 Thank you. Thank you. Jeff, can you put the record? Good morning. For the record, Jeff Vannon from Vermont, Indiana, here to talk about H3. What I finally heard here was the Ethnic Studies Bill. Good morning, and I hope everybody's back is feeling better than mine. The shuttle was a little bit, a little bit. It's all good. So I have some testimony here that I'll pull up here. And I think that's my entire testimony, I think, on the entire screen right there. So I have copies of the folks who want that. Very simply put, thank you. First, I'll thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk to you about H3 today. Simply put, we're in favor of H3. Doesn't get any more documents than that. Thank you very much. We do think there are some opportunities here to strengthen the bill. Number one is to include and make sure that it encompasses those independent schools except public dollars. It's a good idea for public schools or private schools. It's a good idea for public schools. We also think it's a good idea for the private schools to join on board in the effort. It's a statewide issue that we need to address. We think it's important, and we think it ought to include a couple of suggestions there. The other is the Standards Board for Professional Educators, i.e. the Standards Board. That's the licensing body that licenses teachers. It sets the standards for new teachers as well as renewing of teachers. And we think they ought to make note of this. As teachers go through license initially and relicensure, we think it's important that they get some cultural competencies in this area. So I think that's part of it could be a way to strengthen the bill going forward for those educators who are in the school today. Need some help, if you will, to get more up to speed. And I would be remiss if I did not mention that Ramon E.A. has been trying its own for some time now to address this issue largely. We established a racial justice task force a couple of years ago, about three or four years ago, working with folks from around the state, with NEA's help and enable assistance and resources. We've been working very closely with the towns of Bennington for the last two years, and Montpelier last year, too, as well, and working with those communities, as well as the school, to address the issue of racial inequality and racial issues that those towns and others have found themselves in the end. The idea of the racial equity liaison position that we have is to go out and meet with our members and work with them and make sure that they're sensitive, more sensitive than they might be otherwise, to the issues of race and inequality in our schools, their own implicit bias, their institutional bias. And so we're trying to work on this and have been for a couple of years. We've got a website devoted to this, and we actually have a Bessell-Brine produced movie, 30-minute film that's on the website, which is pretty cool. Very great movie. Yeah, everything Bessell does is pretty impressive. And this is, nonetheless, all the more, I think. So we are very much in favor of H3 with a couple of suggestions along the way, but thank you very much for doing this. I'm happy to take any questions. I just need a reminder. So our historic counting, for example, when the state board issues standards, curriculum standards, not curriculum, we don't have curriculum, do the historic academies have to follow those as well to be approved school? I think their standards are a little bit different. You should ask them directly exactly what they do to follow and don't follow my sense is that they largely, the four historical academies largely follow along, but that may not be true for all of the independent schools who accept public dollars. And I don't know for certain. And I don't know if no more is around or Patty Comline represents them as well. I get a little weight in on that. I think it would be a bad idea for us to get them in. See you. Patty. Conline. Conline. Yeah. Right now? No, just at some point regarding the initiative of independent schools. Yes, so right now. Right now. The relationship between the historic academies and the standards, that was my question as well. I had a similar question also about, I'm sorry. Representative James, thank you. Just a similar question about the licensing of the independent schools. The relationship to licensing. And independent schools, they are not required to be licensed. Many are, but not all. So in order to be in the teacher retirement system, some of the academies are in the teacher retirement system. But in order to be an individual teacher in the teacher retirement system, one must be licensed. So for example, I know that there are some teachers at St. John'sbury Academy who at least were in the retirement system because they're licensed teachers. So I was coming back a couple of years. One of the former representatives of Howard Crawford was a licensed teacher at St. John'sbury Academy and also in their teacher retirement system. You said they're not required to be licensed, but many are. That's correct. That's my understanding. I know there are many teachers that are not licensed, but many who are. I believe that they have to have some kind of approval for their own needs after that. Well, that's part of the independent school approval system. So they're not. That would be the school-wide. They're not necessarily licensed. And there was much discussion last year at the end of the session over one particular issue. Correct. And I believe we have a report coming back on that. You might know better than that. I didn't follow up at the end. There are other issues. Yeah. I was just checking in the TED on that, the follow-up. TED, I know that you're listening very closely to everything I say. Just to follow up on where we are with the report on CTE license, I know that there was a group like that. In terms of the standards for professional educators are you suggesting that this start to be, this is something that in relicensing teachers show some kind of evidence that they participated in? Well, I think as soon as maybe I overstated here, perhaps. And I apologize for that. But certainly the Standards Board should be part of the working group, or at least asked to come in and have a discussion. I'm sure that would happen. Because the standards that teachers, as some of you here know, they've got to go through licensed renewal. And if they are going through that, the Standards Board could require them to go through a cultural competency course for everybody on renewal, as well as for new teachers coming into the profession. They have demonstrated at least some course work in that area. And I think that's probably the goal so that you can't change people overnight. You can start getting them to think about it and get some training in it. And I think that's what will be necessary. That's why we're doing the work. We're going to meet with teachers directly and have some conversations. So Ted, if we could also get through from the Standards Board for professional educators. Anything like that happen, Shannon? Are there questions? Let's do the last one. Who's responsible for recruiting, let's say, minority teachers, bringing minority teachers to the law? Is that you? No, for my name, it doesn't recruit teachers. We don't hire people. We don't hire or fire people. We, I think the schools, Burlington, for example, has been a large example of that. But it systematically decided we want to encourage people of different ethnicity to apply for teaching positions. And so they've taken it upon themselves to reach out to various communities and do that. So I think it's the school districts that have to do that. Most of them use an online tool called the school spring. And I think maybe that's what's sort of an online thing that they all contract with, or many schools contract with. But the schools do the recruiting now, not us. You're suggesting that we follow up on status on independent schools and the Standards or its potential thoughts to consider in this bill? I think it's just some way to improve it, perhaps. I think it's a great bill. It's a good idea. It ought to happen in some fashion or another. And we can make some slight additions and edits. You're on this group. Yes, or my designate. It's a big group, which is tough always. But it's a big issue, and a lot of people want to weigh in. Especially when we're dealing with issues of inclusion. It's very difficult to not include. Not include in this group. Absolutely. But my experience has been larger groups like that are a challenge. And you heard this morning from Megan Roy. She's, I didn't hear her. I couldn't be here to hear her testimony. But that group, Act 173, I also serve on that. That's a big group as well. And you get a lot of different opinions. And you need to have somebody who can manage those opinions as a chair to allow them all to come in. And I assume that this group with the working group here would select the right chair. And let's hope to allow everybody to have this input. Whether they're on the group or outside, and many it would be outside. Can't include everybody. Yeah, it's a group that seems to be gathering some losses as well as a long year. If you say so. Other questions? Jeff, who is your racial equity liaison? There'd be none other than Martha Allen, who was our president last year. She left term-limited Allen presidency. And we hired her for this. It's a temporary one-year assignment. We're trying to figure out how to go forward with it. But she's the one who's been spearheading this for the last couple of years internally for us. And we just kept her on board for a half-time position, one-year position. And then going forward, we're going to try to figure out how to do that, continue the work. This is important work. Sure. It really is important work. And our folks are willing, but they have to be, they're all entrenched in their day-to-day. They've got their kids, their class, they've got homework, they've got a grade, assignments to give. And once in a while, it's really hard to pick your head up and take a longer view. And you need somebody to help you do that. And so that's what we were hoping to do. And none better, we thought, than an educator who's been in the classroom for 30 years who knows what's going on in the classroom and can help folks, our members, pick her head up a little bit and take a look at the longer view culturally and what we need to do as a state moving forward. That was the goal and remain so. Very good. Should we have her come? I can ask. She's all the way up and she works out of her home in Canaan. So she's not here that often. Oh, wow. It's a long ways. So she's, like, New Hampshire, Canadian. Very much Vermont. But up in that number of words, yes. It's pretty far up there. It's right on the Canadian border. We do have a Wi-Fi here. And she does as well. That is a good point. But yeah, she could certainly, and I'll talk with Martha about seeing whether she's able to come in and do math. You represent them often. I'm often something like that's friend. And she may be here. She said she was coming to the state house on Thursday. So she will be in town. I didn't want to overpromise her schedule because I don't keep it. I can do that. OK. As a friend can. Because I already asked her where she would come. But anyway, if it fit into our schedule. I certainly think she'll come. I'm going to stay at this point in time. It's a question of whether we're going to be perfect. Right. But I'm happy to see if she's going to be here. I will certainly ask. Yeah. And it's Thursday. It was not a word, but I'm going to check and share and see what you've got to do. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Rather brief, I know. But supportive, all the same. That's helpful. Yes. Now, this is an important bill. OK, have a nice lunch. Thank you. I think that we will begin. OK. We're about to hear about the letter to the committees regarding a request for a delay. What I'd like to remind us is that the focus before us is a very narrow question. It's a very narrow question related to, will a delay help or hurt the process in your district? I want people to refrain from questions related to the tenants of the lawsuit. I want you to stay away from questions that ask about the lawsuit with the pros and cons of the lawsuit. Those are going to be the off limits. We're going to be narrowly focused on, should we offer a delay or not? And with that, any questions about that? Yeah. I have a question as to, is there one of these bills in particular that we are talking about today with that question in mind? We're not. We're going to be talking about a letter that Representative Sherman is going to present to us. So we're going to put those bills aside for a moment and stay very focused on the letter before us. So with that, Representative Sherman. That's OK. Well, I was out of the studio there. It's all right, all good, all good. So Madam Chair, just for the record, my name is Representative Heidi Sherman. I represent the community of Stowe. And I've been in this building for a while. So I'm here, thank you for doing this and for taking this time so quickly and so immediately in the session. So we have, I'm going to just talk about the letter. This is regarding specifically just the involuntary merger part of Act 46. That's it. You want me to press it? So this is regarding Act 46. But as the chair said, and I would reiterate this, we are really focusing on the involuntary merger section of Act 46. And specifically, the state plan that was released in November by the State Board of Education and the parts that put together these involuntary mergers are recommended or actually not recommended. They are putting into place these involuntary mergers. So specifically, so after the election and after the state plan, there was some communication among many of us here in this body, new members, members who were returning this year. And it was determined that there's sort of a broad coalition of folks in this building, both in the House and in the Senate, who have concerns about the timeline of these involuntary mergers. So we brought together a group of these folks. And again, we represent people, political views from across the spectrum. There are progressives, independents, Republicans, Democrats, and it really is across the political spectrum here in the House, especially, but also in the Senate. You'll know it. And we determined that the one thing we could do to really help our districts and our areas was, again, just to delay the implementation of these involuntary mergers by one year. And that's what we're asking today and asking this body to do and then the other body to do is to not argue the merits of Act 46. As most of you know, I could probably do that for hours. But that's not the role. That's not my request. That is, it is the law now. I understand that. But the timeframe and the timeline has become significantly problematic for many districts. I can speak to hours a little bit more clearly than other ones, just because I'm not familiar with ones. But ours is because ours was really not expected, I will say, because ours was recommended by this state agency to actually, the alternative governance structure was recommended to be approved. So we did not expect the state board to actually force the merger on us. So just in terms of time frame, so what we're looking at is March is coming up very quickly. Town meeting votes are going to happen in March. Votes are going to happen before that. We're really looking for an extended time frame to do this right. If we're going to do it and we're going to do this merger, we are prepared. We can be prepared to do that, but we want to make sure it's done right. We have had experience in our supervisory union with Morristown and Elmore merging going into a voluntary merger, which has taken a number of years. And actually, they're still in the process of doing that right now. And it's working out. It's working out OK and fine. But we are very concerned with the expedited time frame that we won't be able to do it well and do it right and it will harm our students. And that is why we're requesting this. I will also say, as an aside, we do have a lawsuit that is progressing. And so without getting into the details of that, as the chair said, I watch law and order all the time, but I'm no lawyer. And I couldn't tell you what aspects of that lawsuit have more merit than others. But what I do know is if we were to have to move forward with this merger now, and if afterwards in July or after this merger happens, the plaintiff's words who succeed and were to win this case, it will be virtually impossible to unravel that newly merged district. And so we're asking, so that's one part of it. But really, our focus is also on making sure we have the time to do this right, making sure our voter experience is sound, that people understand the process, that our taxpayers understand, that our voters understand. And this will be very difficult for voters to really understand, comprehend, and get in. And their interest, we have a very engaged constituency throughout our district, throughout our supervisory union. But it will be very difficult for people to understand all of the implications and the votes, the votes that will be forthcoming in a very short time frame. So that's what we're asking for. There are two bills. One is, though, simply an extension, an extension for one year, for July 1, 2020, that will give the districts the time to put this into place and put it into place well for the students, for the school districts, for the taxpayers. So. So I feel like I heard two things. I heard we need some time to do it right. And I heard we don't think we can unravel it if we prove successful in court. That says we don't want to do it at all until there's a court decision. Well, that's true. We will, if the delay happens, we will, we're going through it right now. We're doing what we need to do, absolutely. But if we're extended this delay, this extension, we would, I can't tell you what the school board will decide to do with the school districts. But my assumption is they'll hold it back for the time being so that we'll continue with our regular budget, our regular school board and what have you and then continue with it after the legal case is decided. That's probably true. As long as it's decided soon, if not, they'll just continue with it, obviously, and continue going with the merger as long to be prepared for July 1, 2020. And even prior to that so that everybody's prepared at time meeting day in 2020. And one of the concerns is that a one year extension will then perhaps change it into a less expedited court case. And therefore, it could be a case that might last two years. And we're speculating, I don't know what we should do. Absolutely. I do think, though, both the attorney general and in our case specifically, they've been, they both have expressed the desire to do this as quickly as possible, to the attorney general, from what I remember, and I could be wrong here, but from what I remember, I read that he understood the need and has made that clear that it needs to be done in a timely