 Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Senate Education. It's Friday, January 29th. We are going to do two bill introductions today. S-27, an act relating to facilitating cultural liaisons, and we have Senator Rahm and S-32, an act relating to school wellness and feminine hygiene products. And that, we have Senator Hardy coming down, but I believe Senator Lyons is the lead sponsor, so she can talk as well. Then at two o'clock, we're going to move to the discussion on literacy. We have, this is based on our earlier work where we are learning that roughly 50% of our Vermont's third graders aren't reading at grade level. And we're going to hear from Susan Newman, who's a faculty member at NYU. She is going to come as is Juliet Holliday, I believe, from UVM, and she is going to work with us and talk a little bit about what they're seeing, what they believe is happening, what's causing some of these kinds of literacy issues nationwide, and how we can work to make improvements in the state. And then finally, we'll have Secretary French in who will talk about some ideas related to his agency and literacy, and he also sent me some draft language that I'm happy to share with everybody. I thought, if everyone's interested, we might have a look at his language. And if everyone is interested, we can, well, we'll pursue it. And then if people want to, we can do it as a committee bill, or a few of us can sign on whatever everyone is comfortable with. So that's a little bit of a preview of our afternoon. And why don't we get started. I see Senator Rom is with us. Welcome, Senator. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. It's great to have you and we're here to talk about S 27. And we thought you could kick it off, give us an idea for, you know, why you're, you put the bill in, you know, the Genesis and, and what it does and then are extremely capable and talented. The council will give us a walk through after that. So with that, we'll turn it over to you. Senator Rom has been extremely helpful for the record. Senator Keisha Rom and this is my first bill introduction in the Senate, and I have not one in my other committees from other senators so just tell me if I'm off track here but I imagine it's more the philosophical and problem statement approach to why I introduced this bill and leaving the more technical side of things to Jim but I can also explain some of the reasons for certain definitions etc. So you've heard a little bit about you. You don't have a PowerPoint with you. I know, you know, I do I need one. It's so hard for me to even know what's a joke, but I, I don't I'm sure, you know, Jim. We're going to let it go. We're just going to let it pass. We're going to pretend it's, it's fine. Just just go ahead and give us the Genesis will just roll with it. Oh, you all I love your chair so much. So on to a very somber and serious topic actually. You know, I have gotten to know and become quite fond of just as a community leader and partner, the multicultural liaisons that we have in the Burlington and Manuski school districts. I do know that there are other Chittenden County school districts that are starting to engage in higher multicultural liaisons as well. In these school districts, those folks become an absolute lifeline for the people that they serve, which is largely groups of families in their community that have common cultural and language bonds. So maybe some different needs, for example, with Somali bond to folks and Somali Somali folks so usually they have separate liaisons there because my my is not a written language involves a lot of other supports and there's been historic conflict between those two communities back in Somalia so it's not as comfortable to have someone interpreting for the other group. So anyway, they have developed lots of nuance around these positions, lots of cultural specificity around how they help folks. And in the midst of the pandemic at the height of the confusion and as grappling with what was happening. We went through a summer where none of these folks had access to their cultural liaison from their school. We had reports of people going to drop their kids off at school, not realizing that school had closed. People who you know one woman said that her husband had died of cancer the year before she was really struggling already financially and now she couldn't access her social worker, and her social worker in her mind is her cultural liaison in the school district because that is the person who knows her community her family, her language and her culture, extremely well. So we worked with Winooski on an equity project where we bought, we brought 12 leaders from the district from the city, and from the community together to decide what their priorities would be around equity in Winooski this was two years ago. And one of the two main priorities they came up with was creating a shared model for the multicultural liaison positions because they realized in the city that they had lots of needs to explain what was going on in the municipality to people who had limited efficiency. They wanted their opinion and feedback they wanted to engage them and it's sometimes can be either life or death or, you know, very much impair people not to have information about what's happening in the city as well. So when you ski districts and municipality have already been trying to have a conversation about how to share this position. I have offered some ideas about who might testify on that front but I believe they would indicate to you that one of the big concerns they had was would they get dinged right away with our education funding formula from trying to move something like this forward. Burlington I just learned this week has added $120,000 for the multicultural liaison positions in their school budget. It's been a very tight budget year as you can all appreciate because they realized how life and death this pandemic experience was for families and how little access they had to their multicultural liaisons, and they have also started a conversation with Burlington about sharing the positions. I believe this would help a lot of other districts who are going to need these positions soon and I was talking to folks in southern Vermont who are working on a huge plan to bring new immigrants to their community in the Brattleboro area. All of that means figuring this out in advance and knowing and acknowledging how important these multicultural liaison positions are to school districts and to the municipalities that they serve. Very helpful. I'm just going to kick it off with a question. So are you thinking Senator Rom under this construct all every district would have a cultural liaison or other spots of course where, like you mentioned Burlington might need more than one. Are schools required. Are you requiring schools and school districts or is this something to do with how they're funded and Thank you for team of a really important clarifying question. Absolutely only enabling legislation. When a district usually the district is initiating and I will say you know from the gov ops side where I'm working on a language access plan that affects municipalities and the state. AoE and transportation have because of their ties to federal funding and probably always commitment to making sure it's serving every single individual student have been well on the front end of meeting the language access requirements that we have from the federal government which is that everyone should be able to access state and local services in their own spoken language. So there are safe harbor provisions for written materials although I would encourage AoE to start getting guidance out in other languages that's written because that would help a lot of districts who actually also don't have liaisons, but Burlington and Winooski started these programs very early on, because they are obligated to let people know enough information about their child success, well being things that are coming up at school that they need to know about in their own language if they're limited English proficient. So this is I mean having a liaison is an option for a school to meet this obligation they have to make sure families have information they need in the right language, but when they do that. The municipality has also realized these become huge high profile leaders in the community they are working well past their hourly wage during the school day to make sure these families have what they need. They are highly underpaid I mean they're not salaried workers they they submit hours and those hours have to track very carefully, you know obviously to two hours during the school day. And yet they spend weekends, you know helping people connect they call a lot of that you know community service but you know many of those folks are working around the clock to make sure the families they serve have important information and access to resources. And just so I'm clear when you say, it seems like there's a conflict right now that you're trying to resolve. Is it that districts aren't allowed to take this step, or what how do you mean clarify what you mean by enabling legislation. So Jim, Jim could clarify because we had a bit of a back and forth about this, but I nailed him with a curiosity, you know, if they did this right now with no language and statute, would that cause someone to be able to raise the question about you know side stepping education funding formula and taking municipal dollars for a district cost. Yeah, even if they I mean otherwise or would they have to draw a really bright line between like and that's really hard for that person they have to do 10 times more paperwork to say, I'm on district time I'm on, you know, municipal time like how onerous would make this. And when I emailed Jim I'll just say this is kind of the nuance of all of it, you know, he said oh yeah you'd probably need enabling legislation I don't know what would be possible I said well how did they do it with SROs, because SROs are often funded between school districts and the municipality, and we don't have any enabling legislation around SROs so Jim could speak to whether or not it would require it would be a legal complaint that would drive, you know, a challenge to how we fund certain positions that are shared between a district and a municipality. But I think that's a nuance that would probably be tested very quickly with culturally is on positions, because I do think they're just anecdotally, there are more people who don't need the service who question, should my school dollars should tax dollars go to a service to support immigrants and new Americans. So I would want to make it really clear from the start without having people go through a legal complaint that this is something that we should enable as a legislative very helpful center alliance. Thank you. And thanks for your testimony this is really very helpful and very good you've done a lot of work on it. I do have a couple I have a couple questions. And, and I guess one is for Jim so I'll save that one for second. But the first one is around the definition of the cultural liaison and to be clear that it's only for folks with some lack of English proficiency. There are significant issues around cultural adaptation that may be separate from language. So what are you that that's the first question I have another comment but so maybe a, what was your thinking on that case or Senator Ram. So, so I'll start with the definition which I was led, because there hasn't been a standard definition of what this position means districts were kind of left to create the positions and define it in their sort of human resources language however they want it, but on a more visionary level, there was one when you ski gathering a convening where they started to define the importance of the positions, and they started to create a definition of the value that the position creates. And that's where I borrowed the language from that sort of spoke to the broader lifeline that they they build to those families. So we don't you know I would have I would encourage more testimony I basically emailed all of the city and district officials I knew came in contact with liaisons and included some of the liaisons themselves to say do you have a standard definition there is not one. You know, I know that they have kind of tangential positions that are shared with special education for people who might need other forms of interpretation and support other families who might need accommodations or extra support. I have not heard, you know, we, I'm trying to think of a population, a large population in Burlington or new ski where it's come up that there needs to be some cultural adaptation without language access. I can't think of one off the top of my head but I think it's all been built on the school districts needs that they're seeing for you know is driven by you know they have to meet an obligation to certain families to get information clearly to them and I haven't heard it come up that's more nebulous that because it wouldn't fall under that federal language access provision. Right now I would, I would think that I do know that my experience working with folks from some of those Baltic countries that where they did have some significant language skills but they didn't have they weren't culturally adapted that was a different, different take. But then my other, my other thought is this and this is something probably we all have to look at and committee and that is within the new CRF funding. There's a lot of money for public health support around language translations of information and so on so I don't know whether that is available for something like this. And then my other question was for Jim, and it's really about when we were looking at Act 60 years ago and trying to figure out how to shift a lot of the school recreational activities over to the municipality we were told that that was contrary to the intent of the Brigham decision. And I, so I, are we running into that court decision when we consider this and I don't know. So, um, maybe what we should do is is once some bombs done testifying as part of my walk through the bill, talking about the issue so that's okay. That's great. I figured something like that but question out. Yeah, I have, I have two two thoughts to what you said, Senator Lyons, I probably can't answer all of it satisfactorily. Okay. And I think since our Baltic and Bosnian, you know, arrivals in the late 80s and mid 90s. There has been a lot of evolution as to what kind of supports families need. Absolutely. You know, they came with a lot of elders who were never able to participate in their kids lives and their school. There has been a lot of advocacy from a lot of families to strengthen and improve the program to understand the difference between, you know, Somalia Somalia and Somali Bantu, and how nuanced that can be, you know, conflicts from where people have come from and how people need to be sensitive to that here. So I'm really proud of our school districts for all the work they've done and I think, you know, the, the municipality can kind of benefit from a lot of great work that's already been done there. The other thing I want to say is just I don't I one interesting thing to take up either here or in Senate health and welfare. Senator Lyons would be the health department when the surge in cases in new American communities in Burlington. They reached out to me they reached out to some other folks they'd great endemic, you know, epidemiological work happening, whatever you call it and they started paying young new American people to be the ones to to disseminate the information and they found that, you know, cultural translation is not just words from English to language. But to your point, I've been really impressed with the Department of Health and the way they try to evolve as well to capture that need. And I, I, I take, I think our the Senate Health and Welfare Committee does take some credit for that in raising the issue. Last year, in the beginning of the pandemic response so it's great to hear that good work. Senator Hooker, I'm sorry, Senator Lyons, did you have a follow up. Nope, that's it. Okay, Senator Hooker and then Senator Purchlick please. Thank you. Thank you and thank you Senator for bringing this up. My curiosity is how are these positions being paid for in the schools that they exist today. Are they all paid for by the school districts. Or by groups that, you know, fund people to go in. What is happening today and, you know, that would be facilitated by, you know, your bill. Yeah, so some of them have gotten one time grants when they needed to expand. Or they, they were just trying to cover all the work that these folks do and compensate them more fairly, but, you know, as, as your committee can appreciate. I believe a lot of it comes from the additional waiting that ELL students receive in the school district so they did carve a piece of that out not just for, you know, the ELL instruction but for the families to be able to help with that instruction and underpin that instruction. There have been, for example, you know, in addition to the multicultural liaison program at one point Burlington got a grant to do something called parent university. And that was a great effort to try and help parents better understand all of the nuances of the culture of school and how to help their students be college ready. And there was a grant that that where they changed the report cards in Burlington so that the report cards were easier to read in a color coded way to so that they could engage in more college readiness with their kids. So there's a lot of ways I think they've tried to help use the program to build with one time money, but I do believe they rely on the ELL waiting formula to support their ongoing need. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Senator around for for bringing this up. We did a tour of a new ski high school last year. Senator Hardy or remember we met. The first thing we did is sit down with four or five of the cultural age john said it was. We had a guy opening and we saw firsthand what the value of these positions are so anything I can do to help the schools and the municipalities to get more of them definitely want to help. I wondered. And I can remember if we talked about this before is you and I said around about the excess spending threshold and maybe it's a question for Jim and we go through the, the bill if that's really one of the problems that the school would have. And if we want to include that in the legislation to make sure that schools that have the spending don't get hit with that excess spending threshold penalty. I think that would be great. Yeah, I'm like pulling all my recollection for ways and means out about, you know, how, how you all would would handle that but I do think any way they can avoid being penalized for something that's incredibly life saving for their district would be helpful and I do want to add. I don't know what I can't remember exactly what you said that made me think of it except the tour, but when you ski was one of the regional recipients of the working communities challenge grant. And one of their projects to receive the money was to take new American families on tours of all the civic stops in the city to help them understand and feel more comfortable with the police department with city clerks office all of that. So they wanted to kind of kick off having cultural liaisons and helping people really jumpstart their civic experience with that as well so you know they and they were successful with the Federal Reserve Bank and that being a creative solution and they just want to build put all their lives across all their teeth to be able to do things like that. Thank you, Senator Rom. I'm not seeing any other questions right now and we do have a hard stop we have a witness coming in at two and we also want to hear from Senator Hardy. Thank you. I mean, I don't want to speak for the committee but I'd say it's probably the best bill introduction we heard today. Thank you. Let's see how the rest of the day goes. But so far, I feel like we're off to a great start. Thank you. Thank you for having me and without my own chairs you have a great chair and as as we do get working on things we'll look to you for witnesses and ideas and things like that so thank you. It's okay with you we'll move to Senator Hardy for just about five minutes. Does that work for your schedule? Of course. Yep. Okay. Thanks so much. Senator Hardy. Thank you. Thank you Chair Campion and the Senate Education Committee it's good to see you guys again. It's a tough act to follow. I don't think I can give a better bill report than that. But and I have so much to say I'm like oh I want to be back on this committee but but I'll refrain. Except for to say that I remember that that tour that Andy mentioned where we went to the Winooski High School and it was on March 10th. It was the week that before we shut down and we literally met in this tiny little room with like I don't know there were like 15 of us in this tiny room like the size of the Senate Agriculture Room. And thinking back on that day it's really amazing that none of us got COVID from it. So but anyway thank you for having me. I'm here. Senator Ruth Hardy from Addison County for the record and I'm here to talk to you about S 32 and the other co-sponsor of the bill is Senator Lyons. So you have the benefit of having the her right on your committee for any questions you have. I will start by just saying that this is a bill that we took up last year and the Senate Education Committee passed it out of committee and it was part of a miscellaneous education bill that the full Senate then also passed right before the COVID crisis state house shut down and then went over to the house and didn't move forward because of the COVID crisis. They're what this language was then included in a Senate Health and Welfare bill which also passed that committee but then was removed in the house. So this is just a reintroduction of letter of language that was passed by two Senate committees last time around and by the full Senate I think at least once. But Jim can tell you that full history and it involves two topics that are related. One is just general school wellness and Jim can walk you through what's already in the statutes about school wellness planning and the definition of school wellness. But this updates the provisions related to the wellness planning and advisory council on wellness and comprehensive health and in my view it just updates the language to make it be more timely into the way that we think about wellness these days. Previously it just included nutrition and fitness so this is a much more holistic look at it and it reinvigorates the advisory council on wellness and comprehensive health which is a little advisory council that's sort of within the agency of education. And in talking to the agency of education and the Department of Health last year we heard from them that this would be helpful to reinvigorate and this was before COVID that we heard this and so I think now would be even more helpful to have this reinvigorated. And we included that the people have to have expertise in health services and education and health policy so we'd get the relevant health professionals involved. So that's the large first part of the bill is just updating that council and making it more in line with the health and wellness planning and education that school districts are already doing. It does also remove some language about data collection about the BMI of elementary school students that the committee felt was a little bit. Perhaps I'm trying to struggling for the right word but stigmatizing of students who would have to be weighed and then have their weight recorded at school in a way that didn't feel very comfortable for us or to us. And so this would then create a requirement that the agency of education would have to update their wellness program and planning in compliance with federal and state laws and best practices. We took a lot of testimony on sort of what are national standards for wellness and not everybody agrees on that but this would have to be creating a wellness program and a wellness policy that's consistent with best practices and consistent with federal and state law which seems obvious but it might not be and it wasn't in statute. So that's the first part of the bill the second part of the bill related to the provision of menstrual hygiene products in schools. This is something that at least a few of us on the screen have experienced where you're in a place and you need a tampon or a pad and you don't have one. So when you're 12 or 14 it can be kind of embarrassing and I think most women have been there at one point or another in their lives and when you're new to menstruating it's even more embarrassing and problematic and just stigmatizing. So we wanted to make sure that girls and any student who menstruates has access to these products in a way that is not stigmatizing that they are readily available in all of the bathrooms that they may be in so that they can get one themselves and not have to go ask for one. We did talk about how and where and when and all of that should be available and we did leave that a lot of that up to the schools to figure out in conjunction with the school nurses. All schools are sort of arranged and differently you know they may have different configurations of bathrooms. We also wanted to make sure they were in gender neutral bathrooms and so we did leave it up to the school to figure out specifics of how it was done but just that they were readily available. The other thing that is a consideration that you'll probably hear about if you take more testimony is the financial cost of this for individuals is often problematic. They might not have a 25 cents or 50 cents or however much they cost now to stick into a machine. So we didn't want them to be have to pay for them and also it often falls on female teachers and female staff members at schools to have a stash in their desk. So I know for sure that most female teachers have a drawer where they have a few extra pads in case a girl needs them and that is an unfair financial burden on female staff and teachers. So the NEA was very supportive of this legislation so to make sure that those teachers weren't put in that position. So that's the basics of it and I'm sure Senator Lyons can take it from here and Jim unless you have questions for me. I think I think unless somebody has an immediate pressing question. We do have Dr Newman joining us from NYU and I want to be respectful of her teaching schedule so unless somebody has a pressing question I think we'll move right to Mr. Demeray to give us sort of a high level if you will walk through both bills what they both do how they do it in any red flags or concerns you see with either. Thank you Senator Hardy. Okay, thank you all good to see you. Good work. Thank you. Okay, for the record, Jim Demeray let's console let's walk through. S32 first because he's heard from Senator Hardy and this bill. I assume we have it in front of you. So what this does on page two is it redefines the definition of a wellness program. So the current definition focuses on two things fitness and nutrition. But now it's going to include comprehensive health education as defined in another statute, but that brings in is a lot. So, in addition to nutrition and fitness. I was talking about study of body structural function. Health issues like pollution safety including first aid, the state of disease, like HIV family mental, family health and mental health, suicide prevention, personal health, consumer health, human growth and development, drug prevention. And it's a kind of a sexual abuse so what's happening with this changing definition is it's moving from a narrow definition focus on fitness and nutrition to a comprehensive definition around teaching our health matters. So we see that term used further on in statute it's referring to that broader definition. This will require that the console have three members with expertise in health services, health education or health policy. I was talking about the console. So this is the console on wellness wellness has to meet at least twice a year by statute with this change. And the secretary would help with preparation of wellness program curricula so that's much broader term so wellness being the whole thing. And section two, I'm sorry, phase three is a strike strike out of that language about having the weight and height of students taken and provided to the health commissioner that's been struck. And then section two of page three, the aoe collaboration with others, we have to create a model wellness program policy, using that expanded definition of wellness we just went through. And that would have to be in compliance with state and federal laws and reflect best practices. We move on to a different topic. Second three is around menstrual health, menstrual hygiene products. And what this does is requires school districts and approved and spent schools to make available menstrual hygiene products at no cost. The majority of gender neutral bathrooms and bathrooms designated for females that are generally used by females and any upgrades five to 12 in each school within the school district or under the jurisdiction of the school. In terms of how that will be done the school would work with the school nurses to determine which bathrooms to put these in and what products to use. And the cost is that would be borne by the school districts and the schools. The date of this bill is a passage, except that the requirement to make these menstrual hygiene products available with coming to force for the 2223 school year and thereafter. I'm just wondering if I don't remember if we had a fiscal note with this and what the comments were from AOE about cost or whether it would be or I mean theoretically it could be born through the school nursing program and the Department of Health but I saw it but I don't know the answer to any of that. The cost under this bill is borne by the school district. Yes, I understand that but did we get a fiscal note on the exact approximate cost or not. I don't know what you got last year. Yeah, okay. Probably should at some point. Yeah. Any other questions for Mr. DeMarais. Senator Campion I have a question. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Correctly from Senator Hardy and maybe Senator Lange. You can correct me. This bill was voted on by the Senate last year. And is it what was it just not. Was it just not taken up by the house or because of COVID it threw everything off. I believe. Bill. Yeah, it was put into in the house. We put it into a bigger bill. We had a member of our committee working with the Ed committee. And so we took the wellness section and the menstrual product section, put them together and put them in a bill that was related. And then the house because the house. Had worked so hard on the other bill and they felt they didn't have time. Given COVID. And so we had to go through the testimony between two committees. They took this language out. And so there it ended. It wasn't, it wasn't because they weren't interested or didn't want to pursue the language, but it was just the timing of it. And Senator Taranzini and others. You know, sometimes you'll hear the reference to miscellaneous education bills, miscellaneous finance bills, miscellaneous judiciary bills. This is when we might, in my opinion, compile bills that don't need to be standalone. You know, you might put, you know, I'm making a list here that I could see, you know, the library bill, this bill, you know, a few other bills, perhaps in a miscellaneous education bill, but it could be a miscellaneous bill, but it could be a miscellaneous bill, but it could end up being a committee bill and move all together. Now, if we were doing something. On literacy, you know, some big project on literacy. We might want that to just move as a standalone bill. But if we were to make some tweaks, you know, just minor changes, that could also be part of a miscellaneous bill. I tend to think of miscellaneous bills as. Not minor issues, but I guess I would say bills that are standalone, they're things that the public's going to be particularly interested in and caring about and putting them part of a miscellaneous bill just wouldn't feel right. Like if Sears were to put out a, something to do with the second amendment and a miscellaneous judiciary bill, it just wouldn't work. I mean, that's a big topic. People are following these kinds of issues. But you could see in making some tweaks to other kind of judiciary matters related to maybe the courts that might travel in a miscellaneous judiciary bill. Senator Chinden, you had your hand up. So miscellaneous really isn't not consequential, but not controversial. So if it's something that seems to make a lot of sense, it goes through with a lot of consensus and committee. We throw in a miscellaneous bill. I think, I mean, you know, it's one of those judgment calls to be honest. I think it, like you said, it's all consequential. It's all important. But I look at it more the other way in terms of just things that tend to be more public bigger issues still could pass unanimously in the Senate and out of committee. I tend to be just standalone bills. And you'll get, you'll get sort of that, that feel for it as, as time goes on. As a follower, please. This seems to make a lot of sense and I support this bill. Is it abnormal for us to vote on something that we as a committee want to roll into miscellaneous? Like do we do incremental votes and say this makes sense. And we, we as a committee bundle it all together with other things that come up. That's a great question. So usually what we would do is just that, you know, you'd have an opportunity to say, Hey, you know, do you want this part of this bill? And then if we all got to some level of agreement, then, you know, this one particular bill would move. What might happen is you might get in this bill. Just maybe everybody's for it. Maybe I'm against it. But if it still goes in and then I may or may not, you know, vote for the entire miscellaneous bill, depending on how important this issue is for me. I might say, Hey, you know, if this weren't in, I'd be fine with it. That may cause the chair and others to rework and maybe yank something out so something can go out unanimously. So it's, it's just a little bit of a give and take. Hope that helps. I think there's a lot of work into these bills. So usually the poor. You know, there was a, at some point, we'll have some of the old folks that are no longer in the Senate that were involved more heavily with the pork. Come in and talk to us about those days. Okay. Other questions. Okay. We'll pass it back to Mr. Demir a. Okay. I think we're about to start with that. But at a cost of time, you have three minutes before two. We'll see if our witness arrives on time and we want to be respectful of yours as well. Okay. So, so for the record against Jim Daymore, we're walking through S 27 now. And. Section one, where this language is going is into a statute that So Act 60, obviously, after Bram reconstituted our education finance system, one of the goals of Act 60 was to separate out the municipal funding streams from the education funding streams. Because if you cost them over, if you use municipal funds, for example, for education, you're back to using the grant list again, and back to that old system where it could be very inequitable for towns. So this is language that went in to avoid that result. So I want to read to you just what's not being amended for subsections A and B on page one. A says, funds received by the school district may be used only for legitimate items of current education expense, and