Alaska Legislature: House Finance, 4/8/26, 9am

Okay, I'll call this meeting the House Finance Committee to order and let the record reflect that the time is currently 9:09 AM on Wednesday, April 8th. And present today we have Representative Allard, Representative Co-Chair Schraggy, Representative Co-Chair Josephson, Representative Jimmy, Representative Galvin, and Representative Hannan, as well as myself, Co-Chair Foster. And let's see here. I just want to remind folks if you could mute your cell phones. And we just have one bill on the agenda today and that is House Bill 246. That's the Special Education Service Agency Funding Bill by Representative Josephson. And this is the first hearing on the bill. So Representative Josephson, if you'd like to come up as well as your staff, Mr. Ken Alper and Ms. Olivia Yancey, the Executive Director of Special Education Service Agency, that's SEESA. If you would all like to—

I'm up here all by myself.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I'm just showing support to Representative Josephson.

You've got great support here, Representative Josephson, to your right over here. So also online we have a number of folks. We have Jean Gerhardt. Chair of the Governor's Council on Disabilities and Special Education. We have Richard Saville, a member of the Governor's Council on Disabilities and Special Education, and Genevieve Hollands, the CESA Finance Manager. So with that, we also have with us Representative Stapp and Representative Josephson. If you'd like to introduce the bill.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, everyone. I'm Andy Josephson. I'm a representative from House District 13 in South Midtown Anchorage. Before us today, and I thank the co-chair for calendaring this bill, is House Bill 246 on the Special Education Service Agency. I have known about this since 2013 when there was a renewal of the agency and probably some increase to its funding formula. In fact, I see it here in the statute. It was 1 Chapter 23 SLA 2013. So in fact, my first year there was some increase offered to the funding. This bill seeks to increase the rate that exists for CESA and make an inflation adjustment. CESAR, the Special Education Services Agency, was created in 1986. The keywords are noted on this PowerPoint that Director Yancy will present, and that are— that is the Low-Incidence Disability Program. The program is mostly for rural Alaska, and it helps comply with federal law, the Individual with Disabilities Education Act of 1975. Incidentally, I think it also helps comply with a 2004 federal law which effectively updated the IDEA. This agency, Special Education Service Agency, is governed by the Governor's Council on Disabilities and Special Education. It has its own board as well. And what it does, members of the committee, is it does itinerant outreach services for special education students. Representative Ballard may find interesting that it has a program for deaf special education students. Also blind, intellectually disabled, developmentally disabled, hearing impaired, orthopedically disabled, and severely emotionally disturbed students with multiple disabilities. What it does fundamentally, and the reason why a Finance Committee might find it compelling, is that some of these districts, particularly in rural Alaska, don't have, thankfully, lots of rates of LIDs. And as a consequence, the economics of servicing special education students in rural Alaska aren't there. And so one of the things that CISA does is fill that gap and help to do what's called capacity building. So it flies out to villages, serves and works with students in need, but also is an educator of other educators working to enhance their capacity to do the work CISA otherwise does. The service often cannot be provided by low school district personnel, and so this is designed to make it economic. CISA incidentally does other things besides the LID program. It operates the Alaska Autism Resource Center. The Alaska Deafblind Project, and the Alaska Center for Accessible Materials. I had the chance this morning to once again review its most recent audit, and I found two selections that I'd like to read to you before I wrap up that I thought were particularly helpful in summing up what CISA does. At page 5, Chris Curtis, her— our auditor, noted that the CESA was created to help Alaska school districts provide special education services for individuals with LIDs. Of course, I noted that these occur in less than 1% of the national school-age population. LIDs are more severe in nature and require specialized educational intervention. So again, that's what CESA specializes in. The second Selection that I thought I'd read you is this. CESA services are available to school districts whose LIDs needs occur infrequently, making it difficult for the district to serve a lone