manner, that he's hopeful that it will be done in a timely manner. And certainly our attorneys in our school district are. And again, we have really two high performing districts with a supervisory unit that works well with both. So we'll move forward however we require to move forward and we'll be sure we're gonna be ready in 2020 if this happens. And that's, I can assure you that and we'll be ready to go. And, but in the meantime, I think, again, for voter experience, for taxpayers, for students, and to allow this legal case to continue at least, at least in some short time that we ask of this extension. The question, timely manner also includes the fact that there's pressure on it. Yes, yes, and there is. And again, so our district is a little different, but we've been working on various organizational changes in our supervisory unit for years, about a dozen years in various ways. And that's how the Morristown-Elmore voluntary merger came into play. So it would be a better in view of the district that it would be a better way to serve the students. And we believe that our section nine proposal was the best way to meet and exceed the goals back 46. So we had hoped for the, you know, this, but we'll move forward regardless. Again, we have two districts that are high performing to get along well and we'll move forward regardless and we'll make sure that we're ready in 2020. But in the meantime, we're hopeful that, again, for voter experience and other things, we're hopeful that it's delayed. We have to make some other changes. When you say we are competent, we will be ready in 2020, you're referring to the Stowe school district? Stowe and Morristown, yeah. More, I'm sorry, Elmore-Morristown Unified Union. If, yes, we'll be ready regardless, you know, with however we... Are you confident that the districts and communities represented by the various signatories to your letter would be ready to go in 2020 where they granted a one-year extension? I don't think I can answer that. I just don't know those districts and I don't know, but I think if you ask the representatives from that district, I think you'll find that they will be confident in their school districts and their new however they're supposed to organize restructure, but I couldn't answer that. I would hope so. Obviously, it's a law and we have to do it right now. It's just a really tough thing to do, again, in our particular district. I will just say that that's the timeframe and given the confusion or the missing, just it's gonna be very difficult to educate people of our district on all of these manners prior to votes that start happening. So that's why, but... Representative James. Just a question to make sure I understand what you're asking. Would all of the involuntary districts be granted this extension across the ward or would it be something that specific districts could ask for? Do you know what I'm saying? So my piece of legislation, I think it's, again, the extension is H-39. It is asking that all involuntary districts be provided the extension to July 1, 2020, one-year extension. Is there an option for them to continue to work on the paperwork on it? I think there's all sorts of things that we can work on if there's articles, the Articles of Agreement, I know districts are considering now, I know are certainly, all of that is happening at this time, even though there's, again, there's these legal cases and there's this discussion happening, but, again, I know in our district we're moving forward the way we need to move forward but, again, the request for the extension is important just because it's a really, really short timeframe to be able to educate and make sure people know what we're asking for. And we recognize that we're presenting on this concept and we will hear from three stakeholders regarding those that would like to see a delay. We will also be hearing from those who would refer to that. Yes, you said that you'd be moving towards the merger regardless, regardless of oil. Well, I just said if we're going to be, if, so I can't tell you for sure what's gonna happen with the court case, with the legal case, but if that's decided and it's decided against the plaintiffs and our case in particular, we're gonna move forward with the merger as we need to move forward and we're moving forward right now because there is nothing in place right now that allows us to not do it as of July 1, 2019. So we're working very hard. There are meetings virtually weekly, at least one with, so we're moving forward right now, but again, I've been in this business a long time but on the ballot presented budgets as a select board member and everything and I will tell you that the understanding of people in the community is paramount when voting and that is not going to be, none of that is going to be clear for the votes that are gonna happen in just a few short weeks. Represent a parliament. And you'll stop me, then. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, so Act 46 was enacted in 2015, four years ago. We've got two high functioning districts that get along well together that are part of the same SU. How come it were in 2019 and there hasn't been any progress? Oh, there's been significant progress. Let me ask, why has it been hard to come up with a... It's not been, actually. We did every piece of work we were required to do in our analysis as a district and as two separate districts was that the best way to meet and in fact exceed the goals of Act 46 was the Section 9 proposal that was part of Act 46. It was not a waiver, that is part of the law and that's what we did. And we propose that and we believe strongly that that is the best way to meet the needs of our communities and our students and the best way to meet the goals of Act 46. And we already do that. And I think you would find that if there was an opportunity to read our Section 9 proposal, it's an excellent proposal and was recommended to be approved by the secretary. Can we say how are you talking about Stowe? Stowe, email. Don't forget, I'll more and more Stowe. I don't know. It's a joint application. Yeah, yeah, immune Stowe. And in the letter, I'm just curious about what this means. So the legislature will more fully understand the true implications of these mergers. Can you give an example of what you mean by that? So I will say it's constitutional and otherwise I'll just point out that some of the legal arguments being made by the attorneys and again these are not what we made clear in the letter. These are the arguments being made. They're not necessarily, we just don't know enough about them as legislators. But for example, in Act 46, it says specifically that the preferred structures that mergers should happen wherever necessary. But in the state plan, the quote is that preferred structures were instituted wherever possible. So that's a pretty significant difference. Where necessary, where possible is a pretty significant district difference. So that's one of them. I think the debt issue with regard to a community having the right to vote to incur debt and in fact incurring that debt, then that being foisted upon a community that did not have a right to incur that debt, I think is constitutional. They argue, you know, violates equal protection clause and the common benefits clause and the Vermont Constitution, the equal benefits and the equal protection clause and one other of the US Constitution. So I think that's where the legislators will see. And again, like I said, I watch law and order a lot, but. Are before the courts. Yeah, exactly. And they are not in. Exactly. Actually, it was the otherwise, not the constitutional issues that I was more interested in. Okay, I think it's just for otherwise. In my opinion, for the otherwise, it's in fact when you have districts that can illustrate clearly that the best way to meet and exceed the goals of Act 46 are being forced into a different organizational structure for no reason, I think that's otherwise. I think that is one thing that we didn't anticipate as a legislative body. Thank you. And any questions or if there's other ideas on how to accomplish what we're trying to go for, please feel free to reach out or anything I can do to bring the folks to the table as well. Thank you. And I understand there's some action happening in the courts on the 15th, anything else? All right, actually, there's a, if I'm not mistaken, there is a, what do you call it when they get together? Status conference. Status conference. Today, I think. Today? I believe so. There's, or sometime this week. Is that right? Is that right? Yeah. So, so at least that's. Thank you again. And thank you for taking this up. I know it's a lot in the first couple of weeks, but we really, really appreciate it and your interest in hearing it. The newly formed committee is on the fast track. I like your new digs too. Much more spacious. Let it up. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. We'll have five minutes. And then we have everybody coming to talk with us about H3. We're going to just, this is kind of the legislative joint where we're going to be moving back and forth between H3 and merger. H3 merger. This is going on this week. Moving away from mergers. There's two chairs in here. And yeah, and we have, we're going to have our own page here. Tabitha, and Stefan, Tabitha? Yeah, Stefan sends his regrets. He got stuck in Chicago because of the storm. Oh, so. Yeah, he was supposed to be back two days ago. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I'm speaking on behalf of footbreakers today. Wait, will you join us? Oh, sure. And then up in the chair. Sure. I'm pulling up here to save it now. Yeah. Yeah, right? He's probably like partying enough somewhere. He was in California. So I don't know that he actually left. That's not. Anybody that's having trouble issues, we understand. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Just see if I can reload this here for you. Try not to do that. And do you want to read off of this, or? I can just look at my phone. That's good for you. Yeah, sure. Okay, so Tabitha, I'd like you to introduce yourself. And that's why you're here. Okay, I am Tabitha Fulmore. I am the Vermont director of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I'm also the Rutland area president. I'm a sixth generation Vermonter. I grew up here. I went to schools here in Vermont. So that is me. And I'm here today to testify about H3, the Ethnic Studies and Equity in Education, Equity in Schools Bill. And it's really funny because Amanda called me and she's like, oh, will you testify? I'm like, yes, because I still have my testimony from last year that nobody got to hear. So this is wonderful. I just had to update a couple things so we're good to go. But before I start that this morning, I had the opportunity to go to Sharon Academy. They invited me to come to talk about racial justice in Vermont and equity in general in schools and what they could do because that's kind of what they're interested in. And one of the things I actually asked them was if any of you have any statements you'd like me to read about why you think that this bill is so important, please send them to me. And just like a student would two minutes ago, I got a, I don't even know who it is. I said, you can tell me your name or not, from a 10th grader. So I want to read to you this 10th graders testimony before I say anything of my own because I feel like their voices are the ones that are most important in all of this. So hello, Tabitha. I'm a 10th grader at the Sharon Academy. Being a middle-class white girl in Vermont, I feel so sheltered from the real world. Going into cities and more urban places, I feel very uncultured because this school is almost completely white and the different cultures are not well represented. I think that ethnic studies and educational equity for students around Vermont is so important because as Vermonters and people in an urban place, I'm guessing she meant rural, we do not get to experience the same diversity in cities on a firsthand basis. So learning about it second hand is the next best option. There is so much internalized racism and prejudice that we are blind to until we begin to talk and that can't occur without a safe space to do so. So that is a student from Sharon Academy. Who just shared with me her interests. So that being said, I'd like to say what I have to say. So there's a quote that I love by Adrienne Rich that goes, when those who have the power to name and socially construct reality, choose not to see or hear you. When someone with the authority of a teacher say, describes the world and you are not in it, there's a moment of psychic disequilibrium as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. It takes some strength of soul and not just individual strength, but collective understanding to resist this void, this non-being into which you are thrust and to stand up demanding to be seen and heard. I want you to remember that as I tell you these next few pieces. And these are all complaints that I've received in the last year and a half. A teacher makes her students lie on the ground close together so they can get a sense of what slavery was like. She tells the one black student in class, you go first because you're black. A student threatens to kill all the black kids at another school and the school determines that it was just a joke and the student's allowed to return to school the next day while some parents of the students of color are afraid to send their kids to school because they found out through their children rather than from school officials that this had happened. When asked why things happened this way, the superintendent or why she didn't alert families to the threat, her response was, well I can't do that because that would be racist. A teacher forces kids to repeatedly say the n-word while reading Huckleberry Finn despite their protest and protests of other students in the class including students of color. A black educator leaves because district administrators do not value their expertise as the longest standing member of their department and instead asks someone with no license to mentor incoming people in their field and in their department. Even though the black educator is highly regarded by the agency of education and other officials. A student is punished more harshly for the same infraction and co-conspirators of the same act. A black educator has passed over multiple times for a position, told that they don't have enough experience only to see that same position go to an educator with no experience and no license. A black kindergartner is hit by a teacher for doing the same exact behavior as his classmates at the same exact time. The school covered it up, refused to investigate until the parents pushed the issue and then brought the child into a room with the abuser, the principal and other educators and told him that it wasn't as bad as he experienced it and that he needs to apologize to the teacher. I could go on and on about the stories and experiences and complaints that I hear on a regular basis in the Rutland area but I know that these issues are not unique around Vermont. In the last two years, since we've been chartered the Rutland area branch we've received more complaints in the area of education than all other areas combined. Whether it's invisibility in the classroom, poor or no curricular representation, unfair and discriminatory labor practices or unequal treatment as perpetrators or victims of a variety of infractions, Vermont students of color are not getting what they deserve and neither are the white children. I remember one day, one of my favorite students, this is when I actually worked at high school up until a year ago, visited me after visiting a friend at Boston Children's Hospital. As she told me about her experience, she paused to say, Ms. P, I was so scared when I was there. Her eyes got really big with fear. I asked her why and she replied, there were so many black people. So there's a few things wrong with that picture but at no point did she stop and even think about what that would mean for our interaction. Here I am, the person she trusts the most. She's telling me about how afraid she is of people that look like me. This young woman loved and respected and trusted me. She was utterly afraid to even see people who looked different from her. No one spoke to her, no one accosted her and no one did anything at all except exist and that was too much for her. Between lack of exposure in her life and lack of exposure in her education, this young woman could not even see someone different without being afraid and this example is not unique. I don't think that we're gonna solve the problem of the lack of people of color in Vermont overnight and yes, that is a problem. There are so many broken systems to repair that this particular endeavor will take far more time before large numbers of people of color even consider coming to our state as an option. But there is something we can do right now to help repair the education system. The State Board of Education could have already done something to remedy these issues but they have not done nearly enough and they have tried to do some things but H3 is what is necessary to move this to the next level. We must do better. Students of color are facing the same exact struggle to be reflected in their communities as I did when I left Vermont in 1996 and I left simply because I was not reflected anywhere. White students are still afraid of people of color even though because of technology our world is shrinking and we have more access to different people and cultures and ways of knowing and learning than ever before. Queer kids are suffering in silence and we know that the consistently validated reports about students with disabilities are quite alarming and it's no coincidence that the people most often omitted from the curricula are also those most likely to fare poorly in our education system. If the old outage is true that in order to know where you're going you must first know where you have been and we are certainly going nowhere fast without the inclusion of indigenous culture and history as it is the backbone and the cradle for all that exists in our country today. If we are to be successful people we must be a well educated people and that education must be founded in the principle of equity, equity in treatment for students, equity in curriculum and equity in representation at every level of our education system. While the third of these will certainly take longer for our state to catch up on the other two can begin to be addressed by this critical piece of legislation. Failure to address this will undoubtedly as history has proven uphold the systems of supremacy that relegate thousands of remonters into silence and make all of our children vulnerable to ignorant, hateful and racist ideology and this is not what our children deserve. Anyway, I have a question. Thank you. Questions? I'm shooting back up when I'm not hearing the story. I have so many more. I didn't even tell anyone my own. Yeah, I know it's a relevant remont school. This is all remont schools, this is all Rutland area schools. Not one of