Senate advances broad education package, including cell‑phone limits and school cardiac plans

Senate reporters advanced H.480, a miscellaneous education bill that packages dozens of technical and policy changes spanning school safety, virtual learning, literacy, career and technical education and other K‑12 issues. The Senate education committee recommended proposing the committee’s amendments to the House and the Senate later ordered third reading of the bill.

The bill bundles changes to last year’s school‑safety statute (Act 29), updates virtual‑learning oversight, modifies BOCES startup grant eligibility, expands the Vermont National Guard tuition benefit, requires cardiac‑emergency response plans and AED access for school athletics, lengthens the allowable term for school energy performance contracts from 10 to 20 years without voter approval, and adds a new subchapter limiting student cell‑phone use during the school day.

Senator Weeks (Rutland), reporting for the education committee, said, “This section amends Act 29, last year’s school safety act, to recognize lessons learned over the past year,” describing adjustments that push some implementation deadlines and postpone data collection for behavioral threat assessment teams to give schools more time to gather experience. The committee’s report also includes housekeeping updates to listings of approved post‑secondary institutions, procurement thresholds for nonprofit school food service accounts, and modest changes to flexible‑pathways definitions and virtual‑learning oversight.

The bill would explicitly assign responsibility for behavioral threat‑assessment policy to school boards and procedure to superintendents and would delay certain implementation dates: for example, the start of comprehensive behavioral threat assessment implementation was described as moved to October of the year indicated in the committee text and some data reporting moved two years to allow a longer experience window.

On school safety and student supports, the bill adds a new requirement that each district and approved independent school adopt a cardiac‑emergency response plan and an athletic emergency action plan and specifies that athletic programs must establish procedures for responding to cardiac emergencies. The committee report said the section intends to improve life‑saving readiness by ensuring equipment and training are in place, with implementation targeted for the 2026–27 school year.

On literacy, the bill restores attention to grades 4–12 in language addressing literacy tutors and standards so that students across grade spans are eligible for supports if they fall significantly below proficiency, according to the committee reporter.

The bill expands the Vermont National Guard tuition‑benefit program to explicitly cover both undergraduate and graduate degree programs (including limited out‑of‑state approval when a degree program is not offered in Vermont) and clarifies that a member may pursue multiple degrees with a cap on total costs tied to an in‑state tuition benchmark.

The package also changes procurement rules for nonprofit school food service accounts, clarifies how supervisory unions or districts may apply for a $10,000 BOCES startup grant before a BOCES is formed, and extends energy performance contracts without voter approval from 10 to 20 years to allow longer payback periods on efficiency investments.

Cell phones and social media: the bill creates a model policy and requires districts to adopt policies prohibiting student use of personal devices that can access cellular networks or the internet from arrival to dismissal, with enumerated exceptions for health‑care plans (IEP/504), narrowly approved academic or co‑curricular uses, athletic or school‑sponsored events as approved by an administrator, and compliance with the McKinney‑Vento Act. The bill also restricts district use of social media to communicate directly with students except through approved archival platforms.

Senator from Chittenden Southeast, who offered a small amendment narrowing the athletic/co‑curricular exception, said the change was intended to allow an administrator or coach to authorize limited device use for safety or supervision during school‑sponsored athletic events. She said the committee “compressed the highlights” of extensive testimony into the legislative language and noted the House committee had taken several weeks of testimony on the subject.

During floor interrogation senators pressed for assurances about implementation and equity. One senator expressed concern that groups such as the ACLU or the Office of Racial Equity were not explicitly listed among consultees and asked whether the committee had considered bias in enforcement; the committee reporter said the model policy process and enumerated exceptions were intended to allow districts to adapt policies for students with special needs or housing instability and that the agency of education (AOE) would draft the model policy. The reporter said, “the cell phone prohibition section of the bill does not take immediate effect. It asks for a model policy from the Agency of Education.”

The committee also adopted narrower language allowing supervisory unions exploring formation of a BOCES to apply for startup grants before formal formation, and it added a limited exception for the conversion of certain therapeutic approved independent schools from for‑profit to nonprofit status so that conversion would not restart the school‑approval process.

The education committee reported the bill favorably (committee vote recorded as 6–0–0), the Appropriations Committee reported no new spending and recommended concurrence (7–0–0), and the Senate voted to propose amending the House as recommended by the committee on education, with later floor amendments offered and adopted. The Senate ordered third reading of H.480 to continue the legislative process.

Why it matters: H.480 would modify timelines and duties for school safety teams, require districts to plan for cardiac emergencies and AED access in athletics, change how districts may incubate shared services through BOCES, and impose new limitations on student device use and district social‑media communications. The measures touch district operations, student discipline practices, equity and special‑education protections, procurement rules and capital planning for energy projects.

What happens next: The Senate ordered third reading of H.480 after adopting multiple floor amendments and proposed to the House to amend the bill as recommended by the education committee as amended. The measure will return for later Senate action, including a final vote if and when third‑reading amendments are resolved.

Ending: The bill contains multiple effective‑date staggers and implementation windows (for example, certain safety and cardiac‑plan provisions are staged for the 2026–27 school year); the Senate indicated it expects to continue work on the education language before final passage.