 You've got it, Daphne. OK. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Senate Education. It is Thursday, Tuesday, January 4, 2022. Happy New Year. We are going to, as you know from the agenda, jump right into our work. And later today, we'll take some time for introductions and committee organization and priorities. But given what is happening, of course, nationwide, not only to the citizens of the country, but in particular our focus, the students, the teachers, the school personnel, as this pandemic continues to worsen, we wanted to jump in and understand as much as we could about what's happening on the ground. We are all certainly reading the press. And I know share the concern that you all share and the work that can certainly support all the work that all of you are doing. But we wanted to understand again directly what's happening and how we can be helpful, how the legislature can be helpful at this point. And we thought we would start with Secretary of Friendship. That works for you. We have until about three o'clock for this discussion. So I don't want to rush through anything. We can always even take more time. This is certainly the priority of the hour. So with that, Secretary, welcome back. Good to see you. Yeah, good to see you all. Happy New Year. And thanks for the invitation to testify. What I'd like to do is just sort of give you a quick update on the state response in schools and give you the opportunity to ask me some questions. I typically would characterize our response to the pandemic falling into three strategies. One is vaccine, two, contact tracing and testing and sort of put those two together as one strategy. And the third being our mitigation recommendations to schools. So I'll walk through those three first and then we can go into some other areas. I think in particular remote learning comes up often. So in terms of vaccination, we're making excellent progress in five to 11 vaccination. Vermont is the national leader by a large measure in this regard. We continue to make good progress we're probably close to 56, 57% have at least one dose. And as predicted as you get 50% that pace of that starts to slow down a little bit as we saw with the adolescent vaccination. But at the moment, we're very satisfied with that work. We're gonna be redoubling our communications efforts and so forth to keep making progress in that area. And that should be exceedingly helpful in terms of operations of our schools. Some news that's breaking on that. We expect probably tomorrow that boosters will be available to 12 to 15, I believe. The CDC will be meeting on that tomorrow. The FDA recommended approval earlier in the week. And so we'll be engaging in booster logistics as well. So that's vaccination, contact tracing and testing. A lot of activity in this area particularly adapting to the circumstances of Omicron which is although produces milder symptoms it produces more cases and moves more quickly. And that's a challenge to both contact tracing and testing. Over the holiday break, we had a supply of antigen tests that we deployed into what we call the kits for kids campaign put out over 40,000 kits into the broader public under very rapid sort of logistical exercise led by the NCVM services and the agency of transportation. We have additional supply from that that's now gonna be deployed to schools. We'll be having a communication out to them this afternoon to hopefully this afternoon to announce that we're just basically distributing that on an enrollment basis around to the school. So there'll be additional kits that they'll have sort of tactical flexibility if you will on how to use as best they see fit. Also as planned, we're about to announce a deployment of or expansion of tests to say to private pre-K that was one of the issues. I'm sure you heard from perhaps your constituents last week, we had a limited supply. So we managed that as best we can but private pre-K and public pre-K have always been on our radar. So that'll be coming out as well. In terms of contact tracing, the big sort of change was unanticipated guidance from the CDC on isolation and quarantine that came out on Wednesday. More or less the same day, we Vermont published its revised guidance on isolation and quarantine. And as you're probably aware, we essentially adopted the broad CDC recommendations but we added the addition of a testing requirement. And the CDC later that afternoon, theoretically updated its guidance for K-12 schools but never updated its website. So it left the old, it's old guidance for K-12 in place. And that created a lot of confusion, particularly over the weekend that we're still dealing with today actually. So in terms of contact tracing, we remain committed to that. We think particularly vaccination as makes that process somewhat simpler in that if you're a close contact and you're vaccinated, you're not required to quarantine. It also vaccination simplifies test-to-stay, you're not eligible for test-to-stay. But I think where I was just corresponding with the superintendent a minute ago, both the volume of cases from Omicron and the speed of Omicron will challenge both our contact tracing and testing processes. So what we're planning on doing is evolving test-to-stay probably more rapidly than we otherwise would as part of a larger strategy of deploying more antigen tests more broadly in the general public. At some point this month will be sort of expanding test-to-stay if you will, where schools begin to act more like distribution sites for antigen tests and not be responsible for administering the test on site, that's really a strategy. Again, that's part of a broader strategy to deploy more antigen tests in the public but also acknowledges that the speed at which this is going to be occurring, we need to anticipate that schools can't manage that in the context of the traditional sort of test-to-stay, which is fairly logistically intensive. So that's contact tracing and testing. One other thing that's emerging on that pretty quickly, there's conversation around symptoms. We have one of the requirements, if you will, or recommendations for schools is that stay home when you're sick. And that's a recommendation we employ across broader society as well. Challenge with Omicron is the symptoms present rather mild, so they're consistent with common cold and so forth. So we've got to provide more specificity on what we mean by sick when you stay home. So that's something we're working on with the Department of Health. And lastly, in terms of recommendations for schools, we are working on, we haven't published formally yet, but we'll be pushing back. You might remember we have a recommendation that schools don't need to use masks when student vaccination rate reach 80%. That will be pushed back till after the February vacation at this point. And then we'll be evaluating the other parts of our recommendations. So one area we're looking at, in particular a little more closely as to what extent schools should allow visitors into their perimeter, if you will. So we'll be evaluating those recommendations here as well. So those are really the big three, those strategies have been consistent throughout the pandemic and same strategies will be used to address the Omicron situation. I'll just comment a bit on remote learning. And so we, we're operating under existing regulations. It's not a state of emergency. And to summarize that, what that means is basically schools are either open or they're closed. And if a school is going remote, quote unquote, is a phrase that was common last year under our current regulatory framework, that does not qualify to schools as being open. Again, schools are either open or they're closed. And think of if the regulations, you know, being useful in the time of like snow days or boilers blowing up those kinds of issues where schools closed for a variety of issues. The fact that a school is using remote learning doesn't qualify the day as an in-person instruction day. So we have a waiver process available and this will increasingly become important. We expect with Omicron that the bigger issue probably will be staff availability, though it's been an issue throughout the pandemic. I think it'll become more acute with Omicron, particularly the staff themselves might be infected or their children might be affected. They might have to stay home and so forth. So the waiver process that's established in our regulation is designed to be employed around February one. So we'll be announcing that waiver process towards the end of January. I've been messaging and I will increase my messaging to folks that will be flexible. If the number of days that they've been able to have are dropping below the state required minimum that's set in statute, we'll be able to grant a waiver if the circumstances are related to COVID. When I'm messaging the superintendents, I'm gonna be less sympathetic to granting waivers for the issues of preemptive school closure. So to your prompt about national media and what's happening in other places in the country, there's a lot of concern that isn't necessarily directly related to our conditions on the ground in Vermont. And that creates panic, if you will, and concernings, a heightened anxiety. And I've had several school leaders and superintendents reach out to me and say, can we close school in advance of what we anticipate to be problems? And those kinds of issues from my perspective are not legitimate waiver issues. But certainly any logistical consideration could be staff availability, you name it. If it's related to COVID, then I'll be very flexible in the waiver process. But going remote itself, there's no sort of comparable way to make that account as an in-person day. And the reason it's been, I think, tough for everyone in the country to navigate is we've come to realize that the remote learning that we quickly stood up last year, it was not necessarily successful. And I can say just in our experience in Vermont, at best it was very unevenly employed. And so it can't necessarily be equated for a day of in-person, but I think increasingly we have to acknowledge, and there's quite a bit of reporting on this in the last 48 hours as well, that the issues of the pandemic related to students is an accumulative issue. It's not necessarily a trade-off between the risks of COVID versus the risks of not being in school. But we have to acknowledge that our students have, they've been impacted