 Welcome to Senate Education. It is Tuesday, February 8th at 132. We're going to start our work today by returning to S189, relating to the status of Holocaust education in public schools. We're then going to pick up our work on team mascots at round two, and then finish the day with miscellaneous changes to education law. And so with that, Ms. Garces, great to have you with us again. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. So last we left it, you were going to do a little digging, do a little work for us and come back and share some additional thoughts and information. So with that, the floor is yours. Great, thank you. Well, thank you Chair, champion and members of the committee, champion, I just changed your name to champion, sorry about that. And members of the committee for the opportunity to provide testimony on S189. My name is Amanda Garces and I am the Director of Policy Education Outreach for the Vermont Human Rights Commission. Today I want to start by saying again and acknowledging the need to teach about the Holocaust in our public schools and to thank the students who testify in this committee for their work in advancing this conversation. I also would like to acknowledge our Vermont educators and all the work they do for our kids and want to thank them for their efforts amid this pandemic. We can all agree that the Holocaust and other heart histories might be taught to our students and that it is in fact imperative to equip our students and communities with the right information and to have the tools to avoid harming our students and communities. With the current state of technology and information, we can spend countless of hours downloading lessons from the internet. I did that preparing for this. If we want to do this right, we need to offer our educators with the right tool so they can feel comfortable. In 2021, a teacher in D.C. was placed on leave after third graders were made to reenact episodes from the Holocaust. Third graders. I will now go on those details for the harm that was made, what's revolting. And when I submit my testimony, you can see the article in there. In 2020, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO held a panel discussion titled Holocaust Education in Crisis. And I would like to draw a quote from Deborah Dwork, who is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center, CUNY. And she says, we're looking at the Holocaust education issue the wrong way around. We need to focus on the teachers, not the students and pupils. And we need to move from teacher training, workshops, day programs to teacher education. Teachers teach materials with which they are comfortable that they feel confident presenting. They teach what they learn when they were at college or university. Until colleges, universities routinely offer courses on the history of the Holocaust. Teachers will never get a robust education they need to be successful in the classroom. Regis Skidmore, another panelist who was also there, echoed that sentiment and said, background knowledge and sense of pedagogy around this complex history is lacking among teachers. There's an urgent need for teacher education. I recommend watching the recording of the event and I will also send that as a resource. But I brought those quotes because I think it's important to put it in the context that is conversation happening in many places, that this is a global conversation around teaching this history and where we need to place our resources. We need to do it right. What I'm recommending today is that we put the resources to make this successful. The students want to learn our history. We know that and they want to and they want it done right. Educators also want to teach our histories and they want the support to get the right tools. In 2020, a student group called Vermont Student Anti-Racism Network survey over 200 students about the state of their schools and how they teach about racism and other topics. It is very informative and I will also be submitting that and if you have not had any of those students in your committee, I strongly recommend that you invite them. As a matter of fact, they've worked with a house representative to introduce the H584, which proposes to create an anti-racism certification program for schools that recognize full of the history contributions and perspectives of ethnic and other groups consistent with the Act 1 work. In a similar vein of the students who wrote S181, the students want to learn and the students want to write. In addition to teaching the history of the Holocaust, as slavery and the genocide experienced by indigenous people, the students also learned teach about the resistance of those communities. Today I'm recommending and borrowing from the report that the Act 1 did last year, which was in the thought was to have a cohort of teachers to learn about these subjects. That part never went anywhere, but we had requested because we had been in conversation with some universities. But what I'm bringing today is, and I'm going to quote from that report, and I will also submit it as you can see it because we don't remember, but and we said in that report, the ultimate success of ethnic and special equity studies in Vermont public schools will depend on the commitment, intellectual acumen and creative energies of educators, support professional administrators, school boards, and concerned individuals in our local communities. With