those is outside my county. And that's maybe a third of the stories that I've heard in the last two years with the NAACP. So as you look at the bill that we have, is there anything that you would change or add or subtract from the bill? Well, as a member of the coalition, Amanda and I have been working together as things come up and as we include more folks. But as of right now, I'm okay with where it stands. We are looking at a clause or something specific to indigenous culture and inclusion. Because again, that is the foundation of this society and we must recognize, if we are to repair any harm, that original harm. So that's what we're looking at right now. That original harm is a tough thing for us as well. Oh, you know? Yeah, yeah. It was under Velvet. How, some of the issues you mentioned, I see how they would be addressed in this bill in terms of having a development curriculum over time that does look at all the contributors to our society and also the episodes and history that we haven't looked at with that honest view. Some of the other things that are about bad behavior by administrators, lack of accountability, lack of any kind of appropriating sensitivity. How will age three prepare us for making the changes we need to make be those statutory or otherwise? Well, I think that there are a few ways that it will help because I think as adults have to become more literate and more understanding and more agile in terms of cultural understanding and inclusion. That will hopefully change some of the mindsets or it's gonna weed out the people that don't have an interest in this kind of image or this ideal of equity. So that's one way that I think it will help. The other way is that it's going to create a generation of folks who get it better than we do and those are gonna be our next generation of educators. So as far as directly addressing some of the harms that were done, it's not, those are done. Hopefully Human Rights Commission or Agency of Education, they're dealing with those issues from other perspectives, but it's going to be more tangential in age three. I wish we could include this in age three. One thing at a time. And I think you probably just answered my question, but in the stories that you told and actually some testimony we had earlier today, the issue of cultural competency of teachers came up in age three really is about curriculum for students. And I don't want to complicate the bill any more than it needs to be and that piece may be lacking, but it does, are there cultural competency efforts going on that you know of around the state? Oh, absolutely, schools are trying, but it's kind of like trying to put a bandaid on an arm that's been cut off. It's just not working. I mean, Sharon Academy had me this morning, they're doing wonderful work, they're much more progressive than a lot of institutions and I know that they're an independent school, so they kind of have different rules, but people are trying, but without this systemic level of buy-in it's really difficult to push against this hundreds of year old pedagogy. Yeah, well, I think it's the cultural competency of adults, not the kids. Oh, of the adults? Yeah. Yeah, people are trying, but they're trying the same old thing. Some people are trying to do new and progressive things and I really admire them for that, but it's really hard to do when you're swimming upstream. So if we can all kind of agree that this dream needs to go this way, I think that they'll see more progress because what's happening, it's just like the kids, right? You educate them here about this and then they go back into the community where the other is what they learn. So it's the same with adults. You aware of implicit bias training that's going on in your area? Mm-hmm. There are other examples of schools that are including implicit bias training for staff. Currently, the Rutland Area Superintendents Association, and I could be getting that name wrong, I know Rutland City Schools is leading the effort with the new superintendent, Adam Taylor, to do an equity conference this spring, which is great, Wallingford Elementary School, which is where my kids attend, just did an implicit bias training with See the Way. And again, I think that these are good one-shot opportunities, but without the underlying structure, one-shot deals are not gonna do it. Kind of like a booster without the initial immunization. Have you seen any curriculum materials that they can pause? Like positive pause? Well, I'm actually looking for what positive would be great, but have you looked at curriculum materials that probably should have been tossed? Oh, God, yes, absolutely. As a school, like I said, I actually ended up submitting a complaint on the behalf of students over a number of years about the Huckleberry Finn issue. Yeah, we've meanlessly complicated that along with Tequila Mockingbird. Literature tends to be the place where there's some things that we're like, oh my God, what's happening here? And then the other one is social studies and Thanksgiving. Lord, I always, I went into my kid's school last year, this is my Emmy story, and my daughter was in kindergarten, and she's just this bright, happy kid, just a kid, and she comes out, she's wearing her pilgrim hat, and she's like, mom, look at me, and I'm like, oh, good Lord, what is going on here? And that was one of the reasons that we started doing more implicit bias training in our school, and it's not that people are trying to be jerks, not by any stretch of the imagination. And another situation, and this wasn't particularly curricular, I had a student who was queer and she was coming out, and I was the first person she came out to, and her social studies teacher kept using some pretty homophobic terminology to connect with another group of students who had been disenfranchised. And she came to me, and I went to the teacher and talked about it, and the teacher was like, you know, you're right, I gotta do something different. So two days later, the kid comes back to me, she's like, well, Miss B, I can tell you had the conversation, and I said, well, how can you tell? She goes, well, because when a kid said something homophobic in class, the teacher responded by saying, you know, the kids that say the most homophobic things are often the kids that are gay. I was like, that didn't work the way you wanted it to. Two years ago, around Thanksgiving, a colleague posted, because they were in charge of doing kind of like, was it TA? Like the homeroom curriculum for Thanksgiving, and just gave an article that said, hey, maybe there's another perspective about Thanksgiving. This is something you might want to talk about with your kids, and it was written from an indigenous point of view. The social studies department freaked out. They absolutely flipped out, they're like, why would you ever put something like this out there? This doesn't celebrate the holiday, it's not what it's supposed to be about. And I was like, oh God, so yes, I got it. There's an answer to that question. Yes, yes there was. My friend handled it wonderfully, but there are some people that are malicious, and there are some people that just don't know, and there are some people that are afraid. Thank you. That's an awesome question. Hi. As a former teacher, I would spend hours looking for resources, books, and trying from my perspective, whatever I was teaching, to find the best writers, or the best artists, or the best music to integrate. Is there either a national or regional curriculum so you look at them on standards and you make recommendations that here in first grade, doing Thanksgiving or whatever. These would be, let's say, five of the books, five of the textbooks, just where a teacher could go, because it would take a lot of time for them to think they're getting the best book, but there may be 100 books out there that are so much better. Right, and that's what's difficult, and I think that that's the difficulty in teaching in general is, right, you pick your biology textbook, and you think it's going to give your kids the most comprehensive start to wherever they go next, but then you find out that there's another textbook. So in that regard, it's similar. And yes, there are tons of curricula out there. There are tons of different entities that are doing this work, and that's the whole point of age three, is so that we have that point of access here in Vermont, and we're not limiting teachers and saying this is all you can teach because that's not good, but at least saying, hey, here are some ways that you could change things up as far as your, not even just curriculum, but just as far as the standards. Right. So that those are more representative. There's no entity that could maybe say, there's been a committee of a lot of input from a lot of different stakeholders, and these are the four books we think would be really great for, there's nothing out there. Well, there's lots of different entities that can be the authority. I mean, right, so you might go to, like, PFLAG for resources on kids talking about coming out, or you might go to, my friend does this, she has her own company called Teaching Well White. So talking about teachers and their curricula, there's plenty of different resources around the nation. Again, I wouldn't want to go to one single resource because then you're limiting. But even a website, you know that, I mean, I've never heard of that, so that I could go as a teacher. Yeah, I don't think we're ever gonna find one. Like the single portal of access for all diversity. I don't think that that will exist, but I mean, it would be nice, but I think it'll ever be a thing. But that's a great question, but I think that, I don't think it should be actually, because if you do that, then you're limiting perspective. And this bill isn't about limiting perspective, it's about expanding it, and saying, these are the basic ways that we need to be educating our kids, and here's different ways, places you can go to get that. But allowing people that freedom that Vermont's known for. I think sometimes it's just about curriculum in the areas of social studies or history and the fact that we have, I completely agree, an incomplete, say the least, curriculum that has been taught since the time that I was in Vermont Public Schools, and before. And I'm just thinking if we've considered the ways in which, of course, there won't just be a portal for all the information that we'll want to add into the system, but at the same time just knowing, well, there's a certain number of hours in a school day and days in a year, and years in an educational career for a student in Vermont, that there will be some parts of our social studies and history that will need to be de-emphasized, and will need to kind of, because we've sort of filled up a block, well, here's everything you need to learn. I know, right? And it leaves so much out, but as we incorporate other things in, it's not so much like, well, this is the definitive list. It's, we're teaching you how to view an endlessly complex history through different lenses, and so it just occurs to me that that is a, it's a big shift, because it also moves us away from a sort of rote memorization of history, right? A sort of list of things that you shall commit to memory. And I think that I don't have any big conclusion here, just thinking about, thinking about that this isn't just expanding the list of topics in curricula over the years. It's really, it seems to be changing the way we're going to intend to learn, the way we're going to, kind of the skills for that lifelong learning, almost. And so, I don't know, it just, in that sense, it strikes me that it's very exciting undertaking and also very big undertaking, because it's not simply saying, you know, we're going to pull out this 20% of the curriculum and replace it with this sort of diversified 20% that we all kind of agreed on. I'm just interested to, and not that I'm looking for an answer here, but I will be interested to kind of hear how, members of the state board view that challenge, how members of the NEA view that challenge and some of the ways we might get there. It's a fascinating development. I think it's such a great time to do this. I mean, we have Act 54, that's created that new executive director position, that's going to be, you know, assessing the different entities. So I'm really excited about to see how that and H3 work together. It is, I mean, we've shifted mindsets in education, right? It's not about memorization, because the amount of information in the world doubles every two to six years, depending on the field. Kids can't possibly memorize all that. So we've, you know, it's how to be thinkers. And this is about how to be good citizens. This is about how to be citizens that are mindful of others. Yeah, I'm curious too. I'm saying you're like, I think this is not my classroom. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this experience and for coming to the legislature today. It's very helpful. I actually grew up down in Wallingford, so I went to Wallingford Elementary School for my entire elementary education. Oh, yes! I think you might have put, yes! That's it, Mike, thank you. I think you and Mike on your right were just school together. I heard you were very likely, so, yeah. You'll get some stories. Yes, yes! But I just wanted to ask, specifically to the bill before us, there's a working group, one of the members in different versions that have gone through the process included a representative of Pre-K education. Do you think that the lens of early education in Pre-K is important or vital to this discussion and so, absolutely. It's probably the most critical of all because, right, the first five years are the formative years and what you do there is so important and Pre-K is what, three and four or five years? Yes! Absolutely. I have strong feelings about that. Okay, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Call me anytime. Thank you. Well, call Amanda and she'll tell me to come on. Yes. Now, see you once in a moment, too. Good for you. I was a school counselor like Mr. Murphy. I was able to squeeze in to one more person to speak to us today about executive director racial equity position. So, Beth, can you join us? We had a conversation at one point about the work. Who would do the work? Who would be reviewing the state curriculum standards and speaking with the state board? And there was some question that this bill puts it to the work group and so there was another one that had suggested that perhaps the executive director of racial equity, which has yet to be hired, should fill that position. And we wanted to just understand a little bit about that position and if you thought this would be an appropriate role or is there an appropriate role for that person? For the record, I'm Beth Pastigie, the commissioner of human resources for the state of Vermont. And we're talking about the new racial equity executive director that was enacted last in the special section at act nine. And I just wanted to go over the kind of where we were in that process and go over the duties. So how that person is gonna be hired is through a panel and it's a five-member panel that is currently screening applicants and will be setting up interviews I think very soon. And once that happens, they'll be submitting recommendations to the governor. The new position will sit in the secretary of administration office and be responsible for kind of a broad overview of state government in terms of racial equity. So they will be primarily liaison between the governor's workforce, equity and diversity council, the human rights commission and also the cabinet. So that's one of their primary responsibilities and some of the job duties that that person will be doing kind of broad. But one of the things they'll be doing is looking at all the departments within state government, what they do kind of internally and how their internal operations are, but also the communities they're serving externally and start gathering data and collecting data so they can have something to measure and to see how we are actually doing in terms of racial equity. So that's kind of one of the first charges. Just I've got a whole list of the work that the person's gonna be doing. So let me just kind of look it up from that act nine. So, just draw a little page where it is. You know, you're not that interested in the funding probably. Appropriation funding, equity report. Report, I'm just trying to find the duties in here. Cause there was quite a big list of them. All right, I'm just gonna have to go from my memory. But overall, I think that one of the nine of the special assessment. It's an act nine special assessment. One of the things that they're going to be doing is overseeing a comprehensive organizational review to identify systemic racism in each of the three branches of state government. And inventory system is in place that engender racial disparities. They're gonna be managing and overseeing statewide collection of race-based data to determine the nature and the scope of racial discrimination within all systems of government. Developing model fairness and diversity policies and reviewing and making recommendations regarding fairness and diversity policies held by state government. We're collaborating with all the agencies to gather data and so they can make some determinations and have some information so people can evaluate that. Developing performance targets for the general assembly of the judiciary and the agencies within the executive branch. And also getting some reporting information on that so the executive director can be tracking that. We almost see this in part like we have the chief performance officer that's looking at state government from a data-centric view. The plan actually is to have the new executive director to be sitting right near that, right near on Sue, Zahler, I don't know if you know Sue, but right in that same office area as her. So he kind of housed within the agency of the administration, the agency of the administrative we'll be providing all the administrative technical legal support that the physician needs. Also they'll be working on conducting developing trainings with respect to the nature and scope of systemic racism and also the institutionalized nature of racial bias. So that's another job duty. That's not necessarily gonna take away from the existing training we do and we'll just hopefully enhance the existing training we're doing across state government. So just improving what we have, what we're offering and suggestions to make it better and hopefully this person will be able to do some training themselves in their spare time. I think that's really about it, but it's very broad, broad duties. I did not write a copy of the job description but it basically has the information, kind of an abbreviated information that's included in the statute. I know they're looking for someone who has definitely background in issues of racial equity as well as some strong administrative and leadership experience either in private sector or public sector. So that's kind of the scope of that work. They're not hiring someone to be kind of a narrow focus on