 Good afternoon. Welcome to Senate Education. It is Tuesday, February 1st at 1.33 p.m. We are going to start our work today with S189. We've had some testimony on it. This is an act relating to the status of Holocaust education in public schools. We have with us two members of the agency of education. And then we also have Amanda Garces from the Human Rights Commission. Great to have all of you. But just to frame this a little bit, I want to speak for everyone, just for myself. This is a time in American and world history where the Holocaust, the horrificness of it, other things that are happening in the world, whether it's banning books from libraries and schools or discussions and evidence of government takeovers, attempted government takeovers, et cetera. We know that we're in a moment, let me say that. And I, for one, want to see us respond to that moment as the Education Committee. I would recognize that no bill is perfect and we are going to make some probably changes and some edits maybe to this bill. But I, for one, want to see us advance something this year that makes certain that in our schools, students are learning about the themes, the identify the situations that bring horrific events about. And so this isn't, I think everyone would agree, business as usual in this country or around the world. I'm not interested in punting this. I'm not interested even in hearing we're doing it. Good to know, but I think this warrants a real serious examination and look. So with that, I should also say the reason I'm feeling that way in part is some of the statistics that were shared with us early on. The number of Americans that aren't graduating, understanding the Holocaust, not understanding what fascism is, not understanding how a country can, how democracy, what a dark democracy is and how those can be put into jeopardy. So with that, I think we are going to begin, I believe with you, Ms. DeCarolis and then Ms. Gala or vice versa, however you want to do it, but the floor is yours. Great, well, thanks for having me today for the record. My name's Jessie Carolis. I'm division director of the student pathways division at the agency of education. And this is a follow up from when we joined you for the walkthrough of the bill and particularly to take a look at current state and also bring back some thoughts about what's been put forward in the bill. Chair Campion, I don't know if necessarily my testimony is going to address your opening statement, but we can talk through that. And then I want to recognize my colleague, Wendy Geller, who will be speaking to some of the specific technical components if we have time. I'm going to turn off my camera briefly just because as I open documents today, I've been finding myself exited from meetings. So people don't mind going to do that and hopefully stay connected. So, again, I just want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak with you today about S189. I particularly want to acknowledge and appreciate the committee's dedication to ensuring equitable educational opportunities for all Vermont students. I genuinely hold gratitude for your continuing insight, investment, curiosity and partnership in developing sustaining inclusive learning communities. I think that this body has really played a significant role in advancing that. Pertaining to our position on S189, we appreciate the committee's interest in learning about the status of Holocaust education in public schools. We appreciate Ms. Steinerman's observation that the Millennial Holocaust Survey of 18 to 39 year old Romaners conducted in 2018 provides useful information that can help inform the committee right now. We agree that Holocaust education should be delivered in a manner consistent with guidelines provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and we've provided some links. We have been engaged in work at the agency and across the state to develop and sustain equity literacy for close to five years now. And we have also included a definition of equity literacy which has been a guiding principle and definition. We'd absolutely be delighted to partner with the Vermont Holocaust Memorial to further develop educational resources and tools to support educators teaching the Holocaust. And we do currently provide links to their site and our social studies equity spotlight tool resources. We recommend focusing on and resourcing implementation of existing statute rule and recovery efforts through statewide professional learning specifically to support coherence and integration as the most effective means of achieving the goals of S189. And this is consistent with 16VSA section 164A as part of the statewide strategic education plan. We recommend that the act one work group be allowed to complete its charge under act one and act 66 that modified act one to ensure that we have a coherent and unduplicated effort to support culturally inclusive learning communities. And we do not support a statewide survey of all schools in core syllabi and this is why. Currently our technical environment does not support the collection of granular information that would allow us to report accurately on the status of Holocaust education and then make informed recommendations to the committee. Course enrollment data collected by the state includes information on the course, course section, student section enrollment, staff assigned to that section of the course as well as the students results from their performance in that course throughout the previous year. And again, Dr. Geller could run us through the specifics of that. This design mirrors the regulatory environment of our education system and the state's investment in its regulatory body, the agency. These data do not provide information on core syllabi content, material, activities or instructional approaches, which probably are the most important and influential piece when we're talking about genocide or Holocaust education. And I believe that has been referenced by previous witnesses. The agency does not collect course enrollment data from our private schools or home study family. So our picture by design would be incomplete. This sends a dangerous signal counter to the intent of this bill and counter to 16 BSA section 165 proceeding with the data collection that by law and design would be incomplete unintentionally communicates that this is a moral issue only for some people that social justice is the responsibility of only some people. And that only some people should have the tools to identify dangers and redress injustice and become responsible global