 Welcome representative Townsend you are here to introduce a bill to us today. So please you have the floor. Thank you very much and for the record, I am representative made a Townsend from south Burlington here to introduce House bill 79. And the purpose of the bill relates to relates to licensing of personnel in public and elementary secondary schools here in Vermont, and a proposed requirement to have completed at least at least one three credit course in African American university for either initially attaining one's license to teach or to renew this proposal was brought to me by one of my constituents, a fellow retired teacher for the record I am a retired teacher myself. The constituent who brought it forward did spend years teaching at South Burlington high school, and during that time himself taught African American history as part of the curriculum there. This bill is not new to the legislative arena. This very language has been brought forward before. Since 2009. That's as far back as I checked, but in it has not been able to gain any traction, and I'm hoping that at a minimum, the bill might serve in this iteration as a catalyst for a deep conversation. It can serve to functions as it's as it's written in its introductory form, it can provide support for school personnel, giving them factual information, a body of factual information upon which they can fall back a foundation of of the history. As I mentioned, it's like a toe in the ocean one three credit course cannot cover everything there is to cover, but it can cover a lot more than is currently covered in general history courses, regarding American history, which I must say generally comes through a particular lens, which does not lend itself to inclusivity of many marginalized populations. The only purpose that I think the bill can serve is to also in in its own small way, help to remedy, seek to remedy move toward a remedy of the implicit bias and the outright racism, which I believe we have to accept is part of our culture today in the United States at this point in time. If you will thanks to technology iPhones cameras the rest of it. We can all see with our own eyes behaviors, which have undoubtedly in my mind been going on for decades. There's still going on today in terms of grievous, grievous behaviors toward one another as evidenced in particular by the violence of this past summer, with regard to African American persons within our population in the United States. So, why look to the schools. Well, I can certainly testify to the fact as a retired teacher that schools are looked to essentially solve all the problems in our in our society. It has not changed over the years, people turn to the schools and that's, that's to be under that that's to be understood it's not surprising to me. The youngsters bring with them are students bring with them to the schools. The lives, they live the lives they observe of others. They have concerns that they feel deeply on many subjects, and those issues are not left at the schoolhouse door, nor at any particular classroom door, nor can they be separated from the wholeness that is each and every student. So, I know myself as as a retired teacher, I would have welcomed I suppose I could have chosen to but I did not I confess that I would have welcomed having more concrete information, which I did seek in other ways, but it. It wasn't as organized and focused as it would be in in in a classroom setting by by that I mean for instance, a trip to Alabama, Birmingham, visiting the Civil Rights Museum there in right across the street from the Baptist church, which was bombed where the children were killed at Sunday school, things like that were what I tried to do myself to further ground my my knowledge base in addition to, frankly, having been of an age to have lived through the 60s. When I was old enough to appreciate what I was seeing. Let me stop there. And if people have questions. I'm here. One of the things that that comes to mind when I when I hear this is our 2019 act one studies bill that created the work group and their design was to look at issues such as this, they have a report coming to us, I haven't scheduled that yet. I don't know if you have any comments of their recommendations but do you know if your your constituent had an opportunity to, to speak with the with the work group, the ethnic studies work group. I do not know. Okay. I do not know I know that he reached out to the executive director for racial equity. Susanna Davis, but I do not know with regard to your specific question. I should. I should mention by the way, that he. And I also in the context of this bill want to encourage a broader discussion, the whole matter of indigenous indigenous peoples, people of color of whatever ethnic background, in addition to African American this, this, this bill could be, as, as I said at the beginning of the discussion, I would like to ask you to give us a little bit of advice for a deeper discussion along with this report that is indeed expected. So yeah so looking at the statutes as well as teacher preparation. Right. Okay. Thank you very much. Are there any. Oh my goodness. I see a whole bunch of questions. Representative Conlon. Thank you. Good morning. I'm just curious to know it talks about teachers would have to have this to renew their license. How often does a teacher have to renew his or her license. Well, I retired in 2008. So I haven't renewed my license recently but before I retired it was every seven years I believe. Okay, so, so this would. Okay. And I guess, is there any thought as to who pays for this course. Who wants to renew their license in, unless something has changed dramatically in most if not all school districts through contractual language, there, there is support for professional development coursework. And this could be one of those. Thank you. Representative Williams. Yes, could you tell us what the biggest roadblock you have run in getting this passed through the last 12 years. Well, I've been in the legislature only since 2013. So I wasn't involved earlier on, but I honestly don't know what the roadblocks were traction simply could not be engendered. And told me how he had tried in many different ways to even get a hearing of any kind on the bill. And the door was not open. And he went to the licensing board. Because a lot of this could be dealt with directly right at the life. He went to the legislature. In the context of this bill. This is that this very language was introduced in 2009. Yeah, thank you. Representative to thank you. I Oh, something popped up. Sorry. Peter actually asked my question. I will actually, I will take this time on the floor to just give a pitch to our Vermont State colleges I got a my degree in history and I do want to say that my name is Peter Spiro, who is now the the is he the president of Castleton. He was my US history teacher or professor at Castleton and we did do an extensive studies on African American history. And so I would just say, from my experiences that that is something that could be reassuring to people that are interested in this bill. Well, I do. I, my questions were the licensing questions. Thank you. Yeah. So we can certainly talk to licensing folks representative Austin. Yep. I just want to echo again. I'm going to go to the other web's. You know, just pointing out that this Vermont Coalition for ethnic and social equity studies in school, you know, we'll be presenting a report really very soon to the legislature and I think our committee and I would be shocked if your questions were not addressed in the recommendations of that report. So, you know, he might want to give a call or she might want to give a call to Amanda Garces, you know, who is, you know, one of the main advocates for this report, and I don't know what what they found because they looked at schools and you looked at all minorities I mean looked at all disenfranchised and marginalized groups in Vermont so it might address your concerns and your constituents concerns as well. I certainly hope that the report will. And if per chance, it doesn't, the bill is still here. Thank you, James. Thank you. The draft of the report is floating around. So we haven't taken testimony on it yet. But it was submitted to the legislature on the 4th of January and I unfortunately also have not had a chance to. So I just have to see how far I've gotten and my little yellow highlights stop on page three. So, but I can certainly find the link and drop that in our chat or. No need for me and well acquainted with going through the reports. Thank you. Thank you for the offer though. I think it was sent out to all the members of the social equity caucus prior to our summit on Saturday. And we're going to need to let represent towns and go back to our committee very soon here, but I see representative Hooper. Representative Townsend thank you so much for, for your persistence on this particular bill. This question actually is for the chair. When might we see Amanda, when might she come in to tell us what's going on. It's just a matter of getting it scheduled. You know, we really ought to just call it American history, right. Right. You could reach out to Amanda garces and we could get around the schedule I think that with this bill presentation it's good idea to get that going. Thank you so much. And I'm assuming so representative Williamson Hooper those those are old hands that are up. How to speak. And here's Robin. Thank you so much. We're going to move on to our next topic. Thank you Madam chair. Thank you so much. I'm going to dance out in another member of appropriations is dancing in. Yeah. In the door. Thank you.