the number of students in need of a particular service. So again, it's an economy of scale kind of operation. The audit at that time was very favorable, and they did surveys of school districts that found their program extremely beneficial. I was reminded of this need when I met with Mr. Seville last session, and he noted a need for further increase in the rate. And that rate is featured in the bill, but it's at $1,436.50. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I will try to answer any questions the committee might have. Okay. Thank you. Was somebody going to go through the PowerPoints? Yep. Mr. Alper, if you could put yourself on the record. Thank you. For the record, Ken Alper, staff to Representative Josephson. Ms. Yancey produced the slides and will And we'll go through the background on the program and how it works at the appropriate moment. I just wanted to sort of give a moment of overview on how the financing of the agency currently works in statute. Okay. Thank you. Maybe if you wanted to make any comments and also go through the PowerPoint and then we'll go to questions just to make sure that we've got kind of a nice little foundation built up. And so, Mr. Helper? Mr. Chairman, it's a very— it's a short bill. It's a basic formula, but there's two numbers in it. There's the fixed number, which is currently $23.13 in statute. That's the number that we seek to amend with the bill. It's multiplied by the number called average daily membership. You know, in the world of education funding, average daily membership is the raw count of the actual students in the state of Alaska, approximately 125,000 people right now. So before it goes through the various calculations in the base student allocation, the school size factor, district cost factor. Those are not part of average daily membership. And what Alaska has faced in the last years is a small decline in overall enrollment statewide while there is also an increase in the agency's caseload. Thus the funding shortage. That's the need to increase the multiplier, which is why we're here. The fiscal note of about $470,000 is just straight arithmetic of applying the new multiplier to the expected membership numbers. And that's really all I have. I'm happy to take questions, but Ms. Yancey knows far more about the agency because she runs it. Okay. And Ms. Yancey, were you going to walk through the PowerPoint? Okay. If you could put yourself on the record.

Good morning. My name is Olivia Yancey, and I am from Eagle River, Alaska. I'm a former teacher for the deaf and hard of hearing turned administrator. Thank you for having me. House Bill number 246, as Representative Josephson quite eloquently wrote and said, we are an education service agency. That's our building, Midtown Anchorage, right across from Stone Soup Group. We have multiple programs. The 5 that are above you or before you include autism, deaf and hard of hearing, deafblind, vision impairment, emotional disabilities, and multiple disabilities. And then we have the additional grants that were mentioned earlier, so I will spare you that. Before you is our staff members that are busy in action in areas that you may represent. We have been busy this year. This is data as of April 6th. We have served 3,374 teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, self-advocates. Our school district total right now for this year is 49. I have a team of about 13 special education teachers with special training that work with low incidence disabilities with an average of 13 years of experience. And I would say that the traveling to these sites makes it challenging. And so that's kind of why we have a challenge of we need additional staff members to continue to travel, including the DeafBlind Project. We have 52 school districts that we're serving right now. Funding for CISA. These are our revenue sources and our budget. As you can see, our primary program is the state of Alaska. That amount covers the LAD program along with part of our Alaska Autism Resource Center. We have additional revenue sources. An example would be the Alaska Deafblind Project. We wrote for that grant years ago to supplement some of the funds for the state of Alaska, and so that covers part of some of the services we have for the deafblind population that we serve. CESA consultations. So this is what it looks like, boots on the ground. Some representatives and senators may have already seen this because I've distributed this out back in February. Our specialists go in and build local capacity. We have vision impairment specialist Angel Black. She's observing a student in the Southeast. What the student is doing is learning how to Braille. The object there that she's using is a Brailler, and without training from Angel, that team wouldn't know necessarily how to use, and the student could not access written form in her education program. The image in the middle is of Amy Totmiller, our multiple disability specialist. She's observing a student that is working on pre-vocational skills, and she's borrowing items from our statewide lending library, which also saves school school district funds because then they can determine what should, does, or doesn't work in the educational program before they purchase it. She partnered with Angel Black, which you see there, to cross-collaborate, and that also saves school district funds and also paperwork process and immediate access to recommended strategies for the team, and they don't have to go through another contractor. And then the image to the right, far right, is of John Barrowman. Before a trip, he goes into the statewide lending library and he works with collecting materials. So he met with the team and he asked them, what do you need? And they asked for communication support and life skills. So what you have there is a GoTalk 4. You have a book about self-help skills for people with autism by Stephen R. Anderson. You also have a toothbrush timer and a tooth— teeth model. And so things like that are— this agency I'm very proud to represent directly works with students and their teachers and builds their capacity by giving them materials. At the end of a consultation, they write up a report. That's what we do. And then we ask them for feedback. Did you gain knowledge? For the past 3 years, we've received feedback. On average, 95.2% of Alaskans shared they gained knowledge as a result of this disability and how to implement a strategy. So we still do good work that I'm pretty proud of.