so not be used for municipal services. And B says, funds received by municipality other than school district may not be used directly or indirectly for education expenses. So that's the language to achieve that goal of separating these two things. However, the language is very market. The language is very market because in A is referring to education expense. Nowhere in statute is education expense defined. It's referring to municipal services. Nowhere in statute is municipal services defined. And we know, I think we know that a number of schools are offering what may be used social services in schools, which are part of the school budget. So this is a very market area we're walking into here. And the solution for that was not to try to define these terms and fix all that is a very big, big issue. Instead, on page two of this bill, it's simply not withstands that section. So we're not trying to solve it. We're trying to not withstand it and just go forward. So now we're saying anything to the contrary, in this section of otherwise in law, this says that a school district in the town or city municipality and with the school district operates may jointly fund the services of one or more cultural liaisons to support students and families who have limited English proficiency. And the course of liaison does three things. Provides language translation and interpretive services to help facilitate educational and municipal services for limited English proficiency students and families. That's one, so helps with translation to help facilitate communication among school and municipal staff, students, families and community organizations. And three, assist in reconciling different different different cultural work perspectives and understandings. So that's what this bill does. So Alliance asked whether it's possible to bring in problem with this bill because it does not withstand this language that bring it put in place or that actually did. And I'll just say that I think already there's there's issues with school districts crossing this line today, I would suspect. And B bring of course was a case dealing with system act issues of tax and equity and student equity and equity across the state. This is not a mass scale. So I can't guarantee it can be challenged by bring them. I think the likelihood is much less given the scale of this and given the precedent for this with SROs, other examples of this is being done already. Without the enabling language, I think that might be a good spot to pause. If you don't mind demirate and we will have you back to continue our more detailed walk through. I see Professor Newman has joined us. Professor Newman, can you hear me OK? Yes, just fine. Yeah, well, thank you for for joining Senate Education here in in Vermont. The building, of course, is in Montpelier, but we are all virtual because of the pandemic. So you're finding us all across the state. Well, me too, me too. Yeah, but thank you for joining us. As I mentioned to Professor Newman committee in an email, I mentioned her how we are indeed looking at literacy here in the state of Vermont, how I think it's safe to say we're all looking without a doubt to improve literacy rates. Our numbers in some regards are declining when you get to that third grade level. We don't see as many third graders as we would like for certain to be reading at grade level and writing at grade levels. And so we're looking to make those improvements. The other thing I mentioned to Professor Newman is one of the things we heard in testimony is from our Secretary of Education, who'll be joining us later, is part of this may be because of literacy wars, reading wars that have happened across the United States, perhaps the world on how to effectively teach children how to read. And so I asked Professor Newman to talk a little bit about the reading wars, what she might be seeing throughout the country as a result. Is are we now in settled science? Are we somewhere where a state like Vermont can say in other states can say, OK, this is where we're at, this is where we want to go. And these are now the ways to get there. And I think my final thing before I pass it on to Professor Newman is what's happening at our teacher education colleges, not specifically, but broadly, and we'll hear more about this, I think, throughout the afternoon as we hear from people, is is she finding that people are now sort of coming together? Or do we still have a for just some local examples? University of Vermont in Bennington College just completely at the opposite page, you know, opposite spectrum here in different ways of teaching? Or is are we now getting to a level of consistency? So with that, I will no small task, but we certainly are grateful to have you in our committee and welcome you and if you don't mind just introducing yourself for the record and sharing your thoughts and experience with us. Sure. Well, I'm delighted to be with you today. My name is Susan Newman, professor at NYU in childhood education literacy development. I've been involved in literacy for over 30 years at least, have authored many articles and and books, and I've been assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education prior under George W. Bush in charge of no child left behind. So the issues that you described today are very salient to me and very important. And so I only offer you my perspective. I'm sure you'll get other perspectives as we go along. So with that, I think I'd like to share my screen and and just show you a few PowerPoints because I thought it would be just clear to do so. So. Jeannie will let you. I think I can share great. And I think I can let's see. Move to slideshow play from start. So what you asked me to talk about was an update on the reading wars and whether or not the reading wars were on or have is there what you call settled science? And I think the answer is are we at war? And my response would be not yet. OK, but we're teetering on a war. And it's a very volatile time, only exacerbated by covid, where we know about learning loss, we know about the urgency and we are all struggling with what to do. And so I think we're at a time where your committee and Vermont at large could really sort of use the opportunity to actually do something that I think would change the odds for so many of our young children. So I would argue that we are a conflicted profession. We're we're made of three overall groups, people who are interested in policy, people who are interested in research, people who are practicing in the field. And all of us have very different perspectives and very different lens in how we see these issues. Policy makers, as you know, want to do things and change things quickly. Practitioners are responsible and vulnerable to the various field and context in which they work and the people they work with. And researchers are slow and deliberate and often don't have answers for you. So it's a difficult scenario that we find ourselves. So there's one side and I'm going to describe it because I really do think there are two sides to the story. There's one side which is more or less the researcher policy side, which focuses on the science of reading. And there is a good deal of research on the science of reading and what children need to know in order to be successful. And the easiest way to describe it is what we call the simple view of reading, which basically argues that children need a strong basis of decoding and language comprehension in order to be successful in reading. If you only have decoding or phonics, you will not be successful in reading. If you only have language comprehension, you will also not be successful in reading. You actually need both. And the important thing for us to recognize is that the old notion of learning to read and then reading to learn is just not true. In other words, we've got to get away from that sort of phrase because the skills children are learning in the very, very early years are those they continue to use throughout their trajectory. So in other words, if you teach reading and reading is nonsense to a very young child at fourth grade, it doesn't they don't turn into all of a sudden being interested in reading and seeing its purpose. So the simple view is a very easy way to talk about the science of reading that they need these two broad categories of skill in order to be successful. That's one side. On the other side, there is a guided reading group and the guided reading group is largely from the perspective of practice of practitioners. This is not something that the science of reading people believe in or have found to be true and it's framed by a different theoretical lens, which is called the three Q system. And just to again describe it real easily, that means the three Q system is based on the notion that children read using three basic skills, graphophonemics or phonics, syntax, which is grammar and semantics, which is understanding. And the argument is if one of those Q systems fail, the others will pick it up. So in other words, if a child is not good at decoding or phonics, then it's OK because they'll use their semantics and their syntax to sort of fill in the gap. It's best known by programs by the teachers college in New York or Lucy Colkins. Some people know that name or Fontis and Penel guided reading program or the reading recovery program. All of those follow the same basic notion of a three Q system. So here are the problems. The problem first with the science of reading, the problem is is that it's based on cognitive science. And it's not necessarily a roadmap for teaching the science of reading. So here I want to enter into my own mistake. I was in charge of reading first in No Child Left Behind, and we taught that children need phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension in order to be successful in reading. And so teachers taught phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, the big five. And the children were no better at the end by teaching those five skills. So in other words, what we have not translated successfully is the science of reading into an implementation of a teaching of reading that really benefits our children. And that's where we fail. So anybody who will say, well, they're not teaching the science of reading, we don't really have good programs of focus on the science of reading. So then the problems of guided reading, guided reading is based on a failed system. Now, we now know it's almost like if you have two out of three skills, you are going to have problems. I mean, just anybody, you need all three working in concert. So if one of them is failing like phonics and decoding, then the others can't pick up the slack. They will lead to a problematic reader. And it's based on the work of reading recovery is heavily language based. So one of the problems of guided reading is that if you have kids who are not strong language learners, even those not just second language learners, but those who may struggle with language, who have environmental stress communities, who haven't had a rich language base, they have great difficulty with guided reading because it is a language based program that and they haven't had the rich language to be able to use that system. It is also from a implementation basis, it is also inconsistent. So one of the things that I see regularly is I will go into one class of second graders, I'll go into another class of second graders and they're doing different things and this does not lead to a coordinated, coherent program where teachers are basing their notion of what children need in order to pick up the slack. In other words, they're creating the curriculum because there's so many holes. So very often you'll go into a guided reading class and the teacher, the child will see a word like bench and the teacher will say, what's that word and the child won't know. And then the teacher will say, well, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup. Child still doesn't know, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, say it with me. But the child hasn't had enough of the rudiments of phonics to be able to actually use that guidance from the teacher. So it's heavily teacher dependent. It's inconsistent across grade as well as across classroom. And it's heavily dependent on the particular skills of the teacher. So that means that new teachers or teachers who may not have had a long term coursework in reading are sort of doing it on the fly. And that's essentially the problem. They are also working on running records, which is a typical strategy for assessment of young children and running records do not have validity and reliability. So they're getting inconsistent assessment results before they're able to ameliorate those problems. So in my view, what are the recommendations? What are the answers? What would if I were in Vermont right now, what would I begin to recommend? First, the states and school districts have to fix the inconsistencies. My notion is very strongly that teachers are wonderful at enacting curriculum. They are not wonderful at making curriculum. And so we need to provide a curriculum so that they can enact it with greater fidelity to the purpose of the actual program. Secondly, we need to I think you need to adopt a core reading program. Guided reading is a framework. It is not a curriculum. It's not a good curriculum. And and the core reading programs are not particularly great either, but they do provide a skilled and sequence of skills that teachers will will need in order to teach on a regular systematic basis. I think after adopting a core reading program, you then need to understand where the gaps in that program are and fill them with a systematic supplemental program. So, for example, some of the programs are just not strong enough in phonics and they don't provide the kind of practice children will need in phonics. We all need a systematic supplemental program and you'll need a group of people who will align that systematic supplemental program with the core reading program. So, for example, I want to give you a bad example that we are finding in New York. They adopted a supplemental program in phonics called Fundations. Fundations is a phonics program, but then they have guided readings. So the kids go from a systematic program in phonics and then to all hell breaks loose in guided reading. In other words, there's no tie or alignment with the program that they are supplementing and the actual reading activity that children are doing. I think you then need to make district wide decisions and not curriculum decisions are school by school. So famously in New York, for example, every principal can define their own reading program. So teachers decide one program and another group decides another and whatever. And what happens is we know that poor children are highly mobile. They go from one school to another sometime within district. And as a result, they're getting a little bit of this and a little bit of that and never a consistent program. So when I was successful, this was before when I had to do an audit in in Houston, Texas. And what I said to the superintendent who then won the Brode Award, you've got to have a program that everybody buys into, whether it's it's not going to be perfect in any way, but then what you're doing is you're working as a team and not in in piecemeal groups. The next is related to that. You have to create a coherent professional development plan, which includes information on the science of reading, but also on the implementation of the program you have selected. So what teachers need is a great deal. Too much la de da on the science of reading is not going to get them where they need to go. What they need is how to implement that particular program using some of the principles you've taught in the science of reading. So one of the things you mentioned at the very outset, as you said, what's happening with our higher ed institutions? And I can tell you that when I teach literacy, I teach it pretty much as I'm describing now that I teach based on the simple view. But what happens is my wonderful teachers, these student teachers or these graduate teachers then go into a school where they're only doing guided reading. They're only doing guide. So what I've taught them goes up in smoke because they have no support and no implementation on the principal ground where the actual implementation of that program creates so that coherent program. Now, when we were in Texas, what we did is we created every first grade teacher had a professional development plan, same plan with a set of power points that we taught that became the science of reading and the science of implementation of reading. And then we did it with second grade and then we went back and did with kindergarten. And I think that is the kind of coherence that I'm talking about. And then finally, I think you need to create rubrics and pacing charts to ensure that teachers are following the program that very often when I go into the classroom, instruction is so slow and I feel like I'm going to die of boredom in that classroom because it's going so slowly. So what I when I talk about creating rubrics, what I do with principles, I say here is the rubric. Here's the overview of what we want to see teachers do every day. Every teacher is going to vary in some way. So we have to say this is what you must do and this is what you have, you know, wiggle room to play with. But creating a rubric would allow those principles to go into the classroom and to see exactly our teachers following a basic understanding of what we know is the science of reading and implementation. And then again, as I said, pacing charts to make sure that they're moving and helping the children on a regular basis. And then finally, I think if we think about reading, children need a systematic program that teaches skills and sequence and guided reading is not that. They don't teach skills in any sequence. They need opportunities to practice these skills repeatedly. So when I do work with decoding, we then go to decodable text so that children get to practice the decoding in a text based setting. They need to build that information through content rich instruction. It can't be meaningless. And then opportunities to independently practice both in and out of school. And then I think finally, I would say, remember the problem of the pendulum. So everybody is talking about the science of reading. And some people, they use the misnomer of phonics based reading. And that's not what I'm talking about. So I think one of the things that you have to do is if you hope to change the nature of instruction and really improve children's skills, you've got to realize that you have a workforce that has had many different approaches and that's going to take some time to really put people, you know, get people on the same page. And so I say, stay with it and have a year's long plan rather than, you know, perhaps a month long plan. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions and comments. Terrific, that was extremely helpful. If I may, I'll just kick it off by asking, you know, as policymakers, you know, I think, you know, we're looking for answers. We're looking to take steps. That's our job. If you were to, is it possible for you to direct us to say, hey, you know, Brian, Boston, Massachusetts or Houston, Texas, these are the spots that are really knocking this out of the park. If Vermont teachers were to partner with a particular region or school district, is there a state out there that's doing really well? I think there are places. You know, for example, in Mississippi, there is a very thoughtful district leader who has made changes and the scores have gone up dramatically. I think in areas in Florida, that is also true. Broward County is doing very well as well. I think it's hit or miss. I know, for example, unfortunately, New York is not doing so well and is not an exemplar. Philadelphia is not an exemplar. So I think you would go, you would likely see some changes in more smaller school districts that have really taken this on and taken it seriously. The larger school districts were still in this, you know, crazy world. And it's interesting to me, I mean, in Vermont, K through 12, we have roughly pre K through 12, 87,000 students. So, you know, I feel like if any state sort of advanced things, I mean, we have this smallness where we're nimble, you know, we might be able to take some steps. Questions from committee members. I'm looking if I'm. Senator Hooker, I see your hand is up. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Professor Newman. You said this is going to take time. It's pretty obvious. I mean, we have a whole group of people, you know, from pre K up through high school with varying abilities of literacy in literacy and also varying methods that have helped them or not learn to read along the way. So we're what would be a good step to take to at least set the stage for this overall transition to a more effective way of teaching literacy? I would start with a cohort of first grade teachers in my in my world. I think they're the most important and grade really saying the stage can garden is, of course, important as well. But first grade is really where they are teaching, reading seriously. And here's what we did in Texas, which was very we created a whole professional development program, a large notebook with PowerPoint slides. And we did a teaching of the teacher kind of model where we came in and and did professional development. We those people became our professional developers. And we began to talk about very specific strategies that you would do that we would want to see in every class. We provided videos of exemplars of what we would see. And we literally mapped it out. And I think starting with your first grade is absolutely critical because they're the they're there's that's where it all begins really. And that makes a lot of sense. You start with the first and then, you know, as time goes on, they're going through the system, what can we do for those students who are having difficulty beyond first grade, either because of the way that, you know, they they were introduced to literacy or, well, I'm sure there are innumerable reasons for a child not reaching grade level. But what are some of the things that we could do in grades beyond first grade? It sounds like a great plan to have a plan in place for first grade cohort. And then what can we do for the rest of our kid? Right. I think the evidence suggests that the most effective strategy right now, which is not terribly effective in some ways, is is to create is a coach to provide coaching to those teachers and to create PLCs or a professional learning communities in those schools. So we're finding that professional learning communities can really with a supportive coach can provide that more cohort. One of the things I strongly encourage you to do is not go teacher by teacher, but try to get teacher by group because teachers talk to one another and and they work in teams. And so it's not ideal. It's it can be expensive. But coaches can create professional learning committee communities, which then can be and become independent. So I would do those two things at the same time at the same time. I would bring together some scientists. I mean, scientists in higher education, I'd make sure. I'm not sure about University of Vermont or Bennington in terms of of the faculty that are there. I don't I don't know, frankly. But I'd bring some researchers and some people who are very knowledgeable, as well as a group of teachers together to talk about developing a core reading program and that should be put in place almost right away. It will not be liked. I want to warn you. They're going to walk because teachers have had it their way for a long time. I'm very, very sympathetic to teachers, but I also know teachers want to be successful. If they're not successful, they're not happy either. So those are at least three things I would do. Start working on a long term professional development, intermediate coaching, PLCs, as well as a core reading program. Thank you. Professor, when you said that we need to have to really provide teachers with a curriculum, I just want to make sure. So, you know, and I understand this, I mean, I think I mean, I've been in the classroom, I am in the classroom still a little bit, but it really is saying, hey, this is this is what either the agency of education or this is what we really support. This is something for everybody to use. Is that out there? I mean, is there one? Is it would it be direct as toward how the common core is being taught using, you know, with literacy? Are there curriculums out there that you would recommend? You know, all of those core reading programs are great. I mean, they're not perfect. Pearson obviously has one, you know, you know, all of these groups have collapsed, so I don't know their names as well as I once did, but OpenCord is another system. There are about four major core reading programs. What I would do if I were you is I'd bring together some policymakers because some researchers, some teachers. So it's not you telling them sure what to do, but it is, you know, nothing's perfect. This is the best world. I don't know at the at the state level whether you have people who really know curriculum and could align and understand where the holes are in any of those core programs you might choose. But that's what you need to do, because otherwise you will not be totally successful. And then you adopt a small number of options on what supplemental programs they might want to use, whether it's foundation, jolly phonics, you know, something like that. And it becomes a package. Very helpful. And this is the kind of thing, of course, that we wouldn't be putting in into law, but we would be talking with our agency of education about Senator Lines. Two questions. One is, as you're talking about this, it seems to me that, of course, development is so critical. Faculty development is so critical. And maybe by putting all those folks in a room together with some leadership from someone who understands current literacy issues, that this could be an ongoing development program. And it's that I mean, that's one of the messages I get from you is you give people, you lead people to water, but they they drink it very slowly or not well. Right. Yeah. So that's that's one question. I mean, have you seen that process put in place? Well, here's what I did in Louisiana. The commissioner asked me to review all the syllabi at the higher ed level that involved reading and whether or not that was indicative of a scientific approach to reading. And I think he had a lot of sticks related to that. I think you don't want to stick. You want more carrots than that. But one of the things that I think really needs to happen is to look at that. You know, you have a lot of adjuncts who teach our students, not just faculty at higher ed institutions. It's a lot of people who are adjunct faculty. And I think it would be very helpful for you to or someone to review the syllabi and to say, are those syllabi indicative of the most recent strategy and techniques about the science of reading? The other thing that has to happen is to bring those principles together and to create more of this flow through because very often principles will go into the class. And frankly, if the kids are quiet, they're fine. But but if they had a rubric, so in other words, I'm suggesting that the whole system needs to be aligned because otherwise, if one is out of alignment, then again, more or less chaos is created. So that's an in response to your first question. Thank you. That's that's really very helpful. The and then I did want to add in, you said we need more carrots and we also need tambourines to celebrate, right? Yes, exactly. The other the other question I had is related to remediation and how how kids can make up, given given the science that you're talking about. And I know there are kids who in Vermont, especially in lower income, perhaps, because we know what a driving factor that is in so many areas, that they don't get the attention that they need at home or they're left behind for some reason. And so how how does this system work with those kids in first grade who are somewhat behind and what what are your suggestions there? Well, you need to catch them up as soon as possible. And that's why progress monitoring tools in that first grade are just essential. I mean, you need to know when they begin to fall behind and to catch them as fast as you can. So, you know, we have there's a lot of horrible stuff about testing. But testing that is are based on really brief tools that can be very helpful, really can catch those kids before they go too long. The second thing is generally then what is the single best strategy for helping those kids is tutoring of some kind. Tutoring, there are a number of wonderful tutoring programs out there. George Farkas developed a famous research based tutoring. But the best way is to save your money on all these specialists and who come in and out of the classroom and take groups of kids and waste our a lot of time. It is a half an hour of tutoring or 20 minute tutoring session with a systematic curriculum can make a world of difference for young children. And again, when you consider the whole system, you should consider that as part of your package. But within the same guidelines of exactly. Yeah, OK, so we need to identify those folks. And some of the folks that we have doing that work are contracted out through special education, so not necessarily integrated, integral to a school system. But right. So they would want we would want them in some kind of a development process as well. That's right. And a lot of these systematic tutoring programs are almost the materials are so strong that they don't need a lot of prior training. So when I go into the schools, I see a lot of of human capital wasted. I see a lot of people around often doing very little, frankly. And I think that one of the things that principals could do is better use their human capital and to really understand their resources and reallocate it appropriately. Thank you. Thank you, professor. That was very, very helpful. I hope you don't mind if you'd be so kind as to forward your slides and share them with our committee assistant and then we can put them in record and then we can not only share them with the agency of education, but just have them to come back to. But this has been very, very helpful and I can't thank you enough for taking the time. Well, thank you. It's been delightful. Great. Thank you. I wish you the best. We'll stay in touch. OK, thank you. Hey, great. Professor Holliday. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Yes, Holliday. Holliday from the University of Vermont. Great to have you. Appreciate you joining us. I know you know Professor Newman or certainly know of her work. Feel free to refute everything you heard. We are as I said to you when we spoke earlier today, I mean, you know, the situation we're in and you are here in Vermont and we are looking to be helpful to children in the state families. And so with that, I will turn it over to you and and look forward to hearing some of your thoughts as we grapple with literacy issues. Great. Yeah. Happy to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation. And I was fortunate enough to be able to hop on a little bit early to the livestream and listen to Susan so that I could kind of I knew when you told me that she was going to be there as well, that, you know, we would have a lot of, you know, kind of overlap in what we were saying. So I wanted to be sure to catch what she said to be able to highlight, you know, points of agreement and also maybe some possible points of of departures. So yeah. And I did put together some notes that I'll share with you on the screen. They're not a neat slide show, but they're still in a document. And for those of you also here, I think I know for me, it's often helpful to be able to see as well as here. One thing we know about good literacy learning, for example, it helps to have multiple modes of input. So I'm sharing my screen with you there. So can you all see that? OK, is the size all right? It's just in a Google doc. A little larger if you're able to. Yeah, I can make it a little bigger for sure. Should be able to. Well, it's not scrolling open. I'll do it here. Is that better? Perfect. Thank you. OK, great. And I did forward this as a PDF earlier to Jeannie, so you should have it. Of course, after I did that, I didn't notice some typos which are fixed in this version, but it's all pretty close. So I framed my notes here around the questions that I've received in advance. And I think hopefully this will meet what you're looking for. So the framing questions that I was given were kind of like, what's the current state of literacy in Vermont? I know there are concerns about declines in literacy rates based on, you know, various measures and what can be done to strengthen and improve literacy in Vermont. And so I thought I'd start with just kind of some overarching points, some kind of big picture things that some of them will seem kind of self-evident, but I thought it's worth at least saying so that we're all on the same page so that when we're talking about literacy, often, you know, when we're talking about instruction, it tends to kind of focus on reading. But really, literacy, we usually use a broad definition. So reading and writing and speaking and listening. So reading gets a lot of the bandwidth. But really, when we're thinking about how to improve literacy rates, we should be focusing on the broad picture of kind of language skills. And then another second point there is that literacy skills are complex and interrelated. This ties in nicely with one of the things Susan mentioned about sometimes that we kind of break them into these groups. You know, here's phonics, here's fluency, here's comprehension. But really, students learn best when they are able to connect across those areas. So if we're looking at what's effective instruction, it's instruction that connects reading to writing, you know, builds on oral language and all that. And the third and this is a related point is that, you know, because of these interconnections, the way that we approach assessment, instruction and intervention should also deal with that complexity. And so some of the problems that we run into, I think, are because, you know, you have kids struggling with literacy writ large, and then the solution to it is a phonics program, which helps if that's where the problem is. But it's that's only one piece of the big puzzle. And so if you want to solve a complicated puzzle, you need more than one piece. And then this next one, the fourth bullet point, I think is also consistent with some of the things Susan mentioned, that literacy involves strategic application of skills and context. So it's not just like knowing what letters are and what sounds they make, but it's being able to use those skills and use them in real context. So not just pronouncing, not just spelling, but really reading to understand and writing to convey meaning. So 100 percent on a spelling test is great. But if you can't write a persuasive piece of something, then it's not. It's not we're not really meeting the end goal. Or if you can, you know, pronounce words well, but you can't understand what you're reading again, we're not fitting the whole thing. So again, this closing bullet point there is just that a lot of initiatives really focus on these smaller pieces of the puzzle. So we need to look for answers that are going to address the integration of these skills, so not just a reading program, but a program that addresses literacy more broadly and not just a phonics program, but something that would