for the last year or so, that accumulative impact on students is beginning to manifest itself in ways that's exceedingly concerning in their needs. And I think rightfully needs to be a prioritization on trying to keep our schools open the best we can. I'll end by just saying we are hopeful from what we're seeing in other places in the country that Omicron is very quick, but it also tends to work its way through the population pretty quickly as well. So we're hopeful that this moment, if you will, will come and go. But why don't I end there? That's sort of a quick summary of the moment and be happy to answer any questions or engage in conversation with you. Committee, questions? Senator Lyons. Thank you, thanks for that report. And in particular, thank you for the information that the distribution of tests is going to be more localized. That's the one area that I've heard the most about from my constituents. So, but I do have a question about that. So the antigen tests will be available at the schools. Is that going to be a weekly distribution? How will that happen? And it sounds like the school will make decisions about who gets how many when, how it's done. But is that like a weekly event? Yeah, it's not clear yet. I mean, a lot of what I'm talking about is sharing kind of where we were before the holiday relative to test-to-stay, which was going very well, had a very defined protocol and so forth to what we were predicting to be our destination of ultimately more widespread availability of antigen tests. And that was sort of the pre-holiday disposition. It's hard to comment about antigen tests without acknowledging that there's been a holiday phenomena around antigen tests. There've been very popular gifts, as you know. And there's been quite a bit of reporting in the last 48 hours about people abusing them, you know, like wanting to hoard them or people who don't really need them using them. The through line through both of those, I think perspectives is the federal supply in procurement of antigen tests. So a lot of what we talk about, whether it be pre-K or local delivery and so forth, is really predicated on securing that supply chain. And that's always been in the background. I think Agency of Human Services has done such a remarkable job at always sort of laying down that track in front of the train that we sort of take it for granted that these things happen automatically, but nothing has been happening automatically. It takes a lot of work, securing multiple vendors and so forth. We are optimistic, you know, we wouldn't have engaged in tests to stay as a state. We're one of the handful states that did that. If we didn't have some assurance about supply, so we've been, you know, securing those supplies on our own. But then we started to notice as early as October that the federal government was playing an increasingly large role in the marketplace that they were buying up supplies as we were trying to get ahold of supplies as a state as well. We knew full well that they were ultimately gonna bring those back to us in some form, but that's, you know, when and how has been open. And I think you might have seen the president's more recent remarks around the holiday time where he's basically, I think, gonna invoke the War Powers Act and really commit to ramping up that supply. But that'll take some time. So we have a couple of different strategies we're working on and AHS can speak more directly to that. But it's fair to say, I think the larger theme is that tests to stay and the idea of schools controlling how those tests get implemented is going to evolve away in favor of schools handing out and sending tests gets home with staff and students as needed. And, you know, what do I mean by that as needed? That'll be defined based on, you know, supply and the circumstances and so forth. But the other sort of side of that is we're, as we've messaged, we're gonna lose control of the data quality on that too. And we're already starting to see that to a certain extent. So on the positive end, you know, when we do control the testing, we can manage the case count, if you will. And we can point to those trends as we more widely disseminate the tests, we'll lose control of some of that accuracy. And we've already started to see that happen to a certain extent as more people are using tests on their own and so forth. But that's the wave we're navigating right now. A large part driven by supply. So I don't have the direct answers yet, but the school context will be, you know, I think in the last year and a half we've viewed schools as sort of a perimeter around them and trying to protect that learning environment, even though, you know, we still today don't see a lot of spread inside of schools that's unique to schools. It's usually a result of activity in our communities. So that idea of protecting the school when there's this community spread all around us is kind of come and gone as a analytical lens, if you will. So we'll be deploying essentially that perimeter in the community. So the idea is that more widely distributed tests will ultimately protect the community and allow individuals to make those decisions in real time. So schools will have a role in doing that, but the exact circumstances of how that distribution will take place haven't been fully described yet. So what I'm hearing you say then is that schools will begin as a place for test distribution and then decisions will be made about what might work better in the community. I'm trying to start trying to sort out. I understand it will depend on supply chain, that's everywhere, but just ensuring that, I mean, look at schools are commute, in many ways schools are commute the community. So I can, I understand that transportation was key in distribution, but there's just one little transportation garage per county. So it made it difficult. And parents were very much engaged in trying to get tests. So it seems to me the school's the best place to get this out or senior centers, but that's not your job, but... Yeah, no, I mean too, I better understand your question. Yeah, schools have always been a priority on antigen test supply. We have a dedicated supply reserve for schools as our priorities to keep schools open. So in terms of if you're a parent and you're a student or a school employee, schools will be your primary distribution point for those supplies. You won't be going to an AOT garage. That was a temporary thing that we stood up in the holidays and they did a phenomenal job doing that. Well, they did and it was great, but now as schools back in special, it does make a whole lot more sense to have them distributed there. But your comments also about other places in the community also make sense to me as long as we're not forgetting the school at the same time. Right, I mean, it deserves a separate emphasis because it is one of our priorities to maintain a continuous operation. But it's also, I think, from the hat I often wear in these conversations is the operational viability of sustaining the work that we're doing. And schools have become an important component of the larger public health apparatus, but it's not what we're used to doing. And there's some wear and tear, significant wear and tear in the system, even as a result of Delta. And the prediction would be that Omicron is gonna require us to adapt the processes that we've become more accustomed to. I've said on a number of occasions, I would have been happier if we were able to evolve the contact tracing process further, but you can't evolve a process like that in the middle of heightened case counts. It would be nice to sort of have a lull and say, okay, let's re-look at this. So we've been hesitant to let go of some of the tools we know that work, but contact tracing and testing, as we know, will be greatly challenged by variants like Omicron. Now, again, I think where a lot of the conversation is heading is to acknowledge that there are risks, and those risks are very real when schools are closed to students. And the risks to the virus are perhaps not as great as those educational and societal risks, and that needs to be evaluated. And that evaluation is the cause of a lot of tension right now around the country. But again, I would encourage you to just stay focused on our Vermont circumstances. It is challenging as I'm reading the national media and the headlines this morning, what's going on in many parts of our country who have very low vaccination rates, who's never had things like tests to stay deployed, schools have still been closed for the most part. Those are significant challenges, and Omicron will make those situations even more challenging. We're in a better place, but it's a challenging dynamic right now with CDC guidance evolving still. We don't think it's quite settled, but we feel pretty comfortable at the moment that we're on the right track, but remains to see, and the virus has thrown us a few curves in the past, so we'll see how it goes. Other questions? Senator Hooker, please. You're muted. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary French. You talked about the waiver and the minimum days and going below the minimum days. I mean, and you talked about the unevenness of the remote learning process as we saw it last time. So how do you account, or how will you account for schools that perhaps have more cases and are closed more than others, and how is that gonna work as far as evening out the process? Yeah, evening out's gonna be a hard way to look at it. I think we'll certainly have very real situations. I think, again, staff availability is gonna play out here pretty significantly with Omicron, and that's gonna be very uneven around the state, so that we saw that last year as well. Some districts can survive that just fine and others stretch exceedingly thin. So the waiver process is basically designed in those circumstances to allow a school district not to have to make up the day. So we very well to your point about evenness. We could end up in situations where some school districts have had little difficulty staying above the state minimums and others need a waiver in order to get through the school year. It's hard to say. I mean, the waiver process set up in regulation, as I mentioned, is really designed to kick in around February anyway. Pre-COVID, the idea of the waiver was if you had a boiler blow up or you had excess snow days, that you would try to make up the days by shortening your vacations or so forth prior to February, and it's at that point, if you, as you start to get a better feel for how the rest of the school year would go, you would approach the State Board of Education and request a waiver. And they weren't, it wasn't used that often. What we've done again this year is the State Board has given me that authority to process the waivers. We've had to use them more regularly as a result of COVID. And I certainly going into this fall, which has been some of our most challenging moments with the Delta variant that we knew we were gonna use the waiver probably more directly this year. But we're also like many states trying to hold a firm line, not enabling remote learning for other reasons. And again, that experience itself was very uneven. We don't have a good definition of what a quality education should look like in remote learning. And there's been a wide variety of utilizations of remote learning technologies around the state. So it's definitely concerning to me for lack of quality definition. But again, as Secretary, I'm increasingly concerned with the cumulative effects of the last year and a half on some of our students, and particularly our most vulnerable students. So I think it's important that we try to do our best to keep schools open. But also there will be a need to focus in on those communities that have lower vaccination rates or for whatever reason, staff availability issues trigger closures. But I'm also again, hopeful that our experience with Omicron won't be long lasting. Okay, thank you. Senator Chinden. Thank you for speaking about the waivers in remote days. I am getting emails and correspondences from constituents reflecting on how the legislature is remote. And it's looking at some hypocrisy there. I speak to that as that you in the schools have much more control over the populations. And also children are much different than legislators. But I would like to ask you, I don't know if we can disclose this, could you tell me how many of these waivers have been submitted to you that you've declined? Or is it a pretty good track record that when a school district submits for a waiver, they have the rationale and it's very likely to be approved. Yeah, I certainly could give you the reporting on that. I haven't, just to be clear, I haven't entertained any waivers this year yet. That process doesn't begin until around February one and that process will be published here at the end of January with absent to formal reporting. I would say I've been exceedingly flexible and very few waivers have been turned down in the last year as a result of COVID. We also would say the difference. Last year we also had remote learning on the table under the state of emergency that was allowed to count as an in-person day. Secretary Fringe, you've mentioned a couple of times the cumulative impact on schools and kids. It leaves me to wonder, standardized testing, what's going to happen this spring? I suspect it's still on track. Is there discussion around that or the possibility of getting some kind of federal waiver? Are you and Secretary Cardona in conversation? Yeah, so actually I have a meeting with him tomorrow afternoon with our national association. You know, to what extent we can wave or not hold the SBAC test is really the federal government's decision. And that's a federal requirement. Last year they provided a limited waiver opportunity, things like the participation rate, which is normally required to be 95%. We were allowed to wave that and we did get that waived. What we're hearing so far is that it's unlikely there'll be any waiver this year. But that was the disposition prior to Omicron, so I don't know how that'll ultimately play out, but it is a topic that comes up frequently at the national level. I'm sure it'll come up tomorrow in our conversations with the secretary. And what's your position on it? Do you think it is important that it's waived or do you think we sort of push forward and measure where kids are at at this point? Yeah, I don't know if I have clear thinking on that for this year. I'll say, I can tell you where I landed last year. And if you remember last year, we had the advent of vaccination, a sense of optimism that the school year was gonna end more or less normal and we would have a limited number of full-person days coming out of April vacation to make hay when the sunshine, so to speak. And it's in that context that I was very, and this has been my approach as superintendent as well, very protective of the limited number of in-person days I had available to us. And I didn't think it was necessarily a good use of that limited number of days to be testing during that time. So what we tried to do is to have people, because the testing window starts in March, we had a lot of districts take advantage of the sort of the hybrid moment to try to take care of their testing prior to, the promise of more in-person instruction after April vacation. So if we come down to that kind of context, I will weigh in on in favor of not testing in the limited days that we have. But I think the other side of that, particularly in this concept of sort of the cumulative impact, you know, the testing data, you know, firstly, the ESPEC data, which isn't the only assessment used nationally, but it's this required test is the only comparative national data we have in our education system. And it is the primary source by which we identify opportunity gaps. And this is where some of the debate in Congress is, you know, that many of the civil right groups, if not all of them are strongly in favor of holding the testing because it's only through the testing that we can shine a light on the equity and opportunity gaps that exist throughout our country. So that's sort of the trade-off. But, you know, it remains to be seen, you know, I'm not thinking we're gonna get a waiver at this point, but again, that was pre-Omicron. It'll be interesting to see where Congress goes with that. But, you know, it's important again on the theme of cumulative impact, the test was not held at all during the first year of the pandemic. Last year there were accountability waivers granted. So we're gonna come down on three years of, you know, lack of really stable data to use in our decision-making, which is gonna be problematic. I will say I do, I strongly support not using the accountability systems in this time. So if the schools would benefit from having the information to make instructional decisions, I'd support that. So another question that I have is, you know, again, along the lines of the cumulative impact situations where we know students are dealing with trauma, there's gonna be, there's a lot of learning loss. One Senate colleague mentioned that, you know, her grandson entered kindergarten when COVID started and now is in second grade. And just finished, I think, you know, I think already this year it's been five weeks of quarantine. What are some of the, what's some of the thinking that you all are having at this point and around how to continue the work that we started last year on these issues, you know, are there gonna be specific ideas that you're gonna all be putting forward with requests and dollar amounts, et cetera, for us to address? Where's your just general thinking right now? Yeah, we have the plans, we have the dollars. We just haven't had the opportunity, you know, and that's been the challenge. We, as a state, we, you know, we came out of the first year of the pandemic thinking we had this thing licked, you know, before Halloween of that first year and then Halloween, the cases started to escalate and then we came out of the winter period thinking we were done with the worst of it and we still had more of it in front of us. So we've been anxious to pivot to what we call the education recovery context. And as you know, we structured a lot of the appropriations last year and our state plan was recently approved by the federal government that outlines all that. We just haven't had the moment. We thought this year, starting in the fall, we'd be able to make that pivot. We haven't been able to do that with Delta. So we've been really cautious, I think, you know, and this is largely from us when I say pivot, it's largely from the state pivot because we have state resources to bear and state leadership that can be brought to bear. But we still have had to focus most of all our energies on the public health aspects of operating our schools knowing that just keeping schools open is our primary intervention right now. And that goes a long way to addressing the recovery. But we have, you know, we have more work to do and we haven't, to a certain extent, begun it. And when I say begin it, from my perspective, the first step in beginning that will be to initiate a data collection on the issues of learning loss and social-emotional impact. And we have that data collection set up. It's ready to go. It largely focuses on what we call ESTs or educational support teams in school districts. We are holding off launching that. I was thinking prior to Omicron that there might be a good moment third week of January to start that work. I'm not sure at this point, I'm gonna sort of hold that on the back burner for the moment. But I'm increasingly becoming anxious that we have to move forward. But realistically, there's limited capacity in the system to do that. And just to give you a sense of limited capacity, we launched what I would argue relative from a bureaucratic standpoint, a relatively simple data collection with schools for them to identify two variables. Their vaccination rate for students and their vaccination rates for staff. And we've had a number of districts fail to complete that in a timely manner. So that data collection, I think, was critical for us to pivot into some of our decision-making, particularly to focus on those communities that have lower rates. But schools cannot complete these data collections right now because the people that would likely complete the data collections are involved in day-to-day exercise to maintain the safety of their building. So there's limited capacity to get data out of the system. But I think at some point we'll make that pivot. Hopefully, Amacron will help us come out the other end of that with some more durability as a society relative to the virus. And we'll be in a better place. But I don't think anyone can predict at this point when that's gonna happen and so forth. So I've