I just wanted to note that we also have with us Representative Bynum, Representative Moore, and then we've only got 10 slides. In the PowerPoint deck, so I'll hold questions till the end of the presentation. Ms. Yancey. Okay.

CESA also does trainings, so these can be student-specific or they can be site-specific or district-wide, and they can be in person or they can be via distance delivery. The image to the left is of our emotional disability specialist, Lion Johnson. He's actually in Southeast Alaska before school starts, doing an in-service training on positive behavior supports within the classroom. You did not— we did not charge the school district for this, but it also provides them training that's required for their team to implement when the students come. And then the image to the right is us looking at how can we bring other experts into the field to the state of Alaska without the expense of travel. And so we have Dr. Susan Bashinski in a webinar and we have Angel Black, our moderator, and an interpreter to make it accessible via webinar. And this is a one-of-a-kind webinar that we did, but we have a list of them available. And that was facilitating social and emotional skills for students that are deafblind, which is a rare topic to have, but we brought it to Alaska. This was mentioned earlier by Representative Josephson. Our funding formula is tied to average daily membership. The red line just demonstrates that that is dipping, and our request for services, which is pretty common knowledge that special education requests for supports across the nation is rising, and CISA is no different. We're seeing that as well. Last year we served a total of 522 students, and our— the dip in our average daily membership last year lost us about $37,000. And so we had to assume that amount. And then because of average daily membership count from this year, we anticipate losing about $40,000 that we're going to have to look at other ways to provide services next year. I've been asked this before. Um, CESA currently has a waitlist, so specialists are unable to travel, um, to every single site. And so we have to max— we have to put a cap on how many students and teams we assign for specialists. We have a waitlist from last year. Um, fiscal year '25, we had 19 students that were waiting about an average of 2 months for services. This year, um, we have right now 10 students from the autism program as well as one 2 students in the multiple disabilities program waiting to be assigned a specialist. Um, so the question is, what would happen with OCESA waitlist? And this is what I suspect. Um, Alaska rural and rural remote school districts would have lack of access to highly qualified professional that could help them design a free appropriate public education, um, required through IDEA, or Individuals with Disabilities Act. As a result, there's a potential increase for school districts with mediations, due process hearings between family and school districts if they're unable to access someone who could help them plan that

FAPE or that appropriate education plan. So I've also been asked the question, well, could they not staff their own specialist? And Representative Josephson mentioned this. If school districts had to hire just one LID education specialist for each school that CISA has served, and that's just with one student, maybe two students, the cost would significantly rise for Alaskans. So last year we served 168 schools across the entire state. Comparing that with our Association of School Boards report, 2024 through 2025 teacher salary without benefits, we just chose the lowest average teacher salary, which was $51,654. If you looked at the previous slide, our revenue is significantly less than the amount it would cost for just one LID specialist. I won't add any comments besides just making this available to you of our current revenue budget. And then what did we use those funds for under the LID program along with our CESA funding formula currently? So the ask— this is not inflation-proof, I understand. It's $3.76 more, but it would potentially give us additional staff members to eliminate the waitlist and also potentially consider salary increases for our team that's working so hard going out to rural remote Alaskan sites. And that is the end of my presentation.

Okay. Thank you so much. I've got in line Representative Allard and then myself and Representative Bynum and Galvin. And so with that, Representative Allard.