citizens. Finally, the above means that the agency would need to develop and deploy a separate data collection mechanism to collect these data. Our existing data collection tool was built with federal dollars. If we were to proceed with the bill as written, the state would need to find state dollars to support an expanded collection. Additionally, our regulatory environment and trust curricular, instructional and assessment decisions of this grain size to local leaders and educators, vacillating between state level and local level decision-making in a piecemeal fashion creates additional complexity that obscures rather than clarifies educational landscape particularly when we're consistently looking for data and trying to gain insight. Vermont's current regulatory structure directs local boards to set graduation requirements and develop and select curriculum, methods of instruction, locally developed assessments and the content and skills to be learned within a supervisory union. Supervisory union boards are responsible for ensuring alignment to state adopted standards and those standards need to be inclusive of the minimum course of study delineated in 16VSA 906, 136, 131, Act 151 of 2012 and 16VSA 909 and I've included excerpts below. Currently, this body has already charged the Act 1 advisory work group with examining the rules that govern public education including a recent update of that charge. That includes making recommendations for students for standard performance and the timeline for that is December 31st, 2022. Engaging in this work now in advance of the December 31st, 2022 timeline risk creating further complexity and perhaps we'll put the agency in the perceived position of usurping the role of the Act 1 advisory working group furthering the perception of disenfranchisement of our fellow Vermonters who have been historically marginalized, this would be by the design of this legislative body. We currently have state adopted standards, the C3, these were adopted in 2017 and the four dimensions within the framework inquiry, disciplinary concepts, sources and evidence and taking action, all support civic education and the belief that our democracy will not sustain unless students are aware of their changing cultural and physical environments, know the past, read, write and think deeply and act in ways that promote the common good. They also provide a framework for supporting the learning outcomes Mr. Enderman and other witnesses seek and I provided a crosswalk to give you a sense of how we could continue to develop that connection. You did ask and to the best of our ability we've tried to provide some insight, a snapshot based on current technical and regulatory environment, our data collections or according to our data collection and we've provided link previously to the Vermont education dashboard, a survey of AP US history and AP US government and fiscal year 21, we know 39 high schools, BTVLC and 33 public high schools engage and provide content in accordance with AP US history and AP US government guidelines, a SCED code scan and these are the reported courses from schools with grades and credit counts from FY 21 is included below in that table. But, you know, we again wanna note this reflects primarily secondary school enrollments. The search parameters used key words in terms like history, US history, world history, world people, but this does not capture the full extent of courses that could be delivering Holocaust education. For example, it excludes courses such as ethnic studies, contemporary world issues which very likely could address genocide and Holocaust education. It also excludes 9 through 12 English language arts courses where students frequently learn about the Holocaust totaling 12,398 enrollments. In accordance with the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the recommendation is that Holocaust education is best delivered beginning in sixth grade or higher. So we had our search parameters sort of consistent with that. So you can see here that, you know, sort of rough estimate of the percent of our 612th enrolled population are engaged in coursework on an annual basis at 65% where they could be receiving Holocaust education. But again, that doesn't provide the detail that folks are looking for. So we did engage in a very brief field sampling. As you can imagine, people have very limited bandwidths to respond to this type of sampling. We've provided some excerpts from those informal survey of social studies teachers who spoke to the delivery of Holocaust units or Holocaust education. Again, this is not something that we pulled up through the VED. And then finally, just as a sort of deeper dive and something that was within our locus of control, I reached out to VTVLC who provided a little table here around their Holocaust education, which gives you a sense of the total number of students who are engaged in courses that provide Holocaust education. So, you know, in conclusion, I think we just like to put forward for consideration why this committee, the following. This committee has not heard from witnesses about, this committee has heard from witnesses about the importance of teaching the Holocaust well, but has not heard or seen data to suggest that it is not being taught at all. We strongly urge you to consider providing resources for statewide professional learning opportunities to support effective instruction rather than conducting a survey or adding another layer of standards. Our public education system and education staff are stressed and need to focus on stabilization and recovery. Educator workforce shortages are already contributing to school closures, personal and professional stress on existing staff, and subsequently stress on families as they adjust to intermittent closures in the churn of the pandemic. Additional surveys, data collections, mandates that are not directly in service to stabilization and recovery efforts should be delayed and or reconsidered. And yet despite that, our schools have been demonstrated in many cases leading the state in the critical equity literacy work that is essential to culturally sustaining school communities. We need to allow them to focus on continuing those efforts rather than pivoting to a new data collection and or a set of standards. And I've provided just a few little snapshots. For instance, we've granted out over a million dollars for equity literacy initiatives and 30% of our SUs SDs since 2019. As of the start of fiscal year 22, there are 30 dedicated diversity, equity and inclusion positions across 25 SUs SDs, which constitutes 