SmartTranscript of House Education - 2025-03-12 - 9:00 AM

[Courtney O'Brien]: And you are live. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Welcome everybody to Health Education on March twelfth twenty twenty five. This morning, we're gonna talk about cardiac emergency response plans, through the context of h two forty seven. This is an opportunity to hear from the agency of education to see, what work in this area is already being done, so we get a a sense of what's happening and should more be happening or anyway, the the floor is yours. Introduce yourself, and, looking forward to hearing what you have today. [Courtney O'Brien]: Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Courtney O'Brien. I am the interim operations director at the Agency of Education. In my permanent capacity, I also work with the operations team, so I have been doing this work for several years. I do have with me, for some subject matter expertise, my colleague, Penny Erickson, from the Vermont School Safety Center, school safety programs manager. Thank you, Sun, for joining us as well. So I have, provided some written testimony. I'm not sure if that made it to your committee, in time of this meeting. Excellent. And my plan is to just read from there, and we can address some questions, at the end. Thank you again for the opportunity to provide this testimony on the topic of proposed house bill two forty seven related to cardiac emergency response plans in schools. We deeply appreciate your attention to the importance of cardiac response plans in schools, and we are eager to share some additional information and some recommendations about how we can achieve this work in a very, efficient and practical way. For a bit of background, folks may recall act twenty nine of twenty twenty three, which was an act related to physical school safety and security. And this was, now embedded within title sixteen BSA section fourteen eighty through fourteen eighty five. Specifically, section fourteen eighty introduced new requirements for all public and approved and recognized independent schools. So thinking about the larger body of schools. And it was related to comprehensive all hazards emergency operations plans. And for the sake of this conversation, we typically refer to those as EOPs. The proposed language of h two forty seven, the cardiac response plan bill very closely resembles the existing provisions of the emergency response plans embedded in act twenty nine. Specifically that that, cardiac language proposes the following Requirements for, requirements for schools and districts to develop and maintain a cardiac emergency response plan inclusive of a placement within each tool, which addresses training requirements and assigns specific responsibility to staff in the event of a cardiac emergency. It also provides for requirements for schools and districts to work with their local emergency service providers to develop and integrate the plan. It's a very important part of, both act twenty nine and the proposed language is that integration with local response. Also provides requirements that each plan provide very specific protocols for cardiac response in schools whether during or after the school day. So, again, kind of that broader, time frame of, school activities. And requirements for exercising or practicing the plan and annual plan review and updates. Act twenty nine, by comparison, requires that all schools and districts maintain a comprehensive emergency operations plan, which is developed in partnership with local emergency management and response partners, is reviewed and updated at least once annually, and includes specific response and training protocols for all identified hazards within a school or district. The AOE in partnership with the Vermont, with members of the Vermont emergency management division of department of public safety, we work together in a unit called the Vermont School Safety Center or VSSC. We've developed both a planning guide, so a very comprehensive planning guide, and a template emergency operations plan, which provides sample language, formatting, a recommended list of priority hazards or threats, and instructions on how to build a hazard specific annex for each district or school. So making sure we have that individualized touch for each district in school. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Would you mind just defining what you mean by annex? [Courtney O'Brien]: Yes. Absolutely. So, in the context of building an emergency operations plan, we tend to use formatting that is either recommended by or similar to Vermont Emergency Management and follows the flow of kind of national best practices around emergency response. In the plan itself, there are some basic components of the plan that are universally applicable, things like, terminology and definitions and how to set up your organization and response team. And then we have what are called annexes that are individualized, almost like chapters or sections of a plan that is, address specific topics. So for example, flood would be a a specific hazard annex. Cardiac response would be a specific hazard annex. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Okay. Great. [Courtney O'Brien]: Thank you. I'll just pause for a moment. Sunny, is there anything else that I've missed on that? No. You're doing great. Thank you. Sunny is our expert on the EOPs and annex planning, so I'll make sure I'll make sure that that's correct. Within the template and planning guide, medical emergency, including cardiac emergency response plan or SERP and suspected overdose is included as a recommended priority annex. So in the materials that have already been published and are being shared with schools, we do identify credit response plan as one of the priority annexes that we recommend all schools and districts. So beyond f twenty nine, there are a couple other places where this work is integrated either into regulation or we've been doing work to meet these goals. Title eighteen BSA, which is a Department of Health statute, requires that all schools own and operate in AED to all schools that own and operate in AED must report that information to both the Vermont Department of Health and their associated regional ambulance or local response provider. So, again, there's kind of this separate, requirement for reported use of AEDs. [Chair Peter Conlon]: But it does not require that every school have an AED. Correct. Correct. [Courtney O'Brien]: In addition, rule series fifty one hundred, which is rules govern rules governing the licensing of educators and the preparation of educational professionals, so this is a set of regulation around licensing, requires that help educators, PE, physical education educators, school nurses, and associate school nurses must have earned certificates in both CPR and, AED, youth and management as part of comprehensive licensing requirements. So those are also embedded in educational licensing requirements. Again, addressing the need for, training requirements around these the use of these tools. And lastly, in the education statutes title sixteen, section two twelve, subsection eighteen, provides that so this is the section that describes the role of the secretary of education. And one of those, duties is that annually, the secretary must inform superintendents and principals of regional resources available to assist schools, to provide instruction in, DPR and the use of AEDs, and provide updated information to the education community regarding the provision of a comprehensive health education. So this work is is already embedded in, the education titles. The way that we're achieving this this year is that we are partnered with the Vermont School Safety Center in posting targeted office hours. We've been hosting this work for for a couple of months now at this point, but we do have targeted office hours to help schools and districts build cardiac response plans and annexes in March so that that session is happening on March twentieth. And in support of this work, we had previously received a planning guide from the American Heart Association for cardiac emergency response plan with port protocols following our, you know, EOB office hours this month, we do plan to publish that resource as part of that package. So that would be another tool available to us. In terms of other completed work, [Chair Peter Conlon]: and I'll [Courtney O'Brien]: say this work has been done, in very close partnership between my team at the agency of education, the operations team, and our partners at the Vermont School Safety Center. So that would be Sunny and her team at the Vermont Emergency Management Division and, to support the development of comprehensive EOPs. So really to try to dig in and go beyond just checking the boxes on whether or not an EOP exists. We're we're really emphasizing the importance of comprehensive EOPs. And we have provided the following technical support and training opportunities to all public and independent schools over the course of the last few years or so. Number one being the release of the planning guide and emergency operations planning template. We have semi regularly reminded, our school safety and community around these resources. So I'd say we've had maybe two reminders in the last eighteen months in addition to the initial announcement of this. We've posted an EOP webinar for independent schools on March nineteenth twenty twenty four to review requirements and available resources. We have, coordinated the delivery of free day long training on EOP development and implementation. So a really comprehensive, training program provided through, an organization called REMS or Readiness and Emergency Management through schools. We posted this training three two times initially. We had a third scheduled and, unfortunately, it was canceled due to low registration numbers. So we were able to reschedule that, and it was posted on February eighteenth twenty twenty five. As I mentioned, in twenty twenty five, we launched monthly office hours hosted by the Vermont School Safety Center and Vermont Emergency Management. And these office hours are designed to provide support for specific annex development. Over the course of the last few years, we have heard from schools and districts that this is probably a more difficult part of writing an emergency operations plan. They understand the template. They understand the concept, but actually being able to dive into each specific topic Mhmm. And build out those comprehensive annexes. It's difficult in some spaces, so we've been trying to approach, approach this from a more hands on place and going through our list of priority annexes, month by month. And lastly, our team, truly through the Vermont School Safety Center and the young partners, do regularly engage with schools and districts to review and exercise their emergency operations plan. So we do have folks that are available in the field on a semi regular basis and are engaging with school safety teams and really diving into those plans in a very detailed way, providing recommendations, practicing them where needed so that they can really understand how effective those plans will be. And that does include, where available, cardiac response and AED plans as well as medical, to emergencies. Ultimately, the agency as well as our partners from the Department of Public Safety and in the Vermont School Safety Center are very much in agreement that ensuring robust cardiac response plans in schools is not only important, but that good cardiac response plans are critical to providing life saving measures for students and in schools. The existing requirements for emergency operations plans are intended to allow schools to be intentional and nimble