look at reading skills in context. And just as an example of a model, this is an example of a comprehension model. It's from a book by Michael McKinnon, K. Stahl. You know, and I don't need to dig into the weeds of this, but this is it's it's a nice visual, I think, because it shows like that the ultimate goal, you know, over here is reading comprehension. And the intervention work we do focuses on this first pathway, which is all about letters and sounds and decoding. So, you know, that's where phonics fits in. And it's important, you know, you can't read if you don't know those things. But we often say, you know, that decoding these phonics skills, they're necessary, but not sufficient. So all the letter sound knowledge in the world, you know, won't help you read, for example, words that you can't sound out because they're irregular or it can't help you understand, you know, how to make inferences or how to apply background knowledge. So that's one pathway and it's essential, but it's not everything. So you have also these other pathways. And the second one, I know Susan's done a lot of work in early childhood settings, looking at vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge and oral language and how all those skills help you read for understanding. So if you don't know what if you're decoding words, but you don't know what the words mean, you're not going to make sense of it. Or if you're reading a book about, I don't know, baseball, and if you've never seen a baseball game, it's going to be hard to make sense. And then the third pathway, which is another one. And I think Susan referenced the simple view of reading. The simple view of reading really addresses pathway one and two. So it's like word knowledge, letter knowledge, pathway two would be the language comprehension, but then there's this third pathway that I think is also important. And this is the strategic processing. So you need to know kind of how to set a goal for reading and how to use different strategies to kind of predict or to visualize or to summarize. And it's all that kind of, I don't know, it's a little less tangible. So I think it's not it's harder to assess and it's a little harder to teach. But I think it's no less important. So if I were looking for, you know, how do you address literacy in Vermont? I would encourage us to look for solutions that draw on these three different pathways, so yes to the phonics, also yes to the language and the background knowledge, but also yes to the strategic work that really helps kids make sense of things. All right, so then next, and this is split across two pages, but there were some questions for Dr. Newman that I think were important about kind of developmental shifts, you know, like often we'll talk about early literacy, but really, you know, in Vermont, we're seeing issues, you know, K-12 or even pre-K-12. And so it's important for us to understand, I think, how things might be different at different stages. One important area is that the tasks that kids engage in and the texts that they use shift in complexity across grade levels. I mean, it's you kind of know this, right? It's common sense, but it's also important to kind of keep in mind how what that means for reading processes. So you're asked to do different things, you're asked to read different kinds of things, and so you actually have to kind of change the way you think across grade levels, because the way you read one thing is different from the way you might read another. So reading a story about a puppy is different than reading a chemistry textbook, for example, and you need to help kids make those shifts. The same strategies don't automatically apply across. So, for example, later grades, often you have more inferential comprehension. So kids who've only learned how to take the literal meaning are going to struggle when they're asked to find symbolism and, you know, fill in the gaps, also a lot more informational texts. So kids who've only used narrative text in early grades might have a hard time shifting to understanding, oh, wait, how do I use an index and headings and interpret all these informational text features? This next bullet point, sorry to scroll. I know it's hard to follow when someone else is scrolling, is that different subskills predicts success at different stages. And this is an important one to keep in mind. I think when you're looking for ways to improve literacy, because letter and word level skills are super important early. Those are the biggest predictors of reading success. So when you're in kindergarten, first grade, it's knowledge of phonics, knowledge of letter sound relationships. That's going to really predict your early reading success. But pretty quickly, that falls away. You know, those are very masterable things. You can't go above and beyond in terms of knowing your letters. They're only 26, you master it, you move on. And they call those constrained skills. And once you move into upper grade, you're operating in what they call unconstrained skills, things like vocabulary, which, while not endless, are for practical purposes kind of endless and also comprehension. They're not like masterable when you master comprehension, because there's so much it's an open ended thing. So anyway, we move then kids shift from these word level skills to vocabulary and background knowledge, really being the biggest predictors of reading success. And this is one area where we often see sometimes they're called the fourth grade slump, although with the common core, some teachers have argued that, you know, now it's even more of a third grade slump. And you see that in kids who've really done well with their letter level skills, they know their letters, they can sound things out. But then as soon as they get to third or fourth grade, the books get harder. You know, the genres change and they don't have the background knowledge and the vocabulary to really do the complex comprehension. And so you have kids who really have seemed to be doing just fine. Sometimes they'll refer to as late emerging reading difficulties. And part of it is that they've experienced this K three really strong literacy instruction in terms of phonics, but they have big gaps. And this gets to the question someone had. I can't remember which I apologize about differences kind of in background. So depending on a kid's home background, language background, they'll have different experiences, different life experiences, different cultural knowledge to bring to bear. And you can really then run into difficulties. Yeah, when kids encounter complex text and haven't had the background that they need in terms of knowledge building and vocabulary building to be successful. So I know I kind of harped on that one for a while. I think it's super important. And it ties into that last bullet there, which is actually something that I was happy to hear Susan saying pretty much word for word, that this common notion of you first you learn to read, then you read to learn. It's out there all the time. Teachers say it, parents say it, lots of people say it. And it was it's one of these kind of, you know, it's common wisdom and it sounds so good and it's so simple and appealing, but it's really not that simple. And, you know, and it ties into that fourth grade slump idea. You can't just teach kids word level skills and then expect them to comprehend complex things. So kids really benefit from focusing on comprehension and knowledge building early on. So for solutions, you know, or programs, I would encourage us to focus on programs that do have reading for comprehension and reading to build knowledge from the early grades. And not all programs really have a strong focus on that, I think. Then just a couple more things as supporting all students in terms of getting all kids to be successful, which is I think what we're looking for. And in Vermont, I know we have success with some groups, some groups more than others. It's important to keep in mind that kids who struggle with literacy often struggle in very different ways. There's been some really good research into the ways that standardized test scores can actually mask a lot of variation in reading difficulties. And so, you know, you can take all kids who test it below proficient, but within that group, it's not a monolith. If you did more kind of diagnostic assessment within that, you would find that some have a hard time with comprehension, some have a hard time with fluency for some it might be decoding. And so because of that, we need to be careful in assuming that everyone with the same standardized test score will benefit from the same intervention, because you have these kind of sub skills at work and you need to make sure that your supports match students' needs on the sub skills, not just the big picture, if that makes sense. Also, some students have really specialized needs. And this came up in the conversation with Susan as well. Students with learning disabilities, English learners that would also need some specialized support and instruction for all students should really reflect the complexity of literacy learning. It's nice to think that we could find like the silver bullet to solve all our problems. And, you know, I think there's a tendency to try to, you know, take something that's really messy and complicated and make it simple, but it's really hard to do with literacy just because there's so much individual difference, so much variation, etc. In terms of kind of systems of support, I think this also ties in with some of the stuff Susan was talking about, just that, you know, it can't be teacher by teacher. It really needs to be a bigger system initiative. And so there's this helpful framework from the state of Michigan that I kind of adapted some of these ideas from. It's a combination of points they've made and other things I've added. But, you know, any statewide kind of approach to addressing literacy needs to be multifaceted and multilevel again, it's consistent with what Susan said. So you need high quality training, also ongoing professional development for all educators, the field changes. And so it's important to teachers for teachers to stay current. I also think in this kind of sub bullet is related to the DMG report that came out a couple of years ago, you know, showing that in Vermont schools, a lot of literacy instruction and intervention is delivered by special educators, a lot is delivered by paraprofessionals and support staff, which is fantastic and it takes a whole team to make it happen. But the level of training is not consistent across those groups. And so it's important to make sure that the people who are delivering, you know, the instruction, especially if it's support for the kids who really needed the most, we need to make sure that they're highly qualified. So looking at classroom teachers, of course, but also special educators, literacy specialists, interventions and even para educators, I think, would benefit. I've been in so many classrooms where you see really well intentioned para educators, you know, prompting kids to, you know, sound things out or things like that. You know, and I was like, oh, you're so close. You know, it would take like an hour of, you know, focused training to really give you, you know, more kind of tools in your toolbox. And I think that that would be kind of a, I don't know, a low, I can't think of the phrase, you know, a small low hanging fruit, maybe it'd be like a low effort, high reward kind of thing. If we could get para educators like a baseline level of literacy training that would help them support kids in ways that match up with what we know about research, research based instructional practices in all classrooms for all students. I mean, that's really the first line of attack, which is what Susan was talking about, giving all kids high quality instruction at the classroom level. But then also comprehension comprehensive systems of assessment used to inform instruction and intervention. So making sure that the assessments we use are valid and useful. So we're not over testing, but we are testing enough so that we can catch kids before, you know, things go too far in snowball. And then also using that assessment data, sometimes I think, you know, districts will kind of have a testing plan and you do the tests because it's in the plan, but there's not necessarily that connection into what do we do with all this information? I will say in the schools I've been in in Vermont, I've seen this done really well. I think one of the things that's fantastic about Vermont is the small scale and you're just the ability to kind of really do high quality work statewide. I've seen a lot of really good district level efforts to get assessment plans in place. Research based supports and interventions for kids who need additional support, so not just high quality instruction in the classroom, but also high quality supports, whether that's in a pull out or a push in through some kind of tutoring. But there are kids who need, you know, not just more, but different. And I think we need to make sure that they're being provided that. And then really good alignment across research, you know, what the research says, policy, what the state asks for resources, you know, what the schools have to work with and practice what actually happens. And I think it's, you know, we're OK there. But I think it could be, you know, tightened up and some state level leadership, I think would be really appreciated there. And that really ties into my final point, just effective literacy leadership at multiple levels, you know, so if we can kind of get people on board, you know, get a common set of values and really see them play out across the state, I think that'd be fantastic. And again, with the scale that we have, I think there's no reason that we couldn't, it's just, yeah, a little tricky to make happen. So I think that's most of what I had. I wrote down a couple of things I wanted to make sure to touch on that. Susan said, one, I totally agree that there is a research to practice gap. There's a lot that we know about research, but then getting it into practice doesn't always happen. And I think to then I wanted to touch also on your initial question about kind of the reading wars and where those stand. I think we have this we have this old reading war. This is like the one out of the 70s, where it was phonics. People who believed in letters and sounds and whole language. People who believe that if you just immerse kids in a language which environmental learn to read, you know, as an intuitive process. And there's a famous article from that era called Reading An Unnatural Act, which is kind of a catchy title, but it always makes me, you know, it's an easy one to remember. And it reminds us that reading really needs to be taught, you know, speech and oral language. You're going to pick that up by being, you know, surrounded by sound. But reading, you're not. You could put me in a room full of books written in Chinese for my entire life and I could not intuit, you know, what it means. I need to be taught. So we do need direct instruction. So the old war was this phonics versus whole language. Unfortunately, we reached a nice little detente, if you will, that was kind of balance literacy, where people kind of agreed. Yeah, we do need phonics, but also we need the context. You can't just do phonics and you can't just do context. You need to integrate them. And I think that was fantastic and going well. But we've kind of, as Susan said, we're teetering on a new one, which is this idea of kind of the science of reading versus, you know, she framed it as guided reading. And I think that's fair. But I would really say that's where it gets a little bit political and less helpful. I think a more helpful framing would be to say we're kind of looking at research based versus conventional wisdom. And there are some things that are kind of firmly into the conventional wisdom that I think we need to try to push against a little, one of those being the three queuing system, which is useful, but misinterpreted. Yeah, so I think there's some ways that ways that we could be stronger in terms of making sure that the work that we do is grounded in in solid research and that we're honoring teachers, professional judgment, but also making sure that they have the knowledge to make judgments that will serve our children well. That's kind of my soapbox. I hope that I mostly meant what you were looking for. I will share my screen so that I can see all of you. And then I'm happy to take as many questions as you have. Great. Committee, questions. Senator Purchlick. Yeah, thank you, Professor Halliday. I had a question, but I want to read the language of the question to you because somebody contacted me about how we should be using evidence based methods of instruction. And is that the same as kind of what you're saying? That little dichotomy that you just presented before about scientific based and conventional wisdom, they said they basically made the argument that we're not doing evidence based methods of instruction for for dyslexia and reading, literacy. Does that ring a bell to you at all? Yeah, I think I think I see what you're saying. There are some kind of contested terms, I think. One is the idea like, is it, you know, is it like what am I trying to say, research tested versus research based? And that's an important one, I think, because sometimes you'll see, you know, programs advertised as being research based, which means that they are based in concepts that have been tested through research, but they're not actually research tested that as a program, it hasn't been tested, if that makes sense. So it's based on solid ideas, but the actual package hasn't been kind of validated on its own. And then the science of reading term, I think, is an interesting one because I think I'm trying to figure out how to explain this. Like within