dedicated long-term professional guidance and resources from the agency of education and other state bodies, a school personnel will need professional training. A successful training program will collaborate with local groups. This is not part of that, but that is what I'm adding. With the expertise in the subject matter. In this case, we have the Vermont Holocaust Memorial and other leading national groups that are doing this work and that have developed cutting-edge information. We have, if we are talking about slavery, we have the Clemens Family Farm that developed their windows to the multicultural world curriculum for K through 12th grade, which is really amazing. Teachers have taken this training and we have the Abonacci Educators in our state who also do this training or who also work with educators. The objectives of the program will incorporate communities here and will have threefold objectives. A ground school personnel in a critical and comprehensive understanding of the history, pedagogy, academic and social context needed to make this a reality. So we think that this cannot just be a group, you know, five teachers taking but that whole districts and local communities can work together to make this happen. It can't be in a vacuum. We need to assist educators to attain proficiency and confidence in developing curricular lessons plans, sourcing the digital print and multimedia resources and in facilitating classroom instruction, student evaluations that develop in a community-based project. So these will go ahead in hand with thinking that it cannot be in a vacuum and that there's just so much information, so much that, you know, if you don't have enough support to get the right thing. And to train the cadres of educators and other school personnel. So we're imagining, you know, regional hubs of teachers that are willing to do that and that will fit in some of those standards that currently exist that can people can draw into develop this curriculum. So that's what we're bringing today. I think that this needs to be a multi-faceted approach where we are supporting the educators but also that, you know, we are collaborating with already the local expertise that we have in the Holocaust, specifically, but that if we, if we're going to do something like that that we should expand it to also talk about those hard histories because if not every year we're going to be coming back all the groups are going to be coming back. We want to learn these too so let's do it all at once. So you haven't submitted written testimony yet, correct? No, I will submit it with a lot of resources that I'm bringing in and who are the people that we know that are teaching some of this history. And so Ms. Garces, correct me if I'm wrong, I think my takeaway are two key points. Number one, what is being taught? How are our teachers being trained to teach this at the university level, at the college level? In other words, this would be an opportunity for us to check in with the state colleges, with UVM to understand as it relates to, you know, we can't control their, you know, curriculum per se in a way that, you know, the state does have a licensing piece, but to give us a sense of what's happening there. And then the second piece it sounds like, but please correct me if I'm wrong, you're endorsing our idea of adding funds to the agency of education, having somebody as a point person in the agency in a similar way that we tackle literacy, where that person can work with teachers, have training teachers, creating teachers to train teachers, more of a, you know, real approach to this topic and to this subject. Correct. Is there anything else that I'm missing in terms of takeaway? No, I think the last- Honestly, sometimes I just repeat what I really do want to hear, honestly, and that, so if I am missing something, please tell me. No, I would just add that it's really important to collaborate with the community when it comes to this. So whoever has the expertise in our community in Vermont, so that it is, you know, from the experience and that, because I think, you know, people that take on these jobs, we might know a lot, but also like it is not the expertise per se. So I think we need to draw from the expertise of the people who do this on a daily basis, who live this in a daily basis, who understand the concepts in a more dynamic way. So I guess my final question would be, could you help us draft some language if the committee decides to go this way? You know, this would be a full-time equivalent at the agency of education. We'd be putting in a request to look at, to support, first of all, some of the work that's being done there right now. We've heard and we've talked about this in terms of, I think, the way the committee is feeling that there are some staffing issues, that we need to staff up. We need to support the work that's being, you know, the people that are there and increase the kind of supports that exist. What might, if we were to get really specific, what might we want a full-time equivalent to actually do? In addition to Holocaust work, what are some of the other things around anti-racism, you know, what are the things that we can sort of incorporate into that position? Just something for you to think about. Yeah, I will be happy to work with someone in the agency, maybe to think through this, and also just, I think it is important to hear from the other pieces and, you know, like, I