46% of all SUs SDs constituting a 400% or more growth since 2019. And 71% of our counties have SUs SDs with DEI coordinators. The agency also co-chaired a New England task force to diversify the educator workforce with our sister education agencies and state representatives beginning in 2019 and published a report that has very specific set of practices and recommendations. We know that there are bills out there around growing the workforce. We highly encourage folks to consider both growing and diversifying the workforce because when we have culturally, linguistically and racially diverse educators in the state, that also improves our equity literacy initiatives. The agency supported a Vermont task force to develop a webinar series in 2020-21. We had close to 150 participants during the pandemic attend, including 32% of our Vermont superintendents. We also recommend allowing the existing policy work that the BSBA and local boards have been getting engaged in to continue as a driver for systems equity literacy. And specifically, we know that there are required policies such as C10, hazing harassment and bullying and C11 student freedom of expression, which also identifies restrictions on that expression, particularly when we're talking about, incidents of bigotry and statements that are inappropriate, but also recommended policies such as C29, the model district equity policy. The agency of education also recognizes that the C3 is a framework that serves as a guide and intentionally preserves the choices regarding appropriate grade level content to local decision making, but we're currently engaged in engaging the field and providing some updates. And we would love to work with the Holocaust Memorial to see how we could actually integrate and do and extend the crosswalk that I've provided as just a sample of the work we can do to leverage our existing standards to support Holocaust education in the state. Thank you. That was really great, that was really helpful. Before we shift to Dr. Geller, a couple of questions and committee may have questions as well. So I, you know, I've got, I think 17 senators signed on to a bill that this is important, including the pro tem. I think everybody recognizes the two greatest threats to this country right now are probably the threats to democracy and climate change. I mean, these are the two biggest threats. I recognize that the agency that teachers and we've heard quite a bit how much stress everybody's under completely respect that and we would work around that as best we possibly can. That being said, Mr. Carolus, I do, it doesn't have to be settled today, but I am going to push the agency to help us to start to really look at, you know, our students. I mean, you mentioned, there's no evidence that students aren't learning about the Holocaust. How are we measuring whether or not students aren't learning about the Holocaust? Are they equipped to be citizens they can be? Do they recognize, you know, other forms of government besides democracy and the threat that's before our country right now? These are all things that are, I think in some ways, very much well connected to this kind of bill coming out of the Senate. And so I'm going to keep pushing, you know, I appreciate it, I don't want us to look back. I don't think you want to look back. I'm not suggesting you do, but this is a moment in this country's history and I really think given the numbers that were reviewed with us and other things that are happening, we need to sort of take stock. We need to have it and we need to take a look at where we're at with some of these things. And I recognize the work that the council is doing. Don't want to interrupt that. That being said, it does seem like this is a moment where we should really be doing some kind of at least assessment. Please go ahead. Yeah, so and absolutely. I think the, what's not a question is whether Holocaust education is important. Sure, I agree. Yeah. You know, that's not on the table. You know, I think my concern is, if we look at that 2018 survey, only 2% of the respondents said that they did not learn about the Holocaust in school. And while only 57% could name Auschwitz, 79% or more said that they thought that Holocaust education was important in order for some reason, including to prevent that from happening in the future. And I think that that does give us some information. Right? I agree, but 21% pushing on almost a quarter of the population, not, that's... But again, you're talking about 200 people, adults we don't know where they grew up, where they went to school. And I'm not saying again that it's not an issue. Looking at the Fordham Institute and when I went on to the website, we have, you know, of the six states that constituted were given an A plus rating in their civics education. When I went on to look at who was adjudicated or who was involved in the sort of insurgency on the Capitol, they constituted 20% of the cases. And we did not actually, and we still don't have a Vermont on that list who's being adjudicated. And again, the reason I mentioned that is because there's not much that you could draw from except to say that to a certain degree, even when folks engage in education, it doesn't necessarily preclude them from engaging in particular behaviors because it's a whole community response. We have absolutely seen incidents and as someone who has had to respond to almost every critical race theory query from the field, I have certainly been intimately aware of how people are thinking and acting. But to a certain degree, I'm not sure that we have proven that our schools are not actually leading the effort and actually counteracting some of those behaviors and that there's a ton of things that we could be doing when we're thinking about the community, including even how representatives behave in public meetings to actually combat and ensure that we are stamping out anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry. Now we have heard instances where people have engaged in instructional practices that have certainly been ignorant and not recommended, but I'm not sure also that we can necessarily make the equation that ignorance equals bigotry. What we can say though is that it requires education. And so I'm not saying look backwards, I'm not saying don't do anything, but what I am saying is that the most effective thing that we can do is support educators right now and improving their practice. And I'm just not convinced that another mandate or regulation or set of standards will necessarily achieve that. We need support, right? We