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House Education panel hears AOE request to delay parts of 2023 school-safety law implementation
Summary
Agency of Education staff told the House Education Committee the agency seeks to extend deadlines in the 2023 school-safety Act 29, delay statewide behavioral threat assessment reporting until 2027, and perform limited interim data collection in 2025–26 while it refines the data process.
Lindsay Hedges, interim director of policy and communications at the Agency of Education (AOE), told the House Education Committee on Feb. 26 that the agency is proposing targeted delays to parts of Act 29, Vermont’s 2023 school-safety legislation, to allow districts more time to refine emergency operations plans and to align threat-assessment reporting across schools.
Hedges said the draft committee bill would push back the implementation deadline for emergency operations plans and align behavioral threat assessment (BTA) reporting to start in July 2027 for both schools that had teams in place on July 2023 and those that form teams later. “We are hoping to align all of the reporting to begin at July of 2027,” Hedges said. She added the agency intends to conduct a smaller-scale interim data collection in 2025 and 2026 for schools that already have BTA teams in place so the AOE can better understand current practices before launching the uniform reporting.
The nut graf: AOE described the changes as a two-year, targeted delay intended to improve data quality and give districts practical time to implement requirements passed in Act 29. The agency said it is not abandoning the reporting requirement; rather, it wants to design a uniform, defensible data-collection process for sensitive information about students and school practices.
Committee members pressed for reasons behind the delay. Hedges said the unit now charged with implementing these statutory duties — the agency’s operations team — was not in place when Act 29 was drafted and the agency wants to ensure practical, consistent implementation. “There’s not a clear data collection process right now,” she said, and any data collected immediately would likely be “disparate.” The proposed delay, she said, would allow the AOE to “work with the field, refine the data collection process, and be really clear on what information we need and how we’re gonna be using it moving forward.”
Hedges said an existing school BTA consultant contract is active and that AOE staff are already assisting schools to prepare for the later uniform implementation. Committee counsel and members signaled they expected AOE to return with subject-matter experts and more detailed proposals; Hedges agreed to bring deeper testimony at a later date.
No formal motions or votes on these draft changes were recorded during the hearing. Committee members asked clarifying questions about implementation timelines and capacity; several members urged the agency to provide further details on training, data security and how interim 2025–26 data would be used.
Ending: The committee chair closed the discussion after members said they wanted the agency to return with more specific implementation plans. AOE staff committed to follow-up testimony and to provide details on how interim data collections will inform the planned July 2027 uniform reporting timeline.