with their emergency planning needs. Any requirements established for school emergency planning and preparedness need to be it needs to strike the right balance between being descriptive enough that schools can effectively carry out the intent, but not so prescriptive that regulation limit our flexibility to prioritize and respond to evolving hazards. School EOPs reflect a number of life saving emergency protocols, including but not limited to cardiac and related events. Including very specific regulatory language for a single hazard or threat or a response plan for such is not an effective way to prioritize certain hazards over others. Instead, the agency and our partners at the Vermont School Safety Center strongly recommend that the AOE and VSC, Vermont School Safety Center, modify the existing planning guide, and template to include very specific recommendations for cardiac response annex. As is our existing practice, our teams will work with experts in the cardiac response field to ensure that best practices are captured in a format format that is consistent with Vermont emergency management response planning and can be duplicated by a school or district. So that individual, aspect to this is also equally important. This approach allows schools and districts to achieve the goal of developing robust cardiac response plans as part of their overall emergency response plan without duplicating resources or competing or creating competing priorities among emergency response regulation. And lastly, in preparation for this testimony, the AOE operations team and Vermont School Safety Center partners connected with representative partners in the education field and found that we did share not only a similar commitment to prioritizing this work without creating competing regulatory priorities, excuse me, without trading and conflicting priorities and challenges for our field partners through new regulation. So, again, trying to strike that balance that balance of acknowledging the importance and improving our technical response without adding additional layer of regulation. And if further testimony is requested, we would recommend that this committee may want to discuss with Jane Nichols of the Vermont Group Legal Association. And that ends my my testimony. You. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you. Question here. So currently, the need be not a requirement at schools? [Courtney O'Brien]: Not that I'm aware of. [Chair Peter Conlon]: In in the written testimony you gave us, there are the three bullets at the beginning. And it says that the language of h two forty seven closely resembles the existing requirements of h two. Are you not about to post a following? It it resembles, but it's not the same. I mean, where where are the differences between the three bullet points and sort of what's in the work that you're doing already? [Courtney O'Brien]: Sure. I would actually suggest that what's what's very different is the bullet point that doesn't exist, which is the requirement for AEDs in all schools. And so the emergency operations plan provisions of act twenty nine do not require any sort of specific equipment, particularly not AEDs. The language where it does overlap is around the response plan, the training, and the requirements for that that that really strong local partnership. We do want to emphasize that that how important that local response is. We are seeing across most, many schools and districts that where emergencies do occur, stronger responses happen in places where those schools and districts have a preexisting relationship with their local emergency partner. So that that is important. Similarly, the training requirements and having those really specific call outs for really in any event, not just a cardiac response event, but in any sort of emergency protocol or process, you need to ensure that the people responsible in your plan for carrying out those duties have achieved the appropriate level of training. And so, again, that language is is, I think, universal to both the EOP planning and the cardiac response proposed language. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Other questions, folks? Alright. And can you give us kind of a timeline as to the work that you're doing? I mean, well, let me ask some specific questions. H two forty seven talks about annual training or annual drills. Is that something that is included in your work, or is that too prescriptive given [Courtney O'Brien]: It it's I wouldn't say not necessarily it's too prescriptive. That is a level of detail that we would not be able to track effectively for all emergency drills. Drills. We do track a very specific set of drills through existing language, and so there are provisions in fire fire and, like, safety code around tracking for fire drills. Mhmm. There are provisions in act twenty nine or now in that title language for options based response to violent intruder drills. An emergency operation plan is really meant to be unique and specific to the school or district and and should provide the district with their own training requirements based on their specific hazards. In a lot of cases, there are shared hazards or, again, kind of those threat specific protocols that need to be established that all schools will encounter. Mhmm. And that's where we are trying to focus our focus our time on helping to develop those office hours and taking time to get with schools and say, here here's a template. Here's a resource. Here are some shared considerations that all of you may find valuable versus drills for things like an evacuation drill in one area of the state may need to happen differently in a in a separate area of the state. Or, one school may be much more susceptible to blood or to some sort of natural disaster where other schools may be more susceptible to an industrial accident based on their proximity to, that