need to have statewide coherence. We don't have an appropriation at the agency, certainly not in my division that allows my division, my staff to actually support professional learning in the field. We don't. Remember this committee asks annually if you all need funds for any kind of work and I believe historically we have been told no. So that might be something that we can have the secretary of education back in and I would hope you would communicate that to him as much as possible as well. Because we know how small the agency is compared to where it was 15, 20 years ago when many of us started in this building. And hearing that we don't have the supports we need, I can go back to the tape hearing that we've got enough supports coming from the agent, from the senator, secretary of education. Absolutely and I think when we look at things like this, adding something like this on top of it, it would change the request, right? So it would mean additional supports. So we can certainly, there are things that we can do right now that we want to do right now that we actually, it has already been part of our strategic plan. My concern is that we know that one of the number one indicators, right? Of a positive outcome for students in schools is that they have effective teachers and they have strong relationships with teachers. As we see that school closures are occurring because literally there's just not enough staff. The number one thing we have to focus on and with the limited resources, you know, or the small staff that the agency constitutes, we want to have everybody focused on that because the primary driver of an insurance that you're going to deliver Holocaust education is that school is open, right? When school is not open, it's really hard to deliver high quality education. Senator Lines. So thank you for your testimony. That was very clear and comprehensive, but as we're talking about this, and perhaps when we hear from the Human Rights Commission folks, and you brought up the word bigotry, I had written it down. Right now we're in the midst of bigotry that has ensured divisiveness going forward in our country for many years. I think it's really critical that we think about how we can mend that type of thinking and bring people together. So is the curriculum not doing it? Is the question? Education, we all believe that education is the answer to so many different areas and concerns. And yet we know that educated people can end up being tremendously bigoted. So then the question is, how do we internalize the experience of the Holocaust? How do we educate people to those experiences so that we don't end up with the young Vermonter who has now been jailed as a result of January 6th? So he must be a product of our schools. And if we say that it's the community's responsibility, our educational institutions abrogating their responsibility around this. So I'm just trying to sort this out very clearly. For me, education should be, Senator Hooker, I used the word should, should be front and center with this. Is it another step that our educational institutions need to take? So help me understand a little bit. Yeah, so and again, Senator Lyons, you're always coming out with the great questions, honestly, every single time. So I think that one clarification I would make is that what I'm saying is that it is a whole community responsibility, not the community's responsibility. So just as it's not solely the school's responsibility, it is the whole community's responsibility. And to a certain degree, we have to start proceeding as if we are thinking about the people who are outside of our education system. Absolutely the education system has a responsibility in doing this. Absolutely the education system has mechanisms by which they can develop those critical literacies, those connected literacies, equity literacy being one of them. But to the degree that we need to ensure that we're not making assumptions about who is responsible for this, except in making a commitment to examine all of ourselves, right? So one thing again, I guess I would just caution is that we currently have standards, state adopted standards that allow for the provision of Holocaust education. And I don't think we've heard anything specifically to suggest that we are not teaching the Holocaust in school. I think there are many things that we can do to ensure that we continue to come out of this moment of churn. And particularly we know the ADL has spoken to this as well, part of the churn that we're seeing in this sort of lashing out, this is something that I presented to the VSBA, is because schools have actually been engaged in this hard work of reconciling systemic bigotry, we're starting, we've seen people sort of pushing back against that. The number one thing we can do is hold the course to not over respond, but to not back away, right? So to not panic and say, oh my goodness, I'm not gonna pass this policy, right? But to not also say I'm gonna legislate our way into people changing their behavior because that actually undermines the efficacy of the schools to continue that work of pushing forward on equity literacy. And that is my very real concern is that we provide the support for people to continue the work that they're doing to advance the goals of this body, right? Which is to engender equity literacy across the board. And so that goes back to the comment on staff development and having resources available for people to understand how to change behaviors. I mean, because teaching the Holocaust can have a good outcome and it can have a bad outcome. Yep, absolutely. Yes, but having role playing or other ways of dealing with this. Not a recommended guideline. Yeah, so of course, so I'm so very concerned. I don't think we should leave this one aside. It just seems so important to building community. So I'll just end there because I know we're good into committee discussions sooner or later. I think that what your point is a really good one. And I think it's sort of come out of this and I'm thinking about it from last year as well when we kept asking the agency to send somebody to talk to us about history curriculum, language curriculum, English language curriculum. And just to Carol, it's kept coming for all of those. Maybe the way we do this is exactly as Senator Lyon just mentioned, we finally say enough is enough with the agency. It's time for more staffing. It is more time for more people in those offices that can go out and work with teachers and work on staff development and help us all to kind of understand what even better what students