K through 12 education. It's all so I'm not sure what this bill does or what the focus of this position would be. It definitely seems to be more narrow in a sense of it kind of what you're probably talking about, something that's more single focus but something that's really more, I don't know about more, but very familiar with that educational system. It's not, it's something that would be helpful in the racial equity executive director but not necessarily something that we, that the hiring panel has been zeroing in on as a technical expertise that they're actually looking for. What the current work group is to do is that shall we view the statewide curriculum standards adopted by the state board and recommend to the board updates and additional standards to recognize the full history, contributions, and perspectives of ethnic groups and social groups and there are a bunch of things along there. So do you see that this person could be a valuable member as opposed to being the person that was responsible? Absolutely, that's one of the things that the statute does say is that person would be the racial equity executive director is gonna be the liaison between other groups and the administration, the governor's office so I don't see why that person couldn't do that as well depending on how much time that was in there again as one full-time person and the job duties are already pretty broad and it's, I think, depending on, I think there's going to be a lot of work for this person to do already and I don't know that they would have the ability to take on this, like an additional responsibility of the whole, I don't know what the percentage of job you're talking about this certainly, participate. It's an area of interest. So this position is about state government and the agency of education, of course, if this is within the agency of education that's within state government so it would be something that that person would definitely have an interest in and be watching whether or not I would think they were a part of the working group or not, it would be something that they would definitely be following and keeping their eye on and looking for progress reports on from the agency of education. Thank you for that, so if you have any questions? Wondering about this position, so we have the executive director of racial equity within Act 9 of the special session, it looks as though that will be implemented with technical assistance provided by the agency of administration. So the support of those activities, this executive director can potentially pull upon or draw upon the resources of the agency of administration, is that correct? Yes. I guess just something that I'm trying to think through as we look at this is the agency of education would presumably be providing technical support to the working group as it worked in the education realm and so I would think that having the executive director on the working group might be helpful to draw upon additional resources, recognizing that we're still very much in the realm of education but I don't see anything negative about having them there. One other question would be that there was a previous discussion, believe in a previous iteration of this prior to this session in which it was thought that perhaps the executive director of racial equity could provide the legal analysis or a review of statute to flag education related provisions that this working group might wanna look at. Do you think that the executive director of racial equity would have the appropriate legal and administrative know-how to actually do that review for the working group or might that be better accomplished by other stakeholders of the agency of education? I mean, at this point, I would say probably the other stakeholders at the agency of education, we don't know who that person's going to be so it's possible they might have that legal expertise but again, not knowing who will ultimately be the executive director. I mean, really can't say you probably can ask that person in a couple of months because they'll be here and I'm sure that they'll be, a lot of committees will be very interested in hearing how that work is gonna happen and meeting the new person and we're pretty excited to have the executive director come on board but until we get in place and it's gonna be a little bit of time before they get up to speed and can do that work. So possible but it's hard to say without knowing skills and expertise and position. That wasn't actually what was laid out in Act 9. So that's not part of it so I don't think that's what the panel is really hiring for. If you get a person that can do all of these wonderful things it's gonna be amazing so we'll see. Well, thank you. Okay, time for one more. Yeah, just I apologize like my ignorance or I've seen this phrase, ethnic and social. You know, social group, you define that for me. I'm not sure what you're, are you talking about something that's in this bill? I've seen it before in other bills and I don't, I mean I feel like we're all members of the social group so I'm not, I just need a definition. Probably it's probably not appropriate to be asking that a death that she's not participating in that there is a definition in the bill. Okay. Yeah. Okay, sorry. Yeah, I haven't, if you look there. And probably someone from the agency or education certainly is much more familiar or will be familiar with the bill and I expect that to be justified. No it is in here, I just, I had started reading the bill and I hadn't gotten through it, I apologize. And I did jump right in on the commission of human resources so my department we have, I'm not normally in this committee, I'm in, we're in government operations. We have about a hundred people and we do the whole gamut of from recruitment to payroll, to labor relations, to employee classification and compensation, employee health benefits. Yeah, this is fine. Yeah. We just haven't gotten to this part yet. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much for that. Thank you. Thank you. For your questions for us. You weren't just in during that interview. So we are going to do our mental gymnastics. So we're going to take everything about age three, put it aside and we're going to turn it into brains. For an larger discussion. Thank you. And I believe Shannon, are we doing this by phone? You have two folks by phone and Scott Thompson is the answer. And Scott, you're Scott Thompson. I am. Okay, good. So I'm working on getting, and yelling out my word and sort out anything. These people are, you know, we much would just take Scott first. Are you not all going to get it? No. That was my understanding. Okay, I'll do it first. So what we're going to be talking about now. Thank you. We heard Representative Sherman's introduction of the possibility of a delay. We are going to hear from three people. I'm sorry, I've limited it to only three people so that we can at least get an idea of what the plan is. Who are stakeholders in the process who will speak to us. Regarding the value of a delay, okay? And I'm going to invite Mr. Thompson here who's a school board member for U32. And I would like to remind you that our focus is really on a very narrow question. It's only on, does delay help you? Does delay hurt you? We're not going to be getting into the, you know, the merits of Act 46, the merits of your argument, that's all in the court. Okay. You're all about time. That's what we're talking about. There will be a lot to the rest of us too. Yes, there will be a lot to the rest of us as well. So we're going to have three different people joining us and we'll start with Scott first because you happen to be here. The virtue of presence. My name is Scott Thompson. I'm the callous representative on the U32 Middle and High School Board. And full disclosure, I'm also an individual plaintiff and that happens at all the state board appeal against the November 30th decision. I'm in favor of the one year delay. For basically two big reasons. One is that at present, at least among our boards in Washington Central, it's bedlam out there. We have essentially a level of confusion and bureaucratic gamesmanship, the two of them seemingly feeding off each other, which is dizzying. And as a result, nobody is really sure which law applies. Does this, are we subject to the order of the state board of education that forces us to merge? Even though none of those institutions, the transition board in the first instance has been created yet. Or are we subject to the law now in force which would require us to submit the budgets in time for town meeting? So what's happening is that boards are engaged in pitch battles among themselves and sometimes, well, with the superintendent as well, who is essentially representing the agency's view of the matter. And a number of boards in Washington Central, or at least a number, yeah, one is a number, right? That I know of has decided to, has voted to warn the single school budget. So the virtue of a year-long delay would be just to bring some order to this mess. And to allow our schools and our boards to function in an environment that is at least somewhat stable and predictable. The second big reason why I think the year delay is not only important but necessary is for you. Because even if you do vote a year delay that does not clean your plate of Act 46 business by any means. There are still many issues which, as you mentioned at the beginning, Madam Chair, I'm not going to get into in detail. However, I think you're very aware of them. And the key point of this is that forcing mergers has taken us into entirely new territory. This is very different from what you saw with the voluntary mergers. There, it's almost as though, it's a different quadrant on the coordinate system where signs flipped to negative. And what was okay in one context is no longer okay. And just if you consider that, the state basically holds all the high cards, money, staff, centralized command and control, prestige, constitutional authority, and yet this sort of ragtag bunch of school board members and school boards and some select boards have filed a very sophisticated appeal that has led to the Attorney General agreeing to put a hold of five weeks and has also led the state to request disqualification of the judge that was assigned. The state, I think, the executive side sees that this is different, this is new. There's a lot here that needs taken care of. And this year would give you the chance to really look at that in a deliberate way and be able to take care of it. Act 46 was enacted in 2015, four years ago. The first school districts that did it for a model were operational by 2017. And your district doesn't even have articles that agree with it. It hasn't been through the 706, the process. We have. We went through the 706B and found it inadvisable. Okay, so you don't have articles that agree with it. So what, I'm just trying to get the covers up. What good is a year going to do if you haven't been able to even cross with articles that agree with it? Ah, thank you. This is where I can clear up by possible misconception. I've heard it said that an extra year would allow these non-compliant districts to get their act together. What you have to realize is that we have our act together totally. And what we came to is that the blasted thing doesn't work. And there's no way to get around it. We tried everything, two years. Again, I'm avoiding the issues, the big blocking issues. But we know to a T and we demonstrated, you know, with as clearly as we were capable of doing why a merged district would not meet the close of Act 46. And that's why I'm saying that this is not going to change that situation at all. This is why there's still all this stuff on this committee's plate. It's not going to change the situation. It's not going to change the situation within Washington Central, the barriers to merger within our supervisory unit. It will, however, give the legislature a chance to maybe look at them and make whatever modifications are necessary. Thanks for being back, Scott, I remember. You worked for the Foreign Service, is that right? Yeah. Well, I appreciate the diplomacy you're bringing to the conversation today. You recall that. I guess my question would be, we just heard testimony from someone else in favor of a year extension who suggested that in her district she was competent, resolution would be reached for their district. Am I hearing you say there will be no resolution even with a year long extension, short of the legislature taking action to modify the law as it now stands? Correct. Thank you. That was another question. And I think this, can you just expand on the barriers that you're talking about? Sure, I'll just mention one very quickly because it's sort of like proficiency-based government. If you can't get this one right, then what can we get right? And that's debt, the distribution, the redistribution of debt in a marriage system. Is that, when you said the areas? There are others, but that has been the kind of the linchpin. That's the headline for Washington Central. Yes, you know that today's district without debt is Tamarau's district that needs it from the new roof. That is a quotation from the secretary's plan. And I know you, however, it actually is not true. Calus Elementary, for example, has a capital plan that goes out to 2090 and that actually plans for capital replacement refurbishing so that the new roof is already covered. It's paid for ahead of time and built into the capital budget for the scheduled need so that we are thus able to avoid having the bond. And that was the state employee who came up with that, by the way. Thank you, we will be listening to your testimony to others for that point of view and then we will be listening to those who disagree with me. Very good, I would be disappointed if it were any other one. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Shannon, do you have any other comments here? Yes. We will have Danielle Forte, school board member, please be very specific, worried. Sure. Are you ready to go and see your folks at the house of committee? Great, Danielle, can you hear us? Okay, Danielle, thank you. I'm for calling. I'm gonna have the committee members introduce themselves here. Starting with the representative of the Tista. Hi, Danielle, this is representative of the Tista for Messick's Junction. Hello, this is representative Caleb Elder from Starksboro. Yes, this is Sarita Austin from Colchester. Chris Mattos, Milton. Larry Coupoli, Rutland City. Kate Webb, I'm the chair from Shelburne. Peter Coughlin from Cornwall. Kathleen James from Manchester. Jay Hooper, Randolph. And KC2, St. Albans. And we have one member out today. So, Danielle, we are interested in hearing from you on a very narrow question. We're keeping the question narrow. Should we extend the timeline for a year? And if so, how does it help you or hurt you? I'm gonna have to refrain from getting into the merits of Act 46 in that process. But simply, why do you want this time change? How does it affect your school? Okay. We can also, sorry, introduce yourself. So everybody knows, my name is Danielle Forty. I am a board member at the Newbury Elementary School in Newbury, Vermont, which is part of the Orange Eats Supervisory District. And so, what I would like to address a little bit here is, it came to our attention really full center last week during an Orange Eats Supervisory Union meeting that our central office is struggling under the mandated rollout of the new financial software that's just being implemented. And so, our superintendent spoke to us about what's going on with that rollout and her concerns and how those concerns would affect us. So, one of the things that we've been told is that there is concerns about the ability to prepare accurate budgets using the system. And so, our superintendent has decided that they will run parallel systems. So, they will use the old system and this new system in order to prepare the budgets going forward. So, at the same time that these budgets are being prepared on two systems, we're also trying to create a new merged board and prepare the first ever merged district budget. So, there's obviously concerns about that extra work, the extra stress that's being put on our central office and their ability to perform this work accurately. And once it's completed, then the board has the job of going through that budget and creating and making sure that it's been reviewed. And that is to make sure that it's responsibly prepared. One of the, well, the goals of Act 46 are to provide equity, maximize operational efficiencies and promote transparency and accountability. It's not really feasible for the board to go through this budget with those ideas in mind in the short of a budget cycle. So, it's frustrating for me to have put in as much time at that point as I have into the Act 46 process and get to this point and not really be able to sit down and go through this budget and put it together, keeping in mind the focus of Act 46 and being able to bring that back to my daughter to say, I am very happy with this budget. We were able to work towards the goals of Act 46. We were able to really streamline this budget and put together what we think is really a great outcome for our students in this area taking into account the goals of Act 46 and equality and efficiencies. And the biggest thing for our district and our area is the accountability and transparency. We struggled with having budgetary errors. Just recently, Ospo's budget was, it became to light, there was some budgeting errors made by previous administrations, so that shakes the voters' confidence. And so, our concern is that if we rush to get this through at the same time that we're trying to implement any software product, it will damage our new administration. So, we have a new superintendent, we have a new assistant superintendent, and we also have a new business manager. So, all of these things combined, it's nerve wracking that we could end up with a sales budget and for reasons that are not really in our control. So, what I would really like is for there to be this extended time frame to allow the administration to put together a budget not under the cloud of any software for us as a new board, transitional board, to be able to go through it and really work together and come up with what is the most efficient budget to put forward. What equalized, all the student's equal opportunities really have those conversations. And, we as a community are struggling with that trust seat in our central office and I feel that the danger of a mistake or an error in the budgeting process or this merged timeline would really jeopardize the progress that we've made as a new administration and putting in so much work and it would be just demoralizing for them and us as board members to not be able to take forward an accurate and responsible budget. Thank you. Questions to Representative Connell? So, speaking from some personal experience when we went through a merger in our district, really, and we were doing it under the accelerated model which meant that we were under a tight timeline as well, we essentially took what would have