That's usually how it goes. Yeah. So, we we're we're going to be on top of it. And I I love the fact that y' What is it? Legiscan or >> It's Legisone. They have a they have a
new adaptation of it. It really is impressive. We're going to be able to provide you reports. Uh we can also give you >> committee video with time codes. If you want to go back and see testimony or what someone a legislator or a public commenter made about certain
legislation, we can give you that, too. So, this is going to be a much more sophisticated, much more tailored legislative session, at least for our needs. >> Great. U Mr. Appel, >> just a quick question. Are you going to have any commentary on specific bills
reasoning why we support or don't support uh published? It would have to be published. >> We're definitely not going to have uh reasoning about >> Do you mean are we going to publish our reasoning for or >> Yeah. Are you going to make any comments
on why you would support or specifically not support some legislative? Probably wouldn't on our tracker. uh we would indicate the board's position, but we as an agency probably wouldn't provide, you know, why that support.
>> Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. We >> Well, you were talking about this new pro program, and I just didn't know if that had that uh function. >> From what I've seen of it, you'll be able to compare it, but they would be walking a fine line. They cannot support or >> No, no, no. I understand that. But I'm
saying this new legis scan, I didn't know what was in there >> and I was just wondering if that's part of it. >> It's so it's more objective, right? It's AI. So it's just using the information that it has, you know, as from resources. I will say my role in terms
of representing you all as a board is to do whatever you need. So if you would like me to mention anything in committee about why you want to or don't want to support something, certainly I'm happy to do that. Well, do you represent us or in that function or is it something we
have to go and testify to? >> Well, I you you have uh either luxury at your disposal, but I'm the one there representing in official capacity the Bessie board. Do I say Ben Lemonne of course with DOE on behalf of Bessie and I can make any comments but I would
directly attribute it to you all should >> look it may be a good thing that if we do want some of our members there that we have some very good information that you've already looked at that you can compare and we can discuss why we're for
it or why we are against it and then if you go >> it's all public record that's the problem. Right. Right. Okay. Thank you. >> And I will say that to your point that adds great value to have your leadership represented in these committees and to
directly hear from you certainly carries great weight. >> Great. You can just like send the the written reports to us. I think >> I will update you all with the tracker up to date today. >> Okay. >> Uh and that will continue you know weekly so you all are a breast. And of
course, we're going to be meeting with Bessie officers on Mondays to get your positions on bills. So, >> perfect. >> Uh, Mr. Marsh. >> Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, you know, as we look at this extensive list of bills and whatnot, uh, focused on education, uh, one of the specific areas
of focus that I've been interested in for some time now has been school attendance. And, um, I'm just curious if we could possibly get an update on that particular issue. >> Yeah, I'm happy to do that. Sure. >> Uh, Dr. Brumley. Yeah. So, as you're aware, Mr. Morris,
um there has been a there was a committee that met on that, and I want to credit uh Dr. Clark for all of her work in uh being a vital part of that particular committee. But a few things that I think are worthwhile on the attendance front. One, you know, I don't
want to miss the opportunity to call out some data. So if we look at 23 24 to 24 25 our truency numbers are down which is good. You want those numbers to be down. And if I look at um uh chronically
absent numbers they're also down about 2%. So those that that is really really good progress. I don't want to not call that out. But a few things um in the uh budget for I think it's a line item under judiciary. I think there's a $5
million ask for fins increase for more fins uh officers throughout the state and the Supreme Court uh and and just Chief Justice Wemer have been handling that particular item because it's in the judiciary. um
next month in the allocations that we're making competitive allocations and and then you're you will make appropriations to the school systems. We have we have designated 6 point I believe over over
$6 million to attendance efforts that will fund I believe 71 different school systems across the state for um attendance coordination efforts. So that's as far as I know that's the most significant investment that this particular board or our agency has ever
made. So um we're excited about being able to make that recommendation to you for April Bessie and that's over $6 million for attendance work. You've got the 5 million uh in the judiciary budget at summit. We will have that separate track for attendance where we invite by
invitation judges, vas other other groups. And so we'll have that. Um, the other thing we'll be kicking off as Star uh fades away, we're going to be kicking off what we're calling the um the power of presence advisory council, the PPAC.
You don't play basketball in the PAC, but you played that in the PAC, but the power of presence advisory council um will be kicking off. And then I know that you had some level of interest in the way in which MFP funded based on enrollment or membership. And if if I
recall, the task force basically killed killed the idea of of of enroll of attendance uh funding as opposed to membership funding within like the first 15 minutes of their meeting. So um that's that's where we are. Um you
know, we're happy to come back to some other point with uh the attendance team, but they're actually in schools today. I think they're in Point Cap. Is that Lexi Point? Yeah. So, a lot of work happening out there. >> Where where does uh where does the PPAC
lie? What the department? >> You've got that. Okay. Thanks. >> Okay. Uh any other comments or questions? What's next on the agenda? >> That concludes your agenda. >> Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Appreciate you.
We'll be back in five minutes.