are learning. And that might be a good segue for Dr. Geller to talk about the data collection mechanisms. Sure. Do you have time? I'm conscious that you have a... Yeah, why don't you give us a high overview if you don't mind? Absolutely. And we have you back. Sure thing. Absolutely more than happy for that. So for the record, my name is Dr. Wendy Geller I'm the division director for the data management and analysis division here at the agency of education. Thanks very much for carving out a little time for me today. So I think that just covered the pieces around what we are largely currently collecting. So I'll just get a little bit into the weeds on this so you get a little more context. But the course level data are reported using the federally defined school codes for the exchange of data course codes. So that's what SCAD stands for. So school courses for the exchange of data, those SCAD codes is a voluntary common classification system for prior to secondary and secondary school courses. It can be used to compare course information, maintain longitudinal data about student coursework and efficiently exchange course taking records. So I have some direct quotation in the written testimony there from the folks who maintain those at the federal level. So if you really are a wonk like me and you want to get into it, that's all there in the testimony itself. So Vermont has adopted and uses the SCAD codes and the standards because students experience a lot of transitions throughout their educational trajectory and it's really important for them and their families, school systems, et cetera to have portable course taking data. It also allows us to make comparisons across various educational contexts. So by adopting those federal data standards, it reduces the burden that's required to report data to federal partners as part of compliance and quality monitoring, which goes hand in hand with Vermont's receipt of federal education dollars for our most vulnerable student populations under the title programs. So I really just from a technological and a logistical standpoint, I can't stress enough that it is extremely ill advised to move away from those standards. We talked a little bit last time about the Vermont Education Dashboard and the annual snapshot. That's where these data are currently displayed. If you want to kind of get in there and play around with them. But to kind of move us forward to what does it take to make adjustments to large scale data collection infrastructure and Vermont's current data landscape. So I wrote a white paper on this in 2020, shortly after my division was formed with my peer partner, Kevin Bionni who reports up through the agency of digital services. But it was a white paper on the technical debt and a kind of a retrospective on the K-12 state longitudinal data system implementation project. And that's linked in the testimony itself if you'd like to take a look at that. But essentially what we see in Vermont is an extremely complex education system and federated governance model that you see that kind of reified in the ways in which student information systems and the data and technical landscape looks across the state. So this degree of complexity is difficult and it's expensive to adjust at the statewide level. So there's, we just need to recognize that there's an extremely high level of variability statewide in terms of the technical debt load that various S user, S user carrying. So technical debt makes change hard and resource intensive in terms of the time, the human resources, the fiscal investments that you have to make that are required to be successful in implementing that change. So technical debt encompasses things like the skills, the tool sets, the infrastructure deficits that compound when more limited expedient or otherwise disjointed and outdated approaches are used instead of longer term, more current or thoughtful solutions. And this is not unique daily. This isn't even unique to government. It's really a condition where you see this kind of thing happen when data and technical infrastructure has not been consistently a top priority for an organization. So technical debt, the long and short of it is that it's kind of like credit card debt, right? When you allow it to accrue to a high level, it becomes very expensive and painful to pay down. So this shared condition at both the state and the local level prevents some additional stumbling blocks for statewide efforts like the SLDS at the time, but in adjusting then that very large scale infrastructure going forward. So to try to give you like a dollars and cents on this, essentially what I did was I took a look at, and these are very rough ballpark estimates. It's making a lot of assumptions, which all kind of bullet out for you here. Again, it's all in the written testimony that we sent across, but adjusting the numerous state information system or excuse me, student information systems, implementations, the different methods of record, records or data, data keeping that we see all throughout Vermont. Those are gonna come with some fiscal and human resources costs. So this rough ballpark estimate is based on my review of the SAS Fender contracts that were used during the time of the K-12 at fusion implementation to make the system changes that were required during that implementation. So those adjustments were more expansive than the curricular or syllabus level collection that would be required to adjust the granular content level data that's being proposed in this current draft. So what I've done is I've effectively reduced the total costs, average total costs of those contracts by roughly 50%. And they still remain around 220,000. But just to give you a caveat, that's not including any estimates for the procurement and implementation of learning management systems where as user SDs might not have such a system in place. So these investments and implementations would be an additional cost if regularly required reporting were to be an outcome of this bill. So additionally, I provided a case study example of the type of work on the ground. So like folks in the districts and in the schools, the type of work that they would have to do to essentially engage in adjusting their recordkeeping and reporting practices to provide the types of data that the draft currently talks about. So I've chosen an example from Kansas which comes from the National Forum on Education Statistics Forum Guide to School Courses for the Exchange of Data Classification System. That's the SCED codes. And so you can take a look at that if it's helpful