been a bunch of the existing budgets and just put them together as one document and saw that really as one step toward the goal of having a budget that produced equity and efficiency which frankly, we've been out and out for three years and we're not there yet. It's a long ongoing process. But had you given any thought to just simply rolling up the existing budgets, combining them and calling that a unified budget as a first step toward having a unified district? Yeah, yeah and in fact that's pretty much what our thought process is. But even if we do that, it will be, in my opinion, it's not a fair representation to our voters. You know, even if you, I guess I have a hard time accepting that that's usually moving forward because I mean, I think yes, we could do that in theory but even that bit is, it seems to me to sort of defeat the purpose. I mean, certainly it could be done that way but I think that even that and then time frame that we're looking at is a rough style. I think that we still need to have some conversations about those line items and being able to even get to that point. Thank you. Representative Melder. Yes, I am just curious. We've heard from a couple different folks in different school districts in one case kind of heard that this year extension would facilitate kind of completion of the merging process in another case that this one year extension wouldn't make any difference if there's no intention or perceived ability to merge. Where does your school district fit into that? Can you give us a sense of is this extension really providing an opportunity to complete a merger process and accomplish more of the thing you're talking about with Act 46's goals or is this sort of just a pause button while we wait for other things to settle out? I'm sorry if that question is not clear, I'm just. No, it's perfectly clear. No, absolutely. So it's interesting that you asked that question because today when I was sort of going through just preparing myself for this, I actually went back and read this note and we as a district, when we went to our presentation to the State Board of Ed, all of the schools in our district agreed to merge if we could have an extended timeline because we knew we saw the amount of work that needed to be done both structurally to our FU, software upgrades, different things that needed to happen that we just knew people-wise, we just didn't have the manpower to get it done. So we all understood that a merge was coming and we were working towards that, but we felt trying to get it done by July 1 was just, it was too much, too fast and that we were all willing to merge and we were definitely working towards that merge. I do think this extra time would give us more time for the merged conversations to happen and for it to happen in a way that involves community in a very, very simple way instead of it being somewhat bruising in the past. So this would be a positive thing for us for sure. Thank you. I'm wondering if you weren't working on this, what would you be working on instead? If you weren't working on merging? Yes. I think what we would be working on is we have a team of you, a couple of new principals and the students are in superintendent and the goal has been to come up with a vision and they've worked on that and they've come through from their admin meetings on that and I believe that we would be more focused on that how we as schools would be working towards a unified vision. I think that this was gonna happen anyway but I think our district was moving in that direction anyway. But it would be in a slightly different timeframe. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much, Danielle. We appreciate your testimony. You're very welcome and again, thank you for allowing me to provide your testimony via phone, I really appreciate it and I appreciate all of your work. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next we have Kenny Jones, who we lost out. I'm sorry, Nicole. You believe that we're running late? We're running late, that's fine. It's the first time. First time ever. Yes, and is new very part of the losses? Is there any? Yes. It is. Yes. Yes. We were looking mainly to get testimony from those who are in the first marches. Okay. But that's true, not all of them are. Because the town is the march which is not. The same as when we, so they're going to come and get the town on the right side. Oh, I don't know about that. All right, how you doing girls? Yeah, I'm good. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. Yep. So there? Oh, there you are. Much better. Hello? Hi, can you hear us? Can you hear me? Are we muted or something? Hi. Can you hear us? I, something happened. I can just barely, faintly hear you. Okay, well we, I'm a former teacher. I can speak quite loud when I need to. So I'm going to first have the committee introduce themselves. I'm Kate Webb from Shelburne. I'm the chair. Hi, Penny. I'm Jean Matisse, I'm a state representative from Essex Junction. Caleb Elder from Starksboro. Serita Austin from Colchester. Chris Matos, Miltus. Larry Kupely, Rotten City. Peter Conlon from Cornwall. Kathleen James, Manchester. Jay Hooper, Randolph. KC2, St. Albans. Could you hear that? I could, I think I heard everyone. Thank you. All right, very good. Okay, could you introduce yourself for the record and we also, just one, I'm sorry, I've said this a few times now, but not everybody's heard it, that we're asking you to stay very narrowly focused on one thing. And that is the effect of a one-year delay. We're gonna, I'm gonna have you refrain from conversation about the merits of that 46, you know, that business, whether or not what you're also is about, and to keep yourself focused on, should be delay or not, and why. Okay, excuse me, thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Penny Jones. I am the Vice Chair of the Elmore-Morstown Unified Union Board. I am a representative from Elmore, one of two representatives sitting on the EU Board. Today, however, I am speaking to you on behalf of the Loyal South Supervisory Union, urging you to provide a delay for the implementation to those districts that have been asked to merge or forced to merge. I do wanna thank you for considering the delay and also allowing me the opportunity to speak to you regarding that. As you may know, LSSU went through a voluntary merger process when an Elmore and Morstown merged. We understand firsthand that the merger process is a very challenging process. It took a lot of time for us to ensure the outcome would be the best to serve our students, support the teachers, and to properly communicate and engage with the community. And finally, the restructuring process itself. During the work that we did and the studies that we did on this merger, we did learn that the best environment to educate our students is the structure we're currently operating in. Currently right now, we are pursuing both the parallel pathway, preparing for the operations in our current situation for fiscal year 2020 and working toward what a forced merger would look like. The parallel processes are very confusing and frustrating to our communities. A delay would allow time to plan for merged operations in ways that include clear communications, thoughtful plans, and community engagement while the legal questions are resolved. We feel the status quo is the structure that provides the best educational environment for students throughout LSSU. A delay provides a more manageable and realistic timeline and allows time for the courts to do their work. The current forced merger timeline is unmanageable from a logistical standpoint. And again, the delay would allow us to take a step back and move forward thoughtfully in the best interest of the student teachers and entire LSSU community. Again, LSSU does urge the legislature to provide those districts that have been ordered to merge by July 1st a delay in implementation until July 1st, 2020. Thank you. Thank you. Questions? I don't need to be silent on this one, but since we've really heard of the same supervisor, you need twice my questions were already answered. Yeah, we had your representative in here that did a very good job expanding on your view. Yeah, I understood what she spoke earlier. Did you have any questions, I guess, specifically regarding the process that may have, that we may have to go through or what we did go through when we merged Elmore and Morristown? Actually, I would, this is Peter Conlon and I will ask, when your supervisory unit, in fact 46 was first enacted, why did you go with two separate districts and not a unified district? Okay, so let me just first, I mean, back up what we, when it was first enacted, Elmore and Morristown were already in the mix of merging. So we, the Elmore and Morristown board basically said, we want to stay on this path and we want to see this path through before we try to bring in another school district. But during the studies that we did have with the merger for Elmore and Morristown, we did look into that initially and again, found that the path that we were going on was the best path for all of our students. What was the size, what's the size of Elmore and Morristown? So Elmore is around 125 students and I believe Morristown is in the 700 plus range, or I know the combined is just under the 900, so yeah, that sounds about right. Or like 798, as far as students. I'm gonna ask a question that I asked with the last person. If this were settled and you were merged, what would you be working on now? Oh, sorry, can you repeat the question? If this were, if this question were not before you, whether or not to merge, what would you be working on? Let's say you're merged, what would you be working on instead? If we did merge? Yeah. We would, in the short term, we would be working on trying to get that merger process set up as far as organizational, setting up the district itself, the new unified union, working on the organizational meetings, which we did already have, working on articles of agreement, getting a combined budget, working on. Is that what you're asking? I'm not sure I totally understand the question. Once that was through, what would you like to be working on other than that, 46? Of course, the students try to get the educational needs of the students' math, and making sure we're providing them the best education we can. Representment elder? So, I feel, you are basically saying that, as I can hear it, that the consolidation that's already happened within your districts is enough in the view, well, in your view, and that further merging would not be desired or necessary. Is that accurate, first of all? I have that right, that basically this extension is not something you're asking for in order to complete a merging process. Is that correct? Well, again, I'm not sure that I'm fully understanding the question, but let me just say this. The extension itself is a request so that we can delay setting up the Unified Union the best way we can. Again, having past experience with setting up the Elmore-Morristown Unified Union, we know there's a lot of work to do. We spent over two years working on the Articles of Agreement, having community engagement meetings. What we did in two years, we're trying to, we're being asked to do in, like, November, so two months, three months, and then trying to wrap stuff up by July 1. So, first of all, so for the delay itself is so that we can, I mean, if we're gonna stay merged and regardless of what the court say, we need to go about this in a thoughtful path and having just a short time to do that is not the best for the students, for the teachers, and for the entire community. And I'll just say a quick follow-up because I know that wasn't terribly clear and thank you for answering it anyway. My, I guess what I'm really kind of wondering is, will you use this year to do that work you're describing of the further unification, which I understand does take time, or would you use this year to wait and see what the courts are gonna decide? Well, we haven't fully discussed that. My assumption would be we would be doing both. We would continue to move along, a little slower pace on the path that we need to go in a merged unified union. Yeah, I mean, I think that's how we would go. But again, going through the entire study and the possibilities, we decided, and I think proven that for us, the best course is to say two separate districts. I know you don't necessarily want to hear about that now, but that's, I mean, we will always continue to work together with the two school districts side by side. Thank you. Representative Austin. Yes, you said that the current structures is what's best for your students. If you were, let's say, forced to merge, how would that be a negative impact in specific, like, can you give me specific examples? Yeah, one very specific example is the pending capital needs of both school districts. We have, and I don't know specific for so, I know that they've been throwing out $20 to $25 million capital bond that they may need and Morse town, the Elmore Morse town is in the neighborhood of 10 to 14. I feel like having one merged board trying to decide how we're gonna handle that and then the potential for the community to vote such a large combined bond down that that's gonna ultimately impact the students of both districts. Representative Dillon Matista. Hi Penny, this is Dillon Matista from Essex Junction. I hate to use hypotheticals, but let's say that in one year, say that we extend the deadline by a year and in one year, we're in the same position and whatever comes of the court decisions, it does not change your situation. At that time, would you be inclined to advocate for an additional extension? So if you're saying that the courts have not made their decision in one year? Penny, if the courts decided and it was not a favorable decision for what you are hoping the outcome will be, would you then advocate for more time? I believe the answer would be no. At that point, we're letting the court handle this right now where we've asked for, we've got the lawsuit pending and the delay, the biggest part of this delay is the fact that we need time to put through a thorough and thoughtful merged district. And again, the Articles of Agreement, we had an organizational meeting the other night last week and our communities are still confused by the fact that we're voting on a merged district and voting on behalf of a merged district, but yet we have this lawsuit pending. So it's just, we haven't had the proper amount of time to communicate to our communities as to how we're moving forward and how this is gonna be the best path for everyone. Let me ask you this. Would it make a difference if you were required to get everything done other than the budget, other than the actual operation, being operational? You have to get all of your paperwork done. Anything would that be unrealistic? It's, I mean, obviously we could get it done, but would it be in the right, would we be doing a disservice to our community? Yeah, I believe so. We're going in for a vote on February 26th, and that's the proposal for the board structure and some school closings and the school of choice for students. And again, these are major important votes that we need to have, have our communities have. And again, we don't have the ability or the time to communicate properly to them as to what they're doing. So what I'm saying is the community needs to make decisions of a future district that we really don't have time to properly communicate to them. How much time do you need? Given the Elmore-Morristown merger that we had, at least as good nine months to a year to really engage with our community, I mean, I think we're looking at that same amount of time to really have the thoughtful, engaging meetings with our community. Any other questions? I mean, thank you very much. Well, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate you taking out, letting me speak to you folks. Thank you very much. Have a great day. You too. Bye. Bye-bye. Okay, everybody, change your hats. We're moving some photos today. Three. Only for you the best human. I mean, let the patients actually know that the affidavits of the teacher are the ones that are the ones that are the ones that have the lesson or the lessons or the lessons. This is a contribution from Essextran. The best bananas in the world. I think it's a real Essextran to choose from. They are up for grabs. They'll be the first guys. They get more stuff. You're early. How's it coming? Good. Best shot. I hope so. I hope so. Acting mayor, right? Not yet. Presidents. No. One week. I'm going to do it. It's exciting. Yeah. You need the wire break? No. I'm going to get some. You're serving us. We have the calls and the secretary. I think it would be great to have that. Secretary, would it be okay if I had a break between you and me? Absolutely. Yeah, okay. I just don't seem to have a committee. Is it something I said? I just speak to you about it. I will take a break. I will take a while. They've been taking a break now. I'll take a while. I will take a while. They've been taking a break now. I'll be right back. Quick break. Two minutes. I can go round them up. It looks like it's happening. So I'm going to go with the flow and say we'll take a five minute break. Thank you. I will let everyone know. It's in my lap. All right. A little gymnastics. H3. Shifting gears. Yes. Thank you, director. My name is Nicole May, so the executive director of the school board association. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on H3. Had the opportunity last year to work with folks from the agency of education and the coalition on the draft bill that I think was reintroduced this session. So we've been engaged in this conversation and appreciate the opportunity to participate this session. I want to spend a little bit of time sharing with you some work that our association has done with respect to racial justice and social equity in schools. A lot of our work is done in partnership with the Vermont superintendent's association, including in 2012 we launched a policy platform that we call the agenda for world class education. And we saw a lot of progress as a result of that shared agenda for public education at the state policy level. So our support for universal access to pre-K, support for proficiency based graduation requirements, flexible pathways and governance reform and education leadership supports were sort of implemented at the state policy level. But our, so our next sort of area of focus is how do we ensure effective implementation of these state initiatives at the local level that's happening in an equitable manner. We're not exacerbating differences between districts. And so before the retreat could really, so we held the retreat with our leaders of our associations, tech center directors, principals, folks from the agency of education to really unpack why we might see some inequities in terms of implementation of our agenda. And so we spent the first, it was a two day retreat, we spent the first day really focusing on unpacking the ways that structural inequities form in our system through the intersection of individual biases, institutional practices and formal policies. So we designed the first day to help our attendees both identify examples of where these structural inequities are forming within the public education system. And then we also focused on developing a working definition of equity because I think equity is a term that gets thrown around a lot without necessarily a shared understanding of what we mean when we say equity. And so that was sort of a big outcome of the day and we are both organizations have adopted this working definition which is listed in my testimony which is on your website. So I'm not going to necessarily read it to you, but it's been really an important step forward for our association's work in developing resources and programming related to equity for our members. Our annual conference this year was dedicated to helping district leaders design for equity and opportunity. That was the theme of the conference. We had keynotes and workshops associated with restorative justice practices, youth voice in terms of identifying, we had showcased the work that's happening in school districts around the state where youth are really leading the charge to address some of the racial and social justice issues that we see in our schools. So we have also in addition to our conference programming and workshops we've been working with vis-vit which is the Vermont school board's insurance trust on a model policy on district equity. So the school board's insurance trust is our partner for the model policy work that we do and I know that I highlighted that piece of work when I was here last week in terms of the association but we develop model district policies for school boards to consider. Vis-vit in our view has significant expertise on the current legal and policy framework for addressing many of the issues that have been raised in H3. Their attorney Heather Lynn provides a lot of training to school district principals, superintendents, teachers around how to implement our state's hazing harassment and bullying policy and procedures. And so we really rely on them in terms of once we start to get into student behavior, manifestations of behavior that impact student well-being, they're an important partner for us in that effort. So I also urge you to hear from them. I know they do have an interest in this bill and potentially serving on the advisory group given that the scope of that work includes a review of the policies and statutes that relate to a lot of the issues that they have an interest in. With that all as a background, the VSBA believes that the ethnic and social equity study standards called for by the bill are important and require the support and oversight of the agency of education and state board. Our understanding is that the agency and state board have relied on the work of national organizations with expertise and standards and curriculum when they've made recent updates to Vermont standards on science, technology, engineering and math. I hope the state board last week was looking at foreign language standards. So a lot of, there's been a lot of work related to updating Vermont standards, but that work has relied on the expertise and work product frankly of national organizations that have developed these content standards that are aligned with the common core state standards, et cetera. Science standards are similar. So we would hope that similar resources could be brought to bear to this work. I don't know whether there is national work. We'll believe it's the state of Washington at first with this type of work, but I think it's important to bring some support and so we are not necessarily recreating the wheel in Vermont and applying this lens to some of the national standards that have been developed. I want to strongly encourage the committee, I know you're hearing from folks at the agency shortly, but hear from them regarding the resources that they would need to support this effort. We are concerned about the current state of vacancies at the agency and believe that before new initiatives are added to their plate, the committee should understand exactly who will take responsibility for supporting the work of the advisory group and the state board of education that is envisioned in this bill. That's a real area of, I think, focus. To the extent we have reservations about moving forward with this bill, it's that without sufficient staffing support and technical expertise provided to the work group and the state board that this process could not be as productive as it should be. And we've got examples of that in a host of task force and work groups, including the hazing harassment and bullying work group which I was part of and the SBA has a seat on which has not been given any staff or resources and I believe its ability to produce useful recommendations and guidance has been limited because of that. I do want to call your attention to page eight of the bill. The work group is tasked with making recommendations with respect to school curriculum. I'm on page eight of H3. Or maybe I'm on a different, I'm on the bill as introduced. So that the working group has to review existing state statutes regarding school policies and recommends proposed statutory changes and then ensuring school curriculum does this, that. So I just want to be clear that it's important that the working group understands that the authority to establish in this committee, that the authority to establish curriculum and graduation standards is currently held by supervisory union or district boards. There's some guidance to those boards through state board rule and I cite the rules that you should look at if you're interested here but state statute clearly places curriculum into the purview of supervisory union and supervisory district boards. If the state is going to mandate specific curriculum as a result of the work of this group that will open up a much larger conversation about the role of school officials in establishing curriculum. I'm not flagged that for you. I think it's important to manage expectations in terms of what this work group is going to produce. If we want to move to a statewide curriculum, that's a different conversation entirely. Do you see in the language that we have here that there's a problem in the language here? I think that this language contemplates statutory changes that ensure curriculum has certain pieces. And so I think you'd want to review what's in state board rule currently and see whether changes to state board rule need to be made to reflect these aspirations but understand at the end of the day it is the school district's responsibility for adopting a curriculum, et cetera. So just want to be, we were in here last week talking about roles and responsibilities. I want to just flag that for you. I think that's important to the committee as well that we're not writing curriculum. And I've heard the state board chair share that concern that, you know, the state board does not write curriculum either. I just want to make sure that there's nothing in the language here, nothing moving up that reflects that we are trying to take over curriculum. Right. So I think you might want to just look at and I'd be happy to talk with folks about maybe some options but I would say lines four through 16 on page eight cause you to wonder exactly where that might be going. Dylan, if you could follow up on that. And then finally for ethnic and social equity work to be effective in schools districts need more than a policy mandate or new standards. And we realize that all this bill does for now is create an advisory group, a working group. But the expectation is that they're going to produce some recommendations that may ultimately lead to new standards or new policy requirements. I think a early first draft of this bill did have some policy requirements. This work is extraordinarily important and it's extraordinarily complex. We've had the opportunity to serve on the Vermont NEA's racial justice task force for two years where they compiled resources for classroom educators to support them and having conversations about race and social justice within their classrooms because folks need support in order to navigate these conversations and have them in a really healthy and productive way. And they need to understand how those conversations intersect with school district policy, et cetera. So I think, you know, we need to remind folks that it's not as simple as passing a policy. That we really need, if this is a priority of the state of Vermont, we need to have access to expertise and support for school districts to be able to really do this work in a meaningful way and not just check it off the box. I think there are some professional consultants in the state that can support this work, but I think it's a limited cadre of folks and there's certainly nobody at the agency of education that I would refer people to in terms of peer support around curriculum, accord, et cetera. So I just want to make sure that we're, if we're going down this road and I believe it is an important road to go down, we need to treat it with the seriousness that it deserves and make sure we're being mindful of the resources that are required. Otherwise, we will just compound frustration in the field about another new thing that we have to navigate and without sufficient resources to support educators in doing it well. So focus on ethnic and social equity is very important to the work we do, both for the costs that are incurred when students don't feel seen, heard, honored, respected in their schools and for the benefits for all students when every student has what she needs in order to succeed in school. So I do not want to anyway leave the impression that we don't think this is important work, but we do think there's some details to be worked through, first and foremost, how is the agency going to be equipped to support this work so that we ensure that it progresses and doesn't stall out, that it progresses in a way that recognizes how important it is and how complicated it is. We are a little initiative to teach. You don't want to relegate issues like this and there's a lot happening. As you've heard. Questions? What does that develop about it? A question about data. This H3 does, at some points, is a little complicated to play that we need disaggregated data for different social groups, different ethnic groups. And I'm just thinking about my school board experience when we're looking for disaggregated data, usually on socioeconomic measures and sometimes it's theirs, sometimes it's not. Can you just speak to the sources of data available to those who would develop curriculum? Whether it's, you know, professional staff, superintendents by way of policy or whoever it may be, just sort of what's the data that's there now and what are our chances of having good and better data going forward and where would it come from? Where should it come from? I think there's folks in the room that could obviously also respond to that in terms of the agency's work on the annual snapshot of school performance, SU performance data that will have equity indicators. And that is drawing from range of state level assessments from ESPEC tests to other assessments that they can speak to. So our hope is that there will currently the agency collects data from your administrators and it sort of goes to the agency and then depending on your administration and their level of some districts have hired like a data analyst and they have expertise and the ability to crunch their own numbers and start to show trends with disaggregated student populations, etc. And others really don't have that kind of technical expertise in-house. So I think the hope is that we'll move to this state platform which will allow everyone, it's not just the data goes to the agency and then we don't quite know what picture it paints but there's going to start to be a picture painted around student performance disaggregated by student groups but it's still going to be my understanding at the SU or SD level because we have such small schools with sometimes very small subsets of student groups that it's impossible to disaggregate the data without revealing student identity. So I think that's always going to be a challenge in Vermont when we're asking for disaggregated data is depending on the end size you may not be able to produce those results and I think in a lot of board's cases when you were dealing with student data from a single school with a class of 20 kids or fewer seeing disaggregated results was not possible because you would quickly know which students were eligible for free and reduced lunch or which students were NID etc. So I think moving to district results at the SU or SD level helps eliminate some of that concern and I'm hopeful that this new data dashboard which has been I think on pause because of the longitudinal data system challenges will start to help district decision makers better identify trends in the areas to be focusing on. On the makeup of the working group you had indicated that perhaps including perspective from this bit would be helpful would you be inclined on line 4 of page 5 that says the executive director of BSDA or designee would you be inclined to find a member there that was mutually agreeable to Bisbit and BSDA? Yeah I think we can I mean I know that there's always concern about making groups that are too big this is the 17 member group but I would like that I can't really speak for them but I'm always willing to I mean school safety group had a school board member on it and I said we don't know it really should be a superintendent so we appointed a superintendent so we will always work with it but I also want to get them to testify and test their interests without saying I got it Any other questions? Thank you so here we will be interested in making sure that we address those issues I would just if the committee would have our attention to be right and correct So I'd be happy to work with somebody from the agency and around you know what the scarred rails we could put on that language to make sure that it's producing the intended result Thank you That's the cool part Okay and yet another switch I am pleased to see the secretary here and the deputy secretary and they are going to this is kind of our meet and greet moment so we don't need to ground on that chair because we want to come together because we want to come together and then okay you want to come up? yeah so we should get the secretary and deputy secretary up here yeah picture picture I don't know what it used to be like it was I am really excited it's actually comfortable what's that you thank you Mr. Secretary introduce yourself Good afternoon Dan French the secretary of education we have with me today who comprise our administrative team the core of the leadership team I'll have them introduce themselves Deputy Secretary go over here I'll stand up so you can see me I'm Emily Simmons I'm the agency's general counsel nice to meet you everyone I'm Ted Fisher I'm our director of communications and legislative affairs I'm Emily Byrne I'm the chief financial officer Emily you stepped into Molly's role yeah so yeah we'd be happy to go into any of those whose role kind of questions but I will say we also have Maureen Gettys who's my executive administrative assistant who also serves on this administrative team the individuals in this room are the core leadership of the agency I've been secretary since August 13th I'm a long-serving educational leader in Vermont was a superintendent for a number of years a principal and teacher for the last couple of years I worked at St. Michael's College in higher ed and also was doing quite a bit of consulting on organizational issues somewhat focused on I-46 but a lot of different issues around school, largely working with school districts with some non-profit organizations so one of the things that drew me to the work and when I was interviewing for position with Governor Scott someone 19 years as educational leader in Vermont was one of my hopes would be to improve the organizational performance of the agency in my view that necessarily has an overly positive over the years but it's been challenged with a number of issues largely due to the complexity of the education policy space which I'm sure you're all getting familiar with as you go through your work so it's a very complex time there's a lot of things happening in education you know, period, internationally so it's not just Vermont but I think the agency has struggled somewhat in large part because federal policy has been very intrusive for the first time you know we went through this thing the No Child Left Behind Act which more or less ended in 2014 so we're at this moment now in history where we're coming at the end of a very intrusive period of federal policy the agency's been struggling competing demands for instance, you know, I have my background in information technologies to a certain extent in my 19 year history the agency had never really been successful at delivering on a single statewide information platform but for whatever reason now we're trying to do five at the same time so we have a lot going on we have major policy initiatives of Nicole alluded to Act 77 personalization of learning, Act 173 Act 166 the pre-k so we have major substantive changes in the policy landscape going on and then of course Act 46 to top it off so CTE so we can go on and on we're not sure a major addition to the structural changes so one of the things coming in as a new secretary I was sort of determined to do this large part of the work I did with multi-district supervisor unions was to position them to navigate and how do you create clear lines of communication organizational structures at the same time set the stage for the innovation that's necessary to handle the complexity so one of the first things I did was to eliminate a deputy position and just go with a single deputy my first couple weeks in the agency I was surprised at the number of programs that were sort of bifurcated by that chain of command for instance we'll talk somewhat about data systems at some point I'm sure part of this thing you'll hear about the SLBS the sustainable data system part of it resided under one deputy and the other part resided under another deputy so issues like that for me we're just sort of all hanging fruit to come in structurally to make the change as challenging as it was so that was sort of the first structural change and then to start with putting together the core administrative cabinet that could advise me and then sort of once again this area of complexity to make sure that I was getting all the information we needed so we could start sort of cross pollinating ideas the individuals in this room were part of that conversation but it was only fairly recently that this cabinet was established I really want to say first of the year we had elements that were in place Ted originally was in a different position the position that he occupies now was vacant when I arrived so he was promoted up to accept which subsequently created a vacancy in his position so we just recently filled that position when Emily when I arrived the agency she was