been holding off launching that data collection but it's something we need to do. I will say we have, I think, good strategies in place from a legislative standpoint, both community schools, literacy, and so forth. Those things have been identified and you've made appropriations for those strategies in the context of our state plan. The state plan's been approved. We have an additional $9 million now on the table to work with. I would strongly encourage us to think about putting those funds into the existing strategies and maybe working with those strategies to focus them on issues like mental health and so forth. But I think we have the vehicles in place and that we have to be, I think, very aware of not putting additional new initiatives into this context because they will not be implemented with fidelity or success at this point. I think I have one final question and that's, we all know what's happening out there again throughout the country with the workforce. I know locally, substitute teachers, teachers in general, et cetera. I don't know if there are specific steps the administration is taking or can even take. As we know, there are dollars there to be spent. It's sometimes just finding those people to hire at this point. So I didn't know if you wanted to have a word on that or if you had any updates in that regard. Yeah, thanks. I mean, it's an important consideration. As I mentioned, I think there's growing consensus that there's some pros thinking, if you will, around Omicron, but I think there's consensus that it's going to really highlight the staffing issues in our schools, probably more acutely than like student illness. And so we should be prepared for that. And I appreciate your prompt. Yes, this is part of a larger societal pattern, workforce shortage across the board, across the country. People are rethinking work and so forth. But I think in particular in the Northern New England states where we're some of the oldest populations in a country that we've been struggling with demographic challenges and we had headwinds in this area prior to the pandemic and the pandemic has created additional pressures in those regard. And I think you're familiar with Senator Sanders highlighting nursing. Nurses again, it's just the tip of the iceberg. In education, I think, you know, the first paradigm I would put on the table is sort of near-term and long-term solutions. So the long-term solution, we have a mandatory strategy and the RPSR plan to do an evaluation of our workforce. That RFP went out, we have a vendor, we're about to ink the contract. That will come back with a report probably December 2022 analyzing our existing regulations to what extent they contribute, you know, because we have to look at our own regulations to what extent did they contribute to shortages? Are they too high a bar essentially? We'll also, as part of that work, go out and evaluate what other states are doing to address education workforce issues. And ultimately that report will surface policy recommendations for us to take a look at. So that's sort of the long-term frame. On the near-term side we've got to work very closely with our associations and people on the ground to see what we can do. There's no magic bullet, as you said. I have a task force that's been meeting a couple of times and what we settled on. It's sort of the paradigm I would use is what can be taken off the plate, so to speak, to make the work more manageable. That isn't necessarily going to bring more bodies to the table but it will make the work for those bodies that are involved or those folks that are involved in doing the work more doable at a very challenging moment. So I do intend to publish some recommendations, hopefully in January, that in my mind is organized around kind of what can be done at the state level, including the General Assembly. I'd include you in that because part of that pressure comes from initiatives that you put on the system. But certainly what can the agency do? Again, I've been holding off on data collections. Are there things that we can do administratively to take pressure off districts? And then similarly, basically looking at three levels, what can the state do? What can districts do? And then what can the local schools do? And particularly as we think about the use of time, time is probably our most precious commodity in education. How much time is taken up with administrative meetings and so forth? Can we take some pressure off there and focus on in-person instruction or assessing the impact of the pandemic on students relative to the recovery themes? So I think we'll have something out on sort of near-term strategy recommendations. And hopefully that will be well-received and useful. But I think it's absolutely necessary that we highlight that because it is, you know, the workforce challenges are multi-dimensional certainly supply workforce or what we call the pipeline is an issue and that's something we have to address. That's a long-term. We have retention issues, I'd say retention and recruitment. You know, how do we keep people in the long-term in the profession but how do we keep people doing the job like today? You know, and how do we keep them moving on through this moment that we're in? But I think then the larger issues of how do we keep people in the profession, those are gonna be larger policy issues that the general assembly should consider and that's where pensions are gonna come in. We hear that come up often. You know, what's the career path for people? And, you know, I think, again, I think the pandemic's highlighted a lot of the workforce issues that transcend just education. But it's, the pandemic's been very challenging inside of education in a lot of ways. So Secretary of Friends, right now, do you have any, excuse me, asks on the table for further, I mean, it sounds like it would be helpful to everyone if we adjourn today, but aside from adjourning and not putting any, or any new initiatives, is there anything that you asks that you have of this committee as it relates to our particular policy work that would help alleviate some of the issues out there or our work and or our work with appropriations as we're implementing? Yeah, I think, you know, we can't just adjourn today, you know. And Nor should we. I mean, that's been sort of my point. It would be irresponsible. This is an important moment in the history of our country and of the world. There are serious implications for education and they're not all bad. There's some opportunity here as well. It would be irresponsible for us not to examine those things. I'm proud of the work we did with you last year relative to the state plan. I was interviewed recently and someone, you know, I said, well, there was a recipe prescribed by the federal government and Vermont chose not to follow the recipe. But, you know, and the question from the reporter was, was that good or bad? And I said, I think in the end it was very good because what it did is it allowed us to focus in on those strategies and really bring some alignment potentially that can really be useful as we engage in recovery. So I think we've done some good work together in that regard. I think that would be a good starting point. I'm planning on like walking through Act 72 in particular, which is the school facilities work with you. We'll have a sort of a detailed analysis because that's, you know, again, that's a topic that was advanced as a result of the pandemic. We'd leveraged federal dollars. There was previous policy interest in that area. But just to take stock of that and to also try to get more coherence, that'll be a theme you hear from me all the time is like, let's get this tighter if we can and really take stock of what we've done, figure out what's next. So I think thematically that'll be what you hear from me a lot is like, let's take a look at what we've done. Let's hear from people about how's it going. Let's refine it. Let's focus it. Let's adapt it. And I think that would be a very constructive approach. We'll certainly have issues of the recovery. Community schools is one that I think is a useful vehicle for expansion into issues of mental health and the integration of social service delivery. And there's a few outlier topics. Again, that might, we might be compelled to take up sooner rather than later. And one was pre-K. We were preparing very quickly in early December to, you know, surf the wave that was coming from Build Back Better, the federal initiative. We're not sure where that's gonna go at this point but there might be issues like that. But I think you'll hear from the governor tomorrow and this is again, you know, consistent with my understanding as well. The workforce issues are the ones that really deserve our, you know, laser focus at this point. And you'll hear a lot of interest in addressing those issues from the governor. And I think there's implications across the board in education, particularly CTE that we might want to take a look at. One last thing I'd mention as well, the work with the State Board of Education. I think the Senator Campion you might have heard from Oliver Olson, the chair of the State Board that that report will be coming your way. It was a little bit delayed but we're working, Professor Colby is sort of chairing that subcommittee, the State Board. So we're working on producing that report for both the education committees to review. And that's, that gets the sort of foundational work around the quality regulations and so forth that I think needs to happen at some point. It's a question of when we can put it on the schedule to work forward. So happy to talk about any of these issues. We had a great meeting this week on Act 173. I think you'll be hearing more about that. I think that's something we can leverage as part of the recovery work. And that's what I'm struggling with right now. I'll have a recommendation for you at some point about timeline for implementation of that if I can situate it in the context of recovery because I think that's the appropriate way to view that work. Great. Any other questions for Secretary French at this point? Okay, thank you, Mr. Secretary. We're going to shift now to Mr. Fannin. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Campion and everyone here. Thank you, Secretary French, to be covered a great deal of waterfront there. And I appreciate some of the things he said. I will probably echo a little bit here and your questions were good for him. Those are good prompts. So good afternoon. I'm Jeff Fannin, the Executive Director for Mononnier for the past five years. Before that I served as General Counsel for Mononnier. I'm here today representing 13,000 educators across the state. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and I will keep my remarks brief, but I'm happy to answer any questions along the way or at the end. The brevity of my statement, however, does not reflect the gravity of the multiple issues our educators face today. I want to make clear my comments say are largely guided about what we are hearing directly from members. Educators have been digging deep and doing their best for their students, but I'm worried about them and their well-being in this moment. And I especially look to you, Senator Chittenden, I know your wife's a teacher, so thank her and her colleagues. It's not easy right now. It's a heavy burden for everybody and the kids too. The social and emotional well-being of our students and staff has got to be a top priority for the remainder of the school year. And certainly for the next years going ahead is we recover from the ongoing pandemic. So it's not just a short-term issue. We have long-term concerns. And focusing on the well-being of every student allows educators to create a safe, secure and inclusive school environment. Every school must be a sanctuary for every student. So please examine our state policies to assure that they prioritize the well-being of our students and the quality of our school climate. By way of example, I think we need to de-emphasize standardized testing and instead return to the joy of teaching. Students want to learn, teachers want to teach, and I don't think anybody wants to be tested. And the silliness of conducting these tests, these standardized tests during a health crisis, frankly boggles my mind. The test and punish concept that came out of the No Child Left Behind Law 2001 has hurt education in my opinion. And while we cannot fix that federal law, you can't, we can't. We need to de-emphasize as much as possible these standardized tests and especially now, more so. The reliance on these test scores is misguided. So even if we are gonna test, which it sounds like we are and I know that Secretary of French will ask Secretary Cardona to waive those hopefully and hopefully Secretary Cardona will do so. I'm not sure of that. And I agree with Secretary of French's assessment that I think the administration wants to go forward with them, but we all know for a host of reasons, pandemic being chief among them, remote learning, low student attendance generally over the last year, just to name a few, that the data is simply invalid and not worthy of anyone's time. Vermont can and should be creative and figure out ways to avoid putting any standardized testing pressure on students or staff at this time. Instead, we should focus all of our attention on the social, emotional learning of students. Instead, we've got too many priorities perhaps and that means we have no priorities and that's dangerous right now. Students, student behaviors, for example, that we are hearing of are a call for help by students and the school system needs to heed that call singularly and focus like that on a laser, like a laser. Last year we heard the social, emotional learning and recovery would be the focus, but what we seem to be seeing is an important attempt to get back to normal at any cost, including focusing on standardized tests. And we just think this is unwise and unhealthy right now in this moment. We have heard and read multiple stories about the workforce shortages, Secretary French mentioned. And I work with Secretary French on that task force and it's absolutely true, there is a shortage. And it's a shortage across the board and across the state, including Chittin County. These shortages are both long and short term. We knew this was a problem in many parts of the state before the pandemic and it's even worse now. We don't, however, think lowering teacher standards is the answer. We know there are shortages of doctors, but we don't and should not lower standards for doctors or for teachers. We can develop a plan to create a state college, perhaps we could develop a plan to create a state college that focuses on teachers. We can and should address massive student loans by providing relief to teachers. And we should focus even more so on our current students of color to recruit them into the teaching ranks. Likewise, we should also start a program perhaps that encourages par educators to become teachers. Some schools do this already, but we should perhaps do it at statewide. Employing both of these strategies might address both short and long-term shortages. And these shortages are very real and what we're hearing is it's leading to larger class sizes. These shortages are also driving educators out of the classroom because they are burning out and an alarming rate, frankly. And just yesterday, Secretary French mentioned Senator Sanders, Governor Scott, Pro Tem Ballant and Speaker Kroinski all spoke about the nursing shortage. And like nurses, there's a shortage of teachers that predates the pandemic. We need to retain teachers. It's not recruitment so much as retention right now. And we have to focus on the track of new teachers down the road. For example, retention bonus might be a good idea if you retain teachers. And that's a locally bargain matter, but certainly retention bonuses could be a statewide initiative. And to be blunt, pensions are a topic of concern to my members. And when teachers hear their pensions may be cut, that is likely having an impact on their decisions about whether to stay in the profession after this most difficult year. And this is frankly the most difficult year of the three. And it includes administrators too, as they too are in the teacher retirement system. The state now has more than 800 teachers on a provisional license, which is more than double for my memory. And while some are licensed teachers teaching out of their endorsement areas, many are truly unlicensed new teachers. And to put a fiscal note on that issue, both emergency licensed and provisional licensed teachers do not contribute to the teacher pension system, which then erodes the plan by shorting the plans, those teachers' contributions to the plan. Perhaps in desperation, the state's ARPA plan, which I understand now is recently approved, expands the state's reliance on provisional licensed teachers. But I don't think that's a good education or fiscal policy for the state to advance. While we often see the term teacher shortage in the headlines, the shortage includes school bus drivers, paraeducators, custodial maintenance staff, nurses in particular, counselors, administrators, food service workers, and frankly every job classification in education. As you debate the critical issues facing public education today, I hope that you please take a moment to look through the lens of workforce development. I think you'll hear perhaps more of that from the governor tomorrow. One lesson we know now to be true is that our public schools are an extension of the state's healthcare system. Secretary of French mentioned that. And so during the COVID, during COVID schools have been on an integral part of the system for our schools, excuse me, for our children and youth. Our school nurses have worked tirelessly to provide services and support to students throughout the pandemic and need to be further supported by the Department of Health, community-based health centers, healthcare providers, and other state and local agencies. As one teacher said to us recently, yes, I'm busy, yes, I'm stressed, but I'm really worried about our school nurse. She's simply overwhelmed. And I think that's awfully true. As you discuss policy decisions over the next year or excuse me, the next legislative session, we ask that you explore ways to make sure that our public schools are seen as communities of healing, not just academic institutions. And that we have policies and rules that promote cooperation amongst healthcare providers, agencies, and schools. This, of course, includes the important area of mental health. The recent changes, the quarantining guidance needs to be clarified and messaged better, frankly. Having parents conduct the test to stay, program is worrisome to educators. It's basically an honor system. And we're just, we're a little bit concerned about that. It's too new to understand it fully, but hopefully there will be clarification. Secretary French alluded to it, that CDC may be further clarifying its positions, but it's all coming out as we come back and return to schools yesterday and today. And it's adding to the anxiety and stress. Much of the recent spike in cases is worrisome to our schools, but schools are reflection merely of our communities. And so the spike is seen in the communities and it's landing in the schools as well. The public school system is under great stress right now. Not adding to the threat, the stress would be helpful. For example, no new initiatives would be a recommendation we would agree to. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for your commitment to public education, which is the cornerstone of democracy in America. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions for Mr. Fannick? Senator Hooker. Would thank you, Jeff. Will you be sending your comments to our community? Yes. So that we can do something. Correct some grammatical errors I noticed and send those to you. Okay. And you think we picked up on those also, Jeff, the grammatical errors. If you could just, you could just clean that out. I would expect nothing less. Yeah. A quick question with regard to teachers who have left since the beginning of the pandemic. I mean, anecdotally, we're hearing about teachers, just getting out because they don't, they're not wanting to deal with this. Any dead on that? No, to be blunt, no. I think that the retirement office probably has that. There wasn't an enormous spike initially, but there is an increase. We do hear of it. And it just may mean that people who were otherwise able to stay decided not to. It's hard to understand. And there's no, typically there's no exit interview that then gets reported as to why they're leaving. The numbers would come from the treasurer's office who keeps the number of retirees and actives. So I forget whether that came out in the summer pension task force. If it did, I can certainly find out and get that to you as well. Jeff, do you have a sense right now or do you know what we're doing for teachers and student loans? Not enough. I'll just say that. Right, but what are we doing? You mentioned that as something to work on. I think there are possibly some federal programs. I don't know that we as a state are doing anything in particular. I need to, it's a great question. I don't think we are. I'm looking at Jay, Shaggy said no. I'm not aware of it, but we should be doing better by that in my humble opinion. Come back to us with some stuff on that. Just some ideas around things that steps we might take. That would be helpful. Sure. I think also, are there things that we can be helpful with around encouraging, I think the idea of getting paraeducators to pursue a teaching career or teaching, people who are serving as teaching assistants in other ways. They know the classroom, they have that hands-on experience. Are there ways to support their efforts? There have been other times in this country, as you know, and I'm thinking back to New York City, I guess it must have been 30 years, where there have been serious teacher shortages and people have opened the doors to people for whom teaching was somewhat closed off. People who always wanted to be a teacher, but now retired, didn't want to go through the traditional educational programs, et cetera. I for one, am not closed-minded around opening the door somewhat. I don't think you're proposing that either to people that could be great in the classroom, but maybe making it a little bit more flexible so they can get into the classroom. I think the research has shown, and I know it was either in this committee or when I was in the house, we brought folks that put forward the work came out of Dartmouth Department of Economics, the Hamilton Report that really does shed some not so positive light on our teacher education programs historically in the United States and that they need some real reform or are there ways that we can again, get people who want to be in the classroom in the classroom, but might not want to go through those kinds of programs, so. Absolutely, so just so you know, Vermont and Yale runs, I think the most robust professional development program in the state under the guidance of our Julie Longchap, who's a 30-plus year teacher. She does magnificent work, works with schools around the state. So we've got a number of programs, I think that might be responsive to that. Number one is we're well aware, we support licensure through peer review, so we do that already. We've been working with provisionally licensed teachers, many who may want to stay in the profession, maybe they don't, but if they want to stay, work with them and try to make sure that they get fully licensed down the road, so we work with them in that regard. And then as far as early, supporting early educators is what we call them, we've got the most robust and I think the best mentoring program in the state that we run through Julie's program, and we also work with early career educators, and it's a new series just getting going, but working with early career folks. That's the student loans. I mean, I'm just thinking about that aloud. We certainly could, again, for those new aspiring educators, work with them on student loans, get them into the profession and work with them and help them with their student loans, as well as, as I mentioned, that the peer educators that we're working with, and think, you know, sort of a grow your own in a school, we could have student loan forgiveness programs for peer educators who want to become teachers. So those are, you know, I think two quick easy things, but try to flush that out a little bit more for you. I think some of those may be available through B-SAC too. I'd really appreciate just, you know, if you guys want to put some ideas on the table right now, that we might, you know, listen, if there's a 30 year old teacher out there that's really, you know, we could make a difference by helping with some of their loans right now, and you've got experience there, you don't want to lose him or her, you know, what are some of the things that we could do? So yeah, it'd be great if you could come back to us. Senator Shinden. Jeff, thank you. I promised my wife I wouldn't talk about her on YouTube, but since you brought her up, I can just say that everything you mentioned is really consistent with the experience that she's conveying about her fourth grade public school classroom. You also spoke very eloquently about the sense of your constituency, but I didn't hear you talk about remote classes. Do you have any commentary? And I know you're not going to get a uniform perspective with all the different teachers, but do you feel like the teachers in Vermont that you represent have a general apprehension, hesitancy? Do they feel like going remote is something that they're prepared for? Are there things that our school districts could be doing more to engage or support some component of that both in this pandemic and also going forward with the snow days that are inevitable in Vermont? I'd just be curious what your thoughts are about how the teachers in Vermont feel about going remote and what concerns and supports they might need in order to enable that should it be necessary? The one consistent thing we heard was a hybrid remote situation was miserable. Expecting teachers to teach both kids in a classroom and remotely was just incredibly difficult and not something that they wanted to replicate. It happened early, last year was some of that. It was really hard and in some cases just next to impossible. I know that some schools that had in-class students and other students who weren't able to attend for health reasons or otherwise, they had a remote teacher teaching three or four grades in elementary school, for example, one of my neighbors does that. She thought that was great and worked out well for her. It's not universal, it depends on how it was implemented and it's not a criticism, we're all learning as we go and some people liked the remote and some really did not, but I certainly think across the board that the hybrid system was really difficult, incredibly difficult for teachers to do. Yeah, that's interpersonal. Yeah, thank you, Chair. Jeff, you brought up the peer review. Where would I go to get data on peer review kind of successes or like how much time it takes? Cause whenever I talk to teachers that are in the process or have tried it, they don't have anything good to say about it. So I wonder if there was any, where I would go to get that data, like how long does the average take? How many people are approved, things like that. The answer is, I don't know. We work, Julie and my office works with Castleton on that program. So I can check in with Julie Longchamp in my office or I think she'll check with Rick Reardon down at Castleton, but I think that that's, we've heard that over the years. Yes, that's true. It's somewhat difficult. Some do it better than others. And we're certainly trying to support that if people do want to become a teacher later in life. Sometimes I guess, if you will, through peer review. So we think that's a viable means to go forward. We try to work on that. I don't know whether there are hard data points, but we'll see if I can get that for you. Yeah, it'd be good to see if it is available because I get the impression just from anecdotally that I've talked to that isn't and they don't, they're not encouraging to other folks to do it. They're like, oh, it took me 10 years. Dr. One teacher who retired the year that they finally got their approval through peer review. So, but that could just be anecdotally of the folks that I've talked to. So I'd want to see the data to see, is it a successful program and is there something that we could do? We still want to have the rigor. I'm not suggesting that we just let everybody get a license, but let's look at the data and see if the data shows that there might be a problem or not. Absolutely. No, we certainly don't want to lower standards. We think that's important. But we also know that some people who come at this, not having gone through a education program in a college, certainly bring something to the classroom as well, maybe coming from private industry or otherwise. And we want to encourage that. So we do, but I'll try to get you some data points. I don't, I imagine it's out there, but I don't know. Okay, thanks. Senator Hooker. Oh, thank you. Jeff, is that the peer review? Was that also known as the harvest program? Was that one of them? Do you know where people brought life experiences and got credit for that? And is that, do you know if that's still happening? I'm not familiar with the harvest program. I'll just be honest with you, Senator Hooker, I'm sorry. I will check in on the harvest program. I'm not familiar with it. I think it, you know, it had to do with life experiences and being able to get credit for that. And I was intrigued by your comment about maybe we need a school that is focused on training teachers. And it seems to me that that's what Castleton Teachers College used to be. And, you know, maybe we need to go back to something like that. Thanks. It was just an idea we've been mulling about, mulling on. And, you know, certainly that won't help on the short term. Right, that we have a short-term teacher workforce, educator workforce crisis right now, but we've got to build the pipeline. And so maybe we need to do that. And so maybe one of the state colleges, maybe it's Castleton, I don't know, would be a good place to sort of focus some attention and some resources on to make that happen. And I appreciate your, you know, professional development through NEA, having taken advantage of that when I was teaching. Thank you. Thank you. Senator Lyons. No, just thank you, Jeff, for your comments. The whole area of teacher credentialing and maintaining standards, I think, is really critical. And I'm very glad that you support that. Bringing folks in from the business environment or technical world who have skills is terrific. You know, can help teach those skills. As we saw with some folks from IBM going to teach at the college level, but still there are questions, there are always questions, because when you go through a teacher education program, you learn a great deal about child development. You don't necessarily learn that when you become