 Welcome back to Senate Education Tuesday, April 5th, 239. It's long shop, Mr. Robinson. Great to have both of you with us. Great to be here. Thanks for having us. More than welcome. We really appreciate making the time. We have talked on again, off again during the session around what we know is a crisis that we're facing right now, in our schools with shortages of principals, teachers, other school personnel. We know it's only going to get worse, even by at the end of this year. We were already hearing of long time professionals that are deciding to move on, and for a range of different reasons, all understandable. This might be the right time, certainly after COVID. We know what a challenge career and education can be, and understand when those are ready for the next step. We certainly respect that and appreciate what they've given. All that being said, we think this is going to continue to get worse before it gets better, and we're looking for some creative ideas, not only immediately, but I'd say even long term, to deal with this shortage. And I think you've heard this committee talk in the past about how do we get the state of Vermont to be the best place to have a teaching career, best place to be a principal, best place to work with kids. And I recognize it's a complicated question. It has to do with housing, it has to do with costs. It has all sorts of implications when you're thinking about that kind of a policy. So I met with the chair of Senate Economic Development this afternoon. He is not feeling confident that the bill coming out of there on workforce has a clear path. So we're likely to do some work in one of our miscellaneous education bills, likely the one that the house has in this committee now. So with that, I know the two of you have been working hard on this issue. We'll turn it over to the two of you for some ideas. Great. Thanks, Senator Campion, and thanks to the committee for digging into this work. As a general matter, I was just down in there visiting with your colleagues in Senate government operations around the other side of this conversation, which is how do we get some retired educators to come back to the classroom to address these acute needs? So appreciate the Senate's dual focus and multi-pronged focus on this issue. I'm gonna hand it over just one minute to my colleague, Julie, who is the creator of the idea in this specific proposal. I will say that what we're gonna be sharing with you today is to help address the acute need here and now for literally next year, but it does have opportunities to be built out over the coming years. Obviously, we've talked about other proposals around student loan forgiveness or retention bonuses with Ed Fund surplus and notions like this. But what's exciting about this is that it's scalable now. It can have a real and direct impact in making sure that we have high quality teachers providing high quality instruction to students when they need it, where they need it, districts that they need it. So the proposal that Juliet's gonna walk through is titled Grow Your Ed Vermont or Grow VT Ed. Sorry, Julie. I was tripping around. And it's sort of modeled off of a Grow Your Own model which is being used and explored in places across the country. So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to Julie. Go for it, Julie. Great, good afternoon, everybody. So my name is Juliet Longchamp. I'm the director of professional programs at Vermont NEA. And for Senators Lyons and Chittenden, I worked 25 of my 30 years in the classroom were at Williston Central School. So I am a career teacher. I never wanted to do, never wanted to go into administration. I loved being in the classroom. So I'm a national board certified teacher and I'm certified in elementary, special ed and middle school in all four content areas. So I have a broad range of expertise in education. Over the past decade, I've been formally and informally supporting prospective teachers or an initial licensure through the Peer Review program and serve currently serve and actually served like in the early 90s with Wendy Anderson and the Peer Review Advisory Committee. But for the past five years, I would say my work in supporting Vermont teachers in Peer Review has expanded dramatically. And I started offering a class through Castleton, helping prospective teachers. So these were mostly teachers that were in the classroom on a provisional license, wanting to go through Peer Review but needed support, you know, the job is overwhelming being in the classroom and then having to do this independently was just a little bit more too much that they too much so this course has grown over the past five years and it was from this course that we kind of have based the Grovermont ed. This winter, seven of the Northeast Kingdom curriculum directors reached out to me to see if we could develop a Grow Your Own Peer Review program to support the teachers that they are going to need to hire on a provisional license during the 22-23 school year. I already have 31 people that have applied. So I already have this program going but it's scaled to the Northeast Kingdom. The curriculum directors especially wanted to recruit community members who work in the school as support staff, substitute teachers and other positions. And then they're also the great resignation. They have people that have left their jobs and are seeking to become teachers. Nationally, 80% of support staff live in the communities where they work and the hope for these Northeast Kingdom curriculum directors is that through a supported program these prospective teachers will continue