Thank you.

Through the chair. So one of the things I always said to myself was if any of these bills have a fiscal note, that I'm not going to be supporting. But the only way I would support them is if I felt that there was some sort of gain coming from the bill. Meaning, is there an incentive incentivizing us and our economy and the structure of building our great state? So a couple of questions if you don't mind. What was your first name? Olivia. Thank you for being here. One of the questions is can we get more money from the Alaska Deaf and Blind Project from the federal government? Is there any more money we can access to help with this?

Ms. Yancey.

There you go.

Through the chair, it is a 5-year grant that we write. Set right now. It was turbulent at times with the U.S. Department potentially discontinuing funding. We're in year 3, so we could look into other measures, but it wouldn't currently meet the need of the waitlist.

Okay, I would love to help you with that, if anything to help with that. A couple of things that I wanted to ask was— let me go through here. I think it was on slide 7. Why are we dipping? Why would we— if we have— are you saying that there is less kids enrolled in this program? That you said we are dipping down as far as ADM not having enough children and we lost them. Can you help me out a little bit?

Ms. Yancey.

Through the chair, I don't have a direct answer for why our state average daily membership is dropping. That is raw data that essentially is tracked by school districts that determine how How many students are showing up by October child count.

Okay.

So maybe we need to do better— not better, but maybe we need to add some messaging to make sure parents know that it is out there. I don't always think that the school districts do enough to advertise to the parents. I think he is going to do a follow-up.

Mr. Elbert. Mr. Chairman, just to follow up on Representative Allard's question, the ADM Just to be clear, has—

is not related to the CESA program.

That's the total statewide enrollment of all the K-12 schools out there, which is declining for various reasons, demographics and so forth. Okay, just wanted to make sure that was clear.

Okay, I thought it was that those that were not participating in the CESA program, but it's— you're saying now it's just a regular ADM that we get every year?

Yes, through the chair, that's the total student count for the state.

All right, and then Will this bill— thank you for giving me some leeway— through the chair, will this bill help cut down the waitlist? We have, you said, I think, 19 individuals on the waitlist. Will this help cut it down?

Ms. Yancey?

Nobody should be on a waitlist to get help like this.

Through the chair, yes, that is the intention behind this, is to add additional staff with this additional funding.

Okay. So then my last comment is the reason I like this bill, and then I would go against my regular, is because I think that when we do things like this, it makes individuals that have challenges productive parts of society, helps our employment, and it helps people in our economy in general and just gets people back into society or gets them into society to be productive parts of society. So thanks, Representative Josephson. This is a wonderful bill, and I appreciate you bringing this forward. Thank you, Representative.

Okay, thank you. Ms. Yancy, if we could go back to slide 8. How is the waitlist determined? Because when I look at this, my first reaction was if there's a shortfall in funding, then rural Alaska is the first to receive a shortfall in services. And I would have assumed it would be maybe a pro rata urban rural and not maybe rural first, but maybe I'm wrong in how that's determined. If you could maybe talk a little bit about that.

Thank you for the question, Co-Chair Foster. The waitlist is just determined by one factor, and that is that specialists have no more than 40 students, and we don't serve urban in this particular rural and remote service and technical assistance, so this is specifically for non-urban districts. I had mentioned in a previous slide that we do serve urban areas or correspondence programs through those other grants, but this one's specifically intended for a community that has 1 to 20 students within this particular autism, you know, field of autism or deaf and hard of hearing or vision loss. So it's not a preference over one urban area versus the other. It's specifically rural and rural remote.

Great, that's perfect. Thank you very much for that. And with that, we've got Representative Galvin.

Thank you, Co-Chair Foster. This is a question I believe for Executive Director Olivia Yancey. Can you share with us how your program dovetails with Infant Learning Program? So if I were a family with a child, let's say at 6 months old, then as the child— and there's clearly hearing loss, for example. How would infant learning program and the family interface with your program through time?

Ms. Yancy.