an engineer. So whatever we do, I think having those a short-term investment in education, some areas that would give people insight into how kids learn wouldn't be a bad thing. I think there's a lot that our institutions of higher ed can do to support workforce development. But it's not something we're gonna solve sitting here right now, but it's so important. And I'm really glad to hear your comments about the hybrid Zoom, because it's an extremely frustrating environment. I think not just for teachers and kids, but we experience it all the time too in our committees. I share that concern as well, but anyway, I thank you. The other thought is, Senator Sanders and others around the country have talked about free college and for something for money does support. We think if we could do it, we should do it. That might help. Get more folks into the education world. So Jeff, if you could come back to us next week, Daphne will schedule some time just to loop back on, you know, what would a good loan relief program look like? For teachers, I think it would also be great to have to understand the data that Senator Persley asked for. So we can all understand that. And then if you would check in with the secretary with Beth Pierce's office to give us a number on how many teachers have we lost over the past couple of years. I think those would be three great data points and information if you would bring that back to us. It's a shoot for Tuesday, that would be terrific. Tuesday, okay. Thank you for the deadline. Yeah, sure. Do my best to make the assignment. All right, thank you so much. Thank you all. Yep, Mr. Nichols. And welcome back, by the way. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to the new year. I'll share a few comments. These are similar comments that I made to house education in October. I just updated it a little bit. So my first section I wanted, and I'll send a copy of this to you afterwards. I've been playing with it all afternoon. So how are the children and families doing as the first area? And my comments are based on conversations with over a hundred school leaders over the course of the year. And principles are commenting that students overall are much less mature than usual and that students are really struggling leading to lots of behavioral issues. This is true at all levels, but particularly disturbing for the younger grades. And if you think about it logically, that makes sense. Somebody mentioned their grand kid being a second grader. They really haven't had a typical school experience yet if they're in second grade right now. Schools are also crying out for partnership and support around mental health and social emotional needs of our students. Every kid comes to school every day. And some of the kids are coming to school without the supports that they need in the mental health area. So more support for that would be very beneficial to our schools. Just a little bit of research because I'm kind of a data person. Recently the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child's Hospital Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry said that the mental health crisis in the United States now for children is an emergency. And I'll have links in my testimony that I'll send to you that you can read that report. And very concerning is the increase in suicide attempts in children, especially adolescent girls. From the age of 12 to 17, since the onset of the pandemic, it's risen by 51%. That's according to the CDC. So 51% more 12 to 17 year old females have tried to commit suicide the last two years than before, ever before. So we've got some huge issues that are out there. Our kids are not all right. Principles themselves are facing unprecedented challenges. They're on 24-7. And they report, as Jeff Fanon talked about, their staff are overwhelmed, they're exhausted. Everybody's saying this is the most difficult year ever. Principles that have been in principles for 25, 30 years said that this year is much worse than last year. Oftentimes, principles in schools are feeling like they're out there on their own and they know that the Agency of Ad and Department of Children and Families and Department of Health are all trying to do what they can. But it seems very isolating at times, like there's nobody there to really provide them support. Families themselves are all over the place, as you might expect. We've had our issues with anti-masking, anti-vaccine parents, and you've seen the issues at school board meetings. We've heard frustration from parents regarding contact tracing and students being sent home who have no symptoms and appear to be perfectly healthy and tests to stay in some of those programs have helped with some of that. There's really a sense of a lack of civility in a lot of public discourse and that's finding its way into schools as well. Just on a side note, we had to have a parent arrested at a basketball game three or four nights ago and taken out of the game with handcuffs because he refused to wear a mask. And just silly stuff like that. What is working was not working well. Contact tracing has not worked well for schools. I know there's been some positive steps recently on that. School leaders and nurses, especially at the beginning of the year. And again, recently with the uptick in COVID cases has spent a lot of time on weekends and in nights contacting parents as a grandfather. I have a kid who lives with me who we've been contacted a couple of times and both times it was a school nurse on a Sunday night calling us to let us know that he was a close contact. Major staffing shortages. You all know that, not just teachers. Jeff Fan had mentioned the different groups. So I won't talk about that. But for example, the day as I was starting on my, joining this Zoom meeting, you may have seen me pick up my phone. Irisburg just taught me to tell me that they're gonna be closed the next three days. They've got 122 kids, they've got nine teachers out and both are subs all COVID related. And so there's no way they can staff to school. So there's no way they can have school tomorrow or the next day or the next day. They're hoping to be able to try again next Monday. We've had transportation issues that have stopped a lot of extracurricular activities from occurring. And in a couple of cases, especially in the southern part of this day, I think down near where Senator Campion's area is, we've had schools that had to cancel school because they didn't have buses to transport kids earlier in the school year. Most principals are not able to serve as instructional leaders this year. They're spending all their time getting things covered and doing triage. System is very fragile. Some of the things that are working, we've seen many schools where adults are bonding together. They're in survival mode. They're supporting one another and children are unprecedented levels. Unfortunately, that's not occurring in every school. Some schools, there's division where people are working to contract and not really putting kids first. But in most schools, we've seen teachers and support staff and principals all coming together to support the kids. So that's something we have to be very proud of in Vermont. Also, the work that teachers and other school officials have done on an SEL, social emotional learning over the last half decade or so has really paid off. We're feeding kids, we're supporting them the best we can. When they have a dearth of resources at home, schools have been incredibly active in finding ways to make sure students are experiencing positive connections and a sense of belonging in our schools. And that's gonna be critical as we go forward. I do wanna mention, Senator, to the Senate that Secretary of French mentioned about the recovery mode in terms of academic learning. We're nowhere near ready for that yet. Schools are still in survival mode. So this is a time that we all need to really step up and support public education because public education has done a great job for Vermont communities. Our economy would be in a lot worse shape if we didn't have kids able to attend school. This means we need to make sure that education fund dollars are being used in an effective way. We need to support our public schools and make sure that education funds are not siphoned away by any groups or schools that discriminate against some of our children. That's something our members just strongly about. And many more after-school programs have been implemented throughout the state making a difference for all students. Much of that was from federal support. That's been really positive for a lot of our kids last summer and then into the school year. In terms of requests for action or non-action, one thing I'd like to see you do is support the VPA retirement bill that I wrote and submitted three or four years ago. I know Jim Demera has worked on it and I believe Kate Webb is planning on taking that up in health education. That would allow teachers to come out of retirement to feel hired to feel positions and they would still pay into the retirement system at the new teacher rate, but they could actually get their retirement too. Just doing that alone will make a big difference for a lot of schools that have openings. And that's an easy win-win proposition. I ask you also to support any federal or other efforts that might come out for schools to have four-year-olds and school for a full day for early kindergarten. Obviously a lot of that for Vermont's up in the air with the Build Back Better Plan of President Biden. If that doesn't eventually go through, I'm hoping there'll be a lot of funding to support that. We ask you to look at support for legislation that would provide financial assistance to educators that work in more economically depressed schools. I like what Jeff Fanny was talking about too, that the loan mitigation, if we could support student loans for areas where they're really hard to staff positions like high school science teachers, for example, speech language pathologists, if we could help somewhere in there. And I'm not aware of any Vermont program that we have that helps teachers. I know there are some federal ones and a lot of those come with a lot of strings attached. As a superintendent, I used to have to sign off on those things. And a person had to be a certain number of years and your poverty rate had to be at a certain level and the position had to be something that was hard to fill in the