to teach, learn and grow in the district contributing to a more sustainable and effective teaching workforce. And you know that just North Country alone I think they had 45 new teachers and finding 45 mentors for those first year teachers this year was really difficult. That was 45 new teachers that started this academic year. Yes, yes. I help, I support their work with mentoring and coaching and their curriculum, their mentor coordinators said it was like 45 new educators. So knowing the need for this type of program statewide I was asked to propose this program on a larger scale which is why I'm here today. So to equip new educators with content. Ms. Malcom, Ms. Center Booker has a question. Thank you Dr. Malcom. Can you tell me again where these 45 prospective teachers were? So were they all placed? Sure, so the North, now I was not working with all of these 45 but just to know the scale of new staff North Country, I believe and you can check with Jessica Applegate who is the curriculum director. They have like it's a huge district. I think there are 13 schools in that district and I think they had 45 new educators many of whom were on provisional licenses. Okay, so they were on provisional licenses they needed some have been getting completing what they needed to in order to get a standard license. Correct, so a provisional license is good for two years which means they have two years to finish there if they're going through the peer review program they have two years. I am working probably with five of them right now and probably 30 people currently statewide in the class that I offer through Castleton. In the class, the class through Castleton helps them just organize their documentation to go through the peer review. Right, so correct. If you call it a class but it's, they're not learning new things about teaching. Are we charging them for that class? Is Castleton charging? It is an option, so I let people audit I would say there are a few that are taking it for credit and the rest are just auditing at their members and they're being supported through Vermont NEA. Senator Booker. And is there a time limit on this or is this, you know? So when I run the class, yep, this when I run the class I we're looking at a full year but I will say what we're proposing here is more than support on creating the portfolio. It's kind of on steroids because we are actually going to be instructing. So the goal of this program is to quit new educators with stronger content and skills that will allow them to apply this new knowledge and integrate it kind of in real time. So in a way we're building, we're flying the plane while we're building it but we all know that teacher quality matters. Effective educators have an immense influence on the lives of children and conversely somebody that is not cared maybe have may have lasting negative effects. I read one study that a highly effective teacher can grow student knowledge four times the amount of somebody who is inexperienced. So I think our goal is to create teachers in a very accelerated way with the skills that will enable them to be as profession ready on the first day they have students in the classroom and then support them through the year in building the content and the competencies that are necessary and we expect all first year teachers to have. If I may, I'm just going to pass this in here personally but can you give us an example? So what I like about this is it's very much like you're already self identifying. If you're working in a school, chances are you want to in this economy right now you want to be there. You like kids, you like, you appreciate education. So if you're an admin assistant in the principal's office let's say you have a couple of years education and a higher education and you really want to be in the classroom. What does that, are those the kinds of folks where you're in the cafeteria? Is that the kind of group? And I'm hoping the answer is yes that you're going to be tapping into to get them excited about being in the classroom. So yes and no, to be a teacher you need to have a four year bachelor's. No, I understand. So I'm wondering if, because a lot of, there are a lot of reminders who go for a couple of years go for three years, go for a year. So there are different circumstances. It's not a lack of interest. Sometimes it's financial that their dream is to be a teacher but they just for whatever reason can't finish it. So please go ahead. So I actually do have a teacher who a parent educator in a Vermont school and I believe it's one of these seven districts. I've been meeting with these perspective teachers over the past month. I probably have three a day because I want to know their background. So this person went to community college and then she needed to work. She had to pay bills and she spent the next four years going through NVU online to and got her professional studies degree with an emphasis on education. But because student teaching the traditional student teaching is 13 weeks or the equivalent, she is now being hired next year and will hopefully receive a provisional license and then be in this program. So she didn't have a traditional college career where she went for four years. I think she got married, had a family, did two years and then slowly finished her bachelor's degree. But I also see this as people who didn't know when they were 18 to 21 years old that education was really what their passion was. So it will enable them through looking at the transcript. So I was in a guest lecturing in a St. Michael's class last night and there were some graduate students