Through the chair, great question. I would admit that this is an area that I know is a gap with CISA. We aren't funded to provide services birth to 3, but we do work with ILP programs that reach out to us about when the student's close to aging out of IEP services and provide some support on, you know what, a specialist might make a recommendation on how to set up an IEP, which is different than their plan they have birth to 3. We've also provided some one-time supports for students that have complex bodies. So an IEP program might come to the multiple disabilities team, and I have 2 specialists that are well trained in how to assess for AAC, and they may support the IEP program in saying, this is what I would go and do So we do understand there's a need. We don't have the full funding to provide 0 to 3 with the exception of the Alaska Deafblind Project.

Follow-up? Thank you. So it sounds to me like as a child moves on from ILP, then many of your specialists will help them link into the education system as well through— did you say an IEP support in terms of building that and applying for that? Is that part of what you do?

Ms. Yancy?

Through the chair, yes. If asked by the school district and the ILP program, yes. If invited.

Thank you very much.

Okay. In line I have Representative Bynum, Hannon, and Jimmy. Representative Bynum?

Thank you, Co-Chair Foster. Through the chair, I hope that I did not miss the answer to this question if it had been asked, but I don't think it has been. The organization is set in statute, but it is— is it organized as nonprofit?

Ms. Yancey.

Through the chair, yes, it is a nonprofit. So essentially the funds we have go straight to the students through the revenue we showed you.

Sure.

Follow-up?

Follow-up.

Thank you, Co-Chair Foster. Follow-up. So when we talk about— I looked at that revenue sheet. It shows that it looks like all the revenue is coming through the statutory mechanism. Is there any other sources of income for SESA outside of statute? So can people donate money directly to the organization? I didn't— okay, there it is.

Yeah.

Through the chair, great question. CISA could in theory ask for additional funds for donations. We do receive some one-time donations. It's typically related to the Alaska Autism Resource

Center. They're currently doing an Autism Awareness Month walk at the end of the month, and so we've received some of those donations, but we typically use those for keeping the walk alive or putting it back into trainings and support for the team. Otherwise, we typically ask for discretionary grant funding from the Department of Ed, both state and federal.

One final.

Representative Bynum.

Thank you, sir. So yeah, I was looking at that. I was trying to figure out if there was like any other outside sources that were non-federal, non-state that were really providing any kind of significant income. And it got me to thinking about the new law that had passed into place under the federal administration about scholarship granting organizations and whether or not you guys had looked at organizing as an SGO. Because as an SGO, you have tremendous ability to fundraise through that tax credit program. And I was just wondering if that was something that you had looked at or had considered.

Ms. Yancy, through the chair, not at this time, but thank you for the suggestion.

Thank you.

Representative Hannan.

Thank you. Thank you, Co-Chair Foster. My first question is for the sponsor, and I believe Representative Josephson, you told us this, but I hadn't quite consumed all my espresso yet. When was the last time that the dollar amount in statute was changed? The 2313.

Representative Josephson.

This— if I've got this right, it looks like 2021. Through the chair.

Thank you. And then I'm going to switch to Ms. Schianci, if I may. Thank you, Co-Chair Foster. Good to see you again. As you probably remember, I'm familiar with your agency having been a classroom teacher and just sort of for the edification of my colleagues, your agency is basically mandated by both federal and state law because states must deliver these services to students. And in most rural districts, like I think in Oregon, I think there's 5, similar organizations to yours organized more in multiple counties at a time to deliver those services so that your school, if you have one deaf student, you may not have an interpreter there, but you're networking with other districts to provide that. And of course Alaska presents rule on steroids and limited capability to the extreme. My question is sort of— we've talked a lot in the legislature about the increasing turnover of teachers, especially in rural districts, especially with specialists, with many of our special ed specialists now coming to districts with international visas. And the model of CESA has always been invest in the staff that are in your district so the next time you have a— this may be your first deaf student, but it won't be your only deaf student. So on down the road in 5 years, you've already got some staff with some experience. We're now seeing this turnover, and I am wondering from your perspective, because your staff are going out and training specialists that you might have thought were going to be there 2, 3 years with that student, and now you're seeing them turning over at a greater rate. And how is that impacting your budget when the investment in training these providers in rural districts is exponentially increasing in their turnover rate, and what does that do to your program and budget?

