Okay, good afternoon.

Um call this public oversight round table to order.

Today is Thursday, September 24th, 2026.

We're in room 412 of the John A.

Wilson building.

The time is 2.35 p.m.

I'm at large council member Christina Henderson, I chair the committee on health holding a round table today on the district's uh challenges in addressing the certified nurse aid workforce shortages.

Um specifically um DC Health and the Office of the State Superintendent Education challenges and implementing training and testing programs to increase the CNA workforce all together.

Uh we're holding this round table to try to get to the root cause of some of the ongoing issues and challenges that we've been having.

Despite the council's passage of the Certified Nurse Aid Amendment Act of 2024 over two years ago, and funding the Certified Nurse Aid Workforce Support Amendment Act of 2025 in the FY 26 budget, DC Health and Aussie have experienced ongoing challenges in providing adequate testing opportunities for our CNA students.

I've heard from many advocates regarding the challenges in getting CNA licensed when the psychomotor or skills portion of the CNA exam is often canceled at the last minute due to lack of a lack of available proctors.

This is concerning as uh in July of 2026, before the council left for recess, there were approximately 484 individuals who had completed their training but not yet taken the skills exam.

And I hope to get some more accurate numbers in terms of where we are today.

Uh to be clear, this is not a one-size-fits-all fix, and there are multiple factors at play and this role.

Now, also I want to just sort of add here some of you may be wondering why is Aussie at the table.

Well, um, in an effort to address some of our CNA workforce challenges, um, the council invested uh $5.4 million in FY26 alone to train CNA students through our advanced technical centers and address some of the workforce shortages and Aussie operates our ATCs.

And um just to be very clear that the ATCs are currently enrolled in district public schools.

There are other training providers who do CNA training and programs for um adult learner workforce.

Um, in addition to the money that was invested for the ATCs in FY26, the Committee on Health specifically invested $300,000 over the past two years to enhance the capacity for Aussie to train CNAs over the summer.

Um sort of goes with the idea of if students are going to participate in the summer youth employment program.

Why not give them an opportunity to earn a actual license or certification through that process as opposed to some of the employment opportunities that may not be as um career fulfilling or as a stepping stone?

Um we're brought both of the agencies together because not but everybody uh both of the agencies are not in my cluster.

Um ICDC, well, DC Health has basically been sitting here since 10 o'clock.

So um they were here earlier.

DC Health is in in my cluster, but Aussie is not, and oftentimes when we have programs that go back and forth between agencies, sometimes there's disagreements, sometimes there's lack of communication, and one of the ways I think we best resolve that is that everybody comes to the table and have a conversation together.

So I'm hopeful that we can learn a little bit more about what's going on here, what changes, if any, have occurred, um, and then we'll go from there.

Um I don't see any of my colleagues here, although we are joined by some staff from the committee of the whole.

Um, but should my colleagues join, we'll certainly turn to them.

Um we are only going to be hearing from our government witnesses today, and I know that might frustrate some of the members of the public, but you're welcome to submit public testimony.

Um right now we are just really trying to get a handle on um what is going on.

So with that, before I begin, I need to swear in our government witnesses.

Um, although I don't have that in this um piece here.

So for um the folks who are testifying, and or if you might come to the table to answer a question.

I need you to raise your right hand.

Um, do you swear or affirm under penalty of law that the testimony you're about to provide to the council of the district of Columbia and this committee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Great.

Okay, so I think Kathy Boris Hill will be going first.

When you're ready.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Henderson and Committee on Health Staff.

Thank you for having us here today.

I'm Kathy Boris Hale, and I'm the interim executive director for the DC Board of Nursing.

I really appreciate this opportunity.

I'm used to watching you from my cubicle at DC Health and never thought I'd be sitting here in front of you.

How things change.

I want to acknowledge that as you know, we recently merged CNAs and HHAs together.

So throughout this discussion today, I'm going to say CNA is probably a lot, but it's inclusive of both.

Let's start by just acknowledging what I think everybody in this room already understands that getting through training is one thing.

Getting through that final skills test scheduled and passing it is another.

And that for our students, training programs, and employers, they have experienced frustration with this process.

When a student can't get their test date, it doesn't mean that they just can't test.

What can we do right now to increase access to testing?

What can we do longer term to make the whole process better?

And so today I want to walk you through what we've done, what we're putting in place, and more importantly, what we've heard from our students.

And I think that's important because sometimes we can all sit around the table and talk about what we think is a problem.

But we wanted to actually talk to the people who were going through this process and find out from them.

So let me start with what we've already done.

So first we worked on increasing the number of opportunities that students had to actually sit and take the exam.

So between June and August of this year, I'm happy to report that 355 students tested through credential across 40 testing sessions with a 76% pass rate.

DC also worked in collaboration with Trinity University to hold five testing events in the city.

We had slots for both CNAs and HHAs to test.