state. So it's not really all that easy to access. Couple more examples, make sure the state pays for any mitigation measures related to PCB testing. We don't want this to end up being a local budget killer, especially when we need to funds to support kids. Make sure that Act 173 implementation stays true to the major goals of that legislation. More flexibility for schools to better support all students, major reduction in paperwork and administrative yeah, and developing a comprehensive student support system in schools that ultimately will better serve students while slowing down the rising costs of special education services. And then don't add any legislation that puts more pressure on stress, on school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers and support staff. To the degree possible, try to be the do nothing Congress if you can. And finally, please don't add any laws that will further increase the divide between the haves and the have nots. We need to make sure our poorest, least resourced school districts have access to highly qualified educators, not just the district with the most resources. And that's a big concern. We're seeing that gap grow more and more during the pandemic. And I think we need to be real mindful of that. Subject, any questions that's all I have and I welcome you back to a new legislative session. I could just kick it off. Jay, can you give us an example of legislation that would increase the divide between the haves and have nots? It sounds like it's possible we had passed some things that you saw may have done that. And I just think it's- Yeah, I'll give you an example of something that you have done and something that you didn't end up doing, but you might do. So the example of the have done was Act 166. And I'll take full blame for it too. I supported it. But in the end, what happened was we ended up subsidizing parents that had the means to get their kids to programming and we gave them 10 hours a week. Wait, you're talking about the Act 166, the early childhood. Right, right. Secretary Holcomb was here and we did early childhood, universal childhood and we guaranteed to pay 10 hours. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so in the end, what that did is it supported people that had the means to get their kids to those programs, gave them 10 extra hours to pay, but it did nothing for parents in poverty that couldn't afford anything or couldn't get their kids there because of transportation. So that's an example. Another example is being careful when we go forward that we don't do anything that would encourage teachers to leave lower paying districts to go to higher paying districts. We already had major inequity issues in Vermont and nobody's fault, I'm not blaming anybody. I was a principal in South Burlington where Tom is and I was a principal in Bakersfield. My teachers in Bakersfield were just as hired as my teachers in South Burlington with less resources. And they would often take jobs and go to South Burlington. So anything that we do along collective bargaining or along teacher contracts or anything like that, let's just be mindful of that, knowing that those kids in the poorer towns, they need to have good teachers too. So that would be my two examples. Does that make sense, Senator? Yeah, yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you. Senator Chen, did you have your hand up? I did briefly, but so I'm trying to understand what you mean by concerns about overburning the existing school infrastructure. One thing that I'm hoping to understand more in this session and love to get your quick reaction to it is, in the report from the Pupil Waiting Study, they suggested that we have a standard universal income declaration form that everybody across the entire state would answer, not just some districts. Does that raise your back hairs? Is that concerning to you as us overreaching and putting on another burden of our school systems? Or is that sort of a mediocre or a reasonable thing that for us to consider enacting this session? Haven't been through that a lot of times. I'm working with parents to bring out free reduced forms. I don't have a problem with that. I personally don't have a problem with that. And I think the food service staff or administrative staff can do that fairly easily. I wouldn't ask them to do it today, but everything that's on their plate. But no, that's not what I'm talking about. I guess I just need to better understand what you are talking about. But I'm the new guy around here. I'm only good to say that. Give me, yeah, okay, that's so done. I mean, we gave you that for the first 24 hours. I actually put a bill in that you can't say that anymore. Well, contact tracing is an example of that. Things like that, that principles in school nurses that we're spending a lot of time on that takes away from their time. Many of my principles are saying, I'm behind on evaluations. I can't evaluate anybody. I'm too busy covering all the classes myself. We had one principal who's since quit in October, actually. She had one week where she was doing all the food service, very small school. She was cooking the lunches and she was teaching all day long. And around October, she said, I just can't do this job. And she walked away. We've had three or four principals this year walk away. I've never had that happen in my career. So that is stuff like that. If I go to school to be an educational leader, I want to be in classrooms. I want to be working with teachers on instructional strategies, helping support them, building systems in the school. If my whole time is spent covering and doing stuff just to cover the school and we're in a pandemic. That's not anybody's fault, but it's really taken a toll on people. So anything we can do to take some pressure off of them, teachers and principals and paraeducators, the better. And superintendent, sorry, Jeannie and Libby. It does seem that, if this were the private world, we would be saying, okay, we're going to, I mean, money is the way that we show our appreciation. You know, we would be thinking, hey, we're going to have some bonuses to retain people. We would be, you know, we would be moving quickly forward on some of these loan relief programs. So again, I would just, and maybe that's part of what we'll have Jeff come back in with on Tuesday is, are there other things that we can be doing, particularly around the, you know, financially supporting people to retain them. So Senator Lyons, did you have your hand up? What are you thinking? Oh, I was just thinking. Okay. That's okay. And it's good to think sometimes. Absolutely. But I, you know, the only bill that I'm, I think the bills that we should pass. Yeah. That might encumber our friends here, our bills that provide resources for teachers or students to go forward. So I don't want to be the do nothing. I want to do the right thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm with you. And I think, yeah, Jay would agree there for sure. You know, what are the things? I think that's a great way to put it. I know he would agree. Well, of course. I mean, he'd be crazy not to agree with me. Anything else for Mr. Nichols? We've been at this. Yes, please. Actually, I do have a question. And you know, we, we worked very hard last session on the community school endeavor. And we are also very concerned, as you have all said that you in particular understand the need for mental health support for kids. And then the whole area around ACEs and we're seeing that magnified big time with a pandemic. So I don't know if there are exemplary programs or things that you've seen in your schools. And maybe Jeff at NEA or everyone here waiting to testify or has testified, if you've seen any programs that are actually effective at helping kids and keeping them from sort of falling down and being lost. So, I mean, just think about it. If you have something at the top of the list, that'd be great to hear now. But for me, the more we know what works, the more we can help maybe. Jeff, did you have your hand up for, did you want to respond to that before I said those? Just quickly, Senator Lines, I think the community schools, schools bill that you passed recently is a great example of what does help and we need to implement that. And I think the time right now in this pandemic moment, it's a perfect opportunity to push out that program and make it more expensive and help more kids. Cause it does work nationally. We've got, there's a lot of evidence to say that it helps them with their social emotional skills. The softer skills that we know are really at issue right now. And so, I think the community skills, school spells a really good opportunity for us. So thank you for letting me jump in there. Senator Karensy. Senator Karensy. Thank you, Senator Campion. Hello, everyone. I've been quiet the last hour and a half just really taking everything in, but everything that I've heard from you gentlemen is really the nightmare that my wife and I live five days a week with three of our four kids in elementary school. And just the headaches and the emails from the teachers and the talking, the principal is just like, it's maddening right now. I was really taken back and I just took the note actually here and I'm glad that some of my colleagues as well in health and welfare are here because it made me sick when you just said that we've seen a 51% increase in the 12 to 17 year old girls in the suicide attempt rates in Vermont. I mean, as a father of three out of four kids, I'm sorry, did I not understand that right, Jay? Nationally, Senator. Nationally, that's okay. Okay, all right. Still, still, but it's nationally. Still, yeah. Okay, so still, all right. So I'll be very careful about that. Thank you, Jay, for clarifying. But that being said, maybe there's something that we can do through this committee or health and welfare to see what we can do to help make sure that this doesn't become a reality around here. Because like I was gonna say, as a father of three out of four, my kids, our girls, it just crushed me. It made me feel sick when you said that. So those are my initial thoughts. Thanks for everyone for being here. I'm excited to be back and getting to work. Great, thank you. Final thoughts, Mr. Nichols. No, I'm sad, but I'm looking forward to working with all of you. Okay, let's take a 10 minute break and we'll come back and we'll pick up, I believe it's with our superintendents or Susie.