Ms. Yancey.

Through the chair, that is a great question. I have surveyed my team in December, and I asked them, what are you seeing on site? I would say that often there's about 10 to 15% of the staff, the school teams that they're working with have a limited staff member that is not available to them to then train because they're itinerant, and so then they're working directly with the paraprofessional. So we see that, and so it's challenging to your point of building capacity to then eventually discontinue services from that particular specialist. So we do see that. I think I understand— if I understand the question correctly, are we seeing any other challenges related to the funding? Through the chair, do you mind if she repeats the question?

Representative Hannan.

Thank you, Co-Chair Foster. Sorry for my long story word problem. More in the nature of now that we're seeing so much turnover, how's that impacting your specialists who are doing training that in theory builds, right? I've gone out and given you one exposure, but now I'm every year starting back with that when you've got a new staff to train. Same child, hopefully, but just how is that stretching your capacity? Because your ratio is about— your specialist ratio 1 to 40, I think, is based on the student, not how many teachers I got to train to work with that student.

Ms. Yancey.

Through the chair, thank you for the restatement or rephrase. It is challenging. We are seeing that we're doing similar trainings again and again and again because we are the ones that are essentially the historians for the student. And so the student without our specialists may not have someone that would be driving the, no, these are what we've determined are appropriate accommodations and modifications for the team and helping with that carryover from one new teacher to the next new teacher. And so that I think you're also seeing as a driving force for CESA to have that wait list because we're not comfortable discontinuing that student because they are so reliant on a SESSA specialist for being that historical, reliant, consistent source of information for the student and the team.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll just share one little anecdote. Having spent 20 years teaching here in Juneau, many times we see students move in from rural districts because they need closer networking to medical services. And it was more than one family who were frustrated when they brought their child into this urban setting and felt like their kid, when they were in their rural community, had better services because they'd had continuity of care with CISA. And now their kid had a new teacher and was one of four and had to get, you know, their IEP adjusted to be one of four instead of, You know, the parents would say, but at home, little Andy J is the only one. And that— SEESA is designed to do that, take each kid and provide the best services you can. And we think frequently, oh, a bigger school provides better services, but in many cases it's not because they were each, you know, individually attended to. The importance of their services cannot be understated, and I think I'm sad that this is as low of an increase. I'd be happy to increase it more, but I know we are under budget pressure and I would never step in front of the sponsor of the bill to say you need more money. But I do think they need more money.

Okay. I've got in line Representative Jimmy Allard in Bynum. Representative Jimmy.

Boy, I know. Chair Foster, good morning to you all. And I have some couple questions. Who did— when a child is born and then they determine that a child has a disability, who determines that they stay on this lifelong to get these services?

Representative Josephson?

The requirement in federal law starting in the mid-'70s was that there be a referral and that students receive an individualized education plan to meet their needs. These are low-incidence disabilities, so they are unusual. And when I say unusual, they're infrequent. They're not unusual, they're infrequent. And that's where special education service agency comes in. In terms of, you know, I mean, I think part of the answer to your question would be things like Best Beginnings and Infant Learning Program, medical—

Parents as teachers.

Parents as teachers, medical providers, all of those specialists would identify that there was a disability.

Follow-up?

Follow-up?

Thank you, co-chair. And do you— I know you guys have— do they keep a list of children in need? And then is there a list of children who are in need but fall through the cracks and do not get these services?

You know, I think I would refer that to Ms. Yancey.

Ms. Yancey.

Through the chair, that is an excellent question. I think that the Department of Education and Early Development would probably be a better source for that information as far as loss of— and the Department of Health, because Department of Health handles 0 to 3 and the Department of Education and Early Development handles the 3 to 21. And so we don't at CSAC track how many students on child count should be served versus were not served. So I think that's a really good question to look into.