kind of building. So those very specific drills or exercises should be embedded within the emergency operations plan for each school, but we do not track them at the state level. [Chair Peter Conlon]: I would I would say this would the cardiac emergency be that's not a specific to any school. They all all schools face the same risk. [Courtney O'Brien]: Yep. We would agree. And similarly, in the category of medical events or medical emergencies, acute medical emergencies, there are a handful that we see universally applicable. Cardiac being one of them. Our goal with the office hours is to be able to build out a repository of additional template language that we can share on our website and kind of distribute out from schools so that schools will have material readily available. They can adjust that material based on the very specific needs or their response plans, but they're not starting from scratch. So that's that's the hope with our office hours. [Chair Peter Conlon]: What's the follow-up to make sure that schools are, you know, doing what they're supposed to do with all of these? [Courtney O'Brien]: Yep. So there are a couple of layers. Act twenty nine does not require any sort of like, there's not a requirement for all EOPs to be reviewed or checked by anyone at the state level. We do have this embedded in our superintendent's assurances at this point, so we are asking superintendents to attach to the fact that this is completed. Sunny, would you mind speaking a little bit to your work in your direct work with schools and kind of your Sure. Plans? Sunny Erickson, school safety program manager with the DEM and the school safety center. Myself and my colleague, Rob Evans, who is the school safety liaison officer, we have been in the field and working in this in this general area for about six or seven years. We meet regularly with folks that are looking for either a full EOP review or specific portions of their EOP to be reviewed. We will walk through any challenges that might be arising with the planning process. We use exercises. We work on trainings with each of the schools. I would say that we've seen a really a great increase in the number of schools reaching out for us to be reviewing and, you know, helping them further develop their EOPs and their processes. So I would say that we're the technical assistance side, the exercise planning and development side, and we've seen a great need for that. We still see schools that are not adequately prepared Mhmm. May have no EOP at this point, and our goal is then to be as helpful as possible, provide this great guide template that's relatively easy to use at once they have the considerations of what their specific teams are based on their location, their proximity, their certain potential threats. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Again, that that sounds like it's the burden is on the school to come to you as opposed to a mandate on the school itself. To review the plans? Yeah. And and to sort of ask for help if they need it. Correct. Yeah. [Courtney O'Brien]: We do we do advertise our office hours through school safety center website, through our trainings, when we're out in the field, we're inviting people in as often as possible doing as much outreach as possible, but also it has to be for the dish or a lot of schools. So I I would say that there's probably an even greater need than what we're, you know, seeing in attendance numbers and things like that. But we are trying to be as proactive with our outreach and availability as possible, and also schools are really pretty well booked right now. Their capacities are limited. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Well, I guess that's my concern is that if if schools are obviously got a lot going on, they're distracted with many, many things. Could a, you know, a small high school out there be cruising right along without any sort of car yet? Emergency response plan? [Courtney O'Brien]: I suppose potentially. Part of the provisions of Act twenty nine and the assurances for superintendents to comply with such do require that it's not just an EOP. Right? The language is not so big that we're requiring an emergency operations plan, but very specifically that we require an emergency operations plan that is at least as comprehensive as the template provided by the AOE and Vermont School Safety Center. So at this point, we would assume that if as we do with superintendents assurances, if they are testing yes, that that is complete, that they the emergency operations plan that they have has at least all of the components that exist in the template, which right now include that recommended prioritization of cardiac response and medical emergency. Great. I'll also note quickly for the record, this work and the the outreach and communication that that Sunny was just referring to and and some of the work that we've been talking about today is really heavily embedded in all of our school safety work. We've we've really approached Act twenty nine as kind of a comprehensive approach to school safety. And so this idea of if if schools are are not reaching out to us for help, it's not because they haven't heard that it's available at this point. Right? We've done a pretty significant outreach. We partnered to host the Vermont, governor's school safety conference this past September, and we did have a section of that conference dedicated to emergency operation planning and annex development hosted by Sunny and some some of her colleagues as well. So it is work that is ongoing and that we we regularly communicate. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Any other questions, committee? Thanks. Thank you very much for the time,

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SmartTranscript of House Education - 2025-03-12 - 9:00 AM

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