to see the kind of real world work that this kind of undertaking would include. So essentially this is a kind of like a data detective work that would have to happen. And it's not a small request to make of the SCEDs in general and in particular at this time in the pandemic. So based on a couple of assumptions, right? If we assume that all the SCEDs and SCEDs have a functional LMS throughout their organization, right? With a standard implementation, which I really am letting you know that this is not the case in reality. And I'm gonna have to just say, if you could just sort of start to think about summarizing just because we have a tight, it sounds to me like this would be a very hard thing data to collect. And expensive. And expensive. Yeah, the estimates are there in the written document if you are interested in the totals as well. But yeah, so. I think, and maybe this is another way to, for us thinking about this back to what Senator Lyons raised is going down on the agenda, Jess, we have you coming in later for literacy. I don't wanna put you in a tricky position. I just feel like every time we ask for anything, you're with us, which is great, but it also seems to me as though there's gonna be, and I'm not gonna ask you to answer this because I don't wanna put you in a tricky position. I'm just talking aloud to the committee. You could even close your ears if you wanted, but we have Jess in all the time, just as literacy, global languages, English, history, all sorts of things. It seems to me that for us to work with approach and say, hey, Jess has done a great job, the real she's here, let's duplicate her. And the easiest way to do that would be to put money in the budget and say, all right, now there's another Jess. So another Jess who can do, and maybe the new Jess, we could even put that into statute, call the person the new Jess. We that person could go out and work on some of these other issues that we're talking about. That just might be another way for us to think about it in a smarter way. I know I kicked this off in my sort of, holy, we got it, blah, blah, blah, but maybe this is a better way. Getting those more supports in, there's no such thing as probably not having enough supports for our teachers right now. And again, this might be the moment that putting more people in the budget, even if we were to sunset them in a few years, could be the way to go. So yeah, I agree with Dr. Geller that Ms. Carolus is great. There's no question about it. And so duplicating hers is not gonna be easy, but you know what I'm getting at. Committee, any questions around that at this point? Okay, please, Senator Hooker in the center lines. Thank you. I like your ideas, Senator Campion and Senator Lyons' ideas. And duplicating or cloning Mr. Carolus, if we could, would be wonderful. It seems to me that I'm thinking of this in terms of kind of an omnibus bill for kind of revamping the way we teach or we educate. And it would include things like civics. It would include things like economics. It would include all of these things that we think that are necessary for a well-rounded education. And the Holocaust is certainly one of them. Learning about indigenous people. Who knew, how many, if you did a survey, now it would be a lot different than it was when I was in school, but who could name the indigenous people of Vermont? 25, 30 years ago. And these are the types of things that we need to include. So I think that you're going down the right track about trying to approach this in a different way. I can see certainly that the agency is concerned about implementing kind of piecemeal in a way, the way we educate. And I hate to think that we're educating based on how much it costs, but that has to be one of the factors that we take into consideration. And I completely trust Ms. DeCarolis. In other words, if we were to say we were going to put another person in, we could leave that up to her in terms of what that person would need to do to support. But it gets at whatever exactly Senator Lyons and Ms. DeCarolis have said is right now it's support. Senator Lyons, please. A quick question on the linkages, the internet connections and the systems that are in place. And there's so many different ones and it's expensive, but was there any discussion at all within the agency about this utilizing federal dollars? Because obviously the gaps are there and removing the gaps and linking folks together with a common system or nearly so might do a lot of good things. So is that a conversation that's happened? I see how expensive it is. It's very expensive. But if the federal dollars are there at least to offset a proportion of it might be helpful. That's a great question. And I realized that we're probably out of time. So I'd be happy to come back another time to talk about DEMED's 10 year strategic plan that we're working on at the moment. So kind of the future of the technical and the data landscape that we're trying to achieve. I think what I can offer in the time that we've got left is that we are definitely working very hard to future proof, if you will. And a lot of that has to do with adopting those federal standards. So it makes change an awful lot easier because if we share the way that we do things we're not kind of creating our own little way of doing something that makes it very hard to maintain and it makes it tough to learn. It also makes it tough to work together on it because we've been doing things in our own way so we can't really share knowledge across systems. So I'd be more than happy to come back and talk about that if it's helpful. Thank you. Okay, I can't thank you both enough. It was great, really good conversation. We will see you in about an hour. Unfortunately for all of you. No, not unfortunately for all of us. Please, I don't want you to leave thinking that at all. I want you to leave thinking just the opposite. We're thrilled. And in no way, Mr. Carolus, I hope you will ever take my comments as, because they're not intended in any way being negative. I fully support the work you're doing. I'm so glad you're in the position you're in. And it's just trying to, my way of kind of trying to find the best way to go. And I want to do that with you. And you've been a great partner to us. And again, we will look forward to seeing you at 330. Absolutely, appreciate it. Thank you folks. Thank you. Ms. Garsis, how are you? It's been about a year. Great, yes, it has been about a year. Yeah, so glad you're with us, looking forward to taking this opportunity to hear a little bit about how things are going, but in particular