and some undergraduate students and the two graduate students, I was like, one is a paraeducator and he's working on his MAT and the other one is also a, she substitutes teachers and she's a part-time MAT program at St. Michael's. And I looked at both of them, I'm like, you know, you probably should be applying for jobs next year because they would be perfect. Continue with their education, they would do this program, but- I'm starting to interrupt and then I'll, okay, we'll pass to the Center for Business and the Center for Business. So it's not, so who are you really looking for then? If it's not gonna be some of these folks that are already there that might have three years of college, who in the schools are you really looking for? So we currently, we are looking for paraeducators people that are in the schools or in the communities that have four-year degrees and a passion for children and teaching. Center person. Can you give us a quick description of the provisional license? Like who determines that or is that kind of a rubber stamp? Oh yeah, four-year degree, the school wants to hire you provisional license or is it difficult to get? No, I think that, I mean, that's a great, so superintendents have to be the ones to ask the agency of education for provisional license. And that is a, they will look at transcripts before people get into the peer review program, they need to pass the praxis one, the praxis core or have the SAT, ACT equivalent and the praxis two, so that will help. That helps to strengthen their application to perhaps get that provisional license. There's also a one-year emergency license and I just got an email from someone in the Northeast Kingdom, forget which school, but she has received, she's been hired and she has been granted an emergency license which is only good for one year. So if maybe the, this again, this would be a great question for the agency of education because they're the ones that actually do this, but if the candidate, you know, they have their four-year degree, they don't have a lot of experience or some of these other pieces, they may be granted a one-year emergency license, which is another type of license. And then within that time, one would think that they would need to pass the praxis and begin building their experience. And you would take those people into your program as well? Right. And then do you also help those paraeducators to say, hey, you could become a teacher, but you would need first to get your provisional license. We'll help you get your provisional license and then we'll help you get your criminal license. What I've been telling our paraeducator members that we have is that if you have experience and you see jobs in your community, I'm encouraging them to apply because there may not be enough certified staff to actually take those positions and districts will hire them, especially if they're known. You know, if they've been in the school for, you know, five or 10 years, they are a known educator in that school. They can only hire them if they get the provisional license. Right. There are a lot of provisional licenses right now. I think I know hundreds. So I think that my question has something to do with this. With regard to those paraeducators, say, who have a degree, maybe, I am a daughter who is a permanent sub with a degree in public administration. What would she be able to do in your program if she decided she wanted to become a teacher? May the peer review works. All students in either undergraduate or a master's of arts and teaching, they have to complete the Vermont licensure portfolio, which looks at the 10 core teaching standards and they have to show multiple pieces of evidence. What we're proposing for Grover-Mon-Ed is that we will actually have seminars, so we are going to have classes that will address those competencies, those Vermont core teaching standards. The other thing that these people will have to do that people do not have to do in licensure programs is they have to document their competencies in that content area. Where if I was, my son graduated from UVM last year with an MAT for secondary English, the program was designed to meet the competencies in his content area. When we have these alt-root teachers, they don't have that, so they actually have to document the competencies. One of the things that we're proposing is that we will have content leads, which will support candidates in the content area. So a special educator, right now from the 31 that I had this morning in the Northeast Kingdom, about a third were special educators and a third were elementary educators. So we would have a content area lead special educator and a content area lead elementary educator and throughout the year, they would be engaging in seminars that would lead to meeting those competencies and documenting the competencies for their content area. And I'm not going through my testimony, you've read that. So I appreciate that. No, this is the center for that. Two questions. Did you have written testimony that described the program? I do, yes. I didn't see that. I didn't know why I wrote that one. I assume that's on your summer. But both quickly, is there a situation in the last, whatever, years where people get to the end of their two years of their provisional license and then they lose that or do they get an extension for another two years? I mean, what happens before your program, if your existing program wasn't there? I'll tell you why I started the program. Yeah. So my first couple of years at Vermont NEA, I would get calls from teachers who were put on provisional, that were