don't, like, this bill is specific to what the Holocaust, I want to honor that, but I also just, and so what I'm, why I'm bringing all these other perspectives to is because we will be going back and forth every year to this, and so this is real need to talk about slavery the right way, to talk about the Holocaust the right way, to talk about the genocide. So I think there is a great opportunity for us to bring this. Here's some hard histories we want our students to learn here, the tools they're going to need, and for you to put the money to support that work is super important. So, but I do want to honor the fact that this was a Holocaust bill and I absolutely bring that up. Yeah, no, we wouldn't be doing this if I think Senator Taranzini, I mean, I don't think it would be on our minds, like it is, Senator Persley, if you have any proposal. Yeah, thanks. Amanda, when you say we, you're talking about the Human Rights Commission or the Ethnic Studies Committee or both? All right, I am speaking up today on behalf of the Human Rights Commission, but a lot of my work on this draws from the actual working group. And I mean, like I said, the last year, the working group made a set of recommendations to kind of, you know, that this idea that we do need to have some cohort of teachers that could start learning some of the things that we'll be bringing up in our standards recommendations, but that's not, you know, so a lot of this is very aligned to a lot of the working group members, but I am not, you know, I haven't brought this up to them. So, but I think it is very aligned. And I'll be happy to, we actually have a meeting on the 17th, I'll be happy to get some feedback from them and send you something. 23 members. Great. It seems like, yeah, and it seems like, yeah, they're aligned and I know that work of that when working group continues. So this just seems like another way to lift up that work and make it stronger and so anything we can do to help. Thank you. Yes. And Ms. Garza, it would be helpful, I think, so what we're going to start working on is a letter to appropriations outlining, you know, why this is why this is important. And we would also want the Agency of Education, Secretary French and his team to, or at least Secretary French, to respond to this kind of, you know, what we would be really be doing in the agency. Historically, I think it's safe to say we've been told the agency's okay. We've got the supports that we need. But clearly, I for one believe that we need to improve those. So if you would be willing to give us a paragraph or two that might incorporate some of the things that you've heard today, that would be great. Yes. Yes. I plan to submit something tomorrow with more resources. Yeah, that's right. That's great. That's right. I went to a rabbit hole with all the resources out there. Good, good. Senator Taranzini, how are you feeling about this, this direction? This is something that is important to all of us, but you should be credited with bringing this issue in the way you did and raising it, which has continues to be raised in the press and in different communities. I know I've heard from people recently having read the Rutland Herald or Vermont Digger of some of the coursework that they did that was transformational and others are concerned, as we all are, that this issue isn't reaching young people like it is. Yeah. Well, thank you, Senator Kimme. I'm encouraged by all the healthy discussion we've had around the subject. And like you said, I've heard from people of all different walks of life, whether they're in education or students or retirees or people from different faith backgrounds. I also am really excited about this bill because we know how partisan, maybe not as much in Vermont, but we know how partisan politics is today. And folks from all different political parties are showing great excitement about this, and it's bringing us together for one common good. So I'm liking the direction we're going in, and I think it's really important that we keep going down this path. So you like the idea, if you could get it in the budget, full-time person at the agency to work on this and other issues related to it, if you will, you're okay with that. Yeah. I think to me, when this idea came to me, it's as simple as saying, okay, we want to figure out how do we get every history teacher in the state equipped and prepared to teach about this event, right? But as we've had more discussions and as this thing has evolved, it sounds like it's bigger than just saying to every high school principal, hey, make sure your history teachers are teaching this course work. Yeah. Yeah. I think we have a real opportunity here. And so I'll be eager to hear if the administration also supports it. But we've got Senator Terzini, we can always send up to the governor if need be. Yeah, I'll be sure to do that. All right. And we are recording, so we're going to hold you to that. I would certainly think, the governor, I'll be surprised if we get real pushback. I think this is the right way to go and continues the work that Ms. Grossis and so many other people have been working on. Other questions for Amanda comments? Okay. Okay. Any final comments from you, Ms. Grossis? No, I really appreciate the time and thank you for really thinking through this that we can do it right. Great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Thank you. Thank you. See you. Yep. Thank you. Bye. Bye.