with an eye toward S189 and where you all are as relates to that kind of work. So with that, the floor is yours. Great, thank you. And for the record, my name is Amanda Garsis. I am the Director of Policy Education Not Reach for the Vermont Human Rights Commission. Thank you so much for the opportunity for me to be here. I'm gonna be brief because I think Jess and the Agency of Education kind of gave the big picture of how I see the mechanisms of curriculum into our system. And for history purposes, when we were trying to pass Act 1, that was the first thing we kept here in sight. Curriculum is about local control. So I wanna uphold the need for Holocaust education as a way to kind of move our democracy but of show what can happen when we let bigotry extend as a way of life, right? And how, so that is not a debate of whether or not we should be teaching the Holocaust. This conversation is about what are the tools that we have in our education systems that can be a tool, a useful tool for these conversations to happen and to make sure that our teachers have all that they need to be able to teach something. Not in a determined way. So with that said, I think that part of the conversation of the Act 1 working group and many of the members of marginalized identities who are doing some educational work, a lot of the things that keep coming up is about curriculum violence, which is like a term that people use when teachers, for example, use different mechanisms to teach something that they don't have all the tools about. So they will pick a curriculum from the website and do simulations, for example, which are very detrimental for kids. Then what happens is that you are teaching a classroom and then once you leave the door of that classroom, conversations between students start to happen. This is when the rise of hate and starts to happen with the students and we see graffitis, we need to look at this in a holistic way. What are the things in Vermont that we're doing to ensure that we are tackling all of the pieces that we need to make this education transformative? So just talk about all of the standard pieces. So the Act 1 working group for the past 18 months, I would say we have been working for the education quality standards and a lot of the pieces are gonna fall into that document. We will submit hopefully by March, we'll be in the State Board and some of the pieces around discrimination, around hate will be included in there, right? So I want you to, I think for us is like thinking about Holocaust education, ensuring that we have all the pieces. What are the policies that are gonna support students when they are in these environments that might not be conducive to have the conversations because we didn't start in an early age. What are the tools that are uniform that all the teachers have in the district? So I think that you heard from the AOE, I think you need to hear from the school districts. What are they doing? What are the teaching? What is the way in which they are teaching from grade to grade that is cohesive, that is important? A lot of the teachers are looking at a textbook and teaching that way. So I think in Vermont and in the country, we have really great resources developed around Holocaust education. Now it's taking those resources, putting some money for real development of the teachers instead of doing the tap down here. So you need to teach the curriculum, you need to start from the bottom up. You need to give the resources first for the teachers to feel, support it and encourage because it's not just the Holocaust where we're thinking slavery, genocide of indigenous people. So all of these pieces also need to come together if we're thinking of a democracy conversation around what happens when hate. These are horrific things that people, the humans did and we wanna make sure that it doesn't get repeated. And so we need to look at that big context. So I think this bill, I see it as putting more pressure on the AOE for data, but it doesn't really have what is needed, which is like we need money and resources for the educators that will be teaching to ensure that we are teaching the right way with all the resources that they need to make this successful. That's what I have. It's very good. Yeah, thank you. Senator Perslick. Thank you. Good to see you again, Amanda. And can you remind me the H1 working group or what is it called? Is it? The Act 1, the ethnic studies, the ethnic studies and social equity working group. So it is a working group, okay. And I remember discussions around, when we passed that bill around the Holocaust and are there members of the Jewish community on the working group that are part of this kind of integrated discussion that you and Jess kind of talked about? We have members who are from the Jewish faith, but we, so part of our function and the way that we're working, so we're 23 members, 11 are community members or 13 now, the rest are from the educational stakeholders. And so the process, for example, for the education quality standards, once we finish, we opened it up to the community. So we got feedback, which we're still digesting the feedback of over 40 people that includes some of the Jewish member. We got from the anti-Semitic working group, they send some recommendations to include in the work that we're doing. We have from an anti-definition league in Boston, our New England, they send some recommendations. So all the recommendations get to our working group with digest them. And then as always, all of that, all of what we're putting together are recommendations for the state board to adopt. Once we, the AOE is working now to get our RFP out for the $50,000 that we got to hire a person that's gonna help us with the second piece of the work. And so that is where some of this conversation will fit in when we start looking at the standards. It could be civics, it could be education, it could fall into many places. And as always, we're very open to get the voice from the people and from all the communities that need to uphold their thing. So the conversation was more because of the standards is around people who have been prosecuted, historically persecuted and gone through genocide. Now, because we're not looking at a specific curriculum, so Holocaust will be a curriculum thing, right? Like a standard will say, a student will learn, not to hate, I'm just making this up. And like, which were other ways into in our history. And that's where then the teacher said, the Holocaust is a way that I can teach this standard in history or as slavery is a way that I can teach