hired on a provisional license and come March that second year, they would call me because they wanted support because they hadn't started it. And that's when we started supporting people through the peer review process. What happens if they get to the end of the two years and they didn't do the documentations? There are, they will give, the agency of education has given extensions in some circumstances, but there were people that lost their job. The school had to go find another either another provisional license teacher or a license teacher. Exactly. Even during the pandemic. Dr. Longshot, I'm wondering if, I'm sorry, my question just escaped me. Oh, I remember hearing that when New York City was in the middle of a real teacher shortage, when they opened it up to really the people of the city of New York and said, hey, who's interested in teaching? The applications were literally overwhelming into the different agencies of education down there. So I would anticipate the same. I would anticipate, which is exciting, that there's a real possibility of getting a range of different people into the classroom. So my question is, how will this be shared? How will you get the word out to a retired attorney, legislator, physician, lab technician? That this is a real possibility that now at this point in your career, it's either we're gonna help you switch or if you're retired, whatever your circumstances, you might want to enter teaching. How are you gonna let people know about this? Well, for the Northeast Kingdom group, it is, I'm working right with the curriculum directors. They are the ones that are spreading the word. We certainly, if we decide to take this to scale and offer it for the whole state, there are lots of different ways. We've started a website, we've done webinars, so we did do webinars for the Northeast Kingdom folks, for those that were interested that the curriculum directors got the word out in their own communities. And I would work with our partners to develop a plan for getting the word out. Yeah, and I think whatever we do in this committee, I think having some dollars there to get the word out, I think it would be incredibly exciting to most Vermonters who would like to be in the classroom to have this real opportunity. My final question, and I mentioned this to Mr. Robinson in the hallway last week, it seems as though a lot of professions don't always say, hey, can we see your transcripts? Do we do that with teachers? And in some ways, I'm mixed on that. I'll be honest, you could be a B minus student and be a rock star in the classroom, but showing that you didn't do great in X, Y, and Z might be intimidating. We all know you could be an A plus student and not necessarily be great in that. So I see you shaking your head that transcripts are required. I work at Bennington College. I don't think we've ever had a faculty member submit their transcripts. I know if you run percent in Washington County, you have to, but other than that, I think the legislature, you don't. So it's just something that kind of, I feel mixed about it. I really do, but... I think that what is unique about the agency of education peer review program is that there is a little bit of flexibility. Because you're right. An 18 year old male in his first year of college may have other things in mind than the academics. And maybe they didn't do so well on their first semester away from home. And well, that will lower that GPA for quite a long time. So I totally get that. There is a little more fun. I'm not talking from personal. That's nothing to do with me trying to change this law. I will say, my son listens to this testimony. He'll probably kill me. But he wasn't quite a 3.0, but in his English credits, he did have that 3.0. So even UVM was a little flexible when they accepted him into the program. We'll have him in to testify tomorrow. I think that is one of the beauties about the peer review program is that it does provide a little flexibility. And we've seen it and we've seen it work. One of the things about the program that is absolutely critical is that these new educators are well supported. And I think this is what makes Grovermont at a little bit different is that we've built in four levels of support. First there's the school-based mentor and this trained mentor will have weekly meetings and the focus will be their growing practice, content, pedagogy, classroom management and environment, lesson planning, as well as acclimating to the culture of the school. Then within each district, and I know that I think 20 of the 31 are from North country that I have signed up already. There'll be two or one district lead per 10 teachers. And the purpose of the district lead is to really help with that Vermont licensure portfolio. There will be seminars and the district teacher leads will be attending the seminars and supporting me in these seminars. But their focus on those new teachers will be to help them work through that portfolio and meet those deadlines. So the goal is that the portfolios will be done by the end of July and we will have dates throughout the year that's reasonable, given that these people will also be first year teachers. Sarah first has a question. Yes. I know I should know this, but the licensure requirement goes all the way down to preschool. Correct. Correct, nope. I'm actually working with some preschool people through secondary people right now. Vincent, I've been trying to ignore your hand, but it's not disappearing. So I feel I must call on you at this point just for legal purposes. I appreciate the acknowledgement and I defer in all