the field of educational research, there are different weights given to different types of research. And so I think that's where part of it comes in is that science of or science of reading is used to discriminate, not discriminate, distinguish between, for example, like randomized controlled experimental trials versus qualitative you know, qualitative studies. And so there are some some programs that use kind of one or the other as their evidence. And so it's I don't know if I'm making any sense in this. It's kind of a question of what counts as evidence. You know, is it like a firm, you know, randomized control experiment? Or is it solid evidence from the field? And some, you know, even within both of those, within quantitative or qualitative, you're going to have different levels of of rigor and control. But where it gets tricky, I think, is that different groups value different kinds of evidence. And so you might, for example, have a curriculum program that maybe is tested in one way, but then you would have people say, well, that's not really generalizable to the population that we need, you know. So if it's tested in one setting, how can you be sure it's going to apply to another? Or if you haven't really, you know, you've done it in small trials, but not in complex classrooms, for example. Yeah. Does that answer your question at all? Sorry. No, it doesn't help. It helps a little bit. And yeah, yeah, there's a lot more. Yeah. And I think the language is really challenging, too, because a lot of it is framed as being like science of reading versus balanced reading. But balanced reading is used to almost mean what used to be whole language. And I think that's not it's not entirely accurate. So it's important to kind of I appreciate that you're digging into the terms because the terms are really important and the terms aren't used consistently by all groups. And so it's really important to get beyond saying, oh, the science of reading, well, what do you mean by that? Like what evidence are you counting when you say that, you know, phrase? Or, you know, you're saying balanced reading is not effective. Well, how are you defining balanced reading? Because it's it's not all done the same way. You know, it's interesting for me, at least sitting here, and I know Senator Lyons has her hand up, it's frustrating. I mean, we have we're really struggling. Our students are in Vermont with getting to where they need to be. And it sounds like there's still debate and discussion in some ways around how to get there. And in a way, I guess I'm just saying it's just surprising that in a way we don't know since we've all been using language for so long. And but I guess that goes with the territory. But I guess one question I have before I pass the center lines is you're teaching teachers, right? I mean, you're out there. And when you're and are your colleagues and you all in agreement with how teachers should be teaching when a student leaves University of Vermont and enters an elementary school, is everybody on the same page in terms of that student is equipped or does it depend if they have Professor Smith or Professor, you know, Michelson? I mean, I hope so. We work really hard for students to see and we are like all the teacher programs around the state, you know, we're bound to the endorsement criteria, which I think would be one thing, you know, to kind of the agency always checks in and revises, you know, they're on a schedule for constantly kind of updating and revising been involved, you know, on the committee to do the revisions, both for the elementary and endorsement group through the AOE and also for the specialized literacy professional, which is the reading specialist endorsement. Yeah, that process is really, really helpful. And I think it's important to make sure that's done really well, because at least at the state level, that's how we make sure that teacher education programs deliver what they need to deliver, because they're bound to those criteria set forth by the state. You know, there are always going to be differences in terms of kind of individual issues and what they do and how they do. I will say one thing that we prioritize at UVM and that I try to prioritize is not just teaching teachers how to use a single program, but teaching them to be critical consumers of all curriculum materials so that they understand not just like, this is how I teach this package program, but these are the research based ideas that all of these are founded on so that they could look at hopefully any program and say, this is where it's strong, this is where it's not. Yeah, so I feel like, you know, we're in solid shape at least at UVM. I think there could be a stronger network, probably, you know, statewide of literacy educators. There's not really that network. My professional network is through where I know Susan through the Literacy Research Association, but within Vermont, I think that kind of work could be helpful. Thank you, Senator Lyons. Thank you and thank you for your presentation was very helpful. OK, so I'll begin with a comment about the last question that Senator Campion asked on the does it make sense to look at a doing analysis of the curriculum across a reading curriculum across different teacher ed programs in the state? Is that would that be something that would be helpful if or not? Good question. I think a lot of that happens through the accreditation process that we have in the state, you know, as a College of Teacher Education at UVM, we do national accreditation through an organization called CAPE. We also do for our reading program in particular. We do this kind of rating through the I'm going to get my acronyms wrong, but National Counselor Teacher Quality, I think, which gave us an A last round on reading, which I was pleased with. And and then other institutions around the state go through the Ropa results oriented. Again, I'm going to get the acronym wrong. But the protocol through the state, which looks at programs, it might be worth looking just to see. I don't know offhand. I can't remember all the details like the grain size, for example, that they get to in looking at that. I mean, it certainly can't hurt just to take a peek, even if it weren't in an evaluative way, but just at least in an information gathering and information sharing kind of way. You know, as a literacy educator, I would appreciate finding out what other people are doing to see, you know, there's always room to improve. And we're always looking for ideas. Right. There's always intellectual property. But yeah, of course. And then so then I had an observation and then a question. So I asked the question first, and that is we've moved so far away from cursive printing. And have you found any effect of that over time? So kids have moved to keyboarding and not to the motor skills that might link with the motor cortex, you know, the reading part of the brain. So I'm just wondering if you found any linkage there. That is such an interesting question. I love it. It's it's interesting because the Common Core state standards for as much as they have, and I think for the most part, they're pretty strong in what they ask for and for literacy K-12. They don't address handwriting at all. And so if schools are looking right and so schools are looking for what to do about this, it's kind of a question that's left unanswered by the standards. It's also not something that's really assessed. And so I think that's out of all the different kind of literacy skills out there, that's one that's just kind of left floating in the breeze and people kind of do what they do with it. In terms of, you know, what role should it play? Honestly, I think that a lot of schools probably should spend more time on keyboarding as well. What we do know about, they call these like encoding or transcription skills. So whether it's keyboarding or handwriting, it's the way we put language onto paper, that those skills in general kind of are bottlenecks for the composing process. So you'll be able to write better and write more. The better your handwriting is, the faster your typing is. You know, if you imagine if you're trying to write something and you're having to like think about every single letter, it's going to slow you down and it's going to make you write less, but also write more poorly. You find kids who struggle with handwriting that by the time they get to the end of one word, you know, if they're struggling to form each letter, they can't keep their train of thought going. You know, when your thought process is so far ahead of your transcription process, you lose it and the quality suffers. And so I think there's a lot to be said for helping kids with those transcription skills, whether it's handwriting or or keyboarding. And I don't want to get too deep, but there are also interesting studies looking at brain activity, using handwriting versus keyboarding. And they found that writing things by hand actually helps a lot more with retention, partly because it's just it activates a different part of the brain, but also because you're doing more kind of intellectual work sometimes in deciding what to write versus deciding what to type. Because people when they type will often kind of just like transcribe. Like you hear it, you type it, there's not a lot of thought, but the thought process is different. I could go on to more detail about that. No, it's great. I like that answer. And I would be interesting to look at sort of the the changes that have happened over time, do some kind of a little comparison, holding all the other variables, you know, all that. But yeah. And the other and as you're talking, the other question that comes up is the relationship, there's some people who read every word very slowly and the whole time they're reading, they're imagining everything. And so they're very slow readers. And I'm actually one of those, but I've learned to read fast. But the imagination takes over. And I don't know what role that plays in literacy. You don't have to answer that question. But I think it's an interesting one. And then finally, thank you for your comments about grade level, each grade level needing some reading instruction. So as you move up into more complex intellectual information and textbooks and how many of our seventh and eighth grade teachers are also teaching reading, that's a fascinating question for me. Yeah, and I think there's a lot to be done. I mean, really, if we're looking at K-12, you know, even if we feel like we're solid and like the early grades getting everyone up to grade level by third grade, if we're not continuing to support those kids, it's going to be challenging. And I think there's a lot to be said for helping teachers of science learn how to integrate literacy into their practice. And teacher education programs offer that. But I think it's, you know, it's an area that could certainly be developed a little more. Oh, it would be such a neat development program. Honestly, it might be a key to turning on some wheels for kids in the science, technology and math and similarly with art, I think it's a similar. Anyway, yeah, and I think that's one of the challenges with thinking about literacies that we often kind of have our subject areas like science, math, social studies, language arts, but literacy and language arts are really like they're more of a skill set than a discipline. You know, and so it really it really cuts across. Like it's hard to find anything that we do in any discipline that's not mediated by language and literacy. And so I think sometimes we kind of categorize it off to the side when if we thought about it in a little bit of a more integrated cross disciplinary way, it'd be helpful for teachers and for students. Great question. Senator, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Your discussion about handwriting that Senator Lyons brought up. Ryan, I've had conversations with Waldorf teachers that really feel strongly that teaching cursives help does help reading and and other motor skills and things. But it reminded me that can you explain why it isn't why we've chosen third grade as the testing, because I know like in the Waldorf schools, they they do a very slower. They don't do as much intensive reading instruction in like first or second grade. But usually by like fourth grade, they've they've caught up. So because their philosophy is that first graders aren't as ready to learn as like a third grader. So it's better to use the time for that later. So is third grade there have we decided is that settled that third grade is the right year to to make the mark? Great question. That is a great question. And it's kind of interesting how, you know, benchmarks are set in different ways. You know, these testing benchmarks that are kind of developmental, but also kind of standards based. And you would hope that the standards were also based on development. But but it's it's not always the case. And so, yeah, it's a fantastic question. And it's it's a tricky one to answer because you know, development just doesn't proceed that way. And there's also this fascinating conversation, I think, between like learning versus development. And so I kind of how do things develop on their own, as opposed to how do they develop in the context of instruction? And really a lot of what teaching is is helping kind of provide opportunities that will lead to learning based on where development is. So I could put that in simpler terms, like kind of thinking about not just where kids are as they develop, but where they could be with instruction. So like this readiness to learn idea, I think, is a really interesting one, but also really, really complicated. And so often what we do is we just base those decisions on kind of like sequences of skills. So, for example, it's hard to work with kids on understanding letters and sounds until they reach this developmental stage of phonological awareness, which is where they can kind of recognize even that words are made of sounds. And so early on, kids hear words and they kind of think of them as units. And so a kid who doesn't have this ability to break them into smaller pieces and see the sounds as being those manipulatable things will struggle, for example, to rhyme. And so like one kind of easy check to see if kids are at that developmental stage is to say like to check them on rhyming. And so if you with a really young kid say what's a word that rhymes with dog, they'll say puppy, because they see words based on meaning. And to them, that's kind of how they match. And it's not until they get to the stage where they can say dog rhymes with frog that you realize, oh, developmentally, now they're getting the sounds. And so there are some things in literacy that are really that developmentally clear that if you tried to do one thing before you had the other, you just be beating your head up against the wall, right? You can't teach the kids to decode a word until they have those basic things. However, there are other things that don't fit in that category. For example, building background knowledge, you can always teach kids knowledge of the world, even if they don't have those other things. And so I think that's it's kind of a roundabout way of getting at. That's why some of these things are tricky, because some things absolutely are developmental, and if we're asking them before they can do it, it's going to be a recipe for failure. But other things are less so and it's not that they can't do it. It's that they haven't been exposed to it. And so it's kind of figuring out where those things are. As far as where third grade fits, you know, I think it's I think it's a reasonable a reasonable spot. You know, it's something that is kind of, you know, it's in the standards. It's in various laws and things. And so we deal with it where it is. And I think it's a reasonable one, as long as we're not asking for things that they just can't do. Did that answer your question? Thank you. Yeah. So yeah, it's not great. Anytime you set a cut score or a benchmark, there's going to be some degree of arbitrariness to it. And you just have to kind of acknowledge the arbitrariness and acknowledge that it might work and it might not because of what it's based on. Professor Holloway, I think we're going to have to holiday. We're going to have to leave it there. It's been incredibly helpful. And we hope you'll be willing to keep in touch with us as we move forward with our work, but this has been between the two of you. I think we have a good understanding of what's out there with regard to what's happening at our colleges and universities and in our classrooms. So so very, very, very grateful. Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And I'd be happy to continue to be involved. I'm here and I'm heavily invested in this whole initiative. And I'm really excited to see all of you taking such an interest and asking such great questions. I think these are the questions that need to be asked. And the fact that you're really digging into this is really encouraging that we can make it a priority and really get some good things done for kids across the state. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much. Committee, and I'm sorry to do this to the secretary of French. We haven't had a break and I'm sorry. So let's stretch and take five minutes and we'll three twenty five. We'll get started again. And I apologize that we've gone so long without a break. So see you on five. Mr. Secretary, my apologies, sincere apologies for the delay. I know you're incredibly busy and appreciate you being here with us this afternoon to continue the conversation. You know, we're having around literacy. We just had a couple of hours from professors Newman and Holloway or holiday on where things are sort of out there in the academic world. Some of the work that they're doing, some of the things that you know, we might be doing or should be doing or can consider doing. And we know the person that can fix it all. His name is Dan French. He's muted just so you know, I was with you up to that point. But we do know that this is, as you've mentioned to us in the past, this is a serious topic for you and your agency, something you're committed to and looking to partner with us on. And so we really appreciate that. And so, you know, what I, the committee, what I asked Secretary French to come in really and talk to us about is just sort of what what tools he and his agency need as we as we look to make some changes, as we try to, you know, help children and their families and Vermonters around this issue. What does his agency look like? Is it staffing? Is it is it getting more people out in the field to help teachers? And just to give us some some information and how we can all move together to to address this. So with that, Mr. Secretary, again, apologies for the late start and thank you for being here. Well, thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee. Dan French, Secretary of Education, I have provided a written document, which I'll I'll sort of find my way back to when it's fairly brief. I thought, you know, since you've had heard from experts in the area, I'm by no means an expert on literacy. If I have some expertise on this, I'd offer the observations of some knowledge of the education system of Vermont and how it's organized. And I think that's precisely where we've increasingly concluded we should put our efforts and what I simply put that means creating strong school district systems in Vermont. And I'd situate this conversation in a context of talking briefly about Act 46 and then talking about Act 173, but probably the two major policy reforms that we've had on the table the last five years or so. And I've just observed with Act 46, you know, firstly, just to say that the Vermont Constitution describes the state's responsibility for education. So education in Vermont is fundamentally a state responsibility. And I do reduce that down to basically say our job is to make sure that all Vermont students have access to high quality education. That's a state responsibility. Simplified further to say equity and quality, you know, that everyone we should our focus should be on ensuring all Vermont and all Vermont students have access to high quality education. We then delegate a lot of responsibility to locals to fulfill that responsibility. But the state itself can't really delegate that responsibility. We delegate authority. And Act 46, to a certain extent, was about, you know, the modern exploration to what extent we delegate that authority. And the theory of action I picked up on working through Act 46, both as a superintendent, as a consultant and then a secretary. The idea of the central theory of action was to create strong school districts. You know, if you put one school board in charge of multiple schools, then they're in a position, better position, perhaps, to confront issues of equity and quality. You know, so the classic example in Vermont in this thing called supervisory unions that, you know, are fairly unique structure. We see them in Northern New England, this idea of shared sort of central office responsibilities, the typical configuration in Vermont might have been one board, one school district in charge of one elementary school, a separate board in charge of the middle school or maybe one board in charge of a middle school and high school. But the point that there were separate board, separate school districts feeding into yet another system. And when I would go around the state and as secretary and as a superintendent, I would observe that there was inequity among those elementary school experiences. That's probably the most common area where we see inequity. And in the middle school and high school teachers that would receive those students would observe, you know, the students come from this school are not well prepared as the students that come from that school. And, you know, when you physically go to some of these buildings, you could see the differences, you know, that each town took so much pride in their individual schools. But no one was sort of sitting above it and looking at the whole system and saying, why is this school this way and that school is that way? You know, why does this school offer foreign language and that school doesn't? You know, and once again, if you put one board in charge of that and then cultivate this idea that these are all our students regardless of their zip code, you know, just in a single school system, these are our students, they all feed into the same high school. Why shouldn't all of them be equally prepared? And so that that essential sort of theory of action from Act 46 pointed me to conclude that really are probably our biggest sort of structural piece that we're after, regardless of the specific policy, whether it be literacy or special ed, is really the goal is to cultivate strong school district systems because that, you know, once again, we delegate that response responsibility to the locals. And that's that's a great theory of action in a rural landscape like Vermont. But we need to we need to, you know, whatever we do, we need to cultivate that strength of system because that's that sort of systems perspective is what's going to be most effective in addressing quality and equity ultimately down the road. So and then I would further go on to my narrative to say, talk about Act 173 a minute, which was the other major policy we've been at embarked upon, which is special education reform. And that that reform is basically two pieces to it. One is a significant technical piece that talks about restructuring of the funding system and special education, moving essentially from a reimbursement model to a block grant model and how we do that. It's very, very complex, a lot of a lot of regulatory action going on with the state board around how to do that. The other piece of it is acknowledgement that there needs to be a shift in practice, you know, to figure out how to basically get in front of special education before kids fall behind. And in my written testimony, you know, I provided some excerpts from the DMG group study. There's basically two studies that basically led to 173. One on the finance side was done by UVM. And they also pointed to some of the programmatic issues. But the DMG group is a consulting group out of the Massachusetts Boston area that was working with a number of districts in our state. And they based on that experience of working with some districts, they made some observations. And I put some of those quotes in my written testimony because this was sort of, for me, a secretary. You know, I've been on the job about three years. The beginning of sort of acknowledging that, you know, maybe literacy is a good place for us to begin our work with Act 173 and also to cultivate stronger school district systems. You know, and DMG, you know, is observing, you know, things, you know, I put the exact quotes in their studies that, you know, investing in the effectiveness of core reading instruction is critical for students in general education of students with disabilities. So yes, you know, Act 173 is about special education reform. But when we unpack special education, by far and away, the biggest category of disability is learning disability. And in there, there's a lot of things going on relative to literacy, you know. So once again, if you're if you're interested in like, well, how do you move forward with special ed reformer? If the theory is to get out in front of that, how does a school district system begin that work? And part of it is, well, literacy might be a really convenient way to focus. So as we were as the agency trying to figure out how to support school districts and acting 173, we came back to sort of the system's conclusion. It wasn't about some magical professional development on how to teach reading. You know, there's, you know, you heard a bit about the literacy wars, if you will. There's, you know, I think that's coming together. It isn't as big a war as possibly some someone portrayed as. But, you know, if we start thinking about, you know, in Vermont, it's a pretty sophisticated professional development system. We have teachers that are fairly well trained, you know, once again, our biggest efficiency is perhaps this loose confederation of districts, you know, in that schools sometimes work independently of other schools in the same system. So this idea of cultivating systems appealed to us under Act 173. So we went back and looked at, essentially, what are the big system levers we have in regulation right now that would promote this sort of systems coherence? And they are, there's four things we have in our current regulation. They sound like basic elements, but they've been in Vermont regulation for over 20 years. One is that each district should have a coordinated curriculum, you know? I know that sounds might sound obvious, but most of our school districts don't have well articulated formal curriculum. You know, once again, it's a local aspect, particularly in about 2010, if you might, if those of you around for Act 153, sort of the precursor to Act 46, we did these things that were called virtual merger provisions, the legislature moved the responsibility curriculum from schools to districts, you know, to supervisory. It's essentially to start promoting that sort of bigger curriculum piece. So, you know, here, if you just draw the parallel narrative on literacy, one of our deficiencies is that there is not a district level approach to literacy. You know, we have pockets of excellence. We have schools doing different things, even within the science system, but we don't have a district level sort of an approach to literacy. A second element of our sort of system levers and regulations is this idea of local assessment plans. And this is simply that districts should be looking at their data, understanding where, you know, it's like continuous improvement. They should be looking at their data. If they don't have the data, they should find a way to get the data. But then they should be making plans based on that data. And this is this is once again, a sort of an essential building block of good school district operations. But here, too, we're fairly uneven across the state in terms of how that's enacted. Another systems lever is this idea of an education support team, which is a central theme of 173 that Vermont's had a long sort of policy tradition of standing up an entity, a committee, if you will, in a school in a school district to look at the needs of students before special education, but more broadly, you know, to say, you know, how can we prioritize our support for all students? And then lastly, our fourth system lever is this idea of a professional development system. And, you know, we're supposed to be looking at data, finding our needs, and then devising the professional development at the local level, at the school district level, not the school level with the school district level to do those things. So we started to look at, you know, that's fairly complex work. If you, if you, from an agency perspective, we look at, OK, if we're going to, we're going to move down this path from taking one Act 46, 173, how do we move the system towards continuous improvement? It's really, we've concluded it's not about specific PD in different areas, it's about building those strong school district systems around those four sort of pillars, if you will. And that's fairly complex work to a certain extent. But it's work we know we need to move forward with some urgency, because our other sort of element in the background is that we have a lot of leadership turnover in Vermont. And I know you've probably heard from the literacy experts, I'm sure, on their lists, one of their variables for good literacy is effective leadership, you know, because that's that's what holds it all together. And fairly routinely in Vermont, 20 to 30 percent turnover and principles on an annual basis, you know, so when you when you start to play that out, if we if we enact these kinds of policies at the school level, as opposed to the school district level, at the school levels where the principal's leadership is pivotal, if the principal is not situated in part of a school district system, you know, then then we're exceedingly vulnerable to that staff turnover in trying to get traction on things like literacy. So we need to acknowledge that, you know, one of the variables here is leadership, and also once again, if we don't have strong systems, then that turnover leadership really creates a significant point of vulnerability for us as a state. And where I'll just make the observation again, if I do have some expertise is working with districts as systems, strong school district systems in Vermont, grow their leaders, support their leaders, build those network of their principals, those leadership teams are coming together, working with their data, highly effective, you know, and it's palpable when you when you when you encounter those organizational structures. On the other hand, the opposite is true. You know, we're districts where principals are working in isolation. There's there's no sense of support among each other, doing this kind of work together from a systems perspective. And I think it's fair to say we, you know, typical observation would be in Vermont, we have three groups of districts. We have those high flyers. We have the groups that are really struggling. And then we have a group that's in between that really would benefit from structured support. So when we think about, you know, how to move forward, how to pull the whole system forward, we have to look at sort of ways to conceptualize that. And literacy emerges pretty quickly as a way to do that. Because firstly, literacy is critical. You know, we would argue it's critical for the entire educational experience. Secondly, we look at our data and we think we have room for improvement. And I cited some of that data in my written testimony. You know, once again, emerging from the research that was underpinned at 173, you know, as SPAC scores basically concluding that half of our students are proficient at the integrated threes. I mentioned the other day, the NAEP scores declining. So we know we have student needs, student needs are changing. We have a lot of mental health needs and so forth for students. These become very complex problems to try to address. We think that part of the solution is moving, you know, the system towards a stronger integrated basis. But we still need to use sort of specific examples of work to kind of do that. And literacy here emerges as something, you know, we can measure literacy pretty well. There's a lot of science on how to do it. There's a lot of effort going on nationally in this area. So, you know, importantly to put Vermont in the context of working with other states on a problem is really useful. And we are, you know, we're one of the few states that doesn't really have a state level literacy approach. So at any rate, all those things sort of factored into us concluding that literacy would be a good starting point to build strong school district systems to engage in the specific work of Act 173, but also to support sort of the growth coming out of Act 46. Many, as you know, many school districts have just merged for the first time. They're still trying to figure that out to a certain extent. And we want to help them become stronger school systems because of the state's perspective, once again, of equity and quality that's best achieved through strong school district systems. So at any rate, that's that's really the basis of what we're proposing. It's grounded in this idea of building strong system. So we look specifically at some levers that we know we have available. And, you know, this issue of measuring literacy is an important one. This idea of benchmark assessment, I think that's come up. Benchmark assessments are basically assessments that are given multiple times a year. School districts measured growth. Usually there's a fall assessment, there's a winter one and then a spring one. So it gives us incremental feedback on student growth as opposed to achievement, which is like a critical piece of this. Districts are already doing a lot of that assessment. What we're proposing here is that they report the information to us in a common format, what's called Lexile scores. So that's an essential element of our proposal. Another piece is to factor in this issue of dyslexia more formally. There's a lot of conversation and I'm sure you'll hear here from different groups on this topic, you know, we're one of the few states that doesn't really have a formal approach to dyslexia. It kind of falls in the crack, so to speak, between special education and what would be our EST system, our educational support team systems. It doesn't necessarily get qualified as a disability very easily under special education. So it's an area where we think there should be some focused effort. Most states have acknowledged that. So we're proposing some focus on dyslexia. And then, you know, to really wrap all this sort of into a policy requirement at a school board level. So once again, delegating our authority to locals to make sure that they have a priority on literacy that we think can function under their their construct of having a coordinated curriculum. So not necessarily an add on, but some emphasis on a critical area for the educational system and our data once again would justify that this is an important priority. So anyway, I'd be happy to talk about that more specifically. I guess my last comment I would make is, you know, sort of on the sort of systems context that we're in right now. Last year, we had this. We started this conversation on literacy and one of the common concerns. And it's a real one is like, we're already doing all these other things. You know, where do we fit this in? You know, there's so much going on. And that's true for sure. But I would also, you know, I can't help but say, look, literacy is foundational. You know, and I would also say where we do have strong consensus, I think, from an educational research standpoint is that we should be making strong investments in early learning and care, you know, that preschool and so forth is like one of the best places you can put your your dollars relative from education policy. Literacy becomes a very useful proxy to measure that successful sort of beginning educational experience and the beginning developmental experience of kids. So it allows us to sort of put in place a common outcome, if you will, from birth to three, because literacy can can be a useful proxy to measure brain development, nutrition, overall well-being in addition to academic success. So anyway, I know there's a lot going on in the space. We appreciate that. But we also think this can be a very practical area where we can get some focused alignment and get districts moving towards improving their systems. And I think it fits nicely into what we anticipate to be our COVID-19 recovery work. So as we begin to sort of diagnose what what has been the impact of this emergency on kids, that becomes a real sort of big sort of topic to wrap our arms around. We have to look at very specific tools. Once again, literacy, we can measure pretty easily. It provides a useful benchmark or a dipstick indicator, if you will, if things are going well or not going well for kids. So yeah, there's a lot going on in the space and education these days. But I think this is one that deserves an emphasis, both based on our data, based on our history in terms of trying to build strong strong school district systems, but also what's in front of us in terms of COVID-19 recovery. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak more to it. And I, you know, to echo, I saw the end of Professor Halliday's comments. I appreciate the effort the General Assembly is putting into this topic because it is one that deserves thoughtful deliberation. And I think we're all well at a position to rise above sort of literacy wars, that's not where we want to go with this. But to help help our system move forward in terms of overall quality, I think literacy emerges as a place that we can make a difference for kids. Yeah. And right back at you. Really appreciate your leadership on this and your interest in this. Very grateful. And and and I have a couple of questions, but I'm Senator Perchlich, please. Yes, thank you, Secretary French. Yeah, I'm really glad to hear the the emphasis on this and looking at some kind of structured way to deal with dyslexia in particular and in this. But so it sounds like what I'm hearing though, is that you're not seeing a need for any legislation going forward. That's one question I didn't hear you saying like there was other than you encourage us to keep looking into it. You're not seeing a need there. And then also on Act 173, maybe this is a question for Jim. I can't we delayed it twice, but both two years that I was in this committee, we did we delayed it. And then I think we had another bill last year to try to get it moving again. But I can't remember if that pastor was yet another bill that didn't make it out of the covid swamp. Yeah, so I apologize. I was taking sort of a broad introductory context on this as I sometimes do on Friday afternoons, but we are we are proposing legislation. It's basically to amend the responsibilities of supervisory boards to have a policy or a literacy plan approach that would, you know, basically encompass many of the things I listed. So we we do once again, basically what we're trying to do is highlight the importance of literacy and think it should be called out a little bit more. And there are some elements of that that we would like to be emphasized. But in terms of 173, I think it is it is a complex policy. It's part of this funding piece, again, that we've, you know, there's a whole rulemaking process. The state board has been deeply engaged in that's very technical. And that that has to be implemented in a certain cycle that districts are also doing the PD work that works. They're progressing very well, I will say, but we haven't assessed the impact of covid now. So we might be coming back in a couple of months and talking to you about a further delay, but we haven't we haven't finished that work yet. We have an advisory group. The General Assembly has established that we have that conversation with them first, but sometime before April, I'm sure we'll be. We have a formal report to the General Assembly, but we'll be coming in and talking about a status update in 173. OK, and Jim answer your question on the last session, you did delay the effective date for Act 273. We're going into effect this summer. July 1, 2021, we moved it to July 1, 2022. That's the first year of the census grant next year. OK, I remember that big. That was the big piece of paper with all the dates on a moment. Correct. Yes. That in the Act 46 map in the community. Two standby. Yes. And so colleagues know Secretary French did put at the bottom of his testimony his ideas for proposed legislation and Mr. Demeray has those and has drafted some things up and that will look at those more carefully next week. But I think everybody has a good broad idea of what you expect there. Mr. Secretary, one of the areas that I know you've done a lot of work in, and correct me if I'm wrong with this, but is technology? And I'm wondering if do you see, you know, as we look at literacy, are there ways? Are there tools as we also build out broadband, et cetera, that we might give? You know, what's the connection there? And I'll just give one little example. I think I've shared with the committee, you know, I get this thing in the morning from a French newspaper, I wake up, I do it. You know, I do this little exercises. It just keeps the French going in my head. And, you know, and also I know my nieces have, you know, do these different kinds of things with foreign languages. And so are there ways for us to be thinking about there? Are there tools out there as it relates to, you know, technology? And literacy? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that's that's sort of also a variable that makes this challenging. If you admire all the research that's out there, all the political debate, you know, all the tools, it becomes a very complex space. And that's why I think we want to be resistant. I'm thinking we know all the answers of the state level and being very prescriptive, because I think that, you know, my solution, our solution has been to focus on outcomes and let the locals figure out how to do it best. You know, we can certainly provide support and identify those those tools, the strategies that are most effective. But sort of the first step is just to get agreement on how to measure success. So we can all sort of agree to that and focus on equity in areas where students aren't being successful. But yeah, there's there's tremendous amount of resources. And I will, you know, just highlight this issue of Lexile. Again, this is this is a score. This intellectual property is owned by a company called Metametrics. We're one of the partner states with them. We're about half the states in the country have partner relationships with Metametrics that basically we have the intellectual rights to use this measure. But they've they've done a lot of work. You know, we focus a lot on the literacy conversation on early literacy because it's foundational. But one of the more intriguing pieces on literacy for me, because I was a high school teacher, the you know, where we start to see the scores level off. The United States is really in the upper elementary grades. You know, honestly, the kids make tremendous growth because they're in the younger grades, they're they're soaking in language, a lot of language acquisition going on. But where things start to level off is in the upper elementary grades. And that trend has been noticed for some some years. And we in the other thing people would observe and they've done Metametrics has done quite a bit of research on this is that many of our entry level careers today, it's incidentally the reading levels have increased tremendously, you know, from a technical standpoint, because you think about the manuals that are required today in most the technology that's involved in most career paths, there's pretty sophisticated reading levels available. So they've measured the entry level reading skill necessary for most professions, so I could I could show up their website, they allow part of the tool is as if you're a student and you're interested in being a plumber, you would go in and see what the lexile score is necessary to become a plumber. And it provides a lot of resources on how to do that. Most any book you buy today has a lexile score related to it. So you can say, OK, I'm a ninth grader and I'm reading at a nine hundred. I know if I'm going to go into this profession and you'd be reading at sixteen hundred, how am I going to get from here to there? And part of that part of that answer from like fifth grade, that sort of that plateau we're seeing in the upper elementary is part of the end of people are promoting is to read more nonfiction. You know, it's like we need to expose our students to more sophisticated materials, not to say fiction doesn't also contain that. But this is where the Internet of Technology, I think, really comes into play because, you know, we our textbooks are largely, you know, if you buy textbooks today, they're largely written at that score around the seventh, eighth grade level, so they're not really exposing students to some of those more sophisticated levels of text and where we can really see some growth, particularly exposure to nonfiction is by leveraging Internet based resources. So I think we have, you know, that sort of broader context to understand, particularly in the social studies and the sciences. But in terms of the actual supporting of student skills, yeah, there's a lot of tools out there. You know, we when I was a superintendent, we purchased access to Rosetta Stone. You know, some of you might be familiar with that platform as a standalone sort of collection of CDs. They have a whole web based platform as do other countries on language acquisition. One of their most prominently used languages is English, you know, so using English as second language or just reinforcement skills, you know, and students after school or what have you during the summer, those platforms can really do a lot to provide that reinforcement, which is again, you know, part of the strategy on using BlackSiles is also to promote 365 day a year approach to literacy. It's not just about the instruction in schools. It's about summer instruction. You know, summer literacy programs are pretty common across the country. It's something we want to champion at the agency as well to keep kids reading through the summer, you know, particularly kids in poverty. Great. Other questions, Senator Hooker, please. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary French. I'm going to show my lack of knowledge here. But a couple of things. You've talked about not want the state not wanting to be too prescriptive, and yet you talked about a common curriculum. And I'm curious to know if any of the unified districts are using a common curriculum. And I'm going back to your your suggestion that we do a common calendar. And it's been a long. So how are we going to do a common curriculum? But just. Certainly, I would say, you know, if you would accept that sort of loose characterization, we have district high performing districts that are operating, I would say my description of high performing here is they operate as systems, you know, that they're they're building their leaders. They have well articulated curriculum. They're looking at their data. There's a lot of professional respect for that judgment of teachers. And they're all working around that as a community of practice. We have districts like that. We have a complete opposite where people are working in isolation. Very frustrated because all they see all these initiatives coming at them and they don't know how to make sense of it. And then we have a whole group of districts in the middle. So I think, you know, the issue and I saw a headline recently, maybe you saw it too, where there's a new superintendent for the Washington Central Supervisory District, which is you 32 regular Montalier. And he came from out of state. He's doing a great job. One of the first things they're doing now is to commission what is called a curriculum inventory, essentially, you know, they're they're bringing in someone from the outside to do an audit. And I see that as sort of a symptom for me as an organizational leader in education and say, OK, they're they're starting to operate as a system because they want they want to know what's out there in their own. You know, they're trying to wrap their arms around the problem first. So I think, you know, that kind of work always needs to happen. So, you know, there are states that prescribe curriculum, you know, very, very rigidly from the top on down. I say, you know, and to pick up on Professor Halladay's point, it's not just curriculum, it's programs. You know, it's like you would say you're going to use this reading program because if you use this reading program nine times on a time, you're going to get good results. I don't I don't think, firstly, stylistically, that would work well in Vermont, so we could prescribe something. I don't think it's, you know, honestly going to work. Yeah, the other thing to a certain to a certain extent, that doesn't acknowledge the expertise that already exists in our state. We have we have quite a bit of expertise in our in our classrooms and in our districts. It's more a question of how to sustain that, particularly as staff turns over. We still see when I go out of secretary and I talk to a new teacher, if I can find one, and I say, well, you know, did did you have curriculum when you started as a new teacher and almost 90 percent of the time they say, no, I'm starting from scratch, you know, so that's a point of vulnerability for us as a school district system that we, you know, we have a we have room for improvement. So I think it's somewhere, you know, my approach to curriculum, as I mentioned the other day on hate crimes is that I think the state, you know, state has a responsibility in a role to promulgate model curriculum, like good examples of that. And we would do that through convening district level expertise at the state level. So we would bring together a committee of curriculum directors, for example, literacy experts and say, and I've had this conversation with Professor Halliday to say, could you imagine what a district literacy plan would look like? You know, what would be those essential elements to bring together people who have the expertise to say, here, you know, here's a template of a plan. If you're thinking about a literacy plan, here are the things you probably want to address. I think that's a better role for the state because we're we're too far removed from the actual day to day and there's a lot of expertise out there that needs to be factored into it. So I think, you know, moving a little closer, especially literacy, I'm not comfortable with saying there's a prescribed way to do it, but coming, getting together, clear about how to measure it, but then certainly promulgating the idea of a model template or a plan that people could follow from a district perspective, I think would be very useful and welcome. Right. Any other questions, comments? I think I think we'll leave it there for now, then. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much. We will take your language and draft it. And I'm sure we'll continue this conversation and just appreciate everything you're doing and that this is on your radar and look forward to working together. Senator Hooker, did you have your is that a new hand? OK, no, no. OK, well, thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Thank you. Stay warm this weekend. Yeah, you too. Thank you. Take care. Committee, so next week we'll look at Secretary French's language as well as other language related to what we talked to VESAC about. We'll go through the questions that, you know, their proposals and get them on the table. And this weekend I'll spend a weekend just kind of structuring us, working to help get where we're at on the table so that we can have some media discussions around what direction we want to move in, what we want to do with certain bills, what we might want to do with what Secretary French put forward, what we might want to do around VESAC. We also how we might want to build a miscellaneous education bill around some of the other things that we've heard. And then the outstanding work that needs to be done, as Secretary French mentioned, is the work that Jeff Fannin, our friends at Two Prospect, the agency, are all working to put together around working to address deficits that students in Vermont might have in this post-COVID, if you will, world. And that work is still being done outside of the building, if you will, and they hopefully will bring some kind of draft to us next week. So so we have a lot and I hope, again, to get us structured and ready to go and in addition to throwing a couple of other things out there that you'll see on next week's agenda. But largely, I think we're at the stage where we need to start to to advance some some of our work questions. I see Allison Clarkson is trying to call me, but she's probably just calling to tell me that committee is supposed to go until five on Fridays. OK, listen, it's going to be cold. Stay warm. Do you want me to end the live stream, Senator? Yes, please end the live stream.