I'm not the person to answer that question.

Thank you. Just a last comment.

Representative Jimmy.

Thank you, Co-Chair Foster. I do see from my village in Tuksook that we do have children who do have one-on-one care, and I wanted to ask just to understand, do you guys send out people to work with local people to train them to serve— I mean, to assist these children who need additional help?

Again, I think the answer is yes, but I think the director is the best source.

Through the chair, yes, we do. As a specialist myself, I used to be in the Bethel region and providing services outside to those villages. I flew by Tuksook Bay, but yes, depending on the need. So essentially, the school district would fill in a referral. The referral requires just their IEP paperwork, which is their 1-year report or program, the 3-year evaluation to determine they need special education services, and that's already made by the school team including the family, a parent permission form, and then a district referral form. And so as soon as we receive that information, provided we don't have a waitlist, I assign that to a specialist, and the specialist then reaches out to the team and says, I'm here, what do you need?

Thank you.

Okay, I've got Representative Allard and then Bynum. Representative Allard.

Thank you.

And through the chair, Ms. Yancey, I know you guys are nonprofit and I know you guys do important work. We— state doesn't always have the resources that your professionalism and your nonprofit brings. Is there any time— and I know that Representative Bynum had brought it up, um, and I was going to make a joke about Andy J. I've never heard you called that. I thought that was special. But is there any way that you would consider more fundraising? Like, and I say that not just to raise funds, but to bring the attention to it. I know a lot of nonprofits do like galas or really great fundraisers, and I just, I just think it could bring more attention to what's going on in our rural communities. Is there any way you would consider that, or do you guys have something like that lined up? Because I want to support the bill, but I want to make sure that we're We're doing everything we can to bring in more money. I don't think it's enough either, which I've never said that on record, but I'm going to today. But I just really want to know, is there something that you could do that would further bring attention to it by doing like a big fundraiser in the sense like a gala or something like that? Have you guys considered it, or do you do it?

Ms. Yancey.

Through the chair, Representative Ballard, that's a great question. I would say that if The administrative overhead is low. I'm the only administrator for the nonprofit at this time. So that would take considerable amount of time along with Genevieve Hollins who's online. So it's definitely something to consider and we're looking forward to writing for additional grants in the next fiscal year. So thank you for letting me know.

Yeah, may I? I think you can get a lot of people. I'd help you. I've got a lot of resources and I think that you can do something that's really amazing. And maybe you just do an annual gala and bring everybody's attention to what's going on. And then it's kind of free advertising too. But I would encourage you to do that. And if you reach out to my office, I'll help you. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks. We're going to go to the last question and then we've got a hard stop at 10. So, Representative Bynum.

Thank you, Co-Chair Foster. Through the chair, I was just wondering how you measure success for your program. Like, what does that mean? You have this operating program. How do you measure if you're being successful or not?

Ms. Yancey.

Through the chair, thank you for the question. I would say there's two things that I measure, and that is that one, students receive on-site visits and they receive recommendations that they would not have had originally. So the productivity of the specialist being out on site and providing that support. So that's one. And then the second piece is asking the team, as a result of this learning, what do you believe you've gained knowledge? And that feedback also is success. The anecdotal notes that we have about student learning is hard to share with other individuals because we value student privacy and family privacy. But those are two things that I typically demonstrate as far as impact of CISA.

Thank you.

Okay. Representative Josephson, anything you'd like to add before we adjourn for the day?

Nothing I can think of. I want to thank the committee for its important questions and for this opportunity. Great.

Okay. Thank you very much. With that, our next meeting is scheduled for 1:30 today, and at that meeting we'll hear House Bill 193. That is the paid parental leave bill. We'll take public testimony for House Bill 77. That's the mail theft bill. Let's see here. Oh, one thing to consider is we may be on the floor, so it's possible that we don't have finance taking up amendments. I assume we'll be taking up amendments on the floor, so on the budget. So with that, if there's nothing else to come from the committee, we'll be adjourned at 9:51 AM. Thank you.