the details to Julie. I just wanna say sort of on the high level, what we're trying to do is we're trying to wrap around structural supports inside an education setting to these provisionally licensed educators so they can be the best educators they can be for their students. And so they stay in the profession because as the question got to, I think it was from Senator Perch like to Julie earlier, if you're in provisional license, it doesn't guarantee that you're going to get a permanent license, you're gonna stay in. We wanna wrap these folks around with the support from their colleagues, the pedagogical support and for them to be successful educators for their students and for their careers. And what's interesting about this because Julie's been working with these Northeast Kingdom curriculum directors, the tracks are already laid and we're an opportunity where we have enough, we can, if there's resources, we can scale this up statewide to a certain level. And then of course, years from now, it hopefully will continue to grow. So I just wanna kind of reorient this back to that, recognizing your committee has other testimony to hear today as well. I appreciate that. And I think one of the things and then Senator Perswick has a question is what does that dollar amount look like? What is it that you need from us? And perhaps it is, oh, there it is, 722,000. Thank you, we've got it. Senator Perswick and then Senator Alliance. So is there, we're always looking for ways to strengthen our state college. You have this partnership with Castleton, but they're not getting any tuition dollars out of it, but you feel there's a higher benefit. Yeah, they will get tuition dollars out of this. This will be a three, and I talked with Rick Riordan this week about it. It will be a contract class. So they will get, and participants can either take it for three or six graduate credits. So for those people that are, they have their bachelor's degree, they will end up with possibly six credits of graduate work. And the other... Is that 48 years per educator include tuition to Castleton or not tuition to Castleton? Oh, no, that's so, so most, I think all teachers, Colin, you might be able to have, in their collective bargaining agreement, they have access to up to three in some districts. I was in Williston, I had up to three credits per year and that's what they would access. So wouldn't necessarily come out of their pocket. They would come out of their professional development funds that are part of their collective bargaining agreement. Yeah. So, and hopefully they will pursue a master's degree from one of the state colleges or private colleges that great, which is that we... Dr. Longshaw and Mr. Robinson, if this number were doubled, if we doubled the amount, if it were possible to get to 300 teachers, is the program ready to take that on? Only when Dr. Longshaw mentioned it started, you mentioned that 48 teachers last year up in that district, it seems as though the need will be there for 300. My question is, would the program be ready to stand up and be on its own? Well, I will say technology, we're all getting really good at engaging via technology and that makes it a little more scalable because we have the seminars online and I was in a meeting with the agency yesterday and the discussion is we know we're gonna have teachers that are gonna be hired at the end of August and September and we are going to jumpstart because I think it is critical that any educator in a classroom understands child and adolescent development, they understand learning theory and how to build that culture of learning in their classroom, how to basic lesson and unit planning, like there's some things that they do need to have which is sort of our jumpstart program in August before that first in-service day, but we can record it. Right, right. And then to, I just wanna put that, I have been offered, we are going to have a full-time fellow next year. So this will be a released teacher from their classroom duties to work full-time at Vermont NEA and this will be one of her projects. We can't really tell you the name right now but she is a national board certified special educator and I felt it really important for a special educator for both because I know we have a need for special educators and she's a very good one, but also when we look at Act 173 and I think we have an opportunity to really educate these new teachers on how to really create learning opportunities for all students in the classroom. And the other piece that I think can be very exciting is having an affinity group for our BIPOC educators and support a more diverse workforce. So I think the potential is great. And the other pieces that, I run the national board network. So I work with all teachers that are pursuing national board certification and I really want to develop teacher leadership. Right, Mr. Robinson, that number of 300 that I threw out, I don't know if you've been able to figure out the need there if the NEA has jumped into that, that kind of granular level. Are you chatting around numbers, whether or not it would be, next fall, 300, 500, anything like that? I'll be honest with you. I defer to Julie as it relates to capacity because she is the professional expert who's going to be working with this fellow who she mentioned to do the delivery of this program. And if she's saying she has capacity to support 300. No, I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Do you have an idea, does the NEA have a number of likely vacancies that we would have to fill? Oh, well, we know right now, I mean, if you go into