this standard or this, so all of this fit together. And I think that's, I do encourage you to think about that holistically too, about all this, how do we, if this is to move the democracy and this conversation that Senator Campion said at the beginning, as the intent of this bill, we should really holistically think about how to move these pieces together. Yeah, please. And it does the working group. I know last year you had an appropriation. It's not like we did give you at least $50,000. I know I think you had asked for some more, but it would be interesting to hear if the working group kind of to Senator Campion's point about more resources, because I think I agree with what you and Mr. Carolus said about kind of the best way to approach the problem and it will require more resources. So if the working group has specific suggestions on where those resources could be deployed, whether it's with the working group or more support for teachers or staff at AOE or all of that, it would be great to hear what that might be. Yeah, and I mean, I think for this purpose, Senator Campion, Senator Parchnik is very, so we had requested in our dream world last year to have some money to send a cadre of educators to get an ethnic studies certificate. So then like our whole dream was that if we get a group of teachers that get trained, get certified, then they can eventually become trained the trainers for our state. And so that's an idea. If you wanna put money into something like that where you're actually training educators from all the regions in our state to become, to work with all these organizations that are doing Holocaust education, because I think what is gonna get us there is the students, right? The students were the ones that brought this bill forward. The students are the one mobilizing. We need them to go to their school districts and say, this is important to us. We need you to teach this the right way. We need you to have the resources in place. So if you have money to put in, you put it to the school districts for them to develop their systems so that they are a developmental curriculum that is going to be cohesive throughout the years, not just in 10th grade. We need to be finding appropriate resources for when we start having those conversations in elementary school, middle school, and that there's a progression because what we're finding is that when they get to college they don't have the right information or the Holocaust. So we let them have all their education life based on a snippet of information around the Holocaust, around all the issues in little bit of pieces that no uniformity. So I think that an idea could be that you develop systems where you're actually training, put in resources and money to teachers that I know a lot of teachers who are hungry for more resources to learn, to be able to be the voice for those students. So I think they just need resources and time. Right now it's very hard to give another Monday to teach anything, right? Like that's just what you've heard the stories and if you have not encouraged you to, you know, it's, so this is, I also just wanna give my sympathy and empathy to all the educators in the state who I know are having a really hard time in doing all that they can with the limited resources and lack of staff because of our reality of this pandemic that's affecting all of us. So I think this feels good. I mean, I feel like we're getting somewhere around what we might need to do. What you said Ms. Scarce was reminded me of what we did with the literacy bill base, you know, we putting people on the ground to train teachers to teachers then train one another, you know, that kind of structure, if you will. I also don't wanna lose sight of the fact that, and I don't think anybody here does, every time we ask the agency to send us somebody to talk about curricular needs, it's Ms. DeCarolis and Ms. DeCarolis also said she's taking phone calls about critical race theory. So I think we're getting there, I do. I think if a senator personally asked you if you could, if you have recommendations where you think we should be putting additional dollars this in the big bill, that would be very helpful as it relates to getting at the needs that you heard expressed here today, which to summarize are helping teachers, helping, giving them extra resources, giving them the support and giving them what you said they're hungry for, more training. And so that feels good to me. I don't know if there's anybody. I'm not sure if they're hungry this year, but. Sure, no, completely, yeah, I get it. I get it completely, yeah. Nobody's hungry this year completely, but we could get ready. And it's, you know, in all reality, we're probably talking, you know, fall of 22 or spring of 23 when we would really start to get different things moving. I mean, the way I keep thinking of it is, is there somebody in, you know, Jess's department, if you will, that is focusing on, I don't want to take anything away from Jess, but maybe that person is focusing on social studies, civic education, understanding democracy and government and those kinds of things and really working on that. So if you would, Amanda, come back to us with some recommendations next week, that would be terrific. And Daphne will send you a follow-up email and that'd be a huge help. And feel free to reach out to us as you're, you know, during the week, if you have any specific questions. Okay, great, thank you so much and thanks for the opportunity. Thank you, we'll see you next week. Okay, bye. Bye-bye. Senators, how does that feel moving in that direction of supporting teachers, Senator Hooker? Okay. Absolutely. Okay, so I think, you know, certainly nobody wants to, I certainly don't want to say don't teach the Holocaust because we can't afford it. So please, let's put more resources into our educational systems so our kids can get an understanding of places beyond Vermont. Right, and we'll wait to hear back from what Ms. Garces comes back to us with in terms of suggestions. And we'll also talk to Jess again and others at the agency. But I think it's time that we have approach as at least one other position to the agency of education. Okay, let's take, yeah, Senator Lyons, please. Just really quickly. The availability of federal dollars to accomplish some of these goals. I mean, the federal government should be coming through right now. We're trying to save them, the democracy, right? Yeah, fair enough. Saving ourselves. Yeah. From ourselves. Right. No good suggestion. And we can touch base with Secretary French on that in federal dollars.