assistant attorney general as part of a staff attorney configuration working with Molly Bachman who some of you know and representative just mentioned her part of the plan when I arrived Molly had worked on was how to do with the requirement to have a new staff attorney with Act 173 how would we manage that and I went with Molly's plan which the funding behind Emily's old position was going away so we used the 173 money to basically maintain Emily's position and also then use some funds to augment that with some contractual services specifically focused on special education Emily was then I appointed Emily to be my general counsel sometime after Thanksgiving she's fairly new in her role as well that's created a vacancy for a staff attorney which we hope to be an assistant attorney general level position Emily Burns been fairly stable in her role she's had the longest experience of any of our cabinet members Emily how long you've been with the agency 18 months I'm sorry I'm sorry my deputy secretary or our deputy secretary four years but I say new in her role as you know she was acting secretary and so there's been quite a bit of change in that level so you get a sense of sort of the instability or the newness of our organizational structure I will also just throw out there in terms of capacity issues or staffing issues I had heard like many of you over the years that the agency was under staff I was surprised when I arrived at the agency to find that we had 26 about 25 vacancies and only six of which were under active recruitment so we had a large number of vacancies that from my perspective were not being actively sought to fill so as I was working with the department of human resources which we centralized across the government to understand what the recruitment practices were across the government they sort of surfaced for me that the agency of education has always had sort of malaise if you will aggressively recruiting folks and that's played out to a certain extent but the other point I make which has been sort of learning for me as part of the cabinet Governor Scott's cabinet is that I always thought the school you know the role of this school we hear that mantra of the number of students going down and so forth one thing I started to come to appreciate is we have this broader demographic challenge you've heard a lot about that and that's translating itself into labor shortages I have we've straightened out some things I think on recruiting but we have challenges finding qualified people to fill our positions so for instance you had two other positions given to the agency as part of Act 173 the strategy when I arrived by then Deputy Secretary McFowler was to first fill the division head on which these two positions fall under we had just Amy had decided that the first recruitment process for that position had failed so we were in the process of contemplating sending it back out for active recruitment that's when I arrived we had very limited response to that recruitment I think we had I want to say three individuals applied for the position none of them are really qualified for the position so we subsequently went back out that failed again and we then subsequently appointed someone internally Chris Case to be the interim director of that division but we have you know that's sort of the recruitment challenges we face we have some structural issues that we've been working on but also just the lack of qualified candidates for some of the positions and the work that we seek people to do so I would just leave you with that general impression that just because you create a position in the agency doesn't mean we can just find a body to fill the position and we're I think structurally in a better place now to see the work, the complexity of it across our different silos within the agency but we're in a better place to actively and it's going to be necessary to retain high quality staff to do the support and work so why don't we stop there in terms of just general meet and greet if there's any specific questions you'd like to ask any of us I invite my staff to chime in as well any questions you might have I'll start we're very concerned about 173 and the lack of capacity that was a really big one and the impact around the state in terms of ability to prepare for that particularly while there's a distraction of 46 we're very worried about capacity at the state level to support our school districts in implementing that in a sea change serving students who's troubled I think you know act 173 it's okay if I just I thought we had a conversation so I'm sorry to interrupt you 173 in some of this I think today our hope was to sort of give you a little taste of what we could provide you in terms of technical support or information and I would just encourage you anytime you have a question I hope you can count on the agency to provide you sort of just straight up practical sort of advice on how we see it either legally or financially or just administratively I see 173 legislation I'd use the phrase you know just I say exceedingly large probably greater than act 46 it has two components one is a revision of the financial piece but the other side of it is a change in practice that's really going to be necessary to carry off the financial piece I think the agency is well staffed on the financial piece that we have that's also legal so that's sort of step one in getting this launched so the advisory groups up and running working Molly Bachman when I was talking about the changes in council we have figured out how we were going to staff 173 as part of this yes it's been an additional burden for us to start off on but I think I think that part of 173 I'm not so worried about coincidentally we've seen we've cleared a backlog if you will of investigations that we've done in the past when I was a superintendent the agency had a huge backlog of investigations of licensed staff coincidentally one of our investigators Judy Cutler is also a licensed attorney we were able to sort of repurpose her or redirect her to take up some of the direction on the rulemaking that's going to be required around the financial legal aspects of 173 so I would say all in all I feel pretty good about the legal and financial piece of the 173 that we're in a good place to do that that'll largely go forward under the state rulemaking authority the second side of it the professional development piece that's really going to be necessary in order to make the financial end work we're not so you know not so well staffed and I think the premise there is that we would do some contracting to that I mean that's why there was a there's a grant making RFP process that was embedded in the law and I think the advisory group has a key role they've given us some not so positive feedback about that initial sort of thinking but this will be sort of a theme going forward I think to what extent does the agency contain all the experts or are we conveners of expertise augmented by non-leaning work to that sort of latter piece to speak with like sort of Heather's role when I arrived her deputy commissioner her secretary role he was deputy secretary for research had a research final flexible pathways my vision for that was that the agency Vermont is too small to have like a research wing you know that we would contract those functions out to a certain extent with UVM and other partners that's kind of what we're doing for a lot of those sort of research pieces so I think you know with 173 I feel pretty good about the one side of it the financial legal end of it you know we've got some work to do on the other side but I think the advisory group has a to give us some feedback on what they need add a little more detail on the program yeah sorry I had a brush a deputy secretary agency of education so the two positions that are undergirding the technical assistance for at 173 are currently under recruitment and the finalists are just about to be interviewed in the next couple of weeks so we should have an update on that we have though a series of retirements that really had nothing I don't think anything to do with the position that was happening so the division director had already planned to retire Karen Edwards I think that many of you know then her assistant director also retired and most recently in December the state education special education director retired so they've all retired because they were tired and they have been working these folks have been working for 20 25 years like many of them yeah so I think that just to kind of echo what secretary said I think we have been moving as speedily as we can I don't want to leave the committee with the impression that we've just been kind of doing nothing but we have had a substantial amount of turnover through retirements that those are the sort of core of who would be making those initial hiring decisions so we really had to kind of backfill what we're making progress in the previous biennium we were provided an organizational chart that described the portion and funding sources that funded positions could we get another copy of that certainly yeah that'd be great that was a really helpful tool to visualize the agency and it would be helpful to compare where you were a couple years ago to where we are now so that the committee understands those changes so we're going to compare on the website is the old one so that would be easy enough to give you the baseline and the new ones in a web tool right now but we're about to translate that into the comparable tools the old ones you'd be able to do that great thank you the hires are they in state, out of state the broader pattern yeah are we getting any yeah I think the Deputy Secretary Boucher was saying a minute ago about you know the turnover in the leaders that would be actually making these decisions and yet the expectation the field would have that we were going to find two people to lead a professional development conversation around implementing this new law those new recruits aren't coming from school districts I mean they have to come from some place but would they ever have the expertise necessary to lead a conversation on changing this practice you know so it's for me it's sort of a set up to almost like be a failure to begin with it's like we're creating the positions but who are these people that we're contemplating but we're trying everything right now so we'd love to see internal candidates we'd love to see other candidates from other agencies in state government we'd love to see out of state we're casting our net as deep and wide as we can but the pattern there has been no common pattern to our recruitment currently yeah it's a mix we have benefited the state went to a new platform around October 1st so we've been benefiting I think I see larger numbers of applicants coming into our advertising which is good news we're leveraging social media better but I don't see a pattern yet to how does the salary compare at least a master level yeah so right so it's a conversation I had with the directors of the organization early on who you know it's the leadership from our state association who are concerned on some of these vacancies and I said to them well how many of you are going to be applying for these jobs you know because it's really I need one of you these kinds of positions I need one of you and the salary is basically half of what they get in the school districts so if that's the case then we have to assume we're not competitive necessarily in the school districts but we can't really compete for those types of candidates and we've had folks from out of state who retired and you know basically would come to Vermont and I think it's an easy cake walk to come out and you know love to live in rural pleasant Vermont you know but these are very complex positions so I think we're the place of needing to really reimagine a recruitment strategy like most businesses in Vermont we have to really think about who's responding to these and who would be responsive to these types of recruitments and what are some of the key skills where yeah I mean so it's well it's a state government issue I think it's also my theory is that we need folks that aren't necessarily you know master's level special educators per se we need some of those people but the other positions we need people that are really skilled at project management how to how to implement things how to convene the team expertise those that group of folks I think we can we can pull from someplace else I have you advertise mountain biking magazines yeah I mean yeah I think we're almost to that place the governor likes to tell that story if you don't want to if I shift gears a little bit a lot of press about what you described as a thought experiment concerning the concept of a one school district so I've heard it described as a thought experiment I've heard it described as actually a a relatively robust discussion that is consuming some capacity and time of our educational leaders could you qualify kind of what that's all about and where it is yeah and I certainly I would welcome the opportunity to come in and spend some more time on that I think it's deserved of some focus on that but I will say it's probably all of the above I think is someone who has testified before this committee in the past and just listening today and the opportunity to stop in for about 45 minutes I think you know one of the features of Vermont policymaking and education is we have a lot of stories and everyone has a different perspective and therefore has a different story and they're not to say one's better than the other but everyone has a story from my perspective just so you know my story I'm not saying it's better but from my perspective I started out as a teacher and became a principal and when I was working at St. Michael's College I was working with folks who were aspiring to be principals I've never yet met anyone who went from the teacher role to the principal role who found that to be a life altering experience okay meaning that someone when you step up to be principal and you find out you look at the whole thing as a system in the building it's a different experience than a teacher perspective you know it really is eye opening black wise when you go to a principal or a superintendent you start to contemplate what is the complete district experience it is revelatory for me going to state government in spite of my 19 years has also been eye opening and my conceptualization of leadership is just you should not just count on me to provide some sort of diagnosis but also some sort of opening into the vision of the future so what I use the paper basically the vehicle to suggest to you my perspective based on my experience of state government after four months looking across the whole state is to say and also I would just say working with the staff of the agency and watching them struggle through trying to administer all the various programs and competing initiative that have been burdened on the system in the last couple of years that my conclusion is one we have an overly complex system based on the scale and the number of students just my clinical diagnosis from that perspective it's overly complex the difficulties we have in filling positions that we just talked about the difficulties in launching information systems providing quality and equity which I see of the two fundamental aspects of the state's role in education all these things are challenged by the significant complexity that we have as an education system and we are off the charts in terms of complexity alright and I can give you some numbers if you care to visit those for example for instance we are often compared to West Virginia on the issue of school district consolidation West Virginia has about 280,000 students in consolidated down to 51 school districts we have 75,000 school districts consolidating after act 46 down to 150 school districts so anything we do at the state level is required to administer to all that granular complexity at the local level so my conclusion number one is that we are overly complex two I started to conceptualize I'm thinking about what is the role of state government in education in Vermont education I see it as two-fold one to ensure quality and ensure that quality is equally distributed across the state quality and equity that's the fundamental role I see of state government my second conclusion is one we are overly complex but two the complexities actually now interfering with our ability to ensure quality and equity we can't go about measuring equity we can't begin to measure those things effectively due to this complexity we can try, we're going to do our best but one should not be surprised that we're challenged by this third conclusion I would make is that the complexity is now the root cause of our high inefficiency as measured by finances you name it we are highly inefficient system largely due to this complexity the good news is as a prescription it's not meant to say we're going to go down that road of having one school district though I know greater minds than mine have envisioned on the past but the point is that we should start down a path of intentionally designing our future and that path largely to me means becoming simpler so that we can achieve our goals of quality and equity so I put that out there to get the conversation started it's a conversation that percolates the cabinet state government because I think another dimension of resolving the complexity issue is that we also need to deal with the integrated need to have education more thoughtfully brought together with other social services and that's something that needs to be provoked sooner rather than later but the other end of it I think now is to embellish this document the first round of it I wrote myself and then the people in the room contributed to that you know to round it out in what was called version 2 what I'm seeking to do now is to translate that document into a website because I think it's already unwieldy as a 37 page document and I'm seeking to have some folks round off the bookends of the policy we're looking for some embellishment on the higher ed piece of it to what extent with the simplification of the K-12 system enhance our ability to resolve the higher ed issue in the state which is also challenged by demographics and then to look more systemically in the early education so it's not going anywhere fast we're not here today and I won't be in the coming months introducing language around creating a single district but I think you'll hear me when you hear me talk about complexity and our complexity issue it's really a response to that because I think we've done it to ourselves to a certain extent we have really I think have consensus in the state that it should be an opportunity available to every Vermont student take it from what it is my diagnosis of the situation today is an experience for my educator is that we are at jeopardy if not being able to achieve some things unless we get a grip on simplifying our infrastructure in terms of complexity you described state-driven policy complexity and how that implementation looks at our education system the federal