school spring, which is the website that there are a thousand teaching positions posted today on school spring. So we really want to have that number higher. Senator Lyons and then Senator Hooker. Well, I think most of my questions have been answered, I was going to go to the geographic distribution for folks who complete and receive their provisional. I'm hearing they get a provisional license. And so my first question is, are they paying, will there be a fee for the provisional license to pay for the administrative costs? That's one question. And then you've answered the other one. So you're going to be using tele-teaching, so there'll be Zoom sessions and the mentoring process. Will that be one-on-one, or will it also be in person or Zooming? And then my third question is on that geographic distribution. So are you going to try and sort people into the program who then would work in those parts of the state that might be underserved at this point and have a lower salary? Going forward, because that's one of the problems we're hearing about. So let me start with the first one, the fee. So that would be an agency of education, an agency of education question about the licensing fee. I think it's like a $50 registration fee and like a two-year license would be $100, but I might be wrong with that and that's not built into that. Historically, kind of licensing is the responsibility of the employee. And as far as geographic location, I mean, I created this program with the Northeast Kingdom Curriculum Director, so that was the focus. And the only thing that I didn't mention is that I want it to be sustainable, but not to the scale. Like I know we have, this is a Band-Aid, but the peer review alternative route to certification has been around for decades. And my hope is some of these district leads because we will be developing content that they may use in the future, that they would have more district-wide sustainability by having their own district sort of academies. Like my goal is to be, I don't wanna be in the business of being a licensure program. I wanna support the aspiring educators in our existing programs because I do love the work that they are doing in all of our colleges and universities. And that's my vision of where I wanna be, but I know we have this emergency situation right now where we need to get people with a passion for children and for teaching in the classroom and as skilled as we can make them. So our students can receive a quality education and hopefully support them so they continue to want to be teachers. Yeah, we're just getting a little short on time. So I just, if you could, any concluding comments, I think we're into respond to Senator Lyons, that would be great only because I'm looking at the clock and our Ledge Council needs to jump in. Well, I'm happy to answer questions offline, but one of the things that we, how we wanna evaluate this program because I think that's, you know, we at Vermont NEA and NEA, we like to apply improvement science. So we will be evaluating each seminar, we'll be surveying our candidates, our participants every other month, we'll be surveying curriculum directors and administrators. And we wanna know how many are successful achieving level one certification through the peer review process and then how many of the Grover-Monad participants actually returned to year two. So those are some of the data points that we would like to follow and report back. Thank you. I think we're gonna have to leave it there for today. We really appreciate this idea and we're going to talk a little bit about it and probably have other people in and we know how to reach you and certainly we see Mr. Robinson regularly and we can touch base with him in case we have additional questions. But this has been really terrific. Thank you so much. And Senator Campion, if I may real quickly, we have a more comprehensive document than was provided in the testimony today that digs down into nitty-gritty details if that would be of use for future conversations. It'd be great if you would forward it to Daphne, she can forward it to the committee. And our intention right now is to start to put together some priorities for appropriations. And I'd be surprised if this wasn't at the top of the list. Great. Thank you for your work. We appreciate having the time today. Thanks a ton. So is everyone in agreement? I mean, I think we try to push that number up. At least say to Jane, hey, we've got a thousand shortages, a thousand openings right now. This is 150, can we at least try to get to 300? How do you get people to apply for those jobs? Because it's my understanding that nobody's applying. Right. So with this program, hopefully, and also I do think if we do talk about marketing, there were an ad in day and hour that said, or we're up in Harold, we're looking for teachers. We're trying to move in this direction. We're trying to help you transition from one career to another. I think we've got to give it a shot. Okay. Mr. Demeray. Put something in about it. It's your employer contributes because you got a leg up and you need a program, something like that. That would make it public part. That would be a penalty. You mean if your current employer wanted to do something? Supported, yes. Or current employer as an employer or as, yeah, any employee you're watching. And I think that's the point that you were trying to get to learn about besides people who are paraeducators and the like, how do you get other people interested and what do you have to accommodate them and get them to a degree faster? Right, get them to get the license faster.