pieces that lend to that complexity and what they mean for the agency as you try to remain compliant with federal law I think it's a great point because one of the other dynamics I was responding to is secretary and I'm new on the job but I sense based on my experience navigating federal policy I sense we have a window of opportunity to have a Vermont-led conversation about what we want to see for our education system in the future we've come out the end of No Child Left Behind Act we were one of the few states that didn't get a waiver from its more onerous requirements and what that meant was we labeled every Vermont school a failing school in 2014 so we're at a place now with ESSA which every student succeeds act was really designed to give states more flexibility and my impression so far is that we have greater flexibility to do that under ESSA than we have for No Child Left Behind Act and perhaps we have federal requirements but we're at a point now in history where those federal requirements seem to be less restricted than they ever have been and perhaps there's an opportunity if not an invitation from the federal government for us to articulate a Vermont path forward I don't suspect that window to be open forever but I think I haven't felt I invite my other staff to contribute to this I haven't felt that we're under significant pressure in a policy direction from the federal government right now I would just add Emily Byrne the chief financial officer from the agency the only thing I would add is there is complexity on the funding side of things so the requirements the way that the federal government structure the funding that runs from the feds to local agencies is always through the state education agency so to the extent Vermont's agency of education is in effect an arm of the federal government responsible for managing the dollars that the federal government has allocated for education and holding local schools responsible for the rules that the federal government has put into place coupled with whatever requirements come on top of that from the agency of administration and sort of through state law to the extent the agency has to hold schools accountable to procurement laws and sort of regulatory regulatory stuff around funding there is this sort of complexity in terms of how the agency is poised to interact with schools and how those schools like how that back and forth, district excuse me, how that back and forth happens and what were accountable to the federal government so in that sort of middleman piece also comes into play so that sort of feeds into the complexity of what the federal government is holding us accountable to on the funding side and how that kind of plays into what the agency is doing we have a lot of capacity spent on handling all those middleman functions because we have so many local areas to administer so to be direct yes ma'am are we expecting to see something come forward from you this year that's going to start looking at your plan? no thank you, we have to see whether things were kind of struggling with at the moment yeah and that's sort of the other side I want to talk about the future but I also have my bias or my primary lens as a new secretary having been a superintendent for many years is that I want to focus on fidelity of implementation of the initiatives that we have on the table thank you and we have I'm predicting 173 will be a major piece of work that's going to require full attention I say our I mean the field as well as the AOE I'm encouraging the state board to go back and revisit the education quality standards because I think that's where many of the things we get into are about getting a tight definition of what we mean by quality and I think they're poised to do that and that will get us into act 77 some of the issues around personalized learning which folks have been struggling with so I think we have enough on the table right now I actually can't imagine too many policy spaces that you would not be involved in already you already have major initiatives like 166 and you did mention as something we have how are we doing in terms of our timeline with the federal government have each other said yeah yeah we're doing fine and I will come back in I think on Thursday to talk with you about the SLDS which I think might be where some of the concerns are arising around us meeting our deadlines SLDS is the data system acronym land so right now there we have an internal deadline for instance on the report card of December it's looking like that's actually going to be in the spring when we're actually able to launch the report card and I'll talk more about that on Thursday but that we're still compliant with our state law like there isn't any kind of stick from federal government currently that we're out of compliance on this particular asset plan so nobody is in jeopardy of experiencing something that feels like a government shopping in their schools there's no problem of money coming to our schools no and I would actually look to Emily to speak to we reallocate title one funds for instance I don't know if you want to speak to that so one of the requirements under ESSA was to identify additional support because we didn't have the data to do that we do have the flexibility with the federal funds to reallocate them back into the school so because we couldn't identify the schools we were able to take that money that was initially set aside specifically for those identified schools drop it back into the title one allocation and then push it back out to schools to spend in the current year so there isn't a pot of money that the agency is sitting on I think in that particular space you should remind us what percentage of the AOE employees are working as that farm of the federal government well it was upwards of 80% I think we have had three or four state positions so maybe we're inching down towards 72 we'll see I don't know it's like the arm of the federal government funded and Lisa it's a significant chunk and we'll make sure that to have all that data in our budget presentation but it is a large amount and to the extent just to put it out there a lot of the federal grants have not been there has not been a change in some of the like the small state minimums which Vermont gets so the bigger states the amount of administrative funds that are given to the states is sort of dictated is a percentage of how much is actually given but the smaller states get this kind of cap and those caps aren't changing and they aren't growing so to the extent the agency has kind of had to figure out given a fixed set of funds because there's not a lot coming from the state in terms of support for those programs there's more pressure on us on the same pool of funds right the state employee contract keeps increasing health care costs keep increasing the share of retirement keeps increasing so that pool of money is not buying as much as it used to so I think we're sort of at that juncture of how much federal dollars do we have given the positions that we have to the extent the state is backfilling us federal dollars or are we doing making other decisions you know around our resources as a little time in terms of vacancies you indicated that you discovered there were a lot of positions held vacant without getting into the world of our appropriations committee do you claim vacancy savings how does that sugar off for the agency? that's embedded as a formula I've learned in the budget development but I would say I just underscore I've observed a certain hiring situation we're addressing that and you heard me characterize the labor market and whom I apply I'm not saying I'm not sure of resources yet anything we're going to make that assessment as a team as we get clear about our structure I think there's places on the positions where we're funded by the general fund in particular that we might need some more support the grant funded so that 80% of the work that we do that's where the bulk of the vacancies are those positions are attached to certain discreet activities the less glamorous activities of just making state government run those general fund positions are ones like LA's area those are ones where we're doing some significant restructuring and those are ones I'm going to don't expect me not to come back with a request for more resources on that side because I think that's where we can handle and what is the agency actually requested to do what requirements do you have and then we're going to do an assessment of what resources we might need on that side it's a complex just a quick hollow and forgive me if it can wait we can discuss this another time but you also indicated looking at roles of the agency where a contracted service may provide value where a position previously had would that be a federal expenditure for those contracted services or would that be general fund dollars? It could be both I think there's opportunities I see that as like in the case of 173 part of that there was a anticipation of us needing to contract out for technical assistance on professional development so we put out the RFP but those were essentially local or state monies that did that so it's a blend of both and I think the structure is right we can see an opportunity to pull the two together to advance one discrete set of goals you know so we don't have necessarily federal requirements taking us in the direction we want to go as a state excuse me who just said it often thank you I was wondering if you could just share your thinking on expanding opportunities for high school students or even middle high school students other than going to college what I think the government seems to be very positive about technology education and I'm wondering what you're thinking and how they could possibly have I think it's like most rural states this is a huge issue I mentioned I started my career in Canaan, Vermont I was up there 15 years they're the students I think of the most when I think of opportunity and interestingly I think we're also it's a great time to be a student in the world today we have the opportunity to deliver all kinds of stuff to students and it's expanded learning opportunities that are really here now I think we've recently called into question some are more limited rural offerings that we provide students so I know the government is very interested I'm very interested Deputy Secretary Boucher this is her area of expertise I've created a career a lot of work due to our demographic situation needs to be focused on how we can really work from student aspirations to help them find a place in the Vermont landscape to live and work and that's something we have to work and once again back to my theme of complexity we need to break down the barrier so students can have more flexible access to the different programs they might want to see right now we've created a lot of sort of pathways but those pathways have like sort of jersey barriers on them and it's hard to move back and forth in among those programs for kids so we need to break down some of those silos but I see us you know the real call for us in terms of quality is how do we offer a 21st century world class which is this expansive curriculum to kids in our most rural locations if we can do that then we can achieve a certain amount of equity on behalf of our state can I just add a little piece I would love to come back in and show you what we've been doing in the area career pathways for instance it's really changing it's really changing the conversation so starting in the early grades it isn't are you going to college or are you not it's really what are the options for your life and how do you actually figure out at that time you are what you might want to do and so this body actually provided a career pathways coordinator for us who's now been there for a year and a half and he's been doing some great work on building career pathways stemming primarily right now from the career in tech education but certainly has for all students and really starting at that middle school a little earlier so I'm very excited by it and be happy to come and share an update on that work I think that would be great we're hearing from the state board of ed and the advisory group that they need help they're lacking resources that typically came from the agency is there any hope for them well yeah I would just underscore deputies remarks anytime you have a question on something you want our expertise we're happy to come in and provide that to the committee so don't hesitate to ask us I think the question of resources I think I serve on the state board as an unvoting member they're going through a bit of an existential conversation I think every state board does that periodically in my experience they're happy to be out from underneath act 46 and that sort of caused some of it but there's some state board members who question why the state board even exists at all and I think from my perception that when we made this change to secretary from commissioner the legislature created a basic framework to make that happen but now it's a good time to go back and revisit that back to my complexity theory I'm concerned about having multiple policy making bodies in education I don't think it's served us well per se that one of the issues that's contributed to complexity is one of state board thinks it's making policy important policy making authority or this committee making policy in conjunction with the governor's authority so I think we need to sort that out and get much more intentional Any more questions? Is there anybody at the agency who is looking at the future of online learning and where it fits in and is it any good that sort of thing? Yeah we have a position that's designed to education technology largely responsible for coordinating infrastructure around broadband development working, you know, we launched the Vermont virtual learning cooperative with that positions direct involvement so this is Peter Drescher does quite a bit of work and coding activity with students so we've got a lot of different pieces that run through that position at the agency and he works closely with our proficiency based learning team he's now housed in the flexible pathways division so it's a much more integrated body of work now I would say There's so much out there it's overwhelming, it's hard to know what's safe oil and what isn't and it's almost like you need a point person to really be able to test Part of it is this idea of open education resources that we call OER which is really where the channel is Curriculum today isn't like biotech because I heard reference in the prior it's really about how do you take all these different pieces and mash it up something the teacher in the other district can take and mash it up and contribute back to it so there's whole platforms dedicated to OER management I think we have to get a lot more intentional about in Vermont It's exciting also but it's really challenging Who did great Question for you I was very surprised to see that you were moving Can you give us some background on that Sure With the agency of natural resources and the agency of transportation on the water quality bill it was very valuable as tropical storm Irene that they were together and we were able to do that and now we're so we're separating that but I don't see how we're putting you near anybody that that creates I mean A&R is great but I'm not sure I get the nexus there Yeah I think well there's some synergies with ACCD which are up on the sixth floor but back to my perception coming in that I wanted the agency to be a better performing entity during the interview process it was floated to me you know we might want to move you and I said yes that would be great because there's nothing like a move to do organizational culture of work but it is challenging but I from what I understand it's a complex decision involved several elements one was we're currently in very city place and very city place was underutilized meaning the state was paying a lease payment but not all the space was being occupied so there was some capacity in very city place that was a conversation that was going on between AOT and BGS and then there was interest on the part of national life itself which is the landlord to take back more space or they wanted more of a presence on their main floor so they were in a conversation with BGS about their space needs on their own campus and then the fire happened that was just you know it happened and that precipitated really looking more systematically at all these issues so that presented itself with a solution where very city place could be more fully occupied if AOT moved out because we only occupy two floors there and coincidentally AOT can pretty much take over the whole space as I understand it so that was the beginning of this sort of move A&R also had some other other space being utilized in national life so the whole plan was put together and the fourth agency is A&C and Digital Services which we have ADS employees that are embedded in our agency like the other agency so there was a whole interest in rethinking how their provision so there were at least four agencies involved and it was a fairly complex decision but I think it was largely firstly driven not so much by synergies but by just being more effective use of our state spaces that we were paying for and setting some light so we're right now we're scheduled to move no sooner than March 1st so that's the latest word on that as of today if I had magic wand I'd be moving you next to AHS right because we certainly see the number of problems that are happening between those two agencies sometimes proximity can help but I don't see that we've helped you at all in the other thing I've noticed AHS is very large compared to us you know so I think if we were next then we'd probably be subsumed by them to a certain extent but no it's we certainly endeavor to work closely together but they're a much larger more complex agency than the agency of education just reiterate our interest in working with you whatever we do to support your work on behalf of a lot of you know don't hesitate to reach out and give us a call so we're going to have customers scheduled for the agency now initially I believe so it is actually they just had to be scheduled for Friday that's not going to work can you help us yeah well you know our people will work on the schedules best we can we have them for tomorrow they could not I'll ask them to resend yeah we'll try our best to shuffle the deck and see what we can do for you yeah we're trying to vote that out of Thursday so the agency's input is important to us that's good to hear we'd love to provide it so even if it could be Thursday okay yeah I'm not sure manager yes I just ask for anyone who announced themselves to the record today from the agency of education if you could please come see me when we're done and just write down your name, your title I have some of you listed but not all of you because I didn't know who would be coming so if you could do that that would be great thank you that's amazing thank you very much thank you and then Heather you're coming back yes Thursday I believe